Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Manchester United Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] We would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. Before we begin, we would like to inform everyone that this call will include estimates and forward-looking statements subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and which should be considered together with the cautionary note in our earnings release regarding forward-looking statements and the risk factors in our filings with the SEC. Manchester United Plc assumes no obligation to update these estimates or forward-looking statements. I will now turn the conference over to Ed Woodward, Executive Vice Chairman of Manchester United. Please go ahead, sir

Thank you, Operator, and thank you everyone for joining us today. With me on the call are Hemen Tseayo, Head of Corporate Finance; and Samanta Stewart, Head of Investor Relations. Hemen will take you through the detailed financial results shortly, but I will start with some comments on recent news and then discuss the quarter. Let me start with on pitch performance. We are delighted with the progress made so far under Louis in his first season as Manager and with only two games remaining, we are well-positioned to achieve a top four finish in the Premier League and therefore, return to European Football next season. Regarding this summer’s transfer activity, we already started implementing our plans and last week announced Memphis Depay. He is one of the most exciting young players in Europe will be joining our first team. We expect to be active again during the window but it is too early to give guidance on transfers or wages at this point. As we mentioned before, the value of content continues to rise and football is the world’s number one sport. As we discussed on our last call in February, Sky and BT have won U.K television rights for seasons 17th through 19th, and that bid reflects an increase more than 70% over current three-year cycle. The Premier League will bring the international rights to market in the second half of calendar 2015. In March, UEFA provided preliminary information on the amounts to be shared with clubs for participation in Champions League and Europa League competitions for the new three-year cycle commencing next season. For the first time, UEFA centralized into one single part and the total club remuneration announced represents an increase of more than 25% on the current deal. The total economics to English Clubs and…

Thank you, Ed and hello everyone. I’m going to review our results for the third quarter ended 31st March, 2015. As usual unless I mentioned otherwise, all figures are in U.K. Pound Sterling. In terms of the headline figures, our third quarter 2015 revenue was down £20.5 million to £95 million. And adjusted EBITDA was down £14.6 million to £25.4 million. EBITDA is higher than consensus due primarily to lower wages in the quarter and variable costs and expected by the Street. Consistent with previous announcements, we have included both adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share as we believe that in assessing the true comparative financial performance of the business, it is useful to strip out the distorting effects of debits and credits unrelated to the underlying business and then to apply a normalized tax rate of 35% for both the current and the prior periods. And we provide a reconciliation of this in the earnings release. Adjusted net loss was £7.1 million, compared with £13 million of profit in the third quarter for prior year due primarily to lower broadcasting and Matchday revenues as a result of our absence from European competition this season and higher amortization, which is partially offset by lower wages and decreases to other operating costs. Turning to the key items of note in the financial statements then, Matchday revenues decreased £11.6 million primarily due to playing two fewer Premier League home games, the discount provided to executive season-ticket holders this year due to the absence of European football and the loss of one Champions League home game in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Broadcasting revenues decreased £13.9 million due to again, the two fewer Premier League home games in the quarter and this is because we…

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my call. Just a couple of questions. The first one with regard to the very strong Q3 and congratulations to that. It seems that the 6% reduction in staff costs was one of the reasons for it. I wonder if you could just give us a little bit more color as to why staff costs went down 6% the way that they did. And my second question is with regard to the squad for next year, two prongs the question. Firstly, I wonder what proportion of players are up for contract review this year and whether we ought to be concerned about wage inflation next year? And the second prong is, do you believe this quarter is deep enough to challenge the European honors next year, and if not will, will you be looking to strengthen?

Thank you, Alex. I will definitely take the first portion of that. The reason for the 6% wage reduction in staff costs that the bulk of that is driven simply due to the absence of the Champions League uplift on this quarter versus last year when we’re in the Champions League. I did mention and I know that a number of analysts obviously have an expectation of some cost coming in the second half of the year. Some of those coming into Q3. Some of those could still happen in Q4 from the play wage negotiations that are underway. With respect to the portion of the squad, do you want to take that, Ed?

Yes. Sure. There are several players out says if you like out of 30 13 players, maybe around about eight or nine who has a contract at the end of next season. There are only a couple this season here on the periphery. So it’s not going to have a major impact from an inflationary perspective because that’s a fairly normal ratio to be honest. Obviously, a number of those that have one year left will be often new contracts. And I think Hemen alluded to that early when he made his comments about the negotiations that are underway. The second part of your question in terms of is the squad deep enough to challenge? The squads will be absolutely deep enough and ready to challenge on all fronts, all competitions next year and that as ever does involve some ins and outs in the summer which we’re not going to guide on in terms on number.

Okay. Thanks so much.

[Operator Instructions] The next question will come from Matthew Walker of Nomura. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much. Good afternoon and good morning. The first question is the beat on EBITDA and the upgrade that you put through. Does that flow through into EBITDA for next year, and if not, why not? The other question really is on the e-commerce side and retail. Why have you chosen to extend with kit back and where are the other stores going to go? You mentioned 20 stores in Southeast Asia, what markets are promising for the further stores? And will you be doing that by yourself or with somebody else? And the last question is really on player CapEx. You said you couldn’t really give guidance for next year. But for this year I think you were talking about around 90 million of net player CapEx. Does Depay go into that CapEx number? Are you still comfortable with that number? And how much is Depay coming in for please?

Hi, Matthew. And thank you. I’ll take your first and your third question and then I’ll pass on to it for the retail and merchandise. Firstly, on the EBITDA or uplift and whether it would flow through into next year, the vast majority of it does not flow through. So I will just walk through the items that are largely contributing to that we can see that I think relatively clearly. So, first of all, and with respect to the topline on the revenue side, we are at the high-end of guidance, and I guess, on a like-for-like basis we -- the revenue would have come down with respect to the early exit on the Capital One Cup, where we went out on the first round as you might recall, the MK Dons game. And so we lost a portion of revenue, but we’ve made that up in other ways, in particular due to the payments on broadcasting, the washer payments from broadcasting on the Champions League, which were higher than we’d broadcast, sorry, than we forecast, and also for the overseas payments. Those are one offs and although, they happened, I’ll say, one-offs, the amounts are not forecastable and the amount that we received, although, we had a provision in there for what we expected to receive it was significantly higher than what we expected, so that would not repeat and that's kind of together circa about £2 million in terms of the incremental uplist. And there’s also then the strong performance on Matchday ticket sales is something that theoretically could repeat its relatively small around circa £0.5 million and that obviously varies from year-to-year but that's amount is theoretically repeatable. With respect to the cost side and the fewer Domestic Cup games, clearly that had an effect on…

Thank you.

I'll hand you now to Ed for the retail piece.

Yeah. Okay. So by the way, we extend Kitbag, essentially prudent. We’ve done a very short extension while we finish our digital media plans and we didn’t want to lock ourselves into something and then regret it. But we’re going -- basically, we will be making strategic decisions during the next 12 months related to that. So that’s why we’ve done it. It is just to cover that often, we continue to deliver product by e-commerce with the partner that we know. The stores, that is very much a work in progress in terms of where they maybe with. We think there is a big opportunity here globally that hasn’t fully been developed. I think there are several strategic markets I would call them that we believe represent a material opportunity. One as an example would be the U.S. And whether it’s our sales directly or partnering, again, that’s to be determined but obviously recognizing that our retail expertise largely resides within the team of people who run to the Megastore, that group of people -- as staff members are coming back to us obviously. So, we are opined about whether we need to partner from an expertise and understanding perspective in particular as you look to local markets, where local knowledge is extremely important.

Last quick question, which is, it was reported I think that the club has decided not to take up naming rights for the stadium, which could have brought in maybe £20 million, £25 million. Can you comment on that? Is that right?

I think the comment was that we had no intention of doing a process to sell naming rights related to Old Trafford. I had no idea where that £20 million came from. We haven't -- we're not sitting here with an offer. We are ignoring that.

Okay. Thanks so much.

Yes.

And at this time, we show no further questions. We will conclude the question-and-answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, the Manchester United third quarter 2015 earnings conference call has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.