NHLPF (NHLPF) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the NAHL Group Plc Interim Results 2026 Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO, James Saralis. Good morning.

Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone. Yes, I'm James Saralis. I'm the CEO of NAHL Group, and I'd like to welcome you to our interim results presentation, which covers the 6 months to 30th of June 2026. We released our results on the 30th of September, and we're going to give you an overview of those results today and try and answer your questions. Next to me today is Chris Higham, the Group CFO, and we're going to walk you through a presentation, which should be on your screen now, and it's also available on our website that's www.nahlgroupplc.co.uk. The agenda for the meeting today starts with me taking us through the highlights of 2026 or the first half of 2026. And for those of you who are new to the business, I'll give you a short introduction into who we are and what we do. I'll then hand over to Chris to present a financial review, including more detail on our growth and profitability and cash generation. Then we'll go into the business review and dig into the results of each of our 2 trading divisions in more detail. And finally, we'll finish by talking about a couple of transactions that we've entered into post period end and provide an outlook. And there should be plenty of time for questions at the end. In fact, I think we've had a couple come through already. So if you do want to submit a question, then you can do so at any time, and we'll try to answer as many of those as we can at the end. So without further ado, let's get started. So the Board and I are very pleased with the group's solid performance in H1. We delivered revenue growth. We increased profit before tax, and our cash generation has continued to be strong. We're also able to report progress against the group's overarching strategy. Highlights include revenue growth of 5% to GBP 18.3 million, and we delivered a 31% increase in profit before tax to GBP 2.3 million. Actually, it's important to state now that unless we say otherwise, all the results that we're quoting today are for continuing operations, i.e., excluding the Searches UK business, which is being held for sale. Free cash flow was again very strong in H1, growing 43% to GBP 2.2 million. That was up from GBP 1.5 million last year. And that meant our net debt reduced by 66% from GBP 3.2 million at year-end to GBP 1.1 million at 30th of June. And this was the lowest level of net debt since the IPO in 2014. So a really important milestone for us and a fantastic team effort by our people across the business. So a really pleasing set of results across the group. Now we'll return to some of these numbers shortly, but I just wanted to share some of the operational highlights across the divisions, too. In our Consumer Legal Services division, that comprises our personal injury business, while the division increased revenue by 7% to GBP 9.9 million and underlying operating profits were up 41% to GBP 1.9 million. We'll talk later on about how we are encouraged with the progress that we've made against each of the 4 pillars that form the basis of the growth strategy for our personal injury business. But to briefly call out some of the highlights now. Firstly, we've added over 2,100 new inquiries into our wholly owned law firm National Accident Law or NAL, which we estimate are worth GBP 2.9 million in future revenue and cash. Secondly, we settled over 1,600 of our clients' claims in the period. This generated GBP 5.7 million in cash from settlements, which was 6% more than last year. And thirdly, at the end of the period, we were processing 6,623 ongoing claims, which we believe should generate over GBP 11.5 million of future cash when they mature. Finally, on our lead generation, National Accident Helpline delivered 11% more inquiries in H1 than prior year. We're investing slightly more per inquiry because they generated added value for us. If I turn to Critical Care then, Bush & Co. has grown its revenues by 3% in the first half to GBP 8.5 million, and they generated GBP 2.6 million of underlying operating profit. So that's broadly in line with last year. Demand for Bush's expert witness services remains strong, and revenues for this service line increased by 11% in the period. And new instructions increased by 22%, guaranteeing a strong pipeline of future reports. The case management market continues to be challenging, and our revenues were down 8%, but management are taking positive action, which I'll expand on later on, including in our exciting Bush & Co. Kids proposition, which grew by 6% in the first half. Finally, Bush & Co. Care Solutions grew its revenues by 20% to GBP 0.5 million and increased the number of stand-alone care packages we provided. So those are the highlights for H1. But before I hand over to Chris to talk about the results in more detail, I said I'd provide a brief recap of who we are and what we do for those who are new to the business. So NAHL is a leader in the U.K. consumer legal services and catastrophic injury markets. We help people who had an accident or suffered medical negligence that wasn't their fault to get their lives back on track. And in our 30-plus years history, we've helped over 1 million customers access over GBP 1 billion in compensation by providing legal support and rehabilitation services. We do this by providing services and products to individuals and businesses through our 2 divisions, which I've mentioned, we call them Consumer Legal Services and Critical Care. And in Consumer Legal Services, we're one of the U.K.'s leading providers of personal injury advice, services and support. We have a strong heritage in this market. In fact, we've helped more people injured in accidents in the U.K. than anyone else. Through our trusted brands, including National Accident Helpline, we guide accident victims through the steps of making a personal injury claim. We triage those claims. And for those we think have legal merit, we either process those claims in our own fully integrated law firm called National Accident Law or we pass them to one of our panel of specialist third-party law firms or we process them in our joint venture, which is called Law Together. Now distributing these claims to the panel provides us access to quick profit and cash with firms typically paying in 30 days. However, appetite for this service has declined over the past 10 years due to regulatory pressures on law firms and market consolidation, and that ultimately led us to launching NAL in 2019. If we process these claims ourselves in NAL, then we achieve higher levels of profit, but with a longer working capital cycle as these claims can take over 2 years to process on average. The joint venture helps us to balance these 2 extremes. In our other division, Critical Care, our Bush & Co. business is a market leader in expert witness reports, immediate needs assessments and case management rehabilitation services in the U.K. And this year, our Bush & Co. business celebrates a milestone birthday -- birthdays, having served its customers with distinction for over 40 years. We support children, young people and adults following a catastrophic injury or clinical negligence. And Bush & Co. deals with the most serious injuries often leading to life-changing disabilities. And these include acquired brain injuries and spinal cord injuries and claim settlements usually run into the millions. So very complex, very serious injuries. We also launched an award-winning care proposition in 2021, which is growing rapidly and offer services for customers who directly employ nurses and carers generally in their own homes and typically after their claim has settled. So those are our 2 trading divisions, and we also have a centralized shared services division, which provides strategic leadership and support with funding and governance. And over the years, we've built an inclusive and supportive employee culture with a strong focus on engagement, and that helps us to recruit and retain the top talent across the U.K. And we're proud that we've been recognized externally for this culture. We've been awarded the Gold Standard by Investors in People and included in the Best Small Companies list in recent years as well. Finally, just to mention, we also operate a small but profitable property searches business called Searches UK, which is in the process of being disposed of, and I'll provide an update on that a bit later on. So hopefully, you should have a good overview now who we are and the progress that we've made so far this year. And I'll now hand over to Chris, who's going to take you through a review of the financial results. Chris?

Thanks, James. I'll start with the P&L. And as James mentioned in the highlights, we had a strong first half overall. Revenues of GBP 18.3 million were 5% higher or GBP 0.9 million higher than the previous year. Both businesses delivered growth with personal injury up 7% and Critical Care business up by 3%. Underlying operating profit increased by GBP 0.4 million to GBP 3.4 million, and this growth was driven by the personal injury business, which increased its operating profit by GBP 0.6 million or 41% to GBP 1.9 million in the period. And this was primarily as a result of continued strong case settlements in National Accident Law. Profits from Critical Care were flat at GBP 2.6 million, although that does include some investment in headcount in the second half of 2025, which has positioned the business well for growth. Shared services costs were GBP 0.2 million higher than last year, and this is largely driven by bonus accruals, and we incurred GBP 43,000 in exceptional costs in the period relating to the sale of Searches UK. We expect these to climb to around GBP 75,000 once the completion goes through on the transaction. Non-controlling interest in our joint ventures were GBP 0.1 million higher than last year, and this is as a direct result of increased profit generation in the JVs. And net interest is 41% lower than last year, reflecting the lower levels of net debt that we're seeing compared to this time last year. This all resulted in a profit before tax of GBP 2.3 million, 31% or GBP 0.5 million higher than the same period last year, with basic EPS up 30% to 3.5p. Moving on to cash, and it was another strong performance in cash in the first half. Cash generated from operations grew 22% to GBP 3.9 million with operating cash conversion at 113%. That was 11 percentage points higher than last year, and both divisions delivered cash growth. Consumer Legal Services, which for cash includes any cash generated from Searches UK, generated GBP 2.3 million of cash from operations and GBP 1.5 million of cash after payments to LLP members. This was double the amount we saw last year. And again, this is due to the continued strong settlements that we're seeing from cases in NAL, which contributed to this cash performance. And we saw cash from settlements up GBP 0.3 million in the period to GBP 5.7 million. Operating cash in Critical Care, that's also strong. It was up GBP 0.1 million to GBP 2.4 million, and that was an operating cash conversion of 93%, in line with the levels we saw in 2025. After exceptional costs, interest, tax and CapEx, the resulting free cash flow is GBP 2.2 million. As James outlined, that's an increase of 43% and has taken our net debt down to GBP 1.1 million at the end of the period, the lowest we've seen since the IPO in 2014. And then looking ahead with the sale of Searches and recent settlement of the contract dispute, we expect the group to move into a net cash position in the short term. Back to you, James.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Right to that slide. So National Accident Law, NAL and its associated brands form an integrated high-quality, high-volume legal services ecosystem that converts inquiries into cash through our proven scalable operating model. And we do this by focusing on leveraging our market-leading brands, by improving the unit economics and by providing exceptional service to our customers through targeting market-leading levels of productivity. Now I'm not going to dig into everything on this page. But as I mentioned earlier on, we've developed a clear growth strategy built on 4 pillars. So firstly, we aim to generate high-quality work by leveraging our market-leading brands to build strong brand trust and demand. National Accident Helpline is one of the sector's most trusted brands, generating high numbers of quality inbound leads, which are then triaged in our call center in Kettering. We'll explain a bit more about the flow of leads on the next page, but it was great to see growth in the number of inquiries we generated in H1 for the first time in a little while, actually. The second pillar is about growing value in NAL to increase profitability and sustainability of the model. So scale is a really important factor for us because it helps us offset the fixed costs of running the law firm. So the cost of compliance, premises and finance and insurance, et cetera. And at the end of June, NAL was processing over 6,600 PI claims, which we anticipate will generate future cash receipts of over GBP 11.5 million. The third pillar is to deliver exceptional customer service. That drives customer advocacy and trust, which then creates a positive feedback loop into our marketing. And both NAH and NAL are rated excellent on Trustpilot, and that site states that our customers consistently highlight the exceptional customer service that they receive from our team and that our staff are there to support them when they're vulnerable and need help. And that's something that we are incredibly proud of. The final pillar is tech and productivity, which is really important to drive profitability in a fixed cost legal environment. So by industrializing the processes and shortening cycle times and applying data discipline to our work, we can treat claims more like a managed portfolio than individual bespoke matters. And this helps us to manage our risk. It improves our ability to forecast and cash conversion as well. So what that means in practice is we look at claims in cohorts, and we track their behavior and outcomes, and that helps us to predict future performance. And Chris is going to talk a little bit more about that later on about how we track cohort performance and the results that we're seeing from that. Finally, when it comes to technology, we're seeing the benefits of our work to refine processes and systems. That helps us to drive down the claim settlement cycle and drive up the average claim values, and that's great news for our customers, and it also helps us to manage our working capital. It's probably worth adding a point around AI, which is so topical at the moment. So AI tools are now part of many of our team's daily workflows, whether that's in marketing for building creative assets, social media, whether that's in our help line team for triaging customer calls, in IT for deploying code and building APIs for our website or in legal, where we use AI for research. So like most companies out there, we're developing an ongoing program of change. And I think we're well placed for further AI development, but we always have a human in the loop providing supervision and the expertise that we're known for. So that's all I'll probably say on that. So if we delve a little bit deeper into a couple of the strategic pillars that really drive value, we'll start, first of all, with generating high-quality work. So through our market-leading brands, including National Accident Helpline, the business generated 7,256 new inquiries in the first half of the year. Now an inquiry, just to remind you, is a lead that we've generated through our own website or via paid search or through one of our partners, and that has been triaged by our helpline call center. And we think that, that lead meets our claim criteria and has legal merits. We then choose whether we want to process that ourselves in NAL or place it into our panel or our joint venture, Law Together. Now the number of new inquiries, as I mentioned earlier on, was 11% higher in the first half than last year, and you can see that progress that we've made in the chart on the top right. The average inquiry cost for the period was actually 8% higher than the prior year, and that reflects inflation in the cost per click on Google Ads and the incremental cost of testing several new marketing channels that we've been working with in this past sort of 6 to 12 months. And you can see that in the chart on the bottom right of the screen, where I've indexed the acquisition cost against the 2023 average cost. So we're witnessing a little more cost, and we're essentially investing a little bit more per inquiry than previous years. But pleasingly, during this period, we've witnessed an increase in the quality and therefore, value of those inquiries that we've generated. And this is reflected in a more valuable mix of work that we are generating, including a 13% increase in employers' liability cases compared to last year. And this is good news as these claims are worth more to us, and it demonstrates that we are more effective in targeting those accident types in our marketing campaigns. So that's a little insight in our ability to generate new inquiries. Next, I want to turn to where we distribute those inquiries. And we placed just over 2,100 inquiries into NAL in H1. So a similar number to last year, slightly fewer, but that was driven solely by the mix of work that we generated. And we grew volume into Law Together from 16 -- 1,610 to 1,840 inquiries and the balance then of those inquiries went into our panels of third-party law firms. And within that number that was placed into NAL, other than the very smallest claims, we took all of the road traffic claims, the RTAs into NAL, and we're gradually building up the number of non-RTA inquiries that we're taking in. We'd like to take more, but we need to recruit more non-RTA fee earners, and this will also require a working capital investment. So it's something that we need to manage carefully, but we're quite pleased with how that's progressing at the moment. So on that note, I'll now hand back to Chris, who's going to provide an update on the second pillar of value creation in NAL, and that's the performance of the claims book.

Thank you, James. Yes, as James said, this is the processing side of the law firm of the business. So the inquiries that are passed across to National Accident Law, this tracks how they're performing. And for any of you who've seen our previous IMC presentations, you'll likely be familiar with the slide that's on the screen, which shows the evolution of the law firm since its inception in 2019 and the progression of the cases that we put through in that time. For those less familiar, I'll take a moment to explain what the chart is showing. So what we're tracking here is the expected value of new claims added in the period to cash generated over time alongside any adjustments to our estimates. The orange bars, they represent the revenue and cash that we expect to generate from new cases adding into NAL when they ultimately settle. The pink color bars show the amount of cash collected from settled cases in a particular year, and the green and red bars show any adjustments made to our estimates to the value of the cases that we process. Finally, the purple bars show the expected future cash to come from open cases at the different balance sheet dates. So as an example, over to the far left-hand side of the chart, you'll see that the new cases added in 2019, we believe will generate GBP 2.3 million in future revenue and cash. Now these cases can take a number of years to settle and for the cash to come through. But you'll see that in the first year in 2019, we generated GBP 0.2 million in cash from those settled cases, and that meant we closed out the year with an open book worth GBP 2.2 million of future cash. And as you look through the following years, you can see that as we grew volume into the law firm, we steadily grew the value of the cases with the amount alongside the amount of cash that we generated also. And what you see is that working capital cycle starting to catch up. And this cycle largely mature in 2023, where the value of new cases added was GBP 6.6 million, against GBP 6 million collected on settled claims. Since 2023, we prudently managed working capital to drive down net debt and the number of inquiries placed into NAL has therefore reduced. This has meant the amount of cash generated from cases started in previous years has exceeded the value of new claims being taken on. That was also the case in the position in the 6 months to June this year, where we placed inquiries into NAL that are expected to generate GBP 2.9 million of future revenue and cash, but at the same time collected GBP 5.7 million from cases that settled in the period. Now, to partially offset this, we revalued the book by GBP 1.3 million, and this is owing to strong performance from our mature cohorts and this continues on from sizable revaluations that we saw in 2024 and 2025, which as a result of damages inflation, but also processing tactics around litigation. I'll cover that in more detail on the following slides. At the end of the year -- at the end of June, sorry, the future cash to come from open cases is GBP 11.5 million, GBP 1.5 million lower than at the end of December. The following couple of slides, these provide an alternative view of the life cycle of the cases and they focus in on the particular years of inquiries that were placed in. So if you look at this first page, this shows the 2019 and 2020 cohorts. And you see where you'll see low cash value generated in the last -- in the most recent 6 months, we generated GBP 0.1 million of cash in the most recent 6 months across those 2 cohorts. So these cohorts have now pretty much reached the end of their life cycle, but I still think they paint an important picture as to how the book has matured over time. The top chart that shows the new claims taken on in 2019. At the time, we expected those cases to ultimately generate GBP 2.3 million of revenue and cash. But as time has progressed, the cases have outperformed those expectations, and we so far generated GBP 3.3 million in cash from those settled claims. There's still a small number of claims left to conclude, and we expect those to generate around GBP 0.1 million, meaning ultimately, the cohort will deliver GBP 3.4 million across its life cycle. This has meant a GBP 1 million positive revaluation against our initial expectations. I look at the bottom chart relating to 2020, it's a similar story. New cases were added with an expected value of GBP 3.8 million. To date, GBP 5 million has already been collected. Again, a small number of cases are ongoing. We expect a further GBP 0.1 million to come through from the predominantly GBP 1.3 million revaluation overall. If I jump ahead to 2021 and 2022, there's a few more cases open on these cohorts. But again, that picture has kind of continued as we've moved through. You'll see the initial -- on the top chart in 2021, you'll see the initial valuation of GBP 6 million has since been increased GBP 2.5 million to GBP 8.5 million overall. And against this, GBP 8.2 million has already been collected with GBP 0.3 million still expected to come through from those remaining open cases. And finally, we saw a particularly strong performance from the 2022 cohort in the 6 months to June. And [Technical Difficulty] 5.9 million of revenue so far generated GBP 7.9 million of cash, including GBP 1.1 million in the past 6 months alone. And that's resulted in a revaluation of GBP 800,000 in the period to GBP 8.7 million. Overall, it's really pleasing to see the work our teams are doing to maximize the value generated from the claims we are processing into NAL. Despite this, number of cases placed into NAL over recent periods will mean that we expect case revenues on an absolute basis in NAL to lower -- to be lower over the coming periods as the case cycle reflects the new case levels. Back to you, James.

Great. Thanks, Chris. So some great results there for us being able to demonstrate growth in those cohorts, but also some fantastic outcomes for our clients as well. Let's now turn our attention then to our other operating division, which we call Critical Care. And if I turn the slide on again, there you go. So our award-winning Critical Care business, Bush & Co. is a brand leader in this market. After quite a challenging 2025, Bush is having a pretty solid year in 2026, and the team are working on a number of projects that pave the way for enhanced growth over the next few years. As I said earlier, revenues in Bush in H1 grew by 3% and underlying operating profits were broadly flat at GBP 2.6 million. The business operates with a very healthy 30.5% operating margin and grew cash from operations to GBP 2.4 million in the first half. Now for the past few years, expert witness services has been the largest segment of Bush & Co. and we are the largest provider of expert witness reports to the U.K. catastrophic injury and complex care sector. Demand for Bush's expert witness services remained really strong in the period and revenues increased by 11%. The number of reports actually only grew by 2% to 736 with revenue growth largely derived from inflationary price increases that we implemented last year. Now this was a bit of an anomaly this year, that the relatively low growth in report numbers, but that was due to the higher-than-normal number of amendments that we made to issued reports in the period. Now these amendments are -- they're effectively add-on pieces of work that our customers ask for us to do to enhance the reports that we issue, and we charge separately for them. However, because we're constrained by associate capacity, that means that if we're working on the amendments, we're not able to deliver as many new reports. But we still have a large pipeline of report instructions to work through, and that gives me confidence that we should see growth in report numbers in this part of the business in the future. In fact, the number of new instructions in the first 6 months increased by 22% to 817, which as you can see from the chart, is the highest that we've ever received in a 6-month period. This was driven by an increase both in the number of inquiries from customers, but also an improvement in the conversion rate of those inquiries into instructions. As I said, the number of reports we issue every month is still constrained by associate capacity, and we continue to seek new ways to attract more associates to Bush & Co. We currently work with 195 experienced expert witnesses across England and Wales, and we're actively developing new technology aimed at increasing capacity from our existing associate base and speeding up throughput whilst maintaining the highest quality reports that Bush is known for. We're hoping to bring that technology online over the next few months, and I look forward to updating you on its impact when we report next year. Finally, on this page, we are very proud that 100% of the customers that we surveyed over the past 12 months to 30th of June said that they would be happy to instruct us again. So a clear demonstration of the fantastic service that our teams provide in this area. So if I turn to case management. Well, in case management, the market remains more challenging. We've talked about that in the past. And in the period, our revenues were down 8%. As I have discussed previously, over the past few years, we've witnessed a deterioration in the number of new instructions for initial needs assessments, or INAs, a reduction in the average invoice value for ongoing case management and a reduction in the number of cases billed each month. We've also seen an increase in the rate of discharges from ongoing case management as well. So those are all challenges that we're facing at the moment. And INAs are a one-off piece of work. So they are a report that we issue into a client -- an assessment of a client's condition and their future needs. And they're important because they often convert into ongoing case management, and that represents recurring revenues for Bush & Co. So in terms of how we performed in H1, the business delivered 188 INAs in the period, which was down 10% on last year. However, average invoice value was actually marginally higher than last year. And at 30th of June, we were delivering ongoing case management services to a large number of clients, 1,069 clients, in fact, and that's where we earn recurring revenues, as I mentioned. So case management remains challenging. And anecdotally, it appears that this challenge is similarly impacting our peers across the industry. Now in response to these challenges, the management team are adapting the business model to deliver a higher proportion of services to customers through our employed case management team, whilst retaining a smaller network of specialist associate case managers for the more complex cases. And this change should enable us to have more control over fulfillment of demand and ultimately drive higher margins in the medium term. So we're partway through implementing this change, and we anticipate completing this transition fully by early next year. And I look forward to updating you more on our progress with that in due course. Earlier in the year, I also talked about our Bush & Co. Kids proposition, which I'm pleased to report has been growing. We have targeted growth in children and young people cases because they are generally more complex cases and they require more specialist case management support for longer. So over time, this should result in higher levels of monthly billing and longer case durations as well. And as I suggested, the news is good in this area in that revenues for Bush & Co. Kids increased in the period by 6% and the number of INAs actually increased by 133%. So the team have been invested in marketing campaigns to raise awareness and going out and speaking to potential new customers about our proposition, and this is clearly paying dividends. So we remain optimistic for future growth for this proposition. Finally, in Critical Care, Bush & Co. Care Solutions continued its strong growth trajectory with revenues up 20% in H1. So it's been just over 4 years since we launched this service from scratch, and we anticipate breaking through the GBP 1 million revenue barrier this year. The number of ongoing care packages, which results in monthly recurring revenue, increased by 29% in the period compared to last year, and we're progressing options to accelerate this growth even further over the next few years by providing more services to our customers. So I'll share more details on that in the new year. So that's a quick overview of the results for the first half of 2026. But before I go into the outlook, I'd just like to update you on the proposed sale of Searches UK. So we announced on the 27th of August that the group had entered into a binding conditional agreement to sell Searches UK to TM Group, who are a trade buyer in the residential property market. And just to remind you, Searches UK has been part of NAHL since 2016, at a time when we had other resi property businesses, and it's a leading supplier of residential and commercial property conveyancing searches and services to conveyancers and solicitors in England and Wales. Now clearly, this business is not in our core markets of personal injury and catastrophic care. And so the sale will allow the group to focus on those core markets. We've agreed an enterprise value for Searches UK of GBP 1.2 million, that equates to an EBITDA multiple of 5.25x. And after the normal completion adjustments, we expect to receive around GBP 1.1 million in cash on completion. Now there are a number of conditions to the sale that included the approval of the CMA, which I can update has now been satisfied. And so we look forward to the sale completing shortly. The net proceeds will be allocated against the group's revolving credit facility, which will reduce our borrowing costs. And I strongly believe this disposal is a good outcome for shareholders, and it also aligns with the Board's ongoing work to accelerate value for shareholders. And since the 30th of June, in Consumer Legal Services, well, on 28th of September, we announced that the group has settled a long-standing contract dispute with a supplier for GBP 1.85 million. And this amount is due to be paid to NAHL on or before the 15th of October 2026. And because of the uncertainty associated with this dispute, we've not previously accrued for this income in our financial results nor included it in our forecast. So this is very positive news and contributes significantly to our cash forecast for the second half of the year. I'm also pleased to report that trading in July and August was encouraging in Consumer Legal Services. NAH generated 2,583 new inquiries. That was 5% more than the same period last year. We continue to invest slightly more in acquisition cost, but that continues to be reflected in the quality and therefore, the future value of the mix of work that we're attracting. And in NAL, we've previously said that we anticipated NAL settling slightly fewer claims than last year due to the claims book having contracted, as Chris talked about earlier on, as we prudently managed working capital over the past couple of years. And it did settle 3% fewer claims in July and August. But pleasingly, cash from those settlements is actually up 22%, in fact, to GBP 1.8 million, really demonstrating the growth that we've been able to drive in average settlements. And in Critical Care, trading in July and August was actually quite similar to last year. We issued 226 expert witness reports, so very similar to 2025, and we received slightly more instructions to add to our already strong pipeline. In case management, we did a very similar number of INA reports, but the number of INA instructions was up by 28%. That's really encouraging, and we expect those to translate into more INA reports over the coming few months. And hopefully, a good amount of those will go on to generate recurring revenues through ongoing case management as well. So an encouraging picture over the past couple of months. So there you go to summarize the first half, the group performed well with 5% growth in revenues, leading to a 31% growth in profit before tax. Cash generation, as we said, was also strong with free cash flow up 43%. And as the subheading on this page sets out, further good news since the half year has caused the Board to upgrade its previous expectations for 2026 outturn, and we now anticipate being in a net cash position by the end of October for the first time since IPO. To finish, I'd just like to reiterate that as previously announced, the Board continues to actively explore strategic options to accelerate value for its shareholders and it's reviewing the group's capital allocation policy. The sale of Searches UK is an important step in this process, and the Board continues its dedicated work in this area, and I look forward to providing further updates in due course. So that brings the formal presentation to an end. I'd like to thank you all for joining Chris and I today for NAHL's interim results for 2026. We've got time to take some questions. But for the moment, I'm going to hand back to Alex.

That's great. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via our investor dashboard. James, Chris, as you can see, we have received a number of questions. And if I may now hand back to kindly ask you to read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you both at the end.

Okay. Thank you, Alex, just reviewing the questions. So we'll start for quite a few questions in. So thank you for that. Really appreciate that engagement. Let's start with the first question, which says, congratulations on the results. Thank you. On NAL, its share of inquiries dropped in H1 '26, which is disappointing. It looks like moving the mix away from the JV to NAL is a clear way of growing free cash flow significantly, given how much is lost to partner drawings, it's about GBP 8 million, it says in the past 3 full years. Is there a plan to route more placements to NAL over time? And if so, what medium-term share are you targeting? Is there a contractual route to buying out or structuring the JV? And do you think the whiplash post-implementation review could have a material impact on the dynamics here? So thank you for the question. And I think that's actually 3 questions, and we'll try and break our answer down as such. So Chris, why don't you take the first part of that on NAL?

Yes, sure. Yes, in terms of placement into NAL, I think James touched on this a bit in his presentation on the results as well. The dynamic is one of mix really. So NAL is predominantly an RTA-focused law firm, where the joint venture is solely non-RTA focused. And we did see in the first half of the year that non-RTA mix of inquiries grew to 43% of overall inquiries, and that compared to 39% last year, whereas RTA fell to 27% from 30% last year. James mentioned earlier that we continue to put all of our RTA, non-tariff only cases into NAL and have done for some time now. And we have -- where we can, we've been increasing the volume of non-RTA cases taken into NAL in recent months. And actually, across July and August, we've already placed more non-RTA inquiries into NAL than we did across the first -- the whole of the first half. So we are seeing growth come through, but we do have to manage that situation carefully. The way that non-RTA cases behave and the specialisms required to process them is different to an RTA case. So we need to build that capability in NAL to match the volumes that we're able to take on. And what we're really talking about there is the number of non-RTA fee earners that we're able to bring into the business. That takes some time, and it's actually been quite a difficult market to recruit qualified quality fee earners this year. That said, we are actively recruiting, and it remains in our plans to continue that growth in the short to medium term.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. So secondly, on buying out or restructuring the joint venture, there isn't a mechanism for that in the contractual arrangement we have with the joint venture partners, but anything is possible, I'm sure. That being said, the joint venture actually gives us the opportunity to balance the working capital demand to processing a claim as our joint venture partner, HCC Solicitors, they're funding the daily costs of those fee earners and managing the case. And also they're taking the risk of case success in that way as well because we pay them a processing cost only on successful cases. I'd also say that HCC is doing a great job in Law Together, and I'm not sure whether that would be the best use of our capital at the present time. But as I said earlier, the Board are looking at all the options available to us to deliver value for shareholders, and we'll update you on those proposals in due course. So finally, the third part of the question was around the whiplash post-implementation review. And just for the benefit of other investors who aren't as familiar with this, this is a review being carried out by the Ministry of Justice, the MoJ on the impact of the 2021 Civil Liability Act reforms, which were extremely significant across the sector. And as with the reforms themselves, the results of this review are actually late coming out. And I'm sure that they will confirm the points that we've been saying for some time that the reforms were great news for insurers, but they didn't really meet the objectives of consumers and an access to justice gap really remains. But in terms of the impact on NAL, to be honest, I don't currently anticipate any significant changes coming out of the review. We'll obviously look carefully at the output when that comes, and we'll see if we need to make any changes to optimize the business structure. But my take at the moment is that it's unlikely to be significant. We contributed to that review through our trade body. And so yes, we'll see what happens when that comes out, but I'm not really expecting a huge change at the moment. More broadly, if I can just talk broadly about regulatory or industry change. There isn't really anything major that we see ahead of us at the moment. There's some talk about the portals that we use being combined. So that's the MoJ portal and the OIC portal for the very smallest claims, a combination of those 2. We see that as a positive that would drive further efficiencies, but that's still in the very early stages of being discussed. So nothing major on the runway ahead of us. The next question is about net debt. So as net debt is so -- as 0 net debt, apologies, is soon approaching, do you have an internal return hurdle for reinvestment? Do you have any idea of incremental return from investing in NAL versus JV versus case management versus expert witness reports? It looks like reinvestment in some areas of the business could offer very strong returns. Well, look, thank you for that question. And it's one that we're discussing internally at the moment. As I said earlier, the Board is actively exploring strategic options to accelerate value for shareholders, and it's reviewing our capital allocation policy, which is even more relevant today as we're about to pivot from a net debt to a net cash position, which opens up some new possibilities. So I think it's a very pertinent question. Our work includes where to focus our investments in order to get the best return. And we're also considering not just the current return levels, but things like the payback periods and the sort of lockup of that working capital and also demand levels in the markets that we operate in as well. So look, I can't say much more about this today, but I do plan to come back with an answer to this question in due course as we share more details about the output of that review. So I will come back to this in the future. The next question is about the U.K. judicial system. So how is your business impacted by the backlog of cases in the U.K. judicial system? So we are impacted. Actually, most of our cases don't go all the way to court. Most of them settle along the way. So it's a relatively small proportion. But I think our ability to take cases to court is really important to us, and we are -- we have been more litigious and we've issued on more cases in the past sort of 12, 24 months than we had previously. And that's driving a lot of the great returns that Chris talked about. So that is really important. It's challenging for our customers when the average time to get a court date sort of approaches a year and it varies across the specific court in question. And that could be quite difficult sometimes for them to wait after they've had their injury and they're trying to get their life back on track and they've got bills to pay, having to wait for a settlement is quite challenging. And sometimes they prefer to settle rather than go all the distance. So yes, obviously, our preference would be to try and drive that sort of court settlement time scales down. That would be better for us as a business. It would be better for our customers, and that all forms part of the access to justice gap that I think exists at the moment. So thank you for that question. The next one is about shared costs. So the question is how much of the shared cost can be directed back to the divisions? Do you want to take that one, Chris?

Yes, sure. Yes, the shared costs, they're largely related to the listing of the business essentially. So it includes the Board, includes the cost of myself and James. There are some group insurance policies in there, things like public liability insurance, et cetera, but not the specific insurances that are required for the law firm, and they're captured within the business unit already and there's some audit fees as well. So largely related to the listing. There are portions of mine and James' time that are focused on probably more so on the personal injury business than on the critical care business. We have a dedicated Managing Director in the Critical Care business. We don't have one on the personal injury side. So there will be some allocation of our time on to the PI business. But yes, largely outside of myself and James, it's fees related to the listing of the business essentially, and being a public business.

Thanks, Chris. We take that one in a minute. And I'll cover those. So we've got a couple of questions now, which return to the strategic work that we're doing at the moment as a Board to look at the options in the future. The first one is from -- actually, they're both from the same person from Daniel. Thank you for the questions. The first one says, once NAHL enters net cash, what are the realistic capital allocation choices, buyback, special dividends, tender, M&A or investment into NAL? Well, I think you've done a pretty good job there of listing those. I would say yes to all of the above. I'm not really going to get drawn into providing more details at this stage of what our proposals might be, but I would say that all of those are on the table. The next question is when you refer to strategic options to accelerate shareholder value, should investors still regard a sale or separation of Bush & Co. as a possible outcome? Or has the Board definitively moved on from that after the 2025 process? I think we are looking at the composition, the future composition of the group and what's the optimum composition. We are thinking about potential of M&A, as I mentioned earlier on. We're not actively working on a potential disposal of Bush & Co. We said in 2025, that didn't work out at the time, and we've moved on from that. That remains the case. I think Bush & Co. is a great business. I think it forms an important part of the group. As we've talked about earlier on, it's a very profitable business, and we are working on a number of projects in that business to accelerate growth into the future. The next question is one around working capital. So Matt has asked, could you discuss how debtor days are moving? Chris, do you want to take that one?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Matt. I guess there's quite a lot of moving parts sitting underneath that question. So if I start with the Critical Care business, I'd say it's largely a mature state in terms of its cash generation. You can see that from the operating cash conversion that we saw in the first half. That's consistent with levels we saw across the whole of 2025. There are different payment terms for the different products within Bush & Co. But as I say, they're largely on a mature footing now. So we don't see too much movement in that space. On the PI side, a couple of different revenue streams there. So the -- anything to do with panel is on -- is paid the following month, so quick cash on the panel side of things. In terms of the law firms and the JV, that's linked directly to the case lengths essentially. So -- and the different pockets within there. So the portal cases, so the cases that go down small claims or through the MoJ portal, we're seeing those speed up. It's an area we focus on quite a lot, and we're doing all we can from the elements we can control in that process to speed up cash collection. But from the litigation side, where those cases are requiring an allocation of the court date or even going all the way to trial, we have seen delays, I guess, over the last couple of years as the backlogs in the courts have kind of hampered that process. That said, I think across the piece in the law firm, we have seen an acceleration in cash collection coming through across the piece. It's just not always within our control.

Thanks, Chris. Okay. That's all of the questions that have been submitted so far. So thank you. I'd just like to thank everyone for joining this call today. It's great to have so many people joining and have such strong engagement. Thanks for your questions. Really enjoyed that. But for now, I'm going to pass back to Alex.

That's great, James, Chris. I was -- James is going to ask you for some closing comments, but I think you have well delivered those. So thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.