Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In a few moments, Stuart is going to provide you with details of our good overall performance in the first half of 2024. I'll then come back. I'll provide a very brief update on each of our categories before we focus on North America, where we're making encouraging progress against our RIGHT WAY 2 growth plan with the core metrics now moving in the right direction and where we'll deep dive on our integration program, which is going extremely well. Brad Paulsen, our CEO for North America, will take you through a progress update on both of these important areas. So to set the scene, let me just say a few words by covering the group highlights of the first half. Revenue increased by 4% to GBP 2.8 billion with top line growth in all regions, of which organic growth was 2.8%. Our Europe, U.K., Asia and Pacific regions are all delivering organic growth in the range of 4% to 6%, and they've all performed well in the first half. In the first quarter, our North America Pest Control business delivered organic growth of 1%. And this has increased to 1.5% in the second quarter following the launch of our Terminix It marketing campaign and our RIGHT WAY 2 growth plan. We are pleased with the progress being made in colleague retention, the increase in brand awareness and branded search, inbound digital lead flow and the increase in the number of technicians submitting sales leads from existing customers. Rebuilding our growth engine will take time, but we made good progress in the second quarter, and we expect to make further progress in the second half. Group adjusted operating profit grew by 4.7% to GBP 455 million. And we delivered a group margin of 16.5%,…

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. I'll run through the financial highlights of what's been a good first half overall. I'll start with the group level numbers. And then as usual, I'll move through the regions and then look at the balance sheet. Unless I state to the contrary, all numbers are at constant rates of exchange. The business delivered a good top line performance in the first half. Revenue was up 4% to GBP 2.76 billion and statutory revenue up 1.3% to GBP 2.7 billion. Organic revenue was up 2.8%. This translates to an adjusted operating profit of GBP 455 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.7%, and margin was up 10 basis points. Free cash flow was GBP 172 million, and cash conversion was 62.2%. This year-end -- half year phenomenon was a result of timing of customer and supplier payments around the half year, and we expect cash conversion to return to 80% to 90% for the full year. These factors, combined with the continued success of our bolt-on M&A program and the dividend payment, resulted in a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 2.8x on the 30th of June, on line -- on track for full year expectations. Based on a good performance in H1 and our confidence of further progress in the remainder of the year, the Board has approved an interim dividend of 3.16p, a 14.9% rise year-on-year and in line with our progressive dividend policy. So looking now at our performance by region, starting with North America. The North American business grew by 1.1%, of which 1.3% was organic. Pest Control services also recorded organic revenue growth of 1.3% for the half year. However, in Pest Control services, we saw an encouraging 50 basis point improvement between the 2 quarters as well as positive movement…

Thank you, Stuart. I want to give the North America section here as much time as possible this morning. So in the interest of time, I'm going to turn the pages on our usual employer of choice and business category sections at pace. I'm delighted with the excellent progress that we're making and obviously happy to take detailed questions later. Our tried and tested operating model continues to perform very well. And as you can see, we've continued to make good progress in colleague safety and in sustainability. We've also made progress in colleague recruitment and in particular in colleague retention, where in the year to June, our global colleague retention rate has increased by an excellent 4.2% to almost 86% and by 1.7% year-to-date. In our Europe and Asia regions, we've achieved an outstanding retention rate for our service technicians of over 90%. And in a moment, Brad will discuss the very good progress we're now making in North America. Turning to our business categories and starting with Pest Control. In Pest Control, we operate a simple, repeatable model in a global market that is underpinned by structural growth drivers, including urbanization, growing middle classes, population growth, climate change and increased regulatory pressure, particularly in food safety. As you can see on this chart, according to the latest industry reports, since 2018, whilst North America, which by the way accounts for around 50% of today's global pest market, has increased spend per capita on pest control by an impressive 24%. Spend on pest control continues to grow significantly faster in the emerging markets of Asia and in India and China, in particular, where the equivalent per capita growth rates are 170% and 468%, respectively. And this is very much in line with our long-term M&A strategy of building our…

Thanks, Andy, and good morning, everyone. For those of you I have yet to meet, I am Brad Paulsen, the CEO of our North America business. I am pleased to represent our team today and excited to highlight the encouraging progress we delivered in the first half. I shared this past March that our U.S. pest team would use our RIGHT WAY 2 framework to help deliver a world-class customer service experience to our existing customers while also prioritizing key actions to help increase our growth from new customers. I'm happy to report that our team delivered meaningful progress across several key areas of our framework, which I believe will help deliver growth benefits for our business as we move forward. Foundational to our growth success is the ability to deliver industry-leading colleague retention. Hiring, training and retaining top talent is becoming a strength of our business as we saw continued gains in retention realized by our team in the first half. We saw material retention increases in our service technician, sales and customer care colleague populations as well as our back-office admin teams. Branch manager retention stood at an impressive 97.5%. These improvements are a reflection of our commitment to our people and the belief that a trained and happy team will deliver great service to our customers, which over time will lead to improving customer retention. I am particularly pleased with improvement delivered in our sales colleague retention, up by almost 400 basis points as that was a colleague group we previously identified as needing more focus and support. Customer experience and customer retention are key parts of our organic growth model. We want to keep the customers we have, delight them with a great experience and sell them more services through our service technicians. Each 1% of…

Thank you, Brad. So in summary, before we move on to questions, good overall group performance in the first half. As you've just heard, RIGHT WAY 2 growth plan is up and running in the U.S. We've seen many of the core growth KPIs showing improvements in the quarter. And to support that growing momentum. We'll continue to invest for growth with that additional $25 million. The branch integrations are underway. They're going very well as we continue to build out the long-term foundations of our powerhouse U.S. Pest Control business. Given the encouraging overall performance, the Board declared an interim dividend of 3.16p per share, which is an increase of 14.9%. So with that, thank you very much. We're going to take questions now. We're going to start with questions in the room and then any additional questions from the audience online. Thank you very much.

Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Two from me, please. You've talked about the improvement in leading indicators based on -- after the digital advertising spend. And you've also talked about rebuilding the growth engine. You're also talking about the incremental $25 million spend that you want to do in the next 12 months. So why lower the growth in North America to the lower end of 2% to 4% range?

I think that were 2 questions.

The second one is on the customer retention, you talked about increasing the customer retention and how an incremental 1 percentage point change can drive additional $27 million of revenue. Can you share your thoughts on where you think the retention rate can reach medium term? And of the spend that you have in the incremental $25 million that you wanted to go, maybe it's an extra 1% or 2% in the next 12 months, and then maybe beyond that takes a little bit longer?

Thanks. Yes. Look, to the growth point, in the core U.S. pest business, 1.5% is an improvement on 1%, and we're pleased with that. But it's still -- we've got some work to do to get -- just do the math. We've got some work to do to get to the lower end of the range. So I think it's essentially a math issue. We do see progress in the second half. And so you've been an excellent analyst. You can do the math for yourself. But we need further progress in the second half, which we expect and which we plan, to take us to that level. So I've said many, many times, this organic growth journey is not linear. It's not binary. There will be lumps and bumps in the road. And you heard from Brad, the fact that we've got positive lead flow for the first time since August of last year is a big thing in my life. It's certainly an important step in the right direction. Lead flow from the technician's an important step in the right direction. We've just got to continue to execute the plan. So what we're saying is we've seen good evidence that the plan is working. Sure, we'd love it to work faster and be bigger than it has been. But it is moving. Momentum is building. If you roll that forward, we expect to see further growth in the second half, but it takes us to that sort of place. On customer retention, I think it's a great question. Before the Terminix acquisition, Rentokil North America's retention rate in our pest business in the States, doing from memory, was about 82.5%. Terminix was about 75%, 76%. So we're now at a blended average of whatever it is, 79.5%, I…

Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. I have 2 questions as well. So firstly, on the marketing spend, you've been very clear about what's been successful and where you've seen progress. Of that initial $25 million that you've spent, is there anything that hasn't been so successful or anything that you think will shift the mix of how you spend the next $25 million? That's the first one. And then secondly, on the product distribution business, it sounds like that's been quite a drag in the second quarter. From memory, I think that recovered a bit in Q1. So perhaps you could talk about what happened in Q2. And are you still confident in the recovery of that business going forward? Or are you considering options for that business from here?

Yes. Thanks, Annelies. In terms of what went well, what didn't go so well, one of my old bosses used to say you never throw six 6s in business. So you rarely get a period where everything that you did worked brilliantly and to plan. So I think there's a range of outcomes. I think there's also a range of experiences through the quarter. I think the performance on the paid search actually improved in the second part of the quarter. So part of that's learning by doing. So does this work? Well, that didn't work, so let's try something else. Yes, that works. So let's do that again. So I think part of that is, as I say, learning by doing. So I think we've had an improved performance, but it wasn't perfect throughout the entire period. But I'm happy with where we are now. One of the things, of course, if you put money into paid search, which we have done, you increase the cost per lead. So that's something I'd rather -- it wasn't the case. But by definition, if you put more money to big search engine companies to drive up performance, which means we want that term and we want that term, you're going to push the price up. So that's probably something that in terms of cost per acquisition of lead, it would be nice if that was a bit lower. So you have to be quite smart with where you spend your money because if you spend it in all of the obvious cities on all of the obvious search terms, all you do is just push up the cost. So I think a little bit more -- we need to be a little bit smarter in terms of exactly where we spend…

Allen from Jefferies. Three from me, please. Just to go back on the $25 million of additional investment. Could you maybe just talk about -- you said the confidence -- I think your language was the confidence to ingest more. But some of this stuff is, as you say, search engine terms, et cetera, which is an ongoing investment. If you want to keep those search engine, you need to keep doing it. So where is the confidence that we don't need further investment beyond this [indiscernible] $25 million? That would be my first question. Second question, just make a little bit of comments around the pricing environment in U.S. pest as well. Just mindful of the growth is obviously still a little bit weak versus peers. But pricing seems like it's holding up okay in the peer group. So just wondering. Are you able to benefit from that as well? And then finally, I noticed in the comments the contracting growth in North America was 2%. So it's running ahead of the broader group. Obviously, part of the challenge here with Terminix is moving some of that jobbing activity to contracting and changing the mix level. So just wonder if you can comment a little bit there about the progress, where that goes, the challenges on contracting and how that moves through the year as well.

Thanks, Allen. I'll take the first and the third. Stu, you can do pricing. Yes, look, I think -- yes, that was the word I used, and I think it's appropriate. So I think someone asked a question a few months ago and said, well, what -- why is $25 million the right number? I think it was actually Annelies who asked the question. And I said, well, it's the right number because that's what we've calculated. It's the right number I also said, but we reserve the right to move to a different number if there is a different number. And I also made the point in the remarks that -- and it sort of links to your third question about, Allen, which is really important. 75% of our revenues in North America are under contract, 25% is jobbing. So we need to make sure that the investments we are making is not just to prop up organic revenue growth in a single quarter. I'll make the bold statement. Anyone can do that if all you're trying to do is drive a number in a quarter. And you would do exactly what you just said. You'd switch the jobs. So a job in termite is $3,000. A job in home insulation services is $10,000. Pest control contract for a year is $1,200. You sell a contract for $1,200, you're going to get $100 in each of the months. So you're going to get $300 in a quarter. Or you could shift the focus to jobs, and you can get bigger growth, but then you've got to do it all again next year. So the confidence that we've got is if I was sitting here and saying, you know what, we've thrown an awful lot of money at Google, but…

Yes. On pricing, it feels pretty resilient to us, again, not just North America, pretty much across the globe. You've got some tapering there, obviously, as inflation comes off. But they continue to be able to price effectively, including North America. And where would you see a problem, you'd see it in the retention rate. You'd start to see retention rates drifting up if we were going to get -- sorry, termination rates drifting up if we were having problems making pricing stick. So we haven't seen any sort of sea change in our ability to recover price in North America or anywhere else around the world. It feels pretty solid to us.

In the North America like I assumed…

Well, look, we continue to try and recover inflation is what we do. We're not trying to enhance margins. So -- and as I've said many times in the past, we look at it on a monthly basis, and we process in the month what we're seeing in front of us.

This is Simona Sarli from Bank of America. I have a couple of questions, please, one for Andy and for Brad. Probably considering since the closing of the deal, how has your opinion changed or evolved on the potential challenges but also opportunities from Terminix in North America? The second one, if we look at the performance for Q2, and clearly, you flagged that you already had tough comps from June last year in the redistribution business, which I assumed was also already well known to you. So what can mean that it was probably softer than expected and that explains why the growth was actually below your guidance overall for past control in Q2? And if you can provide a little bit more color on the differential in performance between commercial versus residential in termite versus Q1. And if in commercial you have lost any contracts, for example, with national account [indiscernible].

Thanks. I'm trying to pick the bones out of that. The 2 questions that sounded more like 4, but I'll do my best. Let's go to the first one. Overall, how do we feel about -- I mean use it me and Brad, I think I'll take it because Brad only joined the team post the deal. And the question was how do I feel about it relative to how we used to feel about it and when we looked at it. Look, let's be honest, it's clearly taking us longer to get growth where we need to get growth, and I think you've heard me diagnose many times and give the strategy for pest control business. You got to have great colleague retention and great colleague retention consistently over time feeds into great customer service, which feeds into better customer retention, which feeds into the ability to sell customers more things, more jobs, upselling and to get good prices. So I think fundamentally, the bigger challenge or the challenge probably that's turned out to be bigger is getting colleague retention back or up to where we need to or towards where we need to. And it's probably the area that I'm also most delighted with the progress we've made in the last 12 months. So I think that's to pick the main issue. I think it's being harder to get growth. And I think it's been because we've been finding it harder or the challenge to get the colleague retention up to where we need to has been bigger. In terms of the opportunity side, I look -- we judge performance and we look at companies and we look at them through an incredibly narrow range of how have we done in the last 13 weeks. I don't know.…

Yes, sure. Really, it was a bit -- those comps, as you rightly point out. It wasn't a surprise to us. We had 20% plus organic growth in June last year. Actually, distribution helped the number in Q1. So it's not that it's particularly challenged. It's just more lumpy than it really used to be pre-pandemic is the main shift. So we didn't give a revenue target -- growth target for Q2, by the way. We gave one for Q1 and then we gave one for the full year. So we're still sticking with that target range of 2% to 4%. So we haven't really moved that, and we certainly didn't give a target for Q2, and distribution was included in that view of life, of course.

James Beard at Deutsche Bank. I've got two questions, please. Could you give us a little bit more detail around the working capital and particularly the debtor performance in the first half and why you think that is a one-off issue and will reverse in the second? And second question, you mentioned that you're pivoting away from 100% sales commission for new hires in North America. What proportion of North American sales colleagues are currently on 100% commission contracts?

Yes. On debtors, it was quite peculiar. I mean we don't manage cash strongly at the half year because it's really related to the -- we're building up the season. We always have some sort of outflow. And it was just a bit bigger. If you -- what was interesting is every single region we reviewed said, and you're going to love this, the half year finished at a weekend. And we paid out debtors -- our creditors the week before, and we suffered from customers paying us the week after. And actually why am I confident because we saw the week after the cash flowing in. So it really was a timing thing. We're largely a Northern Hemisphere business, therefore, at the 31st of December, we don't see those characteristics. And so I'm really confident that it was just a real peculiarity around the half year that I wouldn't expect to recur.

Sales colleagues. I'm going to give you the answer, and I'm going to look at Brad and he's either going to nod his head or he's going to shake it, so we're going to do it that way. I think we have 425 colleagues in Terminix who are on 100% commission. I don't think we have any in heritage Rentokil. I think we have 425. That's probably about 10% of the total sales force. He's sort of shaking his head, nodding his head. I don't know. And what we're doing here is important. If you've already figured out how to sell and you're already on a 100% sales commission scheme and you've been doing it for X years, you love it. And we're not going to take that away from those people. But we don't think that's the way to build the future professional sales force. We don't do it in that way in any part of the business. We don't do it in Rentokil North America. So for new people coming in, we're moving them to a much more conventional structure that we've been using for years in Rentokil with a good salary, but with good opportunities to earn more money. So the earning potential will be as good. But if you're already using the 100% scheme, we're not going to take that away. And that was one of the worries on our behalf, I will say, one of the worries that's been out there, which is, are you going to lose a lot of your top sales people because you're going to take away the 100% sales? No, we're grandfathering for an inappropriate phrase. We're leaving them in those pay structures.

Chris Bamberry, Peel Hunt. A couple of questions if I may. How did organic growth in North American pest services developed over the quarter? And secondly, you kind of nudged down slightly your M&A target for the year. Is that just a timing issue? Or have you been losing out on deals? And I guess, on that front, what are we seeing in terms of pricing and competition for acquisition?

I'll do the M&A one and then I'll come back to the one that I'm not going to answer. M&A, we do what we can. So at the beginning of the year, we gave you the very best view of what we think we're going to do in the following 12 months and then we update it, either we say, we're going to spend a bit more or we're going to spend a bit less. M&A is very opportunistic, very lumpy. You can win a big deal and suddenly the numbers change or you can lose a few. There was no story here at all between the 250 -- the 200 to 250, just simply as we sit here today and the pipeline for execution in the coming 6 months. Just doing the math on it, and we probability weighting on well, how many of these deals do we think we will close, et cetera, that's where it comes out. So we reserve the right, of course, we do to spend more than the 250. We reserve the right to come in under the 200. But as we sit here today, it looks like it will land in that range. I don't think there's much I can tell you on pricing. We certainly saw over the last 5 years in the United States, an increase in prices that kept -- went up 5 years ago and stayed high. Then we were hoping that prices would dip a bit. And I think we did see prices dip a bit in the last 18 months as interest rates moved up, and therefore, private equity found it more difficult to be competitive. I don't think -- and it's marginal. I don't think we've really seen much movement in those prices. If there's been any movement, I'd say it's been a little bit softening overall, but not massively. You saw the amount of money we spent relative to the dollars we bought or the pounds that we bought, and you might say, oh with that, that looks like you're spending less per revenue dollar. That's really a function of the fact that we did more on the Hygiene & Wellbeing side in the half than previously. So Hygiene & Wellbeing deals typically come at a lower multiple, typically because there are a few people chasing them. The pest control pipeline and funnel looks good. Prices are stable, may be a shade lower than they were, but difficult to say. In terms of the month-by-month, blow-by-blow, no, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. Otherwise, I'll be giving you a monthly revenue numbers, and I don't plan to do that. But I don't think there's a massive story in the quarter. I've mentioned that some of the paid activity, we learned as we went through the quarter. But overall, I don't think it's a big story in the quarter to share one way or the other.

Nicole Manion from UBS. Just two questions, please. You've talked today a lot about the importance of colleague retention and since the deal closed, I think that's broadly speaking been increasing. Should we be expecting some volatility in those metrics, even if only temporary, as you sort of crack on with those full branch and route integrations in the kind of later phases? And then secondly, a broader question on the branch strategy. I guess there's obviously multiple ways to skin a cat, but you have a big peer who is maybe quite vocal having these smaller, but more numerous branches. I think you've touched on it today in those helpful slides, but I wonder if you could elaborate on what gives you confidence that is the right approach? Is it that you think you're doing something different through the integration process around innovation, route planning and so on. It will be somewhat better than what peers in the market have or is it something else?

Yes, colleague retention. That's a good question. I think we'll know it when we see it is the honest answer. If we go back to the pilots that we did whenever it was 12 months ago, we did see volatility in colleague retention. That is why we did the pilot. So we then drilled down and said, okay, what caused this volatility, what have we done to upset people that has caused them not to want to hang around. Some of it was around things like the pay structure. So we've learned from that. This is why we pilot, and that's why I'm going to share some of the changes there. We've also said -- we've called what we're going to do in the fourth quarter, a pilot. We've done that quite deliberately. It is the plan. The plan is locked. We know what we're going to do on pay and conditions. But we're pragmatic. If when we get into it, we get a lot of negative feedback from colleagues, okay, we reserve the right to change that pay plan and pivot. We actually think and our data suggests, there are going to be far more people who are going to be happy with what we're going to do than those who have the potential to be unhappy. But we're also focusing on the ones who could be unhappy. So how do we make sure that we reduce the probability that they're really going to be unhappy. So it's possible. And I would say -- and also sitting behind your question, don't forget to deliver the synergies that we're committed to, we have to take a lot of people out of the business. Our plan firmly is not to do some big redundancy program. That's not going to happen. How…

Sylvia Barker from JPMorgan. Three, please. On organic for the second half, you'll finally be doing some of the full integrations in Q4. Would you share any dis-synergy assumptions that you've got within the organic guidance for North America? Secondly, free cash conversion, is that different in North America versus the rest of the business? Because you've got more residential, presumably have a different proportion of prepayments? How does that -- maybe not just for the half, but more structurally? And then finally on Hygiene, obviously, we've asked you this in the past, so sorry to ask again, but where is that business in terms of the -- I guess, how integrated it is with pest in the various regions? Clearly, we get asked that a lot given the recent news flow.

Thanks. Well, I'll do 1 and 3. Yes, I'm not going to give you a number on dis-synergy. All I'll say is that as we put the program together, as we put our plan together, as we put our guidance together, we made certain assumptions that there would be some level of short-term impact on organic growth as you move into integration. So rather, and hopefully, I'm not going to give you that number. But I also said, look, we've done many integrations where the impact has been 0 and we've done many integrations where the impact has been significant. The thing that I'm really most excited about in the second quarter is we've done the systems integration. I know that might not sound a big thing to many of you, but it is a big thing. So to integrate this business fully and properly, we have to do two things. We have to get the systems fully integrated. That's an enormous task, an enormous task, so many things that have to be done well. And that's gone really, really well. So we've now got an IT stack that we've converted Terminix colleagues from their system into the new system. We've converted stand-alone acquisitions to the new system. We've converted commercial, residential, termite to the new system. We've had multiple day 1 glitches every single one of which has been resolved and put to bed. So not saying it's done, but my goodness me, that's a big tick to say you've got the systems integration done. Well done, good, excellent. Yes, but we've still got other things to do. And the three big things that we have left to do is: rerouting, is rebranding and is pay. We feel really good about the pay piece. We've spent ages and loads…

Yes, free cash flow. Thanks Andy saying taking so long over that give me a chance to have a think about it. So let's start from the bottom. National Account, very, very similar, almost identical. [indiscernible] might be different commercial business. We've got a big commercial business in North America, very, very similar. Again, it's payment in arrears and why sort of commercial customers take longer. You're right, residential and termite is different. We've -- and the main difference is around revenue recognition. So it's visit based. It's highly seasonal. So you are billing often on a monthly basis -- sorry, collecting cash, apologies, on a monthly basis. But then you go out and you do work and you recognize the revenue and then you allocate the cash. So what you get up is -- as we get into the season -- through the season, your revenue recognition is ahead of your cash collection, yes? And so then that unwinds for the remainder of the year. We've still actually -- so a very high percentage of new residential and termite customers are on either EasyPay or credit card. It certainly starts with 9 . We still got quite a big legacy of historic customers that still pay by those -- that glorious American thing called the check. So therefore, we still have some collection challenges and that variability around customers that we've had for a very long time. So that's the way the difference is really around the revenue recognition on residential and termite.

How integrated is Hygiene with pest control? It's pretty integrated. At a country level, you run a country, you don't run past or hygiene, you run both businesses. So there's only one MD, only one FD, one HR director, one IT director. So at that most senior C-suite level in any country, you're running the whole thing. So you want to separate those businesses, you're going to have to put a huge layer of overhead in one side or the other. At the branches, it's mixed. Some we run at the same physical location, some are separate. We use the same IT stack. We share procurement. So there's a significant overlay between the businesses, and we get some commercial benefits as well. We don't do a lot of cross-selling. Hold the front page, cross-selling is really, really difficult to do. Anyone who tells you it's easy, has never tried it. But we do have a lot of customers who buy both, that doesn't mean to say that pest control people are selling hygiene or vice versa. But if you're a happy pest control customer, we will introduce you to hygiene and vice versa. So we do get a cross-personalization on commercial. So honestly it's a very similar business the way it works, route density. It's got even higher level of contracting versus past control. All of the things that we talk about in pest control about the importance of colleague retention and all of that exactly the same. So the synergy of having those businesses together, I think, is material. The dis-synergy of separating those businesses, I think, is material end off as far as I'm concerned.

The last question in the room, then we'll take some online.

Okay. We've got some there.

It's James Rose from Barclays. Got two, please. First is on the North America growth strategy. We've clearly made good progress on leads. But when it comes to sales conversion, is that at a rate below what you typically expect and what's your thought and diagnosis for that? And then secondly, assessing the slide, you're doing a process deep dive on the Terminix pricing process. What has prompted you to do that and what would you sort of expect to find from that review?

On the first question, can I add someone has asked online, why the average value of lead was down along with sales conversion? So if we could combine that question with yours.

Yes. I will try not to talk so long and give you less time to prepare the answer for second one on pricing. Yes. Look, we gave you the growth model, which shows where growth comes from. Sales conversion and average lead value was very slightly down, but they were down. And large numbers times a small variance can get you a medium-sized number. So it did have an impact. The honest answer is if you push hard to generate additional leads, you shouldn't be surprised that some of the leads are of a weaker quality than if you weren't pushing as hard. So it's simply, again, a numbers game. So yes we've got more leads, but they weren't all of the same quality. And as you go down the funnel, some of them will be of a weaker quality and some of them will be smaller and that then feeds into conversion, which is if you -- if the only thing you ever feed a sales person is brilliant top quality leads that are incredibly easy to sell, they're going to sell them. But as you go down the funnel and you give them things that are a little bit more difficult to sell, they don't close quite as highly -- at a higher rate. The bit is though and I get excited about this. Brad covered it in his piece, particularly on the Terminix side, we've had a really horrible retention rate of new sales colleagues. The reason -- one of the main reasons we're moving away from this 100% commission thing for newbies is newbies don't like it. It's really difficult to be successful in a few months on a 100% -- no salary, 100% commission only. And our data proves that if you've done a year or so, your conversion gets a lot better. So by getting more and more people to stay longer and longer, we will get an improvement in the sales conversion rate by into the fact that our people have got more experience as opposed to we're replacing experienced people or replacing churn at the front end. So I think it's a big story. The numbers were marginal, really marginal, but I was hoping to see an improvement in the conversion, and we saw a marginal decline. So one to keep an eye on, keep asking the question, but one that Brad is incredibly focused on. We'll get those numbers up as we get sales colleague retention up. Stu?

On pricing, something I've spoken about a couple of times. If you sort of step back and look at the heritage of pricing in Rentokil and in Terminix. Rentokil very, very granular owned by branch managers, given targets and allocate price increases according to the knowledge of their customers, their performance people who've had a poor service, people who've had really good service where they're not making enough margin blah, blah, blah. So really, really very granular approach to pricing around a target overall. In Terminix, much broader brush. So top down, here's our price approach. So I'm talking existing customers here, okay? Much more about -- so in some ways, more effective, but in some ways, a sledgehammer. And so actually, two things. One, bringing those things together, we think we can have a more strategic approach to customer groups. So by category, by [indiscernible] sorts of things. But also, we've got some mismatches in pricing between -- in the same regions. So the Rentokil price position for existing customers might be quite different to the Terminix price positioning and delivering effectively the same service. So as we bring these things together in one big data lake, it gives us much better opportunity for effective pricing, combining the best of both understanding and bringing the -- where we've got customer issues, where we've got softer on pricing, where we've got et cetera, et cetera. So bringing the best of both into that world. But I think also strategically gives us a much better opportunity to manage yield around pest pressures, around the demographics of the region. So that's what we're doing is trying to not lose the best of both combine them and really look at how we are pricing. And of course, that feeds into new business pricing…

Thanks Stu. Well, let's stay with those. But first off, I've been doing this job quite a few years. I have never disclosed the private conversations I've had with any of our shareholders, and I don't intend to start doing so now. It would be completely inappropriate. I wouldn't do it for long only that I've known for a decade, I wouldn't do it for new people coming on to the register. So that, I think, is easy to deal with whoever the shareholders are. The second point is we treat all of our shareholders exactly the same. And certainly, we treat all of our major shareholders exactly the same. So we do meet our shareholders from time to time, and that's what I would consider normal investor relations. In terms of matters in the media, I mean, stating the extremely obvious, we don't comment on rumors, but I'd also remind everyone the panel rules and the panel requirements in terms of these matters are incredibly clear and incredibly strict. So I think you can interpret that as you will. I don't spend time reading the newspapers and their speculation and quite often not, they're not as accurate as you might think, but I don't spend time worrying about that. We're working incredibly hard on growing this business. We're working incredibly hard on improving organic growth in North America, work incredibly hard on the integration and the Rest of the World business, which is all going well. So I focus on the stuff that I can focus on and not the stuff of idle rumor and chatter, can't comment those rumors and would never comment on discussions that I've had with any shareholders.

Disposal of French Workwear. Any update?

No. Look, the position of French Workwear, I mean I updated in terms of the performance, another cracking performance, one might make the argument at best-performing business, but a cracking performance again from French Workwear. It is noncore. It is a noncore asset to the group and I'm sure at one point in time, we will conclude that there is an owner for that asset who is a better long-term owner than we are. But that requires somebody to want to buy that business at a price that makes sense to our shareholders on a fundamental shareholder value [indiscernible]. So selling an asset at an undervalue doesn't seem to be a good thing to me, selling an asset for an appropriate value does seem a good thing. So it's not "for sale." But then again, everything is "for sale." That's the nature of business. So no update and no change to our position. It's a lovely business. It's well run. It's performing well. At some point, I suspect we'll conclude that there is a better owner that is not today.

Thank you very much. I think that's it.

Are we done?

All questions done here.

Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it.