Good morning, everyone. So here's a quick look at today's agenda. I'm going to start with a few opening remarks, and then going to hand over to Paul who's going to provide a financial overview, including our regions and categories. And then I'm going to dive into our North American review and our action plan. We'll then be pleased to take questions. In 2024, we delivered revenue of GBP 5.6 billion, an increase of 3.9% of organic growth increased by 2.8%. But clearly, this was a challenging year for the group with lower profits and margins as we outlined in our trading update in September. We delivered good growth in International, which are our businesses outside of North America with revenue up 8.2%, of which organic revenue contributed 4.7%. And here, Pest Control organic growth was strong at 5.3%. On the right, you can see a breakdown of the North America and International businesses. Our International Pest Control and Hygiene businesses delivered revenue of GBP 2 billion. That's an 8.3% increase and with strong customer retention of 86%. I'll discuss the North America region in much more detail shortly. The integration itself is progressing well, and I'm confident that following our Q1 review, we're taking a pragmatic set of actions designed to drive improved growth. It was very good to see colleague retention continuing to increase, up by 2.4%. And operationally, this means that we had around 1,000 fewer people to recruit last year. You've heard me say many times that a great colleague experience leads to a great customer experience. And indeed, in 2024, we delivered improved levels of customer satisfaction with a further one point increase in our Net Promoter Score and increased customer retention, which rose by 50 basis points. Turning now to North America. On the…

Well, thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today for my first earnings presentation with Rentokil Initial. Since joining the company in early December, I've had the opportunity to meet many of our talented teams within the business. I look forward to getting to know all of you in the weeks and months ahead. This morning, I'll be walking through the key financial highlights from the past year and outlining some of the current financial priorities for the group. But before we get into the numbers, I'd like to take a moment to share some of my initial observations about the business. After spending the last three months immersed in the company, I can say that I'm pleased to be part of a business built on the foundation of great people and a strong culture, one that is ambitious, driven and hungry for success. From an industry perspective, the dynamics are highly attractive. We operate in a market that has strong growth tailwinds, including population growth and urbanization, and the runway for long-term sustainable growth ahead of us is significant. The global addressable market is over $26 billion with nearly half of that in North America. As a global leader in this fragmented industry, we are well positioned to grow both organically and through acquisitions. A key focus for us right now is the integration of Terminix, and this is a complex process. While there is still work to be done, once it's delivered, it will position us as one of the most efficient operators in the industry. We will have a highly competitive cost structure underpinned by some of the best technology and innovation capabilities in the market. This will further strengthen our position and enhance our ability to serve customers at scale.…

Thank you, Paul. Right. Let's now focus on North America. Well, I'll start with the integration. I'll then cover the continued execution of our RIGHT WAY 2 growth plan, including the important new satellite branches and regional brands before we take any questions. We made good progress with the integration in the second half of the year. We completed the systems integration for another 58 branches, mainly Terminix residential, to add to the existing Rentokil network and that takes the total number of branches in North America now operating on the unified Best of Breed systems to over 250. We also piloted our first rerouting, rebranding and new pay plans in 9 branches. And whilst it's obviously early days, we've seen some encouraging results with colleague retention in line with pre-migration levels; and customer retention, in fact, increasing on our pre-migration levels. Since then, we've continued to fully integrate a further 41 branches. So this means we've got around 15% of the Terminix branch network has now been fully integrated. I'm not going to go through this slide in detail, but I do think it's worth remembering our journey in North America from where we started in 2022, a highly fragmented network of over 70 systems, 80 brands, different pay and benefit structures, multiple vendors, no uniform customer experience. And since then, we've made significant progress. And just a few examples on the screen, we've got a fully aligned back office set of functions. We've got a single management team. We've introduced Rentokil's laser focus on colleague experience and colleague retention. We've rolled out a single people management system. We've set the innovation center up and running, and the first branch system integrations executed successfully last year. Undoubtedly, this has been a significant lift for the organization and there's much…

With that, Paul and I will be very happy to take any questions. We'll start in the room and Paul will keep an eye on the screen for additional questions. Thank you very much.

Good morning. This is Simona Sarli from Bank of America. So first of all, if we start from the digital leads and also the progress that you made with your new digital tools and IT systems. So it sounds like it is effectively now across 250 branches, which should be roughly 80% of your legacy branches and 20% of the combined ones. So the question is, if we look like the digital leads now in Q1 that you mentioned that they are still weaker, can you differentiate between the branches where you have rolled out those systems and those that are still on the legacy ones? And the second question, what has been the challenge in rolling out these systems? So why we are still at the 250 branches? And what should we expect in terms of 2025? Second topic would be more related to the new incentive scheme for the sales force and the differentiating commission structure that you are talking about between contracts and one-off work. So on this one, what has been so far the feedback from the sales people? And what is the percentage of the sales force that has been rolled out on this new scheme? Third and last question, it is...

I'll turn over.

Sorry, it is on cost synergies. Yes. And I appreciate, Paul, in your initial remarks where you said that it is difficult to compare it to the old target of more than $200 million. But what has changed since then because I would have assumed that already at the time you were factoring in also the impact of inflation? Thank you.

Okay. For no reason other than I'd like to hear Paul's voice, let's start with the third one and then we'll work back up the list. I'll take the second and share the bits.

Thanks, Andy, and thanks Simona. So I guess my first point would be that I don't really like putting out any targets. And in my old world, that was my model. The business there was reassuringly boring and that's where we aspire to get back to. But we thought it would be helpful for people to understand what our current view is on these cost synergies and what we'll achieve. And the first point I'd make is that we have actually achieved a lot of cost synergies already and that we have confidence that we will continuing to do that – we will continue to do that. But there's a lot more to go for and that's why we're going through all the pain of doing this. We'll end up with a very efficient operating model, which will give us a really good platform to win from. As I look back to when we bought the business to now, I mean, there's multiple years of quite high levels of inflation, there's investment that's gone in behind the integration. There's investment that's gone into the business, you could say, outside of the integration. So actually mapping back and saying, so comparing to this target, I think it's a bit unhelpful. What I think everyone is focused on is once we're through the integration process, so 2027, what's the cost base going to look like and how much can we grow the business by. So I think that's the key metric and that's what people will rightly start to think about. So I've tried to help people get to the right point on that by saying that if you take the 2024 cost base, we will still have inflation in that, but you had inflation for a few years, you take over GBP 100 million and that's the cost base that we expect to operate with in North America. That said, the gross cost savings that we set out to achieve when we did the deal, that we will achieve, but I think this is the more understandable way getting to the right number for 2027. So I hope that helps, Simona.

Thanks, Paul. I'll try the second one, sales incentive. There's two parts to this answer. I touched on it, but I didn't really unpack it. If we look at our performance in 2024, which we're very disappointed with in terms of organic growth, if you actually differentiate between jobbing and contracts, our jobbing performance was pretty respectable. Our contract performance was not respectable in my view. And ours is a portfolio business, we're roughly, whatever it is, 67%, 70% contract portfolio, 30%, 32%, 33% jobs. And it's a subscription business. So what is really important, which I touched on in the press release there, which is we've got to get our portfolio into positive healthy net gain. We have to sell contracts. And the schemes in – on the Terminix side of the house really have not differentiated between contracts and jobs. The Rentokil ones historically did. That is a floor in the scheme. Changing sales incentives may sound an easy thing to do, but it absolutely isn't because you have to plumb it all the way through your systems and your pay schemes. And so it's actually quite difficult to make those sorts of changes. So the change that I've referred to there in terms of incentives for contracts versus jobs is something that we are intending to do as we go into the next few weeks and months. What – the second part of the answer in terms of the sales pay plan is a broader piece, which actually addresses this issue as well. But that is for all sales across the entire North America business we are moving to a single harmonized pay structure for salespeople. And that's what I referred to. We've done that now in nine branches. We've done it now in 41 branches. We've…

Hi. Good morning. I'm Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. I have three as well, please. So just on the lead generation and performance of the regional brands given you've decided to keep more of those brands, I'd be interested to know if there's any data to suggest that those are performing better than the Terminix brand as part of your decision to keep them? Then secondly, just on employee retention. I think in the statement and in the presentation, you mentioned there was an increase in both new joiners and longer-tenured colleagues. So how has retention developed for those most experienced technicians, salespeople, et cetera? From memory, those are the ones with the stickiest customer relationships, so I would imagine a key driver of that customer retention. And then just lastly, on Workwear, since we last spoke in October, there were some fairly detailed press reports regarding an imminent sale, I think, in November. Any comment on that? And is a sale in 2025 baked into your assumptions for the year? Thank you.

Thanks. On lead generation, I mean, it may not be the answer that you're expecting. The organic search performance of the regional brands has been poor. So the non-sequitur between so, hang on, so why are you going – we were on a strategy that basically these brands were being retired over time. They were going to be co-branded with Terminix. So for example, Western exterminator was planned to become Terminix Western. So the team gets super, super focused on Terminix and don't get super focused on Western. And that is part of an intentional deprioritization in 2024. We've changed the strategy that said, no, no, no, we're not doing that. Maybe we should have done that before. But that's where we are now. So Western – we need to love Western. So we have a team of people now actually out of the UK center of excellence team supporting the Western brand to get Western's organic content to where it should be. So that answers the first one. Second one, I don't have a split, to be honest, in terms of new tenured to long tenured. But all of our data, and it's consistent with most companies around the world, you typically suffer much worse with newbies. So the retention rate is always worse in the zero to six and the six to 12 and always better once you get people through one or two, threeyears, that won't be any different. Our data won't be any different. Workwear, the imminent sale in November, I think you're referring to, and where are we now, March. I'll give you the same answer as I always do. You saw the performance of Workwear. Workwear is a beautiful business, performing well, super management team. But it is non-core. It doesn't fit with the branch-based model we've got. We only have it in one market in France. And what we've always said is if there is another owner out there who is a better natural owner for the business in a transaction, which would represent good value for our shareholders, then we will look at that and that remains our position.

Hello. Yes. Hi, good morning.

Hi.

Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Just three from me as well, please, but hopefully, not too long. I just wanted to understand the assumptions behind your guidance for 2025 about meeting market expectations, being in line with market expectations. What are the assumptions on growth and margins that you have baked in there? And despite the weaker start in 1Q, do you have any data on leading KPIs that support an improvement in organic growth over the coming quarters? Second question is on U.K. actually. National Insurance living wage increase, do you expect an increase in costs as a result? And what are your plans to mitigate it? Third is provision on the cash flows. We've had provisions on the cash flows for a couple of years now. Is this going to be an ongoing part of the cash flow statement in the future years? How should we think about that? Thank you.

Thank you. So in terms of the guidance for 2025, yes, we've talked about the fact that we do expect to meet market expectations. And principally, when I talk about that, I'm thinking about the bottom line attainment, it is difficult, as Andy has just talked about extensively, to know when more fuel will start to come into our engine and when we'll see the organic growth tick up. As it does, then we will see just naturally that higher level of organic growth be delivered. We haven't built in heroic assumptions in our expectations as getting to that level for 2025 as you would anticipate. But we are confident we will meet market expectations. And I don't have any further guidance around new margins, et cetera. And I'll sort of go back to my earlier point, I don't really like giving out multiple targets. I just think it's not the right thing for a business that is going to be reassuringly boring in, hopefully, a few years. In terms of National Insurance costs, yes, it is about a GBP 5 million additional cost into business, which obviously, we've built in to our expectations. And in terms of provisions, as we work though, making good progress managing that. And yes, we do expect that, that will continue to be part of the business as we go forward, certainly for 2025. And if anything changes in future years, then we will provide additional guidance on that. Thanks very much.

Good morning. Chris Bamberry, Peel Hunt. So another three questions. Firstly, with the revised brand strategy, how should we think about the fact there's less integrations with Terminix? I presume there's some sort of saving against. You've now got nine brands to support with marketing. Secondly, of the 100 additional locations, how many of those are satellite branches? And given you've got quite relatively small sample because if you said 22 in use, what gives you confidence that, that additional 100 overall is the right answer? And finally, of the organic growth in North America, 1.5%, what was the price contribution to that? Thanks.

Sorry, could you repeat the first one because I didn't quite catch it. I've got a cold. I'm going deaf in my left ear.

No problem. So with the change in the brand strategy, on one hand, you've got, I presume, cost savings because you have less to integrate or to convert to Terminix. On the other hand, you've now got nine brands to support. So how can we think about that down the road?

Yes. I think, as you guys often do, you sort of answered your own question there a little bit. So as we think about the branches and the brands, you're quite right with retaining 9 regional brands, it means we're going to retain more branches. So I'm not going to give you the split between how many satellites and how many regular branches, but there's a mix of those. And therefore, you're quite right. On the one hand, that means less cost to integrate, but it also means a little bit less synergy to come out of those because we would have been merging those branches. The cost to set up a satellite branch is very low relative to a full conventional branch. It's a small facility. It's meeting rooms, et cetera. It's a branded facility. And so that's really – it's a very modest, you wouldn't even notice it. We've said above 500, so sort of hold on to that thought. As the satellite branch program works, if it works in the way that we believe it will, we could well add substantially more. So it's not an end state and we're working through this now. So I think if the – you asked why we got the confidence, well, the early days is can we find locations? Yes. Can we find locations that are sensible cost? Yes. Can we get the search engines to recognize those locations as physical locations and get picked up? Yes. Can we drive 5-star reviews from our technicians into those pins and those locations? Yes. Is the phone ringing and our customers calling those locations off the back of searches they've made on the Internet? Yes. Can we sell those leads and turn them into revenue? Yes. So that's a series of it…

And if I understand the question, I think it's around what's going on in core Pest versus what's going on in the distribution and other businesses that we've got, which we saw a stronger performance in the distribution and some of our other businesses in the back period of the year. And we do provide a few different metrics around North America with Pest Control and pest control services. So we've put all of those in the RNS. Going forward, I think I just want to understand what's most useful for people because we do provide an awful lot of data. We are trying to back off that a little bit. We go into International rather than everything. So we'll try and make sure we're directing the information that you receive, so it's always consistent and then you can build that into your models as effectively as possible. But did that address the question?

Well, actually, put this kind of 1.5% north how much is pricing as opposed to...

Sorry. So we had a strong pricing performance and we lost volume. So pricing continues to be, as we've talked about before, inflation plus, and we've lost volume, which I think we saw the prior year as well. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hi. Sylvia Barker from JPMorgan. Two questions from me, please. First, on working capital. Could we just talk about our North American outflow a bit more. So how much of the outflow was North American creditors? And why did you have that issue? What do you expect for 2025? And then secondly, appreciate you don't want to give more guidance of 2025. But just if we think about the cost base in absolute in North America overall, obviously, very different halves and lots of moving parts up and down. If we – if I kind of extrapolate the cost base into – sorry, from 2024 into 2025, do we just take the second half and put an inflation number on it? Or can you talk a little bit about the moving parts? In the past you've discussed savings from reducing the sales force, further investments in growth, et cetera, et cetera? Are there any bigger items, that will be interesting as well.

Yes. Thank you for those. So in terms of working capital, as I said, a bit of a disappointing second half compared to what we had anticipated at half 1. So across the year, we saw GBP 105 million working capital outflow and that compared to a GBP 47 million outflow in 2023. For 2025, we're guiding to $75 million to $85 million. And at the half, we had anticipated that we would do a bit better at creditors, which we did during the second half. But what we haven't built in is that we had a deterioration in creditors. So a bit better in debtors, but deterioration in creditors. And we need to focus on that this year. A lot of distractions in the second half of last year, new management team in finance in North America. We've got a great new CFO there now. So as I said, I'm not happy with the performance, but more that we need to do. In terms of the 2024 to 2025 mapping of the cost base in North America, what I've said there is we will see inflation, but significant costs went into the cost base in North America to fund a lot of new initiatives and we will reprioritize those to fund the new initiatives behind brands and branches that Andy has just been talking about. So we're not going to require new additional investments there. That's our expectation at the moment. We can use what we've got more effectively. So we'll repurpose it and drive a better level of return from that investment. But I'm not going to split it out half 1, half 2 or try to get into anything like that.

Good morning. It's James Beard from Deutsche Bank. Two questions, please. You mentioned that some of the investments you made in 2024 you're effectively repurposing in 2025. Can you describe in a bit more detail which investments you made in 2024 didn't work? And then second question, within the 1.4% organic in pest services in North America in FY2024, can you give a sort of directional split between resi and commercial? And I guess as sort of a follow-on question, your large competitor in the U.S. recently has been talking about investing in sales and marketing quite significantly within their commercial business. How do you plan to respond to that? What impact have you seen, if any of that, from that so far? Thanks.

I'll take the second one. You want to take the first?

Yes. So in terms of the repurposing and what didn't work, I think there's a combination of factors in this, which is I've talked a little bit about the fact that we're building a more powerful engine here and everything that we're doing around the integration is creating that. We're not getting the fuel to come into the engine though to deliver the growth. So a lot of program integration, not enough leads coming through. If you think about running a business as you're coming into high season, we've built up our capacity in terms of service people, in terms of consumables, in terms of having people ready to do the business and then the leads didn't turn up. So you have some surplus capacity there. We also deployed additional investments behind marketing that we thought would drive a higher level of leads, various initiatives, whether that's additionally buying keywords, various other sales and marketing ways of going to market, which just didn't deliver what we needed. So 2025, we'll stop doing that. And with our new strategy around more branches and more brands, we've got a different way to go to market, which we are confident will deliver a high level of performance.

And James, on the split, I mean – maybe one day, this is wistfully, we might get to report on commercial, resi termite. We don't. We never have. It's not the way our business is set up. So it's a difficult thing to compare like-for-like. And it's always difficult as well, in certain competitors, termite definition includes home services such as loft insulation, so comparing like-for-like is difficult. What I'll say is the batting order of performance across our business and organic growth hasn't really changed. The best performing part of that is national account and that's where you tend to see us and 2 or 3 other big players, and that's where you might see real competitive rivalry and intensity. And that's where we're doing best. And I don't really see much change to that in answer to your question. Commercial is our next best, resi is our next best and termite is our weakest. So we've got a real focus this year on to termite, improving our termite story. So that's our batting order. It's been that way for a little while. I've been in the business a long time and Rentokil has been in the business for 100 years. There's always competitors and there always will be. It's a local business. It's a local market business. And that's why the relevance of branches and physical location and where your pins are is quite important. So whether it's one big competitor saying they're going to focus more on one sector or one segment, we've still got 19,000 competitors spread across hundreds and hundreds of cities. So if it wasn't them, it'd be someone else. There's always intensive competition in the market, always has been. I suspect always will be. So I don't think we're seeing any new change in the competitive environment in North America.

Hi. Ollie Davies from Redburn Atlantic. Just a couple from me. Just on the customer retention number in Q4, the 81% that you reported, obviously, 1 percentage point above the full-year. Just wanted to understand if there's any seasonality in that number, maybe how it compares to Q4 last year and how that's progressed into the first quarter? And then secondly, just going back to pricing, is it fair to assume that the sort of same levels of price increases are sticking now as they were through last year?

Yes. That's super detailed question. I'm trying to think of the answer. I don't think there's massive seasonality. I remember, December of last year was very good. But I think this compares quite nicely with where we were last year. So I don't think we get a seasonal benefit. I think what we're seeing is – I mean, we can see it, we put an additional 40 people in the customer sales team. That's 40 additional people answering phones, making phone calls and dealing with people who otherwise would be looking to cancel their contracts or not renew them. And we can – we're tracking that activity, how many calls, how many calls were positive, how many people were saved, what were the initiatives that saved them, what did you have to do to save them. So we can see that there is an impact, a positive impact, that we are getting from that investment. So it's difficult because it's got multiple factors in there. But it looks as though we saw a decent improvement in the fourth quarter coming out of that activity. I don't have the data for January and February. We wouldn't typically report on that. And sorry, Oli, what was your second question?

On pricing?

Pricing. You want to take pricing?

Yes. So pricing, as you'd expect, is quite a sophisticated discipline. And it's not just that everybody gets an x percent increase on their bill. In an environment where you have higher inflation, it's easier to achieve higher levels of pricing. When inflation is moderating, which we're seeing in North America at the moment, that is not quite so easy to get that. But we push for high rates and then what we actually achieve we have to work through as we come up to renewal dates. So probably a little lighter than in 2024, but we still target for inflation plus. Thanks, Oli.

Hi, good morning. Allen Wells from Jefferies. Just two for me, please. Coming back on actually Annelies' question on the multi-brand strategy. I remember when you obviously acquired Terminix, the value of the brand was highlighted as something that was important in the value you were planning for that asset. Is there anything we need to read into the value of the Terminix brand and some of the challenges that you're having? And then second question, obviously, we're two years in to the integration. There's a lot changing, I guess, again, now digital leads and conversions are still weak. The sales incentives is still to change. Your Brand and branch strategy is changing today. Maybe for you, Andy, like if you had to take a step back and you could go back two years, what would be the one or two things that you would do differently? What's the thing you think would have changed this story? Can I ask that question?

We may want to do that one in the pub, Allen. Seriously. Look, I mean, I put a chart in the presentation there on the Terminix brand. Terminix brand is a power brand. It's a fantastic brand. They have 98% unaided recognition. That is a very strong brand. We're not leveraging that brand as we should be. With that level of recognition, that should be feeding leads and it should be feeding into the searches that people are looking for. So I look at this and say, sort of part of the answer to the second question, this is an amazing industry, pest control, and you all cover lots of industries. There aren't many industries like pest control. It's an incredibly good industry. It's a subscription business, it's a business you can get price increases, it's got secular growth in it that looks like it's going to be there for a long time. North America continues to grow. Somebody mentioned our competitive performance. I look at that, and I'm encouraged by that. I look at it and say, that's where we're going to get to. That's where we should be. So – and we've got an incredibly powerful brand. We are hacking our way through the jungle here of integration. And we can see the other side, we can see where we can get to. So I look at that and say, the excitement that we saw in this combination to take us to number one in the market in an incredibly exciting pest control market with a very powerful brand. The worries I had at the time were about colleague retention, customer retention, and we've done a lot of work on those. And we've also had to do some pretty extensive work on IT systems. We're taking an end-of-life…

Hi. It's James Rose from Barclays. We've got two left you'd pleased to hear. For 2025, we're talking about repurposing the existing investments you've made in 2024. Can you talk about the decision why not to invest a bit more? Why the current level is sufficient for your plan? And then secondly, could we just talk about the thought process behind sales responsibility for field sales going into the branches?

I'll take the second. You take the first.

Sure. So there's an adage, think, it was David Ogilvy who said that back in the day, 50% of your marketing spend was wasted. You just didn't know which half. Now with performance marketing, with much more digital marketing and spend, et cetera, it's much easier to see what is delivering for you. So we do have a clear line of sight to, as we spend, what's delivering leads, et cetera. We tried new initiatives, I spoke about how we geared up for a season. That didn't arrive at the level that we thought. So as I look at what we want to do in 2025 and the fact that as we are pivoting, it does take time to get a good return on investment. You can't just throw money at things and think that, that will solve problems. It doesn't. So we think that we've got the right balance now. We've got enough that went into the business in 2024, reprioritizing that will give us the results that we want.

Yes. I think sales model is a little bit like religion. You're one thing or you're another and people have very strong views as to whether you should be functional sales or operational sales in a branch-based business. So there's strong views. Do you drive sales through a strongly functional organization or do you drive it locally? You put national account, that's always run as a functional sales organization. You put the indoor sales team, that's typically run as a functional organization. But for the field-based salespeople, you've got a choice: you can either have them effectively reporting to the branch manager or you have them reporting into a sales manager. And then that sales manager can either report to the branch manager or report up through the sales function. Having said it's a bit like religion, we were sort of hybrid. We couldn't quite work out in the model like that, but we had examples of both and that's because you're coming from two different histories and two different backgrounds. Alain Moffroid has gone into North America as our interim North America CEO. Alain's worked for me 15 years, Alain's run pest control businesses in Australia, all across Europe. And one of the first things he's come out and said is we need to move to fully branch-based sales guys who need to report to the branch manager. And the reason for that, and as I say, you can make both models work and many companies will be that or that. It's not right or wrong. It's just how you do it. With this model, the branch manager has to be accountable for both sales and service. In the other model, the branch manager can say, where are my leads? Where are my sales? That's your fault, sales. You need to get your life together. With this model, the branch manager is accountable for sales and service. That is a conventional model that we know very, very well in our Heartland business. So I can't tell you it's right or it's wrong. But that's the reason Alain has gone in and said, first thing I want to do here is to go back to the sales into the branch managers, which is a model we know and love. Andy?

Hi. Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas Exane. Just two, please. Door-to-door sales. Last time we talked, you said it was difficult to make any money out of this and you weren't sure how that strategy would work. You're moving back to door-to-door sales, what's changed? And then secondly, you've stuck with the target of growing at 1.5x the market in the longer term. When the big competitors have been performing as expected, that's never happened. Given all that's passed over the past two or three years, is that really a realistic target from here? Thanks.

Yes, door-to-door sales, thanks for raking that one up, Andy. You're quite right. I am on the record of door-to-door sales that I have struggled with the model. But like I just said in the earlier answer, I think in management you have to be prepared to revisit your decisions. Over $1 billion of the U.S. pest control market goes through the door-to-door channel. So maybe there's more to the door-to-door model than I saw. My challenge with it was twofold. One, it feels to me, in an increasingly digital world the channel that involves human beings knocking on doors seems, to me, a backward step. But $1 billion of the industry is going through that channel. The second objection I had was that your point about not making money. You do have to pay, you're essentially outsourcing the sales element. So you employ a third-party company to do the selling typically and then you pay them a very high sales commission. But the industry that is built up off the back of that has worked out quite fairly that by targeting the right customers with the right offer at the right price at the right time, you can attract new customers and you can retain them, and that's the critical thing because customer retention in the door-to-door model is typically not as strong. So rather than just me keep burying my head in the sand and saying, I'm not sure this model works for us and you know some of our competitors have deployed this model, we've said, okay, let's – rather than just say that, let's look at this properly. Let's have a proper structured pilot in the season. So it's not – we're going into it and it's a pilot, and it will be monitored. We'll monitor the living daylights out of it. So we'll see, does it work? Does it drive growth? Is it sustainable growth? Is it profitable growth? If that all turns positive and it will take all of 2025 for us to complete that, if that all turns positive, then that's an additional marketing channel that we can add to our suite. So I'm not saying it is or it isn't. But rather than me just take a position on it, let's go see. Let's go see if – because there's $1 billion going through that channel. So somebody is making it work.

And in terms of the 1.5x, I think if you look at what our top competitor would do in the market at the level they're performing at, and we make no apology for the fact that here we think we're going to have power brands. We're going to have regional brands. We're going to have a lot of money to spend behind sales and marketing and then a very efficient branch model, which will allow us to be very competitive and we really don't see why we would not be able to – once we're through integration and still a few things to learn, but it has set a benchmark. And so the expectation is we will be able to deliver that 1.5x level.

Good morning. Nicole Manion from UBS. Just one question, please, on branches, which is a bit of a follow-up. I appreciate there's lots of different ways you can move from where you are today on branches to a 500-plus number as opposed to, say, 400. And you've already said that you won't give the split on sort of satellite compared to more traditional branches, which I get. What can I ask is it still sort of part of your thinking at a more traditional branch that kind of sub $3 million in size is subscale? Or is that sort of no longer the thought process? Because it just feels like quite an important definition.

Yes, it's a good question. Yes, we still believe that – and if you do the numbers on competitors, you can get to very similar numbers to ours to be fair. We still believe that if the branch size is less than a couple of million dollars, that is not an optimum size for a branch. It needs to be bigger than that, our view. But we're not religious about it. We're not saying we cannot have branches at that scale, and we do have branches of that scale. But the notion being that $4 million, $5 million, $6 million branch is a better branch size from a span and control, and therefore, operationally is still intact. So that hasn't changed.

Okay. And maybe just a quick follow-up. I'm not sure if it's actually sort of stated somewhere, but how many branches do you now have in North America? What's that number?

That's one I'm going to duck because I could give you multiple different answers because you've got physical locations, you've got co-locations, you've got satellite branches and it's in a state of flux as well. So I mean, one of the things we're restarting the full integration plan for the – early in the second half, one of the things that we need to do is to make sure that we've got the absolute complete answer to that question for each of our markets. So we had a plan, right? We were going to deploy in this way with this number of branches in these cities and this and that, that plan is pivoting and we need to remap that plan. So I'm not ducking it for the sake of ducking, it's a very difficult answer to give you and it wouldn't answer the heart of your question. But once we get to the, right, okay, we're ready to go. We're ready to press the green button and on we go. Then I can give you an answer and say, well, this is the end state. Although I did, in answering the earlier question, I wouldn't rule out adding additional small branches, satellite branches, hub and spoke, if you like. I wouldn't rule out adding more, assuming that they go well, we can add more and we think that would be an interesting extension of the sales and marketing budget, if you like. But at the moment, that's the planned, 500-plus.

So we don't have any questions that have come through the online system. It may be that it isn't working. So if anybody has been asking questions through the online system, it could be user error, it's always possible. But if anybody has been and we haven't addressed them, then apologies and we can certainly follow up afterwards. So please do be in touch.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you, guys.