Currys H2 2025 Earnings Report

Currys EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 10
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Currys Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Currys Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 7/3/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, July 3, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

Currys (LON:CURY) is a leading omnichannel retailer of technology products and services, operating online and through over 800 stores in 8 countries. We Help Everyone Enjoy Amazing Technology, however they choose to shop with us. In the UK & Ireland we trade as Currys; in the Nordics under the Elkjøp brand and as Kotsovolos in Greece. In each of these markets we are the market leader, employing 28,000 capable and committed colleagues. Our full range of services and support makes it easy for our customers to discover, choose, afford and enjoy the right technology for them, throughout their lives. The Group’s operations include state-of-the-art repair facilities in Newark, UK, a sourcing office in Hong Kong and an extensive distribution network, enabling fast and efficient delivery to stores and homes. Our vision, we help everyone enjoy amazing technology, has a powerful social purpose at its heart. We believe in the power of technology to improve lives, help people stay connected, productive, healthy, and entertained. We’re here to help everyone enjoy those benefits and with our scale and expertise, we are uniquely placed to do so. We’re a leader in giving technology a longer life through repair, recycling and reuse. We’re reducing our impact on the environment in our operations and our wider value chain and we will achieve net zero emissions by 2040. We offer customers products that help them save energy, reduce waste and save water, and we partner with charitable organisations to bring the benefits of amazing technology to those who might otherwise be excluded.

Currys H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: The group delivered £8.7 bn sales (LFL +2%), £162 m adjusted PBT (+37%), and £149 m free cash flow (+82%), finished with £184 m net cash and proposed a 1.5 p final dividend.
• Positive Sentiment: In the UK LFL sales rose +4% with adjusted EBIT up +8% (margin flat at 2.9%) and in the Nordics, EBIT climbed 24% with margins +40 bps to 2.1%, while free cash flow more than doubled to £69 m.
• Negative Sentiment: A ~15% devaluation of the NOK over two years has diluted reported sterling profits in the Nordics, cutting UK-reported profit growth relative to local-currency gains.
• Positive Sentiment: Management’s strategy emphasises scaling services (credit customers +36% to 2.6 m, repair, installation), B2B growth (14% last year, target to double in 3 years) and capturing share in high-growth categories like gaming and new tech segments.
• Neutral Sentiment: Trading is in line with consensus for profit and cash, but the group faces ~£32 m of new National Insurance headwinds and similar inflation pressures, with modest capex increases, £30 m of exceptionals and ~£80 m pension contributions guiding this year’s cash outlook.

Presentation

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Ladies and gentlemen, I I'll resist starting with a clumsy pun linking Beyond Expectations to a year's performance that saw three profit upgrades, but I guess that's just what I've done. Anyway, good morning, welcome, and what are you going to hear about today from Bruce and I? You're going to hear about another year of strengthening performance, about curries that are showing progress on every line, whether it's sales, margins, costs, profit, cash, the balance sheet or on the colleague and the customer experience that underpins all of these things. You'll hear in The Nordics that in a still tough market, Frederic Lille and their team have returned that business to a really good track and are showing good momentum and including a really strong performance on profit and cash. And in The U. K, we've enjoyed another good year. The momentum we've enjoyed in recent years has continued.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And again, we've returned that business to growth as well as seeing really strong performance on profit and cash. Good news is we know what's working. We can attribute these results to the actions of a clear strategy that's been competently delivered. So we know what's working, so we'll keep doing it. And that's one of the things that gives us confidence not just in continuing this progress, but confidence in a brightening outlook for shareholder returns as well.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

I'm going to be back on a little bit later to talk about how we're doing all of this and then we'll take your questions. But before that, I'm going to hand over to Bruce to talk through the numbers.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. So let me start off with some headlines. I guess the headline overall is that group performance continues to strengthen. From a top line perspective, our sales last year were £8,700,000,000 with like for like of plus 2%.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Our adjusted profit before tax moved forward significantly at £162,000,000 that was up by 37% year on year. And our free cash flow was even stronger at 149,000,000 that was up by 82%. The strong free cash flow translates to a stronger balance sheet. We finished the year with net cash of £184,000,000 Our adjusted EPS stepped forward to 11.3p and we're proposing a final dividend of 1.5p. We're really pleased to see the top line move forward after a number of difficult years.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

As you can see, UK like for like last year was plus 4% and the Nordics was flat, hence overall an average of 2% up. But despite the Nordics being flat, actually we were really pleased to see the momentum in the second half with peak like for like at plus 1% and post peak we were trading at plus 3%. So let me step through the two regions, starting off with The UK. As I say, very strong top line, revenue plus 4% like for like. We also saw recurring services revenue step forward significantly.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Adjusted EBIT in The UK was up by 8% at £153,000,000 although our EBIT margin was flat at 2.9%. That strong profit flowed through into strong operating cash flow, 176,000,000, up 13%. And segmental free cash flow was really strong, 95,000,000. Within that, we were able to unlock significant value from working capital, which allowed us to offset the investment we've made in our iD Mobile. I said that our EBIT margins were flat at 2.9%.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Within that, we saw an uplift within our gross margin offset by a small decline within our operating expense ratio. Gross margins were up by 20 basis points. So you'll recognize that's the fourth year in a row that we've seen our gross margins improve. Over that four year period, our gross margin cumulatively is up by two ninety basis points. What are the drivers?

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Well, it's the same drivers that we've been talking about for the last couple of years. It's around solution selling. It's around selling more services. It's not chasing less profitable sales, and it's around supply chain and service cost savings. From an operating expense to sales ratio, we were adverse by 20 basis points, so that reflects the fact that our costs increased at a faster rate than our sales did.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

What are the drivers for that? Well, obviously the most noticeable would have been inflation and particularly the impact of living wage. The second is increases in marketing spend. Now you may remember that over the last couple of years, we've purposely taken our marketing spend down. And the reason we did that was because we wanted to be extremely focused on profit and where there were promotions or campaigns that weren't generating profits, we walked away from them.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

But by rebasing to a much lower level, having much better understanding of where we make money, it's allowed us to build back our marketing spend with confidence knowing that every pound we spend is driving extra to the bottom line. The third component of cost increase year on year is project investment spend that is going through the P and L. So let me explain that. Obviously, in the last couple of years, we've reduced the level of project spend in order to rebuild the balance sheet. But with the balance sheet now stronger for the year that's just finished, we increased our overall level of investment.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

The blue bar shows our CapEx expenditure. And as you can see, stepped up from a low two years ago of 22,000,000 to last year being 50,000,000. So a big step up. What is that? That's predominantly investments within our stores.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

For example, electronic shelf edge labels, something we call space optimization, so relaying our stores to get the most return that we can, and also some maintenance aspects, for example, HVAC investment. But what we've also seen in the last year is a big step up in project OpEx spend. Now this largely relates to tech, largely relates to software where we've moved to software as a service, and therefore by definition it has to go through the P and L. So this, for example, every pound that we spent on our website has had to be expensed. All the money that we spend on developing our credit proposition is expensed.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Same with ID mobile. And that's critical because as you can see, year on year, we've got an increase of £21,000,000 in that OpEx cost. We've managed to absorb that within The UK p and l and still show that 8% EBIT progression. Moving on to the Nordics, tougher market, definitely last year and hence overall like for like sales being flat. We saw adjusted EBIT step forward even stronger than The UK, 24% on a constant currency basis, and EBIT margins improved by 40 basis points from 1.7 up to 2.1.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Operating cash flow stepped backwards a little bit and that's reflecting the fact that the components of growth coming through with our profit has been driven to a degree by non cash items. In terms of segmental free cash flow though, really strong, more than doubled to £69,000,000. And there, we've seen a reduction within exceptional costs, but also lots of great work on managing working capital. I said that Nordic EBIT margins had stepped forward by 40 basis points. As you can see, big step up again in gross margins, up by 60 basis points year on year.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

That's the second year in a row, so that means our gross margins now are higher than they were three years ago, driven by pretty much the same things that I showed you were driving The UK. From a cost perspective, we saw an adverse movement in OpEx to sales ratio of 20 basis points. But actually, if you were to take away week 53, so last year was a fifty three week period from us, if you took that away, actually our costs were almost identical, where inflation was offset with cost savings. Another key factor that we're very keen just to shine a light on for you is the impact of FX. Over the course of the last two years, there's been a significant devaluation of the NOK.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

The NOK has devalued by roughly 15%. And of course, that dilutes the expressed in sterling profit that we're declaring for the Nordics. To put that in context, over the last two years from the low point in Nordics profit, we've seen in sterling increase of 177%. If you look at the same numbers in local currency, it's up by 234%. So in other words, our reported numbers is negatively impacted by those FX headwinds.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Moving back to cash and group cash, again, really a very positive story across the board. With higher profits has come higher operating cash flow. We have, with the stronger balance sheet now, been able to invest more and therefore you see a step up in CapEx, particularly within The UK. Adjusting items have reduced largely as a result of a reduction of non trading stores and also less restructuring costs year on year. Cash tax has reduced and I'll talk about this more in a second, but largely as a result of brought forward losses.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Our cash interest has got better with a stronger balance sheet. And finally, working capital. I've mentioned working capital already a couple of times. You can see that it's gone from being an outflow in FY 2024 of £34,000,000 to an inflow last year of £14,000,000 And that's despite the fact that we invested over £20,000,000 of cash in ID mobile that has gone through that line. So overall really strong performance, free cash flow of £149,000,000 Of that £149,000,000 £50,000,000 of it went to the pension scheme to help us reduce the deficit.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

We bought £15,000,000 worth of shares for our employee benefit trust to make sure that there's no dilution for existing shareholders. And overall, a movement in net cash of plus £88,000,000 moving our closing balance sheet, our closing net cash position to £184,000,000 really healthy. And you've seen this slide before, this is the combination of our net cash net debt but also the pension deficit. And when you put those two together, you see the progress that we've really made. If you looked at that number five years ago, we had over £800,000,000 worth of debt or indebtedness if you include the pension deficit.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

The year that's just finished, we finished with plus 81, so a positive movement from a debt and pension scheme of over £900,000,000 in five years. Three quick slides which are more technical in nature. I'm going to whiz through these, but obviously happy to pick up with them offline. So we've seen our interest cost fall significantly over the course of the last five years. Within that, a component is a reduction of lease interest and that's as our lease terms have reduced and also as we've successfully reduced our payments of rent.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

More noticeably though is the drop off in bank interest and you can see that it's dropped to single digit millions thanks to the strength of our balance sheet. In terms of depreciation and amortization, again similar trend. We've seen a big reduction over the course of the last five years. Actually depreciation on right of use assets, so the leases predominantly, has been relatively static over the last three years. Where we've seen the big reductions are first of all within depreciation of our fixed assets that have fallen and that's largely as a result of us reducing our total CapEx.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

But the most noticeable reduction is within amortization, the top chunk. Again, that's a reflection of the fact that more and more of the software that we run-in our business is Software as a Service. We're expensing it through the P and L upfront, so we're taking the hit upfront and therefore less is going on the balance sheet and less will flow through in future periods. And finally from a tax perspective, obviously the P and L tax charge has increased as our profits have increased. But as I reflected at the beginning, our cash tax is significantly lower and that's a reflection of brought forward losses in both The UK and The Nordics, but also is a reflection of the relief we get on the pension contribution.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

In terms of current year guidance, so obviously we're two months in. I'm pleased to say that at the moment, our trading is in line with our expectations. Also in terms of this year, we are comfortable and confident with the market consensus for profit and cash. But I would remind you as we talked about it at Christmas, we are facing into some significant headwinds. We've got £32,000,000 worth of new government headwinds through National Insurance as a result of living wage, higher rates, in addition to a similar number of headwinds in relation to general inflation.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

So to hit these numbers we will be working super hard. Just some key numbers for for your models. Net interest expense, we expect to be roughly the same in this financial year at about GBP 65,000,000. CapEx, we expect to step up a small amount that will be largely within The Nordics. Exceptional cash outflow will reduce to GBP 30,000,000 as the number of non trading stores starts to reduce and we have less restructuring.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Our pension contribution will step back up to the contracted GBP 78,000,000. And finally cash dividend we're proposing at roughly GBP 25,000,000 based on a five times cover. Some more technical numbers which I'll leave with you to pick up within your packs. So what does that mean in terms of medium term outlook and in terms of capital allocation? So you'll all be familiar with this slide.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Our medium term goal from an EBIT margin perspective remains the same to get to at least 3% EBIT margin. In The UK, we're pretty much there. We have been for a couple of years. We just need to get through that ceiling. From a Nordics perspective, we've had two good years of EBIT margin progression, but we're still some way off the 3% and we're even further off the long term average in the pre pandemic period.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

But we are still clear that this is our plan and determined that we will achieve it. What does that mean for our number one objective? Our number one objective of course is to increase free cash flow. Alex in a moment is going to come and talk about some of the initiatives we've got underway and one of the core components of that is around reintroducing steady growth into our business, profitable steady growth. But if you combine that with EBIT margins being at least 3% and strong control over CapEx and exceptionals, we will see growing free cash flow.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

And given our strong balance sheet that means that more of that cash will be available for shareholders. To give a feel for the overall shape of how that's going to pan out using last year as a proxy, so we had as you saw, free cash flow last year of £149,000,000 There were some elements of that that you have to take out as non repeating. So for example, the working capital upside that was a one off. We can't expect to have that every year. So we've taken some out and we've called sustainable free cash flow from last year £127,000,000 Now as we look forward, we're expecting exceptionals to fall and you'll remember that we've talked about by FY 2027, so next year we expect our exceptionals to be single digit millions.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

We do expect to spend a little bit more on CapEx going forward. And as we get to at least 3% EBIT margins, you would expect cash coming from profits to step up. So that gives you a feel for the shape of our cash flow going forward. And we are a cash generative business. Over the last six years, Currys on average has generated £125,000,000 worth of cash each year.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

The challenge is where has that cash gone. And as you can see, the majority of the cash that we've generated over the last five years has gone to pay down debt and to reduce our pension deficit. Only roughly a quarter of the cash we've generated has gone back to shareholders. Going forward, that proportion will increase significantly. And one of the reasons for that is our pension deficit.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

We're really pleased to see these numbers are on an accounting basis but we're really pleased to see our pension deficit fall significantly. It's fallen again. It was over £550,000,000 five, six years ago. It's down to roughly £100,000,000 now. In terms of what does that mean for contributions, well, we're contracted to give the scheme roughly £78,000,000 this year.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

It's likely to be a touch higher than that based on some matching arrangements, but maybe in the low £80,000,000 or so. But as we look forward with the low deficit, we would hope to see a reduction in contributions. We're right now in the middle of the triannual review. The triannual date was the March. So our expectation is that by the end of this calendar year we will have completed that valuation process.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

And of course that will allow us to have far more clarity and visibility of future shareholder returns. So to conclude and to remind you, our capital allocation priorities, the same priorities that we've been showing for the last four years. Our first goal is to have a strong balance sheet. We've got a strong balance sheet, so our goal is to maintain a strong balance sheet. Number two, to pay the required pension contributions.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Number three, I've shown you today to build and grow our project investment, particularly our capital investment to increase our profit and our cash flow. Number four, to pay a dividend and we're delighted to be announcing today the proposal for a 1.5p final dividend. It's great to be back on that and of course we would like that to be a progressive policy going forward. And then finally surplus cash that is available will be available to return to shareholders and today in our statement we're specifically calling that out as share buybacks. Good.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Thanks very much for your time. I'll now hand over to Alex.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Thanks, Bruce. The progress that Bruce spoke to, we owe to a clear and consistent strategy, a strategy that, first of all, sees us number one in all of the markets that we operate in. And in the past year, we've seen stable or growing market share across all of our markets. In The Nordics, you'll see that we've grown market share in every single country and that leaves us over 2.5 times the size of our nearest competitors, competitors who are outperforming on the top line and the bottom line. Our revenues have been more resilient and our profits have rebounded more strongly than our Nordics competitors.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

In The U. K, we've seen market share growth reinforcing the number one position that we enjoy, a 30 basis point increase. On the left hand side of this chart, you'll see in our UK electricals. But we're also growing and back into market share gains in mobile as well. As you see on the right hand side, our market share, including mobile, has grown by 50 basis points year on year.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And this way of defining our market share you see on the right, you can expect to see more of. As mobile is an integrated and core category once again and back into growth and share gain in Currys, we see it as worth including in our market share measures. Yes, it lowers our stated market share to 16.9%, but it highlights the headroom and the opportunity ahead a little bit better. And the headroom and the opportunity isn't just in mobile. It's also in our core electricals category.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

You'll see on this slide there are a bunch of categories where we're underweight today in growth but underweight, areas like health and beauty and accessories as well as mobile. This is a significant opportunity. In all of these underweight categories, were we to get to our overall market share of 23.5%, that would be an increase in UK revenues of fully 50%, five-zero. So there's quite a lot to go for there. And gaming is a case in point of why this is no pipe dream.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And over the past five years, we've, Currys, we've accounted for half of all of the growth in this growing market in gaming, taking our market share from 13 to 19%, leaning on the strengths that benefit us elsewhere as well. We have the supplier relationships. We have better ranges to show for it. We've got the expert colleagues in the store. Over 70 stores now have gaming specialists.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Over 100 stores have the gaming bunkers and it features increasingly strongly in our market share. So we're growing in gaming. And as the market continues to grow, we expect to benefit disproportionately. And that's part of a strategy that's overall serving us well, a strategy to which we owe our number one position and our progress, a strategy that starts with what you see at the top here that we exist to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. That stems from a central customer insight that the stuff that we sell, technology, people can find it thrilling, yes, but they can also find it difficult to make it work.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

They can find it confusing, sometimes expensive. They need help. They need help not just to choose the right laptop but to enjoy it to the full throughout its life. And that's where we come in. Currys, with our scale and our capabilities, we're better equipped to help them right the way through the life of the product than anybody else.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And that then informs the strategy that follows, a strategy that starts with colleagues. Let's have the most capable and committed colleagues who, in turn, make it easy to shop for our customers. That allows us to then build customers for life, customers who keep coming back and then to grow profits. And this starts with colleagues, not just because we're lovely people but because it's very difficult in our space for the experience of the customer to be better than that of the colleague. And that's why we've invested in tools, training, reward, a culture and listening to colleagues.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And we've been rewarded for all that investment with world class colleague engagement scores. That's not us measuring it. This is Glint, the global market leaders in measuring this, who tell us that we are now firmly established in the top 5% of companies worldwide when it comes to colleague engagement. In The UK, on the left hand side, we're in the top 3% of companies worldwide and having raised it again last year. So look, the scores are satisfying, but more important is what we learn from these surveys, over 50,000 comments from colleagues as you see.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And we learn and then we can improve. So in two examples from The UK last year, for example, our colleagues told us we weren't doing a good enough job on joining up the repairs process between colleagues in store and in our service operations. We listened, we acted, and we've been rewarded with, I think, a 19 improvement in the score on working as one business. Our colleagues in stores told us they were dissatisfied with the career opportunities open to them. We did something about that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And now 50% of all corporate vacancies are filled internally, including in large part by store colleagues. And again, 11 improvement year on too in career prospects. So we're going to keep learning and keep improving, and we expect to see continued levels of world class colleague engagement to show for it. And that in turn helps drive happy colleagues in turn help drive more satisfied customers. And as you see here, we've had another good year.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

In The Nordics, a significant growth on Happy or Not, I'll come back to that in a sec. On the left hand side, another good year in The UK, up again to 55 on NPS. Trustpilot, we're now at 4.4, having been at 3.6 a year ago. That's a pretty steep rise. And nonetheless, though, this is something we want to keep improving.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're not satisfied with this. 55 is not good enough. We like the trajectory, not yet the score. And it doesn't hurt that our Nordics colleagues have adopted NPS as their measure over the past year, coming in, in their first year at 63, which you might say has led to some healthy competition between the business units from some rather galled colleagues in The U. K.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Being left behind on this. So upward trajectory continued to be important in colleague engagement but and customer satisfaction. But customer satisfaction doesn't just stem from happier colleagues. It stems from how well we're making ourselves easier to shop and how well we're building customers for life. And we've made some good progress on both of those over the past years.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Starting easy to shop, let's sell to customers how they want to buy, which in technology is from a mix of online and stores. We have both channels, so it's up to us to make the most of it because competitors don't have them both. And that's what we've been doing over the past year. We've been investing in our stores and better tools and technology like electronic shelf edge labeling, for example, a Nordics innovation, which we've copied with pride in The UK. It takes away a hated task for changing paper tickets for colleagues.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It also reduces the cost of that process and allows more agile pricing. It's in 100 stores. We'll roll it out to the rest this year. Space optimization. Also, we've invested in shifting around the allocation of space in stores to different categories to allow more room for higher growth, more profitable categories such as Computing and to allow more space for the new and growth categories that are driving the top line that Bruce mentioned.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Online, we've invested as well, over 200 improvements to the online customer experience over the past year in areas such as search, filtering, navigation and checkout. And we have a better conversion to show for it, 25 basis point improvement in The UK, 22 in The Nordics, and market share gains in both channels to show for this investment. And we'll keep going on all of this. We like the trajectory, not yet at the score. And it's not just both channels invested separately.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We've invested in bringing both channels together, which is how customers like to shop. They like, for example, to order online and collect in store. They like having an endless range in store from shopping from the full online range. And both of those, as you see on the right, are in healthy growth last year. Order and collect up 31% in The UK, up 33 in The Nordics.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Online in store up 11%. And on the left hand side, you see the total proportion of our sales that are sold in both channels, omnichannel, steadily rising to 31% of UK sales last year. Again, not nearly enough, but we like the direction of travel. So making ourselves easier to shop is one thing. Then hopefully, we can persuade customers to come back to us, stickier, more valuable customer relationships, customers for life in our language.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And that starts with good data. And we've laid some important foundations on data. You see on the left, the Nordics customer club is now up to 9,600,000 members, up by fully 1,000,000 year on year. On the right hand side, we've got a bunch of data in a rich set of data for UK customers, but we're frankly dissatisfied with our progress here. We can make faster progress for our own benefit, for customers' benefit to give them a better, more personalized experience and increasingly for third parties through things like retail media.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We've made some progress. It's not fast enough. We've had some leadership changes here. Expect to see a better picture on this when we're here in a year's time. Better progress elsewhere on Customers for Life, particularly in selling customers the full solutions.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Full solutions the customers like because they get everything they need, products, services, accessories, and full solutions that we like because we make significantly more margin that way. So it's good to see the progress. In The Nordics, for example, we've nearly tripled the attachment rate on most valuable services. And on the left hand side, in The U. K, you see the proportion of our sales that are sold as part of a full solution have more than doubled from 19 to 40% in a couple of years.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Good progress, bunch of further to go. And at the heart of these solutions are our services. I mentioned at the start that customers find technology sometimes a bit confusing and expensive, So they need some help. They need some help to afford it, the expensive technology through things like credit and giving their technology longer life through things like repair. And if it's confusing, they need help getting started with it, whether it's through setup or installation, and they need help getting the most out of it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And fortunately for Currys, we have assets at scale that no competitor can get close to matching to help the customer in a way that's valuable to us and to them through the life of the tech, starting with helping them afford it. Credit's really important. Credit's a really big driver of sales, profit and loyalty. It's good for the customers because they can afford sometimes expensive tech. The fact they like it is shown in an even higher NPS for credit customers.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It's 12 points higher than it is for customers overall. And it's good for us because those customers spend more, they shop more frequently, and they are much likelier to return, 27% likelier to return within twelve months versus noncredit customers. And over a lifetime, they spend twice as much as noncredit customers. So it's good for everybody, customers for us, customers and us, if we keep growing credit. And growing it, we are.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're up to nearly 22% of our sales on our own credit product now. It's the number one way to pay for credit customers. The credit customer numbers are increasing nicely, up 36% to 2,600,000 over the past year. Credit sales up nicely to £1,100,000,000 now. So credit is motoring quite nicely, and it's in a happy position now of increasingly funding itself.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So the benefit to us of credit is as we grow credit, it grows sales. We think about 30% of our credit sales are incremental. Those incremental sales clearly have a value as does the direct profit contribution of credit. We get a commission from the bank, and we also avoid cost of alternative payment methods. Both of those things add up to a profit from credit that we can reinvest part of in continuing to improve the offer.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're in that virtuous circle now with credit. We've improved the offer over the last year with more flexible and better credit propositions as reflected in our rebranding to Currie's Flexpay. We intend to continue this virtuous circle in the year ahead. And as you can see, even though the profit contribution has fallen in recent years as rates have increased, you'll make your own calls on the outlook for rates, and you can expect as rates decline, the direct profit contribution to improve further. So credit's good.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Credit's in good shape and heading in the right direction as are the services that help customers get started, the setup of a laptop or the installation of a washing machine. Left hand side, you'll see a nice jump in the proportion of our big box sales that are installed with customers. We like the trajectory. The score is still far too low. We're not happy with that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

That needs to keep improving, and we'll some work this year to make sure it does, just as we want to keep growing our big repair business. We have 12,000,000 repair customers in the business at the moment. This is good for customers. Their tech lasts longer. It's good for the planet.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It's good for our profits as well. So purpose and profit going hand in hand as they must. And so the long term trajectory, although we had a dip in the last year in The UK, but the long term trajectory is up on repair. And that rests on some important competitive advantages that we have that no competitor is ever plausibly going to replicate. We have Europe's largest technology repair center in Newark.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

3,000,000 devices go through that every year. We have 1,200 very skilled colleagues in that space, and that's extremely unlikely to be replicated anywhere else. We can make more of it, and we intend to, not least by investing in our repair proposition. One example of that is RepairLive. Some of you may have seen this.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

If instead of having to send your device off to if if if you think it's broken, you can now speak to an expert colleague directly via a video call or in a store or on a on a call or via chat online. And in a large proportion of cases, our colleague can deal with the problem there and then. The customer seven day repair promise effectively becomes a seven minute one because they get to keep their device. The customer is happier. We don't suffer the cost of having to ship the product backwards and forwards and repair it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And we can do this increasingly cost effectively. Again, we're in a bit of a virtuous circle here as a result of our scale. Because of those 3,000,000 devices going through Newark every year, we're getting better and better at harvesting the parts from those devices, so we don't have to pay for a new part to repair a device. 25% of all repairs are now used by parts that we've harvested ourselves. That saved us £6,000,000 in cost last year.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It's not a trivial sum, and we aim to keep that going just as Repair Life saved us over £2,000,000 last year. We're going to keep going on repair. There's further scope for growth there. Finally, under Customers for Life, there's the services that help customers get the most out of their technology. And a good example of this is connectivity.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We like selling customers a product that works. Just as a customer's laptop should leave the store working, so we want to sell them a working mobile phone, connectivity is essential to that. We like having secure and good value access to connectivity ourselves. You may have seen yesterday, we signed a new deal, a contract extension with Vodafone. We're very happy with the terms of that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're equally happy with the long term secure access to connectivity with three that we have for our MVNO ID. And ID continues to be quite an attractive success story. Subscriber numbers up to 2,200,000 last year, driven by a new app being used by getting on for three quarters of ID customers now, which gives customers more features, allows us to communicate with them in a more personalized way. In turn, that enables better retention and so it goes on. And we're improving some of the underpinnings to IDE as well with things like billing and CRM.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So we expect to see that happy trend continue. We're targeting at least 2,500,000 customers for ID in the year ahead. And of course, as you know, we're building quite a valuable asset here as well as building something that's valuable to customers. So we'll keep going with that too. One of the consequences of building out our services is we're building recurring revenues, recurring revenues that can start to make next year's number this year and should give investors confidence in the sustainability of our performance.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And our total recurring revenue grew by 14% in The U. K. Last year. That's things like connectivity and repair plans added together with the sticky repeating nature of credit revenue. And even the directly recurring service revenue was up 12%, which compares to product revenue at four You can see this is an increasingly important part of the mix.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We intend to keep that trend going as well because that's obviously good all around. Our strategy, as you've heard from Bruce, is aiming to grow profits. So capable and committed colleagues, make it easy to shop for customers, building customers for life and grow profits. We've got no intention of relaxing the margin and the cost disciplines that have served us so well. And you see the results of that here.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

UK gross margins growing nicely, I think two ninety basis points up year on four on the left hand side and Nordics back up to above the level of four years ago, a sterling recovery from our Nordics colleagues. Bruce has talked through the ways that we're doing that. We intend to keep doing them just as we intend to keep our cost disciplines. And there's further scope from areas like outsourcing, from making the most of our group scale, whether it's with GNFR or IT partners or our commercial partners as well. We're doing a better job of that, whether it's keeping right first time going, something we haven't had time to talk about in detail today, but getting it right first time is obviously good for customers when we turn up and install their washing machine first time of asking, but it's good for us as well because we don't incur the cost of doing it again.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And that's heading in the right direction just as we're starting to see some benefits from automation, not least from our partnership on Gen AI with Microsoft and Accenture. Cost savings have further to go. But arguably, the most exciting part of growing profits is getting this business back into growth. And you see on the left hand side, this over £17,000,000,000 of core electricals, the GFK electricals market, is how we've traditionally defined our market. I mentioned before that increasingly, you can expect us to see us bring mobile into our definition of the market.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

I mean, time, you might see us broaden it out further because we're playing in a bigger field. When you take into account the new categories like health and beauty, like accessories, like pet tech, like seasonal that you're seeing more of in our stores, when you take into account the services that we've talked to and when you take into account the small and medium sized business customers that we're increasingly serving, I mean, our total accessible market is getting on well over 3x the size of our traditional market. And as you see from the shaded purple bit at the bottom, we've got more headroom to grow in these places. So plenty of growth opportunities, and I'm going to talk about four of them briefly now. First, in our core, there's computing.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And there are some good tailwinds behind computing. We had a good year last year, but we expected an even better one this year. The natural replacement cycle is working for us. It's five years post the COVID boost, so we can expect to see customers wanting to replace their laptops anyway. Windows 10 goes out of support this year.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

That's important. There are millions of Windows 10 customers in The U. K, 3,500,000, we think. And as they run out of security and run out of upgrades, that gives them a really good reason to upgrade their laptop. AI is really starting to bite with consumers in use cases that they value, whether it's live translation, whether it's greater productivity, greater creativity.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Customers are starting to be alive to the possibilities of AI and us with our over 70% market share of AI computing. We're in the box seat here, and we intend to stay that way. And so there's a lot there. And finally, gaming, which I'll come on to, is another big driver of of computing. And of course, we've got the the number one position here, whether it's the market share that we enjoy, whether it's the leading relationships with our partners who will invest in things like marketing and training of our colleagues, Don't have to take our word for it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

You can read that at your leisure later, some of the applaudits we get from partners like HP and Microsoft. We are the number one in this space, and and we intend to stay that way. Within computing, there's gaming, which is a particularly exciting area. I talked to you a little earlier about how we've grown our market share in gaming from 13 to 19%. We expect this to be another good year for gaming, driven by new launches like Nintendo Switch two, which have gone really well for us, and new GPUs launched by the likes of NVIDIA.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

There's a lot of excitement in the market, and we've got a really good position to benefit from it, as you've heard before, a growing share in a growing market with suppliers who know us well. Second is the new categories, which we're getting into in a more serious way now. And these are areas where we've been underweight but where we're growing fast, and we have what it takes to succeed in all of these areas. We're not starting from scratch. We've got the suppliers, the products, the channels, the solutions, the colleagues, the supply chain, the service operations to lean on in selling these new categories.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So we start with an advantage in areas like barbecues and outdoor living that are adjacent to our core categories where which are going pretty well. This is an interesting one. I talk about total accessible market growing. In one sense, the march of technology is starting to see us compete with the likes of beauty retailers as increasing numbers of consumers use less face cream and more technology for their face care, for example. And more we can expect to see more like that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And that actually that Shark face mask is going particularly well. And our position, as I mentioned, we're advantaged here versus other retailers, but we start from a really low position, 1% market share in a £12,000,000,000 market. We're not remotely satisfied with that. We're growing well, but there's plenty further to go. And this these new categories actually provide us with quite a nice nice hook for some of the marketing that's getting a bit of applauded.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And you can have a look at one of my personal favorites now.

You might be surprised to hear that we actually sell this looming ice bath here at Curry's. Yeah. Yeah. Would you mind doing a take in the ice bath? I would

I would mind doing that. Yeah. I'd only get in the bath. This is great if you love a cold plunge, whether you wanna relieve stress, help your muscles to recover after a tough workout, or alleviate soreness. I really think to show the product up properly, we need you to do this next bit inside the ice block.

There's absolutely no way I'm getting in that ice block. It also has an extra 100 liter capacity. It also has an extra 100 liter capacity, so you get the deep cold plunge you crave after a workout. Refreshing. It's not even that bad.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So this is some of the marketing that's getting us applauded, including this Chief Executive getting some very unaccustomed compliments from teenage children. But more importantly, it's getting us it's building our brand strength versus the competition. Brand preference is the equity measure we track most closely. And you'll see that's up fully 500 basis points year on three. And our marketing is getting traction not just in the social channels but in traditional ones as well.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

But it's social that's the hot channel. It's the growing channel. And you can see here how well we're doing. Success in social is typically measured in likes, and we are getting more than 4x the number of social likes than our direct competitors combined at the moment. So our marketing team are on a good track.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

There's a lot further to go, but we like where we're headed so far. Last and certainly not least, under growth, there's B2B. We our core business clearly is selling to consumers, But we have a lot of what it takes to sell to small and medium sized businesses, particularly those smaller ones with under 100 seats. And that's a market not far shy of the size of our core consumer market, yet it's one where we're underpenetrated. It's only 3% of UK curries sales at the moment sold to businesses.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Now we have an example in the group of people doing better than that. Our Nordics colleagues, it's 12% of their sales. And we haven't been slow to learn and copy with pride from what our Nordics colleagues have done in B2B. We've got a lot of what it takes, similar to my story on new categories, much the same applies in B2B. A lot of what we have going for us in our core B2C business, we can leverage in B2B.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And we've added some of the things that we're missing, such as high class leadership, specialist store colleagues and presence. We've got hubs in over 50 stores now with specialist B2B colleagues in as well as a better presence online, beefed up account management and the like. We're nowhere near our potential in B2B. We're happy with our growth. It grew at 14% last year in The UK versus 4% like for like.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Overall, we can comfortably double this over the next three years. And I'm looking at Dean and Chris, the two guys responsible for doing so, as I say that. But we can comfortably double our B2B business over the next three years. Watch this space, really, really exciting source of growth for us. So in closing, it's been a lively half dozen years at Currys, all told, what we're dealing with the fallout from the Carphone merger, whether it's a rapid channel shift online with a business that historically didn't have much of an online presence exacerbated by COVID, a perfect storm in The Nordics hitting our performance there a few years ago and then cost of living crises since.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

But we're in a happy position now of every part of this group heading in the right direction at the same time. So whether it's colleague, customer or financial metrics, whether it's the whichever of the financial metrics, sales, margin, cost, profit, cash, whether it's the balance sheet and the net indebtedness underneath that, whether it's electrical or mobile or products or services or U. K. Or Nordics, all of this group is now heading in the right direction at the same time. Are we satisfied with where we are?

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Certainly not. There's a long, long further to go, and there's a lot more in the tank for us here. But we're pleased with the progress. We're pleased with the strong and strengthening results that we've talked to today. And we're comfortable and confident in our prospects, not least in the prospects for richer shareholder returns in the years ahead.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So thank you for your attention. And with that, Dan is going to compare some Q and A.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

Yes. Thank you. Good morning all. Time for questions. If you could raise your hand, we will bring a mic to you.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

If you could just say your name before asking the question for the people on the webcast. Thank you. If we could start with Ben over there.

[Ben Hunt, Equity Research Analyst - Retail at Panmure Liberum]

Ben Hunt from Premier Lipperum. Good to see there's a sort of an advance in trying to get for new market share. I suppose the general question isn't touching on an old theme is what gives you the confidence that you can go into these new categories and get market share profitably? What's changed? And maybe we've sort of referenced to some of the marketing efficiency that Bruce was alluding to.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Yes. What hasn't changed is the macro environment. We posted the 4% like for likes last year in a flat U. K. Market.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

I mean in The Nordics, it was a similar picture. So we're not depending on the macro. Our growth is in self help, and that's what we've talked to today. But in areas like computing, the growth that we've talked to clearly lies in our core, Ben. That's we have a really substantial business in computing already.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We have a 50% share of the Windows computing market in The UK, 70% of the AI powered. So there's plenty of reason to believe we can continue that. Once you start getting into the adjacent categories, though, I mean, you're asking a good question about what gives us the right to succeed. The areas that we're picking, whether it's the services that are sold alongside the product, whether it's the small and medium sized businesses whose needs are very analogous to the consumers, or whether it's the new and growth categories which are in our stores and in our sites now, we've deliberately picked these because they're adjacent. They're not a big leap away, and they lean on the same machine that we've already built to serve our core B2C market.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So in many cases, the suppliers are the same. So and we already have roots into those suppliers. We already matter a lot to them as their most important partner in The U. K. And in The Nordics.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We've already got the channels, stores and online. We can put more through those channels. We've already built up the supply chain and the service operations. We can pump more through that machine. We've got the expert colleagues in the store, and we're used to training them on new products.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We can do the same here. So So we're not charging off in random directions. What we're doing is we're deliberately picking adjacent opportunities where we already have a significant presence. I mean I might be very unsatisfied with the 3% of our U. K.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Sales that are in B2B, but it's not a trivial number. It gives us confidence we can grow it and grow it profitably.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

Thank you. Perhaps we can go to Vandita behind.

[Analyst]

Thank you, Alex. Just one question on ID mobile. So you've targeted or you said you're targeting 2,500,000 customers this year. What is the ceiling on that? Is it marketing spend, customer acquisition spend?

[Analyst]

Could it be higher? What would make that lower? So what where does that number come from, the target, I suppose?

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We don't think that we're not putting a ceiling on it, in short. And we're certainly not constraining growth. I mean Bruce has talked in the past about us investing free cash flow. And we take cost working capital in year to grow the ID customer base. That's a price we're happy to pay because the net present value is strong.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

The payback is short on ID customers coming in. And we think it demonstrates that we're a good owner for this asset. I mean, I'd be surprised if we weren't asked at some point today, you planning on selling it? We usually are. No, we're not.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Just to anticipate that question. It performs a core role within the group. We think we're a good owner, demonstrated by the 22% growth over 20% growth that we've seen in subscriber numbers. So I wouldn't put a limit on it, and we're certainly not capping it. In fact, if we're promising at least 2,500,000 customers this year, can be sure that what we're going for is higher than that. Bruce, would you anything to add to that?

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

No, I don't think so. As you say, particularly when we were challenging ourselves to improve the balance sheet, improve our margins, pay down debt, it was a tougher choice at that stage to be able to invest and double down, but we decided to do it because it was the right thing to do, and it's now paying dividends. As we were unshackled from some of those constraints and really able to double down our investment, so you can see that that will be growing even even more.

[Analyst]

And sorry. Just linked to that. So you say that you aim to offset the working capital investment from ID mobile by basically being working capital positive in the rest of the business. Can I just understand the drivers of that and risks to that?

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Yes, of course. So, well, we've doing it now for the last couple of years, we will continue to do it. So the first is our stock, being really focused on stock turn, taking down maybe stock items that have a much slower turn or managing them different through our supply chain and really focusing on availability for the items that move the fastest. So that's one opportunity. Another opportunity is looking at supplier payment terms, both goods for resale and goods not for resale.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

We've had great support from our supplier partners to be able to move that forward. Then there's clearly the management of debt. We've got a number of aspects of debt within the organization, so we've been looking at managing that aggressively as well. And all of those have come together as you'll see in the statement today both UK and Nordics out with the ID investment have enjoyed almost £20,000,000 worth of upside each. You can't keep on delivering that of course.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

There are ceilings to it, but our commitment is to continue to offset the ID investment.

[Analyst]

And sorry, just a final one on your store portfolio. Is it right to think that it's mostly about optimizing the operations within the store rather than drastically changing store numbers and things like that?

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're not looking at drastically changing store numbers. I mean, we close a couple every year if they don't make meet our stringent hurdles. I mean every store has to pay for itself. We're not attached to stores for sentimental reasons. We're attached to stores because that's how customers prefer to shop.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And if a store is making sense on its own two feeds, has to make money and it has to make sense as part of the network, and we assess that all the time. But we're pretty happy with the performance of the store network as you can see by the fact that we're investing in it.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

You. If we could come to Richard at the front here.

[Richard Chamberlain, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thank you. Good morning. Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Could I ask you, Alex, maybe to talk about the costs outlook for The Nordics in view of the weaker NOK? And I wondered if there's any OpEx or tailwinds, headwinds, Bruce, to be aware of, I guess, in the coming year.

[Richard Chamberlain, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

So that's the first part of the question. I guess the second is what kind of macro environment do you think you need in Nordic to get somewhere close to that 3% target? Can that be done effectively through self help? Or do we need actually quite a big macro tailwind from from here? Thanks. Thanks.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Yeah. Thank you, Richard. So from a cost perspective, I think the first thing to say about our Nordic business is it's a really tight ship already. They they are they they run a very efficient IT stack, for example. They've got a very efficient operating model within their head office structure.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

But what they've successfully achieved over the course of the last twelve months is really to double down and to to support profit growth both by offsetting inflation and actually offsetting some of the other headwinds in the business. And and do those opportunities exist going forward? I think, I'm honest, think they're probably going to be tougher to find as that business becomes more and more and more efficient. But a good example of of of where that opportunity exists is our outsourced relationship with Infosys. So you're aware that we've moved circa a thousand roles to India.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

That's for both The UK and The Nordics. And looking at continuing to drive those efficiencies, I think, is clear. In terms of macro

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Go ahead.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Yeah. So what we've seen is slightly different by market. Denmark, for one, we've seen improvements in consumer confidence and that's flowed through in our results. Norway, I think, has been relatively static in terms of consumer confidence. We are seeing maybe a few green shoots as we see interest rates come down recently within Norway.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Other markets like Finland remain tough, so that's the way I'd summarize it.

[Richard Chamberlain, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

You. If we could go to Adam.

[Adam Tomlinson, Head - UK Consumer Research at Berenberg]

Adam Tomlinson from Berenberg. Three questions, please. Just on services, lots of areas of growth coming through as you edge towards that billion pounds of revenue. But are there one or two maybe that just stand out in terms of just the size of the opportunity there versus others is the first question. The second one within services just on mobile.

[Adam Tomlinson, Head - UK Consumer Research at Berenberg]

So we've seen some of your direct peers talk about how tough that market is and potentially retrenching from that. So it would be great just to get a few comments on why you're at the other end of the spectrum, why you're finding life more positive in that respect and why you can grow where others are struggling.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Should I take those two first, Adam? On services, actually, ones that I've talked to today, we see further scope on all of them, in short. So Josh is in the room at the moment. I mean he's certainly not happy with 22% adoption rate on credit. I mean we think we can get that up significantly in the years to come, and that's going be good for customers and it's going to be good for us.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It's going be good for our sales. It's going be good for the direct profit contribution. It's going to be good for the recurring revenues that come with it. Second, installation. I said that 31%, nobody's happy with that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

I think it's deplorable that over twothree of customers are trying to install their own washing machines without our help. And it's on us to do a better job of telling them why they're better off doing it with Currys. So there's a lot of scope for growth there, and we intend to get after it. Repair, we had a bit of a flat line in U. K.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Repair. The Nordics stepped on nicely last year, and we're going to do better than that this year. And that's why we're investing in things like RepairLive and continuing to use the assets that we've got that nobody else is ever going to replicate in order to be valuable to customers and to do it profitably for ourselves. So again, nobody is happy with 12,000,000 repair customers, significantly further scope there. And we've just finished talking about ID, how 2,500,000 is what we're promising for this year.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Rest assured, Adam, that we'll go for significantly more than that. You asked about mobile and others struggling in this space. Look, it's a tough space. And we've experienced that more than most. We've our share of issues historically in this area.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We've worked really hard. We've worked really hard to integrate mobile as a joined up category so it's no longer burdened by a separate cost base. We worked really hard with our network partners, the ones that we could bring with us like Three and Vodafone to get to really strong commercial terms that work for everybody, the ones that we couldn't, well, we've amicably parted company with. And we've got this back into growth as a core category in both of the channels. I mean, it hasn't been easy, but we're on with it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

It's not easy being an also run this space, which is why some of the more smaller peripheral players in mobile are perhaps struggling. And clearly, they fall out, that opens up more opportunity for us.

[Adam Tomlinson, Head - UK Consumer Research at Berenberg]

Great. Thanks. And just a final one, just a quick one. On weather patterns, so with the extremes of weather, we're seeing some retailers talking about how that's impacting footfall, interesting just without any numbers, obviously, just your thoughts on that and perhaps why you're resilient in that respect.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

One of the things we're trying to do is to build more stabilizers into the business, and whether it's consumer economic cycle, whether it's seasonal trends that you're talking about, whether it's sort of sudden weather bursts. What we're trying to do is to make sure that the business is more stable in its performance across these ups and downs. And there are several ways that we're doing that. I mean, first of them is on the products that we sell. So when we're selling the ice baths, that colleague was finding a tad challenging to get his words out while sitting in it, whether it's selling air conditioning units, whether it's selling Dyson fans.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

There are increasing numbers of reasons to come to Curry's in hot weather, and we're getting better at communicating to customers in a way that's relevant to the weather today and to that footfall and that traffic coming into the stores. That's one way, selling more a wider range of more relevant products and putting in front of customers. The second is building out the recurring revenues. When 28% of our U. K.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Revenues are now recurring in nature, by definition they're less susceptible to ups and downs in cycles, in seasons or in weather. And then third, we're building out B2B and the small and medium sized businesses operate on a different cycle to consumers. No one is claiming that we've completely eliminated cyclicality from our business. Clearly, we haven't. But what we are doing is making ourselves less vulnerable to it.

[Adam Tomlinson, Head - UK Consumer Research at Berenberg]

Thanks a lot.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

Thanks. If we could go to John.

[John Stevenson, Retail Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thanks. Good morning. John Stephenson of Pillhunt. A couple of questions. Start with the gross margin.

[John Stevenson, Retail Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Obviously, a bit of a very strong couple of years in terms of progression. Can we talk about the sort of the scope to drive margins going forward? I appreciate services mix, obviously, a big part of that. But is there still more to come through to the general savings? And on ID mobile, obviously, you mentioned not selling it.

[John Stevenson, Retail Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Is it core? And if it is a core part of the business, why keep it at arm's length as a sort of separate business outside of Currys?

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Bruce, do want start on the gross margin?

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Yes, of course. It's a pretty straightforward answer, think. What we're doing is working, and we believe there's more bandwidth in all of those opportunities. So sold with is a good example. So the ability to sell solutions, to sell accessories, we've seen big growth, but there is much more for us to go after.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

And certainly, the commercial team have got some great ideas of new opportunities, new products that we could bring in to help move that forward. Alex talked a lot about services. Clearly, all aspects of our service proposition we can drive. In terms of managing our cost base, particularly within our supply chain and our service business, which impacts our gross margin. Alex touched very quickly on sort of right first time, the use of AI, for example, in our customer contacts.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

We see those as almost new opportunities to go after. And I guess that the overarching theme on all of that is over the course of the last two or three years, we have dramatically improved margin simply by being disciplined that we're not going to chase loss making products, that we're going to manage our range, manage our promotions, manage the way we advertise. And we are not going to stop doing any of that. So the underpin will remain strong.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And on ID, we do see it as core for the reasons I've mentioned before. We like selling a functioning product. You need connectivity for the mobile phone to work. We want to sell connectivity. We like having our own source of connectivity because it gives us security as well as something we can sell profitably and building a valuable asset while we're doing it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So yes, sure, it's cool. Now at the same time, I mean we're not sentimental about any part of the business. I mean we get asked about The Nordics from time to time. We get asked about ID. We get we were asked about Greece before.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Look, we're all about the value. Now my belief right now is we're a good owner for all of these parts of the group and that all of these parts of the group are better off with an Encarrae's ownership, that we're getting good synergies and good best practice sharing between all of these parts of the group and that we're perfectly happy with the portfolio as it stands. But that doesn't mean to say that we're close minded on it. Of course, we're not.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

You. Can we come to Wayne on this side?

[Wayne Brown, Equity Research Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Wayne Brown from Pammi Liberum. Just on B2B, you've clearly stated an ambition in the past, but in today's announcement, you've clearly given a hard target of trying to double in three years. So what's changed that's given you that confidence? Or what have you what's changed in the strategies that you've got line of sight of that would be interesting.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're going after it in a more concerted way is summary. So what does that mean? I mean that means taking better stock of the assets we've got in our core B2C business and using them better to serve B2B. So for example, making sure that we're using our channels in the right way, making sure that we've got the right number of hubs in the stores, over 50 now, and the right number of colleagues in specialist B2B colleagues in those hubs, making sure that we're all of the supplier relationships that we have, we're talking to them about pro product as well as about B2C product, making sure that the solutions and the services that we develop are suitable for where they need an adaptation for a small and medium sized business audience, we're doing that. But what's changed, to answer your question directly, Wayne, is a few other things. I mean sparing Dean and Chris' blushes, and I pointed them out before, we've got better leadership in this part of the business now, and that matters. We've invested in the store hubs and in the colleagues and in the account management and in the contact specialist contact center and in the underlying systems and operations. We've also learned from our Nordics colleagues, who, as I mentioned, are further ahead.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And 12% share of Nordics business is B2B compared to 3% in The U. K. So our U. K. Colleagues have some ground to make up to get there.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

I suppose the proof that it's working is in the performance. So we grew 14% U. K. B2B last year compared to an overall like for like of 4%, which shows that we're getting somewhere. But we're at day one on B2B, which is why we're excited about the headroom.

[Wayne Brown, Equity Research Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

And one last question from on ID Mobile. If you are willing, just to give us a little bit more clarity on what the drivers behind ID are. You're clearly aiming to grow 25% on top of 25% this year and 25% the previous year. So the task is getting bigger, but you're clearly taking share. What where is that growth fundamentally coming from?

[Wayne Brown, Equity Research Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

And maybe you can touch on some of the channels where you're actually acquiring the customers from would be helpful.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Start that ID is a really good value product, I mean, really good value product. And the advantaged commercials that we successfully negotiated with three, which worked for them but worked really well for us, allow us to be very keenly priced versus the competition all the time. And this is transparent. You can go on to the price comparison sites, and you will always see ID there or thereabouts when it comes to really attractive deals. It starts with that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Second, of course, there's the network itself. Three is a strong network. It had one of the best invested five gs infrastructures of any of the mobile networks if you go back. And of course, now it's merging with Vodafone. One of the conditions of that merger is further investment in the network, so we can expect to see better coverage for customers, which should give us confidence that in just pure technical coverage and network operability, that's going to improve.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So but there's also the stuff that we're doing. I mentioned that we'd landed a new app in ID. That has landed and landed successfully with threefour of ID customers now using it. What that allows us to do is to get in touch with customers in a more personalized, more tailored, more relevant way, whether it's existing customers and boosting the retention rate that we see some further upside in as well as a draw for new customers. And then finally, we're getting better at selling ID in our own channels.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Of course, we've got the Currys machine to lean on in ID as elsewhere. We're doing a good job now of effectively cross selling ID a better job, I would say, of cross selling ID in online and in our stores channels. Our stores colleagues are well behind it because it's a pretty good proposition that's resonating with customers for them to sell. So the proofs in the growth that we've been enjoying, and we wouldn't be promising GBP 2,500,000.0 unless we're confident of hitting it. So look, we see significant further opportunity there, and we're happy to get after it at a time when, as you've heard, some of the competitors are finding life a bit harder.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

Yes. Do you mind if I add to Sure. You asked why it's so important to us. Well, from a payback perspective, we've shared with in the past that on a cash payback period on a twenty four month contract, it pays back in roughly eighteen months. We don't share a lot of the economics on purpose because it's a category, but what we have shared and you will have seen it in the slides is the revenue per user is about GBP 20.

[Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director at Currys]

And we've shared some of the churn rates as well. But from a profitability per contract, one of the things we could have done to be able to grow that curve is start to dilute those returns, but that isn't the case. And we monitor the lifetime contract value over the course of the last four years as that curve has gone up and the number is largely unchanged. So it is it continues to be a really valuable asset for us.

[Wayne Brown, Equity Research Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Thank you very much.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

Thank you. One more question from Nick at the front here.

[Nicholas Barker, Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Thank you very much. It's Nick Barker from BNP Paribas. Just a question on loyalty program members. They've grown again strongly in The Nordics, but not so much in The U. K.

[Nicholas Barker, Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

I know you mentioned that you'd give us a bit more insight this time next year, but can you give us some flavor of some of the strategies you're going be using to kind of make the most and engage with this cohort of people? And then if I get my second question as well, CapEx, you said that your store estate is well invested and the guidance looking for the year ahead is slightly lower than historical standards, although it ticks up. But what score out of 10 would you give the store estate and why?

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

On what criteria?

[Nicholas Barker, Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

On overall criteria, the whole store estate in terms of how it looks to customers, how you're presenting it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So I mean I'll let Frederic talk in a minute about what we're planning on doing to make better use of the Nordics customer club. But let me answer the store estate question first. We try to be deeply dissatisfied just as a mindset, and stores are no exception. We can see plenty of grounds for improvement. The space optimization that I talked to, we're underway with, but we'd like to get it completed faster.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We'd like to make sure that the fastest moving and most profitable lines have more space and that we get more room for the new and for the growth categories. We've done a decent job with that. We can take it further. We want to get these electronic shelf edge labels and other similar tools and technology landed quickly so we can enjoy the benefits and lower cost and more agile pricing. Our capable and committed colleagues, we're really happy with the engagement levels and the market leading levels of low attrition that we have amongst those colleagues, and we're happy with the rate of training of those colleagues to make sure that they're imparting their knowledge well to customers and delivering the assisted sales experience, which is one big reason for customers to come and shop at Currys.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We're always looking to improve that assisted sales, what we call life, the assisted sales experience, and we've got some big initiatives underway with that. So look, it's a bit of a fourth bridge job. We're never going to be done. And we can and as long as we can see way things to be dissatisfied with, paradoxically, that makes me happy because it's when we run out of things to improve that I'll start to be concerned with, we're nowhere near, is the short version. On the data side, I mean, we've got these big customer data sets, which we've got in the presentation.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

We've got large numbers of customers who we've got permissions and good sets of information from. It's not like we haven't done anything. I mean, we've grown Perks to a meaningful number. We've laid the technological foundations to make more of this data, and that's important because we have the data in the place. We're migrating a bunch of this data, we're a long way down the road of migrating it to the cloud and having the better technology tools with partners like Microsoft that we can make use of it.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

And we've made some when it comes to third party monetization, we've made an important start in some areas like Retail Media with Currys Connected Media, for example, to start to monetize this data externally in a more meaningful way. But I'd give us four out of 10 at best in our progress there. We're dissatisfied with the rate of progress and we want to make a lot more of it. And we think there is a lot more to be made of it. Fredrik, on The Nordics.

[Fredrik Tønnesen, CEO - Nordics at Currys]

Yes, thanks. Yes, as we mentioned, we have around 9,000,000 Custom Club members in The Nordics. That's around 50% of the household. And we see that they shop more and we have more money on them. Am I satisfied with that and how we use the data?

[Fredrik Tønnesen, CEO - Nordics at Currys]

Not at all. So the good thing with four countries is that we have now launched a lot of piloting. So we are testing how can we increase the frequency and how can we be more personalized with those kind of customers. And the initial findings that we see is that this looks really good. And if we can continue to do this the next six to twelve months, we will get a better profit on those kind of customers.

[Fredrik Tønnesen, CEO - Nordics at Currys]

So we are just in the start, but we are piloting now and we'll go out and do a lot in next twelve months.

[Nicholas Barker, Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Thank you very much.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Thank you.

[Dan Homan, IR Director at Currys]

Thank you. If there's no further questions, I'll hand it back to Alex for closing remarks.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

Thanks, Dan, and thank you all. The briefest of closing remarks, yes, these are strong and strengthening performance that we're talking about today. I mean, as mentioned, we are happy that we're moving ahead on all fronts, whether it's colleague, customer or financial metrics, whether it's all of the financial metrics, whether it's the much stronger balance sheet underpinning it, whether it's the colleague engagement and the customer satisfaction that gives us confidence that we're going to sustain this financial performance, whether it's the growth opportunities that we have ahead of us as well as the further ground to go on margin and cost disciplines that we're nowhere near done. And we're pretty dissatisfied with where we are, but we're pretty happy with the trajectory that we're on. And we see a lot more in the tank for this business, not least in the free cash flow generation and the shareholder returns that will flow from that.

[Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director at Currys]

So thank you for your attention and have a very good day.

Participants

Executives

• Alex Baldock, Group CEO & Director
• Bruce Marsh, Group CFO & Director
• Dan Homan, IR Director
• Fredrik Tønnesen, CEO - Nordics

Analysts

• Ben Hunt, Equity Research Analyst - Retail at Panmure Liberum
• Analyst
• Richard Chamberlain, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Adam Tomlinson, Head - UK Consumer Research at Berenberg
• John Stevenson, Retail Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Wayne Brown, Equity Research Analyst at Panmure Liberum
• Nicholas Barker, Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas