Marston's H1 2026 Earnings Report

Marston's EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 2.30
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Marston's Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $422.70 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Marston's Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 5/12/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

Marston's (LON:MARS) operates managed, franchised, tenanted, partnership, and leased pubs in the United Kingdom. It is also involved in the property management; telecommunications; and insurance businesses. The company was formerly known as The Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries PLC and changed its name to Marston's PLC in January 2007. The company was founded in 1834 and is based in Wolverhampton, the United Kingdom.

Marston's H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Marston's said it had a strong first half, with underlying profit before tax up 7.9% to £20.5 million and EBITDA margin expanding to 20.3%, despite cost headwinds and temporary pub closures.
• Positive Sentiment: The company’s new pub formats are performing well, with 60 conversions completed in H1 versus a plan of 50 and post-opening like-for-like sales growth of around 20%. Management said the rollout is now a major growth engine and will accelerate further.
• Neutral Sentiment: H1 revenue was down 1.1% year-on-year to £422.7 million, partly because of closure periods related to the format program, but management expects those headwinds to reverse in H2 as all 91 new-format pubs are now open.
• Positive Sentiment: Management reiterated confidence in delivering over £50 million of recurring free cash flow for the full year and said leverage has improved to 4.7x, with the company on track to move toward around 4x by year-end.
• Positive Sentiment: Looking ahead, Marston’s expects like-for-like sales growth in H2 supported by the World Cup, stronger trading from the new formats, and further margin expansion from productivity gains and good cost visibility.

Presentation

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Marston's interim results for FY 2026. My name's Justin Platt, I'm the CEO. With me I have Stephen Hopson, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll take you through the results today. We'll do so with the following running order. I'll give some quick headlines. Stephen will talk to the financials. I'll come back to give an update on some of the strategic progress we've made in the first half. We'll take some time for questions. It's been a really good first half for us. It's been a first half when we've made really excellent strategic progress. That progress sets us up for a very strong year overall. Profit-wise, we've done pretty well. We've grown profit before tax at almost 8%. Alongside that, yet another period of margin expansion.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

We've done that despite some of the well-known cost headwinds, but also with some of the closure periods that we've taken as we've refurbished our estate in line with the format. The format's been a key success of the first half. We've done 60 of them against a plan of 50. As we've come to, they've all performed very, very well. All of that leaves us feeling very encouraged and positive about the second half, and hence we maintain our view on expectations for the year. That's the headlines. I'll let Stephen take you through the financials, and then I'll come back shortly.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Thank you. Thanks, Justin. Good morning, everyone. I'm gonna give you an update on what we feel is a strong financial performance in the first half, which sets us up very well to deliver a good result for the year in line with full year expectations. If I start with the group's key financial highlights for the period, which show EBITDA margins continuing to expand and pre-tax profits increasing year-on-year. As is the case every year, the group is second half weighted in terms of revenues, profits and cash flows. This year's in particular due to the impact of our new pub formats, the World Cup, and the phasing of some cash flows, which I'll bring out as we go through the slides. Total revenue was £422.7 million, down 1.1% year-on-year.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

EBITDA was GBP 85.9 million, flat year-on-year, with EBITDA margin expanding 20 basis points to 20.3%. This builds on the strong margin expansion delivered last year. EBITDA and revenue were both impacted by the temporary closure periods associated with our new pub formats program. I'll share further detail on this in the coming slides. Underlying profit before tax was GBP 20.5 million, up almost 8% against 2025, which, as you can see on the chart on the right-hand side, was itself a substantial step up against a small loss in 2024. There was a recurring free cash outflow in the period of GBP 15.6 million, reflecting business seasonality alongside higher capital investment and cash tax payments. We remain confident in delivering over GBP 50 million of recurring free cash flow for the full year in line with our CMD targets.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Finally, we continue to make good progress on deleveraging, reducing our leverage to 4.7x from 4.9x at this stage one year ago. I'll now turn to the income statement in a bit more detail. As I mentioned, the income statement for the first half reflects continued margin expansion and profit growth, marking another period of cost discipline and operational efficiencies, whilst also seeing increased investment for future top and bottom line growth. The acceleration of investment into our new pub formats is already delivering strong returns and will support revenue and profit growth in future periods. Clearly there is a impact from having more pubs shut in the near term while we convert them into our new sites. The average closure time is kept to just three weeks.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Of course, in that time, whilst we make no sales, we incur both the usual cost of running the pub and also some additional costs relating to training and restocking things like consumable items. The net impact of the additional closure periods was GBP 2.2 million of lost revenue and GBP 2 million of EBITDA in the first half, which is included in the underlying numbers presented on this slide. Overall revenue is down 1.1% year-on-year, including the GBP 2.2 million closure impact I just mentioned, and I'll give you some more color on sales in the next slide. EBITDA was flat year-on-year despite the GBP 2 million impact from closure periods. Again, I'll come on to how we achieve that in more detail shortly.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Net finance costs were slightly lower year-on-year, benefiting from continued deleveraging and depreciation also fell slightly as a result of lower capital expenditure in recent years and a high mix of spend being in the land buildings category, which is revalued each year rather than depreciated. Profit before tax increased 7.9% to GBP 20.5 million and earnings per share increased 9.1% to GBP 0.024 per share. Before moving on, it is important to note that the revenue and profit headwind from closure periods in H1 won't repeat in H2 as the new pub format program for the year is now complete, with 60 pubs open, all of which will contribute to sales and profit growth in H2, alongside, of course, the 31 pubs that we converted last year.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Moving on to focus on revenue in a bit more detail, I've mentioned that total revenue was GBP 422.7 million. Within that, like-for-like sales were 0.5% lower, which was ahead of the hospitality market and which corresponds to a GBP 2 million decline. In addition, I just covered the GBP 2.2 million impact of having the closure periods which related to our new pub formats. Very encouragingly, those new pub formats delivered like-for-like sales growth of around 20% in the post-opening periods. Although clearly the impact of that in the first half was limited given the relatively short period of time post-opening. Turning to H2, I'd like to make two points in relation to revenue. First, on the bottom left of the slide, like-for-like sales up to the end of week 31 were 1.5% lower year-to-date.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

However, you'll remember last year that five-week period post the half year showed like-for-like sales growth of over 10% due to the timing of a much later Easter, Mother's Day moving into H2, and some great weather. I thought it'd be therefore helpful to note that the two-year like-for-likes in that five-week period have actually been quite strong, and overall, we'd say that the underlying trend from H1 is unchanged. Second, as I've mentioned a couple of times, we do have the benefit in the second half of all of our 91 new pub formats being up and trading with no closure periods.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

The chart on the bottom middle of the slide shows our expectation as to the year-over-year sales impact in the second half of this, which in total is equivalent to almost GBP 11 million of sales upside or 2.3% of total revenue growth in the second half. The first two bars, which relate to last year's formats and then this year's formats, impact like-for-like sales. The bar on the right-hand side, due to closure periods, clearly doesn't impact like-for-like sales, but nonetheless it does represent a material revenue upside, which will continue to expand in future years as we accelerate the pace of our investment program. The number is maybe surprisingly large to you because the sites we've been doing have been larger than average sites for the business, and therefore there's more of a sales upside.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Overall, the opportunity exists to go faster in like-for-like growth in the second half because of this, as well as harnessing the upside from the World Cup, which Justin will talk to shortly. Moving on to margin, a key target that we set out in our October 2024 Capital Markets Day was to grow our underlying EBITDA margin by 2 to 300 basis points compared to 2024 levels. Following strong progress last year, we've delivered a further 20 basis points of margin expansion in the first half, this comes despite ongoing cost headwinds and the impact of the closure periods that I've just discussed. There are a few points I'd like to pick out on this slide.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

First, labor productivity efficiencies have once again fully offset the significant impact of increases to the National Living Wage and also changes to National Insurance, which came into effect from April 2025. This has been achieved predominantly through further refinement of our labor scheduling tool, which continues to deliver meaningful efficiency gains. As Justin will cover, this has been achieved just as our customer reputation score continues to improve. Second, the negative movement from utilities shown on the chart has nothing to do with current market movements in energy prices. It's actually due to a gas contract which came into effect from spring 2025 after the company had enjoyed a very long-term contract which fixed its gas prices for the previous five years.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Looking forward, we're well hedged on energy with electricity prices fixed for the business in total for this financial year and our gas pricing locked in until the end of FY 2027, which negates the impact of any short-term volatility. Third, the business continues to find opportunities to improve margins, both through revenue and COGS management, shown on the left-hand side of the chart, and also other efficiencies, which is on the right-hand side. Between them, they've delivered just over 1 percentage point of EBITDA expansion in the half. Setting aside the impact of the closure periods, our EBITDA margins moved forward 60 basis points year-on-year, which gives us confidence in the second half. Including the impact of those closure periods, EBITDA margin was 20.3% in the period. We have good cost visibility going into H2.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

I've talked about energy already, but also on other key cost areas, and as such, we continue to expect to make further progress over the full year as we move towards our medium-term margin target. Turning now to the pub estate, since the introduction of our strategy in 2024, Marston's has successfully delivered growth through the core estate with EBITDA per pub after central costs increasing 29% to GBP 155,000 over that period. Growth has come from strong operational execution as well as many cost and revenue initiatives. One of the most powerful levers in recent times has been through our investment strategy. As the chart on the right shows, the EBITDA per pub after central costs in our invested pubs has increased materially from GBP 265,000 pre-investment to GBP 354,000 post-investment.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

This GBP 90,000 increase per pub, which represents a 35% EBITDA return on our 260,000 average investment per site, illustrates quite well the speed of progress, both in terms of driving profitability and estate quality that can be made through our investment program. Looking ahead, we expect to build on this further through the acceleration of that program, which Justin will cover shortly. This is resulting in a higher quality, better performing estate, giving us confidence in our ability to drive further like-for-like sales and EBITDA going forward. Turning now to cash flow. As a reminder, cash generation in the group is naturally weighted towards the second half, with H2 typically significantly more profit and cash generative than H1.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

This effect is more pronounced this year, driven by the decision to complete the investment format program all within the first half, alongside the timing of corporation tax payments and other items which I'll cover shortly. Really importantly, we remain confident in delivering our GBP 50 million recurring free cash flow target for the year as a whole. Starting from the top, cash adjusted EBITDA saw marginal growth despite the cost headwinds and closure periods which I've covered already. Working capital saw an outflow of GBP 9.3 million, reflecting business seasonality as well as a number of supplier payments which made this outflow higher than usual. We expect this to unwind over the second half with a small working capital inflow for the year as a whole. On tax, as we communicated at the prelims, we've now moved to the so-called very large company corporation tax regime.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

The impact of that is that in FY 2026 we have made six, or we will make six quarterly tax payments as opposed to the usual four. Four of those cash tax payments were made in H1, with the remaining two to come in the second half. You should expect to see the cash tax lower in H2 than the GBP 7.1 million on the screen. Net interest increased slightly year-on-year. Although we expect this to be slightly lower year-on-year by the year-end. As I mentioned, CapEx was the largest driver of the year-on-year movement, increasing by GBP 8 million year-on-year, reflecting the decision to weight the format investment program into H1 to maximize value generation, including all the trading benefits that we're gonna see in the second half.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

We do expect full-year CapEx to remain within the 7%-8% turnover range which we communicated back at the CMD. As a result of all these factors, recurring free cashflow was an outflow of GBP 15.6 million. We expect a strong reversal in H2 of that. As I said at the top of the slide, we remain confident in delivering over GBP 50 million of recurring free cashflow in the year as a whole. I'll now turn to the group's debt structure. Our long-term financing structures remain in place, and those long-term structures are supported by our revolving credit facility, which in the year we extended for one further year until July 2028. Our securitization continues to provide long-term, predictable financing.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Scheduled amortization saw a reduction of GBP 44.7 million compared to this time last year and continues to be the main driver of de-leveraging for the group as a whole. It's worth noting that while there remain operational restrictions in place as a result of the securitization, our team continue to make significant progress internally to manage and reduce those restrictions as we continue to de-lever. Other lease-related borrowings or OLRBs remain relatively stable in the period, reflecting the long-term nature of that financing. The balance on our GBP 200 million banking facility at half year was GBP 56 million or GBP 53 million net of unamortized issue costs as per the slide, reflecting the cash outflow that I've just discussed.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Comparing to the same point last year, leverage excluding IFRS 16 leases is down by 0.2 of a turn, and we remain on track to reduce net debt to around 4x by the end of the year. Moving to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains really robust and is underpinned by GBP 2.2 billion of property assets, with 82% of the estate held as effective freeholds. The net book value of our PPE increased by GBP 136 million compared to a year ago, reflecting the property reevaluation, which we discussed at the full year. As I've just shown, net debt excluding lease liabilities reduced to GBP 857.7 million, a year-on-year reduction of GBP 23.4 million, with lease liabilities relatively flat year-on-year.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Other liabilities increased GBP 18.9 million, primarily due to the deferred tax impact from the property reval gain in FY 2025. Together, these movements have driven a GBP 134.5 million increase in net assets, which now stand at GBP 812.9 million, which is up 21% year-over-year. As a result, NAV per share has increased to GBP 1.28, underpinning the value of the business, and we expect this value to continue to grow through the coming periods. Moving finally to the outlook before I hand back to Justin. There are five key points I'd like to make here. First, we remain confident in the trading outlook for FY 2026.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

We do expect like-for-like sales to increase over the balance of the year, supported by the rollout of the new pub formats and the opportunity that the World Cup brings in the summer. Secondly, our format program itself is clearly now establishing itself as a key growth engine for the business. With 91 sites now operating under our new formats in total, we expect to see an increasingly meaningful contribution as we move through the second half and into future years. Third, we expect further margin expansion in H2, supported by good cost visibility and continued productivity improvements, keeping us on track to deliver our medium-term target of 200-300 basis point improvement against 2024 levels.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

In terms of cash, the outflows seen in H1 are expected to unwind in H2, with the group on track to deliver another year of over 50 million GBP of recurring free cash flow. Finally, we'll continue to reduce our leverage with further progress towards 4x by the end of the year. To summarize, we've delivered a strong first half with clear financial progress, and we remain confident in meeting our FY 2026 expectations and delivering another strong set of results at our prelims in the autumn. Thanks very much. I'll hand back to Justin.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, I'll take you through some of the progress we've made strategically in the first half. Just as a reminder, the approach we take to driving value at Marston's to be a high margin, highly cash generative local pub company. We do that with a focus on differentiated formats that appeal across a range of consumer segments. That was what we laid out at the Capital Markets Day and continues to underpin our approach. The five value drivers you can see on the screen. The two I will talk to today are the first two. I execute in a market-leading operating model and using CapEx to create these differentiated pub formats. First of all, on the operating model, I mean, really this is about the essence of running a good pub business.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

It's effectively balancing revenue delivery, cost efficiency, and guest satisfaction to drive returns. As Stephen has said, we've done that successfully in the first half to reliably deliver profit growth. We've done that with both sides of the slide here. From a revenue point of view, tough market, but a steady H1, we've done that really through our peak performance. Peak trade in up north of 5%, within that, best ever Christmas. From the revenue side, steady and resilient. We've complemented that with our approach to margin, as Stephen said. Continuing to look at every single line of the P&L where we can drive productivity. Combination of offering a great guest offer whilst also managing our costs. I think that final point, though, on the slide's also very important.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Taking a very disciplined and judicious approach to discounting in the first half. The market's got a bit softer, there's been an avalanche of discounts across the pubs and the restaurant space, particularly on food I'm talking here. Whilst we have offered discounts, in certain places where we believed it can enhance the experience and our returns, we've been quite careful with that. 'Cause what we didn't wanna do was trade the top line for the bottom line. Overall, the combination of the two has allowed us to deliver that reliable profit. Alongside that, of course, a business only wins if you keep doing this right, if you keep giving guests a great time. The great news is that whilst we've driven the profit growth, we've continued to make good strides on guest experience. Reputation score's up again at 8.06.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Continuing to make progress. We do that on three things. There are probably three big drivers behind this. The first one, events. For those of you in the room, you can see the posters around the room. This is about giving guests a reason to come to our pubs. In the first half, we've had a Luke Humphries darts tournament, we've got a Trivial Pursuit national pub quiz, and the family IP Matilda, we've been bringing to our pubs. Appeal across a range of demographics to really drive engagement across our pubs. Alongside that, we've continued with Order & Pay. Order & Pay is really important to us, giving guests the opportunity to not have to get up from their table to order their food or drink. That continues to grow and do well for us, and supports guest service.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Underneath all of it, really is about the service that our managers offer locally. It's about having a passionate team of people who are passionate about delivering great guest service day in, day out. They've continued to do that through the first half of the year. On the operating model overall, good delivery on profit, continued progress on guest experience. That leaves us feeling really good about the foundation that that leaves us for the second half. That's the operating model. Secondly, onto the formats. As we've said, we've launched 60 of these new format pubs in the first half. The plan was 50, we're ahead of plan. Roughly half of them on the Grandstand product and half of them on the Two Door. Such that we've got north of 90 out there now. Really good progress.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

They're all doing exceptionally well. Normally, when you launch new formats like this, you kinda get a winner and one that's soft. What surprised us is all of them have worked well across different formats and demographics. You've got a top line growth across these products of 20%. The returns, you remember our hurdle is 30%, the returns at the moment are averaging 35%. Very popular. It doesn't matter whether it's Woodie's for families, if it's a Two Door which is a split 2-in-1 pub, or Grandstand, our locals pubs. Great appeal, great returns. The real standout performer amongst these, certainly in the first half of this year, has been Grandstand.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

What I thought I would do is just give you a bit more depth into what's behind the Grandstand model, to help you understand the way some of our formats operate. I thought one of the best ways to do that was for you to hear from some of our local pub managers about what this Grandstand pub is all about.

[Video Narrator]

[Presentation]

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Grandstand, very popular with our pub managers, very popular with our guests. And as I said, the commercial returns actually have really astonished us at how strong they've been. Market share, and this is measuring the market share of a local Grandstand pub in its locality. We've gained 1% on average across all the areas that we've launched. One of the biggest things behind that is the visit frequency. What Grandstand isn't is only a venue for the big match or the big occasion. It's accessible enough that people will come on different nights of the week, as well as on those big match occasions, and that's reflected in the visit frequency. Our visit frequency's gone up from an average of 5.5 visits a year to almost 6.5 visits a year.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

That's translating into revenue. Revenue growth of around 30% on a like-for-like basis. That's partly because of that visit frequency, but also we're improving spend. Spend's up 7%. Quite a unique food offer that we've, that we've put into Grandstand alongside the drinks. That's really helping alongside the visitation push up the revenue. Of course, that translate into the returns. The revenue, the top line's good, but remember, to Stephen's point earlier, on average, like, these are GBP 280,000 a pub. It's not a very expensive conversion. To the returns we can get are really strong. Good commercial returns, and that plays into the operating model.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

If you think about the things we talk about on the operating model overall, what's happening with Grandstand, and indeed with the other formats, is it's just turbocharging and acting as a multiplier. I'll talk in a while about the power of the World Cup and what it can do for us this summer. That's across all of our estate. Imagine what it can do in a Grandstand pub. On a reputation point of view, I've just shown you 806. Grandstand scoring 848. Order & Pay, we're a bit north actually of 11% now as a total business. Grandstand's 14.5%, and of course that helps us in our spend. Finally, EBITDA margin, Grandstand's ahead of the total company in its EBITDA margin.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

This is where you start to see the value drivers working together and these formats complementing what we're doing on the operating model. I think the big thing now really with the formats is, I've talked to you over the last couple of years about these formats, and we've very much been in test and learn mode. We're not in test and learn mode anymore, certainly from this half onwards. We've got enough in the business, at 91 in the business, we've got enough that these will contribute to the top line and to the bottom line across the total business. We've had a really good look at the whole estate in terms of the rollout opportunity, and we've mapped all of our pubs.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

We've mapped the demographics and the populations around all of our pubs and worked out which ones can be Grandstands, which one can be Woodie's, which ones can be Two Doors. We think there's about a 600-pub opportunity, a conversion opportunity, and of those, 250 or so on Grandstand. Really clear now, significant rollout opportunity. We've got 91 to capitalize on this year, but beyond them more, which is why we're saying today we're gonna accelerate this rollout program, and that'll be over a number of years. We'll confirm exact numbers to you in the prelims in November, but we'll be doing in the region of 100 next year, to really get behind this. Big driver of top line for us in the second half, but then for many years to come.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Really, that's what leaves us feeling positive about the outlook. Of course, we've got a World Cup summer ahead with a community-based estate, high proportion of drink sales. Big football tournaments are always very big for us across the summer. Alongside that is just the general momentum. Outdoor spaces, beer gardens are very important, the general momentum of a World Cup summer outside of the tournament as well as in the tournament can be very positive. Alongside that, as we've said, 91 of these pubs, a lot of these pubs that we've done in the first half didn't actually open until March, we're not actually getting the benefit until the second half. This is the first time that we'll have been through a peak season with a meaningful number of pubs.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

It's the combination of, if you like, the World Cup summer and those new formats firing for us that leave us feeling very confident about our outlook. In summary, strong H1 in terms of profit delivery, excellent strategic progress where the new formats are delivering. We feel good about the H2, and as a result, we're very much continuing our guidance, and we're on track for expectations for the year. With that, we can take any questions that people may have.

[Operator]

If you'd like to put your hand up and ask a question and then state your name and company, that'd be great. We've got a mic here. Okay.

[Douglas Jack, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Okay. Douglas Jack at Peel Hunt. Two or three questions if it's okay. In terms of the pipeline for conversions into 2027, will that be half on focus as well, do you think? That's the first one. Is Two Door going to be sort of, number two after Grandstand in terms of the pipeline? In terms of the estate, obviously you've got a big NAV at GBP 1.28 and growing. Are you tempted to make any disposals anywhere in the estate? Last question was, in terms of, trading, have franchisees or tenants, anyone in any way cut back in any opening hours 'cause of any costs?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Okay. Thank you, Doug. Let me start with the last one. No, opening times, we've very much protected that, both from a partners or a managed estate. While there's the demand there, we will continue to mop it up. We've very much protected our opening hours and wouldn't touch that. In terms of the formats, we'll very much aim to do the conversions in H1. As Stephen said, it's approximately three weeks closure. Of course, what you try and do is you try and do those closure periods in the lower months. Really this time it's been, this half it's been October, November. We obviously don't then do that in December, 'cause December's a good trading period, and then January to March. We're still laying down exactly what it'll be.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah, we'll tend to do the H1, 'cause that then allows us to have a full period through what we know is our biggest period, which is basically between May and August of firing on all cylinders. In terms of the mix of Two Door and Grandstand, I mean, in essence, Two Door was the first off the rank. This time last year, I was talking to you all about Two Door in a bit more depth, 'cause we did 25 or so Two Doors last year alongside the 30 or so we've done this year. It was kinda Two Door was a big focus last year. Grandstand's starting to grow. I mean, we're in the fortunate position now that they're all working.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

I kind of feel like a football manager with 15 good players, and it's who makes it to the first 11. We can have a look across the estate and work out what our priorities will be because they're all working. Honestly, I didn't anticipate that. I expected some winners and some losers, but they're all working, and that will enable us to pick the right plan for the year. Your last question was disposals. Look, we always look at the estate. There's always elements of the estate that you'd like to pull some in and you'd like to move some out. It's not a major focus. Part of our assessment on looking at the formats, part of the assessment is looking, first of all, are they good pubs in good locations?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Secondly, the extent to which they're suitable for these formats. That's why looking at the estates, as I say, 600 or so are absolutely bang on. It's data led. It's not like, "Oh, we quite fancy this one being a Woodie's." This is completely driven by population and demographics. The remainder, by the way, outside of the 600 are locals pubs, which is our fifth format that doesn't require as much format conversion. Yeah, we do look at disposals, Doug, but it's more on what you would expect of a bit of churn. You got the mic.

[Caroline Gulliver, Analyst at Equity Development]

Hi. Caroline Gulliver from Equity Development. Two questions, if I may. The first was on labor scheduling. You've obviously done a really good job already on improving labor productivity. How much more opportunity is there to go as you roll out Order & Pay with that labor scheduling system?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah, you're right, we have done a lot of work on it. The interesting thing is often your mentality is not how do I save cost, but how do I get more staff on at the right time? It's as much about having more people on a busy Friday night than it is about having less people on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The biggest factor in it is how good you can get with your sales forecasting. That is the single biggest driver of it. There's a bit on rosters and the way we have a staff app and a rostering app, and there's various things that are very helpful. The most important thing is how you can get better at your sales forecasting.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Frankly, we get incrementally better on that every month. I think we will continue to get incrementally better as you forecast trading patterns up and down.

[Caroline Gulliver, Analyst at Equity Development]

That very neatly brings me onto my second question, which is, what does a successful World Cup look like for you? Really, I'm just trying to understand what's the sensitivity to how well England do perhaps for Grandstand, but then perhaps 'cause you've got so many diversified formats for the whole group.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah

[Caroline Gulliver, Analyst at Equity Development]

Is it particularly sensitive or are you not bothered? Just as a sort of a corollary to that, weather. You know, you mentioned beer gardens. Does a lovely summer weather add 1%, 2% to like-for-like or vice versa?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah. You're right, actually, the two link in the sense that the first thing to say about the World Cup is there's two real strengths of it this time versus previous years. First of all, there's an extra round of games. It previously would go second round quarterfinals. It now goes second round of 16 quarterfinals. There's an extra round of games, which is helpful. Secondly, the kickoff times, in the sense that the biggest dynamic change in pubs in the last 20 years is the busiest time is 6:00 P.M.-7:00 P.M. in the evening. The quieter time is 10:00 P.M.-11:00 P.M. in the evening. Therefore, we know we can get people in early evening.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Because the many of the kickoff times are 9:00 P.M. or 10:00 P.M., certainly for the England games, we know we can get people in early, and then they'll stay through the evening. That's an opportunity. I think to your point about what success looks like is it's not just about the games, it's about the momentum and the feel-good factor it creates in the country for people visiting the pubs generally. What we don't see is like of course, you get a big spike on a big England game in the English pubs. You do get that. It's more about the momentum where the pub becomes. In community pubs, you remind everybody that it is the center of your community where you're all gonna go and meet.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

You end up going midweek as well, as well as going at the weekend to watch the game. That's a bit analogous to the way I described Grandstand as a product before, is people will come and watch the big game, but it will remind them that they quite like that venue. They'll bob in on a Tuesday as well. Really, it's about the overall feel-good factor for the year. It can work across all of our pubs, frankly. Our Signature and our Woodie's, which are our more food-based pubs, again, you create that momentum, and that's where our outdoors, our outdoor spaces come into their own. We think it can work across a major portion of our estate, and really it's about a feel-good factor across the country. Thank you.

[Karan Puri, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Hi, Karan Puri from JPMorgan. I've got two questions, if I may. The first one is on the like-for-like. Just, I mean, you know, you sort of shared that you're outperforming the market in terms of like-for-like growth. If you look at some of your closer peers, it's sort of a 3-5 point lag. Just trying to understand what's sort of driving that. Is it geographical exposure, different segment exposure? Are you seeing any sort of weakness, consumer weakness across any part of your business? That's the first one. Yeah, maybe we can start with that.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah. Do you wanna start with that, Stephen?

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Yeah, can do. Yeah. I mean, the like-for-like performance in the first half, it's sort of where we expected it to be to some extent, Karan. I mean, obviously, the market's pretty tough at the moment. We always need a big opportunity for us was in H2 because of the World Cup and because the formats, as Justin sort of said. You know, we've said that we're outperforming the market, which is to do with some market data, proprietary data that we have, which includes the whole market. You know, that's sort of, that's kinda where we sit. I think the opportunity definitely remains in H2. We're sort of as we expect it to be.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

I think compared to some of the peer group, quite a lot of the companies have quite different dynamics. You know, we sort of look at Young's and Fuller's, and they're very London-based. M&B's got a much larger portfolio in food than we have, et cetera. It's quite hard to read across the different sectors. I don't know if you wanna build on that, Justin.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yeah. You know the way we think about it, when we laid out the strategy at the Capital Markets Day, we view ourselves as a hospitality business. Our peer group is public and private pub and restaurant and across the piece. There's different segments within that.

[Karan Puri, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you so much. The second one is on the balance sheet and capital returns, I guess. Seem to be pretty much on track to hit the 4x net debt EBITDA. Do you have any sort of thoughts in terms of how you plan to return capital to shareholders? Could that be dividend, share buybacks? I know it's a bit early, but sort of any thoughts are welcome here.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Yep.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Yeah, I mean, look, it's something we'll consider over the second half. You're right. The trend is that we should be close to 4x, but probably not quite 4x by the end of the year, but close to 4x by the end of the year. I think you guys have us at about sort of 4.1x or 4.2x, something like that. You know, it's clearly something the board will consider going forward. I mean, I suppose what I would say is that, you know, the board will need to consider all different uses of capital, including investing in these excellent returning formats, shareholder returns as well, you know, and resilience of the business.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

We'll have a good think about that as a board over H2, and we'll give you an update at the prelims.

[Karan Puri, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you so much.

[Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Thank you very much. Anna Barnfather from Panmure Liberum. Just on slide seven, you set out the sort of uplift in the second half from the reformats at 1.7%. Just wondered if you could expand on what sort of revenue uplift that is on those 91 sites, and whether that's exclusive of World Cup or World Cup is on top of that. The second question, I guess, is a bit more of a follow-on to the capital question at the end of the year if you get towards 4x. You mentioned that you're sort of negotiating to reduce the restrictions. Is that the cash in the securitization vehicle or anything else on that? Thank you.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Do you want me to take that one?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Sure.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

In terms of slide seven, Anna, I mean, the GBP 11 million in the bullets is what we think the impact on revenue will be from those formats. The 3 bars on the chart, the biggest bulk of them is the FY 2026 uplift. That 1.7% is the impact on the group's total revenue year-over-year in H2 as a result of the formats that we did in the first half. It's actually quite a meaningful number, and if you back solve it, you'll work out it's an average weekly take that's quite a bit higher than the estate average, but it will have quite a positive impact on us.

[Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Just to sort of clarify. They've done 20% like-for-like uplift.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Yeah.

[Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

The Grandstand have done 30.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

That's equivalent to 1.7% on the total group turnover in H2. Which is why we're feeling sort of positive about H2 really, 'cause we can directly see on our own forecast GBP 11 million of year-on-year sales upside from those, from those formats. Most of that will be in the like-for-like number. The closure periods won't be 'cause we strip out closure periods from like-for-like counts, but in total it's a good upside. Your second question on restrictions. What I was alluding to there more was that the securitization does impose restrictions on the company, and there's lots of, I mean, the rule book is sort of, you know, 10 in thick kind of thing.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

We as a business have been working with the securitization for 20 years now, and actually the restrictions that it places on the business, for example, you have to spend a certain amount of maintenance CapEx. Getting cash out of the securitization is a bit tricky. We know how to deal with that. The point I was trying to make is that actually, as we run the business, as we decide what to invest in, what to do with the strategic plan, you know, we can do that despite the restrictions of the securitization being in place. We've also done quite a bit of work on distributable reserves as well. We had negative distributable reserves a, one year or so ago. We're now in a positive position.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

You know, if we want to think about returns, we actually can do that, whereas before we couldn't.

Good morning. Couple of questions. Just on the margin and the outlook, another way of sort of looking at it is cost inflation. You did a fantastic job in the first half of cost being down. What do you think the outlook for sort of year-on-year cost growth is for the full year? Secondly, with the increase in reformats to 100 next year, does that change the view on the sort of GBP 50 million recurring cash and sort of CapEx of 7%-8% of revenue? Thirdly, just thinking about sort of the property valuation at the year end, given the uplift in profitability per pub you're seeing, is it as straightforward to think we can put that uplift in EBITDA or multiple that uplift on EBITDA straight through, or will the value take longer to appreciate that?

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

You wanna go that?

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Yeah, I think so. Margin and cost inflation, we're actually quite well set for the second half. The general situation, Greg, is that, as I mentioned in the slides, the energy prices are locked and loaded, then other stuff that we buy, food, drink, you know, labor and stuff, we know the prices of those. We have long-term contracts, annual prices at least. If inflation were to peak, that would more be a 2027 thing rather than a 2026 thing. We do have good visibility across the whole of the cost base in the second half.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

I can't say that if there's not a real big spike in inflation, that we won't have suppliers wanting to have a conversation with us, and we'll of course engage with any supplier on a, you know, on a normal basis if they come and talk to us. As of now, contractually, we're in quite a good position and I think cost inflation should be okay in the second half. Next thing was the reformats. I mean, look, I think the GBP 50 million recurring free cash flow is a really important number. It talks to the business's ability to generate cash and consistently generate cash. We put it up there as one of the four key targets at the CMD just two years ago. We're really committed to that being something that the group delivers.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

We think that we can extend our investment program to circa 100 next year and still deliver recurring cash flow of GBP 50 million, and that's what we intend to do.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

One of the key things on that, Greg, is you remember when we designed the formats is being clear how much you can invest per pub. It's one of the strengths of it, is whilst they perform at a revenue level, as I say, you're only spending between GBP 250,000 and GBP 280,000 a pub. That allows you to do a significant number without breaking your other commitments on cash flow and capital allocation and CapEx. CapEx as a percent of revenue still remain at 7%-8%. That's why we're so confident in the model going forward, is we've got a formula that works for sensible and judicious amounts of CapEx.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Then the property reval. I mean, it's not quite as straightforward as EBITDA goes up and therefore valuation goes up, because the two factors are the EBITDA that a so-called reasonably efficient operator would deliver rather than what Marston's would deliver, and then there's a multiple of market multiples applied to that. If we see a big improvement in EBITDA as a result of doing investments in sites, that doesn't straight away feed through into a property reval increase, because, you know, we did the investment and, you know, another efficient operator may not have done that. I think in time it supports the property revaluation, and it does give a bit of an upside, but I don't think you should just go, you know, EBITDA's up, therefore property reval goes up as well.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

It's a bit more to it than that.

Okay. Thank you.

[Justin Platt, CEO at Marston's]

Any more for any more? Good. Well, thank you for joining us, everybody. Have a good day. Thank you.

[Stephen Hopson, CFO at Marston's]

Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Justin Platt, CEO
• Stephen Hopson, CFO

Analysts

• Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum
• Caroline Gulliver, Analyst at Equity Development
• Douglas Jack, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Karan Puri, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Video Narrator