Topps Tiles H1 2026 Earnings Report

Topps Tiles EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 0.17
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Topps Tiles Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $142.60 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Topps Tiles Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 5/19/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 21, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Topps Tiles (LON:TPT) engages in the retail and wholesale distribution of ceramic and porcelain tiles, natural stone, and related products for residential and commercial markets in the United Kingdom. The company engages in the property management and investment activities; retail and wholesale of wood flooring products; provision of warehousing services; and sale and distribution of architectural ceramic. It also sells its products online. The company was founded in 1963 and is headquartered in Leicester, the United Kingdom.

Topps Tiles H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Topps Tiles reported flat pro forma revenue year on year, outperforming a market that declined 2.5%, while pro forma gross profit rose 2.9% and operating profit increased 17.3% thanks to stronger margin management.
• Positive Sentiment: The company said it is making good progress on Mission 365, reaching 40% of its revenue ambition and 12% of its profit growth goal, and reiterated confidence in delivering modest full-year PBT growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Trade and digital growth were key drivers, with Topps trade sales up 4.1% excluding CTD, Pro Tiler revenue up about 20%, and online sales rising to 21% of group mix following the launch of a new trader app and CRM tools.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management highlighted three self-help cost initiatives—store closures, a new productivity model, and head-office consolidation—expected to deliver about £6 million of annual benefits, mostly weighted to the second half and fully visible in 2027.
• Positive Sentiment: Acquisitions are improving: CTD losses more than halved and is expected to turn profitable in H2, while Fired Earth was said to be ahead of expectations and already profitable after four months.

Presentation

[Operator]

Morning, and welcome to the Topps Tiles Plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Alex Jensen, CEO. Good morning.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Thank you, Lily, and welcome everyone to the Topps interim update. I'm joined, of course, today by our Interim CFO, Rob Swales. To put these first half results into context, Mission 365 lays out an ambition to grow revenue 50% higher than the 2024 baseline and to deliver PBT margin of 8%. In 2025, we achieved 40% of this revenue ambition and 12% of our profit growth ambition. In December, I laid out six priorities for the year, crucial to realizing this ambition, and I'm pleased to say that we've made significant progress against each. To remind you, they were to increase focus on bottom line, to deliver trade growth, to accelerate digital, to increase sales excellence in Topps, and to tackle the non-profitable parts of the business. I'm going to talk to you about these in detail later in the presentation.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

To summarize at high level, we have increased our focus on profit. We continue to expand gross margin and have implemented 3 major self-help cost initiatives aimed at accelerating progress to 8% PBT margin. On the top line, we have outperformed a softer RMI market. This has been underpinned by growth in trade, in digital, and delivering in sales excellence and new categories. We have also had a laser-like focus on improving the profit of our acquisitions, with the loss on CTD more than halving and Fired Earth already profitable after 4 months. Moving now to financial highlights. I've used the pro forma numbers here, where quite simply, we've added CTD trading back into 2025 numbers, we can see a comparison on a similar basis. We delivered flat year-on-year pro forma revenue against a market that declined by 2.5%.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Thanks to strong gross margin management, this flowed through to a 2.9% gross profit increase. We managed costs tightly, partially offsetting the cumulative impact of government-led inflation through self-help. This therefore led to a 17.3% increase in pro forma operating profit and flat year-on-year PBT profit due to the increase in interest paid. Looking ahead, and as we mentioned in the RNS, we're expecting modest PBT growth in full year, supported by structural self-help cost saving initiatives executed and weighted to the second half. I'd now like to pass over to Rob, who will take us through the financials in more detail. Rob, over to you.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Thank you, Alex, and hello all. I think a good starting point just before we jump into the financial results is just to explain the presentation of the numbers that Alex has just mentioned, given the impact of the CTD business year on year. You may recall that in FY 2025, CTD was completely adjusted out of the adjusted financial measures, largely due to the impact of the ongoing CMA process. However, in FY 2026, CTD is included in the adjusted measures given we now have full control of this business. In order to present the adjusted financials on a comparative basis, we've also shown a pro forma view which brings CTD trading into the FY 2025 base, and this is what you see in the green box on the right-hand side. Let's now walk through the key financial results.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Firstly, from a revenue perspective, we're broadly flat year-on-year on a pro forma basis, which is the –0.2 in the top right. Within this, Topps Tiles like-for-like was marginally positive in the half at +0.1 and our online pure play revenue grew strongly. Total CTD revenue was down due to fewer stores year-on-year. Pro forma gross margin percentage performance was strong. It was up 1.6 percentage points, driven largely by Topps Tiles margin growth, consequently driving a 2.9% increase in pro forma gross profit. Operating costs, however, grew by 1.8% with the impact of inflation and the additional cost to support the growth of the ProTiler and Fired Earth businesses, largely then offset by cost savings. As a result of the gross margin growth and the partial offset in costs, pro forma adjusted operating profit was up 17%.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

After accounting for higher interest, PBT of GBP 2.2 million was flat year-on-year on a pro forma basis when the CTD trading is included in the FY 2025 base. EPS was at GBP 0.83. We've also announced the interim dividend at GBP 0.01 per share, which is a third of FY 2025 as per our policy. Just looking at revenue in a little bit more detail. Starting with half year 2025, we've added GBP 15 million of CTD revenue into rebase FY 2025. Against this pro forma base revenue, as I've said, is broadly flat year-on-year at GBP 142.6 million. If you look at Topps Tiles specifically in the little box, we've got a small upside from the marginally positive like-for-like, noting that like-for-like performance was ahead of the market.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

We've also got a decline of GBP 1.9 million non like-for-like, which is largely driven by our store rationalization program starting in H1, which, while sales dilutive, will be profit accretive as we look to rebalance the profitability of the business. Online has been very strong, particularly in Pro Tiler, which was circa 20% up year on year, and the addition of the Fired Earth business has also driven strong revenue contribution of about GBP 1 million as part of the first half.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

You'll see as well that CTD revenue has reduced by GBP 2.8 million, and as I've said already, that's largely due to the impact of fewer stores year on year. We traded from 22 stores in H1 this year versus about 30 in the prior year. Although it is worth noting that CTD store like-for-like in the first half was positive at +1%. Moving on to gross margin.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

You can see firstly that adding CTD into the base, which has a structurally lower margin, has a 2 percentage points drag on last year's gross profit margin. On a pro forma basis, we've increased gross margin by 160 basis points year on year. This is predominantly driven by Topps Tiles, where close management of COGS and price management has more than offset the mix impact we're seeing, where growth in trade and essentials naturally dilutes the Topps margin. An additional margin rate upside in the half has been the focus on improving CTD's margin post the CMA investigation and post getting full control of this business. This is where we focused on product range, pricing, discounts, and delivery. In addition, we've also benefited from the build of the Fired Earth brand, which operates at a structurally advantaged gross margin. Another mix impact is also evident, the 0.6%.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Another mix impact is evident through the strong growth in our online brand, Pro Tiler. This operates on a structurally lower margin. This growth, however, does deliver strong additional gross profit on a cash basis but will continue to dilute the overall margin % of the group as it grows. That brings us to our 53% adjusted gross margin in the first half 2026. Finally, on margin, it's also worth noting that in the first half on a brand basis, on a brand level, gross margin growth was strong. I've already talked about Topps, Pro Tiler and CTD margins grew strongly in the year relative to the prior year. If we now look at movements in operating costs, we see firstly that bringing CTD into the FY 2025 base adds about GBP 6 million of cost.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

On a pro forma basis, costs have grown 1.8% year-on-year, which equates to about GBP 1.2 million, partially offsets some of the gross margin benefit explained in the previous slide. Within the costs, we've seen about just over GBP 2 million have increased due to government-driven inflationary costs, including the impact of National Living Wage and NIC increases. However, our strong cost management through cost control and self-help initiatives have fully offset the impact of inflation. Within the self-help cost savings, it's predominantly driven by savings in Topps Tiles, where we've talked about having fewer stores as part of the rationalization program and other cost initiatives in Topps. Savings have been delivered through CTD as we continue to focus on returning this business to profit.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Further savings are expected in H2 as a consequence of the self-help actions we've taken. We'll explain this in more detail later in the presentation. Partially offsetting the cost savings are GBP 1.4 million of investments we've made in the half. This includes investments in our digital infrastructure, including the ERP upgrade and our customer facing digital investments, including the trade app, all of which we anticipate to improve the core infrastructure of the group and deliver a solid ROI. Strong growth of our Pro Tiler and Fired Earth businesses also have associated cost increases. These have grown at a lower rate than the sales growth in these businesses. To summarize the P&L performance on a pro forma basis, we've seen revenue broadly flat but ahead of a decline in market.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Strong growth on margin with 160 basis points increase pro forma, partially offset by just over GBP 1 million of cost growth, which consequently results in a 17% increase in pro forma operating profit. After-interest costs, adjusted PBT of GBP 2.2 million is flat on a pro forma basis year on year. The performance does highlight the necessity of the self-help measures we've put in place and which Alex will build on shortly. Just moving on to cash. From a cash position, the half ended in a small net debt position of GBP 3.1 million, relative to a net cash position of GBP 7 million at the year end, September 2025. Whilst cash from operations has increased about GBP 5 million, working capital offsets this in the first half due to an unwind of payables from year end as part of the buying cycle.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Working capital is also impacted by a higher FY 2025 STIP, and a stock increase in Pro Tiler as the business expands. CTD shows a small cash benefit across H1 of just over GBP 1 million, where we focused on tight stock management. Capital investment in H1 of GBP 2.3 million has been focused on investment in digital, including the trade app, which is currently being launched. Our investment in infrastructure as we upgrade the ERP systems and our tiling infrastructure.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Note that CapEx is lower than last year in H1, given the prior year investment in DC2, our distribution center in Northampton, that now supports Pro Tiler, CTD and Fired Earth. Dividend outflows in H1 reflect the FY 2025 declared dividend, whilst the other notable cash outflow in the half relates to the acquisition of the Fired Earth brand. We still have in place a GBP 30 million RCF facility that provides significant headroom.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

As per previous years, we expect a modest cash build in H2 as we benefit from our H2 weighted profit delivery and an improvement on unwinding working capital, and we expect to deliver a small net cash position at year end. I'm now going to hand you back to Alex, who's going to give you an update on the strategy.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Thanks, Rob. As mentioned at the start, Mission 365 continues to be an important milestone. Two years on from launch at the end of last year, we were 40% of the way to Mission 365 on revenue, with profit at 12%. As a reminder, our strategy serves retail homeowners, commercial specifiers, and professional trade installers. This graph shows how 5 key areas will deliver growth across these areas to get us to our revenue goal of Mission 365. The acquisition of Fired Earth positions us to compete in the premium segment, and the consolidation of Tile Warehouse into Topps strengthens our ability to grow in the value segment. The last block has been updated to reflect these changes.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

As mentioned, in December, shortly before becoming CEO, I laid out our priorities for 2026, and these were an increased focus on the bottom line, delivering trade growth, accelerating digital, growing sales capability in Topps, and tackling the non-profitable parts of the business. Of course then, onboarding a new CFO and creating a high-performing team. Let me go through each of these priorities in turn, starting with an increased focus on the bottom line. Mission 365 already has a strong focus on revenue generation and a track record of expanding gross margin. In the first half, as previously mentioned, we continued to generate a strong gross margin with Topps Tiles, CTD and Pro Tiler driving a 1.6 points uplift on a pro forma basis. You can see that in the top of the middle, a continued focus on strong GM.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

As you can see on the top chart in orange, conversion of gross profit to PBT margin is low and has been declining. If we look at why, our Topps Tiles store estate makes up around 60% of the group's cost base. It's operated with a relatively inflexible labor model and has been exposed to government-led inflation in the form of National Living Wage, where rates have risen by 29% over the last 3 years. You can see, this cost increase on the green bars and in the National Living Wage increase on the bottom. The pricing required to offset these costs constrained sales growth. In addition to cost control on COGS, we've also implemented 3 business specific transformation plans to improve profit. Firstly, in January, we communicated to our organization the closure of 23 loss-making stores over 9 months in 2026.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Most of these stores were close to other locations, allowing a proportion of sales to transfer. In fact, 20%-40% sales transfer has been observed in previous programs, making the program profit accretive. Secondly, across the remaining estate, we're rolling out a new store productivity model designed to better match staffing to customer demand, and this dynamic approach increases flexibility and brings our labor model in line with best practice in retail. Thirdly, we've consolidated a number of roles in head office and central functions and reinvested some of the savings back into areas we see the largest growth momentum. These programs are weighted into the second half, and full benefits will be realized in 2027. Across all three, they're forecast to deliver GBP 6 million sustainable annual benefits to offset future inflation and headwinds. Our second priority is to grow trade.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Traders use the group's brands frequently and act as brand ambassadors to other traders and to homeowners. We're focused on improving our value propositions to them so we can expand trader acquisition loyalty. In the first half, we delivered a 4.1% growth before the impact of CTD, which diluted the first half due to the resizing of the CTD business during 2025. 4.1% excluding CTD. Starting on the left-hand side, in Topps, we strengthened our proposition to the trade segment, placing a clear emphasis on convenience and value. In February, we launched live stock availability on essentials, enabling our trade customers to see precise in-store availability. This was particularly important for the app launch that went live in May, as it improves planning and efficiency for our customers.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

We achieved a 55% increase in the adoption of Trade Pay, with 11% of Trade customers now using this facility. Trade Pay is the credit facility we offer to traders. We offer 30 days interest-free credit, this is executed in a disciplined, risk-assessed way in coordination with our credit finance team. By improving access to flexible payment options, we're better supporting their ability to scale their business, customers on Trade Pay spend 5 times as much as regular Trade customers. On the right-hand side, Pro Tiler continues to gain market share, delivering strong and consistent growth. During this period, sales increased by 20% year-on-year, with revenue now approximately 3 times the level at acquisition in 2022. This performance reflects a clearly differentiated value proposition as the Tiler's brand, with an unrivaled product range positioning Pro Tiler as the go-to marketplace for professionals.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

This is supported by competitive pricing, rapid fulfillment, and best-in-class digital marketing capability. The continued expansion of our own brand, PremTool, is driving both revenue growth and margin enhancement. Looking ahead, we see a clear runway for further growth through category expansion and deeper penetration of the PremTool range. Our third priority, digital. It progresses at pace with sustained momentum across key initiatives shown here on the slide. Online revenue, including CTD, rose to 21% of our mix, an increase of 3.3 points versus first half last year and 2 points versus full year 2025. In Topps Tiles, we launched our new trader app this month, and this represents a step change in the value proposition we're offering this segment, particularly around convenience and the ease with which they can now trade with us.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Main benefits of the app include live stock feeds, fast access to Click and Collect, better loyalty visibility with a rewards ladder, improved access to Trade Pay, exclusive app offers and discounts to drive average transaction value and frequency. First half marked the first six months that we used CRM capability. Our email open rates are 20% higher than the industry average. The launch of the app enables us to personalize this, improving effectiveness and efficiency of marketing spend. The app, with the link to CRM in place from now, is a cornerstone for the next phase of trade growth in Topps, and we expect to see an improvement in trade sales in the second half. Across the group, we improved our website capability with new websites launched for CTD, for Topps Retail and for Fired Earth.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Just to give you a sense of the holistic improvements we've made, in Topps, year-on-year conversion is up 16%. Checkout abandonment has decreased by 20%, and speed has improved by 30%. The number of products with reviews has increased by 10% to 44%, 2 points higher than the industry average. At the same time, we're also increasing our focus on search engine optimization and generative engine optimization, with organic visibility improving by 25% since the start of the year and the highest share of voice and AI citations amongst our competitor set. Finally, on digital, the group-wide system modernization rollout is well underway, with the ERP upgrade all on track to be completed by year-end across central functions, the Topps Tiles and CTD store networks, and Parkside then follows in 2027 as planned. Pro Tiler is on a different system, and we'll revisit it at a later point.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

As part of this ERP upgrade, we're enhancing our point of sale infrastructure by introducing tills with customer-facing display screens. We'll be able to link this to CRM data to deliver more personalized promotional messaging to individual customers, and over time, support self-service capabilities. The rollout is already 40% complete, with full completion on track for the end of June. Loads of progress in digital. Our fourth priority is to drive sales excellence in Topps by converting our inherent differentiators into stronger sales performance. Those differentiators include things that I shared in December around my first impressions of Topps and why I joined. Mainly, market-beating product expertise and high-quality customer service. In the first half, starting on the left-hand side, we invested in sales capability to improve the productivity of in-store labor costs. We invested in people, we invested in process, and we invested in performance.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

On people, we developed and rolled out a Topps specific program, training 1,000 store colleagues on benefits-led selling. On process, we drove disciplined use of our customer pipeline tools. On performance, we changed our commission schemes to drive these new behaviors and link reward with outcomes. We measured the impact of all of that through conversion rates and average transaction values, both of which improved. Moving to the second initiative, we strengthened our position in the value segment through targeted price reductions on key value items in Topps Tiles that generated gross profit improvement and always mindful of managing our gross margin. Let me bring this to life with an example. Metro is one of the most popular tiles in the market.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Our price was £21.50 against a market that was at about £14.50, and we were getting feedback from trade and retail customers that we were priced too high. We dropped the price by 30%. We supported this with clear digital and in-store marketing and colleague engagement. Volume increased by 133%, and gross profit increased by 26%. We also simplified our customer proposition by consolidating Tile Warehouse into the Topps Tiles brand. While Tile Warehouse delivered 23% growth in the first half, operating two brands constrained our ability to present a distinctive offer to customers. Bringing this together allows us to build on the momentum achieved by both brands while better leveraging the reach, the brand reach, and the efficiency of the Topps Tiles brand.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

In the period, we grew category extensions by 7%, with acoustic panels and shower panels performing particularly well, and we have plans to ramp up investment and focus on category extensions in the second half, and I'll share more about this in our year-end results. Finally, on this slide, our focus on driving sales is underpinned by excellent customer service, with Google reviews averaging 4.9 stars across 85,000 reviews. Now, having a reputation for good customer service supports local visibility and customer confidence, but it's also a key feed for generative engine optimization, where reviews are an important input into the AI answer. Moving now to our fifth priority, integrating acquisitions to drive sustainable profit. CTD has delivered a 1% like for like in its stores in the first half and more than halved losses to a GBP 400,000 loss, improving GBP 600,000 year on year.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

It's on track to be profitable in the second half. Two new house builder hubs dedicated to house builder needs with racked warehouse, specified coverings, and curated essentials are being opened in the second half with Minworth already open on the 12th of May and CTD Newcastle opening in the fourth quarter. We continue to grow our Parkside business, which made a small profit in 2025 and is building momentum. As a reminder, Fired Earth, the strategic rationale for our acquisition of Fired Earth in November was because it expands our addressable customer base into premium. It strengthens our proposition to homeowners and house builders, and it accelerates digital, and that's what it brings to the group. Since acquisition, the group has also brought benefits to Fired Earth. We've leveraged group sourcing, logistics scale, and digital capability, all whilst preserving the integrity of the Fired Earth brand.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Fired Earth sales are exceeding expectations, and the brand is already profitable in the first four months of trading. We've had three milestones. In the first half, we secured long-term collaborative design partnership with Nina Campbell and Neisha Crosland, and this is an important aspect of newness and inspiration for Fired Earth customers. That's important as part of the brand. This week, actually last week, we launched a paint collection with 120 colors via dropship with our paint partner. Finally, on top of our U.K. stockists, we've extended the brand reach via international stockists in four countries. We see international expansion as a good opportunity for a strong brand with clear brand differentiation around heritage, artisan craftsmanship, and quality. If I turn now to current trading.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

On current trading, Topps Tiles like-for-like has returned to positive, and it's up 0.6% in the first seven weeks. CTD stores are also positive at 3% like-for-like. Online businesses are continuing their strong performance with some record weeks in Pro Tiler. In terms of the outlook, even though the macro and geopolitical environment remains challenging, the group benefits from a resilient, regionally diversified supply chain with market-leading purchasing scale. As usual, trading is expected to be weighted towards the second half, with a modest bias to second half revenues. We'll see self-help management interventions add GBP 3 million of benefit to the second half, and we expect gross margins to be broadly in line with the first half. Therefore, we expect modest year-on-year profit growth in the full year and in line with market expectations, assuming macro conditions and consumer confidence don't deteriorate any further.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

The balance sheet remains strong, supported by a GBP 30 million banking facility. Let me finish with a summary before opening it up to any questions. We have increased our focus on driving profitability, and in support of this, we continue to generate a strong gross margin and have executed three self-help initiatives to tackle unsustainably high costs, driven principally by government-led inflation. These initiatives will underpin profit delivery in the second half of 2026 and future years. We are making good progress in delivering our strategic agenda, accelerating growth in digital, trade, and sales excellence, and category extensions. We are expecting to deliver modest year-on-year profit growth in the full year and in line with market expectations. We're confident of a further year of strategic progress and look forward to sharing the evolution of Mission 365 in our full-year results.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

I'd now like to open it up to any questions for Rob or me.

[Operator]

That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Alex, could I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Very good. Yeah, happy to. Let me just start at the top. How do you plan to continue winning in the trade market, and why is this attractive for the business? This was a pre-submitted question, so it might be that the presentation answered that. The reason winning in trade is important is because whereas a homeowner may only buy tiles when they're doing their bathroom or their kitchen or floors, the trade uses Topps Tiles regularly. They're frequent spenders, they spend more. Creating that lock on with traders, creating loyalty from traders, is a really important part of our strategy. In terms of mix, about 75% of our business is currently with trade.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

In terms of how we continue to win, it is very much about making sure we're giving trade, and that's trade within Topps, but also the contractors that support our commercial specifying business and that work for house building or for our Parkside clients. It's really important to give them what they're looking for, and a lot of that is around convenience, supply, reliability, and value. As you can see from our presentation, we continue to improve our offers in those areas and we've seen growth as a result. Hopefully that answers that question. What is your enduring competitive advantage? Shall I take that one?

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Yeah, please do.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Okay. Our enduring competitive advantage, I've touched on a little bit already. Across the group, one of our competitive advantages is category authority. People come to us because we are experts, and you can see that in Pro Tiler, where we are for tilers, by tilers. A lot of our team, top team in Pro Tiler, they are ex-tilers. The guy heading up that business set it up and is a professional tiler. We know what we're talking about. Homeowners come to Topps because they know that if they've got questions, our team is well-trained and positioned to help them with those choices. Having that category authority is important to customers. Those who do it a lot and those who perhaps don't do it very often.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Secondly, it's the value proposition and the understanding we have of customers and how we're evolving our value proposition to make sure that we're giving them what they need around convenience, speed, and so on. Finally, it's the fact that we have an omni-channel strategy. We firmly believe in omni-channel. Despite the network rationalization, something like 95% of our homeowner customers and those looking at home projects say that visiting the store is an important part of their journey. Obviously for traders, having convenient locations is also important. Having a very strong omni-channel strategy is absolutely integral to our strategy. Hopefully, that answers the question, but feel free to ask a follow-up. Right. What else have we got here? This is a good one, and I'm sure it's on lots of your minds. A few of you have asked this question.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Are you seeing any supplier pricing pressure from geopolitical disruption or freight inflation yet? I'll hand over to Rob for this in a second, what I would say first about this is it's clear that any macroeconomic, any geopolitical events that affect energy markets are clearly relevant for retailers and consumers for that segment because it affects production costs, shipping, transport, as well as consumer sentiment, depending on the segment. We have a very geographically diverse supply chain, very resilient, long-standing relationships with our suppliers, and market-leading purchasing scale, which we believe weathers us or positions us well to weather the challenges coming from the energy markets. In terms of specifically, Rob, do you want to build on that?

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Yeah, I think we are starting to see pricing pressure come through given particularly the oil price increase and the fact that it's linked to production and all the stuff that Alex talked about. As she said, we've got a strong supplier relationship and a diversified supplier base that helps us. We also have a strong product knowledge. We really understand the engineering of our products. Our teams really understand that, so that they can understand if price increases come through, to what degree they are really relevant to the product based on that engineering. From a coverings perspective, the buy cycle is a little longer than it would be for U.K. production and some of our essentials products.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

From a coverings perspective, the buy cycle takes a few months to get that product from Far East or nearer shore to the U.K. and then sold when it comes to our margins. Some of that will be pushed towards the latter stage. We're essentially managing things on a case-by-case basis, balancing the pricing versus the COGS and trying to do the right thing for the business and the customer.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Very good. What is the long-term role of CTD versus Topps Tiles? Great question. CTD has a very specific role to play in the group. The reason for the acquisition was to access the house builder market, which has some very different needs. Supporting house builders, a key part of that is making sure that we can bring products to them where they're building. These house builder hubs specifically catering towards a different need. For instance, the racked shelving, the racked warehouse system, forklift trucks, the house builder contractors can come with flatbeds. It's a much more volume business, and so CTD absolutely has a role to play alongside the Topps Tiles brand. Hopefully that answers that. The market is about GBP 100 million, so it enables us to access that extra market to increase our addressable market.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Lots of questions about Fired Earth. Let's try and answer all these together. Let's do the M&A one in a minute. Fired Earth appears to be outperforming. This is why we're on the same screen because my computer connection's a little dodgy. Fired Earth appears to be outperforming expectations very early. What are the key reasons? I think there's a couple more on Fired Earth. Can we just get them all together? Okay.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

I think there was one.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

I think they've been combined.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Yeah.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Okay. Expectations. Honestly, it's an awesome brand, isn't it? It stands for something so clear, artisan craftsmanship, quality, heritage. Making sure we preserve that with things like the design partnerships that we talked about, that's all part of making sure that that momentum continued. We were so quick with the acquisition and then the integration into Topps. The team did a phenomenal job, so good, taking all the stock and moving it into our warehouse, consolidating the system, having the website up and running. A lot of customers, I think, didn't really notice that we were down, so the momentum wasn't lost.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

I think it's because it was already a great brand and some of the things that we have done to continue to improve that with the partnerships, the paints, the fact that we continue to have stockists in the U.K., so although it's online, you can actually also go and see the product through our stockist network. I think those are the reasons why the momentum just continued. We've been reinforcing what the brand stands for. Do you want to answer this one?

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

How disciplined will M&A be after CTD and Fired Earth?

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

I think certainly our priority focus is really embedding previously acquired businesses and really optimizing them within the group. Within the presentation, we touched on that. Obviously CTD has been challenging and Fired Earth, Alex has just explained. Clearly M&A can have a very important and critical role to developing and growing the business. Also it brings challenges with integration and management time, et cetera. Our view on this is very much balanced. We will continue to go after embedding previously acquired businesses, and we will continue to monitor M&A opportunities on a case-by-case basis.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Yeah. Very good. When you say, how disciplined will M&A be? Obviously discipline is absolutely key. We'll just go to the very top. We're sort of going through most of them. Let me have a look. Why is the share price so low? What is the market misunderstanding about your business? I don't know that the market misunderstands our business. Be good to get your feedback on how clear you think our strategy is. Share prices move, don't they? I haven't got a full answer for that. I think everybody on the call will have a view on how share prices move. Clearly it's about more than just the company. It's lots of other factors. Then we've answered that. How are you leveraging AI for efficiency and innovation? I think we've talked about that in marketing.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

We're very focused on both SEO, which is still very valid and a lot of our visits to our websites come from SEO still, sort of 45%. That's good because it lowers the cost of pay-per-click because a lot of it's coming through organic search, but increasingly clearly, we're also making sure that we rate very highly in AI discovery. As I said, the generative engine optimization and across both SEO and GEO, we're benchmarking extremely well with the highest share of voice and AI citations in the market. We've maintained that trend consistently over months. What we see going forward is probably the balance increases towards GEO. Both will continue side by side. We use AI in more than just search.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

We have AI in the whole spectrum of marketing, whether it's the way we do pay per click, it's in creative, it's in CRM. It will continue to be a bigger and bigger sort of way in which we look at driving efficiency and effectiveness within Topps. This one, "Is Topps becoming more of a software data-enabled trade platform rather than a traditional specialist?" Goodness. Obviously impressed with the digital progress we've made. I wouldn't say-

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Do you want to just read that one out?

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Oh, so sorry. Yeah.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

I can't actually hear you clearly.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Oh, yeah. This isn't published, is it? Okay. Chris H says, "Is Topps Tiles becoming more of a software data-enabled trade platform rather than a traditional specialist retailer?" I mean, it's a great question. It's great that you see the progress that we've made on digital such that you would ask that question. It's very much about keeping the two in balance. We are omni-channel, which means being really brilliant at digital and making sure we're using data to drive decision making and honing our offer to customers. As well as obviously thinking about digital and data in other processes that we have, like end-to-end supply chain and so on. It's about also integrating it into an in-store experience, which is more, let's say, traditional, but how do you use those insights that are coming from digital?

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

How do you use data tools to make sure that we're creating the most modern customer journey we can? I think it's about both. It's about kind of seeing what opportunities there are, and integrating the two. I don't think it's one thing or the other, Chris.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

I think, just to build on that as well, we did do recent customer research and the role of the store in the buying journey still remains a very high proportion and requirement for the customer. It highlights the importance of not just a fantastic digital proposition, but also the role of the store within that and the ability to physically see and view the products.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Very good.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

There's a question here on, "Would share buybacks ever become an attractive current valuation?" I think, just on that, management and the board will continue to review shareholder returns options, in line with we have a capital allocations and dividend policy. I just wanted to cover that.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Very good. This is from Tom W. "How much incremental sales uplift are you expecting from the trade app and CRM investments? What early KPIs are encouraging?" Yeah, another good question. The trade app, we do think is in the combination, the power of that combination of having had CRM, but it's been going through email. Obviously, we've seen very encouraging results. The things we look at, in the end, the outcome is your trader growth increasing. The leading indicators that go into that are ATV and trader acquisition, frequency, those sorts of things. Now with the Trade app that's gone live this month and the power to connect the two in a much more personal way, we do expect to see that ramp up in the second half.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

I'm looking forward to sharing the outcome of that later in our year-end results. The fact that the app has more easy access to Trade Pay, not in terms of approval, but in terms of application, and Trade Pay customers, as we said in the presentation, spend five times as much as a regular customer. You put all of those things together, and you've got a multiplying effect. We're very excited about second half from that perspective. Albeit, we can all see that the kind of environment continues to be muted, but within it, I think we've got a new offer that we're expecting to boost versus first half. What's this one? Appears to be outperforming. We've done that, about Fired Earth. Nothing else. Can you discuss the online tile market? How does your competitive position here compare to that of physical tile? I think we've answered that.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

someone said, "Could you discuss the online tile market? How does your competitive position here compare to that of physical tile retail?" I think really we've answered that, haven't we? Which is we're neither one thing nor the other. We are absolutely committed to omni-channel and actually getting that balance right, the right store network for traders who need convenience and pickup and homeowners who visit the store, as we said, but will travel a little way for inspiration and advice. getting that balance right with then what they can do digitally and how much we can actually do digitally. That's really the sweet spot. It's neither online only, nor physical stores only.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

There's a question here from Jeff, "Is there any fashion trend in the European ceramic tile market away from large-sized modules which would drive the market away from a trade buyer more to its historic DIY roots?" Gosh, that's a great question, Jeff. We are seeing a continued increase in extra large format, so that definitely has been the trend in Europe. Actually, the U.K.'s lagging behind more because of Victorian houses and smaller properties, less modern properties, fewer modern properties, I suppose, and more old properties. I think, our penetration of extra large format is lagging behind Europe. What we see is a definite bifurcation, a sort of split between extra large format and then smaller tiles. The middle size definitely reducing and much more of a growth in extra large format and smaller format. I think we can finish now.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Any time for one more question, and then I'll hand it back to Lily, because I think we've literally answered everything. If you've obviously got any more questions, feel free to submit them after this and we'll get back to you. Oh, we got a biggie. What's this one? This is a long one. Okay. Can you provide a medium-term view on commercial specification? Parkside appears to have stagnated in terms of revenue growth, with other key sector players also finding the sector difficult. It's a good question, because clearly the market is subdued, and our strategy is to make sure we pivot to those sub-segments within commercial and house building that appear to be more resilient. In commercial, for instance, public investment, and leisure, and data infrastructure, data centers, we see continued growth.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

Our strategy is to make sure that we're pivoting to those sub-segments where we continue to see that seem to be resilient, versus those segments like airports, for instance, that might have pulled back for obvious reasons. To also tighten cost and make sure we've got very good cost control, and then to just make sure we're really leveraging the advantages of our value proposition, including a very resilient supply chain, and making sure that the customers are sort of understanding the benefits of our value proposition. Thanks for that question AJS. We've literally done all the questions, so thank you very much for your engagement and I'm now going to hand back to Lily.

[Operator]

Yeah.

[Alex Jensen, CEO at Topps Tiles]

I hope you've enjoyed the interim update, and I look forward to seeing you at the end of the year.

[Rob Swales, Interim CFO at Topps Tiles]

Thank you.

[Operator]

That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that our management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good morning to you all

Participants

Executives

• Alex Jensen, CEO
• Rob Swales, Interim CFO