Greggs H1 2026 Earnings Report

Greggs EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 55.10
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Greggs Revenue Results

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

Greggs Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 7/29/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 2:00AM ET

Greggs (LON:GRG) is a leading UK food-on-the-go retailer with more than 2,700 shops nationwide and approximately 33,000 employees across the business. As a food-on-the-go retailer, Greggs specialises in daily fresh shop-made sandwiches, and savouries baked fresh in the shop ovens throughout the day. These are further complemented by popular products and ranges including freshly ground coffee, breakfast, confectionery and evening menu items. Greggs also offers a healthier options range which includes a selection of gluten-free, vegan-friendly and lower calorie products. Greggs has delivery partnerships with Just Eat and Uber Eats enabling customers to enjoy their Greggs favourites via order and delivery. Greggs’ Click + Collect offering provides customers with the ability to select their shop and collection time slot of choice and allows them to order a range of Greggs products in advance, ready for collection when they arrive our shops. Greggs’ loyalty scheme ‘Greggs Rewards’ is a mobile payment app designed to reward customers for their loyalty, and now allows customers to earn rewards right across the range, not just coffee, whilst making shopping across its shops more convenient, quicker and easier. In April 2024, Greggs launched its latest sustainability report 'The Greggs Pledge' which set out progress made against its ten commitments to help make the world a better place.

Greggs H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: First-half profit and cash flow improved: Total sales rose 7.2%, company-managed like-for-like sales increased 2.1%, and profit before tax climbed 19.7% to £76 million. Operating cash flow grew 18.3%, while the company maintained its 19p interim dividend.
• Positive Sentiment: Greggs said its value-led brand continues to gain market share, with share of food-to-go visits rising 0.3 percentage points to 8.7% despite an overall market volume decline. Menu innovation, including iced drinks, matcha, salads and the Chicken Roll, is intended to support demand across different weather conditions and consumer trends.
• Positive Sentiment: Expansion remains profitable and disciplined: New shops are achieving or exceeding the targeted 25% mature cash return on investment, with limited evidence of cannibalization. The company expects 100–110 net new shops in 2026 and sees potential for at least 3,500 U.K. locations over the longer term, supported by smaller Bite Size and Greggs Express formats.
• Negative Sentiment: Management expects full-year profit to be broadly flat year over year despite the strong first half, primarily because Derby operating costs will increase by about £10 million in the second half. Derby’s cost annualization and the launch of Kettering are also expected to constrain profit progress in 2027 before supply-chain leverage improves from 2028.
• Positive Sentiment: Capital expenditure guidance was reduced to £180 million from £200 million as major supply-chain projects near completion and contingency is released. The resulting recovery in free cash generation could create scope for additional shareholder returns once cash reaches the company’s target level, potentially through special dividends or share buybacks.

Presentation

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Good morning. Lovely to see so many of you here this morning, and welcome to Greggs interim results. It is quite a momentous occasion today because it is Richard Hutton's last interim sales presentation after 20 years as CFO at Greggs and 28 years with the business. Richard became CFO a little over 20 years ago in May 2006. Richard, the share price at that time was around GBP 1.60, and that is taking into account the stock splits. The market cap at that time was around GBP 180 million. At the time, we had two U.K. brands, we had Greggs, and we had Bakers Oven, and we also had a small chain of shops in Belgium at that time, Richard. We ended that year with Richard being CFO with 1,300 shops, and we delivered GBP 40 million of PBT in that year.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Richard's also been a longstanding trustee of The Greggs Foundation, and he's been a real champion of the Greggs Breakfast Clubs from their very inception back in 1999. He probably sits here very proudly being able to talk about the fact that we feed 75,000 children every school day that would otherwise not have a breakfast when they turn up at school. Can I just ask you to give him a huge round of applause? Richard sees most of what we're going to deliver today, but he hasn't seen any of that. The great news is he remains in role until the end of this year, you still will have countless conversations with him, and he will still be here for our October trading update.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I'm also delighted to announce that Ben Waldron will join us as CFO designate from the end of October, and he will take over the role as CFO on the 1st of January 2027. Between the period of Ben joining us and Richard leaving, it will be a seamless and smooth transition as they work together with the senior finance team to deliver that. Back to the agenda, which will be in the usual format. I'll talk about the results that we've announced today. I will then hand over to Richard. He'll update on the financial performance in more detail, and I will then take you through the operational strategic review and give you a view as to the outlook. Let's start with a quick overview of the first half of 2026. We've delivered a strong financial performance in a market that remains tough.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

As you can see in the slides, total sales growth was 7.2%, with company managed like-for-like growth of 2.1%. Profit before tax was GBP 76 million. That is up 19.7% on 2025 when profits were significantly impacted by the heatwave in June last year, they're also slightly ahead of 2024. We have delivered a much more resilient performance in the first half of this year, including during the hotter weather in May and June, with cost areas such as labor and waste very well controlled. Operating cash flow has grown by 18.3%, we have maintained the interim dividend at GBP 0.19. In terms of our strategic plans, we've seen further good progress in the first half of the year. Our brand metrics remain strong, we maintain our sector leading value reputation, outperforming the market and continuing to grow our market share of visits.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

We continue to offer wider access to Greggs by growing in multiple channels, including grocery retail. Our ongoing menu innovation ensures that we continue to adapt to the consumer trends in both new and our traditional categories with products such as the Chicken Roll. We have a strong pipeline of opportunities to grow and improve our shoppy state with our smaller format trials potentially providing further opportunities as we continue to focus on being more convenient for our customers. Our investment projects are progressing well, and as we've previously guided, we are now returning to a phase of strong free cash generation as capital intensity reduces. In summary, it's a strong financial performance in the first half of the year, and we continue to make progress against our strategic plan. I will now hand over to Richard to take you through our detailed financial performance.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Thanks, Roisin. Thank you for that lovely introduction as well.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Thank you.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Which as you say, I wasn't aware of. You might be surprised to know that I've kind of mainly enjoyed doing this actually. I think it's helpful to your thinking to actually have to explain the Greggs story and to articulate it. The questions that you ask us as well challenge our thinking and just make us turn over stones and sort of make sure that we're looking at everything. Thank you for your part in that over, well, 20 years. I think this must be presentation number 41 on that basis because I think the first one was literally 20 years ago at the interims. A number of you have been with us for quite a long time as well and have followed the journey for a fair bit of time, particularly on the advisory side. I'm just looking around the room.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

I think, Darren, you may be the only face who was here that time 20 years ago. Thank you very much. You still look as young as you did then. Yeah, thank you for that. The other thing I would say is just to reassure you, I'm just the front man. There's a very strong finance team back at Greggs. They do all the work. They put all this together. I just come out and tell the story. They're still there, and they will continue to produce high quality information for you as we go forward. I'll look forward to introducing Ben. I wouldn't be going if we didn't have the succession planned well, and so I'm pleased that I'll be able to introduce Ben to you in the last couple of months of this year as we run in parallel.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

I'm sure he'll be a very strong successor. Enough of this nonsense, back into the performance. We're on slide six of the pack, the income and expenditure overview. We've given you two years comps here because last year was an unusual year. We did have a very tough first half. We were affected by the heatwave, particularly at the end of the period in June. I think it hurt us more than it probably should have done because it sort of caught us unawares. I think one of the things the team have done this year is they've got much better at managing heat, both in terms of ranging, staff availability, those sort of things. The cost ratios bear up better, in a heatwave now than they did back then.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

You can't get away from the fact that people eat less in hot weather. We have got some mitigation in terms of some of the things we've introduced, like iced drinks as well. It's a less profound impact this year, and so you've seen quite a good year-on-year increase for a number of reasons, which we'll step through. I thought it was useful to put the H1 2024 comp in as well, because you can see that we've actually made progress on that. If you follow it through, Roisin's already given you the highlights in terms of the profit and sales progress.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

You can see that the profit margin at the operating level for the first half of this year is actually level with where it was two years ago, and you can see that we lost about 100 basis points at this time last year. That's good to see. There's some change in the structure of the P&L, in the interest line because we were carrying an awful lot of cash into this investment program that we've been going through two years ago. You can see the cash was there two years ago from the finance income line, where we were earning some good money on deposit with that. That's obviously sort of left the business now. It's been deployed into CapEx at the new sites and through growth.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

You've got a much higher finance expense line, which is driven by things like the Derby lease, but also the growth in new shops over that time, bringing in new interest charges imputed on the leases, but also the regearing of leases. Under lease accounting, when you regear and renew a lease after 10 years, you have to put in an imputed interest rate, which is equivalent to the current market rate, and that's much higher than it was 10 years ago. This isn't real money, this is accounting, but effectively, as you renew leases, you increase the interest charge that goes through the account. Yes, part of me longs for the days when you could just charge a cash rent through the books, and you didn't have to explain these things. That is the reality. Nothing much to see in the tax line.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We've got a 26% tax rate, which is consistent with guidance. Obviously the diluted earnings per share are slightly up on where they were two years ago, and 21% up on the year. Let's get into the sales number a bit more. 7.2% sales growth. On slide seven, you can see the building blocks of that growth. Company-managed like-for-like at just over 2% is obviously important. It's the lifeblood of the business, but you can see that there are other elements to this. The growth in the estate is actually twice as big in terms of sales progress as the like-for-like element. You've also got the contribution from business-to-business growth, which is a combination of our franchise business, which we are developing with additional sites, mainly in petrol forecourts, and also growth like-for-like of that.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

The grocery segment, where we've extended the availability of our bake-at-home range, from originally Iceland Foods now into Tesco as well. That started in September last year, and we've had a good first half in terms of that range being extended into more shops, but also the Iceland business developing well as well. Those have both contributed to this sort of multi-channel sort of volume picture for the first half. If we look at that versus the market on page eight, we try and give it some context. The solid blue line is that overall sales growth in the business, including grocery, including new shops as well. You can see that we're substantially ahead of the benchmark, which is the yellow line, and that's the all eating and drinking out of home, as measured by card spending data from Barclaycard.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

You can see, obviously, we've got a fair gulf there, but we've been taking more space, so you would expect us to run ahead of that line. I think the interesting thing though is if you look at the dotted line, that's the company managed like-for-like growth as well, and it broadly follows the market, but slightly ahead. The reassurance I take from that is that we are managing to extend the reach of the Greggs brand, both in grocery and in estate growth, without compromising the like-for-like performance of the existing estate. That's a really important thing given that the story for Greggs going forward is to do more of this and to penetrate more deeply, but going carefully so as to avoid damaging existing shop growth.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

I think it gives us some reassurance on that, but also helps to contextualize that like-for-like number as well. If we then look into the P&L, on slide nine, we've got the cost ratios within the P&L. Obviously, that overall sales progress leverages margin within the whole system because we do have a degree of fixed cost, both in terms of the rent of our existing shops, and also the elements of supply chain that we have in-house with the vertical integration. The gross margin has benefited from lower inflation, in food and packaging costs particularly. That's been a help in terms of the year on year gross margin position. The distribution and selling cost ratio, whilst wages continue to be inflationary, there's been a slight phasing change in that we've moved our pay awards to April from December.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We mitigated this with a small increase in January, a bigger increase in April this year. There's been some phasing benefit to the first half, again, which has come through in the distribution and selling ratio. Nothing much to see in admin costs, we've got that financing impact that we've already discussed in terms of shop leases and the Derby site being capitalized, increasing the overall net finance expense. Looking forward, there have been a few tailwinds in the first half in terms of, we talked about the grocery, we talked about the phasing of some of that cost inflation. The other thing to highlight for the second half, though, is that the Derby operating costs will increase by about GBP 10 million in the second half.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

This is why in our overall guidance, we've said we believe that the year itself will overall be broadly flat, in terms of profit progress year-over-year, which might be a surprise given the progress we've made in H1. Just to flag those new costs coming in the second half of the year. We dive into the cost base on page 10, quick reminder that the big two for us are people costs, which is the blue segment of this chart at 39%, then food and packaging, which is a third of our cost base. The food and packaging inflation has been slightly better than we'd hoped, we saw a little bit of inflation at the start of the year. We're now going through a period where we've got deflation in some of our food items.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

The forecast is that we should head back into a small amount of inflation by the end of the year, with a bit more going into 2027 as fuel costs and energy costs start to flow through the supply chain and we come off some of our fixed positions. We've got about 70% of the second half's requirements fixed on food and packaging. We've got good cover there, a third of it's still to fix. We've got even better cover on energy, where we've got 90% of our overall energy and fuel requirements covered for the year. We've got all our electricity and gas broadly bought for this year, and we're only exposed on vehicle fuel, where we're taking month-to-month diesel prices. The equivalent for next year is we're about 50% covered in that energy mix. That's a decent place to be.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

People costs inflating at around 4% across the year as a whole. I flagged that lower inflation from wages and salaries in Q1. In shop occupancy costs, which is our rent, our rates, those sort of things, rents are pretty stable, and we're now able to quantify the benefit of the reduction in business rates that we saw announced in the budget, having got the bills in now. It's worth about GBP 3.5 million a year on an annual basis to us from April. Across the piece, we're now expecting that inflation for the year will be more like 2% compared with the 3% that we saw at the start of the year. In the background, of course, we continue to try and make the structural savings that help to offset the new costs that come into the business.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

A decent first half with some rollover of benefit of the projects that we did last year. We've saved about GBP 7 million in H1 against our full year target of GBP 11 million. It feels like we've got good momentum in that, and the energy is still going into that program across the whole team. If we turn to CapEx on page 11, this gives you the kind of a bit of history and a bit of the forward guidance on CapEx overall. What you can see is it's built of three main components. The orange color at the bottom is IT and other miscellaneous items, and we're in a period where we're spending more on IT because we're renewing our SAP infrastructure and moving to the new S/4HANA basis. That's going well. There are live modules going in every week.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We expect to be finished with that around about the middle of next year. The green element reflects our retail capital expenditure. We're having a relatively light year this year, which reflects the relatively small number of shop refurbishments that we've got in the system, about 50 or so this year. That will start to increase going forward and you can see the number or the value of the retail CapEx increases, and that reflects a greater rate of shop refitting and we should be north of 100 in those couple of years, which we need to do to get back on cycle. We've been fortunate. We've been able to take a bit of a break with some of the shop refurbs at the same time as going through the more intensive supply chain investment program.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

That's the blue element that you can see. You can see it's a fundamental change this year, having got through the peak last year, where we spent GBP 287 million on CapEx. This year, we've been able to reduce the guidance from GBP 200 to GBP 180. It partly reflects the guidance on shop numbers for this year. The overall net growth in shop numbers is likely to be in the range 100-110. We previously guided to 120. That takes a little bit of CapEx out on the retail side.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

The rest of it really relates to the supply chain projects, where as we get closer to the end, we've been able to release some of the contingency in those projects and the team are delivering them under budget, and that's been something I guess we hoped but couldn't really plan for until we got closer to the end of those big build projects. GBP 20 million coming out of this year's CapEx. What you can see in the background of this slide is that the grayed out area is the cash inflow from operating activities, and that's after paying for leases as well. That's been quite committed in the last three years. Going forward, if we assume that it carries on at a similar rate, then the free cash optionality increases materially in the business.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We do have a big gap emerging, that will give us the opportunity to enhance returns as we look forward and apply our capital allocation policy, looking forward from next year onwards. If we just talk about the new shop performance on page 12, this is something I'm really pleased about. We've taken a lot of learning in recent years from some of the experimentation and different formats and locations that we've been going into as we've expanded the estate post-pandemic, it's improving progressively the actual selection process. Technology is helpful as well. It's easier to get your head around a huge estate like ours when you've got more technology and tools at your disposal. We've been refining the process. It's had an impact on the number of shops we're taking.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

You'll see we've nudged that down slightly this year, the quality of the openings and the performance of them is better, that's important. If you actually model out the impact of taking fewer shops at a higher ROI versus trying to take more shops to leverage your capacity, it's better to go slightly slower with higher quality returns because you're still having to deploy all that shop capital. That's been really helpful. We have been more than in line with our targets, which are to achieve a mature cash return on investment of 25% after two to three years. The early opening progress on these shops has shown that they are very much in line with the maturity targets that we would expect, and in some cases, ahead of those.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

That is really important to this ambition that we set out to restore return on capital employed to around the 20% level in the medium term. It's also important, though, that this is incremental growth, I referenced this when I looked at the like for like slide at the start. Some other points of reference that we have that give us the reassurance that we are not cannibalizing existing shops. The new catchments that we're going into with new shops, 62% of them don't have an existing shop within a mile. A mile is quite a long way, particularly if you're on foot in a catchment. They are pushing ourselves into areas where there currently isn't Greggs conveniently available. We also monitor the sales transfer from existing shops when we open a new shop.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We anticipate that this will be around 5%, and actually it's coming in slightly below that. Again, some reassurance in terms of the cannibalization there. The one I think is actually probably the most important is by using the app, and we talked about this last year. We can use the app to actually measure real customer behavior when customers who are using existing stores have access to a new store. We can see whether their frequency changes with the existing store repertoire. The evidence again is that it doesn't. It just makes it more convenient for them to come to us more often, which talks to an unmet demand and reinforces, I think, the journey ahead. Finally, the liquidity tax and dividend slide. I always feel this could do with a photo to liven it up, couldn't it, really?

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

The important things on this really are the cash inflow. Strong cash inflow in the first half of GBP 111 million, up from GBP 94 million last year. That means our cash position has improved year-on-year with GBP 16 million of net cash. We've slightly drawn on the RCF, but we were in a net debt position last year, so that's improved year-on-year. We've just extended our revolving credit facility for another year, so that's good until June 2029 with GBP 100 million worth of committed funds. Nothing exciting in the corporation tax rate. 26% is what we'd normally expect, and that's our guidance going forward. Usually runs about 1% ahead of the headline rate.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Then, as we've already flagged, the EPS up from GBP 0.45 to GBP 0.55, and we've maintained the interim dividend, which we'd expect to do until we get back to our preferred level of earnings cover, which is two times covered. That's me. With that, I'll hand you back to Roisin, and we can get into more of the operational and strategic development.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Thank you, Richard. Let me just spend a few minutes now updating you on the progress we're making on our journey to be a multi-channel food on-the-go brand. You will have seen this slide before, slide 15. However, just worthy of a quick reminder of what's made Greggs successful over such a long period of time. The real strengths of the business that help us to continue to win in the market, the breadth of our appeal in terms of having permission to enter new categories, new channels, and new locations, our outstanding value leadership for freshly prepared food and drink, our track record of innovation and constant evolution to meet changing consumer trends, demands, and tastes, our vertical integration, which allows us to offer affordable quality to our customers by driving efficiency right throughout the supply chain.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

The market leading combination of quality and value, ultimately, that's the formula that translates into brand strength. So staying focused on the relevance of our brand is extremely important. It's great to see that our brand strength continues to be market leading. Very importantly, as you can see on the chart on the right of the slide, we continue to be rated the number one brand for value and have seen the gap to our competitors widening. But we do that without compromising on quality, and that's what really differentiates the brand. We continue to grow market share of visits, and this year we've increased that by 0.3 percentage points to 8.7% in a food to go market where the volumes have declined by just under 2% of visits in the year to June. Pressure on disposable income continues to be the biggest market headwind.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Our freshly prepared food, hot options, customizations differentiates us, and it's our loyalty scheme and our value deals that work to really deepen the value offer that we offer to the customer. As I've said many times before, at the heart of Greggs is the food and drink menu, and we work hard to make sure that we stay focused on our purpose, follow the trends and taste, and ensuring that we offer this at great prices. We innovate in traditional categories to broaden our appeal. So an example of that, I mentioned earlier, would be the Chicken Roll. But we also respond to the dietary trends, and we recently refreshed and extended our salad range. There are some pictures just sitting behind Richard.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

That's to try and make sure that there's a broader range out there for the consumer, adding higher protein options, and also making sure that we do more on labeling to make it easier for the customer to make the choice that they want. New categories, such as iced drinks, put Greggs into growth markets where we can bring our value offering to more people. In the first half, this capability enabled us to bring Greggs Iced Matcha to the market. Recently we introduced a new blueberry flavor variant as well, because you just need to keep that excitement for the customer to try something else and something new. This focus continues at pace to ensure we can democratize and we can grow categories across our menu as tastes and trends change.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Now, on estate, Richard has already shared with you the strength of our new shop openings, and we continue to focus on the quality of the opportunities available to us to ensure we deliver profitable shop growth as we extend and reshape our estate and stay relentlessly focused on making sure that we are delivering great returns. As a result, as Richard said, we expect to open between 100-110 net new shops for this year, with an additional 10 trial installations of our new Greggs Express formats. We believe the medium term rate that we will open at will be at least 100 net new openings each year, and the Greggs Express format trials potentially could provide further opportunities.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Our analysis of the market shows that we have a clear opportunity for at least 3,500 shops in the U.K. over the longer term, and that sort of is consistent with the supply chain capacity that we are building. I have just mentioned Greggs Express, but that's just one part of the enhanced flexibility that we've developed in terms of our formats that is opening up additional opportunities in viable locations. Greggs Bitesize, which I've talked about before here, while it's still only in four locations, is showing very promising results and allowing us to bring most of our favorites to locations where the kitchen space is limited. The most recent Bitesize opening that we've just had, for those of you based in London, is London Bridge, where we've now got a small Bitesize location on one of the platforms.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

We've got three convenience self-service Greggs Express trials up and running. They are in petrol forecourt locations. These units allow customers to select coffee, hot food, and sweet treats within our partner's retail space, and we expect to have around 10 of those trial locations open by the end of this year. At the end of May, we did open our international travel hub shop with our new franchise partner, Lagardère, and that is in Tenerife South Airport. It is only one shop, but so far sales to date are very encouraging and are hitting all the hurdles that we've set. As Richard has also alluded to, our grocery bake-at-home range is performing strongly in both Iceland and Tesco, and that continues to add channel flexibility for our customers.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I previously updated you on the national distribution centers, that's Derby and Kettering, and the fact that they will bring upstream picking at scale through greater automation with robotics, reducing the labor intensity. These sites are the ones that create the logistics capacity to support 3,500 shops through our existing network of radial distribution centers. Derby will be operational in the coming months and Kettering in the first half of 2027. Both sites have also got an element of white space that would allow us to develop future logistics and manufacturing capacity as we require it. Richard's mentioned a little bit about technology. We are in the midst of the SAP S/4HANA migration. We are due to complete that in 2027.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

There are many benefits that come with that, such as a more sophisticated forecasting and replenishment system, which can help us drive availability while also reducing waste. AI, it's worth mentioning, is also being used across the business, to both drive standards and deliver efficiencies, particularly in areas focused in colleague service and customer service. We're also deploying agentic AI in a few areas. Our software engineering team are now using that to both build and test new systems at pace, and we'll be doing more of that going forward. Just to quickly mention, we continue to pride ourselves in doing the right thing at Greggs, with significant focus and progress on our commitments under The Greggs Pledge, which is our version of ESG.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Having proudly delivered the majority of the commitments that we set out in 2021, we have now developed a further seven commitments to ensure that we continue to drive stronger, healthier communities, safer planet, and being a better business. It's an area that really brings the teams together to focus on doing even more good. I think you would agree, some great progress and some exciting plans. We've delivered strong profit growth in the first half of 2026 against a soft comparative period last year. The second half profit progress, as Richard has already mentioned, will reflect the headwinds for Derby coming on stream and the phasing of cost inflation in the year. You would expect, the team will continue to innovate in terms of the range, we have got some exciting product plans in the coming months.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Our disciplined shop estate expansion is making Greggs more accessible for our customers, as well as delivering strong returns on investment. Richard's already mentioned, the board's expectations for the full year are unchanged. That's the main update. Just before I finish, I think it's just worth spending a few minutes reflecting on how all of this positions Greggs for future growth. You see the slides behind me. The strength of the brand and the breadth of appeal enables us to rapidly evolve, follow the trends, and stay relevant. Where we see new trends that are driving volume and have brand relevance for us, we follow fast at a value price point, democratizing and making new products accessible to more customers. Ensuring that customers throughout the U.K. can access Greggs remains a compelling and material opportunity. There are still many locations where Greggs are underrepresented.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Innovation is both driving new formats and new channels to generate revenue growth, this continues to be an area that we've got a strong track record. Our supply chain investment will be coming on stream over the next 12 months, providing highly efficient additional logistics capacity that will enable us to extend our reach to 3,500 shops in the U.K. Richard's already mentioned it, we have now come through the peak of the investment cycle, the free cash generation is once again strong and growing, we're focused on returning ROCE to around 20% as we execute on those plans. Thank you for that. What we will now do is we will take the questions in the room, I will also pass some questions to Richard, who will be monitoring the iPad for those of you that are on the webcast.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

There are a couple of microphones in the room, if you do raise your hand, we will get a microphone to you and take your questions at that point. Thank you. Sreedhar, I'll start with you.

[Sreedhar Mahamkali, Analyst at UBS]

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Sreedhar Mahamkali from UBS. First of all, Richard, many congratulations on your retirement. I'm sure you're very proud of your long and successful track record and many contributions to Greggs. I guess you're still on the hook for Q3. Many congrats. Listen, I think three quick questions, please. Clearly, the weather patterns are swinging around the volume numbers and traffic numbers. Anything you can help us in terms of July trading? How it looked like? That'll be very helpful just to understand how recent trends have changed. If not, it'll be great to know anyway. Secondly, both of you have touched on additional shareholder returns and the sort of capacity that's building. If you could talk a little bit about how we should think about cash on the balance sheet, what level you need to be holding on to.

[Sreedhar Mahamkali, Analyst at UBS]

I remember some numbers back in the time, it'll be great to just get a refresher on that. What metrics we should be watching to have a view on the magnitude of additional return, second one. Lastly, I think franchise like-for-like 1.3 versus 2.1 company managed. Is there anything we should be aware of on this fading, and how should we think about it? Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Great. Thank you, Sreedhar. Let me take your sales question and your franchise question, then I will hand over to Richard for shareholder returns. Yeah, the weather does have an impact on trading, as Richard alluded to earlier. Once temperatures get above 28, 30, physiologically, we all eat less, therefore you do see an impact. It's interesting because you can even have very hot days where we see sales impacted and depressed, then it can bounce back the next couple of days where the weather is cooler. July has seen a much better performance over the last few weeks. Higher than the number that we've just reported, slightly higher than our own forecast expectations. That says that actually it bounces back when we sort of have milder, cooler weather and people are back out and about.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

What I do think is we've also done better this year is we've developed more resilience in terms of our range. Having a bigger salad range, having iced drinks, developing matcha, and bringing new flavors to the market is really important because it creates a reason, even in hot weather, for someone to come to Greggs, we'll continue to experiment and do more and lean into that. In terms of franchise, yep, you are right. Normally, our franchise number runs slightly stronger than our company-managed like-for-like. One of our franchise partners is currently going through a structural change across their business, that has impacted on the operational performance across their petrol forecourts. It is only one of the partners. We're working on them to improve that operational performance. If we stripped that partner out, franchise like-for-like still is slightly higher than the company managed.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

The run rate is the same. We just have an issue with one partner that we're working through. It's a structural change they're making, and then they will come through that. I will hand over to Richard on shareholder returns.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

What we should have said is at the very back of your pack is a reiteration of our capital allocation policy. One of the things you'll see in there is we aim to have cash on the balance sheet at the end of the year of about 3% of turnover. That would indicate sort of around GBP 70 million at the end of this year, would be the target. When we get the cash back to that level, we would consider anything over that to be surplus cash. We should start to see that appearing in the next couple of years.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Our track record for the last, gosh, probably 15 years, has been to use special dividends as the mechanic, but we've been open-minded to the idea that, with the share price having been where it has been, that we would certainly look at buybacks as another option. That's a debate that I guess the board will engage with over the months ahead and as we go into next year. One way or the other, that cash would then be returned to shareholders.

[Fin Ryan, Analyst at Goodbody]

Good morning. Fin Ryan here from Goodbody. Firstly, Richard, congratulations on your long tenure, and best of luck in the retirement, and I guess getting your golf handicap up, or down, sorry. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, could you give us a sense in terms of the moving parts on the lower cost inflation guidance for this year? Where did you see the most deflation come in versus your initial expectations, and how does this change your outlook for any incremental pricing, if any, for this year and next? Secondly, just in terms of the initiatives you're doing around sort of de-seasonalizing your menu, so more chilled salads, more chilled drinks. Does this change the CapEx requirements or refurb requirements required for the new stores and also for the retrofits?

[Fin Ryan, Analyst at Goodbody]

You said that number is coming down this year, but should we expect, as the new menu ramps up, an actual significant step up in the store refurb costs? Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I will pass those to you, Richard.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yeah. Lower costs in terms of food inputs. You'll be aware this time last year, we were talking a lot about things like coffee prices, cocoa prices. Those sort of things were quite inflationary, weren't they? We've seen a much softer position on those markets this year. Pork is another one that's obviously important for Greggs, both for our breakfast market and some of our core products. Again, that's been a better market for us, buying pork. Yeah, a number of things that have moved our way. I guess at the start of the year, you can't be sure of that. Particularly as we came through Q1, with all that was going on in the world there, we were slightly more fearful.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We did carry good cover and I think the procurement team have done a great job sort of buying into markets at the right times. I don't think we'll need any incremental pricing in the autumn, which was something that we'd held the option open on. I think what we have in place already will be sufficient. That's a good place to be, not having to go back to the market for more pricing. In terms of CapEx to respond to menu changes, I think ice drinks are the main thing, and we've been doing this for the last couple of years, going around the estate, trying to put ice machines into as many shops as we possibly can. We've got them in, I think, about three quarters of the estate now.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

There are some that are more difficult and will need to come when we refurbish the shop. It's not possible to retrofit the machine to the existing estate except at great expense. The distribution of ice machines will increase. It's not a huge cost. It's a relatively simple execution, that was an important part of the development of that product, was that it should be a simple execution. It should be simple for the shops and relatively low cost. Ours is an over ice drink offer rather than blended and all that sort of thing. Yeah, I think it's not material to the CapEx program is the way I would describe it.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Thank you. I'm going to come over this side now, Kate.

[Kate Calvert, Analyst at Investec]

Kate Calvert from Investec. Two questions from me, first of all, a personal thanks, Richard, for all your help over the years, I hope you do get a black Greggs card as part of your retirement present.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

It's not that.

[Kate Calvert, Analyst at Investec]

In terms of questions, the first one's just on the Bitesize Greggs, which seems to be working well. Can you just give a little bit more detail in terms of how much smaller the range is? Is there a sort of ratio in terms of the profit or turnover of three Bitesize Greggs equals one full range store? Is there some sort of ratio we should think about? In terms of the Greggs Express, how do you think the agreement is going to work? Who's going to pay for the cabinets? Do you take a franchise fee? How do you think that's going to work? Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Sure. Thanks, Kate. Let me talk Bitesize, I'll let Richard talk convenience retail. I guess the way to think about Bitesize is if an average Greggs shop is around 1,200 sq ft-1,400 sq ft, we can fit a Bitesize opportunity in about 800 sq ft. It takes significantly smaller space, that's pretty much because we don't need the same amount of a kitchen production space that we need in a full size shop. The key changes to the range would be sandwiches. In our Bitesize shops, you will not get the range of sandwiches that you would get in a normal size shop. You will get all of the freshly baked products, you'll get the pizzas, all of the savories. You will also get a range of salads.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

You will get the breakfast product, and you will get the drinks range, both hot drinks and iced drinks. Therefore, that makes it a much more compelling opportunity. The reason that we've put it into London Bridge, that's now our third shop in London Bridge. We've got the large shop in the concourse. We've got the shop just outside London Bridge now. This one's been able to fit on a platform that you would otherwise not be able to access. They are doing exceptionally well. From a sales perspective, they take very slightly less than an average full-sized shop. Not significantly, but very slightly. The returns currently are very good.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

What I would caveat it with is we've only got four. When you've only got four, you're a bit reliant on having a couple of winners and then a couple that you're still sort of trying to work on. Just now it's a very compelling opportunity. We've got a pipeline for the end of this year that we'll have several more that we will put down. I think once we get to around 10, you'll then be able to really understand what the returns are and actually what that delivers for us. Just now, very pleasing indeed. If you think about the white space review across the U.K., this just allows us to infill in areas that previously we didn't think we could put a full-size Greggs. Well, actually this bite-sized opportunity allows us to go to those areas where space is much more compromised.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I'll let you talk about convenience retail.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

That's Greggs Express, which is our way of inserting self-service Greggs into, say, a petrol forecourt or potentially other convenience locations over time. All I can really do is explain the basis of the trial that we've got underway.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

If you imagine at the moment in our trial shops, we've got typically two coffee machines, sort of self-serve coffee machines. A cabinet selling sweet treats like donuts, and another cabinet selling hot savories that you can select and take to the counter. They're within a franchisee's environment. It starts on the premise that effectively it's a small version of Greggs on the franchise agreement. The one variation at the moment is that at this stage we are procuring and funding the coffee machines. The coffee machines are on a slightly different basis in that we own the coffee machines, we deploy them, rather than being on the franchise basis, they're on a share of revenue. We take a proportion of the revenue in return for having our machine in the shop. We're just experimenting.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

It's sort of like an open experimentation between us and the franchise partner to make sure it works, and evolves something that's good for both parties, and that would be the objective.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Great. Thanks. Thank you. Darren, we'll come to you next.

[Darren Shirley, Analyst at Shore Capital Markets]

Thank you. Just to Richard, sorry for being a pain in the backside for 20 years. I'll have one last go. I wonder if you could give us a sort of a profit bridge for the second half to get to your guidance, because I sense you've got sort of GBP 4 million of savings to come for a part of your program. There's a couple of million of rates benefit. I think you talked about a GBP 10 million headwind from Derby. If you could just pull that together, please.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yes. Yeah. You've picked out a lot of the component parts. There'll be a little bit of tailwind from annualization of some of the grocery growth that we've seen as well. There's a few things going on there. Then I guess the other thing working the other way is just what happens in the like-for-like environment. Underlying the like-for-like performance, although it's been cash positive, it's been volume negative still, and it's been broadly aligned with what we've seen in the market, which has been a minus two. What you're doing with all those other factors is offsetting a like-for-like sort of underlying volume position, and driving more volume through the network as a whole.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Those are probably the biggest moving parts I would say, along with some effective margin gain from the slight disparity between cost inflation and price inflation as well.

[Darren Shirley, Analyst at Shore Capital Markets]

I'm then thinking is it you're requiring a GBP 10 million negative delta in the second half to get to where consensus is?

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yes, that's broadly it. Yeah. We may be wrong, of course. If things go well, we could be ahead of that. I guess there is some doubt as to ingredient costs for the back end of the year, and you just don't know what's going to happen in the world. Sitting here today, I think we're pleased with where we've got to. As ever, there's a little bit of caution in the outlook.

[Darren Shirley, Analyst at Shore Capital Markets]

Thank you, and good luck.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

We'll come here.

[Gary Martin, Analyst at Davy]

It's Gary Martin here from Davy. First of all, Richard, I'll queue up behind the people that's wishing you a happy retirement. Thanks for all the help along the way, and I wish you the best. Just a couple questions from my side. I'll start with the cost outlook first of all. It's a bit of a tricky one. Might need a bit of a crystal ball. Cost into FY 2027 and rollover risk, how do you think about that? Would be my first question. Then Roisin, just one on the like for like piece. I'd just like to gauge how important is the value component? Like, how much promotion is currently going through the system in terms of meal deals, and how important is that to overall growth? Thanks.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Sure. Let me take the value question first, then I'll hand over to Richard on the cost outlook, Gary. Yeah, I think being relentlessly focused on our value proposition is absolutely critical to us. I think that's important in terms of making sure that the consumer sees individual price points that are very strong, and the price points that they know us for. Also making sure that we are by far the best offering out there in terms of your meal deal proposition. Holding our breakfast meal deal at GBP 3.25 is critically important to make sure that we continue to take share in the breakfast market. Our big deal, our lunch deal, our three-part deal at GBP 5.25, where you can get both freshly prepared, you can get hot food, you can get customized food. Again, differentiates us out there in the market.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Whenever we talk about value, we talk about the quality and price equation. It's got to be about compelling price for the customer, but you've got to make sure that the quality is there as well. That's why the chart that we showed earlier, where you can see where Greggs sit on that quality and price equation is so focused and so important for us. I think in terms of the cost outlook, what's helpful is knowing that we have managed the cost well for this year and inflation has come down, protecting the price point for the customer then through to the end of the year, I think is exceptionally important as well in driving that value. On cost outlook for next year?

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yeah, our procurement team's view is that essentially there's a sort of like a stored up pressure coming from energy costs within supply chains, which flows through into things like fertilizers and then into agricultural crops, and then into feed costs, into proteins. It does take a while to flow through the system. Their expectation is that they start to see some of that inflation coming in around the end of the year and coming into next year more so. We can't be sure, of course, but that's, as you say, it is crystal ball gazing to a degree, but I think there's a logic to that kind of progression. I think in that context, I would say, we've dealt with a lot of inflation, haven't we, over the last three, four years. Some extraordinary inflation, and it's affected the whole market.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

It's unhelpful to consumers, what we've shown over the time is that as retailers, we've all acted fairly rationally and been able to pass that through, albeit we've put some pressure on the market overall, and I think that's what we're seeing now. We'd like it to be less, relative to our competition, we still have that deep value, and therefore, I think we should feel confident that we can deal with inflation if it rears up. It doesn't feel like, though, it's anything like the sort of experience that we've had over the last few years. Sorry, was there a follow-up?

[Gary Martin, Analyst at Davy]

A quick follow-up. Just out of curiosity then, let's just assume that potentially inflation steps up into next year. Is there an elasticity risk as you pass those prices through? I mean, is that the reason why you didn't choose to increase prices in the autumn this year? Is that due to the fear of elasticity across the portfolio? How do you think about that? Do you have any good data points?

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We do to some degree, but it's more about taking the long-term value position and not wanting to compromise that and not wanting to be opportunistic and risking eroding that because it's what's made Greggs great over the years, is being able to come in to these categories and offer a comparable product at a discounted price. We tend to take the long view on these things. I think we'll have a decent year without needing to do that, frankly. That then effectively you keep that capacity for the future when you might actually need it, and that's the view we would take.

[Gary Martin, Analyst at Davy]

Makes sense. I'll pass it on.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Can I very quickly take a couple of online questions?

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Yes.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

I don't want to neglect the online questioners. Just very quickly, Salman, you asked about how we would distribute cash. I think I've addressed that. You also asked about what happened in the latter part of the first half to bring down the overall like-for-like on company managed shops to 2.1 from the previous level. The answer is hot weather, and I hope Roisin sort of addressed that really. There's a very clear impact of hot weather, and we can see that since the hot weather sort of receded, it's been much better in the last few weeks. Today will be a difficult day. It's going to be very hot out there. There we go. We're getting used to that. Then Ben at Panmure Gordon, who's asked a bit about what's driving B2B profits and margins more at the moment.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Is it the franchise element or the grocery side? Traditionally, it's been the franchise element of that that's been growing because grocery has been relatively mature. Grocery is taking a step up, and that's, as I say, starting to annualize through the second half of this year. There's been a greater contribution to growth in B2B from grocery. I think you should continue to expect that in the longer term, it's extending the franchise relationships that will grow the B2B segment of our business.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Great. Thanks, Richard. We'll take a question here if we've got a mic. Thank you, Henry.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you. Good morning. It's Tim Ramskill from Bank of America. I guess I'll take a different slant on the congratulations to Richard and congratulate him on the fact that the share price went down when the news broke, which I think is a great endorsement of you. Well done. You and I emailed each other about that on the day indeed. I guess three questions from me. Just Richard, maybe can you just remind us on the overall Derby, Kettering kind of cost phasing. You've talked specifically about H2. Obviously, that will roll into next year, but then just how sort of Kettering kicks in and when you think that will be. You've given more explicit guidance, I would say, today on medium term openings. I know it's been a long standing debate, but you're pretty clear now on the kind of at least 100.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

That's perhaps a little bit less than some people have got. Is that a reflection of your comments around recent openings doing really well and the point you make about quality over quantity? Also within that, just interested in sort of how much opportunity you still see with franchisees to be a contributor to that store opening. The last question, given again, it seems to be progressing well, where do you see kind of grocery opportunity more medium term? Is there anything to stop you extending the product range into, if you like, the full suite of grocers out there?

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Sure. I will pass Derby and Kettering to Richard, I will pick up on your medium term opportunities and your grocery opportunity, Tim.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yeah. Next year is a bit of a pinch point for the Derby, Kettering cost in that we have got annualization of Derby at the same time as we start to introduce Kettering. I think we have been clear in sort of our guidance that we would not expect a huge amount of progress next year as we absorb those new costs. Obviously that does depend on overall like-for-like volume performance as well. We gave some guidance a little while ago that said broadly sort of 40 basis points for each site over a couple of years. The phasing matters, broadly, we would expect to be absorbing most of that cost next year, and then from 2028, we should be moving to a point where we start to leverage that as we grow the estate and grow volumes through the network.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

We should start to sort of see some recovery then. If you look at both margins, return on capital for the business as a whole, we should see some, I think, broad stability over the next couple of years, followed by a steady increase as we get back towards a more normal level. I think there is no real change in the overall pattern of it. The timing is slightly different, I think it is pretty much in line with what we have guided.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

If I touch on grocery opportunity, I think the thing to say on grocery opportunity currently is there is still more to be done with our existing partners. Although we have been a partner with Iceland for many years now, we have just recently extended our range with Iceland. We have just introduced two new pizza products into Iceland. The Margherita Pizza and the Pepperoni Pizza have both now gone into Iceland. That is doing exceptionally well. We believe with innovation, there will be more to do with them. With Tesco, actually, there is still significantly more to be done currently. We have just recently launched the Vegan Sausage Roll into the largest Greggs Tesco shops, and we have just gone into their smaller format shops with two of the most popular lines.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Where we are just now is almost, let's maximize those two relationships and let's see what else we can be doing with those partnerships, and the reach that they've got into their customer base. We keep a watching brief on and where else could that go in the future. For now, it's about, let's maximize the two great relationships we've got and let's see how we can extend that range. In terms of medium-term opportunities, yeah, we've said at least 100 net new openings going forward. Back to Richard's previous point, that is about, it's always been about quality of opportunity and not simply chasing a number. Could there be upsides in certain years? Yes, there could. Are we doing more with partners? Yes, we are.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

There's probably some other opportunities that we're trying to work on just now that over the next five years could mean that there's some upside to those numbers. However, the sort of mantra with the team has got to be, we take the opportunities that are going to deliver the ROI, and the 25% is absolutely critical, which is why we are so confident in what we've delivered this year and the pipeline going forward. In terms of franchise opportunity, franchise is currently 22% of the total estate. We've always said that we would feel very comfortable moving that towards a quarter of the total estate. With our 15 current franchise partners, we are constantly looking at other opportunities, and working with them to try and find the right balance and catchments around what's a franchise opportunity versus what's a company managed opportunities.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

If I sit with the property director and I look at the pipeline going forward, it is a very healthy pipeline, which is why we've got the confidence to say, actually, in the white space review, we believe there is a space for at least 3,500 shops across the U.K. We're confident in that number, but it will always be about the quality of the returns. Question just at the back there.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Hi there. Ross Broadfoot from RBC. Just one on like-for-like growth at the company managed sites in a couple of parts. Which segments of the estate are driving the like-for-like growth? Is there anything you would pick out about different locations? Then secondly, could you give any color on how much of that like-for-like is being driven by the maturation of newer sites? Obviously, just trying to get a bit of steer on how the mature estate is performing. Thanks.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I'll hand this to you.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Yeah. At the rate we're growing, Ross, typically, the sort of tailwind for maturity from new shops is about 20 basis points in the like-for-like numbers. It's not huge. If we stopped growing today, I would expect it to drop by about that sort of rate. In terms of different performance across the estate, the only thing, I think the sort of the mature sort of high street estate is slightly slower than the newer locations that we're moving into, where typically you would be accessing them by car. It's not a huge difference, though, but there is a slight bias towards those, which is why we're keen on getting more of those over time. The interesting thing is how they perform in the heat wave, though, is very different.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

It's kind of logical, but those walk-in locations are much more affected by the heat wave, and particularly later in the day. The breakfast period tends to be quite robust. As that temperature builds later in the day, if you're out in the heat, you're much more affected. If you're in an air-conditioned shopping center or office area, or indeed a drive-through where you're in your own car, actually, demand holds up much, much better. It's about the customer and what kind of condition or environment they're in as they're shopping makes quite a profound difference. Now, you can't change that shape of the estate overnight, obviously, but it's been quite interesting just to see.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

We'll probably take two more questions in the room, and then we'll check if you get anything online. Russell.

[Russell Pointon, Analyst at Edison Investment Research]

Give it to Conroy as well because he's had his hand up a lot.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

How are you?

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Yeah, you go first, then hand it over to Russ.

[Conroy Gayne, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Yeah, Conroy Gayne of Bloomberg Intelligence. Richard, as you reminded me, you do still have a few months left in the role. In case I don't get to say this at 3Q, just want to say congratulations, thank you for everything, wish you all the very best. Question number one, on going back to the heat waves. While it's still a challenge, it seems like you're doing a better job of managing things on the revenue side and the cost side. How does that actually work in practice? How do you maintain that degree of flexibility from a labor scheduling point of view or menu point of view? That still must be a challenge in itself, right?

[Conroy Gayne, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

The second one, just to pick up on AI, has there been any areas of real positive surprise or maybe even negative surprise on an ROI perspective that perhaps is less obvious to us from the outside looking in? Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Sure. Let me probably take those. Yes, it's a fine art in terms of managing costs when you've got the heatwave coming. I think what we have done this year, though, is we have been using data analytics much better to predict when we've got these heatwaves coming. To your point about managing labor, you're sort of always trying to manage that three weeks out. I would say that the retail operational team have done a fantastic job at trying to spot, three weeks out, those trends, keep labor at a level that we think is right for the sales that we're going to take, and then you can increase it because you can almost offer overtime shifts and allow people to come in should you start to see an uptick or should the weather not be as hot.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

I think there's been lots of learning from last year, and the team have done a brilliant job this year. I think the other thing is we're doing lots of experimentation on menu. We took some learning last year around what do you want to eat when it's hot, and actually some of our freshly baked options you don't want to eat. What we've actually done in certain locations, particularly down south, on certain key weeks, we've reduced that range. We've actually just said from a production bake plan that we send to the shops every evening before, bake less of these products. Again, that's trying to sort of take some learning around actually, do you still have availability, but you're reducing your waste, thank you, Vi.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

You're reducing your wage costs, therefore the whole cost scenario becomes much stronger, which is why the profit drop through has been much stronger this year, even though we've had the hit on sales. I think there's more learning to be taken. Just now, part of the reason that we're doing some small experimentation is what else can we learn this year? Because the hot weather patterns are just now a feature of the U.K., therefore, we just need to build resilience in. We've also got in about 250 shops, we've got very slim self-selectors that have got ice lolly, ice cream type products. Again, it means that if you come in for your iced drink, there is another product that you might want to buy. Really trying to focus on that resilience is absolutely critical.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Being agile, both in the range that we've got out, because if you think about it, our colleagues every morning choose how many sandwiches we're putting out. We send down a production plan to them, then they make those sandwiches. We can reduce that should we think we need to. You've also got products with life. You've got your salads, you've got your fruit pots, you've got your yogurts. They've got with life. Again, they help sort of bolster the range. You can pull down the bake plan as well. There's a number of levers that we are getting better at managing, which is part of the performance this year. In terms of AI, I wouldn't probably talk about it in terms of ROI. I think it's more about the pace that you can do things.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

We've had a few presentations that have come along to us as a sort of executive team in the business that are actually showcasing to us, particularly areas like our software engineers and areas like maintenance in our shops, where actually we're able to do things much quicker because we're using AI. 80% of what the software engineers are doing now is actually done by the agentic AI first before then they intervene. They've got to have the skill. With AI, what you've got to do is you've got to have the skill to design the right prompts, ask the right questions, and then set AI up right to sort of manage that for you. We're finding that once that agentic AI is set up, actually it is delivering a faster pace and better productivity.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

In our customer service areas and our colleague service areas, we're finding that the throughput of queries that the team can deal with, so the SLAs are just getting quicker and quicker, which should lead to efficiencies then in terms of the number of queries you get or the number of people you need in those teams. It's probably many faster benefits, but it's all about driving efficiency and pace.

[Conroy Gayne, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence]

Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Russel, we will come to you as the last question in the room, and then we'll just check is there anything online.

[Russell Pointon, Analyst at Edison Investment Research]

I guess the honor of the last question comes to me, unfortunately, the last question that I had was just asked. I'll move on to my weaker question. Before that, I just want to say thank you for Richard for your help and hope to see a good improvement in your cycling times going forward. Not really much has been asked on Tenerife, and I appreciate it's very small, but could you just talk about the seasonality of that business and how what you do might change through the year? Because I assume it's busier in the summer and a bit quieter through the winter.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Interestingly, I think the learning for those of us that maybe aren't regular visitors to Tenerife, we're actually in low season just now in Tenerife. We've opened in low season and actually in Tenerife, I guess it's the Canary Islands, you move into high season as you come out of the summer months, so September, October actually becomes the high season. I guess the good piece is opening in low season and still delivering the sales numbers actually allows the team over there to become operationally proficient in the Greggs way of operating. There's lots of work just now going on in terms of that operating model. When we opened, actually, we didn't open at breakfast time. We actually opened after breakfast time. We've now pulled the hours back to get the team to do breakfast. That's providing a very compelling opportunity.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

What we're also doing, Lagardère are a very strong travel operator. What they are doing is they're now working with Tenerife South Airport around the flight schedules coming up, because I think the key piece in an airport like that is making sure you are very well signposted as you come through, so that actually you can see there's a Greggs there. Making sure you start to match your production and availability and resource with the flight schedule. There's still some more work to be done, but we actually see the uptake in sales probably coming beyond September, when actually we see the flight schedule really ramping up. We're in low season just now, about to move to high season.

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

Just one thing, if I could add. A really interesting thing that is starting to emerge, and we have seen this in shopping centers as well in the U.K., is that some of your demand isn't just coming from travelers, it is coming from people who work at the airport. As your reputation for what you provide and what the value proposition cuts through and the word gets around in the airport, people are starting to use you, and there is a base trade that is building, which is the employees of the airport as well. That is really interesting, I think, because many of them will perhaps not be familiar with Greggs, so that is a great experiment.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Anything online that we have not got to?

[Richard Hutton, CFO at Greggs]

I think we are good. Thank you.

[Roisin Currie, CEO at Greggs]

Excellent. Well, I think just a final thank you to Mr. Richard Hutton for his interim results and all the support personally that he has given me. Thank you for your time today.

Participants

Executives

• Roisin Currie, CEO
• Richard Hutton, CFO

Analysts

• Sreedhar Mahamkali, Analyst at UBS
• Fin Ryan, Analyst at Goodbody
• Kate Calvert, Analyst at Investec
• Darren Shirley, Analyst at Shore Capital Markets
• Gary Martin, Analyst at Davy
• Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America
• Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC
• Russell Pointon, Analyst at Edison Investment Research
• Conroy Gayne, Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence