Videndum Plc (VTEPF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Prepared Remarks Transcript

Welcome to the Videndum half-year results 2026. I'll now hand it over to Chairman Stephen Harris to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the call. I'm Stephen Harris. I have with me today Brian Morgan, our Chief Financial Officer. If we move to slide 2, you can see the agenda that we've got this morning, a very short agenda. I'll be doing a quick overview, just talk about significant events that impacted us in this first half. Brian will take you through a financial review. I'll come back for the strategy and operational priorities piece, into the outlook.

Just a quick overview. It's more than fair to say that our half one for us has been very difficult. A lot disappointing for us, as I'm sure it is for the shareholders. The like-for-like revenues, in fact, if you adjust for discontinued brands at constant currency, is just about flat with the prior year. There's underlying growth in there [indiscernible] also some downward swings. We'll talk about that in a minute. We got an increase in EBITDA to GBP 3 million, GBP 2.3 million of adjusted operating cash flow, despite the fact we had an operating loss. Net debt has decreased by GBP 103 million. We're sitting at GBP 39.3. That includes the leases, of course. Brian will unpick that as to how that comes about and what's involved in that.

The significant events, I would like to have called this key achievements, but unfortunately you wouldn't want some of these