Good morning everybody and thank you very much for coming and welcome to our Interim Results Presentation. You've got Mike an I presenting this morning, our Chairman, Gareth Davis is over here too and Tessa Bamford is over there, Independent Non-Executive Director. Nice to be with us here this morning, so thank you.

We're going to follow a bit of a different format this morning. We want to put this set of results into some context and the initiatives that we're pursuing into the context of the progress that we've made over the last few years.

We believe that will help underline our confidence in the further development and growth of the business well into the future. Well first let me share with you the highlights of the first half. We made good progress in the development of our strategic initiatives and we'll come back to those a little bit later.

Our most significant operating priority this half was to deliver great service and availability to our customers to continue to drive profitable growth. And the overall organic growth rate in our Blended Branches business in the United States as you can see from the chart was 9.7% with all of the regions growing strongly.

Together, those Blended Branches regions plus Waterworks account for two thirds of our group. Overall the Group's gross margins were slightly ahead. Trading profits were 8% ahead of last year despite one less trading day and also the impact of some of our investments which Mike will take you through later.

We continue to convert those profits effectively into cash funding significant organic growth initiatives and acquisitions. We also netted more than $250 million of disposal proceeds and we ended the half year with net debt of 1.1 times EBITDA which will improve on further in the second half. That's enabled us to fund dividend growth of 10%.

Now there's the highlights. Mike is now going to take us through the financial performance and also the work that our team has been doing to move our [indiscernible] back to the UK..

Thanks, good morning. I'm pleased to present the Group's half year results for the six months just finished and we have had a good start to our financial year. Revenue for the Group was again driven by strong growth in our U.S. business.

We generated decent gross margin progression 10 basis points up, ongoing trading profit $744 million, up $53 million, that's up 8% in constant currency. Headline EPS up nearly 20% and it's worth also noting that we had one fewer trading day in the first half of the year.

And reflecting our confidence in a balance sheet the excellent track record of cash generation we've increase the interim dividend by 10% and you can see the balance sheet remains in good shape at the end of the half at 1.1 times levered.

So moving to the revenue and trading profit growth slide, on the left I've bridged the revenue growth, that's the $9,865 million in half one last year to the $10,666 million in half one this year.

After adjusting for the FX which you can see decreased revenue by $70 million you can see the constant currency growth of 8.9%, that's split into the organic growth of 6.5 we lose about 0.5% due to the trading day that I mentioned and acquisitions added 3%.

On the right, you see the corresponding effect on the trading profit bridge from the $691 million to the $744 million that we've just delivered. Foreign exchange costing us too taking us to the $689 million organic flow through adding $51 million of trading profit.

Trading day was worth about $12 million the other way and acquisitions added 16, that number is net of transaction and integration costs. Revenue growth in the U.S. remained strong in half one, good markets, inflation running at around 3%. You can see that the revenue comparatives clearly get tougher as we move into the second half.

In the UK, on a like-for-like basis broadly flat inflation within that number is about 2% to 3%. Canada revenue growth reduced through the period, Resi markets slowing as a result of the rising interest rates, government measures to restrict the mortgage credit there, inflation again in Canada running at around the 2% to 3% mark.

We do expect to see lower organic growth in the second half. John will give you our take on the markets as we look forward a little later. Now let me just move into the regional results and importantly our USA business our largest region first, which delivered a good performance.

We continue to grow the wider market in the USA, all our businesses delivering strong revenue growth. During the first half there is a small benefit in gross margins arising from the recent own brand acquisitions somewhat offset by the diluted impact of the very strong growth that we saw in the industrial business.

Overall, I'd expect gross margins to be flat in the second half. Labor cost inflation was around 3.5%, distribution costs were impacted by higher inflation. During the second quarter headcount growth was also too high and since December we've reduced associate numbers by about 600 full-time equivalents.

That was probably worth something like $10 million to $15 million of higher costs in the second quarter. And clearly given our guidance on revenue in the outlook statement today we'll continue to tightly control cost growth through the rest of the year particularly labor given that it represents about 60% of our operating costs.

So overall trading profit $700 million, $53 million ahead of last year trading margins at 7.9%. I've split the breadth of that organic revenue growth out in the U.S. on Page 9. You can see that it's pretty broadly based geographically and across the business units.

For Blended Branches we generated 8.4% in the East, just over 10% in the West and 9.2% growth in the central region. Revenue growth in e-Business standalone was lower as planned as we continue to consolidate the pay-per-click advertising spend across fewer trading websites. Waterworks continues to grow well.

HVAC and Industrial both particularly had strong performances. And the end-markets in the U.S. on the next slide, here we've shown the market growth and also our organic growth against those numbers for the first half.

Residential markets grew well driven by good RMI markets that represent the majority of our revenue though this growth did moderate slightly in the second quarter. Commercial markets remained good, market growth of around 5%.

Infrastructure market growth moderated slightly, but was growing at reasonable levels and overall you can see our outperformance against those markets continued at good levels. So having covered the U.S., let me move on to the UK and in the UK the market remained weak and at best flat against a weak RMI market.

Revenue in the UK was lower at constant currency due to the impact of the branch closures and the exit of the low margin business that we did last year.

Gross margin is slightly ahead due to the improved product mix and trading profit of $30 million was some $8 million lower, this was roughly $2 million of FX and about $3 million for our mostly UK business and $3 million for our Soak.com business which is our BI'll be to see business since the end of the first off with us he sold the search business which is our B2C business.

Since the end of the first half we've actually sold the Soak business which was a non-call online consumer business, phenomenal value. I've included on the charts the revenue and trading profit impact of that business.

In the core business we've also exited the National Distribution Center and disposed of it and relocated the support services office in Leamington Spa in December as we had planned to do. Canada, Canada achieved 2.1% organic revenue growth in the first half, markets weakening progressively through the period, mainly due to those residential markets.

Residential markets in Canada just to remind you, represents about 60% of our business mix there. However, really pleasingly despite that market backdrop, gross margins were a little bit ahead.

Costs were well-controlled and therefore you can see a good uplift in the profit of $6 million to $39 million, very pleasing in Canada to see us getting onto the margins and on to the cost curve despite the markets being softer. So moving on to exceptional items, here you can see whilst they are negligible overall, there's a number of moving parts.

You can see on the slide the proceeds from the sale of Wasco, that was the Dutch plumbing and heating business which we completed in the period. We made a $38 million gain on that disposal. The UK restructuring charges totaling $31 million and that brings to an end the spend on this restructuring phase in the UK.

We've also sold some of our shareholding in our Swiss Associate at the end of the six months period. Following the end of the period, we also have received a further $45 million roughly of disposal proceeds from UK non-core assets as part of the restructuring program.

Finance and tax charges, as expected effective tax rate for the year as previously guided to be 22% to 23% as we benefit this year from the USA tax reforms, and as previously guided, we expect this to move up to 25% to 26% from next financial year, financial year 2020 mainly due to the Swiss tax reform.

Turning to cash flow, good strong cash generation, that continues to be a feature of the business. Cash flow from operations $287 million after a normal seasonal working capital outflow. Capital investment, that includes the additional investments into the new Perris distribution center in Southern California. That will be completed later this year.

We also completed a number of attractive acquisitions in half one. You can see the cash outflow there on the slide of $589 million mainly in the USA and included a couple of slightly larger transactions. Jones Stephens, rough plumbing own brand business and Blackman of which John will touch on later.

The cash received from disposals predominantly relates to the Dutch plumbing and heating business and also some surplus Nordic property disposals and you can see the total of those being generating cash inflow of $255 million in the period.

All that means that we finished the period with a strong balance sheet, net debt to EBITDA just over one times levered.

The net pension asset is now in surplus on an accounting basis $154 million, that follows us putting in additional funding contributions to the UK scheme in the second half of last year and our minimum lease operating commitments remain unchanged at $1.1 billion.

And as normal I'd expect us as a business to deliver a touch through the second half towards the end of the financial year. So having covered the results, let me just cover a couple of other financial like items in the press release this morning. Firstly, we have announced our intention to move Ferguson's tax domicile back to the UK from Switzerland.

You'll remember that the company moved its tax domicile to Switzerland in 2010. Since then the benefits of the Swiss tax domicile have reduced over time and with the recent announced changes there, that having proposed in Switzerland it makes it less competitive for us to remain there going forward.

The proposal requires a scheme arrangement and shareholder approval at the general meeting in April and if approved the effective date would be the 10th May 2019 and clearly we will distribute further details in due course.

It is anticipated that after the implementation that the Group's effective tax rates would remain exactly in line with previous guidance of 25% to 26% for financial year 2020.

And finally, I can feel the excitement in the room, IFRS16, a number of other companies all have been talking to you about this and whilst the standard does not apply to Ferguson until next year, we're a late adopter because of our year end, so our first financial year will be next year.

I did want to give you an early view of where I think the numbers will land which we've included on the slide. The standard just to remind you has no impact on the Group's financial or business plans. It has no impact on the capital allocation policy of the Group and it doesn't impact any of our cash payments or our credit ratings.

At this stage as I say the numbers are indicative. They are subject to change because they are somewhat six months early, but of course I'll update you with firmer numbers as we get to the year-end presentation and clearly into next year we can take you into more detail. Technical guidance for the year, most of this remains unchanged.

As you would expect the trading days in the second half are the same as in the second half last year.

I've included the impact of the completed acquisitions mostly in the USA to give you the full FY '19 full-year figures and the full-year trading profit there I've split between the gross number and the impact of acquisition and sort of transaction and integration costs.

I'd now expect the M&A activity pipeline to be much more modest in the second half of the year with a much more normal level of activity that we see in our pipeline. So let me conclude. We've had a good first half, over $50 million of trading profit improvement year-on-year, a good solid first half performance. We continue to generate good cash flow.

We have a strong balance sheet and both of these fundamentals remain key strengths of our business. Thank you, I'll hand back to John..

Thanks Mike. A riveting stuff on IFRS16 there, thank you. And now, today we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the development of our business and the attractions of our business model. What is attractive about our business today? Just on this chart here, I think there are four things to mention.

Firstly, in the top left here, in most of our markets the market structure itself is very attractive. There is a real need for our services. On the top right, just a reminder, we are differentiated by the services that we offer. We offer highly value-added services to our customers.

Bottom right, we have the opportunities available for growth in our core markets are absolutely fantastic. And bottom left we are able to consistently generate market-leading returns. I'll touch on each of these in turn.

On to the market structure, we used this chart last time to demonstrate the fragmented nature of the markets that we operate in and the market-leading positions that we occupy in the majority of them. Just a reminder, our business is primarily focused on repair, maintenance and improvements market.

This typically involves smaller nondiscretionary projects with quite short lead times. The RMI market has also traditionally been a less volatile market than the new construction market and RMI now accounts for 60% of our revenue. The second key attribute, we are differentiated. This slide from last year is also a reminder, we don't just sell products.

We have a differentiated service offering providing support for our customers' projects delivered by the best associates in our industry and highly valued by our customers. And if kind of touch on the growth opportunities, our underlying markets have really good demographics.

Population growth another social factor support the expansion of home formation and consumers demand more comfortable and better appointed homes and buildings over time.

We've also built a really enviable sales culture in the business which captures more than our share of that growth and incremental investment opportunities to support organic growth are actually quite modest. There are plenty of opportunities for profitable bolt-on acquisitions.

We will have excellent opportunities for profitable growth in our core markets for many, many years to come. If we look at where our growth has come from in recent years, this is the picture, since 2010 we've grown by 7.3% per year. That's across the Group for all the ongoing businesses.

Market growth has accounted for just over 3% per year of growth with the U.S. of course being somewhat higher. We've always shared the objective with our team that we should grow profitably in excess of the market and we've consistently taken market share by growing between 2.5% and 3% faster than the market.

And we've also completed selected bolt-on acquisitions. Those have added between 1% and 2% growth each year. Now the potential and growth of our gross margins is also an important attribute of our business.

We've aligned with the right vendors and carefully managed our mix whilst developing our own brand and that's ensured that we can add value to our customers and also recover that value in our pricing. We've usually achieved gross margin improvements as you can see from the chart of between 10 and 20 basis points per year over many years.

Now since 2010 we've also grown trading profits by a growth rate of 16% per year. That flow through to trading profit is a function of both growth, gross margin improvements, and productivity enhancements. We continue to believe that for our company the double-digit flow through is a good performance in decent market conditions.

Moving on to returns, we don’t very often show a chart like this, but this shows our return on capital over the last 10 or 11 years. We are a very results focused business.

We've improved returns substantially by a combination of driving profitability and careful balance sheet management most notably making sure that we've got the right inventory in the right place at the right time and that we're also commercially astute in the management of our trade receivables book.

Now over the last 10 years we've exited a number of weaker or subscale markets where decent returns were not available and we returned $3.5 billion of surplus cash to our shareholders in the process in excess of $2.3 billion of ordinary dividends.

Today, we have a much stronger, simpler, more focused business with excellent positions in the markets where we are well equipped to win. We think we're in a great place now to capitalize on those opportunities to consolidate and gain market share profitably.

Now, I'd like to just touch on a number of initiatives that we are driving today in the business. Denver is a large and profitable market where our teams have made fantastic progress in gaining market share over several years. Today, we've got over 70 branches in the region.

We are servicing them from distribution center facilities more than a thousand miles away [indiscernible] mountain range.

We are constantly looking at our logistics networks, including trucking every replenishment journey and every final mile delivery we make, whether that's internally or via carrier, that's what all those strange spider lines are on the map.

Now we're building a new facility in Denver and this will consolidate four existing sites and provide next day replenishment to our branch network and same-day delivery to customers across the region. That will significantly enhance customer service. And the economics of this are quite straightforward.

The whole of the operating costs of this facility will be offset by the reduction in freight costs that we currently incur. That's very similar to the economics if you remember of the Celina DC that we opened in Ohio in 2014.

Now people don't always associate distribution with innovation, but as we've talked before, we are trying to break the mold on this one with our innovation unit co-located in San Francisco and Atlanta. The example here on the chart supply.com is a plumbing and heating products business selling those products to professionals across the country.

We provide personalized account management from our call center and we fulfill orders from distribution center. There are no branches and there are no field sales. The business is growing more than 30% per year and is now doing more than $120 million a year. We've talked before about our sharpened focus on own brand products.

These expand the choices of the range available to our customers and capture a greater share of the value in the value chain. Fredrick York which is shown on this chart, this is a range of decorative plumbing products launched in Canada during the year, designed specifically for the local Canadian market.

It's really nice quality product, sourced from overseas and available both in our showrooms and our branches. That rollout supported by specific marketing measures including a transactional website, all developed using resources from within our group.

Own brand sales now accounted for 8% of sales in the first half up more than 1% on last year and growing every month. We continue to find some really nice bolt-on acquisitions. We' talked before about the huge New York, New Jersey market.

This was a region in which we were substantially underpenetrated a few short years ago, but we have been busy, and it's worthwhile reflecting on the last few years of growth. In 2012 we bought Davis & Warshow.

This was the market leader in residential and commercial plumbing in Metro New York and we followed that by Karl’s, which is an appliance business to add on to our residential showrooms business.

We supported the business by building new distribution centers, you can see Upstate New York, not quite to scale I'm afraid, the COX [ph] actually won there and we also built a market distribution center on New Jersey for fulfillment of orders within the city.

In 2017 we added Ramapo and then more recently we've added Wallwork, a New Jersey based HVAC business. Blackman is our latest acquisition. This is a significant expansion for us in Long Island with 23 branches a number of really nice showrooms in great locations and the distribution center expanding our service proposition in the significant markets.

Blackman generated $240 million of revenue last year in the plumbing, heating, HVAC and waterworks consequence. Now you can hardly see Manhattan on the map. But that is partly because of the size of our docks. As with all acquisitions, the hard work starts with integration.

We've had over 100 associates working hard on integrating acquisitions this year and we'll incur acquisition and integration costs of $15 million. But looking through all the short-term pain what are we doing, we're building the best plumbing and heating business and this fantastic markets which will yield substantial returns in the years ahead.

In the UK our new team has brought a real operational focus to business defining a consistent new product range across the network, improving inventory availability, and focusing relentlessly on customer service. We are focusing on our core plumbing and heating and infrastructure businesses.

We've exited the peripheral low return activities including BCG last year. Mike mentioned the B2C business as well as our fabrication activities. At the same time, we continue to lower the cost base to ensure that we generate the best returns available from the business.

Today, growth has pretty elusive, but our team is now starting to see some real momentum and we do expect to see better financial returns now in future. Moving on to the current market backdrop and our outlook.

We track data points from numerous economic industry and research sources as well as surveying our own customers and clearly measuring our own order books. It's fair to say over recent months that some indicators have softened. This chart from Zelman is probably a decent proxy for the market sentiment in the U.S.

as we move into spring with the growth rates for building products having moderated over recent months. So how do we expect to operate in the coming months? First of all we're going to keep our focus on availability and customer service to continue to take market share profitably.

We will actively manage our cost base which Mike talked about across all cost categories and we're going to be very targeted without capital investments and acquisition plans. And of course we expect to continue to be highly cash generative and continue to follow our prudent capital allocation policy.

Just touching on that, we set out a decade ago our very simple views on the balance sheet. The principle that we established was to maintain net debt at no more than 1 to 2 times EBITDA which you can see in those trend lines on the chart and we've operated in the lower end of those limits ever since.

One day there'll be another downturn and at that time, we want to be able to continue to focus on customer service, on availability, on the operations and strategy of our business with a rock solid balance sheet. We continue to think that those limits are about right. We're at 1.1 times in January.

We are less than 1 times today and as Mike said, we expect to continue to brink that down rest of the year.

We've also significantly reduced our reliance on landlords brining lease commitments down to just over $1 billion and I hope we're being good stewards to our retirements funds of our associates eliminating the accounting deficits and derisking pension schemes along the way.

Now on to the outlook, after strong revenue growth throughout the first half our growth rate has moderated recently in line with market conditions. We expect to continue to grow in the second half with organic growth rates likely to be in the range of 3% to 5%.

We expect to deliver trading profit towards the lower end of expectations for the full year. That's it from me. Thank you very much indeed for your attention. Mike and I are very happy now to clarify anything that's unclear and take any questions and comments..

I've got the Mike, shall I? It's Paul Checketts of Barclays.

Can I just ask a couple of I suppose obvious questions, but if you thought about back to the last time we heard from you guys, what is it that's changed really to reduce your outlook for revenue growth and perhaps you could enlighten us a bit in terms of the verticals how is that trending? And then the second is this, there are obviously potential implications for the drop through margin flow through margin in a lower growth environment, is it conceivable that in the second half with lower growth and actually that flow-through could increase? Thanks..

So I'll take the first bit and you'll take the second bit?.

Yes..

Look, I think what's changed. Firstly, if you took our organic growth rates in the first half it was 6.5%. Okay? And we're guiding in the second half to between 3% and 5%. The first thing is strange, if you recall from the Zelman charts that showed volume and price.

I think that there is likely now in the second half to be quite a lot lower inflation Paul than there was in the first half. It is very widely documented. I don’t need to tell you about that. Call it 1%, I don’t know, but we have to take a view into the future. Secondly, Canada, you've seen the Canadian growth rates have come off.

Now we think that is wholly related or primarily related to the slowdown in residential. We are more residential encounter than actually anywhere else in the group. The teams are doing a great job, and we're very positive, but we have seen those growth rates come up, that accounts for about 0.5%.

The third thing I would reference is, in Industrial now we had very strong Industrial growth in the first half and we expect that to be a little bit lower in the second half and that will contribute possibly about 0.5% reduction. But I don’t want anybody to feel negative about Industrial. This is a good business.

It's growing very well in the first half. We just said happened to have some project work that's clearly boosted those, boosted the growth rates.

So I think if you take those three things together, that probably adds up to 2.5% and then I think if you look at some of the other sentiment around just slightly we saw I think Mike in your numbers resi was just off slightly, it came down from 7 to 6 in the first half. That probably accounts for the rest of it Paul.

So those are the things that I would say directionally are the things that have most impacted our view as we've sat here and looked forward through the year.

Flow through Mike?.

Yes, so there's no change certainly long-term Paul in terms of our business model or our thinking. So in decent markets as John has said we would expect flow through of high single digit, low double digit.

I think with the growth rates that we're talking about for the second half wouldn’t be - that will clearly be a challenge for us in the second half and it is clearly our job to make sure we get as good a flow through as we can but do not think it will be as high as low single digits.

I think that's unlikely given the 3% to 5% guidance and but you know it is our job to continue to work hard, make sure we control those costs particularly around labor..

Gregor?.

Thanks, three questions please. So first one is on just coming back to the second half, if you can flush out a little bit the U.S. specifically, I mean obviously with the proportion of the group I'm guessing it, it mirrors the slowdown particularly in I think in the UK the shutdown of the wholesale business kind of comps out.

So I want to understand where you see the U.S. growth specifically for the second half well maybe within the range? That's question number one.

Question two is on acquisitions, so you spent in the neighborhood of $600 million, could you just give us an annualized profit number of that $600 million spend because obviously some is within the period so just to get a sense what the multiple was perhaps pre-synergies and then if you care to elaborate where you think that ends up in due course with synergies? And then the third question is something that I think has been discussed many times in the past, but hasn't been talked about more recently which is obviously the fact that you are now in 90% plus U.S.

business and to what extent do you have reassessed or assessed a relisting in the U.S., obviously you are moving to tax domicile so the group is simplifying, but I want to understand perhaps you can reiterate what you're thinking is so that possibility? Thank you..

Okay, can I take one and two – one and three and you take two?.

Sure..

So it makes sense..

Yes..

Look, I mean the U.S.

versus the UK growth, I'm not sure, I mean the UK isn't big enough to influence that growth rate probably much in the second half, so I think that's sort of 3% to 5% organic growth in the second half that incorporates our views of where the UK is likely to be in that as well, Gregor and it doesn’t substantially distort that number.

It is worth saying because I got asked this, this morning, about what have other distributors seen over time and it is interesting, we did lot of work internally to look at – we look at all the other distributors numbers, we look at all the home center numbers in the U.S.

the Lowes and the Home Décor and those people, if you look at now Q4 2017 versus Q4 2018, actually Home Décor was 7.2, they came in at 3.7. Lowes had had been 3.9 they came in at 2.4. Wasco which is a direct competitor of ours they were 6% in Q4 2017, 3% in Q4 2018.

Masco, which is clearly a very large supplier of ours, Masco's plumbing division, they were 9% Q4 2017, 4% Q4 2018. So it's still – all of these businesses still getting good growth but not quite the supercharged growth that we were seeing.

People in the industry were seeing and by the way those are only a few we've got, there are plenty of other examples you know those businesses. Just look, on the listing side, I'm afraid the analysis remains the same as it was before, which is this is not something which is in the gift of the company.

Our shareholders would have to approve a delisting and relisting with a 75% majority and they would have to, some of those, you remember most people who hold our shares have a mandate that's the agreements that they have with the people around them to operate somewhere. So a lot of UK investors have got a mandate to invest in UK funds.

Some UK investors have got a mandate to invest only in international funds. The same is true in the U.S., the same is true in any other country. I know because I have previously in a former life had to operate within a mandate. You don't go outside your mandate because otherwise you are going to get sued obviously by your enemies.

So it's really every individual shareholder would have to decide whether or not they were able to own the shares if we were to delist and relist in the new territory and I don’t think that is quite as straightforward as it seems to be on paper, Gregor.

Mike, sorry, go on the acquisition?.

Yes, so on M&A on acquisitions there is clearly some profit and these – I think the way you should think, and the way we think of M&A is we clearly only buy good quality businesses. I mean we've been very clear about that. We are not turnaround experts. We don't buy distressed businesses, we buy good quality businesses.

We're probably paying and have paid an again there are landing some of the numbers so you can't actually get to the multiples either because in the Blackman there is quite of piece of land. And we would probably be paying 8 or 9 times right now, for a good quality business. Blackman also has some quite large integration costs.

It will take some time for the profits for that business to come through. I think we also and still firmly guide to second year return on investment of 15% that absolutely still holds and therefore that tells you that we get synergies.

Each business is different, so own brand acquisitions are quite different to Blackman which is a bit more traditional business. They will have different synergies and therefore different turns of multiples in terms of synergies. But we would expect only to take on a traditional business couple of turns off the acquisition process as well..

Really 8 to 9 including the synergies or excluding?.

That's what we'll point..

Okay, thank you..

So we got 8 to 9 and on Mike's sort of two 10s after all we would aim to get that back down to 6 to 7 pretty quickly. Yes, we say in the first year post integration..

Thank you..

I've got the Mike so I'll go for it. Good morning. Arnaud Lehmann, Bank of America. Three hopefully quick questions, firstly just a followup on Gregor's question about U.S.

listing, you have an ADR which I believe is level one and there were talks at one point you might move to level two, I appreciate that might lead to incremental cost for you, but is that an option to make it a bit more liquid I guess and expand your U.S.

shareholder base? Secondly, on the tax rate just to be clear, your guidance is 25% to 26% including the relocation to the UK. It would have been higher if you stayed in Switzerland, is that correct? And the last one, in terms of I guess the U.S.

outlook you said maybe it's a little bit slower which is fine, how does that change your view of working capital management? Are you in a position to somehow reduce inventories and accelerate cash flow generation, so in a slower growth environment, should we expect operating cash flow to accelerate?.

You take one and two..

Okay. So, I think your first question is about, do we propose to be level 1 ADR at level 2 the answer is no. If you look in history you know over the last few years most companies have moved from ADR level 2 then to level 1.

So the trend is very much the other way, unless you are on a journey to somewhere else and given that John just said we're not on a journey to somewhere else. We don’t see the benefit for us moving to that. And in terms of the tax guidance you are absolutely correct, the tax guidance for FY 2020 is 25% to 26% that is as previously guided.

With tax guidance we generally quote the income statement. There is also the cash. I think you should assume that staying in Switzerland longer-term would have given us a larger cash tax bill. So yes, being in the – moving to the UK is a better outcome for shareholders, but no change to the said guidance as previously given..

And on the working capital we use mechanism internally and bear in mind all layers of management have an incentive based on achieving working capital targets. Those working capital targets are not spot targets at the end of the year because then you get wild swings or can get wild swings. They are targets that are based on every month's end.

So we are motivated to ensure that we continually have working capital right up in line of sight all the time. I think the way in which you should think about our working capital is pretty much proportionate to our growth.

Okay? And because we do, you know, you can occasionally get we have one day of cash which our cash to cash cycle, one day in our cash to cash cycle broadly in this business is $50 million. Our performance is usually within one or two days of that identity. So if you think it's within $50 million or $100 million always of being proportionate to growth.

Now I think two other things happen with working capital. Number one, there is a fixed element to working capital because we've got a fairly fixed distribution center network for example.

We're putting some more working capital in any one or two areas such as a brand because that has to come all the way from overseas and just the supply chain is longer. So that will edge things up, but of course we should also become more efficient over time in that. So I think all of that should net out.

You should see if we're growing at 3% to 5% we should need 3% to 5% more working capital.

Just to let you know, I mean not the half year, we were around by about day Mike?.

Yes we were..

So we are slightly shy this year of where we need to be, now that's mainly timing on own brand acquisitions and those types of things. So, but we're talking about fairly small numbers there..

Thank you. Howard Seymour from Numis. Two if I may. Firstly John, you alluded to the growth that you've had historically over and above the market, i.e.

2% to 3% and just thinking, I mean obviously can't tie you down on this, but as you look into the second half, is there any reason why you should do less than that, because share for share 3% Ferguson finished the markets flat in the second half which is quite a big falloff.

So just thoughts on market share gains first in the market? And I suppose your views on whether you perceive, I mean I suggest not given what you put up there, whether this is the peak of the market or just a slow impact to your normal situation? And then secondly, just one to Mike was on the first quarter call you alluded to the drop 7% is obviously a lot less than that in the second quarter and same less than nothing then you would be looking for, I assume that's been expected inflation cost really import cost, and therefore why though there was enough rebate into the second half if they were unexpected then? Thank you..

Thanks, Howard. Look, I mean on the – outperformance against the market, no there is nothing that I see or that we see more broadly in our business that suggests that outperformance would suffer any erosion. Okay? And that's true across all of our 9 business units.

So if we are right about the 3% to 5% then you should expect the market growth to be lower than it has been than Howard that's what I would say. In terms of the peak, if you look at the underlying market conditions, to us the underlying market conditions actually look pretty good.

If you look at new resi, you know that chart, you've seen it, it's $1.2 million to $1.3 million sort of permit starts completions which I have already mentioned them and that stayed fairly consistent for some time. If you look at existing house volumes, that's plus or minus $5.5 million. It was down in January, it was up in February fine.

The long term picture is $5.5 million. If you look at pricing, Case Shiller is still up 4.7 I think in February. Actually that's the reason to be sensible, that we want it at 14.7, I don’t think so, 4.7 is fine.

Sure it is off from I think the peak was 6.5 spring last year, fine but 4.7% housing growth and all 20 metropolitan areas where you continue to have summarizes. Housing affordability remains good and if you look at the Raymond James Affordability Index, that's close to its 30-year-average.

So all of that stuff in residential where JCHS LIRA still looks okay. It has moderated slightly, but it still looks okay. Commercial, I think similarly. And if you look at the Zelman, nonresidential indicators, they are still showing commercial growth of sort of 5% or 6%. So those indicators suggest that the market is going to continue to grow.

Yes on to you _____..

_____ a couple of comments really, one is I touched on the latter. As we exited at the end of last year, clearly we were in very good markets and therefore we had continued to have labor. We had in quarter 2, as I said about 600 equivalent heads too many which we have since taken out. That's actually cause-and-effect.

So with the markets being good we have to heads so we don't miss out on the growth, of course as the markets turned and weakened slightly in Q2 the good is in the U.S. you can take the labor out and we've taken that out without any redundancy or cost restructuring costs. It does however take you six to eight weeks to do that.

You've got to remember we operate over more than 1500 branches across the whole of the U.S. So these are small numbers in all sort of locations and to get that through taking attrition as well, so we're getting normal turnover. It takes us about six to eight weeks to take out labor out.

That did results with the internal disappoints in the first half is a good set of numbers. The internal disappoint is about that $10 million to $15 million if we could have clicked our fingers and taken the labor on quicker we would have. That affects the flow-through Howard.

The other one in the Q2 the year before, we did have exceptionally high gross margins. So I think if you look at the year average it's a better I think you know we don’t manage flow-through by quarter, we manage the business long term. I think if you'd like at the two components, the gross margin for last year for the business was 29.4%.

The gross margin for Q1 this year was 29.6% and the gross margin for Q2 this year was 29.6%. So it also tells you it's not in the gross margin, it's actually in the costs and it's really run battle light or so and we need to clearly continue to monitor that labor very tightly as we move forward given our outlook this morning.

Does that help?.

Yes, thank you..

You got the trading day as well, but I think you will capture that..

John Messenger from Redburn. I think it's two if I could. Maybe just sticking with costs and what happened, during the months kind of your total cost base grew by about 13.5%, 3% relates to acquisitions, so your ongoing cost base grew by 10.

The headcount wise underlying it was kind of 0.5 of growth, 3% of the headcount growth from acquisitions again, just can you help us understand what are the big packets of cost that are inflating in there and that you will highlight labor cost at 3.5, but to go from 3.5 across what looks like a relatively flat net headcount change.

Is it third-party logistics, what is in the distribution costs that are really jacking up in terms of sizable cost increases and when does that start to abate I guess or what of it do you control to an extent? Second question was just on the guidance.

If we assume the group does just a tad above the bottom end of the ranges say 15.90 it implies 8.46 in the second half, last year it was 803 on the continuing, you've said this 29 million effectively of extra acquisition either coming in the second half implies about $14 million of organic in terms of profit change.

Can I just check you number one agree with muffs? Number two, what is really and maybe it comes to the point if 3 to 5 is the growth rate and if that is the growth rate next year coming back to Mike's comment about drops were gearing against ourselves backdrop would be hard to deliver.

What do you need in 2020s if we believe the royalty is going to be 3 to 5 again, what would you be doing differently in six months time to make sure that the comp gearing is better than 5 or 6?.

Mike, do you want to start?.

Well, I do a sort of, [indiscernible]. So I think John, the point you've made is well made. We came out with a very strong growth period middle of last year. Okay? And we are putting in hedge to make sure we've got drivers, we've got can staff, we've got warehouse associates, we got inside sales people, we're doing the right trading.

So that has a momentum to it. It does, you might say it crucial to the business, but if you look at that chart that Mike was putting up there before about the long term growth, show that a few wrinkles along the road and not because it's not a can't do it perfect here, but you came up with Mike, but well done.

Now my point really was we came into the year with very strong growth and we warned him when I'm talking to the team I want them to capture every bit of market growth that's available. Howard's question, you know are you calling the pigs, no I'm not calling the pig or anything. What we're doing is, we are managing the business as closely as we can.

Now to Mike's point it does take you six or eight weeks, it does in any business frankly to correct the heads. We'll we are a bit bullish at the start of the year, I think yes with the benefit of hindsight Mike's given you our view of sort of the degree of that disappointment.

If we were in a 3% to 5% organic growth environment, I guarantee you we will cut our costs absolutely accordingly.

Okay? And I still got to believe if we're in that type of environment longer-term I think they'll be less labor inflation, John if I can say that I think that will be the case and but the other - the single largest factor by country mile is the number of associates.

So although this year we went up and we dropped off a little bit there is seasonality in there as well because remember in the middle of winter we should have fewer associates. So we went up 600 down the 600 that's the bit that was the peak that we should have managed frankly a little bit better.

But make no mistake, if we're in a 3% to 5% organic growth environment, we will still expect to generate sensible profit growth.

All right?.

And just on the bridge for the year in terms of….

Yes, sorry, sorry. Yes in terms of your acquisitions, yes I mean we've given you those numbers. It clearly depends where you've put between 3% and 5% growth will be you come out with them your flow through. Do remember there was some cost credit in Canada last year for the settlement as well.

I think they are net of your numbers, so again it will be somewhat better than your 14 on an underlying basis. And as John says, you know, our job is absolutely to work out flow through in lower growth markets..

And if there's nothing geographically in the UK or beyond the $6 million reversal in Canada that we need to think about in terms of, so you are confident, you are certainly more confident on the UK if anything John?.

Look I mean, with the UK John, I am very impressed with the team's focus, a real focus, they are in patients, they are executing and I think that will pay dividends.

There is more, there is lots more to do and but now we are starting to lack where we took those fairly decisive actions prior to the new management team coming on board last year and staffing. And so yes, I would be cautiously more optimistic on the UK John..

Thanks..

Ami Galla from Citi. Just a couple from me. Just getting into that cost part again, you've talked about managing the costs on the headcount front more actively in the second half.

To what extent are you tapping your potential growth into the second half and into 2020 by managing it so strictly? And I mean you've talked earlier about how sales associates are the biggest driver for outperformance in the U.S.

and how should we think about growth in that perspective? My second question, just a couple of technical ones, can you give us numbers around what integration costs has been booked in the numbers in the first half? And on UK, what are the sort of cost savings that we should be thinking about coming through the numbers in the second half?.

Yes look, I mean to the first question on the, are we capping our growth, absolutely not. Now this is a question of making sure that we have the right level of associates in order to capitalize on the market opportunity. That's a balance that we always have to take.

Because if you imagine that, we have to do that in every location, in every ZIP Code around the business anyway. That's a constant, constant, constant rebalancing, we wouldn't do that.

Mike and I would rather be sat in front of you today saying, no you know we're calling a higher growth rate, we're putting more people in, that was the right thing, that's what we would do honestly. So now there is no way that would choke off growth in our business by reducing associates.

The point there is, for the associates that we do have, we have to generate the right efficiency, we have to generate the right productivity, the right flow through, the right, whether that's salespeople, the number of calls, the number of visits, the conversion of tenders into orders or whether that's the number of picks at, that's warehouse associates, those are the number of drops that are driving us.

All of those efficiency starts have to be in there, in the right ballpark. Go on sorry, and then the….

Yes integration costs, first half was 7 second half I'd expect 8, most of it was 15 so pretty well split. The UK cost space, I mean the UK cost space, the issue in the UK, I think John has already said is not just getting some topline traction, but also getting that gross margin moving.

That's the challenge really in the UK, the fundamental challenge for us and the UK management team. So we will move costs accordingly and if we can grow that topline or grow gross margins either or, I'll take it in terms of gross profit, that's what we're after there..

Thank you. It's Phil Roseberg from Bernstein. Just a couple of questions. The first one on the opportunity, I guess at these times when things go down a lot of the small businesses sort of say, okay I'm looking to go for another downturn it's time to sell.

And I sense from other companies that there is an up more I guess in the pipeline potentially, is this something that you can use to if you like change the nature of your growth and go perhaps a little bit above the 1% to 2% that you normally guide to on bolt-on? So I’d just like to hear your views on the capital allocation point there? And the other one, sorry just to get back to the Swiss tax domicile change, that's a big move.

There must be some savings in terms of closure of the Zug office.

Just can you give us a little bit more sort of the returns logic of that decision as opposed to just sort of saying that, we'll avoid further tax rises in the future?.

Sure, yes look on the pipeline it's interesting. I'm not sure what will happen to the pipeline if there is a more prolonged moderation of the growth rates Phil. It is not something we've really seen so far now.

To be fair, the sort of midpoint of last year 3 to sort of fairly recently when we completed the Blackman transaction, we have had a few more acquisitions that we wanted to step up and get done.

To Mike's point earlier, the pipeline now there is less in the pipeline now, but we'll not be, is that just a consequence of the fact that we've completed them and we are still out there working, we're still out there talking to vendors, but there is just less.

I think harking back to the last standard there were relatively few businesses put on the market at that time. I think is a lot of vendors, saw their own profitability coming down and my own experience of these things is when vendors don’t like to put their businesses on the market if their profits are under pressure.

So I don’t know, but I think the point of having a very strong balance sheet is to maintain optionality. It is to make sure that we have absolute easier risk of needing cash calls or that type of thing and but also to maintain optionality to do those acquisition if they arise at whatever point in the cycle..

What I would say right now is, this is a matter of allocating more capital to acquisitions. We have got our hands full on integration, you know the hundred people, I mean it is phenomenal for us to have a hundred people working primarily on rolling out our systems through the Blackman acquisition.

It is only a $240 million acquisition, I mean it sounds like it is – it isn’t, it is quite substantial for us.

And I am making sure that we reap the rewards from that acquisition, I know the Robertson [ph] out west as well that we did fairly recently, it's only eight months you see [indiscernible] yes, it still needs integrating and doing properly and bringing into our structure, they take quite a lot of work.

So we've got our hands full on those at the moment, we'll see what else comes along..

Thanks, Phil. We only have a small office in Switzerland. So there aren’t significant cost savings. We have a very small services office in Reading. Some of you know, that's got about 30 people in it most days. The work can be done out of the UK.

So there isn’t a significant cost savings, so it is about having the right commercial logic for the tax domicile of the company.

We've clearly sold a number of operations in continental Europe over the last few years and therefore we're sort of out of Europe commercially and therefore having a tax base where we have the listing and the commercial support to do it from makes sense going forward to the UK in terms of the G20 is actually a good place for us to be as well and for our shareholders.

Can I pass it on?.

Good morning, it is Robert Eason from Goodbody. Just in relation to the U.S., I think in your presentation you called out kind of a flatter gross margins in the second half.

So my question is, just with kind of the softer outlook and in terms of the topline, in terms of the pace of growth, are you seeing any change in behavior from a competitive standpoint among your competitors? Is there any region that standout in that context if there are any? And just on the UK you're constantly getting rid of non-core businesses which make sense, two questions in relation to this, in terms of can we assume last year-on-year you are going to get back to growth in the UK business know given Evan that's been done and are we getting closer to, like you have to appreciate we're looking externally in, are we getting closer to a strategic decision on the UK, given what you're doing from a non-core perspective, given what you're doing from the visuals of the profits in that business, because as you say on the flip side no business wants to sell when the profits are going down.

So yes, the same logic can apply to the UK business? And on that front, so they are kind of my two areas of questions, thank you..

I'd been quoted that quickly. Looking on the gross margins, now it is actually, the margins are consistent across regions and very consistent the growth in gross margins over time between our business units is also very consistent.

The only thing that I could point to with regard to gross margins over the last year with the benefit of hindsight, I think some of the tariffs and some of the pricing they take a lot of work because you have to re-price stuff constantly when things like pricing and tariffs are changes. So that's a frustration. It's an irritation.

It creates a lot more work, it creates a little volatility in a month or two on margins. It does not alter the attractions of our business from a competitive perspective. Now, there's no indication of any other competitive factors in gross margins and we're still as optimistic as we ever were about the long term.

We ought to be taking 10 to 20 basis points per year in gross margin improvements. On the UK, I think it's, I think the observation that I would make, and I have made this with our teams, myself and Mike. We need to see the UK getting back to sustainable gross margin performance. Okay without that then I would be glum.

Now, I do think now we've got a better team, a better engine in order to execute that than we've had. But I think that is fundamental to our business.

Being part of our group we have to generate proper returns on capital, actually the returns on capital in the UK whilst they are low, they are still, you know we still do make a positive and decent return, just not as attractive as it is in the States.

So we need to get back to taking market share and doing it profitably and I think fundamentals of that to Mike's point is that we get the gross margin performance moving forward.

I certainly wouldn’t say today anything other than I am optimistic that the current team is making good progress and getting good momentum in the market and the other piece of course is we are aware of the other changes that are going on in our competitive landscape in the UK market. We need to understand how those shake out as well.

Is that it? Thank you all very much indeed for coming along. Thank you..