Half Year 2025 Currys PLC Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Monique Pollard - Citi Investment Research (Europe) - Analyst : The first question I had was just on your UK market shares, obviously, back in growth now after a period of decline, and that's also on top of significant profitability increasing in the region. Just wondered if you could give us a bit more color as to what led to that. Obviously, you mentioned that you've got over 75% market share in AI laptops, and I'm imagining it may have held?

Question: Monique Pollard - Citi Investment Research (Europe) - Analyst : The second question I had was just on the change in the mix of projects, GBP10 million more this year and now being expensed, that has been in CapEx. So should I think of that as versus where we were at the start of the year, you maintaining your expectations for profit growth, but with an additional GBP10 million of OpEx now in the base versus what you had expected?

Question: Monique Pollard - Citi Investment Research (Europe) - Analyst : And then the final question I just had is on the implications from the budget that you've outlined very clearly the GBP72 million cost impact of the recent budget, that's pretty useful detail. Obviously, you're saying you're planning to mitigate much of that or as much as you can by cost-saving initiatives. But do you think a rule this is going to be inflationary for the market?

Question: Nick Barker - BNP Paribas London Branch - Analyst : The first one, just I wanted to touch base, following the kind of court appeal ruling in relation to motor finance and castings and the kind of implications this has for the relationship between customers, brokers and owners across industries. I appreciate at this stage that there's a lot of uncertainty. I was wondering if you could share any initial comments about this case and discuss anything about how you're doing things differently as a result of the ruling? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 12, 2024 / 9:00AM, CURY.L - Half Year 2025 Currys PLC Earnings Call

Question: Nick Barker - BNP Paribas London Branch - Analyst : And my second question was just in relation to electronic shelf edge label. What efficiencies as this created? Can you quantify these? And sort of how much other is there to go on this?

Question: Nick Barker - BNP Paribas London Branch - Analyst : Perhaps the final one, if you don't mind, just on the Nordic itself then. Is there any more color on the kind of different regions and how they're performing against specialist?

Question: Richard Chamberlain - RBC Capital Markets (Canada) - Analyst : Asked about the -- how you're seeing the outlook, Alex, for the appliances market in the UK. I just wondered if you think sort of past the worst now whether improvements in housing activity with the lags and so on might help that category a little bit over the next year? That's the first one. And then the second one, I guess, more for Bruce, you talk about sort of phasing of the adjusting items going forward? What sort of adjusting items that you expect still in the medium term? I guess that's the question. I appreciate the numbers going to be hopefully quite small now.

Question: Ben Hunt - Investec Securities UK - Analyst : Just a sort of general question really on -- obviously, you're doing a lot of work on service adoption throughout the sort of this period of volume coming down. You've increased the penetration. But as the sort of green shoot starts to come through and perhaps volumes return, where you sort of -- see what the sort of the tailwind could be in terms of margins for business? And sort of related to that, there was a chart earlier on in the UK part of the presentation showing your market share is down, I think, 300 basis points since over the last years. But the gross margin sort of hasn't really gone up as much, the improvement there has been a bit more modest. Just sort of -- what's your sort of view of the shape of that to come as you start to regain market share? Any thoughts really around those points?

Question: Nick Barker - BNP Paribas London Branch - Analyst : And just a small technical question. There was a disparity in your market share between stores and online. Are we to assume that the disparities can be explained by the legacy of rationalizing the ranges or any views there really just. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 12, 2024 / 9:00AM, CURY.L - Half Year 2025 Currys PLC Earnings Call

Question: Alison Lygo - Deutsche Numis - Analyst : I just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that CapEx as we look out the GBP100 million and how we should maybe think about that split? Should we be expecting record towards stores? Are we thinking about warehouse automation there? Is there kind of any in cash? Or is it largely now really being expensed? And then the second one is just on the national insurance minimum wage costs. Obviously, you've really helped with your expectations for that in the coming year. Just wondering how far the kind of logistics supply chain that goes like how much of the kind of warehouse drivers, those sorts of things? Do you think there's potential for more indirect cost? You might have to absorb as that gets passed down or do you feel like it stops there in terms of the you've helped us this morning?

Question: Adam Tomlinson - Berenberg Capital Markets LLC - Analyst : Three questions, if I can. Just the first one was on B2B. So I think you mentioned in the past that being a sort of GBP25 billion, GBP26 billion market Nordics in the UK and strong growth highlighted in the statement. So any color you can give around that would be very helpful, please. Sorry, second question was just on stock levels coming down about GBP100 million. So good result there. Perhaps just a little bit more color in terms of how you achieve that would be great. And then just a quick third question on AI. I'm thinking more in terms of business processes here, you announced that Microsoft and Accenture, I think, a few months back. I was just wondering how that is going some of the learnings there and potentially how that feeds into the cost savings program going forward.

Question: Wayne Brown - Panmure Liberum Limited - Analyst : I'm clearly very slow on the phones today because literally all my questions have been asked which is good news for you guys. But let me just probably just ask one quick one. For FY25, I think the narrative was all about you really didn't need market recovery to hit full year numbers. Is it too early? Or do you have a view as to how you think the consumer may actually spend next year or the upside that you think the consumer has to spend on electronics next year? And what's that kind of consumer sentiment view would be? Or would you rather maybe wait to get through peak until you firm up that view? So just getting an idea of how you're thinking about that for the 12 months ahead.

Question: Charlie Rothbarth - HSBC Bank Plc - Analyst : But my final one is on your long-term EBIT margin. I appreciate you said at least 3%. I'm just sort of wondering around what you would consider the point to which you were over-earning on EBIT margins and thus would be looking to reinvest into presumably back into process.