Robert Forrester
CEO & Executive Director
Good morning, and welcome to the Vertu Motors plc interim results for the 6 months ended August 2026. My name is Robert Forrester, Chief Executive, and I’m joined this morning by Karen Anderson, our long-standing CFO.
If we move to the investment case, first of all, in terms of Vertu, I think our investment case is very clear. The results announced today demonstrate this. We are a scaled operation with 5% of the U.K. automotive market, one of the biggest brands in the U.K. and with significant capacity for future expansion to add value and future returns to shareholders. We have excellent scaled relationships with our growing number of vehicle manufacturers. We are having growth opportunities presented to us, which will allow future investment.
Our management has capacity for growth, especially having appointed two managing directors at the start of the year, and our systems and technology is leading edge and scalable. The business is actually underpinned performance wise by our aftersales business, which shows both resilience and growth. It’s aided by nearly 200,000 customers who are either on service plans or have Motability service contracts. We have customer experience levels higher than the sector average, and that promotes retention.
The last 2 years has seen a real focus on cost optimization. This included greater efficiency through technology gains, but also increasingly using data to make sure we’ve got optimization of marketing spend and then we make good decisions. The Board is focused on shareholder returns. Our portfolio is reviewed to deliver long-term returns, not short-term wins. We are here for the long term. We have a very disciplined capital allocation