Transcript

Andy Golding — CEO

Good morning, and thank you for joining OSB Group 2026 half-year results presentation. This morning, I'll take you through the key highlights for the first half, providing view and outlook for the remainder of 2026 and beyond, before finishing off with insights into the macro drivers supporting our business. I'll hand over to Victoria for the financials in more detail, before returning for concluding remarks. Starting with a high-level view of the business, in March 2025, at the investor update, we set out our strategy to remain the number one specialist lender and also our plan to improve RoTE in the medium term. I'm pleased with the resilient financial and operational performance the group has delivered in the first half. We have done what we said we would do, particularly against the backdrop of ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, rising oil prices, and the resulting volatility in swap rates and the impact on retail cost of funds. This slide highlights our three familiar themes. Firstly, we continue to deliver against our lending growth plan. Net loan book growth of 1.3% reflects our discipline in maintaining attractive returns from new lending. Due to strong demand, we wrote more than a billion of new business in Buy to Let at the first half at sustainable margins, and this sub-segment therefore remained at 68% of the portfolio. Despite that backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty, originations in our higher-yielding sub-segments also grew moderately. As expected, net interest margin reduced compared to the prior period. I'll come back to that shortly. The strength of our underwriting expertise continues to be demonstrated in our low loan loss ratio, despite recent volatility, remains in line with our long-term average. Secondly, we've maintained our cost discipline and efficiency while also creating capacity for investment. Our culture of challenging cost helped contain core costs, which were down by 0.4%. Cost to income and managed ratios reflect our investment in the transformation program and are in line with our expectations. Finally, delivering attractive RoTE and capital returns to shareholders continues to be our primary objective. The GBP 187 million of profit before tax translates to a first-half RoTE of 13.3% and TNAV per share of GBP 5.84, up from GBP 5.79 at the year-end. Our commitment to rewarding shareholders is underlined by the 5%