Steve Wadey
Group CEO & Executive Director

Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our half year results for FY ’26. Whilst we continue to operate in challenging market conditions, we have taken decisive action to improve our short-term performance and drive long-term growth, creating value for shareholders. And thanks to the dedication and hard work of our highly skilled employees, we’ve continued to support our customers’ operational needs, delivering mission-critical technologies and services.

Today, we’ll take you through our half 1 results and the actions we’ve taken to address both near-term challenges and strengthen our market positioning for the long term. A great example is shown here, which illustrates the successful completion of the synthetic trials we undertook with BAE Systems to demonstrate how drones can operate alongside combat aircraft like Typhoon. This was a significant milestone in developing critical sovereign capabilities needed to defend the U.K.’s national interests.

Let me start with our key messages for today. First, in tough near-term market conditions that have delayed orders in the U.K., we have delivered robust operational performance and our restructuring program in the U.S. is on track. Secondly, our mission-critical capabilities remain highly relevant to our customers’ needs in a growing defense market and combined with our significant order book and substantial pipeline, provide very good visibility for long-term growth. Thirdly, despite near-term headwinds in our home markets, we