06 Franchise Brands plc Annual Report and Accounts 2018 CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT Our stated strategy has been to invest in our business systems, team members and franchisees to ensure that we can capitalise on the opportunities presented by the sectors in which we operate and provide a first-class customer experience. I am therefore pleased to report that this investment is beginning to deliver tangible benefits that I expect to become increasingly more visible in the current year and beyond. Metro Rod As set out in my 2017 statement, following many years of corporate and private equity ownership, Metro Rod required a new strategy centred on the development of the franchisees as entrepreneurs and the corresponding systems that they needed to grow their businesses. The essence of this was to return the franchisee to the centre of the business and to help them grow local sales, reduce their reliance on over-complicated manual systems and lessen the intervention from Head Office (now renamed the Support Centre). The strategy necessitated creating new systems and ways of working that passed back to the franchisees far greater responsibility for looking after customers and indeed their own businesses. This new strategy was originally presented at a conference in November 2017, as a five-year growth plan which we entitled Vision 2023. Implementation of most of the proposed strategic and operational changes commenced in January 2018 and I am very pleased to report that they have been greeted with real engagement from a re-invigorated franchise community. This is evidenced by the fact that half the network recorded double-digit like-for-like sales growth in 2018. This “freeing up” of the system under Vision 2023 was not without its risks, but our faith in our franchisees has been well rewarded, with improvements also being delivered in customer service and the operational efficiency of the Support Centre. 2018 has been a year of consolidation and development following the April 2017 acquisition of Metro Rod. Stephen Hemsley Executive Chairman Adjusted EBITDA £3.7m Total no. of UK franchisees 428 (2017: £2.7m) (2017: 438)