Commodities: Going Against The Grain

Susannah: Hello, and welcome to Switch your Money On from Hargreaves Lansdown. I'm Susannah Streeter, I'm the senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. And I'm here with Sarah Coles, our senior personal finance analyst.

It finally feels like Spring has sprung - I'm particularly happy about the days becoming longer after the dark days of winter - once the clocks go forward this weekend - although annoyingly on Mother's Day just to give me one hour's less sleep when it really should be my day for a very rare lie in.

Sarah: Yes, although when the kids were tiny it was the one day of the year when you could think - we'll I suppose technically it's 7am. We're not quite full of the joys of spring, and there's definitely no enthusiasm for any spring cleaning among my family. We might just empty the greenhouse of the patio furniture I wedged in there before the storms.

Susannah: Yes, it's the time of years we tend to think about gardening and growing- but this year on a wider scale- it's feared there is going to be a lot less of that going on - because of the situation in Ukraine.

Sarah: Yes, Ukraine grows an awful lot of the world's grains, including wheat, and although the impact of the conflict on crops quite rightly is less in focus than the horrible human cost of the invasion, over time it's increasingly going to take a toll, both on the farmers, and on those who rely on them. It means far less could be planted during the spring planting season, and if the fighting continues through the summer, there will be knock on effects on farmers' ability to look after their crops, or even to harvest them in the autumn. This is a major concern for Ukraine itself, and will also have an impact on its ability to export.

Susannah: Ukraine has traditionally been known as the breadbasket of Europe - but faced with the invasion, that basket could be very sparse this year, and the next few weeks could be make or break if planting is seriously disrupted.

It's why we're taking a look at global food prices in this episode of the podcast, and the impact on food businesses, in an episode we're calling Commodities: Going Against The Grain.

Susannah - We'll be speaking to a George Phillips, Commercial Director of leading food distributor, Wanis International Foods, to find out what the company is doing faced with a nerve-wracking rise in prices - and the impact it is having on their business. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, it must be a very unusual time for the business.

George: Good morning Susannah, yes, it is. I've been doing this for 40-odd years and it's certainly the most challenging set of circumstances I've ever faced and I think for many food companies, they'll be looking at the same thing right now. It's a little bit of a perfect storm which the war in Ukraine has merely exacerbated.

Sarah: We look forward to finding out more later in the podcast. We'll also chat to Sophie Lund-Yates, our lead equity analyst at HL - who's been looking at technology companies and where they stand right now.

Susannah: And we'll hear from our head of investment analysis and research Emma Wall - who's been talking to Thomas Wells, multi-asset fund manager at HL fund management about the role of multi asset investing.

Sarah: And Susannah has been building another quiz for me, and as requested, I finally get questions on food. I'm pretty confident I can ace any questions - assuming they're about biscuits.

But first we need to look more closely at the commodity markets.

Susannah: It's been chaos on the markets over the past few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine intensified - and prices began spiking all over the place.

Sarah: Already we've seen huge price surges in wheat - Ukraine and Russia together makeup 29% of the world's wheat - and the price of a bushel of wheat on international exchanges has surged due to disruptions to supplies.

It's not just wheat - Ukraine is the largest exporter of sunflower oil in the world.

And accounts for 13% of the global corn exports, having grown the industry rapidly over the last few years.

Susannah: It's not just the planting and harvesting that has been disrupted, exports have also halted because ports have been closed, with much of the autumn harvest still sitting in storage in Ukraine. Now the country has now also banned exports of fertilisers to try and maintain the supply for its own farmers who can still.

Fertiliser exports from Russia have also been disrupted -with restrictions put on exports - and with cargo ships avoiding docking at Russian ports due to worries of sanction breaches.

In addition, soaring gas prices have led to fresh worries that plants in the UK which make fertiliser could be forced to shut or reduce operations - and that could have a knock-on effect on the production of CO2 which is a by-product of the industry - a gas used for vacuum packing food and in abattoirs, for example. Then to add into this volatile mix you have mounting fuel prices, with Brent Crude still elevated- which is increasing transport and logistics costs. All of these supply chain worries and concerns over rising costs are weighing on the world's farmers and food producers. In developing nations - which are even more highly reliant on food imports - the situation could be even more severe. In Egypt - the world's largest wheat importer - food and beverage costs rose by more than 17% in February, with prices expected to rise even further. This has all led the United Nations to warn the world could be facing a major food crisis.

Sarah: Here in the UK, the most recent inflation figures show the cost of food up 4.5% in the 12 months to January, but there were eyewatering rises in the price of everything from pasta to margarine, which is up almost 40%. There are warnings that as a result of rising commodities values, food prices could rise by 15%. This has all been pretty unpalatable for policymakers at the Bank of England - who voted to raise rates at last week's meeting. It's all feeding into a horrible cost of living squeeze, which is set to reach a pinch point in April, when energy bills and tax hikes are added to the load. And while shoppers are feeling horrible pressure, we can't underestimate the impact on businesses too.

Susannah: All this risks turning into a cost of commerce crisis as well - with latest data from the ONS showing worries about volatile commodity prices are worrying businesses. Three in five companies said they had concerns for the next month with the cost of goods and services and energy prices causing particular stress. More than a third of construction companies (36%) said goods price inflation was a real concern, while overall more than a fifth of firms said this was a worry. So just what is it like working in food distribution right now?

Sarah: So let's check in with George Phillips, Commercial Director of, Wanis International Foods, which distributes a huge variety of food from rum cakes to coconut milk, and is having to deal with a rise in prices which has turned from a mild headache into a severe migraine.

Can you start by telling us a bit about the business?

George: We're an international food importer, we import from across the world. We have 2 halves to our business - we have brands of our own and probably the leading brand we have is a brand called Tropical Sun, which is a world foods brand, and we source products from all over the world under the Tropical Sun brand. But we also handle other people's brands and distribution again, from all 4 corners of the world. We were founded in 1964, we're a family business and still a family business to this day. We distribute to pretty much everyone in the UK, so we distribute to small shops, supermarkets, wholesalers, food service and we also have an export business as well, which is interesting in the current climate.

Sarah: The price of importing has been rising for a while now, and shipping costs must have been a real headache. How have you had to adapt to cope?

George: I suppose, if you like, where it all started was a combination of shipping costs and the pandemic, and I think the pandemic is still very evident in other markets. We seem to have relaxed here but in a lot of the countries we source from, the pandemic is still very much alive, so there are restrictions around Covid and that contributed significantly to the container shortage. So, at the end of the first lockdown where there was pretty much a global lockdown, containers in the wrong place, ships not sailing, ports closed due to curfews and restrictions. And that sort of escalated from there, particularly last year to the situation we see now. And I suppose a good example was container ships from the Far East, let's say China in 2019, would have been about $1,500 US, and its anything up to $15,000 US now.

Susannah: What about the situation in China now with its zero-Covid policy and fresh mass lockdowns. Has that caused trouble for your business?

George: We source from China but it's not the major source of our products. It is one of the countries we source from regularly and I think the biggest impact we see is they've tightened up regulations on food in China so, for example, a factory in China sourcing raw materials from somewhere else. Those products will be checked and go through Covid testing before they reach the production facility. Everything is then tested again post-production and then you have the battle of whether the ports are operating and whether the local transport system is operating. So, it's more legislation I think, because the Chinese authorities, as you say, have gone for this zero-tolerance approach so there's a great deal more testing and blocks in the supply chain which I think as much as anything apart from cost, introduces delays. And I think a lot of importers, irrespective of whether it's food or anything else they bring from China, will be seeing this.

Susannah: And what impact have you seen on your business since the invasion of Ukraine, with this commodity chaos really on many exchanges, how are you coping with that and what does it mean for your input prices?

George: It's a European conflict I guess, as everyone says. But actually, it has a global impact. Closer to home, one of the things we have seen apart from what you mentioned earlier about certain commodity products coming from Ukraine, for example there's a severe shortage of transport in Eastern Europe because a great many of the truck drivers who drove the trucks from Eastern European countries so, for example, Poland, the Baltic states, South-Eastern Europe, a great many of the truck drivers were Ukrainian and have either gone home to there families or they've gone to fight. On top of everything else, there's a significant difficulty in getting products from that part of Europe to the UK. In the main, our approach is actually, in the end there's not a lot we can do about it, we have to work with it as best we can, so part of what we did when we knew that something was happening was, we increased our stockholding in the UK. We have long established relationships with suppliers, so that to an extent has helped us because I think it's been a mad scramble for supply in the last 3-4 weeks. So, having very established suppliers with long trading relationships has definitely been a benefit because it means we've been able to keep at least some supply coming though. But I think there's no getting away from it, it's difficult and the prices are rising, if not daily, certainly weekly.

Susannah: Now you're having to pass on some of the extra costs? How has it been trying to manage these input costs?

George: It's a difficult one and I think I we rewind the clock to say 12 months ago when we saw the beginning of the container crisis, to begin with because with thought this might be a short-term knock-on effect from the pandemic. So, I think it's fair to say for the first 4 or 5 months, we didn't pass on prices as a rule of thumb, as we felt and hoped that this would resolve itself, prices would come back down and therefore, for a while we'd be able to bridge that. But what's become apparent 12 months down the line, is actually we can't do it and I think perhaps many other companies took the same approach where they kind of sucked-it and see for the first period. But now I think with all the other factors coming in and especially what's going on in the Ukraine, this is not going to be a short-term episode, so we've had to start passing prices on.

Sarah: So, in terms of price rises, has it meant a different balance of the sort of products that are in demand?

George: Yes, it has. What we do, we have a very wide supply base because of the breadth of the product range we carry. It's perhaps an advantage for a company like us and many people would say having an enormous product range isn't an advantage, but actually at times like this it is because we have different options for sourcing. So, one of the things for example, sourcing from the Far East, and I'll pick a reasonable commodity product from the Far East, something like coconut milk. There are many origins for coconut milk. You know, traditionally we buy form one origin and one supplier, but we have the option to go elsewhere so, what we've tried to do is mitigate some of the delays and cost increases by resourcing elsewhere. In the end, the product cost is not going to be different but there are certain origins that don't attract duty where they have a GS1 agreement with the UK. So, we've looked where we can to move to alternate sourcing, simply to keep product availability and try where we can to mitigate some of the worse price increases. But it's an on-going challenge and that approach won't last for ever.

Susannah: And how are you dealing with volatile energy prices? With oil again, creeping up. What is your strategy here?

George: The 2 most obvious areas of impact are 1 - on incoming goods, on vehicles delivering it's costing the hauliers more, and secondly actually is in our own distribution where we send goods out from our warehouse to our customers. At present, to give a good example, for a lot of the smaller deliveries we make, for the time being we haven't increased our cost, we have increased our minimum order value. So, where in the past for example, we might have delivered an order of £500, because of the cost increases now we're asking customers to make an order of £1,000. We're trying to flex it that way in the short-term. I think inevitably we'll get to a point where we can't keep doing that and we have to say, look, distribution costs will have to increase.

Susannah: How long have you been in the business and is this the most challenging period of time that you've been operating?

George: I joined Wanis International Foods 2 years ago, but I've been in food retail and food sales since the mid-1980s. We've had a few ups and down since then, there's been several financial crises, one or two global events that have impacted the supply chain, but I think, going back to what I said at the beginning, this is something of a perfect storm. Individually, all of the elements we've seen have been seen before in some way, shape or form. For me, I've never seen anything where all of these factors have arrived at the same time and I think that's the difference.

Sarah: Can you see light at the end of the tunnel?

George: I wish I could confidently say so. I think when I look at some of the elements - do I think container prices will remain at this level for ever? No, I think in the end that element is subject to supply and demand and I think when capacity catches up with demand, inevitably prices will fall. But, I think food price inflation per se, is here to stay, not necessarily at the level it is now, but I think food price inflation is here to stay.

Susannah: Thanks George for sharing your experience, and just what it's like working in food production right now. A few rays of hope but certainly seems as though they're quite far off on the horizon. But great to get an inside view just what's happening.

George: Susannah and Sarah, thank you very much for having me, I hope I haven't been too much of a harbinger of doom. I think all I'll say is, on behalf of the many other companies that do what we do, we will do our best and our very best to keep people supplied and to minimise some of the elements that we've talked about today.

Susannah: That's really good to here, well let me bring in now our lead equity analyst Sophie Lund-Yates, who has been looking at the impact of this commodity chaos on listed companies as well. So, Sophie - let's drill down and look at some of the global giants. What are the prospects for firms like Nestle given this environment?

Sophie: Hi Susannah. Yes, absolutely - this is having a huge impact across the market and in-particular on the giants, as you said, like Nestle. It's enormous scale and global footprint means rising commodity prices are likely to have an effect on results at some point - we are waiting for the next load of financial results. It makes everything from KitKats to Purina Pet food, with annual sales of around 82 bn swiss francs. The interesting thing to keep in mind is Nestle has long been focussed on increasing volumes more than prices, to keep revenue moving.

That is a strategy we tend to prefer because rising volumes is a lot easier than inflating prices over and over again, in general. However, in order to keep the top line moving, it's worth keeping in mind that Nestle may have to start pushing prices up at a faster rate than its customers are used to, and there is a tipping point at which point higher prices are going to start to eat into volumes. The essential nature of a lot of Nestle's products, as well as the strong brands from things like Starbucks ready to drink items, means there is definitely an element of pricing power, but sustained inflation could see the group's long held volume-led approach become a little bit harder to maintain, so I will be watching that one.

Susannah: Thanks Sophie, I'd like to move on to Tate & Lyle, and we're not necessarily talking sugar fixes, here are we? Because the business has moved on.

Sophie: Yes, exactly. So a lot of people still associate Tate & Lyle with things like Golden Syrup, sugar and treacle, Tate & Lyle doesn't actually make these anymore. Instead, it's focused on ingredients like sweeteners and thickeners, and components that go into lower calorie foods to help replicate so called “mouthfeel”. If you take all the fat out of a Greek yoghurt, it needs a helping hand from somewhere to get the right consistency back. It also has some larger bulk commodity businesses.

Tate & Lyle is in line to feel the impact of rising commodity prices because a lot of replacement sugar products, like sucralose, comes from corn starch. As a large exporter of wheat and corn, Ukraine's crisis is pushing the prices of these items up. At the moment, Tate & Lyle can renew some major contracts, giving it a level of guaranteed revenue because it knows what's coming up revenue-wise. But if costs soar at a rapid rate, margins may come under pressure. We're still supportive of Tate and & Lyle's strategy, which has included getting rid of the less profitable side of the business, but inflation is definitely one to watch.

Susannah: And certainly, shoppers are watching inflation with a lot of trepidation, hoping to find cheaper prices on the shelves and all of this is having impact on the big grocers as well, isn't it?

Sophie: Yes absolutely. It's really important that when we're talking about this we're not just looking at those manufacturing and making the goods, but those who are then trying to sell them to the likes of you and me. Unsurprisingly rising commodity prices means it costs grocers more to put food on our shelves, which is why customers are seeing higher prices. It's a tough balancing act for supermarkets to get right, because price is a huge factor these days in where customers choose to shop, more so than it has been in previous generations. So, hike prices too much and you risk losing sales, but don't put prices up enough and you're putting all the onus on volumes, which is a difficult ask for a supermarket. We think getting this right is tricky for Sainsbury particularly when looking at the grocers, because it has traditionally occupied the middle ground - it's not renowned for being the best value, but it also doesn't have the same defensive properties of the likes of M&S Food or Waitrose, who's customers may not flinch as much at the sight of inflation.

I have to admit the work Sainsbury has done on its proposition and trying to redefine itself as being good value, through Aldi price comparison campaigns and the like, has been impressive the results there. I personally wasn't expecting a profit upgrade last time they reported results, so that was great to see. But there are potential pressure points for margins. The group has done well to massively increase online capacity, but this comes with huge costs - which are likely to recur for a little while. At the same time, the decision to focus on lowering prices means that if volumes don't keep pace, profits will suffer. That's not a problem at the moment, but something we're wary of in the medium-term.

Sarah: Thanks Sophie. It seems as though we'll be reeling from rising commodity prices for some time to come.

Now I'd like to bring in Emma Wall, our head of investment research and analysis here at Hargreaves Lansdown has been speaking to Thomas Wells, multi-asset fund manager at HL fund management about the role of multi asset investing.

Emma: Hi Thomas

Thomas: Hi Emma, how are you?

Emma: I'm good thanks, how are you?

Thomas: Good thanks.

Emma: So, we're here today to talk about the market environment. I think we should say first and foremost that our thoughts are with the people that are affected by the war in Ukraine, and it has had an impact on global markets. Investment is a difficult thing to talk about at a time like this but ultimately people are trying to see through the noise. How do they manage money through this uncertainty? I'd thought we'd start by just quickly recapping what's happened so far this year, because even before the war in Ukraine, it had been quite a turbulent time for markets, hadn't it?

Thomas: Yes, very much so. We came into the year expecting the Fed (the Federal Reserve - the central bank in America) to start hiking interest rates and actually, they hiked today for the first time. The Bank of England obviously is raising interest rates and in such an environment, investors were nervous about certain parts of the market, that were perceived as being overvalued with what we call 'growth stocks' and you were seeing quite a strong style rotation away from these growth stocks towards more value stocks. So, if we think about it from a sector perspective, it means there was a big shift away from technology in America towards more energy stocks in the UK.

Emma: And then of course, we had the Russia invasion of Ukraine, which caused considerable market uncertainty and particularly areas of the market which were impacted by the outlook of commodities being very unsure. And so, because of Russia and Ukraine supplying so much of the world's gas, the world's oil, but also soft commodities like wheat and like corn. We've seen that area of the market really rocket in price, haven't we?

Thomas: Yes. So, coming into Ukraine's situation, we obviously had high levels of inflation and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has simply made that inflation concern even higher now, as we're worried about potential oil supply, wheat supply and that's going to feed through into what people are going to have to pay at the pump for petrol, or what people are going to pay to heat their houses. It's certainly having a material impact on prices and indirectly, on consumer confidence.

Emma: And, what have equities and fixed income done in this market uncertainty? We've talked there about commodities which have done incredibly well, if you can call it that, those incredible price rallies. What about the rest of the market, other assets?

Thomas: As you said, the word 'uncertainty'. Markets do not like uncertainty, investors do not like uncertainty, so when uncertainty increases as we've seen, risk assets, so things like equity often go down because people are scared, people are worried. Fixed income has also been going down, as investors are expecting the central banks to raise interest rates to try to control inflation. So, fixed income assets have been going down as well. So, the only thing that has been going up in this bout of uncertainty is the commodity assets that you mentioned earlier. So, the oil, the soft commodities like wheat, and also gold, gold has performed very well.

Emma: Now, you run multi-asset portfolios which means you blend all of that together for long-term outcomes. When you're looking at a multi-asset portfolio at a time like this, what are you looking for? What is that power of diversification hoping to achieve?

Thomas: Today things are extremely volatile. A good example is last Wednesday European equity markets went up 7%, yesterday parts of the Asian Chinese equity market went up 30%. So, I think as an investor today, whether it be a multi-asset investor or as a retail investor, the most important thing to do today is probably do nothing. And I know that sounds like a strange thing, a fund manager advocating doing nothing, but given how volatile things are at the moment, often if you try and be too clever, you'll get things wrong. So, our perspective, from a multi-asset perspective, I think now is the time to think about your long-term asset allocation. What level of equity risk is suitable to your risk profile? How much fixed income is suitable for your risk profile? And actually, just migrate back to that long-term asset allocation. So, what we're doing in the portfolio today, we're not panicking, we're not selling, we're not dramatically buying either. We're holding back, we're looking to the long-term and we're allocating to both our equity and our fixed income and recognising that these are long-term investments and trying to look through this current turbulence as best as we can.

Emma: I think that's really interesting that both as a professional investor and as a retail investor, the individual on the street - the same approach is the most sensible one in times of uncertainty. And that, as you say, is to hold fast and focus on the long-term. I went to a conference last week and spoke to somebody who invests fixed income, in bonds and also in the commodity area. And they said thinking about, inflation is really hard to navigate at the moment, uncertainty is really hard to navigate at the moment, but in 3 years' time we probably won't be looking at inflation of around 8% or double digits, we probably won't be looking at oil prices which are as high as they are now. So, therefore if your investment horizon is longer than 3 years, stay focused on that, stay focused on what you started investing for in the first place because this, although it's really difficult, is transitory in the investment markets.

Thomas: I think that's a very good point. Charlie Monger, the right-hand man to Warren Buffet, is a big advocate of not trying to time the markets and he always says that if you sell an asset, that's one decision, then you have to think about when to buy the asset again, that's another decision. The more decisions you're trying to make, the smarter you're trying to be, often you end up making lots of mistakes. So, his view, and that's based on 70-80 years of investing, is to look through the noise, remember the fact you're investing for the long-term and to not panic. And that served him well, and I believe it will serve our investors well.

Emma: Thomas, thank you very much.

Thomas: My pleasure, thanks Emma.

Susannah: Emma Wall our head of investment research and analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown there, talking to Thomas Wells, multi-asset fund manager at HL fund management, and that interview was recorded 17 March. Please bear in mind that these are the views of the fund manager and are not individual stock recommendations

You're listening to Switch Your Money On from Hargreaves Lansdown.

Sarah: And finally, it's time for the quiz, so I've been promised questions on food, and I think I've been researching this particular area in detail for quite some time.

Susannah: In the last podcast you asked for questions on chocolate, so we'll start there. Chocolate is the second most exported food and drink item from the UK - after whisky, but within the UK, what's the most popular chocolate bar?

Sarah: You've definitely started me on an easy one here, because I know it's Daily Milk, which is odd given that there are Maltesers in the world - but there's no accounting for tastes.

Susannah: Yes, indeed, and it was pretty easy. Interestingly Maltesers didn't make the top three, because that was made up of Galaxy and then Lindor.

OK, sticking with topics you've specifically requested, we're onto baking and biscuits. The UK flour milling industry produces almost 5 million tonnes of flour every year, and an enormous amount of this goes into baking. We make about 12 million loaves of bread and 2 million pizzas a day - but how many cakes and biscuits do we make? Is it 5 million, 10 million or 48 million?

Sarah: I definitely eat more biscuits than I eat loaves of bread probably four times as many so I'd say 48 million cakes and biscuits.

Susannah: Sorry, no. It seems our appetite for biscuits isn't quite that big. We make 10 million cakes and biscuits. Don't worry. You can still claw this back, because we're sticking with bread. According to the federation of bakers, around three quarters of the bread we eat in the UK is white, and sandwiches are thought to make up half of all the bread we eat in the UK, but how many loaves of bread do you think we eat on average each year - per person? I'll take your answer to the nearest 10.

Sarah: Again, I have a feeling I eat more than my fair share of bread, I probably have half a loaf a week, so I'll round it up and say 30 loaves a year.

Susannah. Sorry, wrong again, the answer is 43.

Now onto crisps. Walkers is the biggest crisp manufacturer in the UK, but how many bags of crisps do you think it fills every day in its Leicester factory? And I'll let you have 2 million either way.

Sarah. I know this is a lot, because it's a massive factory. It's going to have to be a wild guess though, so I'll say 10 million.

Susannah: Yes, that's close enough, it's 11 million.

Right, for your final question, I'm giving you the typical politician test question. Do you know how much a pint of milk costs?

Sarah: Yes, well I know how much it costs me, because I have it delivered in glass bottles, so I order online and it's hard to miss the price. At the moment it's 84p.

Susannah: I may have to give you that, although it's nowhere near the average for a pint, which the ONS puts at 46p - so you're paying a pretty big premium for - although it probably doesn't help that you're buying it by the pint because four-pint containers tend to be much cheaper.

Sarah: Blimey. It's going to be another shopping around argument to have with my husband. We already spend a good chunk of our evenings arguing about the central heating, so this will help us mix things up I suppose!

Susannah. It sounds like a riveting chat. Although at least you'll be able to boast that you got three answers in the quiz, which is your best so far. You were right, you just needed questions about chocolate.

Well, that's all from us this time, but before we go, we need to remind you that this was recorded on 21 March 2022, and all information was correct at the time of recording.

Sarah: Nothing in this podcast is personal advice - you should seek advice if you're not sure what's right for you. Investments rise and fall in value, so you could get back less than you invest. Past performance isn't a guide to the future.

Susannah: Yes, this is not advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any investment. No view is given on the present or future value or price of any investment, and investors should form their own view on any proposed investment.

Sarah: And this hasn't been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and is considered a marketing communication.

Susannah: Non-independent research is not subject to FCA rules prohibiting dealing ahead of research, however HL has put controls in place (including dealing restrictions, physical and information barriers) to manage potential conflicts of interest presented by such dealing.

Sarah: You can see our full non-independent research disclosure on our website for more information. So, all that's left is for me to thank our guests George, Sophie, Emma and Thomas, and our producer Elizabeth Hotson.

Susannah: Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back again soon - so if you enjoyed this podcast please do let us know what you think, and do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you get a fresh new episode in your inbox as soon as it's ready. Goodbye.