Bouncebackability

20:24But with that, when you have extremely hot weather, especially when you've got a thinning crown like I have, actually, It has its own problems more than actually bad weather, actually, and the fact that we've had some very hot weather last year, and it actually makes it very difficult to actually then drive in extreme heats there because wearing a hat with a convertible doesn't really actually stay on that long, actually. It's difficult. But, again, it's practicality, I think, more than anything else. I've got an SUV that's, again, the new sports car. It's a very fast SUV, but I've got grandchildren now, so it's easier to sort of put them in and out of there.

21:05But I think I'm correct in thinking that the SUV market is still sort of completely dominated by the smaller SUVs, actually. So we've got, I think, the Puma, the Quashqai, the Kia Sportage. They are the largest amount rather than the much bigger ones there. The electric market is definitely something that is actually then causing an influence on this as well.

21:29Felicity Hannah:Remind me never to introduce you to Theo Leggett. I feel like you two would just be going off on one while I stood around waiting. Also waiting patiently is April LaRousse still with us. April, it's quite interesting talking there about EVs because convertible sales are down. EV ownership is definitely on the rise. There are some new numbers out showing private electric vehicle ownership in the UK has jumped by almost 46 % in just a year. This is new analysis by the AA. The number of privately owned EVs on UK roads rose from just over 533 ,000 at the end of 2024 to more than 777 ,000 by the end of 2025.

22:12Felicity Hannah:I suppose the business question is, where are those EVs coming from? Hmm. Well, actually, it's even earlier than that. It's, you know, initially when the EVs were all coming out, they were quite a bit more expensive than your sort of traditional petrol or diesel car. But actually, you've seen a lot of competition in the EV space with the manufacturers offering rebates. But also we see the Chinese car makers coming in in a big way into the UK and offering really quite nice cars at a much lower price point. So that's been enticing people who perhaps thought, I'm not paying up for an electric car to actually start considering it, especially as the running costs are just lower.

22:53Felicity Hannah:And in fact, you know, these new numbers are for 2025, so they won't reflect people who've looked at what's happened to petrol and diesel prices in the last few months and decided then to make the switch. Yeah, I'm sure that when we get a refresh of these numbers, they'll be even higher. But I think what's interesting is that historically, mostly these EVs were being purchased as company cars or fleet cars. But now it's individuals who are actually buying them themselves. And of course, there's more of a secondary market now. You know, you can buy a used car more easily as well that's electric, whereas originally there weren't any because it was kind of a new product.

23:29Felicity Hannah:Let's stay with EVs because this morning the tech giant SoftBank has overtaken the car manufacturer Toyota to become Japan's biggest company by market capitalisation. And Toyota had had something like a 20-year reign, hadn't it, when it came to vehicles. So tell me a bit about SoftBank and what it does and whether this is a win for SoftBank or a loss for Toyota. Well, actually, I was just thinking about exactly that when I saw this news story come up. I mean, SoftBank is a really interesting company because it's not a bank. So that's the first unusual thing about it. It is just a company that invests in lots of different types of technology type investments.

24:12And over the years, it started to increase its investments in all types of technology companies, obviously artificial intelligence, but also things like Uber, Alibaba, and so on. And of course, when you're starting to look at anything technology related, especially if it's involving semiconductor, either design or manufacturer, the company's valuation has soared. Now, Toyota is still an amazing firm. It's the largest car manufacturer in the world globally. So they've done absolutely fine. But it's just who can stand in the way of this AI juggernaut, which is pushing soft bank valuations much higher.

24:51Felicity Hannah:In fact, the juggernaut is the front page of the FT this morning. It's got the headline, Wall Street's bulls bet US stocks rally has further to go. And this is making the point, an AI point, shares linked to AI, seeing enormous gains. The newspaper suggesting this is not potentially a sign that markets are overheating, but investors are thinking, actually, they've got faith in AI to really, really turbocharge growth. And we did see just an incredible May for the S &P 500. Yeah. In fact, if you look year to date, the S &P is up 11 percent, which is pretty incredible given we've got a war going on.

25:29and oil prices at$93 a barrel. It's pretty amazing.

25:35Felicity Hannah:Yes, but there is this sort of ongoing concern, though, that the market might be overheating, that we might be looking at a dot-com bubble-type scenario. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, I mean, it is a concern because when you see a lot of investment going into one area and in history, you know, if you're a student of financial history, you've seen this a few times, that there are concerns about is there overinvestment going on? Is this actually going to be money well spent? It's kind of too early to tell on that front. But what we can see is that the investment that's going on to build out artificial intelligence in terms of every link in the chain is cycling in to growth into the overall economy.

26:19So although I know anything to do with AI is getting a lot of headlines, we are seeing really good growth spread across almost every sector. And so it is trickling down and benefiting the overall economies and also companies that don't seem obviously related.

26:36Felicity Hannah:Simon, none of your businesses seem obviously related. But are you looking at AI for any of your many, many endeavours? Actually, I have. I've got an IT business called ITG in Macclesfield. Of course you do. So, yes, we very much know about AI and I've spent 30 years IT professional as well. Yeah, AI is, again, you can't ignore it anymore. It is something that will take over the mundane tasks. It's not going to remove people particularly. It's going to actually remove mundane tasks, make businesses slicker, make people able to operate faster. That's what it's actually doing there. But is it a bubble?

27:13I don't think it is, actually. I think this has got a long way to go yet. I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg of what AI is capable of doing. And I think we should buckle up for a rapid acceleration to this.

27:25Felicity Hannah:Well, Wake Up To Money was born buckled up. But we have seen, I mean, you talk about the potential for not losing jobs, just losing some of those mundane, everyday kind of admin tasks. But we have seen with all the conversation about the number of graduates who can't find those first jobs and the number of so-called needs. There is this kind of growing concern, isn't there, that AI developments and AI being able to do some of those mundane tasks is actually taking out those roles that previously would have gone to new starters. Yeah, I suppose you could actually correlate the two side by side there.

28:00But again, a sort of lack of growth generally actually in the UK is actually definitely part and parcel of that there. And those businesses that are embracing AI and finding opportunities for this are actually capable of actually expanding their workforce simultaneously by having a work smarter, not harder kind of philosophy. And I think that's really where business needs to be thinking of, AI particularly, is how can it advance their growth rather than actually then how can it remove people from the overhead of the payroll, which is, I think, unscrupulous, those that do.

28:43Felicity Hannah:85058, if you want to weigh in on this, Laurie in France has messaged on the convertibles chat to say there are loads of convertibles here. The weather helps. We just had the 500 Ferraris against a cancer rally, so it was an amazing weekend. And somebody who doesn't give their name says SoftBank is just investing in a very large data centre in France because of cheap energy. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Like those$5 roses at a gas station, or a second-hand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes? Marketers know that feeling.

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30:41Felicity Hannah:Good morning. If you're just joining us on Wake Up To Money, welcome to Monday. Welcome to a new week, a new month. We are into June. We've got loads to talk about this morning. We've been chatting about EVs already. We've been talking about farming, keeping cows. Cool. We've been talking about sales of cheese for Father's Day. There's loads still to come. Do get in touch. Do share your thoughts. You can text us on 85058 or you can send us a WhatsApp message on 08085 909693. Martin in Cheltenham has done just that. He says, constant noise on the radio. Not noise, Martin. A constant noise on the radio about buying an electric car when you can't have a charger on a terrace house.

31:22Felicity Hannah:Relying on quick public charges costs double the price than running a diesel car. Thank you very much indeed for getting in touch and sharing that. Do keep your thoughts coming, whether you think the EV infrastructure is there yet or not. And get in touch and let me know if you've ever used, if you were one of the businesses that used a bounce-back loan. Because in 2020, the government introduced three loan guarantee schemes to support the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, during last week's show, we had a message from a regular listener who's celebrating paying his loan off after five years.

31:57Felicity Hannah:And I'm very pleased to say he joins us now. Keith Bradbury, friend of Wake Up To Money, I think, always messaging in. Self-employed plumbing and heating engineer in Bedfordshire. Good morning. Good morning, Flipp. It's nice to speak to you this morning. Very nice to speak to you. I'm up as early as normal. That is our wake up to money listenership. Very, very much the early rises. Keith, we're going to chat to you about your loan, but we're also joined by Julie Palmer, managing partner of BTG, which is a financial and real estate advisory firm. Julie, good morning. Good morning, too. Julie, just before we go to Keith, just remind us what these so-called bounce back loans were, these three loan guarantee schemes designed to kind of support the country.

32:39Felicity Hannah:Bounce back was just one part of that, wasn't it? It was. So originally, the government tried to roll out something called C-bills. They were much more sort of clunky and bureaucratic. So what we found in the early days... That's the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme. Very similar title. Correct. It's a little bit of a mouthful, isn't it? So what the government found is they were quite sort of clunky and the money really wasn't getting to businesses that needed it quickly enough. So it then introduced, as you say, there were three different iterations of the bounce back loan scheme.

33:08loans of up to£50 ,000 that were pretty much done on a self-certification basis. So the money got to businesses quickly that were really struggling from the shutdown of the pandemic. So the intention was that those loans would support businesses to see through the pandemic, keep them alive and therefore control sort of what I think we would have seen as massively increasing insolvency figures if we hadn't had those loans.

33:32Felicity Hannah:Keith, tell me about your loan then. What type of loan did you take out and how did it help you? Well, I took out the bounce back loan. I initially applied for furlough, but I was rejected for that because I bought a van the year before. And then when they evaluated me for furlough, the computer said no. Oh, because you'd spent all the profits on, oh, that's an interesting noise, because you'd spent all the profits on presumably buying the van. And so you hadn't actually made it. This is it, yes. Yeah, they said the HMRC said you made no profit. Well, I had, but it had been cleared by the van.

34:06But yes, I took the bounce back loan out to cover some running costs, the insurances of the van and subscriptions plus material costs. So I'm piling all that up onto the credit card. So the bounce back loan helped me clear that credit card debt because the interest rate's higher on the credit card than it was with the bounce back loan. So it made sense to get the bounce back loan, really.

34:32Felicity Hannah:And you've been paying that back all this time. It's been a five-year process. I have, yes. Yeah, it's finished now. Whoop, whoop. It's my last payment in May. So, yeah. So, I think, oh, wow. It's all gone. So, I'm surprised how five years have gone. Life seems to go quick. Yeah, I mean, that is really, really true. But what kind of impact has making those repayments had on you? Because presumably that's a debt that you weren't expecting to take out. This is it, yes. It was a debt. But to be honest, it worked out better than having the furlough because it must incur tax on that. With the loan, you could claim that back against your business as a loan.

35:13So it helped your tax liability, really. So for me, it wasn't too bad. I could have borrowed a hell of a lot more, but I restrained myself to be sensible. I don't like massive overheads in my business anyway. So I keep things as level as I can. So financially, it helped me rather than impacted me. It didn't hurt me, my monthly running costs. So it worked out better. I think if I'd been paying on credit card, yeah, 20 % interest all the time, yeah, that would cost me a lot more. No, absolutely.

35:49Felicity Hannah:Whether you'd have paid it back in this time would be anyone's guess. Julie, how much did the government kind of support in lending in total? The figures are quite sort of staggering, actually. So in total, there was just over£47 billion rolled out under the bounce-back loan schemes. That is staggering, isn't it? It is. It's a high number, isn't it? And that was to just over 1.5 million businesses. So it really does show the extent of support that was provided. And do we know how much has been repaid? Yeah, sort of the figures are sort of it's a moving target as these schemes come to the end of their life.

36:21So by September 2025, about 67 % of the schemes were actually repaid or on track to be repaid. And I think that's a really good number. And obviously, the sort of underlying number, though, is that there's about a third of the schemes that are not expecting to be repaid. So, again, it gives you a sort of indication of the numbers. And more worryingly, there's about 1.5 billion that the banks have identified that are likely or probable fraud. which is coming under more scrutiny at the moment.

36:54Felicity Hannah:Yeah, I was amazed, actually. When I was sort of reminding myself about bounce-back loans ahead of this morning, knowing we were chatting to Keith, I was sort of searching the internet. And a lot of the stories around them now seem to be businesses being prosecuted for fraudulent claims. That's right. I mean, interestingly, at the moment, HMRC have set up a special task force of about 1 ,200 people, and they are targeting those fraudulent claims and hoping to recover£1.5 billion is their estimates as to what they're going after. But, you know, the numbers here are big. When you hear about the total amount that was rolled out and then you look at budgets in terms of what's needed for the NHS and what's needed for other key initiatives, that just gives you an indication of the context of those numbers.

37:41So, obviously, if some of those monies have been fraudulently applied for, it's right that we try and get those back to get the money back in for the benefits of the taxpayer generally.

37:49Felicity Hannah:I can hear Keith kind of agreeing in the background. Yeah, I think personally they made bounce-back loans too easy to get. There's no sort of valuation of how long your business has been running or anything. The fraudulent people have set up a business straight away and claimed bounce-back loans and then folded the company and disappeared. So with furlough, you have to show your books the last two or three years, but it bounced back loans, you set up a company and then it's like, hey, presto, I've got 10 grand in my bank. Julie, that's been one of the difficulties, though, for the government at the time, wasn't it, that it had to roll out this support incredibly quickly?

38:31That's right. So it had to be done on a self-certification basis, otherwise the money just wouldn't have got to those businesses and we would have seen many more failures. Having said that, by spring of last year, there were 113 ,000 businesses that entered insolvency. that we saw sort of bounce back loans being part of those insolvency numbers. So on the one hand, they stopped insolvencies. But on the other hand, businesses that really couldn't afford to repay those loans, it probably contributed then to rising insolvency rates.

39:02Felicity Hannah:Keith, what does the future look like for your business now? Now that you're debt free, the Covid era is finally behind you. I mean, I'm all right, actually. Yeah, the age I am now, I'm slowly winding my business down. So I've got a few more years of working. So my customers hear me. So don't panic. I'm still around. But no, I'm doing all right, actually. Yeah, we're ticking along. I've been self-employed for about 25 years now. So yeah, we're doing all right. So my company's ticking along as we normally do. So my customers call me the fourth emergency service. So I'm always here for my customers.

39:38Felicity Hannah:We're talking a bit about sort of the switch to EVs this morning. And I was just sort of thinking about other green technology. Are you still just working in very traditional kind of plumbing and heating, or are you having to upskill for the sort of the green revolution? No, not really. A few years ago, we looked at heat pumps as a company installing them, but there's just too much trouble installing them. It's just not straightforward. You have to be geared up properly for them, whereas I'd rather stick to traditional gas boilers. and same as solar panel. We did look at doing solar at one time as well, but you've got to be properly specialized to do that.

40:20You can't dabble at those sort of things. So I'd rather stick with traditional stuff. EV vehicles, if I had a few more years running with my business, I was looking at an EV van, the VW ID Buzz. It's a very nice looking van. But my business, I can't really afford that really. can't justify the cost of the age I am.

40:45Felicity Hannah:Not if you're at the point of winding down, but I hope you've been listening to Wake Up To Money for many, many more years. Oh, I'm always here, Fliss. Yes, I'm always here for you. Regular texter in a now guest on Wake Up To Money. Keith Bradbury, thank you very much for joining us on Wake Up To Money. Thank you very much, Fliss. Nice speaking to you. Nice to speak to you. What a pleasure. And Julie, always a pleasure as well. Thank you so much. Julie Palmer, Managing Director of BTG, which is a financial and real estate advisory firm. Thank you. Thank you, also. Right, lots of you getting in touch on EVs.

41:15Felicity Hannah:People always have a lot of thoughts on EVs, don't they? Paul in Lincoln says, we can't have an EV. We live across a green from where the cars are parked. Parking spaces area free for all, so nothing dedicated. Garage is in a block with no power. We have one full hybrid, one petrol and a trike 300cc scooter. Oh, I bet that's fun. I bet that's fun in the summer as well. Right, let's whisk through some of the other business stories of the morning. Waste companies. This is quite interesting. Calling for a£5 deposit to be charged on vapes to encourage people to dispose of them properly. That's after a ban came in a year ago.

41:50Felicity Hannah:Still with me is April LaRouche, head of investment specialists at Insight Investment. And Simon Spirrell, director of, well, as we've been hearing, a multitude of businesses, including Hartington Creamery in Derbyshire. Simon, I mean, this is sort of well out of your business area, but it shows that sort of some of that refocus that's being called for where the sort of people are being encouraged to think much more about the whole life cycle of the products they're buying and potentially having to pay a fee to manage that. I think in a way it's the right way to go. Making manufacturers actually partly responsible for the recycling of difficult to recycle products actually has to be part and parcel of the model that goes with it there and the cost for doing so.

42:40I know several European countries, they build in the cost of this, of the recycling of a product into the actual cost of buying it. So therefore you're guaranteed that it's going to be recycled sensibly and economically. And yeah, I think, I don't know how much a vape pen costs actually, but£5 doesn't seem a great deal of money actually, considering the difficulty is in actually then disposing of this afterwards. And obviously the waste companies wouldn't be telling us that this is necessary unless it really was a problem for them. So, yeah, I mean, you know, it has to be, we have to take responsibility for our own actions.

43:22Felicity Hannah:Yes. And they do cause, April, some real potential issues for bin lorries and waste facilities when they're chucked away with the general rubbish. They can even cause fires and things. But I suppose, April, that one of the issues is kind of setting up a system for that, you know, a system for a deposit to be charged. That's actually a really big thing for retailers or for councils or for whoever it would be to have to do. Yeah, and it's actually not a very big ticket item. So I imagine it would be complicated. I mean, you know, if they looked back in history, there were definitely schemes where you would be incentivized to return the item to whoever you bought it from to get a deposit back.

44:05So, you know, if you think about some of the schemes where, I don't know, if I fill up my gas tank, my propane barbecue gas tank, I then bring it back. And if you're handing it back in, you get the deposit you placed on it. So you could try and implement something like that. They used to do it in the U.S. on Coca-Cola. You would have glass bottles, return the bottle and you would get five cents back or whatever.

44:29Felicity Hannah:I remember collecting as a teen, collecting Newcastle Brown ale bottles because I think you get 20p, which, you know, if you gathered up a few of them made a difference. But yeah, so I suppose it's a whole other kind of infrastructure. But you're right, April, we've done it in the past. I must ask you about the latest comments from the Bank of England. Andrew Bailey, the governor, has said the bank might not need to raise rates despite higher energy prices because of the Iran conflict. It's going to look at whether inflation is affecting wages or kind of other inflationary areas. He's kind of signaling a rate hike isn't that likely, isn't he?

45:12Felicity Hannah:But I suppose we kind of analysts are expecting otherwise. Yes, it's a tricky one. I mean, could be a central banker now. I'm sure it's never easy to run the Bank of England, but especially now it's very tricky because obviously people remember very, very recently having 11 % inflation. So when you're looking at energy prices and you know they're going to feed through into inflation, the Bank of England is sort of being tasked with trying to make sure that that inflation doesn't kind of create a problem like it did back in 20 and 2021. But because the Bank of England has been signaling that they would be willing to increase interest rates to stop inflation getting out of control, the market is now effectively expecting and has priced in one interest rate hike of a quarter of a percent.

46:02So, in fact, actually, by just talking about it, effectively, financial markets are already pricing it in. So, in some sense, do you have to do anything at all? And in fact, what the Bank of England would like to do is obviously just keep talking tough, keep saying, don't worry, we're not going to let inflation get out of control. We're watching and monitoring to see if this kind of feeds through into lots of other things in the economy. But we're not going to go and quickly increase interest rates because honestly, it wouldn't really help. I mean, putting up interest rates in the UK does nothing about the fact that oil prices are high.

46:38Felicity Hannah:Yes. So people can't necessarily, if they're relying on a certain amount of fuel to get to work or if they're relying on goods where the price is being inflated by oil, they can't do much about that. No. And it kind of matters in which order things happen because ultimately high energy prices reduces demand for all sorts of things. So the economy should just slow, which naturally takes inflation out of the system. So in some sense, it is quite a sensible thing to kind of wait and see because actually hiking interest rates right now just wouldn't necessarily be the right tool for the problem. Simon, what are you seeing with rising prices across your multitude of businesses?

47:19Felicity Hannah:What kind of inflationary pressures are you seeing? The main one is actually heating oil or oil that powers devices that use kerosene. I live in a remote area, so I have no other choice other than to have heating oil. And that has gone up to nearly three times its price from 51p. about three months ago, it's about 119 to 125 pence, which is absolutely ridiculous. The heating oil for business, again, the Hartford Creamery, very remote, it doesn't have a choice. It's in a national park as well, Peak District Park. It means it can't actually then switch easily to renewables because it's a very old building and therefore lots of covenants, lots of restrictions.

48:10So we are at the behest of the cost of fuel. and I still think actually that there is a lot of price gouging going on as is seen by the massive profits that all of the old companies have made in the last couple of months on the back of the crisis generated by the war and they're not being held to account on this at all. They are making a fortune out of our misfortune as consumers here and something should really be done about that and yeah, it is rising, pushing the cost of business production up there because it naturally will do. I mean, you have pasteurisation that has to be heated, et cetera, for cheese, that in smaller businesses, again, they have no other choice other than the heating oil there.

48:58And, you know, I really would like to see actually, instead of actually mentioning gouging, to actually then do something about the gouging and actually stopping large companies making vast profits.

49:08Felicity Hannah:I should say that opinions do sometimes differ. I know UK watchdogs have found no evidence of widespread systemic price gouging by fuel retailers, certainly, although we have, of course, seen those soaring oil prices putting a lot of pressure on a lot of different businesses. Thank you very, very much for your thoughts. And thank you for everyone who's getting in touch on vapes. It's actually I'm just going to read a few of these very, very quickly before our final story, because it is really, really interesting. One person says vapes. In the Netherlands, you return some bottles to units resembling ATMs or vending machines.

49:39Felicity Hannah:They return your deposit by issuing a discount voucher barcode. Easy. Gareth in what he describes as not-so-sunny Wales says, I have a shop which has sold vapes since day one. I now have to pay to have a vapes recycling bin to comply with the law, yet more cost to an already costly business. It has sat empty since it's been delivered. We do as much as we can, but the vape smokers must also be held more responsible. Maybe if it costs them a few quid, they might take notice. Keep your thoughts coming. We've got a few more minutes before the end of the show, but let's talk about a major event in London today.

50:15Felicity Hannah:Heavyweights from the business, technology and creative industries are descending on the capital for the South by Southwest Festival. And when I say big, big heavyweights, I mean some incredible names. Michelle Obama, the Reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian, Ben & Jerry's co-founder, Ben Cohen. They're all among those taking to the stage this year. This is the second time it's been held in London after being held in Austin, Texas for almost 40 years. And joining them will be Ben Drury, CEO of Yoto, which is a company that makes a screen-free interactive audio player designed for children aged 3 to 12.

50:50Felicity Hannah:Morning, Ben. Good morning, Flith. How are you? It's always a pleasure to speak to you because I get to talk about Sir Paul McCartney. I'm a bit of a fan of – you've got some incredible investors, don't you? You've had Mark Zuckerberg and Sir Paul McCartney investing in your device. So you're very much someone who's having to sort of seek out network with these kind of star-studded celebrities. What are you expecting from this year's festival? So, yeah, as you said, it's the second year that's in London. I've been lucky enough to have been to Austin, Texas a few times and seen Billy Bragg playing in a church there.

51:25so this is really bringing London's amazing creative and cultural hub combining it with the American South by Southwest festival I'm really looking forward to doing a fireside chat that there's going to be a lot of themes this year around how UK companies can really scale up and crack the US I think Yoto's done pretty well there it's our biggest market and it's still growing really really fast and of course AI will dominate

51:54Felicity Hannah:I imagine AI is definitely going to be one of the main conversations today. But when you talk about the US being your biggest market, what is the benefit of an event like this festival today? Does it help you kind of network with potential customers in the US or pick up other people's experience? Completely. I mean, it's really, I said less about customers, but it's more about building those relationships with businesses. You've mentioned some of the huge names from the US. These events are a brilliant way to create this bridge between the two countries. We've always had that special relationship, but, you know, maybe been a little bit under pressure the last few years.

52:36But I was just in L.A. with some other representatives from Britain at another conference.

52:43Felicity Hannah:You were part of a UK-US trade mission, weren't you? It was incredible. We had Gareth Southgate on the airplane and Tim Peake. And there was another good example about how the UK does really punch above its weight when it comes to kind of creative industries, sports. I think I personally believe this is where we have to play to our strengths. If we really want to be a global leader in certain areas of tech, we can't try and do everything. We should focus in on the things that we do really well. And we punch above our weight when it comes to music and fashion and sports. and those other creative industries.

53:19Felicity Hannah:What's your impression then of the state of UK-US trade at the moment? Because it's been a pretty legendarily tough year and a half, hasn't it, for a lot of international trade? Yes, there's definitely been lots and lots of headwinds going on. Headwinds, what a great word we use again and again. Yeah, the Iran conflict has been just another one. But I don't know, things carry on, you know, keep calm and carry on. and we've seen great growth in the US and even the tariff situation has calmed down. We've actually got refunds on tariffs now from the US government. So there are some positive signs despite the headwinds.

53:58Felicity Hannah:So you've got refunds but presumably your tariffs are still there just at a lower rate and so you're still paying more than you were before? Yes, I mean there were some tariffs already in place even before the latest administration. And they have gone up slightly, but they weren't going to the crazy levels that they were briefly. Now, if I gave you 30 seconds, tell me what the UK is like for a business like yours. Are you able to scale here? Or are you thinking maybe we need to move to the US if it's our biggest market? Absolutely no plans to move to the US. We have access to unbelievable talent here in the UK.

54:38We do all of our engineering, all of our product management in the UK. And geographically, we're in a brilliant place. We trade with Asia, we trade with Europe, we trade with the US. We spend a lot of time in the US as our biggest market, but we've got everything we need on our doorstep here.

54:58Felicity Hannah:Very, very good to hear. Such an upbeat business outlook. Ben Drury, CEO of Yoto, thank you for starting what's clearly going to be a very busy day with Wake Up To Money. Simon Spirrell, Director of Hartington Creamery in Derbyshire. Thank you very much. Also, clearly a busy day, busy week. April LaRouz, Head of Investment Specialists at Insight Investment. Thank you. Thanks for all your messages and for your company this morning. That's it for Wake Up To Money. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

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