Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming. I'm gonna keep it brief as usual. I'm very happy to see there's not many of you here. There you go. Listen, we've got a great business too whatever is going on. In the external world, we have a super business and we're just dealing with it. That's really the basis of everything they said, we're dealing with everything.
I'll pass it over to John, and he can explain, and Neil and Carol.
Thanks, Mahmud, and good morning, everyone. Firstly, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our teams across all of our brands for their continued hard work and commitment. Our people are crucial as we continue to invest in the business to ensure we have the right technology, infrastructure, and capacity to support our future growth. What we have achieved over the last two years is nothing short of exceptional. We have grown revenue by 61% across the group. We have increased our customer base by 43% to 20 million people. We have increased our market share by over 80% in the U.K. and the U.S., and we have significantly extended our target addressable market with our acquisitions. We can now address everybody from 16 through to 50+ , and the opportunity is huge, with half a billion potential customers across our key markets.
We're investing for the future. We're increasing capacity across our U.K. distribution network to over GBP 4 billion and adding a U.S. distribution center to take capacity to over GBP 5 billion. We're driving efficiencies across our existing sites through automation programs, bringing significant cost savings in future years. We're optimizing our supply chain, taking advantage of our diverse base to flex sourcing to markets closer to home. We have integrated our new brands to position them well for future growth, both in the U.K. and in international markets. Macro factors have created some short-term headwinds for the business. Our international proposition has been affected in overseas markets due to delivery delays. We're confident that we have the right product and price, which is demonstrated by our great performance in the U.K., driving market share gains.
The only thing that is not strong enough currently in our international markets is our delivery proposition. We're investing in a new DC in the U.S., which will transform the delivery proposition with next day across our key U.S. markets. Carriage costs remain very high. On a like-for-like basis, they have impacted EBITDA by approximately GBP 60 million over the last year versus pre-pandemic costs. While we expect these costs to continue in the near term, over the medium term, we expect them to trend down towards more normalized levels. We are moving sourcing closer to home markets and away from areas facing delays and higher costs, such as China. We're improving our stock management, tightening our stock holding to give greater flexibility to react to changes in demand mid-season.
We're focused on cost management, leveraging central overheads across the group, scaling our newly launched brands, and driving greater marketing efficiencies. The effects of higher returns rates annualizing will also have an impact over the coming year, with return rates increasing last year as we exited the periods of lockdown. Product mix has changed significantly, and Carol will come on to talk about this later. The mix has skewed towards dresses more so than before the pandemic, and so associated returns are naturally higher. All of these factors are temporary, not structural, and will subside as the effects of the pandemic begin to ease. We've been investing into our newly relaunched brands, integrating them into our supply base, embedding the test and repeat model, and spending on marketing to raise brand awareness.
This has had a short-term impact on our EBITDA margin, but will contribute to future growth as the brands scale. We're also focusing on our wholesale partnerships, both in the U.K. and internationally, and have announced three over the past year and more to come very soon. Our focus remains unchanged. Invest into the business to be well-prepared for future growth opportunities. We are driving through ambitious automation programs which will bring material future cost savings. We're investing GBP 125 million in our Sheffield distribution center with a payback period of under five years. We've invested in a new office in London for our London-based brands, and we have committed to creating 5,000 new jobs over the next five years as we continue to grow. Over the next year, there are some key areas we are focusing on with regards to our international business.
We are currently in the process of opening a U.S. distribution center, which will be operational by mid-2023, driving a step change in our delivery proposition, enabling us to offer next day delivery to our key U.S. markets. We are focused on building wholesale partnerships to complement our direct offering, increasing brand awareness across existing and new territories. This year, we announced partnerships with Alshaya in the Middle East, About You in Europe, and Very in the U.K. We have a number of other partnerships in the pipeline, and we will be announcing those very soon. Our marketing focus is moving back to driving engagement through key influencers and physical events, such as Coachella in the U.S., along with big campaigns such as Megan Fox with boohoo and lots more exciting events and collaborations over the coming months.
We are focusing our investment in key territories such as the U.S., where we see huge potential for growth. We've increased our market share by over 80% in the U.S. in the past few years. Clearly, our product resonates with customers, and there is massive opportunity there, so we are investing now to drive growth when we have transformed the delivery proposition. Over the past two years, there have been a clear structural shift to online. Key apparel markets around the globe are still down versus two years ago, including the U.K., U.S., and Europe. On this chart, there are some incredible businesses within our global competitor set, and we have seen leading growth over the last two years. Not only are we emerging from the pandemic in that group of structural winners, we're in the top set of those and are delighted with that performance.
Now an update on Debenhams. We're making a significant investment of GBP 75 million in Debenhams, having relaunched the brand as an online-only digital department store. We have now completed phase one, which saw the relaunch of the website, the relaunch of Debenhams in-house brands, the addition of boohoo group brands, new categories, prestige beauty being offered, and also third-party fashion brands through the marketplace. We're now moving on to phase II, and we have the opportunity to add hundreds, if not thousands, of brands to the site. We're in talks with additional beauty houses to onboard their products and also a range of third-party brands to sign up to our marketplace. We have made significant progress over the last year, but there is still a long way to go to unlock the full potential of our digital department store.
Moving on to strategy, there are six areas that we'll run through, covering everything from global opportunity ahead of us through to how our technology and infrastructure will act as enablers for us. Across our key markets of the U.K., U.S., Europe, and the rest of the world, apparel markets remain down versus 2019. The U.K. is down 3% versus pre-pandemic levels, the U.S. is down 9%, and rest of the world down 10%. Despite the macro issues facing us over the past few years, we've grown 77% in the U.K., 71% in the U.S., and 13% in Europe and the rest of the world. That means we have grown market share across these core markets.
If we look at this through our customer KPIs, which Neil will cover in more detail later on, we are seeing different performances between our U.K. and international businesses that we attribute to the service challenges we are having in delivering goods to our customers overseas. Looking at the revenue retention metrics, by which I mean the percentage of total prior year net sales that are repeated by our customers in the following year, we have seen a significant divergence in performance between our U.K. and international businesses. In the U.K., our retention rates have remained close to 100% over the last two years. What this means is that in revenue terms, we are seeing almost no churn from our customer base.
We attribute this to the strength of our business model, which is resonating strongly with our customers as a result of our pricing, product, and proposition being exactly where we want them to be. Internationally, this picture is different, with retention rates lower than where they were pre-pandemic, which is driven by the impact of significantly extended delivery times, negatively impacting our offering in these markets. As we progress our plans to transform the delivery proposition, such as through our U.S. distribution center, we will be aiming to drive those international sales retention rates back up to what they were two years ago, with the ambition of taking them even higher with a superior delivery proposition in the U.S., such as next-day delivery, an example of that opportunity. As you can see, we have a large wholesale footprint internationally, and a key focus for us is expanding these partnerships.
This year, we announced partnerships with Alshaya in the Middle East, About You in Europe, and Very in the U.K. We also have other wholesale partnerships in the U.K. and India being announced shortly. There is a huge opportunity to continue to develop these partnerships and enter new markets in a low-risk way, but with significant potential to increase brand awareness. As you can see, we have a diverse supply chain. We began with our Leicester base in the U.K., and we have grown this throughout Europe, across North Africa and into the Far East. Last year, our sourcing mix was approximately 42% short lead time and 58% long lead time. Over the last year, there have been well-documented issues with sourcing from the Far East, which has reduced this flexibility of our business model and our ability to effectively test and repeat product.
Flexibility to move our sourcing closer to home to Europe and Northern Africa enables us to shorten lead times and avoid increased air freight costs by trucking product back to our UK DCs, which is a big focus for us in the year ahead. Our sourcing mix now is roughly 51% short and 49% long lead time, evidencing that flexibility, and we aim to take that short lead time sourcing from markets closer to home up to 60% in the coming weeks and months. We currently have significant scale with four distribution centers in the U.K. We have ongoing automation projects in Sheffield and Burnley. In our Sheffield site, we're investing GBP 125 million to build a state-of-the-art facility, which will lead to greater efficiencies going forward. To put that into context, that is 3x what we invested in our Burnley site.
We expect payback to be within five years, bringing significant cost savings into the future. We have plans for other sites too, such as Daventry, where we will invest to see material cost savings in future years. When our U.K. automation projects are complete, we'll have over GBP 4 billion sales capacity. When the U.S. distribution center opens, that will take us to GBP 5 billion sales capacity across all of our sites. Significant capacity to support our ambitious future growth plans. We already have a significant business in the U.S., with sales last year of almost $600 million. In mid-2023, we plan to open our first U.S. distribution center, which will be strategically located in Pennsylvania in the northeast, close to our key U.S. markets.
The site itself is over 1 million sq ft, and all of the U.S. will be serviced from this new distribution center. The opening of the distribution center will transform our U.S. delivery proposition to next day across those key U.S. markets and two days in other areas. That compares to 8-10 days currently. We're experiencing delays to delivery now, but this is transformational even compared to our pre-pandemic delivery times, and so we have a lot of opportunity to grow sales in this huge market. The takeaway from this slide is that our global offering continues to scale rapidly, and there are some incredible stats here. Today, we have 13 fashion destinations compared to seven, two years ago. With these destinations, there are 83 customer-facing websites and apps, which will continue to grow. Choice for our customer is unrivaled.
Our offer has trebled in the last two years, and our customer has more newness than ever before, with almost 1,000 lines launched daily. Our reach continues to grow with 60 million social media followers and 20 million customers from around the world shipping across our brands. Shopping across our brands, sorry. On the front end, we have expanded out our platform with upgrades across our Nasty Gal and boohoo brands with our partner Salesforce, and we have also launched Debenhams onto a new headless modular platform architecture, which differs to our existing multi-brand platform technology. Implementing a product inventory management system, PIM, has been a huge step, moving the business forward by standardizing and centralizing all of our product information. With 5 million SKUs across our brands, we are seen as a trailblazer on how to leverage the benefits of a modern PIM across the industry.
Work on how we optimize our products to get them onto our website for a better customer focus. The work in our auto-categorizer has streamlined the internal processes and provided efficiencies by removing manual categorization tasks. We are also focused on innovation content to drive further interaction with our customers. Examples of this are fitness content for our activewear ranges and gamification with new product launches. We've also been investing in back office technology, implementing further digitalization to support the scaling of our platform. Developing our microservices continues into the next 12 months to allow for platform changes across the finance, as well as enabling our growth warehouse in 2023. The implementation of our new PO service and integration with our third-party logistics carriers has unlocked the visibility of our goods in transit across our supply chain.
Launching our supplier hub was a huge achievement, taking all our supplier onboarding into the 21st century, removing the manual onboarding processes, and implementing a digital platform that our suppliers can interact with us and has also allowed for our supply chain to be streamlined, controlled, and auditable. We have completed our agenda for change, which has now become a part of focus now is for driving further sustainability within our business. Earlier this year, we launched an in-house laboratory allowing for fast and cost-effective in-house garment testing, being one of very few retailers that have invested in this technology. It allows us to test fabrics for quality and durability, along with helping to meet sustainability goals. We're now a member of the Better Cotton Initiative, with great progress made to date in the sourcing of BCI cotton, and we're working with Cotton Connect to grow responsible environment.
We recently opened our Leicester manufacturing site, where we have begun producing clothing for a number of brands across the group. We have launched a collection of summer dresses with Dorothy Perkins that are all made at the site in the U.K. When at full capacity, the site is capable of producing 40,000 units per week. We have set out Science-Based Targets as part of our upfront sustainability strategy, and we have verified. We'll be publishing our 2022 sustainability report with further details. We are also entering the resale market with a PLT-branded platform total addressable market. The site will allow resale of any brand. But for PLT shoppers, they will be able to link their account and resell PLT product without the need for tech integration. It's a great market and also increase the lifespan of garments.
To summarize, over the last two years, we have seen strong sales growth across the group of 61%, growing our market share in our core geographies. Customers shopping across our brands have grown to 20 million people, and we have extended our target addressable market to 0.5 billion people with brands targeting all price points and age ranges from 16 to 50+. On investing to position ourselves for future growth opportunities. We're increasing capacity in our distribution centers through automation and efficiency projects. We're adding a U.S. delivery proposition, and we're optimizing our supply chain, utilizing our diverse footprint to source from more closer to home to bring down costs and lead times.
We're continuing to defining the individual focus of the brands, increasing brand awareness, and building out ranges and styles to offer our customers unrivaled choice and even more reasons to shop with us.
That's it for me for now. I'll hand you over to Neil now for the financials.
Thanks, John, and good morning, everybody. I'm going to move on to the financial review of the year. As I go through, you'll see that we continue to include two-year comparisons for some additional context, to provide context following an exceptional year last year. Shifts in customer behavior and demand, I'll take a look at guidance and outlook. Let's start with the income statement. Group sales grew 14%, compounding the standout performance last year, meaning that we've delivered 61% growth over the past two years. We've consolidated our already significant market share and extended our total addressable market. Gross margin was bigger by 70 basis points year on year following significant inbound cost and freight cost inflation and some increases in markdown in the last parts of the financial year.
Adjusted EBITDA at GBP 120 million, in line with the pre-pandemic figure two years ago, despite the significant additional pandemic-related freight costs that have impacted the EBITDA by around GBP 60 million. Totaled GBP 74.7 million, and that includes one-off restructuring and warehousing pounds, and those were investments for scale and efficiencies that the group. Looking at the results by geographical segment, as John mentioned earlier, we're delighted to have significantly increased market share in our two largest markets, the U.K. and the U.S. In the U.K., we've grown 27% in the year and 77% over the last two years. While in the U.S., we grew 4% year-on-year and 71% over the last two years. Due to extended shipping times, we've seen reduced growth on the two-year comparison across Europe and the rest of the world segments.
We expect to see a re-acceleration of sales and growth across these markets, in addition to establishing wholesale partnerships that can support the brands in the regions in the future. We just wanted to add a bit of further color on our established brand performance, who through the pandemic have delivered 36% growth with the U.K. up 39%, reflecting the strength of our proposition, our international business was up 33% despite those service challenges that have impacted performance. Looking at our customer engagement KPIs, we had around 20 million unique active customers in the 12 months to the end of February 2022. That's a 43% increase over the last two years. In the last year, we've seen further improvements in key customer metrics, and that means customers are shopping brands and spending more, a share of wallet.
Most of you will recognize this slide showing our cohorts of customers by vintage and the levels of revenue retention. As a reminder, we're defining the level of revenue retention as the percentage of that are repeated by those customers in the following year. At a group level, we can see that the exceptional customer acquisition achieved in the early stages of the pandemic has yielded some churn of customers in the last 12 months, with revenue retention at 78%, which was down from 91% last year. The big driver behind that decrease is with our international performance, which is as a result of those service challenges we've spoken about. On the right-hand side, though, we've got our customer base, which really when our brands are able to deliver across price, product, and proposition.
Our retention of 99% as we continue to drive market share growth with customers. This gives us confidence that when we're able to replicate our U.K. offering internationally, we can. For context, restoring international retention levels back to pre-pandemic rates would add around GBP 200 million to our top line is to go beyond that, get our international business up to those pandemic rates of retention in the short term, and then to emulate the level of retention that we see in our U.K. customer base. On to operating costs, this slide shows changing costs as a result of the pandemic and also as a result of our investment in new brands. As we move forward, we're focused on leveraging our costs, our efficiencies as well as landing key projects to drive efficiency and the benefits of scale.
We aim to deliver a targeted reduction as a percentage of sales as follows. Firstly, central administration costs, which have increased slightly as a percentage of net sales versus last year. We're continuing to invest in our multi-brand platforms and our recently acquired leverage come through in future years, consistent with our performance. Secondly, marketing has seen strategic investments into those brands that we've recently acquired so that we can fully capture the opportunity that they bring to the group. In addition, trading has been a little behind expectations for some of the other brands, particularly in those international markets. Looking ahead, we'll be focusing on driving more efficient spend, and we expect our marketing 9%-10% of sales corridor in the medium term.
However, at the same time, we won't be afraid to continue investing in order to unlock the growth curve ahead of us. Lastly, distribution costs have increased year-on-year as a percentage of net sales. This is due to significant increase in international carriage rates, elevated levels of returns. Looking ahead, we've got a major automation project going live at Sheffield, where we're investing around GBP 125 million, and that will unlock major operational efficiencies. We expect about a five-year payback on that investment. In addition, we expect significant savings on the distribution in 2023. Going into a little bit more detail on costs, we want to draw out the full impact of freight cost headwinds on our cost base.
Those represent short-term will pass as the effects of the pandemic ease and supply chain million pounds as a result of those. That's versus two years ago shown here. Firstly, outbound carriage inflation is GBP 38 million higher than it would have been two years ago. This increase impacts our distribution cost line. Secondly, inbound freight inflation, which after mitigation was at a GBP 22 million headwind last year in the second half of the year just gone. Looking at the impact of pandemic-related headwinds, plus our brands and platform can really see the underlying resilience as well as the longer-term opportunity. We're reporting GBP 125 million of adjusted EBITDA in the year. That's despite GBP 60 million of pandemic-related costs, which are equivalent to 300 basis points of full year 2020.
In addition, we've invested in brands which have not yet scaled to the same degree as our more established brands. Across overhead and marketing efficiencies, that represents a combined GBP 33 million EBITDA. Bringing it down towards the group's long-term average. This would deliver over 150 basis points of margin. To summarize the last few slides, looking through the cycle of the last two years, healthy levels of EBITDA despite the significant and unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic. While at the same time, investing in our multi-brand platform that gives us a lot of optimism to continue investing for the future of the group. Moving on to cash flow, two main moving parts versus last year, working capital and capital expenditure.
On working capital, we've invested in the brands, the new brands, and operated with higher levels of inventory than expected because of global supply chain issues. We believe that we'll be able to improve this in the year and GBP 62 million in the year, primarily across freehold properties. That was at GBP 88 million. We also had GBP 120 million infrastructure, and then the remainder related to investments in the tech stack for our multi-brand platform and upgrading our offices are all about building a scalable platform, infrastructure, and working environment that can support our long-term growth. Post year end, we have upgraded the GBP 100 million pound revolving credit facility to a new GBP 325 million pound facility, which will underpin. It mirrors what we did capacity for growth, and then at the right time, added automation to drive efficiency.
Look at the location in September 2018 with CapEx of GBP 17 million, which focused on the manual operation. Two years ago, we drew up plans for a GBP 125 million of stock holding capacity enables the site to support 1.3. More importantly, this will drive improved operational efficiencies, where we'll be expecting to achieve a payback of less than five years on that GBP 125 million investment. We're more than five-fold from their pre-investment levels. For the year ahead, we're focused on retaining the significant market share gains that we've made over the course of the last two years. We expect to continue to be impacted by pandemic-related factors that have impacted our international competitive proposition and our cost base.
Therefore, we're expecting that revenue percentage growth will be low single digits this year and adjusted EBITDA margins will be expected to be between 4% and 7%. In the first half of the year, we expect revenues to be broadly flat as relatively high return rates lead to net sales being down year-on-year in the first quarter with a return to growth in the second quarter. Margins to start rebuilding from the level achieved in the second half of FY 2022 in the first half of this year. We've also outlined other financial guidance on this page for completeness, which includes some warehouse commissioning costs for our U.S. DC that will also flow into the following financial year, FY 2024, ahead of the go live of that facility in mid-2023. In summary, we have a robust financial and operating model.
We've delivered 61% revenue growth through the pandemic, with EBITDA broadly flat, notwithstanding the operational and cost challenges presented by the pandemic. In the U.K., our largest market, our performance and strength of our offering and gives us confidence in the long-term opportunity both in the U.K. and also internationally. For the year ahead, we're focused on leveraging costs and landing strategic enablers to prime the group for growth as conditions normalize and as pandemic-related headwinds ease. Returning towards normalized growth rates of 25% year-over-year per annum, and that we'll see post-pandemic and also with the adjusted EBIT to 10% in the medium.
I'd now like to hand over to Carol. Thank you.
Thank you, Neil, and good morning, everyone. In recent years our product categories have evolved to the ever-emerging trends. Our brands and how our dresses have been the best performing category. Before we get to that and get us started, I'd like to present to you a video to show what the boohoo group and its 13 brands have been up to in the last 12 months. Quite a lot going on. On this next slide, you can see there's a selection of dresses that are available across all our brands. We currently have over 40,000 different options of dresses available across the brand today. Huge level of choice and for every occasion and taste level.
Our Gen Z customers to our 20-something with our going out dresses, our tailored workwear dresses, our occasion dresses. It's very different from the offering of old for every demographic, from the age of 16 to 60. Not only are we covering off the various ages and styles, we're also covering off a huge amount of sizes from curves, as well as our leading price points in our boohoo and PrettyLittleThing brands. Going up to Karen Millen by what's in between. If you just have a look at the bottom row, you'll see that's just GBP 12. At the top right-hand corner, there's a Karen Millen leather tuxedo dress at GBP 499. That's just to show you some price points.
Now, our collection, very different from what we would have looked like throughout the pandemic and even through the pre-pandemic times. As we've acquired new brands, broadened our proposition and appeal across the market. This is just boohoo group a few years back. Our core brands at the value end of the market are focused on our 16-24-year-old group. Beyond seeing these customers' wallets squeezed in the current inflationary environment, a large proportion of them aren't exposed to the price increases that many households are facing. After two years of pandemic and lockdowns, they want to go out, and they do want to refresh their wardrobe. In the U.K., where we have the right product, the right price, and the delivery proposition, and we get that right.
As John and Neil have already talked about, the delivery delays faced overseas. We feel confident that when we have. We call them our three Ps, right? We then can return to growth in our international markets. Just a little on our products. Fashion and trends, they change all the time, but nothing more has highlighted this more than a pandemic. I often hear, the conversation we're having with you guys is the words pre-pandemic levels. To a large proportion of our customers, this seems like a lifetime ago. It's very difficult to make comparisons to pre-pandemic levels when it comes to fashion trends to be expected. Life has changed and so have our social habits.
As a result, this has a huge impact on the categories we're now seeing performing and some areas that aren't as performing as well as they used to. As I've demonstrated on the previous slide, dresses are now outperforming pre-pandemic. Not as much tailoring as a few years ago, but brightly colored tailoring is now huge. You can see I'm wearing some today. This reflects the trends of the season. Athleisure, which was huge throughout the lockdown, has a lower mix, as has denim, as skinny jeans have now closed. I mention this because it does have an impact on, especially our return rates that John and Neil have already talked about this morning. Fitted tailoring have a higher return rate compared to less fit critical areas such as joggers and hoodies.
This is a seasonal trend, and as we grow our inventory to suit demand, these product mixes will vary too. What we can see with the introduction of newer brands selling at a higher price where also customers are returning items at a higher rate, or they're just buying two sizes to try on at home. We have increasing average selling price. It's very difficult to compare return rates to pre-pandemic levels. Fashion has changed, customers have grown across demographics, and our average selling price has also increased, and today we have a very dominant U.K. business. On this slide, I've just pulled out two of our brands, Coast and Burton. Over the past 12 months, we've seen a real shift towards occasion wear. Coast is a destination for bridal wear, bridesmaid, red carpet or a day at the races.
We relaunched this brand just before the pandemic began, so you can imagine it was a challenge through lockdown. Now with a focus clearly on dressing up, we've reestablished the brand's destination and we're seeing some fantastic results. First, heritage roots with over 50% of the sales in formal menswear and tailoring, a very different offer to the one we took on a year ago. With tailored suits at great value starting. Now moving on to marketing. We continue to optimize our marketing spend across all our geographies with a clear focus on where we're getting the best return for our investment. Collaborations are still a big part of our business as our usual marketing strategy. It's become part of our DNA and synonymous with the group.
We'd be here all day if I had to list them because there are so many, but here's just a few. At Karen Millen, we just launched a collection with a 90s iconic supermodel, Helena Christensen. boohoo, Jack Grealish, the U.K. footballer of the Euros tournament, and we've got further collabs with him to come throughout the World Cup this year. We've also started our journey into the Metaverse and launched NFTs. At boohoo, we worked with Paris Hilton on a virtual fashion week. PrettyLittleThing, their first virtual boohooMAN launched an NFT. It's not about monetization. Seeing further engagement with our audience. We're seeing it as a way to be innovative and a disruptor in the space.
NFT collections, collaborations, games, and how we can acquire customers that may not have shopped with. It's a growing world and, we're just starting to utilize it from a marketing perspective. Personally, I'm new to it. Here we are at the beginning of the journey. None of us know what this virtual world is going to look like or what it could potentially mean to us. Of course, we're establishing ourselves at the forefront of this. Back to the real world. As we have collabs, we've continued to participate in physical marketing events, such as New York Fashion Week, where PrettyLittleThing did a show. PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal. Something new to us is national wedding fairs across the U.K., where we've been repositioning the Coast brand.
Here we are, two years on, Karen Millen. We've navigated the relaunch through several lockdowns, taken a premium model can be applied. I have to say, it's doing really well. Even when the world was working from home and wearing jog pants, the Karen Millen brand was selling her style. Really lots of strong sales in the U.K., U.S., and now over a third of Karen Millen sales are international and the sales are up 70% on last year. The categories are ever expanding with over 3,000 lines to choose from versus a few hundred when we just took on the brand. Karen Millen has a part of this success is its 100% designed handwriting. I've touched on the collaborations with [ PrettyLittleThing] , they go from strength to strength.
The tailoring and workwear offers become part of the brand signature, are crafted quite exceptional. Recently we've introduced an offer like no other in the market with some of our leather pieces. What's true is that we've successfully implemented a test and repeat model. This allows us to be brave with our fashion choices. Bright yellow it is. Blazer at GBP 399, modeled by the iconic supermodel, Helena Christensen. With all of this, we have stretched our pricing architecture with entry price points on some jersey basics. Every customer can now own some of our Karen Millen pieces.
To summarize this morning, growth over the past two years in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe. In the U.K. specifically, where we've-- and delivery proposition, We're bringing customers back to shop with us time and time again. Structure, enabling us to offer the same to our international customers as we do in the U.K. and to return to growth in the U.S. and Europe. We are investing in automation and efficiencies for our U.K. network that will bring material cost savings in the future. We're focused on optimizing our supply chain network home while improving our lead times and bringing costs down. We are investing in the future to enable our brands to scale above and beyond what they've already achieved this year. We're very excited about all of the opportunities that lie ahead.
Thank you very much, and now we'll take questions.
Morning. Ben Hunt from Investec. Just a couple. Firstly on the stock position, if I could just touch on that a bit. It looks very elevated, and just wondering how confident you are that's clean. To what extent is having to bring in stock these days earlier affecting your ability to do test and repeat? Secondly, on your guidance, for the obviously the recovery of the EBITDA margin, how much of the GBP 60 million in freight costs are you relying to fall back as well, or that 300 basis points that you mentioned earlier in the presentation?
If I take the
You take the stock.
I'll take the stock one. When that really happens is Chinese New Year. That was the first China with COVID, et cetera, is pretty much three-four weeks. That's the only exception I would say in terms of bringing. That's a little bit around your stock levels is absolutely intact and stronger than ever. The key really is what we've experienced more around peak, I'd say. It was even on air freight, which is normally. Actually it was turning into weeks. That was literally queuing to get into an airport, then queuing to get on an airplane, and get away.
Not just a crazy price, but a really poor service is really sort of bringing, even though we have a product up to 60% and that's all truck dependent, which again just takes us away from that kind of from sea, not just in service, but obviously on cost as well.
On the freight costs included in the gap to recover from the pandemic-related issues, well, are those issues behind us just yet. Those elevated costs are gonna continue through the full year in terms of that whole 300 basis points that we've seen in the last year.
Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas. Questions or topics, please. Just on the margins. I just wonder why you aren't adjusting your bought-in margins to reflect the higher cost of returns rate. Dresses are a lower EBITDA margin, as it were. You just can't offset the higher handling costs with higher markup. Kind of related to that, does this shift to more proximity sourcing squeeze your bought-in margin for that?
The second question, actually, sorry, it's only really two topics, is it's probably far easier said than done, but given the challenges around serving those overseas customers, why is it taking you until the middle of next calendar year to compress those lead times? And when you do that, will you be replicating the whole test and repeat practice in terms of getting the stock there? Cool. Thank you.
Okay. I'll take the warehouse one first. We're on the U.S. DC. We're literally imminent days, maybe weeks maximum away from signing. We'll be taking possession of 1 million sq ft, getting ready to go. But clearly 1 million sq ft internally is quite a bit of work to fit out. Between now and Christmas, effectively, we'll be working on storage, racking, et cetera, a warehouse management system, getting staff on board and ready to go for the early part of next. Pushes on timing because as you can imagine, ordering steel today takes years. We want to build a little bit of lead time into that. That's kind of the half year really what takes us up is really sort of internally.
Then in the first half of next year, we can run the key brands. As you can imagine, you'll take a low risk one first just in terms of making sure everything's up and running and then build into the bigger ones. The brands we'll put out there will be boohoo woman, boohooMAN, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, and Karen Millen. In terms of the test and repeat model, The test is exactly the same, except so let's say we order 250 pieces, so let's say roughly 200 goes to the U.K., 50 will go to the U.S. Time is on the repeat, 'cause they're gonna react differently in terms of parts of stock, sizing, color, et cetera.
That's really what we spent a lot of time in the last sort of 18 months making sure process internally was able to be just as fast. Clearly there will be some categories and some products which will sell in a market and may not sell in another market. Again, we're not gonna do anything in terms of sourcing from Central America or Mexico, but clearly we're working through lots of options there in terms of what that will look like for the U.S. market. We've just taken on our first U.S. product person based out in our offices in L.A., and we see that expanding as well, as that D.C. opens and we begin to trade from there.
In terms of-- I'll take the sourcing one and margin as well. Actually what we're doing. Because of the cost pressure in China, on labor, on raw materials, on freight, we're moving any categories we can out of there, and we're seeing in a lot of cases actually, where even North Africa is better value than China because of those increased freight charges, China. Obviously, it's very quick as well in terms of what we're doing. So we're not really seeing any margin impact because of the cost pressure within China. Look, we've got to be flexible because will China sit back forever and just allow that to happen?
I'm sure they'll want their economy, so we need to be ready to flip back when happy on the margin with the closer to home sourcing hubs. There are categories like footwear will only come out of China. We just can't get those in the volume and the styles and the prices so.
They're inherently quite easy to buy that high returns rate because you don't have to price them down so much.
Into the bin, if you like, on dresses. You price in the impact that returns have returns. You can only price it in so much as at any one time. It's not in so much the high returns sales growth. It does impact your distribution costs as well, when you get high levels of returns overall to come back, if you like, those products rather.
Hi. Simon Owen from Credit Suisse. For you two, really just following up on where we've already been. Just on this freight issue, you talked about next year, but what about further out? I mean, if those levels are coming down. You know, if you're not gonna get a kinda big reduction from current rates. Certainly, there are lots of arguments out there to suggest that air freight rates were structurally low and will now be structurally high because of a lack of belly capacity. As to why you're optimistic that there is this medium-term opportunity beyond the current year.
Firstly, are you confident that all of your product will be okay with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act? How are you going to actually get product predominantly gonna be flown out of Europe, given that that's presumably where the bulk of your product is going to be manufactured. Then second, the second half is gonna be better than the first half this year. Most people would probably argue that the basic economics worse.
If I take the U.S. on the freights.
Yeah. Yeah
Wherever we're sourcing from will fly into China, predominantly into the U.S. If that's coming out of Europe, and truly we may have a U.K. hub and fly from there and do the volume that way. In terms of China and Uyghur cotton, you know, we source very little cotton out of China. Clearly we're like every retailer operating in China, we're very clear with our suppliers and with our fabric mills around the use of that cotton. We can be as confident, I think, as anybody else with regards to that not getting into our high cotton products like T-shirts, sweats, et cetera. We don't make really any of that in China. Countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, when it's in Asia.
Again, if you look at Pakistan, we're actually growing our own cotton in Pakistan and right through to ginners, spinners, into the mills, and then into our factories. You know, we've clearly built in no freight at the moment. Only in China, internally in Europe, and internally in the U.S. Actually, we're almost back to 2019 levels in terms of plane usage. Let's say China into Europe, and then Europe over to the U.S. Will that get better then? It's all about more planes flying. It will get better than where it is today. Will it come down considerably from where it is today? I definitely believe so.
We'll need to be moving and looking again what else we can do. Maybe it comes an opportunity time for us we need our own aircraft in terms of to be in control of that, in terms of what we do there. Those prices will come down, but rather than the kind of months away, we now think that key factors that have led us to believe that we're confident about the second half of the year being better than the first half of the year. Thoroughly different to what is out there. We're expecting, and you've seen in our guidance, that it's conservative and that a lot of the brand, the more established brands continue under pressure, and we've got those challenges around the international business.
We've been building up the portfolio of brands over the last couple of years, and we're producing rates of growth that you're not seeing from the more established brands. That's gonna start to come through in the second half of the year. Again, those more recently acquired brands have got great potential for wholesale, which we're starting to realize now, but that's accelerating through into the second half of the year. You can actually see the benefits that wholesale has brought to the international business in the last two months' figures where the world returned to growth just from that boost from the wholesale business where we're selling the brands on other platforms. Those things are gonna come through.
We knew, though, that we had tough comps in March and April in the U.K. at last year's comps. We had 50% growth in the U.K. and significant growth in the U.S. Now we're actually through those tougher comps in May. That's starting to impact us, and we're starting to see that acceleration as we sit here today. Things in the second half of the year that we've got, cost reduction programs as well as just those newer brands leveraging their costs as they scale, automation project going live in Sheffield as well. There's actually a lot throughout this year, but particularly of the year that are moving in our favor, should we say.
Okay. Adam Cochrane at Deutsche Bank. A couple from me. Look at the 4%-7% EBITDA margin guide. Are the assumptions to get to 4%, and what within that when you've given a relatively range on the sales performance? I'm assuming it's not sales going from -5% to +5%. What are the other moving parts within that?
Secondly, if you look at your sales on a pre-COVID basis, you're up, you know. What would you expected the operational leverage to have been from sales that much higher? I know you can call out the COVID costs, et cetera, but I would have thought there would have been more leverage in the business than appears to have been the case. Did you really expect there to be some, as mentioned.
When you look at companies like About You, particularly in Europe, I understand going to India and places where you're not really having a presence, but very competitive opposition in European business is maybe not gonna see as much of a focus as your U.S. and U.K. business. Thanks.
I think on the wholesale point, in terms of the complementary brands, you know, if you look at, you know, we're about creating all of our brands, creating all of our products internally. It's for us, I think, a good partnership in terms of some third-party wholesale partners in Europe or in, and at least in terms of getting our brand awareness out for our brand. You know, for me, it's not a competition because it's they sell hundreds of third-party brands, not like us, we internal. I don't know, you take the margin point here.
Yeah. On the margin guidance, the range, it's a big range, 4%-7%, but that reflects a range, a lot of uncertainty ahead, should we say. At the top end of the margin range, at 7%, you've those factors that I just outlined in the last question, those would be all coming through and then all other things being equal, end of the range. If in the second half of the year, we see the demand there, but we wanna put the foot down on marketing and invest, give us more momentum going into the following financial year, then that could be an investment in marketing or price.
That could come through to get us to the bottom end of the range, but without seeing that momentum starting in the period. It's like it's a scenario where you'd make those investments, but you don't write towards the end of the year going into the following financial year.
Free cash flow. Is that something that you're happy to bear another year of negative free cash flow? I know you've got a new RCF and things, but I'm assuming that's not.
No, it's not. I mean, that 4% is the downside scenario, isn't it? We wouldn't be too pleased if that was the case. Having said that, we've got to do the right thing for the whole year up to this, then we can put the foot down, whether it's investments in marketing, in the brands, and really get that growth going, 'cause we're seeing that path back to 25% year-on-year, that wiggle room. Having said that, we'd only be making that investment in cash if we see a big win in that case, 'cause that's the right thing to grow the business.
On the leverage point, probably you've got to look at the last two years. We've acquired eight new brands. We've got two new warehouses in the U.K., Wellingborough and Daventry. We've automated Burnley. We're in the process of automating Sheffield. We've also got a fourth or whatever in there. Do we expect leverage? Yes. You know, we're not gonna let that stop our growth, so that will come through. Automation, I think we pointed out earlier, is sort of in Sheffield, will pay back in under five years. Definitely getting leverage.
Thanks. Hi. Morning. John Stevenson at Peel Hunt. Two or three questions as well, please. First up, just in terms of the U.S., thinking about the lead times for this year, I don't know, is there anything you can do when you look to all levels and look towards peak? I don't know if you think about sort of returns consolidation or how you'd approach peak in the U.S. this year. Second question, just on Debenhams, I think at the time of the acquisitions, you talk about, you know, sort of hitting a sales target of 1x, you know, sort of acquisition EV. Can you maybe talk about that? I mean, you've alluded, obviously, there's more to add. Can you talk about sort of what level of scale we're at now currently?
The last question just on distribution costs post U.S. opening, how should we think about that sort of mix of costs at the moment? I mean, forgetting the one-off, you know, freight rates that are in there. If you want a like for like.
I'll take the returns in terms of the U.S. and service levels. I mean, I'd like to think that we'll have returns up and running operationally in the U.S. warehouse in terms of other service levels, assuming nothing changes between now and then, you know, you can potentially step up to express, but it's an opportunity. There's clearly a further cost to what we're currently paying, which is almost double pre-pandemic levels, so on that as well. You know, I hope we will see some increase in volume of aircraft going across the Atlantic from where we are now in that time. Returns is something we would look and aim to have up and running pre-Christmas and pre-peak this year.
On the Debenhams, the revenues on one scale, that's what we've done in the year just gone. That, you know, we set that expectation, and actually the way the pandemic plus receivership played out, we started a bit later. We were ahead of that, but we wanted to be ahead of that, if you like, because it wasn't as ambitious. Distribution costs will, we think. In the pandemic, we've seen them up more than double, 1.5x-2.5x what the cost of shipping a parcel to the U.S. was. Once we've got the distribution center to what it was pre-pandemic. It's a massive saving.
We also have, when we have the warehouse up and running, we're importing everything into the U.S., more import duties as well. The big benefit from having the D.C. is being closer to the customer sales and getting the growth back, going back in the U.S. business.
Just on DEBS, I appreciate it was a kind of a low target. I don't know what the sales figure was for the first year.
I just told you.
A couple. First of all, can you give us some idea of the impact on profitability of the new brands versus the established brands are somewhat lower level at 3% declared. Secondly, a lot of chat on LinkedIn about ERP at boohoo. Just wondered exactly where you stand in terms of ERP and whether you know you are as fully integrated with the new brands as you indicate.
Yeah. I mean, on the profit, the slide in the presentation that showed that in the year just gone, we've invested GBP 22 million in the multi-brand platform investment. That's really the high level of cost that we've put into the new brands before they've scaled up, and that's the opportunity as they scale margins to the more established brands. Then the elevated level of marketing on those new brands as well is about GBP 11 million. We've had GBP 33 million of investment in those new brands in the year just gone, and now they're to the break-even point. That's another factor actually for this year. I suppose we did allude to that in the as what's gonna be better in the second half rather than the first half.
When you say break-even point, you mean same as the rec?
Yeah. Exactly. On the ERP, we're constantly systems. John talked about all the ongoing program work to do on Debenhams because it's obviously continued to build on. That is a good sign of what we're spending on tech environment is moving as well.
Maybe give a bit more detail in future presentations. Be a help.
Good morning, everyone. It's Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Firstly, on the level of price increases, if you have passed through anything so far this year, or if you plan to do anything for the rest of the year. Secondly, on the U.S. distribution center, can you provide the location insights you get from the eastern part of Europe, how much from west, and what it would do to your delivery proposition in terms of how much sales would be delivered next day and how much within three days, once the operation is up and running? Thank you.
Distribution center. I mean, our sales, like in most countries, follow population. So if you look at the population versus West Coast, and then if you take out sort of some of the other key categories. So it's very similar to the population stat. So in terms of sort of three-day delivery, we're really getting sort of 95% of people within three day. Next day, obviously, is hot. Pennsylvania is a great location for us, and again, from a trucking next day in terms of that East Coast and what we need to do there. U.S. is quite a big country. You'll probably end up with a second warehouse over there.
Ultimately, you know, in three days, we're getting +90% of consumers across the U.S. in terms of what we're doing there. In terms of the question on pricing increase, look, our consumers and trying to prevent any price increases that we can there. We've talked about efficiencies, we've talked about sourcing countries, we've talked about investment in automation. We're doing everything we can internally to make us more efficient so that we can, from the environment out there and everything that's going on, in terms of what they're seeing. You know, we've also got to remember our competitive position within the market. You know, we've got to make sure we hold on to that and not lose that competitive position in the coming months and year as consumers face that inflation.
We watch our competitors, and we watch the retail market daily, to look at pricing, across every competitor and every retailer. Where we can, you know, we may take some opportunities. Ultimately, we look internally, first of all, to make sure we can do the efficiencies we can do, and make sure we're as efficient as we need to be before we start or have.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A number of questions from the webcast. Johanna from J.P. Morgan. Of the U.K. cohorts acquired during the pandemic.
I think the best thing we can give on with the U.K. cohorts, you know, we've seen really strong in the first part of the pandemic in particular, and then but it still continued to be strong. What's happening with the churn there has actually been relatively low levels for the last two years in the U.K., and we're just finding and you can see that from all the customer satisfaction measures that it's a really strong customer base. That U.K. customer side of things that once we've got all of the price and the delivery proposition right, those three, we know we can get that group, emulate a similar thing in the international customer base.
The U.K. customer base has been very strong, low levels of churn, both before the pandemic and during it and as we leave it as well.
Thank you for that. Next, question is from Georgina from J.P. Morgan again. Given the elevated stock position at year-end, should we expect some element on the Q1 gross margin? And what would you classify as the differential in lead time between short and long lead?
Short lead time. Short lead time is more about country of source, so closer to home rather than the lead time actually taking longer. Our average lead time across all brands and all product categories will vary from a week, two weeks to up to eight weeks. If you look at Asia's been impacted really about kind of freight, I would say more in terms of adding on there. Sort of two weeks to probably 8 and 10 weeks. Some of that is now kind of about freight and getting on planes rather than the actual lead time itself of manufacturing and getting it on the website. That's kind of the sourcing country.
I think on the promotion in Q1 with the elevated stock position. The elevated stock position was more about the timing of Chinese New Year and delays, and also getting other goods in from other sourcing markets. Levels of promotion as far as we're concerned, but we did see a high gross margin last year in the first half of the year around, and we'd expect the gross margin to be lower than last year in the first half of the year. Normal patterns of promotion. It's nothing to do with the elevated stock position at the end of the year that you saw there.
Thank you for that, Neil. The next question is from Ann . Where do you think the returns rate might settle versus the pre-pandemic level?
I think in terms of return rates, what we're seeing really driving that is the dress mix at the moment, and dress mix is above pre-pandemic. I think that's about, you know, people haven't been able to socialize. They haven't been able to go to those occasions. You know, people have been kinda drifting back to the office as well. I think, you know, once we pass the summer, 'cause a lot of what I think is that built-up amount of dresses, celebrating that birthday, et cetera. I do think they'll come back down to normal. It's probably because, again, we didn't quite have a Christmas last year. I think you'll see them elevated right up to Christmas because there will be that pent-up demand again for the Christmas party and to normal.
Primarily, it's been driven by dresses, well, jackets, blazers. It's much more formal than what we would've been even pre-pandemic.
You've gotta remember, we pre-pandemic and today we've got a different set of brands as well. You know, we've got additional little bit of the new norm to come as well. Maybe, you know, better than we're seeing today, but not necessarily down to the value brands, because if we're looking at pre-pandemic, you're looking at collection at a price point added to the mix, which will naturally sit at a higher return rate.
Yeah. If you looked at, you know, like you've got dresses trading 100% on the year. You've got jeans, athleisure down sort of, you know, is much more fit sensitive than the other in terms of what's driving that. It will come back around.
Next question is from Kate Calvert from Investec. Which brands in your brand portfolio have underperformed the most in the U.K., and why do you think this is?
If you look at, I mean, again, if I took Coast as an example at the beginning of the year, we were still in that kinda lockdown mentality, and Coast is an occasion brand, and clearly people didn't have occasions to go to. That's probably an example of that that's really around timing. If I look at it's growth brand percentage-wise, year-over-year, because again, weddings are coming up this summer, the races are on, people are sort of celebrating those. It kind of, you know, it varies, I would say, around timing. Equally, you know, Nasty Gal is very dependent on the U.S., in terms, you know, air freight not being able to get your package in a quick enough time.
If you're a younger customer, kind of 18, you know, having to plan 10 days is like two weekends, which for most is just two circumstances in there around performance by brand, in terms
Thank you. John, I'd like to hand back to you for your remarks.
Listen, look, as we're very, very confident in terms of the business model. We've demonstrated huge growth in the last two years. The take from that is that we're holding on to that market share growth, particularly in the U.K. and the U.S. Lots of people are expecting people to go back to the stores, and that's not the case. We've seen a structural change. If you look at the U.K. in the last year, we still had 27% growth + 70%, over 70% in two years. In the market where we've got the brand, we've got the brand and the delivery proposition temporary issue in international where we just cannot get that parcel.
Remember, our international business is predominantly our young fashion. I just go back to that one point about, you know, it's just too much. You know? Once we get either the DC opened in the early part of next year or with that parcel, that will recover. We're really, really confident about that.
Thanks everybody for coming this morning, and see you all again soon. Okay. Thank you.