Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Q1 Trading Update Call. I'm John Lyttle, Group CEO, and I'm joined this morning by Neil, Carol, and Mahmud. I'm going to take you through our Q1 trading update, which we released this morning, and update you with progress made on our strategic priorities for the year. We will then open up the line for any questions. On to the results for the period. Revenues totaled GBP 446 million, which is down 8% year-on-year, but in line with prior guidance as a result of tough comparatives, continued international service challenges, and the annualization of higher return rates year-on-year due to the significant change in product mix towards higher returning categories such as dresses and going out.
Gross demand growth remained positive versus strong comparatives, up 9%, while net sales continued to be impacted by the normalization of returns, as previously mentioned. Looking back over the last three years, revenues have grown an impressive 75%, reflecting multi-year market share gains across the group's multi-brand platform. Encouragingly, in the U.K., we saw an improvement in performance month-on-month with a return to net sales growth in May. Gross demand remained strong in the period with growth of 21% as our product, pricing, and proposition continues to resonate strongly with our customers. Performance in the U.S. continues to be affected by delays to delivery, and we have yet to see any relief in terms of delivery times, which remain significantly longer than pre-pandemic.
However, we continue to progress plans for our new U.S. distribution center, which will transform the delivery proposition with next day delivery to key markets and two to three days for the rest of the U.S. The U.S. remains a key international focus market for the group, and we have delivered sales growth of 85% over the last three years. With the DC, we're investing into the long-term growth opportunity ahead. Sales were down 9% year-on-year in rest of Europe and up 15% in rest of world. Our wholesale partnerships have contributed to performance in these regions, driving increased sales and brand awareness across existing and new geographies.
Gross margin was 52.8%, down 220 basis points year-on-year due to the exceptional level of full price sales that we have achieved last year towards the end of the lockdown period. Pleasingly, it is up 240 basis points versus the second half of financial year 2022, as inventory has been managed more tightly and we have made great progress on mitigating inbound freight cost pressures. Moving on to our strategic priorities. With our full year results last month in May, we outlined a series of strategic priorities focused on optimizing our operations to position the business for a strong rebound as pandemic-related headwinds ease. I'm pleased with the progress that we are making towards these, which is having a meaningful impact on the group.
We have continued to increase sourcing from near-shore markets, leveraging the flexibility that we have in our diverse supply base to reduce lead times and exposure to inbound freight costs. We've seen a 10 percentage point increase in short lead product mix compared to the same time last year, with plans to increase this to 60-40 split through the rest of the year versus 50-50 in Q1. Inventory has been managed more tightly with a reduction in stock since the year end and stock turn improving through the quarter. Overheads are being managed tightly despite significant external inflationary pressures, and will continue to be managed tightly as we continue to scale the brands we have acquired, along with a focus on driving marketing efficiencies. Finally, we continue to progress key strategic projects with the Sheffield automation project on track for completion in H2 of this year.
On the U.S. distribution center, which I mentioned earlier, we have secured and signed a lease on a facility in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. This will allow us to progress our plans ahead of launch in mid-calendar year 2023, supporting our international growth ambitions and transforming the customer proposition in a key focus market. Our wholesale operations continue to scale with meaningful contributions to Europe and rest of world sales. We have also launched with a new U.K. partner in the quarter, with more plans later this year. Moving on to guidance for this year, where our outlook for the year ending 28th of February 2023 is unchanged.
As a reminder, revenue growth for financial year 2023 is expected to be low single digits, targeting a return to growth in Q2 and performance improving in the second half of the year as the group annualizes high return rates and normalizing consumer demand. Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be between 4%-7%, unchanged from prior guidance as the group continues to be affected by pandemic related factors that negatively impact costs within the supply chain and international competitive proposition, offset by the financial benefits from our strategic priorities and leveraging of overheads. To summarize, we are making steady progress towards our strategic priorities and this is having a meaningful impact within the business. These are the key focus areas for the year ahead as we look to optimize financial and operational performance.
In the U.K., we have seen promising signs from the sales trends in the period, improving month on month and returning to growth in May. Internationally, we have seen contributions from wholesale partnerships having a meaningful impact, and we are looking at new opportunities in this space to contribute to sales growth and an increase in brand awareness. Our automation projects and plans for the U.S. warehouse are progressing as planned with the former on track to deliver material cost savings and the latter transforming our U.S. delivery proposition. Looking ahead, we are focused on ensuring that the business is well-positioned to take advantage of future growth opportunities. With that, thank you for dialing in, and we'd now like to open the line for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A voice prompt on your line will indicate when your line is open. Again, please press star one to ask a question over the phone. Thank you. We will now take our first question from John Stevenson from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Couple of questions to get us going. Starting with returns. I know, I'm sure you're aware, you know, ASOS were talking about returns being sort of economically driven, potentially this morning. Can you talk about your experiences in terms of how you're seeing returns by category, this sort of mix in your view, or is this sort of more of an underlying macro feel to it? Sort of following on from that, I don't know if you can sort of talk a little bit about product mix and consumer behavior in terms of the other sort of general stats for the quarter and maybe some highlights in terms of brand performance.
On the returns piece, I think we're really seeing it driven by the change in mix of products, particularly year-on-year. If you think back to the first quarter last year, we were still much of that in lockdown, so it was still highly driven by athleisure, loungewear categories. Whereas this year, what we're seeing is that dress mix back and actually above pre-pandemic levels. Actually the really interesting thing is that even within dresses, we're seeing the occasion part of those dresses much higher. For us, it feels like, you know, we've had pent-up demand for the last couple of years as, you know, people haven't been able to celebrate birthdays, a day at the races, weddings, et cetera, and are really buying quite heavily now into dresses, but particularly into the occasion part of that.
Certainly for us, that's what we're seeing as the biggest driver in terms of returns as dresses historically would've been a higher returns mix in terms of what our experience would be.
Okay, brilliant. Thanks, John. In terms of sort of general, sort of KPIs, sort of the conversion basket and so on and the, any sort of standout brands, I guess by definition, the more sort of dress formal oriented stuff like Coast and Karen Millen are doing pretty well in this environment.
Yeah, particularly you look at, you know, Coast had a tough time through the pandemic. Obviously it's very much an occasion brand, and it's doing extremely well now in terms of its trade performance. Again, that's really, you know, again, right back down to, you know, you can plan, people are going to weddings, they're going to those days out at the races, all of the occasion going kind of places that we haven't really been able to do for the last couple of years.
Okay, brilliant. Okay, thanks, John.
The next question comes from Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas Exane.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up actually on John's first one. I just wonder if you clarify 'cause ASOS has talked about perhaps there's been an underlying uptick in returns rates even excluding category and other factors, perhaps suggesting that consumers have been sending more back because they're suddenly feeling their wallets getting squeezed. I wondered if you've seen that phenomenon either in the returns rates or in the gross sales trends. Second question relates to your shift into shorter lead time nearshoring. Is that more expensive or does that get offset by better markdown control? How should we think about that? Then the third question relates to logistics.
You've obviously alluded to significant cost savings from automation in Sheffield, but then next year you'll have that cost base coming in the U.S. How should we be thinking about those two offsetting factors dovetailing together and the timing of that? Thank you.
I think the first one on returns. The big driver in the increase in returns rates, the way we read it is, the product mix, like John said, the increase in dresses mix. Interestingly, now we're at the point where dresses mix is actually getting similar to last year as we sit here today. We saw that returns rate increase rapidly during Q2 last year, which started in June and then has continued. We see that returns rate last year go from 20% in Q1 up to sort of just under 30% in Q2. Whereas at the moment we're fairly consistent on returns rates, but they are high at mid 30%.
What you've got there is that change in product mix, the mix of dresses and then the proportion of dresses that are the higher returning type of fabrics. It's purely that. There are a couple of other factors, growth as a group are the mix of the brands which have higher return rates is also more because they're growing faster. Then you've also got things like increasing penetration of premier loyalty offerings, which have higher return rates. That's the more underlying customer behavior, but that's healthy. I think that customers who order with a higher frequency are more of a percentage of the mix.
That's really what we're seeing on return rates, but nothing that we'd say was behavioral, if you compare it to pre-pandemic levels, I think. Do you wanna talk about the lead times?
Yeah. In terms of the shorter lead times, you know, Asia in normal times is still very, very fast for us. You know, once the goods are made, we can have them back in the warehouse within 48, 72 hours. But actually, those kind of congestion at ports, the continued COVID restrictions, particularly in China, and equally the cost of freight coming out of Asia, and again, particularly China, is still relatively high versus pre-pandemic. The short lead time is obviously around Europe and North Africa. And it's all by truck to our warehouses in the U.K. From a lead time point of view, we can be much more consistent in terms of the time it takes. Cost is obviously much better than freight charges currently coming out of parts of Asia.
You know, we're moving it out from Asia, the products obviously that we can resource in Europe. You know, for fabric availability, makes sense from a cost point of view to have it back here as well. There are still some product categories like shoes, for example, that we couldn't move in the bulk from China because it's still such a strong sourcing country for that. But you know, we're very close to getting to that 60% mix now, from near to home, which is predominantly Europe. That's gonna be great for us, particularly as we go into the second half, where last year we faced a lot of issues around supply chain, and not just cost, but around lead time extension.
On the last part of the question on the logistics costs, there's a few, quite a few different pluses and minuses there. We've got the Sheffield automation coming in later this year, which is a big plus. As we go into next year, we'll be getting those additional costs for the U.S. warehouse. There'll be another fixed cost coming in there. Actually, that will get up to speed pretty quickly, and we'll be able to leverage that fixed cost. What I would say is that the fixed cost proportion of the warehousing costs is relatively low, and the big element is the variable cost.
As we go, if we get exceptional costs for the U.S. warehouse, we'll pull those out, as we always have done when it's a big project that doesn't reoccur like that. But what we'll also have is that, if you think of the distribution network, we've also got two U.K. DCs, the more recent ones that we call them U.K. 3 and U.K. 4, one in Wellingborough, one in Daventry. But we've had quite a bit of inefficiency in our cost base from those, and they will actually get more efficient as we go through this year and into next year. There'll be offsetting factors there. Overall on the U.S. DC, we see a positive comp, particularly compared to where we are today.
There'll be a big positive on distribution costs as a percentage of sales. Then there's an offsetting negative on the import duties that we'll be paying and that impacts our gross margin. Overall, that should be relative to today, where we've got very elevated distribution costs for the U.S. customers, and that will be a positive factor next year. While there will be a bit of inefficiency on the distribution center in the U.S., it's a fairly straightforward manual operation, and that compares in a way to the efficiency that we'll be getting in the newer U.K. DCs. Those two things should offset as we go through next year. It's a big project, the U.S. DC, but we're preparing for it very carefully.
Brilliant. Thanks for the call.
The next question comes from Myriam Jollet from Morgan Stanley.
Great. Morning. Thanks, everyone. Firstly, just on the consumer behavior, if you could just sort of walk us through what you've seen over the last couple of months, because, you know, ASOS was calling out that big change in consumer behavior in April. Sort of what did you see in terms of changes from March to April and then April to May? In terms of any trading down, how did the trends in the number of items per basket, average selling price, did you see any changes on those KPIs? If you could just give us a bit more color on that. Secondly, just on the U.S., if I look at your performance versus ASOS, it does look to be a bit worse. Just wondering if there's anything driving that. Thanks.
On the consumer behavior, we've not seen big fluctuations in the quarter. It's been more around we've seen the demand improve as we go into May, particularly in the U.K. We saw a bit of a trough in the U.K., but that has been more around the lapping of lockdown and reopening. That's the changes that we've seen. The big driver for the probably better demand in May. As we go through into June, we're seeing that. Overall on the KPIs, we've seen prices are higher, so we've spoken about the returns and the mix and the impact on returns. That also impacts our average selling prices because those dresses for occasions are higher price points.
On the like-for-like product, we've seen in the market generally that you've seen kind of double-digit increases in product prices. We've seen the higher overall average selling prices, and then that's filtered through into higher basket values. Conversion rates have been pretty similar year-on-year. When you think of that, it's not really suggesting any kind of that trading down, et cetera, at the moment. I think that's what we're seeing on customer behavior, nothing majorly different there.
The last one was on the U.S. in terms of trend. I think for the quarter last year, we had seen the stimulus checks, which drove quite a lot of trade, and we had a strong trading period in the U.S. in last year in that quarter. Ultimately, what we've been talking about this for a while now is just our proposition. We're not seeing any change in terms of our proposition to customers in the U.S., so it's still taking pretty much 10 days to get a parcel from the U.K. over to the U.S. The frequency of flights is getting a little bit better, but just in context, it's still just under 40% volume down on 2019 levels.
At the moment, it's still 10 days which again, if you think our consumer in the U.S. is predominantly sort of that young fashion consumer. Again, for an 18-year-old kind of looking to buy something for the weekend, and having to plan really over two weekends, it's just not suiting most of them. Again, back to our focus on getting our warehouse opened in the U.S. in the first half of next year, where in key markets we'll be able to do next day. In every market, it'll be within the U.S., we'll be able to give two to three days as a proposition.
Great. Thank you.
We will now take the next question from Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I just one question on the U.S. performance. I wanted to understand what, at the moment, you are doing in that market in particular to support the performance. If you have been doing much marketing and promotion there, or you have pulled back on marketing because you know the consumer offer is not up to the mark. Then secondly, what gives you confidence that the consumers will eventually return? Because obviously, they would have been fulfilling their shopping requirement from somebody else at the moment. To get them to return, do you think you'll have to massively invest in marketing or do some other kind of promotions to get them back? What's your thoughts around that? Thank you.
I think what are we doing to support performance? We are trying to just optimize our marketing spend and the returns on the marketing spend. The returns on the marketing spend are not what we'd want them to be. So we're trying to optimize that while keeping customers aware of the brands before we go with the new much better proposition when we've got the warehouse working. I mean, we're very confident that those returns on the marketing are gonna increase massively once we've got the best proposition.
We've seen in the U.K. how well our proposition resonates and has been extremely resilient all through the pandemic, different phases of it, and through now where we're into more challenging times. We're seeing that good performance in the U.K., and that gives us the confidence that as soon as the U.S. we've got that proposition in firing on all cylinders, that the demand will come back. We've seen that in the past as well, the demand is very quick to come back once you got that proposition in the right place.
Thank you.
We will now take the next question from Anne Critchlow from Société Générale . Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got three, please. The first one is about wholesale participation. Where is it now, and where do you think it could get to? Secondly, on U.K. manufacturing, you've been running your own factory for a little while now. Just wondering, you know, how you see the role of U.K. manufacturing in the future. Finally, what percentage of your customers buy with free delivery? How committed are you to free returns? Thank you.
The wholesale participation, we've said previously that that could get up to 5% of sales quite quickly, i.e., during this year. I think that's where we're on track to do that. It's less than that right now, but I would anticipate that it's pretty much on in line with our plans to get up to and above 5% of sales by the end of the year. You can get a feel for that. Now at the moment, it's just been in Europe and the rest of the world. You can see the impact it's having on those regions at that sort of low single-digit of penetration. That's where our wholesale is.
We're very pleased with the way that's going and it's on track exactly as we'd said six weeks ago. What was the second question?
I'm sorry. You know, we've always been a huge supporter of U.K. production and jobs in the U.K. Obviously the speed it offers is just a couple of hours down the motorway to the warehouses here in the U.K. We're really pleased with Thurmaston Lane, our own unit in Leicester. We're just about to take on the second shift of workers there. That's been doing great for all the brands, you know, from Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, right over to boohoo and PrettyLittleThing. Again, the very important part of our sourcing mix, and particularly in the young fashion brands for those kind of jersey knitted cut-and-sew garments.
We'll continue to be a strong part of that business as we go forward, in terms of the U.K. Then in terms of the last one, percentage of free deliveries and returns. You know, we always, whether it's promo on free delivery or whether we're charging for delivery, we charge currently for returns in certain countries. It's something we review on a daily basis as part of our promo activity. Obviously we are noticing a lot more retailers, charging for returns, and making announcements on that recently. We review that sort of daily, weekly as we look at our promo, overall by brand.
Okay, thank you.
We'll take the next question from Michael Benedict from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Excuse me. I have three, please. First one, you mentioned, rest of Europe and rest of world wholesale partners. Are you not considering additional U.S. wholesale partners? If not, why not? The second one is, can you remind us of the key uncertainties or deltas that get us to the top or the bottom of the margin range? Thirdly, on the wholesale again, actually, could you remind us the impact you see on your own website when you launch on a wholesale partner in a particular region? Does the sort of brand awareness provide a big tailwind or do you see the cannibalization impact offsetting that?
In terms of the wholesale question on the USA, we are speaking currently to a number of potential partners, as we are in other parts of the world. Still partners in the U.K. We're speaking to partners in Europe, partners in India, as an example. That's an ongoing. We hope in the next few months we'll be announcing further partnerships from the U.K. to Europe and other parts of the world. In terms of do we notice when we launch with a partner on our own site, clearly from a brand awareness, it's great on that point. Do we notice an impact in our own sales? No, is the answer to that.
You know, we see it mostly as upside in terms of the brand and the overall sales of brand. Then, on those key uncertainties, the delta between the top and bottom end of the margin range. The two things there are the gross margin and the marketing leverage. Level of marketing leverage. Last year we had 11% of sales spent on marketing. If that is down at below 10%, then we're at the higher end, more towards the higher end of the margin. If it's in line with last year at around 11%, we're at the lower end of the margin expectations. And likewise on gross profit margin.
We'll see how the second half of the year pans out. There's positive signs in the first half of the year as we've been able to turn the stock more quickly, and that helps us with avoiding high levels of markdown. We'll see how the peak summer season goes and then into the second half of the year. We're expecting gross margins for the second half of the year to be in line with last year, and that would be in the mid part of the margin guidance. If they're a bit higher than last year, then that gets us up.
Conversely, if they're lower than last year in the second half of the year, I think that would be disappointing because last year we had disappointing sales as we went through Omicron and high levels of returns and that led to quite a lot of discounting in the final part of the season. There's positives for it. There's positive factors for it to be above the second half of last year. But in the midpoint of the guidance, we'd be expecting it to be in line with last year in the second half of the year, the gross profit margin. Those are the two main sensitivities.
Of course, if you get the sales coming through a little higher than the midpoint of the range, then you start to get some more leverage on the central cost. Overall, we're not expecting significant leverage on the central cost. There is one other factor that we're expecting. Deleverage overall on distribution costs, because of higher costs that have come through in the second half of last year flowing into this year and generally higher supply chain costs. That could be a little better than we're expecting. Again, that would push us towards the high end rather than the midpoint of the guidance.
I think the final part of the question was about brand awareness when we launch wholesale in a particular region or country.
It's quite hard. It's quite subtle. You don't see a great immediate increase in awareness if you go on a big platform. There's evidence to suggest that it does help the awareness in markets where we're not so well-known. Even in the U.K., it can if you've got a platform that's got slightly different customer base to our core customer base. It can increase the awareness in slightly different customer segments. There's evidence to suggest that it helps both in the U.K. and, in particular, internationally.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Simon Irwin from Credit Suisse.
Morning, everyone. Three quick ones from me. Firstly, can you just explain why you're more optimistic of better underlying trading conditions in the second half when most people seem to think that the kind of economic environment looks notably worse? The second is, can you just give us a bit of an update around the delivery proposition as you're currently seeing it into Europe and the rest of the world? Thirdly, are you seeing any obvious signs or benefits from Missguided?
On the underlying trading conditions, we're not expecting the underlying trading conditions to improve. The acceleration in the growth, if you like, or the change into growth that we've seen in the U.K. in Q1, we expect to continue, and that is, as we've said before, in line with the kind of changes in the demand patterns around lockdowns last year and then the returns rate as well, as we saw that increase markedly from this point in the year onwards. As we lap that higher return, the returns rate increasing, then we don't have that headwind on the conversion of gross demand into net sales year-on-year increases. We've seen that start already, and that's why we're confident that that will change the numbers.
We're not expecting consumer sentiment to get better or anything like that. We're expecting to see that it's where it is or if anything a little bit lower than that, but it's just the way that returns rate we lap that through this year it changes the net sales demand patterns. The second part of the question was about delivery proposition internationally. We've not seen big changes, so whether it's U.S., Europe, Australia. Big thing there is the transatlantic flights, and while we've seen positive signs there, and I think it's a positive sign that the U.S. has removed the COVID test, so we should get more passengers flying to and from. At the moment we're seeing flights being in May. We're at 37% below 2019 levels.
We're still not getting that capacity in the hold of the passenger planes yet, but, I suppose that's a positive signs, you know, light at the end of the tunnel, but nothing to be impacting us positively in the short term.
Final question on Missguided. You know, Missguided was relatively small really in comparison to our young fashion brands of boohoo and PrettyLittleThing. You know, while as a competitor, it was much smaller in terms of size overall.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ben Hunt from Investec.
Morning. Just two questions. Firstly, just on the economics these days of doing wholesale, have they become more favorable since the pandemic? To what extent are you indifferent between an item's being sold via the wholesale channel or via the retail channel, taking into account all the things that's happened with freight and returns and marketing? The second question is, at the finals, you talked about sales retention lost last year and that, you know, if you could get that back to sort of pre-pandemic levels, then there was a big opportunity.
I just wondered in this trading statement whether you'd seen any evidence of that and what the mix has been between existing customers perhaps spending more, or has the performance been driven more by new customers coming onto the site?
On the economics of wholesale, we're fairly agnostic as to whether our goods are sold on a wholesale platform or directly. It's that incrementality that we can bring in increasing the awareness incrementally that benefits the wholesale. The economics are actually more favorable in a way because it's just got higher EBITDA margin for us because we're not getting squeezed on price from the partners, whereas some of those other costs around distribution, et cetera, in the supply chain lie with them rather than us on wholesale. Some of the costs on the supply chain lie with us, but we'll be passing that through on price.
Overall, we're still fairly agnostic about it, but if anything, with the pressures that we're seeing on costs and the retail businesses is probably slightly favorable, particularly in the international markets. That's wholesale. Then on sales retention, it's not much different than what we were talking about six weeks ago. The retention, what we're seeing is the retention in the U.K. is still great.
Internationally, we've got those challenges around the proposition. It's purely from that, which was the theme of what we presented six weeks ago. No change from that, really.
Okay, great. Thanks. We'll now take the next question from Simon Bowler from Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Just with the, U.S. warehouse piece now signed, I was just wondering, can you just remind us on kind of which brands, how broad a range, and where that product will be sourced from as and when that warehouse goes live?
In terms of the key brands to be housed in the US warehouse will be boohoo, womenswear and menswear, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, and Karen Millen. They're the brands that we're planning to have there. In terms of the sourcing, obviously we'll be looking at Central America, though not really thinking much will come from there. Mexico will be good for young and fast fashion, probably something similar to the U.K. in terms of type of products we get here in the U.K. And then we'll look a little bit in terms of North Africa has got good from a GSP and duty import into the U.S. Realistically, you know, mostly coming still from the current countries of origin, certainly to start with, in terms of what we do there.
The final part of that question in terms of USA warehouse. I mean, again, we'll be going live in the first half of next year. We'll spend the balance of this year building out the racking, getting the warehouse management systems, taking on colleagues to work there. We'll start rolling out the brands from the beginning of next year, and complete by the midpoint of next calendar year is what I would say.
How do you expect kind of the customer proposition to evolve through that period? You know, will there be a period where a U.S. consumer will see stock both in the U.K. and the U.S. warehouse while the inventory levels build up in the U.S. warehouse, and then they get switched on to just being, seeing the U.S. inventory profile? Or how does that side of things get managed?
I think we'll be looking to when each brand gets switched on. The plan will be that they will just see a U.S. inventory, and we'll be ready to go with just the U.S. inventory when we launch each brand. That's the plan as we sit here today. In terms of, you know, kind of range, in essence, the range will be pretty much the same as what they would have seen from the U.K. Obviously, then as we kind of in terms of newness in our test and repeat model, that's where the differentials will come in the market. Remember, we've been trading in the U.S. for a number of years, so we have a lot of history, categories, colors, sizes by brands in terms of what that U.S. consumer demands.
Okay, thank you.
We'll now take our next question from Georgina Johanan from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
The first one, apologies if I've sort of missed this, been a busy morning. Just around the guidance, obviously you've reiterated it, and thanks for the helpful color, Neil, that you shared. I just wanted to make sure I'm right in my understanding that there's been no sort of changes in any of your expectations there in terms of how the consumer evolves over the next few months, external factors around sort of freight and raw materials and so on and so forth. So really, there's. It's all very consistent in terms of the shape and so on versus your comments at the full year stage. That was the first one, please. Second one, you mentioned that you're seeing price increases in the market of double-digit, I think.
Is that where we should broadly assume that your level of price increases are, or have you gone less than that? The third question was, I mean, we're often asked about sort of trading down in this environment. I know you said that's not what you're seeing from your existing customers. Are you starting to see any tentative signs of perhaps benefit, you know, new sort of slightly higher income demographics coming in to look at the boohoo or PrettyLittleThing brands, et cetera? Any color on that would be helpful, please. Thank you.
I think on the first point on the guidance is that it's pretty much as we talked about six weeks ago. If anything, you'd say March and April were a little bit worse, and then May was a little bit better. That trajectory going into Q2 is encouraging from that point of view, and particularly with the U.K. is backing growth despite in May, despite a returns rate that was much higher this year compared to last year. That's the encouraging part and feeling like you've definitely seen that big improvement from April into May. That's why it's very consistent. Then all of those other strategic areas that we outlined, we're very much on track with all of those.
That's where we're quite confident about the guidance being reiterated there.
On the price increases, I don't know whether you wanna comment on that, John.
Yeah. I mean, look, what we're seeing in the market is more around sort of double-digit price increases. We continue to review that on a daily and a weekly basis. I mean, where we're seeing the bigger shift in bottom line price is really around the mix in category, so that dress mix kind of getting back to where it was pre-pandemic versus last year, where the beginning of the quarter was still very much around athleisure driving it. We'll, you know, take advantage where we can in terms of price increases. But I think, look, this is gonna be a long journey ahead. You know, we're not seeing costs anywhere going down. If anything, they continue to rise.
I think this will just be a continuous review in terms of our pricing, but ultimately making sure that we remain within our competitive set, particularly in the young fashion, in that value sector. In terms of trading down, can we see anything on that yet? I think it's too early to see any trends there. The biggest trend, as I said earlier, is really that sort of pent-up demand around kind of occasion that people haven't been able to do or plan for the last two years. That's still the biggest part. Clearly, we're going in now into the key holiday quarter, where, again, we haven't had a holiday quarter for the last two years.
Looking at the travel numbers, in terms of numbers of people who are flying abroad for a holiday, it's kinda getting back to 2019 levels. If we look at categories like swimwear, as an example, you know, even in the last week or so, you know, they're above pandemic levels, quite a bit in terms of how people are shopping. I think the next couple of months will be interesting, but it feels like we're moving from occasion into holiday wear are the biggest changes.
Thank you. Just a quick clarification question, if I may then. Where you talked about double-digit price increases across the market, was that on a like for like basis, or was that including the benefit of mix into formal?
I think what we will be able to look at is we'll be able to look at a category. We'll be able to look at a bottom line by a brand, and then we'll be able to look at category within a brand. You know, we'll be able to look at denim, we'll be able to look at jackets, we'll be able to look at dresses on that level. We're seeing, I would say the double-digit across brand and category is what we're seeing.
Thank you very much.
As there are no further questions on the phone, I'll now pass over to Rosie for webcast questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Marion. We've got our first question from Matthew McEachran from Singer. Please, can you provide some insight into the penetration of BNPL? Is participation changing and providing any impacts on demand and geographical performance?
I think that's. The answer to that is we're not seeing any major changes at the moment on penetration of BNPL. It's a reasonably high proportion of our sales, but not huge. We're not seeing changes. You see the odds shift from one into another. What we did see in the earlier stages of BNPL that you saw a shift away from PayPal, but PayPal's coming back into the space now. Overall, the penetration's not changed much in the last two years, I'd say.
Thank you. Thanks everyone who submitted their questions. I'd now like to hand back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you. John here. Listen, just thanks everybody for dialing in this morning. You know, the key message I think is we're sticking to our guidance, in terms of looking at the balance of the year and balance to achieve. Hope to see you all very soon and thanks for dialing in this morning. Thank you.