Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Revolution Beauty's Fiscal Year 2025 Interim Results. I will first cover the financial headlines and the key strategic progress we've already made in this financial year. Neil Catto, our CFO, will then cover the financials in a bit more detail before I come back and talk more about our second half and the future. So let's start with the results. As we announced at our trading update, revenue was GBP 72.4 million for the first half of this year. The top-line decline was driven by the planned discontinuation of the underperforming brands and SKUs, which, as we know, had inflated the stock holding, tied up cash, and distracted the company from driving the core Revolution brand. Now, despite the revenue declines, we have improved our underlying profitability, which we plan to benefit from further as we activate future growth initiatives.
Our underlying adjusted EBITDA, excluding stock provisions, was GBP 3.9 million, with underlying gross profit margin up 20 basis points to 46.2%. In the first half of the year, our core replenishable SKUs grew 6%, accelerating to 16% in the second quarter. As a result of our brand rationalization and in line with our planned cost savings program, we have already reduced our overhead significantly, with administrative costs down 30% and distribution costs down 33% in the first half alone. Finally, at the 31st of August 2024, the business had cash of GBP 6.3 million and a net debt of GBP 25.5 million. Now, as I said, Neil will walk you through more of the financial detail in a moment, but first, I'll touch again on our refined strategy and what it's anchored in and give an update on where we are in the transformation.
Okay, so as a reminder, our Reigniting the Revolution strategy is anchored in three key initiatives focused on delivering sustainable and profitable growth: the master brand, growing the core categories, and focus global growth. At the core of this strategy is a major simplification of what had become a complex brand and category portfolio. Now, this refined strategy is focused on getting the master brand back to growth and outperforming the category with a strong pipeline of innovation underpinned by excellence in customer service. And in order to fuel that growth, we've been clear we need a smart operating model and a cost-saving program that will fuel that growth. And all of this will be driven by having the right talent in the right roles across the business.
Now, when we set out the strategy in February, we were clear we would exit the smaller brands and categories where Revolution didn't have any deep expertise. And instead, we would focus on three non-competing and complementary brands with very clear consumer propositions and in a heartland of makeup and skincare. Now, our refined brand portfolio is Revolution, our master brand, I Heart Revolution, and our value brand, Relove. I'm pleased to say we've already exited all the sub-brands from retail and are cleaning up the non-strategic legacy SKUs. Now, this transformation is enabling us to move from the portfolio of over 7,000 SKUs to focus on around 1,100 replenishable SKUs that are on stands and shelves, now that's both digital and physical, with our retailers around the world. And we've also begun the reinvigoration of the innovation pipeline with NPD focused on driving true incremental growth.
Our sales per SKU on NPD are already tracking at 40% higher than previous years, and we need to maintain this efficiency as we move forward and we bring more SKUs to life. Now, this streamlined portfolio is enabling us to drive strong retailer growth levels, strong retailer service levels across the world, which is key to retaining and growing space in major retailers around the world. We are delighted to have maintained over 90% service levels throughout half one and are feeling confident in our ability to maintain that moving forward with the focus portfolio. This cleaner portfolio should enable us to reduce the number of units on hand by 15 million in the second half of this year as well. With one global planogram and a core set of SKUs, we will hold less stock and be able to manage demand changes much more easily.
This strategy should enable improved working capital cycle and cash generation. So now let's dive into a couple of the specific strategic initiatives we spoke about at the Capital Markets Day back in February. We talked a lot about Skin Silk, our new foundation that launched at the beginning of the year. The great news is we're on track to deliver the goals we set out with this launch, with the innovation driving our foundation business up almost 40% in the first half of this year. Driving product categories like foundation is more challenging than others, as you need to color match, but if you can convert a consumer, the benefits are huge. They'll regularly repeat purchase and become loyal, and we're already seeing some strong repeat business on Skin Silk, which is really important.
And we still have further distribution expansions planned in January 2025 across the U.S., where we have seen a really strong digital response. We've also seen growth in our best-selling products, known as our Icons. Now, we had a clear strategy at the beginning of this year to introduce our existing best-selling products as Icons that were still really relevant and successful, but bring them to new consumers. We also said we were going to drive our lip business up in the first half of this year with a focus on our best-selling ranges and new innovations. And our lip business was up 40% globally in the first half. Now, we also said we were going to be focusing on the master brand and starting to reinvest carefully in brand marketing and that we would see the benefits of people talking about our brand again, ultimately converting and driving sales.
I'm really pleased that we're seeing a fantastic performance on our social media channels with this strategy. We're growing followers, engagement, and earned media value from influencers discussing and raving about our brand. In particular, we're really excited about the recent launch of Revolution Generation Community Program. We literally launched this just a few weeks ago. We are now inviting content creators to join our community and get direct access to the brand, first access to products, and be rewarded on performance. By working directly with a broad range of influencers in this way, we can expand our reach and engage with our target consumers in a cost-efficient and really authentic way. We're really excited to see how this Revolution Generation initiatives drive sales in the back half of this year as we move forward.
So to summarize, we've made strong operational and strategic progress in the first six months of this financial year. But now let me hand you over to Neil, who will walk you through some of the financials in a bit more detail.
Thanks, Lauren. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the webcast today. I'm going to take you through the financial highlights, and then I'll hand back to Lauren, who will talk about our priorities for the second half of the financial year. This slide shows our revenues split by business channel and by geographical region. The decline in sales of 20% overall has been driven by the simplification of the brand and product portfolio and the discontinuance of unproductive SKUs, combined with a tough comp in the first half of last year when sales were elevated as a result of clearance activity. The purpose behind the rationalization of the product portfolio is to improve underlying profitability by focusing on a core product offering around 1,100 SKUs. And as Lauren has mentioned, we've seen growth from that core range of products in the period.
That rationalisation of our product offering affected both digital and store channels, but it's worth noting that sales through stores, which is a more profitable channel, declined at a lower rate. Looking at the sales by geographical region, we saw a 32% decline in the U.K., which was most impacted by the portfolio simplification, particularly in the digital channel. In the U.S., sales declined by 22% compared with the previous year. The mix of sales in the rest of the world region increased to 45% of total sales as we continue to see strong performances in some overseas markets such as Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. As I alluded to earlier, we're seeing encouraging growth from our core product range with key categories such as lip performing particularly well.
Sales of those core SKUs grew by 6% in the first half of FY25, with that growth accelerating to 16% in the second quarter. Our core 1,100 SKUs now represent 70% of sales, up significantly from 50% in the first half of last year. And that performance underscores our focus on the core offering to drive improved margins. This slide is a summary of our profit and loss account with an emphasis on the underlying performance. The adjusted performance measures shown here exclude non-recurring and non-cash items to show the underlying profitability of the business. And what this slide demonstrates is that the rationalization of the product and brand portfolio has resulted in improved profitability on an underlying basis.
At the same time as our revenues have declined by 20%, our underlying adjusted EBITDA has increased to GBP 3.9 million, and our underlying EBITDA margin has increased from 3.7% to 5.5%. During the period, we incurred non-recurring stock provision charges of GBP 10.2 million related to non-core or non-strategic stock, and this amount has been added back to get to the underlying gross margin of 46.2%, which is 20 basis points ahead of last year's underlying gross margin of 46%. Last year's underlying gross margin has been adjusted to remove the impact of stock provision releases in the first half of FY24 of GBP 3.1 million. We've continued to deliver on our cost savings programs, and distribution costs have decreased by 33%, and general and admin costs have decreased by 30%.
At the same time, we've maintained our investment in brand marketing with marketing costs up 2% and now representing 13% of sales as we focus on building the awareness of our master brand to support future growth. This graph shows the building blocks of the improved profitability that I've just mentioned, and you can see how the efficiency savings in distribution and admin costs as we focus on our simplified portfolio have been key as they offset the impact of lower sales. Cash balances have decreased by GBP 2.3 million during the first half of the year. The key element of that has been the working capital movement associated with a slower inventory turn driven by excess non-strategic stock.
The slide really shows the importance of turning our inventory more quickly to improve our working capital profile. Now that the planned simplification of the product and brand portfolio has taken place, then we expect to be able to further reduce inventory levels as the core product range turns more quickly, and that will benefit our cash flow going forward. But even so, the business has sufficient liquidity to deliver on its organic growth plans. And this slide shows that our cost saving programs are on track, having delivered savings of GBP nine million in the first half of the year through operational efficiencies and reductions in admin costs.
These cost savings have been driven by a combination of having a simplified product and brand portfolio and by capturing further efficiency benefits through improvements made to the operating model. So with a lower cost base, we're developing a stronger platform for future growth, and as our balance sheet becomes more efficient with a faster stock turn, this will further strengthen that platform.
Moving on to the outlook for the rest of the financial year, we're expecting sales to decline at a slightly lower rate than in the first half of the year, but we do expect to see a return to growth in the final quarter as some of our strategic initiatives take effect. While we're not giving specific guidance about FY26, we would expect that growth to continue into the new financial year. As we've seen the underlying profitability in the business improve, we'd expect to generate underlying adjusted EBITDA at least in line with last year's financial result. With that, I'd like to hand back to Lauren, who's going to talk about the priorities for the second half of the year.
Thanks, Neil. So turning our attention now to our second half and how we accelerate. Firstly, we're now back to a stronger pipeline of innovation. We're back to what Revolution does best, first to mass market innovation at speed and at incredible value. I'm delighted to tell you we have 90 more pieces of NPD landing in the second half versus last year and are expecting to start delivering year-on-year sales growth in our NPD overall, which is exciting. Now, one of the first launches this half that we've already launched, Jelly Blush, has already gone viral, and we're already looking forward to seeing the sales come through as the franchise hits shelves across the globe. Now, initial results from our digital-only launch have been fantastic, and we've already sold out once already, so we're really excited about the potential.
We've also just launched our new Icon eyeshadow palettes, and I'm delighted to say we're actually back to the number one eyeshadow palette brand in the U.K. market on the back of that innovation alone, which is great. Now, these are all encouraging early results and really exciting to see what can happen in the second half. Now, when it comes to focus global growth, as we've previously shared, the U.S. market is one where the company had lost some traction over the last couple of years. We previously announced that we were launching a new U.S. Amazon direct wholesaling partnership in June this year, and the results since launch have been very strong. To give you a flavour, we were up 200% in October alone and are continuing to build as we move through half two, so we're really excited about our Amazon business.
We've also returned our number one U.S. customer target back to strong retail growth, and we have more sales acceleration planned in the second half of this year. And then importantly, we will launch a full assortment of Revolution into Walmart in January 2025. Now, in Europe, despite Amazon EU being more mature than our U.S. business, we are also seeing fantastic sales performance. October sales were actually up 27%, which was fantastic. Over the last two weeks, we've also expanded our distribution of the Revolution master brand into 250 extra Boots stores here in the U.K. and are gearing up for a Revolution Beauty launch in the number one mass retailer in Germany, DM, in January 2025. Now, DM has 50% mass market share, and we're excited to build a strong growth partnership with DM over the coming years.
For context, Germany is also the number one market in Europe for beauty, so it's a really big opportunity for the company. Now, on top of the master brand growth plans I've just shared, we're also launching two new ranges globally in early calendar 2025. Firstly, our skin range is targeted at Gen Z, our core Revolution Beauty consumer, and is launching digitally at the end of January 2025. This new disruptive range delivers simplified but fun skincare for our Gen Z consumer. Utilizing our own skincare manufacturing, we've been able to develop a new and differentiated clinically proven skincare range in response to our community's needs. We are also relaunching the Relove brand with the intention of expanding distribution in the value and discount retail channel around the world. Now, this is new physical distribution for the group. It will expand our reach and our sales potential.
Our budget brand has a new commercial construct also, which is capital and cash light and can scale quickly and easily. These are both growth opportunities over the next few years, with the first new retail accounts opening in quarter four this year and into the first half of next year. So in summary, 2025 is a year of transformation. We're strengthening our core to drive sustainable and profitable growth over the longer term. We have a healthy brand in Revolution and are seeing positive improvements in both our social media response, our NPD performance, and retail sales in the major accounts. We're still a young brand compared to our competition, and we have significant headroom for growth. We've made the necessary changes to create a successful foundation for growth, and I'm excited and confident about the brand and the company's future potential.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to our team. Without their hard work, passion, pace, and dedication, the progress we've already made would not have been possible. Thank you again so much. Now we're going to play you a short video which summarizes our strategic progress in the first half, followed by our Q&A section. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to.
We'd now like to open the lines for Q&A. If you would like to raise a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad and to remove yourself from the queue, please star followed by two. Our first question comes from Anubhav Mathur of Panmure Liberum. Your line is now open.
Hi team. Thanks for a great presentation this morning. Just a couple of questions from me, please. Maybe if you could dive a bit deeper into the growth that you saw in the lip category and maybe explain to us whether that was driven more by locating space to the category in the stands or maybe giving more interesting offers to the end consumer or was it all innovation led? So maybe just a bit deeper into how you grew that category and what we can learn from that into the other categories that you play in.
And then on the Relove brand and the relaunch of it, am I right in understanding this would now be quite a CapEx light way of launching that brand into the value retail channel and has any learnings from that taken over to the main Revolution brand as well in terms of if you can make it less CapEx intensive, the main Revolution Beauty brand? Thank you.
Okay, great. Hi, it's Lauren. So I'll take those questions. So your first one was about the growth in lip and what's been driving the growth in lip. So there's a few things that's been driving the growth in lip. I think definitely we saw that the trend was moving towards lip in the marketplace, and so we anticipated that trend. And so there in our stands around the world, we have given a little bit more space to lip. So that has helped, but we've also launched some new innovation, including our new Peptide Lip products, which have performed exceptionally well in our major retailers as well. So it's definitely a combination of sort of anticipating the trend and leaning towards it, but also innovating into that trend.
And some of the innovation really started to land, sort of the June-July time, was really when our new product started to land. We've also just launched in the last few weeks another innovative product, which is our Plumping Lip Liners and new Lip Glosses. So we anticipate lip to continue to be a big growth for us as we kind of move forward. I think what's really nice though is that our eye business is also coming back. So normally it's lip or eye, but actually we're also seeing growth in our eye business start to come back as we've launched the new Icon palette. So we're excited because historically our brand has been very strong in eye, and so to see growth coming back in eye palettes is also very encouraging.
I think on your second question about Relove and being CapEx light, we have designed this with a different type of execution at retail where we don't need to be investing in expensive CapEx from stands in all cases, and so this really gives us the ability to move much quicker, to be able to be much more flexible with our distribution kind of strategy, and that will drive a success at that kind of price point. I think the learnings really for us in terms of for Revolution on CapEx is the biggest thing that we can do on Revolution is make sure that we are not continuing to change the stands too often too quickly. I think we are now on a cadence of changing those stands twice a year, which is more in line with what retail does generally.
Actually we're seeing some really good savings on OpEx and CapEx as a result of that. But we do want to invest in CapEx for the future because we also recognize that Revolution still has a huge distribution opportunity ahead of it. So that's definitely something in the strategy we're looking for reinvestment into CapEx for Revolution because you really do need to have the right execution for a brand that is sat against the top five players in the marketplace. Hopefully that answered that question.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for your question. As a reminder, if you would like to raise a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad and to remove yourself from the question queue, star followed by two. We currently have a question from the webcast. How do you expect the changes to national insurance and minimum wage in the recent budget to affect the business in financial year 26 and beyond?
Thanks. I'll take that. It's Neil here. Yeah, obviously those changes in the budget are going to lead to cost increases, and we estimate those cost increases for next financial year to be in the region of GBP 350,000. So not devastating, but obviously what we will be looking to do is to mitigate those cost increases through continued efficiencies. Effectively, you've seen that the cost saving programs have been working in the first half of the year. We'll be looking at ensuring that we're getting as efficient as possible so as to absorb those increased costs from the budget.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Our next question from the webcast states, What sort of levels of Capex are you expecting in the second half?
So in the first half of the year, we've had just under GBP 1 million of CapEx. We'd expect to see something similar in the second half, but a little bit higher. So I'd expect CapEx for the year to come in at around about GBP 2.5 million. You'll see in the release that we've got some distribution increases that will be incurring CapEx in the second half of the year, and that's what that CapEx would relate to.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Rachel Birkett of Zeus Capital. Rachel, your line is now open.
Hi, good morning guys. One for me around obviously really clear strong growth opportunities for the brand, and I wondered if you could go a bit more into how you think about gross margin evolving. Obviously, we would expect skincare to perhaps be accretive, slightly higher margin, but then is Relove potentially slightly dilutive? What do you see as the medium-term trend in gross margin over the next three, four, five years?
Yeah, I think what we're seeing is that as we've made the provision against the non-strategic inventory, we'd expect to see that margin maintained at above 45% and should be capable of getting to a higher gross margin than that in this sort of region around 47% in the short term. And then those things that you're talking about there in terms of Relove and skin, I'd expect overall that will be fairly neutral as a net net on the entire product portfolio. So we can expect a similar baseline gross margin going forward, and therefore we're looking at improving that gross margin from real control around sell-through in retailers and therefore the sales adjustments that come through that. And I think that's where a benefit will come in the future.
And also around negotiating cost prices and ensuring that the turn of the inventory is fast so that we don't incur provision charges as we have seen in the past. So that's where the potential increases in gross margin will come through. And we'd like to, the whole point of the strategy with the simplified product and brand portfolio is that all of those elements are more controllable and therefore we should see the benefits from that strategy coming through in the future. But we're not giving guidance as to how that's going to pan out over the next five years as yet. And it's early days in the strategy, as you can see from the results that we're seeing today. But hopefully you can see that the benefits of that strategy will flow through from what we've done so far.
But we've been in the middle of the transformation this year and it's a little bit early to say that the gross margin is going to be 55% in 12 months' time. I'd like to think it will be, but I think there's going to be a gradual glide path to those higher gross margins.
Yeah, what I would just say to add to that, Rachel, is that Relove, to Neil's point, one of the areas of controllable costs is the adjustments, the additional charges and promotions that we put into the marketplace that drives your margin down. Relove doesn't have that. So Relove is a simpler model. It's very much price-driven. So the margin is the margin from the beginning. So I think that will definitely be, to Neil's point, that's an area where we'll be able to benefit from the move towards the expansion of Relove.
That's great. And then just one more for me was around inventory and SKUs. Obviously, a lot of work going into streamlining there. And you mentioned around 1,100 core SKUs, but also I think 280 new product launches coming in in the second half of the year. Will that core range, is the plan to keep it around 1,100 and be kind of removing less productive SKUs, or what do you see as the optimal level of SKUs going forward?
Yeah, there's 90 coming in in the back half of the year, and there'll be circa around 90 coming out. So we're definitely in a position now where we're managing, making sure that what we're bringing in is more productive than what we're taking out. Not all of those, remember, not all of those SKUs will go into physical real estate. So it's important to remember that actually we're very much utilizing our digital channels to test and learn before we're scaling and investing into heavy kind of cash into specific SKUs. So some of them will be going onto stands because they're kind of core SKUs. Other piece of innovation, we're launching digitally first to get a read on performance, and then we'll roll them into the physical estates probably later in the year in the June kind of updates.
But yes, very much the intention, Rachel, is that we shouldn't need to grow our core past 1,100. And if anything, honestly, there's probably further rationalization, but I think that we want to be very thoughtful because one of the things that is important about Revolution is that there is an element of localization for the different countries that we're in. So we do want to make sure that we're showing up really, really credible and relevant in each of the countries. And that means that we need to make sure that we've got the right color portfolio, etc. So expect to keep around 1,100 and are now managing that portfolio of SKUs on a life cycle basis in a very tight and controlled way.
Brilliant. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you very much. As another reminder, if you would like to raise a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And to remove yourself from the queue, please press star followed by two. Our next question comes from Matthew McEachran of Singer Capital Markets. Matthew, your line is now open.
Great. Thanks. Morning. A couple for Lauren, if that's okay, and a couple for Neil. Lauren, just in relation to selling through the stock that was written down, as I understand it, that's going to be sold through non-core, more distant channels. But just in terms of before that stock was written down, what was the plan? Is that a change in terms of the route to clear that stock, or was it already being channeled through those routes?
So on the answer to that one, it's not a change. It's not a change to the route to market, but I think as we went out to the market to sell that stock, we recognized that actually given the age of the stock and the situation of the stock, that actually the value, the net realizable value was a lot lower than had been previously held. And so that was really why we made that kind of adjustment. I feel really good now that we've got it into a position where we can get some deals done and we can get it cleared. And then obviously the benefits of that is further distribution and warehousing savings as well as kind of getting our portfolio kind of like really clean. So we want to realize as much cash as possible from that inventory that had previously just been sitting there.
Yeah. Understood. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. And then just going back to Relove, just could you just give a little bit of a flavor on the timing of the relaunch? I didn't quite, I may have missed it, but maybe just clarify that and whether or not you've already teed up some commercial supply agreements within the retail sector on that.
Yeah. So the relaunch is ready to go from January, February 2025, so the beginning of the calendar year. And we are in discussions with potential new distribution as we speak. I think one of the benefits that we have is we obviously have a pretty wide distributor network of which they already have different relationships not necessarily the relationships that we have just on Revolution brand. So that will definitely be probably the first place where we make some traction on our new Relove execution.
Yeah. Do you think in this current environment there's still good latent demand for a deep value proposition?
Oh, very much so. If you look at what's happening in the marketplace and you look at the growth of the discount and the value channels, and I think for us to provide consumers with an amazing, incredible solution on value, but they get the quality behind a Revolution Beauty product, I think that's an exciting proposition for channels that maybe don't normally get access to sort of innovation in makeup, so I think it's a huge channel, and it's obviously not a channel at all that Revolution Beauty Group has been playing in, so for us, it's all like incremental opportunity, and I think that's what's really, really exciting, but because we've removed the Revolution brand name off it, it enables us to expand without any issues or concerns about the master brand erosion, and that was one of the concerns previously.
So by this way, we're really separating the strategies. We're letting Revolution have its own distribution, and we're letting Relove live in a totally different kind of channel and making it price appropriate for that market.
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thanks. Neil, a couple for you. I missed the number in terms of the incremental cost from the budget. Could you just repeat that for me, please, and whether or not you're looking to kind of mitigate that in full or you think you will wear some of it in the end?
Yeah. So the number was 350K of that region based on our current workforce. And you've seen that the cost saving programs are working well. So we'd want that to continue and be able to mitigate that cost. So we're not anticipating it having an impact on next financial year at this point specifically. But obviously, in isolation, it will have that impact that we'll be paying that extra cost. But we're confident that we'll be able to mitigate against that with lots of our other cost saving initiatives.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And then just the final one, just I don't believe there were any questions on it earlier, just in relation to the tariffs potentially changing in the U.S. Do you want to just give a quick update on the degree to which you've changed your regional sourcing and the degree to which a shakeout on tariffs could influence you and the kind of industry as a whole? And obviously, there's nothing being guaranteed at this stage, but just your thoughts at this preliminary stage would be helpful.
Yeah. I mean, we've obviously already been dealing with tariffs for our U.S. market. And because of that, many of our manufacturers actually have dual manufacturing sources. And so we've been actually moving our manufacturing into areas like Taiwan and other places around the world to mitigate as much as possible. I think the key thing that I'd say to you is that the majority of manufacturers for color cosmetics in particular, they all come out of similar regions in the world. So should anything kind of change, it will be a market-wide issue. It won't be anything isolated to Revolution Beauty Group. And I think because we haven't inflated our prices over the last several years, where many have, we're actually in a more competitive position going into this issue, should it occur, than we would have been two or three kind of like years ago.
So we've definitely got more flexibility in the manufacturing base than we did previously. We're continuing to look for other sources of manufacture as well. That's part of our cost saving kind of program stream of work. And if we have to adjust, I think we're in a good spot because we're going into the market in actually a pretty good price point already. So it'll be, we're probably in some ways in a better spot to be able to mitigate if needed.
Presumably, the range rationalization and the focus on a small number of SKUs compared to previously means you're better placed now than would have been the case a year ago, presumably. Is that right as well?
Yeah, correct. Because ultimately, we're putting the whole strategy here is putting more volume through less number of SKUs, and therefore there's obviously efficiencies of buying and manufacturing that we're able to realize. We're also smartly partnering with our manufacturing base to look for other value engineering opportunities. So there's a lot of work, I think, that's happening in this space that we would be able to utilize if and when this is something that we need to address.
Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. That's great. Thanks very much, guys.
Thanks.
Thanks, Matthew.
Thank you very much. We do have further questions from the webcast. So the next being, you've undertaken significant cost reductions, so where do you expect the cost pressures to be as return to expected revenue growth?
I think the only one I would say is that the cost that I would like to start to increase would be marketing. So that's very much been about the strategy, which is about saving costs on anything that's non-value adding for our consumer and making sure that we're honestly spending money in the right places. So I definitely see us as we accelerate the business that we'll be spending very, very carefully and very strategically in the right marketing areas to make sure that consumers are aware of the fantastic innovation and products that we have.
The Revolution Generation campaign that I talked about on the presentation is really, really key to that because what that actually enables us to do is to actually get a really broad reach, but actually it is a really authentic way of doing it, but it is also a very, very cost-effective way of doing it because you are working with lots of smaller influencers rather than celebrities that can be very, very expensive and collaborations that can be very expensive. So we are trying to be very, very smart with our money to get as much reach in a really kind of authentic way as possible. But as we scale, especially with the U.S. market that continues to be such a big opportunity for us, we would like to continue to invest more kind of like moving forward.
The rest of the cost structure, though, in terms of overheads, we believe we can maintain as we move forward. We'll certainly keep the percentages in line with growth.
Thank you very much. The next question from the webcast is, how much visibility do you have around the return to growth in Q for this financial year?
So we've got a fair bit of visibility around that, but there are a number of opportunities that are landing in the last quarter, and those are mentioned in the RNS largely. So we've set our guidance based on a forecast from a month ago when we last spoke to you on October 9th. And we're in line with that, and then that gives us a bit more visibility a month on. So we're comfortable with where we are.
Wonderful. Thank you very much. The next question from the webcast, what is your guidance for end-of-year net debt?
So I'd expect net debt at the end of the year to be in a similar place to where it was last year, effectively at the end of last year. So the big factor there is that you can see the net debt's gone up by GBP 1.7 million in the first half of the year. But we've had that build of inventory, as you could also see on the front page of the RNS. But we've got a big program to reduce the inventory levels in the second half of the year that Lauren spoke about in the presentation. And that will help our working capital position. So we should be able to recover that net debt position to where it was at the end of last year. There's potential if the inventory turns really fast that it could be a little bit better than that.
But at the moment, I'd expect it to be in a similar place to the end of last year.
Thank you. Our next question from the webcast, please talk about how much price has helped you in half 1/2025 and expectations going forward.
I would say how much has price helped us in terms of we haven't raised our prices into retail at all. I think that we definitely can see an opportunity moving forward that other brands have elevated their price points over the last kind of like couple of years. As I said previously, Revolution Beauty hasn't. It's really retained the value positioning, and actually it's probably therefore got even more kind of competitive. I think we do a very strategic review once a year where we look at actually our prices versus the competition. There might be some opportunities for some surgical price increases as we move into next year. We also recognize that there are opportunities to save on some of the promotional spend and redirect it into other sales driving initiatives.
So I would just to be clear, there isn't any benefit of price or any negativity of price in the first half of the year. But it's definitely an opportunity for the future that we are looking at, but always with our consumer in mind.
Thank you very much. Our next question from the webcast is, what level of marketing efficiencies do you think you can get as growth returns?
So I think there is definite potential for significant marketing efficiencies. This year, we've definitely been trying different types of marketing campaigns than we have in the past. And therefore, I think we can learn from that and gain efficiencies going forward. But overall, as Lauren says, we want to increase the gross margin and increase the marketing to support it. But that's over a long-term time frame. So it will be trying to get that virtuous circle going there. And again, I think we'll be trying different things as we go. But overall, I'd say because we've been trying different types of campaign, we always will, there should be a potential to gain efficiencies going forward.
Thank you very much. We currently have no further questions, so I'd just like to hand back to the host for any closing remarks.
I'd just like to say thank you for everybody that joined this morning and have a wonderful rest of the day. Thank you very much.
Thank you. As we conclude today's call, we'd like to thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.