Welcome to the Sosandar full year 2024 trading update webinar. All attendees are in listen-only mode, and questions will be taken at the end. This webinar is being recorded. I now hand over to Julie Lavington and Ali Hall, co-CEOs, and Steve Dilks, CFO. Julie, over to you.
Thank you, Tamsin. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the call. As with previous trading update calls, today we'll be providing a short summary of the update, followed by a Q&A session ending at 8:45 A.M. We've delivered a robust financial performance for FY24, with revenue growth accelerating in the second half. As outlined previously, we focused in particular on growing gross margin in the second half through the reduction in price promotional activity. This has delivered positive results, with a substantial positive swing in PBT from half one to half two, coupled with being cash generative. This puts us in a really good place to drive forward with our strategy for Sosandar to become a multi-channel business, delivering our medium-term goal of revenue of GBP 100 million and 10% PBT.
Our performance has been achieved against one of the most challenging backdrops our industry has experienced. This performance is testament to the strength of our brand and our unique product range, which remain the key drivers of our success and keep our customers repeatedly returning to us for their wardrobe needs. We are incredibly proud to see the success that Sosandar clothes are having across all our different routes to market. sosandar.com remains the bedrock of the Sosandar brand, and this channel was strengthened with the launch of our app in July, which has performed really well. Trading with our well-established third-party partners has continued to be strong, with the success of our product resulting in Sosandar being one of the top-selling brands across all of our third-party partners, including Next and M&S.
Our first launches internationally with The Iconic in Australia and The Bay in Canada, have performed in line with our expectations, further validating our expectation that Sosandar's product range will resonate with fashion-conscious women across the globe. With over 60% of the GBP 60 billion clothing market in the UK being transacted in physical stores, we remain confident that the opportunity available to multi-channel retailers far exceeds that of an online pure-play business. As a reminder, we believe that having our own stores will deliver multiple benefits to the brand as a whole, including expanding our addressable market and improving profitability. The stores will also increase brand awareness, help to drive higher margins, deliver more efficient marketing, and lower returns rates.
We've made substantial progress towards the opening of our first stores, with several shops identified in top-tier locations at various stages of progression, including some now reaching the latter stages. Our primary focus is to ensure that Sosandar stores are situated in the right position in affluent, thriving locations where Sosandar customers over-index. The exact timing of our first openings will accordingly be determined by our disciplined approach to ensuring right place, right location, and that all other aspects are in place to deliver a fantastic in-store customer experience.
Now moving on to our financial highlights for FY24. We are pleased to report net revenue of GBP 46.3 million for the year ended 31st of March, 2024, a 9% increase against the prior year. Our focus on gross margin is delivering, with gross margin for the full year being 57.6%, up from 56.1% in FY23. The second half comparisons paint a clearer picture of the strategic decision to introduce a more targeted approach to price promotional activity ahead of select store openings, resulting in less frequent and less deep discounts. Gross margin for the second half was 59.6%, up from 57.8% in the prior year.
Demonstrating the impact of improved revenue and gross margin, in H2, we delivered a substantial positive swing in PBT from H1 to a profit in H2. FY24 will be broadly in line with market expectations, with a marginal loss of GBP 0.2 million expected to be reported for the year overall. Due to our ongoing careful working capital management, with ongoing focus on stock purchasing, the cash position as at March 31, 2024 exceeded market expectations at GBP 8.3 million. This further strengthens our ability to execute the next stage of growth, including, as planned, the rollout of select physical retail stores during FY25. Our continued focus on cash generation and strong balance sheet means that the store rollout will be delivered entirely from our existing financial resources.
We enter the new financial year well-placed, with a strong cash position in order to execute the next stage of our growth strategy. Post year-end, April trading has been strong, with continued improvement in profitability, driven in particular by gross margin. We fully expect that we will deliver more milestones in FY25 as we open our first physical retail stores and continue to take the Sosandar brand to more customers across the UK and worldwide. We'll hand over to you now for questions.
Tremendous. Thank you very much. So to ask your question verbally, click on the Raise Hand button or type your question by clicking on the Q&A button, and we'll wait for a few moments for questions to come through. At the moment, there are no questions, but I should think people are just typing them in. Otherwise, there are no questions. We'll give it just a few minutes more. No, there are no questions at all. So. Oh, there's just one question that's come in, from Alan Charlton: Is there any update on Sainsbury's and when they will decide on the next part of the rollout?
Only update to say that it's going well with them. We continue to deliver wholesale into them, but we don't, as yet, have any update on when further stores will be rolled out.
Great. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. Oh, I don't, I can't understand. Any comments on any supply issues?
No comment, really. We continue to land our stock broadly in line with the expected arrival dates into the U.K. The team that work with our freight forwarders have done a great job making sure that supply continues to come. No disruption, really, and no significant impact to our levels of activity.
Fantastic. That is it now. That's the end of questions. Julie, do you have any closing remarks?
Just to say thank you very much, everyone, for dialing in, and we look forward to updating you again in due course.
Tremendous. Many thanks, Julie, Ali, and Steve, and to everyone for joining. This is the end of the webinar.