Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining the call. I apologize for starting a few minutes late. With that, I'll just hand straight over to Mike Scott, the CFO, to take you through the numbers.
Yeah, thanks, Geoffrey. Morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'll just give you the highlights. I'll run through fairly high level, and then I'll pass over to Philippe afterwards, who will run through some more of the detail in terms of operations and commercial sort of initiatives sitting behind the numbers. Obviously we'll have Q&A at the end if people want to get into any more detail. We've achieved a record year again for the ninth consecutive year, revenues of just over GBP 1 billion, which is breaking the billion pound mark for the first time, which is over 50% growth year-on-year. Of course, some of that did relate to acquisitions, but 20% of that growth was like organic.
What do I mean by like for like? I mean, constant currency, and adjusted for the number of weeks in the year because prior year was a 52-week year. Sorry, stripping out acquisitions, of course. Of that 20% organic growth, it was about half and half between price and volume. Which is, you know, we are very, very pleased with, given, you know, we. We'll come onto inflation in a bit. We put up our prices to combat inflation, and yet we were still able to deliver a very significant volume growth on top of that. EBITDA was GBP 163 million. Again, a record year, 28% up year-on-year. EBIT followed at 35%, up at GBP 108 million.
I just wanna give a bit of context before I move on. I mean, clearly, COVID is hopefully a thing of the past in our memories now, but certainly at the beginning of this year, our year obviously starts in April, it was not. In U.K. and Europe, we had COVID lockdowns lasting through to July. In Australia, importantly for our Australian division, those lockdowns lasted right through to October. It was still a year impacted by COVID. The other big thing, of course, to mention is inflation. I'll come on to a bit more detail about the analysis of the margin.
You know, inflation for us, yes, everyone's focused at the moment on the recent energy price increases, but we have seen inflation through the year. In fact, for us and a lot of our key raw materials, it started towards the end of the prior year. We have been dealing with that for some time. I'll come on to that in a bit. In that context, really a fantastic set of results that we're very pleased with. We completed five acquisitions in the year. One in the first division, the Soft Flooring division, which was of Eagle Group, which is an artificial grass business, consolidating our two previous acquisitions in that area.
The grass business is performing extremely well and has had a fantastic year and continues to perform well. We bought two businesses in Italy in ceramic tiles. We bought another ceramic tile business in Turkey, which has given us a low-cost manufacturing base in Turkey, selling into Europe. We bought a U.S. business on the West Coast in California called Cali, which distributes LVT and wood products across North America. That has created a fourth division for us of being North America. We've definitely had a busy year, both in terms of acquisitions and in terms of organic growth. Just to finish on EPS, it was up 40% adjusted, fully diluted also for the press with maximum possible dilution.
It's up 40%, 38% year-on-year. Final point to make on the highlights. We, you know, having gone through that acquisitive growth as well as organic growth, we ended the year with our leverage down. Yes, some of that was due to the fact that we raised additional preferred equity with Koch in January this year. We ended the year down at 2.7 x net debt, adjusted net debt, EBITDA adjusted because we put full pro forma effect of the acquisitions that we've made, which is exactly how our lending banks measure the leverage, compared to 3.1 at the previous year end.
A good, healthy and strong balance sheet with more than GBP 200 million of liquidity, even after the acquisition of Balta, which we did in early April. I'm just gonna go on to slide seven. I mean, okay, it just shows you the track record there. You can see my point that it's continuous record-breaking years for us. Slide eight is a very important one. In terms of margin, there's been two key effects on our margin this year. The first one is one that we see every year as we do acquisitions every year, which is that we generally buy businesses that have a lower margin percentage margin than our incumbent group. That's fine. That's not a bad thing.
We pay a multiple of, profits and of cash generation. We pay a fair price nevertheless. Of course, we look to improve those margins through synergies with our incumbent group. Of course, what that does is when we buy those businesses in that first year, certainly it does drag down mathematically the overall margin as you consolidate those lower margin businesses into the group. In particular this year, for example, I'll give you an example. We bought a distribution business, as I mentioned in the U.S., in Cali. It's a $200 million turnover business, making about 6% EBITDA margin. Of course, we hope to uplift that margin. You know, clearly that has diluted, as have some of the other acquisitions, the EBITDA margin of the group.
That, as you can see on page eight, accounts for, at a group level, for about almost 2%, 2 percentage points of reduction in the margin, in the reported margin. The other big effect this year, which is new this year, if you like, was due to inflation. We saw across the board, on average, about mid-teens percentage of inflation in our cost base. As I said, for us, in things like synthetic yarn on the carpet side, it started much earlier. We've seen that through the year, and gas as well, on the ceramic tile side. What we've done is mitigated that where we can, clearly, in terms of operations.
Otherwise, we pass that on to our customers in order to preserve, you know, our bottom line and the health of our income statement. What we haven't done, because it's been so extreme this year, is added a markup, an additional markup to the passing on of that cost inflation. To give it a simple example, if, you know, if your turnover is GBP 100 and your costs are GBP 80 and your profits are therefore GBP 20, if your costs go up to GBP 100, from GBP 80 to GBP 100, we just pass that extra GBP 20 on, so our revenue has become GBP 120. Clearly, 20 of profit over GBP 120 of revenue is a smaller percentage margin than 20 of profit over GBP 100 of revenue.
Without adding that additional markup, which we decided would be commercially perhaps not the right thing to do and not the right thing for our customers either, that effect that we successfully protected online, we have generated more revenue from price increases than our costs in total have gone up. It does mean that your percentage margin goes down because you're not having that extra markup. That, as you can see on this page, is the other 180 basis points. Those two things together have had a significant effect on the margin that we're reporting. Other than those two things, there's actually been a small uplift of about 50 basis points as we've continued to deliver some synergy projects.
Flipping over to slide nine, this takes you through the key KPIs at a divisional level. I won't dwell on this too much because Philippe is going to go more into the commercial summary in each division. As you can see, if you look across the page from left to right, from right to left, it's been a record year in every division. We had a particularly strong year in the U.K. and Europe soft flooring division in terms of organic growth, but it's been strong across the board. As I said, Philippe will come onto that a bit more in a minute. Slides 10 through 12 give the same bridge that was...
I was just focused on the slide eight, but for the three divisions, not for North America, 'cause that's a new division, so it's not really applicable. You can see, for example, on slide 10 in U.K. and Europe soft flooring, the acquisition mix effect, which this is for the Eagle Group, wasn't a lot 'cause that was actually a very high profit margin business. There was certainly a lot of inflation that we had to pass through, having a big effect on the margin. Otherwise, the margin performed very well with synergy projects. On slide 11, ceramic tiles, we had an adverse effect from acquisition mix for the acquisitions we made in Italy in particular, which were low margin businesses on acquisition. We've since made many improvements to integration and again, inflation pass through.
In Australia, we didn't make any acquisitions. This is on slide 12. We didn't make any acquisitions, so no effect there, but again, inflation had an effect. The margin in Australia was slightly down by 70 basis points on an organic basis. Again, Australia was more heavily affected by COVID in this past year than the rest of the group. Coming on to slide 13, I won't spend too long, apologies, there's a lot of numbers on this page. It's the same slide that I prepare every single year just to go through all of the exceptional and non-underlying items 'cause I appreciate those are important to understand. We split them as always into three categories. There are exceptional items, which are by definition one-off non-repeating items.
There are other non-underlying items, non-underlying items, which are things that we don't believe characterize the underlying performance of the group and are non-cash in nature entirely. Then there are some non-underlying finance costs as well. I'll just pick out a few of the highlights. In terms of cash items, which we highlight in blue, you can see it's, you know, acquisition costs, M&A related costs, GBP 10.7 million in the year. Obviously up this year because we did make more acquisitions. Reorganization costs, GBP 5.3 million. Philippe will also speak to this, but we had some reorganization in Italy through the integration of the businesses there.
We also finished off the closure of one of our, the final piece of our rationalization in carpet manufacturing in the U.K. and the closure of one of the sites up in Yorkshire. There were some costs there. There's some exceptional income. We had negative goodwill on two of the acquisitions that we made, i.e., the price that we paid for two of the acquisitions, which was one of the ones in Italy and the Turkish one was lower than the fair value of the balance sheet. That immediately comes as income. But of course, we don't try and take that as underlying income. That is exceptional income. That's that GBP 6.9. The final two items are smaller, but they are cash items.
The GBP 2.9 profit on disposal of fixed assets. That, having finished that consolidation in Yorkshire of the carpet factories that I just mentioned, we then sold a site and obviously made a profit on that. Again, we treated that profit as exceptional. The biggest thing in the next section, other non-underlying operating items, is the amortization of the acquired intangibles, as it always is. This is where we, when we buy a business and we consolidate the balance sheet, under IFRS, we have to fair value everything including any intangible assets that are identified. For us, that is brand names, and that is customer relationships. We have to value those things on a cash flow modeling basis, and then we have to recognize them on the balance sheet and amortize them over time.
It's just, you know, effectively you recognize those assets instead of just recognizing goodwill in one big chunk. You do have to amortize them, and that cost obviously goes income statement, it's non-cash. Once those assets are fully amortized, we don't have to obviously pay any money to replace them, so we don't treat that as an underlying cost. The one just below that that I would like to mention, GBP 5.3 million. Again, under IFRS, you have to fair value your inventory on acquisition. What that means is, all the inventory in the opening balance sheet, you have to value effectively at the value that you're gonna sell it for, less selling costs.
What that means is, for that inventory on the balance sheet that you start with, you're not going to make any profit. Now, clearly, that doesn't reflect the actual cost of that inventory that the business acquired it for, and doesn't reflect the actual underlying profits of that business for that period of time over which it sells that initial inventory for the next, you know, two, three, four months. We take that amount which we treat it as an exceptional cost in the income statement to reflect the underlying profit of the target business as if we hadn't acquired it and have to make that fair value adjustment. Sorry, final big one in that section, the 7.1 at the top, the acquisition-related performance plans. That is effectively earn-outs under those consideration.
It's called an acquisition-related performance plan because it also happened, those ones happen to be linked to the person we bought the business from staying. Because it's linked to them staying effectively on an employment basis, we have to treat it effectively as an exceptional employment-related cost rather than an earn-out. It is effectively earn-outs under the SPA. In terms of finance costs, the key thing here, of course, and the big numbers are in terms of the preferred equity. We raised an additional GBP 150 million of preferred equity in January with Koch. We renegotiated the terms. We had a 100-basis-point reduction in the preferred coupon, not just on the new 150, but across the original 75.
For us as a company, we think it's a very good deal. Hopefully, Koch are also very happy with it. It certainly gave us some more firepower. Obviously, we used some of that firepower to acquire Balta after the year-end. It's a complex instrument. It comes with equity warrants, as everyone knows. There were no new equity warrants issued, by the way, in terms of this new GBP 150. The equity warrants are just from the original. Effectively, we have to fair value this instrument as a financial instrument under IFRS. We have to separate out certain embedded derivatives within that, and they're all separately valued.
Because we, in the end, take the full effect of that in the most pessimistic way and dilute it through the diluted EPS, we then say, "Well, the cost that are going to the income statement under IFRS, we treat as non-underlying." Just to remind everyone that those preference shares are what they are. We can redeem them, but equally, we don't have to. Actually, we'd never have to service them with cash if we don't want to. Ultimately, if we didn't do that, after many, many years, they would convert into ordinary equity. Hence the diluted EPS. I think that's where I'll stop on that page. Sorry, that was quite long. Going over to slide 14. In terms of cash generation, a couple of things this year.
Similar to last year, all because of supply chain risks globally. We took some action to increase our raw material inventory to help create a buffer for us for that. I mean, I think that's normalizing a lot now, but we certainly did that during the course of last year. Our investment in working capital was up. We also invested more in CapEx last year. The year before the year to March 2021 was a lower year because of COVID. We didn't spend anywhere near as much in terms of CapEx. We overspent, if you like, in the year just ended.
You'll see there, in the table, sort of in that middle section, replacement CapEx, GBP 40.9 million compared to GBP 20.9 in the previous year. You'll also see in the movement in working capital line, GBP 26 million negative. That all went into inventory. If you look in the main cash statement in the accounts, that's all adverse movement in inventory, effectively. That's all sitting there in inventory, and we do of course expect that to reverse in the future. Yeah, as a result of those two things, the conversion was a little bit lower than previous years, but we still had a healthy free cash flow, operating cash flow conversion or pre-tax of 78% of EBITDA and free cash flow conversion of 24% of EBITDA, but about 34% of EBIT.
From my perspective, on slide 15, I just bridged that into the net debt for you. We started the year with GBP 345.7 million of net debt. That's mostly our bonds. Everyone's aware of our corporate bonds. We generated GBP 34 million of free cash flow. We raised some GBP 142 million net effectively of preferred equity. We invested that money in some expansionary CapEx as part of the synergy initiatives, GBP 15 million, and then, of course, acquisitions that I've mentioned. There's some FX and other small differences. We ended the year at about GBP 406 million.
As I mentioned earlier, and as shown on slide 16, in terms of leverage. We finished the year at 2.7, with a very healthy balance sheet, lower than it was at the previous year end. Sorry, that was quite long, and that's where I'll stop and pass over to Philippe.
Good morning. I will give you some divisional review. The first division, the U.K. and Europe soft flooring division, where we have record revenues and profits. The revenues were up GBP 140 million or 50% up to GBP 423 million. The EBITDA was up GBP 21 million is now GBP 70.3 million. The underlying EBITDA margin was down, as Mike has explained, 87 basis points. This is related partially to the dilution effect of the M&A of the Eagle Group acquisition, which we have done. Then of course, also partially by the cost inflation pass-through effect, which Mike has explained earlier. Very important to note that the like-for-like revenue is up 31%.
In the first product group, carpet and underlay, we can say that in the U.K., the investments are all largely done and all synergy, all the big synergy projects are done with the exception of logistics. I will come to that in a minute. We have relocated the Westex plant, which was in Cleckheaton. We've relocated that in the Dewsbury site. We've continued to work on the productivity, and now we have a complete dedicated production site for natural fibers in combination with a prior acquisition, which we've made in the past, which was J.T. Firth. Now we have two plants. We have the Dewsbury plant for natural fibers, and then we have the South Wales plant for synthetic fibers.
Having done, we've continued to do some smaller investment which were a few high speed tufters to increase the productivity. We've added beaming activity instead of creel activity, so which gives us quicker changeovers and which can reduce the working capital if need be. We've also created a new layer, as you can see, new layer of inventory where we can finish just in time to hit the warehouse. We just wanted to take some pressure off the warehouses for the raw stock. Very important is the next one is the logistics, our logistics center called Alliance. Just a reminder that this is still a core asset and of expansion of the Victoria Group for the people who don't remember.
For the moment, we have four warehouses in the U.K., we have 240 vehicles, and we have six cutting tables. The on-time delivery for available stock is now 94.4%. This service is unbeatable. It's second to none in the U.K. and we're one of the best in next day delivery for the moment in U.K. market. We've also built an additional warehouse on the Abingdon site, so in South Wales, to do more raw stock. We don't wanna bring that into the distribution centers. We want to do direct shipments from there. Also, in Worcester, we are building a purpose-built warehouse of 185,000 sq ft. Complete, that's also where the new headquarters will be of Victoria.
We will vacate the old Victoria plant, which was our Midlands distribution center. We are looking at what we can do with that warehouse, but probably it's gonna be a centralized merchandising center and a deep storage warehouse for Balta. Then the second geography, U.K. and European Ceramic Tiles. Also record revenues and profits. The revenue is up to GBP 371 million or 31%. The underlying EBITDA is up to GBP 71.4 million or 13%. The underlying EBITDA margin is down 312 basis points for the same reasons as Mike has explained in the very beginning.
We did these three acquisitions, which are dilutive to our margin, but we are working on synergy projects for them. Don't forget also the very high energy prices we've had in half year one, but definitely in half year two. That's in ceramic, that's about 10% of the revenue, but we've been mitigating that with a lot of price increases. We've increased prices depending on product groups across the geographies, different red body or porcelain with anywhere between 15%-30% in the last year. If I go through the regions, for example, let's start with Italy, where we have a capacity of about 21 million square meters. This capacity is all sold last year, and even in this year, the order books are still very solid.
The investments we've done, we've completed an investment program of GBP 10 million last year in ceramics. Most of the investment went to two plants, the Santa Maria plant. We've been able to speed up the certification process because when we took it over, there was a lot of certification lagging. We've speeded that up. The plant is fully specified and certified now. We've increased the productivity with 60%, the output productivity. We've also activating the second atomizer. There was one atomizer, so we've increased the capacity of the atomizers, and we are serving three kilns out of the Santa Maria plant now. Also in Serra was the first acquisition we've done in the Italian market. We've replaced one. There's three kilns in Serra.
We've replaced one of the kilns, which was 24 years old, and we've replaced it by a multipurpose red body and porcelain kiln. The biggest investment which we've done in Italy was in the Ascot and Dom plant, where we installed a new full large tile size line along with a polishing line. Polishing is very popular now. You can see it. It's the copies of marble, which you see in the bathrooms and in the kitchens these days. Most of it is porcelain, and we have done an investment just like we've done in Spain. What we've also done in Italy now, in the integration of the plants, we brought all the logistics and the administration together close in the neighborhood adjacent to the Ascot plant.
The second geography is Spain. We have no new acquisitions in Spain. Capacity for the record is 24 million square meters of tiles. We have a further focus there on the integration of the three brands and three plants we bought, which is Keraben, Saloni, and Ibero. We've done also an investment because this is very popular now in one polishing line, and we've done some replacement and regulatory CapEx. That's it for Spain. Then Turkey, the acquisition which we've done in February 2022, so very risky, Graniser. This is considered for us in the group as a low-cost manufacturing brand and a low-cost manufacturing base for the group.
It will be continued to run as an independent company, so it's not that we will keep it that we will integrate it as a low-cost manufacturer for the other brands. It will remain completely independent. For the moment, this plant is exporting about 70% to Europe and to the U.S. The local market is only 30%, but we are working on a big investment program to bring the capacity of export up to 90%. We're not interested in the local Turkish market, so the plant is entirely designed to serve the export purposes. The third geography is Australia. We've seen strong organic revenue growth of about 11% in spite of the lockdowns.
The revenue is now GBP 110 million from GBP 99.6 million, and the underlying EBITDA is slightly down 174 basis points, but don't forget that last year we had record sales in Australia, and the margin was up 590 basis points last year, which is an incredible performance given the rolling lockdowns, as Mike has referred to. The last lockdown was in October last year. Just maybe detail, but LVT, so we are a distributor of LVT, which is this newer product group in the market, and this is a fast-growing product group in Australia as well. New in the geographies is North America, and this is the final region to comment.
Revenue is GBP 115 million, and the underlying EBITDA is GBP 6.4 million. This is we've done an acquisition in North America on the West Coast in San Diego, Cali Bamboo. For the record, Cali Bamboo is an omni-channel distributor and works in the business-to-business and the business-to-consumer environment. They're dealing with all types of retailers, like the Lowe's and the Home Depot. They work with installers. They work with consumers. Fifty percent of the revenue of Cali Bamboo is LVP, so kind of LVT, which they do import. The growth of the last twelve months ending March was 22%. That was even higher than the 17% CAGR growth of the period 2016 to 2021.
What we're also doing there is introduction of new qualities like rugs and artificial turf. We are trying to use some of the products we are making overseas to integrate with our North American distributor. We've been participating in the big fair in Vegas, Surfaces, where we've been focusing on outdoor flooring. They were branding the new product group, Your Floor Outdoor, they've been introducing this artificial turf and the rugs during that show. Just a reminder, so you can see that the EBITDA is lower. Don't forget this is just a distributor. It's not a manufacturer, and there is very little investment. The EBITDA and the EBIT is pretty close to one another.
Important to mention that we are looking to develop the U.S. in the same way as we've done in the U.K. market. We want to keep control of the service. That's why we are building a purpose-built warehouse as well in South Carolina instead of working with third-party logistics. We want to be in control of the service going forward. These are the main elements which I wanted to flag on the regions. Do we continue here, or do we want to go to Q&A?
Q&A?
Okay. Yeah.
I think we'll take questions from the room first, and then go to anyone online.
Okay.
Charles?
In terms of where are you now in terms of passing on inflation? Obviously you had a great last year in passing it on. How much more have you got to do? You're ahead of the game, so sort of to be able to cover all of it that you're seeing for this year.
Yeah. We've done most of the increases with the inflation for the moment, as I mentioned earlier. We've done price increases not only in soft flooring, but also in ceramics of 15%-30%, depending on the geographies, depending on the product groups. Most of it is done. We're seeing no more extra inflationary pressure than the one we've currently had in the raw material side. It's still fluctuating on the utility side, let's say. There we've built mechanisms, like in ceramics, where the price is adapted according to the megawatt hour of the gas price.
We have looked for links as we've done in the past for artificial turf, for yarn, I mean. We've done that for the yarn. We've done it for the ceramic tiles as well. We're looking for an indicator, and we link the price to an indicator. If the price of the gas goes up, the price of the product goes up. The type of fuel surcharge that the airlines used to put out when gas.
Will it work in reverse when eventually prices get back down again, you pass that straight back on or can you?
Where there is a mechanism, it's passed on straight. Where it's on as a surcharge, we eliminate the surcharge. We follow the fluctuations. I can say that we've been mitigating all of the inflationary pressure, and we've passed it on. This is what we've done in the past, and this is what we will continue to do.
Just clear on that linkage, what proportion of your ceramics business have a linkage?
We have the link in Spain, mainly for all of our Spanish business. We work in a bit different way in Italy. We have partially a hedge in Italy. Thanks to the hedge, we are in the position to pass on a bit more moderate price increases. It's a forward hedge. We can pass on smaller price increases, and we try to mitigate the action like this. Because we still want to remain competitive. If you look of course at the order books, if you compare Spain with Italy, in Spain, you have. Of course, when your prices increase, your demand is suffering a little bit. We see we have less of that effect in Italy.
Don't forget, through the Italian operations, we are working more for DIY. DIY, the demand in Continental Europe and DIY is still strong for the moment.
Can we just talk about demand that you've seen through Q1? Obviously it's very different in each region and probably.
Mm-hmm
... product categories. Can you just give a sort of flavor of what's outperforming expectations, where you might have seen some softness?
We have to make some difference between the geographies, between definitely the product groups, and also between the end users. Like in the U.K., when we look at the U.K. and the medium to high end, we have less of a demand issue. If I look at the top brands which we're having in the U.K., like the Westex or the Abingdon, we get the order books are still reasonable, but we suffer a little bit of a drop in demand. If you look at the more volume end of the brands, they suffer more. The cheaper product, the medium to low end suffers more.
If I convert that to cut lengths versus roll stock, the roll stock, so the big volumes suffering more, the cut lengths are suffering less.
Yeah.
That way we have this direct contact with the end consumer, with the retailer. The performance seems to be better. Don't forget, with all the investments we've done in recent years, the service level, as I have said, is second to none. We have a fantastic service and the retailers for the business they still have, they like to go to that security next day delivery. Yeah. As you know, Charles, that's what we specialize in the tile business.
Do you want to just talk a little bit about Australia and the U.S. and Spain?
Yeah. In Australia, the business, I was in Australia three weeks ago. The business is still strong. They came out of a lockdown later. The business is performing well. I have to say that in Australia, the inflation is a bit less, so they don't have the sharp edges that we see in Europe on inflation. Of course there is inflation. Of course there's some hiccups in raw material, but it's less of concern. They have passed on price increases as well, and the demand is solid. We don't see any drop off in demand in Australia. In the U.S., it works a bit different. The U.S., the demand has definitely dropped. But there, through the distributor, we are completely focused on the bottom line.
We try to be very cash conservative. We see the bottom, the top line drop to some extent, but we have continued performance on the bottom line. We've been able to pass on the price increases because one of the inflationary pressure on the price increases for them is definitely the transport price, the container prices. We've all added that and passed that on with the transport surcharges to the customers, to the end customers. In general, I'm not too worried about the bottom line in the U.S., but the revenue could suffer a little bit because of the MAP.
One other point, Charles, yeah, when you look back at that like-for-like data, soft flooring, i.e. the U.K. business, the soft flooring business, had an extremely strong year. It's no surprise in a way that that's one of the places where, in relative terms, it's a little bit more under pressure. Certainly, as Philippe said, at the lower end, at the higher end, it's definitely more robust. As Philippe said, ceramics has been solid in that Q1, absolutely solid. The other thing, sorry, to mention as part of the soft flooring business is our grass business is also doing very well. I think the softer parts, as Philippe said, are the volume end in carpets, and the U.S. one.
It's important to know that we are still above pre-COVID levels. We know with the two COVID years, if I compare, and this is the comparison we're doing, into 2019. The performance on the top line is above pre-COVID levels still. I mean, this is helpful. Yeah.
Great.
Any other questions?
In terms of ask on CapEx, obviously a three to five year view, obviously logistics make a success. Can we expect more of the same or more of the focus on the U.S. on the distribution side of things? Just any color on that.
As I said, U.K., we've done with the exception of the logistics, and we will spend about GBP 8 million there this year on the new cutting tables and to furnish the place and to put the racks there. This is done. There's a few small. Like, a tufting machine is $400,000. I mean, this is not the end of the world. There's no big CapEx to be done in the U.K. All the heavy lifting is done. We still have room for growth for 20%-30% without having to invest in the U.K. Italy, as I said, in the next three to four years, there's nothing major that has to be done for this specific business.
Of course, we're making projects. We're looking at the big development for a complete new line. It's too early to talk about that, but this would be a specific project, a specific plan towards the future. For the existing business, nothing is needed. In Turkey, there's a bit of catch-up to be done, but this is to increase the export from 70%-90%. That will pay itself. The payback will be very short because we will have a good margin in the extra 20% of sales. In, as I said, in the U.S. market, this is a distributor. We work with. It's gonna be a leased warehouse.
We will have to do a bit of CapEx to furnish that warehouse. Other than that, we are not. There's not a lot of major CapEx ahead for the current size of the operations, and we have still room for growth. In ceramics, through Graniser, through the Turkish operation, and in all of the plants, whether we talk natural fibers or synthetic fibers, in U.K., we have room for growth as well. Nothing major other than the new plants we are developing, which have to survive on their own, payback then.
I guess the integration of Balta.
Yeah. Well, yeah. This is, of course, but I was talking about last financial year. Yeah.
Around Balta.
Yeah.
Just a comment about how that business has been trading since you acquired it. Obviously, it's fairly recent, but just hear that. As much as you can, sort of integration plans. I guess you've only announced them internally, but.
Yeah.
If you can say in terms of how?
Yeah.
You're seeing that playing out.
Yeah. Maybe let me first recall the reason why we bought, why we have bought Balta is because of the rug business. Just a reminder for everybody that the business we acquired had a revenue of about EUR 350 million. 2/3 of that was rugs, 1/3 was broadloom. The real business that we wanted was the rug business. Then we took a view on the broadloom business because we said, "Okay, 70% of their broadloom business is export to the U.K. We know that business. We're familiar with that business. We can bring that business closer to the customers. We'll take that as well." Yeah. For the moment, what we are doing, we are trying to carve out as much as we can.
Balta, by the way, will survive as its own brand. Balta will be the seventh brand which we're having in the U.K. market. On the broadloom business, we're looking to push some of the business forward to the U.K. We still have a bit of capacity, free capacity, we want to fill all the capacity which we have in the U.K. and create positive variance there. We will probably make the broadloom business in Balta slightly smaller, but we can also still in-source some of the business which is currently outsourced by the rugs and tufting in Balta. It would be probably on an equilibrium. On the broadloom side, since Balta is more in the medium to low end, it suffers a bit more than the Belgian brands.
You're asking me a little bit forward-looking. This suffers a bit more. On the rug side, 50% of the rugs is export to the U.S. Of course, the export to the U.S. point. Okay, we didn't buy Balta just for the forecast for the next season. Balta is a big operation, don't forget. It's GBP 250 million, and we are currently studying how we will go on with the future footprint of Balta. We have a Belgian operation and we have a Turkish operation. It's big Turkish operation for the moment. It's 60% Belgium, it's 40% Turkey. We are just giving it some thought on how we'll design the future footprint.
We believe the rug business is gonna grow massively over the next few years because there's a lot of hard flooring being sold, whether that's LVT or ceramics. On every hard flooring, you can put a few rugs. We have a big belief in that business. We are continuing to monitor that closely. We are designing our plans. It's a bit too early days to say that. The one bit that I can say is that Balta is a vertically integrated company. We are extruding. We are extruding in Turkey, and we are extruding in Belgium. Extruding, I mean, we are buying the chips, and we're making the plastic chips, and we're making yarn from the chips. That process has become extremely expensive in Belgium.
In the current market circumstances, it is. We will probably do more of that in Turkey and less of that in Balta. The yarn is key. The key basic components of the yarn, it's the labor, it's the chips, and it's the energy. It's this energy component which is now killing it as a line. We are much cheaper in Turkey. Don't forget that the biggest competitors of Balta are in Turkey and in Egypt. To give you one example, in labor, you have one operator in Belgium for five in Turkey. In Egypt, you have five Egyptians for one Turkish operator.
I mean, this is the competition we are facing with. Balta is known for its creativity, okay, its product development, and this is what we are good in, and this is why we take the lead. The product development comes from the yarn, and we want to keep that in-house, but not necessarily in Belgium. I hope this answers your question, Charles. Yeah. Sure.
It's quite a broad question from me.
Yeah.
I think it's worth touching on. You've obviously laid strong foundations for the year ahead.
Mm-hmm.
I want to know more about your competition. You're obviously very well positioned.
Mm-hmm.
You've done some hedging, protected your margins. Where does that leave your competition? I can imagine that the capacity withdrawal will be lots of kinds of businesses that collapse. Where do you see your position, and does that support your growth outlook?
Yeah. Well, if you're talking about hedging, you're talking more about gas prices, and this is what we are currently seeing. At current gas prices, if you don't have any kind of hedging, albeit long term, short term, it's extremely difficult. Some people follow the fluctuations in the market and, for the moment, every now and then, you see some of the factories closed down for a period of four to six weeks because it doesn't make sense to make ceramic tiles when the price of the gas is GBP 165-GBP 200 per megawatt-hour.
We are trying to mitigate that partially through some of the hedging, partially to bring it on or to push it forward to the customer through price increases. That is what we have done. Of course, there's a limit to the price increase you can make to the market before the demand starts to falter. I think we have a very good view on where that limit is. We're in a position to hang on to that, not only because of the hedging peak, but also because of the customer base which we're having. The customer base, the DIY, which is still strong and solid and is ready to pay up just to get the deliveries because they still have a good demand.
The independent retailers, specialized retailers in ceramic, there we can see some more demand drop. This is what we feel than more in the Spanish factory. There's definitely a limit to how much price increase you can do and to where the gas cost can be. Of course, if you have long-term coverage, you can deal with that and you can play it to your advantage. Yeah.
Do you know what your competitors are doing? For the close competitors, do you have any indication of sort of how they're handling this?
Well, they're handling it the same way, yeah. They try to link. I think it has become a general industry standard that prices are linked to indicators. Everybody's doing pricing surcharges. The whole level, it's not that I'm having a better competitive position than somebody else. The whole market is going up because don't forget, as every hedging comes to an end. You're forced to keep on increasing your prices as well because otherwise you're in front of a wall when the hedging stops. Nobody is hedged for massive amounts. Everybody is taking a view and the whole competitive landscape is building. Where we take maybe most advantage of that is in Italy because of the segment, because we have an extremely lean operation there.
I mean, it's important to remember it's a huge market. It's still very fragmented. I don't wanna say it's bifurcated, but there are large and small players. Definitely small players are going to suffer. I think we benefit from our scale, as do other larger competitors. There is a huge range on sophistication of how people run their operations as well, in terms of how efficiently they get sweepings in their kilns. We like to think obviously that we're very good at that. There are other people who are good at that, but there are some people who are less good at that. Really it comes down to your scale, how efficient you are with your operations, how efficient you are with your.
You know, how well invested your factory is, how efficient you are with your purchasing, whether you're hedged. Yeah, absolutely, there'll be winners and losers through that.
Also the size of integration which we're having. We have our own atomizers throughout the group where we do the atomized clay. Of course, if you're a manufacturer and you don't have your atomizers and you have to buy atomized clay in the market, there's somebody else, your third-party manufacturer, is taking advantage of that and taking an extra margin on top of an already very high gas price to make the atomized clay. They're taking advantage of that. Since we have this integration, so yes, we buy the gas, but we don't have to pay up on a margin. That's where the difference is in the profitability.
If you look, our profitability is still 20%, and the biggest drop we have had in the profitability is because of the margin effect of the acquisition and the cost pass-through effect of the acquisition. We're still performing well.
Obviously well-positioned.
Yeah. Yeah.
The key, I mean, Victoria has got the advantage of scale, which was highlighted in this, the statement this morning. Then second, we've got the advantage of scale, so which gives us more flexibility. We've got diversified geographies we sell into. I think one of the greatest advantages we have is our operating margins are among the best in the industry. What that means is that if the industry does come under pressure, we'll still be making money when probably 70%-80% of our competitors are losing money. That puts us in a very good position for growth.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Well-
Yeah.
Very kind.
Sorry.
Is there any?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Perfect. So yeah, if anyone online has any questions they'd like management to ask, just send them on to Tiana, and we'll be happy to pass on for you. Shall pass on to you for closing statements.
All right. Oh, look, we're out of time anyway. Thanks very much, everybody, for listening and joining the call. I look forward to updating you in due course. Thank you.
Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you.