Welcome to the results presentation of the interim results of Vertu Motors PLC for the six months ending August 2025. My name's Robert Forrester, Chief Executive, and I've got Karen Anderson, a long-serving CFO who's going to go through the financials. If we turn to the investment case for Vertu Motors. We continue, we believe, to do the right things to create a very strong business within U.K. motor retail. We believe scale drives benefit and actually we believe these benefits are increasing over time, particularly in the area of the ability to invest in technology to drive productivity increases and cost reductions and the benefit of having large single brands across the national space to drive brand awareness.
In the period, we've announced today the appointment of two new Managing Directors, two new roles from internal promotions who will take the operational responsibilities of the divisions and provide greater bandwidth. At a very senior level, we continue to focus on delivering great colleague and customer satisfaction levels. Our customer experience scores, as measured by the manufacturers, are well above national average. We continue to invest in technology, and this is proving absolutely pivotal in the cost initiatives that we are driving through, not only to lower cost, but also to make us more efficient and to help the customer journeys. We have delivered, in these results, excellent cost trends despite the headwinds, and that focus on cost through the use of technology will indeed continue. Portfolio management and capital allocation remain an absolute priority.
We are clearly seeking to manage the growth of Chinese brands within the U.K. market, but also the need to modify the portfolio to recycle capital from low return to high return activities, which we've continued to do so in the period. Our share buyback continues and clearly that's important, especially given our tangible net assets have grown to GBP 0.76 per share.
The U.K. consumer space is clearly challenging. The sector itself has issues around the government's electrification agenda and they do provide headwinds. However, the Group has delivered a strong operational performance as we seek to focus on what we can control. We have delivered market share gains across all channels of vehicle sales. We have been absolutely focused on cost control and we had a 0.3% rise in core costs despite noticeable headwinds. Our battery electric vehicle retail sales have increased 82% in the period against a market growth of 55%. We're gaining share in that all-important market. What we did not anticipate at the beginning of September was a global one-off event being the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover, one of our major partners that has caused major disruption to our 10 dealerships in the U.K.
Though I'm pleased to report the situation is now easing, the attack impacted our September profitability by GBP 2 million, and when we look at the potential full-year impact in the current financial year, and this is clearly highly uncertain and dependent on getting systems back, getting back to normal trading, we anticipate the result could be impacted by up to GBP 5.5 million in total.
This year we extended our cyber insurance risk to business interruption from third party outages. Clearly we are now working with our advisors to progress a potential claim where possible in respect to the losses of that we have incurred in relation to this JLR outage. We have appointed forensic accountants to help the Group to work with our insurers on this. We will clearly update shareholders on the impact over the next few months of the cyber attack and indeed on the impact of any potential upside from an insurance claim.
Moving on to current trading and outlook, and particularly the September result, which is a plate change month and therefore very important for the delivery of H2 result. I'm pleased to report, excluding the impact of JLR, that September was a good month with profits up on last year. We had a strong used and after sales performance. Used cars, for example, were up 5.3% like- for like, a much stronger rate than in the previous months. Acquisitions positively contributed on top of the core performance.
New cars remained a challenge. Motability sales were down 15% in volume terms and that clearly impacted gross profit generation for the Group. Manufacturers without grant support on electric vehicles faced competition from manufacturers with grants and indeed utilized some of the retailer margins to compete with strong consumer offers. That clearly impacted our margins. We also saw a market that shifted quite considerably to high pre-registration activity at the end of the month, which I think will impact registrations in future months.
Overall, however, it's pleasing to see that the Group did deliver increased retail new car volume on a like- for- like basis of 1.8%. Also on the positive side, we saw a 25% increase in fleet car volumes aided by significant BEV sales and indeed the impact of the grant, which isn't just for retail customers. There's probably going forward in quarter four calendar less pressure on the manufacturers this year around BEV targets, which is a good thing. The ZEV mandate has seen some extra flexibilities and the grants have clearly led to an increased consumer demand and uptake of battery electric vehicles that should make Q4 easier than last year.
Turning to Motability which has been weak throughout H1 and in September we now see comparatives at a much reduced basis going forward. Additionally, we expect the Motability market will recover from March next year due to the timing of renewals overall excluding JLR, we expect full year profits to be in line with market expectations. But the Board are mindful of a cautious outlook on the consumer side and business sales side. The Autumn Statement at the end of November is clearly of key interest.
Return to the strategic update. The Group has had a consistent strategy and was recently reaffirmed by our Group Strategy Day with the Board in September. If we take growth in particular, we will see further growth in Q4 in outlets. Our expansion with BYD, which is the leading Chinese manufacturer. It gathers apace. We will open our former Citroën dealership in Nottingham as a new Škoda business which we're excited about and we will see some further small-scale acquisition activity.
Our cautious outlook means that our focus in the near term will be very much on maximizing our existing portfolio in the remaining months.
If we look at sector trends in the near term, it's interesting that of the three trends we're going to talk about, we are not talking about the rollout of the agency model as one of the big three. We have BMW planning to launch agency in the U.K. in 2027 but there's been a general rollback and ceasing of agency as a strategy. Clearly electrification is the big issue facing the new car market. There is still pressure from the ZEV mandate and the targets going forward and indeed in 2025 where the government set a target of 28% are not going to be achieved. This is a headwind on the new car market and indeed profitability. I think we're more optimistic than last year. The ZEV mandate flexibilities, the EV grants have gone down well with consumers.
The demand for the Ford Puma for example was absolutely startling in September and we got a future order bank for that product. There are far more affordable cars, some less than GBP 20,000 that are battery electric vehicle in the market today. This was not the case in the new car market in the prior year. Products like the Hyundai Inster, the Dacia Spring are two that spring to mind. However, Volkswagen brands are also bringing out much more affordable product into the marketplace. Electrification is the long term answer and it will come, but it will not come at the government's pace. The second issue to discuss is the role of Chinese new entrants into the marketplace. The starting point here is that the Chinese domestic car market is in carnage, well documented carnage and oversupply, price wars, discounting and a trend now for natural selection.
Among Chinese domestic manufacturers. The U.K. is seen as the go to place for the Chinese to come. Why? Well, we haven't got major tariffs on Chinese product and there's no clear national champion among U.K. manufacturers, as in other countries, except perhaps JLR. You'll have recently read that the U.K. is now BYD's biggest market outside of China. The Chinese cars typically have great technology, fantastic electric vehicles with great battery technology and their hybrid cars are also much sought after. However, there will be a somewhat break on the exponential growth of the Chinese. In all likelihood, we've got a lot of new brands coming into the United Kingdom, all requiring six car showrooms, but there's no new build showrooms being put in place. This will limit growth. How many spare six car showrooms actually are there?
We as Vertu need to balance chasing market share and growth of car sales with making money. We will play the long game here. We will assess new entrants and we will assess in the short term whether we want to invest. You've got to remember for a Chinese new brand there is no high margin after sales. We have concentrated and will continue to do so on MG and indeed BYD, and we will clearly assess others over time. The third topical discussion is around financial commission. The Supreme Court sat in the period and indeed did curtail the wildest aspects of potential claims against lenders in relation to financial commission in the auto sector. In what was perfect timing, last night the FCA released a consultation paper on any redress scheme.
We're now in a period of consultation and we will be diligent to respond to the FCA in a very structured way.
The FCA's focus on redress is likely to be levied, at least initially, on lenders. We will, as retailers, be key to providing the data to actually calculate that redress scheme. We will continue to assess the position, but we do not currently consider the need for provisions.
Our digitalization strategy has always had two components. One is the push for technology to increase productivity and indeed control cost, and secondly, to increase our sales and marketing effectiveness. We have to do both though in this period, given the cost pressure, we probably put more effort into the cost control. Our finance efficiency project, which has been going on for the last 12 months, is now really bearing fruit and we're starting to deliver significant cost savings. We have reduced significantly the amount of invoicing between internal departments and particularly we've developed technology to make sure cash processing doesn't need manual involvement for a lot of intercompany transactions, but also for external transactions. So we now have internet-based payment systems that are seamless, that a service customer can now pay and the cash gets automatically posted into our dealer management system.
There is more of this to come and more savings to be had in terms of data and AI.
Our data warehouse is complete. Our customer data platform has gone from concept to reality and we are now delivering multiple use cases to make us far more efficient and effective in personalized marketing. If you go onto the web and you abort a function such as trying to book a certain online service booking, you are likely to receive a personalized piece of marketing to get you back on track. This is delivering a good ROI. There is no doubt in our business that AI is actually real. The executive sat down and defined a strategy which now our development teams are implementing. We have a formal AI policy to protect the business from.
AI issues. We actually held a competition for our 60-strong development arm, a Dragons' Den-type competition with a GBP 10,000 prize to flush out great ideas that were capable of immediate implementation and we are implementing them. Examples of use of AI use of customer-friendly technology to reduce calls into our contact center. We're using AI email systems to prospect service bookings from our database and those bookings are effectively all done via email correspondence and the booking goes straight into our dealer management system. One of the big areas to look at is that email sales inquiries are historically very low-converting and there's a lot of human effort gone into corresponding via email with potentially little reward.
We're now starting to use AI to warm up those email sales leads to get them to a sufficiently hot prospect to enable humans then to finish off the job. We are at the start of the journey on this for sure. Third element is our new website which we now have one single brand of Vertu, and we therefore took the opportunity to revamp our website. We're doing it in modular stages so it's not a Big Bang approach. We have made massive progress in terms of search engine optimization and user friendliness and the full website will be redone by mid-2026. An area of weakness I think in our offering online is YouTube content, particularly around new and used vehicles, and we will certainly, we've certainly developed a strategy to make sure that we address that.
Turning to brand aspects, the single Vertu brand is now in place and I think we've avoided the major pitfalls in moving our major brand of Bristol Street Motors into Vertu in April. In September, the Vertu brand had a UK prompted brand awareness of 11% that has grown to 19% in September and we fully expect us to hit 30% during the next financial year. The reasons for this growth is very simple. Having one brand increases our ROI on marketing activity. Team Vertu with its fantastic BTCC racing team were at Brands Hatch last weekend and won many trophies including Best Driver and indeed Best Manufacturer. So this then affects 191 sales outlets. The EFL Trophy at Wembley is a massive exercise in brand building.
75,000 people attended, never mind the early rounds, and it affects every single one of our dealerships in recent weeks to support the Vertu Trophy. I've had the pleasure of going to Barnet and MK Dons for the early round games, and it's great to see the Vertu brand very prominent. This isn't only about brand awareness though. Our partnerships with the Manchester concert venue of Co-op Live and the EFL gives us access to marketing databases with which we can then do direct market.
In July we took the step of having our first ever group-wide used car event under one brand. We used the full gamut of media, including a TV campaign to drive increased inquiries through our dealerships and a good time was had. We got a lot of excitement into our businesses and we saw like-for-like used car sales in July, up 12% which is no mean feat. Next year we intend to extend. We intend to extend this strategy of having two 10-day used car events but also having three new car events. The first time that we've used the power of the Vertu brand to have one event across the entire estate to drive new car sales. I think it will be a success.
Finally, before Karen deals with the financial performance, I wanted to update you on a senior management structure change that we intend to make from the 1st of January and which we have announced today. The three founding directors of the business, myself, Karen and our COO David Crane have been in place from 2006 when we formed a cash shell and we now lead a GBP 5 billion revenue group. My span of control I think has been too large. I don't think it's fully managed. The fact that we now run a highly complex and very large group. All the operations divisions report directly into me and I think it's time to augment management from the 1st of January.
Two of our trusted group operations directors, one who currently runs the BMW division, another currently runs the Jaguar Land Rover division, will be promoted to managing director roles with the operating divisions reporting into that. This will give us greater bandwidth and will allow me to focus on the strategy and execution, particularly around growth and portfolio changes. Seeing that more of the manufacturers, which, as a franchise operator, is a very good thing. Spending more time in the dealerships and indeed developing our senior leadership team. I am excited about this. I think it sets us fair for the years ahead. .
Thank you, Robert. Slide 13 shows a summarized income statement for the Group. For the period, Group revenues grew by GBP 35.4 million with this growth attributed to acquisitions, particularly the Burrows acquisition which was completed in October 2024. Core Group revenues declined GBP 49.2 million predominantly in new vehicle sales due to lower Motability vehicle volumes and the move to agency in the Group's MINI dealerships. Gross margin increased to 11.2% due to the increased mix of higher margins aftersales revenues. Costs grew as a percentage of revenue, however, were tightly controlled with Core Group costs rising just 0.3% or GBP 0.7 million on prior year. Despite the cost headwinds we faced. Adjusted operating profit reduced on prior year levels driven by the reduction of profitability from the new car channel.
With this reduction flowing through to EPS, the Group's interest costs grew slightly with increased manufacturer stocking charges and lease interest partially offset by increased deposit income and the impact of reduced interest rates on our borrowings. Non-underlying costs represent redundancy costs as the Group applied technology to improve the efficiency, particularly in the finance function which moved to divisional accounts processing hubs in the period. In addition, exceptional non-underlying costs include the costs of closure of two of the Group's dealership locations.
Turning over to slide 14 here we have a profits bridge of the adjusted profit before tax compared to prior year. For the period, Core Group gross profit declined by GBP 1 million over the prior year period and clearly the standout negative. Here is the GBP 4.4 million reduction in gross profit from new vehicle sales. This decline was driven by a significant reduction in Motability sales volumes consistent with the market decline in this channel as well as significant discounting of battery electric vehicles which impacted new vehicle margins. Offsetting this shortfall was the significantly improved gross profit generation from the Group's resilient and high margin aftersales operations.
Our service department here benefited from an increase in the internal rate charged to the vehicle departments in the preparation for vehicle sales which did actually move some gross profit from new and in particular used car sales into after sales.
Used gross profit generation exceeded prior year levels even after having absorbed the additional cost of preparation from service. Margins and volumes were broadly stable in the period with the improvement in overall gross profit generation arising from improved gross profit per unit, which was aided by the Group's used vehicle algorithm valuation tool. Core Group operating expenses, as I said, grew just GBP 0.7 million and I'll cover those movements in more detail on my next slide. Contributions from dealerships acquired or started up represents a year- on- year movement of GBP 0.2 million and this was expected given the startup nature of some of the dealerships within this category, with improved returns expected as these dealerships mature.
Turning to Slide 15, we've given you further detail on the core and total Group underlying expenses. Overall core group operating expenses rose just 0.3% over the period despite a significant increase in cost of employment driven by the autumn 2024 budget which increased national minimum wage and company NIC costs considerably. The biggest single cost of the Group is salary costs. Remembering that the figures on this slide actually don't include the productive cost of technicians which are in cost of sales. Salary costs in the Core Group in operating expenses rose just GBP 0.3 million over the period and this reflected the impact of the Group's cost saving initiatives which we completed largely by 28th of February to offset the impact of that autumn budget increase, but also reflect some of the cost savings we've done in the current year in respect of things like finance efficiency.
The greatest percentage cost rise was seen in marketing costs which rose GBP 2.1 million over the prior year in the period. The Group invested in marketing both in the move to the single brand Vertu in the period and also in a 10-day used vehicle sale event for which there was no comparative in the prior period which helped drive used vehicle sales volumes in what was undoubtedly a subdued market. The Group delivered a saving of GBP 1.9 million in vehicle and valet costs reflecting cost saving activity in this area and Robert will cover this in more detail shortly, but this actually was combined with tight cost control in respect of the Group's demonstrator and courtesy vehicle fleet.
The Group's share-based payments charge now in underlying costs has increased as a result of the increase in number of management colleagues in the Group to which awards are made following the acquisition of the Burrows dealerships in October last year.
Turning to slide 16, we've summarized the Group's balance sheet. It remains very stable and strong, underpinned by the Group's freehold and long leasehold property portfolio of GBP 336 million which is carried at historic depreciated cost. The increase in current assets compared to August 2024 relates predominantly to the movement in inventory shown here. New vehicle pipeline inventory, much of which is funded by our manufacturer partners, has increased since that date. While the Group has been successful in reducing both used vehicle and demonstrator inventory levels again since August 2024.
Used vehicle inventory has, however, increased by GBP 17 million compared to the position at the year end at the end of February, and this relates to the tight supply of particularly three- to five-year-old vehicles in the market. And as a result of that, the Group took the decision to retain higher inventory levels at 31 August than we did at the end of February to ensure that the Group had sufficient inventory.
To enable a good sales performance in September and the 5.8 like- for- like growth in used vehicle sales volumes in September was undoubtedly aided by this decision. Crucially, though, used vehicle inventory was lower than the position at August last year despite the acquisition of Burrows. Tangible net assets per share are GBP 0.761 and this clearly reflects the strong asset backing of the Group and it's also increased on the level in February due to the share buyback program.
Turning over to slide 17. This highlights the Group's cash flows in the period. We generated a free cash inflow of GBP 0.4 million, which was impacted by a GBP 21.2 million cash outflow from working capital compared to the position at the end of February. The main elements of this outflow were a GBP 14.5 million outflow relating to the increase in used vehicle inventory and our decision to retain higher inventory levels at the end of August, and a GBP 11.2 million outflow from reduced deposits on forward orders. Deposits at February reflected the strong March order take ahead in particular of vehicle excise duty changes in April, while at the end of August we saw some customers deferring orders pending clarification on EV grants. This explains the comparative difference here in vehicle deposits held.
Sustaining capital expenditure of GBP 8.5 million was spent in the period, with this partially offset by proceeds from the sale of surplus properties of GBP 3.3 million. A further GBP 2.5 million was spent on the period on capital projects which enhanced the operating capacity of the Group and this includes a new offsite vehicle preparation facility in York, together with for example the expansion of our Toyota outlet in Chesterfield. Net debt at the end of the period was GBP 78.3 million excluding lease liabilities, representing a GBP 5.6 million decrease on the position last August, despite expending GBP 22.5-24 million on the Burrows' acquisition.
Slide 18, which is my final slide, covers the Group's capital allocation discipline. We remain focused and thoughtful around capital allocation, looking to achieve a balance between investment in growth and shareholder returns.
When we look at growth, we target returns in excess of weighted average cost of capital, and with our strong asset base and low gearing, we believe we can successfully balance both growth and shareholder returns. A key element of the Group's approach to capital allocation is our pruning process. This is where we constantly review dealership operations to ensure an adequate return on investment and contribution to Group profitability. Following such reviews, the Group has exited a Citroën outlet in Nottingham in the period and the leasehold premises would be refranchised to the Škoda franchise in November. In the period, the Group also took some of these recycled properties held for resale and realized cash of GBP 3.3 million 10.7% in excess of book value. The Group actually has a good track record of disposal of surplus properties, in particular at values in excess of book value.
This really reflects the policy of carrying our assets at historic depreciated cost. The Group has had a program of share buybacks in place since FY17. The Group spent GBP 5.6 million in the period on share buybacks and since the start of these programs has now bought back over 19% of issued share capital. The Group announced a GBP 12 million share buyback program in February and to the end of September had spent GBP 7 million of this program, leaving five remaining for the rest of FY26. As a reminder, the Group has a stated full year dividend policy of 2.5x- 3.5x fully adjusted diluted EPS. Bearing that in mind, the FY26 interim dividend has been held at 0.9 pence per share.
It's worth remembering though, that the cash cost of each of our dividends is reducing as a result of the share buyback program in action. I'll now hand back to Robert for a more detailed update on the Group's trading in the period.
Thank you, Karen. So let's turn to the VIC Group vehicle sales performance. We're pleased to report we gained market share in all channels. In addition, margins were stable in new and used cars. There was a slight dilution in fleet and commercial, and this was a mix issue because we saw substantial growth in fleet cars and a decline in vans and that mix impacted gross profit per unit. We saw weak growth returning to the new retail market. Now, this was after a very strong March and it got weaker as the period went on.
I think the government grants that have been introduced in the late summer starting to reverse that. Motability saw continued weakness due to the renewals timing and indeed manufacturers having pressure on their margins and trying just to pull back. The 16.6% increase in fleet car volume is clearly to be applauded, and we took full advantage of the vibrancy of the fleet market, particularly in battery electric vehicle growth in areas such as leasing and salary sacrifice. The Group has a core competency in the fleet channel. The van market was weak. It was down nearly 10% in the U.K. and we think this reflects weak business confidence. We therefore saw overall a reduced gross profit in that channel. The used car market actually exhibited continued supply constraints which held back volume for franchise retailers, especially in the three- to five-year-old parc.
This is the post-COVID new car supply problems working its way through the park. At some point relatively soon, we should see that work its way into five-year-plus and that affects independent used car operators more than franchise. We should see a franchise market share recovery. Trade prices reflecting those supply constraints remain strong and stable. It's fair to say though that the subdued consumer probably put a lid on the extent to which retail prices could rise and they didn't rise in proportion to trade prices. This led to the potential for some margin compression. If we take the Group as opposed to the market, we're delighted actually that the Group delivered increased gross profit in the used car channel and stable margins. We think our Vertu Analytics algorithmic pricing helped to navigate the market successfully.
In addition, the July event saw a considerable difference being made to gross profit generation and volume, even to the extent of slightly weaker margins. But overall our margins in the period were stable. The GBP 600,000 increase then in the period in gross profit on a like-for-like basis and used cars was despite a significant shift in costs from the service department onto the used car department as a result of putting up our internal rates. This we thought was right thing to do to reflect higher technician wages. If we turn to the U.K. BEV market, there is growth in battery electric vehicles, but it is nowhere near getting the industry to the 28% ZEV mandate target that the government has set for 2025.
It's fair to say that the private channel remains the weakest within the period reported: 13.4% of registrations in the retail channel were BEVs. But the EV grants in August did boost interest in BEVs and increase the rate of growth. Clearly we are absolutely delighted that while in the six-month BEV private retail sales were up 55.2% the Group delivered 82.4% and that was on the basis, actually, of a very strong growth in H2 last year as well. So we've had two six-month periods now of excellent outperformance and gaining market share in the BEV market. I also should probably note just updating for September, the grants did lead to an increase in BEV mix overall. BEV mix rose to 23% in the month of September compared to 21% in the six-month period. But we are still a long way short of 28%.
If we turn to Group aftersales. Clearly another very strong performance from the aftersales side of the business. The star performer again was service. GBP 3.6 million worth of increased gross profit in the core business, albeit GBP 2.1 million came from higher internal charges to sales departments. Our vehicle health check process is being tightened up. Our pay later product is making a significant difference both to conversion of repair work identified and to the margin. We think there is still more to come if we can get more consistency across our businesses. We increased some prices in the service department and that also aided average invoice value. Turning to the parts department, there was GBP 500,000 more profit coming out of this in the core business, albeit on slightly weaker margins.
We have appointed in September an internal promotion to group parts director to give us more focus on this channel. If there was a weakness in aftersales, it came in the accident repair side of the business. Our smart repair business is still in growth mode and we are adding vans both to our internal smart repair business for used car preparation and in an increasing business to external customers. The pressure came in accident repair centers. This is quite easy to explain. There's been a significant double-digit reduction in the number of accidents in the U.K. which we are putting down to the increased technology within modern cars which prevent accidents. My car just stops quite often far quicker than I would respond to risks.
We are seeing, as the work has got reduced, lower margins as people in the sector reduce margins to try and gain some volume. Our accident repair centers continue to perform at a high level. If we look at more detail at service repairs, we've given some more data here. We've discussed the impact of the internal rate change where we increased the labor costs that our used car department and new car departments had on internal work. So when a used car comes in, we spend two and a half to four hours of labor time on each car to prepare it for sale. Clearly that has transferred cost to used car department. We're delighted that used cars more than absorbed that and indeed 58% of the like-for-like service profit growth actually came from this change, which we think is right.
There's no question that retention into our after sales business is absolutely critical and how do we build retention? It's clearly multifaceted. The first thing we've got to do is sell cars from the dealership locally in the area. No one travels 100 miles for a service. We've then got to deliver excellent customer experiences, not only on a sales visit, but then subsequently on a service visit, and more often than not we do. We have excellent CRM processes, including now some AI components to make sure we're contacting the customer in a user-friendly way to actually get that booking back in. But retention products are also absolutely critical. We have 160,000 customers with a service plan which means they've prepaid for their service over 2-3 years.
We have a target, that of the used cars that we sell, 50% have this retention product and we're delivering on that metric. It's probably obvious, but as a vehicle parc ages and we've seen a significant aging over the last five years. Older cars need more work and have higher bills, higher average invoice value. As you can see, over three years old cars have a GBP 375 average invoice value less than three years. GBP 275. The average age of a car in our workshop is now 4.85 years. Which belies that. Really goes against the perceived wisdom that franchise dealers only deal with cars in the warranty period.
Our search for cost savings has been extensive. We believe that we cannot afford to do things for customers that are free, certainly if they involve labor, due to the impact of the national minimum wage. Historically, when you brought your car in for a service, we've given you a free wash and vac. Not a valet, but certainly a wash and vacuum. This is now expensive. We've had a two-pronged attack to try and make sure we can control this cost. The first is used in behavioral science and to give customers the reason to opt out from that service of a free wash and vac. 60% of our customers actually check in for a service now prior to the visit online and we then use behavioral science to promote opt outs.
In addition, one of our core divisions actually piloted a charge for a wash and vac, so ceased to do a free wash and vac and we charged GBP 6.99. This led to a 60% drop in the demand for the free wash and vac and clearly we could then remove resource that was actually going to do that. That one division in the period saved GBP 400,000 and had no perceptible increase on customer experience scores. We're now rolling that out in the next few months over our non premium businesses and expect further cost savings both from an annualized perspective and across more businesses.
So we believe the Group is well positioned. We are a scaled group that's stable from a management perspective, well capitalized, and certainly asset-backed. We have the firepower both from a managerial perspective and from a financial perspective to expand our operations and indeed grow our scale. The digitalization strategy, which we've always had, is gathering pace. Certainly, AI transforms, I think, what we are capable of to the benefit of productivity and indeed customers. We remain a very people-focused business. AI will not change that. We have excellent people in the business up and down the country from Glasgow to Truro, and aided by our technology, they can deliver for our customers. They are motivated to do so. They can also deliver for our manufacturers, and if manufacturers like what we do, we can get more franchise businesses.
We are focused on doing the right things and working hard to win.