Hello. My name is Andy Goss, the chairman of Vertu Motors. I've got the pleasure and responsibility of opening the presentation of our results for the 2019/2020 financial year today, before handing over to Robert Forrester, our CEO, and Karen Anderson, our Chief Financial Officer. Of course, the chief purpose is to present the outputs of the year ending on the 29th of February. It's clear that this has been an unusual period for everyone post the financial year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has dominated business over the last three months, and as such, will feature considerably in the presentation today. In my opinion, the executives and senior management at Vertu Motors have done a sterling job in dealing with the consequences of the business lockdown.
In particular, in dealing with the communication to unfurling of colleagues, the management of costs and cash, in handling customers, and now, of course, in the opening of business from July 1st, including vehicle sales, whilst respecting social distancing and all the other necessary precautions. In terms of the 19/20 financial year, there were many highlights. Stable profits were achieved despite certain headwinds in terms of a reduced market size for new cars and some seasonal volatility in used cars. After sales performance was particularly strong. In line with our agreed strategy, we added 12 outlets to our portfolio, including three new franchise partners. We have a strong and stable leadership and franchise team who are considerably experienced. This team has worked tirelessly in ensuring that across the Group, we have strong integrated processes, tight controls and compliance, and first-class management information.
Substantial progress has been made in terms of digital technology, which has supported our omni-channel capability, which is particularly pleasing. This not only supports our customer interface, but also supports our drive for efficiency and effectiveness in the areas of cost. This has already started to pay dividends and puts us in a leadership position versus our competition. Our historic low debt levels and property-backed balance sheet protects the group's investors and stakeholders, which has been particularly important during the recent crisis period. This has given us significant liquidity and financing flexibility. Indeed, both the banks and our manufacturer partners have been very supportive, and we thank them. Overall, and now moving forward, we see ourselves as well-positioned to benefit from the inevitable consolidation which is taking place in the retail sector. This was the case before the COVID-19 crisis, and remains so as we look forward.
We will take those opportunities that are in line with our strategy plan, providing that they can result in a good return for the business. In summary, we know that business will be challenging as we move forward, but we can do so with more optimism than most in our sector. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andy, for the strategic highlights. Turning to slide two and the financial highlights. The revenues in the period grew to GBP 3.1 billion, aided by strong growth in fleet, and you'll see that as a theme as we go through these results, overcoming weakness in the new retail channel. Aftersales continued to perform strongly with higher revenues and margins to some extent aided by the higher internal charges to sales departments, which we noted at the interim stage. One of the great highlights was the used car performance, which we thought was excellent. It absorbed the higher internal charges for preparation from the service departments and absorbed the impact of declines in used car prices in H1 to deliver a very stable performance in what at times were difficult market conditions.
Fleet has increased significantly. We saw stronger margins in the fleet channel, which aided Group margins. You'll see some good trends in the fleet area. This obviously added up to a growth in adjusted operating profit, rising from GBP 27.4 million to GBP 29.1 million, a 6.2% rise aided by strong cost control. This has been a feature of previous results sessions, but again, we kept stable the percentage of cost as a percentage of revenues, which we are very pleased with. Karen will explain more fully an impairment charge that's been recorded relating to the post-year-end impact of COVID-19 on cash flows. Overall, the Group has a strong balance sheet position, and that can clearly be seen with its asset backing, with net tangible assets per share of GBP 0.46, up on last year, GBP 0.449.
We have to deal with the COVID-19 situation in these results, even though the impact was post year-end. You can see on slide three the timeline and that England and Scotland have been now going down a different track in terms of openings. We've gone from complete lockdown on the 24th of March to a situation today where our sales departments in England are now fully open as of Monday, where Scotland remains closed. We've tried to give quite a lot of granular detail regards to trading performance in the lockdown period from the 24th of March to the 23rd of May. We should take each section in turn. The service departments, we took the view that we would open, from very shortly after the lockdown on the 24th of March, the vast majority of our service operations, 98 sites in total.
Initially, for key workers and essential vehicles, clearly vans were very important to food distribution and medical distribution, et cetera. We also service and repair emergency vehicles like police and ambulances. We thought it was right that we opened, and increasingly over the period, we've extended that to, as a result of relaxation of the regulations, to the whole population. We have done around 22.5% of our normal labor sales in that period, and we've looked at the performance as a consequence of that, and we generated cash as a result from opening, and we have incurred less losses had we closed those service departments, and I think that's important. As we've moved closer to June and now into June, we're seeing very strong booking levels and near capacity in many places in terms of service.
The service performance and indeed the sales performance was significantly helped by having significant centralized contact centers. We moved those very quickly in March to working from home, and we've been able to bring resource back in those contact centers, and they've been absolutely fundamental to our ability to trade. Let's turn to sales. You can see we've split the order take in the four major channels of new retail, fleet, commercials and used. Fleet has been surprisingly strong. 68% of order take compared to last year, nearly 2,000 fleet units taken, and we did keep the majority of our fleet operations open on a franchise basis to take orders. New retail was probably the weakest channel. We saw much stronger demand for used, and I think that's been seen across the entire industry. New is now coming back as a percentage of the overall order take.
We couldn't deliver vehicles until quite recently in England, and therefore, we've been building these order banks on top of an order bank from March, which we didn't deliver because clearly we closed on the 24th. The week of the 24th to the 31st of March is actually the busiest week in automotive retail as a result of the plate change, so it was really quite damaging. On cost control, we think we did a good job in curtailing costs as much as we could. We furloughed 82% of colleagues, and from late March onwards, particularly on sales side, we increasingly brought back after-sales colleagues as we went through the months as the after-sales business grew, and we took advantage of the government's excellent job retention scheme, which has been very useful mechanism for us to protect that employment and the cost base of the Group.
The colleagues were actually supported in addition to the job retention scheme, with additional payments. We thought it was very important to keep that colleague base intact. We've actually benefited from the business rates relief of around GBP 10 million. Other costs have been significantly reduced, aided by the fact that we manage our purchasing very centrally in terms of supplier management and monitor energy usage on a half-hourly basis. We very quickly got a good grip of our variable operating costs. Turning to slide four, we want to be very transparent about the impact to the business financially. In terms of March trading, we actually delivered an adjusted profit before tax of GBP 5.9 million. That is substantially lower than we would anticipate. We'd normally anticipate a normalized March being GBP 11 million-GBP 12 million.
You can see the impact of the lower demand coming up to the lockdown and then clearly the lockdown in that very important last week. April and May, which is the height of the lockdown, the combined loss for those two months after government support was around GBP 20 million. The outlook is now clearly much better. England is now open, and we can now move on in terms of making sure that we get the business back to its normalized levels of activity. In order to reopen, we clearly had to do a lot of work around training, around health and safety. When you visit one of our dealerships as a colleague now, if I visit a dealership, I have my temperature taken before I'm allowed in.
A lot of our processes have had to change around, for example, not having a sales executive in a car when we test drive. We now do unaccompanied test drives. Anecdotally, that appears to be very popular with customers. Certainly yesterday, which was our first day, we actually sold cars on the back of unaccompanied test drives, which is good news. We've obviously also curtailed some of our services in the first month of opening around collection, delivery, and valeting of service vehicles, and we'll potentially look to reintroduce those, potentially with charges to customers going forward. With a lot of the preparation that was done has worked well. Our dealerships are as safe as we can make them, fully in compliance with health and safety. We have consulted on the policies and procedure we put in place with around 150 of our colleagues prior to opening.
In terms of the outlook, there's a lot on this slide and in the announcement regarding how we see the market going forward and what the different moving parts are. In service, I think we'll get back to normal levels quite quickly. Bookings are very strong. Sales, a lot more uncertainty. A lot of moving bits. For example, in terms of people moving out of public transport, will they buy a used car? I think we are seeing that. What are the economic conditions underlying? There's normally a relationship between employment levels and car usage and purchase. The government may or may not consider an incentive program for car sales. There's a lot of uncertainty. New vehicle supply, we have not yet got visibility in terms of the factories and their production levels, when that production might come to the U.K.
There are quite high new vehicle stocks at the moment in the U.K., but how that in the medium term comes through in terms of supply, the strength of manufacturer offers, and then impacts potentially on used car values, is one of the key things we'll have to look at over the next few months. Two final points on this slide. Clearly, guidance for the full year is withdrawn, we're clearly getting into September, we should have far more visibility, I think, as a sector. There is no final dividend recommended. Throughout last year, we were working on refining our group strategy, we adopted as a board a new strategy in November, which I can now outline. The next slides that follow go through these in more detail.
There are five key elements of the strategy, which we believe are very and highly relevant today given the virus situation. We don't see our strategy in any way needing amendments. It might need accelerating, but we think this is the right strategy for the post-virus world. The first one is around growth, and we see the success of the Group being based on being scaled, increasingly scaled, in order to develop the right portfolio of manufacturer partners and to benefit from those scaled economies. Digitalization really takes two forms. One is the development of omnichannel retailing and marketing in the digital world. Combining bricks and clicks is the right strategy for us, but also using digitalization to maximize the benefits of cost reduction and enhancing cash flows due to reduced costs as a result of increasing productivity and efficiency. And we're making really good progress there.
However, digitalization has its limits, because ultimately, people are buying off people. The vast majority of our sales are done people to people, having the right colleagues, having them motivated to deliver that customer focus is paramount. It delivers, therefore, operational excellence and great levels of customer satisfaction, and that is core in having the right Group culture. The fifth pillar is actually the development of ancillary businesses that add incremental revenues and returns and complement the core Group. I will go through that in some detail. Let's turn to growth and the need, in our view, for scale and the development of large-scale brands. We've talked for a few years now about the development of large-scale brands, I want to update everyone in terms of how we see that. Let's turn to sector.
First, we think there is a definite long-term role for franchise dealers as a key element of distribution for manufacturers. We see no great movement away from that. The arrangements may differ and will evolve with online retailing, et cetera. The retailer will be a core part of the distribution network of manufacturers for a very long time. That doesn't mean to say there isn't going to be change. There will be change. We see an acceleration of network changes. Last time we spoke to our investors six months ago, we talked about a reduction in sales outlets and a reduction in the number of partners manufacturers deal with. We think actually the virus impact will be to accelerate that. We can see quite a significant fall in the number of sales outlets, bolstering the profitability returns for those that are left.
We think physical locations remain very important, albeit networks will be changed and restructured for the new environment. It remains a fact that 50% of the customers pre the pandemic were coming into the dealerships as walk-ins. They were coming to the dealership to see a car. Whereas over 70% of those customers either went on the internet prior to the visit or after the visit, the vast majority of them were local. They lived less than 10 miles away from the dealership. Why is that? Because they're looking for the trust of the local dealer, and they want their car serviced in the local dealer. There are some customers who want distance sales and will go many miles to buy a car, but the vast majority of customers will buy and still buy locally, and we don't think that will change.
The network structure will change, we see over the next few years, and it will probably require lower investment levels. We will see points coming out. We may see the development of used car only operations to complement a hub of a large dealership. We might have a local after-sales facility. We certainly expect to see more multi-franchising, which delivers representation on a lower cost base, and satellite dealerships around the hub. These are discussions that I suspect are going to take place and have taken place with manufacturers in the last few years, and I think those will accelerate as cost is taken out of the distribution area. Having a significant number of dealerships in one region is important from our brand's perspective, because that helps with regional marketing.
A case study as to how this plays out, we purchased four Volkswagen dealerships in Yorkshire from Sytner's. There was a fifth dealership in Halifax, that was closed by Sytner's on the acquisition. You can see the number of sales outlets went down. The business was distributed to the other regional dealerships. It now gives us regional strength in Yorkshire, we will be going on the television to promote the Vertu brands. We've got Honda and Volkswagen dealerships and Kia dealerships under the Vertu brand in that locality. This comes really down to what our brand strategy is, we've got a very clear brand strategy.
We have four core brands, Bristol Street Motors, over 100 years old, our biggest brand by far in England, and is ranked number two for consumer automotive retail brands in the United Kingdom, according to a survey we've done with YouGov. Our second brand is Farnell, which is our Jaguar Land Rover brand, and has been representing Land Rover in the West Midlands since 1948. Very strong brand which we can leverage. We are increasingly promoting the Vertu brand as one of our core premium brands. It's got 36 premium outlets now, and we have now developed the VertuMotors.com website, which was previously an investor website linked to the PLC. That launched this week as a retail website with full online retailing for those franchises that are under the Vertu umbrella.
Given that we have got regional scale now, we are launching TV advertising in July to promote the Vertu brand in those key regions where we've got representation. The fourth brand is the Macklin Motors brand, which is our Scottish brand. It's 10 years old this year, and again, it's been bolstered and supported by significant TV advertising, as has Bristol Street Motors in the past five years, and is a well-known brand now in Scotland and benefited from recent acquisition activity. Portfolio development, I won't spend too much time on this slide. I think it's fairly self-explanatory. We've grown the Group again by adding 12 outlets. We now got 133 sales outlets. That growth came from acquisitions, it came from re-franchising, and it came from adding franchises to existing outlets. You can see the activity that was undertaken pretty late on in the period, actually.
Those growth points have added around GBP 200 million to normalized revenues. An interesting case study, because there is obviously a link between growth and CapEx. The CapEx is very much coming in line with where we expected it to be. The major phase of CapEx is coming to a very swift end with the completion of Nelson and Bradford Land Rover in the next two months. That will be complete and will be at a low level in terms of future CapEx. This is down to decisions that we clearly have made over the last few years. Derby Volvo, we exited in December. It was too small a location for the new Volvo standards, and we felt rather than necessarily invest in a new dealership when we already had one, that we would exit the Volvo franchise, and we did so in December, freeing up the premises.
For a very low level of CapEx, we've replaced it with Peugeot. We've taken on a strong database from the previous Peugeot dealer, and it's the right size dealership with a strong customer base. It's now open as a Peugeot dealership and will, I'm sure, be very successful. We avoided quite a considerable amount of capital expenditure as a result of that particular decision. I think this is all around managing capital and capital allocation. We talk about digitalization a lot, and it is a major strategic focus for the Group. Two areas. One is the customer journey around omni-channel retailing and marketing digitally in order to get customers and to retain customers. The second is process efficiency through digitalization to improve efficiency and productivity. This slide talks through a number of the things that we've really moved forward on.
I'm delighted with the progress we're making in these areas. If we look at online, offline, seamless journeys, and the growth of omni-channel retailing, we've made really substantial progress. We did not furlough any of our software developers during the COVID lockdown, and they've done exceptional work pushing us ahead. We introduced a much-enhanced online functionality to allow online purchasing in mid-May. We launched in May 2017 online retailing, but we've enhanced that functionality. In fact, did 40 pure online deals in the second half of May, which is the highest level of online retailing we've ever seen. I think some of that was down to the environment we're in, but some of it was down to the better functionality. We've also taken customer signatures effectively out of the sales process.
You no longer need a pen, either on an iPad or on a piece of paper to buy a car from us. You get the signatures via SMS messaging, which can be done at home, or it can be done in the dealership. Really moves us forward significantly. We've also introduced reservation fees where you can go online 24 hours a day, take a car off sale by leaving a reservation fee. Then we contact you and finalize the deal. We've got a variety of different ways in which the customers can now interact with us, increasingly by video straight from the showroom. I think has prepared us as well as we can do, actually, for the latest situation we find ourselves in. We're very positive about that. The second element is around productivity and efficiency. We've talked previously about robotics.
Leo the bot is now helping significantly increase the number of services that we can book online. 10% of our service bookings are now online, and that can be increased even further. All rekeying in that area has been removed by further integration. Similarly, when we receive sales inquiries from the likes of Auto Trader or the third parties or manufacturers, they're increasingly straight into our showroom system, so we don't lose any, and we increase the speed. Very little double keying there now, which again, makes us highly efficient. A major project's been undertaken, actually, to make sure that we not only have a contactless sales process, but a paperless sales process.
Use of robotics and technology means we can now look to have cost reductions around that area now to make us very much more efficient in terms of vehicle sales processing, which we obviously look forward to. We have significant amount of future plans in tray to introduce robotic technology to make us more efficient. That doesn't mean, however, turning to slide nine, that the business isn't based on people. This business is very much based on people. It remains a people business. We have 6,000 colleagues in the Group, and it's very important that we have the right Group culture, and we spend a lot of time investing our time into that culture. The COVID situation really showed what the culture of the Group was like.
We were very clear what we were doing in terms of our approach to colleagues, our approach to customers. We are a values-driven business, evidence of that is 84% of our colleagues would recommend us as a brilliant place to work. 97% of them know the Vertu values. That was from August survey. I think, actually, we've cemented that perception by our colleagues of the group by doing, I think, the right thing during the COVID period. We've been sending videos every two or three days, in some instances, keeping them up to date, trying to keep the furloughed colleagues involved mentally in the business, and to make sure they absolutely knew where we were up to, and we continue to do that.
Showing our values in action, it wasn't right, we believed, to have a business whereby we sell vehicles and then furlough everybody and don't open our service departments when key workers and nurses and food distribution companies needed us to actually service and repair those vehicles in a time of national crisis. Therefore, we kept them open. I think we've won a lot of customers and won a lot of credit by being probably the most prolific opener of service departments in the franchise network during that period. It was the right thing to do, and we're very happy with how that worked. We also encouraged all our colleagues who were on furlough to volunteer, and many, many did. We've also raised money for NHS charities during that period as well. I think we've done the right thing from a values perspective.
On a wider view, I've showed you there the high levels of colleague satisfaction. That helps us execute. The key thing we have to execute, obviously, is delivering exceptional and outstanding levels of customer satisfaction. The evidence there is that we're getting increasingly consistent in the execution of customer satisfaction. We won the Lex Autolease Aftersales Excellence Award. Lex is our second-biggest service customer in the Group. We've got an 83% Used Car Net Promoter Score, which is an exceptional level of customer experience, our manufacturers measure in sales and service, we are increasingly very high above national average when it comes to delivering customer experience. 82% of our sales departments, for example, are above national average scores. Overall, I think we're consistent in executing. One of the reasons for that is we're very clear what we anticipate.
We have an annual vision, you can see it in the middle of the top of that slide, whereby we set out the KPIs that we're going to focus on, and we measure them, and we league table them, and we reward on them, and it drives consistency. Clearly, the COVID situation has meant we've got to refocus. We've set out a very clear short-term vision for the months from May to July of what we want to achieve as a group. All colleagues in the group are very much aware of those goals. We will be focusing on them to make sure that we get the business in the best possible position we can by the end of July.
I talked on the vision on the strategy side around the ancillary businesses and developing these businesses to complement the core group. I just want to give you a little bit of an insight that we've highlighted six of those here. They fall into different types of business. Some of these businesses buy vehicles off the core group, which generates additional volume for us. Bristol Street Versa Mobility is the fifth largest wheelchair-accessible vehicle converter in the U.K. and purchases hundreds of vehicles every year from our group. The Taxi Centre buys new vehicles from the group and supplies them with taxis, over 600 vehicles sold in the year.
Vansdirect, which you'll remember we bought in January 2019, sold in the financial year over 2,000 vans, of which around 50% were purchased from the Group and actually performed really well in the lockdown period with 159 orders for new vans in May. We were delighted with that performance. The other businesses, many of them have a digital feel to them. Vansdirect, all its customers come through online. We have What Car? Leasing, which is a joint venture with Haymarket Group, which is an advertising platform for PCH deals for franchise dealers, very successful business. Our AceParts business, which was another business that performed very well during the lockdown, is an online sales platform for parts via marketplaces like eBay and Amazon and has been performing above plan, perhaps not surprisingly, during the lockdown, growing revenues in excess of GBP 7 million per annum.
The final business I want to profile is at the moment an internal business with increasingly external component, which is we now run over 70 vans on the road to make sure that we can repair ourselves, the cosmetic repairs of used cars and wheel repairs on used cars, rather than using other companies and try and keep that revenue internal. That's an increasing feature of trying to internalize activity to generate profits for the Group. We're increasing that activity to external retail customers, and it's becoming a sizable, big business. I'd now like to pass to Karen, who's going to highlight the details of the financial performance on slide 11.
On slide 11, it set out the Group's profit and loss account. For the FY 2020 financial year, we presented the results both before and after the impact of adoption of IFRS 16, which is the leasing standard. This is to aid comparability because the comparatives have not been restated under the transitional method the Group has applied. The Group delivered both like-for-like and total revenue growth in the year and has delivered an improvement in gross margin. This was aided by the success of fleet and aftersales growth, in addition to some of the structural changes we've outlined previously in the four parts. Group adjusted operating profit was pleasing, especially as this absorbed losses from those businesses acquired late in the financial year, which were loss-making due to the timing of the acquisitions.
Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were stable, and this gives evidence of the Group's focus on its cost control. The Group saw a rise in new vehicle consignment funding costs, which has been previously flagged, and this was due to the impact of high pipeline stocks coming into the year as stockpiling prior to Brexit occurred, higher interest rates from our manufacturer partners as they saw rating downgrades, and reduced interest-free funding periods in some cases. Until the impact of COVID-19 on our sector on sales, we had been seeing reducing trends in terms of new car stocking charges up to this point. The results include a GBP 14.4 million non-cash impairment charge, and this is due to COVID-19 impacting on our future cash flow assumptions, and therefore on our value and use calculations. I'll explain in more detail what's included in this charge shortly.
Adjusted earnings per share before applying IFRS 16 showed a year-on-year improvement, aided by the share buyback program completed in the first half of FY 2020. As Robert has mentioned, in light of COVID-19, we're not proposing a final dividend in respect of the FY 2020 financial year. Turning over to slide 12. The Group has a strong balance sheet with low borrowing levels. Tangible assets of the Group include freehold and long leasehold property with a value of GBP 200 million. With this being carried at historic cost, less accumulated depreciation. The Group has a fully funded pension scheme, largely invested in matching assets with a gross value of GBP 59 million, thus protecting the funded position. Value and use calculations required annually to support the carrying value of intangible assets were, of course, impacted by COVID-19 in terms of its impact on our cash flow assumptions.
This led to an impairment of GBP 14.4 million being included in the results. The charge was largely allocated to the Group's Mercedes-Benz businesses as well as to a freehold property which operated the Vauxhall franchise. The impact of COVID-19 in increasing the level of uncertainty in our cash flow forecasting has led to the unqualified audit report on our financial results, including an emphasis of matter in respect of this uncertainty. Given the low level of debt the Group has and flexibility that we have around the possibility of increased used car stocking loans, the board believe facilities and any further covenant resets will be agreed if required, and our banks are very supportive, thus we've prepared the results under the going concern basis. Turning over to slide 13. Our cash flow is set out.
The Group's free cash flow levels decline in the year prior to the adoption of IFRS 16. This is rather unusual for the Group and stems from the working capital absorption we saw in the period of GBP 23.6 million. This was due to two factors. Firstly, one of the successes in the Group in the financial year to February 2020 has been the growth of the Group's fleet activity and resultant profitability. Fleet activities like these can absorb significant amounts of working capital, and consequently, the Group saw an increase in both fully paid new vehicle stock and trade debtors, together totaling GBP 20.3 million and accounting for the majority of this working capital absorption. However, this helped drive the GBP 5.5 million increase in total fleet and commercial growth profit that we saw in FY 2020.
Secondly, the Group saw an increase in used car inventory as we did not reduce stock levels down in advance of the marked plate change as much as we did in the previous year, given the assumed tighter supply of used vehicles. Stocking up in dealerships acquired post-acquisition also contributed to these increased used car stock holdings. The previously flagged reduction in capital expenditure is apparent within the cash flow as the Group has brought to a close or brings to a close its major capital expenditure projects. Fixed asset disposals in the period include the liquidation of two surplus empty dealership premises in Cheltenham and in Barnsley, and each were disposed at around net book value. Purchases of freehold property relate to capacity increases in one of our Ford dealerships in the Birmingham area and in after-sales capacity in our site at Carlisle.
If I turn over to slide 14, I set out the level of liquidity headroom we have available to the Group in terms of its borrowing facility. Firstly, the Group has an acquisition facility, which is a committed revolving credit facility drawn in respect of acquisitions of GBP 62 million. We also have a further GBP 15 million accordion facility available under this facility limit, which is currently uncommitted. Subsequent to the end of the year, the Group drew down GBP 10 million of additional revolving credit facility funding in respect of those dealerships we acquired in early 2020, and this was in order to protect the immediate liquidity constraints in the light of the showroom closures in respect of COVID-19. The Group funds its substantial, significant, but predictable working capital movements through a committed money market loan.
We have quite high working capital absorption, in particular at each month following quarter end, such as plate change months, March and September. The Group have peak facilities available to us of GBP 68 million, as shown above in the table, with facilities of GBP 28 million under this facility available at other times. Post year-end, in response to the impact of the COVID-19 impact on our cash flows, we extended the peak working capital facility available under the CMML into additional months of August and September to provide us with additional liquidity as the business gets back to normal. The Group runs largely with positive cash balances for much of the financial year.
Subsequent to the financial year-end, our cash balances improved slightly compared to that at the year-end, and the cash balance is currently in excess of our initial forecast in respect of the impact of COVID-19 on our business. It should be noted that the overall Group bank interest charge will rise from 1st of June, it reflecting the impact of COVID-19, in particular, on the results of our leverage covenants. Finally, the Group has available and uses used vehicle stocking loans, and these are funded by Lombard and secured on the vehicles to which they relate. However, the Group does use these facilities to a much lesser extent than some of our sector peers. The drawings on these loans represent less than a quarter of our used vehicle stock value. This gives the Group much more flexibility to generate cash where they need to arise.
Subsequent to the year-end, we increased the facilities available under this limit by GBP 10 million in order to provide additional liquidity should the Group require it. We haven't made any drawings against this extended facility. Overall, as at the 22nd of May, the Group had GBP 9 million of adjusted net debt excluding these used vehicle stocking loans. Given this low level of borrowing, this gives the board confidence in the Group's financial resilience. If I turn over to the profits bridge on slide 15. The core Group delivered an additional GBP 7 million of additional gross profits, and Robert will go through the underlying trends from each department which contributed to this increase in the coming slides. A GBP 3.9 million year-on-year increase in operating expenses is explained in more detail on the next slide, and this partially offsets the growth in gross profits.
The year-on-year growth in finance costs, largely driven by those increased new vehicle consignment stocking charges, as previously explained, is clear on the bridge. Acquisitions and closures drove a year-on-year profit reduction of GBP 600,000, due largely to the timing of acquisitions within the normal seasonality of profit in the sector. Those dealerships acquired in early 2020 contributed losses, including acquisition costs of GBP 0.7 million, and the impact of site closures was neutral, and our FY 2019 acquisitions contributed a small additional profit. As previously flagged, the impact of the change in our Ford franchise parts distribution model led to a GBP 0.8 million reduction in profit. This change, which was to an agency supply model, also led to a GBP 23 million revenue reduction. Finally, the profit bridge shows the impact of IFRS 16.
Turning to slide 16, which sets out in more detail the movement on operating expenses over the period. The core Group underlying operating expenses increased by GBP 3.9 million, representing a year-over-year growth of 1.4%. This is reduced from the 4% growth level we saw last year. Operating expenses overall as a percentage of revenues were stable. Employment costs are the most significant cost to the Group, given that there are just over 5,800 Group colleagues. Overall, core Group employment costs rose GBP 2.3 million compared to last year. One and a half million GBP of this growth arose from investment in additional front-of-house colleagues in our after-sales departments. This follows the investment in additional after-sales capacity made in recent years. 15% of Group colleagues are paid on national minimum wage levels.
Increases to the national minimum wage rate in the U.K. in April 2019 increased salary costs by GBP 0.6 million. Following the further uplift to the national minimum wage rate in April 2020, 17% of all Group colleagues are now expected to be paid at this level. The Group invested in brand marketing campaigns in the second half of the year, and we flagged this at our interim results announcement. This was due to the fact we were heading into a period of reduced consumer confidence. The campaigns used TV, online, and cinema to improve awareness of the Bristol Street Motors and Macklin Motors brands to drive increased inquiries and therefore sales. This meant that spending levels were GBP 1.2 million more year-on-year, with the overall marketing spend representing a consistent percentage of revenues year-on-year.
Savings were delivered in other operating expenses, driven by our focus on cost saving and efficiency initiatives. For example, we delivered savings in telephony costs following an investment in a Group-wide system. This system also facilitated home working with ease for our Group contact centers during lockdown, which has been invaluable. I'll now hand over to Robert, who'll go through the departmental performance in more detail.
The first slide on slide 17 shows the revenue margin analysis by our core channels, split between sales and aftersales. You can clearly see on revenue that car sales dominates our revenue numbers. When you look at gross profit, it's aftersales which is more heavily weighted. Aftersales represents 9% of sales volumes, but 43% of gross profit, with the higher margins coming from our aftersales channel is really important. Two other things to note here, fleet and commercial, as we've said previously, grew from 6% of Group revenues to 8% of Group revenues. We also made progress on margins, particularly in fleet, which grew from 3.1% to 3.6%, and in aftersales, which even though it's our highest margin channel, grew again to record highs of nearly 47%.
Let's turn to service and understand what is yet another strong performance in a long-running tendency for our service departments to perform strongly and grow. I can't remember the last time our aftersales departments actually went backwards. What is the growth in our servicing profitability and revenues based on? Well, high retention. High retention really comes from two major factors. One, we have been very successful over the long term about selling service plans, where customers pay monthly or buy an upfront service plan that ties them into using the franchise dealer, and that is crucial. You can see the Group now has 102,000 customers on service plans, and we can grow that further. The second is if you deliver outstanding or excellent customer experiences, customers will come back. We're certainly benefiting from that tendency across the Group to deliver good and excellent customer experiences.
The second item, which was flagged at the interim stage, is that we have increased the charges to our sales departments from preparation work on new and used cars undertaken in the service departments. You can see a GBP 3.8 million impact both on revenue and margin, actually, in terms of that increase in charges. Overall, like-for-like revenues in service grew 6.8% and margins grew to the record of 77%. Overall, aftersales gross profit in the core Group rose GBP 7.3 million. Turning to used cars, actually, I think this is the most pleasing part of this result because the result of stability of performance belies the fact that there were some significant headwinds to the used car department.
The first was that in H1 there was significant price volatility. You can see on the graph at the bottom of that slide that according to CAP, used car values fell far more substantially in the first half than in previous years, certainly in the previous year. That put pressure on used car margins in the sector generally. We didn't necessarily see that due to the fact that we moved our stock significantly quicker, we didn't really see those margin falls that the rest of the sector saw. In addition, the departments absorbed GBP 2.9 million of the increased aftersales charges coming through on preparation. Considering that core gross profit only declined by GBP 0.3 million, we clearly absorbed that, passed it on and maintained our margin.
I was really pleased here that we saw stable volumes, stable margins and only a minor reduction in gross profit given the fact we absorbed such as that increase in aftersales charges. A really good performance and shows the strength of our used car operations. Turning to new cars, this was a very different story. The new cars in the retail channel were under pressure, both in the market, the market fell 4.8%, actually the Group volumes fell 8.9%, really due to manufacturer mix with a lot of volume manufacturers pulling back on supply. Why was that? I think sterling's weakness was a big part of that. There was also emissions mix issues in there as well. We saw higher sales prices. Partly that's due to the premium manufacturer mix increasing, but also the impact of sterling on rising prices.
Good news here is that retail gross profit per unit actually rose to the highest level the group's ever recorded, over GBP 1,500 a unit and that's clearly good and that helped to stabilize overall margins. A record margin actually in H2, but overall in the period 7.3% margin, so pretty stable stuff. The volume deficit obviously though impacted on new vehicle gross profit generation which moved backwards as you've seen in the profit bridge. If we turn to fleet and commercial, you won't be surprised for me to say that this was another success story. GBP 2.2 million more like-to-like gross profit generated in the period, a real success story that helped to bolster the underlying results of the group. We are benefiting from a number of things.
We've got very close relationships with our manufacturer partners and also the contract hire and leasing companies and by putting those two parties together, we are able to do some quite significant volume. You can clearly see a 16.8% increase in like-to-like volume growth, including agency volumes in the car side, driven by a lot of significant deals. Also speaks to the investment in the high caliber teams that we've put in place in a number of the franchise. We've got some absolutely superb operators in fleet. Also the investment in working capital, which Karen pointed to when she discussed the balance sheet and cash flows. Really, the key thing for me on this slide is not only the significant volume increases, but what's happened to margins. You can see that if you go back five, six, seven, eight years, we'd be discussing margins of 2.2%.
We're now looking at 4% margins in H2, driven by increased premium mix, driven by the impact of Vansdirect, which has had a good impact on our margin, and also the rise of the agency model in some of the franchises, particularly in premium, whereby we get a handling fee and there is no turnover, which clearly augments margins nicely. Record margins and a good performance in fleet. As we saw on the COVID period slide, another great performance in fleet as we've really taken market share. If we summarize where we are, it's been sometimes a very difficult period to actually execute in very uncertain times where the plates were moving very quickly. For example, we anticipated closing our dealerships on Wednesday the 25th, and then Boris's announcement on the 23rd meant we had to bring that forward to 24th.
That was confusing to people. The management executed it brilliantly with the teams on the ground. I would like to pay tribute to all the colleagues in the group who have really gone the extra mile and kept their spirits up in quite difficult times. They're coming out of this really wanting to show what we can do as a group, very enthusiastic. They've done hours of online training with our sales online training processes. They are very ambitious to come out flying and to show what this group can do. I think that gives the whole management confidence and optimism. What have we actually learned? We've learned a lot during this period.
We were on a track of digitalization, of streamlining and innovation, and we've really pushed that completely new working patterns, in terms of how management work, much more speedy lines of communication, much more speedy decision-making. I don't think we're going to go back to a cadence of monthly meetings. I think we're going to be doing every three-day meetings via video technology that we've got used to, and that's certainly helping. The speed of innovation in the business is quite something to behold. We are benefiting, in my view, from having a strong, prudent balance sheet and with financial flexibility, which has always been inherent in that balance sheet. I think that gives us confidence and optimism as well. On the back of a very strong culture with strong values.
I think how people treat their colleagues, suppliers, manufacturer partners during crisis periods speaks to the heart of the values. I actually think of the support of the board that we did the right thing for our colleagues and that they will repay us with their hard work and loyalty, I'm sure, in the months ahead. Our job now is clearly to accelerate with the reopening, to take as much market share as we can. We will be aggressive with regards to marketing and with regards to taking share, and I think we're in a good position. The fact we opened our service departments in the lockdown, I think will put us in a good position with customers. I think the perception of our brand are very, very strong. We've clearly got to drive further benefits of scale with further efficiencies.
Scale does help drive efficiencies through, and we would like to take part in what we think is the inevitable consolidation of the sector going forward. We are ambitious as a Group. We've got a very strong team who's worked together for a long time, supported by great colleagues. We have to be absolutely disciplined with regards to capital allocation, but we clearly see this business as a long-term player in the sector and one that will get a lot larger. We are confident and optimistic about the future and think we're well set. Thank you very much.