Good morning, welcome to the presentation of our latest preliminary results for the year ended February 2026. My name's Robert Forrester, Chief Executive. I'm joined by Karen Anderson, our longstanding Chief Financial Officer. The group, I think, has proven during the year that it can focus on controlling the controllable elements of the business despite significant external challenges, and the aim is obviously to deliver long-term returns to shareholders. This is the 20th year we've been in business. We've got 5% of the U.K. car and van market, and the company has never lost money in a financial year. We have an excellent, resilient after-sales business which continues to show growth. Management have been proactive in managing the business.
Our strong ethos of risk management is clearly seen in the presence of the extended insurance cover, which largely protected the business from the third-party cyber outage that we incurred with Jaguar Land Rover in the period. Our use of technology to drive productivity and very good customer journeys comes through. That also aided GBP 10 million of cost savings, which we actioned in recent months to aid FY 2027 profits. We have a big focus on returns for shareholders. To date, we have, in the form of dividends and buybacks, returned GBP 112 million in cash, reflecting the strong underlying cash flows of the group. We announced recently another GBP 12 million buyback program.
We will make the right decisions for the long term, be it in pruning operations that deliver poor returns, so recycling capital, in growing the Chinese brand presence to secure market share and future cash flows, and to continue to invest in leadership training and future management. We've rolled out a very successful degree apprenticeship program to strengthen our talent pipeline for the long run and in January promoted 2 new managing directors. We're already feeling the benefits of that move. We have the financial and operational capacity to grow when we've got visibility on returns and when we will grow the scale of the group when the time is right. In terms of the performance, you can see here in headlines that we've got increased revenues. Profits were back.
The zero-emission vehicle mandate that the government is putting to target Battery Electric Vehicles in the U.K. is weighing heavily across the U.K. automotive sector, including on ourselves. Overall profit pools in the U.K. automotive sector are reduced in the new car channel. Many auto retailers are now losing money. We remain profitable. We remain cash generative and in control of our costs. Our strong balance sheet reflects in the GBP 61 million of net debt against a very strong asset base, and that's before the receipt of GBP 3.4 million of insurance payouts on the JLR cyber attack, which we've included in FY 2026 profits. Our tangible net assets per share is up again, GBP 0.759, and we continue to sell surplus property at above net book value, showing that our property book values are indeed conservative. There are other key themes present.
The growing strength of Chinese brands in the new car market is clearly important for the long run, and it's a key issue for management to address, making choices as to which partners to partner with and the speed of growth. The FCA stance on motor finance claims rumbles on. We've had a redress scheme announced, and we've now had a redress scheme postponed, clearly aimed at lenders rather than the credit brokers such as us. Overall, we're in control of the business. We're controlling the controllables and looking to seize opportunities. If we turn to current trading in the months of March and April, we're delighted to show that we've had a strong start to the financial year with growing profitability above last year levels. There's a number of reasons for this. We've had the positive impact of last year's closures and underperforming dealerships.
Our startup and acquisitions are starting to mature, and the cost savings that have been delivered are clearly helping. The profit bridge here shows two very interesting trends. The first is the growth in the new retail and Motability market, which has been in decline for much of the past two or three years. The reason for that growth is that the manufacturers are actually starting now to push the retail channel to overcome their increased reliance on low-margin fleet. The Chinese are coming into the market with a cost advantage, and that is driving growth.
We're of the view actually that the growth in the new car market is partly, and it's debatable how much, but it's certainly there, that the Chinese are switching used car customers with two- or three-year-old cars into relatively affordable PCPs on new cars, and we think that explains a lot of the growth. The market has also seen increased levels of pre-registration activity in new cars, which flatters the SMMT registration statistics. It's good to see growth, particularly as well the return to growth in the Motability market, which was down heavily last year. That's generated more gross profit. We have seen what we think is startling growth again in our aftersales business with GBP 2.9 million more gross profit in the core business in the two months. Record labor sales were achieved in the month of March.
We are seeing a benefit in terms of efficiency in our service departments 'cause a lot of the portfolio now does not open for service on a Saturday, and that is increasing the efficiency and profitability of our service departments. If we turn to fleet and commercial new vehicle sales, this actually showed a modest decline in gross profit, which is unusual. Last year, in March, we saw significant deliveries of high-margin pickup sales in the commercial vehicle arena ahead of tax changes, which clearly we didn't get this year. We are seeing major growth in volumes, and if you see in the fleet car area, we were up 32% in the two months. However, we are seeing a knock on margins due to channel mix. Vans historically have a higher margin than cars, and we are entering into car markets with slightly reduced margins.
We think we'll benefit in the full year from growth. The van market itself remains subdued, but we're delighted that we grew by 8.5% like for like, taking good share. It is a major focus of ourselves to grow our fleet and van volumes this year. The used channel is very steady. We sense that certainly premium used car demand is being impacted by the growth of new cars in the Chinese, but we do expect growth in the year in the used car channel. If we turn to outlook, what of the outlook? Well, we can all name significant headwinds and imagine all kinds of problems ahead of us, from impact of oil supply to growing inflation due to the Middle East war and lack of economic growth in the United Kingdom.
If we take the oil issue, I think the biggest concern around the Middle Eastern war, apart from the wider impact on the economy, is actually oil supply itself. We cannot service petrol and diesel cars without motor oil. That's a pretty fruitless task. However, we have stockpiled supplies of motor oil to mitigate supply disruption, so we think that will stand us in good stead if the dislocation continues. We remain very focused on costs and cost control with a number of initiatives to grow sales and profits going forward, including a new initiative in the used car arena, which I'll talk about more in due course. The ZEV mandate is not going away. In fact, the targets for cars and vans are the major drag on activity in the whole automotive sector and indeed profits. They remain.
In fact, they ratchet up. This is the highest level of state intervention since the 1970s when the government actually owned the car plants. It is set to get worse. We expect the government to act in relation to wholesale feedback from the whole automotive chain, from parts suppliers through to manufacturers through to retailers. There will have to be some change to that policy going forward. We look at our strategy. This slide has remained consistent and is likely to do so. We are committed to growing the scale of the group.
However, in the past 12 months and actually in the near term, the economic uncertainty and the impact of the ZEV mandate does reduce visibility of returns, we have concluded that it wasn't the right time and isn't the right time for expansion unless there are strategic opportunities at very much the right value. This may happen in terms of the distress in the sector, we will clearly look at opportunities and assess them. However, we have been allocating capital to buybacks and portfolio reconfiguring rather than acquisitions, that is likely to remain the case. However, as things change, we'll clearly look at opportunities. We've got the management, the systems, the strong core business, the financial firepower to attack when we consider it right to do so, we feel we are well-positioned to do so. What's the external environment?
I think one word that most people would use is volatile. There are 4 key elements of change which has affected the financial year and some of them going forward. The first is obviously the ZEV mandate. I've talked a lot about this over the last 2-3 years. The targets set by the government for Battery Electric Vehicle mix will not be hit in cars or in vans. In fact, the SMMT have recently reduced the % of Battery Electric Vehicles they expect in 2026 in the car side. We are not going to achieve the ratcheted up targets to 80% BEV mix by 2030. In fact, the policy defies basic economics. It forces manufacturers to heavily discount and retailers to discount to hit targets, reducing cash flow for further reinvestment.
There will be, in all likelihood, a change in the policy because of the immense pressure that is being put on the government from the impact of this policy. It's likely that the Battery Electric Vehicle mixes will be reduced out to 2035 or even 2040 with more alignment with the European Union. The second area is the well-documented rise of Chinese brands, which you can see with your own eyes on Britain's roads. Chinese-owned manufacturing brands had a 14% share of the U.K. market year to date, and indeed, Chery's QQ7 was the best-selling car in March. We will and are expanding with the Chinese, but it is nuanced. Not all of the entrants into the United Kingdom will be successful. Traditional players in our portfolio make good profits around very strong aftersales from years and years of selling cars.
The Chinese have no aftersales when they enter the U.K. We therefore apply our consistent investment models to seek to maximize returns and profits over a 3-year timeframe. We may indeed go slower than others, but we are ultimately seen as a desirable partner for new entrants and will gain share over time in a deliberate manner. We could accelerate that through acquisition or indeed brands changing their representation plans over time. We are not concerned about the speed with which we are taking on Chinese brands. The 3rd area is the FCA Motor Commission review. The redress scheme was announced. It's now been announced it will be postponed. That's because it's being challenged, as well documented in the press. The redress is aimed primarily at lenders. Therefore, we've been consistent in not making provisions in this area. That remains the case today.
We will, however, be working with lenders on providing data so they can deal with claims as and when they arise. The regulatory uncertainty and the retrospective changes to the profitability of the lenders could indeed have a damaging impact going forward on the financial sector. If people aren't clear that the rules might not change in the future and lose confidence, motor financing could be difficult with tighter supply. We're not seeing any changes in current supply, but it is worth noting that two of the major providers of used car finance have reduced their exposure to the U.K. or announced their intention to do so, and an independent player, according to press speculation, looks like it will go into adMINIstration. The regulatory machinations of recent years could very well have an impact on future supply.
We've clearly also got the Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack, which clearly is now finished and complete. We were very pleased with how Jaguar Land Rover reacted to the outages that they saw in September. They got production back up quicker. It is now back to normality. We originally in October set out, we thought the impact could be up to GBP 5.5. At the end, it was GBP 3.9. The insurance policy that we had has now paid out GBP 3.4 million, and hopefully that issue is now behind us. We've had to work nimbly and intentionally to manage the business through a period of some turbulence, which indeed continues. We have not been distracted by major acquisitions, and actually, I think that has helped because we haven't been in integration mode.
We've been focusing on what we control. Here are the areas that I think are worthy of discussion. In terms of digitalization, the business has always been very tech-focused. Our systems are generally seen as sector-leading. We have 60 in-house developers. This area is undergoing absolutely major change in recent months almost, with the impact of AI coding, which leads to much faster development. Our team are busy being retrained and indeed we're taking on AI specialists. We've seen great use of AI deployed in our contact center environment and also in the sales environment, where we built our own large language model looking at 30,000 inbound sales phone calls where we can now see a projected conversion for each call. It also prompts our teams on what the next steps are in the sales process.
What are the hot buttons? What should you not say? It also helps our regulatory risk. There's some great work being done here. There's more to come. The finance efficiency project, which we've talked about and has been led by Karen, has delivered real savings in removing manual processing. There is more to come, but we're delighted with progress there. The investment in the data warehouse and customer data platform in recent years is now being extended in terms of the number of use cases. That is helping efficiency and indeed aiding our conversion in marketing by having more targeted personalized marketing. In terms of the web, I think we highlighted to shareholders about 18 months ago that we thought we were off the pace with regards to search engine optimization and the way our websites drove and helped search engine optimization.
I'm pleased to report that the modular changes made to our website are now fairly well complete. It is now designed to drive SEO performance, and our SEO performance is now much better with a leading visibility score in the sector. That's allowed us to rebalance our pay-per-click spend, which I think we over-indexed in. We're now investing in YouTube as a channel with car reviews that helps SEO, especially in an age of increasing AI search and rich content. We're increasing number of the online car reviews, and that's driving more engagement. I'll now pass to Karen to discuss the cost reductions.
Thank you, Robert. The group took very proactive action on costs and undertook for the 2nd consecutive year a significant cost reduction program. We anticipate that we'll deliver GBP 10 million of cost savings in FY 2027, so the current financial year, as a result of this latest exercise. This included a further headcount reduction of approximately 280 colleagues, that's over and above the 290 colleagues we took out last year, that's anticipated to deliver a GBP 7 million cost saving. We were able to do that as a result of some of the efficiency initiatives that Robert's just outlined. The avoidance of losses from closed dealerships that we identified as part of our pruning process adds a further GBP 400,000 of cost savings.
We anticipate marketing cost savings, both as a result of reduction in sponsorship and partnership arrangements, as well as capturing the benefits of the 1 brand that we went to in April and the efficiency that gives us. In terms of other savings, the majority of this represents the introduction of charging for wash and vacuum in our group's volume dealership service departments, which generates a significant saving on valet costs. We also have energy savings coming through from an additional investment in solar, and we've optimized each and every 1 of our group's supply arrangements in order to reduce costs where we could.
The group started to trial building management systems with some good early results in terms of reduction in utility costs. We're expecting to further extend this project in the coming months, which will help us further reduce costs over and above the GBP 10 million that we anticipated.
Let's turn to portfolio development, and the big subject here is where we're going with Chinese brands. We are repositioning our portfolio with more Chinese brand exposure, either by reconfiguring existing sites to add additional franchises or removing traditional brands in some cases and replacing them with the Chinese. I visited China in March, and the two managing directors independently visited China in April for the Beijing Motor Show. In terms of key learnings from that, Chinese car factories are currently running at about a 55% capacity, which is unheard of in the Western world, and indeed shows you the amount of oversupply in the Chinese car market. This is not helped by a major decline in Battery Electric Vehicle sales in China since subsidies were ended by the Chinese government in December 2025.
The domestic market is currently running about 22% back year-on-year. This goes hand in hand with a switch to exports, of which the U.K. is clearly very important. BYD, for example, are now exporting 46% of their volume outside China. In China in itself, there is massive oversupply, real problems with discounting, real pressure on manufacturers and domestic retailers from a profit standpoint. The U.K. is very much seen as the place to go. We are one of the few places in the world with very low tariffs on Chinese cars. The Chinese are coming with technologically advanced cars and also with a cost advantage. We have identified four major players. BYD, which is preeminent in the Battery Electric Vehicle market in China. We've now got five outlets. Geely, which actually also owns Volvo.
We've now got 3 outlets with them, with more to come. The Chery family of brands, which includes Jaecoo, Omoda, and Leapmotor, as well as the Chery brand. We have plans to engage with sites across those brands over the next 5-6 months. The final one is the long-standing MG brand in the U.K., owned by SAIC. We've always been a strong partner with MG, with a close relationship, and they are our 4 key pillars. In addition, Stellantis, which owns Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroën, actually part-own a Chinese brand called Leapmotor, and we will be adding Leapmotor into a number of our Vauxhall sites over the coming months. Chinese representation is a major area to watch going forward.
In terms of identifying opportunities we can control as opposed to relying on the market, the selling of older used cars has been on the agenda for a while. On the 1st of April, we launched a new initiative in this area. Clearly, with people's living standards in the U.K. under pressure, it's no great surprise that the element of the used car market with the highest growth is for cars over seven years old. Historically, this is not a core market for franchise retailers, and only 11% of our current used car sales are in this bracket. We actually have the cars coming in in part exchange, but have been trading them to auction houses as opposed to retailing them ourselves. From the 1st of April, this changes to mean we attack this growing segment. We've got revised preparation standards.
We've procured cheaper parts to use in reconditioning. We got new finance and warranty products. In terms of the impact of this, a margin on average on our used cars is around 7%. If you sell a GBP 9,000 car for a GBP 2,000 profit, you can make 22%. This really, I think, helps margins, helps grow volumes, and provides us with future service work when we sell service plans. Gone down very well with management. I think we made a good start. The business is really based on having very good people. We've got a strong operational business due to stable management, long-term investment in training at all levels, including leadership development. The results from this are very clear on the right-hand side. We have high levels of colleague satisfaction.
We have high customer experience scores measured by the manufacturers, which then aids customer retention well above national average levels. In the promotion of 2 of our operational directors to managing director on the 1st of January, the operations of the business, the operating division now report to them and not me. That has given more capacity for the group to both operationally work much more tightly but also make much better decisions. I am spending my time more with the manufacturers, visiting dealerships, getting together with our strategic partnerships and close suppliers, and also meeting key customers. I think we are seeing the benefits.
Thank you. Slide 16 shows a summarized income statement. Group revenues grew by approximately GBP 70 million, with this growth attributed to acquisitions and new business startups. Core group revenues saw a very small 0.7% decline. The introduction of the agency model in MINI, in the MINI and Honda franchises reduced revenue in the core group by approximately GBP 70 million year-on-year. Gross margins were stable at 11.2%, despite the well-publicized reduction in fleet and new vehicle margins due to the impact of the ZEV mandate. We managed to offset this with a higher mix of after-sales revenues and of course, the impact of agency I've just described.
Costs as a percentage of revenue would have been stable at around 10.1% if the impact of the agency model on revenue was removed, reflecting the strong cost control in the group. Adjusted operating profit reduced on prior levels, driven by the reduction of profitability from the sale of new vehicles in both the retail and fleet channels. The group's interest costs reduced by GBP 1.1 million compared to prior year, and this is driven by reduced interest rates and the reduction in the outstanding mortgage balance as the instrument is repaid over time. Non-underlying costs represent the cost of the group's reorganization and cost-cutting programs I described earlier, and also includes some impairment provisions as the group worked hard to reduce its cost base in the light of the declining new vehicle profitability and cost headwinds.
Turning to slide 17, unusually for us, we have two profit bridges represented. The top one showing the normal core group in total, and the second showing the separate impact of the JLR cyber attack within the overall core group movements. Core group gross profit declined by GBP 4.3 million over the prior year, driven largely by the impact of reduced new vehicle profitability and of course, the JLR cyber attack, which amounted to GBP 3.9 million of the total. The standout negative here, as you can see, is the GBP 8.7 million reduction in gross profit from new vehicle sales, retail and Motability. This is the second consecutive year of declining new vehicle profitability for the group, which saw a GBP 10.9 million reduction on this measure last year. The reasons for this are clear.
Significant discounting of Battery Electric Vehicles by manufacturers striving to hit government targets, which has impacted our margins and a reduction in Motability sales volumes. Offsetting this new car shortfall was the significantly improved gross profit generation from the group's resilient and high-margin after-sales operations, which generated an additional GBP 8.4 million of gross profit year-on-year. Approximately GBP 4 million of this uplift is due to the increase in internal rates that the after-sales departments charge the vehicle department for the preparation of vehicles for sale. With the majority of this increased cost in service having been absorbed by the used vehicle sales department.
Used gross profit generation in the core group was stable, this was a good result considering the absorption of both the increase in the internal rate I've just described, and of course, the impact of the JLR cyber attack on the department, which reduced gross profit by GBP 1.7 million. As anticipated, core group operating expenses grew year-on-year, I'll cover these in more detail in the next slide. Remember that the core group operating expenses include the benefit of the insurance payout of GBP 3.4 million in respect of the JLR cyber attack. I've already covered the year-on-year reduction in finance costs, contributions from dealerships acquired or started up represents a year-on-year movement of GBP 0.1 million. With losses in start-up operations, current year acquisitions driven by timing, offset by improved profit year-on-year from the Burrows acquisition.
Turning over to slide 18, this shows more detail on core and total group underlying expenses. Core group operating expenses rose GBP 1.1 million over the year. That's below the rate of the inflation for the same period, and this excludes the impact of the JLR insurance settlement, as you can see from the table. The single biggest cost of the group is salary costs, remembering that the figures on this slide do not include the productive cost of technicians, which are included in cost of sale. Salary costs in the core group rose GBP 3.8 million or 1.5%. This is despite the notable headwinds driven by the 2025 budget increases in employers' National Insurance and increases in the National MINImum Wage.
The group has worked hard to reduce headcount and undertook, if you remember, a significant headcount reduction at the program at the end of FY 2025 to offset the estimated GBP 10 million annual cost of that budget. In light of the continued and unavoidable cost pressure, we obviously took the further cost reduction exercise at the end of FY 2026, which I'll describe the cost of which in more detail on my next slide, I've obviously already pointed out the savings. Marketing costs increased, reflecting the investment in the single Vertu brand and in 3 group-wide sales events. As we've already seen, marketing cost savings have been targeted for FY 2027, as we see the benefit of efficiency of the single brand and have reduced sponsorship spending.
The significant reduction in vehicle and valet costs has been aided by the introduction of charging for service wash and vacuum in the group's volume dealerships. The cost saving was also aided by tighter control of our demonstrator and courtesy vehicle fleets. The increase in property costs largely relates to business rates, which represent a significant cost to the group, and where we had been very successful in securing rates rebates in FY 2025, following a number of successful rates appeals. The growth in the size of the group, and therefore in the number of senior managers awarded options under the group's partnership share scheme, has seen costs rise over time in terms of share-based payments. Awards for FY 2027 were reduced to half previous levels, reflective of the reduction in group profitability. Slide 19 analyzes our non-underlying items which were incurred in the year.
Exceptional costs of GBP 5.1 million include the cost of the redundancy program undertaken at the end of this current end of FY 2026, which reduced headcount by a further 280 colleagues over and above the 290 colleagues taken out at the end of FY 2025. Impairment charges of GBP 1.3 million include the impairment of goodwill in the group's Motorrad dealerships, following disappointing profit performances from the sites in the last 2 years. In addition, lease or property impairments have been taken in respect of 2 sales outlets where performance has been below required levels, we are looking at changes for the locations. Dealership closure costs, which do not include the cost of redundancy of colleagues at the site, which are included in the redundancy figure I've previously described.
These include clearance, asset provisions, and where applicable, any remaining lease costs. A property remediation provision has been taken in respect of a failed roof at one of the group's larger dealerships. Expert reports were obtained to highlight the extent of the remediation required, and the board is currently evaluating whether a legal claim can be made in respect of this defect. Finally, profits on the sale of surplus properties and the sale of businesses of GBP 0.9 million have been offset against non-underlying costs. Turning over to slide 20, this shows the group's balance sheet. The balance sheet is very stable and strong, underpinned by the freehold and long leasehold property portfolio of GBP 327 million prudently carried at historic depreciated cost.
Four of the five properties held for sale at the start of the financial year, i.e., 1st of March 2025, have been sold during the financial year we're reporting on, generating cash proceeds of GBP 5.1 million and a profit on disposal of half a million GBP, an illustration of the prudent level that we which we carry our properties. Working capital was stable year-on-year, with unencumbered used vehicle stock at a value of GBP 174 million included in there. Tangible net assets per share are GBP 0.759, This clearly reflects the strong asset backing of the group and has increased on last year's GBP 0.729, aided a little by the share buyback, which was conducted at prices below tangible net asset per share.
Turning on to slide 21, this is the group's cash flows for the year. The group generated a free cash inflow of GBP 30.7 million. The working capital movement was MINImal during the year, with notable movements within this MINImal figure being a GBP 8 million outflow arising from an increase in used vehicle stock, a GBP 5 million outflow from reduced customer vehicle deposits, partly due to the move to agency in certain of our franchises. These outflows were more than offset by a reduction in trade receivables, driven by the timing of fleet customer receipts around year-end. Sustaining capital expenditure of GBP 30 million was spent in the period, with this partially offset by proceeds from sale of surplus properties and other assets of GBP 5.3 million.
A further GBP 8.2 million has been spent in the period on capital projects which enhanced the operating capacity of the group and freehold and business acquisitions during the year. Net debt at the end of the year was GBP 61.3 million, excluding lease liabilities, representing a GBP 5.3 million decrease on last year's figure. Final slide, once again covers the group's capital allocation discipline. The group continues to seek a balance between investment and growth, targeting returns in excess of weighted average cost of capital in order to deliver on our strategic objectives and shareholder returns. As Robert's already mentioned, the key element of our approach to capital allocation is pruning, where we consistently review dealership operations to ensure adequate returns on investment and contributions to group profitability.
Following such reviews, the group's exited several sites during the year, as listed on this slide. The group has had a program of share buybacks in place since FY 2018, and the group has spent GBP 10.7 million in the year on buybacks. Since the start of these programs, we've bought now back over 21% of issued shares for a total of GBP 46.5 million. The group announced a further GBP 12 million share buyback program in March for execution in FY 2027. Finally, the group's actually paid GBP 65.3 million in dividends since we started paying dividends back in January 2011. The FY 2026 final dividend of GBP 0.0115 per share holds the dividend overall at last year's level of GBP 0.0205 per share.
That is a cover compared to adjusted fully diluted EPS of 2.6 x, in line with the group's stated dividend policy on this measure. I'll now hand back to Robert for a more detailed update on trading in the year.
Thank you, Karen. If we turn to new vehicle sales performance, you can clearly see here it's been a mix of growth in some channels and declines in others. The financial year saw a new car market dominated by fleet, the rise of Chinese brands, and massive distortions created by the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, which forced discounts in a market that's unrecognizable as a free market. The new retail channel saw growth by the group. However, it underperformed the SMMT registration numbers for two reasons. One, Chinese brand representation being lower in our group than the market, partly actually because of the like-for-like calculations, but also the growth of pre-registration, which goes through our sales as used, but the market puts them through new retail registrations.
Motability saw major declines throughout the year due to change cycle timings, which have now reversed in March and April. The group continued to pick up share in its Motability's biggest partner. There were major share gains in fleet car market. We acted to the weakness in the van market and the pressure on the retail channel by really going out with resources and focus to grow in the fleet car channel. That remains to be the case. The market was clearly bolstered by Battery Electric Vehicle sales through fleet as the manufacturers pushed product through the broker channels, salary sacrifice schemes and indeed public sector fleet channels. You can see, top right, the fleet market was 33% Battery Electric Vehicle, where the retail market was 15%.
While it is fair to say that electric vehicle grants introduced by the government during the course of the year helped, the retail mix is still very low indeed at around 15%, considering the target is now 33%. The group, I'm pleased to say, outperformed for the second year running in private Battery Electric Vehicle sales. The market was up 50%, but we were up 71%, and we continued to focus to drive Battery Electric Vehicle sales through the business because that significantly helps our manufacturers hit their targets. The van market was clearly down 8.6% in the market, and we were actually down 10%. There are key issues driving this market backwards. One, clearly, is business confidence, which was on the floor during the period.
The second was the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate for vans, which we have not discussed that much. Bear in mind that in 2026, there is a mandate of 24% Battery Electric Vehicle mix. The market last year, and indeed this year, is running at about 9%. Remember that the fines for vans are GBP 15,000 per van as opposed to cars, GBP 12,000. This market is stuck. We will not see big increases, and that is certainly an area the government needs to address. Fleet and commercial margins actually reduced in the period. This is actually largely due to mix. Vans have higher margin historically than car, and indeed, some of the new fleet business, we did at slightly lower margins. It was the reduction in van volumes, however, which reduced our gross profit by GBP 4.2 million.
Overall, we are 5% of the car and van market and are clearly pleased with that. A further acquisition grows will clearly enhance that. We turn to used vehicle sales. This was a period really of stability in terms of demand and supply. The weakest residuals we're seeing in Battery Electric Vehicles. That is no surprise given the oversupply compared to demand in that market. I think residuals have stabilized, but they do depreciate faster than petrol and diesel cars. Also, as a result of the oil shock, we've seen recent concern over large diesel car residuals, which in an oil shock with high diesel prices tend to accelerate depreciation, and that is clearly one to watch.
It was good to get back to volume growth in H2, 'cause that is despite very strong new car offers, which have taken, I think, some used car business, and indeed, the Chinese coming out with cheaper payments and moving some used car business into new. We're pleased with our performance. We think we outperformed on Auto Trader's metrics, the overall franchised daily used car market. Stable margins was quite an achievement given the fact we transferred GBP 3.4 million of extra labor costs on internal preparation of cars into the used car department. I think it's fair to say that our insights algorithmic pricing is doing its job in terms of helping with margins and stock turn. Finally, if we turn to aftersales, we've left the best to last.
This is the star of the show for sure with gross profit growth in all areas. There are now 42.5 million vehicles on Britain's roads. That's an historic record, that clearly drives aftersales demand. It will not surprise you to know that tire sales are going exceptionally well since with the rise in British vehicles, we also have the historic rise in number of potholes and the average depth of a pothole, which is driving our tire sales. There is no major impact in our business at the moment on electrification, we think electrification will be a very slow process. However, when we look at fleet work less than 3 years old, we are seeing a decline in average invoice value as a consequence of electrification.
We believe that we get more retention in Battery Electric Vehicles, which is what we've said in the past when asked the question. Modern vehicles with software and radar and batteries have a tendency to go wrong, particularly around software, so they do lead to rather large repair costs when they come in. The growth in March and April showed the opportunity in aftersales through execution and the appropriate strategies. We think it will be resilient for many years to come, and BEV sales are frankly unlikely to ramp up as originally planned anyway. The key to success in all these areas really is operational execution. It is driving service plans. When a customer buys a new or a used car, they go out with a service plan to absolutely make sure they come back for a service.
It's having high levels of customer experience, which we deliver. Also having a vehicle health check process to make sure we've safety checked the car, that we sell the additional work that's needed, including tires, and that we've significantly increased conversion and profitability in this area with our Vpay Pay Later product. Now, accident repair centers, which are body shops in common parlance, they actually saw weaker demand. We think the just the increasing number of cars with radar to tell the driver that there's a potential hazard ahead is having a material impact on the number of accidents. If there's more cars than vans on the road, you'd expect accidents to go up due to congestion, but accidents are actually down about 25%. However, saying that, the smart repair business continued to expand.
Overall, between accident repair and smart repair, we saw a GBP 2 million increase in gross profit and better margins. We are pleased with that. All channels delivered more. Finally, we think the group is exceedingly well positioned. We are stable. We're well capitalized. We're asset backed. We do have the firepower in terms of management and financials to expand our operations and scale. Our digitalization gathers pace in terms of its impact, benefiting customers and profitability. Our people are stable. They want to work here. They're delivering high levels of customer experience. That is a good start when you're in business. We are certainly excited by the amount of change we have to deal with. We see it as a challenge. We think there's plenty of opportunity going forward. Thank you very much.