Good afternoon and welcome to The Works.co.uk PLC FY q2025 preliminary results presentation. Throughout its quarterly presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you up to CEO Gavin Peck. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Thank you, Alessandro. Good afternoon all and thanks for joining us today. Rosie and I look forward to updating you on the great financial and strategic progress that we've made in the past 12 months and the strong momentum that we've carried forward into FY 2026. We've got plenty of time at the end to answer any questions that you may have. In summary, it's been a year of significant progress operationally, financially, and strategically. Excitingly, we launched our new strategy to Elevate The Works in January this year. That starts with a clear ambition that supports our new brand position, which is to be the favorite destination for affordable, screen-free activities for the whole family. We've got clear plans that underpin bringing our ambition to life, and we are already delivering tangible progress with momentum building. Delivery of those plans will step-change financial performance over the next five years.
We'll deliver over £375 million of sales and an EBITDA margin in excess of 6%. We're embarking on delivery of that strategy from a solid foundation, having delivered a strong financial performance in FY 2025. We're pleased to have delivered like-for-like sales growth ahead of the wider sector and in a fragile consumer environment. That's particularly strong performance in our stores, which remain the lifeblood of our business and over 90% of our sales. We're really encouraged by the acceleration of like-for-likes in Q4 as we started to deliver on our strategy and build momentum for it. The like-for-like sales growth, together with significant margin growth and cost reductions, means we've offset the cost headwinds faced and significantly improved profitability with EBITDA of £9.5 million for the year, which is significantly up from £6 million in the previous year and ahead of previous market expectations of £8.5 million.
We're confident in the outlook for our year ahead and expect further profit growth during it. Further delivery on our Elevate The Works strategy will drive sales growth, margin improvement, and cost savings, offsetting further cost headwinds that we face primarily from the government's autumn budget. We've already made a strong start to FY 2026 with like-for-like sales growth of 5% in the first 11 weeks. We're also seeing strong margin growth year-on-year, and we're delivering further cost savings. All of that means we're comfortable with recently upgraded market expectations for £11 million EBITDA in FY 2026. I'll talk more about the strategic progress that we've made later, but for now, I'll hand over to Rosie to take you through the financial review.
Thanks, Gavin. I'll start by taking you through some of the highlights before we get into the detail. We've delivered revenue of £277 million, slightly down year-on-year as a result of the additional trading week in the prior year, along with a focus on optimizing the store estate, which I'll talk more about later. We delivered like-for-like sales growth of 0.8%. Store sales, which represent over 90% of total sales, were the key driver behind this strong growth, with positive like-for-likes of 2.3%. This was driven by more customer-focused events, new products across all categories, and improved store standards and product availability. Online sales declined by 12.1%. They were impacted by the temporary capacity constraints as our third-party provider during peak and also a focus on improving the profitability of this channel.
The action we've taken has delivered significant product margin growth and a year-on-year cost savings, which have mitigated significant cost headwinds such as the national living and minimum wage. As a result, we've delivered year-on-year EBITDA growth of £3.5 million, which resulted in FY 2025 EBITDA of £9.5 million, in line with our recently upgraded market expectations. Statutory profit before tax includes a £3.8 million credit for adjusting items. This includes net impairment reversals of IFRS 16 right-of-use assets of £6.5 million, which are partially offset by exceptional fulfillment costs and restructuring costs in the year. Net cash of £4.1 million is ahead of last year by £2.5 million, with improved cash flows reflecting the increased profit and a net working capital inflow. Let's take a look at sales performance. Sales performance has been ahead of the non-food retail sector.
For the equivalent period of our financial year, FY 2025, the British Retail Consortium reported - 0.1% like-for-likes for the non-food retail sector. Our comparatives are positive 0.8% at a company level, which reflects + 2.3% in stores, which make up over 90% of total sales. In Q4, which is February to April, we increased this outperformance versus the BRC, as we reported + 6.4% total like-for-likes versus the BRC's 2.1%, with stores nearly hitting 7% like-for-like growth for that period. We've seen our competitors come out with declining like-for-likes, so we're really pleased with our strong performance in the market. It demonstrates the action taken and the progress we're making against our strategy. As we mentioned during our interim results, one of the key priorities for FY 2025 was to improve product margins.
We're really pleased that the strategic action taken has delivered strong product margin growth, increasing from 57.3% to 59.4%. Negotiations with suppliers to lower cost of goods sold have been supported by a focused effort to control product mix and reduce promotional activity. This has accounted for a combined 320 basis points improvement. An FX tailwind in the year of approximately 40 bps was due to our hedged U.S. dollar to GBP rate of 1.26 versus 1.11 last year. There was an approximately 100 basis points headwind in container freight costs as a result of the higher average container rates over the year due to the disruption in the Red Sea. Let's take a look at the costs. Significant cost savings have driven an improvement in our profitability. EBITDA benefited by an increase of £5.6 million from the significantly increased product margins that I've just talked through.
Focus on profitability and lower volumes through proactively optimizing online sales in response to the third-party challenges resulted in lower web variable costs. Through our labor efficiency program and changes to our store labor model, we mitigated the majority of the 9.8% national living and minimum wage increase, which was a £4 million headwind in the year. Improved ways of working in our retail distribution center, along with a strengthened management team, saw distribution costs reduce significantly. Property costs increased by £1.1 million. Savings from renegotiations of leases expiring in the year, along with favorable electricity costs, were partially offsetting cost pressures from the prior year release of £1.7 million of COVID-19 rent credits, along with an additional £0.8 million dilapidation provision in the year with respect to expected costs for planned store closures as part of our ongoing store optimization program.
Increased admin costs of £1.3 million reflect the lower central costs due to the restructuring of the Oxboard and the transfer to AIM at the end of FY 2024. These costs were offset with bonuses payable to colleagues, reflecting our improved performance year-on-year, as well as a headwind from one-off releases in the prior year from a VAT provision release and long-term incentive plan charges. We continued to optimize our store estate during the year. We closed 15 stores in the period, opened seven, and relocated four. This resulted in a higher quality estate that is more profitable. Over the last five years, 150 stores have been newly opened, relocated, or refitted, helping to improve the consistency and overall profitability of the estate, with 98% of the store estate now being profitable versus 96% last year.
We focused on reducing the tail of marginal stores through negotiations with landlords to lower rents, along with making operational improvements in stores. Our average payback for new stores is around 18 months, and we've seen slightly lower contributions from landlords, which means payback has got slightly longer. We've seen great performance from our relocations in Bolton, Woking, and Carlisle during the period, along with good performance in new stores such as SAIL and Stafford Riverside Retail Park. Let's take a look at working capital. Stock at the year-end of £35 million reflects lower shrinkage provisioning. This is due to the timing of all our stores being counted at the end of the year compared to a phasing across the year in the prior period, and therefore a reduced provision of estimated shrinkage. An improved stock position with less terminal stock resulted in lower obsolescence provision year-on-year.
Our increased gross stock levels reflect investment in new stock across strong performing ranges to support higher sales. CapEx was broadly flat year-on-year as we made the decision during FY 2024 to lower investment levels for FY 2025, but we are expecting to increase those CapEx investment levels next year, and I'll talk more about that next. Cash generation in the period reflects improved operating profit supported by working capital inflow due to reduction in prepayments and improved working capital management. We're pleased to end the year with £4.1 million cash, in line with expectations and ahead of the prior year. Let's take a look at FY 2026, we'll deliver sales growth, offset significant cost headwinds, and improve profit margins. We've identified strategic initiatives to drive sales, taken action on prices, and continue to focus on reducing cost of goods sold and controlling promotional activity, and we'll create further product margin improvement.
Gavin will talk through some of these strategic plans next. We're targeting significant cost reduction across central costs in the year, and as a result of our transformation project in FY 2025, we identified over £2 million of central cost savings for FY 2026. All of this will offset the significant National Living and Minimum Wage pressures of £4.5 million, along with the £2 million increase in employers' NI contributions. We'll therefore deliver EBITDA growth in line with our revised FY 2026 external forecast of £11 million, a year-on-year increase of over 15%. We'll look to invest in a net new five stores, along with investment in our current store estate and systems transformation, spending approximately £8 million in FY 2026 versus the £5 million in FY 2025. As a result of profit growth, good working capital management, and increased CapEx spend, we expect to finish with cash of approximately £5.5 million. Thank you for listening. I'll now hand back to Gavin, who will take you through the strategy update.
Thanks, Rosie. As mentioned, we introduced our new strategy to Elevate The Works in January this year, and I just wanted to play you a short video that we've pulled together with the support of some fantastic colleagues across the business that summarizes this strategy and what it is looking to achieve. Alessandro, if you could please play the video.
At The Works, our purpose is to inspire reading, learning, creativity, and play.
We want to share time well spent with our customers, old and new.
We're turning the page and starting our next chapter.
We are Elevating The Works.
Our strategy will bring us closer to fulfilling our ambition to become.
The favorite destination for affordable, screen-free activities for the whole family.
Elevating The Works is our strategy. Our three pillars, all supported by our people and planet commitments.
The Works is a favorite among our loyal customers, and we want even more people to discover and love what we do. We will.
Promote The Works with creative marketing that highlights our brand and our time well spent message.
Improve our understanding of and engagement with new and existing customers.
Continuously excite and delight customers with innovative products at great value all year round.
Make every visit feel welcoming, family-friendly, and full of inspiration.
Our customers love shopping with us, and we want to make it even easier for them. We will.
Deliver our product offer and trading plans consistently and to high standards.
Tailor store space to ensure our product ranges better meet the needs of local customers.
Introduce The Works to more customers by opening stores in new communities.
We enhance our online offer with a seamless in-store and online shopping experience.
To continue to offer our customers great value, we need to be more efficient and keep our costs low.
We will work with suppliers to improve our product margins.
Transform the way we work by using new and improved systems and simplified processes.
Reduce our operating costs so every penny is spent wisely.
We grow our customer average transaction values to maximize cost efficiency.
Our strategy is supported by our people and planet commitments.
By improving our colleague experience and giving something back through our charity partnerships.
We are making a conscious effort to protect our planet and use ethical suppliers.
We are committed to doing business better for our people, our communities, and our planet.
Our strategic drivers will come together to help us win more loyal fans, improve customer experience, and support long-term growth.
This is more than art supplies and books.
This is inspiring people to read, learn, create, and play.
Together, we are Elevating The Works.
I still get goosebumps listening to that myself, but I hope it gave you a good introduction to our new strategy. In summary, we're looking to elevate The Works, transforming our business and our performance. We've got really clear long-term goals, new ambition to become the favorite destination for affordable, screen-free activities for the whole family, and clear financial targets, as I mentioned earlier, to step-change our sales to in excess of £375 million and grow EBITDA margins to at least 6%. All of that being delivered through the three strategic drivers that you just heard about. There is lots to do to deliver the strategy across all areas of the business, but importantly, we've got a clear plan of what we're going to do, when, and what that will give us. We're already making great progress with a lot of it, and we're already seeing the benefits from that.
I'm excited about what it can do for our brand and our performance, and since launching it, I can see, feel, and hear that it's also resonating with colleagues across the business and also with suppliers at a recent supplier conference and with other investors that we've spoken to. A big part of the strategy is bringing to life what's on this page, which is the output of the brand work we completed last year and I shared back in January, but just thought it's worth recapping. It builds on our purpose, which remains unchanged, and is to inspire reading, learning, creativity, and play. It ensures we establish a clear brand position and a reason for The Works to exist for generations to come. We're clear on the customer need that we're addressing.
We have increasing research around the negative impacts of the overuse of screens and screen addiction, particularly for parents in relation to their children. I feel passionately about that, not only as CEO of The Works, but also as a father of two young girls. In a world full of screens, it's clear that people want to find other ways to connect and spend their time. We're perfectly positioned to support with that by connecting people with feel-good ways to spend their time. That's what we call time well spent, and that's our brand's strapline. Be that reading a book whilst on holiday, crafting with kids on a rainy day, playing a board game as a family on a Saturday night, all time well spent courtesy of The Works.
We started rolling out this strapline at Christmas, and it resonated really well with pretty much all stakeholders we've spoken to, whether that's colleagues, customers, suppliers, or investors. We're now really clear on what we want to be famous for as well: great value, fantastic ranges in screen-free activities, and we're continuing to refine our brand and product proposition to align to this. Bringing our brand identity to life will help us establish a differentiated proposition and realize our mission to be the favorite destination for affordable, screen-free activities for the whole family. It's really important to have this clear position in U.K. retail, and it's the foundation of our strategy. Taking each of the three key strategic drivers in turn, the first one is growing our brand fame, and that really is all about bringing our new brand identity to life.
We know that The Works is loved by its core customers, but we still remain one of the best-kept secrets in U.K. retail, and we want to address that. In the past year, we've completed the brand projects that I've just summarized. We've launched new customer-focused campaigns that I'll cover on the next slide. We've continued to evolve our product proposition. In the turn of this calendar year, we increased the amount of new products coming through in all categories and ensuring that that newness is hitting our stores regularly. The customers are responding really well to this, as you can see from our recent like-for-like performance. We've also improved our seasonal offerings outside of Christmas. We had a really strong back-to-school season last summer.
We had a bigger and better Halloween, which was 30% up year-on-year and sold out early, which has given us more opportunity for the year ahead. Earlier this year, we've just had a fantastic Easter as well. In the year ahead, we've got plans underway to, first and foremost, get out there and market our brand, mostly through social media and other digital channels, but bringing that time well spent and brand position to life. We're looking at introducing extended ranges in our larger stores. They will be typically sort of new brands, slightly higher-priced items to complement what we currently sell. We're looking to test the success of those in those larger stores and then roll them out through the rest of the estates. We've done some of that this spring and taken the initial learnings.
We had a bay of Crayola, Kids Art & Craft, a bit of stationery, trialed in 28 stores, which worked really well. We are taking that into 141 stores this autumn. We are going to continue to grow the all-year-round appeal of The Works. We are going to increase the strength of our key seasonal events: Easter, back-to-school, Halloween, and Christmas, which we are already quite well known for, but more importantly, further develop customer-focused campaigns that create reasons to visit outside of those seasonal events. I will cover that shortly. We are going to continue to drive that newness of my thought categories to more of the repeat visits and continue the success that we have seen in recent months.
We will also continue to provide a fun, family-friendly, and inspiring experience for customers that will give them reasons to visit and revisit The Works. We are going to give improved customer service training for our store colleagues and run exclusive events in stores such as book signings, character visits such as Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, or Bluey. I mentioned we have been running more customer-focused events since the turn of Christmas. These are championing screen-free activities, much more lifestyle and emotion in the way that we communicate with customers rather than just shouting about products and price. We still want to be value for money. We have still got great products, but it is about the softer way of talking to customers and giving customers all year round reasons to visit. Coming out of our January sale, we went into a kids' favorite event in February.
That was a license campaign at the front of stores, seven key licenses that you see there across all four of our categories, giving real brand authority and choice for our customers alongside our own brands. We then moved into a Books Are Magic campaign that highlights our kids' book proposition and the benefits of reading for children. That coincided with World Book Day and included our market-leading 10 for £10 kids' book offer. At Easter, we moved away from just shouting about products from a pan. We still had that message there, but it was very much about how we can focus on providing customers with hundreds of ideas for activities for little ones. In the new financial year, we moved into a Make Money Mindful campaign.
That was a campaign that was in partnership with Mind, bringing out the benefits of pressing pause, doing an art or craft project, and that being time well spent. Most excitingly, this summer we've got the Boredom Board, which is three young kids who have taken over the board, who are going to suggest screen-free fun activities to help parents with an alternative to just giving the kids a screen this summer when they hear, "I'm bored." That will help give families a summer well spent. It's supported by research and expert opinion. We did a survey and 40% of parents want to limit screen time this summer, but they need ideas for practical alternatives to keep the kids entertained. That's where our three cheeky little kids of the Boredom Board will be providing them with.
It's a huge step forward in terms of how we talk to our customers, giving them a real reason to visit more regularly, and it does seem to be resonating well, as we can see in the recent performance. The second strategic driver is improving customer convenience. As I said on the video, we know customers continue to demand increased convenience, and as a retailer with 500 stores and a transactional website, that's great news for us. It's a real differentiator for us against some of our key competitors, for example, the general merchandise discounters. In the past year, we've improved store standards and customer experience in existing stores in two key ways. We've improved product availability and stock allocations as we continue to realize the benefits of the investments that we made in our new stock allocation software and merchandising team two years ago.
A couple of examples of how that's worked: we had much better support for our top turnover stores, our 50, what we call platinum stores, and that drove like-for-like sales at nearly 7% in those stores in the last year and over double-digit like-for-like sales since Christmas. We've also improved the availability on launch of new ranges to consistently ahead of 90%, with further improvements to come in FY 2026. Alongside that, we've delivered much more consistent store standards supported by the restructure of our retail leadership team just over a year ago. We've brought real clarity as to what good looks like, and we're providing support and driving accountability to teams to ensure that we deliver that. As Rosie touched on earlier, we've continued to optimize our store estates. Our stores remain the lifeblood of the business and will do for many years to come.
As Rosie mentioned earlier, our 503 stores, over 90% of sales, 98% are profitable, and we continue to deliver positive like-for-like sales and margin growth through them. Rosie talked about the portfolio activity we've done, and alongside that, we've continued to drive rents lower in our existing stores. This year, we're on with better using our store space, which is a huge opportunity as part of our new strategy, and we believe that's a multi-year opportunity by tailoring the store ranges to better meet the needs of local customers. We appointed a resource to lead on this work earlier this year, initially focused on undertaking the analysis of the performance of our current layouts to inform trials in the current year and beyond. We're looking at broader art ranges in university towns where we can see arts and stationery over-indexing.
We're looking at those large store range extensions I mentioned and seeing how we can push those successful ones down through the store estate, supported by proper analysis. We're also starting to look at where certain categories over and under-index, for example, kids versus books, where we see demographic differences. If English language isn't the first language for many, then we don't sell many English-language books. We mean different shopper profiles in different store formats, such as garden centers versus retail parks. This year is all about trials to inform what we do in the future. We want to build on our store standards through further iteration of what good looks like and driving the delivery of that. As Rosie touched on, opening a net new five new stores.
We're building the pipeline to accelerate growth in FY 2026 and beyond as part of our ambition to add a net 60 new stores over the next five years. We've just recruited a Senior Acquisitions Manager to lead on this. You'll see here pictures of four recent store openings. From left to right, Edinburgh Fort Kinnaird retail park, a relocation on Edinburgh Princes Street, Bolton Relocation, and Stafford Riverside retail park. All really fresh, inviting, and show the new look and feel of the brand. New store openings are a key building block of our new strategy. We're looking to add 60 net new stores in the next five years from around about 100 priority locations that we don't currently trade in, but we believe we can deliver the strong payback of less than two years from. As Rosie said, we're achieving better than that currently.
Those opportunities are across a range of formats and locations within the U.K. Importantly, we're working proactively with landlords to help educate them on our evolution as a retailer. There are still many landlords out there who see us as a pile it high, sell at cheap discounts so that isn't financially stable and remember us from old. We've had some great meetings in recent months, increasingly getting the message across, and they can see the benefits of our proposition and what it could bring to their centers in terms of being a destination for family fun. The final strategic driver is being a lean and efficient operator. We want to continue to offer our customers great value. We want to deliver sustainable profit margins. To do that, we need to be a business that's lean, efficient, and simple.
We've made good progress here in the last 12 months, as Rosie covered, driving significant product margin growth and delivering significant cost savings both through the actions that we took a year ago and the more recent cost transformation projects. We also completed our value EPOS software across the store estate. That replaced previous end-of-life software and provides a platform for introducing further capabilities, including new physical tills in the future. We've got lots more planned for FY 2026, again, as Rosie's touched on, further improving our product margins through continuing those supply negotiations, supplier rationalizations, and taking a partnership approach with key suppliers. Continuing to benefit from better stock management and therefore seeing reduced markdown cost for obsolete stock. We have put through some selective price increases this spring in response to the cost headwinds faced from the government's autumn budget, and that will clearly help improve our margin.
On top of that, we'll be delivering the £2 million plus operating cost savings identified as part of the recent cost transformation project. That will see us reviewing and simplifying our processes across the business and looking to reduce other operational support costs where appropriate. One example I'll talk through shortly is what we're doing in our distribution centre. On top of that, we'll start investing in replacing our outdated and inefficient systems. We're looking to add new functionality and improve the efficiencies of our colleagues. That will focus on our buying and supply chain areas to start with. Now, admittedly, not the most exciting pictures on this page, but nonetheless an exciting project. We've had capacity challenges at our main retail DC since we moved into there eight years ago. We've brought in new DC leadership just over a year ago.
As Rosie has mentioned, they've driven significant efficiencies in our DC. Alongside that, they've been identifying future opportunities. One of the biggest ones to date has been to invest in building a mezzanine floor in our DC. That's around £600,000 CapEx investment, and it gives us increased capacity, about 17% extra floor space and pallet locations, and 21% extra pick locations. What that means is it will significantly reduce the peak capacity challenges we've faced nearly every year since I've been at The Works. That has resulted in the past in inefficient ways of working as the team have had to work around gridlocks. It will reduce the need to use expensive third-party storage. The benefits of that are significant, and we will see payback of that CapEx investment within a year.
Just to come back to what the strategy will deliver us, again, a slide that was shared in January, but just to recap, delivering on the strategy gives us multiple levers to support step-changing sales, adding over £100 million over the next five years. We believe £25 million sales growth from 60 net new stores, a balance of £75 million coming through our existing channels. We'll do that through attracting new customers to The Works, increasing spend from existing customers, getting more repeat visits by having a more relevant all-year-round proposition, improving availability from the more consistent execution of our plans in stores, increasing our sales densities through better using store space, and growing our online sales through improved customer experience and improving the links to our stores.
With multiple levers there, it means there's a lot to do, but it also means we're not overly reliant on one particular aspect to deliver the growth. That is both exciting and it helps to de-risk the plan. In terms of the step change you expect to see in EBITDA margin improvement, again, shared this slide in January, but just to summarize, delivering on the strategy, we'll see like-for-like store sales growth on a larger fixed cost base, a 200 basis points further margin improvement in product margins, a £5 million plus reduction in our operating cost base as part of being a lean and efficient operator, and improving our cost-to-serve ratio by growing the average selling price.
On top of that, as Rosie touched on earlier, savings from our ongoing optimization of the store portfolio, which will see us continue to close any loss-making stores and save rent in our existing store estate. Overall, £375 million sales, 6% EBITDA margin gives us an EBITDA target in excess of £22.5 million versus the £9.5 million just delivered in £9.5 million. That's hugely exciting. There's a lot to do, but we're progressing in most areas and starting to see real tangible benefits from those, as these results show. Putting all of that together, you know, we believe we have a really compelling investment case, and that's what excites me. We've got a highly relevant purpose and a meaningful ambition, as we discussed earlier, a clear position in value retail with all year-round appeal.
That's a reason to exist for generations to come, which isn't something that many retailers can say. We're much loved by our core customers, but that's still a well-kept secret amongst many, meaning we have a significant opportunity to grow brand awareness and win new customers. We've got an accessible and convenient multi-channel proposition with over 500 stores and a transactional website. We've got significant market share growth potential across all our categories. We have a meaningful share of our end markets, but it's still relatively small. Books is one of our biggest, at 10% share by volume, 4% by value. That gives us huge headroom to take share and supports adding another £100 million of sales in the next five years. On top of that, we've got the new five-year strategy to transform the business. As discussed, that's already delivering results. We're doing it from a position of strength.
We've improved profitability, we're generating cash, and we've got cash on the balance sheet at year-end. We embark on our new strategy from a position of strength. Just to summarize again, you know, a year of significant progress operationally, financially, and strategically on a setup front. We've launched our hugely exciting new strategy to Elevate The Works. We've got clear ambitions, clear targets, clear plans. They can and will transform our business and performance. We're already on with delivering that and seeing that come through in our results. We've delivered a strong financial performance in FY 2025, like-for-like sales growth ahead of the wider sector in a fragile consumer environment, and a significant improvement in profitability with EBITDA of £9.5 million. We expect further profit growth in FY 2026 by further delivering our strategy. We've already made a strong start with like-for-likes plus 5% year- to- date. We're comfortable with recently upgraded market expectations for £11 million EBITDA in FY 2026. We're excited about the year ahead and what the five years beyond that can deliver. I say that ends the presentation. Thank you for listening, and we will now take any questions.
That's great. Gavin, Rosie, thank you very much for your presentation. What I'll do is I'll just bring your cameras back up at this point. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions. You can do that just by using the Q&A tab that's situated in the top right corner of your screen. We have received a number of quick pre-submitted questions and live questions, and I want to start the Q&A session off with the first question here, which reads as follows. Have you got a clear assessment of which stores are meeting your ROE targets and which are not? Do you have a plan to rationalize stores which are failing to hit your targets?
Thank you. I'll take this one. Yes, I've already mentioned that we, on average, see a payback of around 18 months. We look to target under two years, and that's measured through store contribution against that original CapEx investment. For our existing stores, we're comfortable with anything that's making a positive contribution, but we have a real focus on what we call marginal stores, where we'll really challenge rents and operating costs when they're making anything around £30,000 or less contribution to the estate. I've already mentioned the FY 2025 portfolio optimization, and we're looking to do the same in FY 2026. We're constantly reviewing our portfolio to make sure that we've got the right mix of stores in the right locations for our customers. In FY 2026, as we've mentioned, we'll target a net new five, which will mean some closures, but we plan to open more new stores, better quality, and in the right locations.
That's great. Thank you very much, Rosie. The next question we have here is having a wide range of books a USP, and how does this strategy compare to online book retailers and competition?
There are product categories, books. Oh, sorry, I've muted that. We have four clear product categories: books, toys and games, art and craft, and stationery, meaning that books are central to our proposition. They're in the heritage of the business, and they're one of many reasons why customers love shopping at The Works. Part of our new strategy is all about staying ahead of the curve, bringing in new releases. That's in contrast to our old strategy, where we wouldn't have sold those new release titles with more clearance and back catalogue books. That's proved really popular with customers in recent years.
In the last 12 months, we've seen a real strong performance from our adult fiction ranges, driven by a lot of popular book top titles and exclusive editions of sprayed edges. I've also seen kids' books, in particular our 10 for £10 kids' picture flat offers and our famous author books, performing well. We do face competition from other retailers, so we're constantly looking at ways how we can evolve our proposition and drive footfall to stores. I think it's important to note that books are only one of our four categories, and our stores are relatively small. Whilst they are key to ensuring we select the right ranges for books against our specialist competitors, they're always going to have a broader range of books. For us, it's about how do we get the right offering of books at great value and prices for our customers. That's great.
Thanks very much, Gavin. Next question, I do believe you touched on in the presentation, but how do you plan to maximize sales during festive periods such as Easter, Halloween, Valentine's, Christmas, back to school, etc.?
Yeah, it's really about taking the learnings each year and building on it. We're already a destination at Christmas and increasingly so for the other seasons mentioned: Easter, back to school, Halloween, as we saw in the last 12 months. We want to keep growing those seasons, but the priority of the strategy is about how we grow outside of those seasons and get customers coming through all year round through different calendar events. We always have been ever increasingly becoming a destination at school holidays, and as I talked about with the Board, you know, we know that 40% of parents want to limit screen time this summer, but they need practical alternatives. 30% say if they had more inspiration for screen-free activities, then they'd do even more. That has been a success about school holiday ranges as we've become the favorite destination for screen-free activities during half term and the Easter holidays. As you've seen year to date, we've had a really strong start to the spring and summer ranges.
Thanks very much. The next question here, how are you creating brand awareness and what is your USP?
As I talked about on that brand framework side, we know that we've got a number of loyal customers, but we want even more customers to discover The Works and love what we do. That is all what the growing our brand fame strategic drive is about. That brand project has given us a brand framework that we are clear on who we are, what we want to be famous for, and the role we can play for our customers. Importantly, it's addressing a known customer need. Customers are looking for ways to spend their time and connect with family members away from screens. Our focus and our USP is how we provide affordable screen-free activities for the whole family. We're bringing that to life through our time well spent strapline. As I mentioned, that will be mostly on social media and other digital channels. We don't intend to spend a lot of money on TV advertising, but we're seeing great success and great feedback from customers so far to date from the activity that we've undertaken.
Thanks very much, Gavin. Who do you consider as your competitors and what type of comparative data do you use?
I'll take that. We've got a broad range of competitors. We have what we call the full price specialists, so the likes of what was WH Smith, now TJ Jones, Hobbycraft, The Entertainer, Byman's, who sell what we sell typically at higher prices and where the value alternative to them. We've then got the general merchandise discounters, the B&Ms, the Home Bargains, the Range, who sell similar items to us, often at similar and cheap prices, but not as typically as good quality and not with the service that we offer in our stores. There are supermarkets, but no one competitor does exactly what we do, putting all four categories together under one roof and providing affordable screen-free activities for the whole family. I think for us, we look at really the BRC data in particular as a key sort of benchmark, and we've seen that we've outperformed that. We've also seen that we've outperformed the like-for-like sales performance of many of those other competitors that I've mentioned there. We also have access to toys and books market data, both of which we've significantly outperformed in the second half of FY 2025 and FY 2026 to date.
Thank you very much. The next question we've got here, what is your payback period after launching a new store?
I'll take that one. I think you've just covered it, but on average, we aim for under two years, and on average see payback of around 18 months.
Thank you for that, Rosie. The next question, last year you had some challenges with online services. Can you please provide your breakdown in online sales and progress against key metrics?
I'll take this one as well. Online accounts for less than 10% of our total company's sales. We did see online capacity issues, as I mentioned in the presentation, around peak as a result of our third-party challenges. We're really pleased that those subsided once peak demand resumed back to sort of normal levels. We've now appointed a third-party online fulfilment provider, so we're just transitioning to them, and we expect sort of a higher standard of service for customers and cost savings in future years.
That's great. Turning to the next question, how do you record footfall per store in terms of number of customers entering and the conversion rate into sales?
We don't have footfall counters in store, but we do sort of look at external footfall data for the general market, such as the BRC.
Perfect. Thank you very much. The final pre-submitted question we've got before we move to some live questions. In your stores, you have a range of products with different pricing points. Do you have data on the sales results for each product and which product lines are best sellers, the profile of customers, and location?
I think another one for me. We do have the data for product lines and which products are selling well and in which locations, but unfortunately, we don't have customer data to advise us on which products those customers are buying. We do know from customer survey and research that families make up the proportion of our customers.
That's great. This next question has a few parts, so do bear with me. You've paused dividends and buybacks to focus on reinvestment. What specific financial or strategic triggers will prompt your resumption of buybacks? Is there a target net cash position or EBITDA margin threshold? Finally, will buybacks be prioritized over dividends as profitability improves?
I'll take that one as well. Yeah, naturally, we look to profit growth when looking at the opportunity of capital distributions, but a key focus to us is excess cash. At the moment, a massive focus is reinvesting in the business where we know we can get a return on that cash. As our profits grow and we start looking at our internal excess cash thresholds, we'll look to reassess capital distributions. That might be in the form of dividends, but also in terms of buybacks.
That's great. We've had a question here from David. Hi there, please can you tell us EPS for year 2025 and 2026 if possible?
Yeah, I can. I think you'll also find it on the RNS if that's helpful for after this. There's a link on our website, but our adjusted EPS was 7.1 pence. That was versus 4.2 pence last year. Our basic EPS was 13.1 pence, and that was versus 10.2 pence last year. We don't provide an FY 2026 forecast EPS, but as we've stated, we are expecting EBITDA growth of around 15% in FY 2026.
That's great. We have another question, which I do believe you've covered, but if you have anything else to add, please do. With net cash up to £4.1 million and no dividend proposed, how do you plan to deploy capital in FY 2026?
Yeah, I think me and Gavin have probably both covered this, but looking at spending around £8 million of CapEx this year versus £5 million in FY 2025, and that will cover new store openings. We won't just be opening a new five. We'll have to open more stores to cover some of those store closures that we'll see in the pipeline. We're also looking to do that systems transformation that Gavin's mentioned, as well as the DC mezzanine floor. Really reinvesting it where we can make good returns internally within the business.
That's great. Perhaps time for one final question. By how much is the weaker dollar helping your gross margins now, and will it be a delayed benefit due to forward hedging?
I'll take this one as well. Yes, it's definitely a benefit, but as the question mentions, we do forward hedge. We look to hedge 12 - 18 months out, and we saw a 50 bps improvement in FY 2025. We're probably likely to see a similar impact in FY 2026 as a result of hedging.
That's great. Thank you very much for answering those questions for investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions that have been submitted today, and we will publish those responses out on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Gavin, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah, sure. First of all, thank you everyone for your interest and for joining today. It's been a really significant year of progress for us. We've delivered a fantastic financial performance in FY 2025. We've launched a new strategy, which we're really excited about what that can deliver for us over the next five years. As you can see from the start of FY 2026 and the confidence in our outlook for the year ahead, it's already delivering results. We're excited about the future and I look forward to updating you on more progress in the months ahead.
That's great. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? As you know, you'll be automatically redirected to provide your feedback and all the management team can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of The Works, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.