I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Martin Nicholas, Group CFO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome everyone. It's my pleasure to kick off our first half 2022 results call. I'll start by walking you through the group's first half trading performance, and then Jim Clayton, our CEO, will provide an operational and strategic update as well as guidance for the full year. Turning to slide 3 and the highlights of our first half. The business continued to move from strength to strength, underpinned by strong consumer demand across all regions and categories. Revenue grew 23.6%, notwithstanding some ongoing logistical challenges. Both margins were well managed in a prevalent environment with selective price rises, restrained promotional spend and mix, largely offsetting the ongoing inflationary pressures in freight and product costs. If we look to the second half 2022 and beyond, we will likely need to take additional price rises where appropriate to further protect our margins.
With core overheads kept in check, we again strategically invested in the medium-term growth drivers of research and development, marketing and technology, while still delivering EBIT growth of 22.8%. With earnings per share of AUD 0.558, a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.15 per share will be paid, reflecting a 15.4% increase on the prior period. In terms of cash flow, we saw a normal seasonal outflow as peak receivables grew and some level of inventory rebuild was achieved, ending this period with net cash of AUD 31.7 million. Lastly, our ROE remains healthy at 19.7%, reflecting continued good returns on our growth investments. In summary, the first half 2022 was a positive while operationally challenging period. Sales grew strongly. Gross margins were well controlled.
Supply chain challenges were managed, and we continued our investment cadence into the growth drivers of the business. A very solid start to the year. Turning to slide 4, we see two segment performances. The Global Product Segment carried its sales momentum from 2021 into the first half 2022, delivering 23.8% sales growth on a constant currency basis and strong EBIT growth of 59.2%. We saw broad-based regional and category growth despite some logistics disruptions, and our EBIT margins in the Global Product Segment were maintained with headwinds and tailwinds, largely netting out at the EBIT level. Our Distribution Segment also grew top line strongly at 22.6%, led by Nespresso in the Americas, lapping a weak PCP.
This was partially offset by lower growth in APAC, where in line with the segment's role, maximizing margin dollars was prioritized over top line growth. Importantly, the distribution segment fulfilled this strategic role by delivering nearly AUD 1 million in incremental EBIT to reinvest in the global product segment. Turning to slide 5. In terms of the global product segment sales by geography, here we see AUD 141 million or 23.8% constant currency growth split by theater. All three of the theaters delivered healthy double-digit growth over strong prior periods with gains across all categories. In the Americas, the group delivered 17.1% constant currency growth, but this does not reflect actual customer demand as the well-publicized L.A. port congestion delayed inventory receipts into our warehouse and constrained our ability to satisfy retail orders.
We will look to recover some of this in the second half 2022. In EMEA, the region performed strongly, delivering nearly 40% growth with strong sales in both the U.K. and mainland Europe. In dollar terms, EMEA's product growth. Global product growth again outstripped the Americas and APAC. APAC itself continues to show strength over a very strong PCP, delivering 22% growth in constant currency terms. In APAC, inventory and our ability to satisfy orders has largely been normalized. As mentioned for the full year, it's noteworthy that in the global product segment, EMEA is now larger than APAC, and together they match the Americas, giving balance to our growth portfolio. For an additional perspective on the group's sustained growth, I've added a final column to this table that shows the 3-year CAGR in constant currency from the first half 2019 to the first half 2022.
As you can see, all theaters have delivered strong growth profiles over the last three years. It's noteworthy that over this three-year period, global product segment revenue has more than doubled, reaching AUD 734 million in this half. In terms of relative gross margin, nothing much to say. They remain similar across all theaters. Turning to page six on funds generation and usage. You've seen this graphic before, which pictorially shows how we have reinvested our gains in gross profits into the growth drivers of the business while still delivering strong EBIT progression. Solid sales growth coupled with a slightly weaker GM percent where inflationary headwinds more than offset the outright tailwinds grew gross profit dollars by approximately AUD 51 million.
The objective of driving medium-term business growth, we reinvested AUD 22 million of this incremental gross profit into our go-to-market capability and specifically our digital offense, new product development, and the corporate platform. Outside of these three strategic priorities, core overheads and operations were well controlled, growing approximately 11%, largely reflecting the operational costs of growth. The resulting EBIT increased by AUD $20.9 Million or 22.8%. In line with our tactical approach to managing through uncertainty, if our sales strength continues in the second half of 2022, we plan to further increase our investment in these growth drivers while still delivering solid full-year EBIT growth. Please turn to slide 7 on the balance sheet. As you know, under normal conditions, the group structurally invests in working capital to drive growth, and we expect to see our working capital peak in the first half of any year.
As we look at the balance sheet for this half, the good news is it looks markedly more normal than the first half 2021. Last year when I spoke to you, we reported working capital of AUD 202 million, which I said was about AUD 95 million below equilibrium. Adding these two together, you get a first half 2021 equilibrium working capital of about AUD 298 million. Our first half 2022 working capital is at AUD 334 million, which represents a 12% increase on this normalized level, against the sales growth of 23.6%. Are we approaching a normal working capital level and equilibrium level? I think in dollar terms, I'd say yes, we are. Drill down one more level, and we get a slightly different answer.
While receivables and payables are in line with business growth, our inventory position is still not where we want it to be. Too much or approximately 51% of our inventory is still goods in transit rather than our warehouse. It's primarily sitting on ships waiting to get into L.A. Port. With the holiday shipping peak behind us, the global logistics flow may improve on the other side of Chinese New Year, allowing us to catch up in the second half. To avoid a replay of this year's supply chain, these hard supply challenges in the next financial year, our aim in the second half of 2022 is to get in front of any future supply chain problems by accelerating our inventory build in readiness for the first half 2023.
If we're successful, we should see a peak inventory number for financial year 2022 this June, and hopefully less of this balance still sitting in transit. Our fixed asset increase reflects renewal of key warehouse leases, and our intangibles asset increase reflects our sustained strategic investment in new product development with projects flowing through the innovation funnel. Cash behaved as expected for this time of year, coming off an abnormally high starting position in December 2020 and June 2021. Our underlying cash flow generation remains healthy, as do our funds for expansion, with approximately AUD 380 million of undrawn debt facilities and cash still available. As I mentioned previously, the group's ROE was 19.7%, showing continued strong returns on our growth investments. Lastly, turning to slide 8.
I hope that this unpacking of our reported numbers has been helpful in what was a solid year of continued growth and investment. The key messages I'd like you to take away from this half year results are that revenue and EBIT continued to grow well in the half with sustained demand for our products, somewhat constrained by logistical jams in the USA. The gross profit environment is dynamic. We managed it well in the first half and will likely see further price rises in the second half to protect margin. Growth in our gross profit dollars continued to be strategically reinvested in areas to support medium-term growth, namely marketing, product development and technology. In line with our approach to managing an uncertainty, we expect to invest further in these areas in the second half, assuming sales momentum continues.
Lastly, our balance sheet position is improving. However, as a hedge against further supply chain disruptions, we plan to build inventory early for FY 2023. I know that Jim Clayton will say some more in his section about our growth investments and our inventory development. With the final comment that the first half 2022 was a pleasing half of sustained growth on both the top and the bottom line, I'll pass to Jim Clayton, our CEO, to provide an operational and strategic update.
Thank you, Martin, and good morning to everyone. Slide nine. Today I'm gonna take a different approach. Instead of talking about new products or new geographies, I'm going to talk about platforms. Why? In the past, I've talked about our acceleration program. New products and new geographies have their role to play for sure, but it's platforms that govern the pace of acceleration. In a multi-product, multi-geography setting, building something once and using it everywhere drives speed. After covering our digital platforms, I'll provide some commentary on the second half, our inventory plan, and our outlook for the financial year. Turning to slide 10. In our FY 2021 year-end report, Martin presented the waterfall slide on the left, showing we invested AUD 49 million into marketing, R&D, and technology.
As shown by the first half 2022 EBIT bridge on the right, which Martin presented today, we spent an incremental AUD 22 million in these areas in the first half of 2022. Many of you have asked how we are spending this money outside of investing in new products, and today I'm going to show you. Turning to slide 11. The strength of FY 2021 and the first half of 2022 gave us the opportunity to accelerate investments in our digital platforms. I will walk you through each of them. Turning to slide 12. In prior reporting cycles, I've spoken about our global platform. Continue to bring this up because it is the digital backbone of the entire global company. What makes this platform unique to most other companies in the world is its two core features. One, it is based on a software-as-a-service architecture.
Two, we are running a single instance globally. The SaaS feature means we quickly roll to the most recent version of each component in the stack. This gives us added capabilities, leveraging the R&D investments of our vendors, and it prevents the typical 5-7-year re-platforming cycle of typical ERP implementations. Second feature, a single instance, drives efficiency and speed. As an example, when we enter a new country, we begin by deploying our global template, golden template, which takes about 2 weeks. At this point, the country is 90% deployed. The remaining 10% of the implementation covers whatever is unique about the transaction model in that country, along with connecting new trading partners. This platform defines our speed for new countries, new product rollouts, and acquisition integrations. Turning to slide 13.
I appreciate I'm diving a little deep here, but I want to give you an example of the platform in action. We have a component of the platform called PIM, Product Information Management. It's a single repository that defines all our products in one place globally. All other systems in the stack consume this single version of the truth to do their work. In the upper left box, you see two images from our websites. One is from the U.K., the other from Germany. This is driven by PIM. We define the juicer once, then overlay the German translation. The same holds true for spare parts, both their association to a finished product as well as their specifications. PIM also houses the coffee bean products from our roaster partners. Here you can see the products populating both beanz.com as well as breville.com. Define once, use everywhere. Update once, update everywhere.
Once we get the description defined in PIM, every other component of the stack pulls the pieces of information it needs to get the job done. Another way, when we enter a new country, the SKU portfolio is already defined and ready to go, absent the possible addition of translation. Turning to slide 14. Now onto our investments and our customer experience platform. Slide 15. What you're looking at is the redesign of our website, which will be deployed in the second half. We are re-architecting navigation. This new design will make it much easier for customers to find what they are looking for or to discover new helpful information. This navigation framework is possible because of the work we've completed to house our digital content, which I will cover next. Slide 16. Over the past 5 years, we've made significant investments into high-quality digital content.
Content, however, was scattered across the system, making it difficult for customers to find what they needed with the fewest number of clicks. Turning to slide 17. In FY 2021, we embarked on a project to fix this, which we recently took live, the Experience Hub. Our digital content now resides in a single, unified, and structured framework. This will increase the ROI of our digital content investments and make it much easier for our internal systems, our retailers, and our customers to use the content. Turning to slide 18. By solving one problem, we created another. Having our content in one place has its advantages, but it can make it equally difficult for a customer to find what they're looking for quickly. We have over 200 pieces of digital content for coffee alone. To solve this problem in FY 2021, we built My Breville, which recently went live.
My Breville is the lens through which a customer interacts with the Experience Hub. In one dashboard, we bring together everything that is relevant to each customer. It's a personalized dashboard. The customer identifies the Breville products they own, and we surface the content for just those products. The customer can also see all information relevant to the purchase and ownership of Breville Sage products. Turning to slide 19. To complete our customer experience platform, we recently launched Sage Studios in the U.K. as our pilot location. Sage Studios bridges the gap between the physical and the digital. When a customer is shopping our website or looking for information to help them get the most out of their products, we can start a live video stream with one of our product experts.
The customer and the product expert can jointly explore our website and all the digital content to help the customer find what they need. H-Studio will also serve as a master class training location, which gives us a highly scalable platform for engaging directly with our customers. Turning to slide 20. Onto our solution platforms. Slide 21. I've talked before about our new Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro, a product we will launch in the second half of this year. With this offering, we are arcing from product to solution. In this solution, we took the IP and talent from the ChefSteps and Breville kitchens and embedded them inside our market-leading oven. We've been beta testing this oven in customers' homes for the last few months. When making a rotisserie chicken, one participant said, "I would buy this oven just for that chicken." This is exactly the point.
With this solution, we are transitioning from selling world-class countertop ovens to selling the perfect rotisserie chicken in your kitchen, the outcome customers actually want. Turning to slide 22. Underpinning this oven solution is our standards-based connectivity platform. This is the real asset. This cloud-driven platform is agnostic to the endpoint device. It could have been anything. Building a platform takes longer, but it means you can build it once and use it across multiple devices, and the time to market. Turning to slide 23. Onto the ecosystem platform. Slide 24. As I watch the marketing efforts of various players in the coffee space, the phrases that are thrown around very loosely are "barista quality" or "cafe quality." So I thought I'd first define what Breville means when we say it. We all know what cafe quality looks like.
When you walk into a specialty coffee cafe to buy your AUD 5 flat white, you see the indicia of quality in the cup. There will be a multi-group head commercial coffee machine, and large commercial grinder, a talented barista working the machine, and fresh specialty coffee beans. What you won't see is coffee from the grocery store, nor will you see a black box automatic coffee machine. That's because neither can give you cafe quality in the cup. Turning to slide 25. It is with this true definition of cafe quality that our product team designed and built our espresso machine range, enabling customers to replicate cafe quality at home. We defined the 4 elements that are required to replicate this outcome. 18-22 grams of coffee in, pulled at 9 bars of pressure with a water temperature of 93 degrees Celsius.
For milk-based drinks like a flat white, you need sufficient steam pressure to generate microfoam in the milk. These four elements are exactly what commercial machines use to deliver your AUD 5 flat white. Turning to slide 26. Having the right machine is just one element of replicating that perfect flat white at home. If the machine is the hammer, then specialty coffee is the nail. Put grocery store coffee in a capable machine, and you won't have a good outcome. Put specialty coffee in a machine that can't deliver the four elements, and again, you will not replicate what you buy at the cafe. Cafe quality coffee at home lies at the intersection of a capable coffee machine and fresh specialty coffee. This means that Breville does not deliver a cafe-quality coffee at home. Instead, Breville gives you a machine capable of delivering cafe-quality coffee at home.
A machine is a necessary component. It is certainly not a flat white. Turning to slide 27. To actually get a café-quality flat white at home, it's a different four elements. One, a machine capable of doing the job. Two, extra kit that you use with the machine. Three, specialty coffee. Four, a barista training you to get you pointed in the right direction. This would be an at-home café-quality coffee solution. Turning to slide 28. Breville has been working on exactly this. We have the machine and we have the kit. About 18 months ago, we launched our Masterclass infrastructure to cover the training component, but we were missing the specialty coffee. We solved this missing piece by launching beanz.com. With Beanz, we pulled together a selected, curated group of the best roasters in the country for our customers.
This platform helps our customers find the absolute best coffee for them based on their taste profile, and then delivers the fresh coffee to their house as often as they'd like. Beanz.com is currently live in the U.S. and the U.K. We have the top 50 roasters in the U.S. spread across the country with over 200 coffees to choose from. Beanz is also live in the U.K. with the top 21 roasters in that country, currently offering 60 coffees. If we stop here and take an inventory count against the four elements of cafe quality coffee at home, we have the machine, the kit, the training, and the coffee. Now, all that's missing is putting it together. Turning to slide 29. We did that too.
If you go to our U.S. website, you'll have the opportunity to buy the entire coffee solution. Get the machine that is right for you and the coffee that is right for you, and we'll send you everything you need and train you to make cafe quality coffee at home. We'll be taking the coffee solution live in the U.K. in the next few weeks. Turning to slide 30. The enabler underneath the coffee solution is an ecosystem platform, not unlike a smart TV. Several products are global. Specialty coffee is local. The platform seamlessly brings the top roasters in each country into the coffee solution for the customers in that country. As we designed it as a platform, we can reuse it with other ecosystems. We just chose to point the platform at coffee as its first implementation. Turning to slide 31.
Summarize where we invested the incremental dollars in FY 2021 and the first half of 2022. We continued the rollout and upgrade of the global platform. We centralized our digital content into the Experience Hub, created the My Breville staging path for customers to get the most out of the site, launched Sage Studios in the U.K. We're in the process of implementing the redesign of our website. We built version 1.0 of the connectivity platform, which we'll launch in the second half with the Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro. We built and launched version 1.0 of Beanz and the coffee solution in the U.S. and soon the U.K. That meant we've been busy.
While we are looking forward to leveraging each platform in our acceleration program, the important takeaway for the longer term is that the Breville team built them, which means we have the internal capability to roll out the platforms and improve them in the years to come. Turning to slide 32. Now I'll turn to the second half and our outlook for FY 2022. Turning to slide 33. In our base case view of the second half, we expect the supply chain challenges and inflationary pressures to continue. We'll manage the former with our forward planning process and the latter with price increases where appropriate. Consistent with prior years, in the second half, we will lean into our investments in R&D, go-to-market, and technology to set the table for FY 2023 and beyond. We'll also be launching new products and entering new geographies.
Finally, if possible, we will accelerate the timeline for building inventory for the first half of 2023 as a hedge against future supply chain hiccups. If we're successful, we will be reporting a lean forward inventory position at the end of FY 2022. Turning to slide 34. We spiked inventory once before in FY 2019, which caused a bit of confusion in the market. To avoid the confusion this time around, I've included a couple slides on inventory. Here, I have graphed our ending inventory at the half and year-end since FY 2015, the green bars, against what our inventory level would have been if we grew FY 2015 and the first half of 2016 at the same rate as revenue growth, the gray bars.
The supply chain unpredictability during the COVID period has increased what should be equilibrium across the system, having enough inventory to deliver for retailers while absorbing supply variability. Our goal for FY 2022 is to overshoot the COVID equilibrium line as a hedge against further supply chain unpredictability. Once the supply chain becomes predictable, we'll sell down to the pre-COVID equilibrium level. Turning to slide 35. Two notes for context and transparency. First, Breville is not a retailer. In market reports, I often see us categorized with Australian retailers, and I've never understood why. Breville is a product company sitting one step back from the value chain. Our inventory may be bad on a retailer's balance sheet, but it's a good thing on ours, for products do not go stale and price does not decline over time. In fact, we've been raising prices. Carrying cost is negligible.
What's expensive in our business is stocking out. We will ultimately settle back into our normal equilibrium level for inventory once the unpredictability of the COVID period has subsided, but until then, we will try to position ourselves to minimize stock outs across the system. Turning to slide 37. Given our performance to date, our current plans for the second half, inclusive of the amount of money we expect to invest into R&D, go-to-market, and technology for future years, we expect our EBIT for FY 2022 to be consistent with the market's current consensus forecast of approximately AUD 156 million. This concludes my portion of the first half 2022 presentation. I will now hand back to the operator to open the call for any questions regarding our first half 2022 results.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you are on speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask that all participants limit their questions to one per turn. If you have any further questions, you'll need to rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from Alexander Mees from Morgans. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jim and Martin. Thank you very much for taking my question and congratulations on the good result. I guess just sticking to one, I'm just interested in the guidance that you've given. It implies, I think, a 28% weighting of EBIT to the second half, which is lower than history. I'm just wondering how to interpret that guidance, whether you're flagging increased investment or cost in the second half or whether there's something I'm missing. Thank you.
Sure, Jim, great question to start out with, which is what we're flagging is increased investment. What I would say when you're kind of running the math, which is don't mistake the EBIT guidance we're giving for the second half as something that rolls straight up to revenue. In other words, revenue moves independently from EBIT, driven by the amount of investment we expect to make in the second half into marketing R&D and technology. The other thing I would say on this is this pattern is one that we repeat basically every year. We hold back investments, so to speak, from those three categories in the first half, relative to what our budget is, until we see how the half goes.
With the first half behind us, we then accelerate investments into those three functions to arrive at, from my perspective, what was the plan for the year. Martin, do you want to add anything?
I need to reinforce it. I think in these uncertain times when we've been talking about how we manage through uncertainty, you're naturally gonna see a swing towards the higher weights of EBIT in the first half versus the second half. If you're going back over historical models and thinking, "Hmm, this implies a lower weight for the second half," you're correct. It's all about where we're placing the investment first half, second half, rather than anything to do with sales or gross profits or other underlying costs.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John Sanford-Hind from Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jim and Martin, and thanks for taking my question. Perhaps if we could focus on the thing you're talking to. There's actually been a significant amount of work that's gone to this, a lot of development costs. Can you give us some color on how long has this been, I guess, under the hood? How long you've been working on it? An understanding of the scale, like the cost of scale, and how do you expect this to drive. I'm assuming you're using it as a way to differentiate versus competitors. How do you expect it to drive market share and, I guess, into the future?
John, I'm sorry. We just lost the line at the very beginning. Can you just repeat the beginning of the question?
Sorry. I just wanted to focus on the re-platforming of the company.
Yes.
The platform's obviously significant work's gone into it. Can you give us an understanding on the timing, and the costs and perhaps, you know, what sort of barrier, I guess, it creates versus your competitors?
Maybe let me take half of that. I'll set the table, and then Martin can talk about the cost. There's multiple elements to, you know, against what we've been investing on. If I take the global platform itself, we've been doing this for, I don't know, the last couple of years, we've been rolling this thing out. The exciting bit is that Australia, as a country is the last, let's call it, incumbent to go live, and we're taking them live, I think in March. When we get on the other side of March, we will have taken all incumbent territories live, which beyond that just means each time we add a new country, you then extend the platform.
From a global platform, let's call it 1.0 perspective, the good news is at the end of FY 2022, we will declare victory on the rollout of that fundamental backbone. What's the purpose of all of it? The challenge at one level is that what makes us different in a sense than a lot of our competitors is we are young. I'm not young in age, but young in where we are in the world. We have to go into a lot more countries that many of our competitors are already there. What I wanna be careful about is, well, if we go into more countries, do your back end costs grow exponentially because of the complexity that comes with that?
This was the beginning of this re-platforming maybe two or three years ago, was to make sure that we can very quickly get through the geographic elements of our growth plan without costs on the back end growing exponentially, and that's where single instance and tasks and those types of features solve that problem. I wouldn't say it's, you know, grabs market share relative to competitors. It's more they're already there. It's just making sure that we can do this as quickly as possible, and we're gonna get operating leverage across the company as we do it. I would say that's the global platform side of the equation. As we move into the consumer experience platform, honestly, I don't think about it within the context of market share or anything else.
I think about it within the context of what has always worked for Breville as an innovation company since the beginning of time. If we focus on delivering value to our end customer that we know very well, everything else seems to work out. The back end is coming up with new innovations to help them. What this digital platform is doing is helping to arc the life cycle of the customer with that product. Part of it is the front end of which one should I get or is this the right one for me. They then buy it either from us or from one of our retail partners.
They then get it home and the question is, did they get out of that product what they expected when they bought it? A lot of this investment is to facilitate, let's call it, post-purchase experience, for our customers to make sure that they got all the value that they were hoping when they bought it over the long run. That I think will bode well for our continued growth.
John, I'll just add, in terms of the spend or expensing of the monies that we've invested in replatforming the company, because of the change in FAS accounting last year, this is all flowing through the P&L. Essentially all of it is flowing through the P&L. It's not building up as an asset on the balance sheet. You've seen the numbers flow through the P&L. In terms of how much of that is contributing to the number I called out with the increase in investment in R&D, marketing and technology, not much, because as Jim said, we're coming towards the end of the program rollout, so we're not increasing our spend in this area. If anything, it's tailing off, allowing us to have funds for investment more in market-facing platforms. It's all flowing through the P&L.
It's not really contributing to the step-up in spend, but it is there at base level, and will be, let's say, for another 12 months.
Thank you very much. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Lawson from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Thanks, gentlemen, for taking my question. In terms of the inventory levels, can you comment on the shortfall in the inventory among your distribution channels, so amongst the effective retailers, and what you think their sort of reorder intentions are in the second half?
I'm trying to kind of think through it. If the whole system's at equilibrium, then the retail channel has the inventory that they need to be able to smoothly replenish their stores as they deal with the demand in front of them. Then in theory, Breville's behind them with a warehouse backstopping a mistake in demand, right, which is a judgment higher than they expected. If we get all that down and everybody's got the right amount, you would say the system is back to flowing and in equilibrium. I think if I go across the markets, Asia Pac feels like it's in pretty good shape on both the retailers and Breville within that construct.
We're flowing pretty smoothly in the Asia Pac region. Obviously, you'll have a skew here and there, but if I look at it in the aggregate. I'd say Asia Pac's probably in the best shape. If I look at EMEA, I'd say it's not bad. There's a little bit of work there to do, but it's in pretty good shape, and we should catch up there relatively quickly. If I, you know, kind of pick the problem child in the whole system, it would be United States because of the L.A. port. Now, at some level, the way to think about "supply chain complexity," right? For us, it's just time. It doesn't matter where in the supply chain it happened. If it's caused a one-week delay, it's a one-week delay.
What we had in the first half was that delay increasing, so to speak, of the L.A. port kind of going up. Recently, I'm gonna call this in the last couple of months, the L.A. port's been steady at 100 boats, so to speak. Once you absorb that initial time lag, then you get back to flowing. Our inventory is flowing into our warehouse now on top of this, you know, kind of 100-ship incremental inventory storage reality we're in. That's allowing us to start to heal up the retailers in the U.S. I would say we're not done in the U.S. There's still gonna be more work to do.
It also comes down to the retailers themselves, which is in this COVID world and so forth, how are they thinking about their inventory position and where they want it to be? There is some catch-up to do in the U.S., but I would say around the rest of the world, it's not material. Maybe would be the way I'd describe it, Martin, anything else?
No, I agree with that position.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from, Paul Checchin from UBS. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jim, Martin, and congrats on what looks like a pretty strong set of numbers. Just a follow-up question on the FY 2022 guidance and specifically on that reinvestment into marketing, R&D, and IT. In FY 2021, you stepped up that investment by around AUD 49 million, which I think at the time was described as sort of a pull forward. Sounds like in FY 2022, that step up will probably be at a similar level or maybe even above that AUD 49 million mark. Just wanna check if I'm thinking about that the right way mathematically.
Sort of if I can extend the question and ask, if that's sort of right, just could you just explain the rationale for, I guess, stepping up that level of reinvestment on FY 2021, which is already relatively sort of like an elevated step up in itself?
Let me clarify one piece, right? Which is the pull forward was not the amount. The pull forward is what it got spent on. What I mean by that is that as you know, everybody's working from home, demand effectively was self-sustaining. What we would have normally done in FY 2021 is in a normal year, those go-to-market dollars would have been spent on you know, launching products and supporting demand and all those kinds of things. Because that didn't make any sense at a time when we were handing out on the inventory, all of those dollars got reallocated into projects that the marketing team or the go-to-market team would have executed over the next three years, so to speak. This is the back end of the presentation today, where you see where we spent those dollars.
One of the things that I've talked about since I got to Breville in FY 2016 was this need to align the business model for, you know, kind of a long-term sustainable run, which is to make sure that we were spending at least 12% of net sales on marketing and go-to-market and R&D. If you look at FY 2021, FY 2021 was not 12%. It was less than 12%. FY 2022, I don't know, maybe less than 12% as well, which means we're not there yet. What we're really talking about within that construct, it wasn't a pull forward. It wasn't money we wouldn't have normally spent. We would've just spent it on something else.
The way the demand line was behaving gave us the opportunity to accelerate these investments in the digital platform. What I would say from a forecasting perspective is we still aspire to get to a point where we are spending at least 12% of net sales on go-to-market and R&D. Until we get there, we will continue to just lean into this to get to that kind of stable business model. We're only debating what we spend it on, not that we spend it.
I'll back that up, Paul. The pull forward was about the pull forward of the things we were spending on, not a pull forward of the level of spend. We've still got ambition to increase our level of spend towards the 12% sort of target that Jim laid down some years ago. When the top line of the business is growing, you know, nearly 25% every year, you're seeing extra spend being pulled in just to stand still. If you compare to what De'Longhi or some of our other competitors are spending, I think our head of marketing, Cliff, would still say, "Not enough." We're still looking to increase spend. I think our expectation would be we will see continued reinvestment in these drivers period over period, at least matching revenue growth.
Hopefully going ahead of revenue growth as we look to increase the rate of our spend.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Karas from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just a question on EMEA. Can you talk through how many SKUs, how many different products you've got in the different countries that you operate in there? Maybe comparing the U.K., where you've been at for years and years now, versus some of the newer countries that you're in.
Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question. It's mostly because I don't look. We run that entire geography as one idea, as opposed to looking at individual countries. That, from a metaphor perspective, I don't look at individual states in Australia or the U.S. either, meaning we just think of Western Europe as one thing. When I look at the total SKUs there, I would say there's still that range in total is still less than what we would have in North America. I even think North America would be a little bit less than.
Yeah.
Just from the portfolio perspective. There's still room for us to expand it, but you got to earn the right. That just, you know, kind of year over year, we tend to get range expansion happening in that geography.
What I'm trying to assess is just how far through that development in some of the newer countries in Europe you are and, you know, how many more years you've got of growth. Maybe if you could address that.
Yeah. I mean, look, I get the challenge. If I pick on Australia. Look, it's a little bit of an overstatement, but it's actually true. It's been going for about 89 years. You get a sense of Australia. I mean, Asia Pac and the growth rate it's delivering. If you back up, you know, the same with North America in that sense, right? Both Asia Pac and North America kind of bouncing around that 20% mark one way or the other, I think. I would expect Europe's got a ways to go, measured in multiple of years, before we ultimately settle down to what I would call, you know, steady state growing solely off the back of our new product innovation.
In Europe you've got obviously, you've got which stores you're ranged in. We get that fairly early in the piece. You've got the range of SKUs that are taken into those stores. There's still some expansion that can come there. You've just got the pure growth driver velocity of the SKUs moving through the shelf or the strength of the brand.
NPD coming on top of that.
NPD coming behind that. If you were to take Italy at the moment, one of the more recent countries we entered, have we got less SKUs on shelves than we do in Germany? Yes, probably. There's some expansion to come there. The biggest growth driver in Italy will be brand recognition and the speed of the existing sort of core range moving through the shelf with those Italian retailers. Last bit, do we see faster growth in younger countries than in countries we've been in for four or five years? Yes, we do. It's a combination of all of those factors.
Cool. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sam Haddad from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and Martin. Well done on another strong result. Just a question on price increases. Can you sort of give some color on the level of prices that you're putting through and what the pipeline is for further price increases? What you see in your key competitors refraining from increasing prices and absorbing some of the cost. Thank you.
Just look, the good news for us is we play at the premium end of the market. Our products are physically small, and what I mean by that is you can put a lot of them in a 40-foot container. Freight as a % of COG is pretty small for us. Obviously you know, the freight cost went nuts for everyone.
Yeah.
It just impacts us less than most companies. Given that we're premium, it spreads across the devices. That turned out to be. Is it something to deal with? Sure. It's not a big issue. Same on the, you know, we've seen input costs rise. Again, not a huge issue. Within that construct, we've got on the other side this continuing, you know, premiumization and so forth. If you back off promotion because you don't need to and so forth, that's effectively a price raise all by itself.
You know, on an average basis. When we put through price increases, we're maybe luckier than most in the sense that they don't have to be that significant for us to effectively defend our gross margin. When I look across the system, you get different answers, you know, kind of on the competitive front. Honestly, the second half will be a lot more interesting to watch because in the Northern Hemisphere, everybody's year-end is December. They might have a tendency to hold their breath a little bit. We may see something in the second half. What we did see generically, definitely was a pullback on how much they promoted. We don't promote that much, so it's not as big a lever for us.
For some of our competitors, they promote quite a bit, so pulling back on that to get their price increase that way. We saw a fair bit of that, and we've seen some price increases as well. It'll be more interesting to kind of watch the field in the second half.
Some SKUs in some countries we've taken price rises. It's not. It never is a, you know, spread the peanut butter everywhere, same price rise across the board. It's not a cost plus approach. It's a premium value in market, which ones can command that price increase. So that's what we've done so far. Are we seeing continued inflation on containers? It seems to have at least calmed now. Are we seeing some inflation on FOB back to China? Yes. Yes, we are. Therefore, I think you'll see us continuing to take some price rises on some SKUs in some territories, but not an across the board approach, Sam.
Honestly, it helps us to be the innovation-driven company, right? Because it's like, you can take price to whatever you want. It's a function of what your net 50 does on the back side as to whether that ends up being a good idea or not. This is back to whether you actually have the value to sell at the increased price. Because we're so innovation-driven, we tend to be able to do that. Obviously it helps that the price increases are not big swings.
Yeah. Are we constantly looking and evaluating price and margins in market? Absolutely, yes, all the time. Making decisions on a SKU by SKU market by market basis.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thanks, Sam.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Casey from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gents. Just wanted to touch on the working capital. At the FY 2021 result, the working capital at the time was about AUD 80 million below equilibrium. In your latest result, you built your working capital by AUD 130 million, and yet you're still saying it's below equilibrium. Can you just explain the difference between those two amounts and how far below equilibrium you are?
Yeah, sure, James. I tried to bring that out, but clearly didn't bring it out explicitly enough. We always see a high point in working capital in December as opposed to in June. Just we'll need to be careful looking. Are we looking at December versus December or June versus December? What peaks our working capital in December of each year is high receivables following our peak sales months of October, November and December. Yes, we were AUD 80 million below a June equilibrium in June. If you go back 6 more months, we said we were AUD 95 million beneath equilibrium in the previous December. We've almost caught those numbers up. You know, we could be 30 or 40 million beneath where I think the run rate is.
With the caveat that we've now flagged that we're going to deliberately, if capable, try and build inventory even higher for this June 2022. June 2022 may, on the inventory side, look a lot more like a December, but receivables will be lower again because it's a lower sales period. I hope that helps. If you look at how much we were below June, you've got to bear the seasonality and then comparing that to a December.
I think the one thing I'd add is you need to be really careful looking at 2020 and 2021 because, you know, you're sitting in COVID with supply chains wrecked and so forth. That's not a great year, period for looking at data. I think it's dirty. If you go back to, let's call it FY 2019 and just take working capital as a percent of revenue, that'll give you a sense of, you know, kind of notionally what does equilibrium feel like in this business when it's not in the middle of, you know, kind of this COVID mess that we're all dealing with.
I would expect when we come out of the, whatever it is, the new normal of 2024, 2025, 2026, whatever that is, you'd expect working capital to ultimately settle back into something closer to the pattern that you would see in, you know, 2018 and 2019. First half of 2020 was clean. FY 2020 as a year was dirty. That would be guidance to help you figure out where it should be on a steady budget.
Thank you. We apologize for the questions we couldn't get to today, and that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.