Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the City Chic Collective fiscal year 2021 results conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the call over to Mr. Phil Ryan, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Morning all, thanks for joining us this morning. I'm Phil Ryan, CEO of City Chic, and I'm joined today by Munraj Dhaliwal, our CFO. This morning I'm going to talk through what was a great year for CCX given the market conditions and the pandemic. Munraj will talk about financials, and I'll come back to discuss the outlook. In what was an exceptionally volatile and challenging year for reasons I don't need to outline, we've managed to grow our revenue by 32.9% and our EBITDA by 59.6%. These net growth numbers are off a strong result in FY 2020. I've been a CEO now during a pandemic longer than I was outside one, and from this, I've learned to be reactive and nimble, and we have found a way to continually grow despite the market conditions.
It is our people that have delivered this, and I'm exceptionally impressed with the way our team has remained focused on delivering for our customers despite the many setbacks. She comes first in everything we do, from product to customer experience. Our business is structured to make her experience the best it can be given the circumstances. Nothing outlines this better than the logistics situation in the USA this year. We shifted all of our parcels for months to express delivery to make up for the COVID-induced delays in our warehouse. Customer first is not just something we say at CCX, it's the core of who we are and it drives all of our decisions. As you all know, our strategic vision is to lead A World of Curves. In the last 12 months, we've taken huge steps towards this, despite the impacts of the pandemic.
We've remained focused on the three strategic pillars of plus-size, digital, and global customer acquisition, and on these measures, we have delivered. We are now 73% digital with over 1 million global active customers in the plus market, and more than half of them are outside Australia and New Zealand. Our global website traffic is 58 million a year. We are a digital global retailer with an EBITDA percentage of 16.4. We have strong digital storefronts and partner relationships in our four key regions of ANZ, USA, U.K., and the EU, and we've commenced partner trials in Canada and the Middle East. Our market-leading and consistently evolving product assortment, spanning varied price points, segments, and lifestyles, continues to deliver strong demand wherever we put it in front of our customers globally.
The core of our strategy is to find ways both organically, through our digital storefronts and partners, and inorganically, remaining commercially disciplined to deliver our assortment to an AUD 180 billion World of Curves. Our assortment is broken up into three key streams within our business. Fashion, mainly through City Chic and CCX. Conservative through the Avenue and now the new Navabi brands, and intimates through all of the above brands. Plus, we do Fox & Royal for playwear and Hips & Curves for that more everyday kind of lingerie. To design and produce the volume of assortment we do requires creative structures and discipline. That is where my background as a dressmaker comes to the fore. To get a clear creative vision for each of these lifestyles and opportunities, we use sub-brands within each stream to give the design team that creative direction.
We utilize light shapes and fabrications to deliver production efficiencies and give the customer the over 5,000 choices she has on our website now, and all at a manufacturer's margin. We are creating a global marketplace of our own brands for plus ladies or a World of Curves. Talking through the regions, we've continued to gain market share in Australia and New Zealand with 20% revenue growth, with only the fashion and intimate stream of product available in the market. We achieved this through range expansion within these two streams and strong online growth of 45%, with online now 54% of our total revenue in Australia and New Zealand. To deliver the conservative stream to market, we look to our learnings from City Chic's growth in the U.S.
What we did there successfully was leveraging the strong existing traffic streams of avenue.com and partners such as Macy's and Nordstrom to successfully acquire market share for City Chic. Transposing this to Australia, we are using the citychic.com.au website and partnering with David Jones to bring the conservative stream to market. Given these market conditions, stores have been pleasing at 12% comp store growth in FY 2021. We've also opened 12 new stores. At the end of calendar 2021, we'll have 45% of our full-price stores in the new gold fit-out, averaging around 130 sq mi, so slightly larger than our older store, and we'll have 12 in the larger format above 230 mi. The results from these new stores and the larger stores has been very strong, and we will continue to refresh our portfolio. It's another strong year in the U.S. with 37% constant currency growth.
We achieved this result in what was an exceptionally challenging year. The first half was pandemic and socially impacted, and we really didn't see a recovery till March, April. The result came from improvements we made with all of our 5,000 products across all of our brands now live on avenue.com, the website location. This has materially increased her assortment and drove both traffic and conversion increases. avenue.com, the website, is trading consistently above pre-acquisition revenue levels. Avenue-branded sales on the location are also above pre-acquisition levels as we've expanded and improved the offering. Our fashion and intimates, mainly through City Chic streams, have delivered the incremental growth. This has given me the belief that the World of Curves marketplace strategy is the correct direction for our Collective. She wants choice, and she wants assortment, and we can give it to her around the world.
The City Chic U.S. website has returned to pre-pandemic growth levels, with a recovery in the dress category really in March and April onwards. However, City Chic branded sales on Avenue have driven material growth in the fashion segment in the U.S.A. We've also relaunched on both Nordstrom and Macy's websites with City Chic, and they are performing above pre-pandemic levels. To start a trial in the Canadian market, we launched a marketplace with Hudson's Bay Canada, putting a pool of stock in there to dip our foot into that new market, as we did in Europe and the U.K. over the last three or four years, to make sure there is a next horizon of growth. There is so much runway for customer acquisition in the U.S. avenue.com, the website location, has really only had four months of trading post-pandemic, and the results are exciting.
We will continue to invest in marketing and reactivation strategies as I see years of growth in customer numbers in the U.S. FY 2022 saw the next step in our U.K. market entry strategy through the acquisition of Evans. The first six months have been pleasing, with the operation profitable over the period. The integration is now complete and inventories levels are back to a commercial level. Sales on the evans.co.uk are above a pre-acquisition run rate, a lot faster than we achieved with Avenue. We launched all of our three product streams on evans.co.uk location, and they've been received well by the customer base. This learning, I believe, is what got us above pre-acquisition much faster than in avenue.com. We took our learnings from the U.S., and we adapted our strategy to get market share as quickly as we could.
Our U.K. and European marketplace strategy has been implemented with our brands launching on Next, Freemans, Curvissa in the U.K. It's very, very small times months and initial results are pleasing. We've also commenced a partnership with the Alshaya Group in the Middle East to stock A World of Curves in 23 Debenhams stores in the Middle East and all of the associated websites that they run. We took the next step from our Zalando wholesale trials for market entry in the E.U. with the Navabi acquisition. The integration is going ahead of plan, and initial reads on the loyalty of the customer have been positive, but it's very, very early days. The inventory levels there are going to take some time to rebuild, and we'll position inventory from around the world to try and get some market share in Europe.
The exciting part of this is we're learning some new European lifestyles, including the Lagenlook, which is a more relaxed, longer line fit, quite European-focused, and we're going to incorporate this into our assortment next year, and we'll sell it globally. Getting more eyes across more types of our product and offering her the choice she has voted for around the world. With strong banner brands in ANZ, U.S., U.K., and now Europe, and strong global marketplace partners, we are positioned well to continue to grow our business and to lead A World of Curves. I'll now throw to Munraj to talk through the financials.
Thanks, Phil. Morning, everyone. I've included more commentary on the financials in the ASX announcement for this result. I'll just hit the high points now. The full-year result is in line with the unaudited sales and EBITDA announced in July last month. Sales of AUD 258 million is up 33% on last year. Pleasingly, our comp sales growth, which excludes the additional weeks from the Avenue and Evans acquisitions, was also above 30%. Comp growth in ANZ was 32%, with stores achieving 12% like-for-like growth and online growth in Australia achieving 45%. That was off what was already a high base for our online business here in Australia. Comp growth in the U.S. was 31%. avenue.com grew strongly, as Phil mentioned, particularly in the second half.
Whilst the City Chic website in the U.S. was down in the first half, given the impact of lockdowns on dress sales, it bounced back in the last quarter as the restrictions eased. We achieved this comp sales growth of over 30%, whilst also improving the gross margin quite materially. The gross trading margin was stronger at 61.8% versus 57.8% last year. This was driven by higher achieved sale price and lower levels of discounting, and that was across all websites and our stores. Pleasingly, the higher gross margin was achieved despite the downward impact of the shift in channel mix to online and the lower gross margin Avenue business. The cost of doing business increased as a percentage of sales by about 1%. At the interim results, you'll remember I flagged high fulfillment costs in the U.S. during the peak of the pandemic issues.
Although these moderated back to more normal levels in the second half, the overall impact on the full-year cost was about 1% of sales. Whilst we did benefit from operating leverage off our cost base, we also increased our advertising spend to capitalize on the opportunity to grow our customer base and take market share from our competitors, particularly in an environment where a lot of them weren't as stable and financially backed as we were through that period. We added almost 300,000 new customers in the year, and over 400,000 if you include Evans. To sum up the financial performance, we've been able to take market share and grow our business around the globe while strengthening our earnings margins.
Within a year of elevated shipping and fulfillment costs due to the pandemic, and also high Evans transition services fees post the acquisition for a few months there between December and March. The EBITDA margin increased to 16.4%, and EBIT margin increased to 13.9%. EBITDA growth was 60% on last year and 70% on pre-pandemic FY 2019. The business generated strong operating cash flows of AUD 24 million on a normalized basis. CapEx of AUD 4.7 million came in slightly under budget and really allowed us to rotate into more newly fitted-out stores and invest in our e-com infrastructure. Going back to July, August last year, we raised AUD 111 million to really strengthen the balance sheet and set us up to accelerate our growth.
In December, we used AUD 40 million of those raised funds to acquire Evans, and as flagged at the time of the acquisition, we needed to invest in inventory after buying that brand out of administration. That investment of AUD 8 million was made in the second half. It not only restocked the Evans brand, but importantly, it also includes City Chic and Avenue product that is now selling on evans.co.uk and to new partners in the region. We also used those raised funds to repay AUD 17.5 million of debt in the first half. We finished the year with AUD 71.5 million of cash and no debt, which you'll see turning to the balance sheet on slide 24.
As mentioned, we have invested in stock for our expansion into the U.K. and Europe, as well as for the launch of the World of Curves in Australia through Avenue and Evans, the launch of global marketplace strategy, and strong organic growth with avenue.com. We've also built some additional buffer into stock lead time to mitigate against the current delays in shipping that Phil will talk about in a second. The rate at which our footprint is growing around the world means there is a stream of organic initiatives being executed and potential inorganic opportunities. While we go through this phase, it makes sense to keep some financial flexibility. The board has not declared a dividend for the period. A dividend will again be considered at the interim results. On that, I'll hand it back to you, Phil.
Thanks, mate. I'll just give a bit of an outlook now. In the first eight weeks of FY 2022, we've continued to deliver strong positive top line and comparable sales growth. Evans and Avenue are trading strongly and are materially above what was pre-acquisition levels. The City Chic U.S.A. location is back to pre-pandemic growth levels, and our partners are also showing that pre-pandemic level in the U.S. With Navabi, it's really too early to make a comment. We haven't had any real time with them yet. In Australia, I'm pleased to say we're still gaining market share, with online growing close to historical levels. Australia has been materially impacted by the temporary store closures, with a loss of 33% of available trading days. Stores that are open are trading well. That gives me the confidence for a bounce back like we experienced last year when we open up again.
The impact of the closures is approximately AUD 1 million a month to our bottom line. There is still uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, especially around the Australian lockdowns and the timing we're going to come out. Our diversified global footprint helps us manage through this uncertainty as regions are at differing points in their recovery from the pandemic. As I said earlier, we've taken the learnings from U.S.A. City Chic market entry, we use existing traffic and partners to acquire market share for our conservative stream, mainly the Avenue and Evans brands, and get the product into the Australian/New Zealand market. Yesterday, we launched A World of Curves on the citychic.com.au websites. I'm sure you've all followed the emails and gone to the website today and had a look. I think it looks pretty good, the customer response was strong at a sales level yesterday.
That brings the conservative product stream onto the City Chic website, and today we have 800 products now live, with up to 2,000 launching pre-Christmas. As I said, the customer response is good. I would even say better than what we saw on avenue.com with the City Chic product. To complement that strategy, we've signed a partnership with David Jones in Australia for World of Curves and Avenue and Evans and all of the sub-brands to go into a concession format in 14 stores, and most importantly, onto their digital marketplace. This will launch in the first half of this year. The physical presence is really there to support the market entry and to drive awareness.
We learned from our U.S.A. experience that this is the best way to gain market share, and we see DJs as the natural fit for this product range, and it's quite light in capital expenditure as well. As I've said previously, I see this segment, the conservative value segment of the Australian/New Zealand market, as a key building block in our growth story. In September, we'll go live with many new partners around the world, Walmart in the U.S., eBay in Australia, Debenhams in the U.K. We have integrations underway for Very U.K., Zalando in Germany, Amazon in both the U.K. and U.S.A. We are dealing with them now wholesale, but we want to get it onto a marketplace, and also Target in the U.S. We've expanded on the partnership with Alshaya, and we've moved towards a franchise model.
We are now franchising two of their 23 stores and associated websites. That is happening now. As we're growing around the world, we've got to know a lot of the plus-size businesses. We are putting ourselves in the right position should any become acquisition opportunities. We now have a 24-hour customer service and live chat with offices throughout the globe to make sure we are there to talk to our lady whenever she wants to interact, like a strong global digital retailer would. Guys, shipping globally is increasing in price and delays are real and consistent. That's where being a pandemic CEO comes in handy. You learn to adapt. We built a couple of months into our lead time during COVID for many reasons, and this should mitigate shipping delays unless the situation deteriorates.
Regarding cost, the scale that we've grown in production volumes at this stage has been able to net off the increase in shipping. Where rates are and factory costs are now, I can see that continuing, this cost is evolving monthly. We've also built up our inventory across all regions for growth, we were able to fill that to cause any delays we do with the late shipping. I'd just like to talk about ethical trading because I am very proud of what we achieved. This year we published our first Modern Slavery Act, everyone had to do that. On top of that, we achieved a green rating in the COVID Fashion Report. We rolled out worker surveys to our top 24 factories and almost 7,000 workers, we received an 89% worker satisfaction.
We are now working on tracing tier two and tier three of our suppliers, and we've actually looked to trace our first cotton to the farm, which is a big step for us. We've updated and strengthened our cotton region bans, and we are looking to introduce cotton DNA testing so we know the origin of that cotton to really tighten up the regions we're buying our materials from. The pandemic has taught me how important relationships are with team and with our customers. We have to keep the business adaptive and always learn from our experiences and change our path to what the customer and environment is telling us. I think we've been doing that quite well. I'll now open up to questions, please operator.
Your first question today comes from Naveen Patney with E&P. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Congrats on a great set of results for the year. First question I had was just in terms of U.S. sales. Obviously, this year, as you mentioned, there were obviously strong growth but obviously adversely impacted by some currency. If we just did some quick back of the envelope caps, and I might be wrong because it's just because of time, but it looks like first half really accelerated. It looks like it was in constant currency up 23%, half and half in first half and it was up, I think about 12% in the second half. I was just interested, does those workings sound roughly ballpark to you? If so, is there just some seasonality within the business that we should be thinking about or any other factors there?
Naveen, Avenue annualized three months without our acquisition in this financial year on the year before. Makes sense?
Yeah. No, that does, mate. I was just sort of referring to half one half rather than versus PCP.
Yeah.
Yeah. The half one half, right? The December half 21 on the half on half. Just not versus PCP, just thought it was up to 23%. The June half on the December half up 12% in constant currency. Yeah. Maybe you can get back to me just on that if.
Yeah. Sure. Look, I can come back to you, Naveen, at a headline, the second half in the U.S., from about March onwards, we saw a strong bounce back as restrictions eased. We saw an acceleration of both Avenue and City Chic growth in that last quarter. However, January through to March, was still pretty heavily impacted.
Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah.
I think also the drop ship and wholesale business materially was down sort of AUD 8 million, AUD 9 million, and that would've impacted that as well, which is now back up and running.
Okay, fantastic. Thanks for that color. Just on inventory, that was really helpful just in terms of you mentioned that there was I think you mentioned on the call there was AUD 8 million of build related to growth initiatives. It looks like, as a percentage of sales, probably increased slightly over the year, but not much. Reading between the lines, it sounds like you're pretty happy with your inventory levels at the moment, in terms of not needing to discount or have markdowns. Is that fair?
Yes. We have a clean inventory build. That is the comment I would make there.
Okay, great. I was just interested in whether also, just lastly, whether you could provide some high-level comments as to how the run rates from a margins perspective for the various geographies are tracking. Obviously, Navabi is pretty early. Maybe from a Europe and U.S. or U.K. and U.S. perspective, how from the margins run rate we should be thinking about things going to next year?
I'll let you take that, Munraj.
With the bounce back in the U.S. in the second half, gross margins returned to more normal levels. We've previously mentioned to the market that the City Chic product here in Australia sells at gross trading margins north of 60. Our international business being primarily Avenue, but now also Evans trades in the 50s. The gross margin bounce back in the second half has continued into the first eight weeks in the U.S. and also in the U.K. However, the U.K. was a few months behind the U.S. in opening up.
Of course, in the U.K., we had an initial period where we were moving warehouse, and we were clearing some old stock that we acquired with the business. Overall, the Evans business actually achieved a gross margin higher than the Avenue business in the U.S. Going into this new year, it feels like the gross margins or the level of discounting is back to a more normal level. We've got the stock for growth, so we're not having to pull back on promotional activity. It's a more normal level.
Okay, great. Very helpful. Just, sorry, just the last question to follow up from that one. That's helpful in terms of gross margins perspective at a high level versus at a geographic level. Are there any major differences there on the EBITDA margins side of things relative to those gross margins? I imagine you're probably still in an investment phase in the U.S. on marketing and sales or what have you. Is there any extra color you could provide there to the EBITDA level margin?
That's exactly right. The digital businesses internationally at an earnings margin level are stronger relative to the omni business here in Australia, if you exclude the marketing investment. When you include the marketing investment in where we're driving customer acquisition and market share growth in those new markets, then that brings the international market's EBITDA margin more in line with the Australian business.
Okay, great. Thanks, team. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Tommy.
Thanks, man.
Your next question today comes from Marni Lysaght with Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Phil , Munraj. Well done on another excellent result.
Thank you.
I just have a question, I guess, another one around working capital. Payables has declined since the balance date in December. I understand that would have built up in response to building up inventory for Evans. As we build, you've got to build up inventory this half for Navabi. What's a sensible way of thinking about your payables? Have the terms of suppliers changed recently, just given some of the bottlenecks and headwinds?
Look, I'll definitely say to get things through and fasten things down, we've done some things with payment to really be the preferred producer and make sure we're using our working capital the best way to make sure we can secure the stock. Marni, would be my first comment. To say wholesale have the payables changed? I would say not really, and we'll see that more normalizing. I've definitely gone and dealt with factories, and where appropriate, used payment terms as a big lever to get the product and put us to the top of the queue in many ways, especially as we've grown into new regions and new factory bases with the different type of product we produce for Avenue around the more knit garments than what we would see in the CC woven.
That's clear. There's two more from me. Just in terms of, I guess, DJs, that looks really interesting. Obviously, 14 bricks and mortar stores. Can you talk to the margins you'd expect to get out of this? Because I'm thinking you'd probably have to put in some capital contribution for the fit out.
Marni, the capital is immaterial in those stores.
Yes.
Like thousands of AUD, not even tens of thousands of AUD. It's not a material capital investment. They are there to drive market awareness, and that is the key of the strategy, as Macy's did on a wholesale level with 150 stores in the U.S. for many, many years, driving so many people to learn about our new brands. City Chic was a new brand in that market, and the amount of anecdotal people that told us through our customer line that they found at Macy's and then Googled us and came to us, as I said over many years, is phenomenal. We are very aware of the department store situation in Australia. We think DJs are strong and are a good partner. Hopefully, we can even supplement their online marketplace sales through having some physical presence with them. Really, that is the key to that strategy.
It's not about a huge driver of level of growth. What I see is the conservative product streams in the Australian market is a huge building block. For those of you that have been part of our story for some time, prior to Avenue, the entire stream of product was started to do that in Australia because I saw opportunity, and that's been positioned Avenue and then Evans in time. This launch has got kicked down the road a few times, and now it's here. I think DJs are a great capital light way to bring some physical presence into it and also launch with their marketplace. On City Chic, we'll put it in other places we see appropriate online as well.
Yep. I understand that from the balance sheet perspective, it's very capital light. Just in terms of the P&L, is it hard?
I don't see it as a big driving block, Marni. It's not there to be the building block is my comment.
Well, I don't see it would go backwards, but it's part of a broader strategy to bring them to market. Those 14 stores are open to trading, such as our City Chic stores, if that's a more direct question.
Okay. With Navabi, that's quite a Scandinavian and conservative style. Obviously, they're both brands. Navabi is a sub-brand. Avenue and Evans are new brands. Surely there's some sort of synergy benefit there?
Yes, correct. We will be putting all of those products as we see fit to get some of the brands out to the market physically through DJs, and then also through our World of Curves on both our website, which will mold into a World of Curves, and also the DJs marketplace and other places we feel are appropriate where the plus-size customer is shopping.
Okay. Just one final one from me. Just on the tax rate, I can see that's gone down, what, 1.3 percentage points year on year. Just in terms of the trajectory moving forward, given you'll have a full 12 months of Evans and then you'll have Navabi on the books as well.
I'm not even touching that one. Munraj, that's you.
Yes. Look, the tax rates in both the U.S. and the U.K. are lower than Australia at the moment. As those businesses grow, the effective tax rate will come down. We expect it to settle somewhere above 25%-30%.
Okay. Thank you very much. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thanks, Marni.
Thanks, Marni.
As a reminder, please press star then one if you have a question. Our next question today comes from Wassim Kisirwani with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, guys. Phil, can I just ask about your comments regarding avenue.com? I think you described the results as exciting. Can you elaborate perhaps on some of the indicators that you're seeing in customer behavior and engagement, and kind of what's working really well, and how you assess that Avenue opportunity now versus when you first bought that business?
Yeah. I think the learnings for us, I'll give a bit of background on that. When obviously the world hit a hurdle last year, we decided to move all of our warehouse to one place very quickly, because Avenue was obviously bigger than CC at the time. We, at that stage, had to very much keep the separate sort of brands and put a little bit of CC on and try out how it's worked. The way that customer has taken to the CC product is what is exciting for me.
The next thing, and I said it in my speech then, we've also not just beaten pre-pandemic levels with the CC as the building block to get there, but the Avenue-branded product has beaten what it was doing a few years ago. I think with our increase in assortment and our increase in range and improvements, I'll say, in what they were doing, we've been able to drive better results through the City Chic or Avenue-branded products as well.
Okay, great. Second question from me, just on some of the growth initiatives. Obviously, you're well capitalized at the moment, and you've talked to inorganic and organic growth opportunities. Can you elaborate on some of those organic opportunities ahead? In terms of M&A, can you comment on the availability of likely targets that you're looking at at the moment?
Yeah. Look, I'll talk to organic and Munraj can talk to the inorganic. I think, if I go by region like I did the U.S., I think we've really just began with a bit of air and space, and I'm very excited as to what that can throw as inventory normalizes. We get more product into market than we did this time last year. What I didn't say in the beginning, the first half in America has Black Friday, which is their biggest trading period, right? Last year, given all of the confusion and delay that happened at the beginning of 2020, we weren't stocked the way I would like to be. We're ready for it this year, and I'm really excited. That's probably the first and biggest organic block. I think the next one is bringing our Conservative value stream to Australia.
As I've just mentioned through to Marni or whomever else asked that question, I think that's probably very exciting. You've got maximizing the Evans, bringing her the full product range. I think there's 3,000 products up there now. There's a lot more range we haven't gotten to her yet. Navabi hasn't got one of our garments yet. If you look at those four key areas, they're strong levels of organic growth for a period. We've got Middle East and Canada as our trials so that we can be sure that there's something else boiling in the background. Yeah, really confident in organic, and I'll throw to you, Munraj, for the inorganic.
Look, it was only a month ago that we were talking to the market about the new acquisition of Navabi. The focus right now is absolutely on integrating that business, getting that restocked, setting up the team with our operating structures. A lot of that has already been executed in the last month. That's the focus for now. Look, our approach to inorganic, it isn't an aggressive acquisition strategy. The strategy is the strategy.
We see inorganic as a way to accelerate that strategy. Our approach is, and we're lucky that the plus-size market is quite a small market in terms of the prominent players in each of the regions that we would do business. We know them. We're talking to them about trade, about trends. If there is an acquisition opportunity in those discussions, then we're ready to execute. Look, right now, the focus is on bedding down Navabi.
We're in the conversations we need to be, is the comment.
Good stuff. Thanks, guys.
Pardon me. Your next question comes from James Casey with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gents. I jumped on the call late. My apologies. I just wanted to check with the entry into the conservative segment. I'm just interested why you chose two brands instead of one. I can't see it in the presentation. Is there a plan to put stores on the ground in either of those brands?
James, my take on that is you're looking at it wrong. A brand to me is a segment of product within a market, and I think what I've seen through the customer globally is that they are looking for different lifestyles and different choices all in one place. I think the old school, the brand has got to open up a shop, right? I've got to get that thinking is not in my head. The brand is about what is the segment of product that a customer likes and how can I deliver that to market most efficiently.
While we were all talking, I know I shouldn't be looking, but I got the best sellers from World of Curves products in Australia today, and they're the same as they were in America. The taste levels are very similar globally. I don't look at a brand like I've got to open a shop called Evans or a shop called Avenue. I look at these are a segment of the market that I can deliver through a global or physical storefront to offer her the choice that she has shown me she wants around the world, would be my comment to that.
Okay. No stores planned at this stage.
We have 14 DJ stores.
Yes.
Concessions. Right? We will go where the customer are. I think that's part of what I said about being flexible and understanding her, James. You've got to move with what she says. If this is where it goes, that's what we'll do. There's no plans to open in this half, I can say definitively. Right. After that, to me, stores are 20% of our business now, James, and the assortment you can carry in stores is materially less than the 2,000-3,000 of that product mix I can measure online and through our marketplaces globally. To me, getting this product across both U.K., E.U., and now Australian eyes is the store rollout of the future, where you're getting it to customers in a different way, where they can shop in one place. This breadth of assortment that really drives conversion and traffic, and that's how I see it playing out.
Okay. Thanks, Phil.
No worries, mate. You seem to have cut the operator off, James. Thanks, mate.
Might have woken him up.
Our next question today comes from Alex Zhao with Kabouter Management . Please.
Phil, and Manraj, congratulations on these strong results. I have a few questions. One is on fulfillment cost. It seems that it's kind of like 16% of the e-commerce revenue, roughly speaking, for FY 2021. I'm just curious on the order or parcel level, how much is fulfillment cost as a percentage of order value, for instance? The reason I ask that is, I've seen other e-commerce players that have their own warehouses and start getting into trouble in the sense of their warehouse are reaching over capacity and kind of the logistic cost is kind of inching up. I'm just curious, how are you able to keep the logistic costs in control? Because you've kind of faced both long lag.
Yeah, look, I'll answer the strategy questions, and I'll give Munraj on the cost world. To me, we're very good at making dresses and understanding that discussion that James and I had about delivering different segments of products to market. We don't own any warehouse facilities around the world at this stage. We are all third party. For that reason, I'm aware of what we at the company are very strong at, and we focus on that. I'll throw to you, Munraj, around the costs.
Yeah, sure. Look, it's different by region, but the way we are charged for those services are on a per unit level or per activity level. Yeah, I think, and I can always come back to you with all the detail by region. It is different by region. In the service prop in Toll, we have a fully automated facility with extremely good SLAs. In the U.S., it's more of a manual facility, and the U.K. as well. Without going into the detail of every region, we are charged by activity, and it's a fully variable cost.
Do you see?
That also gives us the flexibility. Someone who specialized in warehouse is a lot faster to flex up than flex down. Flex up, hopefully never down, with us as we grow. We've set those expectations with our partners.
Got it. In recent discussions, do you see the shipping costs trending up even more, or it's kind of at least stable at the current level?
The shipping part of it, there was an increase in the first half, where there was a lot of bottlenecks in the U.S. That has since abated, and it's back to more normal levels, as the U.S. return to more normality. There is still a small surcharge that FedEx is charging us in the U.S., but it's quite immaterial compared to the big surcharges they were charging in the first half at the height of the pandemic.
I see. Another question then I have is that I think during COVID, kind of everyone moved up size one or two. There's some kind of non-plus size brands that start offering more selections around the edge, kind of like the size 14 or 16. Do you see more competition around that range?
Yeah, look, I don't think COVID has driven that. I think that has been something that's started over many years. Many people have done it. Prior to COVID, you had J.Jill, you had Loft, you had Anthropologie, you had Urban Outfitters all do it before then. Most of them have dropped it in that time. I think in my almost 15, 16 years experience in this market, there's always been people trying to get it. Forever New Curve did it, and it was everyone wanted to talk to me about it 18 months ago. Today, they have less than 100 products on their website. Right?
I am very aware of it, and I follow and look at what everyone does in order to make sure I'm aware of all the choice for our lady. I put her first. I want to know where else she can look. I'm not going to say it's not something we aren't aware of. I don't think COVID induced this, is probably my overarching comment. Those market conditions have played out for many years, and we've been able to find growth in that period either way.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from John Hynd at Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning, Phil Ryan and Munraj Dhaliwal.
Hey, John.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. I'm just probably after some more color on the smaller parts of the business, the marketplace and wholesale. Phil, I'm interested on how you see those two channels looking in three to five years. Wholesale, obviously flat half-on-half and down year-on-year for the half. Marketplace is starting to show some improvement. What can that channel look like going forward?
That's a good pick-up. I've said to you guys for years that we had profitable marketing in the U.S. with our partners, where I'm really looking at that differently. I see it morphing predominantly to a marketplace model because I think that is the way she shops. I think that is the way, and hence the World of Curves in Australia. I want to own the marketplace if we can. I really see the marketplace as the future there, John, not the wholesale. There'll be a little bit.
There's some people like your Stitch Fix who are only wholesale, we'll have a bit. The partner business and, what's their name? Alshaya in the Middle East. Excuse me. There'll be bits, I do see a lot the marketplace being the focus, I see it as sort of not dilutive at an earnings level. I don't see it as massively accretive to our percentages, but I do see we can get the growth of our margins over time as we get with partners all around the world who already have those eyes.
Thanks. Are you saying that wholesale is, at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a drag? Is it a drag at the same level we see revenue? Is it a AUD 2.4 million drag every year?
When you say drag, John, mate, sorry, what do you mean?
On costs.
No.
Fall down as a cost?
No. There's no cost to it.
Right.
We'd have the same EBITDA earnings as we do it overall. Both of them would, but they're not. You obviously have less gross margin, but I'm leveraging. I have a couple of people in the sales division that's selling product all around the world. I've really repositioned that to become a marketplace division where we're trying to structure the partners of one or two pools of stock in the market so that we can leverage our entire range to get her much more choice. In wholesale, like Zalando bought 12 items from us a month, maybe 15, if we're lucky. Now we produce a lot more than that, and I believe getting that across the market will drive our revenue, and the way to do that is offering the marketplace because they'll never buy into all of our assortment, yet we are prepared to do it.
If we can then leverage that to other marketplaces as well as now our site, Navabi gives us a foothold and the volume basically to get all of our assortment in there, then we can leverage that to partners in Europe, do the same with the U.K. and Evans. Obviously, it's a well-tried policy in the U.S. What you're seeing year-over-year is very hard. All wholesale, we dropped AUD 9 million in what was growing. Nordstrom came back in April.
I held tight to get a better deal because I wanted it to be profitable, even though we could've probably gone live October, November last year. I wanted to make sure it was future, where I saw it in the future. I’m not going to say it’s going to make a lot more money, but at least not earnings decreative. That's why you've seen it not come back as fast as it otherwise could have. I wanted to set it up for future.
Sure. Thanks. Just one more, just perhaps, a silly question, but the DJ's revenue, from the concession stores, that'll fold into Australian stores. It won't go into wholesale, will it?
No, that'll be stores because we'll own the stock.
Yeah.
The concession, we'll staff them. It's a concession, Tom.
Yep. Got it.
Yeah. Look, that's not a big block in my mind. It's there to help our market expansion. I think it'll be great for DJs. They're the natural partner, and I want to give them a plug, too, and say they've been great throughout this. The vision from Bridget and the fashion team, for their plus customer to bring them that width of assortment, really like thinking. I think it will really ramp up our digital partnership as well as the stores.
Thanks very much, and once again, congratulations on a good result.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up from James Casey at Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, guys. Just one follow-up. Just in your outlook commentary, just ANZ top-line sales were in line with the PCP. I suspect online's picking up the slack from the closed stores. Can you just give us an idea of how.
That's the right comment. That's the correct comment.
Yes. Can you just give me an idea how many stores are closed in Victoria and New South Wales at the moment?
Munraj, do you want to take that? Yep, sorry.
Yeah, sure. There's just over 10 in New South Wales and 19, 20 in Victoria.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back to Mr Phil for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. There's no doubt the current situation in Australia is playing on my mind as it is everyone's a lot. We are lucky we have that globally diversified revenue streams where people are at different levels of the pandemic, across different countries and are different stages of their recovery. The reads in current stores that are open are giving me confidence that when this does bounce back, it'll do what it did last year. Let's hope the stores can get open soon. It has been another great year, and I'd like to say thank you to all our shareholders and to all our team. I look forward to many more, and thank you for your support.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating.
Thank you.
You may now disconnect.