Good morning, all. I'm just waiting for all the participants to join, and then we will start the webinar shortly. Okay, thank you, everybody. It appears all of the participants have now joined our half-year call. Thank you very much for joining us for this, the half-year presentation for Domino's Pizza Enterprises FY21 Results. I'm very pleased to be joined this morning for our presenters, which include our Group CEO, Don Meij, our Group CFO, Richard Coney, our Australian-New Zealand CEO, Nick Knight, our Japan CEO, Josh Kilimnik, and I'm very pleased also for dialing in from Europe. We have Andre ten Wolde, our European CEO, and Stoffel Thijs, our German CEO. With that, I will hand it over to our Group CEO, Managing Director, Don Meij.
Thank you, Nathan, and thank you for everybody who has an interest in listening to us today. I'm going to start on slide three, and slide three is a slide that we presented back at our full-year results. But before I do that, I just want to, as I started the last presentation, I want to start this presentation by saying thank you to all of the global DPE team members. It's not lost on many of us that we're a Brisbane based company. A lot of our sales growth and a lot of our business is being done in some very challenging markets. And for many of our franchisees and team members, Domino's has been a bright part of their life in a challenging environment.
I want to really thank them for not only our franchisees and executives and management keeping our people safe, but every time we do a Zero Contact Delivery, we also keep our customers safe. So we presented this slide back in August, and I want to talk about the plan and the way that we were navigating in an uncertain environment. And today we're going to talk about the results that have come from that plan, the way that we prioritize the safety of our customers and our team members, how we invested in distressed media. And for those who don't know what distressed media is, it's when television becomes cheaper because other advertisers may be pulling out, or digital, or even street signs.
To seek out growth opportunities, and I think you're going to hear the CEOs talk a lot about that and some of the opportunities that have expanded for us, to remain agile in the uncertain environment, to strengthen our franchisee base, to refine our operations and to grow our carry-out and delivery business, and to prepare to be more value-focused as a business. If you come with me now onto slide four, I'm really pleased to announce that we have been able to serve these piping hot meals of pizza and our side items of AUD 1.843 billion, up 16.5% on the previous corresponding half. Our online growth, the powerhouse, grew by 25.4%. Our EBIT, and we're going to talk about EBIT going forward because of the new accounting changes, standards that more often and EBIT to network sales particularly, but our EBIT to, it was up 32.3%.
Our EPS up 31.7%. Our dividend is up 32.5%, 50% franked, and our free cash flow was up 50.3%. If you come with me onto slide five and we talk about our group trading update, we are happy with the first seven weeks of trade where our network sales are up 20.9%. You're going to see that in our results that there's even a growing distance between the network sales and same-store sales due to the number of white space stores, as we call them, that are opening in Germany, Japan, and France. The CEOs will talk to that. We are really seeing these significant openings in these new territories, and the manager will talk to you about that. Really happy with the store growth as well. It's been a great start to the year.
If you come with me onto slide six, I'd like to be able to share that the coming half is likely to be even stronger than the first half for store growth and that we expect to have stronger than normal same-store sales. When I say normal, stronger than our three to five year outlook. We're not offering guidance today, but we do recognize that we do offer medium-term outlooks of 3-6% same-store sales and 7-9% network sales and a Capex somewhere in the AUD 60 - 100 million. And we do expect just in this year to exceed all of those. Potentially, even the Capex spend will be on the higher side of our outlook. When I want to highlight in our results that while we are expecting strong growth in the half, there are a couple of things to note.
For example, that we do have potentially some FX challenges with the weakening of the yen against the Aussie dollar, and we are going to be rolling some exceptional comps in the last quarter for Japan that would be considered a little abnormal in that first phase of COVID, but the medium view of the business is unchanged, and you'll see that we're going to reconfirm our outlook for the three to five years today. If you come with me onto slide seven, I think the results that you're seeing are the result of one word, and that's focus as a business.
Three years ago, we shared with the market that we were no longer going to be looking at other concepts around the world and that we're even shutting down some of the things like our cloud kitchens and so on that we'd been working on and that we believe there was far more pizza to be sold in all of our geographies. And that's what you're seeing delivered here is a really focused leadership team and how we're delivering. We're reflecting on the fact that our franchisees in this environment too have illustrated that they can be agile and such a large team around the world, often shifting a group can be difficult. But our franchisees have proven their maturity, the experience, and depth, and the quality of franchisees we have.
That Japan and Germany, and you're even going to hear a lot about France from us, that those three geographies have really taken a shift in the last two to three years and particularly over the last 12 months. Also, I want to highlight on this page that we're really proud that our franchisees are also enjoying the strong performance and the leverage of the group. Our average franchisee profitability grew by 20.8%, and that's a constant focus for us as a business. If you come with me now onto slide eight, the real standout in the results by far has been Japan with network sales up 42.6%. Of course, Germany, and you'll see some of the numbers that are broken out, started with our lowest average weekly unit sales only five years ago in Europe and now is averaging our highest average unit sales.
In fact, Germany often ranks as the highest individual average unit sales for our whole group for many weeks throughout the year. So a really strong performance, and we're happy for Stoffel to be here today to talk about that. If you come with me now onto slide nine, a strong first half of 131 stores. It's true that we did have some carryover in that, in the first quarter for stores that didn't open that were from the first phase of COVID in that April-May period. But what I want to share with you is that we have invested significantly in development teams over the last 12 months.
And so while this is a really strong number that was supported by some flow-on effect in the first quarter, I can share with you that our pipeline shows that we're going to open even more stores in the second half, and we have at least visibility into a strong 18 months of store growth ahead. Typically, our business opens most of the stores in the third and fourth quarter. We did have that flow-on in the first quarter, but you will see in this half a more normalized rate where quarter three will be back to a slightly softer run rate in that quarter with a very strong last quarter. And it's great that it's transparent now and our shareholders, you can see that on any given day on our website, our shareholder website.
If you come with me onto slide 10, we're building an international business and we're delivering, and I'm really proud of that as an Australian company that nearly AUD 1.2 billion of network sales were delivered internationally and about AUD 100 million of our EBIT delivered out of Japan and Europe. Very strong performance, and at this point in time, to talk in more detail about our financials, I'm going to hand over to Richard Coney. Thank you.
Thank you, Don. Just turning to slide 12, Nathan. Look, thank you, everyone, for attending. Look, as this has been a great result, so one that I'm looking forward to present to you now. And really, if we first of all just start with we are presenting our results, including AASB 16, the new leasing standard. Just you'll note that because we've got clear comparability. As Don noted, our revenue, sorry, our network sales were up 16.5%, but our revenue was up 20.9%. And this is a result of our very strong sales in Japan and the significant leverage of our 385 corporate stores that we have in the Japanese market. Our minority interest expense is up, and that's just a direct translation of the very strong profitability in Germany. And our NPAT has ended up AUD 23.7 million, up 32.8%. Noting our statutory growth is actually up 37.9%.
As Don highlighted, our EPS growth up 31.7%, and our dividend follows, but this year being 50% franked, predominantly with so much of our earnings now coming offshore. Turning to slide 13, again, as a result of the leasing standard, we are now going to be presenting this geographic summary highlighting in EBIT as a percentage of revenue, predominantly reflecting that our operating profits are more reflective on the basis of EBIT rather than EBITDA. Noting Europe has grown its EBIT 19.2%, and this is just the excellent revenue and EBIT growth due to our network sales expansion and the scale benefits. Noting our margin has also improved. ANZ EBIT growth up 9.8%, which is pleasing and predominantly result, again, of leverage of network sales growth and our improved trading in our corporate stores.
Moving to Japan, just exceptional EBIT growth of 106.6%, which in constant currency was actually up 112.3%. We've had very strong revenue and EBIT growth due to our outstanding network sales performance, significant margin expansion as a result of our corporate store leverage, improving from 9.5% - 14.3%. And now, actually, when we compare to network sales, it's actually exceeding ANZ in terms of percentages. We did have increases in our global costs, predominantly due to D&O, the D&O insurance costs going up with the toughening of that market that continues in Australia, not specific to Domino's, and also D&O, sorry, and also our incentive long-term and short-term increasing as a result of our strong performance. Moving to slide 14, key normal slide. This is normally quite a big number in H121, is our non-recurring costs. They've materially reduced this year.
For the first half, we've just had some significant charges relating to our legal defense fees associated with the ANZ Fast Food Industry Award class action that continues. So AUD 0.7 million, not a big number compared to the prior half. Moving to slide 15, our cash flow. Yeah, look, a very, very strong result with cash conversion up at 89.5%, partially impacted from some of the working capital unwinding. At the full year, we had a working capital benefit partially relating to COVID and our strong sales of AUD 63.6 million.
So AUD 13.2 million partial unwinding came about in this half. Our net operating cash flow up 21.7% to AUD 162.3 million. And our free cash flow up 50.3% to AUD 124 million with the benefit of higher profits and a lower capex spend in the half. Moving to slide 16, this gives you some more detail on our capex.
As highlighted, H121 was actually mainly due to timing, AUD 36.9 million versus the prior half of AUD 49.1 million. However, as Don highlighted, we are anticipating accelerated investment in our new store openings and strategic franchise acquisitions, leveraging the current momentum and the group's strong balance sheet. And so therefore, we're still expecting to end the year at the top end of our guidance of AUD 100 million. Moving to slide 17, overall, our balance sheet has strengthened. It's a strong balance sheet position. Our net debt's reduced by AUD 70.6 million versus the full year and AUD 102.5 million versus the prior half. You'll also note that other non-current liabilities have increased, and that's a result of revaluation of our German put option and market access right as a result of the continued consistent strong performance out of Germany. Moving to slide 18, key financial ratios here.
Points of note, return on equity 44.4% has increased. Return on capital has increased. Cash conversion is strong. All of these numbers are very positive. And a key one you're seeing, our net leverage ratio reduces from 1.5 x- 1.1 x. Moving to slide 19 is some more detail on our group debt position. And if I just point you to the top right-hand chart, you'll see that our available cash and undrawn debt facilities increased by AUD 54 million to AUD 445 million. So a very strong position for us to take advantage of in the future. Now, moving to slide 20, and my favorite slide, which just highlights the continued and consistent EPS growth over the past 11 years and obviously this significant step up in the current half.
We're going 31.7% for the half, three years at 15.9%, and our underlying EPS over a 10-year period is 22.8%. A very strong result. I'll now pass you over to Andre Ten Wolde, who will talk to you a bit more about Europe. Thank you.
Thank you, Richard. Good morning to you all from Europe. I'm very pleased with the performance in Europe given the high level of impact of COVID in the daily life here. It's made my first full year of being the CEO for Europe quite interesting, and I'm pretty sure it will continue to do so. Although Don's already mentioned it, before I go into the result, I'd like to say I'm especially proud of all the team members in our six markets in Europe who've shown that throughout these challenging conditions, they still committed to the safety of their colleagues and our customers. I'm happy to report strong network sales growth, as you can see, 13.8%, driven by new stores, obviously, and the same sort of sales growth of 6.4%.
At the same time, more customers are ordering through our online digital platform, and this is pushed by a strong increase of our delivery sales during COVID. We've opened a record number of stores, and going to the next slide, you can see that we've opened those stores over all markets. Predominantly by existing franchisees in all markets have increased their average number of stores. And besides the store openings, this slide also shows you that there's still significant room to grow in all of our markets. Noting that the Benelux now has about 70,000 people per store, still a lot of gain there, but Germany, for instance, we still have 243,000 people per store.
If you come to me to the next slide, before going into this myself, I'm glad to be able to hand over to Stoffel, who can talk about the extraordinary performance of Germany over the last period.
Thank you, Andre, and good morning to all. February this year, DPE celebrates its fifth anniversary in the German market, and I'll take you back to day one when we presented to the investors about our three-step approach towards our conversion. Step one was the physical conversion of the store. Step two, getting high-volume mentality into the market and the minds of our people, and step three was going to be the organic sales growth, and Don already alluded to it, that in many weeks in the last half, Germany has had the highest average weekly unit sales for the group, showing that high-volume mentality is part of our DNA in Germany now. I'm very excited to report that we've had another half of very strong double-digit growth, and this has resulted in record profits for both our franchisees as well as Domino's Pizza Germany.
I'm extremely proud to tell you that our managers and in-store teams have been able to, on the back of increasing delivery sales, they've been able to reduce the delivery time by 7%. With that, they laid the foundation for future business to grow because we're delivering pizzas to hungry customers, and the pizza will be hotter when we get to the door. In August, I told you about our more regional approach towards opening stores. In the past, it had been Hamburg-centric, but we've moved to four clusters around the country. I'm very pleased to report that it has resulted in 15 store openings in the first half, which is already better than our full-year record from the year prior. In the first seven weeks of trading in the second half, we've added four stores and many more to come for this year.
Overall, our team is very grateful that they've been able to trade during these very difficult corona times, and they've been giving back to the community where they could. Having said that, I'll hand back to Andre.
Thanks, Stoffel. Like Don said, there were weeks over the last six months where Germany had the highest AWUS of the market, which is always good for me, so I can challenge the other CEOs to top those numbers. Germany going into COVID, obviously, was already doing quite well, and going into COVID, it also already had a high delivery percentage. But some of our markets, notably the Benelux and France, went into COVID with high carry-out percentages and almost lost all that. To give you an example, during the curfew in France, we went from a 50/50 split between carry-out and delivery to a 95% delivery, and I'm happy to report that also in France and in Benelux, all teams in stores managed to keep our average delivery times to a level that's unprecedented, especially if you compare that to our competitors.
I'm happy to also report that the resilience of our system has shown franchisees that it's actually a really good place to grow, and the appetite for opening more stores has increased over all our markets, and also in France, where we took this more regional approach based on the learnings in Germany, we've had a very good number of store openings, and we are sure we'll continue that and increase that over the next half year, so the investment that we're doing in more people in the development and the different strategy that we're rolling out is really starting to pay off. At this moment, I'd like to hand over to Nick to discuss the ANZ business.
Thank you, Andre, and good afternoon, everybody. If you come with me onto slide 26, I just want to call out a couple of things on this slide. A strong start to the year with the 5.7% increase in network sales, and if you go to the bottom right-hand side there to that graph, you can see that the real benefit of that fortressing strategy with nearly 19% of our sales coming from stores opened in the last five years. If you move with me now onto slide 27, we opened 13 new stores in the half across the region. That's against six in the prior corresponding period. We shared our ambition, or we have been sharing our ambition for our franchisees to operate on average five stores each. We made good progress on that goal. Now, coming over to 2.1, that's an increase of 0.2.
You can see there that's a healthy growth in each of those cohorts. Franchisees taking on their second store, becoming multi-unit for the first time, but also an increase in those expanding larger networks. If you come with me now onto slide 28, I'm pleased with this strong result for the half, but I'm also really pleased to see that our franchisees are sharing in that, seeing that their EBITDA at a store level is also growing at a similar rate to ours. Driving that is the strong delivery growth in Australia and New Zealand. The good news inside of that is the majority of those customers, those new customers for delivery, are new to the business. They're not switching from carry-out across to delivery.
That gives us a really good opportunity to focus on rebuilding the carry-out business, which is still materially affected in some regions, at the same time as maintaining those delivery customers which we have introduced to the brand. What you're really seeing here is the culmination of years of work in lifting the bench strength of our franchisees as they really have shown their capability and appetite to grow in this period. We've shared some years back our Operations 360 program and that focus on improving or removing the bottom end and giving our higher-performing franchisees the skills and ability to continue to grow. If you look at what that bottom cohort looks like today versus what it did some three years ago, we have made great progress there, and it continues to be a work in progress for us.
I just want to call out as well in relation to the JobKeeper program. At the time, there were parts of the DPE business that did qualify for this, and that at that time was the right thing to do. It kept those team members in touch with the business. However, we've now seen their need for that has passed and as such have returned or are returning that payment. I also want to point out that there were no executives whose bonuses that were in any way influenced by that JobKeeper payment. Moving now onto slide 29, I just want to talk quickly and give an update on the franchising inquiry in Australia. The government has issued a response to that, and our ambition, Domino's, is to be best practice in franchising. It is at the heart of our business.
Regardless of whether these things become law or not, we have already taken proactive steps to introduce a number of measures off the back of those, which I'm really pleased about. I also think the last six months has been a really strong testament to what a strong model franchising really is and continue to be amazed with the resilience of our franchisees. I'm going to hand over now to Josh to talk on Japan.
Hi, everyone. Really strong results in Japan. And you can see that in the top left where you can see great same-store and total sales. And this coupled with 68 stores in the half really indicates or really shows that we've got a great opportunity in this business and we're capitalizing on this. It's important we've also had some great digital growth in the business. And this has come not just through the influx of delivery, but also through carry-out as well, which is where we've had a good opportunity through all the measures we took on our online platforms to convert people over to our digital assets so we can continue the engagement of those customers on those assets and continue that conversation. I guess at this point, I just really want to thank all the team members out there.
I mean, we've lifted to extraordinary levels through the half and continue to do so. And we couldn't have done it. And they did it effortlessly and professionally. And without their focus, really, these results couldn't be achieved. So let's go to the next page, get into a bit more of the detail. As I look at this slide, I mean, the things I pick out here is just the incredible opportunity where 168,000 people per store at the moment. And what you'll notice is that through the high sales that we've seen franchisees really come alive and as they grow their networks from two-store franchisees to three and five-store and even doubled into the six or more. We now have three franchisees or three franchise stores per franchisee. And I see this in the future.
While we've got a goal of five, I see this bouncing around as we bring in more and more franchisees into the business. Might go to the next slide, please. Okay, so some of the detail around what we've been doing, and over the last couple of years, we've been talking about our strategies at length, and really, what we've been doing is executing against that strategy. We've talked about the barbell strategy and our new occasional pricing strategies. We actually rolled these out through the peak in COVID in May last year, and we talked about that at the full year, but we've been continuing to execute on that foundation. They are foundational and structural changes to the business that have meant we've been able to capitalize on more eyeballs on our business through COVID.
We've done things like half-price carry-out, or we call it Hangaku, to replace a very tired BOGO layer in the business, which was sort of six or seven years old at that time. We also brought in a thing called no minimum delivery, which really provided an access point for people that didn't want to spend JPY 1,500 with us or JPY 2,000 in some occasions. These, of course, coupled with fortressing, which is still part of our strategies, and delivering at a very, very high level operationally has really driven marked inroads into the hearts and minds of our consumers, both old and new. Initially, COVID did act as an accelerator, a new customer vehicle, if you will. But it was really up for us to convert those into raving fans, convert those customers into raving fans.
We made some of the boldest decisions through this time, and we did it while most took a sort of a backseat waiting and sort of a wait-and-see approach. We also did this changing the cost base through smarter supply chains, freight harmonization, or harmonized ingredients costs, and really a more efficient dough production model through our back of house. This opened up the ability to access all of Japan. I think one way to really conceptualize this is a couple of years ago when we talked about our business, we were really only accessing about 60 million people in Osaka, Tokyo, and Nagoya. We often got asked about the other prefectures and how we're going to access those. We didn't have a model. Now, with our new model, we can actually roll this and access all of Japan.
So that sort of opens up the other 65 million people. And we can do that profitably. This is evidenced, I guess, by we're now number one in 17 of the prefectures. We've entered five new prefectures just in the last half alone. And we'll continue to enter into more and more. You'll see in a further slide that we entered in Hokkaido, which was one of the questions of a recent roadshow. We now have that model. We have a supply chain that makes sense. And now we've got an ability to access everything. Of course, we're really, really pleased with the high franchise profits. It's a record store openings and really the renewed engagement of our consumers. We had an influx of customers, but we firmly believe we'll retain those customers. And of course, how are we going to expand?
I think that's on whether we're going to be corporate or franchise. Well, right now, we have both models or both engines started and offering mature returns for all stakeholders in the business. And I might hand over to Nathan now.
Thank you, Josh. I'll just now take you through our environmental, social, and governance update, which you'll note at the top of this slide. We're referring to this as Domino's for Good because we recognize that ESG is important to our stakeholders. But really, ESG is the responsibility of not just leadership, but it's also the responsibility of every one of our team members. And we want to make sure that the ESG program resonates with all of our team members right down to our team members in stores. And we believe Domino's for Good will do that. We've previously provided an update on our materiality assessment, and that outlined five key pillars in which we intended to base our ESG program. So that was our food, our people, our customers, our environment, and our community.
For some time, we've always considered that Domino's does the right thing because it's the right thing to do. So in a number of these areas, we already had initiatives in place. I'm very pleased to announce that we have continued very solid initiatives in these five pillar areas. As you can see on this slide, for example, in Europe from April this year, we intend to use sustainable chocolate in all of our lava cakes. France continues a very progressive program to reduce the amount of plastic and cardboard in their business, including in their supply chain and in stores. As just one example of that, this year, they're saving more than 260 tons of paper. That program is expected to step up. Throughout our community, throughout the history of our business, we've always been a giving company.
We've always, in natural times of disaster, we've always planned to be the last kitchen to close and the first one to open. We've stepped up that giving program throughout COVID. As you can see, we have expanded by giving more pizzas to Feed the Need in Japan. We fed the front line in Australia and New Zealand. We've donated money to those in need at Christmas time in Germany, and we're very proud to have started a three-year partnership in Australia with Lifeline, focused on mental health through Domino's Australia's registered charity, Give for Good. I'm very pleased to announce that we have now welcomed at the start of this month our first Chief ESG Officer, Marika Stegmeijer, who's a very experienced executive. She will join the global leadership team and be based in the Netherlands.
I very much look forward to welcoming her and introducing her on a roadshow to our investors and analysts in the coming months. If we go on to our next slide, at our AGM, we made a number of commitments, measurable commitments. Those included that we intended to reach gender diversity at the board, global leadership team, and country leadership team by 2030 with at least 40% female representation. You can see on this slide, these are the first times in which we intend and we will continue to provide you measurements as to how we're achieving against those measurable goals. We also announced that we intended to reduce our European supply chain center fleet emissions by 20% by 2025. That was using an FY19 benchmark. I'm pleased to advise that we've progressed this goal with a 5.6% reduction in supply chain center emissions.
And that was achieved through two things. One was the introduction of our first compressed natural gas truck in Europe. And the second was about route optimization. So we've been able to reduce the emissions per store, which we're very pleased to be able to advise. These are the first goals, but they won't be our last. We intend, through our global working group that we've established, to set more measurable targets against all of our key material areas under our ESG or Domino's for Good program. And that includes this year, we intend to start modeling and measuring our carbon emissions across all of our regions so that we can set science-based carbon reduction targets, which we'll advise you on as we set those. If we move into our outlook section, Don mentioned earlier our focus as being the keyword from the past six months.
We expect that to be the progress and the keyword for our future outlook. We mentioned our purpose, which we launched at our AGM two years ago: our pizza brings people closer. At the time, we advised that we intended to align our business with a single purpose and to be relentlessly focused on that purpose because we thought that was the best opportunity of delivering. As Don said, management believes that's what we've been able to achieve in this half. The clear principles that have delivered Domino's success before and during COVID, we believe, will guide us through this next phase. That includes putting people first, our partnership with an even stronger franchisee base, making long-term decisions and investments which benefit all of our partners, a Domino's-only expansion approach, which means a single brand, a single concept, and a single-minded focus.
And that, we believe, will allow us to grow market share through product, service, and image. The purpose and values which we've previously established and shared with you, we believe, will continue to shape our success over the coming months and years. We're prepared for ongoing uncertainty with COVID-19 into the calendar year 2022. We expect societal restrictions will continue to affect all of our markets differently. And the leadership team has outlined some of those to you today. We have seen strong digital delivery growth. And COVID, as we see it, has brought forward the age of delivery. Carry-out orders do remain challenging in many of our regions. But we also believe that these present an opportunity post-COVID-19 to rebuild those. All of the leadership and management is focused on seeking growth opportunities. And that includes distressed marketing and real estate.
As Don mentioned at the start, while we had planned for a shift to austerity, that is not something we have observed at this time. Instead, our focus is continued to be on delivering value, which, as we mentioned at our investor day in November, is for Domino's, it's about product, service, and image at an affordable price. Management believes that is the key for us to continue to win and retain customers. We are developing and rolling out new products and new occasions, including our Chicken Box in a Bucket program, which is in Europe. We are seeing positive results from that already. I wanted to show you two advertisements to show you some of these new products and occasions from Europe and from Japan.
[Foreign language] Domino Pizza.
With that, I'll hand back to Stoffel.
Thank you, Nathan. So I've presented before and I said that our franchisees have well arrived at phase three organic store growth. And Andre mentioned that in Germany, we currently have one store for every 245,000 inhabitants. And I want to put that in perspective. That is an equivalent of the Australian business with about 100 stores, which points out the growth that lies ahead of us. I'm proud that of the 15 stores we've opened in the first half, all but one were opened by internal, so either existing franchisees or store managers. And we will be building together with these store managers and existing franchisees in two key areas. One are the white spots. So this is servicing pizzas to new customers to Domino's. Since today, we only deliver to about 29% of the German population.
Secondly, we'll be fortressing our existing markets so that we can drive customer experience and increase the profits for the franchisees. These inquiry sales don't only flow into extra profits, but they also flow into our ad fund, which makes us able to market the brand even more so that we can have more successful openings and make Domino's a household name in Germany. In a recent survey conducted under our franchisees, not less than two-thirds of our franchisees indicated that they want to open a store in the next 12 - 18 months, which once again underlines the trust of a lot of these franchisees who came from other brands into Domino's, the trust that they've put into our brand to grow together towards the future.
To be able to provide for this growth, we have been increasing our development team by twofold over the 18-month period so that we won't stand there without the stores for all these excited managers and franchisees to run. The last thing that's worth noticing is that we'll have a little step up in our royalties in the second half of this year. This was always part of the plan when we bought into Germany. The last and final step will be in the second half of FY22, bringing us to our full royalties back to the U.S. Andre, over to you.
Thank you, Stoffel. Looking forward, Europe has its challenges as it's hard to predict the various levels of lockdown that we still might face in the future. But we're very confident that with all the learnings over the last 12 months on what customers want from us during lockdown and the different levels of lockdown, we will face anything that's in our way in the next six months. And therefore, we expect to open a record number of new stores in Europe. Our pipeline is really strong, both in Germany as in France. As in Denmark, we're opening record numbers of stores. France has done very well in sales and will continue to do very well in network sales, obviously also because last year, over this half year, we faced a closure of the market for approximately five weeks. And we will be up against that.
So that will increase our network sales percentage. In the Benelux, that has the highest carry-out business of all markets. We're seeing that promotions around delivery are working very well. And we're more and more offsetting the less carry-out that we have. But we're also expecting carry-out to become less restrictive. And we'll open up for carry-out again and have some good promotions in place to service the carry-out customers. Because we've seen that the growth in delivery is lots of new customers, not necessarily carry-out customers turning into delivery customers. Data shows that that is only true for 20% of our customer base. And 80% is new customers. And with the restrictions easing, we think that our carry-out customers will come back. We've seen that students are just not turning into delivery customers. But they will come back once we can do more carry-out in our markets.
Lastly, on Denmark, what we've seen is that we continue to repair the brand. The latest research shows that we're increasing our brand image. We're coming from a very low base. Later this year, in June, we'll be there for two years and we'll show some same-store sales back then. I can already tell you that the sales increase of the stores that we've opened early when we started the market is quite impressive. With that, I'll hand over to Nick.
Thank you, Andre. Moving now on to slide 41, looking forward for ANZ. The summary for us is that we're very confident in our franchisees' capability to navigate these uncertain times, and they've really shown their strength in their operations in this last half. Our stores are really well placed for delivery growth, and we remain focused on initiatives to rebuild the carry-out part of the business. There is a small speed bump in this half, and that is an increase in soft commodity pricing. We expect that to moderate into the next half, so it will only be a short-term one. Delivery growth in digital, particularly, has been strong, and we are focused on new menu initiatives that help us sell more pizza to those customers who have tried us for the first time.
We're very focused on developing technology that helps our team members and our stores be the most efficient providers in the delivery business. That's through things like recently our Call on Arrival program, the automated call or text message to a customer to let them know their order is very close by. That's showing meaningful savings in the time that our team members spend transacting. It continues to be a game of execution. Operations 360 is definitely a work in progress. We will continue to focus on that. New stores and the insights to help us make sure we get those development opportunities right have been bolstered by an investment in new team and technology in that area. We expect that organic new store openings will accelerate into this half. The re-franchising of corporate stores will continue.
Before I finish, I just wanted to thank the team members, our franchisees, and our store managers for their hard work in this last half. And it's not lost on us how difficult at times that job is, especially in these current times. And we really thank you for your hard work. I'll hand over now to Josh.
Okay. So looking forward for Japan. And it's really we've got a couple of two big resource and store-building machines that we're likely to draw down upon. And we will hit a 50% milestone for franchising. But it's important to recognize that corporate will also grow. And it's actually very important that they do because that's where we basically curate most of our leaders and franchisees going forward. So really what we'll be doing in the next half is going deeper and going further to execute these strategies and build upon these foundations, these structural foundations that we launched last year. And this combined with the continued Fortressing strategy, which is still happening in Tokyo and Osaka and those areas, which if you can recall back to this time last year, put a little bit of pressure on our margin.
But now, because we're opening so strong in these more wide areas, it gives a better profitability profile for the business. And of course, we're going to really look at accelerating these white spaces under this new model and do what we do, which is strive to get to critical mass and to get to an inflection point that everyone benefits through cost efficiencies across each one of those prefectures. One thing to note, when I do say regional areas for Japan, it doesn't really correlate to the size of the regional areas that we might have in Australia or elsewhere. When I talk about regionals, we're talking about one million plus people. Hokkaido is a great example of this, where we have 5.2 million people that we've only just accessed now with four stores.
Also, it's important to recognize that while our long-term strategy hasn't changed, we've got some sales hurdles coming up in the next half. And that's a result of the COVID numbers. We had extraordinary weeks. We were up 70%, 80%, 100%. And it's important to recognize how that leverages through the business. But we're really confident under these structural strategies coupled with the further planned store growth. We're confident we'll continue to deliver material long-term benefit to the business. In fact, if you look at those data points, you'd probably remove those because it would skew the results. But I take great comfort right now in thinking about, well, what is different in the business now as opposed to before COVID and while we're going through that. And there's a lot that's different.
And not only the strategies that we've spoken about, but just one data point to reflect upon is when we sat in front of you this time last year, we talked about TV and we talked about getting to that critical mass point. And we talked about 52 weeks. Well, this time last year, we were 30-34 weeks on TV on a very flighted schedule. What I can say to you now is that we're comfortably on 52 weeks a year now, not on a flighted schedule, but with a dual layer, which means basically double the eyeballs hitting and seeing our business, which gives us a chance to tell a story about our brand and our business and the various different layers that we have. But at this point, I'd like to hand over to Don.
Thank you, Josh. Incredible results. And it goes without saying how proud I am of the fantastic leadership team we have throughout the DP business, that with most of us in the global team not able to travel, the execution and the way that each and every one of the leaders has risen to the occasion makes me incredibly proud. And we're grooming more leaders below them for future businesses; it's quite an exceptional business that we're building. If you come with me now on to slide 43, we want to reconfirm our outlook for our store count. We remain very confident that the extra investments we're making in the development teams is going to make sure that we can deliver these numbers.
One of the things that we learned from a number of years back in the high growth periods was to make sure that we're really investing so that we can continue to deliver. And store count is just so critical to the growth view that we have of our business. And we've put on more development people than ever before in our history over the last 12 months. We also remain active in pursuing some more Domino's acquisitions. And we hope we'll be able to deliver those in due course. If you come with me on to slide 44, we are also reconfirming today our outlook. It remains unchanged of 3-6% same-store sales, even in a post-COVID environment. Our store growth of 7-9% of network and net capex in the AUD 60 million-AUD 100 million.
Of course, we did highlight that this particular year will be an outlier against all of those three positively. And finally, if you come with me now on to slide 45, the investments we're making today will deliver for our customers, our franchisees, and our shareholders. We really do have a single-minded focus, a very clear strategy. We're all in Domino's and very dedicated to this brand. Many of the members in this team are still youthful by age, but have a long tenure and experience. So we're making long-term decisions. And we will continue to deliver over time. The outstanding growth in network sales and profits from H1 is a testament to the talent of the people that we have in this business. We're not just only invested in development teams. We've been investing in our technology.
We're going to have our third generation of app and web launched in the first half of 2022. It's incredible that our current second-generation app still delivers really high conversion rates, and as you can see from our numbers, it continues to grow. But we're restless, and we want to make sure that we have the best-in-market technology, and that will continue to be delivered. We've also been investing heavily in our strategy and insights team, so you'll see that in part in our global level, but also filtered throughout the rest of the business, so that we're trying to stay one step ahead of the customer and get unique insights that will lead to building better technology, better products, better services, and making even our stores far more efficient. We've been investing in the ESG area.
It's not only that we now have a head of ESG, but we're also appointing members in almost every country, two of those already hired as well. So we're building a head of steam here that Domino's as a business, DP as a business, is not just a vehicle to produce strong profits. It's also a vehicle to make sure that we're giving back to all stakeholders and building a business that we can all be incredibly proud of in all facets of the business. We're really seeing a significant shift in what's happened now in Japan, in Germany, and France. I mentioned in the last year that a lot of the profit growth and sales growth of DPE in the previous decade came out of the Benelux and Australia and New Zealand, approximately 60 million of the 340 million people that we service as a business today.
But let it be known that the real push and growth is now coming from these bigger businesses, which in some ways we're finding new ways to manage those. And you've heard about breaking our business into pieces rather than just being one centralized office. We're trying to manage from the field so that we can do more at the same time. So store fortressing will continue, although we do have a lot of white space stores that are opening right now. Project 3-10, no longer a project, but part of our DNA, as we call it now, 310, is going to continue to be an efficiency driver, but also, obviously, for the customer, a hot or fresh pizza, a hot or fresh side item, maybe even a bucket of chicken in Europe. But the convenience, but also the quality that comes with that.
Continue to build on the experienced franchisees. You can see our numbers are growing. We're very focused, and it's not lost on any of us that we want to make sure that our franchisees are sharing in all of this growth, and you're going to see that, and we look forward to proudly presenting compounding growth of franchisee profitability and illustrating that on a half-by-half basis and continue to invest in that digital capability, so we really do feel like we're uniquely challenged during COVID, but even in the post-COVID world, that a lot of these delivery customers have been new. In some markets, 90% of the delivery customers are brand new, and in many cases, we've just seen the carry-out customer leave our business.
And we do believe in a post-COVID environment that we'll be working very hard to make sure that we get that carry-out return to add to our delivery growth. We have a strong balance sheet. Our franchisee profitability is strong. And so we will accelerate. We will have a record year. This is going to be a bigger half weighted in the second or in the fourth quarter. So yes, we're feeling that whilst there are a couple of hurdles, a couple of speed bumps with sales or FX in this half, by and large, the underlying growth of this business is strong and will be strong into next year. So at this point in time, thank you for listening to us. And I look forward to participating and answering your questions. Thank you. Back to you, Nathan.
Thank you, Don. So as Don mentioned, we now have time for Q&A. We did schedule today. We delayed it by a little bit just so that we would have sufficient time to go through everybody's questions. I know we've got a number of them have already been received. I have seen a few emails come through from analysts sending some questions through to me. If you could help us out by just clicking on the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and just copying and pasting those questions into there, it'll just make sure that we don't miss any of them as we go through. So with that, I'm just looking at the first question in from Craig Woolford. And that is, Don, has the list of new franchisee applications grown in the past six months?
Yes. Because we've got so many questions here, I'll do that as a group. It's not so much external applications because we really are focused on internally franchising. You'll see the numbers in here that are well into the 90s, where we call internal also being store managers. So we're very passionate about seeing existing franchisees expand to more stores, but also existing managers, and you've heard from all of the leadership team that there's been an increased appetite, and that's helping to fuel this growth, so the answer is yes, a lot more interest, but it is still mostly internal, and we're targeting it that way.
Thank you, Don. The next question is from Michael Simotas, who starts with, "Great result." Thanks, Michael. With respect to commodity cost headwinds called out in ANZ, how meaningful are these expected to be for the EBIT or EBITDA and how much should be funded by franchisees versus the franchisor? Maybe if we start with that one.
Yeah. I'll hand over to Nick. Nick, you can add to that.
Yeah. Thanks, Don. And thanks, Michael, for your question. The reason we point them out is that it isn't all green lights. There are some ambers there that we have to work around and work with. But I'm confident that we have programs in place that won't impact meaningfully on our EBITDA, either at a DPE level or our franchise level. We'll obviously bear the cost in our corporate stores. And franchisees will do the same on their end. Hope that answers that question.
Thank you. Franchisee economics seem to be strong across your territories. Are there any numbers you can put around this, and is there still considerable variability, or is this settled?
It's really interesting, but there has been a rise across the board, and we're talking in the averages. We do want to reinforce that there are still CBD tourist areas, downtown stores. We own some of those stores. But we do also have some sub-franchisees, maybe in Amsterdam or in Paris, in Sydney, and so on. So those stores, those franchisees' profitability will be down. In some cases, we may be still giving them support in those markets. But by and large, across the board, we have seen quite strong growth from each of the businesses. We put a first number out today. We do look forward to getting and showing graphs in the future where you can see the compounding rate of growth, both from an individual store metric, but also as franchisees aggregate those stores.
Because it should be always remembered that one of the reasons our results are growing is because of the number of new stores we're opening. And that same metric needs to be applied back to a franchisee as they grow to three and four and five and 10 stores. So yes, we don't break out in individual countries, but it's almost across the board. We've seen some quite significant growth, with the real leaders being obviously in Germany and Japan.
So then in terms of that mix of delivery versus carry-out, a number of questions relating to that. And I'll put them all together. Firstly, obviously, what's been the impact then on delivery and whether that's made a change in transaction value, for example, Australia, Japan? And the second one is whether that makes management think any differently about fortressing, given this change in delivery and carry-out mix through this period?
So from a macro point of view, it doesn't really change fortressing because that's still part of the efficiency model. There are still a lot of areas that we have an imaginary map. But geographies have changed. And we've done a lot of work on showing this to shareholders in the past. And that has not changed. But one of the markets that's had to take the most shift has been Europe. So I might even get Andre to talk because, I mean, France, we've seen really material mentality shift to delivery and embracing delivery. So Andre, any color there for Europe?
Yeah. Like I mentioned, in France, we went from stores that were 50/50 on a customer base and then went to 95% delivery overnight and had to hire a lot of extra delivery drivers to get all those orders to the customers. And that also changes the model a little bit. And obviously, we were smart enough to put some great delivery deals out there to get more customers in the delivery sphere as people after 6:00 P.M. are not allowed on the streets anymore only for necessary stuff and not for buying pizzas. So yes, delivery has always had a higher ticket because it's more often a meal. And people order more for delivery than a casual pickup. But it also has more costs for us to deliver with that order. So it doesn't really change the business a lot.
What we've seen at first is that when we had less carry outs, the increased deliveries didn't make up for the loss of carry-out. But as we've gotten smarter and understood what the customer wanted more, in recent months, we've seen that that has improved a lot.
Adding to the fortressing question, another way that we can look at that is we are and we have been thinking about our store designs changing so that with the age of delivery, we do expect to build stores with smaller foyers more often. There was a period of time when carry-out was so significant, particularly in places like Europe, we were building really large foyers because we were doing 70% or 80% carry-out in some markets. That has been a mental shift for us that while we do want to go after carry-out in the post-COVID environment, we do think delivery will be still stronger. The one exception to all of this is actually Japan. So Josh, do you want to? Why has Japan been different with carry-out growth and delivery growth?
It was likely to do with the structural, the way people live in Japan. There still is a third space culture. While there is a lot of remote work happening right now, people still are seeking safe places to eat. They look to the big brands to do that. Now, overall, the business always benefits from those. Really, what we've done in our business, and just to backtrack a little bit, I was just thinking that through, we've also been able to answer a very important occasion through our half-price carry-out. So that has really accelerated carry-out orders for us. We didn't have an access point for consumers at that. So our store profile might not change as dramatically as the rest of the other markets because people are still seeking safe environments to come to.
And now they can enjoy Domino's in Japan without having to get a buy one get one free, which is traditionally a very high price point. What's interesting is that people still generally buy more pizzas because you also capture the three-person or the three-pizza deals and those sorts of things as you go through. So that's probably one of the big reasons that carry-out is continuing to grow because we've answered a significant tension that the consumers had with us.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you, Josh. A question in terms of digital and technology. We've seen an acceleration in digital adoption across the industry with peers increasing digital investments and loyalty programs. So how are you thinking about maintaining your competitive advantage with technology? And what are the priorities over the next few years?
Yeah. So we're still going to continue to make sure that we're spending in our existing consumer platforms. And we've got a new web and a new app. But for a little while now, and what is speeding up is that we think that this is still an efficiency battle in delivery over the next 10 years. And so we're really focused on those operational technologies like our Future Order Screen, call on arrival, which we talked about in the last window. We're talking about our delivery areas. We're talking about some of the software that can move and be more productive in our routing, a new GPS system that's coming out. And then on the other side, really significant investment in data. I think we were pretty good at data coming into COVID.
We always had the parent company in DPZ as we consider best-in-class, period, worldwide in our space. Pick any QSR. We really think DPZ has been the best at this, and so we've hired one of the executives out of that team who's building it in our business. We're investing heavily behind that, and all of the CEOs here are paying for it for their markets. They're inspired by it because it really does shift the game for us to get these insights and be ahead of the game. You can expect us to really keep pushing in that area. You'll see some of the costs flow into our global P&L for that, but other parts of it do get dispersed throughout the P&Ls.
Then a question on M&A, both at a larger level and a smaller level. So the balance sheet is strong. Do you think industry is ripe for M&A activity in 2021? And that also in Germany, industry feedback is a number of independents have filed for bankruptcy in recent months due to COVID-19. Can we expect smaller-scale acquisitions in Germany?
I'll hand over to Stoffel first. And then I'll answer the second part.
Yeah. Thank you, Don. So in regards to possible bankruptcies and even outside of that, maybe independents in a less certain world with COVID, maybe people that were leaning a bit more towards restaurants. We're open to either welcome people on board or buy businesses of them. It's not the core of our strategy. We are fully focused with our development team on building the organic store growth. But we'd be fools if we wouldn't be looking into these sorts of opportunities in the market, which we are. I'm not expecting anything. The question was like smaller acquisitions. I'm not expecting anything large there. But anything that fits our portfolio well, especially in the south and the west where we're reasonably under-penetrated and where the majority of the German people live, those could be great options.
And to answer the second piece is that Domino's as a whole is learning from itself internally. And many of the businesses are doing quite well as we all best practice share as a franchise system would. So I wouldn't say because of COVID it's made it any better in an environment. But what did change a couple of years ago is that DPZ embraced us and absolutely has opened up a lot more opportunity for us. And that's what we're pursuing right now.
Just on that M&A question, Richard Barwick asked, "When you talk about new territories, are you only focused on Europe?
No, we're not only focused on Europe.
Nice. Simple answer there. The question from Craig Woolford, "Food and paper costs rose 25% compared with network sales growth of 17% and marketing costs rising at 19% faster than network sales." If you can provide some clarity around that.
Yeah. I'll hand that over to Richard. But I'm pretty sure that's to do with the growth in our corporate store numbers. That's really what it has to do with. But Richard, anything else you can add to that? And you're on mute, by the way.
Sorry, Don. Look, it's a little more complicated than that. We're still getting some jet lag in terms of the integration of our warehouse model in Australia. And given that's a significant both revenue and cost, that's lifted those costs slightly ahead of what you would expect in terms of network sales. And in terms of the marketing cost, again, marketing does now include all of our ad funds. So it's a good measure to compare it to network sales. But really, with Japan and the corporate stores exceeding significant growth on the prior period and that revenue being significant, those corporate stores' marketing costs as a percentage is increasing more than normal in terms of our group result. But looking at our stat accounts, it sometimes is quite difficult to explain some of these movements with so many businesses coming together.
A question from Joe Little. There's a decent difference between network sales growth and same-store sales growth in the trading update that isn't fully explained by the record rollout. Is it because you're opening more white space stores and that is less year-one cannibalization from fortressing and splits?
There was a higher increase largely led by Japan, probably second to that with Germany, is we're opening in places where there were no Domino's stores. So there was no cannibalization. Normally, if you recall back just two and a half years ago, we were doing so much carving out of our corporate stores in Tokyo and Nagoya that there was some lag. It took a good three years of recovery in Japan on the lower transactional count. And so that was starting to challenge and slow down our earnings in Japan. We knew it was the right thing. So we were still full steam ahead. And guess what? We've been rewarded immensely since that because those stores are now doing very well in this environment.
But what has happened with all of those structural changes that took place that Josh talks about, these are very material changes, both to pricing engines in the 50% off carry-out and the no minimum delivery or delivery your way. It's beyond just no minimum delivery. You can have Domino's any way you want in delivery. And that's what makes us the experts. But then also changing to a back-of-house dough model, which meant we could go very profitably instead of shipping dough balls all over Japan. And we went to one pricing for freight harmonization of food. Now, what that meant is that actually took some of the margin out of our corporate stores, which are heavily weighted in Tokyo and Nagoya.
In a normal year, that would have been a really challenging one to present to the market because it is actually a cost to our corporate business that we're benefiting from that because we've now taken an increase in those. We've taken a reduction in the rest of the country. That's opened up another 65 million access points. That's a lot of new white spaces. These white spaces, I'm not sure if you heard what Josh says, but there's Canberras and Adelaides out there that we call regional towns in Japan. To 5 million people in Hokkaido, we've just got four stores. That's as big as Melbourne. You put it into perspective of. The stores are opening incredibly strong because we've got these two pricing engines. We've also got the cost base rise.
So yes, Joe, that's been a lot. And you're going to see a lot more of that as well going forward as there's a lot of white space particularly in Germany, Japan, and France.
Just on that, in relation to Germany and France, we referred to record profitability. Does this record profitability make it easy to convince franchisees to be opening more stores?
Over to you, Andre.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It makes it easier. It makes it easier for them to get financing for their third, fourth, fifth store. So yes. And as 90% of our growth comes from current managers and current franchisees, having more profitable stores definitely helps with opening more stores.
We've only got a few more questions to go. I just want to encourage, if any of those analysts have sent me a few emails, if I've missed any of those, can you just make sure you put them in the chat because I don't want to miss them. A question on market share, both from Shaun and from Richard. In Australia, did DPE gain, hold, or lose market share versus established QSR players? And then in relation to Japan, Richard's asked, "You've seen fantastic growth. But have you won market share within pizza?" As he's seen reports that one of our competitors has been actually the big market share winner.
Might even start with Nick talking coming from that last part.
Yeah, sure. So from the data that we can see, we've gained market share against the broader category. Pizza has been a big winner inside of that, of course, as it's well-suited to delivery. And that's been what's driven. Not sure if there's any more I can add to that question. But I'll cover off Sean's other question on corporate stores while I've got the floor. Yeah, corporate stores are a headwind. And we do expect that to moderate. Although one of the callouts in the result for the half was the improvement in corporate store operations as we see the similar, if not more, benefits as our franchisees through that operating leverage going through to the business and improved operations.
Yep.
Some of the other question parts of that, sorry, Nathan, that I missed?
Just on the. Just on that corporate stores, the plan to refranchise those, Nick, in terms of time frames and refranchising?
Yeah. With the volatility of the current environment, it makes it hard to give absolutes. But we would expect that we can continue along the trajectory that we're on and somewhere between 24 and 36 months get back to that 40-60 base that we're looking for.
Josh, you were going to add to that as well?
I was just going to answer the Japan part. Richard's pointed out a report there regarding Pizza-La, who is the second largest delivery pizza. It's a local chain. From the data, we can see I don't see any evidence of Pizza-La taking more market share. We've actually taken the majority of the market share over the last sort of three years. We've now got a 200 and probably 30 store gap between those two between Pizza-La. Pizza Hut has been growing to some extent. Certainly, at their 420-odd stores, there's still someone to watch. We've been accelerating faster than most. I'm happy to look at the report, Richard. Our data says something slightly different.
Excellent. Thank you. Craig Woolford asked, "The mix of delivery versus carry-out for key markets?" So Japan, Australia, France, Germany pre-COVID because we obviously made a note of that going in that that was a determinant of performance. And then what has happened to average transaction value in Australia and Japan over the half?
Yeah. So I'll start with the transactions, and then each of the CEOs can talk to their general mixes, but transactions in Japan, because there's also carry-out growth, have exceeded ticket. It's the exception. Wherever else we've had a delivery growth, then ticket means that a lot of the growth has come from ticket, and there's even windows of time when we weren't getting enough carry-out where we may have even in the last six months gone negative in a market for deeper lockdown for a period of time and so on, so by and large, where the delivery markets are, you've got a higher weight to ticket, most still positive in customer count. Japan, the outlier. Really, really heavy customer count growth, really significant, and Germany's been because it's been a delivery-only base, very strong customer count growth in Germany too.
France now that it's embracing delivery has got some beautiful momentum in customer accounts. Gentlemen in the mix, starting with you, Josh.
Yeah, sure. So mix is sort of because we've launched these new platforms. I mean, both channels have grown very, very nicely. And in terms of mixes, we're about sort of 50/50 on carry-out and delivery. But material growth within both those channels. So I'm not sure what more I can say about that. But that's really how the business is. I mean, if you look back three years ago, we were probably 60% delivery. So it is sort of coming back in line. And that's more of an indication of a carry-out offer that was just not representing the customers that we wanted to attract to the business and got tired and old. So this is another reason that these structural changes were necessary. Over to Nick.
Yeah, Nick.
Sure. I mean, where this is probably most prevalent is New Zealand being a really heavy carry-out market with a smaller base of delivery. And that market is feeling it the most when I look across my region in terms of overall pressure because of that. But despite that, they're still seeing really healthy growth in the delivery, which is helping buoy those overall sales and profits. And the carry-out occasion is a much smaller ticket, much less orders, much less items per order. And obviously, delivery is the opposite end of the spectrum. So that's having a positive influence on overall ticket.
Andre, anything else to add?
Yeah. Like I said, France and the Benelux going into COVID were about 50/50 in customer counts. So that's a little bit different in value because of the higher ticket on delivery. I'll have Stoffel talk about Germany, and then Denmark has been a 70% pickup, 30% delivery market, and we've moved that to 60% and 40%, but it hasn't materially changed. Over to you, Stoffel.
Yes. So Germany, since it's our newest market or mature market in Europe, we haven't been on the path of growing carry-out for that long. So going into COVID, 75% of our orders were delivery. It's a bit more now. It didn't shift massively. But I do want to call out there that when we bought the businesses, both Joey's as well as Hallo, they were over 90% delivery. And today, we're doing more deliveries as we're growing the business as a whole. And significantly, even in COVID, significantly more carry-out just on the back of good offerings, probably a bit more investment into the stores and the dining areas or the pickup areas. So for me, there's no reason, as mentioned before, that when we get back to a more normal world after COVID, that we'll start increasing those carry-out customers again as well.
The last thing I want to point out is very different customers. Our data show that there's very little overlap from the customers that are coming in for carry-out and the customers that are coming in for delivery, so it's not a trade-off. These are different people at different occasions that we're talking to.
Back to you, Nathan.
Thanks, Stoffel. Edwin has raised a question in terms of aggregators. We're previously talking about the way in which we see aggregators as a platform which we need to compete. So could you give an update on how the dynamics of that competing/working with food aggregators has evolved and your thoughts now on strategy?
Yeah. I think our relationship with the aggregators and they understand that we want to deliver, we want to own the process, that we see them as a marketplace has really evolved and matured. That many were worried about Domino's almost being a competitor and even some of our own system believing that an aggregator is a competitor. The aggregator isn't a competitor. Google's not a competitor. Channel 9 is not a competitor. They're places for us to communicate and market and get our customers. Our competitors are the operators inside the aggregators. So still today, they're still our traditional competitors: the burger giants, the fried chicken giants, the sandwich giants, and the like, other pizza players in different markets. They're still our competitors. So what we've seen is that it still comes down to the product, service, and image. And that's what we're driving: best value.
That's really what wins. And that's what we're very passionate about. And what we're aware of is that they will get more educated on the opportunity and delivery. And so really, the bigger competitors are when the burgers and fried chicken players are genuinely delivery businesses rather than sort of hybrid living off the third-party delivery fleets. So that's how we view the world today. And I think that during COVID, the leadership team had often had guest speakers. And we've had the founders of almost every aggregator in the world speak to us in the last little while as sharing learning. It was fantastic because really, they're a marketplace. And they didn't come on as a competitor.
They came on as a marketplace teaching, educating us on who's winning, how they're winning, not necessarily the name of the players, but the sort of attributes of winners inside their platforms and so on and where they were going with their platform. So yeah, I think we're maturing and growing that relationship.
Thank you, Don. We only have one more last question lodged. So I would encourage if anyone has any last questions. Otherwise, we'll then wrap up after this question. But the last question lodged so far is from Joe Little, just saying that the market broadly considers ANZ to be mature despite there still being a lot of upside to your store target. So should we expect ANZ rollout to reignite in the near term to more meaningful levels?
I'll hand over to Nick.
Yep, sure. Thanks, Joe. You're right that we do have a target that is way more than where we are currently today, and while Australia is mature in the sense that almost all of the territories are covered by existing franchise agreements, we do have a lot of stores that we need to open. It's a little bit more complex when you get to that pointy end of things because we're talking about thousands of territory movements in some cases to optimize the network, and there's some relocations within that. But fundamentally, it's a function of the unit economics, and you've seen those improve. You've seen franchisees' appetite improve, units per franchisee improve. And certainly, we're really focused on accelerating that, and in my view, they're the basic building blocks.
We've been in a period of consolidation of the system and the strength of our franchise base, both financially and operationally. And we are now poised for what should be a more meaningful rollout.
Okay. I think we've now gone through all of the questions, so that's it for today. I know we have a number of meetings scheduled over the coming days in which, obviously, we'll be putting management in front of many shareholders and analysts, so we look forward to continuing with those and continuing the discussion over the coming days, weeks, and months. Thank you very much for your time, everybody, for coming, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Bye.
Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Andre and Stoffel at 2:00 A.M.
No worries. Going to grab some coffees.