Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Endeavour Group's full year 2023 results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. Participants will need to press the star key, followed by one to ask a question. Only one question per person, plus a follow-up will be permitted. However, if time permits, participants are welcome to rejoin the question queue. I'd now like to hand the conference.
Yeah. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for Endeavour Group's full year FY 2023 results announcement. As mentioned, I'm Steve Donohue, Managing Director and CEO of Endeavour Group. I'm joined here today by our Chief Financial Officer, Kate Beattie . I'd like to begin today by acknowledging the Gadigal people as the traditional custodians of the land where we're gathered today and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Just before I step through the details of our results, I want to take a moment to remind everyone of our purpose of creating a more sociable future together. Our teams live this purpose every day, recognizing that we play an important role in bringing people together to enjoy social moments and celebrate special occasions.
Whether that's a drink with friends around the dinner table at home or having a great time at one of our pubs, our team's there to make each experience special for our customers. The idea that we can create a more sociable future together is what guides our strategy. We're a purpose-led team of 30,000 people, and we stay focused on making a positive imprint. We work hard to maintain leadership across all our customer offers, stay connected across the group, so we can drive efficiencies end-to-end through our business units, and importantly, we aim to unlock accelerated growth through our capital investments. Now turning to our group financial highlights for the 2023 financial year, which Kate will further expand on later in the presentation.
The team delivered a strong financial result, which reflected the resilience of our customer offers, the strength of our brands, and the effectiveness of our end-to-end efficiency programs. Importantly, we continue to generate strong underlying cash flow, allowing us to continue to invest in the business, while also delivering a full-year dividend of AUD 0.218. This dividend payout equates to a payout ratio of 73.9%, which is in line with our payout guidance of 70%-75%. As we enter the new financial year, we're encouraged by that resilience in our trading performance, and our stores and hotels are continuing to resonate with customers who are continuing to look for quality and, in particular, great value. Now, looking at our retail performance. Both sales and EBIT were slightly down on FY 2023, reflecting the cycling of COVID impacts, particularly in the first half.
The strength and resilience of our retail business is reflected in the 4% sales CAGR we've delivered since FY 2019, though. Pleasingly, we saw improved momentum through the year, starting with a strong festive season and a return to positive sales growth in the second half. Underpinning this return to growth is a real resilience and demand as customers continue to embrace both the discovery of new products and new moderation options. This, in turn, drives the ongoing popularity of new craft and local ranges, as well as the continuing trend towards premiumization. Turning to the highlights for the year in our two key retail brands, beginning with Dan Murphy's. It really is a privilege to be the custodian of Dan Murphy's. Dan's delivers customers the very best value through the Lowest Liquor Price Guarantee. Australia's leading range and an outstanding customer service experience.
Because of all that, customers love Dan Murphy's, which is reflected in that fantastic NPS score, score of 54, as well as the fact that they're growing active members in the My Dan's membership program. The growth we've seen in My Dan's members scanning their cards or tapping their digital membership, when they're shopping, has reached now almost 80% at scan, and it's higher again at tag rates, given the larger basket size for our My Dan's members. The My Dan's program also provides us with great customer knowledge, which allows us to deliver increasingly personalized and memorable experiences. In FY 2023, we continued to invest in the Dan Murphy's network to drive growth, delivering eight new stores and 27 renewals. We also continued the rollout of electronic shelf labels, which have delivered operating efficiency, as well as an improved customer and team experience.
There continues to be opportunities for network growth, both through traditional store growth and now through new formats, including things like The Cellar by Dan Murphy's, noting that we recently opened the latest Cellar in Martin Place in Sydney. While it's early days, it's already proving to be very popular. Now, switching the focus to the BWS achievements in the year. BWS had a strong year, supported by the broader customer trend back to local and convenient shopping. We continued to add to the network of stores in the year, opening 18 net new stores to bring the total number of stores to 1,435. This puts us closest, closer to more customers than any other brand, which facilitates both in-store and online shopping with the broadest reach of any express delivery network.
FY 2023 also saw BWS launch its new brand promise of being your unboring bottle shop. This brand positioning centered around BWS's long-term purpose of delivering drinks your way. It's designed to drive broad customer engagement with a particular emphasis on younger adults. The initial response has been very strong, with significant lift in brand preference among Gen Z customers. We're also continuing to innovate BWS store formats, which is reflected in new modern store designs like that, which we've recently launched at our new Bondi Junction store in Sydney. Over to slide 11 and to our Pinnacle Drinks business. During the year, we saw continued growth and demand for Pinnacle products.
Pinnacle Drinks covers the portfolio of brands we own, as well as exclusive products which we source from third-party supplier partners. Pinnacle sales in the year reached a new high of AUD 1.7 billion, with seven out of 10 of our retail customers purchasing a Pinnacle Drinks product in FY 2023. Encouragingly, through the year, we've also seen continued very strong growth in the sales of luxury and premium wines that make up our Paragon Wine Estates portfolio. That growth was supported by the addition of two new estates, McLaren Vale Shingleback Wines, back in August last year, and Cape Mentelle from Margaret River in May this year.
I might also mention that our winemakers achieved 12 Best in Class trophies for their wines this year, and a particular highlight came from Riddoch of Coonawarra , with The Pastoralist 2021 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon winning the prestigious Cabernet of the Year trophy at the International Wine Show, which I thought was an amazing achievement for a wine that sells for about AUD 40 a bottle. We've also invested in the upgrade of our Dorrien Winemaking facility in the Barossa, to drive further efficiency and productivity savings, and continue to foster industry partnerships, both locally and internationally, as we grow the reach and relevance of Pinnacle Brands beyond Australia. Turning to hotels, I've got a few slides I wanted to touch on here, just in the interest of providing a little bit more color on what's driving our results in hotels.
The hotels results reflect a robust recovery from the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions and the return to a full-service offering across the network. Food and bars performed particularly well, supported by the return of live entertainment and people seeking out on-premise social occasions. Similarly, we experienced very strong growth in our accommodation business, albeit off a small base. As we noted in our third quarter sales update, gaming revenue stabilized through the year, resulting in a more normalized sales mix in the segment. Onto the next slide, this one just highlights how big a year it's been for our hotels team, as we saw the return to a full suite of offerings across all of our venues. It's certainly come at a welcome time, particularly for families looking for an affordable place to celebrate a special occasion.
Like Mother's Day, for example, we served over 86,000 meals, which was a new record. The team worked really hard on a new winter menu, the response to which has been very positive. In the year, we expanded our hotel network with the acquisition of 11 new hotels, up from five in each of the two prior years. It's important to note that when we add to our hotel portfolio, we're choosing assets with a balance of revenue streams across food, bars, gaming, and accommodation, as well as often supporting growth in retail. In FY 2023, we tested a proof of concept for our new hotel app platform called pub+, which we plan to pilot and progressively roll out in the second half of 2024, with the aim of step changing both our guest engagement and guest experiences.
In FY 2023, our focus in hotels was primarily on restoring full levels of trade. As we move into FY 2024, we'll start to introduce optimization initiatives, including activity-based rostering, taking the learnings from retail, where it has delivered strong results so far. We've also evolved our approach to responsibility in hotels with the launch of our Player Protect responsible gambling framework, which I'll talk a bit more about in a later slide. A bit more detail on slide 14 on our hotel investment progress this year. We completed 46 renewal projects, which represented the early stages of restoring our renewal program post-COVID, during which we'd had a focus on social distancing in gaming rooms. Whereas now our attention's more focused on multi-driver renewals, uplifting our food, bar, and accommodation offers.
When it comes to acquisitions, it's important to understand that we're valuing the acquisition on the revenue potential of all the earning streams attached to the license, including all parts of the hotel, plus any associated retail. For example, the 11 acquisitions we made this year are expected to generate approximately $100 million in annualized sales, and that's split evenly between hotel sales and retail sales. As with all our growth capital, our hurdle rate for these acquisitions is 15%, measured as two-year EBIT return on invested capital. Finally, on this slide, we're showcasing our latest hotel full redevelopment, The Brook, which is in the northern suburbs of Brisbane.
Phase one was the opening of a new Dan Murphy's on the site in February, a world-class new pub was unveiled as phase two in May, with the third phase being 40 rooms of accommodation from Nightcap that is scheduled to open in September. By the time we've completed that accommodation, we'll have invested AUD 30 million in this redevelopment. While it's early days and the site does remain partially under construction, both the Dan Murphy's and the pub have been embraced by locals. In fact, The Brook immediately jumped up to be in our top 10 venues nationally for food and bar sales.
It's a beautiful pub experience with that amazing fig tree feature you can see on the slide. We're hoping that some of you will join us there sometime later this financial year for an investor day, focused on a discussion about our hotel strategy. Now, turning to slide 15, covering the further development of our approach to cost management. Being deliberate and disciplined in relation to cost management has been a key focus since the demerger and has allowed us to effectively address ongoing, growing inflationary pressure, sustain and grow our margins, and focus our team's efforts to give them more time to engage with customers and guests. In the two years since demerger, our optimization initiatives have delivered AUD 90 million in savings, AUD 30 million in FY 2022, followed by another AUD 60 million in FY 2023.
The types of initiatives already undertaken include the introduction of an activity-based rostering system across our retail network, with the team using AI and other analytics to optimize store rosters. We've also simplified our in-store and online delivery processes amongst a variety of other initiatives, which I'm happy to talk more about. This year, we rolled up all our current and future optimization work under the endeavourGO program or Endeavour Group Optimisation Program, to leverage the new capabilities we've built in the most efficient way. As you can see on this slide, looking forward, we're targeting a further AUD 200 million in annualized run rate savings by the end of FY 2026, which will increasingly rely on us standing up our new core tech platforms, which will help drive that efficiency and cost out.
Before handing over to Kate, I'd like to finish by talking about the progress on our sustainability strategy. In October 2021, we launched our first sustainability strategy, and today we released our second sustainability report, which I think you'll appreciate when you read it, represents good progress against our goals. We've stayed focused on our responsibility and community programs, and in the second half of FY 2023, we launched our evolution of responsible gambling, the program we now refer to as Player Protect. It's a framework that details our standards and strategy, our future commitments, and our future commitments in relation to responsible gaming. It includes our market-leading initiatives, such as voluntary pre-commitment and the use of a new piece of technology that helps our team have earlier conversations with customers about their gameplay.
Player Protect also covers initiatives like the training of 3,000 team members in responsible gambling practices, gaming practices, I should say, sorry. New trials such as the digital wallet trial at the Crows Nest Hotel in Sydney. The self-exclusion enhancement that can be delivered through the use of facial recognition technology. This tech's already in place in South Australia. We've also been running a trial in New South Wales. We're in dialogue with the regulator in Queensland about conducting a trial of this technology there, too. As many of you be aware, in the past weeks, we were able to announce the early adoption of some of the new changes proposed in Victoria. Our teams are well advanced on making those changes. With, as we said at the time, some of them already being in place.
Our commitment in this space is to be industry-leading, and we'll continue to work with governments and regulators on trialing the latest technology and evolving our Player Protect platform. Now I'll hand over to Kate to go through the financial aspects of the result in some more detail.
Thank you, Steve. As Steve has outlined, in our first full year of trading without COVID restrictions, we achieved AUD 11.9 billion in sales, which translated into AUD 1.023 billion in EBIT and AUD 529 million net profit after tax. NPAT was up 6.9% on the prior year. We remain in a strong financial position. Our operating cash flow reduced when compared to FY 2022 due to an increase in working capital and a catch-up in tax payments relating to the prior year. We maintain significant debt facility headroom of over AUD 800 million. Across the year, we have continued to invest in our businesses, adding AUD 510 million in capital assets during the year, weighted towards further expanding and improving our network.
The group's return on funds employed of 11.8% is 35 basis points higher than last year, as we resumed full trading across all our operations post-COVID, while continuing to invest in a disciplined manner. As highlighted on this group performance slide, our 6.9% NPAT growth was driven by the resumption of full trade in hotels as the hospitality sector reopened, while retail performance continued to be solid. Unallocated corporate costs, shown as Other in this graph, were $63 million for the year, up $6 million, partly due to an increased investment in sustainability that Steve has spoken to. As highlighted in our third quarter trading update, we have experienced higher finance costs due to rising interest rates, as well as an increase in net debt. I will cover this topic in more detail in a later slide.
Income tax rose in line with our increased EBIT. The effective tax rate for the year was 31.6%. Turning to the next slide, given our year-on-year comparatives are still distorted by COVID impacts, we thought it meaningful to highlight the growth we have achieved when compared to our trading results in FY 2019. This being the last full year of pre-pandemic trading. We have delivered sales growth and EBIT margin expansion in both retail and hotels, with both segments delivering an EBIT CAGR of over 5% since FY 2019. Within retail, network expansion, coupled with investment in areas such as data and analytics, merchandising, and Pinnacle, as well as our focus on optimization, have underpinned this performance. In hotels, the growth since FY 2019 has been similarly strong, driven by network expansion and renewal while maintaining strong cost management discipline.
While FY 2023 was a year of rebuilding our hotels back to full operations post-COVID, as Steve has noted, as we look forward, we continue to see further opportunities to accelerate growth by renewing and redeveloping our existing network, expanding our network via acquisition, as well as through operational improvements from leveraging the capabilities successfully deployed across the retail business. Turning to retail performance in the year. Our current year of trading, we would characterize broadly as normal in retail, recognizing COVID cycling impacts distort the year-on-year comparatives. The biggest post-COVID impact was to online sales, which fell 15% year-on-year to 8.6% of total sales, as customers reverted to out-of-home shopping and entertainment. This drove 1.5% of the full-year sales decline of 1.8%.
In the second half, retail sales overall returned to growth of 0.7%, with in-store sales growing at 1.7% in this period. After a strong Christmas and a good start to the half, we experienced a softer Easter trading period than prior year, partly due to non-comparable holiday timing. However, sales momentum improved again through May and June. Our gross profit margin was sustained in FY 2023, which saw retail deliver a 23.8% GP margin in both halves of the financial year. This was in spite of increased promotional activity in the market, which we continue to meet through the Dan Murphy's Lowest Liquor Price Guarantee.
Whilst inflationary pressures have increased costs, notably salary and wage increases, benefits from our Optimization Program have mitigated this impact. As a result, we have been able to continue to invest behind our strategic initiatives of network expansion, new innovative formats, advanced analytics, and customer experience. The increase in depreciation and amortization in the year was in line with these investments. The resulting EBIT for the retail segment in FY 2023 amounted to AUD 658 million, and represents a minor decrease of AUD 8 million compared to the previous year. GP margin expansion and cost growth containment enabled retail to deliver a strong EBIT to sales ratio of 6.6%, in line with the prior year, in spite of a loss of sales leverage.
Our hotels achieved record sales of AUD 2 billion in FY 2023, representing growth of 31% compared to the prior year, which as we've noted, was impacted by pandemic-related trading restrictions. As Steve has articulated, the hotel sales composition rebalanced as we resumed full trade over the course of the year. Gaming revenue was the first to recover post-pandemic and therefore saw the lowest growth in the year. Food and bar sales were strong, with both volume and average selling price in year-on-year growth. While still a small component of our overall earnings, accommodation sales growth was the highest in the year, with both room and occupancy rates up across our expanding portfolio of over 2,500 rooms. The normalized sales mix flowed through to a gross profit margin of 84.1%.
This was 94 basis points lower than last year due to the lower weighting of gaming revenue this year. Cost of doing business increased due to our return to full operations and the addition of 10 net new hotels. Inflationary impacts were seen in labor as well as energy costs and CPI index lease costs. We are actively managing these impacts through effective cost control measures and the implementation of the optimization program, leveraging our experience in retail. Depreciation and amortization expense included an increase of AUD 14 million relating to the amortization of Victorian gaming entitlements, which we renewed for a 10-year period during the year. The resulting EBIT of AUD 428 million represents a 35.9% increase on the COVID-impacted FY 2022 result, with EBIT margin expanding to 21.6%, supported by leverage from higher sales. Turning to capital expenditure.
During the year, we invested AUD 510 million in CapEx. This includes the acquisition of the Cape Mentelle Vineyards and the Dorrien Estate expansion that Steve made reference to, reflected here within the Pinnacle total. The bulk of the remaining retail spend related to network expansion and redevelopment costs incurred to deliver the eight new Dan Murphy's stores and 31 BWS stores, as well as our ongoing investment in renewal of the existing fleet. In hotels, we progressed the redevelopment of the Brook Hotel, as Steve outlined, and acquired 11 hotels in the year. We also invested in renewing food and bar precincts, and we continue to invest in our gaming machine fleet and rooms, as well as continuing to expand and improve our accommodation offerings, all reflected here in hotel renewal expenditure.
With the return to full trading, FY 2023 provided a baseline performance year from which to build investment plans to further scale our hotel renewal program in the coming year. These investments all align to our strategic priorities and supported our ROCE of 11.8% delivered in FY 2023. We have continued to invest in transitioning to standalone technology capabilities through the One Endeavour program. This is an important program of work for us as we leverage the opportunity to replace what are end-of-life and disaggregated systems with a simplified technology landscape. As we progress through the One Endeavour transformation, we expect to increasingly benefit from modern, fit-for-purpose systems, enabling greater growth, efficiency, and operating agility, including the leverage from strong data foundations for advanced analytics.
The spend management program has been completed, with the relatively small investment expected to pay back within two years, as it enables the optimization of group-wide non-trade spend. We are making headway with in-flight programs, being property lease management, people systems, commerce platforms, and service transformation. We expect these to complete across FY 2024 and 2025.
The ERP and end-to-end store and venue programs are expected to progress to design phase during the year, and we will continue to update the market on these programs as we finalize the plans. We anticipate that these programs will extend to approximately financial year 2028. In FY 2023, we incurred operating costs of AUD 26 million and capital expenditure of AUD 15 million associated with this program. In FY 2024, we expect to incur total operating costs of AUD 40 million 50 million and capital expenditure of between AUD 35 million and 55 million.
With ERP ramping up as in-flight programs roll off, we expect the expenditure profile to continue to be sustainable within our operating cash flow envelope. It is important to note that this program, overall, is a key enabler of our Group Optimisation Program targets, with benefits to be delivered as we roll through the program in the coming years. Turning now to cash and net debt. Our net debt increased by AUD 706 million over the year. Within this number, AUD 237 million is non-cash and relates to the amount owing for the renewal of Victorian gaming entitlements. Bank debt rose by AUD 465 million, largely due to higher inventory reflected in increased trade working capital, as well as the catch-up in tax payments in the year that I mentioned earlier.
These factors also drove a one-off reduction in the cash realization ratio to 70% for the year. As we outlined in the first half, we increased our stock of international inventory to ensure product availability during the key Christmas trading period when international supply chains were disrupted. Inventory levels have decreased through the second half, though they remain higher than the end of FY 2022. This is driven also by reduced overall out-of-stock levels, cost of goods inflation, new stores, and winery investments. During the year, we renewed three of four bilateral loan facilities and added a fifth facility, increasing the combined commitment value by AUD 300 million and extending the facility maturity dates to 2027 and 2028. We continue to maintain significant facility headroom of over AUD 800 million and a leverage ratio of 3.6x , consistent with investment-grade credit metrics.
We remain committed to our strategy for delivering value for shareholders. Our trading plans target sales growth ahead of market and EBIT growth ahead of sales, balancing capital return to shareholders with investment to sustain and grow our portfolio. Across the two years since demerger, we have delivered earnings per share growth of 19% and a dividend yield of 3.5%, returning AUD 752 million to shareholders in the form of fully franked dividends. We remain in a strong financial position, and with the scale and reach of our retail and hotel portfolios, as well as the synergies between these, we are uniquely positioned to perform in sectors that have demonstrated resilience and stability over a long period of time.
We will continue to invest in a disciplined way to grow and improve our portfolio, while maintaining adequate flexibility to respond to both opportunities and risks as they arrive. I will now hand back to Steve.
Thanks, Kate. If you flick to slide 30, I'll, excuse me, just talk briefly here, because our FY 2024 plans are pretty consistent with our FY 2023 priorities. What I would say is that, as Kate just mentioned, in the two years that we've operated as a listed company, the team's achieved an enormous amount of progress, which culminates in the delivery of this result, which, for the first time, includes over AUD 1 billion of EBIT. We are, however, very aware of the constantly changing operating environment, and the priorities listed here are designed to ensure that we maintain our leadership position in all the areas that we choose to operate, while accelerating our growth and maintaining, excuse me, our progress on that sustainability journey that I've talked about. Now turning to our final slide.
In summary, the group delivered a strong result in FY 2023. We've maintained our disciplined approach to cost management, accelerated our customer experience and digital transformation, and made progress against our sustainability strategy, all while growing our network and investing for the future. All businesses are now trading in a stable, post-pandemic operating environment, with retail delivering very solid results, including maintaining an industry-leading EBIT margin. Thank goodness, hotels are back to full operations, with customers enjoying everything the pub has to offer. As we look forward, we're encouraged by our trading momentum, and we've started the year with retail sales for the first six weeks, up 2.5%, and hotel sales up 4.6%.
We're looking forward to what, the, the rest of the year that lies ahead holds, and in particular, we're looking forward to seeing everybody at the pub this evening to watch the Matildas have another fantastic game. With all of that, I'd like now to open up to any questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from David Errington from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Morning, Steve. Morning, Kate. Steve, I don't know whether you want to answer this or Kate, but the part of this result that I was pleased with was your actual cost performance. I suppose what caught me out a little bit is this endeavourGO. I, I hadn't heard much about this. Can you give us a bit more color, please, as to what this endeavourGO program is all about? Because there's some pretty punchy numbers there. Is it AUD 60 million of savings that you took out in 2023? Is it AUD 200 million of annual savings that you're planning to take out in 2026 or by 2026, annual savings? Is this linked to One Endeavour? I, I'm just a bit confused as to what this endeavourGO is all about. Can you give us a bit of road mapping on, on these cost savings? That would be really appreciated.
Yeah. Thanks, David. I'll, I'll have a go and then pass to Kate for some, some more detail. The short answer to your question is yes. We've, as we announced today, brought all of the initiatives we've had over the last couple of years together under this platform we've called endeavourGO. A lot of what's been achieved through both FY 2022 and FY 2023 are initiatives that have predominantly related to the retail business. I would call out actually, the leadership that Michael James, who you might know, has, has provided the group in respect of this.
Michael, I'm sure Brad won't mind me saying, was the pioneer of, of these capabilities in Woolworths when he was at Woolworths, and his understanding of, of rostering and using technology to do that has been a big fill-up for us in, in, as I say, retail over the last couple of years, and we're now expanding that capability into hotels. Which is all about understanding what type of team capability you need, when you need it, and providing a system that enables our store and venue managers to deliver against that. That's only one element of it. We're trying to optimize the whole group, and that means we're looking through supply chain initiatives in partnership with Woolworths and our other supply chain service providers. Talked about the in-store wages side of things.
We've got money that we can save in, in the fulfillment that goes into our e-commerce business, which is very scale business, so there's lots of opportunities to save there. We'll keep working on stock loss, which is not a material number, but provides an opportunity for savings. That's both in retail and hotels. There's this opportunity to really ramp up some of the work in hotels. If you think about a hotel, David, it's got a lot more moving parts, if you like, than, than retail. Arguably, there'd be more opportunities for us there. At a group level, we're very focused on our procurement programs and our goods not for resale. We also look through opportunities as it relates to all of our partnerships, those with Woolworths and other service providers.
We are very focused on maintaining a lean group overhead. We had a great opportunity coming out of Woolworths to set a standard that we thought was lean and right for us, but we continually review that, particularly, as Kate mentioned, in context of the One Endeavour program that you asked about, because unlocking those savings in the outer years is very much gonna rely on our ability to implement new system capabilities that provide for that. That's a quick flyover, but I, I guess it's, it's not so much been a secret as it just hasn't been articulated the way we are now and the fact that we've taken a much more coordinated approach to it. Kate, would you add anything to that?
I think, I think the one point I would make, in addition, is the very deliberate naming of the technology transformation as One Endeavour. We've done that because we know that a technology program in and of itself won't deliver a transformation for the business. We're regarding it very much as a holistic transformation program across people, processes, and systems. We're encapturing all of that in the description of it as One Endeavour, and very much in our optimization program, are recognizing that that investment in technology will be accompanied by the opportunity to rethink some of the ways we work.
Yeah. I think Kate's point just highlights the fact that we have a very disparate technology platform or platforms that we're operating on at the moment, many of them, you know, out of date and past useful life. There's a lot of work that's going into One Endeavour and the consequent benefits through endeavourGO.
Yeah, it's pleasing because six or 12 months ago, we were worried that your costs were really getting out of, or potentially could have got out of control, and now it looks like you've got a good cost program there that will at least keep it in check. From that perspective, it's pleasing. Yeah, thanks for your, thanks for your answers.
Thank you, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ross Curran from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good day, guys. Hey, congratulations on, on the results. Can I, can I just get a feel for the step up in debt, coupled with the step up in interest rates? Can you give us a feel for where you expect interest costs to be over FY 2024?
Thanks, Ross. I'll let Kate give you that one.
Yeah, thanks, Ross. I think, I think the, the, the critical thing with the step up in debt is to recognize that we would, we would characterize that step up as being one-off. It's the, the investment in working capital, which will now stabilize, as well as the catch-up in tax payments. We're not projecting a material shift in our net debt position from here, the, the, the tax rate can be calculated with that in mind. We're, we're probably not in a position at this stage to give guidance for the full year on the tax number, but the, the, the tax function ratio is expected to be probably consistent with the consistent debt level.
Okay. Then can we talk about price versus volume and mix in the retail business?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it has been moving around given the impacts of inflation and that flowing through to CPI. The inflation that's sitting at a cross-category level at the moment in retail, sort of in the mid-6s, so about 6.5%, which does result in reductions in volume, which of course, provides us opportunities for savings through the supply chain and in the stores as we move fewer boxes and bottles to achieve the sales number. As I've said in, in our previous updates, it's not evenly spread, that inflation, so it's quite lumpy.
The last CPI increase that just came through in August was only 2.2%, and the two that preceded it in February and August the year prior were 3.7% and 4%. You're seeing that sort of lag flow through of unit price inflation. In terms of category mix, the impacts in beer run to about 5%. RTDs have got the biggest impact. That's had an increase of around 8% and spirits at about 6%. Wine's flat, of course, so wine doesn't have excise applied to it, and therefore, it doesn't get that tick up in unit price the way some of those other categories do.
In terms of how that's affecting mix, it's, it's relatively stable, noting that, some of the categories with the highest increases continue to be the most popular. RTDs continue to perform very strongly at both the volume and value level, even in light of the fact that they've got some of the higher increases. There's, there's quite a bit moving around. I suppose what we're very focused on is the, the impact on, on, customer spending power and making sure that everyone's very clear on the fact that obviously Dan Murphy's beats everybody's prices for members, so that, that you get that, that great value. And BWS offering convenience in partnership with the Everyday Rewards program from, from Woolworths, which continues to be really positive for BWS. What's going on?
Starting to moderate, I suppose, I'd, I'd say, Ross, on that one. We'll see what lies ahead. In terms of trade down, I've said before, we're not seeing it. We continue to not see it in any material way. I think the watch outs are kind of ultra-premium champagne and the reopening of international travel with such gusto as, as we've seen, particularly in the last half has meant that there'll be a fair bit of leakage back to travel retail. I've heard that, you know, duty-free spirits are up, like, 60%. There, there's certainly puts and takes through the whole thing, but overall, we're feeling pretty good about the, the whole mix effect.
Thank you very much.
In my response, I said tax, when, of course, I meant to say interest.
Cool. Thanks, Ross.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Can we talk a little bit about gross margins in the retail business? There's a little bit of rounding in there, but it looks like they might have fallen a tiny bit in the second half versus the first half. What's the outlook for gross margin? Can you continue to expand gross margins in the retail business? I know Pinnacle penetration improved a bit. The market still seems to be premiumizing. Any, any sort of color on that would be helpful.
I think they were flat to slightly better in H2, actually. Flat, flat. They were flat. The half on half flat gross margins, no, no real shift. I think that performance in itself demonstrates pretty good resilience in the second half, noting the amount of gifting that goes on in the first half, which can often be at, at slightly higher margins. No, we're very pleased with the gross margin performance across the year. It's, I think, a standout in, in the overall result. It... You know, I'm, I'm sure, Michael, you're sick of me talking about structural resilience in gross margin because it's not a passing fad. It's very much baked into the way we do business, and, and it continues to deliver results.
In terms of what will it deliver for us in the current financial year, I suppose that remains to be seen as to my answer to Ross before on mix. There's, there's a fair bit moving around there. What we'll continue to focus on is producing products that people have demand for in our Pinnacle and Paragon portfolios. I say that deliberately because no one's forced to buy anything in any of our stores. You've got choice from, from our ranges and, and those of, of others. New, I mean, if you, if you just look at what's going on in the pre-mix RTD space at the moment, it is going faster and bigger than it ever has before, particularly in relation to lemon-flavored beverages.
Which, you know, is, is in some respects, a cast back to the 1990s, and you, you're probably old enough to recall Lemon Ruski and the phenomenon that that was. Well, that whole-
Unfortunately, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We won't ask you too many questions, but, I mean, it, it's, it's history repeating, but, but twice over and twice as fast at the moment when you, when you consider what's going on in this space. Ours is very much a fashion, taste-led category, and that requires us to be very able to, one, understand the customer need and, the customer need, and two, respond to it. As I said in my opening remarks, we're, we're not seeing big down trading. We're not seeing a massive step away from premiumization. Those that have been buying premium product continue to. The amount of money that people are spending on an individual shop remains the same. Of course, they're getting slightly less because things cost a little bit more, but, it's just, it just continues to be resilient.
look, we'll wait and see what happens through the course of the year ahead, but, people continue to enjoy, you know, the simple pleasure of, of a beautiful drink.
Okay, great. Just, can I ask a quick follow-up to remove all confusion? With endeavourGO, you're talking about by the end of the program, a run rate annual cost saving of AUD 290 million, so AUD 200 + 60 + 30. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Shaun Cousins from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Maybe just to some clarification of some of the answers. Maybe just on net interest, maybe if we look at your second half at AUD 131, we annualize that, you get to AUD 262, then you get AUD 9 million because of the Victorian gaming, and you've got higher interest rates. I'm just conscious that your net interest was higher than the market was going for. I mean, why won't your net interest be AUD 270- 280 next year? Can you just maybe walk us through what are the components there, please?
It's probably not, not in a position to give a breakdown of the, of all, all the moving parts of net interest for the full year, recognizing that we'll move in line with movements in net debt and with lease interest costs. It is certainly one of the, the, and I guess probably worth saying both of those are, are factors in the growing interest cost base, which is the CPI indexation of leases and, and, and the interest as it applies to those, and also the increase in net debt level, which we suspect will be the same as the level we've made.
Okay. maybe then, if we think about the AUD 200 million cost-saving program for 2024 to 2026, what's the incremental costs in 2024, cost savings in 2024? Do we just split that equally, or does it build, please?
We're not unpacking the detail, I think, on, on the look forward, but we will, as we progress, provide more visibility on it, Shaun. As I said in my, my comments, you know, we're, we're very focused on enabling what we've started in, in retail, continuing to... Because a lot of that relates to, full rollout already across Dan Murphy's with activity-based rostering. We're at the relatively early stages in BWS, and we're kind of starting in, in hotels. You know, it remains to be seen.
We've, we've got strong aspirations, obviously, to, to build on the kind of numbers that you've seen in the preceding two years, but I'm not unpacking the detail on a year-to-year basis just yet. We'll certainly keep everybody informed of our progress and s uccess, because we're confident that, you know, in, in the, in place of one of our biggest costs rising at the rate that it is, and that is wages, at, at, you know, wage increases of 5.75%, we have to go back and work out ways to drive productivity into our business. We do that in a very collaborative way with our teams to understand what their needs are, so they can be focused on serving customers and guests. You know, that, that takes a lot of work, and as I say, we'll certainly keep everybody abreast of, of our progress.
Okay. Maybe just finally, just on the Victorian amounts that you're paying, in terms of you've signed a 10-year lease, or sorry, pardon me, you had a 10-year agreement there, but arguably, things have changed in terms of, you know, as you go into carded gaming. Can you negotiate a lesser fee, or are you comfortable with the value of the assets that you've got on balance sheet, given what could be a different revenue trajectory that you could get out of Victoria? I'm just curious in that these changes have come just one year in to your 10-year agreement there. I'm just curious around how you're thinking about the financial implications there, and is there any potential for change of financial terms, please?
Thanks for the question, Shaun. Back on the 20th of July, when we made our announcements in response to the Victorian Government proposed changes, we said we didn't have a perspective on that topic at this stage because there's still so much to be resolved. I think what I would encourage everybody to do is actually deeply focus on and understand what the announcement that was made by the Victorian Government consisted of, and again, what our response to it was. It really did comprise four key parts: the AUD 100 cash load limit, the spin rates, the opening hours, and a look forward to mandatory pre-commitment.
On the first three, we were able to demonstrate that both spin rates and load limits. Well, spin rates are in place, and load limits are in place in other markets, and we were very comfortable with having them roll into Victoria. We also announced an early move to the opening hours that were proposed. That was 10 months ahead of what the Victorian Government had proposed. I think what that was intended to demonstrate was our willingness to work with the Victorian Government to maintain our leadership and responsibility. On the topic of mandatory pre-commitment, specifically, the release from the Victorian Government said that they will require it, that they were go- that the implementation of that was subject to thorough consultation with industry through an implementation working group.
There's as yet no time articulated specifically in relation to that, and we're looking forward to working with the Victorian Government on how that would be implemented, and at what stage it would be implemented. Very open-ended, I suppose, in terms of the announcements they've made, respecting the fact that that is their intention. But I think everybody just needs to understand that there's a lot of work to be done to actually reach the conclusion collaboratively, that we would endorse and, and made quite a point about in our announcements back on the 20th of July. That's how we're looking at it.
There's a lot of work to do to get it into the, the shape that it's going to need to be in to meet the needs of, the government, the regulators, players, industry participants like ourselves and, and others. We'll continue to work on that.
Fantastic. Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lisa Deng , from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, Steve. Hi, Kate. I've got two questions. First, on retail. I wanted to understand a little bit on the fourth quarter comp there. In third quarter, we had 14% decline in online, we've got the comp back to 0.2%. In the fourth quarter, with only, you know, 2.8% decline in online, we had a negative 0.7% decline in comp. That would suggest the store-generated sales have really worsened. What exactly happened, how confident are we on keeping the positive top line through 2024, with prices lowering and then the comps getting worse? That 2.5 is off a, you know, a weaker comp right in the first quarter.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Lisa. A few numbers there so that this is going to land in, land in Kate's lap in a second, and she'll give you some more detailed response. I would just point the following out. Actually, it's the opposite to what you're, you've just articulated. I think insofar as our store sales were significantly. The strength of our store, in-store sales significantly outstripped our e-com sales. If you cast your mind back over the last few years, FY 2021, I think we did about AUD 500 million in e-comm sales. FY 2022, we doubled that to AUD 1 billion in e-comm sales, which is all COVID driven. Then you've seen that market moderate in the last financial year, back to about AUD 815 million in retail sales.
That's accounted for the lion's share of the shift in our retail number in the year. Whereas in our bricks-and-mortar sales, they've been very, very consistent. As I highlighted in my opening remarks, we've seen total sales, both bricks and e-comm, accelerating both through H2 versus H1, and then more recently into the first few weeks of trade. Really, the biggest impact on the total retail number has been the market-wide contraction in e-comm. Noting that, you know, our e-comm business is about 5+x larger than the next largest player. Wherever the market goes, goes Endeavour Group, and in particular, Dan Murphy's. Racked and stacked, the whole thing is material and profitable in contrast to, you know, other e-comm outside of our category, but certainly other e-comm inside of our category.
Kate will talk to the specifics, but we, we feel very good.
Yeah
A bout our, our, our retail bricks-and-mortar sales. Kate?
I think Steve probably covered. I think your question is, how confident are we in sales growth?
I mean, more specifically for the 4th quarter, like the sales in e-com narrowed its decline. Our comps have gone more negative versus the 3rd quarter. I just wondered why that was.
Yeah, I think, I think, I, I broadly covered it in my comments, I think, which is that.
Okay.
The fourth quarter was not all equal in weighting, in that we saw quite a non-comparable April trading period.
Easter. Yep.
When, when we had quite different dynamics around the timing of the holidays over that period. We, we really did have quite a soft April, and then we returned to more normal in May.
Okay.
Yeah, Easter was very soft because of the prior year, you had, like, this 11-day straight potential break, which didn't occur this year, and the weather was considerably worse in, in this Easter compared to the Easter prior. I think the market changed quite a lot over the, the, the quarter.
Then confidence in holding the positive, like, through the year, especially 'cause sales, I mean, the comps are getting stronger and pricing getting weaker?
Yeah, well, I think that, I mean, that's a bigger sort of consumer confidence type question, I suppose. We're seeing some moderation in inflation in the market, that's somewhat reflected in moderation in CPI price increases flowing through the category. I think what gives us real confidence is the Dan Murphy's price position. You know, I've heard other retailers this week talk about people hunting for bargains. Well, Dan Murphy's does all the hunting for you and has already found all the bargains and beaten all of those prices. That's why you're seeing this very virtuous sort of looping demand coming back into Dan Murphy's, as people recognize that they don't want to pay a very high premium for convenience and have it necessarily delivered immediately or, or pay a higher price to have it closer to home.
We're seeing a real appetite for value and value on premium products, though, which is that sort of secret sauce, if you like, of Dan Murphy's. I think the continued positivity from consumers towards Dan's reflected in that 54 NPS. Record highs in terms of customer positivity towards Dan Murphy's as it relates to price, gives us a real sense that, in context of what may play out as it relates to consumer confidence or purchasing power, Dan's has some potential upside, but we'll have to wait and see.
Got it. A follow on, on hotels. Understand that there is a mix in gaming and food and, food and accommodation in there in the second half. Can we understand if the food and... Well, the non-gaming margins in that second half, year- on- year, did that expand or contract versus the year prior, please?
Well, it's a, it's a good detailed question to, to break it down. What, what we've been able to do, is pass through those cost increases that are affecting both food and bars. You know, when you consider the, the price of a schooner of Tooheys New running at about AUD 8.30 these days, it's, it's gone up a handful of cents because of the excise increases that are flowing through. We've, we've been able to pass that on to customers. You know, we kind of do it somewhat begrudgingly because we want everybody to enjoy a great value drink and, and meal. We've been able to, I guess, is the long and the short of it.
We're pretty comfortable with, with margins, and it's important that, that we are able to do that, I suppose, in context of there is no inflation in gaming. Gaming is very much a factor of participation more than anything else. Yeah, we've, we've so far, so good, I would say, and if inflation continues to moderate, I, I suspect that'll be a positive for us.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bryan Raymond, from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. My first one's just on capital allocation over the medium term. Given some of the uncertainty you outlined earlier around the regulatory backdrop in gaming, how are you thinking about the hotel network expansion profile and really just deploying capital longer term? Do you think that? Is there much change to your thoughts around that? You obviously had a big year of acquisitions in 2023. Should we expect that to continue, or are you gonna sort of pause and, you know, have a wait and see on the regulatory backdrops to see if the economics still stack up based on what's happening out there?
Thanks, Bryan. I think we've articulated that there's a bit of a mix shift that's taken place in those 11 hotels that we've bought relative to the existing fleet. That's not a particularly deliberate outcome, but it's, it is matter of fact that the mix is less to gaming and more to other drivers. You talk about uncertainty in respect of gaming regulation. That is certainly a factor for the market and, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a challenge to be dealt with, I suppose. What we're confident in is our ability to, work with government and regulators across the country to affect positive outcomes in relation to responsible gambling initiatives and AML, obviously, not to be underestimated.
Yeah, I, I, you know, the market will assume what the market chooses to assume about impacts on, on performance of the gaming sector. We, I think, as evidenced by our continued confidence in, in expanding our network, feel as though we can participate in, in that change in a positive way. If you look at the money we're investing in things like the digital wallet trial in New South Wales, that's, that's, I think, respectful of the fact that there are changes that are gonna take place there. The fact that we've got preexisting voluntary pre-commitment on every mainland gaming machine that we operate today, says we're ready to go on changes that might take place in the future.
I guess I could also point you to forward estimates from state governments on what they think is gonna happen in the gaming space, irrespective of whatever conversations are taking place in relation to further changes in future. I'd just bullet all of that with the point that we just remain committed to working with government and regulators on what we think we're able to demonstrate are the most effective measures as it relates to responsible gambling. You can see a lot of that articulated in the Player Protect platform that we've outlined in our results today and in our sustainability report.
Okay, great. To continue on gaming. Was turnover in gaming still positive? I know it's comping some big numbers, but was it still positive year-on-year in the fourth quarter and the trading update, or has that slipped into negative territory like some of the state-based numbers we can see?
It's, it's played out in a very resilient way. When we say that our categories are operating in a stable and resilient manner, we mean all of our categories. It's probably performed slightly better than I'd expected in the last month. Yeah, it continues to perform very solidly, as does the efforts that, you know, we continue to make in relation to responsible gaming. I think those two have to go hand in hand. Yeah, performance has been strong. It's also publicly available, too, of course, as you know, Bryan, so you can look through any of the published data in relation to that, which I think would demonstrate the same.
Okay, great. All right. Thanks, Austin.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Kierath , from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Oh, morning, guys. Yeah, just following on from Bryan's question there. If, if gaming is growing at a lower rate than food and bev, which I think it did in the, the half just gone, you know, margins down pretty significantly in the hotels business. If it grows at a lower rate going forward, does that mean the overall hotel margin likely falls, just given the different margin structures of those businesses?
Yeah, thank you, Tom. I think you, you've got to look back through the COVID events that took place, really. I think you'll need to take a longer term historical perspective, perhaps, than that which you're taking. I tried to answer your question, I think, when Lisa asked similarly. I guess I could only say that we continue to see that level of stability and resilience that I talked about in that category. And again, I also made reference to our ability to pass through price and drive efficiency back into the group. You do have to look at the coordinated combination of all of those things to understand what's driving, I think, a very positive result in hotels.
you know, there's some published industry data that shows the performance of other hotels that I won't reference specifically. yeah, I think our, the performance of our hotel business is, is really positive. just remember that gaming came back first in that post-COVID world, so it's important to look back a bit further, as we've tried to articulate in the materials, referencing back to FY 2019.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes-
Point I'd add further to Steve is, and then probably to underpin that point, the mix of earnings sales drivers that we're seeing in our hotel portfolio through the year is stable and back to what we saw before the pandemic started. What we're talking to in that compositional change is really the cycling impact, as Steve has said.
You know, given the public exposure of gaming data, you can see whether, you know, roughly, we're holding share roughly across, across the market. Gaming.
Yep. No, cool. Just one on the retail business. I mean, on the numbers I look at, it looks like you've lost share again in the last quarter. I noticed on the slides here, you're saying that your aspiration is to, to win share. You know, the numbers I'm looking at is the ABS numbers. I know they're not perfect, but they're up over 1%. The Metcash numbers are up over 1%. You're, you're kind of flat. I guess, yeah, how... Why aren't you winning share or holding share? Is it, you know, is it because you're pushing too much Pinnacle stuff? Is it pricing? Just interested to understand what's going on there.
Yeah, Tom, I don't wanna pick on your numbers, but we think you're wrong about share. We don't reference ABS and, and I don't wanna pick on ABS either, but the data that we look through suggests something altogether different. There is no single reference point in the market for total market share. We get good anecdotal feedback from suppliers, and, and what we can see suggests that, you know, in line with a lot of that customer feedback I referred to about our brand, things are, are performing very positively. I'd also point you, in a similar way to those comments I made about gaming, to, to the comments I made in relation to e-com.
You know, an e-commerce business that went from AUD 500 million to 1 billion and is now 850 million, is sitting on top of very resilient bricks-and-mortar trading in our retail business. The puts and takes in share probably relate more to e-com, and our bricks business is as solid as it's ever been, I would say. Just encourage you to take a different perspective, I suppose, on how you think about the market.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Richard Barwick , from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. My question would be for Kate. I want to talk about or ask about cash realization. Obviously, soft in this result at 70%, and you've given the explanation, particularly around the movement in working capital and sort of, I guess, the normalization of inventory. If I look back to last year, you also talked about normalization of industry inventory then, and delivered 93%. I guess my question is: What should we be thinking or how do you think about a target or what is a normal level of cash realization as we look into this FY 2024?
Thanks, Richard. Yeah, I think, I think we've previously spoken to broadly around 100% being our expectation. We are a very strongly cash-generative business, so typically, without the puts and takes of those items that I spoke about moving away from that level, that would be our underlying expectation. There is always a higher realization in the first half, obviously, because that's the higher period of trade and a setback in the second half.
100.
Yep, and there's sort of nothing else to call out, Kate, if we think through FY 2024?
No.
Okay. Just one clarification question, if I can. You called out, obviously, AUD 1.7 billion retail sales for Pinnacle. Does that all sit within the retail segment, or by retail sales, are you talking about, you know, actual retail sales across retail and hotel? If it's the latter, can you give us a sense of how that, the AUD 1.7 billion is allocated?
Yeah, thanks, Richard. Yeah, it's all, all retail. I mean, we've kind of just started to get the right products into our hotel's wine list, but, you know, what we sell over bars in hotels has changed a little bit in recent times. It's only a few more cocktails and, and a bit more wine, but predominantly, we are a draft beer business in our pubs. The little bit that we, that we offer customers doesn't really move the needle too much in, in pubs.
That I've talked historically about, I think over the last year or two, around a AUD 1.5 billion sales contribution to retail. It's grown as per the number that we've shared today. Again, I've belabor the point by saying that's a pull from consumers. As we've better understood people's needs, we've been able to produce products that have been more in line with what they've been looking for. That's how that's come about.
The AUD 1.7, though, Steve, obviously, you've added a bunch of acquisitions fairly recently. That AUD 1.7 wouldn't have captured the full impact there, like on an annualized impact. What would you expect that to finish up if, you know, again, if you look through the rest of this financial year?
Yeah, a number that's bigger than that, I guess, Richard, we're not gonna be specific about it. You know, I think, you know, the comment I made about luxury and premium in the wine space is an important one to recognize, I think. I think you heard Treasury talking about it, and, and those that understand this customer need well, I think, are the ones that are being successful in this market. You know, that's an area that we'll continue to be focused on. You know, I, I guess it's important to point out that our retail network is really a, a in deep partnership, in particular with the wine industry, in enabling people's products to get into the hands of their end consumers.
You know, we are effectively everywhere, and we've got a very scale supply chain capability and customer-facing platforms that allow the smallest producer to get their product into the hands of customers a long way away from the beautiful cellar doors that they might be operating. That's at a proprietary level, and as I mentioned in the announcement, we also have many hundreds of partners that provide us with wine, beers, and spirit brands on an exclusive basis, because we're able to provide that level of customer exposure and market distribution, such that they're happy to partner with us on an exclusive basis. There's quite a breadth to what we do in retail, supporting industry and providing customer choice.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Benjamin Joseph Gilbert, from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Steve, I appreciate the comments you're saying around market share. I think timing to merger, you guys are saying you always like to grow a little bit above market at a top line, then also grow EBIT above that, with some leverage through the P&L. Do you still think in this cost environment, you've got ability to grow EBIT margins across the group into 2024, 2025?
Yeah, thanks, Ben. Look, I think our ability to grow the bottom line does depend on being relevant to customers, which is potentially gonna drive your top line, but also that augmentation of growth margin on the way through and CODB management. It's always kind of all elements of the P&L that, that deliver the outcome. I think if you look at the EBIT rates that we've been able to generate in both the segments, they are industry leading and at a sustainable level. We'll work through the other elements of the P&L to try and maintain that level of sustainability, is the way we think about it. I've always said that we'd like to grow our bottom line faster than our top line.
Noting the comments I made before about, you know, what is the, the industry we work in? How do you calculate market share? That's a bit of a nebulous exercise in many respects, but we're focused on bottom line a bit faster than our top line, and that will continue to be our focus in the year ahead.
Thanks. Kate, could you just give us some idea on how you're thinking about cost growth into next year? I'm not looking for sort of a line by line. There's obviously a lot of moving parts, most of them moving up, probably at least around the mid-singles. You've got to call it AUD 60 million to cost out and take off AUD 50 million-60 million from returns on that slide 34. Do you think you can more than offset some of that CODB through your cost out and just through some of these growth CapEx that you've announced and given some pretty helpful return targets on?
Hey, Ben, sorry about that.
Hi. No, no, no, mate. No problem, no problem at all. It, it's just on cost, and so I'm not trying to ask another way around margin. Y our costs last, last year, obviously, you did a pretty good job on the cost side, sort of AUD 2.5 billion, say they're up, I don't know, AUD 100 million, pick a number this year. Do you think with what you've announced around cost out, and these initiatives, is it enough to offset cost inflation through next year? The reason I'm asking is we're getting some companies saying that their costs might be up 2%, 3%, 4%, and others are saying, I think it might be up 6%, 7%, 8%. Just any help you'd give us on how to think about that cost trajectory?
Ye ah, I mean, it's, as you point out, it's a bit of an imprecise science. I think, lots of moving parts. But the two biggest cost components that we have in the business are wages and rent. You know, rent, rent changes in a more glacial way. Wages change quite rapidly based on what happens with Fair Work Commission and the market generally. Which is a good and bad thing, as you know, like, it drives more demand, but also provides the challenge of how we, we generate more productivity. I, I guess, what we've tried to say today is that we feel a degree of confidence and have a demonstrated track record in managing inflationary costs.
Again, if you look back at the slide that Kate talked about in terms of the performance since the merger, there's been quite a lot of inflation that has been chewed through in both our optimization programs, but also other work that's gone on beyond that. Again, look at all elements of the P&L. It's not just the cost line that we're focused on. You've got to, you've got to address some of the opportunities in, in margin, et cetera. Kate, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?
No, I think that's it.
Okay.
Is, is the AUD 200 million, is that sort of designed to offset what you guys see at cost inflation? Because a lot of, a lot of companies are sort of t hese cost cap programs typically are sort of mitigation around CODB, then you can drive benefit Telstra through mix efficiency.
Yeah.
Growth, CapEx, et cetera?
Absolutely. I, I, I tried to sort of explain that a bit with David's question earlier. You know, it is multifaceted. We have tended to over-index the conversation today on activity-based rostering, because that is the most material part. If you look through all elements of, of the cost lines, and we're focused on supply chain, you know, our group overhead, et cetera. Increasingly, and it's important to note this, that is going to be linked to our One Endeavour transformation. We've, we've shared a bit more color today on some of the in-flight programs and those that we're landing successfully, those that are ongoing, those that are yet to start.
A lot of that work is going to enable that optimization cost out that we're referring to because, as I said, we've got quite a mix, if you like, of systems, some of which are well and truly end of life. If we can address that, then we've got a great opportunity to drive productivity and efficiency back through the group.
I think.
Thanks, Steve. Oh, sorry, Kate.
To build on Steve's answer from me is that, through the last few years, what we've also done is use the fact that we have an optimization program that broadly offsets inflation to give us the capacity in our EBIT shape, in our, in our group financial shape, to invest behind the margin expanding initiatives that have underpinned both, both the gross profit margin expansion as well as our overall EBIT containment.
Yeah.
Over time.
Right on. Thanks, Ben.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Phil Kimber, from E&P. Please go ahead.
Good day. Just a question, specifically on hotels. I, I was-- you know, there's obviously hard to track with all the COVID-19 impacts in relation to growth rates, but the second half is probably largely clear air in a year-on-year basis. I just wanted to understand whether, as we move into FY 2024, if we, if we think about the second half of FY 2023, do we have all the costs sort of step ups now annualized? I guess I'm referring there to the, the increased amortization of Vic Gaming entitlements, but I think there was also a step-up in the Victorian gaming tax. I just wanted to check that that's all sort of, you know, how to think about that when you think about the second half of 2023 and then what might happen in FY 2024.
I'll let Kate come back to some of the specifics, materially, yes, is the answer. Everything's baked in. Don't miss the point, Phil, about this wage change. We have lots of people working in pubs. We are fully paying them 5.75% more per hour, and that requires us to work out how we can structure rosters in a way that maximizes their time, working more directly for their guests and engaging with their guests, as well as removing any waste that we might have had in the system. Trying to improve our customer experience on the way through, which we track very, very carefully because I've worked in businesses before where, you've seen people pull the costs out of the store or, or whatever environment and, you know, turn a blind eye to customer experience.
We can't afford to do that because the publican down the road will trump us. We're very focused on maintaining customer experience at the same time as driving productivity. Kate can talk to the, to the topic of the gaming entitlements.
The gaming entitlements will be a very small impact. They were 11 months of 12 worth of amortization of those in the year, last year, so we get one extra month, which won't be material. I think there are, there are, I mean, probably very at the margin, puts and takes to Steve's answer, such as, you know, during the year, we have increased our promotional events and live entertainment, but we expect that those will continue to increase coming into the new year, as the new financial year. There, there'll be some movement, but as I say, puts and takes at the margins as opposed to any, you know, sort of structural change to the P&L shape versus what we saw this year.
Great. And the Vic, not just the entitlement amortization, but Vic Gaming tax actually stepped up from memory in FY 2023. Is that fully annualized now? Like, that rate will continue, but the step change won't.
Right. That's, that's pretty much fully baked in.
Yeah. Great. My second question, sorry, to be on a technical one, on the tax. You know, your effective tax rate's a little bit higher for the year, but in the second half was actually a fair bit higher. Understand that it can be a bit volatile, but, you know, historically, if we look at your tax rate, it's been a little bit higher than sort of the 30% effective, because I think there's some expenses that you're non-deductible for tax purposes. Is that 31% sort of around the mark? Because just in the second half, I think it was 33.5%. I just wanna make sure that that's not the new rate we should think of going forward.
Thanks for the question. The second half is not representative. It was impacted by the timing of non-deductible expenses. Typically, we'd expect the rate to be between about 31%-32%. Call it 31.5%.
Right.
Renee?
That's great. Thanks. Yeah, going forward. Thank you. Thanks for that.
Next question comes from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee.
Morning, Steve. Morning, Kate.
Morning.
Can I just clarify, just in terms of the CapEx outlook, the, the, the pie charts are very helpful. Obviously, the, the bigger component that you've got is, this year was those extra acquisitions. The, the guidance on the specific program for One Endeavour, but the bucket around renewals, do you expect that to be similar or bigger in FY 2024 as to what it was in FY 2023 for both retail and hotel?
Yeah. Thanks, Craig. I think I've got your question. You're a little hard to hear, on capital going forward and the mix between acquisitions and renewals, I think I've always said we'll be opportunistic with, with acquisitions, and there was certainly, you know, more pubs available that met our needs and expectations last financial. Whether or not that's true in the next remains to be seen. I think what we tried to articulate, though, on that, that slide that talked about the hotel, renewals and, and redevelopments, was that we're, we're building a better capability there, over time, and that may result in perhaps us tweaking more capital towards our own network than, expanding the network inorganically. It is a bit dynamic.
It does depend a lot on the availability of stock out there, and pricing and competition and so on and so forth. It's really, you know, what is your opportunity at any, any given point? I think we'll talk more about this when we get up to The Brook Hotel, and share in more detail our strategy as it relates to hotels on Investor Day, everyone can understand it a bit better. I don't see a material step up necessarily, unless some amazing opportunity comes along, that will remain to be seen. What we've got to be focused on is doing a great job of improving the network that we've got, we've taken good steps in that direction with lots more to do.
Got it. Thank you. At the half, the company gave clarity that it was 41% of the interest of your debt book was hedged or fixed. Can you give us an update on that figure as at June?
I can't, but Kate should be able to.
I'm just finding it in the slide. It's on slide 26. We had AUD 725 million of drawn facilities-
Okay.
Which is about 40%.
Okay, that's great. Thank you. There's no other change in credit spreads in terms of renegotiated facilities or anything during the year?
As I mentioned, we, we did renegotiate and renew 3 of the 4 bilateral facilities and extended them and added 1 more. The spreads were not materially changed. In fact, in one case, were improved. I think while, while I've got the opportunity, I might go back around again on the topic of the interest question, in particular, what's the interest guidance for the current year, given. I appreciate it would be helpful to give more clarity around that, I think I was a bit quiet in my answer previously, so I think I was hard to hear.
I think the couple of points to note by way of consideration of interest expenses going into FY 2024 are that we've got the uplift in interest rates that occurred during the year, which will annualize. Obviously, we've had the growth in net debt during the year, and we, as I've said, expect it to remain broadly consistent with the current level as we go through the next year. With that in mind, we're expecting that interest expenses in the year will be around AUD 280 million- 310 million, an uplift on what we incurred during this year.
Thanks, Craig.
Great. Thank you. Thanks, guys.
That does conclude our question and answer session. I'll now hand back to Mr. Donohue for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. I appreciate your interest in the business and, and reiterate, the how pleased we are to be able to share our strong FY 2023 trading results and how exciting it is to have so many people back in pubs right now enjoying watching women's soccer, which is a fantastic spectacle, and we're looking forward to seeing more of it this evening. I look forward to seeing you in the pub tonight.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.