As the previous presentations, we'll have the slides and the numbers presented by Ruslan and David first, and then we'll go into a Q&A session that I will moderate. If you want your questions asked, please type them into the Q&A, and we'll cover them off after this presentation. I'll now hand over to Ruslan and David to present on the FY22 results.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for our full year FY22 results investor briefing. My name is Ruslan Kogan, and I am the Founder and CEO of Kogan.com. Joining me here today is David Shafer, Kogan.com's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Both David and I are pleased to present the group's operating and financial results. Following today's presentation, we will be happy to answer questions that you may have.
In 2006, when I started Kogan.com, online retail was just a drop in the ocean. When I would speak to people, they would smirk at the thought of e-commerce being the future of retail. 16 years ago, my ambition and dream was considered a big bet, but here we are today. It is a bet that I will take again and again and again, and my certainty of that now is even stronger than it's ever been. Our team is delighting millions of Aussies and Kiwis, affording them the opportunity to have the latest and greatest products and services. Over the past 16 years, our business has grown exponentially. Yet it's amazing to think more Aussies and Kiwis will be online shoppers tomorrow than today. The opportunities for us are endless. Millions of customers are discovering the benefits of shopping from any device and location they choose.
There is no greater convenience than using your computer or phone to effortlessly search through a catalog of over 20 million products and then have them delivered to your door at great prices. As I reflect on the year that was and the challenges that the world is navigating, I feel incredibly proud of the company we have built and the resilience our team has shown. Despite lockdowns that never seem to end, supply chain disruptions and logistical nightmares, we continue to deliver on the most important thing, delighting our millions of Aussie and Kiwi customers. In the year of our sweet sixteenth, we achieved our highest ever Gross Sales, won our fifth consecutive Australia Post People's Choice Award, and were awarded the top Australian marketplace.
These achievements are a result of our loyal customers placing their trust in us and turning to Kogan.com time and time again for the products they need at market-leading prices. Our achievements demonstrate our strength in the market, a market that continues to grow. IBISWorld has reported that the online retail market in Australia was worth AUD 52.7 billion in FY22, and it will grow to AUD 56.2 billion next year. It puts into perspective the opportunity we have in front of us as more and more Aussies and Kiwis turn to the convenience of online shopping. I'm pleased to confirm that we've returned to positive operating cash flow this year by both driving our growth initiatives in Kogan Marketplace, Kogan First, and Mighty Ape, while also undertaking a number of initiatives to right-size our cost of doing business.
These initiatives included reducing the scope of underperforming product categories, suspension of Kogan delivery services due to rising transportation and delivery partner costs, and gradually aligning our team size to current trading conditions. At Kogan.com, we are focused on doing what we do best: delivering value. Our marketplace is a perfect example of this. For more than 3 years now, we have been improving our platform, creating more choice for our customers by offering millions of products from thousands of sellers. This year, we expanded Kogan Marketplace to New Zealand and further enhanced the platform to delight both our customers and community of sellers. Over the next 12 months, we are excited to be launching an advertising platform as an extension of our marketplace. This will allow us to continue improving the value and choice for our customers.
Our Kogan First loyalty program currently has hundreds of thousands of subscribers who have received over AUD 20 million worth of benefits in FY22 alone. In order to continue to deliver this outstanding service, we need to increase the cost of access to Kogan First going forward. With the ongoing increase and evolution of subscriber benefits, as well as the impacts of inflation in delivery costs, the price of Kogan First will be increased to AUD 79 per year. We will continue to enhance the benefits our Kogan First members get with ongoing investments in the program. This year marks the first full financial year of having Mighty Ape as part of the Kogan Group. Mighty Ape introduced a number of new initiatives during the year, delivered strong financial results, and we had the pleasure of announcing a new CEO for Mighty Ape.
The two teams are working well together, and synergies are continuously being progressed. Throughout the year, we continued to work through our high inventory levels across the Kogan business in line with our updates to the market. In order to do so, we increased promotional activity and marketing, which has had an impact on our margins. Pleasingly, we achieved a significant unwinding of this excess inventory and returned to adjusted EBITDA profitability in the last quarter of the year. The volatility that has rocked the world through huge structural changes and crises these past couple of years has had an impact on virtually every part of the economy. For over a decade, e-commerce in Australia has grown at a steady and predictable rate. It meant that planning for the future was relatively straightforward.
Almost overnight, our sales doubled due to the onset of the pandemic as shoppers relied on Kogan.com for their needs. It was only due to the strong foundations we'd built over 16 years that we were able to continue delivering to the high standard we expect of ourselves and our customers expect of us. After a number of months of elevated sales, we were faced with a decision. Did we think this trend would continue and even grow further? Based on the data we had available to us at the time, we predicted the trend would not stop or slow. As a result, we made the decision to increase both our range and volume of inventory, as well as our logistics network to support the volume. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, and it turns out we were wrong.
As the pandemic settled, e-commerce did not grow in the way many in the industry expected. This left us holding too much inventory and an associated increase in warehousing costs. The compounding factors of high inventory, increased associated costs, and the marketing and discounting required to sell through this inventory has impacted profitability in FY22. As we continue to discuss throughout this presentation, we have been recalibrating the cost of doing business in order to return to significant profit. The compound annual growth rate since FY20 has been included to demonstrate the long-term growth of the business as we cycle significant growth in the prior year and drastically different trading conditions. Shortly, David will discuss these financial results with you in more detail. We obsess over delighting our customers every day. It's what drives our team. Winning awards is just the cherry on top.
The fact that over 50% of orders are coming from customers who have previously shopped with us over the last 12 months is a strong endorsement of the value we provide to customers. Our customers are continually delighted and keep returning. As Kogan First becomes a larger part of our business, we expect this number to continue to grow. Once you have experienced our platform, with now over 30 million products curated by our Exclusive Brands, Third-Party Brands, and Kogan Marketplace divisions across the Kogan.com and Mighty Ape platforms, why would you choose to shop any other way? The sheer convenience and value has our customers delighted and returning for more. With a huge range, great value, and first-class service, Kogan.com and Mighty Ape are well-positioned to continue delighting customers in Australia and New Zealand. Here at Kogan.com, we work to deliver a first-class shopping experience.
As one of the pioneers of e-commerce in Australia, we have always risen to the challenge of developing industry-leading technology and feedback loops to improve the online shopping experience for millions of shoppers. We have also been developing the interfaces to our platform to make it easier for small businesses to both contribute their inventory to our platform and also purchase from our platform using APIs. This will enable us to scale at an even faster rate in the future as we become critical retail infrastructure. Behind the scenes, our team has developed systems that can be leveraged by our partners and integrated into their business model. We use machine learning and AI at Kogan to ensure that our customers get the tailored shopping experience they deserve.
Our proprietary algorithms and AI technology means that we are communicating the right product or service to the right person at the right time. All of this makes us stronger and smarter as a business and leads to the best deals for our customers and partners. As I mentioned earlier, we have strategically continued to invest in marketing to reach new customers and unwind excess inventory. By increasing our marketing activity to address fluctuating customer demand throughout the year, our ROI was impacted. As our inventory levels right-sized, marketing costs progressively reduced in the fourth quarter of FY22, and this trend has continued into FY23. Despite this increase in marketing activity, our platform and loyal customer base continued to drive most of our traffic.
Owned and earned traffic sources still represent the vast majority of the visits to our websites, which demonstrates that satisfied customers continue to return to Kogan.com. This is a key metric for the platform we have built. Kogan Marketplace continues to rapidly grow. We achieved another year of record growth sales for the division, and we continue to onboard more and more sellers. Kogan Marketplace is a win-win. It delivers incredible range and choice for our customers without the need to invest capital. This enables us to scale infinitely into the future without corresponding capital requirements for warehousing and stock. It also enables thousands of small and medium-sized businesses to access millions of customers and grow their business. We are always looking to enhance the marketplace platform, and in FY23 we are excited to be launching a new advertising platform for marketplace sellers to get website and customer experience.
The strong performance of our marketplace has not gone unnoticed. We were proud to be awarded the top Australian marketplace at a leading industry awards night. This award was no surprise given the caliber of our marketplace team, who work tirelessly to deliver a seamless shopping experience for both our customers and sellers. It's great to receive recognition, but for us, it's just the beginning of our marketplace platform journey. We are continuously developing technology that makes it easier for businesses around the country to list their products on our site, and then we curate the offering to make it quicker for our customers to find the products they need. As part of this, our platform groups identical products together from the thousands of sellers from the Kogan Marketplace and suggests the best value offer to our customers.
No longer do you need to spend hours comparing prices for the same product. We do the hard work for you, ensuring that you buy the products you want at the lowest possible price. In addition, this drives internal competition among sellers, ensuring our millions of loyal customers get the products they want at market-leading prices. Kogan.com has 20 Exclusive Brands in its stable, offering the best value products available anywhere. This division is one of the pillars of our business and is the most efficient way to get a product from the point of manufacture to the customer and results in incredible value. Our Exclusive Brands division is the largest contributor to gross profit in the business and is a highlight of our customer offering. While cycling an incredibly strong period last year, Exclusive Brands continues to perform for our customers and our business.
As part of the initiatives to reduce our cost of doing business, we are performing ongoing range reviews to ensure we are offering the most in-demand products at the most affordable prices. We continue to see a bright future for our Exclusive Brands division as we control the entire supply chain, which enables us to deliver customers incredible value across the most in-demand products. The Kogan First loyalty program has become an incredibly important part of our business because of the value it delivers to so many customers. It rewards our most loyal customers by providing free shipping, exclusive deals on top of everyday discounts on our platform, Kogan First rewards credits, and priority customer care. As of August 2022, we have 380,000 Kogan First subscribers, and our medium-term goal is to reach 1 million subscribers. Our increasing renewal rate speaks volumes.
Customers are delighted by the growing benefits they are receiving and the value of our loyalty program. Over the past year, Kogan First members received over AUD 20 million of benefits. Anyone who considers themselves a smart shopper in Australia should be a Kogan First subscriber. We continue to deliver great value on essential services through our verticals. This year, we've worked with our partners to develop, improve, and review these offerings, achieving growth across a number of our larger verticals. This includes a return to growth in active customers for Kogan Mobile Australia, our largest vertical. During the year, we launched eSIMs and the trial of 5G on all large and extra-large plans. Moving into FY23, we're extremely excited about the proposed integration with Telstra's rural towers, which will allow broader mobile connectivity throughout Australia.
We also look forward to welcoming more international travelers, students, and holidaymakers back to our shores, many of whom will likely experience the great value of Kogan Mobile. It's hard to believe that the Kogan.com and Mighty Ape team had never physically met until early 2022, owing to the pandemic. It was great to finally visit the Mighty Ape headquarters, where we spent a number of days getting to know our new extended family, where we were able to experience the energy and passion that the Mighty Ape team are known for. It's exactly why we wanted them on our side. The Mighty Ape team delivered on a number of key initiatives. These included Jungle Express, which allows transparency of delivery for the customer, as well as improved speed and quality of the delivery experience in New Zealand. We've also worked together on their range to expand their offering.
This will continue to be an ongoing project as our two platforms grow. I'll also take this opportunity now to congratulate Gracie MacKinlay, who was appointed the new CEO of Mighty Ape. Gracie was previously the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for 10 years at Mighty Ape and is a natural successor to Simon Barton. I thank Simon, the founder of Mighty Ape, for successfully leading the transition of the Mighty Ape business into the Kogan.com group over the past 18 months, and for his ongoing dedication to the inspiring business he and his team have built. Simon will continue as Chief Financial Officer of Mighty Ape. David will now take you through the financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Ruslan. Over the past year, the company has worked hard to respond to changing levels of demand while navigating a high starting inventory position and large logistics network and the ongoing integration of Mighty Ape. Despite all the challenges of the pandemic, the effects of which are ongoing, we achieved our highest-ever Gross Sales of AUD 1.18 billion. We are proud to have exited the financial year with a strong trajectory of improving adjusted EBITDA. The long-term health of the business is evident, with the compound annual growth rate from FY20 to FY22 of Gross Sales and gross profit being 23.6% and 20.7% respectively.
The business looks to the future with confidence, given the strong long-term e-commerce growth trajectory and the rapid expansion of our loyal Kogan First subscriber base, which provides the company with a solid foundation of repeat business. As mentioned, in FY22, we achieved our highest ever Gross Sales of AUD 1.18 billion, despite operational disruptions and fluctuations in consumer demand. Gross Sales reflects the total transaction value of Kogan Retail, Kogan Marketplace, and the Kogan Verticals, whereas revenue reflects the accounting revenue of Kogan Retail and only the commission or seller-based fees received from Kogan Marketplace and the Kogan Verticals.
Revenue of AUD 718.5 million reflects the contribution of Mighty Ape, the growth in Kogan Marketplace, and our Kogan First loyalty program, which was partially offset by a decline in both our Exclusive Brands and Third-Party Brands divisions, both of which had extreme growth in the prior year. The business grew Group Active Customers year-on-year to 3,972,000 as at 30 June 2022. Kogan.com had 3,189,000 active customers, while Mighty Ape active customers were 783,000. We are proud to have continued to delight our customers through the supply chain interruptions of FY22, as demonstrated by all the awards that Ruslan mentioned.
Exclusive Brands and Third-Party Brands have cycled extreme growth in the prior year with a decline in revenue of 17.6% and 35% respectively. However, Exclusive Brands revenue of AUD 311.6 million in FY22 had a compound annual growth rate of 15.7% since FY20, reflecting the strong long-term growth trajectory of the division. We have focused on promotional activity to address the excess stock levels and associated holding costs, which impacted gross profit and gross margin across both Exclusive and Third-Party Brands in FY22. As a result of these initiatives, total inventories at 30 June 2022 were AUD 159.9 million, with AUD 137.9 million in warehouse and AUD 22 million in transit.
This reflects a significant unwinding of inventories from total inventories of AUD 227.9 million at the start of the financial year. Moving forward, we are continuing to refine our product range, focusing on in-demand items that delight our customers while achieving better operating metrics for our shareholders. The business has been performing extensive range reviews to improve its offering. By focusing on in-demand products and removing the inefficiencies in the long tail of the product range, the business will offer a curated range of in-inventory products at lower prices, driven by the efficiencies created. Kogan Marketplace Gross Sales increased by 20.3% year-on-year, with a compound annual growth rate of 51.6% since FY20.
Sellers on the platform increased by 49.1% this year, and there continues to be a strong pipeline of new sellers ready to be onboarded. We are continuously improving our proprietary marketplace platform, which enables the company to achieve ongoing growth without further investment in inventory. These improvements include a current investment in implementing an advertising platform for marketplace sellers to gain further reach within the Kogan website and improve the visibility of their best offers. The growth of Kogan Marketplace means that customers have more choice than ever, and the business can become leaner without further reliance on ongoing investment in inventory to drive sales. Our medium-term goal is to reach 1 million Kogan First subscribers. We are investing in marketing and subscriber benefits to achieve this goal.
The Kogan First loyalty program grew to over 372,000 subscribers as at 30 June 2022, with revenue increasing to AUD 15.5 million, an increase of 73.4% on the prior year. Kogan First subscribers enjoy incredible value with more than AUD 25 million in benefits provided to members in FY22, in addition to special access to deals and priority customer service. Growth of the program was underpinned by increasing renewal rates, which was 84.7% in FY22, demonstrating strong and growing customer satisfaction with the program. It's important to appreciate that the growth of Kogan First represents a short-term investment by the business for long-term benefits. We have grown Kogan First through a strong investment in marketing and significant benefits to subscribers.
While we will continue the great benefits, the subscription model of Kogan First means we don't need to continue to market to these subscribers at the same pace as non-subscribers. We believe the economics of Kogan First for our business will improve over time and deliver for our business as well as our customers well into the future. We are already starting to see this dynamic play out, as we have relied on our subscriber base to progressively reduce marketing costs in the fourth quarter of FY 2022 and into the new financial year. Mighty Ape recorded FY 2022 revenue of AUD 163.4 million, gross profit of AUD 39.1 million, and adjusted EBITDA of AUD 12.3 million in its first full year contribution to the group.
Integration of both the team and the operations are progressing well with a lot more to do still. The product range of Mighty Ape has already expanded significantly, and we have delivered logistics improvements to delight customers. We look forward to continuing to share knowledge between the teams and create further value for our Aussie and Kiwi customers. Variable costs. Variable costs consist of warehousing and selling costs. Costs have been elevated, reflecting the levels of excess inventory and increased logistics costs relating to pandemic interruptions. As excess inventory progressively unwinds, associated costs are reducing, and we expect this to continue into FY23. Statutory NPAT, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted NPAT. Statutory NPAT of AUD -35.5 million was materially impacted by the various non-recurring items. The main impacts arise from, firstly, unrealized losses of $2.2 million deriving from our Bitbuy Technologies Inc. shares and foreign exchange contracts.
Equity-based compensation expenses of AUD 26.6 million, which are largely driven by the award of options after the company's AGM in November 2020. The provision for the likely payment of Mighty Ape tranches 3 and 4 purchase price installments as part of the sale agreement, which are contingent on the Mighty Ape founder and CFO, Simon Barton, remaining with the business until the delivery of the financial year 2022 and 2023 results, respectively. In line with the accounting standards, tranches 3 and 4 payments are considered as compensation for post-combination services, and as such, treated as employee remuneration for accounting purposes. The group is proportionally accounting for these expenses up until the respective payment dates. Finally, the sale of the Bitbuy domain for AUD 5.1 million to Bitbuy Technologies Inc.
Adjusted EBITDA, which includes unrealized gains and losses, equity-based compensation, and other one-off non-recurring items, including the profit from the sale of the bitbuy.com domain, was AUD 18.9 million. Please see Annexure 2 of this presentation for a detailed reconciliation of all the adjusting items. On the next slide, we can see gross profit contribution by the business division. Exclusive Brands generated 33.1% of the group's overall gross profit and continues to deliver the largest gross profit contribution across the business. Mighty Ape is now the group's second largest contributor, accounting for 21.2% of the group's gross profit. Kogan Marketplace, Third-Party Brands, Kogan First, and Kogan Mobile are material contributors to the overall gross profit of the group. Kogan First reflects subscription revenues.
Despite only launching in late FY 2019, Kogan First is already contributing 8.4% of overall gross profit, indicating the growth opportunity in Kogan First. We grew active customers within Kogan Mobile AU, our largest vertical, and we have high hopes for this division over the coming year and beyond. Advertising income contributed 2.3% of our gross profit in FY 2022. We anticipate significant growth of this division as we launch an advertising platform as an extension of our marketplace, which will allow us to continue providing great value back to our customers. We have always prided ourselves on our historically strong operating leverage.
Due to the difficult trading conditions over the past year that Wilson discussed earlier, we are now in a phase of consolidation to return to the levels of profitability and operating leverage that we previously delivered in the years between our IPO and the latter stage of the pandemic. We have undertaken a number of initiatives in the second half of FY22 in order to return to profitability, which can be seen in the trading performance of the fourth quarter of FY22. Our initiatives have included reducing underperforming product categories in order to reduce warehousing costs and refocus your capital on in-demand profitable items, suspension of Kogan delivery services due to rising transportation and partner delivery costs, revision of our proprietary marketing algorithm to improve ROI on marketing, and a gradual reduction in team size in order to realign our headcount to current trading conditions.
The group had a strong capital position with net cash, which is total cash less loans and borrowings, of AUD 31.2 million, after having funded the tranche 2 payment in respect of the Mighty Ape acquisition of AUD 29.9 million during the year, and also repaid loans and borrowings of AUD 49 million. The group held AUD 137.9 million of inventory in warehouse at the end of the period. The total inventory was AUD 159.9 million, which includes inventory in transit, and that reflects a decrease of 29.8% of inventory over the year since 30 June 2021. The group continues to be focused on reducing inventory levels over the coming period.
Financial assets reflect shares acquired from the sale of the bitbuy.com domain, along with a small portion of open forward foreign exchange contracts. Acquisition payables reflects a provision for the likely payment of tranches three and four of the Mighty Ape acquisition amount. During the year, we increased our net cash position, which is total cash less loans and borrowings, to AUD 31.2 million from AUD 12.8 million as at 30 June 2021. The year included a return to positive operating cash flows of AUD 61.8 million following the significant unwinding of inventory and initiatives to reduce cost, as mentioned earlier in the presentation. I'll now hand back to Ruslan to discuss our outlook and some further detail on exciting things to come in FY23. Thank you.
Thanks, David. We're excited for what FY23 and beyond will look like as we navigate the changing online retail environment and continue to create a leaner, stronger, and more profitable group. Consistent with prior years, the company will not be providing earnings guidance for FY23. However, we will provide regular business updates during the year. The business looks forward to returning to positive operating leverage, having commenced the process of driving efficiencies in operating costs and returning to adjusted EBITDA profitability in the fourth quarter of FY22. July 2022 unaudited management accounts showed group adjusted EBITDA of AUD 1.5 million, and operating costs reducing by 19.3% year-on-year. In FY23, we expect the continued expansion of Kogan Marketplace and the anticipated launch of our advertising platform.
Continued with growth in Mighty Ape, further growth in Kogan First subscriptions heading towards our medium-term goal of one million subscribers, continued strong contribution from Exclusive Brands. The rollout of enhancements across a number of Kogan Verticals and improved operating leverage consistent with the company's long-term track record. Together with David and our board, I am looking forward to FY23 and the many opportunities the new financial year presents to our business. This concludes our presentation. David and I look forward to meeting with many of our shareholders over the coming days. For those of you who have any questions or are interested in hearing more, please stay with us for the Q&A. Thank you for your interest in Kogan.com.
Thank you, Ruslan, and thank you, David. We've got a bunch of questions queued. Just to remind everybody, if you'd like to ask some questions, please type them in the Q&A, and I will bring them up in this Q&A session. We'll start with Tim Piper. Tim's got three questions. Looking at the second half e-commerce stock carry gross margin, the step-down half to half was about just over 400 basis points. Is it possible to roughly quantify the magnitude of the impacts on that step-down between shipping inflation, cost of inventory, i.e., producer price inflation, and three, abnormal level of discounting to clear excess inventory?
Thanks for the question, Tim. Always a pleasure. The vast majority of the step-down in margin was driven by discounting to clear excess inventory. Most of the inventory had been landed previously, so any cost impacts on logistics were not really apparent in the half. The overwhelming driver was that resolution of the business to drive down excess inventory through promotional discounting, and we expect that to normalize as the level of inventory in the business approaches our desired ongoing level of inventory for the size of our current business.
Thanks, David. Next question from Tim on advertising income. Advertising Gross Sales appears to be trending higher half-on-half, but advertising gross profit is trending lower. Can you please explain the relationship between the two and how revenue to gross profit is recognized?
Gross Sales of advertising income relates to cash receipts. If an advertiser pays for placement on the website that is then delivered over the course of a year or two, but pays us upfront, the booking of that cash up front will give rise to the recognition of Gross Sales. Gross profit or revenue is only earned progressively as we deliver that advertising over the course of the contracted period. Any mismatch between Gross Sales and gross profit will be driven by the timing differential of when the advertising is actually booked or paid for, and when it's actually delivered over the course of a period of time.
Last question from Tim on warehousing expense. There was a solid step-down as excess inventory cleared. Can we expect any further warehousing expense efficiencies to come? In terms of relative to inventory and cost of goods sold, warehousing expense looks to have fully normalized now. Is that correct?
Inventory is significantly reduced over the course of FY22. We expect that to continue in the current half. I wouldn't say we're at the normalized level of warehousing costs yet. I think it'll still continue to reduce lower over the remainder of this half, and then will be normalized towards the end of this half.
Just a follow-on question on inventories from Wei-Weng Chen. Can you speak to the carrying value of inventory and the possibility or not, for write-downs?
Our inventory was thoroughly reviewed by management and by the audit team as at the end of the financial year. The carrying value of inventory in our accounts is after a significant provision that reflects the current value of that inventory. We're extremely confident that the current value of inventory in the business reflects the realizable value of that inventory and is already embedded with any write-downs that are appropriate after having discussed with the auditors and the management team.
Thanks, David. A couple of questions from Wilson Wong. What are the estimated cost savings in FY23 from each of the outlined initiatives?
We've always been reluctant to give forward-looking statements in relation to profitability or costs. We've given the broad buckets of cost improvements that we expect to deliver over FY23. We've mentioned that those were part of the drivers of the performance of the business in the last quarter of FY22, and that has continued into the first month of FY23. Those are the themes that we will be delivering over the remainder of the year. There's an overall focus on efficiency improvement, return to profitability, and becoming a leaner, more scalable business. In terms of how those actual cost drivers come out and what the quantities are at the end of the financial year, we'll need to wait and see, and we'll be happy to discuss that after we've delivered them.
I might just, before I ask Wilson's second question, I might just stay on the cost-out theme with Wei-Weng Chen. How should we think about the 19.3% reduction in costs in July? Is this the run rate we should think about for the rest of the year? If not, why not?
There's no one-off issues in relation to costs in July. There's nothing that is in any way special about the month of July. Again, we're very reluctant to give guidance as to what the forward run rate of cost reductions for the remainder of the year ought to be. We're very happy to say that the figure for July does not reflect any one-offs or any aberrations from what we see as a normal trend.
Thanks, David. Ruslan, I haven't forgotten about you, but we've got a lot of financial questions at the moment, so we'll just stick to that theme for the moment. The second question from Wilson: How are you seeing customer acquisition costs trending in FY23 to date?
I might take that one just to in the interest of participation. You can see on slide 10 of our presentation that we give some high-level numbers around marketing spends, the owned and earned media sources and the marketing spend per new group active customer and some of the trends surrounding that. It's one of the really important features of our business is the amount of brand equity we have in our business that just keeps customers coming back in the owned and earned media.
The brand that we have built over 16 years that says to customers, "Hey, if you're after awesome value, come to Kogan.com." That's our price points and value are almost embedded marketing because that is where we sit in customers' minds, and especially in times like this when people are after better value and there are inflationary pressures, and they are looking around, shopping around. We want more and more customers comparing specifications, looking at products, looking at price points, and deciding what the best thing for them is. We flourish in an environment like that. From a more marketing cost specific, it's once again, it's something we don't give forward-looking statements on.
We have had a period recently where we have increased our marketing because of our very full inventory position. It's something that where we do have proprietary systems, we do it very efficiently, and it's something that the market gets visibility on how it's performing over time.
Thanks, Ruslan. Maybe stick with you now for a few questions and give David a break. Couple of questions from Mariano Castillo. The pandemic has not only accelerated more consumers to online shopping, it spurred more of the legacy brick-and-mortar retailers to increase their online presence. Given their presence online and logistical advantages of bricks and mortar in terms of omni capabilities, how do you feel about their competitive threat to Kogan.com?
At a high level, we love it because when I started the business in 2006, all our business leaders were saying e-commerce isn't real. It's never gonna be significant. Online shopping is not significant. Nobody's gonna do it. We can ignore it. All of a sudden, you switch on the TV, and you've got the biggest retailers around the country saying, "Shop in store or online. Go online to so and so." The more customers that start their shopping experience online, the more customers we're gonna win. Like I just said before, we want customers comparing specifications, looking for features, being frugal, shopping around, because when they do that, Kogan.com grows. Now, from that perspective, it's great to see that a lot of our bricks-and-mortar retailers are finally acknowledging that the internet is real and here to stay.
It's gonna mean more and more people start their shopping experience online. The question does correctly call out that from one perspective, there is an advantage to bricks-and-mortar retailers in that you could consider each store a little satellite warehouse. If you do the number crunching and the cost on that, it's an extremely inefficient way to distribute product. W e have big warehouses with efficient systems to pick and pack tens of thousands of items every single day. That is a completely different proposition to having a store member have to walk to one end of the store, pick an item, then to another, then find a box, then print a label, and so on. It's a completely different proposition.
When it comes to efficiency and better prices, which is what we're focused on, and that is the business model we're building.
Second question from Mariano. Given the apparent increasing tensions with China, do you have supply concerns, particularly in relation to Kogan.com's Exclusive Brands?
Look, our business is a supply chain business, essentially, where we have found the most efficient way in our Exclusive Brands business to get a product from the point of manufacture into the customer's hands. That means we control the entire supply chain, and it means that customers can save a lot of money, as they have been doing for 16, or over 16 years with our business. Where that product comes from can change over time. Even if you look at our existing supply chain, we've got our coffee pods coming from Italy, we've got some products coming from Germany, some coming from Taiwan, some coming from Korea, some coming from the U.S. Like, it is already a very diverse supply chain.
Yes, there's no doubt that where certain categories or products in the future come from may change. Our supply chain can cater for that very easily. It's not wedded to one geography or country or region. T hat won't make an impact to us. One thing customers can always be rest assured of is that our business will remain the most efficient way to get a product from place of manufacture into the customer's hands, and that means better prices.
Thanks, Russ. Another question from Wei-Weng Chen. The July 2022 trading EBITDA commentary is helpful, but can you also please speak to what the year-on-year top line for a sales/revenue comp was?
Yeah. We didn't disclose that in our announcement. Obviously, we do give very regular trading updates to the market. As you can see from the announcement, the focus in our business is rightsizing a lot of costs. It has been a very turbulent period. There's slides in there that show exactly what we've had to react to and how we've reacted to in the macro environment and the fluctuating demand. As a result of that the business has had very great times and not so great times. Overall, we have built a very agile business and the focus currently is on profitability.
Thanks. We had a question from Owen Humphries. Can you discuss how many unique sellers you now have on the Marketplace, and highlight the potential revenue generated from advertising on Marketplace?
Yes. We have a graph on page 11 that shows the growth of our sellers. We still have a huge runway to go in terms of getting every seller in Australia onto the platform. There is a massive backlog. There is a huge pipeline. Our marketplace platform will be a work in progress forever in terms of building the infrastructure and APIs and the platform to make it very easy for all sellers, whether it's a small business and a mom-and-pop shop or an existing e-commerce operator, to be able to easily list their products on our marketplace. We are very excited about the platform we're working on from a marketing perspective, because we have had a lot of sellers come to us and say, "Hey, love the Kogan Marketplace. It's generating a lot of sellers for me.
I'm winning a lot of new customers. I love the fact that Kogan has opened up the website to me to be able to make more sales. However, I would like the ability to better market to your customers and show them ads in certain places and to be able to reach more customers." There's just been so much demand from the seller side that we said, "Hey, we have to build a platform here. We have to service our sellers who are now essentially also our customers." If you look around the world at more mature marketplaces, the advertising platform, in very many cases, generates as much or close to as the actual seller fees from selling in the marketplace. It's a real win-win-win, whereby our customers are gonna see more relevant advertising across the thousands of categories they browse.
Our sellers will be able to better reach more customers, and our shareholders will benefit from it as well. We're very excited about the advertising platform.
Follow-up question for Mariano. Is your plan to continue using third-party warehousing into the future?
During the last year or two, we've talked to the market about a potential plan to roll out Kogan warehousing services. That's one of the initiatives that we suspended as part of our cost reduction exercise in combination with Kogan delivery services. When we look forward into the future, we do think that there is eventually a likelihood of Kogan running its own warehousing and delivery network. We thought that point was sooner than it actually is, as our sales originally were growing at a much faster pace. We've taken the opportunity now with this period of consolidation to pause that exercise. Our current network of third-party logistics partners has sufficient storage capability to enable us to grow for the next few years, and that's certainly the plan over the coming years.
Thanks, David, and thanks, Ruslan. There's no other questions that have been submitted, so I might just hand back to you just to do a wrap up before we close out today's presentation.
Thanks, Ron, and thank you everyone for your interest in Kogan.com. It's obviously been a turbulent year. I'm so proud of our team for navigating the very complicated environments we've got out there. E very decision we make in this business is about servicing our customers. Even though the macro environment has thrown absolutely everything at us, our team have not wavered in our commitment to delighting our customers. That is something, as a management team, that we're very proud of. We have lots of exciting projects that we'll be working on this year, and we look forward to keeping you guys updated as to those projects and how they create a win-win-win environment for everyone. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.
Thanks, Ruslan. Thanks, David, and thanks everybody for attending today.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Thank you.