Good morning, everyone. I'm Greg Taylor, CEO and founder of Step One Clothing. I'm joined also by our CFO, Nigel Underwood. I'm really pleased to present our FY24 full year financial results. Let's start at slide one, slide two, please. Our FY24 financial highlights results are as follows: revenue, up 30% to AUD 84.5 million. EBITDA, up 51% to AUD 18.1 million. Gross margin, up to 80.8%. Cash is also up to AUD 39 million. Total customers, up 23% to 1.67 million, and our average order value is also increased by 7.1% to AUD 96. Very pleasingly, our women's revenue is up 54%, now makes up 14% of total revenue.
We have declared a fully franked dividend of AUD 0.028 per share, bringing our total for the year to AUD 0.068 per share. Turning to slide 3, please. Here are three key highlights I'd like to draw your attention to from our FY24 period. Firstly, our women's category. 30% of all orders now contain at least one women's product. Our international growth. All markets have grown, they're up 18.3%, U.K. up 33.2%, and the U.S. up 261.5%. This delivering an overall growth across the business of 30%. And thirdly, word-of-mouth. From our post-purchase survey, an average of 19% of global orders are now coming from word-of-mouth. Australia leads at 30%, U.K. at 26%, and USA at 4%.
This is a great proof point that not only do we have a great product, a great customer experience, but it really highlights our strong value proposition and that brand awareness is growing. Turning to slide 4, please. Here are some further financial highlights. EBITDA last year grew 33%, this year, 51% to AUD 18.1 million. Our advertising cost as a percentage of revenue last year was 35.7%. We've further managed to decrease that to 32.7%, showing greater marketing efficiencies. Our web traffic is up 5.3%. What also I'd like to point you to is our website conversion rate. Last year, we've not only increased our web traffic, but also increased our website conversion rate 9.1%, that's now sitting at 4.8%, just under 5%.
Our gross profit, as mentioned, 81% at AUD 68.3. And finally, our customer mix. 63% of all purchases are from repeat customers, showing that we not only have a very strong, but also loyal customer base. Turning to slide 5, please. How is Step One growing profitably? We sell a product that nearly every person wears every single day. The average wear time is over 18 hours per day. It's a functionally different product. It's not just a pair of standard underwear. It's a quality product with over 70,000 five-star reviews. We have strong ESG messaging. We have a customer-first focus, strong brand and ethic recognition. And what this has shown is that customers will invest in both quality and comfort.
Highlighted, is that 63% returning customer rate, which I see as a very strong proof point to how we've been able to grow profitably during the period. On the right here are some of our world-class athletes wearing our products. I'll explain later in the presentation as to why these athletes not only wear the product, but they've also purchased shares in Step One. Turning to slide six, six, please. Sustainability scorecard. ESG is in our DNA. Sustainability, while it's a very broad area, we've here provided insight on how we've attended to each of these three key areas, being firstly, environment, social, and governance. For the first time, we're reporting our carbon emissions, our carbon emissions. For us, ESG is not a destination, it's a journey. This level of reporting shows we are well progressed on this journey.
Our annual report has a detailed breakdown of our carbon emissions. Turning to slide seven, please. Our ESG credentials. We're the first clothing company in Australia and the UK to receive the prestigious FSC Chain of Custody certification. This means that from where the bamboo comes out of the ground to our customers' hands, every supplier along the journey has been audited by the FSC. That means things like no child labor, no forced labor, fair working conditions. And then our forests itself are also FSC certified. So things like no loss of natural habitat, no deforestation, and we even add biological mold to wastewater, so that can be used for irrigation. Our bags are also certified home compostable, made from cornstarch. This is an area we're very passionate about, and we'll continue this journey every year.
And finally, I'd like to point out is that we're the first signatory to the Fashion Forever Green Pact. Turning to Slide 8, please. In February, we announced our partnership with Surf Life Saving Australia, whereby AUD 5 per pair sold was donated. Last week, I had the honor of presenting a giant check to the CEO, Adam Weir, of AUD 250,000. We sold over 45,000 pairs, which attracted 8,000 new customers to the brand, and of those 8,000, 23% of those have already returned to buy a Step One product. What I'll also highlight is a quote from Adam.... So the Step One partnership was deemed to be the most successful first-year partnership in our history, where an amount from each sale is donated to Surf Life Saving.
This shows that we can use partnerships that not only help the community, but also to acquire new and loyal customers. Turning to slide 9, please. Our women's range. Our women's range has grown. We launched our Smooth Fit a year ago, and yesterday, our new bralette, which is nearly sold out in most sizes. The women's market is double that of the men's market in Australia, and as mentioned, 30% of all orders now contain a women's product in our Australian business, and further to that, we've seen a 38% increase in women's order volume PCP. Turning to slide 10, please. Our men's range continues to sell really well. We recently introduced our Juniors range with Juniors pricing.
The decision to make them was purely from demand, and this is the advantage of being D2C, whereby we can talk to our customers, listen to our customers, and make products that people are actually asking for. Turning to slide 11, please. I've talked about our relationship with Surf Life Saving, and how we've not only managed to raise over AUD 250,000, but also attract new and loyal customers to the brand. We're working on some exciting new partnerships that will be announced later in the year. With John Lewis, we've our sales have performed very well. That will only lead us to greater potential retail exposure, so at John Lewis's over 30 U.K. locations. I'm very pleased to also announce today that we are partnered with Steptember.
This is raising money for cerebral palsy, which is a similar concept to Surf Life Saving. I think another further proof point that partnerships are really an area of growth for us. Turning to slide 12, please. Our athlete shareholders. There are now over 50 athletes who are wearing Step One, who have now invested their own money into becoming a Step One shareholder. The fact they've invested into Step One shows not only belief in the product, but also the brand's potential, both here and also internationally, and this group of athletes already have a combined following of over 1 million people. This leads not only to authentic content, but exposes us to their engaged audience and their followers. Turning to slide 13, please. This slide shows the total addressable market, or TAM, across the three countries we currently sell in.
I'm going to illustrate the Australian market. On the top right there, you can see the Australian market. The men's market is worth AUD 0.6 billion. The women's market is worth AUD 1.1 billion. In the last year, we released our... We entered the women's market, so we now have a TAM, nearly three x, that's sitting at just over AUD 1.7 billion, so a combined TAM. If you look at the graph below that, this graph shows how our men's product drives our women's products, and our women's product drives our men's product. So as previously stated, 40% of our men's product is purchased by women. And then of that female cohort, 13% have now purchased at least one of our women's products. If we look at the first-time customers buying a women's product, 12% have already purchased a men's product.
So this really demonstrates that our women's product drives both men's and women's sales, and our men's product drives women's sales, which is nearly double that of the men's TAM. Turning to slide fourteen, please. This is about our business strategy. So Step One's built on a customer-first approach with innovative products and a model that's both capital light and also maintains a strong ESG focus. So we break these into the five pillars of profitable growth. So firstly, functional products. We make functional products that solve for everyday problems, that are comfortable and best in class. We market those through our D2C channels, our partnerships, via our capital light model. Talked about our partnership with Surf Life Saving, our athlete shareholders, and also our product adjacencies. That, in turn, creates loyal and returning customers. 63% return, and we have, as mentioned, nearly 5% website conversion rate.
We then have a very strong ESG focus, so first company to sign on to the Fashion Forever Green Pact, and that, in turn, obviously leads to profitable growth. Our women's growth is up 38%. Our TAM has increased, our revenue has increased by 30%, and our EBITDA is up 51%. These results show we have a clear strategy, and we're executing it. Turning to slide 15. Outlook. Our focus on profitable growth in both our existing markets and also testing new markets. Our product adjacencies have shown great success. Success of our women's, and also our bralette. Our Surf Life Saving partnership proved the model that we can attract not only new customers, but also loyal and returning ones, while also supporting community activities. This model can be replicated both here and internationally.
Our athlete shareholders bring great credibility to our brand and expose us to their engaged followers. These points above, along with our results, give confidence in our future growth plans, not only in our existing market, but also potential new markets. So subsequently, at this stage, we're not providing any formal guidance. Turning to slide 16, please. In summary, we've had a great year. We've executed our plan of both growth and profitability. We sell a product that people wear every day. Our revenue is up 30%. Our EBITDA is up 51%. Our women's category is up 30%, and finally, a 100% dividend payout. I remain confident in our business model and outlook. I'd like to thank everyone for your time, and I'll now hand back to the moderator for Q&A. Thank you.
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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Alexander Mees with Morgans. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Greg, Nigel. That was a very strong result, so well done. I've got a long list of questions, but I'll restrict it to three. Just firstly, the ratio of advertising costs to revenue at 32.7%, really impressive improvement on previous years. What have you done differently that's made you so much more efficient with your advertising costs in 2024? And I suppose, is 32.7% a realistic floor, and we should expect some increase in the future?
Yeah, good, good question, Alex. I, I think there's a couple of points I'll, I'll talk to here. Obviously, we've introduced our women's line, and women's market, as mentioned, is double that of the men's. So, on, on slide 13, we showed that how our men's products, so we had 40% of our customers buying a men's product were women. We converted already 13% of those, so we find lots of marketing efficiencies, as an example, by simply releasing our female product, but also marketing efficiency. So being more disciplined on our spend, focusing on website conversion rate, focusing on customer retention. So it's a sum of all parts that's enabled us to do that.
Obviously, I'd like to say that'll come down every year, but as we continue, we've now got the partnerships. We've shown how we can attract new customers through those partnerships, and they're also returning customers. So we're looking at ways to not only grow the business organically through pay channels, but also these partnerships and also our athlete shareholders are really key ways in which we can grow the business in new channels with a very low cost. I think also word of mouth, as you can see, is sitting at over 30% in Australia.
As the brand becomes more well known, word of mouth, and that, I think, really ties back into having a great product, and that return customer rate of 63% drives all those factors, which in turn drives down your advertising cost as a percent of revenue.
Excellent. Thank you. Secondly, inventory down 19% year on year. Just wondering, is there timing at play here? I would assume as the business grows, that inventory balance will increase, and I would assume that you'll need to restock the bralettes in particular, given that that's almost sold out.
Yes, Alex, you're completely correct. It's a little bit of timing about when the orders get delivered, but we plan to still maintain an inventory level around about just a bit over that one year mark, and yes, we will build a bit more inventory to stock the bralette, if only customers slow down buying it, which has been very successful yesterday in its launch. But it's selling well, and we will plan to get it up to about 12 months' worth of supply.
Great, thanks. I did say I'd restrict it to three, but I'm gonna do four. The third is just with regard to John Lewis. Greg, I think in the presentation, you referred to retail exposure potential. Obviously, this is a very high-profile department store in the UK. What conditions need to be met for you to get that exposure, please?
Yeah, look, it's really interesting, and when John Lewis approached us, it would be probably eighteen months ago, so it was purely an online trial. So we've been selling online. And I think we'll obviously cover that and announce that in due course, but yeah, there's a natural fit, naturally, that if you're obviously selling product online and that's successful and it's proving sell-through, then it's a natural process to go through and potentially test some of their retail stores.
And as I mentioned, there's over 30 locations. It's one of the U.K.'s most prestigious and regarded retail stores, as you mentioned. There's certainly a lot of green news there. I think will help build the business in the UK and also give us some exposure to retail potentially as well.
So we can expect some news one way or the other, this financial year?
Yes.
Great, and then just finally, HanesBrands recently said that it had launched an everyday value product for Bonds, saying that it needed to address the consumer's desire to spend less on underwear. Is this a dynamic that you're seeing? Are you unaffected by the things that HanesBrands are seeing?
I think our numbers reflect that, and a 51% growth in EBITDA, 30% growth in revenue. I think if you look at that, it shows, and I pointed out in the presentation around what our profitable growth looks like and how we do that, is that people are willing to pay for quality and comfort. And a 63% return rate, you spent eighteen hours a day in this product, it's a best-in-class product, 70,000 five-star reviews, 63% return rate.
Our numbers show the opposite to that. So whilst I did see that result, you know, and then mentioned around sort of discounting and creating discount bundle packs. I think we've actually shown and bucked that trend and shown that we can make it. If you make a great product, people will stick to it, and they are loyal, and we've proven that, and the numbers reflect that.
I'd agree with that. Thanks so much, Greg, Nigel.
All right, thank you for your questions, Alex.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Tim Evans with Morgans. Please go ahead.
Hi, Greg. Well done on a great result. Just had a query on your comment on slide 15 about testing new markets where you're popular. So you've mentioned Germany and Canada there. Can you just talk to how you would conduct a test? Do you have to launch a website, or can they do it through another region? Or just expand a bit on that, please. Thanks, and well done.
Yeah. It's an interesting one. Yeah. So obviously, Canada is just north of the U.S., so we can ship out of our 3PL in the U.S. there. But Germany, we're testing that through Amazon, so it's a good way for us to not have to put any infrastructure into a country, but test a product. And as you'd see, if you look on Amazon, we've got some really good reviews and ratings there. So it's a really good channel for us to test new markets without having to put any infrastructure into the place, like such as a warehouse, which we've done in the U.K. and U.S. But that obviously really keeps in line with our capital-light model.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Well done again.
Thanks, Tim.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Taylor for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for your time. I'd like to thank the board, the staff, and everyone involved for a great result. Very much looking forward to what FY 2025 brings, and thanks to everyone for their support, and we'll be in touch shortly. Thank you for your time.