Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Super Retail Group's Financial Year 2021 Half Year Results presentation. Today's speakers will be Mr. Anthony Heraghty, Managing Director and CEO of Super Retail Group, and Mr. David Burns, CFO of Super Retail Group. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. Please note that today's call is for investors only. Media wishing to obtain access to management should contact Kate Carine, whose details appear at the bottom of today's ASX announcement. I would like to hand over to Mr. Anthony Heraghty to begin today's presentation. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, and welcome everyone to the Super Retail Group's half year results presentation. Joining me this morning is our Chief Financial Officer, David Burns. Good morning, David.
Good morning, everyone.
In terms of the structure of today's presentation, I'll talk through some of the financial and operating highlights for the period before discussing some of the opportunities we see to leverage our loyal consumer base, grow our four core brands, and to create long-term shareholder value. I'll also talk to our divisional performance. I'll ask our Chief Financial Officer, David Burns, to provide more detail on the full-year financial results, finally he provides you with a brief overview of our corporate strategy together with a trading update for the first seven weeks of the second half. There will obviously be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of the call. If we just go to the presentation on slide four, we go to the summary.
Look, we're pleased to report that the group has delivered a record H1 result underpinned by strong top-line growth, high growth margins, and disciplined cost management. We're in no doubt, and there can be no question that unprecedented consumer demand was the key driver of this result. However, it was the group's omni-retail business model that really enabled us to successfully capture this demand despite the ongoing challenges of COVID lockdowns and the like. This is in a period when our online sales grew by over 87%. The group was able to deliver strong operating leverage, therefore demonstrating the profitability of our online sales and, more importantly, the scalability of our online omni-retail platform. As we enter H2 , the group has a conservative balance sheet with no net debt and a healthy cash position.
This leaves us well-placed to reinvest in our four core brands, grow our market share. Turning to slide five, group sales increased by 23% to AUD 1.78 billion. Pleasingly, this top-line growth translated into 122% increase in EBIT to AUD 256 million, with group EBIT margins up 6.4% - 14.4%. Our underlying NPAT increased by 139% to AUD 177 million, while our statutory NPAT increased by 201% to AUD 173 million, reflecting a significant reduction in below-the-line adjustments. Online sales grew by 87% to over AUD 237 million, now represents over 13% of group sales.
With a 1 million increase in the number of active customers in the last 12 months, or sorry, I should say, with a 700,000 increase in the number of active online customers in the last 12 months and an average online transaction value of 170% higher than our average in-store transaction value, there's a significant opportunity for the group to leverage this shift in customer spending patterns towards digital to profitably grow our business. With a net cash position of over AUD 400 million, we can continue confidently to execute our strategy to both capitalize on current elevated levels of consumer demand and reinvest in long-term to reinforce our market-leading positions in our key categories. We turn to slide six.
We want to call out some operating highlights, and really it underpins the capability of both our systems and our team to successfully manage this unprecedented uplift in the volume of customer orders and transactions more generally flowing through our business. We grew a number of active club members during the period by 10.9% to 7.1 million. They are active members who have shopped with us in the last 12 months. These active club members now represent 62% of group sales in the first half and increasingly represent a source of sustained competitive advantage, which will help to underpin the resilience of our earnings going forward. The group fulfilled over 2 million online orders during the first half, and it's worth noting that despite the impact of COVID disruptions on store trading and foot traffic, click and collect sales increased by 74% to AUD 108 million.
I don't think anyone would've predicted the extraordinary surge in customer demand that we saw during the H2 , and the statistics on slide six will give you a sense of that scale, of that volume uplift we successfully managed across our supply chain to not only ensure that stock was on shelves, which was a challenge, but customer orders were successfully fulfilled. From a team perspective, we were delighted to reward over 5,000 team members with a cash payment of up to AUD 5,000 to thank them for their extraordinary efforts in serving our customers, and looking after each other while meeting the unique challenges of COVID-19. On slide seven, we illustrate our ongoing commitment to social, ethical, and environmental initiatives that benefit our team, investors, customers, trade partners, and the communities in which we operate.
During this period, we've continued to make good progress towards our objective of adopting a sustainable and ethical approach to our business operations. Some of these key achievements are set out onto slide seven. We continue to invest in measures that keep our team and customers safe during the COVID-19 period, including contact-free click and collect. Pleasingly, our continued focus on safety reporting and accountability has helped to sustain our safety measures. Moving on to slide nine, we'll sort of touch and go a little bit deeper on our online performance. The COVID-19 period really has reinforced our conviction that our omni-retail strategy is the right one. That's because it gives us the flexibility to quickly adapt to changing consumer preferences and pivot our focus on meeting this elevated demand in our online channels and also in our in-store channels.
Over the past four years, online sales have grown by a CAGR of 64%, and in the first half, as I mentioned, reached over AUD 230 million, which is more than 13% of total sales. Group investment in digital and omni has benefited all our brands, this is reflected in this online performance. When we go to slide 10, we see that again, despite these COVID-19 disruptions to stores, 93% of sales and 45% of online sales required or involved that customer visiting a store. The store network is just as important to our omni promise as it ever was. Home delivery represents 55% of online sales, which is slightly elevated compared to historic levels due to shutdowns and the like. Click and collect was still 45% of online sales, and we would expect that contribution to normalize upwards over time.
On slide 11, we provide a bit more detail brand by brand in our growth in customer numbers, customer satisfaction, and club members as a percentage of total sales. We're pleased with the double-digit growth we saw in active club members of our three largest brands, noting that Macpac, of course, was impacted by store closures in Auckland and Melbourne and restrictions on international travel and the like. We are broadly happy with our NPS scores, although we note that the Rebel NPS score was impacted by delivery times and availability of inventory for high-demand products like gym equipment and during the peak of the pandemic. Nonetheless, we accept the challenge and will continue to do better. Group-wide, active club members now represent more than 60% of sales, and we think that's a big opportunity, and we'll touch on that later in the presentation. On to slide 12.
This slide really talks what we think is one of the big opportunities available to the group, which is leveraging that loyal member base. We saw significant growth in the last 12 months, 9% to 7.1 million members, 62% of sales. We've seen this trend in the past year also mirror in terms of the acceleration of online purchasing within the active club member base. As evidence of that, the number of active club members purchasing online in the last 12 months has almost doubled to 1.4 million. A key priority for our business is the quality of our digital engagement. We have worked through suspending some traditional marketing and pivoting to digital. That's been a valuable exercise for us during the pandemic and has meant that we're able to better target more efficiently and more effectively these club members.
More importantly, we are getting a much deeper understanding of shopping habits of our members, which provides insight into pricing, promotion, and also our ranging decisions. We currently have research in train to determine even more defined behavioral segmentation, and that will feed into our decision-making process of how we will feed into the process of us reviewing our loyalty club member propositions across all four brands. Going to slide 13. Some of you who have been familiar with our stock would have seen this chart before. For us, it's key because it shows over the last four years that our active club member base has grown by 48%, where store numbers have only grown by 11%.
We think this is important because we can scale our business by growing our customer base and capturing an increased share of customer wallet without significant investment in the physical store network. We can effectively scale our business and deliver the benefits of that operating leverage to our shareholders. On slide 14, one of our key focuses has been our four core brands. This slide outlines some of the key initiatives we expect to undertake in the second half. I won't touch on all of them, but I wanted to call out just a few. In Supercheap Auto, we continue to see strong demand for the do-it-for-me category, especially within fitment, and we are intending to expand dedicated service areas in stores to provide more fitment options to more customers. In Rebel, our RCX store in Parramatta has been a very pleasing success.
We intend to roll that format out to four new locations, as well as take insights from that format in terms of specialized in-store worlds of format for must win categories of basketball, football, running, kids, and training more broadly across our store network. In BCF, we've successfully trialed the introduction of hyper local and regionally relevant ranges in areas like North Queensland, and that has been incredibly successful that we'll apply that tailored approach to other regions. Finally, for Macpac, we're going to range Macpac products in over 150 stores in BCF and Rebel this winter, which in the case of BCF should help address the seasonality skew of earnings in that business. Slide 15, we wanted to sort of set out what we believe are three key opportunities that we think will deliver long-term value for our shareholders beyond this pandemic period. The first one is gross margin.
Clearly, as we've dealt with challenges in availability of inventory, we've reduced our promotional frequency and depth. Underneath that, we've been working tirelessly with our promotion and pricing analytics team to look for structural improvement. We're confident of some of the achievements that team's achieved. We've also worked through a very clean inventory position. Gives us a strong growth margin base to work from, as well as sustained sourcing benefits through our China sourcing team. A second big opportunity is online profitability harmonization. We've seen, as we've called out, sustained click and collect penetration, and click and collect is good business for us. We also see when we look at a transaction online, whether it's delivery or click and collect, a higher average transaction value and a higher gross margin dollar per online order.
That means combined with the ongoing reduction of delivery costs through our order management capability we switched on during this period, and the alignment of pricing and promotions across channel. We believe we are very close to achieving profit contribution harmonization across channels. It's an exciting development. Finally, BCF sales and intenstiy and the ability to sustain it above that COVID-19 period is critical. We've got an increased customer base of 1.7 million active club members, far greater than we had when we went into the pandemic. We've trialed small format stores in Victoria and Queensland successfully, and we're excited by their prospects. We've talked about Macpac entering the BCF range this winter, as well as successfully including exclusive ranges within BCF, which is starting to provide a good competitive shield in terms of protecting its share.
Moving to slide 19 as we get into the segments in more detail. We'll start with Supercheap Auto. Supercheap Auto, which represents 39% of group EBIT, performed very well during the period. Sales increased by 20.2% to AUD 662 million, with like-for-like sales growth of 19.6% driven by both transaction growth and increased unit for sale. Like-for-like sales growth was achieved in all categories, with outdoor and accessories delivering the strongest growth. In-car tech, four-wheel drive and outdoor, paint protect, car detailing, and safety and comfort were the strongest performing sub-categories.
Segment EBIT increased by 81.7% to AUD 104.1 million, and segment EBIT margin improved by 530 basis points to 15.7%. Online sales grew by 46.1% to AUD 54.2 million. Rebel, over the page, represents 37% of group EBIT and had a strong first half. Sales increased by 17% to AUD 624 million, off the back of strong like-for-like sales growth.
Like-for-like sales growth was achieved in all categories with fitness and hard good delivering the strongest growth as customers in various states of lockdown scrambled to buy home gym equipment like weights, yoga mats, boxing gloves, skipping ropes, you name it. Pleasingly, though, apparel and footwear sales accelerated during the half as the COVID-19 restriction eased. Limited stock availability did impact sales, but this was, of course, offset by higher gross margin due to the reduced promotional activity. Segment EBIT increased by 85.5% to AUD 99.6 million, and segment EBIT margin improved by 610 basis points to 16%. Online sales grew by 102.1% to AUD 119.9 million. BCF was the clear standout performer in the first half. Total sales increased by 50.9%, driven by extraordinary strong like-for-like sales growth, reflecting material uplift in consumer demand as COVID-19 restrictions eased and domestic tourism and leisure activity increased.
Like-for-like sales growth was achieved in all categories with camping, boating, and apparel delivering the strongest growth. Camping accessories, water sports, and four-wheel drive were among the best performing sub-categories. Segment EBIT increased by over 400% to AUD 62 million, and segment EBIT margin was 14.5%. Online sales grew by 113.1% to AUD 50.5. This is a pleasing result for BCF, which demonstrates the team's ability to take advantage of what was unprecedented demand. BCF's got a strong brand, we know that. It resonates with our customers. This is evidenced by this 1.77 million active club members, which now represent a significant 84% of BCF sales. Obviously, you appreciate that BCF has benefited from a unique set of circumstances in the last six months.
We remain optimistic about our ability to leverage this brand strength and the customer base that we've created to take advantage of uptake and participation in this category. Well done, BCF. On to Macpac. Macpac brand was most impacted by COVID-19 because of closures in key markets of Melbourne and Auckland, and obviously because of the impact on restrictions on international travel and therefore thermal and insulation sales. Despite a 5.3% fall in sales, segment EBIT increased by 52.2% to AUD 3.5 million, and segment EBIT margins increased by 210 basis points to 5.6%. There are three positives coming out of this performance in the first half I'm keen to draw your attention to. Firstly, in its home market of New Zealand, like-for-like sales actually increased by 15.6%, despite COVID-related store closures in Auckland and decreased international tourism and travel.
Secondly, excluding the impact of store closures in Melbourne and Auckland, Macpac like-for-like sales increased by 6%. Finally, whilst thermal sales were down, the business delivered a very strong performance in tents, backpack, and accessories, following the successful launch of our summer family camping range. I'd also note Macpac has returned to green in terms of positive like-for-like sales growth in the first seven weeks. I'd like to pass over to David Burns to talk about the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Anthony. On page 23, group unallocated resulting of AUD 17.2 million includes the cost of the repayment of JobKeeper that we received from the government this year. The decision to post this to unallocated is based on it being a corporate decision. Macpac made team member top-up payments during the period to ensure that we maintain a minimum AUD 1,500 a fortnight threshold for all team members. The business has been significantly impacted by the northern shutdown. The result also includes higher costs for D&O insurances and management incentives. This year, all DC space is fully allocated to brands. On slide 24, turning to the balance sheet. Maintaining inventory levels has been a challenge in this current high demand environment. Each brand is working hard to manage out-of-stock levels, which remain elevated.
We have benefited from acting quickly in May 2020 to increase our stock purchasing, when we saw the strong lift in demand as we came out of shutdown. The capital raising provided the group with the financial support to take a higher risk on stock purchasing, which we are seeing in sales result now. Stock in transit of AUD 43 million is almost double the prior year, as higher purchasing activities push up against constrained shipping port and transport supplies that are at capacity. We are fortunate to have our own supply chain capability that provides more flexibility to manage this more dynamic environment. Inventory levels need to be high to support the increased trading activity. We have increased our buy, and we are very focused on managing risk in this area to maintain the appropriate balance.
Fortunately, the nature of the inventory we hold is non-perishable and mostly not linked to a fashion cycle. We expect the inventory levels to rebalance by March, with some exceptions taking into quarter four. Net inventory investment has benefited from increased stock terms and extended payment terms, which were agreed back in March 2020 and have ceased in December 2020. PP&E investment is reduced due to lower capital expenditures in the period, as the group paused the capital programs in late 2020 and took a quarter to return to normal levels. There is approximately AUD 10 million of increased depreciation and amortization costs in the period. They were the result of acceleration of depreciation of certain assets. The strong net cash position is impacted by the Christmas trading period, which is always seasonally higher, and extended payment terms which outlined in H2. Obviously the elevated demand. Turning to slide 25.
Normalized EPS has increased by 110%. The group has declared a dividend of AUD 0.33. We confirm our dividend payout ratio will be 55%-65% for the full year. As expected, all key metrics are excellent. The improvement in the Australian dollar will emerge the group's results over the next 12-18 months as our hedge book rebases to current levels. Currently, it's averaging 73.7 to the U.S. dollar. Our hedge policy provides us cover on the downside, but it also dampens responses to the upside. Turning to slide 26, group cash flow. Operating cash flow for the period is excellent, with strong cash conversion due to seasonal strength, superior demand levels and payment terms as outlined earlier.
As noted earlier, our CapEx levels are lower due to the slower start in quarter one, but we are now scaled back to full activity for the balance of the half and the rest of the financial year. I'll now hand back to Anthony to continue the presentation.
Yes, thanks, David. Slide 28 and 29 talk to our corporate strategy, which was outlined at our investor day in September 2019. I'm pleased to report the strategy's proved to be successful during the intervening period, notwithstanding the impact of the bushfires and now a pandemic. Given the limited time, I won't talk to this in detail, but I'm keen to make a few high-level points. Firstly, on this platform of growing our core four brands. Since the beginning of my tenure, we've taken steps to remove non-core businesses, which led to our decision to close businesses like Infinite Retail and Autocrew. Following the equity raise that took place in July of 2020 and recent strong trading, the group business is in a strong cash position. However, our focus remains on reinvesting in these four core brands and pursuing organic growth opportunities.
In terms of leveraging our closeness to customer, I've already spoken today about the Loyalty Club Review we commenced across all four brands, that's making good progress. In supply chain, we've already started to see benefits of our Overseas Sourcing Project flow through, two significant software solutions have been implemented, namely our Online Order Management System, phase 1, and our International Freight System as well. Our Business Simplification Program is well underway. We're happy with the progress we've made on our Information Systems five-year Strategy and migration to cloud-based solutions. Finally, in relation to Omni-Retail Execution, we've already seen some success in key digital acceleration elements, including web chat, which has had a positive impact on conversion rate and average order value, and the overhaul of our checkout flow to make transactions more seamless. All recent progress. Slide 39, trading update.
I'm pleased to report that group like-to-like sales growth of 25.2% as at week 33. Strong momentum for trading has continued, particularly in BCF, with group like-to-like sales of 30.5% in the first seven weeks of half two. Each of our four core brands has delivered positive like-to-like sales in this period, and that is despite the total closure of our stores in Western Australia in week five due to the COVID-19 lockdown. The group remains well-positioned to benefit from positive consumer sentiment and elevated demand in the domestic, outdoor, leisure, and travel sectors. Current levels of consumer spending are expected to moderate when government stimulus is phased out and international travel restrictions ease. The group's strong balance sheet, 7.1 million active club members, and leading market positions in our categories mean we are well-placed to execute our strategy and to grow our market share.
The group expects to return to normal levels of promotional activities in the second half as inventory levels are restored. Second-half operating expenses will reflect a catch-up on projects deferred during COVID-19 and increased reinvestment in the business. Finally, I can confirm our guidance for CapEx for this financial year of AUD 100 million. Thank you. I'd now like to hand back to our operator for 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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Mark Wade with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Look, bumper results, so well done. Just trying to think a couple years out from here. What's making this a better business than compared with pre-COVID? I know you touched on the club members have increased, and I guess there's increase in participation rates. Can you elaborate on any other aspects of the business that you really feel like it's giving you the confidence such that the business should be capable of making more money in the future than it has done pre-COVID?
Yeah, Mark. I think that slide 15.
Mm-hmm.
Really tells that story. You touched on one. That club member base is quite significant, not in terms of just its scale, but the way we can operationally leverage it, whether it's just simply understanding purchase patterns far deeper than you can through a single transaction. That impacts the way we think about ranging, pricing, promotion. It also talks to how we think about the store network, because we can see how those segments actually engage with channels. Can't understate, or can't overstate, frankly, of how big a deal that is. The loyalty program that we're underway with now, which we called out as a program of work in our investor meeting, we're getting to more of the pointy end of that now. That gives us that carrot-and-stick with our club members to ensure that we are protecting their custom with us over the long term.
Clearly the club activity is significant. The second one I would call out is the online piece. We are keeping pace with this online shift. We are seeing in our numbers, we are gaining share against our direct competitors online. We're able to see, we are starting to be very confident around profit harmonization across channels, whether it be delivery, click and collect, and in store. That's critically important for us. The fact that we can grow with this online burst, which we think sustained well beyond COVID, is important. Probably the last one I'd point out is some of the formats that we've trialed during this period, particularly the RCX format within Rebel, the small formats that we're trialing within BCF, and the services extensions that we talked about for Supercheap.
That's probably an arrow in our quill that we didn't think was there 18 months ago. I think as we've trialed some of these new formats, we've been quite encouraged by their performance from a post-COVID-19 period. We think there is opportunity to roll some of those programs out across the wider network.
Mm-hmm. Okay. No, that's quite encouraging. Just looking at Macpac and BCF and having an overlapping range, well, including Rebel actually, having that overlapping range, putting Macpac into those other two stores, is it a risk you just borrow that customer appeal or that brand? How they understand what those brands stand for? In much the same way as Rays didn't really do anything for BCF.
Yeah, I think it's slightly different because Macpac at its heart is a product brand. Its core is a range of apparel and equipment. Obviously with that segmentation data we've got, we can sort of see where there are similarities and where there are differences. I think we're much more aware of those potential traps. The way I think about it is though, for Macpac, it gives us significant accelerant in terms of access to the market and doors. To simply put, we just think about it from a pure packaged goods or FMCG or apparel perspective. To have access to 150 doors instantaneously just gives you significant acceleration in terms of brand awareness for Macpac and availability for customers. That, we think is actually a good step up for Macpac, as well as providing good rounding of ranges for the Rebel and BCF business.
Okay, thanks so much. All the best, guys.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew McLennan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrew.
Yeah, good morning. Well done on the results. Just a quick one, in relation to dividend first, you mentioned that the 55%-65% payout ratios will be maintained full year. It looked a little bit weak first half, but it's just the timing issue there. You're going to put more of the dividend to H2 . Is that reasonable?
Yeah. We've traditionally always held a higher H2 than H1 dividend.
Yeah. Okay. Just as a reminder, obviously the bushfires impacted the business this time last year, but also through to Easter. Can you just quickly summarize your expectations, as best you can, in terms of how the different brands are positioned through the Easter period, given that backdrop?
Yes. I think you've got to extend that question, Andrew, through to May and June. If we just retrace history a little bit, you effectively had an Easter lockdown where Easter was rendered, was disabled, for want of a better description. At the same time, as we got into May and June, lockdown hard last year, you had a little bit of doomsday prepping that impacted Supercheap and BCF. You also had the grand everyone decided to have a home gym at that period. I think you've got to combine the shutdown of April with the uplifts of May and June, as well as the fact that during that May and June period, the business considerably reaped costs, whether it be marketing investment, whether it be store wages, et cetera. Just everything shut down.
I would suggest thinking about that whole picture for that quarter, not just Easter. Was Easter missed last year? Absolutely.
Yeah. Got you. If I could ask one quick, final one. Just around freight costs, we're hearing some, it's not new, but ongoing negative feedback around costs. Is that a significant impulse for yourselves or is that offset by FX gains?
No, it's a problem. Shipping is tough, getting access to equipment is tough. Little sign of it getting worse in the short term. We've got some offset there in terms of promotion being not as intense and gross margin relief, but the global supply chain is under pressure.
Yeah, I think there's a cost issue and there's a performance issue. I think the benefit we have is the scale of our supply chain capability means that we're able to mitigate some of the performance issues, but that underlying cost issue is there.
Great. Okay, thanks very much. Cheers.
Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Callum Sinclair with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congrats on the results. Just a follow-up to the supply chain question. You made some comments in the outlook about inventory levels being sort of restored in the second half, potentially leading to lower discounting. Is there any sign that's actually happening or is supply still tight as we sort of sit here today?
Supply is difficult to achieve, but we have been fortunate that as we did the equity raise last year, and I think we've sort of mentioned this last calendar year, that we're able to sort of aggressively go after inventory really at the first quarter of this financial. A lot of that inventory actually arrived December, January and February. We've got inbounds at the moment, which are Christmas-like in their scale. That's consistent with our strategy of, in uncertain times, being quite tight on costs but going long on inventory. We are more confident of our inventory position being restored because frankly, we've worked judiciously to make it so. The team's done a pretty good job.
In terms of how that then ties into promotion and promotional strategy, we also note that our customers are telling us through our NPS scores that our pricing is not to their expectation. We're playing a delicate game here where we're trying to maintain inventory levels traditionally, at the same time as meeting their expectation. Once those inventory levels are restored, we reasonably will start turning the promotion machine back up. Not to arguably its previous levels, but we need to address this value perception issue, which is going to emerge if you turn off promotional activity.
Yeah, that helps. Just on the state side of things, in the slide deck, the segment commentary mostly talks to strength in New South Wales, Queensland and WA. Just wondering if that's still the same and if there's been any change with Victoria coming out of three plus months of lockdown.
Look, New Zealand was the same, Victoria did the same thing. Even W.A. and the Brisbane lockdown for 48 hours. Seems that you do get a bounce out. Is it enough to make up for the lockdown? Arguably not. Yeah, broadly, I think that position's the same. I think that the challenging things is these lockdowns are incredibly difficult to predict, and their nature is different. Like the W.A. lockdown was unprecedented insofar as it shut everything down. We weren't able to operate anything in W.A. It's not just the lockdown itself, it's the nature that creates complexity.
Yeah. Last one from me, just on the CapEx. Obviously, there is a step-up in the second half. You have touched on where you see that being spent, but just what timeframe to execute on those projects and when can you expect to see benefits flow through? Do you expect to drive EBIT margins sustainably higher post the elevated demands, particularly on the unit economics for home delivery? How long does it take and what sort of margin improvement could we expect?
Yeah. I don't think I'd be converting that answer into an outlook statement per se. A lot of these programs are ongoing. I think some of the outcomes that we're looking for is reduced delivery costs, and we've made some good inroads there. Probably most of the activity from a CapEx perspective is actually within the store network, whether it be refurbishments or more of those RCX type programs for Rebel. As I say, we're quite pleased with the outcome of that store activity. The non-store activity is consistent with the corporate strategy. No new news there. It's really probably a bit of a step-up in some of our store activity that's driving that increase from AUD 80 to AUD 100.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Wang with Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning, Anthony and David. Great result, and thank you for taking questions. I've got a few questions around trading updates. We talked about the improvement in gross profit margin H1 , 260 basis points. How much of that was driven by lower promotional intensity? In other words, how much of that margin expansion do you expect to hold on to as promotional activity normalizes in the second half?
Yeah, that's a good question. A lot of that improvement is from lower promotional intensity. One of the things that these elevated results are masking is some of the great work that the teams have been undertaking in the business, which is where we've got confidence in holding sustained, capturing some of those gross margin gains on a sustainable basis. In particular, the management of some of our markdown processes or our pricing postures in market and our sourcing. A predominance of it is the lower promotional activity that's causing that. What we've said is that we will return those promotional cadence and depth back to more normalized levels as the inventory position recovers. We don't believe we should be promoting and giving a customer an offer when we don't have the stock there to support that offer. It's just a recipe for disaster with losing the customer.
That's likely to be through this month and March, we should be back in stock in the majority of our business areas.
Great. Just touched on the inventory issue. In the trading update, we saw that every brand saw accelerating like-for- likes in H1 , first few weeks of H2 . How much of that acceleration can be attributed to the improving inventory availability?
I think you've got to look at the underlying demand levels are there, which we're seeing, and the extent to which we can be in stock for those customers and improve those stock positions. We were mid-teens out of stock levels after Christmas, which is just unprecedented. We normally talk about a 3% out of stock level. There, they're usually bearing the things which are selling through with customers in high demand. Bringing those out of stock levels back down to normalized levels, you'll see a direct lift in sales performance. There's no question that as Anthony's called out, we've had significant volumes coming in in December, January, and also in February in terms of our supply chain. That improvement of our in-stock position certainly supports that sales performance.
Again, some of the lead times, and we extended our purchasing from May last year. In a number of areas, we're only just now seeing that inventory get delivered.
Great. Further on the CODB, in the trading update, you mentioned that H2 operating expenses will catch up. What sort of dollar amounts are you expecting on these, you mentioned, deferred projects?
Well, certainly in the capital program, you can see clearly the CapEx year to date to December and the CapEx expectations for the full year at AUD 100. That's quite transparent. In terms of the level of cost leverage you've seen in the business in H1, there was a very strong cost leverage achieved. We've held very strong cost controls in quarter one and eased them in quarter two as we saw demand. There was initial expectation that demand was going to fall off the back of JobKeeper. We saw that that was not the case, we had to support the business with significant increases in capacity to just capture this volume of sales.
For BCF, in particular, to grow at those levels through a peak period, which is normally two to three times higher levels of activity in store, that required a significant increase in manning levels in store and Christmas casuals and night refill, opening hours. I think there's a lot of those sorts of activities were skewed more to Q2, and obviously we've had to carry forward some of those activities into Q3 and Q4. Then there's additional investment we're looking at putting in place in Q3 and Q4 to maintain and improve our market share position. I'm not going to quantify them.
Okay, great. Thanks for that. That's it, guys. That's all my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand back to Mr. Heraghty for closing remarks.
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us this morning. We look forward to seeing some or most of you in the coming days, and wish you all a very good afternoon.