Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Woolworths Group F24 half-year earnings announcement. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brad Banducci, Managing Director and CEO of Woolworths Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Woolworths Group's half-year results for the 2024 financial year. Joining me today are Stephen Harrison, our CFO, who will present our financial results a little later, Natalie Davis, Managing Director of Woolworths Supermarkets, Amanda Bardwell, Managing Director of WooliesX, Von Ingram, Managing Director of W Living, Spencer Sonn on the line from New Zealand, Managing Director of Woolworths New Zealand, Dan Hake, Managing Director of Big W, and Guy Brent, the Managing Director of the Woolworths Food Company. We also have our Chair, Scott Perkins, with us today, who will make some brief remarks shortly. Before we begin the results presentation, I think you all will be aware at this stage of today's announcement confirming my intention to retire from the role of Managing Director and Group CEO of Woolworths Group at the end of August of this year.
After eight years, literally to the day in the role, and as we're going to our centenary, it felt the right time to pass on the baton, and I'm proud to inform you that the new CEO designated to Woolworths Group is Amanda Bardwell, the current Managing Director of WooliesX. More on this in the upcoming months, but I want to share a heartfelt thanks to all of you for both your support and challenge over the years. Thank you very much, and over to you, Scott.
Thank you, Brad. Look, I think this is a big day for Woolies, and in particular, a big day for Brad and Amanda. We don't do this often as a company, Brad being the 12th Chief Executive in our 100-year history. I first do want to acknowledge Brad's contribution. Well, he remains very firmly in the seat and charged with delivering our full-year results and working with Amanda through to 1 September. It is natural to reflect on what he's achieved, and it is remarkable. Despite Brad's insistence on a low-key approach, we will, of course, internally mark all of that in due course. The board is thrilled with Amanda's forthcoming appointment. I believe she's everything that we look for in the next leader for Woolworths.
When we think about the vision she has for the business, her proven ability to carry a team with her, and as you all know in retail, the need for relentless execution, we are very excited by the prospects of her leadership. CEO succession has been an important element of our board work ever since I've joined the Woolies' board. When I took over as chair in 2022, we refreshed our future CEO criteria and have been working with our internal bench of talent on their development towards that goal. Throughout that time, we've been in discussions with Brad about what his plans were and what was in the best interest of Woolies' timing-wise. In the middle of last year, we decided to move into a different phase and commence the planning for CEO succession with today's date in mind. Throughout this, Brad has been flexible.
The board's subcommittee first met on this in May, actually, and working with two external advisors, we proceeded to do an external search and continue with our internal development. We did conduct an extensive international search, and I interviewed a number of world-class retailers, as you would expect. This role does attract that caliber of leader. Against that group, the board was delighted to appoint Amanda as the best person for the job, and we're confident an outstanding choice. Typical Woolies' fashion, we're all back to work, focused on our customers and long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you, Brad, and I'll hand it back to you.
Thank you, Scott. Many of you will probably see some of the questions we had in the first session. Scott, I think you're going to dial off, so we're not going to have many specific questions on the CEO process, but Paul and myself, if there are any specific ones, we'll make sure that we close the loop and engage with you, Scott, to get the questions back to our investors.
Thank you. Very happy to answer those. Very happy to answer those, Brad. Thank you all.
I'm now going to dive into the presentation, if that's okay with everyone. As I do that, I would like to start by acknowledging the many traditional owners of the lands on which we operate and pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We recognize their strengths and enduring connections to the lands, waters, and skies as the custodians of the oldest ongoing cultures on the planet. We remain committed to actively contributing to Australia's reconciliation journey through listening and learning, empowering more diverse voices, and working together for a better tomorrow. I'm going to talk to the slides so you can follow it if you want to through the presentation. Just on slide three, I'm going to start with an overview of our performance and progress on the strategic agenda.
Steve will then present our financials before handing back to me to finish with current trading and outlook before we move to questions. On slide four, the group's first half financial result was mixed and reflects strong results from Australian food and Australian B2B, offset somewhat by the impacts of a very challenging trading environment on New Zealand and Big W. H1 F24 Group sales increased by 4.4%, with around 40% of group sales growth driven by e-commerce sales, which grew 17.8%. Group EBIT before significant items increased 3.3%, with the group EBIT margin of 4.9%, unchanged on the prior year. In Australian food, H1 sales increased by 5.4%, and EBIT increased 9.9%, with around two-thirds of Australian food EBIT growth attributable to WooliesX, which I will cover in the following slides.
We have made some early progress in our transformation of New Zealand food in the half, but a value-focused customer, moderating price inflation, and material wage inflation led to an EBIT decline of 42% to NZD 71 million. We are confident we are on the right path to New Zealand and have a strong customer plan to sustainably improve the performance of our business, but we also recognize that this will be a multi-year journey. As foreshadowed last month, Big W had a challenging first half. Outside of solid trading and key events such as Black Friday and Christmas, customers are increasingly cautious, which impacted sales during the half. Lower sales, together with wage inflation and currency activity to maintain inventory health, had a material impact on earnings, with H1 F24 EBIT of AUD 54 million, down 60% on the prior year.
I will come back to Big W a little later to explain what we are doing to improve the performance of the business. On slide 5, you will see a highlight from me, which is our customer scores, which have held up in the half with Group VOC NPS, their promoter score that is, of course, of 50, down 1 point on the prior year. Product availability was particularly pleasing in the half, but especially in December, as supply chains have now largely returned to pre-COVID levels. However, our customers' concerns about cost of living continued to impact value-for-money scores, especially in December and January, and it is a clear watch-out for us and remains our key focus for H2. Customer care remains the highest store-controllable VOC metric across the group, which I think is an amazing testament to our hardworking team.
Just on slide six, another key theme for the half, which we've tried to lay out there, was the moderation of inflation in our food business, illustrating the downward trend in Australian Food, with fresh demanded rather but long-lasting inflation importantly also moderating. Importantly for our customers, fruit and veg average prices declined by 6.4% in Q2, which was driven in particular by an improvement in availability, including an increased supply of berries, capsicums, and zucchinis. Meats, red meat that is, was the other major contributor, with prices declining 7.2% in Q2 as beef and livestock prices softened. In long life, we're seeing a number of supply increase requests reduce significantly compared to prior periods. However, they do still remain above pre-COVID levels. Just moving then on to slide seven.
While lower cost prices across some of these key categories have helped deliver lower prices for customers, we have also been focused on helping our customers spend less. In food, our low-prices, seasonal prices drop programs are helping our customers spend less, with more and more customers shopping these programs. We also importantly grew our own brand range in the half, including over 180 exclusive products as part of our Christmas range, with Woolworths Food Company's own exclusive brands growing 6.8% in the half, with item growth of 4%. Importantly, during the half, we also launched Member Prices. We did actually start that at the end of Q1 and continue to fine-tune it to offer even more value for our customers.
Orange Friday offers in particular resonated strongly with customers and helps drive an increase in Everyday Rewards members, and we will continue to build on our Member Prices programs over time. The enhancement of our digital tools, including best unit price filter, is helping our customers save and drive an increased engagement with our digital assets, and we are pleased to once again achieve a new record for all our Everyday Rewards Bank for Christmas program. Big W delivered great value during the key events in the period, including Black Friday and Christmas, and we lowered the price of over 2,300 items and continued to drive opportunities to introduce great products at low prices. A key example of this is our own brand toy range, Somersault, which launched more than 150 products in the half and grew strongly.
Slide eight is a reminder of our connected group and how we organize ourselves for sustainable value creation in the midterm. I will discuss some of the highlights in the next couple of slides. Slide nine, I just like this slide, which is why I said the material. It just shows for you our desire for increased convenience in e-commerce. So what you see over there is the continued growth in e-commerce penetration, but then within that, very importantly, the proportion of it that is same-day. And it is amazing to me personally that our same-day mix reached 43% in Q2, and importantly, 85% of all customer orders were fulfilled within 24 hours of order placement. In order to do this, we've had to materially adjust the way our network works, in particular our supermarkets.
And as you'll see on the right-hand side, we are just having to challenge ourselves continuously to move essentially to a continuous flow order fulfillment process away from a batch process, which has been the tradition in the segment. You can see what our cut-off times are today, but I think it's an amazing testament to our team that we have a cut-off time of 4:00 P.M. in terms of being able to get same-day Direct-to-Boot or home delivery and, of course, more work to do to open even more capacity into that space. We importantly opened 19 new Direct-to-Boot sites during the half, and we now have DTB, as we called it, available in 714 stores.
We also opened our first standalone Direct-to-Boot site in Rose Bay in Sydney, which is an interesting innovation for us as a group, and I'm delighted to be able to say it's actually performing ahead of plan with, I think, 283 orders last week. Average annual traffic to group digital platforms reached 29.3 million customers in Q2, up 17% on the prior year due to the ongoing resonance and growth in our apps. Just on slide 10, again, a very, I guess, complex slide, but again, one of my favorites. I'm allowed to have my best hits in this material, so please humor me. But what you will see over here is just how we think about our rewards program and the funnel in which we look at it and so the context and the growth of it.
Active Everyday Rewards members reached 9.4 million customers or members in the half, with over 675,000 new members joining the program, around 8% in the prior year. Scan and tag rates increased by 3% compared to the prior year as well. This growth reflects the continued focus on delivering personalized value, and the launch of Member Prices and ongoing enhancements to our Everyday Rewards digital assets has really resonated with our members or customers, with 2 million weekly active app users, up 28.2% on the prior year. As illustrated by the chart on the left, we know that as members become more engaged, we can build our depth of insights to deliver better value for them and increase, hopefully through doing that, their loyalty to our group.
Everyday Extra also continues to grow strongly, with total subscribers increasing 70% in the last year, and we saw a strong uplift in paid subscribers following a positive customer reaction to our Orange Friday offer. Everyday Mobile, we've taken, for those who are not aware, and all of our services that put them under the Everyday brand, but Everyday Mobile's customer base increased 30% in the half, with Everyday Insurance launched. We launched travel insurance under Everyday Insurance in December, so we'll wait and see how that grows. But as we do these things, we've seen very strong resonance and growth. On slide 11, I wanted to provide some examples of the progress within the context of the adjacencies around our B2C food business. These are not definitive, but just give you some sense of color and progress that we're making.
The headline for me is we are making progress in activating our connected group, and that's true in every part of the group. We will come back and talk specifically as we look at our retail platforms to the contribution of Cartology in gross margin, and it's in the Australian food segment at the moment. Cartology is not a new business for us. It has been around amazingly for five years, and it is a material profit contributor to the group. The good news is that its growth continued to be strong, up 14.6% for the half. Just at the end of the half, we announced our new partnership with Vicinity Centres, which hopefully will leverage the capabilities we acquired through the acquisition of Shopper Media.
We look forward to adding 1,000 screens to our store network, effectively about a 40% increase to the overall size of our screen components of Cartology. In terms of advanced analytics, obviously, within advanced analytics, for those who are not aware, it does include all variations of AI, from machine learning to predictive AI to increasingly, hopefully as we go forward, Gen AI. But we have worked in partnership with the group around 30 high-priority use cases. So virtually every part of our group can be materially enhanced through the use of advanced analytics, and that's becoming more true, not less true. I think we can all agree. But we have 30 high-priority use cases underway at the moment.
The ones we wanted to call out, of course, is our next-gen buy-in promotions, which is a platform developed with all the supermarkets that we are now in the process of rolling out across the group, and that has led to material improvement in promotional effectiveness. We are still running a very full promotional program, and we can come back and talk about that, but we are just getting better at making sure they win the promotions, not lose the promotions. That is another, in addition to Cartology, material contributor to the GP percentages you reported in AU Food.
We've also then taken the capability we built around promotions to create a broader commercial platform, and we are very actively building what we call our next-gen buy-in platform or the tool area is Opticost, which has given us a data-driven approach to commodity price changes and been able to engage constructively with suppliers around underlying cost trends and therefore what we may expect in terms of negotiation around prices or costs. Of course, we get more direct leverage of that on our own brands through the Woolworths Food Company. A real highlight for us in terms of work importantly is Quick Assist, which has been led by Natalie Davis and her team, which helps our store teams be much more focused on data-led insights so that they can prioritize what they do in the context of their stores and amazing resonance on that.
And it's also saving our team a lot of time and getting them focused on their priorities. Just moving on from that to Primary Connect. Primary Connect in general had a very good half for us and to have productivity where it was pre-COVID. In the context of material ongoing weather-related supply disruptions in Australia, I just can't underemphasize the impact that we confront. I think two-thirds of the time we have a disruption somewhere in Australia weather-related. So to have achieved that in that context, I think, is key. And then within that, of course, we're working at enhancing and digitizing that network as well. And so we have a lot going on with MyPC, as we call it, and PC Plus within that context, which have continued to be very effective and growing.
In terms of PC Plus, hopefully everyone would be aware, we took over three of the old Scotts warehouses when the business went into administration. Those businesses have now been well, those warehouses have been effectively onboarded into our platform, and we're continuing to engage and grow capacity into those. We're with over 900 suppliers and carrier partners onboarded onto our digital platform during the half. We've referenced our PFD sales. If I went to the Woolworths Food Company, hopefully everyone's aware, the Woolworths Food Company includes our own brands. I've talked about the growth there, but also our food service partnership with the Smith Family PFD and then Greenstock, our integrated meat business, which we do in partnership with Hilton.
I just needed to call out that PFD had another strong half with sales growth of 8.1%, and that was supported by a whole range of activities, including new customer acquisition, but also a recovery in key segments such as cruise ships and airlines. Then last but not least, in W-Living, which is a new part of our portfolio, it includes Big W but a range of other businesses. That group has really come to life for us. Importantly, I'm sure I'll get questions on MyDeal. The MyDeal partnership with the MyDeal executive team, in particular Sean Senvirtne, was so that we could leverage their capability to provide extended range into the rest of our group with a priority on the Big W marketplace. We call it Woolworths Market Plus. That had a very successful half with the Big W Market Plus launched in November.
And Dan, you're going to correct me, I think we now have an extended range of about 20,000 products from 50 key strategic partners. And we're not only generating good sales out of that, but it's really helping Big W customers get a more holistic experience when they come to our digital platform. And we're going to get a lot better at talking about GMV as a group, gross margin value instead of net sales value. But the GMV of our Woolworths Market Plus increased by 7.9% on the prior year, which I think was a testament to the team and the work that's gone on there. And we expect, hopefully, a lot more going forward. One of the big areas that we have invested in is hopefully well, you are all aware, and I'm sure Mr. Errington is listening seriously to this, but supply chain.
We've continued to progress that journey, and it's always a challenge given the weather disruptions in Australia and everything else that's going on. But a real achievement for us was our Moorebank NDC has reached practical completion 2 years after the first sod turn, as it's called. If we have questions on that, I'm sure we'll come back and answer those going forward. And the site remains on track to be operational in the first half of F25. Hopefully, everyone is aware, at Moorebank, we have an NDC and an RDC, and our RDC is also progressing to schedule with High Bay racking completed in the half and on schedule to go live in F26. Construction of our Auburn CFC in partnership with KNAPP is also progressing well. However, it is likely that the opening will be delayed until calendar 2025.
So happy to take further questions on the journey there in the Q&A section. Then just keeping moving to slide 14. Obviously, we should get questions on Woolworths New Zealand and Big W. The financial results clearly are below our collective aspirations, but despite that, we have made good progress in terms of fundamentally transforming both businesses for the future. And I just wanted to call out some of the highlights. In Woolworths New Zealand, as of the end of the half, we had rebranded 34 Countdowns to Woolworths New Zealand. I think the number, as I talked today, is 43. It actually might be 44. I'm a little bit nervous. But what's important to me is that when we've done the rebranding and we've reactivated the store, we do see a sales lift, and we do see a customer and a team block lift.
What the rebranding is doing is it's given us an opportunity to profile the amazing value in our stores as well as reengage with our team on what's important to them. That is very pleasing because we know when we do the right thing for customers and team, we will see sales as an outcome, sales growth. We have a plan to transition another 40 stores during the half, and I think, Steve, it's fair to say we were well ahead of that, and we'll probably do a lot more of that in the half just given the great progress there. In New Zealand, we've also reset our price mechanics and invested in price in the half, which has led to an uplift in value-for-money scores, which is terrific.
We are starting to see the size of our customer basket grow, and that's also reflected in our unit volume increases, in particular in the first seven weeks. Everyday Rewards is now a trans-Tasman program. We launched it on the 1st of February in New Zealand and transitioned our One Card customers into Everyday Rewards, with over 2 million members transitioned as I speak. And really importantly, 150,000 new members joining the program that weren't in the One Card program. In New Zealand, we still have a major opportunity in the e-commerce space, and extending our leadership in this and continuing to drive for convenience is key. We launched MILKRUN in New Zealand during the half, and it's now in 32 stores and really showing great growth.
Our learnings out of moving from pickup extended to a service desk to a Direct-to-Boot have now been also replicated in New Zealand with 12 stores now with a new Direct-to-Boot rolled out and great resonance with it. In terms of New Zealand, proving our fresh offer is a priority everywhere, but in particular in New Zealand. We've been investing as we've talked about our Auckland Fresh DC before, but it's nice now to have our Christchurch Fresh DC opening in March so that we can make sure that we deliver a great fresh experience across the whole of New Zealand. Those are some of the highlights. I'm sure we'll come back to some of the trading, and I know Spencer's on the line to help answer those questions. At Big W, look, we did trade very well in key events.
It's how we actually manage outside of those events within a very cautious customer. The highlights for us there are just incredibly strong continued customer resonance with the business. It's very pronounced. And actually, when we look at the topic of value, we now have market leadership on delivering value, which is price as well as longevity of product, which is a first, I think, for us. So we've now got to translate that into sales and sales resonance, and Dan can come back to it. But we feel we're in a good position there, and we have a whole series of exciting initiatives landing in Q2. This includes the ongoing transformation of our clothing business to improve our customer offer.
And as we're getting much better at managing size-based allocations to stores - and Dan can talk about that - as well as, of course, our own brand offer I alluded to earlier, now SummerSalt range in particular, which is having great resonance in the toy category. The learnings we've had out of using WIP to partner with Woolworths Food Company have been replicated back into all parts of our business, but in particular into Big W, and really promising early results in terms of our promotional replication of what we've learned out of Woolworths Food Company and us leading to much more effective clearance as well as improved price trust. Finally, and certainly not least, I've alluded to investments in our digital assets, and particularly with Big W Market really helping that overall experience. But a lot of upside, I think, we still have in there going forward.
On both of these, when we talk about the outlook, of course, we do expect it to remain challenging in the second half. But the key focus from us inside our business is just keeping focus on building a stronger business, and we are confident that we will achieve the results we want over the medium term. Slide 15, just some of the highlights on sustainability. Very important just to highlight well, I think this is a great page. There are some areas for improvement. Group severity rate had a material ongoing improvement in the half. But in the context of group severity rate, we've seen an increase in TRFA, and we needed to call that out. It's become a key focus for us.
We've agreed with our board we're actually going to include TRFA as one of our STIP metrics for the year so that we make sure that management is not only incentivized on severity rate but on TRFA in the context of the year. So more work to do there and a whole ton of work underway, in particular on just manual handling injuries. Our scope one and two emissions are now 40% below 2015 levels, another 11.6% reduction in the half. Solar panels continue to be rolled out, 19 supermarkets, 5 Big W's, 2 distribution centres, 257 sites we now have across Australia and New Zealand with solar rolled out, which I think is amazing. Our reducing food waste and hunger initiative really does continue to build steam.
We've delivered over AUD 11.5 million to our charity partners in the half, including OzHarvest, Food Bank, and Fairshare and Salvation Army in Australia and New Zealand. This is leading to, hopefully, the equivalent of well, it's leading to over 18 million meals provided to those in need and, importantly, food diversion from landfill. The program we don't talk enough about is our Mini Woolies program. We achieved our 50th store opening at Coreen School in Blacktown during the half. Myself and the ex-girlfriend personally attended what was one of the most, I would say, emotional days I've had at Woolies. And it's just terrific to see how we work in partnership with schools with these amazing children with disability to help them engage and get life skills. And hopefully, many of them come and work at Woolies. These are a great time.
As I speak, we now have 52 Mini Woolies. By the end of F24, we plan to open another 28 in Australia and our first two in New Zealand. In own brand, we reduced over 15,000 tonnes of virgin plastic, which is a 29% reduction on our F18 baseline. Pleasingly, we're also named Australia's healthiest supermarket own brand for the fifth year running, supporting our broader commitment to making healthy food more affordable. That's enough from me. Steve, I'll pass over to you to dive into the financials, and I'll look forward to coming back and talking about the trading outlook.
Thanks, Brad, and good morning, everyone. I'll start today on slide 18 with the F24 half-year results summary for the group.
Group sales for the half increased 4.4% to AUD 34.6 billion, driven by solid sales growth from Australian food and Australian B2B, offset by more challenging trading results in New Zealand food and Big W. Group EBIT before significant items increased 3.3% to AUD 1.7 billion. Australian food and Australian B2B were positive EBIT drivers. Other segment net costs were below last year, while New Zealand food and Big W EBIT declined in half. Group EBIT margin before significant items was 4.9%, broadly in line with the prior year. Group NPAT, attributable to equity holders of the parent entity before significant items, increased 2.5% to AUD 929 million, with EBIT growth modestly offset by higher interest and tax in the half. And I'll discuss our dividend later in the capital management section. Turning to slide 19, our group trading performance.
In Australian food, total sales increased by 5.4% to AUD 25.9 billion, with sales moderating over half one as inflation continued to fall. Items returned to modest growth in the half, driven by strong e-commerce growth. Australian food EBIT increased 9.9%, with two-thirds of the Australian food EBIT growth driven by WooliesX, with store EBIT margin stable in the half. In Woolworths Food Retail, which is our stores and e-commerce business, EBIT increased by 8.2% in half one, largely driven by the growth in e-commerce profitability. WooliesX profit increased by AUD 96 million to AUD 168 million in half one, an increase of 132%, with the profit margin increasing by 186 basis points to 4.1%.
Australian B2B sales for the half increased by 2.8%, and EBIT increased by 45.7%, with comparisons to the prior year benefiting from the exit of the Summer gate business and the international businesses and now seeing the prior year and cycling bulk meat sales. PFD's trading performance remained strong, with 8.1% sales growth in half one, driven by new customer growth and growth in key segments, including airlines and cruise ships. New Zealand food sales increased by 2.3% in the half, and EBIT declined by 42% to New Zealand's NZD 71 million, reflecting the highly competitive and value-centric market, moderating price inflation, and material wage inflation. As announced last month, we recognized a NZD 1.6 billion impairment of goodwill in the half, which has been treated as a significant item.
Big W also had a challenging half, with sales declining 4.1% and EBIT down by 60% versus last year, impacted by ongoing customer adjustment to cost of living pressures, most evident in the more discretionary categories, particularly in home. Results were also impacted by cost inflation and higher clearance activity as we carefully managed autumn-winter seasonal clothing through markdowns, ending the half with lower inventory versus the prior year in Big W. Our other segment includes group functions such as property, group overheads, and Woolworths Group's investments in Quantium, MyDeal, and Endeavour Group. The segment recorded a loss before interest and tax of AUD 68 million, down 20% on the prior year.
This reflects the benefit of lower advanced analytics costs in the half and higher proceeds from property sales than the prior year, offset somewhat by a lower contribution from Endeavour Group, reflecting our lower shareholding in the half compared to last year following a partial sell-down of our Endeavour stake in December 2022. The group reported non-cash significant items of AUD 1.7 billion related to the previously mentioned impairment of goodwill in New Zealand food and a mark-to- market loss of AUD 209 million on our investment in Endeavour Group following the assessment the group no longer had significant influence in Endeavour Group. Moving to slide 20 and our balance sheet metrics. Average inventory days were in line with the prior year, with reductions in Australian B2B and New Zealand food average inventory days, offset by a modest increase in Big W average inventory days in the half.
However, Big W's closing inventory days and dollars declined on the prior year due to the prudent management of inventory and positive seasonal sell-through in Q2. ROFE increased by 78 basis points compared to F23 and was up 148 basis points on half one F23, largely driven by higher group EBIT. However, group ROFE also benefited from the New Zealand food goodwill impairment in the half. Excluding the New Zealand goodwill impairment, ROFE would have been 15.3%, up 110 basis points versus half one F23. Slide 21 is a reminder of our capital management framework. During the half, we generated strong cash flows, which were reinvested into maintaining our assets, increasing dividends to shareholders, as well as growth initiatives and a small reduction in debt. I'll explore some of these further on the following slides.
If we move to slide 22 and our cash flow statement, the group generated operating cash flow of AUD 3.4 billion in the half, an increase of 18.5% on the prior year, driven by solid EBITDA growth and net working capital inflows. The improvement in working capital in the half reflects an increase in payables due to volume increases, inflation, and later purchases in the prior year, with inventory well managed across the group, broadly flat versus December last year. Cash interest costs increased 7.5%, largely driven by higher floating interest rates on bank debt. Tax paid increased by 20% compared to the prior year, driven by higher taxable income for F23 paid in half one of F24. The cash flow on investing activities increased 42% to AUD 1.2 billion.
The increase was a function of the prior year, which included the proceeds from the partial sale of the group's shareholding in Endeavour Group in December 2022, offset somewhat by the MyDeal and Shopper acquisitions. I'll provide more detail on CapEx on the next slide. Finally, our normalised cash realisation ratio, which excludes the non-cash significant items previously discussed, was 111% benefiting from the favorable working capital movements, offset somewhat by higher interest and tax payments. Moving to slide 23, which covers CapEx. Operating CapEx for the half was AUD 907 million, down slightly on the prior year. An increase in productivity spend was offset by a reduction in growth CapEx. Growth CapEx was down on the prior year, driven by decline across all categories, in particular e-com and new stores.
Investments in productivity initiatives increased in the half as the group focused on mitigating higher inflation in FY24 and included the continued rollout of electronic shelf labels as well as Scan Assist across the store network, the implementation of double welcome gates and front-of-store upgrades. CapEx also included AUD 49 million on projects with strong sustainability benefits in areas such as refrigeration, transport decarbonization, and solar. There's no change to our full-year guidance, with operating CapEx expected to be around AUD 2 billion. Moving to dividends and funding on slide 24, the board today approved an interim dividend of 47 cents per share, an increase of 2.2% compared to the prior year, in line with the NPAT growth for the half and our typical dividend payout ratio for the first half.
Turning to debt, net debt to EBITDA was 2.5 times at the end of the half compared to 2.6 times at the end of F23. However, we completed our investment in Petstock on the 3rd of January, which will add approximately AUD 1.1 billion to our net debt balances, including leases, in the second half. We remain committed to a solid investment-grade credit rating and have significant headroom under our current ratings of BBB from S&P and Baa2 from Moody's. In October 2023, the group issued AUD 450 million of domestic medium-term notes with a tenure of 7.5 years. Proceeds will be used to refinance AUD 400 million of domestic medium-term notes maturing in April 2024. Thank you, and I'll hand back to Brad.
Thanks, Steve. Just on slide 43, turning to our current trading outlook after the first seven weeks.
Sales in the first 7 weeks have continued to moderate, reflecting lower inflation and, of course, a more cautious consumer. Given the impact and timing of New Year's Day on a relatively short reporting period, we have disclosed a New Year's Day adjusted figure. Hopefully, everyone is aware. Was in last year this year when it's not in the first 7 weeks. In Australian food, Woolworths Food Retail sales increased by approximately 1.5% for the first 7 weeks, impacted by above-stated inflation and also reflected in lower item growth. While underlying cost inflation in H2 is likely to remain high, we have a strong productivity pipeline for the remainder of the year and into F25. However, EBIT growth in H2 is expected to be below H1, which, given the price deflation we see and elevated cost inflation, I don't think should come as a surprise to anyone on the call.
We look forward to questions on that in the next section. New Zealand food sales for the first seven weeks increased by approximately 1%. While we've seen early progress in our transformation, it will take some time to reach full potential. With the launch of Everyday Rewards and the ongoing rebranding, we expect transformation costs of AUD 15 million-AUD 25 million in H2, with H2 EBIT, as with food, expected to be below a rate to EBIT in dollars. Actually, not percentage expected to be below H1. In Big W, sales have declined by approximately 6% for the first seven weeks. We expect to see an improving sales trend in Q4 as we begin to cycle material sales declines in the prior year and as new initiatives land, which will be more in Q4 than in Q3.
However, as I hope you're all aware, H2 is typically a lower profit half for Big W end of the stage, except we expect EBIT in H2 for Big W to be around break-even levels. Other costs are expected to be AUD 200 million-AUD 220 million for the fully expected, excluding Woolworths Group contribution from Endeavour Group and Petstock. H2 will include Petstock for the first time. EBITDA is expected to be AUD 60 million-AUD 70 million for H2. Managing cost of living pressure remains a key issue for our customers, and we need to work ever harder to deliver value and help our customers to continue to spend less every time they shop with us. We will also continue to invest in our teams and platforms to strengthen the group and deliver long-term sustainable outcomes for all of our key stakeholders.
As always, I would like to finish by thanking our hardworking team for their commitment and focus on building the better tomorrow. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions they can ask. We're limited to one question per person to allow everyone to have a turn.
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 then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask that questions be limited to one per person to allow everyone an opportunity. Please feel free to rejoin the question queue if you have follow-up questions. The first question today comes from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Morning, guys.
I just wanted to ask on the cost growth in the Aussie food business. 9% is a pretty big number. It's probably the biggest number you've reported outside of kind of the COVID period. I had thought that there'd be some RT3 benefits coming through in the half. Can you maybe just talk through those and maybe give us some color outside of, I guess, the labor cost increases that have come through? Because obviously, the 9% is well ahead of the labor cost increases that we've seen. Thanks.
Thanks, Tom. A really good question. I'm going to get Steve to go into detail. I'll just make some contextual comments. Hopefully, everyone is aware of the wage increase that we had was 5.75%, as needed by our team, and then 0.5% of super. So you've got about a 6.25% underlying wage increase.
And of course, a number of other costs went up. Then we've also got the item growth, as you'd be aware, on top of that, Tom. And then very importantly, while e-commerce is an amazing thing for our GP percentage mix because you just get this bigger basket that's got more long-last products in it, some of the costs of actually picking that are in the CODB. So that's material pressure in the CODB that it's not easy to backsolve when you look at it as one line. But in terms of the rest of the things going on in that CODB, I'll turn over to you, Steve.
Thanks, Brad. I mean, Tom, it's a fair question. When we look at it, you've got CODB growth of about AUD 480 million or, excluding depreciation, about AUD 400 million of cash increase. Just under half of that is the wage inflation.
So 6.25, when you include super, is a very big number for us. The other key driver that I think it's worth just building on Brad's comments, volume grew in half. So it was great to be back in volume growth. We opened a number of new stores, and e-com grew very strongly at over 20%. And the combination of those volume and mix drivers is worth about 40% of the gross cash cost growth. We did work very hard on productivity, and we feel like we generated a reasonable amount of productivity in the half. But as we flagged back in August, we always thought it would be very challenging to offset the level of inflation that we were expecting in the current year. And I think just a couple of other bits of color.
We do have spend on a number of areas in our business, including our investment in Cartology and in WIC, that sit in our CODB lines that drive both revenue and margin benefits. We also did see inflation in a number of other areas, including energy costs, which were up materially, as well as inflation on labor-related spend, including contractors and repairs and maintenance. We're very sensitive to the need to manage our costs, and we have a very full productivity agenda and working very hard to drive more productivity in the second half.
Just on that productivity agenda, and we alluded to it in the second half, Tom, we're actually at a very good half in terms of building momentum in that productivity agenda. We're actually ahead of where we expected to be at this point.
But obviously, as with all these things, it does sort of build over the context of the year. So it does sort of ramp in the second half. And that becomes a key wraparound into our F25 plan. And so it is not an immaterial agenda, but it's an agenda not done on just slashing costs, but on fundamental improvement in what we do. And we can come back and talk about it.
And probably my one build-back would be we're agnostic about where the productivity falls in our P&L, right? So a number of our initiatives are driving stock loss improvement. If you think about our investment in assisted scan or double welcome gates, they manifest in the GP line, but they are productivity initiatives the way we think about them. And we're reflective in the CODB. Thanks, Tom. Good question. Wonderful. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you.
The next question comes from David Errington from BofA Securities. Please go ahead.
Morning, Brad. Morning, Steve. Brad, just before I start, I'd just like to make a comment that I've really enjoyed you as an MD. I think you've been a wonderful CEO for Woolworths. I mean, most people on this call should remember. If they don't, they should be reminded that when you inherited Woolworths, it was a basket case. And more importantly, what you've done is you've not only turned this business around to be back to where it normally should be as a leading supermarket business, but you've also got humility into the company. Previously, the management was very arrogant. That was on the public record. I think you've even admitted that. What you've done as a CEO is you've actually brought back humility into Woolworths, which I've really enjoyed.
So I've really enjoyed you as a CEO, and you've been responsive to any challenge come your way. So congratulations, and I hope your legacy goes very, very, very warmly. Now, on that, we can't go without a clap. The productivity and following on from Tom's question, which I think is what's concerning me, I suppose, is this cost increase but with no fallback in CapEx. What really concerns me is this growth CapEx is falling, 283 back to 200, and sustaining CapEx is increasing. We haven't seen an improvement in the cost. Now, I know you articulated very well to Tom's question, but cost of doing business is really challenged. We're not seeing any improvement from that big investment that you made on slide 13. I mean, that is a huge amount of investment that you've made.
And yet, I'm concerned that your outlook statements on your productivity, etc., we're going to be having to expect at least 5%, maybe 6% cost of doing business growth while you're still spending AUD 2 billion of CAPEX. So what's your vision for the next three years that we can expect as investors? Because I just worry that this is just a cost, not an investment. Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, David. Look, I mean, I think Steve articulated. I think at a segment level, splitting GP and CODB, it's not logically in my mind. We do it because you've had it forever. At the group level, it works out, but we're always trading off. We're just trying to make the right decisions and drive value. And often, those values are manifest in GP, not CODB, and we've taken the cost in CODB.
That's part of what you're seeing right now. It's all about how we drive value and therefore how we drive value for our customers, being highly price competitive but also then balancing out against our shareholders. If I then look at that issue, we've been working very hard on it. I look at the team at the table that's sitting with me. We have our most meaningful productivity pipeline we've ever had in the context of Woolworths Group, and we're tracking ahead of it and need to deliver on it. Because realistically, the wage increase would only result from our team. It was needed. They are key customers who have key value issues, and we're about this balance.
We can talk about one thing, but we're the biggest employer in this country, and we have an immense obligation to do the right thing for the people who work for us. So we are working on the productivity to offset the wages. The plan does look very robust and good, and we will continue to execute against it. RT3, to Tom's point, is an underlying platform to deliver the change effectively into the store, is how it sort of works. And as I say, we feel very good about that. In terms of wage, price inflation, it does need to come down, David. It is. So we will get into the negative jaws, which you understand, which is essentially costs are driven by items. And if the cost of the average item comes down, it puts a lot of pressure into the P&L.
So that will be the challenge in the next 12 to 24 months. Outside of productivity, the thing that offsets it, of course, is these profit growth out of our adjacencies, which become key. I can't underestimate to you all the critical contribution of, as I say, Cartology, how we're going to use WooliesX PC Plus, which is our extension of providing supply chain services to our supplier partners and hoping them to be more effective, but also, of course, getting a fair return on the way through. We are going to be a lot more disciplined outside of that on other investments in the group. I think it's unavoidable. Including, I would have to say to you, above-store, we are, just like every other corporate in this country right now, leaning to the issue around how we want to manage our above-store costs and investments.
You can expect extreme prudence in the context of this half and into F25. Specifically on supply chain, it is starting to deliver for us, David. Our productivity is very, very strong. The issue we're still having is really disruption costs that are still flowing through. But hopefully, somewhat, we get better at managing those. You will see quite a lot of nice leverage come out of it. And yes, I'm looking at you as I talk. And hopefully, the cost that we're all dealing with right now is elevated transportation costs. And that's on the back of retaining truck drivers as well as fuel. So hopefully, we'll start to see that balance out. So we don't feel unconfident, David, in the midterm. And we're always trying to play for the midterm.
But it's going to be a relatively painful transition from a world of price inflation to a world of elevated wage or input inflation and very muted price inflation. We don't resile from acknowledging that. Well, thanks, Brad.
Thanks for your answer. The CapEx, just why is the growth CapEx falling and the sustaining CapEx rising?
Steve knows how we split GP and CODB. I think we can improve how we articulate this issue, as my good colleague, Mr. Harrison, knows. I'm going to pause for him to talk about that.
Sure, David. I mean, just by way of explanation, we have consciously invested more in productivity initiatives in our capital in the half in the knowledge of the wage inflation that we have now. The implementation of those initiatives generally doesn't deliver full benefit in the half.
You get them in subsequent halves and years. So productivity going up is a conscious choice. The shift in mix in some of our growth capital is really just to do with the timing of some projects and some projects having larger spend in the first half of last year. So in particular, in e-commerce, we had a lot more spend on automation in the first half of last year on our Auburn CFC. We had the completion of the replatforming of our rewards platform or our real-time loyalty program that ended in the prior year. And the timing on new stores is just very cyclical based on just where the development cycle is at. And we are just seeing some delays in new stores coming through just with the pressure on both cost and interest rates on developers.
So I would see those as timing-related primarily but a conscious choice to step up productivity investment.
Okay. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Stephen. Well done again, Brad. Thank you, David.
Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Before I ask my question, can I just echo Erro's comments? I think most people on this call, Brad, would agree that you've left Woolworths in a much better place for shareholders, staff, and customers. And congratulations, Amanda. My question's around margins in Australian food. And your comments that the split between gross margin and CODB are not necessarily the intuitive are not lost on me, particularly given the scrutiny on supermarket pricing right now. Can you talk a little bit more about the drivers of your gross margin during the period? You've given us some colour on tobacco.
Just be interested in what the impact from the adjacent businesses was, business mix, efficiency, stop-loss, etc., just so we can understand the benefits of the investments that you've been making and as they're coming through that gross margin line, please.
Yeah, thanks, Michael. I'll start, and then I'll pass on to Steve. Thank you for your kind comments. Legacy will be defined of how Woolworths performs in the next three years, not in the past three years. That'll be defined by everyone at this table and how we deliver for our shareholders in the midterm. I'm confident in the team, and I'm confident in the ability to do that. That, I think, will be the metric.
In terms of our gross margin, let me take the things off the plate that aren't material, if you don't mind, Michael, and then we can come back to things that are actually a flat topline number in broad terms, which was a good result, can I just say, given the challenges in topline. So really flat. So we just kind of want to take that one off the table right up front. Of course, tobacco continues to materially decline as a percentage of our mix. We thought it would actually start to plateau, but it's not. And then with the CPI increase on tobacco, it's actually creating more of that distortion while quite a meaningful movement in mix. And you just need to just park it. It's just a very different issue with very different dynamics associated with it. So I think just park that.
Then you get back to really all of these adjacencies and are starting to deliver for us as they should. We've invested materially in them, in CAPEX but also in our P&L. So they're starting to deliver. They had been starting to deliver for us, got a bit crowded in COVID, and now you're really seeing it come through strongly, which is terrific. And if you look at Michael, just to bring it to life here, and Steve, we'll break down forensically the numbers. So you look at e-commerce, right? And we had a very strong gap, and you'll look at the performance there in e-commerce. A material lift there. Now, that caused some issues in CODB because there's no question it cost a lot to pick it, but you see the benefits in GP.
In particular, in GP, what you see is the benefit of a very broad basket versus a narrow basket. And so when you get to these 40, 42 items, you're picking up a lot of non-food, long-life products in there, and they tend to be higher GP mix. So you see the material mix movement come through and the benefits of that basket build, which has been a particular focus of the team. How do you build a profitable basket, which is the key in e-commerce? So you're sort of asking those distortions, but there's no question on the strength of performance of all of those businesses sitting under X, starting with e-commerce. The real achievement is the basket. We managed to actually grow the basket, and it materially improved the basket mix through personalization and a whole range of things that we can talk about.
Our biggest, then, productivity individual productivity improvement in the half was how our store teams actually managed picking. That was through all the work done by WooliesX and the way we route pickers and how we consolidate orders. And it was, as I say, literally the biggest individual process improvement which happens going forward. So we sort of got the double leverage. And then the third one we got, and it's still early, and we're really excited by this, is with our new last-mile fulfillment business, HomeRun, how we manage the mix between trucks and crowd. And we've just started to see some amazing results that we need to work hard on delivering in the second half. So I know you wouldn't have had a time to guess our gap numbers yet, but Michael, if you get in there, you will see that. So that's e-commerce.
If you look at Everyday Rewards, it's just continued to grow and, of course, benefit from all the partnerships that we are starting to have, which is terrific. Some of those costs are reflected in the individual businesses, but you see them. They're reflected actually from gross to net sales. So they're not in the GP. They're reflected we're reducing gross to net sales, and then we're taking profit from Everyday Rewards into the GP line. But then the range of services there, it's so important to have a subscription business. We now have hundreds of thousands of people in subscriptions, and you see the benefit of that sitting there. Early days, Bill, I always say to you on Everyday Extra, but really pleasing results and pleasing for our customers as much as it is for us. Our members, they're resonating with it.
As I say, to rebrand our telco business and get the growth that we did, and that was probably Amanda. I looked at you in October, right, that we rebranded or maybe even November. And the reason we did that was we can be more personalized at providing those offers to members is what we're doing. So you're starting to see that really work for us. And then things like WooliesX, we don't really talk about. Really nice half out of it. So you really see just some great movements in there. And then in the supermarket business, the great achievement is actually with a very muted item growth, virtually zero item growth at a store level to have delivered the outcomes we did. And the cost management was excellent in supermarkets through productivity in RT3. It was more the investments we laid on.
And so you've seen that you've seen that go through. And also, you're just seeing what you're seeing in supermarkets. And I do want to come back and talk about it. I should be asked a lot of questions about where the item growth is going or not. The real issue that's happening in our group is our food businesses are doing well, but all the non-food categories have become incredibly competitive across the market. This is an inconvenient truth for anyone who wants to talk about lack of competition. It's extraordinary, but we've got very high item growth in our grocery food business, which is helping the mix of the numbers that you've seen in what we do. So those are the broad color pieces. Steve will do a much better job of breaking it up forensically. Thanks, Brad.
Look, I'll try to be brief just to build on your comments and not repeat too much. But roughly a third of it, Michael, is coming from our media and service income in Cartology and WooliesX. So Cartology continues to grow strongly there. Brad referenced a number of the service businesses. If I think then about some of the other levers that we tried or drivers that we described in the profit announcement, we're continuing to leverage WIC and advanced analytics to drive better promotional outcomes and reduced unprofitable promotions. We also cycled a collectibles program in the prior year.
And so the combination of those next two is worth roughly another third of the, and so just as I'm describing this, I'm talking to the 76-78 basis points, not the 96 because of tobacco is ultimately gross profit dollars that we don't have, but it does drive a basis point improvement. Then finally, the balance is from a range of things. Long life grew more strongly than fresh. And in our business, long life is a higher margin category. Actually, a lot of that fuelled by the growth of e-commerce where there is a mixed orientation towards long life more so than the in-store shopper. We've been working hard on achieving sourcing improvements on commodities, particularly supporting our own brands.
We've also been working hard to improve the end-to-end economics of meat and, in particular, partnering with Hilton to drive production efficiencies in their factories that supply our stores. Pleasingly, we're actually able to pass on falling livestock prices to lower prices for customers in red meat, which is really important for us. Hopefully, what you get from that description is a lot of the improvements are things that are within our control. We are very focused on delivering value for our customers. There's a number of levers, and I'm sure Natalie or Brad can talk to them, that we're particularly focused on in both the first half and moving forward on how we continue to drive value for customers and where the opportunity arises where we get a lower cost of goods that we pass on a lower price to customers. Thank you.
Very long answer to the question, Michael, but we're happy to have all the questions. I think a great one. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Shaun Cousins from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks. And Brad, I concur with Mike and Dave regarding the work you did culturally. Particularly in the first role that you had in Australian food came at a time when Woolworths had not put the customer first. And trade feedback had definitely been that arrogance rather than humility was the culture within the organization. So I think that the culture is better for your tenure. Maybe just to touch on volume, if I can, why are you seeing such subdued item growth? And it even moderated a wee bit in the second quarter to 1.2 relative to 1.6 in the first quarter, below population growth. Is it loss of share to ALDI?
Also maybe touch on some of those non-food peers like Chemist Warehouse, Bunnings. Is it Amazon? Or are you still seeing sort of strength in eating out? I note PFD's up 8%, but that's a combination of new and existing customer growth. So why is your item growth not better, please?
I think it's a great question. Sean, you will see in the announcement, by the way. I finish up as CEO, and I intend to be a very active one until the end of August and make sure I represent Woolworths effectively at all these various forums. I've agreed with the board to spend my last three weeks working in a store, and I invite you to join me there. I know you're passionate for it. And so I'm going to work in the customer service. In Marrickville Metro, so I invite you to join me.
And I think we could have some fun together. We might bring the productivity of the store, of course. Item growth, which is a big issue, as I say, it is an incredibly competitive market. It's already the most cross-shop market in the world, in the Western world, where we can get data. And that level of cross-shopping is increasing. And you would be well aware with the material penetration, particularly of ALDI together with Coles in local geographies, starting or finishing at an ALDI and is going up and not down. And that should not be surprising. And therefore, we need to work incredibly hard at retaining that customer and retaining the basket. So what happens, as you well know, is you lose a portion of the basket, not the total basket, but it goes up over time.
And we're working very hard, as you can imagine, on this issue. So I think that's there. But it really is then in non-food, which is where the issue is. It's all the everyday needs categories, as we would call it, whether it's home care, personal care, pets, baby, where you see this intense competition across the whole market, and everyone is leaned into the market. I always like to go and spend a Sunday in a store before we do results, and I would do that on Saturday. And I was hanging out, as I tend to do, outside of Coles. And the local pharmacy I was at was not only everyone's got into toilet paper, as we well know, but they were sitting there selling dishwashing detergents and a whole range of categories that are just not logical back to a pharmacy.
But they are looking for traffic builders, additional items to add to their basket. And you've seen everyone do that, a particularly pronounced version. And I think they're doing a fabulous job, of course, is discount Chemist Warehouse. And you've seen the manifestation of the focus they've got on those categories and how it's played through. So this market is unbelievably competitive. It's an inconvenient truth to many, but it is statistically unequivocally true. The traditional competitors are getting more competitive. But then in food and everyday needs, essentially, you've seen virtually every retailer get into these categories because it drives traffic and basket for them. And that includes Big W. So when we talk about Big W, we will be talking about some really positive trajectory in bulk lines in everyday essentials, which is happening. So we're doing this in the context of our own group.
It's good for competition. It's a very important part of the overall basket. It's where we've seen the most price inflation. Everyone wants to talk about price inflation, and we'll get numbers that are thrown around which are very temporal in nature. The big issues have been things like a dishwashing tablet being at a shelf price of AUD 1.64. And so there's lots of price pressure there, very expensive items. And therefore, that competition is good for consumers. We just need to be more focused and execute to hold our share of item growth in that. So that's primarily what's driving it. There are many other overs and unders, as you might imagine. One of the great things I've been able to, as Matt would point out to me, to reduce prices in fruit and veg is that we get volume elasticity, in particular in fruit.
So that's starting to come off a little bit, but that's the major driver.
Sorry, Brad. Are you holding share in item growth, or are you losing share in item growth? Sorry, back to the color. Go back to the question.
It's very massive in the last seven weeks, Sean. It's very massive to be unequivocal. We are holding channel share in item growth. As I said, though, if you look at whole of market and everyday needs, we are losing, I think, market shares. We can't calculate it for you. But we are holding channel share in everyday items. And the overall channel share is sort of in the right realm. It's a very noisy time of year, as you know. But broadly, at a volume level, we look okay.
But in an overall market sense, there's no question in everyday needs, we're losing share to rest of market as a supermarket industry as much as Woolies. And no share loss due to the Australia Day issues? No. That doesn't mean we can't learn from what happened. We know we can do a better job, and I've publicly acknowledged that. And we will come back and be very thoughtful in how we respond and how we operate going forward. So we know we could have done a better job of that, but no, that hasn't really impacted us. It would be fair to say the announcement of the Senate inquiry has led to a material drop in overall reputation and brand NPS scores for the major supermarket chains in Australia. That has been the major factor and the continued press on that on the way through.
But we had some customer segments that, yeah, we could have done a better job of making feel welcome and included at our business in Australia Day, and we will address that going forward.
Thank you. The next question comes from Adrian Lemme from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. And congratulations again, Brad, for the turnaround you executed at Woolworths. And also congratulations to Amanda on your appointment. I was just going to ask a question on New Zealand, please. I've heard of there being a material increase in 50% off-type promotions on front-end displays compared to the more typical 20%-30% off in that market. Can you talk to how much of that extra discounting is actually being funded by Woolworths? And are you seeing a payoff yet from this investment, please? Thank you, Adrian.
We've just been in replicating the learnings from Australia, much more deliberate and intentional on the end and the delivery of value through the end. And it's resonating very well. So we often have these promotions across the store, and often we can fragment the message on an end. And we've just been much more deliberate on getting right messaging on end. So what you're seeing is as much a merchandising issue as a change in strategy. That said, we are investing materially in our own brands in New Zealand, and you are therefore seeing huge item growth. But it is causing us short-term margin and price pressure. But it's the right thing in the context of an even more challenged market in a value sense than Australia.
So as we know, with Australia, you've got to invest in the customer, get the resonance, and then you can really build from there. And that's happening and working. Look, when you look at the overall results for the half, it is reflected in the overall performance of the half. But I wouldn't call something out that's dramatically different in the last couple of months. Spencer, I know you're online. I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add to that.
No. I think you've covered it, Brad. It's really the reset of our price mechanics is what could be reflecting that. But it really is very similar, in fact, a copy of what we've done in Australia. Our specials penetrations are still running at similar levels in the 30% penetration to overall business.
The funding between ourselves and suppliers is consistent with what was there was what was there before. Right.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Lisa Deng from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, Brad and Amanda. Congratulations, first of all. Then I did want to ask a question on WooliesX. So if we look at the gap, it seems that we actually grew profits by nearly AUD 100 million, AUD 96 million, I think, during the period. And that is almost over 80% of the EBIT growth of Australian Food. Can we understand a little bit why e-commerce has actually been so profitable or not profitable, but increased profitability by that much, especially because same day I remember previously Amanda talked about that being quite costly and that increase as a material percentage. So that's the first question.
And then the second question is the digital media and rewards. That also has come up a lot in terms of profitability. What's contributing to that, and how do we think about that going forward as well? Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Lisa. I'll sort of cover the high-level in the matter if there's anything on these specifics. Look, as I said, and just even talking about a GP, you're quite right on e-commerce, it's just a reflection on the capabilities and investments the team has had, including advanced analytics. So we've just done our benchmarking globally. And there's always something to learn, I believe, passionately from everyone globally. But if you look at productivity, actually, Woolworths and Coles, for that matter, at a general level, are two of the most productive retailers globally when you look at unit volumes and how they manage them.
But when you come to e-commerce specifically, we find we are very, very comfortably in the top quartile in terms of the overall productivity and the way we do it. And that's a testament to the way we've worked and the analytics that underpin it and so on. So as I mentioned to an earlier question, our individually biggest process of cost improvement in the half was just the whole way we pick e-commerce across our stores, in particular in our CFC. So amazing testament to the team. A lot of IP that goes into that. And actually, it's just a lot of fun when you're with the team and you're watching our supermarket team that's delivering in partnership with WooliesX and what they're up to.
Importantly there, Lisa, I do need to reference that having a DTB, as we call it, or a side of the store where you can actually dispatch these items is incredibly important. So there is a structural element. And the CapEx we've put in to have almost 750 stores with a DTB is important because if you think about e-commerce, it's going from batch to flow. And even if you stage an item in a back of house, you actually have to put it away, and then you have to take it out. Once you get to same day or delivery now, you move to a flow. You don't stage. And that is actually counterintuitively a huge improvement. When Amanda would have referenced what we did before, when you stage and do that, it's really difficult. But once you flow and you do it into a DTB, the world changes.
The other point to make, which I made to Michael earlier, is we're building a bigger basket generally in e-commerce. That's through all the personalization tools that sit there in the decision-making that helps the customer. But mostly, some of our most important saver customers use that because they can price compare better. They can get the specials. They can use best unit price. But we're seeing a much better basket. And that mix in the basket is benefiting the general percentage. So many other things going on in e-commerce, but we're building capabilities. And the capabilities are coming through. If I look at our micro-performance centers for a moment, which we've done together with Takeoff, they would freely acknowledge that all of our micro-performance centers are in their top 10 worldwide in terms of, again, productivity and the way they flow and the way they work.
It doesn't mean we don't want to do more with them, but that's what's going on there. On the rest, Lisa, really, there's, again, this continual drive for improvement. And so we don't talk about it now, but we spent a huge amount of money back in F23. And it was real CapEx money with our Eagle Eye replatform of Everyday Rewards. This was a huge investment for us. I forget now, AUD 30 million-AUD 35 million, Amanda, of direct CapEx in year plus all the other OPEX that went around it. We've replatformed the whole business. We can now do real-time rewards. The way to validate this, by the way, is if you go to a store and you get a digital receipt and you pay by Everyday Rewards, you will get a digital receipt before the deposit is completed, the transaction.
Now, the deposit is too slow out, by the way. I need to speak to John Hunt about it. He's heard it on this call. But true story. But it just shows how fast our platform is. It's a world-class platform, and we're using it to now leverage. We're then rebuilding all the personalization tools in there in context of work. And we're starting to use that to be better at targeting boosts to customers, to support the member prices in store, to suggest items you might have forgotten from your basket, to build the basket, and then to build our services business. That telco number is extraordinary. I don't want to overtalk it, but from a cold start and a relatively, for us, commoditized business is what we're doing, to actually have driven that says a lot about personalization and targeting.
So many years of benefits you've seen come through in that old portfolio. In Cartology and I mentioned this to someone earlier, and I'd seen an article in The Weekly that said it's still a business to be proven. I won't repeat the publication. Cartology's five years old. It's not a new business. We've put more money and investments into that business. We've grown the headcount there more than anything else we've done inside Woolworths Group. We've got a Shopper Media group. We've invested materially. We've rolled out screens in the last six months into our health and beauty aisles, which look fabulous, by the way. If you haven't seen them in our stores, go and have a look at them. You'll see what we've done with the coffee aisle. And then, of course, now we tend to go broader out into the mall with our facility.
You've seen that business deliver. We do want more out of them. The individually strongest growth in that business, Lisa, was in sponsored ads on our digital platform. As we drive traffic on our digital platform, of course, we want to get sales, but if we don't, we want to get personalized ads. That's really starting to grow materially for us. You've seen all of that come through. The key thing for me as I talk to you and we're all talking about the future, not the past. I've got the stage over you. The king is dead. Long live the king kind of moment. I'm very actively involved for the next until I leave. All of these are just starting, they're not finishing. This is the start of the journey on all of the things I'm talking to.
The material next-generation series of opportunities we're about to deliver is exciting, energizing, stimulating in every possible way. So it's not flash-in-the-pan stuff.
Sorry, Amanda. Can I follow up with Amanda, your appointment to CEO? Obviously, WooliesX is the key growth engine. Will someone replace you as sort of head of WooliesX, or will you continue?
Lisa, I'll take that question if you don't mind. Amanda, as you might imagine, I only found out the news this morning. So we will work to that in a very concerted process as well. We'll do with everything over the next six months. We've got plenty of time before the September start date. So thank you for the question. We might just keep moving if you don't mind. I've told myself I've been a bit too loquacious. So we'll get on to the next question. Thank you.
The next question comes from Bryan Raymond from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Again, congratulations to Brad and Amanda and to Von Ingram. Brad, you're coming up in time. I'm so excited. But no, I'll certainly echo everyone else's positive comments there. Just on, I'm just interested at a high level on whether you feel like you've got the balance right in the business between. I know gross margin versus CODB is an artificial separation. But just thinking about within the current climate, politically and from a regulatory perspective, printing almost 100 basis points uplifts in gross margin. The optics of that and I understand the drivers, and you've spelled those out quite well.
But the optics of that and then the slowdown in comps to 1.4% in total sales to 1.5% early in the calendar year, do you think you've got the amount of reinvestment in the business right at the moment? Or do you think that needs to evolve and become really a higher level of reinvestment in price, in service, in whatever else you need to do to reflect the current climate that we're in and to drive competition and to drive sales and ultimately earnings? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Bryan. That's exactly the right question. Look, our issue in that number, it'll make headlines. And I'm sure I'll be held to account for it at the Senate inquiry next month. The truth is, it came from all these adjacencies. So you've just got to be very authentic in where it came from.
We've got to be very thoughtful and balanced in what we do. It wasn't trying to grow margin at the expense of our customers. Hopefully, everyone is aware. Our price indices are as good as they've ever been, quite honestly, at the moment. We continue to invest in making sure that that's the case. Yeah, we've got an optics challenge. I need to point out, by the way, it's an optics challenge in the context of the half. This half overall result is the same as the second half of last year. It needs to be seen in the context of the year. We've got challenges as we've reflected and talked about coming up, right? It just needs to be seen in that context. Seven weeks makes a lot of is a long time ago.
In terms of price competitiveness and how we go forward, of course, we need to adjust, Bryan. We continue to do that every day. And Nat and the team in particular are working very hard on this. I need to reference, as I say, these everyday needs categories, which is where we are, as a supermarket industry, losing share to other competitors, which is, I say, great for the consumers of Australia, but we can and need to do more there. And we are certainly very focused on thinking through how we execute and do that because that is where it's most pronounced. But we're all pretty clear right now, right? If we get cost benefits, we need to be very thoughtful of how we manifest that in consumer benefits. And you can rest assured of our continued focus on that in the rest of the half. Thank you.
The next question comes from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Morning, Brad. And yeah, congratulations on your time as CEO. It's great to see the team you've got. And the internal succession is really a reflection on your leadership. So congratulations there. I might shift tack on Big W. Pre-COVID, there was plans to close a number of stores. Things went quite well during COVID. What is the outlook for Big W when I look on a pre-AASB 16 basis? Profitability would be incredibly skinny. Are you looking at store closures again for that brand?
Look, thank you, Craig. Every store, when it comes up when the list starts coming up for expiry, we are very tough and very challenged on what we do. So rest assured of that. And we don't have the number yet because it's the half year.
But Steve can remind me how our lease liabilities continue to reduce inside Big W. So we have been very thoughtful and very careful. And if we do renew leases, which we are, we invariably are going for shorter renewal periods than we were. So the weighted average lease term is you say 7. I think it's closer to 6, Steve. I'm willing to wager something for later. So rest assured on that, Craig. So that's key. And actually, it's key in general because where we are undertrading, if Dan doesn't mind me saying, is really e-commerce in Big W. And we have been lagging in terms of delivering a great e-commerce experience, in particular for availability and apparel and things like that and size-based availability, which is important in the store but paramount online. And so we've got work to do.
We need to move. We've done an amazing job in our food business of moving the same day. But we're starting to make really good progress in Big W. But we're still way behind where we want to be. So a combination of e-commerce plus the nature of these categories means that we are cautious. That said, you will see some store openings from us. Those store openings are actually to bridge gaps in the network where we think we should have an offer but also give us the e-commerce leverage we need. We know to do same-day e-commerce, including in a Big W. We do need a store in the local geography. So you will see a balanced story going forward. But if we can't follow up, I think it's fine, Paul, on the lease term and things like that.
So rest assured of a very cautious underlying investment strategy inside Big W.
Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, Brad and team. Just. On your market share performance because it's that slide you put up with all the rewards started at eight or nine. I think it's a great slide. And no disrespect, but it feels like you've got these tools, and you've got this phenomenal set of tools. You've got the best loyalty program in terms of your ability to flex and move around and all the repurposing and stuff you've done around Eagle Eye. But I just still struggle to see how it's yielding results from a share perspective because if you look at leakage of brands like Chemist Warehouse and whether it's Petbarn or Reject Shop or whoever it is, you've got better loyalty capabilities than them.
And you know your customer better. And you can boost. And you can get your extras. But do you think you're working it hard enough? And I suppose the question there is, is you look at what Sainsbury's done in the US sorry, in the UK. They're flying now. They're outgrowing Aldi. They've pushed harder on price, on price matching. Do you think you need to sacrifice a bit more margin in the nearer term to drive volumes? Because it just feels like that the share trends aren't doing what they should be given the toolkit that you've got.
I think it's the right challenge, Craig. So sorry, Ben. What did I say, Craig? It's the right challenge unequivocally. We're very aware and Sainsbury had a great Christmas through Nectar, as hopefully you're all aware.
I mean, obviously, Clubcard worked for Tesco, but Sainsbury actually, just in a comp sense, actually had a very strong Christmas every year. And we do take inspiration from what they do plus what a number of other people are doing with the loyalty program. The loyalty program is growing in size, which is pretty cool. But do we need to use it a bit more forensically, in particular into these non-food categories? We're so wide as a food business, and we can't lose that. It's how we get the right balance in the program is a conversation you might imagine that we have in our core franchise is food. But we just have those loss of share in non-food.
And Ben, just the way all of the mechanics work in the market - and you would know this well when you look at yours - they don't take whole-of-market into account. So it's very hard to get a precise measurement except to know that these are categories that people need to have if the item's not there, and it's not there in our competitors. Either it's gone somewhere else. So rest assured of our commitment and focus to do a lot more in the space and to use Everyday Rewards to do that and to be inspired, in particular, by Nectar. Why we like Nectar is it's a multi-format loyalty program. So it's not just one loyalty program or one business like Clubcard, which is a bit more definitive and unequivocal that it's just singly focused on Tesco.
So we will look forward to coming back at the full year and talking about that.
Thank you. The next question comes from Richard Barwick from CLSA. Please go ahead.
G'day, Brad. It's been covered off quite a bit, sort of this improvement in effectively the e-com margin and sort of how you've delivered on this result. But my question is to the sustainability of that or perhaps even ongoing improvement. You talked about the bigger basket size, the mixed basket, etc. Do you see that as entrenched now? And do you see further scope for, ultimately, the margin delivered through e-com to improve?
Thanks, Richard. The whole of retail in general is about continuing to build capabilities and iterate going forward. So nothing is entrenched. Everything requires work and effort to be done, whether it's in a store or whether it's in e-commerce.
Of course, we need to continue to improve our store experience and build e-commerce on the top. As we know, the connected customer shops the store in e-commerce. The store experience is as important to growing e-commerce as just all the initiatives underway in e-commerce. I would say we've been at this for a long time, right? This is not a new initiative. We created WooliesX. I think, man, it's eight years ago, the years started blurring or seven. So we've been at it a long time. I would say we have a good pipeline of ways we want to enhance the experience for our customers in e-commerce and therefore execute against it. So that's there. But we take nothing for granted. I would not underestimate, within our stores, though, or e-commerce, the importance of the app to provide a better shopping experience.
And Natalie would point out to me that there's 460,000 customers now use the Woolworths app in-store mode and helping them navigate, find specials, find value in our stores for those customers. And that's amazing, right? We've sort of doubled the number of people using in-store mode on the app, I think, in the last six months. So we just need to continue to drive benefits for customers, in particular, through the app, convert web or mobile web customers, in particular, to the app, and then improve the personalization that sits there, like have you forgotten or reorder have become central to an app experience. That reorder needs to be smarter. It needs to be used in predictive AI. GenAI is the next step, just simple predictive AI and basket and composition of basket to make sure that we do that. It's amazing.
Our best unit price, which is where I'm searching what's the best unit price in a category, has got amazing resonance. It's delivering unbelievable value for customers because they get in to see unit-based price trade often, the ducks and doves just for inflation issues. So we feel good. But nothing's taken for granted. Let me just put it that way. We need to continue to run. I will say, in the first seven weeks, our e-commerce performance has continued to build. It hasn't slipped back. So that's really important.
Thank you. That does conclude our time for Q&A. I'll hand the conference back to Brad for any closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for all of your questions and your kind wishes. As I think I've alluded to, I certainly intend to be very active during the rest of my term before September.
And I think it's really important, honestly and I know this sounds cliché, but it is important for me to restate it. I need to be judged what happens in the next three years and where the Woolworths delivers for its potential for you as our investors as much as what's happened in the past. And that will require this amazing team that sits in the room to continue to deliver against our plans, get the right balance between our customers, our teams, our suppliers, and of course, our shareholders. So I'm on the hook. Let me just put it that way and look forward to talking to you all at Q3 and at the full year. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.