Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sa Sa's investors presentation for the year ended 31st March 2022. For the year ended 31st March 2022, the group's turnover increased by 12% to HKD 3.41 billion and recorded a loss of HKD 314 million. The loss would have narrowed by 42% if non-recurring items such as store impairments, government subsidies, and rental concessions are excluded. This is attributable to our loss reduction at the group's operations in the core markets of the Hong Kong and Macau SARs. In the Hong Kong SAR, we continued to rationalize our retail network, as well as adopting diverse measures to attract local customers and boost sales.
We launched effective promotions to seize opportunities arising from the government's Consumption Voucher Scheme and strategically adjusted our product portfolio by broadening the categories of personal care and health and fitness products to reinforce Sa Sa's market positioning as a one-stop beauty product specialty store. We also swiftly responded to the fifth wave of COVID-19 and introduced anti-pandemic products to fight the outbreak alongside the public. In the Macau SAR, which has reopened its border with the mainland, the group's sales rebounded in the H1 of the financial year on the back of a recovery in mainland Chinese visitations to the city. In the H2 of the financial year, the resurgence of the pandemic in the Macau SAR and Guangdong Province compelled the city to tighten its quarantine measures for inbound travelers, directly affecting the group's sales performance in the H2 .
In the combined markets of Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR, the group achieved an increase of 13% in retail sales despite the decrease in the number of stores, with same-store sales having increased by 17%. The group's loss in these markets for the whole year narrowed significantly to around HKD 200 million. For its online business, the group's cross-departmental collaboration began to bear fruit. Turnover for the year surged by nearly 40% to a record high, and its contribution to the group's turnover rose to about 20%. The online business continued contributing profits. We made the most noticeable progress in the adoption of the new retail model in our Hong Kong SAR operation.
In addition to providing the click and collect service, our beauty consultants effectively leverage on the e-coupons that are universal to both online and offline operations to engage customers and provide a more comprehensive and satisfying shopping experience. In doing so, we successfully promote mutual conversion between online and offline customers, boosting customer loyalty and repurchase rate while driving sales growth. In Mainland China, the group's business was severely affected by the pandemic and the slowdown in consumer sentiment. This, coupled with the impairment of physical stores, led to a widening of loss at the group's operations in Mainland China. We adjusted our strategy and suspended the opening of new stores starting from the Q4 and focused on improving the performance of our existing stores.
We started to enable our beauty consultants in our mainland stores to leverage on WeChat Mini Program to extend cross-border OMO services to enlarge our customers in mainland China with expanded cross-border product portfolio online, with the aim of enhancing our competitiveness. We have also launched live streaming in Douyin to attract young customers. In Malaysia, the Movement Control Order enforced in the H1 of the financial year dealt a heavy blow to Sa Sa's business in the country. In October, the policy was changed, and there was no longer large-scale lockdown. Sa Sa's business there quickly turned around with a profit in the H2 . We are optimistic about the future performance of this market. Looking ahead, with online shopping becoming more popular, we believe that the importance of online business will continue to increase even when the pandemic subsides.
Building on the foundation of our physical stores in the Hong Kong and Macau SARs and mainland China, we will actively develop our online business and forge ahead with the integration of online and offline operations. The online and offline customer touchpoints complement each other and provide customers with a personalized new retail shopping experience, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of the group. We will further emphasize and boost our mini program efforts in mainland China and continue to develop new e-commerce platforms to drive online business growth. Physical stores still play a key role under the new retail model. We will continue to optimize our store networks in various markets and improve operational efficiency. In the Hong Kong SAR, we will continue to close down stores that are loss-making or incurring exorbitant rents and relocate stores to better locations when the opportunities arise.
We will, at the same time, consider opening new stores in residential areas and maintain stores with reasonable rents in tourist districts to benefit quickly from border reopening in time. Although the group's medium to long-term objectives in mainland China remain unchanged, we see the need to review and adjust our strategies. We will rationalize our store network and focus our resources on enhancing the performance of our physical stores and online business and reduce overall expenses. Our exclusive products allow us to enjoy greater flexibility in terms of strategy, positioning, pricing, and sales channels. They are best positioned to facilitate our new retail transformation and enhance our product competitiveness and profitability. We will step up our efforts in developing and building exclusive product brands.
The collaborative efforts from our board of directors, management, and all staff in the past three years in implementing all-round cost saving measures have achieved positive results. We are looking forward to returning to profitability when the overall business operating environment improves. My wife and I together provided a revolving loan facility of HKD 200 million at the end of March to further strengthen the group's financial position. The move represents our support to Sa Sa and our confidence in its prospects. We will continue to work hard to thrive in business transformation and create value for our shareholders. Our Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Guy Look, is retiring this year after having served Sa Sa for 20 years. Guy is a great partner of mine. He has contributed tremendously to Sa Sa over the years.
The board of directors and I would like to express our greatest gratitude to him. At the same time, our group has appointed Mr. Danny Ho as an Executive Director, and he will succeed Guy as the Chief Financial Officer to the group. Danny has over 20 years of experience in finance and management. In particular, he is experienced in driving consumer journey digitization. We look forward to Danny helping the group scale new heights in the future with his expertise and capabilities. Now, I would like to pass the floor to Guy and Danny, who will explain the financial and operational performance as well as our future plans. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Kwok. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sa Sa International Holdings Limited's investors' presentation for the annual results year ended 31 March 2022.
Our agenda today covers our group financial performance and business review, which will be covered by myself, and Danny will then present our outlook and future plans. First of all, our financial performance. Our group turnover increased by 12.1% to HKD 3.41 billion. Because our gross profit margin has increased by 2.3 percentage points, our gross profit dollar has increased by 19.8% to HKD 1.26 billion. Our loss for the year amounted to HKD 343.7 million. If we exclude government subsidies, rental concessions, and store impairments from both periods, our losses could have narrowed by 41.5%. Loss per share amounted to HKD 0.111 as compared to HKD 0.113 last year. The pandemic has accelerated the rise of online shopping.
Our fastest growing online business has seen its group sales mix risen from 16.5% in the previous year to 20.4% this year. Because of their slower growth in comparison, the sales mix of our brick-and-mortar businesses in Hong Kong and Macau SAR, and the Chinese mainland markets have been diluted slightly to 64.9% and 9.1% respectively. In the Malaysian market, sales fell by 23.6%, and its sales mix fell to 5.6% as it was locked down for three months due to the pandemic. When compared to the 3.8% sales mix in the H1 , this reflects the fast recovery in the H2 of the financial year when business started to normalize. Our group's retail outlets increased marginally to 234.
It comprised of 85 in Hong Kong and Macau, 77 in mainland China and 72 in Malaysia. In Hong Kong, where rental costs are among the highest in the world, we have rationalized the number of shops in tourist areas to 32, including opening one in a better location. In Macau, we have also opened a shop in the tourist area. In non-tourist areas in Hong Kong and Macau, we have opened one store and closed three. Our objective is to pay reasonable rents for a network of well-located stores and enhance our customer's shopping experience. We will continue to improve our store locations and rental. In mainland China, the number of our stores increased by 20- 77, but the persistence and severity of the pandemic and the weak consumer market affected our performance.
Although our medium and long-term mainland China market objectives are unchanged, we will need to review and adjust our strategy. In Malaysia, we will consolidate our position and boost our profits before moving ahead again. Excluding last year's contribution from our now discontinued Singapore business, our loss from continuing operations decreased by HKD 15.6 million from last year to HKD 343.7 million. The improvement is HKD 211.3 million if we also exclude non-recurring items. Hong Kong and Macau's loss of HKD 198.9 million is 56% of last year's. The online business made HKD 1.9 million less than last year, but as you can see later, there is progress in recurring profits. The loss in China and Malaysia increased to HKD 144.2 million and HKD 7.5 million respectively.
I will explain in detail later. Our cash on hand stood at HKD 296.7 million as at 31 March 2022. A reduction of about HKD 230 million from last year. Bank loans stood at HKD 102.5 billion. Inventory turnover has reduced by 13 days to 127 days under close management. They have been reduced in line with operating needs, much like CapEx and accounts payable. As of the year-end, we have cash on hand of HKD 296.7 million and unutilized facilities of HKD 376.6 million, fully adequate for our needs. We move on to business review. After much efforts, the performance of Hong Kong and Macau SARs has improved despite the unrelenting onslaught of COVID-19.
Sales increased by 12.6% despite the closure of 15 stores, because same-store sales had a healthy increase of 16.9%. Sales volume and basket size increased by 3.1%-9.3% respectively. In the H2 , our Hong Kong SAR store successfully targeted local customers riding on government consumption vouchers. When the fifth wave broke out, sales growth was subdued but positive due to the timely launch of pandemic preventive and testing products. In Macau SAR, mainland visitors led retail sales up 27.9% for the whole year. If it were not for the impact of the pandemic in the H2 , the performance would be more satisfactory.
In Hong Kong and Macau SAR, our gross profit margin rebounded significantly from 32.5% to 38.5% this year, as we no longer had the burden of the large-scale inventory reduction effort last year. Inventory was reduced slightly by 11.6% in line with operating needs under careful management. We have developed strategic product categories to attract local consumers and to enhance Sa Sa's position as a one-stop beauty specialty store. To this end, we built closer cooperation with local suppliers to strengthen the personal care, health and fitness, and beauty devices product categories with satisfactory results. Reported loss in the Hong Kong and Macau SAR markets reduced by HKD 154 million when compared to last year.
The loss reduction would be HKD 285 million if we exclude the effects of government subsidies, rental concessions, and accounting for store impairments. The government subsidies alone made a difference of HKD 110 million between the two years. The biggest contributing factors for the loss reduction were sales growth amounting to HKD 73.7 million. Gross profit margin improvement amounting to HKD 129 million, as well as cost savings amounting to HKD 114 million. We achieved significant rental reduction over the year, amounting to HKD 156.3 million. Store closures saved us HKD 87.8 million, and savings upon contract renewals amounted to HKD 68.5 million. The reported figure is significantly less because of much higher rental concession and store impairment write-backs last year.
The table at the bottom shows that we now pay about HKD 35 million of monthly rental compared to a monthly rent of close to HKD 17 million three years ago. For our online business, Mainland China has provided ample opportunities because of its size and growth, and has been our focus for years. The pandemic has awakened other online markets and accelerated their growth. During the year, the share of the Mainland China market in our sales mix has been diluted to 63.6%, with Hong Kong and other markets rising to 26.2% and 10.2% respectively. China's online market is, of course, still important to us. It grew rapidly in the H1 of the year, but weakened in the H2 during Double Eleven. Major outbreaks later in the H2 also affected consumption and cross-border logistics.
We began trying cross-border WeChat Mini Program to extend online merge offline to the mainland in the H2 . We also began to live stream on Douyin to attract young customers. In the Hong Kong SAR, we also leveraged on OMO to provide a multiple touchpoint experience. Sales increased significantly after the website was updated to support more online and offline synergies, including mutual conversion of customers, expanding our customer base, boosting customer loyalty and repurchase rates, and driving sales. The penetration of online sales in the Hong Kong and Macau SAR continued from last year, when we sold a large number of anti-pandemic masks online. While protective mask sales have dropped this year, the growth of other products have continued, enough to increase the online sales mix in Hong Kong and Macau from 4.6% last year to 7.6% this year.
In the Q4 , it reached 12%. In the mainland market, online sales have always been an important part of our business for the past, and sales mix have gone up from 57.3% last year to 59.7% this year. We made steady progress in the H1 , with improvements in both sales and bottom line. Weaker Double Eleven and major pandemic outbreak in the H2 was a challenge to both sales and profits. We made a good recovery in the Q4 against the Q3 . While we made slightly lower profits for the year of HKD 6.9 million compared to HKD 8.8 million last year, primarily because of government subsidy of HKD 6 million last year.
Putting that and other non-recurring items aside, recurring profits improved from a loss of HKD 3.1 million last year to a profit of HKD 5.3 million this year. Our Mainland China operation was severely hit by the persistence and severity of the pandemic and the weak consumer markets. Our retail sales grew by 2%, but our same-store sales declined by 15.4%. Loss for the year was exacerbated by store impairment provisions and amounted to HKD 118.4 million. We suspended our new store openings in the Q4 and focused on improving the performance of existing stores and online operations. We started cross-border mini program in the H2 with physical store-based beauty consultants, leveraging on the advantage of the enriched online OMO product offerings for physical store customers, and in doing so, strengthening our competitiveness in the markets.
In Malaysia, strict Movement Control Order in the H2 led to 53.7% sales decline and losses. In the H2 , we returned to profitability from October when we opened for business again. Loss for the year amounted to HKD 7.5 million. After the H2 recovery, a significant part of the HKD 18.5 million losses we incurred in the H1 . Now, I will pass the outlook and future plans section to Danny Ho. Thank you, Danny Ho.
Thank you, Dr. Look. I'll now take you through an overview of the future strategic direction and the business outlook. Making life beautiful remains our core purpose, and we'll look to deliver this through our strategy comprising three focus areas. Firstly, we will partner more closely with brand owners and suppliers to drive value from our product assortment that addresses consumer needs. Secondly, we'll look to embed our route to consumer strategy around the changing consumer journey to ensure we meet the consumer where they appear and provide them with the choices they need, be it online or offline or a hybrid approach. Thirdly, we'll be looking to increase our portfolio of managed and exclusive brands and investing in and nurturing these brands to truly showcase their brand value and functional products.
To enable us to succeed across all three pillars, we will continue to invest sustainably in talent and executing the ambition, digitalization projects that will enhance consumer experience and allow Sa Sa to better serve our consumers, partnership with industry players, and the clients such that consumers can be trusted in the authenticity of our products. Under our first pillar, we will be looking to partner more closely with brand owners and our suppliers to enhance our product assortment and introduce innovative products via enticing promotions that excite our consumers. We'll also strengthen our overall category management, looking closely at how we manage inventory, both in quantity and SKU, to enable us to react faster to changing consumer trends and maintain healthy gross margins.
Consumer centricity has always been part of Sa Sa's DNA, and we aim to provide a seamless consumer experience as they increasingly adopt different journeys to explore and purchase. This requires that we manage offline and online channels as one, adopt agile management approach in reacting faster in our execution by responding to changing consumer habits and further digitizing the consumer journey. Everyone sells or helps sell. Under our third pillar, we'll be looking to increase our portfolio of managed and exclusive brands, including niche brands, investing and nurturing these brands to truly showcase their brand value and functional products. We'll be investing in our marketing capability, including greater pulse on consumer trends, consumer interactions via our membership platforms, engaging Sa Sa community, and enhancing our social media presence. To conclude, a few comments in respect to the jurisdictions we operate.
I won't repeat some of what's already been said before. Under the operating environment in Hong Kong currently, we're assuming there will be no reopening of the border this year and focusing on serving our local customers. We're actively reviewing the rental and operating efficiency of our stores in non-tourist areas in order to raise their profit contribution. At present, we believe that upon restructuring, there is an opportunity to return stores to profitability and also open new stores in areas that meet our operating criteria. We have maintained stores in prime tourist locations where we receive reasonable rent concessions. When tourism returns, we expect a rebound in these areas, and we won't hesitate to expand back into these tourist locations as long as the rent and operating efficiency make economic sense. Our stores in Macau mainly serve tourists, and it has been affected by the status of the pandemic.
While we started to see a solid recovery in our Macau business as tourism returns, the recent wave of the pandemic in June has again significantly disrupted that business. When this passes, we expect the business again to return to some degree of normality. For Mainland China, our online business has been impacted by the pandemic since the end of last year with extended lockdowns in port locations. While we ceased opening new stores since the beginning of this calendar year, we will look to further rationalize our stores, but we're not giving up on this market. Our longer-term China ambitions will continue to plan. We continue to grow our online presence through additional channels that has better reach to our Mainland China consumers, and we're looking to enhance this going forwards. However, the current wave of the pandemic has shown us that online sales are not immune either.
Overall consumer sentiment has been somewhat dampened, while consumer habits have been changing. Cosmetics is one of the more affected categories. Our logistics has also been disrupted, with warehouses located in certain areas subject to lockdowns, delays in deliveries to consumers, and returns as a result. The ability to manage inventory and supply chain going forward is a real, critical success factor. As far as the overall online business is concerned, we will continue to invest in expanding our online product categories, which are bought at endless aisle. We are currently selling on multiple e-commerce platforms in Mainland China and in Southeast Asia, and we look to add more channels, and further advance bridges in our online merge offline possibilities over the next 12 months. Regarding Malaysia, we are conservatively confident over the future outlook. The sales have recovered quite well. The market has returned to profitability.
While our previous cost-cutting measures continue to benefit us. Thank you for listening, and I will pass you back to Dr. Look for overview of Q1.
Thank you, Danny. This is the Q1 results or more or less most of it because the Q1 has virtually been completed. During this period for the combined markets of Hong Kong and Macau SAR, we recorded a sales decline of 9.5% and the same-store sales decline of 4.1%. Hong Kong did relatively well on its own with double-digit growth despite a reduction in physical stores and the fifth wave, of course. We did benefit from government consumption vouchers, particularly in April. Macau was affected by outbreak in Guangdong Province that started in March and subsequently suffered its own outbreak in mid-June and resulted in big double-digit decline in sales during this quarter.
For our online sales decreased by 4.2% as cross-border logistic issues arising from the recent outbreak in the mainland affected both our store replenishment in China warehouses as well as direct deliveries to customers from Hong Kong. This problem was particularly acute during the 618 festival. Outside of Mainland, Hong Kong SAR achieved a growth rate in excess of 110%. For the Mainland China market, sales weakened by 16.4%, and same-store sales declined by 22%, mainly due to COVID-19 outbreak and weak consumer demand. We have taken actions to close 6 stores in the Q1 as part of our ongoing efforts to improve on the profitability of our physical store network and to manage our overall costs, taking into account productivity and return.
Mainland China remains a most important market for us, and we need to improve our sustainable development capability of the market. In Malaysia, our operation has recovered well and is picking up momentum after the lockdowns were over. We recorded 102.4% sales growth and 50.5% same-store sales growth, partly because of a very low base in June last year. If we take a more critical look, our May 2022 sales have actually exceeded the May 2018 sales by over 10%. I will stop here, and we can proceed to the Q&A. Thank you.