Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Heidi, MC of today's event. Welcome to the Investor and Analyst presentation of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Limited to discuss our interim results for the financial year 2025. Let me introduce the management team who will conduct the presentation and participate in the Q&A session today. Firstly, Mr. Kent Wong, Managing Director, Mr. Hamilton Cheng, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Danita On of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Firstly, Mr. Kent Wong will present the interim results highlights and group strategies, as well as give business updates. Then, Mr. Hamilton Cheng will then talk about financial review and conclude the presentation with market outlook. After that, we will have a Q&A session. This hybrid event will be conducted primarily in English. We will provide simultaneous interpretation services for any content or questions answered in Mandarin.
For on-site participants here at Hong Kong CEC requiring translation assistance, please raise your hand, and a headset will be provided to you. For online participants, you have two options available. You can select English or Mandarin interpretations in Language Bar located at the top right corner of the webcast platform. Now, I would like to hand the time over to your first presenter, Mr. Kent Wong.
Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us in our interim result for financial year FY25. The business environment continued to be affected by macro uncertainties and externalities in the first half. Record gold prices, in particular, have continued to impact our consumer sentiment, resulting in a slowdown of demand for gold jewellery. During the period, the gross revenue decreased by 20.4% to HKD 39.4 billion. In order to help the market better understand the underlying operational performance of our business and separate the impacts of hedging, we have reclassified the gold loan fair value change, including all settled and unsettled contracts, from cost of goods sold to other gains and losses from this financial year.
Hamilton will further elaborate on this later in the session. Operating profit remained resilient at HKD 6.8 billion, up by 4% year-on-year. Profit attributable to shareholder decreased by 44.4% to HKD 2.5 billion.
The decrease was mainly due to a HKD 3.1 billion loss arising from the devaluation of gold loan contracts amid considerable volatility in gold price during this period. On profitability, the gross GP margins expanded significantly to 31.4% during this period, and operating profit margin improved. The resilient performance in the first half validated our diligent execution of the five strategic priorities, which have sustained the growth momentum towards quality earnings. The board has declared an interim dividend of 20% per share, representing a payout ratio of nearly 80%. The board also announced a proposed share buyback with a total amount not exceeding HKD 2 billion from internal resources. This takes into careful account the capital requirement of the business to invest in growth and our commitment to enhance total shareholder returns. This also reflects our confidence in the long-term business prospects.
Let me now share our key highlights during the first half of FY25. Our brand transformation continued to grant positive momentum in this period. We proactively optimized our product portfolio and pricing strategy to suit consumer demand, with product offering with different value propositions. The gross GP margin was enhanced by 650 basis points in the first half year, thanks to gold price increase and a higher contribution of our higher-margin fixed-price gold products. We remained disciplined in our cost and CapEx spending. SG&A expenses decreased nearly 3% year-on-year. As a result, operating margin grew by 400 basis points year-on-year, against a challenging macro backdrop. As part of our enduring commitment to preserve Chinese culture and heritage, we announced a strategic partnership with the Hong Kong Palace Museum to launch the 5-year Chinese Gold Craftsmanship Heritage Education Program in Hong Kong.
In September, we celebrated the grand opening of our first concept store in Central Hong Kong, marking a significant milestone in our brand transformation journey. Showcasing jewelry collections in a gallery-like aesthetic, the concept store embodies refreshed operating standards and an enhanced store ambience that resonates with the essence of our fresh brand. We are delighted to receive positive feedback so far, and we look to efficiently allocate resources for a progressive rollout of the refreshed store over the next five years. We will be calibrated and aligned in accordance with market conditions. We continue to optimize our product portfolio with exquisite design and craftsmanship. The new collection was launched in the first half, generating strong sales momentum and traction with consumers, resulting in the lift of higher-margin fixed-price contributions to gold product revenue to 14.2% in Mainland China, doubling its contribution versus a year ago.
That validated our pivot in product and pricing strategy in response to market dynamics. In celebration of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery's 95th anniversary, we unveiled the signature CTF Rouge Collection. This new collection has generated remarkable sales of over HKD 1.5 billion since its debut in April, beyond our expectations. In collaboration with the Palace Museum in Beijing, we released the Chow Tai Fook Palace Museum Collection in August. This new collection differentiates with its unique representation of Chinese heritage and craftsmanship, featuring jewelry pieces designed for daily use. Building on our expertise in diamond jewelry, we also launched a new line of wedding jewelry, the Chow Tai Fook Bond Collection in September. This collection features a diverse range of jewelry pieces, with the highlight being the elegant two-pronged Bond ring. Let me take this opportunity to show you the video of our latest Rouge and Palace Museum Collection.
Thank you. We expect to enrich SKU offerings in our key collections, such as Chuan Cheng , Palace Museum, and CTF Rouge Collection, and launch new differentiated collections, spanning fixed-price gold to gem-set. Our strength in product innovation will sustain our leadership in this industry. Over the years, we have applied and enhanced dedicated techniques and exquisite craftsmanship in our jewelry making. This new partnership with Hong Kong Palace Museum aims to preserve the rich tradition, artistic features, and cultural significance of Chinese gold craftsmanship, while educating the young generation about its importance, fostering their understanding and appreciation of Chinese gold craftsmanship. This serves as a testament to our strong commitment to preserving Chinese cultural heritage. Now, I would like to share with you our business update. As of September, we have almost 7,000 Chow Tai Fook jewelry stores in the mainland, of which 77% were franchised.
With an emphasis on improving earnings quality, our current priorities are to maximize the overall financial health of our retail network and sustain our market leadership. Due to the softer demand and the gold price volatility, sales of operating stores and franchise stores recorded an RSV decrease by 26% and 18% respectively in the first half. Year-on-year sales performance was generally similar across different tiers of cities. In the mainland, we net closed 239 Chow Tai Fook jewelry stores during the first half. Based on the recent trends and market conditions, we expect net store closures to be lower in the second half than this period. We shall remain agile in response to market dynamics and optimize our store network by streamlining underperforming stores while focusing on maximizing store productivity.
At the same time, we continue to open new stores on a selected basis, with 166 new points of sale being added to our retail network in the first half. We adopt a data-driven approach and strategically open stores in promising locations where new points of sale can generate higher revenue and profit than the closure of an underperforming point of sale. This strategy not only mitigates revenue shortfalls but also ensures healthy growth on a collective basis to maintain and grow market share. We are committed to enhancing the shopping experience for our consumers, which is integral to our brand transformation. During the period, we host customer engagement events to promote our collections and seize festive periods to drive foot traffic. We leverage AI in digital marketing for tailored content, facilitating sales with bespoke product recommendations to our consumers.
Our e-commerce business in this period was largely stable compared to the same period last year. Its contribution to Mainland RSV rose by 1% to 5.6% compared to the same period of last year. ASP's growth of e-commerce was impressive, with a 14% increase to 2,400 in this period. Now, let's turn to Hong Kong and Macau and other markets. In Hong Kong and Macau, business was impacted by uncertain macroeconomic conditions, local outbound tourists, and changes in mainland tourists' spending patterns and preferences. RSV declined by 26% and 42% in Hong Kong and Macau, respectively, in the first half. We closed 3.7% in Hong Kong and Macau in the first half. Given the current challenging environment, we stayed agile in managing the evolving business dynamics. We continue to evaluate individual store locations, scale, and productivity to ensure margin resilience.
In other markets, we had 61 Chow Tai Fook jewelry stores as of September, with one duty-free store in China and two stores in Japan added in the first half. Excluding China duty-free stores, other markets RSV delivered an encouraging growth of 8.5% in the first half. Singapore delivered the strongest RSV growth of about 14% year-on-year during this period. Other key markets like Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Canada also observed steady RSV growth, thanks to the resurgence in travel retail and domestic demand for jewelry products. This further strengthened our confidence in the growth prospects of overseas markets. We will proactively seek new growth opportunities in overseas markets. Gabriela Bao, recently appointed the General Manager for International Markets in September. She is empowered to drive our growth strategy in Southeast Asia.
Leveraging her extensive experience in luxury retail, we aim to strategically expand our presence in popular tourist destinations in areas with a significant population that appreciate Chinese culture. This builds on the success of our existing investments overseas, of which we shall share more details of our overseas expansion strategy in due course. This concludes my part, and I would like to turn it to Hamilton for financial review and outlook. Thank you.
Thank you, Kent. Good evening, everyone. Let me start with key P&L items and ratios. As mentioned by Kent earlier, the macroeconomic externalities and high gold price volatility weighed on consumer demand in our key markets in the first half of this year. The Group's revenue declined by 20% year-on-year to HKD 39.4 billion during this period.
On the positive side, the increase in gold prices improved GP margin and profitability, coupled with the shift in sales towards our exquisite high-margin fixed-price products. The Group's gross profit was up slightly to HKD 12.4 billion, and its GP margin expanded considerably by 650 basis points to 31.4% during this period. We also benefited from our disciplined cost management. The Group's operating profit was up 4% to HKD 6.8 billion, and the operating margin expanded 400 basis points to 17.2% in the first half, which is a testament to our focus on earnings quality. Revenue in the mainland declined by 19% in the first half, contributing 83.8% of the Group's revenue. Franchise stores outperformed self-operated stores in general.
The share of wholesale revenue rose to 58% within the mainland segment, compared to 56% a year ago. Revenue in Hong Kong, Macau, and other markets declined 28%, making up 16% of the Group's revenue.
By product, we continued to execute pricing optimization and launched product offerings with different value propositions to meet customers' preferences. Despite an overall weaKented demand in the first half, the use of exquisite craftsmanship with a meticulous blend of different precious materials in our fixed-price gold jewelry sustained strong sales momentum in this period, with this revenue surging 118% year-on-year. On the same-store basis, ASP across product categories in the Mainland remained resilient in this first half. Same-store sales growth of Mainland self-operated stores declined by 25%, with similar performance across different city tiers. Franchise stores, which represented around 77% of our POS in the Mainland, outperformed self-operated stores with a smaller same-store sales decline of about 20% during the period, thanks to a higher proportion of newer stores.
In Hong Kong and Macau, same-store sales growth declined 31% in this first half, with Hong Kong and Macau down by 28% and 41% respectively. ASP trends across product categories also stayed resilient. Quarter to date, we were encouraged to see a leveling decline in same-store sales for both Mainland and Hong Kong and Macau markets. Based on current observations, we expect this momentum to sustain and support our view that operations in the second half of our financial year shall improve sequentially. SG&A analysis: Our SG&A expenses declined by 3% in the first half. Aside from staff costs and advertising and promotion, all other expense lines recorded a year-on-year decrease, thanks to our effective and disciplined management. We are investing in our brand for the long term, coupled with marketing campaigns for the key collections launched during this period to celebrate our 95th anniversary.
The A&P ratio was well-managed at 1% of revenue in this first half, remaining largely stable compared to the average ratio over the previous financial years. For staff costs, we will elaborate in later slides, and we shall maintain our discipline on cost management and remain agile in response to evolving business dynamics. This ensures that we are maximizing the value on every dollar we spend. We continue to invest in and retain talent for the Group's long-term growth. This not only honors the legacy of Chow Tai Fook but also aligns with our strategic priority on talent cultivation. Staff costs remained relatively flat in the mainland and Hong Kong Macau, where the variable component decreased in line with the retail revenue decline.
The fixed component increased year-on-year in both markets, mainly because we revised staff remuneration packages for improved welfare and the addition of strategic hires essential for driving sustainable business growth. Moving on to concessionaire fees and leases, mainland's rental costs decreased by 18% in the first half, mainly due to a 24% decline in concessionaire fees, broadly in line with the retail revenue trend. The concessionaire fees ratio increased by 20 basis points to 8.2% due to a shift of sales mix towards higher margin products. In Hong Kong Macau, lease-related expenses declined by 4%, with variable rental expenses decreasing by 46% due to the revenue decline in the first half. The rental expense ratio expanded to 5.4% due to operating deleverage.
We are observing a trend of rental reductions during the lease renewals in Hong Kong and Macau, and we expect it to materialize from fiscal year 26 onwards as we negotiate with landlords. As mentioned by Kent earlier, starting from this fiscal year, we have reclassified fair value change of gold loans from cost of goods sold to other gains and losses, which is below operating profit. This is part of our preparation for the adoption of IFRS 18 for enhanced disclosure in financial statements. Allow me to provide some background on the reclassification. It's part of the Group's usual business practice to use gold loans, which are short-positioning gold, to mitigate the financial impact of gold price fluctuations on gold inventory, which are long positions. Over time, the effects of long and short positions are expected to offset through the sale of gold inventories.
Our disciplined execution of hedging over years has proven effective to manage our risk in commodity price movements. Per accounting standard, gold loan contracts are revalued at market price at the end of each financial period end or upon settlement, while gold inventories are not. This disparity leads to temporary accounting gains or losses. Previously, these gains or losses were included in the cost of goods sold, affecting reported growth and operating profit. After the reclassification, the fair value change of gold loan will be moved to other gains or losses, which is below operating profit. EBIT and net profit remain unchanged before and after the reclassification. With this change, we intend to better reflect the core underlying operational performance and separate the impact of hedging.
You will note in Appendix 3 on page 30 that regardless of the reclassification, the underlying trend of key performance indicators stays similar based on the analysis of historical data over the last five years, and then the first half movements in GP margin. In this first half, the Group's GP margin expanded by 650 basis points to 31.4%, and there are two key movements. The first, retail like-for-like margin improvement contributed 490 basis points, mainly attributable to a surge in gold price. This more than offsets the impact from a higher wholesale mix, which weighed down the margin by 80 basis points in the first half. Secondly, product mix improvement with an increased share of higher margin fixed-price gold products, leading to 210 basis points expansion in GP margin, then profitability analysis.
Despite the slowdown in revenue, the Group's operating profit remained resilient, up 4% year-on-year as driven by a mainland China reportable segment. Over a three-year trend, we are encouraged to see operating margin improvement across all operating markets in this first half. During this period, operating margin increased by 420 basis points in the mainland and 300 basis points in Hong Kong Macau and other markets, respectively. These positive results are driven by our initiatives to enhance earnings quality and maximize value creation for our stakeholders. We are also on track to maintain our relatively stable ROE of about 20%-25% in the full fiscal year, which continues to represent a sustained improvement over our five-year historical average levels. This section reconciles the operating profit and profit before tax.
A key item to explain is the difference relates to gold loan revaluation loss of HKD 3.1 billion in this period, with a 19% cumulative increase in gold price during this first half. For the same period last year, gold price dropped by 5.5%, and a gain of HKD 33 million was recorded. And then inventory and CapEx. We continue to adopt prudent inventory and CapEx management amidst market uncertainty. We focus to streamline our SKU offerings and control inventory procurement in the first half. By seasonality, we typically increase inventories in September for the peak season in the second half.
As of this September, our inventory balance increased by less than HKD 3 billion, or 4.6%, compared to the March level, and gold inventory by weight in September was, in fact, 9% lower than the March level. The inventory balance for gem-set and watches remained relatively stable compared to six months ago.
Due to the overall consumer demand and gold price surge, inventory turnover period extended to 457 days. While we continue to refresh our product portfolio and streamline SKUs to enhance gold inventory turnover, with the focus on core collections, we anticipate inventory turnover to shorten to around 330 to 360 days by March next year. While we are executing five strategic priorities with a focus on brand transformation, we retain financial discipline on CapEx and defer on core CapEx. That's why in the first half, CapEx was just about HKD 308 million in the period. And then let's turn to our cash flows.
Thanks to the resilient operating profit in the first half, the Group continued to generate robust operating and free cash flows amid macro challenges. Operating cash flow net of lease payment in the first half amounted to HKD 7.3 billion, slightly higher than the same period last year.
Pro forma free cash flows amounted to HKD 2.7 billion in this period. We are confident that the robust generation of cash flows from our business will continue to support our ability to deliver steady business growth and sustainable returns to our shareholders. The two major cash outflows in this period were due to repayment of gold loans and the payment of fiscal year 2024 final dividends. Capital structure highlights. We prudently managed our capital structure to ensure financial stability amidst the macro uncertainty while balancing total shareholders' return. We managed our cash balance at a healthy level of HKD 3.8 billion in bank deposits and cash equivalents in September, while reducing bank borrowings to below HKD 4 billion.
Net gearing ratio, excluding gold loans, was only 0.4% at the period end. We used gold loans to hedge against commodity price risk and also as a financing instrument for our gold inventory.
The hedging ratio at the period end was below 67%, similar to the level a year ago. Building on the free cash flow generation discussed in earlier slide, the proposed share buyback program reflects our commitment to enhancing total shareholders' return. It will be financed through internal resources and will be carried out progressively from time to time, subject to market conditions. Market outlook. We stay nimble and vigilantly monitor market dynamics and consumption trends, which will inform the ongoing calibration of our growth strategy amidst market uncertainty. This also sees us prioritizing financial and operational resources in strengthening business resilience and competitiveness. Based on our current observations and expectation of a lowering same-store sales decline and moderated POS closure rate for the second half, business fundamentals should improve sequentially from the first half period, barring market externalities and unforeseen circumstances.
We will continue to focus on the overall financial health of our retail network to ensure margin resilience and maintain financial discipline in cost management and capital expenditure to deliver high earnings quality. Going forward, we stay confident in the long-term prospects of the industry. We will diligently execute our five strategic priorities to further reinforce our market leadership, positioning for sustainable growth in the future, and creating long-term value for our stakeholders. This concludes our presentation today. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. Before we start the Q&A with the reclassification, I'm sure that analysts would have a need to adjust their financial models. So for the interest and benefit of the analysts and investors, Hamilton, can I invite you to illustrate the reclassification with reference to FY 2024 reported figures as outlined in our appendix? Second question is, I noticed that we also enhanced the way we determine the settled and unsettled gain of our gold loans based on the maturity of the gold loans. Can you also briefly elaborate on this?
Sure. Sure. So here in Appendix 1, I can elaborate on the reclassification of gold loans impact with illustration of the fiscal year 2024 figures. This simulation of hedge accounting was carried out on certain assumptions for the purpose of helping analysts and investors to understand the change for your modeling updates as necessary. The first two columns are from our old definition or classification. For financial reporting basis, for the middle column, you will note the total fair value change of gold loans of HKD 3.7 billion loss was included in the cost of goods sold before the reported gross profit line.
With the reclassification, this HKD 3.7 billion loss would have moved to below operating profit line. The purpose is to better reflect our underlying performance by separating the hedging from our operating profitability. As mentioned earlier, it's also part of our preparation for the adoption of IFRS 18, which is about financial disclosure and presentation, which encourages the separation of operating from non-operating activities. As you will note from the first column, the HKD 3.7 billion loss that we had in fiscal year 2024 comprised HKD 1.2 billion realized loss relating to the gold loans or gold products that were sold, and HKD 2.5 billion unrealized loss relating to the gold inventory unsold. We previously introduced the adjusted gross profit metric to help the market better understand our underlying performance.
The adjusted gross profit will take into account the HKD 1.2 billion realized loss relating to gold products sold during the period and translating to an adjusted gross profit of HKD 24.8 billion. While the HKD 2.5 billion unrealized loss relating to the gold inventory unsold is recognized below the core operating profit line. Now, with the reclassification per the column on the right, the fair value change of HKD 3.7 billion loss would be accounted for based on the contract status of gold loans, settled or unsettled. And this treatment, I believe, is basically simple and also more straightforward. In conclusion, we want to reiterate that the fair value change of gold loans has the same value of HKD 3.7 billion loss, and there is no change to the profit before tax and also the net profit.
You also note in Appendix 2 that regardless of the reclassification, trends of adjusted GP margin or COP margin relative to the new GP margin or OP margin are similar.