Investors, good morning. Welcome to Li Ning Company Limited's 2024 annual results announcement. Let me introduce to you the management on stage. We are Executive Director and Joint CEO, Mr. Li Ning; Executive Director and Co or Joint CEO, Mr. Qian Wei; Group Vice President and CFO, Mr. Zhao Dong Sheng. In today's presentation, Mr. Zhao will first walk you through the 2024 full-year financial performance, and then the chairman will talk about strategic directions, followed by CEO, talking about operation highlights and hand out the Q&A. Now, over to Mr. Zhao.
Good morning. I am Zhao Dong Sheng. Now, I am going to review with you our company's financial situation in 2024. In 2024, we consolidated our foundations and pragmatically developed our business, and we ultimately achieved solid increasing results. Financially, our company's revenue was 3.9% year-on-year, reaching RMB 28.676 billion. Gross profit margin was up one percentage point to 49.4%. Under the uncertain market environment, we optimized our business structure with cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, and ultimately achieved a net profit of RMB 3.013 billion, with a net profit margin of 10.5%. Our capital position is adequate.
Operating cash flow was up 12.4% at RMB 5.268 billion, and operating cash over revenue was 7.4%. And then we have 35 days of working capital turnover dates. This is healthy. The board recommended to pay out a final dividend of RMB 20.73 per share, [inaudible] with RMB 37.75 per share of interim dividend for the whole year RMB 58.48 per share. Dividend payout was enhanced from 45% to 50% from last year. So we enhanced shareholder returns. In terms of operations, our main brand retail sell-through recorded a flat performance year-on-year across all channels, while offline new product retail sell- through accounted for 85% of the overall total. It's a healthy and reasonable level.
At the end of the year, for all-channel inventory at tag, it was up high single digits year-on-year, and omnichannel stock to sales ratio was four months, with healthy inventory turnover and aging structure. During the year, our revenue was up 3.9% year-on-year, thanks to the strategic focus on our professional category. So footwear accounted for 50% of revenue, 7% year-on-year, driving overall business growth. Since the beginning of our development, we have adhered to a balanced channel development strategy, with balanced proportion of wholesale and B2C business, which helps us better balance the opportunities and risks of operation and finance. Overall, proportion of channels remained healthy.
During the year, online business environment improved, driving recovery of online trade and sell-through. Revenue share of e-commerce was up 2 points to 31%. For direct retail, we optimized channel structure and closed some loss-making and inefficient stores, and revenue share was down 2 points to 34%. Revenue share of wholesale remained at 45%. Proportion of new product sales in offline channels within six months, the overall sell-through of 85%, remaining at a healthy and reasonable level. In terms of channel development, number of channels and number of POS totaled 7,585 in FY 2024, a year-on-year decrease of 83. Li-Ning core brand stores were at 7,585. Number of stores decreased by 123, and Li-Ning Young stores increased by 40. Li-Ning core brand actively optimized channel layout to consolidate competitive advantage in a high-level market.
At the same time, it actively explored emerging markets to further enhance its brand image and market influence. This year, overall online and offline retail sell-through were flat year-on-year. Online sales was better, achieving a growth of 10% to 20%. Offline sell-through declined a low single digit, of which average offline tags were flat. Offline discounts are deepened by 0.5% year-on-year, resulting in a decline in average offline unit price by low single digit. Number of sales was affected by the impact of customer flow pressure and also declined by low single digit. Li Ning brand wholesale business, excluding international markets and Li Ning Young business, reported full-year revenue growth of 2% year-on-year. Store accounts increased by 78 stores year-on-year. During the year, we actively regulated our selling planning rhythm.
After reducing revenue for professional channels, wholesale revenue declined low single digit, and wholesale sell-through declined middle-medium single digit, relatively matching the trend of wholesale revenue and sell-through to promote healthy and benign development of the channel. We'll continue to empower our distributors and enhance efficiency of our terminal retail operations in order to promote healthy development of the channels as well as sustainable growth. Direct retail revenue down 1% year-on-year. Store count decreased 201 year-on-year. The decline in direct retail revenue was mainly due to optimization in store structure. As a result, there is adjustment in number of stores. We'll continue to strengthen retail operation capabilities and ensure that efficiency of our directly operated channels improves by enhancing remodeling, extension of high-quality stores, and closing down some inefficient stores so as to drive stable growth in directly operated revenue.
During the year, our gross profit margin improved by 1 percentage point to 49.4% in an environment of intensified competition with the following factors. One, optimization of operating environment and sales efficiency of e-commerce channels led to improved discounts, resulting in an increase of 0.8 percentage points in GP margin. Two, optimization of sales efficiency in directly managed channels led to improved discount, resulting in an increase in the group's GP margin by 0.2 percentage points. Three, higher product mix accounted for a share, driving the group's GP margin up 0.1 percentage points. Four, changes in the channel structure of local business units, resulting in a decrease in the group's GP margin by 0.1 percentage point. Revenue growth of 3% resulted in an increase in gross profit of RMB 804 million.
For expenses, we strategically planned our resource investment and strengthened input-output efficiency management to drive realization of better long-term investment returns. As a result of our effective planning and timely optimization of channel structure and channel expansion strategy, sales-related non-fixed expenses overall only increased RMB 64 million, of which retail business-related expenses increased RMB 104.1 million, and with significant improvement of e-commerce revenue, e-commerce business-related expenses increased RMB 102 million. Business revenue growth to match. Logistics and new business-related expenses increased RMB 56 million.
Advertising and promotion expenses up to RMB 25 million. Expense ratio increased 0.5 percentage points to 9.5%. Increase in marketing expenses was mainly due to increase in brand marketing in the context of export years, as well as the increase in promotional and sales promotion expenses to drive recovery of sell-through. In order to consolidate and enhance core competitiveness of the brand, the increase in R&D and personnel expenses, asset depreciation, and so on, led to increase of other platform expenses by RMB 23 million.
Other income and interest decreased by RMB 648 million, including impairment of investment properties of RMB 333 million and RMB 114 million of one-off gain from associates in the same period last year, resulting in a year-on-year decrease of RMB 120 million in investment income being accounted for under the equity method, in addition to decrease in investment and financial management income and interest income and other necessities. Overall, under effective control of cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, our operating profit margin was 12.8%, a slight decrease of 0.1 percentage point year-on-year, net profit margin 10.5%, a decrease of 0.5 percentage point compared to last year's net profit margin after deducting one-off non-operating related gain. Channel inventory in 2024, channel inventory total tag price value increased high single digits at a reasonable level. All channel inventory turnover months were four months. Inventory structure remains healthy.
Going forward, we continue to implement rigorous inventory management initiatives to ensure that inventory turnover, efficiency, and inventory structure remain healthy over time. Our company's inventory, the cost of inventory before provisions in 2024, increased 5% year-on-year relative to the 3.9% revenue growth, the increase is reasonable. Overall, inventory is healthy. Our company's inventory aging structure is such that proportion of new product inventory within six months has stabilized at 80%. Healthy inventory aging structure is an important foundation to support healthy and sustainable business growth. This means that there is room for further improvement in the future through continuous improvement of product efficiency and operational efficiency. For trade receivables before provisions, it declined by 16% relative to the 3.9% revenue growth, mainly due to proactive adjustment in payment days by important customers. Trade receivables turnover days were down one day to 14 days.
Trade receivables are at reasonable healthy level. Percentage of trade receivables within 90 days increased significantly from 86% of last year to 96% this year. Based on our past support to strategic partners and joint effort of both parties, we and our partners have optimized efficiency of channel management, and overall operating conditions have become healthier. In the future, we'll continue to maintain our strategic support for our partners and promote mutual cooperation and win-win. Working capital efficiency continues to be at a healthy level, with working capital to annualized revenue ratio at 7%, giving us sufficient resources to fuel business growth. Cash flow from operating activities was adequate at 12.4% year-on-year to RMB 1.268 billion. Our net cash increased RMB 188 million year-on-year to RMB 19.164 billion. Adequate cash reserves enable us to better manage pressure and risk in the face of complex end-to-end environments.
At the same time, it puts us in a better position to flexibly capitalize on new business growth opportunities in the future. Currently, China's economy is showing steady progress. The timing of the restoration of overall consumer confidence and consumer demand remains to be seen. For 2025, we will continue to operate steadily and develop pragmatically, consolidate our foundation, and drive sustainable business growth with our core categories so as to build up our strength for the medium to long-term development. We expect that for 2025, full-year revenue will remain flat year-on-year.
In 2025, we'll continue to increase investment in brand building and core categories as well as further strengthen our support for China's sports industry. We expect that the full-year net profit margin will be at high single digits. At the same time, we are confident in the medium to long-term development of China's athletic footwear and apparel industry, as well as the Li Ning brand. So that's the end for the financial presentation part. I will now invite our Chairman to introduce our company's key strategic directions. Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. 2024 is the big year for sports, and the organization of Mega Sports Events has stimulated national enthusiasm for sports. On the other hand, our country has been deepening sports reform and promoting construction of a strong sports nation. So prospects of the sports goods industry are promising. During the year, we adhere to the core value of serving the public with sportsmanship and make deep efforts in brand building, product innovation, and channel optimization to upgrade the Li Ning experience value and provide customers with a more professional and higher quality sports experience.
In the beginning of 2025, Li Ning brand once again became the official sportswear partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese sports team. Now, we will continue to work closely with the Chinese Olympic Committee and seize opportunity and ride on the momentum to further enhance our brand value and market influence by driving value creation through sports marketing. In 2024, we deepened implementation of the strategy of single brand, multi-category, and multi-channel, integrating professional sports technology and sports brand culture, and enhanced the differentiated brand advantages through the multi-dimensional layout of multi-category and multi-channel to improve market competitiveness of the brand and products. During the year, we continued to deeply invest into our running, basketball, fitness, badminton, table tennis, and sports casual, six core categories altogether, with a view to driving business growth in the core categories, strengthening our professionalism, professional mindset, and consolidating our market share.
Our professional categories continue to lead the business, with running retail sell-through up 25% and fitness sell-through up 6%, laying the foundation for solid overall growth. Basketball retail sell-through declined by 21%, mainly due to the impact of external demand changes and our proactive adjustments of the basketball selling program and plans. While strengthening our foundation, we're also committed to innovation and breakthroughs and actively cultivating new sports and segments, such as the new outdoor tennis and basketball segments, which have been fully launched and are gaining momentum. In terms of specific categories, we continue to iterate our running shoes matrix and upgraded the Super Light , Red Hare, Feidian three-core running shoes IPs, with a total sales of these three series exceeding 10.6 million pairs during the year, again setting new sales records and demonstrating our market competitiveness in professional running segments.
For our latest professional running shoes, they are exposed in important events. Total sales in the professional arena, our latest professional running shoes continue to be exposed, helping contracted runners win many roads and cross-country running events during the year, and helping the Wuxi Marathon to become the top five in the world and the first in China in terms of the number of people in a single race in the year 2024. We greatly enhanced the market attention and professional image of the brand and made our professional mindshare deeply penetrating into the minds of consumers. Our professionalism is deeply rooted in the minds of consumers. At the end of 2010, we made an innovative breakthrough in mid-sole technology of running shoes, successfully launching the Super BOOM mid-sole material technology, which pushes lightweight and elasticity of super critical foam to a whole new level.
At the end of 2024, the Red Hare 5 series was equipped with a Super BOOM mid-sole material, which is a new product in the brand. Then, in the same period, we became the number one brand in social media during the same period after the launch. The Red Hare 5 Elite won many championships in major marathons, providing strong support for athletes to improve their competitive performance and significantly increasing consumers' willingness to purchase and the professional mindshare of the brand. The basketball category is deeply specialized, which we continue to create industry-leading new products and best-selling products to further enhance market influence of Li-Ning basketball. We improved the professional product matrix, equipped with Carbon-Core and GCU technology, to create a variety of professional basketball shoes favored by fans.
Li Ning basketball shoes have also entered the top of the annual list of major shoe bloggers, with Gamma being included at the top of most of the annual practical basketball shoes list, highlighting the professional strength of Li Ning basketball shoes. We successfully created some hot events combining the Wade Bronze Statue project with the launch of the Wade 11 basketball shoes, which triggered an enthusiastic response from fans. At the end of 2024, we released the Super Light 2025 core basketball shoe with super BOOM technology. We created ultimate lightweight and soft elasticity. So, within 60 days of launch, the sell-out rate was more than 85%. It was well received by consumers. For fitness category, we're based on functionality with protective technology as the core selling point.
And through multi-scenario fitness experience as an entry point, we cover a wide range of people to meet the needs of fitness enthusiasts in different scenarios of wear, and we promote steady growth of the category through multi-dimensional product coverage. For women's fitness, we have built a product matrix for different sports scenarios, such as yoga and urban light sports, and launched professional products with both functionality and fashion sense to create a unique women's fitness product line. For sports special category, we continue to maintain the sporty style and tone and explore the connection between the products and the sports trend culture so as to present to consumers a rich, diversified, and unique sports casual product. We successfully created the core IP Soft series with comfortable, wearable, and versatile as core selling points.
Since launch for the second consecutive year, we have achieved highly efficient growth with annual sales of the new products exceeding 2.5 million pairs. At the same time, we have explored the potential of the women's vertical, focusing on the establishment of mindshare IP and strengthening vitality and conversations of our products through original design and fashion co-branding. In addition, we have once again cooperated with the National Palace Museum to integrate traditional Chinese cultural elements into modern sports product design to enhance the brand's cultural value and market appeal. Within the year, we promoted the building of Li Ning outdoor category. We launched scenarios with urban city and also the wilderness. We launched high-quality outdoor products with both performance and value to meet consumers' outdoor lifestyle. During the year, we launched our cooperation with national research institutions, that is, the eVent technology with rainstorm-proof nanotechnology.
This shows our strength in outdoor science and technology. In the second half of the year, we held a show in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, with the team of Back to the East, launching 20 outdoor products with both outdoor performance and oriental aesthetics to deepen consumers' awareness of Li-Ning outdoor category and their fashion impression. As a professional sports brand with 34 years of experience in the industry, we have always empowered our brand DNA with a spirit of sports, and we continue to contribute to the development of sports in China. As a professional sports brand, we focus on our professional sports categories, and we have laid out resources for professional events and athletes in running, basketball, badminton, and table tennis.
For many years, we have been sponsoring the China table tennis team, Chinese diving team, and the Chinese shooting team for many years, with Li Ning once again becoming the official apparel partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese sports team, so we are enhancing our leading position in professional sports, so as such as now, Li Ning once again became the official apparel partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese sports team for the period of 2025 to 2028. We will continue to help the Chinese sports team and Chinese athletes to pursue their dreams and achieve extraordinary results in the world's top events with our professional sports equipment of outstanding quality and excellent and efficient service guarantee, believing that everything is possible. That's all from me. I will now invite Mr. Qian Wei, CEO of the group, to introduce our company's operational progress. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, everyone. I am Qian Wei. Now, I would like to summarize the progress of the group's operations for 2024. Over the past year, the group focused on building the mindset of professional sports brands and enhancing brand value by focusing on sound management, strengthening investment in marketing resources, gaining precise insights into market demand, and continuing to optimize operational efficiency. We enjoyed a revenue growth of 3.9% to RMB 28.68 billion. Gross margin improved 1 percentage point to 49.4%. Net profit margin 10.5%, basically in line with our double-digit expectation. In the year, in order to better meet the needs of consumers in different sports groups, different tiers of the market, we have further enriched our product mix.
The width of products has increased 30% to 40% high range, and depth of products has decreased high single digit, which has provided consumers with a richer selection of products. At the same time, we continue to consolidate matrix of professional products, and proportion of revenue from professional products continues to grow, approaching 60%. Among them, the business growth was driven by increase in the ratio of professional shoes. Shoes products continue to make an impact. Annual volume of core IP of running shoes exceeded 10.6 million pairs. Feidian sales exceeded 1.73 million pairs, up 35% year- on- year. Red Hare 7 Pro was well received by consumers. Annual sales was more than 4.35 million pairs, up 45% year-on-year. Through the domestic inventory management, our inventory remained at a healthy and controllable level.
For the whole year, quarterly inventory to sales ratio was at four months, in line with the best inventory management expectation. For our own inventory, total cost of inventory increased by single digit. Age structure remains healthy, reflecting a good level of inventory management. Inventory management has always been a key business operation, and this year and next year will continue to pay attention to and ensure healthy and robust channel inventory. In 2024, offline operations faced challenges. For average daily customer traffic was under pressure, declining year-on-year by 10% to 20% range. Overall, offline retail sell-through was down year-on-year by a low single digit. We have improved position of our management from quarterly business plans to monthly and weekly plans and dynamically adjusted differences in geographic structure of products as well as the pace of input to optimize efficiency of retail operations.
During the year, the overall conversion rate improved slightly [inaudible] market environment. Offline discounts were deepened by 0.5 percentage point year-on-year. ASP down low single digit. We have been optimizing channel structure. During the year, average area of Li-Ning stores was 2,431 square meters, average monthly product activity RMB 300,000. In high-level, high-tier market, we further optimized channel layout in accordance with regional commercial development and changes in business environment. Accelerated closure of inefficient stores and promoted renovation of high-quality stores to maintain advantages of high-tier market. Retail sales in high-tier market remains at a high occupancy rate of core commercial business with about 90%. At the same time, we paid attention to expanding and renovating emerging markets, focusing on adjusting channel layout in emerging markets.
There is net increase of more than 90 emerging stores in emerging markets, the opening of more than 2,901 new stores, and reform of more than 2,501 stores, closure of more than 2,101 inefficient stores. At the end of the year, we maintained 1,568 large stores with average area of 111 square meters, which remains efficient. We focused on upgrading index of our stores and accelerated upgrading plan of ninth-generation stores, number of which exceeded 1,026 in a year, number of ninth-generation stores with average monthly opening. In the future, we'll continue to focus on improving operational efficiency in high-tier markets and at the same time, deeply cultivate emerging markets to expand our market share and provide more consumers with quality products and services. E-commerce platform presents diversified development opportunities. Through different e-commerce platforms with different categories, differentiate the business strategy.
We promote e-commerce retail sell-through to achieve 10% to 20% low range growth. In terms of operational efficiency of e-commerce, we continue to deepen retail layout of the overall and increase market investment in various e-commerce platforms in order to actively respond to changes in platform rules and market competition. E-commerce customer traffic improved high single digit. Business conversion rate improved. Discount rate improved low single digit. At the same time, we promoted gradual realization of merchandise connectivity between online and offline to form complementary effect, improve product turnover, increase frequency of rolling orders, improve inventory effectiveness, and maintain e-commerce inventory turnover at healthy level. For Kidswears , we continue to enhance professional product power of Kidswears and combine marketing resources to plan a series of offline consumer activities, and we focused on basketball, soccer, running, and outdoor.
At the same time, we match corresponding market product mix and successfully achieved a year-on-year improvement in retail sales by low single digit. Across all channels, discount is flat. ASP improved low single digit. We continue to integrate and adjust our channel planning, refine high-quality program, explore business opportunities in highly efficient emerging markets, and explore innovative channels such as opening of temp stores at the year-end. A number of Kidswear stores reached 1,468 average store productivity RMB 140,000. In 2025, we'll continue to focus on sound operation and pragmatic development and drive the company to achieve long-term healthy and sustainable growth by continuously deepening our expertise and optimizing efficiency of our channels.