Welcome everybody to Bidcorp 2021 results. It has clearly been quite an up and down year. I think that we're very proud as to how Bidcorp and its management team, and all its employees navigated, again, what was a very volatile year with lockdowns, countries opening and closing. I think the diversification of the group really held up exceptionally well. I think the liquidity was exceptionally well managed, and that we can see that as soon as the country opens up, profitability comes back very, very quickly. There are a lot of people that I need to thank for their efforts in the past year. The executives, Bernard, Dave, and their management teams all over the world. The board members.
Particular thanks go to Helen Wiseman, who is the chairman of the audit committee, Nigel Payne, the senior independent director, founder Brian Joffe, and all the other directors for the kind of effort that they've put into ensuring that Bidcorp continues to deliver for all its stakeholders. I really also have to acknowledge, and I did acknowledge her at the previous half-year presentation. Dolly Mokgatle unfortunately passed away in January this year, and she did pay a great contribution towards this board. We also welcome Keneilwe Rachel Moloko, who has joined our board recently, and I'm sure that Keneilwe Rachel Moloko will have a long career as a non-executive director with Bidcorp, and so we welcome her. I'm gonna now hand over to Bernard, and Bernard will take us through the results, and he will then hand over to Dave, who'll take us through the numbers. Thank you, Bernard.
Please take over.
Thank you very much, Stephen. Without spending too much time on the thank you. First and foremost, I have to thank my fantastic management team around the world and our 24,000 odd employees around the world who've managed to navigate us through exceptionally choppy, difficult waters. There's no doubt our customer base and therefore our business has been really at the pointy end of this pandemic. Our industry has been particularly hard hit and has had to adapt to particularly severe challenges. I couldn't be prouder of the way our team has rallied to the cause and have performed absolutely phenomenally. Most importantly, have ensured that the business remains exceptionally agile and strong, and was and is in a great position to take advantage of the actual and the anticipated resumption in demand, and the continued growth in that industry.
Yeah, a huge thank you to them. Secondly, a huge thank you to, specific to our finance teams who've been through a pretty rough year-end, in some jurisdictions more than others. It's been a very long and tedious process, but thanks to them for getting us to where we are right now. I don't want to spend too much time dwelling on the past, because the year we went through, end of June 2021, is actually a year that we're never gonna see again. It was a very formative year, had lots of different components in different geographies at different times of the year. Generally, it wasn't fantastic. Generally, COVID was raging through most geographies. Government restrictions were in place in most geographies for a significant portion of time.
The challenges that we had to face were unprecedented, and we were making up solutions on the fly, as with everybody. I think when you look at the results that our people did manage to deliver, I think it's a testament to the business and the people within the business, that we believe we have a great business model that's triple purpose, highly diversified, exposed to multiple geographies, spread across lots of different currencies, lots of different experiences within the market, different phases of development, lots of collective learnings across the world, lots of synergy across the world. I think it's a model that has served us well in the past and will continue to serve us pretty well in the future. You all know who we are. You know what our strategy is. We haven't really changed a whole lot.
I think the most important feature of these results, when you look through them and you sit back and you say, "What's the most notable outcome?" It has to be the strong cash generation and the fantastically strong position that the business is in from a balance sheet point of view, to face the future with absolute confidence, and the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that can and will arise. We reduced debt down to almost nothing. I think it's sitting at about half a billion rand, at the 30th of June. Which for a group of our size, is almost nothing. That cash generation happened across the world, I think puts us in a fantastic position. Next slide, Ashley. Oops, we've lost the slides. There we go.
Before we get into the detail of the numbers, I think it's important that we do understand that our most important asset are our people. I've said that before. Anybody can have warehouses and trucks and product on shelves, but we are made up of 24,000 very talented, dedicated people. Unfortunately, in the year, we lost seven of them to COVID, very valuable and well-respected team members, five of them in South Africa, two of them in the U.K. Our deepest sympathies and thoughts go out to their families, friends, colleagues. It's been an exceptionally trying time. Our business is poorer for the loss of these people, and like I said, our thoughts are with their families at this very difficult time. Let's just put that into perspective. This is about people at the end of the day. The pandemic does affect people.
Unfortunately, we couldn't escape unscathed. I think we do need to bear in mind, and I've said it before, that our people didn't get the luxury of working from home, most of them. We were on the front line delivering food to hospitals, nursing homes, vulnerable people, whoever else. That's a full credit to the team and a very sad tragedy that we did lose seven team members this year to COVID. Okay. Could we move on? There's some technical problem here. I'll run through the numbers exceptionally quickly because you got them, but also three months ago, and quite honestly, the year that we went through doesn't really bear any relevance to what a normalized year would look like. There were glimpses in some geographies of what it might look like. Generally, everybody was impacted.
I guess the star performer out of all of the geographies was the Australasian business, Australia, New Zealand. That's probably to do with the fact that from a government point of view, their zero COVID, their elimination strategy, generally worked. We didn't have the severe lockdowns generally that the rest of the world experienced, and I'm talking to the end of June. New Zealand only had a very limited number of lockdowns for the year under review. Australia had Victoria that was locked down for about, I think it was about six months, five or six months in the first half of the year. After that, there were rolling lockdowns in all states and territories for weeks, two weeks at a time. That did impact the results and made it a little bit stop-start. Notwithstanding that, the businesses performed exceptionally well under the circumstances.
They bounced back very strongly once things started opening up and normality set in again. They put in a very good performance. I guess going forward, and I'll focus more on the future than the past, the Australia and New Zealand businesses is more of a challenge in this current year. Sydney's been in lockdown since the end of June, and we're due to come out of that in a phased manner in the next two weeks or so. Victoria's been in lockdown. Victoria and Melbourne, I think, is actually the most locked down city in the world through the pandemic. They've been in lockdown since July. Some of the other states have had week and two-week lockdowns. The ACT has been locked down since August. At the moment, about 60% of the Australian population is subject to a lockdown order. It's pretty severe.
There's only takeaway and home delivery allowed. There's significant curbs on the movement of people. In New Zealand, they've been in a very severe lockdown since, I believe it was about the middle of August. It's only Auckland now that's in the severe lockdown. Bear in mind, in the New Zealand context, Auckland accounts for about 40% of the population of New Zealand. That's a pretty severe lockdown. Having said that, the Australasian business is still profitable. Obviously, we're not operating at these levels and delivering these types of margins at the moment. We're very confident that when things do resume, the Australia and New Zealand business will bounce back very strongly, very quickly, and take their place on the leader board once again. Excellent performance in the previous year.
Will be a little bit of a downward trend in this first six months. Hopefully going forward, they'll start reopening and get back to some type of normality. I suppose it just highlights the challenge of government's approach to how they handle the pandemic between elimination, eradication versus living with the virus. I'm no expert, so I won't really talk about it other than it does have ramifications for what happens in business. Okay, let's move on. The U.K. was probably the hardest hit out of all our businesses because it is just the U.K., and we have no geographic diversification there. The lockdown went on very long. I think they started in about October. July, August, September were reasonable trading months.
From September onwards, it was downhill very quickly, they only started coming out of their slumber, I think it was in about May. Freedom Day was in July. They went through nine months of lockdown, and it was very, very severe, and the implication of that was very significant, and that's reflected in our results. As I keep on saying, we're still profitable. The business was left in good shape and handled the upturn as it started coming at us, and it started coming at us at a rapid rate. Now, we did take the time to streamline the fresh business, to take cost out of the business, to integrate some of the back end into the Bidfood back end, to get some cost synergy and cost saving. We're definitely benefiting from that as we go forward.
We've seen volumes in the U.K. rebound very, very dramatically. In addition to business wins that we have. Sales are strong. They're strong across fresh, they're strong across the Bidfood broad range business. That business is really in a very strong position other than, and I'll talk about it generally at the end, the issues that are facing many economies at the moment, the supply chain issues that we're facing in all our businesses, which are giving us a little bit of headwind. Notwithstanding that, the business is strong, demand is very strong, and the performance that we're getting out of both our businesses in the U.K. now are very, very strong. That covers off the U.K. Europe also went through a very tough time, the results are a little bit more stable than maybe the U.K. because we've got diversification.
We do have the Czech business, which has a component that manufactures and sells into retail. The Baltic operation sells a little bit into retail. We also have the benefit of both our Spanish and German businesses. Weirdly, not weirdly, it's by design, they did a whole lot better in the year under review than they did in the previous year. A whole lot of the hard work that we did is actually reflected in the results of them contributing way less losses than they did in the prior year. We're very comfortable with that and absolutely bodes well for the future in those businesses. Once again, as we look forward in Europe, they had a very strong summer across all our geographies. We're profitable in every geography in Europe. Sales are very strong. Most sectors have bounced back.
There are a few that haven't got full traction yet. Return to office hasn't really happened fully yet. We estimate that at around about 70% as a generalization. Travel is bouncing back, but it's certainly not at the same level that it was. We're talking about air travel and probably international air travel. There's a lot of localized travel and tourism. There's certainly a very limited amount of international tourism. Maybe we're a beneficiary of that in terms of staycations and local tourism strength. That's Europe. If we move on to emerging markets. Emerging markets is once again, it's a very diverse portfolio of businesses, ranging from Asia to Middle East to Africa to South America. The performance overall was relatively good as well. The Asian businesses performed well.
Once again, that's because of the government eradication strategy, which has left them basically cut off from the rest of the world, but performing very well domestically. We're certainly seeing the benefit of that in both Chinese and the Hong Kong businesses. Our view is that both Hong Kong and China are going to stay cut off from the rest of the world for a reasonably long period of time. Singapore, slightly more complicated. They were cut off. They have been in lockdown for a significant amount of time. They decided that living with the virus was the way to go. Now it seems like there's a little bit of a hybrid going on with sort of a change in heart, and some restrictions are being put back in again. Notwithstanding that, our business is doing relatively well.
Bearing in mind, Singapore is a travel hub, as is Hong Kong, so you're missing all that international travel. The Middle East went through a rough time but came back very, very strongly. I think their vaccination rates certainly were up there with the leading rates in the world, and they reopen very soon, and the business has been very, very strong. South America went through a very, very difficult time with COVID. It's fair to say our businesses in South America are in a much stronger position than we were going into this pandemic. Just as an example, our volumes in Chile are three times what they were. They now are currently three times what they were before the pandemic, pre-pandemic. Our Brazilian volumes are ahead of where they were before the pandemic.
There's no doubt we've picked up market share and we've also picked up share of basket and our guys have done a fantastic job of moving into new markets and new product ranges. We're very enthused about the future prospects that will come out of South America. In South Africa, most of you probably know the conditions there better than I do. It has been a little bit challenging, two out of our three businesses reported record results, being the Crown business and the Chipkins business. They performed beyond expectation and did phenomenally well. The Bidfood business, which sells to restaurants and hotels, et cetera, obviously had a tougher time with restrictions and alcohol bans, et cetera. We're still profitable at a very healthy level.
We've certainly seen a very rapid pickup in customer demand now that things seem to be easing up a little bit. There's a lot of information in the pack. There's a lot of detail. A lot of it's historical. I'll just roll for a few minutes as to where we are at the moment. I have touched on most of it. Generally, around the world, we are seeing very strong growth. We have released our sales data to year-to-date end of August. The trend absolutely has continued in September. Our sales are tracking basically at or above 2019 levels, other than Australia and New Zealand in particular, which are partly contributors. Their trading, that's absolutely attributable to COVID and lockdown issues. We are seeing demand come back exceptionally strongly across almost all segments.
We're very happy with where our customer proposition is positioned at across the world. We've done a lot of work over many years in terms of getting the right customer mix. We've spoken about it for many years, we're very happy with where we're at with that. I think that's the reason we were able to perform relatively well through the pandemic and why we've been able to adapt and react to the market opening up again, as well as our guys have. There are some clouds on the horizon, I don't want to be too negative about it, we do need to be pragmatic. I'm sure you read about it and you see it on your TV at all times. There's a shortage of labor across almost all our geographies, with probably the exception of South Africa and South America.
We just can't get sufficient numbers of workers, particularly in warehouse and distribution park roles, which creates a lot of challenge when you have a lot of demand. Not only are we having staffing problems, but our customers are having the same problems. They can't get people to staff their hotels, their restaurants, their pubs, or whatever else. They can't operate at the full capacity that the demand is almost dictating that they should be operating at. That's a major problem that the world has to overcome, and I'm sure that that equilibrium will be restored at some stage once people can start moving around again. People will go where the opportunities are and that equilibrium will be restored. That certainly will take some time and it absolutely is causing us some pressure. There are cost pressures.
In the northern hemisphere, fuel, electricity, gas prices are skyrocketing, that obviously has a significant implication. There's food price inflation on the way. Some of it's here, some of it's on the way. We believe that that will be able to be passed on. We're still confident about that it will still be manageable and we still will be able to pass it on, particularly because the demand side of the equation from our customers is very strong. I guess there is also dislocation in terms of availability of things that you need to operate your business. It's very difficult getting motor vehicles, trucks, forklifts, and all those other simple things that you need to operate your business. Fortunately, we well invested, and we never uninvested in the last year or two. We are in a strong position.
We do understand that there's a year to two year delay in getting much additional capacity on the stream. Those are the challenges that we face. I think we'd rather face those challenges than the challenges we faced in the previous year. I see them as positive challenges. I see that they will create opportunity for us, and our business is very agile and able to take advantage of those circumstances as they arise. The other thing I should have mentioned is our commitment to ESG. Going back to 2018, we committed to reduce our emissions by 25% by 2025, and we're well on track to achieve that. Obviously, we'll be looking at future targets, 2030s and 2050s. We don't just want to commit to something without having a plan as to how we're going to actually achieve it. I won't be here in 2050.
I can give you the guarantee on that. It would be very easy for me to say, "Well, we commit to being net zero by 2050," but we need to understand how that will work, bearing in mind that we have two components that contribute the majority of our emissions. There's the electricity consumed in running our warehouses, and that we've done a very good job of and continue to in terms of going to renewables, in terms of solar, wind, and whatever other new technologies will happen. That has been very successful and has driven down our consumption quite dramatically. The other major component which we are struggling with, as is the world generally, is we're a distribution business, and we run thousands of vehicles around the world every day.
Until there's a credible alternative, we just don't see the path forward as to how we can reduce that. Obviously, we will buy the most efficient vehicles we can find. We are trialing some electric vehicles, but they have great shortcomings in terms of range and payload. Who knows where the next leap is going to come. We are eyes wide open, and we will invest where necessary, to help us along that journey. Yeah, we'll watch that space with great detail and do understand we have to invest in it, but there will be a return on investment. We're very committed to that. The outlook, as I said, we are very positive. We're already 3 months into the year, so 1 quarter down. We are very happy with where we are at the moment. Yeah, we're positive.
We don't know what the future's going to hold in terms of COVID. Is COVID going to come back? Are restrictions going to come back? We don't know. We hope not. We're planning that they aren't. We're going down the positive path of business is going to continue, and life's going to get back to normal, and the world's going to transition from a pandemic to an endemic, and life will get back to normal. We're in a very happy position in our business. There are some acquisition opportunities. We made a few last year. There are more opportunities that are arising. We have said that they're primarily in the emerging market segment. A few things have changed over the past few weeks. There are a couple opportunities in some emerging markets as well that we're looking at.
We've certainly got the balance sheet to make these acquisitions. Yeah, we remain very committed to not only delivering organic growth, but also some accretive growth as we go forward. Thank you very much. Thanks for your patience. Thanks for listening to me. I'm going to hand over to David to talk you through the financial segment, and then we'll have a Q&A session. If you could please send your questions to Ashley. I noticed that one of them did pop up on the messaging thing in Zoom. If you could rather just use the Q&A capability in the I'm not sure exactly where it sits, but there is a Q&A capability. Over to you, David.
Thanks, Bernard, and good morning to everyone. Just as we normally say, the numbers we are showing are obviously in terms of IFRS. Our accounting policies are consistent with what you did previously, and applied accordingly. In Greta Thunberg's words, as I heard her on the TV the other day, "Blah, blah." As Bernard noted there, I'd like to acknowledge all our finance people, not only the people worldwide, but specifically from my perspective, the finance people, particularly the corporate people, and particular mention of the Hong Kong finance team, which has had a pretty tough time over the last three months. We obviously had a disappointment, and it's come in three forms, I guess. Firstly, the discovery of the fraud late in June, and the work that's gone around that.
It's a disappointment because I guess it's been primarily driven by collusion of a whole management team. When you get that, typically you don't know whether the general controls you've got in place, they get overridden, and these things are typically very difficult to detect. It's obviously a big number from our perspective, but it has been perpetrated over five to six years. I think if you take each number in context per year, it is not that material, but certainly from our perspective, it's absolutely prudent view, and written off the full amount. We are obviously very positive or confident that we're going to get some recovery from the perpetrators, from insurance, and from the other parties that have been involved in it. We are obviously pursuing the criminal side of it, and the institute side as aggressively as we can.
We're obviously very disappointed by the delay in the results, but the reality was, because of the timing, we needed to make sure that the forensic investigators and the auditors had enough time to look at three critical issues. One is just making sure there was any complaint to this particular segments of the Angliss, Greater China business. The second was really quantifying the losses, the third was really trying to allocate those over the correct periods. Accordingly, we needed to restate our accounts, as I said. Losses not particularly material. If you take it out over one year, they were material. It resulted in a modified opinion from our auditors.
The auditor could be comfortable and contain it, but were not able as a result of the forensic investigation still not being complete, able to get sufficient evidence around the loss, quantification of the loss, and the allocation. We were up against the reporting deadline in terms of our JSE obligations, and therefore we ended up where we have ended up. I'd like to just thank the auditors, for all the effort that has gone in over the past few months in terms of getting us to where we are today. Other than that, it's been a rather uneventful year end. If I go into the numbers, just really some highlights. I think overall, it's an excellent financial performance considering the conditions which you've heard from Bernard. We had 12 months of COVID in 2021 as opposed to three months in 2020.
One needs to consider these in that context, and certainly from our perspective, we're very happy with the result. Revenue is only down 5% in rand terms, about 9% in constant ForEx. The gross margin is very largely maintained, that's obviously a pleasing achievement. EBITDA margin of 5.1%, and I would put there just to compare it back to 2019, which obviously was the last pre-COVID period that we had, full period that we had, of 6.1%, we're not far off, or the result wasn't far off where we were in FY 2019. Trading margin of 4.2%. Obviously, well, through all the months of 2021, we were profitable despite the severity and the differing lockdowns that we got in all the different jurisdictions. Headline earnings was up 21% or 22%, and EPS likewise up to ZAR 8.684.
As Bernard mentioned, working capital back to about seven days, and we generated ZAR 0.6 billion. That's on top of the 2020 generation of ZAR 1.3 billion. Generally, the cash flow from operations was very strong and a real highlight in the period. What we call our pandemic-era free cash flow, and that's basically from the end of February, to the end of June, nearly GBP 300 million of free cash flow, and that excludes the benefits we got, one-offs I guess, of the sale and leaseback transactions and the dividends, we've excluded those. We declared a final dividend of ZAR 4 per share, which is 2.1 x covered, largely in line with our improved policy. In terms of the P&L, revenue, in constant currency, was only down 9.2%.
I think one needs to take this in context of the past Q2 and Q3 and a bit of Q1 and I guess a bit of Q4, particularly in the U.K. and the Northern Hemisphere, in terms of what they went through. The business too, the sales have recovered to basically where they were in 2019 through July of this and September. That's notwithstanding what you've heard in terms of the restrictions that Australia remain under and obviously New Zealand as well. As I said, the gross profit has held up well, and I think that's particularly strong considering the trading environment. There was some price discounting to gain market share in a number of jurisdictions.
The businesses have been subject to, often as we've seen in many jurisdictions, sudden and severe lockdowns that come quickly, and one needs to be able to deal with short-dated inventory, and that does have some impact. I think in the context of those two issues, the GPs held up particularly well. Our operating expenses have been very well managed. I think just to put it in context, our constant currency revenue is down 9% and our operating expenses were down 13%. There was some, obviously, in the literature of a number of periods, government retention assistance or government employment assistance, which has helped cash flow, but doesn't impact the P&L. Those numbers have benefited the cash flow temporarily, but this is really just a timing issue.
Our interest is down because of interest. We count out increased interest and FX down 23%. That's really been driven by the better asset management and generally stronger cash flows. We have some capital profits, net of ZAR 243 million. Positive is really the profit on the sale and leaseback of transactions we did. There have been some impairments to PPE. The fire we had in November of 2020 was a contributor. We've written off some of these IP or intangible assets which related to IT, where we've seen changing technologies. The tax rate is up a little bit from the effective rate from where we've been. They're going into really about a contribution issue, Australasia being a big contributor, the result. They're having higher tax rates than what we normally see.
We do anticipate as normality returns, whatever the normality is, that our tax rate should track down a little bit further. As we say, the cash flow is very, very positive. I think one thing to just bear in mind, the objective over the last 18 months has obviously been survival, making sure that we have liquidity, our businesses have liquidity, and they're in a position to be able to deal with the varying operating conditions that have played out in the different parts of the world. I think just to acknowledge the group has done a fantastic job in that space. The working capital, as I said, we generated ZAR 4.6 billion. Our working capital on average days was 7 days as opposed to 14 previously. Another metric which we look at is net working capital % versus the annualized revenue.
We have given guidance that we expect that under normal circumstances to be between 4% and 5%. In the past year, it was 2.5%, so we've done a great job there. We do, as Bernard indicated, because of supply chain disruptions and in some cases product availability, we do anticipate the businesses where they can get product will be stocking up to make sure that they have sufficient product to supply their customers. Receivables provisioning has been largely maintained. From our perspective, I don't think we are out of the woods yet. What you are seeing is obviously reductions in support programs, government support programs in terms of support for businesses, in terms of rates, that, all those kinds of things. Those things are going to come back.
Obviously in terms of people, in terms of government support schemes, those are winding up as the world emerges from the pandemic. I think some of the economic consequences are still going to play out in some parts, and therefore we've maintained our conservative provisioning. In terms of investing activities, we did allude to a number of sale and leaseback transactions, which really are principally designed to maximize our, what we call introduce for life, properties. We did realize about ZAR 1.6 billion. We were assisted by particularly favorable yields in many markets because of industrial property. They weren't opportunistic. There's obviously a strategy behind them. This was a good achievement from our group property manager. He did a fantastic job.
Net debt is half a billion, a consequence of basically all the cash flow benefits and the good job that we've done, largely again, from our perspective, gives us a fantastic opportunity and headroom to be able to take on organic and accretive opportunities as we go forward. Next slide, SP. I think really just to reiterate what we've seen in terms of the cash flow over the pandemic era and something that we as a group are particularly proud about. Next slide. Just in terms of our balance sheet, financial position, very strong. Nothing really to add. There's no change to our risk management policies and the way we've approached the world. In terms of our liquidity, we've got ample headroom. Subsequent to year end, or end of June, we have raised an additional $200 million in terms of the ICU.
That will be used to take advantage of opportunities and also to try and make sure that we more efficiently manage the cash flows around the group. That's been done at a personally good rate. We're happy with that. Solvency, debt to equity is very, very low, and on a continuing annualized EBITDA, in terms of excluding our pre-IFRS 16 measurements, basically at 0.1 x as well within our coverage of 2.5 x. We're very comfortable with that. In terms of financial guidance, obviously, as you've heard, the group sales have bounced back quickly, and we've had a particularly good Q1.
The impact of the Northern Hemisphere winter, I guess, is uncertain, but I think that when compared to where we were previously, a lot of the world up there is vaccinated, and I think you'll see a far less restrictive environment as we go forward. We are cash generative, and we do anticipate that to continue. As Bernard indicated, there will be, or we anticipate there will be some inflation coming back, both through product pricing as well as the cost push of staff shortages and energy prices. The absorption of working capital, we'll expect that as the normal trading cycle returns. I mean, as you were aware, or are well aware, we generally absorb working capital in the first half and absorb it in the second half. We haven't seen necessarily that for the last 18 months. As the world normalizes, we do anticipate that to happen.
As I indicated, there is some deliberate stocking up due to supply chain issues that are being experienced in parts of the world. We do have some debt maturities in the second half of the next financial year, and we will need to deal with those. Nothing in particular. We are seeing a step up in CapEx for those jurisdictions where activity has returned, and the investments is for, obviously, anticipated growth. It needs to be advanced upon well ahead of time because of lead times in developing what are long-term assets. Our financial position remains strong, and we do believe that it's going to be a competitive advantage in terms of opportunities starting to arise from an acquisitions perspective. What we say is a less volatile, yet faster and predictable COVID world.
There will be introspection, as I rightly stressed, in terms of our business out of the Miumi fraud . Once again, we need to find the correct balance between making sure that the business remains entrepreneurial and operates within a decentralized group model, versus what we try and restrict from a center. That, obviously, is a balance that we will continue to make sure is balanced properly. In that case, our philosophy is of hedging assets to liabilities, and that will remain. Provisionally, we will remain conservative, as I said, because of anticipated economic conditions that are likely to materialize. Therein lay our forecasting remains difficult. Therefore, we're not really giving any guidance going forward. The first quarter, as we said, has started off particularly well. We are optimistic and we are anticipating growth.
It's difficult to nail anything down and predict anything as we sit here today. On that, I'll hand back to Bernard to take questions.
Okay, thanks, David. The one thing we didn't mention was a dividend of ZAR 4 being declared, which is the largest dividend we've ever declared. Bearing in mind, though, that we didn't declare a dividend in February, so it's in respect of the full year. Our intention is absolutely to go back to paying an interim and a final dividend in the year ahead. We certainly see that as being the reality, unless something very, very, very unfortunately untoward happens in terms of COVID, which we don't anticipate. That's a feature that we should have mentioned. I think it's about ZAR 1.4 billion of cash will be paid out in dividends. What I want to do is go through the questions. A whole lot of questions have been sent to Ashley.
I'm going to read the question out, and then I'll try and answer it the best I can, or David. From Warren Riley. "Australia reported a strong second half. I calculate trading margins of 8.4% in the second half. Could you disclose the absolute contribution from government support in the half? Where do you see normalized Australian trading margins going forward? Monthly net working capital days half to seven days or 14 days. Should we expect this to return to 14 days in the year ahead as markets reopen? What is absolute expected working capital outflow?" Let me try answer that as best I can. The Australasian segments, that's a blend of Australia and New Zealand, there's differences between the two.
In terms of government support, there is effectively about AUD 9 million, call it ZAR 90 million, of government support in the second half. Once again, and we keep on saying it, but since they have an academic argument, is that is offset by the fact that you have got the payroll cost. You carried on taking people on during lockdowns, which did happen, but you are recognizing some income from the government as well. It is AUD 9 million. Do we anticipate the margins to continue at that rate? I think was part of the question. They are very high, and they are very high for a number of reasons, and conditions were very, very good. We would be disappointed if, in a normal year, we did not see margins pretty similar to that.
In the current year we're in, we won't see margins at that level because there isn't government support and there is obviously a downturn in trading because of COVID restrictions. In terms of net working capital, look, I don't know what these days mean because it's a statistic. You've got a denominator and a numerator, and your sales number is a collection over a few periods of months. You've got sales increasing relatively rapidly, and it does all parts of things with ratios. I wouldn't get too hung up as to whether it's seven days or nine days. I think you need to look at the absolute numbers and what has happened subsequent to year-end, and the absorption of working capital subsequent to year-end. We haven't seen any great absorption of working capital subsequent to year-end, notwithstanding that we've seen strong turnover growth.
Our working capital has continued to be very strongly managed. Obviously, you do need more working capital as your base grows. It certainly hasn't been a major issue that's gone to levels that it was maybe two or three years ago. I think at this stage, it seems a permanent change in the nature of our working capital makeup. Next question is, what loss U.K. Fresh made this financial year? What percentage of U.K. turnover is Fresh, and where do you see normalized margins for Fresh? What loss did Germany and Spain contribute this financial year within the European division? Under normal circumstances, I actually wouldn't give you those numbers because we don't want to split it up by country. We've got these divisions for one reason. There's competitive reasons as to why we don't disclose certain issues in certain markets.
I'm happy to tell you the numbers because I think they paint a very positive picture for what lies ahead. In the U.K., Bidfresh was about 8% of the total sales in the year that we just finished. They were more hard hit from a revenue point of view than the Bidfood business because they didn't have the hospitals, et cetera. We reckon it's somewhere between a 14%-20% contributor to revenue of the U.K. segment. We also lost, within the profit that we made in the U.K., there's a loss of GBP 23 million for Fresh. We're very proud to say that the first two months, and we anticipate the third month, of the current year, Fresh has traded profitably. Germany lost EUR 5 million last year, and Spain lost EUR 11 million last year.
We're very happy to say that those businesses have operated at, Spain and Germany, have operated at break-even to profit-making levels in the first quarter. There's quite a big swing there. If we can continue that momentum and that trajectory on those three problem businesses, which we've always identified as our problem children, which we think are absolutely out of intensive care now and are absolutely on the road to recovery, and we're very confident about the future prospects. They're not going to tick the four goals necessary in the first year, but they're absolutely on the path to recovery, and that's it. What is your outlook for CapEx and working capital trends in FY 2022? Do you think net debt will reduce further? We did benefit from a cash boost in terms of we didn't pay dividends for the year.
We also have the proceeds of the sale of these cash transactions. The counter to that is we are generating a lot of money out of regular trade. We believe that with our dividend policy of between 2.2x-2.5 x covered, with our normal CapEx spend of about 2% of revenue, and with working capital being managed, we will be cash generative, which means we should see an improvement in the debt levels other than we do need to now account for the fact that there are dividends going out. I think I hopefully have answered that one. Please could you give more detail on your own brand growth and prospects and what percentage of the business is own brand now.
We estimate as a blended average across the business, own brand is about 20%, and it's growing strongly, and there's no doubt that supply chain disruptions give us good opportunity to grow that even more. When you just don't have the availability of inventory, and you do have a house brand, it makes it a lot easier to convert your customers. Generally, once you've got the customer onto a house brand product, there's a high degree of stickiness. We see that as a positive for our house brand. Could you perhaps give some comment as to whether you believe the Australian business will be able to trade at technological margins equal to or above industry return? I think I have answered that question.
Please also bear in mind, though, that go back in history, you'll always see that the Australasian business performs much stronger in the second half than the first half, and that's to do with the recognition of some rebates and price rebates from suppliers and the freeing up of provisioning, et cetera. The second half margin doesn't reflect the full year's margin, and it's normal for the second half to be higher than the first half. Does the qualified audit opinion issue have any practical impact on the business, governance, listing rules, et cetera? I actually can't answer that question. I'll maybe get David to. The only thing I will say on that is we have spoken to our bankers. We spoke to them a while ago. None of them are overly disturbed about it.
They all see it as a pretty minor, isolated, contained issue and they've expressed no concern whatsoever, and are very comfortable to lend us money based on our financial condition and our performance and our strong cash generation. I don't know if David's got anything else to add in terms of practical impact.
Not really. I think, obviously, what you should just understand, as you said, it's an isolated, reasonably small impact. I think that's the basis of the qualification. There are some practical issues from what's needed to remove that qualification, like a review audit that will have to be done on the half year numbers. Other than a cost issue, I don't believe there's a practical issue.
Okay, thank you. Certain sectors are not trading at normal levels yet, like health, catering, office, et cetera. Historically, what percentage of sales is delivered into these sectors? I can't give you an answer on that because it depends on the business and the geography. In the U.K., for example, the most recent feedback we've had is that basically all sectors are trading above 2019 levels except for the office, the work environment, which is operating at about 70%, international travel, which is operating at lower levels, quite a lot lower levels, and the cruise industry. Besides that, everything else is operating at normal levels. When you move to Australasia, obviously it's a very different issue. I think the Europe levels would be very similar to what we've seen in the U.K.
On Australia and New Zealand, how has revenue statistics as a % of 2019 and 2020 levels panned out in September as these continued to track down significantly? They've actually improved. September in both Australia and New Zealand was better than August. I think they were about 10% down on 2020 levels a year ago, which was operating almost at capacity across both of them. It's about 15% down on 2019 levels. I think the businesses are holding up remarkably well, bearing in mind that 60% of Australia, 40% of New Zealand is under severe lockdown. Re the sale and leaseback transactions, would you say these are largely complete or more expected in coming years?
I think we took advantage of market conditions where yields are very, very compressed, and we sold a property in Hong Kong, and three in Australia, of which one was pretty large. They will continue. It's part of what we do in our property portfolio is that's the way you maximize your end-of-life use out of the assets. The complicated issue there is the replacement now of assets of real estate is becoming quite difficult, both from a cost point of view and a timing point of view. We might just have to stick with what we've got for a little bit longer. Absolutely, it's part of our real estate portfolio proposition, is to do these transactions in order to maximize the end value of end-of-life properties. Could you please comment on the trading levels in Australasia? I commented on that one.
Gross margin management has been enviably stable for the group. What would it take to get back to 2019 cost income plus operating margins? I think we're there. Our gross margins are very similar to where they were in 2019. Our costs are probably a little bit better than where they were in 2019 with severe pressure. I'm not sure we're going to be able to maintain that cost benefit that we picked up through the pandemic. We've got very strong wage pressure. We've got very strong inflation cost pressures. Yeah, I'm just not so sure that we'll be able to hold on to that full cost reduction for too long. You've cut costs during the pandemic. Yeah, we got. Now facing inflationary pressures, how does your FY22 cost base compare to FY19?
Like I said, at this stage, it's probably a little bit lower, but I'm not sure how long that goes on for. Please can you comment on e-commerce take themselves in terms of revenue and what you see in terms of competition from food delivery businesses? I'll answer the second part first. Food delivery businesses are not competition to us. They're delivering the end product from a restaurant or a dark kitchen. Those restaurants and dark kitchens are our customers. Whether they service the end user by way of takeaway, by dine-in or by home delivery, it's still a potential customer for us. We don't compete against the Uber Eats, et cetera. That's not our competitor. Possibly our competitor is retail home delivery, that's just the split between retail and out of home.
In terms of e-commerce, and I guess it was remiss of me not to say it, the businesses have made remarkable strides forward from a very strong position anyway, in terms of technological advancement. One thing we don't do is we don't talk like a tech company, like a startup, and maybe we should, and throw in fancy slides and fancy words and fancy percentage. A large proportion of our business is done electronically. The smarts that we have in the business are phenomenal. The back end is incredible. The data analytics that go into it are very good, and that helps you maximize that margin and maintain that margin and grow the customer and grow the basket and ensure customer retention and loyalty and all those other good things. We do a fantastic job of it, but don't really talk too much about it.
Technology is a very important part of our DNA. We think it's a very strong competitive advantage, and it's something that is getting increased investment and management attention. The investment, don't panic, isn't huge numbers, but it's enough millions of dollars or pounds to make sure that we're actually ahead of the pack and that it works. We're very fortunate that our technology is servicing a base that already exists. We're not trying to create something new. We're not trying to invent a market and talk about a market that we're going to create. We already have the market. We have the customers, we have the product, and it's for us to maximize that relationship. Our team does a fantastic job of that. We've got an incredible team of developers. The output from them is absolutely amazing. The technology is amazing.
If any of you know anybody who owns a restaurant or is a customer of ours, I think you need to talk to them and see if they are using that technology and what they think of it. Our view is it's world-leading. On a country-by-country basis, we're getting huge uptake. It's a very exciting part of the business. Please bear in mind, we're B2B. We're not B2C, and we don't intend to go down the B2C path. We played around with them a little bit during the pandemic, and we did a little bit of it. As I said before, that was to keep our people busy and motivated as opposed to trying to be profitable. We don't want to go into the B2C market. We are very happy with what we do in B2B, and I think we do it relatively well.
Will sales at 2019 levels or thereabout, plus CapEx from last year, confidence of passing the cost-plus, of course, earnings returning to 2019 levels, is that the benchmark for the year?" That's a very good question, and yes, it probably is. Bearing in mind this year isn't a normal year, because we still have COVID, we still have lockdowns, we still have uncertainty. If all things were equal and things carried on the way they are, and you could see the incremental improvement in Australia and New Zealand over the next few months, we'd say absolutely that 2019 is the first port of call. It's very much within reach, but we're not fortune tellers. We unfortunately don't know what's going to happen. "Are you experiencing any supply chain issues in the U.K. in terms of lack of truck drivers?
Is the lack of fuel a present in the U.K. issue for your fleet? Please elaborate on supply chain challenges in general that you talked to in your outlook. In terms of truck drivers, I asked Andrew this question specifically. In April, we were 200 truck drivers short for the reopening, when we saw the reopening happening. We're talking about HGV drivers, heavy goods vehicles. We recruited 300 drivers. We lost 150, we're a little bit short at the moment. We're about 50 drivers short. Out of 1,200, that's not all that significant. Our service levels, although not where we want them to be, are acceptable in the U.K. context compared to what others are going through. Sorry, the driver issue isn't an issue in fresh produce, because generally, they're small vehicles that can be driven on a regular car license.
Is the lack of fuel an issue? No, it isn't. It is something we plan for. We do have contingencies. We do have on-site storage at most of our depots. I guess we do get priority because we are dealing with institutions like prisons, hospitals, defense forces, et cetera. No, it hasn't caused us any major issues. There's been a very limited amount of disruption. The supply chain challenges. Look, it's very difficult. There's a dislocation in shipping containers. They're all in the wrong place, particularly reefers, refrigerated containers. They're in the wrong place. Shipping is very expensive. It's unpredictable. Shipping times have blown out. You order containers, you get none of them, then they all appear at the same time, and there's no one at the ports to move them because they don't have truck drivers. Those supply chain challenges have a knock-on effect.
It's not only on imported product for us, it applies to our suppliers. Our suppliers are having the same issues in their supply chain. They might be missing the screw cap on a bottle or one ingredient that goes into a sauce. It's just right through the whole chain. I think it's going to get worse, not better. "What scope do you have to further automate your operations, robotic picking, et cetera, to mitigate labor cost inflation?" In the short term, very little, because you have to invest a huge amount of money in real estate. If you want to go down that robotic path, you actually have purpose-built facilities to handle it. Unfortunately, in the short term, we don't see that as being a quick win for us being able to do.
In the longer term, it is something we're looking at. We've seen some of the automation that is happening in retail, and it looks very impressive, but it's not actually cost-effective yet. It might become at some point in time, but at this point in time, it's not cost-effective. I suppose at some point in time, it's not going to be a cost-effectivity issue, it's going to be a necessity in terms of labor availability. I think I've got them all. Let's just have a look. Sorry, no, there are a few more. We have seen restaurants simplifying contents in their menus since the pandemic. Is this something that has continued until now, and what has been the impact on the business?
Do you expect menus to return to normal as things normalize further? I think there's no doubt that in a year or two or three, things will go back to normal. But right now, operators have simplified their lives. They have moved to more standard type ingredients. They have moved to simpler menus. And it's going to stay like that for a while, particularly when you've got supply shortages and you've got these disruptions we've talked about. They're not going to want to go for too much of a novel experience. That will change, but we're not seeing a change just yet, and we're quite happy with the way things are at the moment because, like I say, we've got more opportunity to sell house brand, and we've also got more opportunity to simplify the range.
With your balance sheet basically ungeared , do you see enough acquisition opportunities to utilize this capacity? Could we expect increased dividends? David, I am going to let you answer that one.
Listen, We've maintained a conservative position. I don't see that changing as we go forward. There'll be a balance between CapEx, acquisition opportunities, and dividends. We've got a policy, we've stuck to it, and short-term deliberations can change. Big acquisitions can materialize, and that could change the position of the group. I guess we will stick with where we are from a dividends perspective, and acquisitions, we will take advantage as they come along.
Okay. We have no more questions. Thank you everybody for your attendance. I really do appreciate your continued interest. We will give the market an update in, it's probably about six, seven weeks' time, towards the middle, end of November, I believe we're scheduled for. Once again, just a great shout-out to the team around the world. They really are an amazing bunch of people. I haven't seen most of them for 18 months at least, and I do miss them. They have done us proud. They've done shareholders proud, and I think the business is in a very strong position thanks to them. We remain very optimistic about the future and look forward to sharing some more good news with you in a few weeks' time. Thank you everybody, and good night or good day. Thank you.