Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to this morning's presentation as we report an excellent set of results for the financial year ended February 2022. In the face of various challenges, including continued COVID waves and the widespread riots, Dis-Chem's customer-centric approach and the focus on execution has allowed us to deliver a quality set of results. This would not be possible without dedicated staff, which I would like to thank for their continued commitment and continuous focus on servicing our customers. I am proud that our management team navigated the challenging and complex operating environment, progressed strategic initiatives and completed acquisitions that will drive the group forward in years to come. On the back of significant investments in the prior period, this financial year has been a period of implementation, integration and growth.
The evident customer support in these difficult economic environments has been realized through consistent delivery of high quality products and services at everyday low prices, tactical deep cut promotions, and an acceleration of benefit card discounts. Over the last financial year, we have seen a continued normalization in our operating environment. COVID waves have become less severe, with the consumer resuming their pre-COVID routines and shopping habits, driving normalization of baskets and seasonal patterns. Baby City has now been fully integrated into the group and has been rebranded as Dis-Chem Baby City. Renovations and new store openings are continuing. There is now price parity between the two brands as well as alignment of our strong partner supported Dis-Chem loyalty program. With addition of Medicare to our retail pharmacy store portfolio, we are proud to say that we are now South Africa's largest retail pharmacy group by dispensary market share.
Medicare has now also been fully integrated into the group, with half the stores already rebranded as Dis-Chem Pharmacies, offering our benefit program, best in class pricing and everything else that is offered through the Dis-Chem brand. We recognize the importance of bringing affordable health care to the constrained South African consumer, and we continue to invest in the in-store clinics. Our 436 clinics continue to operate at high capacity. There are now also 34 moms and babies clinics within Dis-Chem Baby City. Still focusing on health care, Dis-Chem Health and gap cover has been successfully launched and the focus is now on accelerating our efforts to grow penetration in this market. For the full reporting period, we performed well across all key metrics, showing growth across all metrics. The group increased its revenue by 15.7% to ZAR 30.4 billion.
Our earnings per share increased by 27.6% to ZAR 0.992. Net working capital days saw further improvements, decreasing to 26.5 days. Our full year dividend increased by 27.6% to ZAR 0.397 per share. Retail revenue grew by 15.6% to ZAR 27.1 billion, with market share gains across all categories. Like for like, retail sales grew at 6.1%. We opened 12 Dis-Chem pharmacies and 3 Baby City stores in the reporting period. The acquisition of Medicare added a further 48 retail pharmacy stores at year-end, about half of which have been fully rebranded. Online sales continued to grow nicely, with online revenue growing by 22%.
Wholesale revenue grew by 13.7% to ZAR 21.9 billion, with external wholesale revenue growth of 16.5% driven by TLC franchise stores and increasing support from independent pharmacies. Warehouse activity efficiency improved by 17.8%. We have successfully integrated recent acquisitions into the group. The launch of our Dis-Chem Health insurance offering is an important milestone for the group as we focus on advancing our ambitions to be at the forefront of providing access to affordable and convenient health care. I will now hand over to Rui, who will take us through the financial results.
Thank you, Ivan. As is customary, I will take us through the statement of comprehensive income. I will then take us through the statement of financial position and delve into each of the lines on each of those sections individually. If we look at slide 5, the statement of comprehensive income, Ivan has highlighted some of the important metrics, revenue growth, profitability growth. I think just conceptually, when you look at all the lines, metrically, the group is moving in the right direction. We have total income running ahead of revenue growth. We have profit before tax running ahead of total income. Obviously, I will talk to some anomalies in the non-controlling interest line. We have a good result from an equity perspective for the parents in terms of profitability growth.
Important to note that Medicare is included in these numbers from the first of October 2021 when the transaction was effective. We do talk later on in the presentation as to the quantum and effect of Medicare over the period. Just some lines we don't refer to specifically. The reduction in finance costs is as a result of improved net working capital position, the lower cost of debt and, of course, the reduced Absa term loan. The net finance cost line is very influenced by IFRS 16 and the composition of the interest line relating to leases that runs into the finance cost line. Obviously, as we grow space, that disproportionately increases the finance line.
If that was taken out and we just have to look at the ROIC effect on the finance costs in terms of how we're driving day stock cover and improving cash, net finance costs would be down 29.4%. Our effective tax rate is at 27.5%, up from 27% in the previous year. Predominantly as a result of approximately ZAR 18 million non-deductible legal expenses, which we don't anticipate occurring. These were primarily related to the acquisitions, and we do anticipate that the tax rate normalizing again and obviously benefiting from the tax rate change down to 27% going forward. The non-controlling interest line that's grown by 93%.
Fundamentally a function of our Dis-Chem Oncology business having superb performance, as well as some of our JVs performing ahead of targeted numbers. We expect that to be more normalized going forward. Ultimately, as Ivan said, equity partners will certainly profitability, running into the earnings per share number growing at 27.6%. If we move into slide 6, the statement of financial position. As with the income statement, we talk to each of these lines separately. Some important points to note, property, plant, and equipment, muted growth or slightly decreased growth of 0.7%, as a function of the maturity base of our leases and certainly reduced capital expenditure from an IT perspective and distribution perspective in this last year.
We're seeing depreciation running ahead as a function of IFRS 16 of the additions into the property, plant, and equipment line. That's also noticeable in the lease liability line. As you can see, the lease liability line coming down 3.1%. If we look at intangible assets. Intangible assets increased as a result of the Medicare acquisition, adding ZAR 256 million to that line and contributing to the significant growth of 34.7%. Inventory, trade, and other receivables, net cash and bank, and other liabilities we'll talk to in our working capital slide. Two last points worth noting.
Other assets increased as a result of the investment in Kaela of approximately ZAR 160 million, and liabilities increased as a result of the increase in supply chain finance program, which we've rolled out. I mean, we've spoken previously about the success of our supply chain program locally, being the largest supply chain program in Africa. We've rolled out conceptually a similar program to our import vendors. Although we take the cost of funding as opposed to our vendors or our suppliers taking the cost of funding in the local space. Obviously, it's treated as a liability as opposed to supplier debt. Another growth driver in that line is the leave liability.
The leave liability growing by 27%, and again, driving the other liability line that I made reference to. If we move to slide seven and unpack the revenue growth, I think first and foremost, a strong performance in the like-for-like retail growth number. Important to note that although we talk about vaccine contribution at ZAR 513 million, and certainly when I explain the vaccine slide, we have seen reduced contributions of vaccines post year-end, and we do anticipate a normalization of about 25% in this financial year. In FY 2023, we anticipate the vaccine number to be 25% of what it was in this previous financial year. It doesn't impact the like-for-like number. We drove our vaccine revenue predominantly, as you will see in our slide from mass sites.
We didn't get the uptick in the like-for-like numbers. That like-for-like number is really a function of normalizing trade. As we spoke about at half year, we're seeing normal trading patterns, we're seeing more stores grow ahead of our expectation, and certainly recovering from what was a tough COVID period for more stores. In terms of the retail business growing at 15.6%, Medicare is included, as I said, from the first of October, adding ZAR 450 million to retail revenue. We discuss the Medicare contribution later on in the presentation, but a lot of that contribution is pharmacy driven. The retail business has just got the benefit of what our normalized trading patterns, you know, when compared to a highly influenced COVID-19 comparative period.
We're seeing higher margin and higher price point category mix, and both supporting top-line and like-for-like revenue numbers. Wholesale internal sales normalizing, growing at 13.2% and below group turnover. Very positive, reflecting our continued focus on return on invested capital and ultimately resulting in lower group inventory days, which effectively is the reason why internal sales growth is lower. Wholesale external sales growth. I think it's important to exclude the impact of business to business in the prior year, as well as the Medicare internalized sales that were external and now inter-group. We're starting to see really excellent inroads into the external market. TLC revenue or the TLC franchise model growing at 25.2%.
That model, as Chris will explain later, continues to get traction, and we've got revenue growth from independents at 21.6%, which is a really, really positive sign and demonstrates the ability for us to service. Certainly, as we've gone into the Western Cape and KZN, we've grown quite far ahead of our expectations with respect to providing services and products to independent pharmacies. If we move to slide 8, this just further unpacks our revenue and the growth drivers of our revenue as we customarily do. As you can see, I'm gonna focus on the right-hand side of the chart that shows us growing from ZAR 26.2 billion to ZAR 30.4 billion. FY 2022 new stores.
Ivan spoke about the number of stores that we added, the 12 stores that we added, contributing ZAR 531 million worth of growth. I think importantly, even considering that there were three Baby Cities in that number, the weighted average trading density higher than what we saw in the last year at 27.6 thousand ZAR per square meter. If we look at FY 2021 new stores, so effectively stores in year two, adding ZAR 1.5 billion worth of revenue. This includes the 35 Baby City stores that would have been cycling into their second year.
Of course, as we've explained previously, Baby City has got a much lower trading density, and that's reducing the trading density of those stores to 40.6% when compared to 62.6%. The like-for-like additional retail sales at ZAR 1.6 billion, showing improved trading density of ZAR 104,000 per square meter relative to the ZAR 102,000 per square meter that these like-for-like stores showed in the prior year. The additional wholesale revenue, which we'll unpack later on in the presentation, contributing ZAR 466 million to external wholesale revenue, predominantly driven by TLC and independent external sales growth.
Importantly to note, we do have it as an annexure at the end of the financial year, 289 stores. If you consider the Medicare stores, and we will talk about the rebranding process that we're going through, we've effectively got 254 retail pharmacies and 35 Baby City retail stores. If we move on to slide 9, total income. As we always do, we make reference to the total income line. What we're seeing is a total income line growing ahead of sales and an improvement from 28.3% to 28.9%.
As I've explained previously, we do target group total income at 30%, and we do expect improvements to the total income number as more normalization certainly from a transactional margin perspective affects our number. The improvement in this year from 28.3 to 28.9, which has effectively changed the total income number and grown it by 18.4%, is a function of transactional margin normalizing. You do have a slight change in higher margin mixed categories compared to the prior year. We are seeing that trend, and we do anticipate that trend to continue to FY 2023, as we see the full effect of category normalization.
The total income back end terms, both service and product terms that we speak about, which influence either the gross margin or other income. Craig will talk to the relationship between that and purchases. We continue to see our scale improve or certainly driving a ROIC focus, which improves our back end terms ahead of purchases. That has also contributed to the 28.9% and the growth from 28.3% in our total income margin. As we've spoken about now, we had previously identified a ZAR 1 billion profit level opportunity that we expect to unlock over a three-year timeframe. That process has been commenced, and that will further add or be supportive of an increasing total income margin as we move into FY 2023 and beyond that.
If we look at retail operating expenditure, so now going down into each of our segments. Depreciation and amortization increase as a function of new stores, IFRS 16 and obviously the recent acquisitions that we've made, with the likes of Medicare influencing that number. Occupancy costs. Occupancy costs are the ancillary costs in addition to the rentals. Obviously, IFRS 16 ensures that the rental number goes into the balance sheets. Occupancy costs growing at 21.1%, really driven by an increase in predominantly the electricity costs in our stores. Employment costs at 19%. Employment costs importantly are influenced by the addition of Medicare, as well as the additional pharmacists and nurse costs incurred to facilitate the COVID-19 program.
Other operating costs are driven predominantly by advertising expenses of 24% which, when you compare to the comparative period, had a much less aggressively promoted financial year as a result of the COVID landscape. Importantly, when you look at any cost metric in relation to a total income metric, it's important that you take the cost relative to total income because as in the case of advertising costs, you have the cost sitting in the expense line, but you have the recovery of those costs potentially sitting in the other income as in advertising. If we move on to slide 11, wholesale operating expenditure. Wholesale expenses have increased by 8.3%, significantly below wholesale revenue growth of 13.7%, which is obviously expanded operating margins.
Depreciation increase of 3.5% is really due to our contained capital expenditure, unlike in the retail space. As a result, there's no influence from IFRS 16 on the depreciation and amortization line. Occupancy costs are down 19%, really a function of electricity back billing that reflected in the prior comparative period. I think a phenomenal effort in terms of managing employment costs that Chris will talk to later, really driven by increased efficiencies. What we continue to do is focus on efficient shift management policies and programs across our 3 distribution centers or our 3 main distribution centers. Other operating costs growing very much in line with turnover. One of the cost components of that is obviously courier.
Courier growing far ahead of some of the other cost lines, and Chris will talk to that, but really a function of a bigger increasing network that we're distributing to and obviously a function of the petrol price increases. Ultimately, all of that comes out in the operating profit line. I think both from a retail and a wholesale perspective, really good operating profit delivery in what was a very challenging environment with lots of integration of acquisitions. Retail operating profit moving from 5.1-5.2, 18.5% change. That taking into account what is yet to be complete margin normalization. Again, we expect that margin normalization to drop down into operating profit in the next year.
Wholesale, a significant improvement in operating profit in rand from ZAR 65 million to ZAR 115 million, 78.6% growth and operating profit margin of 0.5%. Still scalable, medium-term target of 2%, still on track. That really fleshes out as a function of more volume running through that supply chain. Earnings per share and headline earnings per share, no significant changes in WANOS or diluted WANOS. Obviously in line with equity attributable to parent, both earnings per share and headline earnings per share growing from ZAR 0.778 to ZAR 0.992, a change of 27.6%.
If we move to working capital, this is obviously, as we've explained, been a big focus for us in terms of how this translates into cash generation. Debtor days have improved to 24 days. I think to contextualize that, you know, as external sales in the wholesale space growth, we've had really well-managed debtor books in our wholesale space. Even with very high growth, we're starting to see debtor days coming down. Inventory days the lowest that they've been. Operationally, you know, as I said previously, operational stock days is calculated at a 90-day moving average as opposed to the accounting method of accounted inventory days at 84 days.
That inventory days is the lowest that we've seen in the group and takes into account the Medicare stock that's been acquired from the first of October that's reflected in that inventory balance. Then creditor days marginally up from 86 to 87 days, which is effectively just more adoption of the supply chain program. That supply chain finance program has been extended into the CJ Distribution environment where they've got direct accounts with suppliers or vendors. We potentially see continued modest traction in the 87 days. It's also slightly being influenced by what I do talk about in the vaccine slide later on.
Currently ZAR 154 million owing, a net owing amount to the state as a function of vaccine drive, which we don't anticipate being settled before the end of first half 2023 as a function of the process that the state is running. We then get to a situation where actual net working capital days taking operational stock into account at 21 days, and a very good relationship between creditor days and inventory days in terms of us funding our growth or certainly benefiting from vendors funding our growth. If we move on to slide 15. This is just really our normal cash management graph. We start with cash inflow from trading operations. As I mentioned, positive working capital inflows of ZAR 45 million, just really a function of well-managed inventory levels.
Net finance costs of ZAR 321 million, mostly attributable to the term loan that sits on our balance sheet. Tax in relation to previous years and provisional tax earnings. Obviously, dividends higher than normal because of the disproportionate payments of dividends in the COVID prior comparative period, where the full year dividend was paid in the second half, which is reflected in this number. CapEx, we talked to separately in a slide. Acquisitions and change in ownership reflective of the recent transactions we've done. Loans, treasury share, finance lease repayments, again, predominantly driven by how you account for IFRS 16. Those are really lease-driven costs as well as contingent consideration, which is effectively out of our balance sheet going forward, other than the Kaelo element, which we expect to be settled in FY 2023.
You know, the franchisees that we acquired at listing have now all been paid for. That used to live in that contingent consideration line. A positive increase in cash and cash equivalents in what was an acquisitive period and a period that was disproportionate from a dividends perspective of ZAR 136 million just talks to the cash generative nature and the improvement we've seen in cash generation of the group. If we move to slide 16, very simply discussing capital management. Total CapEx down 6% year-on-year to ZAR 377 million, really influenced by expansionary CapEx, which is a function of lower number of stores. Those relative metrics also play out when you look at it as a percentage of turnover.
I think as we look into FY 2023, the expansion CapEx to turnover will increase back to normalized levels. Ivan will speak to the stores that we're adding in FY 2023, but in addition to that, there's a Medicare rebranding opportunity or certainly in the Medicare rebranding process that will continue that will add expansion CapEx to our turnover numbers. We do see those levels normalize to the levels that we experienced in FY 2021 with respect to the percentage of CapEx to turnover. We don't anticipate large investments in movable assets in the distribution business in FY 2023 and we anticipate normalized investments of between ZAR 100 million and ZAR 110 million in the IT space as we have done historically.
If we move into the retail trading performance, myself, Craig and Saul, will take us through that. If we start with our core category market shares, relative to FY 2021 and in the green highlighted block, you can see market share gains across all of our core categories. Dispensary gaining share, personal care and beauty gaining share, healthcare and medical, and baby care. Important to note that, as a function of the transaction date and the weighting of Medicare, neither Medicare nor Baby City, which isn't read into this data, really influence those market shares. We have strong market share gains as a function of our performance across all of our core categories.
If we just look at baby starting from the bottom, 9.5%-10.6% and then further extended into the five weeks in April as read by Nielsen to 10.7%. Again, if you take Baby City into account, our baby care market share is now at 16.1%, up from 15.3% at this time last year. Healthcare and medical, a large part of the market in which we have share in, continues to perform well. Certainly in FY 2022, we saw a normalization of that market share. We had lost some market share in that space to some of the grocers. We had extended some of the lines, specifically in the healthcare category.
We see a slight drop off to 46.5% in the 5 weeks to April. That's really a function of the COVID lines in the Nielsen base being read and obviously many retailers participating in what will become sustainable COVID lines. Personal care, again, a good performance from 16 to 17.1% in the previous year. As Ivan said in the highlights, when you look at Medicare's contribution to dispensary market share, which is evident on a like-for-like basis in the 5 weeks up until the end of April, we now at 26.3% in dispensary market share, making us the biggest retail pharmacy by dispensary market share in the country.
If we move to slide 19 and look at core category performance or certainly unpack core category performance, I think importantly, retail transactional gross margin grew ahead of retail sales across all core categories. A function of the normalization of some of the categories, a function of the work that we've done in those categories, specifically around price elasticity, as well as the start of a private label journey. In each instance, we have the transactional gross margin running ahead of revenue. The only instance is obviously in the other category, which is small from a contribution perspective, and that's really just influenced by lower margin opportunities that we identified and pursued. That is more a mix issue than a margin sacrifice issue.
If we unpack each of the lines, dispensary growing really strongly at 20.3%, albeit supported by the vaccination drive, which contributed 1.9% to our turnover. We had change in transactional gross margin at 33.1%. A really good performance in the year. A lot of that being driven by better contracted dispensing fees with medical insurers, as well as higher growth of OTC medication and clinic services, which attracts a higher margin than your scheduled medicine, dispensary fees. If you look at personal care and beauty, if you look at healthcare and medical, and if you look at baby care, metrically all of the transactional gross margins growing ahead of revenue.
That's obviously something that we continue to focus on and has been a contributor to our total income margin growing ahead of sales. We do anticipate this trend to continue into FY 2023. Overall, a change in revenue of 15.6% in our retail business and a change in transactional gross margin of 15.8%, as I've explained. I'm now gonna hand over to Craig, who's gonna talk about or give a little bit more color on the return on invested capital strategy.
Thank you, Rui, and good day to all listening in. Our work improvement strategy continues to be one of our key drivers in terms of optimizing total income, working capital and cash generation. At the half year, we mentioned the step change in retail gross margin, and this is confirmed by the higher transactional margin growth of 15.8% compared to revenue growth of 15.6%. These levels should be sustainable going forward, and we're optimistic about further improvement, particularly on the back of the ZAR 1 billion private label opportunity that we had previously mentioned unlocking over a 3-year period. Which is weighted towards personal care FMCG and baby. We see some nice opportunities in our Baby City business and sort of some quick wins in the Medicare sites post rebranding and ranging.
Our private label brands have continued to perform better than the market and offer an important point of difference and value proposition for the consumer. Importantly, this is in conjunction with the support of the leading national brands we carry as part of the overall growth strategy. We continue to work towards a 30% group total income margin level over the medium term. Strong terms growth from fee for service rebates of 26% was well ahead of the 13.7% purchases growth, and this reflects in the improved total income margin for retail, which was at 28.2%, driving group to 28.9%. From a stock optimization perspective, we continue to leverage our fully automated forecasting and replenishment tool or F&R. This uses retail specific algorithms to optimize inventory levels and reduce supply chain costs.
We've exceeded our initial F&R coverage targets of two-thirds of value into stores and are well into the subsequent phase, which includes automation of replenishment into our distribution centers. Even including the Medicare stock take on, total group stock days were in line with budget at 89 days, with rolling stock days at 84. This relative to creditors days which increased from 86.3 to 87. We therefore continue to run at a higher creditors days than stock days, so at negative stock to creditors working capital position for strong cash generation. Supply chain finance usage continues to increase and has now been extended to our CJ Delmas wholesale suppliers as well as to imports.
Core to ROIC improvement is the effective management of our working capital and operationally, we look at rolling stock days, which is a more current view being calculated on the most recent 91-day cost of sales. I mentioned the gap between creditors and rolling stock days, which you can see on the far right-hand side of the chart between the dotted yellow creditors days line and the gray group day stock cover line. Despite the Medicare stock take on and Baby City inclusion, this remained at -3, which is the variance between the 87 creditors days and 84 rolling stock days. We're fairly comfortable at this level with some opportunity for further incremental improvements over time. The two green lines at the bottom of the chart show the split between store stock at 46 days and distribution center stock of 38 days for the lighter green line.
This reflects the strategic buying at year-end. Thanks a lot for your attention, and I'm now gonna hand over to Saul, who's gonna take you through the loyalty and e-commerce areas.
Thanks, Craig. As with the other metrics, both the loyalty and e-commerce segments of the business have achieved good growth. Our customer profiles and loyalty memberships have increased by 6%. Benefit member contribution is stable at 72% of sales, whilst loyalty partnership contribution to turnover has increased from 57% to 58.8% on average. The loyalty redemption rate has normalized after the easing of the COVID lockdown restrictions. This has increased from 87% to 101%, again reflecting the added value the customer receive from our benefit program. We have introduced our benefit program into our Baby City stores, offering the customer the enhanced benefits and partnerships of our loyalty program. This includes the contribution to the Dis-Chem Foundation, which benefits communities most in need.
We have successfully launched WhatsApp for business, offering our customers the following functionality, to register for a benefit card, update customer personal details, check benefit reward balance functionality, order repeat prescriptions, find the closest Dis-Chem or Baby City store, clinic information and FAQs. We have shown a steady growth on our app downloads, which is up by 61% in the last six months, mainly driven by chronic dispensing initiatives and the added app-based shopping, comprehensive advertising campaign, digital strategy and member statements. Our e-commerce continues to perform remarkably well with online growth up by a further 22% for the financial year, with good revenue trajectory despite the continued shift in consumer behavior as the post peak COVID consumer is frequenting the stores more regularly.
As we extend our decentralized fulfillment hub base from 23 hubs at FY 2021 to 74 at FY 2022 and now currently at 82 hubs that operate in conjunction with centralized delivery technology and route optimization software. We achieve better economies of scale, which have driven costs down as a percentage of revenue from 6.48% to 4.41%, adding efficiencies, increasing our online store revenue, reducing the delivery lead times, better customer satisfaction. The store remains profitable. Our order fulfillment percentage has remained steady at 99%. The split between delivery versus Click & Collect is 64 and 36% respectively. Our Dis-Chem DeliverD, the geolocated on-demand shopping app delivery that delivers within less than 60 minutes, is approaching our first anniversary for the service. Sales continue to grow and customer sentiment remains strong.
The service has been rolled out to 43 stores from previously 30 store locations and will now include in excess of 10,000 product line extensions, up from 7,000. We continue to pursue cutting-edge innovation through various fintech marketplace and super apps. I'm going to hand over back to Rui to take you through our primary care progress.
Thank you, Saul. I'm now gonna take us through our continued investment in primary healthcare. This slide is not too dissimilar to how we presented previously. On the left-hand side are certainly our ambitions around the value that we add to the patient. So we talk about patient centricity, and then each of the green circles around patient centricity talks to what some of the assets we've acquired that have now been rebranded expect to deliver. So from a network perspective, convenience and access in terms of quality of health outcomes, we talk to quality, we talk to wellness. The technology elements of our business deliver the tech that also drives down cost.
Ultimately, what we're trying to achieve is to integrate further into the healthcare delivery supply chain through some of the assets that we acquired, to ultimately develop quality healthcare at a lower price to our consumers. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that these are the brands that we effectively take to market on top of some of the acquisitions that we've made. Top left, Dis-Chem Health, which I'll expand on a little bit more, which is our insurance offering, in partnership with Kaelo, which obviously the medical insurer that we bought recently or that we bought an interest in recently.
Our Clinic Connect business is our nurse-led telemedicine business, which is powered by Healthforce, which is in a business that we continue to invest in from a tech and primary healthcare perspective. Our Pack My Meds offering, which is effectively Health Window driven, is the manner in which we manage and continue to drive adherence in chronic medication and in turn improve health outcomes of chronic patients. Obviously our wellness clinics and our mom and baby clinics, which have now been rolled out to not only be core to our Dis-Chem Pharmacies, but have also been rolled out to our Baby City. If we unpack in a little bit more detail each of these, we always talk about the Health Window and effect, and it continues to generate excellent returns.
What you see in front of you is effectively March to February 2022, so the financial year we're reporting on against the comparative period. From a Dis-Chem perspective, you're now seeing the chronic unit growth, so up 5.69% in chronic units, driven by multiple adherence services, driven by content campaigns, driven by health education awareness and the comparative pharmacies, which is a good proxy of the rest of the market. These comparative pharmacies include all pharmacies, both corporate and independent, whose chronic adherence services are managed by Health Window growing 2.13%. So effectively just over 2.5% lead over the market, which talks to our continued share gain. If you look at the 5.69% being broken down, you can see that natural growth contributes 4%. Obviously we're seeing.
The natural growth is obviously compounded by the increase in space that we continue to roll out. Then we see the importance of adherence-driven growth, which is essentially extending the number of chronic script that each of these individuals engage with, extending it by 1.65%. If we move on to the performance of our clinics, which as we've said become an enabler for lower cost of healthcare delivery. On the left-hand side, you can see that clinic utilization continues to improve. This is of paramount importance, especially since we're seeing a reduced number of vaccines. It just again proves that the market exists in terms of lower cost of care and the delivery of quality care in that environment.
You're seeing strong utilization of our clinics improving by almost 60% over 2021 and 2022. What we're also starting to see is the strong adoption of virtual doctor consultations. On the right-hand side you can see the significant increase in virtual doctor consultations. Again, I think this is important as we think about our ambitions of reducing the cost of care and delivering quality outcomes, especially as we start to see this being a network, an important network with respect to our health insurance products. This is all enabled by the continuous investments that we make in health tech and our clinical offering, which is centered around Healthforce, as I spoke about previously.
Importantly, as I described earlier, we continue to invest and we do have mom and baby clinics operational across the Baby City store network. That service element we think is of paramount importance, and we do see and have always seen that as a synergy to growing the Baby City or the Dis-Chem Baby City business, as we move forward. As Ivan mentioned, we've recently launched health insurance. What you can see on the slide in front of you is essentially our two products in the market today. We launched Dis-Chem branded medical insurance in March 2022. You can see that on the right-hand side. We recently launched our gap cover product at the beginning of this month.
We will continue to evolve our offering and we will continue to launch products in what we see is the health opportunity in the insurance space. What is important to us and what has been good to see is the uptake exceeding our expectations. That is incredibly important considering that it's supportive of the view that the market opportunity exists. As we've previously said, the way that we've seen it is to put what we think is our very strong brand on the back of best-in-class assets. As a result of that, very core to that is our strong strategic partnership with Kaelo, who are the medical insurer that are facilitating these products.
If we move to slide 28, just an update on the vaccination program. What you can see in the graph is total doses we've delivered to date, just north of 1.6 million doses. Essentially 53% of that being delivered to the uninsured, so people that are reliant on the state. Since the seventeenth of May, when the vaccination program was launched, up until the end of financial year 2022, you can see that the contribution of doses was predominantly from mass sites, which talks to the like-for-like point I made earlier. As you look at it post year-end, you can see the evolution of those mass sites to in-store clinics.
Currently, we have 95 in-store clinics, which have delivered 178,000 doses post year-end, and you can see the contribution of mass sites reducing. That's purely to ensure that we continue to drive the efficiencies and obviously cater the landscape to what we think and what we see are reducing volumes. We do anticipate or certainly as we forecasted, we do anticipate that the expected run of vaccines will be at approximately 25% of our financial 2022 monthly average. So still a revenue stream for ourself, still marginally profitable as it was previously. We've had to adapt and change to in-store clinics, you know, from mass sites.
We still contribute to the vaccination program, and we still will continue to do that, as we are a big contributor to the private sector vaccination program. If we move to slide 29, we've obviously, as Ivan said, this has been a year of integration, off the back of acquisitions. The financial year to date is obviously reflective of Medicare's contribution to our business for 3 months. If you recall, when we looked at the Medicare transaction, we were very interested in the pharmacy market share that the group had. We believe that synergistically we could add front shop growth, and a front shop offering to that base. We had half foot traffic that we believe we could increase basket of.
Essentially what this graph shows is the Dis-Chem brand effect on some of the rebranded Medicare stores. We, as Ivan said, are halfway through the rebranding exercise. For the purpose of this graph and just from a timing perspective, these are the first three Medicare stores that have been rebranded. What it shows us is that on the left-hand side as an index, we can see the dispensary and front shop being 100%. After the rebrand, you see a total improvement in the turnover number of 34%. 22% of that coming from the dispensary, which is very positive. The reason for that is simply our better dispensary pricing.
Obviously compared to independents and as a function of our contractual arrangements with schemes, we're well priced from a consumer perspective, so able to extend their benefits. It also talks to the collaborative network that we have, so the ability to shop a script in multiple Dis-Chem dispensaries. From a dispensary perspective, growth of 22% on a very concentrated independent pharmacy growth is really positive. Then front shop, well, obviously, as expected, we're seeing 67% index growth on the front shop categories. That is really the normalization and where we really see the effect of the brand playing into the store. The contribution beforehand, the 72%, 28%, we are really starting to see that move towards the 66%, 34%.
As we envision that moving closer in these slightly smaller Dis-Chem branded spaces to 50/50. On the bottom of the graph is just a waterfall diagram showing how we're managing the Medicare rebranding process. We acquired 50 stores, we've closed 2. We will close an additional 4. The reason for closure is just in some markets, there were over-indexed number of stores. We're closing certain stores and ensuring that the Dis-Chem brand penetrates that market with bigger spaces in less locations. That the same can be said about the stores that we're selling. Either we're selling the store as a function of having high contribution or high density of pharmacy scripts in that area, or because we also intend to consolidate the space.
In summary, closing to close six stores, selling to sold six stores, and we will go through the rebranding profile which should, in theory, generate the returns that we've explained above with 38 Medicare stores. These should all be delivered in the FY 2023 year. I'm now gonna hand over to Christopher, who will take us through the wholesale trading performance.
Good morning. Goeie more. Loluchane. Molweni. Thobela. Dumela. Matshalonyane a bohi. Abusheni. Sawubona. Ngibonga kunkulu. Ngithoba lokwethula. Ngikabanga ukuthi kuyisethi enhle yemiphumela. As you have heard and you will now see more detail of, the wholesale division once again had a very successful and blessed trading period in FY 2022. I truly believe that these results are a culmination of concerted efforts which were well executed by a very capable operational and financial team. The continuous improvement team keeps driving efficiency improvements. We have once again experienced the impacts of focusing on the 1% improvement principle. This process clearly resulted in exponential gains from an operational perspective, which in turn filtered through to our improved financial results. If we now turn to slide 31 looking at the diagram, we can see that external wholesale revenue grew by 23.1%.
Internalized sales of ZAR 93 million were taken out of the base to account for the Medicare sales in the prior year. We also took out once-off back-to-business COVID-19 sales to the value of ZAR 59 million from the base. The number of TLC franchise stores has increased from 122 to 147 in the 2022 financial year. The TLC customer group revenue grew by 25.2%, which once again proves the feasibility and success of the business model. The independent customer group grew revenue by 21.6%, which can be attributed to our sustained focus on maintaining and improving service levels and our increased customer footprint. We now turn to slide 32. This graph seeks to compare total revenue growth to total expense growth.
It can be seen that revenue has grown by 13.7% compared to the same period last year. Total expenses only grew by 8.3% over the same period, despite the growth we have seen in revenue and output. This was achieved by a sustained focus on efficiencies, which I'll touch on later. Computer expenses reduced by 13.2% due to moving our EWM, which is our warehouse software management system, hosting to the cloud and renegotiating how we view user and maintenance licenses. Rent and municipal charges reduced by 15.5% due to a municipal electricity back billing in the prior year. Payroll expense growth was well controlled at 4.5% due to increased efficiencies and a continual focus on shift management. Depreciation increased by only 3.5%, and this is due to contained capital expenditure.
Courier expense, which has gone up 40.6%, was influenced by the following main drivers, the increased number of Baby City and Medicare delivery points and volume, an increase in numbers of pallets distributed, increased number of third-party routes, and obviously sadly, the increase in fuel price. If we now turn to slide 33. The graph on the right shows our pallet growth. The number of pallets we distributed increased by 15.6%. The graph on the left shows our unit growth. Units grew by 7.6% versus the comparative period last year. Pallet growth is higher than unit growth, mainly due to a change in product mix driven by Baby City.
When we compare the increased volume output depicted in the 15.6% pallet growth to the expense growth of only 8.3%, it confirms the impact that the efficiency gains have had, which I'll show on the next slide. If we now turn to slide 34. The block on the right shows an increase of 17.8% in warehouse activity efficiency, therefore increasing our output of units per shift. The graph highlights two areas where we were able to improve on. We achieved a 10.1% reduction in order queue time. This is the time it takes from receiving an order until we start processing it. Our order to outbound time decreased by 1.7%. This is the actual time it takes to pick, pack, and check an order. Outbound to staging time increased by 2.3%.
This is the time it takes to palletize stock and prepare to load it. This led to a total time efficiency gain of 9.5%. This time gain contributed to the fact that revenue grew by 13.7% with only 8.3% expense growth. We continue driving visibility across the supply chain through data analytics. The group has increased the number of suppliers being replenished via F&R as mentioned. This serves as a tool to not only optimize, but also predict demand curves on the DCs, both from a store orders perspective and a supply into DC replenishment perspective. This balance is critical in the DC resource planning process. The introduction of robotic process automation continues to show the benefits of automating mundane tasks to contribute to total efficiency.
Some of the gains we've seen in the total efficiency increase can be attributed to the consistency that automation brought to some of our time and resource dependent processes in our warehouse operations. If we now turn to slide 35. As mentioned before, we adopted the image of a tree as a symbol of what we strive to achieve in our long-term strategy in The Local Choice. The more you take care of the basics, being the roots, the better the results. The roots depicts our input from a franchisor point of view, and the fruits are the results we achieve from these inputs. As can be seen, the group's retail revenue has increased to ZAR 2.84 billion for the twelve months of FY 2022. The TLC customer revenue growth is partly driven by front shop support and ranging that we as a supply chain offers them.
This can be seen in the bigger front shop versus dispensary representation when compared to normal independent pharmacies. The same opportunity presents itself in the Medicare stores which we acquired. I will now hand back to Ivan for the outlook.
Thank you, Christopher. Our commitment to the COVID vaccine program continues as we recognize the crucial role Dis-Chem plays in promoting access to the vaccine. Our entrenched everyday low price strategy has never been more important given the mounting pressure our consumers are facing. While good progress has been made on transactional growth margin, we still see further opportunities for inventory improvement. As of now, for financial year 2023, we have secured 16 new Dis-Chem pharmacies and seven new Baby City sites. The group remains focused on adding additional space. Medicare rebranding is underway and will be completed during the course of the 2023 financial year. The management consortium transaction is in the process of finalization, ensuring executive team succession. Wholesale growth will continue to be driven by increased support from TLC franchisees and independent pharmacies.
Following the successful launch of our Dis-Chem health insurance products, the focus turns to accelerating our efforts to grow penetration in this market. Across the group, innovation is being driven through targeted investment in technology. We are committed to ensuring that the acquired assets generate the required returns in the medium term and realize value for shareholders. Thank you for listening.