Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A great welcome to all of you, and thank you very much for joining us, giving us the opportunity to present our 2025 full-year financial results. I will give you a bit of an overview very quickly about the group numbers, and then Anton will unpack for us in detail the financials. I'll end off again with a little bit of an operational overview of what you can expect us to be busy with in the medium term. 2025, for me, is really a standout financial performance year. Absolutely outstanding, and I'm in great debt to Team Shoprite for once again delivering an excellent set of results. The group sales have grown by 8.9% to ZAR 252 billion. First time that we've crossed the ZAR 250 billion. The gross margin has improved by 40 bps to 24.3%.
I have to mention that that was achieved, still staying the most affordable supermarket chain in South Africa. A few years ago, I did mention that if one does not invest in the appropriate tools to do price optimization, personalization, you will find it very hard and very complicated in time to come to achieve and maintain gross margin. I'm very happy to see that our investment is giving us a return, and hence the increase in the gross profit margin. The trading profit up 16.6% to ZAR 15 billion. I think to have double-digit trading profit growth is a remarkable result. In this case, 16.6%, I think, testimony to an excellent year of execution and a business that has run at full cylinders all the time. The supermarket RSI trading margin increased to 6.5%.
For a food retailer to run a trading margin in excess of 6% just shows a lot of efficiencies in the business in order to achieve that. Something which we are very proud of. As a shareholder, me, and also all the other shareholders around me, hopefully as pleased as me with a 26.7% return on equity and a diluted headline earnings per share growth of 15.8% for the financial year. This summarizes the performance of the group. There are different sections of the business that obviously do better, and we have different brands, as you know, and we've done that so that we can hedge ourselves in different times of economic climates. It's another year where you almost feel like it can't be, but it's now six years continuously that the Shoprite Group has grown market share.
This year, again, we've added another ZAR 8 billion of market share to the RSI supermarkets business. This on top of a very persistent low food inflation of 2.3%. You will remember the guidance I gave last time. We were thinking around 5%. I will talk about it later also, but a month ago, we had as many as 13,300 items in one month where the price was lower this year than last year. I always tell this because people think prices never come down. They always say prices just go up, but prices do come down. There's an example of it. Obviously, in low inflation, we are so much more dependent on volume growth, and so are our manufacturers and producers that volume is almost the only driver left to keep costs under control.
I'm very happy to say that we have managed to still grow volume this year, around about 4.8%. We have completed the rollout of the point-of-sale system across the South African business. There was, of course, a bit of fiscal challenges in the non-RSI businesses, so we will be done by the end of February. The group has opened 281 stores. We're talking about roughly about five stores a week. To do a merger and acquisition in South Africa is not the simplest of things to get done. It's now over a year that we are waiting for approval to conclude the sale of our furniture business to Quebecor. With that in mind, and also the enormous amount of data that we have indicating to us consumer trends, we've also decided to do greenfield businesses where it makes sense for us, where it complements actually our overall supermarket businesses.
Yes, we are opening a lot of stores, but it's intentional. It's not coincidental. There are lots of opportunities out there. We have designed an omnichannel business that picks from store. For us to have a footprint, a wide footprint, just enhances what our business model has been designed to do to support that. We've also invested in our supply chain. You know that over the last two years that we've opened two distribution centers, extended one, and I mean, even me, I was totally surprised that in year one of Riverfields in Johannesburg, that their efficiency actually surpassed that of our older DC in Centurion. That's why I think Shoprite sits with probably one of the best supply chains in the world, inclusive of its cold chain. We will continue to focus on our adjacencies and our supermarkets.
The core of all that we do is still centered around our core supermarkets, but we now have this opportunity with all these adjacency businesses. If you just think the opportunity that that still brings in terms of putting all of that online for customer convenience, and I'm talking pharmacy, pet, outdoor, there is so much still for us to build on this platform because the regional 60/60 as it started is not just a piece of software where we pay dollar license fees. It is a platform designed internally to serve the entire business, not only a subsection of the business. The potential of adding to it is incredible. We've seen that by adding general merchandise already. We've got 35 pet stores on there. We've seen how customers really have taken onto that as a form of convenience.
It is, for me, so clear the big opportunity that we still have to get to. That is what we will be focusing on in the medium term. The big thing for Shoprite, for me, for us that are here on the inside, we believe we have a purpose. Our purpose is to uplift lives every day. It shows in the actions that we take. We don't just talk about it. It's how we live. I don't know of any other South African business that created 8,700 direct employment jobs. We're so proud about this number that we have never retrenched any people. We build the business. We grow the business so that we can give more people opportunities. I am very proud to say that our employee trust has been able to disperse over ZAR 1 billion to our people since we started.
I do not think there are many businesses that can say that they've done that. I'm not talking about bonuses and salaries and that. It's like a dividend to a shareholder. We're very proud of it. On training the unemployed youth, because where are they going to get some experience? If you look at any job application, the second line is saying three years relevant experience. Now, where are they supposed to get it if there are no jobs out there? It is for this reason that we specifically give the youth of South Africa the training and the experience that they need to get employment. We're by far the number one supporter of South African farmers, and it's logical because of our size. We have very specific planting programs with them.
I rate South African farmers probably as one of the best farmers in the world because they farm in conditions that are actually not conducive for what they produce. Not only do we look after our commercial farmers, we have in the past year procured over ZAR 1.4 billion from our SMME producers, which we've helped to start up and start farming and producing. Another thing of note is 91% of our private label products are locally produced. We try and do our part to assist the African economy to grow. A very proud moment to say that the SMMEs that we have embraced have had a fantastic year. Their revenue grew over 120%. We do a lot of social things. We've got 280-odd community farms. We support them. 7.2% of our electricity is renewable. We have almost 73,000 tons of plastic and cardboard that we recycled this year.
There are lots of things that we carry on doing to support our communities. Those are all the things that we think of because we understand the living conditions of our consumers. We try and stay as close as possible to them as we possibly can. Affordability, fighting hunger. I told you earlier, we have a purpose. For us, that is our affordability obsession. Since 2016, we've been selling a loaf of bread for ZAR 5. By now, we have over ZAR 55 meal solutions. We've sold almost 10 million of those meal solutions to people. Obviously, we subsidize this, but this is the heart of Shoprite. Not only do we give best prices, we go to the extra to make sure that we find a way to make it more affordable and really improve people's lives.
A couple of years ago, I mentioned to you that we're going to embark on a multi-year investment to create a platform to deliver consistent growth. Shoprite is not a flash in the pan. It's not a one-year event. We don't give you three-year strategies and plans, and then never deliver on it. We rather do things and then tell you about it. Like I always tell the team, a business that does well can do better. Here is just a quick illustration of the last five years. I think if you look at those total numbers, irrespective of who you are, they are meaningful. We added almost ZAR 100 billion in revenue. Of that, ZAR 23 billion was actually market share gains. In that, I must compliment the team. It meant they outran the competitors.
As part of the multi-year platform investment, it was a very deliberate investment to also introduce alternative revenue streams, which have now become meaningful and come at high margin. For our shareholders, a lot of companies have not been able to, right through COVID and all these years, have been able to continue to pay dividends. Shoprite has paid over ZAR 2.2 billion in dividends additional over the last five years. We've added almost 700 stores to our network. I mean, how happy can a retailer be if I can stand here and say we had additional ZAR 200 million of customer visits over the last five years? It means customers have voted, not us. They have voted, and they've got choices. Just before I hand you over to Anton, I just wanted to share this milestone that on the 25th of July, we have delivered our 100 millionth order on 60/60.
We are very proud about what this business has achieved over the last five years, which we will unpack later. For now, I'm going to hand you over to our very fine, I think, finest CFO in the country, Anton de Bruyn.
Thank you, Pieter, for that introduction. Our 2025 financial performance reflects the successful execution of our multi-year investment strategy. We have consistently communicated our approach to capital allocation. Before presenting the detailed financial figures, I would like to explain certain factors that have influenced our current year results in alignment with our overarching strategy. Here I'm referencing the acquisition of the remaining 50% in the shareholding of Pingo Delivery operations. Just to refresh you, Pingo Delivery is our last-mile logistics provider that's servicing our 60/60 business. I will also talk about the discontinued operations to give more color. We did communicate the sale of the furniture business to Quebecor. Important to note that excluded the Angola and Mozambique operations. During the second half, we closed our furniture business in Mozambique, and we've identified a buyer for our operations in Angola.
We've also taken a decision to exit Ghana and the Malawi operations. Maybe just a refresher in terms of the accounting for restatements. From an income statement point of view, we had to restate the 2024 financial results to take into account the changes that we've seen in terms of the discontinued operations during the first half and the second half. From a balance sheet point of view, we showed in the current year the assets held for sale and liabilities for sale in the current year with no restatement of the prior year. From a cash flow point of view, it deals with the total operation, including the continued operations as well as the discontinued operations.
If we then go into the detail around the acquisition and the impact it had on our financial results, already during the first half, we showed the alternative revenue delivery income as well as the subscription income as part of our sales, where we previously had to show that as part of our alternative revenue. From an operating expenses point of view, the total delivery cost relating to the 60/60 operations was historically shown as part of expenses, but now we show that as part of cost of sales. The third factor that we have to take into account is previously, because we only had 50% share in the business, we showed that also as part of alternative revenue, but it formed part of our sharing profits from associates. Going forward, because we own 100%, we consolidate on a line-by-line basis.
I will reference during the presentation because it did distort our total income ratio as well as our expense ratios and margins during the year. If we then go into the detail around the discontinued operations from the furniture business, first half relating to the sale of assets to Quebecor, but then in the second half, we also had to account for the impact of the Mozambique and Angola discontinued operations. What does that mean from an income statement point of view? The furniture business had a very profitable 2025 financial year where we saw an increase of ZAR 217 million to ZAR 328 million, and you will see that coming through our discontinued operations line in the income statement. From a balance sheet point of view, as we said in the first half, we expect to realize ZAR 2.4 billion as proceeds from this transaction.
The timing of the transaction and when we aim to conclude on especially the South African part of the business is up to the Competition Commission to give us that final approval. With the focus on reallocating capital to our core South African operations, the decision was also taken to exit our Ghana and Malawi operations. As part of our discontinued operations line in the income statement, we reflected a loss of ZAR 101 million in the current year. Assets and liabilities held for sale as per the detail. We do expect to conclude on these two transactions within the first half of the 2026 financial year. The aforementioned transactions have resulted in the restatement of the prior year diluted headline earnings per share from continued operations. Initially, we reported DHEPS of ZAR 12.45.
After the first restatement in December relating to the furniture transaction, we then reported a DHEPS number of ZAR 12.08. Then post our sale of businesses within our Ghana and Malawi, as well as Angola and Mozambique, we now posted a restated DHEPS of ZAR 11.18. The current year DHEPS is ZAR 13.67, and if you look at the growth, there is around 15.8%. To make it more comparable, if we had to include the proceeds from the furniture transaction, the DHEPS number from continued operations would be close to ZAR 14 per share. Now, if you compare that to the ZAR 12.45, we would have seen an increase of around 12.3% for the year if you compare like-for-like. Now that we have a clear understanding of what's influencing our results, let's delve into the detail. Our sales increased by 8.9% to ZAR 252.7 billion. Total income was ZAR 65.7 billion.
Very pleasing, our total income margin is at that 26% level. Total expenses increased by 7.4% to ZAR 50.7 billion with an expense ratio or expense margin of 20.1%. In trading profit, very strong performance of an increase of 16.6% to ZAR 15 billion. We saw an increase of around 40 basis points in terms of the trading margin. EBITDA, reflecting our strong cash flows within the business, increased by 18.8% to ZAR 23.8 billion. The diluted headline earnings per share (DHEPS) that I referenced to in the previous slide, we saw that increase of 15.8% with return on equity now at 26.7%. Adjusted return on invested capital, very strong 19.4% against a WACC rate of 13.5%. Maybe just a reminder on what we classify as adjusted ROIC, and there is a detailed calculation in the supplementary documents as part of this presentation.
We've included the old IAS 17 leases, and we've excluded the impact of IFRS 16 on trading profit to get to the adjusted return on invested capital. Final dividend increased by 11.5% to ZAR 4.96, and then a full-year dividend of 9.7% to ZAR 7.81. If we unpack sales in more detail, we saw growth of 8.9% to ZAR 252.7 billion. Important to note with regards to the Pingo Delivery transaction and what we talked about previously is that as part of the current year result, we've included nine months of subscription income as well as delivery income as part of the Supermarkets RSA segment where we saw an increase of 9.5% to ZAR 214 billion. On a like-for-like basis, the increase was 4.8% and internal food inflation was around 2.3%. If we go into the various banners, Shoprite and Usave increased sales by 5.9% to ZAR 116 billion.
Checkers and Checkers Hyper, very strong performance where we saw a growth of 13.8% to ZAR 95.7 billion. Adjacent businesses also had very good performance during the year with growth of 39.1% to around ZAR 1.1 billion, giving rise to that 9.5% in sales growth. Supermarkets Non-RSA had growth of 6.4% to ZAR 20.5 billion. On a constant currency basis, we had a sales increase of around 14.2% on a like-for-like basis of 3.9%. Internal food inflation within the various regions was 9.6%, and we opened 14 stores during the financial year. Total other operating segments increased sales by 5.2% to ZAR 18.6 billion, with the franchise business driving the growth there with a growth of 6.7%. Franchise now trades from 615 stores, and we plan to open another 79 stores during the next financial year. Looking at our store expansion program, during the financial year, we added 5.9% in space growth.
We opened a net 255 stores, and we plan to open a net 223 stores in the new financial year. We look at the banners and where we saw most of the growth within the Shoprite and the USAF banners. With the liquor shops, we saw 120 stores opening, and within Checkers, we saw 64 stores opening. Really looking at the liquor business, we added 80 stores during the current financial year. If we look at the growth for next year, USAF is showing some nice growth where we're going to plan to open another 49 stores. If I really look at the liquor business again, already 71 new committed stores. Our adjacent businesses, we saw some nice growth with the opening of 71 stores, with the pet shops opening 58 stores, driving a lot of that growth.
If we then turn to our total income margin and our achievements there, during the year, we saw a 9.4% growth to ZAR 65.7 billion with a 10 basis points improvement from 25.9% to 26%. Gross margin was the main driver where we saw an increase of 10.6% against a sales growth of 8.9% to that ZAR 61.4 billion. We've also shown an increase of 40 basis points in the margin, taking us to that 24.3%. The gross margin improvement was across the business. It was not just only in RSA supermarkets. When I present the trading profit, you will also see that within the non-RSA segment, we saw some positive moves as well as in the other segments of the business. The expansion within the supply chain also supported our margin expansion during the financial year.
From the graph, it is evident in terms of our performance during the first half versus the second half in gross margin. We can see that the second half performance is better than the first half, and that is purely as a result of the highly promotional activity from October and November leading us into the festive season. I think what is also very pleasing is to see the trend line in terms of if we really go and look at the gross margin profitability in 2022 compared to the 2025 financial year, we've seen a consistent 12.3% compounded annual growth over these past few years. If I look at the gross margin percentage year on year, we're around that 24.3% ratio. Very consistent from that point of view. Interest revenue decreased by 30.4% to ZAR 218 million.
Included in the base is the interest received from our resilient partnership for the three properties we had in Nigeria. You will recall that at the end of June of last year, we acquired the shares in those legal entities, and we did not receive the same interest revenue in the current year. We will, however, in the next slide, see that we did receive the lease income from those three sites, which basically made up for the reduction in the interest revenue. Our share of profits from our various investments consists of the retail logistics fund as well as Pingo. In the base, we now have our 50% share relating to Pingo as well as the retail logistics fund where we currently own and house currently our distribution centers that we operate from.
In the current year, the majority of the ZAR 250 million relates to the retail logistics fund, and we've included three months relating to the Pingo transaction. As mentioned in the initial comments, we now consolidate Pingo on a line-for-line basis, which meant that we didn't have to account again for it as part of the sharing profits. If we then go to our various alternative revenue streams, where we saw a 13.9% from the core that we will report on going forward, that was mainly driven by commissions received of 7.5% to around ZAR 1.3 billion, and that's through our money markets in our various stores. Marketing and media revenue, that's mainly our Rainmaker business, had another strong performance where we saw growth from 36.8% to ZAR 647 million for the year. The lease income that I just spoke about, where we saw a 31% increase to ZAR 596 million.
We still have more than 100 properties within our property portfolio that we fully own. Franchise fees received increased by 4.9% to ZAR 192 million on the back of that 6.7% sales growth. Sundry revenue increased by 3.3% to ZAR 942 million, mainly on the back of the REX Insights platform, our data insights tool, where we've seen very good growth together with dividends received on our unlisted investments. Why I've split out the delivery recoveries and subscription incomes to the core is to give you the impact of what we've disclosed as part of the Pingo transaction. In the base is included our delivery recoveries and subscription income. As mentioned before, we've included the delivery income and subscription income for three months during the current year. The majority of that is now shown as part of our sales number.
If we then turn to expenses, we saw an increase of 7.4% to ZAR 50.7 billion. We saw a reduction in our expense margin from 20.3% to 20.1%. Again, one has to take into account the impact of the reclassification in terms of the acknowledging of the Pingo Delivery transaction. In the base year, we've included ZAR 1.46 billion of delivery costs, and in the current year, the majority of those costs forms part of cost of sales. Depreciation and amortization increased by 17% to ZAR 8 billion on the back of the 255 new store openings, as well as the 488 lease renewals during the financial year. Additional to that was the two distribution centers, both in Riverfields as well as Wells Estate, that were added during the current year.
Employee benefits increased by 10.8% to ZAR 20.2 billion, better than the prior year growth of 13%, but that growth was still fueled as a result of our store opening program. We are very proud that we've, again, this year been able to invest more than ZAR 1 billion in training for our staff. Other operating expenses saw growth of 1.6% to ZAR 22.4 billion. Some of the major items included in there are electricity and water, where we saw an increase of 9.3%. That is against a NERSA increase in South Africa of 12.7%. What is pleasing for us is that we saw electricity and water as a percentage of sales reducing to 2.1%, still 10 basis points above our historical rate of around 2% of sales.
Diesel costs during the financial year, however, reduced from ZAR 810 million to ZAR 335 million, of which the majority of that was actually a cost that we incurred in Zambia, where we had certain droughts that led to additional load shedding within that region. Advertising costs increased by 6.4% to ZAR 4.1 billion, and if we look at our repairs and maintenance costs, we had a pleasing reduction in cost by 7.8% on the back of two reasons. It's the refurbishments that we've consistently been doing, as well as the decrease in load shedding that we've seen during the last financial year. Security costs increased 11.9%, but it's still within that 1% to sales ratio that we've had historically. It's pleasing to report that we saw a decrease in our insurance costs during the 2025 financial year, and I expect to see similar trends within the 2026 financial year.
We're very proud to report the growth in terms of our trading profit in our various segments, where we saw a 16.6% increase to ZAR 14.9 billion. We also very pleasingly saw an improvement in our trading margin from 5.5% to 5.9%. The majority of that growth was within our Supermarkets RSA segment, where we saw a growth of 15.5% to ZAR 13.9 billion, supported by a 30 basis points improvement in trading margin and mainly driven by that improvement in our gross margin that we've seen there as well. Supermarkets Non-RSA, improvement by 43.4% to ZAR 644 million, improvement in our trading margin of 80 basis points within that segment. Other operating segments increased by 32.3% to ZAR 652 million. For reference, again, to the graph, we spoke about the consistency and predictability within our business when we spoke about the gross margin.
The same trends are visible within our trading profit, where we compare H1 to H2. For the last two years, you can see as well, very consistent in terms of how we report between the two halves. We then turn to finance costs, increase of 30.9% to ZAR 4.8 billion. We have consistently, over the last three years, seen an increase of 16% and then 12%, and in the current year, 20.7%. That was mainly driven by the increase in our lease liabilities, where we saw a 12.5%, 13.8%, and 16.2%. If we unpack and try and understand the growth within that, it is our strong store opening program, as well as our lease renewals in each of those various years. For the last two financial years, we also added our extension within Caylens, and in the current year, the additional Riverfields and Wells Estate distribution center.
Important to note is the comment I made there, the difference between what we account for IFRS 16 lease costs, and here I referred to the depreciation and finance costs relating to the leases, was ZAR 1.4 billion more than the cash flows related to these leases, which meant that we had a 13% negative impact in our profit before tax. From a borrowings point of view, we also saw an increase in our finance costs there, but that purely related to the financing of our working capital increases during the financial year relating to our inventory build within those two distribution centers. If we then align our capital allocation model to the cash generated within the business, our core cash generated within the business net of tax was ZAR 22.5 billion. We then look at how we've spent the cash between the various capitals.
First was our debt and financing, mainly relating to the IFRS 16 leases of ZAR 8.1 billion, our growth and maintaining CapEx of ZAR 8 billion, and then our shareholder returns, where we've paid dividends of ZAR 4 billion during the year and acquired treasury shares of ZAR 1.4 billion. Working capital, we saw a net movement of ZAR 2.3 billion, mainly driven by our investment in inventory as a result of our expansion in our supply chain. From a strategic investment point of view, we paid ZAR 472 million for the additional 50% share in Pingo, but we also realized and we received proceeds from our sale of government bonds within our Angolan operations, which led to a net inflow of ZAR 600 million. That gave rise to a net outflow of ZAR 700 million for the year, with cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year at ZAR 9.3 billion.
I do expect to see an improved cash flow performance during the 2026 financial year relating to the sale of the various businesses, as well as the proceeds from the furniture transaction that is expected to happen in the 2026 financial year. Growth and maintaining CapEx increased from ZAR 7.7 billion to ZAR 8 billion, but we did see an improvement in CapEx as a percentage of sales from 3.3% to 3.2%. If I break it down between growth and maintaining CapEx, 79% of our CapEx is to grow our business and expand our business. That was mainly underscored by the new store and upgrades where we spent ZAR 4.8 billion. Information technology, another ZAR 1.3 billion. That was mainly driven by our rollout of our point-of-sale system that occurred during the year and additional investments behind our 60/60 platform business, additional personalization developments, as well as the investment in our REX Insights platform.
From a maintaining CapEx point of view, we spent ZAR 1.4 billion of refurbs within our store portfolio. Inventory increased by 4.9% to ZAR 29.7 billion. I would like to highlight the impact of discontinued operations on these numbers. In the current year, we show ZAR 1.7 billion as assets held for sale, but within the 2024 number, the ZAR 2.1 billion is part of our inventory number. If we therefore had to include the current year ZAR 1.7 billion as part of the ZAR 29.7 billion, we would have seen a moderated growth in inventory of 10.9%. The majority of the increase in our inventory levels relates to our Supermarkets RSA segment, where we saw an increase of ZAR 2.7 billion. That represents an increase of inventory to sales from 11.8%- 12.1%.
Pleasingly, if we look at our inventory to sales ratio within our stores, it's still at that 8% level, which is testimony to the current stock levels, as well as that it is sellable stock and that we do not sit with dead stock within our store portfolios. Supermarkets non-RSA, we also saw a slight increase relating to the total continued operations. We saw that increase of 11.3%- 11.8%. If we then look forward towards 2026 and what we can expect, from an internal food price inflation point of view, July, we saw a reduction from 3% in the prior year to 1.8% in the current year. Our store opening program is still very healthy with 223 new supermarkets planned for the financial year and 79 franchise stores. We get asked a lot by people how they should think about our total income margin and expense margin.
We are aiming to maintain our income margin at 26%, and we are aiming to improve our expense margin to a 20% range that will give us a 6% trading margin. Some of the cost drivers that we will see increasing during the year are our staff costs to basically support that growth within our new stores and operations. I do expect to see another year of double-digit growth, especially in the first half compared to the second half as a result of the bringing on stream of the two distribution centers during the first half. Our effective tax rate, we aim to keep between 27% and 28%. From a non-RSA point of view, we aim to conclude on the transactions within Ghana and Malawi, as well as the furniture transaction in Angola. In terms of inventory, we'll remain in line with the 2025 financial year.
If we turn to our capital allocation model, just a reminder in terms of what our dividend cover is, we currently have a 1.75 times DHEPS from continued operations, and I do not foresee any change within that. I mentioned earlier that I do not foresee an increase in borrowings as a result of the proceeds that we will receive from the furniture transaction. Our current borrowings to equity ratio is 23%. From a CapEx point of view, we estimate to spend ZAR 7.9 billion with the majority again to grow the business on the back of that healthy store opening program, but we are targeting a below 3% CapEx to sales ratio. Pieter, that then concludes the financial section of the presentation, and we're looking forward to hearing from you around the strategy within the company. Thank you very much.
I will be taking you over now to a little bit of operational overview. On this in particular, I just want to remind everybody that remember, it's a package deal. Shoprite comes as a package, as one listed entity, but that is also why we can stand here and why we can deliver on this. Just before I now go and unpack more of the Shoprite business and give you more color, just a reminder quickly, the salient points as we start in the beginning: revenue growth 8.9%, gross profit growth of 10.6%, trading profit growth of 16.6%. The ZAR 252 billion in revenue, yes, it's a number. I don't think I can count that far, but the essence for me is the fact that the Shoprite Group had to add ZAR 20 billion of additional revenue in the past year to achieve a 8.9% sales growth.
I know a lot of you like to strip out percentages and compare pieces or selective parts of the business with other peers, but that is not how Shoprite is put together. Shoprite is the sum of the parts, and that gives us many levers to pull and end with this picture that we have today and a trading margin of 5.9% for the group. I did say earlier that the South African supermarket has got a 6.5% trading margin, but in the end, we have to look at this collectively. What this has given us and what we've built over the years is the multiple levers that we can pull in different economic conditions to continue to grow and keep on being a business of growth. Like most things, and definitely in business, it's a balancing act.
In this case, if we look at this slide that we've separated here, the consumer on the one hand and our shareholders on the other hand, if I just focus on the consumer side, and I always say we in the people business, that's what we do. Our people, the customer, our people, our own people, and then our people, our investors. If there's one thing that pleases a retailer the most, it's if you can grow your customer base. If more people elect to visit your stores, and we have been very blessed that in this year, we've grown our customer visits by 4.6%. Overall, 1.2 billion customer visits. The volumes I mentioned earlier, one of the very few retailers in South Africa that's been able to grow volume, 4.8%.
If one put those two together, you're growing customers, you're growing volume, you are the cheapest, and you manage to increase your gross profit margin, then there are a lot of momentum in the business overall. The end result of that is that we've gained market share to the value of ZAR 8 billion in the last year alone. I repeat that we've been gaining market share consecutively for now for over six years. If we look on the shareholder side, what does it mean for them? A 15.8% diluted headline earnings per share, I think in today's terms, that is a very healthy number. I'm very proud of that, that we could achieve that and give our shareholders that kind of return. The increase in the return on invested capital, I'm very happy that we could achieve that last year around 16%, now up to 19.4%. I'm very pleased.
As I mentioned earlier, we're opening a lot of stores, and you can think, are they giving the necessary returns? If you look at the return on invested capital, surely then we have to tick that number that it does give us the necessary returns. I want to remind you that we do not think online physical Shoprite is a truly omnichannel. For us, it's a one distribution model. That's how we also look at how we do our investments. Pleasingly, we could pay a dividend again as ZAR 7.81 for the year. Hopefully, with that and the return on equity of 27% for our shareholders, it will be a pleasing result for them. I have now already mentioned the RSA supermarket growth in relation to the total group growth of 8.9%.
The South African supermarkets have grown 9.5% with a like-for-like growth of 4.8% at a very, very low inflation of 2.3%. Retailers generally depend a little bit on inflation for their growth. In this case, as I mentioned earlier, we've been lucky enough to grow our volume to make up for a very low inflation. The thing that I really want to point out here is probably the graph. For five years now, Shoprite Group has outgrown the market. This year, by the largest margin, 2.8 times, which is very commendable. I can only once again thank Team Shoprite for that. If we look at the inflation, six-year low, and then why this is important, we have to show you this. Again, people looking at percentages, they say, oh, you had double-digit sales growth a year or what ago, but inflation was 13%.
Of course, then you will grow 20s or plus. We dipped as low as 1.9% at some point in time, and for the year, 2.3%. Obviously, the percentages of sales growth or revenue growth will be affected by that. I did mention that our promotional sales have increased, and the volumes of promotional I said around 10% is actually 6.9%. The highlight for me for this lower inflation sits probably in the improved gross margin. It's now the second time in this presentation that I'm mentioning that if you did not invest in the tools to assist you in terms of pricing and margin management, you will be at a disadvantage. I'm very happy and pleased to say that we have made those investments early enough so that they're now starting to give us good results.
We like to show this slide, particularly for our international investors, to remind you that we are a multi-brand portfolio. Even if we only look at the supermarket part of the business, I'm not talking about the alt revenue and the adjacent businesses even. I'm just talking about supermarkets here. This is very unique to South Africa because that is what we found the most efficient way to serve every part of the community the best. Each of these brands has a very precision-driven focus on who their customers are and what their deliverables are. The beauty of it is now that we've created this platform business is that all of these businesses still can be expanded onto the omnichannel platform to give us future growth as we and as people demand more convenience and want to save time and money in terms of travel in particular.
Staying with South African supermarkets, Shoprite, the mother brand, always been the livelihood of every consumer in South Africa, price-sensitive consumer, now surpassed ZAR 100 billion in revenue, added ZAR 6.5 billion. I need to acknowledge that Shoprite definitely has been affected disproportionately with the short supply of chicken. We all know what happened earlier this year when there was a short supply of frozen chicken in the market, and Shoprite over indexes on market share in that category, therefore were affected more than anybody else. Shoprite also extended its business to cash and carry. It's new for us. We're learning fast. Here's a good example of when you can quote percentages. The cash and carry business grows over 24%. Very good. Usave, on the other hand, we all know exactly what it stands for. It is the go-to place when your budget is tight. There's no frills.
There's no temptation to spend money unnecessarily. I'm very pleased to say that our private labels, especially the U brand in Usave, are being accepted by the consumers with the quality that it offers. There's no inferior product in that business. Moving on to Checkers, it seems these days like everybody loves Checkers. Everybody loves the brand. It does give good value. If I can just mention one, for example, which I'm very pleased with, and I like to mention their name, is Discovery Vitality. Our partnership with them, fantastic. We brought in Jamie Oliver too because he's a health funny. We do have this beautiful brand called Simple Truth. It's always less sugar, no artificial colorants, et cetera. A very good story. Checkers remains the fastest growing premium grocer for the fifth year in a row now. Very happy that we are still gaining customers.
Who would have thought that a food retail brand could be voted South Africa's strongest brand? Checkers was voted that. Although we're not in for winning awards, it is quite an achievement for a food retailer to be elected the strongest brand, which we are, of course, very proud of. I get many questions about these adjacent businesses that we've opened, the outdoor, pet, the pharmacy, unique store doing fantastic. These adjacencies are really getting traction. They fill a niche, and I want to go back to data again. It's the data that drives these decisions that tells us what and where we should invest. They are really starting to gain traction. We are really looking forward to expand on this business. We already have over 200 stores, and we will continue to expand them as we expand our supermarkets.
A lot of places now, in the strip malls, you will find that we almost are the entire tenant base of a strip mall because of the need state that each of these businesses actually fulfill. If we move over to the rest of the segments, the supermarkets non-RSA and the other operating segments, including for furniture, if we look at supermarkets non-RSA, you know we've exited a lot of regions. Africa still has a challenge in terms of affordability and also exchange rates. Overall, in summary, a very pleasing result for us at Shoprite to have been able to increase the profitability of that segment by 43% and grow customers. The other operating segments did well, especially the pharmacy. That's why I mentioned earlier opening standalone Medirite Plus pharmacies.
Because that, again, I have to refer you back to the data, is that the data tells us people more and more tend to buy basic healthcare and personal care items from a specialized store. We are ready to take that opportunity. We have opened the new Transpharm facility. I'm very impressed with what that team has done. In about three weeks from opening that facility, the auto-picker in that system, in that DC, we're running already at 120% of its design capacity. I laugh a little bit about it because I said the typical Shoprite style is built to do 100, but then we do 120. Very proud about that business. Looking forward to good growth. Franchise also had a very good year, and there's a lot of gained market share. Secondly, a lot of touch points where we currently are working closer together.
They're buying more frequently from our distribution centers, and it also allows us to utilize and optimize our supply chain to service this over 3,000-store network. Furniture, unfortunately, I mean, it's a year later. We're still waiting. It's such a small transaction. Theoretically, if you think of our market capitalization, and we're still waiting on the authorities for approval for that. Just to remind you again, although it's held for sale, it means that at the moment we're not getting any benefit because it doesn't count into continued operations. I can assure you, we're not neglecting the business. We're still running the business and keeping it up in good shape. By the time that we finally will get the approval, we will hand over a decent business. I'll go down a little bit of update of what's the strategy we said to you.
This slide, barring two points, hasn't changed since 2017, when I think I showed you the first time. I'm not going to, you're familiar with this. The only thing is those are the three pillars that drive the things that we do. If you don't fit in one of these, then you don't get done. I told you many times when I first started speaking about precision retail, people didn't understand what I was saying. These days, this is what we talk about. You know that we have over 53 million customers' purchases data. I want to be clear on it that we have got 5,000 data points on these people, and we're very happy with our Extra Savings program. I'm not going to stand still on that. I mentioned right in the beginning, we are still working on creating alternate revenue.
We would love it if your money gets into our environment and never has to leave it. It saves you money because you don't have transaction fees, and you don't have transfer fees and bank fees and all those things. All that you save by doing everything within our real estate, if I might call it like that, saves you money and in the end improves your life. We still have that Rainmaker as well, the REX platform that we monetize to third parties and to our suppliers also. Financial services, I'm not going to stand still on financial services this time. It's a subject almost on its own. The thing that I just want to mention about them is that the electronic or technical platform has been rebuilt, re-platformed, and it is absolutely state of the art.
It will accelerate what we've been able to do in the financial services space. 60/60 is the one largest digital platform in South Africa. Everybody was wondering, what does it do? How big is it? There it is. It's ZAR 18.9 billion, and it's growing, and it's been growing every year for the last five years since we built it. The ticker you see there on the right-hand side is what I said earlier. On July 25, we surpassed the 100 millionth delivery, and the speed that you see there is basically as deliveries happen. That's the pace that this business works at. You know our model. We pick from store. There's been a lot of speculation whether 60/60 can make money or not make money. I can promise you it does make money. It's got a very good return on investment because we have the model of pick from store.
We're in 694 stores nationwide. Nice thing to say also, over 15,000 people actually got a job, new employment that was created by this business unit since its inception. The enhancements on this program and the improvements that's being made on it, they do like 900 software releases a year just to make it tweak it a little bit better. You can understand what it creates is the difference between the 60/60 platform and the rest of the market if you're running at that pace. Here's just a graphical illustration of where we started, COVID. As you can see, this is not abating. The growth is still there. Although the % growth is slowing down, that's quite logical because of your base getting better.
If you look on the right-hand side at the green piece of that graph, the value continues to grow, although the % slows down because the base has gotten so much bigger. I think 60/60 is probably the most loved brand, and no retailer can ask for anything more or better than brand love. Who would have thought somebody would have a wedding with a 60/60 theme and make a dress for your matric farewell? It's just been fun. It's been good. We have to work at it, and it comes with risk. The business is big. 265 million kilometers. 94% of the deliveries are on time. A million products picked per day. Almost 97% of products that you order, you're going to get. The important point here is the bigger the business gets, actually the better it gets. It doesn't come by itself. Obviously, it needs investment.
It needs constant improvement and very greatly. Result for us to show to you that over the last three years, all of the measurements have improved. This year, we achieved our highest on-shelf availability ever, which is 98.2%. You cannot run an online digital business like this if your on-shelf availability is not at that high level. If you don't have the full visibility of stock through your supply chain, then it is not possible to consistently deliver at this level. This is the 60/60 flywheel. The most important thing probably that I can say is it is a platform. It's not an app. It's not a web. It's a platform with scalability. That's probably the most important.
I'm not going to go through every item here, but the most important thing that I can leave you with is that what was created here is not a little app and you got somebody to write it and then you pay dollar license fees. No, this is a platform for the entire business. That's why we now have the ability to add things like general merchandise and the pet and the pharma care and all of that. The one thing we're not, we're not a third-party market. That is not what we do. We believe that we are the everyday store, not the everything store. That is what we try to do as best as we humanly possibly can do. Just to carry on on the point that I'm actually driving home of, it's a platform business with its flywheel of fixes.
We can expand, we can enlarge the range, we can add more product. For me, probably the standout is new customers joining the service, growth by 26%, which is absolutely fantastic. As long as we get those customers, you can understand that the incrementality of that sale is a very profitable customer. Carrying on on that, the improvements that we can still make and have to make is what we have is this high frequency of data that allows us to just make so much better data-led decisions. It's not what I feel like or think like. It is absolute data that tells us exactly how the customers behave and when, at what time, what the weather does, how people behave. We can adapt to that, which makes us smarter in terms of giving them that personalized experience.
That's different to personalized offer where I give you something that I know you need or you want. That experience is what we can improve on. The pricing that we can adjust and the online marketing that we can do, the reducing the delivery times. I know, I mean, on average, our delivery time is 31 minutes. Somebody can come and say, "Oh, no, we're going to deliver it now in 15 minutes." I don't know what difference that makes if I can get my goods in one hour. With the general merchandise, I can specify a specific hour slot on a specific day when I know I'm home to receive my parcel. It's just something that has changed the whole way that omnichannel and online works.
In the end, the dream is that we improve the customer satisfaction and that they will continue to use the service and more and more of it. I'm coming back to, in the end, we get that share of wallet where people feel it's not necessary to take my money out of this environment because I am getting most of what I need daily, every day. I said the everyday store I'm getting here, and I'm getting it conveniently and from anywhere. Once again, repeating this thing I'm saying about the platform and then how we can leverage off this platform. All of a sudden, there's an ability that there can be a multiple delivery, that a dog food can be delivered with a braai. We reduce the cost of the delivery, the time of the delivery. The scalability of it just increases.
I hope I'm getting across just to say that we're still at the infancy of where we can take this business. The natural effect, and I suppose you will say is logical, but it is true that people, the longer that people are on the system, the more valuable they are and the more they spend and the more they use it because it becomes easier. You've done it once and then you save your order. The next time, you just reorder and you add one item. It is true that the omnichannel customers that we have are 3.8 times more valuable than a person that would frequent only in-store. People complement the two, and therefore, we believe the model has still got a lot of legs in terms of growth. This is, for me, probably explaining things the best.
For a non-technical person, just to understand now what is happening here. 10 years ago, we laid the foundation of the core retail system and capabilities, supply chain, real-time view of stock, line item profitability. I can carry on. You will remember those days in 2017 around. The next level came. We expanded on the supply chain level because how are we going to support all of this? Stock has to be moved around. It has to be moved in one hour. You need systems for it. You need to be real-time. We've got the portfolio of the brands. We've added the adjacencies. I've spoken about them. If we go through all of that, it's what I just said earlier is our everyday store. What we want to do every day is to make your life easier every day.
The things that you need every day, the time that we can save you, the money that we can save you on the transactions. If your money doesn't leave our environment, then there's no transaction fees. Those are the things that this thing illustrates, is how this was built. This is not something that you just go buy off the shelf. This has to be built with the right intent in mind with the end goal. Right at the top, of course, is the customer, the customer rewards, the fact that we still gave back to consumers ZAR 16.5 billion in instant savings at the point. I don't think many retailers can say that. That is what we pride ourselves. This is what we've built. On top of all of this now, the digital platform is bringing it all together to make us a really, truly omnichannel retailer.
After I've now said so much about this platform, you can clearly hear, I hope I could give you the message that the growth potential of what was built here and the ability to include our entire business portfolio and make it a true omnichannel. In the tech space, it's very clear the personalization that still has to be matured. We're talking about pharma. There's so much opportunity still for us to add in terms of product assortment. You are aware that we have started also to introduce the 60/60 service in the Shoprite market. There's a total different opportunity in there, which we are testing at the moment that assists people greatly in terms of their small businesses also. The hypers, I mean, for many years, the hypers have been, you know, it's a big store. If you're looking for convenience, you're not so sure.
All of a sudden, people actually realize what a fantastic assortment of product in general merchandise the Checkers Hyper stores have to offer at fantastic prices. That has opened up that avenue as well. There are value-added services on the financial services side that is absolutely in its infancy. If we put all of this together, I hope that I can leave you with a thought that there is so much growth and opportunity still in this Shoprite company with what we have today. It doesn't mean we're going to stop innovating. We will continue to innovate. This is where we conclude the formal presentation. There will be a short video. Anton and I will take your questions to clarify anything that you want us to expand on. I really thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. Hopefully, it wasn't too long. It is a big business.
Thank you very much for your support. I just want to end lastly to say that I'm extremely proud about the people of Shoprite that have delivered this outstanding set of results. Thank you very much.
In 2019, Shoprite did what no one else thought was possible. Launched an on-demand app that delivered groceries in as little as 60 minutes. Not next week, not tomorrow, in one hour. Almost six years later, 60/60 is South Africa's number one on-demand grocery delivery service and one of the fastest scaling platforms in the country's retail history. The scale speaks for itself. 7 million installs and 27% growth in active customers last year, delivering for customers every single second. Since launch in November 2019, 60/60 has delivered 100 million orders and over 1 billion products. Our drivers have traveled nearly 700 million kilometers, the equivalent of 17,000 laps around the earth. In the 2025 financial year alone, 60/60 sales reached ZAR 18.9 billion. Because 80% of South Africans live within 15 minutes of a Shoprite Holdings store, we're not just fast, we're everywhere with an unrivaled proximity advantage.
60/60 started with just 1,500 convenience products. Today, it's a multi-category platform business offering effortless same-day delivery of groceries and general merchandise, liquor, health and beauty, baby, outdoor, and specialty pet almost anywhere in South Africa. What makes us unique isn't just speed, it's how the platform is built. A homegrown, fully integrated digital commerce system for custom-built apps for customers, pickers, drivers, and stores, all connected by our proprietary order management engine. This integration gives us our competitive edge. It allows us to control the entire journey from search to shelf to doorstep with unmatched efficiency and reliability. Today, 60/60 is the digital storefront of the Shoprite group ecosystem. The platform now handles over 9.2 million weekly search queries and more than 1 billion system calls, scaling 10x since launch.
Our mission is clear: to make the everyday effortless for customers and for the group to become South Africa's largest and most profitable omnichannel retailer. With more than 33 million members, our Extra Savings rewards program generates the richest customer dataset in South African retail. Every interaction fuels a personalization flywheel, predicting needs, tailoring offers, and growing customer lifetime value. When you combine that with Shoprite's supply chain, pricing power, and national store network, you don't just get a moat. You get a physical and technological advantage that is difficult to replicate. Competitors can copy an app; they can't copy the ecosystem. The result? 60/60 has become more than just a service. It's a cultural icon. The definition of convenience and one of the most loved brands in South Africa. Customers don't just use us; they advocate for us.
They build us into their daily lives, delivering groceries, general merchandise, summer, dreams, and joy. 60/60 is no longer just a service, and when convenience becomes culture, you're no longer optional; you're essential. 60/60, the future of grocery delivery.
Anton and I are back. Usually, I just, while we get settled and everybody look at their final questions after the video, also I think there was more detail in that, is just a few things that I know I'm going to be asked. Our outlook on inflation. There was a specific question I already saw about where we see the inflation and the discrepancy between our low inflation and CPI. It looks like 3% is what we're talking about. If I have to put it in a crystal ball, we have gone as low as 1.8%. We're currently even lower. Some of the very large manufacturers that we saw recently are talking about planning a 1% volume growth for the year because of the low inflation in amongst where we are. Inflation is low.
The difference between CPI and our internal inflation, which is much lower, is because CPI is a fixed list or, yeah, that gets measured year on year, fixed list of items, whereas ours are weighted, which means, very simply put, we take what people buy today, what's in their basket, and we look at those items, what they were priced or what their price was a year ago. We weigh then that inflation. That's why it's a much lower number than the CPI. The sales growth just in general, we showed you that in H2 was slightly lower sales growth than in H1. I have to mention here that especially in the Shoprite and USAF environment, we were impacted more and disproportionately to our competitors around the effects of the shortages in chicken, frozen chicken. We over-indexed in that market with market share over 70%.
One can imagine that those two to three months where we had some supply issues on that, it did affect the Shoprite and USAF brand much more than any other retailer. The sales effect, if you look at percentages, and I've tried in the presentation to mention a few times how one easily can read things differently or, I would say, incorrectly by just looking at percentages, is that the very, call it super low inflation currently experienced in Shoprite and USAF, which is completely different to Checkers. That's why the percentages growth numbers are completely different. That affects Shoprite's numbers much more than Checkers and many of the peers also, which have a different inflation number. Also, the fact that different retailers calculate the internal inflation slightly differently. We are very clear on how we do it. We've never changed it. That's the way we do it consistently.
The numbers are very comparable. We're going to continue to grow. You mentioned it, Anton. We are planning 309 new stores. There are a lot of opportunities out there, especially in the Checkers environment. It is still true that there are a lot of areas in South Africa where we're underrepresented, and we are going after those opportunities. We are in a very lucky or fortunate position that landlords and property developers currently, I don't want to say it's favor, but they certainly are very positive about having a Checkers brand as an anchor tenant. We also now these days have many instances where we have one real estate development where we've got Shoprite and Checkers as a dual anchor in one center. That's where all of the momentum is coming from. We're going to continue to deliver on our plans.
We know what we have to do, try and surprise and delight our customers every day as best as we can. Of course, sustain our profitable market share gains. I know it's not possible to gain market share forever, but at the moment, as you also saw, last year showed that we actually accelerated on that level. That also brings opportunity by itself. I think, Anton, that's sort of a quick summary if you want to go to the questions.
No, you will be happy to hear. There's not too many questions. I think the first one, Pieter, is, and you've touched on the sales, but how do you think about the competitive landscape? Maybe talk a little bit about what you see within the promotional activity as well, taking place within the various food retailers.
Yeah. Food retail in South Africa is as competitive as it's ever been. Globally, I think South African food retail is probably of the most fiercely competitive business in retail. That hasn't changed. If one be honest with yourself, you have to say, if you've been losing market share, you will tend to get more aggressive. That brings some new dynamics. We also understand that the consumer is under severe pressure. That's why we see this constant ticking up every year, the contribution of promotional items to the overall.
Thank you, Pieter. With that in mind, you mentioned about urbanization and how do you think about that? Maybe what's the role of the cash and carry that we then, I mean, you've mentioned that in your presentation as well. What do you then see as opportunity for cash and carry within that environment?
They are two very different questions, really. The one is about the urbanization. I definitely am not going to be professing that I know what the future will hold. I can go on what WWF told us about, and I think the year they said around 2050, I know that sounds a long way away, a long time away, that something like 90% of South Africans will be urbanized or living around the big cities. In that, I think there's also an advantage for the Shoprite group with the USAF model and the OK Foods model. I think those are in particular the two formats that will be able to survive a mass migration or urbanization in South Africa. It is supported by a supply chain that has been built and where they have been included in this entire supply chain of Shoprite.
To explain it very simply, what that means is it allows our supply chain to have the minimum of what we call dead kilometers because they can do multiple deliveries on a single route for multiple brands and multiple formats. That's the one. In terms of the cash and carry, you know we inherited it basically with a mass market transaction. Didn't know much about the business. We're still learning. Talking about %, if we could bank their % growth, we'll be able to play a couple of balls for sure. It's doing exceptionally well, but of course, serves a completely different market. It opens up a different set of the market that we have not participated before or in. What's interesting is like 70% of the revenue or sales in cash and carry is online. Digital, also paid with our money market account, which is then transaction cost-free.
A completely different model. We do deliveries, which means small businesses where owners currently have to actually close this business to go buy some stock, lose the trade at that time, or leave this business in maybe an unsecured state. They don't have to leave their business anymore. They can get their stock delivered and they pay electronically without incurring any extra costs. Don't have to carry that amount of cash around. That's where the cash and carry is. We're very happy with how the business has improved over the last two years.
Okay, I'll give you a break. I'll deal with one or two financial questions. There was just around the profitability and the trading profit and can we maintain these margins? From the graphs that I've shown, we've seen that consistent trading profit within first half and second half. The first half trading profit is lower than the second half if you also look historically. We're aiming to, again, achieve that 5.9%- 6% trading margin for the whole group. I think that's the one question. Secondly, there was just a question around capital and what are we going to do with the proceeds from the furniture transaction? I think we're clear on where and how we do our capital allocation in terms of how we reward our shareholders through dividends. I mentioned that we do not foresee any changes within our dividend policy.
There's still a lot of opportunities within the business, the store opening program. That's why if we look at that ZAR 7.9 billion investment back into the business. We're looking at a lot of refurbs. Obviously, that's very important for us, how we maintain our Checkers stores as well as our Shoprite stores. Also, how we invest back into our franchise business. There's still a lot of opportunities from that point of view. If there's other opportunities coming our way, we do have a share buyback program approval from the board. We've communicated that in the past, it's about ZAR 1 billion per year. If the opportunity is right, we will again also look at doing a share buyback. I think that's from a capital allocation point of view.
I can add that one point, maybe, Anton, on the OK Franchise business. If one just thinks what service corporate Shoprite can give to them if we change their tech stack, just one example, managing of their loyalty card. We can combine it with the current Extra Savings card. One can just imagine the cost savings that we can bring by combining that and extra volume and extra data, more customer information, etc. That's just about one example.
Yeah, more through the supply chain as well. Pieter, I think let's go a little bit to strategy. You've actually unpacked it very well when we think about what 60/60 can deliver for us in the future. The question has come up again, and I think you're going to get it a lot today, is just what do you see as the potential within the next, let's say, I mean, five years is too far out. Let's work two and three years.
I think if you can recall the second, I think it was the second last slide, where we just put up the Checkers, the Shoprite, the VAS, and then, of course, general merchandise, which is, for me, a fantastic opportunity untapped at the moment. The growth on the online sales currently and the demand on the online for general merchandise is incredible. The ability for us to expand on an assortment which we never carried, and now we can carry in limited quantities. I say for a lot of people, who would have imagined that Checkers will be the largest Dyson hairdryer seller in the country? It is, yeah, was unthinkable a while ago. If we add all of that and you just think about how big pharma is, of course, we've got our own dreams.
For example, just imagine you leave the doctor's rooms and before you get home or by the time you get home, your medicine is already there. Let's just give you an example. If you just start using your imagination, you will get 100 answers yourself very quickly of what we can still do with a platform.
I think, Dina, just to your question around cash flow and what do we define as free cash flow. It's our EBITDA, where we start off, and then from our total operations. We take into account tax, changes in working capital, and also our maintenance CapEx. That's where we got to the ZAR 10.1 billion. I think it's important to note that there is a difference. Last year, we had the same in terms of how the cut-off worked with our trade payables. That doesn't impact the calculation of our return on invested capital. I think the big move for us in terms of our return on invested capital came from our reduction as well in how we think about our effective tax rate. I think, hopefully, Dina, that answers your question around that. There was just a question around the growth in DHEPS.
I think it's important to note that we also shared it through the results presentation, the impact of the discontinued operations. There was a nice slide unpacking the various changes that we saw within the discontinued operations and the impact it had on our DHEPS number, especially looking at the 2024 results. I will refer you to that slide.
The point that you made, and I'm going to repeat that point, is that currently there's no counting into the HEPS for the supposed benefit of that sale because we know the profit being made currently in furniture goes into discontinued operations and/or held for sale. We haven't received the cash yet, so we're also not earning any interest even if we just did that. I think it's just so important that in the modeling that you do, that one takes it into account.
100%. That's really all the questions. I don't know if you have maybe a closing comment around the health of the business and what we saw.
If you push me for that, the one thing I can just say, the results that you see today is not a story of one piece of business that's performing well or outperforming. This is, I can really assure you that all of our business units currently have got great momentum. It's not one piece that's outperforming. It is genuinely a combination of an entire business, as we are, that has fantastic momentum. If I can leave you with that on a positive note, it's not quickly something that's going to break and then our wheels fall off. The momentum is across the business. There's some exciting things to come.
It's tough. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks to everybody. Thanks for joining us. We really try to emphasize the points that really make the difference and differentiate us from our competitors. What we've tried to put together over the last nine or 10 years, I hope somehow we landed some of the messages. You're welcome to contact us. You all know Natasha. If there's something else that you would like clarification on, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thanks a lot for your time. Good day to you all. Thank you.