Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our TFG 2022 year-end results presentation. In addition to Bongiwe and myself, we have a number of our senior leadership team members presenting with us this morning. We do this to add color and richer insights into the various parts of what is increasingly a large and diverse business, and also to give you some sense as to the depth of talent that we have running our various businesses. As our business continues to grow and evolve, a key differentiator will be the extent to which we have the best teams and the best players. The results that we'll be sharing with you today are very much the result of a team effort.
One of the tangible benefits of the easing of the lockdown restrictions and the gradual waning of COVID is that we've recently been able to travel to visit our teams and businesses in both the U.K. and Australia for the first time in over two years. I'm thus very pleased to have Gary and Dean from Australia and Justin from London physically with us in Cape Town today. I'll start the presentation with an overview of our financial year and our key achievements, both from a financial and a strategic perspective. Bongiwe will take us through the detailed group results, balance sheets, and cash flows. Jane, Gary, Dean, and Justin will share their perspectives on this year's results for Credit, TFG Australia, and TFG London.
I'll then wrap up the presentation with a summary of our strategic direction for the new financial year, and an update on our most recent trading post year-end, and then we'll still have time for Q&A at the end. 2022 was one of the busiest years in TFG's history. If I had to summarize the year in just four soundbites, it would be as follows: TFG bounced back from one of the most turbulent periods in decades to reach record levels of turnover, gross profit, and profitability, and has at the same time continued to make significant investments in the key capabilities that will define the future of retail. TFG has made significant market share gains both as a group as well as in each of our three main operating territories by outcompeting the overall market, as well as almost all of our key competitors.
We've applied a relentless focus to the efficiency of our working capital, cash flows, and the strength of our balance sheet, and we've done all of this with a simultaneous, deliberate, and intensified investment in our ESG programs, especially in terms of what we've done for job preservation and job creation, which remain key components of our social contribution to South Africa. Unpacking this in slightly more detail, 2022 was significantly impacted by lockdowns, which forced us to close our stores, especially during the first half of the year. Intensified load shedding across South Africa impacted both our customers' ability and their propensity to spend in our stores and on our e-commerce sites.
Civil unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, which resulted in 198 of our stores being looted and severely damaged, and which also forced us to close nearly 1,000 stores in high-risk areas for more than a week on average, as well as global supply chain disruptions and distortions which impacted the timing of shipments as well as our overall logistics costs. Despite all of these headwinds, we recorded significant market share gains across all of our major territories. The group and TFG Africa in particular, saw very strong like-for-like gross margin recovery. TFG London's new business model and structure has delivered record U.K. results for the group, with EBIT up 75% on pre-COVID levels. TFG Australia, which has now been part of TFG for five years, again delivered strong top line and margin growth and outstanding operating leverage.
2022 was also a year of extremely disciplined capital and balance sheet management. The group made significant organic and inorganic investments to both drive near-term growth and profitability as well as to further our strategic ambitions. These included a major store build-out program with 274 new stores for TFG Africa on top of the 176 looted stores that we rebuilt, together with 41 new stores in Australia and eight new stores in London. To put all of that into perspective, this meant that our property and stores teams opened on average 2.4 new stores a day, five days a week for the entire year. We also invested, both organically and through acquisitions, in new brands, new capabilities that we didn't previously have within the group, and in further vertical manufacturing capabilities and capacity, as well as in our social performance.
Despite the extent of these significant investments, our strong trading during the course of the year, combined with our working capital discipline, saw us end the year with a very strong cash position of ZAR 5.7 billion and thus declaring a healthy dividend. With this background in mind, let's look at how our strategy and execution translated into results and key metrics. From a P&L perspective, we achieved record group turnover of ZAR 43.4 billion, record gross profits of ZAR 21 billion, and record headline earnings of ZAR 3.3 billion, with growths of 31%, 40%, and 442% respectively. We also continued our transition into a true omni-channel business with e-commerce growths of 18%, 14%, and 27% for TFG Africa, London, and Australia.
These growths were all up against high COVID bases and despite us throttling e-commerce growth on purpose for TFG Africa while we were replatforming. Focusing on TFG Africa for a moment, we significantly improved all of our key customer metrics with store visits up 56%, online visits up 34%, and our customer satisfaction score improving to an all-time high of 83%. In terms of our social performance, we created more than 7,000 new jobs and workplace opportunities in South Africa during the year. As a result of this clear focus on our social investment and performance, I'm very pleased to be able to share that we've just finalized our B-BBEE audit, and we've now moved to a level three rating, which significantly raises the bar for listed South African retail.
The theme of our 2022 financial year was very much one of growth, which was generated on the back of previous investments in our business. We know that retail requires continuous investment to consistently outtrade your competitors, and with this in mind, we also continue to invest to support our future growth. The group delivered like-for-like growth of 21.3%, with underlying growth for TFG Africa and Australia of 17.8%, 74.5%, and 15.8%. These like-for-like growths both highlight the extent to which last year's numbers were negatively impacted by COVID and just how dramatically we bounced back. Our gross margin, which was also severely impacted by COVID, improved from 45.5% in the previous year to 48.5% in the year we just closed.
This is despite the impact of globally inflated logistics costs and the margin dilution which comes with an expanded value segment. We also invested in new brands, new capabilities, and in our strategic verticals. From a new brands perspective, having returned Jet to significant profitability in its first year at TFG, we relaunched Jet Home and opened our first 15 standalone Jet Home stores, in addition to 356 Jet Home store installs. While it's still very early days, we're very happy with the performances of both Jet and Jet Home and see a significant runway ahead for both. Granny Goose, which we acquired in October last year, has also delivered very positive results with a 4x revenue run rate increase and a 2.1 percentage points improvement in gross margin since the acquisition.
We will, subject to regulatory approval, conclude the acquisition of the suite of Tapestry brands, Coricraft, Dial-a-Bed, The Bed Store, and Volpes, and anticipate this transaction being finalized over the coming weeks. From a new capabilities perspective, we acquired Flat Circle, the leading Flutter mobile app development team in South Africa. We acquired Quench to help us establish our own in-house last- mile delivery capabilities and to improve our overall omni-fulfillment. We also invested significantly in establishing TFG Labs, which I will talk about in more detail later. From a strategic verticalization perspective, in the clothing area, we acquired the manufacturing assets and the staff of House of Monatic, TCI, Radeen, and Playtex.
In the homeware space, we acquired Cotton Traders, the manufacturing arm of Granny Goose, and again, subject to regulatory approval, we will acquire the various Tapestry manufacturing units, namely Sleep World, the Volpes factory, and the Coricraft factory. These will allow us to further improve the working capital efficiency and the margins in our homewares businesses. As a fashion and lifestyle retailer, we put our customers first, and we obsess them in everything that we do and everything we design. More people than ever before are following the TFG brands across the various social media platforms. This is a proxy for them digitally voting for their favorite brands, and the gaps between TFG and our competitors continue to grow. More people are joining. We saw a 22% increase in our already significant TFG Rewards base and had 700,000 new customer accounts open this year.
Our customers are also more satisfied. Our CSAT, or customer satisfaction scores, have continued to improve, with the influence of TFG Labs already making a marked impact on our online CSAT, which improved from 74% to 83% over the year. Further illustrating this point, we had a 20% reduction in call center contacts despite an 18% growth in online turnover. In putting our customers first, we are constantly investing in and striving to have the best brands, the best people, and the nexus of these two, the best stores. A few examples to illustrate the ongoing strength of our brands would include Sportscene, just one of our many individual brands, which was the fifth strongest brand in South Africa this year, amongst some pretty heavyweight competition.
Other individual TFG brands, such as Markham and Foschini, also featured in the top 50 most valuable brands in South Africa, highlighting the extent of the equity in each of our specialty brands. In terms of people, we continue to win recognition as an employer of choice. In this respect, I'm particularly proud of TFG winning the YES Top Empowerment Award and being runner-up in the SAGEA Employer of Choice Awards. I guess, not surprisingly, given these numerous brand and people awards, our stores, which is where our brands and our people come together, continue to win recognition for offering the best retail experiences. Examples this year included Totalsports, Markham, and Foschini. As a result of our brand and customer obsession and all of the efforts and investments that we put behind these, our customers are in fact putting us first.
We continue to outcompete and to grow market share in all of our markets. These market share gains can be viewed at both macro and at a much more detailed micro level. At either level, the message remains very similar. At a macro level, and looking at the blue bubbles on the right, TFG London grew by 57.3% versus Euromonitor's number for the U.K. of 12.7%. TFG Australia grew by 24% versus the Euromonitor number for similar retail in Australia of 12.2%.
At a more tangible micro level, the Retailers' Liaison Committee or RLC growth numbers, which measure the major South African retailers in detail, showed that the aggregate South African men's and ladies' wear market grew by 5.9% for the year versus TFG's equivalent growth of 27%, which is illustrated on the left-hand graph with TFG's monthly growth trajectory shown by the purple line. I've made a few references to the impact that TFG Labs has already had on our South African online and customer satisfaction performances, but I think these strides are so fundamentally important for the future that they deserve to be unpacked in a bit more detail. Our TFG Africa online turnover grew by 18% to just short of ZAR 1 billion during a year of replatforming. Our cost per order decreased by 19%.
Our average order turnaround time decreased by 10%. Our on-time last- mile deliveries improved by 50%, and perhaps as a result, we also had a 46% growth in first-time online buyers. These achievements are really significant and would never have been possible in any traditional corporate e-commerce culture. It reflects the reason why we have hired 85 high- caliber software engineers and e-commerce specialists within TFG Labs. Having spoken a lot about our financial successes over the year, I'd like to conclude by reflecting on how we've gone about doing this in a manner which has been beneficial to all of our stakeholders.
TFG Africa, as I mentioned, created more than 7,000 new jobs and workplace opportunities during the year, many of which are directly linked to our government's Retail Master Plan and our participation in the YES program during a period which has seen unemployment rise to record high levels in our country. Using whatever economic multiplier you choose to, these 7,000+ jobs have a massive knock-on impact on the broader economy, and in most cases, provide people who've had no work experience their first job and foot onto the employment ladder. We had more than 2,000 equity promotions among our growing workforce. We also invested more than ZAR 100 million on social impact initiatives, including supporting various NGOs and communities during the year. We directed more than ZAR 2 billion in new business to black-owned suppliers.
As a result of this level of commitment, we achieved our level three B-BBEE rating, which is significantly ahead of the rest of major listed SA Retail. At a group level, we've also committed to meaningful BCI or Better Cotton Initiative targets. Now, while ambitious, these sort of social performance initiatives are not mutually exclusive to strong financial performance. We did generate a 24% total shareholder return for the period. I'll now hand over to Bongiwe, who will unpack a lot more of the detail underpinning these headline achievements.
Thanks, Anthony, for setting the scene for us so eloquently as always. Good morning to everyone on the call today. Lovely being here once again, this time around to deliver our 2022 financial year end results. Today is an even more special event as we have Justin, Gary, and Dean with us in person. Their first visit to South Africa in almost three years. I'm keeping fingers crossed that in the not- so- distant future, we'll have most of you and our staff in person here in Cape Town. A bit about the image on this slide. Both the jacket and the skirt were proudly locally manufactured through our very own facilities. I think the Milnerton design and manufacturing facility. The beige pleated skirt became one of our Foschini's best sellers immediately it hit the shop floor.
Yes, please, guilty as charged, I have it in several colors. Stunning quality. The design team started off with a 1,200-unit test units that sold incredibly well. The rate of sale at over 70% that very first week. Through our local response manufacturing unit, we were able to respond swiftly to the demand. Within 40 days, we successfully produced 60,000 units and sold all of them within season. How incredible is that? Local is definitely lekker. Back to the business at hand, it has once again been an eventful year. However, once again, our model has proven robust, adaptable, and our teams have been able to grab at opportunities in the midst of all the headwinds, as you will have noted in the highlights presented by Anthony.
To put our numbers into context and for easier comparison to financial year end 2021, I have listed on the left the significant non-comparables or one-offs. For example, the government and landlord COVID concessions of some ZAR 1.5 billion that influenced our results in the prior year. On the right-hand side, the further headwinds during financial year end 2022, which primarily were the continued COVID restrictions, albeit at different levels of severity in all our operating territories, which resulted in several hours of trade lost, as previously reported and listed on this slide. Africa, and over and above the different levels of COVID restrictions, was impacted by the July civil unrest and Eskom power supply challenges, which seems to have deteriorated in the past year.
Consequently, we are once again conservative as we dialed up credit acceptance rate and on average we're tuning 25% during the year. Quite honestly, we simply didn't need to turn up credit, the credit lever in any material way as cash growth continued to exceed expectations, as I will share later on. For now, 20%-25% seems to be the comfortable level for us. Jane will take us through credit in detail later. If the graph looks familiar, you might have seen it from the Apple results presentation, and I thought to borrow the same diagram to give you a good feeling of the shape of our income statement and how we evolved down to a record profit after tax of ZAR 2.9 billion.
In summary, from a record turnover performance of ZAR 43.4 billion achieved, which was up 81.6% on last year, we have expanded leverage and delivered gross profit growth of 40.3% by growing volume sold and improving gross profit margins. We squeezed trading expenses further, which grew at only 20.9% as reported, which is ignoring the impact of the ZAR 1.5 billion in COVID relief support we received last year. On a like for like basis, though, grew only at 5%, which I'll unpack in the next slide. This culminated to a reported EBIT of ZAR 4.8 billion, which grew over 700% on last year and normalized grew 12.9%.
Consequently, the group delivered a strong headline earnings of ZAR 3.3 billion, which translates to a HEPS of ZAR 100,9 per share, up ZAR 1.666 normalized. That is taking into account the increase in the number of shares today compared to 2020. This, in a nutshell, is our 2022 performance. Well done to all TFG businesses, local and international. Now getting to a bit of detail. Starting with turnover. All our businesses delivered a robust growth. Africa achieved a record turnover at ZAR 30.3 billion, up 32.3% on last year, 21.3% like for like, and pleasing that it was 23% up on 2020 financial year. Well done, Africa teams, Stuart and Shani as retail directors. Well done.
London has truly come back stronger and delivered GBP 309 million of turnover, which was 57% up on last year. On a like -or-like b asis, turnover in London grew 75%. A sterling recovery amidst a very tough trading environment. Justin will take us through TFG London results later on, which honestly, all the financial metrics have exceeded our expectation. EBIT growth forecast is the TFG London story. A smaller turnover business, less dependent on department stores, but a far more profitable business, and will grow off from this base. We look forward to that, and well done once again, London team, Justin as well. Australia honestly continues to please.
Despite all the severe lockdowns of 2020 financial year, Australia reported a growth in a record turnover of AUD 224 million, 24% ahead of last year. Like- for- like, a 16% growth and 15% ahead of 2020. Well done, Gary and team. Online sales grew by 12% off a very strong base. Online sales now contribute ZAR 4.3 billion to group turnover. Also satisfying is the cash sales growth of 34%, once again growing significantly ahead of credit sales, which grew 24% on prior year. Group cash sales at ZAR 34 billion, approximate 80% of our turnover as in last year. This feels like it is firmly our new operating level.
The impact of a high cash base, cash sales, and other optimization successes will be substantiated further when I take you through some of our key balance sheet metrics. Pleasing to note, our 10-year CAGR of 14.1%, which has come from a combination of year-on-year strong organic growth and profitable acquisitions. There's a lot of perception in the market that only deep value segment is growing, which of course it is, but the mid to upper segments equally growing strong for us, as depicted by the chart on the left. The strategy of operating niche businesses in all consumer segments, albeit at differing levels, cannot be overstated in times such as this. On the screen, left chart, we show growth of our key categories.
Clothing, our largest category, grew strongly at 82% with local and regional quick response manufactured apparel now contributing 72% of Africa's apparel. I have also disclosed our athleisure segment growth, which at over 8% growth continues to exceed expectation. Pleasing also was jewelry's performance, a discretionary purchase, growing at 21.3% on last year. Notably, homeware grew 29%, which was ahead of competition once again, and notably off a very high base. I know Shane is looking forward, subject to Competition Commission approvals, to having on board the Tapestry Home Brands, which is largely a vertically integrated business and will add to our market share in the SA homeware segment. Together with the newly launched Jet value homeware segment, we will begin to play a meaningful role in homeware.
I'm often asked how our base business performs against our competitors, removing the impact of acquisitions. For the last year, it's been a notable year of acquisitions for both TFG and our competitors. I've taken the liberty of stacking up our performance against that of an often-quoted competitor, removing the impact of our Jet acquisition for the first half as it was non-comparable. In the second half, I've included Jet as it was in our base in the prior year. Ultimately, stripped back of acquisitions, our underlying base business, our real growth is revealed. The figures speak for themselves. Gross profit, money through the till continues to grow, and we achieved a record ZAR 21 billion, up 40% on last year.
Last year, I explained that we took a decision to deal with all our old stock and took a lot of markdown, hence the drop in our GP margins to 45.5%, including the Jet dilution of 1.4%. I also, at the same time, made a promise that while we've cared for the rands we banked, very important for us, especially as we are now firmly entrenched in the value segment or as a value segment player, with volumes almost doubling past two, three years, we would not lose sight of GP margin recovery. I'm pleased to report that the GP margin for the group has come back firmly at 48.5%, and with Jet dilution included.
We expect this to be our new base and to grow this depending on economic recovery or in, obviously, promotional activity in the market. The internal businesses' GPs have recovered firmly to pre-COVID levels, and in some categories, pleasingly exceeding pre-COVID levels. You will see when I go through the inventory slides, we have conservatively retained the same provisioning buffer as last year in light of the global economic conditions and supply chain disruptions. In short, GPs were not boosted by any significant provision releases, and sales growth was not achieved at the expense of margins. Simply, the demand of our products, group strategic sourcing initiatives, and margin-rich, quick local manufacturing is driving our margin expansion. Moving on to other income. Credit income over the past two years has reduced significantly, as depicted in the bar graph, as interest rates fell to historical levels.
The combination of the 2 25 basis point interest rate reduction, plus us putting a cap on the interest we charge to customers in light of the pressure on the consumer. Further, the impact of a smaller debtor's book, which is of a high quality today, has meant that approximately ZAR 540 million hole in our credit EBIT when compared to 2019. Hence, you see the percentage turnover down to 6.1%. As you have probably calculated, any improvement in interest rates will reduce this gap and drop to bottom line. We've already seen improvements in this new financial year as Treasury increased interest rates. Lots of other mitigating and exciting new initiatives on the go on the credit side, which Jane will proficiently take you through later on.
For completeness sake, confirming we have conservatively accrued for ZAR 150 million of business interruption income, following the obviously COVID and civil unrest. ZAR 100 million in the first half, as I reported at half- year, and ZAR 50 million during the second half of the year. Might be better to click to the next slide to refresh everyone's memory as to how we're impacted, as previously reported. We estimate a loss of about ZAR 1.4 billion in total for the group for Africa, made up of a combination of assets, stock, and lost sales from the looting of the 198 stores and also the closures of the surrounding stores, which we intentionally closed as precaution and for the safety of our employees.
I have to applaud Sasria leadership, who have skillfully handled the claims process and with a wonderful, constructive, forward-looking spirit of seeing business recover and keep as many jobs as is possible. I mean, truly, one of the great examples of what government and business can achieve when we work together. Thanks, Sasria. Well done. To date, we have received ZAR 541 million from Sasria and expect the rest in the next few weeks. We are also finalizing our BI claim and as mentioned, conservatively accrued ZAR 173 million, including VAT, to income and raised a debtor of ZAR 2,223 million at year-end. Pleasing is that to date, about 180 stores have opened and are trading strongly. We'll open the rest towards the end of this first half and also by year-end, probably have opened all.
As you know, trading expenses have been an area of focus for us for the past four years, and one of my KPIs when I joined the group was to optimize all back offices working with our optimization team, led by James, who just also joined the group. We named the project Storm. Improvements to the standard operating model. My other KPI from Anthony was to optimize working capital, which we named Project Wind. I think I've shared with you the successes and savings that we have delivered past three years in Africa, working with all our teams to deliver savings conservatively at ZAR 500 million and obviously more during the COVID period. I did not waste the crisis, as I've often said. I'm pleased that as we traded almost full steam in all our regions, our cost- to- turnover ratio continued to reduce.
Now firmly at 41.4% from 45.3% in 2019. Tremendous cost control discipline. We have certainly learned to do more with less, and this is driving our operating leverage expansion, as you will see in the next slide. Our like-for-like growth, as mentioned earlier on in trading expenses, was 5.1%, well below inflation and well below our turnover growth. Well done to all our Africa teams. Moving on to London, I know Justin and team have taken out the best part of GBP 7 million in head office costs and space costs for the past two years, and Dean in Australia is ruthless on cost. I have to share this with you.
When I travel to Australia, I have to bring my own tea bags and a little ziploc bag filled with Cremora from South Africa because you bring your own to the office. Honestly, true story. Great culture that Gary and Dean have built over the years, and you'll see in their slides the significant EBIT improvements year-on-year as they continue to sweat the asset and squeeze costs out of the business model. The metrics or stats on the right-hand side are our key costs, and you can see the continued decline. The challenge now for all our teams on the call is to keep these ratios, and I know the teams will rise to the occasion as usual.
As mentioned previously, the result of all the good initiatives is that our EBIT has come back strongly after last year's loss to an EBIT margin of 11.1%, and this was achieved with credit hold, credit income hold that I mentioned earlier on, and also with new costs in the business, our investment costs in omni platforms led by Luke and Claude, and we established the TFG Labs, as Anthony mentioned earlier on last year, and further investment in building out our very successful margin-rich local quick response manufacturing. In the block at the bottom, we try and estimate that without these discretionary investment costs of some ZAR 450 million, and if interest rates were at just 2020 levels, the group would be reporting conservatively an EBIT margin in excess of 13.5%.
Moving on to the balance sheet, gearing at ZAR 1 billion is at historical levels and net debt to EBITDA at 0.2x shows the strong trade and how we're focused on paying down debt. Cash on hand at year-end, ZAR 5.7 billion, up ZAR 1 billion on last year. Debtors book only up ZAR 400 million or 6%, while credit sales grew 24%, which shows once again the good quality of the debtors book and that which we have built over time as we purposefully reduce acceptance rates. You will see the data stays in the middle, down another 44 days from last year. Well done, great teams. We are focused on improving shareholder returns. ROCE is up 14% and beating pre-COVID levels, and we will continue to steadily increase ROCE without sacrificing the need to invest in the business.
Our return on invested capital at 17.4% is up 320 basis points from pre-COVID levels, again, showing that we are pursuing organic and inorganic opportunities with solid returns. Inventory, great discipline. As mentioned earlier, through Project Wind, we work with the teams to reduce inventory days, and I will take you through inventory in detail later. Inventory at the end of the year grew 12%, well below turnover growth and also taking into account the store expansions, and we're holding a little bit of stock in light of the global supply chain disruptions and obviously ahead of store openings. What's pleasing, though, is that the significant proportion of the stock is fresh.
Touching on debt further, you'll see from this, from the slide, we're building a nice war chest, ZAR 13 billion in facilities in place and over 70% on a long-term basis. Further, I am continually humbled by all the pre-approved credit letters of commitment from our major local banks, which in total exceed ZAR 20 billion, to support TFG on any acquisitive opportunities in our pipeline. As you know, and mentioned earlier, Tapestry awaits CompCom approval, but we have ring-fenced already cash from all the good collections to fund the transaction when we receive the go-ahead, ultimately. Inventory. Been through some of the highlights, but maybe on this slide is to note our improvement in stock turn over the years. Some brands like Jet, Markham, with stock turns running at about 4% and more, and some product lines even 5x-6x .
We have maintained our conservative provisioning, as mentioned earlier, at ZAR 1.2 billion, almost the same balance as last year, and inventory days pleasingly down at 153 days. CapEx. We doubled our CapEx spend in 2020. We're catching up, as previously mentioned, on all organic investments that we held back in 2022 financial year. The CapEx is driven from all brands fighting for capital and growth in areas where they were not previously represented, and pleasing is that they are returning above expectation returns. I estimate that by the end of this quarter, we would have opened another 80 stores in Africa at market competitive rentals and store sizes fit for purpose and obviously profitable.
The stores opened last year added another ZAR 1.5 billion annualized in turnover with a payback of 12-16 months at most, which continues to be impressive. Africa's total trading space is now at about 1.3 million square meters with more than 3,100 stores. We also invested a further ZAR 250 million in local quick response manufacturing, which we estimate to have yielded about ZAR 250 million in margin benefits as rate of sales are higher and thereby limiting markdowns. In the table at the bottom, I have shown us against some of our competition. Bottom line is growth does not come for free in an economy where GP is muted.
If you don't maintain stores and enhance customer experience, and in parallel invest in your store staff filling capabilities digitally or other, I don't need to say further. For us, this is in line with our business value. It's simply showing respect to our customers and to our staff. Strong free cash flow generated from strong trade and stringent working capital management has resulted in the group generating positive net cash of ZAR 1 billion in 2022, as mentioned earlier, and that is after CapEx of ZAR 1.5 billion and paying out a dividend of ZAR 474 million.
As mentioned in the first half, we have resumed paying dividends, and the board declared a full dividend of ZAR 5.00 per share for the 2022 financial year, which is a 2x cover level, which is in line with what we previously guided. I will now take you through Africa's performance, our biggest trading region. I've also drafted a Sankey diagram, which I'll take you through the highlights quickly. A record turnover of ZAR 30.3 billion, which is 32.3% growth on last year, and incredible leverage delivered with gross profit growing by 87.9%. Reported trading expenses well below turnover growth at 27.4%. Actually, normalized trading expense grew only 21.7%. Africa reported a record ZAR 2.2 billion headline earnings.
Gross margin has also shown strong recovery from 41.4% last year to 43.2%, and that is including the 1.4 Jet dilution. TFG Africa, we are focused on driving volume, and you'll see units sold grew 91% on last year, and thereby rents through the till at a record ZAR 13.1 billion. Trading cost optimization remains a key focus area for us, with trading expenses now at 37.7% of turnover. Working with our landlords is a strategic imperative for us, both locally and internationally. TFG property teams continue to work closely with all landlords, big or small, to ensure we match our growth with affordable and sustainable rentals. We're constantly evaluating space and optimizing where possible across Africa's numerous brands, which are in different lifecycle phases.
Rental reversions are achieved where appropriate, creating a win-win situation with landlords. Often, the result is that overall space is improved and increased. We value our landlord relationships, and negotiations, while always robust, are very fair. To that end, Brad, Lisa worked tirelessly during the year, and of the 662 store lease renewals, they secured an average -14% rental reversion. This translates to a cost saving of some ZAR 80 million. If we compare to 2019, our rate per square meter is down 17.4%, and trade densities are up 7%, which is excluding Jet. Again, well done, Craig and team. Also in London, Justin, Emma, and the team, a large proportion of our leases today are now turnover-based leases with an average length of 1.2 years.
Equally, Australia, Nicole has been hard on rental reversions, where they also, for the 2022 financial year, achieved a -14.2% rental reversion. Well done, property team. EBIT, as a consequence, continues to grow despite the investment cost and the credit EBIT gap, as mentioned earlier. Operating margin expansion, as previously mentioned, remains a key focus area for us. I just included this slide on Jet 'cause a few analysts have asked us to show Jet, especially as this is our the full first year for TFG in the TFG stable. Jet was set to meet turnover of close to ZAR 6 billion, but as we mentioned at half- year, they were the brand most impacted by the July civil unrest, stores, and obviously some of their suppliers.
Hence, we are very satisfied with the ZAR 5.1 billion turnover and double-digit trading profit margins achieved, up significantly from when we purchased the business. We added another 17 Jet stores, which 11 were new homeware stores, and also to improve trade densities in some big boxes and strategic locations, we added another 380-some Jet homeware stores within the big Jet stores. We look forward to Jet's continued success, and well done, Shane, TK, and the Jet team. In closing, I am sure you've heard this from a lot of retailers, it's going to be important to cut the cloth to suit, and at the same time, focus on building a future fit business. There's a further opportunity to optimize expenses, especially in the transport or logistics cost centers as we optimize our DCs and road transport network.
I know Jacques is very passionate about that and is working with teams. ESG is our key focus, as Anthony mentioned, and as everyone knows, job preservation and job creation is unashamedly a top priority for TFG. Lastly, I'd like to thank my super finance and back office teams in all our regions for their efforts, particularly at this time of the year, but also throughout the year, as well as Deloitte, our auditors, and our operating board, our chairman, and our supervisory board, and audit and finance committee chairs in particular for their continued support. Handing over to Jane now, who will take us through Africa Credit. Thank you.
Thank you, Bongiwe, for the introduction. So what's the latest in the world of credit? Well, during the last financial year, we have seen unprecedented levels of applications for our store card credit. If we thought the first half did well, well, the second half did even better, in total reaching 2.8 million applications for the year, which just shows that our store card credit is still very much in demand. Now, the reason for this increase is due to three main reasons. Firstly, we have resumed our new account drives in our stores with incentives for both customers and staff, which always prove very successful and has naturally stimulated demand in the market. Of course, customers will only apply if they have a reasonable expectation to be successful.
You can see from the graph that we have cautiously increased our accept rates during this financial year. During the second half, this was sitting at circa 25%, which is obviously higher than it was during the previous financial year. However, these accept rates are still conservative when compared to 2019 and 2020. Thirdly, customers will only apply for store card credit if you've got the merchandise that customers want to buy, which you can see is clearly true from the turnover growth that we are seeing in both cash and credit. Now, an increase in applications combined with an increase in accept rates has resulted in the active account base growing, and we have now 2.6 million accounts, and the gross book has grown by nearly 4% to ZAR 8.7 billion at year-end.
Now, the second piece of good news is that the credit health of the overall book has also improved during this financial year. However, this is what you would expect if you restrict the credit lending criteria like we did in the previous financial year during the start of COVID. There's always a lag between the opening of new accounts and the bad debt statistics. So to be honest, if I didn't see an improvement, I would have been worried. Thankfully, all of the statistics are better. If you look at the overdue amounts, which are the amounts due for more than 30 days as a percent of the book, this has improved, now down to 13% versus 16% this time last year.
Less overdue values means a better book construct, which is reflected in our improved impairment provision ratio down to 19% from 21% last year. This is with no changes to our provisioning policies, and we continue to be appropriately provided. A lower provision requirement as a result of lower bad debt write-offs and improved bad debt recovery means our net bad debt as a percent of the book improved, down to 11% from 15% last year. I'm pleased to say that the overall EBIT for credit significantly improved this year to ZAR 175 million, with the main reason being improvements in bad debt. Now, we've also shown a graph on customer payment behavior to illustrate the improvements in the quality of the book.
The purple bars represent the percent of cash collected relative to the prior year, and you can see that we've collected more money on a smaller book, indicative of robust customer payment behavior as well as a great collections department. Given we have increased our accept rates during this financial year and that new accounts do attract a higher provision ratio, then during the course of this next financial year, I would expect to see the bad debt and provision ratios to increase slightly, and they will increase ahead of the income line as you always feel the impacts of the bad debt first, while income is earned much more slowly. Now, I mentioned that our collection results are much better than expected, even with the restriction in credit lending. How come? One of the decisions we made was to keep our collection staff working from home.
As a result, we're seeing unprecedented levels of productivity with notable decreases in unplanned leave and improved adherence. An unintended consequence, but obviously, this is great for our results. In the past, I've talked about how we are often the first line of credit that a customer takes out, and we have started a journey to talk to more of our customers about the benefits of maintaining a healthy credit record, as well as the implications of not paying their account. To this end, we embarked on a simple and effective revamp of all electronic communications to our arrears customers, just making it easier for the customer to identify where they are in the collections process and what they need to do in order to prevent their account falling further into arrears and the consequences of late or non-payment.
Now, we've all trialed the use of bots, and we too have done that within our collections department. We launched a web chat bot, making it easier for our customers to use electronic communications to make payment arrangements or just to get more information about their options, as not everybody wants to talk to an agent. These initiatives are yielding great results in our collections numbers, and we will continue to look for ways to improve our collections numbers. Jet. Now, with the onboarding of Jet into the TFG world, one of the first initiatives we did was to ensure that our existing TFG credit customers could shop at Jet, which was very successful, with over ZAR 700 million in Jet credit turnover coming from existing TFG cards. This represents circa 45% of all the credit spent in Jet.
We also launched our second-look book during the course of this financial year, and this now contributes to circa 20% of all the total Jet credit turnover. TymeBank. At our half- year, we announced our strategic partnership with TymeBank, which will allow us to accelerate our digital offerings and expand our financial service products. We are now in the middle of the implementation phase. You'll have seen that the MoreTyme Buy Now Pay Later product is currently being piloted in selected TFG stores. This product allows the customer to take the product immediately, pay half upfront, and the remaining amount over the next two months with no fees or interest. Now, this is fully funded by TymeBank, and the debtor's balance does not sit on TFG balance sheet.
The TFG Money Kiosk is due to be launched in 600 of our stores later this year, and we have literally just taken ownership of our first ever TFG Money Kiosk, which is live in our head office while we test all of the functionality. The kiosks are key to launch a greater suite of financial products. For example, our co-branded debit card and staff and customers will be able to open up a bank account in store or via our offices via one of our new TFG Money kiosks. To all the staff who are listening, did you know if you open up a TymeBank account, you can get paid a day earlier if your salary is paid into this account? Can you open one now, please? Tell me what you think of the product. The all-important money slide.
Income's still down because interest rates were at an all-time low during the last financial year. The primary way store card credit makes money is through interest. This picture, of course, is changing right now, and we expect our income to grow during the next financial year, but this will take time to come through to our P&L. Now, as discussed, our bad debt is also down, and this was expected, but this will increase during the course of the next financial year as we have cautiously increased our accept rates, and there is always a lag to bad debt impacts. Costs were up during this financial year, primarily due to credit marketing activity, which stimulated demand for our store card, and not due to employee costs. We expect a more inflationary level growth in our costs during the course of the next financial year.
Now, given that we expect to see an increase in bad debts due to an increase in accept rates and an increase in income, we believe we will keep the EBIT contribution at roughly the same rate as it will take longer for the interest impacts to be felt in the P&L. Overall, despite being in an incredibly low interest environment and due to careful management of bad debts, it's yet another tickety-boo year from credit, and long may that continue.
Thanks, Jane. Turning to the results for TFG London. Overall, a really good result in a period of significant change, with TFG London driving an EBIT margin well ahead of pre-pandemic levels. The backdrop here you can see is that we had a very difficult year the year before, with COVID having had a substantial impact on the demand for TFG London's core categories. The key points for this year, what happened? We saw the early relaxation of COVID restrictions as high vaccination and booster rates in the U.K. substantially reduced the spread of the virus. The U.K. market and customer behavior then began to make positive steps towards normality. Other markets that we work in took longer to recover, and restrictions on the whole were lifted more gradually.
Trading improved steadily through the course of the year, with a particularly marked post-Christmas performance driving positive gains in the final quarter of trading, January, February, March. This has also carried through to the two months of the new financial year, which is really positive. As a key indicator, footfall to stores recovered well, albeit still not quite to pre-pandemic levels, and this recovery was not felt evenly across the estate and the key call-out here really is that London, which is an important market, continued to be impacted by low levels of travel and tourism and a slower return to normal working patterns, which resulted overall in slower footfall and trading. However, on the whole, it was great to see our store-based business and our bricks and mortar business driving the year-on-year sales increase after a really tough FY 2021.
This recovery overall has enabled us to refocus our efforts on providing a high- quality solution-oriented service to our returning and our new customers. Just looking at margin and gross profit, during the period, we also repositioned TFG London to focus on margin outcomes as well as sales growth. We reduced the overall days on sale, and we were able to allocate stock on a contribution basis. Redesigning the business model away from the legacy department store channels and championing fewer, better stores, closing some loss-making stores, and working on a segmented customer approach, we successfully drove gross profit percentage gains and were able to maintain margin in stock and lower the overall mix of markdown generated sales.
On efficiency, the restructured cost base is increasingly focused around supporting our talented, high-performing brand teams, collaborating across the group to deliver a personalized five-star customer experience. Looking ahead and the outlook for the U.K., we have a more sustainable business model which is less reliant on the legacy department store business. Turnover overall is lower, but margins and efficiency have improved the overall result, and the new strategy is playing out positively. Due to the work we've done with our landlords and the significant efforts of our property team, we've been able to increase the flexibility of our fixed cost base and also reduce the length of our overall lease to just 1.2 years on average.
We've moved the online proposition forward significantly and invested in both the technologies and the teams to support this, and we further invested in both the creative and the digital marketing efforts to support growth. More of our decision-making now, importantly, is based on data, and we have greater clarity on our different customer segments. There's no doubt there are headwinds in the U.K., and that the overall market is facing, and that supply chain continues to be a significant challenge. We've also got consumer confidence being impacted by cost price increases and the upwards interest rate movements that we've seen. We as a team continue to work hard to ensure that we contain these pressures and so maintain the price that the customer pays for our products. For the year ahead, therefore, we're remaining cautious but optimistic.
To close, overall, really pleased with the outcome for the year. We drove an improved EBIT margin of just under 8% and a cash increase of just under GBP 49 million in a year of recovery for TFG London. My sincere thanks go to the whole team. These results are a testament to their resilience and focus through what's been a period of dramatic change. Now handing over to Gary and Dean from Australia. Thank you.
Thanks, Justin. Hello, everyone. Firstly, I'd like to say on behalf of Gary and myself, it's an absolute pleasure to be back in Cape Town with the rest of the TFG team for the first time in over three years. As most of you already know, my name is Dean Zanapalis, I'm the CFO for Australia. Today, I'll be providing you with some key highlights for 2022, and then I'll hand over to Gary Novis, our CEO, to talk to the strategic and operational outlook. Okay. As you can see, there are five years of financial performance on this slide. Now, while the Australian team doesn't take this for granted, we are extremely proud of these results. Five years of consecutive growth, and this year's EBIT profitability is up 26%. Let's focus on 2022.
It's hard to believe that we lost almost 15% of our trade days due to restrictions, very similar levels to 2021. What happened? How did we achieve the results given the circumstance? Well, the lift in sales is actually relatively easy to explain. After 18 months of on and off COVID restrictions, Australia finally reached its vaccination targets, and each state started to reopen. Now, we've certainly experienced reopening from lockdowns before. However, on this occasion, Australia reopened with over 80% vaccination rates. As a result, we opened with minimal restrictions, a lot of consumer confidence, strong demand for all types of events, and a consumer that was employed and still had record savings. This delivered sales growth of AUD 122 million, up 24%, and a comp growth rate of 15.8%. Now, from a cost perspective, we still had a challenge.
In 2021, we received support from both government and landlords. In comparison, 2022 had no direct government support for wages, substantially reduced landlord abatements, and higher inflationary pressures. As a result, costs grew. With good operational disciplines, the team managed to contain that growth. Now, finally, from an economic perspective, there is no doubt that the Australian economy has performed well when not in lockdown, and current economic conditions are relatively good. Record low unemployment at 4%, economic growth with GDP back to 3.3%, and reasonable levels of consumer confidence throughout the year. The opportunity was there. However, full credit goes to the team who've worked relentlessly throughout the last two years to ensure that culture remains strong and the business on track. At the end of the year, we delivered a great result.
24% growth in sales, 22 net new stores, a 26% growth in EBIT to ZAR 82 million, and an EBIT margin at 13.1%. Thank you very much. I'd now like to hand over to Gary for the strategic outlook.
Thanks, Dean. As Dean has shown in the previous slide, our profit has increased every year since TFG acquired RAG, and we have very clear and consistent strategies to continue this growth. Firstly, our retail store network. We will continue to open new stores as well as relocate and expand existing stores and drive like- for- like performance. Secondly, we are focused on growing our Johnny Bigg brand into the United States by way of online only, and this is currently exceeding our expectation. Finally, investing for the future. We continue to invest in our center of excellence for all things digital, which we refer to as our digital hub, as well as investing to ensure we have world-class IT systems and website platforms. The outlook. Australia, like the rest of the world, has economic challenges around logistics and supply chain.
While there is inflation and an increase in interest rates on a local level, our Australian economy is in very good shape. RAG is benefiting from record low unemployment, households starting to spend again after record levels of savings during the pandemic, and our RAG customer is spending on events which were either postponed or not planned during the pandemic. I am feeling very positive about the year ahead, and the first two months of our financial year have exceeded expectation. Thank you.
Thanks, Gary and Dean. It's really gratifying to see these incredible Australian results continue into the fifth year that you've been part of TFG. I'll come back to that point later on. At last year's results presentation, you may recall that I made the point that TFG's strategy was clear, intact, and wasn't in need of any major overhaul. We have a differentiated, resilient, and diversified business model that delivers significantly superior growth and that is not easily replicable. Considering the commodity, geographical, LSM, channel, and brand diversification of our business, as well as its historical track record and scale, we are already South Africa's fashion and lifestyle champion.
The strength and the resilience of our strategy becomes obviously clear and real if we look back at what it has delivered, and this is well illustrated by these 2-, 5-, and 10-year charts, which other than for the direct impact of COVID closures, show a very clear direction of travel. Thankfully, then, our challenges and strategy, it's pretty much down to prioritization of opportunities and execution. If our strategy is intact and prioritization and execution are key, how then do we manage to do this successfully across such a large, diversified business with more than 38,000 staff operating across more than 30 brands through 4,351 outlets on five continents and in 24 countries? The way that we approach execution with clarity and consistency is through our BOLT execution framework. This starts with our purpose.
We inspire our customers to live their best lives, and our vision to create the most remarkable omni-channel experiences for our customers. These have been rolled out at every level of our various businesses, and they unite everybody at TFG in terms of what we need to achieve. If we break our BOLT execution framework down into its key components, we are focused on building out individual, diversified, high- brand equity businesses. Optimizing everything we do, especially our sourcing, supply chain efficiency, as well as our cost base. leveraging our considerable assets, customers, customer data, store footprint, talent pipeline, vertical quick response manufacturing, and our leading in-house credit and e-commerce capabilities. Transforming into a true omni-channel retailer and platform play, and deeply embedding ESG into everything that we do to ensure that we both sustain our own business and play a meaningful role in the broader ESG agenda.
Now, in terms of building out, we will continue to invest meaningfully in our businesses to ensure that they remain as relevant going forward as they have been in the past. We anticipate spending approximately ZAR 2.1 billion in CapEx in FY 2023. At least 75% of this will be focused on expansionary projects for both stores and omni-channel. We will continue to focus on our brands to mitigate against the increasing trend of direct- to- consumer. We will also continue to emphasize our growth in the value sector, particularly in South Africa and in Australia, due to long-term trends and equally because of the current economic pressures. This chart shows how we've already moved our value sector contribution to group sales from just 15% in 2018 to a much more meaningful 28% in 2022.
We will also continue to look to acquire strong brands and businesses that meet our investment criteria, whether these businesses are located in South Africa, the U.K., Australia, or perhaps elsewhere in the world. Interestingly, we are increasingly being seen as the owner or home of choice for management teams of businesses that are going through any form of change in control. At pretty much any point, we are being approached by parties that want to become part of TFG or who would like to partner or collaborate with TFG to leverage our various retail and platform assets, and we remain very open to these approaches and discussions.
To share a bit more color on our organic store build- out runway, the majority of the new stores for FY 2023 will come from South Africa, with Australia and the U.K. also opening a more limited number of stores. In terms of South Africa, we currently have 353 stores under development with committed CapEx in excess of ZAR 600 million. Based on past recent history and a conservative store viability process, we expect that these new stores will generate slightly north of ZAR 3.9 billion in additional turnover on an annualized basis. In other words, for the 12 months after they've been opened.
350 stores may sound like a lot, but the makeup and the diversification of our brand portfolio, as well as the resultant underrepresentation of a number of our brands across significant retail nodes in South Africa, makes this sort of growth both possible and very profitable. For example, during the past year, we opened in 55 new retail nodes where we were previously not at all represented, and these stores contributed more than ZAR 422 million in additional sales. Now, as much as we consistently grow on the back of our organic store and brand rollout program, we do continue to look for acquisitions that we can bolt on to our increasingly sophisticated TFG platform. Given the strength of our organic growth, we sometimes get asked why we bother with theoretically risky acquisitions and whether they're actually worth the effort.
The simple answer to this is we are ambitious, and we want to be able to add the returns that carefully selected and well-integrated acquisitions can deliver to our overall group results. Looking back at the acquisitions that have really supercharged our growth and scale over the past seven years from 2015 onwards, I think the returns profile that we've been able to generate illustrates this point. Looking at the combined Phase Eight, Whistles, Hobbs, RAG, and Jet acquisitions since 2015, our current year, still COVID impacted EBIT return on these acquisitions was 30%. This is clearly additive. As I mentioned, we are often seen as the most favorable home for high- quality businesses and their management teams. We know how to leverage our retail assets and back office platforms and systems to make these acquisitions more accretive.
We have a track record of successful integration and of keeping incoming management teams intact for a sustained period, which is incredibly important as we rely on these management teams to run the businesses that they know better than anyone else. Looking forward, we have both a strong investment pipeline and a strong balance sheet and cash position to support further carefully selected acquisitions when appropriate. I stress the when appropriate phrase because, as a rule, we don't rush into transactions. In many cases, we've watched and engaged with businesses for between two and five years before transactions materialized at the right time and the right price. Given that, we've just reached our five-year anniversary of the RAG acquisition, I thought it might be useful to use this as an illustrative example of what we think a successful retail acquisition looks like.
We bought RAG from a private equity fund five years ago through a personal introduction to the management team after nearly a year's due diligence and getting to know and understand the team and the business. The original management team had a significant say in where the business would end up, and I think they chose us as much as we chose them. The original management team is still very much intact, and as you could probably sense from their presentation earlier on, they're just as excited about being part of TFG today as when they joined five years ago. Five years ago, RAG produced an EBITDA of ZAR 420 million. This year, it produced an EBITDA of ZAR 921 million.
Five years ago, RAG had 400 stores and was considered by some of our South African competitors who were also looking at it to be ex-growth. Today, it has 554 stores and a significant online business and runway. Five years ago, we purchased the business when it was worth ZAR 3.1 billion. A month ago, we asked an Australian corporate finance house to value the business for us, and accepting that there's always a margin of error inherent in any valuation, nonetheless, their valuation came in at just under ZAR 11 billion.
At the time we announced the acquisition of RAG, Amazon had just entered the Australian market, and the prevailing common wisdom was that Australian retail was too expensive, too competitive, too difficult to run, and could only ever end up going badly, particularly for South African investors. Now, other than the illustrative value of this RAG example, it also highlights the value of these offshore businesses and balance sheets as a catalyst for further growth and expansion opportunities. Our continued build-out of manufacturing capacity and capability has also really served TFG well during a time of unprecedented global supply chain disruptions and significantly de-risked our business. Our average quick response lead times are more than 50% lower than the best third-party suppliers in South Africa.
We'll be growing our quick response units by approximately 50% over the next year and doubling these by FY 2026. Our proprietary QR manufacturing processes have materially assisted us in reducing our markdowns, improving our margins, and significantly improving our stock days, as is illustrated in the table below. We will be building out 10 further manufacturing units during the year ahead. Tying all of this back to our commitment to social performance, we anticipate that we will grow our direct and strategic CMT jobs from their current 5,200 employees to approximately 11,200 employees by FY 2026.
Now, to give you a sense of the scale of what's been accomplished in this area in the past year, I thought I'd show you a couple of before- and- after photographs of some of the manufacturing assets that we commissioned during the past 12 months. Prestige Caledon, Prestige Maitland, Prestige Durban, and Prestige Epping. I hope that these photographs help you appreciate the scale of our investment and the positive environment that we've created for our manufacturing staff. I have mentioned TFG Labs and the strategic importance of our omni-channel strategy on a number of occasions this morning. As I've shared before, TFG has by far the most advanced and valuable combination of omni-channel assets in South Africa, which include our already over-indexed online presence, our deep customer base, as well as our 3,200+ physical stores.
TFG Labs has been working both hard and very smartly for the last 12 months, re-platforming and simultaneously creating something very special that will harness these omni-channel assets and combine them with an unrivaled choice of brands, product ranges, and SKUs, both our own as well as those of selected third-party vendors. We'll soon be announcing the launch of a new omni-channel brand and platform that will bring all of these omni-channel attributes together in a way that simply has not been done in South Africa to date. I'd really love to be able to share more about the name and the specifics today, but I had to promise the team that I would wait until they'd completed the migration of our entire product catalog before we share the rest. All I can say is watch this space.
This brings us to the point where I'll share some of my thoughts on the year ahead, as well as provide you with an update on our current trade post year-end. We're acutely aware of the various external macro factors that are worrying governments, financial institutions, policy centers, and businesses around the world. Inflation, the impact of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing COVID impact on China, global supply chain issues, rising energy prices, as well as what is clearly a rising interest rate environment, are all real and will present challenges, I think, for all businesses. That said, we have built what has proven to be a very resilient and diversified business and operating model, and we've also taken far-reaching steps over the past two years to de-risk our balance sheet and to insulate ourselves from these anticipated disruptions.
Having acknowledged these factors, which are largely beyond our control, I think we do have reason to remain cautiously optimistic given both the levers that are at our disposal and our future strategic ambitions. Dealing briefly with each of our geographies. Australia is at full employment. They will continue to benefit from the commodity cycle, and the majority of our core customers are not heavily indebted and have less exposure to rising interest rates than one might assume. The business remains strong and in many ways is now poised for the next phase of growth. London, the positioning of our U.K. brands and their business model still has significant upside to be captured. Even if the macro environment stays tough or tightens further, I believe they'll be less impacted than most.
Bringing this back home to TFG Africa, we have a massively differentiated set of brands serving all taste levels and LSMs. Our individual brands remain amongst the most desired and sought after, and we spent the past five years consciously ensuring that all of our brands offer the best value for money equation in their categories, which will be of increasing importance in a tough economic environment. In terms of current trade, our year-to-date growth to the end of May were +11.9% for TFG Africa, +45.5% for TFG London, and +11.6% for TFG Australia. Breaking down the TFG Africa numbers further, we had an incredibly strong April, but we did see a slowdown during May like most retailers did, but this again picked up from the start of June.
There were a number of factors that I believe led to the slowdown, including the fact that no real paydays fell into our May trading calendar, while we effectively had two paydays in April. The SASSA grants, which are normally paid monthly to nearly 10 million South Africans, have not been paid for the last two months, following everybody having to reapply for these grants. These are due to be paid on a catch-up basis starting from the middle of June. There was also a significant shift in the Eid dates, which further distorted the month splits. As a result of these various shifts, I think we really have to look at April and May on a combined basis, much like we do look at November and December.
I think on this basis, we're actually very happy with the two-month growth of 11.5% off what is an increasingly high base. This brings the formal part of our presentation to an end. I do hope that you found the presentation helpful in better understanding our results and our group strategy. We're going to have a short comfort break, and we'll be back in about 10 minutes for the Q&A. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the original presentation and you've now had time for a comfort break. In the meantime, we've had quite a few questions come in. I'll either answer them myself or pass them on to any of the presentation team who's best suited to answer them. To kick off, the first question is, please comment on the trading densities for TFG Africa.
They seem to be lower than some peers. Are you considering some store size reductions? Is this perhaps in response to growing online sales? It's a great question. We've obviously got lots of different brands. The densities vary hugely between the different ones. Jet, as we were, you know, very open about at the time we completed the transaction, would be dilutive from a density perspective. They had a lot of oversized boxes. We spent a lot of time this year reducing the oversized boxes or cutting other TFG brands and Jet itself, just to give some sense of the metrics, their trading densities have actually increased by 45% during the first year that they've been part of TFG.
In terms of the online piece, that might be a kind of common wisdom theory that as online grows, densities go down, and I think if it was pure e-commerce, there'd be some validity to that. We actually believe we're gonna see exactly the opposite as we get omni-channel selling, really up and running and perfected. I alluded to that when I spoke about labs in the presentation. We'll actually be driving more customers, fulfilling from stores. Densities over time will actually, I think, go up. Hopefully, that answers the first question. The second question is what drove the very strong second half Africa like-for-like revenue growth? Can you talk us through the various segments? Good question. You know, we did an analysis of the last six months and actually the last two quarters independently, and then together.
We significantly outtraded pretty much any other listed or publicly available information retailer in South Africa over that period. I think there were a variety of different reasons for that. You know, first and foremost, we were very much in stock, right from Black Friday all the way through. That was largely as a result of our own onshore quick response local manufacturing. I think a lot of our competitors were stuck with, you know, supply chain issues, particularly out of the Far East. We had some impact of that, but it was, you know, relatively negligible compared to others who were more reliant. I think we, you know, we've also been through a cycle that really kicked off, you know, during COVID period as stores reopened after those initial two months in South Africa.
There was a lot of panic buying, and a lot of the consumer spend really shifted to absolutely rock bottom value, almost emergency- type buying. If you remember, it was kind of going into winter. People hadn't been able to shop for two months. They literally went out and bought the cheapest they could get. As they realized, you know, over the next couple of months and all the way pretty much through to December, January, February for us, there's definitely been less panic in the market. People have got more confident. I think they've realized the world hasn't come to an end, and there's definitely been a marked shift back into aspirational type brands and shopping. Again, if you look at the.
I made the point in the presentation, if you look at the brand equity of the TFG brands, you know, I think that's what, you know, where customers have really, really gravitated towards. Next question. On TFG Africa, could you give us a sense of what the EBIT margin would be if you excluded Jet? I think I've spoken enough. Bongiwe, maybe you can take that one.
Thanks, Anthony. I think it's approximately 12.8% excluding Jet. Remember, Jet has got a dilution effect of about 1.4% added to TFG's trading margins Africa. Remember also this 12.8% I'm quoting is with the hold that I mentioned on credit, ZAR 540 million, that I mentioned earlier in my presentation. On a like for like basis, again, excluding Jet, the base business EBIT margins run at approximately 16%-17%. Thank you.
Perfect, Bongiwe. Thank you. Can you comment on post-period trading? Peers have reported a slowdown in sales in May. I did comment on that in my closing and outlook, but again, just to reiterate it in case anybody missed it, we've really looked at April and May as a combined two-month period. We kind of grew just over 11% for TFG Africa over the two months, and I think we're very happy with the 11%. The reason why May was a lot softer than April, I think there are a couple of components which I spelled out. Probably the most significant is social grants in South Africa.
Those are paid to between 10 million-11 million South Africans every month, haven't been paid for the last three months, and that's obviously had a cumulative effect. There has been a commitment from government to pay those on a catch-up basis. In theory, two or three months will be paid simultaneously, pretty much from middle of June. You know, if that follows through, there should be a lot more money circulating in the South African economy. I think that was, you know, probably the biggest single issue. There were also shifts around when Eid fell, and equally, if you look at our trading calendar, April versus May, effectively, we had two proper pay days, which is obviously when, you know, most of the money gets spent in our stores, fell into April.
We had zero in May. Certainly, we started to see a bit of a pickup again into June, and we would hope that picks up, you know, back to the kind of levels we've had, you know, January, February, March, once money starts circulating on the grants again. Okay, the next question, given the second-look book participation of 20%, what is the total credit participation in Jet? Is it now closer to 50%, or has there been some transference to TFG's book? Jane, I think that one is definitely yours.
Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Right now, the credit contribution for Jet is circa 30%, and that of course, is made up of both the RCS component as well as the TFG component, and quite rightly, the 20% is of the new accounts that we have opened up in the Jet store. But an awful lot of the credit turnover spend for Jet right now is coming from our existing TFG store cards, and that is about ZAR 700 million, which is about 45% of all the credit turnover in Jet is coming from our existing TFG account holders.
Great, Jane. Thanks very much. It looks like you're getting two in a row, Jane. This one's actually addressed to you. Jane, please could you give more clarity on TFG Money Kiosk, and what did you mean on having cards given to customers and staff?
I love it when a question allows me to give a plug for, like, my TFG Money Kiosk. Whoever wrote this question, thank you very much. The TFG Money Kiosk that we have right now, which is live in our head office, means you can go there now, you can literally apply for a debit card, a bank account online, and you will get your card printed in under five minutes in store in our head office. Now, it's only available to staff right now while we iron out all of these efficiencies. During the course of this year, we will roll out to approximately 600 of our stores, where customers will be able to apply for a TFG TymeBank account in store, get your card there and then.
Super, Jane. Thank you. Another Jet question. Now that you've integrated Jet, do you still believe you can get to an EBIT margin of around 14%? Yeah, I think the guidance we gave was between 13%-14%. Bongiwe mentioned it in her slides. If you took out the impact specifically around the looted stores in Jet, they had about twice the proportion of Jet stores looted just because of where they're geographically situated compared to the rest of the group. If you kind of added that back, they would've been pretty close to that, I think. There is a lot of work being done around the margin piece. The margins recovered massively. It was kind of in the mid-30s% at best when we bought Jet.
It's already, you know, sitting very close to the 40% level. You know, as soon as we get that to 41%, 42%, all of that money drops straight to the bottom line. I think, you know, putting all of that aside, it's still a business that has generated over ZAR 500 million worth of profit in its first year. Given that we paid quite a lot less than ZAR 500 million for the business, I think we're pretty happy with it, but there's absolutely no question it's got legs. That doesn't even really take into account Jet Home. I touched on that in my presentation. Jet Home is, you know, another growth lever on top of that as well.
The next question was, what was the group selling price inflation for Africa, and how did it compare to the previous period? Also a great question. It's probably needs to be answered in two parts. We've had a massive product mix shift in FY 2022 versus the previous year. FY 2021 was a huge shift to casual as people worked from home, and then a shift back into a lot of smarter wear, both in men's and women's, as people went back to events, went back to the office. We've been selling a lot more high-priced items this year than the previous year. Having said that, on a like-for-like basis, the actual inflation on similar product would've been close to zero.
If you go back over the last five years, our selling price inflation relative to the South African market has kind of been circa half. We've done that very consciously. We value engineered to make sure that pretty much all of our brands from top LSM to bottom offer the best possible price-value equation. TFG's quick response manufacturing, how does this compare to Chinese imports? I get the impression it's very favorable. Again, a great question and a good observation. When we started quick response manufacturing, actual landed cost of the individual garment or item wasn't a priority. We were much more focused on the speed of response, minimizing markdowns, taking out fashion risk, and maximizing working capital efficiency.
As we've started to get into bigger and bigger volumes and drive efficiencies, we've actually got to a point where on a lot of items and commodities, we're now cost competitive, in some cases, actually lower landed costs and particularly with inflated shipping costs at the moment, than if it did come out of China. Again, just to emphasize, the key and Bongiwe gave a great example at the start of her presentation. The key benefit of quick response is exactly that. It's quick. It stops you taking a 150- to 180-day view on a fashion trend. That's reduced down to 30-40 days. Is rising inflation an external concern, perhaps not mentioned in the presentation? Again, I think we touched on that in the outlook.
I think inflation is you know a concern to all businesses around the world. Having said that, I think in retail a bit of inflation certainly isn't a problem. As a matter of fact, a bit of inflation can be your friend when it comes to driving turnover. What is the next question? Very exciting to hear about the amazing growth in TFG International. Oh, sorry, that's someone looking for a job. We'll skip that one. What is the next one? This is another interesting one. How do we invest in TFG? Please explain in detail. I guess if you're a serious investor, you're welcome to give us a call and we'll tell you a bit more about the business.
Otherwise we're listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Yeah, that was quite a nice question. What is? Are there any left after that? Guys, can we just scroll up the list of questions?
Answered that. Please comment on further acquisition opportunities you're finding in South Africa, the U.K. or Australia or elsewhere. Again, a good question. You know, I think we made a couple of points. We, you know, the group's been inquisitive for a long period of time. This is not, you know, something we've taken to recently. It's very much part of our DNA. As a matter of fact, more than 50% of TFG over time has come through acquisitions. We typically like to find businesses with great management. Cultural fit is absolutely critical. I mentioned that earlier on. Businesses that can leverage off TFG's platform. Jet was a great example in terms of systems. Other brands, you know, we spoke about Tapestry.
They're going to leverage off, again, subject to Competition Commission approval, our online platform, our credit, et cetera. We like to find opportunities ourselves. We typically don't get involved in sales processes. That's normally done just to kind of drive prices up to unrealistic levels. I think the, you know, the key piece which I did mention is, we've got a long pipeline already of potential investment opportunities. There's honestly seldom a week or two weeks that goes by where we aren't approached by somebody. We filter them very, very carefully and, you know, perhaps one in 20 or 30 even gets to an NDA stage. So hopefully that gives, yeah, gives you kind of some idea. Okay. What else have we not answered? Can we? Guys, I think we've done all of those.
Can we just scroll further down? Further down. Jane, I think that is one for you. It's not a complete question.
Yeah.
Oh, sorry, that's actually for me.
Mm.
I thought it was the non-payment, creditors non-payments. Regarding the grant non-payments, is this specifically for COVID ZAR 350 per month or all grants not paid? My understanding is it's ZAR 350 per month, but it might not sound like a lot, but as I said, that's paid to between 10 milion and 11 million people. It looks as though literally in the last week the government departments have only, you know, really come to grips with the fact that it hasn't been paid for three months now. If you think what that means over a three-month period, it has created a massive hole in consumer spending. I think the upside is when that money starts to flow, and as I mentioned, it's likely that, you know, that'll be the middle of June.
I think that injects a lot of liquidity and a lot of money back into consumers' pockets. Justin, you actually get a question. How much of your U.K. online sales is through third-party platforms versus your own websites? What is the profit profile from online versus bricks? You wanna have a go at that?
In the U.K. business, we've got a really good split between our own web and partner web. They're both very profitable. They're both good, really good contribution margins. That's really the split, and that hasn't changed through the cycle in terms of participation of online sales. That's the answer to that one. The next one I think is across-
Yeah.
Across regions.
That's fine. Jane, one for you. Are you comfortable?
Yep.
With credit as a percentage of group sales? I don't think it's just a yes or no. I think you probably have to give a little bit of detail.
Oh, really?
Most of the while.
I thought the yes would suffice. Am I comfortable? Yep. Everything's great. Where are you comfortable with credit? We typically aim around that 30% mark for Africa, of course. That's not at a group level. One of the things, of course, that I really monitor is how is the cash growth doing compared to how is the credit growth doing. I think the sweet spot for Africa is around about that 30% level.
Great, Jane. Thank you very much. Sorry, just to not let you off the hook, you might just wanna touch on TymeBank and Buy Now Pay Later.
Yeah. Of course, one of the things that we are doing in financial services is launching a greater suite of financial service products. The first product that we have got live right now, of course, is the Buy Now Pay Later product, the MoreTyme product. That's not on our balance sheet. That does not go under our credit turnover statistics, fully funded by TymeBank. The debit card, of course, is also under the TymeBank. If we do personal loans, which we are hoping to do, we're currently in negotiations, again, that will be funded by TymeBank, but we'll be leveraging the TFG Money brand. We're really gonna take that TFG Money brand to market in a much bigger way, offering a holistic suite of financial service products.
Looking at what do we wanna fund versus what do we want other credit providers to fund, and TymeBank is our partner of choice.
Jane, just while you were talking, that's obviously triggered some more questions on TymeBank. Do you wanna just talk about the take-up?
Yeah.
Who's most likely, in your opinion, to actually use that as a payment channel?
Yep. Buy Now Pay Later is only live in selected TFG stores. Okay, it's live in Jet, EXACT, and The FIX right now. We have literally only just launched it. Okay. It's in roughly, I think, 30% of our stores, if I think about the mix. Brad, I know you gave me this statistic, and I've promptly forgotten it, and I apologize, but I'm sure it's around about 30% of all of our stores. It's only available in our brick- and- mortar right now. We do think there'll be a bigger take-up once we go online, and that is part of our implementation plan. Really and truthfully, I mean, you know, if you look at any statistics worldwide about Buy Now Pay Later, it's growing. It's growing in a big way.
It appeals to a certain segment of the market, either those that are kinda like not sure about credit or I don't want to use credit, but I wanna buy now, pay later. We'll be monitoring exactly what kind of customers want this, who does it appeal to, and how does it fit into our overall journey. We see it as a complementary product to our Store Card. It's not replacing our Store Card.
Okay, thanks, Jane. Getting to the end of the questions, there's one quite a long one which I'm gonna have to summarize. Effectively, it's asking whether TFG uses rewards and data to the extent that some of the food retailers talk about doing this. The answer is absolutely. We've got one of the biggest rewards programs in South Africa. We've had close to 28 million people enroll in TFG Rewards. We're increasingly using that in a very scientific and targeted manner, particularly as it applies to e-commerce and omni-channel selling. We are able to make much more personalized offers that are much more relevant to individuals. I think we're all used to being bombarded with emails and some offers from, you know, any number of retailers.
90% of them, honestly, are totally, you know, the kind of things you're not gonna wanna shop or you've got no interest in or just not relevant to you. The upside in all of this is making them targeted and focused. We've interestingly over the last couple of months, we've run a couple of trials on some very specifically targeted offers, and the uptake and the return on investment has been dramatic. Guys, that's pretty much the end of the questions. The problem is we didn't get one for Australia, and for you guys having traveled all the way here, it's either you did such a great presentation, but I don't think that's fair. Because you're up here, I'm gonna ask a question. You did mention Johnny Bigg online into the U.S., but you kinda just mentioned it as a sentence.
Could you maybe just give us a little bit of a sense of what's happening and where it could go?
Look, it's a brand for big and tall men. Normally, we're in Australia, and we've launched online only in the U.S. with a great response. We feel that with further investment, we can continue to grow and grow at a quick pace.
Fantastic. Australia going into the U.S. online, no rentals. Sounds good.
Thanks.
Guys, thank you. I think, just to the rest of the team, thanks for answering all the questions. To everybody who attended the presentation, again, thank you very much for your two hours. Hopefully it was helpful. Have a fantastic day, and we look forward to catching up in due course. Thank you.