Good morning and welcome to our 2024 interim results presentation. We'll start this morning with a high-level overview of our performance for the period, and I will then hand over to Zaid Manjra, our Group Finance Director, who will take you through the detail of our financial results for the half. I will then update you on how we're progressing against our various strategies and share some thoughts around our outlook for the second half and beyond before opening up to questions. Starting with an overview of the recent period, today we'll focus on the performance of our continuing operations. You'd recall we sold David Jones at the beginning of last year, an outcome which has been truly transformational for our group and our shareholders, and so the numbers we're talking to today exclude that business from last year's base.
Looking back on our first half, it proved to be a bit tougher than we'd expected, largely by virtue of the macro backdrop across both our geographies, but in particular in Australia. In South Africa, of course, one never expects it to be business as usual. There's often a bit of an obstacle course you have to run. There was not only the ongoing, but in fact the worsening impacts of load shedding. We had avian flu, taxi strikes, port congestion, severe flooding in the Cape, a number of external headwinds in fact. But I'm really pleased, despite this context, how our teams have shown up to deliver a pretty respectable result. Group sales were up 5.4% over the period, with momentum improving to over 7% in the last six weeks of the half.
The impact though of a softer top-line environment resulted in aEBIT, adHEPS, and our interim dividend all declining by around 6% relative to last year's record earnings. From a divisional perspective, our food business delivered an excellent result, and even more so considering it was primarily from existing stores, driven by new customers, increased transactions, and increased basket values. We expanded both our GP and EBIT margin despite continuing to invest in price and various strategic initiatives, and our return on capital is industry-leading at just shy of 60%. In FBH, whilst we have made further progress in a number of our turnaround initiatives, sales growth was lower than planned. This was partly due to the pressure we're seeing on discretionary spend and the impact of shipping delays, which meant ZAR 500 million in stock arrived late, impacting Eunice and the launch of our summer lines.
But candidly, we also scored some own goals here, specifically in the area of product availability, and that's something I'll talk to in more detail later. Notwithstanding these challenges, we continue to focus on our top priority, the financial health of our FBH business, and I'm very pleased that we've been able to maintain our GP margin by increasing full-price sales and driving increasingly profitable promotions. Our financial services business, WFS, doubled its profits over the period and continues to deliver the healthiest impairment ratio in the sector. In summary, taking a look at the performance of our South African and African business, whilst FBH was softer than we would have liked, the rebound in WFS and the exceptional result from foods meant that the profits of our combined Southern African business grew by 10%, which is no mean feat in the current climate.
Moving to Australia, our Country Road Group results are a function of both the very weak macro and the high comparative base. Zaid will talk to this in more detail shortly. While clearly disappointing in absolute terms, I think overall performance has been reasonable, specifically relative to the rest of the market, and that's partly enabled by our Country Road brand, which delivered its strongest quarterly performance on record. That said, given the slower overall top line, CRG's profits were well down on last year, and that's clearly had an impact on our group's results. It's symptomatic of where we find ourselves within the macro cycle, and so I am confident that this impact on profitability is more short-term in nature. We're staying the course. We're investing through the cycle to ensure we're positioned to benefit from the upswing when macros improve.
I think although our interim performance has been somewhat mixed, it does highlight once again the importance and benefit of a diversified portfolio of businesses and the immense value which lies in the strength of both our Woolworths and Country Road Group brands. While we continue doing everything we can in the second half to offset some of the macro challenges, it's just as important to ensure that we're making decisions in respect of both our Australian and SA businesses, not just for today, but for the years to come. We have a fundamentally different business today to that of only a few years ago. Our balance sheet is one of the healthiest in the sector. We're highly cash-generative. We've strengthened our foundations. We have significant runway for growth, and our strategies are working.
We're deploying all of this, these advantages, towards really optimizing, investing in, and growing our business, and I look forward to giving you more of an update on that a little bit later on. But now, I'd like to hand over to Zaid to share some of the financial detail behind our recent performance. Zaid, over to you.
Thank you, Roy. Welcome and good day to everyone. I'm pleased to report our results for the first half of the 2024 financial year. I will also share with you some insights into the numbers. First, I'll provide a group overview, including sales and EBIT, and then go into the performance of each business segment in more detail. We have had a mixed performance for the half. The trading environments are extremely challenging across the geographies we operate in, and I will unpack some of this later. I am very pleased with the way our teams continue to respond to these challenges, and in this context, and notwithstanding these challenges, I believe we have delivered a respectable set of results for the group.
It's important to note that these results are not comparable to last year's first half results when we still had the contribution of the David Jones business, which is, of course, no longer part of our group. I will therefore be talking mainly to our continuing operations in the prior period so we can compare like for like. Looking at the financial overview, and Roy briefly touched on some of these, our group sales grew by 5.4% to ZAR 38.1 billion and by 4.4% in constant currency. The adjusted EBIT of ZAR 3.3 billion was impacted by negative leverage, and despite excellent cost control by the businesses, was 6.2% below last year. However, I should point out that our aEBIT last year was up 25%, so we are coming off a very elevated base, particularly in the Country Road Group, which was up almost 100% last year.
While adjusted profit after tax was 9.5% lower, the adHEPS of ZAR 2.10 per share was down 5.6%, and the dividend for H1 of ZAR 1.48 per share have both had an accretive benefit from our share buybacks that we undertook in the first and second halves of last year. The dividend is based on a 70% payout ratio of adjusted headline earnings. I mentioned earlier that this is a mixed set of results, and we will see later how our respective businesses have performed quite differently in the current environment. This is indicative, however, of the benefit of our diversified portfolio of businesses we have within the group. Another notable aspect of our results, and you will see this coming through in the numbers, are the significant investments we've started to make.
We told you when reporting last year that we are entering into a period of heavier investment to support our growth ambitions and future revenue streams, and this will mean a short-term drag on returns. You can see that while aEBIT is down 6.2%, aEBITDA is down only 3.2% due to the higher depreciation charge. I will talk more about these investments when we go through our capital expenditure later on in the presentation. Our balance sheet remains robust, with net borrowings at a group level of ZAR 4.1 billion. The balance sheet is a strong foundation that allows us not only to withstand the pressure from the macro environment, but also allowing us to invest for the future. Our return on capital employed of 22.3% is maintained at well above our cost of capital and are sector-leading returns.
One of the significant features of our business is a healthy cash generation. Our cash conversion ratio, which is above 90%, confirms our inherent ability to generate cash. Onto David Jones, and this should be the last update I provide to you on the David Jones transaction and related aspects as we near completion of the separation process. It's worth reminding you that the sale of David Jones has been transformational for the group. The transaction unlocked ZAR 7.7 billion of value for us and significantly strengthened our balance sheet. I can confirm that we have received the full amount of the final tranche of the proceeds from the sale during the reporting period, even though it was accounted for in the previous financial year, and this now completes the sale transaction. We have retained the Bourke Street property in Melbourne, which is a flagship David Jones store.
While this property is classified as an investment asset, we do not consider it to be a core asset. Its market value is in excess of ZAR 2.5 billion, and we have recognized rental income of about ZAR 113 million for the period, with lease terms on a triple net basis, and we report this income below the EBIT line. The operational separation of the Country Road Group from David Jones is on track to be completed as planned and within budget by year-end. Finally, you'll recall there's an element of cost that we previously allocated to David Jones, which we are still carrying in the current year, which will be reduced by year-end. As promised, before we dive deeper into the numbers, I'd like to call out a few contributory factors to fully understand the context in which we are operating.
We're all quite familiar with the broader macroeconomic context, so I'm not going to dwell on this as some of the details are in the presentation. However, I do want to highlight the impact of the macro environment on consumer confidence and sentiment that has led to consumers spending less on discretionary items across both geographies. In particular, in Australia, there has been a disproportionate impact on apparel retail that's amplified by the shift in spending away from goods to services. In South Africa, besides a weak macro environment, we have a host of other headwinds to contend with. These include the persistent and elevated levels of load shedding, failing transport infrastructure, and various other disruptions to trade, so certainly not for the faint-hearted. In South Africa, I think no presentation is complete without referencing load shedding and its impact on business performance, so let me address that now.
Load shedding in the half was worse than in the prior period. However, the majority of load shedding costs are in the base. Although we have become better at managing the impact of load shedding, particularly on food waste, we still incur significant diesel costs, which in the current period was about ZAR 15 million higher than in the prior period. Diesel and related costs across the business are costing us in the range of ZAR 20 million-ZAR 30 million per month. Despite these challenges, we grew sales in Woolworths South Africa by 6.8% and group sales by 5.4%. In the last six weeks of the half, which represents our busiest period and includes the festive season, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, trading momentum accelerated to 7.2%, which was supported by our robust trade plans. Our online sales grew by 16% in the half and contributed 9% to group sales.
Our food business had an exceptional half, underpinned by market-leading like-for-like growth of 7.2%. Total sales grew by 8.4%, with momentum growing throughout the half and especially during the festive season in which product availability was at an all-time high. Underlying food product inflation was 9.1% for the period and had begun to decline towards the latter part of the half, in which we saw positive volume growth. While the total food online channel growth was 47%, our Dash offering grew by an impressive 75%. In Fashion, Beauty, and Home, sales grew by 2.2% in the half and by 3.8% in the last six weeks of the period. This growth is certainly less than we would have liked, but was hampered by a number of factors, including the delayed flow of inventory into our stores due to port and logistics challenges and poor availability.
Our beauty business with an FBH had an outstanding performance and grew by 16%, and we are seeing the result of our strategy to invest in and grow this category exponentially and to become the leading beauty destination. We have also invested in improving our online offering, which now contributes over 5% to sales, which equates to growth of 27% in the six months. The performance of our stores in the rest of Africa is becoming more significant, with FBH sales increasing by 7.1%, representing almost 12% of FBH sales. It's a growth area in which we see promising opportunity. In Country Road, the Country Road Group, together with the entire industry, saw a steep drop in traffic across all channels, which, of course, impacted sales growth. While on average, traffic was down over 15%, sales were 5% down on last year.
This does, of course, imply that our conversion rate has been much better, so those who come into stores are buying a lot more when they leave the store. The growth is of a high base, in which sales grew by 25% last year, and growth in the last six weeks across the festive season was positive at 1.3%, albeit with a high level of promotional activity. It's worth knowing that sales in Rand terms were in line with last year due to the exchange rate. While the overall growth rate is muted, the Country Road brand grew by 5% in Australia, achieving record sales in the first half and outperforming the market across all categories. Moving on to the adjusted earnings for the half, group aEBIT for continuing operations of ZAR 3.3 billion is down 6%.
As pointed out earlier, aEBITDA is down 3.2%, reflecting the increased investments we are making. Within the group result, Woolworths South Africa, which includes the food, FBH, and WFS businesses, was up 10%, which is a resilient result in a pretty tough environment. Food aEBIT is up 13% on last year at ZAR 1.6 billion and 13.2% up adjusting for load shedding costs, while FBH is down 5.3% and 4.3% when adjusting for load shedding. I will unpack the details of these results in the forthcoming slides. The overall group EBIT growth was diluted by the CRG result, being 46% down on last year in Australian dollar terms, which had a material impact on the group result. I spoke earlier about challenging trading conditions in Australia, and these were further compounded by the high base in which the Country Road Group almost doubled its profit, bolstered by post-COVID pent-up demand.
Woolworths Financial Services grew their book and interest income and are reflecting a recovery in the business after a particularly tough period. Impairment rates are improving gradually, but are still at elevated levels. I'd now like to take you through the results of each business and focus only on the key metrics. You can find detailed income statements in the appendix. Let's start with our food business, our Holy Grail, as we call it. Food delivered an outstanding performance and has been a key profit contributor. Our biggest business remains our strongest business. We saw positive operating leverage throughout the income statement and best-in-class return metrics. Our like-for-like sales growth of 7.2% is industry-leading, which is testament to this business's resilience. Improving availability was one of our top priorities, and the implementation of a new demand forecasting system has already started to show positive results, especially over the festive season.
As we have told you in the past, we will continue to consolidate our value proposition and enhance our market presence. Our online channel increased sales by almost 50%, supported by an expansion in our Dash offering, which is now profitable on a fully costed basis. The food GP margin grew even further to 24.6%, which was up 80 basis points from the prior period. Our focus on optimizing promotional activity in conjunction with value chain efficiencies and lower waste has more than offset the additional load shedding and inflationary costs, notwithstanding the growth in online and the investment in additional capacity. Expenses were up 11%, which was driven by investment in new growth initiatives, additional load shedding and online costs, and an increase in trading space of 3.3%.
aEBIT for the first half is up 13% to ZAR 1.6 billion, and this returned an aEBIT margin of 7% and 7.3% after adjusting for load shedding costs, an outstanding result which is ahead of our medium-term guidance. Our return on capital employed remains best-in-class at 57.4%. It's been a tougher half for the FBH business, especially in fashion. While our teams continue to focus on improving the quality of sales and the underlying financial health, there are still areas that require attention, such as improving availability across all our channels and geographies. We covered sales earlier, so I'm not going to repeat those points other than to call out that our price movement for the half was 11.4%, which was driven by inflation and our focus on full-price sales.
Net trading space was marginally up by 0.3% with the opening of our smaller format WEdit stores, offset by the ongoing reduction of unproductive space, and this resulted in an improvement in trading densities by over 3%. GP margin for the half was maintained at 48%, which was achieved through the continued focus and further improvement in full-price sales and markdown metrics. This was achieved despite inflationary supply chain costs and a negative mix effect from the higher beauty contribution to sales. We contained expense growth to 4.7%, which is below inflation, even though we have returned to positive space growth. This helped to buffer the impact of the lower sales growth on aEBIT, which was 4.3% below last year. aEBIT margin for the half was 12.2% and 12.6% adjusted for load shedding costs, and the return on capital for this business is still a healthy 22.9%.
The Country Road Group remains an important part of the Woolworths Group and is currently subject to extremely challenging trading conditions that have impacted the entire sector in Australia. We believe that this is a short-term headwind, and we will get through it stronger. Sales were 5% down on last year, but the Country Road brand remains a standout performer even in tough times. The brand continues to enjoy deep loyalty from its customer base and performed well ahead of the market. However, the other brands did not perform as well. We continue to expand into new channels, into Myer and wholesale, which are progressing to plan, and we now have almost 180 new pads in Myer stores across all our brands. The online channel remains a significant contributor to sales at 27%, which is slightly up on the prior year.
During the half, and especially during the Black Friday period, we increased our promotional activity to drive sales in a very promotional environment. While this helped to reduce inventory levels, it also, together with a 10% depreciation of the Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar, had a negative impact on our GP margin, which was 140 basis points below last year to end the half at 62.1%. Our costs were tightly managed and grew by 6.4%, which was mostly driven by our investment in new channels and space. Given the negative operating leverage from the softer top-line performance and the GP margin erosion, the CRG aEBIT decreased by 46% to AUD 50.2 million. This returned an operating profit margin of 8.5% compared to 15% in the prior period, while the return on capital of 10.9% is still ahead of our Australian cost of capital.
Woolworths Financial Services is on a recovery path. The average book growth of 10.2%, together with the higher yields due to repo rate increases, enabled net interest income to increase by 23%. However, the closing book grew year-on-year by 4.9% as we sold a portion of the book towards the end of the period. The credit contribution to WSA sales declined marginally over the prior year for both FBH and food. With rising interest rates, there's been further strain on the most vulnerable segment of the book, resulting in increased default rates and debt counseling. The impairment rate increased to 6.3% for the period, and although on the rise, remains industry-leading and off the peaks seen in the previous quarter. The profit after tax was ZAR 122 million and is more than 100% up on last year, and this excludes a ZAR 52 million IFRS 17 transition adjustment.
The return on equity is 22.4%, which is 9.8 percentage points above last year. Let's now move on to the balance sheet, CapEx, and cash flow. Our strong balance sheet allows us to withstand the headwinds we are facing, but is also a solid platform to invest for growth. Our net borrowings are at ZAR 4.1 billion, net of $44 million of cash in Australia, part of which has been repatriated to South Africa post the period end. I would like to remind you that more than 80% of our drawn debt in South Africa is linked to sustainability criteria, and we are very confident that in line with our track record, we will achieve our targets. Our gearing ratios are well within our targeted gearing levels and covenants.
These metrics are significantly better than that reported last year with David Jones in our numbers, and our lease liabilities and remaining lease terms have also reduced drastically to just over three years, and this gives us a lot more flexibility in our leases. We are also very pleased to have improved the efficiency of our balance sheet, especially in the tough times we are trading in, by improving our working capital primarily through better inventory management. On CapEx, as we have previously advised, we remain committed to spending ZAR 10 billion over three years as we optimize our business and invest for growth. We have spent ZAR 1.5 billion in the first half and plan to spend a further ZAR 1.8 billion in the second half, which is substantially up on the prior year.
We will be spending this money on growing our business, on capacity enhancement, and customer experience initiatives. This includes value chain initiatives of ZAR 1.4 billion, which will truly transform FBH processes and operations. We plan to spend about ZAR 1.8 billion on supply chain capacity, especially in food, and approximately ZAR 2.3 billion on new stores and formats, including WEdit, WCellar, and food services. In addition, we also intend spending CapEx on growing and expanding adjacent businesses such as pet, and on data and analytics, on digital and online, and investing in our loyalty platform. It's important to note that this CapEx forecast excludes the previously announced acquisition of Absolute Pets. Looking at our cash flow waterfall, we generate ZAR 4.5 billion of cash from operations, including working capital in the first half.
We are a very cash-generative business and, importantly, also have a very healthy cash conversion rate of 93%. We spent ZAR 1.6 billion on CapEx, ZAR 1.4 billion on dividends, and ZAR 1.4 billion on finance costs, which resulted in net gearing increasing by ZAR 1.6 billion over the half, and we are very comfortable with these levels of debt. We have been quite deliberate in capital allocation within the group over the past two years based on our aspirations that we have previously shared with you. I've already spoken to the balance sheet and CapEx investments supporting our growth initiatives. Regarding returning value to our shareholders, we declared an interim dividend of ZAR 0.148 per share. This dividend is based on a 70% payout of adjusted headline earnings.
The shares that were repurchased in the second half of the previous financial year have reduced the number of shares in issue by 2.4%, thereby benefiting the dividend per share. I want to end with a snapshot of trading over the first eight weeks of the second half and provide some guidance on price inflation and space growth. The food price movement is expected to be between 6% and 7% for the second half, which is lower than the first half. Sales for the first eight weeks of trade in the second half are up 8.5%, so very much in line with H1, but at a lower price movement. The FBH price movement is expected to be between 9% and 10%, with trade for the first eight weeks being 7.5% down on the prior period.
This growth is on a high base of 11% growth in the same period last year, and one of the contributory factors is a significantly smaller summer clearance versus last year, which in value terms is 12% down and 28% down in units. The Country Road Group is down 8.2% on last year, reflecting a continuation of the weak consumer sentiment into the third quarter. In closing, while we had a challenging six months, we delivered a good result in South Africa, reflecting the resilience and strength of our business. We also believe that we have strong brands in the Country Road Group, and they will deliver to their full potential when the environment improves. Lastly, we have a robust balance sheet that enables us to invest in the future growth drivers of this group. On that note, back to you, Roy.
Thank you, Zaid. As you may recall, during our full-year results presentation, we shared with you the various phases of our strategic journey, and more specifically, the progress we've made to fix, strengthen, and reposition our group. This started with a comprehensive and end-to-end review of our businesses, strategically, financially, and operationally. Coming out of that evaluation, we put firm plans in place to fix the things that were broken, to build on our strengths and our competitive advantages, and to reposition the group. Those plans ranged from restructuring our balance sheet and the way we allocate capital, which included divesting of David Jones and buying back our own shares, to resetting our respective business strategies. All of this enabled us to structurally reposition our group.
While there's still work to be done, especially with regards to our fashion business, and whilst we are obviously cognizant of the current macro context, we are now at a point where we are increasingly shifting from what we've called a phase of fix and reposition to our next phase, which is really about optimizing and growing our business. What does that mean for each of our businesses? Starting with our foods business, our latest results have once again demonstrated the strength and the resilience of our food business and the importance of our Holy Grail. You've heard me speak about this before. It's that sweet spot which balances giving our customers the best overall offering in the market, be it in the terms of product, service, or experience, and our shareholders the highest return on capital in the sector. That is and will remain our number one objective.
It's what delivers real value to our group, and it's what makes money for our shareholders. A few years ago, we were getting a lot of questions whether our growth in our foods business had in fact plateaued. We were emphatic that this was not the case and that you could expect to see continued growth from us as we focused on three key areas in our core business: availability, price and value perception, and our marketplace presence. You'd recall that one of the biggest commercial opportunities we're driving throughout our core business is better product availability. Using our customer data and advanced analytics, we're getting better and better at managing availability and in a hyper-localized way too. In fact, one of the key drivers of our market-leading like-for-like sales growth has been the relentless focus on on-shelf availability throughout our food value chain.
This was most evident over the holiday season. We anticipated where within the country our customers would be and what they would want from us, and by getting the right product, the right catalog really, to the right stores, we generated over ZAR 1.2 billion of sales in our Christmas week alone, the biggest week we've ever had. This is how that all comes to life. This is how we do it.
Underpinning our growth is our commitment to what we call trusted value, the unbeatable Woolworths' Difference and quality at the best possible price. Price and price perception have been a big focus for us, and by the end of this financial year, we would have invested over ZAR 750 million into our food pricing. Not only is this bringing new customers into our stores and driving bigger basket values, but it's fundamentally shifted price perception in the market. That's what you're seeing on screen. We regularly ask a sample of thousands of customers a series of questions regarding price to track how consumers perceive our prices relative to those of our peers across a basket of categories.
We're very pleased to report that the investments we have made and our focus on trusted price, including our WL ist and our new lower price initiatives, have clearly shifted price perception. While we'll never lead on price, we are determined to provide our customers with the best and most trusted value, that meaningful Woolworths' Difference such as quality and freshness, the value of time and convenience, innovative product, and our promise of being a responsible retailer with exceptional sustainability credentials. We've covered availability and price. The third key priority is expanding our marketplace presence. There are a number of components to this, but very simply, it's about ensuring more connections are made between our brands and our customers. It's the access we provide through our physical stores or our online channels, or more generally, the marketing communication and share of voice.
Online continues to deliver double-digit growth driven in the main by our on-demand Dash offering, which now covers more than 90% of our customer base. We've extended trading hours, and we've increased delivery slots. While we have more to do in these areas, we've continued to work on our operational efficiencies, and I'm very pleased to share that as a result of this, our Dash business is now profitable on a fully costed basis and without one single cent of supplier funding. Of course, we're also expanding our physical footprint in a very targeted way by making existing stores bigger and by opening new stores, formats, and adjacencies, which I'll come back to a little bit later on.
I've said before that our biggest opportunity is not in acquiring new customers, although of course that's very important to us, but it is in growing the share of wallet of our existing customers. While our VIP customers spend a large proportion of their total monthly grocery bill with us, they only make up about a tenth of our customer base. In the case of the other 90% of our known customers, where Woolworths makes up a much smaller share of their total grocery bill, every 1% of their wallet they shift to us equates to around ZAR 1.5 billion in additional sales. This is a clear opportunity for us. We're going after it, and we're shifting that wallet, and that's been a contributor to the growth we've seen in transactions driven by the success we're having in improving availability, in shifting price perception, and in growing our marketplace presence.
There's significant runway for growth by leveraging our unparalleled skills and expertise and our differentiated backend capabilities, which is also why we're investing in a number of areas, be it our systems and processes, the expansion of our Midrand DC, or our loyalty program, all to grow our market share and further strengthen our Holy Grail. Turning now to our FBH business. Over the past couple of years, I've shared with you the various steps we've taken in turning around our fashion business, and along with that, I've also shared the milestones and targets against which you could track our progress and hold us accountable for the commitments we've made to you. We also said we would not chase market share for the sake of it.
Rather, we would focus on improving the underlying operational and financial health of the business so as to create a bedrock, a solid foundation off which we would then drive profitable growth. What you see in front of you is a bit of a visual overview of our strategic priorities and the sequencing behind them. Our first priority was to really understand the market and the role that we play within that, to really understand our customer, their wants and needs in a far more sophisticated and granular way.
As part of our edit-to-amplify strategy, effectively doing more with less, we rationalized our range and honed our focus on designing and developing product anchored in our must-win categories that would really resonate with our target market, and making sure that just as we do in food, that these products provide our customers with the trusted value, quality, and difference they have come to expect from Woolworths. We called out three key metrics to measure our success in this first phase: full-priced sales, markdowns, and trading densities. As we stand today, we are selling more product at intended or planned price than ever before. We've lifted our share of full-priced sales to well north of 80%, the highest in over a decade, and we've reduced our markdowns by 10 percentage points, which is testimony to the fact that we're increasingly getting our product right.
That's fundamentally shifted the productivity and profitability metrics of this business. We've step-changed our trading density, and our GP margin now is the highest we've achieved in almost 10 years. Where we still have work to do is ensuring this right product at the right price is in fact in the right place, in correct quantities and appropriate sizes. It's all about availability. This is still a big frustration for our customers and one that dates back well over a decade. I think it's safe to say that our availability is no less than 10, but probably closer to 20 percentage points off where it should be. It's a big challenge, but conversely, it's a huge commercial opportunity for our business, and what makes this opportunity even more compelling is that it's not dependent on the macro turning around or any other factor for that matter. This is on us.
Let me be clear though, this is not a quick fix. It's going to take some time, but just as we prioritized and focused relentlessly in the first phase of the turnaround on full-price sales, markdown, and trading densities, in this next phase, we're now intensifying our focus on availability, and we'll get after it just like we've done successfully in our food business. We've been investing in our multi-year value chain transformation initiatives, which will fundamentally shift how we see and manage our inventory and availability. I'm confident that this is the next big unlock for our fashion business. We also see exciting white space opportunity in our new smaller format WEdit stores, which enable us to provide more and new customers in new markets with a curated Woolworths offering.
With already 30 of these stores up and running, we're very excited about the next phase of our rollout. As we continue to drive the turnaround of our fashion business, we're also delivering incredible growth in beauty with sales up over 16% on last year. We've doubled the business in just a few years, and we're on track to doubling it again, confirming our position as the beauty shopping destination in the market. We also see a lot of scope in our home business too, not just in driving the cross-shop opportunity between home and food in particular, but in growing our online channel. Our teams are working on a clear and discrete home strategy, which as we did in fashion, will focus on our key must-win categories so that we really can bring the Woolies' difference to all aspects of our customers' lives and homes.
Moving now to Country Road Group. While we are all well aware of the weak macro, we are confident in and fully committed to the longer-term potential of this business. It has exceptional competitive advantages, its leading omnichannel capabilities, its scale and expertise in sourcing and distribution, and perhaps most importantly, its strong brands and the ability to leverage learnings across all of them. Over the past five years, we've really turned the Country Road brand around to become the star performer that it is today. Now that we've well progressed on the operational separation of CRG from David Jones, a big part of which has been establishing CRG's standalone capabilities, we're now able to shift focus to driving the performance of the rest of the brands. We're also expanding our CRG brands into new channels, which is attracting new customers.
This includes taking our Country Road and Witchery offering into more regional towns in Australia via a CapEx light wholesale model, and we're expanding our footprint within Myer stores, a strategy which is yielding very positive results. We now have almost 180 pads across 20 Myer stores with CRG already ranked their number one concession. While the upfront investment in expanding our footprint has an initial drag on profit metrics, this is ultimately a margin and returns accretive channel for us and one in which we see significant growth potential. At the same time, we'll continue to invest in our own physical stores and market-leading omnichannel capabilities to truly deliver a differentiated, compelling, all-around customer experience. The presence of a number of our CRG brands within South Africa is also proving very valuable for the group, and particularly for our Woolies' customers seeking a premium brand offering.
We recently opened our newly refurbished Country Road store in the V&A Waterfront, and if you haven't had a chance to visit it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. It is the standout retail fashion expression in the country. Looking ahead, we'll continue investing in our longer-term growth opportunities and the enabling capabilities to deliver these, including a future-fit operating model, a common platform of expertise and capabilities across our brands, and our upgraded loyalty program. We'll continue to execute our growth initiatives so that we emerge from the current economic downturn as an even fitter and far stronger business. As always, we've remained committed to our Good Business Journey, or what we call GBJ, which is really all about creating a meaningful, positive impact on our planet, our communities, and our people. Sustainability is integral to how we manage and operate our business.
It's how we think, it's how we source, it's how we partner with farmers and NGOs, it's how we plan with tomorrow in mind when considering packaging and waste, production and water use, and it's how we strive for inclusivity in every touchpoint of our business. We can do that because of the more than 15 years of time, capital, and expertise which we've already invested in our GBJ to really lead in this space. I'm also very proud of the progress we're making on our Inclusive Justice Initiative, or IJI, which embraces the principles of diversity and inclusivity and is based on the premise of leaving no one behind.
We are a company who has always strived to do the right thing, and we are clear that we have an active role to play in addressing critical social matters and issues of marginalization and social justice, and we'll continue to do so to realize our vision of being one of the world's most responsible retailers. A key initiative within our IJI is what we call our Just Wage Initiative. In October last year, we completed a ZAR 120 million investment in the wages of our frontline employees, a deliberate strategy to move beyond legislated minimum requirements and even beyond a decent wage to a Just Wage, or what we call a Woolies Wage. Our store staff now earn about 20% above the retail sector average and more than 50% above the new national minimum which will be enacted this March.
We're doing a lot in this space, and here are just a few additional examples. While it's always great to be the first in sustainability achievements, or when one's efforts are recognized externally, it's certainly not why we do what we do. We do it because it is the right thing to do, the only thing to do. It is integral to our identity and it's ingrained in our DNA. It's just who we are, and who we are is also a group that is focused on delivering on its commitments. As you may recall when I spoke to you at our full-year results, and I also mentioned this a little earlier, we are entering the next phase of our investment thesis, one where we will leverage our strong balance sheet and our strengthened foundations to accelerate the rollout of new categories, formats, and propositions as springboards for future growth.
We have a number of initiatives to protect and grow our core business, but in addition to this, we see significant growth opportunity in a number of adjacent categories and formats, specifically in the areas of pet care, food services, liquor, and WEdit. We have determined that to best accelerate growth in these areas, we need to implement new processes and capabilities that are purposefully designed to enhance our strategy and to execute in a more agile, flexible, and entrepreneurial way. To this end, we've recently launched Woolworths Ventures, a dedicated team and simplified processes that will bring exclusive focus to our strategic growth initiatives. While the concept of ventures, or an accelerator, is nothing new, it is a first for our group and a potential game changer for us.
I'm really excited by the role Woolworths Ventures will play, not only in accelerating new revenue streams and harnessing the potential of our talented people, but also in attracting new customers to our trusted Woolworths brand. As mentioned, one of these growth initiatives is in the category of pet and pet care. I'm sure a number of you have questions regarding the announcement last year on our acquisition of the Absolute Pets business. We are in the final stages of the Competition Commission process, and as soon as all conditions to the deal have been met and it's effective, we'll look forward to sharing more about this exciting acquisition with you and the role that we see it playing in realizing our ambition to become the leader in end-to-end pet care in the country.
As we said in our last presentation, the investments we're making in our new growth initiatives, along with the investments we're making in our core enabling assets, require a period of heavier CapEx and OpEx investment. That's what you're seeing now, and we'll continue to see, but we'll keep managing this in a very responsible and disciplined way so that we still deliver on our medium-term targets that we have committed to. Turning now to the outlook for the balance of the financial year. Trading conditions are likely to remain constrained by the current macro climate in both of our geographies. In South Africa, we also have to contend with the ongoing energy crisis, supply chain and port challenges, and the upcoming election, which is adding further pressure and uncertainty to the economy and consumer.
So yes, we're still experiencing pretty tough trading conditions, but we've proven our ability time and time again now that by focusing on what is within our control, our costs, our inventory, our execution, we'll keep delivering against our strategies and the commitments we've made to you. We're on course. We've done a lot of the heavy lifting to structurally reposition our group. We're now doubling down on optimizing and growing our businesses, and more importantly, not only fortifying our position as South Africa's preeminent retailer, but one of the country's leading brands. I'd like to take a moment to thank our people. We have an exceptional team of people whose collective passion, determination, and commitment are the cornerstone of our past and future success. Our people are truly unique, and our customers recognize and tell us that all the time.
I'd also like to acknowledge and thank our customers for their loyalty and support, and thank all of our suppliers and partners who do what they do every day to make our Woolworths Difference exceptional. I personally am very excited by the opportunities that lie ahead for all of us together as we build a high-performance culture, a future-fit, winning business that does not only meet but exceeds expectations of all of our stakeholders. With that, we'll now open for Q&A.
Good morning. Thank you again for joining us, and welcome to the Q&A section of our interim results presentation. Our first question, Roy, how are you tackling the current port congestion, and what strategies are you putting in place to mitigate the knock-on effects to your business?
Yes, I guess a pretty topical subject. Well, we're doing a number of things. Firstly, we're actually adding in some lead times where it makes sense. We're building a little bit of a buffer into our go-to-market calendar. It's something that we've done in the past, and we've been pretty successful at that. That helps us smooth the inflows a lot better. We've also got better line of sight to all the product, all the stock that's in transit. We'll be able to direct where we go to the ports where there'll be less friction quite closer in. That's also been very helpful. I think we're also placing smaller orders, but more frequently. That helps us not become totally reliant on one big shipment so that if that got sort of stuck in a port, we're not as dependent on that.
That's also been very helpful as a mitigating sort of initiative. Occasionally, if specific opportunities present themselves, we would actually air freight in product at the same time, but clearly that's quite costly, and that's not something that is sustainable. We only do that by exception. I think finally, it's also important to remember that we have a strategy of local sourcing, which we're actually intensifying at the same time. That's a strategy that we've been at for some time to really develop local sourcing capability and capacity, and so we're dialing that up, and that's a strategy that's been working very well.
Thanks, Roy. I understand there's been a phasing to the turnaround in your fashion business, but what exactly is the crux of your availability issues, and can you talk to what you're doing to fix these, and when can we expect to see that impact the performance of the business?
Yes. No, I think the availability point is, I think, the single biggest sort of task or focus area now for our FBH teams, having sort of gone through the first phase, as I explained during our presentation. But one of the challenges we face in getting product onto the shelves in the right quantities and the right sizes is, in fact, that the business has historically always allocated 100% of its buy. It's been set up from both a systems and processes perspective to allocate 100% of the buy to our various stores right up front. The problem with that is that it doesn't enable you to respond to product gaps and shortages or to overstocks.
I mean, if I can give you an example, summer product may be selling very well up north, but if the weather is proving to be very different down south, you end up with an overstock in the Cape, and you then sold out in Gauteng. Then you've got no stock in the DC because you've allocated everything out. It sounds like a pretty sort of logistics 101 challenge, which it is. One of the changes we're making is, in fact, sort of holding back, recentralizing. We're moving to a more centralized inventory model where only a portion of the buy will be allocated to stores up front. That allows us to hold back product and then replenish stores if and when they need it.
There are a number of other factors that we're working on as well that will help drive availability, increasing the frequency of deliveries of our fashion product to our stores. Instead of the weekly delivery, perhaps getting every other day, we also have implemented and we quite progressed with our RFID rollout. We've also gone to local sourcing, as I mentioned earlier. There's a number of things that we're doing to really help improve the availability challenge that we have. All of this, I think, collectively will help us really respond better to customer demand in real time, really providing more customer-centric offer across all of our channels. That's not only going to improve our availability, it's also going to drive better stock turns and our returns metrics overall. You'll start to see that coming through, certainly from the beginning of our next financial year.
Thanks, Roy. We have a question on our foods business. Zaid, this is probably for you. Can you unpack the component parts of what drove the expansion in your food GP margin, and how sustainable do you think these gains are? Is this the new normal margin?
Yes, thanks. Yes, of course. I think it was an exceptional GP performance. We improved our GP margin by 80 basis points. What I did mention in the presentation is that there were largely three factors that had driven this. The one being, we had optimized our promotional activity. Two, we got a lot better in terms of managing waste, and of course, there were some value chain efficiencies that came through. Let me add a bit more color, perhaps, to that. I can tell you why this is more a more sustainable impact that we would have.
The significant proportion of the GP improvement actually comes from how we trade. It's about better category management. It's about better forecasting, demand forecasting, and the way we actually do our profitable promotions and how we've used more targeted and the better use of data and more effective use of data. Those are underlying things we've actually done in the business. It's in our processes. It's not a one-off thing that will come in one year and go out the other. It is very much sustainable, particularly with these key drivers that we have actually put in. There's also an element of just better how we've managed load shedding waste. Again, I've mentioned in the presentation, we've gotten a lot better at how we have forecasted demand, particularly during load shedding. There has been an improvement in terms of the way we've managed waste as well.
It's important to note, and I think I've also mentioned this in the presentation, that we've achieved this result notwithstanding all the pressures we've got to increase our cost of sales. This includes the load shedding cost in itself. It includes the growth in online. It includes the inflationary cost. It includes the investment we are making in our supply chain. Those are all pressures on our margin, but notwithstanding all of that, we've managed to improve this.
Thanks, Zaid. We've got a further question on a somewhat related topic. Most of your peers are reporting pressure on GP margins. It's difficult to understand how you're lifting GP margin in the current weak consumer environment, but at the same time, you're investing in price in your foods business. Roy, any comments?
Yeah. No, I think a great question. I mean, the fact is we have actually been investing in price, and we continue to invest in price. We've shared with you that we've invested almost ZAR 750 million already, which is about 50-100 basis points' worth of margin each year. That's obviously positively impacted price perception, which is exactly what we showed you in our results presentation. I think the gist of that is that we're seeing customers increasingly trust our pricing more than ever before, and as a result, we're seeing them buy more at full price because they see value in the product at that price point. In fact, our full price sales, as Zaid has referenced, our full price sales are growing at three times that of our promotional sales.
The fact that we're selling more on full price and not needing to promote as much has been, I think, the key driver behind the GP margin gain you've seen.
Thanks, Roy. We have a question on load shedding costs, probably one for Zaid. Please, can you elaborate why load shedding costs increased year-on-year over the six months to December? Considering intensity of load shedding had marginally improved over the same period, has energy usage increased year-on-year by the group, which offset the lower intensity of load shedding, or has the unit cost per liter trended higher based on pricing locked in?
Yes. I think while load shedding was less intense in the months of October and December versus last year, it was actually more intense in July, August, and September, and actually in November. In fact, we've got the statistics, and our statistics show that on average, we've had 4% more load shedding hours in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023. Certainly, we've had more load shedding hours. That's the first point. The second one, of course, is the fact that you're alluding to the cost of diesel has been higher. Certainly, that plays in as a factor as well. I'd like to point out and reference this from the first question. Because we've gotten a lot better at how we manage the food waste in our business, that cost actually is not as significant as it was last year.
The cost we're currently seeing in our business, in the food business, is largely coming from diesel and associated costs. Therefore, I think once the load shedding actually does improve, this will drop to the bottom line. I think we've mentioned before, the cost of this is roughly has been between, depending on the month and depending on the week and the day, between ZAR 20 million-ZAR 30 million of impact on our business per annum, sorry, per month.
Thanks, Zaid. Our next question. Australia seems to be a perpetual problem for you. Does it still make sense to be invested there?
Of course, it does. I mean, you need to look at CRG's performance in the context of the macros and, of course, the base period. I mean, we grew profits there by just about 100% last year. Certainly, when one looks relative to the market, we're holding our own. Traffic is down between 20%-30% across the sector, and that's the reality for all retailers in Australia at the moment. We see this, I think, more as a moment in the cycle, and it is an impact on earnings more in the short term. But I guess, I mean, let me remind you that CRG itself, though, is still a meaningful contributor to the group's profit overall. Even in a relatively weaker half like we've just had, it's generating over $50 million of bottom line for us.
It is a self-funding business and, obviously, very important in Australia, but also in South Africa, where we've been able to leverage those brands to provide a great premium offer for our customers as well. It has a great portfolio of brands with significant runway for growth across all channels and markets. I think it's also important to remember, while it's weighed a little bit more heavily on our group results in the current period, it wasn't too long ago that, I guess, when CRG was the biggest driver of our performance. That really talks to the importance and the benefit we get from having a diversified portfolio of businesses. Yeah, I think if we go back to 2020 and you look at that, I mean, foods was the sort of star performing the portfolio, really underpinning the performance we had there.
In 2021, in fact, it was CRG. In 2022, it was FBH that sort of outperformed and made an oversized contribution to our performance. Last year, it was both apparel businesses, both CRG and FBH. This year, now it's back to foods really driving the overall performance. As I said, it talks to the benefit of having a diversified portfolio, particularly in this sort of climate. This is really just a moment in the cycle. It's not something to be sort of overly concerned about or to change one's investment thesis over. We are very confident in our investment there.
Thanks, Roy. Another question on Australia. Could you unpack the performance of CRG in a bit more detail? You mentioned Country Road had its best performance, but could you talk to the performance of the rest of the brands?
Well, I mean, I think in times like this, in the current macro context, you do see stronger brands really coming through. They hold up better, and our Country Road brand is certainly evidence of that. While some of the other brands in the portfolio, particularly Witchery, have very high brand awareness, they're not yet firing on all cylinders, to be quite candid. That's some of the work the teams are actually focusing on now. I think it's fair to say that these brands have not received the focus or the investment they require, and that's what we're changing. We needed to first prioritize standing up CRG as its own independent business, certainly separate from David Jones. We've done that now, which means we can start to intensify the work that's already underway on the opportunities we see for the rest of the brands.
Thanks, Roy. We have a question for Zaid here. How should we think about seasonality in first half versus second half earnings going forward?
Yes. I think, look, the first half, if you look at each business or the businesses that we have, we've had a very strong first half in food, and we certainly expect that sort of performance to continue into the second half, particularly at the top line level. We've always had a good strong winter business, so we expect that to continue. In terms of the apparel businesses, I think looking from a macro perspective, I think things are not. We don't expect things we've looked at in our outlook statement, we don't really expect that to get worse. If anything, it would get better. I think that's the first thing to consider. The second thing from an apparel business is we're coming off a relatively lower base. Last year, if you look at the first half, we came off a particularly high base.
In the second half, particularly in the fourth quarter of last financial year, we came off a pretty low base. I think we certainly expect that to be better. I think the third point is some of the points that Roy mentioned is some of the challenges we've actually faced in the first half. We know what they are. We have a plan around it, and I think we will be going to try and improve that, particularly with things like availability in the FBH business. Certainly, we'll expect a better second half than the first half. We'll be very disappointed if we don't.
Thanks, Zaid. We have a couple of questions on our WEdit format. Please speak to the SA FBH Woolworths smaller store format WEdit and how these stores are performing. Another participant, how many stores can we expect from WEdit over the next three years? How do the economics differ from the current core FBH business?
Yeah. No, thanks. Thank you for the question. I mean, we're very excited about this particular opportunity, and it is really about taking the best we have in our large Woolworths stores, editing them based on our data and analytics around the customer demographic and perspectives and insights around the customer, and putting them into much smaller footprints. The stores are literally a 10% or 15 % of the size of our bigger stores, but they're much more agile, and they get us into places that we typically wouldn't have put a big Woolworths store. We're able to sort of access a whole new customer, and we certainly be able to take the brand to them, and it really is the best of the brand, and it's working exceptionally well.
I mean, our productivities here are significantly higher than you would imagine out of our big box fashion stores. Given the fact that they are small and agile, we're able to put product in and move product out depending on what's selling. Fundamentally, much more profitable, and the cost of doing business here significantly lower. I guess to the question around number, I mean, we would expect to open at least 20-30 of these sort of every year. We see significant runway for this particular format. As I say, I'm pretty excited about where we think it can take the brand.
Thanks, Roy. Sticking with FBH, Zaid, for you, your sales update for FBH for the first eight weeks of half two looks a little soft. How should we think about the outlook for GP margin for the half?
Yes. The sales contraction, as we mentioned, is largely as a result of the smaller clearance sale. The summer clearance sale was, in value terms, about 12% down on last year. In fact, last year's eight weeks' growth itself was 11% up, so you're actually coming from an elevated base as well. In fact, in unit terms, our unit volumes that's gone into clearance is 30% down on last year. You've got to understand that context. Of course, the performance of our full price sales is a lot better. Our focus really has been, as we've mentioned before many times, is on driving full price sales, driving more profitable sales. I think if we certainly, and back to the earlier question, we expect the margins to be a lot better as a result of that.
We expect the H2 GP margin to be at least maintained, if not improved, into H2 on the back of this smaller clearance sale. Of course, we've also changed the phasing of the markdowns again using a lot of data and analytics to ensure that we get a higher margin out of these clearance.
Thanks, Zaid. For the question on FBH, how much was the underlying inflation at FBH excluding the impact of full price sales? Seems like FBH's price increases are more aggressive than peers, which could be affecting volumes in a constrained consumer environment.
Of the price movement we've quoted for the first half, roughly about half of that relates to underlying inflation, what we call intake, the cost of goods coming in. The balance of it relates to the mix and the contribution of full price sales and lower markdowns into that, and to a smaller extent, an element of mix. When I say mix, I mean the mix of fashion, beauty, and home, and the mix of higher price products compared to lower price products. Roughly, just to answer your question, it's about half of that really comes from underlying inflation.
Thanks, Zaid. Roy, a question for you. Notable improvement in Dash, both at the top line and bottom line, now generating a profit. Please talk to the scale of the operation, latest store footprint, servicing Dash, and any other initiatives, for example, dark stores, invested in to support this growth.
Yes. No, thank you. No, we're obviously very pleased about the progress we're making with this element of our online offer. We obviously also have Click and Collect, and we have sort of home delivery as well, but the on-demand Dash component is certainly the piece of the business that's growing significantly faster than the rest of the online piece. We're up to having grown 75% versus prior year. Obviously, that is significant in that not only is it sort of retaining our customer base, it's also bringing new customers into the brand. We've increased the number of slots. We've seen a double digit, and importantly, a double digit growth in the value of the cart, the value of the basket, which is really quite important in terms of the economics of that particular offering. We're up at 110 stores now being used to sort of service on-demand or Dash.
It covers roughly around 90% of our Woolworths customer base, so there's still some opportunity here to take it further. We also have extended trading hours. We've increased slot capacity. To the point you mentioned around profitability, we really are improving overall efficiency and very pleased with the progress we've made in being able to get it to this break-even point. As I say, that is on what we do is a fully cost-allocated basis, so it carries a little bit of the central overhead as well. Getting to profitability without a single cent of supplier sort of funding is, I think, a great outcome. Our dark store is really working well. We're looking to open more of these, and that will obviously enable us to further improve the overall experience. Certainly, a big feature of the foods business and its growth trajectory going forward.
We certainly believe the offering we have in this space is differentiated. As you know, our cold chain remains very important to us, and so our Dash capability sort of supports that, enabling our customers to get a lot of our product in the same sort of condition, I guess, as they would potentially find it in a store if they had to go shop there. All around, yeah, I know we've been a little slower out of the blocks on this one, perhaps relative to others, but we're making solid and sure progress and very pleased about the role Dash is playing, and will continue to play in underpinning the foods growth.
Thanks, Roy. Zaid, a question for you and going back to Australia. Can you quantify the stranded cost from David Jones? Was this excluded from continuing op results, and was Country Road's result impacted at all?
We are working actively at reducing the stranded costs. In Australia and what we've done, we've actually called out the stranded costs separately. If you look at the back in the appendix, we clearly call out what the stranded cost is, both in Australia and in South Africa. The Country Road results, as you see them, are not impacted by those stranded costs. I think going forward, we are just looking at efficient ways, more efficient ways of doing it. We've got a more streamlined group, a more streamlined business, and we will take those costs out of the business going forward.
Thanks, Zaid. I think if I may add to that point, the value of stranded costs is more than covered by the rental income that we currently receive off the Bourke Street property in Melbourne. Roy, a question for you. Looks like FBH and mainly beauty.
If I heard you correctly, you mentioned that the beauty business, growing its contribution, had a negative margin impact on FBH. Can you break down the margin differences between the F, the B, and the H that we don't disclose, but I'll keep going? Could you also remind us what the revenue contribution split is for those businesses? Finally, given you want to become the beauty destination in SA, would that suggest that beauty's contribution to FBH will increase, and we can expect a lower GP margin from that business as a result, assuming beauty has a lower margin?
Yes. No, I mean, thank you for the extensive way you've sort of asked the question. No, absolutely. I mean, one of the things we've spoken a lot about more recently is the fact that FBH is not an integrated sort of homogenous unit. There is a fashion or clothing business there. Absolutely, there's a beauty business, and there's a home business. They're all very different, clearly, and what it takes to succeed and win in a clothing business or fashion business is different to what it takes to succeed in a beauty or a home business. Increasingly, our teams are managing those as relatively bespoke businesses. We do consolidate their numbers into an FBH number, and that's also the way we've typically, historically, reported it.
You will see, certainly, as we go forward with this, a more distinctive sort of callout around B and H versus the F, in a sense. That's important. They each have their own bespoke sort of teams, leadership teams with their really specific strategies and going after their specific target markets and leveraging and getting the synergies where it makes sense across the different categories. Yes.
I think if you look at the overall mix of the business today, in terms of overarching FBH, you'll have fashion, really, or the clothing roughly at around 80%-84% of the business, and B and H are roughly more or less the same size at about 8%. It's true that the overall sort of when you look at some of the top line margin for beauty products, there would be collectively or in the aggregate lower than what you would typically get in a fashion business. You are obviously selling a lot of other people's brands, particularly at the higher end in sort of our luxe or our prestige sort of segments, and that typically would bring your top line margins down.
Yes, you would imagine the mathematics that if B is growing faster than the F or the H, they would potentially dilute overall margins in the FBH sort of reporting numbers. We're looking to continue to sort of shore up and grow our fashion margins in any event as we are on the home side. Certainly, in the near to medium term, we wouldn't expect to see any particular drag on the overall FBH numbers by the growth in beauty as we go forward.
Roy, thank you. I'm conscious we spent a fair bit of time on Q&A. Maybe one final question. You've recently announced the acquisition of Absolute Pets. Now that you've exited David Jones and seem to be focusing more on growth, can we expect more acquisitions?
Yeah. I would be surprised if this question never came up. It is a little bit of a perennial question and probably quite very relevant in the context we find ourselves today. I think it is important to talk about M&A opportunities in the context of our sort of broader capital allocation framework. We've done a lot of work on that front over the last few years, I would say. A big part of our capital allocation approach has really been returning capital to shareholders, which is what you see in our dividend payout ratios, which is very healthy, and our share buybacks that we've done. You would also notice that we've got approval at our recent AGM to increase our buyback threshold. That remains a mechanism on the table for us, obviously depending on market conditions at the time. We're also reinvesting a lot more back into our own businesses.
We have a significant runway for organic growth, and that's why we're investing ZAR 10 billion over the next three years, which is probably our biggest investment plan to date. On the specific point of M&A, we certainly look at acquisitions. We're never saying no to further acquisition. A lot of opportunities do come across our desk, and of course, we take a look at them. Candidly, the single biggest investment opportunity lies within our own business and, of course, in our own shares.
Thanks. Thanks very much. I think that brings our Q&A section to a close. I don't know if you'd like to say any closing remarks.
Yeah. No, I mean, I appreciate the time that you've taken to join us today. We really hope that we've given you a good sense of exactly where we are and the confidence we have in where we're going as a business. We're in business, and you do occasionally have certain setbacks, but we're very clear that setbacks will not set us back. The teams are very determined, very confident in our strategies. They're working. We're doubling down. We're staying the course. Our business is in great shape, and we just appreciate the opportunity to share what we've been doing with you and look forward to the further engagements over the next week or two. Thank you very much.
Roy, Zaid, thank you. That brings our interim results presentation to a close.
Thank you, Jenny.