Good morning and welcome to our 2022 results presentation. With me today is Reeza Isaacs, our Group Finance Director, who will, in a moment, be taking you through the detail relating to the group's financial performances for the year. From my side, aside from giving you an overview of some of our key highlights for the past year, there are three specific things I plan to cover. Firstly, I'd like to preemptively address what I expect are some of the top-of-mind questions that maybe you have regarding our results for the past year. Then I'll follow on and share an update on our medium-term focus areas that underpin our group's growth ambitions, and finally, I'll provide a perspective on the outlook for our group. Now let me kick off with an overview for the period. The year certainly has not been without its challenges.
Our businesses in Australia endured an extended lockdown that severely impacted trade in the first half. We've had numerous supply chain disruptions, spikes in energy prices, rising inflation and interest rates, the persistent impacts of the pandemic throughout the period, and the ongoing effects of a volatile global backdrop. In South Africa, we also had to contend with the devastation caused by social unrest last year, the terrible flooding in KwaZulu-Natal this past April, and the impact of what has become pretty severe load shedding. One thing I can certainly say is that we've become quite accustomed and somewhat adept to having to navigate our businesses through what is an ever-increasing range of diverse and complex challenges. As I've just mentioned, this past year was by no means any different.
For us, what is important is that while many of these events and challenges were outside of our control, how we chose to respond was not. In that context, I think we have turned in a really good set of results for the year. Reflecting on these, I think it would be fair to say that this past year has been a year that can be characterized by a tale of two halves, especially for our Australian businesses, which faced severe half one disruptions, and Reeza will get into that a little bit later. As a result, our overall group profits were down for the first half and certainly not reflective of what we'd be looking to achieve under more normalized trading conditions.
Our performance in the second half was far more representative of how we've executed our respective strategies and of our ability to deliver a credible set of results. Revenue was up by 5.6% in constant currency, and our bottom line grew by 44%. For the full year, we achieved top-line growth of 2.6% and ADHEPS growth of almost 10%, and this notwithstanding the non-comp one-offs in the first half. In fact, were it not for these, operating profit on a normalized basis would have been up by 18%. Again, Reeza will address this in a bit more detail later.
From a divisional perspective, and starting with South Africa, I'm really encouraged by the progress we're making and the results we're achieving in our fashion, beauty, and home businesses, especially in terms of the quality of sales, which has led to EBIT growth of almost 50% and a 350-basis points improvement in our EBIT margins. Overall, a great result. The performance of our food business, though, slowed. While some of this can be ascribed to base effects and broader market dynamics, to be frank, we are not satisfied with the result we've turned in. I'm going to spend some time talking about that, and more importantly, what we're going to do about it.
Turning to Australia, notwithstanding our ongoing space optimization initiatives and the fact that footfall is still some 20% below pre-COVID levels, both David Jones and Country Road Group delivered a really strong rebound coming out of lockdowns and achieved double-digit profit growth on a normalized basis. While we are pleased with the overall trading performance we've turned in as a group, arguably the real highlight of the year is our balance sheet, which has really gone from strength to strength. We are an incredibly cash-generative business. We've achieved a cash conversion ratio of over 100% this past year, generating almost ZAR 4.50 a share in free cash flow. What is critical, however, is where and how that capital is deployed.
I shared with you at our interims that we were interrogating our capital allocation approach, and that's covered everything from setting sustainable gearing targets, to relooking at our CapEx budgeting and review processes, to enhancing our investment parameters and evaluation criteria, and to how we reward shareholders. This has resulted in a number of key shifts in the areas of capital structure, CapEx prioritization, dividends, and returning excess cash to shareholders. A noteworthy call-out is that we've reduced our debt by over ZAR 12 billion over the past two years without having to raise any capital, and that's returned our balance sheet to its healthiest position since 2014. Perhaps more importantly, this gives us the capacity, the firepower now to shift some of our focus towards both investing in new growth opportunities and in improving shareholder returns.
In line with my earlier commitment to you, there's been no further flow of capital from WHL to David Jones. In fact, we've done the opposite. We've repatriated ZAR 1 billion from David Jones and has used these proceeds to reduce our South African debt. I'm also pleased to share that we'll be repatriating a further ZAR 500 million in the coming weeks. We're also returning cash to our shareholders with our total dividend for the year up by almost 250%. Reflecting an increased payout ratio of 70%, not just from Woolworths South Africa earnings, but from CRG earnings now too. Over and above this, we undertook a share buyback to the value of ZAR 1.5 billion, repurchasing almost 3% of our shares at a price well below what we believe to be the intrinsic value of our group.
This, of course, not only returns capital to our shareholders, but also reinforces the strong confidence we have in our group. Naturally, we've balanced this against continued reinvestment in our business, specifically in the areas of digital and data, and particularly in South Africa, which is where we see the greatest opportunity to drive economic profits. Another key highlight for us this year is the progress we continue to make on our good business journey, or what we call our GBJ. As you know, and may recall from last year, we introduced new, ambitious sustainability targets that would take us to 2025 and beyond, and we've made some really good progress against these and, in fact, continue to lead with a number of sustainability firsts. More detail is provided in the back of the presentation pack, but to briefly highlight just a few.
In a first for South African retail, we published a full list of suppliers that manufacture all of our apparel products. This is not only a vital step towards a fashion industry becoming more sustainable and accountable but also serves to empower our customers to make informed decisions and therefore better choices. We've achieved three major sourcing milestones. We now responsibly source 100% of cotton, palm oil, and cocoa used in our various private label products. In fact, we are the only South African retailer to source 100% of our cotton through the Better Cotton Initiative. We've also been recognized this past year, not only for the initiative we took in linking more than 80% of our debt to the delivery of specific sustainability targets, but also as the most sustainable brand in South Africa.
While we often talk about the E when it comes to ESG, I don't think we spend enough time talking about the social component, which is just as important, particularly in the context of a country like ours, with the challenges we face in terms of social inequality. To intensify our focus on the social and people facets of our good business journey, our Inclusive Justice Initiative addresses issues of diversity and inclusivity and has a very strong focus on racism, gender-based violence, and the advancement of women across the group. As one of the first in this space, we are the first and the only major South African retailer to become a signatory to the UN Women's Empowerment Principles. This further reinforces our commitment towards taking action on gender equality and empowerment.
Over the past year, we have made substantial investments to a broad range of worthy causes. These include our ongoing commitment to food security, education, and job creation. As important as it is to create jobs, it is, in my view, equally important to pay people fairly for the work that they do. As part of our Just Wage initiative, we have moved significantly beyond the legislative requirement of a minimum wage, or even what some define as a living wage, to paying what we at Woolies define as a just wage, or what we call a Woolies wage. Our wage rates are already more than 60% above the minimum rate and more than 25% above the retail sector minimum.
We know we still have more work to do, which is why we've committed a further ZAR 120 million over the next three years to continue this journey. Clearly, none of our accomplishments would have been possible were it not for the collective efforts of all of our people. I'd like to thank each and every one of our team members across all of our markets for their passion and commitment to our organization. It's how each of us shows up every day that really sets us apart. A big thank you as well to our suppliers and our other business partners. There is no doubt our partnerships with you are central to our success. Of course, I'd like to thank our customers for their continued support. It is always important to remind ourselves why we do what we do.
In the end, it's all for our customers. We don't take for granted the deep trust they place in our brands. It is paramount to our success, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to protect and nurture that trust. With that, I will now hand over to Reeza to take you through some more of the detail of our financial performance for the year. Reeza, over to you.
Thank you, Roy. Good morning to everyone in SA, and good afternoon to those of you in Australia. We have closed another challenging and eventful year, and I'm really pleased to be sharing our financial highlights with you, some of which Roy has already covered. Firstly, our group turnover is now ZAR 87 billion, up 2.6% in constant currency, despite not being able to trade most of our stores in Australia for more than three months in the first half. Our businesses in Australia rebounded exceptionally well once stores reopened, and this momentum continued through the year. In South Africa, despite rising inflation, interest rates, and load shedding, both FBH and Food had a stronger second half. As Roy mentioned, our second half was far more reflective of normalized trade.
Our second half APBT was up 44%, and this contributed to a credible full year result with adjusted EBIT of ZAR 7 billion, which was 1% up on last year. Up a very healthy 17.8% if we adjust for the COVID impacts this year and the related one-off support last year. We also had double-digit growth in adjusted profit before tax, which was up 11% to ZAR 5 billion. We are in a net cash position at a group level, and our balance sheet is one of the real highlights. Our SA debt is well within covenant levels, and David Jones and Country Road are both in healthy net cash positions. Net debt to EBITDA is at 1.6 times. This includes lease liabilities and is after ZAR 1 billion spent on the share buyback by year-end.
With the lower debt, our finance costs and borrowings is down by over 50%. Notwithstanding the tough first half, we are pleased to report 80 HEPS of nearly 375 cents per share, up just shy of 10% on last year. Given our strong balance sheet and normalization of trade in the second half, we have declared a final dividend in respect of Woolworths and Country Road at a 70% payout ratio, which means that the full year dividend is up substantially, about two and a half times that of 2021. Return on capital employed came in at 16.8%, up about 200 basis points and well above our cost of capital.
Free cash flow per share is up 13% to ZAR 4.48 per share with a very high cash conversion ratio. Moving on to some of the detail, starting with a high-level analysis of sales. Here we show first and second half sales charts for each of the segments. What is pleasing to note is that we saw a positive trend across the group in the second half. FBH was up 4.2% for H1 and 6.5% for H2. This despite our space having reduced by 4.5%, edited ranges and smaller clearance sales in line with our focus on productivity. We saw good performances from womenswear, kidswear, with menswear and beauty also performing very well. We gained share in most of our must-win categories such as denim, athleisure and essentials.
Moving on to Foods. Foods was up 3.8% in H1, improving to 4.6% in H2. We previously mentioned the high base and the post-COVID shift in consumption patterns. Being a mostly fresh business, our performance was disproportionately impacted by the return to out-of-home consumption and by load shedding in the second half. There were other factors that affected the top line, like low produce inflation, lack of availability of certain lines, and we also did not add much additional space in Foods. Moving on to Australia. First half sales were down 9% in David Jones and down 3% in Country Road. We saw strong demand coming out of lockdown, with H2 sales up 4% and 9% respectively.
What is encouraging is that the underlying Australian macro fundamentals are really strong. Interest rates and inflation is up in line with most developed markets, but there's a high level of accumulated savings, and unemployment is at an all-time low of 3%, with rising wages supporting retail spend. Turning now to EBIT performances. And as mentioned in H2, we did deliver a healthy 26% growth on last year on more or less a comparable basis. From a divisional perspective, FBH profit was up 66%. Foods delivered about AUD 1.5 billion in profit. David Jones was up by over 85%, and Country Road delivered over 70 million dollars of EBIT, up 19% on last year. On a full year basis, earnings were marginally up on last year, but bear in mind the store closures and one-off support in 2021.
Normalizing for this on the next slide, full year EBIT is up 18% and the big adjustments being in respect of Australia. David Jones earnings were up 45% if one were to adjust for COVID and one-offs. Country Road is up 17% on a normalized basis. Moving on to segmental performances, starting with FBH. Really pleasing to see the business yielding results on all the lines of its income statement. Sales are up 5.4%, gross profit is up, costs were up marginally, about 1.8%, with full year EBIT up close to 50%. I covered sales earlier, a very encouraging performance and also in the context of 5% less space. Comp sales were up 7.3% and sales densities were up by over 10%.
Margin was up 210- basis points from higher full price sales and lower markdowns. Despite inflation and other headwinds and the level of COVID normalization, the increases in expenses were kept to a low 1.8%, as I mentioned earlier. This gave us an EBIT margin of 12% for the second half and for the full year just shy of our medium-term target. We are not calling it a turnaround just yet, but very good progress by Zaid Manjra and his team. In turning to Food, I covered our sales performance earlier, but just a few further callouts from me. The run rate has improved as it normalizes and the relative to the base as inflation picks up.
Price movement was a low 3.5%, and despite global trends, we actually saw low inflation this past year, particularly in produce. This is a function of our bumper local harvests, although we are starting to see high inflation come through now. GP was down 50- basis points. The growth in online, particularly in Dash, where we saw sales more than quadruple. This comes with a lower margin, as you know. Load shedding, which pushed up our waste, especially with the high fresh component in the offer. Then we also had higher fuel and supply chain costs. There was also a level of price investment in particular categories, but also through mid-month and month-end, which is when competition is especially fierce.
Other costs were up 5.7%, inflation, energy and load shedding costs. We continued to invest in initiatives that support the food strategy. We also had space growth of around 2%. EBIT margin comes in at 7.3% for the second half and the full year, within the medium-term target range. A challenging trading period as Roy has mentioned, but off a high base. Zyda and the team are really focused on delivering an exciting refreshed strategy going forward. Our financial services business continues its post-COVID recovery. The closing book was 6.8% up on last year, and this was really driven by higher spend and strong demand for our credit card.
Impairments was 4.7% versus 5.1% last year, and with book coverage at around 19%. A healthy book, adequately covered, and with a market-leading impairment rate. Book growth, repo rate increases, and store footfall had a positive impact on interest income, collections and also transactional revenue. Net interest and non-interest revenue was 11% higher, and financial services then delivered an ABPBT, which was 37% higher than last year with an ROE of 18.4%, now well above its cost of capital. A really great job by Sivi and his team. David Jones. I covered sales earlier, but also just a few additional callouts. Space declined by a further 2.6%, in line with our drive for a smaller footprint.
Online was up 29%, about a quarter of total sales for the year. Margin was in line with last year, despite having to clear product after the lockdowns. Costs were really well controlled, down 3.6%, notwithstanding the substantial one-off benefits in 2021. This was due to a disciplined cost out initiative, including restructuring the food business. Really an outstanding job here by Scott and the team. Overall, EBIT was AUD 84 million, and EBIT margin was just shy of 5% for the second half and 4% for the year. Just in wrapping up this section, a few closing comments on David Jones. It has been remarkably resilient in a very challenging year.
It is self-funding, generating EBIT of AUD 223 million and ending the year with AUD 250 million in cash. This is after the AUD 90 million we repatriated in March and in a year where we had a significantly disrupted first half. It is no longer a financial drag on the group, a notable shift from where we were not that long ago. Country Road. Country Road is performing exceptionally well and is really a great contributor to the group. Sales is up 3% for the year, despite the first-half store closures and with space down by 8%. Quite a remarkable performance from Raju, Al and the teams. Second-half sales were up 9%, and comps sales were up an impressive 11% in the second half.
Country Road, Trenery and POLITIX had a good year, and Witchery also had a pleasing H2 recovery. A strong performance from Esey with the product really resonating with our premium customer. Country Road continues to lead in online with about a third of its sales through this channel. Margin was down 130- basis points from clearance post the first-half store closures and also higher supply chain costs. Expenses were up 8% for the year but remember that our cost base benefited significantly from the one-off COVID-related support in 2021. EBIT margin was 12.3% for the second half and 11% for the full year. Well on track in terms of our medium-term targets. Given the strong performance and balance sheet, we are recommencing dividends in respect of Country Road.
Moving on to CapEx, a very important slide. Our CapEx of ZAR 1.9 billion was below the guidance of ZAR 2.8 billion for the year, and this was in the main due to the tightening of spend in the first half, in response to the lockdowns in Australia. Given the underspend, there will be a level of rollover which is included in the ZAR 3.2 billion planned for 2023. Investment in areas like online, loyalty and data is a key priority for us. 12% of group sales and 20% of apparel sales of the group is now online. A very important call-out, we will be entering a phase of investment over the next three years from 2023 to 2025.
As we position FBH, Foods and Country Road for growth, we have earmarked about ZAR 10 billion to fund this. About ZAR 8 billion of this is planned to be invested in South Africa, in the South African economy. As mentioned, our balance sheet is a real highlight. After paying down debt, stabilizing our financial position, we are now focused on capital efficiency. This is shown through the share repurchase we've executed, the return of excess cash from David Jones, and the recommencement of dividends this year. Other highlights, net equity is up about 25% to ZAR 12 billion. Net borrowings is down ZAR 1.3 billion on last year, and our SA gearing is well within covenant levels and our own internal targets. As I mentioned previously, a strong net cash position in David Jones and Country Road.
Working capital is really well managed with inventory marginally up despite the growth in the group. Our balance sheet also reflects our sustainability focus with over 80% of our South African debt now linked to ESG criteria. Also, very proud of the EMEA Finance Award for the Best Sustainability Linked Loan of 2021. A real outstanding job by the team, and kudos to them. Cash generation. As you can see, we are a highly cash generative group. Cash from operations was ZAR 8 billion. The dividends we declared flowed in September and March. There was a further release of working capital of ZAR 99 million. We spent ZAR 1.9 billion on CapEx for the year. In total gearing, as I mentioned, was down ZAR 1.2 billion.
All business units contributed to this and delivered healthy cash flows with a high cash conversion ratio of over 100%. Free cash flow per share was up 13% on last year. Headline earnings and dividends. Given our performance and robust balance sheet, we propose to continue paying dividends in respect of Woolworths South Africa, as well as resume dividends for Country Road at 70% of headline earnings. This translates into a final dividend of ZAR 1.49 per share, and a total dividend just shy of ZAR 2.30 per share. This is significantly more than what we paid last year and a really great result for our shareholders.
David Jones will continue repatriating excess cash to SA, which will be used to reduce debt. I must say in closing, on the balance sheet and cash flows, it's really pleasing to be talking about dividends and buying back of shares given the balance sheet challenges that we were facing not so long ago. Then just to end off on recent trading, give you guys a sense of where we are post year-end and at the end of week eight. FBH trade up 11% since the start of the new year with strong full price sales growth. What is really pleasing is that this is essentially like for like. We pulled winter clearance forward to the same time last year.
With Foods, up 4.5% in line with H2 trade. Top line still affected by high base and the load shedding, particularly in July, but we have seen better comp trade in August. Moving on to Australia, both businesses trading ahead of expectations with high growth, obviously on the back of the stores being closed last year. David Jones up over 70% and Country Road up over 40% on 2021. In closing, just some final thoughts from me. Firstly, really pleased that we that despite a significantly disrupted first half, we have seen a growth in earnings for the year.
Secondly, our second half performance is something to be really proud of, especially as it reflects our ability to trade under normal conditions. Then also worth reflecting on the strength in the diversification of our business, both in food and apparel, and also from a geographic perspective. We had earnings growth in a very challenging and still disrupted year. Finally, our strong balance sheet, as I mentioned this before, stands us really in good stead over the medium term. We can focus on capital and balance sheet efficiency and investing for growth, which is very exciting. On that note, let me hand you back to Roy. Thank you.
Thank you, Reeza. In our full year presentation last year, I shared with you in some detail our new strategic framework and also outlined our key strategic sources of growth. Now, I'm not planning on covering that today, but you may recall a number of the key themes that we called out, such as how we unlock and create value in Australia, how we fix our fashion business, and how we protect our leadership position in foods, and so on. All of which leverage our unique competitive advantages as a group. I think it's important to note that our strategies haven't changed from what we shared with you last year, and that's because we are confident in them. Our focus is now on the execution. We have included a bit of an update for you in the appendix to this presentation.
We've also outlined some strategic initiatives so that by being clear and transparent about these, you too can hold us accountable to delivering against these. What I would like to spend some time on, however, are some of the specific questions you may have regarding our execution and performance over the past year. The questions I plan to address are firstly on the outlook for our Australian business, then the performance of Foods, and finally, where we are in the turnaround of FBH. Starting with David Jones, there's been a lot of speculation about the future of this business. So, we have been very clear in what we needed to address. Firstly, the balance sheet. Secondly, the income statement and the business's profitability. And thirdly, value optimization for WHL and its shareholders.
For the past two years, we've had an intense focus on addressing the financial and operational health of this business. Today, it is in substantially better shape than it's been in for quite some time. It has a clearly defined strategy, with Scott and his strong management team driving execution. It has a roadmap to ongoing improvements in profitability, and it is self-funding. Having successfully executed against the balance sheet and income statement priorities, I'm pleased to say we're now in a position to clearly evaluate all possible options to unlocking value for the group and its shareholders. As we consider our options, we remain focused on strengthening the DJ's business and affirming its position as one of Australia's most iconic and premium omni-channel retailers. What does this mean for the Country Road Group?
One of the key drivers behind our capital plan last year was to enable the splitting of the covenants between our Australian businesses and subsequently set David Jones and CRG up independently so as to pursue their own respective strategic ambitions. In terms of CRG, we are really excited about the opportunities we see within the existing business and also those that we've identified in terms of new channels and markets. CRG has a portfolio of leading Australian brands. It has a strong management team under Raju. It is the preeminent omni-channel player in the Australian market, with short leases in terms of its real estate portfolio. Given its strong growth trajectory, we expect it to become an even bigger part of the group going forward. Turning to the second question. I know many of you will have questions around our recent Foods results.
At the outset, I want to put our performance into context. As you know, we are a predominantly fresh food business. Fresh contributes roughly 2/3 towards our product mix. It's the exact inverse of our competitors. While we were all up against a high COVID base and all bore the brunt of load shedding, as a predominantly fresh business, which also overindexes on prepared food, we were disproportionately impacted as customers returned to out-of-home consumption, and as I'm sure you will recognize, when you can't rely on refrigeration at home or cooking when you want to, customers also cut back on fresh, convenient, or ready-to-cook meals. Added to this, while our competitors have actively been opening new stores and new formats, we've been consolidating our position, and that's seen us lose some market share in the post-COVID world, and that's something we're addressing.
Let me be clear, this isn't meant to excuse our performance in any way. We are disappointed by our results, and we are addressing that. I am very confident in our business model and our ability to remain the leading premium food retailer in the country. We have an exceptionally strong foundation with fundamentals that not only truly differentiate us but are exceedingly difficult to authentically replicate. We have an unmatched, what I call, deep, smart capability in food science and technology. We have a comprehensive, integrated, and obsessive approach to quality right throughout our value chain. We have the strictest governance and compliance requirements when it comes to food safety. We have a best-in-class cold chain, a profound commitment to sustainability.
Sustainability embodies who we are and how we operate, and we have unrivaled innovation capabilities, all of which defines the core DNA of our foods business. By virtue of this model, this premium, primarily fresh, primarily private label offering, we're able to achieve returns on capital that are not only multiples of those of our peers but are probably ranking amongst the highest globally. By any measure, this is a world-class business, but we can and must do more with what we have. We're focusing on three priorities, driving our on-shelf availability, amplifying our differentiated value proposition, and increasing our marketplace presence. Let's start with this last point, our marketplace presence. In terms of our store footprint, since 2020, we have grown space by only 3%.
Not competitive enough, but a deliberate decision at the time to consolidate the several years of pretty extensive space growth prior to that. We are now stepping up our space growth in a very targeted way through both new stores and the expansion of existing footprints, which will enable our growth in new categories such as pet, wellness, and liquor. We're also stepping up our openings in WCellar and our Now Now concept and our coffee shop and carts as well. In terms of our online capacity, over the next few months, we will double the number of our dash fulfillment stores, and within the next few weeks, we'll be integrating this offering into our main Woolies app, thereby reducing costs, improving efficiencies, and enabling a fully integrated omni-channel experience for our customers.
There's no point in expanding space if the products you expect to find are actually not on the shelves. Our next priority is driving on-shelf availability. In fact, category management and product availability are arguably the biggest commercial opportunities we have as a business, and that's a top focus area for Zyda and her team. The third focus area for us is our value proposition. For the past few years, we have talked extensively about our investment in price, and we've worked hard behind the scenes to address it. Increasingly, more often, we are being acknowledged through independent research and the like as being on par, and in fact, sometimes better priced on comparable products versus our peers. I'm actually of the view that the conversation needs to shift from pure price to value.
Most simplistically put, value, in my book, can be defined as the equation between what you gain versus what you give up. Our food business was built on the gains, on the clear and well-articulated differences that our customers sought us out for, quality, freshness, innovation, sustainability, and convenience. We are a business that has always prided ourselves on being the leaders in good food, great food, with industry-leading innovations, great partnerships, and a strong commitment to addressing the many challenges across our food system. This is what has made us Woolies Food, and it is what consistently drives our success, our brand love, and our customer loyalty. It is also what has consistently positioned us as one of the most loved, valued, and aspirational brands in South Africa, and it is something that we will fight tooth and nail for to defend.
I don't think we're doing a good enough job sharing the essence of who we are and what we stand for as a brand. We've under-communicated this, and we've dialed up the conversation on price, which has driven a narrative of sameness in the market. We need to focus the conversation on value because our strategy is not to enter a price war with our competitors or even to say we want to lead on price, but we do want to lead on value, and we need to do a better job of communicating exactly that. Whereas some of our competitors say a lot, sometimes more than they do, we typically do a lot, much more than what we say, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be more deliberate and more effective in how we market ourselves and our unique proposition.
Now, these priorities aren't as much challenges as they are, in fact, opportunities for us to go after. We're not trying to build a private label business. We're not trying to establish a cold chain. We don't have to forage for new product development capabilities. We certainly don't have to make a feast of newly crafted collections to address our quality perceptions. We're not only just starting our sustainability journey. In our business, quality is indivisible. It is in everything we sell and everything we do. I'm confident that by going after our opportunities in this targeted way, we'll not only continue to drive profitable growth, but also sustain our market-leading returns. Now let's take a look at our FBH business. At the interim presentation, I shared with you the progress we were making in fixing this business and what still remained to be done.
Now I'd like to update you on where we find ourselves. Firstly, we remain clear that restoring the underlying financial health of our fashion businesses and growing our beauty and home businesses represents the single biggest opportunity we have to reset value for the group. To this end, and as I've said before, we are not indiscriminately chasing conventional market share or market share in the aggregate but rather focusing on increasing our share of the apparel profit pool through better quality sales and improved productivity and returns metrics. We'll show you a video shortly where Manie will share some of the initiatives the team have taken, to make product more relevant and appealing to customers, and also what they are doing to focus on their must-win categories.
Central to some of the progress that has been made is a more holistic and granular understanding of the market and of our customer. This is really yielding results. Firstly, our full price sales have grown at more than twice the rate of our headline sales over the past year. As Reeza mentioned, this momentum has continued into the new financial year. This is because our teams are responding more effectively to customers' needs and are increasingly getting the product right. This is flowing through to our bottom line, with our last two end of season sales not only being smaller in terms of units available to sell, but also the most profitable we've had in almost eight years.
This clearer understanding we have of our customer provides us with the opportunity to not only drive the frequency and spend of current customers, but it also gives us the opportunity to acquire new ones, and we are better leveraging our relationships through our financial services business and our W Rewards program in order to do so. While we continue to execute our Edit to Amplify fashion strategy, we're also executing on the significant opportunities we have to grow our share in the beauty and home markets. In just over five years, our beauty business has almost doubled in size and gained significant share in a valuable market. We see even further potential here to build that business as a beauty destination. Our home business remains underdeveloped, and we see significant potential to grow this category, particularly through leveraging online.
In fact, we have formulated bespoke strategies for each of these businesses and will allocate the relevant resource and focus to enable them to deliver on their growth potential. We're also becoming more flexible and responsive in our sourcing model. By consolidating our private labels under the Woolies brand and by focusing on our must-win categories, we're able to take bigger bets on fewer positions, which is driving very different structural economics. At the same time, we're becoming more agile and reducing our lead times by increasing our share of product manufactured locally. Critical to successfully executing our initiatives across the FBH business is the multi-year transformation of our value chain. We're investing in a number of enabling digital technologies to fundamentally transform our planning systems, processes, and logistics. We've also been rationalizing unproductive space for the past few years.
Interestingly, as we're getting our product increasingly right, our stores are performing better. We're finding less scope for rationalization versus what we had previously envisaged. You'll see that, last year, we expected to reduce space by around 6% over the three years, and we've now cut that projection back to only around 2%, partly for the reasons I've just mentioned, but also partly due to a new format that's coming on stream. This is called W Edit. It's a new store format which Manie Maritz will be showcasing shortly. I am confident that we, in fact, have the right strategy, and we have the right team in place, and we're also making good progress. We're not declaring victory quite yet.
Our feet are firmly on the ground, and we remain relentlessly focused on execution to ensure that we permanently shift the trajectory of this business. What I've shared with you now is what's happening behind the scenes, but Manie Maritz is going to take you through how this is coming to life for our customers.
Thank you, Roy. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Canal Walk store. I thought it would be apt to share my update from one of our flagship stores, allowing you to experience our product strategy in action. Our must-win categories, denim, wardrobe essentials, athleisure, lingerie, kids, and baby, have been a key focus area for us, and I'm pleased by the traction we have made over the past year, where we have delivered strong full price sales growth, particularly in womenswear. In denim, we have listened to our customers and have improved and extended our fit, size, and length offering, as well as provided compelling opening price points. We amplified this through our Find Your Fit campaign.
This, along with our third-party brand partnerships, which has elevated our private label denim offering, a more inclusive and relevant marketing has resulted in double-digit growth, as well as market share gains across both women's and men's denim. We intend to capture even more of this market. We have also aligned on a single-minded approach to proudly anchor our Woolies brand through the power of the item across wardrobe essentials, creating dominant displays and providing inspiring ways to wear our offering. In winter, we focused on puffer jackets, and we are now focusing on the mainstay of our summer wardrobe, chinos, tees, and our dress shop. We've also shifted value perceptions by positioning price with a difference.
This difference, one of our areas of innovation and superior quality, is really what sets us apart, and we will remain relentless in delivering and dialing this up across our product offerings as we have done in lingerie. Customers trust our quality, and we are focused on telling our different stories, which also includes our high safety standard and market-leading sustainability attributes. We have put this into action by being transparent about our suppliers and our processes. One of the many areas where this difference is clearly reflected is in our baby wear category, which has also delivered consistently strong growth. Our beauty business is a real asset to FBH. As Roy mentioned, we see even more potential here. We've built some real credibility in the market by rolling out the brands that our customers love, and there is more to come.
At the same time, we're expanding our WBeauty business. We see great opportunity here as well and are really proud of the product offering, which is cruelty-free, vegan, and 85% locally produced. We're also driving improved customer experiences through influencers and in-store services, creating theater and excitement in our stores. In home, we are focused on differentiating our offer through introducing new categories, improved quality, and innovation across bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. This is really resonating with our customers.
In line with our strategy of optimizing space, we've been applying a test and learn approach, particularly in the case of some of our smaller and medium stores, which in fact account for two-thirds of our sales and even greater share of our profits, and where we haven't shown up as well as we could. We're working through our chain to ensure we offer our customers the look and feel and experiences they would expect from us, like Tembisa Woolworths, where the shop front is as powerful as our top doors. Secondly, and most excitingly, we have launched our first smaller format store, W Edit, in Harvest Place, Kempton Park, which trades off significantly smaller trading space and offers an edited range across women's, lingerie, and men's, as well as WBeauty. We're really challenging our thinking around the big box formats.
Our W Edit format is a key strategic enabler in growing our customer base, allowing us to be more accessible through targeting convenient locations. We believe that this will be a game changer for our fashion business, allowing us to be accessible to more customers and presents an exciting opportunity for us in terms of store expansion. We've done a lot of work over the past two years to improve the underlying financial health of our business, and we're seeing that come through in better full price sales, trading densities, and margins. While we're not done yet and still have scope to keep improving all these metrics, I'm also excited by some of the prospects and plans we have to grow our top line in fashion, beauty, and home.
Our financial momentum into the new financial year has given me great confidence that our strategies are resonating with our customers and have shifted the trajectory of our business. Thank you. We've taken some time to hopefully provide a few perspectives and answer some of the questions that may have been top of mind for you in respect of our recent performance. Of course, we'll have time to cover further questions, you may have in the Q&A session but now let's look ahead. The global macro- outlook remains challenging. We are in an environment of rising inflation and interest rates, continued supply chain challenges, and generally ongoing volatility and uncertainty. Australian consumers do have the benefit of strong household balance sheets and very low levels of unemployment.
In South Africa, consumption spend faces added headwinds in high unemployment and severe energy shortages, with inflation of approximately 6% and 8% in our food and FBH businesses respectively. Notwithstanding this context, we are clear on our strategies and on our execution imperatives, and as I mentioned earlier, we have outlined these for you at the back of our pack. We have a balance sheet with firepower and self-help opportunities across our businesses to grow both revenue and profitability, and we're allocating capital accordingly. What does this mean in terms of our medium-term targets? Well, there's no change to either our CRG or Foods targets, but I'm very pleased to say that we are lifting our targeted margin in the case of FBH to greater than 14%.
We're not providing any specific margin target in respect of David Jones, given where we're at, but needless to say, we will continue to drive the performance and profitability of this business. In closing and on reflection, I think we've come through two of the most tumultuous years this business has ever experienced. I don't think we've just come through it. I believe we have emerged the stronger for it, and I'm really proud of what we've achieved, even when the going was tough and times were uncertain. We now have the healthiest balance sheet we've seen in almost a decade. Apparel businesses that are more profitable than they were pre-COVID, and the delivery of real and tangible shareholder returns. I firmly believe that we have proven ourselves to be a resilient organization, one that is focused on formulating clear strategies and executing against them.
Yes, there are still areas in our group that we can improve upon, but these are largely within our control. I still see significant opportunity for us as an organization to be more externally focused, to sharpen our competitive edge, dial up our sense of urgency, and certainly drive real accountability across the group. We have demonstrated that success will come if we as an organization focus on controlling what is within our control. You can expect us to keep showing real progress against our strategic initiatives. In fact, it's because of the last 2.5 years and my experience in leading this remarkable organization that I have great confidence in what we can achieve. We are on track to rebuild our financial credentials, drive long-term value creation, and restore our business to its rightful place in the hearts and minds of all our stakeholders.
With that, let's open for questions.
Good morning and thank you all again for joining us. We're gonna move straight into our live Q&A session. Our first question, Roy: With your balance sheet now in a net cash positive position and considering how cash generative your businesses are, particularly Foods, could you please share any thoughts on your appetite for M&A?
Yes, thanks, Jeanine. We have worked very hard on our balance sheet, and it is, you know, now in a healthy position that it is. We're not ruling out any acquisitions, and I think, you know, our biggest opportunities we do see are, in fact, organic. We still have significant scope internally to drive revenues and profit growth, and that's really, I think, where our primary focus is. That said, though, you know, I think one of our more astute acquisitions we have in fact made has been in a great business called WHL. For the first time, our group has done a share buyback, and we've acquired our shares well below what we believe the intrinsic value of our business to be.
That's something we'll continue to explore depending on market conditions at the time, obviously.
Thank you, Roy. SA Food Commentary alluded to a lack of availability in some lines. Could you please unpack this in some more detail? What products were these? What was the driver of the availability issues, and has availability been restored?
All right, thank you. Thanks, Jeanine. Yes, I mean, specifically to availability, I mean, I think in any business like ours, you're going to find times where, based on supply chain, et cetera, there are potentially always certain products that are not on the shelf when they need to be. But when we're talking about availability here, you know, I'm not talking about putting more product onto the shelf because I think we're pretty good at doing that already. What I'm talking about here is really an elevated approach to category management. I really mean this in terms of using customer data, our advanced analytics capabilities, to really drive what we call hyper-localization. Getting far more sophisticated in terms of which product we put where and in what quantities.
With that, I think, you know, we're seeing the size of the opportunity to being quite meaningful.
Thanks, Roy. Another question on the foods business. What is the group's plan with the food business as it has performed rather poorly in comparison to competitors? What is Woolworths doing to ensure the business is more competitive moving forward?
Thank you, Jeanine. I think. You know, we've sort of laid out, you know, in the presentation a little earlier, you know, a whole lot of the context, and I really don't want to go there again. I mean, we've spoken about the high COVID base, load shedding, you know, the return to out-of-home consumption, et cetera. We really aren't short of opportunities to grow within our core business. You should see momentum starting to pick up from here. I've spoken about availability and some of the things we're doing on that already, but we're also doing quite a lot of work on our value proposition, including price.
We have communicated the investment we've made, or planning to make and continue to make, in fact, in price of ZAR 750 million. That's almost 2% of sales, and we're funding that in conjunction with our suppliers through the efficiencies that we're generating in our collective value chain. You know, you would also see from some of the independent surveys, the various independent surveys out there, that we are in fact beginning to shift perception. In fact, in terms of certain like-for-like products, you know, in terms of the basket of goods, we really are very competitive and sometimes even cheaper than our major peers out there. These investments that we're making are in fact shifting perception, as I said.
I mean, we've seen a 10% increase in the number of transactions through our stores over the past year. What's really encouraging and important about that is that this is coming from new customers, not from our existing double reward base. That's exactly what our intention is here, to become more accessible, particularly to a new customer, while maintaining our aspirational status. We see that as being a really positive driver to top-line growth. The other point I made in the presentation earlier was about our marketplace presence. You know, here we're talking about the fact that we've been through a period where we have been consolidating our space growth.
Now we're emerging from that, and we will be stepping up our investment and our overall space growth plans over the next couple of years. You know, that will include making some of our existing stores bigger and some of our smaller stores bigger, particularly where we overtrade. You know, we have specific categories such as wellness, liquor, pet, you know, that if we could allocate more space, it would have a material and meaningful upside for us. From a physical brick-and-mortar perspective, those are some of the plans there. As we sort of build out our marketplace presence, which will underpin the growth you know, ambition we have, we are also you know, going to be increasingly investing, as we have been now for the last couple of years, in online.
We have our Dash proposition, which is really only available through around 48 stores today. We'll be doubling that over the next few months. Importantly, in terms of online, we'll be launching in the next few weeks, you know, an integrated single app, Woolworths app. We'll be only retailer offering this, where you can shop all online channels, including having your loyalty financial services all in one single app, and we think that's gonna be a material shift. As I said, I think we're not short of opportunities to grow our top line. You know, it may not always grow ahead of the market, but that's because we are very clear on who we are, what our DNA is, and we're not going to chase indiscriminate market share.
Because what really, really matters to us is that we maintain our industry-leading margins and our returns on capital. That's what makes shareholders money at the end of the day.
Thank you, Roy.
Thanks.
Next question, probably one for Reeza. How should we think about expense growth into FY 2023, given the inflationary backdrop, though offset somewhat by FY 2022 space reduction annualizing?
Mm.
Coupled with continued space reduction in FY20 23?
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jeanine. Yeah, as you say, I think the question was from Ish. We're well aware of the inflationary pressures, global and local. I think you know, it's a bit of a mixed bag in terms of inflation, but we all know it's high. We look at categories like electricity, fuel.
You know, some leases or CPI-linked insurance has gone up significantly. Having said that, I think we did a fantastic job in FY 2022 on expenses across the group, in David Jones, in Country Road, in FBH, driven to a large extent by space reductions, but also specific focus on particular areas. A great job done by the team. Yeah, it's, you know, despite the inflationary increases, we will stick to our margin guidance. We will continue our cost optimization programs. We will continue to drive cost out of certain categories and offset those increases.
We will stick to our margin guidance.
Thanks, Reeza. A further follow-up question, related to cost.
Mm.
Could you please provide more clarity on which expense categories with a focus for cost reduction or containment across the group?
I think the space reduction across the group is a driver of obviously of cost reduction. Having said that, you know, across store expenses.
Mm
To head office costs, the team will be looking at, you know, well, across the categories. You know, from labor to IT costs, to back- office costs to store costs. It really is across the board. In David Jones, for example, we did focus specifically on the food business, pulling that back and reducing the losses there. Yeah, it will continue, you know, across the piece.
Thanks, Reeza.
Yeah.
Roy, could you give us an update on how womenswear in particular performed over the year and how it's traded into the start of this new financial year?
Sure. Yes, I mean, I think obviously we're very pleased with the overall progress we've made with you know, fashion, beauty and home. You know, you've seen some of the numbers and you know, we're really pleased that you know, for a couple of consecutive seasons now, we're sort of tracking against the milestones we've laid out for ourselves. Feel quite confident that we're on the right track and now we can begin sort of accelerating some of the things we're doing. Certainly, in the fashion space, and we don't often talk about beauty and home, which is also really interesting opportunities for us, but for us. Back to the fashion space, womenswear has been you know, quite an important pillar within that context.
The specific must-win categories that we've defined and in womenswear are really where we're actually performing. Throughout the year, the full price sales, which is a key measure for us on womenswear, grew by over 10% year-on-year. That was very pleasing. Certainly, when we look at the momentum, you know, we've seen that even improve even further coming into this new financial year. In fact, womenswear full price sales today are up well over 30% for the past few weeks. The product that the team are coming out with, the work that they're doing there is really resonating.
Thank you, Roy. We of course have opportunity to engage with many of our investors and analysts over the upcoming days. We'll perhaps close with one final question. Thank you for the presentation this morning. Will excess cash from David Jones continue to be up streamed and used for share buybacks instead of dividends? Is this a result of intentions to sell the business? What is management's maximum appetite or share price level for share buybacks?
Yeah. So, you know that DJ's is cash positive and is self-funding. Yes, I mean, we'll continue to repatriate capital, you know, where it makes sense. Certainly, you know, we'll continue to do this as we explore all of our options in terms of optimizing value for the group and our shareholders. Buybacks remain on the table as one of the options, but we should obviously consider that pretty much as part of our broader capital allocation approach and framework.
Roy, thank you. That brings our FY2022 results presentation to a close. Thank you all again for joining us today.
Thank you. Thank you very much, and thanks for your time today. Thank you.
Thank you.