Good morning, and welcome to our 2022 interim results presentation. I'm really hopeful that this will be our last results presentation that we undertake virtually, and that the next time we will be able to engage with many of you in person and in our stores, where you can get a real sense of our strategies in action. Joining me today is Reeza Isaacs, our Financial Director, who will take you through the group's financial performance for the half. Thereafter, there are three things I'd like to cover. Firstly, I'll provide you with an update on some of our strategic initiatives. Secondly, I'll address some of the questions that may well be top of mind for you.
Then I'll also share some perspectives as to how we view our group, its various businesses, the respective opportunities, both strategically and financially, and where and how we are looking to create value. Before we do that, let's kick off with an overview of the period. The first half has not been without its challenges, particularly those related to the continuing impact of COVID-19, especially in Australia, where stores accounting for around 70% of our brick-and-mortar sales were closed for the majority of the period as a result of the government lockdown. Nonetheless, we continue to focus on trading our businesses, managing inventory, tightly controlling costs, and converting sales into cash. Notwithstanding the impact that lockdowns had on sales, our group revenues were still pretty much in line with last year. Our reported profits were down 16%, largely due to the various impacts of the lockdowns.
Were it not for these and some of the one-off impacts in the base, profits would have in fact grown by around 10%. Reeza will talk to this in some detail a little bit later on. From an overall trading perspective, the group experienced strong momentum over the last six weeks of the period. Within that, however, there was a mix of performances with a really strong rebound across our Australian businesses, a relative slowdown of fashion in South Africa, which I'll come back to later, and of course, a pleasing pickup in our South African food business. A key highlight for us, particularly considering where we were just 18 months ago, is that we've reduced our gearing by a further ZAR 7 billion since December 2020, and we ended the half in a net cash position with the strongest balance sheet since 2014.
I also gave you our commitment that no further funds would flow from WHL to David Jones, and I'm pleased to announce that, in fact, we are repatriating ZAR 1 billion from our David Jones business in the form of a special dividend, which will be used to reduce our South African debt. With regards to dividends to our shareholders, we've declared an interim dividend of just over ZAR 0.80 per share. We have also begun to relook at how and where we allocate capital, particularly in the light of our current balance sheet position, and I want to share a bit more of this with you later on. We're not only improving our productivity and efficiency in relation to our financial assets, but also in terms of how we enhance our structures and processes so that our teams can perform to their full potential.
Towards the end of last year, we introduced a more agile operating model aimed in part at increasing the speed of our decision-making and driving greater accountability across our organization. Interestingly, through our new ways of working, we've already cut about 20% of the time spent in meetings just by simplifying and streamlining some of our processes. Getting after things with greater speed and agility is critical to our success, and these changes will help us get there. A further key highlight for us, and in line with our sustainability goals, we have become the first major South African retailer to publish a list of suppliers that manufacture its fashion, beauty, and home products. We're doing this for all of our apparel businesses.
This is not only a vital step towards the fashion industry becoming more environmentally sustainable and accountable, but it also empowers our customers to make informed, and therefore better choices. Before I hand over to Reeza, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all our stakeholders. Many of you may have noticed that we celebrated our 90th birthday in October last year. 90 years of quality and innovation, 90 years of making a difference and doing the right thing, something we're very proud of. I would like to thank our 45,000 team members across all of our markets for their passion and dedication to our organization and to serving our millions of customers. It is how each and every one of our team show up each and every day that sustainably sets us apart. A big thank you as well to our suppliers and other business partners.
Our partnerships with you are central to our success. Of course, I'd like to thank our customers for their continued support. 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 everything we can to protect and nurture it. Briefly regarding vaccinations, we have continued to prioritize the health and safety of our people and our customers, and we have been particularly focused on driving vaccination rates throughout our businesses through educating, encouraging, and enabling our employees to get vaccinated. As a result of our ongoing initiatives in South Africa, over 70% of our people are now vaccinated. Additionally, our head office and regional offices are now COVID-safe spaces where access is restricted to individuals who are either vaccinated or who present a negative test.
Our teams have done an incredible job managing some of the most challenging and frustrating circumstances of working virtually. In the case of our office teams, I'm really excited about the recent official return to office and the implementation of our New Hybrid Model, which will afford us many advantages, including the opportunity to reconnect and to collaborate on a face-to-face basis, build camaraderie, and drive our competitive spirit. I will now hand over to Reeza to take you through some of the financial highlights over the past six months. Reeza, over to you.
Thank you, Roy, and good morning, everyone. Just a few opening remarks before I dive into the numbers. Even though most income statement metrics show a decline, this should be seen in the context of the lockdowns in Australia, where about 70% of our stores did not trade for more than three months. Country Road and David Jones had a strong rebound when stores reopened, and the impact on the balance of the 1/2 was less severe than initially expected. This can be seen from our adjusted diluted EPS, which was down 16.3% for the 1/2. With our trading statement in November, we guided to a decline of more than 20%. A few of the group performance highlights on the right. Group sales was essentially flat on last year in constant currency, which was a good result.
Adjusted EBIT was ZAR 3.2 billion, 18% down on last year and 9% up if we adjust for the effects of store closures, JobKeeper and rent relief. We ended the 1/2 in a net cash position of ZAR 258 million at a group level, with AUD 400 billion of cash on hand in Australia and the strongest balance sheet we have had for a long time. Net debt to EBITDA is at 2x, and this includes our lease liabilities. Working capital was down ZAR 400 million, with inventory levels very well managed despite the disruptions. We continue with the dividend out of Woolworths South Africa at a 60% payout ratio.
Having successfully executed our restructuring plan in Australia and as a result of our ongoing cash generation initiatives, David Jones ended the period with net cash of AUD 347 million. In line with optimizing capital across the group, David Jones declared a special dividend to WHL of AUD 90 million or ZAR 1 billion as of the period end. This will, in the interim, be used to reduce our debt in South Africa. Moving on to sales performance. Here we show the first-1/2 sales trends for each of the businesses. You have seen these numbers in our various trading updates. FBH is up 4.2% for the 1/2, a declining run rate over the period, but skewed by the timing of winter clearance at the start of the 1/2.
You will see this trend again at the start of H2 with the early clearance of summer. If we adjust for this in the base, growth would have been 3.4% for the six weeks and 6.1% for the half, which is reflected in the dotted lines. We focused on improving the financial health of FBH. Space was reduced by a further 6%. We rationalized brands and SKUs, and the consequences of these deliberate actions have impacted sales growth. We are satisfied that we have improved the quality of sales achieved. We did have fashion misses in certain categories of womenswear, but on the positive side, we saw good performances from kids wear, men's, beauty and home.
Moving on to Foods, we reference the high base and shifting consumption patterns in Foods, and there is no doubt that we benefited disproportionately from higher home consumption during COVID, given the dominance of fresh in our offering. There were other factors that affected the top line this year, like low produce inflation, adverse weather which impacted supply, and the unavailability of certain lines. Space expansion was also negligible in the six months. Pleasingly, we saw a very strong Christmas week, which was up over 10%. We're looking at Australia, and we have said this a few times. Sales were down in the first quarter due to the store closures, essentially the gray shaded areas on the graph. You can see the strong rebound coming out of lockdown.
If we adjust for Boxing Day, for the Boxing Day shift to H2, sales growth in David Jones in the last six weeks would have been 7.7%. Country Road was up 1.7% for the last six weeks and somewhat affected by labor shortages, which impacted fulfillment. Moving on to EBIT. Group adjusted EBIT was down 18% on last year, but not unexpected for the reasons mentioned. In the operating profit for each of our businesses in relation to last year. Foods profit was down 8%, but this should be seen in the context of the fact that we grew profit by over 23% last year through a strong top line and a margin that was boosted by a combination of high volumes and low waste.
FBH was up 34% to ZAR 780 million, and David Jones delivered AUD 31 million and Country Road AUD 48 million of earnings, both obviously non-comparable to last year. We will unpack the segmental performances a little later, but this is a very good result in the context of a significantly disrupted first quarter. Moving on to the next slide. Here we adjust EBIT for store closures, Job Keeper and rent relief in the base and in the current year. This shows the profit impact of these adjustments, essentially normalized EBIT. You can see that this is significant with David Jones' profit up 30% for the 1/2 and Country Road up 10% and the group up 9% if one were to make these adjustments. Moving on to the EPS slide.
Here we show the movement from adjusted EPS to EPS, a function of earnings on the earlier slide. Adjusted diluted EPS comes in at ZAR 1.622 per share, and then some minor adjustments for lease exit and modification gains, and also the SA unrest costs to get to diluted EPS of just over ZAR 1.65 per share. Far fewer adjustments than last year when we had the profit on the sale of Bergstrom Men's and significant adjustments for lease modification gains in David Jones, which accounted for the big differences between AD EPS and EPS in 2020. Moving on to the segmental results, starting with FBH.
I covered turnover on the earlier charts, up 4.2% for the half, online sales up nearly 20% and now 4.4% of total sales. As we have said before, our focus is on improving the financial health of the business. Despite the women's wear misses this season, we are making encouraging progress in executing our strategies to drive full price sales, rationalize brands and reduce space. This is reflected in our GP margin, which was up 40 basis points, TPMs, which was up over 10%, and Operating Profit, which was up 34%. Costs were really well controlled, down 1% for the period, and adjusted EBIT was up 34% to ZAR 780 million.
A number of key indicators are moving in the right direction, but there is still much to do in FBH. We are also encouraged by the progress. Moving on to food. A solid performance in what continues to be an increasingly competitive space and against a very tough macro backdrop. Top line growth 3.8% for the half and 5.8% in the last six weeks, back above the market in December after taking a bit of a dip in November. I made the points on low produce inflation, space growth, and high proportion of fresh, which benefited through Covid. We did not repeat our bulk deals in produce, which in hindsight was not the right thing to do, and one of our key daily meat suppliers unexpectedly shut their operation.
I also made the point on GP margin, high volumes and low waste last year, and this year we also saw higher fuel prices. Investment in price, however, continues. Return on sales was 7.2% for the half, with an operating profit of ZAR 1.4 billion. Just in closing, I'd like to say that the EBIT decline of 8% should be seen in the context of the high base. We grew profit by over 23% last year. Moving on to financial services. Our WFS business continues its post-COVID recovery, testament to a resilient business model, quality of its book and strong management team. The lead indicators have recovered also much earlier than expected. Closing book was up 5%. Book growth, high interest rates and store footfall positively affected interest income and non-interest revenue.
The impairment charge was 4%, which is market leading. A really strong result for the period with an ROE of 19.3%. David Jones still delivered an EBITDA of AUD 100 million despite the store closures. The top line was obviously impacted more than Country Road, given the higher concentration of trading footprint in Victoria and New South Wales and also in CBD locations. Sales was down 9% for the half, but still up 3% over a very strong last six weeks of the previous year. This growth excludes Boxing Day, which falls into H2 this year. We reduced space by 5.8% for the period and are on track to deliver our targeted 20% space reduction.
With the store closures, there was the expected shift to online, which was up 44% and is now 28% of total sales. A very significant increase over a short space of time. Gross margin was up 20 basis points on last year, despite having to clear the stock build up during lockdown, and expenses were down 2% for the year, for the period. A really good outcome considering the one-offs in the base from JobKeeper and the rent relief. On expenses, the team is on target to deliver another AUD 25 million of annualized cost savings for the year. If you adjust for the sales disruptions and one-offs in the base, A-EBIT, as I mentioned before, improves by 3%.
In summary, AUD 100 million of EBITDA in a significantly disrupted half, good expense and working capital management with cash of AUD 347 million at the end of the period. Country Road, a really good performance despite the disruptions with sales down only 3% for the half. The performance of Country Road and Trenery and the Witchery turnaround was especially pleasing. Online was up 4% and is now about a third of sales. We experienced some labor shortages which affected online fulfillment. Gross margin stabilizing at about 60%, marginally down, but we had to clear the stock build up from store closures. We also had to contend with higher freight costs due to the increase in global demand.
Expenses were up 15%, not comparable to last year for the reasons mentioned and the base effects of JobKeeper and the rent relief. The focus on space optimization continues with the closure of stores and unproductive space down 7.4%. It is pleasing to note that our Country Road Group brands in South Africa is also performing exceptionally well and grew sales by 28% in the half. As I mentioned before, on a normalized basis, profit actually improved by 10%, and strong trade momentum continues in the second half. Moving on to CapEx. Total spend for the half was under ZAR 1 billion, with a forecast of ZAR 2.3 billion for the full year. CapEx was underspent in the period, and we will be below our previous guidance of ZAR 2.8 billion for the year.
The pullback was in the main due to the store closures in the first quarter in Australia. Again, a demonstration of one of the levers that we can pull when looking at preserving cash. The 18 million dollars set aside for the consolidation of Bourke Street will be spent this year. That project is on track. The shift of spend from bricks and mortar to IT and tech continues, which is reflected obviously in the continued growth in online. Moving on to the balance sheet. Just a reminder that all numbers are post IFRS 16. Property, plant, and equipment down by a third, but right of use assets is up, and this is due to the sale and leaseback of Elizabeth Street. Working capital is down a pleasing ZAR 400 million, and net equity is up a significant 40% on last year.
Net debt to EBITDA, including lease liabilities, is at 2x. SA Gearing is under 1x on a pre-IFRS 16 basis. SA has a strong record of cash generation with the underpin of the Foods business. Net borrowings is down ZAR 7 billion on last year. The balance sheet does not cover gearing in any great detail. We did that in previous presentations, and this is in the back of the pack. A specific call-out I wanted to make, and this is in respect of our sustainability-linked goals in respect of SA debt. Currently, we have converted nearly 60% of our SA debt, including bonds and working capital facilities, which is a first in South Africa, into that with sustainability-linked targets. Our aim is to convert all our debt into that with ESG attributes.
Overall, a very good gearing and balance sheet story which lays a good foundation for future growth and expansion. Okay, cash generation. Cash generated from operations was ZAR 5.5 billion on the left. Positive working capital movement despite the buildup of inventory as a result of the store closures in Aus. I mentioned the ZAR 400 million. In maintenance and expansion, CapEx was under ZAR 1 billion. At the end of 2021, we also took the decision to resume dividends from Woolworths South Africa, and this ZAR 638 million flowed in September last year. Total gearing was down ZAR 1 billion over the six-month period. Just a reminder again that this is despite the store closures in Australia. Dividends and capital structure.
As we have said previously, dividends will be considered in the context of prevailing conditions. Our borrowings are within the targeted ratios of 1.5x for SA, 1x for Country Road, and no debt in David Jones. We're successfully de-linked our Australian businesses from a financial covenant perspective, and both businesses are in a cash positive position despite the massive trade disruption in the first quarter. We are pleased to continue paying dividends from Woolworths South Africa at a 60% payout ratio, which translates into a dividend of ZAR 0.805 per share to shareholders. As mentioned, we have declared a AUD 90 million special dividend from David Jones to WHL. We will also revisit dividends in respect of Country Road and our longer term payout ratios at the end of the year.
We are currently reviewing our capital allocation framework, which Roy will speak to a bit later, and this is with the aim of further optimizing shareholder value. COVID has taught us many lessons, and we must be cognizant of unforeseen external shocks. The recent invasion of Ukraine is a stark reminder of just how quickly things can change. We must strike the right balance between balance sheet robustness and efficiency. Just to end off on recent trading. This is an extension of the sales slides presented earlier, with the first eight-week trade figures of the second half added. Growth at the start of the calendar year can be affected by cutoff, timing of summer clearance, and back to school dates. FBH traded up 14%, 7% if you adjust for the timing of summer clearance.
The 14% will moderate as we head further into the quarter. Just a reminder that from July this year, we will be anniversarizing our new trading calendar. Foods traded up 3.5% for the first eight weeks, in line with the overall first 1/2 run rate. We are still comping a high base, just as a reminder. Then in the case of Australia, Omicron no doubt affected and continuing to affect footfall. However, we have seen a sharp recovery, which is very pleasing. David Jones was up nearly 8% and Country Road up 14% on last year. That brings us to the conclusion of the finance section. In summary, a significantly disrupted first quarter, which explains the drop in earnings. Working capital and expense management has been sound.
Despite the disruption, we ended the half with a stronger balance sheet, which allows us to resume our interim dividend after a two-year hiatus. We have a solid foundation on which to execute our strategy. On this note, let me hand you back to Roy.
Thank you, Reeza. I would like to take a moment to remind you of our strategic framework, which really describes our purpose and provides an integrated view on our key strategies. In support of being a leading purpose-driven and truly connected retailer, we are focused on the following core strategic themes. Firstly, protecting and growing our core. This is to ensure that we safeguard the foundation of what truly differentiates us from our competitors. Next, expanding for more, which is how we leverage our core platform further by pursuing both underdeveloped and new opportunities for growth. Thirdly, how we lead in customer experience, which essentially means putting the customer at the forefront of everything we do. Within each of these strategic themes are a series of initiatives.
I have shared a fair bit of detail with you at our last results presentation, so I'm not going to run through all of them again. I do want to spend a few minutes on just two of them, our fashion turnaround and our leading food business, particularly in the context of our interim results. In doing so, I hope to preempt some of the questions I imagine you may have around our performance over the period. Starting with our turnaround in fashion. A question I imagine you may have is why we're not making more progress, particularly in the case of womenswear. The short answer is, we are. When I came on board, I shared with you that I believed our challenges in turning our fashion business around lay in both strategy and execution.
I am confident that we now have the right strategy, and I firmly believe we're on the right track. Our execution, though, is still a work in progress, and although we're beginning to see some successes, we are aware and focused on what still needs to be done. Our immediate and overarching priority is to restore the underlying financial health of our business, and that's exactly what we're doing. We're improving the quality of our sales base. We're doing this in a number of different ways. We've defined what we call the must-win categories we're going after. Categories we've historically been renowned for and loved for, and where we know we can deliver differentiated, superior quality and value to our customers. Our wardrobe essentials, denim, athleisure, smart or work leisure, kids and baby.
We're also elevating our apparel credentials in a number of these must-win categories through the introduction of select global and national brands, guest brands, which also serve to differentiate and enhance our customer experience. These third-party brands will be most prevalent in beauty and home. In the case of fashion, they'll represent a significantly smaller part of the mix, currently only around 1% of turnover. But as mentioned, they do have a disproportionate strategic impact in that they enable us to establish category legitimacy in the categories in which we want to lead. For example, in denim, where we have partnered with Levi's and Guess. We're very pleased with the results we're seeing so far. An important component of our holistic clothing offering is the Country Road Group brands, including Trenery and Witchery, which compete in the premium segment of the market.
Interestingly, they also represent a significant cross-shop opportunity with our foods customers. These brands collectively grew at around 30% over this half. In fact, if you look at our total clothing sales in South Africa, including all our brands, we're growing market share. Importantly, we're doing it in a far more profitable way. We've defined where we want to play and how we will win, and we're shaping our offering accordingly. This is based on what we know about the market, and more importantly, our target customer. Through advanced analytics, we are now generating the insights which in turn inform the decisions of our design and buying teams in a far more granular way. We're seeing our proposition resonating with the customer more than it's done in quite some time. How do we know this?
Well, while our overall sales grew by around 4% for the period, our full price sales grew at twice that pace. We reduced our rand value of markdown by almost 20% over the half. We've improved our trading densities by over 10%, and more importantly, improved our profit per sq m by over 40%. We've edited our menswear range by almost 30%, where, to be frank, we just over proliferated. That's now our best-performing category in terms of full price sales. Even in the case of something as simple as socks, where we offered over 130 different styles, we've now reduced that down to 90, and we've still got a way to go. We've begun to shift the scales in terms of the number of things we're doing and getting right versus the ones we're not.
There's still work to be done. In particular, we are focusing on our planning and allocation capabilities and processes. This is really where we face some of the challenges in womenswear in the first half. While product resonance has improved, where we really came up short was not having the right depth of that product in the right areas. This was particularly prevalent as we tracked performance across our store base down to our small and medium-sized stores, which in fact account for over 2/3 of our sales and an even greater share of our profits. Within our fashion business, womenswear is the largest ship to turn. It is the area that requires the biggest changes, from structures to ways of working across design, planning, and buying. Progress is well underway, but will still take more time before we're firing on all cylinders.
Positively though, our womenswear full price sales grew by 8% over the half. In fact, exactly in line with the broader business. We also doubled our stock turn. We're getting more of the right product into the right stores, priced right, but not nearly enough and not yet consistently enough. The investment, though, that we're making in systems and technology, our value chain transformation, as we call it, is fundamental to enabling this. We know that getting the ship turned around may take some time, but we are clear in our direction, confident in our strategy, and confident in our teams being able to shift the trajectory of this business. Now on to food. This business is, and always will be, the engine room of the group. It is critical that we not only sustain our momentum, but further expand our leadership position in food.
Now, I know many of you have questions around the recent slowdown in our trading momentum. As the country's preeminent food retailer, we're fully aware of intensifying competition. While competitors obsess about coming after us, we remain focused and obsessed about our customers and what they expect from us. In doing so, we will keep raising that competitive bar. Innovation is in our DNA, as is our unwavering commitment to quality and sustainability, and we're continuing to invest in these areas. We also keep challenging ourselves as to what more we can do to truly differentiate ourselves. Over the past half alone, we've continued to respond to our customers' evolving wants and needs by introducing over 1,000 new or upgraded product lines. A great example of this is how we've grown our Chuckles range.
Chuckles is now our number one bite-sized chocolate brand, made with 100% responsibly sourced cocoa. Our total Chuckles brand growth has increased four-fold as we've expanded across confectionery, ice cream, and bakery. 35 branded Chuckles items, in fact. It's been a great success for us. We now sell the same amount of our traditional red bag Chuckles in weight annually as that of a Boeing 747. Our product innovation is something we really pride ourselves in, and in fact, we walked away with eight awards at the recent Symrise New Product Competition Awards, maintaining our position as the country's leader in quality, newness, and innovation. We have also reconfigured the structure of our foods leadership team under the helm of Zyda Rylands.
Zyda is putting together a refreshed strategy which we'll share with you in due course, but it is predicated on the opportunity we have to grow both our share of customers and our share of wallet through becoming increasingly accessible, but while still remaining aspirational. Now, there are a number of ways one can become more accessible. Price is certainly a lever, and we're looking to deliver better pricing to our customers without any compromise to our superior quality through an enhanced promotional and everyday pricing strategy. There are select categories in which we're looking to expand our range, and through this we see the opportunity to grow the market and our share of it. There are a number of exciting new concepts in the pipeline which we are testing and are looking to roll out over the coming months.
The team is also rethinking what we call our white space opportunities, and where scope exists through different formats and catalogs to service areas where we're either underrepresented or not represented at all. I know I'm being a bit cryptic here, and deliberately so, particularly when it comes to new sources of growth. We do look forward to sharing more of this with you at our year-end results, and at other future engagement opportunities. I've taken a moment to provide some perspectives and hopefully answer some questions that may be top of mind for you in respect of our recent performance. Of course, we'll have more time to cover further questions you may have in the Q&A post the presentation. Now I'd like to look ahead.
I'd like to share with you what we believe sets us apart and how we're going to leverage our differentiators, our uniquely positioned businesses, to create meaningful, sustainable value to the benefit of all stakeholders, including, of course, to our shareholders. The first point here is that our foods business is the highest return food retailer in South Africa and would in fact probably rank amongst the highest globally. But I don't think we've actually shared with you the true extent of that. Our return on capital is north of 50%, and on a pre-IFRS 16 basis, north of 70%. What that means is that for every rand of sales through our stores, we generate multiples of the economic profit versus that of our listed peers.
We are very clear on how important this is to our overall investment thesis, and how important it is therefore, that our engine room sustains its momentum. I am confident that we have the underlying fundamentals and credentials not only to win, but also to entrench our leading position. On to our fashion business. As I've said before, our biggest opportunity lies in restoring the underlying financial health of our fashion business while simultaneously growing profitable market share in beauty and home. While this is our biggest delta in terms of value creation, it is also the area with the most low-hanging fruit, or what we call self-help opportunities. We are very clear on who our customer is, where we need to play to win, and how we're going to do that. I'm confident that we now have the right strategy, and we're now relentlessly focused on its execution.
Having successfully executed on our capital plan and having split the covenant groups that existed between David Jones and the Country Road Group, we have unlocked value for both entities and for the group as a whole. Both David Jones and CRG are now independently set up to pursue their own respective ambitions. We are now in a position to make important independent choices to improve the underlying operational and financial performance of David Jones and drive our refreshed Country Road Group's growth ambition of becoming a bigger omni player in Australia and beyond. Now if we look at the performance of great companies, whether locally or globally, capital allocation is quite clearly a driver and a differentiator of that performance. We know it's an important determinant of market valuation.
Over the past year, we've begun to fundamentally reevaluate our approach to capital allocation to ensure that our principles support our strategies and support our growth ambitions, while also meeting our targeted gearing structure and shareholder aspirations. We've done a lot over the past 18 months to improve the health of our balance sheet, and we are now in a position with the firepower to shift some of our focus towards improving shareholder returns and investing in new growth opportunities. As Reeza mentioned, we've declared an interim dividend based on 60% of our South African earnings, and we're likely to revisit this ratio, as well as the potential inclusion of COG earnings at year-end. We've been asked if we'd considered special dividends, and I think that's less appealing to us, certainly relative to the option, for example, of buying back our own shares.
We also see significant opportunity, more so than we have in the past, to invest in new growth opportunities within our existing businesses. To support this, we've made some changes to ensure that when we look at investing, we take a holistic view across the organization, ensuring that there is competition between businesses for CapEx. We also prioritize and rank projects relative to our strategic goals and relative to our return requirements and those of our shareholders, because these investments need to compete with returning cash to you. Integral to our investment thesis is our pioneering good business journey, or what we call GBJ, which is embedded in everything we do and how we go about doing it.
I spent quite a bit of time in our last analyst presentation sharing aspects of our GBJ with you, and I think many of you have had the opportunity to attend our recent inaugural GBJ Investor day as well. I won't spend too much time on this right now, other than to say that we remain deeply committed to our vision of being one of the world's most responsible retailers. That's reflected quite clearly in the sustainability targets we've set for ourselves through 2025 and beyond. While it's not the reason why we do it, the fact is this is a competitive advantage for us, and we're doing more to ensure that our GBJ and our commitment to sustainability and doing the right thing is better understood by our customers as much as it is by our shareholders.
Hopefully this gives you some insight into how we look at our business and what those areas are that we believe define our investment case. While these are key aspects of what is effectively our investment thesis, I think it's equally important to share with you how we see our strategies translating into financial performance and ultimately into economic value. Starting with FBH. Our fashion, beauty, and home business is where we have the most self-help opportunities. As you can see from the slide, every key line of the P&L has a role to play in improving the underlying profitability of this business and in turn, resetting the value of our group. Starting with our sales line and notwithstanding our space reduction targets, which remain intact, we are intending to grow sales in real terms on a compounded basis.
Additionally, by rationalizing unproductive space, this will translate into even stronger growth in trading densities. The bigger opportunity, however, is in our margins. We're already improving our intake margins, achieving far better full price sales and reducing our time spent on clearance, and we'll keep doing this to effectively halve our markdown to sales % over the next few years. This should see us achieving GP margins of at least 48%, which, coupled with our cost out initiatives, will see us achieving a medium-term margin target of more than 12%. As Reeza showed you, we've already begun this journey with our first half EBIT margin up by more than 250 basis points on last year.
In contrast to our FBH business, we see the biggest opportunity to create value in our food business coming not from margin, but from our top line, which we intend to keep growing above market. This will require investment, whether it be in price, format or channel, which may mean some sacrifice of GP margin, but probably not more than 50 basis points. We're confident that despite these investments in new sources of growth, we will still sustain a 7%-8% EBIT margin, and more importantly, will be banking more EBIT rand, which is really what matters. Now to the Country Road Group. I'm really excited by the opportunities we see for this division, particularly in the case of the Country Road business, which is a truly iconic brand.
We already have a market-leading omni-channel experience in CRG, but there is scope for us to drive this harder and further. We're investing to deliver continued market share gains in Australia and beyond. We have identified several opportunities to enhance GP margin, from sourcing benefits to greater efficiencies from our online fulfillment center. While some of this will be reinvested into building our brands, some will also fall to the bottom line to achieve our medium-term margin target of greater than 12%. When considering our cost to sell ratio and the subsequent impact on our ROS %, it is important to remember that the FY 2021 metrics you see here on the screen benefited from one-off JobKeeper and rent relief initiatives last year, which Reeza has already unpacked for you.
When adjusting for the various impacts of the lockdown, our medium-term target does imply an improvement on a normalized basis to more than 12% by FY 2024. Now, as you'll recall from our last results presentation, we haven't provided any margin target guidance in the case of David Jones. We haven't shared with you those building blocks. There are a number of initiatives currently underway which are being refined, and they do need to be further progressed before we're really in a position to provide definitive guidance. Unfortunately, the recent lockdown in Australia pushed out the timing on some of these. We will, however, have a firm view on margin outlook for the business at the time of our year-end results. That hopefully provides you with some insight into the building blocks behind our margin targets.
Our focus over the past two years has really been about protecting and in some instances, rebuilding our core businesses so that as we emerge from the COVID lockdowns, we do so with a stronger, leaner and future fit business. A big part of this has been improving our balance sheet and return metrics. With a very well-capitalized balance sheet, we are now in a strong position to invest in our business and continue the journey of creating meaningful value for all our stakeholders. Now we have four distinctly different businesses with distinctly different opportunities when it comes to value creation, as you saw from our building block slides. Starting with food, we believe that incremental capital allocated to this business will continue to produce exceptional and market-leading returns. We are therefore upping our level of investment in our food business to support our future growth.
As mentioned, we'll share more of this with you at our year-end. This may be slightly margin dilutive in the near term, but more importantly, the exceptional return on capital that this investment generates is what this business is all about. In FBH, we are absolutely focused on improving margin, which is already coming through and which we will continue to enhance while also investing in a business which we have historically underserved from a CapEx perspective. CRG is in a sweet spot of being able to simultaneously drive top-line growth and expand margins, and it is on track to becoming a much bigger omni player by expanding not only in its home market, but well beyond this through its existing brands and channels and the possibility of new ones. Finally, David Jones.
We've done a lot of work to stabilize this business and are focused on actively trading and improving its profitability. We're also doing this in a more CapEx efficient way than perhaps what we've done in the past, and are funding this internally out of operating cash flows. From all of this, you will see that we have given structured thought to allocating capital to where it will generate the biggest returns. Turning to our outlook for the second half. South Africa's economic outlook remains challenging for reasons we all know. Australia's economy is in better shape, notwithstanding the recent impacts of the Omicron variant on consumer spending.
Yes, while the external environment is no doubt challenging and the near-term global outlook has become even more uncertain given the recent events in Ukraine, we are certainly not short of opportunities or ideas across each and every one of our businesses. In fact, it's the very diverse nature of our group and the respective prospects of each of our businesses that is one of our biggest strengths. We have a runway for growth independent of the macro outlook. We have a series of strategies and initiatives to ensure that we grow profits ahead of sales. I really believe we are on track to rebuild our financial credentials, drive long-term value creation, and really restore our business to its rightful place in the hearts and minds of all our stakeholders. With that, let's open up for questions.
Good morning. Straight into Q&A. Roy, our first question, for the avoidance of doubt, you believe you're gaining share in SA Apparel or are you saying only in certain categories?
Well, thanks. Thank you very much for the question. Yeah, certainly, in our apparel business, we've defined what we term our must-win categories, and it's critical that we grow share profitably in those particular categories. And we are in fact growing share in a number of those categories. Yes, very specifically, when you look at our entire offering to the South African market collectively, we're in fact ahead, growing ahead of the market, so growing share overall.
Thanks, Roy. Could you comment in more detail about the misses in the FBH performance? How much of the underperformance was intentionally exiting categories and brands, and how much was product core misses?
Yes, there's no doubt that when you sort of do exit categories and brands that you'd overproliferated in the past and you come out of certain amounts of space that will have an impact on the top line. Having said that, though, you know, our major area of underperformance relative to our expectations was in the womenswear business, but bear in mind that business really accounts for about one-fifth of our total FBH business. In fact, in that business, you know, our sales were up around 1%. Importantly there too, our full price sales in womenswear was up almost 8% versus the same period last year.
So you know, when we look at some of the things that I think we did get right, again, going back to these must-win categories, you know, areas such as denim, dresses, athleisure, swimwear, knit tops, all of those categories traded exceptionally well for us. We've also reduced our markdown across the womenswear categories by over 32%. Obviously a really, you know, big driver of the improved margins there. Very encouragingly, our stock turns doubled, you know, across womenswear. Where I think we did get it wrong was much more in terms of, you know, our style count. We did reduce style count, and we could have done that a little bit more, but importantly, our volume buyers were too shallow.
You know, the metric that we track really closely around availability is the one where we came up short, particularly as you look at how we've allocated product to our sort of midsize and smaller stores where this makes a significantly greater difference. This concept of not being able to find your size, which underpins this concern that we have around availability, is probably the area where we came up, as I say, short of expectations, and that potentially contributed mostly to the underperformance in women's.
Thanks, Roy. Reeza, perhaps the question for you, could you please let me know the calculation for getting to a 30% increase in AEBIT for David Jones?
David Jones. Okay. Thanks for the question. What I'm gonna say is applies to Country Road, you know, as well. The way to think about this is that we adjusting for sales in the first quarter, we use effectively our budget as a bit of a reference point. We then make another adjustment for online and we pull effectively online back, 'cause obviously we don't want to double count on the online line in respect of total sales. In coming out of lockdown, we also, you know, make provision for the pent-up demand. That also gets pulled back. Then on the cost line, we...
In the prior year, obviously we adjust for JobKeeper and rent relief. In the current year, the impact of staff that was stood down, we effectively add that back to costs. We make you know other adjustments for variable costs in the calculation. Hopefully that helps.
Thanks, Reeza. Another question on David Jones. Roy, David Jones seems to be making some good progress on cost savings and gross margins, but you don't give targets. Why not?
Yes. No, I would agree. I mean, I think we're very pleased with the progress we're seeing with a number of the turnaround initiatives underway at David Jones. We've always spoken about you know, our approach being a bit of a three-phase approach, and we're certainly onto that third phase where you know, a number of the strategic initiatives are targeted at improving various line items across the income statement. Margins have improved. We have taken out fairly significant amounts of cost. We've dealt very decisively with our loss-making food business there as well. There are a number of initiatives going on you know, around our real estate footprint and discussions with landlords. We're pretty much sort of fairly early into that process.
Some of what we were going after was also to an extent set back by the fact that we were in lockdown for almost four months, between three and four months, during the first half. You know, we wanna give it a little bit more time to get greater traction behind some of these initiatives for us to be able to sort of provide targets with a strong level of conviction. That's really why we are not providing targets at this point. Having said that, though, you know, I would imagine that by the end of our financial year, we certainly will be in a position to give you very clear targets there.
Thank you. Another question. Could you let me know the proportion of Country Road sales by value in South Africa? I'm happy to take that.
Sure.
It's just under 10%. Another question which I can probably answer. What is the food inflation in the post-period sales update, and what is the outlook for food inflation in the rest of the year? We are expecting food inflation of around 4%. Just in case any questions on FBH, that's slightly higher at around 6%. Roy, a question for you. Are the new markets to be explored in CRG product or geographical?
It's in fact, potentially a combination of both. I think there are opportunities to look at where we are, for example, in the Country Road brand as far as our homeware category is concerned. From a product perspective, certainly a big opportunity we see going forward. We've seen you know, how the brand resonates, and we've seen the opportunity for us to do more with that brand in markets beyond where it's at today, which is essentially Australia and South Africa. We'll selectively choose where I think we can go with that brand. Having said that, there is also fairly significant opportunities in the existing markets too. We're excited about the opportunity to take particularly the Country Road brand beyond Australia and South Africa.
Reeza, a question for you.
Sure.
It would be insightful to hear the key drivers for the better than previously guided profit outcome. You had previously indicated the initial profit warning was driven by your expectation of markdowns at the end of season trading in the Australian business. Was the outcome better than expected in the Australian operations, or was the performance of the SA business better and thus offset Australia?
Yeah. As I said in the presentation, actually the rebound coming out of Australia was much stronger than expected. You are correct. We guided in our trading statement in November to 80 HEPS at least being down by more than 20%, and we're quite certain about that. We landed at 16.3%, yeah, much better than expected. Essentially it's due to the rebound coming out of Oz. The demand for the product was better and obviously markdowns and GP margin consequently much better. Cost management obviously, as Roy's mentioned.
Roy, as David Jones improves its financial performance, should we factor
Yeah, I mean, I guess we would be surprised if we never got that question. We seem to pick that question up in most of our engagements. You know, and clearly that's something that you know we may get to at a point in time. We're really very focused on the work I was referring to earlier on, and that is really getting the business stabilized, which we've done, and beginning to turn it. We're not far enough down that particular pathway, but clearly at the right point in time, we'll make a decision which is in the best interests of us as a group and certainly of that of our shareholders. We're not commenting further on that at this point.
Thanks, Roy. As previously noted, the food space is currently a highly competitive space, especially given the rise in the convenience home delivery space. What is Woolworths doing to stay relevant and competitive in this regard?
Yes. No, great question. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that, you know, the shift to online, you know, is somewhat of a permanent and growing feature of our overall proposition of retail in general within the context of our market. You know, playing there and having the right sort of propositions and the ways of intersecting with our customers is going to be such an important and pivotal source of future growth and a component of our overall sort of makeup within the customer ecosystem.
You know, as you know, I've acknowledged this before. You know, I think we may at the outset of the pandemic been off to a slightly slower start than we would have liked to have been. I'm tremendously proud of what the teams have been able to do in building capability to service this online space. You know, we've actually now have a series of online propositions that are accessible to our customers. We have our conventional online shop, which is a next day or day after sort of delivery.
We have a click and collect component where customers can go online and place their orders, and then drive through to the mall and pick it up, and not spend their time grocery shopping, but spend their time shopping elsewhere. We have the on-demand component, which is what we've called Woolies Dash. We've been quite measured in our approach as to how we've gone about executing Dash. You must bear in mind that you know, our Dash and on-demand sort of service really skews quite heavily towards fresh product, not necessarily the long life product. In addition to that, we've invested in capabilities that are genuinely differentiated when it comes to that.
We're the only player in the market that has a cold chain solution, so that you know you order products through the cold chain and they arrive in the way and condition that you expect them to find them when you were shopping them, had you shopped them in the store. That's important. As I say, we've been fairly measured in our approach. We're available with our Dash proposition across 30 stores now in the country. By Easter, we'll be up at 50 stores, and by the end of the year, 100 stores. You know, continuing to expand that, but also got to appreciate that it is a model which is not fundamentally value accretive or profit accretive to us.
We're getting better and better at understanding the cost drivers and the efficiency opportunities within that, and we're improving the levels of profitability in this particular mode, but we have some way to go before it gets to even break even. You can imagine the costs involved with the servicing and the delivery of 30 grocery items at the margins that they're at, and all that goes into sort of the payment processes and the picking and the packing, and then putting it into a container onto the back end of a scooter, etc., etc.
Very little margin to play with there and, you know, so it is a challenging component, frankly, for all retailers, but, something that I think we're pleased with the progress we're making on, and, we should expect to see that improve over time. So yeah, I think that's sort of where we stand. The other important point I'd like to mention, though, is that these three, you know, sort of online components are in fact gonna be integrated into one single app, which makes it a lot more seamless for the customer to shop us online. Again, we're the only retailer in the market that has these particular propositions.
You know, we don't only have an on-demand capability, we have a capability where you can do a more extensive shop, your monthly grocery shop online, and then we obviously have the click and collect that I've mentioned.
Thanks, Roy. What % of sales in Woolworths clothing are made in South Africa? I'm happy to answer that question.
Sure, go ahead.
It's about 30%, or just over 30%. We have a target of 40% over the next few years. That's specifically South Africa. If we look at the broader SADC region, you could add another 20 % points to that. Roy, what does enhanced pricing and promotional strategy in food imply for gross margin in the foods business?
Yes, well, I mean, I think we've got various strategies that we're underway with in terms of, you know, the pricing and promotional capability and competitiveness of our approach. Many of these initiatives are in fact co-funded by our suppliers. While they may have an impact on margin, you know, they holistically are accretive because they also obviously drive up volumes in the process. You know, yes, there is an impact on margin at the outset, in addition to the fact that when you look at what we're doing online, you know, when you roll that all up, as I've mentioned, there's probably about a 50 basis point impact on margin overall.
Thank you. Reeza, can we have a bit of background around the food waste saving in the base that did not repeat?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Janine. Firstly, sort of our waste levels, you know, in the business, in our foods business is world-class, and it continues to be world-class. During last year, we still experienced, you know, during COVID, quite a significant increase in volumes. And that together with the rebates obviously that we got from suppliers resulted in a improved gross margin. The real impact was obviously on reduced waste, given the big sort of fresh component within the business. You know, as volumes normalize, you know, waste levels also normalize. It's not like the waste levels are going higher. It's normalizing off a low base.
Thanks, Reeza. Another question and a comment first. Well done on the presentation and detailed sales guidance. We saw Edgars bring in third-party brands. Jury is out on whether it worked or not, but why would a customer come to Woolies to buy Levi's and not go to the Levi's or Guess store? Thank you.
No, it's a great question, you know, if you go back to what we've been sharing with you about our clothing strategy, we've done quite a lot of work in editing our overall offering. You know, one of our challenges historically has been that we over-proliferated, you know, in terms of not only brands that we brought out, but also product categories. As a result of that, you know, we really confused our customer. With the better insights we have, through the data and advanced analytics capabilities we've built up over the last couple of years, we've been a lot more targeted on the categories that we feel we must win at.
You know, within those particular categories, we see an opportunity to augment our proposition with very selected, you know, third-party brands. Those third-party brands, you know, you know, have a positive impact on that particular category. They certainly bring more customers into the store, and they certainly, sort of, legitimize our authority as a category player in that space. Denim is one of the great examples where Levi's has, in fact, played an important role. It's important to say, though, that when you take a look at our third-party brand contribution to our overall revenues, they're less than 1% of our sales, and that's probably the sort of level they're in the 1%-3% range that I think we will be in.
They're never going to be a big part of our proposition. They play a slightly bigger role in our beauty business, clearly, and to some extent, in the homeware business, too. In apparel, they'll always be in the low sort of single digits sort of level of contribution. They do bring, you know, a halo impact to the category and legitimize ourselves in that particular category. The reason why I think a customer would come in to shop us is because some of the assortment may be slightly different, and the way we bring it to life will be different, and you're there for a whole lot of other reasons. When you wake up in the morning and you wanna buy a pair of jeans, you wanna basically know that Woolworths is the destination.
Between the propositions we've got, whether it's Levi's or Guess or our own really phenomenal rebrand in the space, you know, I think you'd be hard pressed to leave the store without a pair of denim jeans if that was your intent to begin with.
Thanks, Roy. We've had a couple questions on the maximum targeted contribution from external brands at FBH, particularly in clothing and fashion. I'm happy to take that.
Sure.
We've said that it will never exceed 10%. This does over-index in the case of beauty and home.
...where you'd appreciate there's a higher component of branded product. In the case of fashion specifically, it's likely to remain in the low single digits, and again, from a channel perspective, will over-index online relative to in store. Roy, could you talk a bit more to the rationale to increase your staff wage rates and if this is going to negatively impact the cost line?
Yes, certainly. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the question. You know, I think you know, we've been on a journey for some time in terms of elevating our pay levels for particularly our 20,000 frontline employees. You know, currently Woolworths pays around 50% above the legislated wage rate. And certainly relative to the rest of the retail sector, we're around 15% above the average wage rate within the retail sector. You know, I think that our view is that clearly that people need to be fairly compensated, you know, for what they do. Meaningful pay for meaningful work is our overall sort of a philosophy.
We have earmarked around ZAR 120 million to be invested over the next three years to increase our hourly base rate by around 24%. This will be funded through savings elsewhere. You know, you're not gonna see it negatively impact on the OPEX line going forward. You know, for us, you know, we say that a minimum wage is not a living wage, and a living wage is not a just wage. A just wage for us is what we call our Woolies wage, is an aspiration we have, I mean, for our people, specifically to ensure that they can secure an appropriate standard of living.
Very happy to talk more about that, you know, at another opportunity, something we're very passionate about. Thank you.
Thanks, Roy. A question, Reeza, possibly for you. How big an impact has fuel price increases and global supply chains had on your business? What are the likely impacts for the second half?
Yeah. Thanks, Janine. The impacts is, you know, I mean, in the first half, you know, was less than 1%, you know, in terms of the cost. Obviously you've got demurrage costs, you've got freight costs. In the case of, let's say, Country Road, probably the biggest cost for us is lost sales, and there's been some impact there in terms of, you know, late deliveries, et cetera.
In terms of the actual impact on margin, it is minimal, and we obviously look to recover that from other areas within margin, you know, whether that's sort of better markdowns or you know, other cost elements within gross margin. Just talking about the you know, the Ukraine crisis, obviously that is you know, will have an impact on fuel and energy costs, and that we don't expect that also to be you know, that significant.
Thank you. We have a question on explaining the difference between price movement and underlying product inflation. Also happy to take that one. Underlying product inflation refers to the movement on the same product year-on-year, so effectively a like-for-like movement. Overall price movement refers to the movement on a weighted average basket basis, so effectively taking into account mix effect and customers trading up or down in pack size. Roy, maybe a final question for you before we look to close the session. Punchy, short question. Losing market share to Checkers in food?
Sorry, to who? Yeah. Look, I think, you know, it's sort of relatively, you know, undisputed that we have a remarkable foods business. Literally by any measure, it's a world-class business by even global standards and metrics. It's a business that, you know, we've built over many years of investing in the right things. When we often talk about the real differentiators of that food business, it goes to, you know, it absolutely goes to the back-end capabilities, the partnerships we have with our suppliers, the investments we're making, you know, in innovation. We bring around, as I mentioned, about 1,000 or so products every season that are new or different, responding to where our customers are. It's a very customer-centric business.
Food science, technology, quality, the obsessiveness of the team, you know, around that. You know, clearly we look forward to sort of sharing more of that with you later in the year when we have our foods, you know, sort of investor day session too. Back to that, I mean, I think, you know, our business is remarkable. It's been growing market share for 10 consecutive years, and we certainly intend to keep that record intact as we go forward. You know, the point about competitors, you know, and share, you know, there are moments in time where competitors do certain things that might change their rate of growth versus yours.
You know, our growth essentially is coming from our existing business, our core business. You know, we're not laying down loads more space. We're not opening up a ton more stores. Our growth is fundamentally organic. You know, one has to look at the businesses on a like-for-like basis, and where some of those sources of growth potentially come from. You know, the other thing that's worth mentioning, and I did refer to it in our presentation, but you know, we do have the foods business, and as a retail business, one that delivers the highest return on capital employed, bar any.
You know, the point I think I made in the presentation was, you know, for every growth around that we gain, you know, our competitors have to grow 3x to 4x to 5x more to earn the same level of economic profit. You know, fundamentally a very strong and healthy business. We have a ton of things, you know, going on, and certainly, you know, we'll share in some specific detail with you what those are. There are a number of initiatives around making our brands and our product ranges more accessible. We're looking at, you know, innovation in that space. We're looking at new formats. We're looking at different white space opportunities.
As we sort of tally up the opportunities, we see significant upside in terms of growing this business on a go-forward basis.
Roy, thanks. Thanks very much. We've run just over an hour, so I think we'll close it there.
No more questions?
Roy, a couple others, but we also have two days of fairly heavy investor engagement.
All right.
We'll get an opportunity to answer them then.
All right. Well, thank you very much, and again, just for making the time, giving us the moment to share with you know, who we are, our business, where we're at, provide perspective on our results. We really value these opportunities and certainly, you know, I know we have a couple more coming up over the next couple of days, to engage with various stakeholders. Very much looking forward to that. Again, thank you for your time and for your ongoing support and interest in what we're doing. We're very proud of the accomplishments to date, but there's a lot more to come. Thank you.