Good morning and welcome to our 2025 Interim Results Presentation. This morning, we'll start with a high-level overview of our performance for the period, and I will then hand over to Zaid Manjra, our Group Finance Director, who will take you through the detail of our financial results for the first half. I will then update you on how we are progressing against our various strategies. We'll talk about our performance, what's worked and what hasn't, and how we view the outlook for the balance of the financial year and beyond before moving on to questions. So, starting with an overview of the recent period, our first half has been financially more challenging than we anticipated, and this is fundamentally due to the performance of our apparel businesses in South Africa and Australia, both of which are currently undergoing fairly significant transformations.
Within this context, whilst group sales were up 5.7% for the period, adjusted EBIT was down 13.7%, and adjusted diluted HEPS down 19% as a direct result of the lower contributions from our apparel businesses. From a divisional perspective, our Food business continues to demonstrate its remarkable strength and resilience, and the trust customers place in our Woolies brand. We delivered another excellent result with sector-leading growth, consecutive month-on-month market share gains, and a return on capital still north of 50%, and this notwithstanding the investments we're making for future growth. In FBH, we have made significant progress against a number of initiatives to support our Value Chain Transformation, or what we call VCT, an initiative we've shared with you before and one of the most transformative undertaken by FBH business in decades.
Our VCT will drive multiple capability shifts across systems, processes, logistics, including the delivery of enhanced planning capability and a centralized inventory model. Unfortunately, during the period, we incurred some operational challenges in the upgrading of our inventory management system within the distribution center. This upgrade is a single but a pivotal component within our broader Value Chain Transformation. The challenge we had in transitioning, however, temporarily disrupted the flow of product into our stores over the key trading period. Our inventory flow was further disrupted by late deliveries from suppliers, which in turn amplified the lack of availability in stores and online. All in, that unfortunately impacted sales and, more importantly, profit over a critical festive period, and we'll talk to this in some detail a little bit later on in the presentation.
Very pleasingly, however, our fashion business delivered positive volume growth over the period, which is something we haven't seen done for quite some time. Our beauty business also continues to strengthen, growing sales in the double digits and further entrenching its position as the beauty shopping destination in the country. Our financial services business, WFS, is performing well and turned in a strong underlying result, continuing to deliver the healthiest impairment ratio in the sector. So, in summary, looking at the combined performance of our South African businesses, which includes our growing African markets, Woolworths South Africa delivered turnover growth of just over 9%. Notwithstanding a very strong Food performance, the reduced profit from our FBH business meant that EBIT was down 3% on last year. I think an important callout is the impact of our increased CapEx.
While EBIT was down 3%, EBITDA was actually up almost 3%, reflecting the significant investments we're making, and Zaid will talk to this a little bit later. Turning to Australia, there is no doubt that the performance of our Country Road Group business has been pretty disappointing and is currently performing well below its potential. Unquestionably, the macros remained a factor throughout the period. Retail footfall and spend are under significant pressure, but to be candid, our financial performance is more symptomatic of where we find ourselves as a business. While the sale of David Jones has been transformational for our group, the upshot is that having separated CRG from David Jones, CRG was left with inefficient structures and processes and significantly elevated costs arising from the diseconomies of scale post that separation.
We shared with you at our last results that this business is in the midst of a restructure, a complete overhaul, in fact, to reconfigure its operating model and reset its structural economics as a standalone business. Any restructuring of this nature inherently brings with it a degree of disruption, and even more so given we've undertaken it in accelerated time frames, and that's weighed on the short-term performance of the business and, in turn, on our group's bottom line result, and again, we'll unpack this in more detail a little bit later, but it's not all bad news coming out of Australia. Aside from the progress we've made in our accelerated restructuring initiatives, we also successfully sold the Bourke Street property in Melbourne.
You'd recall that when we sold David Jones in 2023, we retained the Bourke Street flagship property and shared with you that it was a non-strategic asset for us. We have now sold that building, and we are very pleased not only to have recognized the profit on disposal, but to now finally close the David Jones chapter, so in summary, while our bottom line performance has been disappointing, and I'm certainly not happy with the result we've turned in, it's specific to our apparel businesses, which we know are in the throes of significant transformation. The restructuring underway is really about building foundational capabilities, and the optimal structure and processes our apparel businesses really need to drive long-term sustainable growth, and I have every confidence in the outcomes that this will achieve, notwithstanding this temporary impact on our financials.
Importantly, we have a strong customer base and a loved and trusted brand, and we continue to lead the market in many respects. Over the past six months alone, we've been recognized externally for our innovation and excellence. Whether it's around our innovative product offerings from exclusive cheeses to award-winning W Beauty products, our marketing campaigns, or our continual progress from a sustainability perspective, we're constantly setting new industry standards, and this is underpinned by our leading quality, innovation, and sustainability credentials that our customers have come to expect from us and that you'll only find at Woolies, and in doing so, we're also bringing more and more customers into our brand, and I look forward to sharing with you shortly how our new loyalty program is going to elevate our proposition even further.
Turning now to our Good Business Journey, or what we call GBJ, which is really about creating a meaningful, positive impact on our planet, our communities, and our people. This isn't just something else we do, but the way we do business. Our GBJ has three pillars with underlying focus areas, each of which has ambitious targets and clearly defined strategies. As a largely private label business with equally committed suppliers and an integrated supply chain, we're able to ensure that we are ethical and fair in our sourcing right the way through our supply chain, from farm to fork and from the factory floor to all of our stores. This is our first pillar. Our second pillar is about building a thriving and resilient environment. We are committed to working towards net zero impact and a just transition to a low carbon economy.
And then the one I'm particularly passionate about is our inclusive justice pillar, which encapsulates our commitment to diversity and inclusivity and enhancing the well-being of all our employees, customers, and communities. We continue to be recognized externally for our Good Business Journey. In some further highlights during the period, we were named amongst the World's Most Trustworthy Companies, the only South African company to make this list. We were recognized by Kantar as the leading retailer for sustainability in South Africa for the third consecutive year. We further increased our S&P Global Sustainability rating, which is already well above the industry mean. And we have now achieved full membership of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which exemplifies our commitment as a business to ensuring worker well-being throughout our supply chain.
But it's also about our own people, and very pleasingly, Woolworths has been acknowledged as a Top Employer by the internationally recognized Top Employers Institute for having the highest standards of excellence regarding our people value proposition and employment practices. To us, all of these things matter. These achievements reflect our ongoing commitment to creating a positive impact across all aspects of our business, as you've come to expect of our Woolies brand. Of course, achieving this is only possible with the support of our incredible teams, and I'd like to take a moment here to thank our people for their passion and determination and their commitment to our business.
I also want to extend a deep gratitude to our loyal customers for their continued trust and support, and a big thank you as well to our suppliers, whose dedication and hard work every single day helps create the exceptional Woolies difference. And with that, I'll now hand over to Zaid to share some of the financial detail behind our recent performance.
Thank you, Roy. Good morning and welcome, everyone. Roy has covered some of the key aspects of our results, and I will share the financial information in a bit more detail. At the outset, it's important to note that even though the trading environments have improved from where they were a year ago, they have remained challenging for the six months under review. Firstly, I will provide an overview of the group's performance, including sales and earnings, and then I will cover the performance of each business. Looking at the group's financial overview, our Food business delivered another excellent performance in the half. However, this was offset by weaker performances from both apparel businesses. Group sales of ZAR 40.3 billion is 5.7% up on last year and 6.2% up in constant currency.
It's worth noting that Woolworths South Africa sales grew by 9.1%, which is commendable growth in the current macro context. From an earnings perspective, the adjusted EBITDA of ZAR 4.5 billion was 6.4% lower than last year, while adjusted EBIT of ZAR 2.8 billion was down 13.7%. This reflects the high depreciation and amortization charge, which is driven by the phase of heightened investment that we are currently in. I plan to go into more detail on that a little later. Group earnings growth was impacted by the negative operating leverage of our apparel businesses and by certain one-off items in the base and in the current year. These one-offs include the Woolworths Financial Services IFRS 17 credit adjustment in the prior period and costs related to David Jones post the sale that are now absorbed in the current year.
Consequently, adjusted profit after tax is 20% lower, and adjusted HEPS of 169 cents per share declined by 19.4%. The group has declared an interim dividend of 107 cents per share based on a 70% payout ratio of group headline earnings, which is in line with our group dividend policy. At the 2023 financial year presentation, we advised that we were entering into a period of heavier investment to build core capability and support our growth ambitions and future revenue streams. We said that we would be investing up to ZAR 10 billion over the next three years and that this would likely impact some metrics negatively in the short term. Separately, our balance sheet has been strengthened by the sale of the Bourke Street property in Australia and I plan to provide more detail on that shortly.
Group net borrowings of ZAR 4.7 billion is lower than ZAR 5.6 billion at the end of our last financial year, and net debt to EBITDA at 1.37 times remains well within our targeted range. The balance sheet is healthy and will continue to provide a solid foundation for our ongoing growth strategies. Our return on capital employed of 17% remains well above our cost of capital, although lower than last year. As always, it's helpful to understand the context we are operating in. In South Africa, the consumer environment has been steadily improving since the formation of the GNU. The encouraging political landscape has brought with it an improvement in confidence following a period of multi-year lows. Even though inflation has eased, real disposable income of South Africans has remained constrained during the period.
With regards to load shedding, although we have experienced some interruption recently, there was no scheduled load shedding during the six-month reporting period, and even though this brought much-needed relief for the country, we did experience intermittent electricity disruptions in parts of the country. It's worth noting that a large proportion of savings from lower diesel utilization versus the prior period was offset by the high tariff increases levied on electricity usage. Looking ahead, there's a fair amount of uncertainty both domestically and globally in respect of short-term South African fiscal policy and U.S. policy. Turning to Australia, which may be less familiar to most, consumers remain under intense pressure, grappling with persistently high living costs, impacting real disposable income and the spending behavior of consumers. Real GDP is at a 32-year low.
Interest rates have been at 12-year highs with no relief in 2024 and the highest among global peers. However, about two weeks ago, the RBA announced a modest 25 basis points cut in cash rates, which is expected to provide some relief for the Australian consumer. During the period, the Australian dollar has also continued to weaken, contributing to inflation and adding further financial strain to importers. The Australian retail sector remains a tough environment. There have been two prolonged recessions in the past 18 months and only two quarters of positive real growth in the last two years. The discretionary apparel retail sector has been particularly hard-hit, with domestic consumer demand contracting for the first time outside of COVID. Retailers in response, like ourselves, have engaged in aggressive discounting to attract price-sensitive consumers, particularly but not exclusively during major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
This has significantly compressed GP and significantly eroded profit margins of businesses. A number of businesses, including many well-known brands, have been placed into administration or have filed for bankruptcy. Of course, our business too has been impacted by these market dynamics. Having said that, at an underlying level, our Country Road Group remained profitable during this challenging period. Just to turn to the sale of the Bourke Street property, you will recall that when we sold the David Jones business in 2023, we retained the flagship property on Bourke Street in Melbourne as a non-strategic investment asset. In the first half, we accounted for rental of ZAR 108 million from this property, and in December, we successfully sold the property for ZAR 2.6 billion and recognized a post-tax capital gain of ZAR 792 million.
The proceeds of the sale will be repatriated to South Africa after retaining a portion in Australia for working capital requirements. The repatriated funds will be used to reduce debt and invest in value-accretive opportunities in line with our capital allocation principles and framework. Turning to our sales performance, group sales increased by 6.2% in constant currency, and Woolworths South Africa sales grew by 9.1%. Our Food Business had an exceptional half, underpinned by market-leading growth of 11.4%, driven by positive underlying volume growth as we increased availability, we reinforced product innovation, and we enhanced our value proposition. This was achieved as price inflation moderated to 6%. The growth includes the contribution from Absolute Pets, which continues to perform ahead of our expectations. Food online sales grew by 37%, contributing 6.4% to Food sales, and our Woolies Dash delivering close to 50% growth.
In Fashion, Beauty, and Home, sales grew by 2.5%, which is up from a 2.9% decline in the second half of last year. As Roy mentioned earlier, the festive season trade was impacted by temporary delays in product flow relating to the DC transformation initiative. Revenues were further hindered by a number of late supplier deliveries during our critical trading period. Notwithstanding these challenges, we delivered positive volume growth in fashion. Our beauty business delivered another outstanding performance and grew by over 17%, reinforcing our ambition to be South Africa's shopping destination for beauty products. Our online offering now contributes 6.6% to FBH sales, which is worth 25% growth in the half. And our businesses in other markets in Africa also contributed positively to the growth, despite the significant disruptions we experienced in Mozambique during the second quarter.
The Country Road Group sales decreased by 6.2%, although this represented an improvement on the second half of last year. We also saw further improvement in the last eight weeks of the half, specifically over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the run-up to Christmas. Within the brands, Trenery delivered double-digit growth, while Country Road performed in line with last year. The other brands, of course, have been more challenging. During the period, we also embarked on a fundamental reset of our operating model, causing a significant amount of disruption in the business, which Roy will unpack a little later. Moving on to the segmental earnings, the group delivered an EBIT of ZAR 3.2 billion, and there's a significant gap between EBIT and EBITDA performance, and this reflects the impact of increased investments.
It's worth noting that the fixed depreciation charge makes up more than 50% of the decline in EBIT. Woolworths South Africa, which includes the Food business, FBH, and WFS businesses, decreased by 3.1%, with EBITDA increasing by 2.7%. The Food Business now contributes 63% of group sales versus 59% last year and 62% of profit versus 49% last year. It remains our largest and strongest business and a driver of growth in the group. Food EBIT is up almost 8% at ZAR 1.7 billion, while FBH EBIT is 17.7% lower at ZAR 763 million. The Woolworths Financial Services underlying profit after tax was a pleasing 6.6% up on last year, excluding the one-off IFRS 17 adjustment we included in the prior period. As is evident, the Country Road Group performance had a material negative impact on the overall group performance, while EBIT of AUD 14.2 million, which is 72% below last year.
Moving on to the results of each business, I will focus on the key metrics. The detailed income statements can be found in the appendix to the presentation. As I've mentioned earlier, the Food delivered an outstanding performance in the first half with strong top-line growth and gross profit margin improvement, as well as best-in-class return metrics. Our like-for-like sales growth of 7.3% is industry-leading, which is testament to its resilience and the strength of our brand. Improving availability continues to be one of our top priorities, and we delivered record levels over the festive season. The GP margin increased to 24.9%, which is up 30 basis points, and this was driven by more targeted and effective promotions, as well as value chain efficiencies, which offset the negative impact of the increased online sales and further investment in price.
An increase in operating expenses from investments in growth initiatives and the inclusion of Absolute Pets resulted in expense growth of 15.2%. The adjusted EBIT is up 7.8% to ZAR 1.7 billion, delivering an adjusted EBIT margin of 6.7%. And importantly, the EBITDA is up a strong 12%. Our return on capital employed remains world-class at 51.3% and is 55.6% if we exclude Absolute Pets. Our Fashion, Beauty, and Home business had a tough second quarter. Although we had a successful Black Friday campaign in November, December was heavily impacted by the stock flow issues called out earlier, which impacted availability and ultimately, of course, the top line. In line with our strategy to improve space productivity, net trading space was reduced by 2.1% year-on-year.
Our GP margin reduced by 1.7 percentage points to 46.3%, and this was the result of higher promotional contribution to sales, one-off supply chain costs associated with the distribution center transformation, and the margin dilutive effect of a growing beauty contribution. Expense growth was contained to 4.5%, supported by the reduction in space, notwithstanding the increased costs from our capital investments. Our FBH business delivered an EBIT margin of 9.8%, and the return on capital at 16.9% remains above our cost of capital. The Country Road Group result is disappointing. I've already covered sales for the period. In terms of gross profit margin, we intensified the levels of discounting and promotional activity to effectively manage our inventory and stock turn. This, together with the impact of a weaker Australian dollar, resulted in a significant 320 basis points decrease in the GP margin to 58.9%.
Expenses were well controlled and declined by 1.3%, notwithstanding the absorption of the incremental dissynergy costs arising from the separation from David Jones, as well as the unallocated group costs separately disclosed in the prior year. Of course, the weaker top line and GP margin dilution resulted in negative operational leverage. Whilst adjusted EBIT of AUD 14.2 million decreased by over 70%, EBITDA of AUD 74.5 million declined by a far lesser 34%. Given the performance during the period and in the light of the current macro outlook, we will be testing the carrying value of the assets of the underperforming CRG brands in the second half. Woolworths Financial Services delivered underlying profit growth of 6.6%. The closing book grew by 1% year-on-year, excluding the legacy book sale, whilst the impairment rate improved to 5.4% and remains industry-leading. Return on equity of 22.3% remains healthy and is in line with last year.
Moving on to CapEx, the balance sheet and cash flow. We previously communicated a more intense investment phase with plans for CapEx spend of approximately ZAR 10 billion as we optimize our business and invest for growth. These investments will underpin a shift from our fixed, strengthened, and repositioned phase to optimizing, investing, and growing. More specifically, the investments are primarily targeted at foundational capabilities, capacity building, and growth strategies. The Value Chain Transformation initiatives in the FBH business and increased supply chain capacity in Food represent a significant proportion of the spend. Naturally, we will continue to evaluate and optimize our CapEx plans throughout this phase to ensure continued alignment with our capital allocation framework. The investment in the current year will be in the region of ZAR 3 billion.
Having invested ZAR 1.6 billion in the first half, we forecast spend of a further ZAR 1-1.4 billion planned for the second half. I'd like to reiterate that our balance sheet remains healthy, and it was, of course, further strengthened by the proceeds received from the sale of the Bourke Street property. Net borrowings of ZAR 4.7 billion at period end is net of AUD 226 million of cash in Australia, arising mainly from the sale of the property. Our gearing ratios are well within internal limits and bank covenants, with net debt to EBITDA at 1.37 times. The return of capital employed of 17% remains well above our cost of capital. Return on capital for the period has been impacted by lower profit contributions from our apparel businesses and the significant investments in longer-term projects and the acquisition of Absolute Pets last year.
Looking at our cash flow waterfall, we generated positive free cash flow of ZAR 600 million in the half. Working capital has increased by ZAR 800 million, primarily due to the increase in inventory and the timing of cash flows arising from the shift in the trading calendar. Net finance costs include lease costs and interest on borrowings, which have increased due to higher levels of debt and higher interest rates. Other major cash outflows include ZAR 1.6 billion on CapEx and ZAR 1.1 billion on dividends. The period ended with a favorable decrease in net gearing of ZAR 863 million, benefiting from the proceeds received from the sale of the Bourke Street property. I would like to close with an update on trading performance over the first eight weeks of the second half and provide some guidance on price inflation and space growth.
Food sales are strongly up at 12.2%, with expected price movement for the second half to be between 4% and 5%. In Fashion, Beauty, and H ome sales are up 3%, and importantly, full price sales are up 9.2%, also with an expected price movement of between 4% and 5%. In Country Road Group, the first eight weeks' sales declined by 15.7%. There was a significant drop-off in footfall post-Christmas, contributing to the weak sales. That brings my review to a close. Back to you, Roy.
Thank you, Zaid. So turning now to an update on our strategies, I think it's important to note that our core strategies haven't changed materially from what we shared with you last year, and that's because we are confident in them.
Where we have let ourselves down, though, has been in aspects of our execution, and you'll see how we are completely focused on addressing this. You may recall we shared the slide with you at our last results presentation to outline the progress we have made in our multi-step strategic journey. As a group, we've begun shifting gears from our phase of what we called fix, strengthen, and reposition to our next phase of optimize, invest, and grow. But of course, each of our businesses is at a different stage within this overall journey. If I can take you back three years ago, there were some concerns within the market that our Food Business was ex-growth. We addressed that question head-on, and I think time has proven that our confidence in our Food Business and our ability to execute our strategies was fully justified.
As you've come to expect of us, we're going to take the same opportunity now to directly and candidly answer some of the key questions you may have, particularly around the performance of our apparel businesses. Starting with CRG, a number of you may be questioning, given the financial performance over the period, whether this business's underperformance is cyclical and therefore fixable or symptomatic of a bigger and more structural issue. In answering this, I'd like to take a minute to recap the very deliberate steps we have been taking to get to where we are today. We shared the slide with you previously to outline very clearly the steps we had taken with regards to our Australian businesses and, importantly, the sequencing of those steps. As a reminder, our first priority was to successfully separate the financial covenants which bound CRG to David Jones.
Having improved the profitability and performance of David Jones through a series of very deliberate initiatives, we then divested of the business itself, a transaction which turned out to be not only very well timed, but more importantly, transformational for our group in removing over ZAR 21 billion in liabilities from our balance sheet and enabling the reallocation of capital as well as management focus towards the more value-accretive initiatives in our core Woolworths and CRG businesses. Our third step involved significant work to effectively separate what was a well-entrenched set of shared services between CRG and David Jones. This was an extremely complex process, and while an element of standard cost still remains to be rationalized, as Zaid mentioned, as of this year, these standard costs are now fully absorbed and will no longer be reported on separately.
Coming into FY25 with CRG unshackled from DJs, we were still left with a business model, a set of structures and processes that simply were not fit for a standalone business. And this brings us to the current fourth step in our plan, reconfiguring our operating model to set CRG up as a standalone entity with the ability and capability it needs to execute on its strategic potential. This restructuring is effectively full scope and end-to-end. It's about reconfiguring the operating model to enable the effective execution of a portfolio of brands strategy. In other words, a true house of brands. It's about optimizing structures, processes, and ways of working to improve efficiency and flexibility. It's about rationalizing the cost base, and more specifically, the excess costs we inherited as a result of the separation from David Jones.
But it's also about investing in new capabilities that can be leveraged to the benefit of all the brands. And of course, it's about shifting the culture of the organization too. It is an unprecedented degree of change, and in fact, the most change this business has experienced in its history. To give you a sense of the sheer extent of it, over 80% of all roles outside of stores have been impacted in some shape or form, whether they're being streamlined and rationalized, or whether they're changing scope, or whether they're newly created as we invest in new capabilities. Effectively, four out of every five roles have been impacted. Now, I'm sure you can appreciate any transformation of this nature and magnitude brings with it a degree of business disruption, and that's been further amplified by the fact we've undertaken it in a record time frame.
It's also taking place in a pretty constrained and highly promotional trading environment, which has exacerbated the degree of negative operational leverage we're experiencing. And of course, that's impacting short-term performance. Now, we could have tackled this over an extended time frame, but that would have simply prolonged the inevitable. It may have saved us in short-term performance, but it would ultimately have cost us in delivering on our longer-term opportunity. A painful near-term trade-off, perhaps, but knowing the potential of this business and what's to come, it was imperative that we quickly establish the standalone capability to go after and realize our ambitions. So what does all of this mean for CRG? It means that we are well on track to complete CRG's restructuring before the end of the financial year.
It means CRG enters FY26 well set up to begin delivering to its true potential with an appropriate operating model and cost structure for a branded specialty retailer. It means a set of structural economics that will see CRG delivering to its margin targets, and it means the finalization of the fourth step of our plan. So back to the question, is CRG's underperformance cyclical and therefore fixable or symptomatic of a more structural issue? This is a moment in time. Clearly, after its separation from David Jones, CRG's business model was no longer fit for purpose, which is why we're reconfiguring the business end-to-end to set it up as a standalone world-class omnichannel retailer. So yes, part cyclical and part structural, but our plans effectively address both. This is absolutely fixable.
We've been giving a lot of focus to the brands themselves, reducing some of the overlap that existed and driving greater clarity and distinction in the positioning of each of our brands, enabling them to pursue a more defined market opportunity. Our leading Country Road brand continues to perform, and the expansion into new home categories, including the scent range, has surpassed expectation. The reset and the repositioning of Trenery is gaining strong momentum, delivering double-digit growth month after month, and we expect to see Witchery delivering an improving performance from its upcoming winter collection, with their repositioning work having started shortly after Trenery's. And here's a video showcasing Trenery's journey to date.
Our journey began just over two years ago as we reimagined how Trenery creates and connects with the world around us. We started with the data undertaking the largest research project in Country Road Group's history to gain a deep understanding of our customer, what they needed from Trenery, and how the brand fit with the broader House of Brands strategy. With these incredible insights and a deep respect for our founding principles, we set out with a renewed purpose to bring luxury to life for our customers. We established a new brand platform and a clear direction for our teams. We refined our identity, collaborating with master typographer Andrew Woodhead on bespoke branding. At the same time, we turned our focus inward, strengthening our team and culture. With a foundation set, we shifted our focus to product, rethinking how we design collections to better connect with a customer we now understood more deeply than ever, a customer who values detail, whose high standards set the benchmark for our own.
Provenance took precedence over promotion as we made considered shifts, right-sizing our product mix and stock holdings, marginally raising prices, reducing discounting, and focusing on sustainable growth in full price sales and profit. As we continued to evolve our collections, we began to focus on strengthening our connection with customers and driving long-term growth. Standing here two years later, I'm incredibly proud to say we're now seeing remarkable success in our top-line results. In the first half of this financial year, we achieved double-digit year-on-year growth across sales, profit, active customers, and new customer acquisition. I'm especially grateful that we stayed the course in the early days. We believed in our strategy, listened to our customer, nurtured our early signs of success, and built upon them. I'm immensely proud of Trenery's evolution and the exceptional team across Country Road Group, House of Brands that has brought our vision to life. There's so much more ahead, and I can't wait to see what we'll achieve together.
Turning now to our Fashion, Beauty, and Home business. At our full year results last September, I shared with you the progress we'd already made in our FBH turnaround and outlined what's still to come. I think we all recognize that FBH has a long-standing track record of inconsistent delivery, which in fact dates back decades. Inconsistency fundamentally driven, I believe, by a lack of investment in foundational capabilities. That's prevented the business not only from delivering to its full potential, but in delivering consistently. In reality, it's very difficult to sustain any kind of positive progress when your legacy systems and processes remain a fundamental constraint. And that's what's changing, and that's what's different now. You've seen this slide before. It outlines FBH's two-phase turnaround.
Like CRG, FBH is probably going through the most change it's ever experienced as a business. Phase one focused on getting the right product at the right price, which is really the more creative component around the design and buying of product. This drove a step change in the underlying financial health of the business, our full-price sales, our trading densities, and our GP margin. Commitments we made to you and commitments we've delivered on. Our latest customer data tells us that our biggest strength is our ability to deliver quality and comfort, and we've strengthened those perceptions even further around fit and value. I'd say we're probably around a seven out of ten in this regard, which means we've still got a bit of work to do, but we are now intensifying our focus on phase two.
Our data also tells us that our customer's biggest frustration is not finding their size. So the second phase of our fashion turnaround is about ensuring our product shows up in stores and online the way it should, ensuring our customers have full access to what's on offer. Simply put, product availability. Getting availability right, consistently, remains our single biggest commercial opportunity, but it requires significant investment and transformation of our systems and processes. It's about operational execution. We've shared with you before that we're investing over ZAR 1.5 billion in our Value Chain Transformation. As I mentioned earlier, our VCT will drive multiple capability shifts across our organization, transforming our ability to execute our strategies and deliver consistently.
Notwithstanding the good progress we've made on a number of elements within our broader VCT, we're probably still only halfway through this phase of our turnaround, as you can see reflected in our progress score. As I mentioned upfront, Q2, and more specifically the months of November and December, was, however, a setback for us in that one of the major initiatives during the half, the implementation of our DC transformation, did not go as well as we'd expected, and we simply weren't able to resolve it in time, and that hampered our ability to get product into our stores. We also faced a number of inbound supplier delays over the half, and all of this impacted seasonal newness, particularly in our womenswear, as well as replenishment of our core lines, with the lowest levels of availability, in fact, occurring over the month of December itself.
So while we were feeling relatively confident about the outlook for the festive season, particularly having delivered double-digit comp sales growth over the Black Friday period, the operational issues we experienced in switching to our new process meant we weren't able to trade the business as we'd expected to in the month of December, during the most critical trading period of the year. Now, while the setback was very frustrating and very disappointing, it is temporary, and it has already been resolved, and so to come back to the question on FBH and why we should believe this time is different. We know that building anything without foundations doesn't last. It can't sustain. The investments we are making are significant, and they're in core apparel retailing capabilities.
We're getting the fundamentals in place, which will give the business the foundation it needs, the wherewithal to grow profitably and consistently and to sustain performance, as we do in our Food Business, and that's what's different. Turning now to Food and onto our third question and our ability to sustain our sector-leading performance. Over the past few years, we have focused on three key priorities for our Food Business: driving our on-shelf availability, amplifying our differentiated value proposition, and increasing our marketplace presence. We've continued to deliver on all of these priorities over the half. We achieved record levels of availability, particularly over the festive season, with volumes up over 4% in the week leading up to Christmas. Our innovative best-ever Christmas range doubled sales year on year.
We've added almost 700 new product lines over the period, and we've grown market share consistently every single month. How? Through bigger basket values, higher footfall, and greater share of wallet. But perhaps most impressive is that we've seen our customer base grow by a full 8% year on year. These are just some of the highlights, but what they really demonstrate is our exceptionally strong foundation with fundamentals that not only are truly differentiating for us, but are exceedingly difficult to authentically replicate. It's the unmatched or what I call deep smart capability that we have in food science and technology. It's the comprehensive, integrated, and obsessive approach to quality right throughout our value chain.
The strictest governance and compliance requirements around food safety, the absolute best-in-class cold chain, it's the profound commitment to sustainability, it's the unrivaled innovation and new product development capabilities, and it's the winning culture of our passionate and dedicated teams, all of which defines the core DNA of this Food B usiness. It's what underpins our holy grail, providing our customers with the best overall proposition in the market, quality, innovation, service, experience, whilst at the same time delivering the highest return on capital in the sector to our shareholders, and perhaps what makes this business most special is that more than 90% of what we sell is our own brand, and with more than 90% of that also locally sourced. Our credentials are homegrown, grown in partnership with our exclusive and world-class suppliers over decades, unique to us. That's what underpins the Woolies difference.
That's what underpins our holy grail, and that's what enables us year after year to sustain our sector-leading performance. So coming back to our three priorities, you've seen we're driving our on-shelf availability, and you've seen how we keep raising the bar on our value proposition. And now for our marketplace presence. We've continued to expand our physical footprint in a responsible way, not indiscriminately. We're opening up more of what we call our next generation stores, and we've continued to expand our Woolies Dash business, which grew by almost 50% over the period, with 7% of all Dash customers completely new to the Woolies brand. We've not only enabled more stores for Dash, but we've also increased slot capacity by over 30% across all our delivery channels. And to elevate our customers' omnichannel experience even further, I'm excited to share the recent launch of our Woolies After Dark concept.
It's early days for us, but we've already opened more than 20 trial sites in partnership with Uber Eats and Engen. This is a first-to-market offering, a dedicated Uber fleet using Woolies cold chain technology, bringing you the Woolies difference until midnight and making the lives of South Africans even more convenient. So as you can see, we're investing in and growing our customer reach across a number of channels. We're also investing in a number of very specific strategic growth initiatives. A year ago, we announced the launch of Woolies Ventures, a dedicated team and simplified processes focusing exclusively on our strategic growth initiatives. This division includes Food Services, our cafes, coffee carts, and hatches, and our Now Now format. It also includes our W Cellar business, Pet, which includes our acquisition of Absolute Pets, and W Edit, our specialty apparel offering, all of which have significant growth potential.
For the period, we opened more than 20 new doors across multiple formats. We grew sales in the double digits and grew profits well ahead of that, notwithstanding the significant investments we're making. I'm very excited about the role Woolies Ventures is playing, not only in accelerating new revenue streams and harnessing the potential of our talented people, but especially in continuing to attract new customers to our trusted Woolies brand, which is exactly what we're seeing. Last year, we shared our brand reset campaign with you, which highlights the Woolies difference. As I said then, we don't just care about the details. We're obsessed over them. Whether it's a product, a service, a simple warm-hearted greeting, we know that by focusing on the things that matter most to customers, we'll make a meaningful difference. We'll add quality to life.
It's the details that take something from being merely good to truly great, and that is our difference. So now, having listened to our customers, I'm very pleased to share the imminent launch of our new loyalty program called My Difference, which combines W Rewards and MySchool into a consolidated program with more benefits, more engagement, and more value. Our customers have told us that what they want is an easier way to engage with our programs, where they can see what they're getting, but also what they're giving back. So we're now enabling one customer profile with self-management of personal data, easy benefit engagement, communities of interest, as well as full visibility to the causes you're supporting. The new My Difference program means our customers will get more with an opportunity to give more.
In fact, no other program in South Africa, or perhaps globally for that matter, will provide a comprehensive get-and-give ecosystem, combined with loyalty, all modes of online shopping, and financial services in a single app. And it's another example of how we are further embedding customer insights into everything we do. Let's take a look. Turning now to the outlook for the balance of the second half and beyond, I think it's not only helpful, but important to remind ourselves of the journey this business has undertaken in recent years. For an extended period, a significant share of the group's capital and management time was focused on Australia, specifically David Jones. An inevitable consequence of this was less focus and investment in our core businesses. The sale of David Jones was transformational for the group in returning that capital and management focus to South Africa.
And we've now put very deliberate and sequenced plans in place to improve the foundational capability of our businesses, to set them up in a way that can give full effect to our strategies and sustain a more consistent level of financial performance. This takes time, and it takes investment. Eighteen months ago, when we presented our FY23 results, we said that we were investing in various organic growth and growth-enabling initiatives to optimize and grow our businesses. At the time, we said that this required a period of heavier initial CapEx and OpEx investment, with benefits to flow from FY25 and FY26. These benefits are already flowing in the case of our Food Business, and you've seen the impact it's having on our top-line performance, further fortifying our holy grail. But in the case of our apparel businesses, the flow of benefits skews more to FY26.
This current year is a peak year of disruption for our apparel businesses and therefore for our group as a whole. So in summary, I'm going to say again that this has been a disappointing set of results for us. But there are specific reasons behind that. We are through the trough. Whilst the consumer remains under pressure and the macro outlook is somewhat uncertain, we are clear in our direction. We are clear in our strategies, and we are clear on the outcomes these will deliver. We have a world-class Food Business that will remain the engine room of our value creation, and we have two apparel businesses, both of which, to be frank, are at cyclical lows. But that presents significant opportunity for us to unlock value as a group.
Our teams are focused on delivering a better second half to offset some of the setbacks of the first half, but equally importantly, on delivering against the many initiatives already underway, which will set us up for the years to come. As I said six months ago, I firmly believe that we are on the right course. We are building a bigger, better, and stronger business. And with that, let's open up for questions.
Good morning and welcome to the Q&A section of our interim results presentation.
Our first question, Roy, Food had price inflation of 6% versus Shop rite at the 2%-3% range. Is this a concern going forward given that your price points are increasing relative to peers? All right, well, thank you for the question.
I think it's important to remember at the outset that our inflation tends to lag that of our peers, both on the way up and on the way down, by virtue of our largely exclusive supplier base and the relationships we have with them. But you will certainly see it continuing to ease. I think there are two other factors here. I think, firstly, mix. We're seeing in our business higher inflation on key categories where we have higher market shares, for example, coffee, chocolate, produce. Where you have seen prices really come down is in our commodity lines, maize and rice, which are much bigger, T hey're bigger components of our peers' baskets. The second thing is that we're selling a lot more in full price, and that's a real testament to the value customers see in our product.
We're certainly not lifting prices. In fact, we're continuing to invest in price. We've spoken before about the investment we've made of almost ZAR 1 billion in pricing. And that's not to mention the continued investment we're making in product quality and new product development. And that strategy continues, and it's proving very successful for us in shifting perceptions in the market around overall value proposition. And in fact, I think very pleasingly for us, when you look at our Food customer base, it's increased by 8% during the period, which speaks to the value our customers see in our proposition.
Thanks, Roy. We have a question on CRG. It appears, given CRG's performance over the period, that the impact of the sale of David Jones on this business has been greater than you anticipated. Can you comment on that?
Yeah, I think the extent of the dyssynergies arising from the separation has been slightly more than we'd expected, but the bigger reason behind the drop in EBIT has, in fact, been the negative leverage as a result of lower gross profit in dollar terms on last year. And in fact, if you look at our OpEx for CRG, it's actually declined year on year, and that's notwithstanding the dyssynergy costs and, of course, the unallocated costs, which we've now fully absorbed as well, so we're actually controlling core costs pretty well. The issue has been more a function of top line and gross profit, and that's the result of two things, really: the macroeconomic environment being significantly tougher for significantly longer than expected, and secondly, the increased promotional activity, the intense promotional environment, a factor, plus a significantly weaker Australian dollar, which have impacted GP margin.
I think had it not been for the dyssynergy and the unallocated costs, we would have been able to offset more of the impact of the declining gross profit. So these David Jones costs certainly impacted our P&L, but the bigger issue behind the negative leverage in the period has really been a top line and GP one.
Thanks, Roy. Sticking maybe with Country Road Group, how confident are you in your ability to still achieve your 10% EBIT margin target given the current performance of the business, and how dependent is margin recovery on a better macro outlook?
Yeah, a great question, I think, but let me say we're absolutely confident in our ability to achieve our target, and that's because the levers that we need to pull to do that are largely within our control.
The most important metrics here are effectively our GP margin and our cost of sale. And as I've mentioned, our GP margin over the last while has been pretty negatively impacted by increased promotional activity and the significant depreciation of the Australian dollar, both of which have impacted GP margin by several percentage points. And I'll say the macro is out of our control. A key part of our restructuring in CRG is consolidating supply and driving greater economies of scale in how we source. And that will provide input margin savings, which, all things being equal, will be supportive of a better GP margin. And then, of course, we're taking a lot of cost out of the business as part of the operating model work we're doing, which will mean a structurally lower cost of sale.
And that will add a couple of percentage points to EBIT margins as well. So net net, we're pretty clear on the levers and the pathways to achieving our margin target. Can we get back to our previous target of 12%? That would need a better macro environment, but we can certainly get to 10% without a better macro, absolutely. Thanks, Roy. Another question on margin targets, but slightly broader. We note that medium-term margin targets were not included in the update. Are these being revised, or do they still hold? No, they absolutely still hold. T ypically at this point in time, we don't provide an update on margin targets at the interims, but we'll certainly, at the end of the year, as is our custom and practice, give you an update to that. But for now, you take it as they absolutely hold.
Thanks, Roy. Another question on Food. What has driven the uplift in GP margin, and how sustainable is this?
Zaid, do you want to take that question?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Roy. Look, there's always a number of different factors that tend to impact the GP margin in any business. For this particular half in the Food Business, we had a particularly good half. We've increased our GP margin by 30 basis points. And the factors that positively impacted the GP margin, firstly, Roy, you mentioned earlier that we've sold a lot more product, more volume at full price. So certainly that's been one factor. And of course, we've been a lot more effective and efficient in the way we do our promotional activity. And that certainly talks to our trusted value offering that we have in the Food Business.
The second factor relates to a number of things we've done to get more further efficiencies in our value chain. Again, it's a combination of volume and various process changes we've actually done in terms of our supply chain. The third factor relates to us really getting a better understanding of the demand versus supply, and we understand we're a lot better in terms of forecasting our demand, and through the use of various data, use of analytics, it enables us to achieve a lower waste number in the Food. In fact, interestingly, we get an improvement in availability on the one hand and reduced waste on the other, so those are the factors that have positively impacted GP margin, but there are a number of factors that have diluted it to an extent.
And that's been the growth in our online business on the one hand, and the fact we've continued to invest in price. And while these gains, and the question is about, are these sustainable? They very much are, because what we've done is underpinned by various process changes we have in the business; they're absolutely sustainable in and of themselves. But I think it's important to bear in mind, as we've mentioned earlier, that we're investing significantly in our Midrand DC, and the impact of this will come as it comes on stream next year. There will be an impact on the GP margin in forthcoming periods.
Thanks, Zaid. Sticking with Food, will you please unpack the high OpEx growth in Food? GP was plus 12.8%, but EBIT only plus 7.8%, implying OpEx growth of plus 15%.
Yeah , I'll take that one quickly, Zaid.
I think, yes , the OpEx growth has been around 15% in the half. I t's fundamentally a function of the investment we're making in our strategic growth initiatives. We've also obviously included Absolute Pets in that number. So 15% is really what you get in the first half. I think if you take a look at the balance of the year and what that might look like, we'll probably be much closer to 10% in the second half from an OpEx growth perspective.
Thanks, Roy. Turning to FBH, you've spoken about the impact of poor availability on your FBH business, but this doesn't seem to reconcile with your balance sheet, which shows a significant increase in inventory levels at the end of the period. Can you elaborate?
Sure. Zaid, do you want to pick that up?
Sure. Yeah, and thanks for the question. I think when you talk about availability, and I think we've mentioned this in our presentation, we talk about availability in terms of the volume of product in the right sizes, in the right place at the right time. I don't want to necessarily go into the definition of availability, but the two latter parts of that really talk about the right place at the right time. And I think we've mentioned that our availability was impacted by two things. The one is a setback in our DC, but also in the late arrival of product from our suppliers. And both these factors impacted the timing of when product flowed through our DCs and into our stores and, of course, in the online channel. Unfortunately, it didn't all get into the stores ahead of the festive season, which is why we lost out on sales, as we explained.
And we've addressed this as the weeks ensued, which also partly explains the high level of inventory on our balance sheet at the end of December. Thanks, Zaid. Maybe a follow-on question. How should we think about the risk to markdown in H2 given the higher levels of stock on your balance sheet? Go ahead, Zaid. Yeah, at the moment, given the lack of newness in stores in the month of December, as we've said, we've seen very encouraging full price sales at the start of the second half. As we've mentioned, it again, it's about just above 9% on last year. And that's as a result of the newness, and particularly in womens wear. And a lot of the product we've actually got that arrived late is part of our core range, part of our essential products, which are non-seasonal.
Being non-seasonal, we sell them throughout the course of the year, and we wouldn't necessarily mark them down in any event. So we don't foresee any material markdown risk in the second half. Thanks, Zaid. How should we think about the outlook for gearing in this business in light of the current trading conditions and where you are in your CapEx cycle? Yeah, let me take that as well, Roy. Look, we're very clear internally in the business in terms of our capital allocation framework, where we look to optimally balance the health of our balance sheet on the one hand and the reinvestment in various businesses, and of course, returning excess cash to shareholders. And within this construct of the allocation framework, we make decisions as to what we do with our capital.
We ended the half at 1.37 times net debt to EBITDA ratio, which is well within our one and a half times ratio that we believe is right for our business. It's worth remembering that this ratio, the 1.37%, includes lease liabilities, which our financiers, from a covenant perspective, obviously exclude. Yes, we have had the benefit of the proceeds from the Bourke Street sale in December, but it's also worth noting that our working capital, and if you look at our cash flow, our working capital was inflated, slightly inflated by certain timing differences, which would reverse themselves in the second half. We've also in the peak of our capital expenditure cycle. As soon as we've been through this, you'll start seeing this net debt to EBITDA returning to levels you're more accustomed to seeing.
Thanks, Zaid. Roy, please, can you expand on what value accretive opportunities are when referred to calling out the use of Bourke Street proceeds? O ur various strategic initiatives that we've been investing in.
Obviously, one of our historical challenges has been, frankly, the lack of investment behind our core business and where we see significant growth opportunity. And as we pivot across from Australia into South Africa, and we do see the use of those funds really being deployed against the significant growth opportunities, both for Fashion, Beauty, and Home, and for the Food Business in South Africa. We've got several growth initiatives within the core business and then a range of other initiatives which we've actually parked or we've located in what we call Woolies Ventures. And so these funds, these proceeds will be used to invest behind that.
We've called out a fairly significant plan over the next couple of years of up to ZAR 10 billion of investment being deployed against significant growth underpins, and so that's what we mean when we talk about growth initiatives or value accretive initiatives.
Thanks, Roy. Hi there. It seems like CRG will be impaired. What brands are you looking at impairing? Can you provide some indication of the value of the impairment? At what point do you decide to sell CRG? So there is a fair bit there.
Sure. D o you want to take the first part on the impairment and I'll talk about CRG?
All right. I think we call out in our sales announcement that we are undertaking an assessment of the carrying value of the underperforming brands within the portfolio of brands we have in Country Road. It's important to note that within the portfolio that we have, we do have some of the brands, particularly Country Road brand, is actually performing particularly well, and there are a number of important and critical factors that we would need to consider when undertaking this assessment that we will embark on. The one is, of course, we know how challenging the Australian environment is, but it's changing, and the changes in the macro environment and the pace of any recovery would need to be taken into account in this exercise. The second thing we've also spoken about is about the strategies of each brand and how that would materially impact the future performance of the brands, and the third thing I think Roy's also spoken about is the work that we are doing in resetting the operating model of CRG and the ways of working.
The consequence of which, of course, is that we will work off a reduced cost base. So all those factors together, I think, will underpin and inform the valuation exercise that we will be undertaking. It will be, of course, subject to an audit, but the outcome of that will determine any adjustment to the carrying value of the assets in Country Road.
And then the second part of that around CRG and its long term or its future within the context of our group. T he question around selling an asset or selling CRG in this case naturally does come when a business underperforms. This type of a question comes up.
It's important to remember that CRG has been a significant profit contributor to our group for many years, and a bad year doesn't detract from the long term potential we see in this business. As I've said before, this is a moment in time. W e have a clear plan. We've successfully executed on every step of it thus far to the benefit of the overall group. And yes, this fourth step has been disruptive given the sheer extent of transformation, and it has weighed on the short term performance, but it's temporary. This fourth step is critical, as I've said, to setting this business up with the right structures, the right processes, the cost base to achieve its full potential. And we have every confidence in the outcomes that this sequence plan will deliver, not only for CRG, but for our group and our shareholders overall.
Thanks, Roy. We have a question on FBH GP margins in the second half. When can we expect the one-off supply chain costs impact to FBH GP margins to be recovered? Will it be in the second half of FY25? Zaid, do you want to pick it up?
Yeah. So we did call out that the GP margin was impacted by two main factors in FBH. The one was to do with the supply chain cost, additional costs we incurred because of the issues we have in the DC transformation. And the second part, of course, related to the additional contribution of the promotional activity and promotional sales in our broader sales. We certainly believe that the one-off cost that we incurred in the half, we won't have in the second half or substantially be less.
And of course, I think working through our season for winter, certainly our plan is to revert back to a normalized margin in terms of our trade plan.
Thanks, Zaid. Maybe just to add to that and to reiterate what we shared in our FY24 result presentation, was that our FBH GP margin at well north of 48% is a full margin in the context of the opportunities we see to invest in price and key categories like baby and kids. And secondly, given the inherent headwind we have from our very strongly growing beauty business, which we know is at a lower margin than the core fashion component. On beauty, Roy, what is your market share in SA Beauty now, and can you comment on the competitive dynamics within the beauty space locally?
Yeah, sure. O ur market share is north of 20%. We've doubled this business, over the last couple of years, and it's well on track to double again in the next few short years. What is really pleasing is that the big beauty brands are really attracted to our stores, and this is arguably the case more so than any other retail in the country, and when we look at our overall offering from prestige all the way through, what we are really pleased about and what we see as a big differentiator for us is our private label offering, W Beauty. T his range is a significant contributor to our overall beauty business. It represents about a quarter of sales and at a significantly higher margin.
Even to , support the potential of this further, we've opened an exclusive manufacturing facility here in Cape Town that will drive research and development and innovation in the beauty space so that we continue to set ourselves apart. We also launched our first standalone beauty store in September last year, which is a really exciting prospect, and that's going very well. And we're certainly taking some very significant learnings out of that as we contemplate where to from there. So there's a lot of runway for us to still grow this business and take more share of wallet, particularly with a strong cross-shop with our Food customer.
Thanks, Roy. Appreciating we are spending a fair bit of time on Q&A. So maybe one final question, actually a couple here on Woolies Ventures. What does the future look like for Woolies Ventures? What's your ultimate vision? Can you share a bit more about Woolies Ventures? What's driving growth? How big do you think this business can become?
This is a really exciting piece of our business. It does encapsulate a number of the bigger growth initiatives that we have. But it was a concept of Woolies Ventures set up specifically as we moved from optimizing and investing and growing that first phase of our turnaround and strategic journey, T o where we find ourselves today, is really accelerating very specific strategic growth initiatives. Ventures is now a few billion ZAR in total already, and it really has the potential to become even bigger and serve the group well from that perspective over the next few years, and the plans are very clear around each of these respective opportunities.
We're growing sales in the double digits, and we're growing profit ahead of that. And that will continue. I f one takes a quick view at some of the specific ventures, W Cellar, for example, alcohol accounts for about 1%-2% of Food sales for us. Our market share in wine is around 15%. We only have 3% of spirits and beer, which represents significant opportunity for us to roll out our standalones. We have almost 30 of those today, and we think we can easily get to three times that from a market opportunity perspective. On our Food Services side, we have about 75 cafes up and running and less than 150 coffee carts. But we have 350 Food stores, which also represents significant opportunities for us.
Our market share in the Food Service sector is really about 1%, and we think we can grow that five times at least. Pet, we're already the established market leader in this space. We see a lot of scope to grow our business. The market here is generally quite fragmented, and so the opportunity to structurally consolidate, I think, is absolutely there, and we're all over that. And then W Edit, which is really our curated offering of Woolies Apparel. We've got 35 stores already now, but we have more than 100 Food standalone stores, and we do find the opportunity to place a W Edit in proximity to a Food standalone as a massive opportunity. So it's an untapped proposition that we can go after. That's the opportunity we see becoming even more accessible to our Food customer in parts of the market.
So a number of initiatives, each with their very specific growth prospects and plans, and we see this division becoming a more significant part of the group as we go forward. Roy, Zaid, thank you very much. That brings our interim results presentation to a close.
We look forward to engaging with many of you over the next few days, but as always, please feel free to reach out if there are any further questions we haven't addressed.
Absolutely. Thank you, Jeanine. And yes, we certainly look forward to catching up with everyone over the next few days, and thank you for your time today. Yeah, thank you, everyone.