Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to attend our full year results presentation today. My name is Steve Burns. I'm the Chief Exec, and I'm looking forward to taking you through the key financial and operational highlights for the year under review, as well as providing you with an update on the Canadian business. I'm joined this morning by our CFO, Laurence Keen, who'll take you through the numbers, our updated capital allocations policy and our property pipeline. We'll close the meeting with a summary, brief outlook, and do our best to answer any questions you may have. I'm assuming you have all got a copy of the presentation in front of you, and we'll be running through that. We'll call out the slide numbers to give you a bit of an idea as to where you are.
Clearly, we were looking forward to doing this presentation in person, but due to the train strikes, decided to host it online. Going to the first slide, and looking at the FY 2022 highlights. Financial year 2022 has been a record year for the group, and we're delighted with the performance. We invested just shy of GBP 22 million in the year growing our business, and we opened three new centers, refurbished eight sites, and acquired a new business in the new territory. As well as being recognized as one of the best 25 large businesses to work for. On slide four, we look at some of the financial highlights. The group delivered GBP 193.7 million of revenue in the period.
That's like-for-like growth of 28.3%, converting the revenue to GBP 60.6 million of group-Adjusted EBITDA and GBP 39.4 million profit after tax. We closed the year with GBP 56.1 million of net cash. We'll pay out GBP 0.1453 per share in dividends. That's over a 6% yield based on the average of our share price for the year. On slide five, while you saw from the last couple of slides, overall revenue performance and delivery of the group strategy is all nicely on track. The leisure and hospitality sector has been hit by a number of cost increases and the impact of higher inflation. We wanted to set out on this slide how unique our business is when compared against many other operators in the wider leisure sector.
75% of our revenue has no cost of goods impact from inflationary pressures. We're not seeing any material risk from this inflation-led pressure, even when factoring in the recently announced increases in the national minimum wage. Our property costs in the main are well protected from any large swings due to the caps and collars built into our leases. The impact from inflation on the overall cost base is estimated at around 3.5%. If we needed to offset all of these inflationary pressures, we need to raise the price of a game of bowling by just 3%. On energy, our costs are fixed until the end of 2024, and we've been busy future-proofing to become more self-sufficient, with our consumption requirements set to fall by 20% due to the installation of solar panels on our buildings.
Whilst we are protected from the vast majority of the hits, we're not immune from all of the cost increases. Building materials, for example, have gone up and will impact the return on investment for new centers and refurbishments. Albeit, we still expect to achieve a blended return of over 20%. We're in a better position than most in the leisure sector. Our core offer is unique. Nothing else is quite like bowling that offers the same level of inclusiveness, accessibility with a competitive socializing element that customers are looking for, crucially, at a low price point. All of our centers are in high-quality locations with a large population and varied demographic, all of which use our product. We're not reliant on one particular customer group and are therefore better insulated than most as pressures build on disposable income.
We've been steadily and sustainably growing our business over the last few years, refining the proposition to create a truly market leading offer. We now operate 64 bowling centers in the U.K., six in Canada, and five of our new Puttstars mini golf centers. That's a high-quality estate of 75 centers with an average group EBITDA per site of over GBP 1 million. With the potential to grow to over 110 sites in the coming years. We've also got exciting plans for our core estate, generating growth from our core cost savings and revenue-generating capital investments. All proven initiatives we can continue to implement, generating impressive returns. Now I'll hand over to Laurence for the financial review.
Thanks, Steve. It's on slide eight. It's just some graphs just to show the fantastic performance we've seen in the year. Strong revenue performance with revenues up 49.2% versus FY 2019. Also for those interested in a 2021 metric, up 169.5%. I will discuss in more detail the revenue bridge versus FY 2019 on the next slide. This strong trading performance coupled with our discipline on costs, has led to group-Adjusted EBITDA at record levels of GBP 60.6 million on a pre-IFRS 16 basis, which is up 58.6% on the same period in FY 2019. Statutory operating profit margin was up 6.7 percentage points to 28.6%.
Finally, Adjusted EPS was up 55.3% to a record at 23.07 pence per share. As mentioned on slide eight, slide nine shows us the revenue waterfall with like-for-like performance up 28.3% versus FY 2019 being the main component of growth. This was driven through growth in game volumes of 18.3% and average spend per game up 8.4% to GBP 10.45. It's important to us that the average family can still bowl headline price for under GBP 24. This excludes any offers that there may be on the day, and we believe that maintaining this value for money pricing strategy is what keeps customers coming back alongside our continued investment strategy across the estate.
The summer trading was strong despite the unseasonably hot weather in the U.K., with August 2022 achieving the second highest revenue month ever for the group. Whilst all revenue lines saw a like-for-like growth of over 20%, it's worth putting out the performance of amusements with the investment into new machines, supported by the marginally longer wait times due to increased utilization on the lanes, driving like-for-like revenues up over 40% on a like-for-like basis. Our new centers opened since the end of FY 2019 have performed in line with expectations, contributing GBP 13 million to the revenue growth. Whilst we're really pleased with the first four and a half months of trading of our Canada acquisition, which brought in GBP 6.2 million in revenue to the group.
Average revenues per center were a record GBP 2.72 million for FY 2023. Slide 10 has the full P&L. As noted earlier, revenues were up 49.2%. Whilst gross margin was down 90 basis points versus FY 2019, this was actually in line with expectations, given the strong revenue mix with amusements and also the marginally dilutive impact from Canada. It's worth noting that U.K. gross profit was 85% and only marginally down versus FY 2019, with bar gross profits and food gross profits down 1%. We maintain the same GP pound. Ultimately that moves the margin down. Overall admin costs were up 33%, GBP 19 million, with employee costs being the largest element of this versus FY 2019 at GBP 8.7 million.
The balance of the increases compared to FY 2019 are in respect of new centers in the U.K. and also CAD 1.8 million from the Canadian centers. Total property costs accounted for under pre IFRS 16 were GBP 34 .5 million, with the U.K. accounting for GBP 33.3 million of this. Property costs in the U.K. increased by only GBP 2.7 million versus FY 2019, with new centers actually accounting for GBP 4 .5 million increase, whilst the like-for-like estate reduced due to the lower property rates in FY 2019. It's worth noting that property rates have returned to normal levels for the second half of the year. We'll talk about the FY 2023 forecast in a few slides time.
Corporate costs include all central costs as well as the outperformance for bonus. This increased by GBP 10 million when compared to FY 2019. The main driver of this being center-level bonuses driven by the outperformance of our centers with over GBP 6.5 million accrued during the year paid out in November of this year. Other increases have been seen in marketing spend of nearly GBP 1 million and GBP 1.4 million in the support center headcount as we continue to invest in our teams. All of these combine to a record group Adjusted EBITDA pre IFRS 16 and exceptionals of GBP 60.6 million, with the U.K. at GBP 59.6 million of that and the Canadian business driving GBP 1 million. Adjusted profit after tax...
Sorry, adjusted profit before tax, taking account for the Canada acquisition costs were GBP 48.6 million, with adjusted profit after tax of GBP 39.4 million and EPS of 23.07 pence per share. As Steve mentioned earlier, in line with our dividend policy, which is 50% profit after tax, we've proposed a final ordinary dividend of 8.53 pence per share. On slide 11, we just want to take a moment to split out the exceptional costs. As we mentioned earlier, there's the reduced rate of VAT for prior periods, which is shown within revenue of GBP 5.6 million.
The balance of this is in relation to the Canada acquisition, 1.6 million relates to professional fees for the acquisition, while there's a GBP 0.4 million charge for the earn out consideration for the owner, Pat Haggerty, that we spoke about at the half year. This is deemed an employment-related cost and will accrue over the period up to the end of FY 2026 each year, as any other long term incentive scheme would. We wanted to set out in a bit more detail following Steve's comment at the beginning regarding the current inflationary pressures on the cost profile of the business.
One of the best ways to do this is to present how the cost would look as a percentage to revenue as we show on slide 12, and then the key areas of potential impact and our plans for managing this. Now, as most of you will know, whilst we While we talk about EBITDA margin, we are much more concerned with the EBITDA GBP number, and we'll continue to focus on that in terms of delivering profitable growth for the business. Now, as you can see from the graph, our largest cost percent to revenue at 18% is payroll. This increased in line with expectations at just over 7% in the past year.
During the year, we continued with our team member hourly incentive scheme, whereby hourly team members are rewarded for hitting targets they can control around upsells, waste recycling and service. We paid this out 64% of the time. We also paid out our largest center manager incentive scheme in financial year 2022. Alongside all other costs, energy has continued to be a focus for the group and as Steve mentioned, we are hedged out to the end of FY 2024. We've continued to work closely with our landlords to install solar panels on more centers, with 22 now benefiting and 10 more planned for financial year 2023. With the solar installs, we've been able to sell back some of our hedge, which has resulted in a credit in FY 2022 of GBP 1.1 million.
Whilst we have seen some food and drink cost increases, total food and drink cost of goods sold accounts for just 7.8% of total revenue, therefore a 5% increase in this would be worth around GBP 300,000, which could be managed through menu reengineering as well as marginal price increases if required. Finally, we are seeing cost increases in U.K. CapEx of between 7% and 9%, which is taking overall new center costs in the U.K. up to around GBP 2.8 million for bowling and for Puttstars centers. On slide 13, we talk through the cash flow. We drove record free cash flow in the period, with group adjusted operating cash flow of GBP 55.8 million.
Whilst working capital, as I've mentioned before, provided a benefit due to the center level bonuses accrued in the year but paid out in the following year. The group spent a total of GBP 9.3 million on maintenance CapEx, including GBP 4.1 million on Pins on Strings technology, as well as GBP 1.5 million on solar installs. The group invested net CapEx of GBP 12.5 million on expansionary projects. A total of GBP 3.6 million was invested in our refurbishments. Despite inflationary pressures, these returns on these investments are all expected to exceed the group's hurdle rate of 33%.
New center CapEx was GBP 9.3 million on a gross capital basis in relation to the three new centers that opened in the year in Belfast, in Birmingham Resorts World and Harrow, as well as just over GBP 1 million in relation to the two new centers that opened in November 2022 in Speke and in Peterborough. Given the strong trading period, our cash balance at year-end was GBP 56.1 million, and as mentioned earlier, the board has proposed a final ordinary addition of 8.5 pence a share. Slide 14, we just talk through our updated capital allocation policy. This was last issued in 2018.
We continue to focus our allocation policy on profitable growth, investment into our effective maintenance and refurb program, investments into new centers in both the U.K. and Canada, and to pay and grow the ordinary dividend. Finally, any excess cash will be available for distribution to shareholders. Key point being without impacting on our ability for investment into growth of the business. As you can see from the slide, we've set out an example of how this net cash ratio target has been set. The ratio is calculated as pro forma net cash divided by EBITDA pre-IFRS 16. Pro forma net cash is cash on the balance sheet at year-end, less the final ordinary proposed dividend. We've set ourselves a target of 0.5 x to be achieved by the end of financial year 2025.
We've also set out our yearly step targets towards that. You can see on the left-hand side of the slide an example of how the FY 2022 additional distribution has been calculated, and for this year, it will be in the form of a special dividend of 3 pence per share. On the final finance slide, on slide 15, we're excited about the period ahead. We've got a strong, well-capitalized business ready to take full advantage of the new opportunities we've been presented with. We're very pleased with the FY 2022 performance and the start to FY 2023. Given the current economic climate and the outstanding performance in FY 2022, consensus rightly has a more modest like-for-like growth for FY 2023, but still over 23% like-for-like growth versus 2019.
Mindful of the inflationary pressures, as noted on the earlier slides, we're well positioned to manage these increases due to our P&L mechanics. Payroll inflation is marginally higher than expected, this is offset by a lower amount for property rates, with a 5% reduction in property rates versus 2019. Electricity usage costs are hedged to the end of FY 2024, we're already working hard on what FY 2025 onward options are. Our strong balance sheet sets us up for a capital spend forecast of between GBP 21 million and GBP 23 million for FY 2023. As you can see on the slide, we set out where this would be spent.
Are mindful of the fact that new center EBITDA targets remain in the GBP 400,000 -GBP 450,000 range to ensure the payback is in line with previous years, given the inflationary effect on CapEx.
Thanks, Laurence. On slide 17, we look at some of the operational highlights from last year and the improvements that we've made to our offer. Starting with bowling, we've continued to roll out the Pins on Strings technology, installing into a further 15 centers during the year. 65% of the estate now benefits from the technology, and we'll be installing into at least 10 more centers during FY 2023. The targeted ROI of 30% is being beaten, and we continue to drive improvements in both the remaining free fall centers as well as the Pins on Strings centers as we continue to refine the offer and improve it. We've also been improving the lane seating out of the usual refurbishment cycle to keep the bowling environment first class.
In the amusement areas, we've been increasing the quality of the offer with 295 new machine injections during the year. All of the amusement with prizes machines switched over to the very latest digital format. We've also been increasing the machine density and where we can through machine selection and reconfiguration of the centers. Contactless payment options have been rolled out to all centers with pricing trials taking place on the two-plus player machines. All these initiatives backed up by a big investment in extra training through our amusement academies, all helping to deliver the very impressive 20.3% year-over-year growth in spend per game reported in our amusement areas.
In our food and beverage offer, we've kept the reduced menu we launched post the COVID restrictions, albeit tweaking it slightly, adding back the popular snacks and sharer options, giving our teams the tools they need to upsell now over 69% of the time, for which they in turn are rewarded through our monthly bonus scheme. During the year with supply and resourcing getting back to normal, we conducted a full review of all product lines to ensure all categories were on trend with the right mix of value and premium offer. This resulted in a number of product line changes in our draft range, Tango Ice Blast and coffee offer. Customer service scores relating only to food and beverage have increased to 83% in the year. On slide 18, we look at our customer performance and that of our team.
Financial year 2022 was a very challenging period operation. Despite the significant increase in demand and the challenges faced recruiting and retaining quality team, we were able to prioritize the focus of our team members on the areas our customers value and grow our customer service scores, delivering a Net Promoter Score in the year of 61%. That's 61% of our customers scoring us nine or 10 out of 10 for service and actively promoting our brand. We've only been able to deliver such impressive customer and in turn financial results because of our team. Hollywood Bowl Group plc is a people business, and we're committed to providing a rewarding career for all those that choose to come and work for us through both career development and attractive pay and bonus schemes.
In line with the increase in inflation, we awarded an average of 7.5% pay award to our team. In addition, in September, we gave a GBP 800 cost of living payment to help out with the increased energy bills prior to the winter taking hold. Our team are sharing in the financial success of the group, with all team members eligible to earn a bonus and our center managers taking home an average bonus of 135% of salary. A record GBP 5.6 million has been paid on performance-related bonuses to our center teams. We're an employer of choice for entrepreneurial managers and ambitious team members that thrive in a high trust, high accountability culture, and we were proud to be recognized as one of the best 25 large companies to work for.
On slide 19, we look at the use of technology in enhancing the customer experience and how we're using it to help drive margin improvement and operational efficiencies. We've made some fundamental changes to our website during the year, improving its functionality, simplifying the customer journey, improving the content and its speed. Web conversions are up 28% versus financial year 2019, and revenues through the website up 97%, meaning online revenues now account for 58% of all bowling income. The digital signage package we've introduced is now included within all refurbishments and is in 44% of the estate. The new signage allows us to dynamically present the most relevant product to our customers, as well as celebrating the top scorers. We'll continue to roll out the new concepts as part of our ongoing refurbishment program.
Our digital customer engagement strategy has been refined further and through the investment in our more specialized team and systems, we're seeing an increase in revenue and a reduction in our cost of customer acquisition. I wanted to give you a quick update on our performance versus the ESG targets we set ourselves for the year, which are set out on slide 20. We take the role our centers play in our communities very seriously and work closely with special needs and concessionary groups to make our centers as accessible as possible to every part of the community they operate in. In the year, over 750,000 concession rate games were bowled. That's up 25% versus FY 2019, and we extended the discount period to include all peak trading days to increase the reach and impact of the discount.
I talked you through the improvements that we've made on our objective of creating outstanding workplaces earlier in the presentation. We're delighted with the results of this year's focus. I'm also delighted with the progress we've made on our environmental initiatives. 77.7% of waste was recycled in the year, driven in the main by team behavioral change. It's a key performance objective supported by financial incentives for the teams. We're further reducing energy usage across the estate, with 32% of our centers generating their own power and 65% of centers with the less energy-intensive Pins on Strings machines installed. We're also, for the first time, making disclosures in this year's annual report in line with the guidance of the Financial Stability Board and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
The disclosures that we do make will continue to grow in line with guidance. We've also set up a new corporate responsibility committee chaired by an Independent Non-Executive Director, Ivan Schofield.
Thanks, Steve. On slide 21, we just look through the investments in the year. FY 2022 has been another busy year for the property team, with a record GBP 12.5 million spent on expansionary CapEx. Our refurbishments and rebrands have continued to pay back at market-leading rates, with nearly GBP 4 million invested in the last financial year. With spend per game up 22.9% and lineage up 19.3%, we have a model that continues to see strong returns. We've already been on site with two more refurbs in FY 2023 and plan to complete a similar number to FY 2022 and will also rebrand the final two AMF centers in Torquay and Worthing to Hollywood Bowl.
One of the key successes of our refurbishment program is adapting based on our customer feedback, as well as a constant review and ownership from our center managers. They run their centers and therefore provide feedback on opportunities when it comes to refurbishments. We also opened up three new centers in the U.K. in FY 2022, all of which we mentioned at the half one update, Hollywood Bowl in Belfast and in Birmingham, and a Puttstars in Harrow. We've included a slide in the appendix showing a case study of a typical new center opening, including demographics as well as some guide on revenue performance in their first 12 months. On slide 22, we turn to Puttstars.
Since creating the concept and opening the first center in 2020, we've continued with the expansion of the brand with the fourth site opening in Harrow in February and the fifth site in Peterborough in November 2022. It's worth noting that none of these centers have actually traded for more than 18 months uninterrupted, therefore, we need to continue to trial and take the learnings from these trial centers into future investments. All of the centers open so far are profitable, the new brand is slowly gaining recognition in the markets that we operate. We completed a major customer research project in the year, which informed some changes to our new center environment within Peterborough. These include, as you can see on the slide, are not limited to these areas.
We will look to retrofit the key successes once the center has had further trading time into other centers. As we've always said, we have a test and learn philosophy within the group, and we'll continue to do this within Puttstars. The strategy remains unchanged, and as a reminder, a Puttstars can only take the equivalent revenue of a 12-lane bowling center for the golf element due to utilization, and therefore the requirement for a five-star location that has footfall during the week will always be there, even before the capital cost inflation that's currently evident in the marketplace. The brand and centers will become more established in their locale as we continue to emerge from the lockdowns and the effect of vacant units around our centers. The potential still exists for a further 10 centers-15 centers.
The strong pipeline continues, you can see on slide 23. It continues to grow. We've opened up two new centers already in the first quarter of FY 2023 and have signed a pipeline of 10 new centers as well. There are more in legals and heads of terms. High footfall leisure developments continue to be the focus with our knowledge that these areas stand up significantly better during any downturn when compared to sites that are not combined with other leisure or restaurants. As mentioned earlier, whilst we've seen an increase in the capital cost of new centers, we're still confident on the returns generated and getting a 19% EBITDA divided by CapEx return on investment. On slide 24, we talk to our solar arrays. 22 centers now have solar panels on their roofs, and that's after completing 17 installs during the year.
In total, these sites will be able to self-generate over 4.7 megawatt hours of energy, which should reduce our like-for-like grid supply by 15%. Based on our current hedged rate, which as we spoke about earlier, is significantly below the current spot rate, the return on investment on these projects is 9.6 years. If you based it on the current spot rate, the return would be closer to 33%. We will continue on our investment strategy in solar. We've got 10 more planned for FY 2023 and plans to be fully invested across half of our estate by the end of 2024.
Just moving on to an update on our most recent international expansion. As a brief reminder on the rationale for the acquisition of Splitsville and Striker, the Canadian bowling market is a very well-established, resilient, and bowling, a valued activity for a customer group that closely mirrors the U.K. Canada is a stable market with a liberal government and a well-educated population who have a relatively high level of disposable income. Over 38 million people live in the country, and 81% of the population is urban, with 90% of the entire population living within 100 mi of the U.S. border. The bowling market in Canada is hugely fragmented and underinvested. There are 193 bowling centers in Canada, but there are only four operators with any scale, with the single largest operator outside of Quebec being us with six centers.
All of the others, bar one, are privately owned businesses. Back in May of this year, we acquired Teaquinn Holding Limited, which consists of the Splitsville and Striker businesses, for CAD 17 million. That was paid by way of an initial consideration of CAD 13.6 million, with a deferred amount of CAD 3.4 million, which is paid at the same time as the maturity of the earn-out incentive. We paid CAD 17 million with freehold assets of CAD 12 million that in 2019 delivered CAD 18.7 million of revenue and CAD 3 million of EBITDA pre-IFRS 16.
For the four months since acquisition to the end of FY 2022, the business is trading well, and it's following a very similar pattern to the U.K. businesses post-COVID, with like-for-like revenues up 25% versus FY 2019, with the group adding GBP 1.6 million of EBITDA to the parent coffers. We've been really impressed with the energy and intensity of the management team out in Canada post the transaction, we've been very busy building a team that have the experience of and will be capable of running what we expect to become a large business. We've replaced the finance director, marketing director. We've recruited a vice president of operations, a head of culture and talent, head of IT, and putting in some very solid foundations for growth.
We've built our project plan centered around brand, customer, process, and team, and we're already seeing the improvements in both the customer experience and revenues as some of the initiatives start to gain traction. We've got a very long way to go, but we're very encouraged by our progress. We've a strategy to drive long-term sustainable growth out in Canada, and we've got three metrics of performance are set out on slide 27. The growth strategy for the Canadian business is very similar to that of the U.K., albeit we need to prove the investment thesis out in Canada like we've done in the U.K. We're on the acquisition trail, and we're in discussions with a number of operators to acquire their businesses, building up a very healthy pipeline.
We do, however, need to prove we can acquire, refurbish, rebrand, and transform the profitability of the sites that we do buy as we've done in the U.K. We've acquired one center since May, a 32-lane bowl in Kingston, Ontario, and have a full refurbishment planned in for April 2023. The second area of growth is through the deployment of revenue-generating capital by refurbishing the estate we do have. We need to be confident we can deliver the same high levels of return we get in the U.K. The refurbishment of Richmond Hill, Ontario, will complete next month, with Hamilton starting in April, the target is a 33% return on invested capital. The third area is through new center openings. While there are acquisition opportunities, like in the U.K., not all of them are in the right location.
To build a high quality portfolio of centers across the country, we need to build from scratch in some locations. We've engaged with a local property agent and are at heads of terms stage on an exciting opportunity in the Greater Toronto Area. The Canadian business offers us an exciting opportunity to continue the growth of the group, and we'll be driving that growth in our usual measured and very cautious way. In summary, we're very confident about the medium to long-term potential for the group. Hollywood Bowl is the market leader operating in a sector of the leisure market that is well-insulated from inflationary and recessionary pressures. We continue to see strong demand for our offering and have a great value for money, low ticket price, unique experience. And with our universal appeal, we're not reliant on one particular section of the market
We've a well-defined and proven strategy for growth in the UK and ambitious plans for our business out in Canada. We've had a strong start to FY 2023 and are confident on delivering on our revenue and profit targets.