Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking the time to attend our financial year 2023 half year results presentation. I plan to take you through the highlights of the year, our operational highlights and progress on FootGolf and our Canadian businesses. Lawrence here will take you through the numbers, an update on the inflationary led pressure and performance against our capital investment metrics, as well as a bit of an update on our property portfolio. On slide three, looking at the H1 highlights, the first half was another very successful period for the group, despite the very tough comparisons in 2022. We grew revenues by 3.5% on a like-like basis, driven by growth in both spend and volume.
We posted EBITDA on a pre-IFRS basis of GBP 35.1 million, closed the period with GBP 44.1 million of cash on the balance sheet. In line with our progressive dividend policy, which, as a reminder, is 50% of adjusted profit after tax on a 1/3, 2/3 split, an interim dividend of 3.27 p per share will be paid in July. Slide four, we remain focused on enhancing the customer experience and the overall quality of the estate through new center openings and acquisitions, both in the U.K. and in Canada, through our program of refurbishments and rebrands, as well as through innovations and investments in technology. During the half, we successfully rebranded and refurbished the three remaining AMF centers to Hollywood Bowl. We refurbished five existing Hollywood Bowl centers and opened two new centers in high quality locations.
Our refurbished centers are delivering returns well in excess of the 33% return on invested capital we target, and all new centers opened are performing in line with expectations. We also continued the investment in cost saving capital initiatives, with 38% of U.K. centers now with solar arrays on their roofs, and 75% of the estate now benefiting from the Pins on Strings technology. During the half, we acquired a further three centers in Canada, in the strategically important province of Alberta. We've nearly doubled the size of the Canadian business over the last 11 months of ownership. Looking at the growth potential on slide five, we've laid out the known opportunities and potential we have for growth of the estate. We currently operate 69 centers in the U.K., 64 bowling centers and five FootGolf centers.
We've a pipeline for nine more bowling centers, agreed and signed, and the potential for a further 15 bowling centers. We're trading five golf centers and have the potential to grow to 30, and we now have nine Canadian centers trading. We've got one new build agreed out in Canada, and we also have a number of acquisitions under review and can see an opportunity to grow to at least a 40-center estate out in North America. Now I'll hand over to Lawrence to take you through the numbers.
Thanks, Steve. On slide seven, on the back of an exceptionally strong FY 2022, it was pleasing to see continued LFL growth, with a 3.5% increase in the first half, and total group revenue of GBP 110.2 million, which was growth over 20% compared to the same period last year, when you exclude the reduced rate of VAT benefit of GBP 8.8 million in the first half of last year. This very strong trading performance, coupled with our discipline on costs, led to a group adjusted EBITDA on a pre-IFRS 16 basis of GBP 35.1 million, which is a record, and up 13.3% on H1 FY 2022, with an EBITDA margin of 31.8%.
Adjusted profit before tax grew by 11.7%, sorry, to GBP 27.7 million, resulting in an adjusted EPS of 12.8 p per share. On slide eight, we set out the growth in total revenue compared to H1 last year. As previously noted, the H1 FY 2022 revenues benefited from the reduced rate of VAT on bowling. Therefore, the underlying pro forma revenue for H1 last year, after deducting GBP 8.8 million, is GBP 91.3 million. Our like-for-like growth of 3.5%, Steve mentioned earlier, was a combination of spend per game growth of 2.8% and average spend, taking average spend, sorry, to GBP 10.82, as well as like-for-like game volume growth of 0.6%.
This like-for-like growth, alongside the performance of the new U.K. centers contributing GBP 4.4 million in revenue, resulted in record U.K. revenues of GBP 98.9 million and growth of 8.3% compared to the corresponding period last year. Our Canadian business continues to trade ahead of our expectations, and total revenues in Canada were CAD 18.4 million, which translates to GBP 11.3 million, with bowling centers accounting for GBP 9.5 million of that GBP 11.3 million. Total group revenues for the half were GBP 110.2 million, 20.7% growth to H1 last year, excluding the VAT benefit.
The average family of four can still bowl headline price for under GBP 25, this excludes any offers that there may be on the day, bless you, we believe maintaining this value for money pricing strategy is a contributing factor to our continued revenue growth. With like-for-like growth actually up 31% compared to 2019. On slide nine, we set out the income statement. As you mentioned earlier, revenues were up 20.7%, gross profit was GBP 91.3 million, 17.5% growth on last year, with gross profit margin at 82.8%. This was in line with expectations, given the revenue mix, growth, and the marginally dilutive impact from Canada. Gross profit for the U.K. business was GBP 83 million, with a margin of 83.8%.
As seen in previous years, the trend of amusements growing at a higher rate than bowling continued, given amusement's lower margin, this has reduced gross profit margin, but produced a higher gross profit pound overall. Gross profit for our Canadian business was in line with expectations at CAD 13.5 million and GBP 8.3 million, that's a margin of 73.6%. The lower margin rate is as forecasted, due to the effect of the lower gross profit margin of the Striker in-store business, and the higher food and drink mix in the Canadian bowling centers, as well as the lower contraction amusements gross profit margin in Canada. Splitsville centers contributed GBP 7.9 million of gross profit, that's of the GBP 8.3 million that we saw in the full Canadian business.
Overall, admin costs, excluding depreciation and amortization, were up 23.2% to GBP 44 and a half million. Employee costs in centers increased to GBP 19.9 million. That's an increase of GBP 4.3 million compared to the prior year, due to a combination of salary increases over the period, the impact of higher like-for-like revenues, new U.K. centers, as well as the GBP 2.8 million of costs in Canada, that's GBP 2.8 million of cost in Canada. To break that down, GBP 4.3 million increase, GBP 2.8 of it was due to Canada, GBP 1 .5 million was in the U.K. Property-related costs in centers accounted for under pre-IFRS 16 were GBP 19.1 million, with GBP 18 million for the U.K. centers in the half.
Property costs in the U.K. actually increased by GBP 2.5 million last, versus last year, with new centers accounting for GBP 0.9 million of that, while business rates were higher by GBP 1.5 million due to the government-implemented COVID-19 concession seen last year. Canadian property costs in the half were CAD 1.1 million. Corporate costs, which include all central costs and the outperformance bonus to center management teams, decreased marginally by GBP 0.2 million to GBP 11.7 million. This includes corporate costs to Canada, which were GBP 0.7 million. All of these combine to a record group-adjusted EBITDA, pre-IFRS 16 of GBP 35.1 million, with the U.K. accounting for GBP 32 million of that.
Adjusted profit before tax, taking account of the acquisition costs of the site in Calgary, and also the earn-out that we spoke about at the full year, were GBP 27.7 million, with adjusted profit after tax of GBP 21.9 million, and an EPS, as stated earlier, of 12.8p per share. We wanted to set out how we see the current inflationary pressures on the cost profile of the business on slide 10. One of the best ways to do that, in our view, is to present how the costs currently look as a percent to revenue, and then the key areas of potential impact for H2, as well as our plans for mitigating this.
Firstly, the labor market is still competitive, and whilst we have a payroll ratio of less than 18.5%, we are cognizant of the inflationary pressures from the National Living Wage increases seen in April this year. We believe that our industry-leading incentive schemes, as well as the amazing development opportunities we provide our teams in both the U.K. and in Canada, aid us in the recruitment and retention of our teams, and will help us to mitigate this to the levels seen in the table above. Most importantly, reduce the impact of the hidden cost of recruitment. Whilst food and drink inflation, and mostly food, is the highest percentage growth impact in our PNL, due to the fact that food costs represent less than 3.5% of revenue, we only need to put through modest price increases to offset this.
These increases, which are in our new April menu, still put our entry price point burger and fries at less than GBP 7.20, and the signature product at less than GBP 9.20. We have been, and continue to be shielded from the much-talked about utilities inflation, most notably energy, given we are hedged out until the end of September of 2024. We're in the final stages of agreeing our strategy for FY 2025 onwards, and we'll keep people updated on this at a later update. We expect underlying property cost inflation to be in line with the 2%-3% previously communicated, with normalized rent reviews every five years, and with all business property rates valuations appealed where they are increasing. We've had significant success on this in previous revaluation years.
We are seeing cost increases in the U.K. capital expenditure of around 15%, which is taking overall new center costs up to around GBP 3 million for bowling and Puttstars centers. On slide 11, which sets out our free cash flow, it's worth pointing out that the impact on working capital, as you can see on negative GBP 3 million, was a swing from FY 2022 and the record center-level bonuses, which accrued in FY 2022 and are paid in November of this financial year. The group spent a total of GBP 4.4 million on maintenance CapEx, including, as Steve mentioned earlier, the continued implementation of Pins on Strings, now at 75% of the estate, and solar panels, which are now on 26 centers, which is 38% of the U.K. estate.
A total of GBP 3.9 million was invested into the refurbishment program. The refurbishments of eight centers were completed, as well as two interim spends of GBP 1.7 million on two Canadian centers. Despite inflationary pressures, returns on these U.K. refurbishments continued to exceed the group's hurdle rate of 33%. I'll talk about that on a further slide. New U.K. capital expenditure for the new centers was a net GBP 3 million. This relates to the two new centers opened in the year, Hollywood Bowl Speke in Liverpool and Puttstars in Peterborough. Post-tax and interest capital lease payments, we generated GBP 15.3 million of free cash flow. Also, it's worth noting that we paid out GBP 19.7 million on the final ordinary and special dividend, as well as GBP 7.3 million for our Calgary acquisitions in February.
Post all of this, our cash balance, as at the end of March 2023, was a very healthy GBP 44.1 million. As Steve mentioned earlier, in line with our dividend policy, we'll be paying an interim dividend of 3.27 p per share in July. On to Slide 12. Our U.K. refurbishments have continued to pay back at market-leading rates, with spend per game performance up 6.4% and lineage up 5.9% versus the uninvested estate. Our average payback on capital invested is over 55% for the last 12 refurbishments. On top of that, it's even more pleasing to see an increase of over five percentage points in the net promoter score in our refurbished centers.
This is testament to our continued evolving designs, introducing new elements into each investment, catering to the local market, and essentially, not having a cookie-cutter approach. It's also worth pointing out that investments three, four, nine, and 10 are second-generation refurbishments, that's investments three, four, nine, and 10. Centers five and eight are third-generation refurbishments, proving the success of our rolling refurbishment program. As noted earlier, we will complete a further, at least a further four refurbishments in the second half. On to Slide 13. We continue to see strong performance from our new centers in the U.K., where our focus on quality locations for long-term sustainable EBITDA is the key to success. Our last four openings are on track to deliver returns on gross CapEx in excess of 35%, and on a net CapEx basis, in excess of 45%.
Our successful pipeline continues to grow. We opened two centers during the first half, and on site in Merry Hill, the third highest footfall shopping center in the U.K. at the moment, which is due to open later in the financial year. Current plans have us on site in Colchester during September of 2023, with our combined 26-lane two mini golf courses, and this should open before Christmas of this year. Our strong covenant, good relationships with landlords, and importantly, our investment cycle, make us first choice for the conscientious landlord looking for a long-term, sustainable tenant. We have a secure pipeline out to 2025, with more in legals and in heads of terms discussions. On to Slide 14 and our financial and investment outlook. We're excited about the period ahead, have a strong, well-capitalized business, and we're ready to take full advantage of the opportunities ahead.
We're exceptionally pleased with the first half of FY 2023. Our Canadian business is performing above expectations, and we have the full year effect of our acquisition still to come in the second half. We're mindful of the inflationary pressures, as noted on my earlier slide, but we're well positioned to manage these due to our PNL mechanics, as well as the mitigation factors noted earlier. Electricity usage costs are hedged until the end of FY 2024, we're working on the FY 2025 options, alongside modest food inflation, given the size to our overall cost base. We continue to invest in the quality of our estate, as I mentioned earlier, with Merry Hill now on site, and at least a further four refurbishments to be completed. Continued investment into our cost saving and our ESG initiatives.
We'll be on site in two refurbishments in Canada in June, and in exchange, on a further new opening in Canada, as Steve mentioned earlier, due to open in FY 2024. Given all of this, we expect H2 CapEx, excluding any further acquisitions, to be GBP 10 million.
Thanks, Lawrence. Just doing a bit of a deeper dive into the operational progress on, slide 16. Looking at some of the operational highlights from last year and the improvements that we've made to our offer. Starting with bowling, we continued the rollout of Pins on Strings technology, installing into a further seven centers during the half. 75% of the estate now benefits from the tech, and we will be installing into at least six more centers during the second half of FY 2023. The targeted return on invested capital 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 upon it.
Our latest new opening in Liverpool was actually awarded the Best New Bowling Centre of the Year award by the International Design & Architecture Awards Committee, recognition on how we continue to design, innovate, customer-focused centers that others do copy but can't better. In the amusement areas, our efforts on improving machine density, quality of games on offer, and making the purchase process easier for our customers through the rollout of payment options, has been rewarded with a 7.1% increase in the amusement Spend per Game during the half. This growth has come from a mixture of increase in play, as well as some price, as we've used the new payment technology to charge more for the multiplayer virtual reality and the new video offer.
Our mantra of delivering a quality product served quickly, consistently, at a value for money price point, continues to resonate with customers in our food and beverage offer. We've kept the simplified menus, albeit tweaking them slightly to include extra snacks and sharers that are popular at the lanes, without impacting the price of play during the busy periods. We saw a 4% increase in food and beverage spend per game during the half. Slide 17, looking at technology. We've always invested in the best technology that's available to us, but due to the size of the bowling market and the very specific requirements that our industry has, the options that we have on third-party software for managing the booking sheets are very limited.
The lack of functionality of these products and the closed nature of the technology, coupled with the growing size of our business, has led us to invest in creating our own more configurable and scalable system. This new configurable system will be much more simple for our teams to use. It allows us to operate one system across all geographies, and it will help us go further to optimize yield and sales of higher value products, helps us simplify PCI compliance, improve web conversions, and ultimately, deliver a much better experience for our customers. We've recruited our team of in-house developers, we did that last year, and we are over 50% of the way through the build, and we expect the new system to be ready by the first half of 2024.
The investments that we've made in the digital marketing team last year is also starting to bear fruit. More than 60% of our bowling revenue is now transacted online. We launched an upgraded website in the half, that will work more effectively with the new customer data platform that we implemented last year. This platform has helped deliver higher levels of customers, customer engagement, and revenue through our CRM program. We've continued our focus on cybersecurity. We've brought our own in-house dedicated cybersecurity professional to lead on data security and ensure the systems that we operate are fit for the challenges of an ever more digital world-- dangerous digital world. Looking at progress on our ESG strategy on slide 18, we have a focus on three core areas: safe and inclusive leisure destinations, creating outstanding workplaces, and a commitment to operating sustainable centers.
In the half, over half a million concessionary games were bowled as we continue to extend our links to the communities we operate in. We were once again voted as one of the UK's top 25 businesses to work for, ranking number one in leisure. 54% of all management appointments came from our internal talent pipeline in the half. In our centers, 81% of all waste was recycled, and 26 centers now have solar arrays on their roofs. We've rolled out our company car electric vehicle scheme now to all center managers, following a successful trial with our regional support teams. Looking at Puttstars on slide 19, we've actually made some real progress developing the Puttstars brand and strategy over the last six months. Puttstars Peterborough, the latest one to open, opened its doors in early November 2022.
This next generation Puttstars incorporated the learnings from the deep dive customer research that we completed towards the end of last year. Changes included varying course difficulty, making them more inclusive and therefore encouraging a second game, a new mobile-based scoring and reduced cost fit-out without compromising on quality. Over the first five months of trading, the center is performing ahead of its peers, and the customer feedback has been very positive. We're also making a few changes to the existing centers. Harrow is having the machine density increased to widen the amusement offer, with 25 new machines being installed.
Leeds Puttstars is having six lanes of duckpin bowling installed to complement the golf offer. Following the learnings of the combined golf and bowling offer that we trialed in the York project, we've installed nine holes of Puttstars into the Leeds Hollywood Bowl. We plan to install at least nine holes as part of a refurbishment of the back end of this year into another Hollywood Bowl. A new center opening will boast two 12-hole courses alongside 26 lanes of bowling. Looking at Canada on slide 21. Just as a reminder, in May 2022, we were delighted to announce the acquisition of Teaquinn, which comprises of Splitsville, an operator of five 10-pin bowling centers, and Striker Bowling Solutions, which is a business-to-business supplier and installer of bowling equipment. Since the acquisition, the Canadian businesses have traded ahead of our expectations.
During the first half, the Canadian centers contributed CAD 18.4 million in revenue, and just over CAD 5 million of EBITDA on a pre-IFRS 16 basis. Like-to-like revenues are up over 25% versus the pre-COVID levels. It's worth remembering at this point that Canada was actually eight months behind the U.K. in terms of the relaxations of restrictions when comparing the two geographies. We've continued to build the foundations for growth, transforming the support function in Canada, exporting some of the UK's top talent to help embed the culture, values, and the operational framework that we know is needed to unlock the true growth potential out in Canada. Looking at the growth strategy on slide 22. The growth strategy in Canada is focused around four areas.
Acquiring existing businesses that complement the existing estate, investing in the existing estate, opening new centers, and supporting the Canadian bowling market with Striker products and services. In February, the group acquired three entertainment centers in Calgary. It's quite a strategically important location between British Columbia and Ontario. These sites are trading in line with management expectations, and integration with Splitsville is going well. Helped in part by the U.K. management expertise that's been seconded to the largest of those centers out in Calgary. The pipeline for acquisitions continues to build with a number of new centers in the diligence process. I was actually out in Canada last week, having a look at some.
The Canadian refurbishment program is going well, with one refurbishment completed during the half and one rebrand and two refurbishments scheduled for the second half of the financial year. On new builds, the group recently exchanged contracts on a new bowling center in Ontario. The 40,000 sq ft center, scheduled to open in financial year 2024, will boast 24 lanes of bowling and will be our first new bowling center in Canada. Our Striker business continues to grow as a result of increased investment into bowling centers across the country, after reopening following the COVID-19 lockdowns. Revenues in the first half were CAD 2.9 million, and the order book is strong with several large installation and maintenance projects already agreed for the second half. In summary, it's been another very successful and busy period for the group.
We are very fortunate to be at the helm of this well-invested, high quality market leading business. We continue to see strong demand for our offer and are working hard to keep it as accessible as possible, with a family of four still able to bowl for less than GBP 25. We are well protected from the cost inflation, with 74% of our revenues not subject to the cost of goods inflationary pressures, and other key costs, like utilities, well under control. We've got a strong balance sheet with a simple, proven business model and a capital allocation policy focused on providing progressive shareholder returns. Happy to take any questions that you may have. Yes, Roberta?
You gave us a very precise indication, a very clear indication of the cost side in the second part of the year.
Yeah.
Can you give us an idea of what you think like-for-likes will be in H2, or at least versus consensus?
I think consensus is fine.
Yeah.
You know, we're comfortable with consensus. As you know, as a management team, we are prudent by nature. But you know, we're fine with people who have upgraded this morning. We've seen three upgrades this morning. We're comfortable with where those numbers are for the year. That's probably what we'll say. We don't work on current trade, obviously.
No, of course, of course, we wouldn't consider that. What I was wondering more, How much more difficult H2 can be compared to H2 last year, versus what was already a very difficult, in my view, comparison, H1?
Yeah, I mean, last year, we tend not to talk about weather, but last year, weather was normalized. There was nothing ridiculous in the second half. The like-for-likes in the first half last year were 26.8%. In the second half, they were 29%. You could argue it's marginally harder, but then you've got to think what you were rolling the previous year.
Yeah.
It becomes something that you have to look at. For us, we look at the trend within a year. The trend within a year of what we see in the first half leads us to believe that the second half consensus is pretty much right.
Okay. Another question on Canada. The margins were, I would say, much better than we would have anticipated, at least from our side of the business. Is there anything in particular you can flag, like new processes implemented, et cetera, that accelerated your margin expansion?
Just gross profit margin or EBITDA margin?
Yeah, gross profit.
Gross profit margin. I mean, because the Striker business was slightly lower in terms of a portion of mix, as we added those bowling centers in Calgary. The bowling centers in Canada have got a GP of about 81.5%, whilst the install business has a GP of 19.9%. In terms of mix, if the mix is lower within Striker than it is within the Canadian centers, that will impact on GP percent. Actually, even if it was to go the other way, the reason would be that Striker business is doing much better. We didn't see Striker decline. Striker grew significantly, because we had acquired these Calgary sites, that meant the margin percent was better. Margin pound was also better as well. Sorry, dollar on all of that, I just said.
Hi there. A couple of questions, if that's okay. What's your view in terms of the U.K. bowling market and the potential size that the U.K. market could grow to? That was the first one, and then just on the second one was, in terms of the solar panels and the pins and strings and what you're doing there, how much of the stake could have each of those, if that's possible?
Yeah, absolutely. In, in terms of the U.K. market, we've sort of tried to lay out a little bit of where we see the potential, certainly from a Hollywood Bowl perspective. Yeah, we think there's probably about another 20 sites that we can open in the U.K. that will complement and enhance the quality of our existing portfolio. In terms of the size of the market, well, you know, how long is a piece of string? I know Lawrence will say twice half its length, it depends on the size of the sites that people are opening. You're seeing BrewDog open some with duckpin bowling lanes. You know, we've put some duckpin bowling in, you class that as bowling in the wider bowling market.
Other people are, like Gravity, installing six or 10 lanes, as well as then, indoor karting and mini golf. It's difficult to put a number on it, I think it'll be interesting to see how many of those are still trading in three, four, five years' time, when, you know, the market tends to rebase itself. I mean, if you just look back in terms of the trampolining and the, you know, the growth in trampolining from five sites back in 2010 to over 100 sites in 2016 to 40 sites in, you know, 2023.
you know, the market will find itself and level, which is why we are remaining fastidious on the quality of location, and that we're not just opening any site for the sake of scale, and we're staying very focused on the quality of location.
It would be very easy to open up numbers.
Mm-hmm.
The number of sites we get offered at cheap rents, you know.
Big capital contribution.
GBP 5, GBP 6, GBP 7, square feet for units that are in warehouse space, which back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, people were opening up bowling centers in these. They're no longer there, and there's a reason they're no longer there.
It comes off the benefit of having the history of trade behind us as well. You know, I've been operating this since 2011. Back in those days, we had a very different quality of estate than we have now. We had a lot more of the AMF centers that we then subsequently sold off to MFA and Disco Bowl and others, that were in more tertiary type locations, as well as in solo, standalone, albeit in 50 center locations, and all of that pre-trading data as to how they traded in comparison to the more typical Hollywood Bowl. In terms of the questions around Pins on Strings and solar.
Pins on Strings, 100% of the estate, we'll plan to continue that rollout, around about seven to 10 sites a year until it's across the estate. We'll also be putting the Pins on Strings into some of our Canadian businesses, as it works in exactly the same way, albeit there's a much higher leak focus in Canada than there is in the U.K. Regards to solar, in as many sites as we possibly can. We are still battling, ironically, with some landlords who aren't prepared to let us have the space. Equally, we need to have the roof.
It sounds a bit odd, but if we're down, downstairs and, you know, there's a, there's an operator above us, then we don't have the access and use of the roof, so we can't go in those sites. We, we think we have the potential to get to about sort of 30, 35, but equally, we'd have the ambition to put them everywhere we can. Yes.
Question on like-for-like volumes in the medium term. What you're doing with Pins on Strings and what you're doing with the new booking software, does that free up headroom for like-for-like volumes? Second question, that data on the refurb stuff was really helpful, but can you remind us what your policy is, in terms of how frequently or the cycles? Last boring one, utility, September 2024, where's the market? I know you can fix, but we're in it right now.
I'll turn the refurb question once, and answer the other two. Refurbishment, it does a bit, Tim, depend on, you know, how well they wear. You know, we have very high footfall and lots of customers who aren't quite as careful with our products as we might like them to be. Lots of kids wandering around with sticky drinks, they have a habit of spilling. Yeah, we refurb them when they start looking tired. The average is anywhere between five and seven years on the refurbishment cycle, which is why, you know, we're getting around to third generation refurbishments from those that we were doing back in 2011, 2012.
We're still seeing the, you know, the returns on investment deliver in line, if not ahead of the 33% return on invested capital that we that you guys keep on in terms of returns we expect from your customer investment.
In terms of the volume like-for-likes, Pins on Strings and scoring. Pins on Strings can increase volume, as we've spoken about before, 'cause it increases reliability, but that reliability increase is only beneficial when you're full. If you're not full, like on a Monday during when the kids are at school and everyone else is at work, if your lane breaks and there's increased reliability, we're gonna move you anyway to another lane, so it doesn't really drive volume. It doesn't set them any quicker, whatever anybody says, that doesn't happen. Lots of people want to wait for their special ball, that they managed to throw down the last time and get loads down, and then find out it's nothing to do with the ball, and it's complete luck.
Volume like for likes will be driven around, I believe, more around the refurbishment program, around the continued investment within our estate. Scoring will help, and the new reservation system will help because it will e-count those opportunities online, and it will automatically do the Tetris-type system. What we'll continue to do is drive the like-for-like growth, both through spend and also through volume, because spend per game can also be increased through our investment profile, through our refurbishment program, and through the increase in terms of amusement density as well. In terms of electricity contracts, it's a really difficult one, so I can only give you based on what the number was last Thursday. It changes so often.
Just to give you a bit of context, we currently pay GBP 0.0647 per kWh for usage. That does not include the commodity costs, the taxes, and the distribution, 'cause you can't hedge that, and that continues to move all the time. That is something that you can't hedge, and that doesn't matter where you get it from or what you do, you're going to be paying that price. The current market is just over GBP 0.12 per kWh, if we were to hedge today for FY 2025. But it's moving significantly. If we go back to November, that GBP 0.12, just that GBP 0.12 that I've mentioned, was GBP 0.24, and at the beginning of January, it was GBP 0.18. It moves significantly.
We've got a number in mind that we're waiting for, but we've also got other options available to us as well, which include long-term hedges and long-term supply contracts as well.
Perhaps I was going to ask, how much of the GBP million bit is usage and how much is it fixed?
If it was, in terms of the split, it's about, at the moment, 60% of it is commodity. Sorry, non-commodity, the bit you can't hedge, and 40% of it is the commodity costs.
Thank you.
Well, what's that little bit? Have you disclosed that?
We haven't disclosed it, no.
Great.
It's all wrapped into it, so total property costs.
Can I ask a question about the, tech investment and launch and?
Mm-hmm. When it's ready.
Is that exposed, or is that capitalized? Is that, would that be a sort of one-off in this year, next year?
Some and some. The, the investment will be capitalized, but then there will be an ongoing increase in central overhead as a consequence of our, having our own development team in-house.
This year, there is no impact. It's a minor impact on the PNL, because at the moment, they're doing development.
Yeah.
They, as you know, all of the guidelines around the capitalizing of internal deployment costs.
Yeah.
-has been picked, which allows us to capitalize it at the moment. Going forward, there'll be a marginal increase in terms of technical support going forward. Probably GBP 0.1 million-GBP 0.2 million.
Just to give us a sense of the scale of that project in terms of base. Are we talking multiple GBP millions?
It's just over GBP 1 million. The cost of the development of the project.
Yeah.
It's just been one of my biggest frustrations has been the fact that, you know, we can't just go to Microsoft or any of the big suppliers and get an all seen, all done system. Is that the bowling market is just too small for the big operators to put any real effort and attention into developing anything top class. What we are building is an open source system that gives us all the functionality, but then enables us to buy in all of the other top software that will integrate with it. All of the current bowling systems are just closed systems, so you end up creating this mishmash of products.
Having it all in-house to enable us to develop it's only really now that we've got the scale and size of business, which just defies the cost.
That all integrates into your CRM system?
Yep. Everything. Point of sale, payroll, its systems. It just becomes the heart of everything that we're able to then operate and do.
It will work in Canada as well.
It's crucially configurable. You know, we like introducing the VIP lanes. At the minute, you can't put those online, so there's a marketing opportunity that's lost because the system just doesn't allow you to hive off certain lanes at certain, in a certain price.
It could be costly. I mean, obviously, it's revenue generating.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Could be, yeah. We've not factored that in yet, but-
Last dumb question.
Sure it's not.
That's not, that's not a dumb question.
No, it is.
No, I want-
Anybody else?
It's as we throw the ball, you know, duck.
Yeah.
That's not true.
What?
It's a variation of a game. It's a bit more like skittles. It's a reduced format. It was introduced for young kids. There are some operators in the UK, BrewDog, next to the train station, that
Waterloo.
Yeah, Waterloo. They've got it installed in some sites. I think there's about 30 lanes of it in total across the U.K.. It's a smaller ball, smaller pins, got a little rubber ring around them, and it's slightly easier to bowl, but you'd need a much smaller area. It's quite possible.
The players put the pins back up?
No, no.
No.
It's still on string, same process. You got duckpin, there's candlepin, five-pin. There are.
Candle.
different types of bowling, yeah.
Just to, first, obviously, given the strong cash position, just want to ask again on the pipeline in Canada.
Yeah.
Whether there's a preference there for greenfield sites versus acquisitions. Then the second one, just on the amusements. You already mentioned in the presentation that there's increased density, a lot of investment going out across the estate. Is there a lot more to do in the U.K. estate in terms of amusements, in terms of increasing density or rolling out new machines?
Canada first. Greenfield versus acquisitions depends on the quality of acquisition. As we start learning more and more about the Canadian market, it's easy for us in the U.K. because we've got all that trading history behind us, and we know what makes a successful site successful. We're in the process of learning all of that in Canada now. Doing the acquisitions that we have done, have given us a whole new vein of information. We need to build up that information. You know, they're not capturing customer data. It's difficult for us to then get a detailed analysis on type of demographic and customer.
As we've started importing our CRM systems and the marketing work that we're doing, we're starting to capture all of that information, which is then enabling us to take a much more specific approach and a realistic approach to looking at the acquisition opportunities. I mean, I was out in Canada, looking at, we looked at eight sites that were currently trading now. My biggest frustration was sort of wondering, should we buy this one, or could we be outpitched, you know, if somebody else came along and opened up a site? In the U.K., we know the best place to be in the geography. In Canada, we're learning about that and finding it out.
Once we've been able to do that, we're not too far away from getting a good, a robust enough model, then we'll be able to answer that question with a lot more certainty. It's, it's easier buying a center and then refurbing what's there. You've already got the market, you've got the trading, you've got the history. Equally, as we found in the U.K., sometimes waiting for the best location was the right strategy. My feeling is that it will be some and some. At the minute, the acquisition is the easiest and something that we've been focused on doing, but only where we're confident we've got the right location and the geography that we're trading in.
In terms of amusements and amusement density, there are still centers, and as we do the refurbishments, we're able to sort of eke out additional space. Most of the refurbs where we've combined the bars and diners and moved the kitchens around, have been done. Where the opportunity and amusements continues to come from is the improvement in the tech that we're putting in to allow us to charge more money for multiplayer games. Like, you know, you'll pay the same amount for a single player video that you would do for a game of air hockey, for example. Whereas introducing the nights means that we can now take a little bit of extra price on those on those pieces of equipment to help support the nightlife.
Are there any other questions in the room? Okay, can we move on to questions on the phone?
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Okay, great. Well, thank you very much, everybody.