Hello. My name is Gerry Murphy, and I'm Burberry's Chairman. Welcome to our shareholder webcast, which is being streamed at 12 noon on 15th July 2020, following the conclusion of our 2020 AGM. I do hope you and your loved ones are safe and well during these strange and difficult times. As explained in the AGM notice, given U.
K. Government advice regarding public gatherings and non essential travel during the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we consider it prudent to hold the AGM as a closed meeting to ensure the safety and well-being of our shareholders, employees and the Board. Arrangements remain for the meeting to be held with the minimum number of shareholders required under our articles of association, and the business of the meeting was limited to formally proposing resolutions set out in the notice of meeting. Shareholder engagement is very important to us. And despite current constraints, I'm very pleased to confirm that we received valid proxy votes representing the vast majority of our issued share capital.
Details of these proxy votes are being shown on the screen now. We also invited shareholders to submit questions on the business of the meeting, and I'll address the key things raised later in the webcast. I will now say a few words about our 20 nineteen-twenty financial year. Then, Marco Gobetti, our CEO, will provide an update on the group's recent performance and achievements. COVID-nineteen is a traumatic and painful development, assessing us not only as individuals but also as families, communities, businesses and as a global society.
How we respond to these challenges speaks to the essence of who we are. I'm particularly proud of Burberry's response to the pandemic. Under Marco's leadership, the resilience and fortitude of our employees shows a strength of purpose that is rooted deep in our company's heritage and values. Prior to the pandemic, work was well underway to rearticulate Burberry's purpose as a company. After a lengthy process involving thousands of colleagues from all parts of the business, including the Board, we've adopted the simple phrase, creativity open spaces, which we believe captures Burberry's long standing commitment to innovation that limits potential of open and lateral thinking.
In line with our purpose and the 4 core values which underpin it, we continue to explore new ways of making a positive impact on the health and well-being of our employees and other stakeholders. At the beginning of the pandemic, Broadband contributed to funding emergency vaccine research at the University of Oxford. We made significant donations to charities alleviating food poverty, and we set up the Burberry Foundation COVID-nineteen Community Fund to raise additional contributions globally. We also retooled our trench coat factory in Castleford to manufacture personal protective equipment or PPE for medical and care workers and as well as surgical masks through our supply chain. By the end of June, we had donated more than 160,000 pieces of PPE to the UK's National Health Service and Healthcare Charities.
Even before the recent tragic events that remind us how far we still need to go to eliminate racism and other forms of inequality, Burberry had established diversity and inclusion councils, about which Marco will speak more shortly. Let me be very clear. There is no place for any form of discrimination at Burberry. The very essence of Burberry's purpose is a culture of inclusion, equity and belonging. Before I hand over to Marco, I want also to acknowledge changes to our Board during the year.
Firstly, a very warm welcome to Deborah Lee and Sam Fisher, who joined the Board till the end of 2019. Deborah and Sam each bring new perspectives and experiences that I'm certain will add to our diversity of thought as we navigate the many challenges and opportunities ahead. We also said goodbye to Stephanie George and Ian Carter, who retired from the Board following our last AGM after many years of outstanding service. Finally, Jeremy Darroch retired from the Board today, having served as an independent non executive director since February 2014 and a senior independent director since July 2017. On behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank Jeremy for his outstanding contribution to Burbridge Development over the past 6 years.
We will miss his wisdom and experience and wish him the very best for the future. Following today's AGM, Dame Carolyn McColl has assumed the role of Senior Independent Director. The Board is unanimous in choosing Carolyn who's exceptionally qualified to succeed Jeremy in this important role. Marco will now give you a brief overview of Burbank's performance and key developments during the past year before we move to addressing your questions. Over to you, Marco.
Thank you, Jerry. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and well. Recent months have been unlike any I have experienced at Burberry or indeed in my career. The COVID-nineteen pandemic has created upheaval on a global scale, while changing the smallest details of our everyday lives.
And I would like to express my deepest sympathy to anyone who has been personally affected by the virus. Even in such unprecedented circumstances, I am pleased to confirm that the energy, passion and commitment of our teams remain undimmed, and we have a robust plan in place to navigate the next 12 months. Prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, we were on track to move to the second phase of our strategy. We had strong momentum around our brand, building heat through high impact campaigns and immersive experiences. The consumer response to our product was very positive, with new collections delivering double digit growth on the prior year and our new leather good styles performing well.
We aligned our distribution network to our new creative vision, while opening new flagship stores in key cities such as Tokyo and Beijing, and completing the transition of our U. S. Wholesale to Luxury Fashion. In digital, we built on our leadership position, innovating with games and our B Series product drops, which drove record consumer engagement. This contributed to sales growth in the 1st 9 months of the year that was ahead of our expectations.
The global health emergency inevitably checked our momentum and led to a material impact on our business in the 4th quarter, or operating at reduced capacity, and the majority of our office based teams were working remotely. As a consequence, we delivered fiscal year 'nineteen-twenty results that were below where we had expected to be by the end of the financial year. Revenue was €2,600,000,000, down 4% at constant exchange rates, while adjusted operating profit on a pro form a basis was €404,000,000 down 8% at constant exchange rates. The progress we made over the past 2 years enabled us to respond quickly and adapt our business. Our enhanced brand and product offering, as well as our digital strength, have also made Berglery more resilient as we navigate these challenging times.
Now more than ever, our strategy to anchor Burberry firmly in luxury fashion is key. We took swift action to contain costs and protect our financial position, while reallocating resources to focus on growing markets and in preparation for a rebound. We created new ways and opportunities to deepen our connection with consumers, leveraging our digital capability. Throughout, we prioritize the safety and well-being of our teams, our customers and our partners. At the same time, we look beyond Burberry, mobilizing our business to support the relief efforts.
We contributed to funding emergency vaccine research at the University of Oxford. We made significant donations to charities alleviating food poverty. And we set up the Burberry Foundation COVID-nineteen Community Fund to raise additional contributions globally. We also retooled our trench coat factory in Castlefall to manufacture personal protective equipment for medical and care workers and sourced surgical masks. I would like to give special mention to our inspirational teams in Castleford, our mill in Keithley and our distribution center in Blythe for their support towards the relief effort.
I am humbled by the way they have continued Thomas Burberry's legacy of protecting others and caring for the community. In this period, it has been vital for us to understand why we do what we do and why that matters. As Jerry noted, Burberry's purpose reflects our shared belief that creativity has the power to open spaces. For ourselves even, open and caring, proud of our heritage and forward thinking describe Burberry at its best, from Thomas Burberry to today, and never have such values been more relevant. Our purpose is our North Star, and it will continue to guide us.
Creating a culture that is truly open and inclusive is part of this. Over a year ago, we started on a journey to educate ourselves and be more representative of the communities that inspire us. And since then, we have expanded training, evolved our policies and created 2 councils, 1 internal and the other external, to help guide us. In June, we spoke up in solidarity with the black community, reaffirming our core belief that there is never a place for racism. As we acknowledged at the time, while these are all steps in the right direction, they are only that.
And we are firmly committed let me do this again, please. I don't like it. So I'm going to start again in 2 seconds. As we acknowledged at the time, while these are all steps in the right direction, they are only that, And we are firmly committed to accelerating our progress in increasing representation at all levels of our company. I'm going to do it one more time in 3 seconds.
As we acknowledged at the time, while these are all steps in the right direction, they are only that, and we are firmly committed to accelerating our progress in increasing representation at all levels of our company. We will be providing further details on our plans and overall strategy in the coming weeks. This will build on our holistic and global diversity and inclusion policy that will cement resources and accountability on how we promote deeper allyship and usher in positive and lasting change, in line with our values and Thomas Burberry's legacy. In the last 12 months, I'm proud that we also continued to drive positive change and lead the way in building a more sustainable future, making good progress on our responsibility agenda. This included launching a regeneration farm to help further reduce our carbon footprint, working with cotton growers in the United States to develop a fully traceable organic cotton supply, and rolling out dedicated sustainability product labeling across all key product categories, so our customers can better understand our environmental credentials.
We are now carbon neutral in our own operational energy use across 85% of our sites globally. And both our springsummer 2020 and autumnwinter 2020 shows were certified carbon neutral. And the same will apply to our upcoming springsummer 2021 show in September. Looking ahead, although it's impossible to determine the precise course of the pandemic and its economic consequences, we have a strong set of initiatives in place to continue to excite and inspire our customers and maintain brand heat. We are building bespoke plans for each market, rapidly reallocating resources towards rebounding economies.
Given decreased travel, we have also intensified our focus on local consumers to meet domestic demand. We are also evolving our approach to product, creating 3 new business units covering ready to wear accessories and shoes. Embedding product specialization in these teams will enable us to elevate quality and increase our agility, further supporting the momentum we have built and setting us up for future success as markets begin to recover. We are encouraged by the improving trends we are seeing in all regions and the recovery in Mainland China and South Korea, where growth in June was ahead of pre COVID-nineteen levels. This shows strong momentum our brand and product have with luxury customers in rebounding economies.
We are looking forward to building on this with the launch of our new social retail store in Shenzhen, with Chinese technology leader Tencent. With COVID-nineteen accelerating the connection between online and offline, we believe this will be a fundamental testing ground for the new way in which consumers will experience our stores. Creating new ways of reaching our customers, such as through live streaming and remote selling, will remain critically important over the next few months, as lockdowns gradually ease and consumers slowly regain their confidence. Digital will also be transformational. We will continue to focus here, driving performance through large scale immersive activations and innovations, including gaming and through WeChat Work, part of our collaboration with Tencent.
In terms of product, we have a great pipeline of collections and capsules over the next 12 months. We will continue to engage customers through our product initiatives, such as our recent TB Summer Monogram collection. And building on the good trajectory we have established, leather will remain an important part of our offer. All our efforts will be underpinned by rigorous financial discipline to maintain and secure liquidity as required, while leaving space for investment as markets recover. I would like to thank our teams worldwide for their dedication and resilience over the past year.
It will take time to heal from this terrible pandemic, but I believe our customers will look to Burberry to make them dream again. It is up to us to surprise and delight them through ingenuity, innovation and above all, beautiful product. Witnessing the resourcefulness and creativity of our teams in recent months, I am confident that we will, as we focus on securing a strong position in Luxury Fashion. To close, I will share a short video that captures how our teams rallied to support the relief efforts during the peak of the pandemic.
You very much, Marco. As I mentioned earlier, we invited shareholders to submit questions in advance of the AGM. We received only a few questions, which we have grouped into 3 broad themes. Firstly, PPE secondly, marketing and thirdly, inventory or more specifically, stock provisions. On personal protective equipment or PPE, as I said earlier, by the end of June, we donated more than 160,000 of PPE to the U.
K. National Health Service and Healthcare Charities, having retooled our trench coat factory in Casperto manufacture non surgical gowns for medical and care workers and source surgical masks through our global supply chain. On marketing, a shareholder asked if Burberry had any plans to pull its digital marketing spending from Facebook following the controversy after the Black Lives Matters protests. At Burberry, as I said earlier, we believe there's no place for racism or discrimination of any kind in our society, and we expect all of our partners to uphold these same values. We believe the best way to see these values reflected and protected on social media is through constructive and active dialogue with the platforms themselves.
That's exactly what we're doing. £300,000 relating to COVID-nineteen. Typically, inventory provisions are made with reference to the expected net realizable value of inventory and are recorded against all product categories and by season. We would normally provide for stock we believe that is likely to sell below cost in the future or which might be donated or recycled. As a result of our reassessment due to COVID-nineteen, we've identified additional inventory, which no longer expected to realize its full carrying value.
Provisions of £68,300,000 have been recorded against this additional inventory, which relates to current and recent seasons that under more normal circumstances would be expected to sell through with limited loss. We've also had a question on Burberry's disposal of unwanted stock. I want to reassure shareholders that Burberry ended the practice of destroying unsellable finished products in September 2018. We remain the only luxury brand to have made this commitment. Over the past 2 years, we've limited the causes of waste through better inventory management and a new model of tighter and more frequent collections, which allows us to be targeted and precise in the way that we design, buy and sell.
We've also expanded existing reuse, repair, donation and recycling routes while developing new partnerships and revaluation solutions. In 20 nineteen-twenty, the cost of finished goods physically destroyed in the year was around £100,000 This relates to beauty products which were damaged, defective or expired or were destroyed where recycling was not an option. That concludes today's webcast. On behalf of the Board, thank you very much for your engagement. Subject to government guidelines, hopefully, we can return to our normal AGM format in 2021, We look forward to meeting shareholders again in person.
This webcast will also be available on our website until the close of business on 14th August 2020.