Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our full- year results presentation for FY 2024. So thank you for joining us today, whether you're here in person at UBS or whether you're joining us online. I'm Darcy Willson-Rymer, CEO of Card Factory, and joining me today is Matthias Seeger, our CFO. Following an overview of highlights from the past year, Matthias will provide the financial performance update for FY 2024. I'll then provide an update on the progress we have made on our Opening Our New Future growth strategy and the outlook for the remainder of the year. Matthias and I look forward to answering any questions that you may have at the end. So when I joined the business three years ago, we began a transformation journey that would fundamentally change the approach at Card Factory.
We're seeing the positive impact of the changes that we've made across the business, and our FY 2024 results are testament to the successful delivery of our change program and the hard work of colleagues throughout Card Factory. By putting the customer first in our decision-making, we've continued to innovate and expand our offer while remaining true to our value for money credentials. As we continue to invest in our Opening Our New Future strategy, we are delivering on key initiatives at pace and ensuring that we're maximizing the growth opportunities in store, across our digital channels, and through our expanding partnership program. Progress on our strategy delivery is ensuring that we are on track to meet our growth targets over the five-year plan.
And as I know, we have a large number of colleagues on the call today, I just want to take the opportunity to personally thank each and every one of you for the positive contributions that you have all made throughout the last financial year. So thank you, colleagues. I'm also pleased to report that we've continued positive momentum across the business, which delivered double-digit revenue growth in FY 2024. Our stores remain at the heart of our growth story, with a strong performance in the last financial year, underlying the strategic role of our store estate and the competitive advantage that our stores provide when it comes to our omni-channel ambition.
At the same time, our strategy is delivering positive outcomes with progress and delivery across all building blocks of growth: partnerships, online, and across both cards, where we retain our leadership position, and gifts and celebration essentials, where we continue to grow market share. A particular highlight of FY 2024 was the acquisition of SA Greetings in South Africa, which has provided us with a leading presence in a key international market, while also providing us with wholesale growth opportunities. Key to our business transformation is the cultural progress that we have made as a business, and the growth we are seeing can be linked to our ability to better understand the needs of our customers and execute at pace while supporting our colleagues to connect through our, to our purpose.
In addition, we've launched our new sustainability strategy, which will provide a positive impact across the communities we work within. And our disciplined financial management and performance is contributing to the improved financial strength of the business, with a further strengthening of the balance sheet and a reduction in net debt. And finally, following the repayment of CLBILS and Term Loan A, we are no longer restricted from paying dividends, and therefore, the Board has approved an updated capital allocation policy with a resumption of dividend, which reflects our positive commitment to balancing investment in driving growth of the business and delivering progressive cash returns to shareholders, which together are designed to drive significant shareholder value. Right, for more detail on this and our financial performance of FY 2024, let me hand over to Matthias to take you through that. So, Matthias?
Thanks, Darcy, and thank you all for joining us on this bright and sunny day, either in person here today or online. Over the next 20 minutes, I'm going to take you through the results, provide perspective on Card Factory's capital allocation policy and dividend for this period. It was a year of continued positive momentum. We saw progress balanced across all key financial metrics, driven by top and bottom-line growth. Results are at the top range of market expectations. We have delivered, delivered double-digit revenue growth. Profit before tax increased significantly, driven by revenue growth and strong margin rate enhancement while investing into future growth. Our cash generation was strong, enabling us to strengthen our balance sheet by reducing net debt and to restart dividend payments, but more about that a little bit later. First, let me talk about the progress against the key financial metrics.
As you all know, the economic backdrop was challenging for businesses and consumers. Nevertheless, we achieved significant improvements across all key financial metrics compared to the same period last year on the back of a strong, resilient business performance, particularly in stores. Total group revenue increased by 10.3% to GBP 510.9 million. This includes GBP 10 million of sales from the acquisition of SA Greetings. Adjusted PBT of GBP 62.1 million increased by 27%, as PBT margin expanded from 10.5% last year to 12.2% this year. Cash conversion was 96.8%. Cash generated by the business increased by 10.1% in line with trading. This enabled us to invest in infrastructure, growth projects, and to reduce net debt by GBP 23 million to GBP 34.4 million. And we will restart dividend payments.
Again, a little bit later, more about that later. We have a track record of delivering year-on-year growth. Even if you allow for the pandemic, over the past five years, we have grown sales on average by 3.9%. For each of the past two years, we have grown sales on average by 18.4%. Last year, at our Capital Markets Day, we set out our strategic building blocks of growth. Today, I am pleased to say we are delivering against these plans, are on track to deliver our FY 2027 CMD target. This will deliver additional values for our shareholders going forward. Let me now turn to our sales performance for the fiscal year. Total group revenue increased by 10.3% from GBP 463.4 million to GBP 510.9 million.
Our core business, the stores in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, that account for 94% of sales, delivered total store-based growth of 8.7%, with strong like-for-like growth of 7.7%. At the core of the like-for-like growth was the strength of our range, our relentless focus on value for money, and on in-store experience. This resulted in improved sales of 9.8% in the strategic growth categories across gift and celebration essentials. It also delivered robust greeting card sales growth of 4.8%. One- third of the like-for-like growth can be attributed to targeted price increases. As we continue to increase our footprint and our market penetration, we grew our store network by 26 stores to 1,058. Over the period, net new store openings contributed 1 percentage point to our growth.
Online sales reduced overall. However, we have seen encouraging performance at cardfactory.co.uk, with a positive like-for-like for the year of +0.4%, behind a half two like-for-like growth of 11.4%, as our investments in the platform to improve the customer experience and to develop the online range are beginning to drive results. Partnership sales, excluding SA Greetings, increased by GBP 1.6 million, which includes the effect of the Matalan contract and the first 4 Liwa franchise stores in the Middle East. The acquisition of SA Greetings contributed GBP 10.4 million of revenue, which accounted for 2.2 percentage points of the growth. Moving on to margin. Now, our revenue grew double-digit. At the same time, we improved margin rates while navigating wage inflation and investing in future growth.
Adjusted PBT margin rate of 12.2% was 1.7 percentage points ahead of last year. This excludes the GBP 2.6 million acquisition gain in relation to SA Greetings, GBP 2 million from the release of COVID provisions, and a GBP 1.1 million impairment charge in respect of Getting Personal. Product margin on a constant currency basis improved by 1.2 percentage points. The impact of pricing and normalized freight costs more than offset the margin rate and mix impact, driven by the high growth in the gifting and celebration essentials categories. Direct store-based costs reduced as a percentage of revenue by 0.7 points. Improvements we have made in labor productivity, operational efficiencies, and the continued benefit of our energy hedge, all more than mitigated the impact of national living wage increases.
Higher sales per store drove productivity and efficiencies below the line, contributing to a 2.2 percentage points margin rate improvement. This came from right to use rent, lease depreciation, and finance costs. We have also seen average store rents reduce on renewals. Increases in interest rates were offset by reductions in the gross level of debt. During the period, our effective currency rate was lower than for the equivalent period last year. However, our established currency hedging policy approach protected us against the full extent of market fluctuations in the period. At our strategy update last May, we set out our plans to invest for future growth. In the period, we reinvested the equivalent of 2.2 margin points in operating costs. We are pleased to invest in our colleagues and infrastructure to make sure we could deliver on our future growth plans.
In summary, our margin enhancement was driven by a combination of increased sales, normalized costs, improved productivity, and cost efficiency across our unique end-to-end value chain… Now let me summarize the consolidated P&L. Double-digit sales growth added GBP 47.5 million of revenue. Product margin of 69.6% improved by 1 percentage points, reflecting the annualization of price increases and normalized freight costs. This was partially offset by currency and sales mix impact, as we sold a higher percentage of non-card products. Gross margins increased by 1.5 percentage points to 36.2%, due to efficiencies that offset living wage increases. Our adjusted PBT increased by GBP 13.2 million to GBP 62.1 million year-on-year. This is a 27% increase to the strong top line and margin rate growth, despite headwinds and reinvestments.
Adjusted EPS of GBP 0.135 increased by 11.6%. Cash performance was strong in the period. Cash from operations increased to GBP 118.7 million, reflecting operating cash conversion for the full year of 96.8%. Working capital trends have now normalized post-pandemic. Corporation tax payments, which are made quarterly in advance, of course, increased with improved profitability. Capital expenditure of GBP 27.8 million was GBP 9.6 million higher than the prior year. Key investments included phase two of our ERP implementation, the upgrade of our network infrastructure, new store openings, upgrading stores, and investing in improving the online experience. Lease payments reduced by GBP 13 million, as the last of the rent deferrals associated with the pandemic was cleared in the prior year.
In addition, we continued to see reduced rents on renewal due to our dynamic and flexible approach to store portfolio. Total finance costs reduced as increases in interest rates were offset by reductions in debt. As a result, free cash of GBP 27 million was GBP 10 million higher than last year. This funded the acquisition of SA Greetings, the continued reduction in net debt, and the resumption of ordinary dividends, which I will come to in more detail shortly. Moving on to net debt. Over the 12-month period, net debt at the end of January reduced by GBP 23 million to GBP 34.4 million, as we have continued to strengthen the balance sheet. Strong operating cash flow and lower lease rentals have enabled us to invest in our growth strategy and to reduce net debt while absorbing increased corporation tax payments. Debt service costs remain broadly consistent with prior periods.
Increases in interest rates were largely offset by a combination of our hedging program and a reduction in the level of gross debt. At the end of the period, the group had headroom of GBP 75 million in its debt facilities. During FY 2024, we made repayments in respect of our term debts and CLBILS facilities, totaling GBP 25.1 million. These facilities are now fully repaid, and with that, the restrictions to dividend payments have been removed. Now that the business has overcome the challenges of the pandemic, delivered strong financial results, and is on track to deliver its growth ambition, it is the right time to put normalized facilities in place to support our strategic plans. We are pleased that we are partnering with a strong syndicate of four banks that have the capability and breadth of operation to support our business today and in the future.
The new financing structure is based on a GBP 125 million revolving credit facility with an accordion option of GBP 75 million. It replaces the previous revolving facility and Term Loan B, which have been fully repaid. The facility has an initial four-year term until April 2028, with the option to extend to November 2029. As we grow our business, this facility is a long-term platform, ensuring access to funding at competitive margins. With the business having turned to growth and strong cash generation, with the right financing foundation in place, and with the restrictions to return cash to shareholders having been removed, the Board has reviewed and updated our capital allocation policy. We are committed to creating value for our shareholders by delivering on our business growth strategy and plans, as outlined at the Capital Markets Day last May.
We aim to deliver our plans and financial targets in a disciplined and sustainable way. We will deliver long-term shareholder value while providing progressive returns to our shareholders in the short term. We have four guiding principles to our capital allocation policy. First, we will maintain a strong balance sheet within well-defined debt leverage range. Two, we will invest in an appropriate, disciplined, and financially sound way to deliver our growth strategy. Three, we will provide regular, progressive returns to our shareholders through interim and final dividends. Fourth, and finally, those dividends payments will be funded through free cash flow. Additional surplus cash will be managed in a principled and transparent manner. What does this mean now? We generated free cash flow of GBP 27 million after investments into our future plans.
The Board will recommend paying a dividend of GBP 0.045 with respect to the fiscal year ending January 2024. I want to point out that this is a full year dividend, which is equivalent to an interim and final dividend. Total dividends paid to shareholders are GBP 15.5 million. We restart dividend payments at a coverage ratio of 3 and anticipate a progressive dividend within our guidance range of 2-3. Considering the options for the use of excess cash available under the company's capital allocation policy, the Board has decided to strengthen our balance sheet by using excess cash to reduce net debt levels. In summary, Card Factory has delivered a strong financial performance in the year. Progress was balanced across all key metrics.
Double-digit revenue growth, enhanced PBT margin rate, PBT increased by 27%, investments in the future, strong cash generation, net debt reduction, and of course, recommencement of dividend. We delivered the proof points that we are on track to increase revenues to GBP 650 million and PBT margin to 14% by end FY 2027. We will continue to deliver balanced and sustainable progress against these targets, mitigating headwinds and investing in growth. With that, I will hand back to Darcy for the strategy update. Thank you.
Thank you, Matthias. Thank you. So I'd like to provide an update now on the significant progress we have made on delivering our--Opening Our New Future strategy in FY 2024, but also the areas of focus for this financial year. By delivering on our strategy, Card Factory is well-positioned to become the U.K.'s number one destination for all customers seeking quality, value, choice, convenience, and experience. And to achieve this ambition, we're focused on the building blocks of growth that we outlined in detail at our Capital Markets update last May. Stores, where we will, we will continue to leverage and grow our profitable store estate in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. Cards, gift, and celebration essentials, where we're making good progress in expanding across the GBP 13.4 billion U.K. celebration occasions market.
Online and omni-channel, where we are seeking to deliver a seamless celebration experience for our customers. Partnerships, where we will continue to build on the positive progress we have made in the U.K. and international. At the end of our financial year, we had a store estate in the U.K. and Ireland of 1,058 stores, and thanks to our agile store optimization program, we continued to maintain an exceptional store, a record on store profitability. Growth within our core business continued with 26 net new stores in FY 2024, ensuring that we remain on track to deliver 90 new stores over the course of the five-year plan to FY 2027. Between May and December, we delivered the first most significant phase of our Store Evolution program with the completion of our space realignment project in 729 stores.
This was a capital-light initiative and is expected to pay back within a year. The program involved reducing average card space within store by 7%, while supporting the growth of both card and gift sales by reallocating that space, and that led to 16% more space for our gift and celebration essentials ranges. This work completed in time for the key Christmas trading season, contributing to our highest ever Christmas sales. We saw strong growth in key expanded categories such as gifting, soft toys, and stationery. The successful rollout of The Card F actory Way customer service excellence program for all colleagues led to an increased customer interaction on the shop floor, enabling tailored customer service, product recommendations, and improved basket value.
Our priorities for FY 2025 include continuing with the new store openings program, using an updated store format and design following successful trials within the Store Evolution program. We are also delivering further expansion within the under-penetrated markets, including Central London and the Republic of Ireland. This includes a new store in Central London, which opened at the end of March in Cheapside, literally around the corner, where we're implementing the learnings on range, layout, and location from all the other trial stores. Range improvements and expansion continued for cards, gift, and celebration essentials, with new ranges for both own-label and stationery, and the introduction of key licensed products.
Innovation and range development to broaden customer appeal and price points contributed to a 4.8% like-for-like growth in card, and we're continuing to tailor our offering for different regions and demographics to grow card market authority. Expanded ranges drove strong like-for-like sales in gifts at +15.8%, and celebration essentials at +6.7%. We also successfully implemented a new card price architecture, which maintained our long-standing value for money credentials, with low entry price points, by ensuring the right balance of targeted price increases and rotating promotional offers. FY 2025 will see us continue to grow card market authority through range development and curation, including tailored ranges by region and by demographics. We're also continuing to expand our gift and celebration essential ranges, including baby gifting and stationery, alongside further space optimization for growth ranges such as pet gifting.
Our omni-channel program saw the successful nationwide rollout of our new click and collect service, and by the end of FY 2024, 7.8% of customers were opting to collect their orders in store, and encouragingly, 50% of those are, were new customers to cardfactory.co.uk. We have already reduced customer order-to-collection times from three to five days at rollout, to one to two days on average by September. Wider digital investment saw the completion of the re-platforming for cardfactory.co.uk and gettingpersonal.co.uk, enabling the benefits of using consistent systems, tools, and processes across both platforms. We'll continue to invest in technology infrastructure to further develop our omni-channel capabilities, alongside continued range expansion, with a focus on personalized card and personalized gift ranges.
Internationally, the first four franchise stores were opened in the Middle East, with up to 36 stores expected over the next four years, and the response from customers in the Middle East has been really positive. As expected, gifts, celebration essential ranges have performed well, given the strong gifting culture in the market, with stationery, soft toys, balloons, and gift bags contributing to almost 50% of total sales. Our partnership program in the U.K. continued with to expand with the rollout of all 223 Matalan stores by December 2023.
And the acquisition of SA Greetings has provided a leading presence in the South African market through 25 Card stores, an online store, and 6,500 partnership distribution points, which are operated by wholesale partners, but also opening up strategic wholesale growth opportunities for us. We continue to progress positive discussions with new prospective partners in the U.K. and across our identified international markets of interest. And additionally, we're optimizing our partnership in the Middle East, where we look to expand the number of stores. In FY 2024, we launched our Delivering a Sustainable Future plan, outlining an updated, expanded sustainability plan to the end of 2028, with clear and transparent commitments and goals. We've established a net zero by 2050 goal with near-term science-based targets to help deliver this.
The strategy is built around five important areas for our business, both now and in the future. Those being climate, waste and circularity, protecting nature, people and equity, and governance, each aligned with the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. And we've made good progress across all areas of focus within the strategy, and we are now engaging colleagues and suppliers under this new This Moment banner, which captures the spirit of personal accountability and commitment that we've nurtured within Card Factory. One highlight from FY 2024 was seeing the results of our waste reduction efforts coming through, with the elimination of non-essential single-use plastics in our own label products and packaging, and increasing recyclability, as well as engaging with suppliers to reduce waste in products and packaging.
We're now embedding sustainability into business planning and decision-making to ensure our commitments are at the forefront of how we work and the decisions that we make every day. Looking ahead, let me start by summarizing the highlights of our performance over the past year. The strong performance we saw in the year demonstrates the strength of our customer proposition and the benefits of the Opening Our New Future strategy, where we saw progress and delivery across all building blocks of growth. Our store estate remains our greatest asset, with positive contribution that we saw from the Store Evolution program and a range development work driving revenue performance. The celebration occasions market we operate remains resilient, and our value and quality proposition is resonating with customers seeking value for money to celebrate all of their life's special moments.
As a result, there's continued positive momentum within the business, which is driving top-line growth and bottom-line growth. This is underpinned by disciplined financial management, which is contributing to improved financial strength of the business. With strong operating cash generation and ongoing reductions in net debt, our balance sheet continues to strengthen. And following the cessation of restrictions around the payment of dividends, we've updated our capital allocation policy to reflect our commitment to balancing delivery of sustainable long-term growth in shareholder value against progressive cash returns to shareholders, while continuing to drive business growth. As we look ahead, the Board remains confident in the compelling growth opportunity for Card Factory and in our ability to deliver on the FY 2027 targets that we outlined in the CMD updates last May.
Those being GBP 650 million of sales and profit before tax margin of 14%. We expect to continue to make strategic progress towards these ambitions in FY 2025. Trading since the start of the financial year has been in line with the Board's expectations, and we have seen good momentum continue across our FY 2025 spring seasons. As anticipated, PBT growth in FY 2025 is expected to be weighted towards the second half of the year, due to the phasing of planned investments and inflationary recovery actions. Through the course of the year, we expect to manage overall inflationary environment through ongoing improvements in efficiencies and productivity, and by leveraging the benefits of our vertically integrated model. Consequently, the Board's expectations for FY 2025 remain unchanged. So thank you once again for attending our results presentation.
Matthias and I will now be happy to take any questions that you may have. So just a reminder, for those in the room or if you're here for the first time, there is a microphone at the side of your seat. So if you could, when asking a question, if you could pick that up and press the red button, that's to enable people online and for the recording for people to hear those questions. And for those joining online, please put your name and organization in the QA box, and we'll read out your question on your behalf. But we'll start with questions in the room first. So very good. Hi, Kate.
Hi. Morning, Kate Calvert from Investec. A couple from me. The first question, could you give some insight into the thinking as to why the Board decided to start with a GBP 0.0 45 dividend rather than perhaps do a lower dividend and a buyback? And I suppose connected, to that, you said that peak leverage was about 1.2x in FY 2024. What sort of level, of adjusted peak leverage do you think is, optimal, going forward? And then my final question is on, Getting Personal. What do you have to do to get that back into growth?
Good. Thanks. Matthias, do you want to take the dividend and leverage, and I'll take the GP question?
Yeah, happy to address your question, Kate. So yes, just to reiterate, we started dividend payments after more than five years of not having paid dividends. We started at GBP 0.0 45 based on the adjusted EPS of 13.5. That's a dividend coverage ratio of 3. This is consistent with our previous target of having a dividend coverage ratio of 2-3. We are targeting regular and progressive dividends, so we would expect this to increase with increasing profitability. On your question, did we consider or is the Board considering buybacks as an option? Yes, use of any surplus cash will be discussed by the Board and decided on the specific circumstances.
All options are open, including a cash buyback. At this moment, considering the history of the business, some uncertainty in the economic environment, it was considered the prudent thing to do to rather reduce cash net debt than to pay, start paying a higher dividend or a cash buyback. Your further question regarding the optimal peak debt level, as you know, we have a capital requirement in our business throughout the fiscal year. We ended with a 0.4 multiple at the end of January. That doesn't include the dividend payment, so if you actually include that, we would look at a 0.5 or 0.6.
Working capital needs throughout the fiscal year are currently at the level of GBP 60 million-GBP 70 million, again, which adds another roughly 0.8. So we are projecting to be within our maximum peak range of 1.5 at the high point this fiscal year, and again, it was more prudent to reduce net debt rather to stretch this to within our target. Did that answer your question? Thank you.
Thanks, Matthias. So, and Kate, on your final question around GP, I think, so first of all, our primary focus had been around cardfactory.co.uk. We completed the re-platforming of Getting Personal, given that the technology was pretty much obsolete. We're now in a position where we can start to now add new ranges and to, you know, drive the right sort of marketing behavior in order to drive sales growth. But, but again, our primary focus is around how do we make Card Factory into an omni-channel business, and focusing on cardfactory.co.uk and the bridge between stores and online.
Morning, Adam Tomlinson from Liberum. Three questions from me, please. The first one is just on that FY 2025 guidance, so the weighting of profits towards H2, and you mentioned the planned phasing of investment. Can you just perhaps talk a little bit more about where that investment's going in H1 and just the key buckets and the relative importance of that? The second question is on pricing. Again, just some color on that in terms of where your prices are now positioned versus the competition, and perhaps you mentioned about expanding the pricing architecture, just the work that's gone on during the year on that and the further opportunity there.
The final question, just on partnerships, any color you can give, you talked about the U.K., but also internationally, just a flavor of some of the conversations perhaps you're having there would be very helpful. Thanks.
Okay, very good. So, Matthias, I'll take pricing and partnerships if you want to do the FY 2025 weighting, but I'll kick us off. So yeah, so if I think about pricing, at the risk of being repetitive, what we said last time is we focused making sure that we have the right pricing architecture, so maintaining our GBP 0.29 price point and then going up the appropriate level, so GBP 0.59, GBP 0.99, GBP 1.49. And then making sure that we've got the right number of cards at each price point, and that each card offers the right value for money at GBP 0.29 and so forth. And then we've stretched the exit price point to now in seasons at GBP 3.99.
The point being, whatever card you get, so even if you buy a card at GBP 3.99, when you pick that card up, it's the best value for money that you can get anywhere, in the market. So that's, so that focus on doing that, on that, and then using range development in order to, to, drive to those higher price points, but offering sort of great value at the same time. I think how you should think about pricing going forward, and I, again, I've been consistent about this, is as we look forward, and we think about the inflationary costs, we've got the three main levers at our disposal, which is productivity, efficiency, and price. And we will pull those levers as we need to, to cover inflationary costs, with price being a last resort.
I think then in terms of partnerships, I think, so, you know, pleased with the progress that we've made, and we've got some kind of brilliant learnings from both Australia, from the Middle East, also, you know, from the U.K. partnerships. There's quite a lot of learnings to take from what we've done and how we need to evolve the model. So for example, if I take the Middle East as an example, where we always knew the Middle East would be sort of gift-led, what we've seen, for example, so we've got quite a lot of what we call milestone age in our store, so 21, 30, 40, 50.
In the Middle East, it's quite rude to point out somebody's age, so actually, you know, we needed to, you know, we didn't realize that going in. We learned it, we took that product off, we've replaced it with better product. So those kinds of learnings. And then also, longer-term in wholesale is how we have to do a full-service model, which we're, we've got learnings from our business in South Africa, and we're, you know, experimenting, you know, potentially in Australia. And then behind the scenes, so we've, we've always said that this will be capital light, and we're, we've been doing this, very efficiently and effectively, but I can't take any more orders internationally on Excel spreadsheets.
So in this phase of the ERP, we're doing the necessary things because we now have confidence that there is, there is an international business. And what we are seeing is that our offer is resonating, people are taking our calls, and when we put the product in front of potential partners, they, they like what we have to offer. But of course, we have to, we have to do this in a disciplined way. We have to make sure it's the right partners. We've got the right skills to the right, right infrastructure. So, more to come.
Should I address that as well?
Oh, sorry. I apologize. Yes.
Uh,
Thank you, Matthias.
Yes, good. FY 2025 will be another step towards delivering our FY 2027 targets. We will continue to see growth on top and bottom line, and the first couple of months, as Darcy mentioned earlier, indicate that we are on track and in line with expectations. And just to remind us, our progress will be delivered in a balanced way, so top-line, bottom-line progress, however, while investing into future growth and of course, you know, mitigating cost price inflation. Typically, our PBT, it's no secret, is more skewed towards the second half. However, you also know that we see certain unique cost price inflation in the first half, such as higher container rates, because of what happened in the Red Sea. That's normalizing.
As Darcy pointed out, just a minute ago, we are addressing all these cost price inflation in the way we have dealt with in the past several years and are confident that we're able to deliver in line with our expectations. Sorry.
Very good. Rus?
Hello, Russell Pointon of Edison. Three questions, please. You've made good progress in Card Factory online, so could you just give a feel for how your thoughts on what you want to provide online in terms of level of service has evolved versus the Capital Markets Day last year? Second question. I think tucked away in the statement, there's something about transaction numbers being relatively flat year-on-year. Is that something you're surprised about, or was that expected? And third, just on the dividend, are you effectively indicating that you moved from an initial cover of three times to two times by the end of 2027? Thanks.
Do you wanna take the transaction profile and the dividend, and then I'll do online?
Sure. Let me start with the dividend because we're staying here on theme. What we have set is we will have a progressive dividend within. Going forward, that will be within the range of 2-3. The Board will assess, of course, every year based on the performance and the EPS delivered and the specific circumstances, what is the right level. So I cannot sit here and tell you that by 2027, we'll be at a certain range, but what I can tell you is that the progressive dividend will be progressive going forward.
On the transactions, yes, overall, we've seen transactions being flat in a market that is challenging for many retailers, and therefore, we are particularly pleased to see that, you know, people are still celebrating occasions and, you know, seeking us out as one of the key retailers where they get products at value for money, at low prices, to celebrate these occasions.
Thanks. And then, I just, in terms of, Card Factory online, and we've had a couple of questions about this also, online. I mean, really, so what we did in FY 2024 is we invested in the platform. We've stood up a digital squad, so we're in a position to release code every two weeks. We've made substantial improvements to the customer journey. We can see that translating through not only in second-half performance, but also key metrics. So, customer feedback, or customer satisfaction up, number of complaints to our contact center, you know, cut in half, so we can really see the traction. The focus now is on making sure that we've got a very clear customer proposition, so being really clear on what it is that we want to sell online versus in-store.
That's work that is literally happening, as we speak, and then what's the best way to do, to market to customers, to recruit them in, to convert them, and retain them? So that's where, that's where the focus is for this year. Gone at the back?
Hi there, Matt... Can you hear me?
Yes, if you're... Are you pressing the right button?
Yeah.
Yes.
Have you got me now? Awesome. Excellent. Thank you. So first question's just in reference to the store format that's gradually being revised. Could you just remind us what proportion of existing stores have been reformatted, and what degree of like-for-like growth you're observing in those reformatted stores relative to the rest of the store estate? Second question's just in reference to range expansion. What proportion of that 7.7 like-for-like growth that you're observing in the store estate reflects mix and how might we expect that mix benefit to progress into FY 2025 as you continue to curate your range? Thank you.
Thank you. So I think in terms of the work on store formats, just looking at what we did, so when we set out a group of trials where we changed the look and feel of the stores, so we effectively refurbished the store. We changed how the products are displayed, and we also looked at the sort of space allocation. At the end of that trial period, what we did is dissected down to try and identify what was driving the sales, and the thing that we were getting the biggest traction on was space reallocation and being able to drive more sales in gifting and celebration essentials.
Effectively, so that's where we spent all of last year, and effectively, when we looked at the space allocation, there were about just over 700 stores that needed to have space aligned. The others didn't need space aligned, either because the space was right or the size of the store didn't allow us basically to do that. So the space realignment as a one-off fix has been complete, and as a result of that, you can see. So we but the point to that was cards will continue to grow. So we whatever SKU in card we took out, there was an alternative card that a customer could purchase. We're very disciplined about that, and that's why we saw card sales continue to grow at 4.8%.
But then, gifting grew disproportionately at above 15%, and celebration at just shy of 7%. So I think that is effectively the strategy working. What we've then done is said, right, the store refurbishment, if you like, so, making the store, you know, look better, it's very difficult to attribute sales growth to a store refurbishment. And if I go back throughout my career, this will be my, I don't know, seventh time I've tried to prove it, and you can't. But what we do know is that you do need to make investments. So we have set a minimum standard, and we will spend a small amount of money where we need to, but all new stores will open with that format.
So the store we've just opened in Cheapside, down the road, the one in Westfield, all new stores open with those changes because we can do that, you know, within the CapEx of a new store. And then going forward, the way we should think about this, this is now business as usual. So we will assess the space range, the display, literally on a constant ongoing business. There's no more, you know, catch-up to do.
Would you like me to address the second question?
Sure
... on mix? So yes, we saw a 7.7 like-for-like growth. And within that, celebration essentials, gifting grew by 9.8% and, cards by 4.8%. The mix is still roughly 50/50. As we communicated in the CMD last May, that is consistent with where we expect it to be, but our trajectory is that non-card sales will continue to outgrow card sales, and the mix will shift to about 53%, 47%, 7%. What we have to keep in mind is that we are operating in a GBP 13.2 billion celebration occasions market, and not only in a GBP 1.4 billion card market. In this bigger market, we have a market share of 6%, so we see plenty of growth opportunity in this particular market.
I'm going to turn to some of the questions online. I think we've partially answered this first question, one for you, Matthias. Why has the company opted for dividends versus buybacks? Could you explain the rationale?
Glad to. We deliberated on that. We consulted with current shareholders and asked what is important for them. Clearly, having been through a certain history and dividends having been a big part of Card Factory, what Card Factory stands for, there was unanimous feedback, overwhelming feedback, that reinstating dividends should be one of the number one key priorities. And so that informed us in our decision-making. There was a second part?
It was just, it was about why one versus the other.
Right. So basically, that led us to decide or recommend to the Board that we should reinstate dividend, making sure, just to reinforce that, that it's a regular dividend, it's reliable, it will be a progressive dividend.
Right. It's now just a coincidence that I'm holding the iPad and all the questions are for you.
I'm sure. I'm sure.
Um
I'm keeping score here.
Okay, very good.
... we'll get to your questions.
Like-for-like revenue in half two was flat, and EPS down. What impacted previous positive momentum?
I'm sorry, could you-
Like-for-like revenue in half two was flat and EPS down. What impacted previously positive momentum?
So let me maybe just rephrase the question. I understand. We've seen some really, really strong like-for-like growth in the second half last year. Part of that was being behind the readjustment from online to High Street. And clearly, we've made progress overall in the second half. On an EPS point of view, we, as we said, we are balancing investment in the future offsetting inflation with improving our bottom line. So EPS development in the second half was absolutely in line with expectations.
Very good. There's a question about why we have no trading statements in November and whether this is something that we expect to do going forward. So I think since I've been here, we've only had one trading statement in November. That was the year before last, and that was because it was necessary for us to do a profit upgrade. So outside of our key set pieces, we will, you know, inform the market, you know, as and when things are necessary. Can you please talk about CapEx a little? In particular, how does the GBP 27.8 million break down into maintenance CapEx versus growth CapEx? And in that context of growth CapEx, what is your return on capital hurdle?
So at last May, at the CMD, we outlined that we'll have a CapEx spending of GBP 25 million going forward. That includes refreshing our IT infrastructure, continuing to invest in our capability in data. That includes our store estate, opening 90 net new stores. Actually, we're opening more new stores as we are streamlining our portfolio and closing other stores. That includes refitting stores in line with Darcy, with Darcy outlined in terms of overall store layout improvement, and it includes our investment in online. The GBP 27.8 million that we spent last year includes all these component, somewhat probably disproportionate, in investing in new stores that were higher than what we had originally anticipated in our glide path.
Very good. How much of the PBT margin headwind do you expect when your energy—when our energy hedge finishes in September, based on current energy pricing?
... Well, our energy pricing is hedged throughout this fiscal year. So, in line with our hedging policy, we have a hedging policy that ensures that we have security for our planning, so there's no energy risk for FY 2025.
Okay, very good. From the many initiatives in the new plan, what has worked well and also less so? What learnings have taken from the store initiatives implemented, and the new merchandising strategy? So I think that, if I think about the whole plan, in total, and of course, you know, once you have a plan, it never survives the first contact on the battlefield. And we have a process of iterating as we go. So, what was you know, before I joined, there wasn't really a long-term strategy. It was, you know, open stores every year. And so we have a process where we iterate that every year. But if I stand back and say, what did we announce on CMD? Where are we behind and ahead?
So we're definitely ahead and made really good progress on all the Store Evolution and really you know, optimizing the breadth of range, the depth of range, getting the pricing architecture right, as well as bringing on new products. You know, making our decisions much more data-led and customer-led. This used to be a products-led company. It's now a customer-led company, so making really good progress there. Culture is ahead of where I thought we could get to. I just think that we have such strong engagement from colleagues, fifth best company to work for last year. I think online is taking a little longer, so I think when the market post-COVID continued to decline beyond where I thought it would do.
But nonetheless, you know, the initiatives are bearing fruit, but there's quite a lot of work still for us to do. But when we set out the growth targets of GBP 80 million from stores, GBP 30 million from online, and GBP 80 million from partnerships, we were conservative in online for the very reason I've just outlined. And then partnerships, I think I'm really pleased that the offer is resonating, and I think there is, you know, the international opportunity, you know, is there. So, I mean, all told, you know, some stuff up, some down, but I would say net-net, we're on track. So, I think we've covered off a lot of these. So there's a question on Capital Markets Day last year.
You defined attractive markets which you'd like to expand. Are you considering a bigger investment in any of those markets? Now, I think the plans that we've outlined, I think at the CMD, we think are right. We're, you know, on track for those in partnerships. It's back weighted to the second half or to later, in the latter years in the plan. I think that's still right. I always said when I put the plan, many British companies have lost a lot of money going abroad, and many British companies have made money going abroad, and we want to be, we want to be one of the latter. So I favor a disciplined, conservative approach in a capital, in a capital-light way, in order to exploit the opportunity. I think we'll...
We're coming up to time, so I'll make this the last question. Do you have any data you can share on the levels of internal colleague engagement and retention, which may be benefiting from enhancements to the proposition in formats? How are your customer satisfaction scores trending? Is Card Factory seeing a step up in shrink and incidents like other retailers? So, just looking at each one of those. So in terms of colleague engagement, our main measure of colleague engagement is the annual customer satisfaction survey that we do, which is a very comprehensive tool and system that we use through Best Companies. And we have seen us go from nowhere to about 100, to about 120, and then 125 last year.
What we do is we ask the questions, but we listen to the answers. But we don't ask people for feedback unless you're prepared to listen to it. We've been systematically responding to and also innovating on what our customers need. For example, last year we launched Career Pathways. Every single colleague, regardless of your background, regardless of your education, whatever position you're in, there's a very clear, detailed path of how you can progress if you want to, and we make, you know, training opportunities available to them. But also the Board, you know, we have our own listening forums and vehicles internally, and we have a whole communications cascade that we do.
We'll have a town hall meeting with all store managers and all Support Centre factory and warehouse colleagues, I think tomorrow. So we have this sort of regular cadence. So we do get. And we, and our colleagues are vocal, right? They kind of tell us, so kind of pleased with that. I think in terms of customer satisfaction, you know, we have very good Net Promoter Scores. We have put in a customer feedback, a sort of Tell Card Factory, where customers give us usually anonymous feedback, but others. And of course, we monitor everything that comes in, you know, through our contact center. And notwithstanding, we make mistakes like every retailer does.
Generally, we have probably some of the highest Net Promoter Scores, you know, in the industry. And then the last question around kind of shrink and incidents in stores. Look, like, I think with like all retailers, we have definitely seen an increase in some challenging behavior you know in stores. We are doing everything that we need to do to make sure that our colleagues feel and are safe, whether that's CCTV, personal safety devices, training, conflict training, all of the things you'd expect us to do. But we're also working with the rest of the industry and with government wherever we need to so that we you know we can support our colleagues.
Again, I know that we've got over 150 colleagues on the call, so, once again, thank you very much for everything you do every day, colleagues. So I think that concludes today's presentation. Matthias and I will hang around for a little bit if anybody wants to ask anything else. And just really thank you for attending here in person, and also thank you to all of those that have attended online. And, if we don't see you before, we'll see you at the next event.