Good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll begin the presentation with a summary before handing to Palmer, who'll cover the financials. You'll be able to ask questions on our conference call, which is at 9:00 A.M. U.K. time. Details are on our website and in our press release. Compass has emerged from the pandemic as a stronger and more resilient business. We've reached an important milestone of revenues now exceeding 2019 levels. We're achieving record levels of new business, whilst client retention continues to improve. The market has never been stronger. With operational complexities and inflation continuing to drive increased outsourcing, we're successfully capitalizing on the resulting growth opportunities with our leading culinary offer and strong ESG and digital capabilities. We've very exciting prospects for accelerated growth above historical levels. Now on to this year's highlights. The group's performance surpassed our expectations.
Full year organic revenue was up by 37.5%, with Q4 revenue at 116% to its 2019 level. We signed GBP 2.5 billion of new business, with around 45% coming from first-time outsourcing and increased client retention to another record level of 96.4%. As a result, net new business growth accelerated, reaching 7.5% for the full year. Our operating margin improved to 6.2% and our operating profit doubled. Having completed our GBP 500 million share buyback and given our low leverage and strong cash flows, we're today announcing a further GBP 250 million buyback. That's to be completed in the first half and takes the total program to GBP 750 million. Now over to Palmer.
Thanks, Dominic. Good morning, everyone. Starting with revenue, overall group organic growth of 37.5% was slightly ahead of our guidance of around 35%. The most significant driver continues to be like-for-like volume recovery, where we experienced a more accelerated recovery than expected. While just under 2/3 of the growth was volume recovery, over 1/3 of the growth was from our actions on net new business and pricing. We are particularly excited about the net new business, which is what we view as perhaps the most important metric. Our 7.5% delivered during the year is 5.7% on a 2019 basis and compares to an historical level of around 3%. This significant step up is attributable to each of our ongoing growth-related initiatives as well as the strong outsourcing environment.
Drilling down into the verticals, we saw good revenue recovery across all of our sectors. B&I and sports and leisure performed particularly well, exiting the year at 106% and 125% of 2019 revenues respectively. The recovery in B&I was due to both employees returning to offices and strong levels of net new business growth. With all sectors and regions now trading above pre-COVID levels, this will be the last time we disclose these metrics. We delivered a great performance across all of our regions. Organic growth was highest in North America at 44%, benefiting from excellent net new business of 9%. Operating margin increased by 180 basis points to 7.2%.
Net new business was also very strong in Europe at 5.6%, significantly higher than historical rates. This reflects both higher new business wins and an improving retention rate. Dominic will talk more about this in a minute. We also experienced good growth in rest of world, reflecting Net new business of 3.6% with double digit like-for-like growth driven by high levels of pricing. What was particularly pleasing is that Net new growth accelerated across all of our regions through the year. This gives us a great platform entering fiscal 2023. We've made good progress managing the heightened levels of inflation across the business. Last year, we faced a blended inflation rate of around 9%. We mitigated some of this inflation with operational tools, including menu management, utilizing our scale in food procurement and digital innovation.
There's always an element of pricing, and we worked closely with our clients in this regard. Where appropriate, we are seeking to increase the cadence of pricing on fixed-price contracts. We're getting good levels of pricing overall, particularly on the consumer side, and we continue to demonstrate value versus the high street. This is an important point and one we highlight for our clients and consumers as it helps them and drives our participation rates. Of course, inflation is a double-edged sword. While being challenging for our operators, it also drives increased levels of outsourcing. We must view inflation in a balanced manner with these areas in mind. Despite mobilization costs due to higher new business growth and ongoing inflationary pressures, group margin improved through the year, reaching 6.5% in the second half.
We will now look to progress the margin from this base in fiscal 2023. As a result of our strong organic growth and margin improvement, operating profit doubled. For fiscal 2023, we anticipate the interest charge will increase to around GBP 145 million, reflecting higher gross debt and the recent rise in interest rates. This increase should be largely offset by a modest reduction in our effective tax rate. Turning to cash flow, where our conversion was strong at 85% in line with our usual pre-COVID levels. Although CapEx was only 2.7% of revenue, much of this was attributable to timing. We continue to anticipate around 3.5% of revenue for both fiscal 2023 and ongoing.
As we highlighted at the half year, the swing in working capital included GBP 110 million of payroll timings, which will reverse in the coming years. Excluding this, there was a small underlying outflow, and we anticipate the same for fiscal 2023. As a result of this strong cash performance, leverage reduced to 1.3 x. You will recognize our capital allocation model. First and foremost, we invest in CapEx and M&A to drive growth and to enhance our strong portfolio of brands and capabilities. We continue to review M&A opportunities in all regions, but remain disciplined in our approach. As evidenced by the share buyback, excess capital is then returned to shareholders while keeping leverage within the target range. Our strong balance sheet and good cash generation enables us to grow shareholder returns.
We've increased our full year dividend to GBP 31.5 per share, and announced a further share buyback of GBP 250 million to take place in the first half of fiscal 2023, thus taking our total program to GBP 750 million. We are aware of the current macroeconomic uncertainties and higher interest rate environment. We are taking a modest approach on buybacks right now. Inclusive of the increased dividend and buyback, we expect to stay on the mid to low end of our leverage range. We believe this is prudent at the moment and gives us optionality as we move forward. Now turning to guidance. As you know, growth and margin are linked, and we are focused on profit as the ultimate driver of shareholder value.
For fiscal 2023, we expect operating profit growth to be above 20% on a constant currency basis. We continue to see strong outsourcing trends, which we are focused on capturing. This will drive strong organic growth, which we expect to be around 15%, weighted towards the first half due to the weaker comparatives. While we expect margin to be above 6.5%, the extent of the progression will depend on the rate of net new business growth, volume recovery, and levels of inflation. Thank you, and now back to Dominic.
Thanks, Palmer. We have a clear strategy to capture the growth momentum. The combination of a significant market opportunity and the increasing operational complexities are leading to favorable outsourcing dynamics. Our offer and focus are resulting in continued strong new business wins and higher client retention. Although the macroeconomic outlook looks uncertain, our portfolio is resilient with more than half of our revenues in non-cyclical sectors. In these challenging times, we remain committed to supporting our people, as well as continuing our sustainability journey to net zero by 2050. We're confident about the prospects for our business and are well-positioned for long-term sustainable growth. The food services market is at least GBP 220 billion, with further opportunities in vending, delivering solutions and support services. About 3/4 of the market is still self-operated or in the hands of smaller regional players.
A common misconception when it comes to outsourcing is that it's simply about cost reduction. The food services industry is becoming ever more complex, with increasing regulation around health and safety, net zero targets or employee well-being. Supply chain disruption, labor shortages, or the need to outsource risk are also key decision drivers. Clients are looking for partners with wider capabilities in tech and data to increase commercial benefits in their own operations. This long list of pressures, including inflation and increasing energy costs, are unlikely to diminish in the near- term and will continue to contribute to the strong outsourcing dynamics. Our growth focus has resulted in another year of strong new business wins. In the last 12 months, we won GBP 2.5 billion of new business, which is a 20% increase on 2021. 45% of these wins came from first-time outsourcing.
With retailer activities returning to pre-pandemic levels, we're particularly excited about increased retention across all regions. Retention is up by 100 basis points on last year, which is testament to the strength of our offer and of our client relationships. As a result of these factors, net new business growth accelerated to 7.1% in the second half of the year when rebased to 2019 levels. While these elevated levels of new business require mobilization support, thereby slowing our margin recovery, it's extremely positive for revenue and profit growth and for our long-term prospects. North America continued to perform very strongly. Rebased net new business was 6.8%, 2 percentage points higher than its historical levels. The growth continues to be skewed to first-time outsourcing in the strongest sectors of healthcare, senior living and education.
We're also increasingly excited by the growth contribution from Europe, from broadly flat historically to 4% today. The increase in net new growth is partly due to the challenging environment, but more importantly due to self-help measures and investments we've made in people, brands and processes. We're also more proactive in our approach to new business wins and client retention, resulting in a larger sales pipeline and better conversion rates. While North America and Europe are performing particularly well, we shouldn't forget net new business in the rest of world has also stepped up, reaching 3% this year. Growth trends are extremely positive across all of our regions. The large market opportunity and ongoing investment mean with confidence in maintaining this higher level of growth. We have a resilient portfolio and are an even more focused business.
After recently divesting of four central and eastern European businesses and exiting Russia, we now operate in 40 countries with around 50% of our revenues in the non-cyclical sectors. DOR, which is now largely production sites, is also benefiting from further investments and should remain an attractive sector for us. Whilst the economic environment is uncertain, the combination of strong outsourcing trends as well as our geographic and sector mix should provide more resilience. Our digital capability is helping unlock growth. As showcased in our recent digital deep dive, which can be viewed on our website. We've now been investing in digital for nearly a decade and have strong in-house capability that allows us to create a bespoke offer for our clients. Digital innovation is a right to entry in all RFPs, and it helps us win and retain clients.
Digital is also allowing us to increase penetration and average transaction values, as well as reducing food costs and increasing labor efficiencies. We'll continue to scale up our efforts across all markets. We're fully conscious of the challenges our colleagues are facing in the current difficult climate. Our regions are providing support, which ranges from free food to emergency financial support, enhanced fuel packages, and increased wages. In North America, we operate Same day pay, which provides over 15,000 colleagues with access to earnings on the same day. In the U.K., where we are an accredited Real Living Wage service provider, we pay those we directly employ the real Living Wage.
We also advocate for real Living Wage. In the past 18 months, we've worked in partnership with over 300 clients, resulting in close to 30,000 colleagues or 60% of our workforce being paid the real Living Wage and above. We're continuing our sustainability journey to net zero by 2050, and have recently issued two sustainability bonds with the proceeds being used to support responsible sourcing, food waste reduction efforts, and other decarbonization projects. In summary, 2022 is a year of strong operational and financial results. The positive outsourcing trends are continuing, and combined with our market-leading offer, this is supporting accelerated growth and record client retention.
We're managing inflationary pressures and our portfolio is resilient. Based on our confidence in the business, we're rewarding shareholders with increased returns. In conclusion, we're excited about the future. The group is extremely well-placed for further progress with revenue and profit growth above historical rates. I look forward to speaking to you on the call at 9:00 A.M. Thank you.