Good day, and welcome to the Currys Peak Trading Update 2022 Webcast and Conference Call. I will now hand you over to Alex Baldock, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Emma, and good morning, everybody. You heard in November that we're on a journey towards a much more valuable business by making the most of a winning business model and as a stronger business now. Today, in that context, we're gonna take you through peak trading, where we're outperforming a challenging market. First, Bruce will talk through the numbers.
Thank you, Alex. Good morning, all. Let me start by reminding you of our key cash flow drivers that we spoke about at the Capital Markets Day. Our focus is fivefold, steady revenue growth driven by a wide range of initiatives, stable gross margin, operating cost reduction which will get us to our target 4% EBIT margin, controlled capital expenditure of 1.5% of sales, and minimal exceptional cash costs. During the first half, we very much operated in line with these principles. We enjoyed strong growth compared to pre-pandemic levels with group year-on-two-year like-for-like at +15%. Our UK&I electrical business was at +21% and international at +19%. Our adjusted EBIT was at GBP 91 million, which is flat year-on-year, and that was despite GBP 16 million of rate headwinds.
We achieved that through stabilizing and growing our U.K. gross margin and taking costs out of the business. We achieved strong free cash flow of GBP 185 million, which left us with net cash of GBP 250 million. Very healthy position and up from year-end. Finally, our total indebtedness was GBP 1.4 billion. That's a further GBP 240 million down on year end, as we've seen pension deficit reduce and lease liabilities fall. Moving on to peak performance. The 10 weeks to the 8th of January. As you've seen this morning, we're presenting a strong performance that we had in the first half, decelerating over peak, very much caused by a softer market. In the U.K. electrical business, our overall year-on-year sales fell over peak by 7% compared to a market that fell by 10%.
Sales were still +3% over two years, and that's +13% year -to- date over two years. In the Nordics, sales fell by a smaller amount, -5%, off a very strong base, and that strong base is demonstrated by the fact that we achieved 16% positive over two years. Finally, Greece, strong year-on-year performance, +18%, although obviously the Greek stores were heavily impacted last year due to closures. In terms of our outlook, based on peak trading, we've nudged our guidance down to around GBP 155 million PBT targets, and that's down from GBP 160 million that we previously stated. Our capital expenditure is consistent at around GBP 170 million.
We've taken down our net exceptionals cash cost from GBP 70 million down to GBP 50 million, partly due to the great job the team are doing on lowering our lease exit cost from store closures, but also the settlement of an outstanding dispute that wasn't budgeted. We still aim to finish the year with at least GBP 100 million of net cash, and we will commence a GBP 75 million annual buyback from today. It's important to bring all of this back to our medium term targets. Everything that you've heard in relation to both the first half and peak leaves us confident that we can achieve our medium term goals in terms of steady growth, stable margin and lower cost to achieve 4% EBIT, controlled capital expenditure and minimal new cash exceptionals.
This will allow us to deliver annual sustainable free cash flow of over GBP 250 million a year by our financial year 2024 to grow shareholder returns. Let me hand back to Alex.
Thanks, Bruce. A few minutes from me now on the market, this peak and how we traded through it, and I'm gonna go through this at a fair clip, before we get to your questions. As we flagged in December, the market was softer this peak, but even with that, it's worth mentioning that it is larger than pre-pandemic. In the U.K., 8% larger during peak, and year- to- date, 17% larger, than pre-pandemic. I guess the question is, how much of this larger market will stick? We do expect some to. Trends like hybrid working are not going away. Gaming's been one of the standout categories, this peak and reinforces our belief that a bigger slice of the consumer's entertainment dollar is gonna be spent at home.
There are other drivers too, like faster replacement cycles, the larger installed base, new product innovation from suppliers. We do expect some of this to stick, but we're not depending on it. For all that, this Christmas, the market was softer, 10% down in the U.K., year-on-year and more volatile. The one question that this raises from this softer peak is Christmas less important now? You could look at this picture and conclude that in the last five years, the average peak week has gone from being 2.1x the sales of a normal week, to 1.7x. Now, maybe this is just a pandemic peculiarity. In the last two years, availability shortages, some pull forward and maybe, this peak will revert, but maybe not.
Maybe this is a sign that technology is a less discretionary item now, a more essential year-round category, less peaky, which obviously would be good for this business in more than one way. I mean, we don't know yet. We'll know in the next couple of years, but this is certainly one thing that we intend to keep a close eye on. That's the market. What of Currys within it? Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, first of all, sales, as you see here, have been up and down during peak and have been softer than expected, especially in the U.K., where we're just growing 3% year-on-year in U.K. electricals. But in that softer market, we've gained market share.
Fully 100 basis points of market share gain during peak, and that's 60 basis points year- to- date. That leaves us, as you heard from Bruce, still on track for the steady growth that we've committed to for this full year, and circa 11% year- to- date year-on-year, arguably a little bit better than steady, but that's what we've been able to do. Now, some products did sell well. I mean, it's been a gaming Christmas. I mean, consoles have flown out of the shops. VR has broken out of niche and very much into the mainstream. Appliances, large and small, have done really well. And in fridge freezers, for one thing, I think we sold 24,000 American-style fridge freezers, about half the total market. Range cookers have been great.
Bean to cup, Dyson hair care, and so on. There have been some stars in the show and mobiles. Many of the mobile products like Pixel 6, iPhone 13 family, Samsung Galaxy A have had good Christmases as well as we start the recovery in our mobile business and get that back into growth. But others obviously have struggled in the overall context of a market. I talked about a stronger business at the start, and this is an ever-stronger business, and we can show that by our progress in a couple of big strategic priorities, omni-channel, notably. Omni-channel wins, we've asserted, and it did again during this peak period. Yes, more customers are shopping online, but we're winning online.
As you see on the left-hand side here in the U.K., we're showing decent growth and good share gains, online. Equally, stores have reopened strongly, as you see bottom left here. The channel mix has reverted to the circa 50/50 that we expected. Importantly, though, omni-channel is about bringing online and stores together, giving every customer the best of both. We've made excellent progress here during peak on the big three customer benefits of omni-channel, whether it's as far as the customer is concerned, never being out of stock in store, online in-store sales are up over 50%. Whether it's getting technology to the customer right now, the U.K. order and collect sales up over 170%.
Helping wherever the customer is on their sofa, face-to-face advice from an expert via our 24/7 video shopping service, ShopLive, which continues to make customers happier. They're four times likelier to buy something, and they spend on average 60% more than unassisted online. Good progress in omni-channel and excellent progress in services, notably credit, where our adoption level of 13.9% during peak was fully 350 basis points up on peak last year. More customers are choosing our credit. Importantly, for gross margin stability, we're getting better at bringing credit to customers online as well. Both online and stores are now at over 13%, and the gap in adoption levels between online and stores has narrowed from 3.1 to 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.
Really good example of leveling up profitability between channels and really important for gross margin stability, as I say. Our confidence that this progress is sustainable is further reinforced by happier colleagues making for happier customers. We've got record levels now of colleague satisfaction. That's new data that sees us get up to world-class levels on the left-hand side. That's good because it helps produce happier customers. As you see on the right-hand side here, over peak, which can be a pretty challenging time of year for customer experience, a full five points of gain year- on- year, which makes us happy. Behind the scenes of all of this, operationally our best ever peak as well. IT stability has never been stronger.
Customer service levels, whether it's in the contact centers, repairs, returns, have been really strong, and our delivery customer satisfaction is significantly improved. Finally, good progress on sustainability as well, with scope one and two emissions down 44% year-on-year in half one. Good progress overall towards an ever stronger business. In summary, what would I say? Well, yes, the market has been disappointing this peak, but it's still bigger than it was pre-pandemic, and maybe peak matters less now.
Currys, yes, our peak sales were softer than we would have liked, but they're still growing steadily, and we're still gaining market share, and we're still showing progress on the big strategic priorities that matter so much for stickier and more valuable customer relationships, omni-channel and services, with happier colleagues and customers, and playing our part in society too. All of which means that we should look forward with confidence to a longer term, just as we said at the Capital Markets Day in November, a stronger business that can make the most of our market and more and more we are doing so. With that, we'll pause and move to your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question over the telephone, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad.
Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question comes from Andrew Porteous from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrew.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Hi, Alex. Hi, Bruce. A couple of questions from me. I guess the first one, I mean, how are you thinking about the sort of the year ahead? I mean, there's obviously a lot of moving parts to that, but obviously a lot of inflation around in sort of non-discretionary areas at the moment. Are you expecting a tough year ahead from that perspective? Perhaps any color you can give us around how you're thinking about events, but particularly the product cycle as well. Is there a lot of products we should be excited about in the year ahead that might support demand? A second question, more of a technical one.
Just obviously the pension deficits come down a bit, I think, and just wondering how you're thinking about the payments that you put into that, going forward, and how we should be thinking about that from a cash perspective.
Thanks, Andrew. Bruce, do you wanna take the second question first? I'll deal with the other one.
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, good morning, Andrew. From a pension perspective, obviously we're pleased to see the deficit come down. The contributions that we're making to the pension scheme and the arrangements we have, we believe will allow us to manage that deficit down over the course of the next three or four years. Our intention right now, and certainly the agreement we have with the pension scheme, is to continue to support to the value of GBP 78 million a year. That will continue.
Thanks. To zoom out to your broader question, Andrew, about the year ahead, I mean, we're being prudent with our outlook. I mean, I think what we've seen this peak is a bumpy customer demand. It's good news, the GDP numbers that we've seen come out today, but we have seen in our space technology and for bigger ticket purchases, patchier consumer confidence. That hasn't been helped obviously by Omicron, but probably more substantially we've seen more concerns from consumers about the cost of living and of real wages and disposable income that goes with that. Of course, we've also seen some supply disruption too, although we've coped very well with that supply disruption. All of that's contributed to a market that was 10% down year-on-year.
We may have performed strongly in that softer market, and you've heard that we have. We're still growing, gaining market share, customer satisfaction, traded well, and so on, but we're not immune from it. The uncertainty ahead is one of the reasons we've been just a nudge more prudent in our outlook, because there are different scenarios of how this could pan out, and we're being prudent on cost of living, on real wages, on discretionary income, of how much of that's going towards tech, the housing market and consumer confidence and the like. As I say, we've got some prudence in our outlook, but that's for the year ahead.
I think what we're showing with, for example, the GBP 75 million buyback that we're starting today is confidence in the medium term. You heard from Bruce that we remain absolutely committed to the steady growth, which we're showing now, to the stable growth margins, which we're showing now, to the costs out that we've made a good start on, as well as to the normalization of CapEx and exceptionals that gets us to our longer term goals. Finally, you asked about color in the year ahead. Yeah, we're pretty excited actually about what's coming out, and this is one of the benefits, I suppose, of being in the sweet spot of global R&D. You'll remember from the CMD that seven out of ten of the world's biggest R&D spenders are our suppliers.
We're hearing from them that they're excited about the year ahead. They're investing behind it, and there's plenty to come, whether it's in fold and flip mobile devices, for example, whether it's continued innovation in small appliances. Some of the innovations in health and beauty and hair care we've seen are pretty exciting. There's new OLED technology coming out in TVs and gaming. Even though we've seen the big console launches this year, things like Call of Duty coming out this year is always a big driver. Virtual reality, the cycle there is looking ever more exciting even before we start thinking about 5G. I mean, there's plenty of reasons for confidence that this new product development cycle is gonna stay healthier as a result of the investment of our suppliers.
You know, all of that said, you know, we're still choosing to be prudent in the outlook.
Thanks for the color, Alex. Really helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Ben Hunt from Investec.
Morning, Ben.
Morning there. Just three questions if that's okay. Firstly, on the first question, you've given us good color on the demand side of things. I was wondering if you could just give us a bit of color on the supply aspect and to what extent your performance was constrained by supply. Second question is, you know, despite the top line being a little bit wobbly, you know, you've had a good profitable quarter it appears. The downgrade is fairly modest. Just wondering where the cost savings came from.
The final question, any color you can give us on the progress you've had with expanding out the ranges or the SKUs, as it were, from what you were talking about at the Capital Markets Day and where we're at with that.
Okay. Let me hand over to Bruce to take the second question first, and then we can. I'll deal with the other two.
Thank you, Alex. Hi, Ben. As you say, clearly the top line has been softer than we hoped, but we've been very careful to make sure that we've been able to mitigate that downside and therefore limit the impact both to profit and cash. In terms of how have we done that, well obviously it's focused on and continue to focus on stable margins, and you've heard from Alex about credit and services being successful. Specifically in terms of cost, it's about being, I think, laser focused. As soon as it was clear that the volumes that were occurring through the business, we took action on marketing spend, specifically PPC, to make sure that we weren't chasing sales in a softer market.
We were very careful in terms of both the colleague build and also the number of colleagues' hours that were in our stores, and we did exactly the same within our supply chain. As much as we possibly can, I mean, clearly sometimes there's limits to the flexibility we have, but wherever we did have flexibility, we managed our cost right across the business.
I think that's right. I mean, one of the things we flagged at the CMD is that we're building extra flexibility into the model so that we can dial up and dial down the number of hours that colleagues work, but also the compensation bill with a greater proportion of the variable pay. That's the only other element I'd add to that. I mean, you asked specifically about costs, Ben. Of course, the other means of protecting profitability when there are ups and downs in the market on the top line side is through gross margin stability. I think one of the things that we've done a really good job of during this peak is to continue to level up profitability between channels.
That's been a big feature of our gross margin stabilization. You've seen the stats on doing much better at selling credit and other services online, and Bruce referenced the supply chain efficiencies, some of which flow through into the GM line. On the supply question, I mean, of course, if we'd had a perfect supply situation, we could have sold more. But I'd say a couple of things. First of all, supply disruption wasn't limited to product, although there was some disruption of product as I'll come on to, but also availability of people in the warehouses, HGV drivers, trainers, containers, all of it. So there's been some supply constraints across the board.
I think the team has done an excellent job of riding out these supply chain challenges, whether it's the improvements in our supply chain or whether it's the fact we've made the most of our number one position with suppliers to make sure that we've got preferred access to stock when it's scarce. The proof of that is in the market share gains that we've seen over peak in the continuing steady growth that we're on for year- to- date, and the customer satisfaction improvements that we've seen. All of those things are evidence to support what we're claiming, that we have preferred access to scarce stock. Now, did we get everything we wanted? Of course not. You asked me if I want more PS5s and Xbox Series X and Oculus Quest 2.
Yes, I do. We did get more than our fair share of those, but I could be greedy and always want more. Some of the Apple computing product and mobile was in fairly scarce supply. This is where really good commercial teams earn their bacon in making sure that our scale and our importance to suppliers, even beyond our scale, is reflected in preferred access. As I say, that's been pleasing in terms of market share gains and the continued growth. On the expanded range, we're going to come back at the year-end and give an update on that. I think what we said is that we are on track for 26,000 SKUs in the U.K. versus 12 a couple of years ago.
There's a nice steady growth, arguably better than steady, in our SKU count as well. That's something with further upside as we talked about.
Great. Many thanks.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Simon Bowler from Numis. Please go ahead.
Morning, Simon.
Morning. At the risk of starting with a really boring one, UK electricals like last year was +8% and then is -7% this year. I'm just trying to work out how the two-year was +3%. Kind of similar math applied in the other divisions. Just wanna check I'm not missing anything in terms of how that's being calculated or what's feeding into it.
Yeah. Hi, Simon. Yes. The difference is travel, the travel business.
Okay. Yeah. Of course. Okay, fine. I guess either way, if I heard you correctly, you said the market was up 8% on a two-year on-year view. I guess therefore, kind of either way, that kind of +3% would look to be kind of share loss on a two-year view. Is that the correct way to read that? What do you think is kind of going on from that perspective?
Yes, that is the correct way to read that. I mean, what we've obviously gained share year-over-year, sort of 100 basis points, in the U.K. during peak and 60 basis points up year to date. Now, year-on-two-year, the explanation is a simple one. It's the channel mix shift in the market. Year-on-two-year, we've gained market share in each channel. We've gained market share in stores, we've gained market shares online. Obviously during that time, the markets shifted quite violently from just over a third to nearly , well over half of sales online.
Mathematically, it's a bit odd, but it's how it works out that we can gain market share year on year in each channel, but still be down overall. I think the main, I mean, I suppose the main message that we take from the market numbers is irrespective of the channel shift, which we've had to ride, and we have, we're back into market share growth, and we're back into obviously with over a quarter of the U.K. market, a pretty strong leader over the competition.
One quick one on cost, I just wanted to touch on mobile, if okay. On the cost side of things, you mentioned some kind of variable cost element. Was there any kind of reversal of bonus accrual that you made in the first half that's kind of captured within your full year expectations?
Simon, no. There are no assumptions in that to get to the 155. Clearly, that will provide some protection on the downside, but that isn't assumed right now within our targets.
Perfect. Thank you. Finally, on mobile, that looks to have been in kinda like bright growth in the period. I mean, I think mobile revenues are only gonna be down kind of 10%, 15% or so year-on-year versus, I think originally when you closed the stores, we would have expected the mobile business to kinda halve year-on-year into this year as well. Can you talk a bit around what's going on there? Given that much stronger revenue performance, I presume profitability in that division is also kind of far more robust than we would have been expecting this year. Can you give a sense of kinda how far off your breakeven target you think you would be for that division this year?
Let me take the qualitative side of the answer first before I pass on to Bruce for anything that he might want to add, Simon. Listen, on mobile, we're quite pleased with our progress. I mean, you know the story that we set out at the Capital Markets Day, and that's how it's panning out. We're out from underneath the old restrictive contracts. We've integrated the mobile division into Currys, and you can see that when you walk into a store. We're ever closer to being genuinely one business behind the scenes as well as how we present to customers, which obviously has top line and cost advantages.
We've soft launched at this stage the new mobile offer, which has been contributing to getting the mobile category back into growth this peak. Look, we're not getting too carried away at this stage. As you know, we don't need the mobile category to be a standout success for us to achieve our longer term ambitions, but we're quietly quite pleased with our early progress.
Yeah. Simon, we don't disclose mobile separately. As you know, it's now a fully integrated part of the business, so we're not gonna call that out separately. But we are certainly on track for the mobile business to break even during this financial year. I think we've said previously by the final quarter, and we're confident we will achieve that.
Okay. Cool. Just a quick follow-up on that. I presume a good chunk of that mobile business is kinda post-paid sales. What I think one of the big cost out buckets had been kind of removing some of the IT infrastructure to do with that sort of sales base. Can you just talk around how that's unfolding, whether there's actually an opportunity to keep that business so the cost doesn't come out, but obviously it still ends up being profitable or whether you can still take that cost out?
You're right. We are continuing to sell post-pay at the moment, and there will be opportunities for us to make further savings within the mobile business as we transition to our new platform across both online and retail. At the moment, we're around 50% there. As you know, we've transitioned online, but we're still selling the traditional post-pay within our stores. As we flip across early parts of next year, that will be the point that we're able to close those systems. That's absolutely part of the cut GBP 300 million worth of cost saving target that we spoke about at the Capital Markets Day.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Simon.
Thank you. We'll now go to our next question from Richard Chamberlain from RBC. Please go ahead.
Morning, Richard.
Oh, thanks. Morning, Alex. Morning, Bruce. Yeah, three from me, please, if that's okay. First of all, I'm just going back to sort of availability. Can you maybe give an idea of in-store availability during the period, i.e., you know, percentage of products available to buy versus those being shown in store or however you measure that and where that's sort of running at versus the historic average. Second, are you planning to change your approach to sourcing and sort of freight cost management in the light of ongoing supply chain bottlenecks? And then third, what sort of rental terms are you getting on the Currys estate at the moment in terms of store renewals?
It sounds like you're getting a sort of better exit position in terms of Carphone exit, call it or lower costs from the Carphone estate, legacy estate. What about the Currys rental situation? Thanks.
Great. Yes, let me pick up the last point, Richard. You're absolutely right. The exits of the Carphone Warehouse stores have been very successful, and we're really pleased with the terms that we've been able to negotiate for the sites both in the U.K. and in Ireland. In terms of rental terms, we continue to have great success at negotiating down our rental terms as our Currys stores come up for renegotiation. I think during the first half, we had sort of high single digit number of sites that were renegotiated and achieved very healthy reductions.
As to your availability question, and you ask about in-store availability, and I think the big change here is that matters less than it did because we've got much more flexibility to sell the full online range in every store. There's been two important things there. There's the so-called online in stores. That when you walk into a Currys, you'll see the colleagues with a tablet, and one of the things they can do from that is sell from the full online range. Now we've improved our delivery performance as well. Customers can get it at sort of acceptably fast.
Online in-store sales were up 57% this peak, which is a big part of being able to, you know, mitigate any bumps in availability. I suppose the big picture on availability is simply that however difficult we found it and however much hard work it was, the competition found it more so because that's one of the big factors that's allowed us to keep gaining market share.
Mm-hmm
As we've done during this peak. There's no fundamentally different approach to sourcing to flag. No. I think, you know, we as others are dealing with the chipset shortages and the cost inflation and the availability challenges right the way through the supply chain. We've got some practice at it now. We've been dealing with this for the best part of a couple of years, and I'm really pleased with the way that the team's responded. They've done a good job. Again, that's been reflected in the market share gains that we've been able to post.
Okay. Thanks very much for the color, guys. Cheers.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question now is from Tony Shiret from Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.
Morning, Tony.
Thanks so much. Morning, gents. A couple of things. First of all, you talked about containing costs by cutting back on PPC. I just wondered if you could give us a bit more color on the sort of marketing strategies you've engaged in, the digital marketing strategies and whether you're, you know, notwithstanding the deterioration in sales immediately prior to Christmas, what your views on the ROAS on that spend is. And the second thing is, in terms of the OpEx, I'd sort of remember from your Capital Markets Day, you've outsourced the distribution to GXO or something like that. And I presume that has made distribution more of a variable type of element rather than having to pay people fixed amount and then not distributing stuff.
I just wondered what sort of benefit you'd seen from that sort of move to outsource distribution. Thanks.
Let me start, and Bruce can build on it, Tony. You're right to observe we've achieved some quite good efficiencies on PPC this year, and we're building digital capabilities in the business, as you'd expect us to be. I think the big story there is as we grow the customer base, and we talked about how we've got a greater number, a large and increasing number of accessible customers in the business now, so the organic traffic that comes into us digitally is growing as a proportion of the whole, and so our need to spend so much on PPC is declining. That's a very healthy trend that we intend to continue with.
I'll let Bruce take follow-up on the OpEx correction on the outsourcing. But I think that was one of the benefits from outsourcing that we've already seen, maybe isn't flowing through to the numbers yet, but we're seeing already the benefits of having an expert partner in this space and one of the ways in which we're continuing to improve the delivery options and performance in the business and being able to make ever more competitive delivery promises and then keeping those promises better. That's evidenced in the double-digit improvements in customer satisfaction on delivery that we've seen again year- on- year this peak. We're really pleased with how that partnership in its early days is shaping up to help us continue to do that.
Hi, Tony. Let me build on those two points. First of all, in terms of PPC, you talked about the return on capital that we get or the return on investment. I mean, clearly this is something that we're very hot on. As Alex said, a lot of our traffic comes through organic, and therefore we're using PPC primarily on a marginal basis to drive incremental value. It's a very competitive market. Prices for clicks vary significantly. Therefore, we've got a very robust process that ensures that we will only invest in clicks that we believe are profitable on an end-to-end basis, and that's the way we operate.
In terms of supply chain and fixed variable blend, I would say that traditionally our supply chain has been less variable than some other parts of our business, primarily because, you know, it involves lots of people, trucks and sheds. Definitely both through our internal leadership within supply chain and our outsource provider, we've seen more flexibility this year than we will have done in the past.
Just coming back, I just wondered if you might put some numbers on any of that commentary. I mean, for example, what is your percentage of organic traffic now versus a year ago, say?
What sort of GBP million saving do you think you've made over Christmas by not having to sort of pay the whole distribution cost versus, you know, presumably some cost per piece type of arrangement with GXO?
Yeah, Tony, obviously this is a trading update, so we don't want to share any specific numbers now. If we can come back to you at year-end with any specifics on that, I think that's what we will do.
Look forward to that. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tony.
Thank you. Our next question now is from Adam Tomlinson from Liberum. Please go ahead.
Morning, Adam.
Morning, all. Three from me, please. Three questions. The first one just on price increases. Can you maybe just give a little bit of color on, price increases you've put through so far, just underlying to try and offset some of the cost pressures, perhaps as well with reference to what you've seen in the market and any thoughts on how that might evolve in the year ahead? That's the first question. Second one is just on loyalty schemes. I note from the statement, Nordics doing well and at the Capital Markets Day in November, I think the U.K. scheme, the Perks scheme there got off to a very strong start. Just if there's any updates, particularly on that U.K. side of things.
Then the third question, in terms of supply chain pressures, you mentioned staff levels in your commentary, Alex. Just if there's any particular pressures you're seeing there. I think we're hearing quite a lot across from other retailers about staff shortages, but just what you guys are seeing as well would be helpful if that's okay.
Sure. I mean, on the price front, what is probably more what we're looking ahead into 2022 on than what we've done so far. I mean, some modest price rises in the market have flowed through to consumers already. There's obviously some uncertainty ahead on that. What we expect is that there will be some price rises across the market in 2022. I mean, both the input and the operating cost inflation makes that almost inevitable. One thing though I will say is that we fully intend to stand by our promise that you can't get it cheaper than at Currys, and we will continue to stand by that. Clearly we can't guarantee that some of the prices won't rise, and we expect that to happen.
Second, you're right that we've had a good peak in the Nordics on the loyalty club. Perks, we updated on a strong start relatively recently, and we'll give another update on that at the year-end, but we're quite pleased with how that's shaping up. Third, your question, Adam, was on the supply chain pressures on the colleagues. We've definitely felt the challenge.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We definitely felt the challenge. I mean, on warehouse colleagues, on drivers, both 7.5-ton and HGV as others have. I think we've dealt with it pretty well, is the short answer. We're not calling out any significant risk to this, both in terms of attracting and retaining colleagues and in terms of protecting their health so that they're available to come to work. On all of that, on all of those fronts, we've had a pretty good time of it of late. On the colleague engagement, for example, we're publishing today the latest update on our colleague engagement, which is, as you know, externally measured, and that's bumped up again to 78, which is above all relevant benchmarks.
We're happy with how that's progressing. Our colleagues want to be here increasingly, which is good. We've moved all colleagues up, as you've heard last year, to at least real Living Wage levels. We're also 16,000 colleagues will get at least GBP 1,000 worth of free shares in the months ahead. We continue to invest in their careers and their development as well as in their well-being. Despite the fact our colleagues are in the front line, I mean, our colleagues have to go out to warehouses on the vans and in the stores, and our colleagues have literally been out there all the way through this pandemic.
For us to have achieved lower than the national infection levels on COVID is something that we're pleased with, one of the reasons that we've got very low rates of absence for this or any other reason at the moment. No, we're not calling that out as a pressure.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Warwick Okines from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Morning, Warwick.
Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Happy new year. Thanks very much. I've just got one question actually, and apologies if I miss this. You mentioned gross margin stability a couple of times. Could you just flesh that out? Are you talking on a two-year basis? Because I would have thought that the UK electricals margin would have been up quite a lot year-on-year given the online sales mix declined year-on-year. Maybe just some color on that, please. Thank you.
Hi, Warwick. The comments we've made on gross margin stability, obviously some anecdote from a trading perspective, but you might remember in our first half results, we talked in the U.K. about gross margin increasing by 110 basis points. That's a reflection of a number of components. Absolutely channel mix was one of those. The success we've had at reducing our costs within our supply chain and our service operations has also helped, and that also helped us offset some of the downsides that Alex was describing in terms of short-term supply chain challenges.
The other component there I'd point to, Warwick, and this is more what we've announced this peak, is to the extent that we get better at selling credit and other services online. We're obviously narrowing the profitability gap between the channels, and we've had a good peak on that count. I mean, you'll see in the credit, for example, at 13.9% adoption is fully 350 basis points up year-on-year. We're really pleased with that. Sees us comfortably on track for the 16% target that we've publicly said we're gonna do at least as well as that. In terms of leveling up the unlovely phrase, so apologies for that, but it's an important concept of leveling up the profitability between the channels.
We've narrowed the gap between online and store credit adoption levels from 3.1 percentage points to 1.5 percentage points. We're substantially on track to eliminate that gap, and we've had a good pick-up on other services as well. As Bruce says, you know, it's absolutely about lowering and getting more flexibility out of costs, such as in the stores and the supply chain, as well as absolute efficiencies in supply chain and service operations. It's also about doing a better job of selling credit and other services online. We're doing all of those things.
Thank you. Sorry, I think I'm being a bit slow.
Bruce, you said or you repeated that it was up 110 basis points in the first half. What I'm not sure about is whether your comments around gross margin stability over peak either imply that it's not up as much as that or whether you consider that to be stable. Sorry.
Obviously, again, trading statement, we're focusing on sales. We're not making any comments specifically on gross margin movements over peak, and we'll update you at year-end.
Okay. When you talked about stable gross margin, that was more of a sort of medium-term comment rather than a comment on the quarter.
Yeah, I wouldn't interpret anything quantitative over peak on that, Warwick.
As Bruce says, we'll give a fuller update at the year-end.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question now from Simon Bowler from Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. You kind of referenced earlier in your opening remarks the idea of kind of the tech demand curve, I guess, flattening through the year. We can, I guess, see from the U.K. both this year and last that that may well be the case. It doesn't look to be something that's kind of going on or a dynamic that's as apparent in the Nordics. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts around why that might be different between those two regions.
As I guess at the moment, Simon, we're not drawing any firm conclusions on this either way in any of the markets. We're sort of pointing out some just interesting data that's coming out of the U.K., which could mean one of two things. It could mean not very much, because simply the last two years have been COVID-related outliers, and we'll see 2022 peak return to its normal sort of premium, if you like, over a normal week. There could be something else going on as well. There could be that over the sort of five years, a downward trend in the relative importance of peak versus the other parts of the year. It's not something we've drawn any firm conclusions on either way.
It's just something that we've said that we will continue to keep a very close eye on.
Okay. I guess if the former of those proves to be the case and is just a bit kind of COVID outlier, then given you kind of run rate two-year growth is +4%, and of course the first half this year you did +15%, one could kind of extrapolate and argue that certainly for the first half of the next fiscal year, you'll be facing into some kind of tough comparatives and year-on-year revenue declines. Is that a sensible way to at least kind of potentially think about this? In that context, are you still comfortable that you'll be able to make kind of margin progress year-on-year if revenues next year were to decline?
I guess the first point to say is clearly there's still a lot of uncertainty over the remaining four months of our financial year. I mean, if I tell you the way that we are planning, we've planned based on a continuation on sales rates that we've seen over peak season continuing for the rest of the year. Now obviously, what we may believe, or hope could be more optimistic than that, but certainly the planning that we've done in order to come to the PBT guidance was assuming a continuation of the current trend.
Just to build on that, Simon, I mean, there's a lot obviously under the bonnet. There's a lot of factors in play here and a lot going on under the bonnet.
I mean, starting with the fact that how much of the boost in the technology market that we've seen over the past couple of years sticks. You know, as Bruce says, we're being very cautious in how we plan for that, but we would expect some of it to. Even this peak was, you know, 8% larger year on two years, as you've seen, and that's sort of 17% larger year to date and double digits in the Nordics as well. Yeah, this—you can pay your money and take your choice on that. We expect some of it to stick, but we're not counting on it. The next stage is whatever happens to that market, what's our confidence that we're gonna continue growing market share? We are confident.
You know, we've shown this peak and this year that we've got what it takes to continue to grow market share, even in the face of some headwinds on market channel mix. We negotiated those, and we're out the other side and continuing to grow market share overall. There's lots of reasons to believe that we're gonna continue to do that because the things that are giving us our competitive advantage are the things that we're gonna continue to double down on. We're not gonna become any less insistent with our suppliers in the nicest possible way that we get preferred access to stop.
We're not gonna let up on building on the benefits of our omni-channel specialist model that we've got that nobody else has got, and we will continue to grow and gain market share online. We'll continue to make the most of having the stores and the two together. Meanwhile, we'll continue to build the credit and other services that get these customers coming back. You'll recall that credit, for example, those customers are more than 50% likelier to return the following year. The momentum that we're building in the proportion of our customers who take our credit is important for the longer term ahead. When we say that we're looking ahead with confidence, we can substantiate that we believe.
Okay. To quickly kinda clarify Bruce's comments earlier. When you say you're kind of planning for peak levels with the demand you've seen recently persisting across the balance of the year, would that be you're assuming the kind of one-year like-for-like rate persist across the balance of the year or two-year like-for-like rate persist? I think the comparative base moves quite a bit from here.
As you know, Simon, it's very, very difficult to judge and monitor this form of the business performance year on year because of the various stages when stores were closed and stores were open. From a planning perspective, we have been focusing on two years very quickly. Unfortunately, we'll be focusing on three years in order to maintain that stable base and have a consistent outlook. Does that make sense?
Yeah. No, there's gonna be some fun modeling bits across next year, I agree. Okay, cool. No, that's really useful. Thank you.
Thank you. We have time now for one more question from Nick Coulter from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Hi, Nick.
Two if I may please. Hi, morning. First, could you share a little more on where you saw softer demand please, i.e. the categories and where you had good availability, but where the sell-through wasn't quite as you expected. Then on the credit side, which does sound encouraging, could you step through what you were doing differently this peak and how you kind of drove that conversion? And was that price? Was that selling mechanic? What drove that conversion across store and online? Thank you.
Yeah. There's a couple of things there. So, the short answer on softer categories is TVs, which is obviously a big one for us, and where the market was weak and weaker than we expected over peak. I mean, what was going on there, you know, we'll say more about at the year end. But what seems to be the case is a very strong start to the financial year fueled by the Euros fell off sharply in November and December. That required us to trade through it intelligently because there were some other competitors who appeared to be stuck with unwanted stock and were selling at a loss, and we're not gonna do that. We traded our way through it profitably.
I guess the proof of that is that we are still gaining market share year on year in TVs. We've traded through stock, so we're not sitting on any excess or aged stock. We protected the top line and profitability in a difficult category this peak. On the credit side, we're just continuing to do what we said we would do. We've done some innovation in the product. The Pay in Three was a particularly successful innovation. The main thing is leveling up between stores and between channels.
This is one of the areas that we're very focused on, and we share best practice in new and quite interesting ways between stores to allow the stores to inspire each other with how they can successfully bring our credit offer to more customers alongside other things. Probably most importantly, we're leveling up between channels, and that's been improving the customer experience online so that it's easier for them to adopt credit. As you've seen, we've substantially narrowed the adoption gap between the channels there.
Important to say in the same breath that it's that we're doing this with great responsibility because we want to stay a mile away from any reputational risk apart from anything else that can come with irresponsible lending, and we're not gonna have any part of that. We've been super careful on who we lend to and how much. The affordability and the credit worthiness checks remain stringent. We're in bed with some very conservative, which we like, partners like BNPP. We've continued to train our colleagues very carefully on compliance and the spirit and the letter of compliance training and work very closely with the FCA to make sure that we're doing all of this in the right way.
That's an important sort of qualifier, if you like, to the message. But the big picture on credit, which we like, as you know, because it brings incremental customers to us, the customers are happier. They can afford better technology, and they can afford to trade up to better technology, and they adopt other services more reliably, and they come back. They're likelier to return. Our measure of loyalty, which we've touched on already. It's been really important progress that we intend to build on. I think with that,
Sorry, I mean, just on that first
Sorry. No, go on, Nick.
On that first question, so a chunk was pull forward impact, but what about the rest of the big ticket area? Did that hold up with respect to demand, or was it just the pull forward in TVs that was the challenge?
TVs was the biggest challenge, yes. I mean, in
Yeah.
Year on two years, computing had an excellent year. I mean, obviously, we had a gangbusters year in computing last year. We weren't expecting to quite match that, but year on year computing. Year on two years, computing showed excellent growth. Gaming within that was a particular star, but also appliances. I mean, the large appliances like range cookers and fridge freezers were very strong, as were small domestic appliances as well, so small kitchen and domestic appliances. Forgive me, Nick. We are out of time, and we have something else.
Yeah. That's fine.
...to get to. Many thanks all.
Sorry. Thanks so much.
Not at all. Many thanks to you and many thanks to everybody. All I would say is the sale is still on. There are some outstanding deals on currys.co.uk or at a store near you, and I would encourage you to go and take advantage of that while it's still on. Many thanks all, and have a great day.