Ladies and gentlemen, I'll resist starting with a clumsy pun linking Beyond Techs pectations to a year's performance that saw three profile upgrades, but I guess that's just what I've done. Anyway, good morning, welcome, and what are you going to hear about today from Bruce and I? You're going to hear about another year of strengthening performance, about Currys that are showing progress on every line, whether it's sales, margins, cost, profit, cash, the balance sheet, or on the colleague and the customer experience that underpins all of these things. You'll hear in the Nordics that in a still tough market, Fredrik Tønnesen and their team have returned that business to a really good track and are showing good momentum, including a really strong performance on profit and cash. In the U.K., we've enjoyed another good year.
The momentum we've enjoyed in recent years has continued, and again, we've returned that business to growth as well as seeing really strong performance on profit and cash. Good news is we know what's working. We can attribute these results to the actions of a clear strategy that's been competently delivered, so we know what's working, so we'll keep doing it. That is one of the things that gives us confidence, not just in continuing this progress, but confidence in a brightening outlook for shareholder returns as well. I'm going to be back on a little bit later to talk about how we're doing all of this, and then we'll take your questions. Before that, I'm going to hand over to Bruce to talk through the numbers.
Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. Let me start off with some headlines. I guess the headline overall is that group performance continues to strengthen. From a top-line perspective, our sales last year were GBP 8.7 billion, with a like-for-like of +2%. Our adjusted profit before tax moved forward significantly at GBP 162 million. That was up by 37% year on year. Our free cash flow was even stronger at GBP 149 million. That was up by 82%. The strong free cash flow translates to a stronger balance sheet. We finished the year with net cash of GBP 184 million. Our adjusted EPS stepped forward to GBP 11.30, and we are proposing a final dividend of GBP 1.50. We were really pleased to see the top line move forward after a number of difficult years.
As you can see, U.K. like-for-like last year was +4%, and the Nordics was flat, hence overall an average of 2% up. Despite the Nordics being flat, actually, we were really pleased to see the momentum in the second half, with peak like-for-like at +1%, and post-peak, we were trading at +3%. Let me step through the two regions, starting off with the U.K. As I say, very strong top line, revenue +4% like-for-like. We also saw recurring services revenue step forward significantly. Adjusted EBIT in the U.K. was up by 8% at GBP 153 million, although our EBIT margin was flat at 2.9%. That strong profit flowed through into strong operating cash flow, GBP 176 million, up 13%. Segmental free cash flow was really strong, GBP 95 million.
Within that, we were able to unlock significant value from working capital, which allowed us to offset the investment we've made in ID Mobile. I said that our EBIT margins were flat at 2.9%. Within that, we saw an uplift within our gross margin offset by a small decline within our operating expense ratio. Gross margins were up by 20 basis points, so you'll recognize that's the fourth year in a row that we've seen our gross margins improve. Over that four-year period, our gross margin cumulatively is up by 290 basis points. What are the drivers? It's the same drivers that we've been talking about for the last couple of years. It's around solution selling, it's around selling more services, it's not chasing less profitable sales, and it's around supply chain and service cost savings.
From an operating expense to sales ratio, we were adverse by 20 basis points, so that reflects the fact that our costs increased at a faster rate than our sales did. What are the drivers for that? Obviously, the most noticeable would have been inflation and particularly the impact of living wage. The second is increases in marketing spend. You may remember that over the last couple of years, we've purposely taken our marketing spend down. The reason we did that was because we wanted to be extremely focused on profit, and where there were promotions or campaigns that weren't generating profits, we walked away from them.
By rebasing to a much lower level, having a much better understanding of where we make money, it's allowed us to build back our marketing spend with confidence, knowing that every pound we spend is driving extra to the bottom line. The third component of cost increase year on year is project investment spend that is going through the P&L. Let me explain that. Obviously, in the last couple of years, we've reduced the level of project spend in order to rebuild the balance sheet. With the balance sheet now stronger for the year that's just finished, we increased our overall level of investment. The blue bar shows our CapEx expenditure, and as you can see, stepped up from a low two years ago of GBP 22 million to last year being GBP 50 million, so a big step up. What is that? That's predominantly investments within our stores.
For example, electronic shelf edge labels, something we call space optimization, so relaying our stores to get the most return that we can, and also some maintenance aspects, for example, HVAC investment. What we have also seen in the last year is a big step up in project OpEx spend. This largely relates to tech, largely relates to software, where we have moved to software as a service. Therefore, by definition, it has to go through the P&L. For example, every pound that we spent on our website has had to be expensed. All the money that we spend on developing our credit proposition is expensed. Same with iD Mobile. That is critical because, as you can see, year on year, we have got an increase of GBP 21 million in that OpEx cost.
We've managed to absorb that within the U.K. P&L and still show that 8% EBIT progression. Moving on to the Nordics, tougher market, definitely last year, and hence overall like-for-like sales being flat. We saw adjusted EBIT step forward even stronger than the U.K., 24% on a constant currency basis. EBIT margins improved by 40 basis points from 1.7 up to 2.1%. Operating cash flow stepped backwards a little bit, and that is reflecting the fact that the components of growth coming through with our profit have been driven to a degree by non-cash items. In terms of segmental free cash flow, though, really strong, more than doubled to GBP 69 million. There we have seen a reduction within exceptional costs, but also lots of great work on managing working capital. I said that Nordic EBIT margins had stepped forward by 40 basis points.
As you can see, big step up again in gross margins, up by 60 basis points year- on- year. That's the second year in a row, so that means our gross margins now are higher than they were three years ago, driven by pretty much the same things that I showed you were driving the U.K. From a cost perspective, we saw an adverse movement in OpEx to sales ratio of 20 basis points. Actually, if you were to take away week 53, so last year was a 53-week period from us, if you took that away, actually our costs were almost identical, where inflation was offset with cost savings. Another key factor that we're very keen just to shine a light on for you is the impact of FX. Over the course of the last two years, there's been a significant devaluation of the NOK.
The NOK has devalued by roughly 15%, and of course, that dilutes the expressed in sterling profit that we're declaring for the Nordics. To put that in context, over the last two years, from the low point in Nordics profits, we've seen in sterling an increase of 177%. If you look at the same numbers in local currency, it's up by 234%. In other words, our reported numbers are negatively impacted by those FX headwinds. Moving back to cash and group cash, again, really a very positive story across the board. With higher profits has come higher operating cash flow. We have, with the stronger balance sheet now, been able to invest more, and therefore you see a step up in CapEx, particularly within the U.K. Adjusting items have reduced largely as a result of a reduction of non-trading stores and also less restructuring costs year on year.
Cash tax has reduced, and I'll talk about this more in a second, but largely as a result of brought forward losses. Our cash interest has got better with a stronger balance sheet. Finally, working capital. I've mentioned working capital already a couple of times. You can see that it's gone from being an outflow in FY2024 of GBP 34 million to an inflow last year of GBP 14 million. That's despite the fact that we invested over GBP 20 million of cash in iD Mobile that has gone through that line. Overall, really strong performance, free cash flow of GBP 149 million. Of that GBP 149 million, GBP 50 million of it went to the pension scheme to help us reduce the deficit. We bought GBP 15 million worth of shares for our employee benefit trust to make sure that there's no dilution for existing shareholders.
Overall, a movement in net cash of plus GBP 88 million, moving our closing balance sheet, our closing net cash position to GBP 184 million. Really healthy. You have seen this slide before. This is the combination of our net cash, net debt, but also the pension deficit. When you put those two together, you see the progress that we have really made. If you looked at that number five years ago, we had over GBP 800 million worth of debt or indebtedness if you include the pension deficit. The year that has just finished, we finished with + GBP 81 million. A positive movement from a debt and pension scheme of over GBP 900 million in five years. Three quick slides, which are more technical in nature. I am going to whiz through these, but obviously happy to pick up with them offline.
We have seen our interest cost fall significantly over the course of the last five years. Within that, a component is a reduction of lease interest, and that is as our lease terms have reduced and also as we have successfully reduced our payments of rent. More noticeably, though, is the drop-off in bank interest, and you can see that it has dropped to single-digit millions thanks to the strength of our balance sheets. In terms of depreciation and amortization, again, similar trend. We have seen a big reduction over the course of the last five years. Actually, depreciation on right-of-use assets, so the leases predominantly, has been relatively static over the last three years. Where we have seen the big reductions are, first of all, within depreciation of our fixed assets that have fallen, and that is largely as a result of us reducing our total CapEx.
The most noticeable reduction is within amortization, the top chunk. Again, that's a reflection of the fact that more and more of the software that we run in our business is software as a service. We're expensing it through the P&L upfront, so we're taking the hit upfront, and therefore less is going on the balance sheet and less will flow through in future periods. Finally, from a tax perspective, obviously the P&L tax charge has increased as our profits have increased. As I reflected at the beginning, our cash tax is significantly lower, and that's a reflection of brought forward losses in both the U.K. and the Nordics, but also is a reflection of the relief we get on the pension contribution.
In terms of current year guidance, so obviously we're two months in, I'm pleased to say that at the moment our trading is in line with our expectations. Also, in terms of this year, we are comfortable and confident with the market consensus for profit and cash. I would remind you, as we talked about it at Christmas, we are facing into some significant headwinds. We've got GBP 32 million worth of new government headwinds through national insurance as a result of living wage, higher rates, in addition to a similar number of headwinds in relation to general inflation. To hit these numbers, we will be working super hard. Just some key numbers for your models. Net interest expense we expect to be roughly the same in this financial year at about GBP 65 million. CapEx, we expect to step up a small amount.
That will be largely within the Nordics. Exceptional cash outflow will reduce to GBP 30 million as the number of non-trading stores starts to reduce and we have less restructuring. Our pension contribution will step back up to the contracted GBP 78 million. Finally, cash dividend, we're proposing at roughly GBP 25 million based on a five times cover. Some more technical numbers, which I'll leave with you to pick up within your packs. What does that mean in terms of medium-term outlook and in terms of capital allocation? You'll all be familiar with this slide. Our medium-term goal from an EBIT margin perspective remains the same: to get to at least 3% EBIT margin. In the U.K., we're pretty much there. We have been for a couple of years. We just need to get through that ceiling.
From a Nordics perspective, we've had two good years of EBIT margin progression, but we're still some way off the 3%, and we're even further off the long-term average in the pre-pandemic period. We are still clear that this is our plan and determined that we will achieve it. What does that mean for our number one objective? Our number one objective, of course, is to increase free cash flow. Alex, in a moment, is going to come and talk about some of the initiatives we've got underway, and one of the core components of that is around reintroducing steady growth into our business, profitable steady growth. If you combine that with EBIT margins being at least 3% and strong control over CapEx and exceptionals, we will see growing free cash flow.
Given our strong balance sheet, that means that more of that cash will be available for shareholders. To give a feel for the overall shape of how that is going to pan out, using last year as a proxy, we had, as you saw, free cash flow last year of GBP 149 million. There were some elements of that that you have to take out as non-repeating. For example, the working capital upside, that was a one-off. We cannot expect to have that every year. We have taken some out, and we have called sustainable free cash flow from last year GBP 127 million. Now, as we look forward, we are expecting exceptionals to fall, and you will remember that we have talked about by FY2027. Next year, we expect our exceptionals to be single-digit millions.
We do expect to spend a little bit more on CapEx going forward, and as we get to at least 3% EBIT margins, you would expect cash coming from profits to step up. That gives you a feel for the shape of our cash flow going forward. We are a cash-generated business. Over the last six years, Currys, on average, has generated GBP 125 million worth of cash each year. The challenge is, where has that cash gone? As you can see, the majority of the cash that we've generated over the last five years has gone to pay down debt and to reduce our pension deficit. Only roughly a quarter of the cash we've generated has gone back to shareholders. Going forward, that proportion will increase significantly. One of the reasons for that is our pension deficit.
We're really pleased to see these numbers are on an accounting basis, but we're really pleased to see our pension deficit fall significantly. It's fallen again. It was over GBP 550 million five, six years ago. It's down to roughly GBP 100 million now. In terms of what does that mean for contributions? We're contracted to give the scheme roughly GBP 78 million this year. It's likely to be a touch higher than that based on some matching arrangements, but maybe in the low GBP 80 million or so. As we look forward with the low deficit, we would hope to see a reduction in contributions. We're right now in the middle of the triennial review. The triennial date was the end of March, so our expectation is that by the end of this calendar year, we will have completed that valuation process.
Of course, that will allow us to have far more clarity and visibility of future shareholder returns. To conclude and to remind you, our capital allocation priorities, the same priorities that we have been showing for the last four years. Our first goal is to have a strong balance sheet. We have a strong balance sheet, so our goal is to maintain a strong balance sheet. Number two, to pay the required pension contributions. Number three, I have shown you today, to build and grow our project investment, particularly our capital investment, to increase our profit and our cash flow. Number four, to pay a dividend, and we are delighted to be announcing today the proposal for a GBP 1.50 final dividend. It is great to be back on that, and we would like that to be a progressive policy going forward.
Then finally, surplus cash that is available will be available to return to shareholders. Today, in our statement, we're specifically calling that out as share buybacks. Good. Thanks very much for your time. I'll now hand over to Alex.
Thanks, Bruce. The progress that Bruce spoke to, we owe to a clear and consistent strategy. A strategy that, first of all, sees us number one in all of the markets that we operate in. In the past year, we've seen stable or growing market share across all of our markets. In the Nordics, you'll see that we've grown market share in every single country, and that leaves us over two and a half times the size of our nearest competitors, competitors who are outperforming on the top line and the bottom line.
Our revenues have been more resilient, and our profits have rebounded more strongly than our Nordics competitors. In the U.K., we've seen market share growth reinforcing the number one position that we enjoy, a 30 basis point increase on the left-hand side of this chart you'll see in our U.K. electricals. We're also growing and back into market share gains in mobile as well. You see on the right-hand side, our market share, including mobile, has grown by 50 basis points year on year. This way of defining our market share you see on the right, you can expect to see more of. As mobile is an integrated and core category once again, and back into growth and share gain in Currys, we see it as worth including in our market share measures.
Yes, it lowers our stated market share to 16.9%, but it highlights the headroom and the opportunity ahead a little bit better. The headroom and the opportunity is not just in mobile, it is also in our core electricals category. You will see on this slide there are a bunch of categories where we are underweight today in growth, but underweight areas like health and beauty and accessories, as well as mobile. This is a significant opportunity. In all of these underweight categories, were we to get to our overall market share of 23.5%, that would be an increase in U.K. revenues of fully 50%, 5-0. There is quite a lot to go for there. Gaming is a case in point of why this is no pipe dream.
Over the past five years, we've at Currys, we've accounted for half of all of the growth in this growing market in gaming, taking our market share from 13% to 19%, leaning on the strengths that benefit us elsewhere as well. We have the supplier relationships. We have better ranges to show for it. We've got the expert colleagues in the store. Over 70 stores now have gaming specialists. Over 100 stores have the gaming bunkers, and it features increasingly strongly in our market share. We are growing in gaming, and as the market continues to grow, we expect to benefit disproportionately. That is part of a strategy that is overall serving us well, a strategy to which we owe our number one position and our progress, a strategy that starts with what you see at the top here, that we exist to help everyone enjoy amazing technology.
That stems from a central customer insight that the stuff that we sell, technology, people can find it thrilling, yes, but they can also find it difficult to make it work. They can find it confusing and sometimes expensive. They need help. They need help not just to choose the right laptop, but to enjoy it to the full throughout its life. That is where we come in. Currys, with our scale and our capabilities, we are better equipped to help them right the way through the life of the product than anybody else. That then informs the strategy that follows, a strategy that starts with colleagues. Let's have the most capable and committed colleagues who in turn make it easy to shop for our customers. That allows us to then build customers for life, customers who keep coming back, and then to grow profits.
This starts with colleagues, not just because we're lovely people, but because it's very difficult in our space for the experience of the customer to be better than that of the colleague. That's why we've invested in tools, training, reward, a culture, and listening to colleagues. We've been rewarded for all that investment with world-class colleague engagement scores. That's not us measuring it. This is Glint, the global market leaders in measuring this, who tell us that we are now firmly established in the top 5% of companies worldwide when it comes to colleague engagement. In the U.K., on the left-hand side, we're in the top 3% of companies worldwide and having raised it again last year. The scores are satisfying, but more important is what we learn from these surveys, over 50,000 comments from colleagues, as you see.
We learn, and then we can improve. Two examples from the U.K. last year, for example, our colleagues told us we were not doing a good enough job on joining up the repairs process between colleagues in store and in our service operations. We listened, we acted, and we have been rewarded with, I think, a 19-point improvement in the score on working as one business. Our colleagues in stores told us they were dissatisfied with the career opportunities open to them. We did something about that, and now 50% of all corporate vacancies are filled internally, including in large part by store colleagues. Again, an 11-point improvement year on two in career prospects. We are going to keep learning and keep improving, and we expect to see continued levels of world-class colleague engagement to show for it.
That, in turn, helps drive happy colleagues, in turn, help drive more satisfied customers. As you see here, we've had another good year. In the Nordics, a significant growth on happy or not. I'll come back to that in a sec. On the left-hand side, another good year in the U.K., up again to 55 on NPS. Trustpilot, we're now at 4.4, having been at 3.6 a year ago. That's a pretty steep rise. Nonetheless, though, this is something we want to keep improving. We're not satisfied with this. 55 is not good enough. We like the trajectory, not yet the score.
It does not hurt that our Nordics colleagues have adopted NPS as their measure over the past year, coming in in their first year at 63, which you might say has led to some healthy competition between the business units from some rather galled colleagues in the U.K. at being left behind on this. Upward trajectory continued to be important in colleague engagement and customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction does not just stem from happier colleagues. It stems from how well we are making ourselves easier to shop and how well we are building customers for life. We have made some good progress on both of those over the past year. Starting easy to shop, let's sell to customers how they want to buy, which in technology is from a mix of online and stores.
We have both channels, so it's up to us to make the most of it because competitors don't have them both. That's what we've been doing over the past year. We've been investing in our stores in better tools and technology like electronic shelf edge labeling, for example, a Nordics innovation which we've copied with pride in the U.K. It takes away a hated task of changing paper tickets for colleagues. It also reduces the cost of that process and allows more agile pricing. It's in 100 stores. We'll roll it out to the rest this year. Space optimization. Also, we've invested in shifting around the allocation of space in stores to different categories to allow more room for higher growth, more profitable categories such as computing, and to allow more space for the new and growth categories that are driving the top line that Bruce mentioned.
Online, we've invested as well, over 200 improvements to the online customer experience over the past year in areas such as search, filtering, navigation, and checkout. We have better conversion to show for it, a 25 basis point improvement in the U.K., 22 in the Nordics, and market share gains in both channels to show for this investment. We will keep going on all of this. We like the trajectory, not yet the score. It is not just both channels invested separately. We have invested in bringing both channels together, which is how customers like to shop. They like, for example, to order online and collect in store. They like having an endless range in store from shopping from the full online range. Both of those, as you see on the right, are in healthy growth last year.
Order and collect up 31% in the U.K., up 33% in the Nordics online in store, up 11%. On the left-hand side, you see the total proportion of our sales that are sold in both channels, omnichannel, steadily rising to 31% of U.K. sales last year. Not nearly enough, but we like the direction of travel. Making ourselves easier to shop is one thing. Hopefully, we can persuade customers to come back to us, to stickier, more valuable customer relationships, customers for life in our language. That starts with good data. We have laid some important foundations on data. You see on the left, the Nordics customer club is now up to 9.6 million members, up by fully 1 million year- on- year.
On the right-hand side, we've got a bunch of data, a rich set of data for U.K. customers, but we're frankly dissatisfied with our progress here. We can make faster progress for our own benefit, for customers' benefit, to give them a better, more personalized experience, and increasingly for third parties through things like retail media. We've made some progress. It's not fast enough. We've had some leadership changes here. Expect to see a better picture on this when we're here in a year's time. Better progress elsewhere on customers for life, particularly in selling customers the full solutions, full solutions the customers like because they get everything they need, products, services, accessories, and full solutions that we like because we make significantly more margin that way. It's good to see the progress. In the Nordics, for example, we've nearly tripled the attachment rate on most valuable services.
On the left-hand side, in the U.K., you see the proportion of our sales that are sold as part of a full solution have more than doubled from 19% to 40% in a couple of years. Good progress, a bunch of further to go. At the heart of these solutions are our services. I mentioned at the start that customers find technology sometimes a bit confusing and expensive. They need some help. They need some help to afford it, the expensive technology through things like credit and giving their technology longer life through things like repair. If it is confusing, they need help getting started with it, whether it is through setup or installation, and they need help getting the most out of it.
Fortunately for Currys, we have assets at scale that no competitor can get close to matching to help the customer in a way that's valuable to us and to them through the life of the tech, starting with helping them afford it. Credit's really important. Credit's a really big driver of sales, profit, and loyalty. It's good for the customers because they can afford sometimes expensive tech. The fact they like it is shown in an even higher NPS for credit customers. It's 12 points higher than it is for customers overall. It's good for us because those customers spend more, they shop more frequently, and they are much likelier to return, 27% likelier to return within 12 months versus non-credit customers. Over a lifetime, they spend twice as much as non-credit customers.
It is good for everybody, customers and us, if we keep growing credit. And growing it, we are. We are up to nearly 22% of our sales on our own credit product now. It is the number one way to pay for credit customers. The credit customer numbers are increasing nicely, up 36% to 2.6 million over the past year. Credit sales are up nicely to GBP 1.1 billion now. Credit is motoring quite nicely, and it is in the happy position now of increasingly funding itself. The benefit to us of credit is, as we grow credit, it grows sales. We think about 30% of our credit sales are incremental. Those incremental sales clearly have a value, as does the direct profit contribution of credit. We get a commission from the bank, and we also avoid cost of alternative payment methods.
Both of those things add up to a profit from credit that we can reinvest part of in continuing to improve the offer. We're in that virtuous circle now with credit. We've improved the offer over the last year with more flexible and better credit propositions as reflected in our rebranding to Currys flexpay. We intend to continue this virtuous circle in the year ahead. As you can see, even though the profit contribution has fallen in recent years as rates have increased, you'll make your own calls on the outlook for rates, and you can expect as rates decline, the direct profit contribution to improve further. Credit's good. Credit's in good shape and heading in the right direction, as are the services that help customers get started, the setup of a laptop or the installation of a washing machine.
Left-hand side, you'll see a nice jump in the proportion of our big box sales that are installed with customers. We like the trajectory. The score's still far too low. We're not happy with that. That needs to keep improving, and we'll do some work this year to make sure it does, just as we want to keep growing our big repair business. We have 12 million repair customers in the business at the moment. This is good for customers. Their tech lasts longer. It's good for the planet. It's good for our profits as well. Purpose and profit going hand in hand as they must. The long-term trajectory, although we had a dip in the last year in the U.K., the long-term trajectory is up on repair.
That rests on some important competitive advantages that we have that no competitor is ever plausibly going to replicate. We have Europe's largest technology repair center in Newark. Three million devices go through that every year. We have 1,200 very skilled colleagues in that space, and that's extremely unlikely to be replicated anywhere else. We can make more of it, and we intend to, not least by investing in our repair proposition. One example of that is Repair Live. Some of you may have seen this. Instead of having to send your device off if you think it's broken, you can now speak to an expert colleague directly via a video call or in a store or on a call or via chat online. In a large proportion of cases, our colleague can deal with the problem there and then.
The customer's seven-day repair promise effectively becomes a seven-minute one because they get to keep their device. Customer's happier. We do not suffer the cost of having to ship the product backwards and forwards and repair it. We can do this increasingly cost-effectively. Again, we are in a bit of a virtuous circle here as a result of our scale. Because of those 3 million devices going through Newark every year, we are getting better and better at harvesting the parts from those devices so we do not have to pay for a new part to repair a device. 25% of all repairs are now used by parts that we have harvested ourselves. That saved us GBP 6 million in cost last year. It is not a trivial sum, and we aim to keep that going, just as Repair Live saved us over GBP 2 million last year. We are going to keep going on repair.
There's further scope for growth there. Finally, under Customers for Life, there's the services that help customers get the most out of their technology. A good example of this is connectivity. We like selling customers a product that works, just as a customer's laptop should leave the store working. We want to sell them a working mobile phone. Connectivity is essential to that. We like having secure and good value access to connectivity ourselves. You may have seen yesterday, we signed a new deal, a contract extension with Vodafone. We're very happy with the terms of that. We're equally happy with the long-term secure access to connectivity with Three that we have for our MVNO ID. ID continues to be quite an attractive success story.
Subscriber numbers up to 2.2 million last year, driven by a new app being used by getting on for three quarters of ID customers now, which gives customers more features, allows us to communicate with them in a more personalized way. In turn, that enables better retention, and it goes on. We are improving some of the underpinnings to ID as well with things like billing and CRM. We expect to see that happy trend continue. We are targeting at least 2.5 million customers for ID in the year ahead. Of course, as you know, we are building quite a valuable asset here, as well as building something that is valuable to customers. We will keep going with that too.
One of the consequences of building out our services is we're building recurring revenues, recurring revenues that can start to make next year's number this year and should give investors confidence in the sustainability of our performance. Our total recurring revenue grew by 14% in the U.K. last year. That's things like connectivity and repair plans added together with the sticky, repeating nature of credit revenue. Even the directly recurring service revenue was up 12%, which compares to product revenue at 4%. You can see this is an increasingly important part of the mix. We intend to keep that trend going as well because that's obviously good all round. Our strategy, as you've heard from Bruce, is aiming to grow profits. So capable and committed colleagues, making it easy to shop for customers, building customers for life, and grow profits.
We've got no intention of relaxing the margin and the cost disciplines that have served us so well. You see the results of that here. U.K. gross margins growing nicely, I think 290 basis points up year on year on the left-hand side, and Nordics back up to above the level of four years ago, a sterling recovery from our Nordics colleagues. Bruce has talked through the ways that we're doing that. We intend to keep doing them, just as we intend to keep our cost disciplines. There is further scope from areas like outsourcing, from making the most of our group scale, whether it is with GNFR or IT partners or our commercial partners as well.
We're doing a better job of that, whether it's keeping right first time going, something we haven't had time to talk about in detail today, but getting it right first time is obviously good for customers when we turn up and install their washing machine first time of asking, but it's good for us as well because we don't incur the cost of doing it again. That's heading in the right direction, just as we're starting to see some benefits from automation, not least from our partnership on Gen AI with Microsoft and Accenture. Cost savings have further to go. Arguably the most exciting part of growing profits is getting this business back into growth. You see on the left-hand side, this over GBP 17 billion of core electricals, the GfK electricals market, is how we've traditionally defined our market.
I mentioned before that increasingly you can expect us to see us bring mobile into our definition of the market. I mean, in time, you might see us broaden it out further because we're playing in a bigger field. When you take into account the new categories like health and beauty, like accessories, like pet tech, like seasonal that you're seeing more of in our stores, when you take into account the services that we've talked to, and when you take into account the small and medium-sized business customers that we're increasingly serving, I mean, our total accessible market is getting on, well over three times the size of our traditional market. As you see from the shaded purple bit at the bottom, we've got more headroom to grow in these places. Plenty of growth opportunities, and I'm going to talk about four of them briefly now.
First, in our core, there's computing. There are some good tailwinds behind computing. We had a good year last year, but we expect an even better one this year. The natural replacement cycle's working for us. It's five years post the COVID boost, so we can expect to see customers wanting to replace their laptops anyway. Windows 10 goes out of support this year. That's important. There are millions of Windows 10 customers in the U.K., 3.5 million, we think. As they run out of security and run out of upgrades, that gives them a really good reason to upgrade their laptop. AI is really starting to bite with consumers in use cases that they value, whether it's live translation, whether it's greater productivity, greater creativity. Customers are starting to be alive to the possibilities of AI.
With our over 70% market share of AI computing, we're in the box seat here, and we intend to stay that way. Yes, there's a lot. Finally, gaming, which I'll come on to, is another big driver of computing. Of course, we've got the number one position here, whether it's the market share that we enjoy, whether it's the leading relationships with our partners who will invest in things like marketing and training of our colleagues. You do not have to take our word for it. You can read that at your leisure later. Some of the plaudits we get from partners like HP and Microsoft. We are the number one in this space, and we intend to stay that way. Within computing, there's gaming, which is a particularly exciting area.
I talked to you a little earlier about how we've grown our market share in gaming from 13% to 19%. We expect this to be another good year for gaming, driven by new launches like Nintendo Switch 2, which have gone really well for us, and new GPUs launched by the likes of NVIDIA. There's a lot of excitement in the market, and we've got a really good position to benefit from it, as you've heard before, a growing share in a growing market with suppliers who know us well. Second is the new categories, which we're getting into in a more serious way now. These are areas where we've been underweight, but where we're growing fast, and we have what it takes to succeed in all of these areas. We're not starting from scratch.
We've got the suppliers, the products, the channels, the solutions, the colleagues, the supply chain, the service operations to lean on in selling these new categories. We start with an advantage in areas like barbecues and outdoor living that are adjacent to our core categories, which are going pretty well. This is an interesting one. I talk about total accessible market growing. In one sense, the march of technology is starting to see us compete with the likes of beauty retailers as increasing numbers of consumers use less face cream and more technology for their face care, for example. We can expect to see more like that. Actually, that Shark Face Mask is going particularly well. Our position, as I mentioned, we're advantaged here versus other retailers, but we start from a really low position, 1% market share in a GBP 12 billion market.
We're not remotely satisfied with that. We're growing well, but there's plenty further to go. These new categories actually provide us with quite a nice hook for some of the marketing that's getting a bit of plaudits. You can have a look at one of my personal favorites now. You might be surprised to hear that we actually sell this loamy ice bath here at Currys. Game death trip one. Would you mind doing a take in the ice bath? I would mind doing that, yeah. I don't want to get in the bath. This is great if you love a cold plunge, whether you want to relieve stress, help your muscles to recover after a tough workout, or alleviate soreness. I really think to show the product off properly, we need you to do this next bit inside the ice bath.
There's absolutely no way I'm getting in that ice bath. It also has an extra 100-liter capacity. It also has an extra 100 L capacity so you get the deep cold plunge you crave after a workout. Refreshing. It's not even that bad.
This is some of the marketing that's getting us plaudits, including this chief executive getting some very unaccustomed compliments from teenage children. More importantly, it's getting us building our brand strength versus the competition. Brand preference is the equity measure we track most closely. You'll see that's up fully 500 basis points year on three. Our marketing is getting traction not just in the social channels, but in traditional ones as well. Social is the hot channel. It's the growing channel. You can see here how well we're doing.
Success in social is typically measured in likes. We are getting more than four times the number of social likes than our direct competitors combined at the moment. Our marketing team are on a good track. There is a lot further to go, but we like where we are headed so far. Last and certainly not least, under growth, there is B2B. Our core business clearly is selling to consumers, but we have a lot of what it takes to sell to small and medium-sized businesses, particularly those smaller ones with under 100 seats. That is a market not far shy of the size of our core consumer market. Yet it is one where we are underpenetrated. It is only 3% of U.K. Currys sales at the moment sold to businesses. We have an example in the group of people doing better than that, our Nordics colleagues. It is 12% of their sales.
We have not been slow to learn and copy with pride from what our Nordics colleagues have done in B2B. We have got a lot of what it takes, similar to my story on new categories. Much the same applies in B2B. A lot of what we have going for us in our core B2C business, we can leverage in B2B. We have added some of the things that were missing, such as high-class leadership, specialist store colleagues, and presence. We have got hubs in over 50 stores now with specialist B2B colleagues in, as well as a better presence online, beefed-up account management, and the like. We are nowhere near our potential in B2B. We are happy with our growth. It grew at 14% last year in the U.K. versus 4% like-for-like. Overall, we can comfortably double this over the next three years.
I am looking at Dean and Chris, the two guys responsible for doing so, as I say that. We can comfortably double our B2B business over the next three years. Watch this space. Really, really exciting source of growth for us. In closing, it has been a lively half dozen years at Currys, all told. What we are dealing with, the fallout from the Carphone merger, whether it is a rapid channel shift online with a business that historically did not have much of an online presence exacerbated by COVID, a perfect storm in the Nordics hitting our performance there a few years ago, and then cost of living crises since. We are in the happy position now of every part of this group heading in the right direction at the same time.
Whether it is colleague, customer, or financial metrics, whether it is whichever of the financial metrics, sales, margin, cost, profit, cash, whether it is the balance sheet and the net indebtedness underneath that, whether it is electrical or mobile or products or services or U.K. or Nordics, all of this group is now heading in the right direction at the same time. Are we satisfied with where we are? Certainly not. There is a long, long further to go, and there is a lot more in the tank for us here. We are pleased with the progress. We are pleased with the strong and strengthening results that we have talked to today. We are comfortable and confident in our prospects, not least in the prospects for richer shareholder returns in the years ahead. Thank you for your attention. With that, Dan is going to compare some Q&A.
Yeah, thank you. Good morning, all.
Time for questions. If you could raise your hand, we will bring a mic to you. If you could just say your name before asking the question for the people on the webcast. Thank you. If we could start with Ben over there.
Morning, Ben Hunt from Panmure Liberum. Good to see there's a sort of an advance in trying to get the new market share. I suppose the general question is, and touching on an old theme, is what gives you the confidence that you can go into these new categories and get market share profitably? What's changed? And maybe with sort of reference to some of the marketing efficiency that Bruce was alluding to.
Yeah, what hasn't changed is the macro environment. We posted the 4% like-for-likes last year in a flat U.K. market. And in the Nordics, it was a similar picture.
We're not depending on the macro. Our growth is in self-help, and that's what we've talked to today. In areas like computing, the growth that we've talked to clearly lies in our core, Ben. We have a really substantial business in computing already. We have a 50% share of the Windows computing market in the U.K., 70% of the AI-powered. There's plenty of reason to believe we can continue that. Once you start getting into the adjacent categories, though, I mean, you were asking a good question about what gives us the right to succeed.
The areas that we're picking, whether it's the services that are sold alongside the product, whether it's the small and medium-sized businesses whose needs are very analogous to the consumers, or whether it's the new and growth categories, which are in our stores and in our sites now, we've deliberately picked these because they're adjacent. They're not a big leap away. They lean on the same machine that we've already built to serve our core B2C market. In many cases, the suppliers are the same. We already have roots into those suppliers. We already matter a lot to them as their most important partner in the U.K. and in the Nordics. We've already got the channels, stores and online. We can put more through those channels. We've already built up the supply chain and the service operations. We can pump more through that machine.
We've got the expert colleagues in the store, and we're used to training them on new products. We can do the same here. We're not charging off in random directions. What we're doing is we're deliberately picking adjacent opportunities where we already have a significant presence. I mean, I might be very unsatisfied with the 3% of our U.K. sales that are in B2B, but it's not a trivial number. It gives us confidence we can grow it and grow it profitably.
Thank you. Perhaps if we can go to Vandita behind.
Thank you, Alex. Just one question, iD Mobile. You've targeted, or you said you're targeting 2.5 million customers this year. What is the ceiling on that? Is it marketing spend, customer acquisition spend? Could it be higher? What would make that lower? Where does that number come from, the target, I suppose?
We do not think that we are not putting a ceiling on it, in short. We are certainly not constraining growth. I mean, Bruce has talked in the past about us investing free cash flow and cost working capital in year to grow the iD customer base. That is a price we are happy to pay because the net present value is strong. The payback is short on iD customers coming in. We think it demonstrates that we are a good owner for this asset. I mean, I would be surprised if we were not asked at some point today, "Are you planning on selling it?" We usually are. No, we are not, just to anticipate that question. It performs a core role within the group. We think we are a good owner, demonstrated by the 22% growth, over 20% growth that we have seen in subscriber numbers.
I would not put a limit on it, and we are certainly not capping it. In fact, if we are promising at least 2.5 million customers this year, you can be sure that what we are going for is higher than that. Bruce, anything to add to that?
No, I do not think so. As you say, particularly when we were challenging ourselves to improve the balance sheet, improve our margins, pay down debt, it was a tougher choice at that stage to be able to invest and double down. We decided to do it because it was the right thing to do, and it is now paying dividends. As we are unshackled from some of those constraints and really able to double down our investment, you can see that that will be growing even more.
Sorry, just link to that.
You say that you aim to offset the working capital investment from iD Mobile by basically being working capital positive in the rest of the business. Can I just understand the drivers of that and risks to that?
Yeah, of course. We've been doing it now for the last couple of years, and we will continue to do it. The first is our stock, being really focused on stock turn, taking down maybe stock items that have a much slower turn or managing them differently through our supply chain, and really focusing on availability for the items that move the fastest. That's one opportunity. Another opportunity is looking at supplier payment terms, both goods for resale and goods not for resale. We've had great support from our supplier partners to be able to move that forward. There's clearly the management of debt.
We've got a number of aspects of debt within the organization, so we've been looking at managing that aggressively as well. All of those have come together, as you'll see in the statement today, both U.K. and Nordics, out with the iD investment, have enjoyed almost GBP 20 million worth of upside each. You can't keep on delivering that, of course. There are ceilings to it, but our commitment is to continue to offset the iD investment.
Sorry, just a final one on your store portfolio. Is it right to think that it's mostly about optimizing the operations within the store rather than drastically changing store numbers and things like that?
We're not looking at drastically changing store numbers. I mean, we close a couple every year if they don't meet our stringent hurdles. I mean, every store has to pay for itself.
We're not attached to stores for sentimental reasons. We're attached to stores because that's how customers prefer to shop. If a store's making sense on its own two feet, it has to make money, and it has to make sense as part of the network. We assess that all the time. We're pretty happy with the performance of the store network, as you can see by the fact that we're investing in it.
Thank you.
Thank you. If we could come to Rich at the front here.
Thank you. Good morning. Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Could I ask you, Alex, maybe to talk about the cost outlook for the Nordics in view of the weak NOK? I wondered if there's any OpEx sort of tailwinds, headwinds for us to be aware of, I guess, in the coming year. That's the first part of the question.
I guess the second is, what kind of macro environment do you think you need in Nordic to get somewhere close to that 3% target? Can that be done effectively through self-help, or do we need actually quite a big macro tailwind from here? Thanks. Thanks.
Yeah, thank you, Richard. From a cost perspective, I think the first thing to say about our Nordic business is it's a really tight ship already. They run a very efficient IT stack, for example. They've got a very efficient operating model within their head office structure. What they've successfully achieved over the course of the last 12 months is really to double down and to support profit growth, both by offsetting inflation and actually offsetting some of the other headwinds in the business. Do those opportunities exist going forward?
I think, if I'm honest, I think they're probably going to be tougher to find as that business becomes more and more efficient. But a good example of where that opportunity exists is our outsourced relationship with Infosys. So you're aware that we've moved circa 1,000 roles to India. That's for both the U.K. and the Nordics. And looking at continuing to drive those efficiencies, I think, is clear. In terms of macro?
Go ahead.
Yeah. What we've seen is slightly different by market. Denmark, for one, we've seen improvements in consumer confidence, and that's flowed through in our results. Norway, I think, has been relatively static in terms of consumer confidence. We are seeing maybe a few green shoots as we see interest rates come down recently within Norway. Other markets like Finland remain tough. That's the way I'd summarize it.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. If we could go to Adam.
Morning. Adam Tomlinson from Berenberg. Three questions, please. Just on services, lots of areas of growth coming through as you edge towards that billion pound of revenue. Are there one or two maybe that just stand out in terms of just the size of the opportunity there versus others is the first question. The second one within services, just on mobile. We've seen some of your direct peers talk about how tough that market is and potentially retrenching from that. It would be great just to get a few comments on why you're at the other end of the spectrum, why you're finding life more positive in that respect, and why you can grow where others are struggling.
Can I take those two first, Adam?
On services, actually, the ones that I've talked to today, we see further scope on all of them, in short. Josh is in the room at the moment. I mean, he's certainly not happy with 22% adoption rate on credit. I mean, we think we can get that up significantly in the years to come, and that's going to be good for customers, and it's going to be good for us. It's going to be good for our sales. It's going to be good for the direct profit contribution. It's going to be good for the recurring revenues that come with it. Second, installation. I said that 31%. Nobody's happy with that. I think it's deplorable that over two-thirds of customers are trying to install their own washing machines without our help.
I mean, and it's on us to do a better job of telling them why they're better off doing it with Currys. There is a lot of scope for growth there, and we intend to get after it. Repair, we had a bit of a flat line in U.K. repair. The Nordics stepped on nicely last year, and we're going to do better than that this year. That is why we're investing in things like Repair Live, in continuing to use the assets that we've got that nobody else is ever going to replicate in order to be valuable to customers and to do it profitably for ourselves. Again, nobody's happy with 12 million repair customers, significantly further scope there. We've just finished talking about iD, how 2.5 million is what we're promising for this year. Be rest assured, Adam, that we'll go for significantly more than that.
You ask about mobile and others struggling in this space. Look, it's a tough space. And we've experienced that more than most, right? We've had our share of issues historically in this area. We've worked really hard. We've worked really hard to integrate mobile as a joined-up category so it's no longer burdened by a separate cost base. We've worked really hard with our network partners, the ones that we could bring with us, like Three and Vodafone, to get to really strong commercial terms that work for everybody. The ones that we couldn't, well, we've amicably parted company with. And we've got this back into growth as a core category in both of the channels. I mean, it hasn't been easy, but we're on with it.
It's not easy being an also-ran in this space, which is why some of the more smaller peripheral players in mobile are perhaps struggling. Clearly, as they fall out, that opens up more opportunity for us.
Great. Thanks. Just a final one, just a quick one on weather patterns. With the extremes of weather we're seeing, some retailers are talking about how that's impacting footfall. Interesting, just without any numbers, obviously, just your thoughts on that and perhaps why you're resilient in that respect.
One of the things we're trying to do is to build more stabilizers into the business, whether it's a consumer economic cycle, whether it's seasonal trends that you're talking about, whether it's sort of sudden weather bursts. What we're trying to do is to make sure that the business is more stable in its performance across these ups and downs.
There are several ways that we're doing that. I mean, the first of them is on the products that we sell. When we're selling the ice baths that that colleague was finding a tad challenging to get his words out while sitting in it, whether it's selling air conditioning units, whether it's selling DYSON fans, there are increasing numbers of reasons to come to Currys in hot weather. We're getting better at communicating to customers in a way that's relevant to the weather today and to get that footfall and that traffic coming into the stores. That's one way, selling a wider range of more relevant products and putting in front of customers. The second is building out the recurring revenues.
When 28% of our U.K. revenues are now recurring in nature, by definition, they're less susceptible to ups and downs in cycles, in seasons, or in weather. Third, we're building out B2B, and the small and medium-sized businesses operate on a different cycle to consumers. No one's claiming that we've completely eliminated cyclicality from our business. Clearly, we haven't. What we are doing is making ourselves less vulnerable to it.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thanks. If we could go to John.
Thanks. Morning. John Stevenson at Peel Hunt. A couple of questions. Start with the gross margin. Obviously, it's been a very strong couple of years in terms of progression. Can we talk about the sort of scope to drive margins going forward? I appreciate services mix, obviously, a big part of that. Is there still more to come through in terms of general savings?
On iD Mobile, obviously, you mentioned not selling it. Is it core? If it is a core part of the business, why keep it at arm's length as a sort of separate business outside of Currys?
Bruce, do you want to start on the gross margin?
Yeah, of course. It's a pretty straightforward answer, I think. What we're doing is working, and we believe there's more bandwidth in all of those opportunities. Sold With is a good example. The ability to sell solutions, to sell accessories. We've seen big growth, but there is much more for us to go after. Certainly, the commercial team have got some great ideas of new opportunities, new products that we could bring in to help move that forward. Alex talked a lot about services.
Clearly, all aspects of our service proposition we can drive in terms of managing our cost base, particularly within our supply chain and our service business, which impacts our gross margin. Alex touched very quickly on sort of right first time, the use of AI, for example, in our customer contacts. We see those as almost new opportunities to go after. I guess that the overarching theme on all of that is, over the course of the last two or three years, we have dramatically improved margin simply by being disciplined, that we're not going to chase loss-making products, that we're going to manage our range, manage our promotions, manage the way we advertise. We are not going to stop doing any of that. The underpin will remain strong.
On iD, we do see it as core for the reasons I mentioned before.
We like selling a functioning product. You need connectivity for the mobile phone to work. We want to sell connectivity. We like having our own source of connectivity because it gives us security as well as something we can sell profitably and building a valuable asset while we're doing it. Yeah, sure, it's core. At the same time, I mean, we're not sentimental about any part of the business. I mean, we get asked about the Nordics from time to time. We get asked about iD. We were asked about Greece before. Look, we're all about the value.
Now, my belief right now is we're a good owner for all of these parts of the group, and all of these parts of the group are better off within Currys ownership, that we're getting good synergies and good best practice sharing between all of these parts of the group, and that we're perfectly happy with the portfolio as it stands. That does not mean to say that we're closed-minded on it. Of course, we're not.
Thank you. Can we come to Wayne on this side?
Hi, Wayne Brown from Panmure Liberum . Just on B2B, you've clearly stated an ambition in the past, but in today's announcement, you've clearly given a high target of trying to double in three years. What's changed that's given you that confidence? Or what's changed in the strategies that you've got line of sight of that? It would be interesting.
We're going after it in a more concerted way is the summary. What does that mean? I mean, that means taking better stock of the assets that we've got in our core B2C business and using them better to serve B2B. For example, making sure that we're using our channels in the right way, making sure that we've got the right number of hubs in the stores, over 50 now, and the right number of colleagues, specialist B2B colleagues in those hubs, making sure that all of the supplier relationships that we have, we're talking to them about pro product as well as about B2C product, making sure that the solutions and the services that we develop are suitable for where they need adaptation for a small and medium-sized business audience. We're doing that. What's changed, to answer your question directly, Wayne, is a few other things.
I mean, sparing Dean and Chris's blushes, I mean, I pointed them out before. We've got better leadership in this part of the business now, and that matters. We've invested in the store hubs and in the colleagues and in the account management and in the specialist contact center and in the underlying systems and operations. We've also learned from our Nordics colleagues who, as I mentioned, are further ahead. I mean, 12% share of Nordics business is B2B compared to 3% in the U.K. So our U.K. colleagues have some ground to make up to get there. I suppose the proof that it's working is in the performance. We grew 14% U.K. B2B last year compared to an overall like-for-like of 4%, which shows that we're getting somewhere. We're at day one on B2B, which is why we're excited about the headroom.
Great. Okay. Thank you.
One last question from an iD Mobile. If you are willing, just to give us a little bit more clarity on what the drivers behind iD are. You're clearly aiming to grow 25% on top of 25% this year and 25% the previous year. The task is getting bigger, but you're clearly taking a share. Where's that growth fundamentally coming from? Maybe you can touch on some of the channels where you're actually acquiring the customers from, would be helpful.
Start that iD is a really good value product. I mean, a really good value product. The advantaged commercials that we successfully negotiated with Three, which work for them but work really well for us, allow us to be very keenly priced versus the competition all the time. This is transparent.
You can go on to the price comparison sites, and you will always see iD there or thereabouts when it comes to really attractive deals. It starts with that. Second, of course, there is the network itself. Three is a strong network. It had one of the best invested 5G infrastructures of any of the mobile networks if you go back. Of course, now it is merging with Vodafone. One of the conditions of that merger is further investment in the network, so we can expect to see better coverage for customers, which should give us confidence in just pure technical coverage and network operability that that is going to improve. There is also the stuff that we are doing. I mentioned that we had landed a new app in iD. That has landed and landed successfully, with three-quarters of iD customers now using it.
What that allows us to do is to get in touch with customers in a more personalized, more tailored, more relevant way, whether it's existing customers and boosting the retention rate that we see some further upside in, as well as a draw for new customers. Finally, we're getting better at selling iD in our own channels. Of course, we've got the Currys machine to lean on in iD as elsewhere. We're doing a good job now of effectively cross-selling iD, a better job, I would say, of cross-selling iD online and in our stores channels. Our stores colleagues are well behind it because it's a really good proposition that's resonating with customers for them to sell. The proof's in the growth that we've been enjoying. We wouldn't be promising 2.5 million unless we were confident of hitting it.
Look, we see significant further opportunity there, and we're happy to get after it at a time when, as you've heard, some of the competitors are finding life a bit harder.
Yeah. Do you mind if I add to that?
Sure.
You asked why it's so important to us. From a payback perspective, we've shared with you in the past that on a cash payback period on a 24-month contract, it pays back in roughly 18 months. We do not share a lot of the economics on purpose because it's a category. What we have shared, and you will have seen it in the slides, is the revenue per user is about GBP 20. We have shared some of the churn rates as well.
From a profitability per contract, one of the things we could have done to be able to grow that curve is start to dilute those returns. That is not the case. We monitor the lifetime contract value over the course of the last four years as that curve has gone up, and the number is largely unchanged. It continues to be a really valuable asset for us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. One more question from Nick at the front here.
Thank you very much. Nick Barker from BNP Paribas. Just a question on loyalty program members. They have grown again strongly in the Nordics, but not so much in the U.K.
I know you mentioned that you'd give us a bit more insight this time next year, but can you give us some flavor of some of the strategies that you're going to be using to kind of make the most and engage with this cohort of people? If I get my second question as well, CapEx, you've said that your store estate is well invested, and the guidance looking for the year ahead is slightly lower than historical standards, although it ticks up. What score out of 10 would you give the store estate and why?
On what criteria?
On overall criteria, the whole store estate in terms of how it looks to customers, how you're presenting it.
I mean, I'll let Fredrik talk in a minute about what we're planning on doing to make better use of the Nordics customer club.
Let me answer the store estate question first. We try to be deeply dissatisfied just as a mindset, and stores are no exception. We can see plenty of grounds for improvement. The space optimization that I talked to, we're underway with, but we'd like to get it completed faster. We'd like to make sure that the fastest moving and most profitable lines have more space and that we get more room for the new and for the growth categories. We've done a decent job with that. We can take it further. We want to get these electronic shelf edge labels and other similar tools and technology landed quickly so we can enjoy the benefits and lower cost and more agile pricing. Our capable and committed colleagues, we're really happy with the engagement levels and the market-leading levels of low attrition that we have amongst those colleagues.
We're happy with the rate of training of those colleagues to make sure that they're imparting their knowledge well to customers and delivering the assisted sales experience, which is one big reason for customers to come and shop at Currys. We're always looking to improve. That assisted sales aren't what we call life, the assisted sales experience. We've got some big initiatives underway with that. Look, it's a bit of a fourth bridge job. We're never going to be done. As long as we can see things to be dissatisfied with, paradoxically, that makes me happy because it's when we run out of things to improve that I'll start to be concerned with. We're nowhere near is the short version. On the data side, I mean, we've got these big customer data sets which we've got in the presentation.
We've got large numbers of customers who we've got permissions and good sets of information from. It's not like we haven't done anything. I mean, we've grown perks to a meaningful number. We've laid the technological foundations to make more of this data. That's important because we have the data in the place. We're migrating a bunch of this data, and we're a long way down the road of migrating it to the cloud and having the better technology tools with partners like Microsoft that we can make use of it. When it comes to third-party monetization, we've made an important start in some areas like retail media with Currys Connected Media, for example, to start to monetize this data externally in a more meaningful way. I'd give us 4 out of 10 at best in our progress there.
We're dissatisfied with the rate of progress, and we want to make a lot more of it. We think there is a lot more to be made of it. Fredrik on the Nordics.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. As we mentioned, we have around 9 million customer club members in the Nordics. That's about 50% of the household. We see that they shop more, and we earn more money on them. Am I satisfied with that and how we use the data? Not at all. The good thing with four countries is that we have now launched a lot of piloting. We are testing how can we increase the frequency and how can we be more personalized with those kind of customers. The initial findings that we see is that this looks really good.
If we can continue to do this the next six to twelve months, we will get a better profit on those kind of customers. We are just in the start, but we are piloting now and will go out and do a lot the next twelve months.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. If there are no further questions, I will hand it back to Alex for closing remarks.
Thanks, Dan. Thank you all. The briefest of closing remarks. Yes, these are strong and strengthening performance that we are talking about today.
I mean, as mentioned, we are happy that we're moving ahead on all fronts, whether it's colleague, customer, or financial metrics, whether it's all of the financial metrics, whether it's the much stronger balance sheet underpinning it, whether it's the colleague engagement and the customer satisfaction that gives us confidence that we're going to sustain this financial performance, whether it's the growth opportunities that we have ahead of us as well as the further ground to go on margin and cost disciplines. Look, we're nowhere near done, and we're pretty dissatisfied with where we are, but we're pretty happy with the trajectory that we're on. We see a lot more in the tank for this business, not least in the free cash flow generation and the shareholder returns that will flow from that. Thank you for your attention, and have a very good day.