Welcome to the DFS Furniture PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Tim Stacey, CEO. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Good afternoon. Hi, I'm Tim Stacey, Group CEO of DFS Furniture. I'm here with Marie Wall, our Interim CFO, and together we'll go through a brief update of our half-one performance, an update on our strategy, and the outlook for our financial year. Next slide. I guess by way of summary, over the last few years, we've been very focused on building compelling customer propositions across our two retail brands, DFS and Sofology. We've been investing in a lot of new product development, developing a digital-first marketing strategy, and training our people to be the best salespeople in the industry. The combination of all of these efforts has supported our continued growth in market share, and I'm pleased to report that we grew our order intake by 10.1% in the first half of the year.
We've also focused on our operational execution and continue to make progress here, with our gross margins up 70 basis points year on year, and our cost-to-operate program achieving GBP 43 million of annualized savings, well on track to meet our GBP 50 million target by the end of financial year 2026. Growing sales, increasing margins, and reducing costs has clearly driven profit growth, with profit before tax and brand normalization almost doubling to GBP 17 million, despite operating in a relatively subdued market that we believe was down slightly year on year. Our financial position has also strengthened. Through profit generation and disciplined cash management, we've lowered our absolute debt levels, and our leverage has come down from 2.5 times in the previous year-end to 1.6 times as we target getting back into our 0.5-1 times range.
Finally, we remain increasingly confident about the group's prospects and fully stand behind our 2022 Capital Markets Day targets of achieving GBP 1.4 billion of revenue and an 8% PBT margin. We've strengthened our position as a clear market leader and are growing profits through our self-help initiatives. In addition, market demand now appears to be stabilizing somewhat, and we do expect it to recover from the current levels, which are over 20% below pre-pandemic volumes. Given our high operational leverage, the profit drop-through from any market support will be very significant. We have a highly cash-generative model, and so we expect to de-lever back into our target range over time, and that will free up cash flow for further growth initiatives and healthy levels of returns for shareholders. Moving on to some headlines, both of our retail brands performed well in the first half ahead of the market.
DFS retail brand order intake was up 8% year on year, supported by its exclusive brand partnership sales, which reached a record high in the period, representing over 40% of our sales. The Sofology brand has performed incredibly well over the period, with order intake up 19% year on year. The range changes that we made at the end of the last financial year have proven to be very effective. Our customer proposition and operations are in excellent shape, with our Net Promoter Scores either at very close to or high record levels across all areas of our customer journey. The Sofa Delivery Company, our delivery network, is performing better than ever and achieved post-delivery Net Promoter Scores up 10% year on year, reaching a record high. In summary, a strong first half with significant profit growth achieved and our customer propositions and operations in great shape.
I'll now pass over to Marie to cover the headline financials.
Thank you, Tim. I'm going to begin by walking you through our key financial headlines, starting with order intake, which is at the top of the chart. We achieved strong order intake growth of 10.1% in a market that has been subdued. Our proprietary banking data indicates both our brands grew their market share in the period. Gross sales, which are recognized on delivery of orders to customers, were up to a lesser extent at 1.4% year on year. This is largely due to the improved order intake being back-weighted during the period, and therefore the goods have not been manufactured, delivered, and recognized as income in the first half. Consequently, though, this has left us with a very healthy order bank heading into the second half of the year.
Revenue growth, meanwhile, came in broadly flat, reflecting the decision we made to increase the use of 48-month interest-free credit in DFS to drive consumer demand in a weaker market. In terms of profit, our underlying profit before tax and brand amortization of GBP 17 million is up GBP 8.3 million year on year. This improvement is primarily driven by the success of our cost-to-operate program, with both stronger gross margins and ongoing operating cost reductions achieved in the half.
Finally, our closing net bank debt stands at GBP 116.7 million, which is down from the GBP 133.9 million at the same point in 2024. It represents a significant reduction from GBP 164.8 million at the full year 2024 year-end, and this decrease is the result of continued cash discipline, with our leverage reducing from a peak of 2.5 times at FY 2024 year-end to 1.6 times at the end of the half.
Now, onto our cost-to-operate program, and I'm pleased to report that the momentum from last year has continued into the first half of this financial year. At the end of FY 2023, we set ourselves the target of GBP 50 million of annualized savings by the end of FY 2026. We achieved GBP 43 million of that target to date at the end of the first half, with GBP 15 million delivered in half one, on top of the GBP 27.5 million we delivered in FY 2024. Our gross margin has continued to improve through action taken to reduce costs and improve quality through ensuring we're making the products in our optimal locations. On the operating cost side, we've delivered savings through the annualization of FY 2024 initiatives, such as developing more efficient operating models across our showroom and online sales teams and within our logistics operations.
In addition, we've implemented new cost-saving measures in the first half of this year, such as through aligning payment solution suppliers across our two retail brands and improving the efficiency of our customer service operations. As a result of this program, we are developing an ever-increasing cost-conscious culture across all areas of the group, utilizing data and management information through the development and effective use of dashboards, which help us obtain insight and improve decision-making in our operations. Our cost savings have been achieved in a sustainable manner without compromising the customer proposition, and overall, we're really very pleased with the progress that we've made to date. The group is now operating at a lower cost, which will strengthen future profitability through all stages of the economic cycle.
With the pipeline of opportunities we have, we're confident we will achieve the GBP 50 million target that we set out in fiscal year 2023. Moving on to gross margin, and we're pleased with the progress made, both in terms of cash margin, which, as you can see from the chart, is up GBP 3.3 million year on year, and margin rate, which has expanded 70 basis points to 56.7%. Now, this is a significant step forward as we continue to make progress towards our 58% margin target, which we first set out at our 2022 Capital Markets Day. Margin expansion is driven by improvements in product margin, reflecting both the strength of our commercial proposition and our continued focus on cost of goods under our cost-to-operate program. Together with favorable effects, these more than mitigate headwinds on freight rates. Now, a quick note on freight rates.
These were notably higher in the half, broadly double the $1,500 per container rate from the prior year, with last year's rate being more in line with the longer-term average. That said, we're starting to see freight rates come down, and it's worth noting that every $1,000 change in the cost per container equates to GBP 7 million-GBP 8 million impact on the group. We remain confident in our ability to achieve our 58% gross margin target, and there are further opportunities to reduce our cost of goods through improved purchasing, with future anticipated interest rate reductions providing further margin support through lower interest-free credit costs. Moving on to operating costs, and as I mentioned earlier, we've made good progress in reducing our cost base, building on momentum in FY 2024. Our total operating costs, including depreciation and interest, have reduced by GBP 5 million year on year.
This is despite GBP 3.2 million of inflationary headwinds, which we've more than offset through the cost savings achieved by our cost-to-operate program. The gross sales increase in the period has been largely driven by average order value increases, with the stronger order intake volumes in Q2 feeding into the second half P&L in this year. As such, variable costs have been broadly flat year on year, which is the first block on the chart. I've already talked about the key areas of cost savings, but one further point worth mentioning is our use of data and customer segmentation to improve marketing efficiency. As a result, we've been able to keep marketing costs flat across the half and offset inflation. Looking ahead, through our ongoing cost-to-operate program, we have a pipeline of opportunities that will enable us to run the business even more efficiently in the future.
Moving on to cash flow, free cash flow in the period was GBP 48.2 million, representing an increase of GBP 37.6 million against last year. This strong performance was driven by improved profit, lower capital expenditure and tax, and most significantly, a working capital inflow. Taking each in turn, cash capital expenditure reduced to GBP 10.4 million as we continue to prioritize spending on maintaining our existing assets and investing in capital-light, short payback growth opportunities. We expect total cash CapEx investment for the full year to remain within our previously guided range of GBP 20-25 million. Interest and tax reduced by GBP 5.8 million year-on-year to GBP 5.6 million, and interest costs were GBP 2.4 million lower year-on-year, primarily due to the non-recurrence of refinancing fees incurred in fiscal year 2024, and corporation tax payments were GBP 3.4 million lower due to the in-half utilization of historical overpayments.
Lease liabilities increased to GBP 46.6 million, reflecting additional payments which fell into half one as a result of our period end date falling five calendar days later. Total working capital inflows increased by GBP 24.2 million year-on-year to GBP 28.9 million in the half. This was driven by a negative working capital model and reflects the higher trade creditor position, which links to higher delivered gross sales and increased customer deposits held as a result of the stronger trading performance. There were also some additional benefits from deposits taken in the additional peak trading days up until the 29th of December. We expect to see a partial reversal of this working capital position as the order bank and customer deposits normalize by the end of the year. In summary, the business is highly cash-generative, and we expect to generate strong cash inflows and reduce leverage.
Let's take a look at how all of this translates into an improving financial position. We've shown three charts on the slide to show how net debt and our key ratios of leverage and fixed charge cover have evolved since 2022. Taking each in turn, closing net bank debt stands at GBP 116.7 million, down from the recent peak of GBP 164.8 million at the end of fiscal year 2024. This reduction is significant, bringing us well below the pre-COVID average level of debt, which we show in the top chart. We have plenty of cash headroom available relative to our total lending facility of GBP 250 million. As a result of the stronger profit performance over the last 12 months and the lower net bank debt, our leverage has improved to 1.6 times, down from the fiscal year 2024 year-end position of 2.5 times.
Fixed charge cover has also improved to 1.7 times, as shown on the bottom chart. In the near term, we expect to remain outside of our target leverage range of 0.5-1 times. However, deleveraging remains a high priority, and to support this, we will continue to take a disciplined approach to cash management, focusing on maintenance CapEx and selective capital-light short payback growth opportunities to ensure we balance investment for growth with maintaining flexibility. We remain fully committed to delivering sustainable shareholder returns, but given our current leverage level, the board decided not to declare an interim dividend. This decision reflects our focus on strengthening the balance sheet in the near term. The decision on the fiscal year 2025 final dividend will be based on full year performance, net debt position, and the outlook at that time.
In summary, I'm really pleased to be announcing a strong set of numbers for my first set of results, and we are well positioned for the future. I'll now hand you back over to Tim.
Thanks, Marie. I'd like to just take you through the group strength through a more strategic lens and start off really by discussing the state of the market as we see it. On this chart, the top on this side, the top left chart illustrates our market share by value, and that's based on the Global Data survey. This shows that our group is the largest business in the U.K. upholstery sector by some way, with circa 36% market share. We're over three times the size of our nearest competitor. This provides us with significant scale benefits across our business that you'll hear about in the following slides. There is a material fragmented tail within the market, making up about 25% of it. This is made up of independents, small chains, and some of the more general retailers.
In terms of competitor movements, some of the generalists have entered the sofa market, and we believe they may have taken share from some of our specialist competitors. As for the independents, they've been in decline for some time now, and we continue to see them as a donor category to us. We can see in the middle chart how our share evolves across our specialist competitor set on a monthly basis using our proprietary Lloyds banking data. We have a track record of growing share across all economic cycles, and over the last 12 months, we've made significant progress as a group. Finally, in terms of market size and the chart on the right, the key to pull out from this chart is that the market size in the calendar year 2024, adjusting for price inflation, was at its lowest point, with volumes over 20% below pre-pandemic averages.
Now, we do expect the market to recover in time. Firstly, there are more rooms in U.K. households with sofas in them than ever before, and these at some point will need replacing. Second, consumer confidence is a big driver of sofa replacement, and confidence levels in recent months appear to have stabilized. Given that household savings are in growth, as consumers become more confident, they'll be likely to be more willing and better able to spend on big ticket items. Finally, housing transactions have been in growth for the last 10 months. Given that housing transactions drive around 20% of sofa sales, the recent growth in these transactions should provide a tailwind for us for future growth. Turning to profit growth, we do see significant profit growth potential over three key areas.
The first is focusing on what we can control, building on our successes over the last few years, and especially the first half, which will continue to improve profitability. Specifically, continue to profitably grow our market share through like-for-like growth and from the clear white space in front of us to increase the Sofology showroom estate by up to 15 new showrooms. That is a 25% increase in the Sofology estate from today. In addition, we have a further 130 basis points of gross margin rate expansion that we are targeting through improved sourcing and also the benefit of falling Bank of England base rates.
As Marie pointed out, we will continue to optimize our cost base to offset future cost inflation as a minimum to enhance our profitability. Second, as I said earlier, sofa market volumes are down over 20% below pre-pandemic levels, and we do expect the market to recover.
When it does, the profit uplift should be significant. We have capacity across our vertically integrated business model to handle much higher volumes. Given the cost that we've taken out of business recently, the operational leverage is even stronger. This should enable a profit drop through at a rate of around 40% of incremental revenue. This should convert to cash at a healthy rate of over 75% of PBT, given our relatively low maintenance capital requirements and our negative working capital model. We also have growth opportunities beyond the core business. We have a great asset in the Sofa Delivery Company where we see opportunities to leverage in future. We are also targeting to grow our share in the non-upholstery home segment from 1% to 4%, starting in the GBP 3 billion beds and mattresses segment.
We've already laid down the back office infrastructure to support this growth and utilize some of our exclusive brand partnerships to sell branded bed ranges. Going forwards, we should be in a position to start to market and build customer awareness to drive sales. Moving on to our winning integrated retail proposition for the upholstery sector. We believe that an integrated retail model is critical for success in our sector. We know from the results of our biannual surveys of over 3,000 customers who are in market for a sofa that around 90% of customers will start their journey by researching online. 85% of customers require the all-important sit test before being willing to commit to a sofa purchase. After all, on average, customers retain their sofas for around seven years, so it's a decision you don't want to get wrong.
We have two complementary retail brand propositions that are set up to meet these customer needs. To start with, we have well-invested digital assets from our websites to being the first sofa retailer to offer augmented reality visualization of sofas through your mobile device, as shown here. We have scale to invest and stay ahead of our competitors. We also have high levels of brand awareness, with DFS being the most searched for term on Google in our sector far more than the word sofa. For the all-important sit test, we have a good geographical spread of showrooms across our two retail brands, with DFS having full representation of showrooms across the U.K. and Ireland. Sofology is on track to have national coverage once we've opened the 15 or so more showrooms I mentioned earlier.
In addition, we continue to invest to maintain our estate in a high standard to create a welcoming and inspiring space to showcase our products to levels that many competitors cannot match, resulting in sales densities of around three times that of the nearest competitor. Finally, we provide the ability for customers to transact in a way that best suits them. This includes our shared baskets in DFS that enable our sales colleagues to build an order in the showroom and for the customer to complete at home at their leisure. To sum up, we have a well-invested asset base across digital and physical channels that we continue to invest in, innovate in, and evolve. This resonates incredibly well with the customer journey for the sofa market. On to design, inspiration, and selling.
Now, we employ, we believe, the best designers and source from the biggest and best suppliers around the world, which allows us to innovate and offer the best and broadest ranges in the sector. Due to our scale, we can attract and work with well-recognized brand names such as French Connection, Joules, Ted Baker, Country Living, House Beautiful, and Grand Designs. These carry a lot of weight with the U.K. consumer. As we work with these brands on an exclusive basis, this is a competitive advantage. In addition to our exclusive brands portfolio, we've also continued to innovate from a product perspective. We've introduced more technology into our sofas, such as wireless charge points, wine coolers, speakers, and vibrating seats, and our recently patented heated seats, all of which are driving up average order values.
We've invested in data across the organization in the last few years to improve decision-making. Our data-driven marketing approach enables us to market at a highly localized and specialized level in an efficient and effective way. We've recently won the Bloomreach Data-Driven Leader Award, recognizing our impactful use of customer data and analytics, and have been nominated for four U.K. Search Awards for best use of search and the best in-house team. We've always been creative from an above-the-line viewpoint, and most recently, our digital-first execution of the recent DFS advert has been used as an internal case study at YouTube for effective platform and digital-first creative thinking. Finally, we believe that our highly trained and motivated sales colleagues are the best in the business. We've developed a good mix of full-time and part-time colleagues, which allows us to flex our deployment based on data-driven analytics.
We've focused on matching our colleague profiles to the towns and cities we serve, and all of this drives in-store conversion. At the end of the first half, we did also make a change in our organization structure with the introduction of some additional group functions, including buying and marketing. This will drive further synergy benefits through facilitating knowledge sharing and embedding best practices across the group. As we move into DFS, our longest established brand, whose core target market is mid-income families, DFS achieved order intake growth of +7.8% in the first half, principally through higher average order values, which were up nearly 4%. The AOV growth has been driven through new product developments, especially in our higher-priced exclusive brand ranges, which overall reached a record high of over 40% participation.
In the period, we also launched exclusive ranges from our new partner, La-Z-Boy, famous for comfort worldwide, which are trading well. Along with this, we enlisted the basketball icon, Shaquille O'Neal, as our brand ambassador for our market-leading ranges of reclining furniture. We are really excited to be working with him, especially on social media, and hope to replicate the success he has had in the U.S. in a similar role. We have also invested in four periods of four years into free credit to stimulate demand and enable customers to trade up to the higher price point ranges. Our three core values as a business of think customer, be real, and aim high are fully embedded across the business and in the mindsets of our teams.
I'm really proud to see our colleagues living these values day in, day out, with their efforts feeding into very strong post-purchase Net Promoter Scores for the period, which were close to the record highs. On to Sofology , which targets a slightly older and more affluent customer demographic. Sofology is a very strong first half of the year. You may remember, if you've seen before on our full year results presentation, that we did start to make significant changes in quarter four last year when around 75% of our product ranges have changed on the shop floor. This new proposition has landed very well with customers, evidenced by the strong 19% year-on-year order intake growth during the period. In addition to the new ranges, Sofology 's merchandising has been elevated.
A good example of this is in our showrooms where the new Paramount recliner sofas are housed in an inspirational home cinema room setup with sofa speakers connected via Bluetooth to large screen TVs. We even provide free popcorn for the full cinema experience. We have also introduced promotional activities such as limited editions and introductory pricing, and this has driven conversion both in stores and online. Finally, post-purchase NPS scores, as in DFS, were again strong, close to the record highs. Moving on to sourcing and manufacturing, our objective across sourcing and manufacturing is to produce goods at the best cost and quality to enable us to offer the best value for money for our customers, whatever the specification of sofas. We operate two of our own factories in the U.K. and have strong relationships with some of the largest furniture manufacturers around the world.
Having our own factories provides us with a number of benefits. Firstly, we know exactly how much it costs to produce and transport sofas. With this knowledge, we know what's optimal to manufacture ourselves and also what to outsource. It also helps us, obviously, with supplier negotiations. Second, we can offer shorter lead times for customers than those that source solely from overseas, and something that's a competitive advantage, particularly at certain times of the year, such as the run-up to Christmas. Our scale and strong relationships with our third-party suppliers enable us to offer our products at optimal cost. Through our use of data, we continue to work with our suppliers to identify the cause of any defects to improve the quality and reduce the cost of repairs.
Now, we're seeing the benefits of this in our established customer Net Promoter Scores, which has taken circa six months post-purchase, and these are close to record highs. As Marie Wall mentioned earlier, our sourcing and manufacturing strategy has contributed to us growing our gross margins by 70 basis points year-on-year. The brand operational changes I alluded to earlier will facilitate us leveraging the group's buying scale more to support us in reaching our 58% gross margin target. Moving on to logistics, the Sofa Delivery Company was formed by bringing together the logistics arms of the DFS and Sofology brands to form the largest two-person sofa delivery network in the U.K., providing a first-class delivery and installation service.
With national coverage and seven-day operations combined with the group's scale, utilization of cutting-edge technology such as AI-driven vehicle route scheduling and data-rich KPI dashboards, the Sofa Delivery Company operates at the lowest cost per order in the market and provides the highest service levels. These are seen in the post-delivery NPS scores, which reached record levels, and the cost base, which reduced by 4% year-on-year despite wage inflation. With capacity available in the network and the anticipated volume recovery, we expect to see significant operating leverage benefits in the future. In short, the Sofa Delivery Company continues to go from strength to strength. Coming towards the end of the presentation now, I'm finishing with outlook for this financial year. As a reminder, in March at our interim results, we uplifted our profit expectations for the full year.
Trading through the second half to mid-March, when we released our interim results, remained strong, with order intakes increasing from +10% in half one to +11% year-on-year, with a record winter sale at DFS. Now, we start to trade against our strongest period in the prior year shortly, so we do not expect this level of growth to continue, but our performance to mid-March was better than we expected and a testament to the compelling customer propositions and operational execution executed by the teams. Assuming that lead times remain extended due to the Red Sea closure and that we experience no further supply chain disruption, we now expect to deliver full-year underlying profit before tax and brand amortization above the previous analyst consensus in the range of GBP 25 million-GBP 29 million.
Just taking a longer-term look, looking at the market drivers, they are on the whole stabilizing or trending in the right direction. Starting with consumer confidence on the left-hand chart, we can see that both the overall index and the climate for major purchase scores have stabilized somewhat, albeit they're slightly below the pre-pandemic levels. Property transactions, as I mentioned before, have been in year-on-year growth now for 10 months, as you can see on the middle chart, and we'd expect this increased level of activity to start to feed through to upholstery purchases soon. Looking at household disposable incomes, these look to be at an inflection point, with the OBR forecasting a return to growth. In addition, the ASDA disposable income tracker indicates that as of January this year, households in three of 13 regions now are spending higher than pre-pandemic levels.
In summary, there are reasons to believe the market could soon start to recover. Just looking at medium term, we have illustrated what has happened since our last Capital Markets Day back in March 2022, where we set out medium-term targets of GBP 1.4 billion of revenue and 8% PBT margin. Now, it was around that time the cost of living crisis started, and the interest rate increase that followed caused the upholstery market to contract significantly. Had we as a business not done anything, we would have been in a significant loss-making position, as illustrated by the illustrative without action bars. We have, however, delivered three percentage points of market share gains that we set out to achieve. In addition, we have taken action to sustainably lower our cost base by becoming more efficient and effective.
As a result of these actions, we've delivered around 3% profit-to-total tax margin in half one 2025. Looking forward, there are further two building blocks. First, we do expect to deliver our 58% target of gross margin. That's 130 basis points more than we are today. Second, given the significant market recovery potential, we expect to further grow our top line, and given our established asset base and existing capacity, a 40% revenue-to-profit drop-through should be achieved. We are therefore very confident that we can achieve the 8% PBT margin over the medium term. I'll wrap up using this slide. I guess in conclusion, we're all very aware of the current geopolitical uncertainties and the varying views on the U.K. economy, but despite all this, what we do know is that we have had a good first half by focusing on what we can control.
We've grown our market share, improved our gross margins for the fifth consecutive half, reduced our costs, and therefore improved our profitability. Our financial position has improved, as Marie Wall set out, and we plan to reduce debt levels in the next couple of years. The second half has started well, and last month, we increased our profit expectations for the full year. Our customer proposition and operations have never been in a stronger position, and our market drivers are stabilizing, and some are starting to improve. We're therefore confident that with a bit of support from the market recovering, we will deliver our Capital Markets Day targets of GBP 1.4 billion of revenue and 8% PBT margin in future. That concludes our presentation, and I'm now happy to take Marie and I have to take any questions and hand over to Phil to facilitate that.
Thanks, Tim. Yeah, I've worked down the P&L from top to bottom and then head on to the balance sheet. Starting with order intake, first question from George W. He notes DFS and Sofology have both gained share and have a strong first half. Are we able to provide any insight into which competitors may be losing any share?
Yeah, when we look at our specialist market data that we have, we can see that one of our major competitors, ScS, has been a little bit of disruption. They were refitting stores in September, October, November last year, which obviously led to a little bit of market share gain in the adjacent stores that we have. Since they've reopened those stores from Boxing Day onwards, we've managed to maintain that share. We can see ScS have dropped a bit of share.
I think one of the longer trends that we've seen, longer-term trends, is around independence, so we can see that we're gaining share there. Most of the other shed retailers appear to have held up okay. I think certainly we know, for example, that Marks & Spencer have exited furniture, and that will be benefiting something like Sofology pretty well. I think the share gains have held well since half one. That's probably where we're at. Thanks.
Next question from Mark. There'll be a number of factors at play that changes made in the brand. Is there anything you would call out in each brand that's specifically driven that order intake growth?
I think, as I said, in DFS, what we've seen is a slight volume growth, 2-3%, but average order value growth of more like 4-5%. That has continued in the calendar year 2025 so far. What is driving that is the strength of the exclusive brands and licensed brands. We are now just over 40% in terms of mix of share. Brands like Ted Baker are performing extremely well, House Beautiful very well, French Connection, lots of new product development happening there. New product development such as a brand that we have developed called Cinesound, which is for home cinemas, and that has gone incredibly well with lots of technology.
We have used interest-free credit. Four years interest-free credit is the best offer in the market. We use that as a promotional tool to help customers afford those types of products. That is what has driven DFS mix increase. In Sofology, slightly different. We made a big range change in about, in fact, this time last year, it was April 2024.
Since then, we've probably changed about 75% of the shop floor. Lots of NPD, really getting the pricing architecture right, great value for money. The volume growth in Sofology has been over 20%. It's mainly volume that's driving Sofology, not necessarily more customers. The footfall's fairly flat, but conversion's been strong and the teams in Sofology really getting behind the new products.
Thanks. Next one's from George S., who asks whether we can provide an update on the performance of our digital channels compared to physical stores and outline any initiatives aimed at enhancing the omnichannel experience.
I mean, digital channels continue to grow in both brands. I think what's happened probably since pandemic is obviously they grew significantly during the pandemic, but they've settled back down. I think the participation or the percentage that we're doing through our digital channels is around 25%. Interestingly, half of those customers, we survey customers and ask them, "Have you been into a store before you bought online?" Half of the customers have been into a store, and then they've purchased online. The actual pure play e-commerce bit of our business, we estimate at about 12-13%. It's fairly plateaued in the last couple of years. I think it goes back to the reason we talked about what we call the integrated retail model. For our category, sofas, customers want to sit on the product.
They want to touch the product. They want to get that feeling of comfort. It's an important purchase. People are in market for three months. For us, it's that combination of, we call it omnichannel, but we call it integrated retail, but it's the same thing of connecting the websites to the store experience. A lot of the initiatives we do is to make the customer experience seamless. If you're in a store and you want to build your order, that creates a basket, which you can then go home and close that basket if you want to. Similarly, if you're at home, you can build a basket, come into store, call that up, and our sales colleagues will talk to you about that and try and find you the right product and combination for you. It's about making that customer journey as seamless as possible.
Our colleague reward has changed over the year, so they're rewarded on omnichannel sales, not just on store sales or web sales, and that creates a much better and joined-up customer proposition.
Thanks. The final one on the top line, I think, Steve and Kay, his question is around plans for new product developments and how you're adapting your ranges to new trends such as modern living or smart features.
It is a good question. There's a huge amount of NPD happening, particularly in technology features. A lot of the features that you'd see in cars, things like electric recliners and managing to maintain your settings, heated seats. We've got wine coolers now. We've got speakers in sofas. We've got charging points. Huge amounts of innovation coming, particularly in products that we call Cinesound, and customers are really trading into that.
Sorry, what was the first part of the question? Around trends around modular furniture. We've always had a lot of modular furniture, and we're doing a lot more, particularly for customers who perhaps have not as much space, and then can grow with their families as they grow. A lot of our sofas are modular. A lot of our corner groups can be split. That's something that's a trend we see continuing. We're trying to innovate on that, particularly with brands like House Beautiful, which is targeted at families who want storage and space and can grow as their families grow. Yeah, we're kind of all over these trends, and I guess hence why the NPD stream has been super successful for us in the last few years.
The question from Stewart is around customer lead times and what we are doing to reduce customer wait times for sofa deliveries.
Yeah, customer lead times are on average, typically around six to eight weeks on average. It depends on the range. If in simple terms, a third of our business comes from the U.K., which is about four weeks, five weeks lead time. A third comes from Europe, which is four to six weeks. Just over a third will come from the Far East, which today is about 12 weeks. Look at the average and average sales. It comes as an average of six, seven weeks. What are we doing to reduce that where we can? For example, we have a big initiative in the last few years to bring in Far East products, working with our supplier partners.
Our Far East partners will store the best-selling models and the best-selling covers in the U.K. at their cost in their warehouses, and therefore we're able to offer quick lead-time products of 7-14 days of the best-selling covers, best-selling models to customers. That's been very successful. Probably now about 12% of our business goes through that kind of model. We're always trying to optimize our supplier partners to give the best possible lead times that we can. I think in the U.K., we're very competitive on lead times.
Next question is from Peter, and it's around gross margin. He notes progression over the last five consecutive half-year periods towards 57% now. His question is, are we comfortable with the 58% target, and what are our levers to help achieve that?
Should I take that one, Tim? Let's start by just iterating our confidence in the 58% gross margin target. It should be noted that those five half-year progressions on gross margin have been made in a not particularly favorable macro environment. I think you'll have heard us talk about a couple of key drivers around that. Currently, interest SONIA rates are closer to 5%. If that was to come back by a percentage point, that would be worth about 30 basis points on the margin target. The long-run average has been more like 3.5%. The second factor in that is freight rates. Freight rates in the first half were broadly double what we saw last year, and last year's rate was closer to about $1,500 per container. That's much closer to the long-run average.
If they were to get back there, that would be another point on the gross margin. 56.7 plus 1.3 gets you to about 58%. On top of that, as you have seen from the chart, we are also doing a lot of work on self-help, both in terms of looking at the structure of our suppliers, where we choose to get the products made, how we optimize that combination between cost of goods, benefits, and quality. We continue to expect the self-help work to continue almost in spite of whatever is happening in the macro environment, which, as we all know, is quite uncertain. In summary, we remain committed to the 58% target with three or four different levers that we see.
We have also got foreign exchange going in our favor a little bit.
Yeah, we do, actually. Yeah.
Starting to.
A little bit.
Yeah, with each cent worth a million at the bottom line.
Okay. I'll do a strategic question. In terms of homes, as Sarah notes, we had about GBP 100 million top-line opportunity announced in the Capital Markets Day. Do we still see that as attainable, and how quickly can we go after that?
Yeah, I think I mentioned in the growth potential areas, home is still a big opportunity for us. We've been doing a lot of work in the last couple of years on building the infrastructure. So we've got a stock management system. We've done a lot of work on the website, done a lot of work on the product ranges. The team's done a great job there. The thing that will accelerate growth there is to invest in marketing and also to put down some space in terms of mezzanines and DFS for this type of product.
At this moment in time, given where we are with the balance sheet and the uncertainty in the market, we've been a little bit on hold with that, and I think that will stay the case for the next, certainly in the next year. We'll be looking to grow the home business, but not quite accelerating until we can see some green shoots in terms of both the sofa market, but also the macro environment. Yeah, I think it's definitely achievable. The question is when we start to push the button on it.
Another strategic one from Harry, who notes we've been talking a lot about Sofa Delivery Company in the last two or so years. What opportunities does that provide beyond servicing the group brands?
Yeah, we were asked this question in the results presentation. I'm not necessarily going to give away anything more than I said there, which is to say it's obviously branded Sofa Delivery Company for a reason. As in, we could service other third-party brands and are currently looking at that. I think if you look at the scale of the Sofa Delivery Company, we're nationwide, seven days a week, lowest cost per order. We know that because we work with other big third-party 3PLs. We can offer a nationwide service to smaller brands that say sub GBP 150 million business, where we can give them a nationwide coverage at low cost per order at very high customer service levels. That would be something that we're actively pursuing. Obviously, our first point of call is always to try and grow our own capacity and our own volumes.
We have plenty of capacity to go out there as the market recovers, so we do not have to add in more fixed cost. Certainly, I think as an asset, it is ready to grow and take on some third parties and provide a great service for them.
Moving on to the balance sheet now, and a question from Harry again. What do we expect net debt to be towards the end of this year and leverage, and what are your views on when we could get back into our target leverage range?
I will start off with Full year 25. We recorded a net debt at the end of the half, about GBP 116.7 million. There are a few different drivers in that, but the most significant of which was a working capital inflow, part of which we expect to unwind in the second half. That is because the way that our working capital cycle works, the increase is really phased with the timing of taking customer deposits, so booking the order, and then also the timing of delivering that order. We built momentum through the first half, which gave us an increase in the working capital inflow that we recorded.
Some of that will unwind in the second half, and the level of the unwind will be dependent on what we see of the phasing of the sales through this second half. Net net, we expect profits to increase in line with guidance. You take those two together, we should be looking at a net debt at the end of the year somewhere between GBP 110 million and GBP 120 million, which would be about 1.4-1.5, just depending on how all of that phasing plays through.
In terms of the longer-term trajectory back to getting within our guidance of 0.5-1 times net debt to EBITDA, we've done a bit of modeling on this, as you would have expected. If we don't anticipate any particular support from the market, which is not guidance, it's just a prudent assumption, and we maintain the approach that we're taking in terms of being quite conservative on our investment levels in terms of capital, focusing on maintenance CapEx and light touch growth CapEx, we should be getting back into the top end of that range within about 18 months. That will see us somewhere towards fiscal year 2026, first half of fiscal year 2027. Nothing heroic in those assumptions.
Okay, that's all the questions that we've received.
Perfect. That's great. Thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today, and we will publish the responses out on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Tim, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah, look, welcome the opportunity to talk to you investors, and hopefully, you've got a good sense of where we're at as a business. I mean, I think my three key points are that we're really well positioned as a business in terms of our market share, highest market share as a group we've probably ever had, and our operations and our customer scores are in the best position. I think we're in a good position from a customer proposition and an operational point of view, point number one.
I think we're starting to see some of the market drivers stabilize. I'm not calling it as a turning point, but certainly stabilize. We're seeing that coming through in our volumes, and our order intake has been encouraging in the last 12 months or so. That's encouraging. Finally, if you look at the bridge that we've set out in page 28 of our interim presentations on our corporate website, I think it's page 23 on this one, we've got a clear audit trail as to how we get back to our long-term profit ambitions and a number of the levers that we can pull within our own gift. We stand by the sort of longer-term or the medium-term targets. Yeah, cautiously optimistic about the future.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you.
That's great.