Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the DFS Financial Results for 2022. We're here in London, which is the center of a national period of mourning. Before we begin, on behalf of our business, I'd like to express our profound sadness at the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and we join millions of people in the United Kingdom and around the world in mourning the loss of an inspirational and selfless leader. Now, let's turn to the results. I'm Tim Stacey, Group CEO, and I'm here with Mike Schmidt, our Group CFO. Now, our presentation today will cover five areas. Firstly, I'll begin with a brief introduction and summary of our progress in the year. Secondly, Mike will deliver the financial overview. Thirdly, I'll present my strategic update.
Finally, I'll give an update on the current outlook before finishing with a Q&A with Mike and myself. I'm pleased to report a set of results in which we've seen revenue growth of 20% and underlying profits growth of 14.6% versus the pre-pandemic comparator. We've reduced net debt since the pandemic period to GBP 90 million and will return over GBP 75 million to shareholders in the calendar year 2022. All of this has been achieved despite the unprecedented operational challenges we've had to face during the year. We launched and established our new pillars and platform strategy, and we have evidence that this is working with over 3 % points gain in market share since FY 2019. Now, I've already mentioned that the growth in revenues and profits was achieved during unprecedented operational challenges.
This included industry-wide COVID disruption affecting our end-to-end supply chain, leading to extended manufacturing lead times, Far East shipping disruption, high levels of colleague absence, and reduced U.K. transport availability and reliability. Now, on top of this, we've had to navigate double-digit industry-wide inflationary cost pressures, and we've carefully absorbed these into our product range pricing. Despite the current challenging economic environment, we remain committed and confident and focused on achieving our long-term strategic goals, which we outlined in our Capital Markets Day back in March, and we'll talk about this more later in the presentation. I think stepping back from the current climate, it's important to remember that this group has historically always taken market share when times are tough. We are very confident that the group is well-positioned to repeat this and emerge from the latest economic challenges in an even stronger position.
Now, here's a reminder of the new strategy which we launched at our Capital Markets Day back in March. Our vision is to lead furniture retailing in the digital age, and we intend to achieve this through our pillars and platform strategy. The retail pillars are our brands, DFS and Sofology, with Home sold via these two brands. Our group platforms underpin the growth of the brands, starting with sourcing and manufacturing, technology and data, our logistics platform, which we've been investing in for a number of years through the Sofa Delivery Company, and our vital people and culture platform, 'cause in the end, we believe that we are a people business. The wraparound of all of this is ESG, which is always at the forefront of our strategic operations. We recognize that as the market leader, we have a massive opportunity to lead on ESG for our sector.
In summary, this is how we plan to organize our business for the next cycle of growth over the coming years. Stepping back from the current trading environment, we think that it's important to set out the structural advantages that this business enjoys. As the clear sector leader, we believe that we have the broadest and best customer proposition through our integrated retail approach, our brands and our brand partnerships, and of course, our fantastic teams across our business. The strength of this proposition is illustrated by the fact that DFS is still the number one searched-for term on Google in our sector, ahead of sofa and sofas. Now, this advantage has enabled us over the years to establish efficient group platforms through which we leverage our scale to achieve sector-leading margins and cash generation. We have a proven, resilient and well-invested business with a strong balance sheet.
The combination of these elements allows us to invest for the future and also ride any short-term headwinds. We'll continue to invest in our growth agenda, our home ambitions, our digital and data capability, and innovate in the ESG space. Looking short, in the short-term, clearly, there are economic headwinds, but we actually see this as an opportunity to gain share. In the long term, these fundamental advantages of our business model underpin our confidence as a management team in the longer term ambitions and also enable us to generate strong cash flows, more of which from Mike later. I think over the years I've been doing this, we've learned to look through the short-term trading fluctuations. Of course, we have to navigate these tactically, and we've got plenty of levers to do so.
In the end, we're focused on the medium to long-term opportunity for this group. When you frame the opportunity in this way, we're very confident that our long-term ambition, as previously stated, is still there. Now, to illustrate the point, the chart on the left here shows our market share trajectory over the last decade or so. Whatever the trading conditions, this group has continued to execute its strategy and gain market share with our value market share now sitting at around 36%. You can see there are some clear jumps, especially when the sector is challenged due to both exits and acquisitions.
As the pie chart on the right shows, we are the clear market leader, with our nearest competitor having only circa 10% market share. Our market share growth is driven by like for like volume in DFS, new store openings in Sofology, and the relative strength of our e-commerce and digital platforms. In short, we see this next period of time as an opportunity to gain share and come out even stronger on the other side. Now I'll pass over to Mike, who'll present the financial overview.
Morning. Thanks, Tim. I'll start with some context on the whole year. Before I do that, I should emphasize that the majority of the comparisons that I will be using are to financial year 2019, which is the last full undisrupted pre-pandemic period. We also commonly exclude from these comparisons our discontinued activities, Sofa Workshop and international operations in the Netherlands and Spain that are now closed. Turning to the results. Overall, we saw the value of revenues increasing by 20.1% versus the pre-pandemic comparator. There are three factors behind the revenue growth. Firstly, the group entered the financial year with a strong opening order bank. Secondly, we saw positive order intake volume growth relative to financial year 2019.
Thirdly, we saw average order value growth from price increases that offset inflationary pressures, but also within that new premium ranges that drove the mix upwards. Against this materially higher revenue picture, we also saw increased operating costs caused by the macro environment and also by a volatile pattern of trading that I'll come back and talk about shortly. As Tim has touched on, this has really been the most operationally challenging period that the current leadership team can remember. Despite those challenges, our overall reported profit performance is positive relative to pre-pandemic levels, with an underlying profit before tax and brand amortization result of GBP 60.3 million from continuing operations in the year. That's 14.6% higher than the pre-pandemic comparator.
We also close the year with a robust and, I believe, efficient financial position, with net bank debt of GBP 90 million and leverage of 1.1 x. This supports the declaration of our final dividend of 3.7 pence together with the extension to our current buyback program of GBP 10 million. I mentioned the trading was volatile, and you can see this illustrated here in our quarterly volume trends, volume and value growth trends relative to the pre-pandemic period. You can see that we saw very strong trading in the first quarter and also the third quarter, with double-digit growth in each of volumes and value there.
The third quarter in particular was pleasing for us, given it was our key winter sale period and it came following a very weak second quarter that had been impacted by extended customer lead times ahead of Christmas. Also, as we confirmed externally previously, we saw weak fourth quarter trading, most likely driven by consumer fears on the cost of living. This volatility really operationally, internally created operating and customer services challenges for us that you can see the impact of as we step through the gross profit and operating cost bridges. Looking first at gross profits. Cash gross profit increased overall by 2.5% to GBP 605.9 million compared to the FY 2021 period.
However, it also decreased as a percentage of revenue from 56.2% in FY 2021 to 52.7%, which is primarily due to the dilutive impact of the pass-through of inflation. Diving into the detail behind that. We saw firstly the benefits of additional volumes driving GBP 14 million of margin, but a net negligible impact on the gross margin percentage. Secondly, inflation pass-through and product range mix effects led to GBP 12 million more cash gross profit or 2% growth in that cash gross profit, but diluted the percentage gross margin by 1.9 % points. I think, you know, against that, in line with many retailers, we experienced significant inflationary pressures across our entire industry cost base.
I think the statistic from the ONS estimates across the furniture sector as a whole, this was 18%, and that's something that's been absorbed within the business. You know, we particularly used our scale to mitigate the impact of this inflation on our customers and only sought to pass on the cost rises on a pound-for-pound basis. Finally, our gross profit has been impacted by the end-to-end costs of operating in the current post-COVID environment. Particularly in the first half, we saw significant increases in our inbound logistics costs. Furthermore, in order to create additional working space within our warehouse network, we accelerated the clearance of ex-display and customer returns at a lower margin. Also in managing the customer service impact of longer and less predictable lead times, we saw increased costs in our business from customer allowances and also returns provisioning.
The combined impact of this disruption was GBP 13.7 million reduction in our cash gross profit and a 1.2% points reduction in our gross margin percentage. This is an area that we're already seeing the signs of normalization in financial year 2023, and we do believe it provides some benefit into the future. Now moving on to our operating cost base. We show this excluding property costs, I should say, as those were heavily affected by the IFRS 16 changes and also rates relief. Looking at the non-property operating costs, they increased overall by GBP 30 million year-on-year.
This is a decrease when measured as a percentage of the overall group's revenues, reflecting the scale efficiencies of our platforms coming through. Inflation was a big driver of increased cash costs, particularly wages within our business, with particularly high increases seen for skilled drivers and manufacturing colleagues. We also invested GBP 5.5 million in increasing the capacity of our final mile delivery network following the significant gross sales growth of the group. The industry-wide COVID disruption has resulted in approximately GBP 14.9 million of inefficiency from colleague absence and reduced trunking predictability, in addition to increasing the size of our customer service teams, again, to look after a much larger order bank.
We do believe that there's an opportunity in 2023 from a normalization in the disruption costs that will be realized through our routine operational execution, and we believe that this will be a good balance and counter to the full year effect of the inflationary trends that we, you know, we have seen coming through in previous monthly periods. Ultimately, though, the point that I really would focus on is the costs as a percentage of revenues are stepping down as we leverage our group platforms, and we see this as a sustaining efficiency opportunity for us in the future. Turning to cash generation. Despite the cash benefits from significant profits, net debt has increased in the year by GBP 71 million- GBP 90 million, as we expected. This firstly reflects last year's transitory working capital benefits normalizing by GBP 29 million.
Secondly, and more significantly, the capital return program that together has amounted to GBP 61.6 million in the period. CapEx of approximately GBP 45 million was higher than normal due to catch-up of deferred spend from the pandemic period and the acceleration of the store refit rollout guided to previously. The final couple of items broadly offset, with the bank interest and tax countered by the other category, which primarily relates to finance lease interest. Our group leverage ratio at close, therefore, is 1.1 x, which is slightly above the upper end of our 0.5-1 x target leverage range. While we would generally operate target operating at the midpoint of this range, our weaker fourth quarter of trading reduced our earnings and has increased our reported leverage ratios.
Overall, though, I'd reflect that we're significantly less leveraged than we were pre-pandemic, with over GBP 120 million of bank facility headroom at year-end. We also expect to remain operationally cash generative in all of the scenarios that Tim will shortly outline. As we enter this more challenging trading period, we feel we have a resilient financial model and structure. As just mentioned, our cash capital expenditure spend for 2022 was GBP 45.6 million, which reflected the acceleration of the store rollout program at DFS. Actually, as we look forward to next year, we expect this to be slightly lower, beneath GBP 40 million.
We think this is a level that is justified by the return on capital that we generate and is actually a level that upholstery competitors struggle to match, which serves to grow the gap in customer proposition over time. Looking at where we spend our capital, we typically see total spends split equally, broadly equally between logistics, property and technology. Just less than half, around 46% last year, is in the renewal of assets, and this particularly relates to our in-house delivery fleets and maintenance of our property estate. We make a base level of maintenance spend in our technology assets. On the growth side, we have a robust approach to measuring our returns. We typically will be seeking over 20% return on capital employed on a post-tax basis and short-term cash paybacks.
Looking at what the gross investment comprised last year, we saw, you know, a slightly unusual high-growth spending in logistics, where we were increasing our warehousing space by opening a couple of new sites to reflect the scale of the business. In property, we were particularly active, opening eight new showrooms, as well as rolling out our new DFS showroom format across 47 stores. We've continued this program into 2023, and we're still seeing evidence that the refitted stores give at least a 5% sales increase across the like for like refitted estate. Finally, we did also add a number of critical digital tools for our group platforms that drive efficiency in the group and are key to our long-term plans to get to 8% profit margins.
Before I conclude and hand back to Tim, I thought it would be helpful to offer a reminder on the relatively flexible way our cost base should move with volumes. You know, there's lots of detail on the slides that I'm happy to talk to, but the big picture, 59% of our gross sales, or sort of sticker price, sticker selling prices, are directly variable, either product costs, finance subsidy, inbound freight or VAT. Around a further 25% is semi-variable or discretionary. That's things like sales commission, bonus, influenced pay, marketing spend, and final mile logistics. That all together means that we're well-placed to mitigate reductions in revenues in order to limit the impact on profitability. That's something that Tim will come back and talk to. I do also call out on the right-hand side a number of cost drivers.
A couple of those in there I know there's particularly active questions on. Energy costs are actually quite small for the group, you know, less than GBP 5 million, and we have forward-bought cover for the next 12 months at a similar cost to the last 12 months. Interest rates are a potentially larger impact, with 1 % point being GBP 10 million of cost increase. However, would reflect that as the interest environment changes, the value of that interest-free credit benefit offered to customers increases, and we also do have the ability to flex the customer proposition to mitigate some of this impact, should we choose to do so. Stepping back, though, the key messages I'd highlight on this slide is that firstly, we do have a big opportunity from operating efficiently following reduced COVID disruption.
Secondly, you know, across all of these factors, we're monitoring and managing very tightly all of the other moving factors to protect profit and our customer proposition. Moving on to the final slide and showing how we've delivered on our fundamental financial principles that I always come back to. Firstly, we believe it's important to drive sales growth as part of value creation. Growth in the revenue since the pre-pandemic period has been largely driven by a 3 % points growth in DFS market share. In Sofology this has been driven due to Sofology new store openings and the DFS brand, driven by like-for-like gains, aided by store refits. On underlying profit before tax and brand amortization, this has increased 14.6% overall versus FY 2019. It's been driven by the increased scale of the group.
Looking beyond 2023, we do believe still that an 8% profit margin is achievable, driven by the higher volumes you'd normally expect and underpinned by our platform strategy. We focus critically on return on capital employed as a business to ensure we invest our resources wisely, and we are achieving returns at our targeted high teens levels. Finally, on capital returns, we do have a history of returning funds to shareholders with approximately a gross GBP 200 million returned or declared since IPO. We're continuing that trend today with the announcement of a 3.7 pence final dividend alongside an extension to the ongoing share buyback. The switch to a buyback from a dividend for approximately GBP 10 million that we would otherwise have considered utilizing as a larger final ordinary dividend is worth dwelling on.
Through to the start of this week, the group has invested just over GBP 21 million in share buybacks, thereby reducing the number of shares in issue by 5.8% and leading to similar earnings per share accretion. The post-tax trailing return on investment on these buybacks to date is 11.9%. Based on reasonable medium-term projections, we estimate an internal rate of return for this program of over 30%, which we believe emphasizes the highly attractive returns we believe are available to shareholders, and it also demonstrates the belief that we have in the prospects of this business. While it's been an incredibly challenging year, we are pleased that we have grown our profits and revenues compared to pre-pandemic.
While the current environment is definitely challenging with the risk of consumer demand weakness, we do believe we will emerge stronger relative to others, and we therefore remain focused on our long-term strategic approach and development. I'll stop there. Thank you, and back to you, Tim.
Okay. Thanks, Mike. I'll now provide an update on our strategy that we presented at the Capital Markets Day back in March, and hopefully you're all familiar by now with our pillars and platform strategy with the two retail players with Home, and underpinned by our group-enabling platforms. Let's start with some of the highlights from the DFS brand first. DFS continues to grow, gaining share and remains the largest and most profitable brand in the sector by far. Firstly, I wanna talk about some of the DFS brand marketing. Our new What's Your Thing? Brand campaign showcases the fact that the DFS brand has the biggest and widest range of sofa styles in the market.
This campaign embraces all brand touchpoints across marketing, the retail channels, and includes our expert online and in-store colleagues who are committed to helping customers find their thing. The campaign launched at Christmas last year and has started really strongly, improving the DFS brand perceptions for those customers who have engaged with the communications. Now, this is evidenced by a very significant shift in our brand connection score of 8 % points, which for context, puts DFS in the top three retail brands in terms of brand connection in the U.K. Secondly, our exclusive brands are a key way of differentiating our product range from the rest of the market, and they broaden our appeal to a wider range of customers.
This year we strengthened our portfolio with one of our most successful brand launches ever, our new Storeaway collection, which was developed in partnership with the largest furniture manufacturer in the world. We've also launched our first ever DFS Vegan collection, which is fully endorsed by PETA and is unique in the market. Thirdly, we continue to invest in our store format program, which has been rolled out to nearly 47 DFS stores. With improved lighting, space optimization, better zoning of product styles, we've modernized the DFS showrooms and improved the consistency of the brand look and feel across all channels. The refit program has led to an increase of at least 5% sales, like-for-like sales, across the estate. A typical refit costs around GBP 300,000, leading to a payback period of under 24 months.
Finally, I'd like to talk about one of our technology initiatives, which has been now rolled out across the DFS brand, which is our Intelligent Lending Platform. This platform transforms interest-free credit, which is a key part of our offer for customers, colleagues, and our finance partners. The introduction of ILP has reduced the order taking process by around 15 minutes on average, which enables colleagues in store to serve more customers at peak times and therefore drives improvements in store conversion. It also allows customers to complete at home soft credit searches, and simpler second line referrals that increases our customers' likelihood of obtaining the credit that's right for them. Look, in summary, DFS is arguably in the strongest position it's ever been in, and I'm very optimistic about the future of the brand and its potential for further profitable growth.
Next, we move onto our Sofology brand, which has continued to grow and develop through FY 2022. Now, we set out to differentiate Sofology within the market as the boutique sofa brand on a retail park. Sofology's distinctive brand advertising builds on this differentiation, and we use well-known actors who are equally celebrated for their own individual sense of style. This year, Helena Bonham Carter has played a key role in Sofology advertisement, and her unique style and creativity has proved a really strong fit for the Sofology brand. In terms of product, Sofology continues to be at the forefront of sofa design and innovation. New product launches this year included the collaboration with George Clarke, the well-known and well-loved designer and TV presenter. Now this collection is a natural fit with the Sofology target customer who wants style, comfort, and strong design credentials.
Our aim to turn Sofology into a Nationwide business has progressed rapidly during this year, with seven new stores opening in FY 2022 to give a total of 55 stores by the year end. We've opened an additional store in September and a further one planned for the remainder of FY 2023. Finally, Sofology have also successfully leveraged our group platforms, and most notably here, Sofa Delivery Company. We've now combined and integrated the two delivery networks that used to be DFS and Sofology into one, which gives both cost efficiencies and a better service for our customers. Turning to the home opportunity, we view the beds and mattresses segment as a key long-term opportunity to grow our addressable market for the group. With a market size of around GBP 3 billion per annum, our ambition is to grow our share in this segment to around 4%.
Now, we're able to utilize many of the group's existing assets, including our sourcing and manufacturing capability for upholstered furniture, our web and logistics platforms, our marketing expertise and data, and our differentiated brand partnerships. With over 700,000 customers each year shopping with us already, many of them utilizing interest-free credit, we have a really strong opportunity from our existing customer base. Now, a key element to achieving this strategy is to raise product awareness. To that end, we've been investing in above the line marketing as well as digital marketing to drive awareness of the bed and mattress offer, particularly at DFS. Indeed, we released our first non-sofa TV advert earlier this year, focusing on our bed range. We've seen strong growth, with our online bed sales increasing by 94% versus FY 2019.
In terms of our supply chain capability, we're using our existing customer delivery network and assets to consolidate beds and mattress deliveries in our large warehousing facilities in Milton Keynes. We're gonna continue to build our capability and foundations to support this growth opportunity over the next few years. Now, the growth within these three retail pillars is enabled by our four group-enabling platforms. Firstly, sourcing and manufacturing. Now, we already have a significant competitive advantage from our sourcing and manufacturing platform. We've been producing made-to-order sofas in our own factories for over 50 years, and for over 20 years we've developed partnerships around the world with the biggest furniture manufacturers. The capacity and design style and business model here are hard to replicate, and our scale gives us cost price advantages and design advantages.
Still, we look to continue to improve the efficiency and performance of our own manufacturing sites, and during the year, we commenced a refurbishment of our own Doncaster manufacturing facility. Work on this site is set to be completed in the first half of 2023. Now we move onto our technology and data platforms. Over the past few years, the group has invested significantly in its collection and use of data and technology. Our ambition with these data platforms is to unlock new growth for our brands, but also to drive operational efficiencies through our cost base. We're currently investing in our Integrated Retail Intelligence System, so IRIS that we call it, which integrates over 35 data sources to provide a 360-degree view of our group. This cloud-based solution incorporates AI and machine learning.
It provides insights across every element of the customer journey. Ultimately, the use of data gives our colleagues the power to make faster and better data-led decisions. Thirdly, our group logistics platform, The Sofa Delivery Company, was launched in June 2020 with the objective of providing the best service, best delivery service in the market for our customers and our colleagues. Now, this involved merging the DFS and Sofology delivery networks into a single combined network which improves the service for our customers as well as driving cost efficiencies. The Sofa Delivery Company operates on a four days on, four days off shift pattern, which provides an attractive work-life balance for our teams. It also enables us to offer extended delivery hours to our customers seven days a week. The final stage of development will be unlocking further cost efficiencies this year.
The Sofa Delivery Company is developing into a really strong and unique asset for our group. Finally, our people and culture platform. Now, we take great pride in the people and culture we have in our group, and in recent years, we've progressed key changes to our culture, introducing more flexible ways of working in our support offices, in our CDCs, in our stores, a new reward structure in DFS Retail. Our mission here is to make everyone feel welcome in our group, which supports our plan to be an employer of choice. Personally, I'm very proud of the progress we're making on diversity and inclusion, and the energy, momentum, and support we have from our colleagues in this space feels totally unstoppable. During the year, we've made other key changes, including integrating the previously separate teams of finance and HR and technology into group centers.
This has allowed us to be more efficient and share best practice. Turning to ESG. We launched our ESG strategy in September 2020 with a strong focus on the environment and sustainability, and that was based on our Sofa Cycle approach. We've continued to make significant progress in this space, and we now understand our carbon footprint, and able to report our total carbon footprint, including Scope 3 emissions for the last four years. Now, although there are clearly specific challenges to the group and the industry to overcome in order to become net zero by 2040, we now have the data and foundations on which to build a credible and science-based plan. Moving on to social.
We launched our diversity inclusion strategy last year and have continued to drive the conversations around other forms of inclusion and diversity with our internal education and engagement activity, alongside the creation of longer-term plans across all of our brands and operating teams and officers to make a measurable difference to the makeup of our workforce. Finally, we look at governance, and the group continues to maintain a robust corporate governance framework, the practice and policies to manage and deliver long-term success for this company, including, but not limited to the board composition, audit committee, the structure, executive compensation, and whistleblowing. Next, we move on to the final section of our presentation, our outlook and summary. Firstly, a reminder of our winning, we believe, integrated approach to retail.
We believe that in our sector, it's the combination of the physical and digital channels that's the right approach here. Utilizing the assets that we've got across the group has served us well over the last few years, enabled us to gain market share of around 3 percentage points. This approach is backed up by the competitive advantages that I outlined earlier. This means that we are confident and we stand by our long-term ambitions that we set out back in our Capital Markets Day back in March. Now, although short-term trading conditions are challenging, we know that in times of market downturns and historically, DFS as the market leader emerges in a much stronger position with a greater market share. Our ambition for the medium to long term remains to grow revenues to GBP 1.4 billion by FY 2026-2027.
Secondly, we expect greater profit margins with higher revenues leveraging the efficient operating platforms in order to deliver an 8% profit before tax margin in the medium term. Finally, we are confident in the continued strong free cash flow generation, which is underpinned by the conversion of our profit before tax into a post-tax cash flow of about 75%. Now, moving into the short term and our outlook for FY 2023. Our profit expectations for this year are influenced by sector volume declines versus pre-pandemic levels as a result of the wider economic uncertainty we're currently observing in the U.K. Now, what we'd always say, it's hard to extrapolate the short-term sector trends into the future, but we want to be totally transparent. What we've seen so far in quarter one is definitely weaker sector volumes, as you'd expect.
Now, more recently, we've observed a reasonable recovery in the volumes in September, towards the high end of the range that's presented here. July and August were, however, towards the low end of those scenarios. We believe that there are some transient factors that are likely to have particularly impacted demand in the market over those months, including, you know, very high levels of consumer uncertainty on the cost of living crisis and domestic energy prices. Certainly the reopening of holiday travel and also the relatively hot weather. All of these things combined to reduce footfall in July and August, which we have seen repeat a bit of a bounce back in September over these last few weeks. Now, we have always seen fluctuations in our quarterly demand patterns, as illustrated by Mike earlier.
In the absence of any significant recovery in consumer confidence and in the light of the ongoing cost of living crisis in the U.K., We present these scenarios as our most informed view at this stage of the new financial year. We're 12 weeks in. Now, it's worth noting that the worst we've ever seen in the market in recent years was back in the financial crisis, 2008-2009, where the market contracted by about 12%. It's worth also noting that DFS outperformed the market and declined by 4% given some of the exits that occurred at that time. Now, in all of these scenarios, we reflect the revenue benefits of the 3% market share gain that we've captured since FY 2019. We reflect the GBP 30 million higher order book in terms of revenue terms as we enter the year.
We also reflect significant growth in average order values that we've seen since FY 19. Our retail margin percentages are assumed to be similar in each scenario. We have a number of self-help levers that we can and have already pulled in order to protect earnings and cash generation, while at the same time playing to win in order to gain market share in the short term and remain extremely competitive value to consumers. Final slide. Look, in summary, there's probably three points I'd like to make. Firstly, we've emerged from the most operationally challenging year that we can ever remember in a stronger position in the market. Secondly, we know from history when the environment is challenging, DFS has been able to build on its market position and gain share.
Thirdly, we believe that these fundamental business model strengths will help us secure not only short-term sector gains, but also ultimately underpin our long-term ambitions and cash flow generation. Finally, I'd just like to say a few thank yous, if I may. A huge thank you to every single one of our colleagues and partners that we work with across the group. Your resilience and energy and determination and hard work have enabled us to navigate what was hopefully a once in a generation challenge that we faced. I'm so proud of you all and proud to be your leader. I also want to take this opportunity to thank, we call him Mike Schmidt, for his tremendous support, and service to our business over the last eight years.
Finally, to our chairman, without my glasses I can't see him, but he's here, Mr. Ian Durant, who's retiring in November. I wish him well on the golf course, and again thank him for his wise counsel and help during my time as CEO. Okay, so thanks very much for listening. I'd now like to open up for questions. You can have mine. Mike?
Thanks. Morning, Jonathan Pritchard from Peel Hunt. Two from a sort of space angle, really. We saw beds and mattresses on the Capital Markets Day there at Milton Keynes. What's the potential for that? Has that changed, or is there potential for that to go into a number more stores? This crisis we're in, the downturn we're in, do you think that will open up a space or a rent opportunity on a 12- to 36-month view? IFC, any changes in customer behavior where IFC is concerned over the last two quarters?
Yeah, good. Look, take the beds and mattresses in stores. You've seen we're trialing in a number of stores, different approaches to Home, particularly focused on beds and mattresses. It's fair to say we're looking at increasing some of the space. We've put some mezzanines into a couple of stores to see how that works, and we've seen some encouraging signs there. I think our focus is online, to be clear, and we've massively increased the range of beds that we've offered, across all styles and price points, and we're really advertising heavily digitally, and we're seeing some really strong growth there. That's our primary focus, and we'll test and learn over the coming year about our in-store offer.
I think in terms of space and rent opportunities, well, look, we continue to be in a strong position in terms of negotiations with landlords. In the next few years, we've got a number of leases that are coming up for renewal. We're still seeing really good opportunities to probably get 20-25% savings as we come to renew. We're keen to, as going back to the integrated retail point, we're keen to have that physical presence though and invest in the stores to make that experience very tactile and good for customers. We do believe in having stores and we just over time will reduce the cost of having those stores.
Finally, on IFC, I'll let Mike build on this, but we haven't actually seen a change in the Sofology pattern of business from an IFC penetration. Been pretty flat at 50/50. What we've seen in the last six-eight weeks is a slight increase now in some of the penetration at DFS in terms of more take up of IFC, which we have a very strong IFC offer, and we welcome that. It drives average order values and cash profit. I expect that to continue as we go into the autumn and as interest rates perhaps rise. I don't know if, Mike, you wanna comment on any of that?
No. I think, you know, we agree with our credit providers' minimum accept rates. We continue to see really good accept rates for our customers, so not seeing any trends there. Then alongside that, we carry on seeing significant interest in that sort of credit book from our interest-free credit lenders as well. It's a key part of our proposition, and I think we feel it continues to be well set in this environment where, you know, I guess consumer spending could be a little bit tighter.
Morning. Mike here from Berenberg. A couple from me, please. One on the market share gains since FY 2019. I wondered if you could give a bit of color around where that, those gains have come from and perhaps where you expect them to come from over the next six to 12 months. Then secondly, obviously very sad to see Mike go. Tim, I wondered what sort of qualities you're looking for in the new CFO.
Looking for a job, Mike?
Yeah if you're offering.
I think it's fair, you know, the market share gains certainly, you know, unfortunately for Harveys, they, I think over Covid, we took quite a bit of share from Harveys when they left the market in about June 2020. Particularly at DFS, took quite a bit of share there. I think we do see structurally over a period of time, and I think the ONS data backs this up, that the smaller players, and that's players between 250,000 and 10 million turnover, have demised over the last few years. They've probably gone down by about 4.5%, and that they'll be typically your independent businesses. That's where I think we're taking some share at the top end.
I probably expect that to continue, Mike, with the pressures structurally on that sector. That's where I think we can see some share gain going forward, and particularly as we open new Sofology stores in key locations. We've just opened in Southampton, which is a fantastic site down there, and we will gain share there. You know, we've opened in places like Bristol, so we know that we get strategic location and we gain share, and DFS continues to pick up share at the top end, in particular. Qualities of the CFO. I think, you know, look, it's we're active in the market looking, and then there's some really great people interested, so I'll hope to update you sooner rather than later on that. I'd look for someone a bit like Mike, if I'm honest.
Thanks. Morning, George from Numis. First one, can you just talk a bit on more recent data and kind of the slowdown in volumes, how that's trending across different brands, different consumer groups, any kind of Intel that you're able to share there? Secondly, just similarly, but on market share trends, feels like much of the market share gains were taken from Harveys when they exited.
When we go into a downturn, is DFS and Sofology more premium-paced? If consumers are trading down, do you see a bit of kind of market share stabilization? Just clarifying on the capital returns, I think it was GBP 8 million of the GBP 25 million buyback in the second half of the year. The GBP 21 million figure that you referenced earlier, does that suggest there's been a bit of an acceleration since the year end? Last one is just, can you remind us, as volumes rebase, how we should think about working capital for the group?
Yeah, good questions. Right, so in terms of slowdown in volumes, I think probably from a market perspective, we've seen the slowdown pretty evenly across both brands. I think in terms of consumer behavior, what we've actually seen is just lower people in the market, so lower footfall in the parks and lower searches. It's not particularly. At this stage, it's a bit too early to say what customer segments. It just seems to be a lower base, full stop. The pattern of trading, conversion is still strong and average order value is still strong. I don't think I position certainly DFS in the premium space. I mean, DFS is the mass retailer, and we've got entry price points all the way to the top. We're not seeing huge trade downs at all at this stage.
We're still seeing a good average order value and a good mix being sold through, 'cause we're competitive at all the price points. Sofology is a little bit more premium, a little bit higher average order value. Seems to be a bit more resilient in terms of the cash versus interest-free credits, split, which kind of indicates a slightly higher and more affluent customer perhaps. I think it's just a general less people in the market over that July-August period for the reasons we've outlined. Market share gains, you're right. You know, the big jump in 2020 was around Harveys. We've managed to maintain that, but we're seeing continually, pockets of share gain when we open new stores for Sofology or we refit a new DFS store, we see that business increase.
I think it'll keep coming from the independent sector, George, rather than any major players. Mike, do you wanna talk about the capital share buyback and the acceleration?
Yeah. On the capital returns piece, yes, I think, you know, we report the shares we're buying back daily, and there has been a bit of a step up in the level of daily purchases. I think we see that as being great news, because we're looking at the returns that are available. I think, as our brokers, who are somewhere here, will attest, we have been giving them very strong encouragement to get out there and to look to sort of, you know, get that sort of share capital deployed at the returns that are available today. I think. In terms of looking to the future, though, you know, we do see that increase, that step up in profitability. You know, we're reconfirming our Capital Markets Day ambitions.
I think if you do the math on that, we don't see a material step up in our capital investment requirements. I think the positive around that is that it gives us a really good choice to have for our shareholders around what we will do with the excess cash generation that getting to those profit levels would imply. You know, we do have a published capital returns and distribution policy that I think gives the approach, the parameters to the approach that the board would take. Clearly there will be a choice there in the future as we sort of deliver on that sort of profit uplift that we anticipate.
Do you wanna talk about the working capital implications of the rebase of volume?
In terms of working capital implications, as we ended the year, we still saw a slightly higher customer order lead times, and we were holding more deposits than we normally, you know, would expect. We've guided to that, and we've guided to the working capital outflow that we would expect to see as a result of lower volumes in the business. We are guiding to sort of about a GBP 15 million outflow that would take place overall. In addition, do be aware that the special capital return program is continuing, and that's another sort of, you know, as you called out, another GBP 15 million or so. I think fundamentally, as we look at the three scenarios, the business is operating cash generative in all of the scenarios.
Those are the sort of two key factors outside that that would also sort of, you know, sit there in thinking about where our future level of debt would turn out.
Yeah.
Thanks very much. Andy Wade from Jefferies. Just a couple from me. First one, cancellations. Are you seeing any change in cancellations, given obviously a bit more pressure on the consumer and with still an extended delivery time? The second one, obviously a bit far out, a bit crystal ball-like, but if we assume a sort of flat market going into FY 2024, how confident would you be about resuming a growth trajectory there? What do you think, sort of what have you got under your control that you can see going into FY 2024?
Yeah, it's a good one. The quick answer on cancellations is actually they've dropped over the last few months as we've started to unwind the order bank. Our lead times are now largely back to normal levels for the vast majority of our supply partners and products that we offer. Circa four weeks from our own factories, Circa five-six weeks from Europe and 11-12 weeks from China and Far East, which is, in inverted commas, normal. Typically what we saw through the pandemic period and as the extended lead time is customers were canceling 'cause it was just the lead times were too long.
That they've dropped down, and that should give us, as Mike pointed to, some upside on the gross margin in FY 2023. Not seeing any evidence of cancellations as a result of distressed consumers as a result of the economic conditions we're in. At this stage. I think 2024. Wish I knew the answer to that, but I think logically, if it was a flat market going into 2024, there are things in our control from a cost perspective. There are some quite material things that should go in our favor in the future, such as freight rates. The freight rates from the Far East, as you all know and will follow, in back end of the autumn last year, $15,000-$16,000 spot rate, and I think today it's at $7,000-$8,000.
That trend should come down, and that is a decent proportion of our business. That should normalize, Andy, largely into 2024. We have contracted rates for a calendar year, so we'll have another contract for the calendar year 2023, which will be at, we'd imagine, materially lower levels, we'd hope materially lower levels than this year. That should give us an upside in terms of profitability. I think we continue to see the benefits of the new store openings, the strength of our digital offer. Even if the market volume is flat, we'd expect to do slightly better than that. We, as you'd imagine, have an ongoing cost program to try and mitigate inflation, but also to make our business as efficient and as effective as possible.
That includes things like property. We'll start to see some further benefits of the Sofa Delivery Company integration coming through on a full year basis. I think we've got a number of self-help levers, if you like, where even if it's a flat market, we should start to, we believe, return to some good earnings growth in 2024.
Great. Thank you.
Anything to add?
No. I mean, I think, you know, I called it out when I was talking to the operating cost space. You know, there was a level of disruption back in 2022. That provides an offset to the full year effect of inflation in 2023. The efficiency that we see coming through, subject to the sort of inflationary environment we ultimately see, I think we sort of see that sort of operating cost base being sustainable. The opportunity, as Tim says, is on gross margin, where we see some of the gross margin coming back in, and we will be restoring that sort of gross margin percentage.
Yeah. Okay. Any more questions from the floor? Are we going to virtual questions? Or are we not?
Not.
We're not. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time and attention and for coming across today, and it's nice to see you all. Thanks very much. See you all soon. Okay.