Hello and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us this morning for our Full Year 2022 Results Presentation. My name is Elias Diaz Sese. I am the Interim Chief Executive Officer at Domino's Pizza Group, and I am delighted to be joined today with my partners, both Edward Jamieson, our CFO, and Will Maclaren, our Head of Investor Relations. Let us turn to the agenda on slide 2. I will give you a very short overview of the year before handing over to Edward, who is gonna be discussing with you more in detail the financials of the year.
I will take you through the strategic progress that we have made in 2022, as well as outline what are the priorities for all of us in 2023, before concluding with a Q&A. Turning to slide 3. 2022 was a year of strategic progress for all of us at DPG. Strong trading and continued shareholder returns. Following the resolution of the dispute with our franchise partners back in December 2021, we have enjoyed a year of alignment, when together we have improved our service to customers and taken market share in what has been proven to be a very challenging market for all operators.
The benefits from the execution of our strategy and aligned system were particularly evident in Q4 of last year when we increased our like-for-like sales by 13.9% and took further market share. I am pleased that the momentum has continued in 2023, and for the first 10 weeks of 2023, our like-for-like sales are up 10.8%, and our orders are up 2.5% for the first 10 weeks of the year. Our asset-light cash generative business model and continued execution of our strategy has enabled us to return GBP 113 million to our shareholders this year through dividends and buybacks.
We have an exciting year ahead with clear priorities, which I will talk to you a little bit later. Now I'm gonna be handing over to Edward, who will be taking you through our financial performance and guidance in detail. Thank you very much. Edward?
Thank you, Elias, and good morning, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here this morning and to present the 2022 financial results and to update you on our outlook and guidance for 2023. 2022 was a year of like-for-like sales growth, improved orders, and increased returns to shareholders. Like-for-like sales excluding VAT were up 5.3% in the year, and with a strong Q4 in which sales increased 13.9%. We're also pleased to report order count growth in a challenging market and a 7% growth in DPG's revenue. Underlying EBITDA was affected by the accounting treatment of investment in cloud-based technology platforms.
This treatment has no impact on cash and is simply a reclassification from capital expenditure to operating expenditure. A lower contribution from our German associate, partly due to the put option exercised on the 10th of November to exit our investment, was offset by the profit on sale of five corporate stores. Importantly, excluding all of these factors, underlying EBITDA would have been broadly flat compared to the prior year. Statutory profit before tax was up 4.2% following the completion of exit of our loss-making international operations in the prior year.
Finally, we've increased the full-year dividend by 2% for the year, in addition to GBP 86 million of share buybacks that were announced in 2022 and have now been completed. Turning to the next slide. As expected, driven by the change in the VAT rate in the U.K., system sales declined 2.8% with a 3.2% decline in the U.K. being partially offset by 4.8% growth in Ireland. It is worth noting that system sales were 20.3% higher than the comparable period in 2019, pre-pandemic. Reported revenue was GBP 600.3 million, a 7% increase on last year. This was driven by 9.7% growth in our supply chain revenue, with smaller increases in royalties on system sales and corporate stores revenue.
National advertising fund and e-commerce expenditure increased 2.7% in the year. Our NAF represents a significant competitive advantage for the Domino's system as it gives us and our franchise partners real scale as we continue to strengthen the brand and offer our customers compelling value. Looking at EBITDA margin as a percentage of system sales, this remains stable at 8.8% as we have passed through food cost inflation, albeit on a lagged basis. Let us go into system sales and order count in a little more detail. Starting on the left-hand side, we've split out the impact of sales and orders between collection and delivery.
I covered system sales in the previous slide, so let me walk you through our order performance. Overall, total orders were up 1.6% on the prior year, with the decline in delivery orders more than offset by the growth of our collection business. Collection orders were up 33% in the year as momentum grew throughout the year and are now at 111% of 2019 levels. Delivery order count was down 8.5% in the year. The first half of 2022 was against a strong comparative period in the prior year when there were strict lockdown restrictions in place in the U.K. We finished the year with a recovery in delivery, which was only down 5.1%, a marked improvement from Q2 and Q3.
In the chart on the right-hand side, you can see the quarterly profiles of firstly our like-for-like sales performance excluding the impact of VAT in blue, and secondly order count in green. Here, you can see our strong finish to the year with like-for-like sales growth of 13.9% and order count growth of 4.1%. As expected, trading was strong as a result of effective national value campaigns, operational service excellence from our franchise partners, growth in collections, and the initial incremental benefit of being on the Just Eat platform, as well as the Men's Football World Cup, an event which only occurs once every four years.
Before I go into the profit performance for the year, I want to take some time to explain in detail and give you clarity on our technology platform costs. These costs will support the long-term growth of the system. Elias will touch on this shortly. I want to explain the accounting treatment of these costs and the corresponding impact on profit and cash. During the year, we started investment projects to develop and implement two cloud-based IT systems, an e-commerce platform and ERP system. As we have previously communicated, both systems are part of our investment in growth, and the e-commerce platform is part of our growth investment framework agreed with our franchise partners in December 2021.
The accounting treatment for these costs is simply a reclassification from capital expenditure to operating expenditure, and therefore, this treatment has no impact on cash. The total cost recognized in underlying profit before tax relating to these investments was GBP 7.6 million in 2022. With an EBITDA, costs of GBP 5.2 million have been recognized, of which GBP 2.7 million relates to ERP, and GBP 2.5 million relates to the e-commerce platform. These represent costs spent on the development of these assets, which are expensed through the income statement rather than capitalized in tangible assets as they relate to cloud platforms.
For the ERP, this represents the full spend on the project in the year. For the e-commerce platform, this relates to the percentage spent on the cloud-based element of the project. An additional GBP 1.9 million has been recognized in capital expenditure relating to the e-commerce platform. Within amortization, a further total cost of GBP 2.4 million is recognized. I'll explain the impact of the technology platform cost on FY 2023 shortly. The majority of our EBITDA comes from the supply chain center through procurement, manufacturing, and distribution of products to stores. In FY 2022, we maintained outstanding service levels with 99.9% accuracy and 99.8% availability.
This is due to the commitment of our supply chain colleagues working collaboratively with our franchise partners, and I would like to thank all those who helped to deliver this outstanding performance. Our EBITDA from the supply chain in the year was GBP 108.9 million, an increase of GBP 3.7 million compared to the prior year. This increase was driven by increased volume and pricing growth. Lower system sales, driven by the reduced VAT rate in the prior year, resulted in a GBP 3.1 million decline in net royalties. Net overheads decreased 2.9%, with expenditure on new store incentives and franchise partner events was more than offset by continued focus on support office efficiencies.
Corporate store EBITDA increased 25%, largely driven by the sale of five corporate stores towards the end of the year. This resulted in underlying EBITDA before technology costs in Germany increasing by GBP 1.3 million to GBP 132.7 million in the year. The contribution from the Germany associate was GBP 2.4 million lower in the year due to the exercise of our put option on the 10th of November and the underlying performance of the German business in the year. Let me briefly walk you through the year-on-year movement. Last year, we reported underlying EBITDA of GBP 136.4 million.
The net effect of pricing growth, offset by our supply chain inflation and franchisee investment, such as new store incentives, was broadly flat at GBP 300 million . As I've already mentioned, I made a GBP 2.1 million profit on the sale of five corporate stores. The revaluation of our Shorecal joint venture has a GBP 1.1 million impact on EBITDA. You can then see from the chart the impact that a lower contribution from Germany and the accounting from technology platform costs had on our EBITDA performance in the year. This resulted in EBITDA for the year of GBP 130.1 million.
Moving to the income statement. Depreciation and amortization increased to GBP 20.3 million in the year. This includes GBP 2.4 million of amortization and impairment as a result of the technology platform costs I talked about earlier. Finance costs were higher in the year due to higher levels of interest rates and a higher average net debt. In July 2022, we successfully refinanced existing bank facilities at favorable rates with a GBP 200 million private placement facility fixed at 4.26% and a GBP 200 million revolving credit facility. Both of these are in place until July 2027. This resulted in a 13.2% reduction in underlying profit before tax in the period, with underlying EPS down 7.4% to GBP 0.188.
Let me touch on the franchisee trading. As in the past, on this slide we have shared franchisee trading estimates in order to provide a view of the health of the entire system. The numbers are extracted from submissions from our U.K. franchisees, and we aggregate the submissions to derive these averages. Our franchisees continue to work tremendously hard in challenging market conditions, and their trading performance has been impressive. Average store EBITDA for all U.K. stores for the year was approximately GBP 182,000, equivalent to a 16% EBITDA margin. The reduction compared to 2021 and 2020 reflects the net benefit of VAT in those years, as well as the impact of higher food and labor costs.
Franchisee profitability in 2019 before the pandemic was GBP 145,000 per store, equivalent to a 14% EBITDA margin. Elias will talk later about our focus on this key area. Our business model generates strong free cash flow. Trading from operations produced EBITDA of GBP 130.1 million. Let me walk you through how this flows through to free cash flow. We had a working capital outflow of GBP 17.5 million, compared to an inflow of GBP 11.2 million in the prior year. This was primarily due firstly to higher debtors, linked to pricing and volumes in the final weeks of the year, and secondly, decreases in creditors due to timing.
This year so far, GBP 8 million of the movement has already reversed as a cash inflow, and we anticipate a net working capital inflow for the full year. Dividends received of GBP 5.1 million represent payment from our investments in Full House, West Country and Shorecal, and net cash interest was broadly comparable with the prior year. Overall, this resulted in GBP 79 million of free cash flow in the year, and let me explain how we use this, given our disciplined approach to capital allocation. You'll now be familiar with this slide.
We first introduced this in March 2021 and update you every six months. We have an asset-light, high returns business which is strongly cash generative. We have this framework to ensure that effective cash allocation can amplify the benefits and returns from the cash generated by the business. We want to retain a sensible level of leverage which we believe to be around 1.5x- 2.5 x, and working within these parameters, we'll allocate cash in a disciplined way. We generated GBP 79 million of free cash flow in the year. Let me walk through how we use this cash. Firstly, we continue to invest in the core business to drive long-term sustainable growth.
To that end, we invested GBP 19.7 million in capital expenditure in the year. We'll maintain a sustainable and progressive dividend. We'll pay a full year dividend of GBP 0.10 , which represents a 2% increase compared to last year. The cost of the FY 2022 full year dividend is GBP 42.9 million. In the year we sold five corporate stores and we exercised our put option over Germany. We've now finalized the price for the German associate. Total cash receipts will be around GBP 79 million, which includes the repayment of a GBP 9 million loan that will be received in June 2023, and proceeds will be flowed through the capital allocation framework.
Finally, we look to return surplus cash to shareholders, and we announced GBP 86 million of buybacks in 2022, which completed at the end of January this year. The first tranche of GBP 46 million was in relation to cash generated in FY 2021, with the remaining GBP 40 million in relation to FY 2022. Here you can see how our net debt has moved in the year, the sources of our cash inflows and our capital allocation framework in action. We started the year with GBP 199.7 million net debt. As I've already explained, we generated GBP 79 million of free cash flow in the year.
We received a combined GBP 10.3 million from the German associate, which comprised deferred consideration paid in respect to the market access fee and loan repayments. Here you can see the cash outflows for the year. CapEx of GBP 19.7 million, GBP 43.8 million paid out in dividends, and GBP 84.9 million in share buybacks and some purchases on behalf of the Employee Benefit Trust. This resulted in year-end net debt in line with guidance of GBP 253.3 million, giving leverage at the end of the period of 2.06x, around the midpoint of our target range of 1.5x-2.5x .
Before I turn to our guidance, I'd like to go through our 2023 CapEx in more detail. As I previously said, when discussing our capital allocation framework, our priority will always be to invest in the core business. In 2023, we expect CapEx to be around GBP 25 million, compared to GBP 19.7 million in 2022, as we continue to invest more in our system to drive sustainable and profitable growth. The main components of our CapEx will be around GBP 13 million on our digital and technology infrastructure. This will be centered on the technology platforms I've talked about and also enhancing our digital capabilities.
Secondly, we will continue to invest in our outstanding supply chain with the continued redevelopment of our capacity in Ireland. Finally, our investment will be focused on developing and continuing to improve our core franchisee operations technology. Turning to current trading and guidance. We have continued to grow market share in a challenging consumer and inflationary environment. Like-for-like system sales, excluding split stores and VAT in the first 10 weeks, have increased by 10.8%, with orders up 2.5% and new app customers up 46%. In FY 2023, we expect the impact on EBITDA from the accounting treatment of technology platform costs to be around GBP 9 million.
There will be no further contribution from the German associate following the exercise of our put option on the 10th of November. We expect FY 2023 EBITDA to be broadly in line with current market expectations before the GBP 9 million of technology platform costs. In addition, we expect underlying depreciation and amortization to be between GBP 22 million and GBP 25 million. Underlying interest costs are between GBP 15 million and GBP 18 million. Underlying effective tax rate is expected to be around 22% for the year. CapEx of around GBP 25 million. With regard to net debt, we expect this to be between GBP 255 million and GBP 275 million. Thank you. Now let me pass you back to Elias.
Thank you very much, Edward. It is so great to have you at Domino's. I joined Domino's board back into October 2019, and I firstly invested my family's capital in the business later in the year, December 2019. I have always been very impressed with the strength of this brand, with the strength of its vertically integrated supply chain, and also with the strength of their franchise partners, some of whom I know for many years. Since 2019, together, we have navigated the pandemic and the challenging market conditions in the last year.
You can see from this slide that we have come together through these very external factors much stronger and with a larger business across a range of measures. This is testament to the investment that we have made together, us and our franchise partners, and also to their operational excellence in the restaurants. I would like to thank all of them for their immense hard work and commitment, and also their team members at the store level, the real heroes of our business. Domino's system sales are 20% higher than in 2019, and our revenue is 18% higher. Our EBITDA is 11% higher, with franchise store EBITDA much improved also since 2019.
Also flat versus 2021, excluding VAT benefits. Our total orders have risen to nearly 70 million, and our store footprint in the U.K. and in Ireland has increased 7%. Our digital focus has resulted into app orders as a percentage of online orders, increasing 8.8 percentage points across this year. We continue to be making lots of progress in this area, and I will talk to you a little bit more in a minute. Importantly, we have achieved all this while seeing our customer satisfaction scores improving, and importantly, our value for money perception scores are also materially higher than in 2019.
We together have achieved a lot. This is just the beginning. We have a great momentum, but a lot to be done in the near future. This is why I invite all of you to join us in this journey to bring this Domino's business to new heights. Turning to our position in the market. We have increased our share of the U.K. takeaway market by 1.2 percentage points over the last year, and 1.5 percentage points over the last two years. We have increased our leading pizza market share from 44% to 47%, with our share essentially 25 percentage points greater than our nearest competitor.
Our share increase in Q4 was driven by different factors. Number one, our focus on value. Number two, our digital acceleration. Number three, our growth in collection. Number four, Just Eat roll out. Last but not least, full alignment with our franchise partners on executing at the store level, excellent service. I am pleased that the trajectory of market share gains has continued in the first 10 weeks of 2023. What we are really passionate about is to deliver a better future through food people love, and this is supported by our vision to be the favorite food delivery and collection brand with pizza at heart.
You will be familiar with this slide and with the five objectives that you see in it. We are focused on accelerating the execution of this strategy. Definitely, that's what I've been doing for the last five months. We have made very good progress on our strategy, and we are extremely excited about the prospects of 2023. Let's turn to the next slide, and I'm gonna share with you the five priorities that we have for 2023 that everyone within the organization is laser-focused. Number one, franchisee profitability and our own organization as a driver of this franchisee profitability. Number two, value for money. Three, digital. Four, convenience. Fifth, the implementation of our technology platform projects.
Let me go a little bit in detail through each of them. Our number one priority this year is to focus on franchisee profitability. What do I mean by this? First, we have reshaped the leadership team in order to ensure that we are leaner and we make faster decisions. Together with our franchisee partners, now we are able to act in a much more agile way in order to react to the changing market that we are seeing. Secondly, there has been a material step up in the last year in terms of franchisee engagement and collaboration.
I have spent much of my time during the last five months traveling all around the U.K. and Ireland, visiting our franchise partners in the store together with my partners, and building the right relationships and underlining our commitment to work collaboratively. I have been a franchisee myself, I understand the challenges which they are facing right now, this is why this is a key priority for all of us as a team in 2023. In addition to our Marketing Advisory Council that we have with our franchise partners, we have enhanced our operations forums.
We have held a country-wide rally with more than 1,400 store managers in that meeting. We have held several operational roadshows in Q4 in order to be focused with our management team on product, service, and image. This is critical for our service, we've been doing this together with our store managers. Later this month, we are going to be holding the first economic forum with representatives of our franchise partners. This won't be enough. As clearly, like for many other U.K. QSR operators, times are very difficult out there due to the challenging consumer environment and the inflationary environment.
Although we are very well pleased, we are focused on increasing our franchise partners' profitability. Therefore, we are going to continue to be working together in order to enhance our commitment to them. How? One. accelerating the execution of the five priorities that I just mentioned. Two. continue to be investing in our growth framework that we have agreed with our franchise partners back in December 2021. Three. leveraging our scale as well as the long-term relationships that we have with our suppliers in order to make sure that we search for more efficiencies that can reduce the cost to our franchise partners.
Last but not least, looking for other potential operational efficiencies with different lens at the store level, from revenue management initiatives to operational technology, to marketing contributions or to menu simplification. At DPG, under the leadership of our partner and Chief Operating Officer, Nicola Frampton, we will ensure that we are focused on the most important projects which will benefit our franchisees profitability, and will ruthlessly be in focus on a smaller number of important projects to ensure their successful execution. Let me turn to the rest of the opportunities quickly. Secondly, value for money. At Domino's, we are laser-focused on offering good value for money and a great experience to our customers.
There are a few components into this value for money. Number one, service. Service is the number one proven driver of customer satisfaction and frequency growth. We continue to improve our delivery experience and make considerable progress in 2022, and our delivery times and percentage of deliveries on time are improving significantly in Q4 versus Q4 the previous year and the same over the first 10 weeks of the year. Last year, we roll out our enhanced GPS into 777 stores, and we are targeting to deploy as soon as possible the rest of the state in 2023.
This enables all of our customers to see exactly where their order is and provide an accurate delivery time, an absolute game changer in the industry. Our aspiration is to return our delivery orders to growth in 2023 and reduce the average delivery time for our customers from the current figure of around 25 minutes as well as increase our accuracy. Second, value. We are very aware of the cost of living pressures that our customers did experience last year and are continuing to be experienced this year. This is where our really strong value message and proposition resonates very well.
Alignment with our franchisee partners has allow us to bring back our national value campaigns, and our value for money scores have improved during the year. We have continued our value campaigns into this year with our Price Slice platform, GBP 8, GBP 10, and GBP 12 price points for a small, medium, and large pizza, already 11 weeks into the market. We are planning an exciting range of new value platforms throughout 2023. Our continued progress on improving store profitability obviously will be key for all of this. Finally, product.
We aim to increase frequency and attract new customers, not only through new focused pipeline of product platforms, but also, very importantly, by delivering great-tasting, fresh, hot pizzas and sides to our customers. We also continue to see an incredible opportunity in collection in order to drive business and growth as we see it as an effective value offer for our customers in the current environment. Turning quickly to our third priority, digital. I am super passionate about the digital opportunity. We have built a great team under the leadership of our Chief Marketing Officer, Sarah Barron, over the last year.
Everywhere I look, I see an opportunity. 90% of our sales are digital. I truly believe that this is just the beginning and that we are only on the early stages of becoming a truly e-commerce platform. The Domino's app is a key driver of this strategy. Let me share with you a few facts. App downloads in 2022 have increased 50%, and active customers were already at 6.1 million, an increase of 16% compared to the previous year. Last year, orders generated through our app grew 10%, and the app orders as a percentage of online orders were 52.2%.
This 52.2% number is the average across the year. In December, this number was already 59.8%. Last week, we were at 65.8%, demonstrating real momentum and progress from that perspective. Indeed, today, we have 6.6 million active customers in our app in the market. Why is this important? Last year, customers who only used the app produced 43% higher sales than customers who only used the website. Customers who only used the app in 2022 had an average order frequency of 51% higher than web-only customers. Attracting more customers to the app continues to be a key focus in 2023.
The most important thing is that we are extremely pleased that in the first 10 weeks of 2023, our new app customers are already up 46% year on year. Remember, 16% across the year in 2022. In the first 10 weeks of 2023, 46% year on year. Personalization is at the heart of our digital strategy. We recently began, under the leadership of the head of digital in our team, Nick Bamber, we have begun more targeted personalization. Let me give you a couple of examples. Number one, reminders for our customers on their preferred order day. Number two, personalized segmentation based on their entire preferences.
This is starting to be delivering results week on week. At the end of the day, enhancing and broadening our personalization will enable us to continue to be driving growth over the long run and enhance our food ordering experience. With the app is the center of our digital strategy, we are focused on delivering an increasingly better customer experience with the goal, the dual goal of bringing more conversion and more frequency that will drive sales. I really look forward to share in the future, later this year, how we are progressing from a results perspective in this arena.
Now, let me quickly move to our fourth priority, convenience, which is also key in the arena of bringing new customers to our business. There are two elements of convenience for us. Number one, our Just Eat partnership, and number two, increasing the number of stores in the system. Let me start by the first one, Just Eat. You will be familiar that at the end of last year, we fully rolled out on the Just Eat platform in the U.K. and Ireland. Why did we roll out? Very simple. By being on the Just Eat platform after a long test, we were able to attract incremental customers that only used the Just Eat platform.
This made a strong contribution to our like-for-like sales in Q4 last year, exactly the same over the first 10 weeks of 2023. Quite frankly, our franchise partners, again, did an outstanding job in the super quick rollout in Q4 on more than 1,000 stores. As a reminder, Domino's fulfills delivery to our customers. We are the ones that deliver. It is our franchise partners, the one who ensure that we maintain our standard service to our customers. At the end of the day, nobody delivers like Domino's in the market.
As we move on through the year, we are focused on continuing to drive incrementality from being obviously on the Just Eat platform, and we look forward for a full year benefit of being on the platform. Let me turn to the second component of convenience that is our priority, store openings. We have made significant progress in this arena too. We have opened seven stores this year, as we speak, by six different franchisees versus five last year. On top of that, we also have 10 additional stores already today under construction versus the two we had at this particular moment this year.
In total, we are double the progress compared to the same period of 2022. A year where we opened 35 stores. More importantly, we have completely rebuilt the pipeline with a great effort from our franchise partners. We have today a significantly stronger pipeline than what we have last year at this time of the year, with, very important, 25 franchisees, franchise partners working on this pipeline. It's not one, two, or three, it's 25 of them believing and working on this pipeline. We remain on track to open at least 200 stores over the medium term as we committed back in March 2021.
We are targeting at least a mid-single digit percentage point increase in the store estate in 2023. Turning to the next slide, our last enabler of our strategy, extremely important for our medium and long term, the implementation of our technology platform projects. Edward has explained to you in some detail about the investment we are making and the accounting treatment of these technology platform projects. Let me tell you about the benefits of these projects and how they are going to be helping us to bring new customers into the platform and to grow our sales. First, we are focused on the development of our new scalable and best-in-class e-commerce platform.
This will, one, enable us to deliver improvements into the platform very quickly and at a more cost efficiently way than our current platform. Second, enable more agile marketing and promotions to be put in place, and most importantly, it will allow us to introduce loyalty, a loyalty platform within the system. Secondly, we have also begun to work on a new ERP program, replacing our 2016 one, which will enable us to improve, obviously, processes and efficiencies across the entire business. Most importantly, it will bring efficiencies on our supply chain operation that is key to all of us.
In summary, in 2022, alignment with our franchise partners and a reset of the relationship with our franchise partners, as well as our investment in growth that Edward has been explaining before, has allowed to maintain store profitability, excluding VAT benefits. Second, it has delivered value for our customers and market share gains. Third, it has increased returns to our shareholders. I hope I have been able to share with you in a clear way the five priorities that all of us are laser focused on 2023.
With the goal of giving our customers a great experience, working with our franchise partners to improve franchise profitability, and growing the business, as well as delivering returns to our shareholders. We do acknowledge the challenging consumer and inflationary environment, but we are extremely confident that if we remain focused, laser focused on our priorities, we will be very well placed to deliver further returns to our shareholders while our franchise partners will continue to see returns growing this year and beyond.
Thank you very much for listening. Now I would like to turn the meeting over to Q&A. Please wait for the microphone to come, and state your name if you don't mind, and your institution, for the benefit of those who are watching our webcast.
Hi,
One, two?
Hari from Deutsche Bank.
Sorry, could you repeat that, your name?
Hari.
Hari.
From Deutsche Bank. Couple of areas where I wanted to quiz you on. One is that you've seen franchisee profitability being maintained or improving this year, right? We've seen profitability go a couple of percentage points relative to 2019 levels. Going forward, if we look at, you know, the value chain between price and volumes, what is your view on how pricing might shape up and how volumes might shape up? Related to this is also, you know, if and when we see F&B costs easing maybe into H2 this year, actually it would be helpful if you could share your views on how that might trend.
When that happens, if and when that happens, how does the pricing strategy change, if at all? Would that be focused on driving volumes? Which would probably be more beneficial for the PLC. That's the first part. Second is if we look at the guidance on net debt from GBP 250 million to GBP 255 million-GBP 275 million, and if we, you know, extrapolate that in conjunction with what you've said about EBITDA and CapEx and whatnot. Is it fair to assume that there is going to be some return to shareholders? Or how does the difference move via your capital allocation program? Thanks.
Thank you, Hari. Thanks a lot for the three questions. Let me, if you're okay, let me answer the first two.
Yeah.
I will give you the guidance question. Let me start by the first one, which is around franchise profitability and the impact in volumes on pricing, right? Franchise profitability in 2022, as you have seen on the slide, was approximately GBP 185,000 per store, which is obviously a big increase versus 2019 when it was GBP 145,000. Obviously, as I said on my opening remarks, vis-a-vis 2021, it's been flattish if we take into consideration, if we leave aside the VAT benefits from that perspective. We are extremely committed, and as I said before, it's priority number one for all of us to continue to be bringing this profitability up.
There are different ways we are going to be doing this. Number one, making sure that we push hard on these five priorities that we do have. Number two, as I said, continue to be investing, as we agreed with our franchise partners back in 2021. Then looking for efficiencies. I think that with the vertical integrated supply chain we have, with the scale we have, and with the leverage where we have on the long-term relationship with our suppliers, we will be able to continue to be bringing efficiencies from that perspective that will be able to be help our franchises.
That's on the franchise profitability side of things. The way I see value on volume, sorry, volume on pricing going moving forward is the following. We've been seeing—we are on our sixth consecutive month. We have started our sixth consecutive month of order count growth, of customer growth. I think that that's absolutely critical. We saw the momentum in Q4, we are continuing to be seeing the momentum on the first 10 weeks of 2023. That's gonna be our focus. If I see how the market is right now from an environment perspective, us, continue to be focusing on our value for money.
That has two elements, pricing, obviously, with our promotions, I said it, GBP 8, GBP 10, GBP 12, and service. That's gonna be one focus. Number two, digital capabilities. I said it before, right? It's bringing new customers into our platform. We have already 6.6 million today in our platform. Over the first 10 weeks, we have increased 46% versus the 16% last year. I think that us, we will continue to be doing that, to be focused on order count. You, you tell me, what happens if in the future costs continue to be going or it starts to be going down? We won't change the strategy. We won't change the strategy.
We really believe that this balance between value for money, digital capabilities, and us bringing new customers through our Just Eat platform and our opening of stores is the right strategy from that perspective. We will continue to be placing that one from that point of view. On guidance, Edward?
Yes. On guidance, we're due to receive, as we talked today, about GBP 79 million related to Daytona, the German associate, in June. At that point, we will flow it through the capital allocation framework. The principles, as we've talked about today so far, will be firstly to look at what we invested in the core business to drive sustainable growth. Secondly, we of course then look at dividends. Thirdly, with any surplus cash, when we haven't identified growth opportunities, we return to shareholders. We will in due course sort of update the market on that. What we can say for now absolutely is that we'll wait until those proceeds land and then apply the capital allocation framework in a consistent manner.
Please.
Morning. Richard Stuber from Numis. Two questions, please. The first one is on the sort of OpEx and CapEx, just for clarity and guidance. I think the last two years you've spent now GBP 14 million on the cloud-based IT platforms in OpEx. How much more is there to go on specifically on those two projects? Therefore, will OpEx normalize in the year after that? On the CapEx side, I think you've got GBP 25 million guidance for this year. What do you see as the sort of medium-term maintenance CapEx number going forward? The second question is really just a follow on from the previous one. Could you just clarify what food cost inflation you expect this year? Thank you.
Thank you. Richard, you wanna start with the OpEx and CapEx?
Sure. Let me start with sort of OpEx and CapEx. If we talk about those two projects, then very much 2022 and 2023 are the years of, you know, predominantly the years of investment within those sort of projects. We anticipate that the ERP will partially go into 2024. In terms of you sort of thinking about the investment within the business, it's very much 2022 and 2023. With regard to CapEx, as you say, there's sort of been an increase in CapEx. We've invested in areas around sort of data, digital, IT, marketing to drive our sort of business forward.
Again, while we're not providing sort of medium-term guidance on it, I think we do foresee now that the CapEx will be likely to trend down based on our views at the moment, you know, beyond the guidance that we've provided for 2023.
Thank you, Edward. Look, on food inflation, 2022 has been very volatile, Richard. Yeah, I could tell you that it's been on the high mid-teens inflation what we have seen in 2022 across the year. Regarding 2023, our 100% focus right now is what I said before. Number one, continue to be working with our suppliers. I think that with the scale that we have and with the strong relationship and long-term relationship that we have with them, we will be able to continue to be doing what I think has been a great effort in 2022 to reduce that cost. We don't need to bring that level of inflation to our franchisees at that level.
That's still to be worked from that point of view. As I said before in my opening remarks, right. We are looking into store efficiencies with different lens. We see different opportunities there, right. Revenue management with menu architecture, pricing and promotions that we could see in a very different lens from that perspective. Us bringing GPS, but other Ops technologies that we are working on at the store level. Us bringing a different lens also from a menu simplification perspective. Those are gonna be the kind of things that we are going to be working on in order that our food inflations to our franchise partners improve over the next year.
May I just add one point on that? I think it's also important to bear in mind that in terms of procurement, we're the largest buyer in the categories we're buying, therefore, us, both our scale of our procurement and the expertise of our procurement team that we obviously seek to, you know, to purchase as cost efficiently as we can in this, you know, in this environment as always.
Thank you, Richard.
Thank you. Actually, can I ask a third question, if I'm being greedy? You talked about some market share gains and the various factors in which is driving that. I think one factor which you may have missed out is the competition and what's going on, the weakness there. I know certainly one of your major competitors pointed out that the U.K. business is a little bit weak at the moment. Could you talk more about the general competitive environment and are you seeing others struggling? Is that also helpful for your market share?
Look, you got on media the comments that the competitors did, right? What I can assure you is what we are trying to do, right? In value for money, as I said before, one of our biggest focus is service. Richard, that's the key thing. Nobody in this market delivers like Domino's. Nobody. We control the entire delivery from our supply chain centers to the door of our customers. We are right now, with full alignment with our franchise partners, focused on service and service. I'll give you two stats. As we talk right now, we are two minutes faster this year than we were last year. At 25 minutes.
We are seven percentage points better in terms of deliveries on time versus last year. That's not happening in 24 hours. That's the result of the work that has been done with our franchise partners since the summer of last year, getting ready into Q4, making sure that we recruit as many drivers and as many colleagues and as many Domino's staff into Q4, maintaining that tension in this year. I really think, Richard, that if we continue to be doing so, controlling the delivery, number one, having everyone within the system focused on service, our unique selling proposition is gonna be extremely competitive in this market, it's gonna be very good.
Not for today. Across the year, for next year, the next years to come. I am very positive on the focus that the team is having. Please, another question here on the right. Thank you, Richard.
Hi. Darragh O'Sullivan from Jefferies. My first question is on franchisee economics. With franchisee relationship being an increased priority for 2023, do you see there being any change to franchisee economics going forward? The second question is on read across from the U.S. business. U.S. business recently updated its guidance and reduced system sales growth and store rollout for the medium term. I was wondering if you could talk through how this might compare to Domino's U.K. outlook. Thank you.
Thank you. Sorry, you said Darragh?
Darragh.
Darragh.
Darragh.
Thank you, Darragh, for both of the questions. We go one by one. Let me start with the franchisee economics from that perspective and come back to my remarks, Darragh, from that perspective. Priority number one for the team. Priority number one for the team, franchise profitability, number one. Point number two, we are working with our franchise partners in order to make sure that our franchise profitability across the year continues to be improving. And we have Nicola Frampton, our COO, leading this project together with Edward, myself, and the rest of the team from that perspective.
We're going to be trying to do accelerating the execution of our five priorities that I have spent a good amount of time explaining. Us , making sure that we continue to be investing as we agreed in March 2021 on our framework of work, of growth that is delivering the results that I am mentioning. Point number three, us , making sure that we're being more efficient. How? Working with our suppliers and how from a store level perspective. That's what is under our control, and that's what we are going to be trying to do together with our franchise partners.
As I mentioned, later this month, we have our first economic forum together with our franchisees. That's what we are doing from that point of view. Point number two, read across vis-à-vis the U.S., right? Look, we are seeing this in a different way here in the U.K., right? We are growing order count, we are growing sales, and we are opening stores. We believe that if we continue to be executing the three priorities vis-à-vis the market that I just mentioned across the presentation, we are confident that we will continue to be seeing this. I'm not saying this just for the sake of faith, of confidence.
I'm just saying this with facts, right? Number one, we are growing market share. We are growing market share. 44% last year, 47% in 2022, and we are seeing same levels of growth on the first 10 weeks of 2023. Number two, we are growing customers. Six consecutive months of growth of customers. I repeat, six consecutive months. We're at 2.5 on the first 10 weeks. We are very happy with the scale of how the months are playing from that perspective. Number three, we are bringing new customers. 46% of new customers are coming through the app. We have 6.6 million.
Just to give you two numbers, right? Our orders in our app, vis-à-vis total orders, vis-à-vis, sorry, digital orders. In 2017, look at this, 2017 were 40%. In 2021, grew 5%. From 2021, up to 45%. As I said, on the first 10 weeks of the year, we are already at 65.8%. The growth is huge. We just started this last year. The team was put together last year. That's why this investment is so critical. Think about this, right? We restarted the engine again with a great agreement with our franchise partners in the seven. That's restarting the engine, right?
We have seen the momentum in Q4, and the acceleration is coming now. This is just the beginning, as I was trying to say. What is gonna happen if we continue with personalization? What is gonna happen if we continue to be focusing on bringing more customers into the app? What is gonna happen when we bring loyalty in the future? I think that quite honestly, I can't see any comparison to the read across to the U.S. because on top of that, I finish the question, store openings. I just mentioned, right? We are today with stores open and under construction, double the progress of last year. Point number one. That's a fact.
By the way, the seven stores that we opened have been opened by six franchisees. We have 10 stores under construction. Double the progress. Number two, our pipeline today is far more progress than last year. Far more progress because think about this, the restart of the engine started in January last year. We've been making the progress up to now, right? More importantly, Darragh, this pipeline has already 50%. 50% of that pipeline today has already planning and zoning approved by the city halls. That's the most important thing because that's the arena in the development process that is not under our control.
That means that very soon, those sites are gonna be on lease signed, and they are gonna be on construction process. We feel very comfortable with both the side of things of order count and sales and the development of stores. Don't see that read across coming into the UK, Darragh.
Thank you.
Thank you. Please.
Good morning. It's Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum.
Sorry, could you repeat the name?
Anubhav. I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, on the impact of Just Eat on your delivery order counts in the fourth quarter, because I see they're still quite negative at -6.5%. Just your comment on the underlying performance, excluding the Just Eat impact. Are you happy with that performance? A related question on collection. Your collection obviously is growing very, very well. Can you comment on what times of the day and what occasions of the day are you seeing more success now that you're pushing behind collection? Are these collection orders just as profitable for the franchisee as delivery? Because it seems like they are eating a bit into your delivery performance. Is that equally profitable for you as well as for your franchisees? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Look, if we see incrementality of orders in Q4, you were asking about Just Eat in Q4, right. If we see incrementality of orders in Q4, the way I think about this is very simple, right. 15% of it is approximately World Cup impact. World Cup is always welcome in Domino's Pizza. We had a great World Cup from that perspective, but that was only 15% of it. The rest was a big part of it, Just Eat. Implementation. New customers, right. It's really bringing new customers that we didn't have access before.
The reason why we didn't have access before is because those customers were only trading on that platform, which is the one with more penetration within the country. Obviously, it had a big impact, but it was not the only one, right? As I said before, digital acceleration and value were also important ones from that perspective. Yes, it had a good relevant impact in our incrementality from an order comp perspective, and by the way, continues to be having it in the first 10 weeks of 2023, up to even more of the levels that we saw on the test from that perspective.
I think there's two points worth making. Firstly, as Elias was saying, look, this is simply, Just Eat is one of multiple levers of growth. I think, you know, the real benefit of the sort of strategy and the execution that we're laying out is we're focusing on a number of different areas, and we could see them bearing fruit together. It's about the combined impact. The second piece as well is, of course, that we've rolled out Just Eat, you know, obviously started with a trial in Q2. We really rolled out during Q4.
We haven't yet even seen a full quarter of performance across the full store estate. It's still very early in that journey. Therefore, you know, for that reason, we obviously won't sort of call. You know, I won't add to sort of Elias' sort of comments on that. That's the sort of the Just Eat part. Elias, perhaps back to you on the, on the questions around collection.
Yeah. Look, yes, collection has been growing very much. There has been. You saw it on the presentation. There has been a big element of focus of the team. Obviously, we have also seen a good focus of our customers in collection, because from a value perspective is an obvious benefit from that perspective. We have seen it across borders. We couldn't told you that it's been more here or there. We have seen this growth across borders from that point of view. Now, it's been very good to see not only the collection growth but also the delivery order comp growth. If you think about this, it's a good balance, right?
We were in Q3 at -15%, in the entire year at -10%, in Q4, we were at -5%, that momentum has continued over 2023. That balance we are starting to be extremely happy with, and we think that it's, yeah, it's a mix of everything, right? It's a mix of value, it's a mix of service, and it's a mix of Just Eat together with the digital acceleration. Now, you ask about the profitability. Yeah, the margin of an order at collection for obvious reasons is higher than at delivery, obviously, the ticket average is lower, right?
That's where we are working with our franchise partners to continue to be increasing not only the transactions but also the ticket average in those orders. Thank you very much. More questions.
I think we're done.
Any more questions?
No. I think we can wrap it up there.
Please, go ahead.
Thank you. Just a couple of extra ones if that's all right. One is, what are you seeing in terms of franchisees' delivery fees? Are they continuing to push up this year? Secondly, you've sort of hinted that your new e-commerce platform may allow you to roll out a loyalty program. Could you just give us your current thinking in terms of timing and what, and how, additive that could be? Thank you.
Yeah. Look, on the first one, which is delivery fees, I think that we are right now at approximately GBP 1.99 average from a delivery fee perspective. They are capped at a level, so we are not seeing them going any farther from that perspective. On loyalty, look, it's critical for us, right? I think that we will see another good path of growth coming out of loyalty. Obviously, we need this platform, this e-commerce platform to be developed in order to be able to be deploying it.
We need to do it very carefully, and we are working already in advance of getting the platform developed in order to be ready. When it's developed, we can go all in from that perspective. We are very excited about loyalty and the impact that it can have also on incremental growth from an order comp perspective and obviously from a value for money point of view. It's very aligned with the strategy and the three pillars that we have. Thank you, Richard.
Any other further question? If there are no more questions, thank you very much to all of you for coming today, and thank you very much for everyone on the webcast. I hope to see you all very soon. Thank you very much. Have a great day.