Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the JD Sports Fashion PLC FY25 trading update. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the start button followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Régis Schultz, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining the JD Sports Fashion PLC 2025 peak trading update call. I'm Régis Schultz, Group CEO, and with me on the call is Dominic Platt, our Group CFO. Hopefully, you had had the chance to see our statement earlier this morning. On this call, we will give you a brief overview, and then we will hand over to you for any question you may have. This trading update covers our busiest period of the year, and I'm pleased to report that we saw robust trading across December. This performance is entirely consistent with our track record around key events. To give you some color on what this means in practice, I'd like to share a few examples that illustrate just how successful these events have been for us in the period and how busy they have been.
We reached a new record daily global sales level hitting GBP 100 million for the first time ever on two occasions, with less than one quarter of those sales coming from the U.K. Our omnichannel was strong with 20 million click-and-collect orders in the U.S., and our flagship U.K. store in Stratford delivered sales of over GBP 500,000 on Boxing Day alone. That said, November has been disappointing, and Black Friday was below our expectations. So our robust performance in December didn't offset the soft November. This largely reflects two things. Firstly, November and Black Friday have seen more promotional activity in the sector than last year, and mostly driven by D2C and across the holiday period from one of our U.S. competitors being on -20% on Nike all across the holiday period. Secondly, football was below last year, reflecting a cautious consumer and a back to last-minute bargain buying from the consumer.
We retained our operational and financial discipline in the period and our long-term view of the market, and decided not to participate in the elevated promotion pricing activity in our key market. We can see the benefit of that in our margin. I think it's worth pausing here to remind people that our full-price proposition is very appealing to our brand partners, and in return, we get great access to innovation and new products, and the ability for our buyer and merchandising team to select what we want from and what we know will work for our customer and not what the brand wants us to take. The brand likes that, and the brand and our customer too. So to me, this is a solid foundation for a successful long-term strategy.
In terms of brand hits, historically, we have seen a number of impactful product launches in the build-up to the peak season that have had a positive impact on footfall. This year, while there were some successful launches, including some Jordan Retro, and we see that in January too in the U.S., collectively, there were a lesser number of those big events and not big enough to make a material impact. Finally, there is more economic uncertainty in our key market today than 12 months ago. We are starting to see unemployment tick up in Europe and in the U.K. Looking forward, we expect this challenging promotional condition to persist in the first half, and we want to be very, very cautious as the environment is still very volatile in the US, and we see the potential for higher unemployment in Europe and U.K.
This is likely to suppress market growth throughout 2025. We are hopeful that this will be a step up. There will be a step up in new products in the second half, but it's not going to impact materially until 2027. Before I hand over, I'd like to conclude by recognizing all the hard work across the business, which ensures that we were well positioning ahead of Christmas and the peak period. This means when the consumer came, the shopper shopped, and when they shopped, they left with a larger basket size. This translates into a 3.4 organic growth across November and December and a positive like-for-like in December. This reflects the expertise of our buying team, merchandising team, pricing, marketing, retail, and operation, to whom I would like to say thank you. I would like now to hand over to Dominic.
Thank you, Régis. I'll now take you through our trading in a bit more detail. We delivered organic revenue growth over the period of 3.4%. We delivered growth in all our segments and across all our geographic regions other than in the U.K., which doesn't benefit from our global store rollout program like the other regions do. Full-year organic revenue growth is likely to be around 5%. Turning to like-for-likes, like-for-like revenue was down 1.5% for the period. We saw lower footfall than last year, but this was offset partly by a higher average transaction value, as referenced by Régis just a minute ago, which was driven by a combination of our promotional discipline and footwear outperforming apparel. Year to date, like-for-likes are flat, and we expect them to remain so for the full year.
By region, we saw like-for-like growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific, offset by negative like-for-likes in North America and the U.K. Consequently, North America and the U.K. were the markets where we saw the best gross margin progression over the period. Outside of like-for-like are our recent acquisitions, Hibbett and Courir. Hibbett performed slightly ahead of the overall North America region, while Courir, which completed towards the end of November, had a good peak season. Now turning to gross margins. Reflecting our planning for and discipline during the peak trading period, we achieved a gross margin for the period of over 48% ahead of last year. And following the post-peak sales season, we expect the full-year gross margin to be in line with last year. Now just turning to the balance sheet.
Our level of preparation and deep understanding of what our customers wanted to buy this year has meant that we have come out of peak comfortable with where we have landed stock-wise. We bought well, so we sold well. And whilst revenue is slightly below our expectations, we've managed our stock position well. And secondly, we expect to end the financial year with a small net debt position. This is after investing around GBP 1.4 billion in the year on the Hibbett and Courir acquisitions and is a testament to the strength of our cash generation and cash management. Finally, turning our thoughts on the outlook for the rest of this financial year, the trading environment has been volatile and challenging through the year.
What we've seen is that the consumer has responded well to most of the key trading events, and what we've done is deliver a strong performance in those periods. Outside these periods, we have taken and will continue to take a considered and measured approach to protect our long-term business model and ultimately profitability. So in terms of the FY25 guidance, I've given a few indications already, but to draw it all together, we expect like-for-like revenue to be broadly flat for the year and organic revenue growth to be around 5%. We expect gross margins to be maintained at a similar level to last year, reflecting our continued financial and operating discipline. And finally, we expect full-year PBT to be between GBP 915 million and GBP 935 million. This is a slight change to previous guidance and reflects the 1% lower like-for-like than anticipated, which is worth around GBP 30 million.
Additional acquisition accounting impacts for Hibbett, totaling around GBP 6 million, a small incremental FX impact, translation impact of GBP 2 million, and offsetting those two pieces, a contribution from Courir following acquisition of around GBP 7 million. So thank you. I'll now hand back to Regis for any final thoughts.
Thank you, Dominic. Also, this is a trading update. I wanted to touch briefly on a couple of highlights regarding our continued strategic delivery. Firstly, we passed through the 200 new JD stores by the end of November, including around 50 conversions from other fashion across the U.S. and Europe, mostly Eastern Europe and Spain and Portugal. We continue to monitor the program against a three-year payback period hurdle, and actual payback continued to be quicker than that. And secondly, and at long last, we complete the Courir acquisition. In fact, Dominic and I are sitting in the Courir office in Paris as we speak. The acquisition extends our reach of our complementary concept proposition by adding a more female, fashion-conscious and older customer base to the group.
And we are much more looking forward to working with the team here and to their success as they have done through the peak period, so reflecting on 2024, I think we, as Dominic said, guided at the beginning of the year around like-for-like between 1%-4%. We always said that we were looking at the bottom of that. At that time, the market, our competitor, our key supplier was much more bullish on the second part of the year. We've always been very cautious about it. I think we were right. We were, unfortunately, not enough cautious. We should have been a little bit more cautious, and we planned for the same level of promotional activity, and it has been a higher level of promotional activity, especially across Black Friday, which is a key period.
So at the end of Q3, we were around the 1%. I think we will finish flat, and that 1% difference is equal to the GBP 30 million profit that is missing compared to our forecast. So that's something we need to reflect on. We will be very cautious for next year, and we look for delivering our forecast for next year. Thank you. So now we're going to back to the operator to pass to the question.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to remind everyone to ask a question, press Start and the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause just for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Jonathan Pritchard of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Morning, Morgan Gill. Two for me. Firstly, I know you touched on that you thought industry conditions would stay difficult for the first half, but do you think the return to normality will be at the end of the first half, or are you concerned it could drag on a lot longer than that? Essentially, when do you think the industry conditions will stabilize? And secondly, just on that stock point, obviously a good stock performance, is there anything to see from a geographic perspective?
Okay, so I think last year everyone was saying the second half will be better. So I think that I want to see what happened before saying it. So I think that, yeah, what we know is that the announcement of Nike has been really very positive. I think the reduced promotion on the back of a D2C arms race on full price is what is needed for the industry and for the long-term growth of this industry. So I think it's all good news. The focus on key wholesalers, and we have seen the difference from the time that Elliott has been in charge. So all that is good. It's just that the time it takes to put that in motion and to clear some of the stock that was committed before Elliott was on board. So that's why we are cautious.
We know that to replace some big key franchise will take time. So that's why we believe that 2025, we should be very cautious about it. Concerning the stock position, it's across all the geography. So we have maintained our discipline, especially last year. You remember in the U.S., we participated in promotional activity, and our margin was impacted by that. This year, we have been much more putting the same discipline and rigors that we have in Europe and the U.S. So we didn't have to participate. So we are in a very good stock position in all our business. Plus, we cleaned a lot of stock in Iberia, which we put the same discipline that was less existing in Iberia. So Iberia is down 20% compared year-on-year in terms of stock.
So we are in a very good position in all our business, and we apply the same rigors across all our business.
Okay, thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Terry Coppetta of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two of them. First, in your -1.5% like-for-like for two months, can you tell us what has been the performance of Nike versus the rest of the brands, number one? And number two, on gross margin, you insist on your close to 50% gross margin, which is effectively well above, notably the U.S. peers. Now, do you consider it to be sustainable, or more precisely, could you be concerned that it could come at the expense of sales and, in fact, at the expense of operating leverage at the OpEx level? Thank you.
So for the first question, we don't give this information because it will give information on a listed company. So we will not answer this question. On the second one, we don't believe it's at the expense of, for sure, on the promotional side, we will certainly lose some sales. But having a full-price business, it is a success of a successful business. You can see that with Zara, with all the key successful fashion business. If you are not on the full price, the customer is waiting for the discount, and you end up by destroying your business. So our model is about full price, and our margin is not that we are making more margin than the other.
It's that our discipline around stock and management of stock is better, which means that we are building a long-term confidence from the consumer that when they buy with us, they will not find the same product one week after at a cheaper price. And I think that, as you know, almost half of our product are SMU, so we are not exposed directly. If we have the same product than a competitor, we will adjust our price, not always the promotion, but at least the price. So I think it's a long-term strength, not a weakness.
Terry, just on a point of clarification, you need to be careful when comparing our gross margin with U.S. players because U.S. players tend to include more in their cost of sales.
Yeah, not directly.
It's not directly comparable.
Yeah, it's not comparable. It's higher, but it's not comparable because the way they report margin includes rent, for example, so.
Okay, thank you. And so there is no scenario, I mean, at this point, your objective is to remain around that, around 50% gross margin going forward. That's the central scenario.
Yes, yes. And I think we have proved that for the last three years. So I think we have the track record of that. And it moved a little bit. We have been higher during COVID because at that time, there was no product. So we are adjusting, and we are in a market where we are just, at one point of time during COVID, we had almost no promotion, so our margin was up. I think our margin is down 1.5 points compared to the peak during COVID. So we have adjusted that, but we believe that the level of margin that we have today is the right level of margin.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of William Woods of Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Two for me. Is there anything to highlight in terms of product or brand differences across the geographies in terms of Europe, North America, and the U.K.? And then secondly, I suppose, what do you think drove the main difference in the strength in Europe versus the weakness in the U.K. and North America? Thanks.
Yeah, I will start by the second one. I think Europe, you need to remember our store estate is younger in a certain way. So I think you benefit from the new opening more than you benefit in the U.K., especially, but even in the U.S. So I think that this part is taking one part. The other part is the online business in the U.S. has been impacted by the D2C increased promotional activity from D2C player, which didn't happen or happened less in Europe. The -30% from Nike happened in the U.S, didn't happen in Europe, which was a higher level of discounting than the year before. So I think that's the key things. And the other part has been that in the U.S. and in the U.K., this impact of promotion activity has been higher.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Grace Smalley of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning. This is Gabrielle Rubin from Morgan Stanley, on for Grace Smalley. Two questions for me. Firstly, on the brand, what are you seeing in terms of brand product innovation, and when would you start to expect to see this improve? And then looking on to the UK consumer specifically.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, Gabrielle. We didn't quite catch that. You said what did we see in terms of brand?
Brand product innovation, and when would you start to see?
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, okay. And then the second question on the U.K. consumer, it's been a key topic of conversation year to date. Can you comment on what you are seeing in terms of the health of the consumer as it stands today and how you're thinking about the macro outlook as heading into FY26, and then how this current backdrop impacts JD's key customer?
Okay, I think U.K. consumer, two things. I think that we have seen, and which, to be fair, everywhere, we have seen the back to pre-COVID way of trading. So that means that they wait for the last minute and the last drop and the last promotion. So I think that during COVID and just after, because product was scarce, we saw a different pattern. Now we're back to the same pattern where they wait the last minute, which is always very stressful for retailers. So that's the first thing. In terms of the second one, I think we've seen, and I think all retailers have reported the same, traffic has been down in the U.K.
And we've seen, I think, a very cautious customer because for the first time, usually Europe is saving rate are very high in Europe, less so in the U.K and nothing in the U.S. And we see that following all the negative view around the debt and all that stuff that the consumer is starting to save money, which is quite unusual and not spending the money. So I think that we have seen that. And the last one, which is the most worry for us, is unemployment. I think that following the increased salary and especially the increased NI, I think that there is a temptation, which is a normal reaction from the business, to review their staff costs and reduce the number of hours, which will be bad news for the economy and for us.
As you know, one of the critical things for us is the unemployment because our key customer is a young customer, is the one that is the most impacted or the first impacted by rising inflation or reduction of number of hours because most of them will have temporary jobs and all that stuff. So that's where we are very cautious with the U.K. because of that. In terms of brands, I think we see what is interesting is that, and you have seen in our statement, footwear has done better than apparel. I think that we have seen plenty of innovation, plenty of branded products, new products, and that has been that the market has been a positive market, and for Nike, we see a lot of good things coming.
The only question, which is what they say, is that you have big franchise and to replace with you need a lot of new product to replace the end of life of some of the big franchise, especially Dunk. So that's where it is. But I think we have seen a lot of good and exciting things. I think on apparel, which has been more impactful, I think we see a lot of things happening out of our direct reach, the Shein, the Temu on one side, the more fashion side on the other side, or more D2C model. So it's a much broader industry, and we compete with a much broader set of competitors. So whereas in footwear, it all stays in the same family. So it's coming from one brand to another one, but we see a great health of the sector in footwear.
Great. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Monique Pollard of Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. The first question was just, obviously, you mentioned that product launches where they've happened in the period have gone well. I just wondered if you could give us any color, X, and Y on which brands have been performing relatively well for you. And then the second question that I had was just around Hibbett. And Hibbett performance, you mentioned that in the period, it traded slightly ahead of the wider North American business. And clearly, that's despite it having, from my understanding, slightly more Nike exposure. So just wanted to understand what accounts for that slightly better trading of Hibbett.
Okay, so I think that on Hibbett, I think it's mostly the stock discipline and the quality of the stock. I think that we are starting to put our discipline and our diversity of brands, which usually US retailer has been very focused on the major brand and on the major brand. And I think we bring more diversity, and we highlight the diversity to the team. And I think that they benefit from they're starting to benefit from that. So that will be for Hibbett. I think in terms of I think we have seen great performance from Adidas, from On Running, from New Balance, very impressive. So Hoka. So I think that a lot of growth we have seen in terms of that launch of product.
In terms of specific high products that we were referring, Dominic and I, it's much more. This is a much more Jordan view. I think we have seen last year plenty of release from Jordan of what we call high product with almost a weekly or biweekly. This year, they have been reducing that, but the one they have done has been very successful. That was the point that we made, less but better, and I think that we can start to see it coming back because consumers are starting to wait for them, whereas in the past, they were coming too frequently, and in fact, it killed itself, the high principle, because you had one almost every week or every two weeks, and the last one, especially, we had one in January, which was very successful with Jordan 3.
So we see that coming, and I think that it's very pleasing to see Jordan back to growth.
That's very helpful. Sorry, just one follow-up on Hibbett. So you've already been able to sort of improve the portfolio of brands that they're selling into Hibbett that quickly?
Slightly. It's not massive, but we have seen some green shoots, yes. Development of New Balance, especially. I had a meeting with New Balance to say how we can increase that with Adidas. So I think they can see what we are selling, how we are selling. And so yes, but it's early days.
Understood. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Morgan, Morganis of BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Monique. Two questions, please. Firstly, could you give us a sense of your full price mix? You talked about preserving it over the peak, and I guess that sort of extra promotional activity was one of the things that surprised you in the market. So sort of where are you in full price mix? And secondly, in the past, Régis, you've talked about looking forward to some newness coming in spring summer. Is that product that you'd expected some months ago? Is that product actually arriving or have plans changed from the brand partners?
Yeah, so full price, we are around. We have for all retailers compared to the intake and net price, we have the lowest difference that exists for all the brands. So we don't communicate on it, but it's really we are at a very high level around the two. And I think that's really something which is around the discipline on our stock management, and you can see that in our numbers every time. In terms of new product coming from spring, it's mainly, as we said last time, around running, which Nike is delivering, and we can see some great things. Same for Adidas. Adidas has been struggling on running. We've seen with the success of Evo. That is starting to come.
So we will see some great things on running, which will not replace the key franchise which are linked to basketball, but it will be a start. But I think we've seen great things on running from Nike and Adidas.
How optimistic are you about the apparel category into this year?
Apparel is a category where we face a larger competition and a competition that we are a multi-brand, agile multi-brand model. And in footwear, we access all the different products. So in a certain way, we are the market, and we can play across the different brands in order to make sure that we continue to deliver growth and give the best choice to the consumer. On apparel, we are playing in a narrow we have a narrow play because we play in the branded sport part, and we don't access the full market. So I think that apparel will take more time. I think that because you have a larger competitor base, you are competing with Shein on the value part with a more fashion trend on the other part. And I think that we are adjusting.
We are bringing new brands in order to respond to evolving customer trends.
Thank you very much.
Next question comes from the line of Kate Calvert of Investec. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Two questions for me. The first is on Hibbett. What is the expected profit contribution from Hibbett in FY25? Because you have previously guided to a 25 million contribution. And looking forward into next year, what do you expect the incremental profit benefit to be from the acquisitions of both Hibbett and Courir? And my second question is on the Genesis option. Have you had any conversations yet with the merchants regarding the exercise of that option? And can I just check that the 30-day window for potentially exercising the first tranche is this March? Thanks very much.
Okay. Hi, Kate. On your first question about Hibbett this year, you're right. We talked about GBP 25 million this year. Just a reminder, that's about GBP 50 million of contribution from the business, net of about GBP 25 million of incremental interest. If I just take the GBP 50 million this morning, it takes a while to finish all the acquisitions. Accounting has had another GBP 6 million non-cash impact from that. And while it traded ahead of the overall North America business through peak, North America, as we said in the release, it was negative through the overall period. We'll see a bit of an impact on that. The GBP 25 million will probably be more in the sort of low teens when you take into account the incremental acquisition accounting and the trading impact through the period. Looking to next year, excuse me, sorry.
Looking to next year, if I take the amount we have in the numbers for this year for Hibbett and the 7 million we talked about this morning for Courir, I would expect about another 30 million coming through from Hibbett next year. And for Courir, net of interest, because remember that we've bought that business for 100 million EUR, you're probably looking at something in sort of low single digits.
Genesis, as you rightly say, it's something that you write. It's the first call at the beginning of this year. I think we started a discussion. I think that the board has not decided what we want to do. The management has been clear that they would like to not exercise their put. And for the board, we need to decide what we want to do.
Great. Thanks very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Chamberlain of RBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Morning, guys. A couple from me, please. So just following on from Kate's question on Courir, talked about a PBT contribution of GBP 7 million in the period since acquisition. Can you give the comparable number from last year and also what you expect from the store closures that you're making, how that will impact the financials? And that's the first one. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
No, you can give us both the questions. We'll come back to it.
Oh, sure. The other one is I just wondered if you still have flexibility to return inventory to big brands like Nike. And was that part of the sort of inventory control over the period? Just wondered if you can touch on that. Thanks.
Okay. On return inventory, we don't do it. We do it in a very limited fashion. It is very costly for the brand. We don't believe it's the right. It's better not to buy than to do that. So we have done very marginally, but we never done. We always prefer in our trade and condition to get better trade terms than to access that because at the end, you pay for it. So it's not directly, but indirectly. So it's not something that we have done in a significant manner. In fact, we have done the same less than last year.
Okay. And then to pick up your Courir question, yes, it's very slightly ahead of last year. So Courir has been trading well through the peak period. I think the best way to answer your question about the impact of the stores or the store disposal, the last reported number for Hibbett was a profit sorry, for Courir was a profit of around EUR 50 million, just above. They have grown since then, but effectively, with the disposal of those stores, I think you can bring it back to that same sort of number as a starting point. If you've learned through this year with Hibbett, there'll be some acquisition accounting adjustments. I don't know what yet, but that will obviously take the number down a little bit. And of course, as I mentioned in answer to Kate's question, we'll have the interest on the EUR 500 million acquisition cost.
So the net amount that sort of hits us next year will be incremental to the seven we've had this year, will be sort of a small double-digit number.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Alison Layo of Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. Actually, similar themes to Richard there. Just starting quick on Courir. So the EUR 7 million contribution of PBT, can you give any kind of color in terms of revenue or EBIT? I suppose just thinking about what interest you're attributing to that number as we think about this year and going forward into next year. And then just on the like-for-like, so you called out up 1.5% in December, which was a step on from what you saw in November. Does that adjust for kind of the late falling of Black Friday and that Cyber Monday falling into December? Or actually, should we think about it being kind of more even across those two months if we adjust for that?
And then finally, sorry, I think I'm just going to ask the same question as I did at Q3. Interested as to where and how you think about that tipping point on maintaining the promo discipline in the sort of promotion market we're seeing at the moment, which is kind of the brand themselves wanting to trade through the stock. Are we talking about maintaining promo discipline on other products and consumers migrating into that discounted product? I suppose in the context of knowing you're not kind of giving a lot of product back to Nike, I'm just interested as to how you're kind of managing your inventory position and are comfortable against that commentary that we're getting out of them. Thank you.
So let's start on the promotional activity. I think that the thing you need to understand is that we buy what we believe we can sell, and we don't buy what the manufacturer wants us to take. And I think that gives us the ability to, and we buy what we believe will be full price, and we don't buy what we believe will be discounted on the market. So we tend to adjust that at the moment of buy, not after, which means that we don't return, we don't discount so much, and all that stuff. But for sure, for example, if you take Dunk, which has been really the key franchise for us, which has been discounted, we have been discounting the product too in order to follow what was happening on the market.
So that's the way we manage the stock and we manage our product. In terms of what you have seen on D2C, I think Nike has been increasing that during Black Friday. But from that time, I think that if you take the last two weeks, they have been reducing. And I think that the commitment from Nike has been to say that their online will become more and more full price, and we have seen that already. So I think that we can see that they do what we do currently, which is a sale period where you have some seasonal product and all that stuff, and we do that as all retailers. So that's part of a normal stock management because we don't get it always right. But the same for Nike.
I think that they are starting to move out of the policy to discount the product in order to drive sales, not only to manage stock, but to drive sales. So they only have to manage inventory now, but they have reduced their promotional spend, and they have been committed for the coming future to be a full-price challenge. So I think we are very positive about what Nike is doing, and which in fact is the same what Adidas has done with Originals. Or if you remember, three years ago, Originals was discounted. Björn came and stopped the discounting on that. And I think that it has proved to be the right thing to do for Adidas, for Originals, and for us. And I think we can see the same will happen for Nike.
So we feel we are in a very good position and ahead of, in fact, of what will happen, not on the other side. The second question was?
So just on your Courir question, Alison. So yes, the net 7 million GBP is net of about 3 million GBP of interest. So you're getting EBIT of about 10 for the period. And that's on revenue of around 140 million GBP. So hopefully that helps. And on your like-for-like question, yes, no, Black Friday moved a week, but because of our 53rd week, our November moved a week as well. So actually, November and December are comparable periods, if that makes sense.
Grand. That's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Clive William Black of Shore Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, gentlemen. Thanks for the time. Two or three from me, if I may, relatively short ones. First of all, Régis as you mentioned unemployment several times in both your opening remarks and answers to questions. I just wondered if this had any implications, first of all, for your thinking on the U.S. versus U.K. and Europe. And secondly, your approach to store conversions and new outlets. The second one, in the U.K., I just want to get some feeling around your comment that stores did better online. But in the U.K., although Next and M&S are proprietary, they talked about online doing much better than stores. So I wondered if that's across your geographies or just in the U.K. And is that saying something to you about your online capabilities?
And then just lastly, in terms of your focus on full price sales, does that imply that you're losing market share in the U.K. and the USA as well? Thank you.
Okay. Unemployment, I think that was the first question. We have not seen in the U.S. any sign of unemployment moving up. So that's why we mention it for U.K., especially where we are very nervous about U.K. because we know that when you increase the cost of work or salary, what is the natural impact is that business will reduce the number of hours. So I think that's the view that it has no cost whatsoever, and it's just more money in the pocket of the government is a very naive view around what's happening in real life. So that's why we are nervous because we know that the first impact, it will be the young customers, which are our customers. So that's why I mention it.
Europe is more around general sentiment in Europe, which is negative, especially with a political issue in France and Germany. But so that's whereas in the U.S., for the time being, we haven't seen nothing on unemployment. It's more volatile because it's a new president coming. Tariff will have an impact or not impact. And so it's very volatile. There is nothing that says that it will go one way or the other way, but things can change very quickly, as we have seen in the U.S. What was the second one was around online. Yeah, store online. Yeah, you're right. M&S mentioned that. I think the difference is that M&S is playing in their own market, I would say. We play with D2C arms where we compete online, and D2C has been more promotional online.
So I think that we have not followed some of the online promotional activities. That explains certainly the difference of our performance, but that's the way we look at it. So that will be a sense of the mix between online and offline because, as you know, in the U.K., the D2C offline presence is very limited. It's mostly online that we are competing with D2C. So that's the way we analyze that. Market share, we don't believe we have lost market share, but we have not yet had the number. So I think that it's early days, but we believe we have been in line with the market in where we operate.
Sorry, just to come back on the unemployment point, Ray, just is your worries around unemployment changing your view on capital allocation around conversions and new stores?
Sorry, yes. So no, because in the U.K., we know that we and we have been clear last time we spoke on after your results that we will not invest a lot in the U.K. in terms of new space. We will continue to upgrade our space. We don't want to have space which are not the right space for our consumer, and we don't want to have our store estates to go older and not to invest. And we will, but we will not continue or we will not invest massively in the U.K. And I think we have reduced that investment significantly in the U.S. As you know, in the U.K., we have disposed one or we have closed one of our warehouses in the U.K. So the U.K. is a mature market.
So the fact that unemployment is moving in the U.K. doesn't change our policy because it was already there in terms of considering the U.K. as a mature market. Conversion is mainly in the U.S. And in the U.S., we have not seen that, and we will continue. In fact, the move that we are seeing, we are suffering online in the U.S. partly because of this move. So because Finish Line was our biggest online play and because we are reducing the number of Finish Line store and moving to JD, the time to transition the online is taking a little bit of time. So I think we will accelerate the movement to convert more store from Finish Line to JD, and we can see the performance of JD being very, very strong compared to a more challenging performance of Finish Line. So that will not change.
Okay. Look, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Anubhav Malhotra of Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Couple of questions from me as well, please. Firstly, if you could possibly quantify the impact you see from the U.K. budget on your cost for the next year and if you have started to think of any plans to offset that, and secondly, maybe just touch upon your performance in sporting goods and outdoor segment, which you noted saw good like-for-like performance this period, so what was going well in that part of the business? Thank you.
Hi. Back to the question. On the U.K., the national minimum wage and the national insurance increase have combined about GBP 30 million, about half and half. As you'll expect, we planned for some of the national minimum wage increase. They've been running above inflation for a little while, but clearly, the national insurance element was, like for many others, a surprise. It's for us to manage our business. We know the U.K. is a smaller part of our overall group, and our job is just to manage those cost increases as much as we possibly can. We're working through some of the plans about how we deal with that at the moment, and we'll share in due course when we provide guidance and updates later in the year.
And on the sporting goods and outdoor, yeah?
Yes. Yeah. I think it's a reflection on the quality of our offer for sporting goods. I think that we bought 100% of our ISRG last year. I think we have a new team, and the team is performing very well. We got rid of the market share problem that we had in the Netherlands, and I think that we are performing and gaining share in Spain and Portugal, and last year, to be fair, we had a cyber incident in Greece. And last year, we had a cyber incident in November, December in Spain. So that has been helping us too in terms of the performance, and outdoor, I think that we have done a good job, and especially December has been a great month for the outdoor business. The weather has turned very cold, and we had a lot of rain.
So that's always a good thing for our outdoor business.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Kate Calvert of Investec. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. I just thought I'd grab a couple more questions. Just on the UK, could you quantify how much Apparel did underperform Footwear over the fourth quarter in terms of sort of the gap in like-for-like performance between the two? And then just on Europe, can you give a bit more granular detail in terms of performance by market, which market outperformed which over the fourth quarter? Thanks.
We're not going to go into detail about specifics. Suffice to say that Footwear did outperform Apparel in the period, and I think , you mentioned about that earlier on, Kate. And in terms of Europe, I think what we've seen is a strong performance in the south versus the north. Perhaps the north has been more like the U.K. But whether it's the sporting goods businesses or JD, we've seen good performance across Spain, Italy, Greece, more neutral in the middle and slightly softer in the further north you go. So maybe the U.K. is probably more like Europe than we think. But when we look at our overall performance, it tends to have been better in the south, less good in the north.
And I think reflecting the economy. I think that we have seen Spain doing well, Greece doing fantastically well. So I think, yeah, it's reflected a little bit the economy.
Great. Thanks so much.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Dominic Platt for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Sorry for jumping in there. Thank you all for your questions, and thank you for everyone on the call for joining us for this pre-close trading statement update. We will be speaking to you again in March when we'll be providing a post-close statement on the full quarter with full details and guidance on the year to come. We look forward to speaking to you then. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our conference call. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.