Welcome to everyone. Welcome to the one who joined us on the webcast. Welcome to JD Update. Unfortunately or fortunately, as we will explain to you in this video, Andy Higginson, JD Group Chairman, is not with us. Let's share with you his welcome video.
Good afternoon. It's Andy Higginson here. I just want to apologize for not being with you today. The reason I'm not with you is I'm in Vancouver visiting my eldest son, who I've not seen for 18 months, and more importantly, meeting my new granddaughter for the first time. I'm afraid that took precedence on this particular occasion. What I wanted to do is just really, as an introduction to the day, give you a little bit of a view from the chair, a personal view of what's happened in the last two and a half years and the progress we've made. There's no question that we failed to manage our City Comms properly. We got our forecasting wrong. That has led to a disappointment, which you see reflected in the share price.
I think what it does mask is just the underlying strength of this business and the great work that Régis and the team have done, which perhaps does not get the attention it deserves. We have been here two and a half years now, I think it is. And 2022, when we joined, 2022, it seems like a bit of a distant land in a way. We inherited this incredible platform, this global platform from which to grow and which we are so grateful for in terms of the way we work every day. Having said that, the infrastructure that we inherited, the good and the bad, the infrastructure was very weak. The infrastructure was weak on IT. It was weak in terms of our online offer. It was weak in terms of our distribution infrastructure.
Most importantly, particularly in the context of the city, our accounting and finance infrastructure was woefully short of what was needed. We spent two years, two and a half years fixing a lot of that. It's important to say that we have a strong and stable leadership team. We have grown the business, OK, with the help of new stores and so on. We've continued to grow the business through a very difficult time trading-wise. We have achieved growth. We've retained strong cash flows and retained a very strong cash position. We funded the two acquisitions in the last year out of our own resources. We've rationalized our strategy to a significant extent. We sold off the sprawling fashion business. We bought in minority stakes in MIG and ISRG in Spain. We bought new acquisitions of Courir and Hibbett to come into the business.
We are in the process of rationalizing our DC strategy around the world. Most importantly, we now have a clear and obvious platform for growth as we look forward. Our strategy is very simple in a way. We are selling lots of sports-related gear to customers primarily through JD, which is our international brand that is present in all the markets. We have complementary businesses that allow us to sell to a wider group of similar sort of gear, which gives us heft in the marketplace, whether that is with the brands, whether that is with the landlords, whether it is with the distribution companies that send our products out to customers. All of that helps and they are complementary to the JD-first strategy. Where do we go from here? I think looking forward, we are obviously in an uncertain world.
It doesn't take me to tell you that the political developments of the last few weeks have been seismic. We are in great shape. We are a business that generates a lot of cash. We can fund our own expansion. We are able to take a long-term view and invest through difficult times to make sure that we come out of those times in fantastic shape. We have really great growth opportunities in front of us, organic growth opportunities primarily, whether that is in Europe, in Asia, or of course in North America in our fledgling Canadian business or getting JD into more cities across the United States. I think that opportunities of growth come in apparel as well. We have an opportunity to get our apparel business stronger in the U.S. and see good growth from that.
Of course, our digital and omnichannel business needs to capitalize on the good work that's already been done and really make sure that we're available to customers whenever it suits them through our online portals in different markets. As I say, we have the strong financials to be able to do that. We have our own cash flows to which to do that. We're not dependent on others. We can deliver that ourselves. We look into this difficult time for world markets with a great degree of confidence that we can continue to deliver a strong JD performance around the world. I wanted to leave it at that. Hand over to Régis and Dominic now to take you through the strategy in the hope that you'll see the great strength in the business as well as some of the challenges we've faced and face going forward.
Great. Thank you, Andy. Good afternoon. Good morning to the U.S. and for our U.S. joiner. Please be reassured, as far as we know and as far as the latest news, there is no tariff on webcast. We should be OK for the time being. After that, I'm Régis Schultz. I'm JD CEO. I'm joined here today by Dominic Platt, our CFO, and Michael Armstrong, our JD Global Managing Director, who I'm sure you will have plenty of questions for. As Andy has said, we have been moving at fast pace over the last two years, investing in our organic and inorganic growth to become the leading global sport fashion powerhouse and developing the infrastructure and the governance you will expect from a company of our size. At the same time, the market has changed.
It is now the time for us to move to the next phase of our strategy by adapting our plan to focus on organic growth and on profit, leveraging last year's investment to improve return to our shareholder. Let's go back to our CMD in February 2023. We share with you our vision for JD Group to be the leading sport fashion powerhouse structured around four pillars: JD brand first, JD complementary concept, JD beyond physical retail, and JD best for people, best for our partner, and best for the community. JD brand first is our commitment to put JD at the forefront of premium sport fashion, ensuring that we are the first choice for consumers around the globe and our first priority as a group. JD complementary concept is about broadening our customer reach, our geography reach, our category reach, and contributing to our scale.
JD beyond physical retail is our investment in infrastructure, governance, and digital transformation to support our past and future growth. Last but most important, JD people, partner, community reflect our commitment to our people, to our partner, and the community in which we operate. We set out three objectives using a sport reference, we are in sport, with a triple double objective: double-digit growth, double-digit market share, and double-digit profit. Let's start by focusing on, before focusing on the next phase of our plan, I would like to share with you our reflection on successes and challenges over the last two years and the lessons learned. Starting with our success, first pillar, JD first. JD brand as a global organization with one leader being Michael. We have now a consistent customer proposition across the world, leveraging our product merchandising marketing expertise and our excellence in retail execution.
Michael has been with JD for more than 25 years, starting in store, moving to buying, merchandising, marketing, general manager. He is JD, and he's certainly one of the most talented and experienced leaders in our industry. The second priority was to accelerate our store opening and conversion program to capture a larger share of the market. We set up the ambitious target to open 200 new JD stores per year, including conversion, with a disciplined approach and a three-year payback hurdle. We have done it with 405 stores open, 84 conversions, and a payback of less than three years on average. Dominic will give you more details around the numbers.
Outside of our strategic market, which are Europe and North America, we stopped our existing model of joint venture or acquisition to develop a franchise model with no CapEx, done with the opening of the Middle East, South Africa, and the flip of our Indonesia JV into a franchise. Second pillar of our strategy, JD complementary concept. We have simplified the group with the divestment of non-strategic businesses and the acquisition of the minority interests in ISRG and MIG. It has accelerated the development of JD in Iberia and Eastern Europe. We have done two acquisitions in our strategic market in the U.S. with Hibbett and in Europe with Courir. Third pillar, beyond physical retail, we have expanded our U.S. loyalty program, JD Status, in the U.K., in Ireland, in France, and Eastern Europe with more than 10 million downloads globally.
This is a foundation to develop a closer relationship with our customers, more targeted, more personalized, and more valuable. We have moved from a multi-channel to an omnichannel model. Omnichannel, as you know, is a right customer proposition. It's a competitive advantage that we have versus the D2C and versus pure player, as it is more efficient and less costly. For example, we have developed our ship-from-store capability to shorten our lead time in Europe and to reduce our fixed costs with the closure of a distribution center in the U.K. This ongoing omnichannel program, a disciplined commercial policy, and the optimization of our digital marketing spend has resulted in a significant improvement of the profitability of our online business to a double-digit operating margin. I'm pleased to say that the gap between offline and offline is almost minimum today.
We hired a very respected and experienced leader, Wim Van Hals, to build our global supply chain and to fix our European operation. We have opened three major warehouses, one in each of our strategic geographies in the last 12 months. With Dominic joining us 18 months ago, we have embarked on a major governance process and control program. This program started with the separation of the chair and CEO position with the appointment of Andy Higginson as JD chair in July 2022. Andy has restructured the board and brought more expertise, more experience, and more U.S. exposure. We have changed auditors, built from scratch an audit and risk team, doubled the size of the group finance team, tripled our legal team, and built a cybersecurity team. Just to give you an example of the things that we have fixed, our IFRS 16 lease adjustment, we calculate all on Excel.
It is possible when you have 300 leases in the U.K., not when you have 8,000 leases across 35 countries. I can go on and on on different examples. Best for our people. To serve our people better, we have put in place for the first time in JD a global engagement survey. In our last year survey, we reached 88% participation from our almost 100,000 people and delivered a record level of engagement. It demonstrates the commitment and the motivation of our people to drive JD long-term success and growth. In a nutshell, we have done what we say we will do, but we have faced challenges too. If I go to the challenge, first and most important one, we have seen a slower growth of the sportswear market across the world. This slowdown has impacted us, especially in the U.K.
With more than 400 JD stores, we have reached our maximum store number. With a slower market and a high increase of people cost, our profitability has been challenged. The U.K. is a mature market where we need to focus on productivity to maintain our profitability. In Germany, we have not delivered the profit we were expecting. Our priority should, would, be to fix our economic model before growth. To make sure we continue to be disciplined in our expansion, we have done a full review of our accelerated expansion program to adjust going forward our plan, as Dominic will explain to you. Our second big challenge has been the cost to fix the past underinvestment in our people, in our infrastructure, and in our governance. It is fair to say that it has both taken more time and required more cost than we originally anticipated.
First, the European warehouse project initiated after the Brexit has seen delays and increased costs. We are more than one year behind the original plan. We have changed two times the team in charge, but we are now on track. This has a major impact on our European margin profit, as Dominic will show you in his section. Second, over the past two years, we spent GBP 60 million of OpEx to secure our IT infrastructure and back office system. We have put in place IT general control, built a cybersecurity function, and we have upgraded non-supported legacy systems with new solutions. As of last month, we have a new HRIS system, a new solution for our store network, and a new platform for our e-comm. We have implemented SaaS-based solutions, resulting in OpEx rather than CapEx, and with a much higher short-term impact on our P&L.
Third, our investment in our people. Not only did we have to invest in our head office to upskill our finance and governance structure, but we had to invest in our people in store to correct some past practice. We have removed the age banding in the U.K., resulting in an increased cost of GBP 45 million per year. At the same time, wages, especially minimum wage, have increased significantly across most of the market we operate, resulting in an additional cost of more than GBP 100 million in the last two years. Last, the length of time, the cost, and the remedies it took to complete Courir acquisition have been horrendous. Lesson learned: doing M&A in Europe is not welcome. As a result of those extra costs and delays, we are not delivering upon the third element of our triple double, a double-digit operating margin.
Our operating margins have decreased for the reasons I just covered: increased staff costs, investment in infrastructure, and governance. Despite the fact that we have delivered a positive impact on our operating margin from the accelerated space expansion and the divestment of businesses. If you look at our first two doubles, double-digit growth and double-digit market share, I'm pleased to say that we are on track to deliver the growth and the market share. If you look at growth, the revenue growth coming from our space growth is in line with our plan. Our like-for-like is below the plan, mostly because of online, as our priority has been, as I said before, to build a profitable and sustainable economic model versus short-term sales. It has been compensated by M&A activity with the acquisition of Courir and EBIT.
In terms of market share, for those who remember, in 2022, we only had three countries with more than 10% market share. Now, we have more than 10% market share across Europe, and JD Group is a market leader in the U.K., Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece. In North America, JD is now bigger than Foot Locker, and we are a market leader in Australia and New Zealand. As a conclusion, we have done what we said we will do. We have delivered the space growth and the market share. We have fixed the governance issue. We have invested in the infrastructure and the people, but at a higher cost than forecasted and a lower like-for-like as the market has changed. The market has changed. When we did our CMD, our like-for-like for Q4 was almost plus 20%. In fact, it was plus 19.6% to be precise.
The Euro-Minter forecast for the market growth was 8% per annum between 2022 and 2027. In reality, the market has grown at around 3% per year in the last two years. Global sports fashion is an attractive and growing market, but we now expect the market to grow at a slower rate over the medium term, in line or slightly lower than the last two years, around 2%-3% annual growth on average. The last word is important: average. Retail and even more fashion, because we are in fashion, are volatile and cyclical. It is never a linear growth, especially in the current environment. At the time of the CMD, we were also in a market of high-end products with a concentration of sales on key franchises. We have seen now a market with multiple new emerging brands and less concentration on key franchises.
I will go into more details because I think it's important to understand our market in more details. If you go in more details of the market dynamic, footwear and apparel markets are flat markets in the world. It's not growing. The driver of sportswear growth is an increased penetration of the market. If you look at the chart on the left, you will see the sportswear footwear was 27% of the total footwear market in 2010. Over the last 15 years, the penetration of sportswear footwear has increased by 17 percentage points to reach 44%. Sneakers are becoming the shoes of every day, not always here, but it's coming, and in most occasions. If you take the U.S., the most advanced country, the penetration of sportswear footwear is already higher than 50%.
Concerning apparel, which is the chart on the right, it is the same, but at a lower scale and at a lower penetration. If sneakers are becoming the shoes, sportswear apparel is one style, part of many. It is a basic and a fashion element of the customer wardrobe. It is clear that footwear penetration has driven sportswear globally. We have seen an acceleration of the penetration of sportswear during COVID. Post-COVID, the trend has continued, driven by casualization and active lifestyle. It is important to say that the penetration of sportswear in the total market has increased every year in the last 15 years, pre, during, and post-COVID, and is still growing. However, as the scale of the sportswear market has changed and the penetration has increased a lot, the growth has been less quick, especially in percentage. 100% of zero is still zero.
When you get bigger, the percentage gets lower. Therefore, we forecast a more modest outperformance of sportswear versus the wider footwear and apparel market going forward, resulting in a slower market growth. In a slower market growth and a market with growth coming from emerging brands and new products, our strong, global, agile, multi-brand model gives us the ability to grow ahead of the market. It all starts with the consumer, JD customer, our customer. Our greatest strength is our focus on our customer, our ability to see the world through the mindset of our customer. Our customer is a young adult, 16 to 24 years old. They move fast. They wear the latest brands and take on new trends quickly. They want more assortment, more access, more choice, more brands, and more looks that blur the line of sport and fashion.
They are looking at global trends via TikTok, social networks. They are global. They are not monobrands. They want to be free, to mix brands, to mix sport and fashion, to shop with their friends in a multi-brand environment. They are trendsetters and critical for the brand. JD is responding to their need. Our concept is new, modern. We are global. We are multi-brand. We are sport and fashion. This close relationship with the young customer gives us this strong partnership with the brand. We are usually the number one partner in the world. We are a full-price retailer. We access new products, innovation first, and we attract brands in their early stage. For example, we were the first major retailer in the U.K. to sell On. This is because we are a full-price retailer. We are connected to our customer.
We are first to discover, to capture trends in the key sports fashion city where we have stores. We are defining range by store. This gives us the ability to test and scale brands, new franchises, new products better than anyone else. We pride ourselves on being the best partner for the sports fashion brand. This strong partnership with the brand gives us the ability to offer the latest and the greatest products to our customers. We are a demanding partner with the brand, working closely with each of them to curate their offer, to select products, to develop products, our SMU, exclusive to us. As a result of that, half of our apparel and 30% of our footwear offering is exclusive to us.
When brands are not able to respond to our customer needs, we are developing our own product, own brand, which allows us to target niche or new categories. Denim is a good example. We saw the trend coming, and we develop products with our own brand Supply and Demand to respond to the trend. To offer the latest products, we need to be fast and agile. Let's look at some facts to demonstrate our agility. On the slide, you have the mix of our sales in footwear. This is on the left, and apparel on the right. First, you will see that we are not looking at our range per brand. You always ask us a question around brands. That's not the way we build our range. We build it by category, by style, to make sure that we are customer-led.
If you take footwear, and this is a simplified segmentation, we have four key categories: running, new running, what we call new running, or what you call performance running, but that's the same for us, retro running, retro basketball, classic or tennis, skate. To simplify the chart, we put terrace in it, which was more football, I would say, and other. You can see the movement if you take retro basketball, which is from 20% in 2020 to almost 40% of our sales in 2024, and back to almost 25% in 2025. The question that you always ask us, are we agile to change? Yes, we are. Yes, we are doing it.
If you take running, we believe that running will soon be back to 60%, as it was in 2020, especially with the development of new running or performance running with On, HOKA, Adidas, Evo, and the coming new exciting Nike running product. Thanks to our agility, we have been able to navigate the change of the trend and deliver a 9% annual growth in footwear during the last five years. If you go to apparel, you can see how we have been able to pivot and develop performance apparel and street fashion to continue to grow at a fast pace with an average annual growth of 12%. Performance apparel shows our agility to capture growth within the sports category and to pivot when things are changing.
This has been done very quickly, as we have more than doubled our sales in performance every year in the last three years and grew more than five times over the last five years. Our development in street fashion, which is the other part, you have core sport, performance, and street, has demonstrated our ability to extend to new categories even when the brands are not responding to the customer need by developing our own brand or new brand to respond to this customer need. We are agile. We drive trends. As a result, we have a strong model that outperforms our peers in all core operating metrics. If we compare ourselves, JD Group revenue growth rate is almost five times the market average, with particularly strong growth coming from our under-penetrated market, Europe, U.S., APAC, demonstrating our growth potential for the coming years.
We have expanded globally at a faster pace than most. This global diversification provides us with a competitive advantage over those who remain heavily reliant on one single market. More important, JD Group store productivity is about 50% higher than competitors. Space productivity is the most important KPI in retail, as it means that you can secure the best location in the best mall and deliver superior return. Our mix, with a higher penetration of apparel than our peers, partly explains the performance, as it increases frequency and traffic. Our digital revenue share is higher than many others. With the development of our omnichannel capability, we have now a profitable business model close to the profitability of our store. Those strong metrics make us a chosen route to market for our brand partner, increasing our agility of our multi-brand model.
Now, let's look to the future and explain how we are adapting our strategy and taking action to deliver improved returns to our shareholders. First, we are refining our growth strategy to take into account the slower market growth, the achievements of the last two years, and the lessons learned. As I already mentioned, the U.K. is a maturing market for us. It is our most established market. Our focus will be on productivity and maintaining our market-leading position by investing in bigger, better, and fewer stores and keeping our store estate up to date. We have the huge competitive advantage to have short leads and a well-invested store estate.
In North America, having completed the acquisition of Hibbett, the focus is to develop the JD brand and to improve our return on space by leveraging our different fascia, which I will come to in more detail in the next slide. In Europe, this is a case of refining our approach. We have seen great success, tremendous success in the south of Europe, in Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania, Portugal. It is fair to say that Germany, on the other side, has been more challenging due to high costs and less appetite from the consumer on sports fashion. We will take those learnings and direct future investment on the market where we see room to profitably grow. Having finally completed the Courir acquisition, we will leverage a strong position in France and use JD Group's strong position in Spain and Italy to accelerate Courir expansion in those markets.
In Spain, Portugal, and Greece, we have a strong sporting goods business. Since the purchase of the minority shareholding, we have taken full control. We have exited the Netherlands and converted a number of stores to JD in Iberia. We are now very well positioned to focus on developing our market share in sporting goods and our profit. In relation to the rest of the world, we are looking to expand our reach via our capital-light franchise model. Our second priority is to leverage our investment in supply chain infrastructure and governance and deliver efficiency. As mentioned, we have opened three new warehouses. We have all the costs of doing that in the last 12 months. They are all in operation, but only one in full operation.
Airline for Europe should begin to deliver benefits beginning of next year, now that the project is back on track and set to be fully live at the end of 2026. Morgan Hill for our U.S. West Coast will be our first multi-brand warehouse in the U.S. at the end of this year. This will unlock improvements in the speed to market for our West Coast store and give us a blueprint to move our other warehouses in the U.S. to become multi-fascia. This will deliver significant cost savings and increase our capacity in the future. On digital, we are at the end of a two-year investment to replatform our omnichannel business. We'll be live at the end of the first half in the U..S and in Europe and the U.K. in 2026.
In both cases, we have incurred significant double running costs and constraints in delivering a fully omnichannel experience to our customers. Meanwhile, we are currently working on opportunities for efficiency in our head office in the U.K. and Europe, as well as post-acquisition synergy across the back office function in North America. As a conclusion, our strategic framework stays the same, but our focus changes with two clear priorities: refine our growth strategy and deliver efficiency. Let's now go to our biggest opportunity and spend a little bit of time on our North America business, since it is now our biggest market, as well as the one where we have seen the most change in the last year and the most important, the one where we see the biggest opportunity. This is history, but we entered the U.S. in 2018 with the acquisition of Finish Line.
We have done two other acquisitions with Shoe Palace and with DTLR. We have three times, not once, not twice, but three times doubled the size of the business and more than quadrupled the profit of the business we bought. Our secret sauce is JD Group operational excellence in buying and merchandising, developing a truly agile multi-brand customer proposition and leveraging infrastructure. We look forward to continuing this with EBIT. I hope that the structural short show on the slides speaks for itself. I cannot resist sharing two numbers with you. In 2019, we were making a turnover of $1 billion in the U.S., and in 2025, our turnover will be $6 billion, bigger than Foot Locker in six years. Our geographical reach has now dramatically changed with a coast-to-coast and a full coverage of the country.
I thought it would be helpful for us to outline the different fascia we operate in North America. Currently, we operate six key fascia: JD, Hibbett, Finish Line, Shoe Palace, DTLR, and Citi Trends. Together, we have a comprehensive geographic and customer coverage. We categorize them strategically into three buckets: mass, reach, and focus. Our mass is JD, aligned to JD Brand First. The U.S. JD customer is the same young customer as our global customer target that I described before. JD operates in key venues, mostly A and B malls. JD Store is our destination store, the best sports fashion store in the catchment area, the one that delivers the most sales compared to everyone in the market. Our reach fascia is Hibbett. It is a sports fashion convenient format, expanding our reach in underserved markets and rural areas. It is a JD local convenient offer.
Finish Line, corner in Macy's, is a great business that extends our reach to an older, more female customer, a little bit like Courir and Europe. Our focus is our city specialist: Shoe Palace, DTLR, and Hibbett, a community store in the urban area. All have a customer skewed toward a specific community: the Hispanic community for Shoe Palace, the African American community for Hibbett and DTLR. They are mostly strip mall venues with some presence in malls. They are fully complementary on a geographical basis. Shoe Palace is situated on the West Coast and Southwest. DTLR store is on the East Coast, and in the middle, Hibbett store fills the geographical gap between Shoe Palace and DTLR, with less than a 10% store overlap with the two other brands.
Looking at the difference in terms of return on space between Citygear, Citygear is doing around $250 per sq ft, and DTLR and Shoe Palace, which average around $500 per sq ft, we have taken the decision to rationalize our portfolio and to convert Citygear store to DTLR, with a limited number of stores converted to Shoe Palace. The five pilot stores have shown strong uplift in both sales and profitability post-conversion. It looks like a triple-digit increase in terms of sales. We will be finding synergy and efficiency through rationalization of the back office function with those fascia.
As said before, we have a strong track record in the U.S., double sales, and credible profit of all our acquired business, a strong team, and a strong plan to continue to do what we have done in the last six years, leveraging existing assets to deliver an improved performance and a high return. In addition, I'm pleased to share with you that we have agreed with the Merceau family, our current minority shareholder in our North America business, to extend our put and call arrangement to 2029 and 2030, to give both parties the ability to fully leverage investment made in the last two years. I think there is no more proof to demonstrate the confidence of the Merceau in managing our city specialist concept in our North America business and give us more visibility for our capital allocation that Dominic is going to cover in his part.
Before I hand over to Dominic, let me share with you four key messages. We are adapting to a slower market growth with a refined organic growth strategy and a focus on delivery efficiency for our past investment. We have a strong and agile multi-brand, multi-geography model. We have demonstrated our ability to navigate short-term headwinds. We are positioned to outperform in North America and Europe by leveraging our different customer propositions. We are disciplined and focused on delivering shareholder returns with a strong and stable cash generation. We have delivered around GBP 1.3 billion EBITDA for the last three years. Now, I will hand over to Dominic to go through the financials and our strong cash generation, which will fund growth and deliver returns to our shareholders. Thank you.
Normally, a video separates Régis and me, but Andy took that today, so no video. Right, thank you, Régis.
I'd like to spend a few minutes talking you through the updated plan and how we're evolving our capital allocation priorities. When we announced our five-year plan back in February 2023, the global sportswear market was very strong, and there were plenty of high-heat products helping to fuel that market growth. Looking ahead, our market will continue to grow, but less quickly. Back in 2023, against the background of a stronger growth market, we announced upweighted growth and infrastructure and governance investment plans. Two years into delivering the strategy, reflecting a market growing less quickly and the significant investment that we have made in the business to develop our infrastructure, we're moving to a new phase in our strategy. Our investment over the medium term will be focused on growing share, where we are underrepresented.
We will start to benefit from the investment we have made in our infrastructure and governance and deliver efficiencies across the group. Finally, we will move to balance the use of our strong cash generation on both investment in longer-term growth for the group and delivering returns to our shareholders. Now, let's turn to the updated plan. I admit there's a lot on this slide, but I hope it's helpful in laying out how our plans by brand and geography work and how they work together to deliver the overall improved performance and returns over the medium term. It lays out the value driver for each business and the key levers we are working on to deliver that value. The table shows the share of group revenue that each area represents and how we see that evolving over the medium term.
We also show the operating margin and how we see that evolving too. Just to clarify, operating margin here reflects operating margin including lease interest, as we think that gives the best indication of underlying profitability. We will provide more detail on that with our year-end results. Finally, we indicate where we will prioritize our capital expenditure. Working across from left to right, we start with JD U.K., where our focus will be on improving the overall productivity of that business. JD U.K. is at the heart and soul of the group. It has a market-leading concept and a good store estate, with almost all stores providing a positive contribution. However, it is important that we continue to invest and manage our space and locations to maintain that leadership, ensuring consistent customer experience and optimizing productivity across the estate.
Secondly, we will invest to support continued growth in our profitable and highly successful gyms business. Finally, cost pressures are impacting our U.K. operating margins. We will now focus on delivering efficiencies in the face of those cost pressures to stabilize our profit margins. Turning to North America, we already have a scale business, but there remains a significant growth opportunity. We will grow revenue and profit by growing space for the JD fascia, optimizing our complementary concepts, and delivering supply chain and back office synergies. First, we will continue with our successful JD store opening program, targeting 700-800 JD stores and completing the conversion of the Finish Line stores to JD over the next two to three years.
Alongside this, with critical mass for the JD brand in key population centers, we will increase our investment in brand awareness to underpin the further success of that business. Secondly, we have a clear plan to leverage our complementary portfolio of fascia. This plan allows us to extend our customer reach and provides a range of store economic models that will optimize our returns in different size markets, something I will return to later. As Régis said, we will be rebranding the Citygear stores we acquired with Hibbett into DTLR and Shoe Palace, replicating the successful Finish Line to JD conversion program that we have been running. Finally, important to improving returns is the delivery of synergies following the acquisition of Hibbett through developing a multi-fascia supply chain and support function efficiencies.
These, together with growing scale, will see the North America operating margin edging up over the medium term. In Europe, our plan will grow revenue and improve the operating margin to high single digits. We can segment the plan into three. Firstly, looking at the JD fascia, we will focus on growth in key markets, adding new stores where we are underrepresented and delivering margin and supply chain benefits as we complete the automation of our Haarlem DC in the Netherlands. Secondly, with our complementary concepts, we will continue to convert to JD where appropriate and look to drive efficiencies across the different fascia. Thirdly, we're focused on maintaining the strong performance of our sporting goods businesses in Europe. We will continue to grow our market share, opening a small number of new stores and improving efficiency as we grow scale.
Quickly touching on the rest of the world, this is a JD fascia growth story. We will continue to grow our store estates in Asia Pacific, where we have existing successful businesses. Elsewhere, we will grow the JD brand through franchise, a capital-light route to bringing the JD offer to a wider set of customers. Finally, we will continue to improve margins in our outdoors business. This framework and priorities by region will drive our capital allocation, directing our capital expenditure to support the key areas of growth and profit increase. This will see 70% of our CapEx directed to North America and Europe, with the balance spread across the rest of the group. How will this drive shareholder value over the medium term? Firstly, we will grow our revenue, led by our investment in space growth.
We will see the contribution from space growth settled at around 3% of revenue in the medium term as our CapEx becomes more targeted and the like-for-like base grows larger. Next, we're planning to deliver profit growth ahead of sales. We will drive operating leverage not only through our growing scale, but as we deliver benefits from the significant investments we've made over the last two years and drive efficiencies in the business. Thirdly, we will focus on generating stronger cash generation through more focused store investment and lower supply chain investment now that our major infrastructure investment programs are behind us, and using the capital-light franchise model to expand outside our existing markets. Added up, this means we'll start to improve our return on capital and enhance returns to shareholders. Now, this is the view over the medium term.
Each year, of course, will reflect the underlying market in year. In the short term, as we look to the current year and before the yet-to-be-determined impact of recent changes to tariffs, it is also a year of transition as we move from a period of significant investment in M&A to a period focused on leveraging those investments and delivering improved returns. Now, a key element to improving returns is a focus on our operating efficiency and cost base. Our profit margin has declined in recent years, reflecting a slower market and the investments we have made in people and our infrastructure. Looking forward, there are a number of factors that will support the stabilization of and then improvement in our operating margins. First, our growth will bring scale benefits as we leverage a fixed cost base.
We will see the benefit of our operating excellence, the day-to-day trading focus on optimizing results that JD has delivered over the years. In addition to that, there are some major areas that give us confidence we can see further efficiencies coming through in time. First, supply chain and back office synergies in the U.S. We have plans to deliver the $25 million we announced on acquiring Hibbett, and we're looking to deliver more. The benefits will start to flow from this year and grow thereafter. We have supply chain and platform benefits. As our new DCs come online and we roll out our new digital platforms over the next two years, we're able to remove the over GBP 20 million of double running costs that we have been incurring on this.
The move to full automation of the Haarlem Distribution Centre will also further reduce duties we pay on product imported from the U.K. into Europe. With much of our investment in upgrading our governance and central systems and infrastructure now complete, we will start to leverage these to deliver overhead efficiencies. Turning to cash, JD is a highly cash-generative business. Over the last three years, we have delivered IFRS 16 EBITDA of GBP 5 billion. Taking into account lease payments in old money, that's a cash EBITDA of over GBP 1.2 billion a year. After allowing for the investment in working capital as we've grown the business, our increased capital expenditure and tax, we've delivered cumulative free cash flow of over GBP 1 billion over the last three years.
This cash flow generation, however, has been more than offset by the important investments we have made in buying out the minorities in ISRG in Iberia and MIG in Eastern Europe and acquiring Hibbett and Courir. With this significant M&A investment behind us and more targeted capital expenditure, we will see our cash generation improve. As I just mentioned, we have stepped up our capital expenditure over the last three years, investing over GBP 500 million alone in the last two years as we capitalized on growth opportunities across the group and invested to ensure our supply chain was fit for purpose for a group of our size. With the peak spend on our supply chain behind us and more targeted store CapEx, we will see CapEx trending to around 3%-3.5% of revenue.
The majority of our spend, around two-thirds, will be on store growth as we capitalize on the growth opportunity in North America and Europe, with a lower share on supply chain than we have seen and the balance on ongoing central and systems projects. In terms of detail, we will provide guidance on store openings on a yearly basis, and we have shared our expectations for the current year in our trading update today. Our spend over the last couple of years has seen investment across a number of areas. Firstly, necessary investment in core infrastructure, where the priority has been stability and risk avoidance. Secondly, investment in supply chain, where returns will start to come through as the new distribution centers come online. Finally, our significant investment in stores, which I will turn now to. We have seen good returns on our store investments.
Looking here at Europe, we've opened 144 new stores across JD Europe in the last two years, and these are delivering an average return on investment of 37% on average CapEx of GBP 700,000 per store. We've also undertaken 28 conversions in Spain, Portugal, and Eastern Europe. These have typically delivered a 72% sales uplift and 32% return on investment on GBP 500,000 per store. This is within our three-year payback criteria. Turning to the U.S., you see a similar picture. We've delivered returns in line with our three-year payback criteria across new openings, conversions, and relocations and expansions. New store openings have led the way in terms of returns. We've also seen good uplifts and returns in conversions and relocations, underpinning our ongoing program of new store openings and conversions. We've seen similar returns elsewhere across the group.
Now, the store returns I've just been focusing on have been JD. Our portfolio fascia across the group operates with different metrics, but similar returns. Here you can see how our U.S. fascia economics are differentiated, allowing us to vary our proposition to match different markets across the country. From the mass market, high-footfall locations we're targeting with JD, where the higher revenue supports the higher investment, to Hibbett, which has a store economic concept which works well for the underserved markets it operates in. Shoe Palace and DTLR's store economic model fits well with their community focus in higher population urban areas. This differentiation across our fascias positions us well to optimize our returns across the range of different markets we serve in the U.S. As an operationally geared business, like any retail company, it's important to maintain a strong balance sheet.
Notwithstanding our increased capital expenditure and recent significant M&A investment, we've ended FY2025 with net cash on an IS17 basis. On an IFRS 16 basis, including leases, we had net debt to EBITDA of around 2 times. Our strong cash generation will continue to underpin this strong balance sheet position and provides headroom for investments and commitments such as the Genesis option. Before we move on, it's worth a couple of minutes on the Genesis option. The Genesis put and call option is over the 20% of our North American business that we do not own. As Régis mentioned earlier, we've agreed with our partners to defer the exercise window. Under the previous arrangement, that 20% could be put or called in four 5% tranches from FY2025 to FY2028.
Under the revised arrangements, the 20% can be put or called into 10% tranches, with payments falling in FY2030 and FY2031. Other than these changes, all other terms remain unchanged, including the cap of GBP 1.5 billion. As we adapt our plans, we've updated our capital allocation priorities. With the underpin of a strong balance sheet, the priority for our cash will be investing in the business on an organic basis, funding working capital and capital expenditure, with the majority of our investment focused on the key growth opportunities of North America and Europe. Secondly, we need to maintain headroom to fund our commitments. The material commitment is the Genesis option, and with that deferred, we now have significant liquidity headroom in the short term. Thirdly, we will continue with a progressive ordinary dividend.
After this, with our surplus cash, we can invest in further M&A or increased investment that improves our return on capital, and/or we can return cash to our shareholders. Reflecting our strong cash generation and with no material M&A in the pipeline as we bed in and generate value from our recent acquisitions, we are now in a position to return cash to shareholders and have announced an intention to launch an initial GBP 100 million share buyback program. I would like to close my section with a summary of our investment case following the update to our medium-term strategic plan. Let's start with the fact that we operate in a scale and growing market, growing less quickly than we have seen, but supported by ongoing casualization and activity trends. Within this market, we are positioned to grow our share as we generate organic growth ahead of the market.
Why will we achieve this? We're a leading player in scale markets. We have headroom to grow in North America and Europe. We are a key partner for the main global and regional brands, and we have a high level of brand love across all our fascias. Next, we have a strong and agile multi-brand model. We have strong store economics. We have wide-ranging brand relationships, and we have a proven ability to drive and respond to trends. Next, we have a customer-focused omnichannel model. We're improving the ease of our cross-channel offer across a number of customer touchpoints, all supported by a strengthening customer loyalty proposition. We come to JD's operational excellence, which has been clearly demonstrated over a number of years.
This puts us in a great position to leverage our well-invested infrastructure and continue strengthening our governance and controls environment to deliver profit growth ahead of sales over the medium term. Finally, this improving profitability and more targeted CapEx underpins strong cash generation and a strong balance sheet. With disciplined capital allocation, we will invest in growth while delivering returns to shareholders. Bringing it all together, we are well positioned to deliver growth. Our operational excellence will drive improved profit and cash flow over the medium term. We are committed to delivering strong shareholder returns. As a demonstration of that, we intend to launch an initial GBP 100 million buyback program. Thank you for listening to that. I'll now hand over to Régis, who will chair the Q&A.
Thank you, Dominic. Let's move to Q&A.
Just before we move to Q&A, because I know that you would like to ask us about tariffs. We are digesting tariff. We are looking at it. It's a very serious matter. We are working on it. As you have seen, the position is likely to evolve. It's volatile. We do not want to be hypothetical. Hypothetical. Hypothetical. It's the same word in French, but not the same pronunciation. We would love to be more helpful, but anything we say now will be misleading or could be misleading. Just to prepare you, we are not going to answer any question on tariffs. Just to prepare you on the Q&A. We are welcoming all your questions on our strategy and our midterm plan. If you can give your name first and your company.
Afternoon, Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt.
Just on brand awareness in the States, I think it's probably a little below where you'd hoped it would be by now. Can you explain why that hasn't quite lived up to your expectations and how the next tranche of stores is going to help force that forward? Another couple of quickies on progress. Firstly, Status, you talked about 10 million customers on there. What are you doing in terms of personalization of contact with those customers and how far developed is that process? Similarly on Courir, obviously some best practice switch change over there. Sharing your best practice, how is that going in terms of their formats, perhaps educating JD a little bit?
Yeah, so Michael, if you can take the first question, I will take the two others.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.
We're actually seeing some really good brand awareness gains in the U.S. in the key markets that we measure where we are most active and we have the majority of the stores, which is New York and the I-95 corridor, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles. We're up to about 50% aided awareness, which is a massive increase year on year. We're definitely headed in the right direction. We've got some more. We're feeling pretty comfortable with the marketing strategy that we've got, which is very much focused on communities, and we're going to look to expand that into some more markets as well as we go into next year. We're actually making really good progress on that front. Do you want to jump in?
Yeah, I will take the two others. Status, I think that you're right. I think we just started the program.
I think for the moment, it's more on downloading and to be able to build the relationship with the consumer. We are really scratching on the surface. There is plenty to go for, but for the moment, our priority has been to build and to have enough customers downloading the app in order to get to the next phase of personalization. There is a lot to go for, not a lot to report on. On Courir, I think that they had a great year last year. I think that we see the benefit of having a different type of customer, and the integration is going well. There is nothing really special to report on that one, but I think the team is very motivated and really happy to join the JD Group.
Okay, let's go here. Sorry, I'll just go around. Thank you. Ashton here from Redburn.
The first question is just for Dominic on the guidance range for FY2026. Obviously, it does exclude tariffs, but could you give us some color on what you are assuming, maybe around cost inflation, synergies, the potential range of like-for-like? Good try. Good try. Also, any guidance on maybe H1 versus H2. Secondly, what are you seeing with Nike at the moment? Are you seeing any evidence of them being more disciplined around promos, or are you seeing partners being more disciplined around promos? When you look into the future, when do you expect them to return to growth with you? I guess the third question, just on a parallel, obviously, you have made a lot of progress over the past few years. It seems like calendar 2024 was a bit more challenging. Just any update on what you are seeing there at the moment?
Shall I start with the optimist? Yeah, please. Okay. Look, Michael will take Nike. Yes. When we look to the current year, space growth, we expect to be around 4% in the coming year. We expect to get about 10% uplift from a full year of Courir and Hibbett. We expect like-for-like to be negative. Now, if I look to where the market is, it is around 1% to -1%, 1.5% consensus. I think I will come to consensus in a moment. That sort of range or a bit lower, I think, is likely to be what we will see. Cost inflation, a big driver of our cost inflation this year will actually just be a full year of Hibbett and Courir, and that will bring about 12%-14% uplift. There are a number of moving parts in our cost space this year.
Clearly, we have just general inflation in the U.K. We have national insurance, national minimum wage. As we say in the release, we've got some investment, tech investment, and these days it falls more into OpEx than into CapEx. All of those things will go down up to GBP 50 million. Offsetting that, we just work hard every day. That's what we get paid for, unfortunately, as well as driving the business forward. Equally, we will start to see some of the benefits of the U.S. synergies coming through this year. We've made good progress on supply chain in the sort of transport area. A good example, bring five businesses together. You put five contracts together with the DHLs and the UPSs of this world, and you get a significant saving. That's a nice quick one. Multi-fascia will take longer.
Some of those things are already starting to come through. Some of the savings around double running costs and the European supply chain will be back-ended in the year. Puts and takes, but we probably will not see all the benefit of that this year. It will not fully offset the cost increases, but we will start to move in the right direction for the next year. Just to complete the picture, coming to consensus, it is around GBP 920 million, as we say in the release today. It is a range of GBP 878 million-GBP 983 million. There are two, three at the top end who have not updated for a while. I think naturally you will see that coming down overall as they look comfortable with that sort of, I would say, range that is not at the top end just because I think they just have not updated yet. Okay. Okay.
Nike, I think started with pricing. I think, I mean, clearly, Elliott's been pretty vocal about where he sees the Nike business headed. They see the DTC business really creating the halo effect for the brand, which gives it a premium position. We're very much early into Elliott's tenure in the business, and we've no reason to suggest doing anything differently from what Elliott suggested. As far as getting back to growth, I mean, it's obviously a very different picture globally across the business because lots of different markets were at different phases of maturity with those kind of three big franchises that we just mentioned. I think generally we feel really good about the direction the brand's headed. We're seeing green shoots in the men's business in Europe, particularly, which is really encouraging.
We're working really closely with those guys to get it back on track in every market that we operate in. We feel really good about the relationship, the partnership that we have with Nike. With Nike, and I'm pretty sure we can get it back sort of full speed pretty quickly, really.
Thank you. Richard Chamberlain, RBC. Just three for me, if that's all right. It looks like you guys had a pretty strong January by the looks of it, and I just wonder what drove that. Was that sort of more on the Europe side, or was that driven by sort of promo markets like U.S., France, Spain, and so on? What's your sort of planning assumption on pricing for the coming year? I mean, sort of pre-tariff or what would it have been up until sort of last week?
I'd be interested in on that. And we're in that sort of low single-digit market growth that you're looking for, very low single digit. To what extent is that driven by price? And then finally, maybe you can say what still needs to be done on the Europe side in terms of warehousing and further benefits to come through there. Thank you.
Okay. Do you take January?
I'll take January. In terms of January, I wouldn't read too much into that. When we do our peak trading, we're taking raw sales data for November, December. We haven't got all of the sort of final adjustments around delivery and everything else. January does reflect a bit of that for the whole quarter. January is a sales period, and sometimes you might have a bit more sales, a bit less sales, and that's the way it goes through.
I would not read too much into that.
Okay. Pricing, Mike?
I mean, our pricing strategy does not change. We want to get as much for the product as we possibly can. I do not really think we can say too much other than that for obvious reasons, but our strategy does not change. We are certainly not going to chase a web business that is highly promotional right now at the expense of margin. That is not what we have been doing. Clearly, you can see that, and we do not intend to pivot from that at all.
I think just to pick up part of your question there, Richard, you talked about 2-3% growth. That is over the medium term. I think in retail, you have higher years and lower years as the product is stronger or weaker. Customer demand is stronger or weaker.
I think this year, for a whole host of reasons, we're seeing as being more subdued on that trajectory rather than positive. Okay.
On Europe warehousing, we opened LN now 18 months ago, operating on a manual basis. Where we face issue has been the automation. We have changed a team. We have brought expertise from out of the group with Wim and with some people that we have in our Spanish warehouse, which is using exactly the same solution. We are on track now. Our plan is to deliver to start using automation during summer in order to ramp up before the peak period. We could have done that last year, but it was at the time of peak, and we said, "Don't take a risk." You will appreciate the way we have looked at it.
We could have been more risky and take some risk. We have taken no risk, but we have the double running cost for longer, which I think is the right way to do. That is where we are, but we feel confident. We have the right team, the plan to start to ramp up and to start to use automation that will increase the capacity, will help us to close the other warehouse that we are temporarily using. That should close at the beginning of 2026, and we start to have a full operation on the B2B place, and we move our B2C after that for next year. The full benefit of LN will be in 2027, but we will get the B2B benefit in 2026.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Hi, David Hughes from Shore Cap. Three questions from me as well, please.
First of all, in the U.S., how much progress/success have you had in bringing some of your other really strong brands over there to perhaps kind of reduce how much of the sales there is so tied to Nike? Secondly, I call it tariff adjacent. In your full year 2024 results, it looked like around 60% by revenue of products were sourced from China. Would you say the mix is kind of currently similar, or has any of that shifted out to Vietnam and other countries in kind of the last year? Finally, on the return of excess cash, do you have a threshold in terms of a preference for share buybacks versus special dividends? Thank you.
Michael, you're happy to take the first two ones?
Yeah.
I mean, the brand mix in the U.S., particularly on apparel, we've seen some great success with the own brands and the licensed brands, and we'll continue to grow on that. We launched another one actually just recently, Unlike Humans, which is one we've developed in-house, and it's got off to a flying start. We'll continue to do that wherever the opportunities allow us. It's not, as always, like we just said, we'll react to the consumer demand and where the consumers are going. It's not like we have a directive to build an own brand business in the U.S. That's not what it is. We'll always go with where the consumer's going. If the own brands can fill that consumer need, then that's where we'll play.
Second one was on China.
I think China represents a very small part of our sourcing and a small part for the industry because most of what is produced in China is for China. Most of what is used out of China is produced not in China. Our exposure to China is very minimum.
On the return of cash, we have not set a threshold. We are just starting an initial buyback program now. In many ways, it reflects when we talk to shareholders, their preference. We will update on that in due course as things evolve.
It was a strong message from our shareholders. We show that we are listening to them and want to please them.
Hi, Thierry Breton from Bank of America. Two questions for me. First, you mentioned liquidity headroom, right?
Going back to net cash position more visibly, can you give us a sort of level or threshold or parameter where you think that you will be comfortable to face Genesis or any other opportunity and you think would be a minimum? Secondly, if I'm not mistaken, January was more or less low single digit positive in terms of like-for-like. You expect the whole year to be down 1-2%. Can you tell us since the beginning of the year what you've seen? Has it been deteriorating or further improving? Thank you.
Dealing with the second question first, we'll update on our Q1 trading portfolio results on May 21. I think, as with all quarters, particularly this year, we've got Easter moving from March to April, and we've got Eid moving from April to March.
That does create a change in the phasing through the period. We'll update on the full quarter at the full year results. On liquidity headroom, what's important to us is maintaining a strong balance sheet. We haven't set a leverage target, but broadly speaking, that's around two times lease adjusted EBITDA. When we do that and the numbers I put up there, we do include the Genesis option liability. Okay? Now, we can see that two times may be slightly elevated above two times, maybe slightly below. In terms of setting our capital allocation, we are always mindful of that liability over the future term. It creates a cash liquidity headroom, but we're not thinking about it in terms of leverage headroom at this point in time.
Genesis, how is it valued?
Genesis is valued as 6.5 times the EBITDA in the relevant period less net debt.
Which could be a nice indication for our shareholder to value the same for us.
It's a good benchmark.
Hi there. Alison Lygo from Deutsche Numis. Say three for me as well, if that's okay, please. First, on the CapEx, so 70% going towards Europe and the US, could you help us a little bit with the split between those markets in that and how maybe it's split down sort of last year? Should we be assuming a sort of similar kind of cash run rate going into the US from here? Second one, just on omnichannel. The slide you put up suggested it's really the online business that you feel like has not been performing.
I guess interested in terms of what your expectations were and now what they are going forward and kind of what you're really doing to sort of drive that and change that going forward. Finally, just one on Hibbett. So just interested in terms of if you could update how sort of their full year 2025 revenue may be compared to full year 2024 revenue in terms of the performance there and whether that consumer is at all more exposed to kind of recession, economic pressures, those sorts of things. Thank you.
You take the CapEx. Do you want to do omnichannel first and then continue?
Oh, yeah. Okay. I'll do the omnichannel first. I think that the way we put on the slide is that our like-for-like has been higher in stores than it has been online.
I think we assume the same because we believe that today there is no reason to have an increased penetration or decreased penetration in terms of our online business. It has been more challenging online, mostly because of the fact that it is more promotional and we get out of the drug of doing promotion. We have reduced the level of promotion significantly to have more and more the same policy online and offline. We do not have any more different promotion online and offline. That has driven a little bit of sales going down. At the same moment, our profit has gone where we want to be, which is something where we make as much money online and offline. That is really what has happened on online.
Yes, it has been going down, but at the same moment, I think we are on track with what we want to do in terms of the way we look at it in an omnichannel way. We have taken a lot of cost out. Some of the costs are marketing costs, which are driving some sales, which you are not interested in because at the end, it's not profitable, especially in Europe because we have not yet the supply chain that we want to have. That's where we are. I think that the way you should look at it is one business, and the fact that consumers buy online or offline doesn't really matter. We want to make sure that the same in terms of our economic, it doesn't matter between both businesses.
Turning to CapEx, broadly 50/50.
I mean, it might be a little bit more, a little bit less between the U.S. and Europe as we look forward in terms of number of the opportunities there, they're broadly similar. I think if we go back to FY2025, and Alison, I don't have the exact numbers in my head, but I think we've probably seen more elevated investment in Europe just because of the cost of the Haarlem distribution center over and above the store opening. We have been spending on distribution centers in the U.S., but they've been costing us a lot less than the Dutch one. I think sort of probably slightly more balanced and probably more skewed to Europe in the last year, but we can confirm that.
On the Hibbett revenue position, I think we're sort of seeing consistent revenue from last year in terms of pre-acquisition and where we are and the run rate. It's about $1.2 billion business. I think the thing about you talked about that customer being under pressure, I think, is what you said.
No, the question was to say, is the Hibbett customer more under pressure?
No, no, I don't think so. I think one of the things to bear in mind about Hibbett is it serves underserved communities. Actually, it's often the only place in the community where you can get the products that we sell, and therefore that in some ways underpins the demand relative to the higher population areas where there's more competition. It sort of works, sort of it's a positive and negative. It's sort of relatively consistent.
Do not forget in Hibbett, you had in the past Hibbett and Cityg ear, so you will see the difference between the two businesses. Hibbett will continue as Hibbett, but Cityg ear will be transformed as DTLR and Shoe Palace. That will happen.
That's a good point. It's about $1 billion for Hibbett and about $200 million for City Gear, just to help with that. Your modeling is important.
Anne Critchlow from Berenberg. Two questions from me, please. First, if you could talk a bit about the male-female split in JD, whether it varies by geography and whether you see an opportunity to maybe attract more female customers. Secondly, if you could talk a bit, just the background information really about price elasticity and what you've seen in the past, and again, by sort of product category and by country if it varies.
Thank you. Yeah.
On price elasticity, it depends on the cycle and the product and all that stuff. There is no answer to that. I see where you're coming from and what you're getting, but frankly, there is no answer. If the product is hot, there is no price elasticity. If the product is not hot, there is price elasticity. It depends on the cycle and all that stuff. It's very difficult to give you a number, which I'm sure you would like to have, but there is no number around it. On male-female?
I think our mix in the majority of markets is pretty similar, actually. It's around 20%. I think as an industry, it's generally going to be male-dominated because of the nature of the product and the nature of sports marketing.
We invest a lot in big space in key malls so we can offer a much better experience for our end, and that works really well for us. We can see we're able to capture more of that market that's out there. I think by and large, there's so many other things you can spend the money on. Trainers aren't always top of the list, so I think we've got to be realistic. There's probably a glass ceiling there for us as well.
I think it's important that we stay on our format. That's why we get challenged by the brand a lot around the female customer. Our answer was more to say, let's have a different concept to address the female customer more than doing less good jobs than we do today for key customers that we have in JD.
I think that's the way we look at it. Yeah.
Hi, it's Richard Hill from Barclays. Just a question on the operating margin. I tried to write down on Dominic's side all the numbers and times them together, so it might be wrong, but it looked like it was just under 8% on the operating margin. Can I just check whether that's right or not so I know that there's potential for rounding over there? Also, is that the operating margin that you reported last year at 9.3%? I know you said it was post-lease, so I was just trying to make sure what the number was and what you were leading to in the median term.
Yeah. We're evolving that because I think if I'm honest, we've been varied in the operating margins that we have taken.
I think when we look at the business, IFRS 16, if I'm honest, doesn't help in understanding the underlying profitability of a business, but there's accounting for you. What we're looking at is operating profit and including lease interest. That's old IAS 17 operating profit. The number of 8% is broadly we'll finish this year including that. It's also the numbers up there pro forma for a full year of Hibbett. Okay? That does slightly lower operating margin than the rest of the group.
Sorry, can you just say so you'd finish this year around 8 on that basis?
Sorry?
This year, the margin on that basis would be 8%? Is that what you just said?
8-9%. That sort of magnitude, yes.
8 or 9? 8-9%. 8-9%. For FY2026?
Yeah.
Okay.
Just to be clear, that is the operating profit or the PBT?
Operating profit. This is going back to the slide. This is operating profit including lease interest. I am doing that illustratively to help you understand where we are today pro forma with Hibbett in terms of that operating profit margin where we see that over time.
It excludes group financing charges?
It excludes group financing charges, yes.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
That is Nick Barker from BNP Paribas. A couple of questions from mine. Firstly, it would be great if you could touch on a bit about product and what products you are selling well and what you are seeing in the innovation pipeline that you are excited about.
Secondly, just touching wider then on your target demographic and given the increasing blend of fashion within your proposition and within sportswear in general, how much do you say a threat is a company like, say, Shein to your offering?
You do it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think demographically, the nature of our consumer and young people is trends are going to ebb and flow and brand appetite is going to shift a little bit within that as well. The beauty of our business model is it is very adaptable, as we've said already. We're multi-brand, we're multi-category, and we can pivot and adapt depending on where the consumer goes. We have a foot in performance, again, as Régis has illustrated earlier, and we have a foot in lifestyle and fashion right now.
The marketplace is probably a little bit more edging towards the fashion side of things in certain markets, and we've adjusted accordingly. As I say, we remain pretty agile in that respect. As far as product specifics are concerned, probably no surprises. Adidas, New Balance, our own business have been massively successful, and there continues to be a momentum there. Asics, again, probably no surprise, is in really good shape as a brand. Yeah, there's still lots of energy and momentum in the marketplace. Obviously, looking towards 2026, we're going into a year with the biggest World Cup ever, which is really exciting for us.
Hi, it's Victoria, a champion from Verona Capsule. Three quick ones from me.
First, could you give us some examples of the kind of efficiencies that you might be able to get in the U.K., whether it's kind of more automation or if there's anything you can do with rent renegotiation, any examples there? The second would be, could you remind us what % of products are exclusive? And maybe if there's any examples of you getting access to drops in advance given your increased size and kind of share of the industry now? Finally, it would be on the outdoor business. Is there any kind of potential for significant improvement in the short term there? Is there any chance of you reassessing you continuing to own that business or any improvements you can give us in the medium term? Thank you.
Yeah. I would do the outdoor. Michael, you do the exclusive product. Yeah.
Dominic, you will do the efficiency. Yeah. Outdoor, the good news is that outdoor is back to profitability for the year that we finish. That is good news. I think we are working on the rationalization of the fascia. We have changed the management, so we believe that we are in a good place in order to turn around the business and to deliver from the scale of this business. It is number one in the U.K. It is a strong business. We need to do a better job to deliver the profitability that we are seeking for a business of that size and with this type of market share.
As far as the kind of the product drops and exclusivity, we are at about 50% on apparel and about 30% on footwear. What I would say is the exclusivity is really nice to have.
It gives us a better protection, but the exclusivity by and large is driven through consumer insight and our appetite to deliver products that are consumer-right that aren't available in the collection. The brands will work with us collaboratively to deliver that kind of product because they don't cater to it. It is kind of a byproduct of our business model and our consumer connection. What is more important to us is the overall assortment. You can see behind you that we have just launched a new global brand platform for Ever Forward, which is something that we are really excited about and proud of. What is more important to us is about the brand overall and how we show up consistently and how we can create energy in the marketplace every single day, not just around individual drops.
I think individual drops and high heat clearly are not particularly, they're great when you've got it, but they're not great when you don't. It is more about consistency for us.
On the U.K. efficiencies, I think it comes in a number of areas. On the store point, what you said about rent renegotiations, we do find that every time we renegotiate or extend the lease, we do better. That is good. I think the other thing is just about the estate as a whole. We have got the number of stores, broadly the space that we want, but we can make that more productive. Often that might mean moving from four stores to three stores in an area or upsizing a particular location in an area, which means we get more productivity out of a particular location.
One of the things that Régis talked about earlier on was a new HRIS system that will aid and improve our store staff scheduling. It's not necessarily about fewer people. It's just about better timing in the stores when they're there, and therefore that's more efficient. As we move back from there, as we do more things like ship from store with our omnichannel offer, that means we can be more efficient in the back office supply chain. Those are some of the areas there. We go back to the back office and the head office. We've been investing a lot in the last couple of years in addressing some of the things that Régis talked about. As we go through that, come out of the back of that period, we haven't quite finished it yet, but a lot of it's done.
We'll start to be able to see some head office efficiencies coming on the back of that. It is like there are no big single items that will change it, but it is just lots of things that we just need to work hard on and do work hard on every day.
If there is no other question, I think that I would like to thank you to come. I think we have a full room today, and I wish you a great day and see you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you.