Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. I hope you're all keeping safe and well. I'm Peter Pritchard, the Group CEO, and with me today is Mike Iddon, our Group CFO. We're pleased to share with you our Q3 trading update for our financial year 2022. The strong performance across our retail and veterinary operations has continued into our third quarter, and we are firmly on track to report a record year of sales and profit growth. This is reflected in the update that we're giving today, and I'm pleased to say that our performance continues to be strong across the group, demonstrating the ongoing success of our pet care strategy and the underlying strength of the pet care market. There are actually four key messages to take away from today.
First, we continue to grow our share of the UK pet care market. Our group two-year like-for-like increased by 28.1% in the quarter, with growth in the two-year like-for-like quarter reflecting sustained momentum across both parts of our business. In retail, it grew like-for-like on a two-year basis by 28.4%, and our Vet Group like-for-like was up 23.3% also on a two-year basis. Our retail sales growth was broad-based across all key categories and channels with store like-for-like of 21.1% and omnichannel revenue growth of 99.3% on a two-year basis. Within our Vet Group, like-for-like customer sales across our First Opinion practices increased by 29.9% on a two-year basis, testament to the strength of our owner-operated model.
Strong sales growth is translating into solid profit growth, and today we're increasing our guidance on our full year profit before tax, which we now expect to be at least GBP 140 million. Second, we're continuing to see strong growth in new customers across all channels. Our Puppy and Kitten Club, which has grown by 60% year-over-year, engages with new owners at the start of their pet care journey and introduces them to all areas of our business. These customers are incredibly valuable to us 'cause not only do they stay with us for longer, they also spend on average a third more than non-members. Our VIP membership now stands at a record 7 million, up 13% year-over-year or 34% on a two-year basis.
New client registrations across our veterinary practices remain strong, and on average, we've now signed up approximately 9,200 new clients every single week so far this year. Our pet care plans continue to see strong growth, and we now have over 1.4 million subscriptions across the group, generating over GBP 115 million in annualized recurring customer revenue. This represents approximately 7% of group customer revenue. That's a 200 basis point step-up in just two years. We're very much at the start of this journey and remain excited about the growth potential in this area. Third, we continue to drive productivity gains across our operations. We, like many others, are witnessing a number of inflationary pressures across our operations.
While we're not immune to these challenges, we've been both proactive in managing them and offsetting them through a series of planned initiatives, targeting rent reductions, procurement savings, and operational efficiencies across our business. Our strong volume-driven sales growth and long-term relationships with suppliers have also helped us unlock both operational and purchasing synergies. This, along with our strong private label penetration, is enabling us to maintain our competitive price position for customers in a time when they're facing into their own inflationary headwinds. Finally, we continue to execute on our strategic investments, building capacity and capability across our pet care ecosystem, which is supporting our strong growth in customer acquisition, engagement, and spend. We're progressing the digitization of our business through Project Polestar, and we're now at the start of an 18-month roadmap. In the coming weeks, we are launching the first of several releases.
A single customer login functionality is representing the start of a steady flow of consistent improvements, enabling frictionless access to all parts of our pet products and pet services. We continue to make pet care even more convenient for customers through utilizing our pick from store capability. Now, this is enabling us to fulfill a third of all online orders through our store network, offering best in class fulfillment for customers as well as generating operational efficiencies. We now offer customers one-hour click and collect, two-hour home delivery, next day delivery, and named day delivery, and we plan to roll this capability out to more stores in 2020 to ensure we continue to out-convenience pure-play providers. We continue to roll out our next generation store with two new Pet Care Centres launched in the quarter.
Our store transformation program also continues at pace across our estate, having refitted 24 stores to date with plans to accelerate the pipeline in the coming year. In our vet operations, early indications from our pioneering veterinary model Pathfinder are extremely positive, giving us confidence to roll out at pace across our company-owned practices, as well as working with our joint venture partners to implement. The development of our new storage and distribution facility in Stafford continues to progress well, and it remains on target to go live in 2023. To conclude, our performance in the last quarter further demonstrates the strength of our unique pet care strategy and the long-term resilience of the U.K. pet care market, even in times of increased pressure on customer spend.
With the investments we're making in our capabilities and the strong leadership team we have in place, I'm really confident as we finalize our succession plans. Our next CEO is in the best possible situation to take Pets at Home through the next leg of growth as we continue to build the best pet care business in the world. I'm really pleased that whilst the operation of the business successfully, we are able to continue to do the right thing by all of our stakeholders. We're progressing our Better World pledge, having helped create a better future for pets, people that love them, and indeed, our planet. Finally, I'd really like to express my sincere thanks to our amazing colleagues and partners across the group. I remain incredibly grateful for their hard work and commitment in serving our customer needs.
I'll stop there 'cause I'm sure there'll be a number of questions which Mike and I will be too pleased to answer. I'll now hand you back to our call operator, Molly, to facilitate our questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is the star or asterisks key, followed by the number one to pose a telephone question. We will take our first question today from Jonathan Pritchard of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and good morning. Two from me. First one on availability. You just sort of run us through by category. Is there any sort of sense to which you possibly even made great numbers, but underpotentialized the opportunity on the basis of perhaps patchy availability out of your hands, of course. Secondly, looking at inflation, the outlook for probably FY 2023, do you have a range of where you think inflation might settle? Are you already putting some price increases through and how are customers responding to that?
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Jonathan. I'll take the first one on availability, and I'll ask Mike to talk to inflation. In quarter three was actually quite choppy, wasn't it, I think for a lot of retailers as we all faced challenges around inbound freight from the Far East. Obviously, we know we had lots of issues in the U.K. regarding truck drivers. To some extent, we had some natural degrees of protection because 80% of our supply chain is sourced in the U.K., and we're a long lead business, so we're not a just in time supply chain. Many of the issues that we faced actually were invisible to customers because we're able to protect ourselves. I think some of the challenges we faced in the quarter was demand very strong alongside some of the supply chain issues.
I'd say there were times that our availability would not have been the levels that we normally expect, but we were able to offset that through having additional choices and ranges. I think what we'd say in quarter three was, it was acceptable. I think we left a bit of money on the table because I think we missed some availability challenges for customers. As we come through into the new year, I think a lot of those challenges have resolved themselves. We face into new year, I think in a much better place than where I think many businesses exited.
I don't think it was material for our numbers, but it was certainly one of those periods in time where it was actually very choppy and we had to be very agile to be able to respond to it. Mike, do you wanna talk inflation?
Hi, Jonathan. Picking up your question on inflation. I'll start first by just looking at the quarter three numbers and then turn to the year ahead. In quarter three, the vast majority of our growth has all come from more transactions. That's more customers shopping across a greater range of products and services. If you looked at our unique price cost increases, price increases in the quarter, they're between 2%-3%, so very, very low indeed. As we look ahead in the year, though, clearly, the inflation environment is getting tighter and we recognize that, but it's gonna show up in different parts of our business. For example, on freight, which is, you know, well publicized in the year, you know, we've incurred significantly higher, circa GBP 9 million year-on-year increase in freight costs.
We're anticipating no change in that in the year ahead. Not getting any higher, but certainly not getting any lower. If you look at something like energy costs, we're anticipating an increase in our energy costs like many businesses in the year ahead. When we look to the supplier base, I think any conversations with our suppliers about passing on cost price increases have got to also include the fact that we've put 30% volume growth to most of our supplier base over the last couple of years. Clearly, there's an efficiency saving that needs to be captured in any conversation around cost price increases. On the other hand, of course, we're taking a lot of progress to mitigate inflation.
Our rents program of reducing rents, well established and will continue, with broadly the same level of rent reduction anticipated in the year ahead. Also we're taking a really close look at all the product we procure, goods and services, not for resale, and we've got some well-advanced procurement efficiencies coming through there. Yes, we will see some inflation coming through, but clearly we're working our hardest to mitigate that, and we'll always remain price competitive on our retail prices. I think that's a really important concluding comment.
Great. Thank you very much. That's very clear.
Thank you. We will take our next question from Andrew Porteous of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, gents, and congratulations on a good quarter. A couple from me. The first one sort of building on that inflation point. I mean, you talk about inflationary challenges, and it's clear that there are some sort of cost pressures in some areas of the business. Do you see it as an opportunity as well? Do you think you're relatively well set versus some of your competitors, when it comes to that sort of input cost inflation? I think you talked to the 30% volume growth. Then I guess the second question was really around growth in the future. Just some of that, you know, share of wallet.
Like before. Could you perhaps give us a bit of color on sort of the profile of new customers that you're seeing? Have you got higher share of wallet with those as they've come through over the past year? Or are they very typical customers that still present that opportunity for you to get them to trade up and gain share over the next two, three years?
Great. Thank you. Those are two great questions. I think you're right. I think on inflationary challenge, I think we actually are really well set. 'Cause I think one of the advantages we've got is the ability to use our network in quite a unique way. The fact we've been able to use stores as picking centers, been able to offer two-hour home delivery, means actually we're able to capture, I think, more share of wallet and get more volume through. I think when you think of our store network as a fixed cost, our labor costs are still relatively fixed.
As we can drive more sales through those units, broaden the services through those units, which of course have a really positive profit mix, I think we've got much more to play with than some of our either our pure-play competitors or indeed pure retail competitors. We've got more strings to our bow. Of course, we know the cure to many evils are sales because, you know, operational leverage becomes your best friend, doesn't it, in an inflationary environment. I think for us, we're really well set. Also we were very proactive. I think many, you know, we read the tea leaves on inflation last year, so a lot of the programs we're in execution mode on now were predetermined. We probably will be entering an inflationary year and therefore we're not reacting to it, we're planning to respond to it.
I just think we're probably, you know, like every, not immune, but I think we're really well set. I think we're probably in a better position than many 'cause we're prepared for it and we can pull more strings. That's how we think about inflation. I think the growth in the future is really interesting. One thing we're seeing in the growth of pet ownership, and I think the first thing is we should never mistake growth of pet ownership always with new pet owners. We've actually seen many of our customers acquire a second or indeed a third pet. One trend we have seen this year is a much younger customer become pet owners, and we can obviously see that through our VIP loyalty data. You know, I characterize this though.
You might recognize these sort of people even in your circles of friends. We're seeing more 20, 30-somethings who historically have been, you know, absolutely diehard people living in the office, but are now flexible working. It's opened up their possibility to have, particularly a dog in their lifestyle. What's really interesting when we look at that profile of customers is they are as valuable, if not more valuable to us than some of our existing. What we're seeing happen, if you look in our vet business, we now have a significant increase in younger pet owners in our vet business than probably our competitors, which I think bodes really well for the future actually, because we know those relationships are very long and enduring with vets.
We also know that our younger customers are more digital and therefore the more frictionless we are, that's good for us and I think good for them. We know that population are much more likely to run their lives on subscriptions and spreading the cost. We're seeing a greater uptake of those customers in healthcare plans and in flea and worm. We think they're all really positive indicators for the future. Of course, for us, the most important thing that we're just focusing on all the time is the absolute size of the pet population. That's what determines our market.
Because that's got bigger, all our focus really now is on deepening our share of wallet with those customers and everything we're putting in place through digital services, connecting all together, Pet Care Centres, we know are all proven, underpinned by data, are all proven ways for us to grow our share of wallet with those customers. We think we're pretty well set just to continue to execute on the plans we've laid out and continue to deliver the level of performance that you've seen from us, over the past.
Thank you.
We will take our next question from Manjari Dhar of RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just had two, please. Firstly, on delivery from store, how does the cost to do this compare with delivering from the warehouse? What are the margins like for that? Secondly, is there any more color that you can add on the learnings from Pathfinder and sort of the benefits that provides the vet business? Thank you.
Sure. Look, I'll take it. Thanks, Manjari, for the question. I'll take the question on delivery from store and I'll ask Mike to talk about Pathfinder. There are two distinct advantages on delivering from store. One is the cost advantage. If we pick and pack an item from a store that goes within the locality, we actually bypass one of our couriers' national hubs, which actually just means there's a straight cost pass-through, but actually it's cheaper just to do it from store as a consequence. Typically in a store, our labor tends to be more of a fixed cost than a variable cost, and therefore there's an efficiency. That's a benefit. It's actually not the primary reason for doing it, though. We see the primary reason really is one of speed and convenience.
By unlocking picking from store, what it allows us to do is make sure that last-mile delivery to a customer is as fast as it can be. You know, we obviously now have one-hour click and collect in all our stores, but we were trialing through Christmas doing two-hour home delivery, working in conjunction with a local provider to do that last mile delivery. We think convenience probably becomes a more important factor necessarily than cost. Now we're happy to take the cost benefit, clearly, and our system is dynamic. It's now routing orders on the most effective way. I think what it really allows us to do is if we think about Amazon and zooplus, they've normally won on the basis of price or speed or convenience.
Well, we neutralized on price range, 1-hour click and collect, two-hour home delivery, same day, next day delivery. Our ambition is to out-convenience pure-play and therefore make their position actually quite challenging. We think that's probably the more exciting part of that opportunity than it is necessarily just a cost one.
Pathfinder, you asked a question about that. That was an operating model we first showed in our store in Handforth. In fact, some of you on the call will have seen that during the investor visit we hosted back in October. Subsequently, we put Pathfinder into our Guildford store as well. The results are very compelling and we're convinced that the operating model this gives us will unlock quite a lot of capacity within our vet operations. Fundamentally, what the model does, it's been proven now to do, is help make our vets more productive simply by taking away a lot of the non-veterinary type of activity they undertake with clients. We've been incredibly pleased with the results. It's proven itself to be successful, and we'll be rolling it out across the rest of the business.
I would say that what we've seen so far is obviously based on very few stores, so the benefits of it won't have flowed through to the numbers yet. Certainly in the year ahead, it's one of our initiatives we think will unlock a lot of productivity in our vet business at a time when we all know that one of the constraints on growth is availability of vets, and therefore making them more productive has to be a good thing to do.
Thank you.
We will take our next question from Matthew Garland of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess just to follow up on that last question, what I guess is the speed of rollout, the Pathfinder initiative across the store network, can you give an idea of that over the next couple of years? And secondly, obviously very, very strong like-for-like store performance in Q3. How should we kinda think about the range of full year guidance of at least GBP 140 million? And can you give sort of any indication around that accounting impact as well as the kind of impact of Omicron? And then in terms of obviously the 7 million active customers that you have, do you have any details, I guess, around the opportunity for reactivation of customers?
Obviously you've got the benefit of being able to win new customers, but what's, I guess, the opportunity from customers being reactivated? Thank you.
Yeah. Great. Thank you, Matthew. Look, I'll take the first question on the speed of rollout. I'll hand over to Mike to talk about like-for-like, and I'll come back and talk about customers. We're really pleased with what we've seen so far in Pathfinder. We replicated it in our Guildford Pet Care Center, and we currently have plans to roll Pathfinder into our 50 company-owned practices in this coming year. We're now working alongside our partners to take them through the operational impact of Pathfinder, and we've got a number of partners who are actively now working towards that, and we'll be working with them over the next year or two to share the learnings and do the rollout.
This is one of the real benefits of having company-owned practices because we can be very experimental on some of these things and refine models before we take it to a JVP. We'll have an existing operation which is running, and therefore we can manage and help them in the migration. By the end of the year, as I said, you'll see all our company-owned practices operating in the Pathfinder model, and we'll advise on JVPs as we move forward. Mike, do you wanna talk about like-for-like?
Yeah. Matt, your question around the GBP 140 million quarter three and what we would've seen before COVID. I think the important point here is our upgrade is all about our trading. It is stronger trading, more customers, more sales that have led us to upgrade profits to at least GBP 140 million. We do know though in quarter three, Omicron, the new variant, did have an impact to our business. We've already, Peter's already talked about availability, but in terms of colleagues having to isolate, us managing vacancies, disruption to customers. We would've been upgrading by a bigger amount today were it not for Omicron impact in quarter three.
I'm not gonna give you a number for that, but full year we estimate the impact on our business of COVID in terms of revenue and cost impacts, it's probably around GBP 6 million. Now, at the beginning of the year, we anticipated being about GBP 9 million. When we gave our update in November, we said around GBP 5 million. It's probably gonna be around GBP 6 million when you take into account the trading through the new variant in quarter three. Your second question was around store like-for-like growth. You know, in the quarter, we saw you know, strong store like-for-like growth of 7.4%. We would plan going forward on our stores continuing to have strong like-for-like growth. I know Peter's just spoken about our fulfillment and picking from stores.
I do think a big part of our planning is that we are planning for our stores to continue to be like-for-like. Clearly not at the levels we've been seeing. Our planning assumptions on like-for-like growth across the business in the year ahead will clearly be lower than we've seen in the year gone. Still, we're planning our stores to be in positive like-for-like.
I'll talk about the customers you asked. We've got 7 million active customers. One of the most important things you wanna do first, Matthew, before you focus on react.
One of the things we worked on last year with our data teams and our data scientists was we did a lot of work trying to predict when somebody's likely to churn. We modeled certain behaviors and spend patterns. We put in place some trial work on intervening with customers to either offers or intervene on an issue, stop a churn. Actually, that was very successful to the extent of it's now an always on piece of work that runs in the background in our loyalty program, driven by effectively artificial intelligence and an algorithm that constantly learns and adapts. We focused on churn before we focused on reactivation.
We do have a reactivation campaign, though, and we have an approach where we identify customers where their churn will not be from something which is sad, like a death. Therefore actually you don't want to reactivate a death. Nothing's gonna happen. You just make people very unhappy. What we do have is a campaign where we think we can try and reactivate customers and then actually if they don't respond, we actually take them off the club altogether and therefore we focus in on core. Both of those have been successful and have been underpinning actually of some of the strengths we've seen in our customer numbers this year.
Because we've learned how to predict and how to intervene and keep customers loyal to us, and that actually will continue to be an underpin to the loyalty program moving forward.
Great. Thank you. If I could just have one quick follow-up question, I guess, in terms of inflation. In terms of obviously your comments around price increase, I guess of 2%-3%. In terms of, I guess, the opportunity in the vet category where maybe there's more opportunities for price inflation there. You know, what do you, I guess, see as the opportunity from sort of that perspective going into next year to continue to drive growth?
Look, I think.
Do you see it as an offset?
Well, no, actually I think we've got to be really sensible when it comes to that business because I think there's a real competitive opportunity here because we know for a pure play veterinary business, their exposure on particularly wage inflation will be very painful for them, and that can only result in price increase to clients. I think given the nature of many of those have been acquired at very high multiples, inflation I think becomes the basis of actually their business plan. I think for us, we've got a very different model. You know, our company-owned model and then with owner drivers drives a completely different behavior because your primary vet is your owner, not just your employee.
We've actually been keeping inflation quite tight in the veterinary business because we also understand that actually it's we have been very successful in driving new client registrations. Often when a client is potentially thinking about that, they'll ring around, particularly if we know a known procedure, for example, a spaying of a dog. Therefore, we've been keeping our prices actually very competitive. Therefore for us, we actually think we have a competitive advantage. We're not reliant upon inflation in the veterinary business, I think the likes of our competitors, and we're gonna keep it very tight. Also 'cause we wanna keep pet ownership really affordable, because we know that keeps more value inside of our total ecosystem.
Another reason why you wanna be, you know, a Vets4Pets client as part of being a Pets at Home customer. I think the proposal plan has given them a bit of a hard time, frankly.
Perfect. Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a telephone question, please signal by pressing star one. If you feel your question has been asked, you may remove yourself by pressing star two. We will take our next question from Tony Shiret of Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Shorter question from me. The selling price inflation, the 2%-3% you mentioned. I think Mike said that was the Q3 figure. I just wondered if you could then tell us what you anticipate that figure to be in the coming year, what your indications are, you know, going forward for the selling price inflation and in retail and, you know, whether you intend to pass, you know, the supplier prices right, you know, straight through with no impact on gross margin. The second question is about data, and, possibly more a sort of thing that you might consider for the prelims.
In terms of the sort of opportunities between the two parts of the business, the vets and the retail, bearing in mind that the vet business is sort of a bit more complex than retail, is there still, you know, are you still further back on the path in terms of acquiring the data and utilizing it? Thanks.
Great. Thank you. Well, Tony, I think, as Mike said, relatively our price inflation for customers has been relatively low and actually our ambition for this year is to keep that as low as physically possible to make sure that we have a very strong competitive position for our customers. You know, classically, particularly in food, we do an annual negotiation with most of our suppliers, typically about now actually. The conversation we're having with suppliers is, as Mike said earlier, one of, undoubtedly, they have faced some cost headwinds in terms of, you know, energy and labor. Typically pet food, by the way, is highly automated in terms of its production, so labor's a less important constituent part of the final finished product. Raw material tends to be the bigger driver.
We watch raw material pricing very carefully and we understand intimately how pet food is made. We also understand the impact. Most of our suppliers have enjoyed 25%-30% volume growth. We all know that in a factory environment, operational efficiency is actually your biggest friend. We're in a situation where we will do everything we can to protect customers from inflation, full stop. We're in a case where we have accepted price increases from suppliers, we then consider whether it's competitive to pass that on to customers or not, because ultimately, we keep our prices competitive. I can't give you a precise percentage because we don't know yet, except for the fact that, I can tell you what the outputs will be. We'll keep our prices competitive with Amazon and Zooplus, that's a given.
We will do everything we can to minimize that pass-through to customers and play really hard, Tony, because that's our job for customers to make sure we keep pet ownership really affordable for them. You know, that's our job. Believe me, you don't want to meet one of our buyers down a dark alley on a night. They're quite tough people.
I presume it's gonna be higher than 2%-3%.
No, I actually don't know yet 'cause those conversations are all live. But I think what we've got to do is just keep them as low as possible, actually, because customers have got a lot to deal with. The last thing we want them to do, we don't want to add to their woes, frankly. We're gonna be as hard as we possibly can do. Often in these situations where you can actually become even more competitive because you've been able to protect customers from inflation. That's our starting point. We're not in that place. We don't think the natural pass-through should be to customers. It's the very last thing you do rather than the first thing that you do.
Okay.
I think on data, you know, you're absolutely right. The first benefit is all of our data from both parts of our business flow straight through to our cloud platform. We are already capturing all that data. It flows into our CRM campaign. A lot of the things that we've already talked about actually are in flight and are actually landing now. I think for us, the opportunity is less about the data because that's actually in really good shape, actually. It's now about the digitization of the customer journey to make sure you're serving up that data and the next best opportunity to the customer at the most appropriate time.
For us, this is why Polestar becomes so important because we spent the last two years getting the data into great shape in a platform with all the right capability. What you're now gonna do is turn that data into something which is executable, and that feeds through into Polestar and personalization. 'Cause what it allows us to do for the customer is serve up the next best opportunity. As we unveil Polestar, what you will start to see is how that data flows through into providing personalized recommendations for the customer on the next best step. Whether that be we recognize it's your time for inoculations, we recognize that you're not registered to our vets, doing a free checkup. That's how it's gonna flow through. Our focus now goes into the execution of that through both CRM and our digital platforms.
For us, you know, what you've seen for the last few years is doing some really, you know, basic stuff, but really well on data. That will still be the cornerstone of most of what we do, by the way, but we'll start to get more and more sophisticated and more and more personalized in the execution of that by having that digital interface.
Doesn't the vet do that anyway? You know, I mean, some of that stuff. You know, these vet businesses are sort of relationship businesses anyway without your data. You know, I don't think there's much incrementality.
Yeah, there is actually, because only the vets do very basic things very well. They'll remind you that a vaccination is due, which is fine. Starting to use breed and life stage, you can start to intervene at a more opportune point. Knowing that certain dogs have certain issues at certain life stages, by providing content and actually providing a checkup on those specific issues, you get more sophisticated. That's what we're learning, 'cause actually I think, you know, a lot of the stuff that happens today, we will just digitize anyway. You know, your automatic reminders, you know, booking your appointments online. That will remove friction and actually will increase traffic. Our ability now to personalize that even further to recognize that, you know, if you've got a Labrador, you're gonna have problems with their hips and joints. It's really common.
Checkup early, being preventive, get them on preventive medication will alleviate a big vet bill. This is where our data moves into a place which is really helpful for customers and drives revenue, and that's the place that we're going to.
Cool. Excellent. Thank you.
Thanks, Tony.
We'll take our next question from Charlotte Barrie of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Morning, Bo. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, one slightly longer and one very short. Firstly, just on the vet side, obviously still very strong on a two-year basis, but I guess some might be tempted to look at the headline one-year number and see this as kind of the inevitable beginning of the slowdown. Are you able to give any other comments or anecdotes just to demonstrate how much of this is simply a function of lapping those strong comps from last year, and actually the business is still experiencing abnormal growth, and how much is really a slowdown in momentum? And then secondly, do you have kind of a formalized target for the retail store refit program?
Sure. Well, look, I'll take the refi one, and then I'll hand over to Mike to talk through the vet numbers. Our estate actually is in pretty good shape. A lot of it actually is relatively new. We anticipate over the next five years, about 350 of our stores will go through what we call our pet care conversion program. They'll be everything from some light touch because actually the store estate is in good place. Therefore, actually what we're doing is landing some new features. For example, our click and collect bays or our service desks through to some older stores that haven't had investment for, you know, 10 years plus, now have more expensive plans.
For us, over the next five years, we'd anticipate that actually 350 of our stores will go through a refurbishment program built into our CapEx program. It means that we will have the best features appropriately sized in each of our store locations as we move forward. We spent, you know, I guess, COVID slowed down our ambitions. We set those out two years ago, and actually it's been physically just very difficult to go and literally get workers to go into stores, and it was not the right place to do it. Having restarted that program last year, we're as happy again about the performance we've seen from that in terms of reutilizing that space, maximizing services, and driving more revenue through the stores that was committed as ever to continuing to roll out that program.
Mike, do you wanna comment on Vets?
Yeah. Thanks, Charlotte. I guess you're referencing the 4% one-year like-for-like growth in our Vet Group in quarter three. I think that's why it's so important to look at the two-year like-for-like because our quarter three last year for the Vet Group was 17.8% growth. What happened, of course, was a lot of the restrictions the RCVS placed on our Vet Group in the first half of last year were relaxed. We had a really big bounce in quarter three. We're trading over that comp, which was artificially high because of that impact. It is important to look through to the quarter three two-year.
When you look at that, the Vet Group is 23.3% compared to 21.2% in quarter two on a two-year basis. Actually, quarter-over-quarter, it's strengthened. You know, it's worthwhile just pointing out a couple of other KPIs in our Vet Group over and above sales growth, which are really good indicators of the progress we're making. You know, one is the fact that, you know, against the cash target we've always set that we'll get to GBP 60 million. We've made great progress against that. And we'll see at the May update just how close we are now to achieving that cash number. The other side of it, of course, is operating loans. You know, operating loans have come down a lot over the course of the year.
That's an important measure of the LFL, the cash performance of the individual practices. It's worth a couple other references. One is the number of our practices that are still in the immature stage. Let's treat a practice under eight years old. Still, 40% of our practices. We're gonna have the benefit of, you know, accelerated growth still to come as those practices go up the maturity curve. That obviously is the capital and the operating cost to release that already invested. That's all growth still to come. The number of profitable practices, and remember that we plan them to be unprofitable in the first four years of opening. You know, it has improved significantly quarter-over-quarter. You know, we're making great progress.
We've got lots of metrics. Do not read into that 4% that our Vet Group is at all slowing down. We talked earlier on one of the other questions about Pathfinder, and we know that's a way of unlocking a lot of vet time to make our vets more productive. Peter referred to how the speed at which we're gonna roll that out. We've got a lot of growth and profitable growth still to come out of our Vet Group.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Peter Pritchard for any closing or additional remarks.
Great. Thanks very much, Molly, and thank you very much for your time and again, some really great questions. I really do appreciate them, and more importantly, for your continued support of our business. I wish you all a great day. Thanks very much, everyone.