Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rank Group Plc full year results investor presentation. Throughout today's recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just please simply type in your question at any time and press send. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, and I am sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand over to the management team. Richard, Cliff, good morning.
Good morning, all. Thank you to everyone joining us today for this presentation, which I am delighted to host. My name is Richard Harris, and I am joined by Cliff Baty, Rank's Interim CFO. We are going to look at Rank's full year results for the year ending 30th of June, 2026, which we published in mid-August, and also give an update on the group's forward-looking strategy. These are my first set of results as Chief Executive, and I am grateful to the board and our major shareholder for their support and for this opportunity. Rank genuinely is a great business, and I am delighted to share with you the story of another year of strong performance, to set out in a bit more detail how I see the opportunities for the group, and why I think we are really well-positioned for future success.
I am going to start with the key highlights before handing over to Cliff for the financial review. Once again, there was strong revenue and underlying profit growth in the year. It was great to see all businesses contributing to the improved performance despite some external headwinds. During the year, we took decisive action to mitigate the impact of higher RGD on the U.K. digital business. The performance in digital was therefore encouraging, a +12% in Q4, particularly given the material reductions in Above the Line Marketing. We started the new financial year in a similar fashion, so that is pleasing too. Going back a little bit to August 2020, when we started to increase the number of gaming machines in Grosvenor. As planned, we increased machine numbers by 65% before Christmas, with only modest in-year CapEx.
Momentum is building, with the initial step-up in performance continuing to improve through the year and strengthening further since then. The trajectory is positive and provides a strong platform on which to build, but requires further optimization before we need to make any further capital investment. So the focus is on maximizing the productivity of the existing machines, and there are lots of actions underway in that regard that we will come onto later. Over the last six months, we have been through an estate segmentation exercise in each of our venues businesses, where we have taken a look at performance on a location-by-location basis. Off the back of that work, we have taken some difficult but necessary actions, including the closure of nine Mecca sites in the year end in June 2026. At the end of August, we also announced the closure of three Grosvenor Casinos.
On the other hand, in Grosvenor, we are also trialing a smaller format casino venue that could provide an attractive investment opportunity. It is all about ensuring we have a high-quality, high-return venues estate for the future. We have also continued to evolve the strategy over the last few months. As a result, we are clear about how we create value, and we are also clear on where we can win in casino-led and bingo-led gaming, and importantly, also about why we can win. More from me on that later. For now, let me pass over to Cliff, who will take you through the financial performance.
Thanks, Richard, and good morning, everyone. I am going to talk briefly through the financial highlights, operating profit growth, and then cash flow, CapEx, and capital allocation. This slide illustrates some of the financial highlights from a strong year for the business. Like-for-like net gaming revenue is up 6% at GBP 834 million, with growth across all our businesses. Good cost control meant that resulted in an operating profit of GBP 78.6 million, up 21%, and that includes one quarter's impact of Remote Gaming Duty in our U.K.-facing digital business.
That strong result flows through to improvements in underlying EPS and ROCE. Given this performance, the group has proposed a final year dividend of GBP 0.025 per share, giving a total full-year dividend of GBP 0.035 per share, a 35% increase over prior year. This slide just walks through the key items in the profit bridge, starting from last year's GBP 64.8 million.
Revenue growth, that is revenues less direct costs, was GBP 24.5 million. As mentioned, we started paying 40% RGD from the 1st of April, which was a GBP 10.1 million impact. However, the U.K. digital business took mitigating cost actions which resulted in GBP 8.1 million of savings from reduced Above the Line Marketing, staff, and supplier costs. Depreciation increased by GBP 4.6 million as a result of prior year's CapEx investment. Minimum wage rises and the knock-on impact across our U.K. estate meant underlying salaries and wages costs increased. However, we were able to mitigate this through staff cost and other savings, giving an overall cost increase of GBP 2.8 million. Finally, we launched online bingo in Portugal in March, which led to a net P&L cost of GBP 1.3 million due to the initial startup costs and marketing investment.
Overall, this gives an operating profit of GBP 78.6 million, with an increase in operating margin from 8.1%- 9.4%. We also did incur some exceptional costs during the year, and we have previously separately disclosed the Spanish fraud and the regulatory settlement items shown here. Other significant costs represent the management actions we have taken to strengthen the business. This includes the closure of eight Mecca clubs in early June and one in the first half of the year. These clubs were either loss-making or not commercially viable, so we took the difficult decision to close. I am pleased that we have seen a positive transfer of customers from these clubs to other Mecca venues nearby, where that is geographically possible. These closures are part of the venue segmentation work we performed and will help drive future investment decisions across the estate.
The restructuring costs relate to the staff reduction actions taken in response to the start of RGD. While these decisions are always difficult, we will continue to look for efficiencies across the business as we tightly manage the cost base. Turning to the cash flow for the year. Net free cash flow was GBP 25.5 million. This reflects CapEx of GBP 50.2 million, which was at the lower end of our FY 2026 estimates, together with lease payments of GBP 48.3 million. Lease payments have increased over prior year due mainly to the increased machine estate following the rollout. Interest and tax costs were GBP 8.6 million, offset by working capital inflow of GBP 4.6 million.
The table at the top right of the slide shows the year-end cash position with the cash inflows of GBP 25.5 million, together with dividend payments of GBP 13.8 million, and this has left the group with net cash balance of GBP 56.8 million at year-end. Adjusting for IFRS 16 leases of GBP 204 million, this gives an accounting net debt figure of GBP 147.2 million. It is worth noting we also refinanced our debt facilities in June with a new four-year GBP 120 million RCF facility on improved commercial terms. This puts our balance sheet in a healthy position going forward. As previously mentioned, FY 2026 CapEx was GBP 50.2 million, down from GBP 58.5 million in FY 2025.
Looking at the split across the businesses, Grosvenor included general maintenance and upkeep spend, as well as refurbishments at Brighton and Bolton, the introduction of sports betting areas at Reading and Leicester, together with the works required for additional machine rollout across the estate. In Mecca, spend includes our new 1825 Lounge at Stockton, a significant investment in the modernization of Bingo, which has had a launch event this last weekend and was highlighted in the opening video. Other spend includes upgrades to our gaming machine areas in Thanet, Romford, Acocks Green, Gateshead and Swansea, as well as external signage at 11 venues. Digital CapEx was GBP 10.8 million and comprises mostly capitalized internal headcount of our IT development teams.
The reduction in spend from FY 2025 levels reflects a lowering from the more elevated CapEx of recent years when we were addressing a significant maintenance backlog, as well as investing into the venues estate, especially The Victoria Casino renovation. Going forward, we will take a disciplined approach to CapEx, spending what is required to maintain a high-quality estate and only investing in high-returning development projects. This approach also feels prudent given the recent change to RGD and the current discussions around the industry. We would estimate FY 2027 CapEx will be around GBP 40 million, with the bulk of the reduction being in the Grosvenor business. These reduced spend levels will significantly improve the group's underlying ongoing cash generation. This slide also illustrates the strong growth in return on capital employed over recent years, from 4% three years ago to over 18% now.
Whilst the full year of RGD will have an impact in FY 2027, we would expect to continue to see strong returns in the future. Given the expected improvements in cash flow generation described, I thought it would be worth quickly reiterating the group's capital allocation policy. Maintain balance sheet strength with disciplined capital investment as described. Pay a progressive dividend that grows to over 35% payout ratio. Our FY 2026 dividend of GBP 0.035 per share represents a 33% ratio. We will consider inorganic growth opportunities, but only where they can help us achieve our strategic aims and meet our strict financial criteria. Otherwise, we will return surplus cash to shareholders. I will now hand back to Richard.
Thank you, Cliff. Moving across to my new role as group CEO has been an appropriate time to review the lessons learned over the last few years. The great thing from my perspective is we believe that there are lots of things that we are doing right, and that is coming through in the customer response, the colleague engagement scores, and in our financial results. It is therefore about fine-tuning how we execute our growth plan from a position of strength. I would describe it as a positive evolution of strategy and how we create value. The group's purpose to excite and to entertain our customers remains unchanged, and I will talk in a moment about how that purpose is implemented across all of our businesses. We believe we have a clear right to win in casino-led and bingo-led gaming. We have deep expertise in our casino and bingo businesses.
We do it better than the competition. There are areas of core competence, and we will create strategic value by doubling down in those areas. There are clear growth drivers in casino venues, in digital, and in our bingo venues. We are well placed to capitalize on the existing and growing customer preference for gaming machines and, in a broader sense, electronic play, such as tablet-based play in Mecca Bingo venues. Finally, the group center adds value in a number of ways. Through the development of talent and strategic abilities, and analytics, personalized experience where the potential is vast, and increasingly in the application of technology to help serve customer needs. I will talk you through some of the key parts of that value creation plan today. Starting with our purpose.
We apply the group's purpose to excite and to entertain through a common customer experience vision for all of our businesses. Importantly, the aim is to offer more localized, more segmented, and more personalized experiences. But in order to do that, we need every customer to be known, valued, safe, and most importantly, entertained. That is regardless of whether the customer plays in-venue or online, in casino or in bingo, in the U.K., Spain or Portugal. So the vision for the experience is consistent, and we implement that well in some areas of the business today. But we have got a great opportunity to do it much better across the group in the future. Moving into casino-led and bingo-led gaming. To reiterate, we believe we have a genuine competitive strength, expertise, and significant further potential in casino-led and bingo-led gaming.
In Grosvenor Casinos, we are the market leader in U.K. land-based, with around 40% market share, a position that has grown in recent years. The venue segmentation work gives us a clear framework for commercial strategy and investment across the estate, including the trial of a new small format, high productivity, electronic-led casino. Revenues in Grosvenor are resilient, improving, and there are clear further growth drivers. There are also high barriers to entry through the licensing model. Our casino heritage, that genuine casino authenticity, is a key point of difference online. People come to us for our live casino offering. It is a real differentiator, which is particularly important with RGD at the higher rate. On bingo, put simply, bingo is in the DNA of the Rank Group. We love bingo, we are proud of it, and we are passionate about it. It is great value, community-based entertainment.
We have a strong estate of nine well-located venues in Spain, and have remodeled the shape of the Mecca estate in the U.K. to focus on the higher quality, higher return venues that generate strong liquidity, which is critical to the bingo game. Liquidity is king. It drives the prize boards that customers play for and the price they pay. That applies online, too. It is exceptionally hard to replicate liquidity game in the unlicensed gambling market.
We are well-positioned online, particularly given the changing nature of the industry, with a highly loyal customer base. We are clear where we can win, but also why we can win, which is on the bottom half of this slide. We have got well-loved brands in attractive markets. A compelling customer proposition that is delivered by highly skilled and highly engaged colleagues. We have got clear growth drivers which are well understood by everyone across the group.
A significant opportunity to grow through investment in the cross-channel proposition. We are viewing the implementation of the strategy through two parallel components. On the one hand, we are focused on delivering the GBP 100 million-plus operating profit ambition that you are all familiar with. That is the deliver part of this chart. We are also thinking about how we build a business for long-term value creation. That is the deploy part of the strategy. As I say, one doesn't lead to the other. They run in parallel, and we need them both to fully realize our ambitions. In deliver, it is about maximizing the value of our existing assets. A laser focus on performance, using data and insights to drive growth, and utilizing technology to improve the customer proposition. That will result in revenue growth, but also higher margins, higher returns, and improved cash generation.
In deploy, it is about selectively deploying capital to build scale in the areas where we know we can win and where we are very confident of securing strong financial returns. The smaller format electronic-led casinos are a good example of that, as are our investments in social gaming lounges in both Mecca and Enracha. We will also look to grow our international revenue streams to provide greater diversification. Both Yo! and Enracha, two bingo-led businesses, have high operating margins above 25%.
They are two very productive businesses, but they account for less than 10% of group revenues. We want international to be a bigger proportion of the total group in future, and Portugal is where we are starting to focus our attention. It was great to launch our bingo product there towards the end of the financial year, and we are slowly building momentum as we attract new players to this product.
To reiterate, deliver and deploy are parallel rather than sequential parts of the strategy. We need both to fully realize our ambitions. Getting into the drivers of growth in each of our business units. We talked about the playbook for success in Grosvenor in the capital markets event that we held in October 2025. The key components of that are shown here. We have a high-quality, segmented estate. In each of the segments, we have a clear commercial plan, a clear investment plan, and a model of the returns we expect. We have improved the quality of our club environments over the last few years. There is still some work to do, but the estate is increasingly in better shape. We will continue to invest in the estate going forward, a targeted approach that utilizes the venue segmentation.
It also recognizes that we have delivered high returns where we have focused on more targeted schemes that have the most direct impact on the customer. In hospitality businesses, people are key, and in Grosvenor, we have over 4,000 highly skilled colleagues. The From Like to Live cultural change program, introduced a few years ago, has had a material impact. We have got some of the best engagement scores in the hospitality sector, which, given the 24/7 nature of our operations, is fantastic. We also offer unrivaled products and service. First-class table gaming, the best, most innovative electronic gaming in the U.K., a much-improved slots proposition with breadth of choice for the customer, and we can now offer sports betting and already have sports betting terminals in 24 casinos. We are learning plenty there as sports broadens the proposition of our venues.
We have a tailored F&B offer, and we are also the leader in poker in the U.K. On which note, we held our annual Goliath Poker event in our Coventry casino in July. Cliff and I both went along for some of it to watch rather than play, unfortunately. It was a fantastic success, with 15,000 customers competing for a main prize pool of GBP 2.2 million. It is the biggest poker event of its kind outside of Vegas, and we are very proud of it. Most importantly, customers love it too. Finally, we continue to make progress with the cross-channel proposition, which is a point of difference in the market and can be a catalyst for further growth through retention and deeper relationships with our customers. There is a big opportunity in that regard. Moving on to Grosvenor performance, where we have made continued progress in the year.
Revenues are up 5%, with gaming machines the fastest growing product vertical. Table gaming performance was flat, a tale of two halves. Revenue was up 2% in H1, but down in the second half due to the Middle East conflict and reduced travel from the region. As I mentioned earlier, we plan to trial a smaller format casino this year using some of our dormant licenses. Gaming machines were an important driver of growth in FY 2026. As you can see from the chart, slots performance improved as the year progressed, and that improvement has continued into the new financial year. We have grown machine numbers by 850, or 65%, and after the initial step-up in revenues, we are very focused on optimizing the performance of the machine estate before making further capital investments.
Our experience from adding machines into venues in the past tells us that it takes two to three years to get to maturity. We've learned that customers like the increased breadth of choice in the machine estate, but there are probably four to five machine suppliers that we'll work most closely with in the next few years in order to maximize performance. Service definitely matters to our slots customers. Knowing their favorite games, helping them with offers, and so on are an important part of the slots experience. We're investing in service training and a mystery customer program with a specific focus on slots areas. We're also investing in a new loyalty and rewards program direct to the machines in the first half of the new year. It's clear that data and insights have to drive decision-making and performance improvements.
We'll increase machine allocations to venues when utilization rates demand it and returns are strong. Growth will come from increasing the customer base and increasing share of wallet from existing customers that also play elsewhere. We offer a really attractive slots proposition in our venues now, and we expect to move from two million slots revenue per week prior to the land-based reforms to over three million per week in the next two to three years. On to building scale in digital, I think it's fair to say the U.K. digital landscape is experiencing a seismic shift with increasing RGD to 40% of revenue. With that in mind, ensuring we have a clear framework for acquiring, entertaining, and retaining customers is key. For us, that's Join, Play, Stay. Join is about acquiring customers as efficiently as possible.
If we do that well, marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue will decline as our acquisition programs become more effective. Play is about giving customers the best possible proposition, the most fun, in order to deepen engagement. To that end, we've protected free bets and incentives and continued to focus on improving customer journeys in the digital channels. If we do this well, customer play a day should increase. Stay is about retention, building loyalty, and improving customer lifetime value. That's the commercial model that we've implemented, and it gives us the best chance of success in a higher tax world. In that context, digital performance is pleasing. Revenues grew by 12% in the final quarter, the first quarter with higher RGD, and by 8% for the full year.
We took decisive action to mitigate the impact of the higher taxes, reducing Above the Line Marketing significantly, more than most operators, because we've got the advantage of well-known brands. We dialed up performance marketing modestly, and that supported performance and is delivering good returns. We also renegotiated supplier contracts and reduced headcount in the U.K. digital business. They were the necessary actions to ensure we had a viable business going forward. As I mentioned, we've continued to invest in the customer proposition. That's key to also having a vibrant digital business in the U.K. going forward. Moving to performance in Spain, where we grew by 7% in the year, much improved from where we finished FY 2025 and the start of FY 2026, when we were in a slight decline. YoBingo performance was pleasing, and YoSports growth was particularly strong.
We've taken some of the community capabilities we have in Bingo and are applying them to the sports site, which gives us a point of differentiation against the much bigger operators. Broadly maintaining margins in digital, given the tax impact, in Q4 was pleasing. Digital profitability will inevitably be reset in the year ahead. Moving to Bingo. The plan remains to maximize medium-term cash generation in our Bingo venues. The slides illustrate our model. We've strong brands in both Mecca and Enracha, and a vibrant Bingo game is key. That's how you attract customers. It's their primary reason for visit. Those customers, generally speaking, are very loyal, and the community aspect is very important. There is a deep loyalty to our brands and a strong association to colleagues and to other customers.
From a financial perspective, gaming machines and electronic tablets are the productive assets that help drive overall profitability. Good quality data, which continues to improve through the loyalty card in Enracha and through the Mecca app, is important to driving growth. In the year, both Mecca and Enracha delivered solid performance. NGR growth in both was driven by a combination of strong Bingo proposition. Remember, that's the primary reason for a visit. It's why they come. Plus the strong gaming machine growth. We've made targeted investments in each business, particularly in the gaming machine areas, but also in social Bingo lounges. The first of those, Bingo Boom, opened in Seville in April, and the investment in the 1825 Lounge in Mecca, Stockton that you saw in our opening video completed in July. We'll report back how they're doing in due course.
Off the back of the venue segmentation work, we did close nine Mecca venues in the year, and that leaves us with a higher quality Mecca estate that we're very happy to invest in. The Enracha estate remains well invested and in very strong shape. Colleague engagement and customer NPS is also strong across both businesses. I've mentioned already that slots and electronic gaming are the economic growth engine for all of our venues businesses. Slots account for around 44% of group revenues, and electronic terminals account for around 16% of Grosvenor revenues. Tablet-based play in Mecca now accounts for around 80% of Bingo revenues. The important point is that customers like playing electronically, even when they're in physical venues. It's part of the broader trend that we see across hospitality businesses. Customers increasingly interacting with physical locations through digital devices.
It's convenient, it's interactive, and it's what customers demand. We continue to improve the proposition in these areas to capitalize on this growth trend and the shift in how customers behave in hospitality venues like ours. Slots and electronic gaming are also our most productive assets. They utilize space efficiently and generate strong returns. As part of our increased focus, we're deepening relationships with suppliers to ensure we continue to develop the proposition and to lead the way in our casino and bingo sectors. It would be remiss of me not to mention Machine Games Duty, and I'm very aware there's been media speculation that has impacted the share price in the last couple of weeks in particular, so let me address that today. MGD is currently charged at 20% of revenue generated on gaming machines in both casinos and bingo halls.
As you have heard me discuss today, gaming machines are an important component of venue profitability. Any increase in MGD puts pressure on the viability of our venues. You can see on the slide the impact of wage inflation and higher taxation on the number of Mecca venues and Mecca colleagues over time. Unfortunately, any increase in MGD would lead to fewer venues across the sectors, lower employment, and reduced tax receipts within 12 months. From my perspective, it makes no economic sense for the government to consider increasing MGD. Over the summer, we started to make these arguments publicly, and you may have seen some media coverage setting this out. As we approach the Chancellor's budget, I am determined to do all we can to amplify our arguments with HM Treasury, through the media, and with politicians.
We have meetings with HM Treasury officials, we are working closely with industry peers, and we are engaging locally to set out the facts and the risk of unintended consequences of tax increases to both casinos and bingo halls. As we do so, we continue to showcase our clubs that support jobs, provide customers with enjoyable experiences, such that they come back in week in, week out, and generate significant tax and duty receipts. Long may that continue. We are very proud of what we offer in towns and cities across the country. These are genuine community assets. Moving to current trading. We said at the time of the results that strong momentum had continued into the first six weeks of the new financial year. Revenues were up 8%, with gaming machines in Grosvenor having grown 15%, and digital revenues having grown 10%.
As you have heard, digital profitability will inevitably reset in FY 2026, FY 2027. That is despite the decisive mitigating actions that we have already taken. We are providing a trading update on the first quarter of the financial year on October 15. Finally, I also expect that trading momentum to translate into further strategic progress. The group strategies focus on those areas where we can win, casino-led and bingo-led gaming. The underlying performance momentum is good across the group.
There are clear growth drivers in each of our businesses and plenty of runway ahead of us. We have got a strong balance sheet, and that allows us to continue to invest in order to capitalize on these growth opportunities. We believe we are on track to deliver the GBP 100 million of operating profit in the medium term. Across the group, there is clear focus on creating long-term, sustainable shareholder value. Right. Thank you for listening. There is now an opportunity for questions. We will see if any have arrived whilst we have been talking, and please feel free to submit any online as we continue the discussion.
That is great, Richard, Cliff. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors. Let me just bring our camera back up. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Before we go into the live Q&A, if I could just remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, will be available via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. Richard, Cliff, I am glad to say we have had a number of questions from investors today.
Thank you to everybody for your engagement. Perhaps if I start off with this one from Peter. I have kind of summarized it here. Your criticism of potential gambling tax increases is strongly and clearly made, and Richard has been prominent in the media on this already. Are Rank able to quantify the impact of potential tax increases in terms of jobs and venue closures? What other evidence can be given to government to ensure they understand the implications?
Great. Thank you, Peter, for that detailed question. The theoretical impact, I suppose, of higher Machine Games Duty, if you take what has been proposed by some of the think tanks that have been vocal on this, could be as high as GBP 35 million. That is a pre-tax number, and that would be before any mitigating actions that the business would take. From my perspective, as I have said previously, that is nonsensical from an economic perspective because it would make a number of our venues unviable. We are economically rational people, it would inevitably therefore lead to venue closures, both in our business and across the casino and bingo sectors. If we close venues, that also leads to job losses. It also leads to lost investment. In my view, it would lead to reduced tax receipts from the gambling sector within the next 12 months.
The economic case on this is not particularly strong. Actually, it does not make any economic sense whatsoever. In addition to the kind of economic argument, though, this has been considered in the past and the economic argument won the day. We will need to continue to win that economic argument, and we will do that publicly, as we have said. In addition to that, I think it is probably right that we have to also win the political and social argument here as well. Our venues, we have got 41 Mecca Bingo venues, we have got 47 Grosvenor Casinos up and down the country. Actually, there is a bias towards the northern part of the country, and that is where the venues would inevitably become unviable and potentially lead to closure. We are really proud of those businesses. We have got very long-serving colleagues.
We've got very loyal customers, and we think they are genuine casino assets. We'll also be making the case around the role that our venues play. They are very highly supervised, highly regulated environments, and we're very proud of them. We'll be looking to make the financial case, but also the political and social case.
I think on the evidence point, actually, it's worth saying they've been working with other operators, commissioned a sort of EY report, to see what the impact of 40% would be on the industry. There's 108 casinos in the U.K., and that report says 34 of them would close at 40%. That has been presented to government and HM Treasury, so hopefully, that will land.
That's great. Thank you. Well, look, I might keep you guys on this theme, if I may. The second question we had is, given your dialogue with government, what is the percentage probability of Rank falling foul of Andy Burnham's disdain for slot machines and more specifically, raising Machine Games Duty from 20% to 40% in the next budget?
Very hard to put a percentage likelihood on it. There's been some speculation around for a while, as I mentioned. It probably kind of kicked off back end of July. But it's not kind of new speculation, so we've had it in previous years as well. As I said, the economic argument that we've kind of laid out already in the previous question won the day last time round. So it's very hard to put a kind of percentage likelihood on it. In terms of the impact for Rank, I mentioned unmitigated, it could be as high as GBP 35 million, but that is a genuine theoretical impact. What we'll have to do is kind of monitor how this plays out and understand the kind of competitive dynamics.
If it were to go ahead, understand those competitive dynamics and what it would mean for each of our venues in their local markets. There's a long way to go. Budget's not until the end of October. We're putting our case forward very strongly, both through ourselves and through industry bodies. We'll fight hard to kind of make our case.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Just turning to the next question, how do the economics of the smaller format casino models compare with the traditional Grosvenor casino in terms of upfront capital investment, revenue potential, and operating margins?
Good question. As I mentioned, we are trialing that smaller format casino, one of our existing venues at the moment. That trial's gone live in the last month or so, and we'll look to trial it in a small number of venues over the course of the next 12 months. The kind of need for that smaller format casino, if you like, came about through the venue segmentation work that we commissioned over the last six to nine months or so. What it kind of showed us was that we've got some really strong flagship casinos. We've got a really strong set of kind of what I would call core traditional casinos. But then in the smaller markets, we haven't really got the right model in order to be successful in those towns, and in some cases, kind of secondary venues in other big cities.
The intention for the smaller format casino, therefore, is to kind of fill that void, and we can fill the void both in our existing estate, but also through putting to use dormant licenses. The group has 77 licenses in total, and as I mentioned earlier, we've got 47 casinos, and we've got around 52 licenses in use in those 47 casinos. So potentially 25 spare licenses, maybe 20 of which could be put to good use.
The economics, so these would be smaller format, so 5,000-8,000 sq ft. Relatively low CapEx compared to much larger casinos, so probably around GBP 1 million per venue, and we'll be targeting an operating margin of around 20%. We are cognizant of the speculation around MGD, so this is something we'll tread cautiously on because gaming machines would be an important part of that proposition. We're mindful of that as we look ahead to trialing that proposition.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. A question from David, who asks, what level of international revenue could digital represent over the medium term?
Yep. Digital at the moment accounts for around, sorry, international digital accounts for around one eighth or so of our total digital revenues. And there's definite opportunity to increase that international digital percentage over time. The Yo! brand is particularly strong in Spain, where we've got 50% of the online bingo market. And as I mentioned, over the last few years, we've grown the Yo! brand into being also a casino and sports brand. What we've done so far is take that Yo! brand, particularly YoBingo, into Portugal. It was quite a long licensing process to allow us to be a regulated Bingo operator. We are the first and only bingo operator online in Portugal. And we've invested, as Cliff kind of pointed out, we invested GBP 1.3 million in growing that business in the last financial year, and we'll continue to invest in the current financial year.
It'll be loss-making in Portugal for the next 12 months with a view to then getting profitability and cash generation started from FY 2028. Is that alone going to materially change the dial from 8% of revenues currently to materially more than that? Probably not. We'd like to see that kind of tick up over the next few years. But Portugal, more than that, is a test for us about how we take our existing brands and trial them in new markets. If you look at Rank Group compared to some of our listed industry peers, they've got a much greater share of international revenues. We're very conscious of that, and we'll be looking to grow that over time, but quite difficult to put an exact percentage on it at this point.
I think it is worth saying that obviously now, but post-RGD, the differential in actual tax rates makes those international revenues and growing them more important. Being licensed in Ceuta or Portugal, significantly lower tax than we are paying the 40% in the U.K. Clearly it is an area that we would look to grow.
Thank you. I might just stick with digital. What does the sustainable margin profile of the digital business look like once the full impact of the 40% RGD rate is absorbed?
Do you want to? This is the first full year of RGD, so as we sort of shown in the results, we did manage to mitigate quite a lot of it last year, but we did have sort of two quarters of advanced warning it was coming in and only one quarter of the tax starting on the 1st of April. We have been pretty clear to say that the impact on the actual business is probably the U.K. business is probably about a GBP 15 million decrease in profitability. For that single standalone business, that goes down to sort of mid-single digit margins. As you can see from our results, our results in the last end of last year and the start of this year, there is still a lot of life in that business and a lot of growth.
We believe we can push those margins up to from higher from where they are now. But would still be sort of single digit because of that level of tax. Coming back to my previous comment, internationally, if you view the digital business sort of in a combined manner, and we grow international and the tax we are paying in Ceuta is 10%, it is very good margins on that business, then we are looking to get back to sort of high single digit, hopefully double digit in time.
That is great. Thank you very much indeed. I think we have covered off most of the themes of the questions. There are a few duplicates in there. Look, once again, thank you to everybody for your engagement. Richard, Cliff, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you both. I will shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and their expectations. Perhaps before doing so, Richard, I can just ask you for a couple of closing comments.
Great. Just from me, thank you very much for listening. As I step into the CEO role, really excited about the potential of this business. We have got some headwinds that we have talked about in this session today, but we have also got a long list of opportunities. As a business, we have become accustomed, I would say, over the course of the last five, six years to facing a difficult external environment, which probably kicked off with COVID, but also went through energy price inflation, wage inflation, et cetera, and now higher tax rates. We have come accustomed to dealing with those external headwinds and managing through them. We have got a long list of opportunities, and I am really excited about leading this business through the next few years as we seek to capitalize on those opportunities. Thanks again for listening.
That is great, Richard, Cliff. Thank you for updating investors. I please ask investors not to close this session. We now automatically redirect you so you can provide your feedback for the company so they can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of the Rank Group Plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Please do enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for your time.