Good morning, and thank you for joining us as we take you through our full-year results for 2023. Our Chief Financial Officer, Damian Sanders, will shortly take you through the financial performance for the group, followed by our executive team, Lucy Gorman, Neil Mistry, and Alistair Crane, who will provide an operational and strategic overview of their businesses. 2023 was a year of material operational progress and execution for THG. We continue to grow our category-leading global brands through digital transformation, innovation, and impactful partnerships. It was certainly not without its headwinds, but the group responded positively and emerged stronger. Following the challenging global environment in 2022, we repositioned our three businesses to focus on margin recovery and a return to sustainable revenue growth.
Overall, the performance was highly encouraging, and although we have more work to do in 2024, I am confident we have the right people, capabilities, and expertise to make further progress. To begin with, we delivered GBP 2 billion of revenue, reflecting our efforts in executing our strategic review as we repositioned several loss-making areas across the group. This created improved momentum heading into 2024, most notably within our largest business, THG Beauty. Overall, we expect to return to group revenue growth progressively throughout the year. Notable margin improvements were made, in part driven by the group's excellent operational performance. Distribution costs were lower as a percentage of revenue through an optimized fulfillment network consisting of increased automation and a best-in-class delivery offering. Operational leverage also supported improvements in profitability, delivering continued Adjusted EBITDA of GBP 120 million ahead of our guidance in January.
This was a group record EBITDA performance after cash-adjusting items, ahead-of-record set during COVID, and we anticipate further progress towards our medium-term targets during 2024 in line with historical performance. In line with our guidance, strong growth in group profitability, along with improved inventory efficiency, led to the group delivering GBP 170 million of operating positive cash flow in the year. This strong operating cash performance allowed the group to continue to make GBP 120 million of CapEx investments in the year, principally into the U.K., while still delivering overall free cash flow break-even for the year. Past years of significant investment building out global infrastructure and automation means our CapEx in future years will remain at comparatively more modest levels, even as the group returns to significant revenue growth. With the support of our long-term banking partners, we extended our revolving credit facility until May 2026.
Even though we haven't used this facility since IPO 3.5 years ago, it affords us continued significant financial flexibility during uncertain geopolitical times. Finally, before I hand over to Damian, I'd like to reiterate my thanks to the management team, the board, and our colleagues across the group for all their efforts and hard work during last year.
Thank you, Matt, and to all of you for joining us on the call today. I'll now take you through the financial performance of the group and, at individual business level, updating you on revenue, profitability, and cash flow. Much like the previous year, 2023 presented challenges for all businesses within the markets in which we operate. Nevertheless, we remain very pleased with how the group has responded, delivering substantial progress against the targets we communicated at the outset of the year. We repositioned Beauty to materially improve profitability, with the business exiting the year in constant currency growth and making a strong start to the current year. In nutrition, we set out to achieve a return on the significant investments that we made in margin during 2022, subsequently achieving an EBITDA margin in excess of our medium-term guidance.
Ingenuity continued to execute its strategic pivot towards higher margin clients, with new client wins and expanded partnerships accelerating monthly recurring revenue throughout the year. Following our strategic review, we successfully executed our plan to reposition or exit loss-making categories, which contributed to the overall decrease in full-year group revenue. The U.K. continues to be an important market for us. However, our international sales remain a large majority, at 54% of the group total. I will now take you through a more granular review of the P&L. I'm pleased to report there have been improvements both in gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margin, which, together with cash generation, have been central to management focus throughout the year. We delivered a gross profit margin that was better aligned with historical norms. This was against an inflationary backdrop combined with notable currency headwinds.
Distribution costs were a standout performance for the group, with this underlying improvement being driven by the group's continued focus on network optimization. We increased our use of robotics and automated solutions, which more than offset the remaining high levels of labor inflation in the market. The simplification of operations across our three businesses has also driven a reduction in headcount, further delivering benefits to both distribution and administration costs. One of the main components of admin costs is marketing, where we have a diverse approach to optimizing a range of channels. While structurally marketing costs have been subject to inflation in recent years, we've continued to invest in our loyalty and retention strategies.
While greater app participation has slightly offset this increase through improved customer purchase behavior, the overall net impact of marketing spend has increased, with the expectation that our brand investment will deliver returns over a prolonged period. Continuing adjusted EBITDA saw a strong year-on-year improvement, with margin up 210 basis points to 6.1%. This was primarily delivered through the group's profit enhancement program and the exit of loss-making categories and territories. This is an encouraging result against the tough macroeconomic backdrop, with the cost base of the business fundamentally stronger. We are well positioned for further operating leverage when consumer spending pressures abate. Group operating loss has also seen substantial improvements. I'll now take you through our largest business, THG Beauty.
We consciously prioritized higher margin sales and focused on key territories, the U.K. and U.S., with profitability improving by over 30% despite the well-flagged headwinds in manufacturing experience, predominantly in H1. Overall, this was underpinned by better quality sales driving gross margin accretion. THG Beauty ended the year with strong momentum, delivering overall sales growth on a constant currency basis, driven by particularly encouraging performances from Cult Beauty and our flagship owned brands, most notably Perricone MD and ESPA. As one of our key markets, we were especially pleased to see growth of over 9% in the U.K. in Q4, positioning the business well for the year ahead. Turning to our nutrition business and through our focus on recovering the margin investment we made in the prior year, we've delivered a significantly improved adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.5%, ahead of medium-term guidance of at least 12%.
This margin recovery gives us the opportunity to further invest in both demand generation and the customer proposition. The improvement in margin also reflects, in part, the annualization of exceptionally high whey commodity prices in the prior year, offsetting FX movements, notably the Japanese yen. Currency fluctuations particularly impacted both revenue and margin in Myprotein's second biggest market, i.e., Japan. As outlined in the Q4 trading statement, we've introduced the concept of total brand sales, reflective of the strategies undertaken across the business in 2023. We've expanded our royalty model with carefully chosen partners in key territories. Targeted offline Myprotein deals were launched in our two largest markets, in the U.K. with major grocer Iceland and in Japan with leading distributor ITOCHU. These offline partnerships have increased customer touchpoints and broadened the brand appeal of Myprotein, with further partnerships and category expansion planned in 2024.
Finally, onto our third business, Ingenuity. The repositioning of this business began at the end of 2022 and is focused on higher value, higher margin clients. Although the more complex sales cycles have actually been longer than anticipated, this pivot has driven an improving quality and an accelerated level of monthly recurring revenue throughout 2023. Following intentional investments in expertise to deliver this strategy, we are pleased on how the pipeline has strengthened and new clients have been onboarded, with the expectation that the repositioning will be fully embedded in the first half of 2024. As revenue scales and the mix evolves toward Ingenuity's technology offering, we remain confident that margins will progress toward our longer-term target of 7.5%, supported by the internal revenue benefit from both the beauty and nutrition businesses returning to growth during 2024.
In line with the intention to simplify and streamline operations outlined in January last year, we have executed our strategic review of loss-making categories and territories, resulting in the exiting of our THG OnDemand division, ProBikeKit business, and additional small legacy brands within beauty and nutrition. This year, the group achieved its target of free cash flow break-even for 2023. This was reflective of a cash inflow from operating activities driven by increased Adjusted EBITDA, lower adjusting items, and a well-controlled working capital cycle. Cash adjusting items are also substantially lower, with the group's balance sheet and liquidity remaining robust, closing the period with circa GBP 600 million of cash and available facilities. In March this year, we confirmed the extension of our revolving credit facility to May 2026, affording the group continued financial flexibility and the ability to capitalize on growth opportunities.
The extension aligns with the group focus on cash generation and reducing gross debt, with continued positive momentum into the current year, providing confidence in further degearing. Looking ahead now to the next 12 months, we remain confident in a return to revenue growth across the group, with a general progression in revenue growth expected through the year. The actions that we took as a business in 2023 provided a solid foundation from which further margin recovery should continue to build, with group profitability expected to pick up later in the year. For beauty, the absence of the industry-wide destocking that we saw in the first half of last year will drive further margin recovery as our retail business continues to perform well, aided by our strategy toward higher margin sales. As mentioned earlier, FX movements, most notably in the yen, have impacted performance within our nutrition business.
This continued to worsen throughout 2023 and into Q1 2024. Local manufacturing will also launch in H2 in Japan and India, helping to alleviate some of this FX headwind in addition to comms easing after H1. Whey prices did rise as we entered 2024 but have actually fallen back again over recent weeks. Notwithstanding this, we remain confident that our already strong margin progression will enable us to balance normalizing input costs and demand generation, driving growth throughout the year and maintaining our mid-term profitability margin target of at least 12% for nutrition. Operating cash flow will remain strong, and as mentioned earlier, we will continue to leverage CapEx investment to drive our competitive advantage, albeit at lower levels than previous years.
Moving into positive cash generation in the second half of the year and beyond will reflect the group's stronger profitability, improved operational efficiencies, lighter CapEx, and lower cash adjusting items. In reiterating our medium-term targets, we are confident in our ability to achieve sustainable growth and return to historical margins, both collectively as a group and within our individual businesses. I will now pass over to our executive team to take you through an operational review of their businesses and progress against their strategic priorities.
As the leading digital strategic player in prestige beauty, we have a prominent, unique position within the global industry as a retailer, brand owner, and manufacturer committed to best-in-class curation, innovative product development, and first-class service for our valued customers. Our ultimate aim is to become the global digital partner of choice across the industry, using our position as the world's largest online pure-play retailer to connect consumers to over 1,300 brands. A distinct point of differentiation versus other beauty retailers comes from our owned portfolio of prestige beauty brands, underpinned by market-leading new product development and in-house manufacturing capabilities, providing us with two strong engines to drive margin growth as our mix evolves. We have established digital leadership positions in key markets, including the U.K. and U.S., and through our proposition have significantly increased retail touchpoints and broadened our exposure in experience and hospitality destinations for our brands.
As we entered 2023, we committed to a strategy that focused on enhancing profitability across the business, leading to the de-emphasis of certain geographies. This is now bearing fruit, as seen in the margin improvements that Damian spoke of earlier and the return to growth seen in the fourth quarter. Within our own brand portfolio, flagship skincare brands ESPA and Perricone MD have shone throughout the year, delivering combined double-digit growth. They are also leading the way in partnership collaborations for the business, further building on their expertise in the wellness and dermis skin categories by expanding their reach into the travel retail markets. In 2023, we saw resilience and robust category dynamics, notably in the continued strengthening of fragrance driven by new brands launching across our retail sites. Brand launches across all categories have been crucial in further enhancing our prestige beauty offering across the year.
As we move onto our customer health, the success of our strategy to prioritize profitable sales can be seen in the margin performance. However, the headline rate of growth and movement in customer KPIs should also be viewed in this context. The decline in active customer numbers slowed every quarter during the year, and purchase behavior remained encouraging. Order frequency and AOV both stepped up year-over-year, and returning customer sales were maintained above 80%. The continued strength of our digital offering has been demonstrated through increased app participation and double-digit growth in new app users throughout the year, notably in the U.K., where a particularly encouraging performance was delivered. Our commitment to best-in-class service continues to be recognized by our customers. Record satisfaction and confidence scores were achieved this year, as our investment in the customer proposition remains in focus.
We continue to connect on a deeper level with our customers through our loyalty programs. These increasingly personalized interactions enhance engagement and drive retention, which can be seen in improved purchase behavior from a higher quality customer base. We are always looking for ways to evolve our digital-first owned brand portfolio, and in December, we strengthened our proposition with the acquisition of U.S. prestige beauty brand Biosense. This technology-led brand is set to unlock further value and audience reach across one of our key markets, the U.S. We will use our expertise and capabilities to leverage the brand's strong awareness and presence in offline beauty retailers to further drive growth in our key U.K. and U.S. markets. Having reiterated our performance against our strategic priorities, we now look ahead to build on the positive momentum from last year.
The focus remains on long-term sustainable growth and margin rebuild in our core markets, the U.K. and U.S. This will come from further growing our retail share and maintaining digital leadership, maximizing the value behind our retail offerings, owned brand proposition, and manufacturing capabilities. We are extremely well-positioned to return to historical profitability levels through targeted curation, building out our higher margin retail media proposition, and growing our beauty community. We firmly remain as the beauty partner of choice for leading retail brands. Progress made across the business this year is encouraging, particularly considering the persistent disruption we have seen in the market. We are confident that our business remains resilient and primed to build upon its success and progress towards its medium-term targets.
This past year has seen a huge step forward for our nutrition business, and we've recently celebrated 20 years of the world's leading online sports nutrition brand, Myprotein. We are a premium sports nutrition brand, which is scaled by entering new geographies and multiple high-growth categories beyond our sports nutrition heritage. Supported by vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities, which fire our speed to market, we are committed to breaking down barriers of the fitness industry, empowering everyone to lead healthier, more active lives. Our approach to meeting the health and wellness needs of our global customer base reflects our commitment to delivering high-quality products, a best-in-class on-site experience, and delivery service, while localising products to reflect different tastes, trends, and formats. We launched a global rebrand in the second half of the year, introducing a new logo and redesigned packaging.
The new Myprotein has already gained significant recognition and awareness among the health and wellness industry. Each decision made on the rebrand has been centered around the customer and our role in championing inclusivity and accessibility, with ambitions to become a key player outside of nutrition and alongside the world's most iconic lifestyle brands. The Myprotein allows us to explore new and innovative ways of connecting with a broader wellness customer while deepening our relationship with our existing loyal base. A key part of the development of our trading strategy over the last 12 months has been our carefully curated licensing partnerships. These partnerships have unlocked incredible value through brand awareness, reaffirming Myprotein as one of the leading authorities in the market, at the forefront of innovation as trends and customer needs evolve.
In the U.K., we have delivered further retail penetration across over 2,000 stores through partnership launches, and you can now find Myprotein products on shelves in every major U.K. grocer. It is this expertise in entering new channels that has driven the brand to become the fastest-growing sports nutrition brand in the U.K. retail market, further demonstrating our ability to scale, innovate, and diversify, and ultimately tap into new audiences. Taking a step back, we have delivered double-digit CAGR sales growth since 2019 and massively expanded our product range. Our customer base remains highly engaged, with repeat purchase rates consistently above 80% in key markets such as the U.K.. We have been encouraged by growth in active customer numbers, demonstrating continued resilience and stickiness. An increase in Trustpilot scores also reflects our focus on the overall customer experience.
It is important to keep in mind that our active customer base now spans beyond D2C, through the thousands of retail touchpoints and the activations of new and existing customers offline. A key factor driving cost-efficient sales has been our mobile apps, which have seen a 32% increase in new users across 2023, with app sales now accounting for over 17% of D2C sales. There still remains significant upside here, with app customers exhibiting more favorable purchasing dynamics in the form of higher average order values and order frequency. We are well-progressed in further enhancing our apps to build more bespoke elements such as personalization and curated content feeds. Moving to offline retail now, where partnerships further increase customer touchpoints either through licensing or retail B2B, we have further enhanced the margin potential of the business by expanding our royalty model with carefully chosen partners in key territories.
Targeting offline licensing deals, we are launched in our largest markets, and we are extensively involved in all aspects of the development of products being ranged. Revenue from products sold under licensing arrangements scaled rapidly to over GBP 36 million from single-digit millions the prior year. Under these arrangements, our licensing partners record the revenue from products sold with THG Nutrition receiving a royalty payment. It has been a year since the launch of our partnership with Iceland, and it has proven to be one of Myprotein's biggest successes today, highlighting the scale of opportunity that we have for further licensing partners, both within the U.K. and internationally. Physical retail acts as an important complementary lever to growth, with online retail still being at the core of the business at around 85% of revenues.
Myprotein is currently the fastest-growing sports nutrition brand in the U.K. retail market, having recently launched in Sainsbury's and Asda, alongside extending our distribution with existing partners. This demonstrates the wide appeal of the Myprotein brand and the leading awareness that it has in the U.K. market. As we look forward, our aims for this year are to maintain our margins at target levels while balancing commodity costs and demand generation. After a two-year process, local manufacturing will launch in both Japan and India, improving delivery times and the development of local product ranges. Local manufacturing in Japan will also largely eliminate future risks from the yen FX volatility and reverse the impact of prolonged yen weakness on EBITDA. Innovation remains front of mind, and we'll be dialing up targeted NPD through the year, considering the insights from our performance and wellness consumer.
Retail category expansion will continue to drive customers to the brand as we address with a wider consumption occasion in partnerships with major brands. Together, with our influences and 10 million strong social network, our partnerships with Williams F1 and with the endurance-based fitness brand HYROX provide an international platform to enhance the brand awareness and future growth of the Myprotein community.
I'm delighted to join Matt and the THG team in the role of chairman at Ingenuity. Having spent my first couple of months with clients, key stakeholders, and partners, I've got a strong sense of the market opportunity and where we can play to our strengths and core capabilities. Using our experience in building category-leading digital brands, we offer e-commerce solutions for brand owners and retailers to grow globally. Our focus categories of FMCG, beauty, and retail continue to benefit from market tailwinds, and we are doubling down our efforts in the geographies where our physical infrastructure is present, namely U.K., the U.S., and Australia. So what did we learn during the past 18 months as we refocused our strategy towards multi-service, higher margin clients? A shifting labor market, higher-for-longer interest rates, slower consumer spending, and increased cost of advertising represented ongoing pressures for retailers across many markets.
At the same time, digital innovation continued its far-reaching impact with new standards set for customer experience. Demonstrably, operators that provide cheaper, faster, and better service will win out. Our advantage as a brand owner is that we can work with clients to shape their digital strategy, offering an individual or full-stack service as they require. This typically leads to partners doing more business with us over multiple years and multiple services, with our monthly recurring revenue increasing year on year as a direct result. As Damian recapped on earlier, we took some decisions around costs and investment to position us towards our target margins and subsequently extended our global footprint in the U.S., winning new customer contracts and building on-the-ground teams. Our investment introduced further automation and AI into our platform, developed entirely by our in-house technology teams.
This resulted in an improvement to the customer experience while guaranteeing greater operational resilience for the future. In July, we entered into the disruptive media space with the acquisition of City A.M. We have already started to elevate the brand's resources in order to reach new audiences, complemented by our own successful content creation studios and digital media expertise. Finally, and for the first time, THG Ingenuity was recognized in the influential Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital commerce, acknowledging our completeness of vision and ability to execute. This year has been a great example of how we have not only entered into new partnerships but also how we have maximized value in our existing client relationships through additional revenue touchpoints and supporting new market entry. The technology that we use to power our clients' brands is the same technology that we use to power our own brands.
This demonstrates the confidence that we have in our capabilities and highlights our commitment to continuous innovation with our clients' needs front of mind. Our marketing capabilities are designed to build and grow brands on a global scale. By designing and delivering fully integrated creative solutions, we are able to drive growth in audiences through elevated brand awareness. Our relationships with both Asda and Disney are a testament to how our marketing solutions deliver impactful campaigns and content, and we have increased our scope of work to multiple services across categories, channels, and territories. In the U.S., we are driving new audience reach for the world's beauty leader, L'Oréal, powering direct-to-consumer operations for two of its most prestigious brands. We are also deploying our own full-scale commerce solution to support the U.S. expansion of one of India's largest branded fashion and retail companies.
Leveraging our investment in fulfillment capabilities, earlier this year we announced a three-year partnership with leading U.K. wellness retailer, Holland & Barrett, to become the main e-commerce operational partner in the U.K. and Ireland. We will support their rapidly scaling digital business and e-commerce ambitions through our fulfillment and carrier management services. Our investment in GenAI has helped to overcome structurally higher cost pressures and streamline operational processes, while automation in fulfillment has increased efficiency, throughput, and accelerated speed of delivery to the end customer. The data speaks for itself as we improve the checkout-to-delivery experience with the customer always front of mind. Through our expertise in building D2C brands, developing technology, and implementing operational solutions, we have unique perspectives and insights to share.
Our strategic priorities for the business remain focused on increasing the value from our existing customer base and investing in long-term customer growth across our primary verticals of FMCG, beauty, and retail, also scaling our presence within our target markets of the U.K., Australia, and the U.S. while building technology and delivering partnerships that create indirect revenue channels and extend our delivery capacity to help us scale, and critically, continuing innovation on the platform. These components are the key building blocks to our goal of Ingenuity becoming self-funding whilst continuing to invest strategically and progress our technology roadmap. Today we have shared the progress made across our three businesses in support of their individual and group EBITDA margin targets. We have exceeded our guidance set in January, and our efforts on cash preservation and higher margin sales have been rewarded with net leverage substantially lower year-on-year.
12 months ago, we talked to how investment across our operations network during a period of accelerated growth had positioned us incredibly well to double down on our focus on profit enhancement and path to free cash flow. Substantial progress has been made, and we have further streamlined areas of our business where we have exited loss-making categories. Turning to our businesses and as an authority in beauty, we've continued to attract, retain, and develop our customer relationships. Our proposition is constantly being refined and elevated by new technology and a best-in-class delivery service, which further enhances the customer experience. Myprotein has evolved beyond sports and performance to broader health and wellness categories, expanding its addressable markets and catering for increased consumption occasions.
Pivotal to this strategy has been creating ranges with prominent partners in distribution, grocery, and chilled goods, expanding the reach of the brand into offline channels and, in turn, building awareness and engagement. Our proprietary technology and operations platform, THG Ingenuity, is a multi-year development story with our fulfilment and operational solutions business now winning clients in its own right as the business accelerates the returns on investments in distribution capacity. In the year to come, we expect further efficiencies in our distribution costs and a return to sales growth, supporting continued margin progression and operating cash flow. We anticipate long-term channel shift across our consumer markets to continue, supported by a track record of consistently taking share and a global expanding high-repeat customer base. Thank you for joining us and for your ongoing support, and we now look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, it is star one to ask a question. I will pause for just a moment to assemble the queue. Now, our first question comes from James Lockyer from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Three questions from me, please. It's great to see some of the proof points of your land and expand strategy in the R&S. Could you just remind us of what you were previously providing to Coca-Cola and Disney and, and what are you providing now? And then on Holland & Barrett, I believe that's just operations, where they were previously doing in-house. Why just operations and what would trigger them to take more services from you? The second question is on the CapEx guidance. Of the GBP 100- GBP 110 guidance that you've put in there, can I ask the same question sort of two ways? Firstly, how much would you deem of that is maintenance CapEx versus growth? And then what's the split between PPE versus R&D Cap-Dev? Thanks. And then third one, on Ingenuity's cash costs, just wondering how much of that is hosting.
I'd imagine as you scale your client base, hosting would scale as well. So we're good to understand how much of that is paying public cloud providers like AWS versus your own data centers. Thanks.
Okay. Good morning. Look, I'll take the very last point of that question, and then I've got the rest of the senior team here with me, or a selection of them. And John is our resident operations expert, so I'll throw quite a few of those questions to him. And then maybe Matt or Damian want to jump in as well on some of the finance questions that we've got there. The simple thing for me to answer comes back to the hosting side. We actually have our hosting in-house, and it's one of our capabilities. So our spend externally with the likes of AWS, etc., is zero or incredibly close to zero. There may be some tiny services for some reason that we use, but actually, it's very much in-house and a capability we've built throughout the years.
I'll hand over to John just to talk about Holland & Barrett and the other points there for you.
Yeah. Look, I don't want to speak too much about Holland & Barrett, but I think what they've recognized is, firstly, the level of service that we provide in terms of fulfillment, particularly in the U.K. and Ireland where we are taking our services. And in terms of the stats, as evidenced by our delivery times, our customer feedback, it, it's a world-class service. But more importantly, we're reducing costs, and that's reflecting the investment in automation. I think in terms of their position, they were looking at having to make decisions from a largely manual operation. And it's key to kind of emphasize that the level of wage inflation in fulfillment centers has been fairly dramatic over the last three years. So there's a high wage inflation. We've already made the decisions to automate.
We've seen the benefits of that automation feeding through, not just cost, but also the service that we provide. So I think their decision just reflects that. In terms of Disney, it's a totally different service to their. They're one of our clients in the studio. So what they've now done is roll out a more global photography service. Previously, it was just localized. They've recognized the service, and they've now globalized that service. And with respect to Coca-Cola, we power their U.K. D2C both through e-commerce and through delivery. What they're now doing with it is rolling out more product development through that channel.
CapEx. Do you want to talk about CapEx?
Yeah.
Shot it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Matt?
Hi, James. So in terms of CapEx and Matt. Or, feel free to add anything you see appropriate. Basically, you know, we're guiding for the coming year, we're guiding to between GBP 100 million- GBP 110 million. It was probably GBP 125 million-GBP 130 million the year just gone. Prior to that, it was much higher because we had a new and a several-year investment in the infrastructure and the warehouse facilities around the globe. So that investment now is largely complete. So going back to your question, James, in terms of the GBP 100 million-GBP 110 million, I think that's what we anticipate to be spending annually going forward because the infrastructure investment has been made. Of that GBP 100 million-GBP 110 million, probably GBP 60 million of that is the annual investment in the platform. And that will continue.
So you might want to call that maintenance, but it is very much additive and adding additional facilities, etc. The other element of the PPE is probably so that's the intangible element. The tangible element's probably about GBP 40 million. A number of that is maintenance, but I think the important thing to mention is that as well as the infrastructure part of that is the automation that we've invested in, both in ICON here in Manchester and also the AutoStore investment in New Jersey. And you can see the benefit of that spend on the savings that we're making on fulfillment and distribution, which have reduced 260 basis points in the year.
Some of our spend going forward will be to continue to invest in the automation, because that's where we're getting a very good ROI and capital repayments of probably two years.
I think the rough maths that are worth applying here is the tech spend equates to 60%-65% of our CapEx every year. Then if you looked at the beauty and the nutrition divisions, you'd be talking that that's the balanced split broadly, equally. And where that CapEx kicks in for them is they do an awful lot of manufacturing in-house and product development, etc. And so it's around putting automation into production lines and protein production, bar production for nutrition, etc. But that's the broad split. What we would then do is, I think, in terms of how we handle that on the balance sheet, I understand, Damian and Matt, that it's probably all of that CapEx would sit within Ingenuity, essentially.
and then, you know, that's where it sits.
Yeah. Absolutely. Very small amounts in beauty and nutrition.
That's great. Thanks. Thanks for your answers.
Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Matt. I've got a couple of questions, if you don't mind. Firstly, on Ingenuity and mainly around the Ingenuity commerce business, can you give us an idea on how the cost base of the business has developed over the last 12-15 months with the change in strategy? Have you needed to hire more people or different kinds of people, to accelerate the strategy in other markets, especially the U.S. and Australia? And how should we look, in that regard in terms of the profitability improvement that you have seen in the business? So has the cost base gone up, and the, the revenue has gone up from external clients, which is leading to, better profitability, or is there more return from that cost base to come in future years?
Secondly, on beauty manufacturing, just give us an idea on what capacity is available still in that business, and how do you foresee that business growing in the future, or would you be using more of that capacity for your internal brands that you manufacture? Thank you.
Okay. Look, I think Steve wants to answer the first question, and maybe with Lucy here, you can answer the beauty question, yeah?
Dan, just picking up on Ingenuity commerce. So the cost base has developed in line with the sales strategy, which just to recap, the prior two years, maybe three years, we pivoted from a broader client base, both across SME and enterprise, purely focusing on an enterprise-only client base. That pivot was, you know, very much executed and brought to a point in conclusion towards the end of last year. And you see that in the MRR stats for last year, that monthly recurring revenue, in a range between 6% and nearing a 15% growth, where into predominantly enterprise clients, there's monthly recurring revenues and out and out hitting, you know, a stable and growing revenue growth rate. So that pivot worked and kind of completed it in the last year.
In line with that, we brought in a new sales strategy with Alistair Crane leading it in his new appointment as chair of the division, whereby it's a much more focused sales strategy of our core end-to-end product into enterprise clients or breaking it back into a couple of structured products, whether it be the front-end headless or the back-end fulfillments-only solution. But the latter in particular, having a shorter sales cycle. So we hope to really shorten that sales cycle with that product focus. So that's meant we can have a leaner operating structure in the sales teams taking fewer more focused products to market into a smaller, more defined enterprise client base.
That then has led to what we perceive, you know, a no change to guidance for 2024 with Ingenuity, where we expect, yes, there's that MRR sales growth, so we expect that top-line growth to continue. But we are expecting, I think, consensus looking for a doubling or more of profitability in that division. And in part, that's driven by the sales growth, but also that leaner cost base.
Hi, guys. Just with regards to your question on manufacturing, so, in terms of capacity, we did a brilliant job last year of reducing the cost base, just given some of the headwinds that the manufacturing division faced. Despite that, we're still probably operating at around kind of 40%-50% capacity, and that's purely based on shift patterns. So across both sites, we operate two shifts five days a week currently. And so with, you know, without significant investment, we could look to double that. Our own brands are roughly about 20%-25% of volume, and we'd expect that to broadly continue. And then there's various projects ongoing, in terms of automation across both sites. So significant headroom in capacity, however, operating on a relatively lean cost base.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph McNamara from Citi. Please go ahead.
Brilliant. Thanks very much for taking my questions. The first, I have three. The first is on beauty margins, which I guess is already above 5% in the second half. So this is your medium-term ambition of 6%. I guess, could you talk through any key considerations into 2024? And then also, could you touch on how big the retail media business is within beauty and where this could maybe get to over time? The second was on distribution cost efficiencies. Could you provide any stats, perhaps, on what proportion of the business is being fulfilled through automated warehouses now versus where this has been maybe in recent years? And then lastly, in January, you talked about confidence in all divisions returning to growth in 2024. I just wanted to check whether this is still the case, particularly for nutrition. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Look, so I'll do the last question, and I think then, you know, we'll break up the other points there, the beauty side and distribution. I know John will be wanting to answer there. In terms of all divisions returning to growth, yes, we would expect that. You know, I think if you were to take a step back and look at where we were this time last year, there was a lot of questions around beauty in terms of, you know, the progress we were making there and the decisions we'd made. And yet, you know, that division now is seeing, you know, really good and strong growth, probably the best growth we've seen there in a couple of years. So, you know, I think if you then look at Ingenuity, Ingenuity's already back in growth.
And then, looking at nutrition, you know, you've got the yen in Japan with FX impact. But putting that to one side, we've got the major brand overhaul that we've started in half two, which creates product availability challenges because one of the things that we do there is instead of throwing away, or, you know, basically trashing old branded stock, we've carefully sold that through, which does create product availability challenges, but it's just a neater, less exceptional, better way of handing that brand over to the new brand. We should get that back to full availability of all new branding, we would hope, during Q2 as well, which will have, you know, quite a material impact, and then it's on the new branding.
But it's also worth then coming back and saying, "Well, what else outside of the online space?" You'll have seen through Neil on the video that the progress he's making on the offline space, where you don't have those brand, yeah, challenges in terms of product availability because they're taking the new brand at all points in time. You're seeing, you know, really strong progress coming there. And then the final point is obviously on the licensing side of the business. It's really elevated the brand, and we're super pleased with the repositioning we've done of the brand. And that's just, you know, further accelerating the licensing opportunities that we've got with the brand. In terms of the overall brand sales that we have with Myprotein, you know, that's strong.
You know, whether we're taking a license fee on that or whether we're taking the full 100% revenue, you know, arguably is less important. The overall brand is in a really strong position and should have a really good year. But coming back to the point, yes, all three divisions, we would expect to have a growth year with them, albeit there'll be, you know, some pullback in the very near term just around the nutrition with the rebranding. But we're very confident in where that goes from here.
You want to do distribution?
Yeah. I think, Arthur [audio distortion], look, I'll answer this specific question, but then just try a little to add a little bit more color when I do so. So the question was, what proportion of employment is going through automation? Well, last year, it was high 30s%. The year before, it was high 20s%. And this year, we'd expect it to be around the 50%, but that probably doesn't capture the true picture. Distribution costs are made up of warehousing and final mile delivery. Final mile delivery, actually, is 50% more than the warehousing cost. So the fact we're putting more through automation is great. But then within that, I think probably what's more important is the continued optimization of that automation.
So if we were to just put automation in and that cost was static, our cost would continue to rise because we can't engineer out all labor costs. What we've always got to do is continue to optimize the existing automation. You get the benefit of putting more product through it, but the greater benefit is by getting that product through it at a lower cost and faster, so we can deliver better service. But then the other element of the cost is the final mile delivery. You know, and that's 50% more than the warehousing cost, right? So the key point there is we've now got 13 fulfillment centers in key markets globally. From those key fulfillment centers, we've got a fairly sophisticated courier management system where we've got over 250 couriers we can pick and choose from.
So we've got competitive tension in most local markets, which means that we can choose on service and cost and deliver both. So we improve costs in both areas. And that's a consequence of being closer to our customers globally through the fulfillment center network, but having the optionality with the couriers to choose. So we're always optimizing it. Does that help?
Yeah. That's brilliant. Thank you very much.
I'll take a question on beauty margins. We're very encouraged by the progress that we saw last year and again into this year. With regards to that medium target of 6%, there's, I guess, a few key drivers there. Increased participation from both manufacturing and brands over the next two to three years, both of which are higher margin. But equally, we do expect to see better margins in our retail business with the continued focus on those core territories. With regards to retail media, we have a relatively sophisticated retail media program, low- to mid-single-digit contribution, but we see quite significant headroom in terms of an opportunity for us to increase the income there from our partners.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Andrew Wade from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Morning. Couple of questions from me, one on Ingenuity and one on the nutrition side of things. On Ingenuity, great to hear from Alistair Crane in the video there. What is he bringing to the role, and what do you think is the key elements of that that are going to drive sort of an acceleration in those new client wins? So that'd be the first one on Ingenuity. And then secondly, on nutrition EBITDA margin. Obviously, a great recovery during the year, very strong performance there. But you are running a little bit ahead of your medium-term guidance on that. So just interested how you're viewing that. Do you see it as a little bit of wiggle room in case whey prices move or potential to reinvest? Just interested as to how you see that. So those are my two. Thank you.
Sure. Look, so Ingenuity and DAL, and then the nutrition margins and, you know, wiggle room. I mean, look, taking the nutrition point, sure. Look, I mean, that's back at the kind of levels for last year that we've been trading at in years before the volatility that you will see in nutrition. So medium-term, sure, there's a bit of wiggle room in there. Equally, you know, how do those mix of sales develop? You know, when you're doing offline sales, you'll get a higher EBITDA margin, typically. And then license sales, you probably get, you know, yeah, slightly less. So it really just depends how those channels play out over time. And if licensing's a particular success, that might be a slightly impacting on, you know, on that margin.
But generally speaking, yeah, it's the kind of level that we'd be expecting, whether it's, you know, 1, you know, 100 basis points more or whatever. What you will see, though, is we've never seen volatility in whey pricing, particularly like we have done over the last 12, 18 months. And we've been doing this a long time. So, you know, it has been a factor of whether it's COVID, war, you know, inflation, and all those kind of factors that have kicked in. We do expect there to be a much more stable market over time. And we've seen, you know, we've seen the market, you know, coming back down quite considerably in recent weeks as well. So, look, we'd be, we think under a normal, stable world, depending on the mix, that's broadly about the right position to be.
But there could be some wiggle room for it being a bit better, you know, but it's just a sensible level to be at. In terms of Al Crane, what does he bring to Ingenuity? I mean, look, very fortunate to have Al. He's sufficiently young in the sense that he's got an awful lot of hunger about him. But actually, it won't mind me saying it looks quite a bit older than he actually is, which is probably the stressful life he's had, running tech businesses. He's founded two tech businesses and exited them. He's got a third tech business. And you know, he's very good at this.
So he's the perfect combination for us to be able to come in and give us two days a week to be able to bring, you know, real sales and closing focus. And that's what I really see him bringing, is that experience around sales cycles, how he wants to structure teams, etc. Now, he's also bringing a gentleman, who'll be joining on the 1st of June, which I'll, you know, we'll announce that in due course, when appropriate. But, you know, look, it's exciting to see what Al's going to be bringing to the table. But I think across the piece, he'll be very well respected as well across the CPGs and the rest of our customer group.
Great. Thanks very much, Matt.
Our next question comes from John Stevenson from Peel Hunt, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, all. I've got three questions as well, please. So starting off with, nutrition, just looking at the U.S., can you talk about the physical expansion into the U.S., how many doors you're in now versus how many you think you need to be in to be driving brand awareness and penetration, and how important licensing's going to be in the U.S. to sort of reach that U.S. customer? Second question, I don't know if you can comment on sort of marketing spend as a % of revenue for, for beauty and nutrition, how that's developing and how you think about above-the-line versus performance marketing and that sort of customer acquisition cost. And then finally, on the on the rebrand, I don't know if you're seeing any change in sort of D2C demographics yet.
I don't know if you can talk about how you're engaging or trying to engage with a new demographic beyond, obviously, the proliferation of product and going physical?
Sure. Matthew, to remind me to come back to a few of these questions here, or the team will. I think, look, starting with the U.S., the opportunity, the licensing, and the rest. I mean, look, we've actually been operating in the U.S. for a long time. We've got real good infrastructure. And, you know, after years of losses in the U.S., we've actually got it to a really good position at the moment as well where, you know, you've got a break-even base to be able to build from there. And so that's a great position to be in given it's a D2C business out there. And you've got that infrastructure already laid down. But what we're learning over time is, these big geography countries, you do need an offline presence.
And so that's what we've been working on quite ferociously over the last couple of years, especially for places like the U.S., even Australia. So for the U.S., we've now started to land some key accounts there. I think GNC is one where we've put some product in, even Vitamin Shoppe for some of the products there, and then more recently on Costco. And we've got further expansion coming through there as well. And as ever, as we found in the U.K. and other territories, once you start to put a couple of products in, you then deliver, deliver, deliver, and you expand your base beyond. And so we see real opportunity in terms of building that out, becoming quite a scale player.
We have got good heritage out there now in terms of what we've delivered. In terms of the licensing side, I think, you know, to be brutally honest, you've got to have bigger brand presence to make licensing work in given territories. So in places like Asia, licensing's a massive opportunity, right, because Myprotein is a huge brand. You go into Japan, it's just a huge brand. U.K., naturally, real licensing opportunity, even across Europe. But when you go to America, we're still relatively small scale for the scale of the country. It's the single biggest market in the world. So as we build our brand presence through offline as well as the D2C growing, then that's where we will see, you know, more licensing opportunities to come.
I would expect that at the moment, it'll be the other way where we're licensing other people's brands in the US to partner with us before then it goes the other way back. And, and that's probably a 24-month project, I'd say.
Then that final point, John, is we have licensed in the Disney Marvel license. So we are the official sports nutrition provider for Disney Marvel. And that range is also part of that, you know, penetration to the U.S. through leveraging off the Disney and Marvel franchise in that tech territory as well as globally.
You touched on some of the offline spend. You know, look, I wouldn't want to think even though all the marketers in the group had a meeting yesterday where, you know, they're always pushing me to do more offline marketing, you know, that's not our core strength, and it's not something that we intend to be on. Said, obviously, we've done things around the nutrition space at the moment with the rebrand, and that's been very selective in terms of we're launching a new brand. We want to get maximum awareness, so we're going in for a partnership in which to do that in F1 with, you know, to get that branding across the world. And the U.S. is a target market for that brand awareness there.
That team that we've done that partnership with has got a U.S. driver, and we're seeing really good response to the rebrand and to the offline spend that we've done. But to be clear, that's not going to become a core part of our model that we're going out doing an awful lot of offline marketing. In beauty, you know, there's a slightly different way to do that offline marketing, even though yesterday's meeting was, you know, Lucy trying to push me for some budgeting, you know, an increased budget on offline.
The better way for us to do that brand awareness, in my own opinion, is, you know, if we were to partner with major retailers and, you know, store-in-store type concepts is something that we're likely to do more of, you know, especially given, you know, the strength of our brands in beauty and the scale of those brands. We think that that's a good way of doing offline marketing and working and helping our brands in the process as well.
So, what was the other question, John?
I mean, I don't know if you can talk, actually, on what the sort of percent of marketing spend is on, on beauty and nutrition at the moment. But yeah, the final question was just on the rebrand in terms of whether you're seeing any change in sort of D2C demographics yet. I guess it's, it's pretty early, but, in terms of how you're sort of engaging with the wider market.
No, so look, I don't think if I should have brought Neil in, actually. I don't think really we could say we've seen any changes to the demographic, you know, in. I'm not seeing that in any of the meetings that I have and, you know, every day with the teams, etc. I think what we are seeing is a real positive reaction to the branding and the desire for partnerships with our brand. And so we're being selective about how those partnerships are. And it's really important that what we don't do is just partner because we know we can partner with so many people. We don't want to just get those partnerships wrong because that'll be very damaging to the brand. And so we're seeing a great reaction.
It's in it, you know. I'm super pleased with the positioning of where Myprotein is and, you know, that rebrand, I think, just elevates it, you know, fantastically well. But it is too early to see if we're tapping into a different demographic online. And being brutally honest, it's not the number one priority, per se, to elevating the brand. And then the hero effect of that in so many different ways will benefit. And that might bring, you know, additional customer groups with it, etc., etc. But it, you know, it will increase the value of the brand.
Matt, can I just add to that?
John, in terms of, you know, the overall rebrand for Myprotein. And what I would say, and Matt has touched on this anyway, is that alongside the rebranding, we're doing a lot of work around brand awareness and all of the partnerships. And, you know, we've been launching Jimmy's Coffees. There's pancakes to come. There's actually dairy products, i.e., we're extending the product range and, you know, the brand awareness because a lot of these products will be in retail outlets, etc. So it's all about the overall brand rebranding, but also all of the things that we're doing, you know, in all the grocers across the whole range, which all ties together.
And, you know, it's having a very positive impact and will, will reach new demographics and new audiences because of, you know, it's in the line of sight as people go about their daily lives. And I think if we I'm not sure if you were asking if the question was, "What's the percentage of offline marketing relative to your marketing budget?" But if that if that was the point, I think we spend, let's say, GBP 250 million a year on marketing. You know, you're talking, you know, if GBP 5 million, GBP 6 million, GBP 7 million kind of level on offline marketing, of which actually, you know, you can you, you can see where the vast majority of that will be in, in, in, in the biggest partnership we've got.
That's fantastic. No, that's brilliant. Thank you very much. It's great. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. That's all time we had for today's questions. Thank you, everyone. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Matthew Moulding, CEO, for any additional or closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thank you very much, everybody. We are pleased. I've done a LinkedIn post just to thank everybody in terms of the effort that's gone into last year. We are pleased with the results, and we look forward to updating you on Q1 in the next couple of weeks as well. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.