Thank you for joining us this morning for THG's financial year 2021 results presentation. I'm Matthew Moulding, Chief Executive of THG, and with me are John Gallemore, Group Chief Financial Officer, Rachel Horsefield, CEO of THG Beauty, Lucy Gorman, CEO of THG Nutrition, Hannah Pym, MD of Ingenuity Commerce, and Adam Knappy, our Chief Marketing Officer. 2021 marked our first full year as a public company, and I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to all THG colleagues for their dedication and hard work in helping us achieve such strong growth in the year. We have scaled revenue and expanded our business model well ahead of targets given at the time of our IPO back in September 2020, and are well placed to manage the inflationary pressures and effects of the pandemic on global supply chains thanks to our investment in automation.
We continue to evolve and operate to the highest standards of corporate governance and were delighted to announce last month that Charles Allen, Lord Allen of Kensington CBE, had joined THG as independent non-exec Chair. Charles has extensive boardroom experience across a range of sectors and chaired many similar large, successful dynamic companies. As I said in my statement at the time, I'm particularly pleased to have Charles work with me on delivering the group's ambitious growth plans. This morning I will take you through a brief overview of the year before handing over to John, who will talk you through the financials in more detail. The divisional CEOs will then take you through their respective highlights before I will summarize our trading update for the first quarter of financial year 2022, and our expectations and priorities for the full year and beyond.
At the end of the presentation, we would be delighted to answer any questions you have. 2021 was a pivotal year for online commerce globally, with changes evident right across our business and key markets as consumers and brands increasingly adopt digital ways of engaging. The pandemic has changed the way business is conducted and consumers behave, creating opportunities for us to invest in support of our strategic growth ambitions. We invested across our entire business. In our infrastructure through the completion of our state-of-the-art Icon Technology campus in Manchester. In our Ingenuity platform by expanding our global distribution network and delivering key functionality. In our global footprint through the acquisition of Dermstore to accelerate U.S. growth, and most importantly, in our people, where we welcomed around 3,000 employees to the group.
We delivered a record financial performance with group revenue of GBP 2.2 billion, an increase of 38% on 2020, and an almost doubling of group revenues on a two-year basis. I am incredibly grateful to all THG colleagues for their hard work and dedication in helping us achieve such strong growth in the year. That growth was broad-based, with all divisions delivering organic growth against challenging comparatives. Our largest division, THG Beauty, was up 51% year-on-year, including contributions from our recent acquisitions, Dermstore, Bentley and Cult Beauty. In our Nutrition division, we continue to innovate the brand and product offering in each territory. The delivery of 21% growth in the year was supported by enhanced in-house development and production capabilities through investment in the supply chain, most notably in drinks and bar manufacturing capabilities, as well as bringing in-house flavoring capabilities.
Revenue from returning beauty and nutrition customers represented around 80% of sales in the financial year, with influencer-led digital marketing delivering high return on investment. Our Ingenuity Commerce business continued to perform strongly with year-on-year revenues up 135% and nearly 100 new sites added to the platform from a growing client base across a range of different verticals. Group gross margin was broadly stable at 44.7%, and the group delivered adjusted EBITDA of GBP 161 million, which was up 7% on the previous year.
We retain a focus on cost discipline while maintaining our strategy of investing for growth and continue to benefit from a healthy liquidity position with cash on hand of over GBP 530 million, plus an undrawn RCF of GBP 170 million, giving the group available funds of GBP 700 million. In terms of operational and strategic highlights, we saw a strong growth in customers. We expanded our offering in the important U.S. market with the acquisition of Dermstore, the leading U.S. pure play online prestige and professional skincare business. The U.S. now represents almost 20% of group revenues, and we remain confident in the opportunity for growth across both beauty and nutrition. Finally, our goal as well as being a fast-growing business is to be a great place to work.
We were pleased to be recognized as one of the best companies, top 25 best big companies to work for in 2021. Given the size of the beauty, wellness, and technology markets in which we operate, we see huge opportunities to keep investing for growth. Demand in our high-growth markets remains strong, and we have observed new and existing customer behavior metrics consistent with the pre-pandemic environment, such as stable average order values and high customer repeat rates. THG Beauty, the global number one pure-play online prestige beauty retailer, has a compelling track record of growth. Likewise, THG Nutrition, the world's largest online D2C sports nutrition brand, grew its active customers from 6.3 million- 7.2 million around the globe.
Availability, continuity, and breadth of range, coupled with our frictionless Ingenuity online retailing environment, are key factors in the high repeat order rates and increased AOVs. E-commerce remains a winning channel with increased convenience due to enhanced delivery and fulfillment infrastructure, increased product and category range, and deeper engagement with brands selling direct to consumer. We are confident in our strategy of putting the consumer first and focusing on top-line sales growth. As a group, we are committed to implementing the highest standards of sustainability throughout our organization and beyond. We recently launched our 2030 sustainability strategy, THG x Planet Earth, which focuses on three key priorities which we believe will drive long-term value. These are protecting climate and nature, strengthening our supply chain and circularity, and empowering people and communities.
As a sign of our commitment, we were proud to become a member of the Business Ambition for 1.5 Degree Campaign during 2021 and signed a letter of commitment to set net zero science-based targets, which we will be publishing this year in 2022. We also acquired two plastic recycling companies and recycled 20,000 tons in 2021, something that is integral to achieving our circularity goals and reducing the use of virgin plastics. We will use our capabilities to help consumers live sustainably and provide solutions to our clients' sustainability challenges.
Through developing our THG Eco proposition, we can support suppliers and partners to deliver their own sustainability goals, and we have already made strong progress by planting more than 830,000 trees in 2021 via our tree-selling platform, More Trees, and establishing a net zero consultancy service, supporting suppliers and clients to measure their carbon footprints and set net zero targets. While we have our sights set on the year 2030 for the majority of our milestone targets, we will do our best to achieve more and work in partnership with others to accelerate the pace of positive change. We are committed to using our global scale and dedication to innovation to act as a force for good.
Most recently, our HR teams have worked around the clock to provide physical and mental health support to our Ukrainian colleagues around the world, and our security teams have helped to safely relocate some of our colleagues and their families who made the difficult decision to leave their homes in Ukraine. We are also continuing to support our Ukrainian colleagues here in the U.K., including assisting those who are making arrangements for their loved ones to join them as soon as they are able to do so. While the protection and safety of our colleagues has been our top priority, we know that urgent support is needed beyond our immediate network. We have been liaising with national and international partners to determine the best way we can help them provide practical support.
To date, GBP 1.2 million in product donations has been made available from our warehouse in Poland to support those affected by the conflict. We have worked with our local partners and charity organizations to distribute essential items such as food, clothing, and hygiene products to the areas in greatest need. The macro events continue to create a challenging environment, and the executive leadership team have led their talented teams to deliver exceptional results. THG fosters an environment built on the foundations of teamwork, integrity, diligence, and excellence. I would like to thank all colleagues for their continued contributions to the group and welcome all new starters to join us in achieving our ambitions. Our vision remains unchanged. THG Beauty and THG Nutrition are focused on becoming the undisputed digital leaders in their categories.
In THG Ingenuity, we aim to build the leading technology platform for the enterprise market, powering digital transformation for brands globally. The management team, with our board's full support, remain wholly focused on delivering our strategic growth plans in 2022 to drive shareholder value. I'll now hand over to John to talk through the financial performance in more detail.
THG is comprised of four key businesses, Beauty, Nutrition, On-Demand, and Ingenuity. All of which grew strongly in the year, notwithstanding the challenging comparable period. On a two-year basis, the group delivered 95% sales growth with organic growth of over 50% over the same period, ahead of medium-term guidance. We have been evolving fast for over a decade, and the last year was no different. We announced the separation of our businesses and consequently, there will be changes in the way we present the business moving forward. As Matt highlighted earlier, we are pleased to report a strong financial performance across the group with record levels of revenue, gross profit and EBITDA. Growth has been broad-based across all divisions and key geographies. It's particularly pleasing to deliver such strong growth in our most mature markets, coupled with accelerating performance in less mature international territories.
Turning to the profit and loss account, we are pleased to report revenue growth of 38% on a constant currency basis, reflecting strong demand in core markets. This is particularly encouraging given tough comparatives, and we delivered over 50% two-year organic growth in both beauty and nutrition. We reported a record gross profit with stable margins despite the ongoing global supply chain challenges, commodity and FX headwinds. Our direct-to-consumer model enables us to flexibly respond to changing market conditions. Distribution costs decreased 70 basis points year on year to 16.9% of sales, reflecting the automation investment in THG's global fulfillment network and ongoing network localization. In FY 2021, this included investment in THG's first automated facility in Manchester, which is around 30% more efficient than an equivalent manual warehouse. We also added six new warehouse facilities to our network.
With the global infrastructure we've built, helping us deliver faster for our clients and customers and at a lower cost. Investment in automated facilities helped us manage the widely reported labor wage inflation challenges as our administrative costs rose as a proportion of sales. We have created thousands of new jobs to deliver and consolidate on the 95% two-year sales growth that we've delivered. This investment will provide a platform for the next phase of our growth. Operating leverage on payroll costs is expected in the current financial year and beyond. Adjusted EBITDA rose 7% year-over-year to GBP 161 million. The margin movement principally arose from the short-term dilutionary impact of the Dermstore acquisition. In addition to FX, commodity costs principally whey and freight costs, which saw a marked acceleration in the second half of the year.
Almost 60% of THG sales are international, which drives foreign currency exposure. We naturally hedge this where we can, matching supplier payments to receipts such as on the U.S. dollar. Forward currency contracts are used where the group hasn't created a natural hedge to manage the risk. This is the case for Japanese yen and other Asian currencies, which have continued to weaken against sterling over the last 24 months. Over the medium term, we have the opportunity to localize supply into Asia following the roadmap we've successfully completed in both Europe and the U.S.
Cash adjusting items amounted to around GBP 70 million, and mainly relates to commissioning purpose-built new fulfillment facilities, including Manchester, Melbourne and New Jersey, as well as the closure of acquired facilities as well as international final mile delivery costs, predominantly in Asia, where costs remain elevated due to the absence of traditional delivery routes such as commercial flights and the closure of key shipping lanes. Elevated inbound freight costs are absorbed within adjusted EBITDA. The group has also incurred professional fees associated with the acquisitions completed in the year and restructuring costs out of the separation of our key trading divisions. Ahead of our planned separation, we have considered how the changing shape of the group is reflected in our cash generating units. Non-cash impairments relating to goodwill in some legacy non-core acquisitions have therefore been recognized. There were no impairments identified within Beauty, Nutrition, or Ingenuity.
We closed 2021 with a net cash position of GBP 44 million, with strong liquidity available through cash on hand of GBP 537 million, plus the additional GBP 170 million undrawn revolving credit facility. Cash conversion over the historical period has been around 100% for the direct-to-consumer businesses. Uncertainty in global supply chains has led the group to holding more stock during the year to ensure availability of key products, combined with working capital investment in the material beauty acquisitions. We expect to see a return to normalized trading during this year for the beauty and nutrition divisions, with Ingenuity expected to be working capital negative due to the high growth of the commerce element. Key working capital ratios are closely aligned to prior year periods.
Stock days have been historically maintained at circa 120 days, with an elevation towards the end of the year to hedge against supply chain disruption and support the global warehouse expansion in addition to acquisition integrations. As outlined at the IPO, capital expenditure as a percentage of sales is expected to reduce from elevated levels of over 10% of revenue in recent periods to a target of 5.5%-6% in the medium term. The recent elevation is reflective of the investment in the global fulfillment network, though CapEx was slightly lower than forecast. Despite the fact that we've already delivered an additional 2 million sq ft of fulfillment space against our plan of 3.6 million sq ft.
This has already increased our fulfillment capacity to nearly GBP 14 billion of GMV. The group will generate leverage on CapEx through utilizing its technology across an increasing number of brands and territory websites with material future capacity in the network now to support medium-term sales guidance. We ended the year in a net cash position with cash on hand of over GBP 535 million and additional undrawn facilities of GBP 170 million. This provides an incredibly strong liquidity position for THG to continue to pursue all of our growth ambitions. I'll now hand over to our divisional CEOs, who will take you through a deeper dive into our divisional performance.
THG Beauty is a leading digital-first brand owner, retailer, and manufacturer in the prestige beauty market. We have a consistent track record of growing at a faster rate than the overall online market. 12 months ago, we laid out our plans to be globally recognized as the beauty industry's digital strategist at the center of conversations with both large and cult beauty brands. In 2021, we continued to accelerate these plans with further investment in the U.K. and the U.S. to complement the continued growth of Lookfantastic, which is the U.K.'s number one online multi-brand retailer. Revenue growth in the year was over 50%, and we saw positive growth in active customers, average order values, and brand partners across our global retail destinations. During the pandemic, we saw accelerated growth as consumers increasingly purchased online and brands invested in their online proposition.
We're encouraged to see growth in revenue from returning customers, together with a growing community of beauty enthusiasts engaging with our app and social media channels. Lookfantastic has leading awareness and double the conversion ratios of competitors in the U,K. Through our apps, we've increased the circulation of our digital magazine, The Highlight, with 30% of customers who receive the digital magazine returning and purchasing within 60 days. Further evolving our beauty community, in quarter four, Lookfantastic was invited as one of the first beauty retailers to adopt TikTok Shop. This presents an opportunity to grow our customer base and be at the forefront of new and emerging social commerce technology through a mixture of video links and live streaming with creators and affiliates. The THG Beauty ecosystem is a unique asset operating in the highly attractive online prestige beauty market.
Through our business, we engage with brands not only as a retailer and fellow brand owner, but also as a technology partner that can internationalize brands online through both Lookfantastic and Ingenuity Commerce, supporting them with their digital growth. Furthermore, THG Beauty is both a product developer and manufacturer, and we extended our capabilities last summer through investment in U.S.-based Bentley Laboratories. Complementing our U.K. BRC-A grade facilities, Bentley's expertise in prestige skincare and haircare products enhances our vertically integrated operating model with in-house MPD and production delivered through THG LABS across both the U.S. and the U.K. THG LABS has more than 75 third-party clients, and we're able to leverage the best-in-class production, development, and innovation teams to oversee the future development and brand positioning of THG's own beauty brands.
We combine all of this with data insights from THG Ingenuity platform to deliver highly targeted new product development across the brand portfolio. We will continue to see the benefit of margin enhancement as we continue to move manufacturing in-house for our own skin and haircare brands, including the most recent addition to our brand family, Perricone MD. This also significantly increases our speed to market when launching new products. THG Beauty plays in the GBP 100 billion global prestige beauty market and is the digital pure-play leader. The online beauty and skincare sector, in particular, is growing at pace with emerging brands rapidly gaining share in prestige beauty. We're well-positioned to support emerging brands entering this market. Through product discovery and our beauty box business, we can support both market entry along with international growth using the data insights from our global customer base.
To further strengthen our U.S. proposition, in early 2021, we completed the acquisition of Dermstore, cementing our foothold within prestige and professional skin and haircare categories through curated expert-driven content and a focused product assortment. Dermstore had already established itself as the skincare authority in the U.S. As part of THG Beauty and following the migration to the Ingenuity platform, we're now leveraging our brand partnerships and customer insights to further enhance the brand portfolio and also drive growth for our own brands. Through this increased U.S. presence, we have the opportunity to scale our beauty box business, which serves as a customer gateway to drive brand and customer loyalty. During the year, we also acquired Cult Beauty, which holds a particularly strong heritage in emerging independent brands, which complements Lookfantastic's broader brand offering.
Cult Beauty are often the favored partner for indie brands as they act as an incubator for brands that may be constrained by limited marketing and distribution capabilities. It has a content-first approach and merchandising strategy designed to offer customers a curated mix of independent brands alongside the globally recognized ones. Cult Beauty's distinguished brand portfolio will retain a very clear identity within THG Beauty. In addition to elevating the group's presence in both the U.K. and U.S. online prestige beauty market, the Cult Beauty and Dermstore acquisitions provide additional revenue channels for THG's growing portfolio of own brands, including Perricone MD, ESPA, Christophe Robin, and Grow Gorgeous. Our BCO brand strategy is to acquire industry-leading brands and intellectual property, typically constrained by store-based retail channels and limited geographic reach.
Last year, we rolled out further localized international sites for our own brands as we progress our strategy of aligning them from B2B to D2C channels. Our approach to new own brand ranges is sustainability led with ingredients, packaging and production methods all in focus. Our Grow Gorgeous Sensitive range is made from recyclable packaging with over 60% of the plastic used in the new range manufactured from renewable sources. 2022 has started positively with double-digit sales growth on the challenging prior year comparable with a number of high-profile brands partnering with Lookfantastic to launch exciting new products. Average order values are growing, and we served over double the amount of active customers in the first quarter than we did two years ago. 2021 marked a pivotal year for the beauty industry and the acceleration of consumer spend into digital channels.
As brands now navigate this transition, we remain well-placed to drive our ambition to be the global digital partner of choice across the beauty industry.
2021 was an exciting year for THG Nutrition as we expanded our vertical integration to bring in-house key components of our product development and manufacturing, while continuing to scale our portfolio of leading digital brands. THG Nutrition comprises a predominantly direct-to-consumer health and wellness brand portfolio that includes the Myprotein family of brands. In recent years, we have utilized our in-house brand building and product innovation capabilities to continue to expand outside of our core sports nutrition category into a significantly larger addressable market that includes healthy snacking, vegan foods, vitamins, and athleisure. 2021 marked another successful year of executing this strategy, with sales growing 21% year-on-year to GBP 660 million, with growth underpinned by continued high repeat purchase rates and new customer acquisition. Product development is a key component of our fully vertically integrated model.
We were pleased to welcome Brighter Foods, an award-winning nutrition bar manufacturer to the group 12 months ago, which has further enhanced these capabilities. Powered by ingenuity and our direct-to-consumer model, Myprotein is able to leverage data insights from our expansive customer base, which directly inform new product development decisions across our brands. These unique data insights, combined with our best-in-class product development capabilities, enable us to serve our customers with innovative and highly targeted new products with a significantly reduced time to market, a true competitive advantage versus competitors that sell through non-direct channels and outsource product development and production. Over 200 new SKUs were launched for THG Nutrition brands in 2021, with these products principally developed and manufactured in-house through our network of global facilities.
We continue to expand Myprotein internationally through a local-first strategy, with vertical integration being key to developing products and flavors that appeal to local trends and tastes. Following recent acquisitions and investments, we have the capabilities to produce powders, bars, vitamins, drinks, flavors, and syrups ourselves, accounting for more than 80% of nutrition product revenue and SKU count, excluding clothing. In-house product development and manufacturing allows for enhanced margins and reduced development timelines with new product innovation informed by daily demand insights from our active customer base. By running the whole process in-house, the new product development timeline is shortened from up to 18 months to less than nine, and we can focus on enhancing the sustainable nature of our products from ingredients to packaging and processes.
This category innovation has supported retail listings for Myprotein bars, foods, and snacks in 3 of the U.K.'s largest grocers, alongside a successful and growing relationship with the Co-op, ensuring a strong presence within the U.K. convenience sector to complement our leading digital offering. New product development highlights in the year included the development of over 30 flavors at Claremont, our in-house flavor business, and a significantly enhanced ready-to-drink offering through our in-house facility, Berryman's. This growing ready-to-drink category delivered triple-digit growth for us in the last year. In Q4, less than six months after acquisition, we launched our first internally produced nutrition bar following the acquisition of Brighter Foods. The Impact Bar has been an immediate hit with our customers and has rapidly become one of our best-selling products.
THG Ingenuity continues to power the growth of Myprotein through over 50 localized websites that retail the brand directly to our global customer base. In addition, since 2020, we have enhanced our e-commerce model through the launch of Myprotein apps. Our Myprotein apps have proven highly successful since launch, with 13% of Myprotein online revenue in December 2021 being generated through the app.
In addition to becoming a material sales driver, our apps have also led to higher engagement with a 14% reduction in time between orders versus non-app channels. App users have an average of 7% higher AOV than our website users. Overall, we are extremely proud of the results delivered by the team in 2021 under some challenging macro conditions. We delivered constant currency sales growth in line with medium term guidance despite the strong comparative results from 2020. We began in-person events again with our customers and influencers to engage with our growing global community, and we partnered with a number of retailers to support growth in our convenience and on-the-go snacking ranges. So far in 2022, we have started the year in a strong position in our core markets with growth across all major territories, including U.K., Asia and the U.S.
Apparel continues to be a high growth category, and we are pleased to deliver encouraging growth across our core Myprotein and Myvegan range. We have grown our active customer base in the first quarter against the prior year, with average order values and repeat rates remaining stable. Looking forward, we will continue to invest in infrastructure, supply chain and people across Asia, India and the Middle East to elevate customer experience and to help us achieve the goal of becoming the number one sports nutrition brand in each of these territories. We also have a jam-packed innovation pipeline featuring some of our tastiest bars yet and a world first vitamin format, alongside the continued expansion of in-house capabilities in the snacking and bakery category.
The past 12 months have been significant for THG Ingenuity Commerce, with revenue growth of over 135% year-on-year and a two-year growth rate of over 500%. Around 100 new solutions have been launched on the platform across a broad range of sectors and many geographies, including the U.S., Germany, China and Australia. Commerce revenues are highly recurring due to the nature of the long-term contracts with clients benefiting from access to the technology platform, world-class fulfillment and brand building expertise. Non-recurring revenues represent one-off costs for clients such as the site build fees or strategic consultancy. However, these costs recur every time a new client onboards, so are recurring in nature for THG.
In the near term, we expect recurring revenues to account for 60% of total commerce revenues as non-recurring revenue remains elevated due to the growth in new clients and pace of new site launches. During the fourth quarter, we observed an elevated level of recurring revenue due to the high GMV volumes processed around the peak trading period. Ingenuity is completely unique in that the same technology and operations that drive the growth of our Ingenuity partners also powers the growth and success of our own brands. As a result, any developments, enhancements we make to our technology, our operations, digital or data solutions automatically benefits our clients too. One of the key reasons clients choose Ingenuity is that we make the complex simple. We work with a growing high quality portfolio of brands who value a partner with deep expertise in scaling international brands.
At the heart of Ingenuity is our global infrastructure network, comprising product development and manufacturing facilities, warehousing and fulfillment sites, data centers and content creation studios. Through these facilities, we're able to service customers across the world with a constant focus on optimizing efficiencies to get products to consumers quickly and profitably. As consumers more frequently choose to shop online, e-commerce brands must ensure their warehouse capacity and capabilities can match such demand growth. Not only are higher volumes of orders needing to be processed, but expectations for timely deliveries are also raised, with over half of global buyers today stating that delivery times influence purchase decisions. We are now well progressed through our global rollout program, which will see GMV capacity extended significantly. This future-proofs growth for our own brands and Ingenuity clients, while ensuring the demands of the peak trading periods can be met comfortably.
As part of the expansion, we have extended our major European hub in Poland. In addition to the opening of a brand new site in Melbourne, which has reduced delivery time to three days from 10 based on shipping goods from the U.K. Our next major automation project will be in our New Jersey warehouse, which will further enhance our customer proposition in addition to benefiting our overall network by reducing cost per unit. Our knowledge and experience in executing large scale projects helps us scale capacity at pace, while significantly delivering sales growth with minimal impact. In September, we dispatched our first order from our Icon U.K. automated warehouse, combining our proprietary warehouse management software, Voyager, with AutoStore technology.
The site launch and inventory building was achieved through transferring over 12 million units between our existing U.K. distribution center, Omega, in the space of just five weeks, a highly ambitious project to complete in time for peak trading. The entire solution and build and commission project was completed in just five months from initial access to the building to first order dispatch. This automated storage and retrieval system has the capability to process 500,000 units a day, simplifying and automating elements of traditional manual processes such as selection, delivery, picking and packing. In addition, through the combination with Voyager and demand planning tools, our operational data scientists have delivered substantial ongoing optimization of the technologies, resulting in meaningful ongoing cost reductions. As you can see, the grid is 69 ports, 256 robots, and 300,000 totes stacked 16 high on top of each other.
The robots are continuously assigned tasks and will always get the closest task at hand with the shortest route in order to save time and energy. The system is also highly reliable and has led to meaningful reductions in pick costs per unit. The facility now not only serves Lookfantastic, but also a number of Ingenuity clients, and most recently, we consolidated our London Cult Beauty warehouse in just a matter of weeks. In response to growing demand, we are increasingly identifying opportunities to commercialize Ingenuity's fulfillment services to new and existing commerce clients and as a standalone solution, as consumers and brands are increasingly faced with rising shipping and fulfillment costs and shortages of capacity. Necessity has driven our innovation. Solutions developed internally that are now available to clients include Voyager. That's our proprietary SaaS solution that can integrate to third-party warehouses.
One particular use case is a major beverage brand owner who has expanded the capability of its bonded B2B warehouse to now fully service its direct-to-consumer requirements. This solution can scale with any client as it does within THG, operating a range of facilities from 50,000 through to 850,000 sq ft, fully automated sites. Ingenuity Fulfillment Services operates as a standard 3PL fulfillment solution, but one which accesses our global infrastructure and carrier network, taking advantage of investments in automation. THG Delivered is our cross-border, fully managed delivery service. Upstream, this includes our headless checkout tech. That's our award-winning proprietary fraud screening tool, and this has access downstream to our fulfillment network and our carrier library, including label print, branded delivery communications, and fully managed customer service follow-up.
Having established and scaled THG's own brands, such as Lookfantastic and Myprotein, as well as Ingenuity clients, the group has seen firsthand the warehousing challenges growing brands face today. This experience has enabled THG Ingenuity to create automated warehouse solutions to enhance time and cost efficiencies in e-commerce order fulfillment. Ingenuity recently announced a partnership with leaders in warehouse robotics technology, AutoStore. The solution combines our warehouse management system, Voyager, with AutoStore's AS/RS warehouse grid and robotics order fulfillment technology, bringing together first, that being our fulfillment inventory retrieval system technology as a solution for e-commerce retailers and global brands. Warehouse automation is moving at pace, but typically, solutions are capital-intensive, comprising a complex collection of partners, consequently slow to execute with high failure rate, leaving the brand owner or retailer a solution that they are unable to optimize with no ownership from the provider.
THG Ingenuity can also work alongside retailers and brands to identify a suitable solution, but more importantly, take ownership from the design through to build, commissioning, and subsequent optimization of the solution. We are well-positioned to further build our technology and operating ecosystem, supported by our digital brand services. 2022 priorities include expanding partnerships through international growth, fulfillment, and manufacturing. Our end-to-end capability brings us closer to our customers and ensure the models captures a greater share of the customer's digital spend than any other e-commerce platform.
Action. Hi, I'm George. I'm a THG Studios apprentice, and for National Apprenticeship Week 2022, I made this video.
Critical to sustaining profitable sales growth is the ability to provide high-quality user experiences to support our customer acquisition and retention strategy. Lucy highlighted earlier the positive customer behavior metrics exhibited by our app users. The customers return quicker to make a repeat purchase, and on average, spend more with us. Apps are a proven way to engage with our global communities across our nutrition and beauty division, where tailored content created in-house can be used to support new product launches and brand campaigns. While the proportion of revenue generated from our app customers continues to grow, more broadly, we have made a lot of progress across our marketing ecosystem, an important component of which is THG Society, our established influencer marketing platform. In September, we opened Icon Studios, housing our creative talent, producing digitally enabled content for THG brands and Ingenuity clients alike.
Our state-of-the-art studios enables additional content creation opportunities for our influencers, supporting our ambition to become a leader in the influencer marketing space. We finished the year with over 32,000 influencers on the platform, an increase of 68% year-over-year.
THG Society also acts as an agency to a growing list of third-party brands, including many retail, beauty, and fashion partners, connecting them together with relevant creators to produce engaging campaigns. Brands highly value the opportunity to connect with the right influencer to create commerce-focused content and importantly, track activity and results. We remain excellently positioned as a technology owner, capturing first-party data to have the ability to rapidly react and diversify our marketing investments while continuing to expand into new and disruptive channels. Our continuous focus is to further drive traffic and marketing efficiency for our own brands and to leverage our digital marketing expertise to support the growth of our Ingenuity clients and brand partners alike. We're pleased to see new Ingenuity marketing technology partners complement our platform offering throughout the year, further enhancing our capabilities to provide customers with rich and engaging digital experiences.
While paid media has seen inflationary rises in cost per click and impressions post the pandemic, we've been able to navigate through these challenging markets to maintain efficiency by focusing predominantly on digital activity and applying a data-rich approach. We then optimize the key marketing performance indicators, so we're able to maximize our return on investments. Alongside THG Society and Precision, THG Media is one of our exciting emerging THG Ingenuity services, driving revenue growth as we further commercialize our in-house creative expertise. Retail media is about finding the right marketing solution for our brand partners. This could include creating bespoke moments to drive brand awareness, improving conversion, or to simply increase brand loyalty on or around the point of purchase with consumers.
We've successfully grown this revenue channel and expanded the product offering with the launch of sponsored ads on list pages, our own brand digital magazines, and app placement opportunities, giving retail brand partners further ways of connecting effectively to their customers. While THG Media offers a high margin incremental revenue opportunity, we will continue to broaden and develop our marketing ecosystem for the benefit of our brands and external clients, leveraging our digital brand building expertise and state-of-the-art content creation studios.
The first quarter of 2022 saw encouraging consumer demand levels against the most challenging comparable period of the prior year, coupled with unprecedented inflationary pressures on consumer spending. I am therefore delighted to see the group deliver 17% growth during the quarter.
Despite difficult macroeconomic factors likely to negatively impact global consumers through 2022, we expect to deliver continued growth across all our divisions in the year ahead and reiterate our full year 2022 revenue guidance of 22%-25%. As a reminder, this guidance is before the impact of sales to Russia and the Ukraine, which account for around 1%. Through our D2C model, we have significant pricing power given our leadership positions in high repeat, large and defensive markets. We are consciously mitigating the impact of environmental cost inflation on our consumers through our vertically integrated business model, in particular through investment in automation.
Our ongoing automation, vertical integration and cost-saving actions will help to offset some of the macro pressures, and we remain committed to protecting the integrity of our brands by playing our part in shielding consumers from some of these short-term inflationary pressures. The investments we have made over the past year in talent, technology and infrastructure provide operational leverage for the group to confidently rebuild towards recently adjusted EBITDA margins of around 9% over the medium term. Our medium-term margin confidence is supported by the transitory nature of a meaningful proportion of the cost inflation pressures. As we have highlighted today, we are well progressed through our accelerated expansionary investment in our global fulfillment network. Therefore, capital expenditure as a proportion of sales remains on track to reduce to around 6% over the medium term.
To conclude, at the beginning of 2021, we shared our vision to advance our strategy supported by investment in talent, infrastructure and targeted M&A. We are incredibly proud to have delivered a record revenue performance for the year with broad-based growth across all divisions. On a two-year basis, we have nearly doubled the size of the business. THG has a long history of delivering consistent and profitable growth both organically and through M&A. 2021 was an elevated year for M&A as value accretive opportunities presented themselves, which enabled the group to accelerate its growth ambitions, particularly in the U.S. In the medium term, strategic acquisitions will continue to play a role in augmenting these key drivers. We have a robust balance sheet and strong liquidity, and we are responding to the well-publicized inflationary environment with cost discipline, pricing reviews and targeted investment to further automate the business.
We are making long-term strategic decisions for THG as we recognize the enormous opportunity that the structural shift to online e-commerce will bring. As I outlined earlier, our vision has not changed. The investment that we have made in our global manufacturing, fulfillment and distribution network provides capacity and capabilities to continue to build leading positions in our core markets across beauty, nutrition and technology. The management team, with the board's full support, remain wholly focused on delivering our strategic growth plans for 2022 and the longer term. Thank you for joining us this morning. We would now be pleased to answer any questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question today, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question now from Guido Lucarelli from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three, if I may, all related to the Beauty division. You seem to have had a good start to the year in Q1, especially if we compare to the last two year comps, which were quite high. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on the trends by category, skincare, makeup, fragrances, any difference there or any difference in the trend by region? How does your performance compare to the market, please? Secondly, on Beauty, I think in the past you spoke about the possibility to separate this business. I was wondering, what's the plan there, if you can share with us any update on this.
Lastly, how do you see the long-term strategic distribution for this market? I'm speaking with particular reference to the e-concession. Are you at all open to the possibility to start selling on any concession basis on your platform? Thank you.
Certainly, yeah. I'll kick off with point one, if I may, and just talk to some of the trends that we've been seeing within the beauty category within the first quarter of this year. You're very right in observing that the world was a very different place in quarter one last year with us being in lockdown. We have observed some shifts in consumer behavior with regards to the categories that we're seeing people purchase into. This year we've definitely seen a return into cosmetics being much stronger for us year on year, than it was with people being in lockdown. That being said, skincare still remains a very prominent category for us. The regimes that people have built during lockdown don't seem to have gone away.
We're definitely seeing more of a focus as customers play into more of that fresh-skinned face, minimalistic look, makeup approach, as they've returned to offices and back out into the world this year. We've also seen phenomenal growth continue through the first quarter into our fragrance category. Some of this being driven by the new brand partnerships we added to the site at the back end of last year. That continues to perform very well for us through events like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day. We're seeing encouraging results there. I think one of the key things we'd call out here is just the speed at which we're able to capture data as those consumer needs change as we move through these periods, really allows us to adapt and play to our strengths.
Working with over 1,300 different beauty brands across the globe, we're very balanced across skincare, hair care, cosmetics, and fragrance. We're really able to serve all of those customers' beauty needs, and we see that reflected in the consistent improvements we continue to see in average order values.
In terms of the second question around our plans around beauty, obviously with the more recent appointment of Charles, myself and Charles are just taking the opportunity of you know, taking a broader view on the various things that the opportunities that we have in front of us. For now, you know, I would wait until the outcome of that. What was the third question?
Concession.
Concessions. Yeah.
Selling products on a concession basis.
Yeah. We work with the majority of our suppliers in partnership. We raise orders on a weekly basis, and we're holding stock in our warehouses for them. The reason that we do that is it prevents split shipments for the consumer, giving them ease. Our average consumer's purchasing on average four products across three different categories and at least two different brands at any one time. Being able to receive those products in one order not only is more convenient for the customer, but certainly better for the planet as we focus on our sustainability strategy. There are a number of brands that we work with globally. We see benefits there as well with being able to hold that stock, certainly with the disruption that we've seen within supply chains at the start of the year.
We can work with brands on concession, but for the majority of our brand partners who are looking to navigate this transition now from bricks and mortar into digital, the challenges they often face is how to serve that customer on a direct basis, which is why we're a key partner in helping them alleviate some of the challenges that they see within their supply chain from that side.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas Exane.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got sort of three different topics, if I may please. The first one on Ingenuity Commerce. You've obviously maintained the year ahead guidance, GBP 108 million-GBP 112 million, which kind of implies an acceleration, at least in percentage terms, from the growth you reported in Q1. I saw there was also a sort of what appears to be a drop in recurring revenue per site. Can you just talk about the dynamics of that, whether it's a sort of a phasing effect or how we should think about the evolution and how much of that is in the bag, as it were, with respect to contracted revenues already? Thank you.
Yeah, sure. The key first point to talk about, which I guess you don't have visibility on, but we do, is it's just the quality of our pipeline as we focus on enterprise-type clients. You will note that at the start of the quarter, Matalan did announce that they'll be embarking on a strategic partnership with us, but there will be more to come in terms of high-scale GMV clients and not just U.K.-based. What we see is real evidence of a growing enterprise customer base. I think it's worth also reflecting on the journey over the last 18 months. Last year we delivered over GBP 45 million of revenue, which grew at 135%. The two-year growth rate is over 500%. The full Ingenuity division, which includes other services we provide, such as fulfillment, is now...
was just short of GBP 200 million, growing at 43%. I think in terms of the quality of the pipeline is then reinforced by the number of clients that we now have. At the end of the quarter, we've got 200, which compares to 60 in January 2021 and 140 in September 2021. The client base has grown by 43% over the past six months. That's across a broad range of services that we're now providing. It's worth also reinforcing that in the last year, we've launched e-commerce propositions in 48 different territories with 15 more new territories in the build roadmap. We've got very broad international reach. Nearly 80% of the propositions we launch are in the G10 high-demand countries.
Given the complexity of the services we're providing, our average revenue per client remains over GBP 500,000. I think a key point to make is the new revenue streams that we're now opening up to support the core e-commerce proposition. There's huge untapped potential in strategic partnerships. This is where we work with the payment providers, the marketing tech, to bring those onto the platform. There's big monetary opportunities there. We've been growing out the digital proposition across not just marketing and trading, but also content solutions. Adam touched on it in the reel, but remind you that last year we launched Europe's largest state-of-the-art content production facility here at the tech center in Manchester.
In that facility alone, we introduced eight new clients in the last quarter, including the world's most preeminent football star, which just, I think, underlines the quality of that site. Again, we touched it in the show reel that we commissioned 2 million sq ft of additional fulfillment capacity over the past 18 months, including the automated facility in Manchester, which does actually service 190 territories. I think we're fairly unique. Well, we are unique at the moment as an e-commerce business, and we've got substantial surplus capacity in fulfillment, having the capacity to deliver nearly GBP 14 billion of GMV. As well as with the automation, our costs are now falling in that area. Within our facilities, we have 153 clients now taking fulfillment services, most of whom are actually taking the full stack from us.
In the first quarter, we commissioned a new fulfillment center in Melbourne, a new one in New Jersey, into which automation will go in the second half of the year. In the latter half of last year, we commissioned a new site in Dubai, as well as supporting the one we've got in India. We've got great global reach in our fulfillment capability to support our e-commerce clients. In the last quarter, we moved 11 Ingenuity clients into the new automated solution, delivering savings in excess of 30% across that. In terms of the types of contracts, just to come round to that. In the first quarter, the average year one contract value of new clients delivered was 10% higher than a year ago.
We now have five of the world's top 10 largest food and beverage FMCGs in our books, having delivered 2 more in the last quarter.
I think the summary is we've got a growing client base, we've got growing revenue streams, and we've got a great pipeline, which gives us that confidence to deliver the numbers that we guide to this year.
That's fantastic detail. Thank you very much, Matt. The second topic I was interested in is a reflection on the margin pressures that you're obviously flagging are even greater than you perhaps anticipated in January. Can you just remind us, 'cause obviously you do a degree of commodity hedging, forward buying and so forth, particularly of whey. At what point does that stop becoming a headwind year over year? You know, and is your assumption based upon expecting prices to be dropping through this year or just not going up any further?
Sorry, yeah, I'll take that. It's Matt. Look, quite clearly through, you know, there was a rapid increase happened, probably in early Q4 last year. It's then continued to rise as everyone will have seen reported, hitting record levels. What I would say is obviously as you then get through to the second half of this year, you start to almost annualize that rapid ascent in pricing that happened back then. In terms of what we're currently seeing, you know, for the first time in over six months, the price of our sweet whey protein has fallen in a week. That has happened at last.
We have seen some very strong signals elsewhere in the dairy industry, and we've also seen some strong signals in the U.S. as well. It's just been a bit later that those price falls coming to the U.K. That's a really positive sign. Obviously, you know, we'd like to see them come down a bit further from here. But you know, the answer to your question is the second half of the year. You start to annualize that, and you know, with the fair wind, if commodities become a more normalized place, then that will become an incredible tailwind for us.
Great. My final, hopefully brief question is, just on the adjusting items charges, I know that you flagged that some of the restructuring will continue in the year ahead, but I just wondered at this stage, how much in total you anticipate those, all of those costs, that you eliminate from EBITDA to be in 2022.
It's a broad hardening, isn't it, Matt Rothwell, your revenue?
We're expecting about GBP 60 million in, be reducing in aggregate, but the cash we're expecting to be broadly comparable. You've got the separation costs. Obviously, the separation gives us huge strategic optionality, and that'll be a big win for us in the year ahead as a group. We have the continuation of the rollout of the global warehouse operations. Obviously, as John's touched on, over halfway through that program now, so that's substantially getting there and giving us huge opportunities with the scale of automation that's providing. We then got obviously in Asia, you've seen further lockdowns, and there's that final mile courier isn't yet normalizing. So we just, we're including in our guidance at the moment on adjusting items that that carries on for the full year ahead.
We'd obviously hope that if that normalizes sooner, there'll be some upside to that, but we're just maintaining a prudent stance on that for now.
Just to clarify.
Thanks.
I do get the question, Charlie. It's all the inbound freight headwinds, those are all taken within adjusted EBITDA. It's only the final mile or the courier expense that we take as an adjusting item or the inbound freight, which has been a headwind and is starting to abate. That's within adjusted EBITDA.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go to our next question now from Roland French from Davy. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks and good morning, everybody. I've got three questions, my side, if I could. Just firstly on the EBITDA margin bridge, from 2021 into 2022, can you give us some color around the moving blocks there, i.e., potentially the gross impact away, any distribution movements, pricing efficiencies? I know you've called out some automation offsets, and then presumably there's some accretion from Ingenuity coming through. I guess help us with that framework. Then second, just stepping back a bit, just any insights around your views on elasticity, as it pertains to the different SKUs and formats in Myprotein in particular, i.e., do you expect consumers to trade more into powders away from snacking convenience, RTD, RTE, etc.
In context of beauty, your views on consumers potentially trading down from prestige. That's my second question on elasticity on the DTC platform. Thirdly, another broad question on Ingenuity, and I guess from the outside looking in, it appears that scaling that enterprise client list appears closely aligned with the growth in your sales count, your sales headcount. Maybe that points to more of a consultative sale. I guess the question is, over the last couple of months, have you been able to integrate any of the technology that allows your customers to more, I guess, from a kinda automagical self-service perspective, kinda scale that functions, i.e., scale sales in absence of scaling headcount? I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
Look, I think we'll start with the elasticity point first, just with the two divisions, if that's okay.
Yeah, of course. In terms of nutrition, I think it's worth adding that we are undoubtedly better positioned than most brands to operate an agile pricing strategy in the face of the inflation, being vertically integrated and direct to consumer. We have successfully pushed through a number of price rises over the last six months or so, and we do have the ability to react real-time to any data around elasticity on the products and the pricing.
Therefore, the pricing level that we're at now, we've seen relatively minimal drop-off in demand, so that's extremely encouraging. We have taken the decision to not pass on the full force of the inflation that we're seeing in whey in an attempt to continue to maintain and grow market share, and we're obviously sympathetic to consumer personal situations, economic situations. I should add that despite the current ongoing macro factors, we're extremely pleased with the results that we've delivered in Q1. The U.K. actually had a record quarter with sales growth of over 20%. I'd say that in the face of the inflation, the category has proved to be relatively inelastic.
In terms of the products driving the growth, we have seen a lot of consumers trade into more entry-level proteins and I guess trade out of our things like our pro range, certainly. Given where we set minimum spend thresholds for delivery and stuff, there are certain items where we're facing challenges that would've previously been basket add-ons, so things like nut butters and flapjacks. Other than that, across the board, we're seeing relatively encouraging growth.
Just on beauty, Roland, to give you some flavor there. As we've seen historically, beauty proves to be a fairly resilient category during times of recession or when there's pressure on the pound in that consumer's pocket. That being said, we're not seeing any shift, any fundamental shifts out of premiumization currently through what customers are purchasing on site. That being said, as we look forward, we're obviously quite well positioned with not only our category mix, but the number of brand partners that we're operating across to fulfill those beauty consumers' needs if and as they should change.
Hi, Roland. Steve here. I'll pick up on just how we think about that margin profile and the recovery picture. Set against the course, that very strong demand, you know, consistent demand picture and the comments that the team have made around shielding the consumer, you know, we do have that pricing power, but we are focusing in the near term, you know, at the expense of near-term profitability on building that customer base. It's an 80% of revenue annually comes from repeating customers, so it's the right asset to focus on. The way we, you know, we're very clear in our thought process is there's no fundamental change to the margin model. This is a 9%-10% EBITDA medium term business model.
The way we think about that recovery is if you look at the gross margin level, you know where we are today, everyone's thought clearly and consistently about the whey environment we've been in. Matt touched on the futures market in the U.S. several weeks ago, showed that some proxy indices for whey are now falling. That's double-digit falls. They are proxy indices in the U.S. That's now been replicated more recently in European proxy indices, so we'll see it coming through in our own types of WPC18, WPI, you know, in coming weeks, and that supports our view for the second half of the year. You've then got that momentum in the gross margin being supported by the revenue mix, increasing contribution from Ingenuity, which is at a higher margin. John's touched on the pipeline.
You know, Q1's always a softer period in any kind of tech sales environment. We see that momentum in gross margin really supporting the second half. There is a second half weighting to our EBITDA picture. That will of course support 2023 and 2024 at an operating cost level. You've then got to re-reflect on against that growing demand picture, very consistent. You've got a fully invested cost base. We're seeing significant operating leverage. If you think about the thousands of employees, you know, the 3,000+ employees that have been added in recent financial periods. You know, this cost base is fully invested today, and every single month that operating leverage comes through. John's touched on the GMV, investable cost base earlier on. There are areas where we've got non-transitory inflation like labor.
Obviously, we're seeing automation. We've already locked in those gains. We're putting more of the business. We heard about Cult going through automation, bringing those benefits, and you can see on a year-on-year basis that fulfillment costs are actually flat, which, you know, in this environment is a real testament to having locked in those kind of savings already. Your strong second half will carry very much into a full year 2023 and 2024, and that margin recovery to 9%-10% EBITDA.
Roland, just to come back on your final point then, it's John here. Which I think is just questioning the efficiency of the model as it scales with respect to headcount. I think to answer that, you've got to reflect upon the types of services that we're providing for clients and the, and the breadth of them. If you take in the first case, the technology that we provide, and most of our clients take an out-of-the-box e-commerce solution that is fully vertically integrated into the physical infrastructure, meaning fulfillment and delivery, and that's highly efficient for us to deliver. There are certain clients who want more of a solutions-driven solution, so we will devote more tech resource to that. That again brings with it different types of rewards.
I think the area where there is more perhaps labor involved and headcount involved are the digital solutions that we provide, such as trading and marketing content. That is particularly our IP in that we know how to build digital brands. That is our core expertise and that's our true differentiator. I think that's a, that's a product that we're highly proud of. I think if you then go downstream into other GMV touch points, such as transaction, payment, fulfillment, and final mile delivery that we manage for a vast majority of our clients, they're very low touch point. You know what? An item of of inventory will just fit into a warehouse alongside
You know, an item of nutritional beauty, and it's kind of seamless, so there is no additional cost driven by that. We've got substantial capacity to drive more of those sales. What we've spoken about there is more of the enterprise-type clients, that we are also developing more of an SMB-type offering, which would be seamless for us. The beauty of that is that the client will get the benefit of access to the technology at a different rate, perhaps, but then they will also get access to the fulfillment and delivery network as well. I think there are many different types of solutions that we're providing for clients, some which do involve resource, some of which don't. The balance reflected in the EBITDA margins remain very strong, particularly compared to other technology peers. Does that capture what you meant?
Yeah. That'd be good. Yeah, that's spot on. Thanks very much for that.
Thank you. We'll go to our next question now from Rob Joyce from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Three from me as well, I'm afraid. Just firstly on the cash side of things, I think, can you just confirm that implicit in your leverage target is that you expect to burn GBP 200 million or less cash in 2022? And can you tell us when you expect free cash flows to get to the break-even level? Second one is just on that GBP 14 billion capacity. It's that number really stood out versus revenue last year of just over GBP 2 billion. I wonder if you could just talk us through the thinking behind that level of capacity and whether we should expect a pretty material falloff in CapEx relatively soon on the back of that.
Then the final one is just on your comments, Matt, in the press release on indicative offers you've received. Can you maybe just help us understand what sort of parties they're coming from? Are they for the whole business? How far are they away from what you would consider fair value? Thanks very much.
All righty. Look, just for the sake of not bouncing around the room, you know, I'll try and answer all of those points, but Matt will come in and, you know, embarrass me where I'm wrong. On the cash generation, yes, we are expecting it to be below GBP 200 million worth of cash usage this year. That's a GBP 200 million CapEx sort of guidance for this year, which then should fall a bit into next year as well. We're expecting to be cash flow neutral next year at the free cash flow basis. Obviously, the operating cash flow, you know, we should be very cash generative, but with all of the other bits on top.
You know, next year we should be somewhere neutral with cash generation kicking in at the free cash flow level, there afterwards. That kind of gives you the feel for that. In terms of the second point on capacity, you know, yes. I think John's touched on it. It gives you an idea and a sense of some of the scale of opportunities that we have in the pipeline for Ingenuity. You know, these contracts take an awful long time. They don't just pop up when you get them over the line in a month. We have some very significant scale GMV-type contracts that we're working on.
At the same time, you know, you need this capacity on a global basis to be able to go into territories and do a very good job of it, so not only for ourselves but also for other clients. You will see CapEx, you know, slightly come down off the back of that. I think Matt has put some guidance out there to say, you know, it's somewhere around 5%-6% is where we'd expect sort of CapEx to be. You know, tech is a big element of that remaining CapEx, just to remind people. You know, our CapEx of, say, GBP 200 million, you know, that's quite a small CapEx really when you consider the tech development that we do across all these areas.
I think coming to your third point, you know, look, there's very tight guidelines as to what I'm allowed to say on these things. I guess what I can say is as follows, that coming into doing the results, we wanted to make sure as a board that we'd made our position clear and, you know, in some instances, you know, multiple bids, you know, ahead of coming onto this. You know, those bids are for the whole of the group. I can say that. You know, I can't really go into the detail of the parties, but let me just give, you know, some context, I guess, Rob.
You know, we IPO'd the business 18 months ago at GBP 5 a share, 15 times oversubscribed. As we sit here today, we've presented numbers that beat expectations, you know, that we set out at IPO across every division in every metric. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that, you know, where we are, that those kind of things, and it's certainly not to the board that these situations arise. I can't tell you to what level these numbers are off. You know, what I can say is, well, the world has changed out there, you know, maybe since 18 months ago, so you've got to take that into account.
You know, all I'm particularly focused on, you know, is the best for THG and our wider stakeholders. What we will look at is what environment is the best environment and share register to get the very best for THG. That's a really important point for us. It's all about the long-term success of this business. We're super proud of everything we've delivered and what we're very focused on is what is the best environment for this business. You know, we'll see what happens in the days, the weeks, the months ahead. You know, we put our heads down and we carry on and just keep focused on the business. You can see that in the Q1 numbers.
The Q1 numbers, I believe, against the wider market are, you know, incredibly strong when you compare the global lockdown comps that we had there. We just keep focused on that. The answers will become clear to myself and the board and everybody, you know, in the weeks and whatever ahead.
Thanks very much. Just quickly, when you say what is the best environment? Sorry, I'm sorry if I'm being slow. Are you just referring to private or public-
Look, I can't.
Operation?
Yeah, look, it's really hard for me to go a lot further than that.
Okay.
That really, Robert, you know, just without me.
No worries. Appreciate it.
causing some problems. I guess now, though, you know, there's been lots of speculation about these things out there, so at least now, you know, there's a level of awareness of those things, I guess.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. We have a question now from Simon Bowler from Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi. I had a couple just on kind of current year guidance, and then one on to follow up on the warehousing piece, if that's okay. Firstly, on kind of current year guidance, each of the quarters that we've seen from you has been kind of pretty impacted in one way or the other by some sort of COVID impact. Can you just give us a sense of what the typical seasonality is in the beauty and nutrition businesses? I think kind of around about in the midpoint, the first quarter that you just delivered is about 20% of your full year guidance. I'm just wondering how consistent that is, that it is that much kind of seasonally lighter as a quarter within your business.
Third on the forecast agenda, and again, I might be really guessing here. I thought I'd read in the statement you're expecting just the EBITDA margins to be broadly kind of flat year-on-year, but then the presentation pointed to 6%, and that was kind of compared to where you'd kind of guided to around about 8% three months ago. Can you just clarify exactly where we are looking, or where you are guiding to for the year ahead and what changed over that three-month period? Kind of finally, just to follow up on that kind of GBP 14 billion point. Is it the case you're literally sitting there kind of wearing the cost of GBP 12 billion of empty underutilized warehouse space at the moment?
You know, are there further investments that would be needed to be made to actually unlock that GBP 14 billion as a number?
Thanks, Simon. It's Matt Rothwell here. I'll take the first two, and then John Gallemore will take the third one on GMV capacity. In terms of seasonality, pretty stable businesses actually. We don't see huge seasonality from one quarter to the next. You're right. And the sort of splits that you've seen in the quarters we reported show roughly what seasonality we do have. No quarter is really below 20% of the full year, but are weighting more towards Q4 and peak cyber trading, particularly in the beauty division, which is more elevated, but no huge difference to what you'd have seen in sort of 2021 there, save the sort of the acquisition mix.
That's reflective of the high repeat purchase behavior that we see in our consumers, and we've touched on that with sort of 80% repeat purchase in both beauty and nutrition. In terms of the EBITDA margin guidance, the guidance is stable EBITDA cash, so that implies an EBITDA margin circa 6% in 2022. That is, as we've touched on protecting the consumer to some extent and taking some of that on our shoulders with the confidence in the long-term EBITDA margin outlook of the business for the reasons Steve touched on earlier in the call, that this is a 9%-10% EBITDA margin business. We've talked in the past about how we reinvest sort of ahead of the curve.
The fact that we've been doing that in the past gives us the confidence that we can now see some operating leverage come through the business together with the higher Ingenuity Commerce mix that will naturally start accreting through as well.
Okay. In terms of the straight answer to you, we are bearing the cost of that additional capacity in the underlying P&L account. Yes, what we've actually done is, over the last two years, we have deployed 2 million sq ft of warehousing space. Now, I've touched on most of those projects in the earlier narrative in that we've got the automated facility in Manchester, which we commissioned right at the end of last year. In the first quarter of this year, we've moved into much larger facilities in both Melbourne and New Jersey, with automation to go into New Jersey in the second half of this year. There was the facility that we commissioned in Dubai in the final quarter of this year, and we're expanding our existing facility in Poland in the second half of this year.
That all is where the additional capability comes from. From those projects I've just described, we get 7 billion of GMV capacity there. I think the key point to make is despite the fact we're having to fund that additional capacity and actually the rising costs of the people who work within it, we are delivering flat and falling fulfillment costs because of the automation that we've put in. I can't really underestimate the importance of that automation and how that drives costs down. We recently moved Cult Beauty from its manual warehouse in London into this automated facility in the past month, and that's halved the fulfillment cost for that business alone. That's the strength of the cost savings from the automation.
Okay. I can't imagine kind of myself or anyone else who's got kind of GMV expectations approaching GBP 14 billion in the next five to seven years. Are we hugely missing something in terms of the Ingenuity pipeline or your ambition for acquisitions or whatever that's gonna see you scale into that capacity far quicker than perhaps is being expected?
I think one of the quick answers there is quite often, you know, there are clients at half a billion GMV, you know, multiple billion GMV. So it's probably just the misunderstanding of maybe some of the scale of the pipeline of clients.
Look, Simon, you should come up and see it.
Yeah, very happy to do so.
Thank you. We'll go to our next question now from Alex Apostolides from Barings. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just three questions from me. The first one relates to your Q1 2022 revenue growth of 16%. Can you give us a sense of what percentage of that was organic? And then also just to get a sense of price increases, the pricing component within that. Secondly, just in terms of inflation, it sounds like you're not fully gonna pass that through to consumers. How much of that would you say you're passing through, and how does that compare to competitors? And then the third just has to do with the working capital guidance. Can you provide some of that for fiscal year 2022, just given the outflow in 2021 and then the inflow in 2020? Just wanted to get a bit more granularity there. That was all for me.
Do you wanna do the working cap stuff first?
Yeah, working cap, we're expecting to be broadly neutral across this financial year. That reflects some de-stocking of the higher levels of stock that we saw come into this year. That will sort of make a bit of a H1, H2 imbalance perhaps. Full year, you'd expect that to be broadly neutral on the working capital side. In terms of the organic, we did deliver organic growth in the first quarter against incredibly tough comparatives and the two-year organic remains very strong. We're really pleased with the performance we've got there. There's some disclosure on the acquisition contribution in the back end of the prelims, and you can see that. That demonstrates that the acquisitions have delivered in line or marginally ahead of previous guidance.
We're not gonna disclose too much on price or on price and volume. I think Lucy and Rachel have touched on that earlier, and there's devil in the detail there in terms of pack sizes and how the consumer basket interacts. That's where our availability of data really helps us in looking at the consumer behavior and working out how best to manage that, and support the customer and manage that within our demand dynamics.
I think, I mean, look, just to answer the question.
Okay.
On organic and M&A. There's obviously gonna be very little M&A to carry forward this year in there. The Dermstore acquisition completed at the very start of February last year. You're only really left then with Cult and the Bentley Labs production. We continue with the same policy, which is we just don't wanna strip that out. You can actually kinda work back from that, but it you know. Just to remind people why we don't do that is because quite often, if we do make some investments, we're doing it for strategic purposes rather than the revenue within those pieces of M&A.
What we can say, just to take you back to 2021, is, you know, the guidance we give on each piece of M&A, of what we expect the sales and contribution to be is pretty much in line with that. You will see that in the release that we made this morning as well. You can work it back, you know, reasonably quickly, but we just want to keep that flexibility. Just remind you, by the way, that the Dermstore acquisition was completed, you know, at the start of February, so that's annualized, and you're just left with the other two pieces thereafter. Then there was a final point, I think, on there. What was the other final-
Inflation pass-through versus peers.
Yeah, look, I think on the inflation point, you know, Ingenuity is obviously scaling quite fast. Despite the increased contribution we get from Ingenuity, what we're guiding to here is a stable EBITDA contribution for this year. What you can see is we're actually doing a relatively strong piece here in terms of ensuring we support the consumer. We've got a really strong demand curve, as you've seen in Q1, and we're keen to sort of double down on that and ensure that we take market share and also we protect the brand integrity.
the inflation pass-through, you know, in simple terms, you can look at the extra contribution that's coming from Ingenuity and how that's being reinvested instead of it, instead of us just reporting an improved position on that. that's broadly, you know, one level. there's obviously within each individual P&L, they're doing a level of support, too. the biggest contributing factor would be you would expect Ingenuity to add through more for us to the direct P&L, but we're actually using that contribution to maintain a stable position.
Yep, that's very clear. If I can just briefly follow up. It sounds like the majority is organic growth. Just directionally, is most of that volume or is it price driven? And then the price increases that you are putting through directionally again, are these in line with competition? Below competition? If you can just give a sense of that.
Yes.
That was all I had.
Sure.
really appreciate your time.
On the pricing more generally, you know, it is. We've got a really strong vertically integrated model. It's slightly different by different business area. Take nutrition as an example. Yes, maintaining a dominant position of pricing, you know, stronger than competition is something that we're maintaining. It will be different to the competition there, as we position. You know, it is something that we're conscious of in terms of the competitive environment, and we're making sure that we are super competitive in that regard.
Look, also on whey-based products as well, that's less than 50% of, to keep running with the nutrition example, and it's the best single area of cost inflation we've talked to. Yes, we'll be passing on less inflation price rises than peers because of the business, integrated business model. When you think about whey, it is less than 50% of the product mix. Again, you know, it's a combination of price rises in certain areas selectively plus volume growth.
Yeah, that's an important point. You know, there is volume growth in there. It's not.
Thank you.
It's not just price-driven in any way.
Thank you. We'll go to our next question now from Andrew Ross from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Great. Morning, all. I've just got two more quick ones to squeeze in, both on Ingenuity. The first one, in both Q4 last year and Q1 this year, the number of websites launched have been a bit slower than my model, and I guess there was, you know, Christmas and peak impacting that in Q4 and, you know, seasonally appointments could have been lighter in Q1. Can we just be clear, in Q2, should we be expecting the number of websites launched to accelerate back to that kind of 40-50 added per quarter? Then the second question is, on SoftBank, and thank you for giving us an update on AutoStore and all the good stuff that's going on there.
Is there anything else we can call out in terms of how that relationship with SoftBank is evolving, from an operational or perhaps financial standpoint? Thank you.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think at the same time as those data points were touched on, we also increased the client base by 43% from September through to now, right? As I touched on in the narrative, there's a much broader range of monetizing opportunities that we're now delivering across a broader range of clients coming from different types of services. Yes, certainly you will see an increase in the number of websites that we're launching for clients going forward, yes. Which reflects just the quality of the pipeline. The timing of some of the bigger ones is difficult to predict given the scale of some of those opportunities.
Andrew, I'll just briefly pick up on SoftBank. Yeah, the SoftBank option kicks in once separation is completed. It completes in Q2, but there's nothing to update on that at this point. It'd be something for later in the year. No other updates outside of AutoStore.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our final question now comes from Nick Coulter from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. A very quick one to close the show, please. It might be a disclosure too far, but are you able to share what you expect your GMV to be in kind of round billions at the end of this year, please? Just to help us get a sense of the operating leverage opportunity, given the potential disparity between the number of websites and the GMV potential. Thank you.
It's an incredibly hard answer to give there. The reason for that is the timing of A, signing contracts and B, then launching them, of material scale GMV contracts. Obviously we give guidance on our own GMV, so if you were to look at the sort of 22%-25%, you know, you can work out from there, that's probably, I don't know, you know, GBP 2.7 billion. Is it GBP 2.6 million? Something like that. GBP 2.7 billion. Add on top of that, you know, there are a number of accounts that we've talked to in the past that have got, you know, decent large scale GMV to them, and then we'll have other ones to announce.
We're not trying to be elusive there at all, Nick. It's just purely s-
Mm-hmm.
It really is. You know, I'd be misrepresenting if I just give you a figure on that. You know, we'll be able to give more color as on GMV as contracts land, and we can give you more clarity as the year comes through. That's probably it.
Okay. Perhaps another way, how many years runway do you think you've got on your current capacity?
Yeah, that's a fair point, Nick. I'd say, look, I mean, it depends what you're trying to get from your capacity. There are key trading points of the year, so if you look at you want to really maximize peak trading such as Black Friday, we will use almost 100% of your capacity everywhere in the world for a period of three, four days, right? That's just what happens in November. It doesn't sit there completely idle for all that year. There are points in time. We have some key trading around Singles' Day. We have some trading points in May as well. You know, there are points of the year when we really do lean into that capacity. You will
You know, you do want to have, you know, more capacity than you would, you know, your day to day. What I would say is if we've got three to four years, you know, that's kind of how we look at the world. We did announce maybe, I think this time last year about opening 3.5 million sq ft more. We've already delivered two of that, 2 million sq ft more. You're probably looking, let's say three to four years of capacity there. It does take time to get these things, you know, running smooth and in the right positions. They don't just, you know, at scale that is. That gives you an idea of probably how we see it.
There are times of the year when we will use 100% capacity.
Yeah. Helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. As we have no further questions at this time, I'd now like to turn the presentation back over to Matthew Moulding for any additional or closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks everybody. It's been a long one for everyone today, so I won't do a long wrap up. Safe to say thank you very much for your time and energy and look forward to updating you in due course. Thank you.