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Earnings Call: Q3 2021

Oct 26, 2021

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the THG Q3 Trading Update. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matt Moulding, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking the time to dial into our Q3 trading update. In terms of the people that I have with me, I have most of the senior management team, including Matt Rothwell, Deputy CFO, John Gallemore, CEO of Ingenuity, Steve Whitehead, our Group Commercial Director, as well as the CEOs of each of our divisions. We will be ready to answer any questions on today's announcement. However, first, I just want to give you a brief update on the trading performance of the business and the broader news in this morning's release. In terms of financials, I'm pleased to report a strong quarter with group revenue of GBP 508 million, which is up over 38% on the prior year on a constant currency basis, and that's plus 93% on a two-year basis.

We are particularly proud of the way Ingenuity continues to scale with a record number of new clients secured in Q3. The order book of websites to be rolled out in Q4, 2021 and 2022 is testament to the many markets we are supporting our clients in entering, as well as replatforming from other providers. Our confidence in the rate of growth for Ingenuity Commerce is such that today we are providing an upgrade to FY 2022 revenue expectations by 20%-25% for that revenue channel. By enhancing the KPI suite and highlighting the level of recurring revenues, we hope this helps support a more detailed view on how the business is growing, supported by the investments in people. As we move into our peak trading period, we are delighted that our new ICON warehouse is operational, which benefits from best-in-class automation.

Product availability is good across all categories, and following the migration of Cult Beauty and Dermstore to Ingenuity, we have the infrastructure in place to support the increased volume of orders placed during this period with an enhanced customer experience. Today, we also welcome Andreas Hansson to the board. Andreas brings significant and valuable experience, both from SoftBank and his prior roles, and we are delighted that he is joining us as we further our partnership together. Further to our recent announcement regarding intentions to move to a premium listing, we have now commenced the process to appoint a non-exec chair and intend to update on progress in the weeks ahead.

Finally, we've got strong momentum going into this incredibly busy trading period and good confidence in both the near and medium-term outlook. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our shareholders for their support and all of our colleagues once more for the monumental efforts they've put in over recent months. We would be pleased now to take any questions you might have on any aspect of today's release.

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question over the phone at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please note if you're using a speakerphone, just to make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one to ask a question, and we'll pause for a brief moment just to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll now move to our first question over the phone, which comes from Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

Hi, guys. I just had a couple of questions. Firstly, on the regional performance, and if you could give us some color on how the nutrition and the beauty businesses has been performing in the broader various regions like Europe, U.K., Asia, and America, that would be very helpful. Secondly, on the guidance. If I understand, you talked about GBP 112 million of annual run rate in Ingenuity Commerce at the end of Q4 . The guidance for next year revenue for Ingenuity Commerce is also GBP 108 million-GBP 112 million.

Am I right in understanding these are two separate figures in the sense that that would be the annual run rate basically for next year at the end of Q4, would be GBP 112 million, and the GBP 108 million-GBP 112 million would be the actual revenue that you are achieving in FY 2022. If you could just clarify that would be great. Thank you.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

It's Steve Whitehead here. If we may, I'll jump in and answer the second question first. You're right in your understanding. They are two separate numbers. The GBP 112 million annual revenue run rate is calculated, you know, 15 months in advance of getting to that Q4 2022 timeframe. It annualizes the recurring revenue from the 400 websites expected to be live at that time, which representing 60% of the sales mix, is then grossed up for 40% non-recurring revenue to give you the 112. Now that's 15 months out and doesn't include any new client wins, both in terms of the rolling out websites model, nor does it include any new client wins for the productized elements of the platform which generate revenue without rolling out a website.

Examples would be fulfillment-only services and personalization, both of which we've been announcing recently. The third bucket that it does not include is what we touched on in recent disclosures, is how we're maturing the revenue model. The GBP 112 million assumes a GBP 170,000 per annum spend per website in that calculation. That's just a revenue share, which has been the primary form of monetizing the model to date. We updated recently that we're maturing that model so that we're going to start generating margin on transaction fees, postage, and fulfillment to further enrich that 170K. There's quite a lot not assumed in there. No new client wins and no new revenues from those additional channels, and it's 15 months out.

What we would expect over the next 15 months is that ARR number of GBP 112 to increase as we get closer to the Q4 period. As that increases, then of course that would create a greater delta to a reported figure, which is of a circa GBP 110 million with actual, which is the upgrade versus the consensus of GBP 90.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

That's very helpful. Just to add on that one, can I ask, so that does the GBP 112 million annual run rate revenue, does that include any of the take rate on revenues that you plan to take?

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

No, it doesn't. It's a good question. It assumes GBP 170,000 revenue per website, which is the achieved, you know, historic in the KPI table revenue per website. That revenue per website is generated by, if you like, the V one revenue model, which is simply a revenue share. It doesn't have those additional forms of revenue capture linked to GMV. Of course, if GMV increases over time, we would expect the revenue share to increase, which should support the 170 increasing per website. Also GMV linked fees, namely margins on transaction fees, postage, and fulfillment should also increase over that period.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

That's very clear. Thank you.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Those will be additional to the 108-112 revenue, which we expect to report in FY 2022, would not include any of those take rate additions that are not included. We're not changing the definition at all. That is 108-112 based on the existing definition, but obviously we expect those other things to come through as well. Just to answer the broader question around territory performance. Just to reiterate, I mean the U.K. remains a very strong market for us. Other very interesting areas, India and the Middle East, continue to be really strong. There's an awful lot of energy going into the U.S. right now. The Dermstore re-platforming, Ingenuity rolling out, and investment across key areas of the U.S. have been a particular success for us. The U.K. in particular remains quite a strong market.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

Thank you so much.

Operator

We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Rob Joyce from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I've got three. I guess firstly, just let me just follow on from that Ingenuity conversation. Should we read from this that you... I mean, it seems to be that you consider that to be very well underpinned. Can you confirm that regarding to next year? And then just in terms of thinking about new client wins in there, I think you mentioned 44 in the quarter. Does that seem like a sensible you know, can you keep doing that given what you're spending on new business at the moment? And how long does it generally take between translating one of those wins into revenue generation? Sorry, that's a protracted sort of first question.

The second one is, thanks for giving us the detail on what you expect from new acquisitions in the year. I'm wondering if you could maybe help us understand what you would say the two-year organic growth at the end of 2021 would be given a midpoint of current guidance. Thirdly, I just wonder if you can help us understand in the short term, just the guidance for the year. It looks like there might be some FX impact on EBITDA in that sort of Q4 or second half of the year. Just wondering if you can help us understand that. Thank you.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Hey, Rob, it's Steve here. I'll pick up, given I was running with the Ingenuity question earlier. The degree of confidence is high, for sure. You know, we've put out that upgrade with 15 months to go, and assumption of no new business development wins, which to your point on 44 new clients in Q3 is clearly very prudent. Nor are we using all of the committed pipeline order book of websites today, you know, to deliver those, to get to 400 websites by the end of 2022, it's only utilizing 85% of what's on the order book today. We are very committed to that number.

In terms of how we think about the new wins and the cadence and how that's to be thought of going forward, the important point about the modeling disclosure that we've been giving this time round is so that people focus on websites. Websites and the revenue per website and the recurring versus non-recurring revenue mix. That's the key metric going forward. You know, number of clients, how many websites per client. Ultimately, let's just get down to how many websites per quarter at what revenue and at what recurring versus non-recurring mix. That's why we're focusing on it. In terms of it being a record number, you know, it's a record number of new client wins, but we absolutely have been building up to it. Every quarter, you know, almost beats the prior quarter.

That's the cadence. That's how you, when you're taking business development heads from three at the start of last year to 75, you know, presently and continuing to invest. There's a very strong correlation which we map internally between new business wins and new business development hires. It's a really strong area for investment. We lost confidence around that revised upgrade. If I've covered everything in the first question, then I think maybe we go to the second question.

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Just quickly.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Yeah.

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

In terms of revenue, you know, when those new clients start to become revenue generating, is there any help on the lead time to that you can give us?

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

It's completely mixed, you know, and that's the point. We've got the pipeline of to go live websites now, which have already been through to, like, that incubation period and continue to do. You know, the reality is very few websites go live later than the 12-week roadmap that we have as a go live program. We comment to that in the slides that are on the website. Where in those very few instances, websites are late, it's at the client request. Perhaps they haven't got packaging or local product registration ready or perhaps some internal resource point. For us, it's absolutely a 12-week onboarding process, always subject to the client readiness.

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

The second point, you know, there's a very, very strong underlying organic growth rate in the Beauty and Nutrition divisions. You know as a group, the two-year organic growth, excluding M&A, is over 50%. That's of course the case for Beauty and Nutrition. We've got these global leading positions in big towns with a, you know, 15% plus channel shift in those markets and 15 years of having outperformed the markets that we are in. The reason why we're able to outperform those markets is because of the high repeat nature of the customers. Both Beauty and Nutrition, around 80% of revenue every year comes from returning customers.

When you look at why customers return, you know, in the slides on the website, you've got all of those UX conversion benefits that we talked about with beauty. The NPS score for Lookfantastic, for instance, according to BCG, being miles ahead of any of its competitors. That’s what gives us the confidence to then look forward to next year and go, “Well, next year is another 20%-25% organic growth business,” which we then look at how do we augment that with M&A. Even this year, we're continuing to augment with M&A, building big positions, as Matt said, in the U.S. with Dermstore, in nutrition, with ready-to-drink and convenience products now coming through and localized flavored products coming through. We've got real confidence on that organic growth and then the investments we're making around M&A. Does that cover the second topic?

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah, yeah, very clear. Thanks.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Thanks. Then Matt will also jump in as well. The point I want to make on the third point around FX is our business model has been able to accommodate all of the inflationary pressures that we're seeing in the marketplace today. That's some statement and it's automation, it's vertically integrated, we're fully stocked. You know, that's a very strong statement. Over and above that, you've then got FX headwinds. FX headwinds, we've mitigated those by natural hedging in two out of our three regions, U.S. and Europe. There's one region left to go, so the FX headwinds, which Matt can touch on in a moment, is in Asia. We will localize production in Asia from local sourcing for local customers as we have done in Europe and the U.S. That's not a pipe dream.

It's something that happened in the medium term, and we've already done it at scale in two out of our key foreign three markets. It's coming and not every business model has that optionality. You know, we will remove or naturally hedge the Asia position in the medium term, but that's been the area for headwinds.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Yeah, that's simply, Rob, the fact that we're selling. We've got a very strong international mix in the business. We're selling into Asia, we're selling in local currencies, using local payment solutions. The pound is just particularly strong. For every sort of 100 basis points that you get of constant currency headwinds, it's translating to about 30 basis points on the bottom line for the full year.

Rob Joyce
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Okay. All right. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Steven.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from George Vilacostas from Belmus. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

George Vilacostas
Analyst, Belmus

Morning, thanks. First one, just want to confirm, you mentioned you expect 20%-25% organic growth for beauty and nutrition next year. The second one was on the slides that you've presented, it talks to FY 2023 GMV of GBP 2.5 billion for beauty and nutrition. Is that where your heads are at? It just doesn't seem consistent with kind of where consensus is at or that kind of 20%-25% corridor. The third one was could you confirm guidance on the GBP 50 million Ingenuity revenue for FY 2021? Just kind of thinking what that implies for the Q4 . The fourth and final one is, you've kind of provided the 4% GMV share for nutrition and Ingenuity or kind of implied within that SoftBank deal. Can you just confirm that this kind of 60%-70% EBITDA margin that you've historically spoken to would still apply to that?

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Yeah, look, it's absolutely the case, as we said at IPO, didn't we, that this is a 20%-25% growth business we make organically for beauty and nutrition. We made the distinction then, which we hold now, that you probably see beauty at the upper end of that and nutrition at the 20% end. That absolutely holds for next year. What we've put in the slide decks on the website is absolutely an illustration. I think the GBP 2.5 billion GMV is a sensible reference point for the illustration. There's a reference there as well into the 4% revenue share. Again, just a very simple illustration which would be in line with our current pricing for existing clients and would also support the 60% EBITDA margin that we talked to for THG Commerce. It's all entirely consistent.

George Vilacostas
Analyst, Belmus

Okay. No.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Sorry.

George Vilacostas
Analyst, Belmus

No, no. Go ahead.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Great, thanks. Sorry for cutting across. In the RNS, we tried to reconfirm the consensus for 2021. I think it's in the same bullet point as we upgrade for 2022. But for the avoidance of doubt, we confirm that position for 2021 of consensus is circa GBP 50 million.

George Vilacostas
Analyst, Belmus

Deep, thanks very much.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

If we've not got any more questions looking up,

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

I know we've got some questions on the line. That's great. Let's get through these.

Operator

We'll now move on to our next question, which comes from James Grzinic from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

James Grzinic
Head of Luxury and Retail Research, Jefferies

Yes. Good morning, everybody. Just a very quick question really around price recovery. I'm wondering whether, especially in nutrition in Asia, you started a process of price recovery of those input pressures.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

James, you mean in terms of the commodity pricing that's been, you know, the significant increase in commodity pricing through the year, if we're recovering that through price increases?

James Grzinic
Head of Luxury and Retail Research, Jefferies

Yeah, correct. Whether you started to adjust the local price points.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Yeah, sure. I mean, look. Yes, I mean, the short answer is you can't pass all of it on all the time because, you know, according to, you know, advertising standards, you only increase your pricing at you know, with certain breaks in between. You can't just keep changing them on a week by week basis. Yes, the intention is obviously we pass those prices through accordingly and then, you know, we may take some strategic decisions where we don't pass it all through, but then we would look to get that back through synergies and other areas elsewhere. I mean, you're absolutely right. There's been quite some significant moves in commodity prices, you know, certainly in the last few months.

James Grzinic
Head of Luxury and Retail Research, Jefferies

Understood. Perhaps as a follow-on on another topic. On the recurring revenues per website, can you perhaps talk to the history of how those have developed? I presume, of course, there's been very different dynamics for different clients. More broadly, what the cadence of maturity and how that revenue per website develops as that maturity profile improves.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

We're currently around 10% recurring revenue across the Ingenuity business. That's increased from 25% around a year ago. As more sites are being launched and we've got more recurring revenue coming through, we do expect that to be a stable number going forward over the next 12 months, James.

James Grzinic
Head of Luxury and Retail Research, Jefferies

Okay, understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Charlie Muir-Sands from Exane BNP. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Charlie Muir-Sands
Equity Research Analyst, Exane

Yeah, morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. They all relate to Ingenuity. Apologies if some of this has been answered 'cause it took me a while to connect. You've kind of indicated, I think, for now aiming to get to 400 websites live by the end of 2022. I think at CMD recently you talked about 450 websites. I don't know whether that was just a phasing thing, but I wondered if that number has changed and yet you've kind of raised your expectations around the revenues you're expecting to generate. Is that because each site is anticipated to turn over more and therefore you take more? Or I'm just trying to understand the moving parts around the revenue upgrade versus the slightly lower website number. That's the first question.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

It's just a prudence point really. The 450 is how many websites we've got on the order book. In order to demonstrate, you know, in the ease or the confidence, if you like, with which we view that rollout to hit 400 websites, it's only 85% of the order book. The remainder of the order book is upside. As we increase the cadence, we can look to get through that. Of course, as I perhaps said at an earlier part of the call when unfortunately you may not have been on, in that GBP 112 million, there's no other benefits from business development.

All 15 months out of business development for new websites being added to that 450 will go into the pipeline, therefore effectively always extending that order book of websites. Plus there'll be business development for the productized areas of the platform where we're monetizing the tech without rolling out a website, so fulfillment-only services as one of the Q3 client wins for a brand called By Terry. Equally, we've had a personalization as a service for Longleat recently announced. There's significant areas of new business development over and above that, as well as headroom in the secured pipeline. That's the difference to the 450.

Charlie Muir-Sands
Equity Research Analyst, Exane

Fantastic. Second question is, I suppose related to the group, I guess disproportionately in Ingenuity. Have you got any early thoughts on what your capital expenditure budget might be for next year?

Matt Rothwell
Deputy CFO, THG

Okay. Hi, Charlie. We guided this year to sort of 10%-12% for FY 2021. Then a similar level of cash next year on CapEx. That cash will obviously be a lower percentage as we then see CapEx as a percentage of revenue reduced down to the medium-term guidance of sort of 5.5%-6.5% over the next few years.

Charlie Muir-Sands
Equity Research Analyst, Exane

Fantastic.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

One point to add to that, which . Sorry, Charlie, if I can add here. Just reminding people then that as the Ingenuity KPIs that we've been given now, if people are modeling them out right, then at a 60% margin, you know, a GBP 400 million revenue commerce business should be funding the cash requirement CapEx for the whole group, which, you know, predominantly that CapEx obligation or needs sits within Ingenuity. If you just take the group number as a read across, then you know, it, at that GBP 400 million revenue number, commerce will be self-funding for the group's CapEx.

Charlie Muir-Sands
Equity Research Analyst, Exane

Fantastic. Thank you. The final question relates to group level guidance. You've obviously maintained your view on 35%-38% reported currency sales growth for the year. If my math is right, that kind of implies an acceleration at least on a two-year basis for the Q4 . I just wondered if there are any sort of phasing dynamics or run rate comments that would give you confidence in that.

Matt Rothwell
Deputy CFO, THG

Yeah, I mean, on a one-year, Charlie, it implies a slight reduction in the run rate. As you'll know, from year to date is ahead of that at the current point in time. The two-year, yes, there is a slight acceleration in the two-year growth. You gotta remember, this is the Q1 we'll be trading both Cult Beauty and Dermstore on the Ingenuity platform. We're really excited about the prospect of trading both of those through Q4. The benefits we're all getting through those on the platform already are quite strong, and Beauty as a business model has a natural slant towards peak trading in Q4.

Charlie Muir-Sands
Equity Research Analyst, Exane

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Andrew Ross from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Ross
Director and Head of European Internet Equity Research, Barclays

Great. Morning all. My first one is just to clarify the margin for this year. I think the guidance is flat excluding FX and dilution from Dermstore. Just to quantify the bridge, are we talking 9.3% from last year? That's kind of 30-40 from Dermstore. Less now around 100 from FX gets us around 8%. Is that correct? If you could just give us a flavor as to how to think about margins into 2022, both with currency, I guess leverage from Ingenuity Commerce, Dermstore synergies, et cetera. That would be helpful. The second question is on AutoStore, and I noticed you called out automation as something that is helping you mitigate inflationary pressures in the underlying margin for this year. Can you just talk a bit about how AutoStore is now up and running in the warehouse and the benefits that's giving you? Thanks.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Can I start with the AutoStore, go on John, please.

John Gallemore
CEO of Ingenuity, THG

Yeah, okay. Just to remind everybody then about the AutoStore configuration here up in the Manchester campus. What we've effectively got is a building with a footprint of just over 500,000 sq ft with another 300,000 of mezzanine. Within that we've got the AutoStore set up. We only accessed this building back in April. We've been in there just over six months now. We commenced to move beauty product into that site six weeks ago. We've now moved 9.5 of the 10 million units we need to do in there. 85% of the beauty orders yesterday were allocated to that site. It's performing extremely well.

Just to remind everybody, we expect this site to be 40% more efficient than the previous one we're moving out of which in itself had some automation. It's a huge capacity increase and a huge efficiency saving over what we've had previously. That's helping us to absorb an awful lot of the inflationary pressures, particularly around headcount costs rising in that type of environment. In terms of the EBITDA bridge there, Andrew, yeah, you've got it pretty much bob on in terms of what the expectations are there. Yes, into FY 2022, you'd expect benefits from both the Dermstore margin, where we expect to be able to get that back to group levels by the end of that financial year, and then the benefits of that Ingenuity Commerce increasing in the mix will also play through.

Andrew Ross
Director and Head of European Internet Equity Research, Barclays

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from David Green from BOLDHAVEN. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

David Green
Partner, BOLDHAVEN

Hi, good morning, everyone.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

Morning.

David Green
Partner, BOLDHAVEN

Morning. A couple of questions. In terms of the Ingenuity contracts, where you obviously talk about the recurring component of those, and obviously revenue share is part of that. Is there anything else specifically that comes under the recurring revenue heading? I guess the second question is just really around beauty and the competitive landscape. I guess more recently you've had Sephora buying the Feelunique asset. Zalando has sort of put its flag out in terms of wanting to grow the segment. Just your overall sort of thoughts on that would be really helpful. I guess just really the final question is on M&A and your visibility on the pipeline, and how you're thinking about that in the context of liquidity. Many thanks.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

I'll take the recurring point first. Look, it's worth highlighting that our average recurring revenue per site is so high at GBP 170, despite the fact we're so disruptive on price because of the full breadth of services we actually provide to these clients. Wrapped up within that would be any ongoing license fees and managed service fees, which are the digital trading and marketing performances that we provide, the content we provide from the studio here in Manchester and any revenue share that's linked to that. There's a broad range of components that make up the recurring revenue. Then, if we just touch on the competitive environment for beauty. Yeah, do you wanna go, Rach, and we'll jump in?

Speaker 13

Yeah, certainly, yeah. Hi, David. Just to touch on the competitive landscape as we see it, we're obviously very aware of the Sephora deal with Feelunique, and we're excited to see those guys come to the U.K. market. We're very close to the business that Feelunique have been building over the years, so we're quite familiar with the asset that Sephora have bought. I think we're very interested to see how they replicate some of the success that they've had in the U.S., leveraging Sephora as a platform for launching their LVMH brands, which are already quite well distributed over here. It's not a point of advantage that they're necessarily gonna bring to the market. We're also working very closely with LVMH. It's probably worth me noting on that point, retailing their own brands through our fantastic platform over here in the U.K.

Zalando, we're also very close to what's happening there. Again, really interested to see how that evolves within that space. I think the key things I would pull out here as we think about the competitive landscape, because we are tracking every competitor in every territory that we're operating. There's no one yet that's quite doing it the same way that we're doing in terms of how we're operating our beauty model, and I think that's one of the key things we draw out here is giving us that position within the center of the beauty industry really. There's lots of other beauty retail platforms out there. Traditionally, these have been built through traditional bricks-and-mortar ways as opposed to online, which is the way we've chosen to do it.

When we then look at the rest of our model and how that plays within that retail environment, we've got, you know, one of the leading sampling mechanics within the beauty industry through our beauty box subscription base. We've just got over 500,000 subscribers there. You know, with appetite for that as a model really increasing in a world post-COVID, where that need for beauty consumers to try a product before they buy being more important than ever, but customers not necessarily wanting to go into store and purchase.

When we combine our ability to do that sampling through the data that we're able to listen to what our consumer needs through our retail platform, it really becomes quite powerful in terms of the return on investment we can drive for our brand partners in being able to get the right product into the right consumer's hands. We're of course also able to support in the production of those samples through THG Labs and our ability to manufacture in-house. We're really excited about the proposition that this is gonna build out for next year as well and the opportunities this gives us as we work with brand partners. Of course, we've got our own brands as well, which we're taking into different territories and working with different retailers as well within these territories and sharing those learnings with our brand partners.

The ecosystem combined becomes quite powerful. We then obviously factor into that retail platform, the breadth of brands that we're able to work with as a digital player. When you look at our proposition versus most of our key competitors in different parts of the world, we're working with over 1,100 different beauty brands. Compare that to a Sephora or a Feelunique, where you've maybe got 200 brands quite heavily focused within cosmetics as a category. Our mix is very broad. Our category mix is very well spread across haircare, skincare, cosmetics.

As we go into Q3, more importantly, fragrance and Christmas gifting at the moment. We're really excited to see what the guys will do in summer within the U.K., but we're very confident in the position that we hold with our unique model.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Just answering the question on M&A. We've obviously got significant resources available if we wanted to go and do some M&A. I think we've GBP 700 million of cash available to us at the end of the quarter, and we're now coming to our cash generation period as well. That said, you know at the moment in terms of investments we've made, you know, our investments so far, we don't really have any near-term pipeline to do anything more than that. If anything did change there, then we obviously have the capability to do that.

David Green
Partner, BOLDHAVEN

Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, it is star one on your telephone keypad, if you do wish to ask a question on today's call. We'll now take a follow-up question from Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum. Please go ahead. The line is open.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

Hi, Team. Thanks for taking another follow-up. Just two questions from me. On the 450 clients that you have already won, would you be able to give us a sense of how many of them are going to be using the full suite of e-commerce in-a-box service? And then secondly, on the CapEx and the long-term guidance of 5.5%-6.5%, would you say that includes that would cover you for all your investments in, say, localizing production, automating all the warehouses, expanding the warehouse distribution? And if you could possibly split it up between what would be the maintenance part of it, what would be the expansionary part of it, if possible? Thank you.

Steve Whitehead
Group Commercial Director, THG

I'll just pick up the first question. Just to clarify, at the end of the quarter, we've got 140 clients who have contracted with us to provide 450 websites. Those are the data points. In terms of the percentage of clients who use the full end-to-end suite, it's actually 95%. A vast majority use all services that we provide.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

Thank you.

Matt Rothwell
Deputy CFO, THG

CapEx guidance. Yes, 5.5%-6.5% and above in the medium term, that is adequate to cover off all of the fulfillment and manufacturing expansion capacity that we will be doing. It's elevated in the short term because of the investment we're putting into facilities worldwide. To your point, that is expansionary CapEx on the whole. While it's only indicative, our sort of maintenance CapEx level is probably only a quarter of that CapEx investment.

Anubhav Malhotra
Equity Research Analyst, Liberum

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

It appears we have no further questions queued over the phone at this time, so I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Moulding for any additional or closing remarks.

Matt Moulding
CEO, THG

Well, look, thank you to everybody for the significant time that's gone into today and hearing our update. I'd just like to say, look, it's been a very progressive 12, 13 months since IPO. I'm super proud of the team and everything we've delivered in beating the forecast and the various initiatives we set out at IPO. We look forward now to a key trading period in Q4, Black Friday ahead and, you know, very well positioned in terms of taking advantage of that. Thanks again to everybody for today and we look forward to updating you in due course.

Operator

Thank you very much to our speakers. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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