Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. I'd like to also welcome everyone who is watching via the webcast. I'm here with our new CFO, Mark George, who joined the business in July. Mark and I are delighted to share with you our half-year results for the business for the six months to the end of June. We will spend the next half an hour or so taking you through the performance of the business, as well as highlighting the great progress we are making on our growth levers and sharing our outlook for the rest of the year. I'm pleased to report we've had record first half sales as we continue to gain market share. As you know, our balanced business model spans three distinctive customer propositions of local trade, our Do It For Me showrooms and DIY.
With both local trade and Do It For Me, driving our strong performance in the first half as the DIY market moderates following its COVID heights. The power of our digital Trade Pro scheme means we have seen unprecedented growth in signups as local traders switch to Wickes for great value, convenience, and confidence in product availability, the cornerstones of helping them save time and money every day. We have seen strong delivered sales in our Do It For Me showroom business as we work through the elevated order book from the end of last year, and we are attracting customers with innovative new kitchen and bathroom ranges and our unique installation proposition. Given our record sales performance and continued growth in market share, we are more confident than ever that our highly distinctive business model is working and affords us tremendous opportunity in the UK's large home improvement market.
Given a more challenging operating environment, I am pleased with the agility of our operating model in the first half, driving efficiencies within the business to protect profits in the face of lower volumes. We are a cash generative business with a strong balance sheet that gives us the flexibility to both invest in our distinct levers for growth, deliver innovative new products, services, and stores to our customers, as well as reward our shareholders. We have today announced that we will be maintaining our full year cash dividend at GBP 0.109. More on this from Mark as he now walks us through the financial review.
Thank you, David, good morning, everyone. First of all, just wanted to say how pleased I am to be here to have joined Wickes in July. It's a fantastic business, and I'm thoroughly enjoying working with David and the rest of the Wickes team. It's great to be here for my first set of results with David. As David said, the first half was a strong performance. We've got some of the headlines here, as you can see. Sales were up slightly, which is a really good performance on lapping a period last year when we had an absolute peak and a record performance. Crucially, on a three-year basis, when we compare to pre-COVID periods, you can see here that like-for-like sales for the business overall were 23.4% up.
That really reflects substantial progress in that period, particularly in the core business, which you, as you can see, is 36.3% up on a three-year basis. Our margin was 70 basis points lower, and that really was driven by the inflationary environment that we're in, and I'll talk a bit about that in a moment. Overall, we delivered GBP 45.6 million of PBT, which was broadly similar year-on-year, a resilient performance. Our profitable cash generative model means that we've got a very strong balance sheet, and we ended the half with GBP 167 million of cash.
It's that balance sheet position and strength and the confidence that we have in the business going forward that has enabled us to confirm that we'll maintain the cash dividend for this year, as David mentioned, despite the lower PBT that we've recently guided to. Let's just look at the P&L in a little bit more detail. You can see here this has been a resilient profit performance, particularly in light of inflation. The product inflation that we have through our business is around 15% in the first half. Now, one of the effects of that is of real pressure on percentage margin, because our strategy for dealing with that is to pass through the cost increases to our customers on a cash basis, so that dilutes the profit margin percentage slightly.
Another factor that's driving that is that we are selling more of our sales in TradePro, and as you know, TradePro customers get 10% discount. Those two effects together are both dilutive to percentage margin. A 70 basis points decline in that context, I think is a good outcome. If you look at operating costs there, they're up slightly year-over-year, just over 1%. Again, that's a good result in this inflationary environment. What it also reflects is our ability to take out some cost as volumes decline, and more on that in a moment. Overall, that's delivered an adjusted operating profit of GBP 56.3 million, which is down 9% year-over-year.
Below operating profit, we have our interest, which is principally IFRS 16 interest payments, but also foreign exchange. We've had a GBP 4 million benefit in unrealized FX gains in this half. That's a 3.8 uplift versus last year. That's non-cash that will unwind, so just bear that in mind, worth pointing that out. Overall, a very resilient performance against record profits in the first half of last year. This next slide takes us through how our uniquely balanced model really works in a period of quite disruptive consumer environment that we've had in the last three years. The year-on-year comparisons, you can see here that there's been some normalization in our core business. It's down 5.5% on a like-for-like basis.
Some very strong performance last year when we were in the midst of the pandemic. In Do It For Me, that business is recovering nicely. You'll remember in the first half of last year for a period, our showrooms were closed. We're now bouncing back from that, as you can see in the year-on-year comparison up 29.7%. On a three-year comparison, which takes us back to pre-COVID levels, you can really see the progress we've made in our core business there, 36.3%. This is a combination of some market growth, but actually substantial market growth where market share growth, where we've been outperforming the market with our very strong model.
With Do It For Me, our showroom business, that is still to recover to 2019 levels, as you can see. That's an opportunity for us. We are very confident we will get back to 2019 levels and beyond in due course. Overall, what we've shown over this period of 3 years is that we've moved forward on a like-for-like basis by 23.4% in terms of the overall business, with a substantial part of our business, our Do It For Me showroom business, still to recover back to those pre-COVID levels. The shape of our sales mix year on year is really reflected also in this profit bridge.
What you can see is that versus H1 last year, our gross profit has decreased in core as the sales have come off there, but increased in our Do It For Me business, which has been recovering. You can see the two are almost offsetting there. Within the rest of the cost movements, the first thing is marketing, which we've shown there is GBP 2.2 million higher in the first half of this year. For the year as a whole, we expect that to be the same as last year. The phasing is slightly different because if you remember last year with showrooms closed in the first half, it just changed the pattern of our marketing spend. That should be similar year-on-year by the time we get to December. The next two bars show the interplay between costs and volumes and inflation.
You can see that there's been some inflation in our cost base, but there's also been an opportunity to take cost out. We have some of our costs in our business that are variable, and I'm gonna touch on that in a moment, and performance and volume related. That has managed to broadly offset the inflation that we've seen in the business. The last two are FX and interest, which we touched on a moment ago. Just a bit more on that cost base then. What we see here in the bar on the left is a diagram of our overall cost base.
The first thing to say here is that ordinarily, distribution costs are presented as part of gross profit, and on the previous slide, they would have been in those first 2 bars for Do It For Me and for core. Here, though, we've just taken them out just to give you the full range of what our operational costs are. Obviously no numbers here, but they are in proportion, those boxes. The first thing to say is that about a third of our cost base is fixed in, excuse me, in property-related costs. The biggest proportion, of course, is rent. What we're seeing with rent, most of our leases are renewed on an open market value basis, and we're not seeing any upward pressure in rents when we're coming to renewal and changing the lease payments. Really zero inflation in rent.
At the moment, rates also are temporarily protected from inflation. Of course, depreciation, amortization, more a function of previous CapEx, but in the short term, also fixed. A good proportion of our base really not inflating at all. You can also see the next biggest part from our semi-variable costs are store wages. There we have a certain degree that's fixed around our management structure. They're on relatively, you can see there, 2022, the pay award that we gave. We have a large proportion of our wages in stores that are hourly wages paid to our staff, where that's dictated really by National Minimum Wage, which was 6.6% in April. That's an area where we can flex the hours according to volume.
There is an opportunity there as volumes come down in the business to bring costs down as well. Within distribution, there's a number of components. Some of these are in-house costs that we have for our own warehouse and our own staff, we also have outsourced operations for transport and last mile delivery. It's particularly those outsourced operations that are more variable, more volume related, where as volumes come down, we can take some cost out and have done so. Overall, the inflationary effects here in distribution are around 4%. Then you can see support centre and marketing as well, also reasonable levels of inflation.
Overall, what we're seeing at the moment in our operating cost base is around 3%, which is obviously very different from the kind of inflation we're seeing in the products that we're selling at nearer 15%. We wanted to just set this out to make that distinction. One final thing on this slide, as you can see in that bottom slither of other, that includes our utilities cost, which at the moment are less than 1% of revenue. We are locked into a position until end of Q1 next year in terms of our energy hedging, and we have an attractive rate. That is going to go up when we're exposed to the market later in 2023. It's not possible at this stage to say what that is gonna be.
It's a function of both the market and also what government support there may be beyond the initial six-month cap that the government has talked about for businesses. As we get more visibility of that, we'll of course update you, but it will be going up in 2023, as you would expect. Just wanted to touch on balance sheet and cash flow now. Wickes is obviously a cash generative business, and what we've tried to do in this cash flow is in the cash flow waterfall, is describe what's operational, what's timing, and what's non-underlying and one-off. You can see there, the core operational cash flow that we've delivered in the first half is GBP 50 million, a very strong cash generating business. We have a working capital benefit of around GBP 45 million. Now that is timing.
You know, you'll remember from previous presentations we've done, our first half is where we get the positive working capital in the cycle. It comes off and will unwind in the second half, and you should expect that again. We have our investments in CapEx, new stores, IT, refits, and then the dividend of course. We have some cash outflows that won't continue for much longer. These are the separation costs we have as we separate from Travis Perkins. They will continue through 2022. There'll be a small number in 2023, and then that will be over after that. We're showing those as non-underlying to try and give you a good picture of what the true operational cash generation of the business is.
In the table on the top left, you can see the overall leverage position, including our IFRS 16 lease liabilities. As you know, the way we prefer to quote our leverages net debt to EBITDA using the IFRS 16 basis. As you can see in June, we've reached 2.6 times on that basis. You'll remember in March that we outlined our capital allocation policy, and here is a reminder of that. The first thing is our policy is that we want to be consistently below 2.75 times on a net debt to EBITDA leverage basis, including IFRS 16 leases. We'll invest in projects that will deliver strong returns, and that will be store refits and new stores as well as smaller internal projects.
We will pay out 40% of profit after tax in the form of dividend and then excess cash we will return to shareholders in the form of special dividends or buybacks. You'll notice from the previous slide that we have now reached the point when we have gone below 2.75 times. We're at 2.6 times. Very important to remember that this is at the optimal point in the cycle for us for a year in terms of working capital, and our expectation is that leverage will be higher on this basis at the year-end. We won't be doing anything on buybacks or dividends, at least until that point. However, one of the things we do want to do, as we mentioned earlier, is maintain the cash dividend. Our policy is 40% profit after tax.
We've indicated that profit will be coming slightly down year-over-year. Actually, we're gonna keep the cash dividend, which means the payout ratio will be slightly higher than 40% this year. I'll finish with some words on outlook and guidance, and really the outlook that we have is very similar to what we said at the trading statement at the end of July. We are seeing some softening really in the DIY market only, and that just reflects the wider economic uncertainty that consumers are facing at the moment. Much of our business is trading very well.
Although we are going through that slightly more uncertain period, we are very confident in our model and our ability to not only deliver market share growth, but also we're reaffirming the target of GBP 72 million-GBP 82 million PBT range that we gave at that trading statement. We've also got some technical guidance which we've put up there. I'm not gonna read that out, that's broadly the same as what we set out at the beginning of the year for those factors. The only slight difference is that where previously we had CapEx at GBP 45 million for the year, it's now GBP 40 million-GBP 45 million as we get closer to the year-end. In summary, this has been a very strong first half performance for the business, both in terms of sales and profit and of course cash flow.
We're entering a less certain period of trading at the moment in the next few months. We go into that period with a very strong customer proposition, a growing market share, and a very strong balance sheet. With that, I'd like to hand back to David for a business update.
Thank you, Mark. Okay. Look, I make no apologies for showing this slide again as the long-term structural fundamentals of the UK's home improvement market have not materially changed since I last presented it back in March. 65% of the UK's housing stock is owner occupied, and the lion's share of which is well over 50 years old, generating an ongoing need for repair and maintenance. We continue to experience high levels of housing transactions, and as you can see from the chart on the top right, the green bar represents the half-year position, and we are pacing well over half of the 10-year average at this point in the year. The boost in 2021 was driven by the COVID-related stamp duty relief.
When people move house, they tend to seek to improve and in particular invest in larger ticket projects such as a new extension, kitchen or bathroom. Alongside this, one of the legacies of the pandemic is that we are spending more time at home and want our homes and gardens to better reflect the way we're living and working today, and this is encouraging people to invest in their living space. The chart on the bottom right shows that older people who tend to spend more money on their homes will typically use tradespeople or installation services to help them with their home improvement projects. This benefits the local trade and Do It For Me parts of our business where we have an older, more affluent customer profile.
What has changed since March is that the cost of energy has materially increased with broad inflation impacting consumers. Despite the welcome announcement from the government last week, the nation still faces a huge challenge. There is even more imperative for consumers to reduce their energy consumption and costs, whether that's by fitting better insulation or investing in newer technologies such as solar or air source heat pumps.
Add to that the government's target to reach net zero by 2050 and the fact that around 40% of the UK's carbon emissions come from the residential sector, there will be an increasingly urgent need to decarbonize the UK's housing stock by making our homes more energy efficient, which presents a tremendous long-term growth opportunity for us, not least given our unique installation capability. Look, in summary, despite the short-term noise, the cornerstones of this market remain in good health and underpin future growth. Now, of course, we also keep a watchful eye on more immediate trends through our monthly Mood of the Nation consumer research. This gives us great insight into the home improvement trends through the lens of our three customer propositions. From our most recent survey, we can see that local trade and Do It For Me remain relatively stable month-on-month.
Where we are seeing consumer behavior changing is in DIY when they began altering their general spending habits from June onwards post the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend. The local trade story remains very positive. Our trade customers continue to tell us that their pipelines are in good shape. One in four tradespeople have work lined up for 12 months or more, with close to 60% having a solid pipeline of work over the next three months, both broadly unchanged since early 2022. Two-thirds of tradespeople have not seen any jobs being canceled or postponed, and if they do get postponed, most rebook within the next month. Now turning to Do It For Me, as we look forward at our own leads, conversion, and average order value, we don't see any significant changes, and cancellations remain at a very low level.
As we mentioned at our Q2 trading statement, what we are seeing is that customers are just taking longer to get through the journey from order to completion. They're being a lot more considered and thoughtful around their purchase. We are taking proactive steps to get customers through this journey quicker. Now, as soon as a customer has accepted our quote, our design consultants are booking in the delivery to create further certainty that the purchase will go through to completion. We're also responding to the current consumer environment and helping customers purchase their dream kitchen or bathroom with the introduction of a new lower financing rate at 3.9% APR. We're simply making it more affordable so they don't have to compromise on what they want.
As distinct from local trade and Do It For Me, there is a different story in our DIY business. As Mark guided in our outlook statement, we are seeing some softening in DIY as we come off the COVID highs and consumers are more mindful of the economic environment. Whilst we are still seeing high levels of engagement in DIY, with nine out of 10 households taking on a DIY project, there is some evidence of people canceling projects, and our latest survey suggests that that is around one in 10. Whilst we can't predict future sales levels, what we are confident about is that we will continue to perform better than the market and be a relative winner.
Our uniquely balanced business model leaves us well-positioned with greater resilience to consumer trends and our distinctive customer propositions mean we can support all customers with their home improvement plans during a period when their household costs are rising. As I've already mentioned, customers across our local trade and Do It For Me channels are generally older and wealthier homeowners with high levels of savings and a need to invest in their aging housing stock. We have a market-leading proposition and a highly efficient model that is based on a curated product range that means we can have a laser-sharp focus on providing the lines that matter most at the best possible value. This is especially important to local trade who are increasingly seeking value to be able to mitigate rising costs for their customers.
One in two local trades are doing more price research than normal and turning to Wickes products more frequently as a result. As you can see from this chart on the top right, our price index versus our main competitors remains strong. Our well-regarded own brand has strong brand recognition and has built up half a century of goodwill with our most valuable customers. Two-thirds of our sales come from great value Wickes own brand products. Critically, our focus on making sure we are always innovating with new products and services that customer love is a key factor in driving demand and market share gains. Finally, as household looks for ways to reduce their energy costs this winter, we are well-placed to help them with that task.
As we step into autumn, we are focused on our trading and pricing plans on making energy-efficient products more affordable to support customers in the challenges around the cost of living crisis with a focus on how they can lower their household energy consumption. We're selling numerous energy-saving products from LED light bulbs to draft excluders to insulation. In recent weeks, we have seen sales volumes of insulation up by as much as 85% on a 3-year basis. We've also updated our energy-saving advice pages on our website, where customers can find great tips on how to make their homes more energy efficient. Look, this slide will be familiar to all of you now. It outlines the strong portfolio of growth levers that we have to win in the market.
We've made great progress on these growth levers in the first half. I'd just like to share a few highlights. Our strong balance sheet gives us real advantage. Whilst others may not have the funds to invest, we do, and they are driving good returns. Our TradePro scheme goes from strength to strength. Sales up 20% in the first half, driven by an 18% increase in new members, taking the customer base now to well over 700,000. That's around 70,000 new members in the first half of this year alone, compared to 80,000 in the whole of last year. We're well on our way to hitting our target of 1 million TradePro members.
We've been doing some exciting work in our Do It For Me business with the introduction of new bathroom and kitchen ranges, which are performing really well and already contributing 15% of all showroom sales. It's vital that we're able to provide our customers the very best installer service backed up by our guarantee of great workmanship. This is a real point of difference for us, and we're delighted to have added a further 200 installer teams to our network of Wickes approved installers. We now have over 2,800 teams spread far and wide across the country and on track to have 3,000 by the year-end. More than 60% of our kitchen and bathroom installations have a tiling or flooring project attached, and following the continued success of our tiling and flooring installation service, we have launched internal joinery nationally this year.
We're also exploring the opportunity to broaden the reach of our kitchen proposition and have introduced six new ranges of ready-to-fit kitchens tailored to the budget end of the market. In DIY, we have conducted a number of range reviews in the first half, including our garden maintenance and buildings categories, which has resulted in a 75% uplift in sales since 2019. The bedrock of DIY is painting and decorating. In this category we have seen strong market share gains in the first half and have new ranges landing in the second. An enduring legacy of the pandemic was the introduction of a younger generation to DIY, including more women trying their hand at home improvement projects. We have seen a 20% growth in female customers since the pandemic. Women now account for over 70% of our followers on our DIY Instagram pages.
We're making super progress on our store refit program, with six out of the 11 stores for 2022 already completed and the rest on track to be done by the end of this year. Our refitted stores continue to see an average sales uplift from ROCE of around 25%. In March, I announced our plans to open on average around four to five new stores each year over the next five years from 2023. I'm delighted to say we've brought forward the opening of one of those new stores, and we'll be welcoming customers through the doors of our new Bolton store in Q4 of this year. Within our stores, we continue to invest in enhancing our service model.
We have increased the square footage of order fulfillment in a further 30 stores, taking the total to just shy of 70 and growing our overall Home Delivery capacity by over 10%. We have also rolled out the new digital handheld devices so our store teams can swiftly pick customer orders, resulting in us launching a new reduced 30-minute Click and Collect window. Customers can now order what they need online or via the app and have their order picked, packed, and ready for them in store in just 30 minutes. Finally, on this slide, we continue to make great strides in our digital capabilities. The number of sales starting online are up year-over-year despite lapping COVID comparatives.
In the first half, we launched a range of Wickes products on eBay with the intention of growing our customer base and reaching customers who might not have shopped with us before. We are making positive progress on all our responsible business pillars. I won't go through each of these, but just pick some highlights in the first half. These includes a phenomenal response to the launch of our Wickes Community Programme. We've helped over 130 community projects in the form of product donations and volunteer support from over 90 stores, with more and more stores getting on board. We've implemented a new energy management platform across the estate alongside the launch of an energy efficiency drive, with a focus on reducing store electricity and gas consumption.
In our homes pillar, selling sustainable products and services will be central to our business strategy over the coming years. We have spent the first half of this year mapping out the sustainability credentials of all of our products and are working on a taxonomy and labeling strategy that will help customers make informed decisions about the products they purchase and their environmental impact. Just to conclude on this slide, we are submitting our science-based targets next week. More on that in the year to come. To wrap up, we've had a strong first half, record levels of sales, record market share, successfully maintained profit, and made good progress across our growth levers.
Our distinctive business model and strong value proposition is standing us in good stead, and we continue to outperform the market despite the challenging environment with the local trade and Do It For Me parts of our business in good health, although signs of softening in DIY. We have an agile model focused on efficiency of the cost base and remain confident in our ability to be a relative winner in this market. We are well-placed to capitalize on the long-term structural home improvement trends. Our strong balance sheet and cash generation supports continued investment in our growth levers and delivering shareholder returns. Thank you for listening. Mark and I would now be happy to answer any questions.
Hey, it's Adam Cochrane from Deutsche. A couple of questions if I can. You talked about finance offer within the Do It For Me. What proportion of Do It For Me sales are made on finance? Secondly, how much of that Do It For Me do you think is people spending down saved cash reserves that they may have saved up for that project in advance during COVID or other times? Secondly, you talked about the energy conservation. Clearly it's very topical and right to flag it. What proportion of your sales does this represent and how are you going about making, you know, is there things you can do within? You know, I would like to do something in my house, but you need to find an installer.
Can you just come and Do It For Me, right? Can you do the whole lot for me in terms of that process? Finally, the lead time on DIY projects. You've said that there might be some signs of softening. When people do a DIY project rather than Do It For Me, how long in advance do you think they know? You know, I know I've got some projects, but they've been on the shelf for two years, let's say. How long do people have
You know, in the pipeline. When do they make the decision to, I suppose, cancel their DIY projects? Thanks.
Wow, Adam, that was a lot, wasn't it? Do you want to hit on the finance or should I?
Try the first one.
You do the first one.
perhaps you can do...
I can do the other two.
Okay. Yeah. Broadly in the Do It For Me business, it's about 50% buy on finance and 50% pay cash. It's not in answer to your second part to the question, whether the people paying on cash are paying out of savings versus regular income, I don't think we know that information. We haven't seen a particular shift in the proportion of people paying on finance versus paying cash. As you know, there are still excess savings in the market since COVID. Although clearly the consumer pressures are there for everybody to see, there are still people with cash and with savings.
At the moment, in terms of investment for that and what you do with your cash, there aren't that many places that give a good return, but one place that you can put cash and get a good return and also help your general wellbeing and quality of life is to invest in your house. People that have got that cash are still doing so. We have, as David said, improved our finance offer as well because it's important that we make it as affordable as possible, so we've brought that down from 4.9% APR to 3.9% APR, and obviously that's in an environment where rates are going up. We're really trying to do the right thing for our customers.
We haven't seen a big shift either way, in that mix between finance and cash.
Thank you, Mark. Just picking up on the energy conservation point, as Mark pointed out, in his update, it's broadly our energy bill is 1% cost to sales sort of thing. Of course, what we're focusing on is making sure as we anticipate that cost may rise as we move into Q2 next year, that we're well organized to be as efficient as possible at a store level in terms of that energy utilization. That project is working quite well. Through our refit stores and in particularly new stores, we'll make sure they're really fit for purpose in terms of being effective in the modern world. That does mean we are installing right now, you know, air source heat pumps into our stores.
We are working with our landlords to put solar on the roofs of those stores to try and, you know, generate energy more locally and immediately at the store. The speed of decision making, I mean, I think it's fair to say that there is a longer lead time definitely attached to a more a scale project in the home. When we look through the lens of our Do It For Me customers, you know, it's a thoughtful, considered process if you're gonna remodel your home and put new bathrooms and new kitchens in it.
If you think about most of the DIY projects, and the most common thing is really about decorating, painting a room or maybe, you know, dropping some bark on the borders in the garden, but not necessarily this time of year, though, I think that's more immediate in terms of people thinking about what they, what they want to do. Of course, people have different habits and attitudes. I mean, we do have a very clear segmentation analysis, Adam, of which you will fall into the sort of like put it off till tomorrow type group.
Mm-hmm.
That's very, very clear and tomorrow never comes in terms of your project. What we are seeing, as I said earlier, is, you know, one in ten projects being canceled. The flip side is still a very high engagement in DIY with nine out of ten, you know, have got a project in mind and intend to execute that. That one in ten is we've seen that come through sort of like in the last sort of like couple of months or so. Definitely a shorter timescale attached to a DIY project.
Thanks, guys. Jack Minshull here with Redburn. two questions from me, one on market share, one on inflation. I see on slide 8, I think it is, you're using GfK for your market share data. Just wondering if you're kinda relying on them solely, if there are other indices you're looking at? Kinda looking forward for market share, which categories are you seeing as being the movers and shakers? In terms of inflation, slide 10, thanks for the breakdown. Lots of moving parts there. You mentioned utilities for FY23, potentially having some driving force there. In terms of raw mats, lumber, stuff like that, what are you seeing in terms of inflation? That'd be great.
Should I take the first two?
Yep.
Yeah, our market share measure, in terms of GfK really covers, you know, the local trade and the retail sort of like, you know, DIY side of the business. I think it's a very sound, and strong measure. You know, we augment that, with understanding, particularly through the Do It For Me lens, the type of share that we're getting in terms of visit impressions to our website and our showroom business, so we can compare that, with others in the market. The challenge with Do It For Me is it's just such a highly fragmented market with many independents, so you don't get a regular read through any form of EPOS, in that marketplace.
We just have to be a bit more thoughtful as to how we measure that. As I say, we use web impressions and sessions as a barometer, to understand our performance in that marketplace.
In terms of inflation in our products, we had 15% in the first half. We are expecting that to moderate in the second half for a couple of reasons. First of all, the simple math of annualizing when we started to get the strong inflation, which was in the second half of last year, that will have a natural slowing down of inflation, we think. The second thing is that some of the raw commodities are actually now starting to come down in price. If you look at timber, for example, that has started to come down, and that was, you know, our best selling line is a stick of CLS that was at GBP 2.50. It got as high as GBP 5.00, and it's currently GBP 4.60, it's now coming off.
That's just indicative because across our business, timber is incredibly important. It goes into our kitchen furniture, it's our decking, it's our fencing. Actually if raw commodity prices start to deflate, that will be a second factor that will help with inflation in the second half of the year. I think the medium term outlook is. It's quite hard to predict. We would expect it to be coming off the 15% that we had in the first half. As we move into 2023, we would naturally see that start to come down. We also will see some headwinds in two forms. One will be FX. At the moment, we're in a very strong position of hedging our foreign exchange.
Gradually over time, that sort of unwinds, we'll be more exposed to a potentially weaker sterling. We'll obviously have to see where that plays out. Freight costs at the moment, we're locked into a good position, and through to part of 2023. Depending on what happens when we come off that hedge, there may be some offsetting headwinds there. It's actually quite hard to unpick some of the different elements. Worth reminding you that in our supply chain, 70% of our sales we buy in the U.K., probably about 20% Europe and just under 10% Asia.
We are very much a U.K. purchaser, albeit that even within the U.K. purchases, we're not immune to a weaker sterling, 'cause obviously some of our downstream suppliers are exposed to that in commodity prices. I hope that gives a bit of a flavor. I know it's not an exact answer, but those are the drivers.
I just thought I missed. Sorry, I did miss one of the questions in between there, which was movers and shakers in terms of our market share. Let me just very briefly come back on that. In terms of the moving and the shaking, for us, it's definitely our timber category in terms of helping drive market share for the business, and we really overtrade in timber. It's also decorative. We've seen some of our strongest outperformance in decorative, which again, is the most common sort of like DIY product. Then also garden, in particular, so like garden maintenance. Beyond that, I'm not talking about. I'm talking about sort of like fencing and more structural sort of like projects in the garden.
There are our three big drivers in terms of our share performance.
Wayne Brown at Liberum. Just two on DIFM and then one on marketing. Can you give us an indication of the direction of travel of installations per order and how that's performing? Then does the imminent recession delay your entry into new categories? Just some thoughts around that. Then on marketing spend, can you just talk to us about the efficiency of marketing spend and your ability to drive traffic? Thanks.
Should I take those?
Yep.
Excellent. Thank you, Wayne. I mean, broadly, when we look at our Do It For Me business, in the round, we're slightly ahead of more than one in two projects having our installation service attached to that, and that is in growth. Much higher in bathrooms, you know, a very specialist thing. A little lower in kitchens on that average point, as people may use local trade and joiners in their area to get that done. As I said earlier, though, the attachment of further installation services around those key projects is performing very, very well, with 60% of our installations taking on the form of further installation attached to it.
I think that really focuses our minds in terms of how we think about extending our services to your question, Wayne. It's really about saying, look, if we take the kitchen project or we take the bathroom project, what are the obvious installation services around that mean we can get more of the project in terms of the sales value? Tiling and flooring are good examples. We've now launched Nationally Joinery, so Internal Joinery. We're actually sort of like fitting the doors. Of course, customers, now we provide the service, come to us and say, "Look, can you just fit eight new doors on the top of my building, please, on top of my house?" I mean, not on the top, obviously, Wayne, but second floor.
Our strategy with confidence is to extend from the heartland of kitchens and bathrooms. We are still trialing some other stuff around the edges, but I think our immediate focus has to be through that lens in the first instance. We'll build our installation services that make logical sense to capture more of that overall project in the kitchen and the bathroom. Efficiency, this is really one for the marketer, but we are a highly efficient in how we invest our money. I always describe it this way because when you think about marketing in its broadest sense, particularly as a retailer, you do have what I call bought channels.
You do have owned channels of which we have real strength and real penetration. I mean, one, we have a national store network, but two, we have a very, very strong digital presence, a very, very high organic search for our business. We're uber efficient there. Of course, we understand PPC to within a penny of its investment. Then you have earned channels, people speaking positively on your behalf. Increasingly, we see that with the Wickes business. We utilize all channels. We're highly efficient in how we invest in those channels. We can see the returns, we measure the returns, and we course correct what we're doing.
I think the marketing team do a fabulous job in making sure we're eking out every sort of like penny of benefit in how we go to market through bought, owned, and earned channels.
Morning. Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I've got four, I think. I think the first one is really an extension of Adam's, though. On the energy piece question that he asked, in terms of... If I'm a consumer and I've got GBP 5,000 to spend on doing some sort of upgrade to my house to reduce my energy consumption, can I come to you and say, "I live in a 1950s three-bedroom house. Tell me what the best thing to do is to reduce my energy consumption"? You might say, "Sam, your boiler's 25 years old. It's burning at 6% efficiency. Spend GBP 2,000 on a new boiler. That's the best bang for buck," or it's loft insulation or it's solar PV or whatever. Can you kind of solve my problem for me in that way?
The second one is
Guidance around the leverage position. I think we can all definitely help by your cost breakdown, have an idea of what the EBITDA numbers might be for the next couple of years with some volume assumptions. How do we think about the change in the lease debt, which is gonna be the balancing figure for where the leverage is going forward? Are you seeing any signs of trading down product categories in the trade market or indeed the DIY market? Lastly, I guess on the balance between dividends and buybacks, you've obviously maintained the dividend at last year's rate. What sort of valuation do the shares need to get to before you do a buyback rather than a dividend?
Okay, it looks like two for me, two for you there, Mark. We can oscillate. Let me pick up with the energy piece. Of course, right now you can step into one of our stores. We have a whole host of products and services or products that can help you in the first instance. Our colleagues would be delighted to help you with your thinking in terms of what you could do in your home to help reduce energy. We also play that out through our energy saving advice, you know, portal in our online store as well.
You can go and get that advice there, and you can click through and buy products to help with certain projects, and we give you an indication of what you could save. We are planning on building out that sort of, like, education and awareness piece. As I mentioned, in the updates, we're planning on improving sort of our taxonomy and how we communicate and help customers get onto those projects quicker. Do I have the ability to step over your door and say, "Right, let me give you an audit of your home," and then recommend to you what you need to do specifically through that, you know, that personal audit, I think is an interesting avenue to pursue, not one that we can do immediately right now.
One that would probably involve a good balance of not just our products and our services, but also partnerships, I think with others in these areas who are quite more specialist to create the overall proposition for the customer. I'll leave it there in sort of like that point on there. Of course, it is on our mind 'cause we do see that we could play a really unique role in this area, not least given our capability in terms of installation and the size of our installation teams to offer something that could look like that, Sam. Do you want to talk to leverage?
Would you wanna do the trading then I'll cover my 2 together?
Yeah. I mean.
trading down.
... you know, I have a phrase which the team laugh at me in the business, which you have a number of canaries in the mine that I look at every week just to anticipate what the customer's doing differently. I can say with a high degree of confidence, whether you look through local trade, whether you look through DIY or even Do It For Me, we are seeing no trading down. Ironically, in Do It For Me at the moment, we're seeing a higher percentage of sales going through in our best ranges. You know, now on DIY, one of the key barometers is actually looking at the most common project, which is paint and an area that we've made, you know, remarkable gains in terms of share.
We're not seeing any trading down in those areas on that most common DIY project and likewise, local trade, very, very similar. It is worth reminding though, that we do have a very strong own brand business. You know, two thirds of our sales are already own brand, so it's less about trading down and more about new customers trading into Wickes at the moment, and that's what we're seeing in terms of the speed and quality of the growth of our customer base going forward.
Would you like to? Yeah. The two points on balance sheet. We haven't given specific guidance on where the lease liability is going to be going in terms of numbers, but it's gonna be coming down. You'll remember from I think it was the prelims presentation, we shared the profile of lease renewals, and you'll see that in the next two or three years we have a low level of renewals, which means our liability is coming down and our annual charge will be coming down before a period then when we get more leases coming renewals coming in and the liability goes up and the annual charge will be going up a bit. We've not given specific guidance.
As you can see, that is starting to come off in terms of the annual charge. That will help from a leverage perspective in the medium term. I do want to reiterate in the shorter term that we're expecting leverage to go up by the year end because of the working capital cycle. Then dividends and share buybacks. You probably won't be surprised to know that we're not going to say at what price we think we'll be willing to buy back shares.
For us, the important thing is, when we reach the point when we're consistently below 2.75 times on that IFRS 16 net debt to EBITDA basis, that then is the time to start, taking action and also talking to you more about how our strategy is there, first of all, between buybacks and dividends and also, the price at which we buy the shares. Really it's more dictated by where we are in leverage and excess cash versus where the share price is. Kate?
Morning.
Morning.
Kate Calvert here from Liberum. I know, Liberum? Where am I? Changing already. Anyway, Investec. Yeah, I know. Terrible. Sorry, Wayne.
Kate needs to regather her thinking.
Two questions from me. The first one is, given where the market is today, can you sort of give some comment on where you see your investment plans for next year? Are we looking at sort of 12-15 refurbs? Obviously you're slightly lower than that this year. Do you have visibility on four to five sites for next year? I appreciate Bolton slipping into this year, but it's basically next year, isn't it? 'Cause it's right at the end. My second question is, the move onto eBay marketplace, is this margin dilutive from a gross margin perspective?
Should we handle the first, you the second?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Super thank you, Kate. I mean, in terms of our commitment to investing in our, in our core levers for growth, of which obviously store refits and new stores are, it remains unchanged. We would be looking to be somewhere between sort of like the 11 and 15 next year in terms of store refits. They move around for a whole host of reasons, but of course, we've got good line of sight of the next 40 that we want to do. There's always optionality in terms of how you, how you move through the portfolio. Yes, on new sites, we pulled Bolton forward. We have another new site which is absolutely confirmed, and we will start on that.
There are around about six or seven that we're working with at the moment to get to that sort of, like, average of about four. You know, we can work with enough breakage in the marketplace sort of thing. There's enough, you know, good, sort of like white space sites for us to be working with. Again, we have good visibility on those. I would say we're in a very comfortable position to achieve our objectives on an annual basis.
In terms of eBay, obviously at the moment, it's something that's very small in terms of trialing. We have only got Home Delivery at this stage. We're looking to implement Click and Collect, which obviously is a slightly lower cost model to serve for us. That will come in. I think the important thing is to look at this both from an incremental sales on eBay perspective, but also what it does to introduce us to new customers. We believe and are now demonstrating that the sales are incremental, and we're reaching people who wouldn't necessarily have gone to Wickes in the first place anyway.
Part of this is also, yes, it would be slightly margin dilutive because there's another mouth to feed in paying eBay. Also, it's in comparison to other forms of customer acquisition that we might look at. We're looking at it in the whole, not just on the pure gross margin that we can flow through the business.
Yeah. I think my only build on that is, you know, the purpose of eBay, as Mark just outlined, was to attract new customers to the business. The incrementality of that customer base is very high. The good news is, as we build out beyond home fulfillment, this is all about driving the efficiency of our physical estate through digital. A whole host of new customers being home fulfilled are now moving into Click and Collect, drives the efficiency of our physical estate through digital. It makes complete sense for us to pursue this as we move forward.
Yeah, Tony Shiret from Panmure. Just maybe give you the hardest one first so you can think about it.
The hardest one for Mark, Tony?
Yeah. Don't know, don't know. Just, just on the emissions plan that you're gonna come up with at the end of this month. Is it gonna be the case that, you know, you'd be able to do in broad terms, lots on Scope 1 and 2 and virtually nothing on Scope 3? Are you planning to make meaningful reductions in Scope 3 emissions? That's the question. Secondly, a bit more sort of about business now. In terms of the DIFM business, presumably you can give us some numeric indication of actual new orders per month, year-on-year. 'Cause I'm slightly concerned that your new orders are more at the top end of the range, and you're still seeing a softening year-on-year.
I wonder what the volume picture is year on year in new orders. Lastly, four to five stores per annum, new stores looks a bit puny, relative to your 230 base. Just wondered if you could give us some sort of indication of how you evaluate stores and the extent to which, you know, if Bolton is an absolute mega success, or something like that, or to what degree would it have to be a mega success to actually get you to more meaningful opening program?
Shall I do the first and the third, and you do the one in the middle? Is that all right?
Yeah.
Tony, you're absolutely spot on. When we look through the profile of our overall, sort of like carbon emission profile as a business, the vast majority of that does sit in Scope 3. Scope 1 and 2 for us are probably around about 2%-3% of our emissions. 97%-98% of that does sit further down the extended value chain into the supply base. We have a very challenging science-based target that we'll be performing against with our suppliers. That takes it, you know, the headline form of that is making sure that our supply base are also lining up behind science-based targets that align to our objectives in terms of where we want to be by 2040. We are actually making really good progress on that.
We have been engaging for quite a while through all our supply forum, forums and supply conferences with this particular topic at the center of most discussions. I think the team have done a wonderful job. It won't come as a surprise. You know, a lot of our existing supply base are already big public businesses that are under the same pressure we are to make progress in this area. There's natural alignment there. Against the targets that we will set and we'll submit next week, so once we submit, we can come back with more detail around those. I actually feel very confident on Scope 3, and we're seeing really good alignment through the supply chain on that.
Yeah, so Do It For Me orders. Obviously at the moment in the year-on-year comparison, we are, this is only in the first half, been lapping an unusual period because in the first quarter of the previous year, showrooms were closed, so we have very good positive like-for-like in terms of ordered sales this year we're comparing. Of course the reverse happened. We had a very strong period in Q2 last year, and that's unwound a bit. I think as we go through the second half, a slightly lower level of ordered sales year-on-year is where we're at. Obviously we believe
That we have the opportunity to get back to overall levels of sales for me, of 2019 levels, which are GBP 400 million in the year, in due course. We think we'll be slightly lower than that this year on a delivered sales basis. We have a lot of great initiatives that will help us get back to 2019 and beyond in due course.
I mean, slightly is what? Less than 10% or more than 10%?
We're not giving specific numbers on that.
Okay.
Yeah, slightly is an operative word.
New stores?
Yes, on new stores. Well, I mean, thank you for the challenge and our ability to only open a puny number, Tony. I appreciate the feedback. It will go straight to the team. They'll enjoy that. No. All joking aside, I mean, look, you know, we need to be really, really disciplined in terms of our focus on capital in the first instance and the types of locations that we look for in terms of new stores are, you know, they're harder to find because we want to be on quality retail parks. As you know, when we think about our peer set, it's about being on the right retail parks with the likes of a Pets at Home, a Dunelm, a Halfords, all other speciality retailers. We're not looking at vacant areas on the high street or big box out of town.
This is premium retail parks, where we'd like to place the business. That in itself means we just need to be really, really disciplined. We've also got to manage the duality of the very strong refit program that we're pushing through, and we've doubled the pace on that in combination with opening new stores. There's a tight but highly skilled team that do this in the business. I'm almost, I mean, loathe is probably too strong a term actually, Tony, but I'm reluctant to increase the pace because I think it might dilute the quality of the execution. I want to make sure the execution is right first time, so it's in there for the long haul and delivers the returns that we believe.
The good thing about new stores is thinking about how you evaluate, and of course, we use a number of techniques to evaluate the potential of a new store in the area. Broadly, we're looking at a payback period that's somewhere just over two years on a new store versus a refit that's probably closer to four. These are good things for us to do, but we will remain very disciplined, laser-like in our focus in terms of how we do those. I say, you know, I say four to five, you know, it could be four next year, it could be, you know, six or seven, you know, the following sort of things. I'm just keeping it as an average in terms of what we're trying to do.
Just one follow-up on that. Sorry. If you're looking to open in retail parks, the follow-up question is, if you look at the 230 you've got at the moment, how many of those are actually retail as opposed to sort of semi-industrial parks?
The vast majority are retail or adjacent to retail, not necessarily on the park. I think if you remember, we've been to the Dunstable store. You know, it's sort of like adjacent to a retail park. That's where the vast majority of our estate is.
Ami Galla from Citi. Just a few questions from me. First one was on pricing. I was wondering if you could talk about the levers that you can pull for pricing next year, potentially the degree of flex that you have to cover additional overhead inflation through pricing. Given that you've got about 10% sterling exposure versus USD to an extent, and maybe your competitors may have a slightly higher exposure to USD, does that mean that you probably have some headroom there? Second one really on competitive behavior into the sort of softer summer batch. Has there been any changes in the broader DIY space?
Shall I take the first two, and you take the competitor behavior?
Yeah
point?
Yeah.
Yeah. We've got a relatively low exposure, but there'll be some clearly exposure if sterling continues to be weaker. I don't know exactly the exposure that other competitors will have, but you may be right in saying that they perhaps have a slightly higher exposure. In terms of what pricing levers we have to operate with, obviously, we are aiming to be the best value in the market. You saw the pricing chart that we put up and we continue to be a few percentage points below, which is just right. You know, we want to be the cheapest, but we don't want to leave money on the table either in terms of margin. We'll aim to continue to achieve that.
Whilst we have a position where our competitors are also facing the same headwinds, whether it's FX or freight, then we think we'll be able to do that. What the evidence of the industry so far is that we have passed through costing increases to the customer on a reasonable basis because our pricing index hasn't really changed very much versus our competitors. It feels like the rest of the industry is going with us. In terms of other levers, clearly what we are trying to do is all of the time get the best possible prices that we can from our suppliers. We will be passing those through. Timber, for example, as soon as the price came down, we've started to reduce the price on our timber.
You know, it's about allowing that process to just flow through and managing it effectively and hedging where we can to help smooth the effect. Clearly, in the long term, you can't buck the trend of foreign exchange, but you can smooth it in the shorter term.
Sorry, a bit of follow-up on that. I mean, do some of your, say, some of the sort of independent businesses, would they be running on cash basis on a normalized? Would you have quarters where there's a distinct price mismatch between your pricing versus them?
Do you want to pick up pricing versus competitors, particularly smaller independents as well as the larger?
Yeah, I think, you know, our both our competitive thinking and interesting and our pricing thinking, you know, 'cause we don't face any one competitor. If you're thinking through the, you know, the axis of value and how competitive are we because of the three verticals. In the DIY vertical, of course, you know, the obvious players in there are sort of like, you know, B&Q and Homebase, for example, as you would have seen earlier, we have a very sharp position versus our competitors, you know, our major competitor in terms of DIY. In trades, I mean, it's just obvious from the performance of our trade business how sticky our proposition and the value that we offer our trade customers is proving in this marketplace right now.
I feel very confident that we're in a strong position on both value and convenience and availability, for, you know, versus our competitors in there. In Do It For Me, it's tricky actually, because there's not really a price. Interestingly, to the point around independence, it is still an industry that is highly fragmented with a lot of independence in local areas. It really is about what the customer wants in terms of their dream kitchen or their dream bathroom or their dream home office. The one thing we do know is the average sale, the average order value that we have is much higher than the market on average.
Back to the type of consumer that comes to our business, which is much more an older and more affluent customer, if we think of classic good, better, best steering, you know, our average price on a sort of like a kitchen, for example, would be around the GBP 6,500-GBP 7,000 mark ahead of installation. The broad average in the market is GBP 4,000 and below. We are positioned in a different space with a slightly different customer, and it's not obvious what any one price should be because it depends what the customer wants in terms of their design and their dream kitchen or bathroom and how we choose to service that and then install that.
Sorry, Sam again. Just one follow-up on the Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Obviously, all the material manufacturers and suppliers are telling everyone who'll listen that they're introducing various green products which are gonna achieve a pricing premium versus the legacy products in the market. Is that your experience that you're willing to kind of pay a premium for green products? Similarly, are you able to pass that additional cost through to the consumer? Does the consumer care enough to buy a green product versus a non-green product?
Yeah, there's two different things there, isn't there? Your question is probably centered more on the environment than it is necessarily on energy saving. I think consumers are very keen right now on energy saving products, and we can see that in the performance of those categories in our business. I've gotta be honest, I'm not aware, I'm personally not aware of, you know, a thematic trend of people coming in and selling green products to us at a premium with the hope that customers will pay that. I think most customers love the idea of more environmentally friendly products but would want them at a similar price to the ones that they bought previously.
There's always a job to be done, I think, between both the retailer and the supplier partner to make sure we're providing best value and in line with customer expectation to get the traction and the change you want in terms of, in terms of the customer behavior.
Thanks.
Good. Well, look, thank you for a very engaging.
Do you want some questions from the conference call?
Oh, are there some?
Maybe.
God.
Just ask Emma for any questions from the conference call. Can you just on the mic just ask Emma if she's getting questions?
Emma, are there any questions from the conference call?
If you would like to ask a question, you can do so now by pressing star one on your telephones. That's star one if you'd like to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment. We do have a question. Matthew McEachran from Singer Capital Markets, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks. Sorry to come in with the 30th question of the day. Just it's one that's left over. Just on TradePro, you've obviously got quite a lot of experience in terms of the cohorts coming through since the start of the program. Could you just give us some idea as to how the different cohorts are performing? Are you still getting growth in the original cohorts? Are the newer joiners starting their life at a better place than the original cohorts or not? A little bit of flavor on that, please.
Yeah. No, of course, Matthew. I mean, encouraging what we do see is quite quickly as a new cohort come into the TradePro scheme, they very quickly, you know, adopt the behavior and the pattern and the frequency and the overall value versus sort of like the, you know, the existing or average lines in the cohort. Typically, over 8-12 weeks, they will then be up at where the sort of like existing loyal cohorts are. I see that in retail as quite a, quite a rapid sort of like alignment in terms of, in terms of the customer base as they, as they come in.
I mean, you may have noticed in our statement that we are up year-over-year, 20% in TradePro sales. In terms of TradePro members, it's high teens. I think that gives you an indication that actually the newer members are doing just as well. A combination of, you know, newer members doing just as well and existing members perhaps slightly ahead.
Yeah.
I think that gives you good evidence that it's not diluting the quality of our TradePro members as we take more on board.
Yeah. Thanks. That's what I thought you would say. That's good. In terms of the Click and Collect 30 minute offer that you've rolled out, I mean, it's pretty early days, but is there any evidence that that's kicking things on again?
Yeah. Super question, Matthew. I mean, early evidence is yes. In actual fact, in terms of Click and Collect growth, we look at every part of our multi-channel proposition through the customer lens. We can see that our TradePro customers right now are the fastest growing part of our Click and Collect business. It's not a surprise because you can go on your TradePro app on a Sunday evening, you can see by SKU, you know availability, you can place your order, pay for your order, then the following day, you know, we're picking that, we're packing it, and we're actually putting it in the back of your van as you drive past the store sort of thing.
We have our outside, you know, park and collect facility for our traders and customers, broader DIY customers, but it's proving really sticky with the trade 'cause it's just super convenient, isn't it? They can sit in their van having a bacon roll and a cup of tea while we're putting plasterboard in the back of their wagon sort of thing before they get off and off to work for the day. Using our digital strength with the trade and the convenience and the value and the availability we offer is working very well.
That's very kind. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Cheers, guys.
Our pleasure, Matthew. Thank you for the question.
Thank you. We will now hand the call back to your host for some closing remarks.
Super. Thank you, Emma. Well, look, team, it'll come as no surprise that we're really pleased with the performance in the first half. It is record sales. It is record market share. You know, we've successfully maintained the profit in the business in a very challenging environment. You know, that performance remains underpinned by those three things, the uniqueness of the balance in this business, the quality of the value proposition that we have for our customers across all three routes to market, Most importantly, and they shouldn't go without recognition, you know, a wonderful team of colleagues just doing an outstanding job in terms of providing service.
You know, we're really confident in our distinct levers for growth and how we can invest in those to continue to be a winner in this market, outperform, and, you know, move the business forward in terms of growth. Thank you for your time this morning. Thank you for your attendance. Thank you for joining on the webcast and have a wonderful day.