Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you enjoyed our opening video. Thought you'd like to see how we spend your money wisely. I'm Brian Duffy, the CEO of the Group, and you'll be hearing from me, then Eric Macaire, Executive Director of Buying and Merchandising, then David Hurley, President of North America and Deputy Group CEO, then Craig Bolton, President of U.K. and Europe. Yours truly, back up again on new projects and acquisitions, and then Anders Romberg, our CFO, will present the financials. I have some closing remarks to make, and then the presentation team will join me on stage to take your questions. Joining us today, we have here in the front some other members of our wider executive team. They will be available after the presentation, and please take the opportunity to meet them.
So, our business is doing very well. We are way ahead of the LRP that we presented to you all back in July 2021. Our unique model is proven and working in all of our markets. Our U.S. business is particularly strong with great growth momentum. The luxury watch and the luxury branded jewelry markets are both dynamic, offering exciting growth prospects. The luxury watch pre-owned market is already large and will go through significant positive change with the launch of Rolex Certified Pre-Owned. The plan that we are presenting to you today has really been built on granular, painstaking detail.
It has growth from our existing businesses through further investment in our proven successful formats, both showrooms and online, and has exciting new sources of growth in the luxury watch pre-owned sector and branded jewelry sector. We are in the process of closing on the acquisition of 19 Ernest Jones luxury showrooms in the U.K., and we have a program of planned investment in M&A and new market opportunities. This plan results in a more than doubling of our sales by fiscal 2028, an increase in group profitability through fiscal year 2028, a strong cash flow, and a strong return on capital employed. It's a great plan.
We're very proud of it, and as you will hear from the team, we all feel very good and confident that we can deliver on this plan and hopefully go one step further. So let's start by looking at the market context. This chart shows the estimated retail value of Swiss luxury watch exports, calendar 2019 through calendar 2022. We see that the market recovered quickly from the impact of COVID lockdown, with U.K. and US markets ahead of 2019 by 2021. The US market has been very strong, showing a 2022 on 2019 CAGR of +20%. U.K., for the same period, +8%, EU +6%. Year to date, September 2023, exports to the U.S. are running at +11%, U.K. +8%, and EU +9%.
Export data is, of course, sell-in, and our market information from brands in the U.S. and U.K., also GfK data in the U.K., indicates that there has been some stock build for new projects and that the sell-out year-on-year is less than sell-in. We are confident that we're gaining market share in both major markets. The 2023 trends reflect market normalization following exceptional growth in 2021 and 2022. We project this normalization to continue into calendar 2024, and the market's returning to good levels of growth from later in 2024 into 2025. This slide shows the corporate status of the brands in our portfolio, with the major independents of Rolex, Patek, and Audemars, and the three major groups of Swatch, Richemont, and LVMH.
I would draw your attention to the group on the right side, smaller independents. Although individually, small brands, collectively, this group has been the fastest-growing group, for us, and in total has become quite meaningful. This chart, which I'm sure you've all seen, compiled by Morgan Stanley, shows the relative size of, watch brands globally, with Rolex as a clear market leader and Omega and Cartier, the number two and, number three, respectively. Our group continues to work, more and more closely with our key partner, Rolex, on developing our mutual business. We are the oldest and the largest, retailer of Rolex. We have strong market positions, clearly here in the U.K. and in the U.S. We have full visibility of projects out several years, and actually, it's the first time we've had, visibility that far forward.
We will open the largest European flagship for Rolex in Bond Street next year. We have expanded our service capacity for Rolex to both improve client experience and support Certified Pre-Owned, and we work very closely with Rolex in the U.S. and U.K. for the successful launch of CPO. We work closely with Rolex in all commercial plans, client events, co-op advertising, et cetera. We sell Rolex to ROI Registration of Interest list clients, and continue to have good conversion of these lists and to grow the lists. Rolex has announced a $1.1 billion investment in Biel, in Switzerland, to increase production capability from 2029. I've presented our LRP to Rolex management, who are supportive of our direction and strategies for growth.
This chart shows the relative size of the luxury watch category in key markets per capita. Again, using estimated retail value of exports and simply dividing the market size by the total population. As you can see, the UK market on this basis is the number one globally and is approximately 2.5x the U.S. The Nordics is the lowest in the EU market. We believe that the main reason for these differentials is the level of retail investments. The U.S. is now the number one market in absolute value. This chart is from the Deloitte Swiss Watch Market Study, 2022.
The gray bar for all of these age groups is the net value of responses to the statement, "Owning a watch being more or less important to me." It becomes less important as you, as you get older, but you can see the positive response from Millennials and Gen Z. There's no question that our younger cohort today are positively buying into luxury watches. This chart is from the more recently published 2023 Deloitte study and shows that for those buying watches with an investment focus, 28% see luxury watches as a hedge against inflation in 2023 versus 13%, 2022. Value preservation and appreciation has always been a key motivator for luxury watches.
New products are increasingly important to luxury watches, including updates of icons, never changing the aesthetic, obviously, but often upgrading of movements, different straps, dial colors, case sizes, et cetera. Color is an important trend with more and more bright color dials and matching straps. Innovation is ongoing with movements, but even more so with case and the bracelet materials: ceramics, fused alloys, carbon, sapphire, crystal cases, et cetera. Interestingly, it's with the smaller independent brands that these innovations are even more prevalent. Sustainability is increasingly an important topic with consumers of watches, and the industry are now really focusing on recyclable materials and reduced packaging, et cetera. The first watch shown in this line is the ID Genève, which is made from completely recyclable materials.
We are the exclusive retailer of this brand, U.K. and U.S., and interestingly, Leonardo DiCaprio just invested in this business. The jewelry market's huge and resilient. On a per capita basis, the U.S. is by far globally the number one, and the U.K., the clear leader in Europe. A low CAGR growth is positive for the years shown year to date. Year-on-year trends are -3 U.S. and U.K., and again, this is sell-in data. The dynamic trend in jewelry, in the jewelry market is the growth of luxury jewelry brands, and this category shows a CAGR of +13% from 2019 through the projected 2027. Our plans that you'll hear from Eric shortly focus on this branded market. And now you're looking at the track record of Our group's performance.
Our previous long-range plan had ambitious goals of sales +18% CAGR and profits of +25%, including the midpoint of our guidance for fiscal year 2024. We will have way outperformed these goals through fiscal year 2024, with a sales CAGR of +23%, 2024 on 2021, and EBIT of a +32%. Our business continues to perform very well, showing an impressive and consistent growth. Again, using the midpoint of the guidance for fiscal year 2024, which we confirmed this morning, our CAGR on sales, 2024 on 2014, ten-year period, is +19% annually over a decade, and on profits, 2024 on 2014, 2024 on 2015, excuse me, is a CAGR of a +43.6%.
Our balance sheet has been consistently well managed, too, with net cash at fiscal 2023 year end of GBP 60 million and a ROCE for the year of 27.9%. Our sales performance is even more impressive when looked at on a domestic market basis. VAT-free tourist shopping was removed following Brexit, and the tourist business has been hugely impacted and airport business significantly reduced. Therefore, whereas the group sales CAGR 2023 on 2019 is +19%, which, when looked at on a domestic market basis, this increases to +30%. The U.K. CAGR of 2023 on 2019 of +11% increases to +21% when looked at on a domestic basis. The U.S. business has been fantastic for our group, driving Group sales and profit growth.
We've only been in the U.S. for just over five years, and as shown here, the U.S. accounted for just 24% of our fiscal year 2019 sales of GBP 774 million and had increased to 42% of the fiscal year 2023 sales of GBP 1.543 billion. Based on the plan that we present today, the U.S. will be our number one market by calendar 2026. Our online business benefited, as many did, during lockdown, effectively doubling in fiscal year 2021. Our e-com teams have done an amazing job by holding this gain and continuing to grow. I remind everyone that Rolex, Patek, and Audemars are not transactable online. All of our capital investments work, delivering strong ROIs and paybacks. Looking firstly at showroom investment, this is not just refurbishment.
These projects, in most cases, involve showroom expansion, will always include additional brand distribution and can often be a showroom relocation. Our cash payback, which we review ongoing, is between two and three years on these projects. So investing in our showrooms is a key driver of profitable growth, and you will hear and see some great investment programs later today. Our New York flagship shows a combined cash payback of between three and four years. Combined sales for these two Manhattan stores are exceeding $120 million. The stores are only open for around five years, and we started from scratch, as I often say, with a PowerPoint and a dream. No awareness, no team, no database, and the performance of these two stores is really outstanding.
Like many people, we love New York. And acquisitions, mainly in the U.S., show a cash payback of four to four point five years. All of our investment formats have worked, honestly, beyond our expectations, and further investment for growth is the basis of the plan that we're presenting to you today. So our results have been strong, and this is because we have a unique business model. We design beautiful large, contemporary stores that are inviting, intriguing, and browsable. Landlords value what we do and come firstly to the Watches of Switzerland Group, as happened in the U.S. with Hudson Yards, the Wynn Resort in Vegas, American Dream in New Jersey, and recently Broadgate and Battersea here in London. Our brand partners want to be in our stores, and consequently, we provide the best choice of brands for our clients.
Our almost 3,000 colleagues do an amazing job of delivering our Xenia elevated client experience and fully utilizing our CRM tools. We invest heavily in team training, both with our brand partners and through in-house L&D. We are truly multi-channel through flagships, multi-brands, mono brands, airports, online. Our Virtual Boutique of fully trained sales colleagues assisting clients while shopping online, driving great conversion and making store appointments, et cetera. We will grow this resource in the U.S., and the U.K., and the Virtual Boutique will play a really important role in Rolex CPO. Our SAP systems support all operations in stores and provide trends and analytics to support our buying team and merchandising teams.
Our marketing programs vary from mass market digital campaigns achieving billions of online impressions, to hugely impactful PR campaigns in the U.S., reaching huge audiences, to the ultimate in VIP events, both here in the U.K. and in the U.S. After sales is very important for client loyalty and is a valuable source of profitable growth. We have expanded significantly in this area, and we will again double our facilities by fiscal 2028. We have diversified internationally. We have learned so much from our U.S. experience, which has benefited our U.K. business, and equally, we've taken best practices from the U.K. and applied these practices in the U.S. We take nothing for granted, of course, and we're constantly looking to learn and to adapt and to improve. So this is how we've organized the presentation of our growth projects.
Certified pre-owned and luxury jewelry we'll present firstly, as these projects apply to both U.K. and U.S. We will then have the growth plans by region, U.S., U.K., EU, including our Rolex store plans, showroom investments, e-com, mono brands, and so on. Craig will present the Ernest Jones luxury showroom acquisition, and I will present M&A and new store projects. So just looking at our first growth opportunity in pre-owned. The pre-owned market is large and growing. We have based this chart here on information from sources through 2021, and then made our estimate of 2022 and projected 2028. The secondary market declined in the second half of 2022 and 2023 due to price reductions, as I'm sure you all know.
We understand that volume has remained strong, but value is clearly down. I do point out, however, that pre-owned business in our group continued to enjoy continued to grow throughout 2022 and 2023, maintaining good margins. The launch of Rolex CPO has, we believe, added to the total market and stimulated interest in the category. Clearly, the pre-owned market is significant and is particularly strong in Western markets, especially in the U.S., and also skewed historically to towards online sales. This chart from the Deloitte 2023 study shows the motivation of pre-owned purchasers, which is value is number one, and then availability is number two, whether hard-to-find products, limited, exclusive, et cetera.
The likelihood of watch consumers surveyed of buying a pre-owned watch increased markedly in 2023 to 39% from 32%, which we believe has been influenced by the introduction of Rolex CPO. The pre-owned market represents a major opportunity for the Watches of Switzerland Group. We have now launched Rolex CPO in the U.K. and the U.S. to add to our already successful Analog Shift and U.K. pre-owned businesses. We launched Rolex CPO in seven showrooms in the U.S. in July, and five showrooms in the U.K. in September. To date, marketing has been very limited, and in-store presentation is merely the product and cabinets. We've made a great acquisition of Analog Shift in the U.S. in 2020, and we've successfully developed this brand both in-store and online.
Here you see the SoHo store on the left, where our partnership began, and the American Dream most recent installation on the right. Looking at the status and performance of the combined Rolex CPO and non-Rolex CPO through to last week, we have our CPO in 15 showrooms now in the U.S., still five in the U.K. Both markets are online and we have Analog Shift in 20 showrooms in the U.S., and CPO in 11 showrooms in the U.K., again, both online. Combined sales since our CPO launched have been very strong at +102% in the U.S., and that's over 13 weeks, +75% in the U.K. over a 5-week period.
Our expansion plans through to the early part of the LRP is to expand our CPO to all Rolex agencies, to install our CPO furniture and window displays in spring/summer of 2024, to really push on digital online advertising, a major push of the business online, and a step-up of procurement to support demand. For Analog Shift and non-Rolex CPO, we will rebrand UK CPO to Analog Shift. We will increase distribution to all of our watch agencies, and we will equally push this business online. We plan to introduce pre-owned to the EU market and once again, we'll step up procurement to us to support demand.
Our goals for the LRP are that our CPO to become 20% of our Rolex new product sales in the U.S. and 10% in the U.K. by fiscal 2028. Non-Rolex CPO to grow at a minimum of 35% annually in the U.S., and a minimum of 25% annually in the U.K. Just moving briefly on to another growth opportunity in the U.K. Craig will present the detail of the recent acquisition of Ernest Jones showrooms. That is known to the market and was included in the Q2 RNS this morning. Eric will refer to it just to make sure that everybody knows of the deal and knows what's going on. We are acquiring 19 luxury showrooms from Ernest Jones. The showrooms all carry luxury watches.
The deal will formally close in late November, but the transition is underway. The showrooms are closed as of last Saturday, and TUPE transfer processes are ongoing. The target is for us to have all showrooms rebranded, fully integrated systems, training, remerchandising, et cetera, all fully done by Q4 of fiscal 2024, and we expect to have a really good impact in the fiscal 2025. So I'll now hand over to Eric, who'll take you through our luxury branded jewelry opportunity. Eric?
Thank you, Brian. Good evening, everyone. My name is Eric Macaire. I'm the Group Executive Director in charge of global buying and merchandising across watches and jewelry. I joined the group last January 2023, and I'm based in the U.K. I relocated from Hong Kong, where I lived 15 years. Prior to Watches of Switzerland Group, I worked in luxury jewelry at Van Cleef & Arpels, part of Richemont Group, and more recently at DFS, Duty Free Shoppers, part of LVMH Group. I oversaw at DFS, the global watch buying and fashion jewelry department, with operations across the U.S., Oceania, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. Today, I would like to share with you our acceleration plan on luxury branded jewelry. This segment within our group is clearly underdeveloped and offers significant growth opportunities. We have built solid foundations on luxury brand management in general and watches in particular.
We have also learned more on luxury branded jewelry from our recent Betteridge and Mayors acquisitions in the U.S. and are now ready to action. Our recent growth has come mainly from watches. As a result, our group has been underweighted on jewelry. Our product mix between watches and jewelry in the U.K. and the U.S. is the opposite to the market. Last fiscal year, 2023, jewelry business contributed to 7% of our sales. Our group operates across two significant markets for jewelry, giving us a strong position to leverage and accelerate. The U.S. is the number one domestic jewelry market in the world per capita, while the U.K. is the number one in Europe. The projected growth will come predominantly from the luxury branded jewelry, as Brian described.
By 2027, we estimate luxury branded jewelry to account for 34% of the market, compared to approximately 25% today. The luxury branded jewelry industry is organized around few large luxury groups such as LVMH, Kering, Richemont, Swatch, or De Beers Group, but also around several independent jewelry brands such as Roberto Coin, Chopard, David Yurman, or Messika. De Beers Group, based in the U.K., achieved over $6.6 billion of sales in 2022 across its brands and mining activities alone. A quick look at the industry players shows four mega brands, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Bulgari, and Van Cleef & Arpels. These mega brands are today under LVMH and Richemont, heavily focused on retail and direct to clients. We do have a very successful mono-brand boutique with Bulgari in Aventura Mall, Miami, Florida.
Many of the brands listed here are Europeans or Americans and have grown significantly in the past decade. However, they often have focused on large cities and not invested in many U.S. states or the regions in the U.K. They are in quest to recruit new clients and therefore interested in our distribution strength and watch clients database to cross over and address their white spots. We can create a point of difference versus our competitors by offering a portfolio of brands to the clients that they wouldn't be able to have. These brands are selective in their distribution and choice of partners. Our elevation in retail and luxury watch selection offers the perfect environment for them to agree to join us. Taking a quick look at the U.K., it's interesting to notice the strength of the business outside of London, with similar spending on watches.
When it comes to jewelry, the distribution is concentrated in London, in and around Bond Street flagship boutiques, Harrods and Selfridges. Looking at the jewelry demographics, we observe that 56% of the buyers are women and are the main influencers in the purchase decisions, and more and more are also holding the buying power. 35% consider themselves self-purchasers. Engaging them is critical for our future success in jewelry, but also in driving further our watches business. Focusing on millennials is essential, too, as they hold majority of the jewelry spending and spend more than an average client. Luxury branded jewelry is aspirational, hard luxury. It triggers customers who are shopping by brand, status seeker, or luxury fashion advocates. It's more of a lifestyle wear and impulse purchase, coming with the intent to own an iconic and timeless design.
It's about creating a collection to mix and match and stack up jewelry. It can be dressed or casual, and the multiple ways to wear offer opportunity to engage more regularly clients into purchasing versus a classic jewelry or bridal engagement purchase by nature, less frequent and more planned. We notice also a growing appeal for men jewelry, and we'll address this segment as well. Why do we believe we can make a difference in jewelry? We have the winning model to execute our strategy and achieve with luxury branded jewelry what we did with luxury watches. Our skills in brand management have allowed us to grow significantly our sales and market shares with strong leaders in the markets, but also to incubate and grow new brands to very sizable levels.
In a nutshell, we are in key markets for jewelry, with strong nationwide distribution coverage, particularly in the U.K. We are a solid group with infrastructure and resources able to scale. We are credible in the watch and jewelry industry, allowing us to get brand support and to build global strategic partnerships. We have an expert buying team able to detect new trends rapidly, thanks to robust market insights. We are jewelers ourselves, running luxury-owned jewelry brands such as Mappin & Webb, Betteridge, Goldsmiths, or Mayors Jewelry, all growing through elevation. We have first-in-class marketing capabilities and the Xenia service excellence. We run a multi-channel operation, offline and online, across various retail fascias. And lastly, we have an impressive, loyal, domestic client database that we can crossover between watches and jewelry.
What we are about to present is a significant development for the jewelry industry in the U.K., a new concept never seen before, especially outside of London. We will create a unique flagship for luxury jewelry and a Mappin & Webb in Manchester city center. On this slide, you can see the beautiful historical facade of the Mansfield Chambers, Grade II-listed building, a central and visible location on St Ann's Square with Mappin & Webb recognizable identity, but also the first De Beers boutique outside of London, operated by us. So why Manchester? Manchester, after London, is the next major city for luxury retail, with a large catchment area in the Northwest. The city is well connected with an affluent audience, liking arts, fashion, lifestyle, and social activities. Not forgetting football, of course. The group has a strong presence in Manchester already, and this will strengthen in 2024.
In the city center on St Ann's Square, we operate already a Mappin & Webb with Rolex and a Watches of Switzerland showroom, as well as a TAG Heuer monobrand. We will have a new Goldsmiths showroom from the acquisition of Ernest Jones, and we'll also open the first Audemars Piguet House outside of London next year. We are also in Manchester, key shopping mall at Trafford Centre, with two renovated Goldsmiths showrooms and more monobrand operations. The brands joining this flagship will all be exclusive with us in Manchester. We will have a selection of international luxury jewelry brands, but also designer brands and Mappin & Webb jewelry. We will also represent the growing men jewelry segment. The objective is to create a destination of style, curation, and trends for our clients, empowered to make their own decisions.
We want them to feel comfortable in a luxury setup, yet intimist and contemporary, allowing them to browse and discover new products, brands, and trends, but also to receive advice. In the basement, a large space will be dedicated to hospitality, where our Xenia experience can be fully lived and where our clients can feel at ease and mingle. It will be a fantastic event venue and launchpad for brands in the North as well. The space will host a bar, private lounges, and sales rooms. The showroom will be treated as a flagship opening, an activity with a dedicated, localized plan. The plan will consist of events, media, local partnerships, press, social media, and branded animations. To note also that 2025 marks the 250-year anniversary of Mappin & Webb. This flagship will be the epicenter of our marketing campaign.
We target to open by fall 2024. Talking about new brands, we are proud to announce our partnership with De Beers. De Beers will join our flagship project in Manchester, as mentioned, and open its first boutique outside of London, operated by us, by fall 2024. Another example of our partnership acceleration, this time with an existing brand partner, will be with Roberto Coin. Roberto Coin has been a strong partner for the group in the U.K. and the U.S., and one of our fastest-growing brands with a well-established name in the U.S. nationwide. In the life of the plan, we will improve the brand's visibility in our network and offer personalized environments to elevate the experience, sales, and average price points. We will accelerate also with the brand across marketing, product assortment, and e-commerce.
Both in the U.S. and in the U.K., we are ramping up our partnerships with current and new brands, making more space in our showrooms for jewelry. Another example is Pomellato, part of Kering Group. The brand has been an existing partner of Betteridge in the U.S. and will be rolled out next year in Mayors network. In the U.K., we have confirmed the roadmap to introduce the brand into the regions with Mappin & Webb and Goldsmiths. Pomellato was recently introduced in Liverpool Goldsmiths. Same goes with Fred, part of LVMH, entering our Liverpool Goldsmiths showroom this year for the first time outside of London. We have a plan to roll out the brand in more locations in the next coming 12 months.
The rest of our network of showrooms has also new formats being rolled out that will be more fit for purpose to sell and present luxury jewelry and branded jewelry. Craig and David will touch on this point. Worth noting that we will create in the U.S. a contemporary version of Betteridge with a new jewelry flagship in Greenwich, Connecticut, by calendar 2025. We target to bring the number of luxury branded jewelry agencies from 115 to 260 by FY 2028. You can expect more brands partnerships announcement to come as we shape the plan and update the distribution. As a summary, we have a number of initiatives already in progress. From our flagship projects, new showroom design concept, elevated hospitality approach, and expanding distribution, I can say the plan is very much alive and in motion.
A specific attention to improve our jewelry visibility on our e-commerce sites across the U.K. and the U.S. is also considered. We have not assumed the rollout of the luxury jewelry multi-brand concept in this plan, but we are excited about the concept and the opportunity it could represent in the major cities in the U.K., U.S., as well as in the airports. Last but not least, I will end this presentation by saying that this plan could not be already happening without the impressive support and enthusiasm of the luxury jewelry brand community, but also our colleagues, who have responded very positively to this strategy. Thank you for your attention. Now moving on to our next section with David to go over the U.S. strategy and plan.
All right. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Well, we've had a great first five years of retailing in the US market, and we've got a great team, and they've produced really great results. But this is still only the beginning, and we're confident in our ability to continue to grow significantly in the world's number one watch and jewelry market. So I'm gonna quickly bring you through the past five years in five minutes, and then we'll go through the building blocks for the next five. We started working on the US market in 2015, but our first entry into retailing was with the acquisition of Mayors in October of 2017. We acquired a great team with the ability to scale, and post-IT integration began the first investments into the store portfolio. The first store we worked on was Merrick Park in Coral Gables.
The store was the first full new Mayors store design, and the sales are now well over three times pre-investment. The store hadn't been touched in years, and this is what it looks like now. Our boutique in Lenox, Atlanta, was one of the flagship stores in the Mayors portfolio. We moved from a B- to an A+ location. This is what the showroom looks like today, and the sales today are over four times pre-investment, and we're out of space. I'll come back to that later. In November of 2017, we took over the retailing of luxury timepieces in the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas. This is where we started, and this is what it looks like today. Over the last five years, we've also added Breitling and Omega monobrand boutiques, and lastly, renovated the Rolex boutique from this to what it looks like today.
The sales in the Wynn are now over 3.5x the business we acquired and continue to get stronger. We're in the best resort in the city that constantly reinvents itself. There's now an NFL stadium and franchise, with the Super Bowl being held there next year, and which now also allows major stadium act concerts. You can see the Sphere, which opened earlier this year with my fellow countryman, U2, and the Las Vegas F1 Night Race. The Wynn Resort is the place to stay, and we tailor our merchandise assortment for these events. We opened up in New York, firstly in SoHo in November 2018, and then in Hudson Yards in March 2019.
In one of the most competitive retailing cities in the world for luxury timepieces, we do comfortably over $120 million between these two stores. They continue to grow year- after- year, and we've added to that with the opening of American Dream, and there's more to be done in New York. Analog Shift was a small but very important acquisition for our group in September of 2020. We acquired a great brand in vintage and pre-owned, but more importantly, a great team, that we've continued to scale up to support our growth in this category and also to support the launch of Rolex CPO. There's been a lot of noise on prices coming down in the pre-owned market, but in the last fiscal year, we more than doubled the business with no drop in margins.
Since then, we've acquired Betteridge and stores in Texas, Minneapolis, and Marlton, New Jersey. It isn't rocket science. We apply the same formula to the stores we've already renovated or relocated, but it does take time, and we're dependent on our key partners in terms of their designs and furniture sourcing. We launched e-commerce officially in 2020. We've continuously invested and improved our marketing, and we've had incredible levels of PR. In the last 12 months alone, we've had over 10 billion impressions, and we will open up expanded offices in Fort Lauderdale early next calendar year to support our next phase of growth. This will allow us to expand our service center, Virtual Boutique, and also online support.
So the business has grown significantly in the last few years with a CAGR of 40%, and we look forward to be able to celebrate over GBP 1 billion in annual sales in the not-too-distant future. All right, so how are we gonna do it? Firstly, I'm gonna quickly bring you through what I can share on our store development pipeline. Online is a major growth opportunity, and our size and scale is gonna help us to grow ahead of the market. And we're gonna continue to invest in strategic partnerships and innovative marketing to establish ourselves as the key destination for luxury timepieces and jewelry. We've had great early success with our monobrand rollout, and just like our multi-brands, we can continue to mature and grow the sales for the stores already opened.
Pre-owned and vintage has been the fastest-growing category in our U.S. business for the last two years, and we're confident we can continue to grow the market share in this area. Eric's already spoken to our jewelry strategy, and this will see us expand jewelry in our current showrooms and make a major statement with our brand, Betteridge Greenwich refurb and invest heavily into the digital space. Look, we've a track record of acquisitions in the U.S., and we're confident we can continue to execute more deals. We have new showrooms planned, including a new Rolex-anchored Watches of Switzerland showroom opening in Minneapolis in early 2025. So you're the first to get a sneak peek of our new Rolex boutique in Millenia Mall in Orlando, which opens in just a few days. The store's almost trebled in size to 3,000 sq ft.
We've had a Rolex boutique in Orlando since 2011, but we needed this additional space to give the full Rolex experience to our valued clients. The mall is one of the strongest in the U.S., and this boutique will be a fantastic addition to our Tudor boutique and our Mayors multi-brand showroom. In Plano, Texas, we're moving to a great corner location and are adding Rolex, Cartier, and Tudor to the brand portfolio in a mall that recently welcomed Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Tiffany. Jacksonville is also a great market, and we have a fantastic location, adjacent to Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. Rolex will be the anchor brand for the store, and we're also gonna be adding shop-in-shops for our key jewelry partners. So there are further expansions in FY 2025, genuinely huge projects.
International Plaza in Tampa is going from a B location to an A+ in between Louis Vuitton and Tiffany. In Atlanta, we'll be converting our Rolex shop-in-shop to a full boutique, as well as an expanded Mayors boutique. We know we can do significantly more sales in this powerhouse mall. Honestly, we've just been out of space, but we have a great relationship with Simon, who are the largest mall operator in the U.S., and we've worked together to significantly expand our footprint. So plenty of expansions and renovations in the next few years and more to come. Again, we have great paybacks. We don't sign up to these spaces without the support of our brand partners, and we go for the best possible locations. Okay. We're really delighted with the success of the SoHo and Hudson Yards, New York flagships.
These stores continue to mature and grow in sales, and we still believe we can continue to grow in Manhattan and in the Tri-State Area. One Vanderbilt will be our next Manhattan flagship. Located next to the Grand Central Terminal, at the base of arguably the premium office tower in New York City, the building is host to the first Amex Centurion Lounge, which spans a full floor of the building. The Summit is the viewing gallery that needs to be seen to be believed, and then there's the 750,000 visitors using Grand Central daily. The boutique is anchored by Cartier and Omega and will open up in Q4 of this year. We're also delighted with our acquisition of Betteridge, which gave us three incredible locations in Greenwich, in Vail, and Aspen.
We've taken our time to understand these markets and have now detailed renovation plans for all. Greenwich is being expanded by 2,500 sq ft, both on the ground and the lower ground. This will allow us to create large showrooms for Rolex and for Patek Philippe, and then the Betteridge showroom itself will be anchored by our key jewelry partners, Betteridge Jewelry, Estate Jewelry, as well as Cartier and Omega, and we're gonna have great hospitality throughout the showroom. The showroom design is by the same architects who did the Mayors concept, as well as the Bergdorf's jewelry department... This is coupled with new creative to promote all three of our Betteridge showrooms. By the end of FY 2026, we plan to have all of our Betteridge, Watches of Switzerland, and Mayors showrooms transformed.
We believe online is a significant opportunity for growth, and our scale, coupled with our in-house marketing and creative team, gives us great opportunity to gain market share. Now, over the last few years, we've built up significant credibility with our brand partners, who are supporting us with their co-op advertising to drive unique content for jewelry. And then you can see an example here with Grand Seiko on timepieces, and again here with Omega. And we've done this with many of our major brand partners to help drive sales. Each of these campaigns will have individual ambassadors and allow us to tap into music, culture, food, architecture, sport, and many other areas.
Digital marketing is by far the largest percentage of our marketing spend, and we will continue to push our unique content in partnership with our key brands to differentiate our group as the destination for luxury timepieces and jewelry. We've just hosted the nominated timepieces for the GPHG, or Watch Oscars, in New York at our Soho showroom for the second year running. The announcement of the exhibition alone generated over 322 million impressions. We're delighted with the partnership and we'll be announcing another great strategic partnership in the U.S. early in the calendar year. Let's take a quick look at a video of the event. See, the Soho store is a great place to have a party. Okay, moving on to monobrand boutiques. Our focus remains on growing market share and enhancing our partnerships overall with the brands.
The key to this is our expertise in developing the productivity of these businesses, particularly in CRM, product profiling, and exclusives, in order to drive both the volume of sales and ASP, supported by frequent events and one-to-one clienteling. All of this is underpinned by great teams, expertly trained with the brands and focused on the client experience. Lastly, I'm happy to announce we'll be opening a Rolex anchor showroom in a newly renovated mall in Minneapolis, in Southdale. Our store will be one of the key anchors, along with Louis Vuitton. So in closing, we know we're growing ahead of the market. We've got a great pipeline of projects. We've got a track record of acquisitions in the U.S. Pre-owned luxury jewelry brands and e-commerce will continue to grow, and we know we can continue to grow monobrands.
We've got a great team, who are really excited by what we've achieved to date and highly motivated to continue to grow. Lots done and lots more to do, and with that, I'll pass it over to Craig.
Thanks, Dave. Afternoon, everyone. So my name is Craig Bolton. I'm the president of our business here in the U.K. and Europe. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, the fourth accent today, following the Scottish, French, Irish, and now you've got a Geordie for a little while, so hopefully you can understand it. Firstly, I wanted to show you a slide, which gives you the detail of how we've performed here in the U.K. The sales over the nine-year period have delivered a very impressive 11% CAGR, which we believe is market-leading in the U.K. And this growth has been driven primarily, but not exclusively, by our focus on luxury watches, delivering a very impressive 15% CAGR, as shown here.
We have transformed our business over the past nine years, delivering an elevated estate, significant gains in productivity, and excellent sales growth for the U.K. group. We're not done yet. We have a lot to do. Our model continues to be focused on investment, and we plan to repeat, enhance, and accelerate it to leverage the future growth. The strategy is focused on these key areas, and I will start with the significant pipeline of Rolex projects we have planned. I'm delighted to confirm that the design work is now complete for the new Rolex boutique on Old Bond Street in London, and work on site has commenced, with the opening date set for October 2024. This boutique will be the single Rolex agency on Bond Street from what was previously four points of sale. The client-facing space will be over 8,000 sq ft across four floors.
Two main floors dedicated to sales and hospitality, providing facilities for day-to-day client experience, as well as eventing space for more intimate occasions. The lower ground floor will be dedicated to the first Rolex Certified Pre-Owned shop-in-shop in the U.K., as well as an education on the history of Rolex. The second floor will be dedicated to after-sales and servicing, home to six watchmakers and technicians, and will be a key hub for Rolex after-sales in the heart of London. We have also agreed with Rolex to double the size of our boutique on Buchanan Street, Glasgow. This hugely successful showroom has traded beyond all expectations since opening in 2019, and now requires this expansion to allow us to service increased number of clients, as well as retail Rolex Certified Pre-Owned in a dedicated space and create a quality after-sales area with in-house watchmakers.
Our Glasgow project will complete in October 2024. In the multi-brand Rolex showrooms, we have major project planned, with a number of high-profile and high-turnover showrooms completing within the next 12 months. In the next four weeks, we have these four major projects completing, where the showrooms have been expanded, significantly allowing for circa 1,200 sq ft of Rolex space, plus expanded areas for several luxury watch and jewelry brands, plus elevated hospitality and after-sales. These expansions and elevations continue in 2024 with plans such as Fenchurch Street in London and Brighton, culminating in one of our most important investments as we embark on the elevation of our amazing Northern Goldsmiths showroom in Newcastle, renowned for being the U.K.'s first-ever Rolex retailer back in 1919. A real special one for me personally. Moving on to travel retail.
Passenger numbers continue to improve, and in T5, passenger numbers are now exceeding 2019 levels. We remain optimistic that sometime in the future, a form of duty-free will return to the U.K., albeit this has not been assumed in our planned sales. In the meantime, the airport remains a strong shopping environment with a good demographic, with inclination to shop. In Terminal 5, we are adjoining the Rolex boutique to the Watches of Switzerland multi-brand in a great location near Chanel. This extensive investment will be fully complete by October 2025. We will also refurbish the Rolex boutique in T2 in the life of the plan. As you can see from this chart, we have the best-ever pipeline of Rolex projects, with visibility and confirmation out to the end of FY 2026.
While our Watches of Switzerland showrooms largely benefit from all the great work planned with Rolex, we also have other great initiatives. We are focusing increased attention on independent brands, and in Knightsbridge, London, we will reorganize the 7,500 sq ft showroom, developing an amazing selection of these brands shown, which includes first for us with the likes of H. Moser and Arnold & Son. Knightsbridge will be completed by April 2024, and we are reviewing all other showroom opportunities. In our famous 155 showroom on Regent Street, we are on site expanding and elevating the Patek Philippe area. This new area will be circa 1,300 sq ft and benefit from luxurious consultation areas, as well as VIP space and a dining room. This project will be complete by the end of January 2024.
As previously announced, we have agreed to enter into a joint venture agreement with Audemars Piguet to open a townhouse in King Street, Manchester, which will be the single point of sale in the U.K. for Audemars outside of London. Across 6,500 sq ft, the townhouse is being designed with the highest level of client experience in mind, offering dining facilities, VIP space, music lounge, and rooftop eventing space. The planned opening is October 2024. All Watches of Switzerland showrooms will be fully expanded and refitted during the life of the plan. We will also celebrate our 100-year anniversary in 2024 for Watches of Switzerland, an amazing milestone in our history. We have an extensive celebration planned, which includes great support from our brand partners with exclusive product totaling over GBP 7 million, including many iconic products.
The anniversary will be wrapped around a U.K.-wide marketing campaign, as well as a sequence of private events, culminating in a grand ball late in 2024, where we will be supporting the Watches of Switzerland Group Foundation. Next, moving on to our Mappin & Webb brand. We have successfully developed a new design for Mappin & Webb, focused on a more modern, contemporary design, while respecting the great heritage of the brand. Here you can see our new Mappin & Webb showroom in York. We have now relocated on to Davy gate in York, significantly increasing our footprint to over 3,000 sq ft with this beautiful showroom, accommodating a large Rolex room, a new luxury jewelry gallery, and luxury watch branded areas. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and trading is well ahead of expectations. Here is a short video to bring the design to life.
It's an amazing space, I'd encourage you to see it. If you're on the Northeastern Line anytime on the way to Newcastle, you can stop off at York and have a look. Since York opened, we've also developed our showroom in Guernsey, as you can see here on the slide. Pre-Christmas, we will deliver the new design to Glasgow, Mappin & Webb, and Bluewater, and whilst post-Christmas, we will start work on our new Mappin & Webb showroom, showroom in Multrees Walk, Edinburgh, in the heart of luxury retail in the city. It's many years since we featured Mappin & Webb in Edinburgh, so we're very pleased to be back in this great city.
In the life of the plan, we will complete 100% of our Mappin & Webb estate with the new design, and more immediately, 70% of our estate will be completed by the end of FY 2026. 2025 sees Mappin & Webb celebrate its 250-year anniversary. Mappin & Webb has a hugely distinguished history, holding Royal Warrants since 1897, issued then by Queen Victoria. Our anniversary will be supported by beautiful new jewelry collections designed by the Crown Jeweler, Mark Appleby. Looking now at the rollout of our Goldsmiths luxury design, which has been working very well since its launch. Recently, we completed the most significant and largest transformation for Goldsmiths in Liverpool city center.
6,500 sq ft across two floors of luxury watches and jewelry, including a 1,200 sq ft Rolex room and a 500 sq ft Cartier room. We've also introduced many new luxury jewelry brands into the showroom, including Roberto Coin, Pasquale Bruni, Marco Bicego, and Pomellato, plus others, and will form the basis of brands we will introduce into future Goldsmiths projects. Here is a short video to bring the new design to life. That's a super impressive store. Following this huge project in Liverpool, pre-Christmas, we will complete three of our top five turnover showrooms in Goldsmiths, including our highest turnover showroom in the Trafford Centre, Manchester. While the majority of developments mentioned to this point for Goldsmiths have been Rolex, we will continue to elevate our showrooms that lead with great brands such as Omega and Breitling.
On the slide, you can see here the work we completed in the Westquay Mall in Southampton, providing all the elements of the new design and facilities. We have a very busy schedule of investments planned for Goldsmiths luxury, and all of our showrooms will be completed in the life of the plan, and 75% of our showrooms will be completed by the end of FY 2026. Moving on to our monobrand store network, which remains a key strategic objective and has grown significantly in recent years. By the end of FY 2024, the number of boutiques for these brands will be 52. Our monobrand boutiques have significant presence across all major cities in the U.K., and whilst slowing in terms of new openings for FY 2025, we will continue to develop this category during the life of the plan.
In FY 2025, we will focus on the retail integration with our multi-brand fascia to maximize the potential of each location for our group. As David has already discussed, our priority across both U.K. and U.S. is improving productivity of these boutiques to grow market share. Our online sites are our best marketing asset, with over 45 million visitors per year. We've enjoyed significant online success in recent years, and while the platform is successful as a singular channel, our focus remains on multi-channel productivity. We will continue to add luxury watch brands, along with developing online success of Rolex Certified Pre-Owned and our own Analog Shift pre-owned, as well as developing a strong luxury branded jewelry proposition. As we integrate the Ernest Jones showrooms, we will benefit from our multi-channel capabilities, giving our new colleagues access to a large increase of brands and web-enabled selling technology.
So as Brian mentioned earlier, I'm very pleased to confirm the planned asset purchase of a group of showrooms from Ernest Jones U.K. Ernest Jones is part of Signet, which is predominantly a U.S.-based group focused on own-branded jewelry. Ernest Jones ceased partnering with Rolex in 2012, but continued their relationship with most other luxury brands. The plan is to acquire a selection of Ernest Jones showrooms, which carry the brands, particularly Omega, Cartier, Breitling, Tudor, and TAG Heuer. The deal, once finalized, will consist of 19 showrooms with a total of 80 luxury brand agencies in the portfolio. These showrooms are very much in our space of luxury watches, with great potential for growth in luxury jewelry, too. All in good geographical locations, complementary to our current estate with good teams.
We will pay less than 10% above asset value for the showrooms, and we do believe this is a very good deal for our group. LTM sales on acquisition are circa GBP 45 million, and it's our plan to achieve our group profitability by the start of FY 2025 and our group productivity by the start of FY 2026. The focus immediately is to leverage our group systems, technology, and infrastructure to support our new colleagues to improve sales growth. We will rebrand the showrooms prior to Christmas and immediately improve stock holding and open up all relevant stock online and make available for web-enabled sales, including pre-owned, which has not been available to these showrooms before. We will fully support the showrooms from a performance marketing perspective, whilst also using our Virtual Boutique team as a conduit between online and offline to support.
By the end of FY 2024, we will execute the full integration of these showrooms into the main Watches of Switzerland Group estate. Further improvements, such as introducing our clienteling system, Captivate, will add real value for our new colleagues. A full merchandise and space review will take place, focused on improving productivity across all product categories. All new colleagues will receive an extensive L&D program, particularly focused on luxury watches and jewelry, but also introduced to our client experience training, Xenia. We will complete a full review of capital investment requirements and timing, with all showrooms receiving our new designs during the life of the plan. In summary for the U.K., our sales will continue to grow ahead of the market as a result of the elevation and brand enhancements planned, supported by the best-ever pipeline of Rolex projects.
Market share gains will be achieved by the delivery of the great new designs for Goldsmiths Luxury and Mappin & Webb, including the integration of Ernest Jones showrooms acquired. Alongside this, the significant new projects such as Rolex Old Bond Street and Audemars Piguet Townhouse, as well as our new luxury jewelry showroom in Manchester. We also have additional leverage areas such as luxury branded jewelry and pre-owned, which we intend to take a market-leading position with. E-commerce has seen amazing growth in recent years and will continue, and further development in our multi-channel capabilities is a priority. Similarly, productivity growth within our monobrand boutiques is a real priority focus in order to drive market share gains. Finally, all of our key drivers are underpinned by the investment in our people, including our key strategic client experience initiative, Xenia.
Now, if I could switch gears for a second to the EU strategy. Our plans for development in the EU are still at an early stage, and we believe the opportunity to be very exciting and one where we can take our proven model and apply it to the markets with success. Northern Europe has been our immediate focus, but all areas of Europe will be considered in the life of the plan. To date, we have opened nine mono-brand boutiques, and these remain a key focus for further development. Showrooms in Sweden and Denmark are now annualizing, with the exception of the new boutique recently opened in Gothenburg. All are building momentum as we grow awareness and we grow our client database. Germany is a very good market with multiple large cities to focus on, similar to the U.K.
Our recent opening in Berlin is at a very early stage of trading and is starting to build traction. Entering the market with boutiques has hugely elevated the brand positioning in the cities and significantly increased sales versus the previous multi-brand only retailers. All our brand partners are very positive about the impact we have made. We have recruited excellent teams in all locations who are very passionate about the brands they represent, are heavily invested in learning, and very focused on the client experience. We have found interesting dynamics in the market, such as a high level of repeating purchases and watch collectors, as well as a very high ASP. One-to-one clienteling and eventing is a key feature in all showrooms as our teams focus on driving their own traffic and building registrations for product in the future. I am pleased to announce today our entry into the Netherlands.
We have agreed with Westfield to occupy a space of 2,400 sq ft in the Mall of the Netherlands, near The Hague. The mall benefits from circa 14 million people with strong demographics and good retail. This will be our first multi-brand location in Europe and first entry to the market for the Watches of Switzerland brand. We will continue to explore mall opportunities with our brand partners. We have a great lineup of brands, leading with Cartier, Omega, Breitling, Tudor, and TAG Heuer, and the showroom is due to open by October 2024. We will also take this opportunity to launch e-commerce in Europe using Watches of Switzerland. Initially, we will launch dispatch and stock from our showrooms as we develop in the markets.
And when we deliver an acquisition, we will move to phase II, which will include a larger scale e-commerce launch with wider range of both luxury watches and luxury jewelry. So overall, our plans have commenced and steady progress is being made. We will run two parallel streams, one looking at new project opportunities and underserved markets, and the other reviewing acquisition opportunities, acquisition being a key priority for our team.
The Watches of Switzerland brand will be launched in Europe in 2024, along with phase I e-commerce launch. As in the U.K., our business plan is underpinned by excellent teams whose skill level and productivity are improving as their experience grows. With the indicative plan we have laid out, we estimate that the EU revenue will represent 4%-6% of total group revenue by FY 2028. I very much look forward to updating you further in future presentations. Thank you for now. I'm going to hand back to Brian.
So clearly, we don't have enough going on. We've got to do some acquisitions. We've got to do some other new projects and keep these guys busy. They have, they have spare time. So as presented earlier, the U.K. is the number one market on a per capita basis. The UK market's strong nationwide, disciplined, and well-invested. The U.S. and EU markets are underdeveloped by comparison and more fragmented. Distribution is being rationalized by the brands across these territories, and investment in larger urban store formats is clearly the way forward. We are now very well established in the U.S. and developing our presence in the EU and we have significant opportunity to grow through both new stores and underserved markets, new developments that are happening, and also through M&A.
So if you look again at our track record in the U.S., new developments, Hudson Yards is a phenomenal success for us. American Dream is off to a great start. Completely new developments, the landlords came to us. SoHo was a classic example of an underserved market. In fact, a market not served at all by luxury watch retail, and that too, a phenomenal success. In Cincinnati, the Kenwood Towne Centre Mall had developed a luxury credibility, creating the opportunity for luxury watch retail that had not been taken by local retailers, giving us the opportunity to step in. And we are proving very clearly, as you've just heard, that great markets like Stockholm and Copenhagen have clearly been underserved. So acquiring, integrating, and investing in businesses in the U.S. has been the backbone of our success in that market.
Mayors in Florida and Atlanta has been fantastic for us. This deal also gave us the U.S. business a market HQ in Fort Lauderdale. Wynn, also fantastic. We get expansion plans there, as you've heard. Betteridge showrooms are in great locations, and new designs are almost there. All will be upgraded and expanded by fiscal 2026. Minneapolis, we're moving into the Southdale Mall. Analog Shift gave us expertise and credibility in the pre-owned and vintage sector and propelled our growth in this category. Marlton, New Jersey, is a great addition to our Tri-State presence. If we stand back now and you look at the sources of our business, our U.S. business in fiscal 2023, we can see that 41% was what we acquired in sales directly.
36% is the benefit for investing in acquired showrooms, and we're only just around halfway through that level of investment. 23% is new, like New York. In the 2024-2028 plan, we will grow our business in each of these segments, and we have potential projects, including M&A, at various stages of discussion. So I've discussed and confirmed these basic principles. Sounds like motherhood, I know, when you hear them, but I've agreed these basic principles of collaboration with our key partners.
So for acquisitions, when a business is for sale, an owner doesn't have succession or change in lifestyle, whatever, and we agree a valuation in principle, and there are good market, long-term opportunities for the brands, the brands want to stay there, and we come up with a good plan, as we always would, then these opportunities are going to receive full support. For new projects in underserved markets or for new development projects, we do what we have been doing successfully all along, finding great locations with the right agencies, and again, these opportunities are gonna be supported. So we've planned investment spend of GBP 350 million-GBP 500 million in these areas.
There's undoubtedly opportunity to do more, but we are conscious of the pace of support, particularly from a supply standpoint, and also internally from the pace of execution. So M&A and new projects in either underserved markets or new developments will play an important part in our growth in the coming years. So I'll now hand over to Anders Romberg for the financial review.
Thanks, Brian. I'm Anders Romberg, the Group CFO. As you heard from Brian, our plan results in more than a doubling of sales and EBIT by FY 2028 compared to our base year of FY 2023. We anticipate an improving macroeconomic environment from calendar 2025, while we think there will be gradual improvement through 2024. The Swiss watch market had a high level of growth across 2022, as you heard, with the market expected to normalize in 2023 and 2024, and then returning to sustained growth. As you heard earlier in the presentation, pre-owned watches and luxury branded jewelry will bring incremental opportunity. These two categories represents a big market opportunity. In our addressable markets, the secondary pre-owned market is disproportionately large, particularly in the U.S. We will continue to invest, invest in our showrooms, generating good returns.
We also see the opportunity from the integration of the Ernest Jones showrooms, as you heard Craig talk about. In the U.S. and the EU, we see further opportunities from growth from acquisitions and new showrooms. We started in the U.S. late 2017, and this segment now represents over 42% of the group's revenue. Our view is that the market remains underdeveloped and fragmented, so a clear opportunity for further consolidation. We do expect operational leverage across our plan, and we've used 1.22 for the translation rate from the US dollar. We don't have any real transactional exposure since we source in local currency. We've had a luxury watch sales CAGR of 19% between FY 2019 and 2023. It's been driven by both volume at 12% and ASP mix of seven.
The volume growth has been driven by both the strategic partner brands growing. But interestingly, is that our supply constrained brands have still shown strong growth with a unit CAGR of 10%. Our elevation plan for jewelry have been seen an ASP mix growth of 16% within the overall CAGR of 19%. During this period, we pulled back on promotional activity, which has a dampening effect on volume growth, but drives higher average selling price and better margins. Overall, we enter into the next five years with better visibility of projects than when we did our last five-year plan back in 2021. The focus on luxury jewelry and pre-owned watches are both new versus we, in, what we included in our last plan.
In the U.K., we expect a sales CAGR of between 8% and 10%, about 2%-3%, ahead of what we expect the market to grow at. This is less than what we achieved between 2020 and 2023. During the past four years, the UK market had severe disruption through lockdowns and loss of tax-free to overseas clients. Sales to our domestic clients in the past four years has grown at a CAGR of 21%. We've gained market share through our capital programs and expansion of our monobrand concept while driving our e-commerce channel. As you will have seen in the earlier part of the presentation, we have an extensive upgrade program agreed with key brands. In addition, we will increase our focus on pre-owned watches.
Rolex Certified Pre-Owned is off to a good start, and branded jewelry, which both of these categories are mostly additive to our existing business. We also will benefit from the Ernest Jones acquisition and further e-com growth. The US market growth is expected to outpace the U.K., as it is, in our view, still underdeveloped. We anticipate the market to grow at an average of between 8% and 10%. We planned a sales CAGR of between 20% and 25% in this market, so well ahead of the market. As already mentioned, the market is fragmented and consolidation is an opportunity, so in this market, acquisitions form part of our growth strategy. In addition to this, there is quite a few locations that we define as underdeveloped and should have distribution of luxury watches.
So to gain distribution, you don't always have to acquire a business. We've identified quite a few such locations and are discussing them with our brand partners. The pipeline of new projects you have seen is giving us good visibility over the years to come. We have seen the benefit of our capital programs in Mayors and in the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas, as you heard David talk about, and we don't really expect this to change as we complete our upgrade program over the next few years. The three Battersea stores will be completed by FY 2026. Rolex Certified Pre-Owned is off to a good start, and we are expanding the number of points of sale. The U.S. is by far the biggest market for jewelry, and we will be more active in this segment over the next five years.
Our e-commerce in the U.S. is still in its early stage. There is a huge market opportunity in the U.S. for e-com. And as you heard Craig say, we think the EU will contribute between 4% and 6% of our sales at the end of the planning period. This will include acquisitions. Over the five-year period, we plan to spend between GBP 300 and GBP 350 million of showroom capital. Our historical return on capital investment has been very good, as you've seen in the previous section of this presentation. On average, our payback on capital programs has been between two and four years, depending on format and location. We also plan to spend between GBP 350 and GBP 500 million on acquisitions and new projects over the period.
This could obviously go up if further opportunities were to materialize, but this is what we used in our plan, as you heard Brian say. We do expect to further improve our operational leverage over the planning period. In our existing markets, we've seen improved leverage as we invest behind our stores and drive productivity. We do expect this to continue going forward. The productivity gains come from better traffic using our multi-channel tools, improved mix with higher average selling price, stable margins, and higher conversion on traffic. In addition, we expect branded jewelry and certified pre-owned to help drive further productivity. The geographical mix is another factor impacting our overall profitability, with the U.S. having a higher EBIT margin than what we enjoy in the U.K.
So in total, we expect to add about 50 basis points-150 basis points of leverage by the end of the plan. We expect to maintain our strong ROCE over the plan period. Last year, we closed at the ROCE of 27.9, and we plan to range between 24% and 28% over the life of the plan. Expanded EBITDA, coupled with good capital management, is expected to deliver this. Capital intensity is planned to reduce in the latest years of the plan as we finish off our big upgrade programs in the U.K. as well as in the U.S. We will need some working capital investment in jewelry and pre-owned watches, in order to drive sales and gain market share. The plan delivers strong cash flow to fund organic and inorganic growth.
In addition to that, obviously, we have our existing facilities. We have planned a free cash flow conversion rate at between 65% and 70%. We will continue to prioritize growth in the business through investment in showrooms, new projects, and acquisitions. We will continue to maintain some flexibility and be opportunistic for investments in case we could grow that number beyond the 500. So capital allocation will, of any excess cash, will be advised at the time. So the plan calls for more than doubling of sales and EBIT over the five years. This chart illustrates the building blocks behind our model and indicates where we see the market opportunities. Vertically shows in which market we see the opportunity, and on the horizontal axis, it indicates the size of the opportunity.
Capital investment into existing stores has is a proven model with good returns. We plan to spend in this area between GBP 300 million and GBP 350 million, which includes space expansion and/or relocations of existing stores. E-commerce growth is expected to continue, and certainly in the U.S. Certified pre-owned will further drive growth in this channel, which is the biggest channel within that category. And certified pre-owned is a segment which has limited distribution in our store network, as you heard before, and we see that as a an add-on to our existing underlying growth. Luxury branded jewelry is an area where we see significant growth potential. We haven't really included or, you know, a really aggressive growth in this category in our plan, as you heard Eric say.
If the model works, it, it could become obviously a bigger opportunity over the years to come. So we just closed the acquisition of the Ernest Jones showrooms or about to close, and this will drive further growth in the U.K., obviously. In addition to this, we plan to spend between GBP 350 million and GBP 500 million on acquisitions and new stores. Track record, as you heard Brian say, is very good. The payback of four to four and a half years is beyond what we expected when we did these acquisitions. This will predominantly take place in the U.S. and the EU market. As mentioned, we expect improved operational leverage by between 50 and 150 basis points. And please don't use the scale on the horizontal, when you go home and take out your, your rulers.
So in summary, we have a proven model of success, which is scalable, and we operate in a fragmented market with strong market dynamics, and all of our investment programs has worked so far. We operate in a very dynamic categories and have market leadership in the U.K. and the U.S. luxury watch markets, with a significant growth opportunity in the EU. We have strong multifaceted growth plans, as you heard about. We expect further operational leverage, over the plan through driving higher productivity. We also plan in significant investment to support growth over the plan period, and we have the infrastructure in place to support this growth plan. I will now hand over to Brian for some closing remarks. Thank you.
Thanks, Anders. First, a little apology. I actually saw a typo there on the improvement in profitability. It's 50 bps-150 bp s, and those of you that are still paying full attention might have seen it come up at 100 bps-150 bps, so we'll correct that. So thanks to all my colleagues for their presentations to you today and for all of you for your attention. As a management team, we feel confident in the plans that we've presented to you today. The market opportunity is undoubtedly there. We have the credibility, the momentum, and the resources to grab the opportunity and deliver impressive growth.
To date, we have executed plans very well, transforming our U.K. business, launching with great success in the U.S., and building our infrastructure there, and now launching in EU. In doing so, we have grown sales and profitability consistently every year, with great balance sheet management. Our unique model works. We have brought an approach to the world of watch retailing that honestly did not exist before and will do the same for branded jewelry. We are in markets that are underdeveloped, and we have the development plans and the support of our brand partners.
We've great growth plans, completing the rollouts of Mayors, Goldsmiths Luxury, Mappin & Webb, Contemporary and Watches of Switzerland, a new contemporary design for Betteridge, developing our successful e-com businesses, U.K. and U.S., and launching in Europe, expanding and driving the productivity of mono brands, becoming a leading player in the pre-owned markets through our Rolex CPO and Analog Shift, growing our jewelry business through our focus on luxury brands and a stunning new multi-brand concept, and the acquisition of 19 Ernest Jones stores here in the U.K., and then adding incremental business through acquisitions and then those new showroom opportunities in the U.S. and EU. All of which underpin our plan for more than doubling sales, improving profitability, and driving great returns on investment.
So finally, many thanks to all involved in putting the plan and presentation together, and thank you to all of our colleagues who do amazing work and inspire us continually. So we're now ready to open the floor to Q&A, and my colleagues will join me back up here. I think we've got a roving microphone.
Hi there, it's Louise Singlehurst from Goldman Sachs. Thank you for taking my questions and for all the information here this afternoon. It's very exciting times ahead by the sounds of things. I wondered if you could just clarify a couple of things. I thought the presentation from Eric and also Craig, just in terms of the merchandising opportunity, particularly for the U.K., can you just tell us about how much exposure you have today in the stores for jewelry? And then also just on a question for Anders as well, on the CapEx. Can you help us think about the CapEx cycle for the organic business today, pre any future programs or projects? And does that start to normalize post-2026? It sounds there's a lot of the CapEx and the refurbishments, which comes to the end of the cycle in 2026. Thank you.
Jewelry? U.K.
Yep, I can, yeah, I can help with that, I think, and I'll hand back to Eric. The truth is, in a lot of the refits we've done over the years gone by, we have reduced space for jewelry. And predominantly, it has been our own branded jewelry as well, rather than necessarily luxury branded jewelry. And we've probably gone too far, and maybe even the case for Mayors too, in the U.S. We've probably gone too far. So but now the opportunities with stores like Liverpool, that we're doing 6,500 sq ft, we're just about to do 6,500 sq ft in Trafford, a similar sort of size showroom in Bullring. We've now got enough space to elevate the watch brands and also elevate the jewelry within the same space.
Our balance and mix of space will be much more equal between our own brand jewelry and bringing in the luxury branded jewelry that wasn't there before. So I, I guess our opportunity is therefore twofold: additional space in total towards jewelry, and then within that, additional space towards the luxury brands that, that Eric's been negotiating to get us over the last number of months. So I think that's a pretty simple answer to it, I think.
Yep. CapEx.
In terms of capital, as you saw, we planned between 300 and 350 or so, on existing store networks, and that would include a few mono brands and so forth as well. But fundamentally, you know, not expanding into any major developments or stores. So that, that's sort of the number that we have done project by project, going out in the years, looking at our current estate, and a few added mono brands, as I said. So, you know, we'll burn through a lot of that in that period.
And then we have the other pot, which is the GBP 350-GBP 500, which is new store developments, as you heard about, you know, Cincinnati and the likes, which are quite capital-intensive to build, but they generate really good returns, so we'd like to do them, and acquisitions. So our preference is always to open up, you know, sort of new development because we don't have to pay a multiple on the earnings. But then again, if you buy something, you get the benefit out of the gate, so.
Can't always get what you want, Anders.
Both are good.
Okay. Yep.
Yeah.
Yes. Hi. Anne Bismuth from HSBC. I have two questions. The first one is, if my understanding is correct from this morning's conference call, the Rolex CPO profitability profile, it's broadly neutral on the group profitability. What is it about the non-Rolex CPO? Is it the same profile? And the second question is about the growth, the midterm plan growth. What is the split between volumes and average selling price? Is it over the plan? Will it be mostly coming from volume, as it was the case in the past? Thank you.
Okay, yes. So our plan is that we'd be profitability neutral nor accretive or dilutive on pre-owned. It applies equally to Rolex and non-Rolex. It's the same approach. In the case of Rolex, and we'll get there, we'll have a lower gross margin, but then we have lower costs, and so our focus is on EBIT profitability, being neutral overall. Currently in Rolex, as we are kinda transitioning, we obviously had a reasonable amount of stock in pre-owned before certified pre-owned came along with Rolex. We had authenticated and done all the work on those products, but they still had to go back to Rolex, and so they've been double worked.
So we've taken a wee hit in margin, a couple of points, just during this period while we transition through that stock. But yep, the goal is that we're, we'd be profit neutral, on this growing segment, and obviously, the segment's expected to be largely incremental. Value in ASP, Anders?
In terms of value in ASP, obviously, we've gone through this by brand, and you know that clearly you know starting from 2023, which was partially subdued by the economics. So volume will probably recover a bit faster than value over the first two years of this plan, where you're recovering that mid-market segment, and we obviously see you know that as a big opportunity. And with the acquisition of Ernest Jones, which is non-Rolex anchor, penetration of distribution is gonna increase in those segments. So and we're opening up One Vanderbilt, which is a non-Rolex anchored. So there will be probably a bit more volume than value in the first part of the plan. As we get along, obviously, Rolex Certified Pre-Owned is actually a higher selling price than new watches in some cases.
So if you look at that, you know, obviously, that will drive the average selling price in the opposite direction, so higher. So it's a little bit tricky to work out exactly that. But over time, you know, this category has been more value-driven than it has been volume-driven. So historically, it's been about 3% or so of volume and about 4% or so of value. So we think that mix is gonna, you know, be something that we are gonna enjoy going forward long term.
So he's not sure, really. The one thing we would say, we haven't assumed, we never assume pricing going forward. So in our current year, we aren't assuming... And traditionally, there are price reviews that happen in the early part of the calendar year, but we haven't assumed any for this year. But effectively, you know, as Anders says, in our looking at our historical numbers, it's included pricing and mix to drive ASP. So using that as a base going forward, effectively, you're assuming there'll be some ongoing ASP improvement.
Hi, afternoon. It's Richard Taylor from Barclays. Two questions, please. Firstly, on jewelry, can I ask what percentage of revenue you're sort of assuming by the out year there? So does it grow faster or slower than the group overall? And secondly, on Rolex CPO, we realize it's very early days, but can you give us an impression of what sort of proportion of revenue it's doing at the moment? And I'm really keen to understand just how you came to those assumptions at the end of the period, 20% of new Rolex in U.S. and 10% into the U.K. So sort of how is it going so far, and why did you end up with those sorts of numbers by FY 2028? Thank you.
Well, I'll answer the bits that I can answer. Yeah, I mean, we obviously are selling our CPO at a good rate per store. We can look at the distribution expansions that we're planning. There's a lot of positives to come on it. We're going to do marketing. Right now, clients don't know that it's even in the store. We don't have it in the windows. We don't advertise anywhere. We're not doing any online advertising. So clients are coming in and discovering they want to buy a Rolex or discovering they can't get one, and then we do introduce Rolex pre-owned to them, and that's effectively how the deal is getting done. But it's not destination, therefore, it's effectively converting people in store.
So when you add marketing to it, when we add presence online, when we get our salespeople even more, you know, trained and experienced and confident in selling CPO, a lot of positives. On the flip side, we're gonna have more competition inevitably. We are, it's us and Bucherer, and I think one other retailer in the U.K. at the moment. The U.S., a couple have just added in the U.S., so we're gonna get more competition. But we are looking at, we're using the sales per door that we have at the moment and modeling that into full distribution. And we thought the best way to express it, because what we haven't ever talked about our pre-owned business.
It doubled last year, but we haven't actually said what the value of it is. We probably will in years going forward, but we haven't done yet. And we thought the best way to express it, you could probably all calculate what our Rolex business is and what it would be in 2028. So take 20% of it in the U.S. and take 10% in the U.K. So we done that as the easy ready reckoner. In jewelry, we've got quite a number of things in the hopper on jewelry, so we didn't want to give a misleading impression on that either. So we aren't giving that percentage.
The numbers that we are using are on, and there's a little cheat chart that you put up there showing where the upside was coming from. But we got a few other things happening in jewelry that we think will benefit that percentage that we'll hope, hopefully announce in the weeks and months ahead.
Hi, thank you. Piral Dadhania from RBC. If we could just maybe go back to jewelry, could you help us understand what the retail productivity is for the jewelry category versus watches in the stores where you merchandise jewelry already? And maybe just also give us what the average ASP would look like for watches versus jewelry, just so we can try and do some modeling going forward. That'll be helpful.
And then in terms of the CapEx program for new stores, the GBP 350 million-GBP 500 million, what does that imply on a per year basis in terms of new store openings? And what would the split be between the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., if that's possible? And then finally, just on CPO. If the CPO Rolex price falls below retail price for the majority of the offer, would you be able to maintain your profitability at the current level?
Again, I'll take the easy one last. Yes. I actually think, you know, in years ahead, product sold at good value is gonna be a big part. And you saw the motivation of pre-owned purchasers that value was the number one thing. And our approach is always gonna be to maintain margin. And some of these really excessive, crazy prices that have been around the last couple of years, we are glad to see them, you know, coming out of the market in some kind of common sense. I think you're always gonna be paying premium for some Submariners and GMTs and Daytonas for a long time to come, but we are hoping the market and expecting it'll move more towards more towards value. The questions on jewelry, ASP, and productivity? You-
I would say you don't have a one-size-fits-all, right, between the U.K. and the US markets. You know, your, your US market has a higher ASP, and the U.K. is a more of a lower price point, you know? So all our work we will do on productivity is also reviewing showroom by showroom and addressing wherever we have pocket of opportunities on jewelry, and so elevating the branded jewelry where we have the opportunity. So sometimes you have locations with very strong productivity in a small space. So how do we expand the jewelry in this environment and vice versa?
You also have the online, where you tend to have a slightly lower, excuse me, a slightly lower ASP, as well in both markets, actually, where we see an increasing opportunity for us also to enter. It will be a combination of the two. You also have between the retail fascias different dynamics that you can also expect.
But I think our big learning in jewelry is we've been underplaying it. We've been under spacing it, as Craig said earlier, with our focus on the watches, and we've been underplaying the price potential. And again, I think the U.S. has helped us understand what you can really do with these beautiful precious items. So over the ASP improvement we've made over the last couple of years is already significant. And we've done a lot of, you know, individual VIP events. Some of the events that we do in Florida are fantastic.
Great VIP events, but also there's been great work done by Eric and the team, especially since Eric came in in January, just looking at every one of our showrooms. I mentioned at the start, the first Mayors showroom that we did was in Merrick, and it's doing over 3x the sales prior to the investment into it. But we're now going back and we're putting jewelry into branded shop-in-shops there because we know it's a significant opportunity, and we probably erred, like Craig mentioned, too much on the side of timepieces. So they're already based on the sales that they're doing in case line, justifying it to go into shop-in-shops, and we know when we do that, we see significant increases in productivity, and we have that for pretty much every store that we're going to be renovating or refurbishing over the next three to four years .
In terms of your question on capital, we haven't given the specifics where we're gonna deploy that capital, but what we've given is an indication of what revenue we're gonna get out of Europe. So if you take out your little calculator and you do your math, you'll get the sales number on that. And you can go back and see what we historically have paid for businesses. So that that's my steer to anybody who wants to sort of work out that number. You know, but we haven't actually been that specific in our guide because we don't wanna have to be held to detailed guidance on more than what we need to, to be frank.
The 350-500 is U.S. and EU, right?
Yes.
It's not U.K.
Hi. Hi, guys, Edouard from Morgan Stanley. So just a few follow-ups on jewelry. Sorry. So today, could you just remind us, what's the mix in terms of, you know, branded versus your own brand on jewelry, and where do you plan to take that? And I guess question for Eric, you know, when brands like Messika and so on have the opportunity to grow DTC or through multi-brand players like you, kind of what's the incentive you provide, you know, in order for them to expand with you? And could you consider down the road doing mono-brand jewelry like you do mono-brand watch stores? So that's number one on jewelry. And sorry, on the transition on mono-brand watch store.
So what's the dynamics between the brands pushing you to open these stores and you really wanting to open these stores? You seem to—if I understood reading between the lines—that you seem to be having some issue with the brand, with the store productivity. Could you just give us some idea in terms of... or maybe not. Could you just give us some idea in terms of, you know, the returns, the sales density, the returns, the margin you're having with these stores? Thank you.
Yeah, you know, I'm glad you make the comment 'cause we were concerned that people would draw that wrong conclusion, that when we talked about increasing productivity, they'd think we had a problem, which we don't. The brands are definitely very supportive of mono brands, and they wanna probably do more than we do. At the end of the day, we got to look for financial numbers that for us make sense. And, you know, in mono brands, wherever we can do them adjacent, we immediately get financial benefits of shared back of house, shared management, shared leasing, and so on. So we are the ones that select financial cases that work very well for us.
There's an open door with brands who are very keen that we do mono brands overall. But what we are learning is that a mono brand environment is a bit different from a multi-brand environment. There's different ways of productivity. We're particularly finding it in Scandinavia, real people who really love the brands and wanna become collectors, wanna be at every event and so on. So the importance of very frequent CRM and communication and so on is higher. We're about to use... We have a great in-house system for our CRM called Captivate, but we're about to have a bit of a test of using Breitling's Salesforce system in the Breitling stores because they have a lot of really great programs reaching out to clients and prospects and all that.
So we're gonna do that. We're gonna do more on product. They should be supporting the mono brands more than they do. It's part of our wholesale allocation of product going to the mono brands. They deserve more than that, so there's an area, again, where we can make a big difference. So, we can improve the profitability, but it, it's not a problem. It's been a very good development for us overall. Jewelry, mono brands, and your comments on jewelry, again, I'll pass. So, jewelry, branded, non-branded? Yep, sure.
We normally wouldn't be disclosing the breakdown between branded and non-branded jewelry, but traditionally, our offers are a lot more around our own branded jewelry, Mappin & Webb, Goldsmiths, Betteridge, or Mayors. You also have a lot more attention on bridal and engagement, like more like classic offering in the past, you know? So with what we're gonna bring is like a branded jewelry is gonna add an additional offer on top. So, for the brands themselves, they really are in that journey as well of developing their visibility, becoming more known. What we can offer to them is the platform.
We have the distribution and also in the regions, in the U.K. or in the U.S., we have the ability to cross over our watch clients to the jewelry clients, as a jewelry clients. We know they are very, they are very connected clients, you know. And, and these brands that they, they basically want to have access to all our marketing and all our, our, our platforms, you know, to really leverage their growth, you know. And that, that will be the, the next step of, of development before you go to the mono-brand execution, which is basically what we've done with watches.
When you start, and then after you start to build bigger and better visible space within multi-brand, and then after you also, when the brand has reached a certain level of development, the brand can afford to be standing on its own, and have a mono brand operation.
And, you know, your question on the DTC and so on, and how do we compete with that? The answer with watch brands is we compete very well with it. You know, probably the best retailer, if you looked at all of the watch brands, you would say is Cartier. They have. It's their focus. Our fastest growing brand, U.K. and U.S., has been Cartier. And it's because they're not in the regions. From an online standpoint, you know, we are very competitive and very visible and spend a lot of marketing. We have the size and the scale, so we do fantastically well with Cartier online. So no problem with that. And, you know, Messika and others, would we do mono-brand with them at some point?
Of course, it's under review. The success with Bulgari, I think, is great in the U.S., and we're looking at other opportunities there. But yeah, we, we wanna apply all of our learnings and success in the world of watches to, to our luxury jewelry brands, fundamentally.
Hi there, Andreas from GLG. Just three questions. In terms of brand mix, I know you can't give specifics, but maybe where you thought versus where you were a couple of years ago with your previous CMD, where you think you're gonna be directionally, especially given Patek and Rolex and some of the other brands. Secondly, you gave a great table up there with all the different jewelry brands. A lot of them are under the same group, Richemont, LVMH. I'm wondering why not Cartier, but you know, Buccellati? Why not Tiffany, but other brands from LVMH? So is that an aspiration and just some color. And then thirdly, on the AP House in Manchester, given it's a JV, what exactly is your role in it, and is this something you'd be looking to do more of?
We do have a go at Cartier and Tiffany. Whenever it happens, I'm gonna retire at that point. It would be the ultimate, you know, accomplishment. But there's a compelling logic for Cartier and Tiffany, as I've regularly presented, on why wouldn't you be in the regions? I've even presented Scotland as a different country and said, "It's gonna happen at some point, and we could represent you in that country, in Glasgow and Edinburgh." So, so far, I'm getting nice smiles, but nothing specific. So obviously, that's not in our plan, but I do think there is a logic for it overall. But everything else, we're having a go at. And I definitely...
You know, our credibility with the groups is hugely influential, and Eric been able to get in there and open the doors and make the progress that he's had, overall. Brand mix and watches, how's it changed over the last few years?
No, I mean, listen, we obviously expect to see our relationship with Rolex. Some people question the Bucherer and whatever. Our relationship's never been better, actually. So we don't expect any supply disruption coming through in that space. Patek has consolidated their distribution, which we see as a positive, because obviously, they're still gonna need to sell the same number of units, and proportionally, we haven't lost them more than anybody else, I would say. So as a result of that, we will just get, you know, sort of better productivity out of the agencies that we have and it frees up space otherwise. So I don't think the mix of those two brands will drastically change in our portfolio.
As pointed out by David, and Brian, to some degree, these niche brands are interesting because there are things happening in that space, and some of these players will be big. Richard Mille, as an example, came out of that cohort some years ago. So, there are things happening in this space that could lead to a change in mix, I guess. It would be additive, so, I wouldn't have a problem with that, actually. So, no issue. Pre-owned, as a category, will be a bigger portion of our business in five years than what it is today. That's for sure. Rolex Certified Pre-Owned, as you heard, is gonna be on average around 15% of the group. You know, that is all of the group's Rolex revenue. So, so it's gonna be a big number. It'll be probably our second biggest brand, actually, by the end of the plan.
Yep.
So that's where we are. I do see, you know, sort of amongst sort of the strategic partner brands, they're all, you know, hungry for growth and, and love to work with good partners like ourselves. So I expect those to continue to do reasonably well. They're all transactional online, and obviously, in the U.S., we're in the early stages of our online journey. So they will grow really fast once we, you know, get that channel going more aggressively in the U.S. So, yeah.
Yep. AP, please.
Yeah, unlikely there would be any more AP townhouses, I think. And that's a real plus point. They're allowing us to do all of the North and all of England and Scotland outside of, outside of London, so we're very, very pleased with that. They'll have their own townhouse. They've got it on Bond Street. They are gonna relocate, we believe, to a bigger location. They've got Harrods. They've got Arije on Sloane Street. And I can't see that growing from there. Our involvement so far has been pretty good. We've helped them with the design of the showroom. We're helping them with all the local authority things. We are, by definition, a minority shareholder in the, in the JV. That's how they do it, and how they organize it throughout the whole world.
We'll help them with recruitment, but once the showroom's actually operational, we won't operate it directly. We'll have a great partnership with them, as we always have done. We'll get the sales numbers, and I guess we'll get a check from them every once in a while for-
Yeah
The work that we're doing, so.
We have a minority percentage of everything, of the CapEx, the investment, and the profits at the end of the day. It's just a fundamentally basic JV from that standpoint. But the big thing is, you know, an AP House in Manchester, fully supplied by them, which it will be, is gonna do a big number. So the percentage we have of that big number is a very attractive one to have in there. And it's, you know, it's central casting for AP in Manchester, you know, with the footballers and Coronation Street, and-
Yeah, it's pushing it.
Pushing that a bit maybe, but.
Hello, this is Rogerio Fujimori from Stifel. I have a question perhaps for Brian, Craig, and David about opportunities in terms of opening Rolex-anchored multi-brand stores in highly attractive areas like California, untapped areas for the group and in the EU. Do you see potential for that to happen? And just a clarification on the Rolex brand mix, I think more or less, I think expected to be about half of group sales. Does it include CPO, or is or not? Thank you.
Okay, easy one again, doesn't include CPO. Right, CPO is gonna add, as Anders said, on average, 15%. But the opportunity in-
In the U.S.?
Yep.
I mean, we are looking at opportunities in California, but we're not restricting ourselves to one state. We've proved that we can open up across the U.S. and open up successfully, whether it's mono brands or multi-brands. I think there was an expectation that when we were going to come into the U.S., that we were gonna stick to New York, Miami, L.A., et cetera. But there's a huge amount of business that gets done outside of there. You know, we've got a business in Atlanta that, you know, when we do these renovations, can end up being a $100 million business in itself. And places like Cincinnati have been hugely successful. So we're looking at California, but we're also looking at basically across every state, and we still believe there's huge potential to grow.
Yep. EU?
Yeah, I mean, they're all so different is the truth. You know, there's gonna be some markets where you go, and you believe possibly the only way to enter would be through an acquisition. The market is pretty mature. There's good retailers doing what they do, and therefore, new opportunities is less prevalent, I think. And then there's other markets and much less mature markets where you think if we couldn't acquire something there, we could certainly turn up and offer Rolex an alternative, and Patek and others actually, a much better alternative with our model and what we do.
So I think it's gonna be a real different approach in each area, and we are being relatively opportunistic in those areas. We're looking at them all and seeing what our best route is. Some may be acquisitions, some may be new opportunities, but we'll update as we go forward.
Yep. One other thing is very interesting. We've only got planned the one mall operation in Europe, and we think really good quality malls have been overlooked, Westfield-type malls. So the Mall of the Netherlands, we think, is a really nice. Mall of Scandinavia, in Stockholm is a really nice mall, and we're having a good early experience there and looking forward to the Mall of the Netherlands. We have Cartier, we have Omega, we have Breitling. So we're gonna create a Watches of Switzerland there in a mall environment, and there's a lot more malls to go out in the U.S., in EU. So we haven't planned any big expansion of that, but it will be a very, very nice experiment.
If you understood alongside that, comes then the opportunity of us doing it online with these brands. So we're representing a much broader assortment of brands because we're doing a multi-brand. So lots of irons in the fire of things that could develop. Maybe just take one more, please.
Sorry, it's Louise Singlehurst again from Goldman's. Just a couple of follow-ups, if I may. Just on the when we look out for the second half, obviously, the full-year guidance reiterated again today. Obviously, that's a very nice acceleration in the second half ahead of us. For Europe and the U.K., is that much more driven by clearly what you can see in the stores today, but more about the supply that's coming into the system, so the actual delivery of product that you're getting? And I think this morning you mentioned about the resiliency of the high-end consumer and the luxury price points in the U.S. And I wondered, whilst we've got the opportunity to ask about, like the US specifically, if that's been stronger than you expected, any surprises there in the quarter that's just gone?
And then secondly, just on Bucherer and the U.S., given the news flow with, Rolex and the acquisition of Bucherer, is there any sense in the market that you feel that Bucherer might be ramping up their willingness to step up in the U.S. or their presence in the U.S., specifically? And then lastly, I was just going to ask if there's any possibility for Rolex to go back into Ernest Jones once it's rebranded. Thank you.
Again, I'll take the easy one. So we're not anticipating them come back into the Ernest Jones stores, but they are really, really nice stores. They're not adding to distribution in the U.K., in principle. So you'd have to come up with a really, really sort of compelling situation, which we're not anticipating overall. We have not seen any change in Bucherer behavior at all. We've, you know, been at pains to really point out to all of you as a community, nothing's changed. Overall, Rolex have been really clear. It's hands-off, let Bucherer get on with it. They'll look at opportunities, maybe sometimes us and them, but they'll look at them and see what the best thing is for the Rolex brand. And I 100% trust that that's what's gonna happen.
On the U.S., in terms of, you know, luxury timepieces or, did we have any surprises in the last quarter? I mean, no, not really. I mean, the reality is our stores are continuing to mature all the time, and we're seeing that higher price point as a consequence. We're adding in more of these independent brands, and we're seeing great success with them. We just recently added in, and we were talking about it this morning, a brand, Arnold & Son, and they're off to a great start in just a matter of a couple of weeks. So, you know, we're becoming a destination for those timepieces, and so that's fantastic.
And then one other thing, just on the Bucherer, just on the US market. We came into the market five years ago, and I think created a bit of a ripple at the time, and then the rest of the market reacted and started investing, and we're seeing the same thing that happened in the U.K., particularly in London, that when everybody invests, the whole market elevates. And the market's continuing to grow, and there's still a long way for the overall US market to grow, to get to a per capita level that the U.K. is at, and there's more than enough space for us and for Bucherer and for the other retailers that are out there to grow.
Is there any logic for the U.S. being 40% of the U.K. per capita? But I don't think there is. I mean, if you look at the concentration of wealth that's there and... So we are absolutely convinced, and I think we've proven it; it's about retail. And we think it's; there is this underlying demand and understanding of watches, but it was all very much an online community and whatever. Again, these brands were bigger in the U.S. because people really had an interest in horological developments, but good retail just wasn't; there wasn't enough of it around the U.S.
I think it's also worthwhile to point out, going back to 2005, actually, it was the same. And since 2005, really nothing happened in investment into retail in the U.S., whereas in the U.K., Harrods, Selfridges, and us, and others, you know, we came in late in the, in, in the cycle, but that whole retail explosion and investment took place in this market-
Yeah
which drove the productivity.
The evidence is there from the last couple of years, the U.S. is the fastest-growing market. It's now the biggest market in the world. It wasn't when we set out a couple of years ago, so I think the U.S. structurally offers, you know, big upside for sure. Okay, ready for a drink? I know we are, for sure. But, thanks very much for your attention, all your support, and obviously, if you can join us for a drink and carry on chatting, we're very happy to do that. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.