Now I'd like to hand the conference over to Joan Withers, Chair. Please go ahead.
Tēnā koutou and good morning. Welcome to The Warehouse Group's annual results announcement for the year ending 30th of July, 2023. I'm Joan Withers, Chair of The Warehouse Group, and with me this morning, I have our Group CEO, Nick Grayston, and our CFO, Jonathan Oram.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm going to go through the introductory part of the presentation, including giving detail on our final dividend. Then Nick will provide narrative on our strategic reprioritization and the actions that we took in the second half of the financial year to maximize EBIT. He will also cover high-level divisional outcomes and specific actions being deployed to address the significant operating loss we have experienced in Torpedo7 this year. Jonathan will then go through the detailed financials, and I will conclude with our reading of the trading environment that we are facing for the balance of FY 2024. I'll start by saying that FY 2023 has been a tough year for The Warehouse Group.
A challenging trading environment, with Kiwi families experiencing rising inflation, increased cost of living, and rising interest rates, has intersected with the group being midway through a transformation program in a peak year of spending on information systems and digital infrastructure. As a result, we have had to make difficult decisions to navigate through those challenges. On to slide four. We are reporting a group sales result of NZD 3.4 billion, up 3.2% on FY 2022, including a record sales result for The Warehouse of NZD 1.9 billion, which was up 9.6% on the prior year. We had planned for increases in the cost of doing business, in particular around IS costs, as we continue to invest in replacing legacy systems. Riding through this part of the investment cycle while facing pressure on our gross profit margin, exacerbated our challenges.
The pressures on gross profit margin were particularly acute in the first half of the year, with higher promotional activity, shipping delays, and congestion. In the first half of the financial year, we enjoyed sales growth of 4.8%. This slowed in the second half to 1.4%. The group's response in the second half was a strategic reprioritization, focusing on operational performance, close management of gross margin, active reduction in cost of doing business, and rebalancing project spend. While initiatives have been put in place, we have not been able to completely offset ongoing cost increases. But in the second half, we are pleased to have recovered some of the gross profit margin decline experienced in the first half, and our cost of doing business has decreased as a percentage of sales compared to the prior year as a result of the actions taken.
We are proud of our purpose of helping Kiwis live better every day. Our vision is to make sustainable living easy and affordable for everyone, so to the benefit of our customers, our community, and our planet, while providing sustainable long-term returns for our shareholders. Now we go to slide five. As I previously noted, our group sales were up 3.2% on FY 2022, and notably 10.7% up on pre-COVID FY 2019. Both reported and adjusted net profit after tax were down significantly, the latter by 56.2% versus the prior corresponding period. Gross profit dollars were down by 2.4% on FY 2022, and our GP margin was also lower than the PCP. However, as Jonathan will detail later, second half gross profit margin percentage improved 160 basis points from the first half.
Our net debt at year-end was slightly higher than at year-end FY 2022, but the actions that we took in the second half saw our net debt position improve materially from the NZD 83.4 million net debt position at the half year. Now to slide six. We continue our strong focus on our ambition to reach zero emissions in our operations by 2040. A highlight in our path to progress was that just after year-end, we signed a power purchase agreement with Lodestone, a developer and operator of solar farms. Two hundred sixty of our sites will be powered by solar energy as early as 2026. Other milestones in our roadmap include having 100% of our light passenger fleet powered by electricity and now having 33% of our private label sales from products with sustainable attributes.
To slide seven, dividends, final dividends for FY 2023. The directors have declared a fully imputed final dividend of NZD 0.08 per share. This is in line with our policy of distributing at least 70% of the group's adjusted net profit after tax, at the discretion of the board and subject to trading performance, market conditions, and liquidity requirements. As previously noted, net debt has reduced materially from the position at the half year when we did not declare an interim dividend. Our liquidity is now well within the bounds of our target area, and we have significantly reduced our planned project expenditure for FY 2024. The record date for the dividend will be the 16th of November, and it will be paid on the 1st of December, 2023. I'll now hand over to Nick.
Thank you, Joan. Tēnā koutou, and good morning. As Joan has shared with you, while we saw strong sales in The Warehouse and delivered 3.2% sales growth across the group in FY 2023, this has been a tough result overall. We planned for an increased cost of doing business, but faced more than expected pressure on our gross margin through promotional activity and cost of goods inflation, while continuing to deliver value to our customers. We made the conscious choice to continue investment in core systems to accelerate our transformation program, which has increased the CODB. At our half year update in March, we shared our strategic reprioritization plan to improve financial performance and operational efficiency, along with an enhanced customer offer. While it's early days, we have seen some improvement in the second half financial performance.
I am encouraged that we are better positioned to weather the economic headwinds that we expect to continue in the year ahead. I'll now share an overview of our action with you now. Slide 10. We have reprioritized our transformation to concentrate on EBIT delivery and chosen to delay some digital initiatives, as well as reducing CapEx We made the difficult decision to restructure our head office team, which will deliver an annualized benefit of NZD 24 million. Our employee expenses have held flat as a percentage of sales, despite wage inflation pressures. We have reduced the operating cost of TheMarket from the H1 loss of NZD 16 million to NZD 6 million in H2, and we expect this to reduce further to under NZD 5 million for the full year in FY 2024.
After peak MarketClub promotional spend in the first half, we have eliminated this incremental promotional spend in H2. We have deferred NZD 30 million investment on some digital product development projects to focus our attention on core system projects instead. We were able to reduce store labor costs through productivity improvements. Employee expenses were held flat across the group despite wage inflation pressures. We've closed 1-day operations and integrated TheMarket and Torpedo7 into our agile operating model and are beginning to realize cost savings, efficiencies, and productivity gains. Grocery is one of our fastest growing categories in The Warehouse. We are focused on building a more profitable category while delivering affordable essentials to Kiwis.
We've increased our private label Market Kitchen range to 64 different products, have seen a significant improvement in our supply chain capability, and are focused on SKU reduction to increase efficiencies in order to deliver the best value products for our customers. Margin management is critical, and this means real-time pricing, reacting to increasing costs, and driving efficiencies through the use of bulk stacks in store. Last but not least, we have reduced our inventory significantly from half year, with a closing inventory of NZD 493.3 million, compared to NZD 562.3 million at FY 2022 year end, and NZD 617.8 million at half year. Moving to slide 11, divisional summary.
Although profitability has decreased on last year, our core agile brands, The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, and Noel Leeming, make up over 94% of our business, and sales have remained relatively steady within a challenging macroeconomic environment. Noel Leeming suffered from the slowdown in sales of big-ticket items and the shift of disposable income from products to travel and entertainment post-COVID, and was down 49.3% in operating profit. However, these three brands have delivered sales growth of 4.2% and a combined operating profit of NZD 121.9 million, and while down on prior year, have still delivered operating profit margin of 3.8% to sales. The losses in our smaller brands have impacted our group's operating profit significantly, and we continue to address their performance with even greater focus. Moving to Torpedo7.
Torpedo7 represents 4.8% of the group's sales and has been affected by a decline in in the bike market, which is also true globally. A wet summer and unfavorable weather have impacted snow and water categories at a time of increased infrastructure spending on their own ERP. This has resulted in an operating loss for the year of NZD 222.2 million. We have provided for an inventory impairment of NZD 4.6 million against Torpedo7 to manage excess and aged stocks, and have put a recovery plan in place. Addressing this challenge is a major focus for FY 2024, and we will provide an update on our progress at half year. Our ecosystem of iconic brands and established store footprint and market-leading digital assets are centered around our customer, and we continue to believe in our strategy.
Through our transformation work, we are unlocking value for our customers while finding efficiencies and new revenue opportunities for the group. I'm pleased to be able to share that our retail media network, Market Media, will be launching 120 in-store digital screens across 60 The Warehouse and Noel Leeming stores, to offer advertising opportunities to our suppliers in times of Black Friday and peak trading. All stores are planned to be live by mid-2024. This network will allow our brands and suppliers to reach customers while they are shopping. Many suppliers have already placed future bookings, and we're excited by this meaningful step forward in our retail media revenue growth. TheMarket.com has been part of our online ecosystem since 2019, and has developed a market-based platform on which thousands of customers and brands engage with.
This year, we have taken the best of TheMarket and embedded it into the core of our group online strategy. Group Marketplace went live on thewarehouse.co.nz in October 2022, integrating some of the best-of-market products onto the Warehouse website and app. This offers our customers an extended range online, providing over 103,000 third-party products from 71 merchants to our existing online customer base. While our group marketplace is still in its infancy, we have seen good uptake from customers and suppliers and have achieved a total group gross merchandise value of NZD 74.3 million in FY 2023. We will roll out more choice in FY 2024. We have addressed TheMarket.com's prior year performance by reducing the operating cost of TheMarket.com.
The first half loss of NZD 16 million was reduced to NZD 6 million in the second half as a result of this action, and we expect the FY 2024 operating loss from TheMarket to be less than NZD 5 million. MarketClub is proving valuable to our customers. Our 1.3 million members have saved almost NZD 18 million in discounts this year. Through the MarketClub donation platform, we have contributed over NZD 1.6 million to community causes around New Zealand since October 2021. Incremental promotional spending impacted our margin in the first half. While this did drive good uptake and a very good CPA, we have eliminated MarketClub incremental promotional spending in the second half. Growing first-party data through MarketClub provides us with a competitive advantage, which, for example, enables our retail media opportunity.
Moving to the Warehouse grocery offering, we continue to see strong demand. Grocery sales grew 26.1% in FY 2023, as Kiwi families chose to shop at the Warehouse more often to find much-needed value on essentials. Grocery contributed 18.7% of the Warehouse's total sales in FY 2023. We experienced 91.8% growth in pantry and chilled, 26.6% in household cleaning items, and 23.8% in pet care. This year, we trialed fresh fruit and vegetables in 12 Warehouse stores and have received great feedback from our customers. We have expanded our Market Kitchen range to 64 product lines, including our famous NZD 5 Market Kitchen 500 g butter. We continue to take a considered approach to grocery expansion and have a focus on margin and supply chain management.
Unfortunately, the recent legislation and code of compliance measures have offered no resolution to the lack of access to wholesale supply at fair prices, but we remain committed to offering affordable groceries to Kiwi families and will continue to fight for this. I'll now hand you over to Jonathan Oram, Chief Financial Officer, who will take you through our group financial results.
Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. As Joan and Nick have been talking to, the full- year result for the group reflects a challenging year, with the business navigating the cost of living impact on our customers, the impacts of inflation on our cost base, while going through a year of peak project spend. So looking at the result, sales growth of 3.2% was underpinned by a very strong first half, with growth of 4.8%, followed by a softer second half, with growth of 1.4%, as the cost of living impact of pressures impacted sales growth, particularly in Noel Leeming and in Torpedo7. Gross profit margin declined 190 basis points to 33.4% compared to a prior year, but saw a recovery from the first- half decline of 200 basis points.
Cost of doing business increased in dollar terms, mainly due to significant increases in information systems and digital costs, and depreciation associated with the increased project spend, but decreased slightly as a percentage of sales to 31.6%. Adjusted NPAT was NZD 37.5 million in FY 2023, compared to NZD 85.5 million in FY 2022, a decrease of 56.2%, and includes interest expense of NZD 9.1 million versus NZD 0.7 million last year. Turning to slide 19, we see the differences between reported NPAT and adjusted NPAT, in which we exclude unusual items to improve the understanding of the underlying business performance. There are three unusual items this year, after no unusual items in FY 2022. The numbers I quote here are pre-tax.
So firstly, we removed the small realized gain of NZD 0.4 million from the sale of our Royal Oak store property. Secondly, restructuring costs of NZD 10.9 million represent staff redundancy costs and costs in relation to the closure of the 1-day business. And thirdly, associate impairment of NZD 3.5 million, where the impairment of the group's investment in Zoom Healthcare. On Slide 20, we show the split of the result into the first half and second half. Overall, we have seen a slowing of sales between halves as we are comping a COVID-impacted first half in FY 2022, and cost of living pressures have increased in the second half. H1 sales growth, as we've talked to, of 4.8%, slowing to 1.4% in H2.
A few other points to note on this slide are, first, gross profit also showed signs of recovery though it fell at a greater rate in sales in both halves, reflecting the decline in gross profit margin. The underlying gross profit margin did improve in H2, with a decline of 180 basis points versus 200 basis points experienced in H1. Second, the cost of doing business increased at a slower rate in H2 versus last year, with the benefit of the cost of doing business reduction initiatives that we put in place in the second half. And third, the rate of online sales decline slowed, but we continue to see the trend of customers returning to stores. Online sales, as a percentage of total sales, were 9.3% in H2, down from 12.3% in H1.
Slide 21 looks at the half- on- half sales trend by brand, and some observations on, on this slide. First, The Warehouse saw significant sales growth in H1, up 13.2%, followed by softer growth of 5.7% in H2, but delivering overall FY 2023 sales growth of 9.6%, a record sales number of NZD 1.9 million, reflecting the strength of the brand's value proposition. Second, Noel Leeming was impacted by decreased spend on discretionary items over the year, with H1 sales decline of 4.5%, slowed in H2, with sales down 1.9%. And if you dig a bit deeper, you can see that Q4 sales decline was only 0.4%, so showing some resilience in the categories that Noel Leeming sells.
Third, Torpedo7 was most impacted by decline in discretionary spend and demand declines in categories that experienced significant demand uplift during COVID, for example, bikes and fitness, with sales for the brand down 1.1% and 11.1% in H1 and H2, respectively. Slide 22, looking at gross profit margin, which has been one of the most significant drivers of group profitability in recent years, and this year, with its decline, is a significant driver of the FY 2023 result. The 190 basis point decline at a group level equates to NZD 63.6 million of gross profit on full- year sales. Overall trend since 2018 has seen gross profit margin peak in FY 2021, then decline back to FY 2019 levels.
This decline is more than we expected to get back post-COVID-19 highs, and the bulk of this decline has occurred this year, and, in particular, in The Warehouse, which explains close to 80% of the decline. So taking a closer look at The Warehouse on slide 23. Overall, for the year, we have seen a decline in gross profit margin for The Warehouse of 290 basis points. Most of this decline occurred in the first half, which was down 370 basis points. In the second half, we have rectified two of the major drivers of the first half margin decline, being, first, incremental MarketClub promotional spend, which we have eliminated, and secondly, container detention costs, which have been running at a lower level than H2 last year.
However, overall promotional spend, including discounting and also product mix impact, have continued to impact margin in the second half. And when we look at one of the drivers in terms of product mix, looking at overall grocery sales, these have grown 26.1% for the year and increased their percentage of total Warehouse sales to 18.7% from 16.3% in FY 2022. In slide 24, we take a closer look at what has happened in the performance of Torpedo7. After being on a path to break even, Torpedo7 experienced significant decline in EBIT over FY 2023, losing an additional NZD 20 million of EBIT versus FY 2022. Contributing factors can be split between gross profit margin and cost of doing business. In gross profit dollars, we saw NZD 14.7 million of the NZD 20 million dollar decline.
In terms of categories, there has been a major dislocation of the bike market, and in snow and water categories, these have been impacted by unseasonal weather, and in the case of water, higher levels of competition. We've also taken extra inventory provisioning in FY 2023. In terms of cost of doing business, this explains NZD 5.3 million of the NZD 20 million decline. This has increased as capability is being built to support the store network growth and increased depreciation of new store, fixtures and fittings. Slide 25 gives a further breakdown of the group's cost of doing business. Cost of doing business was up NZD 27.9 million, or 2.7% from FY 2022, mainly due to depreciation and information system costs, which were included in other expenses. Depreciation was up due to significant increases in project spend over the last few years.
We have further details on this on the next slide. Employee expense is slightly down, and as a percentage of sales, down 60 basis points post support office restructuring and store productivity initiatives. Lease expense was up 3% as the impact of inflation flows through to our property leases. Slide 26 provides a deeper dive on our information systems and digital costs. In the right-hand chart, you can see the profile of operating costs and the split between what is largely recurring operating costs in green and in blue, SaaS project-related costs that can't be capitalized. As these new systems go live, some of the SaaS project expenditure is eliminated, but some of this cost will remain as recurring operating costs in the form of license fees and continuous improvement. For the year, total operating costs have increased NZD 15.7 million.
In the left-hand chart, we have CapEx and prepayments. This year will be a peak in capitalized information system expenditure, with spend up slightly on last year. The largest two projects this year have been ERP FI, which is a new finance and inventory system in The Warehouse, and Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming, and what we call GOMS, which is a new group order management system. Slide 27, looking at the summary balance sheet. The key points to call out here, first of all, working capital increased marginally over the course of FY 2023, but within that, there was a significant reduction in inventory, down NZD 69 million to NZD 493.3 million. As part of this reduction in inventory was a normalization of goods in transit, which decreased from NZD 94.1 million to NZD 65.4 million.
This reduction reflected a return to previous shipping transit times and a reduction in port congestion. Offsetting this reduction in inventory was a decrease in trade and other payables, reflecting lower inventory purchasing and a change in product and brand mix. Fixed assets increased by NZD 14.4 million, as offsetting the CapEx spend was the sale and leaseback of the Royal Oak store property. Net debt increased from NZD 41.2 million to NZD 48.1 million at year-end, but a significant reduction from the NZD 83.4 million at half year, providing liquidity of NZD 421.9 million, well within the group's target liquidity range of NZD 350-NZD 450 million. Moving on to cash flow on slide 28. We have touched on most of the key drivers here already.
Operating cash flows increased 103.2% to NZD 214.2 million, with a decrease in trading EBITDA, offset by a significant improvement in working capital movement for the year versus last year. Other major movements in cash flow included the sale of Royal Oak and also less dividends paid in FY 2023, given no FY 2023 interim dividend was paid. The CapEx component of project spend was up NZD 7.6 million to NZD 115.1 million, and this meant overall net cash flow resulted in a NZD 6.9 million dollar increase in net debt to NZD 48.1 million. Finally, looking at project expenditure on slide 29, and within that, CapEx
As has been mentioned, project expenditure was significantly up in FY 2023 at NZD 164.4 million versus NZD 140.6 million last year. When we talk about project expenditure, we are looking at the capitalized and expensed elements of projects within the business. CapEx was NZD 113.2 million in FY 2023, compared to NZD 107.5 million in FY 2022. This level of CapEx is the second year in which we have run at more than 2x historical depreciation, as the group addresses deferred investment in core systems, store and DC facilities, and builds new digital assets. Core systems investment included the delivery of the ERPFI system, Group Order Management System, Warehouse Management System, Master Data Management, and the delivery of our new people and HR system.
Store development continued in FY 2023, but at a lesser pace than in FY 2022. New stores included the new Warkworth retail centre, a new Torpedo7 store at Botany, and the relocation of a Torpedo7 Christchurch store to a bigger site. Our SWAS integration programme included the development of a further five stores in FY 2023, bringing the total number of SWAS stores to 40. FY 2024 total project expenditure is expected to be NZD 80 million, with CapEx plus prepayments to be between NZD 60 million to NZD 70 million. I will now hand you back to Joan, who will take you through the outlook for FY 2024.
Thank you very much, Jonathan. This is actually Jonathan's last results for the group, and I would like to wish him all the very best in his new role as he departs The Warehouse Group and thank him on behalf of the entire board for his exceptional leadership over the past five years. So looking ahead, while FY 2023 has been a challenging year, our initiatives to improve operational performance and reduce our cost of doing business have strengthened our position. We are optimistic we will maintain this momentum into FY 2024, and our focus on improving financial performance will continue. This year has started with softer sales than expected, but with gross profit in line with expectations. We remain cautious about the outlook as we approach our busiest time of the year. The business has planned its cost base and inventory purchasing considering this uncertainty.
We will continue to adapt our trading plan to the market conditions as sales build through to Christmas. As you've heard, Torpedo7 is our most challenged brand, and we will be reporting on the performance against our recovery plan at the half year. We have rationed project expenditure, as you heard from Jonathan, to a cap of NZD 80 million in this current financial year, with a focus on delivering major projects that are in flight. That concludes today's presentation. I'd like to thank you all for joining us and for your interest and support in The Warehouse Group, and we're now going to open the call for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Kieran Carling from Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead. Welcome, Kieran.
Hi, guys. Hopefully you can hear me all right. Just in terms of—this is the first one from me, yeah, looking at your cost of doing business, previously the indication has been that that will remain, you know, broadly flat in FY 2024, with some of those cost reductions from FY 2023, you know, being offset by wage increases and some further digital spend and increased D&A costs. Can you just provide us with a bit of an update on your thinking there for the year ahead?
Jonathan?
Yeah. Thanks, Kieran. Look, the objective, I think as we've outlined in terms of operating in an environment where we think, you know, sales are gonna be relatively flat for FY 2024, is to keep cost of doing business also relatively flat. Albeit within that, we do see IS costs continuing to IS OpEx costs continuing to climb. So, you know, currently I'd think of putting a number around the NZD 15 million mark against that. And there will be additional depreciation as this CapEx bubble flows through. So, you know, at least five million dollars of CapEx. But we have our other initiatives which we've got in place to offset that.
You know, they, they're around the things that we've looked at in the past, but, you know, we continue to look at our total labor spend of, you know, 17.5% is still relatively high versus what we'd like it to be. And so things like that will offset it, hopefully to bring it back down to being, like I said, I'd expect overall relatively flat to 2023.
Okay. Thank you. And on Torpedo7, you know, you talk about a performance plan going forward, obviously a significant decline in, you know, FY 2023. Can you just run us through some of the detail of what your strategy is for that brand?
Yeah. Good morning, Kieran. It's Nick. So broadly speaking, the recovery plan is broken down into three areas. One is margin improvement, the second is cost of doing business reduction, and the third is product opportunities, specifically. If I look at those sequentially, margin is gonna be worth about NZD 8.5 million, and, you know, that will be a mixture of improving the performance of cycle, though we don't think that the sales are going to bounce back. You know, that's a global phenomenon as we, as we'd indicated. People bought a lot of bikes during COVID, which is one of the few forms of exercise they could actually do. And so there's really been a glut in the market. That business is discounted, but we do see some opportunities within that.
Our own brand mix will continue to increase. That's got a richer margin, and you've seen the performance of some of the sort of own brand outdoor retailers. We've corrected some of the pricing issues on the water business. We've taken some pricing opportunities and are managing our discount. So all of those margin impacts worth about NZD 8.5 million. In addition, looking at reducing our cost of doing business, by integrating the business into Agile, we're saving about 1.7 million in terms of the sort of central head office costs. There are some store closures that are possible, worth about another million.
As we bring the business into Agile, we've started to apply some of the very successful techniques of managing store labor. So we see an opportunity of about NZD 1.3 million in terms of productivity. There's about NZD 0.5 million in terms of cost reduction from logistics, and another NZD 1 million from freight, and a couple of other bits and pieces. So about NZD 6.5 million benefit from those cost of doing business things. Then, you know, some—a small NZD 2.2 million gross profit opportunity from the addition of, you know, some things like surf brands and camping barbecues. You know, we'll test some fishing stuff, more electronics, product protections, and other possibilities. So, you know, there's a lot of detail around it.
It remains a very uncertain environment. The business is now, as part of Agile, got full focus of, of the whole team and, you know, is a major, major issue. And, you know, so we're spending a lot of time on it, and we'll continue to review the, the future of that business.
Okay, thank you. And, I guess just one on, you know, where you see The Warehouse's value proposition in the current, you know, environment compared to the likes of Kmart. You know, Kmart, you have mentioned in the past, you know, is a cheaper option. But obviously that's where consumers are focusing at the moment. So just wanna know if you think, you know, there's some risk of you losing market share to Kmart, and maybe you could touch on, you know, the current promotional environment for yourselves and competitors at the moment.
Yeah. As you know, as I've commented before, you know, they're a retailer who does a good job to be respected, but, you know, they only compete with us in about a third of our locations. And so, you know, we've talked before about not being able to emulate their proposition entirely, nor wanting to. As you know, they focused on home apparel, you know, some toys and a little bit of stationery and some gifting. That would not satisfy the needs of, you know, some of the places in rural New Zealand. And so our proposition necessarily is different. You know, we are very focused on our opening price points and have made some quite substantial moves in terms of our pricing with more to come. Not necessarily taking everything down or taking everything up, but being a bit more nuanced about it.
One of the critical things that that we have worked very hard on, and are starting to see the results, is the grocery proposition. You know, as we know, the customer in New Zealand is under a massive amount of pressure. And so, you know, we've been working really hard to offer affordable groceries. You know, we've started to trial fresh fruit and veg in 12 of our stores, getting great feedback on that. Groceries now just under 20%, 18.7% of Warehouse sales.
And we've launched some great products like Market Kitchen butter for NZD 5, which is a reason to come to us. Pantry and chilled, for example, has grown 91.8% in the year. We still have challenges around you know fair prices. But you know to get around some of that pressure, we are building our Market Kitchen range to 64 products. And you know again, we believe in and are getting recognition for the fact that you know we put a lot more quality into our products, and they perform better.
You know, while you might be forced to buy a toaster for NZD 5 that will last a year, you know, most people will buy one for NZD 6 that lasts 5 years, and that's, that's a better value. So, you know, something we remain very, very focused on. Tough environment, but you know, you've got to pick your, pick your places where you fight.
Okay, thank you. I might just squeeze one quick one in. Can you run us through your expectations of where you see net debt falling in FY 2024, and where you're currently sitting with your interest rate hedging?
So again, in terms of net debt, look for the year, I'd expect, at the moment, full year, at end of FY 2024 net debt to be at a similar level to where we are today. That's what we're, you know, we're trying to maintain the—w e're absolutely committed to maintaining the NZD 350 million-NZD 450 million of liquidity. We've also actually since balanced that, added another NZD 20 million, so our total facilities are now NZD 490 million. We, we don't hedge our interest rate risk, because we're running, you know, running at such low debt levels, we don't, we don't see that as, as necessary. We'll end up with a cash balance at half year. So, you know, at these levels, it's not worth running a debt hedging interest rate hedging strategy.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thanks, Kieran.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Guy Hooper, from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, Guy.
Yeah. Good morning, team. Maybe just firstly on Torpedo7, and I guess, store count, I mean, is there much of a profitability range within the existing Torpedo7 stores? And then, I guess, how are you thinking about, I guess, that brand in terms of its store presence in New Zealand? Is it a store reduction story, or is it a just, I guess, a store location or type of store reduction story?
No, so it's a great question, and, you know, almost all of the stores are profitable in their own right. But there are a couple, and I alluded to it in terms of some store closings that we're going to do. One of the reasons that makes us continue to believe in the opportunity to turn around the business, apart from sort of New Zealand's generic support of outdoor pursuits, is the fact that it would be very hard for someone to come into the country and to be able to obtain a store network like that quickly. And so, you know, as we think about the right of use asset, we believe that that continues to have value.
You know, we will not continue to open large numbers of stores until we see the profitability turn. And, you know, as I told you, it's under the microscope at the moment. But equally, at this stage, no major closings or relocations.
Sure. Great. Thanks. Just on grocery, I mean, the sales as a percent—g rocery sales as a percentage of The Warehouse Group, a smaller percentage than what was reported at the interim. Is that a seasonal thing, or have you made some changes that maybe slowed that growth, whether that's around pricing or categories, stock?
Yeah, you know, so I mean, there's always seasonality, but, you know, around different types of groceries. But, you know, we went really hard on some of the pricing and, you know, it's in there that, that's where a lot of the MarketClub offers were focused, which was an additional NZD 40 million incremental promotions in the first half. And so, you know, we, whilst we still have MarketClub pricing, we pulled back the incrementality of that. And, so, you know, that, that's improved the margin. And, generally speaking, you know, whilst we are very focused on value, we're not gonna drive the same level of unprofitable sales. And so we're being a lot more surgical and a lot more careful about how we do that.
But we do believe in the future of grocery. It's a great frequency driver, and frankly, it's something that Kiwis really need in this environment.
Cool. The last one from me, just on the current trading. I mean, there was comments about, I guess, slower sales than what there had been, but gross profit in line. So it sounds like perhaps margin's been a bit more resilient than what you were expecting. Can you just give us a, I guess, a little bit of color about what you're seeing there, either by brand or, or maybe just in terms of customer purchasing trends?
Yeah, and, you know, it goes through a lot of the things I just said as well. But in addition, we've seen some commodity prices come back from where they were in FY 2023, and some shipping costs reduced. So, you know, there's more margin built into the products. You know, as I said, we're being much more careful about how we promote and how we manage our way through that. You know, the inventory reductions mean that there's less pressure on us to have to promote to get through inventory. You know, we had to go pretty hard as a result of the sudden drop in sales, you know, with our Q2 performance in FY 2023. And so we're a lot more measured and considered.
In addition to that, if you look back at FY 2023, it was a real scramble because of the supply chain complexity to get that product into stores. And, you know, so we don't have that this year, and so haven't, you know, don't anticipate having to go quite so hard. So all sorts of issues around margin management. We've developed our capability around price optimization, you know, how, how much and where we, we promote. We've been sort of more surgical about sort of prices down and prices up, while, you know, keeping a, a focus on, on great value. So there's, there's really a number of things that have come into that.
Great. And is that, like, those shipping normalizations and lower commodity costs, presumably FX has been a bit of a headwind. Are they effectively just offsetting?
Well, you know, a lot of the year has been hedged forward on, on FX. Do you wanna comment on that, Jonathan?
Yeah, look, I would say in the scheme of things, that's been relatively well signaled through the business. You know, we hedge, we currently hedge 75% of our forward orders, 12-month forward. You know, that's equivalent of nine months fully hedged. We've been running at that level. So, headwinds, not so much actually, in terms of overall movement and hedge rate over the year. The biggest, the biggest by multiple, you know, 4x, 5x, has been the shipping costs and the revision of that.
Okay. Thanks for that. And then just that last point, in terms of the current trading, is there anything worth calling out around consumer trends, whether that's, I don't know, basket size or, you know, certain price points that are doing better than others?
Yeah. I mean, FY 2023, we, you know, the traffic has been healthy and, you know, it's been a real case of customers coming back to stores. You know, as you'll have seen, our online mix has dropped. One of the most encouraging things for us is if you look at the overall sales drop in, in Noel Leeming, for example, that reduced to 0.4%, so maybe flat in Q4. And so we're seeing sort of some life come back into the electronics business. If we take the electronics category overall, we're seeing very strong performance in that category in The Warehouse at the moment. So, you know, whilst people might be trading down what they'll spend on TVs, they are still buying TVs and whiteware.
We've had great response to some of the brands that we've added in the Warehouse as well. Overall, our performance in that category is up and spreading the load a little bit more between the various different formats.
Thanks. That's all for me.
Thank you, Guy.
Thank you, Guy.
Thanks, Guy.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Margaret Bei from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Morning, Margaret.
Good morning, Joan. Good morning, team. Thanks for taking my questions. First up, I was just wondering if you could give us a quick idea of what your grocery plans are looking like in sort of the near to medium term, given the trial has gone well in terms of fresh fruit and veg. Is that something you're planning to roll out to all stores?
Yeah, we'll be very cautious about that. You know, specifically the fresh produce. You know, it requires a supply chain. We try to buy locally wherever possible. An exception to that would be bananas, for example, which are not a majorly produced item in New Zealand. But you know, very focused on the spoilage around that business. We are intending to roll out our Market Kitchen business significantly, though. You know, as I said, 64 products so far. We see a potential to get to maybe 200, 250 products. And you know, where possible, we source that direct. For example, rice, we source from the biggest rice factory in the world in India.
And there are products like that in dry grocery that you can import. You know, fresh is a lot harder. As you see, we've had a lot of good uptake. And, you know, where the other focus in grocery is reducing the cost to serve. So being more efficient, getting it through our supply chain, a lot more cross-docking, much more just-in-time ordering, and, you know, having improved the ordering process. But also increased use of bulk stacks in store, which reduces the handling costs. And, you know, associated with that will be a continued SKU reduction. We're really focused on driving essentials. It's not our plan to become a full-scale supermarket, at least not in our current format.
But, you know, the customers are clearly telling us that we need to do that, and, you know, frankly, pleased to have seen some reaction from the competitors. You know, bringing down the price of butter, for example, because of our aggression to give people a fair price.
Thanks, Nick. On the outlook comments, and you mentioned softer sales than expected. I was just wondering if it was possible to sort of put a range on this, whether it was flat or versus the prior year, I mean, or whether you're actually seeing some sort of low single digit decline year on year, at the brand level or at the group, if easier.
So Margaret, we'll be releasing that in Q1, our Q1 sales release. So, you know, it's quite volatile at the moment, and wouldn't want to give anything that was misleading.
All good. No problem. In that case, in terms of Torpedo7, I was interested to hear your comments that a lot of the stores are mostly profitable, and there's only a few that aren't. Does that mean that the operating profit loss in that division of about NZD 20-something million is mostly attributed to a few stores?
No, it's not that. A bit, you know, there's a lot around, you know, central costs, depreciation, cost of putting in the ERP. So, you know, it—a nd that's why it's been important to sort of reduce the central costs and bring that in-house, and be more efficient around, in fact, marketing spend. You know, there's a higher attribution this year to central costs, which is very much a focus. Do you have anything to add, Jonathan?
Yeah, it's just, you know, when we look at store profitability, we're looking at what we call, you know, retail brand profit. So it's costs directly attributable to the store. And so, you know, there has been an increase in, if you wanna call them, head office costs, as, you know, capability has been scaled to support a growing store network, which, as Nick has said, we're not, we're not planning on growing the store network any further at the moment. And the refresh of the ERP system they use, which is Accredo, moving to Microsoft Dynamics, is a really big, you know, change for the business systems. And that's unfortunately, you know, you replace a legacy system with a new system, there is an increase in costs associated with the ongoing maintenance of that.
It will, we believe, deliver a lot of, a lot of improvements across the board.
Thank you. On that same note then, I think at the half year you talked a bit about combining the head office functions for T7, TheMarket and also The Warehouse brand. How is that going? And do you have sort of any timeframes in mind of when that might look complete?
Yeah. So, thanks, thanks for the the nudge on that. So, you know, we've for more than a year now, had the the central Agile brands working together in in terms of head office the Warehouse the Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming. Back in April, we brought The Market into our digital tribe, and so we run it alongside all of our other digital properties. It was the end of August that we brought Torpedo7 in, so that's much newer. And so, you know, we're only sort of a month and a half little going on two months into sort of bedding that in, but it is done. What's also significant is, at the beginning of this year, we moved our core brands retail operating structure to Agile.
And so, you know, the regional structure, for example, and the central structure, all, you know, all run together across Red, Blue, and Noel's. And we've seen a lot of synergies and, you know, idea sharing around that. And Torpedo7 is now integrated into that, but as I say, it's sort of very early. So all done, but early stages of bedding it in, in terms of Torpedo7. TheM arket's already merged in.
You've given some really good breakdowns of cost saving expectations from the various initiatives you have going on. Was there sort of a number in mind for how much the consolidation of the different head offices and I guess moving to Agile might help T7?
Yeah. I mean, all of the, all of the NZD 24 million of, you know, the unfortunate, elimination of roles that we had to do earlier in the year is around that, you know, reducing the, the spend, particularly on digital, but also getting synergies across those businesses. And so, you know, that is the annualized benefit is NZD 24 million, so that's central.
Thank you. I guess final question from me is there have been, I think I saw some news articles around negotiations with unions being a little contentious and workers at one of your stores going on strike. Can you talk a little bit more about that situation and how it's playing out, to the degree that you can?
Yeah, of course, Margaret, and, you know, matter of public record and, you know, our perspective is that, you know, our offer is very fair. The last collective agreement, for workers who've been with us more than a year, over the last two years, was just under 9%. And you look at that same constituency over five years, 2018 through to what we're roughly in 2023, and that's 47% increase. And so, you know, you have visibility on the overall performance of the business. We think that's a very fair number. We have a relatively small number of union members, under 20%. You know, we're negotiating in good faith, and we hope that it will be brought to a conclusion soon.
But, you know, we obviously have contingency plans, and, you know, we've cut our cloth according to how we can afford it.
Thank you all. That's all from me.
Thank you, Margaret.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Ms. Withers for closing remarks.
Thank you so much for attending this morning. We really appreciate your interest, and we look forward to updating you at the half year. Thanks very much.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.