Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welco me to the DFI Retail Group Holdings 2024 half-year results briefing conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by question and answer session. At which time, if you wish to queue for a question, you will need to press star followed by one one on your telephone. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. Scott Price, Group Chief Executive of DFI Retail Group, and Mr. Clem Constantine, Group Chief Financial Officer and Property Director of DFI Retail Group. Thank you. Please go ahead, gentlemen.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 half-year results presentation. I would like to begin this morning by sharing some key highlights from the first half of 2024. We have reported an underlying profit of $76 million, which is a pretty healthy growth versus the same comparable period last year. As we have stated in our press release, a good portion of that profit improvement was in the food and convenience store, but as well, reduced losses in Yonghui, our substantial ownership in that China retail business. Overall, subsidiary sales were down 2% when you exclude the Malaysia food divestment impact. Putting a little color around that revenue number because growth is important in retail. There was an unplanned change in cigarette taxes by the Hong Kong government. We are obviously as the largest convenience store seller chain in Hong Kong. We also substantially sell cigarettes.
If you exclude the impact upon revenue from that change in cigarette sales tax, our revenue would have been relatively flat, pretty close to flat, which I take again, given some of the market dynamics as a very positive indication that as consumer confidence returns, we are well-positioned. Very encouraging profit improvement for the food retail business, led by Singapore, where we have put quite a bit of effort, in improving not only the overall store proposition but also in talent. Food, we will see now a handover from Mr. Choo Peng Chee, who has been with DFI for many, many years, will retire in the coming months to be replaced by Curtis Liu. Curtis, a longtime Asia retailer food, including in Walmart. So expect to see continued progress there. Our convenience stores posted double-digit operating profits. So Danni Peirce and the team have done a great job there.
Yes, we have had decline in cigarette sales, but it is low margin. They have moved very quickly to push a very strong, ready-to-eat proposition with very high margins. As a result, you see the flow-through into our profit. Health and beauty has had some strong comparables. So last year in particular, our main market of Hong Kong for Mannings, the government in April put out some consumption vouchers across the entire business. As a result, we had a very strong profit, which obviously had an impact. But I would call out the fact that, if you look at a two-year stack, we are an 11% CAGR revenue on the health and beauty business. So again, a lot of opportunity moving forward. Home furnishings, Martin Lindström and the team there. High interest rates obviously continuing to mute growth in areas that generally tie very closely to people moving house.
Kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations, and heavy furniture, we do expect to see that to recover as interest rates come down, and the residential markets begin to recover. A great growth in volume on our e-commerce. I will talk a little bit more about that later. A 40% volume growth, and importantly pivoted to a sustained model that ensures that our profit on e-commerce is not dilutive to our brick and mortar. Associate businesses overall delivered improving underlying profit. Those quite different mixes of portfolios across Asia. An interesting type of movement from those businesses. We have a pretty healthy reduction in our overall net debt position. With that, I am going to turn it over to Clem, who will take us through the financial results.
Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the results for DFI Retail Group for the six months to the end of June 2024. Let us start with revenue and underlying profit. Total revenue, including associates and JVs, was at $ 12.643 billion, down 6%, primarily driven by lower sales in Yonghui and the divestment of our Malaysian grocery business, which we completed in March last year. If we exclude these, group sales were down by just 1%.
Total subsidiary revenues were at $ 4.405 billion, down 4%. Again, if we take out the divestment of our food businesses, sales are down by 2%. Our subsidiaries operating profit was at $ 121 million, up 40% on last year, underpinned by strong growth of CVS and food, as Scott just mentioned. After deducting tax accounting and finance charges, our subsidiaries underlying profit was at $ 73 million, up from $ 40 million last year.
Our share of associates and JVs underlying profit was at $ 3 million, a swing of $1 0 million from last year, and again, as Scott mentioned, primarily driven by significantly reduced losses in Yonghui. Underlying profit attributable to shareholders was $ 76 million, 127% better than last year, an encouraging $ 43 million profit swing. Net non trading items were $1 9 million, and this was largely driven by $ 16 million one-off gain from Robinsons' investment in the Bank of the Philippine Islands, which was completed earlier in the year.
Our reported profit attributable to shareholders was therefore at $ 95 million, up from $ 8 million last year. Our underlying EPS was at $ 0.0562 from $ 0.0247 last year, and our interim dividend per share is at $ 0.035, up 17% on last year, demonstrating our commitment to driving sustainable improved shareholder return. Let me turn to sales.
As I have mentioned, total sales were marginally down on the year. If we take them one at a time, we start with food. Food sales were at $ 1.579 billion, - 6% on the year and - 2% on a like-for-like basis. Overall food sales performance has remained largely stable, particularly in Hong Kong, despite the outflow of local residents to the Chinese mainland on weekends. Our convenience sales were at $ 1.168 billion, down 1% on the year and down 3% on a like-for-like basis. Overall, what we have seen is robust sales in the Chinese mainland and Singapore offset by lower cigarette sales in Hong Kong, as a result of the tax increases in late February. If we take the cigarette sales out, we are actually at +4% in sales and convenience. A pretty strong underlying healthy business.
In terms of health and beauty, our health and beauty sales were at $ 1.211 billion, level on the year and minus 1% on a like-for-like basis. Hong Kong Mannings second quarter sales growth was impacted by the strong comparables from last year due to the disbursement of the consumption vouchers back in April 2023. If we take those out, our health and beauty like-for-like sales are actually plus 1% on the year. Our home furnishing sales were at $ 349 million, down 13% on the year. Here what we are seeing is the impact of weaker consumer confidence in Hong Kong, a downturn in the property market, and disruptions from the earthquake in Taiwan. Now, in terms of our key associates, Maxim's.
Maxim's sales were at $ 1.369 billion, in line with last year. In essence, they were impacted by increased outbound travel and reduced weekend dining out in Hong Kong, as well as weak consumer confidence and sentiment in the Chinese mainland. This was offset by good growth in expanding Southeast Asia businesses. Yonghui sales were a touch over $ 5 billion, down 13%. Despite the lower sales in Yonghui, the underlying loss substantially narrowed as the results of cost optimization and ongoing rationalization of the store portfolio begin to come through. Robinsons Retail sales were at $ 1.744 billion, in line with last year, performing relatively well. Now turning to subsidiaries operating profit. Our food profit was at $ 26 million, up 90% the year, driven by a significant profit recovery in our Singapore business and a resilient performance in Hong Kong.
Our convenience profit saw growth to $ 47 million, up $ 20 million on the year. This we have seen through margin improvements across all our markets. So beauty profit was at $ 103 million, up $ 3 million on the year. Here we have seen strong profit growth across all our health and beauty businesses, despite a softer-than-expected tourism recovery in Hong Kong and Singapore, and obviously the large outflow of residents from Hong Kong. Home furnishing profit was at $ 3 million, down from $ 14 million, obviously impacted by the sale shortfall. Our SG&A ended at $ 57 million, an $ 11 million improvement on the year. This was largely driven by significant cost savings in digital. Operating profit pre-IFRS 16 was $ 121 million, up 40%, a very encouraging profit performance. Operating profit post-IFRS 16 was $ 168 million, up $ 41 million on the year.
Our operating margins have now moved to 3.8%, 100 basis points improvement on the year. Finally, turning to cash flow. Our EBITDA improved to $ 580 million from $ 542 million last year. Operating cash flow has increased to $ 155 million, mainly driven by the better profit performance of our subsidiaries. The group remains disciplined with respect to CapEx. $94 million was invested in the first half of the year, down from $ 104 million in the same period last year. Free cash flow was $ 61 million, a close to 40% year-on-year increase.
After taking account of investments and dividends, our net debt, as Scott has mentioned, has ended at $ 549 million, a $330 million improvement on last year, down from $ 883 million. In summary, despite a relatively challenging retail environment, we were able to grow our earnings and strengthen our balance sheet. Thank you. I will now hand you back to Scott.
Thanks, Clem. I would like to now review just an up date around the business. Reminding everyone, the DFI strategic framework, the same slide that we shared with you for second half 2023, full year 2023, in March of this year. Customer first, people led, shareholder driven, which is quite a powerful internal focus as well. Important part of how we are allocating our focus in the business. On the customer first, it is a difficult, challenging time right now for consumers. We see a lot in North Asia, a consumer customer who is quite nervous. They are very value focused, but at the same time, oriented towards convenience. So very pleased with some of the steps that we have taken around, one, the proposition that we are putting across all of our formats, ensuring that we leverage a reset food own brand strategy through Meadows.
Ensuring that as we build a convenient digital proposition for our customers, we do so in a way that is neutral to accretive to our overall brick and mortar profit margins for the business, which to me is critical. I will talk a little bit about how we are doing that. People led, moving much more to a reflection that our local leadership should reflect our customers. It creates, in retail, the most powerful understanding of how we quickly anticipate changes in local tastes. So we are moving towards much more of a local leadership. Then aligning to, I think, an important cultural pivot towards servant leadership where we keep our customer and our frontline team members at the core of all of our decisions in the business.
In retail, store culture is critical, and we want our customers to feel that we have the very best people who are oriented towards serving them. In terms of shareholder, pleased with the first half EPS gains, and where we are targeting our growth. We have prioritized, over the next few years, growth across the formats and markets where we believe those sales have the highest return on investment potential for the business. Importantly, we are keeping an eye upon our overall ESG commitments on the sustainability scope one, two, three commitment. We are participating in a global forum, The Consumer Goods Forum. I am co-sponsoring the Towards Net Zero forum. As a relatively modest sized retailer in Asia, we cannot create all the solutions on our own.
As we think about protecting the future profitability of our business, how do we participate in platforms where we can leverage the scale, the knowledge, and the expertise of global retailers to not only help us achieve our commitment, but do so in a manner that maintains our shareholder proposition moving forward. Just moving into a little detail around each one of those. On customer first, I think I would call out the double digit sales growth in the ready-to-eat for 7-Eleven. We have had some, I think, interesting growth in our ready-to-eat. 7-Eleven is obviously very powerfully known across our markets in Asia, in Japan. I think a large portion, greater than 50% of our customers have probably been to a 7-Eleven in Japan, who are subject matter experts in ready-to-eat. We have collaborated with them, brought a lot of those menus.
Some items for those who are familiar with Japanese food, the onigiri, we have a 90% growth in revenue. As cigarettes play less in our portfolio from a revenue base, we have an enormous opportunity to replace that with ready-to-eat. We are seeing, in essence, the opportunity for our 7-Elevens to become convenient quick service restaurants. Which is a different strategy for growth, but one that I think will become very attractive in terms of the economics moving forward. Our own brand is delivering much stronger margins. We have, I think, reset this program to focus on a much better product development cycle that is tied very much towards customer feedback and focus groups with a clear steely eye on scale and profit. We aren't going to be doing own brands unless they are margin accretive to our business.
As a result, we probably shrunk the portfolio about 15%, but significantly gained in margins. We're beginning to now leverage the yuu data. We have a lot of data. I'll talk a little bit later on that. But that data-driven assortment is not only helping us become more productive retailers, it's also offering to our vendors an opportunity for them to pay us to guide on much more effective promotions in the future. Our health and beauty services expansion, we in fact had a pretty significant milestone this month. We are partnering with a major insurer in Hong Kong, that will now allow us access to 170,000 residents with pharmacy. That will have a pretty significant improvement in terms of not only our foot traffic, but in our experience, a pharmacy customer also stops to add one or two items to their basket.
We are beginning to focus very much on the pharmacare market, and as well we're looking for incremental services, and we'll begin to talk through those more in the future. We're accelerating our omni-channel presence across all the formats. We launched foodpanda in Hong Kong in May, for our Wellcome Food banner. We are already hitting about a million in revenue, that is profitable revenue, a month. Very keen to see that growth moving forward. Then beginning to follow best practices around the world with large scale retailers, offering a retail media opportunity for our vendors in store. We'll talk a little bit more about that in subsequent slides. If I move into people led, of course, obviously there is an enormous opportunity as a business for retail to have the greatest net promoter score.
But from, I think a market perspective, obviously that'll allow us to, one, ensure that we keep a close eye on SG&A costs, which are down 17%. Part of that is just a good structure and cost structure, but also the savings on our digital business, which we have reset. I'm focused very much on what I think to be core aspects in retail of training and development, ensuring that we empower local leaders to maintain local competitiveness. There are, I think, some outflows of hiring of front line team members that has a little bit of supply demand challenge across employment around the world. I think we're doing quite well in that area. Improving our leadership diversity. We now have 40% representation of women in our leadership team. That includes Crystal Chan, who has just joined us as our new Group Chief Technology and Information Officer.
Overall, we are up 71% at a senior leadership level of female representation. Making good progress to a good balance. Building robust local succession. That to me is where we will ensure a sustainable, profitable business into the future, that we have a strong internal succession plan. On to shareholder driven disciplined CapEx investment, I think we have already talked through. We continue to monetize our overall balance sheet where appropriate for capital efficiency, where we sell buildings locking into long-term attractive rental agreements. Net debt down is covered by Clem. We have increased our dividend by 17%. We continue to look at portfolio optimization as we think about the TSR of the future. Hero Supermarket being an example where we continue to divest businesses where we do not believe it can be accretive to our overall TSR. Just a bit on the formats.
I think on food, we have talked quite a bit. A few things. One, market share gains in Hong Kong. If you look at the modern trade only, we are at 53.9% in the first half. That is 130 basis points improved at 52.6%. We are pivoting towards a view on the broader food market in Hong Kong, which would include wet markets, which would include the online and the digital. I prefer to look at that aspect because we are only roughly about an 18% share. I would like us to think about how we go from 18%- 25% with a broader value-based proposition over the next several years, as we see continued decline in wet market traffic, as we see customers continue to graduate to a more reliable environment with a broader basket availability, including dry grocery in the modern trade.
Quite keen to see some of the progress we expect there. Singapore food, we have made good progress. We actually year to date have shut seven loss-making stores. From a revenue, a minor share loss. Again, with a shareholder driven perspective, we have now, I think, created a portfolio from which we can create a much better profit proposition moving forward. E-commerce, talked quite a bit about the double-digit growth, strong partnership. foodpanda and quite excited about the opportunity that brings from a quick commerce, quite a different proposition. Roughly a 35-minute delivery that we are getting across that revenue. Our own brand helping us, in particular for customers who are value-oriented. Generally, own brands are at least 10% cheaper than the national brand at equal quality. For us, a better gross profit. Finally, the divestment of Hero. Moving on to convenience stores.
As mentioned, when you remove the cigarette, a 4% like-for-like growth, which is, I think, very strong. There is an enormous opportunity, I believe, across 7-Eleven as we pivot towards a much more profitable, much more traffic-driving, ready-to-eat proposition. You see that in our profit growth of 73% year over year. The RTE is obviously a huge driver of margin expansion and significantly better than cigarette margins. Happy to see the off balancing where cigarettes come down and RTE goes up into the long term. The QSR market is where, again, we see ourselves competing. For example, in Hong Kong, the QSR market is roughly valued at $4 billion. We have 1,000 stores. We have an enormous footprint from which we can offer, I think, a pretty exciting convenient proposition of both cold and hot foods. Profitable e-commerce, good digital touchpoints are planned.
We have a number of apps that are being launched for each of our banners across. South China, we have added 102 new stores, 1,765. We have a relatively minor share in South China. We are expanding through franchise, so expect to be growing in the 100 to 150 store a year into the future through franchise, which is a much more attractive return on capital, but also revenue growth as we think about how franchise store participation can help grow the business at a better shareholder return. Health and beauty, we have talked about the one-timer, so the 1%. That 11% CAGR over the last two years, I think is a reflection of the underlying business. We do make good progress, I think, across services and corporate pharma relationships to grow traffic into the store.
We continue to gain share across key Southeast Asian markets, which skew a little bit more towards beauty and derma than health. These too will mature into the future. Southeast Asia overall has been helped by very strong performance in Indonesia. We are gaining share and see, I think, enormous upside opportunity into the future. Own brands, taking the best practices we have achieved over the last year in food, we are now applying to the health and beauty. I think, again, great opportunity to offer value to our customers relative to those who are looking for an option to a national brand with accretive margins to our business. Opened 37 stores and great growth in terms of the overall e-commerce. Home furnishings. Look, we are doing the fundamentals to make sure that that business is very strong. This too will turn.
This is really the most significant, in particular North Asia challenge relative to the macro environment around residential. I think that we are confident that we are in the right business with the right assortment. We are doing the smart things in the interim as we think about how we ensure we continue to gain share during this time. We have taken some great cost initiatives. We have focused upon food. We are making sure that we are ready when the markets turn to continue to invest in home furnishings. So I am long on IKEA and home furnishing.
Right now we are going through a 1 or 2 decade flat to decline, but this too, to me, will turn. I mentioned a little bit about our O2O. We have completely reset our digital business and built out an ecosystem where it is very much surrounded around the yuu platform, the Y-U-U platform.
Across all of our subsidiaries, if you think about the left, direct distribution and the right, we are now at 52,000 orders a day, which is up 40% year-on-year with significant improvements across our profit contribution. We are continuing to launch other apps as we move forward. Some notable call-outs, the 7-Eleven direct distribution on the left. We have recently launched a pre-order shop, which allows for a pretty substantial collectibles business to become even more convenient. That collectibles business drives quite a bit of traffic into store. On the WeChat, bottom left, mini program, we now have an 8% e-commerce penetration in South China. Overall, on the third-party platforms, the list here is not exhaustive. We are on more platforms.
The emerging quick commerce as being quite a different approach, which actually for brick and mortar retailers we are going from the centralized fulfillment center kind of mindset to quick commerce, which brings us back to brick and mortar and store fulfillment as being a competitive proposition moving forward, fulfilling a different customer mission. yuu monetization continue to be very excited about the opportunity here. Beginning to leverage the power of our data now to enhance, not only internally, our overall opportunity to run a better business. If you start with the customers on the left, we have 5 million members now in Hong Kong, 70% of the adult population. We have 1.7 million in Singapore and growing and continue to build out the partners.
Our vendors are becoming quite interested in actually the monetization opportunities we offer them in terms of selling them data to be more productive in their overall promotions, but as well, the opportunity to launch media not only on our app but also in store as we build out an omnichannel proposition in our stores. Then finally again on productivity, helping our merchants run better category reviews to increase by category by day in store, the overall gross profit. We have recently done quite a successful launch in yogurt, which is becoming quite a north star for everyone in terms of the opportunity, bringing encouraging sales and gross profit. On the retail monetization, we are really just following over a decade of best practices. Again, not an exhaustive list, but retailers who have moved into the media area.
This is relatively untapped in Hong Kong where the vast majority of the digital market is controlled by Meta and Alphabet. So we believe we bring quite a unique proposition here and again an opportunity to ensure that the profitability of our digital ecosystem, including e-commerce, is shareholder and margin interesting long into the future. Finally, I am going to turn it over to Clem, who is going to give us a brief review on our business outlook.
Thank you again, Scott. Now in terms of our full year 2024 outlook, we are encouraged by the relative resilience of our business. It certainly demonstrated that over the first half. That said, we continue to face challenging trading conditions in the second half and as a result, we expect our subsidiary's revenue for the second half to follow a similar growth trend to the first half. With respect to the other metrics on this page, we see no change. Underlying profit attributable to shareholders, we still guide at $ 180 million -$ 220 million. CapEx $ 200 million -$ 240 million. Our net debt, continued reduction, you have seen that here. And absolute dividend growth and again, you have begun to see that here. So with that, I will now move the session onto Q&A. Ray, can you please go ahead? We can begin.
Thank you, Scott and Clem. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to queue for a question, please press star followed by one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then one. We would like to keep to two questions at a maximum for each guest, and you are reminded to state your name and company name. Please stand by as we will poll for questions. Our first question comes from Chi Cheng Fong from DBS Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for presentation opportunity, Scott and Clem. This is Cheng Fong from DBS. Just two questions here. The first one would be on your guidance range. So what is the broad thinking behind the low end and high end? Essentially what you believe we have to see in the second half to hit the low end and the high end. That is the first one. The second one, with the first month of third quarter over, maybe you could share some broad color on what is happening in the retail scene, especially in Hong Kong after this, I would say somewhat soft second quarter, which was affected by weather. Thank you.
Clem, why don't you cover off guidance and I will talk a little bit about Q3.
Yeah. In terms of guidance, the range of $ 180 million-$ 220 million really reflects what may or may not happen in the second half around our sales performance. You have seen the first half has been quite sluggish. We had the benefit in the first half, in the first quarter of effectively trading against pre-COVID for the first couple of months. Q3 and Q4 of last year was new to us in terms of COVID restrictions released, borders opening, people traveling.
So it is quite difficult to guide to a range and we just feel given the kind of macro uncertainties and the fact that we are still in a high interest rate environment and we still have this high outbound travel, that having a guidance of between $ 180 million and $ 220 million is where we think we will land. We obviously want to end up at the higher end. It just gives you a range.
Thanks, Clem. In terms of the initial month of Q3, obviously we don't want to take one month and project across an entire half. We have, I think, three aspects to the revenue in the second half that we saw in the first half. First off, in terms of an underlying, we're going to have to remove the Malaysia divestment from our revenue. The second is the ongoing impact from the cigarette tax. Relative to that, you would have seen a pretty flat revenue in the first half of the year, Q1, Q2 net. I think that customers and consumers continue to be very nervous. There's a lot of talk about going across the border from Hong Kong into Shenzhen and from Singapore into Johor Bahru. I've done that trip myself over the last couple of weeks to really understand the underlying risk there.
I think it is a bit trendy. Ultimately, though, daily shop across our portfolio other than home furnishing is really around convenience and fitting it into your life. I do think that we'll see a value push, which means volume's not going down. People aren't going to eat less or bathe less, but they're going to be looking for more value, whether it be own brands. So revenue will, I think, continue to be modest for the second half. I think consumer confidence and some of the macroeconomic, I think, interest rate moves across the world could affect that both positively but potentially negatively, which is why we continue to hold to a similar trend to the first half as being probably the most likely outcome that we can see today. Thank you.
Thank you.
So ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to queue for a question, please press star followed by one one on your telephone and wait for name to be announced. Our next question comes from Selviana Aripin from HSBC Global Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thank you very much. Good morning, Scott and Clem, and thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions. My question is with regards to your retail media path to profitability, how would you think about the path to profitability? I guess, probably a related question to that is, your guidance for 2024, does that include assumption around profits for retail media? That is broadly my first question. My second question is around digital spending. I know you mentioned that some of that SG&A decline is because of significant cost savings from digital.
Now, in terms of cost spending, I understand that there is a change in how you actually approach the digital side of initiatives. I wanted to understand how should we see the trend for the rest of the years? Should we expect single-digit decline, double-digit decline from a nominal dollar perspective? How should we think about in terms of the numbers? Thank you.
Could I clarify when you say single, double-digit decline in what? The cost of—
Percentage.
—percentage margin.
Probably that is my question. When you talked about cost savings in digital, are we actually talking about—
I see.
—spending less? Is that how we should understand it? Probably that will help to clarify.
Thank you, Selviana. It's clear. In terms of your first question on retail media, we are in the emerging days of this area. We are, I think, obviously taking on some pretty powerful competitors in the digital only. We are being thoughtful around our revenue projections at this point. If I look at the next six months, it will not yet be material. It is included in our forecast. This is a long game. It is a combination of the opportunity to leverage the 3 million active users on yuu, the fact that we are now going to have an app for each one of our banners as a portal or as a screen that will offer media. What I get excited about is combining that with the in-store.
As we begin to build our omni experience where in store we have the ability to place appropriate technology and screens to sell media as well in stores. The totality of that, I think over the next few years, will be material. I think that as we go into maybe 2025, we will be able to add a little bit more color as to what we think from a multi-year forecast, how that will play in. We share it with you only because we think it is a competitive opportunity given the unique nature of yuu, not ready yet to put revenue or profit around that. In terms of digital, we are growing the digital business, and what I would say is that we were on a path that the cost per transaction was going up, not down. That is not good.
When you step back and you truly look at what are the customer missions and what is the assortment we can win with, we trimmed our sales to be a little bit more focused upon where we believe across our formats we have an opportunity to win versus other players, and instead focused upon scale opportunity to bring down the cost. The economic model that we are planning is that we have the ability to ensure that when you add data monetization, retail monetization, and obviously the dilutive nature of an e-commerce basket. Look, 10 years ago, the customer did the fulfillment and the last mile delivery for free. Now someone else is doing that and delivering it to the customer. In some instances, the customer is collecting it, which eliminates part of that cost.
Offsetting that cost with our data monetization and media monetization means that we should achieve e-commerce transaction growth that is neutral to the brick-and-mortar margins. As a result then, rather than the challenge of brick-and-mortar businesses who are trying to figure out how to manage growth in a dilutive e-commerce transaction, we will be happily building it because it is neutral to slightly accretive. The pivot is bringing down the cost per transaction, which was our previous trend. Thus, you see a 40% growth in transactions volume with improving profitability. We are not at a point to talk about by format profitability of digital baskets. Maybe at some point we are or will be, but are not ready today. Thank you for the question, Selviana.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to queue for a question, please press star followed by one one on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. Our next question comes from Adrian Loh from UOB Kay Hian. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, Scott and hi, Clem. Thanks for the presentation. I just had a couple of questions around your key associates. In terms of Maxim's, could you just give us an idea what are the various countries and brands that you are opening into and how that growth is coming through? Second question is around Yonghui. Just wanted to ask, what is the level of management integration into DFI and how you guys are engaging to try to, again, drive that sort of turnaround to see profitability in that business. Thank you.
Thanks, Adrian. On Maxim's, obviously, in a time of soft consumer sentiment and an overall decrease or flight to value, when you have a broad portfolio of brands at various price points like Maxim's, you do have sort of an impact at the upper end, moving a little bit to the lower end. Overall, if you look at the northbound consumption from Hong Kong, their core market, into Shenzhen, China, which does happen to be some of the weekend entertainment behavior, we have seen a soft performance in North Asia. But in Southeast Asia, we are seeing some good growth across the portfolio. As you look at the capital allocation model, Maxim's sensibly is focusing new store growth into Southeast Asia, where we have, I think, a relatively good start to a business. We have, obviously for North Asia, a seasonal mooncake.
This is going to be an interesting year in terms of how gifting holds up in China and Hong Kong because the mooncake has traditionally been a very strong part of the Maxim's portfolio. In general, I think Maxim's is holding up much like we are very much focused tightly on cost control, sensible investments, and putting capital into longer term growth opportunities with opportunity for share into the future in Southeast Asia. On Yonghui. Look, I think China is a challenging environment. I have spent quite a bit of time in China and have had the opportunity to have conversations with both the chair of Yonghui, other board members, and management. I think that in general, hypermarkets, and of course, we are not the only hypermarket chain through Yonghui, are having to reposition themselves as the digital takes over quite a bit of the general merchandise.
There has been, I think, a recent announcement by Yonghui around a tie-up with a retailer called Pangdonglai out of Henan province. I was there just last week myself looking at those stores, and I think it is quite an interesting proposition. I think that some of the transformation plans that Yonghui has underway gives me confidence that they are on the path to be one of the winners of what needs to occur in China as the overall large-scale hypermarkets reposition themselves moving forward. We support as appropriate. We are not a majority shareholder. Yonghui is publicly held, so obviously we have to be thoughtful around how we speak of Yonghui. They have an independent process by which they manage results. But I am becoming quietly confident in Yonghui pursuing a path to be an accretive part of the DFI portfolio into the future.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to queue for a question, please press star followed by one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the conference back to our hosts today. Scott and Clem, please continue.
Thanks, Ray, and thank you everyone for joining. Again, I think a pretty strong first half result in terms of how DFI and a rather large portfolio of formats has performed across markets that are a little bit economic challenged. As I look at the fundamentals that we're putting in place, the fact that we are gaining share in this environment, I believe that we will see consumer confidence come back. We are taking the steps to ensure that in that process, DFI will continue to be not only a winner, but the result of our portfolio allows those who invest into our business to have a nice position in terms of a format and market exposure through the DFI share price. Thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to sharing the second half first year results in the future.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.