Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Half One Interim Results. Just to let you know, I have Mat Ankers here, who this is his last reporting with us. I'd like to formally thank Mat for everything he's done for the business and wish him luck in his new venture. As I said, thank him for everything he's done for the business and me personally, as well as CEO, and formally welcome Neil Galloway, who will support me on this presentation today. Quickly go through the highlights. Another strong financial performance despite challenging macroeconomic conditions.
Half on revenue of 22%, or 22.8% increase to EUR 2.8 billion and half on EBITDA of +10.8% to EUR 377 million, and that is on a constant currency basis. The store network expansion program, which is very important to us, is on track to open up a minimum of 500 net new stores this financial year. We continue to accelerate and focus on leveraging the scale benefits from our formats to unlock the full potential of the group as well as OpCos, and I'll talk about some of those as we go through the presentation. Finally, we're confident on meeting our full year 2023 EBITDA guidance of mid-teens growth despite a softening sales environment through us driving sales as well as strong cost of doing business plans.
I now hand over to Neil to take you through the financial review.
Thank you, . First of all, I'm very pleased to have joined the group for its results announcement. Having been on board a couple of months around the business, I have to say, very positive experience from colleagues and stakeholders around the business. I'm just going to run through the financial highlights for the first half , click on slide five. Trevor mentioned group revenue up 22.8% on a constant currency basis to EUR 2.8 billion, largely driven by the growth in Pepco, where revenues were up 36%. Revenue were all driven by two components, like-for-like growth, up 11% on the first half, plus the continued store expansion within the business.
Our gross profits were up 20%, but we had a slight margin erosion of 90 basis points, down to 40.1%, which is an expected low point, taking account the buying cycle of Pepco, which is sort of a 12-month calendar buying cycle, and the earlier cost headwinds from containers and commodities, which have come down, and we will see benefits from those having improved in the second half . We'll see a recovery visible in the second half on our gross margin. The underlying EBITDA up 11% to EUR 377 million, again, supported by growth in the business in terms of the store expansions.
A couple of small non-underlying items in terms of the SaaS cost in relation to our ERP rollout program, and restructuring costs related to the combination of Pepco and Dealz in Spain. Pre-tax profits down 10%, impacted by a drag from the growth investment, largely increased depreciation and supply chain costs related to supporting that growth, and some inflationary headwinds, particularly around labor and transport costs, utilities, et cetera. We also had a slightly higher interest charge as interest rates have gone up in the period. We turn to slide six, just to give a bit more color on the sales performance. You can see like-for-like up 11%, 15.8% for Pepco in the half, slowing down Q2 over Q1 , and 4.9% like-for-like performance.
Poundland, again, we are actually increasing performance, 5.7% in Q2. We've seen stronger performance from Poundland, which is benefiting from stronger consumer demand for FMCG as a category, compared with general merchandising clothing. There's a similar picture in total sales performance, Q1 and Q2, Pepco is driving group revenue. That's really to do with a combination of the store expansion and the benefits we're seeing from refits coming through the business. Turning to page seven, the segment performance. Just to give a little bit of color, revenue is up EUR 467 million on a reported basis, just under 20%, absolute terms, year-on-year, again, largely driven by Pepco. The underlying EBITDA in absolute terms, up EUR 30 million.
Two real factors impacting performance, that was the general lower gross margin and the cost of growth and inflation coming through. Turning to slide eight, give a little bit more context around the trend in gross margin. There's a few factors to remember. One, firstly, Pepco, the buying cycle, longer than Poundland. We've got a 12-month forward calendar in terms of buying range. There's a delayed benefit from cost tailwinds of lower container costs and commodities. You can see that from the charts on the slide, which are showing container spot rate movements, commodity movements, and FX rates. Historic gross margin for Pepco, which is really the growth driver for the group margin, is around about 47%.
There is significant recovery opportunity in gross margin relative to where we are at this point, and that will pick up in the second half, which is visible given the purchases already made and in the business. Poundland gross margin improving, but has been relatively consistent over several years of round about 37% gross margin. Although there is opportunity in that with the more aligned range and buying that's going on across the group. The key driver for the group overall, though, is the Pepco margin. Moving to slide nine, to the category mix across the group. It's fairly balanced. FMCG ran about 26%, clothing 34%, and general merchandise 39%. Not surprising, that's the largest category, giving general merchandise is running across both and the non-Pepco formats.
Clothing, we've seen an increase in share, driven by the increase in the Pepco rollout. Currently, FMCG is winning consumers as they focus on food and non-discretionary spend over general merchandise and clothing, although those are up from a sales perspective. We had strong planning performance in Q1 and Q2. We turn to slide 10 and cost of doing business. That has improved steadily since 2020. You can see it was about over a 250 basis point improvement in cost of doing business over the last three years. Although that has gone up in the first half, to EUR 134 million, we've given back about 40 year-on-year due to inflationary pressures, principally driven by labor, transport, and utility costs in the business.
However, there's more opportunities to go for as the format and customer offer increasingly align. We've seen some examples of that in Spain, where we brought together the Pepco and Dealz range and saw a significant benefit in cost from the combination of those two businesses. Moving on to cash flow, slide 11. Just to put in context, if we look, this is sort of showing the impact of gross margin on the business. If we looked on an IFRS 16 basis, the cash EBITDA is fairly flat. It's really held back by gross margin, down 90 basis points. If we had the gross year-on-year, we would have seen a 16% improvement in cash EBITDA. That just shows the key driver is that general gross margin improving.
The other holdbacks have been growth from store expansion and the inflationary costs, which I've mentioned. On a positive note, the net cash from operations is up significantly year-over-year, down to better improved stock management and a supply chain program we put in place during the year. CapEx, not surprisingly, up 30%, EUR 148 million, reflecting a combination of refix across the business and store growth as part of our five-year strategic plan. Resulting in slightly lower cash position at period end, and net debt marginally higher, at EUR 383 million. It's still relatively unleveraged at 0.9x EBITDA. Lastly, just to cover key movements in the balance sheet on slide 12.
The main points really relate to property, plant, and equipment, assets, leases, and stock, all of which are driven by store growth across the business. Noting that the stock position at the half year is similar to what it was at the year-end, as opposed to the half year last year. We've seen material working capital improvements, really related to growth of business and better supplier payment terms. Although, just one final item to note, an increase in the de position, really related to the increased stock purchases and FX movements during the year. That is a quick summary of the financial performance. With that, I'll hand it back to Trevor to talk about the strategic.
Thanks very much, Neil. Let me now continue with a strategic update. Where are we? Just as a quick reminder, everything we do and everything we focus on is how do we get bigger across the business? How do we get better across the business? How do we get simpler and cheaper as well? Starting with bigger, our crucial program of new stores, we're absolutely on track to open a minimum of 500 net new stores this year. We've opened up 166 stores in half one. The Pepco openings in Western Europe outnumber Central Europe for the first time, and we've opened up our first stores in both Greece and Portugal this year, which are both trading very strongly. Moving on to our better pillar. Well, let's start with the Pepco Plus.
Just as a quick reminder, in Spain, we trialed a concept where we put a full Pepco, both GM and clothing, as well as FMCG, under the banner of Pepco, and they're trading really, really strongly. You can see on the right-hand column of page 16, half one, the like-for-like, in Pepco with FMCG is 29.9%, and in standards, it's still a very strong 8.2%. As we said previously, our Pepco Plus format is the chosen format for our Western Europe expansion. What does that actually mean? Is that in Western Europe, we'll have Pepco stores as you know them, but we'll also have Pepco Plus stores. That's what we call them internally. We'll have Pepco Plus stores with FMCG across Western Europe as well.
Just one quick fact, in terms of Spain and Portugal, the pipeline is 80% of the stores will have FMCG and 20% will be standard Pepco. Pepco Plus is our chosen format to roll out across Western Europe. What else about better? Well, the important program of Pepco New Look continues. The refurbishment program started off in January 2023. We're targeting, just as a reminder, we're targeting to refit all of our old branded stores across Central and Eastern Europe, 2,500 stores, over the next two and a half years. We've converted already 191 of the stores in half one, and that's across Poland, Slovakia, Czech, and those conversions are set to accelerate in half two. The results remain encouraging with a like-for-like converted stores up 10% over the control group.
Just as a really important reminder, this is important in terms of refitting the stores and having a financial benefit, but it's equally as important that we protect our Central Europe and our Central European business, e.g., the heartland of Pepco, from all of the new competitors that are coming in. It's important that Pepco is at its best in Central and Eastern Europe. Just the final one that's part of the Pepco New Look program, we are actually making the stores simpler and cheaper by introducing self-scan tools. Because the shop floors are bigger, we're able to achieve a 95% one-touch replenishment, e.g., when the cases come in, 95% of them go straight on the shop floor and 5% go into the warehouse.
We're also changing our software on the checkouts to an Oracle software, which moves our current transaction time from 19 seconds to seven seconds, which is very pleasing for both the colleagues as well as the customers. As part of this New Look program, it's better for the customers and also for the colleagues and shareholders. Moving on to the next pillar, cheaper, where we continue to drive cost efficiencies, it's even more important because of the inflationary environment. We've doubled down on our efforts on cost efficiency to combat the inflationary pressures. The two end-to-end programs that we started, one in Pepco two and a half years ago, continues.
As I've previously two and a half years into a five-year program. We've started our end-to-end program in Poundland this year, beginning of this year. Both of those are showing good improvements in terms of cost of doing business. That was set to continue over the months and years going forward. We've also incorporated our Pepco Group sourcing into the Pepco business to optimize and align the buying cycles. That, again, over time, will prove benefits from both the way we the cost of doing business, and also the economies of scale of our buying. We've also introduced some nearshoring facilities for PGS that have opened up in Europe to increase our sourcing flexibility.
Whilst the stores are becoming more efficient and more effective through the end-to-end supply chain, so are our DCs, some of it driven by our processes and some of it driven by some of our technology. We're putting in WMS blueprint across all of our Pepco distribution centers, so they all will operate in the same way. There's some other things that we're doing across improving our margin. On the right-hand column of page 18, just a reminder, in Poundland, in autumn, winter of this year, we will cease the brand of Pep&Co clothing, and we will move to one Pepco clothing. That means by autumn, winter this year, there will just be one clothing offer across the whole group, and that will be Pepco.
Just a reminder of what we said previously, in spring and summer 2024, we will cease the Pep&Co GM offer in Poundland and cease the Poundland GM offer and move to one Pepco GM offer across the whole group, including Poundland. All of which brings margin benefits, cost of doing business benefits, and also simplifies all the infrastructure benefits. That's on our cheaper program. In terms of simpler, well, there's lots of work with lots of opportunities and lots of work to simplify both our customer offer, and also simplify work for our colleagues, both in the DCs, the offices, as well as the stores. Let me give you a few examples. In Spain, a s you know, we used to have two businesses.
We used to have a Dealz business in Spain and a Pepco business. We've now trialed and tested and rolling out one business, one entity, which is the Pepco business, which creates a far simpler operating model because it's one brand, one range, and one team, where previously it was two brands, two ranges, and two teams. Lots of benefits in terms of simplicity and economies of scale. A second program that we're doing to be simpler, a good example is our rollout of the new scalable Oracle ERP platform across the group, with Poundland going live this summer. And there's benefits to gross margin through optimized markdown management, as just one example.
We continue as we invest in our new stores and refits, especially across Pepco, to introduce self-scan tools, as I've mentioned, and the implementation of Oracle Xstore or retail point of sale, which drives higher levels of customer satisfaction, but also significantly simplifies work for our colleagues. That's the end of an update on the four pillars. What I'd like to do now is just take a few moments to update you, where are we on our strategic reviews? When I started as the CEO, I said that we wanted to take a strategic review of all of our OpCos, looking at how do we maximize the OpCos, but also maximize the group.
Let me give you a quick update. As we've said, as Neil said, and I've said, we've completed all of the work we wanted to do in Spain. We've done the strategic review, and we've put our Dealz business and Pepco business as one. That's now completed. We did a strategic review of the Pepco Group sourcing, and what we concluded is to actually make that part of the Pepco business, because we're going to have one GM, one clothing. The PGS is now part of the Pepco business in Poland, or the head office in Poland. That has been completed. We're currently in Ireland, we've tested five stores. We've got two more stores we're going to open, where we've turned the Dealz into Pepco Pluses, and we're just completing the test and evaluation.
The next time we speak, we can give you an update of what we intend to do with our Irish business in terms of Pepco. Let me move on to the strategic review of our business in Poland, our Dealz business in Poland. What we adopted is, if we knew what we knew today, how would we organize for success?
What we've concluded is that because we've got many Pepcos in Central Europe, it's very difficult to turn the Pepco stores into Pepco Pluses, because the chances are, when the rent or when the lease comes up, being able to extend into a store on the left or the right to make it bigger, is going to be, you know, it's going to take decades before we could actually end up with a scalable Pepco Plus format across Central Europe. We've done the strategic review of Dealz brand in Poland, and it's very positive for customers, it's very positive for the shareholders. Our decision is, we want to continue to develop and roll out our Dealz business, but not just in Poland, but across the whole of Central Europe.
In terms of the group, in Western Europe, we'll end up with a Pepco and Pepco Plus format, and in Central and Eastern Europe, we'll end up with a Pepco format as well as a Dealz format across Central and Eastern Europe. Our strategic review didn't end there. What we are going to do, is we're going to adopt that the infrastructure of the Dealz business in Central and Eastern Europe will be run by Pepco as one entity. The IT will be led and managed by Pepco, the Dealz, the finance will be led and managed by Pepco, the HR will be led and managed by Pepco, as well as the supply chain and distribution. Effectively, we will have one entity and two brands, Pepco as well as Dealz. Again, the strategic review didn't finish there.
We did a lot of work understanding how customers saw our Dealz brand. We had big plans to roll out the brand across Central and Eastern Europe, so we really wanted to understand how the customer sees the brand. We've now got all of the data, and what we've done is we've changed a couple of things going forward. We've been testing and trialing a new look and feel, which has gone down very well with the customers. We've also tested a new layout, far simpler layout for consumers to navigate around the stores. Interestingly, the layout is incredibly similar to our Pepco Plus, so FMCG at the front and GM at the back. As I said, we're going to revitalize the brand.
All the stores since March have been operating with the new layouts, which is simpler for customers, and all of the stores opened since March have had the new revitalized brand. Next year, we will look at going back to the existing, I think it's 177 Dealz stores and look at doing a small refit, so we end up very quickly with one look and feel across the Dealz brand, across Poland, going forward. Our plan is to look at rolling out the Dealz business into another country, which we'll update you on next time we speak. We'll be going cross-border, probably sometime next year. Importantly, we intend to optimize the supply chain. If you think about Pepco, it operates, you know, 3,000 stores plus.
When we organize the transport going forward, we can organize the transport for Dealz. There's going to be many economy of scale benefits as well as simplicity benefits, as we bring the infrastructure from Dealz Central Europe into the Pepco. By the end of this financial year, we're going to have 300 Dealz stores in total by the end of 2023. The other things that we're doing in Dealz is, as you know, our plan is to have one GM range, one clothing range. We could not put the GM range that Pepco sells in the Dealz, because it would compete against our 1,300 stores in Poland.
What we intend to do, we understand that customers like to shop in Dealz for the brands, the brands of FMCG, and what they're also looking for is branded GM. We're going to introduce a range of branded GM into our Dealz stores, and that will be supported and supplemented by some GM range of essentials, all of which will be curated and bought using the Pepco infrastructure. We'll get all of the economies of scale, as well as the infrastructure, as well as the absolute skills of our buying department as we plan, buy, and move the GM products for Dealz going forward. The final thing about the Dealz, it's a small point, you know, important point.
As we intend to roll out the Dealz across Central and Eastern Europe, all of the things like fixtures and fittings, social rooms, everything that goes into a store will all be purchased as part of what we purchase in Pepco. For example, the social room will be exactly the same social room as in Pepco, and that, of course, helps to significantly improve the economies of scale as we roll out both Pepco format as well as the Dealz format. That's our strategic review, and I look forward to showing you the new format at some stage when we meet. Going on to the outlook.
For us, after many, you know, after many years, three years of disruption, we believe that we now can see, for the first time, a much, much clearer outlook since COVID-19. It's very clear where we are on the commodities, and that's all good news. It's very clear where we are on the containers, and that's all good news. FX is becoming less volatile. It was previously some headwinds and looks like it's going to become some tailwinds for us. Whilst inflation is still remains high, it's going in the right direction, and we're getting used to managing in an inflationary environment. The outlook, as I said, is becoming much more clearer, and I think we've navigated over the last three years very well through the disruption.
There are a couple of things that we've still got to navigate, as every other retail business has to, is that the customer behavior is changing, has changed, as well as the trends. That's still to play out, I believe, across all of the markets. I take confidence that we've been able to manage, the management team has been able to manage lots of disruption. The last thing still to play out, which is the customer response to inflation. I'm pretty confident that we can manage that over the next months pretty well and pretty strongly. As I said, there's been lots of disruption, and in fairness, that's meant a fair amount of vagueness on things like margin, et cetera, not just in Pepco, but across many businesses.
As I said, we are now far more clearer on what it looks like post-COVID-19. We have set ourselves, or we set ourselves the target through all the disruption and continue to set ourselves the target, that we want to make sure that through all the disruption, we increase our market share in all the markets, which we've done. We wanted to make sure that this disruption does not disrupt what we believe is a very strong strategy of getting bigger, better, simpler, and cheaper, which I believe we've done. Of course, importantly, we wanted to make sure that we delivered our EBITDA targets throughout the disruption, which is what we've done. Ultimately, we want to come out of all this disruption, which I think we're beginning to come out of it.
We wanted to make sure that we're bigger as a business and better as a business for both customers and shareholders. I believe that's what we have done, and we're set to do. We can now see that the outlook is becoming clearer, we want to hold a mini Capital Markets Day, probably in Warsaw, late September, early October. I think it will be an important session. We can show you the new look stores for Pepco, and we can also show you the new look stores for Dealz. More importantly, I think we're at a stage where we can take you through the modeling that you should be using for margin going forward, for cost of doing business going forward, as well as cash.
I know that's important for you guys as there's been so much disruption, as well as so many changes in what Pepco Group is doing. We'll also, because of the modeling on margin and cost of doing business, it will be an appropriate time to take you through the modeling for our New Look program in Pepco, which is pretty substantial at 2,500 stores. What this new Dealz modeling should be, as well as focusing on what is the one GM, one clothing in Poundland, what's the modeling look like for that? Finally, we'll give you a look on what you should be modeling for Western Europe, in particular, Italy and Spain. I've come to the end of my session, so what would I like the key takeaways for you to take away?
First of all, we will open a minimum of 500 new stores. There's no doubt about that. We will deliver our EBITDA guidance because we're driving sales as well as managing our cost of doing business particularly strongly. Whilst the customer behavior and inflation is still to roll out, still to run the pathway in terms of the customer, we have maintained price leadership, and that is why, as Neil mentioned, you know, we've seen a margin drop. That's because we've we have been a discounter through the disruption. You cannot be a discounter when it suits you. You have to be a discounter in the good times and bad times. We've maintained price leadership, which has meant that our market share has been growing.
The final key takeaway, we have remained, and continue to remain, absolute focused on our strategy, and our strategic reviews. You know, bigger, more stores, better stores through the refits, and simpler through our end-to-end programs in both Pepco and Poundland. Cheaper, you know, you'll start to see, you know, all of the benefits of our end-to-end work showing us getting cheaper, as well as all the margin and sourcing work that we've been doing to make sure that our margin more than recovers going forward. Finally, I look forward to hopefully seeing all of you, if not most of you, in the Capital Markets Day, which you'll hear more about either at the end of September or October this year. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. That is star one for your questions today. We will pause for a brief moment. Our first question today comes from Matthew Clements of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, Matthew Clements from Barclays here. Morning, Trevor. Morning, Neil. Morning, Mat. You've given us reassurance that gross margin will improve in the second half and full year 2024. How do you see OpEx moving? Pepco Banner saw 150 basis points increase in the percentage of sales and cost of doing business in the first half. What's driving that, and will that be different in the second half? Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, I think just to give it context, as I said, look, we've obviously seen significant improvements in OpEx over the last three years. We've seen about a 250 basis point improvement over the last three years. We've done significant work around the company to create efficiencies. Trevor has alluded to some of those. Yes, you're right, we have seen about a 40 basis point, sort of, negative movement. We've give back in that in the last in this period, really, that's really been driven by sort of inflation coming through that's impacting the business, really driven by sort of higher transport costs, labor costs, utility costs. We have been mitigating that through some of the actions Trevor has talked about in terms of store efficiency.
I think the outlook for that is, you know, it's going to continue to be, while inflation continues to run, we're going to have to continually work at the cost of doing business, as we have been doing, to continue to mitigate those increases. But the absolute cost will continue to go up as we continue to grow the business. I think we will just continue to manage that as best as possible. There are certainly new areas of opportunity, and Trevor's alluded to them in terms of the Dealz plans, where we can see significant opportunities for further mitigating the cost of doing business than tomorrow, than how we have been operating the business to this point.
Morning, Matt. Just a couple of builds to what Neil said. Look, we're in the last couple of years, we've made really good headway on the cost of doing business, primarily in Pepco through the end-to-end program. I just want to sort of remind everyone, two and a half years into a five-year pretty significant plan. I mean, the opportunities we've got to improve our cost of business are pretty scaled, you know, pretty, you know, opportunist for us. We've had a little bit of a blip because, you know, we weren't expecting the wage increases to go 15%. That's, you know, we've had to double down on our cost of doing business.
I think the good news for the Pepco and Pepco Group is whether it's through the end-to-end supply chain, value chain analysis that we're doing in Pepco or in Poundland, there's plenty opportunities for us to go for. We'll continue those through to the rest of this year and into next year. I believe that those programs will be bigger than the inflation increases that we've temporarily had to take a bit of a hit on.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We take our next question now, which comes from Simon Bowler of Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. I wonder if I can touch on a couple of areas, if that's okay. First one, I just kind of follow- up on the OpEx piece. There's references in the statement to some of the OpEx increase in Pepco being kind of lapping of one-off benefits in last year and high levels of stock impacting costs. I was wondering if it was possible to kind of quantify or add a bit more color on to those two aspects in particular.
Maybe ask Mat to pick up that from last year, given I wasn't around to give the context around that, if that's okay, Simon.
I think, you know, the point with, I think, the last year pieces was we were dealing with, you know, many different one-offs last year, you know, particularly around, you know, the run-off of COVID still. In addition to, you know, energy spiking last year, because it's come off as much. I don't think at this stage we're going to be quantifying precisely what that is, because there are so many moving parts, you know, to this. I think, you know, last year there were some specifics. I think what has come up this year has clearly been a more, you know, a higher progression of underlying inflation across all of our cost lines.
You know, that is, as Trevor has already mentioned, you know, labor inflation, which is in stores and DCs, alongside energy still being high, albeit not as high as we saw it or coming into Christmas, you know, and fuel, and GNFR sort of inflation. Whilst there were some one-offs last year, I think what we're now facing is a far more broad-based set of increases, across all of the sort of operating lines below the gross margin.
Yeah, it's kind of just two things, to reiterate a couple of things. Clearly, the inflationary has impacts, whether it's, as Mat says, wages in the stores or wages in the DC, transport, et cetera. I'll say again, that when I look at the end-to-end opportunities we've got in both Poundland and Pepco. Over a sort of medium amount of time, they far outweigh the inflation that we're taking as a short-term hit. I would like to think by the time we meet, hopefully we meet in September or October, when we go through the modeling, you'll also take comfort that our programs going forward are bigger than the inflationary impacts that we're temporarily taking.
S ome of those impacts look like they're set to sort of come off, you know, whether it's the transport costs, you know, they've already started to come down. I think, again, there's a bit more certainty in the inflation, set to continue to rise and actually starting to reverse itself.
Okay, thank you. Then the second one will be part linked into the previous one, was just, can you talk a little bit about inventory? Kind of, I guess this time, six, nine months ago, whatever it was, you spoke quite a bit about deliberate investment in it. Have you been able to kind of maintain full price sell through? There's quite a bit of capital tied up in inventory, just to reference, is that kind of part of the reason behind the higher OpEx, the higher levels of stock you're carrying in the business, and do you plan to continue with that strategy of higher inventory levels?
Let me start off maybe Neil add to it. Obviously, you know, we're saying that we want to open up a minimum of 550 stores. We've opened up 166, we've got quite a big program in the last two quarters. We need stock to open those stores. It's quite a bit of stock goes into each and every one of those stores. In terms of we're pretty committed to make sure that, you know, there's always a, what we call sweet spot, which is October the 1st. We need to be in good shape by October the 1st on our stock, if we're to have a successful Christmas.
The whole, you know, certainly in the Pepco business, the whole business is focused on making sure that the sweet spot of the right amount of stock, so we can take in the new stock for Christmas. You know, we've got to hit that sweet spot. They're currently in relatively good shape to get there. In terms of, are we maintaining, you know, are we reducing prices because we've got stock? Absolutely not. All of the stock is good stock. We cleared out all of the Easter stock. We've cleared out all of the sort of stuff that we needed to. I would say that we are making sure that we are driving sales. Clearly, I would say that across the business, you know, there's discretionary.
People want to buy food and fuel first, and then GM and clothing, things like that second. As the market toughens up in terms of trading, then we are making sure that where we need to, we'll promote the business as and where we need to. That's driving sales for our customers, you know, because of what they need to, you know, come to the stores and trade. We're not driving any markdowns because of the stock we've got. We are just making sure that we maintain price leadership, whether it's price or promotions, because that's what we've done for the last three years, and we're not going to stop doing that. It's nothing that anyone should be concerned about.
The only couple of builds I'd make on top of that, Trevor, is, you know, if you look at year-on-year, yes, stock is up, but against the full year, it's pretty flat. Against that backdrop, we've obviously opened a significant number of new stores in the interim, so we've got more stores to feed stock into. I think the last point I'd make is, on average, a lot of the newer stores are larger in size, so there's more space to cover. I think from a stock management perspective, we're in a better position than we have been.
Okay, great. Final one for myself, if it's okay. It's just beyond kind of the core kind of Pepco rollout in CEE, we've got kind of Dealz into CEE now, and it's kind of Pepco Plus into Western Europe. Can you just talk about the kind of relative returns on capital you see from each of those programs? You know, do they have similar hurdle rates that you apply to both of them?
Yeah, I think we have similar target hurdle rates across the business, irrespective of whether it's Central Eastern Europe or Western Europe. The hurdle rates we're running are similar across the business.
We do not invest in anything that gives us less than 30% IRR. That is a rule, and we will not move from that 30% IRR.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. As a brief reminder, that is star one for your questions today. Up next, we have Elena Jouronova of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good day, everyone. A couple of questions from me, please. Sorry to come back to the OpEx point, but it would be great to try and quantify some of the increases that you saw in whichever form that is convenient for you. If we break down the increase of OpEx to sales, let's say, like-for-like for your stores and pressure from new stores, cost to new stores, can you give us a rough idea of what that was on a year-on-year basis?
I think not off the top of our heads. I think it'd be wrong to do that sort of live on this call. I think we can look into that and come back separately on that.
Yes, that would be very helpful. Conceptually, a related question. There will be a certain point in time when basically your fixed operating costs in your new countries are at an optimal level, all the incremental all the store additions and incremental sales are going to be beneficial for your operating leverage. How far do you think are we from that point when you actually start seeing, like, positive dynamics in your OpEx to sales in the Western European business?
Morning, Elena. Look, I understand and appreciate the desire for more. As I said previously, we for the first time, can start to see the really clear direction on things like commodities, containers, FX. We've done a lot on cost of doing business, and we understand that, you know, everyone wants to understand what is the models for the Pepco Group going forward, because whether it's new look or it's the new store openings in Western Europe or the new deals or the one GM. That's exactly why we're inviting everyone to come along to the session in the end of September, October, where we will go through all of the modeling that everyone needs to sort of model the business going forward.
The only reason we're doing it in September and October is because, you know, I've been running the, you know, part of Pepco and the group for the last, coming up to four years. It's the first time that we can really see certainty going forward. The good news is, the certainty is good news. We're looking forward to meeting you all to go through some of those detailed questions you're asking around the modeling. What we want to do that in September or October, if that's okay.
Okay, that's fair. Maybe a few other questions less related to modeling. In terms of Dealz, it's an interesting decision to continue rolling that out in CEE. Maybe you can remind us, what is the competitive edge of that format versus the discounters that are quite strong in the region, particularly Biedronka in Poland, and what is the pricing strategy versus discounters?
Everything we do is price leadership. What we're doing in the Dealz is price leadership on the FMCG and price leadership in terms of what we do on the GM. What is unique about Dealz is actually you can buy brands that you can't buy anywhere else. I'll be honest with you, when I was running Pepco, I had many phone calls from the Polish retailers saying: Is there any chance we could wholesale some of those FMCG lines? When you go into a Dealz store, probably 30% of the products, I'd need to just check it, but I think around 30% of those products are unique to Dealz only. You can't buy them anywhere else in Poland.
You've got lots of U.K. brands that are sold in the Dealz that you can't buy in the other retailers in Poland. That's what. You know, what's unique is it's all about brands, and that's why we want to go with an element, a strong element of branded GM. It is, you know, what's unique is it's selling brands. It's selling brands you can't get anywhere else, and price leadership.
Sorry to clarify, are these brands, the UK brands, are they more attractive price-wise versus what the Polish retailers are selling?
Yep. We always maintain price leadership. One of the things that people don't quite understand is in the U.K., because of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons. P robably the U.K. was the first country where the Big Four had such a prominent own label business. For the brands to get in there, they actually had to be very aggressive on what they were offering to those retailers. Because, you know, in some of these retailers, you know, 70%, 80% of what they sold was own label. If you're a brand, you have to work very, very hard to get into the second biggest consumer market, and that still persists today, it's still very opportunist for Poundland to wholesale to our businesses.
The price that we get it, we're able to offer, price leadership on these branded goods.
Okay, that's clear. Two more from me, please. like-for-like in refurbished stores, I believe you said in the presentation and press release that like-for-like is 10% above the control group. It used to be like 10%-17% before when you just started the refurbishment campaign. Can you remind us what's the overall expectation and why is this a downward trend?
I think we're all, I hope we were very clear when we initially started talking about this, that any trial that you do at a small scale in a business like ours will always be higher. When we described the results, which as you say, was sort of, you know, sort of high teen, that was not our, what we were planning going forward. I hope we were always clear about that. I think where we're at now, you know, broadly where I would expect, you know, expect it to be, you know, it is, you know, sort of meaningfully ahead. The reasons for that, as Trevor's described, is, you know, this is better for customers in terms of the offer, the environment the store is in, you know, better for colleagues.
You know, it's a more efficient box to operate. This is an overall better retail proposition. You know, I think it's, it still remains in line with where we expected it to be, albeit, as you say, you know, slightly lower than when we trialed what was at the time, you know, between 17 and 40 stores. You know, inevitably, when you're trialing, you know, small, in such a small scale and, you know, you will get better results. Certainly, that's what I've seen, you know, pretty consistently throughout my career in retail.
I think the 10% versus control group is well within what we need to achieve, to achieve our IRR of 30%, because there's many other benefits that we put into the store as we do it, whether it's the cost of doing business and the other benefits. The second thing is, we're rolling out the brand across Poland, Czech, Slovakia, and, you know, all of the countries. At the moment, the countries we've done, we've just done city by city. We have done no marketing.
The real power of what we're doing is once it's been done, and we've got, you know, one clear brand identity in these stores, and we've decided that we don't want to promote anything about the brand until the brand is, you know, primarily, you know, 80% of the stores in Poland are the new brand, otherwise, we confuse customers. Also just a reminder, you know, even if we didn't achieve a good like, you know, a good financial return, this would be one project that I would have to do, even if we didn't achieve 30% like, but by the way, we are. I would have to do it to protect the heartland of Pepco in Central and Eastern Europe.
You know, being in Poland and Central Europe is a good place for retailers to be, you're seeing lots of new entrants, whether it's Action or Woolworth, or the continued rollout from KiK and TK Maxx. We need to be at our best in our Central Europe business if we want to protect what was, you know, what's taken us 20 years to build. We would do it for two reasons. One, I would do it just to protect if I had to. However, what we've found is, as we've done them, we've got some good financial returns, and 10% like-for-like, is before we do any advertising. We're still pretty pleased and confident this is the right thing to do for our consumers and shareholders.
Yeah, I agree on that. 10% is what you're planning going forward, in an ideal world?
I'm not sure how to answer that one. The most important thing is we need to achieve the like-for-like, to achieve our, you know, what we set out is, we would like to do this at 30% IRR, and 10% gives us, you know, gives us, you know, a good figure to achieve the IRR. 10% will be a good number, yes.
Okay, the final one I have was, yep.
I think it will really help when we show you the modeling of, you know, come September, October. I think it's much better to show the modeling, rather than focus on just one number. It's better to see all of the numbers that equal a strong IRR. I think September, October mini market is the reason why we want to do it.
Thank you for that. Again, I hope you don't look at this as a modeling question, but just remind us, please, conceptually, Pepco versus Pepco Plus, sales, densities and margins. How different are they? Not numerically, but, you know, one is higher or lower.
Yeah, I think from a density perspective, it is a touch higher, and the reason for that is clearly FMCG sales density is higher. And obviously, c onnected to that, you know, clearly what is almost more important is the fact that, you know, in absolute terms, you know, the sales are, you know, kind of, not only keep track, but are slightly better. You know, that is quite important for the business. We scale up on the size of the store. The densities are, you know, a touch higher. That is very important, and it is driven by not only FMCG, which is higher density in its own right, but is clearly a flywheel for driving customers into shopping the GM clothing.
From a margin perspective, yeah, on a percentage basis, yes, there will be some drag because of the introduction of FMCG. B ut again, you know, the absolute margin, both in kind of gross margin and EBITDA cash margin, is higher. You know, there is this dynamic, as we sort of described before, about, you know, we are building, you know, stores that deliver absolute higher profit and therefore, give us an opportunity to better, you know, kind of deliver, you know, sort of operating leverage at an EBITDA level for the country. I think, you know, again, yes, the concept, these are slightly different stores, and it delivers a slightly different answer in terms of how we'll be operating the business.
You know, bigger top line revenue, greater opportunity for operational leverage, you know, to deliver EBITDA returns in countries that are similar to the returns today. You know, I think we need to sort of consider this not just at that one unit basis, but also the kind of business that we'll be running in these territories in the future as well.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. As a final reminder, that is star one for your questions today. We now take a follow-up from Simon Bowler of Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi, sorry, just a couple on the gross margin piece, if possible. Firstly, and this may be ambitious, but are you able or kind of willing to kind of quantify expectations for, you know, the sort of pace of recovery that you've indicated from, you know? Would Pepco, for example, be expected to get back to a flat or positive gross margin for the full year? That was maybe a way of thinking about that. Then secondly, I guess with that kind of gross margin recovery coming through, and you kind of pointed some of the reduction or deflation in kind of input costs.
What gives you the confidence that, I presume peers are seeing similar tailwinds come through themselves, that those peers won't pass those tailwinds on to consumers, making it harder for you to recover gross margin and maintain price leadership?
I mean, I think, Simon, I think in terms of gross margin, we're not going to give you an exit rate number for the gross margin for the year. I think your comment on ambitious is correct, but the second half will be better. The group gross margin action is driven off, you're right, it's driven off Pepco. Poundland is performing well, and we've seen an improvement on that. I think, you know, as Trevor said, also, we know the gross margin is coming through because we've bought already the products, they're already in the business. We have visibility on that. Again, you've seen the historical levels at which Pepco gross margin was running.
I think we're not going to call timing on that, but, you know, we can see the opportunity for growth margin recovery in Pepco. We can see that coming through in the second half versus where it has been in the last year.
Yeah. A couple of more builds for me. Yep, of course, our competitors will have some of those tailwinds, and they could invest in the customer. We will always maintain price leadership. Through the last, you know, three years, we have maintained price leadership. In many cases, we've made the price leadership gap even bigger. Maybe some of our competitors will invest in price, but we'll still maintain price leadership. That's one point. The second point is, you know, one of the things that we've done is religiously focus on our strategy of getting bigger and better through the entire last three years. We're a significantly bigger business than we were pre-COVID, and all of the economies of scale are benefits that maybe some of our competitors will not have.
You know, the idea was that we want to get bigger, as, you know, which is so important to us. We've got lots to go for, we're getting bigger, and that gives us opportunities to really get the economies of scale. I think I've talked about, we now have a rate card for our clothing. We have now got a rate card for GM. We know as we grow what we should be expect from our suppliers. We've also got a six part projects of improving our margin, you know, and I, and I've spoken about this many times. You know, for example, you know, we have our own business that goes around all the manufacturers and makes sure the manufacturers are as efficient and effective as possible.
We take half the gains, they take half the gains, they pay half the costs, we pay half the costs. We've got six programs that are improving the margin. Not only do we get bigger and get the economies of scale, we get better in what we do in the buying. In the end, we will always maintain price leadership. We've advanced price leadership through the last three and a half years, we can see all the benefits of what we've been doing in terms of making sure that our whole buy program is better. We've got all of those advantages. Of course, if the world becomes very competitive, we will always maintain price leadership. That's absolutely crucial and part of our DNA.
The good news is, we can clearly see that at the moment, n otwithstanding what we have to do for the customer to maintain price leadership, we can see that all of the work will end up with our margin recovering plus.
Okay, great. Then kind of just one final kind of clarification. In terms of your kind of comments of gross margin recovering in the second half, is that sequentially recovering versus the kind of first half gross margin in Pepco of 41.2%, or is that recovering year-on-year versus the second half Pepco gross margin of 42.6%?
I think it's improving sequentially, I think, from where we are. You know, I think, yeah, I mean, I think I'm not going to say, I think, more than that at this point.
Well, I think that's what, I think you're pegging it to, you know, we are going to see an improvement sequentially, I think is the key point, Simon. I think, you know, giving much more than that right now, you know, I think we are trying to manage this end-to-end, as we always have done. As exactly as Trevor described, you know, looking at all of these elements one by one, you know, I don't think we're going to be giving, you know, kind of more specifics than that right now.
You know, I think what we've pegged to is where we think we'll land on our profit growth for the year, and the fact that we'll see sequential improvements in these areas. You know, but we need some more time in terms of, you know, the flexibility to manage the business to that end result at the moment. I don't think we'll be giving any more than sequential improvement right now.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Now I'd like to hand the call back over for any additional or closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us on the call. I appreciate there's still lots of hunger in terms of future dynamics, and that's why we will, very shortly be inviting you to a mini Capital Markets Day, where because we can see certainty, we think that's good news. Because we can see certainty, we'll be inviting you to the mini Capital Markets Day, where we can take you through the modeling of our margins, our cost of doing business, and our cash, as well as the modeling around all of the changes that we're doing in Pepco to maximize the OpCos, but also maximize the group as well. Look forward to seeing you, hopefully in September and October. Thank you very much.