Card Factory plc (CARD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Interim Results Update for FY '25. I'm Darcy Willson-Rymer, CEO of Card Factory. And joining me today is Matthias Seeger, our CFO. Following an overview of highlights from the first 6 months, Matthias will provide the financial performance update for the first half of FY '25. I'll then provide an update on the progress we have made on our "Opening Our New Future" growth strategy, and the outlook for the remainder of the year. Matthias and I then look forward to answering any questions that you may have at the end. The first half of this financial year has seen continued momentum across the key building blocks of growth. The progress we are making is allowing us to deliver on our strategic objectives as we develop Card Factory to a celebrations destination for customers in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland as well as internationally. The strength and ongoing development of our value and quality proposition across cards, gift and celebration essentials continues to resonate with our customers especially at a time when financial pressure on households remains ever present. And as we look forward to the intensity of the Christmas trading period, I'd like to thank colleagues across the business for their unwavering commitment to delivery and the energy, pace and enthusiasm that they show day in and day out. I'm pleased to report that we have continued positive momentum against the top line which delivered a good performance in the first half of FY '25 of plus 5.9% group revenue growth. Our stores continue to outperform in the market with like-for-like revenue growth of 3.7%, driven by our focus on developing our store estate and our quality and value offer. This growth is ahead of the broader celebration occasions market and non-food retail sector. A particular highlight for the business this year has been the notable progress we have made within partnerships, including entry into the U.S. market through a new retail partnership. In addition, we have secured a multiyear renewal of our existing contract with Aldi and are in advanced discussions to renew our partnership with The Reject Shop in Australia. Momentum within our online business has also been maintained as we continue to invest in the customer experience. We've continued to strengthen the balance sheet as a result of positive operating cash generation and a disciplined approach to the management of working capital. As previously guided, the benefit of efficiency and productivity measures are weighted to the second half of the year. And as a result, our full year expectations remain unchanged. We have recommenced the interim dividend at 1.2p per share demonstrating our commitment to delivering progressive returns to shareholders and maintaining a dividend cover of 3x over the course of the full year. So for more detail on this and our financial performance for the 6-month period I will now hand over to Matthias.

Thanks, Darcy, and thank you all for joining us today. Over the next 20 minutes, I'm going to take you through the results of the first 6 months and the outlook for the fiscal year. First and most importantly, we are on track to deliver full year expectations. Our business proved yet again to be resilient against the backdrop of challenging economic conditions as we saw continued positive momentum in sales. As expected and discussed at the prelims, profitability is weighted towards the second half of the year. Our approach to investments was disciplined, helping to maintain a strong balance sheet. In anticipation of the expected full fiscal year results, we are declaring an interim dividend of 1.2p per share. This is the first interim dividend in 5 years. Let me talk about the progress against the key financial metrics. As you know, the recent inflation continued to be challenging for businesses by adding additional costs into operations and for consumers by constraining their disposable income. We have a track record of resilience, having proven that we can grow our business under challenging conditions. Total group revenue increased by 5.9% to GBP 233.8 million. Adjusted PBT of GBP 14.5 million is down by about 1/3 versus the same period last year. Let me assure you, this is in line with our expectations as we annualize the cost of last year's investments into our future growth and anticipated that the national living wage increase in April would impact the first 6 months disproportionately. The underlying cash generation of the business remains strong. To note that we have built inventory for the main trading season earlier than last year to secure stock as shipping lanes from the Far East have remained unpredictable. This timing effect resulted in net cash from operations being down at the end of July. However, our disciplined phased approach to managing investment into capital expenditure was the main factor behind the reduction of our net debt before reinstated dividend. Finally, we are paying an interim dividend of 1.2p as discussed. Total group revenue increased by 5.9% from GBP 220.8 million to GBP 233.8 million. Our core business, the stores in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland that account for 94% of sales delivered total store base growth of plus 6.1%, with strong like-for-like sales growth of plus 3.7%. We have outperformed the wider retail sector in the period. At the core of our like-for-like growth was the strength of our range, our relentless focus on value for money and on in-store experience. As we continue to increase our footprint and our market penetration, we grew the store network by 15 stores. Over the period, net new store openings contributed 2.4 percentage points to total store base growth. We continue to see encouraging performance at cardfactory.co.uk with high single-digit growth of 8.8%. We are progressing with our investments into our platform, to unlock our future digital and omnichannel proposition. Overall, online sales remained flat. The growth of cardfactory.co.uk was offset by a decline in Getting Personal as we are streamlining GP's range and offer. Our existing partnerships, including South Africa performed in line with expectations with sales increasing 3.1%. Given the importance of our store-based business, allow me to provide some further perspective. Total and like-for-like non-food sector sales declined during the first 6 months of our fiscal year due to a combination of consumers' constraints on disposable income, their priority of areas of spending and the far from ideal weather. Our value proposition has continued to resonate with consumers, especially under these circumstances as it has allowed them to celebrate life's moments in an affordable way. Our store-based sales significantly outperformed the sector with a total store base sales growth of 6.1% and like-for-like sales growth of 3.7% despite overall lower high-street footfall in half 1. Our strategic growth categories, gifts and celebration essentials led the growth with 6%. Our greeting card sales remained robust with a sales growth of about 1%. We also continue to make progress bringing our value proposition to more customers in more locations by adding 15 net new stores in half 1 to bring the total of stores to 1,073 at the end of July. To note, we continue to have less than 1% of our stores operating on a negative contribution. We have a strong pipeline of store openings in half 2 that will continue to expand our footprint in the U.K. and Ireland. Moving on to margin. So our revenue grew by 5.9%. However, this did not yet translate into improved margin rates in half 1 as we have seen the impact of wage inflation and investing in our future growth. Plans are in place to offset this impact in half 2. In line with expectations for half 1, adjusted PBT margin rate of plus 6.2% was 3.8 percentage points below last year. Product margin on a constant currency basis was slightly down due to the temporary surge in container rates in half 1. Direct store base costs increased as a percentage of revenue by 4.3 points. As the national living wage increase impacted directly or indirectly more than 90% of our colleagues. At our strategy update last May, we set out our plans to invest for future growth. In the period, we annualized fiscal year '24 half 2 investments in operating costs impacting our margin rate negatively with 1 percentage point. We continue to diligently execute our proven program to offset inflation through a combination of productivity, efficiency and range development, including pricing. Half 1 saw moderate benefits from business efficiency of 1.6 points with the major benefits from store and operational efficiencies as well as range development being faced towards half 2. This will offset the inflationary headwinds in half 1 and half 2. In summary, half 1's lower margin was largely in line with expectations, driven by wage inflation and annualization of investments during the period. Let me please add some further perspective on our approach to ensuring the lowest cost delivery and its impact on half 2. We anticipate half 2 sales to grow in the mid-single digits, underpinned by continuous like-for-like growth and new store openings. We also expect further pressure on margin rate mainly due to this April's increase in national living wage. However, our proven, continuous program to deliver the lowest cost will offset the negative impact of inflation in half 2, ensuring that full fiscal year margin rate remains broadly in line with last year. So what do we expect for our half 2 margin rate? First, historically, we have seen that our half 2 margin rate is 4 to 6 percentage points higher than our half 1 margin rate as the operational scale benefit of higher sales in half 2 delivers higher margin rates. Second, the systemic elimination of non-value-added activities across our value chain, in our stores, in our central operations is executed in a plan thoughtful way to enable business growth. By way of example, we have rolled out an industry-recognized system to schedule store hours, which has been fully implemented in August and allows us to reduce store hours without negative impact on service. Third, we will always ensure that our products provide the best value to consumers. This year, the benefits of our plans to margin-enhancing range development are skewed towards the second half of the year. As stated at the CMD last May, it is our objective to increase revenue to GBP 650 million and PBT margin to 14%. We have made good progress last year and will continue to make further progress this year. Darcy will talk you through the progress on strategic priorities in a few moments. I want to spend a couple of minutes outlining our plans to deliver the margin improvement over that period. We obviously anticipate continuous inflationary headwinds on cost prices and wages. The adverse impact will be mitigated with further net margin improvements through two continuous streams of work. First, we will continue to eliminate non-value-added activities and drive productivity throughout our operations and our unique end-to-end value chain. Examples include automation of processes, such as pellet wrapping, optimization of order picking and delivery schedule in the supply chain. Implementation of a P2P system and a next-generation merchandising system in our support center operations. Streamlining of back-office operations, elimination of administrative work in stores. Second, we will drive scale benefits and productivity of existing assets and operations by growing same-store sales and sales in our strategic growth areas. We will disproportionately grow gifting and celebration essentials in combination with the margin-enhancing evolution of range and optimization of the use of existing in-store space. Let me now summarize the consolidated P&L. Revenue increased by 5.9% to GBP 233.8 million in the period. Product margins of 70.1% were largely flat, only negatively impacted versus expectations by the temporary increase in freight rates. As anticipated, gross margins decreased temporarily by 4.2 percentage points to 32.6%, predominantly to the impact of the almost 10% increase in living wages. As expected, our adjusted PBT decreased with the phasing of the benefits from our mitigating productivity and efficiency program weighted towards half 2. Adjusted EPS of 3.1p per share was down by 1.9p versus last year. Cash performance was resilient and strong in the period. Net cash flow increased by GBP 3.7 million to GBP 15 million. The decrease of cash from operations was significantly impacted by the additional seasonal buildup of stock. As indicated earlier, we chose to build inventory for the main trading season earlier than last year due to the unpredictability of the shipping lanes from the Far East. Corporate tax payments, which are made quarterly in advance, increased due to higher corporate tax rates that came into, in fact, in March last year. Capital expenditure of GBP 6.8 million was down by GBP 8.5 million versus prior year. Key investments in the period included new store openings, refitting and upgrading store layouts as well as investments in improving the online experience. Our disciplined approach to phasing of CapEx spending in half 1 was pivotal to deliver positive net cash flow in the context of our anticipated phasing of PBT towards half 2. Moving on to net debt. Over the 12-month period, net debt at the end of July is up slightly by GBP 3 million versus a year ago. This included the FY '24 dividends payment in June. Excluding this dividend payment of GBP 15.5 million, net debt reduced by GBP 12.5 million versus prior year. Net debt of GBP 59.4 million before dividend payment at half 1 is down by GBP 40.2 million compared with net debt of GBP 96.6 million 2 years ago. Net debt leverage was 0.9x versus a maximum leverage target of 1.5x. To reiterate, our disciplined approach to investment offset the negative inflationary impact on gross profit and PBT. Debt service costs remain broadly consistent with prior periods. At the end of the period, the group had headroom of GBP 50 million in its debt facilities. Let me please emphasize that we are committed to creating value for our shareholders by delivering on our business growth strategy and plans as outlined at the Capital Markets Day last May. We deliver our plans and financial targets in a disciplined and sustainable way year in, year out, and return cash to shareholders while investing to deliver the strategy and maintain a strong balance sheet. Let me please briefly summarize again the four guiding principles for our capital allocation policy. First, we maintain a strong balance sheet with a well-defined debt leverage range. Second, we invest in an appropriate, disciplined and financially sound way to deliver our growth strategy. Third, we provide regular, progressive returns to our shareholders through interim and final dividend payments. Fourth and finally, those dividend payments will be funded from free cash flow. Additional surplus cash will be managed in a principled and transparent manner. [ In ] June, we paid dividends of 4.5p per share with respect to the fiscal year ending in January. That was a full year dividend, which comprised an interim and final dividend at a cover ratio of 3.0. Last year, we were not able to pay an interim dividend due to restrictions imposed on us by the COVID loans. This year, we are declaring an interim dividend. In line with our capital allocation policy, the interim dividend of 1.2p is paid based on the expected progressive full year dividend, maintaining a cover ratio of approximately 3.0. In summary, Card Factory sales performance was resilient and strong against the backdrop of challenging market conditions. As anticipated, half 1 was negatively impacted by cost price increases and annualization of operational investments. Our disciplined approach and management of CapEx investments delivered positive net cash flows, offsetting inflation and operational investments. We have robust plans in place to deliver efficiencies and productivities in half 2 as well as to grow top line through range development and new store openings. Albeit we are yet to trade through the key Christmas period, we remain confident to deliver year-on-year progress in line with our expectations. And with that, I will hand back to Darcy for the strategy update. Thank you.

Thank you, Matthias. Turning now to our "Opening Our New Future" growth strategy, we have made notable progress across our building blocks of growth. Let me summarize the building blocks of growth that form our strategy. Firstly, we continue to develop and grow our estate of 1,073 stores in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. Secondly, to expand our penetration of cards, gifts and celebration essentials market which has a GBP 13.4 billion opportunity in the U.K. For online and omnichannel, our goal is to deliver a seamless celebration experience for our customers. And finally, partnerships where we continue to build on the positive progress we have made in the U.K. and internationally. To drive forward our growth transformation, we are evolving our talent strategy to support internal mobility for colleagues ensuring that we have the right people with the right capability and experience to drive forward our growth agenda. By delivering on our strategy, Card Factory is well positioned to become the U.K.'s #1 destination for all customers seeking unrivaled quality, value, choice, convenience and experience. Importantly, this is being delivered with a firm focus on our ESG impact. We have made good progress on integrating sustainability considerations into our core strategy and operational decision-making. We've started work on our FY '25 emissions inventory for Scope 1, 2 and 3 defining renewable energy transition plans and engaging with our top suppliers to align with Card Factory goals. In line with our strategy, will continue to grow our profitable store estate across the U.K. and Republic of Ireland. We remain on track to deliver around 90 net new stores over the 5-year "Opening Our New Future" plan to FY '27. We're maintaining our core principle of lower cost, flexible leases as well as providing the agility we need to adapt to changing consumer footfall trends and targeting underpenetrated markets. In half 1, we opened 15 net new stores, including a fourth Central London store in Cheapside. We continue to make progress on store space optimization to support gift and celebration essentials growth without compromising card growth. To deliver store efficiencies and improve productivity, we've introduced a new industry-recognized labor modeling system. We have also made substantial progress on updating our store design blueprints for new stores and future refurbishments. In half 2, we'll progress a program of targeted investment to upgrade a number of legacy stores. Moving now to our category progress at cards, gift and celebration essentials, we're seeing our range development continue to perform strongly, supporting our strategy of transitioning Card Factory into a celebrations destination. Over the past 2 years, newness within our card range has been over 60%, with the impact seen in both our everyday and seasonal performance. We saw strong performance across our half 1 spring seasons of Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day with card ranges performing particularly well. This reflects range development aligned to key trends including the growth in family celebrations of occasions, such as Valentine's Day. This is one of the evolving trends we are seeing, and I'll provide a little bit more detail as an example, of how we identify and respond to changing consumer habits. Where once Valentine's Day was exclusively focused on romantic love, we have seen it now expand to encompass all forms of love, including family, friends, and yes, even pets. Valentine's Day has become a day to express gratitude and appreciation for all the people who make our lives better, not just our romantic partners. So this year, we saw a wider focus on gifts, especially personalized gifts that expresses that trend. More generally, everyday gifting ranges performed well, with growth of 10.5% like-for-like. This was driven by the introduction of newness, including a new baby gifting range alongside the continued development of key categories which included soft toys up 27% like-for-like, confectionery up 30% and limited collections, which include Disney and licensed ranges, which were up 17% like-for-like. The strong growth we have seen across gift ranges and celebration essentials has also driven an increase in the average basket value of 7.5% like-for-like, reflecting continuing mix shift as we increase our proportion of gift and celebration in sales, which now stands at over 52%. We continue to develop our gift and celebration essential ranges in a way that represents the progress we want to make on sustainability. This includes expanding the number of products that are fully recyclable and reducing tertiary packaging used to transport products. Turning to Online. We continue to build on the encouraging traction seen in half 2 FY '24 on cardfactory.co.uk. Through the first half of FY '25, we saw revenue growth of plus 8.8%. This was supported by an increased traffic and transactions as well as ongoing range development with a focus on higher-margin products while maintaining our price leadership. We've also continued to focus on improving the experience online for our customers. In the first half of the year, we've completed work to redesign our event reminder tool to support customer retention, and we've introduced an AI-powered product recommendation tool to drive growth in basket volume. A further highlight to mention was the launch of a new exclusive partnership with Just Eat to trial an on-demand celebrations offer across card, balloons, gift and gift bags. This is a trial within 19 stores across the U.K. with plans to expand the trial to a further 21 U.K. stores in the second half of the year. Through the second half, we will continue to make progress in our online capability and platform performance to further enhance customer experience and unlock future digital and omnichannel propositions. There's been encouraging progress within our partnership offering. Starting with U.K. Today, we are announcing an expansion of our partnership with Aldi in the U.K. and Republic of Ireland, with Card Factory now the exclusive everyday greeting card supplier through a new multiyear agreement. The rollout across the entire Aldi estate sees us expand from the current agreement of supply to 550 stores to a full service agreement across the Aldi store estate of approximately 1,200 stores from the end of September. Other U.K. partnerships continue with a focus on in-store location, range and offer optimization across the U.K. Matalan stores. We also have two international partnership announcements. Firstly, we've signed our first agreement in the U.S. Entry into the U.S. market is a key milestone for our partnership strategy. And therefore, we are pleased to announce a wholesale agreement through a nationwide partnership in time for Christmas. We look forward to sharing more details in the run-up to Christmas. We are also pleased to report that we are in advanced discussions with The Reject Shop in Australia; [ two ] for a second time, extended agreement with Card Factory. Our partnership will expand to a full service model, which will now also include seasonal ranges. We continue to develop our partnership with Liwa in the Middle East with a current focus on optimizing existing store locations as well as the range and offer. Lastly, we're pleased to announce that on September 4, we completed the acquisition of Garlanna in the Republic of Ireland. Garlanna is a publisher and wholesaler of greeting cards, gift wrap, gift bags and accessories serving the Irish market. As such, it's a perfect fit for Card Factory as it is closely aligned with our successful vertically-integrated model. Their range is tailored to the Irish market, helping customers celebrate life moments, including Irish cultural occasions and seasonal events. While Garlanna sells online direct to consumers, the largest part of the business is a wholesale operation, supplying convenience retailers such as Centra, SPAR, Londis and others, as well as An Post, the Republic of Ireland's National Post Office group. We continue to assess acquisition opportunities on a case-by-case basis. Looking ahead, I'd like to start by summarizing our preparations for the Christmas season. We are well prepared for our key Christmas trading period with our seasonal rollout well underway. Our marketing campaign activation will commence in the coming weeks, with a new promotional activity this year to support the Christmas season. We are continuing with our successful approach to Christmas range development with 80% of the range being new for this season. This includes a premium card range trial and an expanded gift offer with new ranges, including toys, baby's first Christmas and an own-label pet gifting range. Online customers are able to access an even wider range this Christmas than ever before. And for the peak Christmas season, we've introduced a refined allocation process, which will enable an agile approach to stock management. Thorough preparation and planning has meant that we've successfully managed all inbound logistics for stock manufactured overseas. And finally, recruitment of seasonal colleagues for the Christmas season has commenced through an optimized seasonal recruitment strategy designed to support our efficiencies and productivity drive. In summary, we're reporting a resilient top line performance through the first half of FY '25, which led to growth ahead of the celebration occasions market. We've continued to make very encouraging progress across our strategic growth pillars, growing our presence and reach through our expanding store estate, and retail partnerships and making progress on our ambition of Card Factory becoming a celebrations destination for consumers within the GBP 13.4 billion celebrations occasion market in the U.K. We've been effectively executing our robust plans to offset inflationary pressures experienced in the first half of the year, and there was continued positive cash generation. Looking ahead, we are confident in our outlook for the full year. Alongside the expected benefit from the seasonality of sales in half 2, we have clear plans in place to drive efficiencies and productivity, which we are now implementing. Meaning we are on track and have confidence in our ability to deliver our plans for the full year. We're encouraged by our strong track record in maintaining the disciplined management of working capital and driving returns against a range of economic backdrops. Continued strategic progress is expected in half 2, building on our half 1 performance against a challenging retail backdrop. Half 2 trading, to date, has been in line with the first half. And although we're yet to trade through the key Christmas season, our expectations for FY '25 remain unchanged. Over the medium term, the Board remains confident in seizing the compelling growth opportunity for the business, allowing us to deliver on our FY '27 targets, which remain unchanged. Thank you for your time, and we will now answer any questions that you have. We will take questions from the conference call and then from those watching online. [Operator Instructions].

[Operator Instructions] Our very first question today is coming from Jonathan Pritchard from Peel Hunt.

Firstly, what's the inflation number within the card part of the card like-for-like, please.

Matthias, do you want to answer that?

Can you be a bit more specific, Jonathan, what you're looking for?

The inflation constituents of the 1.1% card like-for-like?

If your question is with respect of the pricing that we have taken, we have taken only moderate pricing of the like-for-like growth of 3.7%, about 1/3 is driven by pricing.

That's the whole range, I'm asking about cards.

We don't comment on card in specific in this context.

Okay. Well, okay, I'll ask another question, a similar question. Were there any price increases annualizing or otherwise in the half?

Yes. So Jonathan, that's just -- as previously said, of the total like-for-like growth, 1/3 comes from pricing.

Yes, I know, but you said that most of your gifting and celebrations was not inflation -- it was not changed due to inflation. So I'm just trying to knuckle down on what that card inflation number is. You must have it. I don't know quite know why you're saying that.

So Jonathan, let me maybe step back and answer your question in a broader context to make sure that we cover all the bases here. Like-for-like growth was 3.7%. That was driven by a non-card growth of 6%, and as we said, card growth of 1.1%. And when we look at the average card price that was sold in the first half, it was sold at [ GBP 1.21 ] retail price, which compares to [ GBP 1.14 ] last year. As you know, this is not just driven by a simplistic price increase. This is the result of our range development to provide value cards at every single price point. And therefore, we were able to offer a wider range of cards to a wider range of consumers.

So about 5% to 6%. True. Okay. What's the attachment rate of -- what I'm sort of getting at is the sort of non-attachment rate, really what percentage of gifting and celebration is bought without a card.

So roughly 1 out of 2 shoppers leaves our shop with a card and a non-card in his or her basket.

Right. Okay. So how many of the gift shoppers, how many of them don't have a card with them when they leave?

How many gift shoppers have a card...

How many don't have a card attached, that's the question.

50%. So 50% of our shoppers buy a card and a gift.

I'm not sure -- I'm not sure we have -- how many -- are there any -- do we have the statistic that says how many shoppers don't buy a card, but only by a gift?

No, I don't have these data to hand.

Okay. And lastly, the Aldi range. I missed it out, I am a massive Card Factory shopper myself. But would your average Card Factory shopper identify the cards they see in Aldi as being Card Factory? Do they have the same sort of characteristics so they have the sort of bits and bobs on the back that you might see on the Card Factory? Or are they completely discrete?

No. So the -- you'll be able to identify -- if you look at the back of the card, it will say Studio 41 or some of the things that we have in it. The majority of the range is the cards that we sell, and there's a small number of cards that are bespoke.

Okay. I mean, historically, there's always been absolutely negligible cannibalization will they start stocking near one of your stores. I assume that's your assumption when you wait in the number of Aldi stores you're in?

Yes. We can't see any discernible sales transfer.

[Operator Instructions] We don't appear to have any further audio questions. I turn the call over to Scott, who will take any questions submitted by webcast. Thank you.

Thanks so much for that, George. We've had a number of questions from the webcast. First question is from Kate Calvert from Investec. Could you give us an indication of the sales run benefit in H2 and going into FY '26 from the three deals that you've announced in partnership this morning? And the second question, can you talk through the headwinds/tailwinds on H2 product buy and gross margin movement year-on-year? And can you hold it flat? Or should we expect it to be down as in H1?

We announced indeed several partnership deals earlier today, which will kick in the second half. The Aldi estate will double that we will serve. Clearly, this is an annualized -- will be an annualized benefit into next year. We are still -- or we will provide further details on the benefit of and the scope of our entry into the U.K. Yes, you can expect to provide us with further updates in 4 to 6 weeks. And the negotiations, the agreement with the Australian retailer are about to be closed. This is our ongoing business. Therefore, it's basically already in our base. I believe your second question was on gross margin and the impact of the programs, the continuous proven programs on efficiencies and productivities. Clearly, any program that we will start such as the automatization of pellet wrapping or an optimized system of order picking in our warehouse will have benefits not only this year but will continue in the future. Therefore, we expect that gross margin for the next -- first half of next year will recover from where it ended up this year.

A couple of further questions from Kate. What do you -- need to -- get to do to get Getting Personal into growth again? Is this likely to be in FY '25? And what level of wage inflation are you assuming now to get to your FY '27 targets?

Thanks again, Kate. So from an Online perspective, all of our focus and the majority of our investments are going into cardfactory.co.uk. I think Getting Personal is operating in a slightly different part of the market. So Getting Personal, as you know, is sort of premium gifting. I think the way the premium gifting market has changed significantly both in terms of the number of players online, the entry online, but also how the marketing and paid search works, hence, why the focus on Card Factory. But Getting Personal will benefit from the investments that we've made in the platform as we are basically on one platform with two store fronts, we're continuing to put some new products on there, but the focus is on cardfactory.co.uk. And the Second question?

I'm happy to take the second question on wage inflation. As you know, we've now experienced 2 consecutive years of close to 10% increases in national living wage. There is a consensus out -- consensus [ range ] out there on the further increases of national living wage. Clearly, we will -- we have anticipated in the perspective that we provided on the progress of PBT margin to our '27 target of 14% further increases in line with this range, which we will continue to offset on a -- with our proven successful mitigation actions of efficiency, productivity as well as range development, including pricing as a last resort. Let me maybe also take the opportunity to comment on another point. Clearly, it is the easy way out to simply increase prices to offset inflation. However, we have a vertically-integrated supply chain, an end-to-end supply chain, which allows us to identify savings across the whole supply chain and eliminate non-value-added costs. Therefore, this is the -- what we will be continuing doing in the future.

We've got a further question from the phone line from Matthew Abraham from Berenberg.

Apologies if you mentioned, I did have to jump online. But I was just wondering how we should be thinking about margin expectations in FY '26, given you've expressed confidence in delivering the cost initiatives that you've outlined. Is there the expectation that some of this margin improvement carries forward into FY '26? That's my first question.

Thanks, Matt. We have outlined a target of a 14% PBT margin to be delivered in 2027. Last year, we had a PBT margin of 12.2%, which was a step up versus the prior year of 10.5%. We indicated earlier that this year, we expect flat margins versus last year. We would expect to make further progress next fiscal year versus our 2027 target. And that will be driven by a combination of business growth and our savings and efficiency productivity programs.

Okay. That's helpful. And then are you able to quantify the full year impact of the efficiency measures that you're looking to roll out through the second half of this financial year?

Yes, of course, we are able to quantify, but we don't comment on details at this moment.

I think, Matt, the way you should be thinking about it is that when we look at inflation, the objective over the long term is to cover inflation with the three levers of productivity efficiency and range development, including price. Those are the key levers, which will continue to utilize.

Okay. We've got no further questions on the conference call. [Operator Instructions]. Going back to the questions online. We've had a question from Adam Tomlinson and Wayne Brown from Berenberg and Liberum, respectively. Talking about -- where are you extending the price architecture with -- where you are extending the price architecture in cards or gifts? Are you seeing good uptick on higher price ranges in this environment? And gifting and celebrations, can you maybe provide more color on what the key drivers and differentials to other category stroke cards are?

Yes, sure. So effectively, on the card range, we're not stretching beyond where we went to last year. So starting the range at 29p, exiting [ GBP 2.99 ] in every day, [ GBP 3.99 ] in seasonal, with the exception of there might be one or two higher-priced cards that are differentiated and offering exceptional value. On the gifts and celebration essentials, it's about continually to develop the range and balance out the quality and value. Of course, we have -- we've seen an increase in our basket spend off the back of that and disproportionate growth in gifting and celebration essentials, basically off the back of that range development, kind of remind you that when we do raise development and we put in higher pricing, we are also putting in a better quality product. So the value for money equation and therefore, whatever the product is, we're aiming to be the best value in the market. Then in terms of the types of categories. So I think, again, as we redid the space allocation last year, and what we've seen is an expansion in stationary, confectionery, kids toys as well as in the party ranges. And you should expect to see continued development basically in each of those areas and us play the tunes on space in order to maximize a combination of the customer offer, but also the sales. And if we think about the range that we've got this Christmas, where we have more gifting than we did last year. We're launching a new own-label range of pet gifting products. And if we look at the Christmas range in totality, about 80% of that range is new for this year. So the team continues to really evolve the product, evolve the range in line with the strategy, and we've seen that disproportionate growth.

Next question is from Marco Fassina from Praude Asset Management. Can you comment on your pricing power? Sorry, do you think it would be able to raise prices and pass on the cost increases to the end customer without losing volumes?

Yes. Thanks, Marco. So look, I think -- if I go back a couple of years, I think I had said historically that pricing was an underutilized lever at Card Factory. I think we've now caught up with that as we have really worked over the last 2 years on our pricing architecture, our range architecture. What we're really focused on is making sure that we're the best value in the market because that's what our brand is being built on and that's what our consumers come to us for. But again, it's been the focus has moved away from pricing and focus on value for money, which is why we've been able to edge up those price points. The other key piece of activity that we do roughly about once a year, is we always through research, have a look at the pricing elasticity in the market to see where we have flexibility to edge pricing up or where we're actually already a level or, in fact, indeed, if there's areas of the business where we're priced too high compared to our competitors. And so it's a perpetual -- it's literally an ongoing discipline of range development, getting the pricing. What I don't think we can do is just take a category. So let's say, take 99p cards and just move them all up to GBP 1.10 without seeing a volume decline, we have to continually evolve the range to make sure that when the customer picks up the card and what they get for 99p is the best value that they can get in the market, but it's something we actively work on the sort of pricing strategy so that we pay close attention to.

Next question is from Jacob Rhodes from JKR Investing. Three questions, if you can. Do price increases come a consideration to neutralize wage increases? Exciting news in the U.S. expansion. Could you share if this is a factor -- if this is factored into full year guidance at all and the store rollout process you are currently doing? And same question again, but with regards to the Aldi partnership.

Yes. So just in terms of your first question on pricing and sort of offsetting inflation. I think it's back to the point that says we want to offset inflation, and we want to utilize the three levers that I've already talked about around productivity, efficiency and price. For us, we want to make price a last resort given the value proposition that we have. And as Matthias said earlier, this focus on the vertically-integrated model and how we can look at all aspects. I'm just going to use one example in sort of bring that to life. So we did a piece of work a while ago where we -- effectively, what we did is we -- the design team had a look at the design of cards that were going through the manufacturing process. We wanted to reduce the number of cards per pack that went out to the store, so reduced pack size. But in order to reduce pack sizes, we need to make the production line more efficient. So we invested make sure that would happen. We've got smaller pack sizes. And what that led to was in store some efficiency because we did -- we then didn't have to store cards in the draw underneath. We could put them straight out basically on the shelf, and it also aided replenishment. So it's just an example of where we will look at something end-to-end from the design phase, all the way to selling from the customers and make sure that we're as efficient as possible. And our objective is always that we always will continue to strive to be the lowest-cost operator in our sector. Just in terms of -- I'll just move to your store rollout question. So we continue to the sort of disciplined approach that this business has historically taken to opening new stores. We continue to apply it, and we will not kind of move off those key parameters that we have. But the intention is to infill with in underpenetrated areas. So we continue to open new stores in Ireland, for example, where we still have more space to go. Central London, we continue to test and learn because again, there's some white space there. But also the infill, basically in the rest of the country. We continue to sign short leases. We continue to invest modest CapEx, and we continue to see less than 2 years payback on the new stores that we open. So turning to your final question on partnerships. In terms of the U.S., we will be able to bring more detail about that partnership closer to Christmas. Once the stock is in stores, we'll be able to come out with a little bit more detail. But yes, the numbers are factored into this year. And I think that's the same for Aldi.

Next question is from Carl from Singer Capital Markets. What is your outlook for freight inflation going into H2 and beyond into FY '26?

Yes. Thank you for the question, Carl. We have seen quite a volatility in the container rates over the last 12 months with a spike in the spring. We have again observed an easing of that container rate. And we of course, have brought all the inventories in that are required stock for the season. So that will materialize in the balance of the year. We don't have a crystal ball. We don't expect a major decrease of the freight rates in our forecast. And we are working diligently on mitigating actions in case there will be a further increase in freight rates.

Next question is from Vincent [indiscernible], who's a private investor. What's the rationale for continuing to invest (capital and resource allocation) in growth in lieu of margin improvement? Is this the best -- is this in the best interest of shareholders?

We are -- as we commented earlier, we want to create and stand for creating shareholder value in the short and long term. We are committed to returning cash to the shareholders through a progressive dividend, which we reinstated last year. But we also believe that the shareholder will benefit long term from our investment into growth which will not only result in short-term returns, but in reliable long-term returns of cash to the shareholder.

Next question is from Marco Fassina from Praude Asset Management. I suppose that part of the inflationary recovery actions involves price increases. Can you explain the rationale of waiting the second part of the year to start implementing price increases instead of spreading them between the first and the second half?

Thank you for the question. Marco, I would say, and I think I mentioned earlier, it's the easy way to simply increase pricing and let the consumer pay for any kind of cost price increases that we see. However, we are committed to providing value products for our consumers. Therefore, we are also willing to do the hard work of taking out costs, non-value-added costs out of our business. And that takes time if you want to deliver that in a systemic, structured and sustainable way, which is why we didn't just increase the prices in the first half, but are relying on our proven continuous program of efficiencies, productivities and range enhancements.

Marcus [ go ], when will the share buyback program start? When will the annual dilution for the employee share program stop?

The Board is considering share buybacks as appropriate. We have committed to a cash return, as I mentioned, based on a progressive dividends. As a listed company, the dilution from share plans is anticipated, and we are actually issuing less share than we would be allowed under employee share plans. But again, the Board is reviewing on a consistent basis, any kind of options to return for the use of surplus cash.

Final question from Matthew McKeen from Singer Capital Markets. What is your working assumption for the living wage next April? And is there any additional catch-up on differentials to think about too?

Look, I think this -- I mean, we have built in into our models sort of inflation going forward. And look, it's -- I think the Chancellor is probably going to announce it will know soon enough. But we believe that over the long term, the plans we have around productivity, efficiency, plus the price lever, there's an ample gas in the tank for us to be able to basically mitigate that. But we await more details from the government, I think.

We've got through a lot of questions today. We're sort of going slightly over time. But I will now pass back to you, Darcy for final closing remarks.

I just wanted to say thank you, everybody, for attending today. Thank you for your time and happy to take any follow-up questions after the event as we go out to the road shows, come out and meet our investor base. So thanks very much for attending today. Thank you.