DFS Furniture plc (DFS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Financial Year '23 Results Presentation for DFS. I'm Tim Stacey, the Group CEO, and here with me today, I've got John Fallon, our CFO. Together, we'll take you through the key points in the slide deck, and then we'll take questions from the analysts that we have with us in the room today. Where's my clicker? So I want to start off by highlighting 3 key points, which John and I will elaborate on over the remainder of the presentation. So firstly, we continue to win market share to record new levels of 38% in value terms on average across the year. Now, it's clear that the upholstery market has been significantly down in volume terms, both year-on-year and relative to the pre-pandemic volumes, but we are pleased to continue our track record of growing market share in tough conditions, and this bodes well for the medium term as and when the market recovers. Secondly, our operations have never been in a stronger position. Our customer Net Promoter Scores have been improving, following further investment in our end-to-end customer service, and we've also finally seen the impact of the supply chain disruption from COVID finally falling away. In addition, we've commenced a program of activity that will result in us operating more efficiently, generating around GBP 50 million of cost savings over the next 3 years. Finally, we believe that the business is well positioned for the future. We've recently secured new debt facilities that both extend the term and increase the funds available, providing us with a solid foundation to continue to progress all of our strategic initiatives, and John will provide more details on this later. Given the strong market share position, our improving gross margin rate and the cost savings we've identified, we remain confident that we have a route to our 8% PBT target as and when the market recovers. Just wanted to bring the year to life with a few numbers in addition to the market share and the refinancing points I mentioned. Firstly, our gross sales for the period were up 15% relative to the pre-pandemic period. Our reported gross margin rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 54.4% for FY '23, with our exit rate higher as we build back towards our historical average rate of 58%. Our PBT of GBP 30.6 million was within the guidance that we set out at the interims, but reflective of the tough trading conditions. And finally, to put a number on our NPS improvement I mentioned, the DFS established customer score has improved 59% year-on-year and is recovering towards pre-pandemic levels. Now, just taking a step back, given the sort of market turbulence over the last 4 years, I thought it's worthwhile spending some time to explain how the upholstery market in the U.K. has developed over that period. And this table kind of references year-on-year market stats, as well as a comparison to the last pre-pandemic year, which was FY '19. So the U.K. upholstery market is estimated by global data around GBP 3.2 billion for 2023. And that's marginally down on FY '19 by about 1%. However, that market value includes a significant level of retail price inflation. And excluding inflation, the data points that we have suggest that there has been about a 15% decline in order intake volumes since FY '19. Now, it's worth noting that the retail price inflation across the sector has been an attempt to offset significant amounts of input cost inflation across both cost of goods and operating costs, i.e., it isn't driving incremental profit for the sector as a whole. In terms of our market share, the 3 sources of data that we have are all showing that our value share has increased by 4 percentage points since FY '19 to 38%. Now, these share gains are coming from a number of sources and are all due to businesses exiting the market. There was the exit of Harveys in 2020, who were the fifth largest player at the time, and we've seen a continued decline across the independents and also recently pure plays, which accelerated in FY '23. So although our market share is up 4% versus FY '19, clearly, our profitability is lower. And it's lower because the market share gains we have, have been more than offset by the combination of the market volume declines of 15%, but also high levels of cost inflation, which has diluted our gross margin in particular. And John has a slide later to illustrate this. That said, we believe that we're well set up for future profit growth in the medium term when the market recovers, given a number of points. Point #1, our retail brands and operations and platforms have never been stronger. Point 2, our market share gains have been driven by competitors leaving the market, i.e., we see these gains as permanent. Point 3, our gross margins are now increasing and cost inflation is now falling. And finally, we know that the market is a long way to recover. There's a slide later in the deck that shows, over the medium term, this market grows at around 2% to 3%. So we do expect the market to recover volumes over time, and we are very well placed to take advantage of that recovery. So I'll now pass over to John to run through the financials.

Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone. So I'm going to start with a brief overview of the results for the year. The first thing that I'll reiterate is that, FY '23 has proved to be a very challenging trading environment in our market, like many others, heavily influenced by the reduction in consumer disposable incomes. We've continued to make share gains, as Tim highlighted. But despite those gains, our revenues were adversely impacted by those tougher conditions, decreasing by 5.3% year-on-year. Profit before tax and brand amortization of GBP 30.6 million was in line with the guidance we shared at the interims, down year-on-year as anticipated, given the weaker market demand and inflationary pressures. Underlying earnings per share consequently reduced to 9.6p, which includes the benefit from the lower average share count following the completion of the share buyback in January this year. Net bank debt has increased by GBP 50.3 million year-on-year, primarily as a result of working capital normalizing following the inflows in the pandemic period and also due to the special shareholder returns associated with cash generated in prior periods. As a result of the lower profit and the higher debt, leverage increased to 1.9x. Now whilst this is outside our target range of 0.5 to 1x, we remain well within our covenants and more to follow later on cash and net debt. Finally, for this slide, we're proposing a final dividend of 3p per share, bringing the total full year dividend to 4.5p, consistent with the guidance that we shared at the interims. At 4.5p, it's towards the lower end of our 2.25x to 2.75x EPS cover range and reflecting our confidence that the current profitability is at a low point for the group and will grow going forward. Turning to gross sales and revenue performance in more detail. Group gross sales, which are recognized on the delivery of orders to customers decreased by 3.5% year-on-year, with growth in average order values, partly offsetting volume declines. Both retail brands reported a reduction on prior year. And that performance reflects the tougher consumer environment compared with the more favorable market conditions in FY '22 when we saw some pent-up customer demand boosting sales. Importantly, this was partially mitigated by those market share gains that Tim talked about across both brands. Following the return to normal of supply chain lead times and operational performance, order bank levels have also returned back to normal, which benefited revenue by around GBP 70 million in the year. The participation of sales and completed digitally [ for us ] remains strong at 24%. And that's down versus the high points of the pandemic. It continues to be above the 17% level that we were seeing prior to the pandemic. For us, that reinforces the importance of both a strong online platform and a strong showroom proposition to support customers' preference for a seamless experience and transaction across both channels. Revenues of GBP 1.089 billion are reported after the cost of providing interest-free credit, which increased year-on-year as a result of the Bank of England base rate increases and also as credit participation levels returned back to more normal levels after reducing during the pandemic period. We partially mitigated that impact through reducing the maximum credit term on IFC from 4 to 3 years in the final quarter of the year. On gross margin, we're pleased with the progress that's been made by our commercial teams with gross margin rate up to 54.4% for FY '23. That's an increase of 170 basis points year-on-year. That year-on-year improvement was a combination of supply chain disruption costs in the prior year that have now fallen away, together with selective retail price increases on orders delivered from May of this year. All of which more than offsets the dilutive effect of that increase in interest-free credit subsidy costs. As we shared at the interims, prior to the pandemic, the group consistently achieved a gross margin rate in the region of 58%. This reduced through the pandemic period as a result of 3 main things. Firstly, the higher levels of goodwill gestures and an increased level of canceled orders sold at discounted levels. Secondly, a shortage in the supply of raw materials, which resulted in higher input costs. And thirdly, a large increase in container shipping rates. By the end of FY '23, we have seen most of those headwinds reversing, which helped our half year 2 margin to increase further to 55%. Well, that doesn't tell the full story in terms of the outlook for gross margin rate coming into this financial year. As you can see on the chart, the FY '24 entry margin rate is already on track to improve by a further 200 basis points to 56.5% supported by 3 main building blocks. Firstly, those freight rates. The average freight rate incurred in last year remained significantly higher than historical averages. But after an improving trend in the second half of last year, we've now secured freight rates for this year that are back down at pre-pandemic levels. So providing there's no new market shocks, and then that improvement in freight costs up 220 basis points to our gross margin. Secondly, we expect the annualizing benefit of the retail price increases that we implemented halfway through the second half of last year to contribute a further 150 basis points to this year's margin. We're continuing to see those price increases sticking in terms of sales and margins. And then thirdly, going the other way, the movement in FX rates year-on-year is a headwind coming into FY '24. And that will offset the benefits of those retail price increases. I'll explain more about our product sourcing and manufacturing strategy shortly, but the benefits we're targeting from that strategy are expected to support a progressive improvement in margin rate back towards that 58% target level. Moving on to our operating costs then. At a headline level, our total operating costs increased by GBP 16 million to GBP 561.6 million. This includes depreciation, amortization and interest charges of GBP 128.2 million, contributing GBP 11.2 million to the overall increase year-on-year. So across the remainder of the operating costs, we contained the overall year-on-year increase to GBP 4.8 million. Like the rest of the market, we saw high levels of inflation, particularly across labor and energy-related costs on top of the net impact from rates relief ending. In overall terms, though, we managed to contain inflation on sales, distribution and admin costs to around 5%. Those increases were to a large degree offset by savings from the reversal of prior year COVID-related disruption, as well as cost efficiencies and savings on volume-related costs. We also continue to invest in marketing support growth in our beds and mattresses range to build awareness and support increased order levels and Tim will elaborate on that a little later. Returning to the GBP 11.2 million increase in depreciation, amortization and interest. There are 3 main components to that. Firstly, a GBP 6.6 million increase from our higher interest costs on our RCF facility due to the higher Bank of England base rates and the higher average drawn balance in the year, which followed limited utilization of the facility through most of FY '22. Secondly, a GBP 2.6 million increase in depreciation and amortization charges as a result of a higher asset base. And then thirdly, a one-off GBP 2 million right of use asset impairment charge associated with warehouse closures in the year following integration of our DFS and Sofology logistics functions into the Sofa Delivery Company. Across our right of use lease properties, it's also worth noting that we averaged around 30% annualized rent savings on leases renewed in the year. Those savings were sufficient to almost fully offset the full year impact from opening 2 large distribution centers midway through FY '22 associated with our Sofa Delivery Company integration activities. At the interim results, I highlighted that we had initiated a full cost base review supported by external benchmarks and third-party insights. Having now completed that review, we've established a business-wide cost to operate efficiencies program, which is targeting cost savings of around GBP 50 million by FY '26. GBP 20 million to GBP 25 million of these benefits are expected to come from product cost of goods related efficiencies as we implement our manufacturing and sourcing initiatives on 3 main fronts. Firstly, by continuing to build and expand strong global supplier partnerships; secondly, by optimizing our U.K. manufacturing operations; and thirdly, by leveraging our group buying scale, rebalancing and redistributing volumes to optimize margins. These product-related efficiencies will underpin delivery of our 58% gross margin target. We're also targeting a further GBP 20 million to GBP 25 million of benefits from operating cost efficiencies through a combination of projects, which we're organizing into different work streams. One work stream is focused on simpler and more efficient group operating models with initial opportunities across customer services, repairs and marketing, in addition to realizing further distribution efficiencies via the Sofa Delivery Company. Another work stream is goods and services not for resale to generate procurement and usage savings by consolidating the supplier base there, retendering contracts across key spend areas and introducing better systems and controls. In addition to these 2 work streams, we then have a number of small- to medium-sized projects that are focused on simplifying, centralizing and automating all the key processes, utilizing technology where we possibly can to unlock cost savings across showrooms, across logistics and across our central support centers. We're also continuing to target additional property savings of GBP 6 million to GBP 8 million net of cost of opening new Sofology showrooms. These net savings will come from a combination of regearing around 33 showroom leases over the next 3 years, where we expect to continue to yield on average, a 30% rent saving; and secondly, from the continued consolidation of our Sofa Delivery Company distribution centers. From a governance perspective as well, we've also introduced a robust structure to support the planning and implementation of the cost efficiencies program. This has been led by the group leadership team. Across the program, we expect the savings to start from this year, and that's factored into our profit guidance for the year. In future years, the expected savings will enable us to offset inflationary headwinds, partially supporting delivery of our Capital Markets Day target profit margin of 8%. In terms of benefits realization, some of the projects will need more planning and investment in new systems and processes, as you'd expect. We currently expect around 25% of the GBP 50 million benefit to be realized in FY '24 with the remainder broadly evenly spread across the following 2 years. And to support delivery of these benefits, we're also estimating GBP 4 million to GBP 5 million per year in non-underlying cash charges over the next 2 years. Moving on to cash and net debt. Net bank debt has increased from GBP 90 million to GBP 140.3 million across the period. The main drivers behind the increase were special returns paid to shareholders in respect of cash generated in prior periods of GBP 30.9 million and net working capital outflows of GBP 40 million. Working capital has now normalized after the inflows of FY '20 and FY '21 from the increased sales demand and supply chain disruption during that pandemic period. That resulted in higher trade creditors and accruals and a higher level of customer deposits being held, all of which have now returned to normal. Excluding the working capital outflow, GBP 29 million of free cash flow was generated in FY '23. We incurred cash capital expenditure of GBP 34.7 million, and this included growth related to expenditure on 3 new Sofology showrooms, 11 DFS showroom refurbishments to support customer experience and operational performance and some of which Tim will come back to later. Leverage increased then to 1.9x at the end of FY '23 compared to 1x at the end of the prior year, reflecting both our higher net debt levels and our lower profit. Over the medium term, we remain committed to managing and leverage within our target range of 0.5 to 1x and we expect FY '24 leverage to reduce to around 1.5x. As we recently announced, post year-end in September, we completed the GBP 250 million refinancing of our credit facilities. The new credit facilities represent an increase of GBP 35 million from the previous facility of GBP 215 million. It consists of GBP 200 million from a syndicate of existing banking partners, which runs to September 2027, with a 16-month extension option and GBP 50 million from the addition of U.S. private placement notes with redemption dates that are split equally between September 2028 and September 2030. The key terms and interest rates of the new facilities are broadly consistent with the competitive terms we enjoyed on the previous facility with no change to the covenants of 3x leverage and 1.5x minimum fixed charge cover. So those new facilities, as Tim said, give us additional cash headroom and solid foundations to continue investing in our strategy. And it's also, I think, an endorsement of the continued confidence and support the group maintains with our lending partners. So before I pass back to Tim, I also want to take a step back and share a 4-year historical view of our profit to give some added context to where we come from and what comes next for the group's profitability. So if we rewind back to FY '19, the group reported PBT of GBP 50 million. Since then, sales have increased by GBP 184 million, which at historical margins of 58% would have contributed additional profit of around GBP 65 million. That sales growth has come from a combination of share gains in a period of significant market volume decline, down 15% in volume terms, as we've heard, together with a reduction in order bank to a level that remains sustainable going forward. To reiterate, we strongly believe that the share gains are sustainable, having come from competitors leaving the market, as well as from Sofology showroom rollout. This sales uplift has been partially offset then by the reduction in gross margin rate as a result of the temporary COVID-related costs, raw material cost increases and significantly higher freight rates together, reducing our profits by GBP 39 million. As we've discussed, these impacts are now reversing, and we will enter FY '24 with a gross margin rate 200 basis points higher than the FY '23 reported rate. In addition to inflationary pressures on cost of goods, we've also been impacted by increased inflation further down the P&L. And whilst we've been able to partly offset that inflation with cost efficiencies across areas such as labor, marketing and distribution costs, the net impact has still been a headwind on our profits of GBP 37 million. The increase in interest rates have also increased our financing costs. And together with depreciation, that has accounted for a further profit headwind of GBP 12 million. So in short, the significant share gains that we've made have been more than offset by the deterioration in the market and the high levels of inflation. So that's how the profit has evolved in the last 4 years. Looking forward, we're confident our plans on gross margin rate and cost efficiencies will increase our profitability in addition to further incremental profit as market volumes recover, and that's something we'll come back to later. In summary, though, we look to the future with our refinancing complete and extended and operationally as strong as we have been since before the pandemic. With that, I'll now hand back over to Tim.

Okay. I'll just give you a quick update on our strategic and operational progress over the year. But I just wanted to step back again and look at the market and how it's progressed over the longer term, looking at a time horizon over the last sort of 10 or 15 years. Now, we know that the group has grown share in all market environments with the share gains being more pronounced in economic downturns. There was a big step up at the time of the global financial crisis as a number of larger players left the market. And in turn, in 2020 when Harveys left the market, we've actually also seen a step-up in FY '23 as many independents have continued to lead the market. So, the market in terms of value terms in '23 is expected to be in line with the historical average over the last 15 years around GBP 3.2 billion. And as I discussed earlier, in volume terms, we think that's down about 15% year-on-year relative to the pandemic, as well pre-pandemic. Looking forward to '24, based on all the data points that we can see, we expect the market to remain reasonably challenging in the short term. There are 3 key drivers that we look at. Firstly, consumer confidence. Hopefully, you can see on the chart, the light blue line, which is the consumer confidence levels. And it shows a reasonable correlation, consumer confidence and market size. Now, we all know that consumer confidence levels are at around low -- record low levels, which is understandable given the cost of living crisis and the higher bank interest rates, which is squeezing disposable incomes. But there are signs of slight recovery, particularly in recent months. The second data point we look at is the housing market, which is currently in decline. I think transaction volume is down about 9% year-on-year from -- according to the ONS. And house moves account for about 20% of our sales. And thirdly, we've looked at in the past consumer credit, which is actually growing and added to that, and we know that some consumer segments still have significant savings on their household balance sheet. And we can see that clearly coming through from those customers who are in market, they are spending, driving up higher average order values around 7% this year alone. So stepping back and taking these factors in the round, we are planning for and expecting the market to be in a slight decline year-on-year about 5% before starting to recover as confidence in the housing market recovers. Now, with that weak market expected for FY '24, there will be share gains there for the taking again, and I expect us to continue our track record of growing our share, and that's underpinned by our leading brands, our scale and our well-invested integrated retail proposition. It's important to stress, though, that we do fully expect the market to recover to pre-pandemic volume levels. And the key question to that is when. But when the market does recover, we know the profit drop-through from our business will be significant. We're confident we've got side routes to get into our PBT margins, and I'll come on to explain that later. Just briefly in terms of the competitor maker of the upholstery market. There's the DFS Group at 38%. There's 5 or 6 reasonably other sized players, but there still remains a significant portion of independents. Now, the independents used to make up nearly 40% in the market if you went back about 15 years, and they've been in a continual decline. But they still represent a large part of the market at 26%, and we see the greatest opportunity for further share gains coming from this sector. So we still have plenty of room to grow our share. Now, moving on to our 3 retail pillars, DFS, Sofology and our Home proposition. I'll start with DFS. Now, during the year, the DFS brand performed relatively well, extending its leadership position as the largest U.K. upholstery retailer by focusing on customer experience and expanding its proposition to appeal to a wider audience. Now, using customer and marketing segmentation data, we've developed and launched a series of new ranges to appeal to a wider group of customer segments. And we've seen the benefits coming through in terms of increased conversion rates and increases in average order values. Our new store format initiative has progressed well throughout the year with 11 further showrooms taking -- having refurbishments taking place. And we've now refurbished 58 of our top priority showrooms over the last 4 years, and the payback periods for the more recent investments remain strong under 2 years. DFS has seen an improvement in its customer Net Promoter Scores throughout the year. The established customer NPS score, which has taken 4 months after a customer sofa has been delivered, has improved by 59% year-on-year, and it's heading back towards pre-pandemic levels. Now that's a combination of the global supply chain-related impacts and the pandemic now falling away, but also great work by the teams and investment in our end-to-end customer service. So in conclusion, the DFS brand is in as good a shape as it's ever been with a record market share of over 30% by itself. Moving on to Sofology. Sofology is making solid progress, having increased its market share as well in FY '23 and also improved its NPS scores. We've opened 3 new showrooms in '23, taking the total for the brand now, up from 38 acquisition to 58 as of today, and we see scope for an estate of 65 to 70 in total. Recent showrooms are trading really well and are on track to achieve a return on investment of over 65%. In its aspiration to become the #2 sofa retailer in the U.K. behind DFS, the brand launched its new internal strategy, the Drive to 25. And we believe Sofology is uniquely positioned in its customer offering and it complements the wider group with a clear customer and brand segmentation. Like DFS, Sofology's established customer scores have increased significantly after being disproportionately impacted across the pandemic period. So Sofology is well set for growth as well. Finally, Home. Our Home proposition is something we remain really excited about. We've made good progress in laying the foundation to support the group's growth, focusing specifically on the GBP 3 billion beds and mattress market, and we're encouraged by the early signs of success through increased sales levels. We expanded our brand partnerships that we have in the upholstery market with high-quality brands such as French Connection, Grand Designs and Joules to now have a upholstered bed frames as well. We've targeted sales of these ranges through our online channels and through a dedicated space in a select number of showrooms. Our online beds and mattresses sales are up 69% year-on-year. To fulfill these orders, we've developed a drop-ship solution for beds and mattresses with our delivery partner that went live in January this year, and we've recently implemented a new warehouse management system to facilitate greater volumes of customer orders. So overall, Home is in a good state to progress further. In terms of our platforms, our operating platforms, we've made good progress across all of these. As John touched on earlier, to support the gross margin improvements we're targeting, we've reviewed the relative end-to-end cost of sourcing our products across our supplier base, including from potential new suppliers in alternative geographies. We have determined that the group will benefit from consolidating its U.K. manufacturing operations and have commenced a consultation at our smallest factory and the wood mill that supplies it. We're continuing to build great relationships with partners internationally and there are opportunities to optimize our global supplier mix. Moving on to technology and data. We've been very busy in this space. So I'll -- in the interest of time, I'll limit myself to a few examples, but I could go on all day. Firstly, on technology. We've developed our intelligent lending platform that we use in DFS, and we're now using that in the Sofology brand as well. This platform increases the likelihood of customers obtaining interest-free credit that meets their requirement, it speeds up the process in store and improves the overall customer experience. Secondly, on data. Data-backed decision-making remains a critical enabler in supporting the group's continued drive towards market share and increase profitability. And one of the examples is, we've launched a data apprenticeship program, which has started in the Sofa Delivery Company, where 40 of our colleagues are enrolled in a course, run in conjunction with a third-party, which helps them make smarter, more informed data-led decisions. Turning to logistics and our Sofa Delivery Company is developed into a fantastic asset for the group. We now deliver both sofa brands through the same infrastructure, the same systems, the same colleagues, and we're seeing scale benefits now as a result of improved fleet utilization, van fill and labor productivity. As part of this integration process, throughout the year, we've rationalized a number of customer distribution centers we operate from, and that will drive further savings in the short to medium term as a result of lower property costs. Finally, people and culture. Our people are fundamental to everything we do, and it's important that we recruit and retain the very best talent. To do this, we've continued to develop our employee value proposition to ensure that the external perception of potential colleagues is as appealing, and it actually matches our internal reality. During the year, we've also made progress on further group integration with a strong focus on retaining key talent. One real highlight last year was we launched the Sofa Delivery Company Driver School, and that was to upskill warehouse colleagues and 3.5 tonne drivers to become 7.5 tonne drivers, boosting their pay, while helping us as a business work around a national HGV driver shortfall. And to date, we've had over 70 colleagues graduated from this scheme. So overall, we've made a huge amount of progress in developing across our platforms. Sustainability. For us, sustainability continues to be an overarching and critical component of our overall strategy. And we're guided by our purpose, which is to bring great design and comfort into every home in an affordable, responsible and sustainable manner, and we've pledged to achieve net 0 by 2040. Now, throughout this year, we've made huge amounts of progress on developing our carbon reduction road map, and we are on track to submit science-based targets to the SBTi for approval by June '24. We've developed a number of policies and targets to help reduce our impact on the environment, covering the key elements of the materials that make up our sofas in particular. We're particularly proud of our fully circular Gaia range pictured here. This has been developed in partnership with George Clarke, the interior designer and is launched in Sofology. The materials used throughout the Gaia are the lowest impact options available today, and this sofa has been designed for a customer to dismantle easily, ensuring that each element of material can be easily separated and recycled. Now, the Gaia range is a strong first step towards creating a circular business model, which will be key to the final stage of our net 0 strategy. A sustainability mindset is now fully embedded across the business, and we've created sustainability and responsibility champions who have proved to be a real driving force in developing ideas and initiatives for us to become a truly circular business. Okay. Just the last couple of slides. In terms of FY '24 guidance, clearly, forecasting consumer behavior and sales performance over the next year is going to remain difficult. But in that context, we have the advantage of seeing lots of data points in our market. And from everything that we can see, our baseline assumption at this stage is that, the market will decline by a further 5% in volume terms in FY '24. Now, this is the key assumption on which this guidance is given and it's likely to be a key sensitivity as we go through the year. Essentially, we expect the upholstery market to get slightly harder in the next 9 to 12 months before returning to healthy levels of growth beyond that point. Based on that, we expect group revenue to reduce by low single digits in percentage terms. That will be ahead of the market, supported by the further market share gains we see. We expect PBT to increase slightly year-on-year to a range of between GBP 30 million to GBP 35 million, and that's supported by the continued progress on the gross margin rate that John outlined and also the operating cost efficiencies that will partially mitigate both inflation and interest rate headwinds. Now, given the weak market demand that we had in the final quarter of FY '23, as well as the timing of some of our cost saving initiatives, we expect that profit will be weighted to the second half of FY '24. Cash CapEx will reduce slightly to between GBP 25 million to GBP 30 million. That range is dependent on the timing of new Sofology showrooms opening. Working capital will be broadly flat year-on-year across a 52-week period. However, because FY '24 will be a 53-week financial period, we're expecting that additional rent and tax payments that will actually fall during the 53rd week will lead to a cash outflow of GBP 15 million for FY '24. So closing net bank debt levels will be around GBP 130 million to GBP 135 million. Current trading is in line with expectations after 12 weeks, so mid-single-digit year-on-year order intake growth, reflecting a more typical British Summer, following also sort of final 2 months of last year being particularly weak. So we had a decent summer. In summary, we're expecting modest profit growth in a market that is still remaining tough, but will look strong as we come out of it. And, I guess, this is the final slide is important for us. Looking beyond FY '24, we continue to see and expect strong levels of profit growth. Why? Well, to reiterate, we've made progress on the things that we can control to support future value creation. Number 1, we are growing our gross margin rate as anticipated and making good progress towards our 58% target. Number 2, as John outlined, we have cost efficiency savings identified to mitigate expected inflationary pressures. Number 3, we've built the foundations for growth now for our home category to enable us to grow our sales and profit. And number 4, from a position of strength, we expect to continue to our track record of winning market share. Now, based on this, we see a clear route to increase our PBT margins from the current 3% to 5%, and that's out with any market recovery. We do, though, expect the market to recover to pre-pandemic levels, and this is the balancing number to get back to our CMD target of 8% PBT. Now, clearly, the timing and speed of the market recovery is hard to predict, but I'll reiterate, we all know this business model generates strong returns and free cash flow, given the established operations, well-invested asset base and our negative working capital cycle. And when the market recovers, we are well set to deliver. That concludes our presentation for today. John and I are now happy to take questions from the analysts we have with us. Thank you.

It's Jonathan Pritchard at Peel Hunt. A couple to kick us off. Firstly, customer attitudes to industry credit. I think they've sort of stabilized as a percentage in the mix where it was pre-COVID. But is there sort of a bit of pressure to the upside, obviously, the sort of financial benefits of doing that, obviously, the consumer? Is there a bit of pressure to the upside and our sort of rejections in -- well, negative direction for the consumer, but are they rejections going up? Or is that stable? And then on Home, just how have you increased awareness and what are your plans to continue to do that?

Yes. So, on IFC, interestingly, the pattern of behavior in the last 6 to 9 months hasn't actually changed dramatically. So, we've kind of settled at DFS around 60% IFC and 40% cash and Sofology, 50-50. And that pattern has been pretty stable despite interest rates going up. So, we plan for it to be a bit more like 2/3, 1/3, but actually it settled at 60-40. So we're not seeing a huge change. We're also seeing the panel of lenders still remaining strong and committed and the level of bad debt being very low. So no real change in either, Jonathan. Obviously, the cost of providing that credit increases as the Bank of England rate increases, and we factored that into our guidance today.

No material shift in rejection levels as well back from the lender data that we get. It's fairly stable.

Second question on Home. The way we're trying to grow awareness is largely through digital marketing. So you'll see in the cost bridge that John pointed out, we invested an incremental GBP 3.5 million, which was specifically around Home digital marketing focus on beds and mattress and that's what's driving the top line growth. And clearly, we can see the return on investment working with digital partners working very well there. So that's our main focus. You may see -- probably not say, well, you may see a little bit of integrating some of the TV campaigns going forward. That's the Marketing Director now not speaking to anyway. But yes, we're really -- beds and matters in particular, we think is a really rich ground for us to grow. Okay?

My name is Matthew Abraham from Berenberg. Just a first question on Sofology. So, encouragingly, you called out that that be an increase in the number of showrooms to 65 to 70. Could you just provide a bit of color on the expected timing and how we should think about the impact to sales growth as they are added to this way of assurance you have?

Yes. So we're currently at 58. We're sort of targeting between 65 and 70 depending on opportunities that come up. I think we're probably looking at ideally 3 -- 2 to 3 a year. There's a couple potentially back weighted for this financial year. So I think over the next sort of 2 or 3 years, you'll see 2 or 3 a year added. Typically, we see a good return on investment. When we invest, we get paybacks of just over 2 years on the new stores. I can give you an average sort of size of a store, but it's probably commercially sensitive. But I think the kind of...

Starting about 1% on a run rate basis to the top group line growth, I think, to...

Does that fully ramped, the 1%, sorry?

Sorry, again.

Fully ramped, the 1% contribution.

Yes. On a sort of 2 to 3 stores a year basis, progressing through from where we've come from to where we're going and you're talking about a 1% contribution to group sales.

Yes.

And just my second query is in reference to your guidance for profit in FY '24 to be second half weighted. You've spoken a bit about demand. I'd just like to understand how much of that timing is dictated by the delivery of these operating cost efficiencies? And how much that has bearing on that comment?

Yes. It means it is genuinely a little bit of both. I think Tim talked about, we saw weaker demand in terms of order intake towards the end of FY '23. That feeds through into weaker deliveries than we'd expected initially to kind of roll back to earlier in the year for the first half of the year. We'll make that up over the course of the year. And then on the costs, it will be naturally back-end weighted as we start to sort of progress and ramp up some of these savings. So, an even progression there, you put those 2 things together, and it's naturally going to be second half weighted.

Saranja from UBS. Two questions, please. In terms of the market being weak in FY '24 for upholstery, what do you think leading indicators might be? Do you think the market recovery has to be housing transactions? Is it macro? What is it? And then second is for Home. What's your sense of demand for Home in FY '24? Is that also quite weak? What do you think there? And I appreciate -- sorry, second half of that, I appreciate that the AOV might be different for Home, but what might it be like from a margin standpoint?

Yes. I think the lead indicators for upholstery is kind of what we've alluded to on the slide, so you look at things like consumer confidence. So 80% of sofa sales in the U.K. are driven by replacement. And so, if consumers are feeling confident and have got a bit more disposable income, that tends to drive the replacement cycle being quicker. And at the moment, you're seeing flickering signs of consumer confidence getting slightly better. And I think it will be linked to real wage inflation and how much disposable income people will feel. As such, I mean, you're probably all better economist than me, but I think realistically, it's not going to be to the new calendar year before we perhaps see some of those signs getting better perhaps. We obviously look at some indicators such as web searches, which are fairly flat across the key terms, including DFS and sofa. So we look at those sort of things, who's looking? And then clearly, you see things like footfall on a weekly basis, which has been slightly down now for a good period of time. So I think for those customers who are in market, the higher demographics, they are spending. Their average order values are strong. They're up about 7% year-on-year. There's just fewer customers in market at this time just given the levels of confidence. But those are the sorts of indicators we look at, which leads to us looking at the minus 5%. On Home, I think it's a little bit different on beds and mattresses, there's probably a little bit more -- we've seen just a huge growth opportunity for us. We've got a very low market share. So to be honest with you, we can confidently invest in digital marketing to drive conversion. And now we've got a good range. We've got a stocked range, we've got a good delivery partner. We feel confident we can grow that out with the kind of economic environment really.

Andy Wade at Jefferies. A couple for me. First one, obviously, encouraging to see order intake move from a decline in Q4 back into mid-single-digit positive. Could you just talk a little bit about how much of that is an impact of -- obviously, you had weaker comps through the first half last year? And how you expect that sort of trend as we go through the year? And comp sort of change, but there's a lot of moving parts going on as well. So I'd just be interested in your thoughts on the shape there. And then the second one, on the replacement cycle, sofa replacement cycle, where are we in that? I think it goes from 6.5 to 7.5 years, where do you see us right now? Are we pretty much at the low end? And linked to that, is there any reason why you can think of, probably not otherwise you would have said it or maybe you wouldn't, why the market isn't going to go back? Has there been some structural change? Are people spending less time sitting on sofas because they're on their phones in different rooms? Or I don't know, just thinking is there any reason why it shouldn't go back?

It's a good question. I think -- yes, so let's just deal with the first one. So order intake, we obviously had a relatively weak May and June for those who can remember that actually was our summer as we had quite a warm period of time prolonged, which is never very good for high-ticket retail for us in particular. So we were down then, which is why we ended up at a slightly lower end of the profit expectations for last year but within the range. What we always expect is that, our analysis says whenever you have a prolonged period of warm weather, you get about 60% of that back within about 3 months. So we did expect to have a decent July and August, and we did. And we had double-digit growth in terms of order value year-on-year. But we expected that partly because of the bounce from May, June, but also last year for those who remember, that was when the summer happened in July and August. So there is always those moving parts. We kind of look at things on a longer term, though. And I think as we've normalized now in the last few weeks, if you look to the 12-week period, we're pretty much exactly where we thought we'd be. So good July and August and it will normalize in September. So we're probably mid-single digits year-on-year. Average order values are good. Market volumes and our volumes are slightly down. So that's how we see it. As we come into an important period now for us, very big bookings months of October, November, we're well set. The average order values and the structure of the offer is strong. We're incredibly competitive. So it's really going to be dependent on what the consumer does in the next few months. There's no reason to believe that it should change the pattern at this moment in time. I think in terms of replacement cycle, the latest data that we have, and we survey I think every half, I guess, every 6 months, we'll look at. We just had a read back. It's probably at the 7 years, just above 7 years, it's not quite at 7.5. There's just fewer customers in the market that we can see. Do you think -- do we think in the end, structurally, it comes back? Yes. The number of households in the U.K. hasn't gone down. It's arguably probably gone up. So there are still lots of sofa stock out there that's getting older. So at some point, people will start to replace it as they start to feel more confident. And we fundamentally believe that. And the reason we put the chart up that, if you look at the last 20 years the market has been pretty stable out with global financial crisis. So we do think it will come back at some point. The big question is when. And realistically, we think that's more like '25 onwards, not particularly this year. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thanks very much for coming along, and have a good rest of the day. Thank you.

Thank you.