Halfords Group plc (HDK.MU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Halfords Group Interim Results for the 26 weeks ending the 27th of September 2024. I'm Graham Stapleton, and joining me today is Joe Hartley, our CFO. In terms of the agenda for today's presentation, Joe will start with a review of our half 1 financial results. I will then give you an overview of the business performance and the strategic progress we've made. I will then cover the outlook for the balance of the year and an overview of the impacts of the autumn budget as we look further forward. We will close today's session with the opportunity for you to ask some questions. Before I hand you over to Joe to talk you through the results, I wanted to give you a few headlines on our overall performance. Against ongoing macroeconomic headwinds, our focus for the first half of this year has been on the continued optimization of our unique omnichannel platform, enabling us to build further resilience and deliver profitable growth. This emphasis on controlling the controllables is yielding good results. To pick out just a few of the highlights. Our ongoing cost and efficiency program has delivered GBP 15 million of savings in the first half, almost entirely mitigating net inflation. We've maintained a laser-sharp focus on profitability with initiatives such as our better buying program and scientific pricing approach driving a significant improvement in gross margin. We continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet, closing the period in a net cash position, largely as a result of good working capital management. And from a strategic perspective, we're seeing fantastic results from our fusion motoring services investment, where rollout is ahead of plan and we are delivering a step change in performance. Combined, this approach has delivered a strong first half despite the macroeconomic and market challenges. I'll now hand you over to Jo to talk through our financial results in more detail. Jo?

Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone. Before I start, the usual reminder that all results are post IFRS 16 unless otherwise stated. Please also note that when I describe performance relative to the prior year, the comparatives I use reflect total operations. That's to say they include the results of the now discontinued operations of Viking and BDL. As we've previously discussed, the decision to outsource our tire and warehousing operations delivered significant P&L benefit to the group. It does, however, result in some costs previously incurred in the discontinued Viking operation, now being reflected in the continuing consumer garage business through the tire distribution fee we paid to a third party for these services. As such, a comparison to the results of total operations last year better reflects relative performance. The first half of FY '25 has continued to present its challenges, and we're pleased to have held PBT broadly flat year-on-year in this context. Inflation has continued to be a significant headwind in the first half. While the hedged FX rates and cost of goods sold was broadly flat year-on-year and we have had a slight tailwind from energy costs, we were impacted by record labor cost increases as a result of the uplift to the minimum wage effective in April this year and increases in business rates. This inflation will persist through half 2 when we will also face the majority of the freight impact we flagged at the prelims. From a consumer perspective, we continue to see 2 of our 4 markets remain significantly depressed in volume terms. We also saw weak customer confidence and a reluctance to spend suppressing sales of higher ticket discretionary items, partly as a result of interest rates, which are falling significantly more slowly than initially anticipated. Adding to an already challenging backdrop, the buildup to the autumn budget created considerable uncertainty. And while we now know the outcome, the consequences of the budget are very significant for all large employers, including Halfords. Furthermore, the consumer impact going forward is yet to be seen. Graham will cover the budget impact in more detail later. Against that context, we have again continued to focus on what we can control, delivering on our cost savings program, optimizing our margins and managing our cash and working capital well. We will cover all those dynamics in detail as we move through the presentation. Turning now to our headline results. Against very strong comparatives, we were pleased to have delivered flat like-for-like sales. In fact, on a 2-year basis, our like-for-like was 8.2%. As we have seen in prior periods, we saw a relatively stronger performance in less discretionary spend areas with Autocentre like-for-likes up 0.8% and Retail down 0.7%. Most pleasing was our gross margin performance, up 160 basis points year-on-year with margin accretion in both the Retail and Autocentre segments. Here, we saw the results of significant focus on margin optimization through pricing and proposition as well as the benefits of our better buying program with no FX headwinds to obscure performance. Our cost control across both goods for resale and operating costs were strong, delivering around GBP 15 million of savings against our full-year target of GBP 30 million. Operating costs as a percent of sales increased year-on-year, reflecting the impact of significant wage inflation, partly offset by a decrease in hedged energy costs. Underlying PBT was GBP 21 million, down just GBP 0.3 million year-on-year on broadly flat sales, demonstrating that we have been able to mitigate the GBP 15 million of net inflation we faced in the first half of the year. Finally, we continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet. Free cash flow of GBP 28.1 million was at GBP 47.3 million year-on-year, and we closed the period in a net cash position with GBP 48.3 million more cash than we had this time last year. This was largely a result of strong working capital management with stock notably down nearly GBP 18.8 million year-on-year. This next slide summarizes our group P&L. I'll pause here only to say that I'm pleased to report that the Board has declared a 3p per share interim dividend, supported by the strength of our balance sheet as just described. Slide 9 bridges the key drivers of underlying PBT movement between half 1 last year and half 1 this year at a group level. I'll cover this briefly before going into more detail across each of the Retail and Autocentre segments. The first bar shows the material cost inflation that we've experienced in the first half of this year. The majority of this comes from labor cost increases as a result of the minimum wage changes effective from the first of April this year and the knock-on impact across the workforce as we've ensured we maintain skilled differentials. The second downward bar reflects the trajectory of volume in the market and our volume share performance across our categories, which I'll explain in more detail on the next slide. These negative movements have been offset by our successful drive to optimize price effectiveness, the strength of our better buying program and a relentless focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency, all of which Graham will cover in detail later. Losses in Avayler expanded by GBP 0.8 million as expected as we continue to invest to grow and to ensure the success of our significant contract with Bridgestone. And the final bar represents investments we've made in the first half. These mainly comprise the investment in leadership capability we described at the prelims as well as increased depreciation expense as a result of our capital investment and some business interruption caused by temporary closures in our first wave of Fusion sites. Turning now to look at what's happened to volumes and our market share across each of our markets. Broadly, you can see that volumes in 3 of our 4 markets have grown ahead of expectations with the cycling market remaining in faster decline than expected. Our market share performance has been towards the lower end of our expectations and anticipated consequence of our focus on margin optimization in the period. So taking each market in turn. In Consumer Tires, we expected volumes in the market to fall by around 2% and the good news is that we actually saw volumes grow by 0.8% as reported by GfK. Within that, the budget sector grew fastest as we saw consumers trade down to cheaper alternatives, giving ongoing pressure on household finances. Our volume share overall fell by 0.2% as we thought to carefully balance sales and margin, although we did see share gains in the faster-growing budget segment. In Motoring servicing, the market grew by 3.7%, ahead of expectations, and we also grew volume share by 0.3%, in line with the expectations set at the start of the year as we continue to see our sales mix into higher-margin servicing maintenance and repair work. In the needs-based retail motoring product market, we saw the market grow faster than initially anticipated. The share loss of 1.6 percentage points is broadly in line with our start-of-year expectations and reflects our prioritization of margin optimization through pricing discipline ahead of share gain. It's also worth recalling that this time last year, we reported volume share gain of 3.8 percentage points. So on a 2-year basis, we remain in share growth. Finally, in Cycling, we saw a further 4.2% decline in the market worse than the 2% contraction anticipated in a market that continues to be very challenging. We once again took market share with our market-leading own label ranges complemented by Tredz's more branded proposition. Before leaving this slide, a word on data and data sources. All our market and market share data comes from third parties with GfK reporting on the tire and motoring product market, the DBSA reporting on the servicing market, and the Bike Association reporting on the bike market. In February '24, we were informed by the Bike Association that Wiggle had withdrawn from the bike market survey following their purchase by Frasers Group, noting that Evans Cycles are also excluded from the Bike Association data. GfK then informed us in May this year that Kwik Fit had withdrawn from their tire market survey. Given lower market coverage, the value of these data sources is much reduced, and we're reviewing their use going forward. This next slide highlights just how challenged 2 of our 4 markets remain. The bike market remains 33% down versus FY '19 in volume terms and continued to decline in half 1 as the chart on the left shows. The tire market remains 13% down versus FY '19 and the chart on the right-hand side gives some insight into why that is. Our own data shows that in FY '21, around 9% of tire jobs we're replacing tires with less than 2-millimeter tread depth, tires we describe as red from a safety perspective. In 2024, that has increased to around 15%, evidencing a shift in customer behavior with tire replacement being delayed and deferred. Happily, there's been some movement in the right direction in more recent months but there's still much to do to educate customers on the risks of driving on unsafe tires. With the context of our market and share performance, let's turn now to look at the financial performance of each of our segments in turn. In Retail, we were pleased to deliver strong profit growth year-on-year in the first half. Like-for-like sales were down 0.7%, with greater decline in higher ticket and more discretionary cycling than the more need space motoring category. The first quarter of the year was impacted by particularly poor spring weather impacting sales of both cycling and motoring touring products. It was, in fact, the wettest spring since 1986. Whether in the second quarter was more aligned to seasonal norms and cycling sales in this period benefited from some halo from the Olympics. As such, quarter 2 saw positive like-for-like sales, bringing half 1 back to a broadly flat position year-on-year. Underlying EBIT grew 8.1% to GBP 21.2 million in half 1 underpinned by the strength of our better buying and price optimization focus, which together resulted in 200 basis points of gross margin improvement year-on-year. We also continued our successful focus on cost resulting in GBP 4.8 million of savings year-on-year. Margin growth and cost savings more than offset around GBP 7 million of net cost inflation. The impact of further market decline in cycling and volume share decline in motoring products. As we look forward to half 2, we expect to see the freight headwind to GBP 4 million to GBP 7 million that I outlined at the start of the year, impact cost of goods sold. However, we now expect the impact to be at the bottom end of that range given the movement in container rates that we've seen. In Autocentres, excluding Avayler, like-for-like revenue has grown 0.8% against tough comparatives. Like-for-like sales growth on a 2-year basis was around 18%. Tire trading in the first half of the year has continued to be challenging. In a market that remains around 13% down versus FY '19, we've seen customers trading down to budget tires, both within the market and our own business with budget tires retailing at around 50% of the price of premium branded tires. This has impacted average selling prices and revenues. Furthermore, with strong competition in a declining and price transparent premium tire market, it has proved harder to pass on labor inflation through pricing. In servicing, maintenance and repair by contrast, we saw a very strong performance as we took volume share in a growing market and successfully passed on labor inflation through price optimization as a result of our relatively stronger pricing power. Gross margin grew 130 basis points as a result of this success in passing on pricing as well as our better buying program. Margin was also supported by a 3 percentage point mix shift into higher-margin servicing maintenance and repair work. From a cost perspective, we saw increases driven by both the material impact of wage inflation as well as the investments we've made. Capital expenditure has resulted in higher depreciation charges and we've also invested in people capability, specifically in this part of the business as we flagged at the prelims. Partly offsetting we've seen the benefit of the movement of our entire wholesale and distribution operations to bond with this move resulting in better availability in our garages as well as being on track to deliver the GBP 5 million cost benefit highlighted at the prelims. As a result of all those dynamics, underlying EBIT, excluding Avayler, was down 20.6% year-on-year to GBP 9.1 million in the first half. As we look forward to half 2, we expect to see the benefits of our investment in leadership capability and the results of our first wave of fusion sites materialize. And as such, we anticipate an improving trajectory. Moving now to our balance sheet. We closed half 1 in a net cash position, excluding leases of GBP 1.3 million, an improvement of more than GBP 48 million year-on-year as a result of strong stock and working capital control. Free cash flow was consequently an inflow of GBP 28 million versus a GBP 19 million outflow in half 1 last year. Stock reduced by GBP 18.8 million, with reductions in Retail driven by successful planning and end-of-season clearance and reduction in Autocenters, reflecting tighter stock control as a result of improved processes and analytics as well as the outsourcing of the tire warehousing and distribution operations. The year-on-year stock reduction partly reflects the benefits we saw at the end of FY '24, which we will annualize in half 2. As such, we do not expect a material year-on-year improvement by the end of the year. Leverage, including lease debt ended the first half at 1.6x, below our guided range of 1.8 to 2.3x post M&A. Our average retail lease length has declined to 2.7 years. Finally, and as a reminder, our GBP 180 million revolving credit facility was extended at the start of this financial year, maturing in April 2028 with a 1-year extension option. So to summarize, half 1 has not been without its challenges, but we have continued to focus on controlling the controllables. We've delivered broadly flat like-for-like sales against very strong comparatives with our 2-year like-for-like at over 8%. We have made very strong progress on gross margin up 160 basis points across the group with margin accretion across both Retail and Autocentres segment. We have delivered cost savings of around GBP 15 million and are on track to deliver our full year target of GBP 30 million. By the end of this year, that will bring our cumulative cost savings over 3 years to close to GBP 85 million. Our cost and efficiency program has helped to offset around GBP 15 million of net inflation seen in half 1, predominantly from labor costs and business rates inflation. And as a result, we've been able to hold profit broadly flat year-on-year on a total operations basis. Finally, we've maintained a very strong balance sheet ending the period with net cash and improving free cash flow by GBP 47 million year-on-year through excellent working capital management. With that, I will pass you over to Graham, who will update on our operational and strategic progress and our outlook.

Thanks, Jo. So as you can see from Jo's summary, despite some ongoing headwinds, we've continued to control the controllables and we are pleased with the results this approach has yielded in the first half. I'm going to spend some time now focusing on the operational and strategic progress we have made. I'll start with the priorities we set out for this year, which you can see here on this slide. And to be clear, there is nothing new. We have been laser focused on delivering the existing plan. As a reminder, we said we would optimize the unique platform we've created to deliver greater returns, mitigate the headwinds by driving cost and efficiency and that investment would be prioritized around a small number of existing proven strategic initiatives. I'll now go through each of these in turn and explain the progress we have made. Starting with how we are optimizing our unique omnichannel platform to drive profitability. In half 1, our focus on profitability has driven a 160-basis point improvement in gross margin. On this slide, you can see some of the key building blocks that have helped us achieve this. Those are further enhancement to our scientific approach to pricing, the continuation of our better buying program and customer proposition optimization. Firstly, let's talk about pricing optimization, which delivered GBP 8.8 million of margin in half 1. This year, we have further improved our data capability and tools to enable us to take an even more scientific approach. A highlight here is our continued optimization of dynamic pricing across our consumer garages and mobile expert vans. We're able to pass a premium to customers for convenience. For example, customers will pay more for the convenience of a mobile service at home on a Saturday morning. Dynamic pricing also allows us to fully optimize capacity in our garages, where we see low demand in specific garages, we can reduce prices to fill capacity. And when we see higher demand, we can increase prices, therefore, matching demand to supply more effectively. Next, I want to talk about better buying, which, as Jo described, has delivered GBP 5.7 million of additional profit. As we have said in previous updates, we work closely with EY to develop our better buying program with a focus on a reduced number of strategic supply partnerships retendering own brand ranges and delivering group buying synergies. The largest benefit has come from new retendering tools, which have realized significant cost price improvements. We have now retendered around 25% of our own label ranges, achieving, on average, a 6% reduction in cost of goods sold. We've also focused on enhancing negotiation tools, building detailed cost models that take account of commodity and component prices, FX and labor rates, both now and in the future. In this way, we have created data-led negotiation playbooks that will ensure we continue to realize sustainable benefits from this program going forward. Lastly here, let's look at the role that our customer proposition can play in driving improved profitability. I'll put out just 2 examples. Firstly, in garages, ongoing investment in training means that our technicians are better equipped to identify additional work required on a vehicle and we've seen an impressive 30% increase in work identified. This has driven a 3% year-on-year increase in the mix into a much higher-margin service, maintenance and repair work. And in retail, we have incentivized sales of fitting services in our stores and made improvements to the online customer journey. As a result, we have seen a 5% increase year-on-year in add-on fitting services when a product is purchased and an increase in the average number of items per basket. So in summary, you can see we have put a lot of focus on this area across better buying, price optimization and customer proposition, which in turn has driven a significant improvement in gross margin. I'll move on now to cover the actions we are taking to drive further cost efficiencies. In addition to the GBP 5.7 million of better buying benefit that I've already discussed, we have delivered GBP 8.9 million of cost savings in the first half. The biggest saving relates to operational efficiencies throughout our stores, garages and supply chain, which totaled GBP 3.6 million. These have been driven by a large number of initiatives such as optimizing the layouts in our distribution centers to reduce picking time and taking a localized approach to store opening hours based on customer demand. We have also driven cost savings through retendering activity and supplier consolidation in goods not for resale, the tire supply chain restructuring that Jo has already talked about and lower interest costs as a result of strong cash management with a higher average cash balance in the business through the first half. That gives you a sense of the key activity, which continues to drive improved cost and efficiency across the group. I'll move on now to cover the strategic elements of the FY '25 plan, including the Halfords Motoring Club and, of course, our Fusion Motoring Services Program. Our Halfords Motoring Club continues to grow today having more than 4 million members and creating significant value for the group. Club members shop more often with us, and when they visit, they spend more. In addition, over 340,000 premium members pay around GBP 50 each a year to be part of the club, covering their annual MOT and bringing them a broad range of other valuable benefits. This generates around GBP 17 million in resilient recurring annualized subscription revenue for the group. And the club is helping save costs too. Over half our MOT bookings now come from club members which has enabled us to reduce MOT marketing costs by over 30% year-on-year. In total, we have seen marketing costs as a percentage of sales reduced since the launch of the club and we see opportunities to go further as the club continues to scale and we extend the benefits on offer. But most importantly, our members love it. Annual premium member retention rates outperformed both our forecast and industry benchmarks at over 70%, proving just how valuable customers find the proposition. So as you can see, the club continues to be an asset to the group, and it is critical for further development of our Life of Car strategy over the midterm. Moving on now to Fusion, the biggest area of strategic investment in FY '25 and arguably the most exciting and transformational part of the plan. In FY '23 and '24, we saw compelling results across our 2 Fusion trial towns, Colchester and Halifax, where sales and profit doubled and the biggest shift in performance was in motoring services. So this year, we set out to bring the highest returning motoring services elements to more locations. As a reminder, these are the introduction of a motoring services hub to the retail car parks where a new automotive services manager identifies work and refers customers straight across to the nearest Halfords Garage and rebranding and refitting our garages to increase capacity for higher-margin service, maintenance and repair work as well as servicing more commercial vehicles under our B2B contracts. And I'm really pleased to say that the results so far have been outstanding, so much so that we are now accelerating the plan, refining and improving as we go. 22 sites have been delivered this year so far against an original target of 25 for the full year. Each site costs us around GBP 200,000 of CapEx and with around a 2-year payback. The Fusion sites are performing ahead of business case, maturing faster than we expected, with revenue up by 50%, while profit has doubled. The really great news is that where we have delivered Fusion to any one of our national garage sites rebranding it to Halfords Garage Services, we've seen even stronger returns. National sites tend to be larger and with a lower mix of service maintenance and repair work, and as such, the opportunity is significant. All of this has given us the confidence to go further and faster in the second half with a target of around 40 locations now to be delivered in FY '25. Before I move on to cover the outlook, let me summarize the progress we've talked about today. We have shown you how we are optimizing the platform and growing our gross margin with a focus on scientific pricing, better buying and a mix into more profitable customer propositions. At the same time, our continued focus on cost and efficiency has yielded further savings, helping to mitigate the impact of ongoing inflationary headwinds. And finally, we have outlined the strategic investment we are making across Motoring Club and our Fusion Motoring Services Program. Combined, this has helped deliver a profit performance broadly equal to last year despite GBP 15 million of net inflation and some continuing tire and cycling market headwinds. I'll now move on to talk about the outlook for this year and the implications of the autumn budget in FY '26 and beyond. To begin with then, the outlook for this year. The strong half 1 performance we have outlined today has enabled us to hold profit broadly flat despite considerable macroeconomic headwinds and inflationary pressures. Looking ahead, it is fair to say that we don't anticipate these headwinds getting any easier in the second half of the year. Recent trading has become more volatile with consumer confidence impacted by the uncertainty of the autumn budget, and we are yet to see how the measures announced will affect customer behavior in half 2. From a cost perspective, we will see continued wage inflation and the impact of elevated freight rates earlier in the year, hitting our cost of goods sold in half 2 as well as the impact of reinstatement of performance-related variable incentives as flagged at the prelims. Finally, the acceleration of our Fusion Program will create some short-term trading disruption impacting profit. Against that backdrop, we will continue to focus on what we control optimizing our platform, driving cost and efficiency savings and delivering on a small number of proven strategic investments. After a strong half 1, we remain comfortable with the FY '25 consensus. Looking further forward, we are working through the impacts of the recent budget. Our calculation suggests that the changes to National Insurance and minimum wage rates will add circa GBP 23 million of direct labor cost to our business in FY '26. Around GBP 9 million of this was already included in our forecast for the next financial year, alongside plans for mitigation. In addition to the direct wage cost impact, we anticipate there will likely be inflationary pressure in managed services that are labor reliant such as cleaning, maintenance, security and professional fees. This is harder to quantify with precision. Furthermore, the impact of the budget on interest rates, inflation, unemployment rates and customer confidence is yet to be seen, meaning it's hard to forecast the impact on our end markets. The actions we have taken over the last few years have given us greater resilience to face the additional headwinds, but we will need to go further. We anticipate being able to pass on wage inflation more easily in Autocentres where a higher proportion of revenue relates to servicing activity. We will also continue to focus on cost. But given that by the end of this year, we would have delivered around GBP 85 million of cost savings over a 3-year period, options to reduce costs are becoming more limited. That said, and as you would expect, we are looking at every tactical and structural lever at our disposal. While the budget certainly makes the next few years more difficult with the strength of our brand and our balance sheet, we are in as good a position as we can be to withstand these challenges. That concludes today's presentation. Jo and I will now be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from Jonathan Pritchard from Peel Hunt.

Could I just ask a little bit on potential for Fusion, obviously, 40 this year and obviously, you're not going to be able to sort of fusion every single garage in the portfolio. But what do you think the number is of potential long term? Secondly, on retail gross margin, obviously, you did very well, this half, what you think there's more low-hanging or medium-hanging fruit to grab? And could we expect the gross margins go better second half and into next year? And then just 2 on side, if I may. Just on the premium end, you stepped away a little bit from the promotional activity that something that you sort of reconsider all the time, getting back involved in that? Or is that a very firm medium-term stance. And also just potential to strengthen at the budget, I know you've done okay down there, but are there things you can do to strengthen your product offer in budget.

Sorry. Thanks, Jonathan, for those questions. Could you please just repeat the third question again? I couldn't quite hear that because the line is not very good.

Maybe it's about your stance, well stepping away from promotion on premium. So is that something that's sort of an ongoing discussion internally whether we should be getting involved promotionally at the premium end? Or is that medium term stand?

And the last question, again, Sorry, Jonathan.

Sorry, just strengthening the budget. Do you need to in tires to strengthen the budget product?

The strength of the budget products in tires. Okay. Should I take -- I'll take a couple of these questions maybe. So start with Fusion. Yes, we're really, really pleased with the performance of Fusion, 2-year payback. We've seen a big increase in sales, doubling profit in the sites that we've put in this 23 sites so far, and we're now targeting 40 for this year, so more than we originally expected. We think -- from what we can see so far, there's at least 150 towns and locations that we can put a Fusion site into. So a lot more we can do, and we're looking at the moment at how we accelerate our expansion plans, particularly with the national sites as we go into next year. But at the moment, it's 150 that we're aiming for. Does that answer your question, Jonathan, on that one?

Yes, that's grounded out.

Great. And then in terms of -- I'll get Jo to answer the gross margin question, I'll pick up the other 2. So in terms of premium end promotions, I think we have certainly put less focus there. But we -- with the pricing science that we've now got, we'll look at all parts of the business. And it might be as we move through this half and into next year, that the opportunity to promote effectively and take profitable margin exists in that space as well as other other parts of the proposition. So we wouldn't rule out doing promotions on premium products. We'll just be very scientific about how we do them and therefore, what we do. In terms of budget tires, yes, you're right, there has been an increase in the budget tire mix in the market. There is no doubt about that this year. There's been a reduction in the number of premium tires certainly that we've been selling. What are we doing about that? Well, we are extending the range of budget tires that we have to offer customers, making sure we've got a really good offer for customers in both the budget and the mid-tier tire range. And then we're working with our supply partners the big brands like Bridgestone, Goodyear, et cetera, to ensure we're making the most of the benefits that those tires bring to customers. So really explaining why customers should buy a premium tire and trade up. And we think a combination of those 2 things will help us in that tire market challenge that we've got at the moment.

Then in terms of retail gross margin, we were really pleased with 200 basis points of improvement year-on-year in that area, which really came from both our better buying program, but also some price optimization we were able to do during the period. We do expect those benefits to continue through to the second half, albeit they will be impacted by the freight headwinds we talked about, which mainly impact retail and will be around GBP 4 million in half 2. So we expect some suppression from that. We do think there's further to go as we look forward from a better buying perspective, also as commodity prices start to come down a little bit. So we do expect to continue to benefit looking forward from the margin improvement, too.

We will now take our next question from Kate Calvert from Investec.

Could you give some more detail on the decision to hold your first dividend flat and how we should think about the full year dividend and sort of balancing it with investments in the business going forward given how strong the returns and things like Fusion have been? And my second question is, could you also give us an update on Avayler? And how we should think about the the run rate of losses and when perhaps that may move into profits going forward?

Thanks, Kate. So I take the dividend question, Graham. So we changed our dividend policy at the Capital Markets Day to say that our dividend would be covered 1.5x to 2.5x by profit after tax, and we held that dividend policy at the end of the year. So we've held our interim dividend at 3p per share, and we'll review the final dividend that we pay with the Board at the end of the year. The dividend policy we've got would imply a slightly lower year-on-year dividend based on current consensus. But as I said, we'll review that when we know the results of this year.

And Kate, in terms of Avayler, we've made some good progress during this half. So we've got Bridgestone to sign off the software for their business. If you remember, there's 2,000 garages in the U.S. that we're looking to install the Avayler software into. The first garage has also been identified, which is Charlotte, and that will potentially be going live within the next month or so. We've also signed up a new client in Australia. So that's the first in that territory called My Car. My Car for those that don't know, is the leading motoring services business in Australia. It has 275 garages and 30 vans. So that's a good step forward. In terms of the losses, the losses are broadly in line with what we expected this year. And at the moment, we're not changing our guidance for profit going forward as a consequence of that.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Manjari Dhar from RBC.

Well done on H1. I just have 3, if I may. Firstly, I appreciate the statement you said that recent trading was impacted by uncertainty ahead of the budget at the end of October. I just wondered if you can give some color on what you've seen in the most recent weeks in November versus the October performance and whether there's been any improvement following some of, I guess, lack of less uncertainty and clarity on the budget? And then secondly, I wondered if you could give some color on what you see in terms of behavior from a motoring club member that's on the premium plan versus the regular plan and sort of what benefit you get from sort of trading people from -- up from regulator to the subscription plan? And then finally, I wondered if you could give us any color on sort of how that GBP 23 million of additional direct labor cost split between the Autocentre business and the Retail business? Or just any color on on how much of that you would be able to pass through more easily through Autocentres?

Thanks for your questions there. I'll pick up the first couple. So in terms of recent trading, obviously, we don't disclose any detail on recent trading. I would say the uncertainty around customer confidence is still there. So I think customers are being very careful about what they spend. And obviously, very recently, we've also had quite some pretty bad weather and Black Friday trends to also look through. So it's very difficult at this stage to say that we've seen any change to the trend that we saw at the back end of October post the budget. But it is early days. Customers definitely shopping for value. They want to make sure they've got the right value option for them as they go into Christmas. That is absolutely for sure. So that's all I can really update on as far as that goes. In terms of our Halfords Motoring Club, premium members are very much more valuable to us. Not only do they deliver a very big ongoing subscription revenue, I think we mentioned GBP 17 million in my presentation, they -- also premium members tend to spend more in our garage business. So they will take an MOT and become a services customer over the longer term. That's also very valuable for us. They shop with us more regularly and when they do, they spend more. So they are absolutely the type of customer that we want within the group, and they shop across the group a lot more, too. So that's where our focus is. The good news is that we are well on track between 8% and 10% of all the subscriptions now are in the premium space. And we will try and grow that further. In fact, we are finding a lot of our free members become premium members over time. So we're quite successful in moving a customer from free to premium. And we're also seeing that premium members stay as well. So our retention rate on premium members is over 70%, which is a very, very high retention rate in any club not just in Halfords, but across the industry. So obviously, customers love the offer. It's resonating with them and they're staying. So altogether, a really good -- a really good sign for us. And as we grow the club out, obviously, there are more options open to us like member pricing, which we don't do at the moment. And then extending a range of additional services that we don't do today, for example, to those members over time. And when we've got hundreds of thousands of premium members, that becomes a really attractive proposition for us.

And then in terms of the labor costs, as we flagged, there's around GBP 23 million of direct labor costs as a result of the budget coming from the National Insurance increases and also the minimum wage. And that splits roughly equally between our Autocentre segment and our Retail segment. We had got around GBP 9 million of that in our forecast for next year, leaving around GBP 14 million effectively unplanned and unexpected, and that's largely the threshold change in National Insurance as well as some of the changes to under 21 wage rates. We do expect to be able to pass some of that on through pricing, particularly in the Autocentre segment where more of our revenue relates to services that we provide to our customers, and we think it will be a bit harder in retail. We don't think we'll be able to pass it all on through pricing. We're looking at a whole range of tactical and structural opportunities to try and mitigate that cost. We will look again at cost savings a bit, albeit as Graham described, we've done a lot of that over the last 3 years, but we're in the process of really working through all the options that we have there.

And it appears there are currently no further questions in the phone queue. With this, I will hand over for any online questions.

We have a question from Matt Evans at Equity Development. Many thanks for the comprehensive presentation. Where do you see the biggest returns in terms of capital allocation and strategic initiatives? And do you think about this purely in terms of return on investment? Or do you take a more holistic view of strengthening the consumer offer?

Yes. Thanks for your question, Matt. So our capital allocation priorities were laid out at the Capital Markets day and they remain unchanged from that time. Our first priority is to maintain a prudent balance sheet and I definitely think that's important as we face into some of the uncertainty created by the autumn budget. We do, though, seek to invest in projects where we think there's a strong and proven return. And really what we've done with Fusion in the second half of this year really emphasizes that point as we seek to expand that program. And as Graham has described, we see further potential in that area going forward. We do think, from a strategic perspective, some of the programs that we talked about in the Capital Markets Day, such as expanding our motoring club offer and expanding the range of products that we offer in terms of the life of the car remains an opportunity for us going forward. Anything to add, Graham?

Yes. And I think the business-to-business and commercial fleet services area, we have made some acquisitions -- successful acquisitions recently in that space. It tends to be a more resilient part of our business with better returns with the strong balance sheet that we've got, we've got the opportunity to invest for growth potentially in those sort of areas, too. So it's a combination of the right investment financially, but also for customers, too. We do look at both angles there it's important to build a sustainable business over the longer term.

All right. I'll hand back to you for closing remarks, Graham.

Great. Thanks, everybody, for your time today and look forward to catching up with you again next year.