JB Hi-Fi Limited (JBH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for your time today. And as always, we appreciate your interest in the business. As you heard, it can stand format, I'll talk through the presentation and then questions at the end. We'll turn to Slide 4, which is the group model. And you'll be familiar with the slide. So let me just pull out some of those key highlights as I see. Both brands have their distinct personalities. They're different product category leadership focus and importantly, different target customer groups. As you know, the JV, it's categories of technology and consumer electronics with this younger tech-savvy customer at the call, but it's broader -- but it has a broader appeal to those who are early adopters of new or evolving technology. Our customers view many of these categories as essentials, not luxuries, as they are so integrated and important to their lives. For The Good Guys, its home appliances is bitumen electronics. It's core customer, being families and first-time homemakers with significant broader appeal to the home appliance replace a customer. Both businesses have a common value proposition of big brands at low prices, combined with a customer-centric approach, which has provided our passionate and knowledgeable staff. All events combined highlights the strengths and benefits of the model, allowing it to remain very resilient through our economic cycles. And then finally, with the model, it is underpinned by 4 key competitive advantages, which I'll detail on the following page, the Page 5. Again, you're going to be very familiar with this. So I'll just give you some high-level summary of each scale. Being the leader in the Australian market with strong supplier relationships, combined with a large and engaged customer database across the group, ultimately means we can leverage the significant scale to drive additional value for our customers and shareholders. Low-cost operating model. Maintaining this low-cost operating model is just part of our culture. The focus is on productivity and minimizing unnecessary expenditure. This efficiency of the model ensures or enables us to respond to market price activity and maintain market shares. Multichannel capability. This gives us significant reach across multiple shopping channels, ensuring we can cater for all customer shopping needs. We are constantly innovating and adapting to changing customer preferences. These shopping channels are then complemented by fast and flexible fulfillment, ensuring we can offer a convenient and competitive shopping experience. People and culture. Our culture embraces and reflects the unique personalities of the individual brands. Our knowledgeable and passionate team members put customers first. They have an ability to quickly and easily adapt to navigate the changing retail environment, and we maintain an unrelenting focus on health safety -- health and safety of our teams. Over to Page 6. We remain focused on generating sustainable long-term growth for the business and having a positive impact on our people, community and environment. Some of the progress we have made in the half years with our people, continued to improve gender diversity across the group with an increase in the number of women in leadership positions, continue to invest in leadership development, that includes increasing participation in our women in leadership program. Ongoing focus on building a greater understanding of our people's leader's role in creating a safe, respectful and inclusive culture delivered through our speaker program and ongoing focus on safety, including mental health and wealth being and importantly, aggressive customer training programs. For our communities, the half year '24 workplace giving donations totaled $2.2 million and $37.9 million since inception. JB Hi-Fi Helping Hands program won the Gold Award for the best workplace giving program of the year at the 2023 annual workplace giving excellence awards. Also, we submitted our 2023 modern flavoring statement, engaged an additional 172 brands on supply chain mapping and reviewed social compliance audits of 48 factories on our supply watch list. With their environment, solar panel generation is sold on 2 stores in half '24, bringing the total number of stores to 26 as a group continues to work towards net zero direct carbon emissions by 2030. JB Hi-Fi Australia transitioned to 100% recyclable bags and multi-use nonwoven bags with plastic bags now out nationally. And finally rolled out battery and mobile phone customer recycling stations and all JB Hi-Fi and Good Guys stores. So turning to page to Page 7, the group's half year performance. For the group, we saw total sales down 2.2% to $5.16 billion. EBIT was down 19.3% to $386.7 million. NPAT was down 19.9% to $264.3 million. Earnings per share were down 19.9% to $2.418 per share, with the interim dividend of $1.58 per share, down $0.39 per share or 19.8%. Now over to Page 8, the divisional performance. I'll take this as read, as we'll move through this in greater detail as we move through the presentation. So now on to Page 10 for JB Hi-Fi Australia. Again, with which is a summary of performance, I'll take it as read as we'll cover the individual breakdown as we move through the presentation. So on to Page 11. Half year '24 sales for JB Hi-Fi, total sales increased by 0.7% to $3.62 billion with comparable sales up $0.1 million. This was driven by continued customer demand for technology and consumer electronic products, supported by well-executed Black Friday and Boxing Day commercial periods. The key growth categories were mobile phone with new product launches across Apple and Google with growth in both units and ASP. Games Hardware, improved stock availability across both PS5 and Xbox, Small appliances, good growth from floor care, personal care and coffee and Whitegoods, with refrigeration growth coming through -- coming from a number of the product categories and improved availability and stronger online product offerings. And finally, services with continued momentum in telco connections, installations, et cetera. Software sales were 4.2% of total sales and online sales increased by 0.8% to $543.1 million or 15% of total sales. Over the page to Page 12, JB Hi-Fi Australia earning results. Gross profit decreased by 3% to $795.6 million with gross profit margin down 84 basis points to 22%, driven by sales mix and increased levels of floor on floor discounting. Cost of drive business was 11.9%, up 50 basis points and in absolute terms grew 5.2%, with disciplined cost control, helping to manage inflationary cost pressures. Depreciation increased by 1.7% with an increase in depreciation on right-of-use assets, partially offset by a decline in depreciation on fixed assets. EBIT decreased by 13.7% to $294.6 million, with EBIT margin down 136 basis points to 8.1%. I'll now turn to Page 14 and JB New Zealand. So Page 14 shows the summary. Like Australia, I'll take it as read as we'll talk in a little bit more detail as we move through. So I go over to Page 15. First half sales for JB Hi-Fi New Zealand. Total sales increased by 5.1% to NZD 168.7 million, with comparable sales down 1.2%. The key growth categories were games hardware with improved stock availability and strong Black Friday promotion. Audio with growth in True Wireless, over-ear, noise canceling and portable speakers, mobile phones, improved store execution and ranging, assisting in driving sales, small appliances, strong growth across the majority of product groups and IT accessories, growth coming from better product attach products such as keyboard, mice, et cetera. Software sales were 6.2% of total sales. Online sales increased by 5.8% to NZD 20.4 million or 12.1% of total sales. Three stores were opened in the half, including one in Christchurch and International Airport stores in Auckland and Christchurch. Over to 16, earnings for JB Hi-Fi New Zealand. Gross profit increased 8.9% to NZD 28.2 million, with gross profit margin at 16.7%, an improvement of a low base in the prior corresponding period. Cost of doing business was 15.2%, up 264 basis points. In absolute terms, cost of business grew 27.1% as we continue to invest in new stores and strategic initiatives, with comparable cost to do a business up 11.9%. EBITDA for New Zealand was NZD 2.5 million, down 55.6%. EBIT was negative NZD 0.4 million, down NZD 5.8 billion. Underlying EBIT adjusted for depreciation that would have been recognized if right-of-use assets and fixed assets had not been previously impaired, was negative 2.1 million, down 3.8 million in the prior year. Now to The Good Guys on Page 18. As with past summaries, I'll take this as read as we'll go through the details. So over to 19. Half year sales are The Good Guys. Total sales decreased by 9.9% to $1.39 billion, comparable -- with comparable sales down the same. Sales did improve throughout the half. The brand's dominant home appliance categories remain resilient, where the consumer electronics categories softer as a cycle elevated demand in the prior corresponding period. Online sales declined by 2.3% to $192.7 million or 13.9% of sales. So over the page to Page 20. Good Guys earnings period. Gross profit was $325 million, with gross profit margin up 16 basis points to 23.4%. This was driven by a sales mix that resulted from the resilience of the home appliance categories. Cost of doing business was 13.6%, up 171 basis points and in absolute terms grew 3.1% with disciplined cost control, helping to manage inflationary cost pressures. Depreciation grew 3.7%, with an increase in both depreciation and right-of-use assets and depreciation on fixed assets. EBIT was down 30.5% to $92.5 million, with EBIT margin down 197 basis points to 6.7%. I'll now hand over to Nick to talk through balance sheet and cash flow.

Thanks, Terry. As I started on Slide 22, with the balance sheet and inventory. Inventory was $1.16 billion, which was down 3.9% or $47 million year-on-year. The resulting inventory turnover was up 33 basis points to 7.2x from 6.9x last year. Payables were down 4.2% or $44 million year-on-year, in line with that movement in inventory. Turning to Slide 23, highlights on the cash flow statement. Operating cash flows and operating cash conversion continued to be very strong. CapEx was $36.6 million, up 7.8% or $2.6 million year-on-year with investment in our store portfolio, online and other strategic initiatives. We closed with net cash of $488 million, which, consistent with prior years, net cash at 31 December is always seasonally high. Turning to Slide 24 and capital management. We today declared an interim dividend of $1.58 per share, fully franked, down $0.39 per share or 19.8%, which represents 65% of net profit after tax. The record date for the interim dividend is the 23rd of Feb, with payment to made on the 8th of March. We do continue to maintain a strong balance sheet, with closing net cash of $488 million. The Board will continue to regularly review the group's capital structure with a focus on maximizing returns to shareholders and maintaining our balance sheet strength and flexibility. I'll hand back to Terry.

Thank you, Nick. We'll now turn to training updates on Page 26. Sales for the month of January, total sales the JB Hi-Fi Australia was positive 2.5%, with comparable sales growth of positive 1.7%. Total sales growth for JB Hi-Fi New Zealand was positive 8.2%, with comparable sales growth of negative 4.1%. Total sales growth for The Good Guys was negative 2.1%, with comparable sales being the same. These are in line with our expectations. I'll now turn to Page 28, is a bit of an update on our group focus areas. I know, again, you know a lot of these, but let me just give you a little bit of an update on how we've progressed. Retail execution, so this is about staying focused on the retail basics and doing what we do best, delivering value and an experience to our customers. What some of the progress we made delivered a strong promotional program, particularly in the key Black Friday and Boxing Day promotional periods. We stayed highly focused on actively promoting and proving a great value offering to our customers, and we leveraged our scale and drive productivity to minimize and control costs. Our multichannel, again, this is about maximizing our reach to grow our customer base, but also stay connected with our existing customers. Four new JB Hi-Fi stores opened in the half, including regional stores in Mount Barker in South Australia and Warrnambool, Victoria and international airport stores in Melbourne and Perth, with 2 JB Hi-Fi stores being closed in the half. Launched a new JB Hi-Fi online home page. We had 500,000 customers joining JB Hi-Fi Perks membership program in the half, taking the total membership base to 1.3 million. The Good Guys gold service extra's membership program currently has over 1.3 million active customers. And we saw a strong growth in sales generated from online chat. The third focus area there in New Zealand, this is about growing our share and reach of the brand through store rollout and improved retail execution. Three new stores were opened in the half, including one store in Christchurch and international airport stores in Auckland and Christchurch, continue to target 3 to 5 new stores per year over the next 3 years. And we successfully -- successful migration of the JB Hi-Fi New Zealand's website to Shopify in October '23 and continued investment in key hires to strengthen local capability and support growth. So over to Page 29. Commercial, another focus area for us. This is about growing our share of this significant sales channel. We continue to grow our active customer base across corporate, government and education customers, ongoing development of multichannel experience with e-commerce expansion of insights -- inside sales and account managers in the field, continue to leverage and integrate with the retail business, focusing specifically on lead generation and supply chain. And then finally, supply chain. This is about meeting and most importantly, exceeding our customers' expectations on product availability and delivery. We remain highly focused on improving customer delivery experience. We launched on-demand delivery service in partnership with Uber for The Good Guys in September '23, with an average delivery time of under 60 minutes; improved flow of inventory in the stores; delivered operational efficiency gains and enabled sales during peak trade per big and bulky home delivery centers relocated to a large facility in the half. During the half peak trade, the home delivery center network recorded its largest volume of customer deliveries of big and bulky product to date. And we continue to review the supply chain network to ensure it remains fit for the purpose evolves with the multichannel strategy and continues to improve the customer experience. Now finally, over to Page 31. Our investment checklist. Again, I'm sure we talk about this a bit, so I don't need to cover it off. However, I'll just maybe just a few closing comments. The business has continued to demonstrate its resilience in this challenging retail environment. Supported by our unique culture, our experienced store and support office teams continue to quickly adapt, evolve and innovate in an ever-changing retail environment and are always looking for new growth opportunities. For JB Hi-Fi are major categories are not viewed as luxury has necessity and they're so integrated into our customers' everyday lives. Combined with The Good Guys, a strong focus on the replacer customer helps to ensure this ongoing resilience. Our low-cost operating model is always balanced with a longer-term view of success, such as maintaining high levels of customer service, even in more challenging retail environments. Our focus on evolving our ever -- focus on our ever-evolving multichannel capabilities means we remain connected with existing customers and gives us new opportunities to engage with future shoppers, ensuring we can continue to grow our reach and our market share. While focused on maintaining this resilient and highly relevant retail model, we will also ensure we have a business that is a desired place to work for our team members, and this will ensure we can continue to attract high-quality staff into the future. We will continue to deliver our commitment to our customers of big brands at low prices, while continuing to invest into the -- invest for the future, ensuring we do so in a sustainable and ethical way. So thank you for that. And now we can go to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Tom Kierath with Barrenjoey.

Just a couple of questions on The Good Guys, if I could. I think before you've said gross margins likely to settle at kind of around 22% longer term, you've done 23.4%, so I'd just be interested in comments there. And then secondly, you're saying that gross margin expansion is happening because of the sales mix toward home appliances. Can you talk about whether gross margins have gone up within the category, so there's an underlying improvement in the GM.

Yes, sure. I'll answer that second one first because it helps answer the whole question about the gross margin. We did actually see the category margins come down. So across -- basically all categories, we did see just due to the competition and it's expected. We said that competition on stock sort of freed up, we would see competition coming back into the market, especially with that on-floor discounting, but also above-the-line discounting. So we did see category margin down where we -- where the team did a good job or where sort of mix helped us there, I should say, is that mix -- the sales mix, we saw a lot of -- we saw the HA categories holding up well. CE was much more challenging. And CE and tech being a lower-margin category, that obviously just played into that mix and therefore, help to raise the percentage margin. The final piece to The Good Guys margin is that in its services category, we did see some good results. And services includes telco services, so in other words connections. So we did see some good benefit from Telco Connect as The Good Guys have these Good Guys mobile plans, but we did see some good benefit there. And in that category as well, is agency sales. And agency sales of those sales we sell on behalf of the likes of Miele, now Fisher and Paykel, asko, et cetera. And yes, the gross profit we make from those goes into there, and we saw some good improvement in agency sales. So hopefully, Tom may have you a bit of color.

No, that's great. And just sorry, the first one is like the 22% margin. Is that still the expectation? Or you're reconsidering that given the performance?

Sorry. Yes. Look, we -- our expectation is it still has to come down. So -- and the reason I say that is because we actually do want to see growth return in the CE and tech side of the business. We want to see growth come back in there. That will naturally just bring the percentage margin down. The Bank of the dollar is doing all the right things there, but it will bring it down. So anticipate it will settle down, whether it's a 22% now, I don't know, maybe it might be a little bit higher than that, but we do expect it will come down it.

Your next question comes from Adrian Lemme with Citi.

Terry and Nick, congratulations on another fine result. First question I had was in New Zealand, just trying to understand the comparable CODB being up about 12%, while the comps were down 1%. Can you give a bit more detail on those extra costs that you're putting into the business, please? And should continue into the second half?

Yes. Look, so we definitely were up. They definitely -- we were definitely investing in service on the floor to ensure we weren't missing any opportunities. Maybe we did overinvest in that a little bit more than we would have liked. So we are reviewing that. Now we did see a 7.5% wage increase in there as well. So there was a significant wage increase and probably just a little bit over investment in staffing on the floor, which, as I said, we're putting a few more processes on that. I'd just say, Adrian, I think that comparable cost of business does have support offer in it as well. And as we said previously, we are investing in capability there and investing in people and processes and systems. And so yes, there's some investment in that support office ahead of the new stores coming online as well.

Great. Now that explains it. Am I'd be just to squeak in another question just on JB Perks, the storewide deals. They seem to be very popular with customers. Just want to understand, are these incrementally detracting from the gross margin? Or are they simply just replacing other retailer-funded promotions? And then just also what are you doing with the data now in JB Perks that you wanted to say 12 months ago please?

Yes. They're really just replacing other promotions that may have just gone to a wider audience rather than the members of the Perks program. So think of it as replacing some of the existing promotions that are out there. What are we doing with the data? We're not -- while we're not analyzing the data to any great detail at this point, to be honest. We just want to continue to build the numbers upward to make it actually worthwhile to do that. We are looking at some resourcing to enable us to do it, just one resource that will enable us just to be able to work with suppliers, be able to work with suppliers on being much more targeted with that database and how we might be able to leverage it.

Your next question comes from David Errington with Bank of America.

Terry, Nick, can I delve a bit more into Tommy Kierath's question on The Good Guys gross margin because that's -- that was the element of the surprise, I suppose, today, how well that's held up. You mentioned home improvement or household appliances, whichever, I suppose, household appliances is the right phrase, the resilience. Can you go a bit more deeper into that, please? What product areas it is? And can you go a bit more deeper into these telco services? Can I understood Telco Services was part of JB Hi-Fi, but I didn't realize that you're getting right into that with The Good Guys as well. So can we -- can you delve into a little bit because trying to get an understanding going forward as to what to expect? I mean you mentioned to Tom, that you're now thinking that the gross margin will be a bit better than what you thought. In other words, the business is structurally continuing to improve. But can you give us a little bit more detail just into this home and household appliance resilience, what areas you're thinking that's coming through in? And can you go a bit more in detail with those ancillary areas, which seem to be supportive very strongly to your gross margin?

Yes. When you think of The Good Guys, they are just known for the home appliances. And when it got a little bit tougher out there, we did see that the categories that suffered for them was those that they're not famous for, which is the tech side of the business, the consumer electronics side of the business. So it's all about just being relatively stronger in the mix. And I say relatively stronger, but it also performed well. We saw good growth continuing to come out of the large appliances, be it Refrigeration and Laundry. We've seen some really good growth coming out of the small appliance categories. We've seen that and including areas like floor care have continued to be strong. And that's driven promotionally in a lot of cases, but it's just, again, just dominates the strength that, that brand has and is known for those categories. Yes, when it comes down into the services, yes, we are pushing in and have been. So it's not new. We just saw some good results flowing through with the telco connections. It's obviously never going to be like JB, and JB is just such a powerhouse in those connections. But it's good. And as you can see, it's -- it actually has helped to support some margin in this half.

Very much. And Terry, can you talk a bit about how you control -- I mean this big phrase on-floor discounting. I mean clearly, how do you control that? I mean, what does it mean? I mean it's a line. We're all expecting it to have a big impact. We could probably see the impact in JB Australia. But how do you actually control it? Do you give to the -- is it totally a discretion of the sales force? Is it the customer driven? How do you actually control on floor discounting?

Well, we do have some processes around understanding it. But controlling is probably not the right word because our direction to our staff is to take the deal. So we want them to take the deal and let not worry if it's a bit skinnier than maybe it should be. But we would rather bank those dollars then let somebody else back as dollars. And if the end result is a little bit lower in the gross margin, and you can see that in JV, even though it's back at its historical levels, we're back into an environment. We're probably very used to dealing in. That's -- so in summary, it's up to the staff. But what it is, it is driven just simply by how competitive the market may be if they're going into a competitor store, getting a price, bringing it into us, we tell the staff take the deal, move on, move to the next customer.

And so what you're saying is that's now back to normal levels, that's the other part of the business that's now offsetting that? Is that a fair assumption that on floor is back to normal levels now, but it's not increasing, it's pretty normal?

Well, it's just back to where we anticipate it will be. The real challenge -- not the challenge, what dictates margin more is competitor activity -- above-the-line competitor activity. That has been aggressive as well. But when we look at it, we can see that we're having to match a lot more deals on the floor. But when I say a lot more, a lot more than COVID, back to where we were before.

Yes. So David, would say got progressively sort of increased throughout the half. So by the end of the half, you're pretty much back to where it was pre-COVID levels.

Right. So it's back to -- yes, so it's around about you're in controllable levels now you're back to normal sort of thing by the half.

Yes. Back to the normal trading environment that the business is used to.

And the other parts of the business are resilient that's more than working to offset that impact? Yes.

Yes. But if you think of the JV margin, it did see -- again, you talked about resilience of categories. You look at how strong mobile phone was, and that's a lower-margin category. How strong gaming was. Once you've got stock, customers just come to us for those products. They have a mix impact into that. But it just shows how strong and resilient they are in the market.

Your next question comes from Michael Simotas with Jefferies.

Can we talk a little bit about costs. Now you guys are always good on costs and you've had another very good result. But there's a big moderation in cost growth across both JB Hi-Fi Australia and The Good Guys. The Good Guys only grew cost about 3%. JB Hi-Fi Australia looks like it's about 4% per store. Were there any sort of specific initiatives that you put in place to manage costs as tightly as you did? And can you just talk a little bit about sort of how you're seeing labor hours per store at the moment and whether it's where you want it to be?

Yes. I think to your point, we're always very focused on costs. And as Terry pointed out this kind of cultural session. We're maintaining that low-lost in our business. As you're aware, the biggest cost is easily wages. And it is the area where we can flex the vote. So in both businesses, I said we wouldn't have changed our approach to how many manage wages, but we have absolutely maintained a very close focus on managing those hours and trying to take a reasonably conservative view as to what might happen to sales and then rostering to that sales in both JB and in Good Guys. Then Good Guys, in terms of where our hours are, we're probably pretty comfortable with where the hours are at in JB, like it is pretty much in line with what we expected. We would say probably in Good Guys in November, December, we're probably a little bit light on hours, and therefore, costs probably came in a bit under what we expected.

Okay. That makes sense. And then just a bit of a sort of housekeeping mechanical question. The change in Fisher and Paykel from a wholesale model to an agency model, I think it happened late in the half. How should we think about the impact on sales from that given you're only booking -- people can [ make ] commissioners revenue rather than the overall sale?

Yes. Well, absolutely, you're right. It does bring sales, but it's not going to be significant. I don't mean that. I mean we do well with Fisher and Paykel. But yes, I must I haven't calculated what it did to sales in...

I take a little bit of sale out. We booked the commission as sales item and at 100% gross profit at the commission is. So it's a little bit beneficial for that gross profit that we were just talking about in Good Guys as well.

So when we roll into a full period, is it going to be enough to sort of move the numbers around? Or is it just sort of in the mix given...

Not on the sales number, you're not going to say this, it's helpful. It's basis points, but it's helpful from a gross margin perspective.

Your next question comes from Shaun Cousins with UBS.

Maybe just to dig into cost of doing business a little bit maybe on the occupancy side. I think your occupancy to sales was only around 3.2%, up from 3%, it rose overall 4%. But I know there were some movement in stores, but just how did you manage CPI linkages in your rents? How does that play out there? And then what should we be thinking about conscious of store growth going forward, but just your underlying occupancy growth going forward, please?

Yes, I'll start. There's a couple of moving parts there. The first one on the CPI. Look, the accounting now under that life basic savings very unusual as everyone is very aware. But the increases come through and effectively, they're getting pushed into the depreciation and the interest over the remaining life of the lease. And you can see particularly that interest expense went up significantly, which is not sitting in occupancy and then yes, depreciation increased as well. So that is coming through. We are doing the best we can to manage that lease portfolio and look for where we think we're overpaying look for opportunities to reduce rent in locations and try and manage the overall mix but there is no doubt that CPI increases are putting cost pressure on that depreciation and that interest. They're getting a bit lost. Then the other offset for that in its JB-specific, is running through occupancy deals and we have some security costs. We've always outsourced the guys in JB. In the last 6 months, we felt through a process of -- for a number of stores moving that in-house and doing that with our own sort of type role, and that means that cost comes out of occupancy and ends up in wages and that's in sales and marketing.

Got you. Great. And maybe just more generally around CODB management and where we should think about EBIT margins in JB Australia versus pre-COVID and the prospect that EBIT margin settle at a higher level. Can you talk a bit about what's fundamentally changed in the business now versus pre-COVID. One component, I think, is online, which was 15% of sales in the half relative to 6.3% in the first half, does that help drive CODB to sales lower, but maybe what are the other structural changes you think in your business that could see EBIT margins in JB Australia settle at a higher level versus pre-COVID, please?

Yes. So is just add to that. online price is a profitable channel. I don't know a lot of retailers struggle with sort of the cost online fulfillment. When they don't have, I suppose, high service models already. But for us, we've got a model where it's an interaction between a salesperson and a customer it is high service, and so there is labor there and actually fulfilling an online order is quite efficient relative to that face-to-face sale model. So for us, it's profitable. Overall, it's broadly neutral in terms of EBIT margins between stores and sort an online. So that is playing out. In terms of broader how do we think about it? You'll note we've sort of dropped all the references to FY '19 out of the presentation. I think for us, how we're managing the business at the moment, it's how we've always managed it. We're a very sales-focused business. We're absolutely focused on driving that top line sales growth. We then are looking to maintain those margins. We talked about in JB and around those 22% gross margins. And you see at the end of the half, it was bang on that 22% for the first half as we sort of alluded to that it may get back to that. And then we just got to manage cost to and that's how we manage it from year-on-year.

Your next question comes from Bryan Raymond with JPMorgan.

First one is just on coming back to a comment, I think, Terry has made a few times calls around the essential nature of many of the products that you guys sell. It would be helpful, I guess, just to think about your business in terms of sales mix or JB mix in terms of sort of sales you generate from essential products that are on a predictable replacement cycle versus more discretionary items, which are obviously more cyclical for software or some of those -- some of the shorter term, more volatile lines. Like would you say the majority of your sales are sitting in those essential categories and if we get a picture of overall growth in those categories, that would be helpful.

We actually don't -- we don't break out those individual categories. So not to be sharing that out water market, that breakup. And you can see even with what we're calling out, categories like telco or mobile phones, we're calling it out as a big growth. So you can't anticipate that that's becoming a big category for for the business. And that is 1 category where you do Yes, it's much less discretionary than I think it's ever been. People we still saw some great growth out of the latest iPhone launch at a Google launching, we've just had the Samsung S24 launch. So we're just seeing those significant categories now just continuing to grow even even in this environment. And I think that's as much as just consumers just absolutely think of JB for tech.

Got it. Yes, I agree with that. Just following up on the comments around mobile. How much of the growth in mobile do you put down to either it could be innovation from the manufacturers versus promotional intensity coming through of Apple has had a bit more promotional intensity out there to play across the market versus Telstra and the relationship you've had there, which I understand has changed a bit over the last sort of 5-plus years. Yes, what do you think is driving that real strength in mobile to now -- it's not your largest category, it's got to be right up there as a key driver of sales?

Yes, a good question. Now just for clarity, the telco comes out, the commission structure from Telstra comes out of that when we talk mobile phones, we're talking just the hardware, the handset sales. That sets and a line under the services line, which we did call out as well as having some good growth in. But what we're seeing is we have seen ASP of new handsets increasing and consumers moving more towards the premium handsets. But without question, we did see during the year, Apple being very promotionally driven, and that's really beneficial to us. So yes, I mean, we definitely saw a lot of promotional activity in that as well.

Your next question comes from Craig Woolford with MST Market.

Terry and Nick, I just ask a question about the, I guess, inventory and the interplay with the balance sheet position. It was a very good net cash result for the first half. There was no change to the dividend policy. Is there any reasons behind that? And does it relate to the fact that you do expect inventory levels to pick up back to more normal stock turns that we saw pre-COVID?

If I say, from a cash perspective, it is seasonal high point as you're aware of this just one day of the -- we would say it's a little bit ahead of where we expected we're probably -- we're not expecting a significant inventory build from here. But we would say at the moment, we just see having a strong balance sheet is a good thing, and it does just give us capacity to capitalize on the opportunities that may present that may be an unexpected inventory opportunity or it could be something more inorganic. But at the moment, we'll just continue to review it. And if we don't have a use for that cash, we'll look to proactively return it to shareholders in an appropriate manner as we have done previously. Just right now, we're comfortable to sit on it for the next 6 months.

Just to be really clear, is capitalizing on opportunity will that include any acquisitions?

Look, like we're always looking at what opportunities might be out there. So yes, that would include if anything presented, would include that.

Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert with Jarden.

Sorry, just another question on costs. If I could just as a cracker result in terms of the C2B increase. And Nick, you just tell me here because I thought, obviously, we've got the new big take thought that would have a probably somewhere kind of 50 to 60, 70 basis points to your wage costs, given you've got your 2 head offices or one building now. Then you've obviously got minimum wage sort of running up around 5.5%. You got utilities, which are pretty punchy coming through many but some insurance costs. Are you seeing more productivity coming out of your staff? Because again, the fact that people are asking for more discounts, I thought you should lose up more time to staff from the floor, which reduces productivity. So obviously, it's a great result. I was wondering, is there anything around timing? Is this the sort of run rate we should be in placing going forward? Or is there some sort of benefit or tailwind that we might fully appreciate looking at the numbers?

No, I would say we are we are just working very, very hard on maintaining cost, but everything you called out is right.. Your fair work at 5.75%, you've got 0.5% in super. You got payroll tax and workover in Victoria, which is given where Victoria-based four offices, it's material. All those headwinds are there. The team is just doing an amazing job of doing more with less, and we're seeing the benefit of that at the moment. It's always a fine line as to how hard to cut. So we're just trying to manage that really closely.

Yes, Ben, I do think there is still -- there's still a lot of room. It's only getting stronger that research online prior to coming into a store set.

So that is -- so you think is still -- you guys are still sending your staff becoming productive in terms of dollars per hour transaction or set of things on that rate searching element?

Well, just we're comfort with at the moment, but the hours we've got on the shop floor, yes, we're still maintaining that customer experience. And yes, I think we think part of that is that customer coming in more involved and therefore, a slightly short sales process.

Just final one for me. Just on supply chain. I know you said a few times in past few years. But just given your scale and how material you are across your categories and where online is moving to as a percentage of sales. When do you think about pushing more down a centralized fulfillment standpoint? And it feels to me you're probably subsidizing a bunch of your competitors on some of those last mile drops given the numbers with deliveries direct to store. Is that something that you guys are thinking about imminently in terms of centralizing fulfillment? Or is this sort of a -- we'll keep an eye on no real change?

Look, I think always sort of innovating and adjusting. And we take online fulfillment, for example, we have to have a lot more centralized fulfillment our stores, we've condensed a number of stores and have stores and we continue to evolve the model. Will we look at broader centralization and is something we continue to work on. Terry take on these notes that supply chain is one of our sort of focus areas, and so we'll keep reviewing it. I wouldn't say you'd see any significant change in the next 12 months from outside.

Your next question comes from Mark Wade with CLSA.

On the muted class action over the warranties there, looks like you haven't taken a provision. I'm just trying to gauge like what could be our stake in terms of the historic exposure and more importantly, looking forward, like has it already or might have potentially change the sales act on how you go to market with pushing those warranties?

Look, Mark, as you're aware, it is obviously a live legal action. So we can't comment. You would see from SX announcement and as we said out in the contingent liability note in the financial statements, we certainly believe that we haven't done anything wrong. And we take our legal obligations very seriously, and we believe we've complied with all relevant laws at all times. So at the moment, we don't think there is any anything that requires a provision being booked.

In terms of -- yes, at the present, is it business as usual in terms of new house in stores, and they're still pushing the warranty. So it feels like it's just you're going to continue as is you've done nothing wrong. No, nothing really to see here. Is that right?

Yes. I mean it is business as usual.

Okay. Okay. I'll leave it at that. And one more if I could sneak it in. i'm bit -- I get asked this by clients, like I'm a bit puzzled myself even on the difference in the relative sales performance between The Good Guys and JB Australia. Is that in the pack, home appliances has been a better market in terms of more resilient, higher margins than consumer electronics. But I'm trying to understand why The Good Guys are doing a lot worse than JB, is it -- if it's not product mix, had you explained is it demographics, store location, range, price, like what's the secret sauce there?

Well, look, it's just a case that JB is just so dominant. It's just no one in all those categories, and that's just built that up over, overyears. The reason it is in The Good Guys is because it provides that total solution for a customer coming in that may be looking at smaller clients or whatever, but they're family, they've got some kids going to school. They buy a laptop and getting fine we see they're taking -- they're obviously getting some connections in there. So it's important for the mix as a total destination, so that side is absolutely important. It's not about price. The price is there. Might be a bit softer and we're probably cycling some competitor activity. Competitors are really strong over the last 6 months, you've seen that. When there's a lot of promotional activity, customers will tend to drift to where they are used to or just have enormous trust in and in this case, but in consumer electronics, it's JB. And in the reverse, it's HA for the home appliances for The Good Guys.

Your next question comes from Ross Curran with Macquarie.

Can I just ask a question about New Zealand. Just the business is at an underlying basis, loss-making in the first half. I understand you're investing for growth. How long can we expect this investment growth period a phase to last for? Is it going to be a multiyear investment that we can expect coming through the P&L?

Yes. I would say we've always said that for us over the short to medium term, which I say is over the next 2 years is about growing that top line sales and getting market share and getting relevance with customers and getting relevance with suppliers. Acknowledging though, it is tough there at the moment, Ross, and we do aren't planning on losing the amount of money we lost in the first half and -- but we're still very comfortable with the longer-term strategy. And we can absolutely say that the sales are getting there in a very competitive and challenging market currently.

Your next question comes from Lisa Deng with Goldman Sachs.

Just a question on the improving comps that we're seeing from second quarter into January. Can we talk a little bit about the key drivers as you see it? Is it just simply because the comps last year getting easier? Or do you see a fundamentally more optimistic consumer? Or do you think it's funded by even more perhaps promotions relative to competition? Where are you seeing this driver of accelerating cost?

Well, yes, Lisa, we're definitely seeing -- we definitely see less demanding costs. So I do find that hard though, because we're still cycling such unusual periods in the past, but less demand in comps. Where is it going to go is obviously a bit of a challenging question. I guess with some of the more positive news in the economy, that's good, hopefully, for us if people have seen the inflation settle therefore, interest rates settling and maybe at least stabilizing tax cuts. There's a lot of positive talk out there, and that may be what we're hoping that may assist us through this next half, but it's just so much crystal balling.

Are you seeing any signs of that in like the transaction patterns? Like do you think it's still mainly a replacement cycle or people are buying more incremental items? Like are you seeing any initial signs of a more optimistic consumer.

No, other than the January results that you can see there. But no, we're not -- it would be a bit early to say there's any patents in there that we think are a good real positive signs of the future other than that's less demanding comps.

Right. Just a follow-up on the competition. Can you give us a little bit more color on where you're seeing primarily competition coming from? Is it online? Is it more -- or more competitors, how are they trending also into the second half of including January?

Yes, it's mostly bricks-and-motor. So it's a more traditional competitors. It's obviously tougher. Nobody wants to see negative comps. Everyone's out there really fighting hard as we are for growth. So it's just coming out of the traditional competitors. And probably, again, moving back into a landscape, we're not unfamiliar with, it's just that we haven't seen it but probably in the last 2 years, 2 or 3 years.

You wouldn't say it's any more worse than what it was, I guess, pre-pandemic?

No, no, no. I mean, no, I wouldn't say the state's any worse, just we haven't seen it for a while, so we just -- you do need to readjust or rebate yourself.

Your next question comes from Phil Kimber with E&P Capital.

Just a question. During the half, you've called out mobiles, both handsets and connections. Just wondering what the trend has been. You had the Optus issue during the half and your position with Telstra, I assume benefited from that. Was that -- did that help for a short period of time and then things have gone back to normal? Or is that still -- that those issues are still flowing through and helping the business?

Yes. I mean we definitely did help a short period of time. The feedback that I was given was it was a very short period of time. We saw a big spike and then it bounced back. And there until it's been pretty hard to read what's happening, whether it's a continued issue from there or not. But we've been seeing over the last few years this good growth even outside of the issue.

Right. And can I just following up on Lisa's question. Just on January because definitely seems to be better than the feedback that you can see in either the credit card data or some of the other industry feedback we had, which is great that you guys are doing better. Is there anything unusual being more promotional, there was more sales or anything? Or is it just it is what it is? And January, you guys are doing a much better job than what the rest of the market seems to be reporting?

Yes. Yes, there's no real change into what we're doing. And internally, we never say we're doing a great job, of course. But it's just been more of the same promotional activity. And again, that's just the strength of the teams here. I mean they just -- they know what they've got to deliver. They know what categories to focus on. It doesn't mean we're going any deeper or harder. It's just other categories to focus on.

We are showing no further questions.

Fantastic. Well, again, I appreciate everyone's time on the call today, and thanks for your interest in the business. And no doubt we'll see many of you over the next few days. Thank you.