Wickes Group plc (WIX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here today and also for those who are joining by webcast. I'm here with our CFO, Mark George. And together, we would like to take you through the performance of the business for the year ending 30th of December 2023 and to share our outlook for the rest of the year. We will also highlight how our distinctive, balanced business model and continued investment in our proven growth levers is driving market outperformance and presents us with a great opportunity in the U.K.'s large home improvement market. I'm delighted to say we've delivered a robust sales performance with our relentless focus on providing great value and service for customers in what continues to be a challenging market. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my 8,000 colleagues for their incredible work in delivering these results. We've delivered some great results across each of our strategic levers with significant growth in our digital TradePro scheme, record customer satisfaction scores, a successful relaunch of our ready to fit Wickes Lifestyle Kitchens range with sales up 24% and good progress on our new store openings and refit program, more of which I'll share later. Investment in our growth levers, combined with disciplined cost management and successful execution of our productivity plans has resulted in us achieving profits ahead of market expectations and continued market share growth. We have a strong cash position at the year-end and are maintaining our full year dividend at 10.9p, in line with guidance. And during 2023, we completed GBP 10 million of the GBP 25 million share buyback program. We do expect 2024 to be another challenging year, but confidence in our balanced business model and growth levers makes us comfortable with market consensus forecast. You will have seen today that we've announced our acquisition of a majority stake in Solar Fast which is a leading solar installations business and will give us a great platform on which to build our leading presence in the exciting and emerging market for home energy solutions. I'd now like to hand over to Mark to take you through the numbers.

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. So as David mentioned, 2023 has been a good result for Wickes in challenging market conditions. But before we get into the numbers, I just wanted to make a note of the fact that we have changed the labeling on our revenue streams. So what we previously called Core, which was product sales to trade and DIY customers, will now be called Retail. And where previously, we had our kitchens and bathrooms showroom business called Do-it-for-me, it will now be Design and Installation. We're hoping that, that will be clearer for everybody going forward. The numbers, by the way, are exactly the same. They haven't changed. It's just the labels. So back to the results. Revenue is broadly flat for the year, although there was some variation across the year, particularly in Design and Installation, and we'll talk you through that in a moment. Gross margin was up in the year by about 20 basis points as the effects of inflation eased across the year. Our adjusted profit before tax after SaaS impact was GBP 52.0 million. Now that was down year-on-year, and that primarily reflected increases in our operating costs and more on that in a moment. As David mentioned, we continue to operate with a very strong balance sheet. We ended the year with GBP 97.5 million of cash, but that is the low point in our working capital cycle. We actually averaged GBP 155 million across the year. And in line with the capital allocation policy that we announced in July of 2023, we are confirming the full year dividend of 10.9p per share. And as David mentioned, we have completed by the end of 2023, GBP 10.1 million out of our GBP 25 million share buyback. That rose to GBP 12.5 million in February. And this morning, we're starting the second half with another GBP 12.5 million in the coming weeks. So just looking at the P&L now. So 2023, we started to see real easing in inflation in the products that we sell. But there's still a lot of inflation in our cost base. So that compression in the P&L made things much harder. And in light of that, I think the profitability result that we've shown is a lot of resilience in the business. Revenue is broadly flat, and we've got a chart on that in a moment to break that down. Gross profit was up 19 basis points year-on-year, and there were 2 effects here. The first is that there was a slight dilution in the profit in the trading margin from the products we sold mainly because of the growth in TradePro, which of course, is sold at a 10% discount. But more than offsetting that was productivity savings in our distribution costs, which are included in gross profit. And so overall, gross profit was actually up year-on-year. Now outside of distribution, other operating costs have increased substantially in the year with inflation in wages and energy in particular, but very much in line with our guidance, which I'll show you in a moment. But careful cost control overall has enabled us to deliver adjusted PBT of GBP 59.5 million on a pre SaaS basis and GBP 52 million on a post SaaS basis. So let's break that down a little bit more for you. So this slide shows the sales breakdown between Retail and Design and Installation in each half of the year. So in Retail, you can see an improving picture between first half and second half. And in the table on the right, you can see that on a quarterly basis. We've had 3 consecutive quarters now of like-for-like growth. And as you can see, inflation easing considerably over the years, starting in Q1 at 9% and actually being in mild deflation by the end of the year. So actually, a strong improvement in volume as we progress through the year. Design and Installation really a tale of 2 halves. So in the first half, we had strong delivered sales numbers, and this was supported by the elevated order book that we were still working through from that post-COVID period. But then in the second half, 3 factors meant that we were in negative like-for-like from our delivered sales basis. The first is that the order book had become much more normalized. The second was the software implementation issue that we mentioned in our trading statement a few weeks ago, which just prevented us from delivering sales as quickly as we wanted to, to some customers. And the third was just a softer demand in market for these bigger ticket projects. So given the overall market backdrop of a weaker consumer, we think the sales performance for 2023 was robust, particularly for Retail. So this chart shows the profit bridge of how we've delivered the profit during the year. Now in the first 2 bars on this chart, this is trading margin, and we've taken distribution out of this is slightly different from gross margin at a statutory level. But just the margin on the products that we sold, you can see they're slightly negative, particularly in our Design and Installation business. And the 2 factors that drove that. One is the weaker demand I talked about in the second half. But also another factor is the higher cost of credit. We support our customers and subsidize them for the consumer credit we offer in our Design and Installation business. And as rates went up, we didn't push our rates up to consumers. So that cost went up to us as a cost in the business. That comes through into margin. But on costs, we've delivered very much in line with what we expected for the year. So you may remember, we guided at the beginning of the year that we would have productivity savings of around GBP 20 million that would offset all the cost inflation we had in the business, except in energy costs. And as you can see, that's exactly what we have delivered. Energy costs themselves have actually come in a bit better than we expected. So we guided to an incremental GBP 10 million year-on-year. They've come in at around GBP 7 million, as you can see, a combination of some energy saving initiatives in the business, plus also rates in the market coming down in the second half. And then the growth investment that you can see there, very much as planned areas of technology, our property program and also our new customer experience center for our design and installation customers. Interest income in the year was higher, a combination of the strong cash we had in the bank plus also rising interest rates. And that helped to offset the increase in consumer credit costs that we were facing earlier in this bridge. Now we've shown here adjusted profit before tax with and without the impact of SaaS, which you can see was an impact of GBP 7.5 million in the year. From 2024 onwards, we will just report PBT on a post SaaS basis. So turning now to cash and the balance sheet. We continue to operate with a strong balance sheet, ending the year with GBP 97.5 million of cash. And that's after the first GBP 10 million of the buyback. As I mentioned earlier, our working capital cycle means that December is the low point for us in terms of a cash position, and we averaged GBP 155 million during the year. CapEx was very much in line with guidance. CapEx of GBP 38 million. You need to add to that another GBP 7.5 million of SaaS investment combined around GBP 45 million total investment in the business in the year, very much in line with our guidance. We've listed out here GBP 8.9 million of IT separation costs. Now this is the final stage of the separation program to move our systems away from our previous parent, Travis Perkins. This is now complete, and there will be no costs of that sort from '24 onwards. So you can see the impact of the dividend there and our share buyback program. So in total, those 2 things combined we've delivered GBP 37.5 million of cash back to shareholders in the year. So I'll finish with outlook and guidance. So the first 11 weeks of trading of 2024, the Retail side of our business has been in line with the previous year, which I think is a good result given the really miserable weather we've been having. Now Design and Installation is in negative territory in both ordered and delivered sales. The continuation of weaker demand that we talked about in Q4 is coming through. Our conversion rates on projects are still really strong. There's just fewer leads in the market. In 2024, we're going to have good productivity plans, but they won't be enough to offset all of the cost increases that we're facing. The bigger-than-expected increases in business rates and in national minimum wage in particular. But overall, we're comfortable with the consensus for the year for '24. Now the technical guidance we've also provided for you there. I won't go through those, but that's for your information. So to summarize, the business continues to deliver well in a tough environment, we've beaten expectations for profit for 2023 with tight cost control. We anticipate 2024 to be another challenging year where it will be hard to grow sales and cost inflation will be high. But we have a strong balance sheet, a clear strategy and proven growth levers for when recovery comes. So with that, I'll hand back to David for a business update.

Thank you, Mark. This slide will be familiar to you. It outlines the strong portfolio of growth levers that we have to win in the market. I'll now take a few minutes to share how our investment in these growth levers is delivering results. 2023 has been a fantastic year for our local trade business as more and more trade people turn to Wickes to save them both time and money. Our digital TradePro scheme makes it easy and convenient for members to shop through the app and our store teams pick, pack and dispatch straight into their vans, all with a 10% discount. As a reminder, TradePro customers are our most strategically valuable customers. They spend 10x that of an average DIY customer. You can see from this chart that we're making great strides in growing membership to the scheme with record levels of sign-ups, 135,000 trades people joined in 2023, taking total membership to 881,000. Growth in membership has driven an 11% growth in sales in the year, and encouragingly, we are seeing a very high retention rate of active customers at 85%. We continue to focus on improving the experience for this key customer base and have made further improvements to the TradePro app. For example, we've added new account features, including project planning functionality and the ability to simply see a product price with or without VAT, which we know the trades find very helpful as it's something that most of our competitors don't provide as their pricing is typically ex-VAT. We run regular communications to TradePro members using our machine learning tool. This provides us with the data and insight to personalize and tailor our communications to them, which is driving material incremental revenues. And these are busy people. We regularly ask them through our Mood of the Nation research program about their pipeline of work. And currently, more than 1 in 4 tell us, they have worked lined up for over 12 months. Finally, on this slide, until now, TradePro has very much been focused on the local small trader. However, we are now building out the platform to access the wider B2B market, targeting larger businesses, trade federations and SME operators. And I'm pleased to say that we're already enjoying some good success in getting these businesses to sign up to the scheme. And I look forward to sharing more information with you about our TradePro and our local trade business at the Capital Markets event that we'll be holding in May. Turning now to the Design and Installation side of our business, which as Mark has already explained, was previously called Do-it-for-me. This market has been more subdued this year with people cautious about spending on those big ticket items like a new kitchen or bathroom. And to ensure customers continue to come to us for their new kitchen or bathroom, we have delivered some exciting innovation to both products and service. We rebranded our showroom kitchen range as Wickes Bespoke Kitchens and introduced 8 beautiful new kitchens. We anticipated that the market will be more subdued and took the intentional move to expand our presence in the high-volume market for lower-priced point kitchens with the relaunch of our ready to fit range as Wickes Lifestyle Kitchens with 15 stylish new kitchens, they come with a free design service provided by our experienced design consultants, either in-store or online in our virtual design showroom. And we're really pleased with the results so far, having seen a 24% increase in sales since the relaunch at the half year. This is a significant product category for us in a large market, and we're excited about the growth opportunities it offers. We have always -- also invested significantly in tech innovation to enhance our customer service and installation proposition. We have introduced new field service management software for our installer teams that systemizes each of the steps along the installation process, reducing manual activity and potential human error and increasing the speed of the customer journey. Our new customer experience center is now live for all new Design and Installation customers, giving every customer their own personal project manager who coordinates and manages communication between them, the installer and product delivery teams. This has reduced the number of customer queries as well as the average time to installation. And we've seen this translate into a very strong Net Promoter Score of 92%. Our installer base of more than 3,000 teams is one of the great strengths of our Design and Installation proposition and our customers greatly value the quality and assurance that our Wickes installer teams guarantee. And now more than half of all customers use our installation service. We are also delighted to retain our distinction level of Service Award from the Institute of Customer Service for our installation quality. When it comes to DIY, we've been working hard to broaden our customer base and to adapt and innovate our product offering to meet the demands of today's consumers. We've seen through our research and as people are more cost conscious, they're still looking to do DIY but they are doing smaller projects, such as decorating or putting up shelves. With this in mind, we have expanded our product ranges that cater to these smaller projects. As customers continue to search for ways to reduce their energy costs and improve their carbon footprint, we've developed our range of energy-efficient products as well as strengthened our marketing and promotional activity in this space. In addition, the pandemic brought about a real shift in the market as more people especially more women and younger people gave DIY a go. We sought to capitalize on this by proactively marketing to younger consumers and women to broaden our brand's awareness and appeal as well as the go-to brand for confident DIYs, we want to be seen as the place to go by those people who might not be so DIY savvy. And we've been surprised and delighted with the results, seeing a significant growth in our female customer base from 1 in 6 in 2019 to over 1 in 4 today. Our adoption of more digital payment options, such as Apple and Google Pay and Buy Now Pay Later tools such as Klarna have also helped us gain access to a younger customer demographic and brought incremental revenue. As a brand, we continue to strengthen our digital market share, which is up 1.5 percentage points to 16% as measured by SimilarWeb. Turning now to new stores and refits. As our refit program progresses, the emphasis now is on building out the network with brand-new stores. We opened 3 fantastic new stores in Chelmsford, Torquay and Widnes in the year, creating some 90 jobs in those communities. Of our 229 stores, 175 of them are now refitted in the new format, and we're very encouraged by the performance. We consistently see a step change in sales and ROCE of around 25% in these newly refitted stores. Across our estate, we continue to invest in enhancing our service model, have increased the square footage of fulfillment space in over 23 stores by a further 36,000 square feet, giving us the capacity to fill more click and collect and home delivery orders. And looking ahead to this year, our refit and store opening teams will be equally busy with 8 new refits and 4 new stores to deliver, including the opening of a new store in Long Eaton this Friday. The output of this investment and development of our growth levers can be seen in the impressive results we are achieving across these key measures. Through the lens of the 2 key digital shopping journeys, click & collect and our home delivery channel, we are delivering record levels of customer satisfaction. These are the 2 service touch points where customers have the highest service expectations, not least when you turn up to a customer's door and step over the threshold of their home and 2023 has been a record year across both measures. You'll see from the chart on the top right that we've made market share gains over the past 5 years. This isn't simply a function of more stores as we actually have fewer stores now than in 2019 compared to the overall store number growth in the market. We're delighted to successfully lap the incredibly strong share growth in 2022, that was boosted by a strong first quarter as we were one of the only retailers with a ready supply of fence panels when the country had those terrible storms in the February and March of that year. A key measure for any retailer is sales densities. We have some of the highest levels of sales per square foot in the industry, thanks to our multichannel service model and seamless integration of digital and physical sales with 2/3 of sales starting online and 98% of sales touching the store. And as to our Built to Last responsible business strategy. I won't go through each pillar, but just pick out some highlights. Our Wickes community program goes from strength to strength where we are all tremendously proud that in 2023, we helped around 1,500 community projects, making a difference to the lives of some 500,000 people across the country. Our switch to 100% renewable energy has put us well on track to deliver our Scope 1 and 2 science-based targets. And in our homes pillar, I've already mentioned that we've ramped up our range of energy-efficient products with the least energy-efficient housing stock in Europe. We want to help customers find ways to improve their energy efficiency of their home and reduce their bills. And indeed, as we seek to respond to this need, we have announced our plans to acquire the majority stake in Gas Fast Limited, which is the parent company of Solar Fast. Solar Fast is a solar panels installations business, who in the last 2 years have installed around 3,700 projects in U.K. homes. This acquisition will enable us to rapidly accelerate our Design and Installation growth lever and enter in a meaningful way to the emerging and exciting market for energy saving solutions. With the strength of the Wickes brand and our unique experience in designing and installing complex projects at scale, we see a great opportunity to be a trusted brand in what is currently a highly fragmented market and to build a market leader presence. The full details of the acquisition can be found in a separate RNS that we issued this morning. But in summary, we are acquiring a majority stake and plan to grow the business with the current management team. So to conclude, 2023 has undoubtedly been a challenging environment, but our balanced business model, great value and service, relentless focus on cost control and investment in our growth levers has seen us deliver robust sales and profits ahead of market expectations. We do expect 2024 to remain challenging, and we will continue to invest both in our growth levers and through the acquisition of Solar Fast because the scale of the opportunity is great. I've said before that strong businesses get stronger in tough times.

Matthew from Singer's. Can we just kick off with Solar Fast? It looks like quite an interesting acquisition. Maybe elaborate a little bit, if you could, on the phasing of trying to drive out some synergy and growth and particularly in relation to air source heat pumps, could you give us some time lines, but it looks like working together, you could leverage a lot of growth and drive some synergy, but maybe just give us some timing and so forth would be helpful.

I think in the first instance, as I just highlighted, we expect this business to be led by the existing management team, no rapid integration. What we believe we can bring in the first instance is obviously through the scale of a national footprint, 230 stores, millions of customers, millions of digital customers that we can really help fill the hopper in terms of lead generation and start to help convert and grow the business. So I think our primary focus in the first instance, is how do we help feed the top of the funnel in terms of that lead generation and get them up and away in terms of further growth. I think from a timing point of view, Mark, would you...

Yes, from a timing perspective, I mean we see energy solutions in the home in a number of areas. I think solar is obviously where we have started with this acquisition. But worth noting that the heritage of the Solar Fast business is in gas boilers and they still have a small gas boiler business. And so there's a real capability there with some synergies for our kitchen and bathroom business, for example, because many kitchen and bathroom projects either need a new boiler or a boiler being moved. But that's also a stepping stone to air source heat pumps, which you mentioned. At the moment, the solar market is about GBP 1.1 billion in the U.K. We think that will grow to GBP 1.5 billion or so over the next 5 years. But the air source heat pump market, we think, will be considerably bigger than that by 2028. As we all know, it hasn't really taken off yet, but we think it will do. And so that's a significant opportunity. In terms of the timing of when we with Solar Fast will be in air source heat pumps, that's not decided yet. The market hasn't really -- isn't taking off to the extent that, that's an urgent need. So we're starting with solar, EV chargers will also be interesting, albeit a much smaller market, but complementary to solar, as you might expect. And then gas and air source heat pumps to come.

Okay. And just in terms of the capacity they've got in relation to -- if you fill the funnel, I mean, do they need to build the capacity in order to build out the volume of installations compared to what they're doing at the moment?

I think we'll be very mindful in terms of how we sort of like build capacity going forward to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves because we feel that we could probably feel the hopper reasonably swiftly. So there'll be some disciplined management in terms of that growth. I think the other thing that's just worth pointing out about solar, and as you know and I say this often, we have the oldest and most inefficient housing stock in Europe. We are a property owning democracy. We had 29 million homes in the U.K. Today, only 3% of them have solar. So if we're to find our way to a carbon-neutral economy and with the help customers save money here, this has to be a great growth lever for the future.

Sorry. And then I had a question in relation to market share. Obviously, you mentioned the comp with your fencing panels where you outperformed the market. If you strip out that from last year and this year, are there any areas where you feel you've moved back -- you've gone backwards and a scenario of focus, is there any particular area of kind of vulnerabilities a lot of competitors doing some new initiatives?

No. I think in the round, we performed very well. We continue to outperform the market. We -- again, we see good outperformance in some of those more strategic areas we focus around particularly sort of like decorating particularly garden. And of course, you've seen the Wickes sort of Lifestyle Kitchen results, I mean, 24% growth in terms of revenue there just in the second half. So I think in the round, we're really pleased with the continued market outperformance of the business. And it was -- it was a good effort to lap what was a really step up in that in 2022.

Shane Carberry, of Goodbody. I'll go one at time if that's okay. The first is to pick up on the last point around Lifestyle Kitchens. David, obviously, pretty rapid growth in the second half. Kind of from a medium-term perspective, does it make you think any differently about your kitchen offering? Like what will the balance look like in terms of kind of lower-priced kitchens versus medium and higher on kind of a 3-year basis, I suppose?

Yes. I mean, how I view that is, I think we are now becoming a more complete kitchen provider. So previously, as an organization through our showroom business, our design installation business, we had always been like what I would call the better and best part of the market, an average sales price of GBP 7,500, GBP 8,000 plus. But close to 2/3 of the volume sits in the GBP 4,000 and below sort of like price area. So I think we've made a very successful and meaningful step now to provide good, better, best tiering in terms of kitchen projects. And we would expect over the time to grow the number of kitchen projects that we can access now as a consequence. I can't quite call the balance at the moment. But if you think it through the lens of projects, the average sale for a Lifestyle is probably around about GBP 2,000 -- GBP 7,000, GBP 8,000 in the showroom. So from a revenue point of view, if you're delivering that kind of growth, you're getting more and more projects into consumers' homes.

Got you. And then in terms of sticking with the kind of kitchens and bathrooms stuff. If I look at the conversion that you talked about, Mark, actually being -- leads are down, but actually conversion still ticking up. Is that the key part of the rationale for conversion being better? Or is this how you're targeting customers? Just a little bit of color on that would be helpful.

I think if I just -- if I give my perspective, and Mark can add some there. I think this is where the strength and uniqueness of our proposition end-to-end really comes to play. So for those that are in the kitchen or bathroom market at the moment, they're serious. It's coming in the top of the hopper. They're definitely not window shopping. They're more serious about the project. And when they understand the uniqueness and the distinctive proposition we have from design all the way through to installation. And don't forget we can do the tiling, the flooring, we can sell you the paint, we can lock up the entire project in -- with one provider that just works really well. Nobody does it in the way that we do this in this marketplace, and I think that's just really shining through. So you see the conversion is higher. AOV is also in a strong place because what we are seeing is more customers taking our full installation service as well as I called out earlier. So more than 1 in 2 now will take installation from us as well. So this service part of our business affords us a great opportunity going forward.

I think just to add to that, the end-to-end component, not only from a project management simplicity for the customer but also because we can offer finance on the whole thing, including the installation as well. So that's really attractive, obviously, in the current environment, and we're offering interest-free credit on that. And just to put some context on the scale, our leads are down around sort of 15% to 20% year-on-year at the moment. But our audit sales, as we said in the announcement this morning in the first few weeks of the year, are in single-digit decline. So that increase in conversion, you can see is really quite powerful.

That's really helpful. And sorry, last one for me. Just in terms of the retail side of things. I assume the pricing dynamics between DIY and Trade are relatively similar. Kind of a bit more color on, I suppose, the volume between both would be really helpful.

I can give...

I mean, look, in the round, encouragingly. And we have -- we started the year with around about 9% inflation in the business. We exited the year at about minus 2%. So we're into a deflation environment that has continued into the start of 2024. Our performance is one driven of overall volume and volume transactions in growth. So we're the right side of where you want to be when you're moving to a deflation environment because we're growing our customer base, particularly through the lens of trade we're seeing greater growth in terms of customers there. DIYs are just being a bit more thoughtful and intentional about the nature of the projects they do. They're just taking onboard some of the smaller projects, just freshing up rooms, hanging pictures, hanging shelves and so forth. They're shopping a little bit more like you'd expect to see in grocery or any other area of retail really. They've just been a bit more thoughtful, take on slightly smaller projects, smaller baskets. But as I say in the round, transactional volume is in growth.

Kate Calvert from Investec. Could you just talk about your expectations on gross margin for FY '24 in terms of some of the headwinds and tailwinds? And could you do likewise on cost as well? Because I think I remember, your SaaS costs are going to be lower, it would be in the current year than last year and things like that. So just run through some of the moving parts, that would be useful.

Yes. So gross margin, we would expect to be broadly flat year-on-year. We don't think there'll be a big movement. You'll recall that in 2022, when we had a lot of inflation in the business, and we were passing on the cash number rather than the percentage margin. We had a bit of dilution as a result of that. That's obviously no longer the case because we're in sort of mild deflation and expect inflation to be broadly flat for the year. We'll have a continued slight headwind on percentage rate from TradePro growth, which we expect to be good again this year. But overall, we will hope to manage to broadly flat for gross margin. On costs, actually, our SaaS cost will be probably slightly higher the impact this year, probably GBP 8 million to GBP 10 million or something like that in the year in terms of the impact on our PBT number as we start to build the investment in that area. Overall, the cost inflation as I mentioned, is national minimum wage is very significant for us. That's coming in at 10%, again, business rates at 6%. Energy costs year-on-year will be broadly flat. And you might recall that in 2023, the first quarter of 2023 was on an old rate, which was much lower. We then had 3 quarters at the new sort of higher market rates. Rates have come down a little bit since then, but of course, in 2024, we'll have 4 quarters and that sort of offsets each other. So energy broadly flat. So it's mainly minimum wage impact and business rates plus general cost inflation elsewhere.

And just on the cost of credit, you called that out as an impact on gross margin, was that annualized...

Not fully, no. And the cost actually will be going up because we are doing more in the area of interest-free credit as well. So that's also going to be reflected in what we charge to customers overall for our design and installation services, but there will be an increase in consumer credit costs this year.

Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt, and I've got 3, almost. Can you talk around the capacity utilization in your designers at the moment? Because obviously they're shifting time from I guess, high-value kitchens to Lifestyle Kitchens over the last 6 months or so. Where are they? And if the market picks up, how easy and quickly can you add and onboard and upscale more designers? That's the first question. One at time or all of them?

Yes. I think -- look, I think we're in good shape. We have around about 600 design consultants across the store say of 230 stores. So sort of in the 2 to 3 area. Interestingly, we're seeing good adoption of design-led solutions into Wickes Lifestyle. So as consumers seek value but want the service of design, we're seeing good growth there. So back to sort of a number of projects coming through, whilst the headline revenue on average per project is lower, there's still the work to be done for us to add that value and that great service through design. So well utilized. We do have something called a kitchen and bathroom assistant, which provides leverage for the designer as well. So as things start to recover, we can work with that resource in the business to accommodate. So this won't be a requirement to employ many more people. I think we can flex the resource we've got and purpose it onto the things that matter most as capacity increases.

One thing perhaps just to add to that. On the capacity as we add Lifestyle Kitchens, one of the things that we found prior to launching the design service for Lifestyle Kitchens, was that about 2 in 10 of our customers that came through the journey of the showroom, went through the process of the design being created for their bespoke kitchen. We weren't able to meet their budget but we were then able -- we're now able to do that with Lifestyle. But of course, the design consultants have already done the work in those cases. They just need to change the product. So it's not all incremental work.

And the other innovation that came on stream towards the back end of last year is our Customer Experience Center, where we've almost removed the project management requirement from the design consultant. We keep them focused on design and we've now centralized that where every individual customer has their own program manager that organizes the installer of the product and the engagement with the design consultants. That again, creates some headroom as things start to come through.

Second one is on TradePro. Obviously, the [indiscernible] keep going up and the revenue is going up. What's happening to the cost to serve of those customers? Are you getting more people ordering the materials on a Sunday night for the week or at least the first half of the week picking them up half 6 at the store, taking extreme capacity?

Yes. The general cost to serve pattern isn't changing. TradePro actually are on the whole lower cost to serve in many ways because they like to come into a store to pick up the products, then they're in control of their own timetable. And as you know, that's the lowest cost to serve for us. They don't really do a lot of home delivery, which is our more expensive cost to serve. In terms of marketing, also, we would spend much higher proportion of our marketing budget on consumers, whether it's for DIY or for design and installation rather than TradePro. And obviously, with scale, everything works a little bit better through the distribution through the stores, so we can drive more volume through more TradePro customers. That's a great thing in our network.

I think it's really good part of aftermarket raise is that, because it's a combination of cat also that focus, Sam. If you remember, 150 lines make up 35% of our sales every week. They have a huge propensity to be trade lines. So there's a velocity and an economics that underpins this. It's just very well leveraged.

And I guess, related to that, the last 1 is on -- going back to the solar and energy efficiency. What scope is there that that's going to alter your kind of SKU mix over the medium term in terms of stocking stuff that's going to be used for the refurb and maintenance of solar and energy efficiency projects? And what does that do to the profile of the business?

Yes. So I mean, the Solar Fast business will be slightly separate from what we stock on the shelves in terms of products. We will also have individual products for energy-saving solutions that either trades people can buy or consumers can buy to do the installation themselves. Where Solar Fast is actually about the full end-to-end service. So I think the acquisition won't affect that too much. But we will increasingly and have been doing is finding ways to allow consumers to make these changes in their home themselves, whether that's LED lighting or draft insulation, that kind of thing. Insulation for loft has been, as you know, very popular. But we will also look for other products like heat pumps and associated ancillaries and potentially other products as well.

No more questions in the room, but we do have questions on the conference call. So Saske, maybe you could introduce people on the conference call.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Wayne Brown from Liberum Capital.

Sorry for not being there. I've got 3 questions, I'll just take them 1 in turn, if you don't mind. Really good growth in the TradePro members update to 880,000, but I'm just struggling to contextualize that in terms of the market. So if you could just help because the [ O&S ] says there's about 800,000 self-employed people in construction and Kingfisher says there's 900,000 trades people in the U.K. So either that's an unbelievably high percentage of market share or there's potentially a lot of customers there that are gaming the system for the 10% discount. So if you could just try help me understand how you've been so successful and how that number gets to such a large quantum?

Let me take that one, Mark. Wayne, so look, in the first instance, we have a slightly different number. So our number for the broader market will be there probably around about 3 million skilled tradesmen people in the U.K., probably around about 2 million of them are what we would call sort of in the small to medium sort of like sectors rather than main employees of large construction or businesses. So I think through that math, you'll probably say we're around about 40% to 50% penetration of the opportunity. So still a big opportunity, I think, and headroom to grow the scheme. But the important thing for us, it's never really been about the quantity. It's always been about the quality of that customer they're bringing into the business. So we're very mindful to your point that we don't let people game the system that we do verify that these are proper trades people before we bring them on to the TradePro scheme. I think I'm going to be wrong, I'm not saying it's 100% fail safe, but we do, do our best to make sure that we're bringing quality rather than quantity. The quantity is just really, I think, a reflection of the strength of our proposition and the distinctiveness of that offer, sharp price, super convenient, all digital, will pick, pack and dispatch into your van in 30 minutes, heavy side stuff. We're not talking about a light model. We're talking about aggregates, fence, panels, timber and so forth. So I think it sits in the proposition. I think there is more headroom for growth in terms of customer numbers, but it's a quality game, not a quantity one when we think about it.

Just to add to that Wayne, the 881,000 is our total membership, which is effectively anyone that's ever been a member of TradePro. Some of those may have retired, for example, in the years since we started the scheme. As the scheme moves on in terms of years, we're conscious that actually what really matters is how many of those members are trading each year. And so one of the things we're going to talk more about in our Capital Markets event in May is opening up a little bit more about participation and rates of trading, which, as David said, are very good, and we'll share more of that in May.

Great. That answers one of my follow-up questions. But could you also just -- looking at the solar business, could you just give us an indication of what the margin structure in that business looks like? I mean my guesstimate is that it's probably a 25-odd percent gross margin business. But a clarification from you on how the profit builds up would be helpful.

Yes. So I think gross margin, if you include installation would be, I don't want to give an exact number, but it would be a healthy margin actually. And the numbers that we provided in the RNS, showed you that in the year to April '23, the Solar Fast business did GBP 33 million of revenue and GBP 3.9 million of EBITDA. So that gives you a sense of the bottom line EBITDA that they were able to deliver with that volume. So it can be a profitable business. Marketing acquisition costs are quite significant in that space. As you would expect, one of the things that we want to bring to that business is an opportunity to acquire customers in a more organic fashion, whether that's through what we do in stores or what we do online, through our e-mail or social and digital channels and an important distinguishing factor for success in that market is going to be marketing acquisition at scale.

Sure. Okay. No, that's really helpful. And then 1 last one from me. This question is more about your view on where the long-term margins in the business can get to. So I mean, if I just look at big picture, you've obviously got some deflation coming through some of your core lines. Lifestyle Kitchen is doing well, but clearly, that's the bottom end of the price curve, [indiscernible] going up the price curve. You've obviously got cost pressures, but everyone's got that in their P&L, particularly on the labor side. So just in answering the question of where you see the long-term profit margins which are sustainable in the business with those pressures. There's nothing in the guidance then on utilities, whether that was a one-off or actually you're expecting those higher utility costs to continue. So maybe in the scope of answering the question, you can just maybe just give us an update on how you see utilities too, please?

Yes. So utilities, to start with that, 2024 costs will be very similar to '23. The rate per month is a little bit lower, but we'll have 4 quarters at the new market rates versus 3 quarters in '23. I think we should expect that energy costs are going to be a little bit higher than they were pre-crisis, but they've obviously recovered back down to more sensible levels. Overall in the business, forgive me for not giving specific guidance for operating profit going forward. But this is a business that will have operating leverage that as sales growth comes from a recovering economy and the growth levers that we've set out, that will drive through to bottom line improvement as well. As we've shown, we can deliver a resilient level of profitability even in what we think is going to be the trough in the economic cycle. And as we come back through a recovery, we expect to be able to grow that quite nicely.

And if there are no further questions from the telephone, I'd like to hand the call over to Scott to take online questions.

Thanks very much, Saske. So we've got a question online from Adam Tomlinson from Liberum. And he's got 3 questions, I'll read them all individually. You mentioned the heat pump market hasn't taken off yet. What do you think the catalysts are?

I think 2 things will help drive the growth of the heat pumps. Much like many things, affordability will help. So as prices become cheaper, you'll see greater engagement in terms of heat pumps. I think also just thinking longer term, the technology in the heat pump as well because invariably, when you install a heat pump, you actually have to modify pipe work and radiators and so forth in the home to maintain the right temperature in the home that will be equivalent to sort of like gas -- the gas boiler. So as the technology in heat pumps improves where you don't have to modify what already exists in your home, I think that works to the first point, which is just makes this whole thing a lot more affordable. So I just think it's the economics at the moment that hinders the more explosive growth. So let's hope for that innovation to come to the market soon.

The second question is the acquisition multiple of circa 7x EV to EBITDA. Can you explain how this value this valuation enhancing gives Wickes the current multiple of 5 -- sorry, how is this valuation enhancing given the Wickes' current multiple of circa 5.5x?

Yes. So I think it will be -- the business is profitable. So we're going to be adding profit to the business. In terms of the multiple, I think you would expect that a relatively young business that is growing nicely would have a higher multiple. And our view is that 7x EBITDA is a good price to pay for a business that will grow, we think, in good measure over the next few months and years.

And the final question, did you consider any other M&A for example, in the installation space where you can leverage your capabilities in terms of handling and delivering bulk products?

I think the response will be, not at present. We're taking a very disciplined approach at the moment, Adam. And I think the first step forward through the lens of M&A when it comes to Solar Fast is the right step forward. I think it affords us a lot of long-term growth, and I think we're really well placed as an organization to become the nation's leader in the design and installation of this energy saving solution.

Home insulation is a relatively lower skilled, lower -- less challenging project where I think the opportunity for us to add value in an end-to-end solution is much less. It's something that a lot of DIY customers can do themselves or local traders can do. I think solar and then air source heat pumps actually is something where there's a lot more that a brand like us can add to the market.

I can't say that I'm curious of that response. Do you look at anything you're lost a rollout? It's a very easy thing to do, we can all do that. I would encourage you all to do that, by the way, note to sales at the weekend [indiscernible] and have a good look. We do a phenomenal deal of market-leading price and insulation. And yes. go, go, go.

So no further questions from the webcast at the moment. So David, back to you for any closing remarks.

Super. Well, firstly, thank you, everybody, for attending this morning. Thank you for those listening and viewing online. Look, we're really pleased with the results of the business this morning. I think it's a strong performance in a challenging market. It demonstrates the uniqueness of our model, it demonstrates our capability to both deliver cost savings, productivity but also create headroom to invest in our growth levers. One of those now being very exciting for us being Solar Fast, and we look forward to updating you in the future in terms of the progression that we make with that investment. So thank you very much.