Wickes Group plc

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 UK'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 Wix lifestyle kitchen range with sales up 24%, and good progress on our new store openings and refit programme, 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 four-year dividend at 10.9 pence in line with guidance. And during 2023, we completed 10 million of the 25 million share buyback programme. 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'll have seen today that we've announced our acquisition of a majority stake in Solarfast, 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 Wix 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. And 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 SAS impact was 52.0 million pounds. 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 97.5 million of cash, but that is the low point in our working capital cycle. We actually averaged 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 10.9 pence per share. And as David mentioned, we've completed by the end of 2023, 10.1 million pounds out of our 25 million pounds share buyback. That rose to 12 and a half million pounds in February. And this morning, we're starting the second half with another 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 two effects here. The first is that there was a slight dilution 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 £59.5 million on a pre-SAS basis and £52 million on a post-SAS 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 three consecutive quarters now of like-for-like growth. And as you can see, inflation easing considerably over the year, 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 two 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 three 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, on the first two bars on this chart, this is trading margin. And we've taken distribution out of this. It's slightly different from growth 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 two 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 subsidise 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 cost, 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 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 10 million year on year. They've come in at around seven, 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 SAS, which you can see was an impact of 7.5 million pounds in a year. From 2024 onwards, we will just report PBT on a post-SAS basis. So turning now to cash and the balance sheet. We continue to operate with a strong balance sheet, ending the year with $97.5 million of cash. And that's after the first $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 $155 million during the year. CapEx was very much in line with guidance. CapEx of $38 million. You need to add to that another $7.5 million of SaaS investment combined around 45 million total investment in the business in the year, very much in line with our guidance. We've listed out here 8.9 million of IT separation costs. Now, this is the final stage of the separation programme to move our systems away from our previous parent, Travis Perkins. This is now complete, and there'll be no costs of that sort from 24 onwards. So you can see the impact of the dividend there and our share buyback programme. So in total, those two things combined we've delivered 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. 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 2024. 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 summarise, the business continues to deliver well in a tough environment with 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 tradespeople turn to Wix to save them both time and money. Our Digital Trade Pro 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 10 times 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 signups. 135,000 tradespeople 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 priced with or without VAT, which we know the Trade 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 personalise 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 programme about their pipeline of work. and currently more than one in four tell us they have work 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 product and service. We rebranded our showroom kitchen range as Wick's Bespoke Kitchens and introduced eight beautiful new kitchens. We anticipated that the market would 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 Wick's 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 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 Centre 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 Wix installer teams guarantee. And now more than half of all customers use our installation service. We're 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 that as people are more cost-conscious, they're still looking to do DIY but are doing smaller projects, such as decorating or putting up shelves. With this in mind, we've 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 strengthen 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 capitalise 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 DIYers, 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 one in six in 2019 to over one in four 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 programme progresses, the emphasis now is on building out the network with brand new stores. We opened three fantastic new stores in Chelmsford, Torquay and Wideness 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 ROKI of around 25% in these newly refitted stores. Across our estate, we continue to invest enhancing our service model and increase the square footage of fulfilment 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 eight new refits and four 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 two key digital shopping journeys, Click and Collect and our home delivery channel, we are delivering record levels of customer satisfaction. These are the two 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 five 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 have successfully lapped 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 multi-channel service model and seamless integration of digital and physical sales, with two thirds of sales starting online and 98% of sales touching the store. And now to our built to last responsible business strategy. I won't go through each pillar, but just pick out some highlights. Our Wix community programme goes from strength to strength and we're 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 the 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 GasFast Limited, which is the parent company of SolarFast. Solarfast is a solar panels installations business who in the last two years have installed around 3,700 projects in UK 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 Wix 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 R&S 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 in 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 Solarfast because the scale of the opportunity is great. I've said before that strong businesses get stronger in tough times. We are well placed to win in the UK's large home improvement market and continue to deliver for our colleagues, customers and shareholders. Thank you for listening. Mark and I will be very happy to answer any questions you may have.

Great. Thanks, Matthew from Singers. 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, tying that in as well to solar. Can you give us some timelines? It looks like working together, you could leverage a lot of growth and drive some synergy, but maybe just give us some timings 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 on the way in terms of further growth. I think from a timings point of view.

From a timings perspective, 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 1.1 billion in the UK. We think that will grow to 1.5 or so over the next five 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, thanks. 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?

Yeah, I think we'll be very mindful in terms of how we sort of like build capacity going forward and make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves because we feel that we could probably fill 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 have 29 million homes in the UK. Today, only 3% of them have solar. So if we're to find our way to a carbon-neutral economy and we're to 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. you know, with your fencing panels where you outperform the market. If you strip out that from last year and this year, you know, are there any areas where you feel you've moved back, you've gone backwards and that's an area 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. Again, we see good outperformance in some of those more strategic areas we focus around, particularly decorating, particularly garden. And of course, you've seen the WIC's lifestyle kitchen results, 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 a good effort to lap what was a really step up in that in 2022.

Cheers. Shane Carberry, a good buddy. I'll go one at a 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. From a medium-term perspective, does it make you think any differently about your kitchen offering? What will the balance look like in terms of lower-priced kitchens versus medium and higher on a three-year basis, I suppose?

Yeah, I mean, how I view that is I think we are now becoming a more complete kitchen provider. So previously as an organisation through our showroom business, our design installation business, we'd always been in what I would call the better and best part of the market, you know, an average sales price of £7,500, £8,000 plus. But close to two thirds of the volume sits in the £4,000 and below 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 time to grow the number of kitchen projects that we can access now as a consequence. 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 2,000, 7,000, 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.

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 is still ticking up, is that the key part of the rationale for conversion being better, or is it how you're targeting customers? Just a little bit of colour around that would be helpful.

I think if I give my perspective, and Mark can add some builds, 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. If 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 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 one in two 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 15% to 20% year-on-year at the moment, but our ordered sales, as we said in the announcement this morning, in the first few weeks of the year 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, you know, In the round, encouragingly, and we have, you know, we started the year with around about 9% inflation in the business. We exited the year at about minus two. 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 move into a deflationary 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 on board some of the smaller projects, just freshening 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 smaller projects, smaller baskets. But as I say, in the round, transactional volume is in growth.

Morning, Kate Calvert from Investec. Could you just talk about your expectations on gross margin for FY24 in terms of some of the headwinds and tailwinds? And could you do likewise on cost as well? Because I think, remember, your SAS costs are going to be lower in the current year than last year and things like that. So just run through some of the moving parts. That would be useful. Thank you.

Yeah. 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 will have a continued slight headwind on percentage rate from trade pro 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 SAS costs will be probably slightly higher the impact this year probably eight to 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, his 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 three 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 four 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. Has that annualised now?

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'll be an increase in consumer credit costs this year.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Morning. Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I've got three almost. Can you talk around the capacity utilization in your designers at the moment? Because obviously they're shifting time from, I guess, higher value kitchens to lifestyle kitchens over the last six months or so. Where are they? And if the market picks up, how easy and quickly can you add and onboard and upskill more designers? That's the first question. Do you want one at a time or all at once?

Do you want to do that one? I think we're in good shape. We have around about 600 design consultants across a store estate of 230 stores, so in the two to three area. Interestingly, we're seeing good adoption of design-led solutions into WIC's lifestyle. So as consumers seek value but want the service of design, we're seeing good growth there. So back to the 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. Well utilised. 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, One of the things that we found prior to launching the design service for Lifestyle Kitchens was that about two in ten of our customers that came through the journey of the showroom went through the process of a design being created for their bespoke kitchen. We weren't able to meet their budget, but 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 in. 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 centre where we've almost removed the project management requirement from the design consultant. We keep them focused on design and we've now centralised that where every individual customer has their own programme manager that organises the installer, the product and the engagement with the design consultants. That again creates some headroom as things start to come through.

Thank you. The second one is on TradePro. Obviously, the numbers 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 the Sunday night for the week, or at least the first half of the week, picking them up at half six at the store, freeing up capacity?

CHRIS TAYLOR- 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 the 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 a much higher proportion of our marketing budget on consumers, whether it's for DIY or for design and installation rather than trade pro. And obviously with scale, everything works a little bit better through the distribution, through the stores. So if we can drive more volume through more TradePro customers, that's a great thing in our network.

I think it's a really good part that Mark raises there, because it's a combination of that scale, but also that focus, Sam. Because 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 that's just very well leveraged.

Thank you. And I guess related to that, the last one is on going back to the solar or energy efficiency. What scope is there that that's going to alter your kind of skew 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?

Yeah. So, I mean, the solar fast business will be slightly separate from what we stock on the on the shelves in terms of products we will also have individual products for energy saving solutions that either trade people can buy or consumers can buy to do the installation themselves whereas 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 and have been doing is is finding ways to allow consumers to make these changes in the 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.

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

Certainly, as a reminder, that is star one for your questions. And we have a question from Wayne Brown from Liberum Capital. Please go ahead.

Morning, everyone. I'm sorry for not being there. I've got three questions. I'll just take them one in turn, if you don't mind. Really good growth in the TradePro members, up to $880,000. But I'm just struggling to contextualize that in terms of the market. If you could just help, because the ONS says there's about 800,000 self-employed people in construction, and Kingfisher says there's 900,000 tradespeople in the UK. So either that's an unbelievably high percentage of market share, or there's potentially lots of customers there that are gaming the system for the 10% of scales. 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, good morning, sir. Look, in the first instance, we have a slightly different number. So our number for the broader market would be there are probably around about 3 million skilled tradesmen, people, in the UK. Probably around about two 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 constructional businesses. So I think through that maths you'd probably say we're around about 40 to 50 percent penetration of the opportunity. So still a big opportunity I think in headroom to grow the scheme but 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 gain the system that we do verify that these are a proper trades people before we bring them on to the the trade pro scheme they can be wrong i'm not saying it's 100 fail safe but we we do do our best to make sure that we're bringing in 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. You know, sharp price, super convenient, all digital. We'll 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, Wade, 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. Thanks. That answers one of my follow-on 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 and how the profit builds up would be helpful. Thanks.

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 R&S showed you that in the year to April 23, the Solarfast business did 33 million of revenue and 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. And 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 email 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. Thank you. And then one last one from me. And 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 a big picture, you've obviously got some deflation coming through in some of your core lines, you know, lifestyle kitchens doing well, but clearly, that's the bottom end of the of the price curve. Harden's going up the price curve. You've obviously got cost pressures, but everyone's got that in their P&Ls, 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 four quarters at the new market rates versus three 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.

Okay, thank you very much all.

Thank you, Wayne.

Thank you. 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, Saskia. So we've got a question online from Adam Tomlinson from Liberum. He's got three questions. I'll read them individually. You mentioned the heat pump market hasn't taken off yet. What do you think the catalysts are?

I think two things will help drive the growth of 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 pipework and radiators and so forth in the home to maintain the right temperature in the home that will be equivalent to sort of like a 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 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.

Thank you. The second question is the acquisition multiple of circa seven times EV to EBITDA. Can you explain how this valuation enhancing gives WICs the current multiple of five, sorry, how is this valuation enhancing given the WICs current multiple of circa 5.5 times?

Yeah. 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 seven times 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.

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

Insulation. I think the response would 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 Solarfast 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 organisation to become the nation's leader in the design and installation of this energy saving solution.

Home insulation is a relatively lower skilled, 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.

Kate's looking curious at that response. Do you not get up in your loft and roll out? It's a very easy thing to do, Kate. We can all do that. I would encourage you all to do that, by the way. Note to sales at the weekend, just pop up in your lofts and have a good look. We do a phenomenal deal, a market-leading price on insulation. Yes, go, go, go.

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 Solarfast 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 Tony for this morning.