J Sainsbury PLC

LSE:SBRY

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Simon John Roberts, CEO, Director & Chairman of Operating Board]

Good morning, and welcome to our 2021/'22 interim results presentation. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Last November, I set out a clear plan and strategy to transform our business over the next 3 years. One year on, I'm pleased with the momentum we've built in all areas and right across the company. As you know, fundamental to the plan was putting food back at the heart of Sainsbury's. Reflecting this Food First focus, we've gained market share as customers have responded to the improvements we've made across value, innovation and service. We've made switching gains from almost all of our competitors over 1 and 2 years. And key to this has been our strong operating performance, where we've been delivering on the cost saving program that provides the fuel for us to reinvest in the customer offer. And this has not been at the expense of customer service as our customer satisfaction scores have remained ahead of competitors across our supermarkets as a result of our focus in driving value innovation and availability, particularly in fresh food. I'm really proud of the sustained strength of our digital business where we've made a conscious choice to invest in areas like online grocery, and we've grown faster than our competitors. And we've been delivering on our other priorities alongside Food First. The Argos transformation is on track and we are pleased with the benefits we are already seeing. Argos is now a significantly more profitable business as a consequence. Our Financial Services business has returned to profit in the first half, and we have built on the growing Nectar digital customer base with the launch of personalized pricing through Nectar prices. And our plan for better is really picking up pace and is becoming fully integrated as part of our overall plan, both in terms of how we're showing up for customers and the work going on across our business to meet our plan for better targets. As you know, it's not been an easy period for the industry with a number of well-publicized challenges generally impacting global supply chains and particularly the U.K. food supply chain. And so more than anything else, I'm hugely proud of the way that all of my colleagues across the business and every one of our suppliers have worked tirelessly to deal with these challenges, whilst at the same time, delivering the best possible service and availability for our customers throughout this period. Importantly, too, we have maintained the pace and agility that we learned through dealing with COVID and lockdowns and that has served us really well. Of course, these supply chain challenges will continue as we look ahead to Christmas. As I said in my letter to customers last week, we are working flat out across the business to ensure we make this a Christmas to remember. My thanks and appreciation goes to all of our suppliers and all of my colleagues for everything I know they are continuing to do so brilliantly and especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I will now hand over to Kevin for him to share the financial highlights.

[Kevin O'Byrne, CFO, Member of the Operating Board & Director]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Simon. As Simon said, I will now cover the financial highlights for the 28 weeks to September 18. I'm going to start with sales. You will see in a number of areas through the presentation that we've given sales comparisons versus 2 years ago as well as the prior year. First, because it provides a youthful context against a '19/'20 base year uninterrupted by COVID; and second, because some of our P&L guidance has been set against that base removing some of the distortions of the last financial year. Grocery sales were up 0.8% in the half within home food consumption still strong but growing off a less elevated base in the second quarter, as you can see in the 2-year numbers as COVID restrictions eased and customers started spending more time working and socializing outside their homes. General merchandise sales were down year-on-year in both August and Sainsbury's. This was in line with our guidance as we annualized very strong lockdown driven comparatives at Argos. These comparators reflected exceptionally strong demand in categories relating to homeworking and home entertainment and very supportive seasonal weather, while many competitor stores were closed. The biggest driver of the Sainsbury's decline was our decision to exit entertainment categories, particularly DVDs and CDs. Clothing sales grew, reflecting weak comparators but were also up 9% versus 2 years ago, despite reduced promotional activity. In total, retail sales, excluding fuel, were up slightly year-on-year and up over 7% versus the pre-COVID year to March 2020. Including the impact of fuel sales up 63%, headline first half sales growth was 6%. Retail operating profits were down 6% year-on-year, but up 49% if you exclude the impact of business rates relief that we later chose to forego. Here, we think a 2-year comparison is more meaningful with profits up 20%, driven by higher grocery sales, relatively limited direct COVID costs and the benefits of our cost saving programs, particularly at Argos. As we stated at Q1, we invested some of the profit benefit from higher sales and lower cost to improve our price position over the period. Financial Services made a profit of GBP 19 million in the half, with the main difference year-on-year being the absence of the COVID-related bad debt provisions charge taken last year. Alongside the benefit of lower interest costs, this drives a UPBT increase year-on-year of 23%, up 56% on a 2-year basis. At a statutory pretax level, we reported a profit of GBP 541 million as we booked GBP 181 million of income relating to legal disputes, which more than offset reduced restructuring charges. I'll explain these in more detail later. Free cash flow was very strong, reflecting strong trading and a seasonal working capital inflow. In the prior year, the seasonal working capital inflow was magnified by the COVID impact on sales patterns and stock purchases. Net debt, excluding leases, reduced by more than GBP 600 million, driven in part by the conversion of the GBP 242 million of the convertible bonds to equity. As you know, net debt is always lower at the half year versus the year-end due to the favorable working capital position at this time of year. We will pay a dividend of 3.2p per share, in line with last year and in line with our practice of paying an interim dividend of 30% of the prior year's full dividend. This waterfall summarizes the UPBT movement versus the pre-COVID year to March 2020, illustrating the benefit from higher retail profits but also lower interest costs. These reflect the material progress we have made on paying down debt over the last 3 years as well as lower IFRS 16 lease interest due to new leases being written on lower interest rates. Looking now at a financial services year-on-year profit movement. The impact from last year's reduced lending activity flows through to this year, offset by a modest improvement in travel money and ATM revenues, the absence of last year's big one-off COVID-related provisions, lower funding costs and cost-based savings. We, therefore, reported underlying profit of GBP 19 million in the period. If we exclude a small GBP 5 million release of COVID bad debt provision, underlying profit would have been GBP 14 million. Going back now to the group P&L. In order to provide a clear view of our underlying performance, as usual, we exclude P&L items, which by virtue of their size and/or nature do not reflect the group's underlying performance. These are outlined on this slide. Restructuring costs were significantly lower this half year than in the equivalent period last year when restructuring and impairments reflected the announcement of our Food First strategy. Our guidance for total restructuring charges for the 3 years to March 2024 is unchanged at GBP 900 million to GBP 1 billion. We expect to incur a total of GBP 75 million to GBP 100 million in the current financial year. More than offsetting this, we booked income from settling legal disputes, 2 of these relating to overcharges from payment card processing fees. The cash impact of these settlements is detailed in the slide. We had already received GBP 75 million of the cash in 2016 relating to this. We received GBP 27 million in this half, GBP 13 million is a noncash provision release and we will receive the remaining GBP 67 million cash in the second half. The net cash impact in the half of restructuring charges were GBP 52 million and the total net impact of one-offs was an outflow of just GBP 4 million. This was another period of strong underlying cash generation. The year-on-year comparisons are complicated by COVID. Last year benefited from rates being paid in the second half and exceptional working capital inflows. As noted earlier, this year's cash flow benefited from some working capital inflows versus year-end as we always see in the first half. After paying the prior year final dividend of GBP 165 million and reflecting the conversion of the convertible bond, net debt excluding lease liabilities reduced by around GBP 600 million versus year-end. Net debt including lease liabilities also reduced, reflecting an increase in lease liabilities to GBP 6.3 billion, an increase of around GBP 500 million versus the year-end. Now let me explain this. We hold a nearly 50% interest in an investment vehicle set up in 2000 that owns 26 of our stores. We leased these stores from the vehicle. In the half, we gave notice to purchase 13 of these stores at the end of their lease. As a result of this decision, we've recognized a substantial increase in our lease obligation based on the estimated value of these properties. In the second half, there are further 10 properties where we have a similar decision to make. Between now and 2023, we will be deciding whether to permanently retain the sites we acquire or resell and lease them back. In addition, on completion of the transactions, the property investment vehicle will be unwound meaning we will get back some of the cash we pay for the sites we retain. Therefore, the adverse noncash net debt movement we see this year will reduce once all of the transactions are fully complete in 2023. This is a really positive step overall as these transactions will, in time, monetize our investment in the property vehicle and secure some of our top sites for the long term, either as freeholds or on lease terms that we want. We are on track with our balance sheet target to reduce ex-lease net debt by at least GBP 950 million by March 2023, excluding the benefit of the bond conversion. Likewise, we continue to forecast average free cash flow of at least GBP 500 million per year over the 3 years to March 2025. So in summary, a very strong first half of the year, reflecting the investments we have made in the food offer driving market share gains and strong cost savings progress particularly at Argos. As a result, underlying cash generation is strong, and we are well on track with our leverage and free cash flow targets. We flagged supply chain challenges earlier in the year and alongside some of the other well-known challenges relating to labor shortages, it makes for a more uncertain environment heading into peak, but we are well placed with strong supplier relationships, well developed in accelerating cost savings and strong operating platforms. And hence, our guidance remains unchanged with the expectation that we will deliver UPBT of at least GBP 660 million versus a pre-COVID 2019/'20 base of GBP 586 million. Thank you very much for your time. I'll now hand you over to Simon to take you through some of the operational highlights of the period and provide an update on progress against the plan we set out a year ago.

[Simon John Roberts, CEO, Director & Chairman of Operating Board]

Thank you, Kevin. Before I move on, just a quick recap here at the highlights of the first half. I'm encouraged, both with the strong momentum we've built over the last 12 months and the leadership team we have assembled to lead the transformation of this business. As a result, we have achieved a strong and robust operating performance and delivered for our customers while significantly reducing our costs. We're delivering across all of the priorities we set out last November. And at the same time, we've learned to work with a greater pace and agility than ever before. So in turning now to review our strategic progress. Firstly, I think it's important to continue to give some context to what's changing in the grocery business. And so we've updated this chart that you will have seen before. It continues to show a very gradual but very clear normalization of in-store transaction and basket spend levels. This is something that we expect to continue as customers spend more time shopping, eating, working, socializing and having holidays outside their homes and increasingly outside the U.K. As a result, we're not expecting the very high level of grocery sales we have seen in H1 to be sustained into the second half or into the next financial year. Now alongside some of the things about how our customers choose to shop, which we expect to trend back to normal, some things have been transformed for good if we look at the role that digital now plays across our business. We had a well-invested digital real estate heading into the pandemic, and this has enabled us to scale our digital businesses and to do that efficiently. We consistently raised the bar in challenging ourselves to be able to serve our customers whenever, wherever and however they want to shop. And we're really delivering on this across online grocery, as you can see on this chart, and across Argos where online penetration has remained high despite the reopening of our stand-alone stores, and in stores, too, through SmartShop participation. Digital is also giving us the opportunity to engage differently and more personally with our customers as we set out in our net to deep dive Investor Day a couple of weeks ago. So turning back to our grocery performance. This is the same measure we have shown you across our reporting periods. Volume market share, which we think is the most meaningful way of measuring our performance relative to the market and our competitors. The first bar shows performance over the half on a 2-year view. The second, the same on a 1-year view. In both cases, we have performed ahead of the market and ahead of our big box competitors. And on both periods, our volume market share has been stronger than value market share, reflecting our high level of price investment and hence, relative deflation and better value against competitors. We're consistently focused on delivering leading customer service, and customers tell us that this is continuing to set us apart from our competitors. We set our expectations high because our customers do. It's been vital to listen and respond daily throughout the pandemic, and this has been even more the case as restrictions have eased. For example, on safety, we learned quickly that not all customers and colleagues were happy moving at the pace that government has suggested. As a result, we responded accordingly in stepping up safety messaging and measures. Customers have told us consistently throughout the pandemic that they see us leading the industry on this and that they feel safer in our stores than in many others. Now as I've said previously, we're committed to sharing consistently the metrics that we monitor internally. A key example would be customer satisfaction in our supermarkets. We're proud of the lead we've built here versus competitors. As you can see on this chart, we've maintained this lead through the first half and beyond, but the absolute level and the gap versus competitors did step back considerably in the second quarter. There's a pretty simple explanation to this, which lies in the availability challenges the wider industry have been having, particularly from the end of the summer, the end of our quarter 2. Through this period, overall product availability served as a leveler across the industry. Quite simply, it is too important to factor for customers to see beyond, can I get what I want in rating their experience in store as a good one and, especially if essential products like milk and bread are in short supply. Now we have made bold decisions given the supply chain challenges to improve our product availability. And as a result, we're now seeing significant improvements in customer satisfaction as we build into peak trading. You can see the gap versus our competitors is starting to open up again. Now I said earlier in the year that we still have more to do to improve our customer satisfaction in grocery online. We're growing share faster than competitors, but coupled with the availability challenges, this remains a continued focus for us to ensure we deliver the most consistent customer experience. I'm confident we're taking steps to further improve our performance as we head into the second half. So overall, a good operating performance and growing momentum across the business. But one year into our plan, it's worth taking stock a little and going back to the key principles. We have a clear galvanizing purpose at the heart of our plan to be a bolder, better Sainsbury's, driven by our passion for food, together, we serve and help every customer. So now to reflect on our plan and the value-creation priorities we set out last November. I know you will now be really familiar with these and particularly the top 3. What I'm most encouraged by is the fact that we have a strong and growing momentum across all 5 of our priorities. Very importantly, we're using them to drive and deliver better prioritization and resource allocation across the business, and we can also clearly see where they are driving improved performance. And we're measuring that performance consistently against the metrics we outlined and as committed, we are sharing our half 1 progress today against those metrics with you. You will see a new line here on our plan on the page, highlighting our value behaviors, something that we've only talked about internally to date. These are 3 simple but important principles for how we will lead and work across our company to put the customer, our efficiency and our agility and pace at the heart of transforming culture and performance. Own it, make it better and be human are our value behaviors being rolled out throughout the business. Our leadership team are passionate about the changes we are making to how we work and we've had a great response and high levels of engagement from our colleagues already. We're well underway with this bold cultural change to be a better Sainsbury's for our customers, our colleagues, our suppliers and, of course, our shareholders. This is at the very heart of the transformation we have set course to achieve. So in reflecting on the essence of our plan and what we said will be different as we make progress, we're putting food back at the heart of our business. We know we can do better on value, on the product offer and on service. We're starting to deliver against that, and our customers are recognizing this. Our key portfolio of brands, Argos, Tu, Habitat, Financial Services and Nectar are all more clearly focused on supporting the core food business and are all delivering improved stand-alone performances. We're making real progress on structural cost reductions, which will permanently reduce our cost to serve, bringing up more resource for us to invest back into the customer offer and flow through to the bottom line. This will put us in a really good position versus our competitors as we face into an environment of rising cost challenges. We remain clear about our commitments to shareholders in the form of profit delivery and cash generation, underpinned by the consistent metrics we are targeting. So how have we done against these 8 metrics? Well, as you know, we are in the first year of our plan. And so whilst we have strong momentum in some areas, I believe we still have much in front of us to deliver. We're setting the bar high. And so the amber arrows here mean that we are on track at the halfway point of this year but expect to push further forward over the balance of the year to go. We are pleased with our progress and improvement across a number of the key metrics, grocery performance, profit growth, cost reduction and free cash flow. And overall, we are delivering to plan at the halfway point this year across all our measures, but some plans such as our plan for better commitments and improving our return on capital will take time to deliver. Now specifically on return on capital. This was down year-on-year in the first half, but there's a bit of a technicality here because ROCE is a 52-week measure and the second half of last year was impacted by the decision to forego business rates relief. Adjusted for that phasing impact, ROCE would have been 8%, so well on track. We will continue to consistently report against these 8 measures as we implement our plan. And as I've said, we will share how we're doing every time we report to enable you to assess our progress along the way. So let's now look at progress against each of our priorities, starting with putting Food First. We've delivered consistent improvement in value for customers across the range, but particularly on the items that really matter most of them in the basket, and we are seeing some encouraging signs that customers are shopping differently with us as a result. The pace is building across product innovation with some powerful coordinated new range launches and our commitment to online capacity and performance has delivered strong market share gains. We're also fully integrating how we will deliver sustainability at the heart of our Food First plan, reducing food waste, plastics and at the same time, improving healthy diets. And you will hopefully have seen how that's increasingly integrated into our helping everyone eat better customer messaging and our advertising. And this switching data is one of the clearest indicators that we've been winning spend from most of our key superstore competitors when looking at the position versus the pre-COVID base 2 years ago and against last year too. Again, this is looking at volumes, the most relevant indicator of how customer share is changing. Now we're delivering better value through 3 distinct value programs: first, we're building on Price Lock as our broadest value program, reassuring on stable pricing day in, day out across thousands of lines; second, we're investing in core high-volume lines, particularly focused on the center of the plate; and third is our commitment now across around 300 products to deliver Sainsbury's quality at Aldi prices. I told you earlier that we had focused our efforts on protecting availability on fresh above all other areas. This is because we know it's these products that matter most to customers and where particularly in meat, fish and poultry, customers buying these products will generate the greatest associated halo spends as they buy into other categories to complete the meal. So this is where we are focusing our price investment too. And you can see the results here. We have outperformed the market on these 2 really important categories, meat, fish and poultry and produce. Likewise, when we created Sainsbury's quality Aldi price match, we know that Sainsbury's has always been famous for the quality of its fresh food. And so this is where we have focused our Aldi Price Match. With now nearly 90% of the volumes sold through Sainsbury's quality Aldi Price Match in fresh categories like meat, fish, poultry, produce and dairy. You can see here the impact this is having on our price position relative to competitors across the whole of the range, but particularly on those center of plate items with the improvement continuing through the half. We're encouraged with the performance we are seeing and our consistency here will be fundamental in permanently improving customer value perception. And we know it's working. Again, it's generating halo spend as customers buy into these everyday essentials and shop other products, too, as you can see in this updated version of the chart we showed you in April. But vitally, we also know that we're growing volumes from secondary customers faster than our competitors are.Secondary customers are those who do some of their grocery shopping with us who spend more of their grocery spend elsewhere. We knew secondary customers were an opportunity for us as this is where we have been under indexing relative to competitors. What we're seeing as we deliver more consistent value across the range is that these customers have more confidence in our value position and are putting more items in the basket as a result. Stepping up product innovation is a key pillar of our plan to put Food First. We changed the way our commercial teams work about a year ago. And as a result, we're now building some great momentum here. We are on track to triple the number of new products we bring to customers this year. We launched 650 products in the first half and over 300 products will be new for this Christmas. And this is delivering results, driving trade up and contributing disproportionately to the halo spend we're seeing from secondary customers buying into our price match products. It's also not just about the what, it's also about the how. You can see here a number of products from our first ever autumn range, tapping into the change in the customer mood as the season changes with warming winter products. These latest products are performing really well. And together, they highlight the substantial opportunity we are seeing to lead in food innovation again. Coordinated range launches like this really deliver an impact for customers. I would thoroughly recommend these products, some really fantastic new lines. Now new products have to deliver a difference for customers, whether that's giving an opportunity to trade up, improve value, reduce waste and packaging or offer a healthier, more sustainable option. What this shows is not just innovation, but really a coordinated program across helping everyone to eat better, with recipe suggestions, really sharp prices across fresh fruit, innovation in meat alternatives and talking to customers about how we're reducing our impact on the environment. So now turning to online grocery. One of the key Food First commitments we outlined last year was to grow online capacity and extend our routes to market. We've made this a real point of difference with the capacity that we added last year, and we've been fully committed to keeping those online customers that we gained. Order numbers have slowed as more customers have returned to stores, but our online sales have continued to be stronger than the market, and we've been pleased with customer retention rates. This is showing through in continued market share momentum. We've just stepped on again recently reintroducing our same-day offer. We dropped this offer when online demand was at its peak. It's back now and available in many more stores than before. This chart shows the breadth and scale of our online grocery proposition that we now offer customers, having continue to grow our immediacy business, both in-house and with delivery partners collecting orders from our convenience stores. And it's important to recognize that this isn't just a London business with around 40% of our immediacy sales now coming outside of London. We called out the significant online market share gain we made last year as our biggest online competitors lost share. We have built on that this year as the only one of the major online grocers to gain share. We're now the second biggest online grocer in the U.K. having been #4 2 years ago. Now quite fairly, I think many of you asked us what would happen to the productivity gains we made as online order volumes dropped back from the lockdown-driven peaks. And the answer is that the margin and contribution gain we're showing here versus the pre-COVID base is pretty much the same as that we were showing last year, with contribution margin doubling and profit contribution up around 4x. We have headwinds against these COVID peaks with lower basket sizes and drop densities, but these are still comfortably ahead of pre-COVID levels, and we've continued to optimize the operating model as well as making strong progress on pick rates and drop densities against pre-pandemic levels, both big drivers of improved productivity. Now I'm in Glasgow this week with Kevin, where Sainsbury's is the supermarket partner of COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. There's a real focus here on driving for partnership and collaboration. We all know that no individual or organization is going to deliver the scale of progress we need to see without deep collaboration and commitment as an industry and global level. I hope many of you were able to attend our ESG event in June or view it on our website. We laid out our plan for better with stretching targets across our 3 pillars of Better For You, Better For The Planet and Better For Everyone. I'm encouraged by our progress. I'm pleased to say that we are ahead of our trajectory to become Net Zero in our own operations no later than 2040. And as a result, last week, we confirmed, we are accelerating that commitment to 2035 across Scope 1 and 2 carbon reduction. Now our second priority focuses on our portfolio of brands outside of food, our brands that deliver and how they support our ability to delivering food. We've really changed the way we think about each of these brands and the role they play in the business with a much tighter focus on how they support the core food business, while delivering for their customers and in making a return in their own right. Let's talk first about Nectar. Hopefully, many of you were able to attend our recent Nectar deep dive event. And if not, you will find all of the materials and video recording on our website. I think it gave a great sense of the opportunities that this part of the business gives us. We're continuing to grow our digital Nectar base. And I've talked previously about our drive to hit 10 million registered digital Nectar collectors. We're well on track to hit that next year with over 8.2 million customers currently registered. Now why does this matter so much? It matters because it enables us to talk to our customers in a much more effective, engaging and highly personal way. We were really pleased to launch Nectar prices at the end of September. Based on a customer's potential value to Sainsbury's, their price sensitivity and the types of products and offers we know will appeal to them, we can offer each and every digital Nectar customer a completely personalized set of prices on up to 10 products each and every week and the opportunity to save up to GBP 200 a year. Now we believe that this approach to truly personalize pricing is unique within grocery retail in Europe. It's early days, but we're really encouraged that we're already starting to see some uplift in our smart shop usage and penetration and also in digital Nectar. Nectar 360 is the B2B side of Nectar which works with hundreds of our suppliers to build their marketing plans across our store and digital assets. Nectar 360 uses our unique coalition loyalty offering and first-party data set to offer shopper marketing services, data insights and digital media capability to more than 700 FMCG and GM brands. In particular, we've made significant investment in our digital media capability, and we believe we are now industry leading in this space, giving brands the opportunity to engage effectively with customers and deliver really strong returns on their advertising spend. Digital Media is driving our growth plans for Nectar. On the left-hand chart here, you can see that we plan to grow our gross billings by 25% over 5 years, driven predominantly by our data and digital capability growing to 10% and 30%, respectively. As a result, over the course of the next 4 years, Nectar's group profit contribution will grow by an additional GBP 60 million to GBP 70 million, as you can see on the right-hand chart, with the key driver being significant growth in billings from our digital media network at high incremental margins. So moving to Argos, which has become a fundamentally different business in the last 2 years with digital really at its core now. Over 80% of sales started online in the half versus a little over 60% 2 years ago. Alongside the changes we've made to the store estate and are making to the fulfillment platform, this has made Argos a more efficient and structurally more profitable business. We said earlier in the year that we expected Argos sales this year to be broadly in line with those of 2 years ago, implying sales declines this year. We're tracking a little ahead of that in H1, but clearly, with a weaker Q2 than Q1. So what was driving that guidance and the sales declines we've seen? We've been clear before that Argos was in something of a sweet spot last year, given heavy exposure to the types of product categories that saw disproportionate growth as customers focus time and spending on living, eating and entertainment at home. Categories such as electronics, technology and electrical were real winners through this period, and at a time when so many competitor stores were closed. Second, the weather last summer, combined with lockdown was also conducive to strong seasonal category performance, and the summer weather certainly did not show up in the same way this year. And lastly, as we take a more disciplined approach to trading, we have voluntarily stepped away from some promotionally fueled sales in categories like toys. Looking to the second half, we flagged in July that we expected general merchandise supply chain challenges to persist through the year. This will impact stock levels and hence, top line performance through peak trading over the quarter 3. However, given gross margin and cost progress, we remain confident of a strong Argos profit outcome. We are making really good headway with the Argos transformation plan, which will simultaneously reduce the structural cost base of Argos and improve the customer offer. We're on track to open around 70 Argos stores in Sainsbury's stores this year, closing a similar number of stand-alone stores, and we've now opened our first 2 local fulfillment centers in Bristol and Leeds. As we build this network out, they will become the core fulfillment network for Argos and will give shoppers quicker access to a wider range as we move more stock closer to customers with improved and more consistent and visible availability and, at the same time, the benefits of reduced working capital. Now thinking back to that Argos Home and Furniture performance chart. We've moved at pace to make Habitat our main home and furnishing brand with a significant increase in the proportion of this season's ranges that are Habitat branded. This has elevated the quality and credibility of our ranges and driven a strong market performance. And we see the launch of Habitat as a great opportunity across Argos, Sainsbury's and Habitat Online, given customers are increasingly looking to refresh their homes post the pandemic. We recently launched our new Habitat brand commitment, make your home a happy habitat to help reposition the brand as affordable and accessible for all. And you may have seen our latest TV campaign, which boldly relaunches the brand. In September, we also launched Habitat's first furniture range for kids which offers some really great new products. We see a continued strong recovery in our clothing sales this half. But again, this isn't really the story. It's a business that is, again, fundamentally stronger than it was pre-COVID, having built scale online and transformed the commercial model. Full price sales now account for nearly 90% of sales, a huge step-up from around 60% pre-pandemic and a real testimony to the quality of the 2 clothing offer. Turning to Financial Services. We announced last week that we had ended discussions with third parties on a potential disposal of Sainsbury's Bank. And importantly, the bank has not stood still while those discussions have been taking place. We continue to simplify and strengthen the business in line with the strategy that we set out 2 years ago, the key points of which are summarized here. We said 2 years ago that we would not inject any more capital into the bank and that capital self-sufficiency is still an absolutely vital pillar alongside generating higher returns and reducing the cost base. The remainder of this slide highlights the last of these key strategic points with the focus of the Financial Services business on Sainsbury's customers, be that to its role in supporting Argos sales or the very close link to Nectar. And as we also said last week, we are comfortable with consensus profit forecast for the Financial Services division. So to our third priority, save to invest. We've been a bolder business over the last 12 months. We've made clear decisions on prioritization, on what really matters to customers and on where we can permanently reduce the structural cost base of the company and reduce our cost to serve. This, in turn, has helped us to be bold in investing back into the customer offer. And we are well on track to reduce operating cost of sales by more than 200 basis points over 3 years. You have seen a version of this chart before. The numbers have changed, but the headline target is the same in terms of the reduction in cost to serve. So why have the numbers changed? Well, first, the sales line has been stronger. And second, we're facing into higher operating cost inflation in some areas than anticipated, which has meant we've brought forward some of the cost savings, but with the same net result. And I take a lot of confidence from the fact that 75% of the cost savings we have delivered are structural cost savings, fixed costs that won't return. This is reflected in the updated chart here. Looking at the biggest block of savings here, it's easy to think of operating model projects as areas in retail, which are easy to target with a high level of variable cost. But when you look at the detail here, we're delivering real transformation to the way we work be that in Argos or in the changes we've made to the online operating model. These are bold changes that fundamentally transform the cost base on a structural basis. Now we're gradually filling in more detail here on the breakdown of the 3-year cost saving program. You will see, in particular, the supply chain and logistics number has stepped up, rising to meet some of the greater headwinds we have in this area. We've already closed 5 depots with other 2 to close next spring and the key integrated transport planning system is rolling out at pace. And so to summarize, well, in food, we've been absolutely true to the strategy we laid out a year ago on value, on innovation and on service. And despite some big macro challenges, we've delivered great momentum in market share over the first half. Argos is normalizing after an extraordinary year last year, but it's a new normal for Argos, which is a fundamentally more profitable business with a lower cost to serve. The same goes for our clothing business, and Financial Services is delivering on its COVID recovery plan. We're on track to transform our cost base across the group with bold programs that are driving structural change. And we will deliver strong profit improvement this year on a normalized base with underlying profit before tax of at least GBP 660 million. And looking into peak trading over the next few weeks, well, we've talked already about some of the challenges, particularly on general merchandise stock. But in food, we're building good momentum on customer satisfaction metrics, and we're well set operationally to build on last year's very strong Christmas performance with a really fantastic customer proposition. We've been very clear on how our plans will deliver for shareholders through an inflection in profit, through high-returning transformation projects helping to deliver real structural change in our cost base and through strong free cash flow generation, supporting a strong balance sheet and a consistent dividend, and we are on track on all of these measures. So returning to our 3 core priorities. These are the pillars of the strategy we set out a year ago. They are informing everything that we're doing, and they are delivering results and the momentum, I hope you agree, is very clear. We're not doing this in isolation, of course, and there are clearly some challenges that we've had to deal with and will continue to deal with. But the strategy has made us a stronger, more agile and leaner business. And I'm confident that we're really well placed to deal with those challenges. Thank you for listening and for joining us this morning. I really appreciate your time.