SSP Group PLC
LSE:SSPG
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SSP Group PLC
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
SSP Group PLC
SSP Group, under CEO Patrick Coveney's leadership, has emerged revitalized from the dark clouds of COVID-19. The travel sector was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, but SSP's transformation from near hibernation to recovery is noteworthy. The resilience of the business shines through a remarkable return to profitability, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rebounding from a loss of GBP 108 million in 2021 to a profit of GBP 280 million. This surge has been complemented by an impressive margin improvement and an earnings per share (EPS) uplift from a negative 32p to a positive 7.1p. The group's prudent cash management resulted in a net debt-to-EBITDA leverage at a comfortable 1.4x, prompting the board's confidence to propose an ordinary dividend resumption at 2.5p per share.
SSP has achieved a sales milestone, with revenue approximately GBP 3 billion, surpassing pre-pandemic levels by 8%. This showcases a strong market recovery, aided by strategic pricing actions to tackle persistent cost inflation, and a focus on menu and range engineering. The company's robust gross profit margin, improved by adept inflation mitigation, and enhanced labor ratios from digital technology utilization, are indicative of SSP's resilient business model. Moreover, effective concession fee management and a normalized depreciation expense indicate that SSP is not only recovering but also strategically strengthening its financials for the future.
Passenger volumes nearing pre-COVID levels, with air travel recovery outpacing rail, showcase SSP's sectoral resilience. The company's geographically diverse recovery, led by North America at 123% of 2019 sales, illustrates an adaptable and strategically responsive business model. Despite strikes and protests in rail across the UK and Europe, SSP has maintained a consistent uptrend in sales volume recovery. The end-of-year positive momentum, with expectations of like-for-like sales growth between 6% to 8% for the full year 2024, further supports the company's optimistic outlook.
The Asia Pacific and EEME regions have seen a stellar EBITDA tripling year-on-year, with margins surpassing pre-pandemic figures. This is attributable to solid growth across most territories and increased passenger activity, particularly in travel hubs that witnessed prior low levels. SSP's strategic tilt towards regions with higher growth potential has paid off, signaling the company's adeptness in global market understanding and exploitation amid changing travel dynamics.
Investors would be particularly encouraged by SSP's capital allocation strategy, which maintains a prioritization for organic investment coupled with an eye for mergically accretive acquisitions. The recent Midfield Concessions deal exemplifies SSP's strategic expansion efforts. Furthermore, the reinstatement of the dividend underscores the Group's recovery and confidence in sustainable cash generation. With a targeted medium-term leverage range between 1.5 to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA, SSP not only demonstrates financial fortitude but also ensures an investor-friendly approach towards surplus cash redistribution, reminiscent of its pre-pandemic stability.
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Good morning, everybody. Okay. Everyone hear me okay? Yes, good. Listen, thank you for joining us today for the preliminary results for SSP for the year ended, the 30th of September 2023. For those of you who don't know me, either in the room or on the call, I'm Patrick Coveney. I'm the Group CEO of SSP. And I'm joined for today's presentation by Jonathan Davies, our Deputy CEO and Group CFO. Sarah John, our Corporate Affairs Director; and several other members of our leadership team are here with us as well today.
The presentation that we're going to go through builds on the results RNS that we released at 7:00 a.m. this morning. I'm going to start with a brief introduction before Jonathan runs through the financial review, and then I'll come back in to go through the performance and strategic update. We'll then take questions from everyone, both in the room and on the webcast. By way of introduction then, I wanted to give some context for SSP's recent history through COVID and where we sit today. From an almost cessation of travel when COVID hit, the business has transitioned from a focus on protection and near-term hibernation to, for the past 18 months or so, a strong recovery and rebuild phase. We have delivered to plan in this phase.
The combination of passenger growth back to almost pre-COVID levels, together with the actions we have taken, including reopening the estate, rebuilding the economic model, upgrading the customer proposition, strengthening client and brand partnerships, engaging colleagues and embedding sustainability has put us in a very strong position now. The output of all of this is strong financial performance. Moving EBITDA from a loss of GBP 108 million in 2021 to profit of GBP 280 million with a near 300 basis point margin improvement year-on-year. EPS from minus 32p to now 7.1p. And reassuringly, the cash generation in our model and in our culture enabled us to deliver net debt-to-EBITDA leverage levels for 2023 at just below our midterm target range, in other words, at 1.4x.
The strength of this performance gives us the confidence to propose a resumption of the ordinary dividend, which we're doing on a full year basis at 2.5p. Importantly, we have strong momentum in the business as we move to the next phase of delivery. That being about long-term sustainable growth and returns, compounding returns, which I'll talk about later. And we've also got off to a good start to financial year '24.
With that, let me hand over to Jonathan to run through the financials.
Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, everybody. So we've seen a further encouraging performance in the second half of last year and we've delivered a very good set of results for the full year. Looking at the highlights on an underlying basis and pre-IFRS 16, sales were around GBP 3 billion, up 38% year-on-year and 8% ahead of 2019 levels. EBITDA was GBP 280 million, so broadly doubling and operating profit was GBP 164 million compared with only GBP 30 million last year. EPS was 7.1p per share compared with a loss of 4.5p last year. And as Patrick said, leverage fell to 1.4x net debt to EBITDA, so slightly below now our medium-term target range. And that was after a year of record capital investment of GBP 220 million.
So on the basis of this strong profit recovery and the healthier balance sheet, we're proposing to pay a dividend of 2.5p a share, which represents a 35% payout of net income, so in the middle of our payout range of 30% to 40%. So briefly looking at the results under IFRS 16, operating profit here was GBP 205 million for the year, so GBP 40 million higher than the pre-IFRS 16 numbers with EBITDA GBP 236 million higher, principally reflecting lower concession fees as the minimum guarantees are capitalized and flow through depreciation, but therefore, was offset by an increased depreciation charge, which was nearly GBP 200 million higher. In the reported numbers, you also see an exceptional charge of around GBP 38 million, which includes some impairments of goodwill and right-of-use assets as well as some exit costs, mainly in relation to the planned closure of our German motorway business.
Now to provide some context, I want to look very briefly at results compared to the planning scenarios that we set out this time last year. So at the prelims last year, we said that we were planning for sales to be in the range of GBP 2.9 billion to GBP 3 billion and EBITDA of between GBP 250 million and GBP 280 million, all at the prevailing FX rates last November. Now as you've already seen, the reported sales and EBITDA were almost bang on the top end of that range. Worth pointing out here, which you can see on the right-hand column, but the same FX rates, so last year's spot rates in November, full year results wouldn't have been ahead of that range with EBITDA up a further GBP 9 million.
The FX impact that we've seen here was a consequence of the appreciation of sterling versus all of our major currencies during the year. And the geographic mix of profits, which were weighted to currencies, which saw some very material swings during the year, notably the U.S. dollar, which is a part of the business for us. but also the Indian rupee and the Egyptian pound. And in the appendix, we've set out the currency mix last year for sales, EBITDA and operating profit which, therefore, gives everybody a clear view of our FX exposure to future currency swings and I should just remind you that is purely translational currency effect.
Now turning to our performance and first of all, sales. I'm going to start by looking at the recovery versus 2019 before then concentrating on the year-on-year performance. And I'll focus on the second half numbers, which were up against a reasonable recovery last year and, therefore, frankly, rather more meaningful. So reported sales were 10% ahead of 2019 in the second half and up 15% on a constant currency basis. Within this, passenger volumes were back to around 93% of pre-COVID levels. And the patch recovery has been faster in air, taking it to about 96% than it was in rail at about 85%. Of course, rail continues to be impacted by strike action in the U.K. and some protests in Europe.
Looking at the divisions. North America is leading the way, that's 123% of 2019 sales. And the U.K., whilst the slowest region to recover largely because of its waiting to rail, has continued to strengthen with sales now back almost to pre-COVID levels. Now if I look at the year-on-year trends, in the second half, we saw reported sales up 22% year-on-year or 25% on a constant currency basis, like-for-like sales were up 19% driven by volume of around 11% and inflation of about 8%. That's, of course, reflects our pricing action to mitigate the continued high levels of cost inflation that we're seeing across most of our operating cost base. You can also see here that the like-for-like volume recovery in air was strong, up 15% year-on-year, and that was even against a very strong summer holiday season last year.
And we continue to see steady volume recovery in rail, remembering that the strike action in the U.K. and Continental Europe has knocked something like 4% to 5% of the volumes here. So if we look at the regional breakdown, again, looking at the year-on-year numbers in the second half, we saw very strong performances in terms of like-for-like in North America at 24% and Asia Pac and EEME at 44%. The latter driven by buoyant passenger numbers, particularly in India, Thailand, and Egypt. And by markets like Hong Kong and Singapore, recovering from a fairly low base in the previous year. We also saw good like-for-like growth in Continental Europe and the U.K., both in the mid-teens. Net gains came largely from North America and the Asian region, as you would anticipate, given our pipeline.
And if we look at the last 8 weeks, year-on-year sales have run at about 22% with most regions seeing a continuation of the strong second half like-for-likes and net gains that I've talked about, helped by another extended holiday season running through into the autumn very much as we saw last year. So we have good momentum in sales with like-for-like sales running in the mid-teens. And therefore, we expect to see like-for-like sales in the region of 6% to 8% for the full year 2024, given the tougher comparatives that we will, of course, face as we get to the second half.
So turning to profit. EBITDA more than doubled in the full year with very strong growth across all regions. In North America, we saw a further margin improvement of 2.5% and the EBITDA margin at 13.7% is now in line with the pre-COVID level. In Continental Europe, the EBITDA margin was broadly flat and that's despite the sales growth. And this really reflected the contract extensions at a number of major airports notably in the Nordic countries, where we were impacted by both preopening costs and cement increases. In the year, in the U.K., we saw good year-on-year profit growth, benefiting from a strong recovery in the air business and that was despite the impact of the rail strikes. The on-off nature of the rail strikes that we saw right throughout last year resulted in a fairly high flow-through to profit.
And therefore, there's a drag on the margin. Nevertheless, the overall EBITDA margin at 9.4% was up 3% year-on-year. In Asia Pacific and the EEME, we saw EBITDA more than trebling year-on-year and margins back ahead of pre-COVID levels, driven by very strong growth across most of the region, and the recovery from low levels of activity in certain countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have been impacted by the loss of Chinese passengers. Now if you look at the overall P&L for the group, EBITDA margin recovered to 9.3%, so up 2.8% year-on-year, in line with our previous guidance and reflecting the benefits of the strong like-for-like sales growth. If we look down the P&L, you can see that gross profit margin improved by 10 basis points versus last year, another really strong performance given the level of ongoing inflationary pressures in many food commodities.
And once again, I think, demonstrated our ability to mitigate inflation through pricing action as well, of course, as the effectiveness of our work on menu and range engineering. The labor ratios were about 90 basis points better than last year, and that's despite the continuing inflationary pressures on pay rates. This reflected the recovery in sales volumes as well as our disciplined management of labor levels through efficient scheduling and, of course, the increasing use of digital order and payment technology. Concession fees were broadly flat year-on-year, reflecting the recovery in sales, which has left few units now pay minimum guarantees, but this was offset by the impact of the renewals in a number of major airports, as I've said.
And finally, depreciation was at a more normal level as sales recovered at around 4%, and that left operating margin at 5.4%, so up 4 percentage points year-on-year. Now looking further down the P&L, we saw net profit of GBP 57 million compared with a loss last year of GBP 36 million. Interest costs were lower year-on-year, and that's despite the rising interest rates, which were offset by margin improvements on both our bank debt following the refinancing last summer and on our U.S. private placement notes due to our improving credit rating. And given our current expectations, we expect financing costs to be a little up next year, but not much. The tax charge represents an effective tax rate of 22.7% of net profit. So back in line with our pre-COVID range of 22% to 23% and our expectations currently are for the ETR to say in the same sort of range.
And finally, the minority interest share of profits rose from GBP 24 million to GBP 50 million, which is a result of the very strong performance in the regions where we have our joint ventures. And I'll give you some more detail on those now. So 2019 is actually a useful reference point here, and you can see that on the chart. So you can see the strength of the profit growth in North America and Asia with EBITDA well above 2019 levels. And then consequently, the minority interest share of EBITDA also rising. In the U.S., the minority interest charge increased from GBP 13 million to GBP 23 million and up to 25% of EBITDA, all as a result of the stronger growth in airports with higher joint venture shares, remembering that these shares range from anywhere between 10% and 49%.
Across Asia Pacific and EEME, the minority interest charge has doubled, but as you can see here on the chart, this is essentially all driven by India, which has performed extremely well, but where there's a higher minority interest, in fact, around 60% in aggregate. And just to explain that, we have a controlling shareholding in the Indian joint venture, broadly 50-50 for the overall market. But this, in turn, has further controlled joint ventures with some of our airport clients, which therefore reduces our ultimate economic interest. And looking forward, we would expect this minority interest charge to increase by something like 15% to 25% year-on-year, reflecting the anticipated growth in these regions as well as the fact that some of these mix effects, we think will reverse next year.
Turning to cash flow. We used GBP 125 million of cash in the year, which was after the investment of GBP 220 million in capital projects and a further GBP 40 million on acquisitions. The CapEx was slightly below our earlier expectations of GBP 250 million as we saw a number of projects, 4 from the latter part of '23 into '24. Working capital was a small outflow of around GBP 20 million, reflecting the further unwind of GBP 50 million of deferred payments, largely rents, and that was partly mitigated by the normal generation of cash as we saw our negative working capital grow with sales, and that contributed about GBP 30 million. All of this left net debt at GBP 392 million at the end of September and our leverage at 1.4x.
So a quick word also on the new business pipeline and CapEx. Looking forward, we have a pipeline of net new business, excluding acquisitions, that equates to about GBP 450 million of annualized sales once fully opened. Of these, 2/3 are in North America, Asia Pacific and EEME. Note, this is as of the start of the year in October, so it doesn't compare directly to the GBP 700 million pipeline that we've talked about historically, which dated all the way back through COVID. So about GBP 250 million worth of that has now been opened by the end of last year. So we expect to open about 2/3 of this over the next couple of years, so around about GBP 150 million per annum, which equates to net gains of about 5% in both 2024 and '25.
Looking beyond this, based on the current pipeline and the strong momentum in terms of new business wins you've seen, we think that net gains will run between 3% and 5%. The important message here is that almost all of the net gains we are talking about here are already underpinned by the secured business pipeline. Now looking at the capital investment associated with this, in 2024, as I said, we expect capital investment to rise to be in the region of GBP 280 million. That includes the GBP 30 million of CapEx deferred from '23 into '24 I've mentioned.
Looking into the detail for 2024, we expect this to comprise about GBP 80 million for the mobilization of the secured pipeline, about GBP 60 million for the catch-up on renewals and maintenance that was deferred during COVID, and a further GBP 140 million to fund the normal annual cycle of renewals, maintenance and technology. And we'd expect that to stay at a similar level in '25. Looking further forward, we'd expect to see contract renewal and maintenance CapEx running at similar levels, so around 4% of sales in line with depreciation. And on top of this, the expansionary CapEx, would follow our long-standing financial model of about GBP 2 to GBP 3 of sales from every GBP 1 of capital invested. So assuming the net gains of 3% to 5%, that would leave CapEx somewhere in the region of GBP 250 million to GBP 270 million.
Now let me try to summarize and give you a view of what all this adds up to as we look into next year. So looking at our latest planning assumptions, and this is all on a constant currency basis. As I said earlier, we now expect like-for-like sales in the region of 6% to 10% as a consequence of the momentum in the business and the higher levels of inflation. As I've just shown you, we expect net gains to be in the region of 5% and, therefore, adding in a full year of the Midfield acquisition that we made earlier in the year, we'd expect to see growth in aggregate of somewhere between 13% and 17% on a constant currency basis. This would equate to sales of about GBP 3.4 billion to GBP 3.5 billion for the year. In other words, adding GBP 100 million or so to the higher end of our previous guidance and tightening the range once you adjust for FX. Based on these assumptions for like-for-like and net gains, we'd expect to deliver EBITDA in the region of GBP 345 million to GBP 375 million.
So again, ahead of our previous guidance, and in the middle of that range, that would represent further margin enhancement in the region of 100 basis points year-on-year, again, in line with our previous planning assumptions. The margin enhancements, of course, driven by the operating leverage in the business and our ongoing efficiency program, which Patrick will touch on, but offset by preopening costs that go with the high level of net new business, including renewals and some rent increases. At an operating profit level with depreciation at 4%, we'd expect the range to be somewhere around GBP 210 million to GBP 235 million. That represents growth of around 30% to 40% year-on-year. And clearly, this would flow through to a very material step up in our EPS. And in the appendix, we've provided some additional information on expectations for the bottom end of the P&L.
So finally, to wrap up, A brief word on capital allocation strategy. Essentially, it's unchanged. Our first priority, as ever is for organic investment to grow the business where we know we've got a proven track record of delivering high returns on investment. And we will continue to exercise the same disciplines as we've done historically when it comes to investment appraisal. The second priority is M&A. And we believe that there will be good value-creating opportunities arising in the near term as we recently demonstrated with the Midfield Concessions deal. As I've already mentioned, given the strength of the profit recovery in the balance sheet, we are today announcing the reinstatement of the full year ordinary dividend, and we continue to feel that medium-term leverage in the range of 1.5 to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA is appropriate. But of course, as ever, we would expect to return any surplus cash to shareholders as we did prior to COVID.
So let me pass back to Patrick for the business review.
Thanks, Jonathan. I'm going to set out the progress that we've made in '23 against our strategic priorities. And also describe the way in which this strategy sets us up to deliver further growth and returns, compounding returns, in fact, going forward. We set out our strategic priorities this time last year. Our strategy focuses on the delivery of high growth and returns with a sustainable margin. We are doing this by consciously pivoting the business to higher growth channels and higher-growth regions that give us access to higher like-for-like sales and new business opportunities. We are strengthening our capabilities to drive competitive advantage and performance by investing in and enhancing our customer propositions everywhere by accelerating the use of digital by engaging our people and by transforming our approach to and delivery of sustainability.
Delivering operating efficiency is a core mindset and skill set of SSP, but we are bringing in new processes and tools to drive this even further. Central to our decision-making in all areas of strategy is to balance short-term margin with long-term sustainable growth and returns. So turning to the outcomes this year. It can be easy to underestimate the scale of the geographic pivot that our business has made. North America and Asia combined now represent 53% of the EBITDA of the business, a 10 percentage point increase on last year and a 17 percentage point increase relative to 2019. Those 2 regions have gone from being about 1/3 of our EBITDA pre-COVID to more than half of our EBITDA right now and growing strongly.
We're building a new business and one that is more aviation focused and geographically optimized for where travelers are going to be over the next decade. The scale of the growth, both in terms of net gains and in the 19% like-for-like that we delivered in the second half of 2023 reflect the strategic pivot and the increasing strength of our formats, brands and culinary propositions everywhere. The momentum we have in volume growth is creating positive operating leverage which, together with our focus on operating efficiencies has enabled us to move our EBITDA margin forward and sustainably to 9.3%.
Turning now to what all of this means for the individual regions. Sitting behind our strategic choices and capital allocation priorities is a conviction that we expect an even greater proportion of our revenue, our profit and our returns to come from our North American and Asian businesses. In both of these regions, we go to market with strong local partnerships. These partners are essential to our operating model, enabling us to better access clients and contracts, establish stronger relationships with local brands, contribute fully to capital deployment, and ultimately allowing us to grow more quickly.
So let's start with North America. You can see that the investment to support the delivery of accelerated growth is very much coming through with like-for-like revenue in the year, up 33%; and in the second half, up 24%. That's -- just to remind you, that's like-for-like growth of 1/3 and 1/4 respectively, in the year. Notwithstanding the continued levels of higher inflation, we've been able to move gross margins forward in America to levels now ahead of where they were in 2019. Digital enablement is helping performance with almost 90% of our stores in North America now with some model of digital ordering solution. But remember, we still operate at relatively small scale in North America, a little over 10% share in a large and growing market. We have many organic growth opportunities in existing and new airports and as you've seen this year, the potential to augment this with value creating infill M&A.
Just to granular on this for one second. At the start of FY '23, we operated in 38 North American airports. Since then, we've secured 11 additional airports, including successfully integrating Midfield, which added 4 new airports from within this group of 11. Looking forward, we expect to deploy, as Jonathan said, approximately 40% of our total group new unit growth CapEx budget in North America over the next 3 years. In Asia then, which are our Asia Pacific and EEME regions, EBITDA trebled in the year, helped by a very strong performance in our joint venture in India. The growth we are delivering represents a material and deliberate strategic pivot in terms of where in Asia and where in EU want to compete. Namely, we're moving the business from a being essentially China-centric pre-COVID to one that's Southeast Asia centric now.
We're also pushing very hard to build out our present scale and relationships in the Middle East. We've seen very significant levels of mobilization and new business wins in Asia this year. These wins will flow through in '24 and '26 and underpin our pipeline, as Jonathan said out earlier. Some of the most interesting format work on proposition we're doing is actually happening in Asia Pacific, most particularly in lounges, where the bedrock capability of our business in India is now being extended to other markets.
So let me say a little more specifically about India. In India, we have an excellent partnership that being Travel Food Services, or TFS, which has been in place since October 2016. This continues to evolve and we are closely aligned with our partner, K Hospitality, both culturally and in our growth and returns objectives. Together, we have grown the business substantially with exceptional revenue and profit performance this year. India is now the second largest market in SSP in terms of unit numbers and represented just over 60% of the reported profitability of APAC and EEME in 2023. But we still have a small share in the market, and we are creating significant momentum behind our business development activity, including planned expansion to 6 new airports, which have been already secured in our pipeline.
You see India is already the third largest aviation market in the world and is expected to grow very materially on the back of enormous investments in aviation and passenger demand. One of the things that I'm learning in this job is the importance of tracking airline capacity. In other words, making sure we're fishing where the fish are and to know that you have to track where the planes, in particular, the new planes are now being deployed. So that's to be explicit about what that means for India. Indian-owned airlines have approximately 700 or operate approximately 700 commercial aircraft right now.
But in the past year alone, they've ordered 1,200 more planes, which will be delivered between '25, '26 and '27 -- sorry, by '25, '26 and '27. This is a massive step-up in aviation capacity, which, of course, requires a commensurate investment in passenger experience in airports, including in F&B. Given our footprint, our relationships, our capability and our performance trajectory, we'd expect that this momentum will continue for many years.
Moving now to Continental Europe and the U.K. We expect our 100% owned businesses in these markets to deliver good growth accompanied by a progressive improvement in margin from here. First, in Continental Europe, this is a business that's made up of 4 subregions: The Nordics, France, Germany, and Spain. These are each businesses in which we typically have high-quality, long established teams and also quite high market shares. We're focused now on only our rail and air portfolios having announced the exit of our German MSA business in September. In the air channel, the recent approval of our partnership with ADP in Paris will bring 55 more units into the joint venture in Charles de Gaulle and Orly from January 2024. In addition, we've significantly increased our air footprint, especially in the Spanish islands.
In the rail channel, we've entered a number of new regional railway stations in France and Germany as well as confirming our entry into Italy through the rail channel in Rome and Milan. We're strengthening our brand and format propositions across the region with a particular focus actually on rolling out our Starbucks and Pret relationships across the region. While the profit performance has been held back somewhat this year as a consequence of the scale of the retention and renewal activity and the ongoing disruption from industrial action, the initiatives we are taking will enable us to make good progress from here.
In the U.K. We've made a step change this year in how we're running the business on all fronts, and that's feeding through to performance. EBITDA has moved forward from GBP 39 million to GBP 73 million despite a significant level of industrial disruption, which is we're all experiencing this week, looks likely to continue at least in the near term. Our reset team is delivering a revitalized set of customer propositions and is freshening up the quality of our estate. This is most evident in the near term in the air environment, but you'll see it increasingly in rail as well. You heard Jonathan reference COVID catch-up capital earlier, the pink bars on the top of this bar chart. Most of that capital is going into the U.K. and it's supporting a pronounced change in how SSP is now being viewed by clients.
To give you some data on what we mean by this, our annual client survey indicated that 86% of our U.K. clients are now either satisfied or very satisfied with what SSP is doing. This is a material step-up on an equivalent score in 2019 of 53%. You can also see it and feel it in terms of the formats where we're becoming more and more relevant as a business in bars and casual dining, big units in big airports. For example, in Gatwick, in our new partnership with BrewDog and the Breakfast Club, with the BrewDog opening officially there yesterday with Kari Daniels on our U.K. team in Gatwick last night. You will also see this progress with an exciting new bar called [ Winery ] that we're bringing to Terminal 2 at Heathrow, which will open in April of this year. The progress that we've made this year in the U.K. gives us confidence to say that we can do better than just maintaining share in the U.K. We can deliver good growth from here accompanied by progressively rising margins.
So let's move away from regional performance to talk now about how we are capturing the opportunity and serving customers and clients in these markets. Underpinning everything is the belief that we need to have the right offer for customers, including outstanding tasting food. So we've introduced several important new brand partners in the year, like Hard Rock Cafe and BrewDog, and that's complemented by the progress that we're making in our own brands like the award-winning propositions, Koh Hop bar in Thailand, our Oakland Draft House in the U.S. So in terms of format, let me pick out some examples. As you'll have heard me say over the last 18 months, bars and casual dining are becoming more important for SSP everywhere.
Food is no longer a commodity at airports. Customers are seeking out food and beverage experiences, particularly in big signature bars and restaurants. Our North American business is built in format terms to deliver these experiences. We've also made huge progress though in lounges, where we've developed strong capability in India, which is enabling us to scale up our business in Malaysia very materially. In convenience formats, we recognize the imperative to be relevant for grab-and-go food for customers in airports and other travel environments. With our significant history and capability in convenience retail through M&S in the U.K., we are not only investing in a renewal program behind this brand, but also expanding our own brands, including Café Local with 15 new rail units opened since June and another 15 to be opened by the end of this calendar year.
And Point where we now have taken our blueprint from the Nordics and rolled it out in Spain, taking the total to 28 units with further openings planned in Thailand and in Switzerland this year. This commitment to enhancing the customer propositions that we offer is paying off, demonstrated by our rising customer ratings. We track this through a program called reputation. And in FY '23, we achieved our highest score in the last 5 years, 4.2 out of 5, up from 3.4 and 3.9 in FY '21 and FY '22, respectively. We're not only building a bigger business, we're building a better business for customers.
Driving efficiency, productivity and cash is in SSP's corporate DNA. And if I could say so, having spent 18 years before coming to SSP and private label food manufacturing myself, it's also in mind. I wanted to give a few examples of how we're bringing this to life, starting with digital. You can now go into almost any of our bars, casual dining or quick service restaurants that we have across the world and find some sort of digital ordering option. But beyond that, we're looking at of how to reconfigure and redesign units more fundamentally in a way that capitalizes on their digital potential. You can see an example of this here with the digitally-enabled food court that we put into Terminal 2 in Dublin airport called The Mezz. And the essence of that is that you can only order digitally.
There's also a common kitchen like a dark kitchen, in fact, within an airport that assembles all of the food across 4 completely different brand formats. It's a plug-and-play option for different brands in the same kitchen. We also optimized hot stockholding using AI and then everything gets delivered to the customer through a single collection point. So this is working for the client, it's working for our customers. It's driving like-for-like cost efficiencies, and it's also materially enhanced the airport's Net Promoter Scores. The next is an example from North America of menu optimization. This demonstrates how we are getting after gross margins while at the same time delivering a strong customer proposition. Many of you will have seen the details of this in our Capital Markets Day in New York back in June.
And the third area is building consistency about how our kitchens look and feel because as we get larger as a business, we've got a significant opportunity to get benefits in terms of both scale and scope in our kitchens. These kitchens now enable us to serve customers more quickly, reducing their stress and increasing their satisfaction. Furthermore, a more standardized kitchen design and fit-out improves productivity, but it also improves safety and maintenance outcomes. Critically, the more quickly we can turn seats, the more we can drive like-for-like performance. Projects like these will be key to underpinning our margin progression this year and for the years ahead.
We continue to prioritize the critically important area of sustainability and we're seeing strong momentum across our business in delivering the strategy. I will let you read the individual points of evidence on the slide that's behind me, but I'd encourage you also to click on the QR code to see more of our approach and to see many of our examples of how we're reducing our climate impact. Not only are we making stellar progress against our targets, for example, a 42% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions since 2019, we're also building capability in areas like restaurant construction and design. And as a result, we're seeing evidence of the value that sustainability is bringing to helping us win more business.
Very tangibly, sustainability is good business for us. Our sustainability credentials were crucial factors behind our wins in U.K. City Airport, in Hong Kong, and in the new units that we opened only 2 weeks ago in the newly opened Abu Dhabi Midfield Airport. Clients across the world are increasingly noticing and valuing what we're doing. Almost everything I've spoken about so far relates to the performance of our units that are already open. Let me now pivot to looking at what's coming ahead. In short, we're growing our business at a faster rate, a materially faster rate than we've grown it before. There are 4 ways in which we're doing it. First, we are mobilizing units from our pipeline at pace. The example here is Malaysia, where our teams have done an outstanding job, not just mobilizing new units, but mobilizing a new country for SSP from 1 unit in 1 airport to 31 units in 4 airports in just 12 months.
Second, we have accelerated the growth of the pipeline with GBP 450 million of further committed new sales to be onboarded over the next 3 years and Jonathan set out the components of this growth earlier. Third, we're complementing the business development momentum we're having with strategic infill M&A. The example here is Midfield Concessions, a family-owned business based in the U.S., which was a strategic fit for us, but which crucially is also expected to deliver fully on the returns expectations that we demand. With the completion of Denver, the final airport within that portfolio 3 weeks ago, all 40 units across 7 airports, 4 of which are new to SSP are now transferred, giving us a platform to build out our presence in those airports further. And lastly, new market entry. So setting the business up in high-growth markets that we weren't in previously.
New news for us today is that we've secured our entry into Saudi Arabia, at least the first step in our entry into Saudi Arabia, a significant travel market with huge planned further investments in aviation initially with 10 units across 3 terminals in Riyadh. So earlier Jonathan set out how our performance and development trajectory feeds into FY '24 guidance. I now want to talk a little further out. As a business, we have strong momentum on all fronts. That momentum is underpinned by our economic model, where we focus on like-for-like revenue growth converting that revenue effectively to profitability and cash and then reinvesting a portion of that cash to fund further new growth. We are creating a compounding and sustainable growth and returns model.
To be precise then, the parameters of how that phase from 2025 onwards will be: one, because we are pivoting to higher-growth markets with improved and sustainable customer propositions, we expect to be able to deliver stronger like-for-like than we have historically. We also have significant net gains opportunities given the higher levels of structural growth in those markets. Our strong business footprint there notwithstanding relatively low market shares and high levels of client support. We estimate net gains of 3% to 5%. Clearly, current momentum is at the top end of that range, but that range signals that we will continue to be disciplined in the returns that we demand as we go after these individual opportunities. We won't chase growth at poor returns.
Two, we expect to deliver sustainable operating margin enhancement benefiting from operating leverage, delivering efficiencies and deploying pricing strategies to offset the impact of cost inflation. We will manage this in a sustainable way that will support the delivery of our growth and returns for the long term. Three, we will deliver sustainable medium-term earnings growth driven principally by that strong operating profit growth. Four, we will fund both maintenance and new business expansion from operating cash flow. This is underpinned by tight cash management. And finally, we're able to fund all of the growth that we can reasonably anticipate while also delivering on the capital allocation framework that Jonathan described earlier. Shareholders should benefit from both strong earnings growth and an attractive dividend.
So in summary, our business is in very good shape financially, strategically, and operationally. We have excellent momentum in all areas. The progress that we're making is evidenced in strong like-for-like sales, high levels of new business wins, margin enhancement as well as meaningfully strengthened relationships with our customers, our clients and our brand partners. In FY '23, we believe that we got the balance right between strong in-year performance and setting our business up to capture the significant industry growth potential that we see in the coming years. And today, we've set out for you the drivers that will build SSP performance and returns, specifically in FY '24 and thereafter.
Thank you very much. So we're going to take questions over here now.
Fintan Ryan here from Goodbody. Just 2 questions for me, please. Firstly, within the 6% to 10% like-for-like sales growth guidance for FY '24, can you give us a sense in terms of your expectations around volumes versus net pricing? I guess related to that, what are you seeing in terms of current run rate around inflation when it comes to labor costs and sort of raw material and ingredients?
And then secondly, you've pointed out the GBP 150 million net new sales gains in FY '24. You quantify what the losses you're expecting there and specifically the German motorway exit? And are there other sort of chunkier assets like -- or chunkier areas of business that you would look to exit during the foreseeable?
Jonathan, you do the first and I'll do the second.
Okay, fine. So with regards to the mix of price and volume in our expected like-for-like, it's broadly 50-50. So I think what we're seeing is some -- in the middle of the range, it's something like 4% of price inflation. It is a little bit higher than that at the moment, but we think it will ease as we hit [ to for ] comparatives later in the year. And clearly, the volume will actually swing a little bit more sharply the other way half to half.
In terms of inflationary pressures on the cost base, I mean, broadly speaking, across the group labor inflation is somewhere in the region -- we expect labor inflation during the year to be somewhere in the region of 5% to 6% year-on-year. There are 1 or 2 areas where it will be a little bit above that, like the U.K. and the U.S., where it's probably sort of 7% to 8%, but there are other regions where it will be lower. That sort of pressure is really eased. If you look at cost of goods, it's probably a little bit below that. So we're broadly speaking, expecting cost of goods inflation to be about 4% to 5%.
Yes. Let me pick up on the net gains and the specific questions you asked. So like our gross win rate is very good at the moment, right? And we're delighted with that because we're getting it at the returns level that the business has been just very, very disciplined about doing for decades, right? And it's been a real positive experience for me to see that firsthand since I joined. You would have noted and hopefully heard me precisely when I spoke about the kind of -- the difference between the sort of 5% net gains that's locked in for the next 2 years already and the fact that we then talk about 3% to 5% net gains thereafter. The reason for that is just a signal that we won't chase business at any returns.
And it may be that the market becomes more competitive, for our propositions aren't valued as much as we hope they will be and, therefore, it could fall off a vision. So that -- it's not that we think there'll be less opportunity. It's just that we need to be careful about making sure that we keep the returns disciplined in doing it. Now the other piece of that to -- that feeds through to this concept of the gains being net is what's happening in terms of renewals and retention. Our business is running in very, very good and a very good path there. On the back of some of the things that hopefully, I brought to life in the presentation around proposition, client relationship, food quality, cool interesting brands around the world wanting to work with us.
Jonathan has sort of taught me since I joined that the right way to think about this is that running with the kind of long-term renewal rate of about 80% is right for exactly the same reasons as I spoke about in the gains, which is if you start running with higher -- turning that into a higher target, you run the risk of retaining business at any cost, which can be damaging to returns. All that being said, over the course of the last 20 months or so, which I can specifically speak to, our renewal rate has been a lot higher than that 80%. And so that feeds through into the push up in the revenue performance of the business and the sort of specific components of the GBP 450 million over the next 3 years that we've mentioned.
And then if I just finish on your question about MSA, I mean it's -- so we had a long-standing relationship with a motorway service station operator called Tank & Rast in Germany. Now it was a kind of a cleverly put together deal in that SSP contributed very little capital into it. It operated the assets crudely, the capital of somebody else. But as a result, the returns -- the EBITDA was quite low. So it was a lower margin business, but quite good returning. What we found as the business has -- the market has come out of COVID is, it's just not as attractive a proposition for us to run anymore. And we have a -- we were reaching a point of having a notice period on that contract, and we've served it. I think it's going to take us a little bit of time to come out of it.
We have publicly announced that we're coming out of it, which we did in September in the German market. So over the course of the next 2 years or so, you will begin to see us phase that down. I think you could plausibly view that by the time you get to 2026, we'll have little business left in Germany. It will be -- it will reduce sales a bit. It will have no impact on EBITDA. And if anything, the natural consequence of that is it would mean that the margin footprint of our Continental European business will [ tick ] up a bit commensurate with that change once it's unfolded.
And worth saying that we've assumed in the guidance we've given today that we continue to run it through this next year.
Jamie from Morgan Stanley. Three questions, please. Just on, again, the sales guidance, are you seeing any signs of consumer demand slowdown? Or are you factoring in anything in the numbers beyond the sort of tougher comps in H2? Secondly, on margins, you're clearly above 2019 levels in rest of world, pretty well there in North America despite the ramp-up of new contracts. People are quite far behind in Europe and the U.K., but when do you think those 2 regions might get back to 2019 levels, if at all? And then just on the balance sheet, clearly, below your leverage target, share price is quite depressed, how you feeling about the balance of buybacks versus M&A?
Let me just make a couple of comments on the market, and I'll let Jonathan then connect that specifically to the sales guidance, the margin trajectory and your question on capital strategy and balance sheet. I think the short answer to your question, Jamie, is that we are not seeing any evidence in the data of a slowdown. You could observe that, that's a bit surprising given some of the things that are happening in the world. But the facts of the matter are that as we see current levels of air travel, air bookings, a gradual build back year-on-year in rail in Europe, whether that's the U.K. or Continental Europe. And this very, very sustained high levels of investment into aviation in the Middle East and Asia.
The demand environment is still very good. And we're alert to it, and I think sitting here in London and sitting in Europe, we're probably more concerned about macro pressures than it is the case in other parts of the world. But as you heard me say, our business is increasingly a North American and Asian business in terms of where our footprint is and where we're putting more capital. So we're seeing -- we track it every week formally in the reviews that Jonathan and I do with our regional teams. But if you look at the levels of current sales and the levels of forward bookings in aviation, you don't see a problem at the moment.
So in terms of regional performance, and the first thing I'd say is that there's no magic about 2019 levels because clearly, a lot has changed between then and now. Clearly, in aggregate terms, we've used it as a little bit of an anchor point. But we should be slightly cautious about using it as our only anchor point. If you look at the 2 regions, U.K. and Continental Europe, which, as you say, are still 3% or 4% behind the EBITDA margins that we saw pre-COVID. U.K., which has got the biggest gap, just over 4% clearly has been hit by the rail strikes this year. And is, of course, subject to a sort of slightly slower recovery that we're seeing anyway in rail. And so I think that's where you might expect a full recovery in the nearer term.
But I stress, I'm not suggesting we're going to get back to that level in the next 1 year or 2, but you have seen a 3% step forward, for example, in last year. A lot of it will depend on the rail strikes and we are building, I think, a bigger and better air business there, which will also help the margins. In the Continental Europe region, again, there's a lot of moving parts there. As I said in my presentation, we will see some rent pressures coming through as a consequence of renewing a number of big airports, which is success, but nevertheless, does weigh on the margin a little bit, albeit some of that comes through preopening costs.
Again, I think it is probably going to be longer before we get back to pre-COVID margins in that region. So I think if you look at the business as a -- the group as a portfolio, it may be that we're well ahead of pre-COVID margins in a number of regions, but possibly may take a few years to get back there in Continental Europe. However, some structural factors may help us, for example, exiting the MSAs, which are running at breakeven will be helpful in due course. So -- but again, lots of moving parts.
In terms of the balance sheet and the question about share buybacks, I mean, clearly, we are thoughtful about this. The reality is right now, we think it will be premature because we've got, as Patrick said, a very good run rate in terms of new business wins. I'm thinking about organic growth, and you've seen that we set out the capital projections. But also, we think there will be the potential for further infill acquisitions. So right now, bluntly, we think the right thing to do is to keep our powder dry. If we're looking forward in the future, let's say, in 12 months' time without clear visibility of opportunities for organic growth or M&A, and we are delevering, clearly at that point in time, we'll think much harder about share buybacks.
Darragh O'Sullivan from Jefferies. Can you comment on the North American competitive environment? The growth in this region has been very strong, and there seems to be a couple of tailwinds also potential macro uncertainty. In this context, do you expect the rate of growth to accelerate or change in '24 and '25? And then secondly, Patrick, given your experience in the Food to Go sector, is this an area that you think SSP may lean into more going forward?
In which sector?
Food to Go.
Food to Go. Okay. Got it. Let me go, but Jonathan, jump in by same thing and then '24, '25, you want to clarify. I mean, the first thing to say is that we've obviously had stellar growth in North American in '23, 33% growth for the year, what was it, 24% for the second half. And the second half was a strong comparator. People were properly -- the reason we use that throughout both Jonathan's section and mine as the comparator is, people were really traveling in the summer of '22. So -- but the constituent parts of our growth in America for '24 and '25 are coming through very obviously. We're in -- we've gone from 38 to basically 50 airports in a year. We've added Midfield Concessions. Our development work within some of our bigger airports, like JFK, for example, quite encouraging as well. So we -- and the like-for-like momentum on the back of both volume and pricing is good.
So I think you can expect that, I think, it would be a reasonable expectation that North America will move from not just being the biggest EBITDA contributor, but to becoming the biggest sales contributor very rapidly over the next 12 to 24 months as well when you compound all those effects together. And clearly, it's the largest single recipient of the capital that Jonathan described earlier as well, close to 40% of the -- what you might describe as the enhancement CapEx or new unit CapEx is going into North America. Sitting behind all of that and, hopefully, those of you who are in New York with us in June will have got a sense for what we believe, which is we also have a -- both an awesome team in America and a really, really helpful set of business partners who are enabling us to scale the business up further.
And so a lot of it -- and that's before you get into some of the kind of macro factors about level of domestic travel and the economic profile and travel habits of people in North America. So that's what I'd say about that. Yes, grab and go, Food to Go, let me make a sort of a bigger point and then an hour point. We think there are benefits of focus in terms of what we do, right? So you're very, very unlikely to see SSP wanting to become a mainstream retailer in airports on luxury goods or duty-free are some of those categories. But where we think the intersection of our business is with retail is in grab-and-go food. And so -- because that's because there are a large chunk of passengers who want it.
So particularly with the continued growth of low-cost airlines and the relatively poor and deteriorating quality of in-flight food. So we have to have good grab-and-go offerings in all of our units, including having some units that are quite optimized towards grab-and-go food. And so the reason that you hear us talk about our convenience formats is not in particular because we want to be plug-on magazines and CDs and pillows. It's because they are units that also have the opportunity to do high-quality grab-and-go food, which passengers want. And so -- and we're pushing hard on that.
It's Manjari Dhar from RBC. I also have 2 questions, if I may. The first is on sort of customer behavior trends. You've talked about the extended holiday season into Q1, and this is sort of the second year we've seen that. To what extent do you think that this is a longer-term shift in the way that passengers are traveling globally? And then secondly, just on the tender market, I was just wondering where that stands relative to 2019 levels in terms of the recovery we've seen this year?
So which was the second question.
The second was on the tender market and how that's ramped up this year.
Do you want to pick that up on and, yes, I'll do the customer behavior. Yes.
So in terms of the tender market, I think we've said in the past that one of the good points of coming out of COVID, there weren't many good points for us from COVID. But one was that it did actually give us a slightly more benign competitive environment for a smell because I think all the competitors were bidding rather cautiously, shall I say, or indeed not participating in tenders. So that gave us the benefit over a relatively short period of securing extensions in particular as well as some new business, arguably lower rents than we might have seen prior to COVID.
Having said that, I think that as you've seen, volumes are largely back, and I think we are seeing essentially a similar level of competition now in major open tenders. I think it's worth saying that in some of the developing markets, if I can call them that, where we saw intense competition from local players pre-COVID, some of whom were bidding what we would argue were irrational and unsustainable rents. I think a little bit of that just fallen away. I think some of these people have been scarred by the experience of COVID and have withdrawn from the market or frankly, haven't had the financial strength to withstand what happened to them.
So I think we have got a slightly more benign environment in some of those markets. But I think we're now back to a world where the normal sort of competition is resuming. And as you will have heard me say before, I did talk about this at our Capital Markets Day in New York. We anticipate, as we look forward, practically a resumption of that sort of long-run historical trend of a slight tick up in rents over time as we renew and bring new business on.
I mean in terms of your question on customer behavior, our business -- travel has become more about leisure and more about experiences post-COVID. So that's true in rail as well as air, by the way. And so there's just a greater proportion of travel missions that are leisure-focused in some way. It does appear to be the case at least for the moment that citizens are choosing to use more of their money, including in someone's instances potentially borrowings to pay for experiences rather than physical stuff. And you see that at all kind of points in the price value spectrum around leisure trips. If you look at forward-looking bookings on cruises, for example. You look at the kind of forward buy on big events that you would travel to, concerts across the world. There is a there's just a sustained step-up in forward bookings for experiences that are enabled by travel everywhere.
And a consequence of that is that the traditional holiday season or leisure season has been reset somewhat. And you can see it in the examples you've given, which is if you take the businesses that we operate in Mediterranean islands, in the Greek Islands or in Cyprus or on the Balearics, what used to be a model of you opened for 5 months and then you basically shuttered for the next 7, has become a 9-month season. And that's obviously helpful for a business like us. But I think we'll have to be is like my response to Jamie earlier, we are configuring propositions to meet those experience requirements of customers, but we also have to be alert to the fact that there could be changes. But for the moment, I think it would be fair to say travel has become materially more about leisure than it has ever been before. And that has implications for the kind of outlets that you have and the customer behavior in them.
Greg Johnson, Shore Capital. A couple of questions. Patrick, you talked about entry into Saudi Arabia with a number of units in Riyadh as the first stage. Can you maybe touch on what future stages look like? And other markets potential, sort of large, fast-growing markets. So with that, in mind, the second question, M&A and Midfield type infill acquisitions, are there any more Indias out there?
Yes. Let me talk about geographic priorities for us. So I mean we are -- we observed and are engaging in the level of investment into aviation in the Middle East. So particularly in the Emirates and in Saudi. So 2 weeks ago, we opened just what's an awesome food court, awesome in all sorts of ways, including some really interesting stuff we're doing on sustainability and menu development in Abu Dhabi. And that's coinciding with COP 28 and I think it's going to generate lots of learnings for us. It's part of a partnership we have with a group called Klimato, which is helping us do carbon footprinting of individual menu items, which customers can see and we'll see how that feeds through. So it's quite an important initiative for us.
But the big picture for us is that we have a very, very strong new presence in Abu Dhabi as that new airport comes on stream, and it's -- as I say, it's only open 2.5 weeks, right? So same theme is Saudi, right? And so our aspirations in Saudi would extend well beyond Riyadh. And the business development we're working on is seeking to generate opportunities well beyond that. So the level of investment in aviation there and the number of people traveling through there and the spend capacity of the people who are there makes it a very, very attractive market to be an F&B operator in airports. And so I kind of watch for further developments would be my point I'd make there and there's industry -- the industry recognizes what's happening in terms of new capacity coming on board, and you'll see more capital to be deployed there.
Last -- and then in terms of other geographies, I mean, there are a relatively small number of other markets that we're not in that we'd like to be in, but they're in keeping with the geographic priorities that we flagged, right? So Southeast Asia, there are 1 or 2 attractive markets that we are in discussions about trying to find a way into, but we have tremendous organic momentum in the existing ones. India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, all very, very important for us. But that sense of being -- if you imagine a sort of a direction of travel southeast, that's where you find most of the places we'd like to be that we're either in already or that we'd like to be bigger in or get into geographically there. And then I think we can do more around the core footprint that we've got in North America.
We can do more in Canada than we're currently doing. And I think there's other opportunities on the back of the U.S. footprint that we have there. So that's where I'd be looking. And I think that's the best segue to M&A that I can give you, right, which is we will seek to combine ways of accelerating our access to those kinds of opportunities while being really careful that we're not chasing off what you would pay to get it through and compromising our return expectations. Like this is the business, and Jonathan and the team are -- businesses that simply do not overpay for assets. And you won't find us doing that in opportunities that we'll go after.
Clive Black from Shore Capital, too. Just a very quick follow-on from that then. Can you just give a steer as to where you see the return on invested capital going forward? Where -- competitive maybe where you've been, kind of accretive, does it stay the same?
I think the return on incremental capital, we've always said, is we're looking for 3 to 4 years discounted post-tax payback on any investment whether it be renewals, whether it be brand new business and that's really where we still stand. I mean, on a normal investment that would take you to sort of high 20s, early 30s in IRRs. And one of the nice features of our business model is that I think we've got a good track record of delivering organic growth over many years and actually getting those sorts of returns or perhaps slightly better, which is one of the reasons you can see the cash generation historically. So without repeating the whole speech here, it's the sort of fundamental part of our business model to make sure we're getting good returns. And as Patrick says, it's why I've always loved to what I would see as overpay for acquisitions, which might look good on paper, but if you really analyze the long-run returns, they're down in your cost of capital.
Clive, the only build I'd just give on that is the format mix and the geographic mix that we're pivoting towards actually is somewhat more capital intensive? And I know some of that capital has been also contributed by joint venture partners. But if you're going to have more signature bars and casual dining restaurants, they cost more. And so they also return very well. But the reason that you see this step up towards GBP 280 million per year of CapEx is partly a reflection of the format mix that we see unfold as we are making sure that we're as relevant declines in customers as you need to be. And in a world where consumers are consciously choosing F&B experiences, you just have to be in bars in casual dining and airports. And so that tends to be a little bit more expensive to build.
Ali Naqvi from HSBC. You have your committed pipeline for the next -- certainly, for the next 2 years. But what is your capability or headroom to continue to win new contracts, especially in some markets where they're getting aggressively reopening for re-tenders such as the U.S.? And then secondly, what are the steps or things that have to go right for you to get towards top end of your guided EBITDA range for next year. And coming out of the pandemic and all these reopenings, do you have a longer-term view as to where margins could end up, especially with some of the self-help initiatives you're putting through?
Do you want to pick all those up, Jon?
It's our capacity to fund these growth. I mean we've got -- clearly, if you look at the balance sheet and the cash generation of the business on a steady-state basis, we will certainly have more than sufficient capacity to fund the sort of growth expectations for new business as well as the renewal and maintenance investments that we've been talking about. So we would be -- in all things equal, we would be delevering if we continue to grow at that rate. And again, you'll have heard me say before, even if you looked at the higher levels of growth that we delivered 5% to 6% net gains pre-COVID. We actually were delevering and we were giving returns back to shareholders. So the answer is we've got the capacity to go faster than we're giving indications of today that you saw in the chart.
However, to Patrick's point, I'm always mindful of the fact that we need to make sure we're delivering returns. So our judgment is here that we feel confident we can deliver the same sort of returns as we've done historically, whilst growing at that pace. Yes, we could go faster, but it might carry some risk of reducing the disciplines around returns. But if we can find the projects, we've got plenty of opportunity to grow the business faster and not struggle to finance that.
In terms of the question about the range, I mean, the reason we've given a range principally around sales of sort of 6% to 10% like-for-like is that we live in an uncertain world. We are having to think about what happens to our U.K. rail business? Do we have strikes or not? Do they last throughout the year. We have to think about some of the geopolitical issues that we face at the moment. We've seen little to no impact, I have to say, of the troubles in Israel, but that doesn't mean to say that, that will be the case throughout the year.
So it's really going to be about sales, first and foremost. And that's in a sense how we've sort of constructed the range that we've given. And the other thing that's worth saying is that if we were to have further new business opportunities that fell into this year, that might also give us some upside in sales. However, it's probably going to come through with perhaps a lower level of profit since you'll get the normal preopening costs and start-up effects with bringing on additional new business in the year.
James Rowland Clark from Barclays. Two on current trends, please. The 22% year-on-year constant FX growth that you're seeing at the moment. Can you talk about the mix of like-for-like and net gain in that number and how that ties into your full year guidance of 5% net gains and 6% to 10% like-for-like?
Secondly, on the U.K., it's the only region seeing a sequential improvement in sales growth. So can you talk about the drivers of that? Is that a rail-driven? Or is that business travel what's happening in there? And finally, on net gains. I think pre-COVID, a potentially higher drag on the group profit margin was the fact that you were growing in new regions or brand new contracts or brand-new markets. Can you talk about the mix of net gains, brand-new markets and contracts versus existing airports where you're just adding new units. So how does -- what does that mix look like?
Yes. Let me briefly do the last one and then I will need to be brief. It's a mix chance, right? So you take somewhere like Malaysia, where you're entering a brand-new country, which we did in '23, you're not going to make much money in the first year. By the time you build a brand-new team, work with a client for the first time, have all the preopening costs of opening 31 units, 3 of the 4 airports completely new to us. We had 1 unit there before or from FY '22. So that type of new market entry, we think will create very good value for us over time, but it doesn't give you any returns in the year in question. You put a couple of more units into JFK Terminal 4, which you've seen, yes, we get a straight and immediate payback on that.
So the truth is, it's a mix across different things, but you're right to parse out the discrete dynamics. I think we -- the sort of general observation is that the more, the higher the level of net gains delivered in the year, the more it puts pressure on your average margin because of the preopening costs and startup and whether -- and it's -- obviously, it's more pronounced in a new country than or a new airport than it will be in an existing one. But in general, you can expect that if we create long-term value by winning these and mobilizing this business, it is a bit of a drag on reported percentage margin when you've got that elevated level of net gains. But do you want to...
So your question, James, on the current run rate, the 22% year-on-year growth, that includes about 7% contribution from net gains. And therefore, the like-for-like is in the region of 15%. And within that, we've probably got 5% to 6% of inflation and probably 9% to 10% of volume worth remembering that actually we're getting a little bit of a benefit from the level of strike action in the U.K. actually because we clearly now have passed the anniversary of the strikes last year. We've had slightly fewer days in the last 8 weeks this year than we had in the same period last year. So that probably helped us by about 1 percentage point.
In terms of your question about the trend in the U.K. I mean, yes, you're right, it continues to strengthen, which is pleasing. It's really -- and I think you've pointed to the right matters. It's really about the weighting to rail compared to air. So what we've seen is a really strengthening performance in the air business and that mix shifting, which has helped the headline numbers. But of course, we've also been helped by the fact that, as I just mentioned, we've anniversaried against the rail strikes last year. So as well as the rail business, I think in underlying terms, slowly continuing to improve. As I said earlier, we also hit an anniversary when you look at the pure like-for-likes, which, of course, has helped the progression in the U.K. That makes sense?
Yes.
We're going to take one more question from Tim.
Tim Barrett from Deutsche Numis. I'll be really quick. First question, not to flog the 6% to 10% issue, but is there any reason why 5% price increases that natural inflation shouldn't keep coming through in the year? And then secondly, on Germany, sorry, if you've already mentioned this, but have you given the turnover just so we can get to the natural margin upside?
Yes. So in terms of the -- in terms of the question about -- sorry, the first one...
About pricing whether the 5% falls off.
Yes. So I mean, it's a good question. I think it's really about the level of cost inflation that we see. I mean we are making an assumption here, as I said in response to the earlier questions that the cost of goods inflation is somewhere in the region of 4% to 5%. And we think that's going to reduce over the year and then consequently, our pricing will, to some degree, ease over there as well as, of course, hitting [ of to ] comparatives. I think if we see cost inflation unchanged, we'll probably have to address that in time. But I think the principal message here is what we are experienced in doing is trying to mitigate the impacts of cost inflation through pricing. But I think it's still going to continue at probably somewhere in the sort of 3% to 5% range throughout the year.
And the second one, in terms of the German MSAs, the sales number, it's somewhere in the region of GBP 7 million to GBP 8 million is the latest sales. Yes, and again, I stress that we've got that built into our numbers for this year because we don't know what -- there's a contractual discussion going on about the right timing and routes to exit that, but the important point is we have made provision for that because we've actually -- comes with a contract.
Thank you very much. I'm conscious we've run on a little bit later than we'd intended. Thank you for staying with us. And our next scheduled update is Q1 trading statement around our AGM. So as I said, thank you for joining us in person. And to those who joined on the webcast, thank you for listening in. Bye-bye.
Thank you.