ProCook Group H1 2025 Earnings Report

ProCook Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -GBX 1.98
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

ProCook Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

ProCook Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 12/11/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, December 11, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

ProCook is the UK's leading direct-to-consumer specialist kitchenware brand. ProCook designs, develops, and retails a high-quality range of direct-sourced and own-brand kitchenware which provides customers with significant value for money. The brand sells directly through its website, www.procook.co.uk, and through an expanding network of over 60 own-brand retail stores, located across the UK. Founded over 25 years ago as a family business, selling cookware sets by direct mail in the UK, ProCook has grown into a market leading, multi-channel specialist kitchenware company, employing over 600 colleagues, and operating from its Store Support Centre in Gloucester. As a B Corp, a Real Living Wage employer and a certified Great Place to Work, ProCook is committed to being a socially responsible and environmentally conscious business for the benefit of all stakeholders. ProCook has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since November 2021 (PROC.L). Further information about the ProCook Group (LON:PROC) can be found at www.procookgroup.co.uk.

ProCook Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: ProCook reported first-half revenue growth of 7.5% and said it outperformed the U.K. kitchenware market by 4%, with both retail and e-commerce delivering positive like-for-like growth.
• Positive Sentiment: The company’s customer base hit a record 1.1 million active customers, up nearly 12% year over year, while new customer acquisition rose 9.8% in the first half.
• Positive Sentiment: Management said store expansion is ahead of plan, with 12 openings expected in FY25 versus the original goal of 10, and early store performance described as encouraging with payback targeted at less than 1.5 years.
• Neutral Sentiment: The company said gross margin fell 160 basis points due to value investments, higher shipping costs, and a lower-margin mix from electricals, though this was broadly in line with expectations and margins are expected to improve in the second half.
• Positive Sentiment: ProCook highlighted improving operating efficiency, including a 120 basis point reduction in OpEx as a percentage of revenue, stronger online conversion, and better marketing efficiency, while reaffirming its full-year FY25 outlook.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon and welcome to the ProCook Group PLC interim results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to CEO, Lee Tappenden. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Thank you, Alessandro. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining myself and Dan on our first half results for ProCook. Before we get into the details of the results, I thought it'd be useful to reflect after being here about a year in the role as CEO at ProCook. First and foremost, I believe we have a genuinely unique customer proposition at ProCook. Some of you would have joined us earlier in the year. I just want to reiterate a few things that are very clear in my mind now after a full year. Quite uniquely, we're 100% own brand product at ProCook. We're fully direct source in terms of taking out middlemen and costs, giving us the ability to deliver incredible value at 30 to sometimes over 50% value against leading national brands of the same quality.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

On the point of quality, completely reassured now of the quality that we have across the board on all of our assortments, very low return rates, even coming through on our most recent launch of electricals, which we'll talk about later. The combination of value, quality, and very importantly, that customer service in our stores, which you don't necessarily receive everywhere else, in such a fragmented kitchenware market represents a tremendous growth opportunity. Through the combined efforts of both stores and e-com, this unique proposition is really coming to life. We've invested in infrastructure over the last few years, both in this store support center we're in today and the single warehouse operation, which is proving out more and more efficiencies as we're running into peak trading at the moment. All of this is complemented by two very important factors.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Firstly, we have a very clear ESG agenda, which is important to us as an organization. We are certified as a B Corp organization and a supporter over the last three years for the Real Living Wage. Secondly, starting to reinforce what is a very strong colleague engagement with more of a performance culture, and that's starting with the newly formed senior leadership team, which has now been in place for the last few months. Before Dan covers off in detail, I thought I would just look back a bit about what we said our goals were for the medium term to deliver this profitable growth. Very clearly, we set out over that medium-term horizon to open 100 U.K. stores, deliver 100 million sales revenue, and an operating profit margin of 10%. There are four very clear strategic initiatives that you can see on the slide here.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

I won't go through all four today, I'm going to double click on the first two, accelerating profitable sales growth and secondly, improve operating efficiency. Before I do that, I'm going to give you just a very quick set of highlights from the first half. As I say, very pleased and encouraged by our performance in the first half. We have strong trading momentum that's reflected in continued market share gains. In terms of active customers, we now stand at a record 1.1 million, which is up nearly 12% year-on-year, whilst our sales growth has been driven through volume rather than retail price inflation, maintaining our gross margin percent in line with expectations. Our new store openings are on track, I'll cover that in more detail shortly.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Our product development continues to yield positive results as we go into new categories and refresh existing. With all of those moving parts, we've managed to achieve these results with real discipline on expenses, Dan will cover that in more detail. I'm also pleased to share that above all, with all of the highlights of the first half, the most recent period of trading in Q3, the first eight weeks ending the 8th of December, show continued momentum. In terms of our new U.K. store network, that goal of 100 stores that we set out a very ambitious goal this year to open 10 stores. We will exceed that goal this year. We opened four stores in the first half, followed by five further stores just in the last eight weeks, getting all those five stores in advance of Black Friday period and Christmas, obviously.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Additionally, we will open three further stores between January and March. Inside this financial year, we'll have a total of 12 stores open. The locations of the new stores are phenomenally strong. A lot of detailed research has gone into the locations, adjacencies with other retailers, and they're in shopping malls that are high traffic centers with a combined annual footfall of over 150 million customers. Initial results on the store openings are encouraging, and they support our investment criteria of a payback in less than 1.5 years. To ensure our growth plans are profitable and appropriately, we have to support the ProCook brand. Apologies. We've opted to close two of our smaller garden center stores, which is in line with the strategy we talked about before. We're already looking ahead to FY 2026 and identifying what that new store pipeline looks for the following year.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

In terms of our product offer, we continue to broaden our assortment. Remember, as I said earlier, it's 100% own brand ProCook products. The expansion of the new electricals range, phase 3 coming through the summer, has proven delivered well, and we have our phase 4 of coffee category. The first couple of assortment products landed in store in the last couple of weeks, and the full range will land in February with a major PR launch to support it. Importantly, the new product launches and design refreshes mean that we're close to 10% of our range has changed over the last six months in terms of color, design-wise, or just a general refresh to make sure that we're actually relevant for customers. In terms of the promotional activity around Black Friday and Christmas, we took a different approach this year on Black Friday.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

It was the first year that we had purposely bought special buys of the same products with different pack configurations, so maintaining ProCook branding, ProCook quality, and technical specifications. The different pack configurations meant we were able to deliver compelling value and maintain a very healthy margin position. In terms of Christmas gifting, the first time we've launched a bit of an expanded assortment, up to 40 products in this area. We're probably not where we fully need to be, and that's something we're aiming for next year, but quite a step change on what we delivered to customers for Christmas this year. There's much more to come on seasonal ranges next year for summer, with a very disciplined category review process means we launch products and categories in a very clear, defined timeline in line with customer expectations of seasonality.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

In terms of customer service, whether online or in store, we've re-energized our focus internally on customer service at every single point. We've introduced NPS in our stores and online. Through a constant revisiting and looking at our results from customers on a weekly basis, we've managed to maintain a 4.8 score on Trustpilot with over 120,000 5-star reviews in place currently. Online, we have a clear roadmap of technical enhancements to reduce friction for all customers. We're seeing a real step change in conversion with conversion up 14% year-on-year, with the most significant increases coming in the most recent trading weeks, which is encouraging. Across all customer touch points, whether it's in store, online or through the emails our customers receive, our brand campaigns are really starting to look and feel different.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

We started this in autumn, followed by Black Friday and Christmas. We're really clearly showing up now with more consistency around personality tone. We're showcasing more lifestyle and inspirational messaging versus just simply value. In the last six months, we've been experimenting on the journey with digital social marketing. Very encouraging results with our increased brand reach of 34%, and our Meta followers have now actually exceeded 100,000. A significant step change in our marketing efficiency as a result of these initiatives. The final piece I'll cover is around efficiency. We talked about this on our last presentation on supply chain transformation and really trying to look at our network on a full end-to-end basis. Right from the warehouse picking situation through to the back room of the stores and even the shop floor of the stores, how do we drive efficiencies through our business?

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

In recent months, we've launched a pilot program to improve product flow to our stores. We've increased delivery frequency. We've replaced pallet deliveries with cages, which improves significantly handling for stores as well as potential loss or theft. We started with an initial pilot of 10 stores, and based on that success, in the last four weeks, we've rolled that out to a further 10, taking it to 20 stores in the south of the country. We have developed and deployed the handheld terminals, which you can see on the slide here, which will significantly increase our stock accuracy in store as well as in-store efficiencies for basically price lookups and just managing our inventory in a better way.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

We believe the combined effect of these programs and some other initiatives in flight at the moment that we will improve not only our product availability and ultimately sales, but reduce our inventory by around 10% in our stores, making the store colleagues' lives so much easier, focusing all their time on customer-facing activity. With that, I'm now going to hand over to Dan, who's going to give you a much more deep dive into the details of our first half financial results.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Thank you, Lee. We're pleased to report positive and continued momentum in trading during the first half with four consecutive quarters now of growth and revenue of 7.5% year-on-year for the first half. Total like-for-like revenue was 4.2% up year-on-year, and as a result, we outperformed the U.K. kitchenware market by 4%. Equally pleasing was the fact that both retail and e-commerce channels had positive like-for-like during the first half. Retail revenue grew by 1.9% like-for-like, with new stores contributing a further 4.6 percentage points of growth to deliver total retail growth of 6.5%. In e-commerce, revenue grew by 8.5% like-for-like, recuperating much of the disruption from the transition to the new website platform last year, aided by stronger conversion and improved digital marketing activities.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

The relaunch of a curated range on Amazon during the first half also contributed a further 0.9 percentage points of growth, in the e-commerce channel, taking our total revenue in that channel up to 9.4% year-on-year. As Lee mentioned earlier, revenue growth was primarily driven by increased transaction volume. With 315,000 new customers acquired during the first half, which was +9.8% year-on-year, we've increased our customer base. Gross profit increased by 5.1% in the first half year-on-year, and gross margins reduced by 160 basis points. This was in line with our expectations. This reflected a continuation for the majority of the first half of price investments for customers to improve value that we initiated first in H2 FY 2024.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

These reduced margins by 210 basis points or 80 basis points when you net off the anticipated and indeed realized foreign exchange benefits that came through in the first half. We controlled discounting and promotions well, reducing the impact year-on-year by 20 basis points, whilst heightened shipping costs due to the Red Sea crisis has impacted first half margins by around 30 basis points. The remaining block on the chart that you can see is related to product mix, and this is largely attributable to the growth in electricals as part of our business, which has a slightly lower margin and therefore impacted our overall margin by 60 basis points.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

H1 underlying operating losses, GBP 0.3 million higher year-on-year, reflecting the volume growth and margin impact, whilst cost discipline has remained consistently strong, and we've reduced OpEx as a percentage of revenue during the first half by 120 basis points. Mitigating inflationary pressures was particularly in payroll, whilst also investing in areas that will support our continued performance and growth over the years ahead, such as digital marketing and new stores. Looking at the lower half of the income statement, finance expenses have remained in line year-on-year, whilst other gains and losses reflect a GBP 0.9 million adverse swing year-on-year, driven by temporary unrealized foreign exchange losses in half one this year compared to gains in half one last year.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Non-underlying items are much reduced year-on-year, and they relate solely to the remnants of the IPO share-based payment awards, which ended in November this year on the third anniversary of the IPO. Net debt at the end of the first half was GBP 4.2 million, with almost GBP 12 million of available liquidity in cash and facilities. The cash flows for the first half included investment in inventory, which we brought in earlier and prudently to protect peak trading as a result of the disruption in the global freight markets. This was largely offset by increased payable balances at the half-year date. As planned, we've invested GBP 1.3 million capital expenditure in new stores during the first half.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Trading performance in the first eight weeks of Q3 has shown improving momentum as we've gone through the eight weeks following a slower start to the second half, which coincided with the budget event and also the later timing of Black Friday. This particularly impacted footfall in retail stores, which has since recovered. Across the eight weeks as a whole, we delivered revenue growth of 7.5%, with continuing the momentum from the first half with like-for-like up 0.9%. Retail like-for-like was weaker as a result of the lower footfall, whilst e-commerce channel continues to perform well with like-for-like revenue up 7.7%. Our full year outlook for FY 2025 remains unchanged. H2 brings around 60% of the full year revenue in just 24 of the 52 weeks, whilst our cost base remains closer to 50/50.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

With efficiencies in marketing and customer acquisition, as well as operational efficiencies, our cost leverage improves in the second half. This adds significant seasonal profit boost to the second half of the year, as you can see from the chart on this page. Combined with the benefits of the new stores being open for the majority of the second half, improved margins from price optimization and foreign exchange gains, and efficiencies that we've already delivered in the first half that continue for the second half, we remain on track and are confident in delivering on expectations. I'll hand back to Lee.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Thank you, Dan. In summary, we continue to see strong momentum in the business in what is a challenging market. As a result of that, we are continuing to see gains in market share. Our strategic initiatives, two pillars of which I covered earlier, are focused on the really long-term profitable growth of the business. Our customer proposition in terms of product and value continues to evolve, and our new store opening program, coupled with the social digital marketing initiatives I talked about, will continue to build brand awareness. Recent trading performance that Dan just talked about gives us further confidence in our business model for the future towards that medium-term goal that we have shared previously of opening 100 stores in the U.K., delivering GBP 100 million in sales revenue and a 10% operating profit. Thank you very much, everyone, for your time and attention.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

We're going to take some questions now. I think there's going to be a few that will come up on the screen, and Dan's probably going to read them out for us, and we'll take them between us. We've got the first question has come up from Richard, which is quite a long question, but good question.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Thank you for the feedback, Richard. The website's looking awesome currently, very fast and very slick from a customer point of view. The performance of reported improvements in conversion and marketing efficiency are encouraging. Thank you for that. Your questions then, firstly, do you think there's still room to continue achieving gains in these areas? That's the first question.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Very simply, yes, Richard, we do. I think we have made significant step change in the last probably six to nine months. I would say that there's a lot more that is on the horizon and within our roadmap around technical enhancements, and I think the marketing efficiencies will continue to gain momentum as well as we look at more interactions and engagement with customers through social digital. There's a lot of work in process that's coming through in Q3 and into Q4. We're very encouraged by that.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

I see. The second part of the question, given the typical profitability advantage of D2C e-commerce, is there scope for additional marketing investment to accelerate growth? Perhaps I'll take that one. I think the marketing efficiency that we've been referring to in this presentation is encouraging. We continually monitor how much to invest and the return that we're generating from that investment in terms of return on ad spend, cost per acquisition, and marketing efficiency ratios. It's a balance between new customer acquisition and repeat customer, getting them back to shop with us again. We constantly monitor that and optimize as best we can. I think there's an ongoing point. Yes, hopefully if we improve efficiency, we can drive more sales. We have a question from another Richard, interestingly. How do you foresee gross profit margins evolving over the next 12 months?

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

I'll answer that one in as far as we've given guidance. We expect the gross margins to improve in the second half, as we just talked about earlier in terms of our full year outlook. Within that, we expect to benefit from foreign exchange gains year-on-year. There will be some impact of heightened shipping, but also benefit of improved or price optimization where we see opportunity to mitigate those freight cost pressures. Going beyond that, I think is sort of beyond the scope of today. Broadly, we anticipate the supply chain disruption will start to ease, and it has done already. Foreign exchange obviously remains volatile, with the recent political changes in both the U.K. and the U.S., but also the impact of interest rates as they move between particularly U.K. and U.S., which is the main currency that we rely on.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Yeah, we continually monitor it, and we adjust our position as we need to.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Do you want me to take the next one?

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Another question from Richard L. here, which is also with inventory levels up year-on-year, how confident are you of managing potential excess stock during peak trading periods? As Dan alluded to, we did quite prudently bring in more inventory in preparation for peak period, which I'm glad we took that stance. That did give us a peak of inventory around September, October time. Our current trajectory of inventory intake and our sales projections mean that we will exit the year, our forecast is in good shape against our original inventory year-end budget, we feel confident of managing that through. We have a very clear clearance plan as part of every year's trading around January sale, which is not a surprise, that will actually address any excess issue. We feel we're in good shape from an inventory perspective.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

There's a comment here, I'm not sure it's a question, but from Philip. NPS does not measure recommendation. It's merely a backward-looking customer satisfaction metric. Without getting into the ins and outs, the way we ask the question around NPS is how likely are you to recommend ProCook to a friend or family member? It does not measure the actual recommendation. I agree with you on that front, Philip. In that sense, it is a satisfaction measure. It's helpful for us because we get lots of free text comments, and that helps us to address points of friction for customers and continually improve. We also have a loyalty scheme, which is around recommend a friend, and you can receive benefits from that through, we work with a third party on our website. That's something else which allows us to drive up loyalty and also increase recommendations.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

We continually look to improve in this area.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Okay. Christopher T is asking, with record active customers, how do you plan to further deepen customer loyalty and increase lifetime value? Great question. I think a lot of the improvements we're seeing through e-com, and a lot more of the targeted focus around our email campaigns will address that in terms of lifetime value. There's a lot of other activities we have in the works around our marketing efficiency and investment going forward. I would take from this, the positive is that we do have record active customers, and every month-on-month for the last six months, we've been seeing that grow. Obviously with opening new stores to complement e-com, we would see there's potential for that snowball effect with more active customers and new recruitment of customers coming in over the coming 12 months.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

We've got a question from Vaska. The apparent good progress being discussed, in the presentation seems out of line with my experience as an investor. I invested at IPO, but my shares are sitting down. Can you clarify the reasons for this? Right. Okay. We'll just briefly touch on that. Yes, we IPO'd back three years ago, and performance has been challenging. The U.K. market has not been easy. We're a discretionary part of that sector. That said, we've set out a very clear plan for recovery, and we're working hard to deliver on that plan. Hopefully, what you can see in this presentation is those steps along that journey. Vaska, thank you for being an investor, and I hope that we manage to deliver and succeed with what we've set out.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Okay. I'll take the next one. It's from John S., said, what risks do you see in achieving the targeted 100 stores and GBP 100 million revenue? Big question. There are medium term goals. I think what we've seen in the last 12 months is that, we have a very good, well-oiled machine around opening new stores and a good discipline around evaluating those stores as well. That journey, I feel confident of. Obviously, there's a lot of external market pressures that can come to bear on that, but I feel confident of that. If we, in line with that, continue the momentum we have on e-com, still maintain e-com as a percentage of our business that we have today, we have a high degree of confidence in our medium term goals.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

We're standing true to that, and we believe it is a policy or set of goals that will last us through over the next three to four years.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

Okay. We'll take one more question because we've done a number already. I think we're coming to the end of them. From Tim, this one, can you explain the reason for reopening the Amazon sales channel? Perhaps I'll just go back a little bit in the history, and then talk about how we've approached it differently. We turned off Amazon sales post-COVID, before IPO in summer 2021, and that was following a period of strong performance on Amazon. Amazon started to, well, lose market share at that point in time, and it became more challenging for us to work together at that point in time. We decided, having listed the entire product range on Amazon, and looked at the profitability that it wasn't worth continuing with right then. Subsequently, we've reassessed, we've reconsidered that.

[Dan Walden, CFO at ProCook Group PLC]

We now have a small curated range of around 80 products on the Amazon Marketplace. They are some of our best-selling ranges. They have strong gross margins attached to them and therefore, even with the costs of working with Amazon, we can make a healthy contribution for those customers that do want to just shop and have confidence in shopping with Amazon. We want to be part of that shopping journey, and we may have some of them switch over to shop with us in the future. We see it as helpful, and having that presence on Amazon adds credibility to our brand, we believe. That's why we've gone back on in a small way, but we're doing it carefully and it's profit-generating. Therefore, we're quite comfortable that the performance is additive.

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Thank you. Alessandro, we'll hand back to you quickly at the end.

[Operator]

Perfect. Lee, Dan, thank you very much for answering those questions you can from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today, and we will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Lee, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

[Lee Tappenden, CEO at ProCook Group PLC]

Yeah, sure. Thank you. First of all, thank you for everyone joining the call. Hopefully, you will see from the first half year results that we're gaining momentum in the business. Both our short-term actions and our long-term plans for profitable growth are coming to fruition. We've got a long exciting period of peak trading to go through Christmas, but, the last few weeks give us increased confidence combined with the new store openings. What you're seeing clearly is an e-commerce step up in performance. Thank you again for your time, and we look forward to chatting to you probably early in the new year.

[Operator]

Lee, Dan, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors now to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ProCook Group PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.

Participants

Executives

• Dan Walden, CFO
• Lee Tappenden, CEO