Ceconomy AG (CEC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the CECONOMY AG Q2/H1 2023/'24 Results presentation. Throughout today's recorded presentation, [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Fabienne Caron, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 results presentation. On today's call are Karsten Wildberger, our CEO; and Kai-Ulrich Deissner, our CFO. Before we start, let me remind you that the presentation slides can be accessed through our website. During today's call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements, so please refer to the disclaimer for more information. Let me now hand over to Karsten.

Thank you very much, Fabienne, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. Together with our CFO, Kai Deissner, we would like to update you today on our Q2 and first half of the year results. And before we get into the details, let me emphasize a few key messages of today's call. First, following a successful first quarter holiday season, we gained significant momentum in the second quarter, both in terms of top line and bottom line. Second, moreover, we accelerated the growth of our strategic business areas. And third, we are confident in our ability to improve our financial performance and have, therefore, specified our outlook for '23-'24. And fourth, we continue to improve customer satisfaction and efficacy as customer experience lies at the heart of what we do. So before we delve into the numbers, let's explore real-life examples of how we are elevating the customer experience at MediaMarktSaturn. Let's turn to Slide 3, please. Let me highlight here 3 major achievements from our most recent quarter that demonstrates our innovation and the pace of our transformation. In Germany, we have launched a 90-minute MediaMarktSaturn delivery service, partnering with Uber. And currently, we have integrated 50% of our stores with plans to expand to 300 stores by the end of the year. And this turns our stores into local distribution hubs. So imagine your phone suddenly breaks or your party at home is about to start and your loud speaker stops working. So with our service, these items can be now delivered to you within just 90 minutes, ensuring convenience and peace of mind for our customers. And since we started our new delivery service, we've noticed a big increase in how many customers are using it. About 20% of home deliveries during store opening hours in big cities actually use our 90-minute service. So our customers really like the speed and convenience and what are the top 3 products delivered? Headphones, vacuum cleaners and gaming consoles. And number 2 in the Netherlands, I'm very proud that our team really excels. They significantly revamped their strategy and climbed back to the top, regaining our market leadership position. And we didn't stop there. And this achievement, we also celebrate with our latest marketing success. So starting next football season and now the proud main sponsor of Feyenoord, Rotterdam, one of the Netherlands most successful football clubs. And this partnership is actually about more than branding. It's about connecting with the community. Also Rotterdam is our hometown, if you like, where the Dutch headquarter is. And it's also about honoring our values of inclusivity in line with Feyenooord's motto,' Home to Everyone'. And we will offer our customers, especially our loyal customers, very attractive regular benefits enriching our CRM activities. And third, we continue to expand our digital presence and the recent launches of our new web stores in Poland and Switzerland as well as our marketplace in the Netherlands, demonstrate our ongoing efforts. We now manage over 90% of our online sales through a single modern e-commerce technology platform across Europe, and this enhances our omnichannel capabilities. And in Poland and Switzerland, we moved from planning to full operation in just over 3 months. And these initiatives are just a few examples of how we are committed to delivering great value and convenience to our customers across Europe. And with this momentum, we were also able to accelerate our financial performance last quarter, as shown now on Slide 4. So in the second quarter of this financial year, we strengthened our momentum, resulting in a very strong first half. The second quarter not only continued our trend of consistent growth over the last 5 quarters, but also it outperformed our successful first quarter. So in the second quarter, our EBIT grew by EUR ‚26 million versus last year, and we achieved a positive EBIT. And in soft market conditions, we achieved a robust sales growth of 6.5%, fueled by strong like-for-like sales growth of 5.1%. And we've gained market share in 8 out of 11 countries and basically all cases, both online and offline. And our sales growth has accelerated since the first quarter, with -- coupled with improved profitability, led to a significant increase in EBIT. And our Net Promoter Score, NPS, which measures customer satisfaction and advocacy reached an all-time high of 58%. So our strong focus on customer experience is paying off. So ladies and gentlemen, we are confident in our ability to improve our financial performance. And regarding our outlook for '23-'24, we are now expecting an adjusted EBIT in the range between EUR ‚290 million and EUR ‚310 million, ahead of market expectations of EUR ‚273 million. We still expect a slight increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales. Let's turn to Slide 5, please. Our recent performance is very strong and is driven by our strategic focus on omnichannel growth. This means that we are strengthening our presence in both physical and digital channels. First, in our bricks-and-mortar business, we've delivered strong sales growth of 5.8% year-on-year, demonstrating that actually our physical stores are very attractive. Number 2, our online sales grew by 8.8%, and this brings our online sales share to 22.9%, which is up 110 basis points versus last year. So our continuous efforts to grow online is bearing fruits. Third, in the second quarter, we continue to strengthen our store portfolio, expanding our store presence with smaller formats. And this enhances customer proximity and an increase of square meter efficiency. Just 2 examples: In Belgium, we introduced the convenient express format which offers an assortment tailor to customer needs. And in Italy, we expanded our smart stores. These are compact stores always located in city centers. And in these stores, we've connected also digital solutions to make product information more accessible and also showcase products that are physically not in the store. And to improve service overall, customers can also get personalized advice at the touch of a call button or through life chat or video calls. The fourth topic I'd like to address is I'm very pleased to report that our growth business are gaining momentum and are making remarkable progress. So our marketplace gross merchandise value continues to grow and reaches a plus of 109% year-on-year, about 1,300 sellers offer now more than 1.7 million products. Consequently, our GMV, the gross merchandise value more than doubled versus prior year. And we successfully launched our marketplace offering in the Netherlands in early March as our fourth country, and we are now preparing to launch our marketplace in Italy in late summer. The fifth topic I'd like to talk about is retail media. We've also seen extraordinary growth. Our revenues nearly fivefold, and I will come back to Retail Media later in my presentation. And last but not least, let's turn to our important and very profitable service and solutions growth business. Services & Solutions was very strong in Q2. We've also grown our income share in the second quarter. And as part of our service solutions strategy, we are focusing on growing our subscription services to drive recurring income. So we celebrated the sale of 4 million subscription contracts at MediaMarktSaturn across the group, and this represents a 60% growth versus last year. By the way, we currently offer subscription products in 7 countries, and these include our warranty extensions, Office 365, our TV content subscription and also our repair subscription products. So Service Solutions has contributed significantly to our financial success for Q2, improving our group-wide gross margin. A few words about the countries. So our strong performance in key countries during Q2 contributed to our increased profitability. We achieved a 60 basis point increase in gross margin. Additionally, we saw a 50 basis point rise in adjusted EBIT margin, demonstrating the positive impact of our strategic initiatives on profitability and growth. And finally, we achieved a positive swing in EPS and managed to increase our free cash flow by EUR ‚100 million in Q2, leading to a neutral free cash flow in the first half. This is a strong result, given we successfully managed to increase in parallel or product availability. And this underpins our resilient and solid financial foundation. Let's turn to Slide 6, please. Each quarter, we provide transparency on the 9 KPIs we introduced at our Capital Markets Day last year. And these 9 KPIs summarize the essence of our strategic focus and pledges. So we've seen significant growth in loyalty members. We are on track with our store upgrades, including our very successful lighthouse store portfolio. We are on track with our ambitious marketplace growth plan, and we made significant progress in Services & Solutions and also in our private label business in the second quarter. We've expanded our online share, and each of these areas has shown strong positive momentum and are critical pillars of our growth strategy. Let's now take a closer look at Services & Solutions and our online business. So let's turn to Slide 7, please. Our Service Solutions business made excellent progress this quarter. When we look at telecommunications, repair services and insurances, we see an increased momentum. In the second quarter, we saw 150% growth in our trade-in program. And the trading program allows customers to trade in their used electronics products. And let me explain why trading is so important to me. It fuels sales by offering great value for money, it provides success key to refurbished products and trading obviously contributes to sustainability. And as a result, in just the last quarter, we've had over 121,000 devices traded in for company vouchers versus 48,000 in the second quarter last year. In online and marketplace, we continue to build on our strong momentum. Overall, with online sales up 8.8% year-on-year and marketplace sales doubling, we've successfully grown our online market share in 9 countries. And these achievements reinforce our dedicated efforts to develop and expand our digital footprint. The marketplace in the Netherlands has shown a very strong start. And by integrating external sellers into our platform, we're expanding the product offering for our customers in a seamless way. So for example, the customer buying a laptop can also find out a matching laptop case from a third party on our platform in one stop. And this approach broadens our offerings and provides a simple and convenient customer journey. And crucially, we prioritize quality control. Each seller is carefully screened to ensure they meet our stringent standards, focusing on product quality and customer service. And in the second quarter, we launched new web shops in Poland and Switzerland, together with the app. And as a result, we've now consolidated more than 90% of our online sales across Europe onto a single modern e-commerce platform. And the launch of our new online store in Poland back in beginning of the year was a great achievement with the fastest rollout of our e-commerce platform so far, and the results are very good. In the first month after launch, sales exceeded our forecast by almost 30% with a remarkable 40% coming from our newly launched app. So let's turn to Slide 8, please. And I'd like to talk about the exciting world of retail media. Retail media is much more than another way to advertise. It's an important growth opportunity in our industry. And currently, we've got 4 products active in the market and more products are in the pipeline to fuel future growth. Retail media actually shifts the focus from traditional advertisement platforms through retail-centric channels, changing the way brands can engage with customers. So how do we play the retail media game? It allows us to use our first-party data to effectively target ads and accurately measure the impact and this allows us to quantify impact at a granular level, making our platform very attractive to manufacturers, looking to allocate their marketing budget effectively. And our data analytics are driving significant growth by enabling us to refine advertising strategies, maximizing return on investment for our partners and earning a higher share of their marketing budget. And we are delivering in the second quarter, our Retail Media segment grew revenues nearly fivefold. A key development to look forward to in the third quarter is the integration of online and off-line consumer data. This will provide our suppliers with a comprehensive omnichannel view to improve the way they reach and interact with their customers. Let's take a look at Slide 9 and the progress we are making in the area of sustainability. As Europe's leading consumer electronics retailer, we are deeply committed to our responsibility regarding all aspects of sustainability. We firmly believe that sustainability is critical to our future competitiveness and that winning companies need to integrate it into their strategy. In focusing on our customers' sustainability must be evident every state at every stage of the shopping experience and customer journey from trading, to purchase and repair. And we're continuously working on this, optimizing our in-store materials for more visibility, integrating sustainable products and services into our marketing campaigns and expanding our Better Way product range. And the positive results of our efforts can be seen in the strong sales growth of Better Way products in the first half of our financial year. Additionally, we've made very good progress in expanding our range of refurbished products across Europe. And as we continue to learn and adapt, we are now aiming to elevate our growth ambitions for refurbished products further. When it comes to our own energy goals, we've achieved an important milestone, 100% of our directly purchased electricity now comes from renewable sources. That means we're ahead of our original time line. And regarding sustainability, validation and transparency, our sustainability strategies and execution have not only improved our ESG ratings, but also placed us well above industry benchmarks. And finally, our CO2 reduction targets have been validated by the science-based target initiatives, ensuring a real and meaningful reduction in our environmental footprint. So turning to Slide 10, let me summarize our financial performance. We've delivered strong results that underscore our commitment to customer-focused innovation and consistent execution. In the first 6 months, we maintained our strong performance and accelerated our growth. Our revenue was up 4.8% year-on-year, with a significant growth of 6.5% in the second quarter. This is the fifth consecutive quarter of continuous progress and robust results. We've also significantly strengthened our financial performance. Our adjusted EBIT in the second quarter was up EUR ‚26 million year-on-year and in the first half, EBIT increased by a very strong EUR ‚44 million, more than 20% increase year-on-year. And again, this is the fifth quarter in a row with EBIT growth. These very strong financial gains reflect our strong market position and significant growth in key strategic areas such as services and solutions, marketplace and retail media. And moreover, we are also successfully expanding our online reach. Each achievement is based on our growth strategy and demonstrates our commitment to a forceful transformation and our focus on innovation, execution and speed always with the customer at the center of everything we do. And I will now hand over to Kai to make -- to take you through our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Karsten, and good morning to you all from my side as well. Let me guide you through the figures both for Q2 and for the first half of the financial year. Starting with Q2 in sales. We saw a robust 6.5% year-on-year sales growth. That's always adjusted for currency and portfolio changes, which is a significant acceleration from Q1. Underneath that, like-for-like sales saw a strong 5.1% growth for Q2 and nearly 4% for the first half of the year. We're really pleased to see that the sales growth in the quarter was driven by both bricks and mortar and online channels. If you look at it per country, we recorded positive sales developments in Austria, Benelux, Spain and Turkey, while Italy continued to face challenges. The Italian market continued to decline mid-single digit but in this environment, we were able to strengthen our position and gain market share. And in the DACH region, except for Austria, all countries were soft, however, our sales trend in both Germany and Hungary has been improving in Q2. Our adjusted EBIT on a group level reached, as Karsten mentioned, EUR ‚5 million in the quarter, that's EUR ‚26 million higher than previous year. The strong improvement in Q2 led to a EUR ‚44 million uplift of adjusted EBIT for the first half of the year, which I think is pretty remarkable. These results come from a robust sales development, successful contribution of our growth businesses and ongoing efforts to mitigate the impact of cost inflation. I will delve into all of these in the course of my presentation. It's important to keep in mind, however, that relative to our financial full year Q2, so January to March, it doesn't contribute very significantly to our annual EBIT, yet the year-on-year improvement does play an important role. Now let me turn to our operational performance on Slide 13. You can see that Western and Southern Europe, along with the segment, Others, were the main drivers of performance this quarter. start, however, with DACH. As I mentioned, sales declined by 1.8% in Q2. But let me remind you, this is an improvement compared to Q1, particularly considering the high baseline for comparison. Notably, Austria demonstrated positive sales development. Germany and Hungary, however, recorded a sales decline, albeit, as I said, with a noticeable improvement compared to Q1. And what is more important, we have strengthened our position and gained market share in almost all countries within that region in Q2. And profitability remains steady with a broadly stable adjusted EBIT at minus EUR ‚4 million for the DACH region. This achievement was made possible by an improved gross margin and effective cost control, which allowed us to counter the decline in sales due to the soft market environment. Secondly, in Western and Southern Europe, we grew sales significantly in all countries, except Italy. Despite these continued challenges in the Italian market, we're proud to report consistent market share gains in that country. Please also note the outstanding performance in Spain with like-for-like sales growth in the low double-digit area and with a substantial increase of market share. It is fair to mention that the market is benefiting from the transition from analog to digital TV. And even when we exclude this impact and TV is not a main driver of our sales here. When we exclude it, it still demonstrates positive growth. On profitability in that region, we increased our adjusted EBIT by EUR ‚28 million. That's an increase in adjusted EBIT margin of 180 basis points year-over-year. This improvement was driven by all countries, again, with the exception of Italy. Moving to Eastern Europe. Sales-wise, Turkey remained the primary growth driver. However, as we anticipated, the market has begun to slow down, leading to intensified price competition. Profitability is normalizing as expected. We did record a EUR ‚19 million adjusted EBIT, that's EUR ‚15 million down from last year. As for the Others segment, which primarily represents holding costs and our private label business, we've seen a positive quarter due to strategic cost control measures, and we will continue to optimize this segment. So after a substantial EBIT improvement in both Q1 and Q2, we closed the first half of the year with EUR ‚253 million in adjusted EBIT. That's an impressive EUR ‚44 million increase year-over-year. With this tailwind, we released, as you will be where an hoc Monday morning, highlighting that we now expect an adjusted EBIT range of EUR ‚290 million and EUR ‚310 million, as Karsten already said. We do anticipate that Western and Southern Europe will be the main contributor to this increase. Going one step further on Slide 15, you can see the performance of our overall service solution sales. As a reminder, in addition to our operational services business, overall, also includes retail media, marketplace commissions and deliveries. So overall, Service Solutions grew by an impressive 14.5% in Q2 and by 8.8% in the first half of the year. As for service categories, telco contracts, repair and warranty extensions delivered really strongly. At the same time, consumer financing and installations were soft. Both Retail Media and Marketplace continued their run from the previous quarter. I'm extremely pleased with this acceleration of our Services & Solutions business after the softer Q1. This clearly underlines that our efforts to enhance our service offerings and to convince our customers that we are more than just a regular retailer are generating meaningful and tangible results. Further to online. During Q2, our first-party online sales grew by 8.8%, that's always excluding currency and portfolio effects and reached a total of EUR ‚1.2 billion. We did actually grow across all regions with a particularly strong performance Turkey, Spain and Poland. Behind that, the revamp of our consumer app in Spain and in particular, as Karsten mentioned, the launch of the new web shop in Poland, both of which contributed significantly to this good performance. Overall, our online share, so now including the marketplace, reached approximately 23% in Q2 and an impressive 25% for the first half of the year. Let me give you a closer look at the marketplace, so our third-party business. The strong momentum which we've seen here was unchanged in Q2 with a sales increase of 109%. We're now operational in 4 countries: Germany, Austria, Spain and now new, the Netherlands where we launched in March. We're planning to roll out the marketplace to Italy in the latter part of the year. You can also see our private label performance on this slide. As you remember, this is an important KPI for us. We target a 5% sales share in '25 and '26. As announced already in Q1, we have completed a new organization, launched new go-to-market initiatives as well as a number of structural improvements in this program has given us now a better momentum, as you can see from the growth in sales share by 30 basis points in the past quarter. Coming back to our EBIT development in Q2 on Slide 18. We're pleased to report a further increase in our gross margin, now reaching 17.8%, which is 60 basis points higher year-over-year. Once again, the primary driver this quarter was a better goods margin, largely coming from a well-managed product mix. Let me add that roughly half of the gross margin improvement already comes from our new business segments. At the same time, our OpEx ratio dropped by 10 basis points this quarter to 18.4% of group sales and in the first half of the year, now reached 16.3%. As we mentioned repeatedly, we do feel cost inflation in several areas like personnel, location and energy costs, but we continue to work diligently against these headwinds and have mitigated the OpEx increase with relentless cost management. In this context, let me give you another update on our efficiency programs. In terms of savings, we have now achieved a run rate of approximately EUR ‚80 million and anticipate this rate to reach EUR ‚130 million by the end of the fiscal year. Regarding restructuring costs, we booked minimal restructuring costs in the quarter, but still projecting an additional EUR ‚30 million to be booked in the latter part of this financial year. This, combined with the previous financial year, brings us then to the EUR ‚100 million figure that you've heard from me consistently over the past few quarters. Turning to the overview on Slide 20. Let me repeat, first of all, that we're extremely pleased with our strong financial performance in Q2. But let's start with reported EBIT. As explained earlier, we recorded hardly any restructuring cost in the quarter so the bulk of the difference between adjusted and reported EBIT is our profit share in FNAC. Consequently, our reported EBIT reached EUR ‚44 million, which is a substantial increase of EUR ‚150 million year-over-year. Our financial result one step further down, reached minus EUR ‚26 million. That's due to higher interest payments in Turkey and higher interest on leases. So a positive note here, we recorded a EUR ‚15 million income from Metro properties, in which you will remember, we hold a 6.6% stake. Let us focus especially on taxes, in line with some earlier comments around taxes. We did record in this quarter a EUR ‚66 million tax income, that's equivalent to an 18% positive underlying tax rate. The main driver for that is the more rapid utilization of deferred tax assets, I mean more rapid than anticipated. This is due to the implementation of the new German legislation in English, the Growth Opportunities Act or in German, the Wachstumschancen Gesetz. With that, we're able to activate tax losses carried forward at an accelerated pace. I will come back to this in a minute. All in all, then, in Q2, we reported a EUR ‚132 million increase in net results, now reaching EUR ‚85 million. Our reported EPS undiluted increased by EUR ‚0.27 to EUR ‚0.17. Our adjusted EPS undiluted, which mirrors our operating performance a little more accurately is very close to our reported EPS with EUR ‚0.19 now in Q2. Slide 21 summarizes this financial performance for the first half of the year in the same logic. Overall, in H1, we reported a EUR ‚152 million increase in net results now coming in at EUR ‚233 million. Our reported EPS undiluted tripled from EUR ‚0.16 to EUR ‚0.48. As promised, let me give you an additional insight into taxes. I'm sure you will remember that the Convergenta transaction, which we completed in '22, enabled us to utilize tax losses carried forward, which were previously unavailable for us. These carryforwards amount to EUR ‚1.2 billion each for corporate and trade tax. The new German legislation that came into force in March, the Growth Opportunities Act had another positive impact as it allowed us to utilize those tax losses even more rapidly. Consequently, our tax rate has been consistently declining. This year, we anticipate a tax income, representing an 18% tax rate in our P&L, once again, a positive 18% that is. Going forward, it is still important to note that our tax rate is influenced by the mix of countries, especially as the utilization of the tax losses carried forward predominantly affects only our German business. Nevertheless, we do continue to anticipate a low tax rate in the future. Having said all that, our key focus remains on free cash flow. Our lease adjusted free cash flow was essentially neutral in the first half of the year, but looking at Q2 in isolation, it's a substantial EUR ‚100 million increase year-on-year. Looking at the underlying dynamics in H1, you can see at the top of the chart that all operational free cash flow drivers improved, except working capital. So let's look at this first. You can see the negative cash outflow of minus EUR ‚329 million from working capital. It's important for me to emphasize that this was a conscious business decision anticipated in our business plan for the year. Just like in the first quarter, we used this as a main lever in Q2 to drive growth, especially through better product availability, which also leads to higher stock levels at least year-over-year. It's also important to note that the comparison base for stock levels last year was low, even unacceptably low in our view, which did last year impact product availability. In plain language, our stocks are now adjusted to a level that is beneficial and healthy for our business. Our increase in product availability did pay off, looking at our sales and bottom line growth in the quarter. You can also see on the chart the underlying positive development in taxes with the EUR ‚46 million year-over-year improvement. Finally, the other operating cash developed well from operational business but was influenced by the insurance reimbursements in the previous year, cash out for restructuring and the noncash adjustment related to FNAC, which we've seen in net profit before. In conclusion, we closed H1 with a robust liquidity position of nearly EUR ‚900 million. Our free cash flow development aligned with our annual plan, and we achieved a neutral free cash flow despite better product availability, even an improvement in Q2. Looking ahead to the full year, we do confirm our outlook for positive free cash flow generation for the full year. Ladies and gentlemen, our free cash flow development makes us confident in the execution of our current strategy also in financial terms. Let me remind you, again, we have no major debt repayment coming due at least until '26. We still have access to 1.1 billion revolving credit facilities, which is still undrawn to this date and has never been drawn. And we've even been able to extend the smaller tranche of that RCF, that's approximately EUR ‚350 million by another year '26. This completes the financial section. Let me hand back to Karsten for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Kai. Finally, I would like to conclude with our outlook and a summary of our key messages. So let's turn to Slide 24, please. We are delivering a strong first half based on our good performance in the first quarter and an acceleration of our momentum in the second quarter. We are confident in our ability to improve our financial performance and specified our outlook for '23, '24 accordingly. We still expect a slight increase in currency and portfolio adjusted total sales. And we now expect an adjusted EBIT in the range between EUR ‚290 million and EUR ‚310 million. We expect positive revenue contributions from all segments with an anticipated increase in adjusted EBIT driven primarily by Western and Southern Europe. Turning to Slide 25. Let's very briefly dive into the exciting world of sports this summer. Imagine the excitement as the European football championship kicks off in Germany in June and the Summer Olympics flame arrived in Paris. We are well prepared for this. For instance, we have curated a special fan selection of products, notably, 10 out of -- or 11 countries are participating in the European football championship and we've introduced, for example, customized private label products in the national colors to drive engagement, of course, to sell. And as shown on this slide, we offer everything you need for an exciting football evening with friends. The example is the portable TV from our peak brand ideal for outdoor viewing along with Bluetooth speakers and air fryers, the national colors or small fridges to keep the beverages chilled. So -- and we also have an engaging international marketing campaigns that is designed to capture this excitement and passion for this sporting event in the spirit of experience, what's possible. So in summary, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude today's call with a summary on this chart. We had an accelerating momentum in Q2 and a strong first half of the year. In a soft market, we've increased sales and gained market share in many countries. We've increased profitability and EBIT with accelerated momentum. We improved customer experience, and our transformation program is picking up speed. Let me be clear, our focus remains also on cost, profitability and liquidity. And finally, we have specified our outlook for the financial year '23-'24. We now expect an adjusted EBIT of between EUR ‚290 million and EUR ‚310 million. Thank you for your attention. And now Kai and I, we look forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Andreas Riemann of ODDO BHF.

Andreas here from ODDO. So we saw that the adjusted gross margin was up 60 basis points, I think you mentioned product mix and also Service & Solutions business. So is that also a run rate for the coming quarters because both drivers might also be in place in the coming quarters? And the second question would then be on the OpEx going down the P&L. So the OpEx ratio was broadly flat on an adjusted basis. On the one hand, you've got the savings, but it also implies that there must be certain costs which increase. Maybe you can speak about wage inflation or rental costs a bit to get an understanding what is basically offsetting the cost savings that you achieved in the OpEx line?

Andreas, it's Kai speaking. Let me take those one by one. So first of all, the gross margin question, you're right. We increased by 60 basis points for the past period. For the 12 months period going forward, what we can say at the moment is that we do expect gross margin overall to increase year-over-year for that period. The main drivers behind that, we expect to continue to be those that we've now seen in the first half of the year. So that's on the one hand side, I think we said roughly half of that, the core retail business and a little more than half actually for our growth businesses. So that Service & Solutions, that's retail media, that's private label and marketplace behind that. So I expect the continued increase in gross margin, please, also for the 12 months basis. Going into cost. The main negative drivers, so to say, that the main headwinds come from personnel but in a differentiated way across our footprint. This is not one size fits all. We do see big differences, not so much by region, but actually by country, it often depends on the national legislation. So that's one driver. The second is location cost, less pure rent but more rent incidentals. So think energy cost as an example, that we see as headwinds. What works against this is particularly our cost efficiency program, drive. As you will remember, this focused on administrative costs, not just in the headquarter but also administrative costs, so SG&A costs in the headquarters, in the countries, but also in the stores. That's one of the main drivers against this. And for personnel, let's also keep in mind that while we do see a wage impact -- effects negatively, we continue to reduce to a small extent, our workforce. So that also helped to compensate this effect. These are the main drivers, I would say.

The next question is from the line of Nicolas Champ with Barclays.

I have 2. The first one is about your free cash flow generation. So you guided toward a positive free cash flow for this year. But could you come back on the various drivers behind this guidance and more specifically, about your net working capital evolution for this year? What should we expect for the coming quarters and after the working capital flow in Q1? Second question is about your recent decision to upgrade your EBIT guidance for this year. Could you also come back on the motivation drivers behind this upgrade, while in the meantime, I mean, you said this morning again that, for instance, you expect activity in Turkey to continue to decelerate. So what makes you confident at this time of the year to upgrade your EBIT guidance for the full year, please?

I'm happy to take both questions. So for free cash flow, let me reiterate, for the full year, we expect a positive swing in free cash flow. Let me be a little more specific. Last year, we saw a massive positive swing. We've spoken, and I will repeat that about a small positive swing in free cash flow at the end of the year. If you look to drivers will continue to be a positive impact from tax. I think I've given quite a bit of detail on that. At the same time, there is a negative impact that we can all expect from financing cost and there will be, at the end of the year, a neutral slightly positive impact from net working capital as well. So the outflow that you've seen for net working capital for the first half of the year, neutral to slightly positive at the end of the year. That's what I would say about free cash flow and net working capital. And for the EBIT guidance, we -- when we looked at Q2 results, we saw an acceleration as Karsten has emphasized of the trend that we've seen in Q1 and Q2. We then also looked at current trading and both of these together, so the acceleration trend in the second quarter versus the first quarter, plus current trading has improved our confidence to the outcome of the year and motivates us to update our guidance.

The next question comes from Clement Genelot of Bryan Garnier & Co.

Just 2 questions from my side, if I may. So the first one is on the working cap. Just to come back on that. Do you feel happy with your [indiscernible] of inventories as of -- or do you intend to sort of further increase them in Q3? And then my second question is on the retail media. Do you intend to increase the prices of the retail media solutions will the upcoming [indiscernible] in-store ads and the omnichannel while reporting and so on, because I would assume that these new features are much more value added to [indiscernible]?

So let me take both the -- both of those questions. So thanks, Clement. So first of all, on the net working capital, if we feel happy with the current level of inventories as of Q2, actually, yes, we are and also with the mix and the right level of product availability. And also, if I compare historically, the freshness level of the stock, which is also an important KPI, we are feeling confident. And why I say that is, in particular, because we have improved in the last period substantially our operational way of driving stock turn and doing this more consciously and steer also very on a granular level. So that's why we do not see a need for a further increase in Q3. And let me also repeat what Kai said, so if you look at the year-end and the translated into cash flow, we expect then the neutral to positive contribution from net working capital. I hope this gives you a bit more color on this one. Retail Media, I would say the following, we have at the moment, the 4 active products live. I still see an increasing momentum that we drive from those, how we engage with partners, winning new partners, new partnerships, et cetera, and some of the momentum I still expect to unfold from those. But equally, I'm very pleased to see that we will also add new product features into the pipeline. And clearly, I think the one that we haven't sponsored brand at the SBA, which we, I think, haven't utilized here to the fullest. We see also great products where we now combine online and off-line from a data perspective, but also how we market our thousands of screens in a different way, make this more attractive. So I would say it's a good balance. But even if we foresee into the future, I still think we have some good runway operationally with the existing portfolio with more things to come and for sure, we will update you on the impact and the quality of those products once they hit the market.

The next question is from the line of Alessandro Cuglietta of Kepler.