HORNBACH Holding AG & Co. KGaA (HBH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to our hybrid analyst and investor conference of Hornbach Holding. My name is Antje Kelbert, Head of Communications and Investor Relations at Hornbach. On behalf of Hornbach Holding and the entire communications and investor relations team, I'm delighted to welcome you personally again here in Frankfurt today. At this point, a warm thank you also to our host, [indiscernible] where we are today. Thank you very much that we are here today. We would also like to extend a warm welcome to our participants who have joined us digitally today for our hybrid event. This hybrid format is a first for us, and we look forward to the joint conference with physical and digital participants who can follow the event via the webcast stream. I would like to extend an equally warm welcome to our Board members from Hornbach Management AG, CEO, Albrecht Hornbach; and our CFO, Karin Dohm, are with us today. Hornbach Baumarkt is represented by CEO, Erich Harsch. According to today's schedule, Mr. Hornbach and Mr. Harsch will first provide an overview of the past financial year 2021, '22 and will present the group's key developments. Ms. Dohm will then conclude with the tour of the financial results and explain the most important key figures. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to raise questions to the speakers. This will not only be possible for participants here in the room, but also for our digital participants. [Operator Instructions] I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this conference will also be broadcast via video and telephone and that video and audio recording as well as a transcript of the entire event will also be made, which will subsequently be published on the company's website. If you continue to participate in the conference, you declare your consent to this data processing. Please note also our disclaimer, which is valid for the presentation as well as for the entire Q&A session. And now I will hand over to our CEO, Albrecht Hornbach, and look forward to the following presentations.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to our annual results analyst conference for 2021-'22. I am delighted that having missed 2 years due to the pandemic, we can welcome some of you in person for the first time again. And there are some familiar faces here as well. It's good to see you. This is the first time we are holding our annual results press and analyst conference as a hybrid event. Some of you are joining us online, while others have come here to Frankfurt. That shows how right it was to draw on digital possibilities and combine these with a familiar format. We need no further introduction because we are already right on topic. We want to discuss the past financial year with you today and give you an outlook for the '22-'23 financial year. At this event in the past, we always spoke to you about the performance of 2 shares. That of Hornbach Holding AG & Co. KGaA and that of Hornbach Baumarkt AG. We decided to withdraw the Hornbach Baumarkt AG from the stock exchange at the beginning of the year, and we successfully completed this delisting as of February 28. Why did we do that? Our ongoing status as a family-led company has been secured since we converted the holding company into a limited partnership by shares. And that means there was no longer any need for a duplicate listing. Now we have streamlined our capital market presence. In the future, we will be able to present ourselves and our success story to the capital markets in a more focused manner as one company. And to say it right away, '21-'22 was a further record year for Hornbach, one with exceptionally strong results. If you have followed our company and our sector for some time now, you will already know what effects, both positive and negative, coronavirus had on our business. The second year of the pandemic with lockdowns and the Bundesnotbremse in Germany was also a huge challenge for all of us. But -- and that is also an [ inside gain ] this year. We once again managed to seize the opportunities presented by the crisis and emerge from the situation in even better shape. Together with Erich Harsch and Karin Dohm, I will be telling you how we managed that. Ladies and gentlemen, in its second year as well. The pandemic promoted a trend, which almost nobody escaped. I imagine you will all have noticed that in your neighborhood, your surroundings or even yourselves, at some point during the pandemic, while working from home, seeing to home schooling for the children and generally spending far more time at home, many people took the opportunity to tackle projects in their apartments, houses and gardens. And that certainly gave them a great deal of positive energy. Now that most restrictions have been lifted, we can move around more freely again and day-to-day life is beginning to feel more normal. Now we can see that this trend towards homing and cocooning is still intact. People have developed a taste for it. Anyone who has actually started improving their own surroundings does not suddenly stop just because restaurants and museums are open and they can go on holiday again. Put simply, people are far more attached to their own 4 walls now than they were before the pandemic. And this trend will continue. A much cited study of -- by the management consultancy, Accenture, even refers to a decade of home. Having said that, the pandemic also affected us directly and is still doing so. Many of our suppliers were and are directly or indirectly affected by production downtime, supply shortages for commodities, containers not being available, parks being closed and other problems. It goes without saying that we have noticed that as well. Prices are rising, goods arrive late or not at all. That all sounds like difficult times. And yet the figures, which my colleagues will present in detail once I have finished, tell a very different story. As I already mentioned, '21-'22 was another record year for us. I would like to highlight 1 or 2 aspects right away. The Hornbach Group concluded the financial year with sales growth of 7.7%. Its sales rose to EUR 5.875 billion. This growth was driven by all company divisions, Germany and abroad, do-it-yourself, retail and the builders' merchant business, online and stationary. Our largest operating subgroup is Hornbach Baumarkt AG, which operated 167 locations and 9 online shops at the balance sheet date. This subgroup grew its sales by 7.4% to EUR 5.496 billion. In Germany, our do-it-yourself stores and garden centers increased their sales by 4.8% to EUR 2.78 billion, and our international locations in 8 countries outside of Germany generated roughly the same volume of sales. Here, sales grew by 10.3% to EUR 2.716 billion. Our online sales, this is including Click & Collect, rose by 10.5% to EUR 944 million.The Hornbach Baustoff Union GmbH subgroup rounded off the superb sales performance of the Hornbach Group with sales growth of 11.8%. And not only that, taking over 2 locations in Thailand, it will press ahead with its successful growth strategy in the new financial year as well. We also have pleasing news when it comes to our earnings. Thanks to strong sales growth, the Hornbach Group increased its earnings significantly compared with the previous year. The Hornbach Group's adjusted EBIT, i.e., EBIT adjusted to exclude nonoperating one-off items, grew by 11% to EUR 363 million. At Hornbach Baumarkt AG subgroup, adjusted EBIT rose by 13% to EUR 315 million. This means that for this important key figure, we even beat the record earnings reported for the previous year. The adjusted EBIT margin for the overall group climbed from 6.0% to 6.2%, that too is a record level, higher than at any time since we converted to IFRS accounting 20 years ago. Earnings per share jumped from EUR 10.33 to EUR 12.48. We are very pleased with our performance in the past financial year, which was driven by 3 absolutely critical success factors. I will begin with our successful digitalization strategy. More than 12 years ago, we were one of the first companies in the do it yourself sector to start digitalization -- to start digitalizing our business, while most of the sector was really quite late to follow suit. We made massive investments in this field because we were and we are convinced that viewed in the long term, digitalization will be crucial to our success story. Today, we are reaping the benefits for this forward-looking approach. We have profited from our head start and extended it further. Now we have the top-performing online shop in the sector with around 250,000 articles available at the German site. So what is the secret? Other retailers use their distribution channels separately and refer to multichannel or omnichannel site sales. Since launching our digitalization campaign, we have relied on our own strategy, interconnected retail, or ICR, for short. That means we consistently dovetail our stationary product trends with the opportunities presented by online shopping. We bring the Internet with all of its possibilities into the stores and vice versa, create a genuine shopping experience for consumers at home. We see ourselves as pioneers in this area and will consistently uphold our ICR strategy. Another key aspect is that ICR also has a cultural component. We never attempted to separate the channels in organizational or physical terms. All of our staff factor ICR into their solutions. The stores do not view the online business as a competition, but rather as a key component of our business model, one that generates additional sales and from which ultimately, we all benefit together. The second success factor is our supply chain and logistics concept. During the lockdowns, 140 of 161 stores at the time were closed. That did not lead to a suspension of business. Quite the opposite, we spontaneously converted our stores into distribution centers from which we sent goods directly to customers. Having said that, even the best logistics are of little use if the flow of goods, the supply chain is disrupted. Hereto we were able to draw great benefits during the pandemic from structures that were in place and highly functional. We have been focused on improving the ways we use freight space since 2012 already. In times of rising freight costs, we are now benefiting from that. Not only that, since the onset of the pandemic, we have created additional storage capacities taking a highly forward-looking approach to procurement and like flexible use of various transport options to secure the availability of goods for our customers. We have long-standing relationships with our suppliers and the multi-supplier strategy that allows us to draw on alternative supply sources when necessary. That all said, our employees, our colleagues are still the most important success factor. I have spoken a great deal about flexibility about the need to be open to new opportunities and the challenges presented to us by the pandemic. Our success despite all of the challenges, this thanks above all to our committed workforce. Just 2 examples: right at the beginning of the pandemic, the team at our stores developed fantastic and highly effective measures to protect our customers spontaneously and at their own initiative. During the lockdowns in the past 2 years of the pandemic, employees who previously advised customers, worked at checkouts or stocked goods into shelves switched to handling online orders, fetching goods from the shelves, packaging them and sending them to customers. We heard of some staff members said they walked up to 30 kilometers at the store in just 1 working day to assemble online orders for customers. We owe each and every Hornbach employee, who now number nearly 25,000 in total, our special appreciation in these times. We know the extra efforts they made to serve our customers placed great demands on them. A decade of home, functioning structures and a motivated team, these give good reason to be optimistic about the future. At the same time, we are, of course, also watching developments in Ukraine with great concern. Regardless of any implications for our company, which Erich Harsch will refer to in greater detail, our wish and hope is that it will finally be possible to end the war. The suffering on the part of those affected moves us greatly and we are committed in a variety of ways to doing our part to help the civilian population. All that now remains is for me to thank you warmly for your interest and to hand over to Erich Harsch.

So thank you, Mr. Hornbach. Ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to offer you a very warm welcome to our annual results press conference. As Albrecht Hornbach already said, we can look back on a record year. I would like to follow up now by looking at the statistics for the sector a little bit more closely. How is our company's positive performance to be viewed when compared with the rest of the sector? How has our market position developed? Before I begin, I would like to pick up on Albrecht Hornbach's comments on the situation in Ukraine. Hornbach does not have any stores in Russia or Ukraine, and we also do not have any direct business relationships in either country. Having said that, the war is close to us. Very close, in fact. We have stores in Slovakia and Romania, 2 countries directly bordering Ukraine. Particularly at our 2 stores in the east of Slovakia, not far from the Ukrainian border, many of our staff have relatives and friends who have been directly affected by the war. That puts the news from this region in a completely different perspective for the colleagues on location, but also for us. This is why we are helping wherever we can with everyday necessities, so material donations, in particular, and with financial assistance not only in Germany, but also in the other country companies. Our Czech Republic and Slovakia region spontaneously supported an initiative to supply people affected by the war with around EUR 200,000. And it goes without saying that we automatically give leave to those colleagues who have to take care of affected relatives. Let us hope that the situation changes quickly, and that people there can finally live in peace and freedom again. Turning back to our company and our business performance in the past financial year, we already heard that the past year was exceptionally good for the Hornbach Group. How good the year actually was is particularly clear if we compare the figures Albrecht Hornbach just presented with those of our competitors. As you will recall, 2020 was a record year for the whole sector. A year in which nearly all companies generated growth. So the question is, which companies managed to latch on to this success in 2021 as well? Let's have a look at the DIY market. The new sector statistics compiled by the Dähne publishing house are due for release in just a few days. They have already communicated 1 fact in advance. Of the 6 largest DIY companies in terms of sales in Germany, according to the statistics collected by Dähne, only 1 of them managed to post further sales growth after the pandemic-driven boom in 2020, and that was Hornbach. All other major competitors, Obi, Bauhaus, Hagebau, toom and Globus were not quite able to build on the previous year's success and reported declines in their sales performance, of course, because of the lockdown situations, the Bundesnotbremse in Germany. The 2-year statistics compiled for 2019 to 2021 show that we achieved the highest sales growth in the sector. This way, we have overtaken Hagebau and toom and advanced to #3 among the DIY companies with the highest sales in Germany. I have no doubt that you will already have seen it in our numerous presentations. In terms of total sales in our international business, we have held third position among German DIY store operators for many years now. But if you look at our sales in Germany alone, we were along only the fifth largest player in the sector and now we have taken a major leap forward to position 3, and that by building on our own resources. We have grown significantly faster than the market, and that is, of course, also reflected very pleasingly in our market share. Based on GfK figures, Hornbach Baumarkt share of the German DIY market grew from 14% up to 15.1% in the 2021 calendar year. And we are still highly successful in our international business. In the Czech Republic, for example, we have a market share of 33% and are already the top player in the sector. And if we look at the Netherlands, we can see that in parallel with the 25th anniversary of our market entry, we are close to achieving 25% market share. With 8 new stores opening in the past 7 years, the Netherlands is one of our fastest-growing country markets. So the question now is, what have we done differently to our competitors? Albrecht Hornbach already referred to the importance of our ICR strategy that is fundamental to our success. After all, our pleasing sales growth was driven not by acquisitions or new -- or many new stores openings but chiefly by our own internal resources, our ICR strategy, our smart procurement and stocking policies and the great, great personal dedication shown by our colleagues. To do justice to the importance of digitalization and all the opportunities it presents, we have set ourselves the standard of being the technology leader within our sector, within the baumarkt sector. We have our own development team with 80 employees alone working on the web shop, the app and the relevant interfaces. Technology is key to our success. And that is precisely why we are permanently investing in this field. For us, online and stationary are not 2 distribution channels. On the contrary, we interlink the 2 worlds closely to generate additional benefits for our customers or to put it loosely, according to Aristotle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Let me give you some specific examples of how we interconnected our stationary and online businesses. For example, Click & Collect, the option to order goods at home or on the road with computer, tablet or smartphone and then simply collect them at the store. Numerous retailers only discovered Click & Collect in the last years. This meant they could still generate a certain level of sales during the lockdowns and maintain their customer relationships. We at Hornbach introduced this option across Germany in mid of 2011 already, and then swiftly rolled it out to all other regions. That gave our customers multiple advantages during the periods of lockdown. Not only that, many customers learned to appreciate this service and are still using it much more frequently than before, even though the stores are open as usual again. We have free WiFi at our stores, which enables us to provide additional information and services to our customers. And by the way, that also creates absolute price transparency. For us, that gives us the opportunity to convince customers of our price leadership directly on location at the shelf. Over the past 2 years, customers have also made far greater use of the option of scanning purchases themselves with the Hornbach app and thus speeding up the payment process. And that trend is continuing. The display of product availability for a given product and its location within the store is another example, or the use of virtual reality glasses for bathroom planning, or online configuration for customized products and much more. No other stationary competitor generates more sales via digital channels than we do in our sector. At around EUR 1 billion, online accounts for around 17% of total sales at Hornbach Baumarkt AG. In reality, it's a lot more because many of our customers are informing themselves via our Internet channel before visiting the store and then buying there. So online is very important for our business. In Germany, not even Amazon, Zalando or Otto generated growth as high as ours in their online businesses in 2020. ICR is an essential part of our very own success. And this success would, of course, be unthinkable without the amazing commitment shown by our colleagues. On the one hand, in the specialist, central departments and logistics services and above all, at our stores, there, digitalization is not perceived as competition for the bricks and mortar business, but rather the benefits it brings to Hornbach's consumer are valued overall. Therefore, our colleagues use the options provided by the online shop and other digital aids in their daily work when advising customers in sales activities and when offering numerous services. That is crucial in making our customers feel comfortable and willing to draw on our services and recommend them to others, very important. We are well aware of the important role of our colleagues played in our successful growth in the past financial year. They have my absolute respect for what they have achieved under the difficult conditions such as the mass loads during physically demanding work. And I am delighted we were able to underline our appreciation with a decent profit sharing scheme to our employees. Before I hand over to my colleague, Karin Dohm, I would like to give a short outlook of the operative milestones in the current financial year. Inflation, unstable supply chains, bottlenecks in logistics, rising commodity and transport costs, many of the challenges that already accompanied us in the past 2 years will remain with us. Given the geopolitical situation, they may even intensify further. However, we will not let up in our efforts to constantly renew our business and act with great flexibility. We intend to build on our momentum this year as well. We have already opened 2 new DIY stores and garden centers in 2022, 1 in Slovakia in Nitra and 1 in the Netherlands in Enschede. And the third is set to follow in Romania in Constanza, on the Black Sea in Romania in the fall. In Germany, we will open the next store in spring 2023 in this case in Leipzig. And of course, in parallel, we are also modernizing and further expanding existing stores when it's possible and beneficial for our customers. And when it comes to interconnected retail, our foot remains firmly on the accelerator. In the current year, we will continue to invest in our online shops, staff and customer apps and technology for use at our stores. We will be moving all our online shops to our new e-commerce platform, which will offer us better scalability and greater flexibility. Demand remains high, and we expect the trend of consumers improving their own 4 walls to continue in the medium term as well. Not least as ever, more people will work from home even now that the coronavirus restrictions have been lifted. In that respect, we can look to the future with confidence. Our people at Hornbach have amply demonstrated their ability to master even major challenges to the benefit of our customers. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to leave you with this positive outlook. Thank you for listening. I will now hand over -- I will now hand you over to Karin Dohm, my colleague on the Board of Management, who will take a closer look at our business results with you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much and also from my side, a warm welcome. Very happy to now have a chance to do a deep dive into some of our figures. I know that Albrecht Hornbach and Erich Harsch gave you already quite a good overview about last year, so I will literally not go through all of those slides that you have in front of you, but just do the one or the other, as a deep dive to highlight what we think is especially important for you to have in mind not only because of the performance of last year, but because we see it as a continuation of the very good performance of Hornbach in general and also see that as a basis for the further growth of the company with regard to the next couple of years. So as highlighted, we had a very successful year, not only in figures, but also in making sure we further deliver on this organic growth customer journey that we highlight as being one of the core pieces of Hornbach's DNA, not only those 5 new stores but also new formats, specializing specifically on floors. And as mentioned earlier, once again here also Netherlands was one of the countries where we tried something new as it is one of our core dynamic countries in our footprint and the current setup. My colleagues already mentioned we had a good growth, not only on the sales side, but specifically also on the adjusted EBIT side, and I will come in a little bit more detail into the various components that led to that. One word here on the CapEx side, you saw that we -- when we went through the last fiscal year, we upgraded the guidance throughout the year. The last one was at the beginning of December. And we also had as part of the communication, some words on the CapEx. We didn't go beyond the EUR 200 million, which we originally envisaged. That wasn't because we held something back, but that was because, as usual, in these long-term investment cycles that we have for the stores, sometimes things fall more in the one or into the other fiscal year, and that then just has quite some influence on the figure, but it doesn't mean that we as such held anything back. It's just the cause of how you build and how quickly sometimes things evolve or sometimes I say, fall into the next month, which then happens to be in another fiscal year. A quick view on to the various quarters also to give you a highlight over the course of the last 3 years. And due to corona, we like to show not only the current year or the last fiscal year and the previous one, but also this 3-year waterfall. And you see here quite nicely that throughout the whole set of the 4 quarters, we were able to outgrow the previous one and the 1, 2 years before. So both in a 1-year and 2-year comparison. Baumarkt growing here with 7.4% and the Baustoff Union, which sometimes comes across quite small but also had a very nice growth with 11.8%, so double digit in the last year. So that obviously being still influenced by closures. We mentioned that earlier. So we had throughout the various countries, a couple of closures, which affected the figures and probably also the composition of certain channels, when you think about our interconnected retail approach. Nevertheless, all in very successful year and especially also when you look into the like-for-like growth, as you see it here on this chart, across all of our countries and regions. So we are very happy with that outcome. And as said earlier by my colleagues, very good basis when you look into the market share expansion, which we were able to collect to make sure that we can use that to build further also in the current and in the next years. One of the key figures which I wanted to highlight is this, what you see here on the right side, the sales per square meter. That includes anything, whether that is starting in the online world or whether that is a classical stationary sales, and we think that is one of the strengths, specifically amongst our German competitor landscape, where we are able to set ourselves off even further if you compare that with the previous year, and that allows us, obviously, to also then expand our position. We, Erich Harsch specifically, highlighted that amongst the German competition. And you know that the German market and its competition is very dense. And we have, of course, a footprint which is very successful in many countries. But we think it's always important to also be successful in your home market because that ultimately drives, of course, the strength of your brand. E-commerce was mentioned several times, and I would like to highlight here just 1 aspect. Obviously, as shown on the slides earlier, we had some closures. And of course, people use the 1 or the other channel more or less if stores are closed or not. And of course, that also drives the behavior -- or the shopping behavior. Nevertheless, as Erich Harsch highlighted already, we are strongly convinced that technological leadership in this customer journey is 1 of the key factors. And that is 1 reason why we also continuously invest not only into the stores and the store network, but also into our online setup, into the web shop, the app, the various parts that you can use there that build the experience for the customers. Because ultimately, we don't want to drive customers into the one or the other channel. We're really convinced that as good as the journey gets, that will drive a positive experience, and that will ultimately drive sales and ultimately, of course, then EBIT. And therefore, it might well be that this 17.2%, as we just had them in the last year, change. They might grow, they might shrink slightly, but we think that is not really the crucial element. The crucial element is that we have also in this online DIY market, a good market share, which we have and that we are able as such to make sure that we have a very good, seamless journey and offer for our customers to enhance that experience even further. Cost management, of course, always important to make sure that you translate those extraordinary good sales into a very good EBIT. We are continuously, as I said, investing and we will keep that also coming back later on, on that aspect in the current fiscal year. And therefore, you see here, nevertheless, although we built up, for example, personnel, we hired people. We want to make sure we have good customer service. That means people who are able to provide -- who are not only there, but who are also able to provide good advice and we consciously invest in our people continuously. And nevertheless, we, despite all those investments, both in personnel and in store and other expenses, we were able to demonstrate that we, a, kept a very good gross margin development; and b, also had an overall cost ratio, which is really attractive on an ongoing basis, which brought us, as I said earlier, to quite a good EBIT development, 11.1% growth, fantastic figure. And also when you look into the translation between adjusted and unadjusted EBIT, there was also quite some stability visible. We have, of course, always the one or the other gain from sales from smaller pieces of land, which we have sometimes left or right of our stores where we then sometimes buy small pieces or sell small pieces. And then also, of course, on the -- in the continuous development of our IFRS valuation, as you know, those are always discounted with a risk-adjusted WACC. So that means we also there had the usual developments that is very much in line with what you see or what you saw in previous years. Ultimately, the EBIT margin was 6.2%, something which we really think is a very good performance and gives you also some indication of Hornbach's strength. I brought along as well a slide, which gives you a deeper cut into the geographical as well as in the operational segments on the left. As I said earlier, not only on the sales side, also here on the EBIT side, very good development across all parts of the group, not only in Baumarkt , which of course, is our core and heart of the operational excellence, but also when you look into the other parts that is giving you, I guess, some confirmation that individually, but also jointly taking into account the fact that we own 2/3 roughly of our real estate that leads to a good contribution to the overall EBIT and its margin. Geographically, I think you might want to take along, a, good growth across all countries on the EBIT side. Of course, we see different margin in different countries very much driven by the individual competition and the landscape around that. And also currently, I would claim roughly 1/3 of EBIT is generated in Germany, 2/3 outside as one of the perhaps figures you want to take along. Only 1 word I would like to take into some other KPIs, important for some of you who went into specifically country analysis. We are also proud that we now are in a status where specifically Sweden is able to not only generate a surplus, but we were also able to due to this now continue a journey of positive EBIT there, we're able to also reevaluate the country, and that leads to an upside in the tax rate, which you might have seen in our figures published. So that is reflecting on an IFRS basis, nevertheless, also reflecting the very good development across all of our regions. The very good result, as mentioned, brought us to the decision and my colleagues highlighted that earlier already. To increase the dividend, we propose now EUR 2.40 to the Annual General Meeting, which will take place at the beginning of July. That is not only a good path towards what we always said being 30% of the payout ratio as one of our targets. But it also is a good part driven by the fact that we say we will always -- our aim is to always pay dividend and to ideally not pay a dividend that is below the previous year. So that is unchanged also with a view, of course, to the future to make sure we have there a stable basis to as such have the last year dividend always as the lower range and the 30% payout ratio as the upper range to which we want to develop further. One word on cash. For the reason also to make sure that you take into account 2 aspects here, number one, CapEx, I mentioned that earlier. I want to highlight again that not everything that we invest into the online shop or the app is going through the balance sheet. So part of that is incremental. And you will see it reflected in the P&L. So the investments in anything that is immaterial is more than what is reflected here in CapEx. Obviously, the good operators activities brought us also increased funds from operations, and you see that stable development, obviously also reflected in our balance sheet, very good and stable setup here, whether you think about the equity or whether you think about also the availability of goods, which ultimately is here reflected in those figures as they were on February 28. We deliberately bought earlier more inventory over the course of last summer and autumn to make sure we have certain availability safeguarded for this very important first quarter for us where we're currently in. And also to be able to beat, of course, availability amongst competitors in the one or the other area. Therefore, the buildup of the inventory was deliberately and proactively done by us. Last figure from my end before we want to enter into Q&A., first time that we were able to publish our Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon dioxide footprint. This is based on the process we ran over the course of last winter, including not only the sheer process of collection, but also to make sure that those figures are reliable and traceable, we included some adjustments on our software. We also made sure that we had a special audit ran through those figures and the process, how they were collected as said to make sure this is reliable and also reproductively possible -- sorry, for twisting up here with my English. What I was trying to say is we established a process which we can reuse over the course of the next years. Obviously, in addition to what Hornbach already did in the past to make sure that we're not only adding to E, but also to the E, S and the G of the whole ESG world. We are now focusing on, a, for this year, looking into the question of how can we work on Scope 3; and b, making sure that we have a couple of measures identified, which we then can also tie to the Board's remuneration from next year onward. I will stop here and then very happy to take some of your questions or any of your questions. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you very much for your presentations. Before we are now available to answer your questions, I would like to give you some guidance on how the Q&A session will proceed. We will start first with the questions here in the room. And then we will transfer to the participants of the telephone conference. [Operator Instructions] Following the questions from the room, as I said, -- we then go to all the digital participants. And you cannot ask questions from the webcast tool, but only from the conference call. [Operator Instructions].

We will now start with a Q&A session here in the room. Who's ready for the first question? We start with DZ Bank.

Thomas Maul, DZ Bank. I've got 2. First one, can you please elaborate a bit on average basket size? How much do consumers actually spend on average in your stores? And how much do they spend online? And yes, the second one is with regard to the deterioration in consumer confidence, have you actually recorded any kind of deteriorations or any kind of down trading following the deterioration or consumers buying cheaper products? Are they buying more private labels and less branded products?

Maybe I'll start a little bit and then happy for additions. So to your question, in general, we observed a growing basket size in general. So that is very much in line with our observation that people think and buy then consequently more in projects. So that we originally see exactly what we always also have geared our whole organization towards that, whether that is a private or a professional customer, those usually come along not only to buy 1 screwdriver or something along those lines, but really have a project in mind and buy according to that. And as I said, that results in continuously growing baskets. We do not necessarily publish precise basket figures, so my apologies for that. Nevertheless, in general, size is growing. We see also continuous demand currently. As you know, since March 1, we are in our -- not only in the usually strongest quarter, but also in the first quarter of the new fiscal year. We see, as said, still an ongoing strong demand. And as also said, with this project view independent of what type of customer. To your question online versus off-line, I think for us, it's really important to have 2 things in mind. Number one, there is, of course, an element of flow. So we see a lot of first views, when a customer approaches Hornbach, there's always this first interaction in the online world. That doesn't necessarily mean that also the transaction is finalized in the online world, but that is definitely the starting point, also independent to the fact of whether that is a classical retail client or whether that's a merchant or whoever that might be. And I think, therefore, it's not strictly hard -- differentiable with the figures as you saw there. We see currently roughly 1/5 of the sales in the classical e-commerce area, including Click & Collect, including direct delivery. But I think the, as Erich Harsch also said earlier, the portion of our sales, which is starting in an online contact is way higher. And you had one last question on the white label side or the private label. In general, it's roughly 1/4 of our sales. But it is -- so to say, it is across all channels or all forms of interaction.

We don't observe down trading effects at the moment. Maybe it will change in the future, but not at the moment.

Okay. So who would like to ask another question? So no further questions? Yes, please.

[indiscernible]. Maybe obviously, given the spike in energy prices, there's a prospect of potentially a recession later in the year. What are you doing to prepare for such a possibility? Or what could you do if that were to happen?

Yes, I can start a little bit on the specifically on the energy side. Obviously, we are affected like everybody else in the sense of our energy bills. Also [indiscernible] was going up. What we're currently doing is a number of aspects. Of course, we have made sure that due to the -- since the beginning of the war, we have started to make sure that we have, a, more intense interaction internally as probably any company has. We're specifically analyzing currently how we can affect the large consumers, so to say, which in our case are the stores, for example, the store network and the logistics when you think about energy consumption. And that means we're currently specifically with a view towards the winter, observe how can we make sure we have more flexibility perhaps in some energy consumptions that might be things such as is there a way we can operate our lighting and anything that is attached to that in a slightly different manner that doesn't negatively affect customers but brings down energy consumption very, very, so to say, specific operating questions. And we are also looking, of course, into further trying to safeguard certain price structures and things like that.

Okay. Next question.

Yes, on inflation, I know your own prices are determined by your own tracking of competition. So first of all, I'm wondering by how much is your competition has increased prices this year? That's the first question. And the second question on inflation, what do you expect how your customers will behave in an inflationary environment? And do you expect that some of the projects might be pulled because it's becoming too expensive for your customers?

So I come to the second question first. We really don't have an exact expectation because if there is less money for the people because of inflation, it also could be a chance for Hornbach because we have our everyday low price concept. And if the people are more comparing the prices, more people will find a way to our stores than to other stores. That could be a chance. Also could be a chance if the people don't go on vacation with expensive journeys, but staying at home and prefer to improve their homes. That also could be a chance. And of course, it could be a risk if the people don't buy anymore because of the inflation. So I think nobody really knows how the concrete behaviors of the customers will develop. But I'm convinced we will be able to make the best out of it, whatever happen will happen and we will be able to deal the situation in that way or in that way. And the first question was about the increased prices with our competitors. It's -- there is no general trend. It depends on certain products. Of course, there is a movement of increasing prices, upgrading also the sales prices in correlation to the growing buying prices. But the market decides, and nobody wants to be the first to have higher prices. So the pricing development on the sales area is much more slower than on the buying side. And of course, we want to make fair agreements with our partners, our suppliers. Maybe there are suppliers who are seeing a chance for themselves to increase their profits. But others also have problems with the higher energy costs and transport costs and so on. And so we -- it's our responsibility with fair agreements to help our suppliers so that we can join us and have a fair partnership to handle the, of course, very difficult situation in some areas.

Okay. Thank you. Do we have a further question from the room? Yes, please.

This is Benjamin Thielmann from Berenberg. Maybe you could give us some color what products are mostly affected by your supply chain issues? Is it more in the garden equipment sector? Or is it electrical component? Or what products are not arriving in your stores right now?

At the moment, we have no real problems with not availability. We have a good stocking policy, we had a good stocking policy. So our stores have enough products for now starting spring season, which is the most important season for our sector. And we have no general problems. We have problems, of course, in certain products, but not really at the moment, but to expect in the future, if our stock is -- when our stock is gone because of the sales and we try to create alternate supplying opportunities and look how we can be more independent and have more choice between more than one supplier. I think it's -- in difficult situations, you have to look that there are -- has less single points of failure as possible.

I would add that actually builders' merchants have more problems with their goods. For example, all these commodities, which are very energy-consuming in production like stones, tiles, steel, these have long delivery times and makes the life of a builders' merchant harder in the moment, harder then to do their sales to us.

Thank you. Do we have a next question?

Okay, I would have another one. Could you give us some color what countries are you targeting with your international store expansion? I know that you're aiming to open 25 stores in the next 5 years? In what countries can we expect more store openings?

Preferred in our existing companies, not new -- countries, not in new ones because we have enough possibilities in the countries we are at the moment. And of course, there are countries with more possibilities, for example, Romania or also the Netherlands, as I told before. And it's more difficult, for example, in Switzerland and Germany, where there are already many competitors and no white spaces on the landscape. So we have opportunities, and of course, it's difficult to develop new stores. But I think we can reach the number you mentioned.

Next question, please.

Does the increasing online proportion of your sales have any influence on the average store space that you're targeting in your expansion?

I think the problem is if there is a big store and a small store, always the big store wins. That's our experience. So I think that because of our main customers, our ability to store many materials for our buildings, which are long and heavy and not so comfortable to handle, I think the big stores will remain as the preferred store concept in our sector. It's -- of course, we have also stores which may be a little bit smaller and more role in online channel. But I don't think that's a big change in the strategy for the stores. The increasing online part, I think in this year, we will see not any further increasing at the dimensions we had. Why? Last year, during the lockdowns, if we have no lockdowns in the future, the online share will be a little bit smaller, not more increasing in the next year. But we are on a significant higher level than before the pandemic area. And we will stay on the significant higher level, and this will increase further on after having not a comparison with lockdown times.

[Operator Instructions] So we have no -- so okay, there's one question. Do we have a question before? I guess switch to the conference call here in the room. Yes, please.

Maybe a quick question on acquisitions. You mentioned that it's actually difficult to find locations to open stores. Would you consider acquisitions? And how likely that is?

We are more fans of organic growth and not of acquisitions. And so maybe Albrecht Hornbach can say something because I think Hornbach didn't have many acquisitions in the past.

In the seldom cases when we took acquisitions, it was only with a focus of the real estate behind, not on the business model or something else. And even that is difficult enough.

Okay. So let us now move to the conference call so that these participants are also able to raise their questions. And I would like to hand over to our telephone operator now.

The first telephone question is from the line of question [indiscernible].

I have 2 questions. The first one is about the financing of the acquisition of the Hornbach Baumarkt shares. Do you still think that you need to raise the equity part to finance this? Or given your strong balance sheet, are you also able to finance this with debt? And the other question -- or retained earnings, of course. And the other question is about real estate. If you're given now your higher part in Hornbach Baumarkt, is it possible to combine real estate in the Hornbach Immobilien sector and also the Hornbach Baumarkt group? And could you generate synergies from this?

Yes, maybe I can -- so thanks for those questions. To your first question, as said earlier, we are having -- we took a first financing step by using a bridge facility. As we publish that, that is currently now something where we are working to make sure we transform this more short-term bridge facility to a mix of longer-term financing pieces. We are having the bridge facility with a possibility to use that as a minimum or in general, without any further negotiations, so to say, for a year. So there's no hard hurry. We have all the timing flexibility that we need. But of course, we want to make sure we have that transformed into a proper long-term financing sooner than later. So we're currently running through some specific setups there to parcel that. And obviously, we also always said that we want to make sure we have not only the good rating that we obtained last autumn from Standard & Poor's, but also keep that. And those are the 2, I would claim, guidelines that we use currently to decide how we go further on that topic. But I think that is a little bit the design pattern as we also announced that earlier. And to your question on the real estate side, of course, as we managed to be very successful in this delisting and got beyond the 90%, the real estate transfer tax according to German law is due on that part of the real estate, which is in Germany. You don't have anything similar in any of the other countries where we currently operate. And that, of course, then gives us the flexibility to afterwards move real estate within the group without triggering that again, if I got your question correctly.

The next question is from the line of [indiscernible].

It's [indiscernible]. A few questions. The first one is about the tax rate, where you said it's a bit lower in the past year due to tax losses carryforward in Sweden. Can you give a bit of idea for the tax rate going forward and sort of the same impact in the current year? Second question is, you gave guidance on revenues and on EBIT. Is it also a possibility to give guidance on the net profit per share, given, of course, the change in the minority stake? And the third question is the minority stake is just over 9%. How often are you planning to give an update about any changes in the minority stake? And the fourth question, the last 1 for now is can you give a bit of idea what the first reactions are to the expansion in [ CECRA ] in the Netherlands about Hornbach [indiscernible].

Okay, so let me start with those first ones on the financial side. So tax effect, I can't give you the exact figure there, but it is, of course, a one-off, so to say, because being able to balance the tax effect due to the write-ups, so to the increase of the valuation is a one-off. And therefore, as I said, it's not a big change that we expect for the future to have there a strong change, but we don't -- as I said, we don't give any hard tax ratio guidance, but it's something where we, in general, expect stability. I'm also not expecting any hard tax rate changes in any of those countries where we're currently active that could influence our picture in its entirety. With regard to the minority stake, I wasn't sure whether I got that question correctly, but I understood how often we would give an update on this percentage. Of course, I mean, if there's a relevant change, we would always make sure we provide there an update. So currently -- or since the delisting, there was simply no change. We haven't bought anything nor did we sell anything. So that is unchanged since then. And yes, if there is a material change, of course, we would provide information, absolutely. And I think then...

The guidance.

Guidance for earnings per share, excuse me, also that one, we're usually not providing. And as this is not a specifically easy future, we're currently all in jointly. We didn't want to start with adding new KPIs on which we provide guidance. I think -- and allow me there a reiteration. I think what we really want to bring across is we're seeing good momentum on the sales side. We're seeing Hornbach in a very good position when it comes to market share and the basis for further growth. We are having very specific ideas about investments, both into the store network as well as into the e-commerce angle, to make sure that, as I said, customer journey is staying attractive. We're very consciously in our price policy, as also said earlier, to make sure that we are, of course, safeguarding our margins where possible, but on the other hand, providing reliable costs and prices to customers wherever possible. And ultimately, we think that's a good position also with this mixture of customers which we have, which are on the 1 side, professionals; on the other ones, the retailers, to be able to navigate certainly uncertain waters in the next months/years and stay ahead of the pack, if I might say so. But I wouldn't dare to give you any guidance on earnings per share, ultimately, but maybe that's a good transition into the floor.

Yes, Hornbach Vloeren, as you know, we have since more than 1 year, 2 stores in Germany, in Berlin and in [ Cologne ] called Bodenhaus with a separate concept only for flooring. And our colleagues in the Netherlands opened this year in February, Hornbach Vloeren. But -- it sounds similar, but it's a different thing because in [indiscernible], our Hornbach store directly besides of Hornbach Vloeren changed its content and gave all its flooring content to the Hornbach Vloeren concept to get more space for other assortments and for renewing some areas in the Hornbach store in [indiscernible]. But both concepts as well the German concept of Bodenhaus as well as the Hornbach Vloeren started quite good. Of course, it's necessary to get known at the customer side that there's a new concept with much more competence and much broader and deeper assortment on the flooring area. And it grows continuously, and the time will come, I think, in the next year to decide how to develop in the future. At the moment, we have made no decisions to start new expansion, stop the old expansion or just staying with these 3 stores, it will be new consideration how to handle the flooring concept for the future.

The next question is from Ludovic Allègre from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have 2 questions. The first one, maybe could you be a bit more precise on your guidance? For example, on revenue, can we expect 2% to 5% growth this year? And on profitability, could you elaborate on the meaning of a slight decrease? For example, do you expect to retrieve your full year 2021-2022 adjusted EBIT level from full year 2023-2024? So this is my first question. And the last one is, have you already started to increase your prices to offset cost inflation? And more globally, how is it taken by your clients so far?

Yes, let me start and then maybe something we should add. So with regard to guidance, the general, let's say, translation of slightly in both areas, whether we think sales as well as EBIT is, I would claim, up to 10%. I think that's probably a figure you might want to have in mind. Anything further precisely with regard to where in those ranges, obviously, is beyond anything which we currently can foresee. Obviously, we, as I said, we see current market movements, and we all are depending up to a certain degree on the geopolitical development that might take place during the course of the year. The earlier, of course, the Russian war in Ukraine is stopping, the earlier certain limitations in the logistical networks around the globe are redeveloping into what might be a more relaxed or normal state that, of course, will have an influences, but that's currently the general picture we foresee there. Pricing and price developments, obviously, something I would hand over to Erich Harsch. I think one thought just I would like to provide there is you might want to keep in your heads that, of course, the current situation is specifically noteworthy with regard to inflation, general price developments in all areas. Nevertheless, parts of that was already there last year. So when you think about prices, for example, one individual piece of shipping of one container, things like that or wood was mentioned earlier, a certain element of that was already there last year. That doesn't mean it is not a very specific situation currently, but I think there is an ongoing element of that which is not new. That means there is a well-trained muscle in our organization to address that and to act accordingly. I said that doesn't make it easy, but I think I said there is a very conscious organization looking into those topics on an ongoing basis.

So our prices, we -- to say it clear, we want to have the best prices for the customers in the future as well. We have it in the present, we have it in the past, and we will stay on that position. Of course, it's difficult in some areas of products. But I think it's much more expensive to lose customers because of too high prices than to wait a little bit, still also others are maybe raising prices because of higher buying prices. So the market defines the prices and the competition is very hard, especially in Germany. And the movement of the price -- sales prices is much more slower than the movement of the buying prices. And we want to -- we don't want to be the first, we want to have the best prices for the customers. And we think that's the best way to make sure that our market shares can growth -- can grow further on and are not in a risk that they will sink because of too high prices in comparison to the competition. So it's a clear position. We want to have the best prices for the customer. And of course, where necessary and where possible, we are adapting the sales prices to raising buying prices.

So there are no further telephone questions at this time, and I hand back to Antje Kelbert.

Yes. Thank you very much. Are there any further questions in the room we could help you with? Okay, so I think this is not the case. And when we have answered all your questions, we thank you very much for your interest and your participation in our first hybrid analyst and investor conference. Hope to meet you either in person or virtually at road shows and conferences over the next weeks. And in the meantime, the Investor Relations team is up on your disposal. By the way, thank you very much also for the entire team who worked really hard to make this event happen and also to our partners who supported us as well. So have a nice and successful day, and hope to see you soon. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.