The Platform Group SE & Co. KGaA (TPG0) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day ladies and gentlemen and a warm welcome to today's Earnings Call of The Platform Group AG following the publication of the H1 figures of 2024. I'm delighted to welcome CEO, Dr. Dominik Benner, CFO, Reinhard Hetkamp as well as Laura, who will join as a Management Board, so the two gentlemen today will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results, and afterwards, as always, there will be our Q&A session. So having said this, Dominik, I hand over to you.

Yes. Thank you for introduction, and thank you for all the participants today that you spend some time with us, 30 minutes, I think, are enough for this call. So first, we would like to give you a short executive summary on the H1 report on the first 2 quarters of 2025. In general, we had a very positive development. So we could realize that we have a very stable growth. Our growth rate is not declining. It is stable or especially increasing in this year and we had a total GMV of more than EUR 442 million, which is a growth rate by 20% compared to the last year. And also, our revenue was increasing by more than 20%, we achieved a revenue of EUR 231 million. So all in all, from these figures, we are more than happy. And especially when we have a look on the adjusted EBITDA, which is our most important figure. We achieved EUR 17.6 million as an adjusted EBITDA. I'll come to that later, which is pretty successful, and it is the highest profitability in our company history so far. Our own margin goal with more than 7%. We figured out that we want to achieve it next year, we already achieved it this year. Right now, in this half year report, we achieved 7.6% of EBITDA margin, which is quite successful for us. And in not such an easy environment, and we have a lot of difficult circumstances in our industries. But all in all, we are pretty happy about this development. And also our net profit of more than EUR 80 million was quite successful for our group. Additionally, you only get more revenue and more profits when you have more customers. We activated a lot of customers. We have an increase of 26% in this half year, and we raised to 4.8 million customers in the total of 12 months. And very important for us, our average order value, it is in the last 2 years, always a little bit increasing. And also this half year, we achieved an average of EUR 118 to EUR 180 as an average order value. What else is positive? On the M&A side, we had two closings in the first 6 months this year. It was HOOD and Avocadostore. It was in the first quarter. And in the second quarter, we had some additional signings. That means, in total, we had six signings, two closings, and we have some upcoming signings also in the next month. We also give you our outlook part, an overview of what kind of targets we currently look at and how we want to proceed in this process of them. Last but not least, we also give the confirmation of our full year guidance 2024. We have a very positive outlook. That means our current development is strong. We also see that the second half year, so the months July and the month August were very successful so far, and we feel very comfortable about our guidance. Usually, we always make conservative guidance. We also do it this year, and we confirm our guidance from May 2024 that we want to achieve EUR 840 million to EUR 870 million GMV and also that we want to increase our revenue up to EUR 500 million with an EBITDA adjusted up to EUR 30 million. Now as we come to the specific data and figures. We give you a short impression about our people here. You can speak today with my person with Laura and with Reinhard. We also have time for Q&A after this call. So we would really appreciate that you give us some specific questions and we can answer you. And we also want to show you the latest developments during the last 3 months.

Yes. What happened in the last 3 months. So we have like six very important announcements and acquisitions. We want to share with you. First of all, we acquired the OEGE Group, which is a B2B platform for items to use from specific brands, for example, like coffee machines or washing machines which is like -- which is -- it will be very successful in the future. In addition to that, we acquired a Dutch fashion platform, which is called Winkelstraat, where we have like see lots of potential in combination with Brandfield and fashionette in the future because they are having like a very nice working infrastructure and are working with a lot of European fashion Lexus brand together. So we are very -- yes, looking forward to combine those shops or benefit from each other. Then we entered the market of flowers and acquired Aplanta, which is a platform or an online shop for fake flowers, which is, from my point of view, the way to go and it's becoming more and more successful. And yes, we'll be more and more used from, for example, hotels and companies, but as well as from private households. So we are very sure that this is like the future way of using flowers. Then we had the acquisition of Jungherz, which is selling bike accessories and equipment, which is good combined with our existing platform by Bike-Angebot. So we are sure that they will benefit from each other as well. Then we had another acquisition of the Weinmann Group, which is a platform for wood machines. And this is also in addition to our existing partners, GINDUMAC or existing platform, GINDUMAC, so we are still -- are also very sure that they will also benefit from each other in the future. And then, yes, we released our first bond of our AG in the latest months. So we are very happy that we overachieved our goal with this. So we had -- yes, we achieved all the goals there, and it was very successful, and we are very happy to announce those developments to you today.

All right. We continue with our overall view on our subsidiaries and our company holdings. As you can see here, we have some more companies now on our dashboard, and you can see how we listen in our segments. Okay. Let's turn to the financials. I would hand over to Reinhard, our CFO.

Yes. From my side, also a warm welcome to everybody. And as Dominik already pointed out, we have had a very strong development in the first half year of '23, and we -- so to take the target already in advance. So we underline our guidance and we are very happy to inform you now about the details. And as you can see, the first half year of '24 was much more better already than we have internally calculated. Our GMV growth up from EUR 367 million up to EUR 442 million, which is a growth by 20.5%. The revenue growth was a little bit higher than the GMV, it was EUR 23.5 million and both increases are, as I pointed out, are already much more higher than we have internally expected. So our forecast does not consider so that we are now in a very positive, much more positive position for the upcoming months. And what are the details regarding our results at the end? So as you can see, we have marketing costs, we have HR costs both of these sections could be a little bit reduced, and that is a very good signal of our cost reduction program. On the other hand, you can see the distribution costs a little bit increased. And that is something that was announced by our distribution companies already beginning of the year. And yes, the cost increases have happened. But nevertheless, we already started respective actions in the second quarter, so that we believe we can bring them down again over the next months so that we are in a very positive position in this regard also at the end of '25 -- sorry, '24. So overall, we can say the adjusted EBITDA was very well developing. We have an increase by 32.6% even also the reported EBITDA grows up by 25.7% and this is, I repeat myself, this is again a very good result of our effectiveness and our cost reduction program. So that last but not least, also our net profit increase and result's much more higher than we expected by a growth of 32%, so that finally, we have a net profit half year '24 by EUR 21.7 million and 9.4% compared to 8.7% in the first half year '23. What does that mean for the consequences of the shares. So repeating the figures. So as you can see, our continuing operations have a net profit by EUR 21.7 million. There are also to consider some non-continuing operations which are part of that net profit. So finally, we are resulting in a net profit by EUR 18.8 million. So that means that the earnings per share overall are EUR 0.90 and when we are only considering the continuing operations per share, we could result in earnings by more than EUR 1, EUR 1.09 and that is much more higher than we have realized in the same months or at the same time line in the year before. And now here, you can see that in account of -- kind of graphs, how that growth has happened. So when you see the first 6 months in '23 and compare it to the first 6 months in '24, the GMV grows up by 21% year-over-year, and is now already by EUR 442 million. And the revenue we are looking for is EUR 231.5 million in this year compared to the same period last year. It was only EUR 187.5 million, which is grow up by 24% year-over-year. In the EBITDA adjusted and EBITDA reported, we have had the same situation. So you can see a very well development of the business. So we are starting in '23, say, time line by EUR 13.2 million, and we are now ending in the first half year '24 by EUR 17.6 million, which is an increase of 33%, and by the EBITDA reported, which is interesting in our case that the reported EBITDA is much more higher than the adjusted EBITDA. But the background about this development, we will tell you some more details later in our presentation. Nevertheless, already to get an understanding to our numbers in the books, you can see that the EBITDA reported growth up from EUR 23 million up to EUR 30 million in the first half year '24. And here is a very quick slide where you can see how this happens that our adjusted EBITDA, which is concentrating on our continuing business and taking out all expenses and so on, which do not belong to our business. that this is something that is lower than the reported EBITDA and the consequences here, you can see are concentrated in the purchase price allocation results of our new acquisitions. We are, and I guess that's something which is already well known by audience here in the team who are already with us for a longer time. You know that we are all the time looking for very positive targets to bind them, and we were also this half -- first half year of '24, we were already very lucky regarding the purchases of our targets, which cost us lower purchase prices than the value we would get and we could achieve. And in this regard, for IFRS purposes, we have to prepare a super purchase price allocation. And the result is quite bad low, but that bad word is not that bad. So we have in our P&L, respective profits to show. And so therefore, we have our own profit are isolated before our acquisitions by EUR 17.6 million. And then we have purchased price allocation results. So effects in our P&L this half -- first half year of '24 by EUR 11.9 million and the respective deferred tax consequences of it, that is the bridge so that we are, last but not least, reporting an EBITDA by EUR 30 million in the first half year '24.

Yes. So also when we have a look on the nonfinancial KPIs, we had a very successful half year. So the numbers of orders was according to our revenue and GMV also increasing to 3.7 million orders in this last 6 months. Our average order volume was EUR 180 compared to EUR 113 the year before. And in total, we had 4.8 million customers in all our subsidiaries and group. And so this is also a big increase compared to the last year. When we have a look on our number of employees, we will show you later how our segments are developing and also with the employees there. In the total number, we almost have 800 employees. This is not such a big increase because some of the companies we signed in the first half year, they have their closing in -- by July or by August. And that is the reason why the number is not increasing higher, that means we have some acquisitions like OEGE Group, and they are still not included in these numbers because their closing is by August this year. And very important for us, the number of partners are very much increasing. When you have a look on our pro forma figures from last year, we always had 11,000 last year. And now we have more than 1,500 partners more on our systems and using our software, and this is a pretty successful development. All right. So all in all, we can first show our development from the first half year, and we can confirm our guidance, which we gave by May 29, we already increased our guidance in May -- by May 29, and we see a very positive development. And so from the today's perspective, we think that we have a good basis and that we can achieve all our targets for this year. I think we can skip all these figures because these figures you already have seen, how we want to increase our GMV this year with our new guidance. and you already have seen the guidance by our call by May '24. So when we have a look on the balance sheet, I would also hand over to Reinhard again.

Yes. So the changes in the balance sheet are not that big. And I guess that's the expectation of everybody, we have, for sure, certain investments to consider. But very important to understand that this is something that you will see later when we are talking about our cash flow. We have a very huge reduction of inventory. As you know, we have had acquired the ViveLaCar and the Cluno entity last year and it was well known by everybody that the company has had a huge part of cars which we do not want to keep any longer, and that is something that we consider as inventory in our balance sheet. And so these changes in the inventory are more or less based on the sales activities in the car business of Cluno and ViveLaCar. In this regard, we increased our cash position because of our sales of the cars, and we could use that incoming cash for sure also for stronger reduction of the liabilities in the first half year '24 because the acquisition of ViveLaCar was very expensive and increased our liabilities, but it was -- or you were informed that this is something only on a short time line, and we want to drive down these liabilities very quickly, and that has already happened in '23. And we continued in '24 in the same way so that our liability ratio goes a little bit down more than we expected. Nevertheless, we have a constant level of bank liabilities by EUR 62 million, which is also a little bit lower than in '23 and the equity ratio has had a very positive development in this regard so that we are in the first half year '24 by 34%. Here, you can see the debt position. As I said, we have cash and cash equivalents by EUR 50 million to long-term debt are EUR 36 million, short term, EUR 32 million, which is a little bit higher than we want to continue. So as you can see, our forecast for end of the year is that we will reduce the long term and the short term debt by round about, what is it, EUR 3 million on long term and EUR 5 million on short term. So that overall, we will have a lower bank loan situation. But on the other hand, as Laura already explained, we are -- we were very successful to set up a Nordic bond, the first half year, which was paid out in July. So you will not find these figures currently in the half year reporting. Nevertheless, this will have an impact in the upcoming months, so that the net debt situation for sure about the bond will increase from EUR 53 million up to EUR 79 million or nearly EUR 80 million at the end of the year. But overall, the long-term EBITDA will also be increased so that we, at the end are expecting a leverage effect, which is currently half year '24 by 1.87. It will grow up about our cost by the 1 to 2.65, but nevertheless, we are keeping our guidance that we are looking for to have a target leverage on a long-term basis by 1.5, up to 2.3 compared to our EBITDA -- and we are ending this year by 2.6, but we expect that by spending the cash out of the bond that we will come down very quickly and will keep our target and result as we explained. Here some figures regarding our current cash flow situation. So overall, coming from the operating activities, we have a cash flow of EUR 21 million. Our investing activities, for sure, has a negative impact by EUR 15.1 million. The cash flow out of financing activities is positive by EUR 1.4 million. So that results finally by current cash period situation of EUR 7.6 million. And regarding that we are starting with the cash by EUR 7.5 million. So we have, at the end of the half year '24, we have -- at the end of the period, we have a cash and cash equivalent situation of EUR 15.1 million. which is higher than our internal expectations and will give us a very good starting point for the activities in the upcoming months.

All right. So we can switch to the segment development because, as you know, we have four different segments in our group and all of our subsidiaries are integrated in one segment. And here, you can see on the total revenue share, how our segments are from the revenue in the total number. And as you can see here, what is the most relevant part from our side and I also show you the EBITDA numbers in the following slides. So when we start with the first segment, it is consumer goods. As you might know, we integrated fashionette 1 year ago and fashionette had a positive development. And we also see that our GMV net revenue in total with all our subsidiaries is increasing to EUR 126 million and we also see the adjusted EBITDA margin is 7.8%, which is, from our perspective, very successful. We always had an internal goal with 5%. In the second half year, you always have lower margins because you have more discounts like Black Friday and so on. But in the total number, we are very happy about this current development, and we see very positive signs from the consumer side. Additionally, you also find the employee number. We have an increased employee number here because we also acquired the platform of Avocadostore and this also belongs in this half year '24. And this is an increase from their side. It is just a consolidation effect. Let's go to the next segment, freight goods. Freight goods, we have, for example, bike or cars and so on. And there, we also have a very positive development and especially where we are very proud of is our EBITDA margin. Last year, we had a lot of restructuring and cost reductions in these subsidiaries and was very successful at the end. And now we see an EBITDA margin of more than 9%, and this is a very good result for this division. And we only slightly increased the number of people in these divisions. And as you have seen, we acquired one additional company, it is called Jungherz. Laura mentioned it already. It is an excellent company. They're coming from the bike part industry. They are one of the market leaders there. And we now incorporate with them together and integrate them together with our platform Bike-Angebot. Now we jump to the industrial goods. That means we have machine trade there and big production trading there. And totally, we also have a good increase there. It is not as high as last year, the increase, but we are still happy about that. Right now, we have 4.4% margin EBITDA, which is not happy not acceptable for us. We internally have 4% at least margin guideline in the sector. And we already see in the last year, it was around 4%, this year it is around 4%. And we decided by March 2024 that we make some actions regarding the margin when we make new projects, when we make new machine trades, and we decided also to reduce some costs. And we are optimistic that we can raise this number by end of this year and also next year to more than 5%. So we hope that we will have a good development there. And from the employee side, there is no relevant change. It is more or less without any change with two people more in this half year. So coming to the last segment -- oh that was too quick. Coming to the last segment, it was service and retail goods. This is our smaller segment, but it is quite important. We see a revenue of EUR 27 million in this segment. This is because our platform for pharmaceutical goods is developing quite good. And we also see that a lot of medications and drugs are selling on all our platforms. And here, you can see the margin, it's almost as last year level. So we are also happy about that. And from the employee side, we have two people more. Now we have a look -- outlook on our group. So first, we can confirm the outlook from May '24. So we see a revenue up to EUR 500 million. We see an EBITDA of up to EUR 30 million and the GMV up to EUR 870 million. And we also announced that we have a leverage ratio, which will be not more than 2.3 next year. We are very optimistic that we will achieve it. We will achieve at minimum in EBITDA, this is our forecast for at least 7%. And a GMV of EUR 1 billion -- EUR 1.1 billion. We also would like to give you an M&A update. So what are our current M&A targets in this quarter in Q3. And here, we have three examples, what kind of companies we have a look at. So first, it is a B2B e-commerce company. They make more than EUR 60 million revenue and have 40 employees. They are located in the EU. They are in South Europe, and we plan to make an acquisition of 50.1% and the due diligence is still ongoing, but we are almost done, and we expect the FDA by September '24. Here, you can also see a second target. It is a very small specialist for forest equipment. As you might know, we already acquired a company for forest and gardening equipment and they have a very positive development, and they would like to make an additional acquisition. And this is a local company, they are also making e-commerce activities and local activities, and they are very small with EUR 2 million revenue. But all in all, they are a good additional possibility to grow in this market. We expect the signing by end of August or beginning of September. And on the right side, you see a classical B2C consumer goods company. They have around EUR 21 million, EUR 22 million revenue, they have quite a big staff numbers, though they are more than 100 people located in Germany. And we also expect a 50.1 acquisition percentage and also expect that the management will completely remain on board and will stay with us together. All right. Our future strategy is still remaining. We want to become the #1 platform group in Europe, and we also want to have a good organic growth, which should be higher than the market. We expect that we have 30 industries by end of 2025. And we will also achieve this by 3 to 8 acquisitions every year. You have seen that we make a lot of acquisitions, but we are not doing this only the last year. We made it since so many years now. We have more than 25 acquisitions done in the last 5 years. And I think we have a pretty successful track record that we do not only acquire companies, we really integrate them. We really use them with our software, and we really changed the strategy and then focus pretty strong on the platform strategy with our software. Additionally, we also think that organic growth is so important and that we also want to have a balanced growth by organic and inorganic growth by around 50%. And on the right side, we still think that we are too much focused on Germany and Western Europe and Netherlands, and we really have to change that. And I think we are on a good track. With that, we'll make more and more steps towards a broad market, and you will also hear some news from us this year about our market entry in some other non-EU markets. So that was it from our side. Thank you very much, and we are now open for questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Dominik, Laura and Reinhard. [Operator Instructions] So we will start with Christian.

Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Christian Salis from Hauck Aufhauser.

Yes.

Yes, I can.

Perfect. I've got a couple of questions, please. So thanks for the presentation of the insights. First of all, on the rental car business. So could you just update us on how much revenue and EBITDA the rental car business contributed in the first half of the year? And how much do you still have on your balance sheet, please?

So I think you are not talking about the rental car business, you are talking about the sale of the cars, right?

Yes, exactly.

Yes. Okay. So the total number of sales was around EUR 20 million, and the resulting EBITDA was around EUR 1.2 million, EUR 1.3 million and from the sale activity. And the sale activity is done. So right now, there are no cars which we can sell or which are free to sell. And so the project is done from our side.

Okay. Sounds good. The second question is, again, on the top line. So how much revenue contribution did you have from acquisitions in the first half, please?

Well, usually, we have no reporting about organic and inorganic growth. So we have no number for this audience here. But as you have seen, we always have the guidance to achieve at least 50% organic growth, and we can confirm that we have at least 50% organic growth by this first half year.

Okay. Next question on the discontinued operations. So what are these discontinued operations, please? And why is it in the P&L? The same figure for the net income from discontinued operations in 2024 than in 2023.

Yes. Very simple answer. So we closed the activity of beauty and smart watches from the former fashionette Group, and we announced the closing in last -- by last year. and we closed and sold the activities. And this is a result why we have the net losses from these 2 small divisions and you can see it in our balance sheet. And this is a pro forma calculation. That is the reason why you see it also from the last year. And actually, we really had more or less the same number, there was no real difference regarding the total net loss from these two divisions.

Got it. And then finally, I've got more questions, but I'll jump back in the queue. Maybe the final question for now on cash net. So we've seen in H1, we've seen a slowdown in the luxury sector, also by leading players such as LVMH, gearing, I think, for example, Gucci has shown declining revenues by double digits in the first half. And I remember, it has been a pretty important brand for fashionette. So do you see any impact? And if not, what are you doing better basically than the rest of the luxury industry?

Well, the thing is it is not relevant for us if Gucci has higher or lower revenue because our model is based on partners and how many products a partner lists with us on our platforms. So for example, if Gucci has great revenues, but the partners do not offer us products, it is very horrible for us because we have no revenues because of no products. In our case, when we look at our luxury industry and luxury sector, we see that more and more partners coming to our platform and sell their product there. And we see that there are only two or three competitors in the market. One of them is Farfetch. Farfetch is not really existing in the market anymore or at least we cannot realize that. And so we have a lot of new partners, they bring us more and more products. And that is the reason why we have good growth rates.

So we'll now move on with the questions from Safa. So you should be able to speak now.

Yes. This is [ Safa Rutzka ] speaking from Pareto Securities. I have two questions. The first one regarding your revenue development. And you already mentioned that the development in the first half was above your internal expectations. When you look at your segments, could you shed some light on the outperforming areas? And in turn, do you also see some business areas that are lagging behind your expectations in the first half?

Yes. I mean, we always consider the revenue side and the margin side. So right now, we see that, for example, the machine trading industry that is very successful in terms of revenue, but we still very low margins, and that is because there is a lot of price competition around there. And though this is one of the subsidiaries where we really think, okay, we have to make actions and we have to improve the margins. So that is a big topic for us. When we look on the revenue development, we see that the bike industry, it is right now very successful for us because it's -- maybe it sounds strange for you because on a total perspective, the bike industry is going down right now. They have a horrible outlook right now. They have too much inventory and they have big problems and a lot of players are going bankrupt. But from our perspective, it is completely the opposite. Now we have more and more partners because there's so much pressure in the market they have to sell on online channels, and that is a great perspective, and we get more partners, we get more products. And because of this, we have more revenue and more profits. Though these are two examples on how contradictory sometimes the market is compared to our development.

Okay. Fine. And my second question is regarding your guidance. And I know or you are known to be conservative or -- to have a conservative stance. But I guess it's getting increasingly obvious that your guidance and in particular, the lower end of the adjusted EBITDA guidance looks cautious. I mean if the development we have seen in the first half continuance in the rest of the year, a further upgrade looks inevitable, I would say. But do you see maybe some positive impact in the first half that will probably not occur again in the second half and that is maybe a reason why you continue to stay on the conservative side?

Well, you really mentioned it. We are always very conservative regarding our guidance. And there's one effect. It is a car sales, which Mr. Salis already mentioned, these car sales are done in the first half year, and they will not occur in the second half year. But I mean we are talking about EUR 20 million. So it is not so much. But all in all, we are very optimistic that we will achieve it. And if we have a bigger M&A target, as we already showed here on the outlook perspective, of course, we have to change our guidance. But as far as we did not find or close anything, we see no reason why we should change it right now.

Okay. Understood. That's it from my side.

So we will now move on with the questions from Simon.

Yes. I just want to talk about the relationship between growth volume and sales as it relates to your guidance. I mean, in the first half of the year, you've got sales about 52% of gross merchandise volume. And if we look at your guidance for the full year, you seem to be implying about 63% sales as a percentage of gross merchandise volume for the second half. And then I was just wondering, could you comment on how this ratio is likely to develop in '25.

Well, we have no estimation for '25 but on an overall I can say one thing that we acquired two platforms in the first half year, and this is Avocadostore and HOOD, and we closed them by March and April. And that means these two platforms, they have effect on the GMV relation and also to the net revenue. You see there's a 2% change when you divide the net revenue compared to GMV. And to be honest, we expect more or less the same relation regarding net revenue and GMV in the next year. So there should be not such a big change. Maybe always 1% or 2% can be a difference, but all in all, it should be more or less the same range as you can see it here in the first half year.

Okay. And I mean how about the difference between the second half and the first half because your guidance implies 63% in the second half versus 52% in the first half.

Yes. Of course, GMV is always including returns and so on. And of course, in the second half year, you have more people which just buy and more make more returns and so on. So of course, there can be a change. But all in all, we cannot estimate exactly how much the change is in November, December. But all in all, you see the relation and the last year you see relation in the first half, you can expect it also for the total of 2024 and 2025, more or less 2%.

So we will now move over to the questions from Robert.

I have three actually. The first two ones are on specific segments. So with the [ frac ] good segment, you will have a significant contribution, I guess, from especially OEGE Group in the second half of the year. And just looking at the business model, I would guess that it probably is less profitable on the EBITDA line just because of the business model compared to the companies you already have there. So do you expect the margin dilutive effect in the second half of the year? Or is it looking all great? The second would be on the service and retail goods segment on the slide in the back of the presentation, you showed that you have like a gold margin or, let's say, like bottom and at least a margin of 2.5%. You're significantly above that. So are there specific effects that boost the margin or that would lead you to expect a margin decline maybe in the second half of the year or maybe in 2025? And my last question, I know you don't comment on, of course, details of specific expectations -- sorry, specific acquisitions but as a sum of all acquisitions that you already announced, excluding, of course, the pipeline, you mentioned now, could you give me like a ballpark, how much cash out you expect for the full year considering those acquisitions.

Yes. So first, one comment on this, you are right with OEGE Group that they have high revenues, but lower margins because of the business model, the margins are around 2.5% to 4%. But they are not in the [ frac ] goods segments. They are in a consumer goods segment. And when we have a look on what is the contribution and how much payout do we have for them? I mean, these are specific numbers in the contract with the seller. But all in all, we can say that we will have a cash out for acquisitions this year -- this half year of around EUR 30 million to EUR 50 million. This is also announced in our cash flow statement, which is public already. And you can also see that we expect acquisitions in the second year. We announced them already and expect a closing by August and September. And the cash out in the second half year will be higher. We do not, of course, have the exact number because the year is still running, and we do not know which companies we will buy and close in this year. But I think to be realistic, we expect maybe a total cash out in the total year 2024 of around EUR 30 million to EUR 35 million. This could be maybe realistic. And because there are a lot of targets going around, and we think that we have very attractive opportunities to buy them. There was one question before I do not remember.

Nevermind. So it was on the service and retail goods segment.

Yes. Got it, yes. Yes, the service and retail goods. As you can see here, we have the plant from Doc.Green and ApoNow. Both of them are very happy about the development. And there is a positive effect because we started selling drugs and medications on third-party platforms this year. And this has an effect on the growth rate and also on the margin side. And there you can see an effect on the side.

Thank you so much. So before we move on with Felix. [Operator Instructions]

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect. I just have one question on your tax rate, which was fairly low in H1. So maybe you can allude to what has driven low tax rate that we also saw in Q1 and what the dynamics are behind that?

Yes. Here, you can see only a short version of our P&L statement. But on our public P&L, you can see the details. Yes, we have the great advantage that we have some companies like fashionette. They have huge philosopher trigger from their side, and we can use them. And we also have it in three other companies. And because of this, we have really low effective tax payment on our total group perspective. On some divisions and some companies, we pay a lot of taxes and some not. And so totally, we can be very happy about this special effect from these three companies.

So we have another two hand again from Christian Salis has some follow-up questions.

Yes. I've got three additional questions, please. The first one, again, on fashionette. Maybe could you provide us with an update on the platform transition in terms of KPIs, the number of partners you have gained in the first half, please?

Yes. So fashionette has a good development regarding their partners. We have more and more partners, especially from Italy and France. So this is a very good development. In the total number, we are already running on more than 550 or 560 partners or local stores. And this is a new record high, and we get more and more products from them. What is really a big project, and Laura mentioned it in the call today is that we acquired Winkelstraat. In Germany, nobody knows Winkelstraat. But Winkelstraat, they have some 100 partners working with them. And they are usually from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and so on. So small countries, but all in all, a lot of partners. And now we start selling their products and listed products also on fashionette. And this will have a huge impact because when we start selling product there, they have more than 60,000 or 70,000 products for men and women which we can also list on fashionette, and this will be very successful. And this will be a very successful acquisition regarding fashionette because when we combine them, it has a big impact. What we do not start and what we do not list is the kid segment or for children because we have no demand on fashionette. So we decided not to list children products on the fashionette site.

Okay. And could you give us an update what's the current share of the marketplace business of total revenues or total GMV at fashionette?

We have no public number for this, but we decided to make an update by the end of the year, where we show you the case fashionette again and show how the development was. And by the end of this year, we will give you some more details about that.

Because when I remember correctly, the midterm target was 50-50, right? And you basically started at close to 0.

0. Yes, exactly. We started with by September. Last year, we started with 0, and we are growing more and more. And we showed them on our Capital Markets Day that we expect a 50-50 ratio by end of next year, and we are optimistic that we can achieve it. And with Winkelstraat, this is a very important part again that this can be part of this big relation between 50-50 relation for fashionette.

Fine. And then just finally, two housekeeping questions. I think Felix already asked about the taxes. And I understand that you have a lot of tax loss carryforwards. But why are the tax expense is so much lower again in the first half this year compared to last year, please?

Reinhard, do you have -- do you have a comment on that?

Yes, I can give an explanation. So as you know, when we have these loss carryforwards what Dominik already mentioned, out of fashionette they are not only to consider in 1 year and then it's gone. So therefore, we can use this advantage over a longer period. And so therefore, we are still in that role that on a year-to-year comparison, we have this positive impact over hopefully, this year or if not hopefully. So you use a loss carryforward means you do not have that well tax profits to compare. But from a pure tax rate point of view, for sure, we are happy to have this loss carryforward so that this situation is still ongoing. And so therefore, we are on a -- in this area on a very low basis, and that is something that will continue.

But not forever.

Not forever and compared to your first question, I guess that is really the reason why we are very optimistic that this will change, because you all know what was the situation of fashionette in the past, and we are now going up more and more in to the platform business with all the effects from cost reduction, from more profitable and so on and so on. So that, yes, from that point of view, this will end at a certain time, and then this figure will go up again, which is not that well. But it's the stipulation, but at the end of the day, we are much more interested to pay more taxes because when we pay more taxes than we know we have much more progress realized and that is for sure our target for the future.

Okay. And final question on cash flow. Unfortunately, there is no cash flow statement for the prior year period in the report. So could you maybe give an indication of what's been the operating cash flow and CapEx in the first half of 2023, please?

That is a very simple reason because you see that we make pro forma calculation because this Group, as we showed today, it was not existing in H1 2023. And therefore, we always make pro forma calculations. And we talked about this issue with our auditor and all of them were sure that we should not make a pro forma cash flow calculation. Because when you make a pro forma cash flow calculation, you see some specific items like there was one company we acquired like Cluno. Cluno belonged to an English big corporate, stockless corporate and they had a lot of internal transactions -- cash-effective transactions and the full cash flow statement would be wrong. And that was the reason why we said there are strange effects, external effects, which has no relation to the company, which required and this is the reason why we do not make a comparison. Next year when all the companies are regularly integrated, of course, we make a comparison. But now I cannot give you the figures about that.

So it seems there are no open topics as we have no further questions left. So we, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. So thank you, everyone for your shown interest and the time you took today. So should further questions arise either a later time, just feel free to contact Investor Relations. And also a big thank you to you, Dominik, Laura and Reinhard for the time you took today. So from my side, I wish you all a lovely weekend and hand back for some final remarks, which concludes our call for today.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you very much for your time and feel free to send further questions to Investor Relations. You know on our website, there are other contacts, and we will come back as soon as we are getting your questions. Thank you very much.