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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the CECONOMY AG investor and analyst conference call. [Operator Instructions] I would like now to turn the conference over to Vice President, Fabienne Caron, from the Investor Relations team. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. As the operator said, I'm Fabienne Caron, the new incoming Head of Investor Relations, and I'm delighted to welcome you to our Q1 '22/'23 results presentation.
On today's call are Karsten Wildberger, our CEO; and Kai-Ulrich Deissner, our incoming CFO.
Before we start, let me remind you that the presentation slides can be accessed through our website. During today's call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements, so please refer to the disclaimer for more information.
I'll now turn the call over to Karsten.
Thank you, Fabienne, and welcome to today's call. We are very pleased to welcome you here today with actually a new lineup.
Next to me is Dr. Kai-Ulrich Deissner, my new colleague on the Management Board. And Kai Deissner joined us as CFO 2 weeks ago but actually has done already quite some work. And having previously worked for Deutsche Telekom, he is an internationally very experienced CFO, also with a keen interest in new technology. And over the last few years, he has successfully implemented various transformation processes. We're delighted to welcome you, Kai, to the company, and Kai will introduce himself to you in a moment.
Fabienne Caron needs no introduction. She joined us from -- among your ranks and has headed our Investor Relations department since February.
Fabienne, Kai, again, welcome on board. I am looking forward to working with you.
So let's turn to Slide 6 please, and that brings us to our current business performance. So how did we do in the first quarter? In a nutshell, the new financial year got off to a good start. We are heading into the coming months with confidence and a great sense of determination, and most importantly, we performed well in what is still a challenging environment. We prepared and executed our Christmas business excellently and generated customer demand. Our sales surpassed pre-COVID levels, and I'm happy to report that we grew our market share in 9 out of 13 countries as well as on group level.
EBIT is in line with our guidance and higher than our own planning. As expected, it was affected by inflation-related cost increases. We took countermeasures and managed to offset some of the price rises, confirming that the steps we took worked.
And we significantly increased our liquidity and free cash flow and optimized our inventories, exceeding our targets in both cases. And customer satisfaction continued to improve, and the Net Promoter Score or NPS rose to 53, which is a new record.
We seamlessly maintained our dynamic growth in our Services & Solutions business and also further progress is being made in implementing our strategy. And in terms of our guidance for '22/'23 as a whole, this means we can confirm our outlook, and we currently consider scenario 1 more likely, and I will return to this later.
So let's turn to Slide 7, please. Let's now move on to our Q1 performance in more detail. In a still highly competitive environment, we grew sales by almost 5% to EUR 7.1 billion, which is about EUR 200 million higher than the comparable prepandemic figure. Our growth was also bolstered by our powerful and effective marketing campaigns throughout Europe, and very good news is that our brick-and-mortar business continued to recover. Moreover, once again, we considerably expanded our strategic Services & Solutions business, and in fact, service sales were up just under 15% year-on-year.
And we made good progress in many regions. In our important home market, Germany, we improved notably and took major steps to reverse the trend of the past years, thanks to good operating management. Although the market shrank by 5%, we kept sales stable and improved our earnings compared to the previous year. And also after some difficult years, we also enjoyed considerable recovery and increased earnings in the Netherlands. And meanwhile, in Turkey, we sustained our profitable growth trajectory. We have rigorously implemented our expansion strategy there and are now #2 in the Turkish market and are close on the heels of the number #1.
Please allow me a few personal words on the current situation in the region. Just over a week ago, terrible news of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria reached us. Mine and our thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends, and everyone affected by this tragedy. My special thanks go to our colleagues from our Turkish subsidiary who immediately organized 8 suppliers for the affected regions with heaters, power banks and chargers. And our colleagues have also been affected by the natural disaster. Many of them have lost their homes or suffered a personal loss. We are supporting our colleagues with a relief package, and in addition, we are in constant contact with various humanitarian aid organizations to help the people in the regions affected. And just for your knowledge, currently, 7 out of our 90 stores are closed.
Let me go back to the script now, and briefly on our business performance in Italy. Demand in the country in Italy faltered and was made worse by the end of government support programs, such as the national rollout of the internet TV. As you know, internet TV was supported with subsidies to actually encourage the purchase of TV screens. What's more, the market is currently very competitive with high inflationary pressure, and we have introduced a short-term program to actively counter this and get our strong business in Italy, let me point out, which is structurally sound, back on track.
So total EBIT in the first quarter came to EUR 224 million. Although lower than in the previous year, this matches our December outlook and is higher than our own planning. And after COVID, we again assume that quarterly seasonality will return to normal prepandemic levels.
One very important point in our last call, we talked to you about our liquidity and net working capital targets. And we have since considerably exceeded these goals. Totaling EUR 2.6 billion at the end of the year, our liquidity came in better than expected, and net working capital improved by EUR 460 million to EUR 1.6 billion. So our measures proved effective. We significantly decreased our inventories and considerably improved our goods [ age ] structure compared to prior periods. This all had a positive impact on our cash position. Liquidity and net working capital remain top priority.
Let's turn to Slide 8, please. And now, I would like to discuss the environment in which we operate. Most importantly, the overall consumer electronics market is robust. It recently picked up by about 1% in all our operating countries despite the dip in consumer sentiment, high inflation and economic uncertainty. Growth was generated primarily in the brick-and-mortar business, reaching 2.5%. The online market declined by just under 1%. All in all, we grew more strongly than the market. We increased our market share in 9 out of our 13 countries, doing so significantly in Germany, Austria, Turkey and the Netherlands.
Looking to the future, we remain cautious in light of the economic environment. Clearly, macroeconomic conditions remain volatile and challenging. Nevertheless, there are cautious signs of improvement. Forecasts for economic growth in Europe are slightly more optimistic than a few months ago, and consumer sentiment has also picked up recently. And we are seeing the first signs that inflation may not increase quite so sharply despite being higher than average across Europe this year. So we will maintain our 2-pronged approach: resolutely when it comes to cost and network and energetically when continuing our transformation.
On Slide 9 now, please. Allow me to briefly address cost efficiency and profitability and tell you what we are doing to improve our margins. The strict cost discipline we apply is proving effective. We made savings in the low tens of millions in the first quarter and kept our operating expenses stable in relation to sales. We also launched an efficiency program in order to improve the structures in our central and management functions to make them faster, leaner and more customer-focused. In addition, we are continuing to digitize processes and the administrative management of our stores, and we have now achieved another major milestone that we announced due in December.
In Germany, we've aligned our 2 successful brands, MediaMarkt and Saturn, more closely in terms of campaigning, and this leverages marketing synergies. And this also benefits our customers who, since January, have had access to the entire product range and the best of both brands in all our MediaMarkt and Saturn stores and online.
And we are continuing to optimize and streamline our product range to bolster our margins, and our marketplace covers a wider range of products without carrying any cost of stock. And wherever we see growth, we accelerate new categories such as gaming, health and e-mobility, and this means that we will focus our product range more on both what customers want and profitability. Of course, we are also expanding our Strategic Services & Solutions business. We have strong leverage here and see growing customer demand. This area is proving increasingly vital as an earnings source for our company.
Let's turn to Slide 10, please. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly outline the strategic direction we are taking our company. More details will be provided at our Capital Markets Day.
As you know, we refined our strategic direction last year, and we're in the midst of putting this into effect. Everything we do revolves around the customer experience. We are moving from a product seller to a solutions provider. We are determined to offer our customers a best-in-class shopping experience, including first-rate advice and services at every touch point in the customer journey, both online and off-line. In other words, step by step, we will turn the consumer electronics category into what we call experience electronics. Our team is fully engaged and committed, and the progress made and better customer experience can be seen in the Net Promoter Score and in the improvement of our online and off-line business or in the strengthening of our logistics capabilities and performance.
And our strategy is based on 4 clear pillars: employee experience, shopping experience, usage experience and the impact experience. And what does that mean? Very briefly, everything starts with the employee experience, and we are guided by the principle of front line first. We are investing in our teams, service and advisory expertise in-store and all other customer touch points. After all, our people are what makes the difference for a first-class customer experience.
The shopping experience means further improving our omnichannel approach for our customers based on a mobile-first mindset in the online world that is integrated into all aspects. We will take our online skills to a new level, further modernize our stores and systematically focus on what customers want. Our aim is to offer customers an unbeatable omnichannel service with a leading omnichannel cost structure.
And the usage experience primarily means accelerating the expansion of our Strategic Services & Solutions business. Services throughout a product life cycle are particularly important here. I think, for example, of repair services, which improved customer loyalty and our profitability.
And the fourth pillar, impact experience, stands for sustainability. It is increasingly becoming a hallmark of our company, and we are well on track to making sustainability a key success factor for us, for our partners and, above all, for our customers.
So let me give you a few examples on Slide 11. We have continued to make progress with these strategic pillars over the last months and also in the first quarter, so here are a few highlights. One key indicator for our development is customer satisfaction, and we set a new record here in the first quarter by increasing the Net Promoter Score to 53, which compares to 47 a year ago. Our company-wide training programs, which we roll out and which are designed specifically for customer experience, service and advisory expertise, have a part to play here.
We provide services and advice on all channels, starting online. In Europe, we are now the second largest online retailer in the consumer electronics market while mediamarkt.de is the third largest online shop of all in Germany, and online sales accounted for a stable 25% of total sales in Q1. This is worth calling out, for this figure is almost twice as high than as before the pandemic.
And our brick-and-mortar business continued its recovery in the first quarter. Customers are back in our stores. We welcomed about 9% more customers in store year-on-year. And we have modernized about 30% of our stores now, and the use of space in our new stores is about 10% more productive than in the old ones.
And we also continued to make good progress in Services & Solutions, generating strong growth of just under 15%. And this business accounted for about 6% of total sales and contributes directly to our margins.
Also, our new forward-looking business areas are making progress. Our Retail Media services are now live in 7 countries. More than 300 partners already use our platform to increase awareness of their brands and products. And our marketplace is continuing to gain momentum, and we now have about 900 resellers on board, offering a total of 700,000 products. And we will continue to grow our marketplace, making MediaMarkt more attractive for our customers.
Before I hand over to Kai Deissner, I would now like to share a few more details just regarding our sustainability focus on Slide 12, please.
We have firmly enshrined sustainability in our strategy. It is one of our company values and is non-negotiable for us. Through our commitment, we take responsibility for contributing to a future worth living while we also regard sustainability as a major business opportunity for us. We are taking 2 approaches here. Firstly, we want to continually improve the sustainability of our own business operations. And secondly, we want to make it easy for our customers to live a more sustainable lifestyle. After all, responsible shopping is increasingly important to more and more people.
We've already achieved a great deal in the last few months and years. Since 2015, we've reduced our own CO2 emissions by about 80%. Moreover, more than 90% of our electricity stems from renewable sources. We repaired 3.2 million devices last year, and our customers traded in about 76,000 old devices with us for vouchers. And 3,800 products in our range now are certified as truly sustainable, and they represent about 9% of our sales, 3x as much as in the previous year, and this figure is rising. We see a fast-growing demand for energy-efficient products. There's only a small selection of our sustainability services, and an in-depth discussion is contained in our first sustainability report that we published in December, and there is a link to it in this presentation.
And independent bodies are also increasingly recognize our progress. For the first time, we had our services and the transparency of our sustainability reporting evaluated by the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP, and we recently received several awards from prestigious institutions for our sustainability efforts. But we won't stop, obviously.
With that, I would like to hand over to Kai, Kai Deissner, who will discuss our business performance in the first quarter and our key figures in more details. Thank you very much. Over to you, Kai.
Thank you very much, Karsten, and good morning to you all from me as well. Now it's a real pleasure for me to be here today, but before I kick off with the financial section, allow me to very briefly introduce myself.
As Karsten mentioned, I started on February 1, having previously worked in several CFO positions in Deutsche Telekom. This includes both national, local organizations as well as group roles. Prior to that, I gained experience in the operational part of the business, from marketing to many, many years in sales, technology and processes. Based on first experience, what I'm keen to add to our business here is my experience to steer a group of countries in both an effective and an efficient way and my experience in large-scale fundamental business transformation. Now let's start with the key financial KPIs on the next slide. As we mentioned, sales momentum was solid in Q1 with a 4.9% growth year-over-year or, if you compare it to pre-COVID levels in Q1 2018 and 2019, a 5% improvement. What was behind this were, in particular, successful marketing campaigns that generated demand as well as strong recovery, as Karsten mentioned, of traffic in the stores.
Group adjusted EBIT reached EUR 224 million. That's EUR 50 million below previous year but fully in line with our expectations and actually slightly above our internal plan. Behind this were, in particular, strong marketing efforts and rising cost inflation, which we could offset to some degree but not fully. I will come back to this later. It is important to note that our EBIT seasonality is normalizing towards pre-COVID times. Historically, we saw roughly 60% to 70% of our full year EBIT in Q1, and so we are moving towards that ratio but will not fully normalize yet.
So based on this encouraging start into the new year and despite still uncertain macroeconomic conditions and continuing cost inflation, we remain cautiously optimistic for the remaining part of the year. And as Karsten highlighted already, we remain on track to deliver scenario 1 of our financial year guidance '22/'23 with a slight sales increase and a clear increase in EBIT.
Let me now turn to our operational performance on Slide 16 (sic) [ Slide 15 ]. As you can see, all our operating segments registered positive sales growth. In DACH, sales increased by 0.6% in Q1. Here, Austria and Hungary showed positive sales development, while Germany was stable and Switzerland remained strongly competitive and reported a decline. In terms of profitability, this region was impacted, like many others, by cost inflation as well as positive one-offs in the prior year, which did not recur this year. It's important to stress that Germany, on an operating level without these one-offs, improved its profitability this quarter.
In Western and Southern Europe, we recorded sales growth in all countries except Portugal and Italy. As indicated already, in Italy, we are comparing ourselves to an unusually high base in the prior year. This is primarily due to the end of the state subsidies for digital TV, which supported us positively a year ago, and now let the TV market drop significantly between 40% and 50% in this quarter. This base of comparison should ease as months progress from March onwards. Profitability-wise, in this region, increased competition in the region coupled with some unfavorable product mix, in particular, an increased share of GSM, in particular, the special situation in Italy, which I highlighted, explained our EBIT decline in this segment to EUR 33 million in the quarter.
Once again, the highest growth rates were achieved in Eastern Europe, strongly driven by Turkey. Please note in this context that from Q3 onwards, we have implemented IAS 2019 accounting standard in order to include the technical effects from the hyperinflation in Turkey. These technical effects are also included from our guidance-relevant KPIs, adjusted sales growth as well as adjusted EBIT. In this region, adjusted EBIT improved by a strong 60%.
We go to the next slide, please. Let me highlight the strong performance of 2 of our pillars, the Online sales and Services & Solutions.
Our Online sales remained high at roughly 25% of the group in Q1. If you compare this to pre-COVID levels, this represents an impressive 80% sales growth. On a year-on-year level, Online sales declined by 4.7%. That's largely due to the normalization of our sales channel mix in favor of bricks-and-mortar business, where we saw strong traffic recovery.
What's behind this is, in particular, also our new web shop now in place in 5 countries, which is performing really well and which offers much better product visibility, smart search and recommendation tools, all of those pushing our conversion rates, which we're really proud of. This new web shop now covers 83% of our total Online sales, and we expect it to roll out to Belgium before the end of the fiscal year. That -- our omnichannel proposition resonates really well with our customers. You can also see in the roughly 30% pickup ratio in Q1, slightly higher year-over-year.
The second important pillar, our Services & Solutions business, also remains a key strategic part of our approach. As traffic in stores improved, the Services & Solutions sales increased by 14.5%, accounting for 5.6% of group sales. In terms of service categories, we saw increased demand for GSM contracts, warranty extensions, while consumer finance offerings were impacted by the current negative interest rate environment. We're pleased to see that most countries noticed an increase in Services & Solutions but particularly the Benelux and Turkey. Our efforts here to enhance our services offerings are clearly bearing fruit.
We turn to Slide 18, please. As promised, I will now come back to our EBIT development in Q1 on this slide. In absolute terms, our gross profit slightly increased in the quarter, while our gross margin declined by 20 basis points to 17%. The main drivers behind those were tailwind from growing Services & Solutions business, lower logistics cost as channel share shifted to bricks-and-mortar and stock variation. However, these positive drivers could not totally offset the increased pressure on goods margin.
On goods margin, this was impacted by an unfavorable product mix, as I already mentioned, with an increased share of GSM. On selling prices, as part of that equation, we were able to pass some input cost inflation to consumers but not all. In essence, improving gross margin is one of our key priorities. We're actively working on a set of measures to achieve this, and we plan to give you more insights later this year.
On the bottom part of the slide, on OpEx. While our OpEx ratio remained broadly stable this quarter, absolute OpEx increased. As already highlighted in previous quarters, we do feel cost inflation in several areas, in particular, personnel, location cost and energy. However, we continue to work diligently on these headwinds and have mitigated the OpEx increase with very strict cost management.
Going forward, we continuously review our cost structure to become even leaner and to optimize our processes. For example, the joint marketing campaigns of our 2 brands in Germany, which Karsten Wildberger already mentioned, should enable us to lower our advertising costs by some EUR 30 million. As a whole, we still target efficiency savings in the medium double-digit amount over the next 12 to 14 months -- 12 to 24 months.
Slide 19 (sic) [ Slide 18 ] summarizes the familiar drivers behind our gross margin, which I highlighted already. And so we turn to Slide 20 (sic) [ Slide 19 ], please.
Walking to reported EBIT down to EPS on this slide. We recorded only minor restructuring costs in the quarter, so the adjusted and reported EBIT are roughly similar. On the financial results, prior year was supported by dividend from M.video, which not recurred this year.
On the tax rate, the Convergenta transaction positively impacted our tax rate, which improved to 34.8% in the quarter, thanks to those tax benefits. This transaction, coupled with the fact that we bought back most of our store managers' stakes in the business, also explained the decline in noncontrolling interests. Our business structure is now much more simplified with effectively no minority shareholders.
All in all, our Q1 net result increased by 4% to EUR 127 million. So the decline in EPS is entirely technically due to the increased number of shares as a result of the Convergenta transaction.
Turning to Slide 20 and to our key focus on cash flow generation, where we are very pleased with the strong development that we've seen in the quarter. Our free cash flow post lease adjustments reached EUR 1.8 billion in the quarter. And I point to the upper part of the slide, which is a solid EUR 700 million improvement year-over-year. In particular, our actions to reduce stocks paid off. Overall stock position declined by EUR 257 million year-on-year. This translated into a strong net working capital inflow of EUR 1.6 billion, which is EUR 457 million above prior year. Other operating free cash flow also contributed to the strong increase, and this was largely due by an increase in VAT payables.
We go to the next slide. This strong free cash flow enabled us to close the quarter with a healthy cash position of EUR 2.6 billion, EUR 351 million above last year. This very, very sound liquidity position makes us confident in the execution of our current strategy. And let me remind you, at this stage, we have no major debt repayment coming to -- at least until 2026. And we continue to have full access to a EUR 1.1 billion revolving credit facilities, which is still undrawn and has never been drawn.
Having completed the final section, let me pass it back to Karsten.
Yes. Thank you very much, Kai. And that actually brings us to the outlook. So given the uncertain economic environment, we explained in December that we had created 2 scenarios for planning for the rest of the year. And in scenario 1, we, therefore, expect a slight increase in total sales, adjusted for exchange rate effects, and a clear increase in adjusted EBIT. And this assumes that conditions will not deteriorate, and that the consumer electronics market will shrink moderately at the most. And scenario 2 represents a less favorable macroeconomic development than currently foreseen, which would also depress demand in the consumer electronics market more acutely. And in this case, we would have to factor in a clear decrease in total sales adjusted for exchange rate effects and adjusted EBIT.
But to put it clearly, after everything we saw in the first quarter, we can confirm our assessment from December and consider scenario 1 more likely.
Before I finish with a summary of today's call, I would like to give you some more details about a very pleasing news that we published this morning with regards to our Swedish business because we have found a promising solution for a successful future of our Swedish business. One could say finally, because many of you will recall, the topic of our Swedish business has been around for quite some time. It actually has been part of the initial equity story going back to 2016, and it has been an ongoing question and debate what are we going to do with this business since then.
And as you know and I've also pointed out that we put a lot of focus on all the countries where we have a leading position, like a lead or lead strategy, we have now, thanks to really an outstanding job that the local team has done in the last 2 years with a strong improvement of our Swedish business, this has actually put us in a situation that we were able to find an even better solution with a partner with Power International in Sweden.
And so we have signed a strategic partnership with Power International, which is a leading electronics retailer in Scandinavia. They're also present with an online business in Sweden. And Power Sweden, a subsidiary of Power International, will acquire a 100% stake in MediaMarkt Sweden. And we, in turn, the MediaMarktSaturn Group, will receive a 20% minority stake in Power Sweden. And the deal actually includes the transfer of our 29 stores in Sweden and all our 1,300 people in Sweden.
And as I elaborated on, in recent years, we have actually continuously invested in our business in Sweden and have built up a good and stronger market position. And together with Power, we have now everything that is needed to grow sustainably and profitably from this position. And the partnership will strengthen our penetration in Sweden and opens up growth opportunities in other North European countries.
This is actually good news for our Swedish colleagues, for our customers and our partners. And I thank all our Swedish colleagues and the management team for an outstanding job they have done in the past period. And I think that is -- you should also take the confidence from this news that we do not forget about our pledges, but we actually deliver against what we said, and I think this is an important proof point.
And our Investor Relations team is on standby and always ready to take your calls in case you have further questions. And they're happy to discuss with you.
So maybe just one more word on the financial impact. The transaction will lead to a one-off cash outflow in the mid-double-digit million euro amount, and it has no impact on our guidance for fiscal year '22/'23. And the closing is most likely in the current fiscal year, as is said on the chart, and is, of course, subject to still regulatory approval. So good news.
Now let me now, in summary, really summarize this call. So the new financial year got off to an encouraging start. We are confident about the months ahead. Nevertheless, we remain cautious on account of continued uncertainties. We are doing this as the European market leader in consumer electronics, and our market is and remains an attractive growth market. And key indicators for macroeconomic development are picking up. Our measures are proving effective. We are overcoming the current challenges and doing everything we can to further improve our profitability and liquidity. Everything we do is focused on the customer experience, and we are making good progress in implementing our strategy. We are reiterating our outlook and believe scenario 1 is more likely.
So thank you for your attention, and I look forward to hearing your questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first questioner is Mr. Volker Bosse of Baader Bank.
Volker Bosse of Baader Bank. And first of all, a warm welcome to Mr. Deissner and Fabienne. All the best and a good start in their new positions.
First question would be on the sales growth. And I would be interested, is it possible to break out the kind of inflationary pricing factor, which would have been sales growth excluding price increases, price inflation, just for curiosity?
And second question would be on the consumer confidence, which is somewhat recovering from its lows last year. That is good to see. Does it already mean any effect on your business? Do you see any improvement, for example, in regards to higher customer frequencies again or higher average ticket buying? So any [ cross read ] which you can already see in your figures or in your indications which comes from the improved consumer confidence, which we already see?
And last but not the least, a clarification one for Mr. Deissner again. You mentioned cost savings on marketing from the joint efforts from MediaMarkt and Saturn of EUR 30 million. Is this already a figure which we can expect for fiscal year '22/'23? So please put your EUR 30 million you mentioned into perspective.
Thank you very much, Volker. Thank you also for your kind, kind, kind wishes. We do the following. So I will start with question number 2. I will start with question number 1, and we'll hand over for some more details to Kai. And I can comment on question 3. Well, look, we do it playful here, so maybe Kai, you start or whatever. Maybe I can do that as well.
So let me start on question #2 on the consumer confidence, actually. So let me call out a few things. The first one is what for us is, of course, very, very pleasing is that we see a very solid recovery of footfall again. These were major questions after COVID. When is it coming? Yes, we are not yet back, but there is a 10% increase year-on-year again, and our stores are performing strongly. So it's also our online business, and we're gaining market share.
Now in terms of consumer confidence, we were able to generate very good sales across the board. This is still a quite dynamic evolution. What we see at the moment is, last time I said, we see it basically a split into the entry point and also premium going very well. What we observed and say in the most recent period is that premium is going even better, also medium, and a bit pressure on the entry side.
So that is probably the latest news. That is something to watch because I think this is -- continues to be dynamic, but the good thing is for us that mid and premium is going well. And as you know, MediaMarkt and Saturn have gained a lot of credibility to actually serve or including the premium part of the business. Frequency, I commented on, and bond is actually still going strong. So that is actually -- it continues to operate on a high level, which is, of course, when I say premium, that this is part of the bond.
On the sales growth, possible breakout of the inflationary price effect. There is a lot of work we are doing to measure what is actually the underlying inflationary price and how good are we in actually passing this on. I would say maybe Kai could elaborate a little bit on this methodology, but to cut a long answer short, I think it's a good proxy to assume that 50% of the sales increase, say, is inflation, and the other 50% is real. I think that's a good number to work with for you.
Yes, reconfirming what Karsten just said about selling price, 50-50, let me put this into context. Now our sector, we need to realize that in our -- for our products, selling prices, in principle, fall over a period of time. Now in order to measure our ability to increase prices, what we are doing internally is to compare the falling price development 12 months ago with the falling prices now. So it's a double delta analysis, if you want the technical term.
If we look at those double delta analyses, we see roughly, roughly speaking, over the last 6 or so months, an ability to reduce the decrease of prices by half. We've dampened price decrease by roughly half. This is data based on the German market, but we take it as indicative of our ability across the footprint to stop price deterioration by roughly 50% full stop.
Now in terms of cost savings, let me put this into a wider perspective, and then I'll come back to your specific question. As we've said, we've launched -- as we've said previously, we've launched a large-scale efficiency program, and it has the following cornerstones. We expect one-off restructuring costs between EUR 60 million to EUR 80 million. This is primarily in the current financial year, although there may be some spillover into next year.
This year, to answer your question very specifically, we expect savings between EUR 15 million to EUR 30 million. This will increase then in the next financial year, and it should then be recurring. So overall, payback of this restructuring program should be less than 2 years.
And the cost savings for MediaMarkt and Saturn, the EUR 30 million is, of course, when we reap the full benefits. That obviously takes some time. But I would say between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million this year is something we are striving for.
I hope these answers your questions, Volker.
Next, we have Mr. Nicolas Champ of Barclays.
Also, warm welcome to Fabienne and Kai-Ulrich. I have 3 questions, if I may. The first one is could you elaborate on the start of Q2? Do you see any change compared with the Q1 trends in terms of consumer environment, in terms of competition?
Second question is, could you update on where you see your net financial charges but also your tax rate for the full year after the Q1 evolution?
And a third one, to come back on the competitive environment, I mean, some of your competitors. I mean Currys is, as mentioned, a very fierce competition in Northern Europe. I mean you also mentioned this perfect market environment. Could you be a bit more specific about which market do you see more competition, which product categories and what's your strategy, I would say, in this environment? I mean do you plan to participate to this aggressive promotions? Or do you expect to be protected by a more high-end positioning, I would say?
Yes. Thank you very much, Nicolas, for your questions and also your wishes.
So I would comment on the first question on the start of Q2. On the net financial charges and tax rate for the full year, we can give you maybe a glimpse. Kai would do this. If you want to have it more precise, I would encourage you to also talk then to the Investor Relations team. They are on standby for this. And on the competitive environment, I would comment on this one, including the question around promotion versus what we call the river business, the normal flowing business, if you like.
So on Q2, look, obviously, this -- today's call is about Q1. So I cannot comment on Q2, but let me state the following. Of course, when I give my outlook and say I -- we consider scenario 1 more likely, I have to factor in all the knowledge of what is going on. So implicitly, right, in that sense, as a consequence explicitly. So let me put it this way. Maybe that gives you a good indication that I say this in the light also of the current trading period without being able to comment on this in greater detail than what I've just said.
Then I would hand over to Kai on the questions on the net financial charges and tax rate for the full year.
Sure. Now the tax rate, which I quoted earlier in my statement, is integrated and extrapolated for the rest of the year. So you can take a roughly 35% as valid, not just for the quarter but with all uncertainty that we have, of course, but it's a fair assumption to take that rate for the rest of the year.
For the financial charges, our best assumption at the moment is to take Q1 as a basis and to assume that it recurs 4x.
I hope that answers your questions, and I'll turn it back to Karsten.
So on the competitive environment, let me try to give you some sort of an overview. As we indicated, we were able to gain, in most markets, market share and also on a considerable level. And this is especially thanks to, I would say, very good execution. It's not just we are buying a share, I don't like that, but we're actually earning market share through good competition. This is, for me, personally very important. But it's true that in these days, when you have a bit of dampened consumer demand overall with inflationary pressures, you see obviously that the competition is still generally strong.
That said, I would say, Germany, we actually performed better than last year. We made managerial changes. They are all paying off, so I'm happy with how we perform in this environment and how we execute. Netherlands is going strongly. And this was, for us, actually, a turnaround case. For many years ago, we had big, big struggles. Yes, it's also competitive, but we are also gaining there. And Turkey, apart from the tragedy I commented on.
Now where we see particularly high competition and challenging environment is Italy, which is emphasized, even more emphasized through the situation in TV because that represented a considerable share of the product range, but we see a stronger competitive situation there. Switzerland and Poland, I would also call out, is very competitive for us because there, obviously, we have lower market share and then it's harder to operate in these countries. But let me emphasize again, Italy is a very strong business. It's structurally sound, and we have -- we are acting fast, and we're doing the right things to get back on track, but the market overall is challenging.
And which product categories do we see a lot of competition? First and foremost, competition is also very strong when you see some players that carry maybe a high level of inventories. So that, of course, leads also to this pressure. And we have done a very good job in actually improving inventory levels also on a comparative basis to previous periods.
And the categories where I think the competition is high is still in GSM, but we are doing really well in selling. We're gaining market share here. Competition is also high on the white goods side. But there, we are also holding up very nicely what is very promising there. You also have to say there's a challenge, but there is also some, say, light at the end of the tunnel, or even more than this, we see an increasing demand for energy-saving devices and products, and that, of course, is helping.
And where we see still, obviously, category because of overcapacity and overstock in the market generally, I would say, is brown goods, TV in many cases. I would say what gives me a lot of hope is our strong execution focus, healthier, much healthier stock levels.
And on your plans to participate in fierce promotion, we have a clear focus on profitability. Let me be very clear, very clear focus on profitability. And we've actually also done a good job in dampening the cost pressures, et cetera. And Kai has alluded to also the things we are doing to increase the cost savings. So we have also a clear guideline of a healthy ratio between what we call the river biz and promotion activities, and we will not leave that path because we are very much focused on profitability.
Maybe that gives you some light on this broader question.
Next, we have Mr. Clement Genelot of Bryan Garnier.
Two questions from my side. The first one relies on the guidance. Why not updating the guidance post Q1 since Q1 is usually the strongest sort of contributor or at least quantifying before the -- quantifying for your EBIT rise?
And my second question is whether we have -- around the Retail Media business. Could you give us any update around the development of this business, both in terms of sales and mostly EBIT?
Thank you very much for your questions, Clement. I would start with the Retail Media one, and then comment on Q1. Well, I'll do both questions then.
So on the Retail Media business, first of all, it's a very, very strong opportunity for us. We enjoy more than 2.5 billion customer contact, and that is highly relevant traffic that we generate that we can sell to partners for more targeted advertising analytics directly from our website. So the team is now operating in 7 countries. We have gained many, many partnerships. We have launched products. We have announced the retail initiative. Whilst we are ahead of our internal plan and it is ambitious, we are still at the beginning, but we have high expectations of fast growth trajectory. What I can say is we will update you in depth around this business and our, hopefully, very soon at Capital Markets Day that the team will share the dates. So we will shed more light on this business.
So in the mid-term, it will definitely be a material contributor to EBIT, and we will give you also some pledges around this. But as of today, we do not yet publish this in isolation, but we will share more details in the upcoming Capital Markets Day. It's an important growth business for us.
Now, why not updating the guidance post Q1? First and foremost, Q1 was in line with our expectations and our guidance and was better in terms of EBIT, also better than our internal planning. That's why we actually first confirm the guidance. And let me reiterate again: we consider scenario 1 more likely. What I can't do is assign a probability for each scenario. But given still uncertainty, volatility that we experience in the market, this is, on the one hand, a prudent approach, but I think also a responsible approach. But let me reiterate, based on everything we have seen so far and what we know, we consider scenario 1 more likely. That's unfortunately all I can say at this stage.
If I may just add to this and be very clear on what we said about EBIT seasonality throughout the year. We did say that it's moving towards a normalization that we saw in pre-COVID time but not quite there yet. Now what we're thinking here is not absolute EBIT numbers, of course, but weight of the quarters throughout the year. Historically, pre-COVID, what we saw roughly 2/3 of annual EBIT being generated in Q1. During COVID of the last COVID-dominated years, this was pushed to well over 100%, as you're aware.
Now for the current year, what we're expecting is that it goes in the direction of the historically established pattern but not quite there yet. In other words, the weight of EBIT in Q1 should still be higher than in pre-COVID times but lower than in the last years. The remaining 3/4 of the year do matter, just to support what customers are saying and to be very clear on our thinking.
Next, we have Mr. Andreas Riemann of ODDO BHF.
Of course, I also wish Kai and Fabienne a good start at CECONOMY. Two topics. First, the famous goods margin. Are you making progress when it comes to renegotiating the goods margin? And related to that, did you already off-list certain product? Or how has the number of SKUs developed over 12 months? So any insights here would be appreciated.
And the second topic, you mentioned higher location costs. Is that driven by opening new locations? Or is it also existing locations? And here also the question, what share of rental payments is actually directly linked to inflation? These would be my topics.
Thank you very much, Andreas. Thank you also for wishes. So there were 3 questions, basically, the goods margin, progress on renegotiation and the size of the SKUs, if you like. And the third question is the location cost question. I will take the first 2 questions, and Kai will chip in or add, and he will take the third question on location costs. So on goods margin, first of all, this is a top priority for us. We have a lot of focus and work on the way to improve goods margin. Yes, an essential part of that is, of course, negotiating with our suppliers, say, the terms, front margin, back margin, very important. Work we have on the way is, in the midst of it, of course, working on the mix, which is very important. Another big, big element for us is working on also attach rates because obviously, when you attach accessories, the margin will also improve for an underlying SKU. Services & Solutions business is an important factor, and also what's helping is the inventory management and the stock turn and the goods valuation, which is actually also impacting that margin because when you have fresh goods, obviously, it also translates into the margin.
So what does that mean more specifically? If you look at the absolute gross profit, we actually did increase by EUR 23 million, but we saw the gross margin decline of 20 basis points. This has a mix effect, competitive environment, passing on prices. But actually, the mix work, if you look at certain countries like Germany, is paying off. So we also have to [ deaverage ] the different countries. And Italy, for instance, of course, is a tougher situation, but we're actually making in key important markets. I would say very good progress on this, and there is more work required, and that is full attention of ours.
In terms of SKUs, as you know, in basically all the markets apart from Germany, we have streamlined already our portfolio. Around about, say, 20,000 SKUs coming from a much higher number. In Germany, as we indicated, we were on a transition path from 35,000, 40,000 to get there. We are -- we have gone a long way. And my goal is by the end of this fiscal year, that we have also managed this journey in Germany, which, of course, will also help our margin situation. And let me now emphasize again the role that the marketplace because that represents the long tail of the product range without carrying the stock risk. That's why marketplace is so important. And we're actually seeing solid growth this year. We started very well with the marketplace, and we will update you also at the Capital Markets Day on this one.
With that, I would hand over on the location costs to Kai.
Sure. Thank you, Karsten. So to be very clear on this as well, yes, it is true that a significant share of our lease or rental agreements is indexed, so we do see inflation costs as headwinds in this context. We're counterbalancing very, very actively by reducing floor space over the whole footprint continuously so that the net impact of location costs is actually very, very small and, as I said, largely driven by our active management of moving floor space down. What gives us confidence in our future ability to continue to do so is the average duration of our lease agreements, which continuously trending downwards. It's now less than 3 years, so there is a formal opportunity for us to open those lease agreements and to renegotiate to counterbalance those cost headwinds.
I hope that answers your question, Andreas.
Yes, it does. So a follow-up would be when you basically negotiate a new location, would it make sense to link it to the sales development rather than directly to inflation? This would be maybe a follow-up.
Andreas, absolutely. So every time we touch a contract, and we do that very, very often, it is linked to exactly what you say. It's linked to sales. It's performance-related. We reduce the space when it's an existing lease, so we see the size of the portfolio coming down. And when it's a new opening, we actually favor very much smaller units these days with much smaller in size between 400 and 1,200 square meters. We can do this because also of our logistics capabilities now. So this is absolutely, as you say, work we are doing. And we have given ourselves very ambitious targets, and we are on a good path that we actually reduce the relative cost of location cost as a function of sales so that we enhance profitability.
And one final, say, comment on this one. You heard me say when I talked earlier about our strategy that the goal is also to create a leading omnichannel cost structure. So everything we do is not just a short-term focus, but we have a clear path that the total cost structure of online and offline will be improved continuously so that we have actually a leading omnichannel cost structure. And yes, there is still work to be done, but we are very confident that we get this done.
In the interest of time, we now take our last question, and it's from [ Neil Kenny ] of JPMorgan.
I'll be quick, hopefully. Just on working capital, well done on the release this quarter and on the inventory side and, indeed, on the receivables side as well. I just wanted to ask on payables and suppliers. We've seen some reports in the press previously about supplier credit insurance, and across the industry, I think the 3 major credit insurers are taking a more conservative view on retail.
Can you give us an indication of what percentage of or a number of your suppliers actually use credit insurance? And maybe further to that, have you seen any developments in the sort of payables terms that your suppliers are demanding? Is there anything we should know about from that point of view?
Thank you very much, [ Neil ]. Let me take this question. So first of all, the work we've done on the working capital side, liquidity, cash flow is working on the inventory side, and we'll continue to do so. We have given clear, say, pledges. End of last year, we exceeded those, and this was also recognized really well by the relevant related parties.
We do not have direct relationship with the credit insurers, but actually, this is a relationship between our partners, suppliers and them, so that's why I cannot comment on this. But what I can say is, obviously, the results that we have shown were very, very pleasing in relation to us. And even, say, for the whole sector that actually in challenging times, one can deliver these results, and we will continue to focus on those. This is very clear.
And when it comes to, of course, our partners in terms of payment terms, this is all set. That is something which is very stable for us. We're in close collaborations with our partners how to also be a bit more creative, say, on the inventory side, how we can increase stock turn. We are working less on sale in, what we're actually working on sell-through, which is actually helping. The supply chain is actually improving the situation here. So I would say this is very aligned with our partners. It has been taken on board very positively, and we will continue to focus on these areas.
I just want to add to be really, really precise on this last bit. If you statistically and actually and contractually look at the payment terms that we have across the portfolio of our partners, these are stable. Now obviously, there is individual discussions and negotiations, which I'm sure you understand, we cannot comment on here. However, if you look at the average over a period of time, these are stable, [ Neil ].
I hand back to Karsten Wildberger, CEO, for closing comments.
Yes. Thank you very much, operator. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time and your questions. As usual, and I've pointed that out a few times, if you have any follow-ups, please feel free to contact our Investor Relations team led by Fabienne. And we will also update you in due course about our planned Capital Markets Day, and I hope that we can bring some more light, clarity to the questions that you've also asked today, and I very much look forward to this.
And with that, let me conclude today's results call. I wish you good health. Take care and goodbye. Thank you very much.