Home24 SE

XETRA:H24

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the home24 Full Year 2021 Trading Update Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Marc Appelhoff, CEO of home24. Please go ahead.

[Marc Appelhoff, Chairman of the Management Board & CEO]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our preliminary financial 2021 results update. And without further ado, let's look at some of the highlights before we then go into details of the financials that we can share with you already at this stage very early on in the closing process, but also look at more details of the Butlers acquisition.We've decided to bring this update call forward because we have received so many questions on Butlers and the impact on synergies and strategic initiatives going forward but also, as you've probably seen, because of our Q4 financials that came in at the lower end of expectations.But zooming out, if we just look at what we've achieved in the past 2 years, we've reported a strong growth of 27% for 2021 and, therefore, have now come out at EUR 615 million, which is close to 80% above 2019. Europe alone has grown EUR 223 million in the last 2 years and showed 80%. And while the group was only at 27%, Europe last year came out at 29%. And I think what's important to mention here is that this comes on top of a very strong 2020 but more importantly, in a very difficult home and living market environment. We will share with you numbers later on, on Germany.Year-to-date, retail home and living in Germany is down 7% until November 2021, which means we have taken significantly more than 30% share. And we have done so with a positive adjusted EBITDA as planned, which proves that our profitable growth strategy to take market share is working out quite well. And also on the adjusted EBITDA side, we've come in, in the planned range, and we have delivered 8 percentage points improvement in the last 2 years while growing so significantly.Our year-end cash position of EUR 131 million gives us ample room for further growth. And even though the Butlers acquisition will only close on the 1st of April, we have structured the acquisition in a way that also, post-acquisition and the first purchase price tranche, we will have ample room for further development of both segments.The home24 group now, including the Butlers acquisition, results in combined pro forma 2021 revenues of above EUR 700 million and, already without any synergies, would result in adjusted EBITDA of more than EUR 20 million. We will give a glimpse of the synergy areas and potential that we started working on to prepare already pre-closing. And we firmly believe that this acquisition will not only significantly improve our profitability profile but also help accelerate on many growth levers, and we'll take you through that in more detail later on.But lastly and most importantly, it's all about the customers in e-commerce. And we are now standing at the end of 2021 with more than 2 million active customers, having added 800,000 in the last 2 years alone. The 40 million Butlers visitors per annum will add to that base and give us ample room for future growth, both in the online space, where home24 will obviously always have its home and still strives to be the online destination in all of its markets, but now we also have many offline touch points. And depending on the market environment, we'll have the opportunity to grow also independently of the opportunities that are given with the online penetration rising.With that, let's jump to the financials, and Philipp will take you through these before I will then continue to give more details on the Butlers acquisition later on.

[Philipp Christopher Steinhauser, CFO & Member of Management Board]

Thanks, Marc. Yes, so quite a few numbers have already been mentioned. But before we go into more detail, let me add some highlights.The European segment has performed much stronger than the Brazilian business this year. Nevertheless, on a 2-year view, performance is very strong on both sides. While Europe grew 80%, LatAm followed very closely with around 77% 2-year growth in constant currency terms. The positive development of the European business is also reflected in the profitability figures. While Europe showed an adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 3 million or plus 1% adjusted EBITDA, LatAm had a positive adjusted EBITDA in Q4 this year but stayed overall slightly negative for the full year due to the investments undertaken post-IPO.In terms of cash, the positive development has been supported by the IPO of Mobly at the beginning of 2021, of course. Since then, we reinvested a lot, especially in working capital in the first quarters of the year, but we're able to achieve in Q4 a quarter again with a significant positive operating cash flow of around EUR 10 million.Next, as Marc already hinted at, we want to give a little more background on the home24 performance versus what we see in the market and knowing that there is not one source of truly reliable market information out there. If we look at the development of the retail home furnishings revenue in our largest market, Germany, we stand year-to-date, and that means including November up to December, at around minus 7.5% year-over-year growth. And those numbers also hold true for October and November in Q4 so far, December so far not available. And in general, as you can see, the development can be perceived quite flat.On the right side, on the other hand, you can see the revenues for our European segment with Germany being the most important market within Europe. And indexed to 100 for the same period, you can see how home24 is taking share step-by-step and that we are on a very healthy growth trajectory overall.For Brazil, the data is actually quite similar. The Brazilian retail home furnishing market was growing around 7% up to December, which is broadly in line with inflation rates, whereas Mobly grew plus 21% in constant currency. And the picture for 2019 and 2020 is actually very similar. Growth rates on the retail home furnishing market were also around those 7%, 8% plus, which broadly represents inflation rate. And Mobly outgrew the market significantly with plus 31% or 47%, respectively, in those years. So therefore, we see the general trend very positive and are strongly convinced of further growth and market share gains for home24 in the future.Adding a brief view to our order intake, as expected, the positive revenue trend is also visible in our full year key figures. Order intake, so GOV, grew for the group around 18% like-for-like in constant currency. The lower growth rate in order intake compared to the revenue growth signals the significantly faster revenue realization compared to last year and proves that we took the right decisions throughout the year on our working capital investments, available buffer stocks, desired stock levels, et cetera, to ensure a high level of availability and fast availability of goods to our end customers.In general, we observed throughout the year an increase in our basket size, which is a function of multiple parameters like higher prices, inflation, items per transaction, different category and country mixes, but also on group level FX effects.We are very happy that we have further increased our active customer base, especially in Europe. And to put this into perspective versus 2019, we added 800,000 active customers on group level in the last 2 years, which is a very solid foundation for further growth in the next quarters.Furthermore, we will significantly increase the active customer base through the Butlers acquisition. And this basket size for Butlers, which Marc will show later on, is significantly lower at around EUR 76. Even on the current generated revenue levels from Butlers online, we can expect a relevant addition to our active customer base as of Q2.And looking a little closer at Q4 individually, demand was robust in a much more normalized market environment compared with the lockdown impacts in Q4 2020. GOV growth for Europe and LatAm was broadly similar at like-for-like single-digit negative growth rates.As already said, we run very successfully on our growth path and delivered precisely based on our preliminary figures 27.2% of constant currency revenue growth in 2021, which represents the mentioned 79% growth on a 2-year basis or, in absolute terms, EUR 244 million, EUR 243 million increase compared to 2019. This signals that 2021 was taking place on very -- already very strong previous year comparables.The constant currency effect in 2021 amounts in the end to 2 percentage points difference in the growth rates, which was partially not that well reflected in available consensus figures on home24. Even in Q4, we benefited from a very favorable market environment last year. We -- while we did, yes, from a very favorable market environment last year, we delivered stable year-over-year revenues.Looking at the revenue development of the segments in more detail. Europe alone now represents more than EUR 0.5 billion in revenues and, as said before, is gaining significant share. The full year growth of 29% was very well in line with the growth guidance that we have given out on group level and also in Q4, despite the negative overall market trends where retail home and living was down around 7% in Germany in October, November. Year-over-year revenues were kept broadly stable. LatAm also delivered a positive growth of 21% in constant currency but fell in Q4 below our internal ambition levels due to a weaker market environment in general. Also here, to put this again into a more precise perspective, also here, Mobly is still gaining significant share. And based on the data for October, November, the overall retail home and living market was down around minus, yes, 6% for October, November, while Mobly managed to achieve growth of around 4%.Looking at the profitability of home24. We managed to remain within the provided profitability corridor of 0% to 2% EBITDA despite pressure on the gross margin and slightly negative profitability in the LatAm segment. It shows that our structured profitability is intact, underlying the ability to invest into further growth going forward.In Q4, for Europe, all unit economics were broadly stable compared to Q3, with highest attention on the gross margin and a clear management focus to bring back gross margin levels up over the subsequent quarters. We are especially pleased to see that the delivery performance improved significantly over the recent months and that our operations scale well, leading to further increases and customer satisfaction along the way.Brazil ended the year with a slightly negative adjusted EBITDA, mainly as a result of the numerous long-term growth investment that were kicked off post-IPO. And still, total profitability improved well in Q4 versus Q3 and is a good sign for the profitability development in the subsequent quarters.Turning to cash. The group's cash and cash equivalents remain high at roughly EUR 131 million. And obviously, the main driver for the positive development was the IPO of the Brazilian business that influenced the financing cash flow significantly. While the adjusted EBITDA was broadly flat year-over-year, you can see that the cash flow from operating activities was negative in 2021 mainly due to 2 working capital effects.As the most important one to mention again, we did that over the last quarters already. And on the back of the strong cash position, we discontinued the anticipation of receivables from installment purchases in Brazil. We can reinitiate at any time that and basically could reverse that effect immediately.Second, the negative working capital impact from increased inventory levels and shorter delivery times may be treated as a one-off effect in '21. The warehouse levels and delivery terms are back on envisaged levels and should be broadly stable going forward.In general, home24 is working, especially in Europe, with a negative working capital and should therefore generate further cash in the growth environment. And for Brazil, the working capital is currently positive as long as the aforementioned anticipation of receivables is discontinued at the current surplus cash levels.Investments of broadly [ EUR 19 million ] signaled the numerous post-IPO investments in Brazil, and roughly 2/3 of the displayed [ EUR 19 million ] are related to investments undertaken in Brazil. And looking a little closer at Q4, the total cash flow increased slightly by EUR 1 million, mainly as a result of a positive cash flow from operating activities of EUR 10 million.And with that, I hand over back to Marc to give you more background information on the Butlers acquisition.

[Marc Appelhoff, Chairman of the Management Board & CEO]

Yes. As promised, we received many questions on giving a bit more of a background of the transaction. And the announcement of the transaction on the 22nd of December, obviously, was falling into a period where there wasn't a lot of time to prepare and then communicate broadly. That's why we've decided to take this opportunity today.The Butlers acquisition adds massive strategic potential, and I will take you through the most important dimensions of that, but also, before we do that, give an introduction to the Butlers business and what it truly stands for. And just to highlight again, before we even add the Butlers business to the home24 platform, the home24 business already is profitably growing EUR 615 million revenue business with 2.3 million active customers, 1.4 million thereof in Europe, and therefore, we have massive potential together with Butlers to become the leading group in Continental Europe. And that's not only demonstrated by the pro forma revenues of more than EUR 700 million and significant profitability on an EBITDA level, even before doing synergies. I'll take you through most of those levers shown on Page 20 in the due course.I want to also highlight that home24 will remain the destination platform. It will carry also all of the Butlers' online assortment, enabling promotion of inspirational home environments with the main strategic purpose of increasing customer loyalty and allowing more seasonal marketing communication. And we will obviously continue to operate the 4 profitable sales channels. So next to Butlers.com, there's 3 others I'll take you through as well. And also, obviously, tap into the huge number of visitors that Butlers sees each year in its 130 offline stores. And lastly, the home24 platform benefits from purchasing and logistics economies of scale to the tech platform and data platform access will drive growth and profit also on the Butlers brand level because there's significant potential to take that to the next level, even though it's already a significant online share.But before we go into sheer numbers and processes, often, picture says more than many words, and we feel this one also works accordingly. Through the acquisition of Butlers, home24 complements its private label furniture expertise with Butlers' private-label home textiles, decorations and tableware expertise, so all those blue crosses on Page 21. These assortment segments are strategic pillars to increase customer loyalty and seasonal marketing communication.So if you just imagine that for the last 10 years, we've installed a large base of tables and sofas and large pieces of furniture in Continental Europe, then all those can now be complemented with seasonal decoration items, and we've got the addresses of all those customers. So there's significant potential to not only communicate more holistically on an entire room setting level going forward, but there's also the potential of our existing base, especially for such events as Easter or Christmas, where the best of the Butlers and home24 assortments can now be combined both in the online and in the offline world.If we look at the next page then in a snapshot of the Butlers business. Founded in '99, Butlers is a self-described creative factory of beautiful things in the most popular colors, shapes and styles. And that is best brought to life in their stores. Butlers currently operates 100 owned, managed stores in German-speaking countries and 30 franchise stores in Hungary, Ukraine, Greece, Czech Republic, Malta, Ireland, France and Luxembourg, and also cooperates with renowned retail chains and a wholesale business, such as REWE or Real, Kaufhof. And we come later on to some financials, but Butlers virtually spends no marketing, and the stores are the marketing.The Butlers' system is based on distributing these creative product assortments and accessories to more than 40 million visitors each year that come there on a regular basis to find new inspiration. What's truly impressive is that despite store closures in Q1 2021 and access restrictions in many months last year, lastly in November and December, Butlers grew to EUR 93 million revenues in 2021, yes, in not only a challenging retail environment due to restrictions, but also, as we mentioned earlier, home and living saw a declining demand in total in our largest market in Germany. So normalizing for those lockdown effects, Butlers would have targeted revenues easily beyond EUR 100 million and profitability also rather towards the EUR 10 million than the EUR 5 million to EUR 6 million that they will come out at once numbers will be final.And I think that's also important to remember in terms of what we looked at when we explored the business potential and the combination in our due diligence phase in terms of risk profile. Butlers demonstrated profitability also during the COVID-induced unfavorable market conditions in 2020 and '21, given it is such a strong offline-driven business in terms of branding and driving footfall, even though already 1/4 of revenues are made online.Butlers typically targets impulse purchase-oriented, fashion-conscious females and people between 20 and 50 that come and visit their stores with a strong, yes, appetite and attention towards creativity, innovation, but also a fair quality for price and fun and colors. And if we look at the assortment and the core values of the brand, yes, then Butlers is perceived as an innovator and developer of ideas, introducing and arranging many new articles a year to surprise customers. And that surprising and that finding new inspiration is the key reason that customers come back frequently to look for news and new ideas.And this distinctiveness is achieved by selling products which are designed in-house and offered exclusively under the Butlers brands as well as licensed products. Far more than 90% of sales is with Butlers branded products. Only a few are non-branded, and even less are licensed. At the moment, for example, Walt Disney and Peanuts cups and small toys. But the vast majority is own-developed Butlers products. They offer it at mid-price levels compared to national and international peers, so great value for money offering if you want to refresh your home on a regular basis and, yes, have to watch your spendings.Many products are part of broad combinable assortments that are presented in seasonal settings that are refreshed on a very regular basis. And by refreshing the assortments on a very regular basis, the Butlers brand stands for this inspiring, imaginative, stylish, affordable assortment that creates loyal customers that come back on a very regular basis and spend on offline much less than online. Though on offline baskets are only EUR 17. The online baskets are in the high 60s, which demonstrates that many of the consumers come and don't plan to buy anything but always find something that they want to take home.And how does Butlers achieve this factory of ideas, production of many new articles each season? Butlers develops more than 3,000 new articles a year, and it's hard work to continuously inspire and surprise customers. But it's also not sheer luck. It's long-hand planned and executed and tested themes that come to life over a period of up to 2 years. The Butlers team has developed this unique skill over the last 23 years to do that very efficiently with a very, very high hit rate and sell-through rate at high profitability.It all starts with the early recognition of future trends and transformation transforming these trends into home and living themes. But this is rather a fast follower. But nevertheless, if you have to commit on these themes 2 years early, 1.5 years early, it's one of the key skills of the team to identify these trends and then create mood boards with concrete product ideas to prepare the themes for the upcoming years.Butlers then identifies the most suitable suppliers out of its private label supply base to produce these Butlers-ish products at attractive prices and good quality in a very reliable supply chain and also organizes in-house and manages in-house a very efficient inbound logistics that minimizes lead times and has a constant replenishment and a constant supply throughout its 4 sales channels, where smaller items with smaller tickets rather mean impulse purchase, but also mean that minimum order quantities are significantly higher and that the sell-through of these products, especially through the stores, are crucial and needs to be very diligently planned and executed. And it's a key skill that Butlers has developed over the last years.And the offer in the end is that the look and feel is pricey. It should look like boutique items that customers want to have with a focus on good value for money. And it really should inspire to replicate these table settings and product combinations also in home but -- in their own home, but also create own ideas out of the Butlers space.Zooming into the 4 sales channels I've mentioned, and I've also highlighted -- I think it's very important that all 4 of them are operating profitably already today. Starting with the first one, the retail stores. The 100 owned, operated stores and the stores managed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland all have an average size of 300 square meters. The main concept works best in 250 to 300 square meters. And it always has to be in a location that is in the city center with sufficient footfall of at least 1,000 per hour, and they're located usually in affluent neighborhoods where customers pass by on a regular basis.The product display in each store is centrally organized. It's diligently planned in headquarter to ensure consistent presentation but also very efficient store operation. And to ensure constant innovation and change, the seasonal product ranges I mentioned earlier not only change monthly, but also, the theme tables are newly set on a very regular basis. And new themes and products enter the shop on a weekly basis to always give a reason to find something new if customers come by.In terms of the growth rate in the last 2 years, 9 new stores were added. And just because of the COVID environment, growth rate in the last 2 years in the retail base was not the highest, which shouldn't be a surprise. But I think it's important to highlight that the retail stores are one of the key drivers of profitability, especially because rent over the last 2, 3 years has developed very favorably, and we don't expect rents in the cities to develop any differently in the coming years. So the retail store profitability will be a key driver also of the growth of the business, especially because a large portion of the marketing for the Butlers brand happens by being present in very prominent inner-city locations.In terms of online, that was the strongest source of growth in COVID times, not only in DACH but also internationally, but that part of growth is attributed to franchise. When we zoom in on the online segment, Butlers already introduced direct-to-consumer webshop as early as 2007 and experimented early on with it. And I think that also demonstrates why its online revenue already stands at 25% of share and also demonstrates a much higher average order value.The webshop also is important innovator and today is a driver of the business because there's dedicated webshop products that are developed, for example, sets of porcelain that in the shop are actually picked and packed or selected by consumers individually but in a webshop make much more sense to be sold in sets. And Butlers has also, over the long period, it's already delivered products by parcel service and developed skills that are unique in terms of being capable of sending those fragile items via parcel service without any significant breakages and claim rates, keeping return rates at very low rates. That's also why profitability is high in that segment.In terms of franchise, this is a Trojan horse of growth also for expanding into other geographies for home24 in the future. Today already, Butlers is active in 9 countries, and it's basically 0 risk because the country representatives buy from the German warehouse. They pay a fixed markup, and they then take full responsibility of managing the countries with very strict brand and presentation guidelines but also, therefore, lower profitability. But obviously, very high growth potential and also profit potential because there is very limited investments that need to be done from the Butlers' side.And in terms of wholesale business, an opportunistic business that is highly relevant when we have great products that we can market with the likes of REWE or [indiscernible] and other large retail chains in Germany, sometimes branded, sometimes white label. And it primarily adds to economies of scale for purchasing and, therefore, not only is driving the profit contribution of the wholesale business. But if you imagine that we then are in a position to buy many more items of products that we also sell in the other 3 channels, then this is a strategically important channel that helps drive economies of scale; but very opportunistically will also be used now that we are a combined group as of 1st of April for home24 private label collections, where we have an in-house team with available capacity to look into the potential to create private-label collections, for example, also for other styles on the home24 platform, like our Scandinavian private-label collection, Studio Copenhagen.We've brought some financials because we've been asked many, many questions. And again, it's preliminary financials where it's early days of converting the local GAAP of Butlers' numbers into IFRS, which is primarily rent, but there's also a few other effects. And also, these numbers are not normalized for any COVID effects. So this is just a sheer combination of the Butlers' local GAAP result of 2021 with EUR 93 million revenue, very solid profit margins from gross profit but also down to EBITDA, where again, as mentioned, COVID effects are not normalized out.So just converting these into IFRS and combining them with Europe, you see that there will -- the Butlers combination will drive at minimum EUR 20 million of IFRS EBITDA and also, obviously, help driving gross margin profile and, therefore, our ability to take further investments into growth together.If we look into the main areas of growth, and again, when we set together with the Butlers team and spoke about the acquisition and the combination of the 2 businesses, this was mainly driven by growth and therefore, scale, profit synergies. We are already preparing in working teams that are staffed from home24 and Butlers on preparing all those potentials to hit the ground running. Once we closed the transaction on the 1st of April, we expect antitrust clearance to be finished by the end of February, which would then mean we have certainty regarding the closing.And the priority one, obviously, the lowest-hanging fruits of cross-listing, the Butlers assortment, the Butlers' online assortment on home24 and selected home24 private label assortments in Butlers, both online and selectively in the stores. The second priority are then joint sales and promotion efforts, both in the retail stores but also in the webshops. You can imagine that these 40 million visitors is definitely a base that home24 wants to tap into further growth. And at the same time, we see vast potential to tap into the existing customer base and also the 2022 customer base of home24 for those inspirational, seasonal items that can be discovered by consumers on a very regular basis.One thing we have not yet detailed and will likely not look into for 2022 is a combination of the webshops and the tech platforms beyond low-hanging fruit synergies. So we'll definitely look into joint CRM, but we'll not look into combining the tech stack of the webshop.And obviously, there's also further synergies on the way, especially once we merge the entities from the usage of the customer addresses to tax optimization and just comparing notes on logistics and transportation rates. But most importantly, what we're all looking forward to is that we'll be able to use our assortment data and customer data together to better develop assortments for our consumers going forward. And we believe this is the strongest opportunity of future growth together.Now looking forward, also zooming out again. You know this Slide 29 from earlier presentations from our company presentation. We've spoken a lot about our main growth drivers in the long run, yes, the structural growth, the market, the platform and the market expansion. And while we are more than convinced looking at the results of the last 2 years of home24 individually that there was long-term structural growth of online penetration rising, and also our go-to-market approach is working very, very well.We have now ample added pieces of the puzzle through the Butlers acquisition, where in structural growth, we become less dependent on online growth increasing, and therefore, performance marketing linked to Google performance marketing or others, we can now make growth by gaining access to 40 million visitors in the Butlers world.In terms of market penetration, we will obviously look at combining our go-to-market approach and best approaching the existing markets. We have an overlap outside of DACH, only in France and Luxembourg, yes, and zooming out to further markets and market expansion. Obviously, we will use the franchise markets and also the franchise system to best exploit new geographies as well.But most importantly, in terms of platform development, the fact that we introduced strong capabilities in those purchase frequency assortments will mean that we are in a position to drive growth and repeat revenues on our home24 platform and, therefore, continue to benefit from the investments we've done in the last 4, 5 years into a sustainable platform of growth, both on the logistics side and on the data side. And the Butlers and home24 combined group will now benefit from these investments.When we look at where we will come out in the coming quarters and years, we are very, very grateful to what we've experienced and what we've achieved in the last 2 years and especially what the team has delivered. I think we have a very strong position that we come out of. And in a more challenging time for home and living at the moment, it's also important that we have demonstrated that even in these times, we continue to take market share, yes. And I think we couldn't -- cannot highlight more or sufficiently that in a year where the home and living space has lost ground in 2021 and where even the market leaders like IKEA showed negative growth, we have demonstrated significant continued growth.And yes, as we see the current development, we see ourselves in a strong position to continue taking market share, and even more so with the Butlers acquisition and the financial position we have as a combined group with a strengthened profitability profile and a clear path towards also sustainable, positive cash flows, especially in Europe.It is a reality that the effect of the strong prior year base and the supply chain headwinds will influence especially Q1 and Q2 for 2022. And therefore, the guidance that we will make precise and share with you on the 31st of March will depend a lot on the outcome of the coming months, but also on what we will put ourselves into the books in terms of targets for the synergies with Butlers.I think what we can share is that Q1 current trading to date is in a similar pattern than Q4, so it's healthy, and we continue to take significant market share. At the same time, we cannot isolate ourselves from demand effects that are taking place not only in the online world but also in the offline world. And at the same time, we see ourselves very well positioned with our liquidity to continue to take active opportunity action whenever we see it.So also for 2022, we will remain focused on best exploiting the growth opportunity at hand, and we will, for sure, not jeopardize profitability by rushing ahead and overpacing, but we will definitely also not rest on our path to achieving that EUR 1 billion-plus target we've laid out for ourselves for the future.With that, we thank you all for listening this morning and open up for questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Christian Salis of Hauck.

[Hans Christian Salis, Equity Analyst]

It's Christian speaking from Hauck Aufhäuser. I've got 3, please. First of all, could you please talk about the GOV growth in Q4 and a little bit -- share a little bit more color on current trading? I've heard from peers that December and particularly the second half of Q4 has deteriorated quite significantly and the GOV growth should have been down double digits. Could you confirm that?Secondly, could you share more color on the customer behavior? So we have seen that customers have shifted back towards other categories, like travel or leisure or also fashion, I guess. But you have still been able to grow your customer base slightly over the past quarter. So could you maybe share some of your numbers or some of -- or give some indication on the customer behavior you're seeing, like important customer KPIs like GMV per customer and so on?And finally, on the top line momentum, yes. So Q4 now on the top line was -- or in terms of net sales, at least, was below expectations. And it's now around 40% above 2019 levels. And I think there is a clear kind of negative trend, yes. We've been still 96% above 2019 levels in Q2, then 64% in Q3, now 39% or 40% in Q4. So if I extrapolate that into the first half of 2022, this results in quite muted or even quite declining growth rate. So would it be fair to assume that? What's your view generally on that? And when do you think you can reverse this trend on a 2-year stack again? And how do you want to reaccelerate customer growth again to, yes, to grow again in line with your midterm range or long-term range of around 20%?

[Philipp Christopher Steinhauser, CFO & Member of Management Board]

Thanks, Christian. So let me start with the GOV growth. So we would say that -- and Marc hinted at that already that the current trading and order intake is pretty comparable to what we have seen in Q4. Q4 overall was fairly similar distributed in terms of growth rates. And as I said, very briefly, order intake would be single-digit negative in Q4, and that holds true for Europe in a similar way as it does for Brazil.And the connection with the resulting top line has also hinted the IFRS revenue growth was slightly higher in Q4 compared to the order intake because we realized revenues faster. So this is a little more pressure on the growth rates than also for Q1 and Q2, where in 2022, we then realized those revenues that otherwise would have been realized faster in 2020. We expect that the comparables for Q1 and Q2 will be -- or they are strong. And if you recall the growth rates, then yes, those were even stronger than what we've seen in Q4. So growing compared to the Q1, Q2 comparables will be tough.Let's see how trading evolves. I mean, we are now 25 days into the year and a lot more to come, but we are very confident that we will be back on a very healthy growth trajectory as of -- the latest as of Q3, Q4, where we've seen -- or where we have experienced a normalized market environment. But 2021 had seen lockdown phases and offline closures partially in January, March and April, I guess. So those will be a very tough comp suite.On the customer base, we don't see, yes, a significant or relevant changes or developments. The category mixes are fairly stable. The GMV per active customer is slightly increasing, which is linked to the basket size development. Especially in Brazil, the basket size rose a lot due to the inflation. And also, we communicated price increases in the past and probably we'll see further price increases going forward. So especially the AOV is probably something that will go up despite us selling also more on the smaller items.

[Marc Appelhoff, Chairman of the Management Board & CEO]

And maybe to add to the consumer behavior in the market because you were mentioning even shift towards other categories. But I think it's really, really important to consider the fact that the market declined in Germany by 7 percentage points last year. And we took therefore more than -- or which will significantly share and outperform the market by more than 35% if you compare the European growth number to the market number.And yes, while consumers might shift some of their spending temporarily back to leisure or other categories, we have demonstrated that we can continue to take share, and especially in these times, we'll continue to do so. So we won't do stupid things. We won't overly spend marketing at times where the demand online is not as strong. At the same time, that was one of the key reasons we decided to pursue the Butlers acquisition because it makes us much more independent of the online customer acquisition and the online growth of the online penetration rates in our segment.And lastly, there's many commentary where -- saying that the return to post-COVID world, omnichannel retailers, offline retailers will now benefit. I mean, that's part of the motivation, right? So yes, we primarily bought Butlers because it's a great assortment with a great team and a great direct-to-consumer assortment, but obviously, also because we have that opportunity to now drive growth also with the footfall in 130 stores across Europe.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] It appears that there are no further questions at this point of time.

[Marc Appelhoff, Chairman of the Management Board & CEO]

Then thank you very much for listening this morning. And we are in exciting times. We will continue to pursue any opportunities out there actively, and we will share progress of delivering then the post-integration efforts with you on a quarterly basis throughout this year, and therefore, looking forward to speaking to you after we've kicked off these initiatives. With that, have a great day, everyone, and speak soon. Bye.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.