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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
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Good morning to everybody joining today's call. I'm very happy that I can present the quarter 1 numbers of SHOP APOTHEKE Europe to you this morning. And I'm here today together with Monica Ambrosi from Investor Relations. I quickly wrap the moment here. I will keep it short. I'd also actually thank all the people who made it possible to have today's meeting here, it is the accounting department, the finance board [indiscernible] it is Investor Relations, it's IT, it is communications and of course, moreover, all the people across SHOP APOTHEKE Europe, that have been able to achieve the results that we achieved quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year that are really according to my definition, impressive and certainly also the result of today of quarter 1, 2023. I'm very happy to present to you.
We do so live from our headquarters here in Sevenum, the Netherlands. As always, the business performance update and then an update of a general business and some strategy subjects.
The business, please, and let's go to the first slide. Quarter one, we achieved a 22% total sales growth. So it's the post-corona period. We are showing that we have been growing double digit pre-corona, during corona and after corona. And this quarter 1 was in total, 22% higher than last year. So our company grew by 1/5 in total size.
And we did so with an adjusted EBITDA margin, which was significantly up and certainly in the next slides, I will explain you more about that development.
To start with the first quarter, double-digit growth pre-corona, during corona, after corona in our 2 segments and even in all our 7 countries. Non-Rx and Rx were both almost growing at the same pace double-digit, total 22%, as I said already, and non-Rx 23%.
The total performance was driven by a continuous growth of our active customer base that means keeping our existing customers loyal, increasing the frequency and at the same time, also welcoming a significant amount of new customers.
Our total base of customers that are active, so pace of purchase over the past 12 months increased in just one quarter, this quarter 1 from 9.3 million to end at 9.7 million. And we had, again, a quarter with a very high customer satisfaction score. We carefully track this on a daily base. And again, total SHOP APOTHEKE was having Net Promoter Score north of 70.
Second bullet, particularly for this quarter, efficiency gains significantly compared to the same quarter last year and also compared to the last recent quarter, quarter 4 last year. The adjusted EBITDA margin this year was positive 2.4%, which is 380 basis points up from the same quarter last year. As a result, our operating cash flow was a positive EUR 44 million. And please don't do that time for because a large part of this is the seasonality of working capital of in total EUR 37 million. And for example, last year, Q1, the working capital inflow in quarter 1 was also EUR 30 million.
But as we will see later, this operating cash flow also included an EBITDA of EUR 9 million, so an EBITDA testing of around EUR 7 million to EUR 8 million.
And while achieving more customers, happy customers and significantly improved financial results, Bullet #4, we are also really happy with some external increased acknowledgment we are getting for our sustainability efforts. Later more on that, but to keep it shorter right now, it's always flattering if an external renowned institution, in this case, MSCI is increasing our rating, our ESG rating from AA to a AAA, that's the highest possible score according to MSCI and that brings us in the global benchmark in the top 4%.
There are couple of things we can mention which we also achieved in quarter 1. I'll point out one, and that was our intention to start a strategic partnership with Galenica and to create together a leading online pharmacy in Switzerland. I'll talk more on that later.
On this slide, the sales, as I said already, total growth of 22%, non-Rx 23%, so both well north of 20%, achieving a total EUR 372 million of sales. The DACH segment increased by 23%. Our international business, consisting of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy, increased by 19%, and that was still 13% in quarter 4. So the growth base in international also increased as the DACH.
And with that, Monica, I'm happy to hand it over to you.
Thank you, Jasper. So let's take a look at our customer key performance indicators for the quarter, which either improved or remained at very strong levels in quarter 1.
Starting with the active customer base. As Jasper already mentioned, we had an increase of 0.4 million in the active customer base from quarter 4 to quarter 1, which was an increase of 1.4 million over the prior year's quarter. So we now boast 9.7 million active customers. And this was an increase seen across all of our markets.
And this several 100,000 increase in active customers every quarter has been a feature over the past 4 quarters, so consistent increase. And this continuous increase in active customers wouldn't be possible if our customers were not happy and returning customers, which is why we really focus very much on delivering strong excellent service and we see this again from a very high Net Promoter Score over the first quarter of 71. So, happy customers.
And then finally, if you can just take a look at the average shopping basket value for the first quarter of the year, we also saw a slight increase compared to last year from around EUR 57 to around EUR 58 in this quarter. So we've been talking about customer satisfaction. It certainly builds customer loyalty and as a result of this, the strong sales growth that we reported was very much driven by a high rate of returning customers, which in the first quarter was at a high 84% among the highest and it has been in the past. So these are not new customers. These are returning customers.
Then we'll speak about our number of orders. You can see that strong momentum, which started in 2022, continued in the first quarter of the year. We are logistics facility very efficiently and seamlessly processed over 7 million orders in the first quarter of the year.
And again, if we look back over the last 4 years, every first quarter, we have seen an increase in orders of around 1 million. So there is a very strong underlying increase.
And what makes the performance even more solid? As Jasper has already mentioned about corona, this is not demand as a consequence of corona, this is demand after corona. And even with a better seasonality, it reflects a strong structural increase. Over to you.
Yes. Thank you, Monica. Very clear to me. And here are then the key financials in the P&L, in the customary format in the table. So let's start with column 2 and 3, quarter 1 last year and this year. So our sales increased from EUR 305 million to EUR 372 million, an increase of EUR 67 million compared to the same quarter last year, 22.1% up. The gross profit margin and later a bit more on that, increased by 1.1 percentage points. And in selling and distribution so all our expenses as a percentage of sales increased by even double that amount by 2.5 percentage points, reflective of scale and efficiency.
At the same time, our administrative expenses also were stable at 2.9% of sales compared to the same quarter last year. And as such, if you add up everything I just explained, you get to an increase of the adjusted EBITDA of a minus 1.4% to plus 2.4% is an increase of 3.8 percentage points.
In euros, from minus EUR 4 million to plus EUR 9 million is an increase of EUR 13 million. And just for reference sake, also we fully loaded EBITDA which was also a positive EUR 5 million in the most recent quarter.
The columns to the right that you're seeing here, though it is an apple and an orange because at SHOP APOTHEKE, as with most retailers, there is seasonality in the quarters. But still quarter 4, where we also achieved for the second quarter in a row, a positive adjusted EBITDA. If you compare those numbers, you see at the top that our sales were significantly higher from EUR 328 million, as Monica just explained, to a new record of more than 7 million orders, reflective of EUR 372 million of net sales.
Our gross profit margin quarter-over-quarter was roughly comparable, slightly down 0.1%. If you see that actually half of the year-over-year increase that we achieved an efficiency and scale and effectiveness we achieved also from the past quarter to this quarter in total 1.3 percentage points.
And also you see that our overhead was significantly leveraged by the very substantial increase of sales that we achieved this quarter, 1.2 percentage points lower as a percentage of sales. So compared to the past quarter, an increase of more than 2 percentage points.
The gross profit, an increase year-over-year and to the right of the slide, roughly comparable to the past quarter. The year-over-year improvement of the gross profit margin is mainly in the first bucket and which is the product margin that we're having. And the product margin is really reflective of all the optimizations we continuously try to do and having the most relevant assortment, new assortment, showing the customers the assortment that is relevant to them, and it's also best for us and also having the right incentives to buy or not to buy to the right customers.
So the total mix of adding assortment and showing the right assortment and our continuous optimizations in category management and in our commercial propositions have led to a higher gross profit margin because actually, as you see in the second bucket, there's not any impact in the total SHOP APOTHEKE number from country or RX-OTC mix, it is really an improved total margin that we achieved in the products that we are selling.
Marketing was a big driver of the -- if you compare mathematically year-over-year improvement of the selling distribution as a percentage of sales, but also the operating labor or something that made us really happy as total SHOP APOTHEKE.
Let me start at the start. So in total, a significant better SMB as a percentage of sales, but please keep in mind that quarter 1, 2022, a year ago are still a relatively marketing heavy quarter to us. We were still recovering from some local points we had in 2021 in Q3 and Q4. So also in Q1 last year, that was still the case that you're really seeing that last year, quarter 3, quarter 4, this year quarter 1, we internally say the machine is running.
Our model is working, and we have significantly more effective marketing across all our countries, all our 7 countries, and that is resulting. As Monica said, not only from effective marketing efforts that we're having directly, let's say, mass marketing, but also the significant high share of existing customers that are loyal and more frequent shopping with us.
Number three, the 0.6%. So the big picture is here. We are in a new facility. We are achieving records week-after-week at SHOP APOTHEKE at a very high quality level. We are delivering our goods faster to our customers. At the same time, of course, we have also had wage inflation also in the operations but still seeing the overall efficiency gains that we have been able to achieve here in this facility, the total operational labor costs were significantly better than last year, 0.6%.
Again, I'm repeating not only a year-over-year improvement, but we also saw that the still the effectiveness and efficiency increased from quarter 4 to quarter 1 by 1.3 percentage points.
And with that, we go to the cash, and we increased our cash balances by in total EUR 32 million over the past quarter. So we increased from EUR 180 million to EUR 212 million. The first 2 brought us together, that I said at the first slide that we highlighted the EUR 44 million increase of operating cash flow with a cash inflow and some EUR 7 million from the, let's say, EBITDA, our operating results very favorable, largely from seasonality movements in our working capital and then our investments and financing expenses in total leading to the [ NPS ]. And then before we go to the second part of our presentation, also in the financial results, I would like to reemphasize what I said in the highlights already, our recent upgrade to a AAA by the MSCI rating in ESG. So a couple of comments here.
First of all, October last year 2022, we were 3 years ahead of plan able to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 CO2 emissions by more than 80%. So 3 years ahead of our planning, and it was not a reduction by 80%, but actually by 88%.
And at the same time, a bit later, we, as a company, committed ourselves to the very important reduction in Scope 3 by 2040 to try to be net 0 there. But ESG is not the same as only a judgment whether we are a sustainable company. ESG in the definition of MSCI actually also focuses on how well is the company prepared for any risk related to the 3 areas of ESG. And the total of that led to an increase of last year already from B2, AA and recently to a AAA. So let's say, the 3 [ Michelin ] stars that we achieved in sustainability according to MSCI.
Strategy and business, let's immediately go to the next one. On e-Rx. e-Rx, start with a key message here. We at SHOP APOTHEKE are totally convinced as much as we have always been about the opportunity, the huge opportunity, the once in a lifetime opportunity of e-Rx in Germany. There's a great market opportunity there, and we think we are very well prepared.
A lot has happened in the past years. We are totally ready. Many players in the ecosystem are ready. We are receiving e-scripts every day, but it is going at a stronger pace than we expected. Let's say, 2 years ago because of messaging then from the government that things will be mandatory as of the 1st of January [ 2024. ] But there is new momentum in it. It's clear, for example, also in the conference of April 25, that the German Minister of Health, Mr. Lauterbach, expressed that it is really on his agenda to also adopt the laws to make it possible to have really e-Rx as the standard in 2024. Still that needs to be published. So on time lines, I cannot give you any more concrete this time you had, before this meeting I can only tell you what we see from our perspective. So we see the number of e-script last time we talked to you, that was on March when we released the full year numbers. It was 1.3 million. That increased to 1.7 million e-prescriptions redeemed in total Germany. The average is around 7,500 to 8,000 per day, some fluctuations there, and we still expect a SHOP APOTHEKE that it is very likely that there will be a lot more concreteness perhaps including even what we are anticipating a significant increase in the last half or at the start of 2024.
We at SHOP APOTHEKE are ready and I think our customers are also ready for the future in Germany with e-prescriptions. That is something completely different. That is an announcement we made on March 30, and here we expressed together with Galenica, the leading pharmacy in Switzerland, active in many aspects on partly of pharmacy in Switzerland. And we announced our strategic partnership where we would combine the daughter of Galenica, MediService and our SHOP APOTHEKE.CH. So our Swiss business into 1 company in order to provide a very compelling and aiming for, of course, having the best possible customer proposition for pharmacy in Switzerland.
In the base, you can see that Galenica is very strong with the MediService daughter in what is named in [indiscernible] Specialty Pharmacy. Galenica are saying we are very strong and, let's say, this being an e-commerce pharmacy and combining those 2 will lead to better products, better services and according to us and best B2C proposition in Switzerland.
As I said already, but just to be clear, we are awaiting the record of competitive authorities approval that time line is unchanged compared to what we announced on March 30, we still expect the transaction to be able to be closed before the end of the first half of the year.
On the next one, please, some characteristics on the transaction. So what is basically happening in 1 transaction is that at MediService, it's taking over the Swiss SHOP APOTHEKE business and at the same time, SHOP APOTHEKE is achieving in this MediService, a 51% share in Galenica, a 49% share.
And it's, of course, clear that the current MediService business with annual sales of around EUR 450 million is significantly larger than our current Swiss business. So we had to pay for this transaction, and we are doing so with a 6% increase of our share capital.
In addition to the 6%, Galenica indicated to us, their wish to actually also reflect their strategic commitment to SHOP APOTHEKE even more and wanted to acquire an additional 2% shares in SHOP APOTHEKE, resulting in the end situation of having an 8% share in SHOP APOTHEKE post transaction. And we, of course, were very happy with this commitment that was expressed by Galenica.
All waiting for the approval, and then it's the intention to execute things, as I just explained, having a very strong B2C proposition in Switzerland, working together with 2 specialized partners, Galenica and SHOP APOTHEKE and having well called another very much wanted investor in SHOP APOTHEKE with 8%.
The last slide is a little bit preluding when we closed the transaction. It's a repetition also, we disclosed on March 30, for those that didn't join the call. According to IFRS, that's the accounting of business -- sorry, business combinations with SHOP APOTHEKE will fully consolidate the numbers as of the closing date. So if it's closing in the course of June, it will be for half a year in our numbers. And then, of course, next year.
For the full year, this repeating what I just said, current business of MediService, so what's going to be on top of the SHOP APOTHEKE number is on an annual basis, around CHF 450 million, [indiscernible] around EUR 450 million and the business is operating at an EBITDA, which is close to a free cash flow percentage of sales between 2% and 3% of sales.
In addition, the last bullet is the transaction process, and we expect that it will happen in the coming weeks for the 2% share in SHOP APOTHEKE, we will receive a one-off cash-in of EUR 29 million.
It's about time. I give it back to you.
Thank you, Jasper. Well, it's not that long ago, just over a little bit more than 1.5 month ago that you and I presented on the re-branding and renaming of SHOP APOTHEKE Europe the corporate. Well, today, we can report that following the 100% approval by our shareholders at the Annual General Meeting that was held last week, we were all going to move forward with this exciting change and rebrand the corporate from SHOP APOTHEKE Europe N.V. to Redcare Pharmacy N.V.
So the process will be that we change the Articles of Association to reflect this new corporate name for the corporate. While we do that, we are not changing the names of the local hero brands. So just to reiterate that the names of the shops across the other countries remain the same.
And just maybe to summarize why the new corporate brand is very important for us is that for us, it provides us with an improved corporate vision, which is going to unite all of our locations, and it will also position us better and best for the future long-term growth and value creation of the business.
Internally, it also means importantly, that we will have a stronger employer brand which better reflects who we are and that is a truly European policy and the leading e-pharmacy in Europe. Meanwhile, our customers are going to continue to receive the same excellent quality service that they are used to from the local hero brand as we just -- as I just mentioned earlier, with nothing changing there.
And in addition to this, there will be no extraordinary costs because the costs have already been absorbed in the past. So our shareholders also benefit and all our stakeholders benefit from this change in the corporate brand.
And Jasper, do you want to maybe just touch on the way forward, that is what goes next to that?
Absolutely. Yes. So we have some checks here already. Indeed, we have the March meeting to inform all our stakeholders last week, April 26, the formal approval with 100% of the votes, which was very nice to achieve and now we can really start to kick off internally our employer branding reinforcing who we are at SHOP APOTHEKE for our existing and for potential new people who want to join the SHOP APOTHEKE journey.
Important on this slide because it's mainly the financial community we're talking to this morning is that on June 13, we will also change the name and the ticker symbol at the country stock exchange from SAE to RDC, Redcare.
And then the next slide, which is the last slide of the presentation. Of course, we don't have a slide on it, but we absolutely reconfirm as we do in each quarter, our mid- to longer-term adjusted EBITDA expectation of in excess of 8%.
If we now focus on full year 2023, I think the big picture is, of course, that we were providing you this guidance before we had a strong result of quarter 1 fully in the pocket. So same to those values, it's easier for us to achieve the full year guidance then at the moment, we gave you the full year guidance.
Having said that, the world isn't safe as [indiscernible] and we already gave you a guidance in a certain range. So I'm reiterating this a growth, again, double digit of non-Rx at the midpoint of 15%, so that's between 10% and 20%. The free cash flow aiming for plus zero within the range of minus to plus EUR 20 million and everything here with a clearly positive adjusted EBITDA.
This guidance here is excluding a potential search, so a fast increase of e-Rx that could still happen later in the year. And it does not yet include any guidance related to the transaction with Galenica and at the expected date of the closing of Galenica will not be too far away from the presentation of our quarter 2 results. It's very likely that we will update you with the guidance reflecting the new situation as soon as possible with the Q2 results in an updated 2023 guidance.
So this is our guidance. We're very happy with the quarter 1 results that we achieved. I think Monica, you said and I couldn't have said it that time, it's not only the financial results, but all the KPIs are also positive in the countries, high customer satisfaction, increase our active customer base everywhere, increase the effectiveness that we're having a very effective and well working and depreciated propositions across our countries.
So with that, I think it's time to go through questions, if there are any. Operator, can you introduce, please.
[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from the line of Alexander Thiel from Jefferies.
Alex Thiel from Jefferies. Monica and Jasper. A couple of questions from my side. I would like to take them one by one. Firstly, very strong EBITDA numbers in Q1. How should we think about the seasonality for the upcoming 2 quarters? And attached to that, could you give us an indication for the full year '23 adjustment level? We will see excluding the Swiss joint venture?
Thanks, Alex, and good to talk to you again. And you said, I have a lot of questions, please try to limit them to 2 or 3 to also allow other questions. Many people ask questions, if that's possible.
As to your EBITDA, yes, we had some tailwinds and some benefits of the return to normal in certain countries of the cold-and-flu season, but that did not explain our strong results of quarter 1. It was -- otherwise, it would have also been strong. It was a little bit better because of that.
What I want to say with that, we didn't have any positive or negative, significant unusuals in our quarter 1 results. The quarter 1 results was as it was.
So then you asked what does it mean for quarter 2 and quarter 3. Well, it depends. On the competitive situation, it is the balance of growth and margins. Actually, you want to continue as we are doing at the moment and the best prediction for tomorrow is always today.
And today, we're showing you the quarter 1 results. The only thing that we always know is that in quarter 2 and quarter 3, our sales in absolute terms are generally lower than in quarter 1 and quarter 4. So we have a little bit less scale of our total cost. But in total, we will continue as we are doing, and we feel comfortable about the guidance of adjusted EBITDA between 0.5% and 2.5%.
And though I don't want to more specify except guidance that we're giving there. I mean, mathematically, it's at the moment, unlikely because we are not aware of any special actions that we will do that we, at this moment is less likely that we will enter anywhere close to the low point of the target range. No, that's not our expectation.
Perfect. And on the level of adjustments, if you could answer that one?
Yes, level of adjustments significantly lower than the prior 2 years, we had 3 adjustments, and we try to really, really be conservative on adjusting. The reason that we have adjustments is that the adjusted EBITDA is actually our cash EBITDA. That's the main reason.
So there are 3 buckets. One has to do with the non-capability of acquisition accounting due to the 2021 acquisitions that we did. That will really fade away to less than 1/2 year we had last year. Then, every stock options that will also be slightly lower than it was last year and then the #3, other cost also not that much. So what I will do the best prediction for this year, if you do the adjustments of the third quarter -- of the first quarter time frame.
Okay. That's very clear. Coming to my last question. Could you comment on your current trading? It looks like that your web and app traffic continues to perform extremely well in April.
We ended the year -- sorry, we ended the quarter very strong. I can say that, and that didn't stop immediately at the start of the next quarter. But that's all I can say about the next quarter. Today, it's about the results of quarter 1, and we have the full year guidance but I can be clear about it because it's also clear in all kinds of external resources that the momentum that we have seen for a couple of consecutive quarters or perhaps it depends on the definition for a longer period already, that we are growing our web traffic, that we are growing our market leading positions in most of our countries. That has not stopped. That's correct.
The next question is from the line of Volker Bosse from Baader Bank.
Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. Congratulations on the great set of results. I would have 2 questions. First question is on the Rx sales, which increased by 15%, of course, coming from depressed levels. However, it seems that e-Rx sales has bottomed out. So is it fair to assume that e-Rx sales will continue to increase in the following quarters of the year '23 again?
And the second question would be on e-RX. You said there is a daily redemption of e-scripts in the amount of EUR 7,500 to EUR 8,000 per day. I think that is a market figure. So what is your share out of that market figure, which you redeem on a daily basis?
And follow to that, also there was in the press some speculation that the CEO of Gematik, Mr. Markus Leyck Dieken, could be forced to leave the position? How do you look at that? And what would that mean for the time line of the e-script introduction as well as e-script rollout, which is probably to come?
Very clear, the first 1 on Rx. I think you're also giving a complement to the company that we achieved the 50% Rx growth. So thanks for that.
From my perspective, I wouldn't make too much out of it. To me, I mean, we're talking about whether it is EUR 30 million or EUR 32 million of -- plus EUR 35 million now. So indeed, we have a 15% growth in Rx. But for me, it's all foreplay before year starts.
We're very happy with the current Rx customers that we're having. And why? Because it's also showing that in the 3 years time already, there are many customers who will actually give that trust to SHOP APOTHEKE for their prescription medications, but that we have some growth there on the low base. It's a nice to have.
But to me, it's not a key point in Q1. The key point to me is that we have been growing super strong as a total company with increasing our base of loyal and happy customers and even so as an increased efficiency. The Rx increased with EUR 3 million, it is what it is, yes. And you can extrapolate that for the remainder of the year or not. I mean it is, for me, not that relevant in quarter 1, I have to say.
And then the e-Rx, our share in it, I will not disclose. And the fact that are happening, some things perhaps in the Gematik or the ministry or, et cetera, I have not seen any official announcement there, only speculations. What to me is taking the helicopter view very relevant with e-Rx is that the system is working. The insurance companies are ready. We are ready, pharmacists are already, doctors are ready. So it's working. That's the fact we have.
And the follow-on is that for what it's worth, also, the Minister of Health, Mr. Lauterbach, is in every occasion where he can, expressing his commitment to make e-Rx as the standard in Germany as soon as possible. Okay. Now, we're waiting. Okay. But just that mean in concrete terms? Where is the time line? What does it mean? Okay? We don't have it.
But those 2 are -- the first 1 are the only effect. It is working, those were working, happy with it all the stakeholders. And #2 is, it seems to be that on the highest level in Germany, it is supported to be introduced as soon as possible.
The next question is from the line of Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank.
Congrats on the strong start to the year. I also have 2 questions, please. The first one is on your gross margin, that remained relatively stable quarter-on-quarter. Your average shopping basket declined sequentially, but you mentioned a favorable product mix. Does that mean that you had a higher share of your own brand sales in Q1 or what was driving this?
And my second question is on your allergy business. Given that we now have left the COVID season largely behind us, I'm wondering how important is the allergy season for you and was this business still negatively impacted by COVID restriction or general behavior trends last year?
Yes. Again, Monica, I'll take on that. Yes. Jump in, if you guess to. Yes, perhaps it's -- it was in [indiscernible] to give some guidance and pace things into perspective, but perhaps it's also a little bit confusing comparing not only to the same quarter last year, but also comparing to quarter 4. There's, of course, a seasonality in its own in the quarters and the margin was roughly stable quarter-over-quarter. That is indeed correct.
The average basket for the first time since I'm presenting was year-over-year, slightly increasing from EUR 37 to EUR 38. And what I'm referring to is the slight increase of the basket from quarter 4 to quarter 1.
I am not aware that anything is happening there that's worthwhile mentioning. So I would presume it has to be -- to do with the fact that we had in the quarter 1, even more new customers we welcomed than we had in quarter 4.
New customers tend to have a lower average basket. At the same time, again, our overall business was growing a bit faster than our Rx business, and those two things might have dampened it a little bit. I think the key conclusions are the most important. We know what's commented on in the economy inflation and things like that.
Those things have until now a very limited, a negligible impact on the pharmacy business as we do it. Not really an impact of customers reducing their purchases. So I have something to mention there. The fact that our gross margin was better. That is really all summarized in this continuous focus on category management and from our commercial departments in giving the right promotion to the right people and giving the right assortment to the right people. And you mentioned own brands, well, that is one of the many elements in order to optimize our portfolio.
The last one on the allergy, well, I can only tell you that's not my area of expertise. I noticed there are some important things this morning, I received from SHOP APOTHEKE as a customer and a very attractive e-mail on -- please be prepared for the allergy season.
But the other parts, how much we expect and how much impact there was? I don't doubt anybody is having the exact answer what the impact of COVID was there. But we at SHOP APOTHEKE are prepared at least to help our customers now at the start of the allergy season to find products, yes.
The next question is from the line of Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Two questions. The first would be regarding the strong customer growth and web traffic growth that we have seen. I mean, I was just wondering -- of course, you probably don't have numbers to this, but to what extent do you think these numbers are inflated from the weakness of your current main peer? And do you think these impacts will fade once your peer picks up marketing again?
And the second question would be regarding the transmission of e-scripts via the electronic health card. Are you happy with this solution that was introduced a couple of months ago with a QR code potentially being displayed on the health card terminals?
Yes, Sven, thank you. Answer to the first one, no. Clear, we have increased our base active customers across our 7 countries. So it's really not going from 1 competitor in 1 country. Perhaps if there is some softness of a certain competitor, then that will help you a little bit. But at the same time, there's a lot more of competition. That's really -- it's not explaining our results. We are not aware of that. We don't see the impact there. So no further comments on that spend. I hope you will understand.
The eHealth cards solution, from my perspective, we are happy with everything that helps to get doctors in Germany to give e-scripts to their customers. So to increase the total base of e-scripts that the doctors are getting to their patients.
And apparently the health card solution is something that certain doctor associations think is helpful in their processes. So in addition to the 2 processes that are there already, printed out QR codes and the Gematik B2C app, if there would be another method which would convince doctors in order to roll it out, that is really something that we welcome as SHOP APOTHEKE. At the same time, it's, of course, very important that is a freedom of choice for the customer, so that the customer can really choose to which pharmacy they want to go to across the street or 3 streets further, or online. So it should be as frictionless and seamless as possible. And we are working there together with many stakeholders together with both the Gematik and Ministry of Health.
The next question is from the line of Olivier Calvet from Credit Suisse.
Jasper and Monica. Just 1 question left. I think at the Galenica JV announcement call, you weren't asked about Migros moving non-prescription in Switzerland, if I'm not mistaken. So I was just wondering if you could let us know how you see the competition developing in Switzerland going forward in light of this move?
But if you can repeat a little because the line was not very strong. So you asked about non-Rx in Switzerland, is that correct?
Yes, non-Rx in Switzerland with Migros move.
Yes. We had nice momentum, nice proposition growing strongly in Switzerland, and we at SHOP APOTHEKE at the moment are doing that in health care-related assortment because the sale of OTC online at the moment is not allowed in Switzerland.
So in most countries in Europe, OTC is allowed and Rx not. In some countries like Germany and the Netherlands, Rx and OTC are both allowed, but in Switzerland is just the other way around. At the moment, Rx is allowed and OTC not. How is possible that we at SHOP APOTHEKE have a fast-growing business there? That's the beauty and personal care, that's the vitamins and other supplements that are non-medications. So that's the business that we are having.
Galenica is very strong in the Rx business, actually 99.5% of the current sales of MediService are prescription sales. And for both of us, at the moment, it's not possible to do OTC in Switzerland. And of course, we, and I think also many customers in Switzerland are hoping that this will change in the near future. But we are not aware of any concreteness of a time line of having a change there.
Okay. Just to clarify the question. I meant on the non-medication assortment in Switzerland.
Yes. And then the question to that is.
If you've seen the growth move in the non-prescription part -- no, sorry, non-medication part. Do you have any comments there in terms of how the competition is evolving?
No, No. Not really. I don't know. Specify, are you referring to certain specific situation? We are seeing that we have SHOP APOTHEKE indirectly and just at all other countries were growing double digit. So in the competitive landscape in the countries also in Switzerland, and we have been able to grow our own business organically by more than 10%. Yes. Okay. Sorry, the line wasn't really strong, so I could not hear it immediately your question.
Our next question is from the line of Miro Zuzak from JMS.
I have two, if I may. The first one is on Page 11 of the presentation, you show basically the mix effect of the split between OTC and Rx being 0. On the other hand side, the strong margin increase of -- in the DACH segment from 26.5% to 28.5% is explained by positive mix effect. Could you please elaborate on this? What's actually happening within the portfolio that you are able to increase or to expand your margin by this high amount? I suggest to take this first, and then I have the second question afterwards.
Okay. Thanks for your question and joining the call today. Yes, what you're seeing is that in some quarters, we used to see quite some mix impact of country on OTC and Rx because the growth percentages were very different. Sometimes international was growing 80% and DACH was growing 10%, for example.
And if you then have a different margin, you can have quite a significant impact of mix and the same goes for OTC and Rx. In this case, because Rx was almost growing as fast as non-Rx, DACH was almost the same as international was. In the end, there was no impact from mix in countries and in OTC and in Rx.
If we then go to your -- probably the background of your question, what is then happening excluding this mix in the product? And then I'm actually reiterating what I was just saying to one of the other questions that have been asked. If this is the reflection that we at SHOP APOTHEKE continuously try to optimize our assortment. More assortment, the relevant assortment, giving the right price incentives to the right customers, giving them not to other customers focusing on existing customers in the loyalty and in the home mix that we are doing, we have been able to increase the profitability. So all-in-all, in selling our products that we were selling in quarter 1, we did so at more than a 1 percentage point higher gross profit margin than we did last year.
Okay. Impressive. The second one is on the selling and distribution costs in the International segment. It came down significantly versus the past from clearly above 30% now to 27% in terms of revenues. At the same time, the growth was less pronounced coming down from also higher rates in the past of clearly above, let's say, 30% not last year, but the year before, down to 18%. Obviously, the 2 lines they relate to each other. Can you tell us what's the strategy there and what we should expect going forward?
Yes. Yes. First to place it into context, the numbers of international are still of the magnitude that a change can lead quite easily to a quite significant change in the percent. The numbers are smaller than they are in our DACH segment.
So sometimes, the changes in the percentages are more pronounced, but still there is a story behind what you are asking for. In international, it is clearly also that result of scale, effectiveness of marketing and efficiency that helped us to improve the S&D as a percentage of sales. That's what it is.
The fact that our growth are somewhat lower is not because we decided to slow down our growth. That is not a situation with growth. It's also more the fact that we are getting there to more significant numbers there. So it's more difficult to grow, let's say, 2 years ago, the segment was still significantly smaller than it is now.
It's now a clear 20% of our total business. And it's not like we say, we save there in order to get that in market and that's why we reduced our growth. In all of our second countries that we are active we have a market-leading position or we have the ambition to get to a market-leading position in all our countries, we don't see a slowdown of the shift from off to online.
So we will continue to work, as we always work on having those leading or getting towards leading position, #1 or #2 in a country, and that is the same strategy we also have in international. That did not change. A little bit of the movement that you're saying, do normally, we don't comment on individual countries. It's actually also explained that we successfully in quarter 3 last year, opened our own operations in Italy.
And at the start of opening the operations, we have to get used to the new situation. Some customers have to get used to the new situation. So there, we were a little bit more careful, a little bit more cost and a little bit lower growth. And now you really see, as I also commented, a SHOP APOTHEKE trading update that actually throughout quarter 1 we already saw an improvement there. So that's some color I can give you on those market developments there. Our strategy is unchanged. What you're seeing is scale and efficiency that we are getting increasingly in those countries.
Okay. But if I may follow up on this one. I mean, that the growth at 18.5% was really basically, let's say, below what you've shown in the past. Now you mentioned the base of basically the scale of the operations, the base effect. Still, we are talking about very small sales given the number of countries you book in this segment and you grow much faster in Germany and then the rest of the DACH area. So can we expect that this segment is basically going to outgrow the DACH segment, excluding Rx? Or do you think this is going to grow in line with DACH, going forward?
We give only guidance on growth as a total company, and not on the segments. But in this case, I can give some color here. If you look at growth as a percentage, so the percentage growth, of course, that can fluctuate a certain period.
For example, quarter 1 last year, international was very strong. Perhaps the DACH was a little bit less strong at the moment there. But in the longer term, the growth percentage organically, not taking into account, they suggest that we want to achieve with Galenica as part of the transaction, but I think it's fair to say that in the longer run, taking out some quarterly impact that we're having, we see still more growth opportunities in international than we are seeing in the DACH segment.
Yes. So the percentage will, in the long run, in the midterm will be higher in international than it will be DACH. And sometimes not and sometimes yes, but if you take out the fluctuations, the growth percentage is more likely to be higher in international than it is in DACH. Yes.
So this concludes our Q&A session. I hand back to Jasper Eenhorst for closing comments.
Well, thanks very much, everybody, and we are exactly on time. We're saving ourselves 4 minutes. Thanks a lot for all your attention today and your questions. And that's it. I would like to end with what I started to thank everybody at SHOP APOTHEKE for working so a dedicated and motivated every day on satisfying our customers, but also focusing on having a good economic business model. Very happy to be part of it. And on behalf of Monica and myself, I wish you all a great day. Bye.