Welcome to the Bang & Olufsen is interim report for the third quarter, 2022- 2023. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Kristian Teär and CFO Nikolaj Wendelboe. Speakers, please begin.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. With me, as you heard, as always, I have my CFO, Nikolaj Wendelboe. I will begin with the financial highlights of our third quarter, followed by an update on how we are progressing with our strategy, and our priorities. Nikolaj will take us through the financials in more detail, and I will conclude the presentation part before opening up for questions. If we please move to slide number five. Revenue declined by 18% or 20% in local currencies. We had expected impact from the current macroeconomic headwinds, but we had not foreseen the development in China after the change in COVID-19 policy in the beginning of December. The change led to a surge of COVID-19 infections across the country and affected customer behavior and demand throughout the quarter. Consequently, revenue in China declined by 65%.
Overall, our product sales declined by 21.5%. Asia was heavily impacted by the development in China. EMEA retail partners continued to be cautious in replenishment of inventory. Americas delivered growth supported by currency tailwind. Brand Partnering and other activities grew by 16.7% or 11% in local currencies, driven by both license income and partnerships. All categories were impacted by the decline in China. However, several of our latest product additions, and in particular our newest sound bar, Beosound Theatre, still performed well. While our sales, sell-in revenue declined 18%, like for like, sell-out declined by 4%. The Asia region declined by 13% and was mainly driven by lower demand in China. EMEA declined slightly, and the Americas showed positive growth. The gross margin came in at 43.6% compared to 44% last year.
Despite a change in product mix towards lower margin products, our EBIT margin was heavily impacted by the lower revenue level, mainly due to the revenue decline in China. We generated a positive free cash flow of DKK 33 million in the quarter, mainly driven by reduced inventories. We continued to see solid progress with our strategy priorities, which I will elaborate on in more detail. Despite headwinds, our turnaround is progressing, and to ensure that we stay on track and are prepared for the future, we sharpened our strategic direction in Q2 with the aim to strengthen our luxury, timeless technology proposition. I will get back to this in a few minutes. Due to the lower than expected sale in China, we adjusted our outlook on March 17th. The updated outlook indicates that we expect improvements in Q4 compared to Q3. Please move to the next slide.
Sell-out declined by 4%, mainly impacted by low demand in China in all categories. EMEA declined by 2%. Our company-owned stores delivered solid growth of 53% with growth in all markets. Monobrand demand varied significantly across countries. In general, the Northern European countries experienced lower demand, whereas we saw a positive sell-out trend from the Southern European countries. Combined, sell-out in the six core markets declined with 2%. In the Americas, we delivered a 3% sell-out growth compared to Q3 of last year. The growth was mainly driven by Monobrand and e-tail, where we saw a good momentum. The main contribution to the sell-out growth in the Monobrand channel came from the high-end products in Staged category, coupled with new products like Beosound Theatre and Beoplay EX.
In our Asia region, sell-out declined 13%. The decline was across all channels, except for the multi-brand channel, and heavily impacted by low demand in China. South Korea had a decline of 5%, driven by monobrand, whereas multi-brand and e-tail showed a good growth rate. We saw solid sell-out growth in Japan of 70%, driven by multi-brand and e-com, and strong growth rates across all product categories. Looking at our product categories, our Staged category was flat in sell-out, whereas the Flexible Living category had a decline of 18%. Our On-the-go category had only a slight decline of 1%, and we saw positive trends for headphones and earphones. Overall, sell-out picked up at the end of the quarter. Please move to the next slide.
Building on our learnings from the past two years, we sharpened our strategic direction in January to ensure that we stay on track to deliver profitable growth and are prepared for the future. We want to deliver on the proposition of luxury, timeless technology. That means cementing our position within luxury, enhancing our focus on circularity and creating timeless products, and leveraging technology to offer our customers more spatial and personalized sound. We believe this will enable us to differentiate further, help us to prioritize our investments, and support our growth ambitions, even in a challenging macroeconomic environment. We have identified more than 200 million affluent design and music lovers in our core markets across our four core segments, very High Net Worth Individuals, EMCs, and young millennials, well-established, and careerists.
As communicated in Q1, we are refocusing our brand and marketing activities, especially towards the younger customer generations and the very high-net-worth individuals. Please move to the next slide. We're moving even further away from the premium consumer electronics market towards the bigger and more lucrative luxury market. Our own unrivaled heritage and unique combination of capabilities with sound design and craft enable us to make that shift. We are defining our blue ocean in the intersection between consumer electronics and luxury products with our offering of our long-lasting iconic products portfolio that bridge the past, present, and future. We're making five key strategic shifts to support our proposition of luxury timeless technology. We're reigniting our brand to become a culturally relevant luxury love brand. We're building a seamlessly connected product portfolio, bridging our past, present, and future. We are creating magical moments in connected touchpoints.
We are winning in key global cities, and we're exploring existing and new adjacent opportunities. Please move to the next slide. We made solid progress with our strategic priorities in Q3, and I would like to highlight a few of the most important initiatives. To cement our position in luxury, we want to continue to create desirability of our products. We know that our target segments have an affinity for product customizations, and to cater for that, we launched our first B&O Atelier limited editions, a made-to-order collection of the award-winning Beoplay EX earphones in lime green color. B&O Atelier is our studio in Struer, which leverages our craftsmanship capabilities, and the team specializes in bespoke products. In addition to meeting the demand for customization among our target group, our Atelier editions also reinforces our brand heritage and helps us to drive brand awareness.
Within the first hour following our announcement, 1,500 customers signed up to buy the first Atelier Edition EX, and we experienced a peak in the number of newsletter subscribers post-launch. When the collection became available for sale, all units sold out almost immediately. More editions will be launched throughout 2023 in a variety of unique colors, and B&O Atelier will work with other elements of bespoke and customized offerings. In March, we introduced new generations of our iconic speaker, Beosound 2 and Beosound A9. They are built on our cutting-edge technology platform, Mozart Platform. The heart of Bang & Olufsen's Mozart Platform is the replaceable modules front-loaded with enough processing power to receive software updates and features for many years to come.
In the connectivity and streaming technology over ever becomes obsolete, the firmware is automatically updated to a connected B&O device without any need of user interaction to ensure the product is always up to date and receives the latest features available. Through our Win London project, we have developed a go-to-market approach that is scalable to other cities. The project has been in execution for some time, while Win Paris has gradually gone into execution and Win New York is in the planning phase and expected to go into execution in Q4. Win London activations for the quarter included Gen Z influencer events and brand collaborations yielding a reach of 1.2 million people. The activations also zoomed in on the topic of longevity and featured hosting of longevity workshops and several other initiatives.
The efforts for the quarter paid off, delivered a solid sell-out growth of 75% of our company-owned stores in London, specifically, and sell-out growth of 14% for the U.K. overall. Win Paris activations kicked off in the quarter. A key activation was the first edition of Écouter en Scène, which means listening on stage, a planned series of listening events powered by our flagship product, Beolab 90, dedicated to the discovery of album releases and re-editions with renowned artists on the main stage of a historic concert hall in Paris. Tickets for the first event sold out immediately, we got the great PR coverage. We also co-hosted a pop-up event over five days with participation by a curated audience of Parisian target customers, journalists, and influencers.
We're already seeing positive results with sell-out growth reaching 12% for our company-owned stores compared to flat overall sell-out in France for the quarter. In quarter three, we announced our partnership with Scuderia Ferrari for the 2023 Formula 1 season. Ferrari is one of the strongest luxury brands in the world and a perfect match for us as a company. With 445 million Formula 1 viewers a year, we expect this partnership to help us increase our brand awareness significantly in the coming years. Already, the partnership has attracted immense interest. Extensive media coverage brought about a combined publication audience of 2.4 billion, our social platforms saw high level of interaction and boosted brand followers.
We expect to have events and activations throughout the Formula 1 season. Will enable more engagement with High Net Worth Individual customers and bring Bang & Olufsen product experiences to Formula 1 and Ferrari fans globally. Please move to the next slide. For the third quarter, we have expanded our customer base by 5%. In addition, we also continue to see more repeat purchases. The number of customers who own two or more products grew by 3%. We want our customers to build an ecosystem of Bang & Olufsen products. We are encouraged to see that customers are growing their B&O systems. This is a result of our improved brand and marketing efforts and the improved portfolio of connected products we have built the past couple of years. We saw a positive trend in our engagement with customers.
The number of newsletter subscribers increased further in Q3, and the duration of visits to our corporate website continued the positive development seen in previous quarters. The announcement of the Ferrari partnership and launch of EX Atelier limited edition drove traffic to our website as well. Please turn to the next page, and it's time for me to hand over to you, Nikolaj.
Thank you, Kristian. Now please turn to page 12. Reported revenue was DKK 635 million, which is a decline of 18% compared to last year, or 20% in local currencies. Compared to Q3 of last year, we have benefited from currency tailwind, especially related to the US dollar. The decline in reported revenue was driven by product revenue with a decline of 21.5% or 25% in local currencies. The quarter was heavily impacted by the development in China, where revenue dropped 65%. Our withdrawal from Russia and Belarus had a negative effect of approximately 2 percentage points on product revenue. In Europe, we continued to see caution regarding inventory replenishment from our partners. However, the launch of Beosound Theatre in Q2 had a positive impact on our performance in Q3.
Our Brand Partnering activities continued to show solid growth of 15.3%, corresponding to 11% in local currencies. The growth was driven by both our license income and our partnerships with Cisco. We expect growth from the Cisco partnership to normalize going forward. The growth in license income was driven by the automotive industry, which benefited from backlog of orders and easing supply chains for car components. Please turn to the next page. EMEA saw a 7.8% decline in revenue. Excluding the effect from our withdrawal from Russia and Belarus, revenue declined by 4%. As mentioned, our monobrand channel declined compared to last year due to caution among partners to replenish inventory. Our company-owned stores continued to deliver solid growth in the quarter, as they have throughout the year.
Our multi-brand channel also delivered growth, however, on the backdrop of lower comparables from last year, where we took back products from a few partners that could not sell them. That decline in revenue in EMEA was across categories, yet most impacted was the Flexible Living category, which is the category with the highest sensitivity to consumer behavior in times of economic uncertainty. The recently launched Beosound Theatre has a positive impact on reported revenue, and Beoplay EX also contributed positively to revenue performance. Reported revenue in Americas grew by 3%. However, adjusted for the currency tailwind, Americas declined 8% compared to Q3 of last year. Our expanded partnership with Origin Acoustics on custom installations contributed positively to revenue growth. We saw solid growth from the e-tail channel, both within Flexible Living and On-the-go.
Our own e-commerce channel declined slightly, yet we saw good growth from A9 and our flagship headphone, H95. The development in Asia was heavily impacted by the surge of infections in China and the backdrop of the change in COVID-19 policy. Revenue declined 46.4%, or 50% in local currencies. The negative impact was across all categories, with the largest decline in the Flexible Living category. Generally, some retail partners have built up excess inventory during the COVID crisis, which impacts our business. On the processor side, we saw good growth in Japan. All product categories were impacted by the significant decline in sales in China. The decline was partly offset by growth in newly launched products such as Beosound Theatre, which was the biggest single contributor to revenue. We also continued to see strong performance of Beoplay EX sales.
In general, for all regions, the lower sales volumes were partly offset by higher average selling prices driven by the price increases that we have implemented since last year. Please turn to the next page. Gross margin was stable at 43.6% against 44% last year, despite an overall change in product mix towards lower margin products in our On-the-go category. We delivered an improved gross margin on Staged and Flexible Living, partly due to price increases implemented. The On-the-go margin was impacted negatively by the sale of headphones as part of our efforts to reduce inventory of products with shorter life cycles. Also, lower revenue in Q3 resulted in the fixed cost to revenue ratio impacting the gross margin.
The gross margin from Brand Partnering and other activities was affected by our new collaboration with Cisco, where we have started to sell the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 headset for hybrid work. The change in product mix with more product sales reduced the gross margin in Q3 compared to the same period last year. Currency movements, in particular the US dollar, had an adverse impact on gross margin of approximately 1.5 percentage points compared to Q3 of last year. The EBIT margin before special items was negative by 6.8% against 0.7% in Q3 of last year. The margin decline was related to the lower revenue. Currency movements had a negative impact of approximately 1 percentage point compared to last year. Please turn to the next page.
Total capacity costs decreased by 1.5% to DKK 335 million. The quarter was impacted by reversal for employee bonus of DKK 19 million due to lower than expected performance, partly offset by a provision for redundancies of DKK 14 million. I will elaborate further on redundancies in our cost focus on the next slide. Development cost increased by DKK 16 million- DKK 86 million, and was driven by higher incurred cost in combination with a lower capitalization ratio compared to Q3 of last year. The increase in incurred cost was partly driven by the addition of more competencies, including our new office in Sofia, which is focused on software development. Distribution and marketing costs decreased by DKK 20 million- DKK 216 million. The decrease was mainly related to a one-off service cost relating to warranty obligations last year.
The marketing cost ratio was 10.8% in Q3 compared to 8.2% in Q3 of last year, the increase was driven by higher marketing costs in the three regions as well as lower revenue. Administrative expenses were stable at DKK 33 million against DKK 34 million last year. Please turn to the next page. Due to the continued uncertainty, war in Ukraine, rising interest rates and inflation, coupled with recent developments in China, we are continuously adjusting to the headwinds we are facing. On the operational side, we have last year implemented a broad hiring freeze with a few exceptions, for instance on software capabilities, as this is key to unlock our growth potential. We have since end of May 2022 reduced the number of employees by 36, despite adding strategic important competencies such as software capabilities.
Following the hiring freeze, we have initiated a reorganization in February where 35 employees were made redundant. The redundancies was made throughout the organization. We have this quarter successfully reduced our inventory level, which is also positively affected by a reduced level of spot buy components. We continue to focus on a healthy inventory composition going forward. Lastly, we are prioritizing our strategic investments to ensure the best possible balance with the economic environment we are operating in. Please turn to the next page. Net working capital decreased by DKK 66 million in Q3. Throughout the fiscal year, we have worked on improving our working capital. The net working capital ratio to revenue was 9.6% and declined compared to the elevated level at fiscal year-end of 11.4%. Inventory decreased by DKK 69 million.
The reduction in inventories was partly driven by a reduction in On-the-go products with shorter life cycles. At the end of Q3, no components purchased at the spot market remained on inventory. Both elements are contributing to a healthier inventory composition going into Q4. Trade receivables decreased by DKK 118 million, driven by lower sales in Q3 compared to Q2 and focus on cash collection. The trade receivables ratio was below both last quarter and last year. Trade payables decreased by DKK 142 million, mainly driven by lower activities in the quarter and timing of payments. As communicated in Q1, we have adjusted our production plans due to the elevated inventory levels going into the fiscal year. Compared to Q3 of last year, trade payables were DKK 196 million lower, reflecting the actions we have taken.
Other liabilities decreased by DKK 12 million during the quarter, primarily related to employee bonus. Please turn to the next page. Free cash flow was positive DKK 33 million compared to negative DKK 14 million last year. The improvement was mainly driven by a positive change in working capital. The CapEx were DKK 43 million, which was DKK 33 million below Q3 of last year, with a higher share of intangible investments. Intangible investments are mainly related to new products and our product platforms. Capital resources consisting of available liquidity and available drawing right on our revolving credit facility stood at DKK 328 million, up DKK 21 million from Q2. The increase in the quarter was mainly related to the improved cash position. Available liquidity was DKK 208 million compared to DKK 187 million in Q2.
With that, I would like to hand the word back to Kristian.
Thank you, Nikolaj. Please turn to page 20. As mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, we adjusted our outlook for the year on the 17th of March. The assumptions are broadly the same as previously. The main changes is regarding the progress in China, where we expect improved market conditions in Q4, yet at a slower pace than initially expected. The visibility remains low. We continue to face an unusually high uncertainty in the world. We continue investments related to retail development as well as marketing and product development. We have in March announced the launch of A9 fifth generation and Beosound third generation. Two of our iconic products are now available on our Mozart Platform. As listed, we expect the launch of an additional product innovation in Q4.
Further, we plan to continue investments in steady execution, but the timing and size of these investments will be adjusted based on market development. If we move to the next page. To recap, revenue declined by 18%, heavily impacted by decline in revenue of 65% in China. We delivered strong growth from our Brand Partnering activities. Gross margin level was kept despite changes in product mix towards lower margin products. We improved margins on Stage and Flexible Living categories also as a result of price increases. EBIT margin was impacted by lower revenue. We delivered positive free cash flow despite challenging macroeconomics. We saw a relatively robust sellout demand except for China. Sellout in America saw a positive trend. Sellout in EMEA declined by 2%.
Yet our company-owned stores delivered solid growth of 53% with growth in all markets. We continue to grow our customer base, and equally important, we see more customers expanding their Bang & Olufsen system with more products, which is a key part of our strategy. We have learned a lot from the first years with our turnaround strategy, and we have now sharpened our direction, and in Q3, we continue the strategic progress. Finally, as I just said, we adjusted our outlook for the year due to the situation in China. With that, we are opening up for questions.
Thank you. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. We'll have a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question will be from the line of Benjamin Silverstone from ABG. Please go ahead. Your line now be unmuted.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good morning, Kristian and Nikolaj. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two to begin with, if that's okay. The first one is regarding the sales in Q3. I mean, I know Q3 was a tough quarter, driven by China. That is completely understandable. However, I'm just trying to sort of better understand where there is some sort of correlation to the B&O positioning, which is, I get what you're saying, Kristian, that you have a blue ocean strategy right now, trying to sort of find a space between consumer electronics and luxury goods. With the quarter being down 18% in sales, and we saw yesterday that LVMH just reported their Q1 with revenues being up 17%, with Asia even driving up sales 36%, I think.
We saw Sonos in their latest quarter growing, I think, 1.2%. I'm just trying to get a bit understanding of what dynamics can explain this material sales growth difference between your luxury audio products and that of other luxury and audio companies. It is quite difficult to see a correlation here. If you can help with that'll be much appreciated. The last question to begin with is regarding the strategy. Obviously this Win City strategy is clearly working. I mean, London saw very strong seller growth, and Paris is also delivering a very solid growth, far beating the group levels. To compare these more fairly, are you able to give us an indication of the profitability of these cities as you are likely using a higher degree of marketing spend in these cities as well?
Just a follow-up to that is if these cities are also profitable, why not significantly ramp up faster this strategic initiative than what you're currently doing? Thank you so much.
Thanks, Benjamin. I'll start and then maybe pass on to Nikolaj, depending on how it goes. But if you first start with China is our biggest market. I think that is a very different situation than many of the companies that you mentioned, right? We are China number 1 market. We are in a transition to luxury timeless technology. We are not just there yet. I think that's another difference if you compare to many of the luxury houses. We also know, at least when we do our benchmark, since you mentioned it, that there are many luxury benchmark, particularly the watch industry, that also have severe declines in China, in the export of Swiss watches, for instance, to China, they are flagging big number declines.
The third thing that is making us different from the other ones is that we have a quarter that is December, January and February, whereas many of the companies have different quarters, a quarter four or a quarter one, where you have one affected month. We have two affected months. Basically in December, everybody did get sick in COVID, infected in COVID, and the ones who did not, they of course, were afraid of getting affected. There was very little traffic in the market, in the malls, in the multi-brand category overall. The other thing that affects this as well is that many, including our partners, had expected the market to rebound after Xi Jinping's reelection in October 2015. That didn't happen. Inventory levels were a bit higher than they should be.
China and Chinese partners, many of them are completely dependent on cash, and it's a cash economy, and they buy from us on cash as well. Therefore, of course, there is a price war immediately starting because everybody needs to deplete their inventories in order to convert them into cash. What you don't want to do at that point in time, if you're subject to that, is to ship in more inventory because that will only worsen the problem. We are not the only ones having had that situation. Two out of three months affected, I think it's 66% basically all the time, and we are down with 50% in revenue. I think there's a correlation in that.
The other things that I mentioned, I hope helps to explain it more. When it comes to the Win City strategy, we are very positive around the results that we see and encouraged by the results that we see. Again, here it takes time and it requires money to expand in the cities. We are building our new flagship store in New Bond Street, that has been unfortunately delayed due to permits due to supply delays of material interiors, et cetera. Also because we are cautious in how we spend our money, and we try to take big care of our profit and loss statement and our balance sheet. We are not doing it as quickly as we could have done probably otherwise.
Then the same, of course, goes for the other cities. We are doing it. We know it's good. We have evidence for the fact that it is working. Given what we had as an impact of China, not only quarter three, but if you think about the last 10 months, we basically have had four months of the last 10 months impacted by China. We had a complete lockdown of our warehouse in April, May, in both Shanghai and our customer, bigger customer, Sparkle Roll in Beijing in two months. You have December and January effects on that.
It's clear to say that our last 10 months have been severely impacted by the Chinese development and obviously as well, our capability to invest into marketing, into retail, into product is affected by that as well. We are adjusting to those realities. We don't have, as I'm sure you're aware of, the same balance sheet that many of the luxury houses do have as well, so they can mill on and execute on their strategies. Again, we're encouraged by the fact that it works, and we will keep on doing it, albeit probably at a little bit more cautious pace. You want to add anything, Nikolaj?
No, I'm not sort of going to add much. We won't disclose our specific profitability numbers for cities or specific stores. I can confirm that all our cities are profitable and our COCO stores are also profitable. The constraining factor in building out that network is in reality CapEx. We need to make sure that we start making earning back on the investments before we are investing in more. That's the approach we're taking. I think that's the prudent and right one to do for us right now.
Thank you very much, Kristian and Nikolaj. Just a quick follow-up on the last part, Nikolaj. When you say that the standalone stores are profitable, is that on a standalone basis or also take into account the marketing used in these cities at large?
That's also including, the higher marketing spend.
All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Benjamin. The next question will be from Poul Jessen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line now will be unmuted.
Yes. Hello from my side as well. I have a follow-up which then relates to the guidance and then also the performance of the peers you just spoke about. The difference in the quarters, that means that, they have March included, you don't. I was just wondering, how is China performing when you check the last six weeks where you must have numbers, and now I'm talking sell-out. Has that normalized as Louis Vuitton reported yesterday that they saw normalization in China?
Yeah. I take that one. We see already from March Sorry, from February, sell-out actually starting to come back. People are coming back from Chinese New Year, and they are not sick anymore, and they start to trade. That trend is continuing as well, into March. We see the same trend.
Okay, because I was just thinking about the guidance that you have given implicit for the fourth quarter, where you go from continued decline to a growth. I think that's a spread of 25%. In my view, should have over a month since you gave the guidance, have more confidence on what direction you are moving, the upper or the lower end of the guidance given.
Yeah. We say stand by the guidance. We still are not through in China, even though I think we see positive trends. There's still six, seven weeks to go before the quarter is over. We don't want to jump the gun here.
No. Then maybe to add, Poul, sorry for jumping in, but.
No, that's fine.
I think one thing that we need to remember in China is also there's sell out and then there's sell in. As we also said here during this call today, we do have retail partners in China that, due to the corona crisis, have high inventory. They also have to sell inventory out before it translates into to sell in for us. That's another factor in our cautiousness.
Your uncertainty to the quarter is maybe not relating to if demand is coming back, it's more when partners are starting to fill inventories again.
It's a combination.
That's one of those. The other thing, Poul, as well, is that being a luxury timeless technology brand, we certainly want to sell at full price, and we don't want to have discounting. That is also making us more cautious in putting volume in there.
Okay. another way of looking at, what Benjamin was talking about, the strong performance of your own stores as you report in the quarter. Is that making you having any thoughts about your future set up with franchisees and own stores? I know that you don't have the money right now. to do an informal integration, but is it having long-term discussions internally about the right setup?
Yeah. We would like to have more COCO stores in the key cities, that's clear. We know it's working and I think we actually said that already when we announced New York and Paris, that we have a list of cities that we have already done our due diligence on, where we would like to have own stores and continue with that work. That's clear and that's part of the strategy. The other thing that is also clear is that the learnings that we take from our own operated stores, we obviously as well try to implement in the monobrand stores and in the partner stores. Many of them are also benefiting from good results when they do take that playbook and implement it.
We have many as well that are from the past and that are not able to adapt to this playbook. We will see more termination as well. That has very little effect on revenue, but will certainly have an effect on the brand and the experiences that we deliver across the world. That work with renovation of monobrand network and in building own COCO stores will go on in the pace that we can afford.
A question for you, Nikolaj. That's the special items and the reversal of bonus which you have in the same quarter. Bonus is part of the before special items, I guess, and special items are then outside the adjusted number. Can you tell which cost lines are being impacted here?
On the bonus reversal?
Special items. No, if you take the special items, where shall we find these in the report?
Yeah. You will find them in all the cost lines, but primarily in sales and distribution and in development cost and a little bit in admin expenses.
Okay. Can you give the numbers of the distribution?
No, no, I don't have that number ready for you, Poul.
Okay. The bonus reversal, where do we find that?
Yeah. That's also impacting, all the different lines, sort of, you can say, relatively to the number of employees that we have in the different functions, right? It goes into all lines, sort of more or less relatively split out compared to the cost structure.
Okay. The final one for me is the cash balance, DKK 208 million. I know it's DKK 300 million if you take your facilities and the cash flow in the coming quarters. Are you sleeping well at night thinking about your cash position? I guess that we should see continued working capital support in the fourth quarter, but then we move into quarters typically Q1 next year, which typically has negative cash flow because of the small size.
Yeah, no. Fair question, Poul. Of course, we are monitoring cash flow and working with cash flow in a proactive way, in a diligent way. We are also taking measures and changing things in order to change lots of historical patterns in cash flow. If you look at something we announced as well when it comes to a more Ferrari-like supply chain with a low volume production strategy where we don't have everything on demand and where partners will have to wait for delivery time, et cetera. We are making changes to the operating model in that respect. Of course, some of them will take time, and we are trying to be super cautious and prudent on how we spend our money. That's all I think we would want to say at this point in time.
Unless Nikolaj wants to add anything on how he sleeps at night.
I sleep fine at night, but I think as you said, of course, it's a focus area. As we also repeated in the last many calls, we are following the plan that we've had all year. Of course, except from China, and the impact that is having. It continues, of course, to be a focus area for us.
When you monitor the franchisees, do you see any risks there of defaults?
No, we do not see any risk at this point in time. As we haven't done for the past many years, I think we actually have a quite strong partner network when it comes to sort of their financial structure. We have had no losses in the past many years on our franchisees.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you, Poul. As a reminder, please press star to ask a question. The next question will be from the line of Niels Granholm-Leth from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question is about your net working capital. Nikolaj, could you talk about the potential to further reduce your net working capital in the short term? You used to operate business at around DKK 200 million in net working capital. You are still at DKK 269 million. Is there any further potential to reduce net working capital in the short term? Secondly, could you talk about the effect that the inventory reduction had in this quarter on your gross margin? I guess your inventories would include quite a bit of indirect production costs, so it must have had a negative effect on your gross margin in this quarter. How we should view this in the next few quarters? Thank you.
On networking capital, we do still see potential to reduce, especially on our own inventory situation. I think it's always a little bit tricky to talk about networking capital as a number because of the composition and the seasonality that you see. Inventory, definitely, we see potential to reduce further. We have reduced almost DKK 200 million in the past year on our own inventory and almost DKK 70 million in the past quarter. The reduction rate will go down from here because it's becoming more and more healthy. The biggest challenge we have on inventory right now is actually related to China also, where we still have too much on inventory in our own warehouse.
That's where we should expect to see reductions going going forward. When we talk about payables and receivables, especially on the receivable side, we do expect the receivables level to increase in the future as we start growing the company again. That will have an impact. If we go back to the overall networking capital levels we had during the, what I call the supply chain crisis, I think that was quite low, probably lower than what is sustainable when we are growing the business. I would be careful around sort of predicting sort of overall networking capital levels going down a lot going forward, but definitely own inventory should be reduced further.
Great. When it comes to the effect from indirect production cost on your gross margin in the quarter, how much was that? Should we expect another effect here in the next quarter?
Yeah. The impact basically come from, yeah, from indirect production cost and the fixed cost allocation, as we call it, into the gross margin. It has an impact of a couple of percentage points in the quarter, which is basically driven by the lower revenue. That's the impact we see from that.
Great. Could you talk about the effect that the termination of spot purchases could have on your gross margin for the next few quarters?
Yeah. We're seeing an easing on the component situation. We haven't had a lot of concrete spot buys in the past quarter, meaning that we also took out the last spot buys that we had on inventory out in the P&L in Q3. That should improve our margin not only in Q4 but also in the coming year. When you look at our guidance, maybe I should put it this way, for the full year and you look at the indirect sort of guidance than we have for Q4, you would also see that we expect to have a positive EBIT margin before special items, even in the low range of our outlook.
That is to a large extent driven by an improved gross margin, due to fewer expensive components in the margin.
Great. Would you still have any ASP uplifts feeding through your P&L here in the coming quarter if you compare with that of last year? Could you also elaborate on how much the ASP effect was on a group level in this quarter compared to last year?
We will still expect to see an impact from improved average selling prices as we have done price increases here in March again. I'm not giving any details as to how much because implementation time of this is always due to inventories and et cetera in the channel, difficult to predict sort of exactly. Over the past year or so, we have definitely seen an increased ASP level. On average it's been 5%-6%, but in some product categories it's been up to 10%-11%. We have to remember that we've also seen increases in the general production cost of around 10% in the past year due to inflation.
It's more revenue impact than really a gross margin impact that we're seeing right now.
Great. Just a final question for Kristian, if I may. You mentioned that you have seen better sell-out data towards the end of the quarter. Would that apply to all your regions? Could you talk about, where you're seeing, the best performance, worst performance as we, as we speak?
My comment was specifically to China, number one. We have like we also say in the report, the Nordic countries seems to be much more cautious than Southern Europe countries and it's not like a homogeneous kind of picture when we look at the sellout. Denmark, for instance, is very different than U.K., for instance, as well. I would rather refrain from doing that at this point in time. We certainly see many places and many partners to having good sellout numbers. The biggest worry for us has been China and that the China is picking up, given it's the biggest market, I think is the best sign that we can see at this point in time.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Niels. As there are no more questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you everybody for joining today. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact Christina. Thank you very much.