Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and good evening. Welcome to this conference call about Q3 2021 revenue for Fnac Darty. I will now give the floor to Jean-Brieuc Le Tinier, new Chief Financial Officer. You now have the floor.
Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for joining us to this conference call about Fnac Darty Q3 2021 revenue. As usual, our press release and presentation will be available on our website. Stéphanie Laval, who is Investor Relations Director, is here with me today. We will start with a few remarks about the Q3 turnover, and we will talk about the outlook and then take your questions. Slide two. We are very happy about our sales performance this quarter. They have been stable at EUR 1.853 billion, knowing that the basis was very high because last year we had an increase of 7.3% in the Q3 2020.
We also had higher sales than in 2019, 7.4% more, excluding Nature & Découvertes and BCC. Our shops have remained open over that period of time. There have been some health restrictions with opening time in the Iberian Peninsula and the health pass in France, which meant that some shopping centers were closed, which meant that we had a limited number of shops open. We had an increase of 12.7% in comparable data compared with 2020 and 9.3% increase compared with 2019 without Nature & Découvertes and BCC. This performance relies on our omni-channel model with our online sales, which have kept going up even though shops were open. So far this year, our sales have remained high with 26% of total sales online, which meets our expectations, and we have also gained 8 points compared to 2019.
The complementarity of our shops and digital platforms were visible this quarter with click and collect sales, which have remained high with 46% and a normative rate of 50% online. Before giving you more detail about our performance in each region, I wanted to talk about our gross profit margin, which has remained stable compared with 2020. Aside from the negative impact of our ticketing sales and the dilutive technical effect of franchise, our margin has slightly increased compared with 2020, and also thanks to Darty Max and new services. However, we still have not recovered completely to the level of 2019. For example, with Nature & Découvertes, which was particularly impacted by health restrictions since the beginning of this year with the number of visitors in shops that was really affected. Now, let's look at the performances in each region.
In France and Switzerland and Belgium and Luxembourg, there was a really strong comparison basis because last year there was an upswing after the end of the first lockdown. In France and Switzerland, there has been strong resilience, which have remained stable compared with 2020, thanks to growing online sales. However, there was the implementation of the health pass in France. The transformation rate and average basket are still increasing. In addition, there is still a lot of diversification and a dynamic trend in publishing products with an increase in sales of 9.4%. In Belgium and Luxembourg, sales have slightly gone down, especially for household appliances, which were very significant before. However, compared with 2019, sales have still gone up by 1.5%. In the Iberian Peninsula, sales have been pushed up by online sales and sales in shops, thanks to the end of health restrictions.
Editorial products, telephony, and services helped maintain this growth. This should continue until the end of this year. Slide four. Let's now look at the performance of our sales per category of products. Products linked to working from home and home equipment did extremely well last year or during the health crisis. They have now slowed down a little because of a very strong basis effect. In addition, our technical products have been very resilient thanks to iPhone 13 and thanks to customers responding enthusiastically to certain products, for example, television and audio products. When it comes to household appliances, sales have gone down a little, especially for air conditioning and fans and freezers, because there haven't been as many heat waves this summer compared to last year.
Editorial products did really well everywhere. Especially books and comic books and mangas, which represented one product sold out of three. Thanks to the Pass Culture, cultural pass in France, which we have been partnered with for a long time, our performance also was really good. This pass was implemented last May and targets 800,000 young people who can spend EUR 300 in books, audio products, video, or cultural events. Gaming also did well, thanks to new consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox, and thanks to postponed sales. Finally, this quarter, services also benefited from our ongoing Darty Max offer, which is a subscription reparation subscription which is unlimited. However, our marketplace was undermined by a low level of availability for certain of our products. There also has been new VAT regulations. Now let's move on to slide number five.
I would like to talk about our new strategic progress. We have improved our customer experience thanks to sales done through video calls or chat online. Everywhere in our network of shops, we will have a new integrated model. There have been 90,000 video calls since it was launched last February. We also launched a new initiative, which is called L'Éclaireur Fnac, which allows customers to make well-informed decisions when they shop. This is in line with our new commitment for better informed decisions and sustainable shopping. We are very proud of the fact that our commitments when it comes to social responsibility and the environment have been appreciated by ratings agencies.
We have now a rating of 7.8 out of 10 by MSCI, and we are now part of the Robust category of Vigeo Eiris, which is part of Moody's ESG Solutions with 54 out of 100, which is six additional points compared to last year. All ES and G components have also made progress this year. Fnac Darty is now part of the top 10 European companies specialized in specialized distribution. Environmental, social, ethical, and governance issues are now fully part of our model and with our ambition for the Everyday plan. I will now conclude with a few words about the situation and the outlook for the group. We are very happy to see that all our shops have remained open so far, and we hope that this will continue. However, some of our activities are still negatively impacted by the crisis, such as ticketing services.
This should improve next year, thanks to cultural events gradually being planned again. In the Iberian Peninsula, the improvement is a bit slower. When it comes to Nature & Découvertes, this is also negatively impacted because of restrictions in shops. In Switzerland, there's still room for improvement because some shop-in-shop in Manor have still not opened. This year, you should keep in mind that the basis for comparison will be really high because of last year's very high sales. However, thanks to our logistical capacities and digital capacities, and thanks to our relationships with our suppliers, we are very confident about the fact that our products will be available. We think that we should be able to grow and make the most out of Black Friday and Christmas.
Far, our inventory is higher than it was last year, although there is some stress on certain products, especially in telephony and gaming. In the past, our group has always been flexible and managed to adapt in the face of uncertainty and made partnerships with strategic suppliers in order to offer quality products and services. For this reason, we expect our turnover to be slightly higher than 5% compared to 2020 for 2021, and we hope to have a current operational result at around EUR 260 million-EUR 270 million. Finally, managing our costs will remain an absolute priority, along with generating cash flow for our Everyday plan objective. Thank you very much for your attention, and I will now listen to your questions.
If you have any questions, feel free to press zero one on your keyboard. We have a first question. Clément Genelot, you have the floor.
Good evening, everyone. I have three questions. First, about the inventory. You said that you have more inventory than last year. How much is it? To date, have you already received all your inventory for Black Friday and the Christmas season? Second question, what are the figures that you expect for the increase in Q3 and Q4? Finally, what do you mean by a growth that is slightly above 5%? If we look at Q4 now, + 5% means that there would be a slowdown in trends. I understand that there is a high basis for comparison, 2% growth means that there will still be a slowdown. Are you just being careful, or did you take into account shortages for some of your products? Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you for your question. Inventory is higher than last year, between 5% -1 0% higher than last year. It's around that type of a figure, not 20%, that's for sure. The consequence, and by the way, in a context where we've conducted many sales in the last six months, and let me remind you that we had the end of 2020 at a very low inventory level. We were able, during the first nine months of the year, to reconstitute our inventory and even increase it by the end of the third quarter to prepare the end of the year.
In terms of inventory in relation to Christmas and Black Friday, we haven't received everything, and that's a good thing, because when you look at the volumes in terms of checkouts and internet sales, we are incapable to physically stock everything as of to date. I would say that the consequences in terms of working capital requirement would not evade anyone here. Stocks will be supplied and provisioned between now and the beginning of December. At this stage, as I said, the orders have been put in and we don't see any specific pressure. There will be a little bit for telephones or in hardware on IT. This is quite obvious, but generally speaking, we don't expect specific impacts. The second question was to do with the price effect.
Well, I would say that what we see today is that we have an increase of average baskets, and this has been seen in the last nine months. The inflation component in this increase is quite minor, relatively minor to date. The price effect for us is first drawn by increasing of ranges of products of our customers. This is the specificity of our brands, Darty and Fnac, which makes us strong in this context of shortages of products. We see that since we've integrated this notion of sustainability, Darty Max, for instance, that we orient our customers to products that are more long-lasting, so higher in terms of price, but better in terms of profitability long-term for customers. We see that consumers like this, and that this basket effect is drawn more by the premiumization of people's purchases rather than the actual price effect.
For your last question, in terms of the guidance, well, on sales figures this is not something new. You've heard our guidance at the first quarter as well. We expect a reduction of sales for Q4. Our guidance for Q4 doesn't change. We have Q3 that is good, we're increasing actually the guidance for Q4. The expectations won't change, however, in relation to what we said three months ago, which are negative indeed. As you said, we have a history of 8%, we could have pressure on telephone, IT, for instance. We are exactly aligned with what we'd announced previously. No specific point on guidance. This is what we see today, we're quite comfortable with this for the time being.
Okay, thank you.
We have a next question from Geoffroy Michelet from Oddo BHF.
Hello, this is Geoffroy speaking. Thank you for these excellent figures. I didn't recall where was consensus for Q3, but what's remarkable is the level of France and Switzerland. Could you go into more detail maybe on these very good performances, once again, of the data from Banque de France, and which means that you've continued being ahead of forecast over the year, even though Q4 is still crucial, of course. Also, could you zoom in on e-commerce sales, online sales, please, in relation, so maybe giving us more explanations than what you gave in the communication?
Okay. Yes, indeed, France and Switzerland are doing very well on the quarter.
When we look at two-year performances are very sturdy, this is bolstered over two years by all brands and families. When you look at white goods for Q3, where you see that Banque de France is at -66. Slight slowdown for white goods. The fact is that you have to put this in perspective with the relative weight of the basic level, which was quite high for last year with coolers, fans, and freezers and refrigerators. We are indeed bolstered by very dynamic markets, especially for France and Switzerland. As you've noted, over one to two years, we've garnered significant market shares in relation to Banque de France. This is true for online and store sales.
For e-com, the good news for e-com is that in spite of the base effect that's quite strong, because last year we had online sales that had exploded EUR 862 million to practically EUR 1.3 billion. We're now stabilizing these online sales, slightly increasing over the quarter and over the whole year. We're very happy, actually very happy with what we're seeing, the share of stores reopening comparable to previous years and increasing online sales as well. Now that the cusp of the health crisis is behind us, we see long-standing positive trends. I don't know if I'm answering your question because otherwise I couldn't give you very many more examples. We're not going to go into the detail of online sales.
No, very clear and very useful. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to ask questions, please press 01 on your keyboard.
We have a few questions coming in particular one from Florent Thy-tine from Midcap. Go ahead, Florent.
Hello, gentlemen. Just a short question on my side concerning guidance, in particular in terms of profitability. I understand what you said about sales figures. Now in relation to profitability, even though we're at the top of the bracket, we would probably be at profitability levels comparable to 2019 with a sales figure that's much above it, even though you're still only at + 5%. What leads you to be so cautious considering that the messages on gross margins are quite positive? Do we have any good surprises in stock?
Florent, quite objectively, if I give guidance at 14:31, excuse me, at 18:31, I'm not going to go over what I said at 18:54.
The fact is, what you need to keep in mind about this guidance is that we're going back to 2019. Practically at the same level as 2019, when we still have product categories in certain zones that haven't completely recouped. For instance, ticket selling have not gone back to profitability levels that we had in 2019. Iberian Peninsula is the same, going back to previous levels slowly, and yet we have gone back to 2019 levels. In the same time, we've all noted that the company has entirely changed its sizing. Historically speaking, in 2019, we were at 19% on online sales. We moved up to 28% with the disruptions in relation to our logistics networks, supply chains, and stores. We've absorbed all of this, going back to 2019 results.
We are extremely happy about this performance and quite confident in relation to the guidance that we have given.
Should we understand that growth for e-com is less profitable than store growth?
This isn't necessarily the case. Historically, e-com growth was the same as in stores. We had about the same levels of growth, but as you may know, profitability of e-com goes by click and collect. A rate of click and collect that's about 50%. We had stores that closed, constraints, regulatory constraints with the health crisis, and we see that as soon as stores open, we are close to 50%, but not quite. We were at 46% with constraints in terms of customer traffic in stores, et cetera. Of course, click and collect and a reopening of stores is going to add to that profitability.
We haven't reached the same level of store openings in relation to 2019, yet we have these positive figures, so we're quite confident in relation to the guidance.
We have another question from Clément Genelot from Bryan, Garnier. Again. Clément?
Yes. You mentioned the impact of the passe sanitaire in France, the health pass. Could we have the number of stores impacted by this measure? Could we have as a basic principle that the extent of the impact was the same as on supermarkets in France, which were also impacted? For your information, most operators say that their stores
Supermarkets that were impacted had sales figures that were between -15% and -20%. Is this the same for Fnac Darty?
Good evening, Clément, this is Stéphanie. In relation to the passe sanitaire, this was put in place at the beginning of August in France and concerned a little over 30 Fnac and Darty stores. This started to go down every week, all the way to 0 stores at the beginning of October. It impacted the Nature & Découvertes brand because these stores are mostly situated in shopping malls. Now, we are not giving any figures in terms of the specific impact of this passe sanitaire, very difficult to modelize, but this is the ballpark idea of the number of stores that were impacted.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you want to ask a question, ladies and gentlemen, please press 01 on your keyboard. Another question from [ Ryan Tsui] from Société Générale. Go ahead.
Marie-Line Fort , actually. I have a question concerning your French and Switzerland revenue figure. I'd like to know what represented deployment of Manor corners, considering that the results like-for-like are interesting, but I'd like to know what the Swiss figure represents in the sum total figure. The other question is more mid-term for 2022. You have basic effects that will be quite strong for the beginning of the year, and so what are the growth relays that you're considering to ensure the right momentum as of beginning of 2022? Thank you.
Thank you, Marie-Line. Yes, for Manor today, we have four corners that were opened representing a revenue figure that's quite marginal at the beginning of the year or even this quarter. Of course, this is not integrated into the LFL. For Switzerland, it's about between EUR 100 million and EUR 200 million sales figure.
For Manor for 2022, we had said that once the whole fleet would be deployed, it would represent an additional revenue about EUR 100 million. Considering that by the end of the year, we will have nine openings of a shop-in-shop Manor compared to what was planned, the rest of the 14 that are left are by the month of June of next year. EUR 100 million additionally by 2022. This, to be clear, is once we have opened all of the 20 shop-in-shops. This will be implemented by the end of the first quarter 2022, projecting to the 30th of June, representing EUR 100 million over the 12 months, part of which will be over 2022.
It's clear, you have to correlate this to the size of Switzerland to see that the impact is quite significant on Switzerland. It's a bit early to talk about 2022. We might do this in terms of yearly statements and financial calls, we may have stores that will be much less impacted compared to 2021 by storage closures. We see that e-com, even going back to the history that are quite strong, we have this capability of going back to previous figures and even to growth, this is the work that we can do with our customer base. The Iberian Peninsula ticket selling and Nature & Découvertes should go back to positive trends other services in the group as well.
Apart from any fleet opening Manor effect that will contribute to growth like for like, we still have possibilities for growth that are non-negligible, but we'll talk about this at the beginning of next year.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
I don't think we have any more questions. We don't have any more questions in French or in English.
That's perfect. Thank you everyone for joining us today on this conference call, and have a lovely evening. See you soon.