Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the conference for the semester results of Fnac Darty. I will give the floor to Enrique Martinez. You have the floor.
Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. I would like to thank you for being connected today with us for this conference call dedicated to the results of the first semester of Fnac Darty. We'll present those results with Jean-Brieuc Le Tinier, which is with me today. Before we start talking about the details of financial elements, I would like to talk about a few elements which were in the headlines for the past few days. We confirmed yesterday that a inquiry was ongoing after the irregularities, which was observed in a very limited numbers of Darty shops.
After a series of internal control reviews, we made sure that the public prosecutor of Paris was aware of it since January 2021, of course, we lodged a complaint. This judiciary inquiry is not targeting the Fnac Darty Group, is targeting individuals which were at the origin of those actions. A few collaborators decided to benefit from a few loopholes existing in our internal control systems in order to act this way.
The group is condemning strongly those practices, even if it's not significant at the scale of the group. It remains illegal and completely unacceptable, especially if we take into account the practices and the ethics of the group and its collaborators. We are actively cooperating to the current inquiry, we made sure that an external audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, can help us in order to make sure that such actions can't happen again.
I would like to talk about something else. The group wished to participate with a few French e-commerce stakeholders to the e-commerce charter, which is supported by the Minister of the Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, and the Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, Cédric O. We have signed yesterday this common charter, which aim is to reduce environmental impact of the e-commerce activities.
With this project, the group would like to make sure to reach ambitious actions regarding its e-commerce processes and also to accompany the customers in order for them to have more knowledge when it comes to buy online. We would like to work for a more sustainable economy, we're very proud to be one of the stakeholders of this project. Now we will start to dive into the details and talk about the different elements of the financial elements for the semester 2021.
As usual, you will be able to find those documents on the website of the group. Now let's have a look at the third slide. I would first of all remind you that this semester was really impacted by the fact that we needed to carry on the health restrictions in all the different territories where Fnac Darty is present. It is penalizing the operating conditions of our different shops and businesses and restricting our usual activities because we needed to close down a few shops of our group, a few aisles sometimes, depending on the territories. For example, in France, more than 90 Darty shops were closed, and all the Fnac Darty shops were closed for a month and a half.
As you know, the ticketing services were really impacting, especially during the first semester because of the cancellation and the massive postponing of shows and cultural events. Today, the restrictions are not as stringent, we need to abide by the personal protective measures, especially when it comes to the possibility to have access to a few shops. Now slide four. We are really happy of our activity level for this past semester. The different markets remained very dynamic. The online activity remained very important in parallel. On top of that, we had a good performance in our different shops during this period. We managed to once again attract new online customers during this period of time.
Just in a nutshell, we had sound results which were registered for the first semester 2021. Now we managed for the first semester to have an income of EUR 3,465,000,000, which represents an increase by 21% in comparable data, which is due to our sound operational execution, thanks to the work of all the regions and the fact that the different product categories remained attractive. More than 28% of the group were done thanks to our digital platform. The activity of our platforms remained at present. Our margin was maintained. Gross margin rate was, for this part, 29.7%. We managed to have a very important product mix.
We managed to compensate the lowering of the sales for the ticketing service for the first semester 2021 because of the governmental measures and also because of the withdrawal of the activities of the Darty shops and because of the dilutive technical effect of the franchise. During the second semester, the group managed to change around the trend for this gross margin rate with a new dynamic for the second quarter, which was better than during the first quarter. The operational result was EUR 34 million for the first semester 2021, with an increase of EUR 92 million compared with the first semester of 2020. For the same parameter and in spite of the ticket service and the activity of the Iberian Peninsula, which was impacted by the crisis.
To conclude, we are very happy about the results, which has allowing us to be in advance regarding the income and the expected operational results. Now slide five, we managed to really focus on the different product categories, which was really a boost for our income during the entire semester, especially because the technical and IT equipment really seduced, attracted our customers, and were very successful because of the teleworking context. The television was also a key product with the broadcasting of the European Football Game.
The cultural dimension was also crucial during this semester. It was promoted in France, especially because of the Pass Culture, this launch in the entire territory and this generalization in the entire territory will help EUR 10 million of 10 million young people of 18 years of age to be able to use a price of EUR 300 in order to buy books, audio products, videos, or to buy tickets for shows in all the Fnac shops. Our partnership with the platform ZEWAY allows us to distribute in different shops and in the group e-commerce platforms swapperOne the first rechargeable battery scooter, which can be recharged in 50 seconds.
The home and design segment is really following a good trend with the deployment of our Darty Cuisine offer, which was carried on during the semester with the opening of 11 points of sale, four per se and seven under the format of the franchise. We knew that was an acceleration of the segment of the services with the launch in June of three new offers for the repair services by the subscription Darty Max, which was the forefront of its new strategic plan Everyday.
Now let's focus on the sixth slide. This semester was deeply impacted by the presentation of our strategic plan Everyday, which has the ambition to be able to help us to embody the new standards of a successful omni-channel retail system of tomorrow. There is a digitalized form and the human-focused form.
In order to do that, we have a growth of our unit activities, which will be crucial, and at the heart of our omni-channel strategy. We have gained 2 million new clients on the web for the first semester 2021, associated to the Click & Collect , which was actually successful. We really try to have the share of the mixed active customers both on two channels, the web channel and the different brick-and-mortar shops, which was an increase of 4 points on the year by the end of June 2021. We know that more than 70,000 sales were done this semester thanks to video conferences or via chats with sellers, which shows that we knew how to use our new omnichannel trade levels.
Also, we carry on with our strategic plan with the opening of 18 new shops and 15 franchise, allowing us to have a new fleet of 923 shops, among them 359 franchise by the end of June. Last but not least, we have our trial period. It led to the deployment of four shop-in-shops Fnac in the Manor shops by the end of 2020. Now we are going forward in Switzerland, and we announced the opening of 27 shop-in-shops by the end of the first semester 2022.
Thanks to these partnerships, Fnac Darty is now aiming to have an additional income of at least EUR 100 million in the third year regarding the impact on the free cash flow of the group expected, which is EUR 500 million of the period 2021 - 2023, in spite of the investment linked to the deployment of the partnership. Slide seven. Now we really try to develop series of actions aiming to accompany our customers in order to consume more responsibly and to make sure that our products are more sustainable and have a better shelf life. We have an opening with We Fix of 16 new points of sales, which will lead to a new number of points of sales of 130 by the end of June 2021.
We'll have more at home repair services representing 560,000 repairs in workshops or at home, which is an increase of 29% compared with the first semester 2020. There is also new 13 classes for new trainings, which will be able to welcome new apprenticeships for technicians on the entirety of the territory. For the third time in a row, Nature & Découvertes got the B Corp Certification, showing its continued commitment with its customers in order to accompany them in a sustainable way of life. On top of that, the group is carrying on with its actions in other areas linked to the environmental and social responsibility.
Because of that, Fnac Darty reconfirmed its commitment for the climate, especially with the initiative Ambition for Climate, showing the concrete commitment of the big companies in the fight against climate change, presenting the projects aiming to reduce the carbon footprint. When it comes to the services, we are trying to accelerate the deployment and the development of Darty Max. Our subscription repair services for all the household appliances concern the fact that we would like to go from a transactional model to a subscription-based model. We currently launched three new offers in France, extending the covering of new categories of products with the small household appliances, our TV and cinema, sound and photo, and multimedia.
The complementary offer is helping us to really meet the expectations of the customers when it comes to the repair services with an ambition to reach at least 2 million subscribers for Darty Max by 2025. We are really satisfied with the impact of our Darty Max action on the evolution of the customer behavior. We observed that the basket of our subscribers, Darty Max, is 25% higher than the average basket, which shows that there is an increase in value, which is linked to our service-based programs.
To conclude, I would say that we can keep on delivering on the operational point of view, except if we had supplying issues that we anticipated at the beginning of the year. Now we have a good availability of the products for the second part of the year. Now there are the first key actions coming from Everyday that are ongoing, and I give the floor to Jean-Brieuc .
Let's talk about the retail performance of each region before we talk about the operational performance and financial performance of the group. Let's start with slide nine. The France and Switzerland zone is in the most for us. We have a strong growth of 22.6%. As Enrique said, there was a closure of different shops and commercials in malls for more than 10,000 sq meters for weeks, which led to the closure of 90 Darty shops. On top of that, the Nature & Découvertes shops for selling products which were deemed non-essential led to the rise of sales on the semester.
Thanks to new digital channels, we can make sure to move the sales from the closed shops to the shops which could remain open. The performance web contribute to the progression, even if there is a high comparison base. The different equipment linked to what you have to do with TV, the telephones, and IT products were increasing, even if you have a shortage of components mentioned before by Enrique. People also try to be more comfortable at home. That's why they started to buy products of better quality. The air climatizer was the only category which was not as successful because there was not so many heatwaves as the past year.
The digital products experienced a strong growth led by the book sector, which benefited from the possibility of more shops to remain open compared with the last year, and the launch of the Pass Culture for the young people of 18 years of age in all the Fnac stores of France. The services are increasing.
It is linked to the WeFix franchise, which is showing an increase of 63% of the sales on the semester, which is helped by winning proximity format and also by a new restockage system on the first semester, and also a very good level of sales by the end of 2020. The ticketing services also showed strength impact of the semester after the government measures forbidding people from gathering, compared with the beginning of 2020, before the first lockdown period, which was not impacted by those measures.
This strong dynamism of this income with a good management of professional costs allowed us in France and Switzerland to have a recurring operational result of EUR 33 million, which means an increase of EUR 78 million compared with last year. Now slide 10, let's talk about the Iberian Peninsula.
There was a growth of the income of 18.2% compared with the last semester. I would like to remind you that those shops were opened later than the other regions. After the first quarter, the growth was 3%. The area has a strong growth of 30% of the second quarter. Also, all the product categories were experiencing a growth. Especially phones and televisions, sound systems, and the book. IT has very strong growth, which is more normative because of the base, very high effect.
There is also macroeconomic environment, which is penalized by the health crisis in Spain and Portugal, also strong competition this semester, especially for technical products. That's why we penalize the recurring operational results of the area, which remain negative on the first semester with -EUR 4 million. It is an increase compared with the past year, with +EUR 8.5 million. Let's talk about Belgium and Luxembourg in slide 11.
The Belgium and Luxembourg areas is impacted by a very strong growth of its income, an increase of 13%. This is the comparable data of the semester. It is helped by the sound performance of the different shops and the dynamic of the online sales. There is also the help of the teleworking system, which are implemented within companies, boosting the sales for the appliances and books.
There was the recurring operational results of +EUR 5.6 million, an increase of EUR 5 million compared to the first semester of 2020. Let's talk about the P&L results in slide 12. I want to talk about the gross margin rate Enrique talked about at the beginning of the conference call. Let's talk about the costs we mastered. We controlled the operational costs during the semester, which allowed us to have an income of 300 basis points with 28.7%. This reduction was realized in spite of the increase of the personal charges. As Enrique said, the operational result is higher than what went in the first semester 2018, which was EUR 32 million.
The same scope, and taking into account the Nature & Découverte throughout the full year and outside of the BCC, and risk compensating the issues of the ticketing services in the Southern European countries. This performance allows the group to reach the recurring operational gross margin rate for the first semester 2021 in line with the one of the first semester 2019 for the comparable scope.
That's why when it comes to the non-recurring operational cost, it is EUR 3 million, which is really below what was going on the first semester 2020, since we had the depreciation of the Darty brand for EUR 13 million and the cost directly linked to the health crisis of EUR 6 million. It means that the operational result is EUR 32 million. We had a new financial structure, which is OCEANE, an extension of the RCF budget line, the RCF line.
Thanks to the payment extension of the guarantee of the state-backed loan reimbursed last March, was Fnac compensated the interest gained, registered with the restructuring of our debt in 2021. The net result of the group of the consolidated system is a growth of EUR 136 million compared to the first semester 2020 with EUR 16 million after the accounting on the first semester 2021, with the tax adjustment in link with the divestment of the Dutch subsidiary, BCC, in November 2021. Now let's talk about the available free cash flow by the end of June in slide 13. The operating free cash flow outside of the IFRS 16 of EUR 577 million, which is a decrease compared with past year. This decrease comes from the negative evolution of the working capital.
The first semester 2021, we reconstitute our stock into context of the sales in growth and anticipated the fact that we needed to buy new goods because there were shortages of a few components necessary to the manufacturing of the products sold by the group. When it comes to the capital expenditures, the group maintain a good management of its operational investment of the semester, which has a decrease of EUR 4 million when compared with last past year and reaching EUR 46 million compared with the original plan.
The group is trying to maintain its yearly investment spending with a normative level of around EUR 120 million outside of the investment dedicated to the modernization of our logistic equipment, which could have an impact during the fiscal year and outside of investment linked to the partnership with Manor.
The Group remain confident with the fact that we will be able to reach EUR 500 million of operational free cash flow generated at the period of time 2021-2023. Now let's say a few words about the financial structure, and you will be able to see all of that on slide 14. The financial situation of the Group is healthy with more than EUR 1.4 billion of equity by the end of the first semester. The Net financial debt of the Group was traditionally higher at the end of the fiscal year because of the seasonality of our activity. By the end of J une 30th 2021, our net financial debt as a Group outside of the IFRS 16 was EUR 454 million.
On top of that, just as a reminder, the group announced last March the success of its new financing strategy, which was the reimbursing of all the state-backed loan which was up to EUR 500 million, and to extend the credit line to EUR 500 million with a maximum maturity in 2028. We really try to reimburse the senior term loan facility of EUR 200 million, which we had reached in April 2021, and also place convertible bonds up to EUR 200 million by 2027. Thanks to this new financial structure, Fnac is optimizing the average cost of its debt with no major deadline for the reimbursement before 2024.
Therefore, the group is now by the end of June, around EUR 500 million of free cash flows, allowing us to have enough RCF of EUR 500 million, which makes us very trustful regarding the uncertainties in order to face with, by trusting our position, the potential negative evolution of the health crisis. By the end of June, the lever debt net of the D&A outside of the IFRS 16, calculated on 18 months, was 1.1x . It means that we will communicate on the annual related results after the shareholders come back with the feedback results of the shareholders for 2021. Now I fall back to Enrique in order to back the group perspective.
Thank you very much. As you understood, it's very complicated. The first half needs to be encouraging. We want to review our expectation for higher expectation. The first half is quite encouraging, our activity is still impacted by the sanitary conditions. The new French government announcement seems to mean that there would be an impact on how to access big shopping centers, this could have an internal impact on the exploitation of our stores. We are very careful about these measures. The economic turnover in the year expected is slower than expected.
In consequence, Fnac Darty stays confident but still careful on how we will perform on the second half, and we will stay focused on our commercial execution to fulfill the big commercial meetings we will have, the big events we'll have, to also manage our cost and to generate cash flow with our objective from the Everyday plan.
That is why with the first half, that is encouraging, but within the unsure sanitary environment, the Group will review its perspective 2021 with higher ones. We await turnover to increase by 5% in comparison to 2020, and we expect a current operational result between EUR 260 million and EUR 270 million. That is all I wanted to tell you today, and I am available with Jean-Brieuc Le Tinier to answer your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, you can tap zero one on your phone. We have a first question from Clément Genelot, Bryan Garnier. You're up.
Good evening. I have three questions. The first one is about the upgrade of the guidance on sales. Is it due to the very good performance on the second half, or is it because the future performance will also be higher on the second half? What is the schedule? Is it between May, July? What are your expectation? Is there a strong reducing of our activity with the opening of bars, restaurants and others? The final question about the cash flow. There is a risk here that cash flow could be lower than in 2020. In your opinion, will the BFR change, will it be positive or negative, or will we need to renew our inventories again?
Thank you for your questions. I will answer the first one, and then I'll let Jean-Brieuc answer the others. The first half, as we see, was really encouraging. Just to remind you of the fact, last year, the second half was really huge. We had an increase of 8% and a real increase of our results. Our forecast here shows that we could have a similar result or a slightly lower result.
We expect the end of 2021 to be as 2019. We think that we were very strong on our first half. We will be strong as well on our second half, but slightly less strong. We take into account a lot of characteristic of features to calculate that. This is just a forecast. We cannot be too precise. We think that we are on a good path, and we will be able later to give you more details on the end of 2021.
We think that the turnover will be around 5% of increase. For July, we cannot comment because as you know, it's still current. We cannot comment on a current situation. We do not anticipate brutal changes in the current growth. Of course, we stay very careful, but today we have a turnover that is higher than last year for the same period. I think that the next week will be decisive for our group success. Jean-Brieuc.
The BFR at the end of the year, it's a bit like last year. It will depend on how we do in December. Of course, it could mean anything. It could go in any direction. We can see that on the last half of last year, we had a great BFR because we had low inventories and now we have higher inventories, so it might impact the BFR negatively. For the BFR, it will depend on the end of the year. As for the cash flow, there will be an increase of the EBITDA compared to last year.
There will be, in 2021, the decrease of the ROC and the decrease of corporate tax, so we will benefit from that. Usually, we pay 40%, and here it's going to decrease, and then it will be 30%, 35%. As for cash loan, it will also decrease, so that will help with our cash flow. Again, the working capital requirement will probably decrease too. Yeah, the few details I can give you about how the cash flow will look at the end of the year. I can't give you all the details.
Thank you. That was very clear.
Thank you. There is another question from Florent from Midcap . You have the floor.
Good evening. Congratulations for the results you presented tonight. I have a question around the guidance. To go back to the July performances, I know that you don't want to communicate them, but can we have a trend for April, May, June, maybe? Are there any differences between those months? As you know, we have a -5% on the second half.
Did you see any decrease like in Maisons du Monde? As for current operating margin, is it 5.2% for the second half? It would be a level unseen since 2016. What could explain that 5.2% margin, that very low margin? I know that the ticket sale has been impacted, but we also integrated Nature & Découvertes and we also split with BCC, so this should have an impact as well. I would like more clarification on that.
For April, May, and June, the comparison is really not easy to make because last year in June, we had a very successful month, so we cannot compare. However, what we've seen here is that we've expected less, and we had a very good trimester, a very good quarter. Of course, sales have helped, but it's not as much as for our competitors. Yes, we could be at the same level of 2019, and that would be very satisfying because it means that we've overcome the crisis and we've succeeded to have sales online and in stores. We could have the same profitability rate as in 2019. We would be very happy with that, and we're very satisfied with the performance we expect.
Can we have an idea of the impact of the ticket sale on the EBIT to know what the margin would be?
Well, we won't give you the numbers, but it's quite significant. Two years ago, like for like, we had EUR 278 million. That would be our level for 2019.
Another question, please. How about online sales profitability? Can you tell us? Can you isolate that number and tell us how much it helps the margin?
It's a very important question. As you can see, the profitability of the group is not an issue. It depends on many factors, on services, on accessories, on goods. We showed already at the end of 2020 that with 25% online sales, we can gain 7 points- 8 points more in comparison to 2019. We've shown that our online sales system is working. It's a system in itself, and that's also our orientation at Darty to go more to a subscription system. We need to have a cost margin profitability rate that is positive, and that's the case for the online sales.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you can select zero one on your phone. We have a question from Geoffroy Michalet from ODDO BHF.
You have the floor. Good evening. Thank you for answering my question, and congratulations for this online performance that is still growing. That's very impressive, even if the stores might close and the ratio has been turned. I want to talk about the online performance at the end of the year. What could it mean in terms of additional logistical costs? Thank you.
The logistic CapEx are not concerned here. For this year, the system is already in place, thank God. It will really depend on the new sanitary restrictions. Will stores close or not? It will depend on that because at home delivery through stores can be impacted. We have a mix. It's about 50/50. It's quite important. We hope that the stores will stay open to sell, of course, but also to maintain online sales. We think that it will stay coherent with 2020. We shall wait and see. One thing is sure, we've grown, we've matured. Between 18 months, we had 7 million more clients on our online platform.
Of course, this has an impact on our online sales, and it didn't happen overnight. We think that there will be more and more hybrid behavior by our customers. This will probably be the consequence of the COVID crisis. We will have a new generation of clients, of customers who maybe don't go to stores.
Thank you very much.
Next question from Marie-Line Fort from Société Générale. You have the floor.
Good evening. I had two questions. The first is, have we gained market share on the first half, especially in comparison to Amazon? Second question, I would like to better understand if in your forecast for the whole year, and especially for the second half, if you've integrated an increase in prices, which probably will happen at the end of the year. We know that for the fourth quarter, prices might increase. Is it something that you've included, and can you tell us more about what it means for the fourth quarter? Or will it be rather for the first quarter of 2022?
Well, thank you for your question. Amazon is really difficult to have the results of Amazon. They're not very transparent. They are contrary comment. We need more information. If we look at what we have, I think our performance has been really good, better than everyone in the country because of online service also because some of our stores managed to stay open, so we're very satisfied with our place on the market. I can't compare our position to Amazon's, but I think that in comparison to the whole market, we are doing quite well. As for increasing prices, yes, we've heard the same thing.
I think the increase will be quite insignificant, though, and the impact as well. For the past few months, we've benefited from an average increase in prices, not for the same products, but there's a mix. There are higher entry products. It's happened for the past few months, and I think this will also have consequences for our Group to build a longer-term strategy to be more viable. I think it's a good thing for us. It's going in the right direction.
The inflation we're forecasting, again, we think it's going to be very low. Of course, it will be up to the customer to pay. For us retailers, we cannot absorb this increase, so the customers will have more products to choose from, but some of them will be higher prices, and this might help us to absorb this inflation. We think, however, that this phenomenon is linked to very concrete and contextual elements such as raw material, lack of raw materials. We're not worried.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question, Clément Genelot , you have the floor.
Thank you. A question about inventories with the cargos, are we at risk of lacking or stock products or not?
Thank you for your question. I think that our supply chain is under pressure since 2020. It stops, it increases. It's also under pressure because of the growth. If you look at 2020, there were lots of pressure because our product categories were highly demanded. Today, we have an inventory level that is at its highest at the beginning of the crisis. Our inventory pre-COVID is the same as now. We're better placed today than at the beginning of the crisis.
We're very careful for the next few months. We're going to keep an eye out. We are looking at our orders. We are ready to face our demands. We hope that the phenomena that we've seen during the crisis will slowly disappear. Of course, some supply chains will be under pressure. We hope that our inventories will make up for that pressure. If there are short-term pressure or significant pressure for some groups, some stores, we'll really be able to absorb them. We are really careful about our availabilities for products.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have a question in English now. Yes. We have a question from Adam Crocker, from Logbook Investments. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hopefully, you can hear me. I had a question about the Culture Pass, and if you could just talk generally about the long impact that it might have and if there are any programs you have in place to maximize the potential there. Thank you.
I'm sorry. There is a bit of an echo between the lines. If the technicians can help. Okay, I think it's better now. Sorry. It's a French program for the last four years. Fnac has been one of the first players that's been cooperating with the French government to create this program in terms of technology offer and the way we have been proposed for the youngs.
The pilot runs for two years, and now they decide to go for a full rollout. The first figures are quite impressive because the potential is around 10 million new youngs every year, and for each of them, there's EUR 300 available to expand in culture products in stores. They're going to address this young generation for the stores, and in particular for the culture products. There was a big impact on the books in particular.
In the other categories like gaming and records and films too, but books in particular is quite satisfying because this is the main, I would say one of the main objectives for the government is to put the reading back on the young generation hands. The way to optimize that is to be inside this platform, open the global inventory online for the young or geo-localized for the whole stores in Fnac. I think Fnac is the only chain, national-wise, that is able to propose this level of inventory and catalog for the young. That's the main reason why we are able to catch a significant part of this programme that give us a good impression of how much it can be on the next coming months. It's a program that is proposed not just for this year, it's to be projected for the following one. It's a pretty good news for the culture products. Probably you know that Fnac is the main leader in all of them, books, records, movies, gaming. For us, it's a good decision.
Thank you. We have no further questions.
Well, thank you to all. Thank you for being here and for all those questions. I wish you all a good holidays and a good summertime, and we will see or we will hear each other in October for our quarter meeting as usual. Thank you and have a good evening everyone.