Good morning to all, and thank you for attending this session. I'm today with Denis Lamoureux, our new CFO, and with Gilles Lemaire, our deputy CFO. As you already know, Gilles and myself, I will start by inviting Denis to introduce himself briefly.
Thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Denis Lamoureux. I am the new CFO of Maisons du Monde, and I'm delighted to join this company. It's actually the third time in my career that I will be working for a love brand, since I was before at LVMH, and after that, I was a CFO of Lacoste for the last six years, another iconic brand. A time during which Lacoste doubled its revenue. I'm particularly excited to join Maisons du Monde at the start of its transformation plan, which you are going to hear about today, and which was presented to me earlier, and which was also the reason why I am so excited to join the company. This transformation journey is very compelling. It has triggered a huge buy-in, both from the management team and from the board.
It has two main pillars: commercial excellence, with a key focus on customer, and operational excellence. I believe the plan is readily achievable, in part because we already have such a strong base to build from, with customer loyalty, with strong omni-channelity, and our iconic love brand, which is inspiring, accessible, and sustainable. As CFO, I will put my focus on efficiencies, operational excellence, and financial analysis, which I have already done many times in my entire career to secure the resource to be able to invest in store, digital, and brand. I am also very optimistic because we have very little debt and ample liquidity available to us, which give us the time to put in place the plan. Once again, I'm thrilled to join Maisons du Monde today, and without further ado, let me hand back to François-Melchior.
Yeah, thank you, Denis. We communicated last year that we would share with you our transformation plan by the end of Q1. This is what we are doing now, and of course, we'll also share our 2023 financial results. We plan to keep this presentation short enough to allow for ample time for Q&A. For practical reasons, we invite you to share your questions on the chat, but Carole, Denis, Gilles, and myself will also be happy to make ourselves available to you in the coming days for any follow-ups. This line outlines the journey we want to share with you today. I will first come back to the differentiating assets that make Maisons du Monde so unique, as a love brand, as a product designer, as an omni-channel retailer, and as a committed ESG leader.
Yet, and this is the second building block here, we have to acknowledge that our recent performance has been deeply unsatisfactory. We see that we have learned from the past to identify the root causes of this underperformance and turn our shortcomings into opportunities. Indeed, and this is the third building block here, Maisons du Monde has changed. There is a strongly renewed, both management team and board, fully aligned to transform the company. How are we going to achieve that? This is, of course, the core of our presentation today. You already see some key concepts here. Our plan is transformative. It leverages our unique assets, and more than anything else, it is focused on customers and cash. We will start from recent learnings, and of course, we will comment our full year results.
Then we will share with you how we want to relaunch growth through a deep transformation of our commercial model, and how, in parallel, we intend to simplify and optimize Maisons du Monde in order to maximize the financial returns, leveraging that growth. After concluding remarks on the financial trajectory resulting from our transformation plan, we will open the Q&A session. Yes, Maisons du Monde enjoys a unique set of assets. Maisons du Monde is a genuine love brand. It relies on a very well-balanced model, and it is recognized as a sustainability leader. As a love brand, the simple name Maisons du Monde does bring a sparkle in the eye of nearly any customer. This stature is also proved by customer surveys, as you can read here.
It results from our capacity to inspire customers with our own creations, and it translates into being by far the most followed brand of the sector on Instagram and Pinterest, at least in France. Maisons du Monde also enjoys a very well-balanced model, as you can see in the center of this slide. 50% of our sales are digitalized as a very advanced omni-channel player. In terms of geography, France, our domestic market, accounts for 55% of our sales. In terms of categories, decoration represents 58% of our activity and furniture, 42%. Last but not least, our gross margin levels are best in class in our line of business. Finally, as you can see on the right side, Maisons du Monde has resolutely embarked on ESG and is recognized for its commitments and results in this field.
This clearly represents a very solid ground on which to build the future. Now, as you will see in a moment, I will not hide behind external factors to explain our recent disappointing results. But on the other hand, it is quite clear that our business and positioning are not currently being favored by the macro context. The level of savings in France could be just one example to illustrate this. At nearly 18% in 2023, it has reached its highest level in decades, with the exception, of course, of COVID times. This illustrates a lack of consumption appetite for many categories, including home and decoration. Of course, the cycle will turn eventually, but we need to act now... to reinforce Maisons du Monde and allow it to strive in tougher environments, and obviously, to benefit from growth tailwinds whenever they materialize.
Indeed, as I said, I will not hide behind external factors. I believe that those adverse external factors have revealed a number of deficiencies, both operational and financial, which of course, we started to address already last year with the 3C Plan. Maisons du Monde has probably been too optimistic when we were enjoying all-time high results in the COVID recovery era. As a result, we have focused too much on expansion and not enough on customers and execution on the operational side. On the financial side, this translates into focusing too much on investing and not enough on challenging return on investment. Let me give you just one example that, for me, illustrates both the operational and financial lack of focus. In recent years, Maisons du Monde stopped sharing with store managers their P&L.
As a result, our store managers had lost the ability to understand, and more importantly, to activate the economic leverages of their stores. This is why we launched a tactical 3C Plan nearly a year ago, to make sure all teams would rapidly adjust to our three key priorities, i.e., customers, cost, and cash. I'm happy to share with you that our 3C Plan did produce very tangible results in 2023. This is important to share with you, as to some extent in the 3C Plan, although more tactical in nature and focus on quick wins, contains a lot of building blocks that we'll find in our transformation plan. Also, I can observe that the 3C Plan has been a powerful tool to trigger a necessary cultural shock throughout the organization. Let us begin with our first C, the customer. Put customers first is not just a nice slogan.
It very practically means changing what we do. Indeed, let me just illustrate the first two bullets on this list. When I visited dozens of stores a year ago, I asked salespeople on the floor: "How many pieces of each of our table I see on display do you sell weekly?" Here are the answers I got. First, "Sorry, I have no easy access to this information, so I cannot really tell you." Second, "Many of those items are not available for sale." And third, "Anyway, I do not have the authorization to switch a non-available model for another one." So we started fixing such situation last year, notably increasing furniture availability by 18 points. We have also adapted our merchandising rules so that furniture on display should be available for order.
We estimate that the share of orderable furniture on display in stores has risen from about only 70% to 90%. All such initiatives did bring some customer benefit. We reduced the historical negative gap of our French stores compared to a global French non-food retail index from 11 points in 2022 to 6 points in 2023, and we secured a sequential sales improvement in H2 versus H1. In terms of cost, we also triggered a renewed focus within the organization, renegotiating contracts, changing suppliers, optimizing work hours at store level, or adapting our central structures, as you can see on this page. Last of all, we managed our store network, closing stores in a very pragmatic, payback-driven approach. In the end, those efforts have resulted in EUR 35 million of gross savings. Last but not least, our 3C Plan clearly introduced a new focus on cash.
Typically, CapEx allocation is now strictly driven by payback analysis, and Gilles will come back to that. Gilles will also comment our inventory reduction. So the 3C plan has proved extremely powerful. It triggered a necessary cultural shock, it put us on a new dynamic to start 2024, and it definitely helped us mitigate the impact of our loss of turnover, which makes a logical transition to a brief presentation of our EBIT and free cash flow results by Gilles.
Thank you, FM. Both EBIT and later to come, free cash flow bridges illustrates the impact of our loss of turnover and also the mitigation impact of our 3C plan. I will share with you our reinvestment in price accessibility of positive gross margin effect, like freight cost and cost saving initiatives everywhere across the organization. First, the pressure on EBIT margin has been contained despite a -9% decline. Gross margin has significantly decreased by EUR 77 million, affected by the top-line sales drop by EUR 150 million. Gross margin rate remained more or less flat, moving from 64.7%- 64.5%. I would like to stop a few seconds to explain this 20 basis points erosion. As you remember, our gross margin had been significantly impacted in 2022 by the surge of the freight rate from Asia.
During the first half of 2023, we consumed mostly goods shipped with containers bought in 2022, while prices were still very high. Then, freight rates started to decrease significantly from April 2023, with a fall by a third, and we took the opportunity to renegotiate all our contracts. During the second half of the year, we started to benefit from this cost reduction. At the end of the year, the net gain represented almost EUR 20 million in our gross margin versus last year. So in 2023, we benefited from the freight rate decrease. We also got very positive contribution of our marketplace, with significant growth in France, Italy, and Spain, and the launch in Germany. All these gains in margin have been reinvested in accessibility and promotion for our customers.
We played new promotional events like Black Friday, and we also started to decrease some prices from September, with good results in terms of elasticity. We also initiated the reduction of our assortment and liquidated a lot of old stock in our stores, which had, obviously, a negative impact in our margin rate. Regarding the other cost, the decrease in logistic cost was mainly driven by the drop in sales and volumes, as well as about EUR 10 million gross saving with 3C Plan implementation. We also improved operational performance, like loading rate or store delivery optimization. On store and central cost, this is where our 3C Plan really started to pay off in terms of saving, with around EUR 25 million gross saving in payroll, in fees, and in other external charges.
On top of that, we made some savings related to the activity decrease in stores, with less temporary staff or credit card fees, for instance. Finally, we benefited from non-recurring items with a total net positive impact on our results. All these savings in stores and central cost allowed us not only to offset inflation, but also to generate a net positive EUR 33 million impact on EBIT that you can see on the bridge. D&A increased slightly with the launch of Leo, our second logistic facilities near Le Havre in northwest of France. Significant CapEx reduction, initiated in 2023, hardly started to flow through in terms of amortization. In the meantime, as sales declined by -9% and D&A increased, there was a strong mechanical impact of -160 basis points in EBIT contribution.
All in all, the EBIT reached EUR 45.8 million, meeting the adjusted guidance. Its decline has been relatively contained in such environment. Now, I want to come to free cash flow, which is probably the result we are the most satisfied with, because given the sales decline, we have managed to mitigate the pressure on the cash flow, which is quite close to what it was last year, thanks to a tight management of our CapEx and inventory. As we have just seen, drop in sales had a negative impact on EBITDA, contributing to a cash reduction by EUR 19 million. The most striking point of this waterfall is probably the positive impact on cash related to CapEx reduction. We have continued to invest in our stores network, but we implemented a much stricter discipline on capital allocation regarding openings and renovation.
We also took the benefit of the completion of our investment program in Leo, our second distribution center. As you can see on the slide, we reduced our CapEx by EUR 33 million, representing almost half of the envelope of 2022, but landing at a much more reasonable level compared to market standards. This capital allocation discipline is part of the cultural shift we initiated across the company in 2023, and it was, and will, remain key to protect cash flow. In the meantime, we have been able to increase availability of our product while starting to reduce our inventory level, gaining half months of coverage. This helped us to get a slightly positive working capital.
So as you can see, in this difficult context, we have managed to protect our cash flow, moving from EUR 32 million last year to EUR 27 million this year, despite a drop in sales by EUR 150 million. Adjusted guidance target was also achieved on free cash flow. I now hand back to FM.
Thank you, Gilles. So the key message here is that we fully met all the criteria of the adjusted guidance. The commercial plans of 2023 have allowed us to run slightly better in sale than expected, notably with a Q4 2 points higher than implicitly expected. This has been achieved with a controlled level of commercial aggressivity, thus allowing us to meet EBIT and free cash flow adjusted targets as well. You also probably noted this morning that we reduced our net debt by EUR 50 million compared to 2022. And we also stick to our indications of a 30%-40% dividend payout ratio to be submitted to our next general assembly. With that, we conclude the part of today's presentation that deals with the past.
So as we have seen, we do have our unique set of distinctive assets, yet we did lose some customer centricity and financial discipline. We have already started to fix some key topics with our 3C plan, and now is the moment to launch a deeper transformation with the plan we are announcing today. A key new asset of the company that will help us deliver this plan is our renewed management team and board. As you can see at a glance, we have reinforced both our board and our management team with skilled and experienced professionals. Half of the people here have been with us for less than two years. So yes, we have the broad skill set, fresh perspective, and renewed energy to take Maisons du Monde to the next level. Inspire Everyd ay. This is the name of our new plan.
This name completely reflects what I've been telling you so far. Yes, we are the leader of accessible inspiration in our sector. Inspiration is our DNA and the core of our commercial promise. But as we fully acknowledged, we have been lacking some customer centricity and some financial discipline. This is what every day means from now on to all of us at Maisons du Monde. Inspiration is great, and we want to deliver the basics of our business, i.e., guarantee every day in everything we do, the best for our customers with the maximum efficiency. You could translate that into inspiration and basics. As in our three C plan, let us begin with our customers and with what will drive growth again. As you can see here, we will very deeply transform our Omni-Channel commercial model. This we will achieve following four key streams of work. First, the offer.
We are remodeling it to make it even more inspiring, accessible, and sustainable. Second, once you have the offer, it all comes to the experience, and notably the store experience, because this is where we have most room for improvement. Third, we aim to further leverage our already existing growth levers, namely the marketplace and B2B. And finally, we are in the process of enriching our existing platform, notably to increase our stickiness with our customers. Now, the title of this slide could have been Less is More, because effectively, we are going to reduce very significantly our assortment, and at the same time, we are going to inspire and satisfy more our customers. No miracle here, just listening to our customers. Let us start with the left part of this slide, i.e., what our customers tell us.
First, your products are great, but there are so many of them that it gets confusing. Second, you offer a unique range of different styles, but we would love to have more Maisons du Monde products, even in the most mainstream, classic, sober style we find in any number of other stores nowadays. Third, we'd also love to find the Maisons du Monde touch in some categories you are not covering, one example being bath linen. And indeed, I understand our customers. Think about the example of cushions. We offer more than 600 different cushions. Online, you will even find closer to 700 of them on the Maisons du Monde brand. But too much choice sometimes kills the perception of choice.
This is why we are convinced that we can further increase inspiration and choice, and better cover some mainstream styles, and extend our categories while reducing our assortment. Our target is a net minus 25% of items. As you can see with cushions, some categories will reduce even more aggressively than this 25%. And not only will we remain the richest assortment in town, but the perception of choice will increase. So indeed, you see, less will be more. So we will have the right offer, but there is a second key customer insight. This is price consciousness. We will also address it, of course, but carefully, so as to protect both brand value and margin. We will come back to the economics you can see on the right later on, but let us begin on the left with our customers. Price consciousness has been increasing recently.
We did ask those of our customers who have not returned to us in the last year why they did so. 43% of answers said, "Too high prices," and 27%, "Not enough promotions." Again, I can only understand our customer. We increased our prices when we were hit by inflation, but we sell discretionary products to consumers themselves hit by inflation. So how do we do that without destroying value? Well, you see the key answers on this page. First priority is to reinforce our price accessibility, focusing on where it matters most, i.e., the first prices, those products that are the entry point into the inspiring world of Maisons du Monde. We also observe that this is a segment where we lost most volumes recently, so we cut some carefully selected 2,000 prices, and we will reinforce the presence and visibility of such entry price products.
As you know, we tested some price cuts already last year, so our investments here are based upon price elasticities that we measured in 2023. In parallel, we will seize two opportunities to increase accessibility. First, we will introduce a loyalty program in Maisons du Monde. It will help us strengthen our relation with our customers by granting them some rewards, but also by providing them with content and exclusivities. Second, we will reinforce what we call our Second Chance platform, i.e., to sell at a reduced price, slightly damaged or already used products. This is a win-win. It allows some customers to access our ranges at a very attractive price, and it allows us to sell products that may otherwise be wasted. We started in the stores last year, and we will extend it online in 2024.
This new trend is an opportunity for Maisons du Monde for one simple reason: we are a brand. Our products have a real value after the first life, or even if they are slightly damaged. Let me just share with you one impressive figure, 18 million. This is the number of views of annonces for secondhand Maisons du Monde products on the French website, Leboncoin, over a period of 12 months... So we can play a financially healthy role in this market, which both serve the accessibility for our customers and reinforces our sustainability commitments. But if Second Chance financially flies, I'm sure you'll want to understand how prices, promotions, and loyalty program translate into a financial equation. This is on the right side here. Basically, we do not expect very significant changes in terms of gross margin levels.
But what we do plan is to progressively reduce our 2023 all-time high in promotional discount investment of above 13%, shifting part of this investment instead to better prices and to loyalty. Now as a conclusion of this chapter, let me illustrate how the Maisons du Monde offer will be structured. Every single product should play a clear commercial role, which is what you see on the left, that then translates into an economic role, which is what you see on the right. But on the page are the essentials of entry price products I was referring to previously. They ensure the permanent price accessibility for customers. They are particularly sharply negotiated and leased to a number of seasons, allowing for high volumes.
Above, you will find core fashion products that represent also a large share of our sales, with products that may call for promotions every now and again. Top of the slides are those products that are the utmost of our differentiation with high values, higher margins, but more limited volumes. As we reshape our categories along this logic, we will live up to our promise for customers: inspiration, accessibility, and sustainability. We improve, at the same time, our economic equation, as illustrated on the right side. In the end, this amounts to implementing a clear Category Management approach to our ever-inspiring offer. Now, you saw that we will deeply transform our offer, but we will also address the experience of customers in our stores. Why? It's again based on customers' feedback on the left.
Customers tell us they love our products and the relations with our helpful staff in store. The main and nearly only pain point being the difficulty to find a given product in our stores. Indeed, if you shop for a cushion at Maisons du Monde, you will find them scattered in dozens of different places. This does not match any longer customer expectations. The second feedback is that our stores are not enough adapted to their location. We will progressively group some ranges together and simplify our layout while maintaining the inspiration. You can see here in the middle an example with textile categories. First results are very promising, and we will extend this test and roll out at marginal or no CapEx, still preserving the uniqueness of our store concept. Another learning about store experience is that we are not differentiating enough assortment or merchandising by store.
Typically, a city center store which serves a high flow of pedestrian customers, was merchandised more or less like larger stores in commercial activity zones in the suburbs. We will also progressively fix that to ensure, for instance, as you can see on the right, that much more space should be dedicated in a city center to decoration and to impulse products, and less to large pieces of furniture. So our merchandising can effectively be improved to deliver better experience and of course, higher sales. By 2026, I expect all our stores to have gone through some very significant changes, although most of them will not need significant CapEx. Fixing the offer and the store experience is of paramount importance, and yet there are also great success stories of profitable growth at Maisons du Monde that are worth further developing.
So let me speak here about one of them, our marketplace. You can see on the left the magnitude of the success with a strong continuous growth over the last years, to the point that our marketplace is now representing up to 37% of all our online GMV. This remarkable success is not to be the result of the curation of our marketplace, as illustrated on the right. It is more about quality than quantity. Typically, this enriched offer makes our website more relevant for product searches on the web, and as you see, it brings an additional qualified traffic to our website that also increases the sales of our own assortment. It's also a margin accretive model, and its relevance is not only for Maisons du Monde, but also for our vendors.
Indeed, as we are more selective than others, we allow each seller to reach higher GMVs than most other marketplaces. Last of all, the dynamics we observe on products and brands through our marketplace is, of course, full of insights. This is quite an added value for us, as our market is not at all as well documented by panels as most other consumer sectors. So I hope you get an understanding of the great value of our marketplace for us, for our sellers, and our consumers. The good news is that our marketplace can and will further grow. Indeed, we see a number of opportunities to expand, and they require very little CapEx. Most obvious territory for growth is geographical. We just started in Germany last summer, so this country is still rapidly growing, and we plan to open at least one new country.
But we are also investigating some new categories to open. However, we will also grow our marketplace by better adapting to local markets, as we will do in our stores. Typically, we target around 50% of local vendors versus less than 40% currently... We also plan to roll out internationally our prize-winning AppShop platform that helps our staff in the stores better sell marketplace products alongside our own products in France. Last of all, we recently launched our Retail Media. It started dynamically with a classic indexing service, but we plan to extend our offer to production of data or content for our vendors. This is only the beginning of a highly profitable business line. This is just an illustration of one of our growth engine that can further fuel our momentum moving forward.
On top of the potential for growth through improved offer and customer experience and marketplace development, we believe there is still much more to come. Indeed, as we will progress in our transformation plan, it is quite clear that we will be able to enrich our model. It will be about shifting from being a product seller to solution provider. As you can see on the circles, we have a number of levers to develop business and to increase stickiness. The part of each circle that is filled in is just an assessment of our current level of development for each lever. As you see, we already have some basis for each of them, and of course, the so far empty parts of the circles represent growth opportunities to be progressively explored and seized in the next three years.
Just as an example, despite our current level of B2B, we present only a marginal share of the market. By 2026, we plan to drastically increase this business. Another example is GenAI. We are already generating thousands of contents to massively increase the visibility and relevance of our product descriptions. This is only the beginning, with many additional options, such as combining our unique decoration professional service, Renov, with GenAI capabilities to propose personalized decoration projects to our customers. I will not dwell too much on those opportunities for stickiness and for growth. They are already there in our portfolio of competencies and tools, and we will keep our competitive advantage and grow them. Yet, they represent a second layer of our business development, whereas our short-term bigger prize lies with the commercial model, the offer, and the store experience.
Let us just conclude that by 2026, Maisons du Monde overall platform will include another significant set of businesses and services compared to today's already strong Omni-Channel model. So we have been discussing at length the commercial and growth agenda of our plan, but we are fully aware that Maisons du Monde must also become more resilient to face headwinds and more agile to increase returns on capital employed. So the second half of our plan really is all about cost, efficiency, and cash. This we will achieve by acting in three key areas. First, by structurally simplifying our overall value chain. Second, by unleashing the power of local initiative, and third, by reducing the weight of cost and cash in our model. What do we mean by structurally simplifying our overall value chain?
Well, as you can see on this chart, it will come from systematically improving our tools and processes at each step of the procurement value chain. But on top of that, let me just share with you the two main drivers of overall complexity we can, and indeed, we are already addressing: the size of the assortment and the number of product suppliers. Reducing assortment by net 25% and dividing our suppliers' portfolio by two will allow us to reach the next level in terms of overall simplification. You can all imagine what it means from product development to product sampling, product and raw material certification, to factory quality validation, to supply chain organization, or even to accounting, when you drastically reduce both the number of items and the number of suppliers involved.
I will not detail all the steps of this value chain or all the initiatives, but as you can see, we plan to address systematically each of them. Simplifying our core central processes, as we just discussed on the previous page, is key, but we believe we can add another layer of efficiency by better leveraging local initiative and responsibility. This is what we mean here by think global, act local, and this is a very deep change we are bringing to our operations. Here again, I will not describe all the different possible benefits of leveraging the abilities and skills of our associates across Europe. Let me just share two of them on this page. First, local marketing activation that we made possible last semester with a simple tool called Armis.
It allows store managers to easily increase themselves, the visibility of what is happening in their stores on locally targeted social media. Second, local merchandising adaptation, facilitated by a super user-friendly tool, No Stress, that we just started to roll out last month to all our stores. You remember that at the beginning of this presentation, I was telling you that store staff had no easy access to basic sales data. Well, this era is now already behind us, and our associates can now become again true relevant merchants. The common point of all of those dimensions of the Think Global Act Local approach is that it allows us to leverage the resources of hundreds of managers and associates that are in close proximity with our customers, instead of relying only on remote processes of head office.
Cost reduction is a key chapter here, and we plan to go for an additional cumulative EUR 85 million of gross savings over the next three years, changing costs at all levels of our P&L. To us, this is not a one-shot cost-cutting project, but a switch to a permanent cost culture.... We call it internally a frugality culture. Now the key message here is the one already widely shared within the organization. The challenge is systemic and for all cost categories, each of them being addressed through the relevant angle. Here again, I will not detail each line, but let me just share a couple of examples. The first item on the list, for instance, is shrinkage, i.e., known and unknown losses. While this is above EUR 20 million every year, it had not really been addressed in recent years, but it's a clear must for any retailer.
Tracking the sources of losses, we found out that so far, we are not measuring the losses we incur at some steps of the value chain. We must do better there. For instance, challenging a supplier whose products are regularly reported as damaged by end consumers when they open their package. For instance, challenging and collaborating closely with all last mile providers to drastically reduce number of missing or damaged items on delivery. We are now in the process of implementing tools and governances that will help us track down and reduce all sources of shrinkage, with, of course, also a customer benefit of increased quality of service. The second example I would like to share with you is that of the store cost optimization. I told you at the beginning that Maisons du Monde stopped sharing financial information with our store managers some years ago.
Well, this is over now. This very week, all our store managers are going to receive their first P&L. What does it change? Everything. Let me share with you what store managers told us as they were informed about receiving their P&L. "So I will be able, at last, to challenge the cost of services I get for cleaning or security, or for the number of deliveries I receive, et cetera?" Well, yes, this is precisely the objective. To conclude on this section, and as you can see on the right part of the slide, we are cutting the cost as a necessity per se, and the organization also understand that it is a non-negotiable condition to carefully reinvest where investment can deliver growth and value.
So this slide is a really important one, as it brings together all the initiatives of the plan and focuses on taking a more selective approach to CapEx while enhancing cash return for shareholders. A progressive but fundamental shift towards a more asset-light model. First 2 levels are about investing only lightly to generate growth. Marketplace and B2B, we spoke about, are growth levels that mobilize very limited CapEx, and we will favor our affiliate and franchise partners to open most of the new stores. Indeed, despite the 40-50 closures or transfer of stores we announced, we plan to increase the total number of stores under our brand over the next three years. But a large share of the investment will come from our partners. In the middle stands a working cap potential improvement.
We made a very significant progress on inventory reduction, but we can do more, and we certainly can extend payment terms for a significant share of our suppliers. On the right side, coming back to the 40 or 50 closure or transfers, let me just tell you that both their identification and their planning is executed with a very pragmatic store-by-store payback evaluation. You see at the bottom of the page how such actions will improve our returns on invested capital. I believe that one of the more structural evolution of our financial model will be the evolution from virtually 0% of stores operated in partnership in 2022, to closer to 30% by end 2026. As you understand, we are progressing on all fronts that allow us to simplify our business in terms of execution, but also in terms of cost and in terms of investment.
This will transform the financial model, just as we spoke earlier about the transformation of the commercial model. Now, what will we share with you to keep you updated on the progress of our transformation? This plan is all about execution. So here is selected extract of the cockpit we are using internally to monitor progress and take corrective actions whenever needed. Those criteria, as you can see, mainly follow our logic of the three C, customers, cost, and cash. So indeed, we plan to share with you some of the key transformation indicators that, with the exception of the last one on this page, will be updated every six months. We added a C for collaborators, which reflects our determination to make all of our teams fully part of the journey. So we will regularly update you on our trajectory.
Last but not least, this plan translates into a progressive return to growth and into cash flow generation. On the left, you can see the progressive step each year, and on the right, their translation into growing cash flow generation. As you can see, 2024 will be the pivotal year of the transformation to fix the basics and to lay the foundation for growth. It will come with a cash flow that will see the benefits of both 3C Plan and current initiatives on the way, but which also reflect investments we are making in our transformation at the beginning of this three-year journey. 2025 and 2026 will be years of the return to growth and its acceleration, while cash flow generation will grow in parallel.
Over this three-year plan, we will thus deliver a cumulative free cash flow above EUR 100 million, and we will have transformed our company into a resilient and more asset-light model. We plan to retain an unchanged dividend payout ratio of 30%-40%. This now ends this presentation. The key messages I would like to underline again are that our plan fully leverages the very unique assets of Maisons du Monde and its love brand, benefits from the full alignment of our renewed management team and board, is supported by a healthy financing structure that matches our roadmap, is already on the way, leveraging the momentum of our 3C plan, deeply transforms our commercial model at the service of our customers, also transforms our financial model to establish a more asset-light company. All of that, of course, to relaunch profitable growth.
I thank you for your attention, and of course, we will open the Q&A session in about three minutes. So we are back. Thank you for your questions. I believe we'll have time to address all of them, but if it was not the case, remember that we are, of course, available for you for some follow-ups in the coming days. So the first questions I do see are about the share buyback. In fact, we have two questions about potential share buybacks. So what I would like to tell you is, at the moment, we believe the best use of our cash is to invest in our transformation plan, Inspire Every Day. We believe this is the best way to deliver value for all stakeholders. So at the moment, as of today, there is no topic of share buyback on the table.
I see another question, which is about the marketplace negative impact on Maisons du Monde brand image that would come from the low quality of some vendors. So indeed, our marketplace, as I mentioned, is a curated marketplace, trying to focus more on quality than quantity, and of course, we are monitoring closely the quality results of our sellers. We listen to our customer there, like we listen to our customers everywhere else in the organization and through our channels. I can tell you that this quality is monitored, and that the CSAT, customer satisfaction, of our vendors on our marketplace has been increasing, increasing last year. I have a third question here, which is price promotion, loyalty budget, will it remain stable? So as you saw on the slide, in fact, it was the allocation of the different levels of investments between the price, promotion, and loyalty.
In fact, we expect our gross margin to remain globally stable of the three-year plan, which also induces a level investment that will also remain more or less stable over the period. I have a question here on why do we guide on free cash flow and not on EBIT? Well, that's a very straightforward question. We believe what is going to drive value creation for our shareholders is the return to free cash flow, healthy generation, so really, cash is of paramount importance. And also, I have to say, it does match very well the mindset shift I want to implement in Maisons du Monde, so we are aligning here the external communication and the internal messages, and I believe that's also a key success factor to drive the transformation moving forward. Do you have a medium-term EBIT margin target?
And then something about the free cash flow. So about the medium-term EBIT margin target, yes, we have, of course, an internally shared EBIT target for the medium term. It will, of course, reflect the return of growth of the top line, and also it will, to some extent, be in parallel to the generation of free cash flow. So we have it internally, but at the moment, as you understand, we want to guide and to focus on the free cash flow generation over the three-year plan. Second part of the same question is about the evaluation of the free cash flow. I see the question being, I see a EUR 5 million on your slide, or EUR 10 million for 2024, 5, but I guess it's 35 following year, and 55 for 2026. Do you have any comments?
No, I don't have many comments on that one, but as you remember, we are communicating that we'll be delivering over EUR 100 million of free cash flow over this three-year plan. And indeed, 2024 is going to be a positive, real contributor of this free cash flow generation. I'm looking for next questions here. There was a question on free cash flow: Is it going to be negative or close to zero in 2024? So here, sorry, I'm repeating myself a little bit, but yes, it is not our baseline that 2024 free cash flow should be close to zero. In fact, we will be, on the one hand, benefiting from the impact of the 3C Plan actions of last year, plus, of course, the first elements of the Inspire Everyd ay transformation plan.
On the other hand, you understood that we want to keep the agility to invest in the necessary transformation of the organization and the company. And of course, if any opportunities to further accelerate the plan were to present themselves, we would want to keep the agility to seize them. But yes, all this being taken into account, at the end, we absolutely are guaranteeing that 2024 will be a positive free cash flow contributor to the overall three-year ambition of over EUR 100 million. I see a question on, why communicate only on gross savings? Well, clearly, the first reason, or the main reason, is that we, can hardly anticipate the different inflation rates for the different items of cost. We do have a current, quite visible example with the Red Sea crisis that impacts the freight cost for an unknown, still period to come.
So we prefer to keep the focus on what we actually want to deliver, the levers we can activate to reduce the cost, and hence, work really on the gross savings rather than speaking about net savings. At the moment, I see no further question. A question about the number of stores that came also quite early this morning. Indeed, we plan to close between 40-50 stores, close or transfer, and remember that in 2023, we did close 13 stores and transferred five to affiliates who reinvested in those stores. So we still have a plan of about 40-50 very pragmatically identified stores to be closed or transferred. But again, and I did not give the figure, but we plan also to open new stores, with a large proportion of those new stores being also opened by our partners.
So in total, we plan to have a total number of stores of around 400 by the end of 2026, i.e., about 50 stores more than what we have today. Oh, and maybe, Gilles, a question for you: is the personnel cost of the store that you will deconsolidate part of your gross savings, or does it come on top of it?
It would come, it would come on top of it. We are anticipating a saving, a cumulative saving of about EUR 85 million for the three coming years, and all this transfer would be additional saving.
So I have another question: Can we have an idea of the Like-for-Like growth in 2023? What was the impact of store closures on sales last year as well, I guess? And the 30% franchise targets includes outside French stores, we have to expect pressure on gross margin. So I will take the last two questions, and then, Gilles, come back to the first two questions. So again, Like-for-Like growth in 2023, impact of store closure on sale in 2023, I understand. How many closures do we expect in 2024? The 30% franchise target, including outside French stores, and expect pressure on gross margin. So I will take the last three questions. So in 2024, we expect, let's say, a logical and reasonable share of those 40-50 closures and transfer of stores.
Second question, that 30% franchise target include outside French stores? Absolutely. We have a vision of development of affiliation and franchise, which is both in France and internationally, so it absolutely includes potential openings of stores or transfer of stores out of France as well. So it's really for the total number of stores that this 30% does apply. And do we have to expect pressure on gross margin for the next years? Well, as I said, we, we have a plan that allows us to remain relatively stable in terms of gross margin, trying to generate, of course, savings and, purchasing efficiencies, notably through the reduction of the assortment and the reduction of the portfolio basis of suppliers, and yet we want to reinvest wherever necessary in terms of accessibility. Overall, keeping globally a stable level of gross margin.
Gilles, if you want to enlighten us on the two, first two questions.
Yeah, regarding Like-for-Like evolution for 2023 compared to 2022, the Like-for-Like was about -7% regarding stores. There was a question regarding the impact of closure in 2023, and it was around EUR 10 million.
I have another question here concerning the affiliation model. Could you help us understand it a bit, the financial impact of the affiliation model? So generally speaking, and, I will allow Gilles to go some, with some more detail, but basically, we keep the top line consolidated, and then there is a commission, of course, which is the way that our affiliate partners makes his profit or her profit, and it's the overall way it works, so it's a little bit different from the franchise model. And as you rightly point out, I think it's Christophe, this is where we started with affiliation, and there might be some franchise over time as well, as you understand. If you want to give some more light to the-
And regarding the model, so the top line will remain the same with affiliate, and the commission will impact the net margin.
There is a question by Florent about the utilization rate of the new warehouse, any capacity to adapt it to the new reality? So that's a good question as well. Clearly, we are still ramping up the volumes that are attributed to this new mechanized warehouse, and clearly, there is still room for maneuver in terms of adding volumes to this northern France warehouse. There is another question about the proportion of the network under affiliation or franchise by 2026. We are talking about 100 stores, absolutely. So again, it will be affiliation and certainly also franchise. It will be France, but also international, so this is really something that covers the full spectrum of our store network. You already know which stores will close and when? So for part of them, of course, we do.
For others, we still have some plans to further refine. What's important, I believe, is to understand that we are here looking at a store-by-store, very pragmatic approach, and we're looking at the payback. You know, first, is a store creating value or not? And for store that could potentially not be creating value, then checking if really it's worth closing them down, and of course, checking what is the best planning to do so to maximize the financial return on this closing of store. What are your predictions concerning the evolution of jobs in the next years? So clearly, we are optimizing wherever we can, and that's all around the place, and at the same time, the agenda is really to relaunch growth. So I expect that we'll have, again, also an increase in numbers of jobs in Maisons du Monde after 2024.
So some very financial questions here. Let me read them. I think there are three of them. What is the level of cumulative organic growth embedded in the guidance? Your cash flow guidance does not include interest and tax payments. Can you please indicate the level of cash burn expected for 2024? And what will be the impact of working cap, negative or positive, in the EUR 100 million guidance? So as you understand, we are guiding really on the cash flow, free cash flow, and keeping the agility to make the right decisions to maximize the free cash flow.
So I will not really come back to a cumulative organic growth embedded in the guidance, but again, stress that we expect a decline in 2024, with the beginning of the year, that will be more or less in the line of what we have experienced last year, then an improvement throughout the year, 2025, beginning of the growth, and 2026, acceleration of the growth. Your cash flow guidance does not include interest and tax payments. Yes, indeed, we are following exactly the same free cash flow definition as in the past, so I will let Denis and Gilles, if they want, after that, we comment on that, but it is true. What will be the impact of working cap, positive or negative, in the EUR 100 million guidance? So I will not share a detailed number, but clearly it will be positive.
As you understood, we have been making a big job in 2023 to reduce inventory by EUR 43 million while maintaining and, in fact, improving product availability. We believe we can do better still on that one. We believe the optimization of the number of references, items, and suppliers will help us do that. And, yes, I also am convinced that we are going to be able to extend payment terms for a part of our suppliers. So working cap will definitely be a strong positive contributor to the overall EUR 100 million equation. What is the turnover and profit or loss realized by the 40-50 stores to be closed? We'll probably come back to you, Manuel, on that one later on. Is the board buying shares at these low levels? Thank you. Well, that's a question, of course, you have to ask the board.
Clearly, I believe everybody at the board level in the management is fully confident that Inspire Everyd ay will deliver increasing free cash flow generation, so that it means the share is now at a very low level, and I'm pretty sure it would be a good idea to invest in it now, but that was not really your question. Could you discuss your competitive landscape and identify your toughest competitor? Well, of course, I hate to speak about competitors, so I will not be too specific about that. But clearly, in the moment we are living through in terms of consumption, what we know is that the natural shift of consumption goes more to the discount or really low-end retailers. This is what we have to take into account.
This is, in fact, what we have been deciding to take into account and to face, notably with the price cuts we are making, the rework of our essential range of products, and the introduction of a loyalty program. Moving forward, we expect that we're going to recover from this, segment of discounters that have indeed been taking some market share recently. Hello, Marlene has a technical question, which is, transferring directly operating stores to franchisees, what will be the reduction of IFRS 16 debt? How is evolving your sales at the beginning of the year? So I will take the second part, and the first part of the question for Gilles and for Denis in a second. So as I said previously, for 2024, we see no macroeconomy context improvement.
We believe that the momentum of sales of last year will, for a while, continue, and we are convinced that we're going to improve over the second part of the year. The sales dynamic that we see now is exactly in line with what we expected, and all of this is, thus, fully, clearly taken into consideration in our free cash flow generation roadmap.
Just regarding IFRS 16, as you know, FM insisted on the fact that we were monitoring carefully our debt, and precisely, this new model of affiliation will allow us to reduce our IFRS debt, as we don't have any leaseholder right anymore.
I have a question from Florent on the first results of the transferred stores to franchise. So, the five stores we have been transferring last year were really to affiliates rather than franchise. To give just a little color on the kind of partners we're working with, it's typically entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who are in France, who have a very strong foothold locally and who generally operate already a number of rather fashion or textile stores, and that are very happy to complement their network with this diversification into the home and furniture sector, and who systematically are very excited at the prospect of joining Maisons du Monde brand. Those stores have been performing satisfactorily. Clearly, you see the local touch of the local merchant that adds some value to the very strong and inspiring concept of Maisons du Monde.
So could you please detail what are the rationale behind the transformation of a massive part of the retail network into franchise? You mentioned the investment share, but what about gross margin, OpEx, and the margin profile of this franchisee? So interesting question as well, because here, clearly, you understand it works only if the two are finding their benefits in this change. I just shared with you the typical kind of profiles of entrepreneurs that are happy to join Maisons du Monde, and clearly, for us, it means a way to help safeguard and remodel at no CapEx for Maisons du Monde some stores, and also to open stores in some yet unexplored and open zones for Maisons du Monde in terms of expansion.
Of course, this makes sense only because the economic model is both profitable and cash efficient for us and profitable for our partners. Is there a specific format of store which are to sell or open over the next three years, city, activity zone? As you probably know, the major part of our turnover and stores are in activity zone at the moment. We believe it's a very resilient model, so we are still going to open stores in this kind of formats. As I told you also in the presentation, on the other hand, we see that our more urban store concepts have not been dealt with in a much adapted way to this particular kind of consumption patterns and of customer flows. We are working hard now to improve that...
We are seeing some very encouraging results from our first test. It means that probably moving forward, we'll also open some more stores in such areas. Will you keep track of the revenues by price range, essential co-fashion signature? What is the current repetition? As you understand, it is not so well curated and organized this way at the moment, and this is changing right now. What you could expect is that the top notch would be around 5%-10% maximum, and then the bigger part will be down. So it's, imagine something around 50%, 40%, and below 10%. That would be the target repetition, but of course, it can also vary from category to category. Did you plan headquarters reduction, real estate? I'm sorry, the question just disappeared, but I saw a question on the head office.
Allow me one second to find it again. Well, sorry, I might find it later on. It has disappeared from my screen, but there was something about head office. It might be a reference to the fact that we announced last year that we are closing down the historical head office of Maisons du Monde in Nantes. That is still a castle, and that we are regrouping all the teams in Nantes to more efficient, currently already occupied by Maisons du Monde, headquarters in Nantes. There was a question: Could you update on the market, how are volumes today compared to previous years? Where are you seeing more competitive pressure, on the low end or the high end side of your product assortment? So the overall pressure on the market is the same as what we experienced last year.
Clearly, as I was saying before, there is a natural trend to go for discounted price or low prices, so that still remains a tension or pressure in the market. To give more color to this, we decided to reinvest in terms of price accessibility, focusing on the entry prices, because this is also where we did observe the larger loss of volumes compared to previous years, and this is also where we saw the maximum elasticity when we reduce the prices. So that gives you an indication. It is true, at the same time, that for more high-end products, we have not, in some categories, seen any loss of volumes, yet indeed, in some cases, increase the volumes. But still, the mass really is more downwards than upwards. Any view on the impact of Olympic Games?
So, yes, we are, of course, like, everybody else in Paris, we are now planning for the Olympic Games. Certainly plenty of fun for millions of people, but we do have to adapt our logistics and probably also, the work of the smaller head office that we have in Paris as well. So this is being taken care of, and I hope that the overall optimism will be, bringing positive input also on the market. A question about the discount rate in 2023. By reducing then the number of SKUs, are you going to abandon the number of styles that used to be around 6-8? Do you plan to renew with a catalog, which was part of the historical success of the brand?
How do you build your slightly positive free cash flow in 2024, which comes from another drop in 2024 earnings? So Marlene, thank you for those questions. So, discount rates and discount investment in 2023 did reach an all-time high, above 13%, with all the initiatives that you saw we took, including Black Friday, not paid before, including the beginning of cleaning of the assortments, preparing for the transformation of our offer. So yes, this is an all-time high. Are we going to abandon number of styles? So it depends on what we call style, but clearly, when I was referring to the styles, what our customers are telling us is not really to completely quit or abandon some of the styles we are working with, but rather to rebalance.
Notably, if you go around to many stores, you will find a kind of classic, sober, white, black, cream, wooden type of colors, which are, let's call it, a mainstream style at the moment. Maisons du Monde was a bit too limited on that one, wanting to do maybe too much difference. We are going to keep the variety, the unique variety and inspiring, inspiration of our styles, and we are going at the same time to make sure that our customers also find this kind of style in our assortment. Now, what is key as well, I think, is to take into account that the merchandising evolutions that we are now testing and about to implement are really refocusing on the inspiration to make the store experience even more inspiring and also clearer to the customer.
So I clearly expect an increase in the perception of choice and an increase in inspiration by our lines of products. There was also a question about the catalog in this question here. I have to find it again. But yes, about the catalogs, we have been progressively reintroducing the catalogs. And, you know, accessibility is not only about discount, it's also about the capacity for consumers to enter easily the inspiring world of Maisons du Monde. So the catalog is a big part of that. I did hear a lot of customers and also store staff complain that we lost it, so this is why we started to introduce it, and definitely is going to be, again, a key pillar of the way to allow our customers to enter into the inspiring world and offer of Maisons du Monde.
Do you plan to open shops in Nordic countries in next few years to conquer new markets? No option is closed. No specific plan on the table at the moment, but, to be honest, although again, it's not a plan today, I believe that the Maisons du Monde love brand is strong enough and inspiring enough to visit any place or nearly any place on Earth. But again, this is not a plan for the Nordic countries as of today. Do you expect restructuring costs in 2024? So we did, as you see, reduced a lot our costs and structures in 2023. We expect to have an ongoing level of restructuring, if you want to call it this way, that will be more or less stable so as to accompany the further evolution and downstreaming of our, structures and organizations. Impact of the housing crisis in France?
Yes, it's true, for those who are not familiar with that, that the level of new projects of housing in France has reached an all-time low in the last months. On the one hand, this is clearly something we see as a threat. On the other hand, what we also see is an increasing number of consumers who, because they cannot afford to change home, want to change inside their home. So for me, it's rather a question for us to make sure that we did seize, that we do seize those opportunities, rather than just, potentially hide behind the fact that, yes, the housing crisis, the housing sector in France is in big crisis. What's the difference between affiliate and franchise? How, who holds the stock? Many thanks in advance.
Yeah, so in affiliation, typically, again, local entrepreneur, having already a network of stores, typically in fashion and so on, we actually keep the inventory, and the affiliate keeps the rest of the cost of the stores, basically, which is the store itself, its rent, the staff, and so on. In franchise, it's different. We sell to a franchisee that then sells to the end customer. So in the case of franchisee, the franchisee will bear the inventory. So I'm going backwards to check if I missed a question, but so far I don't think so. The question on e-commerce and franchisees: Don't you fear future conflicts with them on the e-commerce value sharing with franchisees? In fact, this is a very important question, but we have now the maturity of a really omni-channel leader.
So basically, store to web and web to store are part of the same Omni-Channel model, and our franchisees will be part of that. And notably, they will also be able to sell from their stores in the coming months, the marketplace products and sellers. So it really is an integrated one, and we don't see any competition between the store and the web. I believe both are reinforcing themselves mutually. A question on the marketplace initiatives and its profitability. So yes, as you understood, and I think Gilles commented it also in the margin part of this equation, the marketplace is really accretive to the model, by definition. Now we are further developing it with a level of levers that is already in use or implemented. First part is what I call the AppShop.
The AppShop is a platform and a tool that helps our store staff really sell easily, more easily than ever, the website, the marketplace products. So this is in France now, and it will be rolled out in Europe in 2024. Second, as you saw, we will also increase the local touch of our marketplace to increase from 40% to about 50% the share of local sellers to give more relevance to our local marketplaces. And of course, in terms of geographies or categories, there is still room for growth. So yes, we'll still and further grow this profitable accretive marketplace. You have a net debt over EBITDA ratio targets at the horizon of 2026.
Well, like for the EBIT, we certainly have our roadmap and targets, and certainly making sure that in terms of leverage, it's quite consistent with our overall ambition and the sustainability of our plan, but I will not disclose it now. Ah, yes. Are incentives at store level for store managers changed from previous years? Well, clearly, you understood that the job of a store manager is changing now. As I told you, both in terms of commercial relevance with the No Stress tool, and in terms of PNL understanding and mastering with introduction to PNL, and of course the review of the PNL and the results, it changes the nature of the job of our store managers.
Not necessarily compared to what it was in the past, but certainly compared to what it was in the last years. So at the same time, we are also adjusting the incentives of our regional district managers, and it will be the case also for store managers to further reflect this evolution and enrichment of their role. So Red Sea crisis not being resolved, is there an impact on the 2024 growth margin? So you are right, this is something that we have, of course, found out, like everybody else, at the end of last year. We have included in our forecast a certain level of pressure on freight costs due to the Red Sea crisis.
At the moment, we are not in a position to say if it will be more important or less important than what we have planned, but certainly it will not, at the level it is now, impact our free cash flow generation roadmap. So as I scroll through the questions, I see at the moment no further question. Well, we will, of course, not keep you all waiting if there is no further question. Let me give it another 5 or 10 seconds. Well, I will probably then conclude here, to thank you again for your, your interest and your many questions. I hope none of them went missing somewhere in the equation. But again, Gilles, Denis, and myself, and Carole, of course, will make ourselves available to you in the coming days should you have any further question. Thank you very much!