Hello, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. Today, with Denis and Gilles, we will be sharing our results for the first half of 2024. You will see the agenda on the screen. After the session on highlights and business review of the past half year, I will hand over to Denis and Gilles for the financial review, and I will then conclude with the key priorities for the second half of the year. Of course, we will then open the Q&A session. Now, as you remember, we have committed to two main priorities. First, the execution of our 2024-2026 strategic plan, Inspire Everyday, and second, the management of our free cash flow.
First of all, on Inspire Everyday, what I want to tell you is that the plan is on track, and we do see all the teams of Maisons du Monde fully involved in the plan, and the plan is starting to show some results. First of all, the transformation of our retail network is accelerating. We have been rolling out our new concept to 17 stores since the Q2 , after a successful test phase in the Q1 . The first five affiliated stores transferred last year have been registering positive results, and they do confirm the value of the model both for us and for the local entrepreneurs with whom we cooperate. Our network benefited from five openings, including two transferred to our affiliate partners. Second, the transformation of the operational model is also underway.
We did reduce by 20% the number of references for the spring-summer 2024 collection compared to the spring-summer 2022 collection. On cost management, we have achieved gross savings of EUR 20 million compared to June 2023, and we have been optimizing our inventory by nearly 16%. On the financial side, our free cash flow remains nearly stable compared to H1 2023 and is consistent with our forecast of a positive free cash flow for the full year of 2024. However, macroeconomic uncertainties in June notably affected both our sales and EBIT. So, to summarize, our transformation plan is well underway and is progressing on all streams thanks to the strategic investments, although they are not yet reflected in our P&L. Now, Maisons du Monde is not only about the cost-cutting and all the initiatives to transform the operational model, nor even only about the stores.
It is and remains a love brand, and we are committed to continuing to strengthen its identity and to uphold our promise to customers to be an inspiring, accessible, and sustainable brand. Our creativity has taken new forms through genuine collaborations with renowned personalities, the return of our inspiring catalog to stores, a successful test with selected customers for a loyalty program, which we launched in France this fall, and our commitment to sustainability, exemplified by Maisons du Monde Foundation's initiatives in support of trees and forests. Indeed, according to the latest barometer from the BVA Institute, we have gained three points in brand awareness in France for the 2022-2024 period. In our presentation in March, we have committed to sharing with you some updates on the progress of the three-year strategic milestones.
Here is a list of KPIs, the list that we shared with you, and the status according to the color-coded legend: target met, progress compared to H1 last year, but still gap to target, or action plan underway, but no progress compared to H1 last year, and gap to target. To explain to you the way it works, let me take two examples. Take the line six on cost savings, for instance. Our three-year commitment is EUR 85 million, and you can see the distribution of this commitment between 2024 in this kind of brown color, which shows a 45 million commitment of this year, thus more or less half, a bigger half of the total, and the rest to be delivered in 2025-2026. Second example to show how it works is the KPI number nine, which is about the share of retail network under partnership.
Here you can see on the opposite that the bigger part of the result will come in 2025-2026, with only a first tiny bit happening in 2024. So what you can see with this color code is that basically, as we mentioned, all key action plans have been launched. Some of them are completely in line with the targets already. Some of them are showing progress compared to last year, but still need to be adjusting to fully take in the targets of 2024. Now, in terms of network, as of June 30, 2024, Maisons du Monde has 340 stores, including seven affiliate stores and three franchises, which together represent 3% of our network. As a reminder, by 2026, we aim to have approximately 400 stores, with approximately 30% of them under affiliation or franchise.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we have been expanding our new concept to 17 stores following the successful launch in 3 other stores. This now accounts for 6% of our network. By the end of 2024, circa 20% of the network will be revamped, representing around 25% of 2023 sales. Now, to come back to the test that we have been or the pilot store that we have been launching, I have to tell you that we have been quite satisfied, and we are quite satisfied with those results, with basically an overall that represents a strong double-digit higher performance compared to the rest of the network.
It also matches a qualitative interest on the part of our customers, reflected, for instance, here in the Google Avis Clients , but also positive feedback from our team because the new layout allows them to be more easily in contact with their customers. So this is why we have been happily starting to roll out this concept to more stores, as I just mentioned. Last but not least, and before handing over to Denis and Gilles, here are a list of actions that we have been implementing in the first half of the year and that we will initiate or continue in the second half of the year to achieve our full-year target of EUR 45 million in gross savings. This, as you understand, is an important step towards our 2024-2026 commitment of EUR 85 million in gross savings.
I will not go through the detail over the lines, but I think they do give you a vision of our systematic approach of all cost drivers. This concludes the business review section, and I will hand over to Denis.
Thank you very much, FM. So now let's jump on the figures. So on this slide, you can see the evolution of our sales as well as the evolution of our network. As you can see, we have lost EUR 52 million of sales, meaning 9.6% of 2023 sales for the first semester. It is an 8.5% decline in like-for-like, meaning when we took outside all the effect from the closing of boutiques, and we will come back after, on the closing also of the U.K. website. Nowadays, we operate 330 stores directly, while we have 10 stores operated by partners. In June 2023, we had 345 stores fully managed by yourself. As you can see, so the main point is this alignment of the strategy. On the next slide, we can see what is the evolution of the products.
So we can see that the furniture is declining by 6.7% year-on-year, so less than the total, meaning that the decoration is suffering more than furniture. On the channel side, we can see that the web is the online sales are declining less than the store network, even excluding the UK part. And on the geography side, we can see that we are like-for-like on the same between France and international. We have to take into account that we start earlier the move on the network in international, namely Italy and Germany, but nowadays, the like-for-like is the same for both pillar, meaning again France and international. If we look on the EBIT result, what we can see, we have a gross margin loss of EUR 25.8 million that is composed of positive rate effect and negative effect on volume.
If I come back on positive effect on the rate, we have freight evolution that is on the good way for 2024, as well as savings that we have implemented, savings that part of them are in SG&A, part of them are in gross margin. We also invest this better gross margin into price reduction as well as promotion to ensure that we remain accessible, which is a big pillar of Maisons du Monde. On the logistics cost, we have three main effects. The first one, for sure, is volume. We are declining sales, so we benefit from a volume effect, but we also benefited from savings again on all the transportation to stores or to a direct consumer. We suffer from two effects. The first one is the unfavorable mix effect on deliveries with more delivery at home.
Secondly, for sure, the increase of the rent of our warehouses. So there is a benefit, there is a less logistics cost of EUR 6.5 million. On the store and central network costs, we have a EUR 2 million variation compared to last year, mainly coming from, of course, inflation, the rent of the inflation also of the rent of the stores. As you see, the rush in France, it was more than 5% for the first semester. But we also benefited from savings, as again mentioned by François-Melchior, and also internal optimization of our organization. And of course, we continue to invest on transformation. If we look on D&A, so there is a small variation, and this small variation is mainly coming from the start of Leo, our new warehouse in the North of France. At the end, we suffer a loss of EUR 5.8 million on EBIT.
If we look now on the cash flow, and let me remind you that our guidance is based on the cash flow, and our guidance is to generate more than EUR 100 million over the next 3 years. If we look on the cash flow, we are very stable compared to last year because we are showing a 0.9 negative cash flow, so I would say almost zero, compared to EUR 2.7 million last year. This comes from the decline of the EBITDA, of course, as mentioned on the slide before, but a big improvement on working capital, and this mainly coming from the decrease of the inventory because we came from 7 months of inventory to 6 months, showing all the good effort to secure the working capital and the cash of Maisons du Monde.
On the CapEx side, there is EUR 8.3 million of variation, but this comes mainly from Leo, I mean the warehouse in the North of France, where there is still a lot of investment in 2023. You can see on the right side the fact that we are comparable 1.9% versus 2.3% on all the CapEx outside of Leo, meaning that we are continuing to invest on our network and on our IT to develop Inspire Everyday. That's all for me. Thank you very much.
Now, thank you, Denis. Moving to the key priorities forward, you can switch the slide. Okay. So, of course, our objective is to go on with the transformation of our model. As you understood, it's very key for us to roll out our new store concept, not only because it does improve the experience for customers and the sales, but also because it's a store concept that allows us also to showcase with more value given to products and brands a much optimized offer range. As you remember, we are optimizing the offer by reducing the number of SKUs and better covering the needs. This will allow us to increase clarity and visibility of our offer.
We, of course, will go on with the streamlining of our operations over all the value chain, and more specifically, we will go on accelerating cost savings with a EUR 25 million cost saving to be delivered in H2 on top of the EUR 20 million delivered on H1. And basically, this will allow us to have a positive free cash flow contribution to this overall target that Denis mentioned again of more than EUR 100 million over a period of three years, cumulative 2024-2026. At the same time, you will see in H2 an increased number of initiatives to better value the brand and to increase yet again the brand awareness of Maisons du Monde in our European markets. So this is the conclusion of our short presentation.
I thank you very much for your attention. And of course, Denis, Gilles, and I are now happy to answer any question you have. I believe we're starting with the phone call questions.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We will now take our first question. Please stand by. The first question comes on the line of Marie-Line Fort from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good evening, Charles. Thank you for the presentation. So you still suffered during the Q2 for different difficult contexts. I would like to know if you see some better momentum in Q4. I know it's very difficult to anticipate, but given the cumulative comps base, the comparison base, is there a way to see quite an improvement at the end of the year? And the second question is about the new concepts. Is it possible to quantify the improvement on the like-for-like sales before and after? And also, just to share with us, do you expect the benefits of the refurbishing over six months or something? You will need to recover more traffic to get all the benefits from the new concepts, just to have an idea of the momentum, the phasing? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for your questions. So to start with the turnover trends and the context, it's true that there has been a specific momentum, a reverse momentum in France in June because of the political context, and we have seen that in our figures. We are able to see that because the momentum in France in sales was quite distanced by the one in the rest of European markets just in June as an exception month compared to the rest of the year. So indeed, there has been something specific affecting our main domestic markets in June. And let's say that hopefully this political context is not going to harm in the future any longer the consumption momentum in France. I will not dwell too much further than that because we did not guide on sales, basically.
So we do not see any huge sign for market improvement in H2, apart again from the fact that I do hope there will be no such other impact as the one we experienced in France in June. About your second question on the new concept, so when we go for the full-fledged new concept, we do see we have been seeing consistently something which is a strong double-digit improvement compared to the like-for-like of the remaining stores that serve the same comparable basis. That gives you a hint of where it heads. And then in terms of seeing the benefit, in fact, what we see is that the positive impact on sales of the stores that we are revamping is coming very fast. It's nearly immediate. However, of course, the revamping of the 70 stores we plan to revamp for this year is going to be progressive.
And so there will be a large momentum of those 70 stores representing 25% of the retail sales only in Q4 because the last of the 70 stores will be revamped very early November before we freeze for the end of year period. Of course, we will make sure that we have some local communications to increase the awareness of customers around those stores, which, to be honest, we have not been doing that much so far.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes on the line of Christophe Chaput from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good evening to all. Just one question for me, please. In H1 2024, you benefit from a lower freight cost, but since that, the freight cost, let's say, on the market increased, let's say, quite sharply. What kind of effect it could have on your P&L for the H2 2024? And what about 2025 as well, if you've got some visibility regarding the length of your contract, I assume? Thank you.
Thank you very much for the question. For sure, this topic is a big focus for us. Hopefully, we have currently a contract that secures fully on the cost of this topic. So I do not anticipate any issue for H2. And to be clear with you, currently, we might have a risk sometime of forwarder that does not respect their contract. So far, there is no issue with that. We continue to load our container at the price we have in our contract. So that should secure us for 2024. For 2025, for sure, it's a big concern. You have to take into account, for sure, that there are two topics. First one is that we are mainly based in Marseille.
So what you can see on the delivery index today is Shanghai, Rotterdam, and we all know that this line is quite expensive compared to the line to go to Marseille. So there is, for sure, a big decline compared to this index. Secondly, you have also to take in mind that we are loading a lot of containers in view of the delivery time it comes from Asia. So we book the container in H2. It will be the product to be sold in H1 2025. So I would say whatever will be the cost, and we are going to start the tender in the coming weeks, but it will only hit if there is a hit. It will only hit H2 of 2025.
Thank you.
Sorry. Yeah. If I may just add a kind of follow-up. You still hear me?
Yes, for sure. Sorry. Could we have a rough idea of the gross margin rate that you can, let's say, have in the second half of the year? Because the H1 performance was, let's say, really great. Could you, let's say, maintain this kind of improvement in H2? Thank you.
So far, we do not anticipate to have a big change in our gross margin rate compared to what we have today. Of course, it will depend on the promotion of the end of the year, but we do not anticipate to have a big move on that topic.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. As there are no further questions on the phone lines, I would now like to hand back to the room for any questions on the webcast.
Yeah. So we see Christian who asks, "Can you come back to the deployment schedule for the new concept of stores in 2025 in France and internationally? How many stores in H1 2025 and so forth?" That's a very good question. So, as I mentioned, 70 stores by the end of this year and actually by the beginning of November, or at latest by mid-November. At the moment, to be completely honest with you, we are seeing how we could accelerate as much as possible starting from January 2025 because seeing this positive momentum on the renewed stores, it's obviously for us of great interest to go as fast as we can, both in France and internationally. So I'm afraid that I'm not yet in a position to confirm to you the figures.
I can only tell you that we are working in a direction of drastically increasing the number of revamped stores in 2025 compared to what we had initially in our roadmap. I'm sorry, I will not be able to give you more detail than that for this call.
As there are no further questions, I would like to hand back to the room for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you. Thank you all for attending. I guess that for some of you, it was not a perfect moment. We are sorry for that, but we hope that everybody will be able now to, for the Europeans and the others, if the schedule allows it, enjoy the opening of the Olympic Games. More seriously or more business-related, we are happy to have been able to share with you the fact that Inspire is really on the way and it's really starting to deliver and that we are able to confirm the key hypothesis on which we launched our plan this year. Thank you for attending today and happy to see you and to speak to you after the summertime.