Hello, everyone, and thank you for being with us for this presentation of our earnings for the first half, 2022, for Groupe SEB. Look, we'll be making this presentation with Stanislas de Gramont. I'll turn it over to him. He's our new CEO since the 1st of July, and Nathalie Lomon, who is our Senior VP in charge of finances.
Look, in my introduction, just to remind you that several months ago, when we are commenting the earnings for 2021, I was telling you at the time that we had been through a period that was record-setting, the absolute record in terms of our revenues for our bottom line and all indicators with the context of the COVID, which ended so much so that consumers were still staying at home a lot with buying many SDAs, and with volumes that were extraordinary. They helped us to offset literally the inflationary pressures that already were emerging very strongly. This helped us to have this extraordinary bottom line. In 2022, we'll see. It started off positively.
Given the environment that deteriorated in, with the background of the Ukraine war and continuation of inflation, the group, despite this, continued its efforts to offset the headwinds, not only working on mix and innovation through increases, price hikes, of course, but also through savings in order to be able to offset so much, as much as we could headwinds. We'll be doing this throughout the year. Let's first take a look at what we did in this first half. I'll turn it over to Stanislas now.
Thank you, Thierry. With Nathalie, we'll be breaking down what happened during this quarter, starting with the first context. In the first, we had a mixed first half.
The start of the year turned out to be positive, and we saw during the second quarter a deterioration of the macroeconomic environment with impact on demand, especially in mature countries. When you analyze this, the causes are well known, inflation, the war in Russia and the Ukraine. What do we see precisely? There's a fear from consumers regarding their purchasing power. Their level of confidence is lower than it used to be. It's they spend too in other services, leisure, travel, and also this was widely anticipated and also has a positive effect on our professional activity, which is strong now. A negative effect on cookware, which were the big winners in the previous periods, when people are working at home.
Also another effect that we see in the pressure of trading down, that is buying products of a lower range. We'll come back on them a little later on. Obviously, this demand that was down creates high inventories in distribution. In light of our history in 2021 that was very high, our market is one of the beneficiaries of the lockdown periods. When we look at what it was like in terms of the trend in the markets, we are showing here at the top the SDA market in value in EMEA, including 14 countries over 12 rolling months, up until November, December, even January, February.
Our trend over these 12 rolling months, we see rises in consumption, which accounts for the fact that we were more upbeat at the end of March than we are today. We see as from April, May a decline in the market to a certain extent relative to 12-month sliding. It's true for the SDAs and also the pans in value, France and Germany, where we saw a blip in November, December. The trend over these 12 months, March, April 2021, January, March, was still rising with a decline in March, April again.
Additionally, I was mentioning historically, traditionally, we talk about upgrading the upmarket, that is, the established markets' rise in terms of value market through innovation through the improvement of products' specs and also through the increase in average bought prices. You see here the trend period-against-period of the market shares of established brands in the same EMEA scope in SDA. Apart from March and April, where we see a slight slump and a temporary upturn in brands that are more low-end or retail or retail-related brands. This is our context. In relation to this, when we see the month-over-month momentum in the market versus 2019, which is and remains our pre-COVID landmark.
In 2020 in China, the lockdowns in the first quarter in the Western world, in the second quarter, 2021 turned out with mixed elements that were very strong due to 2020 that was deteriorated. When you look with great attention, the trend of the market compared to 2019, we can see that we remain on growth rates still interesting in a European scope, still for the small, the SDA. In this context, the sales of the group were mixed in the first half. Across the full, half sale, we are 1.6% up. With 2.3% down on a like-for-like basis, a slight deterioration in the second quarter in -0.4% and on a like-for-like basis, 5.1%- .
ORfA is at EUR 199 million with ORfA margin at 5.4% against EUR 320 million in the first half 2021, which was a historical record, and this is borne out in the second quarter with a ORfA at EUR 59 million with a margin of 3.4%. Also, the net financial debt is at EUR 2,447 million versus EUR 1,185 million. Nathalie, now regarding our sales and how you break them down. Of course, Stanislas, as you heard now by Stanislas, the performance in this half year concerning our revenues organically is a decline of 2.3% which represents a decline of EUR 81 million on this slide.
Wanted to give you a number of analytical elements of our sales, especially, pinpoint in this performance elements that are more specific to or non-recurring. The first one is about the loss in sales, which is a consequence of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which represents in the first half EUR 57 million versus last year. That 57 million loss represents 1.6% regarding the scope of the group. As you know, the group also is launching loyalty programs in cooperation with large retailers, and these programs are non-recurring. Since we had benefited significantly in the first half 2021, it is no longer the case in 2022. These programs, which once in a while beef up our revenues, had contributed at the time for EUR 52 million.
The fact of having few of them this year represents an impact for the half year of 1.4% down in terms of growth. The last element now, which is more stemming from an estimate, is about the loss of revenues in China due to lockdowns in March, rather in April and May. This loss should be around EUR 40 million or 1.1% in terms of growth. Restated from these specifics, the sales in the first half would have been higher by EUR 67 million or organic growth of 1.8%. Now, let's go back to the figure that we published. Last year, the group came up with revenues of EUR 3.661 billion, that's in the first half and that was last year.
This year, EUR 3,666 million with the restatements that I've just presented. The currency effect is favorable, which mainly comes from the devaluation of the euro versus the Chinese yuan and against the U.S. dollar, EUR 437 million and no perimeter impact. I present on this slide the detail of this currency effect currency by currency. The positive contributors, as I indicated, significantly are the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar. At the other end of the spectrum, you will find here the devaluation of the Turkish pound. These are comparisons from half year to half year. We see here the strong devaluation of the Turkish pound in the second half of 2021. Much for this, Stanislas. Now, by business, let's see what it was like.
The performance was mixed, starting with the professional, EUR 330 million in sales +13.6% versus last year +9.5% organically, and the consumer EUR 1.336 billion +0.5% compared to last year. A bit more difficult. Let's start with the professional performance. The professional business, that's for 90%, that's Professional Coffee, as you are aware. Our sales for the half year are solid for the Professional Coffee, +6% compared to a high base in the second half last year.
Remember, we had big deals at the time, two big deals in the U.S. in the second half quarter, + 6% for coffee, growth of more than 50% in hotel equipment, and also solid growth and ongoing of +25% for Krampouz, a business we bought nearly two years ago. When you go into specifics of professional coffee, remember, in that sector, we have three types of businesses. We have big contracts, let's call them deals. We have a recurring one, about services, after sales service, selling spare parts, and also we sell machines to smaller consumers. What is typical in this half, and we mentioned this before, is a very sharp momentum of sales which are recurring.
Apart from the big deals, we said that for the past 5 or 6 quarters that the lockdown pushed us to diversify our types of clients. This is what we've done now. Apart from the deals, we can generate sales of 25% higher with a dynamic also that is balanced between service-related businesses and also selling machines. Such performance can be found in every geographical region in Europe first with +20% sales in the U.S. as well, with nearly doubling of sales with GR excluding deals and also Wilbur Curtis sales, which we bought at the end of 2018, up by 50%. Wilbur Curtis are selling filter coffee makers and traditional ones.
In China, the latest that we have a resumption of the rollout of our business with Luckin Coffee after this customer went through some turmoil. On the other side, the consumers are impacted by slowdown in demand. In the first quarter, we saw it solid at the time. Obviously, there are impacts of the non-recurrence of the loyalty programs of 2021. 1.6% in growth, that is, there was also a difference between our sales to retailers, the sell-in and the sell-out, due to the fact that retailers want to wind down our inventories. There are some big impacts in our markets. The whole is better than the average, and then the total one or rather than the specific in certain markets.
The excellent good news is the half-year sales in China, which are organically up by 7% despite the disturbances in the second quarter, especially in April, due to the new lockdowns in the major urban areas. The last point, in my introduction, I said that we are looking at our sales relative to the same period in 2019. We are again rising by 13.2% versus 2019. The business slowdown is particularly strong for the EMEA, and you see that in the Americas, the performance in the half-year at -2.2% organically with a rise between the first and second quarter. Many basic effects that explain this. We are at +7% the first quarter up to +1.3%.
In EMEA, we see sales moving from -5% to -13% between the first and the second quarter. I noted as well that the events in Ukraine have an impact, first and foremost, EMEA directly on Russian and Ukrainian sales and indirectly on the other effects on the economies in this crisis. A few major markets are particularly impacted. In the market in France, it's -20% on a like-for-like basis. First of all, it's the impact of huge loyalty programs, 1.6%. That's nearly one-third of the losses due to last year's loyalty issues. We have a slowdown in demand. We have inventories in the retail business in France had a record year in 2021. Let's not forget that, and that comparative hurts, of course, how we read the figures this year.
Russia and the Ukraine, it's about EUR 60 million, the impact on our sales. With the events there, with the speeding up of the impact in the second quarter, the conflict started on 24th of February and is in full swing now in the business. In the second quarter, we're maintaining our business in Russia, but we stopped our advertising there. We of course respect all the sanctions defined by the French and European authorities. In Japan and South Korea, we see slowing down of demand due to an inflationary context which is new in Japan in particular. People are less keen on buying, and in Korea it's more, it's better for us, service, to be in services than elsewhere. In China, we see the bad news there.
Some also good news in China confirms a good momentum in the half year with the first quarter up +6.6% versus 2021. First quarter 10.9% up and the second quarter up +1.9%. EUR 40 million would be the impact, the estimate on the impact, so it was nearly nil on our industrial activity, also on our logistics. However, it disturbs very sharply the online sales and deliveries to homes because it's much more difficult to deliver during lockdowns. We are reassured by a 12% rise relative to last year in June, which does show that as soon as the economy or the country opened up again, we are back with the sales momentum we had in the first quarter.
Supor outperformed the promotional event on the 18th of June, and such rise of half-year growth is driven especially by the SDAs and by the large kitchen appliances, the hoods and integrated ovens. Supor continues to consolidate its positions in China. We've been saying this for several periods. Supor works on innovation. They are upgrading upmarket and extending products and Supor. Thanks to this quality work, Supor is number one online in May and June, which in cookware historically, listen, we are number two in the cookware. Now we're in front of Midea, and we are historical leaders with a market share twice our first competitor, and that leadership is even stronger thanks in this period.
Another point to note, as you know, the retail business in China is being very dynamic and grows very rapidly. In the past few years, we've seen new platforms of online sales, the latest one and the most successful being TikTok. We are leaders on TikTok, and we take full advantage of the development of these new hubs or platforms to develop our business.
If we now look at how our products are evolving, sales per product line rather, I'd like to make three comments. The core business, our Cookware, electrical cooking, is following the trend, the average trend for the group. The second point concerns Home Care, vacuum cleaning in particular. That's continuing to grow well on a structural basis, and we're continuing to consolidate our positions. The third comment, looking at food prep and Linen Care. Food prep, where we're seeing a decrease of 15%, and linen care up 15%. When people were at home, they wanted to buy food preparation devices and were not focused so much on linen care. We're seeing the real effect of post-lockdown on these product categories.
Now I'm going to summarize our sales for the first half of the year in terms of geographic areas, and this table works in the following way. On the lines, you have the main areas that we're tracking. In the columns, the first half year, 2021, the first half year, 2022, the gap between 2022 and 2021. A reminder of the first half year of 2021 on a like-for-like basis in order for you to compare, and the gap between with 2019, which is our reference here. I'll start with the bottom of the table. We have growth of 1.6% of our published, -2.3, compared to the first quarter. The first quarter of 2022 is almost a +10% with respect to 2019.
Now, if we look at the +0.5 on a like-for-like basis, +29% last year, and we're at +13 compared with 2019 for total consumer. If we go back to the table, and I'm not going to repeat myself, we have had. You see all of the performances for the different continents. Look at Asia and America. Asia on a like-for-like basis at -0.2, compared with +57 last year. A very solid performance. That's plus four, +15, and for Asia, and a minus two, +7.2. The problem is in Europe, we were at +34 in the first half of last year and at plus nine for this year, but we're still +6.6 compared to our reference year, which is 2019. That is our sales activity.
Now I'm going to hand the floor to Nathalie to talk about our financial performance.
Thank you, Stanislas. With EUR 3.6 billion of sales, the group this year had operating income of EUR 199 million. This is ORfA margin of 5.4%. Down from last year. This is impacted by currency effects. At a like-for-like basis, the drop would have been EUR 78 million. If we look at the following slide, which is an important element to understand the evolution of our operating income, if we start on the right side of the table, you see that there's a real currency effect that's been impacting us in a negative way, EUR 43 million. This negative currency effect is the combination of a positive currency effect on sales.
We saw that last year, and this is principally linked to the reevaluation of the U.S. dollar and of the renminbi. You also know that we have a purchasing base for our products, be they sourced or components for manufacturing, which is very high in these two currencies. The reevaluation of these currencies with respect to the euro has an overall negative impact on the group's operating income, and this is what we measure here in the -EUR 43 million. If we go back towards the left of the graph, starting with EUR 320 million of operating income in 2021, we see that there's a volume effect that is negative, representing EUR 149 million. This is a decrease in the volume sold with respect to the first half of 2021, which is a historic year or first half for the group.
We also see that there's an increase in the cost of sales, EUR 189 million. The cost of goods sold compared with the first half of last year. This increase is a significant one, and that mainly takes into account the increase in transportation costs. We've been talking about this for a certain number of quarters now. We've seen a constant increase in the cost of maritime transports. If we're comparing quarter, half year to half year, this impact is even more important. We also have an increase in the price of raw materials, energy that's included in the EUR 189 million. There's also an increase in the storage costs and some under-absorption because in our sales volumes, but also our production volumes, which have gone down.
It's also important to note that the group has again succeeded in offsetting the negative effects, be it the currency or volumes or the increase in the cost of goods sold with price increases. We managed to pass on price increases to our customers in a successive manner at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year, and also during the first and second quarter, depending on the geographic zones and the product ranges, in order to offset for the deterioration of the cost factors and the decrease in volumes, obviously. This increase in price is also associated with a positive mix effect. The group is able, as it is used to doing, to adjust its average sales price. We increased prices, but we also enriched our product mix. This has a huge impact.
It represents EUR 366 million in the first half of the year compared with the first half of last year. We also have two elements which are growth drivers. We've continued to invest in our growth drivers to ensure the promotion of our products in the first quarter, in the second quarter, with a slowdown on our growth driver expenditures that took place at the end of the first quarter. Compared with the first half of last year, these expenses are up by EUR 61 million. We also have seen an increase in our commercial and administrative expenses. This is due to a base effect that was favorable last year that concerns the closing of our shops in Germany, which were closed for almost six months in the first half of last year, five and a half months, to be specific. They're open now.
We also have an increase in administrative costs. This is essentially linked to the expenditures made by the group to modernize its digital platform, be it the digitalization of our back-office and also the digitalization to ensure the development of our better knowledge of our customers, in B2B and also for CRM. What we see basically is that we're able, in the first half, to totally offset the increase in costs, to offset the deterioration of currency thanks to price increases and the improvement in the product mix that was sold by the group. Moving on to the next slide. Here you see the change in our growth drivers for the first half year, as I've just commented on this, with important expenditures concerning innovation.
This is really one of the drivers, as you know, for the group's growth, especially for its long-term growth. We're not slowing down on our investment in innovation in order to develop new products and to add functions to existing products. We also see an increase in marketing and advertising expenses, as I indicated earlier. This is here to support the sale of our products and to help our distributors sell our products. Now from ORfA to net profit, there are some elements. At June 30th, EUR 13 million discretionary, non-discretionary profit sharing, other operating income and expense. Last year, the first half of the year was mainly impacted by expenses due to the closing of a site in Germany and the transfer of a part of the business from that site towards France.
There is nothing equivalent in the first half of this year for the group. The financial result is down by some EUR 20 million. The main element that explains this deterioration corresponds to the cost of refinancing our activities in Russia. Roughly half the gap, so EUR 10 million, EUR 5 million that concerns refinancing of our activities in Brazil. The rest is the technical element with the variation of the valuation of output that was set up to cover our operations and the free shares and the for equity in the group. There's no real impact on equity because of this. The tax expenditures are down, and this is due to reduced operating income and non-controlling interests. That is the part of revenue that's support for this. Now I'll talk about the balance sheet. This is presented in a simplified manner.
As you can see, there are few elements that require any comments here other than the change in working capital requirements and the financial debt. Let's talk about operating working capital requirements on the next slide, please. Here we observe that there's been a big increase in inventory. We went from EUR 1.455 million to EUR 2.241 million in the first half of 2022. We started at the end of 2021, a real proactive policy to reduce stock. The objective was to be able to deal with demand and to absorb the inefficiency of supply chain, to not be out of components or finished products. This is what happened, is we see an increase in our inventory.
We've also had to deal with the increase, the higher prices for raw materials, components, and freight costs, which is taken into account in our sales price. An increased transport time for our finished products that are made in Asia and that are intended either for the U.S. or for Europe. This transport time really significantly increased between the two periods. We have good quality stock. It was recently made up. We were forward-thinking in terms of the demand that we would have in the second half of the year. We have important actions to monitor our cash collection and also the payment conditions that we give to our customers and for suppliers, in terms of, receivables, it's stable compared with last year. Both receivables and payables fairly stable compared with last year.
If we look at cash flow generation for the first half year, starting with the ORfA at EUR 199 million, where we reintegrated amortization and employee profit sharing. For Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 321 million. This was deteriorated by a change in operating working capital requirements, an increase of EUR 636 million year-on-year investments in the first half of the year, EUR 164 million. In this investment amount, I remind you that there's a substantial investment that the group decided to make in France in order to create a logistics platform intended for SDA products that will cover the whole European continent. This is EUR 85 million that was invested, and the expenditures are distributed over 2021 and 2022.
It should be active and up and running at the beginning of January of next year. EUR 102 million of tax and interest that were paid out and the other elements for non-operating working capital requirements. This included fiscal and social debt. We have free cash flow, EUR 683 million. On this last slide, cash consumption increased net debt, which was at EUR 1.5 billion at the end of 2021 and last year. We paid dividends to all of our shareholders. Groupe SEB has shareholders, but also minority shareholders in Supor. There were other elements that impacted debt. This concerns restructuring costs, but also the purchase of shares to cover employee shareholding and investment in our venture capital vehicle, SEB Alliance.
This led to net financial debt at the end of June 2022 of EUR 2.447 billion. The main financial ratios at June 30th that come from the table that I've just presented. Operating working capital compared with as a percentage of sales at 22.3%, compared to 14.8% last year. This is essentially due to the increase in stock levels, in inventory levels. For 12 sliding months, our net financial debt over equity is 0.7. Net financial debt Adjusted EBITDA 2.5 at the end of June. I'm now going to conclude this presentation by sharing our outlook for 2022.
We had a very solid first quarter, and at the end of the first quarter, we thought we'd see a progressive improvement in the economic context and that we would see growth for the rest of the year. Of course, the second quarter saw a deterioration of the environment in general, and we're anticipating that this environment will continue in the second half of the year. In these conditions, the group has decided to review its sales and operating income that was previously communicated, and so we're talking about 2022 sales stable, ORfA margin in the range of 8%-8.5% for the full year, which corresponds, if you've done your calculations, to an operating margin in the second half of the year, which should sit at the operating level of the operating margin for the second half of last year.
We're continuing to invest. We're continuing to cover all of the inflationary factors through the improvement in our mix and prices, as Nathalie spoke about, and we are hoping to come back to our similar operating margin to last year in the second half at the end of the second half of this year. We have to take into account additional costs this year, higher than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. In these additional costs, external ones, we are including raw materials, components, freight, and of course currencies. Everyone can see now that there's been a drop in the euro with respect to the dollar and the yuan. This is going to be a topic in the coming months, and we now estimate the additional cost at EUR 300 million compared with the initial estimated amount of EUR 200 million.
How are we going to manage this? What are the guidelines for managing our business in the second half of the year? We started by setting up the necessary actions in terms of prices and strict control of operating costs. For prices, we have the ambition of offsetting all of the additional costs that we're dealing with, the additional costs that we're having to deal with. For the control of operating costs, we want to have OpEx that is comparable to the second half of last year. We're gradually going to adjust our inventory levels to our business level in the second half of the year.
We'll find balance between the inefficiencies of the supply chain and the determined will that the company has to come back to stock levels that are closer to our historic levels in terms of sales. Of course, we will continue our long-term value creation strategy. We're continuing to invest in innovation for new products, and we're also working on the development of the company in China on professional coffee. We are determined to ensure that despite our short-term disappointing performance levels, that we're going to maintain our heading, and we'll be quickly back up to performance levels that are more in line with our historical levels. Thierry? Thank you, Stanislas.
Thank you, Nathalie. I'm now going to hand you the floor for questions. Firstly, for our operator to give you instructions.
Indeed, if you'd like to ask a question or comment on today's conference, so press star one on your keypad.
The first question from Mourad Lahmidi from BNP Paribas. Over to you, sir.
Yes.
That are contained in the second quarter, despite the much higher U.S. dollar and the Chinese yuan, I guess, the hedging has protected you in the second quarter. Does the rise of the U.S. dollar will it not be more significant in terms of a negative impact in the second part of the year and on the first part of 2023? Same question for the Chinese yuan. My second question is still bearing upon the EBIT bridge in the rise of the cost of goods. Could you give us a rough estimate of the breakdown of the effect of the input cost, raw materials, et cetera, versus absorption? What was the most significant factor between these two elements?
Nathalie, it's for you.
Yes. As a matter of fact, the impact, or I would say the devaluation of the euro versus the other, the two currencies, is fairly limited in the second quarter because the group has been hedged. As you know, we have a hedging policy for the midterm, and our hedging positions are put together with maximum deadlines over 18 months on a rolling way. Starting the year, we want to have a hedging level that is not necessarily 100%, but fairly satisfactory, so that it limits the impacts of changes in currencies over the period. It will be the same situation, I would say, for the second part of the year. Also, we started to put in place hedging positions for 2023.
Some of them were put in place, of course, just when it was more with the euro dollar around 115 and a renminbi whose value at the time was widely higher than seven, and compared to what we have today. The fact of putting in place these hedging policies on a rolling and long-term basis enables us to have enough time and latitude to adjust our prices, our mix, and therefore not be impacted immediately by changes in currency values. Look, I think I answered the first part of your question.
With respect to the deterioration of the cost of sales in EUR 190 million which are on the bridge, there are EUR 80 million that we allocate to transportation costs, especially of maritime transport, with deteriorations where there is a transport hike due to a sort of disorganization of the supply chain in this field. We are also impacted by price hikes which are coming from the rise of the oil Brent, the petroleum Brent, and the index that is passed along on the prices of maritime transport. The other factors are a bit less impactful. However, if you take into account raw materials purchases, we have about EUR 50 million there. Also an increase in our storage expenditures and EUR 10 million in so-called under-absorptions.
Thank you very much. Next question from Marine Faure from SG. Over to you, sir or ma'am.
Yes, Marine Faure, Société Générale. I have several questions. First of all, what kind of currency effect would you expect in the second part? Should there be a similar impact for the coming future? I know it's difficult to make some forecasts. More strategically, will you reconsider your commercial strategy? You have increased fairly sharply your prices. You have increased the mix. You launch products with average prices fairly high. In Europe, it seems to be off compared to the current demand in terms of commercial strategy. Therefore, are you considering to reposition your products? Have a strategy that promotes slightly lower prices for your products. I have also a question about the volume effects, which is fairly negative in the first half on the ORfA, which shows a decline in production.
Do you think production manufacturing should pick up in the second part?
I'll answer your first question and your third question as well. On your first question, the currency impact on our sales in the second half year, as it stands now, it should be around EUR 100 million. Again, given the current state of affairs and your second question now, in the ORfA bridge, we are on sold volumes and not product-related volumes. It's important to note that and to pinpoint it, because the difference between the two depending on the meaning you have, can be found positively or negatively. Now, starting inventories, yes, we expect lower sold volumes in the second half of the year.
Having said that, a positive effect for the full year related to the price hikes and the mix being more enhanced and all the actions we're putting in place to protect the margin of the group.
Let me take the second question on the commercial strategy.
Thank you, Nathalie. Mr. de Gramont, yes, we will not change our commercial and product strategies. It's not that we are not looking at what is going on in the market, but actually for more than 20 years, the group has been working on all its businesses through upgrading, innovation, opening new categories or improving product performances and product specs. I mean, it's working, so we don't see any need therefore to mark down, to go down in our brands.
There are price moves which are unheard of in Europe, especially in terms of the swings, but we are quite confident about our ability in passing along the fair value and price to consumers. Therefore, we will not change our price mix strategy based on short-term events. Hey, let's not forget that the basis for comparison when you look at performances in Western Europe, we compare to 2021, that turned out to be extremely dynamic with overconsumption of our products that we might have underestimated or undervalued. When you look at the trends of our product ranges compared to 2019, look, we are still in double-digit growth in a very dynamic growth context. We want to remain cautious. We want to maintain a strong direction in terms of growth drivers around renovation, innovation, and the creation of value. That's it.
We will let our strategy remain unchanged. We have three questions now. The first one, in terms of the 28% rise in inventories, how do you break down the volumes and the value and inflation, by the way, Nathalie, perhaps?
Yes. We see a breakdown which is more due to the volume effect. About 60% or 67% is due to the volume effect in terms of increases of inventories. The rest is due to value and transit. We have another question pertaining to France, -10% in France with a strong base effect. Could you compare the sales in France compared to 2019, especially in light of the momentum of the group? Yes. Let me take this question.
Let's start with the small domestic appliance, -11% in the half and +11 compared to 2019. These are figures at the end of April. It might be a bit lower. I think we are around 5% or 6% of growth versus 2019 with respect to the French activity. In relation to our momentum in the group, it's neutral or slightly better than Western Europe. Are you foreseeing any increase in the promotional activities from retailers after the summer in order to reduce their inventories? There are some temptations there. What we see from our retailers now is more about lower traffic. From that standpoint, when people don't go to stores, bringing down prices is less efficient or less relevant. We will see pressures on prices.
They are included into our assumptions related to our forecast for the second half.
There's another question. Do you think that the decrease in volumes is not a reflection of the fact that the prices have increased too much? Is it, if it comes from the product mix price effect, not that the contrary to what you're said about the markets?
Well, now you're mixing everything, but thank you for that question. It's very relevant. In the mix effects, you have three types of mix effects. You have the product mix with the categories, you have the geographic mix, and also the distribution channel mix. When we're developing our direct-to-consumer business, online or in the retail shops, we sell at price levels that are higher, and so it has a very positive mix effect on our business. We can observe in certain categories, the categories for which we don't necessarily have a lot of innovation.
That's what we call the core market categories. There's a higher tension on the mix there than for versatile vacuum cleaners. We're seeing an increase of the mix effect, so an increase in the value of our products. The loss of market share for established brands in this period or for two periods, if we look at the medium-term, we're in categories and markets where the valuation is quite constant over time. I don't see any other questions for now.
The price mix effects is very important in the half year. Can you break down and tell us the price effect in this mix?
So the pure price increase other than the. And removing the improvement of the products mix, this represents 50% of the amount that we see here. Well, I don't see any other questions. Oh, by telephone. Are there any questions coming in over the.
I was wondering if the additional cost that you're anticipating in the second half of the year, how much is this linked to the effect of having high inventory levels in the first half of the year, so you still have product in your inventory. Can you shed some light on this?
Hello, Mourad. We have a stock rotation pace that's quite quick, but what's going to happen in the second half of the year is that we're going to continue to slow down production. In our estimates for our annual revenue, there'll be this sub-absorption effect because our industrial tools will be less used in the second or the last part of the year.
Less industrial efficiency, and this will be seen in the cost of sales in the second half of the year representing roughly EUR 15 million. Did I answer your question?
Yes.
Yes. Thank you. That was clear.
Expect to enjoy any benefit from falling commodity prices in China, steel, aluminum, or is it largely held on H2? Again, for you, Nathalie.
Oui. Mourad. There are two hedging methods for the group's exposure. As concerns the purchasing of raw materials for Europe or the U.S., we have hedging policies on the market. Medium-term hedging. There's really nothing to be expected in that part of the business. In China, we have a hedging mix on firm purchases. In that part, yes, there could be some upsides in future, but we have to bear in mind that what will be made in the second half of the year is made with raw materials that have already been purchased. Are there any other questions?
Yes. The following question comes from Marine Faure at Société Générale.
I have another question concerning the driving forces.
Are you going to continue investing in your growth drivers to the same extent in the second half of the year?
I said that we have very different situations in China, very dynamic economy, and we're going to continue to invest because these investments have a quick return on investment, and this is significant in terms of its impact on sales, market share, and margin. For the other geographic zones for the group, we're considering aligning or adjusting our investment level to the very high investment level that we had in the second half of 2021. If you were going to make forecasts, this is a very high level. It's a historic high level in the second half of 2021. It won't be more than we spent last year.
In any case, this reflects that in the first half of the year, we doubtless continued to invest on the performance expectations for the second half of the year that did not come to pass. We want to rebalance our investments according to what we will generate in terms of business activity. For the second half of 2022 should be equal to the second half of 2021.
Moreover, the way in which we're looking at the second half of the year is that we're going to do the same work on volumes, price, product mix, absorption of inflation on the top line, on gross margin, and then we'll bring down our expenses compared with 2021, and this should allow us to achieve a level of operating margin in the second half of the year at 10%-11%, which is comparable to what we had last year. Thank you. Let me just add, in terms of our operating margin that was mentioned at 8%-8.5% in our information, we have to take into account 80 basis points linked to currency. Today, we are seeing a strong weakening of the euro compared to the dollar and the yuan, as we said earlier.
This has a very positive effect on our sales, a negative effect on our operating income, and so by definition, a major impact on our operating margin, but this is not a structural deterioration compared with the rates that we normally have.
We don't have any other questions. Stanislas, would you like to make a last comment? Yes. Thank you, Thierry.
I just wanted to say that we're really focusing on the management of this year and on the achievement of the guidelines, the guidance that we're proposing today. There are complicated market conditions today, and we're seeing some negative impact on our business. We're continuing our path, and we're staying focused on the excellent work that's been done in terms of managing prices, product mix, and the introduction of innovations.
Strict discipline on our operating costs, a lot of work done to reduce our inventory levels in order to come back to a more balanced inventory levels in terms of our need to serve the market and our need to reduce our working capital requirements. Both will be taken into account. We'd like to thank you for your trust, for following us, and we hope that we'll see you again in September for our third quarter results.
Oh, apparently, there were some other questions by phone.
First of all, at this stage, do you feel that you're maintaining your market shares, or are you losing any? In this picture, in your view, what are the good news, if any?
Could you specify the second part of your question? What kind of picture, the picture of these earnings? You mentioned that in China, you were becoming number one, I believe.
Yes, I think that our market share in Western Europe at the end of the period is eroding a bit, is going down a bit. Well, we don't have the figures yet. The panels we have are at the end of April and May, with perhaps a slightly stronger impact in France due to the weight of the major supermarkets, hypermarkets, and the core and commodities products. I think for Europe as a whole, this drop will be very slim. It could be impacted here and there by customer reactions on price hikes, but we don't see any strong trend of any decline or eroding market shares that would be meaningful. Now, the good news, well, I spoke about China.
The excellent good news coming from on this half year is in China, which quarter after quarter, half year after year confirms its resilience, that even in markets that might be a bit lackluster, we can have better margin, and we can adjust to the distribution networks which are changing very quickly. TikTok that didn't exist 18 months, that's 10% or more of our business. We have an ability in China in adjusting to the new developments of distribution levels and to be ahead of the in terms of upgrading and innovation. The other excellent piece of news is the professional business. We entered 2020 in a professional situation where our customers were closed, and the most retailers that bought our products, well, stopped strongly their purchases.
We had good news on the resilience through services and through the small customers who continued more or less in different regions to consume. We sharply developed our portfolio of clients and diversified strongly that portfolio, and today we are back at levels which will reach the highest levels in the next 3-4 quarters. Much stronger because now we have a portfolio that is more diversified. We have a service business that is stronger than before the lockdown, and hopefully, the deals will pick up again when all the major supermarkets and retailers trusted us will have, again, some investments ready. These are the two excellent pieces of news. China, that's about 25% of the group's sales. Now the professionals, that's over 7%. All in all, about a third of the group is in excellent position.
Am I answering your question?
Yes. Thank you very much. Okay, I'll see you in three months. Thierry.
Thank you very much. Any other question? No. Will you please wrap up the conference today, sir?
Look, Stanislas has summarized the situation quite well. We want to continue on this trend, which through the product mix and innovation and sometimes through price hikes, we will offset headwinds, which as we said before, which will be higher than what we foresaw. We feel we are in a position to offset them in the second half of this year, and therefore have earnings in the second half pretty close to what we had last year, like with sales. We'll meet you again in three months' time, and we thank you for your attention. Thank you.