Good afternoon and welcome to this webinar, where we'll be commenting on the half-year results for Thermador.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon, everybody.
[Foreign language]
I'm sure you've received our shareholder letter through. Probably read it as well. During this webinar, we will be commenting on this letter and answering any questions you have, of course. Firstly, about our workforce, you can see that the workforce is stabilizing after growing strongly during the post-COVID period, where we hired a lot of people. We can now see stabilized figures at the end of June in relation to the end of December last year. Now, looking at the activity with these graphs that you've been seeing over the past few months, you can see in 2021, organic growth in sales, which is the first part on that graph. Then we have in orange the selling price effect or inflation.
In the blue-gray color, you can see the average change in volumes. In 2021, all the indicators were positive. And then in 2022, 2023, and 2024, you can see the figures going down gradually. So all these indicators are now negative, both in terms of organic growth in sales, which is down 16.1%. The selling price effect or inflation, which has been translated into a -2.5% figure, and an average change in volumes of -13.6% compared to last year. So some of the indicators from our customers now, firstly from COEDIS, which is a trade association, with all our sanitary equipment, heating, air conditioning, and pipework distributors. And here you have a table seeing the monthly progression since 2023 and then 2024. Since the beginning of 2024, the figures have been in the negative, and in June, this has gone down to -15.6%.
Clearly, this is a difficult period for our wholesaler customers in heating and sanitary equipment, which are our main customers. If we then look at new housing in France, there are two trends here that you know in this graph. The blue one, the higher one, where you can see planning applications granted, which is going down still. This was published this morning by the authorities. We have the housing starts, which is more interesting for us because it's thanks to the housing starts that we can then sell our equipment, say, six months later. You can see that this is very, very low, a long-standing rate, and isn't showing any signs of recovery. If we now look at the retail activity, so these are figures consolidated within the association called Inoha, which are all the main DIY retailers.
You can see that the figures are negative here and have been over the past few years, particularly for this second quarter. In June, the figure was -5.9%. So this retail channel, which is just over 17% of the group's activity, we can see a negative trend in the market. And then a few words about industry now. This PMI index you know now, which we monitor in the French manufacturing industry and also at a European level, and it gives us indications about growth or degrowth in our activity. When this indicator is below 50, it means that we're in degrowth. When it's above that, we're in a period of growth.
So for the past few years, you can see that this indicator has been under 50, and it's stabilizing now at around 45-47, which shows that month by month, the market in France and in Europe is in degrowth. The industrial activity for the group is about 23% of its activity. One last table for our business now, which summarizes growth or degrowth in sales by major channels. You can see the first line is retail, looking at -17.9%. Then we have -15.7% for the professional channel. This is quite a similar trend. As I said earlier, the general trend is -16.1%. To summarize our situation in relation to the context, this first half of 2024 is one of the most difficult contexts that we've seen for the past 25 years for the Thermador Groupe.
So it's a particularly difficult period for us to go through. Patricia is going to give you some explanations on the financial side.
[Foreign language]
Now, looking at income and profits. If we look at our profitability now, we've had sales are down -16.1%. Maybe we can go on to the next slide. No, this one's fine. Charges, fixed charges, which are a significant share of our overall expenses. Mechanically speaking, we have a reduction in the operating profit, which is higher than the reduction in our sales. Because we're getting -27.8%, and our net profit as a portion of the group is going down 26.6%. The difference between those is due to our financial income, because for the first half of the year, we managed to balance out our charges for loans and certain charges related to the main IFRS issues.
So we have that on the one side. On the other side, we have our financial investments, because we invested our cash for the first semester. And if we look at last year, last year, we didn't manage to balance the situation. We had a loss. And that is why, therefore, the net profit has gone down less strongly than the operational profit. So I'll go on to the next slide now, which shows you our profitability. So if we take the turnover, we're looking at -16.1%, and our margin has been maintained here. It's a positive element for our subsidiaries, because in this context where we have a reduction in sales prices, they've managed to resist in terms of their margins. And this has been maintained at 36%, which is slightly up compared to last year.
And then, activities in professional trades, and then those in retail, we can see that both of these areas have managed to uphold their situation, which perhaps better results in retail. In terms of our charges now, we have our charges a percentage of net turnover, which has gone up, because we're at 23.7% here at the end of June 2024. So we have a significant part of fixed charges there. We have the vector variable cost, because if we have a reduction in volumes, the importance was to look at how our variable expenses were going to follow these trends. So these include transport costs, which have gone down in line with the reduction in volume of sales, but slightly less, because we've had more smaller orders. And then we also have packaging, because the goods that we send to our customers are repackaged at times.
We have costs related to that. We also have the third point, which is temping costs, because when our logistics teams, who are permanent staff, need backup, we use temping staff. Given the activity we've had, we've used less temping staff. The last element, which is important here, is about variation in bonuses. 21% of pay is variable pay. That's an important element related to our operational profit at the end of June 2024, which we provided for bonuses, which were decided at the end of the year, which follow the operating profit results. If I go on to the next slide now, we publish information per subsidiary about their profitability, which is quite a rare thing to do, because some groups tend to consolidate the figures, but we're quite transparent about that.
If we have a look at this, we can see a reduction in profitability. We can see the operational profit there. We were at 14.6% at the end of June 2023. This reduction, we can see here in this table, related to the achievements of some of our subsidiaries in professional trade, which have gone down. If we look within those trade organizations, these are mainly subsidiaries related to the buildings industry. They've seen their profitability going down. So Thermador, Isocel, in relation to energy renovations, and Thermacome as well, and PBtub, which work in the new housing market. I think those were the four subsidiaries which had strong trends downwards. Then if we look at the main retail subsidiaries, so Mecafer, Domac, ODREA, and Edouard Rousseau, these four different entities have resisted well, with maintained or even increased profitability.
So if I then go on to one of the key indicators we track, so I'm going to talk about your ROP over turnover. We have a level of 12.34% here, which is comparable to the level we had between 2020 and 2019, so pre-COVID period, with a peak in activity, which we had with the effect of inflation and high levels of sales. So if we now look at the financial structure, so it remains solid, with equity over EUR 365 million. In our stock, because we are a distribution company, so the stock side is very important. We have a level of EUR 180 million, which has gone down in terms of its euro value, because we have about EUR 12 million less in absolute value. But if we look at the number of days consumed, it's stable compared to last year, because we're at 196 days.
In terms of our cash position now, we have an improvement in our cash position. We're in a positive position now at EUR 47.7 million. That is the result of something I will explain to you a bit later on. It's related to our cash flow. This cash position is positive, and it's enabled us to invest and to see an improved financial profitability. If we look at the difference between the cash position and our borrowing, we have a positive net debt of plus EUR 15 million. That's an important aspect. I'm going to go to the next slide now, which shows you this cash position. At the end of March 2024, we were looking at EUR 45 million, which was a high point.
We were expecting distribution of dividends, and we were looking at how we could build up cash over the three months to be able to pay the dividends. And we can see the 47 compared to the 47. Now we've managed to build up this cash over the last three months of activity. So I'm going to talk to you about the cash flow now. If we look at this table now, on the next slide, so we generated cash, as I explained, during the first half. And this cash has come from our profitability, because we have a self-funding capacity at EUR 30.6 million. We have a variation in WCR, and we have had a EUR 15 million consumption in cash.
In terms of our CapEx, this includes acquisition over the first quarter, and then the debts that we have paid to suppliers, which were at the end of December, which we paid during the first half of this year. So that gives us a cash consumption of EUR 7.2 million. In terms of our free cash flow, we have an amount which is comparable to the end of December, which is EUR 38.4 million. That has all enabled us to pay our dividends at EUR 19.3 million and our loans, which we have paid off at a fixed rate for 5-7 years. If I move on to the next slide now, which gives you the detail of the working capital, this is important as an element that we challenge our subsidiaries on. This is an important aspect.
We have a trend at 40%, which is quite stable compared to December 2023. We were between 39% and 40% there. This has remained stable. In terms of customer debts, we are very vigilant about this. We are not exposed to any risks in terms of our client accounts. If I now look at CapEx, we've seen that we had fixed asset acquisitions at EUR 1.5 million. We communicated forecasts for investment for 2024, which were EUR 9.4 million. It's a significant amount if you compare it to 2023. We updated this amount, which was then reduced to EUR 7.3 million. That doesn't mean to say that we've stopped investing. We've just had to spread it over time to make sure the investments may be carried out over 2025 rather than 2024. The main amounts are to do with optimizing our logistics.
[Foreign language]
Thank you very much, Patricia, for all these different elements. So before looking at our outlook, let's look at organic growth for the group since 2020. You can see that each little bar represents quarterly growth. Since the COVID period, where we're in a negative situation, we've gone through three very positive years, and we've seen activity go down since 2023. And the lowest level was the first quarter of 2024. It's clear that we are expecting things to get back on track more quickly during the second quarter. But as you can see, this recovery to a stable level of business is taking more time than we thought and will no doubt take longer than we thought, as you can see on the graph.
In terms of our outlook and MaPrimeRénov' government subsidies, which is dealt with by the National Agency for Housing, these subsidies have changed an awful lot in terms of the regulations, which has led to an almost complete stoppage of energy renovations in France for the first half of the year. That penalized the group's business quite significantly. We estimate that these changes in regulations around MaPrimeRénov' EUR 20 million in sales. The public authorities are aware of the situation and have changed regulations once again, which will be put in place from May 2024. We can see that these changes, once again, are actually delayed and aren't as strong an impact as we thought they might.
The latest trends from the public authorities, and that's from July, is to focus on global renovation works for buildings from 2025. We call for stable regulations so that building renovations, which is a key issue and key concern for France, because it's very important to reduce our CO2 emissions. This energy renovation can be done calmly, intelligently, and we can work in this field. It's a vast area of work, which may take over 15 years to do in France. We do intend to be involved in this work. In terms of new homes, we're still in a downward dip, even though rates for mortgages are going down again, which is a good indicator. In terms of construction and new home starts and planning permission, still nothing new. We're monitoring this every month.
We'll come back to you in September and during October to give you some news from this market. This year, we even gave a trend in July. Now July is nearly over. We have some indicators through. Unfortunately, these trends are still just as bad, sadly. We estimated July would have an average trend of -13%. It's a bit less bad than what we measured, but it's still an extremely negative result. In terms of the water cycle now, this is a topic that I talk about quite regularly. You can see in the letters to shareholders that there's a new decree which has come out, been published by the public authorities to reuse water in a certain number of industries better and more effectively.
So the subsidiaries involved in the water cycle are very interested in this new decree and will be studying it in detail to see how this can be applied and how we can work in line with this new regulations and what products we can offer our customers to be in line with this new regulation. In terms of price trends, I asked all our subsidiaries to do an estimation on the average price trends for 2024. If the estimations from our subsidiaries are right, and it's a very difficult task to do, but we should be at a negative impact of 3% on the 12 months of 2024. To give us some better targets now, we remind you that our long-term objective is for sales growth of 7% per year, over 10 years, which would lead to a twofold increase in business.
If we refer back to 2019, we are ahead of the trend. 2024 is looking towards a decrease in sales, but it's nothing catastrophic for the group. We firmly believe still that we can stay in line with our 10-year plan, and we will manage to achieve this 10-year growth plan. If you would like to take a look at the page 10 and 11 of the universal registration document, which talks about our sales growth, which is not ever achieved to the detriment of our stakeholders. We have finished for now in terms of our overview, and that leaves us some time for your questions. Let's start with the first question from Ibrahim, who's asked us if we are going to maintain this commercial margin. Is it sustainable?
So I would invite you to go and take a deep look at the universal registration document, because you'll see that this commercial margin, sales margin, is very stable year- on- year, whether we're in an inflationary or deflationary period. Our teams in purchasing or in sales work in a coordinated fashion to maintain this commercial and sales margin at a stable level. Ibrahim also asked the following question: might you be reviewing investments on a strategic level? No, we're not at that level yet, Ibrahim. For the moment, the investments that won't be able to be made by subsidiaries are not the result of a significant cut in investments, but just a realistic approach, because we've seen that all the projects that we wish to carry out will not be able to just because of a lack of time and because the subsidiaries are focused on more operational aspects.
So no sacrifices in that way in terms of investments. We're not seeing that trend within our subsidiaries to date.
[Foreign language]
So the reduction, as I was saying to you, is related to timing in terms of our projects. Decisions need to be made about optimizing our logistics. We can see clearly that it takes time when looking at possible solutions for the market, then taking the decision and then implementing, because there's the IT side and also the solutions that we don't have yet. We mentioned Sferaco working on a particular project. So these decisions do have an impact, and the subsidiary has kept time to enact this, to find the right solution in relation to their product, because Sferaco works both in construction and industry.
METIS has a very great diversity of products, which means that one solution cannot necessarily be adapted to all the different markets. So it makes things quite difficult and challenging. That's one of the investments which has been pushed back. Other investments are linked to improving our buildings, so energy renovations, because we are continuing to invest in that. Mechanically speaking, our subsidiaries are continuing to do that because it's improving the quality of life at work for our staff. We're also optimizing our energy expenses there. We have buildings here which were built in the 1980s and 1990s. So we do need to improve their energy performance in terms of insulation.
So we're working on that, and it's a very important point for us so that we can continue investing in that, because at the end, we have a commitment to this by 2030 in terms of reducing our impact.
[Foreign language]
A question from Sylvie. On costs, could you remind us what's the share of your fixed costs? I think to get the answer to that, we'll have to look at the half-yearly note we sent out today.
[Foreign language]
So we mentioned this during the publication at the end of March. We said that we estimated 3%-4% of our expenses, which were variable. And this was based on the figures for the end of December. The structure hasn't changed greatly over the first half of the year, so we can estimate the variable percentage or share, which is very low, 3%-4%.
That means that all the rest are fixed expenses. So it could be rent, the costs of our buildings, because some of the buildings we own, and of course, payroll. And part of that payroll is variable, but the majority of that is fixed. And we've increased our workforce by 2% since December. Sorry, no, we've increased the workforce 2%. Sorry, not salaries, but workforce. And we have inflation since 2023, so we increased pay in the first half. That's the percentage maybe you're thinking of there.
[Foreign language]
Emily is asking us if we could talk about external growth and financial impact expected this year, the cost of these acquisitions and so on. And do you have any targets in line, or are you going to maintain an M&A strategy which is active? Thank you very much. So for the moment, we have a file underway.
Patricia will be able to talk to you about that, because she's been working on this case tenaciously. So it's Compteur-energie.com, and its affiliate organization. So these three organizations will be joining us at the end of July. So imminently, so tomorrow, they'll be joining us. But we don't have any other projects in line for 2024. And it would be very surprising if we did. So ideas for 2025, perhaps, but for the moment, they're just ideas. And as we know that these processes take a lot of time, we would struggle to talk about a financial impact yet, given the uncertainty. But we would like to look towards growth opportunities in Europe and industrial taps. Maybe Patricia, you could give us some information about compteur-energie.com in terms of financial impact.
[Foreign language]
So we're talking about, I think we published this with a press release in July with EUR 3.4 million, which we will pay from equity. And the team from Compteur-energie.com will be joining us, and we will consolidate part of the business from these three different subsidiaries. And we're looking at net sales of around EUR 2.4 million. So they're very small organizations, eight people, I think. So we're currently finalizing that, and we hope to finalize it all tomorrow morning. I have a few questions. I don't know whether you have any. Do you have information? It's a French question, so I'm going to read it in French. Do you have information about progress with Mon Accompagnateur Rénov', and it's related to Mon Accompagnateur Rénov'? So is the market recovery linked to the extension of the decree?
[Foreign language]
So Mon Accompagnateur Rénov', I'll tell you about that for those people who don't know about that. We want specialists. This was an idea from the public authorities, which was implemented at the beginning of 2024. The role of this person or this organization is a project manager to carry out global renovation projects with buildings. The public authorities wanted to have at least 4,000 of these people working on these projects. But what we've seen today is that we only have 3,000. The latest information I have is that we're going to stick with this figure of 3,000 support workers, which is not enough for France. I do hope that by the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025, this organization will be fully in place so that we can benefit from this monitoring of different worksites in an efficient way.
This is related to the public authorities' willingness and drive to renovate public buildings and to avoid fraud. In terms of the monogeste, the single gesture, the authorities said that it was only for 2024. So for the moment, I don't imagine that in 2025 this will continue to work with other options at the same time. And if you want my opinion, it won't be carrying on. So we'll be looking at global renovation and long-term works. I have some more questions. Yes, go ahead.
[Foreign langauge]
I have a question from René, who's asking us what we did during the first half of the year to improve the group's situation in the medium and long term. And the other question is, is it possible to optimize our working capital requirements further? So optimizing our working capital is operational, because we can see we've generated cash here.
Our subsidiaries have their own cash positions. Given the trends in profit, they've been even more careful about that. They've always been very careful in terms of their cash positions, but they've been very careful about this, because it brings them remuneration. Given the rates in the first quarter, this has brought them earnings. Mechanically speaking, this is what's happened in terms of the working capital. In terms of accounts receivables, attention has been paid among the subsidiaries to make sure the payment time scales are improved. This has improved. That's very important, because we're at 58 days, so it's a good amount of time. We've consolidated all these different time scales. In Spain, it's quite a lengthy period. Even there, we've seen improvement in this time period. In terms of managing working capital, we've made significant efforts.
Our supplier debts, we continue paying our suppliers on time, because that's part of our values and how we work. In terms of our stock, it's true that we have 196 days still. But given the extended delivery time period, it's important for us to have stock, because if this is an up-to-date activity, we are ready for that. We can see that subsidiaries have been very careful about what they have in stock to look whether it can be sold or not, what state it's in. So a lot of work has been done within the different subsidiaries to look at whether they have the right stock in place. Also, over the last three years, we had very strong levels of growth.
The logistics chain had various problems, which meant that our subsidiaries were pushed to purchase rather than looking at the quality of stock. During the first half of the year, a lot of work has been done to look at what they have in stock to see whether they should be kept or not. That's very important, because it enables us to have healthy assets.
[Foreign language]
In terms of the sales activity, we haven't sped it up or slowed it down. Our teams are constantly on the phone, in the field. The service is constant. Customer contact is constant. That's one of our strengths. As I said earlier on, this is a very difficult situation, the most difficult that we've experienced for the last 25 years. Yet we are close to our customers. We haven't reduced our sales teams or our sales work.
To the contrary, some subsidiaries are still investing in their teams so that they will be ready to take market share at this time and to prepare for recovery. Patricia has talked about this already. It's the purchasing teams which have worked to adapt our stock and to make sure relations with manufacturers and suppliers remain good throughout this difficult period, which is difficult for them too, because they are seeing reductions in volumes as well. And this comes back to the question that I have had from Eddy Balmain. I understand that the reduction in sales is related to this current economic situation, but do you have any figures related to the reduction of volume in the markets? Are you looking at reduction in market share? So we have a lot of subsidiaries, and a lot of these subsidiaries have a lot of products.
So we're talking at 70,000 products here. And that is the work of our subsidiaries to analyze product by product, range by range, their market share. It's very complicated to do and to say in these conditions whether the average drop in volume is related to the volume I was telling you about earlier on. So these comparisons can be made range by range. And we don't communicate this to the market, because we're transparent enough already in relation to our competitors. We don't need to give them additional information there. But we do know that during this difficult time, the quality of our stock, the stability of our teams, and the quality of our teams is what will enable us to take over market share. And we saw that during the 2020 crisis. We were able to restart very quickly after this crisis point in 2021, 2022.
We saw exceptional levels of growth. Patricia, did you have any more questions? No? No questions left?
[Foreign language]
We are continuing to develop these. We have different areas, like during 2020, 2021, when we saw that growth. We come back to these sites now, and we work on our productivity to look at how we can be better. It's at these times when we have a lower level of charges to do with the activity. We can invest in these areas so that when we do start again, we'll be in a better position. It's very important to do that during these times, because we've endowed our subsidiaries with a lot of tools and digital tools, which we need to optimize. This available time right now enables them to do that.
We haven't consolidated yet our online presence, and that's a very important thing to develop aspects of our business.
[Foreign language]
So there aren't any more questions. So before wishing you a great summer holiday, I'd just like to remind you about what was announced in this shareholders' letter and our press release. We have bought 30,000 shares, the Thermador Groupe, and we've a service provider looking after this. On the 26th of July 2024, when we started this acquisition, we had 17,000 shares of the Thermador Groupe, with a maximum request of 30,000. And in Thermador's history, we've rarely launched this type of intervention in the market to buy our own shares. So if you don't have any further questions, we'd like to thank you for being here. Thank you for your questions. Patricia and I are available if you have any specific points you'd like to raise.
Wish you a great summer holiday, and we will see you for the webinar in October to comment on the third quarter figures.
[Foreign language]
Have a great end of your day. See you soon.