Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Hugo Boss Second Quarter Results 2019 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by question and answer session. At which time if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press Star and One on your telephone. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, 1st of August 2019. I will now hand the conference over to our Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Christian Stoehr. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Christian Stoehr, as you know, and I'm heading up the investor relations activities at Hugo Boss. I would like to welcome you to our 2019 second quarter financial results presentation. As always, today's conference call will be hosted by Yves Müller, CFO of Hugo Boss. During the Q&A session, I kindly ask you to limit your questions to a maximum number of two so everybody gets a chance to ask his or her questions. Let's get started and over to you, Yves.
Yeah, thanks, Christian, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our second quarter results conference call. In the next 30 minutes, I will present to you our most recent financial and operational performance and take a closer look at our initiatives for the remainder of 2019 before opening the floor to your questions. I'm pleased to report that despite an overall challenging market environment, we were able to deliver both top and bottom-line improvements in Q2, thus delivering on what we had promised back in May. Importantly, group sales experienced a slight acceleration, up 2% currency adjusted. In EUR terms, sales grew 3% to EUR 675 million as currency effects provided a 1% tailwind to revenues. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that all our four strategic growth drivers made further progress in the second quarter.
Our own online business continued to grow disproportionately in Q2, recording its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Retail productivity grew 3%, supported by many initiatives to optimize our physical store network. Asia Pacific continued to outperform from a regional perspective as sales growth accelerated in Q2, led by ongoing strong momentum in mainland China. Last but not least, HUGO sales grew 3%, supported by double-digit increases in the important casual wear business. Let's take a look at the regions and starting with Asia Pacific, where sales grew a strong 8% currency adjusted. The increase in Q2 was once again driven by our strategic growth market, China, where momentum accelerated in Q2, as reflected by double-digit comp store sales improvements. In particular, mainland China saw ongoing strong momentum in the quarter, benefiting from the repatriation of local demand.
This said, I'm also encouraged by how our brand activation initiatives and various execution measures are resonating with our customers, both in brick-and-mortar retail as well as through our online partnerships with Tmall and JD.com. As expected, the poor performance in Hong Kong and Macau was somewhat weaker in Q2. While this development is partly related to the aforementioned repatriation of Chinese spend as well as political uncertainties, both markets were also impacted by store optimization measures. The latter resulted in several store renovations aimed at further enhancing the profitability of our store network in these markets. Coming to our largest region, Europe, where sales increased 2% on the currency adjusted and reported basis. With sales up 6%, France saw a strong recovery in Q2 following a rather difficult start to the year.
Here, the development was supported by robust comp store sales improvements as the negative implications from the yellow vest movement have started to fade in the second quarter. Looking at Europe's other markets, sales in the U.K. were up a solid 2% despite ongoing political uncertainties. In Germany, sales were down 5%, broadly in line with the overall market environment, which remained rather unfavorable in Q2. Although a number of macroeconomic indicators are not overly supported at the moment, we're confident that the second half of 2019 will show a sequential improvement. In this context, the remainder of the year will not only be supported by a fairly low comparison base, in particular in Q3, but also benefit from the upcoming opening of our new outlet in Metzingen, scheduled for late September.
This brings me to the Americas, where revenues declined 3% on a currency adjusted basis, reflecting sales declines in both the U.S. and Canada. While this development reflects a slight improvement compared to the first quarter, the performance in Q2 was still below our expectations. In particular, the important U.S. market, where sales were down 5% currency adjusted, continued to face a number of challenges during the quarter. Notably, the non-recurrence of positive effects related to the U.S. tax reform, lower tourist spend as a result of ongoing trade tensions, as well as the general promotional market environment put a strain on our business. The decline in tourist spend also weighed on our second quarter performance in Canada. Latin America in turn, continued to enjoy a robust momentum, up high single digits in Q2, led by particularly strong performance in Mexico and Brazil.
As a result of the weaker than expected performance in the Americas and in the light of the current market dynamics, we now expect the Americas to experience a slight decline in 2019. This said, we continue to expect an improvement in our performance in the Americas during the second half of 2019. Moving over to our channels. Own retail sales grew 3% on a currency adjusted basis, reflecting a 2% increase in comp store sales, as well as 1% contribution from space. While comp store sales remained stable in the Americas, they were up a low single-digit rate in Europe and increased even at a low double-digit rate in Asia Pacific. Taking a closer look at the like-for-like performance in the quarter, let me point out that our brick-and-mortar business saw a broadly similar growth rate compared to the first quarter.
Slight deceleration in total comp store sales growth compared to Q1 is therefore mainly attributable to our online business, where the clear focus in Q2 was on further improving the quality of our business by tightly managing markdowns. While those initiatives unsurprisingly weighed on the top-line performance in the second quarter, they in turn had a positive impact on profitability. Altogether, on a currency adjusted basis, online sales were up 16% in Q2, benefiting from ongoing strong momentum in the concession business. Let me also spend a minute on our non-like-for-like business, which as I mentioned before, had a positive impact on retail sales in Q2. The optimization of our store network, including store renovations, relocations, or rightsizing, has become a fundamental part of our strategy.
This in turn means that the share of our non-like-for-like business has become increasingly important over the time and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Another contributor to the non-like-for-like growth is the further expansion of our online concession business, which as you know, is a key element of our digital strategy. Already today, non-like-for-like represents a good third of our total retail sales and is likely to grow even further in the upcoming years. The rollout of our new BOSS store concept continues to be an important component when it comes to the ongoing optimization of our store network. In the second quarter, we renovated and upgraded a total of eight stores, bringing the total number of stores offering the new atmosphere to a total of 52 BOSS stores worldwide.
Besides the further rollout of the new BOSS store concept in Q2, we also opened three new HUGO stores in Tokyo, Singapore and Moscow, making it to a total of 26 HUGO freestanding stores globally. As mentioned before, we will continue to grow HUGO store network consistently, yes, also diligently in the years to come. Turning to the wholesale channel, where sales remained stable on a currency adjusted basis. While currency adjusted revenues in Europe and Asia Pacific increased 1% and 15% respectively, sales in the Americas were below the prior year level, largely reflecting the ongoing challenges that department stores were facing. Similar to previous quarter, Q2 saw ongoing strong momentum with either online marketplaces or online platforms of leading department stores. While stationary retailers continued to suffer from ongoing traffic declines. Finally, our license business grew 8% in Q2, driven by significant improvements in fragrances and eyewear.
The former continued the positive trend from Q1, supported by successful product launches for both BOSS and HUGO. We are confident that the positive performance of our fragrance business will continue during the remainder of the year, driven by new product launches that are planned for Q3 and Q4. Let me conclude my remarks on the top line with a review of the performance by brand. Starting with BOSS, where revenues increased 2% on a currency-adjusted basis as a result of low single-digit improvements in both business and casual wear. While our casual wear business continued to benefit from the ongoing trend towards casualization, importantly, our business wear offering returned to growth in the second quarter.
The latter is not only proof positive that business wear remains relevant for the BOSS customer, but also that innovative concepts such as Mix and Match or broken suit provide a robust foundation for future growth. In Q2, we also make further progress when it comes to enhancing the personalization of our product offering, as we introduced BOSS Made to Measure as a new tailoring service. It allows our customers to personalize and customize different elements of a suit, including fabrics, linings, and buttons. In addition, for a truly personal touch, individual details such as the name, chosen words, or a date can be stitched in the inside label of the garment. Beyond suits, as of today, customers can also personalize their own sneakers with the BOSS Made to Measure service, and we are planning to extend this concept to outerwear jackets during the upcoming fall-winter season.
On the marketing side in Q2, BOSS celebrated the latest addition to its existing lineup of brand ambassadors, as Taiwanese and Canadian actor Mark Chao has become the new face for BOSS in Asia Pacific. In his role as an official brand ambassador, Mark Chao will not only become a key face for future marketing campaigns, but also be closely involved in the creative process of specific collections going forward. In this context, Mark, together with our Chief Brand Officer, Ingo Wilts, has already co-created a limited BOSS x Mark Chao travel collection, which has been available online in these selected BOSS stores, as well as via WeChat Mini Program as of April 2019. Moving over to HUGO, where the positive trend from previous quarters continued in Q2, as reflected by a 3% increase on a currency adjusted basis.
In line with the brand positioning in the contemporary fashion segment, sales and casual wear continued to grow disproportionately and were up by a double-digit rate, driven by ongoing strong momentum around HUGO's logo-inspired product offering. To further raise HUGO's brand awareness in the contemporary fashion segment, in May, we introduced British singer and artist, Liam Payne, as HUGO's future brand ambassador, the first partnership of this kind for HUGO. Part of this collaboration, Liam will not only take center stage in future marketing campaigns, but equally importantly, will become the face of exclusive HUGO x Liam Payne collections, inspired by the singer's personal style. Together with a live appearance from Liam, some of these new styles were showcased digitally at an event during Berlin Fashion Week, after which they were immediately made available online, exclusively on Instagram first, followed by hugoboss.com, as well as in selected HUGO stores.
Although early days, initial results following a good three weeks of trading, have been rather promising, with sell-through rates twice as high and online revenues clearly outperforming brick-and-mortar sales. With this, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a look at the remaining P&L items. Starting with the gross margin, which saw a decline of 100 basis points in Q2 to 66.0%. It is crucial to understand that this development is largely due to the non-recurrence of inventory valuation effects that benefit our gross margin development back in Q2 2018. The non-recurrence of these positive effects have now weighed on the gross margin development in the second quarter of 2019. Importantly, this inventory valuation effect is purely timing related and will reverse in Q3 already.
To complete the picture on the gross margin, negative currency effects, although to a lesser extent compared to Q1, put some pressure on the gross margin in Q2. These negative effects combined more than offset a slight tailwind from favorable channel mix. All other effects, including the effect from markdown management, were broadly neutral in the second quarter. In terms of operating expenses, I'm pleased to report that we managed our cost tightly in Q2, as reflected by a very moderate increase of only 2% in the quarter, despite a slightly negative impact from currency effects. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses declined a strong 90 basis points. In detail, selling and distribution expenses increased only 3% as we are starting to realize the first positive effects from our various initiatives to optimize our store network, resulting in improvements of pay to sales and rent to sales ratios.
Marketing expenses declined slightly in Q2, mainly due to timing shift effects between the first and the second quarter. Last but not least, administration expenses were also below the prior year level, as tight overhead cost management overcompensated continued investment in the digitization of the business model. As a result of the strong operating leverage achieved in Q2, EBIT returned to growth and increased 3% in the quarter. The group's net income ended the second quarter 1% below last year, as negative currency effects resulted in an increase in the financial results. Let's now turn to the balance sheet, starting with inventories, where we have made further progress in bringing inventories down to a normalized level. At the end of June 2019, inventory growth amounted to 3% currency adjusted, a further six percentage points improvement compared to March 2019.
As we will continue to show highest discipline in managing inventories, we are committed to further reducing inventory growth during the course of H2, just as we have done over the past few quarters. Mainly due to the increase in inventories, but also reflecting temporarily higher trade receivables, trade net working capital was up 6% on a currency adjusted basis. This, however, is expected to reverse in Q3 already. Before taking a look at our initiatives for the remainder of 2019, let's quickly review our free cash flow development. Investments increased 45% in the second quarter, or by EUR 50 million to a total of EUR 48 million at the end of June 2019, largely driven by the step up in store renovations as well as ongoing investments in IT and digitization.
As a result of the increase in CapEx and trade net working capital, free cash flow declined 9%, or by EUR 7 million to EUR 72 million. As we project a significant step up in EBIT growth during the second half of 2019 and further improvements around trade net working capital, we remain confident to reach our guided free cash flow range for the full year of between EUR 210 million and EUR 260 million. With this, ladies and gentlemen, let's change perspective and look ahead at our expectation for the remainder of the 2019 fiscal year. We remain confident of achieving our full year top and bottom-line guidance as communicated in early March and reconfirmed today as we forecast sales and earnings momentum to accelerate during the second half of 2019.
At the same time, we now expect both sales and EBIT to reach the lower end of the respective guidance ranges of the middle single digit and high single-digit increase. In doing so, we take into account the persisting challenges in the U.S. market in particular. From a top-line perspective, the acceleration in sales will be largely driven by our retail business, for which we forecast mid to high single-digit growth for the full year. Besides the anticipated acceleration comp store sales growth, we also project important stimuli from the non-like-for-like business. Regarding the latter, three factors will be decisive for the second half of 2019. Firstly, we are fully committed to further expanding the concession model within our online business. New e-concessions and those we initiated back in 2018 will clearly contribute to strong double-digit growth in our online business also in H2.
As you all know, our Zalando partnership will play a key role in this regard as we are not only about to roll out the concession model with Zalando to further European markets, but also start converting our BOSS casual and leisure wear business to the concession model starting in Q3. Secondly, we will continue to expand our dot-com business to new geographies. In this context, Q3 will see the go-live of hugoboss.com in additional markets such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Ireland, markets that will be fulfilled via our existing distribution center close to our headquarters in Metzingen. Last but not least, we will continue with our initiatives to optimize our store network. In the second half of 2019, a number of important BOSS stores will be upgraded to the new store concept and reopen on time before the important pre-Christmas season.
Starting with our biggest flagship store worldwide on the Champs-Élysées, where the renovation of our BOSS store is in full swing. Besides Champs-Élysées, major store renovations for the second half include some strategically important stores in key U.S. cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami. In Asia Pacific, we are about to finish the renovation of our Macau stores as well as that of our biggest store in Singapore. Beyond the distribution side, we are looking at a well-stocked product and marketing pipeline, which will ensure we create a further buzz around the BOSS and HUGO brands in the second half of 2019. Let me therefore share with you some highlights on our product and marketing calendar for the upcoming months.
We are particularly excited that in the second half of 2019, BOSS will take center stage twice at two of the world's most important fashion shows, in Milan and Shanghai. While we are very excited that BOSS will enter the fashion metropolis Milan in September to showcase the upcoming spring/summer 2020 collection, we are equally thrilled that in October, BOSS will, for the first time in history, also present itself at Shanghai Fashion Week. Showcasing the pre-fall 2020 collection in Shanghai at the beginning of Q4 clearly underlines the importance of the Chinese market for BOSS. Both shows will be broadcasted live via boss.com and will also be accompanied by dedicated social media campaigns. Talking of social media, let me shed some light on our current global 360-degree marketing campaign to promote our iconic BOSS suit business. We have the hashtag, #SuitChallenge.
Our BOSS brand activates influencers and athletes globally to master the toughest challenge in a suit while being impeccably dressed head to toe by BOSS. The Suit Challenge is not only creating a tremendous buzz on social media, but it's also helping us to further drive brand desirability. As of today, the Suit Challenge has already generated more than 200 million impressions on social media, with a particular emphasis on Instagram. Another important building block for growing brand desirability is our ongoing focus on exclusive collaborations. In this context, the upcoming fall/winter 2019 season will see the second drop of the unique collaboration between BOSS and Porsche, which is soon about to hit boss.com and selected BOSS stores worldwide. The capsule collection will consist of 12 menswear styles reflecting the high claim to design, innovation, and performance that both brands, BOSS and Porsche, share.
Inspired by the latest Porsche Panamera E-Hybrid, our design team has developed a collection that stands out for its ergonomic lines and iconic details. Let me conclude today's presentation with a detailed look at our full-year bottom-line expectations. Regarding our EBIT outlook for the full year, we are confident that H2 will see a strong acceleration in earnings growth and forecast double-digit improvements in EBIT for both Q3 and Q4. Beyond the anticipated acceleration in top-line growth, there are two factors in particular that will contribute to the anticipated bottom-line improvements in the coming quarters. Firstly, we expect a strong improvement in the gross margin in the remaining two quarters.
This development will be supported by easing currency headwinds, a reversal of the negative inventory valuation effect, as well as positive effect from a more favorable channel mix. Q3 will most likely represent a peak in this regard, simply due to the relatively low comparable basis. Secondly, our efficiency program introduced to you back in November last year is expected to result in further operating leverage during the second half of the year. In particular, we expect the tailwind resulting from our improvement in retail efficiency to continue in the upcoming quarters. In addition, administration costs should also continue to develop at disproportionally low rates. With this, ladies and gentlemen, I am now happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel that request, you can press the hash key. Once again, for questions, please press star and one. We will now take our first question. It comes from the line of Antoine Belge from HSBC. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. It's Antoine Belge at HSBC. Three questions. First of all, I think you mentioned that there should be other initiatives such as the one that you have with Zalando, in terms of you moving to a concession business. Is it possible now for you to be a bit more vocal about other names and maybe in terms of figure, what it could represent, especially on an impact for 2020? Second question relates to online, which was a bit slower in the quarter at around 16%. I understand that it's probably linked to the discounting period starting a bit later and with less discounts. Is it something that you drove yourself and also, do you expect a rebound in the second half of the year for online?
Finally, with regards to your guidance, to what extent have you taken into account that we already had quite a few very warm months and I think a lot of the guidance is linked to having a strong Q3 on a weak Q3 last year. Any sort of internal thinking you have had around global warming and your guidance? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Antoine. Your first question was related to the online concession business to give further names. In the second quarter we converted several other partners. For example, David Jones in Australia. We converted Lamoda in Russia, and we converted Stockmann in Finland and in the Baltics. In the second half of the year we have in our pipeline, big department stores from Southern Europe like Galeries Lafayette and El Corte Inglés. These are the names that I can give you today. Others are in the pipeline. Your second question was related to the online performance, the Q2, where we achieved 16%. Yes, I can confirm your hypothesis that we took the deliberate decisions on our own to start the sales period later. That was deliberately done by ourselves.
This gives us, because the overall intention was to maximize our full price business regarding online, which is strategically very crucial for us. Clearly we can steer it on our own in the upcoming Q3 and Q4, whatever we like, how much marketing and how much discount we want to grant in the upcoming times. Your final question was regarding warm weather and global warming. I think our guidance takes every macroeconomic effects, some uncertainties into account and we are confident overall to achieve our guidance.
Okay. Maybe just a follow-up on that. Obviously, July was quite warm, especially in Europe. The start to the quarter is embedded into the guidance of the rebound in the second half.
We took the weather conditions into account into our guidance, and it's actually too early to call about the Q3. As you know, actually, we don't comment on current trading in July.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jürgen Kolb from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Thank you very much. Two questions. First one on brand HUGO. 3% growth in Q2, that's a slight slowdown from Q1. Is that the run rate you feel comfortable with? In this respect and when it comes to HUGO, I believe, already a big chunk or at least some parts of the collections are fully digitalized already. I was wondering if you could share with us how this specific part of HUGO is actually selling through. Secondly, on the womenswear, obviously down 6%, quite weak in the second quarter. It's now getting to a point where maybe you have to ask yourself if you want to keep that collection really going. Is that really a core business for you going forward? Maybe you could share some thoughts with us on this particular collection and basically what drove this decline in Q2. Thank you.
Regarding HUGO, you're pointing out that there is a slight deceleration. Overall, we are saying that we want to outgrow HUGO overall in terms of our group net sales. Actually, this is what we did with HUGO. I think we are very picky when it comes to now new freestanding stores. We do it very deliberately to grow the HUGO brand. Since we have now established a kind of distribution, we now start with the marketing campaigns. As you know, we just started with Liam with the Berlin Fashion show in July. This is not reflected in our numbers so far. The other question regarding digital. Yes, we constantly increase our capsules and the products that are digitally produced in order to be much closer to the trends. I think this is the most important effect.
It has a effect that we are much closer to the current trends, especially when it comes to casual wear when we do this. We are about to increase this time over time. By the end of this year, the HUGO, if I take the products we have, 10% are completely digitally developed from prototyping samples and sold via digital showroom. There are some different stages if you take the supply chain, everything is sold via digital showroom already. Then you talk about samples. There is more to be digitally developed for samples and then less for prototyping because this combines the whole process. We are proceeding with HUGO, and we are determined to improve this and to increase the number of digitally produced products in 2020.
Regarding womenswear, it's our clear statement that womenswear is an integral part of Hugo Boss, and it's not margin dilutive. It's a EUR 300 million business. Therefore, it scales. It's clearly in the center of our business. On the other hand, as we have always pointed out, we are in the retail space very much driven by sales productivity. If there is a small corner in a freestanding store, we might exchange this via BOSS casual wear or leisure wear in order to improve the sales productivity. This has happened a lot in 2018. This is the major driver actually why we see declining net sales in womenswear because we reduced the distribution services. That was deliberately done. Overall, it makes the whole Boss group more profitable at the end because we drive sales productivity.
Okay, understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question.
In addition to this-
You can proceed, sir.
Okay. Thank you. In addition to this, if I'm talking about Milan, you will see both the combined men's and womenswear fashion shows. This is a clear statement of BOSS as well that women play an integral part of the BOSS strategy.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Piral Dadhania from RBC. The line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Hi. Thank you. It is RBC. Two questions from me, please. The first one is on range rationalization. My understanding was after the unification of BOSS Black and BOSS Green, all the BOSS lines into single line, that there were excess SKUs and option counts which would start to be reduced come spring, summer 2019. Could you perhaps provide an update as to what progress you have made on that front and how much more there is to go, and what type of gross margin benefit we can expect from range rationalization going forward? The second point is just coming back to your guidance once again. It feels like the cut was relatively minor. To that point, consensus expectations are already looking for 7% EBIT growth for the full year. I think on Bloomberg, Yves, you were mentioned as saying that EBIT could rise between 7% and 8%.
My question really is why did you not cut the guidance more in the first place? Secondly, do you believe that sell side consensus estimates are too conservative to come out and say that EBIT will rise in that sort of range? Thank you.
Coming to your first question, what we always said, and which was an integral part of the capital markets day back in November 2018, we said that we want to reduce our SKU range. The big effect that will start will be actually spring, summer 2020 versus 2018, where we want to reduce in this period the SKUs2020 over 18 by 30%. This is what we always say. If I now, because we have start selling the spring, summer collection, I can confirm that we achieved the reduction of this range by close to 30%. We achieved this kind of range reduction, but this will be effective in 2020, starting in 2020. We will see from there how far we can go. The first step is a 30% reduction in sportswear. This comprise casual wear and leisure wear.
This is what we always said, and this is what we executed, and that was done. This was one of the major driver of the gross margin improvement. As you know, we were always pointing out we want to improve our EBIT margin from 12 percentage points to 15 percentage points in 2022. We said half is coming from gross margin, half is coming from costs, our operating leverage. This was one third of the gross margin improvement. This is, in our calculation, a good up to 50 basis points. To be very precise regarding your question. Regarding the guidance, we are clearly saying that we reconfirm our guidance, first of all. At the same time, we are saying to be more precise and that we expect the lower range of the guidance.
This is what we did because we are convinced, and we want to treat this in a very honest and transparent way because we see that in the U.S. we had to adjust our expectations, and now we expect for the U.S. market a slight decline. That was the reason why we were more precise regarding our guidance.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jörg Philipp Frey from Warburg Research. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Hello, gentlemen. I want to come back a bit on the non like-for-like part of your performance contribution. Can you update us a bit how the non like-for-like, the sales uplift of renovated stores and the increased particularly now with more data. Secondly, what percentage of your overall or the overall business of Zalando, which we expect is now already converted into a concession model?
Philipp, thank you very much. Regarding non like-for-like. Overall, what we disclosed today is that out of 390 BOSS stores, we have already now 52 stores in the new store concept. Some of them are brand new, some of them are more remodeled. We still see, and this is clear, positive development once we change into the new store concept, and we see double-digit improvements regarding sales productivity and net sales. As a matter of fact, as you know, because the like-for-like phase means it's very slow because we have space on the calendar years. We have only three stores that are now on the like-for-like phase out of those 52. This is very limited, and that's why we are pointing out that non like-for-like gets more and more relevant.
The positive news is once we remodel the store, we see positive effects, and that's actually the reason why we are continuously investing into the store concept. You could see that in our investments, we increased our investments by almost 50% in comparison to last year. We are really in a rollout mode now, like we communicated to the capital market. Regarding Zalando, if you take the figures for Zalando, for the Q2 figures, it's just the additional business that we did with BOSS starting in the German, Austrian market. In July now, we will start to add new country. Most importantly, and this effect is much stronger, is that we completely convert the business casual wear and leisure wear in Q3. This is what we about to do with Zalando.
In the current numbers, in the online concession, you only see a very small part, which is actually a new business for Zalando that we started back in November 2018.
Would it be fair to say that probably more than 80% of the business potential of Zalando is not yet converted?
This is fair to say.
Great.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Chauvet from Citi. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Good afternoon, Yves, Christian. Firstly, your FY 2019 guidance implies an acceleration in like-for-like to around 5% in the second half. I understand some of the drivers will be a stronger product pipeline, step up in marketing campaign. Can you perhaps indicate whether July accelerated towards this level of 5%, especially given the easier comp? Secondly, on the admin cost, I think it's the first time ever they're coming down in absolute value. What type of costs have you taken out, and is this trend of a decline in absolute terms sustainable in H2 and perhaps next year? Just to follow up, Yves, on your comment of the LFL in physical stores holding up. How did full price stores compare with outlet in Q2, and are you generally satisfied in full price stores about the level of markdown? You're saying it didn't have a major impact on gross margin.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Your first question was related to like-for-like, yes? You're right, we are indicating that we expect a like-for-like development in the second half of the year of mid-single digit improvement. Like I said to Antoine, we are actually not commenting on the July performance. This is our general rule, that applies for every quarterly result. Regarding the administration costs. The improvements are coming from both personal costs. One, because of the reorganizations that we did in Q1. You remember that we had some one-off costs there, we see the benefits now in Q2, which is in the run rate and lower depreciations as well. Regarding the performance overall, in Q2, we had a kind of outperformance of the outlet business versus the full price business.
That has had one major reason, because we renovated a lot of our outlets, the big outlets, and they had really a tremendous performance, especially when it comes to Bicester in the U.K., with very good comments in New York. We had some two Germans there now on the base as well. Those renovations are running radically outperformance. Despite this kind of outperformance in the outlet, overall markdowns remained stable in comparison to prior year. There you can see that in the full price business, actually, we really kept the markdowns under control.
Thank you, Yves. Just on the admin coming down. If it's personal cost and D&A, that should continue in the next two, three quarters, I would guess? A decline in admin costs until maybe Q1 next year?
Yeah. Because of the efficiency program that we initiated back in November, this is our clear intention.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. The line is now open.
Hello, gentlemen. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. I would like to start with the question on your online business. Thanks for all the details, what is to come in the second half. I missed the Asian name, so perhaps you give us an update where we stand with Tmall, for example. You mentioned it in earlier calls and what is yet to come and how is the underlying momentum progressing here. The second question would be related to the gross margin, 100 basis points down in first half. To be honest, I'm still struggling with the bridge. You spoke about inventory valuation. How much of the 100 basis points comes from which component? Perhaps a bridge would be helpful.
Also for the second half, you expected huge increase, gave some components, but we also see cost inflation, freight costs, personal costs all over the place, at least listening to competitors. How does that play into your projections? Thank you.
Volker, the last question was related to OpEx, right?
No. It was, yeah, OpEx, yeah, right. We started with gross margin, but then we came into OpEx, of course. True.
Okay. Starting with the first business. The Asian digital business is mainly, like we always say, Tmall and JD.com. As we said, in May, we changed our partner to now a new marketing agency running the websites on Tmall and JD.com. Since then, we are very satisfied. We could double the net sales on these platforms. We are very satisfied with this, and we will continue this. On the other side, we are like a small startup in Asia. Don't overestimate this doubling. From our perspective, it's going into the right direction and we are developing this business nicely. This is clearly what we have expected and we are doing the business on plan.
In addition to this, with the fashion show in Shanghai, of course, we want to exploit our better position, our higher customer base on these existing platforms to showcase this in the digital world. Regarding gross margin, it's an effect coming out of 2018, not 2019, because it was a kind of positive effect in Q2 2018 that was then timely reversed in Q3 2018. Overall, it was a neutral effect. Overall, we are today confirming our gross margin being up 50 basis points. I know that in the first half of the year, we are now down 60 basis points, but we are very much convinced that we can achieve this, especially when it comes to Q3 to improve this. Your question was related to the drivers.
The majority, if you talk about 80/20 rule, so the majority was related to this inventory valuation regarding gross margin.
Majority out of the 100 basis points which we saw in Q2 down?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Regarding cost inflations, you sometimes have this on the other side. I see tremendous potential in utilizing the purchasing department to get this down. If you see the raw material prices of wool and cotton.
Yep
You see some deflation tendencies as well. Overall, for the time being, it's not an issue for us.
Okay. Thank you very much, and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Guy from MainFirst. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Thanks very much. Good afternoon, Yves and Christian. Two questions, please. My first one is with regards to the EBIT guidance of up to 7%-8% IFRS, compared to EBIT down from a low single digit on a reported basis. Does that imply basically that you're looking for an IFRS 16 impact of around EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million? If that's for the full year, looking at 1H 2019, the IFRS impact at the EBIT level is basically flat. If I go into your interim report, which I think on page 31 mentions a EUR 66 million IFRS impact related to the straight lining. Can you talk a little bit more about that straight lining impact, and what's going on there? Is it just a simple case that you basically, I guess, didn't book enough rental expenses?
Were there some deferred tax charges that you're now having to roll through? I'm just trying to understand what this actually means and what kind of base effect it will have rolling forward, because I don't think it's particularly clear. It'd be great if you could comment on that. My second question is around inventory. Yes, from a headline perspective, clearly we've seen only a 4% reported growth. As a percentage of sales, it's still notched up around 20 basis points, so it's still ticking up. Within the context of the confidence that you just flagged around gross margin increasing by 50 basis points for the year, how much of that is already factored in based on the weaker performance that you're seeing in the North American market, which doesn't look like it's going to change? Thanks.
Thank you very much, John. Coming to your first question regarding IFRS 16. Overall, I would say clearly we'd make the decisions that we base our guidance off excluding IFRS 16. I think this is very crucial because it's a big project that is now running in all the big retailers. We talk in our case about more than 1,000 retail contracts that has to be analyzed and has to be reported. It's a very complicated topic when it comes to rents, minimum rents. You talk about stores, shop in shop, you talk about variable rents, you talk about rent-free periods, you talk about indexations and all these things. I don't want to make it too complicated, but I just wanted to give you the indications. It's a big topic for all the retailers. We are in current discussions with our auditors.
At this stage, this is the best, to our knowledge, how IFRS 16 would change our view from a reporter's perspective. On the other side, I cannot exclude today that there might be some changes going further, and we will clearly make a note to you once it comes more transparent.
Yes
our guidance and the whole numbers are based on excluding factors of IFRS 16. Regarding the inventories, yes, we reduced our inventories now another six percentage points, now to 3% FX adjusted. You were talking about, you did some ratios with net sales. If I look at my conversion cycle, for the first time since four quarters, I'm now back into better conversion cycles actually than one year ago. It's the first time, because they are based on the expectations for the months to come. Regarding, I think your question was related the weaker U.S. markets and all these things. They are all accounted in our numbers and our guidance, and we clearly stick and reconfirm our guidance regarding gross margin to improve it to up to 50 basis points.
Okay, great. Thanks, Yves. Maybe just one clarification then. For point one, I should deduce that possibly it looks like you didn't maybe account for high enough rental expenses in the past, and that within the transition of IFRS 16, there could be some massaging here in terms of basically raising some of those rental costs. That's the way that I see it, because it's not D&A. I don't know if it's deferred tax assets. I appreciate it's a complex issue. The base effect looks like you could argue, if you're being skeptical, that you maybe haven't been as conservative or too conservative on rental costs in the past and now you're having to adjust for that.
No, I cannot confirm this. Actually, to precise, it's the opposite. It refers to straight-line method, and I think we have been conservative in the past, and we are still in discussion with our auditors to solve these issues. I think it's nothing to worry about. We have been always conservative, and this was actually confirmed by the auditors as well.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Elena Mariani from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. You can now ask your question.
Hi, good afternoon, everybody. A couple of questions from me as well. The first one is on your medium-term targets. You've provided, a few months ago, us with a guidance for fiscal year 2022, and an outlook of a 5%-7% organic growth and a 15% EBIT margin. Can I just confirm whether, as of today, you're still comfortable with this guidance? If so, what do you think could cause this re-acceleration in the coming years, towards the middle point of the range and towards this 15% EBIT margin? That's question number one. Then a couple of clarifications on the gross margin. You're talking about an unchanged guidance of up to plus 50 basis points for the full year. Is this more like plus to 50 basis points or could this be also 10 basis points?
Given you've tweaked the guidance slightly towards the lower end, can you be a little bit more precise on the growth margin as well? Perhaps, how should we think about phasing in Q3, Q4, given that the big chunk of conversions is going to come in the third quarter? One final clarification on the e-concession business. Last time you told us that this was representing approximately 10% of online sales in 2018, and it should be around 20% of online sales, in full year 2019. Is it correct to assume that you're going to have around EUR 35 million of sales related to e-concessions by the end of 2019? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much, Elena, for your questions. Regarding the medium-term guidance, I can clearly reconfirm today that we stick to our midterm guidance, which is a CAGR of 5%-7% regarding top line and 15% of EBIT margin. Clearly we see in the months and the quarters to come, a acceleration, especially coming from the online concession part. This is a big part, the second big part is actually coming from all the measurements that we are taking. I was just saying that we were heavily investing into our store network, and you will see positive effects coming from the modernization of the store network and the right sizing and making the whole system more efficient. We are clearly on our expectations and we will meet this midterm guidance. Secondly, your question was related to the gross margin.
We are guiding the gross margin as a specific and up to 50 basis points means up to 50 basis points. Your further question was related regarding the phasing. Yes, I think the phasing refers more to the Q3. We should see positive effects coming in Q3. This is not end loaded more in Q4. That should be coming in Q3, the improvement, especially because we said this inventory valuation effect will have a very positive effect in Q3. Your third question was related to online concession. Yes, clearly, the online concession. We are on good track. Even today, the online concession part makes more than 20% of our online business. We are well on track. We are performing better than actually expected.
Okay. One small follow-up. In all the benefits we're going to see from the third quarter, from the conversions, is it correct to assume that they will then annualize in the third quarter of next year, so you're going to have a tailwind also in the first half of 2020?
Yes, that's true.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. That will be our last question. I would like to hand the call back over to Mr. Christian Stoehr. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen. This completes our call for today. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. I know that there were a few more people who wanted to ask questions. I promise that the IR team will get back to each and everybody right after this call. Thanks very much for your understanding, and I wish you a very good day. Thank you very much and goodbye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may all disconnect.