Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q4 12-month Results Call this morning. With me today are our CEO, Karsten Wildberger, and CFO, Florian Wieser. They'll guide you through today's presentation. Before we start, let me address the usual formalities. Firstly, this call is being recorded and a replay will be available on our website later today. Secondly, don't forget that today's presentation and potentially some answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. For additional information in this regard, please refer to the disclaimer. Now let me hand over to our CEO, Karsten Wildberger.
Thank you, Sebastian, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our full year results presentation this morning. Let me start with, it's fair to say it's been quite a year. Our financial year 2020-2021 was a real stress test for our company, and we did pass this test. Although the second COVID wave hit us with longer and more severe restrictions than in the previous year, we managed to grow our top line. Actually, in countries less affected by COVID restrictions, we also increased our EBIT. Our omnichannel business model proved to be very resilient, and the close integration of our online with our bricks and mortar business was an important advantage in that period. Thanks to our online growth, we were actually able to overcompensate for the COVID-induced decline in our stores.
Above all, our performance is a proof of the quality of our teams, and I would like to take this opportunity to also give my thanks to each and every colleague for this performance. Finally, I'd like to point out that furthermore, the market for consumer electronics has proven to be attractive and continues to offer great potential. Important to add, we were also in a position to terminate the syndicated loan facility with the involvement of the KfW, which by the way, we hadn't ever used. With our new financing structure, we have sufficient backup liquidity for the upcoming years, also during challenging times. Let's turn to slide five. What does this mean in terms of numbers?
Well, we increased sales by 3.8% to around EUR 21.4 billion, notwithstanding store closures in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. Adjusting for currency and portfolio effects, this figure is also above the pre-pandemic level two years ago in fiscal year 2018/2019. Bottom line, we delivered an operating profit of EUR 237 million, which is on the level of the previous year. Given the circumstances, we have demonstrated operational strength and achieved the full year targets we specified in August. Of course, we could only achieve this thanks to our customers who remained loyal to us throughout the pandemic, and we will work hard to continuously earn the trust of our customers. Let's turn to slide six.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've now been at CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn for a bit more than the famous 100 days. Similarly to what I shared shortly after my start in August, I can say, our underlying solid progress in many parts of our business is often not recognized due to the volatile and challenging market conditions we're operating in. However, our team is highly motivated and skilled in operating our business, also in stormy waters. We manage both short-term challenges and execute our Omnichannel strategy at the same time. Despite the current difficult market conditions, the overall consumer electronics market remains very attractive in my view, and I'm confident that we will continue improving in how we leverage our very high customer reach and customer demand.
On slide seven, some important facts and figures about our business to provide and give you more color. First thing I'd like to point out, we have 2.5 billion customer visits and contacts per year across all our touch points, online and in our stores. This is a fantastic asset. We have one of the highest customer reaches in Europe, and it's now up to us to continuously improve leveraging this enormous potential and deepen our customer relationships.
We are actually number one or number two in terms of market share in eight countries in Europe. Looking at our online business, we have more than doubled in the last two and a half years and become one of the largest online retailers in Europe. We are increasingly interlocking our stores with our online business to make the customer experience more and more seamless. More than one-third of our online customers actually choose to pick up their orders in one of our stores.
Concluding, our Omnichannel strategy is the right path. Let's turn to slide eight. Of course, it's also clear there's much more to do to become a truly customer-obsessed company. It's also time to realize how much we have already changed and reinvented ourselves. This is important for me to point out. We've been rapidly moving from a transaction-centric business where customers just pick up a product to an experience business where advice and service has become an important part of our customer promise. We measure customer satisfaction with the Net Promoter Score, NPS, at touchpoints and along processes. Last year, we improved the NPS across the company by five points to 47. This is good number, but we aim for more.
Secondly, MediaMarktSaturn's heritage is a very decentralized business model, but we have been moving towards what I call a smart central organization. Today, we leverage central capabilities in category management, logistics, or process design so much better. Decentrally, we continue to leverage our entrepreneurial power. Until today, we've implemented around 75% of the respective organizational changes that we laid out, and we exceed our cost targets. Florian Wieser will talk more about this a bit later.
Today, we are no longer a pure bricks and mortar retail business. We are accelerating our Omnichannel journey and have fully embraced digitization, and our online business grew 65% in the last financial year. Finally, we have moved into a new phase of how we evolve our business. I think there was a time where we were fixing things, and we are moving now to creating also new opportunities. One good example in that regard is how we started and now scale our marketplace.
There are many other things to mention and to come, and I will turn later to give a bit more color to the marketplace. Let's turn to slide number nine. We will double- down our efforts in improving the customer experience across the entire customer journey because this goes way beyond selling. We are improving our service and expert advice already online and offline. We are also improving forward and reverse logistics. After-sale service is a growing part of our business. In Germany, for instance, we repaired around 500,000 smartphones in our store Smartbar last year. In Spain, we improved our after-sales NPS significantly through personalized service.
Turn to slide 10, please. The progress we have made is clearly visible in our online business. Don't forget that until recently, MediaMarktSaturn was predominantly an offline retailer with a webshop attached. Two and a half years ago, in financial year 2018-19, the online share stood at less than 14%, with sales less than EUR 3 billion. In the past financial year, we achieved online sales around EUR 7 billion, accounting for one-third of our share. We have managed to better integrate our Omnichannel capabilities online. Today, we are able to keep a 29-minute click and collect customer promise. That means you order online and 29 minutes later, you can pick it up in the store. Almost 40% of our customers use and enjoy this service.
Another example on slide 11. An important element of our strategy is also to rejuvenate our bricks and mortar business as part of our standard store investment program. Whenever we refurbish, move or open a new store, we use one of our four new store formats, the Core, the Lighthouse, the Smart, and the Xpress format. They serve all different customer needs and provide us with more location-specific opportunities. In our Lighthouse store, because I think that offers great potential and highlights so many aspects of our business. In our Lighthouse stores, currently in Milan and Rotterdam, we offer real technology discovery journeys. It's not just about the discovery, but it's also a very commercial store with as a very successful format with about 20%-30% uptake in traffic and substantially higher revenues and margins.
Our suppliers and partners are also excited about this format, and they partner and invest with us by running about 20-30 branded boutiques in each Lighthouse store. I regularly receive actually phone calls and questions because partners want to participate also in the future Lighthouses. We will continue to roll out the Lighthouse concept, and next year also launch the first one in Germany. All our formats pay dividends to our ambition to offer competent advice, a super attractive product range, great service, and they are increasingly linked with our online business for the benefit of our customers. Let me now turn to slide 12 and the marketplace. This is another element of our Omnichannel strategy. We launched our German marketplace in summer 2020, and we are exceeding our internal growth plans and continue to grow strongly in the last months.
Currently, we offer around 300,000 products from more than 400 retailers on this platform, with special focus on categories such as gaming, IT or the whole coffee section, especially coffee machines. In October this year, the marketplace also went live in Spain, and we are planning marketplace launches in Austria and the Netherlands in 2022. This shows that we have successfully implemented the IT infrastructure for such a marketplace and proven our concept already in the first year. Now we will focus on scaling it and expand the marketplace to further countries. Before I hand over to Florian Wieser, let me now turn to slide 13 and talk a little bit about sustainability. This is a key topic, and I'd like to highlight today also the progress on ESG in general.
For us, sustainability is not just an add-on to our strategy, it's part of who we are and what we stand for. For this reason, we have developed our comprehensive sustainability roadmap in the past financial year, which is based on two main pillars. The first pillar, firstly, our primary objective is to make our own business operations more sustainable. For example, we aim to source 100% of our electricity from renewable energy sources by the end of 2023. We're on a good track to achieve this even faster. Other focus topics comprise reducing packaging materials, auditing our supply chain regarding labor and human rights compliance, as well as fostering a more diverse culture and workplace.
The second pillar is our ambition to become customers' first choice for sustainable consumer electronics products and services. On the one hand, we are systematically expanding our sustainable product range. We've already more than 1,000 certified sustainable products in our assortment and services portfolio. We will also encourage and help our customers to buy sustainable products. Our BetterWay label, as you can also see on the right-hand corner in the green box.
Our BetterWay label is intended to give our customers appropriate orientation. In the last financial year, we saved, for instance, 11,000 tons e-waste, and we managed to resell almost 98% of products returned by our customers. We also sold almost 200,000 green electricity contracts. Our consistent focus on sustainability is also reflected in the reorganized financing structure of our company. More details on this and much more will now be explained by my dear colleague, Florian Wieser. Over to you, Florian.
Thank you, and good morning to everyone in today's call. I can only agree with you, Karsten. It has been a quite turbulent year. Our financial performance proves that we have done many things right. Facing severe restrictions almost the entire year, we delivered a resilient performance. Thanks to our integrated business model, farsighted and stout-hearted actions, as well as the boost of our online activities, we have achieved our updated targets for the full year. Let me now walk you through our results in more detail, starting with the fourth quarter. Our prior year's fourth quarter was boosted by pent-up demand, which followed the reopening of stores after the first COVID wave and VAT reductions in Germany. Against this backdrop, we delivered nearly the same level of sales in this year's quarter.
In EBIT terms, we even saw an increase due to improved operating efficiency overcompensating a more competitive environment. For the full year, sales increased by roughly 4% and adjusted EBIT was on prior year's level. I know that Karsten and myself have mentioned a couple of times. However, this is a great operational achievement given the longer-lasting and much more severe restrictions in the course of the last fiscal year.
Let's now move on to slide 16. Important root causes for this success are improved processes, increased competencies, and lower costs. Our new operating model helped in all these regards. As mentioned in our Q3 results call, we are well ahead with the implementation of the model. We overachieved our savings targets of more than EUR 100 million. Plus, we concluded two-thirds of our planned store closures in the last fiscal year.
In total, we spent slightly more than EUR 120 million for these measures. The remaining EUR 55 million-EUR 60 million will be recognized in the current financial year, 2021/2022. Besides the finalization of organizational target structures, the expenses will be incurred in connection with selected store closures and space reductions. Coming back to our sales, the desire to shop online with MediaMarktSaturn was unbroken. The rise in online sales of 25% in Q4 was largely driven by an increase in average checkout value. The pickup ratio improved by four percentage points, returning to a level above 40%, which is in line with our targeted range. Our strong online performance compensated a 7% decline of our brick-and-mortar sales, which is related to a not yet restored customer frequency. In the full year, online growth was even more pronounced.
This was also related to COVID restrictions, especially in Germany and the Netherlands. With online sales of almost EUR 7 billion and an online sales share of around 33%, we have done a huge achievement. They both are evidence of our successful efforts we put into our capabilities and our logistics processes. During last fiscal year, we have been facing large swings resulting from store restrictions. After the end of COVID-19 related store restrictions, the online share remained on an elevated level. The clear message for us is to further drive the underlying online growth and to work on our omnichannel processes, providing a seamless shopping experience regardless of the channel. Let's move to slide 19 and our services and solutions performance. Next to online, service and solutions performed well in the fourth quarter.
The full year performance was impacted by temporary store closures and a more transactional business as less customers sought advice in our stores. In line with our omnichannel approach, we now increasingly attract customers to our services online. As a result, we could already observe strongly improving services sales online in the fourth quarter. To mention some examples, we have upgraded our recommendation engine for online customers actively proposing the most relevant services by product. Moreover, we have increased the portfolio of ready-to-use solutions, bundling a product in a solution in advance. For example, a console can be purchased with pre-installed games, or a laptop is already prepared with Office and antivirus software. In our stores, TV calibration is still highly appreciated by customers. Let's now move to slide 20 and the gross margin. In Q4, our gross margin was broadly stable compared to prior year's quarter.
In the second and third quarter, the gross margin was down by 230 and 20 basis points respectively. We experienced headwinds from the online channel shift, a less favorable sales mix, and a more competitive environment. Thanks to process improvements and our active inventory management, selling down stock we had secured early in the year, the adverse impacts could be limited. Further, the strong performance in service and solutions had a positive impact on our margin. Let's move on to our OpEx development on slide 21. As in the past, we adjusted cost ratios on this chart for any COVID-related subsidies, which were substantially lower in this year's quarter. Mainly due to the success and fast implementation of our initiatives, like the new operating model, we see a substantial underlying reduction of around 50 basis points in a normalized OpEx ratio.
As for any retailer, costs are a critical success factor and we will of course, continue to work hard on our cost base to support the profitability of the group. Slide 22 summarizes the Q4 performance of our four reporting segments. It becomes clear that the blended sales decrease and the EBIT increase on group level result from mixed performance among the segments. While the DACH region lost on sales and EBIT, all remaining segments contributed to the EBIT improvement. In Western and Southern Europe, a slight sales decline was more than offset by pleasing margin development, especially in Italy and Spain. Turkey contributed to the positive sales performance in Eastern Europe in local currency. With plus EUR 10 million year-on-year, segment Others negative EBIT contributions significantly declined. This was mainly due to a continued pleasing improvement in Sweden and lower group holding costs.
Now quickly moving to reported financials and EPS with full focus on the full year. While our adjusted EBIT came in on prior year's level, reported EBIT was far higher year-on-year. This was mainly due to the Fnac Darty impairment in the previous year and the partial reversal of that in this year. Our financial results benefited from higher dividends coming from M.Video and METRO PROPERTIES in this year. When considering income taxes or the tax rate, keep in mind that the Fnac Darty impairment and its reversal are non-tax effective. In addition, the tax rate does not yet reflect any benefits related to the acquisition of the MediaMarktSaturn minority stake. This will only happen upon closing of this transaction. All in all, for the full year, our earnings came in at EUR 0.62 per share. This is an improvement of almost EUR 1.30.
Let's now have a look at free cash flow. As in previous quarters, free cash flow was mainly influenced by a negative change in net working capital. As you might remember, our trade payables were particularly high last year in September. This high level was caused by an elevated order volume in prior year's fourth quarter following the already mentioned strong pent-up demand. This year, we deliberately increased our stock levels already beginning of calendar year 2021. In the light of expected supply chain distortions, we built up additional stock, ensuring maximum availability during the year. In addition, the long lockdowns in Germany and the Netherlands contributed to an elevated stock level. In sum, this led to a significant deterioration of our net working capital. Regarding income tax payments, we had an outflow of roughly EUR 100 million versus a smaller inflow in the previous year.
This swing is a result of the reversal of prior years' COVID-related deferrals and reductions. All in all, free cash flow stood at -EUR 270 million and was thus EUR 740 million lower than prior year. It goes without saying that such a negative cash flow is not sustainable. The year was heavily influenced by prior year's peak in trade liabilities and our COVID-19 mitigation measures. These effects are now normalizing. As a fact, our net working capital position on September 30 was only slightly below the level two years ago. Thus, both factors are non-sustainable and should not be extrapolated.
Let's move to slide 25. Facing severe headwinds, we have strengthened our balance sheet, initiated cash flow measures, and increased our room to maneuver. We have a cash position of EUR 1.6 billion and improved our equity by more than EUR 200 million as of September 30. We refinanced upcoming maturities early and have a sound structure consisting of a EUR 500 million bond, a EUR 500 million commercial paper program, and an RCF backup line of more than EUR 1 billion. The buildup of our own logistics infrastructure and our direct supply capabilities will result in optimized stock levels. Further, we are monetizing revolving commission receivables from our telecommunication partners. Tight cost management and a high degree of operational flexibility allow us to quickly react to current external challenges.
Now to slide 27 and to the outlook. For financial year 2021-2022, we expect a slight increase in currency and portfolio-adjusted sales compared to the previous year. For adjusted EBIT, excluding associates, we expect a very clear increase in comparison to the previous year, which came in at EUR 237 million. Let me give you some color on our rationale behind these projections. We currently see a very volatile business. We have pictured that for you in more detail on the next slide. I will come to this in a minute. The main driver of this volatility is, of course, the ongoing COVID pandemic.
COVID restrictions have been with us for quite some time now. Yet the restriction which we are currently being imposed are new. In Germany, for example, the so-called 2G rule applies. This means that you are either vaccinated or recovered to visit one of our stores. Further examples are the Netherlands, where store opening hours have been substantially restricted, and Austria, which has just been in another shortly announced lockdown.
These measures go along with a decrease in store traffic and potential pressure on sales and margin. We currently lack sufficient data to accurately assess the full year impact on our business and our financials. Secondly, as most market participants, we face supply chain disruptions for certain important products, for example, within the GSM category. This is despite our early action to secure products. Thirdly, inflation has recently risen, and its further trend is intensively discussed in the public right now. The further course of the COVID pandemic is just as difficult to predict as the international supply chain situation. We can already see that our first quarter will be complicated compared to last year's high comparison base. Therefore, we believe it is appropriate to remain somewhat vaguer with our guidance now than we would have been otherwise.
However, rest assured that we will provide you with a more precise outlook as soon as possible. We believe that the impact of the pandemic will be less harmful than the last year. We believe that current difficulties in our supply chain will normalize throughout the year, just as inflation will do. Against this backdrop, the anticipated rise in our EBIT will be driven by our services and solutions business, a recovery in our gross margin, and further cost savings. I want to point out one additional topic you should consider going forward. In September this year, we granted the equity-owning store directors in Germany the option to transfer their shares on fair conditions. The vast majority of store directors accepted the offer. No change in responsibility is associated with the transfer of shares.
However, the store directors will now receive a bonus payment going forward, rather than a dividend like in the past. This will be accounted for as personnel expenses . Consequently, adjusted EBIT will decrease by around EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million. In return, our minority expenses will also reduce so that the overall impact on EPS will be small. In terms of cash flow, no change is going to happen. This effect has, of course, been considered in our guidance. Let's move to slide 28. I just mentioned the graph on this slide shall give a better insight on what we refer to as volatility. It shows sales versus the basis of fiscal year 2018-2019, that is the year before the pandemic. The swings are substantial, ranging from -12% during lockdown periods to +11% thereafter. The increased volatility makes a precise prediction even more challenging.
Thus, it is so important to not only take into consideration last fiscal year's quarter, but also the quarter before the pandemic. We are confident that we will deliver a full year result, which will be clearly above previous year in terms of EBIT. This does not mean that every individual quarter will be above previous year as well, hence my earlier comments on the tough Q1 comparison base. This completes the financial section, and now back to you, Karsten.
Thank you, Florian. Look, I would like to now give you an update also from my perspective on the current environment and the trading period. The general market conditions, as we have now said numerous times, continue to be more challenging and uncertain compared with the pre-COVID times. That's clear. We are dealing with COVID-related restrictions, and we are working through supply chain distortions together with our suppliers and partners. Since the beginning of COVID, we have been preparing our business for certain volatility. The following also makes us confident. We have demonstrated again and again that we can overcome challenges, and there will also be a time after COVID with less COVID restrictions, and we are well-positioned for this new normal after COVID. Let me also comment on another topic that caused some speculation.
You've heard that our IT systems were subject to a cyberattack in early November, 8th of November, to be precise. We were able to react instantly, initiated immediate countermeasures, and ensured that the spread of the malware was contained. At all times, we could serve and sell to our customers in our stores and online, albeit with some limited functionalities when combining online and offline. In particular, the pickup in store wasn't available for a few days. In parallel, the teams of our IT partners and our own IT teams worked tirelessly and successfully to restore all systems after several days. Thanks to this outstanding performance of our people and the great cooperation with our IT partners, we were able to go back to normal without any restrictions within days.
As of now, we have not registered any new attacks, and we have no indication that any customer or employee data has been compromised or stolen. Often there is the question, and I would just say to answer it in one go. The question, have you paid anything? No, we have not paid any ransom. Let's turn to page 31 and give you a bit of an update on Black Friday and the peak season. The situation around supply chains and product availability has, of course, also kept us busy over the last period. We talked about it also throughout actually last year, how we were preparing for that. We started the new fiscal year well-prepared and have increased our inventories early on during the last year as a precautionary measure.
In individual categories, such as, and I would say especially telecommunications, the situation is volatile, and some orders could not be met in full by our suppliers. It's also fair to say when customers try to find a product, one should definitely try with us. Just last week, for example, we received a shipment of 20,000 gaming consoles, and we sold within hours, and there are more consoles actually landed already are on the way. October, November were characterized by centrally supported and successfully implemented campaigns during the Black Friday period and the run-up to Christmas. In October and November, demand, momentum, and frequency in our stores did not reach the exceptionally high level of the same period last year. Even so, our current sales performance is stronger than in the first months, 2019-2020, so two years ago.
Let's turn to 32. Ladies and gentlemen, we have taken important steps and made tangible progress last year despite all the challenges around. We have the right strategy and execution to be successful with a strong team, the right omnichannel strategy, an attractive range of products and services, strong brands driving very good customer demand, trustful relationships with our partners and suppliers, and most importantly, our commitment to excellent customer service. One in three Europeans has shopped at MediaMarktSaturn at least once in the last period, and this is the potential to build even stronger on and build deep customer relationships. In a nutshell, how I would look at the business. Where do we stand today before Christmas 2021, and what do we stand for? Consumer electronics remains an attractive market despite short-term volatilities. We operate short-term without losing sight of what's important mid-term.
Secondly, we are Europe's largest consumer electronics retailer with strong brands and leading positions in eight countries, but we won't rest. Thirdly, we demonstrated resilience in 2021 and accelerated our transformation. We continue to become more adaptable. Fourthly, we became faster, reduced overhead, and simplified our organizational structure because we cherish speed and simplicity. Number five, as an omnichannel retailer, customer excellence is what defines us. We make it personal. Finally, sustainability is an integral part of our strategy. We see it as both a commitment towards society and a business opportunity. With that, thank you everyone for your attention, and I will now turn the call over to the moderator for your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. The first question is from the line of Volker Bosse with Baader Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thank you. Hello, gentlemen. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. It's good to hear, and congratulations that you were able to successfully handle the nasty cyber attack. Great achievement. I would like to start with three questions. At first, would be on the gross margin. It declined by 100 basis points in fiscal year 2021. For fiscal year 2021/2022, you now guide for a very clear EBIT increase. Does that include also gross margin improvements in 2021/2022? That will be the first question. The second question would be on the Q1 trading update. According to the HDE, the stationary retailers in December suffered massively from the introduction of the 2G restrictions, which you also mentioned in Germany. Can you confirm what does it mean for your business?
It's not about concrete figures, it's more about setting safe expectations for December, right? How much does that impact in December, this new restriction rules, 2G, which we never had before. The last question, the third question would be on the EGM. At the AGM, at the February 9th, and then you have an EGM at the April 12th. I guess this has to be seen in the context of the Kellerhals issue. Could you perhaps elaborate and remind us on the schedule, when you expect to solve the Kellerhals issue and what is the background of the EGM after just some weeks after the AGM? Thank you.
Thank you, Volker, for your three questions. I would take the quarter one trading update question, and Florian will comment on the gross margin and on the EGM, and he will start with the gross margin.
Yes, I'm happy to do so. Provided that we have given an EBIT guidance with a very clear increase, that actually means that we are also optimistic for the gross margin development. Looking at the various factors, please keep in mind that in the last fiscal year, 2021, the temporary closure of our stationary business weighed significantly on our gross margin. Moreover, our online offerings have been in very strong demand. We do not think that we will have again an online share of above 30%. There will be basically also some compensation from the channel shift.
Last but not least, our growing service and solutions business will also significantly contribute to the recovery of the margin as we have already seen the fourth quarter. Yes, we are very optimistic in line with the EBIT guidance also for the gross margin. These three factors will contribute from my point of view. Second question regarding the Kellerhals transaction. We already published earlier this year, like, an ad hoc message communicating the way forward. As you know, there have been two ways to Rome, so to say. We took some time to basically study both options, and we went for the most robust option. Yeah, our clear intention is to make this transaction as safe and robust as possible.
That means now that we have two annual general meetings next year. First one in February, the regular Annual General Meeting, where we will pay dividends. The dividend will lead to basically an extinction of the voting rights of the preferred shares. In April, the second general meeting in 2022 will be an extraordinary one. In this extraordinary Annual General Meeting in April, we will basically resubmit the transaction so that we are very optimistic to conclude the transaction next year.
Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Florian. Look to Q1 trading update question, your specific question around 2G, geimpft, genesen restriction in retail and what that means on the high street and the traffic and the demand. Let me reiterate just one thing because I think that's important. As I said, October, November this year were clearly below the exceptional quarter, comparable quarter last year, which given how last year was, doesn't come to me as a total surprise. October, November this year in total was better than two years ago. Now the real uncertainty comes with this 2G measure in the restriction in December, because clearly this does lead to muted traffic on the high street. This is dynamic quantity about 35, sometimes 40%. That also means that we shift online.
Of course, this is uncertainty and will clearly puts pressure, say, on retail. That's where the main uncertainty stems from. Let's also be clear, and that doesn't make it easier. Last year, we had to close our shops in Germany, as of December 16th. Let's assume that at least 2G remains open till the end of last year. That also means comparing to last year, starting with December 16th, we should see some sort of catch-up effect. This will not, you know, close the gap completely, that's clear. You know, it will definitely help. If you drill down into the various countries, again, the situation is more complex. In the southern countries, we see much less impact. We had closed in Austria. It's just a, say, more complex situation. As we did in the past, we're dealing with it. This is where the uncertainty comes from.
Yeah. Crystal clear. There's a lot of ups and downs in hearing your comparison. Absolutely. Thank you very much for the, for the answers. Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Clément Genelot with Bryan, Garnier & Co. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I have two questions for my side, if I may. Our first one is on promotions. Is the current promotion on all level competitive landscape in Germany still intense with some, notably Amazon, leading of a pack? My second question is whether on inflation, do you see any rising labor inflation, and especially in Germany? Thanks.
Thank you, Clément. I will comment on the current promotional environment, and Florian will take the labor inflation question. On the current promotional environment, yes, it is still competitive. Some players, of course, even in the shortage and now muted traffic, try to basically still gain market share through promotional pressures. There are certain categories where price pressure is less pronounced, so it also depends on the category. One important thing to note is that you see actually a price aggression with a trick, with a customer trick. You get offered a good price, but the product is delivered in January or February. We see actually that customers choose availability over price when it comes to, you know, having products available.
See, we see this demand clearly in our online stores and our brick-and-mortar stores. As I said earlier, as a customer, when you want to have the high chance of finding a product available, you should definitely look with us. It's a mixed bag. Of course you see all kinds of pricing retail tricks. Again, nothing that we find particularly, say, unusual. Most important is again, the evolution of the traffic. We work very hard with the suppliers on general availability and the rest, you know, we will manage.
Second question regarding labor inflation. Inflation, as I already outlined in my speech, is currently bothering us and all the market participants. We see that especially logistics costs are increasing. Freight rates from China are on very high levels. First signals we see that basically this also labor inflation in the logistics sector is transferring to retail. For ourselves, it's too early to judge. Of course, we have also considered some wage inflation for our personnel expenses in our budget and our guidance for this fiscal year 2021/ 2022. But as I said, the precise impact, which will then be negotiated between the tariff partners, is too early to judge. Our assumption in the guidance basically is that these high inflation levels will normalize in the course of the year in line with what we currently hear from the central banks.
Understood. Thanks. At this point of time, no real labor inflation in the stores or maybe in the warehouses, right?
For ourselves, like for our own workforce, no. There's no significant impact so far. As I said, the new fiscal year is still young, and we have to monitor it closely. The second, yeah, impact, as I said, is in the logistics, so in the logistics, in the supply chain. If their costs are increasing, suppliers tend to pass these higher costs to us, and there we can already see some impacts.
Understood. Thanks.
Our next question is from the line of Fabienne Caron with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Three questions from my side. The first one, in a normal world, so we post Convergenta transaction, and given the fact that you have moved or you have bought shares from a store manager, what would be the level of minorities in percentage that we should have for the group? And can you just as well give us the qualitative criteria or what will be the bonus for store manager based on? It would be the first question. The second question, what are the lessons that you take from the cyber attack? Because as far as I'm aware, it didn't impact all the IT system that was cloud-based. So does it means that you will accelerate, you moved from your IT to the cloud?
The last question, I saw a research from a company called Profitero, who did a survey regarding 15,000 products over the course of 2021, comparing price between different operators in Germany. MediaMarkt was always more expensive than Amazon? I wanted to have your view on this point. Thank you.
Sorry, Fabienne. We're just waiting for the last question again to be a bit clarified. Look, I would-
It was in Germany, by the way. Sorry, I didn't.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Florian will take number three. Maybe there is also a follow-up. On the first one, I would say a few words. Florian will add to this, and I will take the second one on the cyberattack, and then, Florian will take the third one. Look, I will highlight the principle. Obviously, we have a scorecard in our stores that is based on very important different factors. One, of course, is sales, one is profitability, another one is margin. But also very, very important is the customer experience. What is also very important, and that will evolve over time, for me personally, soft factors like people leadership, how we manage teams in the stores to provide that experience will be some adjustments.
The trick is always to have the right targets, of course, that drive the performance. At the same time, it's not just one KPI, it's several, but at the same time, not too many because it has to support how we have to run the business as an experience business. Again, sales, profitability, bottom line, but also margin, NPS, customer experience, and of course, how we lead and manage our people in the stores. These are critical success factors. I just look at Florian. Is there anything you would like to add?
Just maybe I think one question was regarding the remaining minorities we have. Maybe to give you some color on this one. In Germany, I think we have between 20 and 30 store managers left who have minority stakes. You can see basically looking at our store portfolio of more than 400 stores, the vast majority of store managers accepted. Also in other countries, basically the minority stake model has been terminated in the past years. There are just few countries left where store managers have minority stakes. That's maybe to give you also some colors on the minorities.
Fabienne, to your second question, lessons from the cyberattack. Let me say, obviously this is a highly sensitive topic because in a semi-public conversation, of course, we on the one hand talk to you, which we love to do. On the other hand, you kind of feel always you also talk to the other party, which is based on criminal behavior. It's always a bit sensitive. Let me say the following. First and foremost, we invest a major part of our business and focus has been throughout on IT security. I think absolutely, yes.
That was I think also one of the main reasons why we were in a position to react so fast and also with the support of our partners, we're able to restore services within days. That's point number one. Clearly, we are taking in, during such attack times, additional precautionary measures in terms of reaction times, monitoring, you know, what kind of system changes you allow for. You don't do that much anyway in the high season, but you know, all of those precautionary measures. Second and thirdly, clearly, we have also an ongoing review of what we can do. By the way, our cloudification program that is on the way, we will also probably accelerate. That's also clear.
Rest assured, we will continue to make IT security a top priority and make it as safe as it can be. Because it's a race against criminal forces in the outside world. I hope this gives you some kind of background to the question.
Okay. I also try to answer your third question, but I have to admit that I do not know the Profitero research, so this will be some homework for us, for me after the call. But I can comment a little bit on pricing and what we do. Maybe first comment, pricing is one of the areas where we really invest a lot in the last years and we are operating with an AI-based pricing platform. It's highly automated, it's sophisticated, and we ensure that for the most relevant products, so let's call them top 300 or whatever, we basically ensure that we are priced competitively against relevant competition. For these products, it should be...
If there's any more expensive price, it should be rather an exception. That's my second comment now. Looking at the current situation, if this is a recent research study, what we see at the moment that the markets are in an exceptional state. We have scarcity in products, especially in telecom. There's not a huge supply. If you look at MediaMarkt, you can be sure that if we offer the product, there's sufficient availability and that the lead times are not long. I also invite you, if you compare the offerings at other marketplaces, then basically you should also consider the lead times. This is, I think, the picture or the analysis which should be done in the current situation. I think that's the current situation and, as I said, I will have a deeper look into Profitero.
Thanks. Just to follow up on that, Florian, do you include the delivery cost as well when you check prices? Because most of the time, you know, price may be similar, but then when it comes to delivery cost, you know, if a customer is Prime, then you may be tempted to go back to Amazon just not to pay the delivery cost for MediaMarkt.
Yes. Like, also looking at delivery costs, depends of course on the value you spend, depends on parcel versus two-man handling. But we also ensure that delivery costs are competitive. Now, if you mention Amazon, you also have to compare basically whether it's a Prime or non-Prime offer. So looking at delivery basically makes the pricing more complex. So it's not comparable one by one. But as I said, we ensure that we have a competitive offer and also delivery is considered in the overall pricing mechanism.
Fabienne, just one addition from my side, because this question gives me the opportunity to share with you just one observation I had when I came in fresh. We first will look into the study and see what we can take out from this. Yes, but actually our pricing is very sophisticated in real time. As Florian said, it's machine learning based, and we change prices, product, shop several times during the day. Of course, we use all sorts of input factors, because we don't always have to have the best price, clearly, to maximize margin. We look at price comparison sites by products. We look at our own conversion rates. We have data on footfall in the stores, feedback there.
Of course, we also monitor what's going on on the Internet in terms of pricing on competitor sites, et cetera. We have very good overview on average pricing, category pricing, and shop product pricing. This is highly sophisticated, but definitely we'll have a look at this study.
Okay. Can I just follow up on two financial question, if I can? Florian, out of the EUR 55 million cost for this year, can you remind us how much will be cash or not? And the second question, what tax rate should we take for this year? And is it fair to assume that the positive impact for the Convergenta transaction on the tax rate will be more on 2022/ 2023?
First question, I think, about what was the one-off for the NOM program, so the delayed-
Yes.
Deferred, the deferred one-off. Yes, this will be cash. The second question, tax rate. You see that, the extraordinary Annual General Meeting is on April 12th. We will have to see whether we get some deferral by people who try to attack potential decisions of the AGM. We have to see how lengthy this process will be. If we run through smoothly, we will still be able to use tax loss carry forwards in this fiscal year, 2021/ 2022. Of course, we are already preparing ourselves that we can use these tax loss carry forwards. If the transaction is closing as planned in time, we will be able to use it this year. If there should be some delays due to this public disputes in Germany, which we discussed already a couple of times, then it will be rather 2022/ 2023.
Okay. Okay, thanks a lot.
Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero followed by one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Nicolas Champ with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question is, could you please share with us your CapEx guidance for next year, please? The second question is that, in the context of accelerating inflation and not only consumer electronics products, but overall inflation, do you see any change in shopping behaviors from customers? I mean, any trading down phenomenon for instance, in some countries? Third question, I mean, could you be a bit more precise where do you see your net working capital will evolve next year? I mean, I understand obviously that last year has been a bit unusual. You expect things to normalize. Could you please guide maybe a little bit more precisely regarding your expectation in terms of net working capital for next year? Thank you.
Thank you, Nicolas. Florian will comment on the CapEx guidance for next year and also give a bit more light on the working capital. Looking at the inflation overall, this of course is looking again a bit into the future with a bit of uncertainty. We have seen, of course, again, inflation rises that we hadn't seen for so many years. If you drill down where it comes from, it's heavily influenced in many markets by, say, energy prices. The question, for instance, on this inflationary pressure is how governments are also going to deal with that? Is that going to rise?
I would say there is a competition between inflation, available spend, and how consumers are willing to spend also versus, say the attractiveness of categories, which products are actually in the pipeline, because this is a major driver for customer demand. When you see basket shifts, and that I think is still the beauty in consumer electronics, that we continuously have very attractive products that then shift behavior. Again, the question is now on central banks' reaction to ease the pressure. Should inflation rise further at some point, of course, we will see probably a bit of slower demand. Right now, I would not attribute the main effect that we see today, of course, to inflation. It may cause some pressure.
I'm more keen on having everything open back to normal, dealing and having a good frequency. It's a bit speculative, probably. Unfortunately, I can't give you probably any more insights than that. We can be more precise, say, on CapEx guides, because this is what we do.
Yes. Regarding CapEx guidance, we expect a recovery for this year, fiscal year 2021/ 2022. We want to go in a direction of 1.5% of sales, meaning that CapEx will go above EUR 300 million. Reason for that is obviously during COVID with store closures, we could not do our regular maintenance program and basically also refurbish and upgrade our stores. There we will now basically do the job and refurbish and maintain the stores, as I just said. Regarding net working capital, you can expect a normalization. We had an extraordinary positive development due to the pent-up demand in 2019-2020 and now a normalization in 2021. Huge net working capital swings for this fiscal year, it should normalize.
In the mid-term, you should expect slightly decreasing net working capital. The reason for that is that we more and more go for direct supply from our suppliers. With this direct access to products, the net working capital is slightly going down.
Okay, thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Karsten Wildberger, CEO, for closing comments.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time and your questions. As usual, if you have any follow-ups, any further clarification, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. Now let me conclude today's results call. I wish everyone a happy and joyful holiday season. Good health. Take care, stay healthy. If you still need some Christmas presents, by the way, you know where to find them. All the best. Bye-bye.