Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the CECONOMY AG Investor and Analyst conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press 9 followed by the star key on your touchtone telephone. Please press 0 followed by the pound key for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Hendrik Finger from the investor relations team. Please go ahead.
Thank you, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 12M results call this morning. With me today are our CEO, Karsten Wildberger, and our CFO, Florian Wieser. They will guide you through today's presentation. Before we start, let me address the usual formalities. Firstly, this call is being recorded. 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, Hendrik, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome from my side to our analyst investor call. Let me start in saying the 2021-2022 business year was difficult for all of us, no question about it. At the same time, it was a year in which we continued to develop our company. Firstly, we successfully completed the Convergenta transaction and thereby simplified our previous complex structures. We also reduced our costs, modernized our stores, and strengthened the brick-and-mortar business. I'm very pleased that we have grown our service and solutions business. We have taken our online capabilities to the next level, and we have established sustainability as a cornerstone of our business. We have significantly reinforced our market presence with a new and bold brand campaign.
In other words, we have strengthened our foundation and at the same time, we address decisively the necessary challenges under extraordinary market conditions. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our 50,000 colleagues throughout Europe for everything that we've achieved in the past year. It fills me also with great confidence that we have such a committed and fine team. I also give my thanks to our customers, our partners, and suppliers. Let's turn to page 4, please. Russia's invasion of Ukraine fundamentally changed the world and the entire economy. It has led to an energy crisis, inflation has surged, and consumer sentiment has plummeted over the course of the year. We cannot choose the environment. All we can do is accept the challenges and find the right answers.
We act and focus on the things that we can influence, and we do so successfully. We met our updated outlook and delivered at the upper end of our EBIT guidance. We increased turnover compared to previous year by 3.2 percentage points to EUR 21.8 billion, thus performed better than so many expected. Let me also clarify, we primarily grew in real terms and not driven by inflation. Above all, we sold more products, we sold more services and solutions and achieved a record year in this fast-growing business. Our over-the-counter business recovered. Customer frequency in our stores increased by about a quarter compared to previous year. We also resolutely developing online, where we perform at a different level than before the pandemic.
Last year, the share of turnover of our online business was around 25%. This is almost twice as high as in the 2018-2019 financial year, so pre-COVID. In terms of earnings, we achieved an EBIT of EUR 197 million, which is at the upper end of our revised guidance. We improved our results in all regions outside the DACH region. We also made considerable progress in our strategy implementation, which positions us well to emerge stronger from the crisis. In this regard, let me summarize some key achievements. Let's turn to slide 5, please. We increased the Net Promoter Score, NPS, that's the metric we use to measure customer satisfaction, by 5 points to 50 points. In our service and solutions business, which is success-critical for us, we continue to grow by more than 20%.
Service and solutions is very margin accretive. With a sales share of 6.2%, it accounts for roughly 30% of our gross profit. We strengthen our online capabilities and refreshed our strategy with Experience Electronics as a new category and as the leading principle. We will share a full strategy update at our next Capital Markets Day, and further details will be announced at the beginning of the next calendar year. We also simplified our governance structures. CECONOMY is now the sole shareholder of MediaMarktSaturn, and Convergenta, the largest shareholder of CECONOMY. We are now much faster in decision-making. On page 6, I will outline what we're doing in terms of margin and liquidity protection to counterbalance the negative effects of the economy. We act decisively regarding costs, profitability, and liquidity.
Regarding costs, let me first point out that we successfully concluded our new operating model program in the last financial year, which had been been initiated in 2020. We thus cut our costs by EUR 125 million annually. We are now reducing our costs further given the market situation. We implement an efficiency program with three main elements. Firstly, we are flattening the structures in our central and administrative functions. That means, for example, we will have fewer departments at our central and local headquarters, and we will reduce the number of interfaces. Secondly, we are further automating and digitalizing manual processes in our stores. A good example is our Pick and Pack app, which allows us to process online orders in our stores much faster. That, for instance, leads to an overall effort reduction of more than 50%.
Thirdly, we will further strengthen our two successful brands, MediaMarkt and Saturn in Germany for the benefit of our customers, and thereby, at the same time, reduce material costs. From January onwards, all our customers will have unified product ranges and will benefit from the best product offering. We will also conduct joint campaigns to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our marketing activities. The cost optimization measures described above will entail one-off expenses of EUR 60 million-EUR 80 million this year, and this will lead to substantial annual savings. For 2022, 2023, we already expect savings of EUR 15 million-EUR 30 million, and for the years thereafter, we are in the mid double-digit million EUR amount saving territory. Let me turn to profitability. We need to strengthen our margins. No question.
An important lever for this is our profitable service and solutions business, which we will continue to grow. We will also improve our product mix and strengthen growth in new categories like e-mobility or health and fitness. Last but not least, we see a lot of potential to further optimize our marketing activities. With our current Let's Go campaign, which has been successfully launched across Europe, we have a stable foundation on which we will continue to build. Regarding liquidity, we will strengthen our liquidity, and to this end, we are continuously optimizing our inventories and our goods rotation. In addition, we are engaged in a trustful and constructive dialogue with our partners in order to improve conditions. We will better align and further streamline our assortment range in line with customer preferences.
Florian will shortly give you more details on our prudent financial policy, which is utmost important for us. Before that, let me give you some more insights how we are implementing our strategy. Let's please turn to page 7. We have made material operational progress in the last months. Our customers are our top priority, and we focus on how we can improve our shopping experience for customers further. We're getting better. We increased the NPS by 5 points to 50 points for the full year and to 52 points in the fourth quarter. More and more customers emphasize the good personal advice they receive in our stores and the improved functionality and usability online. Our repair capabilities at our Smartbars in our stores, as well as our delivery and installation services at customers' homes are growing.
Our share of service and solutions reached 7.4% of total sales in Q4, the highest ever. Our online business is also becoming increasingly important. In Germany, we have now managed to move up to third place amongst the largest online shops with mediamarkt.de and Saturn.de is in a strong sixth place. We have significantly improved the overall performance and functionality of our web shops for our customers. After a successful launch in Germany and Spain, we now also launched our marketplace in Austria. Our next marketplace will start in the Netherlands. We strengthen our brick-and-mortar business. We are modernizing existing stores, increasing selling space productivity, as well as also opening new formats, often with a much smaller size. At the end of the last year, we had remodeled slightly more than the targeted 25% of our stores.
Our investments are having an impact. In the modernized stores, productivity has increased by around 15%, and sales grew by around 8%. We've also made a leap forward in the area of sustainability, a cornerstone of our strategy. Circular economy, for example. We have significantly expanded our repair services. In the last year, we repaired more than half a million devices at our Smartb ars, and in total, across the company, we repaired 3.2 million appliances throughout the year. In our extended trade-in services, we exchanged around 80,000 old products for vouchers, which is almost 250% more than in the previous year. We now offer such trade-in services to our customers in 6 countries.
To put it clearly, with what we offer in terms of service and sustainability, we have a unique selling point in our industry. Let me go through page 8. In October, we launched a new brand and marketing campaign, one campaign for all European markets. It communicates our way forward in a catchy manner. Under the motto, "Let's Go," it addresses our customers at different levels in various advertising formats. It conveys very clearly and impressively what we are all about. An attractive customer experience on all channels, personal advice and service, and close integration of online and offline. Provided by our colleagues who have a passion for technology and for people, that's what every single person in our company stands for. It's our own people who participate in the campaign. Let's Go works outwards and inwards.
This was also the communication platform for our Black Friday season. I will come back to this later on. Let me now turn to page nine and our retail media activities. We see a lot of further growth potential for us in the retail media business in the medium term. Retail media refers, for example, to advertisements placed by brand manufacturers in retailers' web stores or apps, addressing customers directly at the point of sale. That means that retailers add an attractive new advertising opportunity to their business. With our reach of around 2 billion annual customer contacts online and via our mobile apps, we have all the prerequisites to scale relevant new business here. Therefore, in the coming months, we will be setting up our own retail media platform in our web stores, offering our industry partners attractive advertising opportunities as well as analytics.
We are boosting these services together with Criteo, a leading specialist in that field, and we entered into a partnership in September. With that, I will hand over to Florian Wieser, who will explain our business development in the past year and our most important key figures in more detail. Florian.
Thank you, Karsten, and good morning to everyone on the line today. Let me guide you through our Q4 and full year figures in more detail, starting with slide 11. I would like to reiterate what Karsten said earlier. It has been another turbulent year, heavily shaken by external developments. These fundamentally changed the macroeconomic and sector-specific environment. After easing of COVID and related supply shortages, the Russian war against Ukraine caused elevated uncertainty. Ceconomy and MediaMarktSaturn also clearly felt these effects. The increasing level of inflation and strong deterioration in consumer sentiment had a considerable negative impact on our business performance. To give you some more color, let's do a review of the past financial year. Ceconomy started very promising in the first month of the financial year, despite challenging market conditions, supply shortages, and a cyberattack in November 2021.
Our business gained additional momentum in the second quarter following the easing of COVID restrictions. In the first six months of the year, CECONOMY managed to lift both sales and profitability and was well on track to achieve its full-year targets. From June onwards, and despite a series of proactive measures to drive demand, sales dropped noticeably in light of cloudy macroeconomics and a deteriorating consumer sentiment. As a result, CECONOMY updated its outlook in July in line with the changed circumstances. The last weeks of the past fiscal year showed a pleasant recovery of demand. Various campaigns across our country portfolio proved to be successful. As a result, trading came in nicely with Q4 sales +3.6% and full-year sales above prior year.
This was a better sales momentum than we had anticipated in our updated outlook, especially in the segments West and Southern and Eastern Europe. We were thus able to achieve market share gains in both channels in the fourth quarter. In a nutshell, market momentum has been extremely volatile in the past fiscal year, clearly restricting visibility. Despite our successful measures, adjusted EBIT declined year-on-year and stood at EUR 95 million in Q4, thereby hitting the full year guidance range at the upper end. Let's now dive deeper into the operational drivers, starting with our online business on slide 12. In the first three quarters, online sales declined year-on-year as expected, following the gradual lifting of COVID restrictions in the year before. In Q4, we turned the needle and our online sales grew by 6% against a comparable undistorted prior year.
Our investments into our omnichannel processes to provide an effortless online shopping experience are thus paying off. The successful launch of our Omnichannel Spine initiative in the Netherlands in April and the rollout of our new powerful webshop to an increasingly number of countries marked important operational milestones. These measures helped lifting the Q4 online sales ratio by 1 percentage point year-on-year to levels strongly above pre-COVID. With a ratio of 24.6% for the full financial year, we have still room for growth, and we will keep working towards a ratio of 30%. Boosting our app traffic and further improving our user experience will be the key contributors. The pickup ratio, a crucial proof point of our omnichannel proposition and one of our competitive edges versus online pure players, stood at 40% in Q4.
That is 4 out of 10 customers conveniently collected their online orders in our nearby stores. Let's move to slide 13, to our service and solutions business, a key success factor for our resilient business performance. In line with the previous quarters, the demand for our service offerings was high. We increased services sales by more than 20% in both Q4 and full year, fueled by the operational progress we have made. We recorded increased demand across all service categories. Sale of GSM contracts and financing solutions performed particularly well. We notably improved our online service offerings to make the selection of service options more appealing during the customer journey. From Q2 onwards, the enhanced online visibility and our smarter recommendation engine showed growing results, and we enhanced the advice for accessories and services at our in-store pickup stations.
These improvements led to elevated attachment rates, both on and offline, which translated into a steadily growing sales share, as displayed on slide 14. In 2018, CECONOMY launched a comprehensive initiative with the intention to transform the previously transactional business focus to a customer-convenient offering. In Q4, we have now reached an all-time high services share of 7.4% of sales. Despite significant external headwinds, we have been able to demonstrate steady growth. This not only supported our gross margin, but also drove customer satisfaction and our net promoter score. In retrospective, this business focus has been very successful and laid the foundation for further profitable growth in this area. In a nutshell, our thriving service and solutions business was and will be a decisive positive contributor to the gross margin development, which we show on the next slide for Q4.
Our gross margin flattened by around 1 percentage point and stood at 19.1% in Q4. For the full year, it stood at 17.7%. The latter represents a year-on-year increase of 60 basis points. As usual, let me summarize the operational drivers of the development in Q4 for you. Firstly, goods margin and goods valuation suffered from product mix effects with a high share of GSM, tough market competition, inflationary pressures within goods cost of goods sold, and elevated inventory levels. On the positive side, our flourishing service and solutions business benefited our gross margin. We obviously appreciate the full year margin uplift versus a COVID-burdened prior year. However, the prevailing goods margin remains well below pre-COVID levels. Neither does it meet our internal ambition, nor does it reflect our customer and supplier relevance.
Looking forward, we will translate the benefits of our efforts even stronger into goods margin accretion. The following initiatives will play an essential role: streamlining of our assortment, growth within attractive categories, investment into supplier partnerships, and further scaling of our own logistics operations. Let us now have a look at our OpEx development on slide 16. In Q4, our absolute operating expenditures were roughly on prior year level. The OpEx ratio somewhat declined, driven by the higher sales level. For the full year, we saw an OpEx increase of around EUR 210 million. Thereof, roughly EUR 170 million from the absence of COVID-related subsidies and savings in the prior year. Against the backdrop of surging inflation, we are satisfied with this development. Of course, we feel cost pressures in several areas such as personnel, energy, and warehousing.
At the same time, our active and continuous cost optimization measures are paying off, and we realize savings with respect to location costs and advertising. Going forward, location costs, marketing expenses, and headquarter costs will remain in focus. Firstly, we are taking a cost-conscious approach to modernizing our stores in order to achieve the maximum results with the capital use. We continuously and successfully keep working on our location costs. Demand for commercial real estate has generally turned into our favor since COVID. Secondly, we will significantly cut our advertising spend by bundling the strength of our two brands in Germany with joint promotions and campaigns, as Karsten presented earlier. Lastly, we continue to review the cost structures at our headquarters to establish a leaner and more agile organization.
With these ongoing measures, we expect to curb the inflationary pressures in the post-COVID era, thus paving the way for sustainable margins and earnings growth. Carsten will give you later some color how inflation is about to impact our profit and loss for fiscal year 2022, 2023. Let's now have a look at the performance of our segments on slide 17. The view again reveals rather diverging developments across our regions. Sales in the DACH region contracted by 3.6% in Q4. Hungary continued to grow, sales in Germany and Austria declined. This year, sales in Germany were marked by inflation and an associated lower purchasing power. The prior year was characterized by strong pent-up demand following extended store closures. Successfully initiated measures to stimulate demand as well as cost savings were not able to fully compensate sales and margin declines.
Earnings in Austria, Switzerland and Hungary were on prior year level. Western and Southern Europe were regions with less gloomy macroeconomics compared to DACH. Here we saw continued good momentum in Spain and the Netherlands. Sales in the remaining countries came in very slightly below the elevated prior year levels. Earnings for the entire year or earnings for the entire region developed in line with the sales uplift, mostly supported by rising profits in the Netherlands. High sales growth was once again achieved in Eastern Europe, driven by the strong demand in Turkey. Let's now move to reported financials down to EPS on slide 18. All in all, we saw a drop to EUR 0.31 in earnings per share for the full year 2021/2022. Besides the decline in reported EBIT, there were 3 additional drivers. Firstly, the valuation of our strategic stake in Fnac Darty impacted EPS.
While a partial impairment reversal of EUR 150 million benefited reported EBIT in Q2 last year, we recorded an impairment of EUR 56 million in Q3 this year. Secondly, on the positive, we recorded tax benefits from the Convergenta transaction for the first time in Q4. The deferred tax assets recognized through profit and loss reduced our income tax expense by EUR 195 million. This is not yet the full scope of tax benefits from the transaction. We only recognized the portion we will realize over the next five years according to a conservative plan for our Germany business. Thanks to the new corporate structure, we expect the underlying tax rate, excluding non-tax effects and one-off items to move towards the direction of 30%.
Thirdly, prior year's financial result was supported by dividends from Metro Properties and M.Video, which were not recurring in this year. Before moving on, let me briefly talk about our dividend proposal for fiscal year 2021, 2022, as the situation is rather specific this year. The available balance sheet profit is blocked from distribution due to the capitalization of deferred tax assets, according to German GAAP. Our Management Board and the Supervisory Board have decided to propose to the Annual General Meeting that the net profit for the fiscal year 2021, 2022 will be carried forward to fiscal year 2022, 2023, and that no dividends will be paid for the past fiscal year 2021, 2022. Let's now turn to our free cash flow on slide 19.
A major driver of our cash flow was the negative change in our net working capital position of around EUR 360 million. Already in the prior year, we recorded a cash outflow from working capital, among others, due to high stock levels. This year, stock levels were even slightly up. I will come to back to this topic in a minute. Besides that, our net working capital position decreased due to peaking receivables from suppliers. This is a result of increased back conditions after the elevated campaign intensity in the fourth quarter. Further, shorter payment terms following new legal regulations in Belgium, as well as our intentional shift towards direct sourcing from selected suppliers, also weighed on our net working capital position. In the current fiscal year 2022, 2023, we expect the reversal of the operational net working capital development.
Regarding income tax, higher advance payments and scheduled repayments for prior years led to an increased cash outflow. The expected reversal of last year's COVID-related VAT deferrals in Germany continue to impact this year's free cash flow. Our cash flow stood at minus EUR 533 million and was thus EUR 263 million lower than prior year. Let me provide you with a stock taking of our liquidity and financial position on slide 20. The negative free cash flow debited our cash levels. We recorded several scheduled one-time payments, which also weighed on our liquidity. These include the EUR 130 million Convergenta cash component, a net amount of around EUR 120 million of repaid promissory notes, the EUR 63 million dividend payment, and repurchases of minority interests from store managers in Germany.
In total, non-recurring cash outflows added up to a mid triple-digit million EUR amount. Our cash position stood at around EUR 800 million as of September 30th. This development, paired with a gloomy opinion on macroeconomics, has clouded the view of certain external parties on our business. Given the one-time nature of many of last year's cash outflows, the encouraging start into the Christmas quarter and our prudent financial policy, we believe that we are not properly characterized in this isolated view. Let me give you some further background. By the end of December, we expect our liquidity position to reach again around EUR 2 billion. We have no major debt maturities coming due at least until 2026. We have access to a EUR 1.1 billion revolving credit facility, which is still undrawn to date, and has never been.
The first one-year extension option of the RCF facility A has been accepted by all bank partners. Just recently, rating agency Fitch has initiated a BB rating with stable outlook for both Ceconomy as a company as well as our bond. With this financial cash in our bank, we are nonetheless pursuing coordinated measures to improve our cash flow from operations. Let me give you some precise examples. First and foremost, we expect to lift the rotation of our stocks and are clearing our old inventory levels. We plan to do so with a more balanced order management, dedicated campaigns, and streamlining of our assortment. Secondly, we speed up the cash in from back margin condition, thanks to the implementation of digital tools in Germany.
Thirdly, thanks to the successful ramp-up of our own inbound logistics, we have switched towards direct supply in various cases, fostering availability and rotation of stocks. The initiated actions already begin to benefit our net working capital position, which we expect to move towards a more sustainable level during financial year 2022, 2023. This completes the financial section. Now back to Karsten for the outlook and his closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Florian. Well, in order to achieve our goals, what can you expect from us? Well, you can expect from us to follow a two-track approach. This means we will continue to consistently implement our measures to counter the economic crisis. In parallel, we will continue to implement our customer-centric omnichannel strategy. I'm convinced that the progress we are making will become even more visible when times become more predictable and the sentiment brightens. In the here and now, we will do everything to increase our profitability and improve our efficiency. We aim at compensating as much as possible for the inflation-driven cost increases shown on page 22. We see pressure in purchasing, logistics, staff, energy, and location costs. In order to cushion the cost pressure, we are relying on a bundle of effective measures which will generate very significant savings.
We are continuously working on further optimizing the terms with our suppliers. We will also streamline our product range and align it even more closely with our customers' expectations. We will consistently implement our efficiency program, which I've already explained to you. This will also take effect in the current year. In addition, we are counterbalancing the drastic increase in energy costs. With a series of measures, we've already significantly reduced energy consumption in our stores and in our administrative offices. For example, we are using very energy-efficient lighting concepts. We've lowered the indoor temperature by 2 degrees. On the sales floor, we now have significantly fewer TV sets switched on. In total, we are talking about a program being worth a high double-digit million EUR amount in the current business year and significantly more in the years thereafter.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me now turn to the outlook for fiscal year 2022, 2023 on page 23. The measures we have initiated to assert ourselves in this environment are increasingly taking effect. We have successfully continued our strategic transformation and becoming more efficient as an organization. We make progress, and we have started the new fiscal year with good customer demand. However, we operate in times with high economic uncertainty, and therefore, we provide two scenarios with a set of assumptions. Based on our most recent trading experience, we consider scenario 1 more likely. Scenario 1, for the full year 2022, 2023, we expect a slight increase in sales and a clear improvement in adjusted EBIT. We assume that the overall economic conditions will not deteriorate further and that the market for consumer electronics will shrink moderately at most.
Should the overall economic environment develop more negatively than currently foreseeable, and should demand for consumer electronics fall sharply, would obviously adversely impact our business. In the second scenario, we would have to expect a clear decline in sales and adjusted EBIT for the 2022, 2023 business year. I say it again, we consider the first scenario more likely from today's perspective. At this point, I would like to give you an initial assessment of the consumer demand for the months of October and November this year. In short, it was better than so many would have expected, including myself. We've implemented our campaigns across Europe very effectively, and the Black Friday business was very promising for us. Overall, in a competitive market, we've experienced an encouraging consumer demand in October, November. Our two-month sales in October, November was higher than in the previous year.
Let's turn to page 25, please. Ladies and gentlemen, we are well-positioned to grow profitably in the mid and long term. We will emerge stronger from the current economic crisis. What can you expect from us in the coming months? We will grow sales by leveraging our leading market positions and focusing on further improvements in customer experience. We will further interlink our online and brick-and-mortar business. We will enlarge and enrich our customer offering by growing our marketplaces and our circular economy proposition in more countries. We will keep our growth focus on our profitable service solutions business, and here, sustainability services will be front and center and will differentiate us from competition. We will seize our opportunities in new product categories such as fitness, health, and mobility. We will grow retail media, which represents a major business opportunity for us.
Last but not least, we will implement liquidity measures and will ensure that our cost structure becomes more efficient following the targeted restructuring measures as I've outlined in detail. In short, we are mastering the challenging economic environment, and our measures are working. We are aligning everything we do with our customers' expectations. We are continuing to consistently implement our omnichannel strategy and strengthen our competitive position. We are vigorously driving forward the strategically important service and solutions business, and we will improve our profitability and liquidity. Before I look forward to answering your questions, let me just make one personal remark because today is Florian Wieser's last analyst call for CECONOMY. Let me thank Florian Wieser wholeheartedly for his contributions to our business. On a personal level, Florian, I truly enjoyed working with you.
I thank you for your support, and I wish you personally and professionally only the very best for the future. Thank you very much for your attention, and now I look forward to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press 9 followed by the star key on your touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press 9 followed by the star key a second time. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press 9 followed by the star key at this time now. One moment for the 1st question, please. The 1st question comes from Clément Genelot, Bryan, Garnier. Please go ahead.
Morning. We've got three questions from my side. The first one is on Q-one sales. Could you elaborate a bit on the performance of sales? I mean, was it mostly driven by discount events such as Black Friday and this soccer World Cup? My second question is on the back margins. Back on slide six, I would like to come back on the earlier question of back margin conditions. I mean, what does it mean, well, exactly? Does it mean that the back margin payments will be more spread throughout Q-one, Q-two, and Q-three? Does it mean that we should expect a higher boost from back margins on these quarters, and then also softer Q-four only because of that?
Finally, what should we expect from the CMD next year? I mean, is it just a reiteration of the past targets, or should we expect more colors on the marketplace, the retail media, and so on? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you very much, Clément, for your questions. I will start with question 1, the back margin, Florian would take, I will then conclude with some answers to the question on the Capital Markets Day. Performance Black Friday and how was the soccer world championship impacting Q1? Maybe overall, we have seen, apart from Black Friday, also in Q4 last year, a very strong demand in the GSM sector for us. That was also helped obviously our service and solutions business because we also sell contracts for some operators. We have done well in NDA, particularly SDA and floor cleaning, for instance. That was also a focus area because product mix, obviously, driving the right product mix was important to improve profitability.
With regards to the Black Friday season, if I go through the top products that we sold, there is clearly gaming.
There is NDA and IT hardware. We are actually also very strong in selling TVs, often very specific, say, brands. That also shows that we can make the market. We were also able, for instance, to sell more than 100,000 of earphones, wireless earphones. Some good demand also on the cleaning side. This is something that has continued throughout, say, end of last year. That has continued. Obviously also mobile phones and notepads as well as wearables. Quite a broad range. Top 20 products. I've given you a glimpse here. The Soccer World Cup has not really boosted anything, to be honest. The demand for TV generally is not that strong.
Italy, actually, that was very strong in the past also because the government put some subsidies to IPTVs, has actually declined very, very strongly, above 60%. This market is actually not difficult at the moment. The World Cup here has not helped. Let me summarize again. If anyone had told me 10 weeks ago how October and November and Black Friday would have turned out for us, I would have said I wouldn't have believed it. In that sense, we are overall very happy. Clearly, for instance, some markets like Italy, there we see also some challenges.
Regarding the second question on the earlier question of back margin conditions. First of all, let me emphasize there's no implication on the P&L.
We properly accrue the positive impact of back margins in our P&L, you should not expect any changes in the P&L looking forward. We are referring to an earlier cash-in of these conditions and I mentioned my speech briefly that we implemented a digital tool. Let me briefly explain it, what we mean. In our business there are, especially in the environment of campaigns, there are article-related conditions. If we sell an article or we buy an article during a campaign, we get an extra contribution from a supplier. These conditions which we get for these articles during a campaign can have qualitative conditions. It must be sold during a certain period of time, there must be certain marketing criteria fulfilled.
In the last month and years, it took some time to prove to each other between supplier and us that these qualitative conditions have been met. There was a lot of manual work, and sometimes it took us a couple of months to actively collect the cash for the conditions, which was already properly accrued in the P&L. Thanks to the implementation of a digital tool, we are now much quicker in cashing in these outstanding accruals against suppliers, and this will significantly benefit our net working capital. As you have seen in Q4, part of the deterioration in net working capital was related to an increase of receivable against the suppliers from increased campaign activity. This initiative of earlier cashing in back margins is particularly addressing this topic.
improving liquidity, improving net working capital, no impact on P&L. handing back to Karsten for the Capital Markets Day question.
Yeah. On the Capital Markets Day, first on timing. Our plan is in the first half of the next calendar year, to give you an update on, you know, strategy, what you can expect of us, provide you with more transparency. Most likely, after Kai-Ulrich Deissner, as the new CFO, has started around April, May time, something like that. In terms of content, what can you expect of us? Obviously, after the many conversations I'm having with you, with investors, with partners, we of course receive a lot of questions around more transparency, better understanding sometimes our business. The first goal is clearly to give you a better understanding of our business, what we are doing. That's point number one.
For me, personally, very important is that you also get a better view because we always talk about it. It's clear that we have to improve the profitability. What is it specifically that we are doing? Because we know what needs to be done. We are not short of any insight problem, and we're executing on it. Obviously, this is harder in times when you have an economic crisis. That's not that trivial because we have also high competition density. I'd like to give you more update on what does it mean for mix, how are we really growing services and solutions, and also what are the relevant scalable growth business that we're doing in a tangible way. This will be embedded in a strategy refresh, that it also feels more real.
Obviously, I would like to also give some pledges, what you can expect of us by when, what we're going to deliver. Hopefully, this will be a good tangible exchange, and I'll personally look very much forward to it.
All right. Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from Volker Bosse, Baader Bank.
Hello. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. I would like to start with the current trading. Good to see and good to hear that you stayed safe above last year's level. However, what do you see in regard to consumers'The shopping trend. Do you feel that consumers are trading down on the back of recession fears or do you see less big-ticket items? Any trends which you are have observed in the course of Q1? Second question would be on store openings, store closures. What is to expect in 2022? Just briefly, where you wanna end up and which regions you wanna open stores, which regions you wanna close stores. Last but not least, well, the question is on one-offs in 2022, 2023.
I mean, in the past, you already announced the one-offs for the new operating model as well as for introducing the efficiency program. Just for clarity, is that all done, these investments for these initiatives? Or are there any one of which we already can take as of today into account of our financial model? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Volker. I will take question 1 and 2, and number 3, Florian will take. On your current trading questions, question, the shopping trends, generally, let me say a few remarks. What I'm saying is referring obviously to our experience until end of November. Why I say that is obviously we experiencing, also, volatile times. Again, it has been a very, surprisingly, for me personally, good period. Generally, our stores are going strongly. That means we see better traffic than obviously during COVID times. They are strengthening, and we have also experienced good conversion rates with also good average volume values, which is good. What are the shopping trends?
Interesting, we see at the moment, we continue to be strong also at the entry, and very strong also at the more premium side of things. We see, if you like, some kind of bifurcation where we see a strong demand in the entry side, but also on the premium side. What is something we consistently hear, that MediaMarktSaturn is also getting better to sell and present products more at the premium range, as well as mid and entry points. These are, this is something that is very visible. Obviously, during Christmas, I expect SDA is always a strong category.
SDA, what does that mean? Sorry.
Pardon?
What does it mean, SDA?
Sorry. Small Domestic Appliances like, you know, goods, small machines for the kitchen or a toothbrush, et cetera. Things like that. So that is, that would be my take on the first one. Store opening and closures, let me say the following. Obviously, we have a lot of work on the way to improve the productivity of our store space, floor space, generally. That is important. That's why it's not just about closure, it's about reduction of space where we're coming along. It's opening new formats, especially also smaller formats apart from the lighthouses, and also refreshing stores. You see when we invest in the stores, we see a productivity uplift as well as a sales uplift.
For instance, in the last year, we closed 10 stores, 7 in Germany, and we also opened, like in Turkey, which is a big growth market for us, we also opened stores. I think what we'll see in the future, the stores where we don't think because of change of consumer behavior that you can't run profitably, obviously we'll close. We are, wherever we can, reduce the floor space, and we are also becoming much better at opening and running profitably smaller locations. It's that mix, and I could foresee a future where in the midterm, we would even have more locations, but obviously of smaller size. Now the third question, Florian, please.
Regarding the one-off program, please allow me to make two comments up front. Looking back in the last six years, we have structurally adjusted our cost base. We have overall, if you compare the last six years, we have grown top line. At the same time, we have reduced the absolute cost level by roughly EUR 400 million, not even taking into account inflation. If you would consider inflation, we have cost reduced even stronger. Key for this has been our structural one-off programs. You remember Project One, now we just reported today that we successfully finished the new operating model one-off program and the savings was EUR 125 million above our initial expectations.
From my point of view, CECONOMY has proven that we can successfully implement these programs and that we do not only implement them, but that we are, in the long run, able to substantially reduce our cost base. These programs, Project One and new operating model, were dedicated to bring the cost structure to a level which are sustainable in normal times. If you look at the current times, they are all but normal. Now doing our budget and our plan for the upcoming months, we decided that we have to do something again, that we have to structurally reduce our costs, unfortunately, one more time.
That's why we today announced another one-off program with a one-off range of EUR 60 million-EUR 80 million, which should come in this fiscal year, EUR 60 million-EUR 80 million one-offs. They will be invested in three buckets. One is our, yeah, our marketing, our strengthening of our sales brands. Karsten mentioned his speech that we want to bring our brands, Saturn and MediaMarkt, closer together in Germany. Using our force and bundle it, and not as in the past, that we position both brands against each other. That's the first bucket. Second bucket is we want to increase the digitization in our stores. First step has been done by centralizing our structure.
We bought the minority stakes of our store managers, and we set up a global business service center in the last 3 years with 1 branch in Germany and a 2nd branch in Barcelona. We want to increase the digitization of all store processes. 3rd point, 3rd bucket, as Karsten mentioned, we want to reduce the interfaces, we want to streamline the departments and to further centralize the value creation across the various steps in our value chain. These are the 3 buckets and we expect already savings out of this program this year, particularly in the 2nd half, and the majority of it then in the fiscal year 2023/2024. That's maybe a brief summary of the one-off programs and the effects you can expect for your models.
Yeah. Thank you. Just one follow-up. As you just mentioned, the buyout of the minority stakes of the store managers, is that program concluded, and what is the final outcome? How many, in % of your store managers who, I mean, what % of store managers accepted your offers, and how many store managers still stick to their minority equity stake in the store? Thanks.
We worked on these programs in the last year.
Yeah.
We centralized almost all countries now. What I mentioned was, considering Germany there, more than 90% of the store managers accepted. I think we have now 10, 20 store managers left with stakes, not more. More than 90% accepted, and almost everything is clean. Looking at our overall country portfolio, there are just 2 countries, 2, 3 countries left where we have a few store managers. Overall, now we are a central company, and this, you can consider this done.
Perfect. Thank you very much for that update. Thanks and all the best for the remainder of the year in busy days, especially for retailers. All the best. Thanks.
Thank you very much, Volker.
Thank you.
Same to you.
The next question comes from Jean Teurquetil, Allianz Global Investors. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. First of all, I would have 1 question regarding working capital. I do understand that you expect to have a quicker receivable position. When we look at the financial metrics, it seems that it has actually deteriorated in terms of number of days of 10 days, from 6 last year at then September to 7. Just, is your actions forward-looking? More importantly, on payables, I've seen that it's also deteriorating by 4 days year-on-year. What is your view on that front? I know that you intend to improve your inventory position, but what's your take on payables for next year? That's my first question.
My second question is more generally, you've burned EUR 500 million of cash this year. I know that there are several one-off mentioned. Could you quantify in your two scenarios what would be the level of cash burn of cash inflows according to the scenario? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot for this question. I will start with net working capital. First one was on the receivable position and what are the actions looking forward. If you let me give you some more color. If you compare fiscal year 21 with fiscal year 22, we saw a decline of net working capital due to increasing receivables against suppliers of EUR 150 million. This EUR 150 million are fully linked to the intense campaign activity which we saw in Q4. If you have, as explained earlier on the first question of Clément Genelot, if you have this campaigning, then it takes us some time to effectively collect these contributions from suppliers.
This led to the worsening of net working capital. What we did is we implemented digital tools to do the matching of these accruals or back margins much quicker. That's why we expect, first of all, to do it much quicker and have improvement and a reversal of this receivable proposition. Number 2, there's, as I just said, also some degree of phasing. Last year in Q4, the campaign planning was not so intense. We saw the pent-up demand. This year, as Karsten explained, we implemented proactive measures to stimulate demand. We saw macroeconomics being more cloudy, consumer sentiment dropping, and that's why we tried to stimulate demand and did some higher campaign intensity, leading to the higher receivables.
Both will not reoccur in 2022/2023. That's why we clearly see that we will see an improvement in this receivable positions benefiting our net working capital. Second topic was regarding payables, what is being done. One topic is clear. Payables, there will be pressure on payables due to a couple of elements. One was regulatory changes, which we saw in Belgium. I mentioned this in my speech. Second, we see rising interest rates. Euribor is rising. Extending payment terms by factoring by other financial supply chain instruments becomes less attractive. We also see some mix, goods margin mix, like Karsten mentioned, we saw strong growth in telecom. Telecom typically is a category with lower payment days.
These are factors which are weighing on payment days. However, we of course work on this as well, and the key measure is stock rotation. As mentioned in the speech as well, we initially planned to bring down stock levels in fiscal year 2021, 2022. Due to the consumer sentiment and all the, yeah, all the headwinds we are facing, we delayed this initiative, so we even saw slightly higher inventory levels. Now we have already seen in the last weeks of the new fiscal year that stock levels are dropping. With this dropping stock levels, our own logistics operations, which allow us a much better stock rotation as you reduce the bullet effect in the central inbound, we will clearly improve stock rotation, and with an improved stock rotation also the payable structure will improve.
That's why we believe due to operation measures, we can counteract the negative external impact on payables. That's why overall to reinforce this measure, we clearly expect a trend reverse in net working capital and like a benefit to free cash flow in 2022, 2023. Third question you raised was on the negative free cash flow which we are facing. I explained there was a significant impact in the free cash flow this year from scheduled one-time payments from Magenta transaction, dividend payments, buyout of minorities, which we just discussed with Volker, and this impacted our free cash flow. Our clear ambition and our target is that we want to improve the free cash flow and that we want to have a positive free cash flow in 2022, 2023.
Looking at the two scenarios, major contributors in both scenarios, which Karsten explained are the non-recurrence of the scheduled one-time payments in 2021, 2022. In scenario 1, which is more likely from today's point of view, we will see an increase in EBITDA, and as I said, we will see the trend reversal of net working capital. In the second scenario, EBITDA could be lower than prior years, so we could see a deterioration. Still in this scenario, we want to see a trend reversal of net working capital, but in the scenario, the more negative scenario, the free cash flow could be negative. I hope this is answering all your questions.
One follow-up. If you have this scenario, how are you developing your discussions with your financing partner about financing, sourcing new financing, liquidity? Thank you.
Yeah. As we mentioned, our trademark is a very prudent financial policy. I think we have seen the most challenging business environment in the last 12 months, and no point of time we are even forced to use our revolving credit facility of EUR 1.1 billion. I think that clearly shows how responsible we act and how proactive we plan our countermeasures. Looking forward, we do not see issues with covenants or access to our financing sources. We are confident.
Okay. Thank you very much.
At the moment, there are no further questions. If you would still like to raise a question now, please press nine followed by the star key. The next question comes from Andreas Riemann, ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Two quick questions from my side. One would be on price increases. I think you mentioned that the growth was price driven last full year. What categories allow for higher prices at present? The second one, you mentioned in the past that improving the goods margin, yeah, is important, as you lost a lot during the last years during lockdowns. I think you even said you would unlist some products. Where are you in that process? This is question number two. Thanks.
Thanks, Andreas, for the questions. On the first question, the higher prices, I think I did say, I hope I did say that the sales increase that we experienced was not inflation price driven, but actually real, sold more products, more services, et cetera. What we are monitoring at the moment, and for some time, obviously, is our ability to also pass on price increases that we see from, say, suppliers when products the purchase prices increase. We are actually doing a good job here. We are confident that we can do this. We are also seeing that, you know, that the markets react to price initiatives, et cetera, because obviously we can't pay the party.
That's why we do that, and that's working. The unlisting of products, the question, I mean, the purpose what we are doing is that we say we are becoming better at seeing what the customer really wants and what is also from a capital use perspective, more effective. That's why we streamline the portfolio. In that sense, we are streamlining the number of SKUs that we carry on our books, quite substantially, because this is the right thing to do and we still serve the customers better actually with also better availability.
The major job that we have to do and this is a bit of something homework we still had to do and still have to do is Germany, where we are now streamlining very fast a portfolio that was very large 30,000, 40,000 SKUs and bringing it down, say below the 20,000 mark. That's also important to note that this is round about a EUR 300 million inefficiency ticket in the networking capital that we are working through, that we are getting out of the system. Our logistics with our national distribution center will help a lot to accelerate this. We're doing a good job here now and we will accelerate this obviously.
We are now I think much faster and even a bit ahead of the plan that what we saw would be possible a few months ago. We're on track here.
Okay. Maybe coming back to the first question, which is about passing on higher costs. Does it rather mean that you change or try to change the mix or really to raise prices?
What we do, first of all, when we are forced to increase the prices we pass it on, and we see, look, if you look certain telephones they become more expensive. Obviously that's something we pass on. If you have a washing machine that becomes more expensive, that's something we pass on. I mean, that is working. We see this in many markets and I think we can do this. Your other question I think is a very important one. How we can improve the mix because that is an important factor to improve profitability. What we did last year successfully, we said we saw that we could gain market share and we should gain market share in SDA, small domestic appliances.
We set up a program and if you look at our performance there, it has paid off and it has worked out. Right now we are working also on the white goods section where we are already strong, but I think we can do so much more. Why is that? Because in all these difficult times, selling energy efficient devices like a washing machine, et cetera, a dryer is a super big opportunity. Today we are selling 40% more energy efficient devices than a few months ago. Customers want to also save money.
What I'm saying is we are working actively on the mix, how we steer it, how we execute on it, how we position, present products and actually also on the assortment because it's on one hand helping our business and helping our margin and it's also good for the customer. Yes, you can see, will see more of us when it comes to mix.
Okay. Thanks for those answers.
As there are no further questions at this time, I hand back to Karsten Wildberger, CEO for some closing comments.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time and your questions. With that, let me conclude today's results call. I wish everyone a happy and joyful holiday season and to all our say French participants, good luck for the final and take care, stay healthy and if you still need some Christmas presents, we're happy to help you be it white goods or brown goods or good telephones. Thank you very much. Goodbye.