Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 2022, 2023 results presentation. On today's call are Dr. Karsten Wildberger, our CEO, and Kai-Ulrich Deissner, our CFO. Before we start, let me remind you that the presentation slides can be accessed through our website. During today's call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer for more information. Please note that MediaMarkt Sweden's business is still including in our reported figures. It is excluded from the guidance relevant KPI, currency and portfolio adjusted sales growth, as well as adjusted EBIT. Karsten, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Fabienne. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our today's Q2 results call. Let's get started on page five. Well, if I had to sum up our performance in the second quarter in a single word, I would probably use the word robust. We maintained the momentum from our strong start to the financial year, generating high customer demand and achieving year-on-year growth. We managed to increase our sales by around 6% to EUR 5.3 billion, despite the decline in the overall consumer electronics market during the second quarter. Our earnings trend is also moving in the right direction. We improved our adjusted EBIT by EUR 35 million year-on-year. In particular, we continued our positive development in Germany, the Netherlands, and in Turkey.
I would like to emphasize that our measures to boost efficiency and strengthen liquidity are yielding tangible results. In the first half of the year, we increased our free cash flow by more than EUR 800 million. To put it simply, our performance in both the second quarter and the first half of the year aligns with our outlook for the full 2022, 2023 fiscal year. We clearly stand by the statements made in February and continue to view scenario one as the more likely outcome. I will discuss this later. Before delving into the key aspects of our business performance during the second quarter, let's first examine the market environment and turn to page six. In the second quarter, our relevant consumer electronics market overall contracted by 3%.
This downturn was primarily driven by a noticeable decline in the online sector, while customer demand for brick-and-mortar stores outpaced that of the online businesses. Other retail sectors, by the way, experienced a similar situation during the second quarter. After COVID, we are currently witnessing a shift in consumer preference towards physical stores as customers increasingly return to the in-person shopping experiences. We as well have seen a 16.5% uptick in the number of customers visiting our stores compared to a year ago. Our brick-and-mortar business has continued to rebound also in Germany. This growth has enabled us to capture more market share in the DACH region. However, our business was affected by competitive pressure in Western and Southern Europe. Despite these challenges, we overall successfully maintained our market share.
Now to the key aspects of our performance during the second quarter, and that's on page seven. In the second quarter, we sustained our growth trajectory. This was underpinned by our robust brick-and-mortar business, where we saw a solid 11% year-on-year increase in sales. As the brick-and-mortar sector continues its recovery, online sales made up 21% of total sales in the second quarter, slightly below the previous year's figure, but still clearly above the pre-pandemic level. Furthermore, the pickup rate, a key indicator of our omni-channel approach, rose by 3 percentage points year-on-year to reach 39%. We continued to make operational improvements in key countries. In Germany, our largest market, we increased both sales and earnings, maintaining our upward trend. We experienced similar progress in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, in Turkey, we sustained our dynamic, profitable growth.
Growth also characterizes our strategic high-earning service and solutions business. Compared to the previous year, we grew sales by 5%, raising its share of total sales to more than 6%. Our growth in service and solutions is a vital aspect of our strategy, which we're implementing consistently. We are also making significant strides in our new, highly promising business areas, retail media and Marketplace. Our retail media offering is now available in nine countries, with 450 partners taking advantage of our platform's relevance and reach, and that number is growing. Our Marketplace is showing a similar dynamic performance. We increased gross merchandise value, GMV, by 90% compared to the previous year and significantly expanded the number of resellers. Currently, 1,200 resellers offer a total of around 800,000 products on our Marketplace.
With the Marketplace, we offer customers an even more diverse and attractive product portfolio that complements our own range. I'm also especially pleased with our progress in customer satisfaction. As you know, we use the Net Promoter Score, or NPS, as a performance indicator to measure customer satisfaction. In the second quarter, we achieved a score of +53, matching our record from the first quarter and improving by 4 points compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Now let me share some recent examples from the last weeks that illustrate our commitment to delivering on our transformation. Let's turn to page eight, please. We've been making steady progress in updating our IT infrastructure. We are gradually replacing outdated and inflexible systems with new technology to accelerate workflows and provide greater service to our customers.
The latest milestone is the introduction of our new order management system in Germany, which enables us to fulfill customer orders more quickly and accurately. The new order management system is a real breakthrough for us because it links logistic processes across all sales channels in line with our omni-channel approach. It's a uniform cloud-based system for the entire group. This means that we will be connecting all our national companies to it step by step. The second point I would like to make is we are also making good progress on launching new store formats. Shortly after Easter, we opened the first two express stores in Germany, smaller format stores in city center locations that offer a selected product range, pick-up service for online orders, and fast repair services. The express stores are an important factor to improve store productivity.
They're a great complement to our overall various store formats. As you know, those store formats range from large technology experience centers in major cities, medium-sized stores with extensive product ranges and ample services and advice. The smaller stores in city centers complement each other. We're now ready to launch this format in Germany. The third point I'd like to make, we reaffirmed in the past quarter our commitment to sustainability as a cornerstone of our strategy. We expanded our participation in the European Commission Sustainable Consumption Pledge and set voluntary goals to improve our carbon footprint and promote sustainable business operations. For example, we aim to increase the number of Better Way products, externally certified sustainable items in our range from currently 3,800 to 6,000 by the end of 2025.
This initiative will enable customers to save more energy and promote the growth of the circular economy. Fourth, we have also introduced new innovative offerings focused on sustainability in Germany in recent weeks, in partnerships with other companies. Firstly, we launched a project in collaboration with the car subscription service, Like2Drive, offering customers of our MediaMarkt and Saturn stores access to attractive electric car subscription plans with terms of up to 21 months. The campaign was very well received by our customers. Secondly, we formed an exclusive sales partnership with CoffeeB end of April, a new eco-friendly coffee system from Swiss company, Delica. CoffeeB does away with traditional capsules, compressing the coffee into a fully compostable natural structure.
Electric car subscription and environmentally friendly coffee systems are just two examples of how we strive to offer our customers appealing shopping experience and explore new promising product categories. We are determined to continue this path while maintaining a focus on cost, profitability, and liquidity as top priorities. Let's turn to slide nine, please. Our measures to counter inflation-driven cost increases have proven effective, and our CFO, Kai Deissner, will give you more details shortly. Before he does, let me highlight the progress we've made with our efficiency program, which we announced in December 2022. The program primarily aims to optimize our workflows and our administrative functions. By reducing complexity and enhancing collaboration between our corporate headquarters and the head offices of our country organizations, we are striving to become faster and more customer-centric. As a result, we will also optimize our costs.
Our efficiency program is already yielding significant savings this financial year, helping to offset inflation-driven cost pressures. Beyond that, we are building a robust organization that is faster, more cost-effective, and leaner. Our unwavering focus on liquidity and net working capital continued to pay off in the second quarter. As a result, our free cash flow increased by more than EUR 800 million compared with the first six months of the previous year, and we significantly improved our net working capital by around EUR 640 million year-on-year. With that, I would like to hand over to Kai. He will guide you through the financial section and give you all the details on our second quarter.
Thank you, Karsten, good morning to you all from my side as well. Let me guide you through our quarterly as well as half year figures. First, let's examine the P&L impact of the disposal of Sweden in a little more detail. As you will recall, we announced the sale of our Swedish business to Power on the 14th of February. It is thus now classified as disposal group in accordance with IFRS 5. Sweden is thus included in our reported numbers, excluded from our guidance-relevant KPIs. That's currency and portfolio-adjusted sales growth and adjusted EBIT. As you can see on the slide, the disposal of Sweden accounts for most of the difference between our adjusted and reported EBIT in Q2, with EUR 63 million impairment and EUR 6 million operating profit. Now turning to sales on slide 12.
Sales momentum was solid in Q2 with 6.4% growth year-over-year. That's adjusted for currency and portfolio changes or 5.7% compared to Q2 2018, 2019 pre-COVID on a reported basis. What's behind this is successful marketing campaigns as well as strong traffic recovery in the stores. These were the main drivers behind our sales development. However, please do remember that last year in Q2, we still had some COVID restrictions in Germany, Austria, and also in the Netherlands. Group-adjusted EBIT reached -EUR 23 million. That's EUR 35 million above previous year. Behind this were strong sales development and continued efforts to offset rising cost inflation. I'll come back to that a bit later. It is important to note that underneath this, our EBIT seasonality continues to normalize towards pre-COVID levels, as already indicated in our Q1 call.
That's Q2 towards pre-COVID levels, not quite reaching them yet. Please also keep in mind that our Q2 from January to March is, relatively speaking, not the most important quarter within our financial year in terms of EBIT contribution. Turning to the performance of our first half year. Looking at our H1, despite the uncertain macroeconomic conditions and continuing cost inflation, we do stay cautiously optimistic for the remaining part of the year. As Karsten highlighted already, we do remain on track to deliver the first scenario of our guidance for financial year 2022, 2023, with a slight sales increase and a clear increase in EBIT. On sales. Let me now turn to our operational performance on slide 14. As you can see, Eastern Europe and DACH were the main drivers this quarter. In DACH, sales increased by 2.6% in Q2.
There, Austria and Germany showed positive sales development while Switzerland was stable. Hungary reported a sales decline in a very competitive market environment. In terms of profitability, this region posted the strongest EBIT improvement with +EUR 40 million. It's driven by Germany, thanks to good sales development and lower advertising and logistics cost. Here, our efficiency programs already start to bear fruits. Profitability was rather stable in the other countries of the region. In Western and Southern Europe, we recorded a sales decline, particularly in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In Italy, we're still comparing ourselves to an unusually high comparison base in the prior year. This is due to the end of the state subsidies for digital TV, which did support us positively a year ago. This base of comparison should ease from Q3 onwards. In Spain and Portugal, the competitive environment remained intense, which impacted our sales negatively.
Please also note that we announced the disposal of Portugal on the 20th of April. Profitability-wise, increased competition in this region together with an unfavorable product mix, that's in particular an increased share of GSM, in particular, this special situation in Italy explain our EBIT decline in this segment to -EUR 47 million. Once again, the highest growth rates were achieved in Eastern Europe, driven in particular by the strong demand in Turkey. Adjusted EBIT here improved by EUR 27 million in this region. Slide 15 highlights the performance of both our services and solutions and of our online sales. The service and solutions business remains a key strategic pillar to improve our profitability going forward. As traffic in stores improved, the service and solution sales increased by 5.2% and now accounted for 6.1% of group sales.
In terms of service categories, we saw increased demand, in particular for warranty and extensions, consumer finance, while GSM contracts declined somewhat. We're pleased to see that most of our service and solutions business continues to grow. This highlights that our efforts to enhance our service offerings are really bearing fruits. Our online sales share reached 21.5% on a group level in Q2. This represents nearly 2 point 2/3 sales growth versus pre-COVID level. On a year-on-year view, online sales declined by -10%. Customers currently prefer to shop back in stores, leading to declining online sales across general retail as a whole. Our omni-channel proposition resonates well with customers, however, which is reflected in a 39% pickup ratio in Q2, an impressive 300 basis points increase year-over-year. As promised, coming back to our EBIT development in Q2 on slide 16.
We're very pleased to have stabilized our gross margin in the quarter to 17.2%. Our gross profit increased by EUR 40 million. The main drivers are the following. Tailwind came in particular from lower logistics costs and a strong recovery in bricks and mortar sales. These enabled us to totally offset the continued pressure on goods margin. Goods margin was impacted by an unfavorable product mix, as mentioned, with an increased share of GSM. On selling prices, we were able to pass some input cost inflation to consumers, however, not all. At the same time, our OpEx ratio dropped by 50 basis points this quarter to 18.5% of group sales. As already highlighted in previous quarters, we do feel cost inflation in several areas like personnel, location, and energy cost.
We do continue to work diligently on these headwinds and have mitigated the OpEx increase with strict cost management. This, coupled with positive operating leverage, were the main drivers behind this decline in our OpEx ratio in this quarter. Slide 17 summarizes these familiar drivers behind our gross margin, which I highlighted already. I turn to page 18. Let me give you a little more color on our efficiency programs. At the end of last year, we already announced that we were taking several efficiency measures to improve our cost structure to offset cost inflation. Those measures include, among other things, streamlining our SG&A functions in Germany and abroad, optimizing our processes through digitalization, and reducing our advertising costs through joint marketing campaigns between MediaMarkt and Saturn. At the end of April, we officially announced the streamlining of our SG&A functions, particularly in Germany.
In this context, we are working very closely with the Works Council to find a socially acceptable solution for our employees. Overall, we expect to book roughly EUR 100 million of restructuring costs, of which EUR 60 million-EUR 80 million this financial year. This will enable us to deliver roughly EUR 130 million savings run rate from the end of the fiscal year 2023/2024. As you can see, this leads to an attractive payback period of less than two years for this efficiency program. To reported EBIT down to EPS on slide 19. As explained earlier, while we recorded only minor restructuring costs in the quarter, we did register EUR 72 million one-offs, almost entirely due to the disposal of Sweden, EUR 68 million. This led to the negative reported EBIT of EUR 106 million. Our financial results reached -EUR 15 million.
That's due to higher interest payments and higher interests on leases. We recorded a 36.6% underlying tax rate for H1. That's thanks to tax optimization coming from the Convergenta transaction. This transaction, coupled with the fact that we bought back most of our store manager stakes in the business, also explained the decline in the non-controlling interests. Our business structure is now much more simplified with effectively no minority shareholders. All in all, in Q2, we reported a -EUR 47 million net results, EUR 26 million below last year, mainly due to the one-offs which I described linked with the disposal of Sweden. Our key focus remains free cash flow generation, and we're pleased with the strong development in H1. Our free cash flow post-lease adjustments reached EUR 244 million in H1, a solid EUR 839 million improvement year-over-year.
In particular, our actions to reduce stocks paid off. Our overall stock position declined by EUR 557 million year-over-year, and our stock turn at the same time increased to 8.6 versus 10.4 weeks in Q2 last year. Both of these translated into a strong net working capital inflow of EUR 236 million. That's EUR 643 million above previous year. Other operating free cash flows is normalizing versus last year. Last year was impacted by the cash out of previously deferred payments. Finally, slide 21 highlights these net working capital improvements with our focus on stock management.
Ladies and gentlemen, this strong free cash flow makes us confident in the execution of our current strategy. Let me remind you, in addition, we have no major debt repayment coming due at least until 2026, and we do have access to EUR 1.1 billion revolving credit facilities, which is still undrawn to date and has never been. This completes the financial section. Let me hand back to Karsten for his closing remarks.
Yes, thank you very much, Kai. Before I move on to the outlook and a summary of our call today, let's briefly discuss the latest change in our country portfolio on page 23. Look, we continuously assess and review our country portfolio, considering our positioning and how we can sustainably build on our market position and, of course, what's also important, how we can focus. After reaching a beneficial agreement with the sale of our Swedish operations to the Scandinavian company Power in February, we recently also made a strategic decision for our business in Portugal. By agreeing to sell MediaMarkt Portugal, which includes by the way, 10 stores to Fnac Darty, we paved the way for a successful future for our Portugal business. Over the years, our strong local team has enabled us to perform well there in a highly competitive environment.
However, our business is still too small to establish a relevant market position in Portugal. We currently rank number six in the market, while Fnac is the second-largest player in Portugal. With our operations, Fnac's position will be further strengthened, offering excellent prospects for all employees, customers, and partners. Please also note that these portfolio changes slightly alter the baseline for our outlook for the full year 2022, 2023. Without Sweden and Portugal, the adjusted EBIT for the last financial year, 2021, 2022, now amounts to EUR 208 million instead of EUR 197 million. By sharpening the focus of our country portfolio, we've also improved our overall profitability. This brings us now to the outlook. In December, we explained that we had devised two scenarios for planning for the remainder of the year, given the volatile, uncertain economic environment.
In scenario one, we expect a slight increase in sales and a clear increase in earnings for the 2022, 2023 fiscal year as a whole. This assumes that macroeconomic conditions will not deteriorate and the consumer electronics market will shrink moderately at most. This was the case in the second quarter. Scenario two represents a less favorable macroeconomic development than currently anticipated, which would also reduce demand more sharply in the consumer electronics market. In this case, we would have to factor in clear declines in sales and earnings for the 2022, 2023 fiscal year. In February, when presenting our first quarter figures, we made it clear that we consider scenario one to be more likely. Given our company's overall performance in the first half of the year, I can now confirm that although the environment remains challenging, scenario one is still the more likely scenario.
That concludes our outlook for the current financial year. Let me say a few words about our Capital Markets Day plan for June 2nd on slide 25. To build on the momentum we have, we also want to discuss the medium and long-term direction of the company with you. We will explore how we are implementing our strategy and bringing our purpose, namely, we create experience electronics to enrich people's lives, to life. We will also provide more transparency regarding our business and address your questions in depth. Additionally, you will have opportunities to meet our senior operating management live and in person. Moreover, we will set a clear midterm financial framework based on detailed KPIs. We will explain all this in detail at our Capital Markets Day on June 2 nd . The event, page number 26.
The event will take place at our experience store in Cologne, which actually has rapidly become a hub for the gaming, e-sport, and influencer scenes. We are looking forward to welcoming many of you to our customer engagement center, which is perfectly suited for this conference. With just 2.5 weeks to go, we hope to welcome you in person at the venue or digitally via live stream. In summary, on page number 27, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude today's call with the following. In the second quarter, we continued our strong start to the financial year. Despite general market trends, we delivered continued growth and our measures are taking effect, allowing us to perform well in a still challenging environment. Our focus remains on customer experience, and we continue to make progress in implementing our strategy.
Strict cost management and the sustainable strengthening of our profitability and liquidity remain top priorities. Therefore, we reiterate our outlook for the full year 2022, 2023, and believe scenario one is more likely. Thank you for your attention. I'm looking forward now to receiving your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press nine star on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press nine star again. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press nine star now. One moment for the first question, please. The first questioner is Mr. Volker Bosse of Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello. Good morning, Volker Bosse, Baader Bank speaking. Congratulations on the great top line momentum. The first question would also be regarding a top line plus 6% like for like. Could you break out how much of that is inflation driven? In that context, perhaps elaborate a little bit on the incredibly strong growth in Eastern Europe as plus 74% to put that into perspective, please. The second question would be on the gross margin. Encouraging to see that the gross margin stabilized or even slightly increased by 10 basis points year-over-year. Is that a sign? For our modeling, could you confirm that this will be an ongoing trend in the current year?
Last but not least on Spain, a bit struggling here with the performance as Spain has been always the best country in your portfolio, the most profitable country in your portfolio. What happened here? Is this a temporary weakness currently, or is it a structural change and how we have to look at Spain in that regard? Thank you.
Thank you, Volker. Your first question on top line inflation, Kai will deal with as well as gross margin. I will take on Spain.
Volker, thank you for your questions. Before commenting on the particularities of the inflation impact on our numbers, let me remind you that in our sector, we are dealing with very short product life cycles, and thus a general tendency for selling prices to fall over time, not to increase. It's pretty difficult to track price developments and also inflation in the CE sector in every country. If we look to the main driver of inflation in our portfolio, that being Turkey, we estimate roughly 50% of our sales increase in Turkey to be due to inflation, the other half being a material increase of sales in that period. Secondly, on gross margin. Improvement of gross margin does continues to be our key focus, both in the current quarter and in the final quarter of the year.
It is our clear target to stabilize and over time, even to increase gross margin again. In Spain, I would hand it to Karsten.
Thank you, Volker. On Spain, you're right, as Spain is definitely one of our best operations and has always been. Like in the past, let me first of all say that also Spain recovered after a dip during the pandemic. The current dip, which is also driven largely by increasing interest rates, a demand mix shift, by the way, important. We have put a very solid plan in place, and that includes the revision of our marketing plan, working on the mix because the GSM mix at the moment is very high. We have a special focus also on online because online took a bigger hit, and we are confident that this is improving. As always, there is a strong collaboration with our partners on the assortment, running the right campaigns.
We also actually keep in Spain still a growth mindset. Wherever there's an opportunity in terms of locations, et cetera, we will look into this. That in mind, we have a clear plan to improve the situation in Spain.
Yeah. Thank you. May I, as a follow-up, as you. It's just, yeah, to repeat, you mentioned the figure, I guess, in the presentation, but I did not catch it. It's about the number of store visitors. How did the store frequency developed also in comparison to pre-pandemic levels? Where we are we in regards to, yeah, frequency figures? Thank you.
Yeah. Across the board, it's, in the last quarter, around 16% more than the year before, which is very encouraging, and we've seen that continuous trend. If you then ask the next question, okay, how does this compare with the pre-pandemic level? That depends on country. This is still below that level, roughly 15%, sometimes 20%, depending on country. There is an increasing trend. Let's not forget, those customers visiting also exhibit a higher, say, conversion rate.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much. The next questioner is Mr. Clément Genelot of Bryan, Garnier & Co.. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you. Three questions on my side. The first one is on the growth. In your view, what is explaining such gap in the consumption and sales growth between DACH and Southern Europe currently? The second question is whether on the growth margin. Do you see any early signs of competition easing, both at Europe level and in Germany? My third question is on the retail media. Could you give us any updates on the ramp up of this new business? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much, Clément. I will take question one, consumption sales growth, and the comment on the gross margin and on retail media, I'll also add, and maybe Kai can also jump in a bit on the gross margin. Let me first of all start with the gap in consumption and sales growth between DACH and Southern Europe. First of all, on DACH, we have gained market share. Very happy about the development in Germany. As you know, we put important changes in place in our German operations several months ago, and they are paying off. We're very strong in our campaigns, how we run the channels. We see increasing footfall, and we're taking market share.
It's also clear in terms of efficiency, for instance, the campaign we started by combining MediaMarkt and Saturn has been actually very effective. Not just from a cost perspective, but also from a performance perspective. That is very much explaining DACH and how we break away from the overall trend. In Southern Europe, I explained before to Volker, the situation in Spain. Let me turn now to important market, Italy, where we do not see the same growth as last year. One of the major reasons is that comparing to last year, we've seen basically, the stop of the subsidies for internet TV, and that has actually fueled enormous growth in Italy in the brown goods section. That is actually something that put a lot of challenges to us to actually change the mix faster.
What we see at the moment is a high share of GSM, we have a plan in place to ensure that we improve the mix, we have the right campaigns, we do the right mix online, offline, very similar to the plan actually in Spain. I'm sure because we have a very strong team in place that we will manage the situation well. On the gross margin, first of all, the gross margin definitely has various elements. Let me first of all point out that we have a plan in place, and this is also paying off, and Kai will mention that a little bit more, how we improve front margin, how we change the mix, how we work with suppliers. Secondly, service growth is important pillar of that.
In the future, for sure, in the future, retail media will also play a role, but in the short midterm, it's definitely more the work we do, say, on the product side and on services, and then Kai will add a few other things.
Let me flesh this out perhaps a bit. Karsten mentioned service and solutions. In addition to that, we've been focusing on very, very operational improvements of the margin. I'll give you an example. We've negotiated and renegotiated and recovered conditions which we lost during the COVID period. That's in particular on the front margin, not so much on the back margin, but it's in particular on the front margin where we saw a very healthy improvement in Q2. I would also highlight increasing attach rates. Whenever we do sell devices, in particular mobile devices, we put a very strong focus on attaching accessories and service products to this. Finally, even inventory management and stock turn does help us to recover the margin.
This perhaps just to add a bit of color to this increase in the gross margin. On retail media, we will share financial data on June 2 nd in our Capital Markets Day. Let me highlight where we do stand operationally. We're now live in nine countries in Europe with four products. That's Sponsored Product Ads, A+ Content, and two types of different reportings. Again, we will talk about the details on June 2 nd, but key highlights to remember, live in nine countries with four products live on the market. Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much. The next questioner is Mr. Stephan Van Hamme of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hello, guys. Good morning. I got two question first on the portfolio rationalization
Are you satisfied about the new scope, or should we expect further disposals? This is my first question. Second question is about the working cap. Are the inventory optimization and improved payment terms sustainable? If so, what level of working cap should we expect, going forward, as percentage of sales? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Stephan. First on the portfolio side, we are happy with the current portfolio as it is. As I said, we have made two major steps with Sweden and Portugal because in both situations, this was not the best fit and allows us more focus. There were always a lot of questions, especially around Sweden. We're coming our way. We're finally successful, but now we have the right market mix to focus. Obviously, we continuously look into the portfolio, but that's the current situation. On net working capital, Kai will give a bit more details to it. Let me emphasize, with all the work we have done on net working capital, we are substantially strengthening our capabilities to run better the stock turn, managing also the aging of the stock much better.
You will also see a much improved aging of our stock situation. Of course, this capabilities that we use, that also includes data and how we use systems, et cetera, and automate, et cetera, is going to continue. Then Kai will add a bit more color to it.
If I was to start with the result, first of all, then I'll come back to a few more drivers behind this. As Karsten mentioned, optimizing net working capital, and in particular, stock management is a key focus that we have. Yes, for the full year, for the full financial year, we do expect a positive change in net working capital, roughly low triple-digit million euros. That's what you should assume for this year. Now, let me highlight perhaps two or three more drivers behind this also because you mentioned them. We currently see no deterioration in our payment terms. We see no deterioration in our payment terms. Perhaps one other element, you may be aware that we've optimized our inbound logistical infrastructure, thus being able to shift to direct supply from our suppliers, which again, does help us to improve stock turn.
Just to give you two examples, perhaps what's behind this, and just to repeat, end of this year, assume a low three-digit million euros networking positive swing. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much. I have one more questioner. It's Mr. Neil Keeney of JPMorgan. The floor is yours.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Just following up maybe on the working capital development, everything seems pretty positive there. Your liquidity position has obviously improved year-over-year. Have you considered any liability management exercises, just looking at where your bonds are trading? Your 2026 notes are trading at about a 27, 28 point discount to par at the moment. Any changes in capital allocation policy to take advantage of that we should be aware of?
Thank you for the question, Neil. To do this very, very short, the answer is no. The answer is no. We're currently not entertaining any changes in our capital allocation or funding policy. We're extremely satisfied with the development of liquidity, which has high focus in addition to net working capital. We're pleased with that, but we are not entertaining any changes here. Again, I would point you to June 2 nd, where we will share a little bit more about the key KPIs and guardrails of our funding policy, but expect no fundamental change.
Great. Thanks for that. Look forward to catching up on the second.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you still have a question to stage, please press nine star on your telephone keypad. Please press nine star right now. The questions are coming in. The next questioner is Mr. Tom Gibney of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Just wondered, apologies if I missed it, what was the adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2023? The second question is, you've guided for working capital of low, positive low triple digit billion euros for the year. Presumably that guidance ties with the first of your scenarios. Could you give us a sense of how that would change in your second scenario, the more negative one? Lastly, how has the penetration rate changed for your services and solutions business with respect to bricks and mortar sales only?
Okay. Let me thank you, Tom, for the questions. Please give us a second for your first questions, adjusted EBITDA. Let me comment on working capital first. Yes. Your second question, yes, this does tie to scenario one. We currently have no detailed scenario that would give us a working capital number for scenario two. Let me remind you, scenario one is the one that we clearly see more probable given current circumstances. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2, EUR 138 million. For H1, EUR 524 million. For the penetration rate of service and solutions in bricks and mortar, Karsten.
We don't break down the numbers on the penetration rate also by channel. What I can say is that we have seen a good improvement and further growth in our bricks and mortar store, also online increases. What sits behind is also a growing number of services in the portfolio, which is driving this. There is much more things in the pipeline. I hope that at least gives you, even though it doesn't answer precisely your question, but a better view of how this is. We see a good penetration in our stores, and also online is improving.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Next, we have Mr. Andreas Riemann of ODDO BHF. The floor is yours.
Yes. Good morning. Two topics. Eastern Europe, I guess driven to a large extent by Turkey. Maybe you can shed some light on the growth in Turkey. Was it volume driven? Price driven? I guess there was volume growth, so maybe also comment on the fast volume growth in Turkey. What's happening here? The second topic, divesting Sweden and Portugal implies probably that you're buying lower volumes from the producers. Does it affect the buying power and thus the growth margin, or was the sourcing process so far maybe too decentralized?
Thank you, Andreas. Let me first of all take the second question, and well, Kai will comment on Eastern Europe and the growth, inflation, et cetera. On the buying volume, we see no impact on the buying volume. Let's also be clear that these, of course, also to a certain degree are local markets where our market share is was not the strongest. With a very clear answer to this will not have any impact on our buying pool, power or supplier relationship. Let's not forget through that focus, we are and we will focus even more on the countries we are strong in. Let's take Germany, wherever we strengthen our market position, that will also be beneficial when it comes to, say, our partners and the buying situation.
Now over to Kai on the first one.
Yeah. Andreas, let me come back to what I answered to Volker's question initially in the Q&A session. First of all, it's difficult to track for us inflation in our sector because with these short product life cycles, we tend to see decreasing product prices, selling prices over time. It's difficult to track. However, based on estimates, we do estimate that roughly 50% of our growth in Turkey is due to inflation. The other part is material driven by volume increase and pure better sales, so to say. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, why is Turkey growing then, as you say, maybe, more than 30%-40% in volume? I mean, is there, I don't know, extraordinary demand or any insight you could give us what are these guys buying?
Yeah. Look, in Turkey, we have grown a lot. We've opened new stores. Our market share is increasing. We run very strong campaigns. Execution is very strong. obviously, We have a very strong team. We are really on a forward path in Turkey. I would say half of the growth is, can be attributed to our own performance. There's of course also market demand, but we are taking also share, and the other 50% is inflation.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. The last question for today comes from Mr. Jean Baptiste Thieffry of Allianz Global Investors. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank Thank you for taking my question. I had just one question on payables. You mentioned that your current, currently do not experience any deterioration in your payment terms with your supplier. Why are payables down EUR 446 million year-on-year? That's just my question. Thank you.
Okay. Jean Baptiste, let me clarify what I said. If we do look into the contractual payment terms that we have agreed with our suppliers, we see absolutely no deterioration in those payment terms. The downward trends in payables that you see is a mix effect coming from the mix of product categories, but no change in what we've agreed with our suppliers. Please put this down to a mix effect, not to any operational deterioration.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Karsten Wildberger, CEO, for closing comments.
Well, thank you very much. This concludes today's call. I wish everyone a great start of week. Hopefully, I will see as many of you in person or digitally on the second of June for our Capital Markets Day. All the best. Thank you.