Good morning, everyone, welcome to our Q3 2022- 2023 Results Presentation. On today's call are 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, so please refer to the disclaimer for more information. Please note that our operation in Sweden and Portugal are still included in our reported figures, but they are excluded from the guidance relevant KPI, currency and portfolio adjusted sales growth, as well as adjusted EBIT.
Finally, be aware that given the technical impact of IAS 29, hyperinflation in Turkey, we will comment on business dynamic pre-IAS 29 in the presentation.
Let me now, however, hand over to Karsten.
Yeah, thank you, Fabienne, and good morning, everyone. Welcome everyone to today's call. Thanks for joining. Back in beginning of June this year, we had the Capital Markets Day, and I'd also like to thank all of you for the numerous feedback we received. The Capital Markets Day marked something big for our company when we presented our updated strategy. Engaging with so many of you and seeing the acknowledgement for the ambitious, yet achievable goals we've laid out, has been very encouraging indeed. Now today, along with our CFO, Kai Deissner, we want to update you on our Q3 performance. We'll also spotlight some of the progress we've made in executing our strategy, and we will provide you with an updated outlook. Let me begin with some very good news. We have delivered a very strong performance in Q3, extending our very solid nine-month path.
Allow me just a very few general remarks. Before diving into the key numbers, let's take a look at the consumer electronics market and more from a general perspective, because the consumer electronics market remains very attractive due to the increasing integration and role that technology plays in all our daily lives. Obviously, the market is not without its challenges, and even if the macroeconomic situation appears to be easing, with a decline in inflation and falling energy prices, consumers' purchasing power remains under pressure, as does the CE market. The Ceconomy is excellently prepared to succeed in a volatile market environment. At the heart of our new strategy is the customer experience that is even made stronger by our commitment to sustainability. This shift is not small.
We are moving from Ceconomy being primarily about selling consumer electronics towards becoming a customer-centric service platform. Now let me start with one important point that I'd like to highlight, that our Net Promoter Score, NPS, representing the customer experience, reached an all-time high of 55. The feedback from our customers and the NPS score show that we are on the right track, increasing customer loyalty and strengthening our position as a leading player in the European consumer electronics market. Let's turn our attention to the current sales development of the consumer electronics market, considering the countries we are operating in. Including Turkey, all the markets, including Turkey, the consumer electronics market grew by 2% in the third quarter. If we exclude Turkey, the market declined by 5% over the same period.
In these market conditions, we, as a group, managed to increase our sales by 7.4% to EUR 4.5 billion in the third quarter. We gained market share, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey. As a group, our market share was stable based on GfK data. On the earnings side, we've made further progress with a EUR 43 million increase in adjusted EBIT year-on-year, as we stabilized our gross margin and managed diligently our costs. Moreover, I'd like to emphasize that our measures to boost efficiency and strengthen liquidity are yielding tangible results. In the nine months of the year, we increased our free cash flow by almost EUR 1 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, given this very strong Q3 and overall nine-month performance this year, we update our outlook with one single scenario, the positive scenario one.
We now expect a moderate increase in sales and a clear increase in adjusted EBIT for this fiscal year. Let's turn to slide 6, please. In the third quarter, the market increase was primarily driven by an increase in customer demand for brick-and-mortar business, which offset the decline in the online sector. Other general retail sectors like clothing and furniture, experienced a similar situation during the third quarter. We have seen a 7% increase in the number of customers visiting our stores compared to one year ago. There is a good recovery of the bricks and mortar business, a very important question always asked, obviously, after the pandemic. Our overall growth has enabled us to capture more market share in the DACH region.
In Western and Southern Europe, we see some encouraging trends, I'll also allude to Spain and Italy a bit later. Let me now turn to the key aspects of our performance during the third quarter on slide 7. In the third quarter, we, as a group, sustained our growth as we did in the first half of this year. This performance was, as highlighted, underpinned by our robust brick-and-mortar business, where we saw, in terms of sales, revenues, a strong 8.2% year-on-year increase. As the brick-and-mortar sector continues its recovery, it offsets our weaker online sales. As a whole, our online in-house share stands at approximately 20.4%, which falls below our expectations, but it remains significantly higher than the pre-pandemic level.
I would like to highlight that our pickup rate, a key indicator of our omnichannel approach, so someone orders online but picks up the product in the store, increased by 300 basis points, now standing at 41%. During the third quarter, we made notable operational improvements in several key countries. In Germany, our largest market, we increased both sales and earnings, maintaining our upward trend. We experienced similar progress in the Netherlands and Turkey. Furthermore, we are delighted to share that our efforts and focus in Spain and Italy are yielding positive results, as evidenced by improving profitability trends. I would also like to give a quick update on our portfolio. We are pleased to announce that we closed successfully our Swedish transaction, and we expect to finalize the disposal of our Portugal business before the end of the fiscal year.
Growth also characterizes our strategic, high-earning services and solutions business. Despite a more challenging consumer financing business due to the high interest rates, we achieved a solid 5.3% year-on-year sales growth, this represents 6.5% of our total sales. We continue to make significant strides in our new, highly promising growth areas: retail, media, and marketplace. With our marketplace, we offer our customers an attractive, extended, and fast-growing product range online. This is for us, another source of income through reseller commissions. The marketplace business does not carry stock risk and other corresponding costs, currently, the marketplace is live in Germany, Austria, and Spain, where it achieved sales growth of 121% in the third quarter. The rollout in the Netherlands and Italy is planned soon. The marketplace selection is also steadily increasing for customers.
By the end of July 2023, we had already more than 1,000 resellers, with a total of about 1.2 million products on our platform. In conclusion, our collective efforts have paved the way for growth in strategic businesses, and we are driven by our commitment to customer satisfaction and are constantly striving to improve our offerings. Let's turn to slide 8, please. As you know, we've made very specific pledges at our Capital Markets Day regarding our new strategic approach of becoming a customer-centric retail service platform. We have defined nine KPIs for 2025, 2026, regarding retail core, services and solutions, marketplace, private label, space-as-a-service, and retail media, which are highlighted in this slide. I would now like to give an overview of the progress we've made on these KPIs over the past few months.
On slide 9, I won't go into detail on all of the KPIs, but I would like to highlight that we have seen good growth rates in loyalty members, and we are also well on target with the modernization of our stores, including our lighthouse openings. With our growth drivers, marketplace and retail media, we make steady progress. We are not yet satisfied with the development of our online share. Let me explain what we are doing, how we turn this. We are focusing on organic online traffic generation. We are improving our online functionality and quality of content, as well as growing the penetration and usage of our MediaMarkt app. In parallel, we are enhancing our store portfolio and our motto is: the right format in the right place.
Large Tech Villages in metropolitan areas, medium-sized stores with plenty of service and advice, smaller stores with a selected assortment, where customers can also access our entire range and pick up goods ordered online on-site. That's our approach. I will provide a few more details on the next slide. Let me share a few examples of the past few weeks that illustrate our commitment to driving our transformation. Following the successful opening of six large Tech Villages in Europe, we opened in June, a store in the so-called Express format for the first time in Germany. This is just below 1,000 square meters. As part of our omnichannel strategy, this store concept combines in a different way: service, an assortment tailored to customer needs and digital in elements that enhance the shopping experience.
This kind of store, which is basically also more local, makes our online shopping more regional. Products can be tried out in the store around the corner or quickly picked up. What is important, that this strategy will enable us now to operate more stationary locations close to our customers in the future, but on a smaller footprint. The smaller formats offer us new growth opportunities by addressing attractive locations, that we cannot access today with our former larger formats. Moreover, they improve sales productivity per square meter. At the same time, we drive forward the ongoing modernization of our classic core formats. For example, we upgraded recently in Italy, a first MediaMarkt, based on a hybrid concept of our store formats, with very flexible and sustainable design elements that we're going to roll out and use elsewhere.
A warmer look and feel, with also more appeal to our female customers. There are lots of experience zones where customers can try out products. We'll see and hear more based on this concept from us going forward, with also tangible numbers. Slide 11, please. Before I hand over to Kai, here are some further updates on two very important topics: technology and sustainability. Our tech transformation continues with steady progress. We've successfully rolled out our new webshop platform now in Belgium, in July, making it now 6/ 11 countries on this new technology stack. This means that over 80% of our online sales are now generated on this new web platform. This allows us to harvest synergies, increases speed, and we share improvements across all these countries once we implement them.
All these functionalities are available much faster in all these countries. We'll expand to Switzerland, Turkey, and Hungary during the next fiscal year. We're also accelerating our MediaMarkt app enhancements with new features, functionalities going live in Germany in the first quarter of the next fiscal year. That means customers can now compare products more easily. They can utilize a QR code scanner, enjoy personalized content and push messages, status updates on delivery, et cetera. All these improvements and enhancements will make us more forceful in driving also our app adoption. Our tech transformation remains a key driver in shaping our future success. On the right-hand side of this chart, in the past quarter, we reaffirmed our commitment to sustainability as a cornerstone of our strategy, reducing carbon footprint, promoting sustainable business operations.
For example, we aim to increase the number of BetterWay products. This is our sustainability label, based on third-party certification, to increase the BetterWay products in our range to 6,000 by the end of 2025. This initiative will enable customers to save more energy and promote the circular economy. Now, our trade-in offer, as displayed here, has witnessed impressive growth, with trade-in products reaching a remarkable 75,000 units during Q3 2022, 2023. So far, this year has been very successful, with a total of approximately 150,000 trade-in products processed year to date. We are also seeing good demand for sustainable services in other areas. Our pilot project for renting electric cars has been very well received, and we are now expanding this further.
As of this week, customers can once again rent selected electric vehicles at a very attractive price through a subscription model. In cooperation with Like to Drive, there's a choice of several attractive electric cars. As you can see, we are well on the way to transformation.
Now I will hand over to Kai, who will give you a deeper insight into our financials. Kai?
Thank you, Karsten, and good morning to you all from my side as well. Let me guide you on the following pages through our quarterly, as well as our nine-month figures. On slide 13, as you can see, sales momentum was very robust in Q3, with a 7.4% growth year-on-year. Keep in mind, please, this is adjusted for currency and portfolio changes, and we're looking at these figures pre-IAS 29, so pre-hyperinflation accounting effects in Turkey. Now, the main driver, again, for this sales development, just to reiterate, it's continued recovery of our bricks and mortar business. On a country perspective, we saw good sales development in Germany and in Turkey, as well as improving trends in Italy. On EBIT, group-adjusted EBIT reached minus EUR 60 million, and that's an impressive EUR 43 million above previous year, so roughly 2/3.
Behind this, the strong sales development and successful efforts to offset rising cost inflation. I will come back to that with a bit deep dive later. This EBIT improvement over the quarter, enables us now to look much more positively towards the end of the fiscal year. With already nine months under the belt, we feel comfortable to upgrade our outlook, and focus exclusively on what we used to call scenario one, so the more positive scenario. Looking at our nine months performance, yes, despite the still uncertain macroeconomic conditions and continuing cost inflation, we do feel comfortable to deliver this first scenario of our guidance for fiscal 2022, 2023. That's a moderate sales increase. Mind you, previously, we spoke of a slight sales increase and a clear increase in EBIT. You look at the nine months performance, our adjusted EBIT increased by an impressive EUR 35 million already.
That's almost a third. Now, on regions, turning to our operational performance. As you can see, Eastern Europe and DACH were again, the main drivers this quarter. We're also pleased to see that the trend is improving in Western and Southern Europe. Start with DACH. Sales increased by 1.6% in Q3. Here, Austria and Germany showed very positive sales development, while Switzerland and Hungary reported a sales decline, largely due to the competitive market environment. In terms of profitability, this region posted a strong EBIT improvement with EUR 18 million plus. That's driven by Germany, thanks to good sales development and lower advertising cost. We can clearly see that here our efficiency programs are starting to bear fruits. In the other countries of the region, profitability was rather stable. In Western and Southern Europe, we recorded a slight sales decline.
In the Netherlands, we posted solid sales growth. While we still had sales decline in Spain and Italy, in the latter, we see some sales trend improvement as we cycled over the highest comparison base in April. Remember that last year, the state subsidies for digital TV supported us positively. In Spain, we're also making progress. Our sales decline here is mainly due to our online business. We've put in place a new team from April, we've, in particular, improved our product availability online. We're confident now that all of these measures will bear fruits going forward. Profitability-wise in this region, we're pleased to report that we reduced our EBIT loss here by EUR 5 million this quarter. The Netherlands and Italy were the main drivers behind this recovery in profitability. Once again, the highest growth rates were achieved in Eastern Europe. That's driven by the strong demand in Turkey.
Adjusted EBIT here improved by EUR 22 million in the region. Turning to services and solutions in some detail. As you know, service and solutions remains a key strategic pillar to improve our profitability going forward. Now, technically, for the current fiscal year, we're still commenting on the old definition of services and solutions. That services, including retail media, including marketplace, commissions and fees, as well as deliveries. We will switch our reporting to the new definition, which we introduced in our Capital Markets Day in June, from the next fiscal year. By the old definition, our services and solution sales increased by 5.3% year-on-year. That's now leading to a sales share of 6.5%. In terms of service categories behind this, retail media had a very good performance, as well as warranty extensions.
Other hand, as Karsten already mentioned, the higher interest rate environment is impacting our consumer finance business. We're also cautious here to manage our credit portfolio in order to limit a potential increase in bad debt later on. Also on the slide, online sales share reached 20.4% on a group level in Q3. This still represents nearly 60% sales growth versus pre-COVID levels, although we're not satisfied with the performance. On a year-on-year view, online sales declined by 6.6%. It's clear to see that customers still prefer to shop back in stores, leading to declining online sales across general retail as a whole. That our omnichannel proposition still continues to resonate well, you can see in the pickup ratio, it increased to 41% in Q3. That's an impressive 300 basis points increase year-over-year.
Now, coming back to our EBIT, EBIT development on slide 17. We have again stabilized our gross margin in the quarter to 17.6%. The main drivers, the following two: tailwind came from lower logistics cost, and secondly, stable goods margin, thanks to a more favorable channel mix. On the sellings prices part of this, we were able to pass some input cost inflation to consumers, not all. On the bottom of the slide, our OpEx ratio dropped by an impressive 90 basis points this quarter to 19.8% of group sales. On an absolute level, our OpEx increased by only EUR 9 million this quarter, as our efficiency measures are accelerating and bearing more and more fruit. What's behind this, as already highlighted in previous quarters, we do feel cost inflation in several areas, like personnel, location, energy cost.
We do continue to work diligently on these headwinds, and have mitigated the OpEx increase with very strict cost management, even better than in previous quarters. Slide 18 summarizes the familiar drivers behind our gross margin, which I already highlighted just now. In this context, let me give you an update on our efficiency programs. Overall, we continue to expect roughly EUR 100 million restructuring costs, of which EUR 60 million-EUR 80 million this financial year. In Q3, we booked EUR 31 million, and expect to book the remaining in Q4. This will enable us to deliver roughly a EUR 130 million savings run rate from the end of fiscal 2023, 2024. In Q3, we generated a high single-digit amount of savings and still expect EUR 40 million savings as a whole this fiscal year.
Behind this, we continue to streamline our headquarter structure, and we've reorganized, as you well know, our repair services in Germany and expand our digital platforms and solutions internationally, as Karsten highlighted. Now next, to reported EBIT down to EPS on slide 20. In terms of one-offs, we registered EUR 63 million one-offs in the quarter. That's EUR 15 million less than Q3 last year. Of that, EUR 31 million is restructuring costs and a roughly similar amount, mainly non-cash, due to IAS 29 hyperinflation in Turkey and the deconsolidation of Sweden and Portugal. This led to a negative reported EBIT of minus EUR 123. That's almost EUR 60 million better than last year. Next down the line, our financial results reached minus EUR 33 million. That's due to higher interest payments and higher interests on leases in line with market development.
Do please note that out of the EUR 22 million increase, the main part is non-cash. The main driver behind this is this: as we regularly renegotiate our lease contracts, this leads, from an accounting point of view, to a higher interest component in the financial results. This does, however, not change our rental cash out. For the full year, we assume a net financial result of roughly minus EUR 100 million. A specific effect. On taxes, we recorded a minus EUR 30 million charge in the quarter, as you can clearly see, this is the one main driver of our net result in Q3. Let me try to explain this. Last year, we recorded a large tax income in the quarter, that's due, amongst others, to the impairment of our Fnac Darty stake at the time, and at the time, lower business expectations.
As we use an integral approach for tax, this effectively distorts our tax rate on a quarterly level. In practical words, we set our full year tax rate at the beginning of the year based on our budget for the full year, and adjust quarterly charges along the way, based on non-foreseeable impacts, like, for example, the impairment charges, which we saw last year. You need to think of this negative year-on-year effect in Q3 effectively as a one-timer. For full year 2023, we expect a lower tax rate induced by the Convergenta transaction, a mid-double-digit tax charge, and from a cash perspective, we assume a limited cash outflow of around only minus EUR 30 million.
In particular with this tax impact, in Q3, we reported a minus EUR 186 net result. That's EUR 90 million below last year, and as explained, more than EUR 100 million delta comes from this extraordinary tax effect in the quarter. Our key focus in all of what we're doing remains on free cash flow, and we're very pleased with the strong development in the nine months, which you see on the current slide. Our free cash flow post-lease adjustments increased by EUR 996 million year-over-year, to minus EUR 87. We recorded a positive cash inflow of EUR 55 million from working capital for the nine months. That represents a very impressive EUR 820 million improvement year-on-year. In particular behind this, our actions to reduce stocks paid off. Our overall stock position declined by almost EUR 500 million year-on-year, and our stock turn increased to 9.4 weeks. This is 10.5 weeks in the last year.
You can interestingly see also here, the underlying positive development in taxes, despite the one-time effect, with the EUR 40 million improvement year-over-year at the top of the chart. Other operating cash flow is normalizing versus last year, because last year was impacted by the cash out of deferred tax, severance payments. Slide 22 highlights our net working capital improvement with a focus on stock management. Ladies and gentlemen, our very strong free cash flow makes us confident in the execution of our current strategy. Let me remind you, as always, we have no major debt repayment coming due at least until 2026. We have access to EUR 1.1 billion revolving credit facilities, which is still undrawn to date and has never been drawn.
This completes the financial section, let me hand back to you, Karsten, for the closing remarks.
Thank you, Kai. Finally, I would like to give an outlook and summary of our key messages today. As we have stated already and earlier, based on our strong performance during the first nine months of the year, we have updated our outlook and only work with one scenario, the positive scenario one. We expect a moderate increase in sales and a clear increase in adjusted EBIT for the 2022, 2023 fiscal year as a whole. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude today's presentation before we move to Q&A with a summary. First, in the third quarter, the good operating momentum continues. Second, in a challenging consumer electronics market, we grew in key markets and maintained our market share overall. Number three, we are clearly in command. Our measures to master the current challenges are taking effect.
Number four, we focus on the customer experience and are building momentum as we execute our strategy. Number five, our focus remains on cost, profitability, and liquidity. Finally, we update our outlook for the financial year 2022, 2023, with a positive scenario one as our sole guidance.
With that, I thank you for your attention, and now we look forward to your questions.
Yes, 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, followed by a star key on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press nine star for the second time. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. I will conclude. Anyone who has a question may press nine star now. One moment for the first question, please. The questions are coming in. The first questioner is Mr. Volker Bosse of Baader Bank. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Hello. Good morning, everybody. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. Congratulations on the encouraging set of results. I would like to start with your comment on consumers' purchasing power remains under pressure. How do you see that in your figures? How do the consumers react? Do they trade down, or what do you see behind this statement? Second, would be on the sales split by product group. Just as a rough indication, what is what is highlight, what is lowlight in regards to product sales, so which product segments performs better, which worse? The third question would be on the same service and solutions business, which remains stable at 6.5% in comparison to group sales.
Isn't this a bit below your expectation as you invested into Smart Power, SPaaS and invested into this transformation into a service company? Your comment on that would be helpful. Finally, if I may, just a brief one on July current trading, how do you see things developing in regards to sales in July? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Volker, for your questions. To cut it short, there were four or five questions, basically. Kai will cover the last one, the current trading one, and of course, he will add, whenever he feels like he wants to add. Consumer purchasing power remains under pressure. How do consumers react? Situation is, in my view, as follows: as we said earlier, the situation generally remains volatile. What does that mean? It means there is a month where we feel, okay, it's a bit softer, and then there is another month where it's, it's, it's going better. There is a certain volatility in that, and that's what makes it hard to predict. The thing that we still see is that the premium goes very strong.
Premium goes very strong and more pressure we see in the entry point, which, which, suggests that there is more pressure on, you know, purchasing spend, what do customers spend money on. Now, of course, we have, everyone hopes it's the holiday season, and then when people come back, at some point, there will be another demand. But we see kind of this bifurcation, if you like, this split between entry and premium, but premium goes strong. That would also lead me a bit to the split of the product groups. Let me start with the things that we see very, very strong. Very strong, is, telecommunications, hardware, mobile phones-- We see also wearables, strong. Also computer accessories are very strong. What also is strong on the entertainment side, entertainment hardware.
Software is for us a good growth. What goes well in the, what we call the white goods, which are the big, big products, like washing machines and the small domestic appliances. Small domestic appliances, like floor care, going very strong. What is not that strong is a continued pressure on the TV section. I guess, this is still a bit of a hangover from the COVID period, but let's see. This is still under pressure. Computer hardware is not that strong either. I think that also has to do. What remains kind of stable is actually the big domestic appliances. It's a mixed bag, but within that, you can see that premium, if you like, goes better.
Thank you.
Services and solutions stable with 6.5% below our expectations. I look at it the following way, because Kai elaborated a bit more on this. The thing that is in the number is that the financing part of services, due to the high interest rate, is under pressure, but is actually a big contributor in the financial numbers. That is an effect of the interest rates and the current market situation. I personally think over time, of course, we will hopefully also reach a more normal situation again, and I'm quite generally positive on this one. If I take this effect out, we're actually going very strong. Why is that? We see good footfall in our stores, and we see very strong attach rates on the various services that we sell.
That means we're doing operationally, a very good job in selling services and solutions. What also gives me confidence going forward, is that we have good new services in the pipeline that we are going to launch, like myMediaMarkt+, which is basically this enriched guarantee proposition, worry-free for customers, that will take some time to ramp up. It's a very attractive proposition. I look at it with these two sides. Just from a pure numbers perspective, when I just look at the number, you're right. That we know where this is coming from. If I look at it operationally, I'm actually more positive. As always, there is clearly work to do, which we will do and deliver.
On July current trading, Kai, please feel free to add.
Yeah, thanks. Hey, Volker. Good to speak to you again. Now, as all of you are well aware of, we cannot share details at this point. I would go back to our guidance, and let me just reiterate that. We're assuming for the full year, a moderate increase in sales and a clear increase in EBIT.
That implies for EBIT, that for Q4, we still do need to see another clear increase in Q4, otherwise the full year numbers wouldn't add up. A moderate sales increase and a clear increase, specifically also in Q4, there is nothing in current trading, there is nothing in current trading that let me doubt this particular statement. On a regional perspective, let me remind you what we highlighted. We highlighted good performance in Germany and in particular, in Turkey, and a encouraging trends in Italy and Spain. There is also nothing in current trading that lets me doubt this particular statement about the first nine months. This is how I would comment.
Yeah, thank you very much. One follow-up on your online sales, if I may. Your sales, online sales is still down. I think that is also something to do with the, with the COVID effect. However, how do you see the future of your online sales channel, and when do you return to positive online sales figures again in regards to sales growth? Thanks.
Yeah, important question. Thanks, Volker. generally, Q3, in terms of online share, is always a quarter. There are also some seasonal patterns which is different, but clearly, this is below our expectation. What we see overall is a, if you look at the whole market, a quite a decline in the online market overall. That is something that we are, of course, also exposed to.
Sure.
In our particular case, what happens is we see a very strong 7% increase in footfall in our stores. That means that our online business is more, is more under pressure. If I look at it operationally, the work we need to do and where we have to get better at, we have to grow our organic traffic, not paid traffic, because from an efficiency perspective, more. There are things technically that we are developing, like Search Engine Optimization, et cetera. There are some lot of technical capabilities that we are building in the background. I'm confident that over time, this will bear fruits. Our functionality of the website is improving, it's getting better, but there is more work to be done also on the content side.
Where we will accelerate much more, because that's an important part, to basically go native through the app. We see a refresh of our app in, in September, and we will push that hard. Last, last but not least, the marketplace, the extension of our portfolio, is an important part of our strategy. It's now the first time that I see growth rates that are really great to watch-- Over time, this will also pay the dividends, in, in terms of building more attractiveness for customers to search for products and to purchase with us. Last comment, I would say, given, given the environment, of course, we balance also very strongly what is our promotional activity versus our standard business to protect margins, which I think, given also the mix, we've done a very good job.
That, in turn, also has an impact, actually, on the digital share, which is often more exposed to, say, price competition. Saying this all and squaring this, obviously, we have real work to do, as I said. What gives me confidence that we know the levers and what we have to do, and, hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we will update you with, again, figures that I also enjoy more.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Thanks for the statements. Perfect.
Thank you. The next questioner is Mr. Adam Gilday of Bank of America. The floor is yours.
Hi, thank you so much for taking my questions. This is Adam Gilday from Bank of America. I had two, please. First, on retail media, I was just wondering if you could give any quantification around how it grew in the quarter, and if it's growing at the rate you expected at the CMD when you outlined the new targets? Then second is on the new web shop. I was wondering if you could talk through the services and solutions attachment rate. Are you seeing an uptick on the new platform? Thanks.
Adam, I'll take the first question on, on retail media. Look, at the Capital Markets Day, we included retail media in one of our key pledges. Just to remind you of the figure, the target for 2025, 2026 is EUR 45 million in income. Now, we will update quantitatively, quantitatively with our annual figures, so with the next quarter, quarterly results. Qualitatively, what I can say, as I make explicit, the arrows that you saw on the slide that Karsten presented, you saw a big arrow up, and that is also the tendency that we do see, but we can only share numbers in the next, after the next three months at it. It's all on the right track. This is how I would summarize it. Karsten, for you, second question?
Yeah. Thanks, Adam. On the service and solutions attach rate uplift on the platform, Clearly, the attach rate on service and solution generally is far higher in the offline environment than in the online environment, because of the interaction with the customer. What we have achieved over time is more than a doubling of the attach rate in the online world, and this is sometimes painstaking work that needs to happen because it depends really on the service we talk about. Let me give you a few examples, and then please, if, hopefully, this answers your questions, but if you have further questions, please do ask. Give you a few examples.
When you, for instance, buy a washing machine or any device, then of course, we have improved the engine, also the new web platform, that the relevant services for this particular customers are displayed and shown. We have also made the process of then, say, clicking and adding the service much, much easier. What does that mean? It could be, for instance, a guarantee extension, it could be an installation process. On those things, like installation, we see very, very high attach rates. Let's take another very important service of ours. If you want to basically buy a mobile phone contract in combination with the mobile phone, this is something we are developing as we speak to actually make the process of signing up to a mobile phone contract, including credit checks and all of that, much, much easier.
This is a more complex process where we've seen considerable uplift of 70% compared to the past, but there is more work to be done, and so on and so forth. It depends really on the service and the product combination and what, where we, where we build the capabilities now to measure the customer journey and the attach rate in the process. The specialty about this new web platform is, of course, that all the development basically happens on this website or on this tech stack. Once we've improved something for one country where maybe the demand came from, basically then, the same functionality is available in all these countries. We have strong synergy gains and strong speed advantages.
Last but not least, we do the same work on the app, and we have the app in all the countries that are on that tech stack in this, in this current format. This is a key focus area of ours, and over time, we're able to more than double the attach rate. More work to be done. Hopefully more growth to report on.
That's, that's very helpful. Thanks.
The next question comes from Mr. Clément Genelot of Bryan, Garnier & Co. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I will have quick questions. The first one is on Germany. Were you able to preserve at least your market share in Germany in Q3? If I remember well, you said during your CMD that you that you have gained about 120 basis points to your update there. My second question is whether on the guidance, if I might, the current consensus of expectations for the 2023 EBIT implies an EBIT decline in Q4. Just wondering, what's exactly your view on that, and what are your assumptions for Q4 in terms of demand, and especially gross margin? Because if I'm right, in Q4 of last year, you have booked as well, an inventory write-off. What should provide a kind of boost obviously? My third question is whether on the, on the services and repair, could, could you give us more, more color on your ongoing repair service team reorganization?
Because some press articles recently mentioned about 400 job cuts at a subsidiary named Tec- Repair. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Clément, for the questions. I'd suggest, Kai, you start with the financial questions. I will deal with the German market share and then the service repair, tech repair question.
Clément, let me, let me comment on Q4 again, and perhaps also avoid some misunderstanding that my previous answer may have given. For Q4, I would anchor it into the full year guidance. For the full year guidance on EBIT, if you look consensus expectations, we feel very comfortable with these consensus expectations. If you assume those consensus expectations, roughly speaking, this leads for Q4 to a more or less stable, ±0, ± a little, EBIT in the quarter versus the same quarter of last year. That's our expectations, roughly speaking. Now, you asked about margin in that quarter. You're right about certain impacts that we saw last year, in particular from stock in our margin. As we've highlighted continuously, we've made some progress in managing stock, consistently over the last three quarters.
Having that in mind, as well as our continuous efforts to stabilize and even grow margins, my expectation is that with a roughly stable EBIT versus last year, underlying, we would actually, on a margin base, see an increase versus previous quarters in that particular quarter. These are the two items that I would give for that, Clément. I'll hand to Karsten for the other two questions.
Yeah. The other question you asked was on the German market share evolution in Q3. Is that in line with what we did say during the Capital Markets Day? A clear answer, yes, it is absolutely in line, and we have gained market share in Germany. Notable, obviously, this market share gain was primarily driven by the stores, not online, but stores. Overall, we have gained substantial market share. Let me give you one more detail, which I normally don't talk about, but I think it's also important and I, I feel, yeah, I feel good about it. Because we were able, in Germany also, to gain market share on the brand MediaMarkt, as well as on Saturn.
Why this is important to me and to the team is because we said we do one kind of advertising, one type of campaigning, beginning of the year, as an efficiency measure. We did say that we think, and we hope, that also Saturn will benefit from this. Actually, for a long time, we see good market share evolution on Saturn as well, and we can also attribute this to this decision where we took to say we streamline the portfolio for customers. We have stronger advertising with two brands under one roof, and this is working well. Of course, market share of yesterday, we have to work on the market share of tomorrow. To your question, a clear yes, I confirm what was said during the Capital Markets Day.
Thank you for the question on the Tec- Repair side, on the service side. Maybe just one sentence for all the others who may not understand exactly where this question comes from. In Germany, we have a subsidiary, which is called Tec -Repair. This is a company, a separate company, that does in-store repairs. The German team took the decision, and now this is very important, they took the decision to strengthen our service offer for our customers. In order to do that, they had to close this company. This sounds very counterintuitive. Let me explain why this is. This is because when you go into a MediaMarkt or a Saturn store as a customer and you want to get your phone repaired, you're basically talking to two companies. You're in a MediaMarkt, but actually you're doing it with a Tec- Repair company.
If you have any other question outside, "Repair my screen," anything, they can't answer it, they don't do that, because they only do what they are basically employed for. Basically, we have a lot of customer confusion, and also actually quite some frustration amongst our own people, that we do the service in two worlds, in two parallel worlds, that is hard to explain to customers. The German team said, "Enough of that, we wanna be one service offering in the stores. For that, we have to close- Tec- Repair. Now, in terms of numbers, in the Tec- Repair, we used to have 800 people doing repairs. In the future, we will minimum have 1,200 people.
That means we will basically increase the number of people who are able to do service, and for that, out of the 800, we will take over 400 from Tec- Repair, and we will also qualify other colleagues to do repairs. Moreover, we have a central repair facility in Erfurt, which we will also ramp up and grow. My final comment is, this model is actually in certain parts, like in the central repair set function, a copy-paste of our best-in-class organization in Spain. We're basically replicating something we learned and demonstrated elsewhere. Unfortunately, to get to this state, we had to close an organization, and we're working through with the works council, of course, with the employee. We used to do this in the right way.
This has, understandably, for those people affected, created a lot of noise. Underlying, thank you, Clément, and I hope I could explain what the rationale is and what we're actually doing. More service, clearer, better for the customer in the end.
Thank you, Mr. Genelot. At the moment, there are no further questions, therefore, I will repeat the combination. 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. We have one more questioner. It's Mr. Alexander Koefoed of Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, I have two questions. In terms of your suppliers and agreements with suppliers, can you give a bit of, of the light on any sort of KPIs that you have with them in terms of how many days payable you will have with, with your suppliers? Would it be more dependent on qualitative negotiations? Could you, could you, could you give a bit of light on if you have a batch coming up on negotiations with suppliers, or if they are, yeah, scattered, scattered throughout, more or less, in the coming, coming year? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Alexander, for the question. Let me try to explain a bit more, give a bit more color on how this works with our suppliers, how broad the range of, say, interaction, et cetera, agreements kind of is. First question about the payment terms. Let me be very clear, payment terms are stable, something which we are very, very clear about, and that's working well. That is something, as, as we said, on cash flow, et cetera, it's very important. There is a broad range, actually, of KPIs with suppliers. It's not just that we kind of negotiate with a, with suppliers, say, kind of once a year to reach the big agreements. It's actually an ongoing daily cadence of working with them. It's a true partnership. It happens on all levels, including myself, regularly meeting suppliers.
Obviously, we do this on a frame agreement. This can contain, of course, sales numbers, unit numbers, this, qualitative numbers, how we drive experience, attach rates of services, et cetera. Some suppliers also ask us to use our space, Space-as-a-Service we call, to present their brand. It has to do with repairs, it has to do with installation, explaining the product, attach rates of selling a universe. Think of, you know, telecommunications companies that have different products. So it really depends on the suppliers, but I can say that the big suppliers we have, there are sometimes, you know, multiple things they ask of us, and they, of course, also become then part of the agreement, because we are much, much more than a sales partner. We are also a service partner of helping to present their brands.
With some companies, they also say, "Hey, we want to do something very big with you. We plan to launch new products." Some companies call this the moonshot agreement, which is sometimes something on top. You can imagine moonshots often comes more from the U.S., but also other companies, and we have a strong partner network that we, that we work with. It's a broad church, but let me be also clear, payment terms, stable.
Yeah, okay. That's clear. Thanks, thanks for that. You mentioned this, the frame agreement. If there were any changes, not that I have a preconceived idea that that's relevant right now, I should say, but if there were changes, how, you know, how fast typically would that be implemented? Just to my understanding. For example, you said there could be a sales KPI, for example. If there is a deviation there in a quarter, typically, how fast would you see changes to the payment terms? Are we talking, you know, immediately for the next quarter, or would that be a bit, bit longer until you actually see the change to payment terms, for example?
Payment terms are very stable. They don't, they don't change something we are very clear about, and it's working with the suppliers. This is something critical, but also suppliers do understand that. They do understand that. The customer experience strategy we have on NPS, et cetera, they also like to, to get information around this, data on this. Let me, let me be clear. We have, for instance, this retail media business. This is something that a lot of our partners are interested in, and that can happen, that we reach an agreement on top around retail media. That means they can now position, for instance, on our website, they do advertising in a different way, they get good customer insights, data on this. That's something we would implement, for instance, within one to three months. This can happen.
We're in good conversations that some of our partners say, "Hey, we would like to have more presentation of our brand in your stores, maybe online, do something special for us." That is something we can pull off within a month, two months. These are things which I think the way to think about it, is that it makes the agreement and the engagement stronger. Let me be very clear. All the results that we have shown also on the cash side, would not be possible if we didn't-- Are very clear about stable payment terms, and that is to continue.
If I can just add a half sentence, here, Alexander. To be very specific on what Karsten said, when we say stable payment terms, we mean a multi-year perspective. If on a per supplier basis, compare payment terms a few years ago with a few less years ago, with last year, with this year, and very, very likely with next year, it's just a flat line. Just, just to quantify a bit, what customers say.
Okay. Maybe just a final here on my side. Against the expectations, and I understand that it is stable right now, so I think I'm more talking about how it would work in practice if things change. Again, not that I have a preconceived idea that is necessarily gonna happen, but if it changed, how, how fast could, could suppliers change the, the payment terms? Would it be typically restricted within a quarter, or would it take longer time for them to, you know, implement changes to days payable, for example?
Yeah.
Do you understand what I mean?
I understand what you mean, Alexander, and I do see where you're coming from, but it. Forgive me for saying that it's a bit of a hypothetical question, because we have not seen that situation before.
Okay, fair enough.
But let me still try to give you some cover. I, I'm not pushing back. I'm, I'm just telling you that we're still grappling a bit with, with an answer. These payment terms are contractually bound in multi-year contracts or annual contracts, so any change to that hasn't happened, and, and I struggle to foresee how it would happen very, very short term. That's as much as I can say, but it's a two-layer answer, if you will. First, haven't seen it, nobody has asked for it. Second, if it had to happen, if whatever, I don't know, if sky came down or, or whatever. If it, if it had to happen, then it would run against a contractual agreement that we have that is pretty much cast in stone and, and is agreed on an annual level. Does that give you some color?
I'm trying to be helpful to answer your question, while having to say, I just haven't seen it yet.
No, no, it is very helpful. I appreciate that. That's very helpful. It's, it's, I guess it was more of a household question for me to understand some of the background workings in some of these contracts. It's very helpful. Thanks. Many thanks for it. I don't have any further questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alexander.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Karsten Wildberger, CEO, for closing comments.
All right. We've come to an end of this Q3 results call. Thank you very much for joining today. As always, our investor relations team, led by Fabienne Caron, is always available for any further question you may have. Kai and I, we also look forward in the upcoming period to see and meet some many of you, and of course, also happy to discuss in person and answer questions and discuss. With that, I would like to conclude today's call. I thank you again for your attention and for your interest. I wish you all the best. Take good care and see you soon again. Thank you very much.