Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Global Fashion Group's Q2 2022 results presentation. I am Patrick Schmidt, and I'm joined today by my Co-CEO, Christoph Barchewitz, and our CFO, Matthew Price. I will provide an update on our strategic priorities and KPIs. Matthew will take us through the financial results and the outlook for the remainder of the year. After that, we'll open it up for Q&A. We traded in an unusual environment in CIS, which has distorted the group performance. In early March, we set up the business for self-sufficiency. Practically, this meant that we pulled back investments and tightly controlled costs. In the quarter, NMV in CIS was up by 39% in constant currency terms, driven by higher average selling prices and high demand. Currency movements contributed to the expanded gross margin. This, alongside the actions on costs, meant that profitability stepped up compared to last year.
Let's now take a look at the group performance. As always, we are presenting constant currency growth rates. We achieved net merchandise value of EUR 792 million, up 12% year-over-year. This was driven by CIS and strong growth in ANZ. We continue to have a large active customer base of 16.2 million, and our customers made nearly 12 million orders with an average order frequency of 2.9x . Our gross margin improved by 3.8 percentage points to a strong 50%. Gross margins across the regions were well controlled. Our Adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 7.3 percentage points year-over-year, driven by the dynamics in CIS. Let's now have a look at the progress of our strategic priorities during the first half of 2022.
Our strategic priorities are to build the best-in-class customer experience, to be the partner of choice for our brands, and finally, to be People & Planet Positive. Let me walk you through a few updates on how we are executing in line with these priorities, starting with our LATAM investment plan. On the left, we included a status update on the key initiatives we outlined at our full year results. The team has done a great job executing against these. We are making progress on increasing the exclusivity and relevance of the assortment. Dafiti in Brazil is differentiated in the market by growing key exclusive brands such as Forever 21 and Gap. In addition, we just launched Inspira, Dafiti's new sustainable own brand. Our new app is live in Argentina, and we are currently in the test and learn phase in Brazil with promising results.
We have also improved our marketing efficiency by rationalizing marketing investment. Finally, we have made significant strides in ensuring we offer seamless and faster delivery for more of our customers. We are seeing faster times for click to receive and click to return. This has esulted in NPS being up by 15 percentage points year-on-year. Turning now to page six and ANZ. One way we differentiate ourselves at THE ICONIC is through exclusive own brand products covering the full breadth of fashion. These drive customer loyalty, better unit economics, and promote more responsible sourcing. This has proven really popular with our customers. Three of our biggest brands in ANZ are our own brands. These brands have been growing fast. NMV has tripled since 2019 to now make 12% of total NMV.
Our own brands also have an, on average, higher gross margins driven by higher intake margins and control over pricing and promotions. Moving on to why we are the partner of choice for brands. We continue to offer flexible business models to help brands reach more customers. The marketplace proposition continues to offer growth, increasing 24% year-over-year. Marketplace now accounts for almost 40% of NMV, and we have several initiatives in place to advance our marketplace capabilities further. One of which has recently gone live in SEA. This is our size refill functionality. Size refill allows us to increase our depth by replenishing sizes of an existing retail SKU with marketplace inventory. As seen in the example here, this Adidas SKU was originally available on retail. The size large has sold out as shown on the left, and without size refill, it would not be available anymore.
With size refill, we backfill this size from marketplace, making it available again to the customer. We've seen the success of this initiative with our developed market peers already, and even though still in early stages, size refill is already live with 10,000 SKUs. Now I'll take you through some of the global and local brand launches across our platforms. The teams continue to onboard new brands, leveraging our localized approach. We are pleased with our progress securing key global brands such as Armani Exchange and Topshop in LATAM. In SEA, we've added & Other Stories and American Eagle. We also have continued to broaden our assortment into adjacencies, including Beauty & Home , with Ole Henriksen in ANZ, and Aesop and L'Occitane in SEA. Let's now turn to look at how we continue to advance our People and Planet Positive agenda.
In April, we published our People and Planet Positive report, where we detailed how we believe we can deliver on our six strategic objectives. We are happy to report that our 2030 Science-Based Targets were approved in May. Today, 18% of our NMV is from more sustainable materials, and our plan is to grow this to 60% by 2030. As you know, we have a different set of priorities for our CIS region. Let me give you an update on these next. In March, we started to set up the business for self-sufficiency. This meant that we pulled back from our investments and reduced costs significantly. All local debt has been repaid and the parental guarantees are limited to minimize any further risk and liability to the group. We have not made any financial investments or taken distributions from Lamoda in the quarter.
The safety and well-being of our Ukrainian colleagues continues to be our top priority. As you know, we paused our activities in Ukraine, which mostly consisted of a customer service team for the Russian market. We have pledged EUR 5 million for both our team in the country and the broader humanitarian response. We are focused on supporting our people even further as best we can. This includes the continuation of salary payments along with financial assistance and hardship support. GFG remains deeply concerned about the war. All of the actions taken so far have allowed us to properly evaluate further options while safeguarding our people and global business. Let's now take a look at our KPIs. Q2 NMV growth of 12% was driven by the 23% increase in average order value. AOV was impacted by the larger baskets and higher selling prices in CIS.
Orders declined year-on-year, driven by LATAM and SEA. The decline in LATAM reflects the deliberate decision to prioritize customer experience improvements ahead of growth. Looking now at our key customer metrics. Our active customer base declined to 16.2 million, reflecting the pared-back operations in CIS, the execution of our LATAM investment plan, and lower marketing investments across the other regions. Order frequency grew 6% year-on-year to 2.9x . Higher AOV and greater order frequency across the group drove NMV per active customer up by 23%. Now turning to our regional performance on the next slide. Starting with our LATAM business, the team has continued to deliver the investment plans and deprioritize growth. NMV declined 15% and active customers declined 13%, while we improved NMV per active customer by 7%.
CIS delivered NMV growth of 39% due to the dynamics described earlier. SEA had lower growth than anticipated. With SEA having restrictions through much of Q1, there has been a more gradual reopening and the environment across the region is mixed. NMV declined 6% and active customers fell by 5%. ANZ NMV continued to grow strongly, up 19% on top of last year's 68% growth. Driven by robust active customer growth of 16% and by customers choosing to shop across multiple categories, NMV per active customer in ANZ grew 12%. We remain confident in the longer-term growth dynamics of our business despite experiencing a challenging macro environment. With that, let me hand it over to Matthew to take you through the financials.
Thanks Patrick, and good morning, everyone. In Q2, we delivered revenue growth and a higher gross margin, generating an improved Adjusted EBITDA margin. The consolidated results are distorted by both the CIS regional performance and also currency appreciation year-on-year. All of our major currencies have appreciated against the euro, adding EUR 103 million to reported NMV and EUR 11 million to Adjusted EBITDA in Q2. Therefore, I'll focus more on constant currency growth rates and on cost income ratios today. Revenue grew 11% on a constant currency basis to EUR 506 million in the quarter. We improved our gross profit to EUR 253 million, representing a 50% margin and a 3.8 percentage point improvement from last year. This was primarily driven by CIS and reduced levels of discounting, especially in LATAM and SEA.
Adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 7.3 percentage points to 10%, reflecting our strategy in CIS to deliver self-sufficiency and managing costs more tightly. Let's take a look at our regional performance on slide 17. In Q2, LATAM reported a decline in revenue and gross margin. We're pleased with the progress in rationalizing marketing to focus on stronger paybacks at the expense of bringing in fewer new customers in the short- term. The higher gross margin delivered in Brazil is masked by the year-on-year impact of the very high margin in Chile last year during lockdown. CIS delivered revenue growth of 31%. The gross margin increased by 8.8 percentage points to 59%, which largely reflected average selling price dynamics and currency movements. SEA experienced the biggest acceleration of marketplace participation, resulting in revenue decline larger than NMV.
Gross margin slightly increased in the region. In ANZ, the region delivered strong revenue growth of 18% in the quarter. Gross margin was a strong 45%, reflecting a little more discounting. Now turning to Adjusted EBITDA on the next slide. H1 group Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 40.3 million, with CIS delivering EUR 61 million of this. LATAM experienced a EUR 5 million setback year-on-year. The success of the initiatives that Patrick has just talked about are evident in our Brazil numbers, while Chile is annualizing a strong marketplace performance in last year's lockdown. SEA mitigated the impact of the reduced top line on profitability through improved gross margin and cost control, resulting in an Adjusted EBITDA improvement of EUR 1.9 million.
Profitability in ANZ remained robust at EUR 5 million, representing a 3% margin and a EUR 1.2 million improvement on last year. As we saw in Q1, we continued some elevated operating costs and discounting. In the first half of the year, we excluded from Adjusted EBITDA EUR 4.4 million of share-based compensation, a EUR 1.6 million non-cash IFRS hyperinflation adjustment, along with EUR 3.4 million of other costs, which mainly relate to supporting our Ukrainian colleagues. We also recognized an impairment charge on goodwill of EUR 41 million on our LATAM business. This reflects the higher interest rates in that region, which increased the discount rate used in the IFRS valuation model. This is a non-cash item and is excluded from our Adjusted EBITDA measure.
I'll now turn to look at the movements in our operating costs and the leverage that we've delivered. Here we have the cost income ratios for the group as we normally show them. Given the highly unusual performance of CIS this year, I've excluded that region in the blue column that looks at the change in cost since H1 2019. Therefore, you can't read the table from left to right in the normal way. Here you can see how we've continued to develop our cost base over time in line with our strategy. Our fulfillment costs are reduced as we deliver scale efficiencies in our fulfillment centers and our marketplace participation increases. Our marketing costs have also stepped down as a percent of NMV as we implement more efficient strategies across the group.
Our tech and admin costs have reduced over time as scale improves, fixed cost leverage. As planned, we made some investments in the tech this year, especially our group-wide tech products. Now looking at our cash performance. The group's cash flow was strong in the quarter. This quarter, we generated EUR 52 million from our Adjusted EBITDA and EUR 18 million through working capital. Within this, our inventory is EUR 16 million more than at the year-end net of FX. As you would expect, given the slower than expected growth, we do have some regional pockets of older stock that will need some discounting to clear. We spent EUR 14 million on CapEx with approximately a third for our fulfillment centers and two-thirds for technology. Total balance sheet additions to fixed assets in H1 were around EUR 30 million.
Now turning to our pro forma net cash, i.e. the cash available after future repayment of our convertible bond and all other debt. We grew this by EUR 64 million in the quarter to EUR 200 million, with the operating cash inflows and the benefit of the partial repurchase of the convertible bond at less than its face value. This meant we closed the quarter with EUR 500 million of pro forma cash and an improved net cash position of EUR 200 million. Now going into our outlook for the year. We were previously unable to provide guidance for this year as a result of the very high level of uncertainty in CIS. We continue to face low visibility of future performance, and so we're providing a range of outcomes to reflect this.
Our guidance ranges are based on currency rates as of the June 30, 2022, except for the ruble, where a planning exchange rate of 70 is applied. On a constant currency basis, we expect NMV to grow by 10%-15% for the full year, which equates to EUR 2.9 billion-EUR 3 billion.
Revenue is expected to be around EUR 1.9 billion. We continue to carefully manage our gross margins and costs and therefore we expect an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 3%-5%. Within this, there are a number of scenarios for our CIS business. In our outlook, we're taking a more conservative view on both demand and profitability in the second half compared to the first half. Across the other regions, we expect similar performance to the first half. While we will benefit from no longer lapping pandemic peaks, we expect this to be offset by a more challenging macroeconomic backdrop. Our investments into our logistics infrastructure and technology platform imply CapEx of approximately EUR 65 million for the year, and we've spent about half of that so far. We'll now open the call up to your questions.
If you'd like to submit a written question, please click on the speech bubble at the bottom of the screen and type it in. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll take the first question from Michael Benedict from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Hopefully you can hear me okay. I have three questions, please. The first one is, you suggested continuing to evaluate a range of further options. Could you give us a bit of color around your main evaluation to date? The second one is, I wondered when we might have full visibility there, please. Third one, circling back to CIS, if you did choose to exit Russia, could you give a bit of color on the worst case scenario from a financial perspective?
Thanks, Michael. It's Christoph here. I think we couldn't get the second question through, so if you can please repeat the second one. I think we got the first and the third.
Second one was on Latin America. You gave the slide around the four pie chart in terms of your progress there. A bit of color on when you might expect to have four full pies, i.e. progress or strategic priority progress is broadly complete in the region, that'd be really helpful.
Okay, great. Thank you. Patrick will take the question on LATAM. Maybe I'll take the two on CIS. As we said at the end of April, which I guess now is coming close to four months in, we clearly focused the business on self-sufficiency and really, you know, pulling down some of the investments, some of the spending, especially on marketing, etc . I think you see that very clearly in the Q2 results, that in the combination with the external market dynamics and customer demands and those actions taken on our side, we've achieved the goal of financial self-sufficiency in the region. I think that also enabled us to continue to provide, obviously, unchanged employment and support for all our employees in the region, which was an important objective for us.
As we saw that, really, playing out and executing on that, we've also embarked on what we described as the options for the, let's say, more medium- and long-term future of the business in the region, given the circumstances. I think we're in the middle of that. We're reviewing different alternatives. I don't think it's appropriate for us to go into details around what those choices could be. Rest assured that's very active work and something we're, you know, spending a lot of time now on, and we'll also obviously update externally, if and when there is any, change in the situation. I think your second or your third question, but the second one related to CIS was about a worst case scenario.
I think what is important there is that the performance and the actions we've taken over the last couple of months have improved the outlook for that significantly. We've reduced our financial exposure, which, you know, we have disclosed is about EUR 40 million in terms of group guarantees and other things by about half. Overall therefore, I think the worst case today is, you know, less problematic than it was a couple of months ago. I think we're greatly improved relative to the last time we talked about it. Patrick, do you wanna comment on LATAM?
Sure. Hi, Michael. So, I think you're referring to slide five. I'm gonna quickly go through the four strategic priorities. Before I go there, I think it's fair to say that for a number of reasons, part external, part internal, we have not made enough progress on the assortment and front-end marketing efficiency, and also on delivery in 2019 and 2020. We have made a lot of progress on each of those. In terms of the assortments, we believe that we will make at least as much progress for the remainder of the year as we have already done here today. The main things here are really own brand launches, a couple of inclusive brands we're talking to.
I can't talk about the names here. Also going more into adjacent categories. We're very confident that we will continue to fill the hardware, so to speak. In terms of front-end, that's really about the app. We believe that the new app will be live in all countries, hopefully by the end of the year, if not earlier. In terms of marketing efficiencies, it's a little bit harder to give you a clear answer here because ultimately this very much depends also on the market. We've seen efficiencies here. We hope that we can drive it a little bit further.
Given that we have already seen a quite a bit of reduction of the typical metrics, such as customer acquisition costs, we're actually quite happy with that. This is not only about the cost, it's also about driving loyalty, as you know, which is one of our group priorities, and we see the biggest potential here in Brazil and the other countries in Latin America. Obviously with more frequency and higher and higher NMV per customer, we also then have the opportunity to spend more on marketing. On seamless and faster delivery, we have a number of initiatives in place, especially around enabling marketplace to be quicker. We think that we're very happy with the progress to be clear.
We've made significant progress in terms of reducing delivery times by a number of days. We can probably drive this further, but as you know, as you drive it essentially more towards the optimum, it gets harder. Hopefully that addresses your question.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Cool.
We will now take the next question from Nicolas Katsapas from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi there, thank you for taking my questions. I also have three questions. First one is on LATAM. I just wondered if you could comment on what you're seeing in respect of competition there. At least to my eyes, it looks like a lot of those regions have embraced the sort of cross-border platforms from East Asia. You know, attached to that, what would you think the future's main defensible characteristics are against those players, if you do agree that they are competition? Secondly, on Russia, I wondered if you could sort of update us on the more near-term dynamics of whether you have enough. You know, like what's the inventory situation? Are you managing to procure product from Western brands?
I know a lot have said that they're closing, but they are in operations, but I wondered if they still continued to provide wholesale, you know, sales to you. And then the third question is just around cost inflation. You know, you've spoken a lot about reducing costs across the business, especially outside of CIS. And yet, you know, we are entering an inflationary environment here in U.K. And I was struck, you know, to see that you hadn't commented at all on cost inflation really. And I wondered, you know, I know your regions are a bit more used to seeing cost inflation, but how are you thinking about, you know, inflation over the next twelve months kind of a thing?
Hi, Nicolas, this is Patrick. Thanks for your questions. I'll take the first one, and then I'll hand over to Christoph and Matthew for question two and three . On LATAM, you're right, there were a lot of new entrants in the last two years also driven by COVID. That's one set of competitors. What they have in common is that they are much cheaper on the price point. Their price point on average is below EUR 10, sometimes even below EUR 8 on average for fashion, from what we know from just essentially scraping the sites. Our price points are about double that.
It's definitely competition, but it's not as direct competition as we see from the bricks-and-mortar players. The bricks-and-mortar players have improved their online capabilities and they're obviously growing quickly, more quickly in bricks and mortar, but also in e-commerce. That's why for us, exclusive brands and improving the assortment is so important. In terms of the sustainability of the cross-border model, I think long- term, probably a more localized approach is necessary given import duties, given that probably not all, especially in Brazil, import restrictions and duties are being followed at the moment. That's probably something we need to see how it plans out and not something in our control.
With that, I'll hand it over to Christoph for the second question.
Sure. In terms of the, you know, I'll let Matthew comment on the inventory situation and on inflation. I think broadly on when it comes to the brand relationships in CIS, I think what is important to note is that we work with about 4,000 brands, so there's a very long tail of brands beyond, you know, the ones that are probably most in the headlines and our key partners in terms of the largest brands. We've seen very mixed reactions. Some brands obviously stopping to supply into the market, other brands continuing. We've received pretty much all of our spring/summer product, which is selling through very well, and we're obviously now at the very end of that season. Also for fall/winter, I think we have a different set of brands to some degree.
Some that we expected to have will not be there anymore. By and large, I would say we have still a very strong differentiated assortment with a significant share of it being in some way or another exclusive, i.e. products, not necessarily brands, that are only available on Lamoda. I think we feel confident that from an assortment perspective it is evolving, it is changing, but it's still covering the key categories, key price points, and very attractive for the local consumer. Matthew, over to you.
Thanks. Yeah. I mean, just covering off quickly the inventory position in Russia. I mean, obviously, the FX appreciation is a huge driver in the reported euro numbers, but we're probably carrying in the region of EUR 25 million more inventory there than we were this time last year on an FX neutral basis. So it gives you a sense of where we are. But on inflation more generally, and look, I won't comment on CIS because obviously that's the most complicated one. But across the rest of our regions, we are seeing inflation obviously, and we are currently able to manage it through. So what we're seeing probably in Australia, we're talking about inflation going up to about 8% there.
It's lower than that at the moment because we've got relatively long lead times, order times on the key purchases into the market where we're seeing that kind of high single digit, low double digit cost price inflation. You're seeing it more for being future orders. What we've had at the moment, we've certainly been able to pass on to the customer through RRP, and then, you know, making adjustments to the mix and what's being offered to the customer to try and manage that basket price for her. Southeast Asia, actually, we're generally seeing cost price inflation quite a bit lower than you'll be familiar in developed markets. We're seeing it probably about 4% at the moment. That's being passed on. We're expecting that to increase a bit, but it's a very different market dynamic there.
In terms of LATAM, we're probably back at that sort of 8%-9% inflation rate in sort of Brazil and you know in Brazil, which is our main market. That's sort of back at where they were you know in 2015, 2016. That is being able to be passed on in the main markets. Of course, what we're doing there is that mix of where you've got that higher imported inflation, we've got producer markets, so there's a lot of local brands, there's a lot of other pieces in the mix. The teams are able to sort of balance what's being offered to the consumer. Whilst we're able to pass on that 8%-9%, that isn't what the customer is seeing in terms of the price pressure on her.
On the cost side, because of where we are and where we buy and that mix of regional, local, and international brands, we're not seeing that incredibly high supply chain freight inflation that you could see in certain developed markets where you've got ex Far East into Antwerp or into L.A. rates. We just aren't experiencing that. We obviously have some pressure and some upwards movement on staff costs, particularly for some of the ones who are in a bit of a global market like technology, that's 5%-6%. It's manageable. There's an awful lot going on. We're very active, but we're finding it manageable at the moment. I hope that helped.
No, that is very clear. Thank you very much.
As a reminder to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. We'll now take the next question from Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. I would like to start with the guidance, with the outlook. You mentioned EUR 1.9 billion in revenues. What does it mean in terms of growth and why do you not take a growth target on the revenue take as you did at NMV? Perhaps some clarification here. The second on the guidance is the Adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.5%, surprising positively. I think the consensus is expecting here a flat margin, if I'm not mistaken, but perhaps you can shed some light on how this development evolves. A question on the impairments, which you made on LATAM. Question here, is there more to come? We also see in Southeast Asia a decline in sales.
Is there also here impairments to come and what potential impairment risk is to loom on the CIS? So the question is here about impairments across the regions. Finally, third question would be on CIS. Sorry to come back here. Do you feel an increasing pressure in some way to get rid of that business? What is your feeling? What is the financial. So the maximum of your financial obligations which you still have in CIS, you mentioned EUR 40 million at end of H1. I was not clear. Is that it's all financial obligations or is it just the financial obligation coming from inventory? So what's the maximum financial risk from CIS? Which is on fire, so to say. Yeah. Thank you very much. Sorry for the long questions. Thanks.
Matthew, do you wanna take the question on the guidance and the impairment and maybe I'll cover the CIS?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. In terms of guidance, the 3%-5% Adjusted EBITDA range, which I appreciate is fairly broad. The way we're thinking about this in terms of dynamics is, you know, obviously starting the seasonality of our business means that Q4 is tremendously important to us. Therefore, typically we make the majority of our profits in the second half, particularly with a weight towards Q4 rather than Q1, Q2. You know, Q1 is always quite a small quarter for us in bottom line terms. There's that seasonality piece. What we're then looking at in terms of the regions is with CIS, you know, there was a very unusual dynamic that drove the profitability in H1.
Really, you know, I think as we set out in the presentation, that is, you know, continuing demand, a dynamic towards higher price points, more full price mix that elevated the gross margin. Then we were able to, because we were going for self-sufficiency on the financial terms in that region, we reduced investment, reduced marketing significantly, held the costs down, so it flowed down. We are forecasting in our guidance for it to be more conservative than that in H2. We in all honesty have, you know, no crystal ball and no huge ability to forecast what's going on in that region. We're taking a more conservative view, and therefore we're not forecasting for that kind of really big profit event to be repeated throughout.
In terms of other regions, what we do think is you've got the seasonality, but then we think that, say for Australia, for Southeast Asia, for LATAM, that the overall sales trend that we experienced in H1 is probably broadly what we'll see for H2, and that will drive the profit numbers. Why would it be broadly similar? I think there's two factors that play against each other there. One is the comparatives. So clearly in much of our regions, we had high sales in Q1, Q2 during lockdowns. We don't have those lockdowns in H2. In consequence, you know, year-on-year should give us a bounce. Contradicting that is this general move where the consumer seems to be under more pressure, inflation, as Nicolas pointed out, etc, going on.
We're just being a bit more cautious and believing that the two broadly net each other out. That's how we derive the guidance. In terms of impairment, the impairment piece here, we obviously do a full review each year with the annual report. We looked at it at the half year, and we checked for triggers of impairment. Triggers of impairment obviously came up in LATAM, where we've made the impairment. What was going on there isn't really a change in our view on the plans and the profitability of the region, but actually the discount rate. What's changed since December 31, is the central bank rates have increased significantly in a number of those countries.
That gets reflected in the discount rate we use in the impairment modeling, where effectively it's a valuation, and that's triggered that impairment. We have looked carefully at the Russian business. There, you know, clearly we would take a view that the cost of capital, the WACC into Russia, has increased significantly. The performance has also stepped up, as you've witnessed. Therefore, while the change in Russia would give a trigger of impairment, we're not currently seeing a need to make such a thing. In terms of whether there's a risk of a future impairment in it, again, that will depend on trading. That will depend on how the Russian political or macroeconomic situation evolves. You know, I really can't comment on that in detail.
Christoph, do you wanna pick up?
Yeah. Just further on your last question, CIS, we had EUR 40 million of guarantees effectively for trade at the end of Q1. That's what we talked about in the last results. We have managed this down to about half of this level. It does vary obviously on a daily basis because it is about our imports and our trading balances with suppliers. There is some fluctuation in that, but we feel comfortable that the risk exposure there is very much under control and something that you know doesn't pose a very material risk to the group overall.
The question would be here, so how do you feel the pressure to get rid of the business? How is your mood looking on Russia compared to, six weeks ago.
How do you see the situation evolving in that regard? Thank you.
Well, I think there's obviously different views across the investor world, across media, different geographies around the world. I think what we're focused on is not so much thinking about that, but actually really focusing on what is the right outcome for our people in the region and how we manage that in very difficult circumstances. I think we're being, I would say, very diligent and careful and thoughtful around the choices that are in front of us. I think now that we're about 6 months into the whole war situation, unfortunately, I think, have proven out that we are making very careful choices and we're protecting, you know, our people first and then secondly the business. I think we're gonna continue to do so.
Again, we're not doing anything rushed. We'll just, you know, make the choices based on the facts and the options that are available to us.
Okay, thank you. All the best.
As there are no further questions from the phone, I will hand over for any questions from the webcast. Thank you.
First question we have is from a private investor. Question is could you please clarify your cash balance in Russia today and whether or not you have the ability to take cash out of Russia should you so choose?
Yeah, sure. Thanks. I'll take that question. We're not disclosing individual cash balances of any regions or countries, but the very vast majority of our EUR 500 million of cash is held centrally, not in any individual market. It's also in a range of currencies, mainly with you know hard currencies, i.e., euro being the dominant one, but also US dollars and pounds and with international banks. We are able to continue to trade and move money out of Russia for imports and those types of things. I would say the ordinary course payments are not a problem and you know operates fairly normally. There are restrictions in place by the Russian government around things like dividends and other capital movements.
That's not our focus. Our focus is on the self-sufficiency of the business and on the trading, and there we're not seeing any problems of moving cash.
The next question from a private investor is, given the strong cash generation, do you have plans to purchase more convertible bond repurchases?
Thanks, Julia. I'll take this, Matthew. The reason that we did the convertible bond repurchase just to reprise is we'd set out our strategy, even with the uncertainty around Russia, we felt that we had excess capital available. We were looking at options for it, and we came to a very, you know, very clear view that, an offer for a repurchase of part of the convertible bond would be both appreciated by and create value both for the convertible bond holders and also for equity holders. Therefore, we went ahead and made that offer. We're pleased with the outcome of that, and we've received positive feedback about it.
At the moment, you know, while we generated cash in Q2, planning another return of capital isn't really top of our agenda. I don't have anything to announce there for today.
Next question from a private investor. How has trading evolved in CIS in July and August?
Hi. I'll pick that one up quickly. We didn't provide a specific comment in the press release on July because you know the dynamics are broadly similar to what we're reporting in Q2. We're seeing a continuation of trends. You know, clearly, you'll see month-on-month movements in each region, but we're not seeing anything which is dramatically different.
Great. The next question is from Dan from Navi Fund. First one, we've seen some of the European retailers implement measures to improve order economics such as minimum order value or charging for returns. Have you considered any of these measures in particular? The second one is how much has buy now, pay later been a driver for average order value and order growth? What regions do you see using buy now, pay later the most?
Thank you. This is Patrick. I'll take the question. On the first one, what in terms of minimum order values and charging for returns, we already have minimum order values in place in all regions. Then that's been in place for years, almost from the get-go. In terms of returns, most of our returns are free. There are some restrictions already. In terms of returns, what's important is to understand is that return rates are actually very low in our regions. To give you the numbers, in LATAM, returns in 2021 were 9%, CIS 3%, because we obviously have the trial model there, SEA 14%, and Australia and New Zealand, where we have the highest return rate, had a return rate last year of 23%.
We're evaluating whether we need to charge for it, but that's not on top of our agenda, given that customer experience is really key and returns is a big part of it, and returns is not as big a cost as it is for some of our European peers. In terms of buy now, pay later, it's been a small driver, mostly in Australia and New Zealand. We have buy now, pay later solutions in place in most of our countries. It's a payment method, not necessarily a driver for economics.
Next question comes from a private investor. The commentary on the last call suggested that capital expenditures for the year would be lower given the suspension of the Russian fulfillment center project. Has this been resumed driving the higher guidance?
Sure. I'll pick this one up. I mean, in terms of the Russian fulfillment center project, no, we haven't resumed it as an automated project. In order for the team to manage the volume that clearly you're seeing in Russia, they are standing that facility up as a manual facility that has a very small amount of cost associated with it. We haven't increased our guidance or our spend for the year. Where are we spending CapEx? We spent roughly EUR 30 million in the first half, with a similar expectation for the second half. It's one-third is on fulfillment assets and two-thirds on technology.
The technology spend we're making both at the regional level and then on the group-wide platforms such as our marketplace seller center development and our personalization engines. We see these having a strong pipeline of activity. We think that there are great returns to be delivered from them, and therefore, you know, given our funding situation and actually the way we're trading, we're very comfortable to carry on with these at the moment.
The last question is from Ekta Singh from JP Morgan. Any color on current trading trends and consumer purchasing behavior and seeing any trading down on brands or any difference in demand across various price points?
I mean, it's a difficult question I think because we're across a lot of different markets. I think where we see the middle classes being more squeezed in a current economic environment, that trading down is probably more happening. In other geographies where like, for example, Australia and New Zealand, I think we're seeing less of that. There isn't a super clear picture at this point, so I'm not sure I can give a very good answer to a pretty broad question. I think it's a risk certainly that we're spending some time on, and we're making sure that we have a very broad assortment across price points to cover this.
Thank you. That's all of the questions. I'll hand it back over to management for any closing remarks.
No, I don't think we've got any closing remarks. Thank you very much indeed to everyone for attending and thank you for your questions. Hope to see some of you later on in the next day or so. Thank you.