Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to our investor relations update call on the third quarter and first nine months of our fiscal year 2022/2023. My name is Antje Kelbert, head of communications and investor relations at HORNBACH. Please welcome with me our host of today's call, our CFO, Karin Dohm. Together with Karin and me are our IR colleagues, Anne Spies and Fabienne Villwock. May I remind you that this audio webcast will be recorded, and as usually, a replay on the website and the transcript will be published. If you continue to participate in the webcast, you declare your consent to this data processing. Please also note our disclaimer, which is valid for the entire presentation as well as the Q&A session. Karin Dohm will now guide you through our financial achievements and figures and will take your questions afterwards.
Happy to hand over and start our quarterly deep dive. Thank you, Karin.
Thank you, Antje. A very warm welcome also from my side. Let us begin with a quick overview of the key highlights. With a strong sales momentum over the past nine months, we have demonstrated that even in challenging times, our business model proves resilient and our organic growth strategy works well. We continue to see stable and strong demand for DIY products from both private customers and professionals. Our net sales growth has accelerated in Q3, resulting in a plus of 6.7% in the first nine months. We continue to see specifically good demand for insulation, electrical equipment, and alternative energy generation. As already expected, we are seeing a decline in adjusted EBIT from the very high levels we achieved during the last two years. However, compared to pre-pandemic 2019/2020 levels, we have grown by almost 36%.
Our outlook as of June 22 remains unchanged and is now reconfirmed. We continue to expect a slight increase in sales and our adjusted EBIT levels to decline at a low double-digit percentage range compared to previous years. With respect to our expansion strategy, we are well on track. We have opened three new Baumarkt stores so far in the first nine months of the year. Baustoff Union has continued to grow as well with the takeover of two new locations in July. Furthermore, we have continued to expand our ICR strategy with the launch of the BODENHAUS online shop in September. Over the last nine months, we have also launched several initiatives to support our employees. In Germany, we started a flexible working hours program. This allows more than 11,000 employees to reduce or increase their hours within the framework that is legally possible.
They can, for example, use vacation pay or Christmas allowances for extra vacation days. In Switzerland, our colleagues have reduced working hours for all employees, extended parental leave, and increased flexibility for breaks. Other countries are working on similar projects. We have also relaunched our employee share program, switching from Baumarkt to holding shares this year, including now all group employees within HORNBACH Group. To ease the inflation from paying for our employees, we are paying inflation boni in various countries as well. For example, in Germany, HORNBACH Baumarkt will pay out EUR 10 million from January to June 2023. Let us now take a closer look on our financial results. As I mentioned in the introduction, customer demand continues to be strong.
Net sales have grown by 10.4% in Q3, resulting in 6.7% growth for the first nine months of 2022/2023, and this on top of the very strong growth rates we've seen over the past years. Net sales of the subgroup, HORNBACH Baumarkt, including the online retail, grew by 6.4%, with particularly strong growth outside of Germany, where we grew 9.6%, bringing up the share of the international business to over 50%. Net sales at Baustoff Union also increased significantly by 11.7% to EUR 343 million. Baustoff Union is the subsidiary which is mainly catering for professional customers. Our strong growth performance is also mirrored in our like-for-like figures. In total, Baumarkt sales grew by 7.2% in Q3.
In Germany, we saw an even stronger growth at 7.8%. Outside Germany, we have some countries which are performing especially well. I would like to mention here the Netherlands, Romania, and Slovakia. In Sweden, we have a very challenging macroeconomic situation currently, with interest rates on mortgages rising significantly together with real estate prices falling. In Switzerland, we face a cautious consumer sentiment and a hesitancy to make large purchases currently, despite a relatively robust economic environment. With respect to current trading, we have so far seen a very good performance in December. Allow me to point out, though, we had store closures and restrictions in some countries last winter, notably in Austria and the Netherlands. Overall, for the first nine months of 2022/2023, our like-for-like sales were ahead of last year in Germany as well as in the other European countries.
Our strong and continued growth is also reflected in the three-year figure comparison of roughly 30%. Looking at further into the market share development. You can see here that our market shares have grown significantly since 2019. In Germany, our market share increased from 13.2% in 2019 to 14.9% in 2022, on the back of the successful interconnected retail execution during the Covid period. The strong market share development in the Netherlands was driven by like-for-like sales growth of 37.4%, as well as significant expansion with three new stores. In Switzerland, expansion was partly driven by the opening of one new store, while in the Czech Republic and Austria, we gained market shares without any new openings at all. Let us now look into the e-commerce development.
Our e-commerce share of HORNBACH Baumarkt net sales stood at 14.5% after the first nine months. In Q3, e-commerce, including Click & Collect , grew by 12%. The overall decline in the first nine months was mainly driven by a lower volume of Click & Collect , as we had in the previous years, still Covid restrictions for our stationary stores, with periods where only Click & Collect was allowed for private customers. Moving down the P&L, let's take a closer look onto the cost development. Gross margin was down by 1.8%, reflecting the challenges regarding rising purchase prices and transportation costs. In line with our everyday low price strategy, we have not fully passed on all costs to our customers.
This is a conscious decision in order to affirm our position as price leader and to be a reliable partner for our customers. The cost ratio of general administration expenses increased slightly due to investments into IT headcount and inflationary effects. The increase in selling and store expenses was more pronounced, mainly due to expansion and wage increases, as well as higher energy costs. We see the following adjusted EBIT development. For the group, adjusted EBIT in Q3 came in at EUR 48.9 million, which is 12.6% below the previous year's quarter. There were no adjustments in the third quarter, neither for the current nor for the previous year. After nine months, the adjusted EBIT for the group results at EUR 326.3 million. That is 17% below the previous year's period.
I would like to point out that we're still 36% above the level of the pre-Covid year, 2019, 2020. Some further key earnings figures in nine months are as well on much higher levels compared to 2019 and 2020. Earnings before taxes decreased by 17.5% to EUR 297 million compared to the previous year. Compared to 2019, 2020, we are more than 40% above the, after the nine-month period. Our EPS amounted to EUR 13.08, which is only slightly down from previous year by 4.3%, supported also by a higher share in the Baumarkt, HORNBACH Baumarkt AG after the delisting offer. Let us now have a look onto the cash flow development.
Specifically here, cash flow inflow from operating activities in the first nine months of this year decreased compared to the previous year, mainly due to the working capital effects. Our funds from operations were at EUR 389.7 million, well above pre-Covid levels. We currently carry some more inventory than usual due to our cautious purchasing behavior. A part of the increase in inventory is due to higher purchasing prices. Let me remind you, though, that in general, our inventory is non-perishable, non-seasonal, and not necessarily subject to short-term trends. As planned, CapEx stood at EUR 158.6 million in the first nine months. Regarding the CapEx split, approximately 60% was spent on land and real estate, mainly for new stores in line with our expansion strategy.
HORNBACH can once again present a strong balance sheet as of November 30th in 2022. Compared to February 28, the consolidated balance sheet increased in total by 5.3% to EUR 4.5 billion. This was mainly driven by our store expansion as well as increased inventories. The equity ratio also increased, now standing at 43%, representing a very comfortable level for the group. Summing it up all up, following these very strong nine months, we reconfirm our outlook for the current financial year, 2022, 2023, as revised in June this year. We expect net sales to grow above the record level we have reached in the previous years, supported by continued strong customer demand and also partly driven by price inflation.
Earnings are expected to fall behind last year's level by a double-digit percentage range, reflecting the challenging macroeconomic business environment with political uncertainty as well as price and cost inflation. Our store openings are well on track. We have, as said at the beginning, already opened three stores in the current financial year. Our fourth one in Leipzig, in Germany, will follow in February. By the end of 2022, 2023, we will have 171 stores in total at HORNBACH Baumarkt. Let me now hand back to Antje.
Thank you, Karin, for guiding us through our nine-month figures. We now take your questions and start the Q&A session. Operator, please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Our first question is from the line of Jérémy Garnier from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. I have two questions regarding your publication. First, congrats for this good figures. I would like to know if it's coming from a specific exposure to specific products. If you can tell us maybe a bit more about your split on products, because we see a lot of other players in do it yourself that are suffering and they don't have the same, I would say, positive tone on their figures. That was a bit of a positive surprise, I would say. I wanted to know, how do you explain this outperformance? It comes from kind of products or your geographical locations. How do you explain it?
Yeah. Thank you, Jeremy, for the question. I think a number of points which we observe. Number one is the demand of customers to find solution for their houses, their flats, in any shape or form to bring down, in its entirety, their energy consumption and their energy bill ultimately is quite pronounced. Many people. That goes through a number of products. That covers a range of things such as better insulation, different window frames, changes that are made to attics or to other parts of the house, just to make sure that, so to say, the warmth stays where it should stay, and if I may use this picture.
Then of course, things like power banks, things like changes where possible with heating pumps, with solar panels. So a lot of these things are of interest. Then also things like smart home solutions, you know, where people want to make sure when they are not at home, they can control better their, the way the heating is orchestrated or the light goes on or off. It's a variety of products. In addition to that, we are continuously investing in our advice capabilities to make sure that our people are able to help, especially, of course, the retail customers to find the right solution.
I think that is definitely one of the large pillars that we currently see paying off in the demand and in the way what people buy and how they buy it. In addition, as said, it's also the professional customers. We all know that when you look towards the building industry, that some outlooks are relatively concerning or concerned. Nevertheless, I think one of the things that we observe as we are usually in existing buildings, you know, whether it's our retail customers or our professional customers, a lot of the activities of our customers is in existing buildings. It's about home improvement, modernization, renovation, and that is under strong demand and not necessarily from our observations affected by the building industry or the activity level around new buildings.
Okay, thanks. If we, do you have a percentage of sales in terms of products linked to energy efficiencies or it's difficult to say?
It's difficult to say because we so far have clustered our products more in along different lines, such as garden or electricity-related or wood-related also. Whilst the whole aspect of energy-driven renovation, so to say, goes a little bit across now. It's like a horizontal layer across a number of verticals. I can't give you there the exact figures, but of course, we are working on bringing that into some more visibility.
Okay. You would say it's like 50% or...
No. No. really sorry for not being here able to be, give you any quantitative shape. Yeah.
Okay. No, no worries. Regarding, can you give us the split and the price increase for the nine months, in average on, all products? I don't know if you can give it, but.
Yeah. Roughly I would claim, 8% is inflation driven across the whole year so far and across the whole range of products on comparison-
What do you expect for next year? Sorry. You think it would continue to increase the prices or?
No, yeah. I think a couple of thoughts on next year. I mean, obviously when you look into any of those figures that think tanks publish, I would claim for our region here in the E.U. plus Switzerland, I think on average I would expect some, I don't know, single digit, but somewhere, probably, you know, as said, I can only repeat what you get from any macroeconomic think tank, 6%, 7%, 8% maybe on average. We all saw that energy prices have started to come down. We saw that some logistic prices, now if you think of container spot prices, those have significantly come down throughout the year.
There are a couple of indicators which give us a little bit of a positive outlook into 2023 with regard to a sheer like-for-like comparison, where I would expect that some components of our P&L become easier for us. How that reflects then on the sales price side, I can't give you yet a thought actually. We need to see, I think, how we all jointly here in Europe go through the rest of the winter, so to say. Yeah, I think that's a little bit the thought there.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from the line of Thilo Kleibauer from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, good morning. I've two questions. The first one is on the gross margin, which is, yeah, still under pressure. I mean, what can we expect here in the coming quarters? I understand your price strategy to be the price leader, but do you see potential to further pass on price increases to the end customers? Or do you have other pillars maybe to stabilize the gross margin? Yeah, any insight here would be helpful. My second question is on the pre-opening costs, which are significantly below prior year levels.
I mean, does this indicate that you have a lower number of new opening projects in the pipeline that we should expect maybe a lower number of new openings in the first half of the next fiscal year? Or what is behind the lower number of pre-opening costs? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Thilo. Let me start with the second question maybe first. We have, as you know, we will have four openings this year. Right as you said, that drove pre-opening costs before. We are still going ahead in our current foreseeable planning, so to say, on the CapEx for the next couple of years with what we said earlier, where we expect something around when you think in a five-year horizon, we always say, "Look, that might be something around 20 new stores or so." That's totally unchanged. As also is the case in our in our expansion velocity, you always have sometimes things that go quicker and others go slower. We expect openings next year.
Yes, it might be that we have less in the next 12-month period and then have potentially a little bit more in the following year. That might be what you see now in the pre-openings. That is so to say, there is nothing in our strategy changed. It's just some things go quicker, others go slower. On the first question with the gross margin, I think, similar to what I alluded to earlier a little bit, we see, obviously gross margin is driven by a number of components, as you rightly pointed out. We expect to see some easing on some purchase prices. We expect to see some easing on some components such as the cost of moving goods around, so to say, until we have them in our hands.
I'm talking here before we not the last mile, but the part that is so to say, happening before it is in our hands. As said, we expect there's some easings. Of course, as you can imagine, we're pushing hard on also our suppliers where we know that they are in a good shape themselves. Where we know that we want to make sure that within our partnership also there is a give and a take. We're obviously driving that continuously. I think that offers the possibility for some amelioration on the gross margin side.
Nevertheless, as we have moving average price in our inventory, of course we need to see how that then reflects over time the gross margin.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Ludovic Allegre from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. I have two questions. The first one is on the development of private labels. Maybe can you give us a bit of details concerning this category? Has the weight increased in your mix given the, you know, the decreased purchasing power of customers? The second question is on the home price evolution. We know that, you know, interest rates are increasing. We can expect, you know, a decrease in home equity next year in Europe.
I was wondering, what's the, you know, the sensibility of the home equity price evolution compared to, you know, the demand for construction and DIY products for the company? Thank you.
Thank you very much. On the private level, we are currently relatively unchanged, somewhere below 25%, roughly. It is, as you know, always our aim to make sure we have a large portion. We also really think and are convinced of the good quality of our own labels. Nevertheless, we think there is a kind of, let's say, magical ceiling at 30%. We also have customers, and we totally appreciate that, who want to have, for example, a specific A, brand A or B when they shop with HORNBACH. So we make sure that we have the option and the optionality for our customers. Nevertheless, we think ideally somewhere between 20%, 23%, 24% and towards the 26%, 27% would be good.
We are continuously also investing into those private labels, and paid specifically in 2022 as well as in the next year, we will do a lot to make sure that the innovation in the private label area is also strongly moving on to make sure that things out there are really attractive and stay attractive. We're happy with the ratio as it is. There might be potential for slight increases, but actually we're quite happy. On your second question with the housing prices. Yeah, I think I mean, you know the game, no? Interest rates go up and then eventually, but that will take some time, asset prices, meaning also real estate will come down.
Obviously we're currently more in this situation where housing prices, real estate is high since a couple of years, and now we have an addition to high interest rates. As said, I would expect that switches eventually somewhere in the next, I don't know, 12 to 18 months. Currently, what we see is a little bit of mixed picture within the countries where we operate due to the national specifications, I would say. Take Germany as one example. Germans often have very long-term running refinancing for their homes. Most of them are in existing homes, not necessarily affected. Here more in Germany, the energy prices and the cost of living are the pain point.
Whilst in some other countries, take Sweden for example, people usually have home financing that is attached with a flexible interest rate, so, and not necessarily a paying scheme for the pure loan. That means the rising interest rates hit them hard, and that means then obviously that triggers also a change in buying behavior in general. Nevertheless, in its entirety, when we see DIY and home improvement in comparison to the activities in the building industry, we do not necessarily see a correlation. We also sometimes see, in contrast, a positive opportunity for us.
Meaning if less new houses are built and if people are more bound to existing houses, in combination with the urge to bring down the energy consumption of existing houses, that offers actually a wide range of opportunities for potential to help customers in either renovating or expanding maybe their home or their flats or transforming an attic into a room where somebody can live or things like that in conjunction with the assets investments into the energy efficiency of such existing houses. Summing it up, I would claim, I can't give you a direct in the sense of if this one goes down by 10%, our sales go up by that percent. We definitely see this not as an automatic risk if building activities go down.
We see there also potential for us.
Okay. That's very clear. Maybe a follow-up question because I know that your activity is not really correlated with the, you know, the building activity per se, but my question was more on the existing home. Basically, if the interest rate are increasing, the existing home, you know, prices will go down. Eventually. Do you see a correlation or do you think that if the existing home prices go down, people will be less, you know, motivated to do renovation in their home, knowing that the price, the prices of their home will go down? You know, basically.
Yeah. I see your point. difficult to say, but I think one thing which is probably a little bit of difference between North America and Europe is in North America, people often invest in their homes because they know they are frequently switching homes, and investing into one home means also investing into the potential sales price.
Yeah.
In continental Europe, you often have people investing into their homes because they just live there and they want to live. They want to, so to say, increase their own living standard. No, they want to have a nicer living room or a chicer bathroom or things like that. I think the general, independent of macroeconomic environment, the general motivations to go into home improvement activities is a little bit different.
Okay.
I would think that that is not necessarily correlating. No.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Johan van den Hooven from Value8. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. It's Johan van den Hooven from Value8. A few questions, please. If you look at the revenue growth in Q3 of 10.4%, were there any differences, noticeable differences in the three months growth? Second question is, you mentioned, and there's a positive, that December was a good one. Can you please give a bit of an indication how good compares to the 10% of Q3? Last question is, Q4 is normally loss-making, and the question is, to what extent can you influence the final outcome of EBIT in Q4? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Johan, for your questions. Let me take them one by one, obviously. The first one was on the 10.4%. I think in general, a couple of thoughts on specifically on Q3. I think what we saw is, as said, number one, the in contrast also to maybe Q2 was in general, a slightly more, how can you say, a slightly better mood in some countries and regions where we operate. Over summer, the view, the outlook onto the winter was partially, if you look into consumer sentiments in general, independent of home improvement or DIY, was in summer partially worse than it was in what is our Q3, in autumn, let's say.
That is obviously when you're in retail, consumer sentiment is in general an important topic. Second, as said, we saw a switch from defensive shopping to more constructive shopping, I would claim it. Whilst in summer that was more about, yeah, storing wood to burn it to cover potential, yeah, blackouts. We saw now in the last month, way more constructive activities in the sense of apparently customers and merchants working for other customers, working on projects that are as such related to really working on one's energy consumption, on the insulation of one's homes and things like that. That I would claim is also another driver of that difference, partially.
Last but not least, what we saw now and what we obviously have as a, in contrast to last year's winter, specifically now moving into Q4, is we had, although it seems far, far away and not of strong importance, but it was partially a little bit, is the fact that we will of course, expect to not see any Covid limitations this winter. Moving slightly into your Q4 question, that is an element which enables us to just operate as we want to with our customers and them giving the opportunity to shop in which shape and form they want.
Your question on potential to influence the P&L of the fourth quarter, of course, we are, we try to make sure that the results are as good as we can. We are, for example, very consciously, as we do the whole year round, but specifically in our fourth quarter, we very consciously work on the disposition of our employees, meaning, as we all know that the next spring is coming and that people then will have a couple of overtime hours. We, as usual, work consciously on making sure that people can rest, can recharge their batteries, working, so to say, under hours in Q4 to also give them the time to recover and give our, of course, P&L a little bit of relief there.
We do a lot on these things, but as you know from our past, there are some limits to how far can you adopt an operation whilst not risking that the spring quarter is then not a quarter where we're well prepared.
An influencing factor, last but not least is, unfortunately, as usual, the weather, meaning, the temperature will also be of importance, and the question of when in February will people feel, so to say that spring is coming.
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, to confirm that star followed by one to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Antje Kelbert.
Yes. Thank you very much for your questions this morning. Just one little remark from our side, with respect to our new website. We have launched on the 8th of December, a new corporate website for HORNBACH Holding. We have a new design, a new structure, and you will find it as usual under www.hornbachnews-group.com. There you will find all HORNBACH Holding related corporate information, including governance, responsibility, investor relations, and media. We are happy to invite you to visit and explore our new website. We also invite you to meet us on several capital market events in the coming weeks and months. You see here a short overview, and whenever you have the need or some questions, need to discuss any topics, please do not hesitate to contact the IR team.
We are here, and you can just drop us a line or give us a call. Thank you for all your interest and the great cooperation in 2022. We are looking forward to great events and experiences in 2023 as well. We wish you and your families a happy holiday season, some quiet and relaxing days, and a healthy new year. Thank you and bye-bye.