Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to the HelloFresh SE Q4 and 2022 full year results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dominik Richter.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our full year 2022 results presentation. In today's call, we will cover both our most recent Q4 results as well. We start by discussing some of the longer-term trends that we've been observing in our business and provide some context on how we navigated an extraordinary 3-year period in which we saw unprecedented growth while being subject to a rapidly changing macroeconomic environment.
First of all, we announced our ambition to grow into an integrated food solutions group, which expands on our mission to change the way people eat forever, which we've been following for the last 10 years. We've embarked on that journey about 2 years ago, when de facto all of our revenue then came from our core meal kit business.
Since first sharing this vision, we have diversified our top line meaningfully and now generate over 10% of our revenue from non-meal kit sales, most notably from our ready-to-eat through the acquisition and subsequent scaling of Factor and Youfoodz, as well as more broadly investing into the HelloFresh Market.
While we remain confident in the long-term growth opportunity of meal kits, we have seen that our capabilities are very relevant to other food solutions as well, and expect to further diversify our revenue mix in future years in order to become known as a fully integrated food solutions group beyond meal kit business.
The last three years have been nothing short of extraordinary and subjected us to scaling challenges like very few other companies have seen before with such a physical supply chain in place, meaning that we need to buy all the ingredients, we need to pack all the boxes, we need to physically ship them to customers rather than scaling a pure software play.
From 2019 to 2022, we grew net revenues by over 4x from EUR 1.8 billion- EUR 7.6 billion. With all geographies embarking on a massive scaling plan. We grew the number of meals shipped from 281 million in 2019 to over 1 billion meals in 2022, which also represents a circa 4x growth.
We managed to do that not only by adding new customers in our existing geographies and launching in a number of new markets, but also by increasing the order rate of our customers by about 14% over that 3-year period. While the average customer ordered about 3.6 times per quarter in 2019, that number grew to an average of 4.1 orders per quarter in 2022.
A lot of this order rate increase has been driven by our relentless pursuit of improving the customer proposition. Most importantly here has been the number of meals and the resulting recipe choice that we added, up 71% since 2019, during a time when we also scaled the volumes going through our supply chain by about 4x.
Most importantly, over that extraordinary three-year growth period, we not only maintained strong profitability throughout, but generated very significant cash flows from operations, about EUR 1.37 billion. We used the majority of those proceeds to reinvest back into the business to build a robust innovation engine as we remain excited about the long-term growth opportunity.
More specifically, we embarked on a significant expansion of our total addressable market and launched HelloFresh into five new markets, namely Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain and Ireland. In addition, we launched EveryPlate, our budget brand in Australia, and Green Chef, our premium brand, into the Netherlands and into the U.K. market. We also became active in the RTE vertical through two M&A deals by acquiring Factor in late 2020, Youfoodz in late 2021, and then organically launched Factor into Canada in late 2022.
All of these newly launched brands first consume significant adjusted EBITDA and cash before turning profitable after 3 to 5 years on average. In addition, we invested very meaningfully into building out our future fulfillment networks, scaling our fulfillment footprint by about 5x over that same period. Finally, we also started to return cash to shareholders with our first EUR 125 million share buyback in early 2022, offsetting share-based compensation dilution and actually shrinking our share count year-over-year.
All of these activities resulted in our customers benefiting from better service levels and greater choice, with customers adding on average 11% more meals to every order than in 2019. Cancellation rates also stabilized at record low levels post-pandemic. This has allowed us to pull further away from our direct competitors.
In the U.S., for example, we increased our meal kit market share by 11 points over that period. A similar picture surfaces for our international markets, where we expanded from already very high levels and gained another 9 points market share, making us a very clear winner in the meal kit industry. More recently, we used the strong muscles we developed over the past 11 years to focus on the RTE vertical and scale toward very clear market leadership in that segment as well, improving our U.S. market share by 52 points in direct-to-consumer ready-to-eat.
Especially ready-to-eat has shown that our capabilities are both unique and very repeatable in adjacent direct-to-consumer growth verticals. Both for our meal kit as well as our RTE business, we benefit from a number of strong modes we have built and have grown into the undisputed leader in both categories.
For example, our superior fulfillment networks and broad supplier base allow us to ship orders at unit costs that are vastly superior to any of our competitors. Our technology stack is custom built and gives us advantages in every area of the business, the work of 10 years and hundreds of dedicated software engineers and data scientists.
The same applies to our D2C growth engine, which we have shown not only works for meal kits, but also other food solutions, and which gives us a significant advantage against current and potential future competitors while being replicable to new and exciting growth verticals. With that in mind, let me focus on the more recent past and share some of the highlights of full year 2022 and Q4 2022.
First of all, we saw continued strong revenue growth of about 18% to EUR 7.6 billion, an increase of EUR 1.6 billion in 1 year alone, or as much as we actually made in 2019 in total. AOV increased by about 10% for full year 2022 and even more in Q4, showing a 12% year-over-year growth in the most recently completed quarter.
Revenue growth was also positively impacted by high customer engagement, including high order rates even beyond a strongly COVID-impacted Q4 2021 period, continued low cancellation rates, and positive early customer retention indicators. During a year in which macro and ensuing supply chain disruptions took center stage, we managed to expand our contribution margins slightly to 25.5% and more forcefully in Q4 2022, when we returned to about 27% contribution margin.
This allowed us to post strong Q4 adjusted EBITDA margins of 8.5% or EUR 160 million in absolute terms, and EUR 477 for a 6.3% adjusted EBITDA margin for the whole year. Given the environment of rampant inflation, high energy prices, and inflationary wage trends, it's great to see that our investments in talent, processes, and technology pay off handsomely.
Finally, our multi-year CapEx investment program progressed well, and we have the peak of CapEx deployment behind us. As previously stated, this is an increase of more than 5x in fulfillment footprint versus 2019 and was entirely funded from internally generated cash while maintaining a strong balance sheet throughout. Let's take a look at meals and orders.
In 2022, we continued to grow the number of meals shipped, up 8.5% for the full year and up about 1% for Q4. This was driven by customers ordering more meals on average, as well as continued strong customer loyalty. Order rates were up another 1% over a strongly COVID-impacted comp in 2021, while active customers came down by about 1.5% in Q4 to 7.1 million.
The decrease in active customers was driven mainly by our U.S. segment, which posted very strong profitability at the expense of a slightly shrinking active customer base. Active customers in international remained stable, gaining about 1% year-over-year in Q4 2022.
Q4 2021 saw large scale lockdowns in Europe and Australia, the beginning of the Omicron wave in the U.S. and most of the population working from home. This extraordinary period, it's very encouraging to see that customer behavior stabilized year-on-year in Q4 2022.
Two leading indicators which we show here, which have great predictive power for customer retention, are the early customer behavior and the customer cancellation rate. On the left-hand side, we show the cumulative orders by newly acquired customers for the first 10 weeks since acquisition. That's one of our most important internal early retention KPIs, which has great predictive power.
You can see that cumulative 10-week orders remained at substantially higher levels in 2022 compared to 2019, but also shows the COVID boost in H2 2021 clearly, where you see that dark green line tick up to levels it hasn't been on before. The same trend can actually be observed in customer cancellation rate.
The trend line between 2022 and 2019 is very positive and speaks to the great improvements we've made to our product. Also here you can see the unique COVID-induced behavior observed in H2 2021, which we have been lapping in 2022. The key message here, we have materially improved underlying customer health metrics over 2019 benchmarks.
We're tracking very closely to heavily COVID-impacted periods for all leading indicators, but being back to a more normalized seasonal swings now and also sort of like as we look towards 2022. AOV developed very successfully over the course of 2022 and has been one of the major growth drivers for us.
The increase in AOV has been one of the primary drivers of net revenue growth. AOV increased by about 10% in constant currency for the full year 2022 to over EUR 60 and even more forcefully for the Q4 period at about 12% constant currency year-over-year growth to EUR 63. The drivers for that AOV increase were manifold. We saw positive contribution from customers increasing the number of meals per order.
We featured a higher share of surcharge meals on the menu as we offered greater recipe choice, and those were met with great uptake by customers. We've also had a positive effect from the price adjustments from earlier in 2022, which contributed to a higher revenue run rate per box.
All of these observations apply to both the US and our international segment, but had a more meaningful impact on the U.S. with additional positive AOV expansion through a higher share of Factor meals, which are typically priced above the price of a meal kit. Taking all of these trends together, namely strong and increasing customer order rates, strongly elevated AOVs, and broadly flat customer counts throughout H2 2022.
This translates to HelloFresh showing year-over-year revenue growth of about 18% for the full year to over EUR 7.6 billion in constant currency, which again, adding EUR 1.6 billion in one year is about the same that we did in total revenue in 2019. For Q4, year-over-year revenue growth came in at 11%, growing from about EUR 1.6 billion per quarter in 2021 to about EUR 1.9 billion per quarter in 2022.
If we look at the U.S. segment, U.S. constant currency growth amounted to over 15% in Q4, driven by very strong order rates and high AOVs, while actually observing a decline in active customers. On the international segment, growth was more pedestrian at 6%, but actually driven by an increase in active customers, stable order rates, and a much more measured AOV expansion year-over-year. With that, I'll pass over to Christian to walk you through margin expansion and the outlook.
Okay. Thank you, Dominik. Warm welcome to every one of you. You have heard me saying that a few times in the past, excuse me for being somewhat repetitive. We've done a very good job in 2022 to effectively contain procurement expenses as percentage of revenue, despite underlying food price inflation of meaningfully north of 10% and our direct competition raising prices actually by up to 20% in certain markets.
If you remember, going into 2022, we thought that even after taking mitigating measures, there would be around about 2 percentage points downside risk to margin because of underlying ingredient price inflation. We ended up keeping this cost item flat at 34 percentage points of revenue.
This is where our strength in a data-driven menu setting process, a well-diversified supplier base, and overall decent pricing power came through and helped us to protect margins. When you look at our fulfillment expenses, you see that also here we have fully delivered the productivity increases we promised last year.
For the full year, we have decreased our fulfillment expenses by 0.5 percentage points of revenue to 40.4%. This improvement has meaningfully accelerated throughout the year. In Q4, we improved fulfillment expenses as a percentage of revenue by a whopping 2.6 percentage points year-on-year to 39.1%.
Especially our U.S. business contributed meaningfully to this positive trend as we rolled back COVID-related inefficiencies, quickly ramped up new fulfillment centers to target productivity, and are well on track across both segments to increase labor productivity across the board. We started to rationalize older, less efficient production capacity.
This positive trend in productivity increases and overall decreasing relative fulfillment expenses is something we should expect to continue in 2023. The result of our strong performance across both procurement and fulfillment is that we've managed to expand contribution margin for the full year 2022 to 25.5% despite high inflationary pressure across various cost lines.
In Q4, we brought contribution margin back to close to 27%, 2 percentage points up from Q4 2021, which means we've ended the year on a good level from which to drive further year-on-year contribution margin expansion in 2023. Let's talk about the development of our marketing expenses. In Q4, you've seen broadly a continuation of the trend discussed on our Q3 earnings call, i.e., somewhat higher relative marketing expenses, which are circa 2 percentage points of revenue higher than in 2023.
These are driven by 3 effects. One is there's a COVID effect still in a comparative period. Secondly, some tech inflation due to an overall reasonably soft macro and consumer environment. Thirdly, the ramp-up of new or recent geographies and brands in international and of Factor in the U.S., which at this early stage in the life cycle, generate higher relative marketing expenses.
However, please keep also in mind that we increased AOV by 12% in Q4, i.e., those customers we acquired at somewhat higher CAC, they now generate on average 12% higher AOV on every order they give us compared to the customers acquired a year ago. This means ROI on our growth marketing spend remains solid.
For every dollar we deploy into marketing, we achieve industry-leading overall payback period of about 6 months. When you put all of this together, you see that we actually somewhat outperformed latest market expectations for EBITDA in Q4. We delivered EUR 160 million of EBITDA in Q4, 22% higher than in Q4 2021, which brought our EBITDA for the full year to EUR 477 million.
Especially our U.S. segment performed well from a profitability perspective, delivering an EBITDA margin of close to 12% and taking our U.S. ready-to-eat business to profitability. Now before we turn to the outlook for the year, let's also have a look at our cash flows and liquidity profile. We generated a solid cash flow from operations of EUR 313 million. This compares to total cash outflow from investment of EUR 444 million.
That cash outflow from investments primarily consists of two things. One, round about EUR 480 million of CapEx. 2022, therefore, marked our peak CapEx year. The rest, as some of you may remember, represents the first earnout tranche paid for the Factor acquisition, which was paid in March 2022. Our free cash flow, cash flow from operations minus CapEx in 2022, was a negative EUR 104 million.
We expect free cash flow to turn positive again in H2 this year. I want to touch base on this in a bit more detail in a minute. Lastly, please also don't forget that we've returned EUR 125 million of cash to our shareholders via a share buyback in 2022. This means that our share count has actually decreased. Also in the future, we look for similar opportunities which will further boost our free cash flow per share over longer periods of time.
Lastly, let me turn to our outlook for 2023 to try to put it into context. In line with broader e-commerce trends, we envisage relatively modest revenue growth in 2023 of 2%-10% on a constant currency basis. This is driven by three things. One, us exiting 2022 with a slightly lower active customer number than initially anticipated.
A reasonably tough growth benchmark still in Q1 where the comparative period was still impacted by COVID effects in a number of key markets. Thirdly, an expectation of overall consumer environment across our markets will remain somewhat subdued for most of the year. As a consequence, we expect orders to be broadly stable for the full year and constant currency revenue growth to be primarily driven by continued year-on-year growth in average order value in 2022.
From an order perspective, we expect ready-to-eat to be the biggest source of order growth in 2022. From 2024 onwards then, we are targeting overall order and revenue growth to move more in lockstep again. That top line from EBITDA perspective, we are targeting a moderate increase at the midpoint versus the EUR 427 million delivered in 2022.
We were targeting a range of EUR 460 million-EUR 540 million. We're planning to achieve this through, number one, modest revenue growth, as just discussed. Secondly, a continuation of successful contribution margin expansion, primarily driven by efficiencies and productivity increases in our production activities.
This is partly offset by temporarily higher marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue. This is high on effect, this absolute EBITDA guidance is based on the current U.S. dollar euro rate of 1.07, which is 1 of our 3 percentage points softer than the average rate in 2022. As a rough rule of thumb, a 10% softer U.S. dollar reduces our euro-reported EBITDA by EUR 45 million and vice versa.
Please keep in mind that our 2023 guidance implies that we will have grown revenues by more than 4 times since 2019 and adjusted EBITDA by more than 10 times, while our share price is broadly flat versus the end of 2019. Let's also have a look what we see as intra-year trends in 2023 and how they may potentially shape up.
While H1 still faces a number of headwinds, we are confident that this will start to show expanding revenue growth, expanding margins, and positive free cash flow per share from H2 onwards again. I believe the trough of the current transition period is close from our perspective, even if the overall consumer environment will not improve near term from here.
That means for Q1, we expect constant currency revenue growth in the lower single-digit area compared with a strong Q1 2022, which was still subject to prolonged lockdowns in Europe and in the U.S. as a result of the Omicron wave. We also expect in Q1 quarterly active customers to be down mid-single digits year-on-year, but meaningfully up sequentially versus Q4.
EBITDA in Q1 2023 will be below Q1 2022. Indicatively, we expect circa EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million of EBITDA in Q1, which is driven by a front-loading of certain marketing activities, which was seasonally attractive our eyes during that period. We expect this to benefit EBITDA growth in Q2 and Q4.
In H2, we expect an expansion of all key KPIs again, namely step up in revenue growth back towards 10% and beyond, as there's no COVID effect anymore in the comparative period. We will open our new ready-to-eat production facility in Arizona, which will allow further growth from current capacity constraint levels. Our new ready-to-eat facility in Australia has just been launched and can be ramped up from Q2 onwards.
Secondly, we expect in H2 a year-on-year expansion of our adjusted EBITDA margin and therefore also higher absolute adjusted EBITDA in H2, driven by 1, continuous progress on fulfillment efficiency. Secondly, further AOV expansion at stable CAC. Thirdly, no headwinds from G&A ramp-up runway defect anymore. Thirdly and importantly, we are planning to deliver positive and growing free cash flow per share again from H2 onwards.
On that last point, I would like to drill a bit deeper into our CapEx development and outlook in the very last slide there. 2022 marked our peak CapEx year. Even so, we ended up spending somewhat less than the EUR 450-EUR 500 initially envisaged. This is driven by the fact that we deferred or shelved some discretionary capacity expansion projects given the overall economic environment.
Irrespectively, by now, we are at the back end of our multi-year capacity expansion program, which we have fully funded from internally generated operating cash flow. In H1 2023, we will see meaningful CapEx for the completion of key projects such as the U.S. Factor facility I just mentioned, or our modern and efficient vehicle filling centers in both Germany and the U.K.
By H2, these projects will have substantially progressed, and we see CapEx as a percentage of revenue start to step down. From 2024 onwards, CapEx will further come down, getting towards that by 2025, towards the 2.5% of revenue we discussed previously. At that point, CapEx will primarily comprise certain optimization projects, automation, and selected high conviction growth investments into areas such as ready-to-eats in Europe. With that, we look forward to your questions.
Dear participants, if you would like to ask a question now, please press 9 followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. If you wish to cancel your question, please press 9 followed by the star key a second time. Please press 9 and star now to state a question. The first question comes from Joseph Barnet-Lamb, Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, my first question is just relating to the CAC profile of the group. Obviously, CACs are rising in the post-COVID era. You obviously explained about the higher LTV dynamic as well. Could you just talk about the trending CACs? Are they still rising or have they now plateaued? If you could talk a little bit about the CACs across the 2 divisions for 4 Q and into 2023. Thank you.
Hey, it's Christian here. On the CAC profile, effectively what we have seen towards the back end of last year, a certain step up, as we discussed on our Q3 call already, that had been continued into Q4. Effectively what we've seen so far in Q1 is the CAC are holding up at around that level. That trend is relatively similar across our two segments.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Andrew Quinn, BNP. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, team. On the, on the wires, they're suggesting this morning that the group is prioritizing earnings over top line. I was just wondering, firstly, is that the right interpretation? It's a little bit surprising, to be honest. Just help us understand the reason for that. Thank you very much.
Hey, Andrew. I think our investment framework is always very much ROI-based, right? We see where can we invest a dollar most profitably over a certain investment period. I think what happens in time where volatility is higher, in time where uncertainty around your margin profile, around CAC levels, et cetera, is higher, we obviously try to look at shorter time horizons for investment decisions.
That definitely means that we've, over the last probably six to nine months, have reevaluated like some of the investment frameworks that we have. On balance, I think, you know, we want to make sure we protect our margins, but sort of like our long-term investment framework always remains ROI-driven. If somebody misunderstood that, then I apologize.
It's just that I think the big difference is that in times where different metrics are subject to higher volatility, we typically try to shorten the investment horizon and not basically give as much value to future behavior of either customers for margin expansion, et cetera, when you make those investment decisions. I think that's just a normal ROI-driven investment behavior.
Indeed, it makes sense, obviously, a higher cost of capital. The EUR 10 billion 2025 ambition, is that still intact? I mean, obviously that's the obvious follow-on question. Thank you.
With Christian, yes, that, those midterm targets they stand. When you think about that implies effectively for much above a 10% figure for both 2024 and 2025, for us, which we feel comfortable with.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Adrien de Saint Hilaire, Bank of America.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. A couple of questions for me, please. I'm not quite sure I understand why customer numbers are, well, coming below expectations when marketing spending is actually running higher. If you could just maybe help us clarify that point again.
On the Q1 EBITDA guidance, EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million, again, I'm not quite sure I understood why it would be down versus the Q4 trend of like EUR 160 million despite customer numbers really growing. Recently you announced the exit of Japan. I'm just wondering if there are any other geographies perhaps that you have in mind that you could potentially rationalize. Thank you.
Hey, Adrien, it's Christian here. Let me try to take that in order. On the first point, customer numbers, your comments on customer numbers. From what we see here, yeah, I think where we came out in Q4, frankly, is pretty bang on what we saw in terms of expectations for some share side and buy side when you look at the most recent one.
From our perspective, it is more in line, but you potentially have a different perspective. On EBITDA in Q1, and sorry if I wasn't precise on the call just now, we have front-loaded certain of our marketing activities. Q1, as you know, is a very decent period for us to achieve high ROI on these marketing activities.
However, that is basically upfront, so to speak, and then we see the payback in increasing EBITDA over the set subsequent quarters from there. This will impact positively EBITDA goals Q2 through Q4, but it will see the impact of certain growth investments in Q1, and that's reflected in my comment on our Q1 and EBITDA. Now on our Japan exit, this is in line with what Dominik had referred to in terms of us being an ROI-driven organization and being disciplined with how we spend capital.
When we look at our growth budget, we look obviously at the portfolio of our brands and markets and segment goals, and then focus on the ones where from a risk-weighted perspective, we see the highest ROI, but then also are ready to basically not push through on areas which don't meet those risk-weighted ROI hurdles, and that's why we basically made that decision with respect to Japan.
Okay. Thank you. Just 1 clarification as well on the customer numbers for Q1. Did you say, down mid-single digit versus Q1 last year, but up meaningfully from Q4? About 8 million for Q1. Is that the right number?
Correct.
Thank you.
Dear questioners, just 1 quick remark before the next questioner is up. Please limit your question to 1 per person. Thanks very much. The next questioner is Luke Holbrook, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Just a question really on your guidance for revenue this year. Am I right in assuming that that 2% growth at the bottom end of your guidance is effectively assuming flat volumes because it looks like you're carrying through a couple of percentage points benefits from pricing from 2022 to 2023. Is that right to read it at the top end of your guidance is almost mid-single digit price increases? Is that the right way of reading it? Thank you.
Look, it's Christian here. What you see on the average order value, that's basically the positive trend that you've seen from us in 2022, that will continue towards to carry through. That by itself has a certain positive impact on our revenue growth on a constant currency basis this year. Yes, when you look at the bottom end of our guidance, this would not assume positive order growth in 2022.
Okay, thanks. That's just to clarify. The way I read flat volumes at the bottom end and is price increases driving the top end, that's the right way of reading it?
Not necessarily price increases at the top end. I would say, from the AOV perspective, both bookends look relatively similar, yeah, in terms of AOV contribution or AOV growth contribution to that of revenue growth. Then the variable is really the underlying order growth, which is the difference between lower end and upper end.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question comes from Clément Genelot, Bryan, Garnier & Co.
Yeah, thanks. Maybe just along the customer base, in the US, just to really elaborate a little bit more. Is it driven by the more or less customers? Maybe has the declining trend really eased now that we with inflation have ticked in the US? Thank you.
From the U.S. customer numbers, I think what we saw in the H2 of this is that existing customer behavior held up really well. Existing customer behavior, as I've shown before, some of the early leading indicators like 10-week cumulative orders or the cancellation rate, I think with a massive improvement over 2019, and that applies to both international and the U.S.
Definitely U.S. active customers have been subject to that development. What we did see in H2 2022 in the U.S. is that customer acquisition costs came up quite a bit. Much lower customer acquisition costs in our RTE Factor vertical. We actually allocated a lot more of our marketing spend towards Factor rather than HelloFresh. I think has been driving up RTE customers, driving down slightly our meal kit customers.
In the meal kit business, obviously, with very, very strong profitability. If you look at revenue growth was also higher in the US than in international. Not driven by active customers, but actually by AOVs and the overall margin profile that we have achieved in the US. We felt this was the best ROI that we can get on the incremental investment dollar and where always we evaluate where we actually see the best ROI on our incremental advertising dollars. We did see that in RTE and also more in Europe than in the US in the H2 of last year.
The next question comes from Nizla Naizer, Deutsche Bank.
Great, thanks. I would just like a bit more color on the sequential decline of the customers in Q4. Was that something that you could have avoided maybe with stepping up your marketing expenses? Or is that sort of an indication of maybe the tough macro? Some color there would be great. I guess linked to that, based on the customer additions you are seeing thus far in Q1, within the wide revenue range that you've given us, is it too early to say sort of where you can end the year, given I guess how important Q1 is to set the stage for the rest of the year? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Hey, Nizla. It's Christian here. On the sequential customer development in Q4, again, we have strict ROI targets for our growth marketing spend, which remember what we had discussed in the past. We are happy to deploy growth marketing spend if we can reach on a 10-year payback of around about 6 months and then one and a half to 2 times our initial invest back. Where we see that opportunity, we're deploying that spend, but only up to that level. What you've seen from us in terms of the marketing invest in Q4 effectively reflected how we size that opportunity in Q4.
To your question, yes, in theory, we could have spent more in marketing and then that would have brought in more customers, but it would not have met, or it would have risked not to meet our ROI criteria that I just outlined. With respect to the breadth of the range that you alluded to in your question, or the breadth of the range of our 2023 guidance, we think this is appropriate, given an over reasonably uncertain macro environment. That's why we even mentioned that those reports.
Great. Thanks.
The next question comes from Marcus Diebel, JPM.
Hi, everyone. I have one more question on the Q4 for customers. Just wanted to question the visibility that you really have. On the Q3 call, Christian, you was talking about lower to mid-single digit growth in customers. Now they come in slightly lower.
Could you maybe tell us a little bit more about what has changed between October and now in terms of, like, you driving the business and allocating marketing spend just on Q4. Now on Q1, 8 million customers. Could you give us also the marketing number broadly for Q1? To really put the 8 million into perspective. Thank you.
Marcus. Yeah. Obviously the indicative guidance that I've given you end of October, early November, that there were two or three months still to go. Effectively those two months shaped up as I just described in Nizla's question. That's why we overall ended up with a Q4 active customer number much below what we had originally targeted for that quarter.
For Q1, yes, year-over-year, it's the round about eight million active customers would be slightly down versus Q1 2022, which again had some COVID tailwind there in some of our biggest markets. From a sequential perspective, and that's obviously what you need to look at when you try to put our marketing spend into perspective. This is quite a step up versus where we ended Q4.
Thank you. Perfect.
The next question comes from Nick Coulter, Citi.
Hi. Good morning. I have a few, but to respect the 1 question rule, could you reassure us on the building blocks or bridge to the 10% margin target for FY 2025 please? I guess it's a slightly more aggressive profile than perhaps we were envisaging previously. Thank you.
Yeah. Nick, it's Christian here. Actually, I want to take the opportunity of our capital market day in a couple of weeks to also go through that with you in a bit more detail. From a high level, yeah, without trying just to give too much color of when we sit down in 1 or 2 weeks from now, effectively off those 4 points expansion versus current levels, we feel confident that from a contribution margin perspective, there is more than 2 point of expansion that we can flip.
From a marketing perspective, which again is at higher levels versus where we see ourselves in the midterm, there's also 1.5-2 points that we see certainly as potential. Very much looking forward to go through that in more detail in a couple of days.
Okay. Assuming on a flat gross margin profile, you're not expecting any more pressure there?
From ingredient price inflation, there's still some inflation out there. Inflation has not dropped to zero, but certainly...
For sure, yeah.
In terms of it was less than when we were the same point last year. The biggest, let's say, headwind we've got behind us, yeah, and that's also how our near as well as the midterm planning is then based on.
Brilliant. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Okay. Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'd like to hand back to the speakers for some closing remarks.
Thanks for attending our full year 2022 results. Lots of questions for Christian today, very few for me. I look forward to sharing more about the strategic update, how we see the company grow until 2025 and beyond during our capital markets day, in a couple of weeks in Berlin.
I think, till then, it's good to remind ourselves that we've gone through an immense growth period over the last few years. There's a transition period that started in the H2 of the year where we definitely see a lot of things with a slightly different eyes, but with very clear sight towards returning to strong growth, to strong margin development and with our long-term growth targets impact. Looking forward to sharing more details on that over the course of our capital markets day in 2 to 3 weeks in Berlin. Thank you.