Good day, and welcome to the Shop Apotheke Q1 2022 earnings release presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Stefan Feltens. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning to everybody. Jasper and I, we welcome you to Shop Apotheke's Q1 2022 earnings release call. Before we get into the details, we want to take a moment to recognize and to remind that while we are having the earnings call, a little bit further east, a terrible war is continuing to ravage Ukraine. At this point of time, our thoughts and prayers are with all the people that are suffering from this terrible war. What are we going to share with you today? Jasper and I are going to start with an overview of our financial performance, operational performance over the first three months of this year.
Just on a couple of strategic topics, we're going to give you an update, and at the end, Jasper is going to talk about the outlook for the remainder of the year. I can already tell you that we are going to confirm the guidance that we just provided a couple of months ago to you. At the end of our presentation or after our presentation, rest assured we're going to have enough time for your questions. Well, what were some of the highlights of the first quarter? Our non-Rx growth amounted to 15%, and this needs to be seen in comparison or on top of the strong growth in Q1 2021, when our top line expanded by 22%.
In all of our markets, at least in the markets for which we have reliable and valid market data, we have seen a notable increase of Shop Apotheke's market shares. Our Rx sales have stabilized, or as we sometimes refer to it, they have bottomed out at around EUR 10 million per quarter. In terms of our bottom line, our adjusted operating results came in at minus EUR 4 million or minus 1.4% of net sales. This is a improvement versus Q4 last year, but it's a little bit of a deterioration compared to a year ago, and Jasper is going to talk more about this. Most importantly, our Q1 EBITDA is fully in line with our guidance for the full year.
Our operating cash flow added up to a positive EUR 24 million, driven by continued favorable development in our working capital, most notably a reduction of our inventory levels and an increase of our payables combined with a bit of seasonality. The highlight of the first quarter was a record customer satisfaction level with an NPS of 73. This speaks well or reflects well on the smooth operations in our new pharmacy and distribution facility here in Sevenum. By the way, in the first quarter, we also set another record in the number of orders, customer orders processed in a single day, which exceeded 110,000. In terms of our customers, our active customer account went up in the first quarter by around 400,000 to 8.3 million.
You are of course all following the eRx test phase in Germany. We have all seen an acceleration in the number of daily or weekly prescriptions, and we're happy that we are finally reaching the midpoint of the 30,000 eScript target, which had been set out as one of the success criteria by the shareholders of the gematik. Last but certainly not least, we had an important acquisition with acquiring FIRST A, one of the leading quick commerce players in the pharmacy space. FIRST A will be an important cornerstone for us to ensure that we will continue to be able to address all of the relevant use cases, current use cases, and future use cases of our customers, of course, especially in the context of the introduction of electronic prescriptions.
Well, let's take a closer look at our sales development. You're looking here at both of our reporting segments. Our total sales were up by 7.3%, reaching EUR 305 million. When we look at the two reporting segments, the DACH segment went up by 2%. This is, of course, a blend of a solid non-Rx growth of 10% and a decline of our Rx business of around 33%. Even though the Rx bonus ban came into effect on the 15th of December 2020, we all remember that we didn't see the full effect of the Rx bonus ban until later in 2021. Again, the Rx bonus ban is the driver behind the drop of our Rx decline of around 33%.
Looking at our international segment, international is comprised of Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands continued to grow at a rapid pace of 31%. Also here, let's keep in mind that this comes on top of a 71% growth in Q1 last year. Quarterly sales of our international segment are now at around EUR 70 million. Looking at some of our KPIs, I already mentioned the active customer base went up compared to a year ago by 1.5 million. That's of course purely organic growth, 1.5 million or 22%. But I think I already referred to the highlight of the first quarter. It was a record and all-time high customer satisfaction level with an NPS of 73.
We all understand the most important driver behind the NPS are the customer delivery times that need to meet or exceed our customers' expectations. This was certainly the case in the first quarter. As I already mentioned, the pharmacy and the distribution facility is now really working smoothly here in Sevenum. A high NPS or a high NPS of course translates right into our PNL. Happy customers are returning customers, resulting in a more efficient use of our company and marketing resources. Looking at our average basket value, the average basket value dropped from around EUR 63.5 a year ago to around EUR 57.
The main driver, but not the only driver, but the main driver behind the reduction of our AOV was the decline of our Rx business, and the Rx basket is significantly higher than an average non-Rx basket. Beyond the Rx decline, in most, not in all, but in most of our other markets, we also saw a little bit of a decline of our non-Rx baskets. That points to a little bit of a softening of customer demand and probably some limitations of discretionary spending that's available to some of our customers. Well, web traffic. The green line shows the consolidated web traffic, all the visits to Shop Apotheke's websites in Germany and all of the other markets.
You see here with the green line on the right-hand side, throughout Q1, it was between 7 and 8 million visitors or visits. That is a notable increase compared to even Q4 last year, which was already, you know, a strong quarter in terms of our web traffic. When you look at the year-over-year growth in comparison to the exact same week a year ago, here indicated with the blue bars, you saw that throughout Q1, our growth, year-over-year growth was at or above 30%. According to Similarweb, in March, Shop Apotheke's website in Germany was the most frequently visited e-pharmacy website. That is probably not a surprise. We have mentioned this before, but, you know, more important, when you look at all the healthcare-related websites in Germany, Shop Apotheke was the third most frequently visited healthcare-related website in all of Germany.
Well, with this, Jasper, let's have a closer look at the numbers.
Yes. Stefan, thank you very much and, good morning, to everybody. Before I start about this slide, just to avoid any confusion. At the highlights, you mentioned Rx stabilized at 10 million per quarter. It's 10 million per month.
EUR 10 million per month.
Around 30, yeah, per quarter. I think the audience understands.
Yeah. Thank you.
To avoid any misunderstanding. Okay, yes. This slide then. Yes, we did it. We had an internal plan to try to exceed more than 6 million orders for the first time in the past quarter. We achieved a 6.155, so around the 6.2 million orders in the past quarter. If you look at this slide, you see that in 2019, we for the first time achieved 3 million orders per quarter. In 2020, 4 million. Last year it was around 5 million orders, and then this quarter we crossed the 6 million customer orders for the first time. You mentioned already, Stefan, that we achieved a lot of new customers, in total, 0.4 million in quarter one alone.
That's something that we're very happy with, more than 80% of all the orders that you see here came from returning customers. Next slide, please, Karen. Thank you. What financials did we produce with those 6 million orders? On this slide, the customary PNL financials on one page, from sales up to and including the EBITDA. The sales ended up at EUR 305 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was -1.4%. If I start with top line sales, they increased by EUR 21 million to EUR 305, which was a 7.3% increase.
also compared to quarter four, we increased by 5.8%, and that absorbs the impact of, for example, that February has fewer days than an average month. The gross profit margin and the S&D, in a minute, I will show you in the variance which the year-over-year change, but now already on a high level on the total company perspective. The gross profit margin was 26.6 in the past quarter. That was an improvement of one full percentage points compared to the same quarter last year, and it was an improvement of two percentage points compared to the most recent past quarter four 2021. S&D as a percentage of sales was 25%. That was a significant increase compared to last year.
Please remember that last year was a full lockdown quarter and also included significantly more Rx sales than we had this year. If you look at it compared to past quarter, we actually improved slightly, so stabilized, improved slightly from 25.1% to 25% in the current quarter. Administrative expenses as a percentage of sales at 2.9% were stable year-over-year and slightly improved compared to the past quarter. If you add up all the numbers I just quoted, then the adjusted EBITDA in absolute millions of euros was -EUR 4 million. That was EUR 10 million lower than last year, and it was an increase, an improvement of EUR 6 million compared to quarter four. Margin -1.4%, EBITDA as a percentage of sales.
If you look at the adjustments, the adjusted EBITDA last year was EUR 6 million, and EBITDA was EUR 3 million, so adjustments were EUR 3 million. This year, from EUR -4 million to EUR -11 million is EUR 7 million. This is not an increase because we want to show a nice adjusted EBITDA number. No, we continue to be very conservative in the use of adjustments. The only reason for the increase, namely the EUR 4 million increase is the IFRS accounting for business combinations of the 2021 business acquisitions. This is a non-cash item, just like the employee stock option costs that are also in it. It's also non-cash, and that's why we adjust for it. On an underlying base, in both years, around EUR 3 million, more than 90% of that only related to the employee stock option program.
With this set of numbers, in total, we are fully on track for our full year guidance. The gross profit margin improved by 1% compared to last year. In the second building block, you see that in total, there was a lowering impact from the net pricing of our assortment, including the mix of our assortment. This lowering impact of 1.1% was more than offset by specifically better sourcing conditions that you're seeing here, direct better sourcing conditions, more direct deliveries. There was an important element in other, where we see a continuation of our success with media income, the data and media monetization, increasing not only in millions, but also as a percentage of sales. All in all, 26.6%, a 1 % point improvement. S&D as a percentage of sales was 25%.
Again, as I said already, the number of last year, that was a full lockdown quarter in Germany, which is impacting the numbers. If we start with marketing, this year we decided to continue our momentum, and we did successfully so with the numbers you quoted. We decided to use more marketing, a bit more overlooking at the -2.4%. That is, of course, an impact of having lost paper or Rx sales. But this is also, that's number three, the total company perspective. International is growing even faster at 30% than that DACH is growing. In the mix in total, you also see because of that, an increase of all the cost as a percentage of sales.
If you take a helicopter view here, explaining the rest, then there is an impact of what Stefan also just mentioned, a lower average order value in part from less Rx, but also some softness in customer spending in the majority of our countries that's impacting shipping, packaging, payments, marketing, operational labor as a percentage of sales. In shipping, there's also some inflation of energy costs, but I tell you that we have been able to get also better contracts. In our case, there is an offset largely from inflationary energy prices in our last mile and overall better conditions in shipping.
Labor as a percentage of sales, we had an increase of the minimum wage rate at Shop Apotheke in September last year, and we are here comparing year-over-year to the past quarter. All in all, S&D as a percentage of sales, 25%, a slight improvement versus the prior quarter. With that, we go to the next slide because what is this doing to our cash position? We started quarter one with EUR 282 million of cash and cash equivalents and ended the quarter at a EUR 9 million higher level of EUR 291 million of cash and cash equivalents. There's the operating cash flow, the investing cash flow, and the financing cash flow. Operating cash flow from EBIT was a minus six.
Working capital, seasonality, but also underlying improvements in inventories and payables resulted in an increase of EUR 30 million, the net of the two operating cash flow, a positive EUR 24 million. Investments in quarter one amounted to EUR 12 million. That was mainly in IT, and the remainder was in our logistics facility here in Sevenum, but also the start in Milan, in Italy. The financing cash flows of EUR 3 million also includes our lease payments. All in all, slight increase of our already robust cash position in the quarter. Back to you, Stefan.
Okay. Thank you, Jasper. Let's just briefly look at a couple of key strategic topics.
Top of mind, of course, for all of us is the progress of the eRx test phase in Germany. Before we go there, please let me take the opportunity to remind ourselves of the big opportunity that lies ahead of us. Of course, I'm referring to the introduction of e-prescriptions. You see this here on the lower right-hand side. The total Rx market in Germany amounts to around EUR 50 billion. Right now, the online share, and I'm not just referring to Shop Apotheke, but to Shop Apotheke and all of our direct competitors, amounts to less than 1%. To be precise, 0.7% of the EUR 50 billion Rx market is currently served by e-pharmacies.
When you refer to independent market observers, everybody agrees, even after the introduction of e-prescriptions, the vast majority of prescriptions will continue to be filled by local pharmacies. Everybody also seems to agree we're going to see a multiple of the online share that we have today. You've heard us mention this before. Sweden is a good reference market because the market characteristics are not too different from Germany. At this point in time, the eRx share in the online share in Sweden stands at 11%-12%. With the red donut on this chart, you also see the non-Rx market in Germany. The non-Rx market in the non-Rx segment, the online share has exceeded 20%.
Again, we are not, we don't wanna imply that this is a good reference point for the Rx segment. We're dealing with very different, dynamics. Getting back to the eRx test phase. Over the last few weeks, we've all seen that the number of daily and weekly prescriptions, e-prescriptions that have gone through the telematics infrastructure has steadily increased. At this point of time, based on everything that we are seeing, we are assuming that the eRx test phase will be concluded, sometime in the third quarter. Probably in July, we're going to reach the 30,000 e-prescription mark in terms of e-prescriptions having been dispensed by pharmacists. A few weeks later, these e-prescriptions will have been reimbursed by the health insurers.
Again, that leads us to the conclusion that sometime in the third quarter, the eRx test phase will be concluded successfully. The next obvious question, of course, is once the test phase has been concluded, what is the rollout going to look like? At this point of time, you know, the best witness or the best source that we can point to is the German health minister, who over the last couple of weeks, and as recently as yesterday, mentioned that the eRx introduction is going to start, is going to commence right after the successful conclusion of the eRx pilot. Yesterday, he mentioned that the nationwide rollout of e-prescriptions is going to happen in 2022. As far as Shop Apotheke is concerned, we have been and we are ready.
All of our systems and processes are working smoothly. We continue to stress test our systems and processes. We are very eager for e-prescriptions to start, and we can't wait to receive a much higher number of electronic prescriptions after the conclusion of the eRX test phase. Putting everything together, referring to the health minister, but also to everything that we are seeing as Shop Apotheke, we remain confident that e-prescriptions in Germany are going to start in earnest in 2022. An important step, of course, along our strategic journey was the acquisition of First A, a leading quick commerce player in the German pharmacy space. We concluded the deal in early April.
Both sides, we, but also the management team and the founders of First A, we're really excited, we're really happy about the marriage of these two organizations. First A is now going to have the backing to realize their ambitions, and we as Shop Apotheke, we have added another important component to make sure that our ambition will come true, that we'll be able to continue to address all of the current and future relevant use cases in the German e-pharmacy market. The acquisition of First A is of course directly linked to our preparations for the introduction of e-prescriptions in Germany.
FIRST A will continue to operate separately and under their own brand, but in parallel of course, we have already and will continue to identify opportunities where it makes sense to cooperate to make sure that one plus one equals three or more. In April, we did not just conclude or close the deal with FIRST A, but we also launched a brand new TV campaign in Germany with the aim to further increase the trust that our existing and future customers have in Shop Apotheke's proposition. If you live in Germany, you've probably already seen the TV spots. If you haven't or if you don't live in Germany, let's have a look.
Well, I hope you like the spot as much as we all do. Of course, that's probably not a surprise. Ideally, at least some of you are already using the Shop Apotheke app to place your next order with Shop Apotheke. By the way, it's time to order some sunscreen. Jasper, what about the outlook for the year?
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Well, on one slide. In a world where clearly several e-commerce or in general digital companies have some challenges to continue to grow in a fast dynamic time and also facing the peaks of quarter one last year. On top of that, an overall declining customer confidence, more insecurity in the world and in addition, inflation up to significant levels. I think that our Q1 results actually show, according to me, that we as a leading e-pharmacy in Europe have been able to continue our growth. That we on all levels increased also versus the peaks we had in quarter one last year.
We increased our active customer base in the quarter significantly with 0.4, and perhaps even more important is the fact that we recorded record levels of customer satisfaction at a 73 across all our seven countries and also in Germany specifically. With this set of results in our pocket for quarter one, we feel comfortable in reiterating our full year guidance for 2022 in all elements. That means that we expect a continuation of our many years consecutive track record of growing everything but our X double digits. That's in the range of 15%-25% in our case. On our X in total, we cannot give guidance. It's too much depending on news that we will receive from the government.
On paper, our Rx, we were aiming for a stabilization of the Rx volumes, and we achieved that fully. We had a stable volume in quarter one, the same level as we had in quarter three and quarter four, 2021. That for the sales. The adjusted EBITDA margin in a range from - to +1.5%, and I would say, of course, the mid to long term guidance, as we explained in more detail, just a couple of weeks ago with the full year results unchanged with an ambition of an adjusted EBITDA margin in excess of 8%. Our guidance reconfirmed. With that, we have more than sufficient time for questions. Operator, can we please move to the page with all the details here?
May I remind those who want to ask a question, please mute your webcast when you are dialing in. Dear operator, would you have the first question, please?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. But again, please press star one to ask a question. We will take the first question from Christopher Johnen from HSBC.
Yes, thanks for taking my questions. Three, please, and I would like to do them one by one if possible. First on First A. The guidance wasn't touched. Yet I think the guidance was set when or before First A was acquired. The asset is probably burning some cash. Maybe you can give us a couple of numbers on the assets. Maybe the consolidation impact for 2022 or sort of any view on the impact for 2023. Basically, how much you guys wanna ramp this up? When international expansion is likely next year? You know, all those things that would help us model this a little bit better.
Can I start? Yeah. Yeah, indeed, Chris. Indeed we gave the guidance before the acquisition of First A. It is our ongoing business. It's not that suddenly we're gonna deliver our normal rate sales growth just because of the acquisition. It is the guidance before, and that's for bottom and top line. No, we don't give any specifics on the First A transaction. It is on all levels, albeit whether it is sales or adjusted EBITDA, or EBITDA or cash. It is not relevant in 2021 from a total company perspective. We're reporting two segments, that's international and DACH, and First A is part of that. First A is not big enough at this moment to have a significant impact on total Shop Apotheke.
That's everything there. You were asking something about the future, international expansion, 2023. Yeah, it depends a lot on what's how big the use case is, how fast eRx is going. It's absolutely our idea where we now focus with First A on Germany, as we announced already, actually for the reason that we expect eRx to happen very soon. Very quickly after that, we envision very well that First A is a very good addition to our propositions in the other countries where we are active. In modeling at the moment, we don't give any guidance there at the moment.
We have, of course, our several scenarios for the coming years, but it will all depend on how big this opportunity and the relevance for those specific customers is. I don't know if you have anything to add on that on the output.
No, I think you covered it all.
Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Perfect. That's helpful. Second question on eRx. I mean, you chose not to disclose the number of scripts that you processed, this quarter. I think that was deliberate. I would assume, you know, why is that the case? I hope it's not because, the percentage of scripts processed was lower than at your main competitor, I would assume.
No. Yeah, I can quickly answer this, Chris. The reason why we disclosed this in the past, I think we did it twice, was simply to indicate, you know, that all of our systems and processes are working. We are continuing to receive e-prescriptions, you know, through the gematik eRx test phase. It's not a significant number, but we're also not out promoting anything. I know there is a tendency, you know, to take the number of e-scripts that we have received and to divide this by the total number of e-scripts to draw some conclusions in terms of market share. The sample base is simply too small, and again, we are not out talking actively about e-prescriptions.
What I can tell you is today the number of e-prescriptions that we have received is significantly higher than what we reported the last time. We wanna leave it at this. It's not relevant. The key is that our systems and processes are working smoothly. We are ready, and we are eager for the test phase to be concluded and to get started.
Okay. That's clear. The last question on Q2, the current quarter. April's over, first week of May almost, as well. Is there any sort of comment color you can give on the current quarter, please?
Yeah. I think the past many years of Shop Apotheke have actually proven that mostly, there's happening dynamics of a full year in a quarter already. It's too volatile for us, and it's also not how we look at our company that we give our quarterly guidance. I refer to our full year guidance. Yeah, overall, we see a continuation. That's the only thing I can say. With all the color we gave already in Q1 , we see some impact on a lower average basket, which is not unlikely, probably related to some customer confidence, a decline that you see across the markets.
We see all kinds of dynamics continuing to the same extent as the positive ones also to the same extent as we saw in quarter one. I think that's all we wanna say on Q2 . Yeah.
It's in line with our full year guidance.
Got it. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. We now take the next question from Alexander Thiel from Jefferies.
Hi, good morning, gentlemen. Good start to the year and some weak upcoming comms. Three questions from my side. I would also like to take them one by one. First, a high-level question on your average basket value, and I assume we all understand the negative correlation between high Rx AOV and lower gross margin. First, could you give us an indication on the current per Rx AOV and how stable this has been over the last quarters?
Yeah. Alex, we have seen a really marginal decline of the average paper Rx basket, nothing of any significance. Again, we are not using the paper Rx basket to project the future eRx basket, so it's too early for this. Again, no drastic change in terms of the average paper Rx basket value.
Because on a group level, right, if I account for the shift in sales mix by 4% less Rx in Q1, the average implied OTC AOV, excluding the VAT, is actually increasing. I was just wondering what was the driver behind that, as the gross margin of international was actually slightly declined. Can you confirm that the OTC basket is actually slightly increasing, which is not the case?
Yeah. We're going almost a level deeper than we normally do. We see in most of our countries we're selling non-Rx. In the majority of our countries, we saw in Q1 that the average basket was lower than it was in Q1 last year. Not in all of our countries. As I just said, that could be an indication that in discretionary spend, there is some slowdown from our customers. In part, it also relates to our success of acquiring a lot of new customers, and we have a lot of ways how we can always impact.
That's one of the fun things we do in our business that we try to. Of course, it's helping a lot to increase the average basket by getting good customer baskets. Just to be sure that I understand what you are saying, what Stefan was saying and I was saying in prior quarters, we said it was only because of Rx. In this case, we say it's NRx and non-Rx, though we also have positive exceptions in certain countries, but that's what it is. It's end-to-end in this quarter. Is that what you were looking for, Alex?
Yeah. I think we can take this offline. Maybe my second question is more a suggestion, as I would like to see a pure German reporting in the future, right? To calculate the future customer conversion from the existing OTC customer base to eRx in the future. I think we are now at some point where this is definitely very good for analysts to have a better visibility for the future, to make some very good estimates going forward. My last question would be on your marketing spending. I mean, you commented on a very difficult market in Germany. Could you provide a ballpark figure for Q1 and break it out of the SG&A?
Your first remark on reporting Germany separately, that's not possible. We steer our business on a DACH and international level, and there are requirements, and that's why we report external segments the way how we steer our business. On the marketing spending, can you be a little bit more specific what your question is exactly?
Could you break it out of the SG&A, what you roughly spend on marketing for Q1?
No, we have S&D and roughly one-third of S&D is our internal pharmacy and fulfillment activities. Roughly one-third is our last mile, and roughly one-third is our marketing. That has always been the case. That's also now the case. But if you compare it to last year, you see that our marketing as a percentage of sales increased compared to quarter one last year. It's somewhat higher than the one-third, which it normally is.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Please, it's very important if you look at those numbers that there is actually mathematically quite some mix there which is just a result of success. The success is that we're growing very fast in the international, and those numbers are, because of lower scale, slightly higher than they are in the DACH region and impacting the total, the total numbers of the company. Yeah. Also for marketing as a percentage of sales. Okay.
Operator, do we have another question?
There is no further questions at this time. Again, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star one. We'll take the next question from Michael Heider from Warburg Research.
Yes. Hi, and good morning. I have a follow-up question on the marketing spending. You have this TV campaign that you have shown us in Germany. Can you give us an indication if the main cost for this TV campaign has already been booked in Q1, or is it rather a continuous booking of the cost? I mean, can we expect the marketing cost to come down somewhat going forward? Thanks.
Nothing of the campaign is booked in Q1 , because we started the campaign in April, and April is Q2. That's in the upcoming quarters. Michael?
That makes sense. Maybe the production phase might be higher than the cost when you actually show it on TV.
I understand your question, but that is insignificant on the total level of our cost. Yeah.
Okay. Thanks.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, as a final reminder, to ask a question.
Please press star one. We now have a follow-up question from Christopher Johnen from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. I figure if nobody else wants, I'll come back with another one. Maybe you could give us an update on Italy. That'd be interesting to see if you saw any sort of positive impact in the Q1.
Well, again, we are not disclosing, you know, the country-specific numbers, but we are very happy with the development of our business in Italy. We are on track to open our second distribution hub beyond the one, of course, that we are in right now here in Sevenum, in Milan, in the third quarter. We are again on track with this. We have very high expectations looking further into the future for Italy. This is a very promising market, and we're very excited about the opportunity this presents for Shop Apotheke.
Understood. Thank you.
The growth in Italy is, of course, one of the key drivers behind the significant growth of our international segment. That's probably not a surprise to you.
Got it. Thanks.
We will now take the next question from Milo Zack from JMS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen, from Zurich. Just one question regarding the costs in general. I acknowledge the excellent gross profit margin that you provided. Now, if I look at the rest of the P&L, like selling and distribution costs in percent of sales, which was up significantly. Can you please explain again how much of this is like related to the mix effect? How much of that is related to cost increases, which couldn't have been passed over, but which you will be able to pass over? If you look at it like from a normalized basis or an underlying basis, how this compares to your budgets that you have going forward? will this come down again, or do you expect this to be a kind of new slight level at this point in time, like the 25% of sales? Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, indeed. There is from our success in also countries outside of Germany and DACH, that is at this moment on total company level, having a mixed impact. And also if you look at the total numbers.
Sorry if I interrupt, I mean, it's on both segments. If you look at international, it went from 28% to 31%. On the DACH segment, it went from 19% to 23%. There was a mix effect of course, but also for the dips for the individual segments, both were up actually.
Yeah. Actually, I was just going to address that. There is this mix impact on those total numbers, but also in the segments. If you look at the segments, it is mainly the impact of the lower average basket that you're seeing here is the impact. The remainder, because the biggest variance that you were seeing there, and that's both the case in DACH and also in international and on total company level, that's our choice because that's marketing as a percentage of sales. We deem it at this moment best for our value creation to spend the amount of money that we did in Q1 . That's not it happened to us or it's inflation or there's a cost increase.
No, compared to last year, this was according to us the best in order to fortify our marketing positions that we're having. That's the main reason why you're seeing an increase of cost as a percentage of sales.
Jasper also, you mentioned this before.
The comparison to Q1 last year was a lockdown quarter.
In a lockdown quarter, that automatically, you know, gives us the opportunity to reduce our marketing spending. Luckily, we're now not in a lockdown any longer, and that is also a driver of costs.
Yeah, absolutely. The only thing I don't wanna suggest what this is seems to be suggesting, but I still make the remark. If you go two years back, before a distortion of all kinds of trends, there was always the seasonal pattern that you see that with Shop Apotheke quarter one was the most promotional, most marketing-driven quarter of the year. That's suggesting that I'm saying now that the other quarters will be better in a cost perspective than Q1 . That's on an underlying base, that is true.
I'm not gonna make the statement because we only have full year guidance, and we wanna act upon the moment that we wanna act in deciding upon more or less marketing and what's the best way how to have our proposition exactly at the moment. I'm not gonna make the statement, but just in general know that there's an underlying seasonality where I just said there's a lot of focus on January and February normally in our business.
May I have a follow-up question on this one? I mean, it explains a lot. If we go back into 2018, 2017, 2019, so before the COVID distortions, so to speak, there we were talking about selling and distribution costs of, like, 20, 17.5, 18.5%. Now, at that point in time, your growth was around 20%-30%, the organic growth rate. Now, at the moment, we are talking about 25%. The organic growth rate was clearly lower, but that's also distorted by COVID, of course. Let's don't focus on this quarter. Going forward, as you say, it's a business decision, how much you want to grow and how much marketing dollars you want to spend on this.
Do you expect that the marketing efficiency going forward is going to be much, like lower because of other players trying to grab the market shares now when it comes to eScript? If yes, what is your estimate, that like the market efficiency has decreased now? How much percentage points more do you have to spend to achieve the 20% growth rates, that we are talking about?
No, we don't see that. Some weeks yes, some weeks no. Just as a general trend, we don't see that. I think there are two things important when you compare it to a couple of years ago. I think at those moments, our international share was less than 10%. There's a big increase of our success in our other countries. There's a big impact of the fact that in those times our Rx was around 25% of sales, and it's now less than 10% of sales. The average Rx basket is a very loyal customer and a very high basket.
All our numbers in 2021 and also in Q1 2022 are significantly impacted by the lower share of Rx. That's the apples and oranges if you compare it to a couple of years ago. One of the reasons why we are so much looking forward to the Rx.
Thank you. Very clear. Thanks a lot. All the best.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for your questions. Yeah. Operator, is there another question?
Notice there was no further questions, so I'll hand the call back over to you, Mr. Feltens, for any closing remarks.
Okay. First of all, thank you for your time, for your interest in Shop Apotheke. I'm going back, Jasper, to you know, what you emphasized in a very you know, turbulent environment. I think we delivered a solid Q1 that's fully in line with our full year guidance. As a result of this, we have reiterated our guidance for the full year. We are very excited about this important step that we have taken on our strategic journey with the acquisition of FIRST A. I'm sure you're going to hear more about this in the future. Last but not least, I think our next call is in early August. We're confident that we will certainly have more news about the rollout, the implementation of e-prescriptions in Germany.
I think we all have to be a little bit more patient. Most of you know there is an important gematik shareholders meeting this coming Monday. Let's see whether and what we're going to hear after this meeting. With this, again, thank you for your time. Enjoy the rest of the day, and we'll be in touch. Thank you.
Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.