Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Redcare Pharmacy Full Year 2024 Earnings Release Analyst and Investor Conference Call. I am Valentina, the Quartus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Olaf Heinrich, CEO. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much, and good morning to everybody, and a very warm welcome also from my side. Let's have a look into the agenda of today. First of all, we would like to start with some highlights from 2024, followed up by the business performance of 2024, and leading into an update on strategy session, and then finally the outlook and guidance. If we go to the highlights of 2024, you know, I mean, this has been an exceptional year to Redcare. If you just look back, I mean, it's almost like you can't believe it. I mean, at the beginning of last year, there were the questions: Is the e-scoot coming? Is it not coming? What will be the adoption rate of it?
I mean, we quickly learned that e-Rx became the nationwide standard in Germany for all publicly insured patients, and that is actually great news. There was the second question: I mean, how can we access that market? How do we discriminate? How do we get discrimination-free access? You know, then we launched our fully digital patient journey via CardLink in May of last year. That seems like it is almost more than one year ago, but it happened last year in May. At the same time, we also further developed our product. Now we have a highly valued customer-centric product.
It has all the features you need, so it does not only have the CardLink functionality, but also you have the product availability, you have the payments, you have the 24/7, you can order OTC, BPC, Rx, so everything is in the product, and this product actually has developed over the year, and now we think it is a great product out there in the market. At the same time, we also launched our marketing campaign. It is on the one end of the product, but on the other hand, also our very successful marketing campaign from last year, which really, I think, also made a difference when looking back, was a great achievement also on that side. Also the decision to step up our marketing activities in Q4 was the right decision based on the numbers we see.
You know, our growth accelerated from 7% in Q1 all the way to 142% in Q4, again confirming, I mean, we have a great product out there and we had a great marketing campaign. Putting this all together, it led to a market leadership position for Redcare in Germany. You know, we always have been the market leader on non-Rx, but now in 2024, we also got the market leadership on Rx, so we can say that has been an exceptional year looking back in terms of the e-Rx. The company is not only about e-Rx. We have a lot of value proposition in that one. We also continued our great growth in all of our other countries. What you already saw in the numbers, I mean, really great achievements across all countries, also high customer satisfaction. NPS continues to be one of our key metrics.
As a result of that, I mean, some of you are probably tracking also traffic in Italy. As a result of that, we are now also market leader in Italy. I mean, not only in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland, but now also in Italy, clear market leader. We are proud of that because, again, it's not only about e-Rx, it's also about our other business, and it's a major success. You know, being market leader has, as we learned in the other countries, a lot of advantages. At the same time, we also continue to grow our marketplace business. You know, we have a very successful marketplace business in Germany and in Austria, and we launched this into Belgium and also into Italy, making use of the traffic there we have in those markets and try to improve our value proposition.
At the same time, you know, with this growth, also we had to produce much more parcels. We are really proud of that we managed that also in a great way. This, especially looking here into Sevenum, but also Italy, I mean, it has been a great achievement that we kept our high level of customer satisfaction and service levels, and we were really able to manage all of those parcels leaving our warehouses. At the same time, we even increased our efficiency in logistics. This is not the whole story of it. You know, we also had a change in the leadership team. In April, two board members left, and then we had two successors coming in.
I think to me, I mean, that shows how strong also the organization is set up because, I mean, we had two internal successors, Dirk and Lode, and it almost worked out seamlessly, I have to say, Jasper. It shows the organization is strong and has a strong leadership, and we built also talents on our own. We are really happy with what we have seen throughout 2024, and thanks to Dirk and Lode for stepping in and making this happen. The last thing, you know, is the first year of reporting CSRD. It has been a tough audit, we have to say. It has been a tough audit, but we are ahead of the legal requirements, and we are proud of the product which is out there. 2024, great achievements. Let's look into the numbers. What does that mean in numbers?
You have seen the numbers. It is a growth of 32% in 2024, even if you exclude media service. I mean, we are still on the 26%, so it confirms our strong growth part here. The non-Rx growth is at 21%, and the Rx growth is at 64%. You know, it was even higher in the German segment. At the same time, we also managed a margin at 1.4%. You know, that is based on the strategic investments, also the decision we took to further accelerate our marketing in October of last year. I mean, strongly underlying core businesses, and Jasper will talk a little bit about that later in the presentation, we have a strong underlying core business, which of course also helps to have a positive margin here out there. Cash flow is minus EUR 26 million.
We are operating, and we are generating cash from our operations, but at the same time, we also took some strategic investments. I think here we did a good job, managed to work in capital. Jasper will talk a little bit more about the cash flow later in the session. If we go to the next slide, you are familiar with those slides. I mean, it's just one additional information. International, again, is growing on the non-Rx a little bit faster than the DACH region. I mean, I pointed out the market leadership in Italy. It is also driven by our success in Italy, but not only in Italy. We are growing in all of our other countries on the international segment. If we go to the next page, you can also see that the number of active customers increased significantly.
Now we are at the level of 12.5 million active customers by the end of the year. We added 0.6 million active customers in the last quarter of 2024, so also great achievement on our customer development. At the same time, we kept the NPS at a very high level of 69. Again, this is still one of our key metrics. This is all about the customer, and we need to continue to work hard on keeping that net promoter score up. If you look into the AOV or the basket size, I mean, of course, you can see the first impact of the Rx business. We have more Rx orders coming in, and the average basket size is increasing. It is now almost at EUR 61. If we go to the next page, you can see our very impressive development of the orders.
The overall message, I think it's still the same pattern than it has been in previous years. I mean, Q3 even has been a little bit better. Usually, Q3 is a little bit lower, but if you look into 2024, we almost reached the level, or we exceeded the level of the Q2. Great development. It's the first time that we processed 10 million or more than 10 million orders in one quarter. Also a milestone for this company. As always, if you look into the share of repeat orders, still very healthy at a level of 88%. Having said that, I would like to turn it over to Jasper.
Yeah, thank you very much, Olaf, and thank you all for joining today's call. Very happy that you show your interest in the company. We are very happy in sharing with you today our results of the past year. Here are the key financial numbers in the customary table. After that, I have four instead of two slides in shedding more light on the underlying developments. First, the high-level numbers here. In the fourth quarter, we achieved a total of EUR 675 million sales, which was an increase, fully organic, and also no impact of media service because it was last year. There are two of 27.1%. As Olaf just said, the full year growth number of 31.8%, that was close to 26%, to be precise, 25.6% fully organic. Actually, our growth accelerated in the fourth quarter on an organic base.
An increase of EUR 1.799 billion last year to close to EUR 2.4 billion this year, an increase of EUR 572 million. If we look at the gross profit margin line, that is slightly down versus last year in quarter four, and it's more down year-over-year for the full year. The margin of Rx is very attractive, and that's the full explanation of what you're seeing here. We are adding more of the very profitable sales of media service in Switzerland, and we are adding more of the very profitable Rx sales in Germany. In quarter four, it's mainly the impact of the increase of the e-Rx in Germany, more euros in the gross profit, lower margin, but we explain that also in the second part of the presentation later.
In the full year, that's a bit an apple and an orange because of the full year impact of media service. In selling and distribution as a percentage of sales, in the fourth quarter, you see an increase of the cost to above 20% impacted by our marketing, and that we are really happy with the marketing that we have been spending. I hope it will become clear when we show the second part of our presentation and our overall numbers. Perhaps you are a bit surprised to see that here, the full year, year- over- year is a flat number, but there we have the big benefit of the lower, significantly lower S&D as a percentage of sales of media service. Now, a lot of mix. I will explain it in the other slides a little bit more clear.
If we then go to the admin expenses, 2.9%, and actually it improved in the fourth quarter to 2.8% of sales year-over-year. That is flat. Adding all up, the adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was minus 0.7, and for the full year, we generated EUR 33 million of adjusted EBITDA, which you will see later. It's very close to our cash generation, and that's why we adjust for it to get close to the cash that we generate with our businesses. It was a 1.4% positive margin for the full year in the range of 1.2-2.2%, as we updated you on October 3 for the guidance for the year. If you go to the next slide, please. This is the gross profit margin.
To the left, the same number as we just saw already, so that it's going down 0.5% because more of the profitable Rx sales that we have. On the right, you see the larger increase as we reported it in the first two pillars. Actually, if you take out the full year impact of media service, it's a similar decline that you are seeing there in the gross profit as a percentage of sales. Apart from that, you see that we on an organic base have been growing more than 25% in the company, and that did not come at the cost of our gross profit margins. Across the group, our gross profit margins are stable, and the result that you're seeing in the P&L is only because of the impact of mix. On the next one, the cost in total, the quarter four we already looked at.
If you then look at the right hand of the slide and you exclude the impact of mix, then you see the year-over-year increase of a bit over one percentage point. That is, of course, because of our decision to increase the e-Rx marketing, seeing the large opportunity that we have there. It will also make clear, if you look at the total numbers, hey, how can a company achieve only such a small increase seeing all the firepower that we showed in the e-Rx campaign? That is really because, and give you just one example, logistics in our case actually achieved a record efficiency and also across the group with automation scale and also the benefits of being the market leader. We see that cost as a percentage of sales in our core business is improving year-over-year.
On the next one, this is about the DACH segment where I wanted to communicate a certain message on, and then after that, also international. In DACH, so Germany, Austria, Switzerland, we are reporting the purple ones here in the segment reporting, and that was last year, a total of EUR 1.5 billion of sales at a margin, a fully loaded margin of 5.1%. This year, we report a significant increase of the sales in part the full year impact of media service, in part organic growth, in part also because of the e-Rx addition that we have, and we increased the EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 1.9 billion and a 2.6% margin.
If we now look at what we then define only for the purpose of this slide now here today as the established businesses, I say, okay, in Switzerland, we do it together with Galenica, and that's going really well. Also in Switzerland, with the launch of Redcare.ch, which we did one and a half years ago, we have a strategic reset and are growing there really fast. e-Rx is also the growth that we have at the moment. If you then only look at the established businesses, you can see in the black graphs already that that is actually EUR 1.1 billion in 2023, operating at a very solid 5%-6%.
Perhaps the term established businesses is suggesting that's a stable business, but that's not the case because this business has been growing double digit before corona, during corona, after corona, two years ago, last year, and also the past year, this established businesses continues to grow fast from EUR 1.1 billion, double digit to EUR 1.3 billion. Also this year, if you can take out the impact of the e-Rx push, but then also the sales and also the contribution margin, we are again operating here at a 5%-6%, meaning that our contribution margin is even much higher because this is fully loaded, including all the overhead. How is this possible? Because we have a continuously growing base in our core propositions of active, happy customers. We have the most comprehensive proposition and are a clear market leader in Germany and in Austria.
Later you will also talk about the proposition, but elements, of course, you can order same day, you can order next day. We have the assortment, we have the marketplace, we have all the other things that you will discuss also later. With that, we always have internally the expression, you need to run to stand still. We invest in our proposition continuously to continue to aim to have the best proposition and expanding our market leadership. This segment, well above EUR 1 billion, is of course cash generating and is continuing to grow really fast. In international, actually all the numbers on this slide are the same numbers as you can also find in our annual report and our interim reports, but I just put them on one slide to emphasize what is happening in international.
That is also because in the second part, we will dedicate a lot of attention to e-Rx, how great the developments are. I took the opportunity to also show a bit of our other businesses here. In 2020, we had EUR 150 million of sales in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy combined. In only four years, we almost tripled that to last year, close to EUR 450 million. At the same time, you see that our fully loaded, including everything, marketing, overhead, everything that we can allocate, an adjusted EBITDA margin of minus 9.8% in 2022, then minus 6%. Last year, we improved with 2.4 percentage points to minus 3.8%.
As we also disclosed in the segment reporting before overhead, so it is also in the annual report, you see that last year we had for the first time a positive result before overhead for the total international segment of 1.3%. What do we have in international? We are already for many years the market leader in Belgium. One out of the four households in Belgium is an active customer of us. We have an over 90% brand recognition in Belgium. Actually, after the big boys like Amazon and Shein, etc., we are in the top five of leading websites in the country. You gave it already. In addition, since 2024, also market leadership in Italy. The next slide, back to the total group view. This is our cash flow.
We started the year 2024 with EUR 204 million in cash balances, including what we have in fixed deposits. At the end of the year, we had EUR 178 million. From the left to the right, how we got to the minus EUR 26 million, we were generating EUR 32 million of operating cash and had a minus EUR 3 million in working capital. With the growth that we achieve as a company, also knowing that we had some more receivables related to e-Rx, it is showing that the working capital made a great improvement also the past year because it only increased with EUR 3 million. Operating cash flow in total around EUR 29 million positive. We had total investments of EUR 38 million, and we had the financing, which is according to IFRS. This overview also includes the leases that we paid in total. Minus EUR 26 million, continuous working capital improvements.
With that, back to you. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Jasper. Now we would like to give a little bit of an update on strategy. We would like to focus on two topics. First of all, talk about the overall strategic positioning of the company, and then secondly, get into some of the great key metrics of our Rx business. We think at the start of 2025, it's a good timing to also take some time to talk about our overall positioning and also why we think we are set up in the right way to also have a great 2025 ahead of us. On this slide, you will find the story for, let's say, the next six slides.
We will not spend so much time on this one, but the overall story is, I mean, we are Europe's leading one-stop pharmacy with a unique and broad customer value proposition. We will talk about this later. We are also best positioned as the leading pharmacy to accelerate market leadership in Germany. We are gaining Rx market share in Germany month after month, quarter after quarter. We tripled within one year. We have now more than 1 million active Rx customers in Germany in 2024. And our cohorts, our Rx cohorts already outperform our strong and really strong non-Rx cohorts in year one by a multiple. Last slide will be about the unit economics, also to show how both businesses, the non-Rx business as well as the Rx business, can fuel our midterm EBITDA guidance in excess of 8%.
If we start with the first one, again, we think we are Europe's leading one-stop pharmacy, and we are great positioned. I would like to take some time to also explain to you why we think it's like that. If you look into the pharmacy part of it, we offer Rx, OTC, and BPC products. We have a really huge wide range of assortment here on the OTC, BPC, Rx. On top of that, we also have, let's say, what we call real-time availability information. We are known in the German market for, if you really want to find a product, you need to download our app, and you can check on that app. If we don't have it available, probably difficult to find that product.
On top of that, we have, we always call this the marketplace, but what is really the marketplace? The marketplace is where we give sellers on our platform the opportunity to sell additional product. We call it health-related products. This, for example, is medical supply, baby food, diapers, whatever you can imagine when you think about a healthcare-related product assortment. This is what we offer on our platform, and we have currently more than 140,000 SKUs being offered on our platform. Overall, we have really the widest assortment possible. At the same time, we also have great enhanced pharmacy services, how we call them. I would like to give you at least two examples here. The one is really, when it comes down to the Rx, it is the check of interactions and double medication.
You know we have something like an electronic health record from all patients. We have all the orders from the past, including also the OTC and BPC orders, and we do checks on that and reach out either to patients or to doctors if things are not in the right way. We provide all of this information in a digital way in our app, and customers really love that. We are also developing a repeat script service. That means especially for the chronically ill patients, they can use that service to get a refill script from the doctor, and then they can use our pharmacy to get the product. We think in that area, we are really ahead of the curve, and most of our products are digital. If we then think about the delivery, I mean, we have all the options.
We have the next day delivery, we have the same day, but we also have the pickup. Next day and part of same day, we do via our own pharmacy here in the Netherlands, but we also have a wide network out there of brick-and-mortar pharmacies in Germany. Currently, with our network, we are covering already more than 30 million Germans, and we are increasing this network while we speak. If we combine this all together, it is about assortment, it is about great prices on OTC, BPC, it is about convenience. Those are the key success drivers for our pharmacy platform. On top, we have what we call the retail media business. We offer our partners, so that is the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the sellers.
They can use our platform and our reach in terms of customers and traffic to offer tailored solutions towards our customers, and they really like that. That means we have, of course, the margin we make out of our own business, but we also have an income stream out of the marketplace business, as well out of the retail media business. From a customer perspective, it comes all together. It is a one-stop pharmacy. You have all the products, and you just get, and you can pay all the things in one. That is why we call it a one-stop pharmacy. If we now go to the next slide, we would like to talk a little bit about the positioning of our pharmacy in the German market, because we think we are best positioned as a leading pharmacy to even accelerate our market leadership in Germany.
Let's look into this wonderful metric. You see three layers here, three layers how you can actually act in the German pharmacy market. There are also three product categories: the OTC, BPC, the Rx, and then the combination, the OTC, BPC, and the Rx. If we start with the layer at the bottom, which is the easiest one, it's the brick-and-mortar pharmacy layer. We all know that one. I mean, there's a ban on foreign ownership in Germany. Only pharmacists can own a pharmacy. They don't really have a strong brand or something like this. They have their local pharmacy. Sometimes it's called Brunnenapotheke or Bärenapotheke or whatever it's called. This is just a local business. We get to the next level, which we call the platform level. Let's look into the platform level.
On the one hand, this is the platform OTC, BPC, box. There we have online retailers or drugstore apps or retail apps. Different retail players either have a store out there and then have an app on top or just an online retailer, and they can sell OTC, BPC via online pharmacy sellers on their platform. There is a large competitor of us who has been doing this for 10 years. I mean, besides of him doing that, we have always built our business very strongly with all of the great numbers Jasper just presented. Let's look into the next one. The next one is the Rx. On the Rx platform, you can see that there are players like the apps from the payers or the Gmarket app.
I mean, on those apps, as a customer, you can place an Rx order, but I mean, you do not have the full advantages of our product available. What you can do, you can place the order, but you do not get any availability information. You do not get any opportunity to buy OTC on top, and you also cannot do a payment on that one. It is almost like you just leave your script there, and then somehow you will get a delivery from a pharmacy. We do not really see a lot of orders coming to our pharmacy via that channel. That is left on the right-hand side, the platform business for OTC, BPC, and Rx. Here we saw in the last year two platforms coming up, and they are more platforms organized by the brick-and-mortar pharmacies.
They are more a digital entry point for the brick-and-mortar pharmacies. This is, from our perspective, a difficult business model because, again, it is highly regulated. If you want to do something like this, you have to list all of the German pharmacies, and the business model is very limited. We cannot, for example, get a commission on an Rx or on a script. Overall, this platform level is not positioned as a pharmacy. It has been out there in the past with sellers of. It has not hindered us at all to really grow and continue to grow in the German market. There is the third level, which is the level of the online pharmacies. Here we see two different types of online pharmacies.
On the one hand, based on a ruling from the European Court of Justice of 2003, OTC and BPC online pharmacies can offer products in Germany. There is only a very limited number of countries from which you are allowed also to send Rx into the German market. The Netherlands are one of those countries. In the Netherlands, you even have the advantage that you can give discounts on Rx products. If you put this picture all together, we are positioned in the upper right box. We can do the OTC, the BPC, and the Rx. We can position ourselves as a pharmacy as opposed to not being a pharmacy. That means we feel really comfortable to accelerate our market leadership in the German market.
If we go to the next slide, let's get into some more of our metrics which we can measure, and let's talk about the market share in the first place. What you can see here, we have tripled our market share within one year, now reaching in February 0.82% market share. Steady over time, we are building this one. Please keep in mind, we are showing here our total Rx numbers and also the total Rx market. There is this market of GKV, so statutory insured, and PKV, private insured. In some cases, there's an e-script, and in other cases, there's still a paper script out there.
If we would just look into, let's say, the GKV market where we have the e-script, and then looking into our e-scripts, we receive and compare that to the number of e-scripts out there based on what the [margin] is saying. Of course, our share already is a little bit higher because the dynamic is with the e-script and not so much with the paper script and the privately insured because privately insured right now, they do not have an e-script. Nevertheless, more important to us are the number of customers. If we can go to the next page, you can see here, at the beginning of the last year, we already started our marketing campaign, and then we increased it over the time. We have a couple of objectives on our marketing campaign. First of all, I mean, we have to do some kind of education.
We have to talk about the current solution. Of course, secondly, we want to establish Shop Apotheke as the leading brand, which worked out pretty well in 2024. The third objective, of course, is to generate first-time Rx customers for Redcare. We decided to show you first time or to give you an insight also what that really means, what are the results of the campaign. There is a lot of speculation on downloads of app, monthly active users in the app. That is all fine. We also look into those numbers internally. For example, an app download could also be an OTC customer who is downloading an app, or a monthly active user could also be an OTC user. That is why we decided to show you the most relevant numbers from our perspective, and those are the active Rx customers.
What you can see, again, we doubled this one in only a couple of months, and there was an acceleration in the second half of the year, of course, also fueled by our dedicated e-Rx marketing campaign. Overall, we think it's important to show you those numbers so that you see what we have in our mind, the marketing campaign. It works out pretty well. We are building the active customer base, and we are currently continuing to grow our customer base. If we go to the next slide, this is actually a slide we love a lot. We love a lot, I have to say, Jasper. Let's start with a key message here.
The key message is the average new customers of an Rx cohort, which we acquired in the first quarter of 2024, has a significantly better performance than the already good non-Rx cohorts we acquired in Q1 of last year. In terms of sales, we are 4.5 times higher on the Rx cohort than on the non-Rx cohort. On the gross profit level, the factor is still 2.7. I mean, we only have now one year of actuals in, but I think it is important to share those kinds of data because it is not just making some kind of assumptions about a customer lifetime value, what is going to happen in five years from now or so. Those are hard facts. This is what it is all about. You can see strong non-Rx cohorts and significantly stronger Rx cohorts.
Maybe let me try to explain it in detail if it's not completely clear based on the picture. What we have done is, I mean, we looked into the Q1 of last year, looked into all of the new customers we received on the non-Rx side, and then looked into the sales those customers generated in the first quarter. It could be that they placed one order. It could also be that they placed a second order, those new customers. For example, the one from January placed an order, a second one already in March. That means we have the sales and the number of new customers in the non-Rx cohort. Then we build just a sale per average customer of that cohort, and we index that one at 100. It's the same exercise, of course, we did with the Rx.
What you can see immediately, already in the first quarter, the Rx cohort is stronger. I mean, we would have expected probably something like that because of the higher AOV. You can clearly see how it's developing over time. The main driver for that is, of course, it's interesting to see when you require new customers, not all of them return. What we can see on the Rx cohort, more customers return than on the non-Rx cohort. Secondly, what really kicks in is we have a high share of Rx patients with chronic conditions. They have a significantly higher AOV, but also a significantly higher order frequency. If you put this all together, already after one year, you can see the sales are 4.5 times higher. Of course, I mean, that is just the beginning of it.
This, of course, will continue. The gap is going to widen over the next quarters and also the next years. A similar pattern is on the gross margin. Putting this all together, we are happy with our non-Rx cohorts because that is what you showed, Jasper. It is working. We already have fully loaded an EBITDA above 5% in established markets in Germany and Austria. We put something really great on top here. Overall, it confirms our marketing strategy was the right one because we acquired a lot of new customers. We see based on one year actual data that the cohort model works. If we now go to the next page, we would like to show you also how this all can play out. How can we get to the midterm EBITDA guidance in excess of 8%?
Let's have a look into the unit economics on the non-Rx order as well as on the Rx order. Let's go line by line. If we start with the AOV, you all know that we have something around EUR 50 on the non-Rx and more than EUR 100 on the Rx side. We are starting off with an AOV, which is more than twice as high on the Rx side. If we then go into the gross margin, very interesting what you can see, the absolute gross margin on Rx is a third higher than on non-Rx. Percentage-wise, it's lower. Percentage-wise, we are on almost 30% on the non-Rx and 18-22% on the Rx. I don't know if everybody of you is familiar how it works on the margin side on the Rx. It's regulated in Germany.
What you get is you usually get or you always get a fixed amount of money for each script you are handing in with a payer. Then on top, you get a percentage, which is then calculated based on the value of the product. That means the higher the value of the product, the more margin absolutely you get. Of course, the higher the value of the margin, the higher the value of the product, the lower the percentage, of course, becomes because of the fixed block in it. What we currently see based on the customers we have acquired, and again, most of them, they have chronic conditions, currently we see gross margin coming in in the area of 18%-22%. If we then look down all the way on the cost, let's start with the variable cost.
Variable costs are all of the costs except marketing. What we can clearly see here, the variable costs are almost comparable. I mean, the logistics cost as well as the last mile cost are comparable. On the Rx cohort, we have an additional step, which is the pharmaceutical check. Absolutely, the variable costs are a little bit higher. On the other hand, percentage-wise, it is lower. On marketing, we see a similar pattern. I mean, looking now back into the cohorts we acquired on Rx, we can clearly see you almost do not need marketing once you have them because they love the service so much. We see that the marketing cost to keep an Rx customer is lower, absolutely, and in percent. That means both cohorts can very well fuel our EBITDA guidance in excess of 8%.
If you then put on top the marketplace business, which I explained earlier to you, where we also have an additional revenue stream, you can clearly see both areas are playing and fueling our midterm EBITDA guidance in excess of 8%. Having said this, I would like to turn over to Jasper.
Thank you. We are looking even further ahead now. After the great results that we saw this year, it achieved the past year. This is such an important slide that we are having here because the last year, we expanded our capacity because of the success in Italy. We also shared with you already that we are building distribution capacity in the Czech Republic. This is something else.
This is a major project that actually right in the location where we are sitting here in Sevenum, we started a major project in the infra logistics here in Sevenum. This will not only double our capacity that we have in total at this location, but it will also significantly reduce our cost because of much fewer labor per order. It is a highly automated solution. We selected the world's best technology firms for this. It is proven technology. Of course, we tailored it towards the specific of our processes. I am repeating what I just said. We doubled the capacity and we reduced labor by 70% plus versus the current process. The total investment is around EUR 100 million. We will be paying that in 2025, 2026, 2027.
We financed that through our existing cash balances at the moment, but very likely because it's such a good collateral, we will be replacing that by at least anytime soon. Fast payback, and we're planning to go live. Operational parcels from the automated system very early in 2027. If we then go to the second and last slide, which the guidance for the current year is, I'm reading out what's on the slides and add a little bit of color. We expect for this year a total sales growth in excess of 25%. In other words, we are not expecting any slowdown versus what we achieved in the exceptional year last year. In Germany, we expect that the Rx will roughly double to above EUR 0.5 billion. Non-Rx for the total group, as we say, in excess of 18%.
We want to do so with an adjusted EBITDA margin above 2%, namely between 2% and 2.5%. All those four elements are full year guidance, but in Q1, and those that know the company and the many year seasonality because of our internal plan, but also because of the seasonality of the quarter, we do not know it for sure, but it is likely that Q1 will be somewhat lower, also meaning that all the quarters will be somewhat higher, probably. Taking now a helicopter view, looking at this, I had to think back of the year 2021. We then crossed the EUR 1 billion. It was EUR 1 billion and 60 million. That was 2021. If you add all the numbers that you are seeing here, it seems to be that we are approaching in the current year the EUR 3 billion already.
For the coming year, we expect unabatedly, so uninterrupted continuation of our organic growth. We expect a doubling of the e-Rx. As an outcome of the total, what we think is the best value creation for the company, what we are doing there, we think it will be a margin minimally at 2%. Of course, if things happen, we will act upon it, as we always do as a company. This is at the moment our best expectation for the current year. With that, I think we should rapidly go to the Q&A. Yeah. Is there any question?
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch on telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue.
If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only hands up while asking a question. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Aisyah Noor from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. My first one is on the Rx sales ambition of more than EUR 500 million. Would it imply that you achieve about 0.9% market share for the year when you are already running at 0.82% in February? Is it fair to say you are being conservative here, and do you think there could be some volatility? Just give your color on the downside risks that you are building into this figure.
My second question is on the gross margin. Thanks for the unit economics data. Very helpful. Could you describe a little bit the drivers of the 18-22% range for the e-Rx cohort between pricing, mix, growth? What takes it to the bottom and upper end of that? Would you expect your gross margin to gravitate towards this kind of 20% for 2025? Thank you.
Yes, do you want to start on the first one?
Yeah. Good morning. Also from my side, we did not speak to each other yet. Thanks for your question there. No, it is not. It is our best expectation. If you give me now a document where I can sign, and you will have $500,000 of Rx sales, I will sign it immediately. We have to do a lot of hard work for that, and we are looking forward to that.
We are not conservative there. Thanks for the implicit compliment that we're almost there, you're saying. I have to say that the step up that you're really seeing from 0.66 to 0.82 from December to February, it's fair to say that this December number, that is a seasonality lower number for our market share. That is a huge step up. Actually, December was somewhat lower than November was, but that's just seasonality. Now we are in total not. This is our best expectation. Of course, always aiming for more, but this is the realistic expectation. Good question on the gross margin, I think you are looking forward to answer that.
Yes, yes. We'd love to answer. I like the question on the gross margin. There are many ways how we can get to the gross margin.
Also a reason why we currently still give a range. I mean, some of the things are easy. This is a business now. We are first starting to get in, if you compare to the larger OTC and BPC business we have. That means in terms of supply, you can always sometimes you go with a wholesale, sometimes you get direct supply from manufacturers. There is also a margin gap in between that one. That is one of the drivers. The more volume you get, of course, the better we become also on purchasing. The second one is there is a share of OTC products also in the Rx basket. Of course, that share can go over time. As you can imagine, that is part of our product where we offer also OTC and BPC products to our customers.
That is a reason why there's still also movement in this one because we only had one year of learning, and we haven't reached what I would call the ideal share of a mixed basket. Of course, the main driver is, again, this reimbursement scheme in Germany. I mean, you usually get a fixed amount, which is EUR 8 something, and then there's a little bit of a subtraction from that. Then you get 3% on the product value. As you can imagine, if the product value goes up, of course, the absolute margin goes up, but the percentage goes down because the EUR 8 something, they stay where they are, and you only get the 3% related to the value of the product.
Which kind of customers we will get in this year and the upcoming years, we do not know exactly. What we have seen so far, which is the good news, the customers we see today are those with chronical conditions. That is exactly the target group we want to have. It really heavily depends on which kind of products are they sending in. Is it more on the generic side and the price is lower, so the percentage margin is higher, or is it more on the higher price items and the absolute margin is higher, but the percentage is lower? This is something which is ongoing, and therefore we have to give a range. We have to give a range. It is only really the first year of experience we have in this fast-growing Rx area.
Maybe by the end of the year, we will be much smarter. In any case, it's good enough to fuel our above 8% EBITDA midterm guidance.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Christopher Johnen from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks also for taking my questions. First, is it possible to get a bit of, I noticed there wasn't anything in the prepared remarks on the Algéjar ruling with respect to bonus advertising. I know you sent out a PR after the ruling a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you could give us a bit more color as to what your thinking is on that. Second question, I was curious on Belgium. I mean, you've said this a couple of times now in a couple of calls, like a quarter of the population being a customer.
That would suggest that this must be a somewhat stable business with respect to being quite mature or probably still growing. Is there anything you can share on profitability for Belgium? I know you're probably not keen to talk about individual markets, but given that international overall is still loss-making, it would be interesting to hear about drivers or individual countries within that sort of profit mix. Last question on the 8% margin target. I understand it's a mid to long-term guidance, but in the prepared remarks earlier, you have sort of alluded to the, let's say, established part of the business already being at 5%-6%. I think the general assumption is that marketing and size also play quite a big role. I mean, is it reasonable for us to assume that at some point you'll give us a specific target?
Like, is the 8% already theoretically possible, I don't know, in 2030? What's your thinking about it? Because obviously, this mid to long-term thing has been a rolling target for quite a while. The question is, at what point is it going to be a realistic expectation? Yeah, that's it. Thank you.
Okay. I will give it a try on the first question and then hand it over to Jasper. I mean, your question was on the ECJ ruling. First of all, we are really happy with the ruling. It is the second time that the European Court of Justice, after the first time has been 2016, allows a bonus on Rx. That is great, and that has also been our statement in our press release. You know how this works.
I mean, the European Court of Justice only receives specific cases from a German court. They get forwarded to the European Court of Justice, and from there, they find their way back to the German court. That is what is now going to happen. I think we should not really speculate about what this means in detail. Again, the overall direction, I think it's clear. We can give a direct bonus on Rx. This is what we are really happy with. Let's see really what happens then on the German side. We will, of course, react accordingly to that so that we are always in line with the actual rulings. I think that's all we can say at this point in time. The rest would just be speculation. Again, we are happy.
It's a confirmation of 2016, and then let's take it from there. Jasper, do you want to go for the question number two instead?
Yeah, I will do that. I will do that. Thanks. On Belgium, yeah, indeed, I can confirm what you are saying, but I cannot confirm the second part because actually, though we indeed don't talk about individual countries, I will also not do that now. We have the segment reporting. I can disclose here that we continuously grow double digits in Belgium. I also can say that the penetration numbers that we are having here, despite all the growth that we are seeing here, are much lower than we have in Germany at the moment. In Germany, even the penetration is still increasing. There is ample room to grow.
Olaf also just said we're even adding the marketplace to that now in total. It is a very good base, and we do not see an end to the growth opportunities that we are having there. We are also really happy with the financial results that we are achieving in that market. The third one, the midterm to 8%, yeah, I think that is super important that you ask that question because it is not that we need to scale. We need to be larger, and then in the end, we hope we will get to the 8%. If we are saying that our established businesses are doing 5%-6%, indeed, what you are saying, there is a lot of marketing included in there. You can estimate what the contribution margin is there.
We could be within a month, we could be close to the 8% if we would like to do that. We are so convinced of the opportunity in total Europe and e-Rx that we think it is much more value-creating by continuing to increase our base. That underlines our unit economics are very strong because of the setup of our model, because of the focus on the efficiency that we are having in the attractiveness of the industry. You say, when will you achieve it? Yeah. That is a decision that we can take when we will achieve it. What you are seeing now is that we continue to grow very fast in combination with margin improvement. I think that is the fastest value creation that we can do at the moment. I am repeating myself a little bit, so sorry for that.
I hope that the other numbers are also showing the attractiveness of the contribution margin in our case.
That's clear. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Yeah.
The next question comes from Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Olaf, Jasper. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is on your Rx business. You mentioned that you have more than 1 million of active Rx customers by the end of 2024. Could you share with us how many of them have a chronic disease? And then a second question also on the e-prescription market, is there any update on the e-prescription for privately insured people in Germany? I understand that the market opportunity is a bit smaller, but it should still be a tailwind for you.
Finally, on your marketing strategy, and without giving your competitors too much information, what are the key learnings of your intensified marketing campaign over the last few months?
Nice question for you all.
Yeah. First, yeah, on the chronically.
Yes, on the chronically. Yeah. I mean, look, we do not really want to give so many insights. I love the questions, and I can understand them, but we do not want to give so many insights. I mean, we try to say that there is a high share. I think that is what is on the page, is a high share of patients with chronic conditions. Because, I mean, the fear probably could have been, "Oh, it is only a one-time customer or something like this." No, we see it is exactly the other way around.
If we look into the frequency, so that means the number of scripts being available to an individual active customer, for sure, that has to be a chronic patient. It cannot be that there are so many scripts on that level. Therefore, additionally, of course, we can also look into what is called the ATC code. There is always a coding of the product. If you look into this one, you can pretty easily, if you are a pharmacist, and even if you are not a pharmacist, you can differentiate if it is something acute, which may be a painkiller or something like this, or on the other hand, if it is something more chronic, which is maybe blood pressure, sugar, diabetes, whatever it is. It is easy to see that.
Therefore, we can identify a very high share of chronic conditions, but we do not want to give any more details into that one. I think the second question, if I recall it right, was on the privately insured, so a PKV business. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Overall, the market share, I mean, 90% of the Germans are GKV, so statutory insured, 10% are privately insured. Therefore, the most relevant market is the GKV market where we have the e-script and where we are really happy. To my knowledge, the PKV is still lagging behind. I have not seen a schedule or, let's say, from a regulatory perspective, a push where you have certain deadlines when to introduce this. They are working on that. To my knowledge, there is not such a fixed date or something like this.
Of course, at one point in time, it will happen. Of course, we will also try to get into that business, which we did also in the past. As of now, not to my knowledge, not a fixed date to have e-script on the PKV. The third question. Yes, I forgot the third question. I thought it's maybe a little bit also on your side. I don't know. No, and you placed it in the context already, Jan.
Yeah, indeed, that's an area where we sometimes shed some light on, but we don't want to share too much for obvious reasons, I would say. It has been a very exciting year. What's the key learning of the marketing that we have in total? In the end, you need also to count your blessings. It is working.
There is a technology change, something with an NFC and a chip and etc. How are you able to explain it to your customers? You see the results that we have. The key learning is that we are apparently capable of educating the people, or at least they place their trust into our hands to place their order with this digitization that we're seeing here. We see that if we then also subsequently deliver on what people hope that we will do, we get very high scores. Very satisfied with the additional service in the perspective of the total healthcare system, having also this possibility next to all the availability of the physical stores that has also this customer journey. Your question was to disclose learnings, but I leave it there. It's okay. We are continuously learning also. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
The next question.
We're over time, but for me, it's good to take one or two. Yeah. Let's continue.
The next question comes from Christian Salice from Hauck and Aufhäuser. Please go ahead.
Hey, everyone. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. I'm giving the marketing a try again. I understand that you're not disclosing the exact marketing amounts, but could you maybe just give us an indication, for example, whether your marketing ratio has increased year-over-year in % of sales in 2024, or has it remained rather stable? Also on the quarterly run rate, would it be fair to assume that you obviously have increased marketing quite significantly in Q4?
During Q4, maybe it felt it was maybe a little bit too much, and now you're scaling back a little bit more to a normalized level, which would maybe be in between the Q3 and Q4 levels on an absolute basis. That would be interesting. Also, in light of the recent ECJ ruling, how is the Rx bonus going to play into the marketing strategy going forward? Thank you.
I mean, those two questions are wonderful questions, I have to say. I mean, they're really to the point, but unfortunately, we really do not want to answer them in detail. Let me give it a try on the first one. What we try to do is, I mean, and we always said that we are very agile in terms of marketing.
We are looking into different channels, different communication messages we have out there, and then we try to steer the CAC, so the cost per new customer. This is something we are doing. Whenever we see that we are doing too much, we reduce a little bit, maybe in one channel or increase in another channel. It is more an ongoing optimization on the CAC. We say, "This is the amount per new customer we want to spend." We are working and fine-tuning on this quarter after quarter and month after month. If possible, we would not want to give more insights on how we steer that. That is one of the second part, the bonus. I mean, I think that's also a good question. We have a voucher out there.
It has always been out there, and it has been confirmed by the ECJ. You get, for the first order, you currently get a direct bonus on your Rx. If you have a co-payment, or in Germany, there are also some other things like called a Festbetrag difference. That is a very regulated, detailed information on the pricing, but nevertheless, something a customer potentially has to pay. I mean, that is in the details of our vouchers. It is out there for new customers. We have been using this in the past, and we are currently using that. Of course, the question is, what else do we want to do on the bonus side? This is, again, something which we do not want to display here because that is sensitive information.
We are really happy on what we have today, and we have established a business model currently where it's more driven by our great product as opposed to by price. We have all the options on our hand, and you will see once we act on the market. So far, we have this voucher for new customers, and it is in line with the ECJ ruling.
All right. Thanks so much. Just a quick follow-up on the paper Rx business. Are there still people who are really sending in the paper scripts to you? Also, what's been the paper Rx development over the last quarter? Was it stable, or is the share decreasing again, or still increasing?
What was the last question? Increasing or decreasing?
No, if the paper Rx share, is it stabilizing, or does it continue to decrease quarter over quarter?
We will keep our pharmacy services here open until the last letter in Germany will be sent to us. We took that principle. Everybody who wants to send in a paper can always send in a paper. All the privately insured customers, patients, they are still doing that. Also, some for the socially insured, but I can say it has really, because of the customer preference, really diminished to a minimum percentage that we have in the socially insured. Because of the PKV, we still have. As I just said, yeah. We have some that the majority of the people, they really want to benefit from not walking to the letterbox and waiting, but placing the order immediately, have the improved journey where they can also order other things at the same time, see availability checks, and other things.
Answering your question directly, very small percentage in social.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Olivier Calvet, UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Olaf and Jasper. I have a few questions left. The first one just on German Rx. 500 million is close to 0.9% market share. Just as a follow-up to the first question, do you expect any headwinds on the German Rx growth or slowdown in market share gains versus last year? Because if you assume your February market share holds, you're already at 450 million. And your 1 million active Rx customers, could you quantify the share of your customers that are repeat customers, maybe? That's the first question. Second question would be on sort of, I mean, you're showing a very impressive growth in non-Rx across DACH and international and have done so historically.
Obviously, we've seen competitors' interest in the space. Would it be fair to assume that your non-Rx business is broadly evenly split between medicines, as in OTC, versus non-medicines, so vitamins, BPC, stuff like that? Finally, on the free cash flow, I understand that you don't want to give a, given the dynamic situation, a free cash flow guidance. I was just wondering if you could help us with the building blocks in terms of working capital dynamic. Now that you've seen about a year of e-Rx customers, what is the working capital dynamics in Rx specifically versus non-Rx? CapEx guidance for the year. If you could help us a little bit with the phasing of that EUR 95 million-EUR 105 million project that you have in Sevenum over 2025-2027, that would be helpful. Thanks.
EUR 500 million.
Yes. Yes.
I mean, maybe the first question is, if I recall the first question right, there's a slowdown on Rx. We can see, no, we don't see a slowdown on Rx. Why should we see this? I mean, the way it fundamentally works is, I mean, we have this freedom of choice here in Germany. And as long as the product is good and we think we have a great product, we don't see any reason why there should be a slowdown. I mean, we have a great product on the non-Rx side, which has a market share that is more than 20%. Why should there be a slowdown? In terms of looking into our overall guidance, I think that's also what Jasper already pointed out. I mean, look, if you are right now, we are below than the, I think you mentioned the 0.9.
We think it has to be higher to reach our guidance. Nevertheless, right now, we are lower, and we still have to bring in this for a full year. I think that is already what Jasper pointed out. I do not see any slowdown on Rx. It is the opposite. The solution becomes more and more popular. There was a second question on competitors entering the market. I was trying to explain that there have been online platforms out there for more than 10 years. On those platforms, there are online pharmacies offering OTC and BPC. That is fine. It has always been the case. Especially, there is one online retailer who is the largest one in Germany and has been doing this for 10 years.
We do not see there any additional competition, even if now others are trying to do the same thing because over the last couple of years, the last 10 or 15 years, we have been growing our business very well. We also do not give any breakdown of OTC and BPC. To us, it is also not so relevant because, I mean, those are just platforms, not really pharmacies. We have been growing even despite them offering OTC and BPC. There was, I think, some more questions, which I probably think work better with you, Jasper. Is that right?
Yeah. No, I have opened otherwise. You add. Hi, Olivier. Good morning. Yeah, the number of repeat customers in the 1.1, you will understand, not disclose. Looking at the cohort information, you will see that they are better than we have seen in non-Rx.
In non-Rx, we are pretty happy with the frequency of our customers. I will not disclose any additional information. Your question about everything but Rx, how is the split between OTC and BPC? The interesting thing about that, that's very material-driven. In some countries, we have significantly higher shares of BPC, and in other countries, it's mainly OTC. Also there, I don't want to add anything else. We talk Rx, and we talk all the other assortments, which we always name OTC, but it is indeed OTC, BPC, healthcare-related vitamins, etc. That's the entire business. Free cash flow, I understand, but we don't give guidance on free cash flow. I cannot answer your question there. Also nothing to hide. You see the EBITDA as the driver of our cash generation. You talk about working capital dynamics there.
On one hand, you see the underlying continuous improvement that we're having as a total company. At the same time, you see that the receivables from the insurance companies might increase somewhat, but it's also not unlikely that we have a certain solution for that. We will see that in the future in total. As to the investment, the base scenario, as we just said, is that we will be spending this money in the coming three years. I also added to it that it is also quite likely that there will be a lease, and that means there is no cash out at all in the coming years until we start harvesting the benefits when we will be starting to pay a lease. That is a little bit forward-looking because otherwise, we would have announced that now. That is common practice.
It's such a good collateral to do that. Adding those things up, then you get to the free cash flow. We do not have a guidance there.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Jasper.
Yeah. Okay. Have a nice day. Thank you.
The next question comes from [crosstalk] . Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you. Congrats on the results. Sorry to come back to this topic again. I am trying to understand how you are thinking on this topic regarding the European Court ruling. Is it not fair to assume that there will be some regulatory headwinds? Right now, and please correct me if I am wrong, you are in the complete opposite position as over one year ago when the NFC CardLink was not available and the company, yeah, threatened to sue because of unfair disadvantage, which correctly so was right.
Now it looks like that the Netherlands-based foreign pharmacies have an unfair advantage over the local pharmacies who are not allowed to offer these Rx discounts. Do not you think that there could be some regulatory headwinds? This could even reignite the whole discussion about prohibiting mail-order Rx in Germany, especially with a CDU as the new government?
Thank you very much for that question, of course. That has been a fundamental question for more than 10 or 15 years on our business model. Let me try to give some insight into that. On the other hand, we should not start really a speculation.
I mean, as you said last year, I think, I mean, without CardLink, there would have been a or there had been a discrimination of our businesses because, I mean, few customers get this printout from the doctors. Therefore, I think it was fair and it was a good move also to establish this CardLink solution. To me, a completely different discussion is this bonus. It has nothing to do with the CardLink. CardLink was to make sure we do not just get an additional discrimination because of e-Rx being introduced. The long-outstanding discussion on the bonus is a different one because the argumentation, the key argumentation, and also why the European Court of Justice has ruled twice in our favor is pretty easy. I mean, there is a protection in Germany, which is called the ban of foreign ownership.
Countries from outside Germany are not allowed to enter that business because of the ban on foreign ownership. That means there is also discrimination from that perspective towards European pharmacies. On top, there is this fixed price regime in Germany on Rx. It is a double protection. That was one of the reasons, one of the reasons why the ECJ now ruled twice, that to offset this disadvantage, yes, online pharmacies can offer a bonus on Rx. I mean, I think we shouldn't get too much into those discussions because, I mean, they are legal discussions. It's not helpful to have them here. This is, I just want to show, I want to explain, it's the difference between the discrimination on the access via NFC and the discrimination because of the ban of foreign ownership, which was ruled twice.
Of course, there is always and has always been political discussion in Germany. It has been also part of this business model for more than 10 or 15 years. Therefore, you saw what happened in the past. I mean, there have been a lot of attempts, sometimes also to put a ban on our business, but I mean, it has never worked out. Right now, I strongly believe, I mean, there is a freedom of choice on pharmacy in Germany. That means we are an established business also on Rx. It is something the customer wants. Therefore, I am pretty confident that, of course, there will be a new government. Let us see what the new government comes up with. I think, personally, we are part of the solution. That is what we also see in the numbers.
I mean, we just recently also published a study saying, I mean, who are our customers? And what you can see, our customers are not customers in the big cities. They are customers in the rural areas. We, as a pharmacy, are part of the solution. That is what we strongly believe. Therefore, we will always have this position when talking to regulators. I also think we shouldn't speculate about what's going to happen with the next government. We don't have a new government right now. Overall, I can say, I mean, having been in that business, especially on that case for almost 15 years, I can say I feel really comfortable about our current setup and also forward-looking. I think the setup is ideal. Again, we are part of the solution and not part of the problem in German healthcare.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your insights on that.
The next question. [crosstalk] from JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have a couple of ones I would like to take them one by one, if I may. The first one is a quick one. You have this new slide in the presentation regarding the unit economics, and you also showed the gross margin. If you look historically, I mean, if you take the mix of both businesses, and you never disclosed that exactly, but you can for sure say that you never reached these numbers, like the 30% and the 18% on e-Rx. I was wondering whether this has something to do with the sales tax, the Umsatzsteuer. It's a topic that we discussed a couple of times.
Do you expect to reach these kinds of margins in either 18-22% and the 30% in non-Rx after the sales tax or before the sales tax? An associated question, is there a sales tax actually on the e-Rx or not? Is it just OTC?
Jasper, thanks. You want to give it a try? Maybe I can help you then out on the e-Rx.
I mean, thanks for your question. The numbers that we're showing here, for example, in the non-Rx, that's our numbers that we have in total. I always look at it from the internal perspective, which is by definition net sales, the way we report. It's a gross margin as a percentage of net sales.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear. Just to confirm, on the Rx sales, is there also a sales tax, or is it just the OTC?
I'm sure there is no one on the media service, right? On the German Rx, is there a sales tax?
Can you make me understand the background of the question that I can answer it better? I give you a couple of things. For example, there are sometimes floating around numbers of EUR 65 billion-EUR 70 billion market, etc. Everywhere we try to be as clear as possible in our market size, then we in total define. We take the net sales perspective, excluding if any VAT that we have in total. In all the numbers that we talked about today, that is also always from that perspective. From us, the VAT is not a relevant one here.
If you look at the total regulatory framework of the reimbursements of Rx, indeed, in the total calculation, you need to take into account certain elements of it. That is why I do not understand the background of your question. Everything we show here is in line with how you, IFRS-wise, accounting-wise, should look at the numbers.
Yeah, the background is, I mean, if I put in the numbers that you state here in my model, then my margin floats below. Because historically, the reported margins as in terms of sales, take your gross profit, has always been lower than the 30% and also presumably lower than the 18-22% in Rx. If I take just these blunt numbers, then my margin explodes. That is just the background of my question.
Yeah. Yeah.
Probably in the past, you were taking then a number which was including OTC and Rx, I would assume, with the 30%. I have to say, otherwise, please also reach out to investor relations or me because we can take this also offline because it's a little bit detailed for me in this call to talk about it if you want to clarify something. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Sure. I have two others, if I may. The first one relates a bit to Olivier's question. It's basically he was asking whether you believe that e-Rx is no longer going to grow. I mean, of course, you said no because the whole case is that e-Rx is going to grow. I think his question was rather related to the 500 million of Rx.
Maybe you can clarify, is this including the, according to my estimate, roughly 60 million paper script sales, or is it excluding those, the 500 million?
Jasper, do you want to give it a try? I think the answer is pretty clear. It includes everything. It includes e-Rx and paper Rx. It includes GKV and PKV. Statutory insured and privately insured, it's all in. That is what we call our Rx number.
For example, the 142% we had in Q4 was for e-Rx, of course, much higher. Yeah, because that's the total.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, then you have just to be aware that if you do the math, this really implies that your new client growth in e-Rx really goes down. I mean, you also said in excess of 500 million.
Oh, no.
It would also end up at EUR 600 million, right?
No. No, but that's not true. I think it's important to say that is not our plan. We don't see something like this. There is no decline in new number of customers. It's the opposite. It continues. It works very well. I don't know how you want to make this up because we don't see it. We don't simply see it.
No, no. Of course. My estimate is also EUR 600 million, not EUR 500 million. Anyway, the last question, I don't want to take too much time. Regarding adjustments, how large are the adjustments going to be this year on EBITDA level according to your current assessment or estimate?
I look at the operator. This is really the last sentence we're going to say because we ran out of time.
I like to answer this one because it's very clear. Everything adjusted totally into the details disclosed in the annual report. Super simple it is. It is only our stock option program that you're seeing there in total. There's nothing there that we adjust to get to a certain number. It is to get to the cash generation. Last year, EUR 33 million of adjusted EBITDA, EUR 32 million of operating cash flow that we had there. Nothing like we adjust for this and that. It's only what I just said. And it's in the exact detail disclosed there. It was just a couple of million last year. Yeah. Because we think it's a more relevant number than the fully loaded one. Yeah. Yeah. It's very small, but all details are there.
So what's the number? EUR 6 million, or is it?
It's in the annual report. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I mean, for 2025 was the question.
We guide them adjusted EBITDA only. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, the question was, what is going to be? Okay. You do not want to give your current estimate. Okay.
Yeah, there is also nothing to hide. We do not have guidance on the adjusted on the adjustments. There is not any reason to think that it will be very different from this year. I will take, I do not know what, current year number and with the growth that we achieve, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Cool. Congratulations again. Well done. Keep in touch.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Olaf Heinrich for any closing remarks. Yeah. Thank you very much. Great questions.
I mean, a lot of great questions. And Jasper, it's always fun. Yeah. It's always fun, I have to say. Look, to us, I mean, 2024 has been an exceptional year, but also this year is going to be a great year. So it's a lot of stuff going on at the same time. We are really looking forward into this year. And then sharing with you, next time the information, I think it's beginning of May, 7th of May or so.
Yeah. We have training of that much earlier already. And then 6th of May, we have 6th of May.
See you 6th of May, when then maybe some of the questions you asked today, maybe we already have an answer to that one. Thank you very much for joining and have a good day. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over.