Well, good morning, everybody. Jasper and I, we want to welcome all of you to the release of SHOP APOTHEKE's full year 2020 financials. Of course, we also want to provide you with an outlook for the current year, for 2021. Before we get into the detail, over the last few months, I came to realize that some of you are not only closely monitoring how SHOP APOTHEKE does and SHOP APOTHEKE's numbers, but at least one person also seems to monitor the ties that I'm wearing. I realized I was told that for the last two webcasts, I wore the same tie. Hopefully, you know, I'm responding to our investors' needs, and I want to show a greater variety in the ties I'm wearing going forward.
Well, as I already mentioned, this is the third time we do the webcast from our new facility, our new headquarters, our new distribution center right here in Sevenum. As we said before, it's literally just a stone throw away from our old facility, even though this was within the boundaries of the city of Venlo. Compared to the last time we talked to you, I can assure you it's much busier here today because we are literally in the midst of transitioning our logistics activities from the old to the new facility. Before we jump into the meat of our presentation, let me just take a step back and let me remind everybody what drives SHOP APOTHEKE, what gets us up in the morning and what gets us going.
What is our mission? What is our ultimate aim? At the end of the day, at SHOP APOTHEKE, we wanna make a meaningful contribution to enabling our customers to better manage their healthcare needs. Or as we, you know, stated here on the chart, we want to enable everyone to live the healthiest life possible. Well, with this, we have a busy agenda as we always do. We're probably going to take around 20 minutes to go through everything that we have prepared for you. Jasper and I, we're going to start by sharing with you know, the review of what happened last year, including the financials. We're going to shift gears, and we're going to look forward towards 2021, even though we're already in 2021, talking about some of our key strategic initiatives.
Of course then Jasper is going to conclude by sharing with you the outlook, the financial outlook for 2021. At the end, we're going to, of course, answer your questions. Once again, we don't have simply at this point of time, we don't have the technical capability to entertain live audio questions. We would ask you one more time to submit your questions by clicking on the question mark on your screen on the left-hand side. At the end of the meeting, we're going to answer as many questions as we possibly can in the, in the time that's left.
Again, talking about the highlights of 2020, I think all of you would agree with us that this 2020 was truly an extraordinary year, a year that we're not going to forget during our lifetime. Unfortunately, it looks like the corona pandemic is going to cover more than just a 12-month period. At some point of time, this is also going to be behind us. We're all confident that we're on the right track. Before I talk to you about SHOP APOTHEKE's accomplishments, because we're now talking to our shareholders and to, you know, other members of the financial community, I also wanna one more time express our, Jasper's and mine, and management's deepest gratitude and appreciation for to all of those who made the numbers that we have the privilege simply to share with you, who made this possible.
Of course, I'm talking about the teams and the employees of SHOP APOTHEKE across the value chain, across the location, across all the departments. Also for them, last year wasn't an easy year, because of their drive, their commitment, we were able to be there when our customers wanted us to be there for them. Well, again, shifting gears again, looking at the numbers, you're already familiar with the strong growth in the fourth quarter, 38%. When you look at the whole year, it's pretty much the same picture. SHOP APOTHEKE in 2020 compared to 2019 grew by a solid 38%. Our sales reached EUR 968 million.
I don't wanna steal Jasper too much of your thunder, I dare to say that our guidance will indicate that we are clearly going to cross the EUR 1 billion threshold in 2021. Through our almost continued investments in our brand and in customer acquisition. When I say almost continued, there was an exception in the second half of March and the first half of April last year when we reduced our online marketing to almost zero at the start of the corona pandemic. You know, over the remainder of the year, we continued to invest. As a result of this, we added 1.6 million active customers to our customer base, which reached 6.3 million unique active customers by the end of December.
You know, needless to say, all of our growth last year was fully organic. The strong top-line performance cascaded through our P&L, and we ended the year. Across the year, we generated an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2.2%. Again, going back a year, at this time we had guided towards a break even at the adjusted EBITDA level. We clearly did better than our original guidance. As Jasper had mentioned in previous earnings releases, even without the corona effect, which certainly contributed, but even without the corona effect, we would have generated a positive adjusted EBITDA margin last year. From my vantage point, even more impressive than the percentages are the sheer, the plain euros. In 2019, we had an adjusted EBITDA loss of EUR 13.5 million.
Last year we had a profit of almost EUR 22 million, which translates into a year-over-year improvement of EUR 35 million. Looking at operating cash flow, even more impressive the improvement. We had a negative operating cash flow in 2019 of almost EUR 31 million. In 2020, we had a positive operating cash flow, and Jasper is going to share more details of almost EUR 18 million. An improvement, operating cash flow improvement year-over-year, by EUR 48 million. In parallel, we strengthened our balance sheet, you know, with two initiatives that Jasper led on behalf of SHOP APOTHEKE.
We retired, we did an early conversion of our old convertible bond, EUR 135 million in November. We replaced it with a new convertible bond in early January, totaling EUR 225 million at, you know, I dare to say, Jasper, truly amazing conditions. Again, just one highlight. For the EUR 225 million , we're not paying any interest. Zero. I think that that's a strong sign of trust from the financial community. As a result of this, I think we can, with a lot of confidence, based on a strong balance sheet, look into the future.
Parallel to achieving, you know, strong results last year, we also executed a very focused strategy, and we're going to talk more about this, getting ready for the introduction of e-prescriptions, our new logistics center, the expansion of our same-day offering under the label SHOP APOTHEKE NOW!, the commencement of the cooperation with ZAVA, one of the leading online doctor service providers in Europe. Again, looking at our two reporting segments. The DACH region, we had in Q4, we showed growth of 34% versus Q4 2019. When you look at this over the course of the full year, you see growth of 32.5% in the DACH region. This includes growth of our Rx business in Germany by 17.6%.
By the end of last year, our Rx business in Germany amounted to almost EUR 220 million. Again, looking at the overall growth of 32.5% and the Rx growth, and we are very proud of last year's Rx growth of 17.6%, that gives you an indication that the non-Rx business grew at a much faster pace than the 32.5% for the whole segment. Our international segment, which is comprised of Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, in Q4 grew by 68%. For the full year, the segment grew by 78%. The drop in Q4 can be attributed to some challenges that we faced, I think especially in November, with getting all of our packages in time to our customers in Belgium. For the full year, sales in the international segment amounted to EUR 153 million.
We're also very proud of our NPS, of our Net Promoter Score. Last year we maintained a strong NPS of 70. For those of you who are familiar with other retail verticals, you will recognize that 70 is already a very, you know, strong result. You know, to be transparent, at the beginning of last year, we had aimed to improve our NPS a little bit more, but in hindsight, and again, with all the dynamics around the corona pandemic, we're very happy, we're very satisfied that we succeeded in maintaining a very strong NPS of 70. As you all know, only happy customers are returning customers, and that's one reason why we closely monitor our NPS performance. In terms of the average shopping basket value, virtually no change versus last year, at around EUR 68.
From some of you throughout last year, we had received questions, "Well, should we expect a drop in our average shopping basket value because of the number of new customers and the dynamics of the Corona pandemic?" Obviously, that was not the case. The next chart I really like to look at from time to time, and what you see on this chart is the web traffic, and this covers all of our webshops. Not just the webshop in Germany, but across all of the markets. What you see here are the weeks, the 104, 105 weeks from the first week of 2019 through the last week of 2020. In the middle you have the first week of 2020.
The orange line indicates the total number of visits per week, and you see a steady growth. If you put a regression over the orange line for the year 2020, you would see continuous steady growth. This is also true for the time from the beginning of the Corona pandemic. That's the spike around the beginning of the second quarter that you see in the blue bars here till the end of the year. Looking at the blue bars, the blue bars indicate our percentage growth, the web traffic percentage growth versus the same week a year ago. This relates now, of course, to the scale on the right-hand side of the chart, the percentages.
As I already mentioned, you see the spike at the beginning of the second quarter, meaning at the beginning of the Corona pandemic. Even if you then look towards the end of 2020, in every single week, our web traffic grew by 50% or more. Not just our top line went up, but also the number of customers went up and the number of visitors to our websites increased significantly. One last remark, and you only see it, and that's something that we're also proud of, you see it here in the footnote. In January 2021, shopapotheke.com, this is our German web shop, was the number three most frequently visited website in Germany in the healthcare segment.
Number one was the website of the Robert Koch Institute, which is the vaccination, the public vaccination agency in Germany. Not a surprise. Number two was netdoktor.de, which is a site that provides general medical advice. The number three most frequently visited website in Germany in the health category was SHOP APOTHEKE. Again, that is something that doesn't just happen by accident. Well, before I hand it over to Jasper to walk you through the financials of 2020, let's have a quick look at our orders and how they developed. When you look at 2020, the quarterly distribution, no surprise, but we were glad to see that we reached our peak in the fourth quarter with a little bit more than 4.3 million orders.
For the whole year, orders amounted to 16.6 million, which translates into a growth versus 2019 of 36%. Again, largely in line with our top line growth. The green line here indicates the share of repeat orders, which held steady at 83%, which is largely in range where we want the share of repeat orders to be. We're always referring to the 80% range. With this, Jasper, I'm sure you have something to say about the financials.
Absolutely. Thanks, thanks a lot, Stefan. Good morning to you, to you all. On this slide, according to me, a set of some very strong numbers reflective of the exceptional year as Stefan just with a lot of passion explained to you all. Thanks, thanks a lot for that. Before I go into the numbers, I also want to tell you that this morning, we did not only release our numbers for the press release on our website, there's also the annual report. At the same time, I'm also proud to mention that we also released the numbers according to ESEF, so the European Single Electronic Format.
There was a possibility provided by Europe to delay the implementation, but we wanted to be a front runner there. Our numbers are also available in the new European standards. To the numbers. I will discuss with you shortly everything from sales up to including the EBITDA. It's three columns from quarter four last year and this year, and then it's full year. After this, in two slides, I will dive into a little bit more detail on the gross margin and the selling and distribution expenses as a percentage of sales, the bridge from last year to this year. First, high level the numbers. If you start with sales, I don't want to repeat too much, but the numbers are too nice to not mention them again. I take the opportunity there.
Our sales increase in the fourth quarter was EUR 73 million to EUR 264.7 million, which was a year-over-year growth of 38%. In the full year, our growth was in total EUR 267 million, EUR 267 million higher than the year before, and we were indeed very close to the EUR 1 billion sales in 2020, and it was a growth of unrounded 38.1%. These sales were achieved with a much different gross profit margin compared to 2019 and compared to 2018. I think SHOP APOTHEKE has always reported gross profit margins that were just below the 20%. In 2020, each consecutive quarter, we were significantly north of 20% of sales of the margin.
If you look at Q4, last year, Q4 2019, gross profit margin was 19.8%. We improved by 3.8 percentage points to 23.6%. More on this on the next slide. For the full year, we achieved a 3 percentage point improvement to 22.7%. These sales and this margin were achieved by selling and distribution expenses as a percentage of sales of in Q4 18.4%. Well, I'm now presenting for the fourth time the numbers of SHOP APOTHEKE. We have this column better, worse. In between brackets is worse, and otherwise it's better. It's the first time we have something in between brackets this year. Actually this was exactly what I tried to guide you and the markets on, and we are operating at this moment, two facilities at the same time.
We continued with our marketing expenses, and this is exactly internally according to what we were expecting. It is 0.7% worse than it was in Q4 2019. Over the full year, in addition to the better gross profit margin, we also improved our selling and distribution expenses as a percentage of sales by 0.6 percentage point. The adjusted administrative cost. As always, the adjustments at SHOP APOTHEKE are clear and limited. We only correct for the employee stock option cost and for one-off third-party costs related to certain projects. Certain project was the new logistics center and certain capital market transactions.
If you then look at the adjusted base on the administrative cost, you see both in Q4 and in Q3 that we leverage the expenses with an improvement as a percentage of sales of respectively 0.2 and 0.3 percentage point. All the numbers I just mentioned, they then boil down, they sum up to the adjusted EBITDA, in Q4, 2019, this was a -1.8%. It improved this year to EUR 6.1 million, from EUR 1.8 million to EUR 6.1 million, an improvement of EUR 7.9 million. For the full year, the number that Stefan also already pointed out, from a EUR -13.6 million to a positive EUR 21.6 million.
Margin-wise, a -1% in Q4 last year, which was then considered a very strong number, the fourth quarter of last year. From a -1%, we improved to a +2.3% this year. For the full year, from a -1.9% with a three times raised guidance, we ended up even north of 2% at exactly a 2.2% of sales. Because of the adjustments that I mentioned already with the administrative cost, you see, the fully loaded EBITDA is showing exactly the same development. Quarter four, the year-over-year improvement of EUR 7 million, and for the full year an improvement of EUR 38 million. To the next slide, please. Yeah. The full year bridge of the gross profit margin.
We improved for the full year 2020 compared to the year before from 19.7% to 22.7%. The major building block here is the block of 2.7 percentage point of net pricing and product mix. There's a lot in this, but the key here is that in the total optimization of the commercial proposition to our customers, we have gotten significantly more sophisticated. We only use vouchers when they are really needed. We try to optimize the product mix that we are having, and we are also balancing our promotions that we're having. A total improvement of 2.7% year-over-year.
The other of - 1.1 percentage points is mainly related to Q2 and Q3, when I also mentioned that we had to take a write-off of COVID-related articles, to be more specific on face masks. In hindsight, we sourced them at prices that were too high when we were really wanting to have those products in order to deliver them to our customers. This impact should not directly be added to the 2021 expectations because we of course, in the 2.7% also had a positive impact from the high margin COVID-specific assortment. Those are the two major blocks. We have 0.8 positive impact from country and our Rx OTC mix, and we're growing internationally even faster than we're growing in Germany. That's having a positive mix impact.
The fact that Rx was growing with only 17.6%, which according to us was a strong number, but OTC is growing faster than 14%, is resulting in this mathematical plus of 0.8%. Not at all mathematical, but fundamental is the 0.6% improvement from sourcing. This is not only because of better conditions, one-on-one on products with our pharma partners. This also includes impact from the fact where in cooperation we can get the total chain more efficient. In those cases, there is something to win for the supplier and something to us, and we're not only gaining euros, but we also reducing the CO2 by making the supply chain more efficient. The next slide, this slide is on the operational cost as a percentage of sales.
That's an improvement year-over-year of 0.8%. First of all, marketing. Marketing as a percentage of sales improved by 0.2%. Remember that indeed in March and April, we virtually had no marketing. Balancing everything, marketing as a percentage of sales is roughly flat or perhaps even increased somewhat. We were really grabbing the opportunities when we saw them by increasing our sales and our leading positions. The shipping, packaging, and payments, - 0.1%. This is only due to the fact that shipping to international is more expensive, and we're growing faster there. This is only mix. To me, by far, the most impressive number on this slide is the 0.2% improvement of operational labor.
In this very challenging year, with all the unexpected surges in demand from our customers, we were able to keep our operational labor flat, actually even improving 0.2%. While everybody who's running an operation knows that if you operate at max capacity, you also incorporate certain inefficiencies. In this operational labor here, we were able to give our operational people two times the past year at the start and at the end also a Corona bonus, not to management, not to senior executive management, but to the people who did the real work. In the operational labor, in the second half of the year, we have absorbed the fact that we are operating two facilities at the same time.
Other, an improvement of 0.5, is everything else that I did not mention, which is growing at a slower pace than our sales growth. This is scale. Here again, the adjusted EBITDA numbers in EUR million and as a percentage of sales, I mentioned them already for the last time, from EUR -1.8 million last year in Q4 to EUR +6.1 and a EUR 35.2 million improvement for the full year from a - 1.9% margin to a + 2.2%. Next, please, Carmen. What does it mean for our cash? We started 2019 with a cash balance of EUR 130 million.
If you look at our balance sheet, you see this is the sum of our cash balances and our current other financial assets because we can turn them into cash within a day. We started with EUR 130 million with the expectation that the operating result would be roughly flat, and we knew we had a big investment coming, namely the first three quarters of our new logistic facility. What happened in reality, we had EUR 130 million because of the much better operating results we generated, EUR 19 million of cash. This is the number actually that Stefan just mentioned, the 31 improvement of the operating result. This EUR +19 million was the year before EUR -60 million.
If you go to working capital, our working capital requirements, our needs for working capital increased with only EUR 1 million in 2020, while our growth was 38%. There was also the year before EUR 50 million of cash needed, and those two sum to the EUR 31 million that Stefan just mentioned. Cash from operations, including working capital, a positive EUR 80 million throughout the year. We get to the investments. The investments include 3/4 of the end of 2020 facility. We had a positive inflow of financing, which mainly relates to the April 7 capital raise of EUR 65 million. We also have interest expenses, lease expenses, and we had accelerated interest expenses related to the earlier conversion of the bond, which we did in October and November.
We ended the year with more cash than at the start of the year, namely EUR 128 million. Here's the second and the last slide on cash flow. This is only from Q3 to Q4. We ended the year at EUR 128 million, and we started Q4 with EUR 157 million. What happened then in Q4? We had a positive operating result of EUR 4 million. We had an increase of working capital, which is always the case in the Q4 because of seasonality. We had an elevated level of investments because we earlier reached a milestone for our distribution facility. We paid that, and we had an elevated level of financing mainly related to the earlier redemption of the bonds. We ended with EUR 128 million.
Also in this slide, you see that already in the first two weeks of 2021, we had two major transactions. We acquired SMARTPATIENT, and Stefan will talk about that more in a couple of slides, and we had the successful placement of EUR 225 million of convertible bonds, with the zero coupon, meaning that at this moment we have cash of more than EUR 300 million in our accounts. Thank you.
Well, Stefan. Thanks, Jasper. Let's go to the next chart. Before I hand back over the microphone to Jasper to talk to you about, you know, some of our accomplishments along our sustainability journey and of course, you know, the, the guidance for 2021, I wanna share with you or talk about some of the initiatives that will allow us to transform SHOP APOTHEKE from, you know, being pretty much an online retailer into Europe's leading customer-centric e-pharmacy platform. You know, when I started at SHOP APOTHEKE 2.5 years ago, and since then, I'm sure I've talked to some of you about, you know, the how impressed I was when in my interactions with a lot of, you know, people at SHOP APOTHEKE, how the customer was always top of mind.
The question, how can we meet and better meet our customers' needs was always top of mind. That is something that struck me, as I said, from day one. I already mentioned only happy customers are returning customers. Again, with an NPS of 70, we have many customers that are returning to SHOP APOTHEKE over and over again. Of course, it's a one-on-one of e-commerce. Once you have gained the customers, you know, we have to do our utmost to convince the customer to place a second, third, and fourth order. Over the next couple of minutes, again, just a little bit about some of the key initiatives. Of course, e-prescriptions. Related to e-prescriptions, the acquisition of SMARTPATIENT.
At SMARTPATIENT, we wanna provide a little bit more color where we are with our same-day pilot, and just a quick update on our new logistics center, as I said before, I will hand it over to Jasper again. If there has ever been in the history of SHOP APOTHEKE, if there has ever been a top priority for us, it's certainly the preparation for the introduction of e-prescriptions in Germany. You know, we are using here a little bit of a reference from Formula 1 racing. Our ambition is, of course, that once e-prescriptions start in earnest, we really wanna be in a pole position.
We installed our task force, we called the task force the e-RX First Task Force already in 2019. Since then, we continue to strengthen also in terms of resources. We strengthened the task force throughout 2020. Rx is nothing new for SHOP APOTHEKE. We've been doing this for many, many years. We understand the needs of an Rx customer. We have developed some targeted and tailored patient care programs that are really appreciated by the patients that are enrolled in them. I'm going to talk more about the acquisition of the MyTherapy app and SMARTPATIENT, I already wanna state clearly that was not, you know, an opportunistic acquisition. That was a clear pillar of our e-Rx strategy.
We were convinced, we have been convinced for quite some time that sophisticated digital medication management will be a true value add in the e-Rx environment. Generally, you know, speaking, e-prescriptions are nothing new for SHOP APOTHEKE, or digital prescriptions are nothing new for SHOP APOTHEKE. Since we started the cooperation with ZAVA, the one of the leading European online doctor service providers, we have been, and we still are, processing literally hundreds of digital prescriptions that have been sent by ZAVA customers to SHOP APOTHEKE. You know, with the experience that we have gained with handling all of these digital prescriptions, our backend processes, our backend systems are well prepared for the start of electronic prescriptions in Germany.
Last, certainly not least, we have been and we continue to talk to a lot of market participants, wherever it makes sense from our vantage point, but also wherever it makes sense and provides a benefit for our customers, we will continue to enter into partnerships with others. Just a quick word about the timing of e-prescriptions. We're saying at the bottom, SHOP APOTHEKE will be ready if e-prescriptions launch on July 1. Based on everything that we have heard from Berlin, from the health ministry, from the gematik, from other market participants in Berlin and beyond Berlin, everything that we've heard today indicates that the gematik will be ready in time. They're going to launch the telematics infrastructure and e-prescriptions around the middle of this year.
Everybody acknowledges it's an ambitious timeline. Far, again, based on everything that we have heard, the gematik seems to be on track. Of course, in earnest, e-prescriptions are going to start once it will become mandatory for physicians in Germany to issue electronic prescriptions. Before I talk about, you know, the value proposition, SHOP APOTHEKE's value proposition for e-prescription customers in the future, let's look one more time at the potential that's in front of us and our competitors. On the left-hand side you see the total market size, based on 2019 IMS data. The 2020 data is not yet fully available. In 2019, the Rx market amounted to EUR 50 billion-EUR 52 billion in Germany. This is at AVP.
Sorry, I have to torture you with a, with a German term, Apothekenverkaufspreis, that includes VAT. Again, just in order of magnitude, at this pricing level, we talk about EUR 50 billion-EUR 52 billion. Also based on IMS data, the OTC market in 2019 amounted to around EUR7 billion. Now switching to the right-hand side, looking at the online share of the OTC market, and there are different data points, but it's everything that we are, we are seeing. It's the online share is around 20%. Of course, this is not only SHOP APOTHEKE, there's SHOP APOTHEKE and our direct competitors. When we look at the Rx market, of course, and that is not a surprise to you, a very different picture with an online share from 1%-1.5%.
We, by no stretch of the imagination do we wanna lead you to believe that the Rx online share is going to resemble the OTC market anytime soon. Based on the projections of market experts and some of them are, of course, participating in this call, the projections seem to converge around the 8%-12% range a couple of years after the introduction of e-prescriptions in Germany. We as SHOP APOTHEKE, we can get our arms around this range of 8%-12%. Again, just to provide some context, our share, SHOP APOTHEKE's share of the 1%-1.5% last year amounted to around EUR 220 million.
Again, thinking about the value proposition for e-Rx customers going forward, SHOP APOTHEKE has been one of the pioneers in the mail order Rx market. We've been doing this for many, many years, and as a pharmacy, we have learned what is important for Rx customers if they receive their orders via mail delivery. At the same time, of course, we have a deep expertise in e-commerce. We have scaled up SHOP APOTHEKE over the years to almost EUR 1 billion. Our aim with the e-Rx opportunity is simply to bring our pharmacy expertise and our e-commerce expertise together to provide the best-in-class customer journey, customer experience for our e-Rx customers. That is there are no surprises for you.
It's about the customer centricity I was referring to earlier. It's about the convenience that people appreciate, especially, but not only during a pandemic. It's the ability to order 24/7. It's the flexibility in terms of how you submit your prescription, how you pay for your co-pays, very important. That's really a change for all of us. It's the breadth of the assortment that we can bring to bear in an e-prescription environment. Keep in mind, right now, when a customer sends a prescription to us, it's a paper format, and it's really cumbersome to add other products to the Rx basket.
In the future, all of this is going to happen in the digital space, so it will be very easy, very convenient for a customer if she submits a prescription, an e-prescription to SHOP APOTHEKE to add OTC product, to add beauty and personal care products to the same basket. On the next couple of charts, I'm going to talk more about the role that medication management, digital medication management is going to play in our e-Rx strategy. Again, having talked about SMARTPATIENT, we are very excited about this acquisition that was concluded at the beginning of this year. As I mentioned, this was not an opportunistic acquisition.
We had been convinced for quite some time that digital medication management will be a true value add for our customers, will be something that is critical to our success in the e-Rx market. And the more we work with, the more we learn from the SMARTPATIENT team, the more convinced we are getting. At the end of the day, sophisticated digital medication management is going to allow our customers, our especially the chronically ill patients, to have better health outcomes. Digital medication management, it helps them to adhere to therapy. It helps them to have better persistence with their drug therapy. In other words, to take the medication that has been prescribed to them by their doctor regularly, and to stay on medication for as long as the doctor has prescribed it.
There is a lot of scientific data out there that clearly indicates that better adherence, better persistence, not a surprise to anybody, results in a better therapy outcomes, better health outcomes. Furthermore, of course, with the MyTherapy app, and I'm going to talk about more about the MyTherapy app on the next chart, this will give us as SHOP APOTHEKE an opportunity to interact with our customers not just once a month, but several times per day. Let's have a look at the MyTherapy app, what it looks like right now. We just wanna give you here an idea, and it might be misleading to think about MyTherapy simply as an app because it's much more.
It's a platform that already today consists of several different modules. You're seeing here some examples. The more we think about this and the more we work with the SMARTPATIENT team that has developed expertise in digital medication management over eight to nine years, that is something that we ourselves would not have been able to replicate within a reasonable period of time. Going forward, the SMARTPATIENT team, they're going to develop drug-specific content so we can provide, you know, a targeted advice on the medications that our patients are taking. We can provide advice on how to better manage their disease.
All of this, the quote-unquote, pill reminder, functionality, the additional advice and information we can provide to our customers, we are deeply convinced this will be a real value add for our customers, and it is one of the pillars of our e-Rx strategy. Another building block for our e-Rx strategy is not a surprise, our same-day delivery service. What you see here on this chart, the dark blue dots are the areas where we will live with our same-day delivery at the end of last year. The Rhine-Ruhr area, the most populous area in Europe, the Stuttgart Metro area, the Munich area, and Berlin. By the end of this year, we're going to be live in all of the metropolitan areas of Germany.
Not just for OTC, but this is also a building block for our e-Rx strategy. Before I hand over again the microphone to Jasper, just a quick update on our new logistics center. I already mentioned it's much busier here today than the last time we talked to you. In October, the first customer order left our new facility on its way to a customer in Italy. At the end of January, we took into operation our new equipment with a much, much higher degree of automation and of the customers to all of the customer orders from customers in our international segment. Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium are shipped, executed from our new facility.
This summer we will have transferred all of our activities from the old facility to the new facility, doubling our capacity and at least, you know, for the next two to 2.5 years, we are not going to be constrained by any capacity limitations. Also this year, next year, again, if the demand fluctuates and peaks, we'll be well prepared for this. Jasper.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. I'm really happy to share with you two slides on our progress on ESG, Environmental, Social and Governance strategy or sustainability, or the sustainability strategy. We really stepped up here in 2019, our major step was actually in 2020. We as a board, as a total company, we say we are committed to do the right things, we installed in 2020 a clear internal structure with governance, with a head of sustainability, with targets and responsibilities. The language we talk internally for this is because we care. What do we care about? We care about health. We say always the health of our planet, you see on the slide, on the left side, the health of our patient and the health of our employees.
If you talk about the health of our planet, of course, a major impact there is CO2 reduction. It's about sustainable packaging. It's about reducing our carbon footprint. The health of our patient, that's of course in our DNA already for more than 20 years. There's always room for improvement. Besides giving tools to get a healthier life, an easier life, if you are a patient, here's also the areas of being applying the highest standards of data and data privacy. Caring about the health of our employees. That's providing everybody equal opportunities about diversity. We installed a pension insurance for our people in the operations here in Venlo the past year.
Of course, the safety of the workplace environment was very important the past year with Corona, but this is something where we on a continuous basis want to focus on. This is the strategy and quite some talks and words, but did we do already something in concreteness? Please to the next slide. Here are some highlights what we really did in 2020 on our sustainability agenda. Already in January last year, we committed ourselves to the UN Global Compact. In March, we joined the Leaders for Climate Action, and we cooperate in doing our fair share of avoiding that the world will increase by 2% of temperature. In July, this was rewarded a significant upgrade by the MSCI index to a BB B from a below average to slightly above average.
That's the first step of our improvement that was recognized by the outside world in July. Throughout the year, the first half of 2020, we worked together with ClimatePartner. They have 20 years of experience in determining, in all aspects of our operations, what our CO2 footprint is. In addition to that, we also asked another independent testing body, TÜV Rheinland, to also certify what we consider as our carbon footprint. We decided based upon that information in October to offset all our CO2 emissions. Actually, not only for CO2 emission according to Scope 1, but Scope 1, 2, and 3. That's about offsetting. Even more important is of course that we also are a front runner in reducing CO2.
Already from 2019 to 2020 in concreteness, we reduced the CO2, the carbon per parcel with 15%. We were able to do so, I give some examples, because of all our standard deliveries in Germany with DHL are now green. All our energy, our electricity in our German facilities come from renewable sources. Also there was an important impact for us moving to the facility where we are presenting now from, which is according to the highest climate standards. Some other highlights, just a couple to share, is internally we rolled out programs in getting people up to speed and get their commitments and get their energy in having an impact on the health of our customers, people, and planets.
The last one is that I want to say that already for many years we have a cooperation with an organization, a charity organization, of which the name is Herzenswünsche, which is for seriously ill children. Over the past years, we already donated close to EUR 600,000 to this organization. What we decided to do at the start of 2021, when the bonus ban took effect in Germany, is that we gave our ex-customers the possibility to say, "Okay, instead of me giving the bonus, which is no longer allowed, we can make a donation to this charity organization." This is very successful. I want to finalize this slide is that the annual report that this moment, that this morning we released is entirely, and for the first time for us, according to the GRI reporting standards.
Sustainability is fully integrated in our annual report and I hope you pay attention to that. If you have any remarks or questions on our progress in this area, just reach out to us and we're happy to share with you. Thank you. Something completely different. The guidance for 2021. I think the header says it all, continued fast growth and margin improvements. That's actually our guidance. We have a longer term guidance, which is at the bottom. We have the guidance for the current year, which is, I have to say, super difficult because the world is very volatile, as we all know. We felt comfortable enough providing you with this guidance. To start with the number one, with the sales growth.
The big picture from a helicopter view is that last year our sales growth was 38% fully organically. Now we're promising that we expect that in this year, on top of the 38%, we will grow again around 20% or more. We say this taking into account actually three items that I want to point out to you. Number one is, of course, as of March, we are cycling peaks in COVID demand of last year. We took that in our guidance into account. Number two is as of mid-December, we have the ban on our Rx bonuses. We also took that into account.
The third one, perhaps not familiar to all of you, but we clearly see that in January and February of this year, of 2021, we see throughout Europe, we actually see that people are less ill. Most probably, most certainly related to the social distancing because of the COVID measures. This is not impacting us more or less than others, but just the whole industry, specifically in our age, will most likely in January, February have faced a decline in our sales. We take that into account and then still say we wanna grow as a company, significantly double digits around 20%. That's the sales guidance for the year. Adjusted EBITDA margin. We achieved in 2020 a + 2.2%. This is not a one-off.
Next year we want to do that again and even improve by 0.5% approximately in the range of 2.3%-2.8%. We added a new guidance because we always only had sales, EBITDA, and that's the guidance on investments on CapEx. We expect that in 2021, in the current year, around 3.5% of sales will be investments, will be CapEx, and this includes our last phase of the Sevenum facility, where we are presenting from. That's the guidance there. The long-term target profitability unchanged. We expect that our longer term target profitability will be at 6% EBIT or more. That's it. Let's quickly go to the Q&A. Nick?
Okay. Jasper and I will take turns, you know, in reading the questions. We have a question from Olivier Calvet from Kepler Cheuvreux. Rx year to date, are you expecting any impacts from the absence of a flu season or from COVID-related excess mortality this quarter? Why or why not? Well, let me I'll take the first cut at this. I don't know about the excess mortality, whether that is having any impact on the overall market. Certainly, and Olivier, you are familiar with this, we have seen a significant drop in prescriptions in January. We don't expect, first indicators actually tell us that this will continue in February as well.
This has an impact on the overall market and has an impact on SHOP APOTHEKE as well. Again, that is, as Jasper mentioned, that is reflected in our top line guidance for 2021.
Okay. If you can go a little bit more up that we take a question from somebody else. Carmen, please. Okay. It's from Christian, from Hauck. Hi, Christian. Good morning. Many analysts are forecasting the online penetration 10% 2025, 2026, which thanks to the e-prescription launch next year, do you feel comfortable with the mid-term assumption of around 10% in 2025 or 2026? Or do you think it's too aggressive? Stefan, can you answer that?
Yeah, I think we answered this in the presentation.
Yeah.
You know, we get comfortable with the projections that come, Christian, from analysts and other market observers like you. An 8%-12% market share a couple of years after the launch of e-prescriptions, that is something that we are very comfortable with. We don't think that's too aggressive. We think it's reasonable.
Okay. More up. Can you continue, please? No, continue up, please, Carmen.
We just wanna take a mix of questions from a variety of participants.
Okay. Please, Gerhard from Berenberg, same-day delivery, how does that work from logistic perspective in areas that are further away from Venlo, for example, Stuttgart? How do you do that? Do you have to use a partner? Shall I take that one?
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks, Gerhard, for your question. Yes, indeed. In the Rhine-Ruhrgebiet, we do it from our facility in Venlo and Zevenaar. In the Stuttgart, the Berlin, in the München area, we do this together with our partner physical pharmacies. We work together with existing pharmacies there in a win-win situation. Customer is happy, local pharmacy is happy, and we are happy with that. Yeah, that's how we do the logistics in the large country of Germany. You pick the next one. Yeah.
We have a question from Andreas Riemann from Commerzbank. Good morning. Profitability. I don't know whether you're saying good morning to us or to profitability, Andreas. What is driving higher EBITDA margin in 2021? Marketplace? How big is the marketplace today? What could be the share in two to three years? Jasper, do you wanna take a cut at this?
Yeah. Yeah, it's good. The EBITDA margin improvement that we foresee for the year 2021, to make it very short, is driven by better commercial, better gross profit margin. That's the main reason. It is not coming from leverage of marketing. It's not coming from leveraging operational expenses as a percentage of sales, because actually the first six months we will continue to operate two facilities. It's coming from further gross profit margins, better sourcing, optimization, also in media income. The second one of your question is, how big is marketplace today, and what could be the share? Shall I do this also?
Yeah .
Yeah?
Yeah.
Okay. Marketplace is very successful because SHOP APOTHEKE in NOW! to us is a pure example of marketplace. We work together with partners, the physical pharmacies, we offer, because of this cooperation, other services to our customers. Namely, they can also choose for same-day delivery. From that perspective, it is really well. In the number, it's also impressive. If you look at our P&L, you round it to 30 because the other numbers are so big. That's what marketplace is. In 2021, we're still gonna launch the marketplace of products. That's not live yet, that will not have a significant impact in 2021. Because we really prioritize now e-Rx mechanization of our fulfillment center and the rollout of NOW!
We don't expect marketplace in the first half for products in the first half of 2021. Your more important question, what could be the share of marketplace in two or three years? Well, we are working on this, Andreas, because we think there could be a very large impact, but we don't have any guidance there.
Well, let's take a question from Alexander Thiel from Jefferies. Alexander Thiel has four questions for us. Let's see whether we how far we get. How should we account for the new logistics site in terms of operating leverage? Could you give us more insight into the potential increase in the degree of automation or potential leverage in the second half of 2021? Now, I mean, let me throw something out there. Alexander, the degree of automation, we talked about this before in our old facility. You know, admittedly, it was close to zero. It was a very efficient but very, very manual process.
In our new facility, the degree of automation is going to get close to 50%, and we expect in the fourth quarter to see an impact on our cost per order. The impact will be significant, but so far we have not shared exactly, you know, what we are projecting. The second question, could you briefly touch on your market share in Austria and the contribution to growth in the DACH segment in 2020 and your estimates for 2021 so we get a better understanding of the Germany standalone performance? Should we assume a slightly lower growth rate based on your dominant market share?
We report, and that's of course a very strict IFRS guidance. We report in two business segments. That's also how we steer the business internally. It's a DACH segment, and it's the international segment. Trying to get a more precise view in a country is not part of the segment reporting. What I can say about Austria, and which is really relevant, is that in Austria we are by far the market leader there. I see another question from Olivier, who is from Kepler Cheuvreux, and he is asking, "Can you explain to us why customers would order Rx with you?" I think that's in the context of no borders.
Yeah. I think.
Yeah.
Olivier is referring to the overall decline in the market.
Yeah
You know, in January, and again, based on early indicators also in February.
Right.
Well, Olivier, it's not just acute medications. People are delaying customer doctor visits. Even if you are a chronic, chronically ill patient, Some patients at least are trying to avoid going to the doctor. Another driver is simply that surgeries are being delayed, and after the surgery there's always some type of a follow-up, you know, medication that normally would be prescribed. Also, this is not happening at this point of time. You're right. For acute needs or the typical, you know, antibiotics, you know, SHOP APOTHEKE probably wouldn't be the first pharmacy that customers could think of at this point of time.
When we look at the delay of doctor visits and the delay of surgeries, of course, that is also something that has and will continue to impact SHOP APOTHEKE.
Okay. I look at the time, it's four minutes past, 12, past time. I actually would propose let us continue for a minute or three.
Yeah. Yeah.
People are still listening perhaps, and people can of course drop off. Thanks a lot for your attention at least, in joining the video. Let's do a couple of more questions.
Yeah. Yeah.
If people are interested.
I think we had one from Alvira.
Okay.
I think we had one from, go a little bit further down. Yeah.
How- Alvira Rao from Barclays. "How does monetization per unit economics work on SHOP APOTHEKE NOW!? Did you say they deliver in partnership with brick-and-mortar pharmacies?" Yeah. Okay. I take it. Good morning again, Alvira. How it works is that the customer is willing to pay for the service. The pharmacy, the local pharmacy is happy with the additional sales, and the fact that we brought the customer to the attention of the pharmacy means that we get a fee for the service that we provide there. That's basically, yeah, how it's going. Let me see if I see here in total same day delivery. Yeah. Customer is coming to our website, wants to order paracetamol. Normally you do that, and you get it in 1 or 2 days in your post box.
If you live in those areas, you can also select SHOP APOTHEKE NOW! for delivery on the same day or on the morning. You pay for that. There are a lot of people who are happy with that, the same like paying EUR 5 to get your pizza delivered at your home. In some cases, people like to take the service. At the moment they do that, they order at the local pharmacy. The local pharmacy is preparing the prescription. We as SHOP APOTHEKE have organized the delivery, the last mile from the pharmacy to the customer, and we get a fee from the pharmacy and get the fee from the customer for the delivery. That's how the units economics work. Go on.
We have a question from Henrik Markmann from Montega. "How are we going to convince the potential customer to use the digital services like the SmartPatient services? Could we expect some higher marketing costs?" Well, Henrik, we think, you know, there are already 1.4 million people who are using the MyTherapy app today. As I alluded to earlier, the more we think about the opportunity that this offers now in connection with a pharmacy, that's really a game changer from, you know, in terms of, you know, monetizing this opportunity. There are many ways for us to make a compelling offer to our customers. I already mentioned, you know, there is drug-specific content we can provide.
There is advice, how to better manage your disease. In addition, and that's what people at this point of time think about when they talk about a MyTherapy app, it's already today more than a pill reminder function, and it's going to be much, much more than a pill reminder function in the future.
Okay. One of the last ones I think then, Ben from the Bank of America. Good morning again, Ben. There are a couple of questions. Let me quickly look through them. Talk about please the revenue development in 2020 per reporting segment, geographic segment. Yeah, not the exact numbers, because we only give guidance on the total. But I think directionally it's fair to assume that international will grow double as fast as a percentage compared to DACH. I think that's directionally right. About the OpEx base, should be additional A&P, the cost lines in 2020. Let me see, what is A&P in this case?
Advertising and Promotion.
Advertising and Promotion. Never How much Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah. It is part of our overall guidance where we say that EBITDA will improve according to our expectations, to a level between a + 2.3% to 2.8%. The driver of that in 2021 compared to 2020 will not be the A&P lines. Number three, the last one, could you talk about the very impressive customer acquisition numbers, thanks for that, Ben, how they trended into 2021? We continue to focus on making our existing customers happy, also we continue to focus in acquiring new customers. We did that in 2018, in 2019, in 2020. We will also continue to do that in 2021. Roughly, they are comparable.
Are you continuing to see a major tailwind from the lockdowns in Germany? No, we're seeing at this moment not an additional significant tailwinds from anything related to lockdowns. Yep.
And if I would suggest-
We can take the last one.
Okay.
Yeah.
We'll take one more.
Yeah.
Um-
Some more we didn't have yet.
Go down.
Oh.
Go up, sorry. We have a question from Lennart Lengeling from Algebris Investments. What is your current view on the threat of new entrants, in particular Amazon? Lennart, I can really be very brief. We are not constantly, you know, watching what might Amazon do in the future. Our strategy is clearly a standalone strategy. We are charged with, and we are excited that we're going to, you know, provide our customers with a very, very compelling value proposition. Nobody knows what Amazon is doing right now, what they might be doing in the future, but it's not keeping us busy every day. I have to leave it at this, Lennart.
Okay.
With this, I would suggest we'll conclude the call. Of course, we couldn't get to all of your questions, but I have a feeling that all of you know how to get ahold of us, so please reach out to us if you have more questions. We'd love to chat more with you. I hope you share with us that 2020 was an important milestone year for SHOP APOTHEKE, and 2021 shapes out to be another good but important year with the introduction of e-prescriptions in Germany. Again, thanks for your time and for your interest in SHOP APOTHEKE, and please reach out to us if you have any more questions. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Yeah. Thank you. Okay.