Good morning to everybody. Jasper and I welcome you to the Q3 earnings release of Shop Apotheke Europe. On the picture behind Jasper and me, you see of course our new facility, which by now is fully operational. Actually, you can see literally hundreds of solar panels on top of our roofs. Later, we're going to share with you additional insights into our new facility, and actually, I mean this quite literally. Before we go there, we have some really exciting news to share with you. Last Thursday, on October the 28th , we received, we processed and we filled the first electronic prescriptions from the Gematik e-Rx pilot in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. These were prescriptions from actual real customers.
It wasn't a surprise to us, but it was still quite comforting to witness that these electronic prescriptions went smoothly through our end-to-end processes as we had anticipated. Let me go down memory lane for a moment, you know, and some of you might remember, might already know this, little story. When Shop Apotheke Europe was set up, was founded exactly 20 years ago, one of the drivers for setting up Shop Apotheke was the presumed imminent introduction of electronic prescriptions in Germany. Well, you know, admittedly, it has taken a little bit longer than anticipated at the time, but finally, electronic prescriptions are reality. Electronic prescriptions have actually happened.
We are very well prepared, and we are excited about the rollout of electronic prescriptions across Germany next year. Let me give you a quick update on electronic prescriptions, at least how we see it. The e-Rx pilot has been extended by the Gematik until the end of November to gain some additional experience to ensure that the systems, the processes will be ready for prime time when electronic prescriptions are rolled out nationwide early next year. In parallel, the e-Rx pilot has been scaling up finally, some might say, with based on what we have learned from the Gematik and from others, with 40 pharmacies-50 pharmacies participating and 20 physicians-30 physicians participating in the e-Rx pilot right now.
Furthermore, I think that is also important to know, more and more pharmacies and more and more physicians are meeting today or will meet by year-end the technical requirements needed to issue electronic prescriptions, and this includes the e-Rx readiness of the most commonly used physician software systems. For 2022, we, and this is now I'm speaking for Shop Apotheke, we are not assuming a big bang on the first of January, but we are projecting now internally a gradual but fast adoption of electronic prescriptions over the coming months. Our assumption is that by mid-year, the vast majority of prescriptions for publicly insured patients in Germany will indeed be issued electronically. Quite frankly, we have waited for many years for this to happen.
Whether it now happens a couple of months earlier or later doesn't make a big difference for us. For us, for our customers, and I assume also for our long-term investors, it is key that electronic prescriptions have finally arrived. As we said before, this really marks an important milestone for the digitalization of the healthcare system in Germany. As we mentioned, Shop Apotheke Europe is certainly ready to partake in this opportunity. Well, not just our front and back-end processes are ready for electronic prescriptions. With our new facility, we also have the needed capacity to turn our growth ambitions in Germany, but also in all the other markets, into reality and to secure our share of the e-prescription opportunity. You have heard before that with our new facility, we will be able to handle more than 100,000 customer orders per day.
To get a better feel for the new facility, let's have a closer look. It's now fully operational. Actually, over the last two to three months, some of you on the phone have actually taken a first-hand look at our new facility. I guess to see that it really exists, and it's probably fair to assume that we're going to host more visits by some of our investors and perhaps some of the analysts over the coming months. The move from the old to the new facility was completed in early September. Actually, we were pretty much done by the end of September. The new facility is fully functional. Equally important is that we succeeded in bringing up our staffing levels.
As a result, since September, we are no longer capacity constrained, which allows us, of course, to continue the Shop Apotheke Europe's growth story. Okay, let's shift gears and let's have a closer look at the business and financial performance over the first nine months of the year. By the end of September, our Shop Apotheke Europe's sales had grown by around 10% and our sales had reached EUR 772 million. DACH sales were up by 4.5 percentage points, of course, hampered by the absence of an Rx bonus, and our international business went up by 38%. When you look at our everything but Rx growth rate over the first nine months of the year across all of our markets, it stood at close to 22%.
Our adjusted EBITDA for the first nine months stood at around EUR 5 million. This translates into an adjusted EBITDA margin of 0.6%. The number of our active customers increased by almost a quarter, over 1.4 million, from 5.9 million at the end of September last year to 7.3 million this year. Since January alone, we have added around one million active customers despite the reduction of our marketing spending in June and in early July. Very encouraging for us is the quick recovery of our customer satisfaction with Shop Apotheke Europe. You'll see in a moment that our net promoter score recovered nicely after the dip mid-year in May, June, and early July. Since August, it has stayed at the targeted level of around 70.
Over the first nine months, we generated an operating cash flow of around EUR 28 million, and Jasper is going to share more in a couple of minutes about the drivers behind our cash flow development. More important, as of September 30th, our cash balance was in excess of EUR 300 million. Last but not least, we love to talk about it after the end of the quarter in October. On October 28th, electronic prescriptions had finally arrived at Shop Apotheke Europe. Let's have a closer look at our two reporting segments. As we mentioned before, DACH region up by around 5 percentage points. The growth rate was of course pulled down by the 31% reduction of our Rx business, triggered by the absence of the Rx bonus.
Our non-Rx business in the DACH region went up by 17%. Just as a reference point, the OTC market in Germany, covering both the offline and the online segments over the first nine months of the year actually declined slightly versus a year ago. Our international business grew by almost 40% and sales were in excess of EUR 150 million. Shifting to some of our KPIs on the next chart. The number of active customers, our net promoter score, and our average order value. As we mentioned already, active customer count went up by 24% to 7.3 million. Our net promoter score over the first nine months stood at 68, of course, pulled down by the lower NPS around mid-year.
Our average order value over the first nine months was EUR 62 compared to EUR 66 a year ago. This decrease can be exclusively attributed to the lower share of Rx orders, which, as you know, carry a higher AOV. For the first nine months of 2020, when you look at our non-Rx basket across all of our markets. Or no, I have to be precise, not across all of our markets. In every single market, the non-Rx basket value went up compared to a year ago, which of course is a good development. Well, I don't have to say too much about our NPS chart. I think it speaks for itself.
You see the dip in the second half of the second quarter when we were capacity constrained, and as a result of this, we experienced extended delivery times. Again, encouraging is the quick recovery of our NPS in the month of July. Since then, it has pretty much held steady of around 70. As mentioned before, since December, we are no longer capacity constrained. The cut-off of this chart is the end of September, but I can confirm that the NPS has held steady in the month of October as well. Well, how has our web traffic developed over the last few months? You see here the bold green line, which shows the total number of web visits across all of our websites.
You see the low point with around 5 million visits per week in around mid-year. Since then, our web traffic has again increased steadily, and in the last few weeks of September, the web visits exceeded 6 million again. The blue bars show a similar picture. They represent the growth of our web traffic versus the exact same week a year ago. Since the dip around mid-year, our web traffic growth has accelerated again, and over the last few weeks, we have seen web traffic growing at around 30% compared to a year ago.
Well, before I hand over to Jasper to walk you through the drivers behind our numbers, and especially behind our financials, let me substantiate the web traffic numbers we just shared with you with some of the external data points. What you see here is the data from Similarweb for the month of September. shop-apotheke.com was the most popular online pharmacy in Germany. On the next chart, pointing in a similar direction, Google Analytics report that over the last 90 days, Shop Apotheke was the most searched pharmacy brand in Germany. You know, putting all of this together, looking at our weekly order volumes, which have been growing steadily, you know, over the last few months.
Looking at our web traffic, looking at the recovery of our NPS, and knowing that we're no longer capacity constrained, this all prepares us to get back onto the growth trajectory that, quite frankly, you have come to expect from Shop Apotheke. With this, Jasper, you'll take it from here.
Thank you, Stefan, for that. Good morning to everybody on the call. Looking at this slide, this slide shows the number of orders in thousands per quarter for the past two and a half years. For example, in Q1 2021, we did 5.1 million orders, which was one million up from the year before, which was then in Q1 2020 around at 4.2 million orders, and which was then also one million up from the year before that year, Q1 2019. The graph also makes clear that we have a seasonality throughout our calendar years. Q2 and Q3 are lower, and we tend to set records in Q1 and in Q4 in absolute terms.
Nevertheless, the slide also shows that the decline in Q2 and Q3 this year is greater than it was in the past years. This is of course for the obvious reasons that are, I think, known to everybody, specifically, constraints in our capacity that we meanwhile have solved, and our decision to subsequently hold back on marketing in the middle of the year. In Q4 2020, thus last year, we have set our records for 2020. This year, there is a challenge looking at the base of last year. In addition, we are of course coming from a low point of Q3.
Two challenges that we are totally ready and set and on track to if for the upcoming quarter four to set new records, not only having more orders than we did last year, but we are also aiming to do more orders in Q4 this year than that we did in Q1 at the start of this year. All in all, looking at this slide, we processed more than 14 million orders year- to- date, and each quarter we did more than we did in the same quarter last year, and we are ready to set new records in the current fourth quarter. Next slide, please. What did all those orders bring us in terms of financials?
On this slide, as always, the customary one-pager overview of the operating results, P&L items from sales up to including EBITDA for quarter three and the first nine months of the year. The sales in quarter three ended at EUR 337.9 million. This included the slowdown in June and July and in August. Still, all in all, in the end, we were almost on last year's level with a -0.3% in quarter three. This number brought us to a total of EUR 772 million year-to-date, at a 9.8% increase year-over-year. We achieved those numbers with a significantly higher gross profit margin, and in a moment, I will show you the year-over-year bridge explaining the developments.
At the same time, selling and distribution increased in the quarter a bit over 5 percentage points and year- to- date a bit over 4 percentage points. Also here I have a bridge in a couple of moments, but the main elements here I can tell you already is related to marketing and the absence of our Rx volume that we faced this year. The administrative cost as a percentage of sales. First of all, if you compare it to last year, there's a little bit of an apple and an orange in it, because roughly half of the percentage of the deterioration versus last year is from the inclusion of the business acquisitions of MedApp and Smartpatient.
The remainder that you're seeing there that is reflective of our investments in a solid and in the right foundation to be ready for the great growth opportunities we're seeing in Germany and across Europe. Also the percentage in 2021 is of course impacted by lower than originally anticipated sales in Q2 and Q3. All the numbers I have been discussing until now, if you add it up, we had in Q3 an adjusted EBITDA of -EUR 2.2 million, which brought us at a year-to-date positive EUR 4.7 million. Next slide, please. Here the bridge from the gross profit margin, and let's start with the third building block, the 1.3% positive impact. This is country and our Rx/OTC mix.
Country, meaning that our countries with a higher gross profit margin have been growing faster, and Rx/OTC mix is the impact of selling less Rx and a fast growth of OTC. Going to other. Other is mainly the non-repeat of negative write-offs last year related to the corona assortment. This is a large explanation in the year-over-year improvement, but of course, not impacting this year's 25.4%. Going back to the left of the building blocks, we are proud and happy to show another improvement in our sourcing this quarter of 0.4%, compared to the same nine months last year. The net pricing of -0.3%, that is the impact of lower prices compared to last year, in part offset by the fact that we don't pay a bonus on Rx anymore.
All in all, from 22.3%-25.4% year- to- date, an increase of the gross profit margin of 3.1 percentage points. The next please. The selling and distribution. First of all, looking at this picture, it seems like, okay, marketing is the main explanation here for the increase of our costs. But in this case, I don't think it's the best explanation if I would discuss the individual building blocks, because there are more relevant, explanations here from a higher level looking at this picture here. I want to point out the three main developments there.
Number one, A and B, has to do with the drop in our Rx sales from the fact that we are in a situation without a bonus on Rx and not having yet the eRx, where the much better customer journey will, according to us, most certainly lead to an increase of Rx again. The impact of less Rx is directly impacting the marketing as a percentage of sales, simply because the denominator of the sales is lower. One B is the fact that less Rx is, as Stefan said already, bringing down our average basket value, and as such, is having an impact on our marketing and shipping, and payments, and operational labor, and other as a percentage of sales. Again, I repeat, we think this is a temporary situation with eRx around the corner.
Number one, looking at this graph is the impact of Rx. Number two, in this case is actually the fact that our international businesses are growing even faster than our DACH region was doing. That's having an impact in this case. Number three is the fact that in those numbers here in 2021, we have been operating two logistics facilities until September 3rd, while last year we were only operating one logistics facility. Those elements, if you strike that out from this bridge here, and actually what is remaining is the fact that marketing increased so much versus last year. Well, that is this year we invest more coming out of the low point from the year compared to the exceptional year last year.
What's remaining is that in other, there's the impact of Smartpatient and MedApp. The key point here is that the underlying business model, metrics here are solid and are developing very well. Next slide, please. Starting here with the column at the right of the slide. You talked about that already, Stefan. We ended with a cash balance. That's cash, including the liquid, all financial assets of well above EUR 300 million. Then going to the left again. This year we are still operating at an operating result, an operating cash flow of EUR 0 million-EUR 1 million positive we generated after nine months. But you also see a EUR 27 million positive impact from favorable working capital changes. It is not just popping out of the numbers.
No, we have internal programs started one and a half years ago of improving our payments and receivables and have been successful with that. In total, EUR 28 million of operating cash flow. Going to the investments. Investments were in 2021 on an elevated level because besides the regular investments in IT, we have had two business acquisitions, Smartpatient and MedApp, and we also finalized our project Venlo 2020, the move of our logistics center. The next one. Before we go to the Q&A, where we wanted to give you today additional time for Q&A on the financial guidance. It's today, of course, an exciting day that we are able to to announce our first real eRx that we have processed.
I want to take the opportunity also to give the compliments to all the parties involved there and also to the Gematik and the government working on this new infrastructure, which are much safer and better and faster customer journey. This is a good moment to look back at our longer term perspective. Today, we want to reiterate our longer term guidance as to profitability, and that's unchanged. That is an EBIT in excess of 6%.
Actually, the excess of 6% is referring to the fact that we are not just an online pharmacy retailer, but that we are an ePharmacy platform, which enables us to go even beyond the positive 6% in the longer term. If we go from the longer term profitability guidance to the some short term guidance for 2021, of course, we have only October we just finished. We have November and December left in this year. That seems to be a short period, but the world is dynamic. Will there be a heavier or not flu season? We still have Black Friday. Will the corona measures be tightened or not?
In the dynamics, we still see sufficient comfort in being able to deliver for the full year and also in quarter four, a growth of around 10%. That's narrowing down to the 10%-15%. The main reason for that is, first of all, there's no help from the OTC market in Germany. The OTC market, as Stefan also just said already, is actually the total market online combined. Here OTC is slightly down to date. Number two, we are coming from a low point in Q3, and we are rapidly recovering. We're delivering very solid weeks, but it takes us a little bit longer, and that's why we remain in the range of 10%-15% growth.
We think it's gonna be close to 10%. That on the sales. The adjusted EBITDA margin, actually we're year- to- date at the positive EUR 4.7 million. Why is quarter four then predicted to be negative? The reason is not cost increases. The only reason why we are guiding for this is that we want to have the flexibility to continue to invest in our growth momentum that we have achieved now in September and October. We're having growth momentum with good, fast growth in traffic, high customer satisfaction, being back on growth despite the challenging last year, and that is more costly.
It's our decision to continue to invest in marketing and our overall proposition, and we think that's the best decision to bring us in the best position, making clear to, also specifically in Germany, the customer that we are the leading online pharmacy brand in Germany. To CapEx, excluding acquisitions, spot on our earlier guidance is gonna be around EUR 45 million. With that, Carmen, it's time to ask questions, but could you go to the next slide, please? It's the same procedure as we had the past quarter because there was the request from you to be able to ask the questions instead of typing in the questions. We have that situation again. Here are the numbers. Please don't forget to mute the webcast when you are using your phone.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question via the telephone, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one to ask a question today. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question today comes from Alexander Thiel from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stefan and Jasper. Thank you very much for the update. I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
I have a couple of questions. I will take them one by one. My first one is on your existing customer structure. Could you give us a ballpark how many of your 7.3 million active customers are located in Germany?
Well, Alexander, we don't disclose, you know, the split of our customers by market. The vast majority of our customers, again, follows our sales volumes and is located in Germany. Again, we are not disclosing the precise numbers.
Okay. I mean, that's the starting base, right, for the e-Rx . Second one is a follow-up. Do you have any insights on how many of your existing OTC customers do you think have a chronic disease?
Yeah. Our main standpoint there is, I understand your question and also from a modeling perspective, that seems to be very handy to take that position. But for us, being close to the pharmacy space, of course, every day, we are basically looking at it from a higher level angle where it's clear, of the total pharmacy market, 80% of all value that's in the pharmacy space is related to Rx and 80% of the Rx is related to chronically ill patients. That's basically what it is. Even if we look at our own base, we don't see any reasons.
Actually, we see a reconfirmation of the fact that this is the same, having the same distribution in our base, except of course, for the Rx customers we have already, but you were referring to the OTC. There's nothing interesting to mention there. It is just representative for the total country.
Okay, perfect. I'm just checking because our research basically thinks that around 60% of OTC customers that shop online also have chronic disease. The next two on your full year guidance for the EBITDA, I mean, obviously implying -EUR 50 million in Q4, with additional marketing spending. How should we think about next year? And could you also please touch on the operating leverage that you expect from your new logistics site, so we can basically calculate the incremental marketing spends you can do in 2022?
Should I start?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Thanks, Alexander. The Q4, I'm repeating a bit on Q4, and then I get to your second question, second part of the question. In Q4, it is only reflective of the fact that we think it's best to continue with our elevated level of marketing as we did in September and October. We gained back our growth momentum, and we wanna continue that. It's too fragile and it's not the right moment in not continuing with it. So in Q4, it has naught to do with cost increases. The only reason is for us that we continue to drive the growth momentum. Then your question, what does that mean for 2022? Well, as you know, we don't have any guidance on 2022.
In 2022, it is much more important to think in if scenarios, because if this then that, because of the e-Rx having such a big impact for the coming years. The fact that we are guiding towards the EBITDA in Q4 as we are doing, that is not having any mid or longer term impact on our business model. This should not change your expectations for 2022. We don't have any guidance on 2022. It will depend a lot on what we then will decide to do exactly in this exciting year. And then you talked about the leverage of our operations, and indeed, on an underlying base, those things indeed kick in. We are now in an automated warehouse.
We will cycle this year where we were operating two facilities. We had a move this year, and next year we don't, but probably there will be new things there. Indeed, we always focus on two things. That is achieving efficiencies on all kinds of levels, whether it is better sourcing or whether it's operational efficiency. We continue to do that. If you ask, what is your guidance for next year, then that depends a lot on what we will decide to do on, for example, marketing, and we don't have any guidance on that yet.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. My last one would be on your midterm target. I mean, will you at some point provide a more specific sales midterm target in the future, or is this still up for debate?
Me again?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. No, it's sure that we see where we stand as Shop Apotheke and take our positions in the seven markets, and then on top of that, the e-Rx opportunity and that we will be growing is our expectation very fast the coming years. But we don't have specific guidance on that, Alex. Yeah. It is-
Yeah. Thank you.
It is possible that we will perhaps give some guidance on that at a later stage, but we don't have any guidance there. I think the main thing that we're always very open about is the fact that we say that at the moment that e-Rx is mandatory in whole Germany, then we think that in the coming years, the share of online usage of Rx in Germany will increase from the current below 1% to a penetration of 10%. That's what the market will do, and we think that we are in pole position to grab our fair share of that opportunity. That's all that we are saying on guidance.
Besides that, you know that on an underlying basis, how strong our trends are in everything but RX at the same time. Exciting expectations for the coming years, but we don't have any guidance on that.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. We now move on to our next questioner from Olivier Calvet from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, Jasper and Stefan. I would take my questions one by one. The first one would be on the competitive environment. Do you see it getting worse? I mean, we've heard your main competitor just cut their full-year external sales growth target. You're talking about on a reported basis, if we assume EUR 3 million of adjustments in Q4, kind of the run rate, that's about EUR 17 million-EUR 18 million reported EBITDA in Q4. So yeah, obviously your biggest EBITDA loss in a quarter ever, but in terms of margin, kind of the lowest since Q1 2019. Back then you were growing, you know, 30%+. Now we are pointing at 10%.
Could you just maybe talk about the competition in non-prescription products, in particular, and also whether you are seeing the drop in prescription sales having now reached the trough or not yet?
Well, let me start with the last part of your question, Olivier. If we look at the last data points, you know, we're observing exactly what you were referring to. Our Rx business has now leveled off. For the first nine months, we saw a decline, as we mentioned before, of 31%, but it has stabilized at a level that is not satisfactory to us. With the introduction of electronic prescriptions, of course, it will be a whole different game. The customer journey will be totally different from what customers are experiencing today. In terms of the competitive environment.
You know, we haven't seen any drastic changes compared to what we observed earlier this year. You know, pricing, you know, has become a little bit more, you know, competitive than what we saw during the Corona period. During the high phase of the Corona period, I don't think that's a surprise. Also, not surprisingly, we will see increasing marketing investments, not just from Shop Apotheke. Again, with over EUR 300 million cash by the end of last year, I think we're very well prepared for whatever might come down the pipe. Also our competitors, they will increase their marketing investment in order to take what they presume to be their fair share of the marketing opportunity.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. No, sorry, go ahead.
No, I was just checking if you were still online there, Olivier. No, the only addition I have to it.
Yeah.
It's important to look at terms not in a too narrow base, and it seems to be a little bit implicit in your question. Because normally if you have investments and you also see all the benefits of the investments, and now with our decision to continue with what we are doing successfully, you have seen all the positive indicators are developing very well in September and also at the start of October, as Stefan said. But a lot of those investments will also pay off in 2022. This is for us to be in the best possible position with the exciting start of the year 2022.
If you just look at Q4 now, with us over-investing because we wanna accelerate away from the low point where we were mid-year and we are having momentum there, actually it's a bit unfair only looking at a quarter. That's probably explaining why you say, "Hey, for the quarter it looks relatively negative." That's just because it's a short period, and I think normally you should look at it on a yearly basis, yeah, on a full year basis.
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, just wondering in terms of looking into 2022, what's your expectation for growth in the non-prescription part of the business? Do you expect this to return to the high 30s, you know, percentage points, across all of non-RX, let's say?
Thanks for your question, Olivier. Today we don't talk about 2022, so I cannot comment on that. Yeah.
Okay. The next question would be on the integration of parties on your marketplace. I'm just wondering if you can give us some color on the customer journey. Assuming a patient wants to use your app, how will they determine which pharmacy they want to send their eScript token to?
Well, are you referring to the e-prescription customer journey? You talk about the marketplace, so are you referring to the now dimension or you're talking to the what we refer to as the product expansion dimension of our marketplace?
Let's say I'm a, you know, I have an acute need next year and I'm getting an eScript, right? From whoever, whether it's telemedicine or a local doctor. And I open up, you know, your app, how can I choose between getting my prescription delivered by your local partner or you?
Yeah. Well, Olivier, that might be an unsatisfying answer, but really for competitive reasons, we are not yet disclosing exactly what the customer journey is going to look like. What we can say is, if you have a prescription for an acute need, there will be opportunities for the customer, for the patient to choose one of our partner pharmacies, you know, especially in the metropolitan areas. But again, at this point of time, we're not yet disclosing, for obvious reasons, the details of our customer journeys.
All right. I have just three remaining. First one would be on purchasing improvements. Like if you could give us some color on what you would expect at this stage on the non-prescription business going into next year. Maybe I follow up with the second and third straight away. I was just wondering if you could give us the share of your private label sales. Last time you talked about them, it was not really material, but maybe now it is. Finally, obviously you had two logistics facilities this quarter, but you're also looking to grow or to use, let's say, the international segment as a relay or a growth driver.
I'm just wondering if you are looking to start operations, for instance, in Italy. I remember, Stefan, you were talking of delivering to Salerno and so on. You know, is this a topic potentially for next year or rather after eScript start in Germany?
Let me start with the purchasing piece. What we have seen now, not just, you know, on a year-to-date basis, but we saw this, you know, similar numbers in 2020 and 2019. You see year-over-year improvements, you know, around a half percentage point, at least for the foreseeable future. That's what we are assuming will also be feasible going forward. In terms of our logistics facilities, again, we have ample capacity right now, but we are actually right now in the process of assessing what should our distribution facility or our distribution strategy look like going forward? Yes, you're right.
At some point of time, a customer, for example, in Palermo, won't be satisfied with, you know, the delivery times that we can actually handle, you know, if we deliver everything from Sevenum. But again, these are discussions that are going on right now, and probably we'll have some news there in the not-too-distant future.
Yeah. Your last was related to private label. Thanks for this question. I think it's an important pillar in our strategy. Private label is going very successful. Our brand, the name is Redcare. Of course, nu3 and Beavita are also private labels, but our main brand at the moment is Redcare. It's going very successful, but still the status is the same as you said before. In the total scheme of numbers, it's still relatively small. So that means there is still a lot of opportunity to improve here in the near future. Thanks for that. Olivier, thanks for all your questions, but I'm looking at the time.
Sure.
Let's please go to the next one.
My last one. Yep. Bye.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye, Olivier.
Bye.
Thank you. We now move on to Volker Bosse from Baader Bank for our next question. Please go ahead.
Hello, gentlemen. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. A lot of questions have been answered already. I will stick to three. First, on your specified guidance in regards to sales to the low end, I mean, you pointed out net promoter score website visits are going to progress to pre-crisis levels, so to say. However, what fell short that you reduced your original expectation 10%-15% to the low end of 10%? I did not get that so far.
Yeah.
The second question would be perhaps on the guidance on the EBITDA side, because that's a relation. I understand you want to have the flexibility in regards to marketing. My question would be: When will you shift gear from promoting the eScript? So far I see on TV you are still promoting the paper-based script. Any strategic change going to happen and when, going forward here in regards to marketing strategy?
Thank you. Very, very relevant on the short term indeed, to have clarity on this. The only reason for sales that we're guiding that are still in the range but at the lower end of the range is actually the fact that it took us a bit longer to really get out of our low points. We're very positive of the end of September and how we started in October. So that's developing well. Looking from the point where we were in June, July, et cetera, it took us a little bit longer. Number two is the fact that at the moment, and nobody can predict the future, what it will bring, also with COVID measures and what could happen there.
We are until now seeing that the overall offline and online combined OTC market in Germany actually is not growing at the moment, so that's also not helping. Those are the two main elements for us guiding towards a 10% instead of a 15% growth there.
Should I take the next one?
Yeah.
On the e-prescription. Your question was, you know, when are we going to see, you know, broad advertisements, commercials around electronic prescriptions from Shop Apotheke, for example, on TV? We mentioned before, we don't expect a big bang on the 1st of January in terms of, you know, all physicians switching to issuing electronic prescriptions, but we then assume a pretty fast adoption across Germany. Once the vast majority of public insured patients in Germany will be able to receive electronic prescriptions from their physicians, we will also, you know, change our the focus of our TV commercials and other, you know, broad marketing initiatives.
We will have the flexibility to start it a month earlier or a month later, but we don't think it would make sense to start with, you know, TV commercials right now or even in early January, when at least the vast majority of customers will not be able to experience or receive electronic prescriptions. Again, we are set up to handle this in a flexible manner.
Okay. Thank you. Perhaps one question for clarification, my third one, so to say. You said you expect the majority of the market to be at mid of 2022. I mean, I learned from industry experts that software-wise, around 70% of doctors should be ready at the beginning of the year to fulfill the eScript needs. Why are you a bit more cautious saying, let's say, above 50 at mid of 2020, although 70% of doctors have the software installed already at the beginning of the year? What makes you a bit more cautious in that regard? Just to close the gap here for my understanding. Thank you.
Well, you know, we certainly, at this point of time, we don't wanna over promise. It's all happened much faster than at least we are internally projecting at this point of time. That's why we wanna maintain, you know, the maximum flexibility, you know, to start all of our commercial activities, again, when the vast majority of a significant number of customers will be able to receive electronic prescriptions. We talk about, you know, a fast but gradual increase. Also what we're hearing from Berlin, the mandate seems to stay in place. It's stipulated in the law right now. It will stay in place as of the first of January, so if physicians have the technical capabilities, they are obligated to issue electronic prescriptions.
However, what we are sensing is that the mandate will not be enforced right from the beginning of the year. Again, there will be a little bit of an adoption period. When we talk about the middle of the year, we think that's perhaps a little bit cautious. Again, at this point of time, we don't wanna over-promise. It's simply outside of our control to a certain extent or to a large extent.
No, I understand. I agree. Okay, all the best and, yeah, stay healthy. Thank you for the call.
Thank you. Same to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes today's Q&A session. I would now like to hand the call back over to Stefan Feltens for any additional or closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thank you for all of your questions and for your interest in Shop Apotheke. For us, you know, sometimes it feels like it's difficult to convey this. The month of October, the 28th of October, that was really exciting for us because we got the first real electronic prescription from a real customer. We're very excited about, you know, the opportunity that e-prescriptions present for the German healthcare system, but also, you know, of course, for Shop Apotheke. Rest assured we're well prepared to take our fair share of this eRX opportunity. If you have any more questions, you know how to reach Jasper and me.
We're looking forward to talking to you at an upcoming investor conference or again, if you have specific questions, feel free to reach out to us. Jasper, anything else?
No. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Okay.
Thank you.
Great. Hope it was helpful, and we keep in touch. Thank you all.
Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.