Okay, thank you, and a warm welcome to all the participants in Shop Apotheke's Q2 Earnings Call. I can already tell you that this was a truly extraordinary quarter for Shop Apotheke. I'm once again joined here by Jasper Eenhorst, our CFO, and I think, Jasper, by now you have met or talked to most of the participants in this call. Today's earnings call is a first in two respects. Number one, we are doing this via video cast. This is a first, and this was actually a suggestion that came from you, so we appreciate the suggestion, and we're going to see how it's going to work out. And secondly, and I dare to say more importantly, we are broadcasting today for the first time from our new headquarters in Sevenum, near Venlo. We're just 500 m away from our old facility.
All of the headquarters offices moved, actually, two weeks ago, and I can tell you that we saw a lot of very, very happy faces across our teams. The logistics operations are going to start transferring in Q4, and Jasper is going to share some more details later on about this. The whole transition of the logistics activities should be concluded in Q2 next year. With the new facility, we will certainly be in a position to fulfill our growth ambitions in the future, not just in terms of plain logistics capacity, but also in terms of the work environment we have created here for our teams, which fosters a spirit of collaboration, offers many opportunities to cooperate, to collaborate, to be creative, and again, all of these will be key ingredients to ensure that we continue to excite customers about Shop Apotheke's offerings.
So you see here, actually, a live picture of our new facility. The agenda for today, you're familiar with. We're going to start with walking you through the financial performance of the first half of the year, of the second quarter. Then we're going to give you a quick update on where we are with executing our strategy, and Jasper is going to walk you through the outlook for the remainder of the year. And then last but not least, of course, we're going to open it up for questions from you. Because we're doing this via video cast, as the moderator mentioned earlier, today we're going to look for a different solution for the future, but today we are limited to receiving questions via the chat box. Again, as was mentioned a minute ago, just click on the question mark, and then you'll be able to do this.
Okay, so switching to the meat of the second quarter, I already mentioned it was truly an extraordinary quarter for Shop Apotheke. I dare to say we hit on all cylinders, and this is clearly reflected in some of our key performance indicators. Of course, we benefited from the corona-triggered demand, but through excellent execution across the whole value chain, across all the teams of Shop Apotheke, we were actually in a position to leverage, to take advantage of the opportunity that was in front of us. Our growth accelerated in the second quarter to 42%. Across the first half of the year, growth was 37%, and sales totaled EUR 465 million, with a growth of 42%. We also gained market share across the markets in which we operated, and the growth was fully organic.
One of the drivers behind our growth, our top-line performance, was a record number of new customers that we gained in the second quarter. Our number of active customers actually went up by 500,000, by 500,000 only in the second quarter 2020. If you compare the growth of our active customer base to June 2019, you will see an increase by over 30% or by 1.3 million active customers. The impact of the revenue growth cascaded throughout our financial statements and also lifted up our operating profit margin. The adjusted EBITDA margin in the second quarter was 2.7% for the first half of the year. It was very close at 2.4%. When you look at the 2.4% EBITDA margin, that's an improvement of over 5% year- over- year. From my vantage point, even more impressive are the improvements when you look at the sheer euros.
We generated an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 11 million in the first half of the year, and that's an improvement of EUR 21 million compared to just a year ago. The key drivers, and Jasper is going to share more details about this, were significant gross margin, but we also succeeded in extracting scale effects across the P&L. And again, also that is something that Jasper is going to walk you through. Our operating cash flow was also positive at around EUR 6 million. Shifting our view a little bit from the most recent past into the future in terms of e-prescriptions, I can tell you that everything as of today is progressing as we had planned. That is certainly true for our internal preparations, but this is also true for what we are hearing, what has been reported by the Gematik.
Again, you remember the Gematik is the entity that's charged with developing and putting in place the telematics infrastructure for processing e-prescriptions. Last but certainly not least, we've already had and will continue to have some exciting news. We have hit some milestones with our other strategic initiatives. We are in the process of expanding our same-day offerings to more metro areas across Germany and in future years beyond Germany. We're on track to launch our marketplace later this year, and we continue to expand our own brand portfolio. Taking a closer look at our top-line growth, I already mentioned you see here the changes by segment for the group and by segment for the second quarter, 42% growth up to EUR 233 million . This is pretty much on the same level as the Q1 sales, but you might remember in the past we had seasonality.
Q2 was always lower than Q1. This time we succeeded in maintaining the same sales level. We saw significant increase in the DACH region. Of course, when you look at the total, at the euros, the biggest contribution came from Germany, but we also saw sizable increases in Austria and in Switzerland. The 33% growth, of course, covers the whole product portfolio. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that also our Rx business in the first half of the year increased by a solid 18%. When we saw the results of our international segment, which consists of Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, we were really astonished. We more than doubled our sales. Sales amounted to EUR 42 million. The biggest contributor in "hard euros" came from Belgium, but we also saw very sizable increases in the other markets.
Okay, shifting from the top line to one of the key drivers behind our top line, and I think this is now a good reflection of everything we do in order to satisfy our customers. I want to mention again that we gained 500,000 active customers in the second quarter only. We already talked about the increase by 1.3 million to 5.5 million active customers as of the end of June, and I want to remind everybody an active customer is a customer that has placed at least one order over the last 12 months. Very important for us, we track this closely, is our Net Promoter Score. The Net Promoter Score in the second quarter remained at a very high level of 70. Again, you compare this to other industry verticals, and I think you will see that this is truly a solid performance.
I think it's a good reflection on the quality of the end-to-end customer journey we offer to our customers. By the way, of course, as I mentioned, we're tracking this closely. The numbers in July, in the first couple of days of August, we saw another improvement in our Net Promoter Score. Looking at the average shopping basket value in Q2, we saw a value of EUR 65.50. That's a marginal improvement compared to Q1. It's a little bit of a drop compared to Q2 2019. The drop can be attributed, number one, to the high number of new customers we gained in the second quarter. Of course, new customers, they have on average a lower shopping basket value. And secondly, our non-Rx business grew significantly faster, as we mentioned before, than our Rx business.
And again, the average non-Rx basket is a little bit lower than the average Rx basket. Okay, looking at web traffic, we have amended our charts a little bit. I think it provides more transparency. What you see here in the orange line is the total number of visits by week. And you can clearly see the spike when corona kicked in. But more importantly, throughout the second quarter, our weekly web visits were between 3.5- 4.5 million visits, and they remain at a very high level. Also, when you look at the year-over-year growth, again, these are weekly numbers reflected here in the blue bars. You saw that the web traffic year-over-year throughout the second quarter increased by 80% or more compared to prior year. Of course, that was driven by the generally higher interest in online offerings over the last three months.
But again, looking at our top line, at the end of the day, we succeeded in gaining a disproportionate share of the opportunity that was in front of us. Okay, before I hand over to Jasper to walk you through the financials, a quick look at our orders. In the green line, you can see the repeat customer order share. We see a little bit of a drop from Q1 to Q2, from 82% to 78%. Of course, no surprise because we focused on gaining new customers.
As a result of this, of course, the existing customer share came down a little bit. When you look at order growth for the first half of 2020 and compare it to the first half of 2019, orders and revenue always matched in lockstep. Order growth year-over-year was 37.8%. Top-line growth was 37.4%. With this, I'll hand it over to Jasper to walk you through the financials.
Thank you, Stefan. Good morning, everybody. Is the slide there? Yeah, exactly. The Adjusted EBITDA, as Stefan mentioned already, increased from minus EUR 10 million over the first six months last year to plus EUR 11 million the six months of this year. So that's a year-over-year increase of EUR 21 million. And how did we get there? In the year-end tables, I will discuss all from sales up to including the adjusted EBITDA margin. And before I start, I want to state, like I did in the prior two calls, that I want to be completely transparent. What is there in the adjustments? We are consistent in the definition. In the adjustments is only the employee stock option program because that's non-cash, and it is one-off related to projects. So year-to-date, we have EUR 2 million of adjustments.
That is more than half because of the stock plan, and it is for the other half mainly related to actually the new building where we are in at the moment. Okay, then go to the table, sales. The sales growth in quarter two was 42%, and over the six months of this year, over the first six months of the year, we increased from EUR 338 million- EUR 465 million, which was an increase of 37%. Then, to the gross profit margin, we arrived at a new peak in the second quarter, which was 23.5%. It was year-over-year up 2.3 percentage points, and in the next slide, I will give you more details on that. With this, we are year-to-date at a gross profit margin of 22.5% year-over-year, up 2.6 percentage points, then S&D arrived at 18.1% of sales in quarter two.
That was not as strong as it was in Q1. But of course, remember that in the month of March, we did not have any marketing. Year-over-year, in the quarter, we are up 60 basis points, and year-to-date, we're even at 230 basis points. Then on the administrative expenses, in the quarter and in the half year, you see the scale that we achieved there, respectively 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points. So until now, I've only talked about positive deviations in the column better words. And then the result of this is that if we look at the adjusted EBITDA in millions of euros, we arrived in the second quarter at EUR 6 million, year-over-year up EUR 7 million, and over the six months at EUR 11 million, up EUR 21 million.
By the way, not on this chart, but also our EBIT was plus EUR 2.5 million, respectively EUR 4.5 million positive on a non-adjusted and on an adjusted base. The key in our guidance, adjusted EBITDA margin percentage was in quarter two, 2.7%, and in the first half of 2020, 2.4%. The next slide, please. The gross margin bridge from this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. The improvement was 2.3 percentage points, so from 21.2%- 23.5%. And I want to start with the negative block that you see there of minus 1.9%, although this should be seen in part in combination with the very positive net pricing block that you see there. What you see is that the start of the corona times, in the very volatile times, we really had a drive to get the right assortment in to grab the momentum and also serve our customers.
But throughout the second quarter, we saw that in some corona articles and specifically in the protection masks, actually the conditions that we sourced the masks at were at the peaks of corona at the start of the quarter. They were a little bit unfavorable. So, unfortunately, we had to bring the value down somewhat at the end of our quarter. Let's start now looking at the left, how we got to the year-over-year improvement of 2.3 percentage points. First of all, sourcing. If you remember, already in the fourth quarter, also in quarter one, and now in quarter two, we show year-over-year improvements of sourcing. First of all, in our relationship with our partners, we make improvements over there. But also there's an impact on the fact that more and more we have direct relationships with the producers of pharmacy. Then the very big positive block of net pricing.
There is some impact on the fact that we had corona articles at attractive prices, but a very important impact here is the fact that we talk about net pricing in our overall marketing mix that we had as a company. We needed less price reductions, for example, personal vouchers, and so on. The country product mix of 1 percentage point is key. If you want to summarize it, the fact that we grew with Rx, but we grew even much faster with OTC. This is the main driver for the improved gross profit margin on this slide. All in all, 23.5% up versus last year, 2.3 and up versus prior quarter one, 2 percentage points. Selling and distribution, actually, this slide seems to be of less importance of our profitable, of our big improvements, but actually, I'm very proud of what's on this slide.
Because what we did is in these very dynamic and volatile times, we were able to scale up in an efficient way. We were able to adjust our marketing mix in a flexible and an efficient way. And it results, remember that if you see a minus number in the bridge, it's actually positive because we talk about cost, of course. So we decided as a total company to really grab the momentum that's ongoing by increasing our marketing investments, but still, all in all, our marketing expenses as a percentage of sales improved with 0.3 percentage points versus the same period last year. The pressure we see in the shipping, packaging, and payments block, that's mainly because of mix and the fact that we grew very fast on DACH, as Stefan said already, but we grew even faster.
We doubled our sales in the international segment, and that's explaining the overall slightly higher shipping cost. Operational labor improved 0.3. We had this in quarter one already. At the start of the second quarter, the improvement in operational labor was a bit stronger than we ended the quarter. All in all, it was 0.3 percentage points better than it was last year. Other is efficiencies of scale. Next, please. Yeah, Stefan addressed it already, and I did already, so perhaps this is a little bit too much. Nevertheless, it's a world of change compared to just one year ago. Quarter two last year, we were around break-even. This year, we generated a solid adjusted EBITDA of over EUR 6 million, and compared to the not-so-very-strong Q1 last year, actually, from a sales perspective, Q1 last year was strong, but huge investments were made there.
But if you look at it from an EBIT perspective, in the first six months from minus 10 to plus 11. Important. In the end, if you look at how our business is doing, what counts is cash. We started the year with cash balances of more than EUR 100 million, and we ended quarter one with cash balances of more than EUR 150 million. The light blue here is the cash equivalents, so that's short-term money funds, and the dark blue is the real cash on our bank accounts. So the total of EUR 100 million of cash and cash equivalents. They increased by the fact that we generated in the first half of this year a positive cash flow from operating activities, of course, driven by the already mentioned very positive EBITDA that you see.
Actually, we increased our inventories for two reasons: to enable our growth, and also, specifically related to corona articles that we have in our assortment now. Despite this investment in our inventories that laid the foundation for our growth, as we have shown already in the second quarter, the total operating cash flow was positive. We did our investments close to EUR 80 million into this building, the new facility, and IT. The financial assets is actually from the light blue going to the dark blue, and then the cash flow from financing. Of course, a very important element in this total bridge is the April 7 capital raise of EUR 65 million. So why don't you see EUR 65 here with only EUR 53? Well, we also have regular lease payments and rent payments.
Actually, there is an unfavorable item that reverses in the next quarter related to our stock of around EUR 5 million. So next quarter, we will see that back in our cash balances. All in all, a solid balance sheet which enables us to act upon opportunities when we see them. We did this in quarter two, and I'm very happy with the situation we're in at this moment. With this, it's going back to you, Stefan.
Okay. Thanks, Jasper. So next, we want to give you a quick update where we are with the execution of our strategy. Where are we on our journey from evolving Shop Apotheke from being a predominantly e-pharmacy retailer today to becoming a truly customer-centric e-pharmacy platform? And then, of course, we're going to conclude by handing it back over to Jasper, who's going to walk you through the outlook for the remainder of the year. So we have already hit a couple of milestones on our strategy roadmap in the first half of the year. You remember that we started our cooperation with ZAVA, one of the leading online doctor services in Europe.
The business that we do with ZAVA is growing steadily. And equally important, we're gaining many valuable insights in terms of what's working for our customers, what do they appreciate, what's not working, so that we can continue to tweak and to scale up this offering. In terms of our same-day offering, I'm taking you back to last year when we successfully concluded our same-day pilot program in Germany in the Rhine-Ruhr area.
We quickly came to the conclusion that there is indeed a use case that needs to be addressed and that we want to continue with our same-day program. We, of course, have turned the pilot in the Rhine-Ruhr area into an ongoing offering for our customers. And just recently, we went to the next metropolitan area, to Munich, to also offer same-day to customers in the Munich metro area. Over the remainder of the year and early next year, more metro areas are going to join the same-day program. In terms of our own brands, of course, we have two major own-brand labels at this point of time. We have our functional food brand, nu3, which is continuously being developed. But you remember in the first quarter, we also introduced our second own brand label, Redcare.
We started with the launch of Redcare nasal spray, ibuprofen, and paracetamol in the first quarter. Just a couple of weeks ago, we introduced the next two products. There's a heat pad for the treatment of some muscle pain or soft tissue issues. And we also launched a patch for the treatment of lip herpes or for treatment of cold sores. So this is only the next step in our journey to expand our own brand offerings. More products are going to be added over the coming weeks and months. What are we after? Of course, with the own brands, we want to further enhance the loyalty of our customers because these are products that can only be bought at Shop Apotheke. And secondly, of course, we're generating and will continue to generate significantly higher margins with our own brand products than with the comparable third-party products.
By the way, the Redcare label is also a success of the acquisition of nu3 because the nu3 management team is also driving and managing the Redcare label as well. In terms of our marketplace, all I can say at this point of time, we are on track. We had communicated earlier that we're going to launch our marketplace, which will focus on expanding our product portfolio. So there will be no cannibalization of Shop Apotheke's core business today, but we are on track to launching our marketplace later this year. Of course, all of these offerings, all of these strategic initiatives, the ultimate aim is to give our customers more and more good, compelling reasons to return to Shop Apotheke, to come to Shop Apotheke, to address their healthcare needs. Okay. So quick update on where are we on the road to the launch of electronic prescriptions in Germany.
When you look at the upper part of the chart, the timeline, I can tell you nothing has changed from the last time we shared this with you. Based on everything that we are hearing from Berlin, from the Gematik, from other market participants, it appears as if the Gematik is on track to be able to provide the telematics infrastructure for e-prescriptions with the launch of e-prescriptions, and then, more important, with the mandate for physicians to start issuing electronic prescriptions in January 2022. We also want to take this opportunity to just give you an overview of the legislative foundation surrounding e-prescriptions in Germany. Some of this is, of course, you're familiar with. We're going back to August 2019 when the GSAV, the law for greater drug supply safety, was actually signed by the German president.
The GSAV actually made e-prescriptions in Germany legal, and it included an obligation for the Gematik to define the eRx specifications by June 2020. As you know, this, of course, happened by now. The GSAV was followed by the Digital Supply Act, the DVG, later last year. The DVG included an obligation for statutory health insurers and physicians to define the eRx rules and processes. This obligation included a requirement to define these rules and processes by using the Gematik Telematics Infrastructure. We have heard recently a lot about the Patient Data Protection Act, the PDSG, which was actually passed by the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, last month. It appears to be very likely that the upper house, the Bundesrat, is going to pass the law in September. In terms of e-prescriptions, the PDSG contains two important stipulations.
The one we are more familiar with than with the other one. But I'm starting with, I think it's Paragraph 360, Section 1. That includes an obligation to use the Gematik Telematics Infrastructure for the transfer and processing of e-prescriptions, of course, once the telematics infrastructure is available. And secondly, and again, we are more familiar with this stipulation. It includes an obligation for physicians, a mandate for physicians to issue electronic prescriptions and to use the Gematik Infrastructure as reflected in Section 1 as of January 2022. Derived from this legislative framework were two agreements between the National Association of Statutory Health Insurers in Germany and the German Pharmacist Associations. The one was the framework agreement governing the drug supply. This agreement, which was finalized in the second quarter, includes an obligation to provide e-prescriptions exclusively via the Gematik infrastructure once available.
And the reimbursement agreement, and of course, that is very important for Shop Apotheke, it included a stipulation that the downloading of electronic prescriptions from the Telematics Infrastructure is actually a prerequisite for reimbursement of e-prescriptions by the Statutory Health Insurers. And again, you're familiar, 90% of the patients in Germany are covered by the Statutory Health Insurers. The remaining 10% are being covered by private health insurance. So when I take a step back and I look at this chart, so what are the key conclusions for us? Number one, based on everything that we've heard so far, again, this is, of course, outside of our direct control, the Gematik seems to be on track to delivering the Telematics Infrastructure on time.
Secondly, it has become, with this legislative framework, as it has evolved and the agreements that have been negotiated, it is becoming clearer that the Telematics Infrastructure will indeed play a central role in the issuance, the handling, the reimbursement of electronic prescriptions. Last but certainly not least, I can assure you that our own preparations for the introduction of e-scripts in Germany are on track. We are preparing for a variety of scenarios to be very well prepared and to be prepared to, and that's, of course, our ambition, to take a disproportionate share of this opportunity. With this, I'll hand it over to Jasper to walk you through the outlook for the remainder of the year. Jasper, please.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Stefan. Yes, looking ahead to the second half of the current year, with the Q1 numbers and with the Q2 numbers, but importantly, also with more visibility on what we expect that is going to happen in the second half of the year, and that's then both externally, customer behavior, our competitive position, but also internally, what we are able to produce and to do as an organization. Based upon that, we were very happy that already on July 23, we were able to raise our full-year guidance for the current year for the second time to raise this year. Number one, the full-year sales growth we expect now to be at least 30%. Previously, it was around at least 20%.
Again, as I just said already, this is in part because of what we expect that is from a demand perspective, the situation in the second half of the year, but it's also because internally, we have been able to increase our capacity to make that very concrete. We will move a part of our operations earlier to the new facility than we anticipated before. We will do that still in a manual way, like we do the process at this moment, because the mechanization, we will really switch on in 2021 according to our original planning. Our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin stands year to date at 2.4%, and our full-year guidance is a margin of 1%-2%, significantly up from our previous guidance of breaking even and then being a positive number.
In the second half, if you compare the second half to the first half of this year, and also taking into account the margin guidance that we gave, of course, if you compare the second half to the first half, we do not anticipate another month like March, where we don't have any marketing. And also what I just mentioned, we deliberately choose to act upon the opportunities that we're seeing by accelerating the move of our operations, which will result in operating two facilities and a slightly decreasing operational efficiency.
So that is the difference in color between the second half and the first half. Still, our expectations also for the third and fourth quarter are that we will grow fast, make many customers happy, and that we will do so on a positive adjusted EBITDA margin level. Okay. Long-term target profitability unchanged. Our vision is still 6% or more of EBIT.
Okay. Thank you, Jasper.
I think we go to Q&A.
Yes, let's go to the Q&A. Just to let you know, we use automatic camera tracking in this webcast, and there's always a couple of second delay. So for example, you might be hearing Jasper talking, but the camera might still be on me. So bear with us. So we'll go through the questions as we have received them. I'm going to read them, and then either Jasper or I are going to answer. So we have a question from Gerhard Orgonas from Berenberg. So what are the main factors affecting the minus 1.9% other decline in the Q2 gross profit margin, please? So Jasper.
Yes. Yeah, Gerhard. Yeah, it's what we just said. We had to adjust the value of the remaining, particularly inventory related to corona products.
Then we have a question from Michael Heider from Warburg Research. Rx growth of 18%. Is this Q2 or the first half of the year? I can tell you the 18% is the growth in the first half of the year. The growth in the second quarter, if I remember correctly, Michael was 13%, and the growth in the first quarter was 23%. So Q1, 23% year-over-year growth. Q2, 13% year-over-year growth. And for the first half of the year, this averages to 18% year-over-year. Can we go down?
People like using the chat, I see. We get a lot of questions.
We have a lot of questions. Yeah. So we have a question from Alexander Thiel from Jefferies. Additionally, could you give us more info on your CapEx planning for the next two years, including the ramp-up in your logistics side? So Jasper, I guess that's for you.
Yeah. Now, Alex, in the first two years that are coming, we don't expect CapEx related to increasing our capacity. We are just opening our new capacity here. We have already in this facility, we have two phases of ramping up. And actually, in this scenario of ramping up from phase I to phase II, we're still talking about an 18-hour shift so that we call a two-shift. We don't even use the possibility to go to a three-shift day. So for the time being, we don't expect significant CapEx in the coming two years related to our capacity. We don't need that. But of course, already we started to think about what we will do after.
Okay. We have another question from Alex. Good morning, gentlemen. Alex Thiel from Jefferies. The first question would be on your growth rate in the DACH region. Could you give us more color on the pure underlying German segment in terms of Rx and OTC? Alexander, as you know, we don't disclose our sales by country, but I can tell you that, of course, the OTC growth was higher than the Rx growth because we're only participating in the Rx market in one country, in Germany. And the German market contributed significantly in terms of euros, but also in terms of percentage growth, to the overall development of the DACH segment. The second question would be on your plus EUR 10 million effect in investment for other financial assets. Could you elaborate on that, Jasper?
Yes, this is in the bridge of the cash and cash equivalents and only because we show cash and cash equivalents. It is the sale of certain money market funds we had. So sometimes to avoid negative interest rates or to make a little return on our cash balances, we invest in money market funds with a very low risk profile. So actually, this is a non-event. This is from a money market fund to our cash balances, just to be complete. Question number three is the strategy for Rx in the next two years.
Yeah. So the strategy for Rx, Alex, in light of the potential bonus discussion, our strategy is focusing on the end customer. Again, I know this, you've heard this before, or all of you have heard this before, but that's what Shop Apotheke is all about. We want to make sure that the end-to-end customer journey in the non-Rx segment, but also in the Rx segment, are best in class, that we really want to have a competitive advantage in this area. I think we have been very successful with this so far, and that's, of course, what we will continue over the next two years.
In terms of the potential bonus discussion, Alex, our position hasn't changed. We are convinced, and we are not alone with this opinion, that a prohibition on Rx bonuses would be a violation of European law. But as we all know, this discussion has gained some speed. So the V, I have to be careful, the VOASG, the law that is supposed to support brick-and-mortar pharmacies, will be introduced into the lower chamber of the German parliament sometime in September.
It's our understanding that there is still a difference. There are different views among the coalition parties in Germany. We can reassure you that the European Commission has not changed its position. They are steadfast behind their opinion that this would be a violation of European law. We are not aware at this point of time whether or not an agreement has been reached between the European Commission and the German government. That doesn't seem to be the case. Okay. Then we go to two questions from Christian Salis from Hauck & Aufhäuser. Could you please provide an update on the sales momentum so far in Q3? Is it fair to assume a decelerated but still above pre-COVID level? Jasper, you want to take this?
Yeah, we can even be more specific on this. What we are seeing in the first weeks of July is a continuation of the trends, top and bottom line, that we have seen in the first half of the year, and then your second question, progress of the warehouse move. I think I just talked about it already. Everything is on plan. The mechanization will start in the first half of 2021 and be completed in the first half of 2021, but indeed, with what your suggestion here, we decided to do the same. Actually, we accelerate the move to gain extra capacity, but we will do that with a manual process, as I just said. Thanks, Jay Christian. So let's go to the top of the list. We have a couple of questions from. Okay, can we go to Olivier's questions? Olivier Calvet from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Okay. How many Rx products do you have in an average Rx basket? Olivier, I have to tell you, quite frankly, I don't have this information top of mind. I really don't know at this point of time. I can tell you when I place my orders, it always contains three Rx products, but I'm not sure whether I'm the average customer. The next question from Olivier, aside from COVID products, masks, etc., did the change in sales mix, for example, the drop in flu medicine, have an impact on your gross margin? Jasper, you want to take this?
The total impact of all the mix, where we say it's the mix of products, but also the mix of countries, was just one percentage point, and the main reason for that was that OTC is growing even faster than Rx is. That is the answer to your question. Actually, it is no. We don't see a significant net impact because of changed behavior of our customers, besides the one you mentioned already on corona-related products. The others remain the same.
Okay. Olivier's next question for your same-day, next-day delivery. Are you covered by the delivery fee of EUR 2.50 per delivery that applies to German pharmacies currently? Would you mind quantifying the size of that business? I'll start with the second question. No, we don't want to quantify the size of our same-day business at this point of time. Again, we are just live in two metro areas in Germany. The business is developing as we had anticipated. In terms of the delivery fee, of course, the delivery fee for the messenger services applies only to Rx business.
That is not part at this point of time of our same-day offering. And as Shop Apotheke, the business that we do ourselves, we're also delivering to patients, to customers' homes. We are currently not getting this delivery fee. Olivier's next question, if the competitive environment changed significantly, would you consider a merger with Zur Rose? Olivier, you're probably not surprised that we're not commenting on any rumors. I can tell you we are convinced that we are very well positioned to execute our strategy on a standalone basis. But again, principally, we don't comment on market speculations. Another question from Olivier. How do you see the probability that Rx bonuses be banned today? I think I already talked about this. Again, this discussion has gained some speed again with the law being introduced in the German parliament.
It's an open question for us: is the German government, while it has the presidency of the European Union in the second half of this year, the time when they want to pass a law that, according to the European Commission, according to the German Ministry of Justice, at least they have some serious doubts? And we are that fast convinced that it would be a violation of European law. Would the German government be willing to pass such a law while they are having the presidency of the European Union? There's a big question mark. But again, that is outside of our hands at this point of time. Next question. I think that's the last question from Olivier. In your opinion or experience, how long would it take to get a pharmacy license in the Netherlands?
Olivier, we don't want to answer this question at this point of time. I think that would be competitively sensitive information. If somebody wants to find out, I think they have to do the work.
Let's go to the top of the list.
Okay. We have a question from Tom Diedrich from Metzler. What are the reasons for the strong performance in Belgium you just mentioned? What can we expect in regard to growth rates in the International segment in the rest of the year? Jasper, you want to take this?
We're very proud of the fact that we have market positions with our brands in Germany, Austria, and also in Belgium. It was just a very strong performance that we did. That's a compliment to the team overall. Also, in the other areas of international, we had very strong percentage growth. But in Belgium, also with publicly available information, for example, YouGov or Google Trends, please see the impressive performance that we have achieved there. So what can we expect with the growth rates of the remainder of the year? There will be, is our current expectations continuing the momentum that we saw in Q2?
Okay. Yeah. And we have another question. Perhaps to add to Belgium, you might remember that in 2016, we acquired Farmaline, a local online pharmacy. That has truly been a success story. I really want to leave it at this, but I would be remiss if we didn't give credit to the team in Belgium that has scaled up this business just fantastically. And we have another question from Alexander Thiel from Jefferies.
Could you give us more info on your customer acquisition costs in the Rx segment, plus the average bonus spent per customer and per month? I sound like a broken record, but this is information, Alex, as you probably know, and you're not surprised by the answer that we choose not to disclose. We have a question from Andreas Riemann from Commerzbank. How has the cross-selling developed since the acquisition of Europa Apotheek? Is the share of mixed baskets, OTC and Rx, higher today versus last years? Should Rx acceleration as of 2022 immediately help OTC based on your projections? Jasper, do you want to take this?
Yeah, I think thank you. Yeah, one of the successes, I think, of 2019 is the successful integration from front and back of Europa Apotheek and Shop Apotheke, and that significantly improved the customer experience. I think in the current process with paper RX, it's still difficult for an OTC customer to add an RX product just like that. But you also asked the question the other way around, and that's absolutely happening. It is now easy for an RX customer to also add OTC or health and beauty care products or our health and nutritional foods in the basket. So that is increasing the average basket. Yes.
Then we have another question from Uwe Schupp from Deutsche Bank. Once you have moved to the new facility in full, what is the revenue that you can handle from this side, assuming the two-shift model? How many parcels can it handle, assuming unchanged basket sizes? I think what we have conveyed in the past, and of course, we still stand behind this, we will be able to handle at least €2 billion from the new site. Again, this is before any continuous improvement effects. The number of parcels we'll be able to handle at least 35 million parcels on an annual basis. We have a question from Gaurav from Shannon Partners. Hey, guys, can you please talk about penetration of private label today and the 2% mix in the long-term 6% margin target? Jasper, do you want to take this?
Yes, absolutely, Gaurav. Thank you. The good thing is if you now look to our numbers, our P&L, and the year-over-year improvements that we have, you will not find any impact of our own brand or private label in those numbers because the share is too small. But what we are doing on own brand and private label, the introductions that we did this year are very successful. We started with paracetamol and nasal spray, and Stefan talked about the other introductions we have. So the good thing is in the current numbers, you don't see that, but we expect a lot of that in the total mix in the future. From a customer loyalty perspective, it's a traditional win-win: lower prices for the customer, the same quality, and better margins for us. That's our current standpoint, but we have the idea that there's much more to come in the future.
Okay. There's a second question from Gaurav. Can you please talk to how many customers in your existing base you have with a chronic disease, fit the age profile, and have low-hanging fruit on eRx conversion? Gaurav, when we look at our Rx business today, the majority of our customers in the Rx segment are chronic patients. They have chronic diseases. They are compared to our average customer in the non-Rx segment. They are older.
In terms of the eRx conversion, we focus on organic growth, or we focus on growth in general at this point of time to have a large customer base with the introduction of e-prescriptions because that is, of course, the first customer group that we're going to go after, the people who are already happy, who are already satisfied with the customer journey offered by Shop Apotheke, and we want to convert them from a non-Rx customer to an Rx customer. Again, that is certainly a focus of all of our marketing efforts in preparation for the launch of electronic prescriptions. We have a question from Alexander Hugh from Kuvari Partners.
I think, Stefan, you see how many questions we still got, and then looking at the time, thanks for all your questions, I would say. But also, we will respond to a couple of more, but then I think the time, it's until 12:00 P.M. we have. So we will look at those questions and get back from it, I think, then after this meeting, I would say.
Okay. Good.
So let's continue with another two or three questions, I would say.
Okay. So then let's take then Alexander's question. Would you expect to see Rx growth accelerate significantly in the second half of 2021 rather than 2022 when it becomes mandatory? Secondly, clearly in recent months, you have one more new customer than grown faster than Zur Rose. Would you expect to be able to retain these customers as Rx move electronic from the second half of next year?
So Alex, based on everything we know, we think we're going to see electronic prescriptions in the second half of next year, but we don't anticipate a massive number of electronic prescriptions because it's not mandatory for physicians in Germany to issue electronic prescriptions. Again, we'll see. Initially, it will be a trickle, and then it will get bigger towards the end of the year. But we really think we're going to see a very significant scale-up in e-prescriptions with the mandate to issue electronic prescriptions as of January 2022.
In terms of our growth over the last few months, again, I think we already talked to this. Yes, our focus is on converting and reaching out in many, many different ways to our existing customers in order to convert them from being just a quote-unquote, just a non-Rx customer to also becoming an eRx customer in the future. Then we'll take the last question from Natasha Brilliant from Citi. Do you expect any meaningful impact on growth and margins from initiatives such as marketplace and same-day delivery in the near term? And Jasper, probably it's for you.
Yeah. Hi, Natasha. Thank you. You ask in the near term, then the easy answer would be no, but I will give a little bit more color. In the guidance that we have of achieving an EBIT margin in the longer term of 6%, those initiatives are not even yet included. Those initiatives are key strategic initiatives of us. So in potentia, it could change our business model also here, and that's why we have a guidance of 6% EBIT or more, so in excess of 6%. So in the near term, I don't expect it. In the future, both marketplace and same-day delivery, I expect, will have a positive impact on our total P&L.
Okay. So again, we want to respect everybody's time. So we once again want to thank you for your interest in Shop Apotheke. I assume, I hope you're going to share the statement at the beginning of this call that this was a truly extraordinary quarter for Shop Apotheke. But I can assure you, and hopefully, we gave you a flavor for this as well. There's more to come over the coming months, over the coming years. Obviously, the Q&A chat function was very popular. So thanks for your questions. We want to assure you we're going to reach out to everybody who has submitted a question that we haven't answered.