Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and on behalf of Montega , a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the TAKKT AG following the publication of the first quarter figures of 2024. I'm delighted to welcome the TAKKT Management Board, represented by CEO Maria Zesch and CFO Lars Bolscho, who will give us a presentation shortly. After the presentation, we will move over to our Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly to them. And having said this, we are looking forward to the results, and I hand over to you, Mrs. Zesch.
Thank you, and welcome to our earnings call for the Q1 results. I'm hosting the call together with our CFO Lars Bolscho. In today's call, we will focus on our operational development and the financials, after we had a strong focus on strategy and midterm targets in our analysts' conference call at the end of March. I will start with a summary of Q1 before Lars will then get into details of our financials. I will then close with a view on our outlook, and at the end, we are open for your questions. So when we presented our guidance to you at the end of March, we already talked about Q1 being a challenging quarter. So let me give you a short overview of what we saw in Q1. The economic environment on our markets in Europe and the U.S. remained challenging.
For Europe, we saw very low GDP growth and a recession environment in our home market, Germany, and a manufacturing PMI clearly below the 50-points mark and with a negative trend over the course of the quarter. For the U.S., we saw a better GDP, but looking at industry indicators, the Restaurant Performance Index points towards contraction in the market with a value below 100. In regard to the furniture and display industry, we are facing a continued weak environment in our markets due to post-pandemic effects. So in this environment, we experienced negative organic growth of 16.5%. Our European business in I&P and the Office Furniture & D isplays activities of OF&D developed similarly to Q4, while FoodService saw a significant drop in sales. We will provide you with more details on FoodService later.
With this negative top-line development, we focused on strengthening our resilience, and we saw good results on cash, on gross profit margin, and we also established leaner cost structures. We saw a significant increase both in free cash flow as well as in our gross profit margin. We made structural adjustments in our cost base, especially on personnel costs. This included adjusting the number of FTEs to lower demand, and we also decreased the number of leadership positions after finalizing our more integrated organizational setup. We are evaluating and implementing additional measures in the coming months. We achieved important milestones also with our strategy implementation. We completed an important step with the harmonization of ERP systems at Hubert and Central in our FoodService division, and we finalized the migration of ratioform customers to our KAISER+KRAFT brand, and we'll discontinue the ratioform brand in early May.
These are both important steps for integration and will contribute to future success, but more short-term, this also leads to some challenges and impacts to our top-line development. With that, I will ask Lars to give you more input on the financials.
Thank you, Maria. Welcome, everyone, from my side as well. Let's have a closer look at our financials in the first quarter. As usual, let's start with the group's development with our sales development in the first quarter. Sales for quarter one came in with EUR 269 million after a EUR 322 million last year, so a reported decline of -16.4%. There was hardly any currency impact in Q1, as the U.S. dollar and also the Swiss franc translation impact to euro are balancing almost out-on-touch level. So organic growth was at a very similar level at -16.5%. I want to mention two important impacts. First of all, the phase-out of Certeo in the second quarter 2023. You might remember we have closed down those activities a year ago.
And the second important impact, we have a negative working day impact of around, together, Certeo and working day 3 percentage points. So the two impacts together around 3 percentage points. If we adjust for the working day effect, our divisions Industrial & Packaging and Office Furniture & Displays developed in growth rates versus prior year, very similar to what we have seen in the fourth quarter of the year 2023. FoodSe rvices decreased in growth rate. I will comment on this later when we come to the divisional views. Overall, growth in the first quarter was disappointing and below the run rate, which we have seen in the fourth quarter last year, which was at a -11%. And summarized, the main reasons for this are, first of all, the slower development at FoodServices, and secondly, the lower number of working days, which impacted growth.
Let's continue now with the profit development. EBITDA was significantly below prior year at EUR 16.8 million. This implies a reported margin of 6.2% and an adjusted profitability of 7.4%. Let me break out the profit development down in a bit more detail. Our main challenge is definitely the missing sales and with that, missing absolute gross profit. As Maria has mentioned in her overview, we have showed our resilience in challenging times with a strong increase in our gross profit margin by 1.2 percentage points to 41.2%. We are happy with this development as it is coming from all of our three divisions. We continue with cost management on marketing, on personnel, and also on other costs. On marketing, we reduced our activities in line with the lower demand. Anyhow, we are operating in a challenging environment right now with an increase in costs for online marketing.
This led to an overall more stable development of marketing spend year-over-year and, as a consequence, a lower marketing efficiency in the first quarter. We are working on countermeasures to improve our marketing efficiency, and we expect the lower marketing cost ratio again in the upcoming month. On personnel, we adjusted our resources to the lower demand and continued to reduce the number of FTEs in all our divisions and also in our holding company. Besides making use of fluctuation, we also realized structural reduction measures. The measures we've taken in the first quarter will show their savings impact from the second quarter onwards more clearly, as many of them were realized end of February. In the first quarter, we talk about realized savings of a bit below EUR 2 million and around EUR 3 million one-time expenses.
The savings for the year 2024 out of the already realized measures will be more around the level of EUR 9 million before one-off costs. In addition, we continue to evaluate and to implement additional structural measures. Including savings on other costs, we had published in our guidance a savings target of at least EUR 15 million, which we will go for as a minimum for this year. Overall, looking at our adjusted margin of 7.4%, this margin level is low, and we expect the profitability to increase in the upcoming quarters, especially towards the second half of this year for three main reasons. One reason is our sales growth expectation. Maria will talk about it later regarding our outlook. With this, the higher overall scale of our infrastructure. In addition, second aspect, I talked about cost measures getting into more impact and being enhanced in the upcoming quarters.
Thirdly, as mentioned before, we expect improvement in marketing cost ratio that will also support our profitability. With this, let's have a look at the division Industrial & Packaging now. On sales, sales were at EUR 154.7 million and down 14.1%. Currency impact was positive, so organic growth was -15% in a still very weak European manufacturing environment. The purchasing manager indices for manufacturing are still clearly below the line of 50 points in Eurozone and even lower in our main market, Germany, indicating very low demand for our division Industrial & Packaging. Similar to the fourth quarter, all regions within the division Industrial & Packaging performed more or less in line with the overall trend. Only our activities in the U.K. were slightly better, but still negative compared to prior year.
The development versus prior year was impacted by 2.4 percentage points by the closure of our Certeo activities in 2023. I had mentioned that when I talked about the group. In addition, we had the also already mentioned impact of less working days with around 2 percentage points impact on the growth for division Industrial & Packaging. Looking at the profit development, EBITDA was at EUR 16.8 million, a reported margin of 10.9% due to lower top-line and also one-time expenses. Adjusted for our one-time expenses, EBITDA margin came in at 12.2%. On gross profit margin, we saw good improvement to 43.7%, coming mainly from better product margins. We significantly managed down also other costs. While marketing and personnel were similar to prior year, this was due to the high online marketing costs and impacts from salary increases.
With the measures, especially on the personal side, we implemented here, we will operate with a lower cost base going forward. In the first quarter, we incurred EUR 2.1 million in one-time costs at I&P, mainly for the mentioned reduction of personnel. Now, let's go to the U.S. and our division Office Furniture & Displays. Let's again start with the top line. Top-line performance was overall similar to the fourth quarter with sales of EUR 60.3 million and an organic growth rate of -16.7%. Both our brands, NBF and D2G, showed a similar weak performance. While GDP is better in the U.S. compared to Europe, we see on our more specific market indicators weaknesses signaling also a challenging market environment for Office Furniture & Displays. Overall, this is also in line with what we are seeing in markets around us and at competitors.
Looking at profit, the development remains challenging due to the difficult top-line development. EBITDA was EUR 3.1 million and with that, an EBITDA margin of 5.1%. We had some smaller one-time costs here in the last quarter, so the adjusted margin was 5.5% in the first quarter 2024 compared to a 7.4% in the previous year. We continue to have a high gross profit margin at Office Furniture & Displays with a very good 44.8%. This is, as we have already seen in the second half of last year, a comparatively high level for this market, resulting from improvements in freight costs not being transferred to price levels of our customers and therewith kept in our pockets. In addition to gross margin, we managed down our marketing spend, personnel, and other costs at OF&D as well.
Despite all cost measures due to the weak top-line development, we still saw a clear decline in profitability in the first quarter. Let's continue with our third division, FoodService, and with sales again. Here, top-line was the most challenging one in our first quarter and with this also significantly below the run rate of the fourth quarter, where we had seen a -7% versus prior year. In this quarter, we are at a -20% organic growth versus prior year. Market environment continued to be weak with a Restaurant Performance Index below the 100-point threshold and worsening expectations from the customer side. As Maria shortly mentioned below, there's also internal reasons for the weak top-line development. First of all, we harmonized and integrated ERP systems as a final step in our FoodService integration with Hubert and Central.
With such a large IT project, there's both a shift of focus away from sales and marketing and also still some process challenges that we have to solve. This distraction from growth does not come completely unexpected, but it had impact in the first quarter and needs to be reduced again. The second specific challenge we have at FoodService is the performance in our project business. Those are big project orders with longer lead times and high volatility in sales realization. You might remember the first quarter last year, we achieved a comparatively high number of sales from this project business. In the first quarter this year, we are significantly below this level. Reasons for that are the more volatile order intake and sales development of this business, but also that we had some fluctuations in the sales team. We needed to refill open positions.
Both of these challenges will still also have impact in the second quarter. On EBITDA, EBITDA was at EUR 1.8 million with a 3.3% reported margin. We had some one-time costs in both periods. So adjusted margin would have been higher with 3.7% after a 4.7% last year. Also at FoodService, we see a good development on gross profit margin with an increase to 29.9% after the margin had been under pressure in 2023. It's good to see this improvement, and we will continue on this path at FoodService. On cost management, we reduced marketing, personnel costs, and other costs, and we will continue doing so, still with a further reduction of sales. We are currently operating at an unsatisfying scale and profitability level at our division FoodService. Now, over to cash.
As in 2023, a very good development, also this year, that shows our ability to generate cash in challenging times. Cash flow optimization is one important part of our resilience. Even after releasing substantial net working capital over the course of last year, we were once again able to reduce inventories by also increasing trade payables. With that, we were more than compensated for the lower cash flow before changes in net working capital. We are working on the whole cash conversion cycle, so on inventories, payables, and receivables. We will continue with this push also in the remaining quarters. Capital expenditure was a bit higher compared to last year, but completely at expected levels. Overall, free cash flow improved substantially to EUR 21.3 million, a nice success in such a challenging quarter. We will continue to generate good cash flow and improvement in cash conversion cycle going forward.
But please be aware that our comparison base will start getting more challenging as we have last year released more net working capital in the second half of the year. Finally, let's look at our balance sheet, which, no surprise, remains strong. We have decreased net financial liabilities by EUR 16 million in the first three months. About 2/3 of our financial liabilities currently are lease liabilities. So we are looking at a comparatively low level of bank debt remaining at the moment. The equity ratio is slightly increased to 64%. And with that, it's clearly above our target corridor of 30%-60%. This leads us to capital allocation. We continue to run our share buyback program. And so far, we have spent about half of the allocated total amount of the program of EUR 25 million.
More than enough volume available for us to continue until the end of 2024 with this program. We propose to pay out a dividend of EUR 1 per share after our shareholders' meeting in May. We stick with that to our attractive dividend policy. As you can see on this chart, we will also for 2023 pay out a special dividend besides the base dividend, bringing us then in total to the EUR 1 per share and an attractive dividend yield of 8% based on our current share price. Before I hand over to Maria, a short summary from my side. As we had expected starting into this year, we are looking at a very challenging first quarter. Our main challenge remained to be weaknesses in our markets and our clear sales decrease.
Despite our progress in building up our resilience in gross profit margin and cost management, we have unsatisfying profitability levels in the first quarter, which we expect to increase, especially in the second half of this year. On cash flow, we continue to compensate and are above prior year, enabling us to have a very solid balance sheet and also attractive dividend payouts. With this, over to Maria for our update on the outlook in 2024.
Many thanks, Lars. So I think we have already mentioned that we expect 2024 to be another challenging year in our target markets. After the first quarter, we confirmed this expectation. In Europe, GDP growth rates and especially GDP growth of our main market, Germany, will likely remain very low, if not negative. European manufacturing PMIs remain firmly in contraction territory, clearly below the level of 50.
So for the U.S., uncertainties and a slowdown in GDP growth are expected. So overall, a more resilient market than in Europe, but still with a risk of a slowdown in the second half of the year. Overall, we see the U.S. more resilient also in the rest of the year. In this environment, we saw that Q1 overall followed the top-line development from Q4 2023. In April, we don't see a significant improvement yet. We expect to see a gradual improvement over the course of the year and mainly in the second half. This assumption is supported by better GDP growth outlook in the Eurozone, but also by lower comparison base to previous year and also that we manage, especially the internal challenge in FoodService. So looking at our priorities, we continue in the same mode that we started with in 2024.
We focus on gross-profit margin, we focus on cost, and we focus on cash generation. We continue to work on strengthening our resilience. Quality before quantity. Part of this are structural improvements in other and personnel costs, where we have made the first steps and where we continue with additional measures in the coming months. On an annualized basis, we expect cost savings of at least EUR 15 million. These structural adjustments would lead to one-time costs in 2024 between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million. We continue to work on strengthening our cash generation. This includes managing net working capital and release of additional inventories, as well as improvements in the cash conversion cycle. For the full year, we confirm our expectation of organic sales to show a high single-digit to low double-digit decline, depending on how much of an improvement we see in the coming months.
On profitability, we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to come in between 8%-9.5%. One-time expenses could impact profitability by 1%-1.5% percentage points. Lars has shown you the adjusted margin for Q1 being below this range. As he explained, we see clearly three points how to further improve. First, with a lower marketing cost ratio. Second, with structural cost impacts. And third, with the better scales for better growth. We will continue to work on cash generation, and we will release additional working capital and with that, contribute to a free cash flow development that's more stable than EBITDA. To summarize, Q1 has been difficult as it was expected. But we are adjusting our cost base via tackling these challenges. We operate from a position of strengths. We generate strong cash flow also in this environment.
Before we go now to the Q&A, let me give you a reminder about our investment thesis. We have a huge growth potential in a very large and also fragmented market. We have an excellent position with our diversified activities in Europe and the U.S. This has helped us in the past. It will also be important in the future. 2024 will be challenging on the top line, but we remain confident that we will return to positive growth in 2025. Mid-term, we will achieve an average organic growth that's noticeably higher than our historic growth rate of around 3% by clearly targeting market share gains both in Europe and the U.S. We have a clear vision to bring new worlds of work to life together with our customers. We have executed thoroughly on our strategy along the three pillars: Growth, OneTAKKT, and Caring.
We will continue to do so. We have a good financial track record and execution. We know how to adapt and to adjust to a challenging environment. We will take the necessary measures to safeguard our financial performance. You see this with cost management. You see this with the strong cash generation also in 2023 and in Q1. Last, given the current uncertainty, we have the advantage to operate from a position of financial strengths and stability. With a strong balance sheet, we generate substantial free cash flow, and we are committed to pay dividends to shareholders, as you have seen it with our dividend proposal. In addition, we continue with our ongoing share buyback program. Now, with that said, we are happy to take your questions. Over to the operator for the Q&A.
Thank you very much for your presentation and the dive into your results and the outlook. We will now move over to our Q&A session. For a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask your questions in person via audio line. To do so, please click on the virtual raise your hand button on the lower part of your screen. If you've joined by phone, you can use the key combination star key nine to enter the queue, followed by star key 6 to unmute yourself. If you're not able to speak freely today, you can also place your questions in our chat. We already received the first question from Christian Bruns. Please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Yes. Hello, Maria. Hello, Lars. Hello, Benjamin. The first question is on the savings.
You said that, EUR 9 million, there will be EUR 9 million in savings in 2024, if I remember correctly. EUR 15 million will be then the structural effect. Is this for 2025 onwards? Is this correct?
Hi, Christian. So I would, I would, start answering this question. I would say, I'd say almost. So in Q1, we have actively reduced numbers of FTEs, right, as you said. Now, for the impact, what's the impact on the first quarter, savings? That, of course, depends then heavily on the timing, right, when we have reduced. For the first quarter, our cost savings before one-time effects were slightly below EUR 2 million. Now, out of those measures we have already realized, we will have an impact then for the year 2024 of EUR 9 million. Yeah? So that's the EUR 9 million, the impact of the measures we have already realized.
If we then look one year further, the impact will even be a bit higher, right, because most of those measures were done in February. So this is more than around EUR 10 million, probably on a 12-month basis. Now, the EUR 15 million, this is what we had also published, like, in our guidance, our overall structural cost saving target for this year, including personnel and others. That's the EUR 15 million. And we say at least EUR 15 million. Yeah? So minimum of EUR 15 million in 2024 out of other costs and structural personnel measures, probably a bit above.
Okay. Thank you. And but I have a follow-up there.
Yes, please.
What are the EUR 5 million, not personnel, savings?
No, it's, yeah, good, good, good that you asked. So it's additional measures. We continue to realize measures both on other costs and personnel during this year.
Yeah? So the EUR 9 million I've mentioned, that's what we have already done and realized. And we continue over the course of the year in both categories, other costs and personnel. Of course, we also adjust that on what our order intake trend shows us, right? This will always lead us into going a bit more into that or less. Yeah? But that's what we do. So it's additional measures, also on personnel.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And if I may, a second question on the one you mentioned, high online marketing costs. So I think it's yeah. So is there could you give an idea about that increase of online marketing?
Yeah. So Christian, let yeah? Do you have a further question, or can I answer on?
No, no, no. No, no. I was finished. Sorry.
Yeah. So thank you. Thank you, Christian.
So, price increases in online marketing or high online marketing cost, that was your question. So what I can say is that in the past few months, the price for keywords in online marketing rose, among others, due to the higher demand, by companies for keywords and also for the willingness to pay higher prices. So and we do not expect that these prices to drop in the near future. We believe they will likely to stay. But what we can do is to adjust and to improve our cost ratio. So what we can do is give you some examples. In the first quarter, we got some learnings out of Q1, how we can steer more efficiently. So shift into higher efficiency online marketing channels for us, so where we see more return. We also see some channels where we convert better.
So we will clearly shift into these channels.
Okay. And what could you give me a better idea of which channels this could be?
Yeah. On the marketing side, so for each and every one of our divisions, these are different online marketing channels. So in some, it's product landing pages. In some, it's Google versus Bing. So it really depends on where we are in our divisions. And we steer that on a daily basis, and we see what the return is and go to the higher return channels.
Okay. Thank you very much.
And Christian, may I just add one thing that we are not misunderstanding or that we don't have a misunderstanding? So in your question, I was not sure how you meant that. Our absolute online marketing costs are not above prior year. The cost per click are increasing, right?
So our cost ratio is up, but our absolute marketing costs are not above prior year, but they should be a bit more below prior year than they are.
Okay.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Thank you for your questions, Christian. So we will now move on with the questions from Thilo Kleibauer. So please go ahead and unmute yourself. Unfortunately, we cannot hear you, Thilo. So then we will move on, with the questions from Dr. Zuzak and come back to you later, Thilo.
Yes. Hi. Can you hear me?
Very well.
Yes. Yes. Hi, Maria and Lars. Just one question from my side. You, you seem to be a little bit less optimistic for the current year, 2024. You're more optimistic for next year. I think you mentioned both the internal problems in the FoodService division, but also the macro picture outside.
There, I would like to ask what you see in terms of trends or in terms of behavioral patterns with your customers? Because I think, like, also before the backdrop, basically, of the, let's say, the investments, which were completely halted during Corona, then probably after Corona there were kind of, like a superorder cycle in some areas, at least, which might be cooling off a bit right now, but that might be a temporary issue. And I would like to basically hear your view about the overall picture now without focusing on a given quarter or half year.
Yeah. Thank you. So I think your question is multiple-pointed. So I will start, Lars, please also, you know, bring your view into it.
So let me start with, like, the focus on what we see, for us for 2024, and also, like, how we deal with it. So we say, this 2024, it's really about resilience, so making sure that we get out of this crisis even stronger. So therefore, we clearly say it's quality above quantity. So what we do is, so what we saw is, in the figures you see, it's a double-digit percentage decline, in what we see in regards to our market expectation, but also to the indices we see. And, as we referred to already earlier, it's manufacturing index here in for Industrial & Packaging, or it's a so-called BIFMA index or RPI for the other divisions. So we see that they are really in the decreasing area, not in the, you know, increasing area.
What I also see, and if I talk to other CEOs, there seems a lot of caution for this year. I think it's not only us. We expect a challenging year. It's, I think, especially around Europe. As you know, we are strong here in Germany and in Europe. As you know, we sell cyclical equipment products to specifically industrial customers, mostly in the manufacturing world. This combination, I think, is challenging because Germany is one of the weaker economies in an already weak European environment. With the industrial environment being weaker, customers, we see very hesitant to invest now into expanding their operations. That affects our top line directly. But what I also see is that, you know, with our divisional setup and especially also being in the U.S., we will show resilience.
And, maybe, Lars, you can also give an update then on what you see in also how we deal with that.
Yeah. So, thank you, Maria. So not too much to add. Honestly, it's like important to look, like, at our specific market indicators. And, like, in this example of European manufacturing, you asked a bit, like, for the trend or anything. We don't see a trend change yet in the macro numbers we see, right? If you look at the PMI for manufacturing, Eurozone and Germany, unfortunately, remains at a very low level now for several months. And all the positive news we hear around, like, the European, also German economy is more related to service industry where we are not benefiting from at that same space. So nothing to add there. Resilience is also our focus, clear.
So far, no real trend change.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your questions. So now let's come back to Thilo Kleibauer, so we give them another try.
Yes. Hi. Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yes, we can.
Oh, fine. I've only one question regarding your problems in Q1 in the FoodService segment. Yeah. I mean, it seems that the implementation of the ERP system was not, yeah, as smoothly as planned, and that you have lost some orders due to this. So maybe can you describe what has happened there and also what is the current status? Do you still have some difficulties? Should we also expect a negative effect in the current quarter, or is this now fine? That would be helpful.
Yeah. Thilo, I will, I will give you answers on two aspects. What we, as Lars mentioned, first of all, we did the ERP integration of Hubert and Central, and I think it's a major, major step forward. But as you also know, in such big projects, it's not always, you know, running 100%, as planned. I would say, we have gone ahead with it. We did the switch. What we saw was a complex process. I think, I've been in that also quite some times already. I would say it's not unusual for some errors, issues to occur. What, how would I describe the situation? The impact on sales due to this ERP integration is due to two effects. First is there was really a focus of the whole organization on the ERP project during the hot migration phase.
So and with such a project, a lot of the internal attention is then focused on making sure it's getting right. But this takes time off also to serve customers. So that's one point. And on the other point, I would say, adaptation to new systems and also to new processes takes some time. So our sales and service teams, they need to get used to the new system and even further improve some processes. So both effects are temporary. Our clear expectation that we see ongoing improvements. And what I can tell you is that we are working. I think we are done with almost 90% of the issues, and we expect now a gradual improvement in the coming weeks. So I would say we will see an impact, a bit in this quarter, but this will fade out. So that was the ERP.
There was a second topic, also last mentioned, that was the project business. As you might remember, a lot of the positive growth from last year in FoodService came exactly from the increase in the project business. So, the project business was around 10% of, I think, last year's sales. And in Q1, we saw a significant lower contribution. So and there, I can also give you two factors why they which played a role in there. Project business is volatile in terms of order intake, but also in terms of when you realize sales, because it's more like a 6-18 months topic, than an immediate topic. So it's about volatility. And the second reason is, it's also about a lot in, in FoodService, project business about personal relationships between sales reps and customers. And we had some changes.
We had some fluctuations also in our sales team at the beginning of the year. So that led to less sales reps being active in Q1 than before. We are currently rebuilding the team. We expect that this will improve later in the year. In Q2, we will see a lower level of contract business than in 2023. So these two topics, and I hope I could give you, like, good insight into that these both topics will be, you know, having an impact a bit on Q2, but we are certain that, you know, it's only of temporary impact.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Maybe one follow-up on the ERP system.
Does this affect both brands, so Central and Hubert, or is it just that, that you take the system from, from one of these companies and, and roll it out in, in the second one?
Yeah. Good. Yeah. Thilo, good, good question. So, we, we migrated the Central ERP to the Hubert ERP. So Central is more influenced. So, there were the changes. So Central more influenced than Hubert.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Pleasure.
Thank you so much for your questions, Thilo. So by now, we just move on and come back with the questions of Christian. So please unmute yourself.
Yes. Hello. I would like to have also a follow-up question on Office Furniture & Displays where you reported lower freight costs, which were helpful for your, for your gross margin.
And I just would shed some more light on this and if this is also something you could which could help also the FoodService business.
Yeah, so I will take this question. So, first of all, that's something that we have already seen in 2023. So this is not new. And what we are seeing there is especially related to the ingoing freight. So that's most of that is the container costs, for example, from Asia to the U.S. in our business there. And this those costs were coming down last year, as you can already also see, like, on container rates. And also, outward freight was impacted. And what we are doing in this business, that's a difference to Europe, we are, let's say, invoicing freight costs to customers, like, separately. So it's outside of the cost of the product.
We were able to keep those costs that we get from the customers to shipping products quite high. Yeah. So that's also a bit of the answer on how sustainable is that. We expect that and we also see that there is a bit of market pressure on the pricing then coming up. And this will then also lead, leads us to the, expectation that those very high gross margins will most likely not remain. Yeah. So that's more a, let's say, period of time where we were able to get a benefit out of that, which is great. Yeah. Well done by the team, also on the pricing. But it's not the new level of gross margin we see for this business.
Okay. That's clear. Thanks.
Thank you so much, Christian. So in the meantime, we have received no further questions.
So everything appears to be answered by now. But should further questions arise at a later time, ladies and gentlemen, please do not hesitate to contact investor relations or us. Having said this, we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining and your shown interest in TAKKT. And a big thank you also to you, Mrs. Zesch and Mr. Bolscho, for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining day. And we conclude today's call with some final remarks from Mrs. Zesch.
Thank you. Thank you for your interest in TAKKT, and also for your questions. So I'll invite you to our next call, which will be in July on the 25th of July. I keep my fingers crossed for you, for all of us, that the economy goes in the right direction.
I'm looking forward to present you then, our figures of Q2. Thank you.