Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the METRO Financial Year 2020, 2021 results presentation. Throughout today's recorded conference, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dr. Steffen Greubel, CEO, METRO AG. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to this result presentation of our financial year 2021. I am excited to be here and present to you how we've used the last year to improve our competitive positioning. Let me make a COVID comment before I go into the content. We all would like to have done that in a physical meeting, but due to COVID-19, we planned that as a call. Now, I ended up in my home office because I am in quarantine. Despite being fully vaccinated, I had a positive Corona test last week. I'm back to negative already, had only very mild symptoms, and I'm desperately waiting for my quarantine to end. I would like to take the opportunity to reiterate the importance of vaccination.
METRO, as a company, and I am as an individual, strongly supporting vaccination. Hope to finally meet you in person at our Capital Markets Day on January 26. Couple of words to the call structure. I'm going to walk you through the highlights of the year. Christian is later on, then bring you through the financial section. At the end, I'm going to summarize, and then we will have time for Q&A. Let's get started, and I would like to ask Sabrina to go on the first page. Next one, please. Exactly. The overarching message in this unusual year is it was all about focus. Focus on wholesale, focus on professional customers, focus on expanding our multichannel business and investing into our growth, and focus, obviously, in navigating the pandemic. Our hard work was rewarded.
It paid off last year, and it continues to do so. My five highlights are a very strong catch-up in the second half of the year. Indeed, a super comeback of gastronomy and METRO. As a result, we ended up at the upper end of the guidance range. That also led to internal all-time records in a lot of different companies and geographies, and we are continuing to win market shares. We expect a further growth acceleration in the financial year 2021, 2022, and actually, we are also seeing strong current trading despite the challenges. Let's now look into why these are my highlights. Next page, please. I'll start with the quarterly sales development, which shows the resilience of the business model and our significant growth potential. Let's first look in the first half of the year on the left-hand side of the chart.
Obviously, HoReCa suffered very much under lockdown and restrictions, but the trade and the FSD part of the business compensated quite well. Nonetheless, we finished the first half of the year with -12%, but overall, a very resilient customer base and, giving the circumstances, I would say, not inspirational, but really okay number. Second half of the year, that really turned around. We had a strong business development after the super comeback of the gastronomy. Since June, we are having our sales constantly above 18-19 levels, and in Q4 we even have outgrown the previous year 18-19 by 9%. So, we have outgrown the pre-COVID period by 9% in the fourth quarter of the last year. That all led us in a full year perspective to sales and EBITDA more or less on previous year.
We are quite proud of this achievement. Sales development of 0%, that feels maybe not so good, but when you would look at the first half of the year and then on our performance of the second half of the year, we are very proud for having achieved at the end a black zero in sales development. Our takeaway for you is the adaptation of the business model pays off. The comeback qualities of the HoReCa sectors are high, and we are emerging stronger out of this crisis than we went into it. Next, how the wholesale and multichannel focus contributed. Next page, please. Our operational wholesale focus contributed in three main ways mainly. We optimized further the portfolio. It's now more wholesale, more growth ready than a year ago.
We grew the multichannel offering in focusing on improving and growing all the channels, especially the ramp up of the FSD, the food service distribution and digital. We invested into the business model and further growth. That means we invested in our people, we invested in our infrastructure, and we invested in innovation. As a result, we really have set the basis now for future acceleration of growth. We benefited this year, we will benefit even more in the years to come. Now I would like to talk about our international presence and infrastructure, about our growing portfolio of brands, and about the heart of the company, our multi-channel model. Let's go to the next page, please. Let's start with the international presence and infrastructure. Our investments further improved our powerful international presence.
We have now, from a country perspective, a very balanced international presence in more than 30 countries across Europe and Asia. Our store and FSD network is indeed an international food service infrastructure. It's not only a conglomeration of stores, it's indeed a food service network. Why I'm saying that? We're having 681 stores, and 563 of them do have already now out-of-store capabilities. That means we are delivering out of the store. This is 10 more than the last year. I will give more details later on when we will talk about the multi-channel business model. We do have 67 dedicated depots. That is one more than the last year. We opened one in Rome.
I was actually personally opening that, as one of my first things I did when I was with METRO, I was opening the depot in Rome, and 12 are coming from our acquisition. Only organically, the additional square meters of FSD surface is 44,000 sq m additionally compared to September 2019. Roughly 25% a quarter is coming from the new depot in Rome, and the rest is indeed coming from repurposing of the surfaces from stores to FSD. This is our sort of multi-purpose fulfillment centers. More and more, the stores will be also set not only for selling directly to customers, but also as a delivery point to serve customers at the places where they work. Next page, please. We have an attractive and growing portfolio of brands.
Besides our store and delivery portfolio, which comprises the well-known METRO and MAKRO brands, we made three acquisitions in the last year in Spain, Portugal, and Austria to densify and professionalize our Western European footprint. The HEM merger, though, is still under pending clearance. We also two country exits, Japan and Myanmar. We exited from countries where growth prospects were indeed missing. Both countries also were contributing negative EBITDA and cash flow to our overall performance, so we decided to exit those two geographies. On the right-hand side, you see our growing franchise model. It's now roughly representing EUR 500 million in sales and 8,200 franchise stores around 6 Eastern European countries. The outlook to this portfolio is that we do have, and we see a healthy, strong and stable country portfolio as indeed a basis for growth.
We will continue to invest in our network and infrastructure, and every country must contribute. Loss-making countries will be either turnaround or exited. I will be very open with you, this might also need to take additional, potentially costly exit decision, where all our efforts to turn the business do not bear fruits. Let's look, next page, please, on our multi-channel business model. It's a true wholesale business model on top of the described infrastructure and the described brand portfolio. The beauty of this combination of stores, delivery, and digital is that everything goes well together, and it's serving and delivering the customer and delivering customer value in almost every touch point you can imagine. Let me run you a little bit more through the details of that. Let's start on the left corner with the stores.
Our stores are obviously the heart of this company. This is where it all began. Our stores are important, first of all, because our customers need a good choice of products at low prices with a high flexibility. Besides this, the store can add value, and this is the intersection to the next circle, the delivery circle, to our biggest growth lever, the FSD, the delivery. We use store space, we repurpose space for out-of-store delivery. We do maximize asset utilization. We can build on an existing infrastructure, and we push the FSD business forward in a very, I would say, efficient and resourceful way. That's the combination where you see the intersection of the two circles in out-of-store. On top of that, I lost connection now to the charts. Sorry. Give me one second.
I just lost connection to the charts. It's back again. I'm sorry, that was a technical issue. I'm sorry. On top of that, we are expanding our FSD capacity, where we are strengthening our infrastructure, building depots, for instance, growing volumes over time or with the help of acquisition. Everything is then digitally connected. First, the digital circle, that's a normal channel for us, like FSD or like the stores. We call that METRO MARKETS, the channel. With METRO MARKETS, we are creating Europe's largest online marketplace for professional non-food products. We will continue to grow suppliers and range on the marketplace and roll it out to additional METRO countries. Of course, our online ordering for food, where we now generate EUR 1.5 billion in sales digitally. This is already today the core channel for our FSD customers.
Second, the digital solution called DISH. This is in the very center for customers, helping our customers make their processes more efficient around reservation, communication, and delivery. Last but not least, the customer app. It's a special service that enables to create a digital shopping list, to check goods availability, to check out in the store paperless, to check in without the plastic card from METRO. It's really a digital customer experience that we can generate with our customer app. This shows us METRO is very well-positioned, and we are building on a very resilient business model. This business model cannot be copied by any competition that easily. We are very proud that we do have those three individual but interlinked channels that are helping basically each other. Let's take a more detailed look.
I'm going to run you through a couple of more details alongside the different parts of this multichannel business model. Let's start again with stores. Again, a very stable basis with a lot of potential, big choice of products, low prices, and a super high flexibility. Let me underline especially in years where we do see business volatility. For HoReCa, it's a very convenient way to reach most of our customers. There is no minimum order values, so it's a very convenient and very flexible way to stock up and to buy your product as a customer. The development in the last year, we were focusing on high stock availability. We are continuously achieving with up to 50,000 products to levels of 95%, roughly.
We were rewarded in the second half of the year with 5% growth at more than 50 million own brands, growth. That is equaling now 17% own brand share, not only in the stores but overall. That's something that we are really proud on. Let's continue our journey through this multichannel business model and look at the app. It's called METRO Companion. You see a picture here. It's basically digitizing a store experience. We have the possibility to connect to users, to collect data, and to digitize, at the end, the customer experience. As I said, you can use it to make the entrance instead of the card, you can generate shopping lists, you can administrate your invoices, there is search functions, and you can check out paperless. The performance is very promising.
We have seen 1.4 million downloads in the last year. This is 81% more than the previous year. What is interesting is that all of those people who have downloaded it purchase almost twice as often as the average. That's a very encouraging application, very encouraging performance of the app, and it's very much interlinked to our to our stores. Let's go to the next part of this business model, which is the FSD. Indeed, this is going to be one of the key growth levers for the future. It has also now a very important role already. We are providing a reliable service for our core food products, and it's an important procurement source for our customers.
We are very happy with the development of the last year and the speedy recovery in the second half of the year, where HoReCa demand was coming back. We have a strong performance, EUR 4.2 billion in sales. In Q4, we had the highest sales share ever at 20%. That's what really made us proud. This is one of the fastest-growing activities we do have. We have achieved with our 630 locations, so the dedicated depots plus the out-of-store facilities, and 6,500 sales force together, we have achieved the figures. As mentioned, we also have invested and added 44,000 sq m space in the last year compared to the previous year before.
Sales force, one word to that topic, is an important topic because in FSD, you've got to go to the site of your customers. You've got to sell these offers. We have a sales force that is quite sizable already. Not everybody knows 6,500 sales people visiting customers, and we are expanding that now. Right now, we are adding roughly 100 every month because we do believe for good FSD performance, you have to have a good sales force. Next page, the next part of the business is then how the delivery orders are coming in. The orders coming in to a fair share completely digital. There is a tool that's called M.Shop, where our customers, the restaurateurs, the gastronomy, is ordering online.
It's representing roughly EUR 1.5 billion in sales. We had last year roughly 8 million orders, and we are reaching roughly 18,000 customers daily. This means already a third of the overall volume is generally online and digital. There is no sales rep, no telephone people involved in taking the order. Sales rep can concentrate what they're supposed to concentrate on, which is selling. We are pushing the penetration of the digital offering of the M.Shop towards the FSD customer more and more. A third, EUR 1.5 billion, is already completely digitalized. Let's go to the next page when we're talking digital, which is our marketplace. It's a convenient online extension of our shelves, basically, with almost an endless assortment. We are talking 600,000 products and 900 partners.
This is 50% more products than in 2019, and 160% more partners than in 2019. It's indeed not only a marketplace on PowerPoint, it's a marketplace that is very liquid, that is very lively, and we have also strong figures to show and to communicate our gross merchandise value. The overall volume of this marketplace is tripled to more than EUR 63 million. Right now, in November, we already had the first days where we were exceeding EUR 1 million in sales a day. This was now in November. You see there's a very good dynamic going on with the marketplace. Of course, we are working with everything what we have into the rollout in other METRO geographies. Next one is going to be Italy and Portugal, and then the other countries will then come soon.
We are completely convinced by this offering, and we are investing to really speed up the rollout to additional countries of METRO. Let me end this journey with the heart of this multi-channel business model, which is our DISH Order. It's to remind everybody, the online ordering and reservation tool that has been in demand very much by our HoReCa customers, supporting them, in particular, during the lockdown. We have 240,000 registrations on dish.co, so that means 240,000 customers registered. Since roughly a year, we introduced also fee-based subscription model, which we are having now sold 20,000 times. 20,000 customers are having a subscription to a DISH tool in their restaurants. We see also a growing demand.
We are pushing also our sales force very much to offer that to our customers because we are completely convinced by this offering. We see in the new year, roughly in the first two months, roughly, a little bit more than 5,000 new subscriptions. You see there's also dynamic in this lever because also right now, also with some more restrictions, especially this offering is seeing a big demand from our customer side. Let me summarize on the next page the overall business model. You see the three circles interlocked, interlinked, and we are sure that this is a super attractive multi-channel model with a lot of growth potential. This is really what differentiates us versus competition, and this is how we will be successful in the future.
The basis for that, when we go to the next page, is obviously also a good progress on our sustainability commitment. We influence responsible product handling, and we want to meet the growing demands of our customers. To give you examples and progress reports alongside our core focus areas, which is products, packaging, food waste, and climate protection. On products, we committed to turn 1,500 products into more sustainability until 2023. That means less salt, healthier, less fat, less sugar, new organic products. Right now, we have more than 1,000 revised and or new introduced own brand products. For example, we are now having the first plant-based meat alternative as our own brand. It's called METRO Chef Veggie, and it's selling out quite nicely in the moment. Packaging.
We committed ourselves to reduce 2,000 tons of plastic until 2023, so this is 2 million kilograms. We are on good track, and we have already reduced 1,221 tons of plastic packaging so far. Here I can communicate that we are well on track. Same for food waste. We wanted to commit a 50% reduction in our own operation, and we have so far until 2025, and we have so far reduced food waste by 27% per sq m sales area, which is also going into the right direction. One remark, we are also increasing our food donations. That means we are working closely together with companies like, or not, with institutions like Too Good To Go or like the German Tafel or other food banks.
We have an increase in 34% in our food donations in the same period of time. Then of course, climate protection. Very important. It's a big commitment from us, and we also have upgraded our existing commitments now to our new one, which is to become climate neutral in our own operation until 2040. So far, we have reduced 37% of CO₂ emissions, and we are completely convinced that this is going to be the right track. We are also committed to invest in this. You need to know the vast majority, 90% of our CO₂ emissions are coming from the store. When we are refurbishing our stores, we will replace the existing, for instance, F-gas cooling devices by new modern ones and therefore also save the CO₂.
Just to give you an example, in the last year, we invested EUR 32 million in exactly this F-gas refrigeration changes, or phase out of the F-gas refrigeration. Our outlook is it's a long way to go indeed, but we are on the right track. With this broad package of measures for the next fiscal year, we feel well prepared. When can we? Yeah, exactly. Thank you very much. I'm coming now a little bit more to in summary mode. When we look at our feedbacks we are getting internally and externally, I would like to point at a couple of things. First, our customers. Both HoReCa and Traders customers, development is very good from my perspective. We have gained 250,000 new HoReCa customers and 200,000 new Traders customers.
Of course, we are also losing some of them, yeah. Indeed, it gives me the feeling that the entire industry is very resilient. There is a lot of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit going on, and we as METRO seem to be attractive for especially newcomers to this sector with our offering, 250,000 new customers. Then also a very positive NPS. This is our customer satisfaction Net Promoter Score from our customer positive development here, so that goes hand in hand with our win rates for new customer. Second, sales. We had several all-time sales records. I don't want to run you through all of them, but also in significant institutions like France, like Germany, like Spain, we had all-time highs.
We after, you know, as you can imagine, a period of not so good mood in the organization and fighting the pandemic mode, that was something that was really good in the organization that we could look again on records, that we could celebrate. We are very proud that we are again a record-breaking company, especially in the second half of the year. Market share. We continue to grow market shares in our core geographies, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Russia, and others, which is giving us the confidence that our growth is not only coming by tailwind, it's also coming because we are operationally outperforming competition. Then ESG, I mean, that was also very well appreciated by the outside world. Since eight years now, we are now in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
We are ranked A- in the CDP climate score, and we are confirmed in the FTSE4Good stock market index. That's also giving us good and confirmative feedbacks from the market that we are going in the right direction with our ESG strategy. Let me sort of summarize it in three ways. Number one, we had in the last year a strong performance in the second half of the year. We were accelerating our customer and user growth very much in the second half of the year, and overall that brought us to the upper end of the guidance range. We do have a positive outlook for the current year, for the next fiscal year, so to say.
For 2021-2022, we plan to accelerate our growth to 3%-7%, and this is the highest growth ambition in years. We will also continue to intensify our investments in FSD and digital. The EBITDA end is going to stay flat on previous year level. We feel that in this moment, in this very moment of time, it's exactly the right moment to double down in winning market shares, to double down in growth, because we feel that in the moment the opportunity is huge for us to really land grab and to grab some of the market shares we couldn't maybe grab in previous periods. With our multichannel business model, with the combination of digital, of stores, and delivery, we are sure there is now a super good opportunity to win additional market shares. We also see strong current trading.
My third point, you might worry about COVID as we do, but when we're focusing on customer needs, on the pandemic and the execution, we are sure we can overcome that. Right now, in the first two months, our sales trends continues. In the first two months, we were delivering sales above 2019 levels. Of course, now with more restrictions in the month of December, this is going be more challenged. But still, we are very happy and very confident with this figure so that we are sure we can deliver the 3.7% sales growth, at least with current information. I will now hand over to Christian, who will give you more details on the numbers and the development in the past financial year. Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you, Steffen, and good morning, everyone. To look back at a really very interesting year with a number of challenges, but most importantly, with quite a number of overwhelming successes, and this makes us look very confidently into the future. Let me first give you some highlights on the strong fiscal year performance, and then I'll walk you through some more details. We have achieved a stable sales development and EUR 1.2 billion, roughly, of adjusted EBITDA, which led to EUR 0.25 EPS growth. As a result of growing free cash flow by roughly EUR 350 million, we were further able to reduce net debt by about EUR 300 million. A lot of this performance came through in Q4, where we have achieved a sales growth of about 10%.
The positive trend continues in the new year, as you can see on the chart, where in October we have achieved a sales growth of 14%, November with 30%, and in December so far, roughly at 17%. All of this development is really in line with our expectations. How have we reached that? As Steffen already said, with customer focus and with a continuous drive for market share, where we will now look into some more detail. Throughout the pandemic, we have been committed to focus on the core needs of our customers in order to really grow our existing but also attract new customers. Our multichannel offer with delivery, store, and online marketplace really forms a USP, and the channel combination was particularly attractive in the last two years of the volatile situation during the pandemic.
The flexibility of the stores really attracted existing but also new customers. Because again, we need to remind ourselves, when buying in the stores, customers have no minimum order value and don't have to order one day prior. We also used our sales force to stay in contact and to bring pure delivery customers to the stores. Our competition is mostly delivery only, so they cannot bring customers to stores, and in many cases, they have also reduced their sales force. Don't get us wrong, we are very focused also on significantly growing delivery and the FSD space, but we see the strong benefit of having that balanced business model. During the recovery, we then focused on making the most out of this temporary advantage of the volatility.
We've really developed our customers through loyalty programs, and we have prepared FSD for the reopening by focusing on service level, one of the really most important winning factors in FSD, and really alerting our customers to that broad multichannel offer, but especially within that, the digital offering that is driving loyalty and the USP from our viewpoint. As a result, we have also, during difficult times, gained 250,000 new HoReCa customers at a rate that has grown by 30% since May. Thereby, we have kept the overall HoReCa customer development stable despite the strong industry challenges in the last year. We have also succeeded in developing these new customers as they trend with higher average sales and stronger buying frequency. Let's now look into NPS. What really are our customers telling us?
Overall, the customer satisfaction that is measured by this Net Promoter Score has increased by 9 percentage points for HoReCa and 5 percentage points for Traders. This development has been recorded on 3 main pillars, availability, multichannel, and new customers. With respect to availability, we have managed to achieve a small increase despite the global supply chain challenges and also occasional panic buying. This has made a real difference in the way our customers rely on us and has increased their loyalty. On the side of multichannel, we separately measure NPS for store and delivery. As you can see, both scores have increased measurably by 7 percentage points for store and even 17 percentage points for FSD.
This shows the positive impact of our measures across various channels and also gives us confidence that what we have done during the pandemic in order to focus on being prepared for the recovery has been paying off. On the new customer side, the NPS score has also increased by 2 percentage points this year compared to the last year, which provides us with a stronger basis to develop these new customers into really strong recurring customer relationships. Such quantitative feedback really makes us confident to be on the right track, and this is also recognized externally on our performance compared to the market. As you know, these charts from a couple of times that we have shown it in consistently during the quarters.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have outperformed the HoReCa markets, not only on those five key hospitality markets that we show here, but also in many others that we continue tracking. I think this quarter, what is very interesting is the gap has actually widened in all countries in the fourth quarter as we have crossed the pre-pandemic levels, but the market still is not recovered in most of the countries. Therefore, METRO exceeding pre-pandemic levels, but the market, not yet. We are quite excited about these numbers as they really show the direct translation of our actions into market and market share outperformance, and they really reflect the solid basis we have for further growth. How does that market share development actually translate into factual performance? Or to put it the other way around, where did the strong H2 originate from?
Certainly, it originated from HoReCa as one of the key driving forces, while also other customer groups are performing well. As you can see here, HoReCa has grown by 21% in September, and therefore once again showing the strong comeback qualities and also agility and nimbleness of the sector. This comeback then also drove group sales, as this is one of the key customer groups, obviously, and since June, they have not only been consistently positive compared to 2019-2020, but also consistently growing on a high level compared to the pre-pandemic levels of 2018-2019. Together, this resulted in a strong H2 and stable sales in the fiscal year. We see that this trend continues in the new year.
Despite the growing restrictions and some impacts that we also do feel, October and November sales were significantly above the 2018-2019 level, while December so far are growing by 17%, which is broadly flat against 2018-2019. Let's now look into the financial development, first on group level and subsequently then on regions. All of the following numbers are based on the reporting view, as you also find it in the annual report. This means that the portfolio changes are reflected in a way that I'm just briefly setting it out.
It's very important for us to be transparent and very clear in bridging the elements that we have seen, but we have basically exited two countries in the last fiscal year with Japan and Myanmar, and we have also added with Aviludo in Portugal and Davigel in Spain, additional pieces to the portfolio, so they are included since their first time consolidation. When we talk about guidance achievement, we look at a constant portfolio, meaning that we exclude Aviludo and Davigel, and we have included a slide with additional detail in the backup of the presentation so that all data points can be easily bridged. Now let's look at the group financials. As I mentioned, Q4 was quite positive in sales and reached +11% in September versus the pre-pandemic period.
The recovery was particularly visible in the FSD sales, which rose to a 20% sales share, as mentioned before. This is the highest FSD sales share ever and a great basis for further growth. In fiscal 2021, sales in local currency remained stable. Due to negative currency effects, especially in Russia and Turkey, overall group sales in EUR decreased by 3.4% to EUR 24.8 billion. The sales recovery was also reflected in the earnings development as adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 1.171 billion and therefore increased markedly over the previous year. This development was supported by positive one-time effects in the mid-double-digit million euro range, which mainly occurred in H1 2021, mainly in the segment others, and as we have discussed at the respective quarterly calls and the disclosure.
The reported EBITDA rose to EUR 1,166 million, whereby transformation costs, mostly for country exits, were broadly compensated by real estate gains. The overall group performance is built on strong regions. In both Q4 and fiscal 2021, most regions grew sales and EBITDA. In Q4, even three out of five regions grew sales by a double-digit percentage. On a full year basis, also three out of five regions grew sales, while the regions with higher hospitality exposure couldn't fully compensate for the challenging H1. The EBITDA development looks similar. More than half of the EBITDA growth of the year was achieved in Q4, and the growth was driven by all regions. Let me now go through the regions individually.
When we look at Germany, reported sales declined by 5%, and that's mainly attributable to a decline in sales to HoReCa customers in the first half of the year. METRO Germany performed significantly better overall than the FSD company, Rungis Express, where government restrictions had a significantly more negative impact due to its specialized focus on hospitality customers. The growing EBITDA in Germany is mainly the result of very good margin development and strict cost management. In Western Europe, reported sales and sales in local currency declined by 2.3% to EUR 9.4 billion.
France and Italy were particularly affected by the COVID-19 restrictions in the first half, but it was also the significant and rapid recovery in those two countries, also plus Spain in the hospitality side, which has driven the outperformance of the market continuously and has driven a strong performance in the second half of the year. In addition, sales in the delivery companies, Aviludo and Davigel, which were recently acquired, contributed positively to the sales development. On the EBITDA side, EUR 394 million are broadly in line with what we have had in the prior year. In Russia, sales in local currency increased by 3.3%, while reported sales decreased by 10% roughly to EUR 2.4 billion, and that is also driven by currency effects.
The sales growth was driven strongly by HoReCa and Traders, and the adjusted EBITDA increased by EUR 2 million at constant currency. In Eastern Europe, sales in local currency increased by 4.5%, while reported sales decreased due to negative currency effects by -1.7% to EUR 7 billion. Adjusted for currency effects, sales, especially in Romania, Ukraine, and Turkey in particular, developed positively. Adjusted for currency effects, EBITDA increased by EUR 18 million. The last region is Asia, where sales in local currency increased by 3.3% and adjusted for currency effect, the FSD company, Classic Fine Foods and India in particular, benefited from the recovery in the hospitality sector, especially in the second half of the year. EBITDA in Asia adjusted therefore reached EUR 7 million.
Let's now look at the remainder of the P&L to understand how we have achieved the previously mentioned EPS growth. Let's first look at the underlying depreciation that was flat year-over-year. However, the number that you see that has quite significantly increased is driven by two key elements. One is asset impairments that are mostly relating to country exits, that is Japan and Myanmar. On the other hand, we have impaired the remaining goodwill for Germany in the amount of EUR 94 million. On Germany, this was driven by the pandemic-related uncertainties in the hospitality market, but was also driven very much by the proactive conviction on our side that we want and will continue focusing on the availability of goods, and we will further invest into the market in Germany in order to drive also that attractive market going forward.
This has certain short-term consequences on the cash flows, and therefore we have decided to do that impairment. Germany continues to be one of our key challenges, obviously, but very, very certainly one of our key opportunities, and we will focus on that also in our new strategy. As a result of the increased D&A, EBIT declined compared to the prior year. On the net financial result, on the other hand, this improved by EUR 132 million, mainly driven by lower interest from finance leases and also a favorable currency development. Tax expense came in about EUR 20 million better than expected. This is mostly driven by a decrease of the tax expense due to the goodwill impairment, as mentioned for Germany.
In summary, the P&L from continuing operations increased to EUR -56 million, leading to earnings per share of EUR -0.15 in fiscal 2021, which is an increase by EUR 0.25 compared to prior year. Despite this improvement, EPS is still negative and therefore we will not distribute a dividend this year. Let's now move to the cash flow perspective, where we have achieved improvements in all elements of the simplified cash flow. Compared to last year, we had a slightly higher adjusted EBITDA, lower lease expenses, which were offset by lease income from Real, a very positive net working capital development with EUR 300 million improvement compared to prior year, which is also driven by the business recovery versus last year.
I think there, I would like to refer to the many calls that we also had during the pandemic, where net working capital was going into the other direction, as we predicted at that point of time, the swing back will be significant and that is marked already there and we continue focusing on the proper balance of inventory for availability and on the other hand, obviously for efficiency from a capital investment perspective. On the side of CapEx, we basically see a slight reduction in cash investment despite continuous growth investments. What we need to keep in mind here is that both this year and also the previous year have been impacted by COVID, and hence investment levels have been significantly below historical and future numbers.
All together, this leads to free cash flow growth of roughly EUR 370 million and translates into a EUR 300 million reduction of net debt. With this development, we have compensated the COVID-related increase in net debt of last year. Again, an example of our proactive management of the challenges presented by the pandemic. Let me therefore summarize, looking at the overall achievement of the guidance, what the bottom line is of our performance in 2021 compared to the guidance. We have invested in our future growth in order to emerge stronger from the pandemic, and that's together with our customers who are feeding that back very much through the NPS scores. We have thereby achieved our adjusted sales and earnings targets for fiscal 2021 and came out at the upper end of the guidance corridor.
This is true for both the guidance and also the reporting view. When we compare apples to apples, as circled here on the screen, sales developed at -0.4% versus an anticipated -0.4% to -3.5% and adjusted EBITDA grew by EUR 65 million versus an anticipated EUR +50 million to EUR -75 million. We are quite satisfied with the result, but we see that more as an obligation also starting with high confidence into the very new year. Therefore, looking into the future, we keep the focus on growth, customer needs, and investing into those, as we are convinced that over time, they will also very much pay back on the EBITDA and on the cash flow side. Therefore, for the new year, we expect 3%-7% sales growth.
With this quite significant ambition, we'll be back to pre-COVID sales levels, and that's faster than the HoReCa market overall is expected to recover. We expect adjusted EBITDA around the same level of the past fiscal year. The new guidance for 2021, 2022 is again based on a stable portfolio. This means that it excludes also in the base value, Japan and Myanmar. It includes Aviludo and Davigel. Let me just comment on this expected EBITDA development, which is largely driven by the relevant amount of one-time earnings, mainly in the segment Others, that supported EBITDA in 2021 as described earlier. However, strategically, even more important, we continue expansion of digitalization of our wholesale core business, such as the expansion of METRO MARKETS into two new countries. As a result, the segment Others will therefore be noticeably below the level of the prior year.
With respect to the growth, Western Europe is expected to contribute in a particular manner while all segments are expected to grow. As a consequence, by the way, on the reporting side of the reduced size of our Asian portfolio, we are further merging the segment Asia with the segment Eastern Europe from 2021, 2022 onwards. In the key financial slide that you will find on our website, we have provided basically all necessary information to bridge those data points. When we now look into the P&L below EBITDA, we expect real estate gains to amount to roughly EUR 100 million and transformation costs of a very minor extent. Depreciation is expected to be back at its underlying level. On the net financial results, we expect roughly EUR 220 million, and that is at the current FX rates.
An increase in tax expense to around EUR 150 million is expected, and that is due to expected earnings improvements in Western Europe in 2021, 2022, and to a smaller extent, to non-recurring effects in 2021. In summary, this will lead to further EPS growth next year. We further expect a return to pre-COVID cash investment levels as we invest into strategic growth initiatives such as IT, digitalization, and sustainability. This specifically includes investments into FSD expansion and remodeling, but also the intensification of our FGAS exit investments, as Steffen described on the ESG chapter. In consequence, this is expected to result overall in a stable net debt for the next fiscal year. Our guidance reflects the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and factors in temporary but limited COVID-19 restrictions, which affect especially our business with HoReCa customers.
We expect such restrictions, particularly in the first half of fiscal 2021, 2022, and also in line with the recent developments. Before handing back over to Steffen, let me also take the same chart and summarize from my point of view and reiterate the points that have been made before. This year was all about focus. Focus on wholesale, focus on our professional customers and their needs, and focus on expanding our multi-channel business model and investing into growth. The hard work from our perspective has been very much rewarded and it paid off the last year, and it continues to do so to date.
Therefore, also my highlights are the very, very strong catch up in the second half of the year, leading to being at the very upper end of the guidance range, which also was driven by many internal all-time records, also recognized from the external perspective on market share gains. Against that background, we expect further growth acceleration for fiscal 2021, 2022, and we see that confidently on the basis of the current development despite the challenges we are all aware of. On that positive note, let me now hand over to Steffen for a final summary.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Christian, and let me take the opportunity on this last chart to summarize a bit what we have heard today about METRO. METRO at a glance. Number one, we did see a strong performance and sales above 18, 19 levels since June, and this is obviously also continuing to go on like that in the start of the current business year. We've seen growth in all of the region, and our results are mainly driven by the strong HoReCa sectors in Western Europe and by, of course, the gastronomy sector per se. We are having still, despite the restrictions that Christian just mentioned, a positive outlook to the current or to the next business year, 2021, 2022.
We want to accelerate our growth to 3%-7%. We will also continue, because now is the time, really, to grab the market shares, to accelerate that we will continue to grow our investments into digitization, into IT, into things that are going to put us in a better position into our multi-channel business model that I just described. Therefore, the EBITDA also expected to remain flat, but we want to now really double down on the growth in this business year. We do see, number three, an impact from COVID, but a limited one, yeah. We see, and that's a good thing, a relatively stable pandemic situation in countries where we do have a HoReCa share that is high.
This is very different to what we have seen in the first two waves of the pandemic, because here, Italy, France was hit hard. This is not the case in the moment. The countries where we have the biggest restrictions are the ones that were we are ensuring a quite balanced customer portfolio. Even if HoReCa goes down a bit, then we do have possibilities to compensate for that. As a third point, we have now automatism in place, I would say, right? We can proactively compensate for lockdown or for restriction measures in our stores in the field, so it's not that we need to sort of think what we have to do. It's quite clear how we are going to react, and the company has learned to deal with that.
These three things in combination, I would say, it feels manageable, at least at, you know, this very moment in time, with all the information which we are having in the moment. Our motto is now, when we are looking forward, METRO, let's do this. We also have continued to develop our strategy. We have progressed that. We have shared that with the organization. We're going to share that with you also, on the capital market day on January 26 in the next year. We are really willing now to double down on growth, to grab the market share, and we as the management team have really set now the course for growth. Then, let me end with that. Let's do this. This is our motto for the year.
This is the motto of the annual report. We are going to do that. That's what I can actually promise, that with all our passion, our energy, everything we can bring, we can give with our heart, with our brains, with our muscles, everything, we will put into our growth plans and to really make that happen. Let's do this. This is our motto. Now let's most probably answer some questions here for your agenda. January 26 is our Capital Markets Day. You are highly invited to come there. We are now waiting for your question. Thank you very much for your attention.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is on the line of Xavier Le Mené from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. And thank you for the presentation. Two questions, if I may. The first one is, how would you qualify, you know, 2022. Should we see it as a year of transition where you're investing and trying to fix, you know, things, and then we should see a significant acceleration from 2023? Or do you expect potentially a more gradual process, you know, in the three years coming? That will be the first one. The second one is, you are accelerating CapEx, you know, quite significantly, so EUR 500 million -EUR 600 million. Should we see that as the normal run rate going forward? Or do you think that you have to invest more just for one year and then potentially CapEx will normalize going forward?
Thank you very much for the question, Xavier. Let me take the first part of the question in terms of our midterm plans that we're going to share, as I said, on the capital market day, and then let me hand over to Christian for the CapEx perspective in your question. Number one, when we're looking forward and we're looking to this 3%-7% growth, I would say this is not characterized by a kind of a one-off transformation activity in the next year. We have long-term growth plans. We have long-term plans that we want to sort of continue that journey of accelerating growth. We have, of course, some transformational activities that we need to do rather in a short-term way. Christian was describing the topic around Germany.
on the other hand, when we're looking sort of midterm or longer term, we want to sort of confirm that we would like to accelerate also our growth, the expansion of our multichannel business model consisting of the digital, the store, and the FSD also in a longer term. So, you can expect a continuous dedication to growth. this sort of next year should not be a one-off activity to boost now the growth and then everybody, everything is going to go back to 2% afterwards. That should not be the case. It should be also a midterm dedication to the growth. Some of our transformational activities, obviously we will have some, I would say, dedication then in a short- term perspective in the current and the next business year.
Let me hand over to Christian for the second part of the question now.
Yeah. Thank you, Steffen. Let me piggyback on that before going on to the CapEx side. I think the growth perspective, as Steffen has described, is really the trajectory that we are very confident to have embarked on in a structural manner on the top line side. I think with respect to the EBITDA development in the current fiscal year, yes, that should be more of a transitory perspective, and we see the development in the outer years also then nicely growing, in line also with the top line perspective. I think that's important because that will over time also drive not only EBITDA, but also cash flow, which enables me then to answer your second question with respect to the CapEx. The last two years have been pandemically driven, relatively low from a CapEx perspective.
The EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million of CapEx that we put out there are not dissimilar from historical perspectives prior to the pandemic. We are just very much convinced that going to those levels, we will be able to drive a much more significant growth on the top line and then over time also on the EBITDA side and thereby eventually from a free cash flow perspective. That will be the overall shape of the profile that from our conviction is looking very attractive.
Thank you very much. That's very helpful.
The next question is from the line of Andrew Gwynn from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning, all. Just go back to the guidance, actually. I see you're guiding to the 3%-7% sales growth, so just over EUR 1 billion of revenue growth, but EBITDA expected flat. I'm just trying to understand that a bit better. I know within EBITDA we've got these one-offs, but why is it only flat? You would expect some gearing coming through. Second question. I mean, we've spoken quite a lot about the FSD coming through from depots. I think a long-standing question for METRO has been about whether or not the FSD business is best supported from an existing wholesale store or something more standalone. Is there a sort of further thinking on that, you know, as the food service delivery becomes bigger, could we see more dedicated depots going forward?
Thank you very much.
Thank you, very much. Let me now turn the order around. Let me start in answering your second question and then give the first question to Christian. So, on FSD, of course what we want to do, and this is the strategy looking forward, is to use our existing store infrastructure and repurpose to a maximum extent surfaces and sort of transform them into FSD handling and storage areas. That's number. Then there is basically a, well, if you want to say so, a business case calculation behind it. At a certain point of time, it makes more sense now to shift towards a dedicated depot.
What we actually have learned and what we will also do, we have to generate out of store a kind of minimum load because we cannot start a depot with basically 0% utilization. That is the logic. We're going to shift the volumes that we have sort of generated out of stores then at a certain point in time, and this is just an efficiency calculation, if you want to say so, a business case calculation, towards then dedicated depots. Could also be, and this exercise we will undertake now, in the next weeks and months, that we are then also going to repurpose an entire store towards a depot. We have to do that location by location because that's very individual.
To remind you or what you can keep in mind is we are using the out of store to generate load. When the market is big enough, and this is mainly in urban or very high- density areas, when this is the case, then we're going to shift to a dedicated depot. We would never do that without having the utilization already generated out of stores that would actually give us the perspective that this depot can be very fast, also profitable. Let me go to the first one and give it to Christian, please.
Yeah, very happy to take this one. Let me split the roughly flat EBITDA that we're expecting for this year into basically two chapters. The first chapter is the country chapter, where, yes, based on the 3%-7% growth that we are expecting, we do also expect quite a significant growth from a profitability point of view. It will be slightly more muted from a gearing perspective because also there we are convinced, especially by building sales force, we will now gain further market growth momentum, which will then over time also improve actually our gearing. It will be a bit of an OpEx investment in that year. Country EBITDA is expected to grow.
On the other chapter, the second chapter, it is the segment Others, basically, where we have had in the last year one-off support of roughly EUR 50 million that we have also discussed in the various calls from ongoing lawsuits and other topics. Therefore, there is a little bit of tailwind we had in the past.
Basically, they are also very much strategically, for example, METRO MARKETS, which is featured in there. We want to continue doubling down on that in order also to drive the medium-term growth. In the end, the flat EBITDA, basically two chapters, growth definitely in the countries and some reductions in the other segment because of the shape that the financials were cut in the last fiscal year.
Okay, thank you very much. Just obviously with the Investor Day around the corner, is there some thinking to sort of more fully adjust the P&L? It is quite a frustrating company to model because of the sort of one-offs that slowly accumulate in the adjusted EBITDA. I know we've had that discussion before, but yeah, further thoughts there would be very welcome. Thank you.
Maybe, Christian, do you want to react on that one as well?
Yeah, I think it was rather a statement from Andrew, but, happy to.
I see. Okay.
No, happy to comment on that. I think what you see is a very transparent way that we are disclosing all these data points. When we are exiting a country, for example, like Japan or Myanmar, we know that it is absolutely very critical to show this very properly from an IFRS perspective. On the other hand, we are convinced that the transparency that we're providing there is helpful. We know that also some of the small adjustments that we show might look from time to time to be nitty-gritty, but I think we all need to be pretty specific in order to have the consistency then of the data points.
I understand that if things move around, that this is not the most easy thing to model, and we are doing our best in order to facilitate that at your end of the stick as well, colleagues.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Have a good break. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. The next question is from the line of Andrew Porteous from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Hi, gents. A few from me. Can you just talk a little bit about Germany? You talked about investing there and you know, it's sort of impairing the cash flow, I guess. Can you just talk about what you're investing in there and give us a bit of color and perhaps what you're expecting to get back from that investment as well? The second question was around sort of the top- line guidance, the sort of 3%-7%. I mean, obviously quite an ambitious target. Is that driven by sort of market recovery, or is it an assumption of you gaining market share again next year or sort of a mix of the two? Could you perhaps give us a feel for that?
The last one around M&A. I mean, obviously with the higher CapEx around, a, do you still see the opportunity for further bolt-on deals? b, do you have the appetite for them, given that you're going to be investing more in your core business going forward?
Thank you very much. Let me start with Germany. Germany indeed is a very important country for us. It's not only our home country, it's also one of the countries from a market share perspective and from a market size perspective, where we do see a lot of opportunities for us. We expect our market share in Germany to be one-digit still, and the market is per se, and let's sort of take all this COVID-19 and Corona aside, is a very attractive and per se growing market, yeah. That means we are dedicating ourselves to Germany very much. When you look now at the current business, and this is coming to your question, we do see a transformation need in Germany.
That when we talk about investment, that starts with some of our stores that we need to make also sort of fit for the future, and it ends with, sort of, investments into the assortment, into streamlining and into sort of the expansion of our FSD business, and then basically the interlinkage between all of those different channels, digital, FSD, and the stores. It's quite a intensive work ahead of us, because it's big, the market opportunity is big, and it's our home market, so we want to be successful there. Indeed, when we look at the current situation, we do see this transformation need, and that's why we are saying we need to invest now in the business. It's also now reporting directly, so the units Germany and Austria to myself.
I want to make that as a CEO priority and that gives you just also a little bit of the feeling why we say also Germany first, so to say. Number two, the 3%-7% ambition, of course, you know, that's a very motivating ambition. We are sure we can or we will do that. I do think this is really coming from our operational performance. It's coming from our multi-channel business model. It's coming from this connection between digital, between FSD, and between the stores. We are sure there's not a lot of competitors, maybe not a single one out there, that can actually sort of bring on a business model towards their clients like we are having it.
That gives us the feeling that with our operational performance, we are able to drive 3%-7%. On M&A, I would always say we are not, and you will see that also on the Capital Markets Day, we are not basing our strategy on M&A, on a M&A-driven market consolidation because there is not a lot of big targets around that are sort of available. We are constantly observing and screening the market for opportunities. When we are having opportunities, we will do, but we don't want to rely on M&A for consolidation of the market. We rather would like to do it organically because then it's in our own hands. Whenever we have the chance for opportunity, we will be there.
We will actually be also willing to invest then, but we cannot build our strategy and our tactics on M&A because just that there's not enough possibilities out there in the moment.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time, and I would like to hand back to Dr. Steffen Greubel for closing comments.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for participating. I guess we are well on time. I am sure we have shown you that METRO is back in the game. With our plans for the next year, hopefully that is for you guys as exciting as it is for us. We are convinced that we can do this. This is why this is our motto. With having said that, I would like to wish you a good Christmas time. If you are Christians, a good Christmas, and if not, then a nice holiday break, a good start in the new year and all the best for you. Thank you very much for your attention. Looking forward to see and to speak to you soon.
Remember our Capital Markets Day, January 26. I expect you to be there, and then we hopefully can also have a personal conversation there. Until then, all the best for you. Thank you very much and goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.