Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gail, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Arçelik conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the second quarter 2021 financial results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Polat Şen, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Özkan Çimen , Finance and Enterprise Risk Director, Mr. Alper Gür, Investor Relations and Capital Markets Compliance Manager. Mr. Şen, you may now proceed.
All right. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and for some of you, good afternoon. Welcome to our second quarter 2021 results webcast. I'm here with Özkan Çimen , our Finance and Enterprise Risk Director, and Alper Gür, our Investor Relations Manager. Before going into details, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our employees for their dedication and high motivation and relentless efforts this year. Let's move on to slide two. I'll start with the highlights of the second quarter. Our net sales have increased by 86% year-on-year and 12% quarter-on-quarter, thanks to the continued high demand in many markets and our pricing initiatives. The increase in raw material prices hit profitability, and our margins have declined on both quarterly and yearly basis.
Our OpEx to sales ratio in this quarter was flat compared to the first quarter of this year. One of the most important indicators for us is working capital to sales ratio, which is 27.4%, which is flattish compared to the previous quarter. Please kindly be informed that this ratio does not include the acquisition of Whirlpool and Hitachi for apples-to-apples comparison purposes. If included, the ratio comes down to 26.8%. I said Whirlpool and Hitachi, but I'm just talking about Whirlpool because Whirlpool has been acquired on 30th of June, so we had to include it in our balance sheet. I'm quite happy that we have completed our strategic acquisitions, Whirlpool in the last day of this quarter and Hitachi on July 1st.
It gives me great pleasure to tell that our green bonds, the first of its kind in Turkey, was a success story, receiving more than 4x demand from 190 global investors, reflecting the trust that the markets put into our company. Our leverage was 1.54x in the second quarter, excluding the impact of our acquisitions, for apple-to-apple comparison purposes again. Can we move to the next slide, please? Our net sales was TRY 14.5 billion, up by 86% year-on-year, thanks to substantial unit growth, yet coming from a low base, of course. Proactive actions in pricing and strong Euro USD against Turkish lira. The revenue growth was 12% on a quarterly basis, mainly attributable to the price increases and Turkish lira depreciation. In terms of margins, the second quarter of the year marked by the significant upsurge in the raw material prices, which was not unexpected.
As you can see in the middle and the right-hand side of the slide, our gross margin was 30.2% and EBITDA margin was 9.8% in the second quarter, reflecting around 430 basis points and 473 basis points contraction respectively on a quarterly basis, mainly due to the severe increase in the raw material costs. This was not something unexpected, as I told and communicated before. Our capacity utilization is a bit normalized in this quarter compared to the last two quarters, which was around 100%. EUR USD parity had a neutral impact on our gross margin in this quarter, which the impact was positive a quarter before when EUR was stronger. Beyond higher raw material costs, a slight increase in OpEx to sales ratio had a small negative impact in the EBITDA margin as well. Can we move to the next slide, please?
I will continue with the domestic market. In quarter two of 2021, Turkish MDA6 market was up by 16% in unit terms. As Arçelik, we continued to outperform Turkish MDA6 market once again following the first quarter of this year, delivering 23% year-on-year growth within the same period and sustained our strong leadership. We have seen gradual decrease in the trend or in the consumer demand growth from April to June, mainly due to 17 days lockdown in May and inflationary macroeconomic environment and relatively lower house sales. We see the contraction in June was the first signals of the expected normalization in the demand trend going forward due to the strong base of the last year's second half. The growth of AC market decelerated following the first quarter.
Our AC sales have declined due to the high base of June 2020 last year and not executing the consumer campaign. TV market has declined further because of the supply issue in the panel market. Can we move to the next slide, please? I'll continue with the European markets. In Western and Eastern Europe, the strong demand continued in the second quarter, where we saw growth on both quarterly and yearly basis in majority of the countries. The four of the five big countries in Western Europe performed quite good on a quarterly basis, except for France. Demand remained high, and sellouts were very strong despite the logistic crisis in the ports faced with Brexit, thanks to increasing vaccination coverage. Germany recovered very well after a decline in the first quarter, despite the traditional channels opened later than the rest of Europe.
Eastern Europe was also resilient, and except for Poland, the unit sold in each country grew on a quarterly basis. Next slide. Our situation in the European markets. As demand remained high in European markets, Arçelik has benefited from that. The share of European market in total sales increased slightly compared to the first quarter and reached 45%. In Western Europe, we saw strong top-line growth on a yearly basis in euro terms, thanks to the unit growth and our pricing initiatives. On a quarterly basis, sales were almost flat. We have been able to increase our market share in the U.K. with a slight improvement of our price index there. Our performance in Eastern Europe was resilient, and we delivered around 40% year-on-year and 10% quarter-on-quarter growth in euro terms. We sustained our strong leadership in Romania and Poland.
As a result of our price increases, we have been able to improve our price index in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania. Next slide, please. Cycling a very low base, South Africa sales posted more than doubled revenue year-on-year in euro terms. Due to the lockdown in the country, net sales decreased by 8% quarter-on-quarter. In the first six months of the year, we have gained significant market share and reinforced our strong leadership in South African market. Sales in APAC has increased its share in total sales compared to first quarter of 2021. Our sales was up by 83% year-on-year, thanks to mainly the strong growth contribution from Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Pakistan, our sales have increased more than 20% in both euro and Pakistani rupee terms, reflecting the positive impact of both continued high demand and price increases.
Despite lower units sold in Bangladesh, we have been able to increase our sales by 32% in local currency terms. Just after the quarter ended, there has been some looting issues in South Africa, as many of you know, which had impacted our sales in July. We are aiming to recover the loss of July within the quarter three. We do not expect significant financial loss thanks to our insurance coverage in this country. Please move on to the next slide. As expected, the upward trend in the raw material prices, which started in the second half of the last year, continued this quarter as well. The supply shortages caused by high consumer demand to the finished product, which contains plastic and metal raw materials. China's conservative attitude for metal producers and logistics crisis that the world has been facing were the key reasons of the price increases so far.
As Arçelik, we have been closely following the market in order to manage our costs. As you can see, we have been affected from the price increases in the raw material market. As you may remember, the last quarter call, I told you that we had, especially in quarter three, quarter four, and quarter one of 2021, three quarters back-to-back. Our results were very strong, mainly due to our long-term raw material price contracts, which has been starting to finish by now. Starting from quarter two, we are feeling the effect of increases in the prices. Every company has a different cycle on this one. Everybody is going to be feeling that sooner or later. This is what I can say. I will just hand over to Özkan to move on with the numbers a little bit more. Özkan?
Thank you so much. I will continue with the sales performance slides. In second quarter of this year, Turkey sales grew by 47%. On the other side, international sales grew more than actual double, where 60% was coming from organic growth and 52% is coming from the FX impact. On the right-hand side, you can see our regional revenue breakdown. The share of Turkey in total sales compared to the previous year has gone down to the normal levels of 33%, while our other developing markets and European markets gained some share. Last year in Q2, Turkey sales was an outlier in terms of revenue breakdown because Turkey shares have increased while the other markets were impacted with the COVID. Move on to the next slide, please. Here you see the detailed financials. I will not talk in detail of every item, but I will give some highlights.
Our EBITDA was TRY 1.4 billion in Q2, and the margin was 9.8%, around 50 basis points lower than Q2 last year, and around 470 basis points lower than last quarter, which was exceptionally high with 14.6%. If you look at the full year figures, the EBITDA margin is 12.1%, which is 90 basis points better than last year. We delivered in Q2, TRY 541 million net income with 3.7% margin, which is 32% higher than Q2 last year. If we move to the next slide, please. On the right-hand side, you'll see our loan portfolio and effective interest rates. We have TRY 24 billion equivalent of loan. TRY 14 billion is bond portfolio, and around TRY 10 billion is loan portfolio. We have two EUR and one USD bond as the biggest shares in our total borrowings. We finance our Turkish business working capital needs with Turkish lira loans.
Turkish lira loan and bond is around TRY 6 billion. Last year, we have benefited from the low rates while financing our working capital need. In this quarter, as we renew our loans, we got higher rates from the market. Therefore, our effective tax interest rate for TRY borrowing has increased to 16%. On the left-hand side, you can see the leverage. Our leverage, including the impacts of acquisitions, was 2.2 in the second quarter. We have been able to manage to sustain the ratio at quite healthy levels, despite our cash payments for the acquisitions, and without any contribution EBITDA. If you look at the apples-to-apples comparison, the leverage is calculated at 1.54.
As recently acquired companies start to create EBITDA contribution for us, our leverage will get healthier since their CapEx requirement and net working capital need is quite lower, despite their margins are lower than our consolidated figure. We expect a lower leverage than when the companies fully operate. Move on to the next slide. As you know, Arçelik places sustainability at the core of its business. Our efforts regarding sustainability appreciated by various types third parties so many times before. This time, the investors showed their trust in our sustainability credentials. We have successfully issued EUR 350 million green bond at the end of May, which is the first of its kind and attracted high demand from investors. Total demand was EUR 1.6 billion, around 4.5x of the issued amount. We started with 350 basis points initial price talks and completed the deal with 300 basis points.
We can move to the next slide. Our free cash flow remained at negative levels, with an improvement compared to the first quarter figure. Despite having better CapEx to sales ratio and almost flat net working capital sales in this quarter, the significantly higher raw material costs hit our EBITDA margin, which resulted in negative free cash flow in this quarter. That was the last slide. Now I will hand you over to Polat for guidance.
Thank you, Özkan. I just muted myself. Our guidance has changed for the year-end, including the impacts of two acquisitions. We had to do that because of the acquisitions. Our expectation for Turkey's sales growth is around 30% in Turkish lira terms, and international sales to grow by 35% in foreign exchange terms, in hard currency. That's mainly due to the change in the international sales, mainly due to the acquisitions. Our consolidated sales, our guidance is to grow by around 50% in Turkish lira terms on a yearly basis. Considering relatively lower EBITDA margins of the recently acquired companies, we now expect our consolidated EBITDA margin to be around 11%. Our net working capital to sales ratio and our CapEx guidance has not changed, and it is 25% and EUR 220 million respectively. This is all from our side.
We are ready for the questions and answers session.
The first question is from the line of Cemal Demirtaş with Ata Invest. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the presentation. My first question is about your guidance. You gave a guidance including the Whirlpool and Hitachi. What could be the guidance excluding these two, and what was the effect on the balance sheet? You gave some numbers, but could you further elaborate how this will change the net debt levels for the year? That's my first question. The second question is about the income statement. When I look into details, the FX items, FX losses and gains, normally when the currencies go up, net when you include all the FX in others and financial expenses, you come up with positive numbers usually. In the first quarter, it was net TRY 99 million. In the second quarter, despite currency increases, we see FX losses. What might be the reason in the second quarter for this? This is the second question. Thank you.
Okay. Cemal, thank you very much. I'll take the first question, and Özkan is going to take the second one. To be honest with you, we have just acquired the companies. It's been one month that we are really working with the companies. The acquisition, especially with Hitachi, is a very multi-jurisdictional. We are talking about 10 different subsidiaries in 10 different countries. Because of the COVID situation, it's really hard to get into the details quickly because of the circumstances that we have. We are going to be in need of some more time in order to, say, give you a guidance of a full year. Because right now, what we see is, that's what I can share right now, we see a more upside potential, especially on the synergies, than what we were expecting.
It is a better picture for Arçelik in terms of synergies, especially on the raw material costs. The last year of Hitachi especially has been a year that was more successful in terms of EBITDA than the year before. We expect all of those going to be contributing on a full year basis, especially on 2022, because the effects will take time in order to change suppliers or in order to really materialize those synergies. We are going to start seeing the effects in 2022. It would be much more wiser for us to make an indication on this, especially at the end of the year, in 2021. I have to say that the Whirlpool has been included as balance sheet because of the 30th of June acquisition.
Hitachi, you can't see any numbers about Hitachi except the amount that we have paid has been transferred due to the time differences of Japan and Europe in 30th of July. We see the cash out on 30th of July. That is also one of the reasons of our little bit complicated results in quarter two. To give you a better understanding about without any acquisitions, what will be the situation, I will not be able to give you a direct or concrete answer on this one, but I can tell you that we have guided you last time with around 12%. According to us, around 12% was between 11.5% and 12.4%, according to our interpretation. I think that we are going to be close to the lower side of this bracket, let me say, for Arçelik without the acquisition.
I hope that answers your question, and then I'll ask Özkan to answer about the FX losses.
For the top line growth, because of this inorganic thing, now we are just in between, because we have some numbers in our valuation.
Now we don't know whether excluding those changes, there is any upgrade in your numbers or not. I think that a little bit puts a blank.
Okay.
For the transparency, anything with the current numbers will help the analysts to see.
Whether there is a revision upward or downward. That's what I want to understand. In the margins, I understand it's very clear.
In revenue, there is no deterioration without the acquisition. Actually, what we have guided you before in Turkey, I have to check the numbers.
Sorry about that.
Last quarter, 25%.
Yeah. Maybe I'll answer that after Özkan answers this question, then I'll get back to that one. I'll check this one, all right?
Thank you.
Cemal, your question around FX, as you have pointed out, we are closely monitoring our open positions in the balance sheet. We are trying to do this as square as possible, looking at every day's breakdown. We are working with more than 30 different currencies. We are trying to manage the impact of those currencies. Sometimes, the daily estimations that we are making is deviating from the actual position. That's creating a small variance in our positions, which we can make another transaction to close the deficit in the coming transaction. Therefore, those variances, if there's a big daily impact in the FX, sometimes affect the total FX position. Other than that, we have swap differences coming from the total positions, which is reflected to the FX line in the P&L.
When we compare the two criteria, as you said, one is positive and one is negative, but this is coming just a temporary impact, which is actually balancing each other.
Thank you. Maybe one last question about the tax rate. It's lower than we thought. What could we assume for the second half of the year and with all these transactions? Did the Whirlpool transaction have any effect? I don't think, but what was the reason behind lower tax rate?
Yeah, sure. As you said, Whirlpool didn't have any impact on the tax rate because we haven't included any P&L items. Besides, if you just look at the Turkey operations, as you know, there are two major incentive lines that we have been benefiting in Turkey. One is the R&D incentive, where R&D expenditures are deducted from the corporate tax base. The second one is the investment incentive, which is provided as a reduced tax rate. In Q2, our R&D expenditures were high, and also the amount of investment that we have made in Q2, which are subject to incentives, has increased. Therefore, the effective tax rate just in Turkey reduced compared to Q1 with 4 points. Actually, this has decreased effective tax rates of consolidated figures to the level that you see around 12.7%.
If you look at quarterly, 15%-7%, which is including the impact of that R&D benefit and investment incentive benefit.
Sorry, did I see the wrong number? I see that your effective tax in second quarter was TRY 42 million. Am I wrong?
TRY 42 million, which is 7.3% of the before.
Yeah, that's correct, right? That is 7%.
Yes.
Okay. I'll just get back to your first question, Cemal Demirtaş, about the revenue growth. Actually, Turkish growth is not affected from the acquisition. We guided Turkey 25% before. Now we are guiding 30%, mainly due to inflation and price increases and also some unit increases as well. On the international side as well, last time we guided more than 10%. I think that we are going to be in the bracket of 10%-15% organically only. In order to go up to 35% on FX terms, this is the effect of the acquisitions.
Okay, 10%-15% international.
Yeah
Turkey side is 30% versus.
Yes
25% in the past.
Yeah
there is no contribution from Whirlpool, right, into Turkey numbers?
No. It's all exports from Turkey.
Okay. Now it's more clear and helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Hanzade Kılıçkıran with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Polat Şen, Özkan Çimen , thank you very much. I have some technical questions. I just want to be clear about this. Are you going to consolidate Hitachi for the full year, so on a 12-month basis, or you are going to consolidate the P&L of the Hitachi starting from only July 1st?
Yes. The second one you said. The P&L is going to be consolidated for six months only, as we are acquiring the company on 1st of July. Of course, the balance sheet, there's no time issue with balance sheet.
Is it possible to share some sort of insight about the first half performance of Hitachi? What type of volume growth the company has experienced? What was the margin in the first half of the company?
Yeah. As this is not our results, I am not able to give you a full disclosure on that one, but I can tell you that it is better than 2020 results.
Okay, so-
In terms of growth and in terms of profitability. Both of them has positively surprised us. That's what I can say.
Okay. All right. Despite the acquisitions, I can't see any adjustment on CapEx. Does it mean that you are not planning to do any sort of CapEx in Whirlpool or Hitachi in the rest of the year?
As I told you, our teams are still working on integration. We have two integration management offices, IMOs, for both acquisitions right now, working on it. There will be some CapEx requirement. We do not have anything that we have approved yet. I do not think that we are going to be starting spending CapEx money within this year. Most probably, if there will be, I think there is going to be small amounts. The main spending is going to be coming in 2022, which I will be sharing with you at the end of this year.
All right. Final question is about pricing in the rest of the year. The cost has just inflated Q2 from margin perspective, so it will continue probably in Q3 and Q4, right? Do you think that the market is good enough to reflect these potential cost increases into prices, both in Turkey and Europe?
Yeah.
I mean, the rest of the market.
Yeah. The situation is different in different countries. I have to tell you that in Turkey, until now, actually this quarter, only quarter two, we have increased prices almost mid- to high-single-digit price increases. In Europe, we have made, again, mid-single-digit price increases in EUR terms this time, this quarter only. In Pakistan and South Africa, we have again made high-single-digit price increases in local currencies in this quarter. In quarter three and quarter four, we most probably are going to be in need of some more price increases, as we are going to still see some raw material impact. Also in Turkey, as you said, some inflationary issues. In Turkey, we already have made a mid-single-digit increase in the beginning of August already.
We are watching for the remainder of the year, if we are going to be in need of making some price increases. Price increases is all about the raw material, passing on the raw material increases. The most important effect here is, as I try to explain how the competitors are going to be moving. We do not want to lose market share, of course, in any of the countries that we operate in. We are closely monitoring the situation, and everybody has a different pricing cycle on the raw materials. We have enjoyed our pricing cycle in quarter three and four and quarter one of this year. Some other companies are enjoying quarter one, quarter two of this year.
At the end of today, everybody's going to be balancing at a level, which is going to be more, let's say, more competitive, comparable to each other. Right now, the prices are moving so quickly that I cannot say that every competitive companies are at the same level. At the end of the day, everybody's going to come to the same level. We will see the situation after that. Until then, we are planning to push the price increases as much as we can or as much as the market can take it. Right now, in some of the markets, we are having difficulty in pushing the price increases. Turkey is included to that as well. In some of the markets, there is still some room that we can use.
In each market, we are trying to evaluate the situation one by one, not to make a mistake. At the end of the day, as I told, we do not want to lose profitability, and we do not want to lose the market share at the same time. It's a delicate issue for each market.
Thank you very much, Polat Şen.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Berna Kurbay with BGC Partners. Please go ahead.
Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have three. The first one is about the EBITDA margin outlook in the remainder of the year. Your new guidance suggests that you expect around 10% EBITDA margin in the second half, which is similar to what you achieved in the second quarter. I was wondering if we should expect this margin to get worse before it gets better, or whether you see a significant difference between the third and fourth quarters of the year. My second question is about the net debt. I'm looking at slide 14, and you have the net debt, including Whirlpool impact and without. I see that the difference is around TRY 3.3 billion. TRY 14 billion, including the Whirlpool impact, and then TRY 10.7 billion without. That seems a little bit high to me.
I thought you paid around EUR 78 million, and I was wondering if you could clarify that difference. Finally, Whirlpool's P&L in the first half, is it loss-making? Is this going to be a significant drag on your second half net profit? Thank you.
All right. I'll take the first and third question, and I'm going to ask Özkan to answer the second question, Berna. I'll start with the third one, which is easier. We did not take over the Whirlpool operations as a loss-making business. It is a profit-making business right now. Of course, we started the operations, it's very recent, just been one month now. The situation is that it's not a loss-making business for us. As I told for Hitachi, it's the same situation with the Whirlpool as well. We see significant synergy opportunities which we are going to be, one by one. Some of them are easy to pick up. Some of them takes a longer project to utilize the improvements. Our expectation is to have a better picture than what we have acquired.
About the first question that you have about EBITDA margins. Yes, there is a deterioration. As I told, we have already increased prices in Turkey by 5% in August, around 5%. We are also increasing prices in some of the other markets, and we have already done some of them at the beginning of July in some of the countries. We are going to see the positive impact on this one. From second quarter to third quarter, the raw material prices did not increase as it increased from quarter one to quarter two, let me say. In terms of quarter four discussions that we have with the suppliers right now, to be honest, we do not really expect an increase anymore in quarter four.
Our expectation is to start the normalization, maybe stagnant in quarter four, but after that quarter one, we expect some normalization in 2022. I can say that third quarter EBITDA, my expectation is that it is going to be around this level. Because the price increases take time and the reflection takes time. Quarter four, our expectation is some more growth in the EBITDA margin in order to get to the guidance levels that we have.
This is also taking into account that third quarter typically is the strong quarter in terms of sales. You expect third quarter margins to be lower than the fourth quarter because of the raw material pricing issues?
Yeah. It's not only raw material, it's about pricing as well. The effect of pricing takes time to push. That's why I said like that. Yes, quarter three is a powerful quarter, I have to say that in the beginning of July, our factories, we used the annual leaves in July mainly. The July month, in terms of production overhead, it wasn't the most effective month because of this situation, because we wanted to stabilize our inventory levels as well. Starting from August, actually, we expect again, a high capacity production and high profitability and also some more price increases to come. That's why I expect, again, maybe a little bit slightly more than what we have in quarter two. In quarter four, we expect a better result. That's what I can say right now.
Again, it's really hard to make predictions for quarter by quarter. Our expectation, our guidance about our EBITDA margin, around 11%, should be the one that we should be sticking to. It can really move around.
Okay. Thank you.
Özkan Çimen?
Yes. As you see in slide 14, the net impact of the acquisitions we have shown as TRY 3.4 billion. If you look at the breakdown of it, EUR 78 million paid to Whirlpool, which is around TRY 800 million. At the same time, we have acquired, actually we have started to consolidate the last day of the month for Whirlpool. That means there is some cash of the entity that we acquired. Which is around TRY 450 million. The net impact is around TRY 360 million from Whirlpool acquisition. We have paid $343 million to Hitachi, which is around TRY 3 billion. There is no consolidation in the balance sheet as of June, because it's a transaction completed at the 1st day of July. We have made the payment on 30th of June. Therefore, the net impact is TRY 3.4 million.
TRY 3 million coming from Hitachi, and TRY 400 million roughly coming from Whirlpool.
Understood. Okay. Hitachi acquisition has been paid as of June 30th. That's why this figure is high.
Both are paid as of June 30th.
Okay. Thank you. That's very clear.
Thank you.
Our next question is a follow-up question from Berna Kurbay with BGC Partners. Please go ahead.
Yes, I just wanted to ask one more question about free cash flow generation. This year, there are ups and downs as the acquisitions go. What is your view on a maybe 12 months outlook or by the end of the year? Are we going to see some improvement over there, or was this the first half, but definitely, probably not versus last year. How do you see the outlook in 2022, given that all the acquisitions will have been completed and everything would be in the numbers?
Özkan Çimen, will you take that, or shall I?
I can take that.
All right.
We have explained that the working capital level at the end of last year was not a sustainable level. Therefore, we expected deterioration in our free cash flow because of the working capital need. In Q1, we have seen this impact high compared to Q2. In Q2, the free cash flow is slightly better than last quarter. If you look at the total of the year, with the impact of the acquired companies, where we estimate the working capital need will be lower, therefore it will take us to the 25% level, which means we will see a positive figure compared to last two quarters when we look at the Q3 and Q4.
Thank you very much.
Our next question is from one of our webcast participants, it's Mr. Unal Ghem from Goldman Sachs. The question is, Hi, thank you for the presentation. Do you expect worse than previously expected WC/sales on a LFL basis? As WC/sales is kept at 25% despite Hitachi having no WC needs. Thanks very much.
Actually, in the net working capital phase ratio, we have guided for 25%. In Q1, we have seen 27%, and this quarter it's 27% again. With the impact of the acquisition and partially improved of the current business, we estimate it will be close to 25%. If we have higher sales coming from the acquired companies, for sure there will be a positive impact. Right now, we think it will be close to 25%, but most probably lower than 25%.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from the line of Cemal Demirtaş, with Ata Invest.
Özkan Çimen, just a question about the payments for Hitachi. You paid in the last day of the quarter. Because it's a huge number, did it have any effect on your FX position, the closing? I'm curious about that. Thank you.
Actually, it did not have any impact as of June. It will impact July and coming months because our position will change with that paid amount. That means our income generating from the loan provision will decrease significantly.
Thank you. Another question about the domestic market trends. July and August, how was the selling and sell-out rates and the inventory levels? If you could give us some color. Maybe you gave, but possibly I missed.
Let me give information about the domestic side. Actually, second quarter was quite positive in Turkey. Only one of the issues that we had, you may remember at the Mother's Day time, there was a lockdown. This lockdown really affected our SBA sales. That created more than expected inventory in the whole chain, including us and the dealers. Other than that, actually, our inventory level is very healthy, I have to say. Both our inventory and the dealers' inventory as well. Especially the heat in July and beginning of August, has affected very positively our air conditioner sales, and it has really decreased our air conditioner inventory as well. In terms of sales, the sell in and sell out ratios still seem very healthy and strong, actually, in Turkey. We do not really see a big negative impact.
Starting from now, actually last year's third and fourth quarters were very effective as well for sales. I think that we are going to be measuring ourselves with the quarter three and quarter three of last year, which is a high base for us. I think that we are going to be able to close to what we have achieved or more than what we have achieved in last year for the remainder of this year. We see still very strong. Inventory is very strong. Only SDA inventory is more than our expectation, but other than that, it seems healthy.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Şen for any closing comments. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending our earnings call of quarter two. If you have any further questions after you evaluate our results, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. We will try to get back to you as quickly as possible. Thank you very much