Dear and distant investors, welcome to BİM Birleşik Mağazalar Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Webcast. This is Akif Demirşan, BİM's Investor Relations and Sustainability Manager. Today we are together with our CFO, Fatih Meriç, and Treasury Director, Ahmet Akça. We hope you have managed to download our investor presentation on our website. Please note that in this presentation we are providing both inflation-adjusted and unadjusted figures to enable quarterly comparison for investors. I now give the floor to Mr. Meriç for introduction and highlights of the quarter.
Thank you, Akif. Hello everyone. We will first look at our highlights for the third quarter. Before starting giving details, please note that all the figures here in this slide are inflation-adjusted. Our quarterly net sales were TRY 126 billion, reflecting 9% year-on-year growth. Our ongoing store expansion program continued to support sales figures. Our EBITDA margin was 4.3% in the third quarter of this year. On the other hand, without inflation accounting, the margin stood at 7.5%. Net income was TRY 4.4 billion, with a corresponding 3.5% margin. In the third quarter, we opened 253 new stores. Along with store expansion program and increased sustainability-themed investments, capital expenditures were 3.5% of our revenues. Despite our high investment appetite, net cash position jumped to almost TRY 20 billion in the third quarter, which was TRY 9 billion in the previous quarter.
We will be elaborating the details in the coming slides. Moving on to the operational performance and starting with like-for-like sales slide. Please note that all numbers are without inflationary adjustments here. Like-for-like sales increased by 50% in the third quarter. Like-for-like basket size increased by 54%, while our internal inflation was also 54% in the quarter on average. Although the traffic per store per day numbers were almost in line with the previous quarters this year, a high base of third quarter of previous year resulted in a 3% like-for-like traffic decline in the third quarter of this year. Please note that this year there was no secondary minimum wage hike in July, unlike the previous year. Meanwhile, in the first nine months period, like-for-like traffic growth was positive 1.7%.
Looking at the revenue breakdown by format and geography, BİM Türkiye forms 87% of total sales, while FİLE share in consolidated revenue increased to 8% levels. The remaining 5% is coming from our foreign operations. In Türkiye, we can see that our private label share has declined to 58%, mainly due to more offerings in the in-and-out category and a sales mix change. I would like to emphasize that there is no change in our PL strategy, and we still continue to work hard to improve our PL offerings in our stores. On the other hand, the inflation in basic categories was relatively lower compared to headline BİM inflation. As you know, our PL share is much higher in basic categories. Therefore, a sales mix impact is also playing a role in the dilution of PL share. Moving on to expansion details.
In the third quarter of this year, we have opened 197 new BİM stores and 18 new FİLE stores in Türkiye. We have opened 25 new stores in Morocco and 13 new stores in Egypt. In total, we had a consolidated number of 13,377 stores by the end of Q3. Our store expansion program goes in line with our plan so far. When we come to the CAPEX slide, our CAPEX with inflation accounting was TRY 4.4 billion in the third quarter, corresponding to 3.5% of net sales. Excluding inflation accounting, quarterly CAPEX was TRY 4.8 billion, corresponding to 3.9% of net sales. Our capital expenditures in the third quarter were primarily driven by real estate acquisitions for upcoming warehouse developments, ongoing store openings, solar energy projects, and continued capacity investments in our biscuit and chocolate factory.
This is the end of my part in this presentation, and I'm handing over to Akif for the financial performance part.
Thank you, Fatih Bey. Starting with sales progression on page 11, our revenues increased by 9% year-on-year in real terms in the third quarter. If you look at the sales without inflation accounting, sales grew by 66% year-on-year in the third quarter, reaching TRY 124 billion. In the first nine months of 2024, the top-line growth reached 80%, in line with our expectations. Therefore, we maintain our guidance of 75% growth for the full year. On the next page, gross profit and gross margin progression, including inflation accounting, our gross margin realized as 17.7% in the third quarter, which is 110 basis points lower than the same quarter last year. Excluding the impact of inflation accounting, our gross profit increased by 65% in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Our gross margin was 20.8%, representing a minor 10 basis point decline from the same period last year.
Benefits from advance payments continue to support our gross margin. We expect that such benefits will continue in the last quarter of this year and to normalize next year. The next slide shows the quarterly trend of OPEX, along with cumulative data for the first nine months of 2023 and 2024. OPEX to sales ratio increased to 16.6% in the third quarter, and excluding inflation accounting, the ratio was 15.2%. We will go in detail in the next slide. Here, the graph shows the change in operating expenses as percentage of revenues by item. As you can see on the graph, personnel expenses remained the main driver of the increase in OPEX items. Personnel expenses to sales increased by 150 basis points year-on-year this quarter. Note that wages increased by 10% at BİM in July. On the other hand, utility expenses continue to contribute positively.
Ongoing energy efficiency projects and our own electricity production from solar panels keep utility expenses under control. As a final remark on this page, excluding the impact of IFRS 16 accounting, rent cost as a percentage of sales was around 1.5% in the third quarter. Now let's look at our quarterly EBITDA. Including inflation accounting, EBITDA was 5.4 billion TL, and EBITDA margin was 4.3% in the third quarter. Excluding inflation accounting, EBITDA was 9.3 billion TL, and EBITDA margin was 7.5% in the third quarter. Following temporary pressures from higher operating expenses, primarily due to employee-related costs earlier in the year, we achieved normalization in our EBITDA margin this quarter, supported by our commitment to efficient cost management. We expect that the operating leverage aspect will continue to the EBITDA margin in the last quarter of this year, and we maintain our EBITDA margin guidance for 2024.
Moving on to the net income slide. Including inflation accounting, our quarterly net income was TRY 4.4 billion, corresponding to a net margin of 3.5%. Excluding inflation accounting, net income increased by 38% year-on-year to TRY 5.3 billion in the third quarter. This is the end of my part in this presentation, and I am handing over to Ahmet for the remaining part.
Thank you, Akif, and hello everyone. We now move to quarterly free cash flow. On this slide, we wanted to show a more detailed picture of cash flow movements in Q3 without inflation accounting. Including short-term financial assets, our cash position jumped to TRY 19.5 billion at the end of the third quarter versus TRY 9.1 billion in the second quarter. A gradual improvement started in inventory days in the third quarter, and we expect this trend to continue in the fourth quarter.
We now move to FİLE side. On FİLE side, we opened 18 new stores in the third quarter of this year, and the number of FİLE stores reached 272. FİLE online sales account for 5.3% of FİLE total sales. FİLE share in total consolidated sales reached 8.2% in quarter three compared to 5.6% previous year same quarter, thanks to its robust performance. If you look at foreign operations, we opened 25 new stores in the third quarter in Morocco, and our total number of stores reached 759 in this country. In Egypt, we continue to grow. We opened 13 new stores in the third quarter, and the number of stores in this country reached 394. The operation is not full cash positive yet, but the progression is good. This is the end of my part, and I'm handing over to Akif again.
Now, this is the end of our presentation for today. Now, we may take your questions if any. Please note that if you want to ask a question, you can raise the hand, and we will open the floor to you. Alternatively, you can write down your questions via Zoom. We will read and answer them accordingly. Thank you.
Our first question comes from Cemal Demirtaş. Cemal Bey, the floor is yours.
Thank you for the presentation. My question is regarding the outlook in the fourth quarter and of course, for 2025 first half, how do you see the picture? We see some decline in the traffic in the third quarter by 3%. Could you further elaborate the reasons behind maybe a slower pace of growth in the third quarter and indications about the fourth quarter, at least in October? Do you see any change in the consumer side? Thank you.
Thank you, Cemal Bey, for the question. Of course, we are all aware of the current challenging macro environment in Türkiye. There is a slowdown in consumer spending. Unlike last year, there was no secondary minimum wage hike at the middle of the year, and purchasing power of people is eroding. Our weaker traffic figures are a reflection of this consumer environment in Türkiye. But we should also consider this fact in the comparison, especially on the competitive landscape and other aspects. In this challenging environment, the credit card usage in payments increased. Even for cigarette and alcoholic beverages, consumers prefer paying with credit cards. Due to the low margin of this segment, traditional channels mostly do not accept credit cards in these categories or apply extra charge.
Therefore, there is a shift towards modern channels in these low margin categories to the modern channel, as they accept credit cards in all categories. As you know, we don't sell any kind of these categories, tobacco or alcoholic beverages. This is the main reason for the differentiation between us and the others on traffic figures. When reading these traffic figures, we should also consider this fact. Note that our market share is 10 basis points higher year-on-year in the third quarter and 20 basis points higher year-on-year in the first nine months. Therefore, yes, there is a slowdown in the consumer spending, and this is a reflection of our traffic figures. There is most probably this soft pace may continue in the fourth quarter, as there is no improvement in the purchasing power of people.
But with the beginning of the year, it may change with the decision on minimum wage hike. But we will see how the rate will be and how it will impact the purchasing power of people.
Thank you. And as a follow-up, how do you see the service inflation and the product inflation together? Do you see any normalization on that side? Or on the rental side, do we see any lagging effect of those other factors other than personnel expense? Do you see any changes in other cost items you have?
Yes, sure. Such kind of expenses, especially rent expenses, are coming with a lag, and therefore, with the new contracts, new rent contracts are higher than the existing one, but as we mentioned in our presentation, the share of rent expenses to sales is the pace very slow on the growth side. It's still 1.5% of our revenues. Therefore, the pace is very slow, but of course, I can say that the new contracts are definitely higher than the old ones.
And last one question is about contract termination expenses we see in the other expense items. We don't see much in the past. So could you a little bit give more details about that in the third quarter?
Sure. Thank you for this question. This is nothing related with the net income side because there is the same item in the monthly gains. Therefore, this is just an accounting issue related with this inflation accounting coming to our life. So this has nothing to relate with the net income impact. There is no impact because the same amount is also included in the monthly gains. So there is no impact on the net income side, but this is just an accounting issue.
Thank you.
Thank you, Cemal Bey. The second question comes from Funda Afacan. Funda Hanım, the floor is yours.
Hi, apologies. I wanted to ask how you interpret the decline in private labels because in this environment, we would have waited a switch from branded products to private labels. That would be my first question. And then I saw that you haven't changed your full year EBITDA margin guidance, which implies that in the last quarter, you expect some sort of margin expansion. Do you see that happening in October and so far in November? Thank you so much.
Funda Hanım, regarding PL strategy, we don't have any strategy change. But as you can see in the presentation, it seems that our private label share declined to 58%. This is mainly due to more offerings in the in-and-out category. And so this is the result of sales mix change, actually. And also, the inflation in basic categories was relatively lower compared to the headline inflation. And our PL share is much more higher in basic categories. Therefore, a sales mix impact is also playing a role in the dilution of PL share. This is the reason. And on the EBITDA margin guidance question, we already experienced some improvement, P&Q improvement in the EBITDA margin. And this happened without an operating leverage aspect because we increased employee wages by 10% by July.
But in the fourth quarter, we don't expect a major change in the gross margin progression because the benefits from advance payments and early payments are still going on. And on the OPEX side, we will be definitely benefiting from the operating leverage aspect, especially on the employee cost-to-sales ratio. Therefore, we are still confident that we keep our EBITDA margin guidance for the full year. This means that we expect an improvement in margin in the fourth quarter.
Thank you very much.
Welcome. And the next question comes from Hanzade Kılıçkıran. Hanzade Hanım, the floor is yours now.
Thank you very much. I just wonder about your space expansion plans for next year in Türkiye and international markets. Could you please give some sort of initial thoughts about the expansion next year? And also, I know it's too early. You may be still working on the budget, but I do really wonder about your initial thoughts about the sector for next year, particularly from a competition perspective. Thank you.
Hanzade Hanım, regarding the expansion plan, and as you know, in the last couple of years, we are opening nearly 1,000 stores. And so this plan will continue in a couple of years. So I will say for the next year, there will be no change about this plan. And regarding the...
Hanzade Hanım, we haven't finalized the 2025 budget, but what we can provide you is we don't expect a major change in the opening pace in the foreseeable future, so there is no concrete decision for the store expansion yet, but you may expect in your models, you can expect a similar growth pace for the next year.
This will be also quite fast in FİLE format, right? Because you already stepped up in FİLE in the third quarter, and can we assume a faster growth in 2025 for FİLE?
You can expect similar pace.
Similar growth. Okay, thank you very much. And can you please comment about your initial thoughts for next year from a competition perspective?
Sure, Hanzade Hanım. It is a bit early to speak about the competitive environment next year because for the macro side, it will also depend on the decision on the minimum wage hike at the beginning of the year, which is not clear yet. But still, of course, there will be a much more stiffer environment for everyone, especially for consumers, because currently, the tendency is to keep minimum wage as low as it can to control the inflation under control. So next year will be, of course, will be a challenging year for everyone. But of course, we are a hard discounter, so we will position ourselves regarding that. But it is a bit too early to comment on the, especially for the competitive environment. It is a bit early to comment for next year's environment.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Hanzade Hanım. And the next question comes from Muharrem Gülsever. Muharrem Bey, now the floor is yours. I think lost the connection. There are also written questions. Let me read, and we will answer them accordingly. This question comes from Maxim Nekrasov. Your cash position has improved materially. Should we expect more share buybacks?
And as you know, our share buyback program has started a sharp decline in the previous months. And so it was due to make a stability in the share price. And for the timing, even though we have the improved cash level, there is no plan to buy additional shares. But for the timing, the program is continuing on. And so as we declared and through the KAP system.
The next written question comes from Dominic Leoni. Can you please share insight into the competitive environment that you are seeing? The competitive environment, let me answer this question in two manners. First of all, the physical, the store expansion side. What we see on the competitive landscape, the store expansion rates are slowing down on the competitive landscape, but as we already mentioned, we don't see any reason for a slowdown in our side. Therefore, on the store expansion side, we can provide that the competitors are mostly slowing down there, especially for the current period. The growth pace is slower than the historic practices. On the pricing side, of course, in this challenging environment where the consumer spending is weaker, the price-based competition is also stiffer.
In the food retail industry, the competition has been always stiff, but we can say that it still continues in this manner, and especially for temporary campaigns and price discounts are the case in the market, so the competition is still stiff on the pricing environment, but on the store expansion side, we can say that it is softer compared to previous periods. Melis asked, can you repeat your market share evolution in third quarter and ninth quarter, nine months? We mentioned that it was 10 basis points higher year on year in the third quarter, 20 basis points higher in the ninth month, and a question from Maxim Nekrasov. Why, despite weaker consumers, we don't see any additional traffic from people who trade down to private labels?
As we mentioned before, on the private label side, it doesn't mean that the decline in private label share does not necessarily mean that there is a decline in demand. This is the opposite. There is a volume growth. However, the inflation in, especially basic categories, the inflation is much lower than the headline BIM inflation. Therefore, although there is a volume growth, there is a sales mix change in the total because our private label share is much higher in the basic categories where the inflation is much lower than the other categories. Therefore, there is a mix change. This is the main reason of the dilution in the private label share. Emin Tay is asking, could you provide some more details on the demand side for the fourth quarter?
Actually, on the demand side, we already mentioned that there was no minimum wage hike at the middle of the year, and there will be no in the fourth quarter. Therefore, we shouldn't expect a different environment in the fourth quarter. The purchasing power will still be weak for the consumers. Therefore, we don't expect a major dramatic change in the fourth quarter. Muharrem Gülsever is asking, "Cash flow generation was solid in the third quarter thanks to sizable working capital release. Should we expect further support into cash flow generation in the coming quarters?" In terms of cash flow generation, if you are asking the contribution from working capital release, we benefited from lower inventory days in the third quarter. And we expect this trend may continue gradually in the fourth quarter.
But in the total cash flow generation, we should also consider that in the fourth quarter, we have much higher dividend payments. Therefore, these are the two aspects of the following quarters on the cash flow side. Yeah, there's a question from Victor F. With inflation accounting, BIM gets penalized for generating significant amounts of cash. Would you consider paying out a higher dividend or additional dividend to shareholders?
For the timing, there is no decision to pay additional dividend. As Akif mentioned, we haven't paid the remaining dividend payments. In the last two months, we'll pay the remaining part of our current dividend payments based on the last general assembly. For the timing, it depends on general assembly decision. There is no agenda to pay additional dividends.
However, I would like to remind that there is an ongoing share buyback program in place, although we don't have additional dividend payments. Mustafa Küçükmeral is asking, given you have already increased wages by 10% for second half 2024, should we expect lower adjustment for the next year than the minimum wage hike? As we mentioned, the budget is not finalized yet, and we don't know what will be the minimum wage hike. Therefore, currently, it is too early to make a judgment on this question. And there is a question from Burak Yılmaztürk. Burak, the floor is yours.
I just have a follow-up on wage adjustment for the next year. Lots of questions have been asked, but we know that one of your competitors is unionized, and they are going to make wage exposed inflation plus some numbers. And we know that the sector is having troubles in terms of employee turnover. And right now, minimum wage expectations are at like 25%. So how would you respond? There is a huge gap, almost 20 percentage points between the planned minimum wage hike and exposed inflation. And considering your competitors were doing something close to exposed inflation, what would be the reaction from you guys? So in the current conditions, if minimum wage hike will be at 25%, can you guys make some adjustment close to minimum wage hike, or you have to close the gap between the competitors? Can you give some color on that?
It will be perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Burak Bey. Actually, since the budget is not finalized, we cannot quantify the impact at this point, but I can help in this question with regards that in our current strategy, there are two new areas, important areas that we are really focusing on. One of them is, as you know, human capital. We are investing on the human capital of BIM, and the other is the digitization and the technology, and since human capital is one of our important aspects for the new strategy, we always keep an eye on the employee satisfaction, so this is very important for us because we are a service company, and the quality of the service is related with the satisfaction of our employees, and this year's 10% decision was related with them. There was no minimum wage hike.
This is voluntarily given to our employees to reduce the employee turnover and improve the employee satisfaction. And our decision and strategy will be similar in the following periods. But it is too early to give a quantified reflection to this question. Thank you.
Thank you.
There is a question from Kayhan Demirak . Kayhan Bey, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much for the presentation and opportunity to ask questions. I have actually some kind of follow-up on the other two issues. I mean, it seems likely that you will have a higher wage hike than the minimum. It is very likely that you will have a higher wage hike. So going forward, if your OPEX growth exceeds your basket size growth, do you think you can make up with a higher gross margin for the next year given the weak consumer sentiment, etc.?
Kayhan Bey, as I said, it is too early to comment on the margin outlook for next year, how the minimum wage hike will be, and what will be our decision on the wage hike will be shaping the answer to this question. But currently, since the budget is not finalized, it is too early to comment on this question. But of course, we always keep an eye on our overall profitability, especially on the EBITDA margin. We have a very low standard deviation in our EBITDA margin. This is one of the aspects we always keep an eye on the margins. But in order to quantify this, how the control will be shaping in the gross margin or OPEX sales, it is too early to comment in this manner. Thank you.
Thank you.
There is a written question from Mustafa Arıkan. Shouldn't eroding purchasing power increase traffic to BIM stores since you guys provide the lowest prices? This is, Mustafa Bey, this is a part of the trade-down issue. In this environment, there are several aspects. We already mentioned the impact on this, for instance, cigarette and alcoholic beverage site, the credit card usage, the shift to credit card usage rather than cash payment occurs in this environment. This is also a part of this trade-down. Of course, overall, the consumer spending is eroding, not only the purchasing power, but spendings are also eroding. Therefore, it is inevitable to see some contraction in the traffic figures. Also, we should also consider that our traffic figures are not declining compared to the first half. It is still in line with this first half trend.
There is no contraction, but there is a high base of third quarter last year. Therefore, in year-on-year comparison, you see 3% contraction in the traffic. But when we check the first half figures, traffic figures, third quarter figures is also in line with the first half figures. So there is no contraction in the traffic figures, actually. Emin Bey is asking, is there any extra CAPEX planned for next year or any investment in, for example, warehouses or new formats? Will online channels remain at a similar rate? Actually, since our budget is not finalized, it's too early to comment on this. But as you know, we continue to increase our store expansion. Therefore, the new warehouses are needed. Therefore, this is the natural outcome of our store expansion program. So you can expect a similar pattern with this year for the next year.
But of course, the budget is not finalized. Therefore, it is too early to comment on the CAPEX side. And there's a follow-up question from Kayhan Demirak. Kayhan Bey, please go on.
No, I think my finger remained. I have an additional question.
There's a follow-up written question from Pascal Mora. Do I understand correctly that Q3 2024 market share was down over Q2 2024? We didn't share the Q2 market share. Of course, there is a seasonality because we don't have a focus on the touristic places in Turkey. Therefore, there is a seasonality in our market share. So it is not correct. This might be misleading to compare our market share Q on Q basis. What we shared is in the third quarter, year-on-year improvement was 10 basis points. And in the first nine months, year-on-year improvement was 20 basis points. And this is the end of the questions. Thank you very much for joining us today. And this finalizes our presentation and the webcast for today. We hope to see you in the next webcast with the fourth quarter results. Thank you very much.