Dear analysts and investors, welcome to BİM Birleşik Mağazalar second quarter 2024 financial results webcast. This is Akif Daşıran , BİM's Investor Relations and Sustainability Manager. Today, we are together with our CFO, Fatih Meriç. 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 second quarter. Before start giving details, please note that all the figures here in this slide are inflation-adjusted. Our quarterly net sales were TRY 109 billion , reflecting 8% year-on-year growth. Our ongoing store expansion program and positive traffic growth continued to support sales figure. Our EBITDA margin was 3.3% in Q2 2024. On the other hand, without inflation accounting, the margin stood at 6.5%. Net income was TRY 4.5 billion , with a corresponding 4.1% margin. In the second quarter, we opened 333 new stores. In line with increased pace of store openings, capital expenditures was 4.1% of our revenues. We will be elaborating the details in the coming slides.
Moving on to the operational performance, starting with like-for-like sales slides, please note that all numbers are without inflationary adjustment here. Like-for-like sales increased by 68% in the second quarter, while like-for-like basket size increased by 62%. In addition, in the second quarter, our internal inflation was 66%. Despite with a lower pace, positive momentum in traffic continued in the second quarter, and like-for-like customer traffic increased by 3.5%. Looking at the revenue breakdown by format and geography, BİM Turkey forms 87% of total sales, while FİLE share in consolidated revenues increased to 8%. The remaining 5% is coming from our foreign operations. In Turkey, we can see that our private label share has declined to 58%, mainly due to SKU expansion and more offerings in the in-and-out category.
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. Moving on, expansion details. In the second quarter of this year, we have opened 284 new BİM stores and 10 new FİLE stores in Turkey, and we have opened 23 new stores in Morocco and 16 new stores in Egypt. In total, we had consolidated number of 13,124 stores by the end of Q4. Our store expansion program was in line with our plan so far. When we come to CapEx slides, our CapEx with inflation accounting was TRY 4.5 billion in the second quarter, corresponding to 4.1% of net sales.
Excluding inflation accounting, quarterly CapEx was TRY 4.3 billion, corresponding to 4% of net sales. Real estate acquisitions for future warehouse developments, strong store openings, solar energy investments, and ongoing capacity investments for our biscuit and chocolate factory were the main pillars of our capital expenditures in the second quarter. This is end of my part in this presentation, and I am handing over to Akif for the financial performance part.
Thank you very much, Fatih Bey. Starting with sales progression, our revenues increased by 8% in real terms in the second quarter. If you look at the sales without inflation accounting, sales grew by 88.6% in the second quarter, reaching to TRY 107 billion . In the first half, the top line growth reached 90%. Currently, we maintain our guidance of 75% growth. We target real positive growth at the remainder of the year. However, the top line growth momentum will gradually come back due to the lower inflation in the coming quarters. Gross profit and gross margin progression, including inflation accounting, our gross margin reached to 16.8% in the second quarter, which is 110 basis points higher than the same quarter last year.
Excluding inflation accounting, our gross profit increased by 99% in the second quarter when compared to last year's same quarter, and our gross margin rate 19.9%, which is one hundred and forty basis points higher than the same quarter previous year. Benefits from advance payments supported gross margin expansion. We expect that such benefits will continue in the second half of this year and to normalize next year. The next slide shows quarterly trend of OpEx. OpEx to sales ratio increased to 16.8% in the second 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 expense was the major contributor to the increase in OpEx items.
In addition to high minimum wage hike at the beginning of the year, accelerated personnel hiring due to extra expansion plan and increased side benefits to employees, further increased personnel expenses in the quarter. On the other hand, utility expense continued to contribute positively. Ongoing energy efficiency projects and our own electricity production from solar panels keeps utility expenses under control. Now, let's look at our quarterly EBITDA. Including inflation accounting, EBITDA was TRY 3.7 billion , and EBITDA margin was 3.3% in the second quarter. Excluding inflation accounting, EBITDA was TRY 7 billion, and EBITDA margin was 6.5% in the second quarter. Higher operating expenses, mainly stemming from employee costs, put some pressure on EBITDA margin temporarily in the second quarter.
We expect a normalization in EBITDA margin in the second half, thus, we maintain our EBITDA guidance for the full year. Moving on to net income slide. Including inflation accounting, our quarterly net income was TRY 4.5 billion , corresponding net margin of 4.1%. We had TRY 260 million of revaluation gain after Emek İnşaat acquisition in the quarter. Excluding inflation accounting, net income increased by 46% year-on-year to TRY 4.15 billion in the second quarter. Moving on to quarterly free cash flow. On this slide, we want to show a more detailed picture of cash flow movements in the second quarter without inflation accounting. Including short-term financial assets, our cash position was TRY 9.1 billion at the end of second quarter.
Advanced payments and higher CapEx were offset by sound cash flow from operations in the quarter. On FİLE side, we opened 10 new stores in the second quarter, and number of FİLE stores reached 254. FİLE's online sales account for 5% of FİLE's total sales. FİLE share in total consolidated sales reached to 8% in the second quarter, compared to 5.5% previous year, same quarter, thanks to its robust performance. If we look at foreign operations, we opened 23 new stores in the second quarter in Morocco, and our total number of stores reached 734 in this country. Fourth warehouse of BİM Morocco in Marrakech opened in March. Our plan is to open 100 stores in Morocco this year. In Egypt, we continue to open new stores.
We opened 16 new stores in the second quarter, and the number of stores in this country is 381. The operation is not fully cash positive yet, but progression is good, so we still continue opening stores in Egypt this year. Now, this is the end of our presentation. We may take your questions, if any. Please note that if you want to ask a question, raise the hand and we will open the floor to you. Yes, please note that if you want to ask a question, raise the hand via Zoom, and we will open the floor to you. Thank you.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We have a technical problem, and we cannot see the raising hand, unfortunately. Can you please send us an email through IR contact or myself with your questions, and we will answer here in this meeting. We will read your question and answer. Again, sorry for this, you know, inconvenience. We have a technical problem, and we cannot see the raising hands, unfortunately.
And we have a question, and the question is regarding CapEx details. And as I said, actually, in the last, in the second quarter, we have the warehouse developments, and so we have real estate acquisitions for future warehouse developments. And also we have strong store openings, as you know, three hundred and thirty-three stores opened. And also we had solar energy investments. On top of this, we have the ongoing capacity investments for the biscuit and chocolate factory. We had another question regarding wage increase. In the second quarter, in addition to minimum wage hikes in the last two months, and accelerated personnel hiring due to store expansion plan increased side benefits to employees, further increased our personnel expenses in the quarter.
Employee satisfaction is an important aspect of this company, as you know, and due to the erosion in purchasing power, the management decided to increase the side benefits to our employees. In the second quarter, there were two religious holidays, and we have provided nearly TRY 300 million worth of additional side benefits to our employees. And as a result of such initiatives, employee turnover started to decrease, and in the third quarter. And on top of this, and starting from July, we have initiated 10% wage increase, and for the time being.
And yeah, we will answer it. And regarding, do you plan to offer the products you offer for sale in BİM stores through BİM's own online channel? For the time being, there is no plan. And as you know, and we are very near to our customers, actually, and so for the time in the current situation, we'll continue. And regarding?
You already explained the personnel stance.
What is the reason for the drastic changes? Mustafa Bey is asking, "Are you planning to open new stores abroad, abroad? Do you have plans to open stores abroad, other than Morocco and Egypt? No, we don't have nothing on the table. We are just focusing on the current operations at the moment.
And there's also a question from Hanzade Hanım . "There's a tone shift in our, in your, gross margin expectations. What are the drivers behind the optimism? Is there any downside risk? On the operating cost, employee staff seem to be main reason of the pressure in the second quarter, pressure, is higher than first quarter. Is there any one-off payments in the second quarter? How much wages adjustment is done in July? We have already said, actually. So in July, we have made 10% wage increase, and so we will continue this 10%. And so this will do until the year end, actually. So at the end of year, so there is a new actually, so wage increase, but for the time being, it's not certain yet. Do you plan to cut your private label share further in the rest of the year?
No, there is no. So this is our focus on, and private label strategy is still ongoing. So as you mentioned during presentation, this was a temporary. There was in and out, and would increase in the last quarter. So that's why our PL private label share seems decreased, but in the upcoming period, so there is no change in our strategy actually. So we'll keep our PL share most likely around 60 and above 60.
There are also questions from Funda Hanım. Can you explain how the EBITDA margin will expand in the second half? Did you make wage adjustments in the third quarter? It is interesting that the percentage of private label is lower, given when the purchasing power is lower. How do you explain that? Thank you.
Yeah, OpEx to sales ratio is a bit higher versus previous year. This is the case for the whole sector, and minimum wage hikes resulted in higher personnel costs to sales in the sector. However, we are- ... least affected, one in the sector, actually. In the remainder of the year, we expect improvement in margins and maintain our EBITDA margin guidance of 7.5% and 8%, and, for the time being.
You already mentioned about our strategy on private label.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
And a question from Koray: how do you see pressure on OpEx evolving in the second quarter?
I presume it's about employee cost, and we already mentioned this. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Question from Max: third quarter trend, can you confirm that margins have improved versus second quarter? Regarding the comments on gross margin, should we expect gross margin closer to 2020 in the second half, in line with the second quarter? Do you expect the results in full year 2024, closer to the lower end of the guidance, considering second quarter results?
Yeah.
So far, what we observe in the third quarter trends, we are more confident that we can, we are in line with our EBITDA guidance for the full year. We cannot quantify the gross margin evolution or quantify the numbers at the moment, but we can give a color that, with the current margin evolution, we are consistent on our full year EBITDA guidance. I think this could give a color on this question. We already answered this. And also, we answered the mid-year salary adjustment. And Jason is asking about working capital management. Do you expect normalization?
And in the second quarter, so early payments and advanced payments made the net working capital change, actually. This was the reason, actually, so we had positive net working capital. But in the last couple of months, actually, as the top management, we have decided to decrease the inventory days. So we had already seen the improvement in net working capital, and in this month, I will say. So in the upcoming period, we will continue to decrease the inventory days, and so we will see the improvement in the net working capital till the year end.
There are two questions from Sultan. Other peers have talked about having to increase salaries for their lowest salaries employees beyond the minimum wage. Have you had to do that, too? And if so, by how much? We already explained about our wage increases. Another one is on the like for like, the BIM inflation and basket growth numbers imply that you are selling less volume like for like. Is that true? If so, can you elaborate on what products are customers buying more, less over the last quarter? It's not necessarily true, because it's also mix changes also may result in this situation. Therefore, more details, you know, analysis is needed to come up to this, you know, result.
Murat Bulut is asking, there are three questions. How much did you increase personnel expense in the third quarter? We already explained. I see some deterioration in net working capital in the second quarter. I would like to know why, and do you think this will continue in the third quarter? Fatih already mentioned this. Does the strong trend in customer traffic continue despite the economic cool down in the third quarter? As Murat, as you know, there might be some transition between like for like basket and traffic from time to time, and therefore, just traffic trends might be misleading.
But we can give a color that we aim always positive real growth in revenues is a combination of basket and traffic growth, and we expect the same for the next quarters. Berna asking the margin outlook for the second half, we already mentioned that we maintain our guidance. Rob is asking again, there is two guidance, but we already mentioned. Cemal Bey is asking: With 10% additional increase in personnel expenses in July, is not it too aggressive to maintain your guidance? In which cost items particularly you expect operational leverage advantages should start further. Of course, this is 10% for the third quarter, but for the remainder of the year, the operating leverage will continue to elevate on margins.
And this is already what we, you know, this is already in line with our, you know, plans. And currently, what we see in the current trends, we don't see any major risk on the guidance. Akif is asking: Do you think inflation accounting will be continued in 2025 and beyond? It is under discussion that there are several noises about that, but we will see the regulatory part will be deciding on that. Melis is asking: Can clarify that apart from 10% wage increase in July, can there be extra increases in the second half?
We don't see any actually, so for the timing, so it's enough actually. So we have seen the turnover ratio decreasing actually, yeah, in the last months.
Hanzade Hanım is asking, "Can you please comment on comparative competitive environment and pricing dynamics?" With the ease in inflation, of course, the price-based competition is again, you know, there are aggressive companies in the market, but as you know, we have tools to compete or react to such, you know, environment. Currently, the trends are, you know, again, as I said, the price-based competition is stiff, but in Turkey, especially in the food and food retail industry, the competition is always stiff.
We already observed this in the last year as well, in 2023, especially in the first half. We observed similar, you know, cases.
But again, with the decline in purchasing power of people and some ease in inflation, yes, there is more stiff environment nowadays, but there is no major, you know, big shift or changing, you know, trends in the environment. I think we touched all of the questions. Again, sorry for the inconvenience, for the technical issue in this, you know, meeting. We appreciate your attendance and your understanding. But if there are any-