Dear analysts and investors, we are very pleased to welcome you to our third quarter results presentation for 2021. I am Serkan Savaş, Reporting and Investor Relations Director. We hope you have managed to download our presentation on our website. Please note that we will hold Q&A at the end of the presentation, and we'll kindly ask you to ask your questions at the end by raising your hand via Zoom. We are not able to take the written questions during the call. I now invite you to have a look at our results. Let's start with the highlights for this quarter, third quarter. Our key figures this quarter are our quarter sales were TRY 17.5 billion, reflecting 29% year-on-year growth. EBITDA margin was 8.6%, representing 24% year-on-year growth.
EBITDA margin, as you see, is slightly above our full year guidance. We maintain our guidance, we don't revise it. CapEx was TRY 532 million, corresponding to 3% of our sales. Net income was TRY 884 million, which represents 35% year-on-year growth. Deferred tax income boosted the net income year-on-year in this quarter. We will be elaborating further in the coming slides. On the store front, we are continuing with the strong pace of store openings and have added 214 new stores across the operation in Q3, which brings us to 10,330 consolidated stores by the end of quarter.
Another topic for this quarter is, as you already know, that establishing and acquiring subsidiaries, supply chain in some strategic products. As we discussed previously, we are setting up a new company in Biscuit and Confectionery category in Eskişehir with TRY 40 million initial equity. In one or one-half years, we plan to start the production in Eskişehir. Second, our company, we have acquired a company which produces tomatoes with soilless farming methods in geothermal greenhouses in Afyon. Please bear in mind that, those acquisitions are just to improve our company's supply chain sustainability and improve our quality in some strategic products. Our priority is not profit or EBITDA for acquiring or setting up these companies. We don't aim for vertical integration.
For such kind of some kind of strategic products, we prefer to improve our quality and provide the best quality products to the people. It's just our aim, the priority. Moving on to operational performance. And about like-for-like sales slide. This is slide six. Now we are in slide six. Like-for-like quarter sales increased by 18.7% in third quarter. Although the strong base is still the case in this quarter, there is an ease in the base effect to some extent for this quarter due to a temporary normalization during the summer of 2020. Higher base will most likely to be the case in the fourth quarter as well. As you know that last year we grew 45% in the last quarter. And like-for-like quarter basket size increased by 18.6%.
Our basket today is around TRY 36 per basket. Average basket size has grown significantly during the COVID-19, and high basket size trend continued in third quarter. Nevertheless, the basket size growth was below the BIM internal inflation. Our internal inflation for this quarter year-on-year is 32% due to high base and deterioration of consumers' purchasing power. In October, the internal inflation is running at 32% levels. Customer traffic was on the positive territory for the first time after the pandemic. This was mainly due to an ease in the base effect and normalization in the consumer behaviors with the increasing rate of vaccination. Regarding BIM inflation, it is still running at around 32% post Q3.
There is no sign of easing because some of inflation cost was not reflected to the prices yet. We are seeing some kind of cost pressure going up. This is post Q3, it is around 32%, our BIM internal inflation. On the store side slide, we have maintained a good opening pace. We have opened 214 net new stores, including seasonal closures as well in total this quarter. In total, we had 10,330 stores by the end of the quarter, including Morocco, Egypt, with nine new stores in Morocco. Strong store expansion continued in this quarter.
As you know, we have not disclosed any guidance for the store opening outlook for this year, but it seems we will be exiting 1,000 stores at the end of the year. Note that in the last twelve months periods, we have opened close to 1,200 stores in the last twelve months periods, and at the end of the year, likely to be more than 1,000 stores this year. Acceleration in BIM mini openings also had a positive impact on new store openings. We have around 71 mini stores today across the region, and they are still on track. We are step-by-step increasing these mini stores. For test purposes, we plan to increase it to hundreds in a few months time. Just still test. This is trial. We are still testing these mini stores.
As we mentioned on our previous call, we are redesigning our stores. The number of new format stores reached 2,100 as of Q1. Moving on to CapEx slide. Our quarterly CapEx was TRY 532 million, corresponding to 3% of net sales, which is higher compared to same quarter of the last year, but almost in line with our expectation. This is slightly higher than expectation because due to strong store openings, CapEx also remains high this quarter. Another biggest impact comes from the accelerated store openings. Also, as we mentioned before, construction material prices increased globally, not just in Turkey. Warehouse construction gained momentum. In third quarter, we have opened one warehouse for BIM in Manisa Akhisar.
Also for File, we opened another warehouse in Ankara. This is the third warehouse of File. Now additional two new warehouses are under construction. We are also buying some lands. We didn't stop because of higher land costs or warehouse construction. We are still doing CapEx. This is a little bit slightly higher than our expectation. For the full year, it's likely to be around TRY 2 billion, maybe slightly more than TRY 2 billion CapEx at the end of the year. Now let's look at our financial performance and the sales progression in page 10. We are now page 10. In third quarter, sales grew by 29% year-on-year and reaching TRY 17.5 billion.
Although the quarterly sales growth was above our guidance, full-year guidance, the year-to-date growth figure of 25% is still in line with our guidance and expectations. We indicated on the previous calls that sales were starting to normalize after COVID-19 periods. As you know, restaurants and cafes opened, and due to that, home consumption is down during the periods. With normalization in sales, base is also normalizing. Now actually, as you see, the base effect is more favorable in this quarter. Apart from the strong base in fourth quarter, sales trends is slightly getting momentum in post-Q3. In Q4, as you know that we will have a high base, and this may slightly curb our year-on-year growth figures relatively Q3. Our guidance already includes these impacts.
The sales is going up, and as the weather conditions little bit worsening, we hope the sales trends would be better for the retailers. This is in line with our expectation for time being. Gross profit and gross margin progression on quarterly basis. Gross profits has increased to TRY 3.3 billion with 18.8% gross margin. Gross margin is stable and at good levels in Q3. We may expect some normalization and a bit ease in gross margin in near term. As you remember, we were mentioning our expectation of normalization in gross margin in our previous calls as well.
Cost of products increasing rapidly, but we reflect these hikes to our prices with some delay due to the deterioration in the purchasing power of Turkish citizens. Having said that, we don't see any reason at the moment for a major drop in our gross margin. For example, we don't expect below 18%. As we already mentioned that, 18% we were around targeting. In the last few quarters, we are above this, and this is also going back. After Q3, we expect somewhat very slight normalization in gross margin. We are still facing inflation and our product prices still going up. Sometimes we are in delay to reflect to product prices to the shelf price.
It is almost all under control, and we are very confident to be around 18%. Now let's look at our EBITDA slide on page 11. The quarterly EBITDA was TRY 1.5 billion, with corresponding margin of 8.6%, which is slightly above our full-year targets, and this EBITDA is resulting 24% year-on-year increase. Quarterly EBIT was TRY 1.1 billion with corresponding margin of 6.1%, resulting 24% year-on-year increase. Even though EBITDA is a bit exceeding our top-end guidance, we are not planning any revision of our annual guidance because the beat is very immaterial. As you know, our top-end target is 8.5%. Now we are 8.6, so no need to officially revise our targets.
Regarding the OpEx, the government support for minimum wage is received in this quarter retrospectively. On the other hand, we are facing some kind of pressures in utility expenses. Utility expenses increased OpEx to sales ratio in third quarter. For example, electricity prices increased more than 30% year-on-year in this quarter. Majority of the price hike occurred lately after second quarter 2021. Additionally, maybe you already observed from our report, one-off donation expenses also has a minor impact on OpEx. This is for floods and forest fires, as you remember. But this is very minor expenses and some kind of very small packaging expenses little bit going up because of the oil price are going up. We are slightly facing some kind of pressure in our OpEx.
Moving on to net income slide. We are now at page 12. Our quarter net income was TRY 884 million and 35% year-on-year growth. Quarter net income margin was 5.1% this quarter. In this quarter, maybe you already know that we registered deferred tax income due to revaluation of our fixed asset in Statutory books. Now, we were already revaluing our fixed buildings in IFRS, but in Statutory books we also did this quarter. The Turkish tax regime recently gave a right for the corporates to revalue the fixed assets in Statutory books to benefit from the tax expenses. This means that we will benefit from the less tax payments going forward in expense of advanced tax payments.
This net impact, P&L net impact of this policy is around TRY 140 million, including deferred tax income and current tax expense. We are generating deferred tax income, but on the other hand, we are paying some advanced tax payments. Of course, as most of the portion of this tax benefit is reflected to equity. As you said, this is just the P&L effect, TRY 140 million. I think this should be perceived one-off for you. This is one-off expenses perceived. As the last slide, let's look at our foreign operations and File highlights. Morocco is continuing to contribute to our net income and has been contributing to better gross margin and growing gross profit margin this year.
We have opened nine new stores. Sales track almost normalized like in Turkey in the third quarter. In Egypt, our store number is same, 300 this year. For the remaining of the year, we don't plan to open any store. As our File operation, we have opened another 10 new stores, which brought it to 153 stores at the end of the quarter. As I mentioned before, Ankara warehouse, this is the third warehouse opened for File and start the operations. With this Ankara warehouse store expansion in the Middle Anatolia region will accelerate hopefully. File online shopping platform has been launched in May, as you remember, and now covering the majority of the Istanbul population.
Let's say 90% of the Istanbul population are under coverage now, in line with our plans, shared previously. In addition, it's now available in other states, in Ankara and Sakarya now. This week or next week, in a short period of time, we will be launching it in Antalya and Bursa. Before Q&A session, I would just touch on the fine from the Competition Board. As you well know, the competition authority fined the five chain markets, including our company and a supplier as well, due to the violation of law with allegation that they form a cartel. It's obvious that there is no grounds of these allegations, and the fine is just an outcome of an effort to link retailers to high inflation.
Since the beginning of the BIM establishment, our aim is to lower the prices through the operational efficiency improvements. You know that we have everyday low price strategy, and there is very high competition in the market, so we never accept those accusations. By the way, I would like to thank you all of you for your great support in this situation. We received very good feedback, very good reports, and we are very glad that it is very well understood by the investment community, by you. We again thank you for your support in this situation, in competition, fine. I can say that also we expect this fine will have no impact on our dividend payout practices.
We will continue to distribute cash dividend as much as we can, as usual. Dividend payouts since IPO will be, we will keep it, and we don't expect any major change in our policy. As you know, we have a free cash position. Since the decision announced post the end of Q3, we haven't reflected any provision for the fine in this quarter. We will most probably expense this amount in the fourth quarter or set a provision. We are now waiting for the reasoning from the competition board, then we will have 30 days for the payment. We will most probably benefit from 25% of the payment discount. In the fourth quarter slightly we will expense it in our financials.
Of course, we will start legal process in near term, and we will strictly follow the legal process. Because we never accept the accusations as we announced through our Borsa Istanbul and also press release. We will strictly follow the legal process. Legal process and the payment is different, separated, fully separated. The payment, we're likely to benefit from 25%. We expect no permanent impact on our daily operations. Maybe most of you might wonder this. We don't expect any major delay on our operations. We are still pursuing our strategy. We are still keeping our EBITDA targets or other targets.
This will have a temporary impact, but we don't expect any permanent impact coming from this Competition Board fine. I think this is the end of our presentation. We would like to take your questions, if any. You can actually raise your hands through Zoom, and then we will give you the floor, and you can take the floor. Now I think Hanzade Hanım, now the floor is yours.
Serkan Bey, thank you for the presentation. I think, I mean, the financial results are very clear. I have a question about the competition. I wonder about the market share evolution in the market, particularly in the modern channels. Are you still gaining market share or is there a sort of, a small loss in the market share? Is there any price pressure at the moment that may affect 2022, I mean, because of the competition? Thank you.
Thank you, Hanzade Hanim. In the price pressure, no price pressure because we are the leader. We are the leading price setter in the markets. There's no any price pressure. We are setting our strategies. We have own strategies, own growth margin strategies. The competitors are following the BIM. Yes, the competition is tough. There's still competition. The players are opening more stores, and in price-wise, they are more strictly following the prices. Actually, we are very much able to set our own strategies on price changes. I can say that. Actually, there's nothing new in the competition side, nothing new than in the few quarters.
Actually, the first question, of course, we are growing actually 25% and other competitors are also growing. Online is also growing faster than the previous years. We don't have any clear data about the modern retail traditional parts. Of course, modern retail is also taking share of the traditional and we are also taking share traditional parts and also modern parts. Today, actually, we don't have any trustable data at our hands. This is the fact that online is growing and we also launched our online in File site. We are actually trying to cover the other cities. At BIM site, we don't prefer for the right for time being as a full scope online.
Of course, we are doing brainstorming so we can adapt ourselves to online retail in BIM, not just all food products. Maybe non-food products we may do something. In non-food side, we may adapt ourselves to online. Maybe stock products, we can adapt ourselves for BIM. Yes, online is growing. Online is a little bit actually changing the environment. I can say that generally speaking, we are still taking shares from the modern channel, maybe from local supermarkets, local chains, maybe.
Okay. Thank you, Serkan. I have also one other question about your internal inflation and the impact on the basket in the fourth quarter. You mentioned that your current internal inflation is around 32%. This is a very, I mean, high inflation figure. How should we think about your like-for-like revenue trend in the fourth quarter, including the high base from the fourth, I mean, last year?
Thank you. Yes, today is, it's running 32%, and we have some kind of, actually product price transitions which are long-awaited. In the fourth quarter, we may have some kind of price transitions in the fourth quarter. There's no... As I said, there's no sign of easing in our BIM internal inflation. It's likely. For example, third quarter average 32, October is also 32. It's almost stable, but there is no sign of easing. But let me actually give some numbers about the strong base. For example, last year, third quarter, our like-for-like increased by 70%, but the fourth quarter is 30% our like-for-like increase. This is a little bit, a very clear picture for the high base in the fourth quarter.
We also couldn't exit from the COVID yet fully, so there is still some kind of people rushing to non-food items, shopping malls, restaurants and cafes after opening the markets after June. This is why. Purchasing power is little bit deteriorated in Turkey. It is not so meaningful actually to expect the all BIM internal inflation reflected to baskets. In the fourth quarter, they will have high base. I can say that you already observe our traffic figures. It's the first time we achieved stable 0% traffic after COVID, and it's very good signal for us. In October, the sales trend is also good, actually almost stable, but slightly better than September.
It's very early to speak about the like-for-like sales for the fourth quarter. I can just say that you have to consider high base.
You are not expecting something like the second quarter performance, negative like-for-like?
Negative like-for-like? Yes, of course. Hopefully not.
All right. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Cemal Bey, the floor is yours.
Thank you for the presentation. My question is about your international operations. What was the growth in that front? Excluding international, what was your domestic growth? That's my first question. The second question is about the effective tax rate. Could we expect further deferred tax income in fourth quarters? That's my second question. The third one is the store openings. Do you see any slowdown in procedures for opening new stores in fourth quarter so far? Do you expect lower pace of store openings in 2020? Any color on this. Thank you.
Thank you, Cemal Bey. From the last question, store opening, no, we are not facing any difficulties in store opening procedures or openings and license, something like that. It's still going up in good pace. Likely we will have more opening than 1,000 stores and maybe 1,100, something like that, for the full year. We are not facing any difficulties in terms of store openings this last quarter. Effective tax rate, actually, this is actually I already explained this. Deferred tax income is the income generated as an income for the following year's tax benefits. You can take it a one-off in this quarter.
Of course, in the following quarters, we may have some kind of positive impacts, but today we have to reflect in our P&L and also equity. This is because it's already. We already revalued our fixed assets in statutory books, and then it is already obvious that we will benefit from the tax income going forward in the next five years. Now we are recognizing a deferred tax income, so you can take it one-off. Don't expect anything for the fourth quarter and the next years. So it is one-off income for third quarter. In terms of the international operations, of course, for example, the better growth is coming from the BIM side, BIM Turkey side.
If, for example, I can say that Morocco and Egypt revenues, the Egypt revenues is growing less than in Turkey. If I, for example, this is actually just File, for example, File is also growing faster. If whenever I have the exact numbers, I will also explain to you the details. BIM is growing faster. For example, in Morocco, the sales is a bit down in the third quarter because the market also opened in Morocco and the negative impact is bigger than in Turkey in the third quarter. It's almost going well. If you have the needed details after the call, I can provide to you.
Thank you very much, Serkan Bey.
If you have questions, please raise your hand through Zoom. I think no questions. Okay. If you have no questions, and I would like just thank you for joining us on this quarter call, and hopefully to actually join the next conference call, maybe last quarter, a year, annual conference call in, likely in March. Thank you for joining us.