Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mavi Webcast regarding the financial results for the third quarter of 2023. Our Chief Executive Officer, Cüneyt Yavuz, will be presenting the results, followed by a Q&A session. We would like to inform you that this presentation is being re-recorded, and we kindly ask you to keep your microphones muted throughout the presentation. Now, I will leave the floor to Cüneyt Yavuz.
Thank you, Duygu. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our webcast for the financial results of the third quarter of 2023. We are here with you today with another set of very successful results, and for this, first, I would like to thank my team for their dedication and hard work. I believe with these results, we are once again proving that Mavi's success is based on best-in-class brand strategy that gains the consumer's utmost trust and love, which then translates into loyalty for the brand, repeat purchases, and sustainable financial success. We have been continuously elevating our brand investments, offering newness and increasing product variety to give our customers more and more reasons to come and shop with us.
On the other hand, thanks to our great sourcing capability that enables to keep product costs increases under control, we are able to deliver our customers the Mavi quality that they are used to with a great value at the right price. Hence, with the margin base normalizing in the third quarter, we achieved 300 basis points improvement in gross margin this quarter. Through effective cost management, supported by strong sales performance, we also delivered 130 basis points improvement in OpEx to sales ratio in the third quarter, despite the significant minimum wage hike and inflation in Turkey. We continue to generate cash from operations, and our net cash position increased to TRY 2.17 billion.
In Turkey, thanks to the increasing consumer demand for Mavi and our product variety, which enables us to respond to this level of demand, we captured strong volume growth in all categories and continued to increase our market share in both men's and women's. Online sales in Türkiye also grew at a significant 119% in quarter three, mainly driven by mavi.com performance. International sales recorded 7% constant currency growth in the third quarter. North America sales performance noticeably picked up compared to the last quarter and helped to offset the continued slowness in Europe. We are happy to report that international margins turned to improvement as of third quarter. Online is the best performing channel in international markets, with growth mainly driven by direct-to-consumer channels, mavi.com, and marketplaces.
Before going into details, I would like to make a special note regarding our latest, most special collection ever. In October, we celebrated the centennial of our republic with great pride and joy. With the Mavi Hundred collection, which we designed to honor the hundredth anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye, we redefined the inspiration we took from the rich history of denim through the lens of contemporary premium elements. Each item in the Mavi One Hundred collection reflected our dedication to using innovative and sustainable techniques and materials. Now, let's take a look at the key highlights for the year, year-to-date results, and move on to slide 5. With 80% growth in the third quarter, our consolidated sales reached TRY 14,189 million in the nine months of 2023, growing 94% year-on-year.
Türkiye retail sales grew 100%, and Türkiye online sales grew 104% year to date. Our EBITDA realized TRY 3.561 billion, resulting in a strong EBITDA margin of 25.1%. Our net income grew 88% and reached TRY 2.170 billion. With effective brand strategy and increasing traffic in Türkiye, customer acquisition was very strong at 970,000 new customers, year to date, 2023. Türkiye active loyalty card members reached 6.6 million. We are now operating 465 mono brand stores globally. Moving on to review our channel performance. As of the first 9 months of 2023, total revenue consists of 67% retail, 24% wholesale, and 9% e-com sales.
With the continued robust performance, 87% of total consolidated revenue was generated in Türkiye. The inflationary environment in Türkiye continued to drive demand, and as Mavi, we make sure we have the newness, the variety, and the right price to respond to this demand and remain consumers' brand of choice. Our sales in Türkiye grew 86% in the third quarter on top of a very strong base, with retail growing 84% and online growing 119%. In the nine months to 31st of October, total sales growth in Türkiye was 104%. Total international revenue in constant currency grew 7% in the third quarter and 8% in the nine months. Online is the strongest channel internationally. Let's look into our Türkiye retail business in more detail.
In Türkiye, we opened eight stores, closed five stores, and expanded four stores in the first nine months of the year... and we are now operating 332 own operated stores across 172,000 square meters of selling space, with an average store size of 518 square meters. I would like to reiterate that growing retail is always at the heart of our business strategy, and that the slowdown of store openings in the recent years, due to availability of new space supply, given the economic conditions. We will continue to expand current stores in square meters, grow our product offering, while constantly taking new actions to make sure that consumers have a great shopping experience. On slide 10, let's elaborate on the like-for-like store performance.
Traffic growth was slightly more moderate in the third quarter, mainly impacted by lower tourist figures versus same period last year, and the start of the war in the Middle East for a few days. Overall, in nine months, the 10% increase in traffic on top of high base, displays continued strong consumer demand. Like-for-like sales grew under 2% in the first nine months of the year, driven by 73% basket size growth and 16.4% transaction growth. Basket size growth was enabled not only by the dynamic pricing strategy, but also the newness driven by right product mix. As Mavi management, we always review the success of our growth figures with actual volume growth in number of pieces sold, especially in these days of high inflation.
We are happy to report that 16.5% volume growth was achieved in 9 months, 2023, in line with management's sustainable growth targets. Moving on to Slide 11, to review category-based developments in Turkey retail. We continue to trace strong growth across all our product categories, both in price and volume. As of nine months, denim sales grew 98% and now constitutes 39% of total Turkey retail sales. We are constantly enriching our product range, especially in casual lifestyle categories. Knits business, constituting of T-shirts, sweatshirt, and jersey offerings, grew 98% year-on-year, and make up 28% of our retail sales. Non-denim bottoms grew under 37%, now constituting 8% of sales. Shorts grew 103%, and accessories grew 89%. Jackets is one of our key focus categories in the recent quarters.
Due to weather being warmer in the third quarter, the growth appears weaker as of 9 months, but the category is actually still on a strong momentum and is on track to catch up by the end of the year. Going forward to review our online sales performance on page 13. In the first nine months of 2023, our direct-to-consumer e-commerce sales share in total consolidated revenue is 9.4%, whereas including the wholesale e-com, total online sales is 10.7% of total consolidated revenue. Online sales in Türkiye consists of only direct-to-consumer channels and grew 104% as of nine months, driven by the strong 107% growth of mavi.com. Mavi performance on marketplace platforms generally depends on the platform's own marketing strategy, which resulted in 86% growth in the first nine months of the year.
Online sales now constitute 7.8% of total sales in Türkiye. International online business performance improved in the third quarter compared to second quarter and brought the nine months growth to 49%. Mavi.com, again, is the main driver, with 57% growth year to date. Online makes up close to 30% of total international sales. With brick-and-mortar retail continuously performing strong, especially in a Türkiye context, omnichannel capabilities are essential for future growth and in improving the shopping experience for consumers. We are seeing very positive results from our omnichannel initiatives, driving incremental sales. Mavi will continue to invest in data analytics and CRM projects that support omnichannel growth and make sure online business continues to be a positive contributor to our margins. Let's move on to review our consolidated financial results. We review our gross margin performance on slide 15.
We have been guiding that the extraordinary strong base for gross margins would normalize as of third quarter, and it did. In Türkiye, continued strong demand was captured with variety, newness, and the right product price positioning. On the other hand, we have been using our strong balance sheet position and our well-planned sourcing capabilities to keep product cost increases as controlled as possible. Our international margins also turned to a positive momentum as of third quarter. All these factors led to 300 basis points improvement in gross margins in real terms, when adjusted for increasing interest rate impact. Gross margin realized 56.4% in the third quarter, and stands at a strong 53.2% as of 9 months, 2023. Moving on to slide 16 to review our EBITDA and bottom line performance.
The significant OpEx inflation in the third quarter was once again leveraged by the strong top-line growth and effective cost management. We continue to deliver improvements in rent-to-sales ratios in Türkiye retail business. Despite the challenging macro environment, our OpEx-to-sales ratio improved 130 basis points in quarter three and 140 basis points year to date. As a result, our EBITDA, excluding the IFRS 16 adjustments, grew 131% year-on-year in quarter three, resulting with an EBITDA margin of 25.8%, improving 570 basis points. EBITDA margin, including IFRS 16, realized 29% in the third quarter, reaching the highest ever third quarter EBITDA margin, and resulted with 25.1% EBITDA margin in the nine months of 2023.
The increase in net financial expenses is limited due to our strong balance sheet, and hence, the operational performance is mostly reflected to our bottom line. Our net income in the third quarter is a record high TRY 1,036 million, bringing the net income for nine months to TRY 2,175 million, with a net income margin of 15.3%. On slide 17, we look into our operational cash flow and working capital performance. Operational cash flow margin in nine months, 2023, is 47%, due to increasing working capital requirements because of strategic actions taken to mitigate product cost pressures, such as cash payments to manufacturers, early booking of capacity, and advanced payments for raw materials.
This is also reflected on the working capital per sales ratio, which increased to 11.5% as of the end of October. We expect these heightened levels to continue for another year or so, as we will continue to use our cash position in similar purchasing strategies. The 80% year-over-year increase in inventory level at the end of October is largely driven by 57% cost, product cost inflation in Turkey inventory year-over-year. Inventory in number of pieces is, in Turkey, is only 22% higher compared to same time last year and is in line with sales growth and demand expectations. Inventory, as always, comprises of all fresh and seasonal products. Moving on to the next slide, slide 18.
We spent TRY 344 million in capital expenditures in the first nine months of the year, resulting in a CapEx to sales ratio of 2.4%. On the retail side, we had store openings, expansions, and some new store concept transformations taking place. There will be more to come in the last three months of the year, and we expect to reach our guided net eight store openings. Apart from retail, we have been investing predominantly on IT projects, digital investments, and R&D. Our strong operational performance led to strong operational cash generation in the quarter, and despite the cash deployed to working capital, our net cash position increased, reaching TRY 2.17 billion as of the end of quarter three.
As always, all of the foreign currency that you see on our consolidated reports belong to our subsidiaries, all borrowing in their respective local currencies, and hence does not pose a currency risk. We continue our approach of holding no foreign exchange position in our balance sheets. On the other hand, average cost of debt increased significantly in quarter three to a blended rate of 38.2%. It is worth noting, however, that we are also getting a rational rate on our cash deposits. We will have paid back most of our bank loans by the end of this year. With this very successful performance of the third quarter, we are once again revising our 2023 year, and sales growth, and EBITDA margin guidance outwards. From the previously increased 80%+ growth, we now foresee a top line growth of about 85%.
We are increasing our EBITDA margin targets by another 100 basis points, so we now expect EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, to be 20% ±0.5%, and EBITDA margin, including IFRS 16, to be 23.5% ±0.5%. As always, to provide some insight on the current trading environment in Turkey as of date, I'll share a few figures. With the weather getting colder in November, our winter collection started receiving strong demand from consumers. Turkey retail sales increased 103% in November and 125% in the first days of December. Online sales in Turkey grew 102% in November and 109% in the first ten days of December. With this final positive note, I'm happy to take any questions you may have.
Thank you very much.
Dear guests, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Raise Your Hand button, which is a hand icon on your control panel. When I call your name, you may open your microphone to speak. Hello, everyone. If you wish to type your questions, you may also use the chat screen, or you can email me directly.
So thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this presentation. At any point now or later in the day or during the coming days, if you have any questions, our IR head, Duygu, is more than happy to take any questions you might have. And we would all, from the Mavi family, from the bottom of our hearts, would like to wish you all a very happy New Year and hope to see you with even greater and better results, with our quarter four ending in March. Take care and be safe. Bye-bye. Just as, as we were leaving, we got a question about Russia. So our Russia business, as you may recall from our previous meetings, is doing pretty well and performing pretty well.
But our approach on our Russia business is to maintain the business, so we are not on a mindset of expansion. The stores we have are still open and functioning very well, and we have a 15% like-for-like growth. The EBITDA is positive, and Russia overall constitutes around 2% of our total sales. Thank you.