Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Ülker Bisküvi Second Quarter 2025 Results Webcast. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Beste Tasar from the Investor Relations Department. I will briefly walk you through the agenda before handing over to our speakers. Our CEO, Özgür , will start with an overview of the project's performance and key strategic highlights. Then, our CFO, Fulya , will provide a detailed review of the financial results. After their presentation, we will open the line for questions. With that, let me now hand it over to our CEO, Özgür. Özgür?
Thank you, Beste. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all who are joining from different places of the world. I'm pleased to welcome you to Ülker Bisküvi's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Presentation . Today, we will walk you through our performance, strategic initiatives, and outlook. Our agenda for today is structured around four key points. First, we will highlight the strategic and operational achievements of the quarter. Then, we will examine the macroeconomic context and its impact on our business. We will follow up with a deep dive into our financial performance. Finally, we will share our outlook for the remainder of 2025. Each section reflects our commitment to transparency and long-term value creation. In quarter two, Ülker continues to build momentum across multiple fronts. They launched new products that contributed meaningfully to our revenue, executed high-impact marketing campaigns, and advanced our sustainability agenda.
Our portfolio saw strong volume growth, and we maintained our leadership position in our key markets. These achievements are a testament to our team's agility and strategic focus. Looking at the macroeconomic context, the Turkish economy remains in flux. In quarter two, it continues its declining trend and reached 2%. Inflation continues to be a key challenge, with 35% CPI and 24% PPI. The Central Bank interest rate still stands at around the 43% level. Despite these headwinds, Ülker has adapted its operations through dynamic pricing, cost discipline, and strategic sourcing with agility. We remain vigilant and responsive to all the macroeconomic shifts that we are going through. Looking at the key raw material prices, the raw material volatility continues to impact our cost base. One of the biggest contributors is cacao prices.
We have seen huge fluctuations in cacao prices going to the levels of GBP 9,500 per ton. Recently, the surge is around GBP 5,377 per metric ton. Sugar prices in a slight decline in GDP terms. Looking at wheat and milk, they have shown relative stability, while packaging costs, especially paper, have increased. Hazelnut, we are going through the hazelnut season, and it's expected to increase also. Our procurement strategy and long-term supply relationships have helped us mitigate these pressures and maintain supply chain resilience. Let me share with you today's key messages. First, we are staying agile despite a challenging macroeconomic context. Ülker has continued to deliver resilient growth, driven by innovation, operational excellence, and a deep commitment to our consumers and communities. Secondly, we are ensuring affordability and accessibility across all segments. Thirdly, we have strong H2 plans focusing on sustaining growth momentum.
Fourthly, we are accelerating sustainable growth through technology, AI-powered procurement, and operational efficiency. Next, we are committed to driving targets through impactful innovation and communication. Last but not least, operational excellence and cost discipline remain our top priorities. We have recently introduced a continuous cost-to-shelf savings program, which helps us to minimize the impact of all the cost increases in our operations. Now, let's look into the new product launches that we have seen in the first half of the year. In the first half of the year, we launched several new products, some of which you see on the screen, both domestically and internationally. These launches contributed 4% to Q2's net revenue in the second quarter. Our innovation pipeline is really robust, and we are seeing strong consumer engagement. These products are not only driving incremental revenue, but also reinforcing our brand relevance in a competitive market.
New product development in three years periods contributed 12% of our Q2's net revenue, 14% domestically, and 7% internationally, summing up to 12% in total. This performance highlights our ability to innovate at scale and meet evolving consumer preferences. Our teams have done an exceptional job in identifying trends, executing launches, and ensuring distribution efficiency. Our marketing campaigns have been both creative and effective. I will give some examples from Kusura Magma to Ülker Original Dido taste, and Çizimen ve Osimhen Celebrity Campaign. You know, Victor Osimhen is a famous worldwide known player who is currently playing in the Turkish league in the Galatasaray football team. We have leveraged TV, digital outdoor, and social media to connect with consumers. These campaigns are not just about visibility; they are about building emotional resonance and driving brand loyalty and brand accuracy. Our partnership with influencers has amplified our reach and relevance.
Sustainability is at the core of our operations and whatever we do. We are qualified as an A rating in CBP Supplier Engagement Assessment. We reached 100% reusable recycle of upcycling and launched a Sakliköy biofortified biscuit in collaboration with Sabanci University, which is one of the top universities of Turkey. This is the first time done in Turkey. Biofortification means directly sourcing from the soil itself the nutritional elements. In this project, recyclable biofortified, we have enriched our biscuits with selenium and zinc. These efforts reflect our commitment to sustainable growth. We have continued to strengthen our corporate reputation through community engagement and brand social link through our marketing campaigns.
We launched the My First Match campaign with major football teams, of which we are sponsors, provided for our consumers who never saw a football game of major football teams as an opportunity to see their first-ever football game in the stadium. This really makes huge engagement in the country, creating huge buzz, which is an important example of our connection with our consumers. Another initiative, some examples like renovating a basketball court in Hatay, one of the key cities in an earthquake zone back in 2023. The earthquake, and we really support our communities and the kids to provide them with a basketball court. Another example is our support to our Paralympic players. This also created a lot of engagement through our videos that we provided in social media. All these efforts give trust and deepen our societal impact. These initiatives were also awarded in important platforms.
We have received the S&M Global Flag. For five years in a row, we have been awarded as the largest food company of Turkey by one of the big business magazines of Turkey called Capital. Recently, we have also been awarded as the Happiest Place to Work in Turkey. Our people are at the heart of our success, which we always highlight in different platforms. At the Stevie Awards for Great Employers , we received nine honors, including Employer of the Year. This is really what we are proud of. This recognition reflects our commitment to creating a supportive, inclusive, and high-performing workplace. We continue to invest in talent development, in employee engagement, and workplace culture to ensure Ülker remains a top employer in the region. Now let's look into our operational performance.
In the first half of 2025, we managed to increase our Q2 revenue by 8.8% and EBITDA by 3.6% compared to the same period of last year. In our export business, our revenue grew by 8.4% and EBITDA deteriorated by 20.8%, mainly driven by the weakening correlation between inflation and Turkish lira devaluation. As of June 2025, the yearly inflation rate is 35%, whereas the Turkish lira to U.S. dollar depreciation is around 21%. This is lagging behind the inflation, which explains mainly the weakening impacts on this correlation. In our North Africa business, our revenue grew by 33.6%, driven by improved pricing, mix management, and currency effects, and EBITDA grew by 8.8%. In the Middle East region, revenue grew by 1.5% and EBITDA declined by 22.1%. High raw material costs and increased energy costs put pressure on profit margins in both the Middle East and North Africa regions.
In the Central Asia region, excellent performance is in line with previous years in terms of revenue and EBITDA delivery. Despite the ongoing slowdown in Kazakhstan's domestic market, we achieved to recover the sales and EBITDA gap occurred in Q1 during the second quarter. On-time pricing actions and effective promotion activities have driven higher sales and profitability, which results in a really good comeback in quarter two. All in all, in the first half of the year, we successfully achieved growth in sales in our own regions. Despite these headwinds, we remain committed to our strategic priorities and confident in the long-term potential of our international operations. Now, let's take a closer look at our revenue breakdown for the first half of 2025. Our Turkey operations continue to be the backbone admiralship of our business, contributing a solid 72% of our total revenue.
The remaining 28% comes from our export and international operations, reflecting our growing footprint beyond domestic borders. We break this down further by region. As I said, the Turkish domestic operations account for 72% of total revenue. Our export business contributes 12%, driven by direct shipments from Turkey. The Middle East region represents 10%, showing resilience despite market challenges. North Africa contributes 3%, and Central Asia also accounts for 3% of our total revenue. This regional breakdown highlights the strategic importance of our diversified international presence while reaffirming the strength and consistency of our domestic operations. As we move forward, we remain focused on optimizing our performance across all regions and leveraging growth opportunities in both major and emerging markets. Looking at the market share, Ülker consistently strengthens its leadership position across key categories and geographies.
In our home market, Turkey, we hold our leading 33% share in biscuits, 27% in chocolates, and 14% in cakes, underscoring our deep-rooted brand equity and consumer trust. In the Middle East, we remain a strong presence with a 14% market share in biscuits, reflecting our ability to adapt to regional preferences and drive growth through innovation and distribution. Our footprint in North Africa and Central Asia also remains solid, with 14% different market share in both regions. This figure, sourced Nielsen's year-to-date June 2025 data, highlights our consistent performance and strategic focus on maintaining category leadership while expanding our global reach. Now I'll leave it to the stage for Fulya , our CFO, to describe our financial performance.
Thank you, Özgür . Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q2 webcast meeting. Unless noted otherwise, again, I'd like to remind that all the numbers that are shown are stated per Inflation Accounting IAS 39 adjusted figures. Let me start with Q2 results first, Q2 only results first. Volume grew by 5.5% and revenue grew by 11.5%, reaching TRY 23 million by the end of Q2. Global profits remained nearly flat, slightly down by 0.6%, reaching TRY 6.3 billion and delivering 27.2% gross profit margin. Slight decrease on the gross profit margin is mainly driven by high input costs, and overall, EBITDA margin also decreased by 14.9%, reaching TRY 3.4 billion. It ended up at 14.6% and net income ended up at TRY 7.22 million. We delivered mostly for Q2 results, mainly, mostly in line with what the market expectation.
Input costs, more promotions, sales support activities within the shipping market also are the main results for the EBITDA decrease. Overall, H1 results, when we take a look at the H1 results, we see a slight decrease on the volume, by 2.6%, reaching 344,000 tons in half months. This is reflected by temporary slowdown in certain international markets, partially offset by stronger domestic market results. Total revenue reached TRY 50.6 billion, and it shows a 4.6% growth versus prior years. Gross profit 2.3%, reaching approximately 31% gross profit margin. In terms of EBITDA, we reached TRY 9.2 billion, reaching 17.8%, and net income landed at 6.4% of the net revenue at TRY 3.3 billion by the end of Q2 on a year-to-date basis. Net EBITDA is 1.92, but again, I'd like to remind that this is a method EBITDA calculation based on the face of the balance sheet.
In terms of covenant perspective, which we will show on the coming pages, it's around 1 point below 1.75. Despite a very challenging environment, and while markets trend significantly in all of our regions, we maintain top-line growth and protected gross profitability. We are definitely working actively on initiatives to strengthen the financial figures on the second half of the year. When we take a look at the domestic and international breakdown of our Q2 results, we see a very solid revenue growth in domestic markets by 10.9% versus prior year, landing at TRY 6.2 billion, and also gross profit landing at 26% on a margin basis, and which grew by 5.77%. EBITDA margin and GP margin, EBITDA margin, as you can see, landed at 16.1%, and there is a 6.5% decrease versus prior year's quarter.
Both EBITDA margin and growth margins were affected by input, mainly costs and other cost increases that impacted our domestic markets. On international markets, again, we see a solid and strong revenue and top-line growth, and all of our volumes also increased, especially in Q2 for domestic and international markets. However, with the shrinkage, especially in the Middle East and North Africa market, or especially on the Middle East market, increased input costs and energy costs impacted our gross profit margins and EBITDA margins. On the next page, you see the category impacted by biscuits, chocolate, and cake. Let's start with the volume first. So it's making sales volume go up by 6.5%, and in terms of category contributions, cake shares remain the same as 10%, whereas chocolate decreased slightly, and biscuit increased slightly by 3% each, respectively, in terms of volume contribution.
In terms of revenue contribution, again, cake has steadied at 9%. In terms of revenue contribution, chocolate continues to be a stronger contributor in terms of revenue by contributing 53%, whereas biscuit share is 38%. This performance, our category performance, again, highlights the strength of our making portfolio and the effectiveness of our innovation and marketing strategies. We will definitely continue to focus on driving growth in high margin categories and expanding our leadership in biscuit and chocolate. We'd like to give you more color on in terms of our international operations and businesses. In North Africa, there is a slight decrease in terms of EBITDA margin versus prior year in terms of 13.1% - 12.1%. When we take a look at North Africa numbers, we see a strong, solid top-line growth, especially in Q2 and year-to-date basis, growth in volume and net sales.
Gross profit margin also remains on a very high-level basis as well, but it is a slight decrease versus prior year. The GP percentage decrease around 1% is also reflected through EBITDA margin percentages for North Africa region. For Middle East, sales volume and revenue also grew, not as strong as North Africa because the market share increase is quite higher versus North Africa in the Middle East. Global profitability due to contracted domestic markets triggering higher promotional activities, higher brand equity, investments, and using more brand equity activities, higher raw material costs, and increased energy costs put pressure on profit, which we landed at 16.8% as our first half of the year in the Middle East region. In Central Asia, as also our CEO, Özgür , mentioned, there is a comeback in Q2, which finally we were able to recover the losses from Q1 in Q2.
We also established the Uzbekistan produce confectionery, which we strongly believe that there is a great potential. Even though it seems there is a decrease versus prior years, when we compare the first half and first half for the Central Asia region, we kind of see that the EBITDA margin is stable versus prior years, first half. In terms of domestic numbers, let me start with net EBITDA. Net EBITDA from a covenant perspective is below 1.25. In the first half of the year, it reached 5.24. Working capital rate, average working capital rate, slightly increased versus June 2024. This will drive us, mentally phased and receivables. There is also a phased rate effect that we expect to be normalized within the coming quarters. In terms of strengthening our balance sheet activities, our journey continues. We have 66% net positioning scores.
As of June, $549 million worth of open positions hit. As you know, $77 million dividend is distributed to our shareholders on June 19. I'm happy to share with you that today we officially launched our syndication launch. Original maturity is April of 2026. Our syndication official launch is final, is kickoff today, and the leader bank is JP Morgan. I'd like to highlight that. Great news, with you as well. In terms of output, I'll hand over to our CEO.
Okay. Thank you, Fulya. Despite the challenging times, Ülker remains committed to sustainable growth, driven by our strong focus of ensuring our products are accessible to every consumer. With that highlight in mind, our 2025 guidance is 3% net sales growth and 17.5% EBITDA margin. For the year-on-year net sales growth, 3% ± 1% is our guidance. On EBITDA margin, 17.5% ± 0.5% is our guidance on the EBITDA perspective. This is powered by our 5H, 5 happiness growth model, which I shared with you earlier.
As we did in Q2, we would like to continue our growth, which is a consistent happiness growth driven by volume, competitive happiness growth to maintain an increase of market share, increase our profitable happiness growth, sustainable happiness growth, and, last but not the least, people-centered happiness growth to bring into life our vision, bringing happiness with everyone, internally for our employees and externally for all our consumers. I think with that, this brings us to the end of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now be moving to the Q&A part of the call. In the meantime, we're opening a quick survey for our web participants. Your feedback is highly valued and greatly appreciated. The survey will remain open during the Q&A. If you'd like to ask questions and you're joined from the phone, please press star two from your phone. That is star two. If you're connected from the web, you can request to ask a voice or a text question. We'll wait a few moments for the questions to come in. Okay. Our first question is from Hanzade Kilickiran from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for the presentation, Özgür and Fulya . I have three questions. The first one is about your gross margin. I mean, there is a large variation in the margin in the past three quarters, which is reasonable because of the cost inflation, I presume. I'm struggling to estimate the upcoming quarter. How do you think about the trend in the next quarter? Is it going to be similar to Q2, or could there be some sort of improvement starting from Q3? The second one is on your working capital, which is a concern on the paper flow side. You have highlighted that it will normalize in the coming quarter. What is driving this normalization? Is this inventory driven, or are you cutting the inventory days? What is your working capital or sales target in 2025 based on your current cost conference?
And MENA, the third one is about MENA . It has been showing weakness, more than other markets for a while. What are the main drivers behind this? I presume that your cost base is similar to other markets. Is there a pricing pressure in this market, or weakness you're seeing, or is there much higher competition? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions. Let me start with the first part of the questions. You are asking for gross margins. Actually, what we do is, as I said with you earlier, in our past 5H growth model, we first put the reach to our consumers. Being consistently driving our growth agenda is critical for us. As you have seen, the context is getting tougher and tougher in 2025. Looking at ours, also, the commodity prices are also showing increases. Despite all these headwinds, what we are trying to do is to manage it really effectively from source to shelf to minimize this impact to our consumers. With that agility and cost discipline, we are trying to, and we are aiming to, manage our profitabilities in line with our H1 performance. This is what we also expect in H2, answering your question.
Moving to the second question about the cash, I leave it to Fulya to answer.
Yes. Thank you for the question, Hanzade . In terms of working capital, I mentioned phasing of, in terms of receivables and inventories. For inventories, what happens is most of the inventory of the core core shipments came out in Q2, which kind of increased our inventory. Because our consumption will not change, in the full year of 2025, we expect it to be phased out based on our production plan in Q3 and Q4. That's one. In terms of receivables, we kind of see the, you know, if you might remember from last year, again, the cash flow, receivables also kind of normalized in Q3 and in Q4. We expect it to be the same again this year as well. It will be a question of patterns, sales growth, and floating and temporary transactions.
Regarding yours, and we don't, definitely, we have some targets, but we do not explicitly share a working capital target or some targets that are not public. We can definitely assume that you have a priority of optimizing our working capital as also shared in the prior quarters with you all. Regarding Q3 Middle East, I'll hand over to our CEO.
Thank you. Thanks, Fulya. In Middle East, the lower profitability, what we have seen is mainly due to contracted domestic market demand, triggering higher commercial activities. The slowdown in market is structural, and competition is expected to continue agricultural promotion. In addition to domestic contraction, margins have been declining in export markets as well. Higher raw material costs and increased energy costs also put pressure on profit margins. In the outlook, in the year, we aim to drive our cost efficiency to a better performance in half two. With our discipline, cost discipline, powered by our brand campaigns and also successful innovations, which we have a strong pipeline for, for H2, we aim to drive better profitability in H2 in the MENA region .
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Our next question is from Alper Ozdamar from Garanti BBVA Asset Management. "Hello, thank you for the presentation. Can you give us some color on the free cash flow for the second half of 2025 and the 2025 estimated net debt to EBITDA levels? Can we expect some deleveraging in the second half?" Thank you.
Net debt to EBITDA, thank you for the question. Net debt to EBITDA is around 1.24, which is below 1.25 in terms of covenant calculations agreed with our finance business partners. I do not see any deleveraging in terms of, we do not, we should not expect any significant decreases from already at a very low level as stated as below 1.25. Our objective is to maintain it and to maintain healthy net debt to EBITDA levels, helping maintain healthy and very strong net debt to EBITDA levels in terms of having a strong balance sheet. In terms of free cash flow, I have also mentioned on the first question the phasing on mainly two items, receivable and inventory, which we expect to normalize and stabilize over the coming quarters. As I have shared, anything that's not public, we do not disclose.
We definitely have some free cash flow targets, but we are not disclosing right now. As you should know, our objective is to optimize both working capital and free cash flow. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, it's star two on your phone, star two from the phone. If you're connected from the web, you can send a voice or text question. Our next question is from Evgeniya Bystrova from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I have several questions. You mentioned during the presentation something on the syndication loan. Is that correct to assume that you've refinanced the 2026 syndication loan with the new facility? If yes, what are the terms of the new facility, like maturity, etc.? My second question for margins, I don't really understand. In the second half of the year, I mean, your Q2 margins were kind of like very down, 14%. Previously, you were also talking about hedges and how that would prevent margin dilution going forward. Maybe if you could break down where exactly will we see margin funding improving from Q2 levels going into Q3, Q4? What would be the main driver for you to achieve your guidance? Thank you.
Thank you for the, sorry. I think it looks like there is [audio distortion] connection right now, but now it's over. Related to syndication loan, yes, the objective is there is a syndication loan, which is maturing in April 2026. The objective is, this is a syndication loan to refinance the syndication loan. Today, we have launched it. JP Morgan is leading our leader bank, who is leading our syndication loan. The details are not public yet, but I definitely look forward to sharing with you the completion news over the coming quarters. We are also very excited. I can't believe it. We will be finalizing and completing it very, very successfully as we did our prior syndication and like we completed our Eurobond in 2024. That's what I can say related to syndication. Regarding margins, I hand over to our CEO, Özgür .
Yes. Thanks, Evgeniya for the question. Regarding the margins, actually, there are a couple of factors. First of all, in the markets globally and also in our region, we see challenging times in the market context across most of the sectors and also in our food sector as well as the snacking sector. You might have seen the news, the published public results of the big players, which have shown significant decline, some of them on the volume and also in the profitability as well. The decline in the margin is due to a couple of things. First, the pressure on the markets, which also resulted in higher promotional activities in the markets. In terms of protecting our competitiveness, we also balance our competition activities together with our margins in order to protect and improve our market share and distribute.
Secondly, you have seen the increasing cocoa prices, and we also have seen some phasing of the stock impact of the cocoa, especially, which made some impact on this outcome. Thirdly, there is also seasonality impact of our mix. What we see is in the second quarter of the year, because of the heat, because of the temperature, in our portfolio, the biscuit and the bakery products are preferred higher than the chocolate products. As you know, the chocolate has a higher mix impact, which is also impacted by the ice cream market in the hot summer year as well. In the year to go, in the normal course of our seasonality, we are expecting to see a positive impact from our mix. We will see a positive impact from our pricing actions that we have taken as a kind of compound impact.
Also, because of our procurement strategies and the operational efficiencies that we are creating in the second half of the year, I think this is what we will see as a kind of positive impact in the second half. As we have shown in the total outlook, we have already reflected in our numbers some dilution in the margin, which we have seen some of it in quarter two.
Okay. Thank you. Just to follow up on this syndication, will that include the IFC facility as well? Do you refinance the whole 2026 debt maturity? On your covenant, could you please remind, you said it's 1.25, right?
Our covenant as of today is 1.24, below 1.25, which is a very low and strong number. In terms of syndication, yes, DFIs, both EBRD and IFC are part of our current syndication. Yes, we also plan to refinance those amounts as well.
And sorry, on the covenant, the limit for the covenant or the one that the level that is tested is 1.25?
There is no limit on 1.25. 1.25 is a very low number, but I am sharing it in terms of target. We do not disclose anything, but what we are saying is we want to maintain a very strong and healthy leverage number. As you know, a healthy net debt to EBITDA is around anything below 3 and 3.5.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question is from Yejide Onabule from Barings. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi there. My question was on the covenant. It's been answered. Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Technology.
Yes, covenant question is answered.
Excuse me?
The covenant question, which is answered.
Oh, this is covenant. Okay. I already answered. Okay. Great.
Thank you very much. We'll just give it a few more moments for any viewer questions. It's star two if you're connected from the phone, and you can also send a text or voice question from the web. We'll wait a few more moments. Okay. Our next question is from Gustavo Campos from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much. Sorry if I missed this. How are you planning to repay the remainder of the 2025 loan? Apologies if that was already discussed.
Thank you for the question. We want to plan to repay the outstanding debt with the pre-financing that we plan to finalize, like we did in the prior syndication and like we did in the prior Eurobonds. Hope that makes sense.
And.
And refinance.
A hard currency bank loan, potentially together with other syndication.
There is a lot.
Will that be?
Yeah, there is a lot of syndication.
Okay. It will be separate processes, right? The term loan, the syndicated loan that's from 2026, will have a different refinancing than the existing 2025. Is that correct?
No, that's not correct. We currently have one syndication where some commercial banks are part of it and two DFIs are part of it. Even though we have separate agreements between two DFIs, they are part of the total syndication loan. The original maturity of this loan, which we closed in April 2023, is April 2026. What we have fixed as of today is, with the leadership of JP Morgan, to refinance this loan. In fact, that's it, to refinance the current syndication loan.
Okay, understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Muharrem Gulsever from Kona Capital Advisors. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much for the presentation and the opportunity question. I have two questions. First, in respect to the guidance, what inspiration should we use plug-in for the real growth of 1%? The second one is your inventory turnover. If you look at the number on the quarterly basis, it's all time. Should we expect, even if we should expect normalization, what is the normalized level, for you, given the current market environment? Thank you.
Muharrem , thank you for the question. Let me answer the first question, and then give the second question to Fulya. The inflation rate expansion we took is 30%. I hope this answers your question. As of now, it's 35%, but our estimation for the second half is to go a little bit down to 30%. Year-end 30% is our estimation.
Second question. Regarding the second question, inventory increases mainly phasing because most of our shipments came out in Q2. This impacted our Q2 numbers. However, our total procurement numbers, our production plan has not changed. This means that our inventory levels will be normalized over the coming quarters, until year-end. You should expect a normalization in terms of inventory levels in Q3 and Q4. Since these numbers, these targets are not public, we do not disclose any specific target in terms of working capital or phasing in inventory. You can assume that we will definitely try to optimize it as much as we can, to make it much more effective. Hope that helps.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. We'll give a few more moments for any further questions. Okay. It looks like we have no further questions. I will now hand it back to the Ülker team for the concluding remarks.
Thank you very much for your participation and for your questions. As a closing remark, what I would say is, what I said at the beginning, actually, we are here as Ülker to really bring happiness with everybody to our consumers. This is what we have done in the first half of the year, and this is what we are really striving for to do in the second half of the year and the upcoming period, driven by our 5H growth model and strong strategy and operational excellence. Thanks very much for joining, and hopefully, see you next time in the next quarter.
Thank you all.
That concludes the call for today. Thank you and have a nice day.