Good morning. Welcome to the Q2 webcast with management of Elektroimportøren. Presenting today will be CEO, Andreas Niss, and CFO, Jørgen Wist. If you have any questions at all, please use the written Q&A function, and these will be answered after the presentations. Please go ahead when you're ready, Andreas and Jørgen.
Thank you very much, Kjersti, good morning, everyone, and thank you for listening in. I'll take you through a brief update on key financials and operations, and then I'll hand over to Jørgen. To sum up the quarter in numbers, NOK 326 million in revenue, which is down 9% from 2022. Like-for-like sales are down 10.7%, and the decline is fairly evenly spread between B2B and B2C, with 8.8 and 9.3% decline, respectively. The B2B share is at 51%, and the total sales of SpotOn is at NOK 7 million, which is roughly on par with last year. Gross margin is at 34.6, which is 0.5 down from last year, and OPEX to sales ratio is at 25.2.
The EBITDA for the period is NOK 31 million, which is down from NOK 49 million in Q2 last year, which gives us a margin percentage of 9.4%. On operations, obviously, tough market conditions, and the major decline in sales. For the major decline in sales, we can point to EV chargers, where we haven't been able to replace the Easee sales. I will come back to that a bit later. The representation of that in the decline is NOK 26 million. Gross margin percentage is somewhat lower than last year. Mostly that is because of the reduction in margin in Elbutik. We are, though, closing the gap to last year's numbers in terms of margin percentage.
Cost control in sales channels continues to be good. We have been doing further cost savings in the quarter, and we will have the full effect from those going into September. We're very happy to say that we've signed our two first franchise agreements, and we will start to see Elektroimportøren franchise stores from, from probably 9-12 months from now. We have opened our first store in Sweden, in Veddesta, just outside of Stockholm. It opened end of April. We have the full numbers for Veddesta in the quarter. As you probably know, we made a private placement of 120 million NOK in the middle of June. A bit more on Sweden, Q2 sales is at NOK 30 million, which is down NOK 2 million from last year.
The EBITDA is down NOK 7 million from last year. The store that we've opened is well-received in terms of the feedback that we get from the customers. They, they like the layout of the store, the assortment, the pricing, the brands, and the products that we have, and they love the expertise that we have with our people working in the store. The issue is to get enough customers to come through the door, so we need more visits, and we're, we're obviously working on, on how to make the footfall into the store improve. We need to learn more about the market. We need to understand how to attract the customers to come to the store, and we have, of course, taken actions.
We need to learn more before we sign our next store in Sweden, which I'm quite confident that we will do in time to come. Increased sales and marketing activities are in place, and we foresee that the sales will improve week by week, month by month, going forward, and so then also the financial performance. Key focus is still to build operational excellence and to build the brand and the concept awareness going forward. Namron share of business for the second quarter is at 31.6 in Norway, and in Sweden it's at 4.7. There's a major difference on the share of business in online sales and offline sales, which we thought.
Offline sales from the store, sales of Namron is considerably higher than, than it is online. Obviously, the conversion over to the Namron brand is easier when you actually get to talk to the customer, and the customer can test the product, see it, touch it, and see how it works. So far, we do not see the effect of lower freight costs in Namron, we expect that that will come in, and we will see that through Q3 and Q4. We, of course, continue the work to increase the share of business in Sweden, as I said, a much higher share of business in the physical store than online. SpotOn. Total sales in the quarter was NOK 7 million, which is roughly what we had last year, about NOK 7.4 million last year.
We continue to explore the opportunity to use SpotOn, the SpotOn platform, in other craftsman areas. We are in discussion with, with partner companies that we hope can join us to make the SpotOn offer wider in terms of different craftsman areas. We also launched solar in Q2. Actually now, you can go on to SpotOn.no. You, you type your address, and within 2 clicks, you get an offer. This is a fixed price, including installation and products at your home, you will have the solar panels on your home in a matter of weeks.... As you know, this is a fully digital ordering process. You have a multiple choice of products. You get a fixed price for the installation, and the products, no added cost.
We confirm your booking right then and there, and we have all certified electricians, and we promise the job done as you order it. Electrical vehicle chargers. EV chargers has been a major part of our growth over the last years, and now it's a major part to our decline. The Easee sales ban in Sweden has led to a dramatic decrease in sales, also in Norway. The range of EV chargers have been extended, but we have not been able to fully replace the shortage in demand for Easee. For our sake, it's mostly that the other suppliers that we have on EV chargers have not been able to supply the demand that we have.
Q2 sales was at NOK 21 million for EV chargers, which is down 55%. The Easee sales was down 90%. Other chargers give us +14. We should say that we are in a good dialogue with Easee. Hopefully within a short time, we will have a solution to replace the chargers that we have, and that we then will not be affected by a shortage of the supply, but actually we start to sell these products in the market again. We'll keep you updated on that. We've started to sell solar. Total orders of solar is at NOK 10 million in the quarter. We have not been able to deliver all of it in the quarter, so the major part of the sales will actually go into Q3.
We have launched it on SpotOn, as I said, to compete, in the consumer space, and we have made a lot of learnings in terms of distribution, marketing, and sales, and we are optimistic when it comes to solar going forward. Yes, thank you. Jørgen.
Good on us. We go to start with the revenue. As Andreas say, the market conditions start to be or continues to be challenging in both Norway and Sweden, that results in a decrease of, in sales of NOK 32 million in the quarter. The main reason for this negative development in Norway is still, as Andreas said, still the reduction in the EV charger category. The footfall to the physical stores is in line with last year, the hit rate on basket is lower. Both the hit rate and the basket are affected by the customers, which is more conservative in terms of their spending. In addition, the basket is, of course, affected by the decline in sales of EV chargers.
This quarter, sales of EV chargers declined by NOK 27 million compared to last year, which is a reduction in sales to B2B of NOK 20 million and B2C of NOK 7 million. Reduction in sales is, as you know, due to the sales ban of Easee chargers in Sweden, which has led to uncertainty among the Norwegian customers. We have started to sell Amina and increased our stock of Sovtek. However, we are not able to compensate fully for the loss of sales on Easee. Sovtek is not able to deliver the quantity we want because of the sudden increase in demand. Our sales of solar products are increasing, but most of the projects are not delivered yet, hence, it's a minor effect in the Q2 figures. Sales in Sweden is lower than expected.
The gross margin, the percentage is 34.6%, which is somewhat lower than last year. The deviation is less than in Q1, which is positive. Main driver for a lower margin year-on-year is lower margin in Elbutik. We need to continue to work on implementing Nomon into the Swedish markets and train our employees, so they can guide the sales more Nomon products, which have a higher product margin. We do see a considerably higher margin share of business in our physical store in Sweden than in our online store. Product margin in Norway is in line with last year. Freight cost on Nomon products are still high on the products being sold.
However, the freight rates have declined during 2023, so we expect to see better product, product margin on Nomon products going forward, given a more stable market towards USD. Operating expenses increased by NOK 5 million this quarter, which is driven by our new organization in Sweden. For our like-for-like stores in Norway, we have reduced the cost, so the cost in Norway is the same as last year, even with 2 new stores. We continue with a rigid cost control, and we have made further cost reduction during this quarter. This cost reduction will take effect from September this year. This result in EBITA decrease of NOK 80 million. In Norway, as I say, it's a result of lower activity in the market and reduction in ease of sale.
In Sweden, it's a result of lower sales than expected and higher operating expenses because of the new organization. Andreas?
Okay, again. Yes, how do... What have happened since last of June, and how do we look at the future? We expect that the market will not turn, and we expect it to continue to be challenging. We do believe, however, that our concept is attractive in a price competitive and tough market, and that we will stay strong going forward, both in terms of the B2B and the B2C markets. Sales of solar are increasing, and hopefully we will be able to offset the decline in EV chargers for the quarters to come. If, if we can- what we hear is that supply of chargers is increasing as well, so, so I hope to stand here with the Q3 presentation and say that the decline in EV chargers has stopped.
That is dependent on the fact that we will get the deliveries that we need, but we are, we are slightly optimistic in terms of that. Price increases for professional customers were implemented in 1st of July. We expect that together with the lower costs on freight, on Namron products, to be somewhat reflected in our margin for the next two quarters. We continue with a very rigid cost control. We have taken actions to reduce personal costs, and we will get the full effect from that from September and onwards. We will, in September, October, move our Swedish operation into a new warehouse.
The new warehouse is set up with AutoStore, similar to what we have, or exactly more or less a copy of what we have in Vestby, there in Norway, and that should increase our delivery and warehouse efficiency as, as we go forward. That's what we had for today's presentation. Now we open up for, for questions. Damn. Do publishing. Can you remind us on your inventory situation of Easee chargers and how you see the write-down risk to this?
Yeah. In, in terms of the inventory situation, it's more or less the same as in Q1. We have, as we, as we said, we have around NOK 20 million in stock, where we have, where we have paid NOK 10 million of them. The write-down is we have, as I say, we have good dialogue with Easee, so we haven't done any write-down in, in this quarter. We hopefully, we think we will find a solution with Easee.
Any other questions? Kerstin, are there any more questions?
No, nothing at the moment.
No.
Seems like everything is clear, so-
Yes.
Do you maybe want to wrap it up, and then-
Yeah, sure. I mean, if there are no more questions, thank you very much for, for listening in. We hope to be able to present you some better numbers in the quarters to come. As we say, we will keep you updated on the, on the EV charger situation, especially with Easee going forward. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.