Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this Q3 webcast with management of Elektroimportøren. We have with us CEO Andreas Niss and CFO Petter Bjørnstad. Andreas and Petter, whenever you're ready, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Kjersti, and thank you all for calling in to this webcast. We will take you through a short presentation on the results of the third quarter. First, I would like to say that going into the third quarter, we had some expectations, but didn't really know what to expect. Last year was fantastic in terms of sales growth with July +60% growth. What to expect going into the summer was a bit uncertain. What we saw is that July became a tough month to reach our comparables from last year. We had a decline in sales and majorly in the B2C sector or B2C customers, with footfall declining to the stores, which was quite big.
We are quite okay with the performance in August and September when we saw customers coming back, and then throughout the quarter we also had good growth in B2B. The numbers are as follows. Revenue is up by 7.5% to NOK 360 million. Compared to 2019, it's up almost 50%. The adjusted EBITDA is at 34, which is slightly below last year of almost 38. The margin percentage is 9.5, down 1.8% from last year. Like-for-like growth is at almost 3%. We did manage to grow online actually, 0.2% decline or flat online.
That is mainly because of July, where last year we had 77% growth online in July, and we were not able to match that this year. We ended up flat. We had growth in our physical store of just about 3%. B2B sales is driving the growth, 21.6% up. B2C sales is down with 5.4%. The major part of the decline, as I was saying, is due to July, where we were facing last year growth of 64%. The decline is in number of visitors. July minus 23,000 customers compared to last year. That's why we are not able to match the figures.
We managed to compensate some of it with a higher basket and a better conversion rate. Electric vehicle chargers continue to be the fastest growing category. It's grown with more than 100% in the quarter. It's easy to think that maybe it's only the electric vehicle chargers that is driving the growth, but that is not a fact. It's a more complex picture than that. We have growth in cables and wiring. We have growth in electric vehicles. We have growth in smart home devices. We have a decline, the major decline is in electro materials, and also for this quarter in heating, where it's been particularly weak compared to last year. The greater share of business in B2B is the major reason for the margin decline.
For the quarter, we have had no new store openings, but we have built the one in Stavanger which planned and will open in Q4. The key takeaways for the quarter in the big things is we continue to grow in B2B, and we continue to increase our market shares within the B2B segment. We have a decline in footfall, especially in July, which we did not fully manage to compensate for in terms of increased baskets and conversion rates up. We do see a nice trend in terms of the baskets and the conversion rates. Also for the quarter, the expenses are normalized. Last year, we had no traveling, no meetings, no nothing actually of expenses in terms of those things. Today we...
This year we've had trainings and meetings and customer visits, et cetera. SpotOn. We've had more than 400 installations in Q3, which we're happy with. We see the sales in the quarter is NOK 4 million, which is as much as we had in the first half year of 2021. The trend in SpotOn is positive. So far this year, up to Q3, we had 900+ installations and NOK 8 million in sales. What we've done, we've increased the joint activities with our stores and also using elektroimportoren.no to drive both awareness and sales. It's working, and we're increasing sales month by month during the quarter. Petter?
Here are just to show the bridge between last year and this year. As you see the increase in B2B business-to-business customer is strong, around NOK 25 million from last year. Around 50% of that is coming from EV chargers, so it's still a healthy growth on other product categories. Like for like on the B2C side is down from a fantastic last year, like Andreas mentioned. We opened up three new stores. We opened Klepp in Jæren in November last year, and we opened Jessheim June this year, they are continually being very good. Yes, and the new store is doing very well. So we'll see positive effect from these stores in December as well, or in Q4 as well.
Sales in August, they were around the last year figures when it comes to the B2C sales. As Andreas mentioned, the basket size is actually showing good development all year. We have more than. That's both on the B2C side and business to business. Of course, the increased sales of EV chargers are also driving the basket because the average sales price on these products is pretty high. But still, without that, we also have good development. Conversion rate, good and footfall in the store. We have more than 50% conversion rate, and it's almost 2 percentage point higher this year than last year. And as we saw the online business, flat development year-over-year, but we have to remember we had almost 40% growth in online business last year.
Gross margin is a bit down from last year or at the 2.1 percentage point lower than last year. We have, I think, three drivers on the gross margin. First of all, we are increasing the B2B share of the business, and we have a significant lower margin on this customer segment, the B2C. We also increased the sales of the EV chargers. That for now is also lower than the average should-be B2B margin. When we grow this category more than the others, then we'll have a negative effect on the margin. We have a positive effect of Namron products. We are still increasing.
We are increasing sales, the Namron products for B2C and B2B in this quarter, and we also have a positive margin percentage development. These are the three elements driving the margin. We have some more aggressive campaigns trying to increase the footfall during this quarter compared to the tough comparable last year. OPEX we increased in the sales channel from NOK 62.6 million to NOK 68.10 million from this quarter. The main element there is that we have three new stores. We have Klepp, they opened November last year, and we also have Jessheim, they opened in June. We are starting to have common costs for the second store in Stavanger that will open in November.
Of this NOK 5.10 million, NOK 4 million coming from these new stores. The biggest portion is coming from the new stores. On the other OPEX, distribution, marketing, head office costs, and so on, it's roughly around last year. If you look a bit below that, we have higher marketing costs. We have higher traveling costs and sales gatherings and so on that come from our normal situation. In this quarter, we have a little lower provisions for year-end bonuses because we started to provide all these bonuses in this quarter last year. We made a provision for year to date in this quarter last year. The total picture is in line with last year.
Just looking at the bridge on the adjusted EBITDA for this quarter. We had NOK 37.7 million last year and ended up with NOK 34 million this year. Look at the like-for-like physical stores. Not able to deliver the store contribution from last year. That's mainly because of the lower margin percentage and the mix in the customers from B2C to B2B. Online, the same, lower margin, little bit higher marketing and campaign pressure there. New stores are delivering good profits. We have some higher costs net 1 million. That's giving us NOK 34 million as the adjusted EBITDA.
That's in brief the number for the quarters. If we look for the rest of the year and the last quarter of the year, we believe that we will continue to grow sales in B2B.
We've had a good trend all year, and we do not see that stopping. We see it's challenging to meet the number of visitors coming to our stores. We've actually seen that since May, June, and especially in July. It's not dramatic, the drop, but it will be tough. We need to continue to work with to increase the basket and increase the conversion rate. We had actually a conversion rate in the stores in the fourth quarter of 60%, and an increase basket of 7.8%. We're doing that, and we're also increasing some of the prices to compensate for a bit fewer customers. There is some uncertainty in regards of supply of products.
As we said last quarter, we do not foresee any major challenges for the fourth quarter. Usually when we have one product that run out of supply or that we run out of, there is an alternative product to provide to the customer. We do not see it as a major issue. We will open one new store. We have just signed two more stores for opening in the first half of 2022, and we're looking for a couple more. We continue to look at Sweden. That work is going well, and we will give you an update on what we will do there before year-end. That's what we have. Kjersti, if you throw out some questions.
Yes, we do have some questions that have come in. Can you see them?
Not yet.
Here we go
. Now please. Oh, sorry, if you could please read the questions for me, Kjersti, for us. Yeah.
Okay, no problem. How has the sales development been so far in October?
It's been okay. We see similar trends that we saw in August and September. We believe that July was a one-off. I mean, July was extremely good last year. We should also remember, I don't like talking about the weather, but it's a fact, I mean, we had the COVID restrictions, so everyone stayed home last year. The weather wasn't that good in 2020. This year was some relief in terms of the restrictions, and also the weather was fantastic. Going into August, September, those things are normalized, and we see that October is trending quite okay, you know, also
the start of November.
Okay, next question. How should we think about B2C growth in Q4? How much of the footfall are you able to offset by price increases, conversion, et cetera?
Yeah, that's the million dollar question. I'm not sure. I can say a bit more on September. We had some tough campaigns. We thought that, let's just give it a go and make some tough campaigns and see if we can increase the number of customers coming to our stores. We had tough campaigns, which means lower prices. We had an increase in customers coming from the other weeks of that month, but not enough to compensate.
Going into October, we said, "Okay, maybe we need to turn this around and just have the offers that we have and then adjust some of the prices up and see if we can still get the volume that we need with a bit fewer customers." I think we saw in October that we were quite okay in starting to compensate for that. What should we think around B2C in the fourth quarter? I think a lot of it stands around the last week of the month of November with the Black Week. We've made great preparations. We have good campaigns coming. We have enough supply of products.
When I think that if we reach last year numbers in B2C in the fourth quarter, I think we're doing really well. What was extraordinary last year as well was December was very good for us in B2C. I think it's hard to say. We do not foresee like a July crash, absolutely not. Then we'll see how much we and I think how much we can compensate in terms of price increases. Then again, going into November, you cannot have high prices. The campaigns need to be really good, and they are to attract the amount of volume that you need.
I think if we're on par with last year in B2C in Q4, I think we're doing good. Hopefully, we are able to increase the margins a bit up from what we saw in Q3.
Expect still good growth in the B2B market in the Q4.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question. How should we think about the gross margins in Q4?
I think the share of business B2B, B2C it will still be more B2B sales compared to last year. The share of business for B2B will be higher, which is driving the total margin compared to last year down.
We expect higher margin in Q4 compared to Q3 still?
Yes. That, that's how we can think. We expect the margins to go up from Q3, but probably not above last year.
Thank you. That was all questions for now.
Okay.
If you have any final remarks, perhaps, and then we can see if there are any more questions coming in.
Well, not really. I mean, we've been through what you could say is a tough quarter, but I wouldn't say so. I mean, in terms of our development year-over-year from 2019, 2020 to this year, I think our performance is okay in B2C. I think we're doing very well in B2B with a great growth. We continue to be positive about our long-term ambitions and that the concept that we have is working well. Customers like it, and we're well prepared for the peak season and also for next year.
Thank you very much. No further questions.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much for that again.
Okay. Thank you. Bye everyone.