Okay. I think we'll start. 1st of all, welcome everybody to this presentation in July. We start, as always, with some gifts and a little bit of lottery. Today, we have for the World Championship finals, of course, you need some snacks.
You can buy these small ones at DKK4 for DKK20 at Europrize or you can go to a petrol station and buy 25 kroner for 1. Or you can go to buy De Mon in Kjosk and get ripped off at DKK 32 kroner, you know that. Also, I think that you can pick on the way up, you can pick up some of those unicorns. This is actually small sized unicorns. My personal favorite that I'm going to spend the next 2 weeks on is this big one, and we will have a lottery.
And this is a giant one, much bigger than it is. And today, we will draw the lucky winner who can spend the summer in El Limon of those. And I think, Espen, you can't draw yourself, but
29.
29? Okay. We are writing the papers, so that's okay. Here we are. There.
And one more lucky guy actually or girl. €31,000,000 €31,000,000 Okay. Summer is secured. There you are. Okay.
We've got sales leaflets. It's sales weeks in the European stores now. So it's a really good the right time to get some good bargains. Every week we come with new offers for the next few weeks. So if you want to make a bargain on a bargain price, you have to come to Europe.
Quarterly results, the key message is low growth on the top line in a very soft market, but very pleased with the way we have worked with the gross margin in particular, where we have turned negative development into positive and the way we work with the cost side, so sort of partly compensating for the low growth. I'll go to with the figures. The Q2 is really not comparable. So I encourage you, as I said before, to look at the half year figures. But in the second quarter, this is, of course, because of the timing of the Easter.
We had a 1.5% year and net profit was up 5.6%. The more important things that happened in this quarter was the soft launch of the e commerce operation, I'll come back to that, and the acquisition of 20% of the shares in the RuneScruppen or EOB that is strategically and long term very important. More important or more comparable is the first half where we had a 4.4% increase in group revenues. That was solid sales performance during Easter and spring, so the main seasons we're doing very good. But overall, 0.6 percent like for like growth, which is below our expectations, obviously.
Gross margin, as I said, increased from last year and has turned up development and has been negative. We're very pleased with that. And we had overall very good cost control. Adjusted net profit increased by 13%. We had 6 new store openings, and as I'll come back to later, those store openings met or exceeded our expectations.
So that's also very pleasing that the new stores are meeting the budget expectations we have for them when we make the decisions. And we took over 5 franchise stores in the first half. If you look on the sales performance, it is a very slow market at the moment from the indications we got from Qualia and others. So we had a lower than expected like for like growth, which we are not satisfied with. The spring summer has been good, actually very good in the south, as you all know, and it's been basically not existing in the north.
So I think that in the north and part of Norway, there wasn't any spring or summer season before end of June or something. So it's a very unusually cold and challenging season in the north, very good season in the south. Campaign pressure has been slightly adjusted. Basically, what we have done is that we have changed the mix of products, especially on the front page, slightly. That has been successful, and we've been able to have a positive impact on gross profit.
It has reduced campaign share of sales by 3.3%, but that was a deliberate strategy that has been successful. In some categories, like personal care and laundry cleaning, there's been a more sort of competitive environment. On price, that happens from time to time. Previously, we had some in chocolate and snacks. Now it's personal care and laundry and cleaning.
But we have stable volumes. So prices has gone down. People have not bought more shampoo or soap or anything. But so we have stable volumes, but prices have gone down in these categories. We see a slightly improvement towards the end of the period.
So it seems like especially personal care is picking up now again. And as I said, new stores are on track, and that is also very pleasing. We're opening 6 stores so far this year, 3 more stores to go, and we have 9 signed for next year. And the stores we have opened have met or exceeded our expectations. So there's no diminishing returns from new stores at the moment.
These are the 4 new stores opened in this quarter. So it's basically all over. Ryken is in the parking lot at the Ryken Shopping Center. Scholbeek is a new shopping area that is growing between Porskudrun and Scheven. So it's basically all over the country.
We expect 3 more stores to open in the end towards the end of the year, but one closure means that the net will be 8 as it looks now for this year. And we already signed 9 contracts for next year. Some of them are subject to municipal zoning regulations, so they could can change a little bit on the timings in particular. We have already talked about the e commerce. We had a soft launch.
I mean, soft launch, we mean that we have started it and actually sped up a little bit the implementation of the launch just to get started and get going and get experience and fine tune the operations. And then in the fall, we will market it more to the consumer. So that's why it's a soft launch. We haven't sort of put on the marketing yet. We still just want to make the technical things work and the operations behind the scene work smoothly.
One of the more important things that happened in the Q2, we had a special presentation here a few weeks ago, is obviously the partnership with OBE, Rundsengruppen. I think that in the long run, this is maybe one of the most important thing that has happened in Europe is over the last years and in the next few years too. What we are doing is that we're combining 2 strong leading discount variety retailers. And I think long term, that is a way for us not just to get synergies, but also to make sure that we can stay competitive on price and protect our margins. So it's very, very important strategically in the long run, in addition to the synergies.
So we have already started working on the purchasing cooperation. Our business is only a few weeks since we launched it, but we are working on that. And then we have the option to buy the remaining 80% of Rundsvengruppen in 2020, and obviously, we'll come back to that. And with that partnership, we will, together with the joint venture we have with TUKMANI, we now have a partnership that has combined retail sales of more than SEK 17,000,000,000 And the reason why I think this is very important is obviously that I think in the long run, I think that it's important to have the lowest prices in order to be successful in the variety retail sector, and I think size matters. And this is a way for us to make sure that we really get the regional Nordic stronghold, and it's important to secure the long term growth on profits of Europritz.
So I think it's very exciting about that the partnership both with OOB and TUKMANI. And with that, I'll hand over to Esben, who will take us quickly through the financial figures.
Thank you. Yes. We'll start with the gross margin where we have seen a positive development in the start of the year. In the Q2, the margin was 43.8%, up from 42.9% last year. Comparison with last year is a little bit difficult due to timing of Easter.
But on the gross margin, this had a positive effect in the quarter of about 0.3% to 0.4%. On the negative, the positive development we've seen has, as we Paul explained, been due to a gross margin. So this also has compensated for the price competition we've seen in selected categories during the quarter. So yes, operating expenses in percent of revenue was 30% in the quarter, up from 28.3% last year. The number of directly operated stores increased by 9.1%.
We have increased the store base from 198 directly operated to 216, of which 12 are new stores and 4 of those opened in the Q2, 6 franchise takeovers over the last 12 months. Overall, we see very good cost control. We see very great cost focus in the store in periods where we have some challenges on the revenue side. EBITDA adjusted was 13.8% margin in the 2nd quarter, which is down from 14.5% last year. The increase in number of directly operated stores affects the operating expenses in both the quarter year to date.
On cash flow, again, it's a little bit difficult to compare the quarter due to the timing of Easter. But if you look at year to date figures, we see an improvement in operating cash flow from last year. Last year, we had a buildup of inventory. We see now that, that has stabilized. So we don't have that additional working capital need this year.
On the investment side, compared to last year, we did the investment in the land area next to the new warehouse in Mas last year. So the investments are down. And also the dividend payment was DKK50 1,000,000 down from last year. So all in all, that leads to a cash position of
Look, we still believe in our long term growth in revenue and profits supported by our leading position, not just in Norway, but in the Nordics. In the existing partnership we have with TUKMANI is important in order to secure our position in the long run. And with the launch of the e com, you won't see it in this first half year figures, but in the long run, that's important. And as Espen mentioned, the board has initiated a share buyback program of up to 2,000,000 shares. That's the main things.
But the key sort of things that happened in the first half of twenty eighteen, I think, was the launch of the e commerce operations and the partnership with EOB that secures our long term growth and profits. And with that, I think we will open up for questions. You'll get a microphone.
Kristian Narbeek, Kepler Cheuvreux. Warm spring and warm May, how did that really affect you? Because our classes that it affected them quite a bit. Now you sell more soft drinks and stuff like they do, of course. But how did that really affect you compared to the timing of Easter that obviously affected more?
I think in general, timing of Easter obviously is a huge effect. If you look at the market reports, I think everybody wants the summer to start, spring to start. You saw in the northern part of Norway, you saw what happens if the spring never starts. It didn't start before the end of June. Then you don't get the seasonal sales.
So we saw obviously, we see when the season kicks off, you see a very positive growth because people understand what they need. As the warm weather continues for a record breaking period of time, it's a little bit more sort of negative just because people are it's too warm and people are just buying the necessities. So in the beginning, it's positive, but a long period like this, this has been unprecedented, is negative. But that being said, as I said, we had a very good total seasonal sales in spring in the South. So altogether, we as a retailer has done well in this environment.
But I think from a market point of view, I think long periods like this of very warm weather is slightly negative. Okay, everybody is sitting in their cabins and calling in.
And there's one question from the web. What was the market growth and market like for like growth during both Q2 and first half of twenty eighteen?
The figures are not out yet. I think there's still some lagging in terms of getting the figures from the shopping centers. The early indications we have got is that the growth was surprisingly slow in June and sort of fairly moderate also in the first half. But the official figures, I think, will come next week. Okay.
Loud and clear. Okay. So thank you all for coming.