Okay, I think we'll start. First of all, welcome everybody to this presentation in July. We start as always with some gifts and a little bit of a lottery. Today we have for the World Championship Finals, of course, you need some snacks. You can buy these small ones at four for EUR 20 at Europris, or you can go to a petrol station and buy, cost NOK 25 for one, or you can go to Narvesen in a kiosk and get ripped off at NOK 32. You know that. I think that you can pick on the way up, you can pick up some of those unicorns. This is actually small-size unicorns. My personal favorite that I'm going to spend the next two weeks on is this big one. We will have a lottery. This is a giant one, much bigger than this.
Today we will draw the lucky winner who can spend the summer in one of those. I think, Espen? Yeah. You can't draw yourself, but 29. 29? Yes. Okay. We are writing the paper, so that's okay. Here we are there. One more lucky guy actually, or girl. One. He bought it already. 31. 31. Okay. Summer is secured. There you are. Okay. We've got a sales leaflet. It's sales weeks in the Europris stores now. It's really the right time to get some good bargains. Every week we come with new offers for the next three weeks. If you want to make a bargain on a bargain price, you have to come to Europris. 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 a negative development into positive, and the way we worked with the cost side, sort of partly compensating for the low growth. I'll go to with the figures. The second quarter is really not comparable. I encourage you, as I said before, to look at the half-year figures. In the second quarter, this of course because of the timing of the Easter. We had a 1.5% here. 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. The acquisition of 20% of the shares in the Runsvengruppen, or ÖoB, that is strategically and long-term, very important. 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. The main seasons we're doing very good. Overall, 0.6% like-for-like growth, which is below our expectations obviously. Gross margin, as I said, increased from last year and has turned a development that has been negative. Very pleased with that. We had overall very good cost control. Adjusted net profit increased by 13%. We had six new store openings. As I'll come back to later, those store openings met or exceeded our expectations.
That's also very pleasing that the new stores are meeting the budget expectations we have for them when we make the decisions. We took over five 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 Coor and others. 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. It's been basically not existing in the north. I think that in the north part of Norway, there wasn't any spring or summer season before end of June or something. It's been 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%, 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. We have stable volumes, prices has gone down. People has bought more shampoo or soap or anything, we have stable volumes. Prices has gone down in these categories. We see a slightly improvement towards the end of the period.
It seems like especially personal care is picking up now again. As I said, new stores are on track. 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. The stores we have opened have met or exceeded our expectations. There's no diminishing returns from new stores at the moment. These are the four new stores opened in this quarter. It's basically all over. Rykkinn is in the parking lot at Rykkinn Senter. Kjørbekk is a new shopping area that is growing between Porsgrunn and Skien. It is basically all over the country.
We expect three more stores to open towards the end of the year, one closure Means that the net will be eight as it looks now for this year, we already signed nine contracts for next year. Some of them are subject to municipal zoning regulations, they can change a little on the timing in particular. We have already talked about the e-commerce. We had a soft launch. With 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. In the fall, we will market it more to the consumer. That's why it's a soft launch. We haven't 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 second quarter, we had a special presentation here a few weeks ago, is obviously the partnership with ÖoB, Runsvengruppen. I think that in the long run, this is maybe one of the most important thing that has happened in Europris over the last years and in the next few years, too. What we are doing is that we are combining two strong, leading discount variety retailers. 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. It's very important strategically in the long run, in addition to the synergies.
We have already started working on the purchasing cooperation. Obviously, it's only a few weeks since we launched it, but we are working on that. Then we have the option to buy the remaining 80% of Runsvengruppen in 2020, obviously we'll come back to that. With that partnership, we will, together with the joint venture we have with Tokmanni, we now have a partnership that has combined retail sales of more than EUR 17 billion. 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 discount variety retail sector, I think size matters.
This is a way for us to make sure that we really get a regional Nordic stronghold, and it's important to secure the long-term growth on profits of Europris. I think it's very exciting about that, the partnership both with ÖoB and Tokmanni. With that, I'll hand over to Espen, who will take us quickly through the financial figures.
Thank you. We'll start with the gross margin, where we have seen a positive development in the start of the year. In the second quarter, 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%-0.4%. On the negatives, the positive development we've seen has, as Pål explained, been due to margin. This also has compensated for the price competition we've seen in selected categories during the quarter. Yes, operating expenses in % of revenue was 30% in the quarter, up from 28.3% last year. The number of directly operated stores increased by 9.1%.
Here we have increased the store base from 198 directly operated to 216, of which 12 are new stores, and four of those opened in the second quarter. Six 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 second 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 and 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 has stabilized, 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 Moss last year, the investments are down, and also the dividend payment was NOK 50 million down from last year. All in all, that leads to a cash position of 130-
The outlook, we still believe in 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 Tokmanni is important in order to secure our position in the long run. 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. As Espen mentioned, the board has initiated a share buyback program of up to 2 million shares. That's the main things. The key things that happened in the first half of 2018, I think, was the launch of the e-commerce operations and the partnership with ÖoB, that secures our long-term growth and profits. With that, I think we will open up for questions. You'll get a microphone
Hi. Christian Norbieri, Capio. A warm spring and warm May, how did that really affect you? Orkla says that it affected them quite a bit. 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. Obviously, we see when the seasons 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 negative. Just because it's too warm, and people are just buying the necessities. In the beginning it's positive, but a long period like this has been unprecedented, it's negative. That being said, as I said, we had a very good total seasonal sales in spring in the south.
Altogether, we as a retailer has done well in this environment. I think from a market point of view, I think long periods like this of very warm weather is slightly negative. Okay, everybody sitting in their cabins and calling in.
There's one question from the web. Harry Pakula, Nordea. What was the market growth and market like-for-like growth during both Q2 and first half of 2018?
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 fairly moderate also in the first half. The official figures, I think, will come next week. Okay. All clear? Okay. Thank you all for coming.