Welcome to the CDON Q3 2022 presentation. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Peter Kjellberg and CFO Thomas Pehrsson. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Slide two, please. Today's presentation will be conducted by myself, Peter Kjellberg, CEO at CDON, and Thomas Pehrsson, CFO. Slide three, please. Some reflections of the three quarters. In this market climate, the strength of the marketplace business model becomes very apparent. With an assortment of over 12 million products, we can adjust our offering to our customers, enabling us to stay relevant independent of the market climate.
We are performing better than the market year to date. We continue to focus on building our core categories with higher commission levels. As a result, our commission has grown, and the marketplace net sales continue to grow. Considering the uncertainty in the market, we have reduced our cost level, where most of the effect is expected to materialize in Q1 next year.
We have continued our work on optimizing the effect of our performance marketing, and our initiatives have yielded very good results. The organic traffic continues to improve, and underlying metrics related to SEO show a strong increase. The repositioning of CDON progresses according to plan.
The first step towards launching CDON 2.0 will be in Q1. We have developed a CDON app, and the focus is pre-owned products. Pre-owned is one of the fastest-growing categories in the market. 50% of the non-consumers have bought pre-owned goods in the last 12 months. 25% of online shoppers have bought pre-owned goods in the last month. The estimated market in Sweden alone is about SEK 20 billion, with a 15% annual market growth.
The current economic situation will most likely result in further price-conscious consumers and market growth for pre-owned. Pre-owned will also be the foundation for our sustainability work as a corporation.
We could all reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by just switching to a more circular economy. I hope that you're now going to App Store and that you download our new pre-owned app, CDON Pre-owned, that is available from today actually.
The agenda for today contains an introduction to CDON, followed by a Q3 update. Thomas will then present our financial performance and directives. After that, we will open up for the Q&A session. Slide five, please. Let me first give a short introduction to CDON. Slide six, please. CDON have the right products at the best prices.
It's enabled through our marketplace business model in the Nordic markets. We are currently offering around 12 million products in core categories. It's everything from simple everyday products to capital goods, from well-known, respected premium brands. In many core categories, we have the biggest assortment in the Nordic region.
We have more than 1,500 active merchants operating on one or several of the Nordic markets in our core categories. We are active in all Nordic markets. Sweden is, of course, our biggest market, by history, but we aim to grow on all markets.
We work with 360 digital marketing. We have integrated campaigns, focused messaging across multiple points of consumer contact. The brand CDON is, as you know, well-known. It's clearly related to e-commerce. Our brand awareness in the Nordics is very, very high.
We have a modern scalable platform that gives us flexibility, possibility to grow number of customers, merchants, products at the same time. We have today about 90 million visits per year and 2 million active shoppers. Slide seven, please. The internationally proven marketplace model is under-penetrated in the Nordic markets. In Asia, 90% of all e-commerce goes through a marketplace.
In the U.S., it's about 50%. In Europe, between 25%-40%. In Nordics, it's below 5%. This gives us unprecedented opportunity of growth. The main reasons why the marketplace model is under-penetrated in the Nordics are, in our view, related to one, maturity. We are still in the early phase in the Nordics. CDON converted to a marketplace in 2019. We are the undisputed market leader.
In the more mature European markets like Poland, Netherlands, and so on, they have about 10 years head start before us, and they are now showing 25%-40% market share. Our ambition is, of course, to have the same development in the Nordics.
Reason two, the current shopping experience at cdon.com, it can be improved for sure. We are now taking vital steps to become the natural shopping destination with the launch of CDON 2.0 in Q1.
Slide eight, please. We estimate the total available market in the Nordics to be SEK 450 billion. Our core categories represent 48% of the total online market. That gives us a serviceable available market of about SEK 200 billion. This excludes then building material, groceries, clothing, shoes, and pharmacy products.
Our current market share is approximately 1% of this market, and that gives, of course, a great opportunity for growth for us. Slide nine, please. Let's move into the quarterly update. Slide ten, please. The gross merchandise value, the GMV, for CDON Marketplace, 3P, decreased by 11% to SEK 430.5 million.
The market decreased by 2% in the third quarter, while CDON Marketplace GMV decreased by 11%. Adjusted for the fraudulent merchant activity in 2021, we remain flat in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Net sales for CDON Marketplace increased by 2% to SEK 48.6 million.
CDON Retail net sales decreased according to our plans by 27% to SEK 48.5 million, due to the process then of reducing sales of our own inventory. Our gross margin increased by 6.8 percentage points to 51.2%. Profit and loss before depreciation and amortization amounted to SEK 19.7 million.
Profit and loss for the period amounted to SEK 26.5 million. Slide 11, please. We are now moving into our financially strongest part of the year, which is the Q4. We are doing it with more activities than ever. It goes from Singles' Day, that moves more or less seamlessly into the Black Friday, that moves seamlessly into Christmas, and finally into winter sales. As I said, this will be our most active period ever.
On the right side of the slide, you can see a design draft of the new interface of the CDON site that we will launch in Q1. As you can see, it's a much more consumer-oriented feeling than we have today. Slide 12, please. Now, I would like to give the word to Thomas to present the financial performance.
Thank you, Peter. Let's move over to the financial performance. Next slide, please. Group income statement. As Peter said, the market decreased by 2% in the third quarter, while CDON Marketplace GMV decreased by 11%.
Adjusted for the fraudulent merchant activity in 2021, we remain flat in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Increased commission levels and a solid product mix has led to gross profit, which was 3% higher than the corresponding period last year. According to plan, we are phasing out our retail business, and as a consequence of that, the net sales and gross profit for this segment decreased.
Since we have been investing in activities for future growth, such as marketing, product categorization, fulfillment, and attracting key expertise, we have recognized somewhat higher expenses in this quarter compared to the same period last year, which is in line with what we have communicated at our calls the last quarters. This means a lower EBITDA and EBIT than the third quarter last year. Next slide, please.
Group balance sheet. Last year, we acquired shares in the associated company, Shopit, as well as a minority stake in Xales and Commerce 8, so our fixed assets have increased compared to the same period last year. As I said, we are phasing out our retail business, and this leads to a lower inventory. We now have a cash balance of SEK 80.3 million. Next slide, please. Group cash flow statement.
We recognize the lower operating result versus the same period last year, mainly due to lower sales and specific investments to enable growth as mentioned. We are not content with the result. However, as said, we have a cash balance of SEK 80.3 million going into our financially strongest part of the year. While we are accelerating several of our ongoing growth initiatives, we are in parallel adapting our spending to the challenging market situation. Next slide, please.
Financial directives and targets. Since the marketplace business model is still relatively unknown in the Nordics, we have now decided to communicate financial directives, which will be commented upon on a quarterly basis. Our financial directives are that our 3P business shall continuously gain market share in the Nordic e-commerce market. Our 3P take rate shall increase over time.
We shall enjoy stronger incremental margin as a result of its high gross margin 3P business and the relatively fixed nature of administrative and general costs. After this quarter three, we have the following comments. Adjusted for the fraudulent merchants in 2021, we have performed better than the market for five consecutive quarters.
Our take rate from the 3P business increased by 1.4 percentage points, and gross margin increased by 6.8 percentage points compared to the same period last year. SG&A expenses excluding marketing costs have reduced continuously throughout the year and is expected to continue in Q4 and in Q1 2023. In Q3, our marketing cost in relation to total GMV decreased by 0.3 percentage points compared to the last quarter. Next slide, please.
Our target for 2023 is that we shall be at least EBITDA breakeven unless we find growth initiatives, opportunities that where we believe that internal rate of return significantly exceeds our cost of capital, or the macro environment undergoes further material deterioration from lower levels expected in Q4 2022. Our midterm target for 2025 is to gain a market share of at least 2.5% in the Nordics. Thank you, and over to you, Peter.
Thank you, Thomas. Next slide, please. To sum CDON up, the Nordic marketplace opportunity is very attractive. It's up for grabs. CDON is uniquely positioned to win and rapidly scale the marketplace models in the Nordics. We have a highly scalable business model with strong working capital dynamics with a scalable OpEx base that allow us for a rapid growth and profitability.
Our very broad assortment guarantees market relevance regardless of the economy in the market, in good times and in bad times. CDON does not deliver the right consumer experience today, but with the launch now of CDON 2.0, we feel that we will be able to unleash the business potential for real in the company. Next slide, please. Thank you all for listening. With that, I would like to open up for the Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one keypad. There will now be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from Niclas Elmhammer. Your line is now open.
Thanks, operator, and good afternoon to everybody. My first question would actually be to look at your statement from yesterday evening on your financial ambitions, targeting obviously a 2.5% share of whatever the market is in 2025.
If we just, you know, for this purpose, assume that there is absolutely no growth in the market, and you would take a 2.5% share in about four years, that would probably imply a CAGR of between 40% and 45% at least per annum in terms of 3PGMV growth.
Now, could you give us some sort of what's your internal discussion on landing in this target in terms of average order value contribution, traffic contribution? Could you break that down so it makes a little bit easier for us to understand how you get to that number, please?
and thank you for the question. First and foremost, we don't predict in the long term such metrics as average order value and conversion rate and similar. Nevertheless, as you say, with that assumption of the market, the CAGR looks very good for the 3P business. We would also like to say that. No, I would say it like this. I go back to what I started to say.
We are of course seeing in our own terms and our own calculations that we are growing those metrics that you were mentioning, but we don't want to exactly state what they are. Can you hear me? We lost you. Operator. Can you say that. Sorry again, Niclas. I think we lost you. Are you still there?
This is the web operator. We are working on getting the operator back. Just a moment, please.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Adam Widen.
Just before that, could we ask, are you on the line, Niclas? No. Okay, Adam, please. I don't know if anyone hear us from our side. It's complete silence, so it seems that it's not operating with the system. So if the operator please give some feedback what is happening. Operator, could we get some feedback, please? What is happening?
Yes, we are currently working on getting the phone line back to this meeting.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, very soon the telephone line should be back. Our apologies.
Operator, do you think it will be fixed or should we call it a day?
Okay, this is the web operator. [Foreign language]
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