Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Half Year Figures 2020 conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relevant field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Martin Hug, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Lindt & Sprüngli telephone conference on the occasion of our half year results 2020. During the presentation, I will provide some additional comments on the charts that were uploaded this morning to our website, and where a transcript of my speech will be available. I'll guide you through the slides via webcast. The presentation will take approximately 30 minutes. Following the presentation, I will hand over to the operator, who will then manage the question and answer session. The agenda points of the presentation can be seen on this chart and include our response to the COVID-19 crisis, a detailed review for the first half, our expectations for the full year for 2021, and in the medium term, and a chance for you to ask questions at the end of the presentation.
I would also refer you to the disclaimer at the end of this slide deck. Before I comment the usual slides showing our financial results, I would like to take 10 minutes to share with you some additional information concerning the impact of COVID-19 on our business and our response to that challenge. Despite the extreme and exceptional nature of this epidemic, we are pleased that our existing systems, with just a few additional measures, have coped extremely well. Importantly, we decided not to fundamentally change our plans, though we did make a number of tactical changes to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. First and foremost, we wanted to ensure that our employees were safe and provided all the support they needed at the group level and, more importantly, at the local level.
A central pandemic team in Switzerland, including the CEO and group HR, took charge of group-wide issues such as insurance and legal, and monitored the latest global medical advice. Group-wide health and safety instructions were defined, and the global supply chain was secured. In parallel, local pandemic teams were set up in each major location, whose task it was to monitor closely the latest developments and to make recommendations to their local operations. A constant flow of information between the central and decentralized teams ensured that best practice was shared. All our factories and retail stores adapted new layouts and additional hygiene regimes that included social distancing, face masks, and hand sanitizing. Similarly, in our administrative centers, we adopted social distancing and limited the number of people in meeting rooms and other areas. In addition, we take the temperature of all visitors at reception before entry.
At the peak of the outbreak, close to 100% of all administrative staff were working from home. More recently, as circumstances have allowed, this number has decreased to roughly 50%. Throughout the whole period, we remained fully in control of the day-to-day business. Working from home functioned extremely well, and administrative productivity remained high throughout. Our existing logistics systems required no adaptation or additional measures, both for the inflow of raw materials and packaging to our factories, and for the outflow of finished products to our customers. Everything worked well without disruption. Likewise, production ran smoothly and unhindered by the new hygiene regimes. Of course, we faced some rather unique challenges in the marketplace and had to balance shorter-term needs with longer-term priorities. We were determined not to neglect our employees, abandon our customers, or sacrifice our longer-term objectives.
Within that context, we were able to take a number of prudent actions to mitigate certain short-term negative effects, thereby maximizing demand, minimizing costs, and optimizing our cash. To support the ongoing business, we maintained planned growth investments. We even slightly increased our promotional support to help our retail partners sell through Easter products. We maintained our usual high level of product innovation, especially for Lindor and Excellence, as well as the regular renovation of our seasonal ranges. None of our planned new product launches were postponed due to COVID-19. We minimized costs and postponed investments if doing so did not conflict with our longer-term plans. For example, vacancies were not immediately replaced, and budgeted new positions were not filled. Leases were renegotiated with landlords. Expansion CapEx was postponed where it made sense in order to maintain our strong liquidity position.
By contrast, we generally avoided layoffs and furloughed the majority of our retail staff. This was a cost that we were willing to accept. All the while, and as planned, we have been implementing the restructuring measures in the U.S. that were announced in January. We have even accelerated one of these initiatives, which I will discuss later. Crisis or no crisis, we decided to continue to invest in our future sales and profitability and in our key brands. In fact, advertising in the first half was likely higher in absolute terms than during the same period last year. We also continue to invest in projects that drive efficiency, so we are ready to leverage these assets as soon as demand returns.
Last but not least, I would like to thank all our frontline employees for their incredible efforts in maintaining the availability of our products and meeting the needs of our consumers. On slide five, I would like to give you some insights as to how the pandemic has impacted the business on 3 levels, by sales channel, by product category, and by geography. You will see that we experienced positive as well as negative trends. An analysis of both is important to understand what can be expected once the pandemic ends. In the first box, you will see that the negative growth effects have come primarily from channels that were closed and therefore simply unavailable to our consumers. The main ones to mention here are our 500 own stores, care retail, food service in the U.S., and the traditional specialist channel in Italy.
By contrast, we saw a substantial increase in our sales over the internet. Although our online sales are still small and we're unable to compensate, this increase has demonstrated the future importance of this channel. Indeed, our online business doubled in the first six months of 2020. In terms of categories, we saw considerable growth in self-consumption products as consumers treated themselves at home. For example, the Excellence brand grew double-digit. This proves that consumers have stayed loyal to our premium offering, even if they have been unable to buy gifts for others. In key geographies, despite the major lockdown, we saw either modest growth, as in Germany, France, and in the U.S. wholesale with both Lindt and Ghirardelli, or stable sales trends, such as in the U.K. and Spain.
In Russia and other Eastern European growth markets, we achieved mid-single-digit organic sales growth, while in Scandinavia, we even grew double-digit. The resilience of these important geographies makes us confident for the future. The markets most affected by the COVID-19 crisis were Italy and Switzerland in Europe and Australia, China, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa in the rest of the world. The effects differed according to the timing and extent of lockdown in the various markets. In the U.S., all our stores were closed for an extended period and hence experienced a 100% shortfall during that time. Finally, the Russell Stover brand in North America, with its focus on seasonal items and gifting, was heavily impacted during the Easter season. In June, as the lockdown eased, group sales showed some normalization of trends, which is reassuring for the future. Let's now move to the final slide of this special introduction.
As we look to the future, we continue to see significant demand for our products, and we are more determined than ever to exploit that unchanged potential. We are confident because we have seen, even under the weight of such extreme external factors, that underlying consumer demand has remained buoyant. In short, for us, the new normal will look remarkably like the old normal. Over the medium to long term, we are maintaining the focus on our leader products, on premiumization, and on our growth markets. We will continue our clear focus on the successful Excellence and Lindor franchises. The premiumization of Anglo-Saxon markets, notably the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, and our investment in new growth markets such as Japan, China, Brazil, and Russia, will continue to generate significant incremental business. In 2020, our investments in brands will be at least the same as in 2019.
Our product innovation plans are unchanged and continue to represent an important part of our growth story. Even our geographic expansion plans are unchanged, as we see advantages in maintaining the pace of expansion in spite of the current external issues. We see online sales channels as an additional important growth opportunity. By developing an extensive network of its own retail stores, Lindt & Sprüngli has long recognized the importance of alternative channels as a means of generating additional sales and reducing dependency on traditional channels. Three years ago, we launched an e-commerce project with the aim of generating sustainable double-digit growth within this channel over the medium and long term. We are starting to see the first results of this initiative with a doubling of this business over just the past six months, which accounts now for about 4% of our total revenue.
We have just relaunched the lindt.co.uk website and will relaunch the lindt.com site in the second half. Our click-and-mortar business, for example, with Tesco in the U.K., and sales via third-party platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba, are now starting to drive substantial growth. Looking forward, we see enormous potential for the high-value gifting product range such as ours. As you know, we are implementing various initiatives in the U.S. to streamline our operations for growth. Our plans in logistics, retail merchandising, and production are well on track and will be implemented as planned this year. We are bringing forward the closure of the redundant Russell Stover factory to August this year, seven months ahead of schedule. The retail network closures are progressing as planned and will continue into 2021 as scheduled.
After this special analysis of how we are managing the impact and implications of COVID-19, I will now provide the usual detailed review of our results. The organic top-line results for the group was negative 8.1%. As discussed previously, we achieved different results depending on geography, category, and sales channel. I'll give you more details in a subsequent chart. EBIT came in at CHF 17 million, which means that the EBIT margin was slightly above 1%. This is lower than last year, driven by the declining sales and the negative impact on cost absorption. Net income was CHF 19.7 million, with the net income margin at 1.3%. We again had some positive developments on the tax side. Thanks to good progress in our negotiations with foreign tax authorities, the uncertainties with regards to transfer pricing risks could be reduced, resulting in lower current tax liabilities.
In addition, the Swiss tax reform announced in 2019 led to an additional capitalization of deferred tax assets in the balance sheet and correspondingly positive P&L impact. We are pleased that free cash flow reached CHF 156 million in the first six months, coming in at about 10% of total group sales. Despite the lower operating profit and net income, we saw positive impacts from our proactive management of net working capital and CapEx. Our net debt position, which includes a lease liability of CHF 470 million, increased to CHF 567 million. This is slightly higher than in December 2019, lower than one year ago when net debt was at CHF 780 million. At this point, I would also like to stress the liquidity ratio remains strong at 57.7%.
Despite the challenges to our top-line growth, mainly coming from closed sales channels, our balance sheet remains healthy and robust with a strong liquidity position even after paying the special dividend in May. I already mentioned in my introduction the key drivers for half-year organic sales growth shown here on slide nine. I think that it is worth pointing out how exceptional this year is. It is indeed the first time for more than 25 years that the group has registered negative organic sales. A closer analysis of the reporting period demonstrates that the negative impacts occurred in just a couple of exceptional months. In fact, we had a strong start to the year and again a strong June after most of the sales channels reopened. In most key markets, regardless of absolute trends, we continued to gain market share with our key franchises, Excellence and Lindor.
It is clear that underlying consumer demand has remained buoyant throughout, and this persuades us that future demand for our premium chocolate remains intact. On slide 10, we present as usual the sales growth in CHF over the last five years. In most prior years, CHF growth has been negatively impacted by the strengthening of our reporting currency. In the first half of 2020, this has again been the case due to the weakening of most currencies compared to the CHF. The overall negative impact was 4.6 percentage points. Looking on slide 11 at the sales split by market in the first half, North America reached 35.9% of total sales. Another important pillar, Germany, attained an 18.2% share with the U.K. approaching 6.8%.
The rest of the world at 12.9% was the most impacted by COVID-19, especially in markets such as China, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. Please bear in mind that these numbers are shown in Swiss francs. Therefore, all percentages have also been impacted by currency fluctuations compared to last year. The drivers of our sales results are shown in the chart here on slide 12. Group volume, in fact, declined by just 1.4%, but combined with a negative price mix effect of 6.7%, overall organic sales fell by 8.1%. As I mentioned above, the foreign exchange impact was negative 4.6%, and this resulted in the 12.7% decline in Swiss francs. The key thing to understand is the dynamic within the price mix impact. The pricing impact was, in fact, slightly positive, so that the negative impact came entirely from the mix.
The negative mix was, in turn, driven entirely by COVID-related effects. In particular, the channel mix, due to much lower sales in our own retail stores, as well as sales returns and participation in markdowns to support the trade sell-through of unsold Easter products. We now turn to slide 13 to review the key regional segments. In our biggest region, Europe, organic sales came in at negative 4.9%, compared to positive 5% at the half-year 2019, representing a better performance than the other two regions. We delivered a solid performance in important markets like Germany, France, the U.K., and Spain. In Scandinavia, without a lockdown, the key market of Sweden, growth was even double-digit. In the Eastern European markets, Russia and Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, we also grew mid-single-digit.
By contrast, in markets with a traditionally large Easter season, especially Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, we suffered significant sales shortfalls. In addition, Italy had to close all its traditional retail stores while Switzerland suffered from a complete absence of tourists. North America's overall negative 8.2% performance hides positive underlying trends. Lindt U.S.A. and Ghirardelli, in fact, demonstrated good resilience in the wholesale channel with low single-digit growth. Unfortunately, the closure of our U.S. retail store network during most of the first half led to a double-digit sales decline in that channel. The important Ghirardelli food service business was negatively impacted by the closure of most restaurants and cafes. The extremely positive performance in e-commerce was an important sales driver, but e-commerce is not yet large enough to offset the negative impact from the closed stores.
As mentioned at the start of this presentation, the online channel is a strategic priority for our business. Russell Stover's main business is focused on gifting and sharing, mainly during the important Valentine's, Easter, and Christmas seasons. The start to the year was very strong, with a good performance during Valentine's, but Easter sales did suffer in wholesale, compounding the shortfall from the brand's own retail stores. By contrast, we saw good sales momentum with the Russell Stover sugar-free range using stevia extract as a sweetener. We have continued to make good progress on various projects to further leverage the Russell Stover acquisition and on our overall streamlining initiatives in the U.S., which are mainly in the areas of production, merchandising, logistics, and procurement, and IT. We expect bottom-line benefits from those projects in the coming years, which will be in part reinvested in the brands.
Benefits have already started to kick in this year, as mentioned in my introduction, we are accelerating the closure of the redundant Russell Stover factory by around seven months. Overall, we are convinced that we are taking the right strategic steps for future success at Russell Stover and in the U.S. generally, that we are on the right track. Overall, in the rest of the world, we saw a decline of 18.4% compared to plus 8.3% in the first half of 2019. This region was the one most impacted by COVID-19, not least of all because we report travel retail in this segment. Due to global and local travel restrictions, sales in this channel came to a virtual standstill in the second quarter. As the first market to enter lockdown, China was impacted very early on and most severely.
We have seen nothing to make us doubt our positive medium-term assessment of this market. Brazil and Japan, which have been a focus for Lindt retail store network development, suffered due to this channel being closed during a major part of the first half. South Africa saw a significant spike in COVID-19 cases, and a curfew was implemented across the entire country with very limited commercial activity, all of which led to a decline in sales. Australia was quite resilient in the wholesale channel, representing another positive sign for the future. In the medium term, we are convinced that we will again reach double-digit growth within the rest of the world segment. Indeed, many of these countries are large chocolate markets with significant premiumization potential for Lindt.
Let's move on now and go through the different cost categories, starting with material costs on slide 14. Material costs, which have been adjusted for changes to inventories, came in at 35.3%, 330 basis points higher than in the previous year and 180 basis points higher than in 2018. There are two factors behind this negative development, one sales related and one cost related. As explained earlier, our sales volume declined only slightly, meaning that we did not produce and sell much less chocolate than in 2019. It is simply that we achieved a much lower net sales per ton, net sales being the denominator in this calculation. On the cost side, we have seen increases over the past 12 months in cocoa bean, cocoa butter, and hazelnut prices, which will have an impact on our full year results.
Looking forward, we estimate that our overall material cost should be at roughly the same level in 2021 as in 2020. On slide 15, I would just like to take a quick dive into our most important commodity, cocoa. Development of the cocoa market over the next 12 months remains uncertain. The outlook depends heavily on the positioning of market speculators with an over proportionate influence on the cocoa market. That said, the market currently expects a slight surplus for the 2019-20 harvest season, but a larger surplus of around 300,000 tons for the 2020-2021 crop. The surplus predicted for the new crop is the reason why cocoa futures have declined over the past few months. By contrast, the Living Income Differential of $400 per ton implemented by Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire has helped push pricing in the opposite direction.
Overall, as can be seen from this chart, cocoa bean future prices in London are currently trading at around GBP 1,600 versus around GBP 1,700 one year ago. At the same time, cocoa butter ratio has more or less stabilized at high levels of 260 to 270. This compares to a ratio of around 270 to 280 one year ago. Based on current market expectations and including the Living Income Differential, we assume that cocoa bean prices for 2020-2021 crop will increase only slightly. Despite an absolute decrease of CHF 42 million, personnel expenses were unable to keep pace with the decrease in sales. As a result, personnel expenses increased by 110 basis points. A large part of our personnel expenses are fixed costs, the decline in the overall sales inevitably led to these economies of scale.
Given that we expect organic sales growth to recover and normalize in the medium to long term, the ratio of personnel expenses to sales is therefore expected to come down again in the future. Although operating expenses decreased by CHF 47 million, the ratio increased by 100 basis points, driven up by two factors. Here again, we experienced these economies of scale from fixed expenses such as warehousing costs. As explained earlier, we maintained advertising investments at a high level and continued to invest in our brands in all geographies with the objective of emerging from the COVID-19 crisis as one of the structural winners. These two negative effects were partially offset by the positive impact of lower variable percentage rent expenses in our retail stores and other smaller runoff effects.
Within the depreciation and impairment category, we also experienced these economies of scale as depreciation in absolute terms was at the same level as in the first half of 2019. The key drivers for the increase of depreciation in recent years have been our CapEx program aimed at satisfying future volume growth and the reporting of depreciation for right-of-use assets in line with the new IFRS 16 standard effective from 2019. One of the biggest investments relates to our Lindt factory in Stratham, New Hampshire, in the U.S., which is planned to absorb the expected medium-term increase in volume from gaining U.S. market share. Due to the slowdown in 2020, we are slightly rephasing overall CapEx in that factory, leading to lower CapEx in 2020 and 2021 than originally planned. I will discuss CapEx in more detail later.
The EBIT figure remained positive at CHF 17 million or 1.1% of sales, but was significantly down compared to the first half of 2019. The decrease of nearly CHF 110 million is due to the factors discussed at length in the previous slides and are primarily the result of the COVID-19 related diseconomies of scale and the negative mix impact on the top line. Net income also remained positive, coming in at CHF 20 million or 1.3% of net sales. The decline in net income was less marked than for EBIT, thanks to positive developments within financial items and income tax. Net financial expenses came in at CHF 13.4 million, a decrease of CHF 1.3 million or -9% versus last year. This was mainly due to the lower US dollar interest rate and the related lower hedging costs for subsidiary financing.
As already mentioned, we again had some positive developments on the tax side, driven by the lower current tax liabilities related to lower transfer pricing risks and further capitalization of deferred tax assets related to the Swiss Tax Reform. Looking forward, and based on our current outlook, we consider a tax rate of 21%-22% to be sustainable over the medium term, assuming no major changes in tax legislation. CapEx from the first half came in at CHF 117 million, at roughly the same level as last year. This is less than planned given that we had decided to postpone certain growth-related investments. We now expect CapEx to reach around CHF 230 million-CHF 250 million for the full year, which is about the same level as in 2019.
As communicated above, we are rephasing our CapEx plans where it makes sense and now expect CapEx to be between CHF 250 million-CHF 300 million over the medium term. As I take you through the bridge of the main cash-relevant developments of the first half, please bear in mind the impact of net debt of IFRS 16, and specifically the lease liability with its negative impact of CHF 470 million. At the end of the first half, net debt reached CHF 567 million, much lower than the CHF 780 million of one year ago, but higher than the CHF 423 million at the end of 2019. Consequently, we are now more focused than ever on cash generation. Indeed, in the period under review, we managed to generate a free cash flow of CHF 156 million.
The increase in net debt of CHF 144 million was mainly due to the special dividend paid out in May to our shareholders. In total, we returned CHF 420 million to shareholders in the period. Given today's assumptions, net debt should end the year at around CHF 350 million-CHF 400 million. Before the lease accounting change and on a pure cash basis, our expectation should be for around CHF 100 million net cash. That concludes my review of half-year results. Let us now look at future expectations. For the full year, the group expects organic sales to decline between 5%-7%, while EBIT margin is forecasted to be around 10%. As additional guidance, and as mentioned earlier in the presentation, we plan CapEx of around CHF 230 million-CHF 250 million. Of course, everything depends on how COVID-19 develops, which nobody can predict with certainty.
The most important assumptions for our 2020 forecast are that there are no major second COVID-19 waves that require further widespread lockdowns. The majority of our own retail stores remain open from now until the end of the year. The holiday season business comes in at around 2019 levels in most markets. Travel retail gradually starts to gain some traction, though realistically, sales in that segment will remain far below 2019. From now on, therefore, we expect momentum in our business to build. The group remains confident over the mid to long term of achieving its goals of an organic sales growth of 5%-7%, combined with an average increase in EBIT margin of 20-40 basis points. I can now confirm this unchanged guidance.
In the medium term, and as mentioned earlier, we expect CapEx of CHF 250 million-CHF 300 million and a tax rate of 21%-22%. For the 2021 financial year, as our business bounces back, the group expects organic sales growth to be slightly above these medium to long term brackets. We expect our EBIT margin still to be under some pressure next year, but back at around 15% within roughly two years from now. With this, I come to the end of my presentation and hand over to the operator, who will manage the question and answer session. We ask you to limit yourselves to a maximum of three questions so everyone has the opportunity to ask questions. Thank you.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relevant field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Warren Ackerman from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Martin. It's Warren Ackerman at Barclays. Hope you're well. 3 from me. The first one, Martin, you talked about June being more of a normalized month. Are you able to quantify what June looked like relative to April and May, how you exited the quarter? The second one is, you're making the key assumption of no further lockdowns. If you're reading the news, it seems like Miami, Florida, L.A. are going to potentially go into imminent lockdown. That key assumption could already be out of date immediately. I was wondering whether you can maybe give us sensitivity within your 36% in NAFTA to California and Florida to get an idea of the risk assessments on that key assumption that you're making. The final one is just on margin. You said there will be some negative impact next year on the margin.
You've given the organic growth guidance for next year. You've told us what the margin will be, hopefully in 2022, 2023, above 15%. What about in 2021? You say still under pressure. Could you give us a bit more clarity on what that means relative to the 10% this year? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning.
Morning.
Just had to write down all your questions to be able and not forgetting any one of them. The first one was about June. Exactly.
Yeah.
Of course, it looks very different depending on the markets you look at. We had some markets which grew double-digit. We had others which still suffered under a kind of, not a lockdown, but closed retail stores. Overall, June was somewhere in the mid-single-digit area in terms of growth. As I say, there were big differences between different markets. It gave us a lot of certainty that we could clearly see a bounce back. With regards to your question on lockdown or lockdowns, our key assumption is there will not be one huge lockdown at the same time where everybody basically is closing down, all retail stores close down for three or four months, right?
we'll see some lockdowns, like the one in Melbourne or the one in California.
factored into our numbers. We don't expect something similar to happen in those numbers like what happened basically in March, April, where everything was closed, right? Where all our stores were closed at the same time for eight to 10 weeks, and in some countries even longer. Where restaurants were closed, so we lost basically for two months our food service business in the U.S., et cetera. Some of it is factored in, but not the same magnitude as basically we saw in March and April. You mentioned California and Florida. Florida itself is not, let's say, the biggest chocolate market for us within the U.S. because its, of course, temperature is quite high.
California is a bit of a mixed bag, dividing between Northern and Southern California. Yes, California being the biggest state, from a population point of view in the U.S., sure is an important market for us. We can see that currently also in retail, right? Because retail is really, especially for Ghirardelli, quite an important state. Disney, I think some businesses have even reopened, but we have to see if the tourists will come back, because we have two stores in Disney, one in Florida and one in California.
Yeah
the Ghirardelli Square store in San Francisco. It is impacted for sure. On the other side, we see some very positive momentum in baking and in also food service, which is somehow coming back nicely. You asked about the margin for 2021. We are not giving a specific guidance for 2021 on the EBIT margin. 2020 is at 10%, around 10%. We are saying 2022, 2023 at around 15%, back to 15%. You can assume that 2021 will be somewhere in the middle between the two.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Alain Oberhuber from MainFirst. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Martin. Alain Oberhuber, MainFirst. Three from my side. Regarding the recovery you expect on the organic growth rate, can we expect it will mainly come from price mix? If so, which of these factors? The second question is regarding your visibility, in particular regarding the festive season for Halloween and Christmas. Obviously, it's a little bit too early to have to sell in already. What makes you this confident that you have this recovery, given the key assumptions you have set? The third question is regarding travel retail in 2020. As you said, it will remain far below 2019 levels. What was your base case assumption for travel retail prior to COVID-19?
Hi, Alain. Your first question on organic sales, from where it's coming. For the second half, or for the full year, I should say, we expect volume to be slightly down, as we have seen in the first half. We expect price to be slightly positive, and basically it's really coming from mix. Within the mix, yeah, we saw during Easter the impact from returns and markdowns. You should bear in mind that the channel mix is also part of mix. If our retail business is lower, it has an impact on mix. A lot is really driven by channel mix, so in the first half, and we expect that also still to be the case in the second half, right? Global retail is coming back, yes. It will still be slightly below 2019 in terms of the rebound.
Yes, it's really coming from the mix, the fact that we see our organic sales to decline by 5%-7%. Your second question was about visibility Christmas. Of course, at the end of the day, we try to make our assumptions. We also try to give you a certain guidance, with our best knowledge we have today. I mean, these are very uncertain times and, nobody really knows what happens exactly November and December. What we can see right now is that, orders that are coming in are actually okay. We already get some orders like in the U.S., and so far they give us some confidence that, the assumption of achieving for the holiday season, so the Christmas plus the whole season basically between November and December, to be flat in wholesale.
From what we can see right now, it seems to us to be a realistic assumption. As I said, we get first visibility on Christmas because we get first orders from some customers. Travel retail, yes, it's down. You asked me about the base case prior to COVID-19? The base case, right, prior to COVID-19, you mean?
Correct.
It would have grown versus 2019 in the base case. Now, it's down massively, right? We're talking somewhere between one quarter to one third of the sales that we would normally have achieved, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
A decline of way more than half, right? We are losing 75% or so. There are no many people are traveling, the traffic is really missing, right, in the airports.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Martin. Thanks for taking the questions and your time here. You're being very open. Just on back to the margin question. You've mentioned a 10% margin this year. Obviously, what is the mix of that in terms of you think is COVID-19 versus the accelerated restructuring you're doing in North America? I'd ask the same question about 2021. What is to stop you just coming back to where you were previously, in 2021? You think, excluding flare-ups and the rest of it, you'd assume it would be a year, more or less in line with 2019, in terms of business. I don't quite understand why you're guiding the margin down. Is it because of the still there'll be more restructuring coming through next year? You still think there's gonna be legacy COVID-19 impacts next year? What would they be in 2021?
Thanks very much.
Maybe you can go mute, Jon, because, somehow there's a background noise.
Sure.
If you could go on mute. Thank you. Thanks, Jon, for the question. Yes, margin 10%. You're basically, your question was why 10%? What the impacts were on that? I mean, there are different factors, of course. One, as I mentioned, when I was presenting, we are planning to continue investing on advertising, because for us, it's important to think midterm, and we continue to invest behind our brands. We actually plan to spend even slightly more than in 2019 behind our brands on advertising. That's one. With lower sales, of course, that means that the ratio goes up there. The second reason, travel retail is a very profitable channel for us. By sales declining so sharply, we are losing there, relatively, even in proportion more in profit than in sales. The rebound in retail, it will take some time, right?
Because in our own retail stores, people go back, the stores are open again. It just takes time for things to normalize in 2020 and also 2021. In Italy, we have this traditional trade channel, which is also quite a profitable channel, which suffered in the first half. I think, a significant amount of the players there, of the owners of these traditional trade stores, some of them will not come back, will not reopen their stores. We are losing there also some sales, and we are losing also some profit there. It's also quite a profitable channel. That's how we get to this 10%. These are the main reasons. Some of them continue as well into 2021. Again, on advertising, yes, of course, we want to be one of the structural winners out of this crisis.
We know we have high liquidity, so we will continue to invest behind our brands because we are very confident about the midterm. Travel retail in our plans right now will continue to be low, the sales. Maybe slightly higher than in 2020, but not much higher. In this mix, we will continue to have a negative impact from travel retail on the profitability. Exactly the same for Italy, for the traditional trade. I think a significant amount of the stores will not reopen, not even in 2021. We lose there also, again, profitability because it's, as I said, a profitable channel. Retail will rebound even faster in 2021 than it was in 2020, according to our plans right now, our own retail stores. We have to see at what level compared to 2019 they will really be in 2021.
These are really the key drivers, and the key reasons why we think 2021 will not just be back at 2019 levels.
I wonder if we just have a follow-up then. The accelerated restructuring has got nothing to do with additional costs there, which are in. Just on what's happening in North America, can you give us a rough idea of what you think it may do to your cost base in North America, everything you're doing there, either in CHF tens of millions or whatever way you want to talk about that? Thank you.
I forgot to answer this as well, Ben, because it was one of your questions before. Where is the restructuring, right? We are not planning additional restructuring right now. We are just planning to implement what we have announced in January. A big portion that we are even accelerating slightly further is the closure of the factory. Actually, everything has already been booked in January, right, in the past year, basically. There's no additional negative impact from that. We'll see some positive impact coming from the restructuring. In the out years, it will be more than in 2020, 2021. Some of the stores, for example, which are not so profitable, we are, as I communicated well in January, we are not renewing the leases. It's not all in 2020. Some of it is in 2021, some of it is in 2022.
Yes, there will be a positive impact. It's really difficult to quantify it right now exactly because it's still a bit of a moving target. Yes, there will be no additional restructuring planned right now for 2021. That's not the reason why there's no rebound in 2021 to 15%. The reason for that is really the other four reasons that I gave you before, advertising, which remains high, travel retail, we have to see the rebound, plus the Italian traditional trade.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Joern Iffert from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello, Martin, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one is please, on a more detailed split between your wholesale and retail channels, which account for around 80% of your sales. What was the growth here in the first half 2020, and what is also your assumption here for the full year guidance? as a balance, I can calculate myself and for your own shops and through retail, what was the impact here in the first half? How sharp the decline was in sales, and what is also your assumption here then for the second half? The second question is please, on your pre-orders for Christmas. As far as I remember over the summer, 80% of the volumes are pre-ordered now for Christmas. What is the liability if Christmas turns out to be really bad?
Is it you are sharing the pain with retail, or you have to take the products back? The last question is, you have a very strong liquidity and balance sheet. EPS are likely below your initial plans and market expectations due to COVID-19. Is there willingness in the management and the supervisory board to compensate investors with a structurally higher dividend?
Hi, Joern. Thanks for the questions. Your first one was about wholesale, retail, or, well, actually this 80% of the business if I understand you correctly, if you exclude retail, travel retail, traditional trade, food service, et cetera.
Yeah.
These are the 20% that were under pressure. It was actually the 80% was flattish, and the 20%, we lost, you can calculate it yourself, somewhere between 30%-40% overall. The 80% of healthy business was flattish. Because in there you have also the Easter business, right? The Easter business, of course, was under pressure. Whilst, as I said in my introduction, we had some very positive numbers in Excellence and also in Lindor. Actually, in all those categories, we gained market share in most markets. Relative to the market, we have really performed well. As I mentioned, Excellence, we have even grown double digit, which is the typical product that you would consume at home, right? Tablets as a category was also very positive. It's really a mixed bag, right? There are huge differences between channels and even categories.
Yes, this 80% wholesale, we were flattish, and for the full year, we think we are going to be slightly positive. For Christmas is a bit similar ball game like Easter. It depends really on the customer and the country. You have different markdown policies, different sales returns policies, depending on the customer. Even within one country, you can have different policies with different customers. Of course, at the end of the day, in basically all examples and with all trade partners, there is kind of an incentive also for the trade partner not to have a lot of markdowns. It's not in the interest of us and it's not in the interest of the trade to push a lot of volume to the trade that will then not be sold through.
Because if there are markdowns, both of us pay for it. In some examples, we pay more, in others, the trade pays more, so it really depends. There's absolutely no incentive for any party to just push a lot. From the trade, we can see some positive thinking about Christmas, actually. That gives us also some optimism that we should achieve these numbers that I communicated. Of course, that all depends on the assumptions that we will not have, again, for two months, a lockdown. Your last question was about the strong balance sheet. As I mentioned as well, we are trying to make it even stronger. We are really having a lot of focus on net working capital and on free cash flow generation.
Now, if we will pay a special dividend or if we will do a share buyback or something else, I can really not tell you because, as you said, it's the board of directors who will decide that. We will assess the situation together with the board of directors when we have the 2020 numbers, when we have confirmation if we can really achieve those targets, and then we can decide it. There's absolutely no discussion going on right now, and it's too early now to discuss this.
All right. Many thanks.
The next question comes from Graham Hunt from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Martin. Thanks for taking the question. The first question is on your growth investments going forward. I know you said that the new normal will look remarkably like the old normal, but I wondered if you could talk a little bit about where this step-up in spend is going in terms of either geographies or channels, and if this is more focused on defending and building share in your existing key markets or if you're leaning into new market opportunities that you might be seeing out of this crisis. The second question, just briefly on Brazil. I wondered if you could give any additional color on what you're seeing on the ground there at the moment and what you're penciling in for your recovery expectations there under the current guidance for this year and beyond. Thanks.
Yes. Good morning. first question on growth investments, where this is really going. Of course, we are trying to have some investment in most strategic markets. We are particularly focusing, if you look at the big markets, on the U.S. because the U.S. is the biggest market at the end of the day. 20% of the worldwide chocolate market is the U.S. a lot of the spend is going there. We have also three brands there. as I mentioned, we even saw some growth in wholesale with Lindt & Sprüngli, so we are going to invest behind those brands in the U.S. for sure going forward as well. also in other growth markets, especially where we have big retail operations, where we are building up the markets with our own wholesale, like Russia, for example.
We're also trying to continue to invest, and it's one of the top three chocolate markets. In the UK, we continue to invest. It's a very important strategic market for us. Really in the growth markets. Then also Europe. As usual, we also try to continue having a good performance in Europe. In Europe, not necessarily having up so much the investment, just trying to keep it on a high level. The heavy up would be more in the markets where you see significant growth going forward. Brazil, yes, it's a big chocolate market also. It's one of the top seven chocolate markets. It's a market where we have chosen the strategy to go into this market with our own retail stores. We have about 45 own retail stores right now. Unfortunately, most of them have been closed during most of the time.
For half year, you can imagine, if during the half of the first half it was closed, it's down by like 50% or so, ish. At least that's the retail part. We also have a wholesale business, so it doesn't mean that Brazil as a total was down by so much, but just in retail. Brazil as such, we still continue to believe that it will be slow, even though the stores have reopened. A lot of the stores have reopened, actually, in Brazil. Some of them are now closing again, so it's a bit up and down. We expect for the second half, let's say also a negative sales performance in those stores. We will be somewhere between 25%-30% for the full year minus in retail in Brazil.
I wouldn't say it's a very bullish assumption there because we try to be realistic. It's an emerging market, and at the same time, they are basically really suffering almost most. Yes, that's more or less our assumptions.
Thanks very much. That's very helpful.
The next question comes from Patrik Schwendimann from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Patrik Schwendimann, Zürcher Kantonalbank. Good morning, Martin. Regarding the price mix effect, what's your best guess estimate for H2 for price mix? Second question, did I get you right that you were expecting for the second half of the year a slightly positive wholesale business? Third question, what are your expectations by region for the full year organically? Thank you.
Sorry, can you just repeat the second question quickly?
In terms of the second half, did I get this right, that you're expecting a slightly positive growth for the wholesale business? For H2.
Yes, that's correct. Yes. The pure wholesale, let's say, yes.
Yes.
Slight positive.
that decline of roughly 3% to 6% in H2 is again, coming from retail, travel retail, food service.
Correct.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you.
Also for price mix, we expect a similar, even slightly. Of course, the numbers will be slightly lower in terms of negativity. If you take the middle of the minus five to minus seven, minus six, even in there, we would expect a negative volume, slightly negative volume for the full year also, minus one, minus 1.5-ish. Price mix similar as well, let's say, the difference. It's really, again, the mix. The picture no change dramatically for the full year, compared to what you see now in the first half.
Mm-hmm. slightly better than this minus 6.10%, right?
Yeah, exactly. Because the total, let's say, will be slightly better as well. It's probably minus four and a half or something like that.
Right.
You asked about guidance. Well, it's not really. It's just our best guess right now. For Europe, for the full year, somewhere between minus three and minus six. For North America, somewhere between minus five and minus eight. For rest of the world, somewhere between minus 14 and minus 18.
That was the question, right?
Okay.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Maybe just one additional question. The online business, did I get this correct? It's 4% of your sales now.
That's correct. Yes. Up from 2%-4%.
Okay, perfect. Thanks a lot, Martin. See you on Friday.
Thank you. See you.
The next question comes from Jean-Philippe Bertschy from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, Martin. I have one follow-up on your guidance, and I'm still struggling to understand why, based on your assumption, you're still going for negative volume growth in H2, knowing that Christmas is a very strong business, as for Easter in H1, which was heavily affected. When you see that the own retail stores, travel retail and food service were closed for the biggest part in H1, in H2, there is a gradual reopening or recovery. Why are you so negative on the volume growth? The second one would be on Italy. If you can give some color, probably sales were down 30%-40% there. If you can give some color on how the traditional trades has been behaving and what you expect into H2.
Yes. Hi, Jean-Philippe. Your first question was about why negative volume in the second half. Yes, while we will see some improvements in some of the channels, we still think even in the second half, we will not be obviously back at the same level as in 2019. For example, if you take our own retail stores, our assumption right now is that we will not be back to the same as in 2019. The rebound will take some time. We are roughly at somewhere around 80% of the 2019 levels, more or less, for the second half. That's our assumption. Because we obviously don't know. Nobody really knows how the consumer will behave during Christmas in our own stores. Because with social distancing, et cetera, you're logistically not able to perform so many transactions as you can if there is no social distancing.
If there is still social distancing, there will be an impact on the store throughput in November, December during the Christmas season where you have a lot of people going into the stores. That's why we assume basically there that the rebound will take some time in global retail. That's one of the key reasons apart from travel retail, which is kind of obvious, why we have those numbers in the second half slightly negative. Yes. Your other question was about traditional trade. Was that just in general what we expect from traditional trade in Italy going forward? Is that correct?
Yes. Exactly. The sales decrease overall for Italy in H1, I guess something like minus 40% organically.
Traditional trade, as I mentioned, is an important part of the Italian business, but it's a business that has been in decline as well in recent years because you have lots of these small stores just struggling because the modern trade is getting stronger and are reopening more outlets, et cetera. The traditional trade, even before COVID-19, was declining as a market between 5% and 7% before. We were a bit better than this, but still for us also, this was a declining business before. Now the COVID crisis accelerates this basically. At the same time, we have to raise success. We have started to build up 10 years ago, a very successful business in modern trade in Italy, and this is really a nicely growing business. </edited_transcript
Italy as such, for the second half, we expect it to continue slightly negative, especially driven by this traditional trade, but we expect an improvement. In modern trade, we have also gained market share in Italy. Relative to the market, our performance is actually quite good in Italy. It's really this special circumstances that this specialty channel is still quite important in Italy. Strategically, in 10, 20 years, this channel will continue to decline. That's why we have really looked at other avenues to sell our products many years ago, and those are impacted much less.
My assumption for a sales decrease of 40% in H1 for Italy, is that accurate?
It's more or less correct, yes. </edited_transcript
Thank you.
The next question comes from Farhan Baig from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, Martin. Thank you for the question. One sort of broader question. I guess this crisis is different to the one we saw in 2009, in that you have a global crisis, the global financial crisis, but it's preceded by a health crisis. I just wanted to understand, in the surveys and the consumer response and questions and answers you're seeing, has there been a change in view from consumers when it comes to consuming what would be indulgent, but relatively high sugar product items in confectionery? Relating to the financial element, are you seeing any down trading in your larger markets within confectionery or not? Is this something that we need to look out for when going into FY 2021? Second and third questions are relatively quick.
What would be your best guess for full year tax rate, given some of the moving parts you've had in the first half? Thirdly on online, it's a growing business, but when you compare it to potentially other FMCG categories, it's still a very small proportion. I guess one of the difficulties you've had with confectionery historically has been on the distribution side and ensuring that product quality remains up to scratch when it's delivered at home. What elements or what areas of improvements are you sort of driving in order to improve the distribution in the online trade to further accelerate that channel? Thank you.
Okay. Coming to the first question about the change in view of consumer during COVID and if you can see some down trading. What we can really see is that we are gaining market share, one, and we are losing sales in channels which were basically closed. As I mentioned, like traditional trade, like global retail, our own retail stores, like also travel retail, which was almost closed, came to a standstill. At the same time we have seen that our Easter business, for obvious reasons, was suffering. Seasonal and gifting, which generally is one of our key strengths, was suffering because there were less family gatherings, et cetera, during Easter. It was also because the occasion did not happen, not because people did not want to buy our products.
At the same time, we saw our business which was consumed at home, like Lindor and Excellence, really having fantastic results, especially on the Excellence side where we grew double digit. From what I can see, I can rather see an acceleration in the example of Excellence. People who have been working from home, they can maybe not go out to a cinema or to a restaurant, so they buy a nice chocolate and they buy a chocolate which is high quality. We can rather see an increase in the demand on this side, right? How I assess right now the crisis, the decline in sales is really mainly coming from channels that were not available to the consumer and not because the consumer has decided not to buy high-premium chocolate.
For the tax rate for 2020, I guided it to 21-22 for the future. Now in 2020, it will be slightly better than that because of the impact we have now seen in the first half. Online in general, your other question, when you talk about online, we have to look at the different aspects of online. We have the click-and-mortar, so the Tesco.co.uk, for example, or the Sainsbury's or Ocado. Then we have to look at the platform separately, right? Like Amazon or Alibaba, and then our own e-commerce. The biggest share of sales is actually in the first two, so click-and-mortar and the platforms. Our own e-commerce is the smaller part of the total online sales.
The logistics problems, let's say, if you want to call it like that, or challenges, they are more focused on our own e-commerce or lindt.com. There, in general, we have also good results, and we are finding also good ways of accelerating that. As an example, in many markets, we have used our own stores for pickup, so consumers were able to order a product, and then they could pick them up in our store, so click and collect. Yes, it's still a small portion if you look at these three pillars of online, but we can see definitely this growing very fast. As I mentioned, we have started a big project for all these three pillars three years ago.
It's kind of the kickoff the project is unrelated to COVID-19, but now, of course, it is helping us tremendously now in 2020 to offset some of the shortfalls we have seen in retail.
Thanks for the response. Just going back to one of the first questions with regards to health. Is there an intention, as part of your innovation pipeline, to maybe launch more sugar-free variants, stevia variants, just to maybe grasp additional customers or keep some of the customers that are worried about their health, which seems to be increasingly the case?
As you know, in the U.S., this is probably the biggest market in terms of share of sugar-free as part of the total chocolate. It's still relatively small there as well. There with Russell Stover, we are quite big. We have like 60% of the sugar-free market in the U.S. It's small, of course, as I mentioned before, but it's a nice part of the business of Russell Stover. Over there, they have launched a sugar-free chocolate bar. Because so far we had the bags with sugar-free products, but now we also have a bar with different chocolate free bars. Another nice innovation, if you don't want to eat a lot of sugar, is Excellence 100%, which is also, of course, free of sugar. Then also EXCELLENCE 100% Cacao Orange, so it has some orange flavor as well.
both of them are 100%, so zero sugar. definitely, yes, we are looking at this and it's part of consumer demand. We have also recently announced the launch of Hello Vegan tablets in Germany in the vegan area. Now those, they are not sugar-free, but they're also another type of consumer trend that we are trying to follow, where we see the opportunity, of course. yes, we are also looking at those things.
Thank you.
The next question comes from John Ennis from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, Martin. Two from me, please. The first is on the top line guidance again of 5%-7% sales declines. I guess what strikes me as a little bit odd is that you're not forecasting much of an improvement until the Christmas period, really, when you then expect flat sales. Between now and November, you effectively have a very similar run rate of declines implicitly to the 1H that you've just delivered. I guess, why is there limited improvement between the 1H and the start of the Christmas period, particularly in the context of you saying that June was maybe slightly better. Is that because June you would consider to be maybe a bit of a blip and not a good indicator of the exit rates? A bit of color on that shape would be helpful. My second question is on the margin performance in 1H20.
Could you maybe help bridge the performance and give us the proportion of the CHF 110 million EBIT decline that was down to global retail and travel retail, please? Thanks a lot.
Yeah. Hi, John. In terms of your first question, which was related to the top line. No big improvement you say H1 versus H2. I mean, yes, at the moment, we are still assuming, as I mentioned earlier, especially on global retail, that the rebound will take time. Even if all the stores are open, we are assuming that it will not be back to the '19 levels in terms of revenue. That will take time. Even though June was positive and we had some positive momentum there because we are trying to bring some innovation on the market, like ice cream, et cetera, as well. Yes, retail will take some time to rebound. Travel retail will be the same as in the first half. Italian traditional trade will also continue to suffer.
I think food service in the U.S., we have to see what happens because, as it was mentioned earlier on by Joe, I think California is on lockdown, for example. Florida is on lockdown. Some of the restaurants there are also maybe closing again. Also on food service, we are obviously not assuming that we will be right back at the '19 levels, even if June there has been promising on food service in the U.S. A lot of the reasons why we have basically negative sales in the first half, they are not just going away in the second half. If you look at the pure wholesale, then there, as I mentioned before, there we think we will be okay, actually, in a good shape in the second half, probably even slightly better than the first half, depending on the Christmas season, of course.
there we should really be able to be at flat-ish to even slightly positive. yeah, it's a very similar story to the first half. your One second, please. your second question is about the EBIT, where the shortfall is coming from. it's roughly half of it is coming from retail and the other half from the rest.
Yeah, that's super helpful on both counts. Thanks, Martin.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Corinne Gretler from Bloomberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I actually just have one, and it's about the ICI report that you may have seen that said that child labor increased in the Ivory Coast cocoa farms during lockdown. I just wanted to ask if you've taken any specific action to mitigate that, and then also what kind of risk might that pose for chocolate demand, if at all?
Yeah. Hi, Corinne, thanks for the question. We have actually our farming programs Lindt and we are sourcing our cocoa beans in Ghana and Ecuador, which are our biggest markets, and also in Dom Rep, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea. We're actually not sourcing cocoa beans out of Ivory Coast. From that viewpoint, we are doing our utmost to make sure that the farms from where we get our cocoa beans, there is no child labor. We therefore have implemented this Lindt farming program, and we are really tracking this together with our partners. Ivory Coast, it's not really where we buy any cocoa beans. Okay. I assume we go to the next question if there are other questions.
Mr. Hug, this was the last question.
Okay. thanks everyone for your patience, for taking the time. yes, have a fantastic day and stay healthy. Thanks a lot.
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