Go from one point to another point. If we look for the environment, we believe that this environment still as aftermarket will stay as I see some, okay.
Please mute your microphone.
Okay.
I did it.
Okay, perfect.
[Foreign language]
Next quarters and the process of the changing the markets in one body and as well with less players will be something as a natural goal. If we look for the average growth, we see that in the United States it's not higher than 5% for the players with the biggest growth. In Europe, we see most of the players on the negative or on the zero. Inter Cars is growing on this comparison much more above for half of the year. Still, we have somebody with the unmuted microphone. If we look, the Inter Cars growth is 11.5% for second quarter, 10.3% for half a year. And can we unmute still, because somebody unmuted, try to maybe now it will be better. Okay. Still, we see our place to increase our market share.
We believe that for the big companies above EUR 1 billion, we really generate big value for the customers. If we compare as well to the Western European players, always is the question why we grow much faster and why they not succeeded in Central and Eastern Europe. We are sure that our strategy based on the delivery to the point of fixing is the answer. Our market share in the independent garages, fleets, and dealers is around 74%. Many players in many countries, this rate is below 50%. The best are around 60%. If we look for Polish distributors, they have a spot business around 50% to the Western market, which means that even if they sell a lot on the Polish market to the garage, in the end, the stake is limited.
We see that our long-term growth and market consolidation is effective in comparison to the merger and the acquisition. We see our strategy is valid, and it's not only valid for the customers which understand this concept because if you calculate the prices together with added value service, we have the best and the cheapest service, and we are as well the most lean player in the delivery of the goods for our suppliers. Our investments with automation and digitalization, even more in the next quarters, will improve our situation, and we can come back on the path with the profitability as we expected.
Import of the cars, for example, for Polish markets going down, but in place of this, we see the sale of the new cars and as well, a lot of the cheap brands which as well exchange the older car to the, a little bit, newer ones, but still the car aging is, growing. We see as well that the car park is growing, which is as well something which, support our, future and as well giving us, knowledge that our investments are, on the right, process and based on the right assumptions. Currently, electric vehicles, is only 2% of the entire vehicle fleet, and we believe that, this, what we predicted that up to 2030 will be safe harbor as a combustion engine.
We believe that the hybrids, even if we check the sales of the Chinese brands in Europe, the dominance is based on the hybrid solution, which means with the combustion engine and up to 2035, we believe that this will be dominant support supply of the car, and this is giving as well as the possibility that we can think on a bright way that demand which is still not visible on a short period will come and big demand can only be used by the big players because they have the right logistics to solve it and giving as well additional value on the margin or on the profitability.
Now it's time for the comments on the financial results. Piotr Zamora speaking. Good afternoon. In the second quarter of 2025, Inter Cars Group revenue reached the level of PLN 5.3 billion, representing an increase of 9.5%. However, in the first half of 2025, revenues reached the level of slightly above PLN 10 billion, representing an increase of 7.6%. When we compare it to the sales dynamic measured in units, after first two quarters of 2025, the group achieved sales growth in units of around 11.4%. This difference between 11.4% in units versus 7.6% in nominal terms shows, more or less what kind of price competition we have to face in the first half of 2025. The share of domestic sales continues to decline. I mean, domestic, I mean, in Poland, continues to decline, compared to higher growth of sales of our foreign distribution companies.
In the first half of 2025, Inter Cars revenue in Poland from domestic market accounted for approximately 39% of sales, compared to 40%, which on one side shows that the group is further diversifying geographically. On the other hand, it's showing that the growth rate of our distribution companies outside of Poland is higher, coming from generally lower market share on many of the markets, and also because of the implementation of our strategies in various segments, which allows those companies to grow faster. Over the last six months, we opened 19 new branches abroad, and we closed three branches in Poland. At the end of June, we had 670 branches.
In our opinion, Inter Cars Group's ability to maintain higher sales growth, which was commented by Krzysztof versus competitors, was of particular importance for our results and was possible thanks to two factors. We would like to distinguish two factors. One being full completion of spare parts for given vehicle type. It is worth noting that many of our competitors specialize in certain suppliers or in product groups, while Inter Cars provides outstanding service for the workshops in terms of the offer, which outperforms the market and drives our sales. The second factor would be the distribution network of 670 branches and efficient logistics. Regarding gross margin, the consolidated first quarter, second quarter, 2025, gross margin decreased to 28.4% compared to 30% after eliminating the impact of exchange differences.
When comparing half year to half year, gross margin decreased slightly, only slightly, from 28.9% down to, sorry, from 29.2% down to 28.9%. The key factor negatively impacting the first quarter gross margin was primarily the need to adjust the selling prices to market conditions on selected product groups due to increased competition and weaker than expected demand for spare parts. Furthermore, in quarter two 2025, we faced price reductions from various suppliers, which also translated into downward pressure on prices. However, at the end of Q2 of quarter two 2025, we began the process of increasing gross margins. The process was continued throughout quarter three. What is worth noting is that the gross margin increases did not affect negatively our sales growth, which you can see in our monthly reports regarding sales growth in January, July and September.
Regarding the cost, the share of selling general and administrative costs to sales revenue for the second quarter of 2025 was 13.8%, which means, which is a decrease, an improvement compared to the same period of the last year when it was 14.4%. The improvement in this ratio is due to the actions taken by Inter Cars management in recent months, including a number of cost optimizations and reductions, particularly in the area of IT and logistics, and is also related to the implementation of robots in Zakroczyn in the first phase of the entire robotization process. The improvement in the cost to sales ratio was the key to achieving a 3% improvement in operating profit in quarter two 2025. It is also worth noting that there was an increase in financial cost in quarter two.
The financial cost amounted to 54 million PLN compared to around 42 million PLN for the same period of quarter two 2024, which is primarily due to increased sale scale of investments while maintaining the turnover inventory rotation more or less on the same ratio. Regarding the net profit, the group achieved a net profit of 188 million PLN, which is basically on the similar level to previous year, which in our opinion is a good result considering the price pressures and the decline in the first quarter in the gross margin. Regarding the inventory rotation, as it was mentioned earlier, the inventory rotation remained on the similar level as in prior year, which is 143 days. And now I would like to make two additional comments regarding one of events. On September 5, 2025, Inter Cars management received information about the fire.
It had destroyed the Inter Cars Ukraine warehouse located in Dnipro. After determining the cause of the fire and estimating the value of destroyed goods and fixed assets, we will recognize the impairment loss in the third quarter of 2025. The initial estimated losses amounted to around 21 million PLN. The second event, which is a positive one, on the 2nd of July 2025, the provincial administrative court in Gdańsk issued a judgment in the case concerning our subsidiary Lauber. The order concerned irregularities in waste management, in particular the classification of used parts, cores, undergoing the remanufacturing process. The court decision, as I said, is positive for us. Generally, the court indicated that the remanufacturing process could be classified as a reuse, not recovery, which would preclude automatic recognition of these parts as waste. Yeah.
So, we can say that this court judgment actually closes the case, which is very positive for us, and Lauber will be able to continue its operation. So I think this is all from my side. And I will pass the voice now to Krzysztof. Thank you.
Okay. We are the fast, fastest growing distributor among the largest players on the market despite weakening demand in Europe in comparison for half a year, 10.3% growth, LKQ -6.4%, GPC around 0.6%, MEKO 4.1%, including the merger of Elite Poland, and total these biggest players around 0.9%. We believe that still the independent aftermarket is the safe harbor. The vehicle parts distribution and repair market is undergoing consolidation, and in the near future, we can expect smaller players to gradually lose importance, with Inter Cars remaining the growth leader among large distributors. We are open to the changing environment, technologies, and the social and geopolitical challenges facing the world today. Thanks to our internal culture focus on development, we are ready to further expansion, setting increasingly high, higher standards of customer service.
We expect an improvement in sales dynamics in the coming month, in the coming quarters of 2025 due to expected completion of postponed repairs by the drivers. We see the potential for further growth in 2025 in the aftermarket, still is a solid foundation. The vehicle fleet in the past, the aftermarket has proven to be strong even during economic downturns. The uncertainty that exists in the market is paradoxically good news for us, as such a situation may lead to further market consolidation at the expense of less agile players.
Furthermore, the growing pressure to improve efficiency and effectiveness resulting from rising operating costs may contribute to faster market consolidation, and Inter Cars is a leader in the area thanks to the robotization of the process and digitalization, what we mentioned, especially that our main customer, as we mentioned, is the point of fixing the garage. We believe that this unbeatable offer, lean offer for the producers to go to this last mile and best solution how to repair cars, especially that we see that this lack of people. We have the new narrative, which we present in September, regarding the powering progress and saving time. It's exactly connected with the garage and the last mile. We currently operate in 21 markets, but we are still developing our logistic network.
We recently opened a new fully robotic warehouse in Zakroczyn, scheduled for early 2025, and robotics is now a necessity. We already know how to achieve this using existing modern technologies. The robotization of another warehouse in Brașov is nearing completion, and by the end of September the investment will be completed, including a 100% transition to the new warehouse and the termination of the lease agreement for the old warehouse. Our logistic footprint currently covers 660,000 square meters, 670 branches, ensuring we are as close to customers as possible and able to deliver goods to the workshop multiple times, as I mentioned before, as a leading company on the last mile. Thanks to our network, especially based on this tech, we could say solution, one-stop shop, we are present in Central and Eastern Europe, but as well, we're going more and more to the west.
We believe that, based on this, we will expand and build the franchise model system not only on existing markets, but as well on the new one, like Austria and Germany. Thank you very much, and we ask for the question.
You can ask the question also on the chat, if you would like to put it on the voice, so please unmute yourself.
Other questions? Yes. From Mr. [Lukoforgo] is typing.
Okay. I would like to inform you in the meantime that the presentation was uploaded to our new website, so you can take them from our investor website. We have the question.
This is about Germany. As we discussed before, the first stage was to onboard the customers which bought from Poland, directly to IT solution in Germany. This phase is like on finishing. Now it's making the relation with the customers in each town, in each land. And then, based on the knowledge of our team, it will be the proposal of the converting them to the franchise partner. Nowadays, it's not yet as a step. We need to remember that in Poland, it took us 10 years from changing from the distributors to the franchise partners in Greece, five years, which I believe that we will see how fast we can do this in Germany. But as Piotr mentioned as well, that we develop our logistics network. Next year, we will start to development of the new warehouse near the border of Germany.
It is as well the part of our plan for supporting the customers in the first phase. The second phase, of course, is the opening the first branches. Then, based on the number of the branches, when we will be satisfied and the partners will be satisfied, is building the local warehouse, then the warehouse similar as we have in Zakroczyn or Sosnowiec or the future near Poznań, which means that we have the plan, but as well something which we use always as a phrase every day, small spoon. We have quite nice growth to the western markets, and we believe that it's not only based on the offer, but as well about the next stage as well, this what we can deliver to the last mile, exactly to the need of the garage. Any more questions?
Thank you for the question.
Mm-hmm.
So if there are no more questions, I would like to only remind you that our recording from this teleconference will be uploaded to our website. And see you after the third quarter results.
Yes. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Yes. We would like to invite you to the next conference. Thank you for your time and for listening to us.
Thank you very much, and see you next time.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.