Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Poppy, your conference call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Hepsiburada Conference Call and Live Webcast to Present and Discuss the First Quarter 2022 Financial Results. All participants will be in a listen only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Miss Helin Çelikbilek, Investor Relations Director. Ms. Çelikbilek, you may now proceed.
Thanks, Poppy. Thank you for joining us today for Hepsiburada's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. I'm pleased to be joined on the call today by our CEO, Murat Emirdag, and our CFO, Korhan Öz . The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management's views as of today's date only. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information except as required by law. Certain statements made on today's call are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's earnings release, as well as the risk factors described in the safe harbor slide of today's presentation, today's press release, the 6-K, our form 20-F filed with the SEC on May 2, 2022, and other SEC filings for information about factors which could cause our results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
Also, we will reference certain non-IFRS measures during today's call. Please refer to the appendix of our supplemental slide deck as well as today's earnings press release for a presentation of the most directly comparable IFRS measure as well as the relevant IFRS to non-IFRS reconciliation. As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available on the investor relations page of Hepsiburada's website. With that, I will hand it over to our CEO, Murat.
Thank you, Helin. Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before diving into the first quarter dynamics and our actions in more detail, let me quickly refresh our memory on the operating environment in Q1, 2022. Challenging macro dynamics continue to shape the operating environment, including the rising inflation in Turkey and global markets, continued devaluation of Turkish lira, ongoing challenges on the global supply chain, and headwinds from the tragic war in Ukraine. In this operating environment, our solid performance underlined the strength of our business model as well as the soundness of our customer and merchant value propositions. Accordingly, we delivered TRY 8.3 billion GMV corresponding to an 84% year-on-year growth in line with our expectations.
A strong order growth of 63% year-on-year was mainly instrumental in this performance, driven by healthy growth of active customers and order frequency, which I will discuss on the next slide. Similarly, we had a strong revenue growth of 82% on a yearly basis, mainly driven by the increased share of 1P operations, which grew by 92% in revenue. Our gross contribution margin was at 8.3%, lower by one percentage point on a year-on-year comparison, while a continued sequential margin improvement was achieved by one point two percentage point on top of previous quarter, in line with efforts for our path to profitability. Our best-in-class customer experience, powered by our robust logistics and technology infrastructure, was once again confirmed with our NPS leadership in the sector, with a significant improvement by four points compared to Q4 2021.
We strongly believe that customer experience is a long-term success factor for our business, and we are keen to continue building on our strengths. We are grateful to our customers for their trust in our brand. As diversity of affordability options becomes more important in customers' eyes, Hepsiburada stands out with its innovative payment solutions and services such as multi credit card payments, payment installments, instant customer loans, store credits, such as buy now, pay later, and charge to billing ability with a telco partner. Within this context, Hepsipay continued its expansion in our customer base, reaching TRY 7.1 million open wallets by the end of the first quarter, up from TRY 5.2 million just a quarter ago. We are excited about our financial services as they continue to progress towards evolving into best-in-class Fintech solution across online and offline channels.
Now let's take a closer look at the first quarter dynamics and our actions in more detail. Next slide. We took a firm step into the year despite several challenges, as I have already mentioned. We are glad to share that all of our four growth drivers continued their healthy rise, which is one of the key building blocks of our strategy. Our active customer base grew by 27%, reaching TRY 12 million. Our order frequency reached 4.9 this quarter, up from 4.1 a year ago. Our strong performance in customer experience, enhanced by our nationwide logistics network and data-driven marketing, helped play an important role in the consistent increase in both of these indicators.
We achieved a broader active merchant base and wider selection, resulting in improved availability across long tail products and services. With nearly 83,000 active merchants, we now have over 110 million SKUs on our platform. Compared to the first quarter of last year, our selection has particularly increased in fashion and supermarket domains. Our unique 1P, 3P hybrid model helped us quickly adapt to the changing operating environment, where our robust multi operations have provided us greater flexibility with product availability and pricing in a rising inflationary environment. Last but not least, it is important to reiterate that we believe our affordability solutions complement our customer value proposition quite well, especially in the current macroeconomic environment. Therefore, in February 2022, we launched a new store credit solution called Buy Now, Pay Later, marking a first in Turkish e-commerce.
While the early demand for this new store credit solution has been encouraging, we plan to scale our offering cautiously and roll out new features gradually in the remainder of 2022. Next slide, please. Let's take a deeper dive on our progress with respect to our value propositions for our customers as well as our merchants. We design our customer journeys to provide peace of mind to our customers with compelling experiences, including frictionless return, next day delivery, and convenient two-man handling cargo service, all enabled by our robust logistics and technology infrastructure. As a result, based on FutureBright market research, we continued our NPS leadership in the market in Q1 with an NPS of 72. Likewise, we remain focused on enhancing the end-to-end customer journey for HepsiExpress, our on-demand delivery service, including grocery, water, and flowers.
By monitoring our perfect order ratio performance and constantly exploring different service models, we aim to achieve a more sustainable business model in the long term. Our comprehensive merchant value proposition and our progress in enhancing merchant lifecycle management helped us increase our active merchant base to around 83,000 in Q1 2022, up by 55% compared to a year ago. As a result, the number of SKUs reached roughly TRY 111 million, with continued expansion in non-electronics and long-tail products, up by 110% compared to last year. In parallel, the penetration of our value-added services among our merchants continued to grow. While HepsiJet delivered around 53% of total marketplace parcels in Q1, the number of merchants using HepsiLojistik fulfillment services reached 330, up from 191 at the end of previous quarter.
Moreover, over 9,000 merchants used ad tech solution, HepsiAd, in Q1 2022, compared to 6,000 a year ago. At HepsiGlobal, the number of active SKUs reached 2.7 million with over 1,400 participating merchants. With our cross-border capabilities, we aim to enable our merchants to export their products through our convenience model. Following this pilot phase, we began enabling export to the Azerbaijan market in the first quarter of 2022, which we aim to scale gradually with strong focus on customer experience and an asset-light business model. We are committed to standing by our customers and merchants as a reliable companion as we continue to enhance experiences for both. Let me now elaborate on a strategic asset in our portfolio, Hepsipay, and our progress in financial services at Hepsiburada. Next slide.
At Hepsiburada, our innovative payment solutions and services play an instrumental role in our customer value proposition. We offer a wide range of solutions such as one-click checkout, payment installments, multi-credit card payment, instant customer loans, store credit such as Buy Now, Pay Later, and charge to billing ability with a telco partner. Within that context, our wallet solution, Hepsipay Wallet, continued its strong momentum by reaching 7.1 million in Q1 2022. In the first quarter of 2022, around 40% of total GMV passed through Hepsipay Wallet. In February 2022, we also launched a new store credit solution called Buy Now, Pay Later for purchases at our Hepsiburada store, marking a first in Turkish e-commerce.
Buy Now, Pay Later limits are defined based on the financial history of our consumers, combining their track record at the Credit Bureau of Türkiye and their shopping history at Hepsiburada. While the early demand has been encouraging, we remain focused on closely monitoring the credit risk behavior, including early delinquency and default rates, before scaling the offer further. In the current customer experience, the credit limits are up to TRY 5,000 and up to six installments with minimal exceptions. The installments are charged to the user's credit card on the platform.
Also in February 2022, we made progress to enter the consumer finance sector by completing the acquisition of a consumer finance company. Once fully implemented, we expect to be able to offer our customers consumer financing solutions matching their needs, in addition to those already offered by leading banks on our platform. At Hepsiburada, as we keep expanding our capabilities and offerings in innovative payment solutions, we aspire to evolve into a best-in-class fintech player across online and offline. In line with this, I'm glad to welcome one of the prominent figures in the banking and fintech sector in Turkey to our leadership team to lead our financial services under a unified vision. Next slide. Before I end my presentation, I would like to remind you of our strategy as we pursue our path to profitability.
Our strategy is built on three key executional priorities. Accelerate growth drivers, differentiate and monetize via logistics and technology, and expand strategic assets to offer a diversified ecosystem. Let me quickly provide brief insights on each. First, attracting more customers, driving further order frequency, expanding our merchant base, and increasing our selection are of strategic importance to us. In particular, we are focused on executing segment-based customer initiatives, primarily addressing women, running targeted marketing campaigns, scaling our automated growth engine journeys, and customizing life cycle management along each stage of the life cycle for our customers and merchants. Second, we have a nationwide logistics network and footprint, which we will continue to couple with our technological capabilities to further differentiate in both customer and merchant experiences while adding monetization opportunities.
Last but not least, we will continue to diligently build a diversified and coherent ecosystem with select strategic assets such as Hepsipay, HepsiExpress, and HepsiGlobal. As we deliver on these executional priorities, our disciplined cash and cost management remains as the core guiding principle on our path to profitability. As we wrap up, we have started the year with a solid growth performance in line with our plan, driven by strong order growth fueled by healthy momentum in our growth drivers. Considering the current dynamics, the limited visibility on inflation's trajectory, and its impact on consumer behavior for the remainder of the year, we are not making any adjustments to our GMV growth guidance at this time and keeping it around 50%.
Powered by our disciplined cash and cost management, we move forward on our path to profitability and commit to not raise capital for another 18 months from the end of Q1 onwards. I will now hand over to our CFO, Korhan, to give more color on our financial performance. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Murat, and welcome everyone. Q1 2020 GMV grew by 84% compared to the same period of last year when we had already experienced strong GMV growth. The share of marketplace GMV was around 65%, same level as the fourth quarter of 2021. GMV growth is an outcome of the increase in number of orders and average order value. In Q1 2022, strong order growth at 63% was instrumental in generating the GMV growth. This order growth came through continued increase in active customers, reaching 12 million, and order frequency reaching 4.9.
In our business model, the change in average order value and the inflation trends are not fully correlated, as at the end of Q1 2022, the annual inflation as published by the Turkish Statistical Institute reached 61%, whereas our order value rose by 13% in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021. We believe that several drivers impacted the increase in our average order value in the first quarter. First, the consumer purchases shifted toward more affordable alternatives. While making purchase decisions, taking the higher pressure on wallet into account, customers tend to prefer lower priced brands or products. Second, the unit sales of certain consumer electronics such as TVs, laptops, and robot vacuum cleaners declined compared to the first quarter of 2021, which could be attributed to soaring prices despite the pace of discretionary income.
Third, 65% of our GMV comes from the marketplace model where the merchants decide their pricing. Last but not least, while pricing the products, it is likely that having inventory purchased at lower prices across 1P and 3P and competitive dynamics in the market play a role. Also, let me remind you that the inflation impact is more likely to be passed on to customers across the food and grocery related product groups, which only make a very limited portion of our product mix.
It is worth mentioning that Turkey is categorized as a hyperinflationary environment by the International Practices Task Force due to the fact that 36 months cumulative inflation rate was greater than 100%. Therefore, any company operating in Turkey and reporting under IFRS, including us, will be required to apply International Accounting Standard 29, financial reporting in hyperinflationary economies to their financial statements for the periods ending on and after June 30, 2022, which will be a reinitiation after more than 15 years. Accordingly, our financial statements and non-IFRS measures, such as GMV, will be impacted as a result of the implementation of this standard. As of today, we cannot predict the extent and magnitude of the future impact that the application of IAS 29 and related adjustments will have on our financial statements and consequently on our margins.
Although we will be reflecting inflation accounting to our financials from the second quarter onwards, we believe we initially restated this quarter's GMV growth through this methodology for exemplary purposes. By using the official monthly consumer price index numbers, the restated GMV growth in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021 would be around 19%. In the next earnings call, we will spend more time on the methodologies and implications of inflation accounting on our reporting. Now let's move to the next slide, where I would like to discuss our revenue and gross contribution performance. Next slide, please. Our revenue grew by 82% compared to Q1 2021, corresponding to TRY 1.2 billion rise in nominal terms.
This performance was achieved by 92% growth in 1P operations, 45% growth in our marketplace revenue, and 44% increase in our delivery service revenue. Our 1P operations have served well, particularly at the time where price changes were inevitable, as well as supply shortages due to global supply chain issues. Our gross contribution was TRY 688 million in the first quarter of 2022, with an 8.3% gross contribution margin. While there was a one percentage point decline in gross contribution margin compared to the first quarter of last year, our gross contribution margin continued to improve sequentially by one point two percentage points in this quarter. This performance is an indication of our focus on the path to profitability. Now let's have a look at our operating expenses in the next slide.
Our net operating expenses as a percentage of GMV was at around 12% this quarter. As a percentage of GMV, our net operating expenses rose zero point three percentage points, mainly due to one point eight percentage point increase in advertising expenses and zero point two percentage point increase in other operating expenses, offset by one point seven percentage point decrease in payroll and outsourced staff expenses. The one point eight percentage point rise in advertising expenses reflects our investment in our brands and growth drivers in a more competitive market environment, where both the need and for the cost of marketing increased compared to the first quarter of last year. The one point seven percentage point decline in payroll and outsourced staff expenses is through the impact of the share-based payment plan, where we booked the provision for the cash portion in the first quarter of last year.
Normalizing for this item, our G&A expenses as a percentage of GMV would increase by zero point nine percentage points, reflecting the rise in the number of employees and also annual salary increase. The shipping and packing expenses, driven by 63% order growth and 38% in unit price increase applied by our delivery partners, remained unchanged as a percentage of GMV compared to the first quarter of last year. Let's move to the EBITDA margin bridge on the next slide. As a function of aforementioned drivers, EBITDA in the first quarter of 2022 was -TRY 303 million compared to -TRY 104 million in Q1 2021.
This corresponds to a -3.7% EBITDA as a percentage of GMV in the Q1 2022, indicating a one point four percentage point year-over-year decline, whereas it continued its improvement sequentially by a solid four point three percentage points from the previous quarter. Our assumption for the cost inflation for 2022 is roughly 65%. Nonetheless, we will continue to strictly monitor the trajectory of the inflation rate and dynamically adapt by taking necessary actions to make sure we pursue our path to profitability. Next, I would like to say a few words on our cash flow dynamics. Net cash used in operating activities increased by roughly TRY 1.1 billion, reaching TRY 1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2022, which is mainly due to decrease in change in net working capital.
Higher volume of inventory procurement and increased trade and service payable, such as advertising, shipping and other operating, operational expenses in Q4 2021, and which were paid in Q1 2022, was the primary reason for such cash requirements. CapEx was around TRY 119 million in the first quarter of 2022. Over 60% of total CapEx consisted of the cost of tech-related employees who are mainly employed for the development of website and mobile platforms. While remaining CapEx mainly consisted of purchase of property and equipment and software and rights. Accordingly, free cash flow was negative TRY 1.4 billion compared to negative TRY 159 million in the first quarter of last year.
Before I end my presentation, let me also emphasize our commitment to focus on sustainable growth with disciplined cash and cost management. Our current liquidity and future plans enable us to say that we have no plans to raise any capital for another 18 months from March 2022 onwards. With this, I end our presentation. Thank you for listening. Operator, please open the floor to questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Hanzade Kılıçkıran with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for the presentation. I have two quick questions. One is regarding the consumption trends in Turkey. We have observed generally very strong reporting in majority of the Turkish companies under high inflation in this quarter, and companies claim the strong pull forward demand in their sectors. Do you also see the Q1 consumption trend as pull forward demand? And how do you explain the demand in Q2 so far? Because you still keep your 50% GMV growth guidance on the rising inflationary environment. I try to understand the current consumption trends. Second question is related to your cash flow management.
I mean, Korhan Bey has already explained about the increasing trade payables, which is the main cause. I mean, majority of the working capital need is arising from this. What is the reason of this increase in the trade payables? Do you expect to follow a different policy in working capital management in a way to create some inflow by the end of the year rather than outflow? Because you now have a limited cash in hand, and I'm trying to understand the cash burn for the full year. Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for the questions, Hanzade. I really appreciate. Maybe I can take the first question, and Korhan can take the second one. In the first question, I guess you are asking the correlation between our GMV regarding inflation as well as the consumer trends in Turkey, right? At a high level, I guess it's fair to say, it is still very limited visibility on inflation trajectory and its impact on consumer behavior for the rest of the year. With respect to our approach, I guess at this point I can maybe break it down into a couple of facts. One actually is our GMV actually growth is a function of AOV growth and an order growth. In the case of our business model, Korhan explained how AOV is not fully correlated to the inflation trajectory.
He already explained those reasons. I'm not gonna repeat it. Also on the order side, regarding the order side, I guess, we also from the consumer's point of view, realize there's a pressure on consumers' wallets. Actually we are still yet to see what is the implication will be for the rest of the year. That's why under these circumstances, we prefer to observe the dynamics a little further before making any adjustments to our top line growth expectations. With that said, we are confident about our guidance in that sense. With that said, though, with respect to consumers, it is actually there are some maybe insights I can share at this point with you. There is definitely a pressure on their wallet, and we see consumers are seeking for more affordability solutions.
Luckily at Hepsiburada, we are well positioned in that sense by offering a wide range of affordable solutions, ranging from the monthly credit card payment, instant customer loans, installments, and now buy now, pay later and so on. This is actually the way we're gonna address that need. Also we understand consumers are shifting their purchases towards more affordable alternatives, which is again, thanks to our hybrid model with 1P and 3P. With our wider selection, we are trying to address that need as well.
As they shift their decisions to lower price items and so on, we also tend to address that with our wide selection. Additionally, we can also refer to the fact that there is a kind of a decline in unit sales of certain consumer electronics such as TVs, laptops, or robot vacuum cleaners with respect to the customer behavior. I guess in general, these are the high-level areas I can refer in terms of customer insight and observations. But another detail actually I wanna highlight here, we also kind of observed the need for trustworthy shopping experience, trusted and reliable after sales experience also becomes very important. Also that's why our leadership in NPS actually is very relevant in that sense.
With our brand over 20 years of history and with our leading experience in terms of NPS, we believe we are also offering a safe and reliable option and solution to our customers. Let me now stop here and hand over to Korhan for the second question, which I guess was referring to cash flow.
Thank you, Murat. Our free cash for Q1 2022 is negative by TRY 1.36 billion. Out of this, TRY 360 million is comprised of net loss for the period, roughly, TRY 240 million loss, and our CapEx spending roughly TRY 120 million. The remaining TRY 1 billion is coming from the changing net working capital, mainly driven by the trade payables and inventories. We have a seasonality in our business, and the highest advertising and shipping and delivery expense spending are realized in the last quarters, and those payables are mostly paid in the first quarter of the following year. With scale, those payments are getting higher through time.
Due to global supply chain issues and high inflation expectations in Turkey, we procured more inventories during Q4 to get readiness for Q1 to ensure that our products are available on the platform, and those payments are done in the first quarter of 2022. During Q1, we continued such procurements with shorter payment terms, and even in certain categories like electronics, we paid in advance. Those resulted in our free cash to decrease during this period. Having said that, I would like to mention that our cash spending will be lower during Q2 and Q3 compared to Q1 2022, and it will be minimum during Q4 as we continue to procure in advance for readiness in the following years.
All these effects has already been embedded in our business plan, and we give our 18 months cash availability according to this plan. Thank you.
Thank you, Korhan Bey.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Cem Ünal with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation, Murat Bey and Korhan Bey. My question is related to the fintech arm and Hepsipay. Could you please elaborate further on the monetization of the fintech arm going forward, maybe after 2022? Like, what are the plans on that point? And also related to Buy Now Pay Later segment, could you please explain how do you plan to manage very high inflation given that there is at least one month of the period that the customers buy and pay after one month? That would be helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Cem, for the question. In terms of, like, our overall approach in fintech and how we actually also see and manage the buy now, pay later during the environment, let me quickly address those questions. First of all, I guess, as Hepsipay brought up, we believe that financial solutions play an integral role in our vision of leading digitalization of commerce. It's actually a very significant part of our strategy as well. As you know, we already offer a wide range of services and solutions, which I already mentioned in my previous answer, ranging from instant customer loans, installments, multi credit card payments, now buy now, pay later, and ability to charge the billing. Also, as you know, we recently acquired a license, a company, to be able to offer consumer financing.
It's actually a large spectrum of solutions and services, and that's why we believe we are, with our unique license, with these operational and functional capabilities, well positioned to evolve into a leading fintech player in this market, spanning across online and offline. That is our ultimate approach in our fintech arm. With that said, as you know, Buy Now Pay Later is a capability that we just launched in this quarter. It is one of many tools we actually offer in our portfolio.
With that said, I also wanna emphasize, we won't compromise on our disciplined cash and cost management principles, even if we keep working on these features. Let me also reiterate the fact that in buy now, pay later, even though our current focus is all about perfecting the precision of our credit scores and making sure we show this service to the right relevant services, and also making sure we continue to perfect the customer journey. Even the early demand of this service seems to be very encouraging and promising. Actually, we remain focused on closely monitoring the credit risk behavior, including early delinquency and default rate, before scaling the offer further. That is actually, I guess, the few things I wanted to share. Korhan, do you wanna add anything else?
That is more or less all. You said everything almost, Murat. Thank you.
Basically, Cem, it is one of the many steps we're gonna take, but we will take always with caution, and it's gonna be always with a gradual rollout approach.
Maybe I can mention that we will be charging a commission fee to our customers to cover all the time lag and the NPL risks for the buy now, pay later product. The initial tests are very encouraging, as you mentioned.
Did I maybe forget to mention, but it's good for Cem and others to also know how the mechanics work on Buy Now Pay Later. Maybe they are not familiar with the process. In general, especially, we right now use by defining the limit, the financial history of consumers from the Credit Bureau of Türkiye, and they shop in Hepsiburada. Right now, this credit experience is offered by 1P Hepsiburada store. The credit limits are up to TRY 5,000 and up to six installments with minimal exceptions. It's kind of a very pilot phase for us that is strictly control the progress on that end.
Okay, thank you, Murat.
Thank you.
Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Murat Emirdag for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening and being with us. I just wanna leave you guys with three key takeaways from this call. First one actually is we believe Turkish market offers a sizable opportunity given the fact that e-commerce is at an inflection point and expected to exceed 20% penetration within total retail by 2025. The second one actually is, yes, there are many uncertainties in the macro level in terms of dynamics in the global and local market. However, the third one, actually, we have a very well-defined and clear strategy in place to overcome those challenges, and we continue to execute it prudently and with very core principle, guiding principle of disciplined cost and cash management. We are very committed to progress towards path to profitability. That is actually what I wanted to highlight one more time.
Appreciate your time and thanks for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.