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Teknosa’s Q3 2025 earnings call highlighted a mixed performance, with a 6.5% year-over-year decline in revenue to TRY 20 billion. Despite the revenue drop, the company reported improvements in its gross and EBITDA margins. The stock’s performance remained stable, with no significant price changes reported.
Key Takeaways
- Revenue for Q3 2025 declined by 6.5% year-over-year.
- Gross margin improved by 1.1 percentage points to 13.9%.
- EBITDA margin increased from 4.3% to 6.3%.
- Net loss reduced by TRY 261 million compared to Q3 2024.
Company Performance
In Q3 2025, Teknosa faced a challenging environment with a 6.5% decline in revenue compared to the previous year. However, the company succeeded in enhancing its profitability metrics, with gross and EBITDA margins showing significant improvements. This indicates effective cost management and strategic focus on high-margin categories.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: TRY 20 billion, down 6.5% year-over-year
- Gross margin: 13.9%, up 1.1 percentage points
- EBITDA margin: 6.3%, up from 4.3%
- Net loss: TRY 231 million, an improvement of TRY 261 million from Q3 2024
Outlook & Guidance
Looking forward, Teknosa is prioritizing revenue and margin growth, controlling operational expenses, and optimizing inventory management. The company remains committed to digital transformation and expects gradual improvements as interest rates normalize. Long-term growth and strategic capital expenditures are also on the agenda.
Executive Commentary
Ümit Kocagil, CFO, emphasized, "We are successfully navigating the headwinds of high inflation and interest rates," highlighting the company’s resilience. He also stated, "Our vision is to become a digital-first company," underscoring Teknosa’s strategic direction.
Risks and Challenges
- High interest rates continue to impact financial performance.
- The consumer electronics market faces a general decline, affecting revenue.
- Economic conditions and inflationary pressures pose ongoing challenges.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about potential market exits by Sabancı Holding and expectations for the fourth quarter. The company addressed concerns about high interest rates and discussed initiatives to mitigate financing costs.
Full transcript - Teknosa Ic ve Dis Ticaret AS-EXCH (TKNSA) Q3 2025:
Sibel Turhan, Investor Relations Manager, Teknosa: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and good afternoon wherever you are, and welcome to Teknosa’s third-quarter earnings call and webcast. My name is Sibel Turhan, and I’m the Investor Relations Manager of Teknosa. Before we start, please take a moment to review our disclaimer notes. I would like to inform you that this presentation on the 2025 first nine months’ financial results includes the company’s audited financial information prepared in accordance with IS29 Inflation Accounting Provisions as per the Capital Markets Board’s decision dated 28 December 2023. Our presenter today is Teknosa’s CFO, Mr. Ümit Kocagil. Please note that all participants will be in the synonym mode during the presentation. Following the first part of this call, there will be a Q&A session, and you will be able to submit your questions through the Q&A box on your panel.
If you have any questions, we kindly ask you to submit your questions in writing before the Q&A session begins, which will let us review and address them efficiently. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded, and the link will be available online following this call. Now, I would like to hand the floor over to our CFO, Ümit Bey.
Ümit Kocagil, CFO, Teknosa: Thank you, Sibel. Hello everyone, and welcome to our meeting on the third-quarter financial result for 2025. Today, as usual, I’d like to begin with a brief overview of Teknosa’s third-quarter performance and highlights and some KPI realizations. Then, I will walk you through market assessment, financial performance, and the strategic initiatives that we are implementing to navigate under this challenging environment. Since we published our financial results recently, I will be happy to address any questions you may have. Let’s begin with the key highlights from 2025 year to date. First, despite high interest, low demand in comparison to previous years, and intensified competition, we delivered a solid quarter reflecting steady progress and the positive impact resulted from our ongoing initiatives. Financial costs remained elevated in the third quarter as policy cut rates have been progressing more slowly than expected.
Macroeconomic pressures continued to weigh on purchasing power, leading consumers to focus on essential categories and putting pressure on non-food retail demand. In this challenging environment, in line with market decline, our revenues diminished year over year, reflecting both market dynamics and intensified competition. However, we continued to deliver strong operational performance with further improvements in EBITDA margin driven by gross margin explosion and tighter OPEX management. In response to these macroeconomic headwinds and the challenging market conditions, we are implementing a more aggressive set of measures to capture additional margin opportunities and achieve meaningful OPEX savings. In a high-interest environment, we are also optimizing credit card costs, managing inventory more efficiently, and improving payment terms to reduce financing costs. Looking ahead, these ongoing initiatives, together with the gradual normalization in policy rates, are expected to contribute to our sustainable profitability and position us well for the long-term growth.
As you may remember. We mentioned in our previous calls that we expect the full benefits of our ongoing strategic actions to become more fruitful in the second half of the 2025 and coming years. Accordingly, this quarter marks this, and we benefited from cost-cutting initiatives and improved our operational profitability versus last year. Before sharing the operational KPIs on the right side of this slide, just a quick reminder for you. All the figures that are provided in this presentation are in line with IS29 standards, which means that figures in the prior periods are revised to present September 2025 purchasing power. In response to recent macroeconomic developments, we have accelerated certain strategic initiatives. Over the past nine months, we closed a significant number of smaller-scale stores not meeting our performance expectations, while opening larger stores in new locations in well-known shopping malls such as Forum Erzurum.
Our market expansion strategy continues to focus on opening larger-format, experience-driven digital stores in strategically selected high-traffic locations. As part of our intensified store network optimization efforts, the total number of stores decreased from 175 in December to 146 by the end of September. As a result, our average net sales area has now increased significantly and reached 655. Square meters per store, which is beneficial for our targeted customer store experience. We continue to expand our number of SKUs, namely stock-keeping units, to meet consumer demand. Since the launch of Marketplace, the number of SKUs has increased 49-fold, reaching 244,000 SKUs. Similarly, the number of merchants in our Marketplace has grown to around 1,300 merchants. The Net Promoter Score (NPS), major indicator of customer satisfaction, remained robust, staying close to 70, which is in line with top global benchmarks.
It is important to note that this NPS score represents the average of stores’ online services that we provided and call center. Last but not least, our Techno Club loyalty program launched in 2021 has now exceeded 5 million registered customers, further enhancing customer engagement and strengthening brand loyalty. Now, let’s look at the market performance before getting into details of our financial results. As a reputation, GfK, the independent research company, follows two consumer electronic markets. The first one is the panel market, which represents the total sales of consumer electronic products in Turkey, and the second one is the tech online market, which constitutes a subset of the panel market and includes only the online sales across all channels in the panel market. As I mentioned in previous calls, due to prevailing economic headwinds and the high base effect from last year, market growth has slowed in 2025.
A note: despite our previous calls, GfK data are not representing the same period as there is a trouble in the system. Hence, we had to provide the latest panel market data, which is for August, but tech online for the first half of 2025. Looking at the inflation-adjusted market data, the panel market increased by 11% in the first eight months of 2024 versus the same period of 2023. This data reflects August year-to-date year-over-year growth, as reporting is slightly lagged. As you may recall, there was a big jump in demand affected by the total elections until the end of March 2024, and afterwards, the market faced a decline in demand. In the first eight months of 2025, the market declined by 3% in real terms compared to the previous year, driven by a 13% market decline in Q1.
The tech online data is not yet available but will be ready in November. Therefore, we have included only the six-month information that we shared with you previously. Accordingly, the tech online market grew by 1% year-over-year in the first half of 2025 versus a 20% growth year-over-year in the same period of 2024. When we break down these figures by categories, we see that in the panel market, all categories have decreased. Telecom and SDA, small domestic appliances, recorded the smallest decline during the relevant period, while white goods, IT, and consumer electronics were more significantly impacted. In the tech online market, white goods and consumer electronics delivered strong growth and made a positive contribution in the first half. SDA performed in line with the previous year, whereas telecom and IT faced a decline. Since early 2025, we have been proactively implementing headwind mitigation measures.
In the third quarter, we further intensified these efforts by adopting higher impact actions across four key areas. The first one is capturing additional revenue and margin upside opportunities in a tightened market. In order to address the challenges in the contracted market demand, we have launched multiple initiatives to strengthen our revenue streams and improve margin optimization. The second one is implementing additional cost-saving opportunities in the OPEX base. We are continuously optimizing and intensifying our operational cost measures across all items to align with the current market realities. The third one is further optimizing credit card costs. We are further optimizing credit card costs through tighter installment management, bank renegotiations, and a shift toward alternative collection methods. The fourth one is decreasing our financing costs via optimizing our stock levels and improving payments terms.
By applying smarter demand planning and lean inventory strategies, we are enhancing stock efficiency, reducing stock levels, and accelerating turnover. We are improving financial costs and liquidity by increasing consumer loan usage, supplier supports with loan costs, enforcing stricter cash management, extending our supplier payment terms, and optimizing purchasing. In summary, along with the continued tight costs and high-interest environment and softer demand, we began executing our planned more radical impact-driven actions in Q3 to position Teknosa for greater resilience and long-term stability. In the following pages, I will walk you through the main KPIs on our profit and loss statement and highlight the strategic initiatives we have implemented. Demand began to normalize, driven by seasonal trends and the back-to-back school period in the third quarter. However, we deliberately refrained from our engagement in an aggressive price war in order to protect our profitability.
As a result, our revenue is higher than the first two quarters in line with seasonality but lower compared to the same period last year, recording a 6.5% decline year-over-year in Q3 affected by the store closings. As like-for-like revenues stayed flat on a Q3 basis, the difference came from the closed stores. Q3 revenues nearly reached TRY 20 billion, and total revenues for the first nine months amounted to TRY 57.7 billion. Going forward, we are actively implementing strategic actions to enhance our retail mix, drive growth in complementary products and services, and expand our presence across third-party marketplaces. As I mentioned, while the market environment remained highly competitive, our gross margin improved.
Thanks to disciplined pricing strategies, effective inventory management, and the continuous focus on high-margin categories, we achieved better margins across all categories and recorded strong gains in stock turnover speed, which also contributed to our margin improvements under IS29. Overall, we achieved a 1.1 percentage points improvement year-over-year in Q3 2025, reaching 13.9%. With this achievement, our first nine-month margin is 13.7%, 1.6 percentage points higher than the previous year. In the second quarter, we have already started to implement comprehensive measures to control our costs, reviewing our major operational spendings. In this quarter, we further intensified these efforts. We began by optimizing our store network to remove inefficiencies and then identified savings opportunities across personnel, rent, marketing, logistic, and general administrative costs. Some of the key actions we implemented included optimizing our workforce and personnel costs, which continued in the third quarter.
In addition to conducting fact-based aggressive negotiations with landlords, we worked closely with our suppliers on investment area revenues to lower rent costs and continued improving our store setup. We also achieved savings in marketing, communication, and delivery expenses by optimizing our supplier mix and renegotiating terms with logistic partners. Our warehouse operations benefited from ongoing process improvements as well. Furthermore, we created additional cost efficiencies in areas such as travel and maintenance. If you refer to the right side of the slide, you can see the impact of these disciplined actions. Our OPEX margin was realized at its lowest level this year. We expect to capture further benefits from these ongoing initiatives.
When we look at the nine-month figures, it is important to note that OPEX items are affected by higher wages and related social security costs compared to last year, as well as certain one-off items this year, mainly due to the store closures and workforce optimization. As a result, our OPEX margin was slightly higher than the previous year. However, we achieved meaningful cost savings, particularly in rent, marketing, and logistics, which helped offset part of this impact. Moving on to EBITDA, we saw a remarkable performance in the third quarter. This was driven by both an improvement in gross margin and notable savings in operational expenses. It clearly reflects our continued focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency. Despite overall cost pressures, our disciplined execution led to a significant improvement in profitability.
EBITDA margin increased from 4.3% to 6.3% in the third quarter, the highest level we have achieved this year. For the first nine months, we also saw a strong improvement, up to 1.6 percentage points year-over-year. Below EBITDA, credit card commission costs continue to be the main driver of financial expenses, with high interest rates impacting us. As you may recall from our previous calls, credit card commission rates have been kept stable by the central bank since November 2023. In the current difficult interest rate environment, to further decrease credit card costs, we are optimizing our collection mix. Tightening installment discipline across all channels. Commercial card installments have been reduced from four to two months to lower our financing costs, while installment management is being applied more strictly. At the same time, we are continuously renegotiating commission terms with the banks in line with falling interest rates.
The share of non-credit card payments has grown significantly, supported by beneficial consumer loan rates arranged with banks and cost participation from suppliers, surpassing 25%. Collectively, these initiatives are helping us to reduce financing costs and improve cash flow efficiency. As I shared in our previous earning calls, strengthening financial discipline and liquidity management remain core priorities in this high-interest environment. Stock turnover optimization continues while we sustain recently improved payment terms and further optimize payment days to reduce interest expenses. In the third quarter, we continued to execute proactive actions to optimize inventory management, tighten procurement strategies, and actively negotiate payment terms, carefully balancing inventory turnover days and cash cycles at both category and supplier levels. Daily cash management remained under strict control, supported by disciplined procurement planning and execution.
These efforts delivered tangible results, with net working capital improving by approximately TRY 1 billion quarter over quarter and reaching the best level for the year. Despite the positive impact of the new bond issuance, which allowed us to secure financing at below market borrowing costs, the net financial expenses-to-revenue ratio, including credit card commissions, increased from 5.68% to 6.3% due to higher overall borrowing. For the first nine months, the ratio improved from 6% to 5.8%. While financial expenses remain under pressure from high interest and broader macroeconomic headwinds, our mitigation measures have proven effective in managing costs and maintaining liquidity. Let’s look at our third quarter net income bridge compared to the same period last year. We achieved a positive contribution of TRY 342 million from EBITDA, driven by our margin expansion initiatives and disciplined management of operating expenses, as discussed earlier.
Below EBITDA, TRY 75 million decrease in other operational expenses, TRY 37 million increase in net financing expenses, including interest and credit card costs, and TRY 118 million increase in deferred income. These were partially offset by TRY 237 million negative impact from lower monetary gain as a result of lower inflation in Q3 compared to last year. Overall, our net loss is TRY 231 million, which is TRY 261 million better than Q3 2024 and best quarter result in 2025. Looking ahead, as interest rates begin to normalize, we expect this loss position to gradually reverse, supporting a recovery in our net income level. Despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges, we have remained committed to our investment strategy to transform Teknosa into a digital-first company. In the first nine months of the year, we recorded TRY 600 million in total CAPEX, maintaining our CAPEX-to-sales ratio above 1%.
Our commitment to strategic high-impact investment remains unchanged. In line with our digital-first objectives, we are accelerating AI-driven initiatives to further enhance operational performance. The main initiatives can be summarized as follows. Bilge is our AI-based sector-first sales tool. Following the SAP transformation, Bilge ensures reliable data and delivers significant performance improvements. New features are being introduced to drive sales of higher margin and complementary products, particularly within wave three, resulting in strong financial performance uplift. AI-based localized assortment management project optimizes the product range in stores using AI, reflecting local customer and store dynamics to ensure consistently strong stock turnover performance. AI-powered stock accelerator project. Identifies slow-moving stock and recommends turnover-accelerating actions by analyzing sales, stock, and price elasticity data. As these projects have been prioritized for measurable impact, targeting both sales growth and operational efficiency with a strong focus on enhancing networking capital performance.
These initiatives will not only improve operational agility but also reinforce our commitment to sustainable data-driven efficiency gains across the business. Before concluding my presentation and opening the floor for questions, I’d like to summarize the key points we discussed and highlight our main focus areas for the remaining of this year. Briefly, Teknosa is successfully navigating the headwinds of high inflation and interest rates by maintaining a strong focus on well-defined strategies. For the rest of the year, our priorities remain driving revenue and margin growth by expanding sales of complementary products and services, focusing on high-margin categories, growing the online channel, and optimizing the retail mix. Controlling OPEX through targeted measures aligned with the current economic environment. Maintaining effective inventory management and disciplined cash flow practices while mitigating financing costs and expanding attractive non-credit card payment options to support customer demand.
Investing in AI-driven digital transformation initiatives and IT infrastructure to enhance operational efficiency and performance while continuing the expansion of big store formats. Despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges, we remain fully committed to our long-term growth ambitions and strategic CAPEX investment. Our vision is to become a digital-first company with sustainability initiatives that create lasting value for all our shareholders. This is the end of my presentation. Thank you for listening and participating in our call. Now, if it’s okay for you, we may proceed with your questions. Before we begin taking your questions, I would like to kindly remind you that you can submit them via the Q&A box or the chat box on your panels. When making your statements, please first introduce yourself. Your questions will be addressed one by one. I’m going to start with the first question from Erkan Edinecik.
There are news suggesting that inflation accounting will not be implemented next year. What’s your expectation? Would this have a positive impact on your financials? Merhaba, Erkan Bey. These news suggesting that inflation accounting will not be implemented next year. However, up until now, there is no information regarding this issue. As you know, the big four companies, the audit companies, are just following closely about this issue because it will change all the reporting standards that we are just implementing currently. Up until now, there is no certain news that we are just going to make a change as of 2026. Thank you, Ümit Bey. The second question, Erkan Bey’s second question is, recently there have been reports that Sabancı Holding may exit operations outside its core sectors. The names Teknosa and Kaufsta have been mentioned in this context.
It’s naturally difficult to give direct answers to this question, but do you think that these companies are on the radar during the screening process of the investors looking to enter the Turkish market? We haven’t received any information on this matter from our main shareholder. In the event of any potential sale, our main shareholder would announce a public disclosure regarding the matter. Mustafa Kemal Bey, as Teknosa and management, our responsibility is to navigate and perform the best financials possible under these heavy winds and to continue value creation for all stakeholders. Thank you, Ümit Bey. The next question is from Mustafa Bey from Marbaş. Congratulations on the valuable results. Do you think that the market is optimistic about the fourth quarter? The gap between the credit card reference rate and the policy rate has narrowed considerably.
Therefore, is it any closer to seeing a policy rate close to or below the reference rate? Do you see an improvement in fund demand for new generation and newer models, regardless of the brand? I would be very grateful if you could elaborate on this. Congratulations again on your communication and the results. This is a very long question to answer, actually. Let’s start by one by one. First of all, thank you for your applause, actually. Thank you. Fourth quarter, as you know, the decision effect, the high season for all the retailers. When we just look at the previous years, we can see that the growth pace has just slowed down. We know that the pace has just slowed, but still, the fourth quarter will be the strongest period of the year. We are seeing that new product lines from major brands are supporting demand.
Additionally, we have implemented our necessary initiatives to capture both revenue and margin opportunities. We are closely monitoring market trends and will continue to implement targeted campaigns to drive both sales and overall financial performance throughout the quarter. That said, the cost environment remains challenging due to intense competition and inflationary pressures, which have at times exceeded market expectations. The other part about the reference rates and the policy rates. In November 2023, when the policy rate was 35%, the Ministry of Finance just stopped increasing the maximum commission rates that can be applied by banks to the customers. Currently, as you know, the policy rate is 39.5%. Still, there is no legislation or any news for the change of maximum commission. We believe that at the time when the time comes, they are just going to start decreasing also the maximum commission rates.
Do you see any improvement in fund demand for new generation and new models regards to brand? Actually, we just expect this sort of improvements because, as you know, there is a high demand for the telephone site in consumers’ electronic market. When you see that 5G is just going to be applied after April. It’s just going to affect the current technology. We are just going to see that there will be some increase in demand for this, let’s say, latest technology-produced products. I don’t know whether it’s a good answer for all your questions, Mustafa Kemal Bey. The next question is about the EBITDA. It’s from Alperish. Thank you for the presentation. How many basis points in EBITDA margin would you say have been lost due to one-time store closures this year? I will also show the EBITDA slide. Let me just see the question again.
The one-offs, exactly. The impact of one-offs for the store closures and network of workforce optimization is not big in the EBITDA. The amount is not so high, but the total cost is just booked under the EBITDA level. In this sense, the effect is not so high. We do not lose a lot, let’s say. We are losing, of course. As you see in the presentation, there is TRY 26 million cost year to date. The remaining costs are just below the EBITDA, and it’s just affecting, of course, our net income level. Currently, there are no new questions. Let’s wait for a couple of minutes and see if there are more questions. Did you see any more questions? Yeah. Ümit Bey, we’ll now hand it over to you again for your closing remarks. Thank you all for joining our webcast. Oh, there is a question. Yes.
While I’m closing, there’s a question. Let’s answer this one also. Let me read it first. From Erkan Bey again, considering the operational performance, EBITDA improvement was very strong year over year. When are we seeing the same improvement in the bottom line? When the interest is just becoming normal. As you remember, in 2023 and 2022 and 2023, the interest rate, especially for our maximum commission rate, was very compelling to low. We were just giving, let’s say, 12 installments, and the cost was around 2.3%. Right now, it’s around 5%. The main part for our bottom line is the interest rate. Up until now, as I just tried to explain to you, we are doing lots of things and taking lots of initiatives in the gross margin and OPEX side. The interest rate is not something that we can control.
It does not necessarily mean that we are just waiting for the interest rate to decrease. We are just taking all the mitigation actions to eliminate this effect. As I say, we are just trying to use the other collection method rather than the credit cards. The cash collection and also the consumer loans are very important for us. Combining these two, our percentage in the collection in-house share increased a lot, and now it is more than 21%. We. Target to improve this ratio because we are also just sharing some part of this financial expense with our customers and also with our merchants, our suppliers. So it’s very usual for us to just continue this way.
Once the interest rates become normalized, with these efficiencies in the OPEX and also in the improvement in the margin, we will be in a much better position, as I said in my previous calls. Is that answer for you, Erkan Bey? If you have some additional questions. Okay. If there are no more questions, thank you again for joining our webcast. Hope to see you in the next quarter’s learning. Thank you. Thank you.
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