Dear analysts and investors, welcome to our third quarter results for 2022. I'm Serkan Savaş, reporting and investor relations director. I hope you all have downloaded our presentation on our website. We know that this is a very busy season. Today is the deadline for the third quarter results. I will actually quickly summarize our presentation. Let me invite you to have a look at our third quarter results. We will first look at our highlights for the third quarter. Now we are at page four. Page four, at the headlines page. Actually, our top line growth accelerated in the third quarter on the back of the high inflation and positive traffic momentum. Our quarter net sales increased by 135% year-on-year to TRY 41 billion in the third quarter of this year. With the contribution of the higher inflation, the basket size grew by 102% year-on-year. Meanwhile, the customer traffic increased by 8% year-on-year. Here, I would like to highlight that our market share in FMCG market increased by 1.7% in the first nine months period. We are continuously increasing our market share since beginning of the year in the nine months period is likely to continue going forwards. The share of the private label products declined slightly to 63% in the third quarter from 64% of the last previous quarter. In terms of EBITDA increased by 90% year-on-year in the third quarter, while our EBITDA margin was around 7%. There is slight weaknesses in our profitability in this quarter, but what I want to highlight here is that our profitability already improved back to our expected level in October and November so far, and after a temporary weaknesses in Q3. We will discuss and elaborate the details in the following slides about our gross margin developments and also OpEx developments. Net income was TRY 1.8 billion, which represents 101% year-on-year growth with corresponding 4.3% margin. Capital expenditures goes in line with our guidance. It's 3.2% of our revenues in Q3 as well as nine months period, 2022. We have added 109 new stores across all operations in Q3. That brings us 209 stores in our new stores across all operations in Q3, and that brings us around 11,274 consolidated stores by year end. Moving on to operational performance. Next slide, page six. Starting with the like-for-like sales slide. Like-for-like sales increased by 118% compared to previous year. Customer traffic increased by 8% in the quarter. Trading down to discounters had a positive impact on our customer traffic in Q3. I'm glad to mention that we are seeing more new faces in our stores and from all income level segments. Actually market surveys also say that we are now all market, all income levels are also shopping from BİM. Lower traffic growth from previous quarters is due to ongoing normalization of the days after COVID. We have around 80% traffic growth in this quarter. It's also in line in October. This growth is also in line with the Q3. Our internal inflation reached 119% in third quarter, while like-for-like basket size increased by 102% in Q3. Basket size still going up together with the rising inflation. On the store expansion side, we have opened 188 new BİM stores and 11 FİLE stores in Turkey. Number of foreign operations stores had increased slightly with six new stores in Morocco. As the recovery in Egyptian operation is promising, we have opened four new stores in this country in Q3. We will continue to open new stores in Egypt. In 9 months period, we have opened 785 stores consolidated basis and reached 11,274 stores. At the end of the year likely to reach around 1,000 new stores at the end of the year in consolidated basis. Now we are at the capital expenditure page eight. CapEx was TRY 1.3 billion in the quarter corresponding to 3.2% of net sales. If I elaborate about the warehouse CapEx progression in this year, what we have done so far. Construction works of two new warehouses in Elazığ and Samsun still continues. After opening those two warehouses, we would reach six warehouses in Turkey. Additionally, our new biscuit and chocolate factory in Eskişehir is also under construction and likely to be finalized in the middle of next year. Another investment is the second rice packaging plant of our packaging company is almost finalized in Mersin, and to be all opened soon. In brief, our investment continues to be maintaining our 3.2% CapEx sales expectations for the full year. Now, moving on to our financial performance, page 10. Net sales and gross profits. On quarterly basis, sales increased by 135% in Q3 and reached TRY 41 billion. Rising inflation and trading down supported top line growth, and our internal inflation has continued its upward trends in the third quarter of 2022. For now, we do not revise our sales growth guidance for now, and we expect the top line growth for 12-month periods would likely stand at upper end of our target range. You know that we already set our revision in the last revision, in the last quarter 110%. Now, today's trading shows that we likely to be stand around 110% at the end of the year. Of course, we will be judging if there's any significant upside risk, we will be judging the new revision in the coming months. We are also happy for the back-to-school season trading in Q3. I mentioned before in the previous slide, we have gained around 1.7% market share in FMCG markets with good sales. On gross margin side, gross margin declined to 17.7% in the third quarter. If I elaborate the reasons, the first, the sales mix is more in favor of the basic products, which have naturally lower margins. This is also we already mentioned in the previous quarter as well. People are more tending to basic products, basic quantities, and they naturally have very low margins. The second, regarding inflation, you are strictly following the inflation in Turkey. The purchasing price index is much higher than the consumer price index. So the cost of the products, the cost of the suppliers goes up much faster. Sometimes we prefer to wait for a while to pass these costs onto shelf price and put a time lag. This sometimes leads to margin dilution. After Q3, across Q3, we took some actions, some proper actions on gross margin, and our gross margin already reached back to our expected level in October and November so far. Third reason, I have to, I want to mention that, we are paying fewer advanced payments after Q1, is also evidenced by stabilized net working capital. In the following slides, you will clearly see that. Please also note that, yes, this quarter is a little bit weak in terms of growth margin side, but note that this kind of, in this kind of high inflation environment, it is sometimes normal to face some volatility in growth margin progression. Recovery is immediate after weaknesses. You also experienced in the last 20 years, we have full of capability to take immediate actions and for immediate recovery, which we are doing right now in October and November. This is why we do not revise our EBITDA margin guidance, and we expect the full year EBITDA margin likely to stand at around the lower end of our target range at the end of the year. Now, page 11 is about the breakdown of our revenues in terms of both geography and category. Foreign operations and FİLE together correspond around 10% of total revenue. Only foreign operations itself has around 5.9% share in total. It's almost stable compared to same quarter last year. Foreign operations share is stable last year. But it's a little bit coming down during the last few quarters due to dilution impact of having higher growth in Turkey. The share of private products declined to 63% in Q3 versus 65% same quarter last year. We had to actually increase the share of some brand products in some big product categories, for example, sugar. So there's some kind of supply shortage in sugar and staple products. Sometimes we prefer to list the brand items in basic commodities. This is one of the reason in this quarter a decline in the profit. Our profit still is, we are doing our best in terms of private label. Meanwhile, 0.6% third quarter versus 6.3%. Next slide. The change in operating expenses as a percentage of operating compared to last year and additional 10% in July. This is our big wage hikes. In total, 37%. Year-on-year, there's not any big pressure but for sure it's putting more pressure on, compared to Q2 and previous quarters. On the other hand, due to rapid increase in electricity and energy prices, utility expenses as a percentage of sales rose in this quarter. Likewise, vehicle fuel and maintenance expenses also rose in the quarter. Of course, these figures include IFRS 16 impact. Therefore, rent expenses are excluded in these charts. If you wonder about the rent cost, it's almost historically low levels. Rent to sales ratio declined to 1.4% in Q3. It used to be 2.1% the same quarter last year. As you see, operating leverage is still working, but of course it is less than the previous quarters due to the minimum wage hike and higher energy costs. For the last quarter, for the Q4, we expect operating leverage would work better and contribute positively to profitability since we don't expect any big additional OpEx pressures. We are taking some actions in terms of some cost levels in personnel costs. For example, in personal costs, our number of employees increased by 18% in this quarter. This is almost double of our store network growth. Now we are adjusting it. We are adjusting our number of employees. We like to actually save something from adjusting our employees going forward. In the fourth quarter, we also expect operating leverage would work harder in the last quarter. EBITDA and EBIT. Now let's look at EBITDA quarterly, EBITDA and EBIT slides. Our Q3 EBITDA was TRY 2.9 billion, and margin is 7%, which was below our EBITDA margin guidance. First reason is, of course, lower gross margin in Q3, which I mentioned reasons in the previous slides. Secondly, the higher OpEx cost due to minimum wage hike and energy costs. As I already mentioned, we expect a positive progression on both two reasons in Q4. In nine months periods, EBITDA margin stood at 9.7%, which is lower than our guidance. We believe that we will be able to reach the lower end of our EBITDA margin guidance end of the year, for full year. Quarterly EBIT TRY 2.2 billion, and the margin is 5.4%. Moving on to net income. Our net income more than doubled to TRY 1.8 billion in Q3 versus TRY 884 million in the third quarter of the last year. There is not any significant one-off in our expense in this quarter. Income from FX-protected deposit is TRY 67 million in Q3. In the next slide, we provide quarterly cash flow bridge. As you see, there is improvement in our cash generation. Net working capital is almost stable in the last two quarters after a decline in Q1. Please note that cash flow in the chart, cash flow from other investment activities is not a real cash outflow. It's the sukuk or bond-like securities deposit to banks as cash. To sum up, actually, net cash position ex IFRS 16, before IFRS 16 is around TRY 3.2 billion in this quarter. It was TRY 2.3 billion in the last quarter. We are generating more cash, and we are improving our cash position. We would like to highlight decline in lease payments as percentage of revenues, which declined to 1.54% from 2.2% in the same period of last year. If you look at the foreign operations, we opened six new stores in the last quarter in Morocco, and our total number of stores reached 610 in this country. Now we are working to accelerate growth in this country, accelerate store openings. Also to do this, we have to actually improve our logistics structure there. Now the fourth warehouse is under construction in Marrakech, in Morocco, and to be opened in early 2023. The fifth warehouse, lease agreement already signed and to be opened the end of the next year. We plan to improve our logistics infrastructure further, and then accelerate the store openings in the country. In Egypt, we continue our operations with 306 stores, and four of them are newly added in this quarter. Even though Egyptian operation is not profitable yet, we are now more hopeful to reach breakeven in a few years' time. Dear analyst, investor, this is end of my presentation. Before Q&A, I would like to re-state that, yes, the profit is a bit weaker in this quarter. In October, I have also stated that October and November trading shows that there will be recovery in both gross margin operating leverage in Q4. I would like to thank you for your attention today and would like to open the floor Q&A. If you want to ask a question, you first raise your hands and we will open the floor for you. First question is from Görkem Göker. Please, the floor is yours. Serkan Bey, my question is regarding your guidance. Even if you achieve the low end year-end target of your guidance, you should still post at least 8.6% EBITDA margin in the last quarter, which is roughly 1.6% quarter-over-quarter improvement. You already mentioned some of your measures, but can you still provide us whether this will come mainly from gross margin improvement or your measures on the OpEx front? Also about your internal inflation for third quarter and also for your expectation for the last quarter. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Görkem Bey. Of course, we are waiting for the improvement in both sides, both gross margin and, you know, the October is almost done, and November is also 10 days also passed. We are seeing that we are improving our gross margin to our expected level. What's our expected level? Maybe we already mentioned before, it's 18.5. Now approaching to 18.5%, something like that, in our gross margin, hopefully. Of course, the December is not clear yet, we will look that. In gross margin side, we have actually improved in gross margin side. We improved our right now. At the operating expenses, of course, we do not have any one-off hikes in fourth quarter, any employee costs or something like that. For example, in third quarter, you know, actually there's a minimum wage hike, and we already actually hiked the wages more than the minimum wage. In our case, it's almost a 38% minimum wage hike fully included in the third quarter. In the last quarter, we don't expect any hike. We don't have any hike. Inflation is going up. Inflation will actually accelerate the sales, and we don't expect any further pressure from employee costs and pressure from the OpEx side. As I said, actually today, if you look our reports, our number of employees increased by 18%. This is double of our store growth. Our store growth is 9, around 10, and we have 18% employee growth. We are now also adjusting, actually. We are opening new stores, and we are moving our employees, and we are changing our criteria, performance criteria of employees side, store employee side. It's also making sense and it's also working right now. I can say that in both terms, we are improving our staff in October and November. Internal inflation, the internal inflation is reached 118%, year-on-year, in Q3. Thank you. Just to follow up the question about this last thing you mentioned about your employee number of employees. Is there a particular development for this quarter? Because the number of store openings do not deviate much from previous years or previous quarters. Is there any new development on that front or just coincidence? No, there's no new development. Actually, Görkem Bey, we have some criteria, internal criteria. For example, we have some kind of thresholds about the number of employees per store. For example, if the sales is something, you can recruit four employees. If their sales actually exceeds to some levels, maybe some levels, you can recruit five. As the inflation hikes, actually, this gives the regional directors more room to actually recruit more employees. This sales increase is more coming from the inflation. Actually, now we are revising. Of course, if they have room to actually recruit more employees, and with the boost sales, with the boost traffic, of course, they prefer to recruit more employees. Now we are changing our performance criteria together in line with the inflation. They will be much more ready for the new year about number of employees. There is not any specific issue for this quarter in terms of number of employees. Thank you very much. You're welcome. The next question is from Ali Kerem Akkoyunlu. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, Serkan Bey. My question is more on 2023. Where do you think your margins would be, I don't know, whether we should say, you know, on a sustainable basis, what should we assume going on for next year? Thank you, Ali Kerem Akkoyunlu. Actually, in the next year, the budget we haven't started yet. Actually, you know, this very high inflation environment so Yes. Next year, our target guidance will be actually disclosed at our fourth quarter conference call. From now on, I cannot specify anything about the next year guidance. Actually, there's no reason to actually decrease our expansion plan and also decrease our gross margin progression. There's no reason for now. I cannot give any specific details for the next year. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Next question is from Cemal Demirtaş from Ata Yatırım. Cemal, please go ahead. Thank you for the presentation, Serkan Bey. My first question is about marketing expenses. You know, when we look at your marketing expenses, we see that your electricity, water, and communication expenses almost doubled quarter-over-quarter, just from TRY 364 million to TRY 603 million. It's a very significant number, although it looks like a small item, but there's a big jump on that. So does that continue in the following, you know, quarter or that was one jump for the time being? The other question is about the like-for-like sales growth. When we look at the traffic, the pace of traffic growth is lower in third quarter compared to second quarter. How do you see the picture on that front? Do you see any weakness in consumer visits or traffic? How do you see the traffic in October and November? Already, inflation is high, but could we assume that this traffic trend will continue or on the positive or negative side? Thank you. Thank you, Cemal Demirtaş. Actually, first in marketing expenses, this is electricity, water, and communication expense is mostly 90% includes electricity cost. As I mentioned that electricity costs, energy costs, unit cost price increased significantly in this quarter. This is the main reason of the hike. Actually, the amount, of course, not very low. Do you mean this line? It's TRY 1.3 billion, right? It's, you know, in the third quarter, it's my number is TRY 603 million. It's around TRY 300 million more expenses I see quarter-over-quarter. Yeah. You are right. Actually, there's a drastic hike in the last quarter, in the third quarter. This is also affecting our actually energy cost, electricity cost in this, mostly in store level. This is mostly coming from energy hikes. This is the general actually problem for all the sectors. Actually I can say that since we are a hard discounter, we have very low exposure on refrigeration in our stores. Refrigeration costs is lower than the other actually formats, other supermarkets and Hypermarket formats. But it's likely to continue going forwards. These energy costs, we will suffer more. Unfortunately today the energy, electricity costs became the second component after employee costs. You know that we used to have first employee costs, second rent costs, but rent cost is now lower than the energy costs. This is the general problem of all the country, all the world. Everybody is actually challenging in this energy cost. It's likely to continue. Of course, it depends on whether there will be a new hike in electricity prices for commercials. This is the main issue. We will stick the following. We can manage it. We can manage it because as I said, we have a low refrigeration exposure in our stores. Your second question is about like-for-like traffic growth. Yes, it is 8% in the last, actually in the last quarter, it is 14%. Now I want to show our like-for-like page. Yes, this is 8% and it used to be 14%, but this is more coming from the base. As you know, last year, the second quarter was the COVID quarter, so there were lockdowns and people actually buy items. But now, actually, we are away from the COVID days. Third quarter, there's very limited COVID base in this quarter. Now this 8% is more normalization in traffic growth. In October as well, it's almost stable around 7-8% traffic growth we have. But this is more normalization and actually throwing out the base effects of the COVID. Serkan Savaş Bey, as a follow-up, if you are sustaining the traffic and the inflation rate is still high, it continues to be high, could we expect some upside risk to your guidance, top line growth guidance, 110%, given the, you know, the information you have for October and November? Or you can just say that it's fair to just assume, even if we didn't see December numbers. Thank you. Actually, thank you. You know, actually, for now, we don't revise, but likely to be at the upper end of our target range. Yes, why not to evaluate this in coming month, maybe December. Yes, the inflation is going up. Maybe the sales will boost going forward, might boost our expectation. Just for few percentage points, one, two percentage points, we don't prefer to revise our top line growth. In the coming months, in November is also going well. Also we will evaluate the first 15 days of maybe December, then we may judge it. So far, we now keep our top line growth as is. Why not? Yes, we are, why not in the coming months. Thank you very much. Thank you, Cemal Demirtaş. Next question is from Hanzade Kılıçkıran from J.P. Morgan. Serkan Bey. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a follow-up on the working capital dynamics. Do you have any strategy to improve the inflows through extending the payable days or cutting the inventory? Because I mean, particularly for next year, because inflation is likely to be lower than 2022. Do you see any strategy change here that could let you to earn more cash? Actually, thank you Hanzade. Actually, we don't prefer to stand on full of cash because in this environment it is better to invest in our operations. As you know, in the first quarter, we invested in our operations more. We heavily paid in advance, and we heavily actually piled up stocks in our case. Today, our strategy is yes we are still pursuing this strategy but where it is necessary. For example, it's not our job to finance our suppliers. If they, our suppliers, critical suppliers, are able to find the products from abroad, and they need finance to actually secure our product availability, yes, why not? We prefer to pay in advance to them. We are actually now pursuing very actually a little bit modest strategy. We don't want to rush this environment. We are also trying to adjust our inventory days. Maybe you actually see our inventory days a little bit decline, but it's not enough yet. Our job is, we already have cash, and we have a dividend payment in December. It's sufficient for the dividend payment. We actually don't prefer to actually pile lots of cash. After then, what we will do? There's nothing to invest in Turkey. First we prefer to invest in our operation. That strategy could pay off only if you extend your gross margin in return of lower inflows. Is it going to? Because otherwise it's better to keep cash if you are not- Yeah. going to improve your gross margin. Of course. Do you think that next year this could be a driver on the gross margin? I mean, keeping the strategy, I mean, reduced. Because this year we didn't see much impact from lower working capital inflows on the gross margin because of this change in the SKU because of the customer trade down. Do you think that next year this could be a kind of margin driver? Yes, could be a margin driver, but inflation is very high. Will it be visible? Yes, sometimes will be visible. Maybe in some product category will be visible. But inflation is very, very high. Maybe it's became sometimes invisible, kind of. I make sure that in terms of operational sites, we always prefer to use our cash if it extends our gross margin. In the previous quarters, maybe in the first quarter and second quarter, there is some kind of positive impact, but it is not visible because of the high inflation. This is one of the reason in this quarter our gross margin is a little bit declined, because we a little bit slightly cuts our advanced payments, unnecessary payments. Make sure that we are still using our cash in some actual cases, case by case. We are actually evaluating this, not all cases. Our job is not supporting the suppliers. Our job is not financing the suppliers. If they give a very good rate, good fee, and secure our product availability for a long time, yes, why not? We prefer this. Right. This is the main strategy. There's no change in the strategy. Okay, thank you very much, Serkan Bey. You're welcome. Next question is from Ilya Ogorodnikov from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Ilya, the floor is yours. Good day, Serkan Bey. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a quick question about the regulatory backdrop and another investigation by the authorities over retailer and producer pricing. How do you estimate the risk of further fines for the company, and can you also update us on the court appeal regarding the fine that BİM has already paid earlier this year? Thank you. Actually, thank you, Ilya. Actually, I think you mean that second investigation of the Competition Board? Yes. There is no risk. I can definitely say that there's no risk to our knowledge because the second investigation is related to suppliers, not directly to retailers. Yes, the retailers are technically included in this investigation because it's a part of the first investigation. As you know, we already fined for the same reasons, and we actually fight a case against this, and this is still going on. We believe that it will take some time. For the second investigation, we don't see any risk. Okay. In a second, fine, something like that. Okay. Okay, that's very clear. Thank you very much, Serkan. Welcome. Actually, if you have questions, please raise your hand. I think there is no further questions. Sorry, just one question from Emin Bey. Just a minute, please. Emin Bey, please go ahead. The floor is yours. My question is about the slowdown in the store opening growth, is now more notable I see. The current growth is 9% year-on-year. Will below 10% growth be permanent or is this temporary? Thank you. There is no slowdown, actually. It's all in line with our expectation, in line with our budget. Yes, we didn't close any openings in our guidance. At the end of the year, we're likely to around 1000 store openings, or something like that. Around store openings, which is also up, in line with our expectations, around 9%-10%, sometimes change. Is the base growth? Of course, it is coming down from 10% to 9%, something like that. Around 1000 store openings and 1000 store openings is also our expectation. There's no slowdown. Another question. I will ask about the cash conversion cycle. The cash conversion cycle's ratio of net sales dropped to around 2%. Can we expect it to rise back to its old average of around 3% or 4% for next year? Actually, it's a very dynamic environment, very high inflation. Of course, actually we prefer to create cash, more cash and invest in our operations. At today's level we are also generating more cash. Today we have TRY 3.2 billion cash at the end of the third quarter. We are happy with that. Do we need more, for what? Of course, we prefer to invest in our operations, in our stocks, in our product assortment. As I said, we are sometimes challenging actually in finding some kind of products. For example, sugar. Sugar is very problematic in a few months. We are actually challenging to find private label sugar products. Whenever we find the sugar, the product SKU, we pay in advance. Actually, from now on, I cannot actually say anything for the next year. Very dynamic organization. Next year budget is also very difficult right now in this environment. What's the inflation? What's the food inflation? There is lots of uncertainties right now. Actually, in general sense, we don't prefer any debts. Cash positive business will continue going forward. We do our best in terms of using our cash for our gross margin expansion going forward. Maybe you heard actually something about our management change. Actually, as of first of January, we have management change. Our procurement head will be joining our Board Advisors, and we have a new procurement head. We will actually expect better also with the new management. Of course, in the next year, we don't pose a risk about the cash conversion. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I think there's no question. I would like to wrap up our session, our meeting. Thanks for joining meeting. As I said that Q4 is going better and in terms of gross margin and OpEx management side. You know, you are following the BİM. We have a capability to the fast recovery in the last in high inflation environment, we sometimes face these kind of weaknesses, but immediate recovery is always we achieve. Thanks for joining us and hopefully hope to see you in the next conference call. Thank you.