Casino, Guichard-Perrachon S.A.

Welcome to the third quarter 2021 of Casino Group Conference Call. I now hand over to Mr. David Goubeck, Chief Financial Officer of Casino Group. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for attending our quarterly results conference call. For most of the past 18 months, until last July, the pandemic was a key factor in our environment. We had to adapt our operations And we did so quickly and effectively by leveraging our key strengths, convenience, urban stores, and our exclusive assets and partnerships in food e-commerce. We also took advantage of our technological capability to reduce our costs substantially in our stores and back offices, leading to a high level of profitability in all our banners, the bottom hypermarkets, and indeed at a positive level in hypermarkets. As a result, we have emerged from this situation in better shape, with more profitable food retail operations, an improved financial situation, and attractive growth opportunities in our new B2B businesses. As stated at the end of H1, our key goal now is to get back to growth in our core business, building on the strengths of our best format. Since this summer, our environment has started to shift away from the pandemic constraints with a successful rollout of vaccines. Restaurants, cafes, and entertainment venues have fully reopened for customers equipped with a pass-in there, which led to some headwinds for food retail as a result. Strong demand for various goods and services, coupled with temporary restrictions in logistics hubs, have also led to a return of inflationary pressures. In this environment, our priorities in France have remained the same. First, a return to growth in our food retail business with proximity and e-commerce leading it. Second, maintaining our high level of profitability so that additional sales fully translate into additional ABBA and cash flows. And third, taking full advantage of growth opportunities in our new B2B businesses. As you will see from the numbers published tonight, we are on the right track on all these points. First, sales. At group level, live phone sales were up plus 1% in Q3, an improvement of 5 points compared to Q2. The improvement is even higher on total sales, up plus 4%, that is 10.6 points above the future. The improvement is clear both in France and Latin America. Let's start with France and with our food retail business. The main takeaways of this quarter are first, the sequential improvement in our overall sales trends. the excellent dynamic of our food e-commerce operations, and third, the continued rollout of our new stores. First, sales trends. Our life-for-life sales trends in France have improved sequentially by four points on average between Q2 and Q3, and again by plus 1.6 points at the beginning of Q4 and October, with convenience, and Franprix now in positive territory. The total sales trend has improved even more by close to 8 points with a recovery of fewer sales and the positive impact of our new stores. We now have 8,125 stores in our French banners thanks to more than 450 new convenience format openings since the beginning of the year. Looking at market share data, Our performance has also improved consistently, from minus 1.2 points in May to almost stable in October, and positive, plus 0.1 points, excluding higher markets. All of this happened during relatively tough market conditions, especially during the summer. First, the reopening of restaurants led to a transfer from eating at home to eating out, particularly for urban formats. Hotels and restaurants' consumption was up for 59% during the summer after insane data. Second, the Parisian market was still soft with a lack of tourism and some transitory reduction of the inner Paris population. And third, the Passe Sanitaire affected traffic in hypermarkets. These conditions led to negative sales in Q3 at minus 4.3% in life-to-life, albeit much better than Q2 at minus 8.4%. These conditions have evolved as evidenced from the last four weeks, with all our banners improving again from the Q3 numbers. The average was minus 1.4%, excluding high-income markets, with Monoprix improving by 2.5 points and our convenience format, including Fonprix, now in positive territory. With the continuation of this normalization, the positive impacts of our extension plan and our food e-commerce performing extremely well, we should expect this trend to continue and bring most of our vanity prompts, especially our best format, back into positive territory in the next few months. This leads me to my second point, the exceptional performance, once again, of our food e-commerce operations. Based on our unique mix of strong brands, and technology partnerships. Sales of home delivery in the greater Paris area, boosted by the Monoprix Plus offer, were up but 72%, 40 points above the market trend in France. These are profitable e-commerce operations based on the strength of our banners and our unique deals with Ocado and Amazon. Our partnership with Ocado has been strengthened adding Naturalia, our pure organic food banner, to Monoprix and Casino. We now offer more than 35,000 SKUs on Monoprix Plus, 26,000 SKUs on Casino Plus, and over 4,000 on Naturalia Marché Milieu. This is an offer that is truly unique in breadth and reliability. Of course, the success of these partnerships with the best players in their field is based on the attractiveness of our banners. We are pleased to announce our new groundbreaking partnership with the leading and innovative quick commerce player, Gorillaz. This deal will include three parts. First, Casino Group will provide national brand and Monoprix products to Gorillaz in France. Second, Gorillaz will prepare and deliver orders for Monoprix and Franprix customers in 10 minutes. And third, Casino Group will be associated to value creation through stake in Korea, in France, and at group level in Germany. This is a very exciting new step for us. Once more, it shows that having the best families in the best areas allows us to build unique, exclusive partnerships that will create long-term value. We now have such partnerships at all levels of their home delivery markets. With the Cadre, we have a unique edge in the next-day delivery. With Amazon, a unique edge for same-day delivery. And with Korea, the unique edge in 10-minute delivery. Of course, each of our banners has also developed its own specific offer. One of the banners which has some particularly impressive numbers is Grand Prix. Grand Prix has its own e-commerce offer with a dedicated app and fast delivery from its uniquely dense network of stores in the Paris area. Franprix recorded triple-digit growth in its e-commerce operation this quarter. Another noteworthy development was the rollout of a new offer from our convenience store anywhere in France through a dedicated website, giving access to over 1,250 stores, adding to our convenience store e-commerce capacity. This comes on top of our Uber Eats and Deliveroo partnerships. This leads me to my third point, our extension plan. We have 8,125 stores in our French bank. This is already the widest network of stores in France, and we have added more than 450 convenience format stores since the beginning of the year. We have hundreds more in our pipeline, and we've put in place an extremely efficient team of developers who work in close coordination with our franchise partners to secure the best locations for our proximity formats. Having this organization in place, with our mix of brands, Monop, Naturalia, CasinoShop, Dival, Star, CasinoHashtag, and others, gives us a clear edge in a market that is moving fast with new space appearing from former non-food stores. Our view is that market share will continue to move from hypermarket store proximity and expanding quickly will allow us to capture this shift. Our goal was to secure 750 new locations this year and based on the 454 new stores opened at the end of Q3 and our pipeline, we are on track to reach these targets. One business unit of particular interest is Franprix, our premium, innovative banner catering to urban needs. Franprix has added 20 more stores this quarter. On an annualized basis, this represents a growth of the store base of almost 10%. We now have 906 Franprix stores, and we see this expansion accelerating in the coming quarters, with a high attractiveness of this banner for franchisees and the strong development team put in place. Hockey's DNA is innovation and customer satisfaction in the Greater Paris area first, but also now in other booming urban centers. They have recently extended their partnership with Decathlon to complete their offer. Hockey's unique density in the Greater Paris area makes it particularly valuable for business partners and suppliers. With the impact of new stores and with the sales trend now back into positive life-for-life territory and the triple-digit growth in its e-commerce operations, We expect Fronty to perform well in the coming quarters. Another key business unit for our expansion program is the casino convenience. We have added 373 stores to our base since the beginning of the year, bringing this network over the 5,500 stores mark. This is the largest network of proximity stores in France. We have opportunities for further profitable expansion in franchise, both in urban centers with Cuisine Shop and CuisineHashtagToutBret, and in rural areas, notably with a design panel. Again, a very strong asset that we see growing further in the coming quarters. So overall, three levers for sales growth. First, trends improving regularly in stores life-for-life. Second, high growth food e-commerce, thanks to our exclusive networks and partnerships. And third, significant expansion of our storways in proximity. Moving now to my second highlight in France, the high profitability of our food retail banner. In the past few years, we have transformed our operations significantly, boosting the bottom line of all our banners into strong cost-saving initiatives. One key development which has allowed us to realize this cost saving while increasing our NPS, have been the successful digitalization of the business. Our autonomous stores and self-checkout solutions, powered by our smartphone apps, have led to a sharp reduction in our cost of operation. These apps allow for both efficient checkout by the customer and for targeted coupons and promotions with better ROI than standard promotions and better monetization to suppliers. All of this while reducing our carbon footprint with less reliance on paper catalog. We now have 640 stores equipped with autonomous solutions, up from 613 at the end of June, and the share of checkouts done automatically has reached 65% at Géant and 61% at casino supermarkets. As evidenced by our Q3 numbers, these cost-cutting initiatives are still bearing fruit. The BDM margin in our food retail balance stands at 8% in Q3, same level as last year. Most of the impact of sales lost during the quarter were compensated by our cost savings. Looking forward, we expect to maintain the high level of profitability reached in all our formats except hypermarket, and for hypermarkets to also remain profitable. This means that the return to sales growth should translate into higher absolute EBITDA. For the full year 2021, we confirm our objective of an edgy growth at the perimeter of the French food retail business. Finally, my third highlight in France relates to our high-growth businesses. We have three businesses operating in markets posed to benefit from secular megatrends. CityScouts in e-commerce, digital marketing and marketplaces, Greenyellow in energy transition, and relevancy in data and retail tech software as a service. First, CityScout, which has already published its key three numbers, and I will focus on the main takeaways. It was a relatively tough quarter for non-food e-commerce, in the particular context of the reopening. Tougher than what was expected. In this context, CityScout performed relatively well, with GMB growing by 8%, marketplace revenues up 8%, and digital marketing revenues up 31%. CityScout also registered a new increase in its base of loyal customers, with CityScout advertising subscribers reaching 2.4 million customers, an increase of 11% compared to last year. This was achieved thanks to CityScout's strong offer and some targeted price investments in direct sales during the quarter, which weighed on its margin in the short term. Also of most importance for its future growth potential Simscout's B2B offering is ramping up nicely. C-Logistic, which builds on Simscout's unparalleled logistic capabilities in France to offer fulfillment, kick-and-collect delivery solutions to various corporate customers, has already landed 15 contracts and has a strong pipeline. Octopia is also developing very nicely. Octopia offers a full-fledged, turnkey marketplace solution to any retailer, including software, vendors, products, and fulfillment solutions. Octopia has signed five new contracts in the quarter, including some major e-commerce players. We are fully convinced that Octopia has access to CityScout's unmatched pool of 14,000 vendors and 100 million FPUs. And the 10 years of experience coming from the operation of its own marketplace gives this new business a key edge in addressing a €600 billion fast-growing markets. The current pipeline of new customers, particularly of the merchant-as-a-service offer, which is a unique offer in today's market, is extremely convincing. As mentioned by Sinova and its Q3 communication, due to temporary market conditions and despite strong interest from potential investors, its fundraising initiatives have been postponed. This will not prevent CityScout from accelerating its new B2B businesses in the next month, given the investments already realized and funded by the cash generation of Cities County's highly profitable activity in marketplace and digital marketing. Within the next few quarters, we'll demonstrate the strength of Octopia and Sea Logistics' unique offers, which will also help suit your fundraising as soon as conditions permit, and in turn, accelerate its growth even more. A few words about Green Yellow, our business unit dedicated to decentralized energy transition. In the context of COP26, the urgency of acting to reduce human carbon footprint is more than ever obvious. Grignolo, by combining decentralized solar power and decentralized energy saving solutions in 16 countries, has again performed well with a strong series of new customers and projects. Among the key achievements of this third quarter A new project in Vietnam for 7 megawatts for the industrial textile group Canaplex, which is the 55th project signed by Piniello in the country. In South Africa, a new solar program of 2 megawatts for food retailer Truckbite completes the first installation that went into operation in September. Other significant programs can be mentioned in Brazil with the extension of the partnership with OIT Telecom for 3.5 megawatts, a new project for 6 solar plants generating 7.7 megawatts with a distributor of construction materials and the signature of an energy efficiency contract for 4.1 gigawatt hours with a leading media player. In all its relevant geographies, Grignolo is developing fast. Its new model, which entails keeping the project on its boots to be a wide base of cash flow generating assets, will include the raising of new funds. This project is very much active and given the interest we have seen for this business from various parties, we are quite confident that it will be completed either through public markets or through a private deal. Finally, a few words about Relevancy, our data monetization and retail tech software as a service business. Relevancy is ideally positioned to take advantage of the move to digitalize retail, having first tested its solutions on millions of customers through our own values. Among the recent developments, the most important is the launch of Infinity Advertising, our subsidiary in partnership with Atamashi. It will leverage the data from 17 million loyalty cards, combining our various values, and will work with suppliers to sell personalized promotion, e-commerce activation, retargeting and games around promotions. This is an extremely promising business. Other recent developments include a strong start for our Brazilian subsidiary, with 20 new contracts signed since last June, and the fast development of InNeed, which was acquired in the first quarter. InNeed, which specializes in digital marketing for brick-and-mortar networks, has already signed 15 clients. Before moving to Latin America, a few words on our financial position in France at the end of Q3. We have a comfortable liquidity position at the end of September with 2.1 billion euros of cash on hands-on credit lines. As you can see from our quarterly update on debt and cash position, net cash flow during Q3 was consistent with the usual seasonality of the business. Compared to 2020 Q3, net debt variation in the French perimeter, excluding green-yellow and disposals, actually improved by 17 million euros despite our sales due to our strict monitoring of OPEX and CAPEX. Our continents are again comfortably met this quarter, with a margin above €179 million on our bid year. We remain fully committed to cash flow, management and control, and to our €4.5 billion disposal plan in France. Our most recent disposal was the disposal of our stake in Thuramont, signed in July. This deal will generate an immediate cash-in of 180 million euros, plus an amount, and it's progressing towards its treasury, as planned. As usual, we do not comment on ongoing processes before they are ready for announcements. Now, a few words about Latin America. GPA, AFCI, and Exito have already published their results, so I will concentrate on the main takeaways. Main events in the quarter. is a major project initiated by ASSAI and GPA, which we think will create a lot of value in the next two years. GPA will sell 71 extra hypermarkets to ASSAI to be transformed into cash-and-carry stores, and will turn the rest of its hypermarket into Bondi Asuka and Mercado Escar supermarkets. Hypermarkets are losing ground in Brazil to cash-and-carry quarter after quarter. With this deal, GBA will be able to monetize a lot-making and structurally challenged business and contemplate its development on a unique land of profitable premium and flexibility segments such as Fond d'Essoukara, Minito, Mercado de Sardana and on leading Omnicanal solutions. For our side, this transaction will allow an acceleration of its expansion plan in uniquely well-positioned locations. After a conversion process, that will take one year to complete. ASSAI has significant experience in this matter, having done 26 such hypermarket conversions already in previous deals with GPA. Based on this strong track record, we expect sales from former hypermarkets to triple, from R$9 billion to R$25 billion under the ASSAI banner, and to deliver an ABA margin above the average ABA margin of ASSAI. Our site now aims for clear leadership in the Brazilian cash and tariff market with a 100 billion rail of sales in 2024, that is 2.5 times 2020 sales. This is clearly a win-win deal that will benefit both companies and by extension should allow a significant revaluation of our Latin American assets, which have already gained significant value after the spin-off of us. A few words now about our lab and business results in Q3. First, sales showed a good dynamic overall, with plus 11.5% total growth and plus 3.9% like-for-like. Compared to Q2, like-for-like growth improved by 4 points and total sales growth improved by 13 points. This was notably driven by the strong recovery in Colombia. Acai then had an excellent quarter with 18% sales growth in local currency and an impressive 66% over two years, driven by the success of its expansion plan and solid life-alike performance in the relatively top market for food retail in Brazil. At GPA, excluding hypermarkets, which will be discontinued by the end of 2021, GPA Brazil sales were stable year-on-year and plus 8.4% over two years. Convenience, a distinctly strong suit of GPA Brazil, with its neutral palm crowns, recorded a very strong 12% like-for-like growth. And GPA's leadership in omnichannel solutions was again confirmed with impressive numbers in online operations. 46% year-on-year and 393% growth over two years. Online sales accounting for 9.3% of total sales in the third quarter of 21, up from 6.3% in the third quarter of 20. At Pondia Total, our premium banner, online sales accounted for an average of 15% of total sales, reaching peaks of 20% in the bottom. This confirms the soundness of the company's strategy to focus on its clear, distinctive advantages, urban, premium, proximity, and e-commerce in a consistent ecosystem. Group-wide results were still a very strong performance, with like-for-like sales of 16%, boosted by the strong economic recovery in Colombia and the end of pandemic-related restrictions. Exito has also been at the forefront of a new channel, with online sales accounting for 12.2% of total sales in Colombia in the last nine months. Among recent developments, the partnership with Rappi has been enhanced to implement TurboFresh, a 10-minute delivery service in Colombia, with the shipments of products from Colombia stores. And 320 stores in Colombia also offer sales via WhatsApp an innovative service that grew 2.3 times year-to-date, accounting for 20% of omnichannel sales. As for the profitability of our businesses, the BPA was up 36% at our site, driven by sales growth and the wrap-up of recently opened stores. The BPA was up 42% at Exito, driven by strong sales growth as well, and at GTA Brazil, a big decrease, mostly due to price investment in high-end markets, second facing a difficult market and which will be discontinued by the end of the year to conclude this has been a part of transition for our group from an environment mostly affected by the pandemic to a progressive normalization we had to deal with some temporary headwinds with the immediate impact of reopening weighing on e-commerce and food retail markets In this context, our business units delivered a good performance and our strategic priorities, which have been clearly outlined and have arguably been shown to be even more relevant, remain the same. In France, our goal is to maintain the high level of cross-stability reached in our bandwidth and get back to growth, building on the strength of our urban and proximity format and the fast development of our home delivery operations. We have unique assets which allows us to build efficient partnerships, the latest example being our groundbreaking deal with Gorillaz. Growth in our food retail operations is expected to come from a combination of several factors in the next few months. The normalization of like-for-like trends in our different banners, an ambitious and efficient expansion plan in convenience format, and the fast transit of our e-commerce operations. Recent trends in Q3 and at the beginning of Q4 confirm that we are moving in the right direction. Of course, these are all profitable channels, and we expect sales growth in the coming months to translate as well into a VTA. We also aim to take full advantage of our unique assets in secular high growth markets, as evidenced again in this quarter. High B2C loyalty and a strong B2B offer for city towns, a unique blend of decentralized energy transition services for Brunello, and a wide offer of state administration and retail tech services for relevancy. These three companies started as small in-house operations and now operate at a global scale. Finally, regarding our lifetime operations, we have high confidence that the recent deal announced in Latin America will generate significant value both for our site and CPA, while Exito should continue to deliver at the forefront of the omni-channel transformation of retail. With the right levels of success still in place, we stand ready to continue to execute on our strategy and strengthen our leading positions in the coming months and quarters. Thank you for your attention, and I'm ready to take your questions.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. So it's 01 on your telephone keypad. First question is from Mr. Arnaud Joly from Société Générale. Sir, go ahead.

Yeah, good evening, David and Tim. I have two questions. The first one, you mentioned a stable EBITDA margin for retail France, exclusively in yellow and real estate gains in Q3. Just to have a full view, can you tell us what was the growth in EBITDA in Q3? so the growth, not the margin trend. And the second question, at the end of September, so you have 650 million euros in drawn-down credit lines. Is it only driven by the change in WCR with the seasonality, or do you have any unexpected effects in your free cash flow statement in Q3? And maybe just one last question linked to this. In Q3, did you have some losses, operating losses related to the price as it was the case in the first half? Thank you.

Thank you, Arnaud. Okay, so first, I mentioned stable EVDA margin and food retail business. Since sales were down, actually EVDA, the French food retail business, was slightly down in Q3. If you look at the appendix and you see the the different parts of our ABD variation. Basically, ABD in the French retail business was slightly down, but a small reduction of about a bit less than the drop in sales. So almost stable, whereas, of course, we had a drop in the commercial margin, so the gap was the cost-saving index. 650 million euro drawn credit lines. That's purely the impact of the seasonality of the business. As you remember, every year during Q3, there is about 600 million euro cash consumption just linked to the seasonal variation of working capital. And of course, this is always more than reversed in Q4. We have the same level of cash at the end of June, so the difference was in these credit lines, but this is totally normal. And actually, the valuation compared to last year was slightly better, I mentioned, 17 million euros, better variation than last year in Q3. And as for leader price, we have a clear number to give you the exact number. Last year, the variation of the net debt was 580 million, and this year it's 500, so 510, so we have a 17 million euro improvement. Yeah, there were still some losses. We mentioned that we expected still some losses until the end of September where all the stores were converted. And I've given an estimation of the magnitude of these losses. These are, of course, included in the variation that Dan just mentioned in the net depth. And these are now, this should now be over, of course, because all the stores have been transferred to Aldi. Next question.

Next question is from Jeffrey.

Go ahead. Good evening, David. I had two quick ones. The first one is, I think Gorillaz was valued at $2.1 billion a few weeks back. Can you perhaps reassure us that you're not spending much money taking a stake at group level there? And the second one is, Can you just remind us on the trailing 12 months what exceptional proceeds you had? I can think of the price, but if you had anything in the way of sizable property proceeds and disposals over the trailing 12 months so we can sense check that leverage dynamic, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Yeah, so Gorillaz, no, it's not a significant cash out at all. It's actually a very, very small symbolic investment, but the value of the stake that we get is very significant. Basically, the idea is in exchange for the deal, in exchange for the access that we give to Gorillaz, to our brands, they give us a stake. And that's how it happens, not by a significant cash investment on our part. And we think, of course, that Gorillaz is the best factor in this sector. The amount they've raised is quite impressive. And as we can see that in the quick commerce, they might become at the same level that a gather is on the technological side. And I think that's really great that we can have deals in all these cases with the best in their fields. And again, the state kit was an exchange for the value that they saw in the partnership with us. The disposals that we did These are all the disposals that we published in the last four quarters. There was no additional disposal in Q3. As we mentioned in the press release, we did advance on the FLORA disposal, but no cash-in specifically from disposal in Q3. So, again, when you look at the cash variation, the numbers until the end of June, of course, are public. You have them already. And what happened in Q3 is, excluding any disposal, there were none this year. And comparing the cash flow to what happened last year, we were actually better by 17 million euros. And the rest, you already know, is what we published at the NG. Maybe next question.

Next question is from Mr. Simon Geneveau from Baringham. Yes, sir. Please go ahead.

Good evening, David. Thanks. I will have a question from my side, if I may. The first one is on growth. is a return to what I grew from in 2004 in France still unlikely in your view, given the negative trend in October. My second question is on Gorillaz. Just you have a global spirit of partnership. Do you think that just... becoming a wholesaler of Gorillas, because obviously Monoprix and Fonprix will sell brands and goods to Gorillas, is really the answer to, let's say, embrace a dark-store trend and quick commerce, and also on the over-partnership side, So if I might, Gorillaz might as well deliver some stores. So in this case, will Fonprix and Monoprix pay, let's say, 20% or even 30% fees on each order? And my last question is rather on net debt. When we look at your French net debt, it increased by 28 million euros at the end of Q3. This is last year. Despite a significant amount of asset sale, is it implied close to 700 real structural cash burn? And how do you intend to finance it going forward? Thanks a lot. Okay, thank you, Clément. So, growth in Q4, the trends, yeah, they're still negative, but they are on the right track, as I mentioned. Less and less negative, and actually some of the business units are already in positive territory. Fonprix is already positive, Monoprix is already positive in October. Monoprix is still a bit negative, but not so much. And, of course, as you remember, last year we had a significant headwinds for Monoprix, in November with the closure of the non-free. We couldn't send textiles. So, of course, we will benefit in the next month from positive base effects for Monoprix. So, we think that each of these banners will get back to growth, some of them a bit earlier than the others, but all the trends are going in the same direction. So, it's difficult to be the exact date at which each banner will be positive, but the trend, I think, is quite clear. It's getting better and better. And in terms of market share, We're basically already there. The idea is basically the same idea as what we did with Amazon. We have a good actor, a leading actor that wants to develop on this particular part of e-commerce. And we can help each other. And actually, that's the way we see things. Of course, in some ways, we are competitive, but we can also be partners. I think it's quite clear that it's the fastest one, the fastest growing one, and the one that raises the most cash, which is a clear advantage. We will benefit from their growth because we will sell them our products. So if they grow, they succeed, we will benefit from that. We will also benefit from that because we will have a stake, which, as I mentioned, didn't cost us cash. It's the counterpart of the deal that we made. And for us, we gain also access to their, so to speak, technology, their . And a bit like we use to deliver . We can use to deliver . So we now have all the tools. We have the partnership with for next day. We have Amazon for the same day, two hour. And we have for 10 minutes. And of course, on top of that, we have all the other solutions already in place, and they will continue. The online business, we are really well covered there. It's a key strength that we have, e-commerce online. Search NetDev, well, again, the numbers we mentioned, they are strictly equivalent to the ones that you can see at the end of June, so nothing new there. Of course, in the version of NetDev, the impact of the disposal, there are significant exceptional elements. If you look especially on the 12-month basis, either at the end of June or at the end of September. Mostly, of course, leader price. As we mentioned, there was a significant cash benefit price in H1. There was also, of course, cash benefit price in Q4 last year. And there's still some, but less, and now zero, in Q3. So that's a big part, of course, a significant part. The rest, you can have, you can look at things one way or the other, but I would say the goal is to be clearly, now that the price is behind us, to have positive cash flows. That's clear, and we have several levels for that. We monitor our capex very closely, as I mentioned, and that contributed, of course, to the good performance, relatively good performance we have with Q3 compared to last year. We have for growth in EBDA, driven by e-commerce and expansion, and we are still, of course, monitoring our inventory and working tightly with our with our working capital objective. So we are clearly investing on this objective and as mentioned, it's a clear priority for us. And again, leader prize, it's over. Maybe the next question.

The next question is from Mr. David Amini from Bank of America. So please go ahead.

Yes, two questions, if I may. The first one, just back to Gorillaz. Can you explain us a bit how it will work? I understand you know the fact that you're supplying them, which is quite clear. How does it work when Gorilla is preparing or delivering actually an order from Monoprix? Who is preparing the orders? Is it casino in the store doing it or do you have a specific dark store that you are going to set up next to the store? Just to understand a bit how it will work with Monoprix more specifically. The second question is just to understand a bit more the profitability in France in Q3. Can you help us a bit to understand the kind of building blocks, so how much leverage you had potentially, and I'm talking specifically, you know, Casino France retail, and also the cost savings that you were able to generate in Q3, that would be very helpful.

Yeah, really, thank you. So, the idea is, we're a huge story of doc stores. It's not to build new doc stores and our own stores. They have all these doc stores, and they are pretty great, and there will be more. And in those dark stores, they will have our products, obviously, since we are the ones supplying them with products. So they can just prepare orders for us. And we will have a system where when a customer orders, moves their orders, it goes to Gorillaz and it's delivered from a Gorillaz store. So it's 4P or 1P delivered by Gorillaz. But for us, it's really private, transparent, and it's a way to leverage on the deal that we're doing where they will have our products in their dark stores anyway. So it's a way to use that efficiently. As for the food retail for stability in top studies, basically if you look at the impact of the drop in sales that we still had in Q3, reducing drop in sales, but on average it was still a rather significant drop in sales in Q3, it had a negative 50 million euro impact on the gross margin. And most of that, I would say about 80% of that was compensated by the top studies. And then you have the spike reduction of the EBG in absolute value, but less than 10 million. So still a strong impact of our cost-cutting initiatives in Q3.

Thank you, Sam. Next question. So next question is from Mr. Rob Joyce from Goldman Sachs. Sir, go ahead.

Thanks, David, for taking the questions. I've got three questions. Just to build on Clément's question earlier so we can understand the cash generation going forward, is it fair to think the sort of the leader price cash burn over the past 12 months in there is about $500 million? That's the first one. Second one, just in terms of the credit lines drawn on the working capital, I think from the last year's release it says that credit lines were undrawn. Just wondering why the change in funding this year versus last year. And then the third one, on green-yellow. I think there's guidance given in May for around 80 to 85 million EBITDA at green-yellow. Can you give us an update on that and maybe an update on the potential capital raise or capital, yeah, capital raise you discussed back then? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Ron. Okay, we didn't publish exactly, I think, the timeframe of the supply for the last 12 months, but I think your estimate is might be close to right now. If you look at the cap run in H1, I mentioned that it would be about a fourth of that in Q3, and the last year you probably have about 100. So it's a reasonable estimate. Perhaps it's a bit less than that, but it's a reasonable estimate. And of course, this is over. The un-drawn credit line, yeah, it's just that We did the same variation as last year, but of course the cash position at the end of June this year was lower than last year because we optimized a bit our balance sheet. We bought some bonds, reduced our gross debt, and got to the level of cash that we were comfortable with. And now when we have some troughs of working capital, we draw a bit more credit line than we used to do. That's all. But compared to last year, the variation between June and September is again the same, 17 million euros actually better. And coming from a lower point of cash, that means that in September we close some credit lines. Of course, we pay them back by the end of the year with the inflows of working capital. In green and yellow, yeah, they have mentioned an objective. They haven't changed it, so obviously it's still about it. Otherwise, it would have been communicated. They're growing fast, as you've seen. They're putting in place a lot of projects. to realize their business plan for 2022, where they announced a 100 million euro target for the D8. They will need, likely, some additional capital and, as I mentioned, we are still working with them on that. And we're really confident that it's going to come through. We'll, of course, inform the market when there's something new to announce, but the goal is still to do that, of course. It could be done either through an IPO or through a private deal. They mentioned both possibilities. I think they have a very productive business and it will be done. Okay.

Thank you, sir. We have no other questions. Back to you for the conclusion.

Well, thank you, everyone, for attending this call. Good evening and stay safe.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.