Hepsiburada (HEPS) Q2 2026 earnings review
Top-Line Stagnation Meets Collapsing Profitability
Hepsiburada's Q2 2026 results reveal a company struggling against macroeconomic headwinds and mounting competitive pressures. While real (inflation-adjusted) Revenue eked out a 3.1% YoY increase, this stability was entirely bought through aggressive margin destruction. Net Loss widened by 98% to TRY 1.89 billion, and EBITDA margin collapsed to a razor-thin 0.4%. The company is heavily subsidizing shipping and absorbing steep credit card installment fees to retain customers in a softer consumer market. Until management can prove they can maintain market share without severely depressing margins, the financial trajectory remains firmly Reversing.
🐂 Bull Case
Despite a tough macro environment, Order Frequency accelerated by 14.9% to 7.4 orders per customer, and Total Orders grew 13.4% to 19.5 million. The platform is retaining its core user base.
The higher-margin Marketplace segment remains a bright spot, with 3P revenue growing 22.3% YoY, far outpacing the 1.5% growth of the Direct Sales (1P) segment.
🐻 Bear Case
EBITDA margin collapsed from 1.8% to 0.4% of GMV. Management is heavily subsidizing cargo and boosting advertising spend just to achieve single-digit real revenue growth.
Free Cash Flow plummeted 65.5% YoY to TRY 1.55 billion. The massive drop in operating cash flow severely limits the company's ability to self-fund future growth initiatives without external capital.
⚖️ Verdict: 🔴
Bearish. Optically high unadjusted growth numbers mask a reality of stagnant real volume and rapidly deteriorating unit economics. The cost to acquire and retain customers is currently outstripping the economic value generated.
Key Themes
Shipping Subsidies Crushing Margins
A severe disconnect emerged in logistics economics: Shipping and packaging expenses jumped 21.7% YoY, while delivery service revenue grew only 5.0%. Management explicitly admitted this was due to 'cargo subsidies provided to merchants.' This artificial enhancement of merchant economics and delivery speeds is the primary culprit behind the broader EBITDA collapse and represents a Decelerating margin trend.
Fintech Drag on the Bottom Line
Net financial expenses and fees surged by TRY 689.6 million. The driver was higher fees for the collection of credit card receivables, as Hepsiburada was forced to offer an increased number of credit card installments to keep customers spending in a high-inflation environment. This financing burden is directly cannibalizing operating profitability.
Marketplace Segment Sustains the Top Line
While the 1P direct sales model effectively stalled (up 1.5% YoY), the 3P Marketplace model acted as the sole growth engine, accelerating by 22.3% to TRY 2.98 billion. This caused the share of Marketplace GMV to inch up to 68.6%. Cultivating this higher-margin segment is critical to eventual profitability recovery.
Customer Acquisition Costs Accelerating
Advertising expenses spiked by 39.7% YoY, heavily outpacing the 2.8% growth in real GMV. This indicates that customer acquisition costs (CAC) are rising sharply. The company is having to spend significantly more marketing dollars to combat inflation fatigue and extended holiday distractions among Turkish consumers.
Other KPIs
Reversing. FCF dropped 65.5% from TRY 4.5 billion a year ago. The deterioration was entirely driven by a massive TRY 2.84 billion decrease in net cash provided by operating activities, further pressured by a slight increase in capital expenditures.
While unadjusted GMV grew robustly to TRY 56.0 billion, this is entirely a mirage of hyperinflation. When adjusted for purchasing power under IAS 29, real GMV growth was only 2.8%, highlighting that volume growth has largely stalled.
Decelerating. Inflation-adjusted AOV dropped nearly 10% in the quarter. Consumers are buying more frequently (order frequency +14.9%) but are trading down to cheaper items or smaller baskets, compressing gross profit per transaction.
Key Questions
Path to Subsidy Reduction
Shipping expenses grew more than 4x faster than delivery revenues due to merchant cargo subsidies. What is the timeline for rolling back these subsidies, and what impact do you expect that to have on merchant churn?
Credit Card Fee Pass-Through
With financial expenses ballooning by nearly TRY 690 million due to credit card installment fees, is there a plan to pass some of these financing costs onto consumers, or will the company continue to absorb them to protect GMV?
Kaspi.kz Integration Strategy
As Kaspi.kz assumes a controlling stake, how will their operational philosophy change Hepsiburada's current strategy of buying market share through heavy advertising and logistics subsidies?