Nilfisk Holding A/S

CSE:NLFSK

Earnings Call Transcript

[Tracy Fowler, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to Nilfisk's conference call for the third quarter of 2024. Thank you to everyone for joining us today and for your continued interest in Nilfisk. My name is Tracy Fowler, Head of Investor Relations. And with me today are Jon Sintorn, CEO; and Reinhard Mayer, CFO. Before passing the word over to Jon, I would like to turn your attention to Slide 2 and regarding forward-looking statements. Please note that -- sorry -- please note that this presentation, including remarks from management, may contain forward-looking statements that should not be relied upon as predictions of actual results.

For more details, please read the content on this slide. And with that, I would like to pass the word over to Jon.

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

Thank you, Tracy, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Today, I will present Nilfisk's financial highlights for the third quarter of 2024, provide an update regarding the financial targets for 2026 and present a brief update on our new product launches. Afterwards, I will pass the word over to Reinhard, who will walk you through our financial performance in the third quarter and financial outlook for 2024. I will start with the financial highlights on Slide 4.

In the third quarter, Nilfisk delivered a negative organic growth of 0.8%, a decrease of EUR 7.2 million compared to the third quarter of 2023. This was primarily driven by the professional business, which delivered negative organic growth of 4.3% in the third quarter. Here, the negative growth was driven by Americas and APAC, partially offset by solid growth in EMEA. The service business delivered negative organic growth of 1.6%, where temporary shipment delays in the U.S. impacted performance. On a positive note, we had very strong organic growth in our Specialty and Consumer businesses, which delivered 20.1% and 22% organic growth, respectively.

By region, Nilfisk continued to deliver strong organic growth of 6.7% in EMEA, driven by positive contributions across the business. This was, however, fully offset by negative organic growth in the Americas and APAC of 10.5% and 6%, respectively. Taking a moment to speak to our performance in the Americas. Since assuming the CEO position 5 months ago, I have traveled to the U.S. speaking to several of our customers as well as our employees. I have gained valuable insights into our strengths and weaknesses.

And we are addressing our go-to-market strategy, product portfolio and capabilities for shifting market dynamics. But it's not a quick fix. Results were clearly below our expectations in the third quarter. And going forward, I will be focused on supporting the business performance. Lastly, our EBITDA margin before special items was maintained at 12.6% -- flat versus last year's third quarter and EBITDA before Special items was EUR 30.4 million. Turning now to an update regarding our financial targets for 2026. On the back of a mid-quarter change in momentum, predominantly in the U.S., we revised our financial outlook for 2024 in October.

Our financial performance in '24 falls short of the trajectory required to meet our '26 financial targets for revenue and EBITDA margin before special items. For this reason, they have been removed. We continue to operate in the market with structural megatrends supporting long-term growth. Our ambition clearly remains to be close to our customers and deliver profitable growth in the years to come. To address macroeconomic uncertainty and a decline in revenue, we are looking for structural efficiency improvements across the group.

We will provide an update here in connection with our annual report for 2024 in February. Moving now to Slide 6 and our high pressure washer business. On October 9, our high pressure washer business located in Fort Pierce, Florida was impacted by extreme weather as a result of Hurricane Milton. As you can see on the slide, the site was damaged and business operations have been disrupted in the fourth quarter. Fortunately, no Nilfisk employees were injured during the hurricane Milton, and their safety remains our #1 priority.

As a result, we expect to incur a loss of revenue of around EUR 6 million for 2024 in the Americas. Business continuity has been partially restored, and we have engaged with our insurance providers regarding future claims. Turning to Slide 7 for an update regarding Nilfisk's product pipeline. In the third quarter, we successfully shipped initial orders of our new SC25 to customers and we have received positive feedback. Step by step, the SC25 will become available across key markets, including the Americas, where it will be introduced at the ISSA industry -- on November 17 in Las Vegas.

Sales are ongoing throughout Q4, and we are encouraged by the demand for the SA25 since its launch. Another new product that we have introduced is the SC550. This was displayed at Interclean in May and has since October been available for sale. We have shipped initial orders in EMEA in November, and it will be available to customers in Americas before the end of the year. The SC550 will also be shown at the ISSA. Going forward, we will continue to update our product pipeline to align with the needs of our customers. It is crucial that we deliver industry-leading quality and innovation, which will be reflected in future product launches.

Early indications for the SC25 and the S550 are positive, and we expect revenue from these products to ramp up once the global rollout is complete in the first half of 2025. And with that, I would like to pass over the word to Reinhard for the financial update.

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Thank you, Jon, and good morning to everyone joining us today. I will now provide a financial update, speak to our outlook for 2024 and our financial targets for 2026 before opening up for questions. We saw strong momentum in the beginning of the quarter, delivering organic revenue growth of 7.1% in July. In August, demand slowed down in the Americas negatively impacting our professional and service businesses.

This was partially offset by strong organic growth in our Consumer and Specialty businesses. In Q3, revenue was temporarily affected by the rollout of SAP in U.S. Shipping delays resulted in approximately EUR 7 million revenue effect. This impacted both our professional and service businesses. As a result, Nilfisk reported negative organic growth of 0.8%. Excluding the temporary impact from the ERP -- organic growth in Q3 was plus 1.9% and 2.6% year-to-date on an adjusted basis. By segment, the Professional business was the primary driver behind lower revenue in Q3 2024, delivering a negative organic growth of 3.4%.

Service delivered negative organic growth of 1.6%, and the service attachment ratio was flat versus the previous quarter at 25%. Revenue from the consumer business was very strong, delivering 22% organic growth as robust customer demand continued across key European markets. This performance was supported by innovation-driven growth, including the updated high-pressure water range and the S1 vacuum cleaner range. The Specialty business also delivered very strong organic growth of 20.1%, driven by healthy momentum within the IVS business across all 3 regions, supported by continued diligent price management.

Overall, revenue was EUR 240.6 million in Q3 2024, EUR 7.2 million lower than Q3 2023 corresponding to reported growth of minus 2.9%. This included a negative impact from foreign exchange rates of 2.1%, which was driven by the depreciation of the Turkish lira, Argentinean peso and to a smaller extent by the U.S. dollar. Moving on to Slide 10 for a revenue breakdown by region. Looking into the 3 regions, EMEA continued to deliver strong organic growth of 6.7% in Q3 2024. This was driven by a very strong performance in our consumer and specialty businesses alongside solid growth across personal and service.

In total, EMEA delivered revenue of EUR 141.9 million. The Americas delivered negative organic growth of 10.5% in Q3 2024. This was driven by a demand slowdown in the U.S. as well as the aforementioned revenue impact from the SAP go-live. Adjusted for these delays, organic growth was 3.4% in Q3. In total, the Americas delivered EUR 79.7 million versus EUR 93.5 million in Q3 2023. The APAC region delivered negative organic growth of 6% in Q3 2024, as we saw continued weak demand and market headwinds in China, Australia and New Zealand.

Price management partially offset negative volume growth in the region. In total, APAC delivered revenue of EUR 19 million versus EUR 20 million in Q3 2023. Moving to Slide 11, which highlights the continued improvement of our gross profit margin. The gross margin was 42.4% in Q3 2024, compared to 41.2% in the same quarter of the prior year. This was the highest gross margin since the launch of Business Plan 2026 and is a testament to our focus on continuously improving our margins. Compared to Q3 2023, pricing and mix effects benefited the gross margin by 0.9 percentage points. In addition, freight and distribution costs positively impacted the gross margin by 0.1 percentage points. Continued tailwinds from raw material cost reductions led to a positive gross margin impact of 0.2 percentage points.

Moving to Slide 12 and some comments on overhead costs. In Q3 2024, overhead costs increased by EUR 1.1 million compared to Q3 2023 coming to EUR 87.6 million. The overhead cost ratio increased to 36.4% from 34.9% in the same quarter of the prior year, driven by lower revenue in the quarter. Let's have a deeper look into the evolution of our major spend categories. Sales and distribution costs increased by EUR 2.7 million from Q3 2023 driven mainly by merit increases. Administration costs increased by EUR 0.8 million from Q3 '23, also primarily driven by merit increases.

R&D spend increased by EUR 0.4 million in Q3 '24 to EUR 8.5 million, representing 3.5% of sales.

[Audio Gap]

We continued to invest into refreshing our product pipelines across business segments. Other income and cash flow from investing activities reached EUR 8.9 million, resulting in a positive free cash flow of EUR 7.4 million for Q3 2024. Changes in net working capital had a minor negative impact in the quarter. Through the first 9 months of the year, Nilfisk has generated free cash flow of EUR 8.4 million after incurring a negative change in working capital of EUR 31.5 million. Driven by the free cash flow, net interest-bearing debt decreased by EUR 5.6 million from the previous quarter, finishing the quarter at EUR 257.7 million.

Financial gearing remained at 1.9, the same level compared to the end of the previous quarter and down from 2.0 in the same period of last year. The CapEx ratio in the quarter was 4.4% as we continue to invest into product innovation, digitalization and the rollout of a uniform ERP system. Summing up Q3. Despite revenue challenges, we delivered continuous gross profit margin improvements while strengthening our financial position further. This concludes the financial update. I will now turn to the financial outlook for 2024.

The financial outlook, which we revised on October 24 remains. We expect organic revenue growth in the range of 1% to 3%, and an EBITDA margin before special items between 13% and 14%. We continue to expect CapEx to be around 4% of revenue in 2024 and special items will be around mid single-digit million euros. Demand in the Americas continues to present uncertainty in 2024, and the current outlook is our expectation. Before opening up for Q&A, I would like to address the decision that was taken to remove 2 of 3 financial targets for 2026.

Since business plan 2026 was launched, Nilfisk has managed to deliver strategic and financial progress despite multiple business and macroeconomic challenges -- from a strategic perspective, in our optimization opportunities, supply chain robustness has substantially improved, supporting an expansion of our gross profit margin. Furthermore, we have delivered EUR 237 million in free cash flow since the beginning of 2021, leading to a EUR 124 million reduction of net interest-bearing debt. This has been achieved while simultaneously increasing our investments into product innovation, enhancing our digital ways of working and expanding our production capacity.

At the same time, a combination of internal and external factors led to an overall business performance that did not meet our original expectations. The macroeconomic environment has also been more challenging than initial assumptions embedded in business plan 2026. After the downward adjustment on October '24 we continued to assess developments and projections for 2025 and 2026. Together with Nilfisk Board of Directors, we have conducted a thorough review of the financial targets for 2026. Based on this evaluation, Nilfisk has decided to remove 2 of the 3 financial targets for 2026.

As Jon stated in his presentation, we will look for structural efficiency improvements across the group. We will provide an update in the annual report for 2024 and outlook for 2025 is published in February. And with this, we conclude our presentation of the Q3 interim financial report, and we are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Kristian Tornøe from SEB.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Yes. A couple of questions from my side. So first of all, regarding your you also mentioned some of the highlights here. I mean one of the core drivers has to be growing your U.S. business and winning market shares? it -- I mean Q3 seems to clearly point towards the fact that that has not happened as you hoped for. At least when we benchmark you against your listed peers, we can see you are underperforming on growth as well. So just curious on what's your take on why this hasn't been successful and how you plan to make it work essentially.

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

Yes. Thank you for question. And as I stated, of course, the performance were below expectations in the third quarter. And as I also stated, I've been there now talking to customers, talking to staff. We are looking into the situation. There is a little bit more to do, but I think I do have a fair view on the situation on hand. And I think there are multiple things that we, as a company, need to be better at providing tools and capabilities to address this market. There is go-to-market strategy, there is the product portfolio, and it is the changing market dynamics with, for example, the dealer consolidation, which will require additional capabilities in order to address that in a good way.

I mean there are multiple things, and it's not a quick fix, but I am confident that we will be able to drive this business in a positive direction in the years to come.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Okay. So it sounds like a somewhat extensive strategies you need to do for your U.S. business. Will you elaborate more on this 1 you publish your reform...

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

As we go and the further I get into this position, I will be able to give more flavor on what we're doing. I mean we work hard every day of looking at things, changing, adopting, improving in multiple areas.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

All right. Understood. And then my second question on service, which is also core to your strategy. So by the way you presented it, it sounds like you are satisfied with what you have done on the service part so far. In my view, though, I mean, I was hoping that you could create a service business, which was typical -- and what you show in Q3 here, sort of, I mean, shows the other set. And then you also say that your contract attachment rate is not really growing. So again, are you satisfied with your -- with the performance in service as well.

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Kristian, thank you for your question. Well, in summary, when I reflected to what has been achieved, obviously, we need to take a longer span of performance, not only to Q3. And there, we have, over the last 3 years, still delivered growth in service as a business. But yes, the current performance is not satisfactory, and it's also driven by more lower volume, especially in the Americas, which we have seen now in Q3 as this is a part of equipment-related sales.

And that is obviously a topic which we are going to address forward, as Jon had said, with a different approach to how we grow our market in the Americas.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Okay. Makes sense. Last question from me. You say you will come back with the structural efficiency improvement. So is this sort of a cost optimization program, we should expect -- should we expect that you come with you 2026 or '27 targets? So can you elaborate a bit on sort of what metrics we should expect you to communicate?

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

To start, at this time, we will not issue any new long-term the '27 targets so that is not in the plans for the structural efficiency. But the structural efficiency improvements relates to that, obviously, that when top line is not as expected, we need to adjust for that. But we also have identified an ardent finding further efficiencies across the group, and we are in the process of evaluating this.

And at that time, then in February, we will be able to share more of what it will entail in terms of savings and efficiencies, but also whatever cost that may be related to it.

[Operator]

The next question comes from as from Casper Blom from Danske Bank.

[Casper Blom, analyst]

I would like to return a little bit to the discussion about the U.S. And I think, Jon, you mentioned that you would have to sort of address your go-to-market strategy, which for me sounds like something that has been sort of on the agenda for new this for many years, the whole discussion about direct or indirect distribution in the U.S. But I was thinking also maybe you could sort of elaborate a little bit on what you see as the differences between Nilfisk in Europe and in the U.S.

I understand that there could be different market dynamics and different economic situations, but sort of having come into the business and looking at how the U.S. is doing and how Europe is doing. What -- could you sort of maybe elaborate a little bit on what is it that is working in Europe that is not working in the U.S.? That would be my first question.

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

Yes. Thank you for that. That's a really interesting question. And I think probably, I'd love to sit in front of the fireplace for hours and talk about business models and those sorts of things. But I think for a long period of time, obviously, there is differences in how we traditionally -- and this is what I see, obviously with the caveat of being fairly new still, that we built the market position slightly different in Europe from legacy 120-year-old company and so on, right?

But I do believe that we have more of direct sales and direct in traction in the European markets that has built a stronger resilience. That's 1 dynamic. And we also have built a product portfolio originally from the European perspective. We have migrated to make some great products for the United States as well. But the overall portfolio has been traditionally more geared towards the European situation. And now when we see there is a shift in market situation in the U.S. as well with consolidating dealers and so on. That obviously has an effect on our go-to-market strategy, which we will need to adopt.

[Casper Blom, analyst]

If I may sort of follow up then the -- what I hear you say is that you have sort of traditionally built a business for Europe and then the U.S. has been added on since then. Is it fair to sort of expect that you would need to sort of take quite drastic measures to get a good or a better U.S. business up and running? And could it, in any way, be part of the discussions of whether Nilfisk should be in the U.S. or not?

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

That was not exactly what I meant when I made the comment. I said that we have built a slight different business model for various reasons in Europe than we did in the U.S. and more of an indirect model is across industries more prevalent in the U.S. market because of geography and size and those sorts of things. That is what I said as an example of the differences.

[Casper Blom, analyst]

Okay. Understood. Then finally, just a little bit of a housekeeping. The impact from the hurricane amperages that you have seen in Florida, obviously, the picture you showed looked quite dramatic. Should we expect that this is something that will also hurt you and your possibilities to find growth into 2025?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Casper Blom, what we can say today is that we are going to resume production in November, hence we don't expect an effect of that Milton in Q1 next year. So it's a temporary effect of Q4, but it cannot be ruled out because obviously, there are larger damages across the whole Florida region. And we have not, so to say, yet fully taken up manufacturing, but we'll do so this week.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Claus Almer from Nordea.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

So also a few questions from my side. The first 1 is like both Casper and Kristian asked the efficiency improvements that you mentioned in the report. What do you actually expect to find or identify that has not really been looked at for the last 8 or 9 years of one-off costs, restructuring, new strategies, et cetera, et cetera. And is mostly on the cost side is always more looking at the commercial view of the company. That would be the first one.

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

Thank you for the question. And where you're standing, obviously, you need to be confident and humbled to the task at the same time, recognizing what has been done, but also where we can improve. And as a general comment, I think we have some strategic levers that are evident and good in place. I'm looking at our ability to execute. I think that's 1 important thing, and that entails looking across the organization, end-to-end processes and also the commercial side in order to be good at.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

So that I really didn't understand. So it is execution that has been the issue in the past. And is it more on the cost side? Or is it more on the go-to-market that you're going to make the changes?

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

We are -- I am -- we are looking at both those dimensions.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

Okay. But the execution, so just -- so you mentioned execution. So do you think that has been the cornerstone of the issues in the past or has been the wrong strategy or the combination?

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

It's good to have a strategy, obviously, and you need to understand anything from profit pools and your capabilities in the markets you play. And then it's a matter of organizing yourself and put an organization in place that can collaborate through the value chain and make an impact and serve customer needs in a good way. So it's in that line.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

Okay. My second question goes to what happened in Q3. This is probably more to you. We've heard for quite a while that you have this backlog. Shouldn't that have helped you in the third quarter or was the rollout of SAP. So damaging that you could even deliver on the backlog or what did really happen in the third quarter?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Thank you, Claus, for the question. Well, on 1 side, I think we have basically guided earlier that backlog is coming down in Q3 and here we need to dissect growth in Europe, fueled by innovation has been supporting growth. At the same time, we had the Americas demand slowdown in the second half of the quarter. And that, so to say, was in a way, also affected by the SAP go-live, where we have stacked up approximately EUR 7 million of shipments, which are going to flow over as we expect in Q4.

This is, so to say, the effect in the Americas. If you adjust for that, you still see that in the Americas, there is a negative organic growth, and that is a market driven one. Yes, we have supported that to an extent with order book reduction. But as you remember, the order book, which we had was predominantly for the larger industrial machines in the Americas. And when we also listen into the market momentum in the Americas, the industrial sector is the one which is currently seeing challenges. And that's where we also see the effect in the demand slowdown.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

But -- and also when I do a broader industry survey, to your peers, they don't see the same slowdown as you reported. So I'm a -- to really understand this. But just coming back if you are selling this machine, I know this different segments and so on. But if you have a backlog of industrial machines, why -- and start to delivering on those types of orders rather than trying to find new orders in the market? Or did you do that by this other segment that is worse than we think?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

We do both, but still the market slowdown have affected us. We still have an order book for industrial. Not everything can be delivered at the same time, and that's in that essence, the effect.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

But is the end of the year, have you then done your backlog?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Yes. We are expecting that by end of the year, we are in a normalized situation from whatever has been pinned up through the pandemic and the supply chain interruptions thereafter.

[Claus Almer, analyst]

Okay. And then the EUR 6 million mentioned from the hurricane, is that loss revenue? Or will you regain that or get that impact in Q1 instead?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

This is what we assume lost revenue. It's a quarter 4 effect. It's temporary. It will, as we expect, not have an impact, positive or negative to the next year and is expected to be a lost revenue.

[Operator]

We have a follow-up question from Kristian Tornøe from SEB.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Yes. Just on your cash flow, it has been weak or less strong, however you want to phrase it, at least compared to previously, especially due to the movement in working capital. So just a bit of commentary on your ambitions for the working capital going forward and whether we should expect the cash flow to strengthen?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Well, as I had alluded in my presentation, we have seen a cash flow effect from working capital buildup that we had obviously lower revenue with pent-up shipments in the Americas has had an effect of that. And at the same time, and that's, I think, also important to mention, we have continued to invest into product innovations, digitalizations and our new ERP systems because those are long-term improvements and long-term supporting margin improvement activity.

So there we have continued, whilst at the same time, we had seen the temporary effects from the go-live but also the slowdown. And at the same time, we have prepared for the new product launches. We spoke about SC25. We spoke about the shipments for S550, have now been gone -- have been produced. So those are all effects of, let's say, the situation change in the cash flow. We expect positive cash flow to continue to contribute to a net interest-bearing debt reductions in the quarters to come.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

But do you expect sort of a relief on working capital -- I mean as the demand is proven obviously lower than you expect that are you slowing down the inventory buildup? And can you actually start to release a bit when we do sort of a couple of quarters here?

[Reinhard Mayer, executive]

Obviously, we will adjust our inventory build to the demand situation, which we are facing in the various regions at the same time, and I think we spoke about that in Q2 and earlier. We obviously have a funnel of new products which we are building and which we are launching in the Americas as we speak. Jon addressed that, that we have at the moment at ISSA, 2 new products for the Americas. Those are also in our balance sheet and will basically will go into the balance sheet forward. And then there's more products to come in next year.

And that has an effect. And obviously, we will, on the other side, work to improve on receivables, on payables and inventory. So in combination, and we have a resilient cash flow position, we have been producing substantial cash flow improvements over the last years, whilst investing in the business. So I cannot say more at this moment in time.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Jon Sintorn for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Jon Sintorn, executive]

Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you for participating in today's call. We look forward to meeting you with some of you over the coming weeks. And if you have any follow-up questions after today's call, please do not hesitate to reach out to Tracy. And we will be back with the fourth quarter report, February 2025. Have a nice day.