Solar A/S

CSE:SOLAR B

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Welcome to the Solar Quarterly Report Q2 2021. [Operator Instructions]. Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Jens Andersen; and CFO, Michael Jeppesen. Speakers, please begin.

[Jens E. Andersen, CEO, MD of Denmark & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you. A very warm welcome to this second quarter webcast for Solar Group. Together with me, as you also mentioned, I have my colleague, CFO, Michael. The agenda for today is more or less as usual, a general business update with some highlights presented by me. Then I will give you some insights about 2 important focus areas, that is Concepts and Trade. Then I will hand over the word to Michael, who will present our signature results, including a high level cash flow status. And of course, some comments to our recently revised guidance for year 2020. Finally, and hopefully, we'll have some questions, and therefore, we'll have a Q&A session. Next slide, please. With our second positive profit update just 6 months into our CORE+ throughout the period, we are now guiding for the best result in our long history. Guidance is now an EBITDA result of DKK 825 million. In fact, all our 4 strategic focus areas are showing traction across markets and have contributed significantly to the strong result. This quarter, our EBITDA has increased with 66% to DKK 211 million compared to the same quarter last year. But in all fairness, it also has to be mentioned that extraordinary one off-price increases of approximately DKK 30 million supports the positive development. In addition, I am particularly satisfied to see that deposit performance goes for all our legal entities, but also if you measure on the customer segment to the level year-over-year. Especially our industry segment within OEM and MRO has picked up this quarter and exceeded our own expectation. Just as an example, we saw strong 2-digit growth rates within our industry team in Solar Sweden. As a consequence of the strong result and cash flow, we distributed an extraordinary dividend of DKK 110 million to our shareholders, whereby the total dividend payment in the first half year of 2021 was DKK 314 million, corresponding to DKK 43 per share of DKK 100. Again, I want to thank our dedicated and hard-working employees across border, you are surely the foundation for our success. Next slide, please. Concepts. Based on our customers' needs, Solar have developed 7 concepts, each with a different DNA. They embody 5 elements. It's about price, quality, assortment, availability and a high service degree. The main target groups are installation customers and industry customers. Solar Plus, our oldest and most important concept continues to develop new concepts such as Solar Tools, Heat and Cable, however, are growing rapidly and are now starting to contribute quite significantly to the overall consumer share. Although more than 22% of our core revenue derived from concepts, we are aiming for 25% by year 2023. We see strong performance in all our markets where the largest chains originated from Solar Netherlands that achieved an impressive share increase of more than 2%. Next slide, please. Trade. Customer markets and the demand percentage to us are constantly changing. As a sourcing and service company, we have to be ready to adapt to the shift in circumstances and trade is a good example to this. Trade is our most recent strategic area, it targets customers who do not really fit into installation and industry segments, and it's typically DIYs, retailers, webshops and smaller independent B2B customers. Unlike installation and industry, trade customers, they do not need a physical visit from say, safety nor technical support. However, they require a business product with a strong digital mindset. We introduced trade back in 2018 with the intention of providing this customer group which services on available elsewhere. Availability, a wide assortment are paramount, we offer that. We think at least a great webshop where customers can gain a quick overview and receive deliveries through our flexible logistical solutions. Sourcing all their products from Solar means that customers can cut back on suppliers, deliveries and administration, which saves time and money. It is indeed a win-win situation for our customers and also for Solar, and it makes very good business since all of our. Trade is currently an active part of our position in Denmark and the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have taken few steps in the first 6 months of 2021 to launch a new segment in their markets. So I would say that our organization and structure are more or less in place in all Solar markets, and the sales teams are really onboarding new customers month by month. I will now give the word to you, Michael, for some more insights to the financials. Please, Michael.

[Michael H. Jeppesen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you. Now turning to Page 7. Compared to the last quarters, Q2 is a trend shift, delivering an adjusted organic growth of 8.6%. This, combined with the increased gross margin more than outweighed the slight increase we did see in staff costs, leading to a substantial increase in our earnings. Revenue in terms of DKK increased, we came out with almost DKK 3.1 billion compared to the DKK 2.7 billion last year. As Jens was also mentioning, if we take a look into the segments in Q2, we did see growth within all the top segments. And this is actually despite the fact that installation and trade segments, we are still doing a substantial pruning effort, meaning we take out products with a low margin. This is a part of -- this is one of the initiatives within our Better Business project, which is a part of our CORE+ strategy. And this actually means that the underlying growth is actually above what is being disclosed. This is particularly the case in the Netherlands, where, as you may remember, we did start this process last year, but we encountered a setback due to contractual obligation, meaning that we first really got traction on this in H2 last year. Looking at the industry segment, OEM, MRO is really picking up, but also Marine & Offshore in Norway has moved into the positive territory, whereas in Denmark, we still see headwind within Marine & Offshore. As a side note, we noticed that MAG actually delivered almost 21% in organic growth, thereby contributing to the improvement in the growth rate within industry. Turning to Slide 8, with an EBITDA of DKK 211 million, Q2 was the 11th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth within EBITDA. The main growth driver was the increase in gross profit margin, which delivered astonishing 1.5% increase. This was driven by our CORE+ strategy, focusing on concepts, but also on Better project, Better Business. We did also realize a positive one-off impact from price increasing to delivering DKK 30 million or equal to 1% point. But even adjusted for this, the strategy is delivering improvement in gross margin within all countries. The increase we did see in staff in terms of DKK were more than outweighed by the increase in revenue, adding another 0.5% to the margin increase. In absolute terms, we thereby increased the EBITDA with DKK 127 million to DKK 211 million. If we take a short look at the cost level, please notice that the reference point in Q1 now is the COVID-19 cost level, which actually means that travel, entertainment and cars, which are the main single contribution with an external operating cost. We have not -- they're following what we expected. We are still below the pre-COVID level. We are quite pleased with this. Staff costs, of course, affected by increased activity levels for handling costs, but also, of course, increase in bonus schemes. Looking at loss on debtors, this remains in control. Taking -- if we're turning to Page 9, shot on H1, the pattern we see is similar to what we did see in Q2, with a margin expansion from 4.6% to 6.8%, of which 1% can be explained by the results of our CORE+ strategy leading very strong results on the gross margin. This, in combination with cost containment is adding another 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively, from external operating costs and staff. It would be noticed, as we've mentioned on the previous slide that this is, of course, also supported by the one-off effect, which adds 0.5% to the margin, leading to a total margin increase of 2.2%. Turning to Page 10, looking at H1 in absolute figures. If we do a simple decomposition, not taking FX into consideration. We can see that the DKK 146 million is decomposed into an effect from growth of DKK 64 million. Gross margin increase of DKK 60 million and then again, DKK 30 million from one off prices. So we're very pleased with the improvement we see here. Turning to the cash flow on Page 11. We have a positive impact from operating activities of DKK 351 million, which I'll comment on shortly. Investing activities amounted to DKK 63 million. It should be noticed that the investment in the expansion and the upgrade of the central warehouse in BIM had an impact of DKK 35 million on the cash flow in Q2. We do expect that this will increase in the quarters to come. In total, we do expect to invest DKK 250 million. Financial activities amounted to DKK 271 million. And of course, you see here the impact of the DKK 110 million. We did pay out in dividend, but also, of course, change in current interest-bearing debt is a main contribution here. But let's take a closer look at the operating activities. We generated DKK 148 million in net profit, noncash items of DKK 58 million. Inventory is actually slight down, more or less eliminating the increase we did experience in last quarter. We do see an increase in receivables, but it should be noted that this is an impact of the growth that we have experienced here in Q2. Liabilities were up with DKK 172 million, of which a part of it is temporary due to COVID-19 support packages. Turning to Page 12. If we look at the net working capital, as an average, we have seen the continuous improvement in Q2 compared to Q1 and previous quarters. We are now down to 10.8% at the end of the quarter. Please notice that the way we calculate networking capital is not supported by the temporary support package that we have, which currently holds a value of DKK 102 million. If we take a look at the gearing, on the other side, we ended up with 0.4 at the end of Q2. Turning to the next slide, Page 13. We reconfirm the guidance that we announced early in July. We expect a revenue of DKK 12.1 billion, corresponding to an organic growth of approximately 4%. Our Better Business project is -- which is an integrated part of our CORE+ strategy is expected to reduce the revenue with DKK 200 million compared to last year, meaning adjusting for this, we're basically guiding from an organic growth of approximately 6%. EBITDA, we expect DKK 825 million. And if we take a look at it, how is this achieved? Yes, there's extraordinary price increases of approximately DKK 50 million. Other nonrecurring income of DKK 6 million, meaning that the improvements compared to last year net has to be DKK 132 million, bringing us from the DKK 637 million last year to the DKK 825 million this year. This equals approximately an EBITDA of DKK 640 million, which, as Jens was mentioning previous is the best result in our long history. Thanks.

[Jens E. Andersen, CEO, MD of Denmark & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you, Michael. So now it's time for questions. If you have any, please?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Okay. There seems to be no questions from the participants. So I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

[Jens E. Andersen, CEO, MD of Denmark & Member of Executive Board]

Okay. Then I think our comments were successful. I hope.

[Michael H. Jeppesen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Okay. Thank you for listening in, and have a nice day until next time. We look forward to hear and give you some comments again. So thank you for listening in. Bye-bye.