Solar A/S

CSE:SOLAR B

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Welcome to the Solar Quarterly Report Q2 2022. [Operator Instructions] Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Jens Andersen; and CFO, Michael Jeppesen. Speakers, please begin.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Thank you for the introduction. A very warm welcome to this second quarter webcast for the Solar Group. Together with me here as presented, I have my colleague, CFO, Michael Jeppesen.

The agenda for today is, I would say, more or less, as always, a general business update with some highlights presented by me. Then I will give you some insights about our smallest customer, segment trade, but also give you a few information on our new large combined heat pump and PV solution at our warehouse in line. Then Michael will present our second Q results including a high level cash flow status and naturally some comments to our revised guidance for year 2022. And finally, and hopefully, we will have a Q&A session.

Next slide, please. In Q2, we delivered an EBITDA increase of DKK 56 million, up to DKK 267 million. The positive development exceeded our own expectations for the quarter. High growth, combined with strong markets in all our segments, resulted in EBITDA of 7.7%, up with 0.9% year-over-year.

Especially, I want to draw the attention to the strong EBITDA development in Solar Netherlands and Solar Sweden. This is a result of dedicated focus on Better Business initiatives as well as price path to FX. Besides that, MAG45 also did extremely well. It is still too early to claim victory as some of our companies still are below the overall EBITDA target of an EBITDA of at least 6.5%, but it is a fact that the company portfolio mix in the Solar Group has never been as strong as we have seen in the first half year 2022. In my mind, a very robust signal to all our stakeholders.

On group level, our main segments, installation and industry, delivered strong organic growth of 11% and 18%, respectively. This, in combination with a substantial increase in demand for renewable solution across our markets, a situation we expect will be accelerated and long lasting due to the after effects from the terrible war in Ukraine, but also more generic the need for electrifying our society in a much faster pace than ever.

Based on additional one-off price effects, but also a strong operational performance in all markets, we just have upgraded our EBITDA guidance for 2022 by DKK 125 million from DKK 975 million to now DKK 1.1 billion, and our revenue guidance from DKK 13.25 billion to DKK 13.45 billion. Finally, the Board of Directors distributed an extra dividend of DKK 45 per share, which were paid out mid-May.

Next slide, please. Our trade customers are based locally, which means that cross-border sales are an exception. Up until now, trade account for 8% of the total revenue in the Solar Group. And so far, we have more than 8,000 active customers. We have, therefore, set up an organization to match our customers' requirements. We also ensure that Solar representatives or salesmen are always available whenever required locally. But nevertheless, our teams work together across markets to share knowledge and experience.

We try constantly to adapt our broad assortment to the changing in the markets and especially also towards the trade segment. That's also why we have recently introduced a new Solar concept tailor-made for our trade customers and designed to further advance their and our opportunities for profitable growth. The concept is named Solar Select. The Solar Select product portfolio compromises the products most frequently purchased by our trade customers.

The service we offer for our trade customers differs a little bit from our 2 other segments, installation and industry. Each of our segments compromise, of course, unique services for trade. These are storage solutions, logistics and cleaning of shelf in DIY shelves.

Next slide, please. With 3 new large heat pumps, we expect annual savings in energy consumptions to be approximately 1.4 million kilowatt hours, which corresponds to annual energy consumption of around 275 homes. With a total investment of DKK 6.2 million in the new air source heat pumps, Solar expects a payback period of approximately 3 years. At the high, but also [ curing ] price level, this equals to savings of around DKK 2 million per year. Parallel with that, and also extremely important, we reduced our CO2 emission significantly. In this case alone, it's a reduction of 261 tonnes carbon. I think that is a great achievement on top of a good financial business case. That's also why we believe that together with our industry customers, we can open the market for these green installations going forward.

And now at least we have a proven business case and showcase to show our customers in the coming months and the coming years. Internally, the next country in line for a large heat pump and PV solution will be Solar Poland. With that, I will now give the word to Michael for some more insights into the financials. Please, Michael?

[Michael Jeppesen, executive]

Thank you. Please go to Page 7.

Revenue in terms of DKK increased with more than 11%. We came out with almost DKK 3.5 billion compared to DKK 3.1 billion last year, equal to an adjusted organic growth of almost 13%. Our 2 main segments, being industry and installation, delivered very strong growth rates, particularly industry, which came out with astonishing 18%, and we saw solid growth rates in all subsegments here, including marine and offshore. Trade however did face some headwind, mainly due to less sales within the DIY subsegment, albeit it should be noticed that it's from a very, very high level that we had last year. So you could say that what is happening is that the development is probably returning to a more normal situation, the situation we saw pre the COVID situation.

Turning to Page 8. With an EBITDA of DKK 267 million, Q2 was the 15th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in EBITDA. The main growth driver was the increase in gross profit margin, which delivered astonishing 0.9% increase. This was mainly driven by our CORE+ strategy focusing on concept but also Better Business. We did also realize a positive one-off impact from price increases of DKK 45 million compared with DKK 30 million last year or equal to an increase of 0.3% point compared to 2021.

If we take a look at the cost level, we do see that external operating costs, in the figure they're called EOCs, are increasing. As many other companies, we are also starting to see a negative impact from the inflation hitting our costs, particularly energy cost, but also cost related to travel are increasing. Now it should, however, be noticed that the increase we have seen is more or less in line with what we expected, and it's still below pre-COVID level. Staff cost remains under control. So in total, costs were actually slightly down relatively speaking compared to last year.

If we look at loss and debtors, we did actually suffer a few losses, which resulted in a total loss of DKK 9 million versus DKK 5 million last year. The losses are related to a few single customers in -- actually in 3 different countries, and we do not expect this to be a trend shift. So going forward, we do not anticipate a level of this magnitude. In absolute terms, earnings thereby increased from DKK 211 million to DKK 267 million equal to 27%. If you look at EBITDA, adjusted for one-off effects, we see an increase in the underlying result from DKK 181 million to DKK 222 million.

Turning to Page 9. Looking at H1, we see a similar pattern as in Q2 with a margin expansion from 6.8% to 7.9%, of which 0.4% can be explained by the result of our CORE+ strategy, continuing to delivering strong results, but also one-off price effects delivered 0.7%. Again, there is a slight increase in the external operating costs, but this is more than offset by lower staff costs. Again, in absolute terms, we do see -- sorry, in relative terms, we do see a continued improvement.

Looking at the EBITDA in absolute terms, we saw an increase from DKK 415 million to DKK 548 million or equal to 32%. If we look at the EBITDA and adjusted for the one-off effects, we can actually see that the underlying result improves from DKK 385 million to DKK 468 million, which we are particularly happy for.

Turning to the next slide. This is Slide 10. Looking at the cash flow. We see a slightly negative impact from the operating activities of DKK 10 million. Despite that, we actually have an improved profitability. I'll comment on that shortly.

Investing activities came out with DKK 75 million. It should be noticed that the investment in the expanding and the upgrade of the central warehouse in line is the main driver of this with DKK 45 million, meaning that there remains approximately DKK 46 million of total investment of DKK 250 million. Financial activities net amounted to DKK 370 million, which relates to change in noncurrent interest-bearing debt, installment of lease liabilities and, in particular, raising of current interest-bearing debt of DKK 400 million or almost equal to the payment of dividend of DKK 329 million.

But if we take a closer look at the operating activities, we can see that the main change is the inventory and to a lesser extent, liability. Now in order to secure our performance towards our customers, we stick to the increase in inventory level we built up during 2021. It is important to notice, and we said this before, but it is the same situation that approximately 85% of the increase can be referred to A articles, meaning our fast runners. So albeit we have increased inventory value, we do not see any increased risk given that it's the A articles.

Liabilities are affected by the repayment of COVID support packages, which now has been paid almost in full. This means, of course, that we will see an increase in net working capital going forward or at least until things -- the supply situation gets normalized. But again, in the current environment, it's clear that those who have the goods will end up with the orders.

Turning to Page 11. If you look at the net working capital, we do see a minor increase compared to -- in Q2 where the average is increasing from 11.4% to 12.3%. However, if you look at it compared to Q1, it's almost unchanged where we stay at 14.1% versus 14%. So the pattern we see here in Q2 reflects the similar pattern we did see in Q1.

Looking at the gearing level, we see the effect, of course, of the normal seasonality for the half year, but also the payment of a total DKK 658 million in dividends, meaning that we're at the end of the quarter, now have a gain of 1.1 from -- up from a starting point this year of 0. If we adjust for one-off effects, the gearing is around 1.4.

Turning to Page 12, guidance. As announced, the 9th of August, we now expect a revenue of DKK 13.45 billion, corresponding to an organic growth of approximately 9%. We stick to our project Better Business where we expect to reduce our revenue by approximately DKK 200 million compared to last year. And adjusted for this, the underlying organic growth is approximately 11%.

Looking at EBITDA. Compared to 2021, we have actually increased the underlying performance in the company with DKK 101 million, bringing the total guidance for this year to DKK 1.1 billion, including, of course, now DKK 200 million in expected one-off income. Thank you.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Thank you, Michael. So now it's time for questions and answers. So please, if you have some?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have 1 person coming forward or questions so far. That's Kristian Johansen of SEB.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Yes. So just a few questions around the climate and energy segment or the heat pump sales you do. So first of all, can you in any way help us in terms of how big a proportion of sales these climate products are today? Because it seems obviously that the growth rate in this segment is substantially higher than what you see on average. And then secondly, the supply of these products, if you can update us on what the situation is there? Because obviously, if you were to run out of the supply of these products, it would hurt your growth possibilities, I assume?

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Thank you, Kristian. I would say we will give you an update in our Q4 report of our annual report. So there will be an update, how much we have grown within plant energy. Talking about shortage of products, you are fully right. At the moment, it is difficult to -- supply and demand is simply not in balance, so we have put in some large orders. We expect a great part of those orders will be delivered during the autumn. But you're fully right, the shortage is still and remains to be at least a problem in 2022, so -- but anyway, we are still growing and we are growing rapidly in a -- much more than we estimate.

[Michael Jeppesen, executive]

And it's above the average growth rate we can add that as well.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Way above, I would say. So we need to make an update in Q4.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

And the profitability, is that also -- I mean, the gross margin, is that also above average in the segment?

[Jens Andersen, executive]

I would say differently. I would say in absolute krones, it's a very good business to sell heat comps if you go with the right partners, of course. In percentages, it's a lower margin. That's for sure. And that goes also for PVs, heat pumps, EV chargers and things like that. But in absolute krone, it's a very good business, and it also means that earnings before it is strong. But it's a matter of going with the right partner.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Understand. And then I guess, the majority of your comments is on heat pumps. So I mean, small-scale private homes and so on. The industrial heat pumps, you have a slide on here as well. It's a different segment. Can you maybe just talk a bit about the reception of customers? I guess you have been pushing this out now with your sales of pumps.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Yes, I would say differently. I would say if you compare with Light, we also entered into Light many years ago and to a certain extent, like a step stone, and then suddenly went up to, I would say, a really demanding or close to engineering of Light. That is the same way we think we will enter into the market of industrial heat pumps. We are very strong in residential and commercial buildings. And now we have taken our own medicine in mind, and we do that also in Poland and Holland. And that is, of course, a great showcase for our customers. And of course, also the suppliers where we have worked value close together and to open this market together with both vendors and customers. So we truly believe that this market will be very strong in the coming years. It has to be strong simply because of the crisis we're in, but also because you can reduce your carbon footprint a lot with such an insulation. So we see a very positive market in the years to come.

[Michael Jeppesen, executive]

Also for industrial buildings, municipalities, that's a lot. Sports, yes, everything I would say.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

Then maybe just my last question. I mean, it relates more to the cyclical risk to your business. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from your customers? Because obviously, considering the price increases, which you also greatly illustrate with the one-off price increase, the increasing interest rates and so on, I guess, at least in the stock market consensus is that we should be looking at your activities. So do you agree on that? And when will it come if it comes?

[Jens Andersen, executive]

It's a difficult question to answer. There is no doubt that the transparency right now is reduced quite substantially. So I would say it's honest speaking, it's anyone's guess what will happen. But what we are rather sure of is that the green transition will accelerate, and electrification is the main part of that. That will give us opportunities. So I would say, even if construction, and it is cyclic we know that. It should reduce to some extent. We see that the green transition will continue to accelerate. But I would say it's anyone guess.

[Michael Jeppesen, executive]

Yes. I think, and you know that as well as part of the -- especially the residential market and also project market will decline to some extent, how much? We don't know yet. On the other hand, market, the green transition at least for Solar is a huge opportunity which can balance out the -- there may be common problems within the project market. So -- but it's still not very transparent. So we will follow that closely month by month. That's for sure.

[Kristian Tornøe Johansen, analyst]

But that's obviously interesting. You say that you hope they can balance out because -- and that was actually why I asked my first question on the exposure of climate energy because in your annual report for last year, it was 6% of sales, which obviously means that 94% of sales does not relate to climate energy. So I would assume if we are looking at a more cyclical slowdown, even though I fully agree that climate energy will continue to grow, the net impact on your business will still be truly negative.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Yes. But you should remember, what normally happens when we face headwinds within construction is that the number of projects reduced substantially. Now the earning incremental on these is lower than the average. Secondly, what also normally happens or is historically always has happened is yes, our sales from products may be reduced, but at the same time, servicing normally increase. Now it's not a euro-to-euro compensation, but they tend to compensate some of it at least because they have higher margins, and so...

[Michael Jeppesen, executive]

But I think for us, it's too early to predict what will happen next year. And of course, we'll come out with our guidance later. And there, of course, we have calculated and we started that, how can we predict as good as possible in a volatile market how 2023 will be. But for sure, a part of the project market, especially the residential housing market, it's already slowing down. And then on the other hand, how much can we gain from huge investments that will go on within climate energy, that's a good question. And then, of course, we will come with a -- our estimation on that with the guidance of 2022.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There seems to be no further questions coming through at this time. So I'll hand the floor back to our speakers.

[Jens Andersen, executive]

Thank you. Thank you for listening in, and have a good day. Thanks for the Solar team that joined us. Bye.