Diebold Nixdorf Inc

NYSE:DBD

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Operator]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Diebold Nixdorf Investor Update Call. My name is Emily, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to our host, Chris Sikora, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Chris.

[Christopher Sikora, executive]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Diebold Nixdorf's Investor Update Call. Today, we have with us CEO, Octavio Marquez; and CFO, Jim Barna, to accompany our prepared remarks, we have posted our slide presentation to the Investor Relations section of our corporate website.

Before we begin, I will remind all participants that during this call, you will hear forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the expectations and beliefs of our management team at the time of this call, but they are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Additional information on these factors can be found in the company's periodic and annual filings with the SEC. Participants should be mindful that subsequent events may render this information to be out of date. We will also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. As noted on Slide 3, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in the supplemental schedules of presentation.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Octavio.

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

Thank you, Chris, and thank you all for joining us.

Today marks a pivotal moment for Diebold Nixdorf, as the company has emerged from its financial restructuring and is relisting in the New York Stock Exchange. The overwhelming support from our post-restructuring shareholder base enable the company to complete an expedited, highly consensual, deleveraging transaction that better positions the company for long-term success.

I would like to thank our customers for their support, as we [indiscernible] it roughly 70-day period. I am humbled and very grateful for their continued trust in our company as we work through our debt rupturing. They have stood by our side, maintaining confidence in our relationship and valuing their industry-leading solutions we provide. In addition, we are thankful for the ongoing partnership with our suppliers and are very proud of our employees who remain focused on executing and serving our customers while we work through the restructuring process.

This morning, we plan to discuss in more detail how the restructuring process allowed Diebold Nixdorf to emerge as a stronger company with a capitalized balance sheet and an enhanced liquidity position. We will also review our strong second quarter performance, covering both financial results and our continued positive operating momentum. And lastly, one of the main highlights that we'd like to leave you with today is that we are tracking well [ in the ] prior year and our outlook for 2023. We continue to drive towards our full year expectations that were published as part of our restructuring process in late -- in late May.

Turning to slide 6. I want to reiterate our investment thesis and highlight the strength of the company. First, we are emerging a stronger company focused on operational execution and customer satisfaction. The debt restructuring removes the capital structure overhang that has been inherent since the Wincor acquisition in 2016 and best positions Diebold Nixdorf to leverage its core competencies to drive immediate and long-term value creation.

We have an operating model that at its core is based upon winning in the market with our world-class product offerings, which leads to recurring long-term, stable service and software base of future business. In addition, strong secular growth drivers around cash recycling, branch transformation and new checkout journeys support ongoing demand in our banking and retail end markets.

Leveraging the strong demand in our end markets help us secure product backlog levels that provide coverage for product revenue for the next 12 to 18 months. Attached to our product sales are our higher-margin recurring service and software offerings. Approximately 70% of our roughly $2.1 billion of service revenue is recurring, which provides stability and predictability around our financial performance.

We have a blue-chip customer base, that consists of long-standing relationships with leading financial global institutions and retailers for whom we play a critical role in helping them serve their customers. Lastly, we have adopted a continuous improvement set across the company to optimize the operating model, drive efficiencies and maximize cash flow conversion.

Going forward, we expect to deliver a higher quality of earnings with less nonrecurring onetime items and generate stronger EBITDA to cash flow conversion. Removing the debt overhang on the company will allow us to focus on our strengths, and we are excited about what we will accomplish moving forward as we deliver for our customers and create value for our stakeholders.

Now I will turn it over to Jim to walk us through the results of the restructuring process and details behind relisting on the New York Stock Exchange.

[James Barna, executive]

Thanks, Octavio.

Looking at Slide 7, we have outlined for you the primary benefits stemming from completing the restructuring process and how that better positions the company for success going forward. The slide outlines the 4 main areas of improvement in our business and details how we have significantly improved in each area.

First, we were able to materially delever the capital structure. At the end of 2022, the company had approximately $2.6 billion in gross debt and approximately $2.3 billion of net debt. Post emergence, the company now has $1.25 billion of gross debt and approximately $700 million of net debt. And from a net leverage perspective, the company was around 8.5x at year-end 2022, and now we expect that to be in a range of 1.7x to 2x using the adjusted EBITDA range in our full year expectations that were published as part of the restructuring process in late May.

Next, we have a dramatically improved cash flow profile. Our expectations in the beginning of 2023 for approximately $250 million of annual interest expense has been reduced to approximately $150 million of annual interest expense. We are also laser-focused on driving cash EBITDA growth.

Next, coming out of the restructuring process, we have a much more robust liquidity position. In the past, the company had a challenged liquidity position with cash below target minimum levels prior to filing, and this was impacting our ability to run our business efficiently. Now, we have a healthy liquidity position with cash in excess of $500 million as of June 2023.

Lastly, another significant benefit of the restructuring was that we were able to normalize our vendor relationships. I will cover this in more detail later in the presentation, but we had stretched accounts payable with DPO in excess of 100 days prior to our filing. We have now been able to significantly pay down our trade payables to a more normalized sustainable level.

The benefits of the restructuring transaction are significant and we believe the company is much better positioned to compete and continue winning in the market going forward.

On Slide 8, to reinforce my comments on the previous slide around having a materially delevered capital structure, you can see the post-emergence debt structure that we have in place. The debt restructuring eliminated approximately $2.8 billion of debt outstanding at the time of filing, which had near-term maturities ranging from 2023 to 2026 and replaced it with a $1.25 billion exit term loan maturing in 2028. The exit term loan has an interest rate of SOFR plus 750 basis points. This structure eliminates any near-term capital market refinancing risk and also eliminates the debt overhang for the company's operations and value to equity. The company's recapitalized balance sheet will now be a positive factor in enabling us to compete even more effectively in the commercial markets. Additionally, the exit term loan allows for an Accordion Basket to put in place a revolving credit facility in the near term, which we expect will improve our cost of debt capital going forward and provide additional flexibility.

On Slide 9, we provide details around the new Diebold Nixdorf equity profile. As of this morning, Diebold's common stock has resumed trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DBD and there was approximately 37.5 million shares outstanding. Again, we could not have emerged from this process and relisted without the overwhelming support of our post-restructuring shareholder base. This group of investors is long term and value oriented in nature and have demonstrated their belief in our company and the strong value we provide to banks and retailers globally. As a result of this process, the restruct attachment point for equity investors is at $1.25 billion compared to approximately $2.8 billion for Legacy Diebold Nixdorf at the time of filing, which implies an effective strike in value that is approximately $1.4 billion lower compared to Legacy Diebold Nixdorf.

I will now turn it back over to Octavio to move into our second quarter performance.

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

Thanks, Jim. The next few slides were published last week as part of our earnings announcement, and we wanted to provide a little more color on the call today. So starting on Slide 11.

Overall, we performed well in the second quarter with results reflecting continued demand for our self-service and automation solutions in Banking and Retail, as well as the operational improvements we have implemented over the past year. Both revenue and gross profit were up approximately 8.5% compared to the prior year second quarter, with particular strength in our Banking product business. The net results for the quarter was adjusted EBITDA of $84 million, representing a 19% increase compared with prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 80 basis points.

Going into a little more detail in our Banking and Retail businesses. There are several positive areas to highlight from the quarter. In Banking, ATM shipment units were up 16% year-over-year, and we have been able to stabilize our ATM production at around 15,000 units for 2 consecutive quarters. Due to timing and historical seasonality of our business, we can expect to see quarter-over-quarter variances that are slightly above or below this unit shipment expectations, but we are encouraged by the trend we see developing. ATM revenue units were up 42% year-over-year, which represents 4,500 more units delivered this quarter as compared to second quarter 2022.

With the strong Banking product backlog and factory production improving, we continue to expect strength in Banking products, ultimately driven by demand for our DN Series recyclers.

In Retail, self-checkout unit shipments were up 37% year-over-year. We continue to see customer preference shift towards self-service checkout solutions. We added an additional self-checkout production line in Germany to ensure we can accommodate the increased demand for this offering we see in the second half of the year. Self-checkout revenue units were up 36% year-over-year, representing approximately 1,900 more units delivered during this quarter compared with prior year period. Our self-checkout product sales have a strong service attach rate. And we estimate the vast majority of our self-checkout shipments represent new placements in the market. This has allowed us to grow our self-checkout contract base on a quarter -- on a sequential quarter basis since we started tracking this metric.

While there's still much work to be done in the second half, this is another good quarter, and we can build upon and reinforce we are taking the right steps to improve our operating momentum.

On Slide 12, as I alluded earlier, our product backlog remains strong even as we have been able to deliver more to our customers in the first half of 2023. Going forward, our primary objective will be to accelerate backlog conversion. We will continue to strengthen our supply chain and vendor relationships. As we execute on these fronts, our long-term goal is normalizing backlog to 2x to 2.5x quarterly product revenue.

I have talked a lot about the strength of our product business, and I must also reiterate that it drives the attachment of long-term, stable service and software revenue. This is evident in some of the more notable service wins we had this quarter. In Banking, we secured an ATM as a Service agreement valued at nearly $5 million with a major French financial institution and also won a service and support agreement valued at more than $8 million with one of the largest private banks in Turkey. Similarly, on the Retail side, service activity is strong with a 5-year $24 million agreement with a major supermarket chain in Great Britain and a 3-year $9 million agreement covering a major retailers 1,500 stores in Spain.

I will now turn it over back to Jim to go into more detail on our second quarter performance.

[James Barna, executive]

Thank you, Octavio. Starting on Slide 13.

Banking revenue of $665 million was up approximately 12.5% versus the prior year period, driven primarily by higher product volumes. We continue to benefit from the improving supply chain and logistics environment, which is allowing us to capitalize on strong demand for our DN Series offering. Service revenue was up approximately 3% versus the prior year period, driven by higher installation work that was tied to the strong product delivery in the quarter as well as higher software delivery revenue. Banking gross profit in the second quarter increased by [ $17 million ] year-over-year to $165 million with improved profitability in products from the impact of price adjustments and the benefits of lower logistics costs.

Some of the upside in products was tempered by lower gross profit and service, which was impacted by additional resource costs in North America as we transition to an improved delivery model. To ensure higher customer satisfaction in the region in the first half of the year, we have changed the mix between internal and external resources, adding more internal resources to service the market with greater quality and during the quarter, we had some duplicative costs to support this transition. This resulted in Banking gross margin of 24.8% in the quarter which is down slightly compared to the prior year period and up 110 basis points compared to the first quarter.

Moving to Slide 14. Retail revenue of $252 million was down slightly by 1% versus the prior year period. Retail product revenue benefited from higher self-checkout volume in the quarter and this continues to be an area of growth for the company, but this was offset by lower EPOS and third-party revenue. Service revenue was flat year-over-year as higher service contract revenue driven by growth in our self-checkout contract base was offset by lower software delivery revenue. Retail gross profit in the second quarter increased slightly to $63 million year-over-year. Product margin was up 40 basis points compared to Q2 2022, primarily due to favorable mix of self-checkout units in the quarter as well as improving supply chain and logistics environment.

Service margins were favorable year-over-year due to the benefit of earlier cost savings initiatives and growth in the self-checkout contract base. This resulted in Retail gross margin of 25% in the quarter, which is up 60 basis points compared to the prior year period.

Now on Slide 15, we wanted to share that on a year-to-date basis through the second quarter, we are driving meaningful improvements in revenue and profitability from a year-over-year perspective. Also, as of Q2 2023, we are tracking towards the full year outlook range that was published as part of the restructuring process in late May.

Now turning to Slide 16. We I already covered the highlights earlier in the presentation, but I wanted to spend a little more time on this given the significant impact it has had on normalizing our operations. Throughout the course of 2023, Diebold has reduced its DPO from a high of 113 days to 83 days via increased operational discipline and utilizing proceeds from the DIP facility. We expect to manage to a DPO target of 75 days on a go-forward basis with the goal of further strengthening global supplier relationships.

The company continues to evaluate and implement procurement optimization initiatives to support supplier relationships and reduce supply chain costs. We expect these initiatives to be much more collaborative and mutually beneficial now that we have improved our reliability with suppliers. Also, while it's not explicitly shown in the presentation, another component to our improvement in working capital is the normalization of the deferred revenue balance. This will enable the company to negotiate and bid for new contracts from a position of strength which should provide an opportunity to bolster top line results and expand product margins.

On Slide 17, let me walk you through free cash flow for the quarter. Excluding certain items for the quarter, some that are nonrecurring in nature, free cash flow would have been approximately breakeven. These cash uses in the quarter include: $135 million of payments to vendors to normalize the DPO position, $76 million of burn down on our elevated deferred revenue balance, and approximately $37 million of costs associated with the restructuring transaction. These cash uses effectively represent a short-term investment in the long-term normalization of our working capital position. We expect cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year to exceed $600 million.

Now I will turn it back over to Octavio to cover our outlook.

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

Turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year on Slide 18.

We are committed to deliver and revenue 60,000 ATMs, 35,000 self-checkouts and approximately 134 point-of-sale device units in 2023, in line with what we've disclosed previously. Total revenue is expected to be in the range of $3.65 billion to $3.8 billion, which represents approximately 7.5% year-over-year growth in revenue. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $348 million to $402 million which aligns with the models provided during the debt restructuring process in May. As you can see from the first half results of the year, we are tracking towards the higher end of our range for 2023.

Lastly, moving to Slide 19. Looking out to 2024 and beyond. There is significant opportunity to continue improving our operating efficiency and growing in the market. We wanted to share with you today a high-level view of the sources of additional improvement that we -- that are linked to our continuous improvement mindset. The company will implement a transformation management office to govern both -- the program framework. The key priorities of the program include accelerating revenue growth, optimizing our business model and improving quarterly linearity in our broader performance and operations, all of these priorities will translate into better customer service, improved working capital management, higher quality of earnings and improved EBITDA to free cash flow conversion.

We will maintain our strong governance framework led by our Board of Directors and retain acquired top talent in our employee ranks to implement the enhancements identified in the program. We will be sure to share more details with you as we develop these programs further and quantify the ultimate benefit and value we plan to unlock going forward.

And with that, we would like to now open the call for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from the line of Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson.

[Matt Summerville, analyst]

Thanks. Maybe just start -- obviously, there's a lot we could ask here, but -- let's start in the North America Services business. Can you help me understand in a bit more detail what the issues are when they sort of go away? And help me get comfortable to what you're experiencing is acute and not chronic in that piece of the business?

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

Sure, Matt, and good to hear from you. So -- as you can imagine, for the past years, we've always dealt with a little bit higher attrition across the board for all positions, and we have supplemented that in the service market with third-party resources. As we transition into a stronger company and look at improving customer satisfaction across the board, my strong belief is that service is one of the most important -- or it's -- what's -- the key driver of customer satisfaction. So having more internal resources that can be better trained that can be better managed is key for us going forward.

So during this quarter, we -- during the past couple of months, we've implemented that shift of reducing reliance on third-party resources to service our customers and increasing the number of our own resources. This transition, clearly, there's a little bit of overlap in cost as we want to make this transition as smooth as possible. So we're confident that as we move forward, having a more control over every aspect of our service delivery will be key for us. And this is something that we have a very -- we keep a very close eye on.

[Matt Summerville, analyst]

Got it. And then just as a follow-up, I want to talk about free cash flow linearity. I mean as you guys know, I've followed the company for more than 20 years, trying to drive better earnings and cash flow linearity has been a theme I've probably heard from every management team I've dealt with since I've covered the company. What's different about what you're doing going forward versus what others have tried to do in the past?

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

Thank you, Matt, and thanks for the 20 years covering us. Let me tell you what's different. So the first thing that I would point you to, Matt, is -- and I mentioned this in the call. We have $2.1 billion of service revenue, which should be fairly linear. So we need to make sure that we're managing that correctly and aligning some of our expenses to that solid recurring revenue that we have. The part of the business that can always provide variability is the product part of the business that -- have always had the seasonality of starting slow during the year and then building up as the year progresses, building inventory and then in the last quarters of the year, deploying that inventory and turning it back into cash.

First thing that's different is we -- one, with the backlog that we have, we have very strong visibility of the next, as I said, 12 to 18 months depending on the region of product revenue. So we're planning that revenue and manufacturing aligned to those customer schedules. I would tell you that a second very important thing that we've done through this process, and again, this kind of have been done without the support of our customers. We're actually starting to change some of the behavior that the industry had before where banks would expect us to deliver in bulk and then install throughout the year to a much more linear installation plan that is developed jointly with our customers so that if they need 1,000 devices during the year, we're not planning on building 1,000 devices in Q1 and then deploying them throughout the year. We're planning on building that, in this example, 100 devices every month of the year to meet their installation schedule.

So it's been -- and as I started the call thanking our customers. It's truly been a change in the way we conduct business, a change in the way we plan for our business. And frankly, also a lot of effort around our supply chain, making sure that all our factories are producing product at a stable rate throughout the year, and that, that is clearly aligned to our revenue profile.

That doesn't mean, Matt that every quarter will be the same. We're still always a little bit of seasonality in our business. But once again, with the strong backlog with the close alignment with our own delivery schedules with customers, and frankly, with the supply chain that is now operating at a much better level than what it has in the past 2 years, I can see how we will try to make our quarters a lot more linear.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research.

[Kartik Mehta, analyst]

Octavio. Maybe we could start -- maybe a bigger picture question. Now as the company has reconstituted, what do you think is a realistic top line, bottom line prospects for the company? I know 2023 is a little bit odd because you're working through the backlog. But as we normalize, what do you think is a realistic expectation?

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

I would say that I want to talk about -- too much about the future today. Again, hopefully, you can see the strong performance. We're accelerating revenues. We're tracking very well towards the range that we've provided in our cleansing documents. We're tracking ahead of what we think. I see the end demand for both our self-checkout solutions and for our recycling technology to be very strong going forward. So my expectation is that the company will continue having revenue growth. We're not -- we see more opportunity for revenue growth in Retail than in Banking. But in Banking, we do see that as customers keep using recycling, particularly in North America, we will continue to see strong demand for that.

And as I said, our focus is we've cleaned up our balance sheet. We've enhanced our liquidity position. Our focus now needs to shift and how do we convert EBITDA into cash flow. That has been one of the things that me and the management team and everyone in the company is now focused on. We need to make sure that this company operates with that mentality of being a strong returner of cash to the business. And that's where we're really, really focused on.

And in order to achieve that Kartik, it doesn't have to be a super high-growth model. We will clearly grow. But -- but it's more the discipline of operating and translating that strong EBITDA growth that we expect into cash as we move forward.

[Kartik Mehta, analyst]

And Octavio, obviously, one of your competitors has been talking a lot about taking market share because of the situation you are in. As you look kind of at the backlog and what's happened, conversations with our customers, both Banking and Retail, what is that -- what do you see as the market share or what you might have lost or gained as a company as you came out of bankruptcy?

[Octavio Marquez, executive]

So Kartik, as I mentioned, I'm extremely grateful to all our customers because through this restructuring process, the multiple conversations I had with global retailers or our banking customers, both large, medium and credit unions, community banks were all very positive.

I would tell you that when I look at the numbers, our self-checkout shipments and our self-checkout revenue grew and remember, our focus in retail is growing in that self-checkout space, as we believe that the self-checkout journey will be the predominant driver of growth. So in Retail, most of the shipments that we do are new placements in the market. So I don't know how that plays into markets, but it's clearly new placements in the market.

And when I look at our Banking and again, we've talked a lot about units over the past couple of quarters. If you see how much our ATM shipments and revenue is growing, I find it hard to believe that we're not growing faster than the market. So that -- the ultimate test of that will be at the end of the year when the analysts that count those things give out their numbers, but I feel fairly confident that we are in a strong position and -- and to be honest, we didn't experience any cancellations during the process. What's more I was encouraged by so many customers coming to me and asking me, how can we help Diebold during this period? How can we help you because we need what you do, and we're rooting for you.

So -- so again, I'll defer to the end of the year, Kartik, when the people that count these things tell us how we did. But I feel fairly optimistic that we're doing everything we need to either maintain our share or grow our share in the market.

[Operator]

We have no further questions. I will turn the call back to Chris Sikora for any closing remarks.

[Christopher Sikora, executive]

Thank you. With that, we will end today's call. And if there are any other follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to me in Investor Relations, and thank you for the time today.

[Operator]

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes our call, and you may now disconnect your lines.