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Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to Oriola's Q2 Results Webcast. My name is Tua Stenius-Örnhjelm and I'm from Oriola's Investor Relations. With me today, I have our CEO, Katarina Gabrielson; and CFO, Mats Danielsson. After the presentation, we will open up for your questions and you can start to send in your questions already during the presentation.
Please be aware that we will focus on questions relating to Oriola's business and financial development and take questions on Kronans Apotek only within a limited scope. We are recording this webcast and the recording will be available on our website later today. And next, we have the disclaimer that we all should be aware of.
And without further ado, Katarina, please go ahead.
Thank you, Tua. And then you can see the agenda for today. We will start as normally with the quarter 2 highlights, going via the operating environment and segments to the financial review and then go to the Q&A, as Tua mentioned before. So let's then start with the highlights for quarter 2.
In quarter 2, I'm really pleased to see that one of the strategic initiatives that we have, the goal about the strong partnership and customer centricity has really been in the focus for this quarter. We can see that the Distribution business has been growing very well and also had good profitability due to the strong partnerships that we have in this area.
We also have the strong partnerships in the Wholesale business and I'm also really proud to say that during the quarter, we have the all-time high again, like I also said in the first quarter regarding the NPSs with our customers overall the segments. This has resulted in that the sales growth is supported by both segments and we ended up at EUR 494 million. That is 12% growth in the net sales.
The sales margin has improved, especially with the inside the Distribution business segment and especially in the services side and we landed on EUR 42.2 million compared to EUR 40 million last year.
We haven't talked so much about the services side in Distribution before. In the Distribution, of course, it's mainly to distribute pharmaceuticals to the pharmacies and hospitals and other downstream customers. But it's also about doing certain kind of things outside this one that is very close connected to the distribution, like taking medicines from the pharmacies that is then in the end of expiring date and send that for -- to destroy it and also doing some repackaging for the pharmaceutical companies. This is something that has been growing very well during the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA was slightly above previous year despite higher costs. And we will now, for the rest of the year, focus very much on these costs and really see that how can we drive efficiency even better. We have started by having more filling ratio in our [ totes ]. And we have also had really strict cost control now and implemented a recruitment freeze as well as looking at all the costs that we then don't need to have to really drive the profitability in the segments.
The ERP project that we have talked about earlier will be launched during the year and the first deployment is in Sweden and its approaches. We have during the quarter 2, started with user acceptance tests and that will continue during the summer and also in the autumn. We will also then, of course, now go into the testing phases with outside customers and also do trainings to get in the organization.
In the joint venture company, Kronans Apotek, we are not really happy with the result and we can see that the result was burdened by the high costs in -- also in the second quarter. The market share in Kronans Apotek has been strengthening with double-digit growth in the e-commerce side, while the brick-and-mortar sales was more flat. And I know that Mats will come back to this later in the presentation.
So overall, I would say, strong partnerships and strong Distribution business, also strong growth in the Wholesale business, but really to continue to be aware of the costs.
In the operating environment, we can see that the value of the pharmaceutical distribution market has been growing in both Sweden and Finland. In Sweden, it has been growing with around 5% and in Finland, around 3%. We can still see that the consumer confidence is weak in both Finland and Sweden.
And this is not affecting the pharmaceutical side as much as the self-care side. And in self-care, we have, for example, the skin care products, where we can see a shift from the more -- not profitable, more expensive products and the customers is then changing to more cheaper products in these segments, which will, of course, affect us if it's going to happen.
The cost inflation has slowed down and we can see more normalized energy and fuel prices as well as we now know also what the labor inflation will be since all the negotiations with the unions has been completed during the quarter.
We have also earlier talked about availability situation in Europe of pharmaceuticals. And that is, of course, also affected what -- with the tariff situation in U.S. In Europe, we can overall see that there starts to be a change towards more products from Europe and also from the Asian markets. But we can see that the challenges in availability will continue and that's also something that, of course, is affecting us in the long run.
Then going to our segments. The Distribution segments, which consists then of pharmaceuticals that we distribute to pharmacies, hospitals as well as veterinarian and other customers downstream. In this segment, we can see a net sales growth of 11% and we landed on EUR 398 million during the quarter 2. The growth was particularly strong in Sweden, but we also had growth in Finland.
Across the whole Distribution segment, we can see that this growth happened and it was supported by the sales both from the existing portfolio that we have and also the new onboarded customers that we have talked about both in quarter 1 and the end of last year. And we can see also that this new onboarded customers that is then completely onboarded now will benefit and support the second half sale -- second half of 2025 sales. So that's an uplift what we have compared to last year.
This is also showing the long processes we have that from the signing of a contract, it takes some months before we really can benefit from the new contracts. In the quarter, we have not lost any major -- not lost any contracts. So that is also supporting the second half of the future of 2025. We also had good growth in the services sales and also, of course, we're benefiting from the overall market growth.
The adjusted EBITDA improved to EUR 8.3 million compared to EUR 6.1 million last year. So the Distribution segment is performing quite well. And of course, improvement is driven by the invoicing growth. We can see that we have had higher costs in these segments.
And we have had temporary storage capacity constraints and also some high peaks in ordering that is resulting in extra costs during the quarter. This is something we have worked quite heavily with now and that means that during the second half, this will be in more control and should also lower the cost burden in this segment.
What I also mentioned before is the customer focus that we have had or have overall in the company. And we can see that the Distribution segment is benefiting from that one. We have a lot of customer that is like we have discussions with new customers. So that is one of the work to really get the net sales continue to grow and also get new customer contracts for the future.
In Finland, we have also during the -- during June, in fact, had a legislative proposal regarding a new pharmacy reform. That has been presented and this -- it's now out for comments and it will be commented during the August month. The plan is to implement this by 1st of January 2026. For Oriola, I will say that this is a possibility for the future.
We have been building the capabilities and we can see that the good distribution practice that we have and following in our distribution channel is something we have now implemented to be able to do also in the retail sector. So when this is happening, we will be positively -- it will be possible for us to also then benefit from this one.
Then going to the Wholesale segment. In the Wholesale segment, we can see that the net sales was growing even more than in the Distribution segment. In the Wholesale segment, we were growing with 18% and landed on EUR 96 million. So the base is, of course, a little bit lower. We can see that the growth was primarily driven by the Wholesale business in Sweden and especially in the parallel imported sector, where we can see that weight loss medicines is really something that is driving this growth.
Finland, we can see that the sales to veterinarians is growing, while the overall sales is quite modest in this area. The adjusted EBITDA, though was declining to EUR 2.1 million compared to EUR 3.1 million last year. In this segment, it's the same as we had in quarter 1. We have like planned increases in the personnel. It's the kind of investments we have to really get this now long-term strategic goal in the wholesale business to succeed.
And we can also see that the parallel imports that we talked about before as a good part of the net sales growth has an unfavorable margin in this segment. And that means that the adjusted EBITDA has been declining.
We can also see in this segment that the seasonal products like sun care and allergy products is affecting. I know that it's today is real hot outside. But in the same time, we also know that during the spring time, it was not so much sun outside and that is something that is then affecting the profitability since these products is having higher margins than the parallel imported ones.
In Advisory Services, Medinfo, the Danish company that we were acquiring in the beginning of the year, has now been integrated completely to Oriola. And also the digital and data services that we have discussed in the beginning of the year has -- there, we can see double-digit growth from low levels, but it's also promising for the future.
And like I said before, the Wholesale segment is something where we can really see it is important for us as a long-term strategic goal and it will also benefit our profitability. We just now need to really get the profitability down to the bottom line. And that's something we'll focus on with cost control and also higher efficiency during the second half of this year.
I'm also really happy to say that we have now, during the quarter, have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. And we have also now then the possibility to talk about our strong commitment and our also goals in -- that has been approved.
Our targets are to commit to reach the net zero greenhouse gas emission across the value chain by 2050. And the goal is divided in 2 areas. It's the near-term goals where we commit to reduce the absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission by -- with 67% by 2030 from the 2023 base year. This means that we also need to work very close together with our suppliers to reach these targets.
We also have a long-term target and that's we commit to reduce the absolute Scope 1, 2 and 3 of the greenhouse gas emissions with 90% by 2050 from the 2023 base year. What we need now to do is to really to update our sustainability agenda and also work on the climate transition plan.
To be able to achieve this, we need to work very close together with everyone in the value chain and also with the suppliers because 99% of our emission comes from the purchased goods and also services that we have in Scope 3. So we will not reach this target without really focusing on the whole value chain. But we will come back to that later in this year.
Now Mats to the financial review.
Thank you, Katarina, and welcome to a warm and sunny Espoo. We will now go through the financials, starting from the from the top line has been a good growth in both invoicing and net sales, both year-to-date and for the quarter. Especially in the quarter, we had a good growth also in the Wholesale segment that was affecting the net sales growth.
It has been a combination of both the current customers' volumes have been growing, but it's also related to the new customers that we have been onboarding during the beginning of the year this year. Also the Swedish krona has been strengthening. So the -- if you look at the year-to-date number of plus 11%, so there's actually a 2 percentage unit increase in -- related to the strengthening of the currency.
Then if we go to the sales margin, just to note and to repeat that the sales margin for us is important and the sales margin is a combination of distribution fees that we receive for products and also additional services that we do, and it's the Wholesale segment, the margin from that, and then it's the advisory sales that we perform.
The sales margin growth is really important also if we look at the improvement of the profitability in the company because that will add a lot -- should add a lot of profitability to the bottom line.
The quarter -- in the quarter, we had a growth of the sales margin of 6%, EUR 2.2 million. If we look at year-to-date, it's a 5% increase. It's EUR 3.8 million more than last year year-to-date. Mostly -- the sales margin increase now is mostly generated -- or it's generated from the Distribution segment.
If we look at the adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, EUR 8 million last year, EUR 8.1 million -- no, sorry, EUR 8.1 million this year, EUR 8 million last year. The graph is a bit strange because we had a positive impact of an adjusting item last year. So we did a bit better this year than last year. Year-to-date, we are slightly behind last year with EUR 100,000.
We have quite big adjusting items. We are now fully into the ERP project. So that is affecting quite a lot. So we have EUR 6.5 million in adjusting items. We also have a translation difference from the sales of Svensk dos that is affecting the adjusting items. The Distribution is driving the improved EBITDA. Wholesale is having a negative development compared to last year. I will get back to that when we come to the segments also.
Distribution segment. First, of all invoicing, 90% comes from -- the invoicing comes from the Distribution segment. There has been a good growth, 12% in the quarter and 11% year-to-date. It is coming from existing customers having volume growth, but also from the new customers that were onboarded beginning of the year. And we have had in -- especially in quarter 2, there has been a good sale of additional services.
So if we look on the right-hand side, we have the adjusted EBITDA in the segment that is increasing from EUR 6.1 million to EUR 8.3 million in the quarter and from EUR 12.4 million to EUR 15.4 million year-to-date, so EUR 3 million increase. The increase is coming from the volume, the customers -- the new customers and the current volume that we have been increasing.
We have also been able to make deliveries, improve the efficiency on the freight cost. We have been able to have a better fill rate. So we have really gained on that. On the other hand, we have had some more cost also to -- due to the volumes we have been having, especially in Sweden, some extra storage costs that is included in the EBITDA. And we have had some extra costs related that we -- related to the volatility in orders and the handling of the goods in -- especially in the second quarter.
Then if we look at the Wholesale segment, good 18% growth in net sales, a big part of that coming from a growth in Sweden and 13% year-to-date, which we consider to be on a good level. If we -- on the right-hand side, we have the adjusted EBITDA declining from EUR 3.2 million to EUR 2.1 million in the quarter. We have had unfavorable product mix.
We have not -- the weather has been affecting also and we have some more costs that we have invested in the segment compared to last year. So the year-to-date number is also declining from EUR 6.6 million to EUR 4.5 million in EBITDA. We are now, like Katarina said, we are very much focusing on the profitability of the -- both Distribution and Wholesale segment to get the sales margin and the pass-through margin to go down all the way to the EBITDA also in both segments.
Looking at the net profit, I would highlight 2 things. We have some additional costs from now affecting the net income, big part, ERP project. We have costs related to that. And we have some cost now in impairment and in the cost part related to Svensk dos. Svensk dos is not affecting the cash part, but it's still in the result. Totally EUR 13.8 million minus those 2 items. The other elements are developing positively compared to last year.
If we look at the cash flow, it's positive, better than last year, even though we have the reported EBITDA is much lower than last year due to the fact that we have the adjusting items.
Net debt on a good level, no big change from last quarter. It can be noted that we have -- we reported in June already that we have been renewing the revolving credit facility with the same banks and terms are quite close to the old one also. So no big changes in that, amount is the same also.
Looking at the financial position. Gearing is, continue on a good level. Equity ratio, of course, is burdened by the extra cost that we have, ERP, we have the dos impairment and the cost for the translation difference and we have the negative result in krona. So we are down on a 13% equity ratio.
Kronans Apotek, not a very good disappointment for the quarter. EBITDA, minus EUR 2.6 million compared to EUR 0.6 million. The brick-and-mortar not growing, had a good growth in e-commerce, but not helping up the result, quite a lot of cost in the operations, and there is work ongoing to improve the profitability and get the -- all the transformation projects over and done during this year.
Year-to-date, EBITDA on minus EUR 1.7 million compared to minus EUR 3.8 million last year. Still the loss for the period is minus EUR 7.7 million compared to minus EUR 9.5 million last year. We are not really happy with this and the work has to continue to improve the profitability of Kronans.
Then the outlook, we expect the H2 to improve from last year. So we have kept the outlook that we had previously that we will increase from the previous year.
Thank you. That was...
We still have like the summary to be honest. So it's like...
Yes, you have the summary.
I have the summary still. The key takeaways. And I will say that even though that you see the EBITDA level like maybe like some more improvements to be done, I'm really proud to say that the sales growth and the sales margin improvement has really been there and especially in the Distribution business, but also from the Wholesale side.
And we will, of course, focus very much now on second half, both to continue to grow the sales and sales margin to not lose that one, but also really secure the pass-through margin that we talked about here before, both me and Mats. It's important that we get especially the Wholesale business to now really also show more positive profitability and not like, of course, lose the profitability in the Distribution business.
And then I'm also really pleased that we have the science-based targets and climate targets approved by SBTi because that's important for us, both now but especially in the long run for the company parts.
But with that, please, Tua.
Yes. All right. So thank you, Katarina and Mats for your presentations. So we now open up for the Q&A. And there are already some questions in the chat, but I just want to remind everyone that if you have a question, please send them through to us and we will take them one by one. And we'll focus first on the questions relating to Oriola's business and financial development and then later on, on the questions on Kronans Apotek.
So the first question is relating to the cost level for the group. And I think that's for you, Mats, to take. So was there any specific reason for group costs in Q2 to be EUR 1 million more than usual?
I think that's -- the EUR 1 million is a combination of quite many things. But in general, I would say that we have had -- there is a -- the main part is related to IT costs. We have more personnel now than we had last year within IT. We also have some general -- in the other support functions, we have a few persons more that are adding to the cost.
Then I know that we also had the change in the structure by beginning of this year. So there might be some costs that are handled a bit different than last year. But those are the main parts of that cost increase.
All right. So then continuing on the group costs. So on an adjusted EBITDA basis, should the level seen during H1 be considered an indicator for the run rate going forward?
I would say that it's -- the cost part, the adjustment part can be seen quite close to a run rate now in the coming quarters, yes.
Good. Then a couple of questions on the segment. So for the Distribution segment, do you expect the good development to translate into improved relative margins during H2?
I will say, yes, because we can also see now that what we have done now in the first half and especially in quarter 1 is to onboard the new customers. And we will really benefit from that in the end of the year. And we can also see that the efficiency part that we have done when we come to, for example, what I mentioned before with the total filling rates and so on.
That's the work we have done that we will also benefit from the rest of the year. And also some other like projects that we have. You always need to work with the distribution every day, of course, to make it more efficient, but we will benefit from that, yes.
Good. Then on the Wholesale, with the good growth in Q2, should we expect more focus on growth investments or a shift towards profitability?
Definitely profitability. Of course, we shouldn't lose like the growth in this aspect. It's important that we grow. But it's important that we grow profitable. We need really to like get the pass-through margin down from the sales to the profitability. And that's going for both parts that we have in the Wholesale segment, both the part that is then going to the products and then the Advisory businesses.
Good. Then there's a question relating to the adjusting items. So there is the logistics operations feasibility study. Can you comment what this is related to?
Do you want me? Yes, I can take it. Like we announced before, we are checking or like investigating what we should do in Finland with the distribution side. And that is something that is still ongoing and we haven't taken a decision. And of course, it will most likely be quite big project. So when we are ready, we will announce, of course, what we will do and so on. But we are still checking that and we'll announce in due time.
It's under investigation.
Yes.
Good. Then there is a couple of questions relating to the customers on the distribution side of the business. So a customer moved to your own inventory last year. Was this impact visible in Q2 numbers? And if so, how much was the organic growth, excluding this impact?
It was shown also, but do you remember the growth?
I mean we have not only excluded that. But if we look at the invoicing, then we have -- the 10% was the corrected…
Number, yes.
Corrected numbers on -- without the kind of changes in there.
And this is also the last quarter now that we will be affected. So it's like -- but it's still a good growth, but 10% growth.
Okay. And then moving on to -- with the customers. So do you have more new customers to be onboarded in H2, meaning should we expect this pace to accelerate towards the end of the year?
We have a long like line of customers. There is no like this big as we have had in first -- in quarter 1, quarter 2, but there is good customer traction ongoing. We haven't lost any customers. So I will say that we will continue to grow like we have done with the market and also with these new customers that we have.
Okay. So another question about the customers. So how profitable are your new onboarded customers? Are they more -- are they more profitable than your average profitability in the segment?
I can say like this, we're always working with the profitability on the customers. And even if like you have an average customer, we will always try to increase the average. And that's both me and Mats goal, to be honest, I will say, and also something we should do. We will not comment like the specific customers. We can't do that for several reasons, of course. But of course, our aim is always to get more profitable customers onboarded.
Good. Then going back to the Wholesale segment. So the total costs increased more than sales growth in Q2. Do you expect you will be able to turn this trend in H2 already in Q3? And what kind of measures are you taking?
We have already started to do this shift, to be honest. So for example, like if you go for like the pure cost part, it's very much about now not investing anymore in the wholesale business in the same pace as we have done. So we have recruitment freeze, for example. We're also really, really cautious when it come to, for example, travels and some other costs that is not directly benefiting to the profitability or increased sales.
Yes, looking at activities that we should not do.
Yes, exactly. And it's also about, of course, always look at the efficiency. So we have taken parts already now in the quarter 2 that will affect positively in quarter 3 and quarter 4.
Okay. Good. Thanks. And then a question relating to the one-off costs for the ERP. So they were EUR 3 million in Q2. Is this a good proxy for ERP costs for Q3? And do you expect any other one-offs in Q3?
Well, I mean, yes, it will be, on average, something like that. It's hard to say between the quarters, how -- if it's a bit more or a bit less. We have no -- we don't have any other topics that we know for the adjusting items right now for the quarter 3, I would say. Not any big ones.
Good. Thank you. And then going back to the Distribution segment or actually, this would affect also the Wholesale segment, but it's the deregulation in the Finnish market. So in what ways could this benefit your business? Are there any risks that the outcome could be negative?
I would say it's hard to say before we know exactly what will happen. The change now is a minor one. And if you listen to the government in Finland, there is most likely something else that also should be proposed further on. Right now, it's a minor part of the OTC portfolio that will -- that is proposed to be released on the Finnish market. And that will then happen 1st of January. That means, of course, that this will then be going in other channels.
We are doing like so that we are ready to then launch this or like be able to deliver this to the new channels. So that's what we can do right now. What we will benefit from this one is that we already have these customers, most of them. And it's also a possibility that we can also sell other products to other customers. So that's the benefit.
Risks depending on how the legislation goes and of course, how the customers act, but that's nothing we can say anything more about right now, but we will monitor this one closely.
Good. Thank you. We still have a couple of questions and those are basically mostly related to the guidance. And so if there's -- just a reminder that keep on sending those questions to us, there is a small lag between the webcast and when we get the questions in.
So about the EBITDA for 2025, you aim EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA to grow this year. What does growth mean in the context of your guidance? Does it imply above 3% growth?
Yes, it's more than 3% growth in EBITDA growth. And in general, you can say that now we are at the same level as last year, but we -- our guidance is growing, of course, then we need to improve from the status where we are now. And we -- like I said, we have had quite some extra costs now due to several reasons during the first half year and we expect to eliminate those and get the effect from the sales margin to go through the profit and loss.
And also, we normally have a stronger second half than the first half.
Okay. So then there's questions related to the cost side. Cost side, so given the cost efficiency goals, are there particular segments or geographies where you have identified some potential?
I will say yes. I will not go through all of them now, of course. But overall, you can see like when you look at the figures we are like presenting today, of course, in the Wholesale segment, both advisory and the assortment part of that one is an area where we really need to get the profitability up.
Then the efficiency part. And if we go for efficiency, that will, of course, make both the Distribution segment and the Wholesale segment in a better profitability situation. But it's like you know overall, but I would say Wholesale.
Good. So just to summarize, so could you walk us through on how you will manage to improve EBITDA in H2 to reach the guidance?
Of course, we will continue then what we say also in the key takeaways here to continue sales growth. The difference is that we should then also get the pass-through margin in these cases. And we have then implemented now strict cost control. We have the recruitment freeze. We have really the costs like the unnecessary cost as much would phrase it under control.
It's also about increasing now the efficiency, continue to work with filling ratio is a really big cost. You can say transportation is one of the biggest costs in Oriola to really work with that one. And the other big costs, like we said, the personnel to really like make sure that we don't get extra people into the organization, but doing the other one. That's the 2 biggest areas that we have.
Good. Thank you. And then there is a last question about Kronans Apotek. So Oriola expects Kronans Apotek to reach profitability level representing industry benchmark by 2027. This means that EBITDA should be yearly about EUR 40 million. Could you name at least one key issue to achieve this expectation?
I will say, if I take one, I would say to really like -- I know that we, during the quarter now have made one company with Kronans. We have merged the legal entities. There is still some parts that need to be finalized to really do the full integration. And the biggest one in this is to really get the ERP system in place. So we have one ERP system in Kronans. And that is planned to be taken -- to be part during the autumn. In fact, not the full autumn even, but when that is done, I think we have the fundaments in Kronas to really start the profitability journey.
Good. Thank you. So that was the last questions on the Q&A for now. And I would like to remind everyone that we have the next report on, the Q3 report on 30th of October. And until then, if you have any follow-ups or questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We are here to help you.
But otherwise, thank you, everyone, for joining the call today and we wish everyone a good summer.
Have a great summer.
Nice summer.