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I think we are ready. So welcome to Kid's Q4 Earnings Presentation. My name is Petter Nyström, and I'm the Equity Analyst here in ABG Sundal Collier. From Kid today, we have the CEO, Anders Fjeld with us; and also the CFO, Eystein Lund. [Operator Instructions] Please note that my understanding is that Kid will show a video before we start the Q&A session. By that, I'll leave the word over to Anders, CEO of Kid.
Thank you, Petter, and morning to you on the line and the few spectators here, which we appreciate. It has been a demanding quarter, but I'm very happy to -- and proud to present results and achievement that our team has delivered during Q4 and 2021. As I said, it's been an unusual last quarter of the year caused by the reduced capacity in the global value chain, hence, delayed products delivered for our peak season. However, after a slow start to the quarter, we saw significantly increase in revenues from late November as our classic Christmas assortment arrived in our stores, and this resulted in a top line growth of 2.5% for the quarter. The top line growth for our omnichannel in Norway -- sorry, for our e-commerce business in Norway was plus 4.7%, and in Hemtex, minus 0.8%. Bear in mind that we have extremely good figures in Q4 2020, and I'm proud to announce that we managed to increase our gross margin from 63.1% till 63.4% in the quarter despite the challenging logistics situation. On an annually basis, we have a volume equivalent approximately 3,020 foot containers that arrived in our warehouse in Norway and Sweden. And the work that has been done by our colleagues to deliver on time and at the right costs has made us able to achieve these strong figures, both when it comes to revenue and also especially when it comes to gross margin in the quarter. The EBITDA had an increase, so excludes for IFRS16, it increased by NOK 2 million to NOK 301.4 million. And we then passed also a milestone, the NOK 3 billion revenue milestone for the fiscal year. [indiscernible]. Sorry about that, bit technical issue. We passed the NOK 3 billion revenue milestone for the fiscal year, and we had the seventh consecutive quarter with a year-on-year EPS growth. So the Board proposed a half year dividend of the payment of NOK 4 per share following the strong financial performance and the solid liquidity position, which Eystein will come back to you later. Yes. To sum up 2021, I'm proud of our performance and our strong results. We have a group revenue growth of 3.4% and, as I said, past the NOK 3 billion mark. And if you look back to 2019, our annually growth has been 15% on our top line. The EBITDA grew of 10.6%, and again, an annually growth of 29% from 2019. And the margin -- EBITDA margin came from 17.8% in 2020 to 19.1% in 2021. And to sum it up, with the EPS growth of 8% to NOK 9.46 per share. The online growth has been good as well in 2021 with lots of changes to the e-commerce platform. We had a growth of 21.7% and it accounted for 10.2% of the total revenue in group. And then in May 2019, we announced the acquisition of Hemtex. Our first goal was to achieve NOK 100 million EBITDA in 2021 last year, and our second goal was to achieve NOK 150 million in 2023. We have crushed our goal, and we achieved an EBITDA, except the IFRS16 effects, sorry, at NOK 172 million, crossing the first goal and also the goal for 2023. Which I must say, I'm extremely proud and humbled for all the work that has been done by our employees in Hemtex and also in Kid.
Congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations to you, too. And then which we are, of course, proud of, we have shown that we've been able to handle the difficult supplies situation. And to sum it up, the margin in 2021 has an increase of the record strong margin in 2020, ended up at 62.6%. And the full year dividend, which Eystein will come back to you later, as -- is very good, too. So what have we done in Q4? It's been a very challenging quarter. We -- as the last step of our e-commerce upgrade, we launched -- we didn't have an e-commerce platform for Estonia, but we launched a new platform for Estonia in the quarter. So now, we have e-commerce platform in all 4 countries where we have physical stores. At the end of Q3, we implemented Click & Collect in Hemtex that drives traffic and also store revenue to our physical stores, and the way that has been implemented is very positive for the time to come. One of -- what we find the most interesting results we have achieved during the quarter is the introduction of a broader assortment of seasonal products, Christmas products in Hemtex. The results has been very, very good, and it shows there's a further potential to introduce more seasonal product in Hemtex. And we did also pilot the Funkle lamp range in Hemtex in the quarter in a few stores, and we will introduce more. We will introduce Funkle into more Hemtex stores during 2022. And also, as I said, we will probably widen the product offering of Christmas products in 2022. Next time, we will get ready for Christmas. Widening, expanding and refurbishing stores is also important growth drivers. We were very busy during the quarter. We opened 5 new stores and 6 stores were refurbished or -- and/or relocated. Which is, as I said, is an important growth driver, especially for Hemtex, where there's lots to be done when it comes to relocation and refurbishment of our store base. And I'm proud to say that we also raised NOK 2.2 million in the Pink Ribbon campaign in Norway and also the SOS Children's Village that we support in the Swedish market. And as you know, the COVID situation has been tough to handle. But again, our company culture and the hard work delivered by my colleagues, we've been able to achieve fantastic results. And also, probably the countries where we saw the most stringent regulations were in Finland and in Sweden during the quarter. And on short notice, we adapted, and that's the result you can see in the figures today. So with that said, Eystein, I will leave next slides for you of [indiscernible].
Perfect. So then, it's my privilege to start by repeating the revenue figures that are all known to you as we reported them on 10th of January. So no need then to repeat that the revenues increased by 2.5%, with a decline in Kid Interior and steady growth in Hemtex. The overall picture is that Kid Interior was behind both in October and November, but that was almost fully compensated by an increase in December. In Hemtex, we saw growth all through the quarter, but also with the material increase in December. And the reason for the slow start is that the seasonal products arrived late. Normally, we will -- and China being the most challenging country. And this is, of course, due to the global overseas freight situation. So normally, seasonal products will arrive in late September, maybe early October. This year, they only arrived late November, maybe early December. So we realized that our stores during this first part of the quarter was not, and also our online site, was not really inspiring to our customers. We were lacking the seasonal products that would normally inspire our customers to visit the website or step into the stores. And this clearly proves that -- but when the seasonal products actually arrived in early December, late November, early December. It basically exploded, and this clearly proves that seasonal products only accounting for around 20% of the revenue is important to drive traffic both to the customer -- both to the online site and also to our stores. So it's important to drive the all-year products, the sales of our all-year products. In Hemtex, we are happy to see that our customers are embracing the introduction of new products. Our premium bed line Egyptian cotton has become a bestseller, and in my personal opinion, that's something you all should have at your homes. And do not forget to add scented candles, which have also been a success in Sweden. So all in all, I would say that we are satisfied with the quarter given the factors that we actually cannot influence. And especially with the organization as Anders Fjeld already mentioned, adapting to these changes and delays in delivery schedules. Gross margin. We are reporting -- we are reporting a rock solid gross margin for the quarter. You should keep in mind that we have full control of our value chain and we have an extensive toolbox, enabling us to adjust prices, adjust campaigning and rebating. We have clear visibility on FX rates due to our hedging policy. We have the ability to adjust quality of products, and we can decide on ordering products or canceling products on rather short notice. And finally, we can also decide on product development and innovation. This, combined with the fact that 80% of our overall turnover is all-year products, makes it a short way for us to market. We can easily adapt, rather, quickly adapt. So despite this freight cost situation, freight delays and freight cost situation that we have seen since August, September last year, we were prepared and we are able to raise the gross margin by 0.3 percentage points to 63.4%. Perhaps we will get back to freight costs, but we do see some signals indicating that the market are maybe normalizing. It's too early to conclude, and we will see increased or higher levels of -- not increase, sorry, higher levels of freight cost in Q1, but I think it's fair to say that our toolbox has been changed in Q1.EBITDA. We report an increased EBITDA of NOK 3 million, including IFRS16 and NOK 2 million excluding IFRS16. Explained by an increased gross profit of NOK 6 million, which is basically due to the increased margin, volumes are more or less the same. Furthermore, other operating revenue is up by NOK 5 million which is due to a non-recurring payout from the Swedish pension association. This applies to all Swedish companies, and our part of that payment it was NOK 5 million in the quarter. This is offset by an increased employee benefit expenses of NOK 11 million, whereas OpEx, other OpEx was down by NOK 2 million. So I would argue that the payout regarding pensions is a non-recurring item when analyzing the Q4 performance. However, one should also note that we benefited from NOK 8 million in COVID reductions last year, but only NOK 3 million this year, this quarter. So in total, this more or less balances out. The NOK 5 million from the pension fund balances out the changes in COVID effects. So basically, when you see an improved EBITDA of NOK 2 million, in my mind, that represents the improvement of the business as such. Cash flow is lower in Q4 this year -- not this year, but in 2021 compared to 2020, mainly or basically only explained by higher inventory. We have an unusually high inventory at year-end, and that's caused by 3 main factors. First of all, and the most important one, earlier deliveries of goods. We have decided to place orders and have deliveries earlier, both of seasonal, spring and summer products. And those products, you would really like to see because they are really nice. And we have also earlier deliveries of all-year products. That's the main reason for the increased inventory, and we are not worried about the risk in inventory. We're really comfortable about the inventory levels. Also, the inventory is higher because of increased number of stores, and we are expanding our product categories. Some of the main reason being earlier deliveries, but also adding new stores and increased categories will explain basically the whole increase in inventory. And part of that increase is due to goods on boats or on the sea, which has no cash effect on the net working capital as such, but it increases the inventory, but it's offset by debt to suppliers or other operations. So again, we see no risk in inventory going into 2022. Dividend. We are suggesting -- the Board are suggesting a dividend of NOK 4, and adding the NOK 4.6 already paid in November, this represents a 91% payout ratio, equal to the payout ratio of 2020. But still an increase in the nominal amount. The further details on the dates, et cetera, are given here, I won't go through them.But I think it's fair to say that we care about our customers, and we certainly care about our shareholders. Thank you.
Okay. To sum up, the slide about the outlook. We have, in 2022, also an extremely strong pipeline for optimizing the [ store ] portfolio. You will see new store openings, and you will see high activity when it comes to enlarging store, refurbishing and relocating stores, so we are busy at the moment opening new stores and refurbishing stores. As we announced earlier, the project of opening a warehouse for Hemtex goes according to plan. We hope to start the bidding process within a few weeks, and this -- hopefully, we will open the new warehouse during spring in 2023. And again, the freight situation, which we've been challenged during this Q4, and both when it comes to the delays and the spot rates it's been challenging, but we are quite confident that we will challenge this situation. And as Eystein said, we have adapted to the delays. So -- to ensure that we have the products for the season, we have booked some of our freights that will arrive in our warehouse a bit earlier, to make sure that we have Easter products for Easter and spring products for spring. And I'm very confident about the freight situation, however, we will handle it in the first half of 2022.And again, when it comes to summer and spring, the range of product that has been expanded from last year, where we did a test sale of, for instance, outdoor furniture in Hemtex. That was highly successful. We will now widen this product range for Hemtex and also for Kid. It's been one of our success the last year, so I'm happy and I'm looking forward to when our stores will have the new spring and summer collection, both outdoor furniture and lots of other, that has been enlarged for enlarged volume also for this spring and summer. So we really look forward to that. And with that said, I will try to switch over and show you a video, before the Q&A session, from a store opening downtown Oslo. This is from Storgata, which is approximately twice the size of a normal Kid store. We will use this store to do some tests when it comes to how to create inspiring stores. We know that inspiration is the key driver within our business for the customers to -- that drive sales. We will also do some testing when it comes to new products. So this film is from November, so you will see some Christmas products. I will try to be a technical engineer here. Petter, do you see the video now? Because we don't.
No, it's fully black screen here.
Okay. Is that okay now?
Still a black screen here.
Yes. It's like, during COVID, we should have learned how to do this, but...
We also learned that it takes a few seconds before we get it to work, but we always get it to work. So I think we should give it a couple of seconds.
Is that better? You see it now?
Yes. Now, it's much better.
Okay. We will try the second one [indiscernible]. [Presentation]
Thank you. So I hope this is inspiring, and if you did not buy a gift for your wife or your husband last Valentine's day, there's still a chance. There is probably a Kid or Hemtex store close to you, or then we have our e-commerce sites. So with that said, we will open up for questions. So Petter?
Yes. Thank you, and thank you for showing that inspiring video. So we have a couple of questions actually, so we'll start with the first one coming from Markus. How did the average basket development through Q4 and in January? Any comments on volume versus price effects?
So again, the question was on January, Eystein ?
Q4 and January.
Q4 and January. We do not give specific numbers on basket size or volumes, but we have increase in prices, you have seen that. We also have increase in volume. I think I will stop with that. In terms of January, we do not change our policy about guiding, so there is no comment from us on revenues as of January.
Understand. And then a timely question here, can you comment on how the new store in Storgata has performed so far?
The store has performed very well. We do have a store 150 meter away from in Storgata, so -- which is one of our best stores. So we'll see if we're going to have -- how that will, how to say, what's to be the right -- Pardon?
Location.
Location in the future. But we are very happy with the test that has been done, and it will be an important and a strong store for us in the years to come.
And then we have some questions on the store development and what's your targets here outside Norway. And also if you look into Sweden, what do you expect for Sweden here in 2022?
We do not do guidance, but our financial objectives we say that we are aiming at 300 stores. That's -- you can see we're getting close to that. We are happy with how Hemtex has developed, and we also see a large potential in Finland and some stores in Estonia as well. We do not disclose figures when it comes to the specific markets. But the -- it's the most important thing for us is to have the right leases, not a high number of stores, so we will work and be patient. And we do have some very interesting negotiations going on, both when it comes to adding white spot stores, new stores in the market, and also when it comes to relocation and refurbishment of stores in all markets.
If I can, may I add, we'll say approximately 300 stores and we have 286 as per year end 2021. We have also said that we will increase in Finland and Estonia, and with lots of opportunities in Norway and Sweden, the number is obviously increasing. That's the direction. But approximately 300, and we haven't seen any reason to change that as of yet.
Perfect. Then we have a question here on the freight costs and looking into Q1.
Finally, finally that questions arrives. Thank you, Petter, I'm happy about that.
Yes. Yes. Okay. So will there be roughly a flattish freight cost in Q4 versus Q1? Or should we expect them to be higher given a potential time lag?
I already mentioned in my part of the presentation that we do see signals indicating that freight costs are leveling out. I wouldn't say we have seen them decrease yet, but at least they're not increasing. I do not have the ability to foresee how that market will develop in the months to come, but we have been preparing for increased freight cost over a long period of time. And I think we have fully demonstrated today that we are able to adopt freight costs as well as the foreign exchange rates, as well as increased prices of [ downs ]. There are a lot of other raw materials also increasing, and I think we proved today that we're able to adapt to that. It's difficult to say anything more about Q1. We...
I could sum up and say we are and we have chosen to be in the spot market. We do hedge some of our freight costs through a fixed rate agreement, which is better than what we see in the spot markets. And we are very comfortable about the situation and the way we have handled and the way we will handle it in the time to come.
Right. But obviously, we won't see spot rates or freight cost per container going down to the levels we did pre-COVID during the next quarter. So back in the days, we paid less than $2,000 per 40-feet container from China, and this is China only. We do have other freight destinations as well, but China is the main problem or the main issue. I think spot rates are -- have gone down from levels seen around $20,000 per container, and we have paid less on average because we do, like Eystein just said, hedge or have agreements to put volumes at a fixed price. But we are now seeing improvement, and we think it's normalizing. We do not know for sure.
We have some questions here, obviously, on how things have developed into 2022, but let me try to rephrase some of those questions. I mean, can you share some lights on how you see the effects on the reopening of society here? And that's the first question. The second question also is, can you also share some lights here on new categories that you are targeting for 2022?
We are, as probably all of you are, very curious about how the changes in the COVID situation, now the positive changes will affect sales. But as of in the Norwegian market, this change actually occurred a few days ago. So even though we see figures from Saturday and Monday, that will not give a trend that shows how the changes in COVID situation will occur in the Norwegian market. So we actually don't know because it's -- the opening of Norway happened just a few days ago. So honestly, we don't know how the change will affect us. And the same with the other markets where we are represented. We don't know. But what we focus on in Hemtex and Kid is to adapt to any situation. And we can't do anything with the COVID situations, but what we can do is to adapt to any changes that occurs. And historically, you can see in our performance that we've been very good at handling any changes at all. So honestly, we are very curious on the situation and the time to come in the same way as you, but it's too early to tell any effects in the market. And when it comes to new categories, we are very -- we're looking forward for the seasons, especially the spring and summer first, and also, as we said today, the Christmas season. And we will introduce new categories as Funkle, as you saw on the video, the lamp -- range of lamps that we have in Kid, but you will also see more categories in Hemtex. We are limited by a smaller average store in Hemtex, but now approximately 40 of our Hemtex store have the full range. So then, you can do the math. There's a lot of small stores that don't have it, so that's also why increasing the store size in Hemtex is very important. And we have a very active program for increasing store size in Hemtex in 2022, being us enable to introduce more products to both the Swedish and also the Finnish market -- Estonia, sorry.
Okay. I think that was all. So with that I'll leave the floor back to you, Anders, to take closing remarks.
Thank you very much. And thank you to those of you who are physically here today.
The 4 persons present today [indiscernible].
Yes. I hope to see more of you on the Q1 presentation. And keep in mind, if you didn't buy anything for your husband or wife at the Valentine's day, Kid is the place to go. Have a nice day.
Thank you.