© 2024 Alpha Spread Limited. All Rights Reserved.
www.alphaspread.com is not operated by a broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Under no circumstances does any information posted on www.alphaspread.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. In no event shall Alpha Spread Limited be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on www.alphaspread.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, www.alphaspread.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nederman Holding Audiocast Teleconference Q1 2021. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Sven Kristensson; and CFO Matthew Cusick. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand it over to the speakers. Please begin.
Good morning, and welcome to Nederman's First Quarter Presentation. We start to say that Nederman had a strong start to the year, though with a lot of vacations, a lot of sort of uncertain market in the beginning here. It started to gradually climb from mid-January up to end of March, and we've seen a recovery. The positive outlook also that if we can have a continued recovery with the vaccine distribution and so on. And we see a more positive way of thinking, especially in China and in not to forget U.S. where a large portion are already vaccinated. We have, for the first quarter, had organic growth in all divisions. Totally, we had close to 15% organic growth, though the Swedish -- strengthening of the Swedish krona has taken that down with 10% when we -- so in real money, a bit more than 4%, coming back to that. We have had a safe growth versus Q4, and we have also had a positive mix and good cost control. The cost control comes, of course, out of that program we started a year ago, and we continue to deliver on that. We also have had a positive sales mix where we are selling more of newly released products with slightly higher margins that also have an impact on our result. And we are pleased to say that for the second consecutive quarter, we have achieved our target of 10% operating margin, and we've also managed to have a very good cash flow in the quarter.
If I move on to Slide 3 in the presentation and the summary of the financials for Q1. Incoming orders for the first quarter were SEK 1.035 billion versus SEK 995 million last year. Currency neutral, as Sven mentioned, was 14.7% growth. We have had the strength in krona working against this -- one example is the U.S. dollar, where the quarter-on-quarter last -- versus last year, the U.S. dollar is 13% weaker than it was in Q1 last year. Versus Q4 last year, orders also increased, that was by 12.7%. Sales, SEK 868 million versus SEK 981 million in Q1 last year, so down there. Currency, neutral growth. We can debate with the definition, but it's negative growth 2.7%. On the charts at the bottom of the Slide 3, you see the -- we see the trend on orders is an upwards one for the -- since the lows of Q2 last year where we were far from alone in having extremely low order intake. What you see is this the first quarter for some time that we've exceeded SEK 1 billion in order intake. You also see comparing that to the orders chart to the sales chart on the right-hand side that there is a little bit of a die in the sales growth in the certain divisions and certain parts of most of our divisions of the business. The order intake, the time from order intake to delivery is not immediate. It can be up to several months in the case of Process Technology, for example. But we expect, given the order intake in the quarter, one, we expect the sales in quarter 2 to be -- to obviously be higher than they are in Q1 of 2021. Moving down onto Slide 4, the financials. In terms of operating profit, SEK 87 million versus SEK 65 million last year. Like Sven mentioned, that gives us an operating margin over 10% for the second successive quarter. Net profit, SEK 57 million versus SEK 34 million in Q1 last year, giving earnings per share of SEK 1.63 versus SEK 0.98. As Sven also mentioned, the cash flow from operations was strong in Q1 with -- cash flow from operations was SEK 74 million versus SEK 13 million in Q1 last year. The 2 charts on the bottom of Slide 4, perhaps the most pleasing one we see right now is that we've managed to get this cash flow from operations. Q1 traditionally is a bit of a slow quarter in terms of cash flow as a lot of that related to project business, but we have been much stronger in Q1 this year than prior years. If we then move on to the divisions, and Sven, I'll hand over to you for Slide 5, Extraction & Filtration Technology.
Yes. Extraction & Filtration Technology, just to recap, that's mainly sold -- mainly selling under the brand Nederman, and they are actively in all 3 regions. And the key areas are welding, it's woodworking and its composite, et cetera. All 3 regions saw an increase in orders received, though we have still seen lockdowns having an impact there. We've seen it in Central Europe. We've seen it in India. Although the quarter, as Matthew mentioned, was good. Germany, increased base business. Still hesitation to book the larger orders, but it's coming strong. Growth in Denmark. Poland, very strong, coming back with service and product sales. Southern Europe coming back with some midsized orders. Czech Republic was completely as was Slovak Republic closed. So they had an impact there. Turkey come back. U.K. was impacted by, again, the restrictions. We can see that Benelux countries closed more positive than last year. Orders received in India were in line with Q1 2020, and we had a major windpower order booked in Q4 of last year. They are coming back. What is a bit disturbing is the new lockdowns that might have an impact going forward. Whereas the rest of Asia, China, Australia and Thailand all reported very solid growth in orders received and sales. As mentioned before, North America have a more positive outlook and optimism. And we saw healthy order growth compared to last quarter. More midsized projects were booked and were leased. And it's been primarily in the wood industry, and we've seen that they are coming back. It just -- it's both constructing industry furniture, consumption is coming back. Even though we had lower sales volume following the tough market conditions in late 2020, we have increased profitability in North America. Brazil, we have a continuous good trend. And also in many of the distribution market, we had a strong quarter compared to Q1 2020. And we have had healthy growth. We've seen good comeback in the wood industry. Key activities in the division has been to improve the performance of the digital tools. Under the motto, easy to do business with. We have launched new quotation tools, other things to make life easier for ourselves and our customers. And that has proven to be successful so far. We have also a continuation of the new, as we call it, smart filters that was launched last year. And we can see that there's a growing interest for capabilities with the IoT and other features that comes with the Nederman Insight applications.
If we talk about the financials for this division. Incoming orders SEK 431 million versus SEK 426 million in Q1 last year. That's actually currency-neutral growth of 9.4%, currency-neutral organic being the same for all of our divisions given that we haven't made any acquisitions in the last 12 months. But even there, you can see that the currency impact is not insignificant. On sales, SEK 396 million versus a very strong SEK 462 million last year. Q1 was very good for Extraction & Filtration Technology last year. Despite the reduction in sales, you can see the adjusted EBITDA is still at SEK 65 million. So a very strong performance there. That gives an EBITDA margin of 16.3%. Moving on to Process Technology for Q1.
Yes. Process Technology, larger projects focusing on more heavy industries, foundries, smelters, aluminium recycling industry, lead recycling and also in the textile fiber manufacturing. The division has been approaching pre-pandemic levels in terms of the Q1 orders received, which is interesting and very good. They were strongly hit by the disturbances in the market. They are very often linked to large projects and investments. And of course, with closedowns in our major industries in the textile side and in other areas, of course, that has had last year a very negative impact. But we see now that it's coming back. Quotations for large projects, that has been delayed, are now sort of moving again. Some, we have got the orders. Some, they are at least requoting. And so there's a more positive sentiment in the market. If we look at the textile segment, they had a very strong order received in most markets for this quarter. China had a strong start of the year. We have also seen that the Pakistani government has made a financing program available, and that has also sort of tipped the -- our customers over. So they are now booking the orders. Bangladesh, where we have a strong textile and fiber industry, we have had handshakes, but the final order has not been received. Now they are beginning to be realized, and we have been given down payment for some and thereby booked the project, and they will start again. Increased freight cost and few freight possibilities do make project planning and execution more difficult. Worth mentioning is also the now and then returning lockdowns for shorter, longer period where you are affecting the ability to reach the site to do service or installation. But so far, they are managing in a reasonable way. That's also been some price pressure in market. We keep the balance between volume and margins and making the more profitable aftermarket business even more key. There are some competitors that are under strong pressure. Some, actually 2 that went bankrupt late last year and some are trying to fill their factories with orders and fighting for the life. We say that we have the high technology. And we see here also the value of the new the Digi 7, the Insight where we give new value to the customers and thereby instead of lowering price, giving much more value, and that has so far proven successful. In the Foundry and Smelter segment, the sustainability trend is creating tangibly increased demand for recycled aluminum. And this has given us higher orders in Q1 in Europe. They are refurbishing some of the existing and there's also some interest to increase capacity. We have also in Americas has got 2 foundry projects demonstrating the importance of globalization. We are here now after fighting for several years, introducing the European way of filtration. And now finally, we are getting the success with that. We have to realize that that has been a very regional market in many where you are sort of trapped into habits how you do it, even though you can find better solutions in other places. Now we have after few years of intense marketing and showing -- starting to get the European way and the air filters is coming normally from our German factory. The key activities, of course, a number of connected systems being installed. And this is again one of our competitive strength. I mentioned in the textile segment, but it's also so in the smelters and foundry segment, where we are adding services that tip in our favor when it comes to who they choose. We are the future-proofed supplier. There were several major projects in new markets booked. And that work, again, across the regional boundaries are accelerating. We are combining expertise from Luwa textile fiber with Mikropul normally with more heavy industry. And we have thereby launched new heat recovery solution for the foundry industry where Luwa come with that capability and Mikropul with the customers and the knowledge about the customers and the customer process. So it's been so far fruitful. It's also so that we have launched -- with the Insight we have got orders and actually through this continuous monitoring of the activities with filters. One of our large customers were very pleased because they managed to stop a big fire due to this continuous monitoring. And we hope that we can continue with this distribution of our IoT solution. Continuous monitoring also being able to do calculation, help them to be more efficient.
When it comes to financials for Process Technology, we can see a large increase in incoming orders, SEK 375 million versus SEK 335 million. So a strong increase despite currencies working somewhat against this growth of 25% currency-neutral year-on-year. Sales for Q1 were rather low as we would expect following the weaker order intake during the latter half of last year, SEK 242 million versus SEK 299 million, is a 10.5% drop in currency-neutral. We see how much the backlog has obviously increased during the quarter. We're approximately SEK 130 million higher in backlog now in this division than we were at the start of the year, which is very positive moving forward. Despite the sales drop, we've managed to maintain profitability in this division, which is -- we are quite happy with actually SEK 6.8 million versus SEK 9.3 million on an EBITDA level. Move on to Monitoring & Control Technology for quarter 1. Go ahead, Sven.
Yes. Monitoring & Control, here, we have the brand named Gasmet, NEO Monitor, Nederman Insight and AFS. And we had an organic order intake growth of 11% in the quarter, and it was especially Gasmet and NEO Monitors that were developing well. And as you see here, it was mainly Asia that -- EMEA was slow. The lockdowns have dampened activities in this process control operations. And we have, though, gone into and got orders in the sales and orders received increased for emission-related businesses. But EMEA, a bit slow. APAC, on the other hand, we're doing well. We clearly increased versus last year, and it's been a faster recovery in that region, especially with China. And also with the Chinese legislation, Chinese wish to be able to monitor in a more precise way. And here, it comes in handy to have the 3 leading brands. We are technology leaders in FTIR. We are technology leaders in -- with NEO Monitors, in laser emission control and also with AFS in particle. So it's been a good quarter for Asia. Americas, we had higher order intake than last quarter and in line with Q1 2020. If the gas -- oil and gas is coming back, we will see a continuous growth in the Americas. We have also seen the growing increase because the recovery appears to be significantly faster in Americas compared to Europe. So we have a positive trend for process-oriented products and services, and that really continues. Key activities is, of course, one, is to continue to launch new product going into new markets and also as mentioned on Process Technology be more globalizing where we see we have areas where we are not as strong sales-wise as we are in some areas. We are continuing that work. We got NEO Monitors LaserGas III, gas monitor achieved its SIL2 certification. And why do we bring this up? Yes, these high-end product need certification to be classified. And it opens definitely new positive possibilities in the international market for process instrumentation. So we are very happy passing that, and that's very good. We also continued to deliver 42 advanced particle measurement instrument to one of the largest foundries in the U.S. They are getting operational improvement, sustainability, and cost reduction value of the system, rather than regulatory compliance was the key driver behind this sales. They are saving money on energy, et cetera. We have had a number of other installations where it's been the regulation that has been the major driving force.
The financials on Monitoring & Control Technology. Incoming orders for Q1 2021 were SEK 119 million versus SEK 117 million last year. That's currency-neutral growth of 10.8%. Sales SEK 122 million versus SEK 108 million last year, is currency-neutral growth of 22%. Obviously, significantly less at prevailing rates, but still SEK 14 million higher than the Q1 last year. And we have an adjusted EBITDA that has basically doubled to SEK 21.4 million from SEK 10.6 million last year. That's an EBITDA margin of 17.5% for Q1 2021. If we move now, Sven, on to Duct & Filter Technology, Slide 8.
Yes. Duct & Filter is where we produce the ducting systems and the filter -- bag filters for internal use as well as for external where we -- externally use the brand Nordfab in nordic. The development in the quarter, we've had a positive trend in most markets, and we've seen distinct recovery in orders and sales. And since U.S. is the largest market by far, we have benefited from the bounce back there. We have had strong profitability, and that is mostly on the enhancement in operational performance. Of course, we have continued good cost control starting giving also a result. But we see the investments in new equipment and new procedures are giving results. And we will also hear later in the year install a completely new setup in Denmark. And we hope that then we can boost the European sales there. For Nordfab, the ducting part, we saw a positive order growth. In U.S., the orders received significantly higher compared to both last quarter and the same quarter last year. We also had higher sales. And we also can say that digital orders continue to grow and medium-sized installation displayed a strong recovery. Europe, we also had a growth compared to last year and the same in the smaller factory in Thailand. And they continue to through operational improvement to be more and more profitable. Menardi, which sells the division's filter solutions saw strong sales growth during the quarter, better possibilities for physical customer visits and an acute need for maintenance following delays in the customers replacing filter bags are driving growth And we're coming back to what I mentioned in the previous division in Process Technology that there has been some issues for customers allowing service technician on site. And now they are needing to do that. Sales in U.S. were particularly positive following good order intake last quarter. And Europe was in line with the last quarter. The key activities is an updated version of our customer portal where we make it again. They have this slogan, "fast friendly and reliable "in the duct in Nordfab. And in order to be, we have a lot of distributors, smaller distributors and installers, who buy from us. And here, the customer portal, the digitalization makes it simpler for them and is more efficient for us to handle the orders. We had a quick tool QTO digital order management tool was launched for ducting in Europe. It is -- has before been used in U.S., and that will also have a positive impact there. We will also have launch of -- we have a prelaunch and it has been prelaunch a new design for quotation tool, and it will go live fully during Q2 in U.S. and during Q3 in EMEA and APAC. Here, we will give how -- customers access to simple tools over the web where they can do design that normally takes a couple of hours to do, in less than half an hour. And I think that will also drive sales for us. So again, for us, digitalization is not a matter only of the IoT, only of the measurement control side, it's also trying make use of more efficient tools internally.
The financial for Duct & Filter Technology. Incoming orders, 7.4% up currency neutral versus last year despite the -- with providing rates being decreased to SEK 111 million from SEK 117 million. Sales, SEK 128 million versus SEK 132 million in Q1 last year. That's actually currency-neutral growth of 10.3%. And despite the slight drop in revenue, we see a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA, we're now over 20 -- well over 20% in Q1. SEK 25.9 million of EBITDA is very positive development. SEK 15.7 million was the comparative figure in Q1 last year. If we move on to Slide 9, a short summary of the quarter, Sven?
Yes. If we summarize, we think we have had a strong start, especially on the cash flow and profitability. We had organic growth in all divisions, which is also positive, even though we hope for even more sales and order intake. We are not where we expect and want to be long term. The sales growth there versus last quarter and also with a positive sales mix combined, as mentioned before, continued good cost control, generated an operating profit of over 10%, which is very good in first quarter, which is normally one of the weaker ones. Good operating cash flow, as mentioned before. So all in all, we are quite pleased with the first quarter, and we hope to continue with the growth and bounce back from the last [ year ].
A little bit on the outlook, Sven, maybe?
Yes. The outlook is positive for continued recovery though market uncertainty remains as does the potential for further lockdowns. For the second quarter, Nederman expects the effects of COVID-19 to have a continued dampening effect on the group's market, particularly in Europe. If vaccination programs that are now underway throughout the world are rolled out according to current plans, we can look forward to a stronger second half of the year for Nederman. The COVID-19 pandemic has put the focus on clean air, and lockdowns have shown that the world can look like -- what the world can look like when the air is not polluted by industrial emissions. This can be achieved without a paralyzing pandemic by effective air filtration, which Nederman demonstrates through each installation.
Finally, before we open up to question, the financial calendar for the remainder of 2021. We have the AGM on 26th of April, very intimate affairs. It's been -- its postal voting only. No interactive meeting or anything such. The final day for postal voting is tomorrow. We're following the recommendations of Swedish authorities and the temporary Swedish laws for Annual General Meeting in that respect. The interim report for Q2 will be released on the 15th of July and for Q3 on 22nd of October of this year. That is the presentation for now, so we could open up for questions.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Herman Eriksson from Handelsbanken.
First of all, congratulations on the strong report. So I just have some few questions here. So we saw impressive order intake in all of your divisions. And just looking at the process technology, this has historically been a low-margin business area. Can you say anything about -- on the margins on the orders received in Q1? Should we expect higher margins on these going forward? Or how shall we look at it?
What you can say there is, obviously, there is some price pressure on the market, but we are -- like Sven mentioned, we try to keep a balance between margin and volume. And we have relatively -- compared to some of our competition, we have relatively low fixed costs. We don't have -- they're not completely nonexistent, but we have relatively low fixed cost. So we try not to get dragged into these pricing games to a large extent. However, there is some margin erosion at the moment. What you can say, if you look down to the bottom line or to at least to EBITDA in the Process Technology division, of course, some better volumes, sales volumes or to mean a higher EBITDA margin. But that division is -- what it does have, it always is a much stronger division in terms of capital employed. The cash position on projects is usually -- particularly in the textile industry is usually positive throughout the project. So they contribute in that factor. They're never going to be at 20% EBITDA like Duct & Filter technology can be. But the margins on the projects that we're taking right now, there is some pressure, but not on all of them. And what we do try and do is grow the aftermarket business, where there is a significantly higher gross profit margins.
And I can say I have to remind, we have to see that we are getting paid for, you can say that the extra efforts with the Mikropul-Assist and Digi 7, they are a bit different names in the different divisions. But where we attract the interest from the head office, how they can actually control the business significantly, get better efficiency here. Here when we say we are the future-proof solution, we get significantly better paid than some others. And that is working for us and then the market pressure from some more desperate areas is working again. So I think we have a fairly balanced approach, and it's also, so that as mentioned by Matthew, volume is important. Even though we do not have so many huge factories, we have some, we have a lot of engineers, if they are sitting idle of course it cost money. So I think that it's a good balance here.
Great. And then just looking at your costs, you continue to have low admin costs compared to historical numbers. How much of this would you say is sustainable going forward?
It's generally sustainable to a large extent. We don't see a need right now that we need to accelerate on the -- anything on the administration costs front. What we are doing is selectively ramping things up on the sales and distribution side, of course where we see opportunities in Process Technology. For example, this Internet, this globalization is important that we do that. And then we see certain niches within Monitoring & Control Technology where we will add costs selectively, but there -- it's not -- we don't see a need with the sales volume -- with the order intake volumes that we have right now, with this profit protection plan that we carried out last year, we ought to be able to maintain a large chunk of the cost reductions that we made at least for the foreseeable future.
I would say that close to keeping that, there will be some lifting travel restriction, there are some needs for traveling. But the behavior has changed, and I don't think it will come back to the -- this is a bit more of the new normal. And of course, we will see and we can also see that some lack of the physical meeting has hampered some of new introduction to new customers, but it won't be a big issue. Where we invest is in R&D, we are focusing and getting more engineers in to deliver the next generation because we see that we get a payoff. We are, as Matthew mentioned here, investing now in areas, in territories where we see that we can grow our sales and where we have strengthened our position. And we want to -- if there is an opportunity, we will do that. So we are adding sales resources, especially in some areas. But that means that we ought to be able to, within a few months, get the payback that they also start to deliver new orders with us.
Perfect. And then looking at Duct & Filter Technology, you had a strong converting on your orders 3 quarters in a row. Should we interpret it that you have received orders during the quarter? And if so, is this something we should expect for Q2 as well?
It's going rather well in Duct & Filter, particularly the ducting side is an early indicator. They're very early cyclical. You see that we've seen that already in last couple of weeks of Q1 last year, they started to go down rather quickly as lockdown started. They are cautiously optimistic. What we've been able to do so far is to ride out or pass on steel price increases to our customers, whether we can hold the margins that we had in Q1 on a gross profit level, that remains to be seen, but generally a positive outlook for that division. And if they continue to grow sales volumes, then the margin is -- it should not -- it should be 15% to 20% in that division on a reasonably regular basis. I don't know what you say there, Sven?
Yes. I agree. And they are focusing on efficiency in the major plants and that has had a good impact. And then, of course, they are volume sensitive in the sense that growing volumes will generate higher profit and higher margins. So they should be in this exceeding 15% going forward.
Perfect. And then the last question for me. Looking at the Monitoring & Control Systems division. The incremental margins are nothing that are short of impressive. So should we expect these kind of margins on the order intake we've seen in this quarter as well? Or how should we look at it?
Yes.
[Operator Instructions] We have another question from the line of [indiscernible]
I hope you have a better weather than here in Stockholm because here it's snowing at the moment. So your report is a light in this setback of spring movement. Okay. I have a question regarding the Process Technology. When you bought Luwa a couple of years ago, was it 2018? Has the market changed competitive-wise? The price pressure you're seeing now, is that temporary or is it structural?
I would say what you have seen is that the price pressure is now, I think, it's temporary because what you've seen is a number of competitors, smaller competitors that has gone belly up here. We've seen that and some others are needing to, how should I say, fill the factories and try to fight because they do not have new products. We are launching new products, new ways of doing this. So I think that this is not -- I would rather say that coming out of this, structurally, it would be better because we will see that some of the low cost of the one [ fighting ] only with price of going up the business. And hopefully, it will be for in the midterm, a better situation.
Okay. And question number two, the last one. The tax rate around 26%, is that what we're continuing to look at?
[ False item ].
We've -- what we could say on 26%, it probably -- you're right, since it feels a little high. It depends very much where in which countries we're making the profit. We've -- I don't want to say, unfortunately, we've made quite good money in Germany in Q1, for example, and that doesn't help. But it's very dependent. It will be very dependent on the U.S. rates going forward, whether 26% is going to remain. It could -- if the U.S. rates remained unchanged from where they are now and Biden completely back down, then I think you could expect somewhat of a decrease from 26%. But on the other hand, the indications are that it's probably going -- it is something is going to happen on that front.
And as there are no further questions, I'll hand it back for any closing remarks.
Okay. And we thank you for taking the time. And we have -- we start -- sun is shining, although it's very windy here. So you have to fight the winter, and I hope that this report, as you said, gives some light to you in waiting for the spring. So thank you for taking your time listening to us.
This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.