Troax Group AB (publ)

STO:TROAX

Earnings Call Transcript

[Martin Nystrom, executive]

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Troax Group Interim report for the fourth quarter. My name is Martin Nystrom. I'm the President and CEO of Troax Group. I'm together here with Anders Eklof, who's the Group CFO, and we will present the quarterly results for the fourth quarter. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A, and we will let you in, in a good manner.

So without further ado, let's begin to the quarter. So here we go. If we start with summarizing the fourth quarter, we had a 12% order intake growth in the quarter, where 5% of that was organic. That also means that we return to organic order growth despite the very mixed market demand picture. The demand was mixed between markets and geographies. And I'd say the main positive development we saw in North America in the quarter.

The weaker demand continued similarly to the third quarter also into the fourth quarter, where we saw continued relatively weak demand in Europe. During the quarter, we also saw a bit more presales activities in the Warehousing segment and also orders in the Active Safety segment, which is a strategic segment for us and positive. Largely, I'd say, the market picture and the demand picture remained stable versus the third quarter.

We delivered a 17.2% EBITA margin in the quarter, and we consider that to be a solid EBITA margin. And that [indiscernible] that we had relatively low volumes in the quarter, but we also had some FX headwind as well as structural impact from structure. And we think about this as a solid margin given the circumstances.

Gladly, I would say we had solid gross margin, which was in line with our formal target despite the lower volumes. And also when it comes to the sales and marketing or sales and admin costs, they were very much in line with our plan. But if we look at the top line, they are still at a too high level when we look at it from that point of view.

I'd say also on the sales and marketing side, we are and have been -- throughout 2024, we have been making investments into further growth, meaning additional countries and geographies as well as active safety and all of those initiatives have not started to see all of them paying off fully yet, and that will then be to come.

During the quarter, we also delivered a strong operational cash flow, and we continue to reduce our net debt. So strong operating cash flow. Our net debt continued to reduce and also our balance sheet continues to enable further growth investments. In the quarter, we reported net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 0.8.

Last but not least, and very important from my point of view is the fact that we've done good progress on our strategic priorities during the quarter. I'm very glad that we managed to sign and close the acquisition of ST&L, who will strengthen our service offering, and I'll come back to that on the next page.

Also, the Board of Directors proposed to keep the dividend of EUR 0.34 per share, similar to what we had for last year.

If I then spend a bit of time on the ST&L acquisition and ST&L is a specialist in machine safety and risk assessment, established in 1998. And we were attracted to this because of the comprehensive safety assessment portfolio, which then helps to ensure workplace safety as well as compliance with legal requirements. And here, we have the opportunity to provide full turnkey solutions in the areas of machine safety, but also inspections, marketing as well as certification and training. And I think even though ST&L is not the largest acquisition one can make, it's a very strategically important initiative for us to improve and build our service offering as well as add capabilities for us to be able to deliver customer value. So, very happy to welcome ST&L as part of the Troax Group.

Then moving into the market. And for the ones of you who have followed us for some time, you know we look at the world through the lens of geographies as well as through market segments. And we have -- now when we have concluded the year 2024, we've also updated the weights in the market segments slightly since we now have the full year figures. The same thing goes for the weight of the respective geographies.

But in total, we recorded a plus 12% on the order intake side. If we then dig a bit into that more in detail, you can see it almost looks like a Christmas tree. So there is arrows pointing upwards. So the green ones where we've grown more than 5% in the quarter year-on-year. There are areas which are developing more flattish, which are gray, and there are also areas that are declining with more than 5%.

Looking then to the geographies to start with. In Continental Europe, we saw a decline of 9% year-on-year, and we saw that decline being driven by warehousing, construction as well as the other industry segment. In North America, which was up in the quarter, we had very good orders in the automotive sector, but also warehousing and process, which took us to a positive development in the quarter.

If we move over to Nordics, which recorded a minus 5%, we had some developments up in the automotive sector. But this market or this region is very much then driven by both construction as well as warehousing and others, which means that the overall is down in the quarter.

The second exclamation point, I'd say, is the U.K., where we were up 37% in a quite tough market. Here, we saw good development in the warehousing segment, but also we made progress in the warehousing or in the process segment. So all in all, we're significantly up in the U.K., which is very pleasing to see.

Then to the last geographical area, which we call new markets, which is APAC, plus a few other markets in Eastern Europe. Here, we're down minus 12% after a year, which has been categorized with strong growth. Here, I'd say it's more timing of orders than anything else that took us down a bit in the fourth quarter, mainly so in the warehousing segment. But overall, I would say, new markets has been performing very strongly if we consider the first 3 quarters as well as the full year of 2024.

Then returning a bit to order intake pattern and growth. Here, we see the year-on-year growth for order intake as well as sales. And we had an uptick up until the pandemic, then we had the automated warehousing or warehousing boom '21 as well as in '22. And then for '23 and '24, we have been on a more of a flattish organic pattern, and the organic growth has been driven a lot from acquisitions throughout 2024. So I would say that the fourth quarter this year is the first time in a quite long time where we have seen organic growth, which is pleasing to see, and let's hope that this is the beginning of a new trend in the marketplace.

And with that, I'd like to hand over to Anders to run us through some of the key numbers in the quarter. So...

[Anders Eklof, executive]

Thank you very much, Martin. I will go through some slides here with some measurements. We start with the order intake development. As Martin said, in Q4 this year, we reached EUR 68 million in order intake, which is a 12% growth compared to Q4 of last year, and that comes from 5% organic growth and an additional 7% from structure, meaning acquisitions and from FX.

Looking to the sales development. We were on par on sales compared to the Q4 of last year. We had an organic decline in sales by 7%, offset then by structure and FX of the same number, 7%.

Going forward to next EBITA. We reached 11.5% in EBITA or [indiscernible] EBITA margin in Q4 of 2024, to be compared with EUR 13.4 million in EBITA in Q4 of 2023 or 20.1% EBITA margin. So that's declined by EUR 1.9 million in EBITA. And notable here is that we have a dilution from structure, meaning the acquisition from Garantell by approximately 1% year-over-year.

We can take next. Working capital is, as you can see, very stable. No major difference between the 2 quarters that we compare, and we don't see any issues in the working capital side. It's very stable.

Operating cash flow in the quarter was high. We had EUR 14.4 million in free cash flow, compared to EUR 11.5 million in EBITA, which gives approximately 125% cash conversion in the quarter.

And then looking at the net debt side, we are down from 0.9 in Q4 of last year, to 0.8 in Q4 of 2024.

And then on the last slide that I will present here, you have a summary chart. I have talked about basically everything on this chart except for the earnings per share, where we had EUR 0.15 in Q4 of 2024 compared to EUR 0.16 in Q4 2023. And by that, I hand over again to Martin.

[Martin Nystrom, executive]

Thank you, Anders. And then to conclude the fourth quarter for '24, we returned to organic order intake growth despite a pretty challenging market. We delivered a solid EBITA despite lower volumes. We had FX headwind, and we also had a structural impact. We delivered a strong operational cash flow, and we continue to reduce our net debt. And in the quarter, we also made good progress on our strategic priorities and strategic initiatives, one out of many is the acquisition of ST&L.

And with that and before we move into the Q&A session, I would like to remind you what we are and our purpose, which is caring for everybody's safety, which to us means bringing every employee back home safe, businesses sustainably, higher productivity and also customers' values untouched. So play it safe and play it with Troax Group. And with that, I'd like to open up for questions and answers.

[Martin Nystrom, executive]

So we start with Jonny from SEB.

Should we give Anna from Carnegie try meanwhile, and then we come back to you, Jonny.

All right. It looks like we will have to do the written questions today instead.

I will start with the first question then, which is to provide some color on the timing effect of the organic growth regions and also if you saw that effect in Garantell?

I'd say on the timing effect, I think there -- generally speaking, what we are exposed to is, of course, when the -- a bit larger projects when they are being placed as orders, I think we probably -- we probably had a -- we did have a good fourth quarter, but I wouldn't say that we were unusually lucky in the fourth quarter having more large orders than usually. So I do think we have -- I think the -- on the order intake side, it's probably a fair reflection of what we saw in the quarter with the activities that we had.

And the same thing when it comes to Garantell, we didn't have anything that was unusual given the normal seasonal pattern that we had. So, Garantell very much follows the historical pattern in Q4 versus years prior to '23.

Next question would be around the activity level and talks with automotive customers in North America after the U.S. elections?

I think we have previously talked about decisions and the customers coming to a decision-making point after the election. And I think that hypothesis is still valid. I wouldn't say, though, after the election and before or in between the inauguration of Mr. Trump, I wouldn't say that we've seen any significant change in decision makings during the second half of November and December. So I would say it's pretty stable. And if there is a significant uptick in the automotive sector, we still haven't seen that. So the numbers that we had in Q4 and the uptick is not really a reflection of post-election decision making. So I think that generally speaking, higher level in the U.S., we're still waiting for, even though we believe it's going to come during the year.

Next question would then be on the weakness in Europe and whether there is any shift during the quarter or any signs of stabilization?

I would say that Europe pretty much follows the pattern that we saw in the previous quarters. I wouldn't say it hasn't -- it hasn't become much better, generally speaking, in Europe, but also it hasn't really worsened either. So I would say it's stable at a relatively low level. Then when it comes to the order intake, numbers and whether it swings up or down or it's flattish, I think it also depends quite a bit on the specific customer mix and the specific customers and their projects. So now in Q4 as well as in Q3, we have had quite a lot of orders coming in as well as also deliveries, which have been perhaps more customer-specific than segment or industry general. So I would say stable, but rather weak marketing in Europe overall.

Next question is on the gross margins. So the 39% gross margin in the quarter with under absorption?

I'd say the underlying gross margin, we have -- in this equation, we have 3 points. There is, of course, the price and making sure that we keep our prices to reflect the value that we provide. And I think we have done a very good job overall with the pricing discipline in the quarter, also similar to previous quarters.

The other element of this is, of course, our raw material pricing. And here, we see relatively and also stable material prices. Here, we probably gain from a bit of tailwind. I think we had some tailwind from that in the third quarter, which also continued into the fourth quarter. And I'd say the price and cost levels of the input materials continues to overweigh the under absorption that we have coming from lower volumes. So in between Q3 and Q4, we're at a pretty stable, but high level in this regard.

Then when it comes to volumes being pushed into Q1, and if we can quantify?

I'd say we're not going to quantify or put a specific number to that. We had an organic sales decline and parts of that gap comes from pushing orders into the first quarter. And parts of that is likely that we also have a slight decline on the volume side. So it's a mix of those 2.

The next question would be on automated warehouse and that we've seen further increase in presales activities, and that we're looking to start receiving orders in '25?

I think when it comes to the market activity and the presales activities, we saw a bit better activity during the second half of 2024. That continued into -- and of course, that continued in Q4, similarly to Q3. I'm hopeful that some of those orders will be converted during the first half of this year. Then whether it's going to be in Q1 or in Q2, I think time will tell. But nothing material has changed when it comes to looking at the segment as such and overall.

Next question would be on the order book into Q1?

Not sure, Anders, if you would like to reply on that or if you want me to do that?

[Anders Eklof, executive]

[indiscernible].

[Martin Nystrom, executive]

Okay. Then [indiscernible]. I wouldn't say there is anything in particular that you need to take into consideration when you convert your order books in between, you could say, Troax and Garantell. So I think if you assume historical patterns based on Q4, that's probably the best assumption that you can make.

Next question is here, Anders, perhaps you'd like to chip in on the negative currency impact on the margin, can you give some context to that and if there is any spillover into Q1?

[Anders Eklof, executive]

Yes, I can give some comment to that. When we talk about negative FX impact, we talk really about revaluing assets and liabilities in foreign currency to [indiscernible] rate. So both in Q4 of this year 2024 and Q4 of 2023, we had a positive impact from that. But, we had a significant, I would say, positive impact in Q3 -- sorry, Q4 2023. And there's really nothing going into the next year.

[Martin Nystrom, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Anders.

Then there is one question. What's the sales for ST&L. And for ST&L, we're talking about a few percentage points, so low single digit of group sales, ballpark. Then when it comes to the service offering, where are we today and what we strive for in the next 5 years?

We would like to expand on our service offering. I think ST&L is one example of that. We're already today also partly in, for example, installation services of our products, that will continue. So we're continuously reviewing our service portfolio, service offering. And I think there is more to be had and more to be done in that space. And I think there is also then a plan and an expectation that the service portion will increase as part of the group total without being more specific than so.

Then when it comes to capacity utilization, which is a topic that we sometimes talk about. I'd say that we're, on average, probably somewhere around the 60% mark group-wide. Some units are having a bit higher capacity utilization. As you know, we are closer to the ceiling in North America, where we've decided to make an expansion investment. And in some of the units, we are a little bit lower. So -- but at an average, roughly around 60%.

Then Garantell, lower volumes in the quarter and also order intake wise?

I'd say, Garantell has not encountered more headwind than other parts of the group. I would, though, say that Garantell, given the business model, they are on the margin a bit more sensitive to the working days, especially towards the end of the quarter. We had quite a lot of customers going for Christmas already, 16th of December, which means that there is a bit of pressure towards the end, especially for Garantell. I think the overall picture for Garantell throughout the full year, I'd say is that we are, for sure, seeing a slight decline in Garantell. At the same time, the customer and the market is down significantly more. So I'd say the overall picture for Garantell is that we continue to take market share in a pretty tough market environment.

So then on Active Safety, better traction on Active Safety, whether it's slow or a gradual ramp-up. Should we expect significant contribution already during '25? Or is that too soon?

When it comes to Active Safety, it's a couple of percentage points of our group turnover, it's a product or a solution range that we are -- haven't been used to before in the group, which means that the sales process and a bit what we need to secure as a provider of that, we need to build a bit of capacity and capability. And that's -- I think we've done good with that second half of '23 and also into '24. And I'd say that we have done -- and we have won a couple of breakthrough orders on the Active Safety side. I'd say very much when it comes to Active Safety is that we would sell a project to 1 site with 1 customer. And if that goes well, we then expand to other sites within those customers. So it's a gradual ramp-up, but it's very important that we win those first projects and that we deliver them well for us to be able to then get more sites on to the solution and step-by-step gain share of wallet.

So I'm hoping that we will see the Active Safety segment continuing to grow during 2025. But at the same time, it's not going to be a catch-up model with a significant growth to the full group. It's yet too small for that. But certainly, we'll take good steps and continue to take good steps to convert the breakthrough orders into more of a sustainable running recurring business with the customers that we're targeting.

Then on the acquisition side and the cost, there is -- in the reported EBITA, there is no impact coming from the acquisition on the result in quarter 4.

Then there is one question around pushed volume into Q1? That is true for sales.

Is there also pushed orders? I'd say there is also the same pattern on -- there are certainly also some orders that have been pushed from Q4 into Q1, similar to the sales side. So we see the same pattern on orders, but sales. But I'd say the pattern or the sales piece, it was more significant on the sales side than perhaps on the order side. And the other thing is that we know pretty well when we have our deliveries and the delivery scheduled. When it comes to the timing of orders, it's a little more difficult for us to predict when that will materialize. So let's say, for sales, there is that side of it. But on the order side, I'd say it's -- the pattern is probably there, but it's not as significant as what we saw for sales.

On Garantell, flat in margins for '25?

I'd say Garantell has the opportunity to improve a bit also with consistent or same volume. There is a bit more to be done on price, on mix, on operational efficiency. So I think there is improvements that can be made to Garantell without more volume. That being said, a bit more volume would certainly help the Garantell profitability upwards.

Then on working days in Q4, Garantell, expecting a positive effect in Q1?

I'd say we had quite many days of, you could say, the break period also in Q1. But I would -- so I wouldn't count on any material working day impact for Garantell or Troax in total. I'd say that that's probably not the main driver when you look at this sequentially.

Then there is one more question around policy discussion on tariffs, et cetera. Have you noticed this as a discussion point amongst any of your customers, mainly automotive in the U.S.?

I wouldn't say this is a big topic specific to our business. So the answer to that would be no. On the other side, I'd say, overall, there is a bit of uncertainty and things being flying around regarding trade in general. So what we've now seen in the past week with the U.S. administration having ideas on what to do with tariffs. And so I'd say that impacts perhaps investments overall and what to do and so forth. So I'd say it's more of a general topic than a company-specific topic and nothing specific to automotive in the U.S. either from what we've seen so far. But still quite some uncertainty which we feel and, of course, other industrial players feel as well.

All right. I'll give it 1 more minute and see if there is a last question. And my apologies for the technical issues here and not being able to have a dialogue with you, will look into that for the next call.

So with that, then I see no further questions in the chat. Thanks a lot for calling in and showing interest in Troax Group quarterly result. And with this, we conclude the conclude this call as well as soon also the weekend. So thanks for today. Have a lovely weekend and see you latest in a quarter's time. Thank you, and bye-bye.