Metro AG
XETRA:B4B
Earnings Call Analysis
Q1-2024 Analysis
Metro AG
The quarter commenced with a notable change on the horizon for Metro AG as CEO Dr. Steffen Greubel announced that this would be his last time presenting the financial segment alone, with the incoming CFO Eric Riegger taking over from Q2. Riegger shared his enthusiasm for joining the company and diving into the food wholesale business, promising a to-the-point tenure.
The business environment Metro AG finds itself in is characterized by declining inflation yet persistent food price increases, currently expected to stabilize between 3% to 4% over the year. The company notes challenges such as staffing shortages in the HoReCa sector pushing for increased digitalization, while geopolitical risks loom. Despite this, analysts foresee an uptick in customer sentiment and disposable income, which Metro anticipates will benefit their operations.
The quarter revealed a portfolio-adjusted sales growth of approximately 9%, reaching €8.1 billion, despite portfolio effects related to divestiture such as the sale of Metro's India operations. The company grappled with a €22 million dip in adjusted EBITDA, attributed mainly to the cessation of license income from the previous year and transformation efforts in Germany. Despite the EBITDA setback, the regions exhibited robust sales figures with significant contributions coming from West Europe and a solid performance in Russia and East segments, albeit with currency headwinds from Turkey's inflationary environment.
Amidst this financial backdrop, Metro is implementing its sCore strategy, focusing on key strategic KPIs. Important developments include the transformation of stores into Multichannel Fulfillment Centers (MFCs), boosting productivity and customer service. This transformation entails wholesale-oriented space management, full digitalization of stock, and in-store logistics optimization - as evidenced by an 8% productivity uptick in MAKRO Poland.
Metro is doubling down on its multichannel approach, recording significant growth in digital sales (36%) and delivery business (24%), alongside a 5% growth in stores. The strategy seems to be bearing fruit, particularly with a 40% surge in HoReCa sector multichannel customers, and impressive growth in digital solution subscriptions. The company is betting on initiatives such as the one-face-to-customer approach and commercial programs to transform single-channel customers into multichannel ones, optimizing offerings across stores, delivery, and digital platforms.
The first three months culminated in a positive free cash flow, a remarkable recovery given the previous year's cyberattack. However, the company anticipates a slight negative free cash flow moving forward due to ongoing investments. Net debt saw a significant reduction, buoyed by the sale of the China share. Looking ahead, Metro reaffirms its guidance projecting 3% to 7% sales growth and a wide EBITDA range of minus €100 million to plus €50 million, asserting that it remains in step with its ambitions set for 2030.
With no pressing questions from the call participants, CEO Greubel offered concluding remarks, indicating satisfaction with the clarity of the presentation. The team looks forward to the continuing conversation with stakeholders, anticipating the upcoming annual meeting and maintaining a positive outlook despite the aforementioned challenges.
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the analyst and press call Q1 2023-'24 results presentation. Throughout today's recorded conference [Operator Instructions]Be my pleasure to turn the conference over to Dr. Steffen Greubel, CEO, Metro AG. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much and good morning, everyone. And welcome to our Q1 '23/'24 results call. I'm very happy to present the most recent business developments today. And I will do the full presentation myself for the last time now since our new CFO, Eric Riegger, who has just started a couple of days ago on the 1st of February '24 will take over the financial part from Q2 onwards. Eric is sitting next to me here and I would like to ask Eric for a short intro to also get you familiar with our new CFO.
Thank you, Steffen. Good morning also from my side. Yes, I'm very excited to have now joined Metro and I am happy to meet everyone here today on site and virtually. I keep my introduction to the point that you can find my resume on the Metro webpage. So my name is Eric Riegger. I am the new CFO of Metro AG. I spent most of my career in finance, working for large global retail organization across different geographies in Europe and the U.S.Apart from my responsibilities in finance, such as tax, accounting, controlling and merchant acquisition, I also was responsible for IT and HR in the past. My latest role was to lead finance at ALDI USA. ALDI in the U.S. is the fastest-growing retailer and in the U.S. with 2,400 stores in 37 states, similar sales volume as Metro.But now I am very happy to start my journey here at Metro here in Dusseldorf to bring my expertise to drive Metro's core strategy. Thank you very much. Handing over back to Steffen.
Thank you very much, Eric. I'm very glad to have you onboard. And we are all looking forward to working with you. Today, our Senior Vice President Finance, Michael Bouscheljong, who's also sitting next to me here in the room will again support me later on during the Q&A for more the financial parts of the questions.And as in previous calls, there will be again a written and verbal Q&A options. So feel free to post questions either in the chat asking verbally. And as already mentioned, later on we will have opportunity for questions in Deutsche -- in German at the end of the call. So if you want to ask a question in German, stay on, you will have opportunity to do that then in Deutsche later on.So let's check the agenda. Today, we will focus on 4 topics. First, look at the business environment; second, the Q1 performance and sCore strategy implementation, mainly in figures and then some insights and examples sort of, say, directly from the front directly from our business, how we drive multichannel growth in reality and then details regarding our financial performance. The financial part will complete the agenda.So let's start directly. Let's jump into content and let's have a quick look into our current business environment. So 3 topics I would like to highlight here. We see 3 main movements, 3 main developments that are impacting us. Number one, we see -- do see a declining inflation in the Eurozone now for a couple of months in a row and also food inflation is cooling down with even in some geographies, slightly deflationary effects in our selling prices in Metro Germany. However, we're still above the European Central Bank's target. And we do expect food inflation to remain roughly in the course of the year between 3% and 4% in the calendar year '24.Second, the main challenge for HoReCa, for hotels, restaurants and canteens in Europe remains staff shortage which accelerates the need for digital solutions to speed up processes and save resources. And then through it while the geopolitical risks and conflicts are remaining out there, analysts expect a change in trend and the improving customer sentiment coming along with the rise of the disposable income and we are in the position to also benefit from this.Let's look a little bit closer into numbers and start with an overview on growth. Portfolio adjusted and at constant currency, we achieved a sales growth of roughly 9%. The portfolio effect in Q1 is around 3 percentage points minus. So we reached EUR 8.1 billion sales in reported [ geo ] portfolio effects associated to the disposal of India. Q1 adjusted EBITDA declined by EUR 22 million. This is mainly driven by discontinuation of the license income in the previous year related to Wumei, our Chinese partner as of May '23 and transformational efforts in Germany.To look a little bit closer into the region. All regions contributed to the sales growth in Q1. To be a bit more specific and walk you through the individual regions in Germany, the reported sales increased by 3 percentage points versus previous year, reaching EUR 1.4 billion in a slightly deflationary environment.The adjusted EBITDA decreased by EUR 19 million, driven by continuous cost inflation and investments in price optimization, which has been very much expected. In West, we -- the reported sales increased by 6% while our previous year reached the EUR 3.3 billion, especially Spain, France and our FSD companies such as Pro a Pro in France or Pro a Pro in Spain and also Aviludo in Portugal contributed to the sales growth significantly.Adjusted EBITDA for the segment were slightly increased to EUR 179 million, mostly due to the sales development. Russia. In Russia, sales in the local currency increased by 20%, also impacted by a negative effect of the cyber attack last year that was very relevant in -- especially in Russia. Adjusted EBITDA at constant currency slightly increased by EUR 6 million against the previous year.In the segment East, sales in local currency increased by 5%. Adjusted for METRO India that I just mentioned, sales even increased by 14%. Almost all the countries in the segment contributed to the sales growth, especially Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, significant sales growth also in Turkey, but affected apparently by the hyperinflation environment.We do see negative currency effects related to our Turkish operations significantly impacted the reported view. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 137 million and slightly increased by EUR 9 million at constant currency, following the sales growth. Segment Others -- in the segment Others, the reported sales grew by 16% to EUR 59 million and included METRO Markets sales of EUR 34 million. Especially Germany and France contributed to the sales growth.DISH Digital Solutions sales growth is above 20% versus previous year. Half of this is DISH POS. The sales growth is mainly a result of the encouraging growth in our digital business. Adjusted EBITDA decreased to minus EUR 24 million, mainly to the expiry license income from Wumei of previous year and we further invest into digitalization.So now let's look -- let's go from these rather output-oriented financial KPIs to the more strategic KPIs of sCore. So overall, the message is that we are progressing as we planned. We are on track in our journey to become a 100% wholesale company and the multichannel food wholesale company. In numbers, that means, as you can see that we have further invested in our sales force as we have 270 FTE in Q1, more that are visiting every day our customers in the HoReCa -- mainly in the HoReCa environment.And we have further expanded also our delivery infrastructure by now 13 executed network transformation project that includes also the enhancement of multichannel network capacity while new or transformed depots and out-of-stores, OOS we call them. We love abbreviations at Metro. So OOS is out-of-stores, I'm sorry. On the output side, we see strong progress on all the indicators versus the Q1 of the previous year. So FSD sales share at 23%; digital sale share up to 12%; on-brand sale share, 22%; strategic customer sales share, 71%. All these are record numbers for the company again.So let's look a little bit closer into the content and some selected topics. Let's start with network and network transformation. As we have already outlined in the previous call, we have continuously invested in our infrastructure to create additional capacity momentum to drive FSD sale. FSD sales is one of the core drivers for growth. So we need to adjust also our capacity and our network accordingly and that's exactly what it's all about.However, in the past, we've always reported about additional depots and OOS, out-of-store projects within our network while the focus of our network transformation lies more and more in transforming our existing stores now, which already have basic OOS, out-of-store capacities into now full-fledged multichannel fulfillment centers with greater delivery space, adjusted layout and more efficient tools and processes. That's why in the future, we are going to report about all network transformation projects, newly built and especially transformed stores and depots in order to create full transparency about our investments.That said, as you can see on the network map in Q1, we've not only opened new depots under the brand Classic Fine Foods, CFF, in Asia, but also transformed several stores into multichannel fulfillment center in Germany, in the West and in the East segment. Moreover, as already outlined in the Q3 call of last financial year, a store transformation into MFC, another abbreviation, MFC, multichannel fulfillment center, does not only create additional FSD capacity, but it's also productivity booster. With some -- I mean, on the example of MAKRO Poland, remarkable results in terms of achievements of productivity development.So MAKRO Poland, a very good example in the early adopter, the front-runner in MFC implementation. We see in MAKRO Poland all stores now already running on the MFC logic and everywhere is fully implemented in all sCores across the country. It's containing of 3 main elements: a), a efficient wholesale-oriented space management; a full digitalization of the stock management and an optimized, more efficient in-store logistics. Based on those aspect, we see remarkable 8% overall productivity increase at MAKRO Poland inflation adjusted -- inflation adjusted in Q1 versus previous year.And we do measure at Metro productivity as sales divided by FTE. And we see even a 11% increase when focusing on in-store operations due to faster and more efficient picking and replenishment processes. And this goes along also with additional benefits, especially for our customers because we are looking at the increased stock availability as well as increased FSD service level. So we see this progress on a very sustainable way and we are about to roll out the MFC logic in all of the other Metro countries.Let's look into our strategic visual and multichannel. You might recall the 3 different channels in our multichannel sCore strategy of Metro, which is stores, which is FSD, the delivery business and the digital. Portfolio adjusted at constant currency level, we achieved 36% METRO Markets sales growth in the digital, 24% sales growth in FSD business, a double-digit growth, by the way, in all regions and is growing continuously every month since the start of sCore. So that's very interesting since we have started sCore, every single month, we were growing and we are continuing to do so. And we are looking at 5% growth in the stores.It shows us and it gives us a lot of confidence that our multichannel strategy works well. So it's worth to further focus on multichannel customers. The number of those multichannel customers grew by 40% in the HoReCa sector in Q1 versus previous year. In Spain, Italy and Portugal, the growth is even 3 digits, so that means a minimum doubling. Around 13% by dual-channel customers. Dual-channel customers means the customer use 2 or 3 channels while multichannels are using all 3.We also won around 6,000 new subscribers by DISH Digital Solution. We also prioritized the monetization of current and new contracts by DISH. As the multichannel customers are in the heart of our strategy and the figures developing quite positively, let me explain how we win multichannel customers or how we make single-channel customers to multichannel customers.The first lever is one face to the customers with regard to our multichannel portfolio. Close cooperation between our sales force and METRO Markets, eye-catching advertising, joint presentation on trade fairs. The second lever are commercial programs to promote our multichannel offerings, a kickback program, refunding of HoReCa customer. That's a big one, when buying both in-store and on METRO Markets. Cross-channel vouchers to buy different channels or QR code, placed everywhere in-store and linking to METRO Markets.So the use case is you don't find a product, but you have your QR code directly at the shelf and can order directly online. That's one. Or we are subsidizing the POS system, for instance and you are basically paying back the subsidy with additional volume in the classical products. Let me lay out that topic specifically because it's related to the DISH POS rollout. So after the successful DISH POS rollout in France and Germany last financial year, we've now also launched a product in Italy in November '23 and it's progressing as planned.Moreover, with the upcoming launch in Spain in early '24, we will cover the 4 largest continental Europe HoReCa markets. Hot news, in Spain, we just on-boarded the first test client or the first real client into our DISH system. After 2,600 POS customer acquisitions in France, Germany and Netherlands last financial year, we won around 1,100 new POS customers just in Q1, which is a strong result. And with Italy and Spain ramping up, there's much more to come.A further highlight is the broad acceptance of the cross-financial POS program in Germany, which offers new POS customers a subsidy on the POS hardware against the obligation to generate additional sales. That's what I just mentioned within the next 12 months. The pick rate of this program is very strong. More than every second POS we are selling with -- in combination with this cross-financial POS and we plan to introduce similar programs in other countries as well as to foster linking our food wholesale and digital business.So let's move from the digital to the FSD channel. We have announced a further acquisition in December. Our Swedish FSD specialist Johan i Hallen & Bergfalk, part of Metro since May '23, has now acquired Fisk Idag, a Gothenburg-based Swedish fish wholesale specialist with unique elaborated products. We're looking at 500 customers nationwide and EUR 24 million sales in '23 and a positive EBITDA and a positive cash flow.With this acquisition stage, we're serving now 4,000 hospitality customers across Sweden and Finland and is very well positioned to further strengthen its competitiveness and drive growth in Nordics food service sector to the synergy potential and by also entering the Norway market. As usual, closing of the contract signed on 20th of December is -- last year is still subject to approval by the local authorities.So let's now go a little bit deeper into the financials. So let me walk you through our P&L. Last time I'm now playing the CFO. As mentioned, adjusted EBITDA decreased to the discontinued license income from Wumei in previous year and transformation efforts in Germany. Also, the currency effect is very high in Q1 at minus EUR 36 million due to the ruble and the Turkish lira. The current real estate gain in Q1 mainly includes 2 transactions in Turkey, while previously you included a bigger transaction, the Campus real estate gains at around EUR 200 million.This brings us to a difference of minus EUR 237 million by reported EBITDA versus previous year. Depreciation stable delta by net financial result is mostly due to positive noncash FX effect of ruble and other financial results from previous year. We landed EUR 0.36 of earnings per share in Q1 and a EPS decrease caused mainly by the special effects at roughly EUR 1 for Campus sale and noncash FX effects in the previous year.Moving on to the cash flow now. After 3 months, we've achieved a positive free cash flow. Significant improvement in net working capital is driven mainly by cyber attack in the previous year, while the delta of other operational cash flow includes mainly reclassification of real estate gains also in the previous year. Investments fully in line with sCore execution in previous year, including real estate purchases in Italy. Divestments in previous year, including Campus project and a significant reduction of net debt by EUR 375 million versus previous quarter driven by the sale of China share. This is 26 -- EUR 260 million and the reduction of leasing liabilities roughly EUR 90 million and positive free cash flow.For the financial year, we reconfirm our guidance of 3% to 7% sales growth and adjusted EBITDA development in the range between minus EUR 100 million and plus EUR 50 million. Q1 previous year was strongly impacted by cyber so that we are fully in line with the plan in the current year. As well as on the other financial KPIs, that develops fully in line with sCore.We see a normalization of depreciation, amortization, taxes and financial results with slightly negative free cash flow due to the investment phase. And we increase in net debt under consideration of the prolongation of leases in the following months, which is at the end, an effect of IFRS 16. While there remains work to be done, we are fully on track with reaching our 2030 ambitions.This now concludes the presentation today. And now Michael Bouscheljong and I are happy to take your questions. Thank you very much for listening.
[Operator Instructions] It seems to be no questions at the moment from the call.
Everything was very clear. Maybe we can ask for German question first. [Foreign Language]
So we have a question from [ Anita Claudia Mueller ] from [ LebensMittel Sitong ].
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We will now continue with the question from the online webcast.The first 2 questions come from Volker Bosse. In addition to the comment on VAT that Steffen already gave, he would like to understand some words on the German business in general, the like-for-like trend and the EBITDA development and also with a view to the FY '24. And then his second question is on Russia, if there are any news with regards to consumer sentiment and again, the EBITDA trend for the year.
Yes, thank you very much for the question, Mr. Bosse. Again, as I just mentioned on the VAT, also now for the English-speaking participants, situation is that there was a raise in the VAT for food in gastronomy that apparently is impacting business. It is due 1st of January, where it was implemented, but it's a bit too early to say if you see a lot of now insolvencies or bankruptcies in the Western hemisphere. So we need to sort of survey that and see how it's at the end then coming out with a little bit more time behind us.We see -- when we look at Germany, that's your next question, we see that the transformational effects in the country are significant because we need to do a couple of things in parallel that needs to be done to correct at the end the business model towards a true multichannel wholesaler. This is mainly characterized by investments in prices to achieve a price positioning that is relevant also for professional customers.And second, then also to invest in the multichannel business, meaning additional sales force we need to have and so they will have an impact also on the cost side of things. And those 2 things in parallel will just take longer than in the very beginning of Germany, we expect and that's the reason why the financial performance on Germany is in the moment not where we would like it to see. And then, of course, you see that especially in the HoReCa segment, we see some sort of impact by the -- just the customer sentiment and the headwinds that are out there, especially in Germany.
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And then we have a final question once again from Volker Bosse. And he wants to know whether we continue to gain market share in Europe in Q1 because he missed the market share chart in the presentation.
Very good, Mr. Bosse. No, we continue to win market share. Since the -- this analysis is not very volatile, let's say, like this, we decided to rather look in more on a yearly or a half yearly basis to that indicator, but I can confirm that we are still winning market shares.
I will go back to the call and do a reminder. [Operator Instructions] [Foreign Language]
Yes. I'll do it in English. So it's a question on your EBITDA outlook for the full year. It's a change of minus EUR 100 million to plus EUR 50 million. We are now down EUR 60 million in Q1. So is the lower end now more likely? Or would you say there are easier comps going the next 3 quarters? Or is there something -- I don't know that you read today can see that things are getting easier so that the profit trend may improve in the next 3 quarters? This would be my question.
Thank you for the question. So first of all, the guidance we have given on EBITDA is currency adjusted. And there, the development in the Q1 is around minus EUR 20 million, EUR 23 million. If you then look into the coming quarters, I think what we see is that we are, at the moment, very well in line with our expectations, both sales-wise and EBITDA-wise and we are comfortable to confirm the guidance here.
That's the last question from the call. It seems no further questions at this time and I will hand back to Dr. Steffen Greubel for closing comments.
Yes. Thank you very much for listening and following us and asking the questions. And we are all looking forward to speak to you to the next quarterly or even in our annual meeting that is going to start at 11:00 today. Goodbye, everyone. Stay safe and go out eating.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.