Kri Kri Milk Industry SA
ATHEX:KRI
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Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q2-2023
Kri-Kri's first half of 2023 witnessed robust financial growth with sales soaring by 35.5% to EUR 113 million. The EBIT margin expanded to 23.3%, culminating in an EBIT of EUR 26.3 million due to operational efficiencies and controlled expenses. Projecting this momentum forward, Kri-Kri has updated its full-year guidance, now expecting sales to surpass EUR 200 million and EBIT to reach EUR 33 million, a notable increase from the initial EUR 24.8 million estimate.
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Hello, and welcome to this webcast. I'm Konstantinos Sarmadakis, Kri-Kri CFO. In this session, I will first try to elaborate on the figures of the first half report of 2023. Also, I will present our updated guidance for the full year results and the assumptions that this is based. After short presentation, Q&A will follow. You can post your questions using the chat tool.
Firstly, let's have a look at our P&L statements. Sales showing an increase of 35.5% reaching EUR 113 million. Gross profit margin reached to 36.6%, a little higher than that of 2021. Operating expenses were EUR 1.5 million higher increased by only 11.4%. Thus, this dilution of operating expenses led to even higher gain in EBIT margin. EBIT was EUR 26.3 million, with a margin of 23.3%. Finally, EBITDA stood at EUR 28.7 million with a margin of 25.4%.
On this page, you can see the gross profit bridge, starting at the gross profit of the first half 2022, there was an increase of EUR 2.6 million coming from sales quantities -- increased sales quantities. The carryover effect of prior price increases are extra EUR 18.1 million. Also a small decline in raw material prices had plus EUR 1.5 million to our gross profit. And falling energy prices helped compensate for increased labor costs, therefore, reduced production expenses added an extra EUR 0.5 million to gross profit. Therefore, the gross profit for the first half 2023 grows to EUR 41.3 million.
Moving on, you can see the EBIT bridge. Starting at EBIT of the first half 2022, increased gross profit adds EUR 22.7 million. Increased OpEx reduced EBIT by EUR 1.5 million leading to a final EBIT figure of EUR 26.3 million. Also because sales increased by 35.5% and OpEx increased by only 11.4%, this dilution added 2.8 percentage points to our EBIT margin.
Moving on to the segment review. We start with yogurt exports segment. Yogurt export sales saw a strong growth of 49.8%, exceeding EUR 49 million. This boost in sales is contributed by the major markets of Italy and U.K. as well as other countries such as Sweden, Austria and Belgium. As far as our profitability figures are concerned, we have recovered back to these figures, we have recovered our normal profit levels. Of course, the EBIT margin improved significantly. And this is mainly the result of economies of scale and also the dilution of OpEx. OpEx are in the most part, fixed or variable to quantities not volumes.
Also moving on now to domestic Greek market. Our yogurt sales saw a strong growth increased by 37.8% and exceeding EUR 38.7 million. The current inflationary environment has led the overall market to a decrease in consumption, only a slight increase, decrease in consumption volume of 0.6%, while the value is increased by 12.1%. This is risk caused by the rises on the overall pricing level. At the same time, there is a strong shift of consumers to private label yogurt because of their choices for value for money products. As a result, you can see that private label yogurt market share increased by 4.8 percentage points in volume, applied strong pressure on branded yogurts.
This pressure has led Kri-Kri branded yogurt to a small market share loss of 0.2 percentage points. And you can see that this is lower compared to our main competitors. In general, it seems that we benefit from these market dynamics because we are the largest producer of private label yogurts in domestic markets.
In terms of profitability, our gross profit margin reached 32.7%, which is slightly lower than that of 2021. This is a result of our decision and tactic to absorb part of some additional input costs that occurred. Of course, economies of scale and the dilution of OpEx that we referred to previously led to strong EBIT margin.
Let me now move to ice cream segment. In the domestic ice cream market, our sales increased 9.1% in value. We had -- the conditions during the critical months of May and June were not favorable. There were many rainy days during the months. But on the next month of the season, ice cream sales recovered. And this led for the entire ice cream season sales to reach of -- to be at 15% higher level compared to that of 2022. Of course, our exports show development with the Greek frozen yogurt, and this is something that we strongly believe that can be a vehicle to ever stronger export sales abroad.
Moving on to some ratios. We can see that our days of -- for working capital or for inventory are the same, just as last year, besides also higher than sales, trade receivable days are much lower. So there is an improvement, but trade payables are higher. So our cash conversion side has improved significantly. Our gearing for this year stands at 13%, but we have a net cash position and our cash flow from operations show a very strong improvement, strong cash flows of EUR 16.5 million.
As part of our growth strategy, we have the respect to all our stakeholders. In that respect, we recently had some initiatives for consumers, partners and our employees. For consumers who have increased the budget for product price reductions through promotions. For farmers, we had an additional payment of total EUR 500 million as a premium for cooperation, this is a one-off bonus. And also to employees an additional average monthly salary was given to every employee as a one-off bonus. This total cost reached to EUR 1 million.
For the rest of the financial year 2023, we believe that the strong growth on our financial figures will continue. We are very optimistic on that. In that respect, we updated our profitability estimates. So total sales, we expect to exceed EUR 200 million. And EBIT, it is expected to reach EUR 33 million against our initial estimate of EUR 24.8 million.
Just note that this guidance has taken into account the extra cost arising from the bonus initiatives that I said earlier and also a possible implication of the recent extensive [ flat sale in session ]. So we expect that possibly higher raw milk prices driven by damage in crops that may rise prices in animal feed and also shortage in raw milk supply because of damage in cow's farms. In any case, we believe that this turbulence will be temporary, and we can soon get back to normal.
Finally, about our shareholder structure, Tsinavos Family holds 73.2%. Institutional investors, 20.1% and individuals retain 6.7%. So this is the end of the presentation. You may now post any questions you have using the chat tool. And then I will try to answer as much as possible. Thank you.
Thank you all for posting your questions. There are many, many questions this time. I'll try to answer as much as possible.
Let me start, will there be enough production of milk in Serres area to support sales of EUR 500 million. We are still far from reaching that number. However, in that case, I think that we will have to expand our area of sourcing the milk.
I have also some questions about our updated guidance and whether this is conservative. For the next of the year for the second half. There are planned -- we have planned some price reductions in our products. This, along with the extra cost and the uncertainty over raw material prices, all these were taken into account to form this update guidance. Of course, this might prove conservative at the end, but at this time, this is our best estimate for the full year.
A question about seasonality. Seasonality is mitigating by higher contribution of yogurt sales.
Question about dividend. If we achieve these targets for this year, we expect to increase the dividend significantly to match this higher profits.
A question about CapEx. Our guidance for CapEx was -- is EUR 20 million for this year. Only EUR 4 million of these were at the first half. We expect a much stronger capital expenses to be at the second half of the year. And perhaps a part of this new investments to move at the first month of 2024 because of the lead times that our suppliers for machinery need to deliver.
A question about if the current pricing is sustainable. I believe that with some minor adjustments that the pricing is sustainable. I think we have a new price level to all food products. And because the figures of inflation have reduced significantly, I think that the Greek statistic -- so report with inflation of 2.4%. So at this level, I think that the market can adopt this new level of price for food.
A question about the sustainability of our higher margins. Our margin improvement does not come from one-off events of -- or of some cyclical events. Much of this improvement is sustainable because it comes from the economies of scale, from a dilution of operating expenses. Of course, this period, we have not settled yet. I think we will have to wait for some time and then see a new balance of our margins. But of course, much of this margin improvement is sustainable for the future.
A question about financial instruments of EUR 2 million that is shown on our balance sheet. This is a short-term bond of Greek state.
A question about our CapEx plan. Most of our CapEx plan is to expand our production facilities and also our warehouse storage and also new production lines and to increase capacity, mainly for the yogurt factory.
A question about growth rate of yogurt exports. Can high growth rates of yogurt exports above 20% be maintained for the next 5 years. This is a very challenging target. I think that we can achieve high double-digit growth in yogurt exports, but above 20% will be difficult for all the next 5 years because also the level, the current level has risen significantly.
A question about export into the U.S., if it is unprofitable to export to the U.S. or supermarket sales are not interested in incorporating. For the yogurt, we have a limitation of the short shelf life of yogurt. So we cannot export in a cost-efficient way to the U.S. You need to travel the goods by -- the yogurts by aeroplanes. So it is a very expensive one. The U.S. market, we believe that there is an opportunity there for ice cream. And we are now in -- we have some contacts there in order to place ice cream, this Greek frozen yogurt to U.S. market.
I think we covered much of your questions. Once again, thank you for joining this webcast, and have a nice day.