Matas A/S

CSE:MATAS

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the interim report for the period 1 April 2020 to 30 September 2020. [Operator Instructions] Speakers, please begin your meeting.

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to our Q2 update. I'm Gregers Wedell-Wedellsborg; and with me, CFO, Anders Skole-Sørensen. We've had a very unusual and very strong financial quarter, but we are also facing new restrictions in Denmark right now. So the agenda that we have for today is 3 parts. I will comment on the overall situation, then I will hand over to Anders, who will comment on our financial results. And then finally, I will give you a bit of background on the outlook for the financial year. The results are exceptionally strong, some of that are due to one-off effects. I'll get back to that. But we saw very, very strong results in the Q2 of 2021 and we have seen that trend continue into the first part of Q3. Top line growth at 13.4%, like-for-like 13.6% and EBITDA, up 28.1%, reflecting that we are seeing positive scale effects in our business, and in particular, in our online business. Also, this is a quarter where we have had beneficial terms and good trading terms due to the competitive situation but also where we have seen the strength of our business model and the strength of our strategy. I think it's notable that the stores have had a really strong comeback in the summer quarter, up 3.8%, of course, due to the fact that people have been vacationing at home and that they have spent a lot of time shopping locally where we have our stores. Also, we have seen online sales that really boomed in the first quarter. We have seen continued strong performance on online. A lot of customers that shopped for the first time online are continuing to shop online. And as I mentioned, we also see positive scale effects and profitability, proof of online profitability again in this quarter. As for the mix of business, we have sales up across all categories. And for this quarter, also, we are seeing that our efforts to address the inventory situation is starting to pay off despite some supply chain volatility still. As for the outlook for the full financial year, we are in the middle of a second wave. That, of course, implies increased risk and uncertainty. But also, we know from the first wave that there is some upside potential for matters in a situation like this. So I will speak about that at the end of the presentation. And then, of course, we upgrade our guidance for the year, both for the growth numbers and the EBITDA margin. Looking at the stores, 3.8% growth. It's been a long time since we've seen that. It's driven both by footfall and particularly by basket size in the quarter. And it is consistent throughout the quarter so it's not just a matter of a strong summer. Even after the school start, we have still seen stores performing very well. We see that Main Street local shops are performing well. Cities and malls are flattish. We, of course, have seen some one-off effects from demand for health products and that drives traffic to the stores as well. We have also seen new segments that haven't been shopping in Matas stores for a while, come back to the stores and rediscover the stores. And we've been doing a lot to animate the stores online and provide, for example, online advice to customers via video chat or live streaming sessions from the stores connecting online and the physical stores. The online growth boom that we have seen accelerated over the last many, many quarters, also performing strongly in this quarter. 20% of total revenue is online in this quarter. It's lower than the last quarter, not because growth has stopped, but because the stores have started to perform more strongly. And as you can tell from our last 12 months' turnover, we have about DKK 800 million in turnover for the last 12 months online only. And also, I should mention that we, in the second quarter of the year, have acquired 40,000 first-time customers to matas.dk. And that is particularly within the young demographic. As for the categories, this is also a very encouraging picture. We see growth across all categories. So it's not just driven by the fact that people are in demand for health products. It is across the board that we are seeing uptick and a mix that is not far away from what it usually is. The health and well-being growth is driven in great part by sanitizers and face masks. And as for face masks, we have sold for around -- at around DKK 20 million. And you should note that we decided to sell face masks at almost no margin as part of our contribution to keeping the infection rates down. And with that, I will hand over to Anders who will go through the financial numbers.

[Anders Tormod Skole-Sørensen]

Thank you, Gregers, and good morning. As you know, I've been doing this for a number of years now since basically the IPO back in 2013. And I was -- when I looked at it this morning, I was a bit tempted to say, well, this is basically a situation where I could say nothing and just let the numbers speak for themselves. But nonetheless, as it is my job, I would like to just come up with a few comments here. Gregers has already mentioned revenues, so I'm not going to talk more about this, but this is really an extraordinary quarter. I must say, with my 13 years in the business, I've never seen anything like it. So quite an extraordinary quarter. As to the gross margin, some of you may have noticed that there is actually a small drop in the gross margin from 43.5% to 43.1%.And if you look at and delve a little more into those numbers, there's a few interesting points that I'd like to make. First of all, as Gregers has just mentioned, we did sell a lot of particularly face masks, but also other products of that sort. And we did do so at a very low or almost nonexistent margin. And that actually explains more than half of that drop in gross margin per se. But then I think a second point is quite interesting, and that is that if we look at the online margin, and you do know that the online margin, all things considered, is lower than the margin in the stores. But if we do look at that, it's actually been moving very much in the right direction. So we are seeing what I would -- I would always call it a normalization of the online business insofar as we are seeing that the online business is much less driven by campaigns than it used to be. And there are more of our customers who are just using the online channel as they're made a store in a more general way, and that means that the gross margin in the online business is going the right way. And that's a very positive if we look at it in the medium term. As to the costs, I will just come back to that in more detail, but overall, the cost picture is also quite positive with costs overall falling as a share of sales. EBITDA, obviously, with good revenue, with the gross margin very, very close to the same level. EBITDA has moved quite significantly ahead as has adjusted net profit and free cash flow has always also been quite positive. And as Gregers already mentioned, it is very, very good news that we are seeing both a solid growth in the number of transactions, up by over 6% and we are combining that with a very solid increase in basket size. In reality, that actually, this very big increase in basket size, probably actually means that people are perhaps going a little less than they would be otherwise because of the COVID-19 situation. So in reality that it is very positive that we're still seeing that lift in transactions. Now with that, just turn to the next page, please. There, we're just looking at the long-term trends. And obviously, if we look at revenue growth, it's going through the roof right now, and it is obviously a very significant deviation from what we've seen. But again if we look at it with a slightly longer-term perspective and taking what I would say, a positive view to that, we really see this as a situation where Matas, and if you look at the dotted line, that's the last 12 months like-for-like growth. We are really seeing that we've turned the corner and that we are moving into positive territory. As for the gross margin, we still think, given what I just explained to you that we are actually seeing something that is close to a leveling up of the gross margin. And as the EBITDA goes, obviously, EBITDA goes up as a percentage because of the high growth and the fact that we have our costs well under control. So with that, let's come back to the costs. I promised I was going to talk a little more about the costs. And as I said, the total cost ratio was down from 26.3% in the same quarter last year to 24% this year. And if we then look at costs, yes, they have gone up by DKK 8.5 million. But if you go down and sort of decompose that increase, what we're seeing is that a lot of that is driven by the high-growth sales on the online business, both in matas.dk where it added about DKK 8 million of costs, and also in Firtal, which is growing quite rapidly where it's also adding costs. Some of that costs is for instance, the fact that in [ mute QSL ] as an online-only player, they have quite a high portion of costs in the marketing department, which raises -- which goes up in-step with the turn over. As you see, we've also added around DKK 3 million of what we think is specifically cost related to the COVID-19 situation. That has something to do with the way we run our distribution centers and also some of the costs that we are associated with -- out in the stores. But -- and this is really the positive news, if we strip that out, we can see that the underlying cost base is actually still going down, and it's actually gone down in the second quarter by roughly DKK 10 million. And that means that the continuing work that we've been talking about a number of quarters now with rationalizing the way we operate and optimizing both our headquarters and in our stores, that work is continuing and it is actually also showing good results. So with that, just shortly on the cash flow and the working development -- cash flow working development, you can note that the working capital per se has actually been a slightly negative development and that is because trade payables have fallen more than the positive for inventories. And the reason for that is, if you look at last year, we were in a situation where we bought a lot of the Christmas stock, for lack of a better word, we bought a lot of them already in the second quarter. This year, we have been a little more conservative as to the purchasing patterns. And we've also actually said, look, we don't really need those goods before the third quarter, so we are buying in the third quarter as well. And because -- and I'll come back to that, because some of the stocks we have are COVID-19 related, that is why some of that stock has already been paid. So that's why we don't get quite the same result on payables. But apart from that, a positive development. And if you noticed, slightly lower if you look at the millions spent significantly lower the percentages on CapEx because we have not spent quite as much money in the store network as we did in the same quarter last year. So with that, let's come back to one of our Achilles heels, to be honest, where we've had some challenges, and that is the development in our inventories. And if you look at it, the big changes, there's still a growth. Last quarter, it was a very significant growth, more than DKK 150 million up. This -- it is a very small growth of only DKK 24 million relative to the same quarter last year. And if we actually then look at those DKK 24 million and decompose and see what actually happened on the inventory side, that is what you see on the right side of this slide. You can see that there's about DKK 40 million of these inventories, which are what we call COVID-19-related products. So these are the face masks. It's also the disinfectants and other products that are specifically linked to what's happening in the world around us. And obviously, those type of products have played a very, very small role historically. And now they're playing quite a big role in our overall inventory. So we'd say there's a very good reason why we have more inventory of that -- these types of products. Then secondly, you have to remember that our facility, our new workshop up in Humlebaek was actually established in the third quarter of last year. So it wasn't actually there at the 30th of September, but it was in the process of being built up. So the fact that we have Humlebaek, which we didn't have at the same time last year. It's actually added around 45. Also because Humlebaek and the workshop is growing as much as it is, it is actually also, of course, then taking up more inventory. And finally, there's about DKK 7 million, which is, in bigger scheme of things, not very important, but nonetheless, the small acquisition that Firtal, in August, made, of what is known as Din Frisør Shop. That's what it's called, added about DKK 7 million of stocks. So you could say that we actually had roughly DKK 100 million added to the DKK 90 million added to the stocks. And then, well, we've only added DKK 24 million on the bottom line. So we've actually taken up around DKK 70 million. So the underlying existing business, so to speak, has actually reduced its overall inventory by about DKK 70 million, which is why we're not overly enthused by this number. What we're actually looking at and say we think that we are moving very much in the right direction. And we are moving towards the goals that we've set for ourselves in this year. Well, with that, I will turn you back to Gregers.

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Thank you, Anders. We might ask the question. So what is the effect of COVID-19 on our overall strategy? And the answer to that is that it has accelerated the execution of the strategy that we have, and it's also proven that some of the ideas that we had way back in May 18 turned out to be right for this situation. So what we have seen throughout these 6 months in the quarter is that we've seen a continuous improvement in our brand rankings. We have seen an increase in our customer satisfaction, particularly online. We have seen, of course, a step change in the online sales and also in the online profitability. We have also seen the value of having a big store network. That is really, really key because people have been shopping in local stores, much more than centers, city centers and malls. And of course, the area where we have placed our bets in terms of category, namely health and well-being is the area that's been most in demand throughout these 6 months. And then finally, I think it's worth mentioning that while all this has been going on, as Anders mentioned, we have not stopped our work to run the business more effectively and reinvent how we work at Matas. And at the same time, I should highlight that with the explosive growth on online, we are still very much looking into a logistics and warehouse investments. It's still under review, but you should expect that to come forward in the coming financial years. The other big question, I think, for the quarter is, is this just a one-off? Have we just been lucky? And the answer to that is, yes, we have been lucky, and we have been in a good position as Matas because customers needed our products and competition from travel retail, for example, is -- has been limited. But it's not just a one-off. There are significant benefits that we will take away from this situation and that we can translate into long-term advantages or, if you will, into long-term customer relationships that drive value in the next years as well. Just to give you a few examples, the big boom we have from the consumer spending and the market share gains that we are clearly taking strengthens our market position vis-à-vis our competitors. And it has also left a clear positive mark on the brand strength. Our online growth drives the profitability online faster than we thought possible. The 100,000 new customers that we have acquired in first half just on matas.dk, we see repeat purchases from those customers already. And also, as I mentioned, customers shopping in the stores that maybe have forgotten about the stores, I don't know why they would do that, but now they're returning to the stores and might rediscover that the store has changed and the assortment has changed, and we are able to work with those customers in a systematic way to win them back as part of our business or even as Club Matas members. And then, of course, as for our bet on Health & Wellbeing, this has obviously fueled that drive and placed Matas more as a top-of-mind destination for your health needs. And just one small example. The core of our business really is to translate from being a physical retailer on one hand and then an online retailer on the other hand and be an omnichannel retailer. Because we see, when customers shop in both of our channels. They -- we get a lot better share of wallet from those customers. And you can see quite a spectacular 51% growth in that number, of course, driven by more customers shopping online. But you can also see, on the other hand -- other side of the slide that in the first quarter of this financial year, we recruited 60,000 new customers to matas.dk. 1/3 of those customers has already shopped again. And when we look at customer satisfaction, it is really high, which is really the best thing we can do, give the customer an amazing experience, then they will come back. And we have the comparables from last year, so you can see it's actually a real and significant improvement both in customer intake, but also in repeat purchase. As for the outlook, it is a difficult time to provide guidance, obviously, because we have just had new restrictions in place for physical retail, mandatory mask in physical retail So when we try to do the balance and give our guidance and look ahead, we do see that there is an increased risk to lower footfall to the physical stores. We have seen that effect in a moderate way since the requirement to wear a mask in the stores. But on the other hand, of course, we see -- if we lose sales in the physical stores, we win sales online. So there is an internal hedge. We know that there will be more competition online for sure, that has been a topic on these sessions for years. We feel that we are in a better position than we had ever been before to meet whatever online competition comes our way. We have also learned from the second wave -- or from the first wave of the pandemic, how to operate the business in as smooth as we can, what decisions to make and not to make. So our ability to go through the second wave in a less costly way making more smart decisions has actually gone up. But of course, with the infection numbers that we're seeing, there is also a higher risk to our operation than before. So we are operating our logistics facilities with heightened precautions that drive extra costs. As for the recession ghost, if you will, we haven't seen any of that yet. We have seen consumer spending up, and we also expect governments to continue their policy of stimulating the economy at the right time. So that's one to keep in mind, and we have seen how effective it has been as well. As for the opportunities, people are still staying at home close to our stores, shopping online with some limited competition from travel retail. And the other areas, I've actually covered already. But just to say that there is a balanced view of what is going on in the coming quarters. And that also translate into how we see ourselves positioned against Amazon, who has opened in Sweden, not shipping to Denmark yet. And what we've seen in the quarter is that Club Matas is becoming stronger. We are recruiting members these days. And of course, the big shift in our own online channel is perhaps the best defense that we can mount to have an offer to the customers that is competitive to whoever wants to enter the market. As for our guidance, we have upgraded our guidance, and we now expect total revenue growth at around 8% for the full year, up from around 6%, the same for the like-for-like growth. And EBITDA margin before special items above 18%, we have provided a floor. And the CapEx remains unchanged. As for our long-term financial ambitions, they are unchanged at this point. And for good measure, I should say that, of course, as you all know, in these times, there are higher than usual uncertainty as to the effect of what's going on with COVID, or if we will see a recession on the tail end of this development. And with that, we close our presentation, and we will open for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Magnus Jensen of SEB.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Congratulations with the very, very great results you've delivered. A couple of questions from my side. First, on online, how much growth -- I mean, Q4 -- sorry, your Q3 is going to be a huge quarter online. How much growth are you able to handle with the setup that you have now?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Thank you. Yes, that's a very relevant question, and it's a question we have actually been discussing and acting on ever since the first wave, because obviously, that was kind of, I wouldn't call it a wake-up call, but it was really a laboratory for what could happen in the rest of the year. So what we did at that point is that we made plans to be able to scale our capacity to the max, both in relation to some of the big shopping days around Black Week, and of course, around Christmas. So we feel with the capacity that we have in place that we should be able to manage what's coming our way.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Okay. You have set a growth rate on it for us to...

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

I didn't get that.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Yes, how much growth can you manage? Are you willing to share such a number?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

No.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Second question is also on the online. You gave us an online margin back in a couple of -- half a year ago or so on your online business of 10%. Are you willing to share sort of where you are currently with the very good development you see in online?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

We have decided to disclose the margin once a year with the financial year and indicate as we go whether the margin is moving in the right direction. And it is moving in the right direction. And as Anders mentioned, when we look at the online P&L, we see improvements on the gross margin level. But of course, a lot of the drive towards higher profitability online comes from being able to scale both -- run our logistics more efficiently and, of course, get scale and all the fixed costs that we have. And we're seeing that positive movement.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

And then one final question to the online. Now you've -- I guess, Humlebaek has been open for more or less a year, and you said that after a year, you will -- it would not be sort of a drag anymore because effectiveness would have gone up. Where are you with that? And could we expect some tailwind from that in Q3 and Q4?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

I would say that given that there is a lot of infection in society right now, it's probably the other way around for the next couple of quarters. We have put -- we have seen the effect that you described. We have seen the operation go up the learning curve and become more and more effective. But we have made a series of decisions right now to operate in small cells, to have different kinds of shifts, to do more testing, and all of this does add extra cost to our operation in Humlebaek. So we probably won't see a continuation of that positive effect but rather see some added cost in that regard.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Okay, unobtainable. And last question for me. Now people in Denmark have to wear masks to enter stores. Have you seen -- what kind of impact have you seen on your stores so far from that?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Yes, so we've seen -- I think we have been, relative to other European nations that we have seen, that Danes have sort of gradually become accustomed to wearing the mask because it's been a requirement in the public transportation system for so long. So it's not like a shock to the system. But obviously, it does moderate footfall and people's appetite to go shopping and have fun. So we have seen a moderate negative effect on footfall. And just as in the spring, as soon as we see that effect in the stores, we see a boom in the online. So we really see customers just shifting channel as a result of that requirement. But it's early days. It was put in place on the 29th, as you know, of October. So it's early days. But we haven't seen a complete shock to the system.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Poul Jessen of Danske Bank.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

Congratulations from my side. A few questions, you are mentioning the value of the mask. Is that the only impact that you have from the COVID-related products? I'm just thinking about sanitizers also. Or is that insignificant nowadays? That's one question. The other one is that you mentioned that you're going to increase or hire about 50 to 100 people for digital advising over the next 2 years. Is that cost that we have to add? Or is that going to be funded by efficiency improvements in general? And the third one, you mentioned that you're looking at [ Locke 23 ] or the logistics which could require significant investments in the coming financial years. Could you put a little more flavor on that part?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

In the spring, it was all about sanitizers and in the early fall it was all about face masks. And we see the same pattern in both cases that we see a massive boom as soon as the requirements are put in place. And everybody runs to the stores and to online to stock up. And then we see a really rapid flattening out and normalization of demand. So for this particular quarter, you're pretty safe if you use the DKK 20 million as sort of a guide to what kind of sort of one-off kind -- one-off-ish kind of sales have we seen in the quarter, including the negative margin effect that Anders mentioned on sanitizers. As for the cost that we have or the -- the people that we want to hire to run our digital business, you should not consider that an addition of cost. It will be a transfer of resources from our physical stores to online. So it's really migrating. As the business migrates towards online, we migrate some of the people online. And you should also be -- take note that those people are productive from a sales point of view. They actually sell something when they are advising customers. So it's actually -- that's our business model that we try to translate to the online business. And as for [ Locke 23 ], Anders, will you answer?

[Anders Tormod Skole-Sørensen]

Yes. Just on [ Locke 23 ], just let us read say, well, we are looking into this. We are developing it. And we are, as we go along, becoming more and more certain about which direction we're going. But it's not as such, going to have a significant -- we believe, a significant effect on CapEx in this year as we've already pointed out. There might be some small adjustments. But then you will see an effect coming into the next year. So we're not going to put specific numbers on as of yet because we're still in the exploratory phase. But obviously, the reason why we are mentioning it obviously, is because it is of some significance. And that means that it will be something that you will be able to see in the overall numbers. But as we become more certain about exactly how we're going to do this, then obviously, we will also bring that information to the market.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

And what we're talking about is that automatization?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Yes, obviously, that is one of the things that is on the table that we are going to run part of our logistics with a more automated setup, yes, correct.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

So there will be benefits as well?

[Anders Tormod Skole-Sørensen]

Yes. Yes, yes. No, no, listen. Obviously, we don't do this -- we're only doing this because we think it's going to be a setup, which is going to be cheaper to run in the future, obviously.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

Of course. In turn, so it could also be that you have ambitions to expand the online business beyond Denmark or beyond the current categories?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

It's not in our strategy. We're still focusing on becoming the market leader in Denmark for health and being, both off-line and online. And we think that's our main task for this strategy period.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

Okay. Then a final one for now. Do you have any statistics, market shares or whatever that could give an indication of the revenue increase that you have, which, of course, is benefiting from staycation so far this year? So where are the additional revenues coming from? Is that airport and international or traveling alone? Or Are there any changes in the domestic market shares as well.

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

I would think it's safe to assume that most of the shifts in market share has been due to the change in travel retail. I don't think it's -- we don't have data that would suggest that we are either winning or losing market share in the physical space. We're pretty confident that in the online space, we are continuing to take market share across all categories. But most of the increase in the beauty -- high-end beauty sales is probably due to a changed shopping behavior and volumes moving from travel retail into domestic spending.

[Poul Ernst Jessen, Senior Analyst]

And the increase you are having is reflecting your underlying market share, domestic as being spread normally across the domestic...

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

That's a fair question.

[Anders Tormod Skole-Sørensen]

That's a fair question. And in all honesty, we can't give a precise answer to that. I think it's probably -- our overall -- and this basically is a gut feeling. A gut feeling is that if anything, this has strengthened our position also in the high end of the selected part of the business, but it is -- you really can't tell at the end of the day because, obviously, when there's also been fewer tourists coming into Denmark and they -- guess what, they also do some of their purchases at Matas. So it's not just a one-picture as such. But nonetheless, we think that we have undoubtedly benefited from the, as we call it, the staycation.

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Yes, but it's worth noting that the influx of tourists is something that we feel as well because that's actually a significant customer group for us. And it's also worth mentioning that a lot of the shopping that's being done at airport are not planned shopping or substitutes, domestic shopping. It's really impulse shopping and gift shopping and so on and so forth. So it's probably less effective than you think.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of [ Matts Kristoff ] of Carnegie.

[Unknown Analyst]

Just 1 follow-up question from my side. Will there be any changes regarding the upcoming events such like Black Friday?

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

I think all of retail has adapted to the situation that we don't really want to do like come early, stand in line all day for a great offer. So we're approaching the holiday season as such by spreading out the offers much more and running campaigns in a different way than we usually do. And on top of that, we are actually -- we have decided to do a lot of precautions as to the environment in the store, including actually adding and taking on some new people to advise customers and to make sure that they get their gift wrapping as fast as possible, and so on and so forth. I think that's as much as I can comment without sharing our marketing plans.

[Operator]

Thank you. We currently have no further questions via the audio teleconference. I will now hand back to the speakers.

[Gregers Christian Wedell-Wedellsborg]

Thank you very much for joining and for the questions. This concludes the conference call for the day. Thank you. Bye.