Electrolux Professional publ AB

F:4KK1

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Group Q1 presentation. My name is Jacob Broberg, I'm heading up Investor Relations. With me I have Alberto Zanata, CEO of Electrolux Professional; and Fabio Zarpellon, CFO.

And as always, I start by handing over to Alberto. Please go ahead, Alberto.

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Thank you, Jacob. Good morning to everybody, and welcome to the call. Q1 was a strong quarter, strong from the net sales development point of view, roughly 20% up, but also strong from the profitability margin and earning point of view.

We grew earnings EBITA by 44% with a margin that is above the 10%, double digit, 11.4%. So good quarter driven mainly by strong performance, in particular in Europe and also Asia-Pac, Middle East and Africa recovering pretty well.

In the quarter, we also improved the cash flow. Operating cash flow was positive. I would say in the normalized range, in the meaning that compared to last year that was negative, it's clearly improving. But if also compare it to the past years, it is on a normalized level. Thanks to this performance, we also reduced the ratio between net debt and EBITA.

If you look at the geography, here, we can clearly see that we had the different dynamics. And they are different also by segment in the meaning that while Laundry grew in every segment -- in every region. So we had a good development of Laundry in Europe, in Asia-Pac, Middle East and Africa and also North America.

If I look at Food & Beverage, we had extremely good performance in Europe. I would say, even above our expectations, very good performance also in Asia-Pac, Middle East and Africa, confirming the recovery of the regions with one exception that was China. China is still late to come back.

We see right now a sign of recovery in April with good business in China, but again, is late to come. But in particular, we had Food & Beverage declining compared to last year sales in North America. And this is specifically, as I said, in Food & Beverage.

If we look at the performance of the Food & Beverage segment, overall, we delivered a good increase, a good sales increase, roughly 10% with a 40% increase of the EBITA. So also in this case, a profitable growth that mainly came from price, but also volume development in this case, in Europe.

And another important thing was the development of the mix. So we've been able to mix up focusing and growing particularly sales of high-margin product. Food & Beverage, and I mentioned earlier when we discussed or when we look at the different dynamics in the region, we declined sales in North America compared to last year.

And this is mainly because of a specific event happening in that part of the world, in the meaning that in North America in 2022, due to the fact that customers and stocking dealers, at least the ones building the stock, they were concerned about the product availability. They build up stocks, not trusting in some way suppliers, they build up stocks.

Now with this normalization of the supply chains, with the performance of the manufacturer back to normal in terms of delivery time, all these customers are with both the chains and the distributors. They are reducing the stock. They are doing exactly what we are doing in our factories, where we have been building up stock of components, and now we are going back to the normal way of managing the supply chain and the flow of the components. This is an effect that we believe is temporary, probably going into Q2 too, but for sure, it is something that is related to a specific dynamic of the market.

Things that is not affecting the Laundry business. Not at all, the Laundry business is doing very well. As I said, growing up to close to 20% and basically everywhere, in every region.

Also in terms of margin, the margin improved significantly and, again, driven by price again, as in the case of Food & Beverage. As in the case of Food & Beverage, because of the mix, in this case we sold mainly the product providing a significant benefit for energy saving, water saving are concerned that are not only providing good advantages or competitive advantages to our customers, but are also the product that are, at the end, delivering higher margin to us.

And in the case of Laundry, also an important impact of volume. I believe I always mentioned the fact that in this business, volume are super important for the expansion of the margin. And I would say that in Laundry, it is the case proving it.

With this said, I would leave the floor to Fabio for additional comment about the financials.

[Fabio Zarpellon, executive]

Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody. Since quarter 2 2021, Professional quarter-on-quarter has been able to consistently increase both the top line and EBITA compared to the previous year quarter.

Also in this quarter, overall, we increased the EBITA generation by SEK 100 million. SEK 60 million came from Food & Beverage, plus 40% compared to the previous year, reaching SEK 180 million EBITA generated in the quarter with a margin of 9.6%.

Additional SEK 34 million came from Laundry, plus 28%, reaching close to SEK 200 million in EBITA generation in the quarter with a margin over 18%. For Laundry, this represents the best historical quarter or the best historical quarter 1.

Group common costs were SEK 38 million, roughly SEK 9 million below quarter 1 last year where we had a specific consultancy cost. Alberto already mentioned about the ingredients of such EBITA improvement. Definitely price play an important role, more than compensating the inflationary item, not only related to material, but also related to labor cost as such.

Volume growth definitely supported the development of EBITA, in particular in Laundry and Food service in Europe. And as Alberto mentioned, we are also mixing up, in particular, in the Food service business in Europe, increasing in our portfolio product, the sales of the higher-margin product categories.

With the stabilization also of the supply chain, we also saw a reduction of the logistic cost on the sales. So this is definitely good signal going forward. We continue to invest in the company for our future.

The investment in innovation, in particular, on product development as well of the digitalization of our processes and interface with the customer continuing. But overall, we have reduced the weight of SG&A on sales to 24%, roughly 1 percentage point below the same period last year.

Income in the quarter reached SEK 190 million or SEK 0.66 per share, meaning an increase of 23% year-over-year. Finance net was close to SEK 40 million, clearly negatively impacted by the increase of the interest rate.

When it comes to the balance sheet development, let me start with the operating working capital. Operating working capital was SEK 2.2 billion at the end of March, an increase of 38% compared with the same period last year.

Currency translation contributing negatively with increase of roughly 7% to 8%, but also the pricing of the component and the product we have in stock negatively affected the value of the operating working capital, in particular on the inventory side.

At the same time, I expect that with the stabilization of the supply chain and the actions that we have put in place, in particular, on the inventory, in the second part of the year, we should start seeing a reduction of the weight of the inventory and the overall operating working capital. Quality of receivable is and I expect will remain good also in the rest of the year.

Overall our finance position was solid and remain pretty solid. Our ratio net debt on EBITA, we closed the quarter at 1.4x against 1.5x at year-end. In the quarter, in particular, thanks to the cash available and the cash generation, we have been repaying a portion of our short-term loan for roughly EUR 35 million.

And we ended up the quarter with roughly SEK 800 million in cash, and we have a revolving credit facility fully available for EUR 200 million, meaning that we have the means to sustain and support the development of this group going forward.

Alberto mentioned about cash flow. Cash flow was pretty solid in quarter 1, close to SEK 90 million cash generation against minus SEK 42 million on the same period last year. Cash compared to the EBITA generation was negatively affected by the increase in working capital related, in particular, to the support increasing receivable inventory related to the business growth.

Cash flow, as you see from the chart, is historically weak in quarter 1. But as anticipated during last call and the message was already that for quarter 4 last year and confirming quarter 1 this year, I expect stabilization of the cash generation going forward, more reflecting a trend that you see in this chart, of 2021.

And with that, back to you, Alberto.

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Thank you, Fabio. And now moving from the financial results, I'm also happy and proud to report that we continue to invest to bring new product. I think I mentioned at the beginning that one of the element giving us the possibility to improve the margin was the mix up. So focusing our sales efforts towards high-margin product and high margin are the products that are providing additional benefit to customers.

And during the quarter, we brought to market 2 important product. There have been others, but these are the 2, let me say, hero one. One is, for sure, the espresso, the super fully automatic espresso machine. This is the first model of a complete line.

We will complete the renewal of our fully automatic espresso machine in October, but we started with the largest model, the high productivity model. Customer reactions are very good, very positive. Sales are still tiny compared to the overall business. But the launch of this product help also to revitalize the entire espresso coffee machine.

And we are clearly mixing up in coffee, selling more and more espresso and less the drip coffee. That is, by the way, in line with the trend of the market. So very good and very happy to see this product working.

The second one is also a nice story in the meaning that we call it HeroDry, and it is a product that has been developed with large commercial restaurant chains, in partnering with them, and it is to address the clear need of single-use plastic in the meaning that with this product, we are able to dry in a short period of time, reusable items. They are directive.

So it is something that is coming in some country already. It is there and some other is going to come directly that oblige commercial restaurant chains or not only them, everybody, let me say, not to use items that are throw away, so to reuse them. It's part of the circular economy.

And we have been developing this product, in this case, specifically here in Sweden with Max Burgers, the largest burger chains in this country, and Coca-Cola. This product that is very competitive because it's providing what the customer needs, using less energy than other solutions. So very proud to have this one and I see the possibility and the applicability for this product also in other customer and segments.

All in all, again, a strong quarter with strong development both of sales and EBITA and margin. Order stock is good. We are in the level of 2 months of sales. So this means that it makes us cautiously optimistic about Q2. Why cautiously? Because even if we see that the business of the customer of our customer, so this means restaurant owners, hotels, operators, laundry operators and so on, is still good.

At the same time, we clearly acknowledge the fact that cost of money is -- interest rates are still high, and we have always to remember that our customers, they need typically to borrow money to invest on the product that they buy from us. So cautiously optimistic, thanks to the good order stock.

Order intake softening compared to last year, during the past weeks. We have also to remember that last year was -- I would not use it as a reference because the order flow was screwed up by the supply chain issues that forced many of our customers and the dealers to pre-book production slots.

In addition to this one, I'm very proud of the progress we are making on the sustainability, on the target that we have. We have a target to reduce by 50%. We are nearly there. So already 45% reductions. Our efforts are also certified by external entities that is very good.

I can, without that -- I mean, that we are leading in some way our industry for what concern the sustainability. And sustainability is also paying back in terms of business and sales, as I said, mainly in Laundry.

And last but not least, a continuous effort to bring new product to market, a product again that are in line with our sustainability targets, that are in line with our target of mixing up, that are in line with what customers are looking for.

With this said, I turn it back to you, Jacob.

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

Thank you, Alberto. And with that, we open up for questions. Please go ahead, operator.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Gustav Hageus from SEB.

[Gustav Sandström, analyst]

First of all, if I recall correctly, you were also discussing a bit of a weakening in the order book momentum in Q3 last year. And it turned out that sort of orders came in after you reported that and the results were actually quite okay. Could you perhaps make a reference to that period versus what you see now if there are any similarities or do you think there's any differences that you can see now in terms of that order book momentum going into Q2 versus Q4 last year?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Yes. I think the difference that we were experiencing at the end of last year and in Q1 is that the weakening that we reported during the second part of 2022 was mainly referring to the European market. Reality is that Europe performed extremely well. I would say, even above expectations, our expectations during the quarter. So demand remained very strong in Europe.

We saw a weakening and I explaining also the reason, in the United States, specifically when we were talking about chains, large chains that have been building the stock in-house, that is something peculiar, I would say, and related to what happened with the supply chain in 2022 and some larger stocking dealer. We have -- it's a relatively small business, if I look at the overall one, but we have a distributor business of specific line and brand of products sold in the United States that is only going through large distributors that are only stocking in particular fridges. So when you have a fridge, when it's down, the product, it is available or it is not. So the only way to sell and to run that business is to have stock available.

They had a record year or we, sorry, had a record year in 2022. And this was partially because the market was good, but also because these large distributors that were increasing significantly the stock being afraid not to have the product. And then suddenly, starting from the last month of the quarter and entering into Q1 -- quarter of 2022 and entering Q1, they started not to place orders, so to reduce significantly the order flow. That was the clear sign of the destocking, if you want to call it.

What I can see is that some of this one, they are restarting to place the order. So that is the reason why I'm saying it's probably a temporary effect.

[Gustav Sandström, analyst]

And do you have a view on in terms of how many weeks of inventory versus normalized to have? Or don't you have the type of granular insights to your dealer customers?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

No. If we talk about our dealer and customers, I would say, it's not so easy to get it with some of them. We also have such a partnership that we know also sell out, let me say, but typically it is not the case. I can tell you that our current order stock is covering 2 months of sales in average. So a big number. In average, we have a couple of months of sales.

If I compare the level of the order stock we have today with the order stock that we had last year, is much lower. But again, last year was abnormal because of our inability to deliver product and the fact that all our customers, they were pre-booking production. So I have to go back to 2019 when there was a normalized level of both product delivery and demand from customers. And typically we have 1.5 months of order stock.

So that is the reason why I'm saying we still have a healthy order stock. And this is the reason why still being cautious, but we are relatively optimistic for what the Q2 is concerned.

[Gustav Sandström, analyst]

If I turn to the Laundry division, a very strong quarter. And also if I did my calculations correctly, it's like 25% organically versus the 2019 baseline, so clearly strong. Do you have any sense of how sort of your addressable market has developed over the same period to what -- if you can divide it up a little bit between market share gains and then market growth, that would be helpful?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

I don't know about that. We don't have indication about the market yet. We don't have indication. So I would not speculate about these things, not yet -- not yet. So it's hard to say. I believe you know this industry is not a one that is super transparent with the market size and development. So we have statistics, but they are not out yet.

[Gustav Sandström, analyst]

And then finally for me, very quickly, Q2 was a bit wea last year then for Laundry. Can take us back a little bit what the comparison is and what happened in Q2 last year in order for us to sort of have -- get a sense of what to expect this year?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Yes. Last year, in Laundry, we had the big issue of the supply chain in the meaning that we did not receive components for quite a bit of time because China was in lockdown due to COVID. Last year, we produced the product. We produced the product. They were on finished, and we have been stocking to then deliver then in Q3.

So this year, we should not have this problem in Laundry. The order stock in Laundry is good, healthy. So I don't see, hopefully nothing happens, and the facts will confirm and I hope that we don't have a problem with the supply chain or with the COVID lockdown anywhere in the world in Laundry. So the business should be on the normal level in Laundry. Food was not, or just partially affected by these issues. It was the normal, let me say, if you want to call normal challenging that everybody had in 2022 with the missing components or scarcity of component, but not the big things that happened for Laundry.

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

We have a question from the web. It's Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux. With most of organic growth in Q1 coming from price, do you think full year growth can remain double digit?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

I'm cautiously optimistic on Q2 because this is the order stock. The analysis about the contribution from price is spot on, in the meaning that price is contributing positively. During the quarter, we expect to remain so. Also considering that the difference between the cost material will be reducing gradually.

Price is a big thing that we are monitoring, obviously, because still the price is there to cover the inflationary item, not only material. Remember that we had direct labor. We had also energy. There have been many items. But things are normalizing. And as a consequence, it is still something that we are looking at -- we are monitoring continuously.

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

We have a similar question from Henrik Christiansson at Carnegie. You highlighted price as positive component for Q1, more than offsetting inflationary pressures. How will the price cost dynamic play out in the coming quarter?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Yes. And I think in some way, I answered in the meaning that we have to keep our eyes open about the trend in the market. For the time being, the demand remains good. We have order in-house for the coming -- during the coming months, we will look at how it evolves. There could be that due to that competitive pressure, there could be pressure on price, but we don't see this happening yet.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Karri Rinta from Handelsbanken.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

Firstly, about the Food & Beverage business in the U.S. Firstly, can you remind us of how much of that is of your overall group sales? Maybe we can start with that.

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

So in the U.S., overall sales in the Americas was 26% in Q1. This is Laundry and Food & Beverage together. So again --

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

We don't -- sorry, Jacob Broberg here. We don't -- I mean we don't disclose the figures for Food & Beverage specifically for the U.S. But in total, last year, we had 29% of our sales in Food & Beverage and Laundry in the U.S. But we don't specifically call out the Food & Bev part.

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

So if you see that one, we reported a decline of the weight of the business in the Americas in Q1 because Food & Beverage declined in the United States, while we grew it in Europe and in Asia-Pac, Middle East and Africa, excluding China. And in Laundry, we grew everywhere basically, but less in the Americas compared to Europe and Middle East, Africa and Asia.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

And then if we look at the -- that growth rate that you had 5% reported sales decline in Food & Beverage in the U.S. So excluding FX, that's then maybe minus 15%, and then you have had price increases. So in volume, was the decline in the range of maybe 25%?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

No.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

And I think you alluded to some of the -- no?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Not so large. Not so large. But we had a decline in the United States, in particular, as I said, I would say particular was beverage also because you have to think about the kind of business. So due to the fact that the decline -- at least the explanation we are getting also from our people is mainly in -- due to the destocking, let me say, a fact that both dealer and chains we are doing, clearly proud with that unitary value relatively low like the beverage one where the ones that they have been stocking more by both chains and dealers.

So the main decline was in the beverage product. Food & Beverage in general went down, but mainly Food & Beverage, both in net sales and volumes. We have also to consider another thing that last year in Q1, again beverage, we had a significant rollout for our chain customers that we didn't repeat this year. This year, we didn't have any significant rollout for chains in Q1.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

Given that, would you say that food, at least some segments were positive in Q1 even in North America?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Yes, I believe so. Some segments like the institutional business was relatively good for us. The business, the former Unified Brands, now we don't split any more Unified Brands as you had the possibility to see. But one of the brand grow and that is the typical business or the product we sell to institutions. Institutions are staff canteen, hospitals, institutions in general, schools was relatively good. So it was not bad, that business. It was mainly the business addressing the chain customers.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

And then turning to Laundry, you did mention the energy saving solutions as one of the drivers for this very strong momentum that you have in that business. Do you have any other explanations? For example, how is the aftersales business developing firstly for the Laundry and then for the company overall?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Okay. So first, the energy saving product is one of the elements because also in Laundry, price, in the case of Laundry volumes, so we increased volumes units, pieces leaving our factories. As you rightly said, the mixing up, so with the energy saving solutions, all these very good thing. So it is a combination of all these elements that have been helping the development of the Laundry business.

[Karri Rinta, analyst]

And the aftersales part?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Aftersales, as a percentage compared to net sales is more or less stable, so didn't grow. But this is typically what is happening when you have a month with such a strong product sales. So the development of the sales was so strong that the percentage of the aftersales business remains stable, I believe, a percentage point down, but significant on that one.

We are already on the 18 percentage -- 18 percentage, a stable percentage of customer care business on net sales, that even if our ambition is to go higher than that, considering the variety of products that we have in our catalog, is a good level. What we can see is that we are focusing obviously in developing more the consumable that are in particular the chemicals. And indeed, the chemicals are growing very, very well, so high double digit. So very good. It's a tiny portion, but it is the one that could give us the possibility to mix up again.

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

We have a question from Henrik Christiansson at Carnegie again on the web. Could you talk about China? How big China is and how this -- how that developed during the quarter and what you expect going forward?

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

So today, China is a very small -- very small, and it was very small in -- also in 2022. So a very tiny business, is less than 5% of the business. The point is that China, let me say, before COVID was a significant portion of our Asia-Pac and Middle East, mainly Food & Beverage business. And we are expecting to have it back.

In Q1, China was still very, very small. So I think I mentioned it in the meaning saying that the recovery in China was expected to already start in Q1. We were all expecting to have China back after the new Chinese year, that was the end of January. This did not happen. But they reopened. We had our people traveling to China. We have Chinese people traveling outside of China, and they restart also moving inside. So these are the good sign. But evidently, the business didn't restart yet.

In April, here, if I look at the April, even if they are what, 20 days, 25 days, and so quite closer because we just need 3, 4 days to close the month. China is almost back in the month. So it seems that the recovery that we are expecting is 4 months late into the year. But I'm confident that China is back and we have a nice plan to increase the product portfolio and the localization of production, China for China, during the coming months.

[Jacob Broberg, executive]

Thank you. And if there are no further questions, operator, I think we will say -- we will say thank you for today, and speak to you next time. Thank you, and goodbye.

[Alberto Zanata, executive]

Thank you. Bye.