Benchmark Holdings PLC

LSE:BMK

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Trond Williksen, executive]

Good morning to all of you, and welcome to this quarterly presentation for Benchmark Holdings, where we cover our third quarter in our financial year '23.I'm Trond Williksen, I'm the CEO of the group. And as usual, I bring with me my CFO, Septima Maguire, and we're going to take you through kind of a normalized program for these kind of presentations, starting with highlights of the quarter, moving in to give you an operational update of the activities in our 3 business areas, before Septima is going to take you through some more granularity on financials. We are ending the presentation with outlook for the time to come. And of course, at the end of the session, there will be an opportunity for Q&A.Let me move into the highlights of the quarter, which has been a different quarter for us in Benchmark, where anticipated seasonal variations or seasonality has impacted our activities within our Health business area, where adverse market conditions have impacted our activities and speed within our Nutrition business area, and where more quarter-specific factors have impacted the financials of our Genetics area. Despite this, we are happy to have gone through and ended a quarter where we have kept the momentum of the business, we have kept the momentum of the year, and we expect to land a full year within our own but also external expectations.Let me shuffle you through some of the main numbers for the quarter. Our revenues ended at GBP 34.4 million. That's a reduction of 6% compared to last year. Our adjusted EBITDA excluding fair value adjustment, which is the measure that we are using, ended at GBP 3.6 million. That's a reduction from GBP 5.1 million in third quarter last year. And again, the explanations around that is linked to the factors that I initially mentioned.Our adjusted operating loss, excluding fair value movements, ended at GBP 1.7 million, which is a worsening compared to last year, where it was GBP 0.7 million. But on the contrary, our loss before taxes substantially improved quarter-on-quarter. It's now reduced to GBP 4.7 million compared to a significantly higher loss before taxes last year.Again, we expected this quarter to be a challenging quarter for us, and it goes without saying that given the quarter itself, we are not particularly happy with the numbers. But if you look at how we have kept the momentum in the business during the quarter, how we are keeping the momentum through the year, the picture is quite different. We are very happy that we year-over-year, at the end of the third quarter, have significantly positive development of the group. Revenues are up 15%. Adjusted EBITDA excluding fair value movements are up 27%. Adjusted operating profit excluding fair value moments are up 207%, more than tripled. And our loss before tax is significantly reduced to GBP 6.6 million.It should also be mentioned, and this is important for us, that operating cash inflow for the year-to-date is GBP 11.2 million, which is a significant improvement and it's an important improvement for us in Benchmark throughout the year. Thus, we also are reducing our net debt over the year.In the highlights, it should also be mentioned that we are continuing to streamline the group, continuing to make sure that we operate as efficient as possible, and that we are taking out synergies in between that we find in the group. To that end, we have executed an alignment in the quarter between the Health organization and the salmon part of the Genetics organization, aligning them into a new business area, which we call the Salmon business area, under a common leadership with a combined offering to the common customers we have within the salmon industry.This allows us to take out synergies in the group. It allows us to operate more efficiently. This is a natural development of Benchmark where we are seeking to utilize what we have in the best possible way to create the best possible result for the company. This is, so far, showing to work very well. So we are satisfied with the development of that change in the organization so far. This is also something that we will continue to do in the time to come, seek areas where we can operate more efficiently, seek areas where we can synergize within the organization to become an even more efficient organization than we are today.Moving you from highlights into the 3 business areas, and starting out with Genetics, where we have seen growth in top line during the quarter. It's driven by our core salmon Genetics business out of Iceland and Norway. Totally, the revenues are up 10% for the business area in the quarter and it's driven by increased salmon egg sales to the industry. Egg sales in third quarter this year ended at 68.5 million eggs, which is an increase from 59.4 million eggs last year, showing that we are continuing to grow our egg sales into the salmon industry out of our core salmon activities out of Iceland and Norway.Besides the core activities within salmon out of Iceland and Norway, we also have salmon activity established now in Chile, where we have seen commercial progress during the year -- during the quarter. We are continuously working in order to utilize the capacity that we have invested there. We have an invested capacity in Chile of 50 million eggs, and we are constantly working in order to fill that capacity and take a meaningful position in that market.We have had progress on that during the quarter, focusing on building order books going forward that gives us a utilization of the capacity that we have installed. This is taking time. The key to this is that we have now established a documentation of the performance of the Chilean Saga strain, the purest Chilean strain that we have established in Chile.We have now the results from the first cycles, and we're getting more and more results from the first full cycle of that in Chile. And those results are continuing to document that we have a very competitive strain in Chile, which is, of course, a requirement for the customers to start to buy and to see that we are coming into the market as a solid reputable supplier with high-quality genetics and high bio-secure standards into that market.Other than salmon, we have in -- within our shrimp genetics activity, we have focused in our third quarter. This is in line with what we communicated last quarter. We are focused on enhancing our genetics strains within shrimp genetics. We are building on the experiences from the first year of commercialization to do that.The shrimp market is not a market where one size fits all. So it requires work to tailor genetics to different markets. And we are using the experience from the first round of commercialization that we did from '21 onwards. While we are doing that, we have dampened or reduced our commercial activity within SPR shrimp. Together with that, the adverse conditions in the shrimp market is impacting also our activities within the shrimp genetics operations and is reflected in our numbers.On the tilapia side, we have now for 2 quarters announced that we are doing a strategic review. We have used the quarter in order to accelerate that review, and we are now well advanced in that process. As we announced previously, we are not satisfied with the economics in our tilapia breeding activity. And the purpose of the strategic review is to do something with that, rectify that. And we are well advanced in doing so and determined to do that as soon as possible.As you can see from the number, even if we have a growth in our top line driven by the core salmon activity, this is not fully reflected or this is not reflected in our financials when it comes to adjusted EBITDA before fair value movement. So this deserves a special explanation and a special attention.Indeed, the increased sales of salmon eggs from our core salmon genetics activity has created a better result, has created an increase in our adjusted EBITDA, and more precisely, that is GBP 2.8 million. That positive effect has been offset by what I call partly seasonal specific factors.First of all, we have compared to last year an effect related to inflationary cost increases. Like any company out there, we are not immune against the cost inflation that we see around us. This is reflected in, if compared to third quarter last year, with an increase in COGS, but also in OpEx in total GBP 1 million. That reflects the difference between this quarter and the third quarter last year. The more quarter-specific factors that are impacting our results are related to normalization in the proportion of biological assets that are capitalized.Last year, we were about -- when we ended the Q3, we were about to enter into Q4 with extraordinary high sales of eggs. This was due to specific market conditions that occurred during last year. That gave an effect of -- into our biological assets that helped our numbers last year. We don't see the same effect this year. We have a positive movement also in our biological assets this year, but compared to last year, the effect is negative of GBP 1.3 million if you look at the numbers quarter against quarter.Besides that, we have a negative effect related to our harvested fish. This is fish that we own. Thus, they are reflected in our P&L. But we are not operating the harvesting -- the fish that we are harvesting. That's operated by a third party.What we experienced in third quarter is that we harvested fish. I will say they were not particularly hitting the nail when it comes to prices. At the same time, we saw extraordinary cost related to that harvested fish, which has a negative effect in our numbers of GBP 1.1 million.Besides that, we have ForEx effects. The Norwegian krone is weak, as everybody knows, and it stays weak. And if you compare our results this year within Genetics, where we have a significant portion that we are selling into Norway, that has in total an effect compared to last year of GBP 0.6 million. So these are the things that has taken down our adjusted EBITDA compared to last year, what I call quarter-specific effects.Let me -- before I go into the other business area, let me shortly take you through the granularity of the distribution of the revenues and the earnings from the different parts in genetics. This is a slide that we introduced last year, and we got feedback that it's a very helpful way of presenting it. So everybody gets a good insight into the different parts in our Genetics business. Just short, you see that the financial backbone of our genetics activity is the core salmon genetics activity out of Iceland and Norway. That includes harvested fish and harvest income, which again reflects the specific things that I just commented.You see that here that is the economic and financial backbone of the activity with a significant positive adjusted EBITDA. On the contrary, the growth vectors we have within Genetics, being in our mind Chile tilapia and shrimp, continues to have a negative financial impact on our total numbers within this genetics area. I can assure you all we know that. And I can assure you all that we are focusing very strongly to bring a change into that situation. I told you about the progress that we have had in Chile. And we are also working actively, as you know, with both shrimp and tilapia in order to alter that picture going forward.Moving forward -- or moving forward to our second business area, Advanced Nutrition, where we have experienced a same situation or a situation within the markets that are continuing to be adverse driven by weak shrimp markets out there. This is not a new situation. This has been the situation, and we have been communicating this throughout the full year. The shrimp markets are -- which are our main market for this business area, have been weak for a while and we expect them to stay weak for some time. This is affecting our top line, which is reduced quarter-on-quarter in third quarter.What is driving the situation in the shrink market? Well, at the end of the day, it's lowering -- lowered customer demand, which again creates in the shrimp industry overproduction. It creates pressure on farm gate prices for the farmers. In addition to that, the farmers have encountered also inflationary pressure on the cost and especially on feed, but other inputs into their production.So the pressure on the shrimp farmers -- and this is now a picture throughout the whole world, is that they are facing difficult times. What they are doing is that they reduce their stocking, taking down the production; meaning, again, that the possibility for us to sell products into that market is reduced. And this is reflected in our top line.Having said this, let me take a little bit picture on the magnitude of the problem, by the way. If you look at the 2 main importing markets, consuming markets for shrimp globally, that's the U.S. and Europe. This year -- and this is independent reports that says we expect that the imports to these 2 markets will go down between 20% and 30%. So that shows the magnitude of the problem in the markets that we are in. Despite this and despite the effects that we have seen in Q3, if you look at the total year so far, we have been managing to keep the same pace throughout the year as we did last year, which I think is performance.And despite this -- and this is also something that absolutely needs to be mentioned, is that, if you look at our adjusted EBITDA for this business area, it's actually increased quarter-on-quarter if you compare Q3 this year to Q3 last year. This is due to a change in product mix, but it is also changed due to a change in or a lowering of freight cost, which was a big problem during COVID and after COVID, which has easened up. But it's also due to an ongoing efficiency program in our Advanced Nutrition business.I must say that I am very satisfied with the way that our Advanced Nutrition organization, INVE, has been tackling the headwind that we have encountered in the market. And that's reflected in the numbers. We have a very strong organization. We have a very agile organization. We have a very commercially focused organization. And we expect that the conditions within the shrimp markets will stay difficult also for a while going forward, but we are very well positioned to gain more traction again and to take up the growth, and we are -- when the market conditions are changing to the positive again.It should also be mentioned within this business area that the other big market segment is the marine fish segment. It's not as significant as the shrimp market segment. We've been doing very well in that market segment. And that is despite that the market conditions also for sea bass/sea bream, but also other marine fish throughout the world has not been particularly easy during the year and during this quarter. But despite that, we have been performing well within that segment.Moving on to the last business area, which is our Health business area. And we communicated this when we ended our Q2 presentations. We expected to move into a low season of medicinal treatment for sea lice. And this is what we have experienced, very much like what we experienced last year. So it's no surprise to us. Even if we can see it, we don't particularly like downturns or seasonal variations and we don't like periods with low activity anywhere in what we are doing.What is driving this? Well, during the summer months after the spring treatment of sea lice, the farmers -- and this is -- I'm talking about the Norwegian market now, where we are installed with Ectosan Vet and CleanTreat, they prefer to use a combination between fresh water treatment and mechanical treatment to keep -- to control the sea lice levels. This is the way that we did last year. This is the way that we are still doing it this way. So they control the sea lice levels throughout the summer with that, a period where the sea lice pressure in general are less intense.So even if they acknowledge that Ectosan Vet and CleanTreat is the most efficient and efficacious medicine to treat sea lice, they are saving that for later periods where the sea lice pressure are increasing, and that's where we are right now, and throughout the fall and into the winter, into the spring. So that's the way the mechanics of that works. That means that we have in the summer period very low activity, and that is what is reflected in our numbers.If you look at the numbers, they speak for themselves. In total, we see that revenues are at the level of last year. So again, we are experiencing the same thing this year as last year, and we have a loss on adjusted EBITDA. But if you look at the progress again that we have had year-to-date, it's very significant. Year-to-date revenues are up 57% in this business area and our adjusted EBITDA is GBP 5.6 million, which is a significant increase compared to last year. That shows the progress that we have had within this business area.As I've been explaining now repeatedly in these quarterly presentations, we are on our journey to make the business model around our Health solutions more cost-effective for the customers, less capital-intensive and less costly for ourselves. A key to do so is to integrate the CleanTreat system, which is a crucial part of the Ectosan CleanTreat solution that we have introduced into the market, to integrate that into the infrastructure of the farmers, meaning the wellboats that are there. That will enable us to reduce the cost related to a separate vessel where we have the CleanTreat system sitting as of now and to streamline the solution.This we've been working intensively with, I will say, for a year. We know where we want to go. It takes some time to convince and to get there. Key to that is the alliance that we have established with leading equipment -- well, both equipment provider, MMC, and the leading ship designer, SALT, which allows us now to work with integration of the CleanTreat system into future wellboats coming into the market.We have advanced that significantly also over Q3, and we are now in a position where we can offer such a solution. And what I said at the end of Q2 is that we are targeting to get the first such solutions signed during the fall of this year. And we still uphold that.Just a small comment also on the other part of our Health business, which is the Salmosan. Not particularly strong sales in Q2. It's due to the same reasons as I just mentioned for Ectosan, but also partly due to that we had extraordinary strong sales in Q2 that has taken down a little bit sales into Q3, but also -- both for Ectosan Vet but also for Salmosan. And we expect and we already see an increase moving into the main sea lice season.So with these words going through the operational highlights, I'll leave the floor to you, Septima, to go through the financials.

[Septima Maguire, executive]

Thank you, Trond. So looking at the income statement, I'm going to talk to the quarterly numbers, but also how they feed into the overall year-to-date picture. As Trond noted, quarter 3 has evolved as a slower quarter as we previously guided when we reported our half year results in May of this year. But overall, we've maintained the growth that we saw within the first half of the year.From a revenue perspective, in quarter 1 -- sorry, in quarter 3, this fell by 1% at a constant exchange rate driven by higher Health and Genetic sales, offset by the lower Nutrition sales that we saw. At an actual exchange rate, this actually reduced by 6% driven in the main by the weak NOK/GBP for the quarter. From a full year-to-date perspective, though, this grew at 15%, showing the strong start that we had within this financial year.From a gross profit perspective, this decreased by 11% to GBP 7.3 million in the quarter. This was due to a number of factors. In Health, the Salmosan sales mix, country mix are impacted on the gross profitability for that business area. Genetics were impacted by the factors as noted by Trond earlier. And -- but conversely, Nutrition actually increased their gross profit by GBP 0.2 million driven by the product mix Trond referenced and also FX tailwinds that we saw in the period. But even within the slower market conditions, we maintained growth of 12% in the year-to-date gross profit and a gross margin of 50%.R&D grew slightly in the quarter to GBP 1.5 million. The main element of this was focused on our Genetics business area as we progressed some of our genetics development programs. Overall, in the year-to-date, this reflected a reduction in R&D in the year-to-date period, leaving us at 4% behind last year's levels.Operating costs have decreased by 6% at a constant exchange rate to GBP 10.6 million in the period. This is as a result of extreme cost control across the group to mitigate the drop in gross profits within the period. The strong cost control in quarter 3 helped ease the increase in OpEx that we've seen at a year-to-date level back to 11%.Adjusted EBITDA reduced by 13% to GBP 3.6 million. This is driven by the drop in gross profit, offset in part by the cost control. Correspondingly, adjusted operating profit dropped to a loss of GBP 0.2 million.Exceptional costs in the quarter were flat versus last year, but were made up by different components. This year, it related mainly to aborted acquisition costs versus -- last year it was primarily made up of restructuring costs. With the exceptional cost for the full year, we also have costs associated with the establishment of the June listing in Oslo.Net financial costs for the period reduced by GBP 7 million in the quarter, reflecting credit movements of GBP 3.4 million on hedges and GBP 4.4 million of FX credits and also lower amortization of deferred financing costs. This was offset by increased net movements on interest and also lease interest of GBP 0.9 million in the period. This drove operating loss -- the loss before tax down to GBP 4.7 million versus the GBP 11.2 million that we saw in the same quarter last year. Also with lower profits from Genetics and Nutrition in the period, our lower tax charge was reduced, resulting in a loss before tax of GBP 4.6 million for the quarter and, of course, GBP 8 million for the year-to-date.So moving on to look at the cash flow. Our cash generated from operations in the period of GBP 17.6 million shows that we're moving in the right direction. This was then supported by more moderate CapEx of GBP 4.7 million as we seek to control investment and conserve cash. The main investment completed in the period was, of course, the new tanks in Salten to bring capacity up to the 150 million eggs. This CapEx remains in line with the full year guidance of between GBP 6 million and GBP 8 million.As previously noted, we acquired the remaining share of the minority interest in Iceland for GBP 8 million in the first half of this year. Additionally, we had cash out for interest and taxes of GBP 12.6 million, which related to GBP 6.3 million of cash out for taxes and GBP 6.3 million for cash out for interest. It should be noted, we pay tax in our profit-making jurisdictions, which are our core salmon businesses, Iceland and Norway, and in Belgium, which is the center of our nutrition activities.During quarter 3, we received GBP 1.3 million deferred consideration associated with the divestment of the Improve business, which occurred in 2020. This completes the deferred consideration payments associated with that divestment. And of course, the net proceeds for the December '22 equity issuance associated with the new Oslo listing, which contributed to us ending the quarter with a net debt position of GBP 66.9 million. With cash of GBP 33.8 million and liquidity of GBP 46.1 million, we have a stable balance sheet as we move forward to continue to grow the business.Now moving to look at the metrics that we use to monitor how we're progressing our business. From a sales perspective, we've delivered year-to-date sales growth of 15% within the medium-term target range of 15% to 18%, but reflecting softer market conditions in Nutrition in the quarter.The adjusted EBITDA margin of 20% has softened since the half year due to the negative margin from Health diluting the overall business as a consequence of the slower sea lice season. Cash conversion remains a significant area of focus, to bring it from its current 41% to a target of 80% for the business in the medium term, with increasing and consistent focus on working capital to allow us to release some of the cash held within this area.Finally, free cash flow as a percentage of sales. Within this metric, a free cash flow of 0% of sales, moving away from being a negative 8%, we're moving towards our targets through significant discipline around CapEx, which will continue to move forward towards the target of 10% to 15%.Back to you, Trond.

[Trond Williksen, executive]

Thank you, Septima. And moving on to the OpEx from where we are today. As I said in my introduction, we have ended a quarter that we knew would be challenging, and we have added it in a way where we have kept the momentum in the business and we have kept the momentum in the year. And if you look at year-to-date, we have double-digit growth in our revenues and in our adjusted EBITDA and we expect to end the year within expectations.To be a little bit more granular on the expectations to the different business areas. In Genetics, we continue to have good visibility in our salmon egg sales out of the core salmon genetics business, Norway and Iceland.Last year, we went into Q4 where we had exceptionally high sales due to particularly market conditions that were at that time. We don't expect that to be repeated to the same extent this year because the conditions are not there. But if you look at the year in total, we are steering towards significant growth in egg sales, Salmon egg sales out of the core business in total.Focus is, of course, to run that core business as good as possible, to continue the progress that we have had in that business. The focus within our Genetics area is, of course, to change the pictures around the growth vectors. So very strong focus now is to work on Chile to build on order book into next year. That brings us a step forward to utilize the capacity that we have established there and take a meaningful position into that market.In our Advanced Nutrition business, we expect that the headwind that we have had over the last year in the markets with -- driven by the weak market conditions in shrimp is continuing to stay with us for a while. That is, of course, impacting the progress we have in that business area. Nobody is vaccinated against such market headwinds. We continue to work with what we can do something with. The market conditions, we cannot do anything with. But we can do something with how we operate.As I mentioned, we are satisfied how our Advanced Nutrition or INVE business has been tackling the headwind that we have had, and we will continue to be agile in this market. Looking forward, we will be -- the growth rate of that business area will be impacted by the market conditions in the short run as long as the market conditions are as they are. So the growth will not be the same as it would have been in a normalized market condition. But that is the way it is when you are meeting market headwinds.But we are extremely well positioned as soon as the market is picking up again to gain traction in a better market within shrimp but also within marine fish business. We will also continue within this business area. And they are really on it themselves to increase efficiency in what we are doing, which, of course, is also already reflected in the financial numbers for Q3. We are adjusting our cost base in order to mitigate as good as possible the effect, but we are not vaccinated against market headwinds.In terms of the last business area, Health, we are now moving out of the seasonal low for medicinal treatment of Ectosan Vet, which is the main product. But also same thing is happening for Salmosan, our second product, within that sector. And from now on, and I'm talking now, we expect that, that is picking up. And we see that, that is picking up for the last part of Q4 and into the main sea lice season, which is actually our Q1.We also are strongly focused on our efforts in order to develop our business model within our Health business, integrate the CleanTreat system into the infrastructure of our customers, thus moving ourselves from being a medicine provider and a technical provider of CleanTreat systems to become a more pure-play medicine provider, a [ official ] provider into that industry. So that's a key focus for us going forward.So that summarizes the outlook. Let me use the opportunity since I'm standing here, and this is an opportunity just to repeat what Benchmark is all about and why it's in our mind a unique bet on the agriculture industry. We define ourselves as being a market-leading aquaculture biotechnology company, having 3 business areas that are well placed in the market, where we hold market-leading positions in what we do. This is key to the strategy. We are in areas where we are market leading or where we believe that we can be market leading.From these 3 business areas, we are providing specialized -- highly specialized, mission-critical solutions. Specialized because this is also a key to our strategy. We are only in specialized products commanding high margins. We are not in commodity business. Mission-critical because all our products and solutions are mission-critical to the industry, which means that should be less impacted by fluctuations in the market. The farmers need to have our production as long as they are farming.And we are providing our products in a very well-developed global distribution network that we have established, which is unique, reaching customers in more than 70 countries every day. Truly an international company. Truly a company that is well positioned in the aquaculture industry that we are a strong believer in.So with those words, I end the presentation. And now we are open for questions.

[Operator]

Right now, there are no questions from your online audience. Just remind them that you are free to ask questions on your screen. And then we'll turn to the audience here in Oslo and see if there are any questions here. Apparently not. It seems everything is loud and clear...

[Trond Williksen, executive]

Apparently, we were very complete in our presentation, so there are no questions to be asked. Or we can wait a little bit and see if there comes up more questions from the external audience.Okay. So then there were no questions. We thank you for the attendance and we are looking forward to come back and present our fourth quarter in the fall. So thank you for attending.