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Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Emma Tryti, executive]

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our presentation of the second quarter and first half results. Very nice to see you here in person and also hi to everyone following online.

The second quarter of 2024 represented a significant growth in underlying demand amongst consumers, resulting in 37% year-on-year growth in the Consumer segment and was also driven by strong growth across all channels. And we had 89% growth year-on-year through our own e-commerce channel.

And as a significantly larger portion of our total revenue now coming from the Consumer segment, I'm very pleased to see that we manage to keep our gross profit margin at 62%. And the main driver behind that is the high growth that we see in our own e-commerce channel with naturally higher margins.

In the second quarter, we also experienced continued challenging market conditions in the Business segment, still lagging sales, longer sales cycles. So the great growth in the Consumer segment was somewhat offset, ending at a total revenue growth of 17% for the quarter. And we will get back to the details in the numbers later on.

So all our key metrics, at the last 12-month basis, are pointing in the right direction. We do have revenue growth, gross margin expansion, OpEx increases, less than 1:1 with revenues, and we also have growth in the EBITDA margin.

And this strong underlying demand in the Consumer segment, I'll come back to that in the strategy update today, but usually, the second quarter amongst consumers is a pretty slow quarter, but we see this pull effect getting stronger and stronger. And we had especially strong growth in North America, Canada, up 40%.

Device registrations grew by 12% and repeated sales accounted for 26% of total sales, indicating a strong customer loyalty. And the fact that the increase in device registrations is not as high as the increase in revenues in the Consumer segment that is explained by a simple fact, we are selling much more of our most basic device Corentium Home, which is not connected.

And that, again, is something that is directly correlated to the increasing demand. Now more and more people who actively would like to measure Radon just to prevent Radon-induced lung cancer. So we sold actually 3x as many Corentium Home this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. And we have already sold more than our most optimistic forecast for the full year.

The Business segment came in 30% down compared to the equivalent quarter last year, continued strong or, let's say, challenging conditions. And that's due to macroeconomic factors and the real estate -- the commercial real estate market struggling a bit still, so the sales cycles are getting longer, and we see not as many deals.

But at the end of the day, the difference between 2.0 and 1.4 quarter-on-quarter that is related to 1 big deal in Q2 last year. And we were pretty close to have an even bigger one for this year and then the numbers would have looked different.

It's still a growing pipeline of large projects, both in the real estate market, U.S. and Europe, but also within the school districts and also amongst municipalities in Scandinavia. We secured an order of indoor air quality sensors of 1,500 classrooms across school districts in the U.S. And we have added a couple of solid references in Europe as well: Radisson Blu, Telenor in the major Norwegian financial institution.

And we do see a considerable growth in devices in the field. And it's good progress in terms of installing a lot of the devices that we actually sold in Q3 and Q4 last year. And now we are approaching 25,000 devices installed at 1 of our large global accounts who keeps continuing building orders. And we do have as many quarters before as well, pretty steady sales at the Pro segment. ARR is up 7% year-on-year, driven by the Business segment.

So with that, let's dig a bit deeper into the numbers with Magnus.

[Magnus Bekkelund, executive]

Thank you, Emma. So we recognized USD 8.7 million in revenues for the second quarter, which is up 17% compared to the same quarter last year. And first half revenues came in at USD 18.2 million, up 13% compared to first half of '23.

Gross margins for the quarter came in at 62%, which is stable compared to the second quarter last year, despite a large share of revenues from the Consumer segment, and I will dig more into the details on the next slide. We saw an EBITDA loss of negative USD 1.7 million for the second quarter, resulting to net EBITDA margin of 19% compared to 37% last year.

The EBITDA loss came in at USD 3.5 million for the first half compared to USD 5.9 million first half of '23. This reflects a reduction in employee benefit expenses and a slight increase in other operating expenses mainly due to increased freight costs, as we have sold more devices this year.

In terms of EBIT, it came in at negative USD 2.2 million compared to USD 3.1 million the same quarter last year and USD 4.4 million for the first half compared to USD 6.7 million in '23. And the reported net loss for the quarter was USD 2 million compared to USD 2.2 million negative in Q2 '23. And for the first half, it was USD 2.9 million negative compared to USD 4.3 million negative, an improvement of USD 1.4 million.

So moving to the margins. We have delivered strong and stable gross margins over the last 5 quarters and despite the change in segment mix in the first half of '24. The margins in the Consumer segment will fluctuate due to seasonality, channel mix and product mix.

The contribution from airthings.com has increased every quarter and is an important factor to keep healthy margins in the segment. Gross margins from the Business segment have increased first half of '24 due to a larger share of subscription revenues compared to hardware sales and more than 700,000 of the revenues comes from subscriptions. And the subscription contributes with more than 80% in gross margins.

The Pro segment is stable at around 88%. The inventory situation is still a key focus area for the company. In the second quarter, we saw a reduction of USD 200,000 compared to the first quarter, which represents a reduction of 14 days from 360 to 346 days, despite a significant ramp-up of the inventory in the second quarter due to significant orders that had to be shipped in the third quarter. So with this and the continued focus on inbound supply, we aim to be at 250 days at year-end.

Moving to the balance sheet. We covered the changes in assets. Deferred tax assets have increased due to the losses in the last 12 months. Inventories is down, as mentioned on the previous slide. Trade receivables are up, and that's mainly due to increased sales this quarter compared to the second quarter last year. And the cash is down from USD 17 million to USD 11 million, and I will cover the details for the quarter on the next slide. We have limited changes to the liabilities, and the equity ratio remains at 78%.

So looking at the cash flow statement. Cash balance was USD 11.2 million at quarter end, down USD 2 million, and that's mainly driven by negative cash flow from operating activities, negative EBITDA, offset by positive changes from the working capital.

In terms of investment activities, we reported negative USD 329,000, mainly related to R&D and development capitalizations. Financing activities was modest, USD 234,000, which brought us down to USD 11.2 million at quarter end.

With that, I leave the word back to Emma, for the strategy update.

[Emma Tryti, executive]

Perfect. Thank you. So as we saw, all our key metrics are pointing in the right direction. At the same time, we do have this twofolded outcome for the first half year and we do see changing perceptions amongst consumers. So that triggered a strategy review.

And we will go through a couple of -- actually 3 main findings from that review. We will shortly cover the changing market dynamics that we are experiencing and then we will go into 3 strategic initiatives that we announced today, okay?

So we have been very curious. What are the main reasons behind this opposite development? The consumer demand exceeds our most optimistic forecast, while we are seeing the lagging sales in the Business segment. And we did present a new strategy for Airthings at the Capital Markets Day last year.

And that was all around the go-to-market approach, which is mainly all about building stronger relationships to customers, getting closer to customers. And it was also about the product focus. To put that into simple terms, creating engaging user experiences across hardware and software, and it was about building a scalable operating model.

And all those core elements, they remain. And then we had a new management in place, and we have done this strategic review, and we do see that we need to accelerate our path to profitability.

So the key findings, they go as follows. So the first one is that the value proposition with the best market fit that is health-driven indoor air quality. It goes for consumers and businesses. That's where we are at our very best. We optimize for people, whether they are at home, at work or at school.

And it's about ensuring safety, wellness and also performance of productivity. And of course, there is one difference between at home and at work because at work, we also provide -- to comply with health regulations and to achieve wellness, sustainability certifications that you don't do at home.

But at the end of the day, we have established and differentiated solution with an excellent current product market fit. So on the other hand, when it comes to building control, we don't have the same product market fit. That is more optimized to the energy bill, to put it that way.

And it's about optimizing heating, ventilation and cooling. It's needs-based building management. And we do have a partial solution, but there is still much that has to be developed. So the product market fit is lower.

The second insight is related to this accelerating demand amongst consumers. And we talked about the Radon part, generating more sales of the Corentium Home. And then it's also, as we are experiencing increasing instances of wildfires around the world, people tend to get fairly obsessed about having clean air where they can control it.

So at home for their families; at work for their employees; who are at school, for their students. It has done something to the mindset. And people are also getting more and more interested in indoor air quality to reduce discomfort such as headache, dry eyes or just the fact that you don't sleep good enough. So we always knew that this pool effect would come. We just didn't expect it to come as early and as strong as we are experiencing at the moment.

And the third insight that is related to the Business segment. We sell our solutions to a wide variety of businesses. And at the end of the day, it's when we sell to large accounts and schools where we have the best return on investment.

That's where we have high device density. So we sell a lot of devices. Okay, the sales cycles, they are pretty long, can be cumbersome, public tenders and all that for the school districts. But when we win, it's a lot of devices which generate subscriptions over time.

The win rate is pretty good. So when we go for it, we have a quite high probability of actually make it happen. And the average deal size is huge. And then something that we spend a lot of time analyzing is our lifetime value over customer acquisition cost. That mathematics just has to be right.

And it's easy to understand that we have a high lifetime value of those big deals. But we also need to make sure that we don't use too much resources in terms of actually getting the deals. So for large accounts and schools that equation is good.

But again, on the other hand, all the other segments within businesses that we use a lot of resources on, like hotels, museums, gyms, restaurants, as an example, they also would like Airthings devices. But there, we don't have the same return on investment.

It's not the same device density. The customer acquisition cost actually tends to be higher because there's so many specific solutions needed for the different part or types of businesses. So it includes extra time spending figuring out how to develop this and that, it's not streamlined.

So based on these insights, going forward, Airthings will empower people to breathe better. Before today, we had in our mission that we would empower the world to breathe better. Ambitious and good, yes. But that's also included buildings. Now our focus is people, whether they are at home, at work or at school.

So now I'm going to do a short deep dive into the market insight before we wrap it all up with the strategic initiatives, okay? People are getting more and more engaged in their personal health. So would you associate with your personal health. For some, it's all about mindfulness.

For some, it's about exercises, nutrition. For me, it's much about sleep. I love to sleep. But for some, it's also about indoor air quality. And the interest for things within personal health, such as body battery, sleep score, heart rate [ variability ] is at its peak, and it's going quite fast.

And we have 3 main entry points, 3 doors into indoor air quality, health-driven indoor air quality. The first aspect is safety. Here's where we have the demand around fixing -- you just want to measure Radon levels or you want to measure PM levels in wildfire areas, that's about the safety thing.

And then we have wellness, which is more about monitoring and filtering indoor air quality to improve sleep and prevent allergy symptoms such as headaches and dry eyes, reduce this kind of discomfort.

And then we have something around performance where we can utilize all the data that we have available. I've said it before and I'll say it again: in the future, and we're not that far away, indoor air quality will be a common feature within tracking your sleep score at your watch when you wake up in the morning, that's about the performance part.

We're not yet there, but we will be. And we are pretty well positioned to capture a significant share of the indoor air quality market. And the safety aspect, that is also -- it helps with the regulations. Did you know that every single school in Norway, they actually have to measure Radon if we ask for it.

And there's a lot of things going on, on the regulations around the world, helping us. Over 70% have purchased more in this category in the past year than in prior years. And more and more believe that workplace air quality directly impact their health and wellness.

And it's about changing these perceptions in the minds of people, from nice to have to must have. And we have actually already managed to come quite far within the safety aspect of it. We see this pull effect in the market. And we do believe that just because we have already started to enter the early majority of the population with devices to measure Radon and PM levels, we will also come there when it comes to wellness and performance.

And when we have done that, we do believe that in the future, indoor air quality will be seen as a basic need. So for example, owing an indoor air quality monitor is just as common as owning a smoke detector. Any family will measure Radon in their homes. Not even -- not only considering it while you're moving to a new house, but also where you're at, at the moment.

And people buy new air purifier filters when preparing for wildfire season. Indoor air ratings are common features of rental listings such as in Airbnb. Children bring indoor air quality monitors to school that don't actively measure air quality.

And this is my favorite: employees demand indoor air quality measures from their employers. So based on the twofolded outcome, the insights that we have from the strategy review in addition to the market insights, we will present 3 strategic initiatives that will make us get where we want to be.

So these 3 are: The first one is all about investing in 1 united value proposition, that is health-driven indoor air quality to people at home, at working and at school. We will continue to sell direct and through our strategic partners when they help us increase our distribution power.

The second one is about partnerships. We will enable our trusted partners to sell, develop and grow, building control to businesses. So we will sell exclusively through value-added partners.

And the third one is that we will reduce complexity in our organization by adopting a more lean and focused way of working. So with the first one, we are going from a twofolded value proposition into 1. And we are going from pursuing 4 trends into 1.

So this means health indoor air quality, that's where we will invest; building control, that's what we will maintain and to do through our value-added partners. And within the Business segment, as we sharpen our focus on the indoor air quality part, building control will be provided by partners.

We will still sell all our products that, of course, we need to do to provide people with Airthings at work. But we will stop some of the in-house development of the building control initiatives.

And when it comes to the organization, it's all about building 1 organization. So we are moving away from having 3 different business segments and at least 2 different kind of businesses within the business, so building 1 Airthings, 1 team, where we will have a united commercial organization consisting of digital and physical sales and product technology and supply chain. And it all will be based on a commercially driven product and technology development, capitalizing on the synergies of a sharpened focus.

And we will reduce the workforce by 20% during the second half of this year. So what does it mean? These 3 initiatives; invest in 1 value proposition, partnerships and organization; will lead to revenue growth. By capitalizing on the accelerating demand we see within indoor air quality, it will lead to reduce costs as we are -- it's mainly driven by the fact that we will reduce the workforce. And as a consequence of this, we aim to be EBITDA positive for the second half of next year and full year 2026. So let's empower people to breathe better.

And as a sum up of the first half results and the strategy update and the initiatives: As I said, we expect EBITDA positive for the second half of 2025. And we guide on revenues for the coming quarter Q3, 2024, between 9.5 and 11.5 and ARR of 4.3 to 4.5.

Any questions? No? Any questions from you joining in here in person today? No? Then we take that as crystal clear communication. Okay, thank you so much for listening in, everyone physically and online. Thank you.