Aker Biomarine ASA

OSE:AKBM

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Good morning and welcome to the presentation of Aker BioMarine's third quarter results, where myself and CFO, Katrine Klaveness, will take you through the highlights and the key financial figures for the quarter. I'm really glad to stand here today and report another record quarter for Aker BioMarine, $95 million of revenue for the quarter, that is 38% (sic) [ 39% ] higher than the same quarter last year and with an EBITDA of $25 million and that is 32% higher than the same quarter last year. Harvesting was on par with the same quarter last year, about 12,000 tons of product produced and vessels are now at shipyard and will soon go back to the fishing fields.

For the Qrill segment, we delivered 46% growth and for Superba 51% growth year-over-year. We have a bit lower margin than the same quarter last year, driven by the fact that we haven't produced in Houston, which drives that COGS up and drives the margins down. And also because the fuel price difference between Europe and South America has been exceptionally high and also impacting the COGS and the margin for the Qrill segment.

We relaunched Superba to consumers in Korea during the quarter and the launch beat the TV channels expectations. So we are on a good path for a launch over there. For Brands, ended at $31.1 million, up 14%, driven by the Lang part of the business. So the $95 million of revenue is all-time high for Aker BioMarine. It is also the fifth quarter in the row where we deliver year-over-year growth. So it really demonstrates that Aker BioMarine is really driving in a positive trend now. $25 million of EBITDA is also among the highest quarters when it comes to EBITDA in the history of Aker BioMarine.

Talking about harvesting operation. As mentioned, more or less on par with last year with about 12,000 tons of product produced. We entered into shipyard a bit earlier this year compared to last year. That means that also the vessel will come back to the fishing areas also earlier in Q4 than what we saw last year. The USV drone has been delivered. It's come onboard the vessels now during shipyard and will go into operation now in the fourth quarter, something that we really are looking forward to.

On the harvesting operation and production, we are constantly focusing on how we can improve our performance. And there's 2 main KPIs we are focusing on. #1 is the number of fishing days that basically is how many days in the year do we have the trawler in the water. And then the other KPI is production per fishing day. So what is the average production for those days where we have the trawler in the water. And we have several initiatives in each of these buckets to drive improvement here. So if we start with focusing on improving the number of fishing days, the drone will have a significant impact here. We spend quite some time every year searching for krill, moving the vessels around. Now the drone can do that job for us. And through that, have fewer searching days and more fishing days.

We have also recently started using our new logistical boat provider. And every year, we're improving the processes around offload, making sure that we can as quickly as possible offload the vessel when it gets filled and get quickly back into fishing. That we are improving and doing things so that gets shorter and shorter every year and every quarter. Also, how we do maintenance in shipyard every year is key so that we don't have any technical breakdowns. We've been very good at that historically. The vessels are performing well but that's also another parameter that is important to maximize the number of fishing days.

When it comes to production per fishing day, the drone will actually have an impact there as well because very often during the year, you are in an area where the fishing is okay but perhaps it's better somewhere else. But you would never stop fishing and go look for that other area. But now with the drone, we can do that, which means we can make good decisions and moves and through that optimize the production per fishing day. Also focusing on different initiatives in the factory, onboard the vessels for how we can improve the yield and the output from the factories and also working with trawler technology for how we can catch more krill through our nets.

And improvements in these KPIs can quickly have quite large impact on the total production for the year. So for instance, if we would use one of the historical better years when it comes to number of fishing days and you multiply that with the average production per fishing day, we have these days, would easily be above 60,000 tons of production.

Moving over to the Qrill segment. As you can see through the graph on the right, it's been a fantastic development, the last 2 year. Every quarter, better and better, both driving significant volume and significant price increase and that's quite an undertaking. It's quite difficult to increase prices when you also put in a lot of new product to the market but we've been able to achieve that. We are getting some tailwinds from the marine raw material market, where there is an imbalance in supply and demand there, which drives prices up and the demand for our products also up. And also those 3 new large customers that we have reported earlier. They are all now fully onboarded, have krill in their diets, producing feed and feeding to the fish and shrimp. So really good performance also here for the third quarter with a 46% growth year-over-year.

We also met an important milestone for the Qrill segment during the quarter because for the first time since we took delivery, our newest fishing vessel, Antarctic Endurance, for the last 12 months, we have now sold more than what we have produced. So if you look at the graph to the left, you see the blue bars representing the production volumes and the increase coming from onboarding Antarctic Endurance. And the gray one, you can see every quarter volumes coming up, to now looking at the last 12 months and in Q3, where sales is now higher than production.

That will now put some more pressure in supply and demand for our products and also taking into account that we have produced limited volumes in Houston this year, which means we haven't allocated a lot of raw materials of krill to that segment. When Houston get back into normal production next year, more product will also go into that segment. So that favorable supply and demand situation will also help us drive value and prices up. And the key driver for that great development in demand, on top of having a great team globally in sales, marketing, R&D, supply chain that can come to make this happen, the key -- there's key 3 drivers. #1 is that, it is a great product. It's well documented, published in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating that salmon and shrimp grow faster when you add krill to the diet. You have better health, less mortality and also better quality of the product you produce. This has direct economic benefits for the farmer and is a key driver for why we see higher and higher demand as farmers start to experience that more and more.

Secondly, as mentioned, we have tailwinds from the marine raw material markets now that's also helping drive demand. And last but not least, the investments and the focus we have had on sustainability in the last 15 years is slowly starting to pay off. So being MSC certified in the fishery, having a low CO2 footprint contributing to better fish welfare, all these are parameters that farmers are becoming more and more focused on and that is also helping to drive demand on our product. And this increase in demand is also having an impact on price. So as you might remember, in 2022, we increased pricing quite significantly, 9% year-over-year price increase in 2022. And if you look at the pricing, we report now for the third quarter, you will see an additional 6%, 7% price increase on top of what we already did in 2022. So 16% price increase over the last 2 years on top of lifting about 40% more volume into the market. That's a really, really great performance.

And then the question, okay, is there more potential in price for our product? And then if you look at the illustration at the -- in the middle of the slide here now, you can see to the left, the blue bar is what we call the commodity value. This is basically the replacement value of the proteins and omega-3s and the nutrients you find in krill with the prices from those alternative sources. This bar has increased quite significant the last 2 years, as raw material prices for marine ingredients has come up.

But on top of that, the additional value that our product provides to the farmer, it's really what everybody is looking for. And if we use the kind of midpoint in all our -- independent science out there of what benefit our product brings, the farmer could pay up to $10,000 per ton. And still it will be a good decision for the farmer to pay that price and include it in the diet. In reality, farmers will always get the biggest chunk of that value but you can see the little arrow there on where we are now or kind of capitalizing on that value we bring to the farmers. I think there is still a potential to capture a bigger chunk of that value. And that value and our ability to get that out, you can see that on the right side, this is the price development of fish meal, which is kind of the easiest comparable with krill meal. And you can see the gap between those 2 products over the last 10, 12 years, has been widening and now krill has quite good premium versus traditional fish meal.

Moving over to Superba, saw a fantastic Superba quarter in Q3, $20.9 million in revenue. That's 51% growth compared to the same quarter last year and also beating the strong second quarter we reported a couple of months ago. We relaunched in Korea. I will get back to that a little bit later and give a little bit deeper dive into that. And also, Houston is now starting to ramp up production. And in 2024, we will be back to normal production levels in Houston, which means the cost of goods and the margins for Superba will start to come down or up to the normal levels.

We have also used the downtime in Houston well. And among other things, we have implemented a production line for algae-based omega-3. We have great synergies from our equipment and our team in Houston know that and have very limited additional costs of running that production line. That line now has 100 tons of capacity. In October, we received the first purchase orders from that. And we have the possibility with relatively small investment to increase that capacity significantly in the future if we see the demand is coming.

Also got the final FDA approval for Lysoveta in the U.S., which means we have now all the regulatory approvals we need to commercialize Lysoveta in the American market. And again, looking at the graph to the right, you can see the strong trend we have shown for Superba over the last 6 quarters, in line with that turnaround plan that we presented 18 months ago to you guys.

Then a few words on Superba. So 21st of September, our partner went live with the first home shopping show in 3 years in Korea. Results were really good, beat expectations and targets set by the home shopping channels by 20%, which means you can continue and we will get more shows and better slots. And since then, over the last month or so, we have been optimizing the content, the messaging, together with our partner. And the last couple of weeks, we are now performing 40% to 50% better than the target. So this is the start we were hoping for. It will still take time to kind of build step by step and to come and get back into the old levels but the start has been good and things are looking promising.

We are pursuing a bit different strategy this time around compared to last round in Korea. Last round, we had one partner that were anchored in home shopping, which is a great channel, have a broad reach and get 1 hour to tell the broad story of krill oil. So this year, we will still have that as an anchor in our strategy. But on top of that, we have launched what we call the Superba Alliance, which is a network between 4 and 6 large existing dietary supplement brands in Korea that in parallel with home shopping are launching their own krill oil products, doing their own marketing, creating more robustness in the customer base and also allowing us to access other channels than what we did last time.

Yes. When it comes to Brands, Lang also delivered a strong quarter, 23% growth year-over-year driven by continued good performance from the new gummy segment, successful promotion with the retail chains and also general good performance for private label products in the current economic environment in the U.S. We have the margins a bit under pressure, mainly driven by the constantly increasing pricing for fish oil, which we also have in the Lang portfolio. And there is a lag between we get a higher price until we can switch it over to the retailer, which hits our margin. But that is something that we're working on. For quarter, there is a change in distribution on one of the major retail chains and more specifically, Costco. Costco a quite small dietary supplement aisle in their stores and they have decided to prioritize other categories in Costco. So that will shrink their dietary supplement shelf even further and have to take 8 products out of distribution.

And hence, Kori was the last product in, it hasn't been able to build up enough velocity, as they call it, so basically sales per store to be prioritized in that exercise, which means we are out from normal distribution in Costco but are currently discussing with them alternative distribution models, including coming in and out with pallet promotions, which will deliver close to the same volumes as traditional distribution. But that decision is not made yet. But apart from that, Kori has continued its positive development with the other retailers and continue to onboard new retailers. So in the third quarter, iHerb was taken krill into the portfolio. iHerb is like the Amazon of the dietary supplement world globally. So the strategy for Kori is still growth. But I think we can say that we have an increased focus on getting that into breakeven, so we don't have to continue to fund and kind of bleed EBITDA dollars into that segment, in too long period into the future.

So with that, I will pass the word over to Katrine that will take you through the financial numbers.

[Katrine Klaveness, executive]

Good morning. I will take you through the financial figures for the third quarter. The third quarter has shown continuous growth, both from Q3 last year but also from the previous quarter. Total revenue was $94.6 million in the quarter, up from $67.9 million same quarter last year and $88.6 million in the previous quarter. Both the Ingredients segment, driven by Qrill Aqua and Superba and the Brands segment, driven by Lang, has shown good development and strong top line growth. Adjusted EBITDA was $24.9 million, up from $18.8 million same quarter last year but with lower EBITDA margins at 26%, down from 28% as gross margin was down both in the Ingredients segment and the Brands segment. SG&A has improved in both segments compared to Q3 last year, mainly due to cost improvements. Net debt was $388 million, up from Q3 last year at $360.1 million but down from $398.5 million previous quarter. As the protein plant now is completed, there will be less CapEx investments going forward.

Moving over to the Ingredients segment. The Ingredients segment had a strong quarter with 45% growth since same quarter last year. The Qrill category grew with 42% and Superba oil category grew with 51%, both driven by increased volumes and price increases for Qrill Aqua. The gross margin was at 42%, down from 48% same quarter last year. The reason being the higher unit cost for both Superba and Qrill Aqua.

The low production in Houston through 2023 has driven unit costs up as a high percentage of the cost base is fixed. But we expect this to move back to normalized levels in 2024 when we ramp up production in Houston. For Qrill Aqua, this spread in fuel prices between Europe and South America has continued to be high in the quarter and this has resulted in a year-to-date increase in fuel cost of close to $10 million. Part of this has been offset by positive FX developments in the quarter. EBITDA margin improved from 34% Q3 last year to 37% this quarter. SG&A was down year-over-year because of cost improvement initiatives and strong cost control despite both elevated inflation and high one-off costs related to the improvement programs and the restructuring efforts.

Moving over to the Brands segment. The Brands segment was up 14% from Q3 last year. This was a result of increased sales in Lang by 23%, largely driven by the new gummy multivitamin, where the first shipment of adult gummies took place in the quarter, in addition to growth in fish oil due to scarce supply. Epion is down 42% from Q3 last year as the Kori brand has exited from one of the major retailers as a result of a SKU rationalization at the retailer. However, this is partly offset by growth in several of the other retailers materializing in a POS figure, which is sales out of store, of only minus 22% for the quarter.

The gross margin for the quarter is 22% versus 32%, same period last year. Lang has maintained its gross margin despite high inflation due to price increases second half last year. But Epion's gross margin is down as a result of customer mix. In addition, [ capsule ] COGS effects led to an artificially low internal profits in the Brands segment this quarter, affecting the gross margin negatively. Adjusted EBITDA for the Brands segment was $0.8 million, down from $1.3 million Q3 last year as a result of lower sales and lower EBITDA from Epion in the quarter. EBITDA margin was 2%, down from 5% same quarter last year, also driven by Epion, partly offset by improved cost base at Lang.

A few topics worth pointing out in the P&L. We see the result of our improvement efforts through the SG&A, which is down despite both higher sales activity and includes nonrecurring cost of $0.4 million in the quarter. Depreciation of nonoperating or nonproducing assets includes protein plant as commercial production has not yet started. Net financial items are negative $8.2 million in the quarter and includes the following key items: Increased interest costs of $2 million as a result of higher debt and higher interest cost rates; gain on the settlement for a customer receivable, including storage and interest costs of $1.1 million for holding and storing the product. This relates to the Acasti transaction.

Our share of the Aion loss from June 2022 when it was deconsolidated, so this is a catch-up effect of $1.6 million. For this quarter, the loss was $0.3 million and this [indiscernible] of $1 million. In the third quarter last year, there was a significant positive currency effects. Net result for the quarter was positive $1.1 million.

The balance sheet has few items of significance this quarter but I will mention a few. Inventory is down from the second quarter this year but still relatively high at $183.2 million, where the Ingredients segment amounts to $133 million, while Brands amounts to $43 million in inventory. Cash and cash equivalents of $18.7 million, in addition comes to fuel option derivative of $7.6 million, still deep in the money. Working capital is up from Q3 last year due to increased sales and hence higher customer receivables. Total assets of $815 million and an equity ratio of 44% for the quarter.

Finally, the cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities was positive $20.3 million due to net change in working capital as a result of inventory build down in both segments. Cash flow from investing activities was negative $10 million as a result of the finalization of the protein plant, shipyard payments and various other development projects at the Houston plant. Cash flow from financing activities was negative $6.4 million as a result of debt installments on the ECA loan of $2.4 million and lower draw on the overdraft facility. Net change in cash amounted to $3.9 million in the quarter.

With that, I will leave the word to Matts, to conclude.

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Thank you, Katrine. So outlook for the rest of 2023. When it comes to operation, as discussed today, you can see that we are on par with last year when it comes to harvesting year-to-date and we expect the year to be on a normal harvesting year for the offshore production. Houston also in Q4 will slowly come back to kind of full operation and we expect in 2024, Houston to be fully back in operation, which will drive down the COGS and improve the margin back to the normal levels for Superba.

For the Qrill Aqua segment, we expect about the same revenues as same quarter last year. And the reason is that we are basically sold out. We don't have more product to sell in the fourth quarter, while both on Superba and Brands, we expect to continue the positive year-over-year growth for those 2 segments.

Also, in the last quarterly presentation, we informed that we're doing both a legal restructuring of Aker BioMarine and implementing new segment reporting. We are doing that both to get a better focus here at Aker BioMarine, on those specific business areas or business segments that we are now creating. We're also doing it for you investors to have more transparency and easier to get a good overview of what this company is and who you could compare those different segments to.

And thirdly, we do it also to bring the flexibility to maximize shareholder values and looking at all options in partnerships and transactions related to that. So that process is on track. We expect both operational and kind of segment reporting to be in place from 1st of January 2024 and the same goes with that new legal structure of the company. So starting Q1 2024, we will report in that new structure. But already in this quarter, in the appendix of this presentation, we are also now providing more figures into those new segments that you can already now get a good overview what those segments looks like, both when it comes to revenues and EBITDA.

So with that, we conclude the presentation and we open up for Q&A session. You can now e-mail your question to [e-mail] and we will happily answer.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. Thank you very much. Now over to the Q&A session. We have received quite a few questions. So starting off with you, Matts. We have seen some pressure on fish meal lately but given that sales volumes exceed production, are you in a position to increase krill prices going into 2024?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. So we will not comment yet on the pricing or guide the pricing for 2024 but that will be favorable for our prices, both what's happening in the markets around us and also the supply and demand kind of balance that we see in our own product. But we're not providing any guidance for 2024 pricing now.

[Unknown Executive]

And for you, again, Matts, was there any meaningful contribution from South Korea during Q3 '23?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. We sold some volumes, not a lot but some volumes in Korea. So they have the kind of necessary products for the launch and to be able to supply in the coming period. So there were some revenues from Korea in the quarter.

[Unknown Executive]

And then to you, Katrine, there was a limited working capital release in the quarter given high krill sales and the Q2 comment that Lang built inventory in that quarter. Should we expect a significant release in the next quarter?

[Katrine Klaveness, executive]

So we'll continue to build down the inventory levels. I think brand will continue. Lang did a very good job from Q2 to Q3 and we will continue to see that release. From the Ingredients segment, we have now started to ramp up production in Houston. We produced quite a bit of Superba Boost in Q3 and we will continue to do that in Q4 but we will continue to build down the inventory levels. So we should see some more release from working capital as we move forward.

[Unknown Executive]

And then a question on Houston. So the -- so when do you expect the Houston factory to restart? And when will it reach full production?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. So it has already started and starting to kind of a ramp up. So in 2024, we will be back into the kind of normal production levels, what you could call full production. There's still more capacity in Houston to -- for further expansion in Superba but it will go back to the full production levels the way it was before we had the shutdown. So that will positively impact the cost of goods and the margins for Superba.

[Unknown Executive]

And then as Houston starts up, how much lower will Qrill Aqua production be?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. So you can say that when we have normal production in Houston, about 10% of our harvest or our production goes into that. We have produced some product for Houston this year as well but it will be several thousand tons that we will now move from the Aqua market into the Superba market.

[Unknown Executive]

And then what is your target inventory level of Qrill Aqua?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. I think -- I mean, we are -- it's a long value chain from Antarctica into Montevideo with container vessels all around the world. So you need to make sure that you have enough products in the inventory to cover you until you get the next offload from the vessels, which means that you need to have a minimum, I would say, 4 months, minimum 4 months to not have kind of supply disruptions in customers.

[Unknown Executive]

And then there's a question on the Qrill Aqua price but I guess you already answered that. And then going onto Epion and Korea. So when do you expect EBITDA breakeven for that company?

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Yes. So we are not putting any guidance on that but it's a strong focus for us to get that into breakeven as soon as possible.

[Unknown Executive]

Yes. There's -- we have not received any more questions yet but we will leave the line open a few more seconds in case someone regrets.

Yes, still not any questions. So I guess, we all say thank you to the listeners.

[Matts Johansen, executive]

Thank you.