Cambi ASA

OSE:CAMBI

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Dragos Talvescu, executive]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cambi's presentation of the first quarter results. I am Dragos Talvescu, Director of Corporate Relations, and I will be your moderator for today's session. During the next half hour or so, you will be hearing from Cambi's CEO, Eirik Fadnes; and CFO, Mats Tjemsland. They will walk you through the noteworthy developments that took place in the quarter and provide an overview of our present business and financial outlook.

At the conclusion of the presentation, we will address any questions you may have including those received before the start of this session. You can submit your questions in writing at any time during the presentation using the Q&A tab. Please bear in mind that this call is being recorded and will be made available for replay on our website later today. Before we proceed, please note that during this presentation, we may make forward-looking statements.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could potentially result in material differences between our actual results and expressed or implied information. Now without further ado, I will give the floor to Eirik.

[Eirik Fadnes, executive]

Thank you, Dragos, and good day to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before we get into our financial highlights, a short introduction of Cambi's unique value proposition for new listeners with us today. For most citizens in developed countries, surge from our toilets, sinks, and washing machine goes down pipes to be treated, reducing disease causing organisms and the new [indiscernible] load that would otherwise cause pollution and the proliferation of [ algae. ]

[ Sewers ] needs to be built to collect sewage and transport it to wastewater treatment plants. There, different levels of treatment can be applied. A byproduct of this treatment of wastewater is [ sewage sludge ], which is mostly organic material formed as bacteria consumes the organic pollution in wastewater. Although it is small percentage of the overall flow to the plant, [ sewage sludge ] treatment accounts for 50% of the operating cost at the wastewater treatment plants.

This is where Cambi comes in. When a plant uses our thermal hydrolysis technology, they experienced a host of benefits. The volume of biosolids is reduced by 50%. The biogas yield increases by up to 50% and the need for digester capacity is reduced to 1/3 and our solution also has the lowest carbon footprint irrespective of biosolids outlet. So our growth opportunity is very exciting. It is driven by urbanization, the need for investment in critical infrastructure, tighter regulation and a proof for our industry to be more sustainable.

Over the coming decade, wastewater treatment plants need significant investments to transition Net Zero and sludge management has a critical role to play. To meet that target set by an increasing number of utilities in cities, plants need to adopt new solutions and rethink their sludge strategy. This makes our thermal hydrolysis solutions well positioned.

Now let me talk about our global presence. We have a truly global presence with reference plants in 25 countries across 6 continents with a combined capacity to serve 112 million people equivalent. Although we have the capability to execute projects anywhere in the world, we have a tighter concentration of plants in certain regions.

For example, we have a significant number of plants in the U.K. treating about half of all the sludge in the U.K., reflecting our strong position in the market there. In Norway, we have 10 references and a pipeline of several more, which, when considering the population size, reflects the huge global potential for our solutions. In the U.S., we signed our first project in Washington, D.C. in 2011 and got our first reference in the market.

In the last 3 years alone, we have delivered or signed 7 projects in the country, demonstrating that we are gaining traction in that market. We have a global market share of more than 80% in the thermal hydrolysis market and have identified an addressable market of more than 3,000 tonnes with strong drivers for our solution.

For the first quarter of this year, we signed two projects that you can see on the map in green, which I'll touch on shortly. Now for the highlights of the first quarter financial results. I'm pleased to report that we had a strong start to the year with solid revenue growth and continued progress on strategic initiatives. As mentioned in our last update, we secured several contracts last quarter with detailed engineering for those projects now underway.

In addition, building on the operational momentum of the previous quarter, our customers are keeping pace on site, and the Cambi team continues to deliver exceptionally. The total revenue for the quarter was a record NOK 210 million with a solid EBITDA margin of 27%, reflecting the scalability of our business. Regarding order intake, as cited in the previous slide, the team is proud that we've successfully concluded the collaboration phase on the Fredrikstad project and move forward with the delivery contracts.

In addition, we received a notice to proceed with the full contract for the [ Ringsend ] plant upgrade in Dublin during the quarter. The backlog remained above NOK 1 billion, providing good visibility of future revenue and profits. Let's move on to an update on the Cambi Invest business segment. As communicated in our last update, we secured a conditional award of a DBFO project in the U.S. in the first quarter.

It is still early stages with the permitting and engineering process underway. Subject to receiving the necessary permits and concluding the contract with the municipality, we estimate construction start at the end of 2024 and operation in 2027. There is a continued -- also a high activity in the DBO subsegment with projects at various stages in the U.S., in U.K. and other countries.

In Gronn Vekst, on the other hand, the volume of soil sales was impacted by prolonged winter weather delaying the start of high season. However, in the quarter, the first pallets of peat-free soil were packed and shipped to garden centers from the new packaging plants. Let me now move on to outlook before we go into a deeper detail on the financials.

Looking ahead, the drivers for our offering remains strong. Our order backlog remained above NOK 1 billion. And in recent quarters, we've seen the scalability of our business. The project pipeline is maturing with several projects now awarded by cities to name contractors. And these are now at an advanced stage. Some of them have entered tender stage for our scope of supply and others are in contract negotiations.

We have so far, in 2023, secured an order intake of NOK 246 million and reiterates our target of NOK 1.2 billion order intake in the 2-year period 2023, 2024. We're confident in our ability to deliver excellent outcomes as a high-quality business with strong market position, proprietary technology and our strategy to ensure sustainable growth.

So in conclusion, I'm proud of our team's performance in Q1 and confident in our ability to execute on our strategy while delivering significant revenue and profit growth for the year. Now I'll turn it over to Mats to review our financial results in further detail.

[Mats Tjemsl, executive]

Thank you, Eirik, and hello to everyone. I will now take you through the financial results for the first quarter of '23. I'm very happy to report another quarter with a strong financial performance for Cambi in the first quarter. Q1 revenues came in at NOK 210 million, up NOK 141 million versus the same quarter last year and NOK 53 million higher than the previous quarter.

The key driver for this strong performance is continued solid execution on several projects in the equipment subsegment, as Eirik already mentioned. The EBITDA came in at NOK 57 million in the first quarter, which is up NOK 78 million versus the same quarter last year and NOK 28 million higher than the previous quarter. The increase in EBITDA is primarily driven by the margin contribution from higher project revenues.

Gross margins also saw an uplift in the first quarter. We are pleased to report a gross margin of 61%, which is significantly up from 43% same quarter last year and also up from 57% in the previous quarter. The reason for this is partly a favorable project mix and project margin expansion from foreign exchange effects. As a large share of Cambi's projects are denominated in U.S. dollar and euro and the majority of our cost of goods sold for such projects are in British pounds. The weakening of the NOK has been greater towards U.S. dollar and euro compared to the British pound, which is boosting our gross margins.

Our sales, general and admin expenses during the first quarter were NOK 72 million, which is up from NOK 51 million same quarter last year and NOK 10 million higher than the previous quarter. The majority of this increase is directly related to project costs. In addition, the Cambi organization is growing in order to support execution of current and future projects. On top of this, we see a general cost increase from inflationary pressure across the line.

All in all, we are pleased to report a solid EBITDA margin of 27%, which is up from negative 31% same quarter last year and also up 18% -- from 18% on the previous quarter. And let's move over to the Cambi Group segment. This segment consists of the subsegment equipment and services, where equipment is related to the delivery of THP systems and services related to site maintenance, spare parts, upgrades and other aftersales activities.

And revenue in the first quarter came in at NOK 194 million, which is up NOK 142 million versus the same quarter last year and up NOK 58 million versus the previous quarter. This is primarily driven by good momentum on several of the 14 ongoing construction projects. In addition, the previously experienced issues in our supply chain has eased. Also, as mentioned in previous updates, the project in Lviv, Ukraine remains on hold under the clause of force majeure.

The equipment subsegment makes out 91% of the group segment revenue. And the services subsegment revenue is reported at NOK [ 18 ] million, which is slightly up from NOK 16 million in the same quarter last year and slightly lower than the previous quarter. And as the installed base of plants using our technology continued to increase with more projects being delivered, growing the services subsegment remains an important strategic focus area for Cambi. The EBITDA was reported at NOK 61 million for the first quarter, which is NOK [ 18 ] million higher than the same quarter last year and NOK 30 million higher than previous quarter.

A key driver for this increase is the previously mentioned good momentum in project execution in addition to a gross margin expansion driven by favorable product mix and positive effects from foreign exchange in the equipment subsegment. Now looking at the Cambi Invest segment, which consists of subsegment recycling and DBO projects, where recycling is related to sale of soil products and DBO projects is where Cambi participates in plant ownership and operations.

The reported revenue in Cambi Invest is solely from the recycling subsegment from our portfolio company Gronn Vekst. Revenue was reported at NOK 16 million in the first quarter, which is slightly lower than the same quarter last year and somewhat lower than the previous quarter. There is an [ inherit ] seasonality in this subsegment, in which sale of soil products are higher during the spring and summer months. And the soil volume came in at 18,500 metric tonnes for the quarter, which is slightly down from the same quarter last year of 19,200 metric tonnes.

And the reduction is mainly from a prolonged winter season this year, as Eirik touched upon earlier. The EBITDA for the segment was negative NOK 5 million, slightly down from negative NOK 2 million in the same quarter last year and the previous quarter. The reduction is primarily driven by increased costs in the DBO project subsegment for more activities in developing the pipeline of DBO projects for Cambi.

And now looking at the order intake and the order backlog development. The order intake in the first quarter was NOK 333 million, which is NOK 318 million higher than the same quarter last year, but lower than the previous quarter, which had a record high order intake of NOK 604 million. The order intake this quarter is primarily from the signed equipment contract for a project in Fredrikstad, Norway, in addition to moving forward with the upgrade project in Dublin, as Eirik also touched upon earlier. Also, I'm very pleased to report another quarter with a record high order backlog for Cambi.

The order backlog was close to NOK 1.1 billion end of the first quarter, which was NOK 634 million higher than the same quarter last year and slightly up from the previous quarter. As mentioned in the previous update, during the first quarter of '23, the Calgary project was not renewed upon expiration. This impact is now reflected in the reported order backlog at the end of Q1.

The order backlog has also been influenced by index regulation of existing contracts, which has had a positive impact. In addition, the weakening of the NOK has had a positive impact on projects denominated in foreign exchange. And to summarize, the order backlog provides a solid financial foundation for the coming years for Cambi. Now let's have a closer look at the order backlog distribution.

Based on our estimates, we have indicated the order backlog distribution over the next years on the left-hand side, and we estimate that around 75% of this backlog is executed before 2025. The order backlog currency distribution viewed on the right-hand side shows that the backlog mainly consist of U.S. dollar and euros, which, in sum, make out close to 2/3 of the total order backlog.

Out of the backlog in Norwegian kroner, around 1/3 of this is linked to euro, and this is adjusted based on the exchange rate at the time of invoicing. Since the large share of the backlog is denominated in other currencies than Norwegian krone, Cambi may experience fluctuations in the reported order backlog from quarter-to-quarter. The majority of the order backlog is related to equipment orders and equipment orders make out 86% of the order backlog at the end of Q1 while the remainder is split between services and recycling subsegment.

Now let's take a look at our communicated targets to sign new equipment contracts. During the first quarter, we were very pleased to reach our communicated target of signing new equipment contracts worth of NOK 1 billion over a 2-year period, '22, '23. On the back of this, we established a new target to sign NOK 1.2 billion of new equipment contracts for a 2-year period, '23, '24. We are reiterating this target. And so far, in '23, we have signed equipment contracts worth of NOK 246 million.

The reported new equipment contracts maybe influenced by variation orders, index regulations and fluctuations on foreign exchange with rates towards NOK. And to round this slide off, I would like to emphasize that we see continued support from strong economic and regulatory and environmental drivers for our products going forward. So we remain optimistic.

And now before moving into the Q&A section, let's have a quick look at our balance sheet. At the end of the first quarter, the total assets were NOK 635 million, up from NOK 497 million same quarter last year and up from NOK 577 million in the previous quarter. The increase in intangible assets versus last year is mainly from the transaction with Veolia, which is amortized. I'm pleased to report an increase in our cash position this quarter.

Bank deposits came in at just shy of NOK 200 million, which is up from NOK 70 million same quarter last year and up from [ NOK 167 ] million in the previous quarter. Financial assets, mainly money market funds, are at the same level as the previous quarter, but those reduced compared to the same quarter last year to partly fund the transaction with Veolia.

All in all, Cambi maintains a solid financial position and a dividend of NOK 0.50 per share has been announced, equivalent to NOK 24 million, which is subject to AGM approval tomorrow. And with that, we are ready to move over to the Q&A section.

[Dragos Talvescu, executive]

Let's see now what questions we have received. You can use the Q&A tab on your screen to send in any questions you may have. We do have one question here already that I will now read out loud and allow Mats or Eirik to answer. The question is, in the outlook, you mentioned that fewer project delivery milestones are expected to be reached during the second quarter. Could you please elaborate on this?

[Mats Tjemsl, executive]

Yes. I think I can touch upon that. So revenues from the construction contracts are recognized on the percentage of completion method for Cambi, which is measuring the percentage of costs incurred to date versus estimated total cost for the project. And this may vary on several internal and external factors. I mean Q4 and Q1, several delivery milestones were reached. However, this may vary between quarters, and we expect somewhat fewer delivery milestones to be reached in Q2 compared to the levels that we saw in Q4 and Q1. So that's what that is about.

[Dragos Talvescu, executive]

Thank you, Mats. I don't see any other questions right this second, but maybe we'll give it half a minute in case people are writing right now? Meanwhile, I can tell you that the video recording of this presentation will be accessible on Cambi's website under the Reports and Presentations section later today. And we also encourage you to follow us on LinkedIn, where we regularly share the most recent updates.

I don't see any other question. So to be efficient, we will close today's session. Thank you all for your attentive presence. We trust that you found the presentation informative. We're wishing you a good afternoon. Bye-bye.

START