Europris ASA
OSE:EPR
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Europris ASA
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Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Europris' Presentation of Results for the Third Quarter. It's been a busy quarter for us where we show a steady growth in Europris and the OoB integration is progressing according to plan.
Joining me on stage to present the results today are CFO, Stina Byre; and IR Manager, Trine Englokken, will manage the Q&A session at the end of the presentation, but please feel free to send in your questions as we speak.
Before we start, I would like to thank ABG for hosting today's event and also wish a very welcome to the live audience we have in the room here today.
The growth journey of Europris has been stable and good for many, many years, and before the pandemic we had almost 30 years of consecutive growth for the Europris chain, and during the pandemic many new customers discovered our low priced stores. In the years after we have managed to keep these customers at Europris and we have also completed the acquisitions of Strikkemekka, Lekekassen, and in May this year we completed the acquisition of the Swedish discount retailer, OoB. The acquisition of OoB adds around NOK 4 billion to our top line. And, of course, that impacts the group reported figures quite significantly. We have also added the segment Sweden, which consists of OoB. But if you want to look at comparable figures, you should look at segment Norway, which consists of Europris and the pure-play companies.
Let's have a quick look at the highlights for the quarter. Group sales increased by 50.4% with an organic growth of 4.4%. EBIT was NOK 168 million, which is a decrease of NOK 67 million, of which segment Norway was down NOK 22 million, and we recorded a loss in segment Sweden of NOK 45 million. Stina will provide more details on the group figures and the segments in her financial review later on.
We have delivered a satisfactory quarter in what I would call a challenging market. The campaign-driven low-price concept of Europris and also OoB continue to deliver, and we stay relevant in the market. And especially in Norway, we also see that we have taken new market shares and that we are showing sales growth above the market. The Europris chain had a growth of 3.5% in the quarter compared to 1.7% growth for the shopping centers in Norway. And year-to-date, the Europris chain has a growth of 3.8% compared to 3.5% growth for both the shopping centers and the broad variety retail index as reported by Statistics Norway.
So the market has been a little bit tougher. We are continuing to beat the market, which is our long-term goal. And in Sweden, we saw flat footfall and sales in the third quarter, which is actually an improvement from the reductions we saw in the first half of the year. So overall, we're satisfied with the sales development, but many consumers remain cautious about their spending. We see especially that they're holding back on investment purchases and that sales are concentrated more on campaigns and consumables. This change in sales mix in combination with hiked interest rate -- no, excuse me, the depreciation of the currency, both in Norway and Sweden and also higher freight costs put pressure on the gross margin. As a discount retailer, we have to be aware of the price position, and we have demonstrated very good sales development and also won several price tests during the quarter. So we are showing steady development, and I'm really pleased to see that the concept continued to take market shares in Norway.
Let's have a look at OoB and the integration plan we presented back in July. We set high ambitions for OoB and the operations in Sweden, and we aim to grow OoB by SEK 1 billion by 2028 and achieving an EBIT margin of 5%. We are in the reds now, but are confident that our plan to turn around OoB will show good results and that we are doing the right actions at the moment. Our plan is based on 3 key initiatives. First of all, it's about category harmonization and joint sourcing. And what we're focusing on is basically to introduce the same private label assortment across the 2 store chains and in OoB introduce the same nonfood assortment as we have in Europris. We will improve the customer experience. That means upgrading the stores, introducing the same shop-in-shop layouts on the same touch and feel to inspire the customers as we see in Europris, and we will strengthen execution across the whole value chain. And this is about sharing best practices between the 2 store chains and make sure that we implement the retail machinery that has delivered growth year after year in Europris also into OoB.
And I'm pleased to report that the integration is progressing according to plan. We have 2 organizations that we see are in really good spirit, and we see very good and solid contributions both from employees in Europris and OoB. Collaboration and the mood is good, and that is also always a very good basis for the collaboration. And during the quarter, we have made significant progress and made some important changes to the OoB plan. Andre Sjasaet, who presented the turnaround plan back in July here in Oslo. He has taken over as Country Manager for OoB. Andre has been in Sweden since April, late April, knows the organization very well and has got off to a very good start as the new Country Manager of OoB. We have closed down OoB's sourcing offices in China and consolidated all operations at the joint sourcing office that Europris and Tokmanni has together in Shanghai. The joint sourcing and negotiations are progressing as planned and making good progress and showing good results and the ERP project is also on track. So I think we truly state that we are making the progress that we were aiming for in the quarter.
And we are also implementing the Europris ways of working and have started to introduce the key elements of what I would call our retail machinery. And that is, of course, all concentrated about campaigns as the first start. But we're also implementing the same management principles and very tight follow-up routines as we have in Europris to be close to the business every day and collaborate between the different departments in the company. We are implementing Europris' campaign principles and methodology. You can see it on the pictures. We have introduced basically the same layout for the weekly marketing leaflet and also introducing the same kind of structure for the offers. And we have also adjusted the number of printed leaflets to match the same as in Europris. We follow now the same campaign plans, which also allows in the future for having the same campaigns across the 2 countries.
And to support all these changes, I'm sending one of my absolute best district managers from Europris over to Sweden. He's relocating now to support their stores in implementing all these changes because what's happening in Sweden right now is a lot of changes at the same time, and they need support, but we see that they are very positive to what we're doing, and they see results from the actions that we have already taken. So very good to see that the employees from Europris want to contribute and move over to Sweden and that the Swedes are very positive to see the support they get.
We are also testing the visual profile of Europris in selected stores with very positive feedback from both employees and the customers. So it's a lot of things going on, and you can already start to see the results in the stores. And to sum up the integration, I think we have made significant progress in the quarter, and we know it will take time to see the results transform into changed sales mix and also profits. But we are even more confident now after this quarter that the measures we're taking are the right ones to make the change and turnaround of OoB.
On sustainability, we continue to get recognition for our climate efforts. And this quarter, we received the top score in PricewaterhouseCoopers' Climate Index for 2024. And this adds to the recognition we have already received by Financial Times and Statista who named us as one of Europe's Climate Leaders and the A- score we received from CDP. And Europris has established climate targets aligned with the Paris Agreement, and we joined the science-based targets 2 years ago. And in this quarter, we will actually file our final targets, which means that we are committed to 0 emissions by 2050.
With this, I will leave the floor to Stina, who will present the financial review.
Thank you, Espen. Before I start and dive into the numbers, I would just like to repeat what Espen said on how to interpret the numbers. The group numbers are obviously impacted by including the OoB figures. So when we talk about the change for the group or reported figures, this includes the OoB numbers. And when we talk about organic change, this excludes the OoB figures. And this is also the same as the change for segment Norway.
Group sales were NOK 3.2 billion in the third quarter. Reported growth is more than 50%. But if we look at the organic change, the top line grew by 4.4%. The group gross -- the gross margin for the group was 39.7%. Including OoB figures has a dilutive effect for the group, and this contributed with a decline of 4 percentage points. The organic decline on the gross margin was 1.6 percentage points or 1.3 percentage points if we exclude the impact of unrealized effects from currency hedging, where we, this year, had a loss of NOK 7 million and last year had an unrealized gain of NOK 2 million. And the gross margin has a lot of headwind, and I will take you through the main elements. One is the product mix, where we sell a higher share of consumables that, on average, have a lower margin. The second is that, we have higher sales growth for campaign products. This is good for footfall, but it has a dilutive impact on the margin.
We have also had war surcharges implemented on our inbound freight costs following the situation in the Red Sea. And lastly, the Norwegian kroner has been weaker over time. And due to our hedging strategy and inventory turnover, it takes some time for this to wash through in the P&L, and we also saw a negative impact in the third quarter.
OpEx to sales was 26.5%. This is unchanged compared to last year. And we are pleased that we have been able to deliver a lower OpEx increase for -- organically than what we previously anticipated when we communicated the 10% OpEx increase for the full year.
EBIT was NOK 168 million. This represents a decline of NOK 67 million. And as Espen said, we have a negative EBIT of NOK 45 million in OoB and the organic decline was NOK 22 million.
The net profit was NOK 84 million. This is a reduction of NOK 60 million, obviously, impacted by the factors that I have mentioned. And in addition, we had an unrealized loss on our interest rate swaps of NOK 12 million this year compared to an unrealized gain of NOK 2 million last year.
I will comment on the year-to-date figures. Cash from operating activities was NOK 365 million, down from NOK 734 million last year. There was a more negative net change in working capital this year than last year, and this is impacted by a planned inventory buildup as we wanted to make sure we had no trouble with supply of goods following, as I mentioned, the situation in the Red Sea. And we have also increased the inventory of Christmas items as we last year sold out a bit too early. The net change in cash was negative with NOK 582 million. The group had a net debt of NOK 5.1 billion or NOK 1.6 billion, excluding lease liabilities. And the cash and liquidity reserves were NOK 1.36 billion.
I have explained for segment Norway, the organic decline on the P&L, so I will now focus on the top line development. Sales for segment Norway were NOK 2.2 billion, up 4.4%. And the Europris chain had a like-for-like growth of 2.9%, and this was supported by higher footfall, campaigns and also good results for upgraded categories. The pure-play companies had sales of NOK 155 million, up 11.6%, and this was attributable to strong development for Strikkemekka. And it was very rewarding to see that the private label yarn that Strikkemekka and Europris has sourced together has been very welcomed by customers. Strikkemekka also made a soft launch into Germany in the quarter. And we are happy to announce that we have recruited Kristoffer Langballe as Vice President of Digital Commerce. And with his solid professional background, we are confident that this will ensure more support and improved follow-up of the pure-play companies.
Segment Sweden had sales of NOK 1 billion in the third quarter with a gross margin of 30.7% and an EBIT loss of NOK 45 million. The footfall and like-for-like sales were stable in the third quarter. And as Espen said, this is an improvement compared to the development that we saw in the first half. OoB had growth in campaign sales and also higher sales of consumables, while the nonfood sales had lower sales, which was impacted by low inventories and limited availability of goods.
And with that, I will hand it back to Espen to take you through the outlook.
Thank you, Stina. First of all, I would like to say that we are ready for the important Christmas season ahead of us. As many might remember, last year, we had a shortage of goods. This year, we have fully stocked and are ready for the Christmas season and are really looking forward to that.
We've been through a long period with high inflation that has put pressure on households economy. We've seen more price-conscious consumers over time, and they have been selecting more campaign goods and also holding back on investment purchases. So it's been tougher climate for the consumers for quite some time, but we are starting to see signs of relief. The interest rate has already come down in Sweden. The Norwegian National Bank are indicating that there might be interest rate reductions in Norway next year. Inflation is coming down in Sweden faster than in Norway. And all in all, this is quite positive and in combination with the outlook for real wage increases in both Norway and Sweden next year with stable unemployment rates, that should be supportive for low-price concepts like Europris and, of course, consumption business in total. So I think that the outlook is easing up. It will take some time before we have volume growth, but it's positive for the total economy that this period with high inflation and the hiked interest rates are coming closer to the end.
Regarding OoB and Sweden, the turnaround plan we have presented is progressing as planned. It's an ambitious plan we have ahead of us, but we are really seeing that we're making progress and are really confident that we'll be able to lift the sales up to SEK 5 billion by the end of '28 with an EBIT margin of 5%. So the long-term outlook is positive for the Europris group.
With that, I think we have concluded the presentation, and we will open up for questions.
So this is Petter from ABG. A couple of questions from me. I take one at a time. So if you start with OoB, you are delivering a gross margin of around 31% in this quarter. Is it possible to say what that was in Q3 last year and also briefly explain why you potentially have a change?
Yes. We have added a spreadsheet online that can be downloaded where you see comparable historic figures that are unaudited, but give you an indication. And there, you will see a decline of 1.3 percentage points with growth in consumables and also higher campaigns that is explaining this development.
Okay. Perfect. And then on the OpEx side in Norway, that was, to me, a positive surprise. Do you expect that your guidance of an OpEx growth of around 10% year-over-year can surprise on the positive side for Europris?
Yes, I expect that we will end lower than 10%. We have worked hard to come below the 10%, and we have seen results from that. We will have some headwind in the fourth quarter with the arbitration reward that we had last year, but I still believe that we will deliver below what we previously guided.
Perfect. And then one final question for me, and that goes for the gross margin for Europris. It seems that you might be somewhat more cautious on your gross margin comments versus previously. Do you still expect the gross margin to be up versus pre-pandemic levels?
Over time, we do believe that. But when we also made the statement, there was a different product mix and also a different mix of share of sales from consumables, share of campaigns. So this, of course, will have an impact that change the situation, but we are confident in all the things we have done, but we cannot help the sales mix, and that does have a dilutive impact.
Then we go to the questions on the web. Hakon Fuglu, SEB. How much of the year-on-year decline in Q3 is due to stock-taking effects? And what will it be for Q4?
As we explained previously, we are now able to allocate this into the correct quarters. So this is distributed when it is supposed to have effect.
Do you expect softer gross margins in 2025 on weak NOK and increased freight costs?
Well, the NOK is, of course, difficult to predict. It is more in line with last year now. But if it continues to weaken further, then it will have a negative impact and vice versa if it strengthens.
And the remainder part of the question, sorry?
Yes, I think you've covered it. Fine. Yes. Based on historical trends compared to what you have seen so far, what do you expect for the Christmas season?
We actually expect a quite good season. We were surprised last year that the Christmas season turned out to be so good. So we have actually prepared for significant growth. And if we look at the mini seasons like what we are seeing right now with Halloween, we've seen that the sales is good and that people are celebrating. And I think that for sure, it will be Christmas this year as well, and we are looking forward for that season, and we are well prepared.
And then we go to Eirik Rafdal, Carnegie. Could you give an indication of sales mix this quarter between consumables, specialty retail and general merchandise, both in Norway and Sweden would be great.
Well, in general, it's the same trends that we have seen in the previous quarter. It's kind of not major, major changes, but it's steady growth.
On the 130 underlying gross margin decline in Norway, could you help us quantify the key drivers? How much is unfavorable mix year-on-year? How much is FX and how much is freight?
I won't go more into the details, but I have explained the main drivers.
And what we have seen is that, the underlying margin on per category is basically the same as before. So this is a mix issue, and it's also that we see higher campaign shares. So that's the more cautious consumers are driving this direction, and that is something we just have to support.
You state higher sales of consumables while nonfood had sales decline impacted by low inventories and limited availability of goods in Sweden. How are inventory levels for nonfood looking into the Christmas season? Could we see another flat quarter year-on-year? Or should we expect to return to negative top line development?
I think it's too early to say. We have placed large orders for goods to Sweden, and I was in China myself last week talking with some of the key suppliers. And we have already placed orders for fresh assortment to OoB for close to $10 million in the fourth quarter. So we are positive, but it takes time to get goods delivered. And I'm sure that we have enough on stock to sell in Sweden, but it might not be the freshest goods. But we have to sell what we have.
Have you seen any behavior changes among competitors in either Norway or Sweden after you took over OoB?
We have not seen any significant change just due to that -- the fact that we have taken over OoB. But we believe that the price competition is strong in the market. When we look at Christmas goods, for instance, both in Sweden and Norway, the season kick starts with like 30% to 40% discount for many retailers. So it's a battle out there for the consumers at the moment. And that has been and will be the same also in the next quarter in both Norway and Sweden.
Ole Martin Westgaard, DNB. What is the private label share in Q4?
It's roughly on par with last year.
Can you break down the like-for-like growth in price, basket and traffic?
The basket is slightly up, not a major change, a little bit higher on price and somewhat down on volume.
You are making an aggressive upgrade of stores in OoB in Q4. What is the total investment related to this upgrade? And what are the lessons learned from potential pilots?
It's not significant in investment. It's not a high number of investment amounts this year. We will have more coming in next year when it comes to spend. I don't know if you want to comment on that.
What we're doing right now in Sweden is basically we're doing like a soft upgrade. We're upgrading the designing and how we are presenting the categories. We are not rebuilding the stores. So it's done with the existing store layout as today and the existing equipment. So we're not making major changes to the layout, but we are changing the way it looks. And the results from the test stores has been very positive, not driving a lot more sales, but making the customers feel more relaxed and inviting them to do more shopping. So it's good results, but this is not what's going to drive the major sales growth in Sweden. That will be the changed assortment, and that will take more time.
What will be the impact on cost for the closure of the OoB China office?
This was taken before and accrued for before we took over. So we haven't had any costs on that in the third quarter.
How was the sales of products above NOK 1,000?
It was actually slightly up in the third quarter, but it's very small numbers. So I wouldn't read too much into that. People are still cautious.
And how was the sales performance for Lekekassen in the quarter?
It was slightly down for Lekekassen. It's tough competition, and they are seeing somewhat slight decrease in all markets.
Oyvind Mossige, Sparebank 1 Markets. What would be the most important operational improvements in OoB in Q4? And could we see a positive EBIT margin for Q4?
The most important things we're doing right now is to implement the same campaign machinery as we have in Norway. And we have tested front-loading of campaign goods in some selected stores seeing good results. We will implement that throughout the store base. We have changed the layout of the campaign leaflet and also changing the number of printed leaflets. So it's -- that is the key first change that we can do and we are doing. And that alone is not enough to make significant changes to the EBIT in a single quarter, but it's an important tool to create a lot of energy and positive results and good inspiration for the rest of the changes that we're going to do in the coming years for the OoB staff. So it's a very good first step to make to get some quick results on sales and motivation for the staff.
And the last one here from Henriette Trondsen, Arctic. September was a soft retail month according to market statistics. How has the start into Q4 been?
It's too early to really comment on the fourth quarter. It's -- we've done with October, which is the smallest of the most important months of the year. So we won't say, but we can say that we were satisfied with the growth we had in the third quarter for the Europris chain. We beat the market. I think that is a strong achievement.
That was the last question.
Thank you. It's actually one more.
[ Fredrik from Handelsbanken ]. Andre Sjasaet has been taking over as the Country Manager at OoB instead of Eva Lundqvist. Could you tell something more about why you're making this change in that position?
Of course, when we want to make a lot of changes in the company, we will look at the best fit organization and the management structure we need. And Andre had a good experience with the concept of Europris fitted well into the Swedish organization. And we just concluded that to get the best drive and the speed on the implementation, a change was necessary.
Thank you.
Thank you.