Kitron ASA

OSE:KIT

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Lars Peter Nilsson, CEO & President]

Welcome to Kitron's fourth quarter and full year 2020 review. I'm Peter Nilsson, President and CEO, and presenting with me today is Cathrin Nylander, CFO.Please remember that you have the possibility to post questions through the webcast. We will answer these at the end.Now 2020 has been in many ways an exceptional year. The corona pandemic has created both challenges and possibilities. The growth of our Medical device revenue in 2020 is directly contributable to the pandemic-driven demand. Also, constraints in the upstream supply chain have created opportunities for Kitron as our performance likely has been better than the average competition. We expect much of the growth for 2021 to be driven by new customers and new products won during the past year or so.Next page, please. So the fourth quarter revenue is the highest Q4 revenue ever. Growth is more than 11% in the quarter and contributing to the remarkable growth of 20% for the full year. Growth in the quarter was solely driven by the industry sector at more than 50% growth. This growth came from electrification products, which grew more than 160%. Other sectors returned to more normalized levels.EBIT in the quarter improved close to 40% and yielding an impressive NOK 76 million. Profits were largely driven by significant improvements in the CEE, Central Eastern Europe operations. As efficiency improved in Lithuania and Poland, profits increased from NOK 12 million to NOK 39 million.Operating cash flow was favorable as the peak in medical deliveries in Q3 generated cash in Q4. Overall, the cash flow improved 36% year-on-year in Q4 and generated NOK 237 million in cash flow for the year.Next page, please. Some additional highlights in the quarter. Earnings per share in the quarter grew 36% from NOK 0.19 to NOK 0.26 as a result of improvements in the CEE performance. The full year EPS improved more than 60% driven to a large degree by corona-related demand increases and reliable performance across most Kitron companies. Order backlog grew overall by modest 6%. However, there's a strong growth of 35% within electrification, connectivity and automation.Net working capital grew in line with sales growth and constraints in the supply chain. Capital efficiency measured towards sales remained unchanged, but return on operating capital, excluding IFRS 16, improved to over 21%.Dividend for 2020 is proposed at NOK 0.70 per share paid in 2 equal tranches of NOK 0.35 in May and in October. And in addition, Kitron will be organizing a Capital Markets Day on March 17. The Capital Markets Day will introduce new market segmentation, new sales targets towards 2025 and an updated strategy, and I welcome you all to join us.Next page, please. In regards to awards in the quarter, 2 awards were announced. Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace awarded production of a new radio link module to Kitron Norway. And Northrop Grumman awarded a development project to run over the next 3 years. The end result of this project will enable Kitron to function as a repair center for the United States government.And moving on to financials and off to you, Cathrin.

[Cathrin Nylander, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Peter. Slide 5, please, financials, and then we'll go to Slide 6, please. Industry sector shows strong growth. The quarter ended at NOK 992 million and an increase of NOK 103 million and 12% compared to last year. The underlying growth is 7%.Let's discuss the sectors as they are shown in the graph from left to right. Defence/Aerospace, lower -- 7% lower than last year, a reduction of -- reduction to NOK 234 million and the result of some of the orders having been worked out and where we're awaiting the follow-on orders. It's primarily for the U.S.Energy/Telecom, we see a reduction of 8.5%, down to NOK 78 million compared to last year due to the disengaged customer. But from the graph, it's clear to see that we have reached the bottom in Q2 with NOK 46 million, and now we're building up back the revenues. An increase in deliveries within the energy transmissions are mainly behind the growth so far.For Industry, a substantial growth of 53% and NOK 170 million, up to NOK 488 million due to strengthening within electrification and demand driven by warehouse automation and IoT. All over good growth, but CEE is absolutely the largest contributor within the industry. And as previously communicated, Medical devices revenue is normalized and the reduction of 4.3% and down to NOK 173 million compared to last year as the ventilator business has come down.For the sector Offshore/Marine, a substantial reduction compared to last year but stabilized at a low level and in line with previous quarters this year.Looking at the sites. Norway shows strong growth at 16.4% and ending at NOK 283 million, which is higher than previous quarters and a robust quarterly revenue this year. Sweden, with a modest growth of 3.5% and ending at NOK 171 million. Compared to last year, Sweden's numbers are affected by the customer that was disengaged, and compared to previous quarters, they are affected by the slowdown in Medical devices. However, we see volumes growing with other customers, many of them new.CEE, Central and Eastern Europe, in total, a strong growth of 38%, up to NOK 397 million as industry strengthens for both sites. Of a growth of NOK 103 million in the quarter compared to last year, NOK 109 million comes from CEE.For Others, China volumes are returning to normal levels. And for U.S., a reduction, mainly due to the defense projects for multiyear orders being worked out.In the U.S., previously, a strong foothold in the Defence/Aerospace, we now start to see more diversification and they've just about started to work with a new customer within Medical devices, as we talked about last quarter.For the full revenue -- full year revenue, it ended at almost NOK 4 billion or NOK 3,964 million and up 20% and NOK 665 million compared to last year. We have had significant changes within the sectors. Defence/Aerospace is up NOK 230 million; Energy/Telecom is down NOK 240 million; Industry, up NOK 400 million; Medical devices, up NOK 410 million; and Offshore/Marine, down NOK 135 million. It really proves the point that the sectors have different business cycles and compensate each other, which gives stability in the income for Kitron in total.Slide 7, please. Outstanding full year results. Profits are returning to strategic levels. Q4, normally a strong quarter and so also this year at 7.6%, up from 6.3% last year, but of course, less than Q2 and Q3 where we had economies of scale and exceptional utilization due to the demands in the Medical devices.For the group results, the world situation has affected NOK. And since the consolidation in NOK, it has affected the accounts as well. Revenue has an underlying growth of 7%, and EBIT has an underlying growth of above 30%. Although the NOK has a favorable development in consolidation, it does not in general affect the local accounts. But dependent on the currencies, the site the business in, there are normally some local effects due to revaluation of net working capital. However, for Q2 -- or Q4, this is very minor as we have around negative 0.1% margin effect in revaluation and around the same level last year and the cumulative figure is about the same as well.Worthwhile commenting is also that we, below EBIT, have a net noncash negative [ argue ] of NOK 8.7 million in finance net compared to a loss of NOK 2.8 million last year, mainly a revaluation of euro to PLN loans in Poland.Tax rate in the quarter is 21.6%, which is slightly lower than last year's 23.6% and mainly because of the income mix due to higher share of profits in lower tax countries, mainly CEE, actually. In all, a very good quarter.Slide 8, please. Q2 (sic) [ Q4 ] EBIT by country, improved profits and profitability. Norway and Sweden now both at strong margins, Norway at 7.5%, up from 5.4% last year; and Sweden, just below 7% at 6.9% and up from 6.3% last year. Both show solid improvement. Norway's growth in fourth quarter, slightly over 16% and they managed to leverage that growth into profit increase of over 60%, increasing profits from NOK 13.2 million to NOK 21.4 million. Sweden improved profitability from 6.3% to 6.9%. Revenues here also growing but with a more modest 3.5%. Nevertheless, increasing profits with 4.5%, going from NOK 10.4 million to NOK 11.9 million.Central and Eastern Europe, improved EBIT margins from 6.6% in Q1 to 7.2% in Q2, dipped during Q3, went down -- when it was down to 5.5% and now 9.8% in Q4. Volume increased 40% and profits 25%, a strong contribution from both sites. Although the previous quarters have been in line with our expectations, we have said that the deliveries in Q4 was well above our expectations. Both sites in CEE well above strategic lows.The others, consisting of U.S. and China, show low profitability in Q4 compared to the exceptional performance earlier this year. Q4 was particularly weak in the U.S. The large volumes in Medical devices Q2 -- Q3 is now down to normal.In all, we are quite satisfied with the improvements in profitability overall for the sites and the reason why they are managing to improve profitability. There's only one answer to that, and that's attention to detail and hard work on operational excellence.Slide 9, please. Working capital. Working capital ended at NOK 10,063 million (sic) [ NOK 1,063 million ], an increase of 13% compared to last year. Adjusted for foreign exchange effects and consolidation is around a 10% increase on last year's level. So of the NOK 121 million increase, NOK 26 million related to currency.Main increase in net working capital in local currencies are due to demand growth in Defence/Aerospace and Industry sectors. Compared to Q3, there is a reduction in the working capital mainly due to a normalization of the Medical devices volume.We are carrying more inventory. The increase in -- mostly in WIP and finished goods represented as contract assets in the balance sheet. The increase here is mainly due to the previously mentioned demand growth in Defence/Aerospace is strong growth. A part of that increase is covered by advances from customers. Sites not involved in defense show minor growth or, for many, stabilization in inventory levels.Trade payables are increasing as a result of high activity and the higher share of preferred vendors with longer payment terms. Trade receivables are higher than last year but a reduction compared to last quarter. Overdues are about 6%, up in value in percent and mainly cleared by now. We definitely have seen a more tactical payments at the end of this quarter than ever before. Receivables as a percentage of revenue is approximately 21%, which is slightly up from last year's 20%. DSO is 65 days.In total, net working capital in percentage of sales is at 26.3%, which is the same as last year. Cash conversion cycle is reduced to 98 days from 102 days last year.ROOC substantially improved compared to last year to 18.9%, up from 14.8%, driven by the increased profitability in the quarter. Adjusted for IFRS 16, the ROOC is slightly over 21%.There is a positive cash flow, NOK 132 million in the quarter compared to a positive NOK 97 million last year driven by profitability and reduction in working capital. In total, cash flow is NOK 237 million compared to NOK 195 million last year. Investments of NOK 60 million is approximately 1.5% of the revenue in total, slightly higher than the -- or slightly lower than depreciations of 2.5% for this year.Net interest-bearing debt over EBITDA is improved from 2.8 last year to 1.8 this year. If we adjust for IFRS 16 of around NOK 120 million, it is 1.6. Net debt is NOK 758 million, at the same level of Q3 and reduced NOK 26 million from last year.And in Q4, we paid a dividend of NOK 90 million. As for 2021, a dividend of NOK 0.70 per share is proposed, which is in total NOK 125 million. It's also proposed to pay the dividend in 2 tranches, one in May and one in October, mainly to split the cash outlay. We see that as we continue to grow dividends, this is becoming increasingly important. In all so far, the capital situation is satisfactory.Slide 10, and over to you, Peter.

[Lars Peter Nilsson, CEO & President]

Thank you so much, Cathrin. Before we look at the order backlog, let me comment in general. Competition continues to be fierce. But with strong efficiency improvements, well-thought out equipment investments and a superior management of the supply chain, Kitron continues to win new business as well as serving existing customers with necessary cost reductions and world-class quality and flexibility. Our competitiveness is demonstrated by a high hit rate with new customers, consistently above industry average. Close to NOK 500 million in sales in 2021 is coming from new customers won in 2019 through 2020.As our customer relationships mature, we consistently win new generations and expand our product portfolio and service range. We also support customers in taking over their internal production. And we participate in sometimes drawn design projects and design teams.Overall, the market continues to develop favorably for Kitron. We're in the process of changing the way we view and segment the market. And we'll be happy to share this on our upcoming Capital Markets Day on March 17. So now let's move on to the order backlog.As I mentioned previously, the order backlog increase is 6% year-on-year. On the Defence and Aerospace sector, Aerospace remains strong. The defense communications part is reduced as we have delivered on full year, and we've delivered another full year on multiyear orders received in 2019. Fire control systems and surveillance continue to show growth and strong growth even.Within Energy/Telecoms, machine-to-machine, IoT and networking products are growing around 25%. Energy transmission is growing 35%. Within Industry, automation products show a growth of 28% and sensors at 73%.Starting in the first quarter 2021, Kitron's market sectors will be updated. Marine/Offshore and Energy/Telecoms will be replaced by Connectivity and Electrification. And historical comparisons will, of course, be available.Let's move on to the next slide, please, and move into the outlook. For 2021, we expect revenues to be between NOK 3.9 billion and NOK 4.2 billion. We expect the EBIT margins to come in between 6.8% and 7.4%. This outlook implies that we're back on our long-term trajectory for revenue and profitability after exceptional growth in 2020, largely driven by the corona-related demand within the Medical devices sector.Growth is driven by Defence/Aerospace, electrification and connectivity within Energy/Telecom and automation and sensors within Industry. Medical devices is expected to be more normalized and return to previous year's levels.So then finally, please remember to post any questions you have to the webinar Q&A section. The key takeaways from this quarter and for the full year is we have outstanding full year results in 2020. We're back on our long-term trajectory for revenue and profitability. There's a proposed dividend of NOK 0.70 per share, and we have a Capital Markets Day on March 17.This concludes the presentation portion. You can hit the last slide there, Cathrin.

[Lars Peter Nilsson, CEO & President]

And we'll move on to see if we have any questions. And there is one question. Can you please comment on the likelihood of potential M&A moves during 2021?Well, during the past year 2020, we have been involved in looking at probably half a dozen or so different opportunities, and we were involved also more deeply in 1 or 2. We feel right now that the market is overvalued when it comes to what's out there on the M&A front. So it's difficult to say if anything is going to happen exactly in 2021. I can say that we don't have anything going on exactly right now.But we are opportunistic. We continue to look at further growth. We're particularly interested in expanding our capacity in the next 2 years in the Central Eastern Europe region. That can be done either through an M&A, giving us some nice bottom -- top line to start out with or as a greenfield, if that opportunity deems as a better option.That is the only question we had. So maybe we will conclude on that and meet the rest of our investors in Teams meetings and other meetings throughout the day and next week.Okay. Thank you so much. We'll see you back in the Capital Markets Day on March 17. Thanks.

[Cathrin Nylander, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you.