Multiconsult ASA

OSE:MULTI

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Mirza Koristovic, Head of Investor Relations & Finance]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the First Quarter 2019 Conference Call for Multiconsult. My name is Mirza Koristovic, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Today's conference call will be held by the CEO, Grethe Bergly; and the CFO, Hans-Jørgen Wibstad. Today's session can be accessed on our web page under the IR section. The presentation will last for approximately 25 minutes and we’ll open up for questions after the presentation. So with that, I leave the word to Grethe.

[Grethe Bergly, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Mirza. Welcome to this presentation. I will now take you through the highlights and some of the overall happenings in the quarter and following this, I will hand over to our CFO, Hans-Jørgen Wibstad, who will take you through the details on the figures. This is a quarter who is -- has shown a solid growth, and we are very pleased to present an all-time high order backlog. There has been good earnings in this quarter, which will give us a solid foundation for the future. There has also been higher activity and improved operations. In the figures, this means a net operating revenue up 9.9% from Q1 '18, and our revenue this quarter is NOK 944 million. This means an EBIT of NOK 92.5 million and a margin of 9.8%. We would, however, like to highlight that there is a significant positive calendar effect in this quarter as there are more working days compared to quarter 1 2018, and Hans-Jørgen will take you through some of the details related to this. The figures we present are very positive and -- but we are still seeing that the underlying profitability is not at a level that we find satisfactory. And we will continue our work to focus on improving profitability over the next quarters. It's natural as I am a new CEO to tell you some more details on how I have approached the journey that we are starting. You were all presented with our new strategy, GO, in quarter 3 of 2018, gain and operations, called GO. And in this, we say that we will, for these next 2 coming years, focus and prioritize core business and operations. For us, that means concentrating on project execution and making sure we are doing good and solid sales. The framework of the strategy stays, and we have started to work more concrete on how this strategy should be realized in the organization. I and my leader -- my team of leaders are working on setting clear expectations on how we are going to improve on profitability, and we are continuing the work to develop the culture of the company. Putting our clients and customers in focus, value creation and creating the one team of the Multiconsult group. And the basis of everything we do is competence and expertise. Together with my management team, we are now establishing an overview of the current situation where we are. Looking at this and then seeing the goals in the strategy, we will gradually develop goals for what we need to change. We will then set up activities, and Hans-Jørgen and I look forward to coming back to you in the following quarters to show you the results that we expect to get from this exercise.Looking at our order intake, we are currently standing at NOK 1.2 million, which means an increase of 6.4% from the previous Q1. As you can see, there is a slight reduction in the Building & Properties and an equivalent increase in transportation. And for us, the balance between these 2 main areas is important as we see that some of the large infrastructure projects also require a substantial input of competence and people who would normally work in the Building & Properties sector. So the balance here is right, and it's a healthy balance for us. It's also very good to see that water and environment has had a substantial increase. This is an area that we see growing and we expect to remain strong. Also within renewable energy, there's been a positive development in this quarter. In addition, we see that there is a continued strong tender pipeline across most of our business areas. And of the major projects that we would like to highlight, there is -- has been an increase on the Subway project for the greater Oslo area. There has been a call-off to start detail engineering for Drammen Hospital, where Multiconsult has 3 major contracts. And it's also very good to see that they have 1 -- 2 projects within renewable energy. One which is the Jølstra hydropower plant and one which is the wind power park in Sørmarkfjellet. And this gives us a solid base in our home market in this important business area. Looking at the backlog, we see a continuous positive development, and this is an all-time high since we entered the stock market. It's an increase of 28.6% from Q1 '18, and it's standing now at almost NOK 3 billion. It is important to remind you that our backlog does not include call-offs from major frame agreements. And we do see that our portfolio tends to have more frame agreement than we had looking back a few years. So we are expecting to see call-offs with the Subway project. We also expect to see call-offs on 2 major contracts that we have with the Defense Department in Norway. Looking at other nice happenings in the organization. We are, for the seventh year in a row, ranking as the #1 company for technology students within the consulting, engineering industry, and we are ranked as #2 within all companies in Norway, and this is a great achievement and a great encouragement for the whole organization. We also continue to develop our employees, and we've had 2 people defending their PhDs in the quarter. Amin Haddadi defended his PhD on value creation in the construction project and Solveig Vassenden defending her PhD on tunnel drilling machines, both very important areas to face future challenges within our industry. And at the end of the quarter, we were 2,972 employees in Multiconsult. And with this, I hand you over to our CFO, Hans-Jørgen Wibstad.

[Hans-Jørgen Wibstad]

Good morning. My name is Hans-Jørgen Wibstad. I joined the Multiconsult as its new CFO on May 1 of this year. I would like to go through with you the main topics related to our financial highlights in the first quarter 2019 and as Grethe said, the operating revenue rose to NOK 944.2 million in the quarter, reflecting an organic growth rate of 9.9%. The underlying growth rate is about 4.1%, when we take into account the calendar effect. We also saw improved earnings in the quarter with an EBIT of NOK 92.5 million, but there were some special items that I would like to highlight under this -- relating to this quarter. First of all, there is a particular calendar effect this quarter compared with the last -- with the first quarter 2018 of NOK 50.2 million and that impacts revenues and earnings by NOK 50.2 million. We also have an IFRS -- implementation of IFRS 16, which has a positive effect on EBIT. And furthermore, relating to our balance sheet, we have the IFRS effect relating to our -- to the rental buildings that we are -- that we have and that is -- has an impact on our total liabilities of just more than NOK 1 billion. On top of that, of special items that I would like to mention is that we have one-off severance agreements relating to leading management personnel that left the company of approximately NOK 10 million in the quarter. So if we look at the strong earnings of NOK 92.5 million and then adjust for the calendar effect and also the IFRS impact as well as the severance agreements, we end up with the margin of about 5%, which is a little bit better than the first quarter of 2018. However, it is not at a satisfactory level for us, and we are looking forward to working with the management and the employees to improve that over the next quarters. Going a little bit further on the financial highlights, we will see that we only -- that we have a healthy revenue growth organic of 4.1%, the underlying, reflecting a good performance by the organizational role. This particular quarter, we have pretty low write-downs, 0.8%, which is -- which will vary from quarter-to-quarter. We're still guiding that level to be between 1% and 2%, but this quarter is -- particularly is a little bit better than what we assume to be the average. Looking at the billing ratio, it's -- in the quarter, it's 70%, which is in the low end of our -- of the range we have indicated, 70% to 75%. So we're not so happy with that. But at the same time, it's at -- within kind of acceptable range. We've talked quite a bit about our EBIT level, and we're very happy to report a very high level, which is actually the second highest EBIT in a quarter since the stock exchange listing, with an EBIT margin of 9.8%. But as I said earlier, with adjusting for the IFRS effect, the calendar effect, we are running now at a margin level which is pretty much similar to what it was in the first quarter of last year, which is a level we're not happy with, but we will work very hard over the next quarters to improve that. The general OpEx overall was in line with the growth of the company. So there's nothing particular in that. Number of employees is growing 3.9%, a little bit less than the growth of the company. So that is a KPI which is within a satisfactory level, and we're also looking very closely at the mix of resources according to what we actually need. So the EBIT bridge from the first quarter of '18 to first quarter of '19, we see clearly the calendar effect that I've talked about a lot, we have an increased capacity in the quarter, we have a positive effect on the billing rate, and we have low write-downs this quarter, and then we have certain more expenses related to increased capacity and other effects which ends up at NOK 92.5 million of EBIT for this quarter. Moving over to the main business areas and segments. We're very happy to report that the greater Oslo area, which is the most important, representing more than 40% of our revenues, is the best-performing segment this quarter with a revenue growth of 13% and a reported EBIT margin of 13.3%, a solid improvement from the first quarter of 2018. And if we adjust for the IFRS effect and the calendar effect, we still see that the underlying profitability is improving from 2.9% to 7.8%. So that is a solid performance by the most important segment for the company. We're also seeing that the billing ratio is stable and also see that there is only a very modest increase in number of employees. So overall, they're doing well in the Oslo great area -- greater Oslo area and we're quite happy with that. When it comes to the Oslo -- sorry, the regions Norway, which is the second largest segment for Multiconsult, this also had a reasonable quarter, but we're seeing that they have certain more challenges than Oslo. They had a somewhat slower start, still giving an increase in operating revenues by 10% to NOK 307.9 million and a reported EBIT margin of 10.2%. However, adjusting for the IFRS effect and the calendar effect comparing the 2 quarters, one can see there that the underlying EBIT margin is as low as 3.7% and part of that is due to low billing ratio as well as somewhat higher OpEx, operating expenses, in this particular region. But they still have a good speed and they're having a good underlying performance at the same time in the market. Moving over to the international, which represents about 5% -- 5% to 6% of revenues, it's a very mixed picture with revenues increasing 11% and the reported EBIT margin is 5.5% and adjusted EBIT margin of 5.3%, which is a substantial reduction from last year. However, the impact of that due to the small size of this segment is not that big. So it's a reduction in underlying EBIT from NOK 5.4 million to NOK 3 million. So NOK 2.4 million of reduced earnings there. Mixed picture, the Swedish subsidiary, Iterio, and the Polish subsidiary, Polska, is doing good -- had a good quarter, while the business in Multiconsult U.K. had a more challenging quarter in this year and -- but we are hopeful that, that will improve as we're moving towards -- through 2019. And finally, LINK arkitektur did -- had a good quarter and -- with a revenue growth of 7.5% and also then with the reported EBIT margin of 12.6% and with an adjusted EBIT margin of 9% -- 9.1%, which is slightly above the first quarter 2018. So overall, a solid performance by our -- by LINK arkitektur and with a particularly strong performance in Norway as okay -- a good performance in Denmark, some challenges in Sweden for the time being. Then moving over to the -- looking at our earnings in a different dimension, namely by business areas. We're seeing that the Building & Properties and transportation, looking to -- looking at those 2 main drivers in our business, doing overall with a strong performance, somewhat reduction in Building & Properties, strong increase in transportation. But those 2 business areas are in combination doing very well. We're happy to see that. The other business areas, Water & Environment has a strong growth to NOK 101 million in revenues and the others are overall doing reasonably fine with certain variations from quarter-to-quarter. Finally, on cash flow, Multiconsult had a weak cash flow in the first quarter that is particularly triggered by increased working capital, which is partially due by normal seasonal variations, but also an effect of very, very low working capital level at the last reporting period at Q4 2018. So we have a lot of focus on working capital, and we will focus on that over the next quarters, and we will -- but we expect that to stabilize as we move through the year. We also have certain higher investment levels in the quarter and that is driven by certain assets acquisitions, which are periodical, and we expect the cash flow from investments to be at a lower level as we move through the year. So overall, then our net interest-bearing debt increased from NOK 59.5 million to NOK 186.6 million in the quarter reflecting a working capital buildup. But overall, we come out of the quarter with a strong and solid balance sheet for the group. And with that, I hand over to Grethe.

[Grethe Bergly, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Hans-Jørgen. The outlook in the market continues to show a strong positive development in most of the business areas that we operate in. And we are well positioned to take advantage of this strong market. The strong competition on large projects continues, and we do see that a larger number of international contractors are entering the market, but we are well positioned with our professional capability and in particular, the strong backlog who gives us a good foundation for being a bit more selective on what tenders we choose to go for. Overall, a good quarter but the administration will continue to put priority on improving the underlying profitability and our focus for the 2019 is to look at cost level that we need to take down and a project to look at our project execution. And with that, I thank you for the attention, and I expect to meet you again on the 29 of August, where we will present the second quarter of the year.

[Mirza Koristovic, Head of Investor Relations & Finance]

We will now go into the Q&A session. So we are waiting for the questions from the web, first. This concludes our session for today. Thank you very much for your attention, and have a nice day.