Strongpoint ASA

OSE:STRO

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Jacob Tveraabak, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Q2 presentation by StrongPoint.

My name is Jacob Tveraabak. I am the CEO of StrongPoint.

Today, I will take you through the following agenda: the short introduction of StrongPoint and the market we operate in; secondly, the financial results in this quarter; and then thirdly, other financials, including the 2025 ambition path.

Firstly, starting with StrongPoint, our purpose. We strive to put retail technology in every shopping experience for a smarter and better life. And what it means is that we are helping retailers and grocery retailers specifically to improve the operations, improve productivity in operations, thereby helping them achieve better margins and, at the end of the day, improve the shopping experience also for its end customers. This is our purpose. This is the ambition of StrongPoint long term. We believe this is a long-term mega trend. And we also believe that what we've seen in the Scandinavian markets, Norway and Sweden specifically, is something that would be possible to export, if you want, to other European markets.

Looking at this quarter and in general, I'd say. It is a challenging macro environment. Inflation has been soaring. As a consequence of that, interest rates have been increasing to heights not seen in many, many years; and with the corresponding household commerce having retracted from the great heights during the pandemic. So all in all and as you will see in the quarterly figures also for StrongPoint, we are operating in a environment which is challenging. Yes, we do serve the resilient, stable grocery retail customers, but even they are not resilient enough to not be affected by these trends that we see in this quarter.

We do and I do still believe that we are providing significantly important or business-critical solutions to customers, so what we have seen in this quarter is something you can postpone or push out in time to a certain extent, but take electronic shelf labels. I mean they wear out over time. And it's not like we have customers that would like to return to paper [ tax ] , so I'm confident that what we've seen in the challenging macro environment even in an environment that continues, our solutions will be implemented, in the second half of this year, a lot more than what we have seen in this quarter.

So specifically looking at the financial results for StrongPoint. We are achieving a 5% growth on revenue. The 5% growth includes the acquisition of ALS that we did last year, naturally, but if we're comparing with last year's figures, we have to remember that we only had one month of ALS in the figures, whereas of course this quarter we have the full 3 months in the quarter. Adjusting for the ALS acquisition, the revenue would actually not have grown 5%, but we would have seen a decline of 3%. That's clearly not where we want to be. And it's even more challenging when we think about the depreciation of the Norwegian krone, which leads to revenues in Norwegian krone higher than they normally would have been. There's a couple of explanations to why this is the case, and I'd like to take you through those.

Firstly, it's in general the macro picture. We're seeing that there is a postponement or delay in the investments that are happening or not happening. In particular, we are being hit in our Nordic markets Norway and Sweden. This is where -- this is where naturally, in a way, this is where we have the biggest penetration in the grocery space, and as a consequence, we are also impacted by the market as a whole. And we're seeing a retraction in our revenue in the Nordics in the order of magnitude 16% to 17% in this quarter. The U.K. market, with the acquisition of ALS, should, of course, have grown a lot more than what we have seen. In the figures, as such, we're growing from NOK 30 million to NOK 56 million, but of course, we are comparing 1 month to 3 months. The pattern is the same. We've seen a delay in projects that were supposed to happen in Q2. So a number of projects have been postponed, not canceled necessarily but postponed in time.

It should be settled in this context that we have a number of business units doing very well. The Baltic operations is growing by more than 50%, which is quite strong in a such mature market as the Baltics is for StrongPoint. Also, Spain, the transformation and turnaround of the business is still going very strong. And we're growing by 25% in this quarter whilst still working very intensively on the very large cash management project that we'll talk about later today, but as a whole, we are, of course, not happy with a 5% overall growth. We expect and I expect that the revenue will be increasing across the markets that StrongPoint operate in the next 6 months we are going to be operating in.

When we look at the profitability in terms of EBITDA. This is also declining. We're going from a NOK 10 million EBITDA and seeing a decline to just barely positive. Again this is clearly not where we want to be and aspire to be, but let me explain why this is. Firstly, we're seeing that the EBITDA reduction in Norway has been significant. It's in the order of magnitude of NOK 10 million in itself. The U.K. business has gone from a positive NOK 4 million to a negative number equal that size. And e-commerce, we have still been and are still investing into major e-commerce projects that putting a lot of pressure on the organization and resulting in a minus NOK 50 million in itself.

So we have these three areas, Norway, U.K. and e-com, performing less good than last year. There's a reason for that, but clearly these are areas in which we also have to adapt our cost position to be competitive in the quarters and years to come. Again I'd like to highlight that the Baltic is doing great and Spain also being positive in EBITDA, as we have talked about earlier.

As a whole, with the revenue figures expected to grow in the next 6 months, we also expect the revenue to follow that. And not least, I do want to emphasize again we are working on both a very major cash management project in Spain. We're also working on a unprecedented pipeline of opportunities in the U.K. and particularly within e-commerce, where the e-commerce market is so highly penetrated. So there's lots of more of positive activities happening behind the figures than the shared figures themselves show.

Rounding off the financial highlights with the operating cash flow. We are seeing a NOK 60 million positive operating cash flow. I think this is very important to get across to the investor market. We are serving the stable, resilient and very well-driven grocery retailers, so the loss on accounts receivable is neglectable in this context. The NOK 60 million represents a -- about NOK 100 million improvement from last quarter and also a NOK 100 million improvement from same quarter last year. And in the short history that we are showing on the slide here, this very positive operating cash flow is actually the best we've had in many, many years. The two abnormalities that we have earlier in Q4 '20 and Q3 '21 were due to divestments of Labels and Cash Security business, respectively. So a very strong cash flow due to solid customers. They are paying their invoices on time. And of course, it also reflects the fact that we haven't been getting the -- all the investments in this quarter as we were expecting. But a very solid operating cash flow there.

Besides figures, I do want to talk somewhat about the customer success we were seeing in this quarter as well. Firstly, I'm very pleased that we're continuing to serve ICA with electronic shelf labels in Sweden. We actually also in the quarter had a notification to the stock market about a major electronic shelf label for ICA that we normally don't do, but in this case it was a group of ICA dealers going together and acquiring a quite a significant number of electronic shelf labels from Pricer and StrongPoint. Secondly, we have now completed the first AutoStore installation for ColliCare, the 3PL operator in Vestby, resulting in very successful customers -- or customer experiences, where IKEA have now been able to reduce its delivery time to customers from 5, 6 days down to 2, 3 days due to the AutoStore facility. So very proud of that and hope that we can build many more such facilities on the back of this first successful AutoStore facility.

Lastly that we're also highlighting in our report and here is the pilot of Vensafe in both South Africa and the Baltics. Why is this a big thing? Well, it's important for us to get defensive outside Norway in particular and Sweden, but it also underlines the potential for Vensafe in an environment where we're seeing, regrettably, that the pressure on disposable household income leads to more theft in stores. The theft in stores, of course, can be prevented to some extent by having Vensafe. And that's exactly what we're seeing in the Baltics, in South Africa and, hopefully, in more geographies as we progress.

Also, with regards to progress towards 2025, I want to highlight the partnership that we did in -- or announced and did in Finland with Aste. Aste is a provider of refrigeration technique, actually also providing certain components to our cooled Vensafe solution, but we now have a partnership agreement in place that allows StrongPoint to distribute the coolers, freezers and even Aste's grocery lockers themselves into the core markets we are in, in addition to other important markets. This is an area which is still in high demand with customers, and we're very pleased to be able to provide our customers with the ability to get even more solutions from StrongPoint.

We also announced Marius Drefvelin as our new CFO. He is commencing his position on September 1. I look very much forward to welcoming Marius. Marius has had a number of CFO positions in public and private companies. Amongst others, he's been with TechStep for many years where he was the CFO. And he also has as a abundance of M&A activities and experience that I'm sure StrongPoint will benefit from, so looking very much forward to have Marius by my side on the next quarterly presentation.

And lastly, again I do want to emphasize the importance of the very large project we're doing for a Iberian grocery retailer. I will actually talk more about that, but I think it's important for the investor group to understand how the project which is happening now is putting pressure on the organization as such, but that's a milestone that we are, hopefully, not too far away to be able to comment and announce very soon.

I also want to go through some other financials. When you look at the earnings per share of StrongPoint, obviously with a weak financial quarter, I think it's fair to say, the EPS or earnings per share is going down. That means that we are now in a position where we have a rolling 12-month earnings per share adjusted that is below NOK 1, certainly not where we want to be. And I both hope and expect that the earnings per share would increase significantly going forward towards 2025 and throughout the year. I think there are two aspects I want to highlight. One is the NOK 40 million dividend payout in May to investors and shareholders. And secondly is the NOK 18 million CapEx, of which NOK 11 million is capitalized investments that we're doing in the [ full ] cash project and the joint venture that we now own 60% of and, as such, consolidate into StrongPoint.

The consolidation, by the way, is also the reason why there's a 6-person increase in the employee base that StrongPoint has since last quarter. As for working capital. Working capital level is about the same as end of last year. Account receivables have improved significantly, again, with the very strong operating cash flow that we have. And we are going to ensure that we have a working capital which is fit for the business that we operate. If anything, today, I believe we can reduce the working capital somewhat more; and that is also focused internally at StrongPoint.

And lastly, our balance sheet. We have still a very strong balance sheet. We actually have a small reduction of NOK 4 million in net interest-bearing debt compared to last quarter. And the full sort of growth in IFRS liabilities relates 100% to the fact that we have moved our headquarters that used to be at Slynga, Rælingen to Bryn in Oslo. And I look very much forward to invite both customers and investors to our new facilities in Oslo after summer, but that is, as I said, in this instance a pure technicality that we need to introduce the full leasing rental agreement obligation into the IFRS liabilities. In sum, very solid and strong balance sheet.

I do want to round off today's session with a recap of the 2025 financial ambitions as well as helping U.S. investors understand why we feel so confident that we will be getting to those ambitions we'd set forth. The financial ambitions that we have laid forth in 2025 is NOK 2.5 billion revenue and a 13% to 15% EBITDA margin. Those were the financial ambitions we announced in February 2020, and I'm still now reiterating those same financial ambitions, standing here today before you, end of Q2 2023.

So how will we get there? Well, let's start with revenue. From the year of when we introduced the financial ambitions till end of last year, we had 22% compound growth of revenue. First half now is 16%, so obviously lower than that, but in total this is about the level we need to be at going forward, where a 19% CAGR is needed to get to NOK 2.5 billion revenue. Certainly the acquisition of ALS has contributed significantly to this. And M&A will be and shall be part of the vehicle we use to get to NOK 2.5 billion. Just after the quarter was closed, we announced the acquisition of Hamari Group. So the Finnish company Hamari Group, a pricer distributor working out of Finland. We believe it's a great entry into Finland that we can build around, but we also believe that we can do great things together with Hamari Group represented as the largest pricer ESL distributor in the world. So we will be using M&A forward and we will be seeing stronger organic growth for StrongPoint, following the same path that we've had over the past few years.

In terms of EBITDA. And this is not a new picture for those that have been following us, but still we want to go through the reasons for why we believe we can get from today's levels to the ambitions we set forth. Firstly, this, the 10% to 11% EBITDA margin in our in-store business that we have been able to achieve over the cycles -- and rolling 12, we're still at that level. What has been a drag to our EBITDA has been both the investments in e-commerce that we're constantly shaping and fitting to fit the market needs, but as I said, we're working with unprecedented pipelines.

And it's also been in Spain, which we during 2022 turned from massive negative figures to being positive and again also now in Q2 being positive figures. So when we then shift to how will we be getting to 13% to 15% EBITDA in 2025, let's start with the 10% to 11% margin for the in-store business that we have, the mature business in Norway, Sweden, Baltics and also the U.K. for that matter. We're going to be introducing more of our solutions in these areas, leveraging the operational efficiencies we have, getting better margins, to make sure that we at least are not below the 10% to 11% EBITDA. Beyond that, there are two very important aspects that will be getting us there: one, the e-commerce contributions; and two, the Spain and special projects, which we've called the cash management project we're working on, as key contributors.

So let me just double-click on both these opportunities to elaborate a bit more on why we're so enthusiastic about these opportunities. Firstly, regarding e-commerce, in general I guess we can say that, when we had the pandemic, we saw e-commerce growing across the board. That is certainly not the case in today's economic environment. We've seen the retraction of e-commerce. We've even seen companies moving out of e-commerce, so our focus has been pivoted in particular to the U.K. market, where we have both ALS but also the e-commerce experience and expertise situated. And if you think about it, the U.K. e-grocery market is the highest-penetrated market in Europe, about 12%. And to put that in perspective, that's larger than the entire Norwegian grocery space, that's the size of the pie.

And so in the U.K., the question from these players that you see here, the question is not should we be in e-grocery or not. The question is how can we make it profitable because that's still not the case for these players. We believe that we have the solutions based on the very high labor costs out of Sweden, in particular, in this case, that have forced us to deliver solutions that are highly efficient and that have been contributing to profitable e-commerce business for our customers. So this means both our picking solution, whether it's in-store, it means our picking solution with AutoStore to make the picking more automated or to make sure we get a last mile solution that is cost efficient.

The U.K. has been a home delivery market for many, many years and will be predominantly that for many, many years. But still there is a massive opportunity to ensure that there are other ways of getting the groceries. And I'm, of course, thinking about grocery lockers in this respect. For obvious reasons, I cannot disclose which of these customers or companies we are working with, but I can say this much. And that is that we have an unprecedented pipeline of opportunities. And for the U.K. as a whole, I will be very disappointed if we don't reveal a massive deal in the second half of this year. That is e-commerce, massive opportunity for us and the pivot is really on the U.K. Secondly, as we also displayed during our strategy update session earlier this year. It's what we called the very important cash management project out of Iberia. And as most of the investors are Norwegian or Swedish, I think it's important to put in context what does cash mean in a grocery environment in Spain.

This is still an environment where cash is being used in more than 50% of all transactions. It's a massive amount of physical cash going through the cashiers and the ability to be more efficient in the cash management process is key for this customer, but many other customers as well in Spain and at the Mediterranean areas.

What makes us feel confident about this solution is, number one, that we are exclusively working for this major grocery retailers have done so for more than one year, having been in their laboratory at their headquarters and are now setting up the first live in-store pilot. Secondly, we feel very confident that the return on investment for the customer is significant and more than significant. Introducing our enclosed cash management system, we'll ensure that the customer is able to reduce the cash in transit company visits by several fold in a week going from, for instance, five stops per week to maybe even down to two, maybe three stops per week. That's a massive save for the customer. I'm personally also going to spend part of Q3 in Spain for this pilot. And I really both hope and expect to be delivering some very exciting news to the market as this quarter goes by.

I do want to round off today's session by saying that I both hope and believe you will be hearing a lot more from us in the next half year. The least you will do is hear from me and Marius on the Q3 presentation that we will be holding on October 23.

Thank you so much for listening, and thank you.