Strongpoint ASA

OSE:STRO

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Jacob Tveraabak, executive]

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this second quarter presentation by StrongPoint. My name is Jacob Tveraabak. I am the CEO of StrongPoint. And with me today, I have Marius Drefvelin, our Chief Financial Officer.

I will do a short introduction of StrongPoint, then followed up with the Q2 highlights and success stories with customers. After which, Marius will provide additional financial information.

I'd like to start off with StrongPoint's purpose because our purpose is to get retail technology in every shopping experience for a smarter and better life. And what that means is that we need to get retailers and grocery retailers specifically to adapt and take on the StrongPoint's technology solutions to drive efficiencies in stores, enabling them to boost their margins and also enabling them to provide a more sleek and enjoyable shopping experience for our customers.

A tech-led infusion of productivity enhancements in stores is a long-term trend that we believe will be prevailing for many, many years to come, and that is the market in which StrongPoint is playing.

At StrongPoint, we provide a number of retail technology solutions. We have a set of what we call in-store solutions. So solutions in stores ranging from our Vensafe solution, the automatic dispensing solution for high-value items to self-checkout solutions.

Two, on the other hand side, a number of e-commerce solutions. We have our well-known Order Picking solution that we earlier this year, announced that we will be rolling out in Sainsbury's, which we're very proud of but also providing a number of other both picking and last mile solutions.

In essence last, we believe in providing the best for our customers. So that means that we have a good mix of own proprietary solutions whilst also leveraging the products of high-quality partners such as AutoStore as an example. And this broad range of solutions allows us to serve a number of retail customers and grocery retail customers specifically.

We operate in 9 markets in Europe, Norway, Sweden, the 3 Baltic countries, the U.K. and Ireland and Spain. And in these 9 markets, we serve a number of the high-esteemed grocery retail customers. Retailers. In the traditional Nordic and Baltic customers, we pretty much serve each and every grocery retailer there is, whereas in the U.K. and Spain, we're starting to grow the number of customers that we have.

When StrongPoint sells a solution, we just don't only sell the product or a solution, we also strive to do the installation, the service and the support for that. And what that allows for is, number one, for StrongPoint to be able to give maximum value for customers when they take on the solutions that StrongPoint offer, but it also provides StrongPoint with a fantastic opportunity to build more solutions into the mix.

We see that on average, out of the top 10 grocery retail customers that we serve, we actually sell 4.7 solutions. So starting maybe with 1 solution, you can add on additional solutions that we just saw on the previous page to get added value from the solutions.

So that was StrongPoint at a glance. That's what StrongPoint is doing, focusing on the grocery retail customers with a broad set of portfolio and also selling that portfolio to partners in the markets in which we're not operating with our own personnel.

Now to the second quarter highlights, starting with the financials. This quarter was a very tough quarter for us. We saw a decline in our revenue of NOK 40 million to NOK 297 million revenue this quarter. That kind of revenue decline is obviously hard to swallow. What should be said is that this decline stems from product sales only. We're seeing a product sale reduction across the markets in which we operate in all BAUs.

We're also seeing the service revenue and the recurring revenue increasing. Actually, when you look at the 12-month recurring revenue, we're having an increase of 6%. And in that number is also starting to see this first sliver of revenue from the Sainsbury's contract that we announced earlier. We haven't yet installed live in-store yet a solution, but the recurring revenue as well as professional services revenue is already starting to tick in this quarter.

Those are mere and very small highlights given our overall tendency of the revenue. But we're seeing that the product revenue is actually a reflection of the continued investment hold from customers. And in that aspect, it's at least good to see that the service revenue and the license revenues are increasing under that.

When we're looking at the EBITDA, we're seeing a reported reduction in EBITDA to NOK 9 million negative. That's a negative NOK 11 million reduction from the NOK 2 million plus that we had same quarter last year.

We kind of foresaw the reduction in revenue. And in the quarter, we yet again took another round of cost reduction in the order of magnitude NOK 20 million per annum reduction. That's on top of the earlier announced NOK 20 million in Q4 last year that we expect to have additional impact in the quarters to come. So in this quarter, we actually had a restructuring cost of NOK 10 million nonrecurring, that is, of course, in the quarter. And had we adjusted for that, we would have been a slightly positive EBITDA figures. But this is, of course, not at all levels we aspire to be, where our long-term ambition aspires to be in the order of magnitude of more than 10% EBITDA margin.

Again, under these figures is the reflection, of course, of the revenue reduction we've seen. We've also managed to increase the gross margin from 40% same quarter last year to 45% this quarter. And with additional -- or sorry, with the cost reduction that we announced earlier, we're seeing a cushioning of the otherwise implication that would have had on EBITDA.

I want to round off with some of the customer success stories that we've had in the quarter that we announced in the quarter. Number one is, of course, the CashGuard Connect solution that we have been working with for many years. And as we announced earlier this quarter, during the strategy update session, we are now live with a pilot at the largest grocery retailer in Spain. The solution eliminates the need for manual cash handling both from checkout personnel but also massively reduces the need for CIT stops or Cash In Transit stops at grocery retailers. And hence, it's a massive saving potential for that solution.

We're continuing to work with the pilot to make the product more stable and ready for mass deployment across many customers to come, but there was a bit of a milestone to have the first solution in-store, although it's still on a pilot stage.

Secondly, we announced a more than 30 locker installation continuation, I should say, in the U.S. This is with a leading grocery retailer in the U.S. and as such, in the world that is deploying StrongPoint lockers going from a proof-of-concept stage that we announced more than a year ago into now what is called a proof-of-economy stage. So we're very prosperous about the implications that lockers will have also for the last mile delivery not only in the markets we know very well, in particular in Sweden, but also now in the U.S. where e-groceries is certainly a very big market.

And lastly, we also announced a NOK 37 million electronic shelf label contract with Alphamega, Alphamega being the largest grocery retailer in Cyprus. I think what's in a way fun and interesting to see with Alphamega is that Alphamega has gone from adapting StrongPoint's Order Picking solution, our locker solutions as well as our delivery manager solutions, so all in the e-commerce sphere to now also adding on electronic shelf labels, thereby increasing the overall value of all the solution that StrongPoint offers. So with Alphamega, we are now at 4 solutions. Hope to make that both 5 and 6 solutions in the years to come.

And with that, I'd like to hand over to Marius Drefvelin for additional financial information. Marius.

[Marius Drefvelin, executive]

Thank you, Jacob. I will now go through some of the other financials for the second quarter. To start off, our earnings per share in the second quarter this year was negative NOK 0.47. This was mainly impacted by the operational performance and the restructuring costs, which we have already discussed. As shown on the figure to the right, the 12 months rolling earnings per share was negative NOK 1.59. If we adjust for the noncash amortization-related to the acquisitions in the U.K. and Finland, the 12 months rolling EPS was negative NOK 1.33. This was our earnings per share.

So what about the cash flow movements so far this year? We started the year with NOK 39 million in cash, which have been reduced to NOK 26 million at the end of the quarter. The negative reported EBITDA was mitigated by improvements in working capital. I will talk more about that shortly.

We had planned capital expenditure of NOK 15 million, mainly relating to the development of the CashGuard Connect solution. The majority of these costs are capitalized in the balance sheet. All other development costs are expensed over the P&L.

The other main cash item was leasing payments of NOK 16 million. These were the main cash items so far this year.

Now let's move further into the key components of the working capital development. As we have said before, working capital levels will vary because we are a project-oriented company. The levels will vary depending on the volume and the type of projects that we deliver. Overall, we reduced the working capital by NOK 15 million from the end of 2023 to the end of the second quarter this year. We had a small net increase in the net effect of receivables and payables but a decrease in inventory of NOK 19 million during the period. This was driving the reduction in the working capital. In the previous quarter, we also said that this is a high priority, and this will continue going forward.

So turning from our main working capital changes so far this year to the development in net interest-bearing debt. The net interest-bearing debt mainly consists of a short-term bank overdraft and available cash. In addition, it includes a smaller term loan in our Spanish subsidiary as well as financial leasing obligations. The net interest-bearing debt was NOK 105 million at the end of the quarter compared to NOK 77 million the previous quarter. The main reasons for this increase are the negative operating reported result and our continued investment activities in the CashGuard Connect solution. We are working hard to maintain the debt levels and emphasize that at the end of the year, we had NOK 65 million in disposable funds.

Furthermore, in the previous quarter, we informed that we had signed a refinancing agreement with a leading Scandinavian financial institution to replace our current bank overdraft. The current overdraft of NOK 150 million will be replaced with a combination of a loan facility and working capital financing for a total of up to NOK 200 million.

We expected this to be completed at the end of the second quarter. However, we decided to delay this until after the summer due to some extra work needed on the IT implementation for the working capital arrangement. This does not have any practical impact for us, and again, we reiterate that we still have sufficient disposable funds. When this has been implemented, there will be an equity ratio covenant of 30%. There will not be a net leverage covenant. So the covenant waiver that we currently have until the fourth quarter this year will no longer be needed. These were the main other financials.

Later today, there will be a Q&A call at 11:00, where you can post your questions, and you can also send us an e-mail. The next quarterly presentation will be on the 18th of October with our third quarter results.

So with this, we thank you for your attention and wish you a great day.