Strongpoint ASA
OSE:STRO
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Strongpoint ASA
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this third quarter presentation with StrongPoint. With me today, I have Hilde Horn Gilen, who will be going through some of the more detailed financials. But allow me to take you through the short introduction as well as the highlights for this quarter. And in the end, we'll, of course, have time for Q&A, in particular, from this first row. StrongPoint is a retail technology company. Our mission is to drive retailers' productivity by providing them with innovative, integrated technology solutions. In a way, I'd like to say we are the lifebuoy of retailers. And there's the one big animal called e-commerce that's driving both the opportunity for us to be the lifebuoy, but also what I'd like to call the double opportunity. E-commerce takes away, whether you like it or not, sales from stores. Sales going from the brick-and-mortar stores online, it ensures that you get a continued margin squeeze in the stores. You typically have the same sort of real estate costs, labor costs, et cetera, and hence, you get the labor and certainly the margin squeeze. And we believe that technology solutions and our technology solutions is part of helping alleviate this margin pressure.On the other hand side, even though you've been a retailer for 50 or 60 years, moving online is a different game. So we see a lot of incumbents wanting to go online and needing the help to drive this business with the help and expertise of StrongPoint. So that's the second opportunity. With our world-class products, we're able to help our clients. So that's the double opportunity for StrongPoint. And we're starting to have quite a rich portfolio of solutions to support. We have a number of in-store solutions, both in-store productivity solutions, payment solutions as well as checkout efficiency solutions. And on the other hand side, we have a rich e-commerce portfolio. We're -- essentially, we're doing everything, apart from the front-end webshop that you see in stores. We do the picking and we do the delivery, both hardware and software, development and deliveries.In addition to that, we have Cash Security, here illustrated by Cash In Transit, which is the biggest -- by far, biggest piece of Cash Security. Cash In Transit ensures that the Nokas, G4S, Loomis of the world can reduce the manning to transport cash by having IBNS technology in the cases that makes cash unusable if opened in an uncertified manner. And in addition to that, we also have Labels. We have a very good and stable Label business, which principally delivers labels through the fast-moving consumer goods industry and more.And we also want to repeat our focus areas, which then naturally are centered around Retail Technology. Number one is that we're working constantly to maintain and grow the relevance in our home markets: Norway, Sweden and the Baltics. We need to all the time look at how we can expand our product and solutions portfolio to better serve our customers. In addition, we've phased out Spain as a priority area. We see that the product market fit for the solutions we have versus what is needed in the Spanish market is very, very good and we're getting lots of traction there. But we want to continue growing the Spanish market in a way to mirror some of the characteristics that we have in the home organizations. And lastly, it's to, I'd say, of course, grow e-commerce into a substantial part of StrongPoint's business. I'll get back to that. But we're seeing tremendous growth in the e-commerce space, and going forward, we will be continuing to push to get our solutions out there in the market.And lastly, we also want to make sure that we are the best owner and employer for all the StrongPoint businesses. And in the back here, we also have Erik Vaag, who's our new SVP of People & Organization, specifically for that matter. We believe we need to be in a market to attract, retain and develop the best talents to succeed on the journey that we're just getting started on.So then to the hardcore figures that I know that at least the first row here is very busy with. First of all, we're doing a very strong performance in Retail Technology and we shall show you there's a bit more mixed in the other business areas, which makes the overall performance flat. I'll go through some of the customer breakthroughs that we've had in the last quarter as well as some of the important milestones in our go-to-market model.So starting with the overall revenue growth. It's a 2% revenue growth, pretty flat. I'd like to say that on top of this, we are selling our leasing solutions, the Easy Access solutions, which if you equate that into revenues, that would have been something like NOK 5 million or NOK 6 million, so the same as we had in Q2. I'd also like to say about this quarter, as you can see from earlier years, this is a quarter with -- in which the revenue is typically lower. I mean there's vacation times in both Norway, Sweden and Spain for that matter, so we are also expecting Q4 to go up versus what we have here. Although we should remember that last Q4, we had a very, very, very good quarter for the Cash Security business. I think even more interesting, though, is to see how are the different segments or business areas moving. Retail Technology is moving very, very strongly. We are seeing here 20% growth in Retail Technology. And again, this is also without the Easy Access sales. But I think even more interestingly so is the fact that beneath these figures is 80% growth, 8-0 percent growth in e-commerce, yet this is from a small base, but I think that's very, very interesting given the journey that we are on. Cash Security, as you see, had a quite tough quarter compared to last Q3. Last Q3 was very good. This Q3 -- or before this Q3, we had announced an order from Sberbank of up to 580 cases that would be delivered in second half. We now see that, that delivery is going to be in full in Q4. So nothing delivered in Q3, but delivered in Q4. In addition, though, instead of only moving up to 580 cases, we will be delivering 880 cases in Q4, so we're very pleased with that.With regards to stables -- I'm sorry, to Labels, we -- as you know, earlier, we had initiated a sales excellence program and I'm very, very pleased to see such a tough market that the Labels organization is achieving a 7% growth in sales there. So well done. If you go to the overall profitability, again, that's pretty flat, up NOK 3 million versus last Q3. However, this is also with the NOK 5.7 million IFRS effect, so slightly down. And not much to say about the overall picture because it really shows in the business area segments how the development has played out. Again, the Retail Technology areas improving a staggering NOK 15 million in EBITDA. If you look at the margin as such, in Retail Technology, it's moving from 7% EBITDA margin in last quarter -- or same quarter last year to 14% including IFRS or 12% excluding IFRS, so 7% to 12% margin improvement. And then margin improvement is, well, of course, it's partly driven by the fact that the NOK 30 million cost-saving program we initiated beginning of the year have an effect on this margin because the cost reduction was done in Retail Technology. But it is also the fact that we're seeing a more favorable product mix. And I can say so much that the margins that we're seeing in the e-commerce space is at least not taking down. At least, it's actually taken up the margins overall.I think also to add on to this performance is the fact that we had a NOK 3 million negative currency effect. So without that currency effect, that would actually be NOK 3 million more in Retail Technology. Cash Security. For those of you that have followed the company for some time, you know that, that's a quite volatile business both on the top line, but also then on the bottom line. Earlier, I have introduced -- we've announced the fact that we have a lean initiative to understand how we can maintain the profitability better than what we're doing today with the swings in production. And I'm pleased to say that we have concluded on that program. We will be seeing a NOK 5 million, at least, per year impact over the cycle stemming from not only productivity improvements, but also purchasing improvements and quality assurance. So they will help alleviate those reductions -- or those swings in EBITDA in Cash Security going forward.With regard to Labels, yes, we had a great month in terms of -- or great quarter in terms of revenue growth. There is a margin pressure out there and we're seeing that reflected in these numbers. But again, we have a Labels business, which delivers very strong results compared to its peers.Taking some of the customer breakthroughs. We're not going in very much detail on specific contracts. But 80% growth in e-commerce solutions is something we're very proud of. Again, yet from a small base, this will swing, but I think it sort of resonates pretty well with the interest that we're seeing out there in the market both in our current home markets but also beyond those markets. In addition to that, we had a little bit of a European celebration, if you want. We were the first to install age verification based on facial recognition. We're using Yoti's artificial intelligence to determine whether you, as a person, based on your facial expressions, are more or under 25 years old, which is a proxy for whether or not you are allowed to buy cigarettes and alcohol. So the first in Europe to install that in the Baltics, which basically means that you can also now be purchasing tobacco in Self-Checkout tills without needing to get the attention of the personnel, but actually linking that to the Vensafe in getting your tobacco or age-restricted goods. So very proud of that.And we also now have completed the first installations of our new cash management solutions. We, of course, have CashGuard Premium, the fastest, most reliable, biggest capacity cash machine out there in the market. We also see that with Unico and the Compact machines at a lower price point, however, less performance, of course, than the Premium, is something that resonates very well with some of the market demands we're seeing out there, in particular in the hospitality industry. And that, of course, is important not for countries, Norway and Sweden, but more so for Spain and the likes.In terms of go-to-market model, we've spoken earlier in this group also about the RoadRunner concept. We're seeing now that 50% of the sales we're doing in Spain in cash management is done by -- or through these RoadRunners, these independent agents working for provisions. It's a very, very scalable and good way of driving business. And we see also a continued interest in the rental model that we have applied, the Easy Access or easy rental solution that we have. So at about the same level in Q3 as in Q2, meaning there's about 80 solutions being not sold, but being rented out as part of the Easy Access and easy rental concept, which is quite good given the fact that Q3 also have some summer months in it compared to Q2.And also in Portugal, we signed a partner agreement with Exclusivas Iglesias. Exclusivas Iglesias committed to selling at least 100 of our cash management solutions. I'm very pleased that they have already been selling 40 solutions that we have, so that's a very nice way of getting very quickly into the Portuguese market with a partner that has the clout and credibility in Portugal. And no, Portugal is not the same as Spain. It's like saying Norway is the same as Sweden, and we know that's not the case.Okay. So now we talked about the past. I'd also like to just share a little bit of the direction and initiatives forward. Number one is focus. I've used the word focus, I think, on numerous times. We are only a NOK 1 billion company. We have to focus our efforts where needed. And we will also be using partners where that makes sense. So we're now restructuring our internal setup for how to handle partners. We realize that it's much more efficient both for us internally, but also for the partners to get partners closer to the operational business units. So that means that our e-commerce division will be handling the OPIs, the MS Box, the [ Doddles ] of the world. It also means that Julius with the supply chain and tech team will be handling the partners that we have as many big partnerships such as Bullion, CashGuard in Ireland, et cetera, are basically sending their orders straight into the supply chain. It's a much better way of working with partners, we believe. We're also doing adjustments all the time in the organization. Now we're doing adjustments in Germany. We've been -- we've had a subscale business in Germany. We've been losing money in Germany and all the time been hoping for those -- or that big order. We're still doing that. But in the waiting time, so to speak, for that to happen, we're adjusting the organization such that we're going to be using partners to a much larger extent. We're also going to be continuing a German type of RoadRunner concept. And we'll be dedicating senior management team to ensure that we have continued good dialogues with the big German retailers. But the current setup that we have was just not viable from a business point of view. Again, we're focusing our efforts where it makes sense. So then I'd like to go back to the 3 key or focus areas in terms of maintaining and strengthening the relevance that we have. As you know, we have Reflexis, the workforce management and task management solution, into our portfolio of solutions. We're seeing great traction and interest in that systems. And we're continuously exploring third-party solutions to add to our portfolio. That does not mean that we're not adding own products, but we believe that to be quick to market, there's a lot of very, very good solutions out there in which we, as StrongPoint, with our very strong presence in Norway, Sweden and the Baltics, seem to be a very cherished partner. Reflexis is such an example being a U.S.-based company entering into Europe, how do you do that in the best possible manner? Well, we are at least here in the Nordics.We are continuously recruiting personnel in Spain, in particular in sales and marketing. And as I just said, we are -- we believe we have improved the value proposition for RoadRunners. In the past, we've had CashGuard Premium. Now we have 2 additional lower-priced cash management solutions that we believe will enhance the offering to our clients. And I think in that respect, it's very, very important to recognize the fragmented retail industry that you have in Spain and not least the hospitality industry. We are literally selling cash management solutions to bars, hotels, restaurants in an unprecedented manner that you will not be able to see in such a country as Norway or Sweden. We're also building on the strong e-commerce momentum in Spain. Spain, in a lot of ways, in terms of e-commerce penetration in the grocery retail space, is somewhere between Norway and Sweden. There's lots of interest there and we believe -- or we think we have very good discussions with the players that matter.And lastly, we want to grow e-commerce not just by 80% quarter-over-quarter, although, again, that's coming from a small base. But over time, we hope and believe that we will be able to grow e-commerce into a substantial part of StrongPoint's business. Part of getting there is actually investing. I've said this before is we're investing in E20. E20 is a product -- or project in which we are standardizing the way that we have set up our picking solution, right? To date, we have, to a very large extent, been tailor-making or customizing that through specific partners or customers. That's not a very scalable solution. So we're now investing in making a solution that's really, really scalable. And we are expecting that to be concluded or those investments to be concluded in the first half of 2020. We also have expansion of our e-commerce solutions portfolio in the making, so please follow. And also being able to scale the e-commerce business interest, a large part of the StrongPoint business, of course, also means that we will be hiring for international growth.So with those things, I think I will hand over to Hilde. And then after Hilde has done her piece, then we're both available for Q&A. Please.
Thank you. I will go through some of the financial slides that we have. Starting with earnings per share, which is, of course, a KPI that we have a lot of following up. Of course, the earnings per share is following Jacob's presentation about how we are developing. We -- I have 2 columns per quarter. I have the EPS and I have an adjusted EPS. And the adjusted is that we adjust for amortizations that is mainly related to previously M&As. Previous year, we've got questions related to how can we give a dividend of NOK 0.55 and we have an EPS of NOK 0.3, and this is the reason. The amortizations does not have a cash implication. If you look at the column to the left, you see that per quarter, we have had a better year this first half while the Q3 2019 is slightly below Q3 last year, following, of course, the results that Jacob just presented.Moving forward, we see that the Q4 2018 was below 0 on the EPS, above 0 on the earnings per share adjusted. That also influenced the table on the right side where you have the rolling 12 months performance on EPS. And if you look at the darker blue column, you see that it is declining quarter-by-quarter, of course, influenced then by Q4 last year with a quite low effect.Moving forward to the cash flow. We see that this year -- this quarter, we only have a cash flow of 0.1 in effect. So I'm talking about the cash flow effect so far this year. Starting with a cash of NOK 27 million in the start of the year, we add the EBITDA of NOK 68 million that we have formed so far. We reduced by the IFRS because that has cash implication. The IFRS is linked to the leasing agreements and that is, of course, something we need to pay for currently and every month. We see that we have an increase of working capital, and that's a negative change of NOK 13 million on the working capital. We have reduced receivables, so that's a good thing. But we have increased the stock slightly with NOK 10 million and that is because we have preparing -- we are preparing for a busy Q4, which is the season that Jacob showed you. And we also have reduced payables that is actually related to public payables, so we are handling our suppliers as we should and pay according to deadlines. The CapEx. It seems that we're investing a lot in CapEx, we are not. This is related to the rental solutions in Spain, most of it. We are currently -- the rental solutions, we are taking on our own books and that is, in this presentation, handled as CapEx. In normal sessions, you could say it's a working capital because it's just increasing our stock of goods, but it will influence and it has influenced in the past with Alimerka so we choose to present it as CapEx going forward. That is also why you see that we have changed the debt with NOK 22 million. That is an increase of debt. It's just that we have to do some allocations of cash so that the Spain operations is -- can handle the new situation and pay for the goods towards our suppliers. Of course, we pay the dividend in May. And we end up with a cash position of NOK 50 million.Going forward, we can look a little bit more on our debt situation. The net interest bearing debt, again, 2 columns. This IFRS is complicating the presentation, but if you look at the lighter blue, that is the way that we presented the figures before we added IFRS in 2019. That is a slightly up from last quarter, again, just periodically seasoning changes and the rental situation. And then you see that IFRS, which is the lease of our offices mainly and some cars is, of course, reduced every month -- every quarter by the IFRS or the lease payments. The accounting policy is that we are, of course, always looking at the option periods. There are no substantial changes in the option of continued rent of our offices that will influence the quarters going forward as we approach for deadline on any rental agreement for our housing. And the net leverage multiple is 1.24, and that's on the lower side of our covenants.Another work that we have used a lot of time on in the past quarter is investor relations. We have said that, that is one of our priority tasks as new management. In August, the ABGSC published a commissioned research. It is a way for us to get out more information about StrongPoint, so that investors can read more and also can discuss with analytics in ABGSC if needed. We also have had a number of meetings with current and potential investors and with corporate finance players. It's important for us to let these know who we are and how -- what we stand for and what we want to do in the -- going forward. We have achieved some increased coverage in the media. We will continue to focus on that. And of course, our web pages and social media is really on our agenda every day to see that we get the information out. In August, we also announced the market-making agreement with SpareBank 1 Markets. And in the slide or in the picture, you see the date where we have signed that. There is a 2% spread requirement on the market-making deal. And you see that we are absolutely making that. Of course, they are handling this for us. And at the same time, you see that the 100 days of deals or the number of shares every day handled -- sorry, is increased. Of course, market-making is not what is doing this. This is 100 days and it had a bit -- a good trend before they started, but we believe this is also helping to continue to have more liquidity in the share, which is our ambition.SpareBank 1 Markets has already had a very high number of shares or transactions. And they have actually sold and purchased shares for around 2% of StrongPoint shares during these 2.5 months that they have operated. So it's absolutely needed as we see it today.Investor Relations continues in 2020 with our financial calendar. And on the 12th of February, we will meet again probably here and we will look at that, some of the interest. We will present our Q4 figures and also we will offer a strategy update session. This is where we want to go a little deeper into StrongPoint on how we think the future look like, talk more about strategy and actually talk a little bit more about the different markets that we operate in and the products that we have and to offer to these markets. So we welcome you all to that session then, of course, going forward with the Q1 and so forth on the dates that you see. The general assembly will, as usual, be held just immediate after the Q1 presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Hilde. Then we are open for questions.
There's some analysis expecting you to reach an EBITDA of NOK 100 million in 2020. Are you satisfied with that kind of result?
I guess you're referring then to ABGSC. I mean that's -- even though it's a commissioned research, right, believe it or not, we're not fielding with the figures. So for me, it would be totally wrong to sort of comment on whether that's good or bad. That's ABG's perception of how the business will be running. So I'm not going to even comment on whether I think that's high or low. Nice try.
What's the status of -- about the face recognition? What is your plan forward? I'm referring or thinking about other countries, other chains? What is your plan for that?
Yes. So first of all, this is very interesting, right? And I think, for us, it's natural to have a look at which other countries is Self-Checkout being widely used. We know that's the case in Sweden. It's more and more self-picking up in Norway. But in particular, that's the case in the U.K. So all these markets are places where we will be promoting this type of solution where you have our Self-Checkout solution with the Yoti artificial intelligence to determine the age and then combining that with the Vensafe.
To Hilde, what about buying other companies? How is that plan going?
Okay. How is that plan going? Well, as I have said before, we have introduced a very good process internally. So the whole EMT or the whole group of management are working on finding targets. And we also have a good process to evaluate and then move forward. On the other side, we have not purchased anything yet, but it's absolutely continuing to be high or lower [indiscernible]
We also have been discussing this newsletter, which we were asking for a long time and finally it was completed. But there is only one, which is issued.
Yes. And again, I know there's been lots of demand for the newsletter with the first newsletter came up, absolutely. As part of the, I wouldn't say, restructuring, but as part of moving the market area that has been situated around the Baltics closer to home, that's, unfortunately, fell between, we'll just call it, 2 chairs. But that's alive and kicking, and hopefully, the next newsletter will be coming out in not too long.
My final question is we have been talking about marketing against investors and I'm really confused because you're running around and have presentations, et cetera, et cetera, and you're trying to do your best for getting new investors, et cetera. And I'm really surprised when you say that the SQS order for 580 cases was increased to 880. Why is not that informed to the investor market?
Well, we made that judgment call. I don't know if you want to comment on that, Hilde, but...
All I can -- it's a way of trying to not get the expectations towards the Q3 too high because we could only say how much it would be. And in itself, it's just an increase. That is not part of how we -- we have our limits of when we are going to notify the market and that fell quite low -- quite far below on that.
I wonder, could you tell us a little bit about the situation for Click & Collect in Italy or in Russia?
Sure. I mean, I think both those 2 places that you mentioned is places that more than a year ago they were pilots. And to some extent, I'd like to call it not pilots, but rather proof of concept. I think when we go out now and sell the e-commerce solutions in which Click & Collect is part of that, we're not just selling a box, right? I think -- so let me comment on the Italy point -- I'm sorry, POC or proof of concept because that's really what it was, we're basically shifting to not just selling a Click & Collect locker because that's not going to be a success. We have to be with the retailers to make that a success. And you can imagine selling 1 locker is not what's going to drive customers more and more. So rather than both announcing that we're doing a proof of concept in the country, we'd much rather talk about broader pilots where we have really pushed to make our customers be successful. So no, I think the Italy -- concretely, to answer that, is we sold a box and that's not going to work.
And then can you tell us a little bit about the status in the States?
Yes. So we have -- in the States, we have a -- we don't have a current organization ourselves. We have a partnership with Optical Phusion, OPI. And OPI are doing very well in sort of promoting our solutions. And yes, we have actually sold 3 lockers through OPI in the U.S. But again, in terms of size, that's not big enough to be announced. And in terms of making it a success, it takes a long -- it's a long way from selling 3 lockers to actually making that a success. So that's the short answer to OPI.
My last question, could you tell us a little bit about how it's going in APAC?
APAC? Yes. So in APAC, we made the partnership agreement with Radiant after having lost money quarter-by-quarter. Radiant is keeping up, I'd say, the same type of sales that we were doing ourselves. But that's not what you call [Foreign Language] in Norwegian. That's not really making our figures skyrocket, but rather maintaining the sales levels at the same levels.
But that's very good because when we are changing from our own office to a partner office, we, of course, monitor that. We continue to be relevant and to have, even though in small figures, we continue to have sales in this area. And Radiant is picking up, and it's small numbers, but they are selling our solutions.
According to the program of buying own shares, which was stopped in the middle of the process somewhere, what happened? Will it be continued? Or is it totally discontinued?
It's -- as we said, we will -- we buy shares. The company buys shares for the employee program. And we saw that during Q2 we reached a level that was, for that time of period, good. We have the shares that we needed. And when we look at it going forward, we will start again if we see that we need more shares. We are not buying shares to keep in like a depot for any acquisitions or anything. We're only having our own shares to use for the employee program.
I'm a little bit critical, I guess, because I'm wondering why you don't buy own shares when the CEO tells us that the stock market price should be 2, 3x as it is today? So this is money on the -- like we say, money on the street and we could use that money or these shares for paying for buying other companies. I'm really confused why you don't do it.
So the situation today, at least, we can't comment on when or what type of acquisition or shares we will be doing beyond what's already been communicated. But when it comes to sort of acquiring shares to have as a depot, as we say, I mean, that's actually a Board decision, not a Jacob and Hilde decision. And the decision to date has been not to move in that direction but rather to have shares for the employee programs that we have.Any backbenchers? [ Jürgen? ]
How confident are you...
Give the guy a microphone because it's -- for the webcast guys.
How confident are you about receiving the NOK 55 million from BaneNor in first quarter? I mean you have accepted an initial offering. Is there going to be more negotiations? Or can I walk away from the deal?
So we are waiting. I'm not going to put a probability on it. But we are waiting BaneNor's Board meeting to agree on that deal. And more than that, I can't say. But we've spent many, many hours negotiating to deal in which they are happy and in which we are happy, but we have to await that Board approval.Okay. I think with that, we can conclude the first quarterly presentation with that many questions, so thank you for that. And with that, I'd like to thank you all for showing up. Thank you so much.
Thank you.