Strongpoint ASA

OSE:STRO

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Jacob Tveraabak, executive]

Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to this Q4 presentation by StrongPoint. My name is Jacob Tveraabak. I'm the CEO of StrongPoint. And with me here today, I have Marius Drefvelin, our CFO. At StrongPoint, our purpose is to put retail technology in every shopping experience for a smarter and better life. For the grocery retailers, that means getting more efficient operations, whether it's in-store or in e-commerce operations. And this means providing a better shopping experience for the customer, yielding then more revenue for the grocery retailer. That is what StrongPoint is all about. In today's environment, we are seeing a number of trends that are affecting our customers. Firstly, we're seeing inflationary -- inflation reaching levels not seen in many, many years that tends to drive price changes in the store. That inflation has, in return, led to a hike in interest rates that are affecting the consumer disposable income, which [indiscernible] consumers more and more over to soft discounters. We're seeing a growth in soft and hard discounters. And lastly, we are seeing after the pandemic that with more consciousness about profitability on the e-commerce operations. The growth by all means is no longer the mantra with our customers. The e-commerce business has to be profitable. There is not 1 single bullet for our grocery retail customers to solve all the issues in the wake of these trends. But what we do know I feel very strongly about is that technology is a vital part of the solution or solutions that [indiscernible] retailers will be taken on in the years to come.

Now with that backdrop, let me present the Q4 figures that we have released in our report. Firstly, we're seeing a decline in our revenue by 18% compared to the same quarter last year. We're seeing grocery retailers holding back investments this quarter as well halting the investments, and particularly in the Scandinavian countries, where StrongPoint is strong. Whilst the U.K. has come from a very strong quarter last year to a much more soft quarter this year. That performance is also driven by the fact that we have been doing and are doing or have been doing leadership changes in the U.K. in that 1 quarter. At the same time, we're seeing a very strong performance in both the Baltics and in Spain. Revenue in the Baltics was increasing by 22%, following many quarters with strong growth. And in Spain, we're growing by 35%. Still, the overall revenue is [indiscernible].

Looking at the Q4 EBITDA we have a reported EBITDA of minus NOK 21 million. Some of you would remember that after Q3, we presented or announced a cost reduction effort in which we would be saving NOK 20 million every year starting January 1. However, in this quarter, we have been recurring or we have been seeing restructuring costs associated with that cost-saving effort in the order of magnitude of NOK 7 million. In addition to those NOK 7 million, we have other nonrecurring cost of NOK 11 million, including M&A costs and also write-downs of IT systems and some stock. So adjusted EBITDA in the quarter is minus NOK 3 million, still very far from what we aspire to be or aspire to have and where we should be. The poor economic results should be seen in light of the fact that whilst we have revenue decline in our most important markets in this period. We've also kept on the strategically important investments, of which most are being expensed directly. And that has led to a very weak financial performance in this quarter alone. Going forward, we expect to see improvements. We expect to see the full effect of the cost measures that we have delivered on. We expect to see revenue coming out of the investments that we have been doing with the wins that follow there. And we are expecting to see at some point in time, a flattening or a decline of both interest rates and inflation leading to a better macroeconomic environment.

In the quarter, we also had a number of very significant customer wins. In the Baltics, we announced a significant deal with Maxima, the largest grocery retailer in the Baltics, in which there is a framework agreement to deliver more than 1,000 self-checkout solutions over 3 years. In Norway, we're really pleased to see that other industries beyond the grocery retailers are starting to get their eyes open for electronic shelf labels. And we delivered -- or sorry, we announced the delivery of electronic shelf labels to [indiscernible] at the end of last year to be delivered now this year. And in Spain and Baltics, we're seeing the growth very strongly following both Click & Collect lockers and self checkouts going out in the market.

And with that, I'd like to hand over the word to Marius, and I'll continue after Marius' short piece.

[Marius Drefvelin, executive]

Thank you, Jacob. I will now go through some of the other financials for the fourth quarter. To start off, our earnings per share in the fourth quarter this year was negative NOK 0.65. This was impacted by the financial results, which we have already discussed. As shown on the figure to the right, the 12-month rolling Earnings per share was negative NOK 0.77. If adjusting for amortization of intangible assets, which are mostly noncash items related to historic M&A transactions. The 12 months rolling EPS was negative NOK 0.52. That was our earnings per share. So what about the cash flow movements for the full year 2023? This chart shows the changes in our cash position going from NOK 47 million at the end of 2022 to NOK 39 million at the end of 2023. During the year, we had positive impact from working capital of NOK 49 million and the bank overdraft increased by NOK 76 million. Furthermore, we had planned capital expenditure of NOK 41 million. We continue to expense the development costs over the P&L with the exception of the cash management investment project, this is capitalized in the balance sheet. Other cash outflows include leasing payments of NOK 25 million mainly relating to rent for our offices and the dividend payout of NOK 40 million in the second quarter of 2023. These are the main cash items for last year.

Now let's move further into the key components of the working capital development. First of all, our average working capital requirement is approximately 25% of revenue during the year. This will, of course, vary depending on the volume and the type of projects that we deliver. Debt collection is a high priority for us and accounts receivable decreased by NOK 34 million during the year. And due to our solid customer base, the loss on receivables continues to be low. Moreover, there was an increase of NOK 9 million related to a large e-commerce project, which was prepaid in 2022 and delivered in 2023. The reduction in inventory of NOK 2 million is lower than what we would like to see. Reducing the level of inventory will be a key focus area for us going into 2024. Overall, the working capital decreased from NOK 221 million to NOK 183 million.

So turning from our main working capital changes in 2023 to the development in net interest-bearing debt and the net leverage multiples. The net interest-bearing debt was NOK 81 million at the end of the year. This mainly consists of short-term bank overdraft and available cash. In addition, it also includes a smaller term loan in our Spanish subsidiary as well as financial leasing obligations mainly relating to our service cars. As you can see from the figure, the net interest-bearing debt decreased from NOK 92 million at the end of the previous quarter to NOK 81 million this quarter. This is mainly due to working capital improvements. On the top of the figure, we have the net leverage, which is the net interest-bearing debt divided by the 12 months rolling EBITDA. We have a credit facility of NOK 150 million, of which NOK 55 million was unused as available credit facility at the end of the year. As part of our credit facility agreement, the net leverage cannot exceed 3.5%. Due to the fourth quarter results, and negative EBITDA for the full year, we will be in breach of our covenants. Now this is not because the debt level itself is too high, rather, it is the effect of the 12 months rolling EBITDA, which also includes the nonrecurring costs. Due to the long relationship we have with our bank we have received a covenant waiver until the fourth quarter 2024. Consequently, a dividend payout is currently not possible, but in the long-term dividend policy, this still remains intact. With the covenant waiver that we have received, we are able to focus on commercial opportunities continue our planned investment in the cash management project and capitalize on the significant wins that we have already discussed.

With this, I will leave it back to Jacob.

[Jacob Tveraabak, executive]

Thank you, Marius. I will now continue with our progress on the strategic ambitions of StrongPoint's. In 2022, we did an acquisition in the U.K. with the ALS. We have always said that conducting M&A is important to achieve our strategic ambitions. At the end of last year and in Q4, we also closed the transaction of Hamari Group in Finland. Hamari Group is a relatively new and smaller company working out of Finland, however, has a lot of experience with electronic shelf labels from pricer -- being their price partner. With the StrongPoint now entering Finland, we have a unique opportunity to bring in a number of the solutions that we offer to the market including our self-checkouts, order picking solutions, Click & Collect lockers and [indiscernible]. Going forward, Finland will be part of the operations driven by the Baltics. There are clear cultural and economic entice between, in particular, Estonia and Finland, and we will leverage that to the most extent.

Now when we -- and I presented at the beginning of 2020, the financial ambitions of StrongPoint of NOK 2.5 billion revenue and 13% to 15% EBITDA little did we know that just a couple of weeks later, there will be a pandemic. And literally, we know that Europe would be at war with Russia invading Ukraine. And not least, little we know that we will have an inflationary regime, not seen in many, many years and subsequent increase in interest rates. And so with both those economic, macroeconomic conditions and the results you've seen us present today, we would have to revert to the drawing table regarding our financial ambitions. We are uncertain about achieving those ambitions in 2025, and we see that we will need more time to achieve the levels that we have been talking about. Hence, when we are presenting our Q1 results, we will be also having an updated strategy where more than resetting the ambitions, we will revisit the ambitions and place them appropriately in the years to come as well.

Now if I may just do a little bit of reflections on 2023. At the end of the fall or during fall, I said there were 3 things I was expecting following our soft Q2. One was to see an improvement in our financial performance in the latter half of the year. Clearly, that has not happened. Actually, on the contrary, we've seen the macroeconomic environment playing out during the year has just continued. And we're seeing that our customers have delayed their investment decisions. Secondly, I said that we will be providing you with more information about our very exciting cash management solution project in Iberia called Cashcard Connect. And whereas we are so close we still have not communicated anything to the market to the investors. Rest assured, we are very, very close to do announcing something. And lastly, I said that I would personally be really disappointed if we did not announce a major win in the U.K. Well, we didn't achieve that in -- but I hope you would excuse us for having done that at the beginning of the year with Sainsbury. Sainsbury's deal and the supply of our order-picking solution to Sainsbury is something I have labeled the most important win in the history of StrongPoint. And I still stand by that. Sainsbury is a giant. It's the second largest grocery retail chain in the U.K. Its turnover is the entire Norwegian grocery market plus 50%. It's e-commerce penetration is amongst the highest in Europe. It's actually the third or fourth largest e-grocer in Europe with 14% of its turnover within the e-commerce space. So this is a mammoth win for StrongPoint in itself. I expect to see more solutions being sold to Sainsbury's over time. We know historically that our top 10 -- out of the top 10 grocery customers we have, we're delivering on average 4.7 solutions, not just 1 solution, but 4.7 solutions. And I hope and believe that the order picking deal we have with Sainsbury's is going to be the first out of many exciting deals to be done in the future.

And then lastly, of course, when StrongPoint is awarded the honor of serving such an steam client like Sainsbury's it attracts the attention of many of the other players in the industry. So I'd be -- again, it would be equally disappointed if we don't see major wins also in the next few years on the back of this fantastic deal.

Now zooming out a bit what do we see in the long term. We see a long-term fundamentals being very solid for StrongPoint. Firstly, we have grocery retailers operating in a very resilient industry. Sure. What we're experiencing now is a halt or a pause of investments. But the industry and the grocery retail companies are fundamentally very strong. As Marius have shown earlier, in other presentations, we have very, very little losses on the accounts receivables, and that is, of course, because we have such resilient customers.

The second thing is the need for technology solutions to provide more effective operations, whether it's in-store or it's in e-commerce operations. That trend will just keep on going, and we'll see more and more use of technology in grocery retail industry going forward.

And lastly, although it's taken a player like Sainsbury's a long time to reach the investment decision. We're starting to see now first fruits of the seeds that we have planted with the investments that we have done in, amongst others, or e-commerce in the U.K. We expect a lot of those investments also to bear fruits in the years to come. And as such, I believe we have a very, very strong long-term fundamental in place for StrongPoint.

Lastly, I would like to remind you all about the next time we have a quarterly presentation that would be together with the Annual General Meeting and with the strategy update session, which we'll be holding on April 25. For any investor relations inquiries, please do reach out to myself or not least Marius Drefvelin.

So with this, thank you so much for listening, and have a great day.