XXL ASA

OSE:XXL

Earnings Call Analysis

XXL's Q2 Focuses on Recovery Amid Sales Drop

XXL reported a challenging second quarter with a 9% drop in sales. Despite this, the company's Reset & Rethink plan showed promise by increasing EBITDA by NOK 96 million due to improved gross margins. Efforts to lower inventory by 15% and bolster liquidity to nearly NOK 0.5 billion are notable achievements. A new strategic partnership with Frasers Group aims to aid recovery. While sales remained underwhelming, especially for capital-intensive goods, positive growth signs were noted in apparel and shoes. The company remains optimistic yet acknowledges significant work ahead to regain its desired market position.

Company Transformation Underway

The management at XXL is dedicated to turning the company around with their 'Reset & Rethink' strategy. This plan appears to be showing early signs of success with a considerable increase in EBITDA. CEO Freddy Sobin emphasized the focus shift from resetting to rethinking, indicating a strategic transformation is well underway.

Sales Performance & Revenue Decline

XXL experienced a drop in sales by 8.7% year-over-year due to factors such as low product availability and reduced demand for capital-intensive goods like bikes. Despite aggressive sales campaigns, revenue fell. The focus is now on reversing this trend by enhancing product availability.

Margin Improvements

Gross margin saw a significant improvement, rising by 8.1 percentage points year-over-year. This increase is attributed to better pricing strategies for both campaign and regular products, along with an inventory write-down last year. This improved gross margin has been a critical factor in increasing profitability despite lower sales.

Cost Management and Operational Efficiency

Operational expenditures (OpEx) were up by 2.8 percentage points compared to the previous year, primarily due to negative like-for-like sales growth. Absolute personnel costs reduced by NOK 30 million, but were offset by nonrecurring items and marketing investments. EBITDA improved significantly, up NOK 96 million year-over-year.

Liquidity and Financial Health

Liquidity reserves stand at NOK 483 million, down from NOK 722 million the previous year due to investments and refinancing costs. However, a successful private placement increased liquidity, giving XXL a buffer against its bank covenants.

Inventory and Stock Management

Inventory levels have been diligently managed, showing a 15% reduction year-over-year, with stock value down to NOK 1.8 billion. However, product availability remains a concern, particularly for high-demand items where availability is only 82%, indicating room for improvement in inventory planning.

Customer Initiatives & Strategic Partnerships

Several initiatives aimed at boosting customer engagement and loyalty have been launched, such as the newly revamped customer club and XXL Pay. The strategic partnership with Frasers Group is expected to accelerate the company's turnaround efforts, leveraging synergies in retail operations.

Growth Potential in Select Markets

XXL is experiencing positive sales momentum in Sweden, helped by decreased interest rates. However, the Finnish market remains challenging, and the Norwegian market is showing signs of stabilization. The company appears optimistic about the recovery trends in these regions.

Future Outlook and Goals

The second half of the year is crucial as XXL aims to sustain and build upon the recovery trends observed in recent months. The focus will be on increasing sales through better product availability and continuing with strategic partnerships and customer initiatives to drive growth and profitability.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Tolle Groterud, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second quarter results presentation. My name is Tolle Grøterud, and I have the pleasure of guiding you through today's presentation. Our CEO, Freddy Sobin; and our CFO, Stein Eriksen, will take you through the presentation then followed by a Q&A session. And for media, there will be an opportunity to perform separate interviews after the presentation, so please direct your request to the press contact. So without further introductions, I turn the floor over to you, Freddy.

[Freddy Sobin, executive]

Thank you very much, Tolle. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're having a great summer so far. We're here today to present the second quarter developments and results in XXL. And I'm happy to report that our plan Reset & Rethink is progressing well. We are just like the headline says, actually delivering a strengthened underlying profitability measured as EBITDA.

We are also seeing potential early signs in some markets of recovery in the market, which is very pleasing to see after quite some time of negative developments. Also, unfortunately, we need to conclude that the quarter has been somewhat disappointing from a sales perspective, and that has held back further profitability improvements and uplift.

But moving on beyond the disclaimer as well. So I will walk you through the quarter. I will also show you the indicators of our plan that we are continuing to move forward step by step. Our plan is working and is delivering and then also we'll go through the financial results.

Starting here. The quarter did see 9% in decreased sales. However, that being said, we are proud to actually report NOK 96 million in increased EBITDA. And I think that is a positive indicator that the plan is working. We are moving forward. Looking at what's driving that, it's gross margin. We see a gross margin uplift year-over-year of almost 5 percentage points, which I also think is a strength from our side.

Our plan, Reset & Rethink, we are continuing very -- staying true to our course, true to our plan. We've also now started to focus more on the Rethink agenda, not only on the Reset that has been the focus for the first year that we have now behind us. We've started to incorporate Rethink components also into the agenda. We've always had a very strict focus since I started and before that on our inventory levels. They are now down with 15% year-over-year at record low levels, NOK 1.8 billion. And also looking at, of course, we've had very strict control and focus on liquidity.

In the quarter, we ended at almost NOK 0.5 billion after a very successful and oversubscribed private placement and also then a fully subscribed subsequent offering. So that places us well above our bank covenants as well. Focusing on more a bit about sales because even though we do report somewhat disappointing sales in the quarter, we have been seeing a positive sales trend from March and onwards.

So March through June, just like you see in the graph, has actually had a very clear recovery path. That being said, we did meet and all through the first half of the year, quite tough comparables as in 2023, XXL launched its maybe most aggressive extraordinary campaign ever, Prisras and we also did some extraordinary campaigning during summer of 2023. So even though we're meeting quite tough comparables, we are seeing clear recovery in sales month by month from February and onwards.

Digging a bit deeper into the quarter, we can clearly see that we have pockets of growth. Soft goods, mainly apparel and shoes are in quite many categories showing very positive signs of growth. All in all, our top 5 categories amount to NOK 53 million in growth. The top one actually being bikes and even though bikes has been a very challenged category throughout the second quarter, our own controlled brand, White , which is an XXL brand, produced a test winner in a fantastic gravel bike, and that pushed one single bike category to become the best-performing category in XXL.

So great to see that [ White ] is performing strong with just one product, pushing ourselves back in well. And I think that also shows you the strong product development confidence that we have within the organization. However, bikes was not only a highlight. It was actually also a low light. Because if you look at the bottom 5 categories in the quarter, bikes, meaning capital-intensive goods and other capital-intensive equipment categories, very much held us back.

So NOK 96 million in lost sales year-over-year, meaning that the top 5 versus the bottom 5 categories, we were losing NOK 43 million in sales. However, the shift in mix of categories did strengthen the gross margin with 3 percentage points. So sales moving in the right direction, but capital-intensive goods was a trouble, definitely a challenge in the quarter.

So in the light of having some disappointing sales throughout both Q1 and Q2, we have been taking action. In the quarter, we did announce our intention to enter into a strategic partnership with Frasers Group. Frasers Group, of course, being our second largest shareholder, also the leading retailer in the U.K., owning Sports Direct and many other retail banners, strong partner for us, and we have already launched a few different parts of that partnership. So we are more closely working together and we are convinced that this will accelerate our Reset & Rethink journey moving forward.

But it did not stop there. We have also had some other commercial milestones throughout the quarter. Our customer club that we relaunched and renewed in October of 2023, when you could also start to earn points and get bonuses in the club has been progressing very well. We are closing into our target of 4 million members because we are now well above 3.8 million members in the Nordics biggest customer club for sporting goods which is very great to see something that will definitely give us a boost moving forward and pay off for the times to come. Also in the quarter, we launched what we call XXL Pay.

So a new payment solution that is tailored for us and that we are convinced will boost both sales and loyalty in the mid- to long term. So just launched in the quarter, but I'm sure we'll see great things from it in the future. Also, we have been very clear about in our Reset plan moving slightly back towards low prices.

So in the quarter, we have seen a push towards what we call everyday low price, launching or rather relaunching Stormberg in XXL to great success and also allowing yet another controlled brand in our journey, Pilago, both brands propelling us forward with great success really anchoring us in everyday low price with great value for money for our customers.

And we do see that our customers really buy into this. And actually, with regards to Pilago we have been selling out almost too quickly for some of the products. With regards to stores, we have begun on our store elevation journey, meaning that we are now lifting store experience but also looking into store operations, how we can continue to strengthen them. Very positive first steps being taken in the quarter. mainly driven by our new COO, Dawid Gosciniak and we'll see great pace in that in the quarters to come, also progressing store elevation.

But also staying true to our purpose, Sports.

Unite All, all for the second year in a row was the sponsor for Joshua King football Camp together with Zuccarellostiftelsen something which we think is important. We think we need to also give back to the community because we think sports and outdoor activities is something that unite people. And XXL is not only about all Sports United, the second part of that is Sports Unite All, something that we want to activate even more when moving forward because we think that is a key part, both for us as an organization, but also for our customers.

So commercially, many things happening and more to come. Moving over to our turnaround plan, Reset & Rethink. As you know, we have been focusing very much on Resets for the last 12 months. We're now also integrating more Rethink components into that plan. I would say private label controlled brands is something that we've maybe seen most progress in, but also restructuring physical stores, accelerating e-com is progressing well. And the fourth one, leverage our service offering is something that is yet to come to be realized. So still early days with regards to Rethink, but we're now starting on that journey as well.

Moving over as in each quarter, we report on our must-win battle indicators, meaning how actually our plan is progressing to show you that some proof points that we are moving in the right direction. With regards to category Reset, our assortment, our price points, we have been very clear that we are moving back towards more low price or rather a good, better, best strategy in our assortment. The target for that has been 40-40-20 and the low, mid, high ranges. We are continuing to increase low price points in the assortment.

And as you can see, we're moving closer to the target but even more so with regards to stock turnover, we see that low price points are performing extremely well. High demand, high stock turnover. And from an index perspective, low price points are by far outperforming mid and high price points when it comes to stock turnover. You can see the indexes for mid being 172 versus low and 239 when it comes to high. So our focus and our commitment is still to increase low price points because we see that being a success factor to bring XXL back to shape once again. It's also a success factor in strengthening our availability.

Now availability has been holding back sales in both the first and second quarter of this year, which is very unfortunate. And even though the stock value is down by 15% year-over-year, stock in quantity in a number of pieces is relatively strengthened as that is only down by 6%, once again driven by having more low price points in our assortment. So the strategy is very much strengthening also availability indirectly. However, our top 1,000 products, we see very high demand for them, and we have not yet again had enough inventory to satisfy that demand.

So for the top 1,000 products, we have only had availability of 82%, and that is just not good enough. That is something we are focusing on and putting a lot of effort behind to really strengthen because here lies a big part of turning around sales development as well.

Our pricing must win battle is continuing to show very strong progress. In the quarter, we lift up our gross margin with almost 5 percentage points. But if you actually break it down month by month, you can see that in April, we were up over 37% in gross margin.

In May, almost 39% in gross margin. However, in June, we launched a quite aggressive clearance campaign quite early on in the market, which was successful. We did capture sales, but we did take somewhat of a hit on gross margin. But in total, still a strong gross margin level in the quarter, I would say, and very much and clearly so strengthened year-over-year. So category reset, availability, pricing, moving forward, positive indicators. And the same actually goes for store operations. Here we can see that revenue per worked hour is up, conversion rate is up.

So strengthening to operations actually pays off, it continues to do so. The same with e-commerce profitability, our e-commerce gross margin for 5 consecutive quarters continues to increase and grow, which is very positive. Our restructuring moves, we've talked a lot about the before, also continue to progress, we are now mainly focusing on cost-out as well as optimizing our store footprint. We continue just like communicated in previous quarters, and it is materializing in a very nice way. If we turn our attention to the general sporting goods market for a second, we have been talking about the market being quite a challenging one for quite some time.

So the market for the last 2 years, 2022 and 2023 has had a negative CAGR of minus 5%. And in the last quarterly presentation, we said that we believe that the first quarter of this year was a negative -- yet another negative quarter for the Nordics sporting goods market. That proved to be true as well when all numbers and the facts we're in. So 9 consecutive negative quarters for the Nordic sporting goods market as per Q1 2024. However, in the second quarter of this year, we are actually seeing some positive signs. So the market, let's see where it ends up in the second quarter of 2024, we don't have all the numbers in from all markets yet.

But we might be seeing some at least temporary or potentially early signs of recovery in the market. If we take Sweden, for example, Sweden has been the first of our three markets to decrease interest rates and we saw a very immediate effect of that in the Swedish market. So from an XXL perspective, we are once again growing in Sweden after that happened. So we see right now strength in the Swedish market. We see the Norwegian market may be at least stabilizing, not continuing to go down. However, the Finnish market remains challenging. This is from an XXL's perspective, and let's see also when the official numbers are in for each market.

So summarizing the quarter from a financial perspective, sales down 8.7%, gross profit, however, being up by a strong 8.1%. And that is really what's helping us to deliver stronger bottom line EBITDA. OpEx here shows a very, let's call it, modest reduction of NOK 1 million. However, we do have quite substantial underlying cost savings that are realized, but they are offset by nonrecurring items as well as a few timing effects and our CFO will guide you through them shortly. So actual cost savings are more material than what you see here.

Looking at our EBITDA, we are able to year-over-year turn it from a negative to a positive NOK 39 million, so that is a NOK 96 million uplift year-over-year. And I think that's a strong number, something to be proud of. However, we were hoping for more, and we are definitely aiming for more for the quarters to come. Inventory, once again being down by more than NOK 300 million, liquidity under control at almost NOK 0.5 billion.

Now before I leave over to our CFO, Stein Eriksen, I want to take the opportunity to thank Stein for 5 years in XXL, 5 quite challenging years. But both from me, all colleagues in XXL, I want to say a big thank you for great efforts, a lot of engagement, motivation, loyalty towards the company. We wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors. At the same time, we are very happy to welcome our new CFO, the successor that has been appointed is Lars Syse Christiansen, joining us already in early August. Lars is a talented and seasoned CFO, coming in with a wealth of experience and competence from both big and small companies, but all of them having one thing in common and that is a clear customer orientation, something that we think is crucial also for XXL.

And once Lars starts in August, that means we are once again complete in the senior management team. And also looking at the senior management team since I started last year, that also means that out of the 6 people reporting directly to me, 5 of them are now new in since I joined. So very much a renewed, refreshed senior management team. They are now very much up to the task of getting XXL back in shape once again.

But with that, I leave it over to Stein and actually your last quarterly report.

[Stein Eriksen, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Freddy, and thank you for very kind words. So hello, good morning, everybody. Let's go through the main financial results for Q2. And Freddy has mentioned a lot of it already, but as you can see, revenue was down with NOK 170 million or 8.7% versus last year, mainly then explained by three things: First of all, lower product, low product availability, like Freddy said, 82% product availability on the top 1,000. Also, we see reduced demand for capital-intensive goods. Especially like bikes and also we had some extraordinary sales campaigns in Q2, 2023.

Gross margin was up with 8.1 percentage points, and I will come back with more details on the next slide. OpEx is 2.8 percentage points higher than last year, where negative like-for-like growth is the main explanation for the increase in OpEx percent. EBITDA ending at NOK 39 million versus minus NOK 27 million last year. That's an improvement of NOK 96 million.

And then you see that net income ended at minus NOK 283 million in the quarter. And I just wanted you to be aware that XXL has booked NOK 72 million as a tax provision and NOK 14 million as interest expenses related to the ongoing MAP/APA negotiations between Swiss and Norwegian tax authorities. And more information regarding this case is provided in Note 9 in the half year report. However, the net cash effect of this is expected to be limited.

So moving over then to the different building blocks of the P&L. Gross margins were up, like I said, 8.1 percentage points, and all markets posted improvements, main explanations to the positive development versus last year was better pricing, both on campaign and non-campaign products. But also an additional write-down of inventory last year, explaining 3.4 percentage points of the improvement.

A high share of turnover is still on low price points and on campaign products putting pressure on the margins. However, we continue to see positive trends from previous quarters on gross margin. Then moving over to OpEx. And like Freddy said, trying to comment a little bit more on the OpEx, like I already stated, up 2.8 percentage points, but all explained by the negative like-for-like growth.

We -- if you look in absolute numbers, we were in line with last year, and XXL had a continued reduction in personnel costs of NOK 30 million compared to Q2 2023 but this was offset by some bonus -- reversal bonus accrual last year of NOK 15 million. We had some prior marketing investments in this quarter compared to last year. As well as some nonrecurring elements, partly related to the refinance of the group of around NOK 10 million.

So moving over to the EBITDA already stated an improvement of NOK 96 million compared to last year where all country segments posting positive development. And as you can see, Norway was the main contributor. EBITDA margin ending at 2.2% in Q2 versus minus 2.9% last year.

Looking at net debt. As you can see from this slide, the net debt development is fairly stable from NOK 900 million by the end of Q4 2023 to NOK 900 million in Q4 -- sorry, Q2 2024. And net cash flow from operations were negative of NOK 149 million where positive EBITDA was contracted by some timing effects of payables. We had CapEx of NOK 42 million, that's at historic low levels, while the capital raise earlier in this year with NOK 560 million, of course, contributed positively and then we had the payments related to the lease contracts with a negative of NOK 321 million. Also, as you can see, some transaction costs related to the capital raise of NOK 13 million and then some interest expenses of NOK 25 million so far this year.

So then let's look at the financial position of the group, liquidity reserves, ending at NOK 483 million versus NOK 722 million last year. And as already stated, the net interest-bearing debt ending at NOK 900 million. So that concludes the financial review.

And like Freddy stated also marks my final quarterly presentation here at XXL. As I embark a new adventure as CFO at Anora, the leading wine and spirits brand house in the Nordic region. And I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to both current and former employees and colleagues for some really interesting time and experience here at XXL and I will be really cheering you -- on you from the sidelines. So then leaving the floor back to you, Freddy, for some final remarks.

[Freddy Sobin, executive]

Thank you very much, Stein, and best of luck. So then just a few final remarks and a summary. Firstly, looking at the first half year, the first 6 months of 2024, we can conclude that our plan, Reset & Rethink is progressing well. It's proving itself through various indicators. We also see a very strong and increasing gross margin. So very nice development there. So from the first half of 2023, we were at 29.5% of gross margin. This year at 37.1% was strong development, no doubt about that.

Looking at OpEx, also something we're committed to really getting down. Even though it only says NOK 76 million here, looking at the underlying savings that are unfortunately a bit offset in the quarter, actual underlying materialize savings is almost at NOK 100 million year-to-date. So actually a bit better, I would say, but they are offset by nonrecurring items and timing effects also a bit of salary inflation, of course, hitting us in the quarter.

That means that actually, we have got an EBITDA uplift of NOK 153 million for those 6 months. So something I think we should be proud of, but we are not satisfied. We are definitely not where we want to be yet, but we are moving closer to our target and turning around XXL and getting it back to shape once again.

What is holding us back is top line. And what it's holding top line back is low availability, mainly, but also what we see in this particular quarter is bikes and other capital-intensive goods. So therefore, we are now really doubling down our efforts on commercial development and on strengthening top line once again because what we have done is a simple simulation is to look at if we would have had the same sales levels as in 2023, but with the current gross margin structure as well as the OpEx base that is now lowered, we would actually have delivered NOK 300 million in EBITDA instead of the NOK 51 million that's now delivered.

I think that's a very marginal and big difference, of course, and that is actually what we're aiming to deliver moving ahead. So many things moving our way, but we now also need to get sales back on track because that will also get bottom line fully where we want it to be.

So many good things are happening, but we are not there yet. We will continue on our journey to Reset & Rethink XXL. And I think that very much summarizes where we are. We believe in our plan. We are committed and motivated to continue on that journey. And that is something I can say that the entire XXL organization stands behind, so we do have a clear plan in place. We fully believe in that plan. Also, we have a strong team that we continue to strengthen day by day, not only the senior management team, but also in a broader aspect, the entire fantastic XXL team with more than 5,000 employees.

We strengthened that team continuously as we go. And we see that it gives an effect. The plan team, we deliver very clear indications that we are progressing towards getting the company back in shape. However, the main challenge now going forward is sales. That is the last challenge that we really need to overcome together as a company. And I also want to take the opportunity as it's now summer time to give a big thank you to all of our fantastic employees.

For the first 6 months, I've seen your efforts. I've seen also part of your struggles in getting the company back to shape, but I've mainly seen the engagement and motivation in all of our fantastic 85 stores, 3 offices, 2 central warehouses. It's one XXL, one team fighting together to get us back on track and we will get there, of that I'm certain.

So while we leave the first half behind us, we look forward to entering the second half and really proving what XXL really can deliver. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for your time.

[Tolle Groterud, executive]

Thank you, Freddy. So then we open up for questions. First, from the audience present here at Alnabru. So please wait for a microphone, and we kindly ask you to introduce yourself. So please go ahead.

Okay. There are no questions from the audience. So I then call upon the conference hosts for further introductions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions coming through. I will now hand it back to your host for closing remarks.

[Tolle Groterud, executive]

Thank you so much. So thank you all for listening in and enjoy your summer holidays. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.