XXL ASA

OSE:XXL

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Tolle Groterud, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the third quarter results presentation. My name is Tolle Groterud and I have the pleasure of guiding you through today's presentation.

Our CEO, Freddy Sobin; and our CFO, Lars Syse Christiansen, will take you through the presentation and 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 requests through the press contact. So without further [indiscernible], I turn the floor over to you, Freddy.

[Freddy Sobin, executive]

Thank you, Tolle. [Audio Gap] joining us online. Welcome to our Q3 presentations, where we'll walk you through both the CEO update, the financial results with our new CFO [Audio Gap] as well as concluding with some [Audio Gap] what do you say? Let's get going.

Q3 2024, unfortunately, we need to establish that the Nordic sporting goods market have now seen at least 10 negative consecutive quarters with negative market growth. So we're acting a tough macro, a tough market, and most probably, we are also looking at an 11th negative consecutive quarter in the market.

So while the sporting goods market definitely has been having a tough time since after the pandemic, we believe in the long-term resilience and growth of the market and the consumers in the market. We see this being driven by strong global mega trends. So we fully believe that the historical growth of around 5% will come back in the market over time, and that is really what we are preparing XXL to take part of, once again.

While previously believing in market recovery in 2024 we now believe that that recovery will most probably happen instead next year, in 2025. But exactly when that will happen, of course, nobody knows. But while we're acting in a difficult market, we can at the same time, establish that since Q1 this year, we have been seeing sales recovery quarter by quarter. So in the third quarter, we are seeing further sales recovery. We are getting back on track, even though we are definitely not proud of the sales numbers that we are delivering in Q3.

But taking us back looking in perspective of where we actually are when compared to 2019, so the last full year pre COVID, we can conclude that we are down 15% in top line. But we are down with more than 30% actually all the way to 34% in inventory size. That meaning that we are acting with way less products out in the stores and online. That is hampering our sales and our growth, for sure, but we are still recovering. We are on the right track. And as said in previous quarters, our capital intensive, hard good categories are partially holding back, and we are not able to compensate with the growth in the soft goods categories that we are seeing, i.e., meaning mainly apparel and shoes.

So sales being a bit difficult, we still see us moving in the right direction. And as you know, moving in that direction, we are moving along the plan of Reset and Rethink, the plan that we launched last year in the summer of 2023. And just to reiterate, we fully believe that we can turn around XXL by leveraging on the company's unique strengths in the market. Those strengths, of course, being that we remain the market leader in the Nordics, with the 3 core markets now being Norway, Sweden and Finland, to which we have consolidated to. We also fully believe that we can again strengthen our position by leveraging on our highly centralized business and operating model, as well as our omnichannel capabilities, which are quite unique in the market, if I can say so.

Also our unique customer reach. We have now reached more than 4 million members and XXL Rewards, our loyalty program is quite unique, and something we want to utilize even more moving forward, and also taking back our low price position to widen our mass market appeal. So this is the unique strengths which the plan really is rooted into.

And if we go into the plan, Reset and Rethink. We've talked a lot about it. Reset with our 5 must-win battles. Rethink with our 4 strategic pillars. We still believe in the plan. We see that we are showing progress and good indicators which we'll guide you through shortly. However, we see that the plan will take some more time than initially thought, due to the market recovery not coming in 2024 but maybe rather in 2025.

Looking at those must-wins in the Reset part of the plan we have always in every quarter show you various indicators of us actually moving in the right direction, and we are now proud to say that, with regards to inventory within our category Reset must-win battle. We are now above 90% of healthy inventory. So even though inventory levels are lower now more than 90% is actually what we call active assortment, and the rest is done on various clearance categories within the assortment. I think that is a strong number. We have been working very diligently with our inventory for a long time now, and now reached a quite satisfactory level with regards to inventory health.

That being said, we have more to do. And also, as you see in the availability must-win, we are down in inventory value with 13%. But as the strategy to go back into more low price has actually enabled us to still defend a number of pieces in inventory even though value being down. So that is actually a positive sign once again of the strategy actually working. The dynamics are there. We are seeing them. But availability of top 1,000 products is by far means not satisfactory, and we are reaching a level of 78%. We need to be in the high 90s here. So this is something we're working hard to correct.

Also, we've been very focused and disciplined on pricing. And you can see that year-to-date, our gross margin is up by more than 5.2 percentage points. I think that's a good number. It would be a bit higher if we wouldn't have invested in gross margin activities in the third quarter, meaning that we have been a bit more campaign intense and active in the third quarter to assure that the customers comes back to XXL in the fourth quarter, now in peak season as we are approaching both Black Week and Christmas.

Looking at the store operations, we can also conclude that we are continuing to see a stronger RPWH, which is an abbreviation for revenue per work hour, maybe the most central KPI that we are steering after. So we are getting more efficiency from our stores, which, of course, is a sign of strength. E-commerce profitability, while having a good trend over quite a long time, did see a dip in the third quarter for the first time. That again relates to the gross margin investments that we did to really assure that the customers comes back shopping with XXL now in the peak season.

Also looking at our restructuring initiatives, we are very focused on continuing with our cost-out initiatives, which are progressing well, as well as optimizing our store footprint throughout the Nordics. And we have some more concrete examples of what happened there later on.

Moving on with the Rethink. This is actually the examples I just mentioned. In Sweden, in the third quarter, we relocated and downsized and reopened 3 stores, the stores in Uppsala, Vaxjo, Vasteras. All 3 stores with new locations, also a bit smaller store size than before with elevated store experience, showing very promising early indications that this is actually the right way to go for us. So just like as communicated in previous quarters, we will continue to optimize our store footprint, and we will continue to negotiate very hard with our property owners and landlords to get the very high rent levels down. After the last year's inflation on rents, we are seeing levels that we by far means cannot accept.

Also within the Rethink domain, we have launched a new communication platform, what we call Great Moments. The first campaign in that platform was the back-to-school campaign, which we called the Great Comeback. Looking at the consumer insights of that campaign, we can conclude that the campaign was not only appealing to a wider target audience, meaning that we appeal to more customer segments in the market, but it also was very clear that XXL was actually the center of the campaign and also many positive consumer sentiments around what the campaign actually signaled. So we are modernizing the way that we communicate to the consumers, widening our mass market appeal to more very valuable consumer segments.

Also, private label has been a focus of ours within the strategic pillars, and we've had an extra focus on soft goods within private labels. We're therefore very happy to report that in the third quarter of this year, we have a year-over-year growth of 34% in revenue of soft goods within private label. And that also leads us to a stronger gross margin as compared to A-brands. These private labels have more than 10 percentage points higher gross margin. So definitely a show of strength where we reinstate our entry price point, our low price market position, as well as actually strengthening our underlying profitability.

That is being led in the quarter by brands like MacKenzie, our outdoor hunting brand, which we have had for quite many years, but we have relaunched. And with that relaunch, we've actually now here in Norway, received 2 test winners, which is fantastic to see this early on in the relaunch journey of MacKenzie.

Also, Stormberg and Pilago is leading the way for our private label growth, where we have more to come in the next few quarters. So very good to see that, that strategic pillar is delivering with more to come.

Furthermore, a year ago, we launched XXL Reward 2.0, where the customers for the first time in XXL were able to, for every purchase, earn points and get bonuses. We see that a year after that launch, we are now over 4 million members in XXL Rewards across the Nordics. I think that is a strong number, not only here and now, but it's also a strong number for the future because our ability to increase loyalty for XXL will definitely be key when moving forward.

So I think this is a strong indicator that both the Rethink initiatives that we are doing, they are delivering as are the Resets, but we are still acting in a tough market. But we are seeing a recovery. I think that is kind of the key message that I want to relay here today.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you Lars Syse Christiansen, our new CFO since August, to guide you through the financial update. Lars?

[Lars Christiansen, executive]

Thank you, Freddy. Thank you for that introduction, Freddy. Let's start to look at the Q3 financials. Starting at the revenue side. As Freddy mentioned, it's been a challenging quarter on the sales side with the top line being down with approximately 7% versus the same quarter last year, coming in at just above NOK 1.8 billion in the quarter.

Looking at the geographies, we see that both in Norway and Finland, we have had a challenging quarter, where Sweden has seen somewhat more resilience also in light of the overall slightly better macro development in that market.

On the category side, we see strong performance within soft goods, apparel and shoes, more headwind in the more capital-intensive hard wear goods within outdoor and hunting categories.

On the gross profit side, gross profit comes in, in the quarter at NOK 623 million, continuing the improvement in margin as we've seen also in the year-to-date figures. However, underlying product margin a bit better than the 0.5% improvement we report as we also see increase in freight costs and also slightly lower supplier bonuses compared to the same quarter last year.

On the cost side, we continue to reduce our costs, also facing headwinds from strong inflationary development reducing the cost base with NOK 9 million in the quarter, NOK 22 million if you correct for the weakening of the Norwegian currency also impacting these figures. That leaves us with an EBITDA of NOK 5 million in the quarter, down from NOK 35 million last year as we see that a positive EBITDA development in Sweden is offset by negative EBITDA developments for Norway and Finland.

We continue to execute strong rigor in our management of our inventory. And for the quarter, the inventory lands at just north of NOK 1.7 billion, down by 13%. It's also fair to note that our inventory has been reduced significantly more than the top line side. Liquidity, NOK 356 million in cash and available credit facilities.

Looking at the EBITDA. If we're starting at the year-to-date numbers, we see that we so far this year, have been able to compensate the reduced top line with increases in margin as well as cost reductions. The margin improvement is driven by low margins in 2023 following large clearance sales, but also underlying improvements in product margin and also positive impacts from increased private label shares.

We continued to take out costs, and we will take a closer look at our cost program performance a bit later in the presentation. However, in the third quarter, we have not been able to increase the gross margin and reduce the costs to compensate for the reduced top line. As Freddy said, it's been a quarter with intense campaigning, meaning that for the quarter as a total, we do see a reduction on the EBITDA side.

On the cost out side, our cost ambition is to take out NOK 300 million gross cost savings versus our 2022 baseline. Now in order to assess that performance, we need to make the baseline comparable. That means that we are adjusting for the negative effects of the weakening of the Norwegian currency as well as for the inflationary increases on our cost base on the real estate and salary side. That means that we have a comparable cost baseline of just approximately NOK 3.4 billion. From that, we have been able to take out more than NOK 240 million in cost reductions, predominantly within personnel expenses, meaning personnel expenses being reduced both on the store level, the value chain as well as on the administrative level. Going forward, we maintain our NOK 300 million cost savings target and expect to see more cost savings within real estate as well as general procurement initiatives throughout 2025.

Looking at the balance sheet and cash flow. Net debt at just north of NOK 1 billion in the quarter. That includes the Swedish tax debt of approximately NOK 350 million, which will be paid down over 36 months starting from October this year. On the liquidity side, as we said, NOK 356 million. Operating cash flow, NOK 9 million weakened compared to last year with negative NOK 44 million, where improvements in underlying performance on earnings before tax has been offset by less positive working capital changes so far this year than what we saw at the same time in last year.

Looking at the overall liquidity as well as the availability of products that Freddy commented on, XXL is today announcing that we're contemplating to launch a holistic financing solution. It is expected to cover both the short-term liquidity needs of the company as well as working capital investments. We contemplate that this financing will consist of a fully underwritten rights issue of approximately NOK 600 million, a prolongment of the company's long-term credit facilities as well as a short-term bridge loan. This financing solution will enable us to invest in working capital to continue to deliver on the Reset and Rethink plan as well as improving the general availability in the stores.

And that concludes the financial review for the quarter. Freddy?

[Freddy Sobin, executive]

Thank you very much, Lars. So summary and final remarks. Where are we? Well, I think we are very much progressing on our Reset and Rethink plan as we have guided you through in each quarter. And as you can see, sales are recovering. Gross margin is moving in the right direction as are OpEx, meaning our cost base. So EBITDA is strengthened, but not to a satisfactory level yet. We have definitely a long way to go here, but we are held back by low availability. Nothing new, but we continue to see that. So that holds back our top line with a soft top line of minus 13% year-to-date is, of course, challenging for us.

But on the positive side, we are also strengthening the general organization in XXL. We have lifted and shifted competencies in many, many teams and functions within the company to be able to deliver on the plan in an accelerated manner. So with a strengthened team, a strong plan, we are very optimistic that we will be able to reach our goal, however, maybe with a bit longer runway than expected initially.

That being said, if we would have had the same top line as in 2023 year-to-date with the current gross margin, with the current OpEx levels, we would instead of NOK 56 million in EBITDA be seeing more than NOK 300 million is what we have been calculating. So top line is holding us back for the full EBITDA recovery and that in itself is held back by availability. That is what we hopefully are able to correct now also with the financing solution that Lars told you about.

So a challenging macro, a challenging market and long lead times in the industry means that this will take a bit longer than initially expected. But let me really, really, really, really reinstate that we do believe in our plan. We have a clear plan. We have a strong plan. We have very strong indicators that it is moving us in the right direction. We just need to accelerate, and we have a strong team.

And just as in sports, even running a company and especially in a turnaround mode, it's all about the people. It's all about the team. We are here to deliver on the plan. We are here to succeed. This is a marathon, but believe me, it feels more like a sprint, and we will continue in a very high pace also moving forward.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.

[Lars Christiansen, executive]

Thank you, Freddy. Then we open up for questions. And then first from the audience [indiscernible] so please wait for a microphone, and we kindly ask you to introduce yourself. So please go ahead.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We currently have no questions coming through. [Operator Instructions] Since we don't have any questions for now so I will hand you back to [indiscernible] thank you.

[Freddy Sobin, executive]

All right. So thank you all for joining, and have a nice day.