Assa Abloy AB

STO:ASSA B

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Björn Tibell, Head of Investor Relations]

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of ASSA ABLOY's second interim report in 2021. My name is Björn Tibell, I'm heading Investor Relations. And joining me here in the studio are ASSA ABLOY's CEO, Nico Delvaux; and our CFO, Erik Pieder. As usual, we will now start with a summary of the report before we open up for your questions, and we seek to round this up in about 1 hour. And with that, I would like to hand over to you, Nico.

[Nico Delvaux]

Thanks, Björn, and also good morning from my side. Q2 results for ASSA ABLOY, a strong quarter with a significant sales growth and a stronger margin recovery. A record organic growth of plus 23%. A very strong sales growth in all divisions, except for the APAC division where we saw a stable sales growth. And also complemented with good growth through acquisitions of net plus 5%. Then good operational execution, giving us a strong EBIT improvement with an EBIT margin of 15.2%; if we exclude for acquisitions and currency, 15.9%.And strong operational leverage, I would say, despite higher raw materials and higher logistical cost and despite also challenges with component suppliers in different of our factories. We also signed 4 acquisitions in the quarter. And also, a very good operating cash flow, 6% up versus the same quarter a year ago with a cash conversion of 105%. So in numbers, a sales of SEK 23.6 billion, 19% up, with a 23% organic growth, the 5% net acquisition growth and then a headwind of currency of minus 9%. An EBIT margin of 15.2% versus 10.5% the same quarter a year ago. An EBIT of almost SEK 3.6 billion, 71% up. And then earnings per share of SEK 2.89 per share, 130% up. If you look a little bit in the different regions, starting in North America, strong organic growth in North America of 20%. Our residential business continues to perform on a high level, but where we now also continuously see a recovery on the commercial side where really, month-after-month, commercial business is coming back more, as I also explained already in the previous quarters, which is obviously good news for the second half of the year. Then record organic growth in South America, 74% up, with all countries higher double-digit growth. Then Europe, 31% organic growth, where in Europe, you could say that the counties that were most affected by COVID-19 a year ago now also recovered the most. The ones that were less hit by COVID-19 showed also less growth. So the ones that showed the biggest improvement, countries like Spain, U.K. and France; and then the ones that show less growth, region like Scandinavia and Sweden in particular.Also good growth in Africa, plus 47%; and in Oceania, plus 11%, despite, I would say, continuous lockdowns in several parts of Australia during that quarter. And then a flat development in Asia. It's mainly because a continued challenging situation in Southeast Asia. As you know, that part of the world live so very much from tourism as borders remain closed in those markets. Also, business activity remains on a lower level.And then also in China, we continue with our strategy where we only take orders where we can get the margins that we aim for and where we also can get paid in a reasonable amount of time. But overall, I think a very strong performance, I would say, throughout the world. Some market highlights. Also this quarter, several project wins. An important docking station project order for distribution and logistics center in Sweden. Perimeter security solution for a large data center in the U.S., and then a next-generation ePassport solution for Estonia for HID. And then in Biosite, our construction vertical in Global Solutions, security solution for the largest U.K. infrastructure project, that is going on as we speak. A lot of new products and solutions. Also launched to the market in the quarter a new high-performance door in Entrance System, focusing on energy efficiency. And then, of course, very excited about the collaboration with Apple to provide both employee badges and hotel keys in Apple Wallet and in Apple Watch. And then, again, it's good to see that all our efforts on R&D pay off and also are rewarded by the professionals in our industry. So also different new awards won in the quarter. So now 2 consecutive quarters again with positive organic growth. So really bouncing forward and reaccelerating that growth, mainly through organic growth, but also very good complementary growth through acquisitions. And operational margin also heading again towards 16% to 17% bandwidth. So an improved top line, improved margins gives us also a strong improvement of operating profit, 71% up compared to the same quarter a year ago. On the acquisitions, we continue to be active with 3 acquisitions completed in the quarter. 6 acquisitions year-to-date represent an annualized sales of around SEK 400 million. And then we will close one more acquisition now in Q3, the MR Group that we announced already, a company in Portugal with a sales of around SEK 230 million.Then we also informed you that we will divest CERTEGO. That transaction is expected to close in Q3, our locksmith channel in Scandinavia, they represent a divested annualized sales of around SEK 1.4 billion. And we will also book a write-down and cost associated to that divestment of around SEK 200 million now in Q3. A couple of words on Sure-Loc, an acquisition we did in the U.S., in the Americas, complements our mechanical hardware portfolio. They're a supplier of residential locks and associated hardware with a sales of around SEK 120 million, and they will be accretive to EPS as of the start. If we then go into the different divisions, starting with the EMEIA Opening Solutions division, very strong organic sales growth in the quarter of plus 39% with very strong sales growth in all markets, except for Scandinavia where it was only strong sales growth. A very good operating margin of 14.9% versus 5.7% a year ago with very strong volume leverage, 910 basis points, despite the negative mix in the sense that we have more South Europe and less North Europe and despite higher raw material costs, higher logistic costs and also challenges with availability of components in our different factories.So I think a very good job well done on the operation side by the team. We were held by FX of 40 basis points because of the stronger SEK and then 30 basis points dilution from M&A. That's mainly only an internal transfer from India from APAC to EMEIA. So a strong performance in EMEIA. Definitely also very strong performance in the Americas with an organic sales growth of 26%. Also, we have very strong sales growth in all product areas and in all regions from Canada, over U.S. to South America. We have a strong operating margin of 20.4% versus 17.5% a year ago. And what I said about EMEIA is definitely also true for Americas, so a very strong volume leverage, 300 basis points, despite all the challenges in operations, helped by FX, 10 basis points; and then dilutive M&A, 20 basis points. Then Asia Pacific, our third geographical division, a flat organic sales development of 0% with good sales growth in Pacific, stable sales growth in South Korea, but on sales, declining in Southeast Asia and China for the reasons I mentioned earlier. An operating margin of 9% versus 7.1% a year ago. Same story here, very strong leverage, 130 basis points, with FX dilutive, 30 basis points; and M&A, positive 90 basis points. That's again the transfer of India from APAC to EMEIA. And going to Global Technologies, a division that is still hit by a lack of mobility, mainly on the tourist-related or people moving-related businesses. But despite that, still an organic sales of 17% with very strong sales growth in PACS, Secure Issuance and Identification Technology, stable sales in Extended Access and then sales declining in Identity & Access Solution and sales declining significantly in Citizen ID. And also, in Global Solutions, for the non-travel-related businesses, very strong sales growth.An operating margin of 15.7% versus 10.1% last year. Very strong volume leverage, very good cost actions, and then it is the division, 770 basis points leverage. And although travel-related businesses remain very challenging, we see slowly the aftermarket business coming back as mobility starts to improve again. Dilutive FX, 100 basis points; and dilutive M&A, 110 basis points. And then last but not least, Entrance Systems, another strong performance in the quarter, organic sales up 21%, very strong sales growth in all business segments and a similar growth in equipment as for service. An operating margin of 14.9% versus 11.4% a year ago. Also here, very strong volume leverage of 450 basis points, neutral FX and then 100 basis points dilution from M&A. That's obviously in the first phase and in the only place of agta record. And with that, I give the word to Erik for some more details on the financial numbers.

[Erik Pieder, Executive VP & CFO]

Thank you, Nico, and also good morning from my side, everybody. As mentioned before, the sales went up with 19% due to a record high organic growth as well as a strong M&A of 5%. The currency went the other way. It went down with 9%, which is mainly related to the strengthening of the Swedish krona. Operating income, the EBIT went up with 71%. And if you take it in percentage, it went up with 4.7 points, so we ended at 15.2%. And the earnings, the net income went up with 129%, and the earnings per share went up with 130%. The reason why there is a difference between these 2 is due to a nonrecurring event of an intra-group transfer of a trademark. If we exclude this nonrecurring event, our annualized tax rate would still be around 26%.We had another quarter of a strong operating cash flow. We're up with 6% to SEK 3.6 billion. Return on capital employed increased with 2 points and ended up at 15%. If we look on for Q3, the FX impact as of today, we estimate to be around minus 3%. The M&A will be lower, roughly around 3% due to that. As of end of August, agta record has been within the group for a year.And then also, I would like to remind that last year, in Q3, we had some positive tax gains which came out of the record acquisition. And this year, as mentioned before by Nico, we will close the CERTEGO divestment, which will have a negative impact of roughly SEK 200 million. And this will, of course, heavily impact our M&A column in Q3. If you look into the bridge and dissect the organic growth, roughly 20% comes from volume and 3% is related to price activities. And the flow-through was a strong 40%. And there, we can see that we had the help from the strong organic growth, plus that we also had a strong operational execution in the quarter. That was on the positive side. If you look on the negative side, in Q2 last year, we had quite a lot of temporary cost reductions. And also, we have the high headwind that we get on the raw material and the logistic cost. The currency impacted the EBIT margin with minus 20 basis points, which is related, as I mentioned before, to the SEK, but also to the dollar. And then we had the M&A column where the dilutive impact of the record acquisitions is 50 basis points. So as mentioned before by Nico, if you exclude the currencies and exclude the record acquisition, our margin would have been at a similar level as what it was in Q2 2019 at 15.9%. Cost breakdown. The direct material, we have a positive impact on the direct material. This positive part comes from a positive divisional mix with the stronger Global Technologies and the flat APAC. If we look specifically then onto the raw material, it impacted the result negative with roughly the same, meaning 20 basis points negative. We -- now if we look on the prices in Q2, for instance, on steel, they have increased with another 50% in the quarter. So we expect that the headwind will be stronger in the quarters to come.We've had good organic operating leverage on the conversion cost. We have good cost control. We have efficiencies if you look on the conversion as well as within the S&A. But however, it's important, we still invest into R&D. But the conversion cost you see is down with 1.7 points. And the SG&A in total, if you compare to last year, is 3.3 points better. Operating cash flow, I mentioned before, strong plus 6%. This is mainly related to the improved earnings. If you look on the working capital, it's more or less the same as what it was the similar period last year because there, we, let's say, we need the net working capital in order then to facilitate the strong growth that we have had. Our cash conversion on a 12-month basis was 123%. The gearing, we continue to go down on the net debt versus equity and now down to 45%. In the quarter, we were able to reduce the actual net debt with another SEK 600 million. The net debt versus EBITDA came down from 2.1 last year to 1.6 this year. So we have a strong financial position. Our balance sheet is strong, and we can continue our acquisition strategy. Last but not least, as I mentioned before, on the earnings per share, it went up with 130% related to the improved earnings as well as this nonrecurring tax impact that I mentioned before. And with that, I hand it back to Nico for final conclusions.

[Nico Delvaux]

Thanks, Erik.So we can say a good second quarter for ASSA ABLOY with significant sales growth, record organic sales growth of plus 23%, complement as we have good growth through acquisitions of net plus 5%. And then also very good margin recovery and operating margin of 15.2%. If we exclude currency and acquisitions, 15.9%, similar level as prior to COVID-19 times. Now also good actions on working capital, resulting in a strong cash flow, 6% up versus same quarter a year ago.So it's clear that now as vaccines are further rolled out and COVID-19 situation is further improving, although there is, of course, concerns around delta variants and we are still very much in the COVID-19 situation, I would say, we definitely are shifting gears and now focusing further on how to bounce forward and reaccelerate further our profitable growth, growth through acquisitions and definitely also growth organically. But while we do that, of course, we will continue to focus also on operational execution. We have to have a strong cost measurement. On one side, we have to make sure that we can compensate for the much higher raw material costs through either other cost savings and definitely also to further price increases. And then the component shortages in general and electronic components in particular remain, of course, a challenge that must be handled by our operations. And with that, I give back to Björn for questions and answers. Björn?

[Björn Tibell, Head of Investor Relations]

Thank you. Thank you very much, Nico and Erik. [Operator Instructions] Operator, this means that we are ready to kick off the Q&A session. Please go ahead.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Vivek Midha at Citi.

[Vivek Midha, Research Analyst]

And so sticking to one question. In terms of understanding the strength you're seeing in developed markets and pent-up demand versus underlying trends, did you see any stronger trend on quotation activity as you went through the quarter?

[Nico Delvaux]

Yes, of course, we follow up quotations more on country level. The only quotation activity that we really track and trace more on division level is our spec business. And there, we definitely can see a good increase of activity as well a number of project as -- in value as well in North America as in Europe, where we are back now in Q2 into a positive growth for the spec quotation business in the U.S. and where we also see good, strong growth in EMEIA.

[Vivek Midha, Research Analyst]

And actually, if I could just follow up as well on the price/cost then, which you mentioned before. In terms of the phasing of those price/cost pressures during the year, should we still expect the peak of the gross pressures to be in Q3? Or is it likely to be Q4 now that you see the most pressure?

[Nico Delvaux]

That's a bit difficult question to answer because I don't know what material prices are going to do from here going forward. We only see and have seen that material prices have further inflated in a very strong way in Q2. Like Erik mentioned, several materials up 30%, 40%, 50% in the quarter. If you take, for instance, steel in the U.S., price level of steel today is 200% up compared to a year ago. I would say that's not inflation, that's hyperinflation. That's not something you would expect from a country like U.S. So yes, we are working very hard with many sequential price increases to compensate for that. But like we mentioned at previous occasions, we now see with that continued inflation pressure that fully compensating for those pricing -- for those material cost increases will not be possible this year. It will go into next year.If you see, in Q1, we were almost capable of fully compensating for material increases. Now in Q2, the headwind was around 20 basis points. One should expect that to go further up in Q3. And as it stands today, we still believe that Q3 is the more difficult quarter. But then, again, it will depend on what happens now with material indexes in the coming weeks and in the coming months.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Lars Brorson of Barclays.

[Lars Wauvert Brorson, Director]

Can I follow up on that, Nico? Just to your slide, the direct materials as a percentage of sales, obviously, that's not a pure price/cost. So I just want to understand the message clearer. Am I right to say that the price/cost equation is 20 basis points negative? Obviously, you have gross price of 300 basis points. My understanding was that mix was a 40 basis point tailwind in the quarter. There's obviously also within that direct material line an FX component, some supply chain savings and others. So I just want to understand what the pure price/cost, if that's 20 basis points.And also, if you can just clarify that the price/cost guidance for the year is still what you said after Q1, I think, it's less than 2018. So I take that to be less than 50 basis points. I just want to clarify if that's still the message.

[Nico Delvaux]

You are right with everything what you said, Lars, the stuff, the easiest answer. You remember in Q1, we had, I think, 40 or 50 basis point dilution on the material side. And we explained that, that was because of a negative mix in the sense that we grow more in APAC, that's the main reason, and less growth in Global Technologies, which affected the mix in a negative way. And we said that if you purely look at material, that we almost compensated 100% for the material inflation.In Q2, it's -- like you say, we have 20% headwind -- 20 basis point headwind from material, but we show 20% better on the result and that 40 basis points is mainly mix in the sense that this quarter, it's better Global Technologies and less APAC. So this quarter, compared to Q1, is a more positive quarter. And then going forward, yes, Q3 will be more headwind. But we can repeat what we said before that we are aiming and confident that the headwinds will be less than back in 2018 when we had last time, yes, I would say, a more modest material inflation. You're right that at that time, the effect was around 50, 60 basis points purely on the material side. Yes.

[Lars Wauvert Brorson, Director]

Helpful. Can I ask, secondly, just on the sequential trend or the exit rate from the second quarter, I wonder whether you can help us a little bit with that. I think you grew sequentially 9% in Q2. I think normal seasonality would see you grow sort of low double-digit. I wonder what you're seeing as you exited the quarter. I mean, historically, seasonally, you've been sort of flattish in the third quarter. What are you seeing here? Obviously, you're flagging sort of the non-resi business starting to come back. Not sure that already hits you in the third quarter on the new build side, but I just wonder whether you can give a bit of color as what you see on sort of short-term trends.

[Nico Delvaux]

It depends, of course, a little bit how you compare with last year. It's, of course, difficult to compare because if you compare, for instance, April, April was almost that a year ago, whereas then in May and June, the business slowly came back a year ago. So compared with last year, it's perhaps more difficult. But what we do is we look obviously on sales per day or sales per week. And then, like I mentioned, we see commercial coming back in a good way. Month after month, week after week, we see commercial improving as well in Europe, definitely also in North America. And as you know, in North America, that's also important for us because it's also the more profitable part of our business in the Americas. That being said, it's, of course, going to be much more tough now going into the second half because second half of the year was a good half of the year for Americas, for instance, and for Entrance Systems. So from a comparison perspective, it will become obviously much more challenging than Q2, which was an easy comparison, of course, because a year ago, more than 50% of world population was locked down, and that was not the case anymore in Q3 and Q4.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Guillermo Peigneux of UBS.

[Guillermo Peigneux-Lojo]

Guillermo from UBS. Just maybe one question and one follow-up. First, on the pricing, you said 300 basis points, 3% broadly speaking. I was wondering whether with the new price increases, whether you could indicate what kind of pricing level do you expect year-on-year for the second half with the information that you do have at this point. And then I have a second question on the smart locks, but I -- or electromechanical door locks, but I'll wait for your answer to the first question and then I'll ask the second one.

[Nico Delvaux]

Okay. You're taking over the Q&A session, Guillermo, with the questions. But if I then first answer the first question, yes, it was -- like we mentioned, price was 3%. Okay, it's not exact science, but we believe it was slightly higher than 3%. And then, obviously, we continue to increase prices, and we did not do that a year ago. So I think what we add from a pricing perspective will also be a net further price increase. So you should expect that number to further go up now in Q3. And that's what we have to do also because you see, of course, material indexes and material cost also further going up.

[Guillermo Peigneux-Lojo]

All right. And then the second question is on the smart locks, which I think in EMEIA continue to grow very steadily, very, very rather strong. And then, obviously, in Americas, it was declining, then now it's back to growth. And I was wondering on electromechanical and electronic locks, first, what are you seeing in EMEIA? Is this a broader adoption in the market? Were some of the trends that we saw in Americas 2 years ago starting to take place in EMEIA? And second, in Americas, declining and now increasing, what do you see there? And is the growth coming in, in residential or nonresidential or both?

[Nico Delvaux]

Growth is coming in, in both. And if you look at electromechanical in general and digital door locks in particular, digital door locks is, of course, the fastest growing subsegment that we have in the group. And that was also the case now in Q2 with high double-digit growth. And we see good, strong performance as well in the Americas as in EMEIA. Of course, it is also thanks to several new products that we launched. If you take, for instance, in EMEIA, we have launched a new Linus retrofittable digital door lock. In August, a like solution, you could say, for Europe, getting very good traction. And then we also got our new Yale Doorman for Scandinavia, which is also selling in a very good way, where we even have challenges to keep up with production and to keep up with electronic components to support that growth.So I would say it's in one way thanks to the new products that we launched. It's, of course, also just the market. We continue to see a further shift from mechanical to electromechanical and digital, and we see even a further acceleration of that trend. I would say U.S. has the advantages. It's one country, so it's a little bit easier. Whereas as in Europe, you still, of course, see different speeds in the sense that when new technology comes to Europe, the northern part of Europe, Scandinavia, Finland is often the first one to adapt. And then afterwards, you have countries like U.K. And then it takes much longer to adapt in, let's say, the southern part of Europe. And you see something similar with our digital door locks in our different markets.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Gael de-Bray of Deutsche Bank.

[Gael de-Bray]

My first question is on the cash flow side. I was actually surprised not to see a bigger change in working capital this quarter given the very strong revenue development. So could you comment on this, please, and on what to expect as we look forward, especially on the inventory side? So that will be question number one.

[Erik Pieder, Executive VP & CFO]

Yes. If you look on the -- as we said, I mean the cash flow this quarter is driven by the earnings. And on the working capital, it's flat. And of course, if you -- I mean you have the components there. Of course, if you increase the top line, then you also get more receivables. And then, okay, on the inventory we need in order then to support the growth. And there, of course, in the inventory as well, we also get in the higher raw material prices in inventory as well. So I mean, going forward, I think we are going to see the trend that we're not going to see that much, let's say, going down on the net working capital.

[Nico Delvaux]

I would say on the inventory side, if we could have chosen, we would have loved to have a little bit more inventory because we have seen, like I mentioned in the presentation, some challenges on supply chain, getting the components in. So it's already something would have -- we would have loved it to be a little bit higher for some of our businesses.

[Gael de-Bray]

So it would make sense, right, you expect inventories to eventually go up?

[Erik Pieder, Executive VP & CFO]

Yes.

[Gael de-Bray]

Quite substantially in line with demand?

[Nico Delvaux]

Well, of course, we have done a lot of efforts on efficiency improvements in operations in general and that you also have seen in our inventory figures if you look over the last 2, 3 years. And we'll continue to do that. Of course, you will also see and you should expect to see efficiency gains in inventory values as we go. But of course, with that important side remark that Erik mentioned, the inventory is a higher value today than a year ago because of the material inflation. So like-for-like, if you put the same stuff in stock, you will see a much higher value because of material inflation.

[Gael de-Bray]

Okay. Okay. And the second question is on the margin trajectory. Are you still confident that the group will reach the 16% to 17% margin range relatively quickly? And of course, any indication on the potential timing to get back in the range would be pretty helpful to us.

[Nico Delvaux]

Well, like we have said at several occasions, and we can repeat again, we have our financial targets to be with our EBIT margin within 16% to 17% bandwidth over a business cycle. And we're now below, and we are working very hard to come back within that 16% to 17% as soon as possible, of course, taking into account the 50 basis point dilution from agta record.If you look the last quarters -- and you're correct, for agta record, you could say that we were on very similar levels as prior to COVID-19. So I would say, just a matter of time before we will get back into that 16% to 17% bandwidth, excluding agta record; we're, therefore, 15.5% including agta record.But we have also said that we have the ambition to bring the margins of agta record within the normal margins of Entrance Systems within 3 years, realizing on the synergies of that acquisition. And then like I mentioned earlier, we are very happy with the way that integration is going. We are, we could say, even slightly ahead of our plans to realize the synergies and, therefore, bring those margins in line.

[Gael de-Bray]

I agree with your comment that at the group level, the margin is now on par with what it was pre-COVID if you exclude FX and M&A. But if I look at the situation in Europe, in particular, there, I mean the margin in Europe still looks well below that of its 2019 level despite revenues already back above 2019 levels. So I wondered if in Europe, specifically, there was a need or not for an extra layer of cost optimization measures.

[Nico Delvaux]

Of course, when we talk about the 16% to 17%, we talk on group level, and there is always moving variables in different directions. You talk about EMEIA. I can talk also about a fantastic track record that we have in Entrance Systems where, obviously, margins are significantly better; where in APAC, we continue to improve margins. If you look in particular in EMEIA, of course, you have, on one side, the pricing, which it is very high inflation. And it's also a complicated market because it's not a uniform market where we are doing more on the pricing to fully compensate for material indexes. We have also invested heavily on the shift from mechanical to electromechanical where we believe we haven't seen the complete return on those investments yet because, of course, you first make investments in R&D and then you launch the products and then -- and solutions and then, ultimately, you get the growth.We see that, for instance, like I mentioned on digital door locks where we invested in an important way in new product launches where we are now starting to get the return through higher sales. So I think it's more, I would say, I guess, a timing issue. And you should really look at the 16% to 17% as a target on group level. There will always be parts of the group that then outperform in your eyes and then some divisions that perhaps in your eyes have further room for improvement.

[Erik Pieder, Executive VP & CFO]

Perhaps just to add on EMEIA, remember also, Nico talked about that we have moved India from APAC into EMEIA. Now you see the I in there as well. And that has a negative impact on their margin with roughly 30 basis points.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Alasdair Leslie at Societe Generale.

[Alasdair Leslie, Equity Analyst]

Returning to the kind of price/cost, sorry, 20 basis point headwind from raw materials in Q2 that you called out. It's perhaps maybe a little bit less than I expected. So I was just wondering if we can follow up on the question around sort of full year expectations of up to a 50 basis point hit essentially. I know you're not changing that. But is it fair to say that you're now maybe a little bit more confident or a lot more confident even in achieving the target given the obviously solid Q2 execution and price actions that you're taking? And then a sort of follow-up question would just be on China. I was just wondering whether you could provide a bit more color on the decline there. How much of that was explained by the underlying market versus the selectivity measures you referred to? And given that we have seen a pivot to growth, a growth strategy there, when does China really return to a sort of solid and consistent growth path and kind of more in line with the growth of the rest of the group?

[Nico Delvaux]

We start with material cost. Everything will depend, of course, on how good we will be in executing on the next price increases that we have announced because, of course, you announce a price increase and then you have to realize the price increase. And there, a lot depends also on how the market reacts to it. We are in many markets a strong market leader and, therefore, also want to be that price leader, being the first one to come with price increases, second, third, fourth and fifth price increase. And then we see how the market reacts.So if the market continues to react like they have been reacting until now, then yes, we are confident on that statement that we should be better in managing material inflation to price increases this time around than back in 2018 despite, I repeat, a much higher material price inflation this time as compared to 2018. Again, I think the material increases that we see today, I think, aren't seen in general and definitely unseen for steel. But yes, so under those conditions, yes, we are more confident. When it comes to China, I would say it's not the market. It's really us internally, the way we are implementing the strategy of stability, profitability and then, ultimately, growth. Again, we had low- to mid-single-digit negative growth in China in the quarter. And that was, like I said, because we are very selective in which business we want to have going forward and which deals we don't want to take because, again, we want to have deals with margins in line with our expectations and also a good chance of being paid within a reasonable time.We are definitely in that stability phase. We further increase our margins if you look on a 12-month moving trend. Now indeed, next step is the growth. I'm most probably much less patient than you are. I don't know you that well, but I can tell you I'm much patient -- less patient than you. But like we said from the beginning, this is something that takes time. It's not something that we can fix in a couple of quarters. That's much longer term. But we are confident that, yes, we will move now from that stability profitability phase into growth mode again going forward.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Lucie Carrier at Morgan Stanley.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

I have 2 questions. I will go one at a time. I wanted to come back on the demand dynamic and notably related to price and supply chain constraint. Have you done any analysis from the past or now on how much you think your customer base can take price increase? Because we talk a lot about increasing prices, but there's sometimes also challenges with acceptance. And I think it was mentioned already earlier that the seasonality in the second quarter was maybe not as strong as usual. And do you see ongoing challenges from supply chain constraint that could also prevent you from basically kind of delivering on the demand you are seeing in the market, notably in the second half of the year? That's my first question.

[Nico Delvaux]

Yes. On the demand -- on the pricing side, it's a bit the same answer as I gave earlier. We increased prices and then we see if the market continues to follow. And so far, the market continues to follow. If you take the more critical families, very much steel-related, I think we have already done 5 or 6 price increases, a combination of price increases with material surcharges. And so far, the market is following because it's just a fact that the cost goes up for everybody.So it's a similar or an equal playing ground field. You could say everybody has the same challenge. There is also not so much timing differences between us and our colleagues, competitors in the market. We are confident that we can continue to increase prices as much as it take to compensate for the cost. But like I said, there will be some lag between material inflation and us realizing the prices, and that lag will go on into next year. That's on the pricing. On material availability, in Q2, yes, we most probably had a couple of orders that we could have delivered out if we had better flow of components into our different factories. But I would say that it's not significant. In fact, on the top line, it has been very limited. Of course, it creates a lot of disturbances in our factories, and therefore, we have to reschedule and plan in different ways all the time. I think our people in operations are doing a great job to manage with those challenges. I would say the more challenging part is that we don't have so much visibility. If you take, for instance, electronic components, it's very difficult to get hard commitment from your suppliers for longer periods of time. So your visibility has become much shorter. But the visibility we have gives us enough confidence that we should not have significant effect again on top line or on bottom line in the coming months and in the coming quarter.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

My second question was more related to some of the comments you've made in the press release this morning around kind of shifting the growth focus. And you were mentioning specifically kind of software as a service, I think, and also on Elmech. Can you maybe give us a couple of hints of what you're thinking to do differently now on this area versus what you were doing before, please?

[Nico Delvaux]

I would say there's not so much difference what we do today to what we were doing yesterday or prior to COVID-19. In a sense, like we explained earlier, during COVID-19 times, our first focus was on cost control, on protecting the bottom line and protecting our cash flow. We have seen market dynamics and market sentiment improving in a very good way in general, I would say. Therefore, okay, we want to now take advantage of that better market sentiment and make sure that we grow at least in line with the market or preferably even a little bit better than the market.And it's a similar trend, as we have explained at earlier occasions and also in our capital markets, there is this whole shift from mechanical to electromechanical and digital as well on the commercial side as on the residential side. And if you have that shift, of course, yes, you also have more software as a service revenue. We have that same focus on software as a service in our different verticals in Global Solutions. As mobility comes back, we should also see aftermarket in general coming back and also in Global Technologies. And then we have, of course, the focus on our service business in Entrance Systems.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Andreas Willi at JPMorgan.

[Andreas P. Willi, Head of the European Capital Goods]

I just wanted to follow up on the earlier question on China. I think, obviously, you described your journey from stability, profitability to growth. But what's the difference? Or is there a difference in the market that just prevents you in China from achieving longer term the same kind of profitability and cash conversion that you achieved in the rest of the world? And in what sense is that different to maybe to what we see in other capital goods companies that don't have that same problem in China? So basically trying to find out to what degree China coming back to growth and good growth is dependent on your own journey versus the -- what just the differences are in the market.

[Nico Delvaux]

I think if we look top line-wise, I think China should be able to grow faster than many other markets in the world because the market dynamics in China are and will continue to be very good. All the macro drivers are also in favor of China, urbanization, people moving from rural areas into city, population growth and so on. If you look at margins, we have said at several occasions that our ambition in China is to bring our margins to high single-digit levels, close to 10%, and that once we are there, we will see if we can do even better. But we've also said, if we are successful in reaching that goal in China, that we then also have a very nice export product solution that we also can sell in, in other margin -- in other markets like Southeast Asia, even to a certain extent Australia and New Zealand, Africa, Middle East, with better margins. Why are the margins lower in China than in the Western world? For instance, I think 2 reasons. One, of course, in the Western world, you have a much higher share of aftermarket business. And we know that we have better margins on aftermarket than on new build. And then two, just because of the competitive climate in China, I think our industry is still an industry that is not consolidated. If you take, for instance, digital door locks in mature markets, there is a limited number of competitors. If you take digital door locks in China, most probably there is 2,000, 2,500, perhaps 3,000 players here in the market.So it's a much more competitive market and a much more scattered market still today that still needs and will get further consolidation. And that consolidation then ultimately probably will also lead to better margins like you see in other industries. I think other industries went to a similar dynamics perhaps a little bit earlier than our industry.

[Andreas P. Willi, Head of the European Capital Goods]

And my follow-up is more clarification on the organic growth number. If we look at the absolute organic growth you reported in the statement and divide it by last year's sales, we get 21% roughly rather than 23%. Maybe you could just clarify that.

[Erik Pieder, Executive VP & CFO]

I think, Andreas, that's something maybe you and I can take offline. It's the way it's calculated where we take off FX first and M&A and then you have the residual coming. I have the calculation here, which probably is easier to share between a spreadsheet.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Rizk Maidi at Jefferies.

[Rizk Maidi, Equity Analyst]

So I'll start with the price/cost question. So I think last quarter, you said that you needed 3.5% to 4% of price increases to compensate for cost inflation. So this quarter, we had 3% slightly higher. You're guiding for an even higher price increases in the coming quarters. And yet, it is surprising that your full year guidance for price/cost sort of headwind hasn't changed. So perhaps if you could start with the comment there. And then perhaps, Nico, where do you see, within your different divisions, where do you think sort of it's easier to push price increases? Where is price/cost positive versus what it is sort of negative amongst the different divisions? I'll stop here.

[Nico Delvaux]

I could say that material has inflated an important way for all material, if you take copper, nickel, zinc, aluminum, of course, definitely steel. But even if you take plastic or cardboard or glue, you can't name it all, all materials have very high double-digit cost inflation. And therefore, it's in the first place us doing a good price management and doing that in a proactive way to compensate for that. And I think if those increases come gradually within limits, you have time to adapt and do it through different price increases.Like I mentioned earlier, if the price increase is 200% on steel in the U.S., I think we cannot do that in one go and compensate fully for it in one go. Somebody else can do it. I would like to understand how they do it. So there, definitely, if you take steel in general and steel in the U.S., you will see some lag between price increases versus cost increases.So it's not so much about the divisions. I would say it's much more about which product solutions have a lot of steel. And then you come to our steel door businesses in China, in Europe and in U.S., and you come to our Perimeter Security business in Entrance Systems.

[Rizk Maidi, Equity Analyst]

Okay. And then the follow-up that I had was just on near-term trading. I think you touched a little bit on this. Obviously, last year, we had quite a big swing. It would be really helpful if you could tell us how your daily sales growth has started so far in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, please.

[Nico Delvaux]

Again, it's a bit, I mean, difficult to give a consolidated view on group level because you have a lot of different moving parameters between the different divisions. And also, what do you compare with? Because we have strong seasonality in our numbers. And if you compare with last year, it's also not so easy because the way the pandemic hit last year was very different country by country and division by division.But if I try to give a little bit of flavor, again, you can say that in the U.S., our commercial business, like I mentioned also at earlier occasions, we see very good sequential improvement month after month, week after week now for several months and we see that commercial business now really coming back, where the residential business stays on a similar high level, but of course, going forward, you will compare with quarters last year that were already very strong quarters last year. So the comparison becomes much more difficult.That's true for residential. That's true also for South America, where second half year still was very strong performance in South America. I would say a similar story in EMEIA. Residential stays on a good high level, and commercial is really coming back in a good way. Quotation levels, like I mentioned earlier, for our spec business, also good, in positive territory again now in Q2. If you take then Global Technologies, it's a very different picture between things that are perhaps less tourist travel-related, where we have seen that vaccinations and contaminations of COVID-19 going down really has boosted mobility, has boosted business confidence. And we see those businesses bouncing back stronger, perhaps also stronger and faster than we expected. That's, for instance, the case for our PACS business in HID. Whereas the more tourist travel-related businesses, hotel, hospitality, marine, Citizen ID, stay much more in challenging territory, let's call it like that. And like we said earlier, we believe that the recovery of those businesses will take longer.The good positive sign there is, at least to a certain extent, we see some of the aftermarket going back. For instance, if you take hospitality, of course, people will now and during the summer start to travel. They will go and stay in hotels. So you need cards. You need credentials. That business is coming back, but of course, still far away from what it used to be prior to COVID-19. And that, again, will take time.

[Björn Tibell, Head of Investor Relations]

Thank you, Rizk. It's time now actually to round up the conference. So I hope it has been helpful for you. And if there are any follow-up questions, please feel welcome to contact us at Investor Relations. And we look forward to speaking to many of you then as well in the coming months.So thank you for today. Stay safe, and have a lovely summer. Bye.

[Nico Delvaux]

Thank you.