Biogaia AB

STO:BIOG B

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the BioGaia Q1 Report 2021. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO, Isabelle Ducellier; and CFO, Alexander Kotsinas. [Operator Instructions]Isabelle, please begin.

[Isabelle Valerie Ghislaine Ducellier, CEO & President]

Thank you so much, and dear shareholders, welcome to BioGaia's Interim Management Statement Q1 2021. We are actually satisfied to present you a good Q1 at plus 10% sales at SEK 202 million versus last year SEK 183 million, which represents a 21% organic growth excluding currency. These good results are driven by both the Americas and the APAC region and our focus on multichannel approach. But I have to underline that we have as well moved some order planned for Q2 into the last week of Q1, following the request on some of our clients who didn't want to be out of stock. And I know I'm very well aware that the market doesn't like supplies, even if they are good. But for BioGaia, I mean, the customer is king so they got their order in Q1.Next page, please. We've been very busy during Q1. So you've probably noticed all the different press release recent. And I would like to start with Sweden, our home market. In line with our plan, we took over Sweden directly, and now we are rolling out our other portfolio. So we launched Osfortis, against bone losses, we launched Prodentis for oral health and for all the shareholder based in Sweden, I would encourage you [ 2 of the on meds ] or on apotea.Secondly, we announced that the Board decided on a revised dividend policy to 50% instead of 40% as we had before. On the 12th of February, we announced as well that MetaboGen, our sister company based in Mölndal received approval from the Ethics Committee to start a clinical study targeting the prediabetic population, which is a very interesting area, as you know. On March 17, we announced the establishment of BioGaia Invest, which main role will be to invest in companies that will support the growth of BioGaia. We have already achieved 2 investments for about SEK 10 million each, one for a company called Boneprox, with the purpose to help us to grow our sales of Osfortis. And the second one, Skinome, where we have some plan to develop together new products regarding the skin microbiota. We are expecting the gut microbiota, but now we are looking very actively in the skin microbiota.On the 8th of April, we welcome a new country. So now we sell our products in 110 countries, mainly starting to sell BioGaia Protectis drops in Egypt. And last but not least, we have been able to publish a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in children that showed that a supplement of 2 probiotic strains significantly reduced the fever and severity of pain in children with upper respiratory tract infection, which you see here as well a very interesting area. I mean upper respiratory tract in children -- well, if you have children, you know that every year, when they go back to school at the autumn or during the winter, it's one of the main indications.Next page, please. Despite the pandemic and the fact that we could not organize event to launch new products, our partners and ourselves have been very, if I may say so, creative to offer to consumers new BioGaia products. So you can see on the slide the number of country and product we've launched. But I would like to emphasize the focus from our distributor to launch our Protectis drops with vitamin D. I mean that really vitamin D together with probiotic has been our hero product during the pandemic. The consumer, they know that to stimulate their own immune system, the combo, probiotics and especially our Protectis together with vitamin D is the best way to do so.And by the way, I would like to encourage you to watch our video that we will post this afternoon on our website for the general assembly because you could see there some example of what we've been doing or what our distributor has been doing in terms of communication to the consumer regarding the immune opportunity. So you could see a new TVC that our Belgium distributor has been doing. A new TVC that our Ewopharma distributor in Italy has been doing in a lot of countries. You will see new digital content. You will see new POS for pharmacy. So really a 360 approach around the theme boost your immune system.Next page, please. Per segment, you will notice a good resilience under Q1 of our Pediatrics range at plus 13%, and that's mainly thanks to our drops. Regarding the Adult range, as a key indication for like Protectis tablet together with antibiotics, and that we've really seen a decrease of the demand because people were not being taking antibiotics. So we've been as well seeing a decrease of sales of Protectis tablets. I mean not in a bit extent but not slightly. And that explain the minus 4% for the Adult.Next page, please. Now region, so we are really pleased with our sales in the Americas, I mean 102%, I can say we are satisfied. But actually, both North America and Latin America are overperforming. In Latin America, and despite the very complicated health situation, we have had very nice sales in Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru to name a few. We even received the latest seller data and for the first time, we [indiscernible] in the region, which put BioGaia brand as the second biggest probiotic brand in Latin America, just after Enterogermina. But our real market in Q1 is again the U.S. market with 3-digit growth. And this is thanks to the perfect collaboration with our local distributor for both off and online marketing, supported by both medical and consumer campaign.EMEA, unfortunately, continue to suffer, and it's mainly due to large markets such as Italy and Spain, both for the quarter and MAT. Hopefully, we saw some growth in France, in Poland or Turkey, but not enough to compensate the loss in the market -- the Italian market. APAC, we are back on the normal trends we used to have for the APAC region. So a very strong Q1, mainly driven by good sales in Japan, Taiwan, Australia and China.Next page, please. In term of gross margin, we have -- we maintained a stable gross margin in the quarter and MAT for the Pediatrics products. You will obviously notice the decrease for the quarter, but not MAT of the gross margin for the Adult products. And it's mainly due to a mix effect, as I mentioned before, demand for Protectis tablets has been decreasing and that's where we have our best margins, and that explains why we lost a bit during the quarter of gross margin for the Adult segment.Next page, please, and I will ask Alexander to comment on OpEx.

[Alexander Kotsinas, Executive VP & CFO]

Okay. Thank you. Then we move on to Slide #9, called OpEx. So if we look at our total operating expenses, they were at SEK 81 million versus SEK 77 million in the same quarter last year, which is an increase of 5%. And then if we look at the individual line items, we will see that the so-called OpEx noncore, which is our subsidiaries, MetaboGen and BioGaia Pharma, that OpEx is basically flat compared to 1 year ago. So the increase in OpEx is mainly then due to the non-MetaboGen and BioGaia Pharma business. And if we look at the individual line items, you will see that our sales costs were slightly lower compared to 1 year ago, even though that cost item also included a restructuring cost of SEK 2.4 million for staff costs. So even including that, our sales costs were a bit lower than the same period last year.If you look at our admin costs, you will see that they are substantially higher than same quarter last year at SEK 15.7 million versus SEK 7.3 million. However, this is explained by both that we have had M&A costs during the quarter of SEK 2.5 million and also a restructuring cost for our premises in Lund, where we took cost in this quarter of SEK 5.1 million. So all in all, it's about SEK 7.5 million included in the total cost in admin of 15.7%. So if you deduct that, you will see that our admin costs are basically in line with last year.Looking at our R&D costs, they were SEK 21 million versus SEK 22.5 million last year, so they are slightly lower. And other at SEK 5.2 million versus SEK 2.7 million. It's mainly positive currency effect. So all in all, our OpEx then at SEK 81 million versus SEK 77 million. And if we look at rolling 12 for our costs, you will see that our costs are flat compared to the same last 12 months.If we move on to Slide #10, which is called P&L. You will see like we previously described that our sales increased by 10%, 21%, excluding currency effect, and our OpEx increased to 5%. And all in all, this then, of course, led to an EBIT increase of 16%, an EBIT of SEK 64 million versus SEK 56 million in the same period last year, which then is a margin of 32% versus 13% last year. And if we look at the same metrics for the rolling 12, we see that we have a margin for the rolling 12 of 31% versus 32% in the previous period. And for the EPS, we have an EPS in the quarter of SEK 2.5 million versus SEK 2.39 million in the same quarter last year.So if we move on to Slide #11, which is called cash flow. You will see that our cash flow from operating activities was -- cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital was SEK 57 million versus SEK 48 million in the same period last year. Of course, that -- the increase is then mainly due to the increased profit in this quarter. The changes in working capital were minus SEK 15 million versus plus SEK 25 million in the same quarter last year.It was a bit exceptional quarter in the same quarter last year. So this -- in a way, it's a bit more of a normal quarter. In the previous quarter, in quarter 1, we had -- if you may remember, in the quarter 4 of 2019, we had a switch of our ERP system, which meant that we actually had accounts payable, rather favorable situation in the first quarter because we paid off quite a lot of accounts payable in the fourth quarter 2019. So therefore, we had a positive change in working capital. It was one of the contributors at that point in time. And this is then is a more normal quarter this quarter. But also we had negative effects in this quarter of the accounts receivable, which is mainly due to the fact that quite a lot of our sales came in the second half or the later part of the quarter. So we made -- recorded the sales, but we did not get the cash. So cash flow from operating activities was SEK 42 million versus SEK 73 million, same period last year. Then we had a cash flow from investing activities of SEK 23 million versus SEK 4 million in the same period last year. That is then due to the 2 BioGaia investments that we made in Boneprox and Skinome of a total of about SEK 22 million. So if you deduct that, you will see that our cash flow from investing activities is actually lower than the same quarter last year. So all in all, it led to a cash flow for the period of SEK 17 million versus SEK 67 million last year, and a cash at the end of the period of SEK 1.49 billion versus SEK 284 million in the same period last year.So with that, I hand over to Isabelle Ducellier.

[Isabelle Valerie Ghislaine Ducellier, CEO & President]

Thank you, Alex. And to conclude, so I just would like to say that we are satisfied with our Q1. We have strong sales at plus 10%, and that has been driven both by Americas and APAC. Unfortunately, EMEA are still suffering and especially in one of our traditional big markets like Italy. But I just would like as well to put it into perspective because if you look at the total Italian probiotics market, it has decreased by 26%. So it's difficult to grow in so much decreasing market. But the pandemic didn't stop us, neither us nor our distributor, to launch new product and even for BioGaia to decide on internal changes to adapt ourselves on the new normal.And we've been restructuring our organization in order to seize the digital and the B2C opportunities. We've been very active, both in medical and consumer activation all around the world. We can clearly see that the multi-tenant strategy early implemented in markets such as the U.S. is the way to go. So our ambition is that our brand BioGaia will be available at every consumer touch point in order to generate growth.Thank you for your attention, and we will -- Alex and I will welcome your question with pleasure as usual.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie.

[Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson]

Yes. First, I wonder if it's possible maybe to quantify the impact you said with those orders that were shifted from the second quarter to the last weeks here of Q1? And then I wonder, operating cost now for the remainder of the year and given the restructuring you are doing some changes in the organization, does this mean operating costs will remain rather flat? Or do you expect them to start maybe increase again?

[Isabelle Valerie Ghislaine Ducellier, CEO & President]

Okay. So thank you, Kristofer. To answer your first question, yes, we can obviously quantify. We have a very clear view about what has happened. And it's mainly China and some countries in Eastern Europe. So if you put that together, we -- if you take that away from Q1, we would have landed in same level as Q1 last year, which was a strong Q1 last year with a slight increase. So that's the third question. Regarding the second question...

[Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson]

Sorry, sorry. I appreciate that. Yes, I understand. I mean you're talking about absolute numbers there. So that would mean adjusting for FX, you would still have been growing 10% plus pure organically in the quarter?

[Isabelle Valerie Ghislaine Ducellier, CEO & President]

Last year, we sold SEK 183 million. If we took away the order from Q2, we would have landed around SEK 190 million.And so to come back to your second question about the organization. So what we've decided actually is that we want to have a topnotch center in Eslöv, where we have BioGaia production. So in order to have a better efficiency of organization, we want to have all our people on site. So we want the operation to be much closer to manufacturing. We want D&R to be closer to operation and product development. So we have decided by December to close the office in Lund, and that's why you see the restructuring costs, as you saw. And in terms of staff, I mean we basically -- we are -- I mean we want to adapt ourselves to the new strategy and the new worldwide opportunity, namely we want to increase our competency in term of B2C, and we want to increase our competency in term of digital. Total number of people will be pretty similar, but the profile of the people will change. So that will be slight increase in term of number of staff, but with different profile.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And as there are no further questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers for closing remarks.

[Isabelle Valerie Ghislaine Ducellier, CEO & President]

Okay. Thank you for not having question. And Alex and I, we wish you a very nice day and see you for Q2. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.