Dustin Group AB

STO:DUST

Earnings Call Analysis

Dustin Reports Mixed Q1 Results Amid Market Challenges

Dustin's Q1 saw sales dip 12.7% year-on-year to SEK 5.793 billion, with organic sales down notably across divisions due to challenging market conditions, like the Danish frame agreement termination. Despite a slight gross margin improvement from 13.5% to 15.3% fueled by more service sales and software, SMB and LCP segments experienced downturns in sales. Notably, SMB sales decreased by 10.4%, and organic growth shifted negatively by 9.3%, leading to a segment result of SEK 61 million, down from SEK 104 million year-on-year. Nevertheless, operating cash flow improved substantially to SEK 250 million from a negative position last year, and leverage, thanks to a successful rights issue, is now within target at 2.8x.

Johan Karlsson and Julia Lagerqvist Lead Q1 2023 Presentation for Dustin

As Dustin commences its Q1 presentation for the fiscal year 2023-24, CEO Johan Karlsson, alongside newly appointed CFO Julia Lagerqvist and Head of IR Fredrik Satterstrom, expresses enthusiasm for the journey ahead with Dustin, an extensive reseller of IT hardware and software solutions.

Product Portfolio and Market Expansion Amid Challenging Conditions

Despite challenging market conditions reflecting customer cautiousness, Dustin demonstrates a resilient product mix, with an increased gross margin to 15.3% from last year's 13.5%, achieved through a focus on value-rich services over hardware like computers and mobile phones. This strategic product mix uplifted the software and services segment's share from 17% to 19.7%. Organically, sales were down but EBITA margins improved from 3.0% to 3.3%, showcasing effective margin management. A successful rights issue reduced leverage to 2.8x, aligning with financial targets.

SMB Segment Faces Downturn; Focus on Software and Services Growth

The SMB segment experienced a downturn in sales by 10.4%, with organic growth at -9.3% due to economic uncertainty. Demand shifted away from volatile categories like computers and mobile phones towards a growing software and services segment. The Benelux region showed relative resilience. Strong price discipline contributed to a positive but decreased gross margin at 3.6%, down from the previous year's 5.5%.

LCP Segment: Agile Performance with Focus on Services and Advanced Hardware

The LCP segment declined to SEK 4.1 billion in sales, a 13.6% decrease from the prior year, amidst contract expirations and accounting changes. The segment attracted stable underlying demand and an improved gross margin due to strategic deliveries and an improved customer product mix. Cost pressures were managed effectively, leading to a segment margin increase to 4.0% from the previous year's 3.0%.

Dustin Cuts Costs and Improves Efficiency Despite Inflation

To combat inflation and retain competitive edge, Dustin focused on operational efficiency and cost reduction, achieving an 11% reduction in fees compared to the previous year's first quarter. A 5% decrease in SG&A expenses versus last year, regardless of currency fluctuations, indicates a concerted effort to align the cost structure with market conditions.

Inventory and Net Working Capital Optimization

Inventory levels decreased by SEK 671 million from the same time last year as Dustin successfully adjusted to post-COVID supply recovery. This was facilitated by strategic customer engagement and procurement process improvements, particularly in the Benelux region. Consequently, net working capital improved by close to SEK 600 million, and the company aims to bring it around the long-term target of minus SEK 100 million.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Welcome to the Dustin Q1 Presentation for 2023 and 2024. [Operator Instructions]. Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Johan Karlsson; and CFO, Julia Lagerqvist. Please begin your meeting.

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to this Q1 presentation. I'm here with, as the speaker said, Julia Lagerqvist, who is our new CFO, but also with Fredrik Satterstrom that is Head of IR. And I think before we start, maybe you Julia, could give you a short introduction of yourself.

[Julia Lagerqvist, executive]

Yes, of course, as said, my name is Julia Lagerqvist. I joined Dustin in mid-December, so still a fairly new year. Before Dustin, I worked at Scandi Standard, a chicken producer that is also listed here in Stockholm, and I was the CFO for the last 4.5 years. Despite that, I was mostly in FMCG or fast moving consumer goods but now I'm very happy to be here and joining what I hope will be a very exciting journey with Dustin.

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

Thanks, Julia. And let's then continue and move to Slide 2, Dustin at a glance. So Dustin is mighty reseller with its space in IT hardware and software products. And as you can see in the graph up to the left, 82% of sales is IT hardware and 18% is software and services. Software and services is becoming a larger share of the total sales and has increased the share of sales by 4 percentage points in last financial year. .

Our assortment is primarily sold online and 60% of sales go through our online platform that share in the Nordics is about 80%. And in the Benelux, the share is lower. And as you know, we have recently launched our online sales model in the Benelux and the aim is that we moved to a similar share of online sales as in the Nordics later in coming years.

We are present in 6 markets in Europe with our main markets being the Netherlands and Sweden. And as you can see, key customer focus is B2B representing 98% of our sales.

Let's move to Slide 3 and a bit of the quarterly result summary. Sales in the quarter was affected by a challenging market with continued and a general cautiousness by the customers in many of our customer groups. Sales in the quarter was SEK 5.793 billion or 12.7% below last year. Organically, sales was down 16.2% for the group and 9.3% in SMB and 18.8% in LCP. Sales was affected by the termination of the frame agreement in Denmark and by changing in accounting treatment that affected sales by approximately 9% for Dustin Group.

Gross profit at SEK 888 million, was down slightly or 0.6%, while gross margin improved from 13.5% last year to 15.3% this year. A strong product mix with more service and less mobile phones and computers affected margins positively. Software and services share was up from 17% last year to 19.7% this year. Again, we saw the strength of our position as we were able to maintain margins in core categories through price leadership in these challenging times. Adjusted EBITA at SEK 192 million compared to last year's SEK 201 million, but with an EBITA margin up from last year's 3.0% to 3.3%. Items affecting comparability was SEK 17 million as our integration work continued during the quarter.

EBIT was at SEK 129 million compared to last year's SEK 138 million, and cash flow from operating activities ended very positively at SEK 250 million compared to negative SEK 85 million last year. Leverage was at 4.6x compared to 5.0x last year. And if we include the rights issue proceeds, leverage was at 2.8x meaning in the range of our financial targets, but we'll come back to that later in the presentation. And obviously, one of the highlights in the quarter was the rights issue that was carried out successfully and according to plan and generated SEK 1.710 billion in net proceeds. I'm also pleased to see that our continued focus on cost has had effect, which we will see later in the presentation.

Now we move to Slide 4, where Julia will give us some more details on the SMB results. Over to Julia.

[Julia Lagerqvist, executive]

Thank you, Johan. Yes, looking at SMB segment, the sales landed at SEK 1.7 billion, which was 10.4% below last year. The organic growth was minus 9.3%. The continued economic uncertainty affected demand in all markets. Lower demand for computer and mobile phones as these categories are more affected by the economic uncertainty. However, the share of Software and Service sales increased just above 12%, with a healthy trend for contracted recurring services combined with weak sales of hardware. Geographically, the Benelux showed the best sales development.

Gross margin developed negatively in the quarter. More price-conscious market meant a shift to a weaker product mix with more basic variance of hardware products and more campaign volumes. We have kept a strong price discipline, which had a positive impact on gross margin but also impacted sales. And overall, the lower sales impacted the segment margins negatively due to fairly stable cost base. All in all, the segment margin ended up at 3.6% compared to 5.5% last year. The segment result ended at SEK 61 million compared to last year's SEK 104 million.

If you go to Page 6, we look at the LCP segment. And the sales was SEK 4.1 billion, down 13.6% year-on-year. The expiration of the Danish contract plus one major contract now recognized on net basis affected goods negatively by circa 13%. But overall stable underlying demand in both the public sector and the large corporates. And from a geographical perspective, sales performance was strongest in Finland. Gross margin developed positively, this was driven by a large delivery with high margins and improved customer product mix with more advanced hardware and services. Not having the expiry Danish contract also contributed positively to the margin [indiscernible] lower margins.

In addition, we've had a sharp increase in takeback, which had a positive impact on margins. Johan will come back to this later in the presentation. So despite the high inflation, the pressure on cost, the segment margin ended at 4.0% compared to 3.0% last year. The segment result was SEK 163 million or 14% above last year's SEK 142 million. Overall, a strong performance by the LCP team in this quarter.

On Page 6, we look at our cost development. And as showed last quarter, a focus on improved efficiency through integrations and cost cutting has led to significant reduction in fees. This work has continued in Q1, and we see an 11% reduction in the fees compared to last year's Q1. This has had a positive impact on our total cost base, but it's partly offset by inflation and fluctuations in currency.

Looking at SG&A for Q1, we see a 5% decrease versus last year adjusted for currency fluctuation. This is a continued important focus area for us to make sure that we adjust our cost structure to market conditions.

Coming to Page 6. We look at the net working capital development. And net working capital has improved close to SEK 600 million compared to the same quarter last year and ended at minus SEK 260 million. This is mainly driven by inventory reduction. I will come back to this on the next slide. Both accounts receivable and payables decreased mainly related to lower business volumes. We also have some positive seasonal timing effects and our long-term target for net working capital is to be around minus SEK 100 million.

If you look at Page 8, you have an overview of the inventory development. Inventory decreased further in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter and is now SEK 671 million lower than the same period last year. The reduction is mainly driven by our lower customer-specific inventory, which is at the lowest level in 9 quarters as the supply situation is now fully recovered after COVID. This inventory level is made possible by active collaboration with customers and partners, benefiting from our strong position in the market. We also continue to benefit from improvements done to our procurement processes, mainly in the Benelux region. And with this targeted work, inventory is now at a balance and normalized level, where we target to be for the coming quarters.

Moving on to cash flow and CapEx on Slide 9 and summarizing what we covered in the previous slides, you see that the cash flow for the period was SEK 129 million compared to SEK 218 million last year. Looking at the details, we see that the cash flow from operating activities before changes in net working capital was SEK 108 million compared to last year's SEK 150 million. The negative development is mainly due to the increased interest rates. Cash flow from the change in net working capital was SEK 142 million compared to last year's negative SEK 235 million, mainly affected by the lower inventory as we previously showed. This gives us a total cash flow from operating activities of SEK 250 million in the quarter, so an overall strong cash flow.

Cash flow from investing activities was SEK 70 million compared to SEK 51 million last year. More on this in just a few seconds. The cash flow from financing activities was negative SEK 51 million compared to plus SEK 353 million last year. However, last year's positive effect is mainly related to new loans raised at a total of SEK 400 million.

If we move on to CapEx. The total investments in the quarter was SEK 119 million, of which, as I said, SEK 70 million affected cash flow. And the majority of the SEK 70 million of CapEx related to IT development, including the new IT platform, which will be key for our future operational efficiency. Investments in tangible and intangible assets was SEK 40 million this year of which SEK 30 million was affecting cash. The noncash items are mainly related to lease contracts and [indiscernible]. And investments in related to services was SEK 24 million compared to SEK 7 million last year. This is mainly linked to harmonization of data sets. And with that, I would like to hand back to Johan.

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

Thanks a lot, Julia. And let's move on to Slide 10, and it's really encouraging to see that we, in the quarter, both improved the working capital and successfully carried out the rights issue, which took us to a leverage of 2.8x EBITA, including the proceeds of the rights issue, which is done in the frame of our financial targets of 2x to 3x. In the quarter, the debt was reduced by SEK 350 million by the improved net working capital and positive effects from the stronger Swedish krona. At the same time, the rights issue brought net proceeds of SEK 1.710 billion. And that after the rights issue that took net debt down to SEK 2.734 billion. This means that we can now put full focus on implementing our strategic plan and continue to realize synergies, improve our offerings and continue the expansions in our markets. This also makes us prepared to use our position and grow as the market gradually will improve during 2024. In terms of leverage, we will continue to use our cash flow, reduce leverage to be prepared for further expansion.

Moving on to Slide 11. And as we mentioned on the previous slide, we are now done with the majority of work in reducing debt and can focus on other parts of the strategy, namely margin and growth. When it comes to margin, the cost focus will remain, as Julia mentioned, and the synergy extraction can bring further efficiency gains. Further to that, the addition of service to the hardware offering and sales is continuing to show good effects and we can see that in the quarter by the strong development of takeback. This, in combination with using our position to maintain and improve margins on hardware will bring possibilities on margin in the future.

Moving to growth. Growth target is still in line and the ambition of growth is still in line with our financial targets and that means 8% growth in SMB and 5% in LCP. This will come from continued improved offerings with hardware, software and services. It will also come from a broadening of the customer base both in the Nordics, but also in the Benelux. Further to that we will continue to invest in the future Dustin through the transformative steps taken with harmonization of brand, culture, ERP systems and customer offerings. This will form the basis for a successful growth and margin development as our journey continues.

If we move to Slide 12, we can there see one of the successes of the quarter, I would say, on the margin improvement activities, we have in our long-term plan is an increase of takeback services. And as you can see in the graph, the volume from takeback improved by almost 100% in Q1. This was possible by a strong demand from our customers but also due to improvements in internal processes in both our takeback centers in Sweden and the Netherlands. The potential here is great, and our ambition is to refurbish products to our customers preferably online, but also offer other circular offerings that could add value to our customers. In this area, we see good help from our LCP segment that through customer requirements can help develop offerings also with the SMB market.

This is clearly an area that we increase in importance in the coming years, and that has the potential to make us more relevant towards our customers and improve margins.

We then move to Slide 13 and a short summary of the first quarter. So as we will summarize in Q1, we can see that the markets have continued to be challenging, primarily on the SMB side. The expired Danish contract and the change in accounting treatment has further affected sales negatively in LCP. And in total, sales declined by 12.7%. Gross margin, on the other hand, was strong in the quarter and mainly through a strong product mix and some larger rollouts with good margin, strong price discipline and a reduction of low-margin customer deals added to the positive gross margin.

In total, this resulted in an adjusted EBITA of SEK 192 million, and an EBITA margin of 3.3%, up from 3.0% last year. This was a result of the good gross margin, but also as we have [indiscernible] a result of our cost focus. Through the reduction of working capital, we also saw good development of the quarterly cash flow. And you heard about the positive operating working capital -- cash flow.

Further to that, the oversubscribed rights issue generated SEK 1.7 billion of cash, which reduced the debt and move leverage down to 2.8x, which is in the range of our financial target. As the markets are still weak, the cost focus remains and despite inflation and weakening of the Swedish krona cost remains at last year's levels. This puts us in a good position when as we forecast the market will gradually improve during the first half of 2024.

And with that, I think we conclude the formal part of the presentation and open up for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [indiscernible] from Handelsbanken.

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

Yes. Perfect.

[Unknown Analyst]

Could you please comment on the progress on the One Dustin program, the progress here and the priorities for this year and the improved margins that we saw was this mainly related to the synergy extractions here or more of a mix effect? And could you please explain the different parts here, if it was more related to the mix or to the improvements in the synergies.

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

Yes, I think it's a combination in the quarter where we saw a few really good customer deals or rollouts with a high share of services included in them, and that brings the margin up primarily in the LCP side. And you can see that in the segment margin of LCP and we are -- there is -- in the presentation a slide on where we look at head count today and a year ago. And part of that reduction of the head count is because we are putting organizations together and capture the synergies of primarily, I would say, the Benelux acquisitions. So it's a combination of the two.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And could you also comment on the take-backs, the traction here looked very good. But how much from this was -- yes, the margin improvement, how much, it was from the take-backs and what potential margin improvements do you see from this in the coming year?

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

I think takeback is very encouraging because it's really a customer-driven offering because customers like us to help them with the sustainability challenges that they have. Currently, we are on, I would say, relatively the beginning of this journey, so the numbers are not huge and they will improve gradually as time goes because the demand is there. The effect on the financial result is, I would say, is there, but is limited due to the fact that we're in the beginning of the, say, the sales of this product or service.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

[Johan Karlsson, executive]

We conclude the quarter 1 result presentation from Dustin Group. Thanks a lot for joining and wish you all a great day. Thank you very much.