Investment AB Latour

STO:LATO B

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Investment AB Latour's Q1 2022 Report. [Operator Instructions] Today, I'm pleased to present Johan Hjertonsson, our President and CEO; and Anders Morck, CFO. Speakers, please begin.

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Thank you so much, Johan Hjertonsson here speaking. Welcome, everybody to listen to our presentation of our Q1 report and at the end we will, as usual, of course, have a Q&A session. And at my side here, I have our eminent CFO, Anders Morck. So Anders and I will take you through the presentation together.

So if we start, as usual, with the first slide here, which is on our group structure. The whole structure, so to speak, is unchanged, and we've done a minor, minor change where we have divested our partly owned company at the beginning of the year in January. We had a good first quarter in our industrial operations at our wholly-owned business despite quite heavy, as you all know, external turbulences and especially with Russia's invasion on Ukraine. We have organic growth in both order intake and sales, but with slightly lower margins. The reason for this is that we've had lower productivity and thus higher cost.

Of course, we had put a high focus on prioritizing our customers and the service to our customers. We take pride in that, and we think that's very, very important. When it comes to Russia's invasion on Ukraine, it's important to know that we have a very small exposure overall to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. We especially put focus on the health and safety for our employees that we have in Ukraine. We have 270 employees in Ukraine within the Hultafors Group business where we have a factory and the factory -- textile factory and the factory is located in Western Ukraine close to Lviv a little bit south of Lviv.

We have also done the Hultafors donations to the Red Cross and on behalf of all our companies have made a large donation to save the children for their work in Ukraine. Then going forward, if we go to the next slide.

The total return for the portfolio. As you could expect, then in this very turbulent time with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and also the increased interest rates that are ticking up quite heavily. And I would say that we have a clear signs of inflation in the whole system right now. So that's under the 2 main underlying reasons for the quite turbulent stock market situation in Q1. And therefore, the investment portfolio has gone back 19.5% compared to the SIXRX, which is back 14% during this time. All our holdings are directly or indirectly affected by the war in Ukraine, and of course, we focus primarily on safety for all of our employees in connection to this.

All holdings are affected by cost increases, component deficiency, shortage of components, et cetera, logistic issues. But I'm also happy to say that the underlying development in general is quite strong and good. Until yesterday, the portfolio value decreased to SEK 74.8 billion and the total return amounts to minus 23.5% so far this year, whereas the SIXRX as of yesterday was down 18.3%. This time of the year, we have concluded all the nomination committee work and all our listed companies, and we're very satisfied with the outcome. I think overall, in all of the 10 listed companies, we have very strong and competent boards to help support our companies to grow and overview that. And we're very happy also to report that we have a strong gender equality all over the line, all of the 10 listed companies.

Then if we come to the next slide, we come into our wholly-owned businesses. And as you can see on the slide, we have a very nice tilted curves that fields upwards here, both when it comes to EBIT, order intake and sales. And as you can see, there is an increasing gap between sales and order intake, and that's something you can see in general today that the order intake is strong, the demand is strong, but many companies struggles with deliveries and to deliver all those orders, actually, and therefore, we have an increased order stock, which is reflected in the gap between the order intake and outgoing sales.

Having said that, we're very satisfied with the first quarter. Good growth in order intake, as I said, 12% organic growth and 10% organic growth in sales. As you can see in the number, including M&A and currencies and so on, the growth is considerably higher than the numbers I just mentioned. And as I said before, good volumes, but with lower margins due to the supply chain disruptions, higher raw material and transportation costs.

And also, actually, I'd like to point out there was a very high degree of sick leave in almost -- in all our companies, especially in the beginning of the quarter in January and February due to the Omicron variant. People were sick, but also the people around sick people were obliged to isolate. It was quite large absence both in our offices and factories during that time.

And as I have underlined, we put high pride in a high level, a high service level to our customers. Therefore, we have prioritized that, but to a lower productivity with higher cost. But we believe this is a strong competitive advantage, and our business units uses this as a competitive advantage to win in the market.

Operating profit, as you can see, grow by 18% to SEK 669 million with an EBIT margin of 13.3%. As usual, for those of you that follow this quarterly talks with Latour, it's a little bit repetitive, but that's how it is. We continue to invest in our holdings, especially in the areas of R&D, marketing and sales development and continued internationalization.

Since we are a strong owner with a very long-term view, we can continue to put strong emphasis on those investments even during dire times. I'd also like to highlight that we've made a lot of progress in our sustainability work, and we continue to do that with a high pace where we have massively increased the networking in between our wholly-owned holdings and also our 10 listed holdings with very good results and effects doing that.

If we go into the M&A part, if you go to acquisitions during this year, we continue with a fairly high pace. We finalized 4 transactions in Q2 -- Q1, sorry, Hultafors has acquired Telesteps, a Swedish leading manufacturer of telescopic ladders based in Tranas the global distribution. Telesteps have a net sales of about SEK 80 million and with a very nice profitability, well in line with the profitability of the Hultafors Group.

Consens we have acquired through Bemsiq -- through Bemsiq's subsidiary, S+S Regeltechnik in Germany. It's a German developer of devices, sensors, components, and testing technology and assistance for humidity, temperature and air quality. Consens had a net sales of close to EUR 3 million and a profit level well above Latour's financial targets. We have also acquired Esse-Ti to Latour Industries, and Esse-Ti is an Italian manufacturer of alarm systems for elevators. Those buttons you press if you get stuck in the elevator. I hope you don't -- hope you will not have a real use of them in the future, but we're good that they're there if you need and they have net sales of about EUR 10 million and about 40% of the sales is exported outside Italy.

And then we have done a smaller acquisition through Caljan and that is PHS Logistiktechnik which is an Austrian company that has developed an automatic parcel unloader used by parcel carriers. The rapid unloader system reduces unloading times, increases throughput and improves the working environment in logistics centers. The company was founded in 2017, it's headquartered in Graz in Austria with 3 employees. So having said that, as an introduction, overall, I hand over to, as I said before, our eminent CFO, Mr. Anders Morck, over to you.

[Anders Mörck, executive]

Thank you, my eminent CEO. And before we start with the comments around the business areas, I just want to repeat what Johan said before because all areas more or less have these problems with supply chain disruptions, higher raw material, higher transportation costs and also put this pride in a high level of service to customers. So I won't say that on each slide, and that's why I'm going to keep it a little bit shorter this time.

But we start with Bemsiq, the first business area. They have had a continued strong underlying demand. The total growth was 56%, but mainly explained then by acquisitions. The organic growth in order intake was 25%, but all of that didn't come through in net sales. So net sales grew by 11%. And you know the reason then for the -- not being able to deliver all orders to customers.

And the profitability then is excellent this quarter at 25.1% in operating margin. And if you remember, in Q4, we commented that we had some one-offs and temporarily a bit lower profitability. But now we can see the potential in this business area in this quarter.

Let's go to the next business area, which is Caljan, and the success story on orders for Caljan continues very strong underlying demand for their products. The order intake grew by 42%. And even though the order book has been on a record level now for the, I think, more or less 5 quarters in a row, it's still a new record this quarter as well. Also, net sales is developing positively. It's significantly above last year, but it could have been much better if it wasn't for these supply chain disruptions that I'm not going to talk about.

And despite all challenges, operating profit more than doubled to EUR 4.6 million with a margin of EUR 13.7 million. And due to the order backlog, which is on record level, we see that this is going to be nice the quarters to come. And we do continued investments in Caljan's expansion. So the latest is the which Johan talked about, a new factory in Germany. And of course, the growth demands for a lot of new recruitments, which is a heavy work for Caljan.

And Johan already talked about the acquisitions, we leave that to the side and go to the next business area, which is Hultafors Group. And to start with the highest priority is still the safety and well-being for our employees in Ukraine. But the figures, of course, much less important, but still on a very impressive note, a very strong top line development, growing net sales by [Indiscernible] of which the organic growth is 9%. The profit was SEK 250 million compared to SEK 183 million last year with a margin of 15.6%. So the really strong development for Hultafors continues, which we are very glad for.

We turn to the next page, and we come to Latour Industries. The demand for Latour Industries' companies has been very strong during the quarter. The order intake grew by 15% organically. And the total growth, including acquisition was at 20%. Net sales, however, when we look on organic growth was a little bit low on 4% organic, but we see no risk in that the order backlog will not so to say, come in the net sales going forward. So we feel quite relaxed about that. And as for everyone else, the profitability has been affected by the issues with supply chain and et cetera. So we know when we feel quite much comfort in that the business area here has a much higher the future profitability that we show at this moment. And as the headline says, this is building the basis for future business areas and that's why we continue to invest in the future very much here.

Let's go for the next distance area, Nord-Lock Group. We have a very strong development for Nord-Lock this quarter. And then we must say it's despite a very, very weak market in China, a market that to a very large extent, closed at the end of the quarter, more or less. And considering that the organic growth of 8% in net sales and 6% in order intake is very strong. So the negative development in China is well compensated by Europe and Americas. And the order book is now on a record level, and we have a strong operating result of SEK 103 million or 25.3% in operating margin.

Let's go to Swegon then, the last business area. The order intake grew by 6%. And also here, we see our backlog on a record level. The organic growth in net sales was 7%. And more or less, all markets are growing. But this time, it's U.K. and North America that grew the most. And the operating result amounted to SEK 140 million with a margin of 9.2%. And all necessary price adjustment to keep up the margins going forward have been implemented. So we feel quite safe on that matter.

And let's go for my last picture here, which is the net asset value. And as you can see in the report, it has decreased by 13.6% during the quarter to NOK 196 per share, almost in the same level of SIXRX index that was minus 14%. Our share price at the end of March was NOK 301, which then implies that we have a premium valuation in the stock price at 62%. And just to remind everyone, as you know, our net asset value calculation is only an indication of a prudent value of the assets that we have that are not listed.

Until yesterday, the net asset value had decreased to NOK 181 per share, and the share price has decreased even further to NOK 261 and that implies a premium right now then at 44% compared to net asset value. Our total debt is at SEK 8.6 billion, almost unchanged since year-end, and that is 7%, a fairly low level of the total market value of our investments. So we have a good headroom for being active in acquisitions going forward. Thank you so much. And now back to the eminent CEO, Johan Hjertonsson.

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Thank you, Mr. Morck, for an excellent presentation. And I will then talk about our financial targets. And to remind ourselves, our minimum target is to grow above 10%, have an operating margin above 10% and have a return on capital in the -- within the area of 15% to 20%.

And during the last 12 months, we have had growth of 28.5%, almost tripling that target on growth. And we had an EBIT margin of 14.3% in the last 12 months, and we had a return on operating capital of 16%. So I'm very happy to report that we are well above or within our target ranges on all 3 criterias in our wholly-owned business area.

And let's remind ourselves, an operating margin of 10% is a minimum target of -- for Latour companies. Very many of our company -- most of our companies, they are more around 15% or actually upwards. So a very strong performance, and we're very proud as a team and we have a very good team work, delivering all of this.

And then looking forward, next slide, on the potential, so to speak. We are a long-term sustainable investment company. And our long-term ambition is not changing. Our ambition is future growth. And as you can see, we have close to 80% in Europe of our international sales. We have 15% in North America and 6% in Asia. And I see that as a very positive picture because the picture shows very big possibilities and opportunities going forward.

And we will continue to build organically our existing holdings, as I said before, primarily by investing in R&D, marketing and sales. We will continue with add-on acquisitions to the holdings we already have, and we will also acquire new holdings or new platforms going forward. We have an ambition to grow, and we are truly delivering another growth target, as I just explained.

And as you can see, it's almost limitless potentials going forward. Having said that, we are monitoring the macroeconic development closely as we always do. and we have a very agile and decentralized organization structure and philosophy, which makes us very quick to react to changing completions in demand and so in the market. So having said that, I would like to conclude and thank on the -- thank you all for listening to the presentation from myself and Anders, and then we open up for the Q&A session before ending the call. So Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Joachim Gunell of DNB Markets.

[Joachim Gunell, analyst]

So starting off, but can you say anything here about the timing and the decision to increase the MTM program here in February and quantify what the financial power -- firepower is basically today? On that topic also, I mean, the correction in public markets, has that opened up for more, I mean, attractive opportunities here? And I mean, where do you spend most of your time here in terms of, I mean, building the industrial operations platform with add-on acquisitions? Or are you also delving into what opportunities than arising in public markets?

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

I think there's -- at least Anders can start on that question.

[Anders Mörck, executive]

Yes. Okay. So thank you. Nice speaking to you, Joachim. Of course, the increase of the total amount for the MTM program to SEK 15 billion is to prepare for growth. And that is one of our sources to be able to finance further growth. We have always been a little bit ahead our development, so to say, so that we don't run short on financing, so to say. So we have a good headroom. And I would say, you know the -- it's official how you calculate our headroom, which then is 10% of our listed portfolio. And it's 2.5x our EBITDA in the industrial operations, and that give us around SEK 6 billion headroom, but then you also know that we are going to make a dividend shortly. So let's say, around SEK 5 billion we are at in -- then you have dynamic effects. Once we do an investment, you also increase the EBITDA of the market investments.

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Yes. And to the latter part of your question, Joachim. We continue, of course, to look for opportunities, both in the private market and the public market, so to speak. So we don't limit ourselves to one of those. We look broadly overall to find nice opportunities going forward.

[Joachim Gunell, analyst]

And then with regards to very -- I mean, still strong demand backdrop here, as evident from the book-to-billed. Then here with, I mean, solid growth in orders and invoicing at, call it, slightly compressed margins as you take this like long-term, call it, responsibility towards your customers that we have seen in the past 2 quarters. Is that something that we could expect also going forward as you are, I mean trading considerably above your long-term targets here in terms of EBIT profitability? And then can you say anything in terms of where -- I mean, if there are any of your subsidiaries that stands out from that point of view?

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

It's in general that we drive that. And we've done that over the last 2 to 3 quarters, I would say we prioritize that quite highly. We get good feedback from our customers. And we think that will pay off in the long term in the result of increased market shares going forward. You should know if you trade and do business with Latour company, you have a high service level for us, and we don't leave our customers alone, so to speak. So we will continue to do that.

And once the world and when it comes to all these component shortages and logistic issues and the war in Ukraine. And so once all of that normalizes, I expect, of course, productivity to go up and EBIT margin to consequently go up as well. But for the time being, we think this is the absolutely best approach for the long-term results of our businesses.

[Joachim Gunell, analyst]

Understood. In terms of the Caljan acquisition of PHS, can you say anything because this seems slightly more about, call it, pre-revenue innovative technology addition. Is that something that we can expect going forward as well as it slightly differs from the more bolt-on character that we have seen in the remainder of the industrial operations?

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Yes, you're correct in your analysis of the Caljan acquisition. It's a small acquisition. It's mainly an acquisition of the intellectual property and the development of a product that we find highly interesting that we can add to our present product offering to even service our customers better going forward in Caljan.

And I think the main focus for Caljan is still a very, very strong organic growth that you can see in orders. So the #1 focus for Caljan is to take all of those orders and convert them into sales, which means building factories and hiring people and growing quite heavily. It's a very impressive growth agenda that the management of Caljan is undertaking. I mean, please remember, this is an industrial company with factories and products. And when you grow with these numbers, it's a big challenge to do that. So that's the main priority going forward. But when opportunities like this materializes, we will take them. And of course, we have, so to speak, product platform and technology platform that we can develop either through R&D and/or with selected acquisitions in that product area going forward.

[Joachim Gunell, analyst]

That makes sense. And Bemsiq that holding is also in the spot light here, I mean building automation, the organic growth acceleration we are seeing there. Can you comment a bit on what's actually driving that step-up in organic growth?

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Yes. The main macro -- please add on, Anders here, if you want. The main macro growth driver is, I would say, is energy, and it's the classification of energy in building. You will see that people want to save energy in buildings. And 1 way, 1 very strong and good way to do that is to really measure everything in the buildings, the temperature and so on. And then there's also another strong macro trend, a little bit boosted by the pandemic, but it was already there before. And that's the notion of the quality of air, the environmental quality of air and well-being of breathing good particle free air and also air with good oxygen levels. And then you also need to measure the air quality within buildings and in [indiscernible]. So -- but I would say those are the 2 main macro driving efforts, but the strongest one is certainly energy consumption to heat and ventilate and to cool buildings and also when it comes to water usage in buildings. So you need sensors and you need to measure everything locally to do that.

[Joachim Gunell, analyst]

So it sounds like a fertile demand backdrop going forward as well then. But -- and one final for me. Just from a broader perspective with regards to what we're seeing with supply chains tightening up, et cetera. Can you talk a bit about -- I mean, what do you think about the trends of onshoring of production across your subsidiaries?

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Yes. I think I mean, I'm not a metric economic specialists. So as you know, number one is that we'll make sure we have flexibility and that we are agile very fast in adapting to this very turbulent situation going forward. That's number one, right? So we need to have better B plans if the A plan does materialize, so to speak.

When it comes to onshoring, yes, I think overall, there will be a stronger trend on onshoring, we need to set up a backup supply chain systems. And I think the way the world is developing, you really need to put the question in front of you -- really ask yourself who and which country you're doing business with and how you feel about doing that and really take decisions based on that and not only primarily short-term economic value into that, you have to think about the long-term picture. As you can see, many that has done a lot of business in Russia, of course, sorry for that today. But I think that's a trend one needs to watch and carefully manage going forward.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand back over to our speakers.

[Johan Hjertonsson, executive]

Okay. Thank you all for calling in. It's quite many of you calling in. We're very glad for that, that you're listening. We're very glad for the questions from you Joachim, but if it's more of you, that have questions, don't hesitate on the next call. Of course, this call is ending right now and looking forward to speak to you all and when we present our Q2 results later on this year.

Thank you, everybody, and I wish you all a great weekend in the nice spring weather that is arriving here in Sweden. So when you come to the weekend, later on today, have a great weekend, everybody, and from Anders and myself, thank you all.