Pricer AB

STO:PRIC B

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Hello, everyone, this is Magnus Larsson speaking. I'm President and CEO of Pricer. With me today for today's Q3 presentation I also have Claes Wenthzel; and we have Cecilia Vinell who's actually helping out with facilitating your questions for later.

Very happy to be here today and do this Q3 report. And as always, for those of you that watched our reports before, I would like to start with our vision. It's to be retail's first choice in in-store automation and communication. And I think that as you might have seen, we got an announcement from the S-Group. It's an extended order. It's more than 100 stores that they plan to deploy before summer. And then once again, to me that's also a sign of being retail's first choice. Now they -- we've been working together for a full year. We are almost done deploying their 300 initial stores and really happy to have this additional order.

It's one way of showing the retail's first choice. I think that in discussions with them we have managed to be the first choice in quite many different ways. From the initial engagement where we looked at the opportunity, we analyzed their needs from the procurement process and eventually into actually being awarded the contract. But then constantly during the entire work together, the engagement, the overcoming things that doesn't work, fixing it, addressing it, and at the end creating a very successful deployment in the S-Group stores, improving the work for the S-Group store staff, but also for the shoppers in their stores.

So for those of you who don't know us that well, where are we -- or that used to know us, where are we? Swedish company. We have deployed more than 300 labels -- electronic shelf labels. We have a SaaS service that we call Plaza. We have more than 3,500 stores connected and some 25 million labels connected to Plaza. But all in all, 25,000 stores with more than 300 labels makes us a leader in the retail space.

Looking on the market. So which market are we in and what's happening on the market? When we look at retail technology and when we look at the space where we're in the store digitalization, and especially the shelf labels, it's market that's been dominated by a relatively few number of countries and markets contributing to the growth and a very strong growth on the ESL side.

We see that a lot of things are happening now to actually increase the speed of the market, but still the penetration rate as we view it is somewhere around 10%. So given the interest that we see, it's still a low number showing that there is a huge market opportunity ahead of us.

And then, why does people wish to actually do the digitalization? Well, there is clearly a need to create efficiency. There could be many reasons, could be lack of staff. You need to do more with less staff. It could, of course be to create a competitive advantage that you can actually do more with less staff. But it could also be that you want to improve the customer experience, so that you want to unlock unpenetrated revenue streams. How can we get more in the shopper basket, or how can we make sure that we actually help our retailers tag into revenue streams from the [ CPG ], so from the suppliers they have, Coca Cola, Unilever, et cetera.

We're in the middle of our strategy work. But we can also say that from -- as communicated before, the markets that we believe are highly strategic, combination of high growth potential, but also that we have the ability to serve them well. We look at the U.K., we look at Central Europe, it could be Germany, it's quite a few other countries, Spain, U.S. and Australia. We have historically spoken about Japan. We believe now that these are the key markets that we focus on right now. Let's see if this will once again change after we're done with the strategy work. But we see massive potential in these markets and we see also a lot of untapped potential and we see a very high need from these retails in these markets.

When you digitize a retail store, I can see there are a lot of companies that feel invited to participate and they want to be part of this. And it's some retail tech solutions can be built easier than others.

But what is really hard is to build something, build technology for the store environment that actually meets the criteria of the store environment. They have to be durable, they have to make sure they're easy to manage. You have to make sure that they are -- there is a high reliability and that they will actually stay for a long time, and that whatever service you want to get out of them, that they are responsive and available. It sounds fairly easy, but it's really difficult environment from the shoppers banging stuff with a customer [ card ], the environment -- technology environment, and that's something that we've managed to do really well.

When we look into the future what solutions are coming, we see a huge interest in any kind of solution that can reduce carbon footprint while working more effectively. Printing less paper clearly does this, but we also believe that with what we provide and the solution we will provide into the future, having a clear sustainability, that we address it in a way that will actually help them reduce their carbon print, I think will be one key criteria. Very much in the Europe, but we see the very same thing also in the North American market.

Retail media is another area. The idea of being able to communicate in a different way in the store to actually do advertisement and promotions in the [ Norway ] and capture new revenue streams, that is also creating a lot of retailer interest. And I think there's hardly any event, exhibition or keynote presentation where retail media is not mentioned one way or another. It once again one of those areas where we can see there's a lot of untapped potential, but might still be in the early phases. So clearly something to be engaged in, but it might not actually give us the large revenues this year or next year. But clearly this [ is ] in some very early foundational years.

The market is taking off. I think I covered it a bit, on the digital transformation, we also see that retailers that now engage in the transformation, they want to make sure that this investment, if they now decide to do the point of sales, they have done the back office and the ERP, they've done the ESLs.

Having done all this, then I think the question is, what's next? How can we actually add tech in the store that will make the online presence and the physical presence get closer together? Can we add different devices? Can we add gadgets, engines, things that are online and connected, that will add visibility to the store, visibility to the shelves, that can actually detect motion? You lift something. If you go to the online platform and you actually check a product out, the supplier of the platform will clearly know that this customer was looking at this product, which has been hard in the store. But if you attach a motion sensor to, let's say a mobile phone in a mobile phone store, well then they can quite easily see which products are popular and whatnot.

So we see that this merge with the omnichannel and then both the online and the physical presence, and actually try to do something -- it's something that will generate a lot of opportunities into the future.

Cost reduction, operational efficiency, that's clearly driving it, but also the technical advancements. We see some markets that have been late bloomers, they are now ready. They have done the initial investments required to actually digitize their stores. We see that in the U.K., we see that in North America or U.S. as an example. They weren't really ready before, but now the readiness is in place.

On the market status, so what's happening right now? Of course, we see a lot of interest in ESL across several markets, but we've also seen that some of the retailers that have now made a large investment, but they're not fully deployed, that they now actually aim to actually do a full deployment.

And in the report we mentioned that we now expect orders from one of our large customers as they plan to now fully deploy all their stores. They've had a partial deployment, some stores without [ the ] [ ESL ], some with partial deployments, but now their target is to actually improve store efficiency and to work different way with price management. They will actually now by Christmas next year have all stores deployed with ESLs to actually make sure that they have an environment and a setup where they can fully benefit from all, what the digitalization can give them. They were really happy for what they did in a number of stores, now want to do it fully to reap all the rewards.

We see a lot of actions in North America in general, U.S. and Canada. We see a lot of action in the retailers in U.K., here, most of the Tier 1 and many [ other ] Tier 2 retailers within several areas, grocery, do-it-yourself, home electronics and actually quite a few other areas, are now looking at or planning for an ESL deployment. So a lot of interesting discussions that will happen and business that will happen over the coming year and years. We -- You have seen our result. It's, of course very pleasing to report it today, but it's the effect and the result of a lot of work.

We -- You can say that we started a transformation back in 2022 with the formation of a new management team. We started to -- we changed the go-to-market plan. So in 2022 we got the growth of the company started, which had somewhat stagnated. 2022, 2023 we were strengthening our balance sheet. We did a share issue last year and we -- at the end of the year we communicated actually the cost reduction corporate program, but also the start of the transformation.

Today we can announce that actually in Q3, we have reached the full effect of the cost savings program and the transformation is something that is part of the daily life at the company. We've done a lot of work, there is still a lot of work to be done, but we have done so much that we can say that we will not end up in the same situation as we did before, where we add resources to actually compensate for processes that might not work as good as they should.

So we have a structure, we are working continuously, but we have actually laid the foundation, we laid the platform to actually move into the future, which would then take us to phase 4, where of course we want to increase the speed of growth and we still want to continue the operational excellence to make sure that we deliver competitive growth at the high profitability.

And I think that's probably a good segue, over to you, Claes.

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

Yes. So let's start looking at the sales and the gross margin development. Large orders, customers has a big impact on each quarter and the lack of growth is due to few large orders or customers that was buying last year. Despite of that we have very strong and good growth in the rest of the market throughout the period, not only in Q3. If you look at the gross margin for the whole period now, it's 21.3%. It's almost 5% units higher than a year ago. The reason for this is of course a product mix, but it's also better cost of goods [ sold ].

And if we go to the next slide, looking at the last 12 months for EBITDA and net profit development, and as you can see, we have [ earnest ] growth in EBIT sales the first quarter in 2023. But the effect is much stronger now in 2024 when we have increased the gross margin and also have the effect from our cost reduction program.

The next slide is the -- our P&L and here is a few interesting things. Down at the bottom you see of course the cost reduction effect and the higher margin effect. But also on the financial items we can see much better development compared to a year ago. And a big part of this is related to that we have reduced or amortized our [ factoring ] totally. So we have saved financial costs related to that with [ SEK 8 million ] for the whole period. And now [ all ] said, when we go out of Q3, we will going forward have a more normal tax situation.

We [ have ] had a lot of losses in the Swedish company and that's why we have had such a low tax cost now over the first 9 months.

Then, if we go to the next slide, the cash flow from operations and as you can see here, we expect to have higher sales now in the fourth quarter and that's why we have increased our inventory. That big impact on the cash flow is of course the amortization of all the [ factoring ], which is close to SEK 170 million. So that explains the situation now. So we will -- when we come out of this year, we will not have as high inventory as we have at the moment.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

All right, thank you, Claes. So let me summarize the third quarter, and as always, this will probably be a little bit of my bragging slide, so I hope you excuse me. We -- Despite the fact that, that order intake was just slightly above last year's Q3, we have seen very good order intake in the French market, we've seen it in the Pacific market, we've seen it in the Nordic market, we've seen in the Benelux market and also gladly [indiscernible] the U.S. markets, but it's been offset by a decline in -- on the Canadian market.

If we look at this different market, in Pacific, so we have seen a very strong growth over the year. There has been a focus on especially the four-color label where we've been successful both in New Zealand, but increasingly also in Australia. They are partner in this region. They pretty much only sell four-color labels, which is of course also contributing to our good profit.

In the Nordic market it would be easy to say it's the S-Group that's been driving it. Sure they are -- they've been very successful, but we've also had an increase in orders both for Sweden and for the Norwegian market. So here we can actually say that it's been something not only thanks to one customer, but actually 3 different markets. And the U.S. market, it's of course very nice to see that we are growing this market. It's still from a number that is low, but it's a very clear growth and it's a major growth compared to last year.

And just like the order intake has been affected by Canada, we can see that the market in terms of net sales -- France have impacted also the result. If we would actually exclude France from the figures that we compare the quarters -- so there's no France in Q3 this year or last year. The growth for -- in net sales is 37%, driven by Nordic market. Once again, very strong net sales in the Italian market driven by both partners and a lot of direct sales.

Benelux market is kicking back, which is nice. Once again, it's not only all the [indiscernible] level, but it's actually both in Belgium and the Netherlands that we see this growth. And just like for the order intake, U.S. is actually growing on the sales side as well. So at all -- at large, even though I'm not happy that net sales were less than last year, we can see it has been very specific market affecting this one. And now the other markets have been healthy and growing very strongly.

On the gross margin, as Claes mentioned, we had a gross margin over the year of [ 21 ] -- Please help me, Claes? [ 3% ]?

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

Yes, it's [ 21.3% ] now [indiscernible]...

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes. And in the quarter we had [ 21% ] -- 22.1%. And of course this together with the corporate cost saving program, that had the full effect in Q3, which you can see on the [ obvious ] figures, has of course helped us to get an EBIT margin above 10%.

Net profit, SEK 47 million. And of course it's -- I'm very happy to be able to report this, after 2023 that was fairly [ gleam ]. So I feel that as a company, we are on the right track. We will deliver good profitability and we will deliver growth in the year.

Finally, why should you invest in Pricer? I know that a lot of you on the call, that you have invested and you have expectations, of course, on the work that we do.

And there are some of you that are considering investment. So why should you actually invest in ourselves? Well, we are a leading company in retail tech. We are well known on the market. For our customers we are known for bringing the best ROI to them compared to our competitors. We are moving now from SaaS first to SaaS only platform, which of course will be a way for us to capitalize from the installed base that we have. We have 25,000 stores sold. We have 3,500 stores connected. I want to connect as many of these stores as possible. Every single connected stores give us a wide opportunity to actually do a lot of upsells on different kind of SaaS solutions and services.

The market is about to take off, or I would actually say it's taking off. We see that there are a lot of reasons for a retailer to invest in digitalization. In many of the critical markets they have done their homework. They have the basics in place. They have the trigger points, lack of staff, or they need to remain competitive, or they want to look better than competition. They want to work smarter. They want to really take the omnichannel approach and see how much can we digitize the physical store. They are all ready to actually do something.

And as I mentioned before, we see North America and U.K. now really making headways into the future. We have a momentum on the financial performance side. The transformational work is kicking in, but it's also progressing well. We have a clear improvement in gross margin and then actually we have a good control of our operational costs.

You can see an improvement through the entire P&L, the cash flow on the balance sheet and least but -- of course, not least, we have a really good pipeline of leads and opportunities for 2024 and 2025 and actually further on. So these will be the three key reasons to invest in Pricer.

So having said that, I would be happy to invite you all for a Q&A session. So, Cecilia, do we have any questions?

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

We do.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Excellent.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

A lot of them. So we'll see how many we can handle. So...

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I think it's a challenge, Claes.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

So let's start with the gross margin.

So the -- this person understands that the gross margin is affected by Plaza sales. Can you tell us something about the development of gross margins on labels during the quarter?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Should you take it, Claes, or should I take it?

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

You can take it. I mentioned a part of it. Of course, it's related to cost of goods sold, so also for the direct material related to the seller. But Plaza, of course, has an effect.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Then, we can add that we have worked a lot with the cost baseline, which means that we have actually managed to reduce our COGS across all labels and certain label families, which have actually improved the gross margin. But we have also been quite successful in actually changing the product mix. So we are able to sell labels where we can actually charge a higher price and get a better gross margin. So it's been a combination, actually improving the legacy and [indiscernible] sold.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And the cash flow, what is your opinion on the cash flow moving forward, considering the discontinuation of [ factoring ] on one hand, but the buildup of inventory on the other hand?

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

Yes, it's exactly what I said during the presentation. We have a high inventory now, and we do expect that inventory to go down during the fourth quarter, which, of course, will have a positive effect on the cash flow.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And on the recurring revenue, what has caused the recurring revenue for Q3 to grow less year-on-year than previous quarters?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

That's a good question. Do you have an immediate answer, Claes? I would say it's probably seasonality.

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

It's [ affected ], of course, also on how much new sales we done during the quarter.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

So we have new customers, but if we -- we have -- for example, some of the orders that we received has been a lot of sales to existing customers that already have Plaza or is planning to do Plaza, when we do new stores, so the new -- 100 new stores for the S-Group as an example, the stores that we're deploying for the North American retailer that we announced in June, they are all on Plaza. So you can say that virtually all the stores that we deploy are on Plaza. So we do expect that they will continue to grow quarter-on-quarter, and it will probably be a little bit [ difference ] in the growth. That's -- I'm not sure it was a really great explanation, but it's at least an attempt.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And on the margin, should we think of the current margin reflective of a normalized product mix moving forward?

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

That's [ sort of ] said, you see, the margin is strong now in the quarter, but it's a little bit less than the quarter before. So it has a lot to do in the product mix for each quarter. But of course, we have as a whole much better margin now compared to a year ago, and that will continue. But making a forecast now on exactly what level the forecast will be, we will not do that. Yes.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And here's a question that refers to the SEK 4.5 billion that we have talked about, so previously, so sales hasn't developed in line with the [ SEK 4.5 billion ] for 2025. Have you lost potential contracts due to higher price?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I think if I start with a SEK 4.5 billion, we -- of course, even though we don't communicate around that any longer, we do keep track internally. I think I have communicated before that we've seen that in the U.S. market, that was a big chunk of the expected revenues. We did not have the traction that we wanted. That's one of the reason why we made the changes that has been done on the North American market.

We have seen, and what I communicated last year, we see a 12 to 18 months delay in sizeable business maybe, because it takes time to actually build it the way we want. So that would actually explain it. Have we lost deals to high prices? I think when we lose a deal, we lose it because we haven't been able to articulate the value or it could be that we actually work on a customer where it would be hard for them to actually -- It might be that their use cases [ they want ] -- they think they want to do where they're not ready, they're not willing to make the investment or fully utilize all the opportunities. So I would say that the sales and the selection of the customer is probably a bigger attribute.

Sure, we have won customers or lost customers on price, but above all, we have won a lot of customers actually at the way higher price than the market. We see that if we spend time -- enough time with the right customers and we do the proper engagement, we earn the right to sell at the higher gross margin and a higher market price than competitors. And this is generally actually acknowledged by our customers as well.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And cameras. Previously you have talked about cameras. Do you still sell them?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

We do not sell cameras. We were looking at the camera that we were offering the market. We were looking above all at the market. We were quite far in discussions with [ Carrefour ], just like our competitors. In that discussion it became clear that they did not see the ROI. We haven't seen any major camera deploys.

So we decided to post investment and -- wait and follow the market. And when the time is right, when we see that there start to be traction, then we will reengage on the camera side. We have a product, we have software solutions, we haven't developed it. So we would need to actually do some investments. But we have the basics in place. But still to date, we've only seen one larger deployment, and I think it would take a little bit more to really show that, yes, there is a market that people are willing to invest in, but it is an interesting area and I see that it's adding value. So here is clearly what is the cost versus actually the benefit we get out of it? And at one point in time, I think camera will be one of many elements in the retail store.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And the [ factory ] in Germany, how is it doing?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

It's alive and kicking. It's progressing really well. We are producing three-color labels, four-color labels, and we have added one more size, so -- And it's full production.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And a question about framework agreements. So are customers with framework agreements ordering within the agreements?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Yes, they are. So when we have a framework agreement, I've sometimes been asked, could we quantify what could be the value of the agreement? We prefer not to do that. We prefer to actually base our order intake and whatever data we present to yourselves to be based on facts. So we base it on purchase orders. We know within a certain, if we like -- When we announced the S-Group agreement, it was a framework agreement, but also with an attached commitment that we would deploy 300 stores, or at least 300 stores.

Now, when we did the re-announcement, it's the very same thing, but we have several frame agreements with a lot of large retailers where we actually they place orders continuously. But if we see within that frame agreement, if you would get orders that are significantly higher than you could expect, then we will actually make a separate announcement on that.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And the question on market growth, do you think that Pricer still grow as quickly as the market or even quicker? And what do you think of the growth during the coming years?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I think that we are growing faster than the market on some of the markets, and then we're growing slower on some of them. It's a little bit we -- as part of the strategy work, we are, of course, now looking at several sources to really assess the market growth. I've had a lot of different data, so maybe -- please ask the same question at the Q4 report, and then I will come back with a more definite answer. But I -- amy feeling is that on some market we are growing really well. In some markets, I wish that we were doing more and being more successful.

And I mentioned Germany before. We are taking actions. We are actually restructuring the way we work, actually to get the growth up. And I remain positive. But are we -- what is the speed of the market? It's a little bit hard to assess. We'll come back on that.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And the question to Claes on cash conversion cycle. So the cash conversion cycle has increased significantly. Is this only due to decrease of factoring or are these -- or are there other drivers behind this?

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

The main driver is, of course the better margins.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Actually I think I can add something on the growth. Yes, I think that we grow fast. I think we grow in line with -- and actually faster than some of our competitors right now based on what we've seen, just to actually make a small addition. But once again, looking at the total market, it's still -- we don't have enough data yet to give a complete picture.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And the question on market share, do you know, or how much do you think your market share is today?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

It's -- Once again, it depends on how you look at it. But I would say our market share today, or we're actually #2 on the market. The easiest way to measure it at the moment is actually to look at the installed base. Then the rest tends to be a little bit more of our opinion. I do believe that we're #1 in the French market. If you would ask me to prove it, it would be a bit hard. I know that we're not on the market or we're not -- yes, maybe we're #5 in Germany, where I would want this to be a top 3. So it's a little bit market specific, but I think the easiest is to look at the installed base. There we are clearly #2 on the market.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And could you -- on -- a question on France and the sales in France, could you quantify to what extent or elaborate on why France was weak in terms of sales?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

I can. We communicated in Q2 that we could see that there were delays in orders from the customer. And you see now that we actually communicated that we have a growth in orders in France now in Q3. It's the same customers -- so one of our French customers, they were delaying investments, and now we can actually see that they are -- those investments are coming through. So that's the key reason.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And a couple of questions from Swedish investors, wondering about the Swedish -- large retailer in Sweden, why they sometimes choose other suppliers?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Well, that's actually a question for [indiscernible].

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

Yes. And I think very last one, the -- can you tell us more about the higher margin labels you have been selling? Is that color labels or other labels?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

It's actually the color labels, but it's the same product family that we also do for three-color labels. We call it the power label, and there we can sell it with a better margin because we deliver a whole lot of more performance. So we can charge a higher price because we add more value on that product family. And when -- with a four-color, of course, then we add even additional values.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

There was actually one more. Can you remind us of Q4 seasonality in terms of sales and profit margin?

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Seasonality wise, we normally have a stronger Q4 than Q3 from a net sales point of view. From a profitability point of view, it's been a little bit -- gross margin point of view, it's been a little bit more difficult to assess because we have, over the last couple of years, constantly been growing the gross profit. So I don't think we can see that we have a specific pattern. Then it would be more coming down to product mix. If the question is, will we take a low margin deal to increase the net sales? Well, if we can actually get that deal in January at a better margin, then we'd rather do it in January.

[Cecilia Vinell, executive]

And yes, that was the last question.

[Magnus Larsson, executive]

Excellent. If there are no more questions, I would like to thank you all for joining us. I hope that you got the answers for -- maybe not the one you wanted, but at least you got the answers you were asking for, that you feel that we got them covered. I look forward to present to you again on the Q4 report next year. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

[Claes Wenthzel, executive]

Thank you.