Probi AB

STO:PROB

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, and welcome to the Probi AB Q1 Report 2021. [Operator Instructions] Today, I'm pleased to present CEO, Tom Rönnlund; and CFO, Henrik Lundkvist. Tom, please go ahead with your meeting.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you very much, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining the presentation of Probi's first quarter results for 2021. Here, down in Lund, together with me, I have Henrik Lundkvist, our CFO, as well.So if we turn to the next page, please, #2, which is -- which depicts our safe harbor statement, so please familiarize yourself with that.And then please switch to Page #3, which is today's agenda. So as normal, we will have an overview of our results and our financials as well as discuss our view on the outlook for Probi moving forward.Please turn to Page #4. So Probi, we've had a good start in 2021. We've posted strong growth and improved margins compared to the same quarter last year. We came into the year with a strong momentum, and we are pleased to be able to continue with good growth and better margins compared to the previous year. Admittedly, we did have a quite weak quarter in 2020 due to some production disturbances that we experienced back then, but we still see a positive development in our commercial efforts across our regions. Compared to last year, we also saw our EBITDA margin rebound to be closer to our long-term ambitions than we were in the same period previous year.So the compare versus previous year in the first quarter might not be fully fair, but regardless, we are proud to have continued to drive growth across our portfolio and improving our position in the marketplace.We have, during the quarter, entered into a important partnership with Sinopharm Foreign Trade in the Chinese market, where the pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm, or this company is a part of the Sinopharm Group, will launch 3 new probiotic supplements within immune health, bone health and iron absorption based on our Probi's validated -- scientifically validated probiotic concept.For Probi, it is very pleasing to see high-quality scientifically driven partner such as Sinopharm to choose our probiotic concept for launching the Chinese market, and it is an important reference customer for us in the region.Last year, we experienced some COVID-related challenges to initiate and conduct clinical trials, but we're now back to a more normal high level of activity in our R&D initiative. And during this quarter -- or during the previous quarter, sorry, we initiated a new study in collaboration with La Trobe University in Australia to further strengthen the scientific evidence for our Osteo probiotic concept for improved bone health and a concept which is garnering increased interest in the market as we speak.We continue to operate in an exciting industry. And last year, we estimate that the global market grew with approximately 4% to 5%, affected in part likely by demand also driven by the pandemic. If we look forward, we do expect the U.S. market to probably have a slightly slower growth compared to last year, but where EMEA and APAC having had a stronger impact of the COVID pandemic on sales of probiotic products to have the possibility to rebound and hopefully then resulting in a continued positive development on a global level for probiotic.If we turn to the next page, please, #5. So a bit more detail on our first quarter from a sales and profitability perspective. In Q1, our net sales landed on SEK 170 million -- sorry, SEK 171 million, which was compared to SEK 158 million last year. This is a growth of 9%, well in line with our growth ambitions -- long-term growth ambitions of growing by 7% on an annual basis. But if we take the weakened dollar throughout last year into consideration, our growth in the first quarter was actually considerably higher. It was towards 20% actually in the quarter-on-quarter comparison or by quarterly comparison.Our EBITDA came in at SEK 47 million compared to approximately SEK 30 million last year. And it represents an EBITDA margin of approximately 28% in the quarter. The improvement here was driven both by improved gross margins in the quarter, and the gross margins last year were impacted by the production disturbances we experienced back then, but also lower operating expenses, partly due to COVID-related causes as travel and certain customer arrangements and other types of activities are still on a lower level as societies and the world has not opened up back to more normal conditions. But these results are well in line with our long-term ambitions of delivering both top line growth and an EBITDA margin of above 29% over time. So we're pleased with these results.Next picture -- next slide, please, #6. So if we have a closer look at our geographic regions, we saw our largest region, Americas, to rebound strongly compared to previous year, with a growth of 6%. This was, of course, heavily affected by the weakened dollar throughout last year. And if we would adjust for the currency and look at it at constant exchange rates, our growth was actually 22%. This strong growth was in large parts affected by the low compare from last year, as I've commented on before, but we still see positive development with many of our customers in the region.Also very encouraging, we've seen a very strong start to the year in our region EMEA, with a growth of 19 -- close to 20%, 19%, posting SEK 35 million of revenues in the -- of revenues in the quarter. This is actually our strongest quarter ever in the region EMEA. Parts of this performance here was campaign-driven demand and combined with new launches occurring with a number of customers, including our partnership with Perrigo. And with these launches occurring and our pipeline of new customers in the EMEA region, we're confident that we will be able to continue to grow our position in EMEA moving forward.The gross margin, as you can see here, was a bit lower compared to the first -- in the region EMEA, sorry, and this was impacted by additional costs in relation to these product launches that we're carrying out together with Perrigo and other partners.Our APAC region posted a small growth of 5%. The region for us is still very small in absolute revenue numbers. Our APAC team is working very hard to -- on returning to growth for Probi in the region and establish the type of market position we feel that our company and our products deserve in the market. And they're doing a great job, but it takes time to develop. Certain customer relationships, lead time from new product launches, et cetera, are sometimes quite long. But we see a very encouraging pipeline of opportunities in the region, stronger than ever before, I would say.So over time, we will be working very hard on executing on this and ensuring that the APAC region becomes more considerable in Probi finances in the future.So if we turn over to Page #7, and I will then hand over to Henrik for a financial review.

[Henrik Lundkvist, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I will now walk you through the financial section of the report here. So please turn to Page #8.As earlier mentioned, our growth was strong in the first quarter with an organic growth of 20%, but we should mention that we had a low compare last year. We continue to experience some headwind related to FX. So in total, we reported a net sales growth of 9%.Our EBITDA landed at SEK 47 million, which was an increase by 58% compared to last year. The increase was explained by a higher gross margin since the comparison period included a temporary disruption in production. Our operating expenses were also lower this year compared to last year since there were only limited lockdowns during the first quarter last year, and the customer activity level was then almost considered as normal.In the comparison period, we also had high admin costs connected to some business development activities. All in all, this gave us an EBITDA margin of 27.5%, which was 8.6 percentage points higher than last year. EBIT was SEK 19 million higher than last year, and net income and earnings per share was 100% -- 112% higher than last year.Please turn to Page #9. Net income for the first quarter landed at SEK 23 million, which was SEK 12 million higher than last year. Compared to last year, we had a positive sales volume effect in the quarter with growth in all regions. We also had a positive gross margin effect together with reduced operating expenses, which further strengthened our net income. The increased result obviously resulted in some additional income taxes.Now turning to Page #10. The gross operating cash flow amounted to SEK 48 million during the first quarter, which demonstrates a solid business model. The working capital slightly increased as a natural effect of increased sales volumes. Our CapEx amounted to SEK 7 million during the first quarter, where SEK 5 million was related to the upgrade program of our manufacturing site in Redmond, U.S., and the rest was related to investments in clinical trials and patents. The cash flow from financing activities was related to payments and interest for lease obligations.To summarize, our cash generation was strong during the quarter, and our cash position grew by SEK 31 million and was at the end of the quarter SEK 247 million.Please turn to Page 11. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet, and we do not have any external loans. Our equity amounts to SEK 1.2 billion, with an equity ratio of 90%. So to summarize, this means that we are well equipped to continue to evaluate interesting business development projects that we can further grow our business not only organically, but also through M&A activities and different types of strategic partnerships.Now turning to Page 12, and I will hand over to Tom again.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Henrik. Please turn to Page 13. Our company's strategic focus areas remain the same as we have discussed before. We continue to be focused on driving top line growth, ensuring that we stay in the front line of innovation and science in our field, and through investments in our manufacturing facilities ensure that we have world-class capabilities attuned to the customer demand, delivering high-quality, flexible and attractive manufacturing solutions for our customers, combined with partnerships with other manufacturers as well to ensure that we have sufficient capacity to address market needs.You can see in our recently published annual report the progress that we made through 2020 in these fields, and we continue to drive our business to deliver in these focus areas. In 2021, we will continue to build our position in the marketplace in key growth markets, a very important priority for us. We have, during last year, added new resources or additional resources to ensure that we are quick to capture the opportunities that these markets represent, and we see a strong pipeline of attractive accounts that can help us grow, both on a regional as well as on a global level.In innovation, research and product development, we aim in this year to invest more than we did in the last few years to drive a continued frontline position for Probi to deliver probiotic concepts and solutions and product development that satisfy consumer demand and health and support to grow our company.In manufacturing, we are now, right now, in the middle of the process of optimizing and fine-tuning our upgraded facility, and we expect to start to see the impact of this towards the end of this year and into the future. So far, the project is running in accordance with plan. We encounter challenges sometimes, but the team is diligently resolving those, and our time line for completion of the project remains as before.Looking forward, there are, of course, things that are outside of our control, for how long will the pandemic last? When will life return to a more normal state? And how will consumers behave in a post-COVID world? We see some clients today, particularly with certain e-commerce customers, that demand can be hard to predict. And with some of our customers, there might be elevated levels of inventory. So we predict moving forward that we could see some volatility between quarters throughout this year, but we remain committed to our long-term ambitions and our financial targets and feel that we are very well positioned to deliver on them in 2021 and moving forward.And with that, thank you for your attention for today's approximately 20 minutes, and we can open up for the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rickard Anderkrans from ABG.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

So first one, just for my understanding, basically, so there's been 2 press releases regarding collaboration with Sinopharm in China. Are these separate collaborations or -- it appears to be the same, but I just want to understand that.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Apologies for the confusion there. It transpired that we in the press release, despite close collaboration and communication between us and our partner, we have used the wrong entity within their group in the first press release. So that's why we had to amend that or we chose to amend that or clarify that. But it doesn't change anything with regard to the project. It's about the same project. Apologies for that.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

Excellent. And just looking at the Sinopharm collaboration, will the launch be aggressive sort of nationwide launch? Or will it be more of a gradual rollout in the metropolitan areas? So how should we think about the sort of pace of that new introduction there?

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. We -- it will be a gradual rollout, and it will be targeted in their sales force that is using to -- that is working towards health care practitioners, hospitals, et cetera. So it will be a gradual rollout with them. And thereby, we will most likely not see sort of a massive impact early on, but rather gradually developing business with them.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

Great. And looking at the Chinese probiotic market dynamics, obviously, it's a rapidly growing market. But do you see any barriers there in terms of sort of advertising claims, market understanding and awareness, et cetera? Can you comment and give some flavor on that? That would be much appreciated.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

I would say that the -- so the probiotic market in China has been growing very strongly for a long period of time. There is a historical cultural acceptance for fermented food and the benefits that bacteria can deliver. And actually, last year -- I believe, last year, the Chinese market became the second largest market in the world for probiotics, a position earlier held by Italy, actually.So -- but still, the household penetration in the Chinese market is still relatively low. But of course, the sheer size of the market gives ample opportunity for growth there. So the consumer acceptance is there and developing. And the ways that the companies work with different kinds of claims and statements around their products is quite okay actually in terms of what level of communication you can have. A partner such as Sinopharm, of course, they will ensure that they stay on the right side of every line in that communication, but they -- them being a very scientifically-oriented company, we expect them still to be able, through their sales forces, to position this well in the customer group.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

Great, great. And switching gears a bit to EMEA, how has the initial reception been with Probi brand with Perrigo here? So as I understand, the first launches were in March with -- in Spain and Belgium, with Italy coming up in May. Can you talk about the initial rollout there? And then the remaining 11 countries, how will that proceed?

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

It's still very early, of course. The deliveries that we've made here during the first quarter under that partnership is, to a large degree, of course, building up inventory at distributors and retailers or pharmacies mainly. But -- so it's a bit early to judge on the pull-through or the sell-through. But from the indications that we're getting from our partner there, they're very positive, they're very excited, and they're very hopeful for the continued rollout there. The continued rollout of the countries is we do have a set timetable for that. That can sometimes change for various reasons, but we have not communicated exactly when and where on that one.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

All right. Great. And just a final one from my side. You mentioned that some U.S. customers, especially in the e-commerce vertical, have seen some stock buildups here, perhaps during 2020 and the early parts of the year. Can you develop a bit more on that? It has been sort of a challenge looking back a few years with some destocking events, et cetera. Just please lay out the text a bit more on that.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

The historical destocking effects, it's not of the same magnitude that this company experienced a few years back, but we have seen that certainly e-retailers or e-commerce-oriented customers have had a bit of a challenge in sort of reacting to quite quick market movement, mostly probably to some extent related to COVID event. But at the same time, while we're getting these signals from some of our customers, we also have other projects in the pipeline and some very recent ones as well, which hopefully will offset any negative impact by potentially some e-retailers and e-commerce-oriented customers, that they might sit on a bit bigger inventory.We also experienced another impact. We had some price increases last year and where some customers stocked up a bit extra before the price increases came into place. And they will cycle through that as well here mainly through the second quarter.

[Rickard Anderkrans, Analyst]

Great, great. Excellent. And that's all for me. Congrats to strong growth.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mattias Vadsten from SEB.

[Mattias Vadsten, Analyst]

Yes. I have a few more questions here. So on the EMEA region, I just wondered if the underlying market has improved. You elaborated a little bit on the drivers previously here and also in the presentation. But can you talk a little bit about how the sort of go-to-market setup has been working out in the quarter, physical marketing and sales group pharmacies and -- compared to the second half of 2020? That would be helpful.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. And as you know, we have a quite diverse bouquet of customers in EMEA, so they're impacted in different ways. But in general, most of our sales goes through the pharmacy channel in EMEA. And it has been a bit dependent on how much society has been able to open up versus having been forced to be closed down due to the pandemic. So we still see, I would say, in general, probably a lower sell-through in many channels.Those who are e-commerce-oriented do better. Where there's online -- in markets with well-established online pharmacies, et cetera, there we do see a better development. But we do expect that once, hopefully, societies can open up again towards the fall in a more proper way, that also the efforts by our customers to meet with pharmacists, with health care practitioners, et cetera, to drive increased demand.So we have a positive outlook on the EMEA market, but still dependent on sort of the pandemic and how that will be resolved moving forward. But I would say still probably a slightly lower demand than it normally would be, if I can express it that way.

[Mattias Vadsten, Analyst]

Okay. Great. And then also in EMEA, I was probably a little bit surprised about the gross margin. I mean we have more sales through royalties now, and yet the gross margin was down some 460 bps versus last year. What can you comment here? What is the driver for that?

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. So there are a couple of events driving that one. So I mean, one is the increased cost in connection with the launches that I think was comment here earlier. But then if we look at the comparison period, we also had some redistribution of some of the customers moving from royalty into more of a, yes, goods sales, but a very similar margin. So it didn't really affect the total picture of the gross margin in that period. It was more of a movement between royalty into goods sales. So there are 2 moving factors affecting us now. But the main one is then the increased cost in connection with the product launches.

[Mattias Vadsten, Analyst]

That's very, very clear. And then moving over to APAC here. I just wondered, the sales run rate that you achieved here in the first quarter, is that a fair run rate going forward? Or should we expect something else? And then I also wonder if you can expect -- elaborate a little bit of what to expect around the Sinopharm collaboration in terms of timing and so forth.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

With regards to the APAC region, as you know, we have not really been able, over the course of the past few years or for quite a long time, to really break out of the mold and come to a position of accelerated growth there. The market is there. We have a strong portfolio of products and so on. We have put in a partly new team in place there. We've also expanded the team to be able to be -- to serve the market in a better way locally than what we've been able to do in the past.So this we do actually expect will contribute to a stronger growth in the market moving forward. And we have quite high ambitions. We realize we're starting from a low level, but our ambition is definitely to have a growing position in that region moving forward. We have not commented on any specifics there and will not do so today either.When it comes to China and the impact of Sinopharm, as in all product launches, of course, it will be dependent on how the products performs in the market. Our partner, they have a very solid marketing and sales plan for this, and they're adding significant resources to actually create a successful product for themselves. But it's also always, of course, dependent on how the acceptance then will be in the marketplace at the end of the day. But of course, a customer such as Sinopharm with their resources and with their capabilities in the region, they represent one of those types of accounts which we need, are key accounts for us. And those are accounts with the sales of over $1 million on an annual basis. $1 million or higher than that is what we call the key accounts from that perspective. So -- but again, we will have the first orders coming through in this year, and then it will, of course, be dependent on how it performs in the marketplace.

[Operator]

And as there are no further questions, I'll hand it back for any closing remarks.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Thank you very much for your attention today, and thank you for the questions. Please turn to the last page, which is page number what?

[Henrik Lundkvist, Chief Financial Officer]

15.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

15. And yes, please make note of our upcoming Annual General Meeting, which will be held in a digital way as current restrictions stipulate. And then also, we do welcome you back to hear about our second quarter results on July 16 in the summer.

[Henrik Lundkvist, Chief Financial Officer]

And we can also mention that we will release a video in connection with the AGM where Tom will present or have a speech, which will be available on our website.

[Tom Ronnlund, Chief Executive Officer]

And with that, thank you all for your attention this morning, and have a very great day and weekend.

[Operator]

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