Basler AG

XETRA:BSL

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Hardy Mehl, executive]

So it looks like as if we are complete. Hello, again, to Basler's first quarter earnings report. My name is Hardy. I'm CFO and COO of the company.

And before I start with the presentation, I need to remind you on our disclaimer that the statements I'm making on this call and using by the management are available -- are based on the information available at this time. These are forward-looking statements by nature, and they are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties.

Let's start with our first quarter earnings. I would, from an agenda standpoint, start the presentation today with an executive summary. We then do a deep dive into the financials. Having a quick glance at the share performance and also the shareholder distribution. And then we come to the outlook at the latest part of the presentation before we have then enough time for hopefully a lively Q&A session.

Let's start with the executive summary. I mean, Q1 has been still a challenging environment for us. We saw some early and slight indications of recovery, but on a very low level. So we come to this and quantify this more during this call. We still see a very weak market situation, especially in North America and Asia. In Asia, both in China, but also outside China, in the Asia Pacific region.

We still see above-normal inventory levels at our clients and not only at our clients, all over the market, as a legacy effect of the, let's say, supply chain crisis and now the one-off effect that the full chain is still -- or the whole chain is still full of inventories. However, we see these inventories shrinking, and we believe that by -- roughly, by and large, mid of the year, hopefully, this effect is no longer muting the demand.

Our customers in North America and Asia, they become more positive. On a quantitative basis, we don't see substantial bookings yet, but this gives us more confidence about a better market condition in the second half of the year. However, the risks are still high and we need to see and steer the company along the way.

When we look at the figures back in Q1 here of the German vision components industry, delivering the world markets, billings were down by 19%, bookings were down by 12% compared to the first quarter of the previous year. So these are -- demonstrate also the very weak market.

Looking at our situation, Basler in the first quarter, our bookings were down by 19% compared to the first quarter 2023. Billings down year-on-year by 23%. This means we are still behind the market. When we look at this development, our interpretation is this is mainly because we are -- we have a higher distribution of our business compared to many other, let's say, German competitors. So we have a higher distribution towards Asia and also towards North America.

When we look at our book-to-bill ratio, I mean, it's balanced in the first quarter, and it hasn't been balanced for quite some time. It was below 1 for quite some quarters. Our bookings also grew 13% sequentially. So here are also some signs of a better situation of recovery, but still very early stage.

Significant improvement of gross margin. We will talk about this. Happy to report this. And our restructuring measures, again, here, it's a bit of a repetition, but has been successfully executed. The breakeven point is below EUR 200 million sales for 2024.

Our earnings first half -- first quarter this year still in the negative region. So we had a pretax loss of EUR 3.6 million. We come to this also later on. This is mainly due to the situation that the market is still weak on the one hand. On the other hand, we steered the breakeven point towards EUR 200 million, and we are still behind that or below this breakeven point.

Looking at the organization development, the team. So we had our peak in the organizational size by end of the quarter -- first quarter in 2023. We were approximately 1,140 employees or full-time equivalents at this point in time. Now compared by end of first quarter this year, the number of full-time equivalents were at around 918 FTEs. So there is a delta of roughly 220 FTEs so that we are -- that we have reduced over the course of our restructuring programs. What you have seen -- what you can see is even though it was a substantial reduction, we were able to manage and keep the company in balance. The functional mix is almost the same with a little bit more exposure or distribution towards our go-to-market units of sales, marketing support functions, staying close to the customer, which is definitely our strategic approach also in our change towards more direct sales approaches in the regions.

With regard to new product launches, I mean, Q1 is typically not the strongest one in new product output. We still heavily invest also in R&D, as you could see in the slide before. So the product worth to mention and what we demonstrated was on this 3D product side, new product ranges for stereo vision, on the upper left, what you can see. And we presented the stereo vision products and also other 3D products and 2D products on the LogiMAT in Stuttgart recently demonstrating our capabilities -- vision capabilities, especially for the logistics market.

On the right-hand side, we also launched quite some functions and hardware products with regard to the processing units. So when we -- when our customers are using high-end cameras, they need to use those preprocessing card that you also see on the picture. And on top of these preprocessing cards, there is -- or it's running on the card are software products from us and this software product is called VisualApplets, so that the customer can preprocess and use pre-functions in order to preprocess the data in order to reduce the CPU load in their systems.

Looking at our journey, I mean you -- we are talking about this for quite some time. Just a repetition, a reminder here, we are making good steps forward. We lead the restructuring mode behind us, looking forward, strongly implementing our strategy to become, let's say, a full-line provider or a solution provider for the computer vision world expanding on the Y-axis here. Our product offering with regard to hardware and software on the X-axis to address key verticals in our markets that hopefully has over-proportional growth over the course of the next years.

Closing this executive summary chapter, doing a deep dive into the financials and starting this deep dive with our bookings and billings. So maybe it's not on the slide here, but to remind everyone, we came from a very bullish 2022 with approximately EUR 80 million, EUR 85 million quarterly order entries. And this has been declined over time in 2023. And then what we are seeing here is it looks that the deepest point has reached in Q3 last year. And since then, the order entry, so the gray bar making step-by-step -- or step-by-step increasing. However, on a low level, but at least we have seen, let's say, a trend into the other direction.

Revenues have more or less -- the last 3 quarters, more or less stabilized. So we are making sideways more or less here, also below -- still be so below our breakeven point. However, we are pretty positive that over the course of this year, we are making further progress.

Looking at the revenue distribution. So the revenue in total, EUR 44 million in Q1, the distribution still, we can see that Asia is weak with a roughly 50% of total sales. In normal times, we had roughly 55%. So this region is still relatively weak, especially due to the situation in consumer electronics and also with the regional situation in China. EMEA, so especially Europe, is relatively robust. Still, we see some weakening. But in general, Europe is still robust and Americas is also still weak. There, we have also quite some exposure to consumer electronics and logistics, and these key verticals are still weak at the moment.

Looking at the gross profit margin and gross -- absolute gross profit, maybe coming first here to the gross profit margin. Happy to give you some positive news here. As projected, we have implemented quite some measures in the last quarters already, and we are now starting to see the gains from it. Happy to be -- that we are back on the level of first half year last year of this gross profit margin level. And this is despite the fact that we still have negative impacts regarding spot buys legacies, so material that we have acquired for higher prices in the past and they are still in our inventories and slowly going out.

We still have weak currency situations in the China and Japan region. Also, the price pressure in China with the domestic competition and also some of the other Asia Pacific countries where the Chinese companies are pressured pretty hard on the prices. So we see this phenomenon continuing. And what we are still having because of the low revenue on the one hand and on the other hand, we have our organization and also capacity in place, we still have relatively low economies of scale due to low utilization rates. So there is quite some potential to further improve and we are keeping, let's say, our focus on that point.

In absolute terms, we reached EUR 19.4 million in gross profit. In the first quarter, also here, you can see step-by-step as we grow that since mid of last year since Q3, we are increasing our gross profits again. However, it's slowly happening, and it's also below the breakeven point for a normal profit situation. We would need somewhere around EUR 25 million gross profit per quarter in order to cover our organizational costs, our OpEx and also have a decent profit that we [ earn ].

Coming to the earnings. I mentioned this already, with minus EUR 3.6 million, we are still -- or have been in the loss area in the first quarter. You see here the Q3 and Q4 of the previous year, we had our restructuring program with high losses. So the losses are getting smaller now. However, what we are looking forward is to bring us back into the profitability zone as soon as possible. But this is also, to a certain extent, obviously, depending on the market situation and how fast the markets will recover.

Just another overview here of the KPIs for the P&L statement. So order entry mentioned is EUR 43.5 million, minus 23%. Sales, EUR 44 million, minus 19% compared to the first quarter 2023. Gross profit, we just talked about the EUR 19.4 million. The margin back to the level of the first half year of first quarter of last year, good news and then the earnings parameters you can read yourself. Net income minus 3.9% -- minus EUR 3.9 million, sorry.

Let's have a look at the cash flow situation. So what we can report here is on the free cash flow side, we were still on the negative side here with EUR 3.4 million. This was mainly due to the low or the weak market situation, so low revenue and thus low earnings. But on top of this, due to the weaker demand than anticipated, we were not able to create further destockings in the first quarter. We are positive about the remainder of the year to continue our destocking as we have done already in Q4 with a good result here, as you can see with positive operational cash flows. But in Q1, we have not been able to reduce our inventories. And therefore, with those low earnings, no inventory reduction. The operational cash flow was with minus EUR 1.2 million negative.

We keep our investments to a low level here, minus EUR 2.2 million. You can see in the first half of last year, Q1, Q2, we were more in the range of EUR 4 million investments per quarter. So here, we definitely keep a tight management of investments as we also do for our OpEx spendings.

The full statement -- cash flow statement here. We started the first quarter with a cash account of EUR 32.2 million. Operational cash flow, minus EUR 1.2 million. Cash flow investments, minus EUR 2.2 million. So free cash flow, minus EUR 3.4 million. Our cash flow in financing was minus EUR 3.1 million, mainly due to paying back certain loans by end of the quarter. And by end of the period, our cash account was at EUR 25.7 million.

Looking at our net debt, they were at minus EUR 33 million -- the debts were at EUR 33.5 million due to our liabilities to banks at around EUR 60 million.

Just a quick glance at our share performance in the first quarter. So no strong developments here. We more or less developed side moves from beginning of the quarter until end of the quarter, a little bit lower, but also in line with the TecDax. I mean, obviously, we are in the situation here where many of the investors are looking at us seeing whether we did the correct job with the restructuring and also wait for the right timing when the markets hopefully pick up.

With regards to the shareholding structure, we had over the course of the first quarter, a little bit of change. Union and Universal investment increased their stakes, some others reduced their stakes, but from, let's say, management and also Norbert Basler Holding family, no change and also treasury shares, no change.

This brings me already to the outlook. So what do we assume for the upcoming quarters for the remainder of the year? So we are expecting that the demand is gradually rising over the course of the year, but it will be a slow rise step by step.

As mentioned earlier, we also for the second quarter, we believe that excessive inventories will mute the original demand. Hopefully, then in the second half of the year, this is -- more or less, this effect will be out. I mean with some customers, it will also remain at the end of the year, but for the majority of our clients, should be over by middle of the year.

The recovery in consumer electronics and logistics, we expect for the second half of the year. Also here, we expect a slow recovery, not a strong recovery. looks like that this is more real stronger one is more realistic for the year 2025. Obviously, we will also have uncertainties with regard to the geopolitical situation, bumps in the road. And we also expect the high competition intensity, especially in China and in Asia Pacific remaining because of the tight markets on the one hand and also relatively aggressive competitors on the other.

Looking at those assumptions or keeping those in mind and the development of the first quarter, we confirm our guidance that we have recently given. We see revenues in the corridor range of EUR 190 million to EUR 210 million. We expect, looking at this revenue current earnings before tax margins between 0% and 5%. So therefore, looking at our first quarter results, we definitely expect an increase or an improvement in the market situation and increase in our top line to grow out of the current profitability situation. And also, we will further work with high concentration on improving our gross margins. And as long as we are in the situation where we are right now, we definitely keep our tight pockets regarding OpEx and CapEx.

With regard to our midterm outlook that we also have recently announced, we are pretty positive about our markets, in general. We believe the markets will recover, it's just a question when. There are certain megatrends in the world that require or that foster more vision, more automation. And we, with our strategy and our position in the market and our capabilities, are fully convinced to gain from those megatrends. And therefore, we are striving to realize EUR 300 million by 2027, with a decent profitability of 12% and also a good cash conversion rate of 70%.

So this, and I mentioned this in the last call, is based on the assumption that latest in 2025, our markets will recover, and also that at least the access to the Chinese market remains. I mean, it will stay a competitive region and landscape, but at least the excess needs to remain because of our exposure and revenue distribution to this market.

Having this said, and giving you the midterm outlook here, I'm at the end of the presentation and looking forward to a lively Q&A session.