elumeo SE

XETRA:ELB

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Florian Spatz, executive]

All right. Good morning, everyone. As always, the call will be recorded. Yes. Good morning, and welcome to the Q1 2024 financial earnings call of elumeo. Only 2 weeks ago, we have presented our full year 2023 figures. And today, together with Wolfgang, I will give you an overview on the key developments of the first quarter of 2024. One particular thing, our CFO, Riad, is not in the call today for private, but very happy and pleasant family reasons.

So let's start with the summary of Q1. I'm very happy to report that we have been able to return to profitable growth. Our adjusted EBITDA improved from a minus EUR 169,000 to EUR 148,000. Our revenue increased by 5% with both of our main sales channels, Live and Web being back on the path of growth and continuing to outperform the market.

Due to increased COGS, our gross profit margin declined to 48.5% compared to 52% in Q1 2023. And this is an effect related to higher COGS, mainly material costs such as gold and silver and increased shipping fees. And at the same time, a low consumer sentiment that is only slowly getting used to rising prices. And in a couple of slides, I'm going to show you that we have launched several projects to improve the margin in the upcoming months and quarters.

We continue to grow our active customer base, increasing active customers by 7% in Q1 compared to last year's quarter. With our new multi-language platform, we are making great progress in testing the AI-based translations. And the first international show created via our platform for lean and tech-driven internationalization will start in June. And yes, we are really excited about this, as this will allow us to leverage our content internationally at a very low production cost.

Also with Jooli, we continue to make good progress. In Q1, we have launched a new onboarding process that allows customers to indicate their personal preferences directly at the beginning, allowing the algorithm to identify even faster the perfectly matching products. And compared to Q4 2023, in Q1 this year, we can see a significant increase of orders and average order value.

And finally, we confirm our outlook for 2024. So we project to return to profitable growth with revenue increasing by 4% to 8% and an adjusted EBITDA improving disproportionately to EUR 1.5 million to EUR 3.5 million.

Yes, this slide gives you a quick overview about elumeo, Juwelo and Jooli and how these brands are connected. And you might have noticed that compared to our full year presentation 2 weeks ago, we have graphically updated this company slides, but the content remains the same. So we have elumeo as listed group company that has the function of trend behind our general core strategy, a strategy that focuses on emotion as driving force behind successful e-commerce the power of video shopping as key success factor to generate this emotion and our tech-driven platform that lays the basis for our emotional shopping experience. And then the 2 video shopping platforms we run Juwelo, our core jewelry business and Jooli the first instant leisure shopping app.

I think I will skip this slide, and we come directly to the key developments in Q1 2024 and our return to profitable growth. As you can see on this slide, the market in Q1 is still declining compared to previous year quarter. The multichannel market went down by 5%. And the online jewelry markets went down by 9% compared to Q1 2023. However, it's not a double-digit decline of these markets anymore. There are improvements compared to the data I have shown you 2 weeks ago for 2023 compared to 2022, that underline the slow market recovery we are also seeing.

Thanks to our strong business model, we remain ahead of our competitors. We continue to clearly outperform the market. And as you can see on the right side, we have been able to return to growth. And you can see also that the main growth driver was our Web business with 15% of growth, but also our Live business was able to return to growth with 1%.

On this Chart #9, you can see that we continue to grow our active customers, increasing the number by 7% in Q1 compared to previous year quarter. At the same time, the revenue per customer stabilized and is only 1.3% down. And in the light of the slowly improving consumer sentiment, we continue to see a significant revenue potential coming from higher spendings per customer.

Our Live business recovered from double-digit negative growth rates in -- that we have seen in Q1 2022 and in Q1 2023, and return to the path of growth in Q1 2024. Some special Live shows and Live events that we did in the second half of Q1 worked very well. And we will expand the number of these events in the next months and make it a regular part of the program also throughout 2024 and the next years. And moreover, an important improvement that will also drive future growth of the Live business is the increase of new customers, new live customers by 16%.

So let's come to our Web business. In our full year 2023 presentation, I spoke about the investments we have made to generate a lot of data in the algorithms of Google and Meta with the goal to determine the most cost efficient and profitable online marketing campaigns. And as we have planned, this has allowed us in Q1 to make a significant improvement of the profitability of our Web business, reducing, as you can see on the left side, the marketing spendings by 13% to EUR 771,000 and at the same time, increasing the Web gross profit by 9% to EUR 2.146 million.

We will continue with this focus on highly profitable campaigns also in the upcoming months in 2024. So we might see a reduced quantity of new web customers, but a significant improvement of profitability of the customer cohorts in 2024.

Yes, some of you will know this chart from our full year presentation. So as I don't want to bore you, I'm not going to present all projects in detail again. In summary, we will optimize our business in 4 main areas: supply chain, logistics, sales and customer service, reducing costs and improving revenue. And moreover, as you can see, we are -- the special icon with the percentage sign and the arrow that I put in the graph -- in the graphic, most of our projects will also have a positive effect on our gross profit margin.

Just 1 example, the reduction of shipping fees via [ Wagon ] post, the reduction of payment fees for the cash on delivery. And our packaging process consolidation will, of course, reduce the cost of goods and services sold and the live programming optimization, where we focus on products with high percentage margin and gives them a little bit more airtime will improve in a sustainable and permanent way our gross profit margin.

So let's turn to Slide 13. And here, you can see the summary of our project of Internationalization 2.0. Yes, as presented 2 weeks ago, our new platform will record the German Live show and will then translate and adapts our show into all foreign languages that we define. The platform uses AI translation and lipsync to create very authentic local language shows that we can then distribute internationally with our game robots.

Our game robot is our -- is the basis for our automated shopping shows. And this puts us into a position to leverage our video shopping content and create international shopping shows at very low production cost. And as you can imagine, the growth potential is significant as we currently -- as we are currently covering only 4 countries and 22% of the European households with our current TV shows.

We continue to make good progress in the implementation, and we are using Italy as our ideal or friendly test markets in which we already have a TV program and TV reach. In the past weeks, we successfully created several translations. We optimized the quality of these translations. For example, the sound melody of the different languages or specific gemstone, terminology, et cetera, et cetera. And we are now ready for the next important milestone, the international rollout in Spain, Netherlands, France and Belgium. And the first regular AI translated show is planned for June. So only in just a few weeks. And I can only say once again that we are really excited and looking forward to this tech-driven internationalization.

[Wolfgang Boyé, executive]

Yes. Good morning also from my side. I'm going to guide you quickly through the slides on Jooli. Over the course of the last 5 months, we have made a huge progress with this project. Basically, we're moving upstream with the development of the platform. And we have reorganized the entire onboarding process for Jooli. So now users can enter into the app upon onboarding what their preferences are. And this allows us to play them much better video content.

And if you go to the next slide for us, you can see that this has allowed us to increase the order value and also the average order value. These are still small figures, obviously, kind of we are speaking about roughly EUR 5,000 of revenue in the month of March. This is mainly due to the fact that we also invest a very limited amount of marketing budget into this market at the moment. We're investing in India, depending on the month between EUR 5,000 and EUR 10,000 in marketing spending. So obviously, the growth would be much higher, if we were to increase the advertising spendings. But at the moment, we still do not think that the platform is ready for massive scaling because we still have to improve the customer lifetime value of the customers we're onboarding.

So the second, third and fourth purchases -- and here, we have in the second half of this year, a number of very important projects that are going to allow us to increase the customer LatAm value. So due to that, we hope that in the second half of this year, we will come to a situation, where the customer lifetime value becomes positive. So we expect to get from a customer more revenue than we actually pay for the customer. And once we have reached that point, then we can massively increase the investment into marketing, and this was a very firmly accelerated growth.

Before that, we would be hesitant to do that because it would show a great growth figures on paper, but with each individual additional marketing euro and also the loss of the platform would increase, and that would not let them create immediate economic benefit. And as Florian has also explained in our marketing budget project in the year of 2024 is a year of profitable growth.

So we really try to make sure that wherever we invest money, we get an immediate return, and we do not invest money that gives us a return only in 2025 or 2026. So we have a very conservative investment approach in Jooli for this year. And as I said, I hope that sometime in the third or fourth quarter, we will become -- we will get into a situation where we have a positive customer lifetime value, and then we can massively increase the investment and can also profit from the fact that Juwelo has increased its profitability and, therefore, can support that growth also.

[Florian Spatz, executive]

Okay. Then let's come to a quick summary of the financials in Q1 2024. Revenue increased by 5% from EUR 10.8 million to EUR 11.3 million, once again outperforming the market, which declined as you have seen by 9%.

Our gross profit margin went down by 3.5 percentage points due to increased COGS, as I said, material costs and also shipping fees. But yes, as presented, we took action in order to increase the margin again in a sustainable and permanent way.

And finally, the gross profit stabilized compared to previous declines we have seen in 2023. And besides our return to revenue growth, an important factor in Q1 was also a reduction of total expenses by 8%, mainly thanks to the marketing spending optimization that we have done and that reduced marketing spending by 13%. All this has brought us back to profitable growth with an adjusted EBITDA that improved from minus EUR 169,000 to EUR 148,000.

Yes. So we are back to profitable growth, and we expect consumer sentiment in the course of 2024 to further improve slowly and on a -- still on a very low level, but constantly bringing us into the position to benefit from this market recovery in a strong way. And therefore, we confirm our outlook and we project to return to profitable. We project revenue increasing by 4% to 8%. And the gross profit margin between 49% and 51% and an adjusted EBITDA improving disproportionately to EUR 1.5 million to EUR 3.5 million.

Okay. Many thanks. This was the presentation of our Q1 2024 figures. I would now like to open the Q&A session. And as always, it would be great, if you could use the zoom function raise your hand, and my colleague, Boris will then give you the microphone.

And I see the first question, Mr. Frey.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Well, nice to see you so quickly back to profitability and see happy faces. Probably I would start with quickly on the gross margin. Would you see this sequential improvement relative to Q4 mostly market-driven or already a big -- any big action that you've taken here?

[Florian Spatz, executive]

So the instant recovery will be more based on our actions, since we cannot predict exactly when the market recovery takes place or how fast it takes place. I mean, we see with May the third month in a row that consumer sentiment according to [ gift card ] is improving. So there seems to be a continuous upward trend, but this is not in our full control.

So in order to improve the gross profit margin. We took action with projects that are 100% under our control, for example, the switch to lower shipping fees with [indiscernible] cost or the airtime improvement where we can really decide what exact product with what percentage margin will play. So I think in the very beginning, in the next month, it will be an improvement based on projects we do. But in the long term, of course, an improved consumer sentiment will also help us a lot here.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Right. And now you are in the good situation that you've grown sales for 4 quarters, obviously, in a declining market, which, however, means that in the fifth quarter, you'll start to face tougher comps. And if I'm not mistaken, you had your probably a bit bigger anniversary campaign last year for the 15th birthday of Juwelo. What have you plan for this year's? It should be particularly concerned for their Q2 comps of last year?

[Florian Spatz, executive]

No, not at all. We are planning a really great birthday. So the 15th birthday was, of course, a nice event for our customers, but it is a great event every year. It's an important event for us. And this year, we focused on a lot of new guests, new formats, we are going to launch a lot of new products that we have ordered specifically for the Juwelo birthday.

And I think we have the setup and everything, we have prepared is very promising for a good Juwelo birthday. Of course, good consumer sentiment and a continuous increase of the willingness to buy of German and European customers would be helpful. But we do see this development currently. And at the same time, we have really prepared a lot of things to have an entertaining and good performing Juwelo birthday.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Reassuring. Another question on the marketing mix, which is probably relevant for both Juwelo and Jooli. Well, in -- particularly in advertising seems to still be pretty neglected by larger advertisers. And -- just wondering, have you tried that so far? Do you think it's suitable for Juwelo and probably also in the future for Jooli?

[Florian Spatz, executive]

In advertisement, you mean, for example, push notifications via the app, just to make sure I understand your question correctly?

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Yes. Well, there is a big industry now. You have say, the app about which we're talking range from the web or app to games. And you -- well, whenever someone usually doesn't pay for an app, it's financed via advertising. And then you have a small button where you show Juwelo products or probably Jooli products, and the idea is a bit -- while there is very much time spent on a mobile device and prices are relatively low and targeting functionalities much better than in other marketing channels. It's a bit structural because large advertisers usually want to allocate really big budgets, and that's a relatively small corner of the market. That's a bit the idea if that's something...

[Florian Spatz, executive]

Okay. I see. I see. So for example, also in other apps, making sure. Yes, so there are 2 things. One thing is the advertisement we do for our webshop, that's already takes place wherever Google or Meta things make sense. It can also be an advertisement in the app -- in 1 of the apps. But -- and here, you have a very good point and something that is part of our core strategy projects.

So far, our mobile app for Juwelo was an app that had the function like a second screen app for the TV show, right? It was promoted in the TV show, but we did not market the app as a stand-alone app. And this is something that is related to the fact that the app was not made in the beginning to be a stand-alone app.

And therefore, when we tried to spend some marketing budget on this, the conversions were pretty low. So what we decided to do is to rebuild part of the app to create a new Juwelo app that can be marketed really as a stand-alone app. And this will offer us the opportunity that you are mentioning to promote the app as -- on other apps where it's just 1 click away from the installation on the mobile device. And I think it will be a huge revenue growth and especially new customer driver for our Live show, for our mobile live show. So if we look at where the market goes towards pocket TV, this pocket TV thing is something extremely interesting for us, and we are preparing our apps to make sure that we can profit from this.

[Wolfgang Boyé, executive]

And I might want to add them some of the Jooli experience. As you know, we have focused the launch of Jooli in India because this is an area, where we can scale at much lower cost and reach the level of scalability with much reduced investment. [ India ] is already pretty much ahead in terms of the usage of mobile and also the usage of mobile marketing.

So currently, the Jooli app in India, we spent EUR 0 in classic display ad, and in particular, into search engine marketing that in Europe is still a pretty important part of the marketing mix of any advertisers. So 0 money goes into that. In India, we had spent only money on classic and social media marketing and in-app marketing, and we see they are much higher conversion rates, which is 1 of the reasons why we have started to use this experience also with the promotion of our Juwelo app in Germany.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Sounds good. So basically, you relook and still a bit learn from Jooli in that regard.

[Wolfgang Boyé, executive]

Jooli is little zodiac boat with a small engine, so it can move around fairly quickly, and we are trying to profit from that fact. And whenever we see unchartered waters, obviously, we guide this to the big Juwelo boat to follow.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

If I may, 1 final question on Jooli, obviously, as we already had the topic. I think we talked about, well, customer lifetime value, well, inflecting this year. And I just wondered first of all, what level of data do you have already any data on reorder frequency or other indicators for lifetime value? And what are you looking at particularly in that regard?

[Wolfgang Boyé, executive]

And yes, I shared some of that with you in the full year figures. Only -- I did that only orally. Obviously, we have all of the data on our customers. We have tens of thousands of individual movements and also tens of thousands of customers. And we also do have numbers on repeat customers. But I have to add that, currently, we do not get fully focused on retention. So we spent very limited amount of marketing volume on customer retention, which is now starting to change. And so the overall number of repeat customers so far is fairly low, which leads to a customer lifetime value that becomes positive only at the moment roughly after 10 years. So it's a very long amortization process, and this is something that we have to bring to 1 year in order to be able to scale it.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

And can you -- well, if you look -- not the final question, nearly the final question. If you're looking at the reasons why it takes probably longer for customers to come back, do you have some kind of attribution saying, well, our customers content with the whole process. Is it anything you can influence or any idea, any light on that one?

[Wolfgang Boyé, executive]

This reflects basically the core aspect of modern AI-based marketing and on modern AI-based customer journeys. So the thing that we need is we need a huge amount of data to see, which customers to target and we're still in Jooli, in India. We are still in the process of determining which customer groups to target with which kind of advertising campaign because we do see that some campaigns produce very nice customers with quick follow-on purchases and other campaigns produce customers, who purchase a product and then never return.

And for that, we just need to wait because we need to pour all of this data into this, I may even say black box, see how it performs and then adjust the data. And that is something that both in customer journeys, but also in advertising that is a change for the past when in the past, you had people thinking about with their experience on how to do that. And now you have a machine that actually optimizes and that, in the long run, is much more efficient, but in the short run, requires quite a lot of data to function properly and therefore, with the current budget of between EUR 5,000 and EUR 10,000, this is the amount of time it is going to take.

[Joerg Frey, analyst]

Yes. Understood. Thanks a lot, and well I hope the very good momentum continuously.

[Florian Spatz, executive]

Many thanks, Mr. Frey.

I see no further questions. So I would like to thank you for your time and for your continued interest and trust in our company and in us, and I wish you a very nice day. Take care and bye-bye.