Rational AG

XETRA:RAA

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Tobias Stadler, executive]

So my dear ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased that you have dialed into this call and a very warm welcome from my side. My name is Tobias Stadler, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Nicole Engelhardt, Stefan Arnold; and our CEO, Peter Stadelmann. Due to a business trip to Asia, our CFO, Jorg Walter, is unable to take part in the call today, but Stefan will take over his part in the presentation and the Q&A session.

Before we start, as always, a few hints at the very beginning. You can also find them on the slide here. First all participants remain muted. After the presentation we will directly go over to the Q&A session where our colleagues, Nicole will read out the questions you sent us via e-mail. Your questions will then be answered by Peter and Stefan. Thanks to all of those who sent them in advance. This makes our life a bit easier, and we hope the answers will be more helpful for you.

If we already gave the answer to a question during the presentation or if we already had a comparable question, we then might not repeat the question later on. However, we will make sure that all questions will be answered before we close the call. This call is being recorded, and we will send the recording as a YouTube link to all participants after the call. We kindly ask you not to share this outside your organization as we have here written on the slide.

With that, I hand over to Peter.

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for your interest in our company on a day with a lot of news struggling around. Let me start, as usual, with some customer insights. The first one is about the October fest in Munich. It had 6.7 million visitors, a lot of international guests also, most of them came from the U.S.A., followed by Italy, U.K. and Austria. The food sales grew by 9% compared to previous year. The Bavarian Classic remained at #1. The chicken or [indiscernible], as we call it, was the most favorite dish. The Wiesn gastronomy also followed the trend to more organic, regional and vegetarian food. 29 of the 40 so-called tents are using Rational equipment. In total, 195 units, iCombi's and iVario's were in use.

The day before the opening, our team of 6 chefs visited all the kitchens to make sure everything is perfectly ready and the 1,000 chefs operating the kitchens during the [ Wisen ] are happy. From Bavaria to south of India, Bangalore is known for its high-tech industry and nightlife. As the most populous country in the world, India offers great opportunities for us. We want to take advantage of these opportunities and did invest in a Rational-owned training center in Bangalore. It was opened in late September. As everywhere, we have most of our training centers at [ dealer ] sites and additionally run a few independent training centers on our own.

Finally, let me present another customer example. We know that you are all waiting for customer references on the iHexagon. Let our customer, Markus Dworaczek, Executive Chef at the Schalke Stadium in Gelsenkirchen speak on his own. He posted his experience with the iHexagon on LinkedIn. As you can see, he uses the iHexagon to produce a full load of hot dogs. It was cooked for 800 VIP guests at the European Football League Championship game. As a batch only takes 1.30 minutes -- 1.50 minutes, sorry, I have to say, 1 minute and 30 seconds, no guest had to go hungry during the half-time break.

This cooking time isn't possible with any other equipment for such a large volume. None of this would have been possible without our employees. As you know, we call them U.i.U entrepreneurs within the enterprise because they run at a performance level of real entrepreneurs. They take responsibility in the company and try to improve wherever possible. At the end of 9 months 2024, we employed 2,690 U.i.U worldwide. In 2024, we run our global employee satisfaction survey, the U.i.U Compass again. 90% are very satisfied or satisfied with Rational as an employer all in all. 88% are proud to work at Rational.

By the way, all employees in Germany received an additional inflation compensation premium on top of EUR 1,000 in July. Let's take now a closer look at the figures. We start with sales, and I would like to repeat, 2023 sales, we reached EUR 1.126 billion and we were able to exceed the previous year sales by 10% or by more than EUR 100 million. After 2 years of exceptionally high growth rates after the pandemic, we are returning to our normal growth rate after the many, many years before 2020. These are sales revenues by quarter in 2022, '23 and the actual year. Q3 2024 sales revenues grew by 8% to EUR 294 million. This is on the Q2 level and reflects our usual seasonality. Looking at the 9-month figures in total, we grew by 5% to more than EUR 875 million.

Let's have a look at the regional business development. Europe, including Germany, remains our largest region, accounting for more than 50% of sales. Due to the higher market penetration of iCombi steamers, the growth rates here are lower than in the overseas markets. Europe, excluding Germany, recorded sales revenues near previous year with EUR 356 million. Thanks to France, Switzerland and Southeast Europe, this region grew successfully. In Germany, sales was flat at minus 1% in 9 months 2024. Q1 sales were down minus 17%. Q2, on the other hand, grew by 11% and Q3 grew by 8%. So we see the German market stabilize. The lower sales in Q1 are explained by the reduction of order backlog of the previous year, not by a corresponding decline of demand.

After growing quarter-by-quarter, sales in North America continued to develop well. Sales in North America grew organically by 8% in 9 months 2024. Latin America grew by 10% to EUR 53 million. Asia grew by 3% in 9 months and sales revenues fell by 14% in Q3 2024. The decline in Q3 is explained by the additional order of a big key account in Q3 2023. Thanks to the strong partner business in Japan and China, we remain on a higher sales level. The smallest regions also contributed to growth, albeit at a lower absolute level.

With that, I'm handing over to Stefan.

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

Thank you, Peter, and also a very warm welcome from my side. You can see on that slide that both product groups contributed to the positive trend we saw. So the iVario after coming back to the growth mode in Q1 could even accelerate throughout the year. Sales in Q3 grew by 14%, which results in the end in higher sales by 12% for the 9 months of 2024. Having a look back also at 2021 shows the tremendous growth rate in '22 and a 3-year CAGR of around 18% for the iVario. -- iCombi grew by 4% after 9 months 2024 with a growth rate of plus 7% in Q3 alone.

Having in mind that the growth rate after 9 months of 2023 was 18% due to working down the high order backlog, the iCombi in this year was able to even slightly grow from the high prior year figures. And again, the iCombi sales got a tailwind coming from the very strong recurring non-unit business. Let's move on now to the development of earnings. So you see here, EBIT grew overproportionally by 12% to EUR 227 million after 9 months 2024. And this is the best 9 months we ever had as we show here on the slide. The EBIT margin returned now back to precrisis levels faster than we initially expected. Looking at Q3 alone, EBIT was EUR 78 million, which translates into an EBIT margin of 26.4%. Having a closer look on the P&L, we see where the margin impact was coming from.

And if you followed us throughout the year, it should not be a big surprise for you that besides the good sales development with a growth rate of 5%, the main driver for earnings growth still was the favorable gross margin situation. We were able to increase the gross profit margin by 2.4 percentage points to 58.9%. This reflected mainly 2 effects. So on the one hand, we still saw some positive effects from the price increases for our own products after 9 months. But this effect has gone now in Q3 more or less.

And at the same time, benefited from an easing of the input costs and a stabilization of the cost on the reduced level now starting earlier this year. On the other hand, operating costs rose at a higher rate than sales by around 7% to EUR 285 million as we have expected and announced. The highest increase here we recorded in the research and development costs, which grew by 27%. And thus, we continue to invest in the future of Rational. And here, considering that EUR 5.4 million of the R&D costs were capitalized in the 9 months of last year, -- so then the increase of the R&D expenses was lower at around 13%.

The under proportional increase in sales and service expenses, on the other hand, was mainly coming from lower freight costs compared to last year. And overall, having a look at this slide, we are very, very satisfied with the development of the earnings situation. You all know our solid balance sheet structure, and there was no change during the year of 2024. So you can here calculate yourself. There is an equity ratio of 75%, which is a very constant one over the last years. And also our liquidity ratio stays at a very high level of 43% -- so this means that in the cash and cash equivalents and in the other assets, there is a level of around EUR 430 million in liquid funds.

So compared to the end of Q3 last year, our total assets grew by 11% or EUR 99 million to a little bit more than EUR 1 billion. And this was mainly due to increase in long-term assets of around EUR 15 million, but mainly due to the higher liquidity position. Now let's come to the sales and earnings guidance for 2024. So after the quite volatile last 3 years, we expected 2024 becoming a normal year for us. So we expected sales revenue growth in the mid- to high single-digit area initially. After now having completed 3 quarters of 2024, we can make this more precise now.

So we expect the growth rate in the mid-single-digit area now. The reason for going here toward the lower end of the range is the somewhat slower growth development in Germany, in some Southern European markets in North America and in China, and this compared to the initial expectations that we had. For the gross profit margin, we expected the trend of 2023 to continue and expect our input prices to stabilize on the low level, leading to reduced COGS and with that, a higher gross margin. Here, the easing of input cost was even more significant so that the improvement of the gross margin was stronger than initially forecasted.

We were planning a slightly over-proportional increase in operating costs on the other hand. And this mainly for the expansions of sales activities and the strengthening of the R&D capacities. And on the other hand, of course, also for our strategic projects that we were continuing, first and foremost here, the Road to China project. And here, we are all over in line with the expectations, as you can see here in the coloring of this slide. As a result of that, we now expect an EBIT margin for 2024 of around 26%. So as earlier said, we are faster than expected back on precrisis levels with the EBIT margin.

For the longer-term view, we see an EBIT margin in the range of 25% to 26% as a realistic level. Compared to analyst consensus, this means the sales revenues are slightly lower than forecast. On the other hand, the EBIT margin is slightly higher. So what does this mean for the bottom line now? So with lower growth rates and higher margins, this means that the EBIT in absolute terms is expected to more or less match the analyst consensus. So if you have a look in the latest Bloomberg consensus shown on Monday this week, this was at a level of EUR 305.2 million.

And with this outlook, we are now at the end of the presentation, and we want to start with the Q&A session. So I hand over to Nicole.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you, Stefan. Okay. Let's start. I'm going to start with you, Peter. First question. How should we think about potential impacts from the U.S. elections on Rational's business? Will production footprint expansion plans into the U.S. be back on management's agenda?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

We do not expect immediate effects on our industry. The majority of combi steamer manufacturers are outside the U.S. So tariffs would impact all of them equally. We agreed earlier in 2024 to reassess the situation once the President will be elected, given our flexibility and financial strength, we see ourselves well prepared for any consequences the second Trump presidency might have. At the moment, it is too early to take a decision based on rally promises. Let me make a general remark here. If tariffs really are set up rapidly and sharply as President-elected Trump announced, that would lead to imported inflation.

It will also lead to increased demand for domestic substitutes, creating more inflation if domestic supply will not be increased at the same speed and building up production capacity by domestic or foreign manufacturers of tariff goods will take some time. These are basic economic effects, even the U.S.A. under Trump could not escape. And we do not know yet the countermeasures, the affected nations will take on their site. This, I think, all will be subject of negotiation to run after Trump is inaugurated.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

What is the outlook for the gastronomy industry in your markets?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

All over, this is still positive. So all the big trends forecast increased number of meals eaten outside of -- or out of home. The people need to eat and want to go out and shift. There is still some shift between different customer groups that's ongoing. So we will see even more snacking, more cheaper offerings. as the economy is weakening, more retail business and more casual dining and on the other side, less of the traditional gastronomy, less typical restaurants. But as I said, the number of meals is growing and will be growing.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Are you seeing increasing key account activity now that interest rates are falling? Could there be positive surprise in Q4?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

I just came back from the U.S. last week, and I learned that our key account pipeline is filled quite well. So lower interest has always been positive for key account investments. So I think, yes, this is positive even if we might not see it in Q4.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

To what extent and where do you apply artificial intelligence? And what are your future plans?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

As you might know, we are using cooking intelligence now for more than 20 years. That means that our units cook autonomously. They -- we just had a big hotel group on site here the last 2 days, and we did a comparison using combi steamer -- a rational combi steamer on manual mode going at 180 for 30 minutes and using an iCombi Pro using the intelligence function for [indiscernible] . And the difference has been huge since in the intelligent mode, we use different climates in the beginning with steam and then we use dry air. whereas if you just manually bake them, it's just dry air at 100 degrees flat. So we saw a huge difference in that. Next to that, we use artificial intelligence in the field of technical service to have preventive maintenance and things like that. And of course, also in connection with our connected cooking platform.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Could you give an update on your activity in China? And what's the state of affairs at the China production site?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Yes. The project runs according to plans. Start of production and start of sales is unchanged, expected end of 2025.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

What's the order intake and book-to-bill look like in Q3? And what is the reason for not reporting the order backlog?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Yes. Order pattern remains as it used to be pre-COVID. That means sales equals order backlog. Order backlog remains rock solid at around EUR 120 million. The book-to-bill is at 1. And why don't we talk or report that any longer? After the supply chain got back to normal, we stopped publishing and talking about order backlog and order entry since we never did that pre-pandemic.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

How did you start into the Q4 2024?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Starting Q4 was good. More details then in February next year with the announcement of prelims.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you, Peter. Got a couple of questions for you now, Stefan. What was the unit growth for iVario and iCombi? And what was the pricing impact for Q3 and year-to-date?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So the iCombi unit development was flat after 9 months, and the iVario grew by 13%. So Yes. In Q3, we had a 3% growth in the iCombi segment and around 17% for the iVario. Price increases, as stated earlier, were, let's say, more or less gone now in Q3, and this is maybe a story of the past, and there is no plans to do further price increases for the short term.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

From which regions can the demand increase for the iVario?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So our biggest markets are, of course, in Europe, still especially Germany and France. And of course, here, the demand is the highest, but we see also strong sales growth here and demand growth in the Latin American market in Asia and in other overseas markets.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you, Stefan. Peter, when can we expect relevant iHexagon sales and what will drive them?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

As I said in my letter, we do not want to increase unit growth of iHexagon too over eagerly, and we do not disclose more details about the iHexagon for the time being.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Which percentage of group sales did you realize in the nonequipment segment?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

That is around 32% share of total sales in Q3 2024.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Do you see kind of sustained demand decline in any region?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

No, we still see the sustainable growth opportunities in all markets given that big 3 potential and unpenetrated markets.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you. Stefan, could you please elaborate on the sharp revenue decline in Asia of minus 14% year-over-year in Q3 2024?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So the major reason for that was that last year, in Q3 already, we were benefiting from big orders in Japan and China. And they were from -- yes, let's say, the big order that we were discussing last year a lot was about this big China order, but also from our OEM partner in Japan, we saw good orders here that -- so that the Q3 2023 was extraordinarily higher.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

What was driving the revenue growth in North America? Any market share gains?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

Yes. Basically, it was the increase in the market penetration so that we converted kitchens from traditional equipment to our cooking systems. And this was, yes, mainly coming from the street business, as Peter pointed out before. So here, these were the drivers.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Can you give us a sense of the size of the chain orders in China that will have a negative comparison impact on first half year next year?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So looking at the quarterly data, we estimate this impact at around EUR 10 million that we will see maybe as, yes, headwind for the Asian market in the half year one next year.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

How high is sales in India in percent of group sales?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

This is around 1% of total.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

And could you remind us what the FX impact on sales was in Q1, Q3 -- Q2 and Q3, please?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

Half year one in total was more or less neutral. So to be maybe a little bit more exactly, this was slightly negative at around minus EUR 0.6 million. And now in Q3, we had a higher negative effect of around EUR 3.3 million.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Weak Q3 Asia sales attributed to large chain customer orders in prior year. But actually, the really large orders, if I'm not mistaken, were in Q4 last year and Q1 this year. How was the underlying development?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So as I said before, there was another big order coming from a Japanese partner, which was already very strong in Q3 last year. And so as China and Japan are responsible for the majority of sales in Japan -- in Asia, sorry, this is having a big impact here.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Stefan. Back to you, Peter. Although the share of iVario sales has increased, which we understand has a lower margin compared to iCombi, you still had a strong gross margin. How has the unit economics in iVario changed?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Gross margin is almost at the same level between iVario and iCombi, maybe around 2 to 3 percentage points lower in the iVario than in the iCombi. It has improved over the last years, and we know that it will be getting closer to the iCombi gross margin given that we will have scale effects with growing numbers.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

What is the reason for the slower-than-expected increase in the operating cost?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Personnel costs in the operational expenses increased faster than sales, while logistics costs trended downwards compared to previous year quarter. And cost for overseas freight is somewhat lower than expected and offsets higher costs for inner European freight.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Could you give an update on how you are proceeding in hiring more sales staff and whether or not this might have an impact on your targeted revenue growth medium term?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Yes. This, of course, is crucial for our growth. We hired 170 more staff in the last 12 months. In sales, we are slightly behind hiring plan. As usual, I would like to add. Our salespeople are former chefs, and they are missing everywhere. So it is also, for us, more difficult to finally hire them. Some regions could be affected by that in the short term. We already have measures in place. So for instance, we hired an additional recruiting manager to help us with active sourcing in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

How many salespeople have you hired year-to-date? And how does that compare to your plan and your existing sales force?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

We hired around 50 full-time equivalents. We still have enough work for another 30 or so people. In total, we have more than 1,000 chefs, half of them on our own payroll and the other half working as freelancers doing the Rational live shows, helping with basic introduction once the unit is installed or at trade shows.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Are there any specific geographies where you would like to hire more sales staff but are below plan? Is it U.S. or is it Asia?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Yes. It is U.S.A. and China, but also in some selected European markets.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

And how do you see the further development of the wages?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

We take decision on wages every year in June and with effect of July after 2 higher wage increases in 2022 and 2023, the increase in 2024 was lower. Generally, we try to offset inflation. For our customers, we expect increasing wages also since there is a shortage of personnel and every increase in all factor prices make our cooking systems more affordable and more profitable for our customers.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

To which extent is the better anticipation of the EBIT margin stemming from hiring bottlenecks? How much will be sustainable going into FY 2025?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Sales and service expenses were growing under proportionally. As said in the presentation, one reason for that were lower logistic costs. Another reason that it did not grow faster is that we are lagging behind in hiring new salespeople as said before.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you, Peter. Now again, a couple of questions for you, Stefan. Will we see a further decline in CapEx in the future or a normalization at a certain sorry, I didn't open this line here. I repeat the question. I'm sorry. Will we see a further decline in CapEx in the future or normalization at a certain level?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So all over, we are expecting a level of between 3% and 4% of sales revenues for the CapEx, but also a fluctuation, of course, within this bandwidth.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

The fiscal year guidance implies Q4 sales growth in 7% to 9% growth range. How comfortable do you feel about being able to continue with this momentum heading into 2025?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So with the fiscal year outlook we gave with the mid-single-digit range, we would say this implies maybe also for Q4 now a mid-single-digit level, so being at 5% after 9 months. So this means so somewhere around the 5% range, including, of course, also the range you mentioned is realistic. For 2025, we do not yet give an outlook. So this is something we will do next year.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

And what is your outlook for the markets in North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

Here, we expect a continuation of the 9-month developments we already saw.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Where do you expect the Q4 margin to come out?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

Yes. With the guidance we gave, this means EBIT margin guidance for the full year is at around 26%. So this means that also for Q4, we should be around this level, maybe slightly above.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

How should we think about the expected gross margin in Q4 2024 versus overhead costs?

[Stefan Arnold, executive]

So gross margins should stay on the level of Q3 approximately. So there are always one-off effects in Q4, as you know, like, for example, revaluation of stocks that makes it more difficult to predict here. With overhead, I would assume that you mean operating costs. Here, as always, due to the seasonality we see with also higher sales in Q4 also the OpEx should go up slightly compared to Q3.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Thank you, Stefan. So at the moment, we have a couple more questions, one more question to be exact. Peter, what sales volume growth in units for the iCombi and for the iVario would sound reasonable at global level for fiscal year 2025 and further beyond. What is the normalized unit volume growth that Rational can deliver?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

Our long-term guidance is in the mid- to high single-digit range. Sales revenue growth with Rational is usually always unit growth since we try to avoid any price increases in order to keep our customer benefits high. So our 8% to % growth rate that we had in the last 10 years, I think, is a reasonable value to also see in the mid and long term.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

What's the outlook for the input cost 2025?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

We assume you mean COGS and are expecting to stay approximately on the cost level that we see right now.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

For quite some time, you considered 25% EBIT margin to be your sustainable long-term level. Do you think there will be noticeable margin pressure midterm? Or is the margin progression towards, let's say, 30% a possibility, thanks to operating leverage, the current margin upward trend and potentially higher margin iHexagon sales?

[Peter Stadelmann, executive]

As we expect a more or less unchanged input cost level, gross margin should be on a similar level. On the EBIT margin, no statement yet. You know that we stated in the last 2 or 3 years that we want to get back to 25%, 26-ish. Long term, as said earlier, we are experiencing a range of 25% to 26%. On the impact on the iHexagon, as said earlier, we don't disclose anything about that.

[Nicole Engelhardt, executive]

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Stefan. No more questions.

[Tobias Stadler, executive]

Well, it seems like, yes, all questions have been answered. In case of any additional questions, please feel free to submit them via mail or give the IR team a quick call after the call. Then thanks for participating in this call. We hope you found it helpful, and please feel free to share any feedback with us. If you allow me to make some marketing for our upcoming events, I would like to invite you to our IR follow-up talk on today's results, which will take place next Thursday, so on November 14 at 2:00 p.m. CET.

You can register via the IR calendar on our website, and I would be pleased to welcome you to join the session. Additionally, I would like to draw your attention to our upcoming Capital Markets Day. If you wish to attend, please feel free to send us a mail, and we will provide you with all the relevant info. One thing is for sure, anyone who would like to see iHexagon live in action should come to Landsberg on November 28. With that being said, I close the call. Thanks once again. Take care. See you soon, and bye-bye.