Wacker Neuson SE

XETRA:WAC

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Susanne Rizzo, executive]

Hello, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to The Wacker Neuson Group's First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Susanne Rizzo, Manager, Investor Relations at Wacker Neuson.

I would like to point out right away that we are facing a bit of a logistical challenge today. Our CEO, Dr. Karl Tragl; and our CFO, Christoph Burkhard, are both in corona quarantine, and they are connected to us by phone from the home office. We therefore ask for your understanding if the call might not run as smoothly as usual.

Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, we will present the results and highlights of the first quarter and provide an outlook for the remainder of the year. You will have the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. If you are not joining us via webcast, you can find the presentation slides for this call at wackerneusongroup.com/investor-relations. Before we start, please note that the entire call, including the Q&A session will be recorded and made available on our website in the afternoon. Now let me turn the call over to Karl Tragl and Christoph Burkhard.

[Karl Tragl, executive]

Thank you, Susanne, and good afternoon, everyone. This is Karl Tragl speaking. I know my voice is more sounding like Joe Cocker, but I do hope that you still can understand me well. Thank you all for joining us today.

[Christoph Burkhard, executive]

And welcome also from my side, Christoph Burkhard here. It's good to be with you today.

[Karl Tragl, executive]

2022 got off to a brisk start for us with a dynamic pace of growth across all our reporting regions. With revenue increasing by 20% on the prior year quarter, our teams again succeeded in meeting the dynamic demand for our products, and the teams delivered another quarter of strong growth. I am extremely proud that our employees remain highly motivated and full of [ triumphs ], especially in these difficult times and that they put our customers at the heart of everything they do. However, the corona pandemic and strained supply chains continue to cause operational disruptions and rework. At the same time, prices for materials, energy and shipping are evolving dynamically. All this is putting pressure on our gross margin. On the positive side, we were able to realize price increases in the first quarter. And with strict cost control across the whole organization, we decreased operating costs by 2.1 percentage points of revenue year-over-year.

These cost actions, however, could not fully compensate the above-mentioned negative effects of disruptions, rework and rising input costs. With an EBIT margin of 7.5%, profitability in the first quarter was 2.5 percentage points lower than the previous year. The net working capital ratio at the end of the first quarter reached 28.5% and remained well within our strategic target range of 30% of revenue or less. However, supply constraints in our dynamic growth in the first quarter led to an increase of net working capital in absolute numbers, which impacted our free cash flow.

Now let's take a look at the business development in our regions. Double-digit growth in all reporting regions clearly shows that there is a high demand for our innovative products in the targeted markets. Sales in Europe were up 18% on the previous year. Drivers of growth were once again Germany, Austria and the U.K. but also France, Poland and the Czech Republic. There was strong demand for compact equipment for the construction industry. And also our own rental business developed positively.

With an increase of 32%, agriculture business with our brands, Kramer and Weidemann has once again proven to be an important growth driver and we are preparing the future with more innovation. Weidemann's electric Hoftrac, 1190e, which you see on the slide, has just received the Equitana innovation price for its redesign, offering a bunch of new customer benefits like the [indiscernible] and charging technology. Market launch of this zero emission machine is in preparation.

In Americas, the positive trend in U.S. and Canada continued with strong demand from major customers. There was high interest for worksite technology like generators and light towers. Excavators and compact track loaders also recorded significant growth. You may recall that in our last call, I presented to you a great new product for the North American market, which we launched in October 2021, our new SM100 utility track loader. This product was highly appreciated by our customers in the first quarter, and it is turning into a sustainable growth driver for the Americas.

In Asia Pacific, there are no news in the Chinese home markets. We still face, like others, a difficult market environment with overcapacities and high price pressure. On the other side, strong growth continued in Australia, particularly with excavators and rollers. Our affiliates there are now able to source the high-volume excavator models from our plant in China, especially configured for the Australian market. This can further accelerate our business. Now over to Christoph, who will elaborate on our major challenges.

[Christoph Burkhard, executive]

Thank you, Karl. It will not come as a surprise to you that supply chains remain our biggest challenge. Unfortunately, things are not getting better regarding the serious disruptions to global supply chains rather on the contrary, due to China's strict corona policy, cargo ships are queuing up at the world's largest container port in Shanghai. Currently, around 40% fewer goods are being exported than usual. This situation might also further disrupt our production processes in the coming weeks. With the rising share of late deliveries, planning accuracy continues to be a big challenge. But positive news here is that the number of unfinished machines, which stood around 2,200 at the end of the first quarter, did not further increase until today. However, the necessity to rework these machines and touch them more than once to get them out of the factory has obviously a negative impact on productivity and eventually on profitability. So we have to operate our plants extremely flexible, and it becomes more and more difficult to adjust production schedules at short notice.

I would also like to point out that there are positive signs as well. Suppliers have invested in additional capacities, which might lead to an easing of the disruptions in the quarters to come. However, we remain very cautious here. No positive news on the input cost side either, prices for raw materials were already on record highs in 2021 and the increase continues and energy prices are skyrocketing. Container prices are stagnating, but unfortunately, on a very high level.

So let me repeat now our countermeasures we communicated in our last call in March. We have decided to introduce our dynamic pricing model from Q2 onwards. Price lists will be reviewed every 6 months. Additionally, we will introduce an energy price adder that will be reviewed on a quarterly basis. In this way, we should be able to respond swiftly to further increases in input costs. In the first quarter, we realized price increases of 7% to 8% compared to the levels of the beginning of last year. Additionally, we have implemented another price increase of 6% for compact and 4% for light equipment being effective February 1. Taking into account, however, that our order books are very well filled, we do not expect to see a substantial effect of this increase until Q3.

So how did the supply chain situation affect our net working capital and cash flow in the first quarter? As Karl already mentioned, we managed to keep the net working capital ratio at the end of the first quarter at 29%, hence, within our strategic target of 30% or less despite all the challenges on the supply side. In our last call, I explained that with our plans to proceed further on our growth path, our net working capital in absolute terms would eventually rise again, and we have seen an increase of receivables in the first quarter. Further on, the disrupted supply chains continued to impact our inventory with increasing works in progress as well as higher raw material levels.

Overall, this development impacted our free cash flow, which came in at minus EUR 68 million before inflows from fixed-term investments in the amount of EUR 30 million. Consequently, our net financial debt increased to EUR 76 million compared to the end of the year. At the same time, we reduced significantly our gross debt position to approximately EUR 255 million by repaying a EUR 125 million Schuldschein in February as planned as well as a USD 40 million tranche out of our USD 100 million Schuldschein as an early repayment.

Now let me come to our outlook for the remainder of the year, and I would like to start with the confirmation of our guidance. When we issued our guidance in February, we already expected the first half of 2022 to be particularly difficult. In the meantime, we have seen on the revenue side, a dynamic start into the year, driven by continued strong demand for our products. However, pressure on margins has continued to increase. Supply chain disruptions are still negatively impacting our operations, and they are responsible for the many reworks. At the same time, input cost inflation has accelerated.

But we have reacted fast. To counter cost inflation, price increases and the introduction of a flexible energy price adder has been communicated and in part been implemented. With this, we expect to at least partially counterbalance rising input costs in the months to come. This should translate into a gradually improving profitability during the next quarters. Furthermore, our dynamic pricing model gives us the ability and flexibility to react swiftly to developments on the procurement side.

In response to the unstable supply chains, we have set up a power room where we bundle supplier reports on a daily basis, theorize actions for our plans and decide on immediate measures. Nevertheless, we need to acknowledge a variety of risks, adding to the ongoing uncertainty and unpredictability in 2022. Amongst others, I would like to point out further coronavirus containment measures in China as well as further knock-on effects from the war in Ukraine. All this has not and cannot be factored into our guidance yet due to lacking visibility.

But despite all those challenges, the fundamental trends of our business are still intact. Our order backlog for the group is significantly above average historic levels, and we have an excellent up-to-date product range that will help us winning market shares with our 3 brands.

And with that, we are happy to take your questions.

[Susanne Rizzo, executive]

And I would like to ask the operator to inform everybody now regarding the Q&A position.

[Operator]

The first question is from Jonas Blum, Warburg Research.

[Jonas Blum, analyst]

Three from my side, please. Firstly, with regards to the strengthening U.S. dollar, could you just remind us with regards to [indiscernible] policy? And should we expect strong tailwinds in Q2?

Second one, since you mentioned in your presentation, good demand from key accounts. I was just wondering if there's any risk that you can't pass on rising input costs that efficiently, given their stronger negotiation power? And could you just give us an indication, order back book versus current sales, what's the customer mix here? Is there a significant change given that, for example, key accounts have a larger share in the order background versus current sales.

And finally, aftermarket business, obviously a bit less dynamic than other product sales. Just wondering here, do you see risk going forward that the large share of key account sales might cannibalize some of that business?

[Karl Tragl, executive]

Okay. So let me take the second part of the question and then leave the U.S. dollar question to Christoph. And as far as the key accounts are concerned, yes, it's more difficult to get the pricing implemented at the major key accounts. It's something which Christoph had mentioned. So it's easy for us to implement pricing actions on the light equipment rather than on compact equipment with major key accounts. We are doing the best what we can. We implemented the system for that. And now it's up to us how far we can go and will implement that.

Your second question was, is there a change in mix in terms of major -- this [ wasn't asked in any of the questions ], that there's a major mix in the customer mix, a major change in the customer mix. We don't see that. The customer mix is as we started into the year and is evolving in a continuous way. We are doing some customer mix actions in U.S., getting more into the retail business, but that's due to our business strategy and less to [ external effects ].

A question with aftermarket and the risk by major key accounts and due to the fact that we don't change the mix that much and normally, in times like this one also, the dealers and the customers are getting more spare parts to be on the safe side, whatever they can get. So -- and this is more limited on production capabilities on the market demand. So aftermarket is basically on track as well.

[Christoph Burkhard, executive]

All right. So I'll just take the U.S. dollar question or the U.S. question. I cannot specifically now comment on the isolated Q2 impact here. But of course, the exchange rate development does help our U.S. entity at the moment. That's undoubtedly the case.

[Operator]

The next question is by Charlotte Friedrichs of Berenberg.

[Charlotte Friedrichs, analyst]

Also, speedy recovery to both of you. The first question would be around recent the recent weeks, if you can share with us how the order intake has developed here and also a little bit on the cost base?

And then the second question is on your conversations with customers with regards to changing prices for the backlog. Have you had any specifics here that you can share with us?

[Karl Tragl, executive]

Okay. So then, I would take the question. The first part, order intake is still strong. So we still see a positive order intake. We don't see any negative signs from that end. And could you please repeat your second question? I didn't get that fully, I'm sorry for that.

[Charlotte Friedrichs, analyst]

And so the changes in price for the order backlog, what you've heard here from customers already, if anything.

[Karl Tragl, executive]

I mean, it's understandable that on our supplier [ and input ] side, the prices are going up. Difficult to fight against many, many reasons, as Christoph explained, and we try to pass as much as possible of that to the customers with our dynamic pricing. And there is no specific feedback. It's just, I would say, the general impression I get is some of them understand that. Some of them don't understand that the more bargaining power they have, the more they can fight against it. So it's a daily sales job, I would say, where our salespeople are working on it. There is no general [ feat ], I would say.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] At the moment, there are no further questions, and so I hand back to Ms. Rizzo.

[Susanne Rizzo, executive]

So if there are no further questions, thank you, everybody, for listening, and have a great day.

[Karl Tragl, executive]

Thank you very much.