Westwing Group SE

XETRA:WEW

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Westwing Group SE earnings call regarding the first quarter results in 2023. [Operator Instructions] Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Andreas Hoerning, the CEO of Westwing Group SE.

[Andreas Hoerning, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q1 2023 results call. My name is Andreas Hoerning. I'm the CEO of Westwing. And today, we will review our Q1 2023 results, reiterate the outlook for 2023 and close with a Q&A.Let's get started with a summary of our Q1 financial results. Firstly, top line in Q1 was still impacted by baseline effects from the previous year and continued low consumer confidence, which resulted in minus 8% year-over-year group GMV growth, EUR 218 million total GMV. However, let's keep the bigger picture in mind, Q1 2023 revenue is up by 67% versus Q1 2019, showcasing the difference in scale the company gained over the past years.Secondly, in our last earnings call, I emphasized that 2023 will be all about returning to financial stability. And in Q1 2023, we clearly delivered on this. Costs across marketing, G&A and CapEx were already down by EUR 29 million on an annualized basis versus the committed EUR 30 million of gross savings. The commitment is against the Q1 2022 baseline.Thirdly, based on those cost savings in combination with strong margins, we generated EUR 5 million adjusted EBITDA or 4.9% margin in Q1 2023. Moreover, free cash flow improved significantly by EUR 27 million versus the previous year, amounting to positive EUR 10 million in Q1 2023. This was also driven by our successful net working capital management. Net working capital was at a negative EUR 5 million to end of Q1 2023, a very strong improvement of EUR 30 million versus the peak of Q2 2022.Fourthly, in terms of outlook, we continue to act in a highly uncertain macro environment, so top line forecasting remains challenging. Yet we remain very confident about the structural return to full year profitability in 2023 so that overall, we confirm our full year guidance.With that, I will move on with a more detailed discussion of our Q1 2023 results. Starting with top line. In Q1, our group GMV stood at EUR 118 million, which represents an 8% decline year-over-year. This is primarily due to baseline effects from the previous year, which was stronger compared to the rest of the year as this period was not yet fully impacted by [indiscernible] inflation.In addition to that, we still face a continued low consumer sentiment due to ongoing economic challenges and uncertainty. This difficult market environment is also reflected in our active customer base. We ended Q1 2023 with 1.3 million active customers.However, as I mentioned already, in this volatile environment, it's important to keep looking at the bigger picture when interpreting the top line results. Based on GMV, we are now 55% larger than in Q1 2019. Let me emphasize, Westwing is now in a significantly stronger position than it was in 2019.Moving on to our revenue performance in Q1 2023, which was very much in line with GMV development. In total, we achieved a revenue of EUR 103 million, resulting in a decline of 7% year-over-year. Our DACH and International segments showed similar growth trends with DACH representing 54% of the group and International representing 46% in Q1.Let me now move on to some details of our P&L, starting with an update on our cost-saving initiatives. I'm pleased to report that we are delivering as planned on our significant cost-saving targets. Overall, costs were already down by EUR 29 million on an annualized basis versus Q1 2022. So we are fully on track to generate a committed EUR 30 million of gross savings per year compared to the baseline.The savings in marketing were already achieved through roughly equal parts of personnel cost savings and reduced performance marketing expenditures. The G&A and CapEx savings are also driven by head count reduction supported by operational efficiencies across the organization.Let's take a closer look at our income statement. Our gross margin improved by 1.6 percentage points year-over-year to a very strong margin of 50.3% in Q1 2023. We continue to be able to compensate for overstocking inflationary effects with a higher Western collection share and we see now the full impact of last year's price increases, which we introduced to compensate for cost inflation.Also, our fulfillment ratio improved compared to last year despite an overall lower top line and hence slightly less scale, we were able to lower the fulfillment ratio by 1 percentage point. This was mainly achieved through continued efficiency gains in our warehouses and increasing carrier competition, which paid off in our P&L.These effects combined led to a very strong contribution margin of 27.9%, up by 2.6 percentage points compared to the same period last year. We are pleased with this improvement as it demonstrates the structural profitability level of our business model, in particular with a higher-margin Western collection at the forefront of our next growth phase.Let's move further down the P&L. As discussed just now we made significant progress introducing our marketing and G&A costs, resulting in an improvement of 1.4 and 1.5 percentage points, respectively, versus the previous year. This brings us bottom line to a strongly improved adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.9% in Q1 2023, an improvement of 6.5 percentage points versus the previous year.These results confirm that we have taken the right decisions in reaction to our 2022 results and we are confident about our structural return to full year profitability. I also want to take this opportunity to commend our entire team, which has worked tremendously over the past quarters to enable this turnaround on profitability. I'm very proud of what we have achieved and excited about our journey ahead.Just like on top line, it also helps our P&L lines to zoom out for a moment in order to understand the structural improvements we've achieved since 2019, underpinning that we are now in a significantly stronger position. On gross margin, we improved significantly by 7.9 percentage points versus 2019, which is mainly driven by the continued expansion of our Western collection.Such an improvement of gross margin in our extremely competitive retail market is extraordinary and showcases the competitive advantage we have built with our Western collection. The gross margin improvement in addition to scale and efficiency in our fulfillment operations resulted in an improvement of 9.3 percentage points on contribution margins. Hence, we have strongly evolved our business model in terms of unit economics since 2019.Based on this strong improvement on contribution margin and scale effects and G&A, we improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 11.2 percentage points compared to 2019. And yet we still have huge potential in terms of profitability. Our targeted adjusted EBITDA margin is 10% to 15% and we are very confident to deliver on this in the long run.Let's look at absolute numbers. We delivered a strong Q1 2023 with a profit of EUR 5 million on adjusted EBITDA. When we look at profitability across our 2 segments, we see that DACH is ahead of International. DACH delivered a strongly profitable Q1 with an adjusted EBITDA of 9%, while International was breakeven again with 0.3% margin.Moving on to net working capital development. Based on a continued reduction of overstock improvements on trade payables and the introduction of trade financing solution, I'm happy to report that we returned to negative net working capital to end of Q1 2023. This is a huge improvement of EUR 13 million versus the peak of Q2 2022 and we expect to maintain these healthy net working capital levels going forward.Of course, there will be some seasonal fluctuations especially in Q2 and Q3 this year, but structurally, we have already returned to negative to breakeven net working capital. Based on operating profit and successful net working capital management in Q1, we generated EUR 10 million of free cash flow in Q1 2023. This is a huge improvement of EUR 27 million versus last year and shows how well we can convert our profits into positive cash flows.In terms of our balance sheet, we continue to have a very healthy cash balance of EUR 80 million. With that, we are able to steer the company with a long-term perspective as the opportunities to come our passes.Let me now reiterate our outlook for 2023. In terms of top line, we are still in a highly uncertain macro environment and see quite some volatility on growth rates. However, we continue to expect to turn to growth in the second half of the year, mainly because we see a weaker 2022 baseline for the second half of the year. Therefore, we confirm our revenue guidance of EUR 390 million to EUR 440 million for 2023.In terms of profitability, we confirm our commitment to return to adjusted EBITDA profitability for the full year 2023 and our adjusted EBITDA guidance of EUR 4 million to EUR 13 million at 1% to 3% adjusted EBITDA margin. But please do keep in mind that our business is very seasonal. So the second and third quarter will be weaker from a profitability and cash perspective before we move to the seasonally important fourth quarter.Based on this guidance, we also continue to expect to return to a positive free cash flow on a full year basis, especially since we will continue to reduce our inventory levels throughout 2023. Yet please note that free cash flow is not part of our official capital markets guidance.With that, I'm closing my update on our Q1 2023 results with a quick summary of our investment highlights before we move to Q&A. The opportunity ahead of us is massive. The European home and living market has a size of EUR 130 billion and is still very clearly very early in e-commerce, which provides exciting growth momentum based on dynamic online adoption for years to come.Customer loyalty is at the core of our business. We create superior loyalty based on our differentiating and inspirational core. As a result, we achieved best-in-class repeat order shares of more than 80%. Our Western collection then perfectly leverages the loyalty to our log brand at about 10 percentage points margin upside and our strategic target is to bring Western collection share to greater than 50% of GMV. As of Q1 2023, it is already at 46%. [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator]

Dear participants, we will continue in a moment. Please hold the line. Dear participants, we will continue in a moment. Please hold the line. Please stay online. Dear participants, thank you for your patience. We would need a bit more time. So just bear with us for a couple of minutes. The presentation will continue. We are still waiting for the speakers to return, so please bear with us.

[Andreas Hoerning, executive]

This is Andreas again, we're back. Thank you for staying tuned. This was a false fire alarm. I'll continue with the investment highlights. We were at our Western collection that perfectly leverages the loyalty of our log brand as the 10% market margin upside and our strategic target is to bring our Western collection shares to greater than 50% of GMV.As of Q1 2023, it is already at 46%. We have a strong cash profile. Our strong balance sheet provides us with ample liquidity and strategic optionality to navigate through the current challenging market environment.And lastly, based on this highly profitable consumer log brand strategy, we have an attractive long-term profitability target of 10% to 15% adjusted EBITDA.With that, I'm now happy to take your questions. I'm joined by our interim CFO, Max Schmidt in case of more detailed questions regarding our financial results.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first questioner is Mr. Christian Salis of [ Hype ].

[Christian Salis, analyst]

Christian Salis here from Hauck & Aufhaeuser. I have 2 questions, please. First of all, could you maybe give a qualitative comment on current trading in Q2, please? And then secondly, regarding your growth outlook for the remainder of the year, particularly looking at the second half of the year, you said you are confident to recover to positive sales growth in the second half. So what gives you the confidence considering that the number of active customers is still declining by double-digits? And have you seen any -- maybe any sequential improvement in this figure in the recent weeks that maybe makes you confident to return to growth in the second half?

[Andreas Hoerning, executive]

Thanks, Christian. Max will take the first question, and I will take the second one.

[Max Schmidt, executive]

Thanks for your questions. I think coming to your first question, how Q2 2023 growth is so far, I think it's fully in line with our expectations and our guidance, but growth rates are clearly quite volatile. So for us, it's too early to provide a good indication on the Q2 2023 growth levels yet. Yes.

[Andreas Hoerning, executive]

Similarly, Christian, because you asked about the growth outlook for Q2 for the second half actually of the year. We -- why we expect to return to growth there and how that is related to active customers. On the active customer part, this is also still a baseline effect. Same as the growth numbers themselves. So there's a baseline effect in Q1, there was a much stronger baseline of 2022.And yes, we do see structural improvement, but it's too early to tell about the numbers. As Max said, it's still too volatile. And we would expect to return to growth in the second half of 2023 because the baseline of 2022 simply becomes weaker, especially now in summer and we expect no further deterioration of consumer sentiment at the moment.

[Christian Salis, analyst]

[Technical Difficulty] numbers. So I understand the argument regarding the comparative base and so on. But if I look at Chart 18 in your presentation, the active number of customers is now basically halfway down between the pre-pandemic level and the high of the pandemic, right? And I mean, the big question is obviously, where can this go to? Where can this number fall to? Are we going to see maybe pre-pandemic levels in a couple of quarters? Or do you think it's going to stabilize at a higher level or anytime soon? So that would be the big question now. Do you see any -- in Q2 now maybe, do you see any stabilization of this downtrend in terms of active customer numbers?

[Max Schmidt, executive]

I think I understood your question. When we look at active customers, I think what's very important to keep in mind is that it's the last 12 months number, right? So active customers define someone who has placed an order in the last 12 months. So it has quite a time lag until what we've seen on kind of top line in terms of GMV and revenue, also an active customer that always follows the site delay, right?So what we see now is still kind of the shrinking active customer numbers is actually something what happened already in the last year in 2022. And yes, we expect that active customer was actually going to stabilize now again because kind of this time back of 2022 kind of fails out now and it gets no more line over top line development again

[Operator]

At the moment, there are no further questions. Therefore, [Operator Instructions] There seem to be no further questions in the queue. There are no further questions, therefore, I will hand back to the company.

[Andreas Hoerning, executive]

Thanks a lot. Thank you, everyone, for joining and goodbye and take care. Bye-bye.

[Max Schmidt, executive]

Thank you. Bye-bye.