AAK AB (publ.) (AAK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you Johan, for announcing me. But certainly, thank you, Karsten, for really paving the way for me to continue to speak about AAK, how we're doing, how we work on our strategy going forward, and so forth. I hope you all appreciated getting a bit more knowledge about oils and fat, because that is really what we do, right? And that is where we excel. So thank you, Karsten, you make my life a bit easier now and try to kind of tie it together to our earnings to how we drive our company forward. So with that, let's get to it. I think it's fair to say, and everyone knows, the last 1.5, 2 years, are it's a time, an unprecedented time. It's been challenging. It's filled with uncertainty. We have cost inflation, we have disturbances, all right? And they are still here. I said before, kind of 2 steps forward, 1 step back. When you look at AAK, I do think that you see that we have been able to manage. We have been able to really maneuver in some difficult waters, navigate. We have had early on contingency plans, a decentralized organization, an agile organization that made it possible for us to continue to operate. So in the beginning of COVID, it was all about safe -- staying safe, not getting infection into our company, to our employees and to families, but also knowing that we are an important part of the global food supply chain. Like you just heard from Karsten, we are feeding the world with our ingredients, the oils and fats. So important that we, like medical and hospitals continue to operate. So immediately, we focus on how do we keep our plants running. And through continuous plans on agile and decentralized organization, we were able to do that. So in short, AAK has shown its strength in the organization. And lately, as we sum up the last quarter 2021 perspective, we are also now back. We're earning money. We're earning more than we did before. The business is going well, although still in a very dynamic environment. But if you look from a pre-COVID perspective to now, we have that growth that we have had in AAK for quite some time. I'm very proud of the organization, very proud how we have delivered through this. When we look at AAK, we have a business that we report into 3 different business areas: Food Ingredients, Chocolate & Confectionery Fats and Technical Products & Feed. You heard a bit from Karsten . Within Food Ingredients, we deliver solutions to dairy products, bakery products, infant formulas or special nutrition, plant-based food to name a few. In Chocolate & Confectionery, it is about replacements for cocoa butter as well as advanced solutions for filling fats and spreads. In Technical Products & Feed, we do animal nutrition feed, but also kind of a circular economy way or a sustainable way of taking the fractions that Karsten just talked about. When we fractionate fats into the solutions that are used in certain industries, we also get side streams, some of them nonedible. And we're able to produce solutions for candles, detergents, tires and who knows what going forward, really trying to take advantage of everything that we get from our processes and the knowledge that we have about oils and fats. And Rene will talk a bit about more -- a bit more about that later, some of the solutions that we have, some of the opportunities outside, call it, the Food Ingredient space and the Chocolate & Confection space. We are today about 4,000 employees, a turnover north of SEK 30 billion, and earnings on a rolling 12 basis of SEK 2.3 billion. When we met face-to-face last time, that is 2 years ago, we launched our new strategy where we concluded that we are in a good space. The space of oils and fats, advanced ingredients, plant-based oils and fats is a good space to be. But we declare that we need to be more precise. We launched an industry-focused, portfolio-based strategy with 4 categories: invest for future growth, Chocolate & Confectionery, Special Nutrition, optimized performance, bakery, dairy, food service, as well as taking bets for the future around plant-based food and Health & Nutrition, also concluding that we delivered too many industries. And in many of them, we have a strategy that we don't need to update that much. It really works, right? That was the claim. So a portfolio-based strategy with the purpose of making us more precise in what we do, selecting and deselecting, focusing on where we see best opportunities for AAK to deliver value to our customers. And with that, of course, helping us to grow and have a strong profitable growth. Now to comment on what have we done so far and predominantly over the last year. Well, in invest for continued growth around Chocolate & Confectionery and Special Nutrition. For example, we have continued our co-development journey around sustainability. We recently announced together with Mars, one of the global big players in chocolate. We are investing together in West Africa in our women's program around shea that is important as a raw material into chocolate, and you'll hear more about that later from Anne Mette and Jacob. We have also expanded in terms of market reach. We have invested also in our backbone in Aarhus, Denmark as a component factory. So increasing capacity, investing in that. Same thing in Special Nutrition. We recently opened up the door to our new plant in China for OPO, an important ingredient for infant nutrition. That came really timely because the market is growing in China, with the Chinese players taking more and more over from the multinational players in infant nutrition. So a well-timed investment for us. Karsten mentioned DHA, we just entered into a partnership to add new ingredients to our portfolio, making our offering around special nutrition better to our customers. Optimizing performance. We recently announced that we are consolidating capacities in Europe, taking 3 plants and consolidating volumes from 3 plants into 2 around bakery. That is to optimize our cost structure to have a better play. We're also working with product management, price management and the portfolio of products that we supply in bakery and dairy to optimize in essence, our earnings at the end of the day. Optimization is about optimizing cost structure, yes, but it's also about us being more precise and selecting those segments within bakery and dairy where AAK has the best the solutions, where we can do the value-added solutions to our customers rather than offering kind of high-volume, more commoditized type of solutions. Same thing in foodservice, streamlining a bit and rightsizing, a bit taking advantage of the COVID situation where volumes were down quite significantly, taking that opportunity to right size and streamline our foodservice business. In the bets for the future, Health & Nutrition is going to be key. It's key today and it's going to stay. For us, it's about developing portfolios that we can supply through the other industries that we have, making a chocolate more healthy, making baked goods healthier, getting a better nutritional content into an infant formula, et cetera. A brand plant-based food. We have invested into a venture capital fund, Big Idea of venture to get it closer to innovations, closer to new customers. We have entered into a partnership structure around MISTA, where we have ingredient peers, a bit like Karsten mentioned also, how do we get closer to protein, flavors, fragrances and how do these components interact in order to produce better plant-based food for the future. And last but not least, we are investing in a center of excellence, a customer innovation center in the Netherlands to be able to take our customers through a culinary experience about how to make plant-based foods better. In essence, doing what we are doing in chocolate, infant formulas, bakery and dairy. Within maintaining current strategy, we continue to invest in natural emulsifier. We made an acquisition to add more lecithin into our portfolio, strengthening our position in Europe on lecithin. That is an adjacent ingredient that we have added to AAK. We have in Personal Care improved our position in U.S. to help grow that market, as well as we have within Technical Products & Feed, really stepped up with an upcycling in candles that we just heard about. These are all efforts that helps AAK grow on many pillars. Speaking about pillars. And I think many of you investors, as well as analysts, have been asking about more granularity, especially maybe around food ingredients. So today, we show a bit of the volume breakdown that we have. CCF -- it's the CCF as we report it within Food Ingredients, as I mentioned, bakery, industrial food service, dairies, special nutrition, plant-based food, et cetera. The message with this page is that AAK, we have many legs to stand on. There are many pillars that build up our total turnover and certainly our total earnings. Dynamics within these industries are different. They are different in terms of consumer demand, they are different in terms of the opportunities for us to earn money. That's for sure. But this is a bit the breakdown that we have as of now. But maybe more interestingly, how are these now developing? So these are now delta year-on-year. And this shows a bit that we are delivering on our strategy. You can see that we have significant growth within Chocolate & Confectionery. Plant-based food, candle waxes, very strong growth, very much on the back of sustainability, as well as health, all right? And clearly, within our focus on how to drive AAK forward. You can see that we have lower growth in bakery, dairy and even industrial solutions, which are more commodity plays, we have a reduced volume. So this is to show a bit the dynamics underneath the surface. Clearly, the way of showing us how we deliver on our strategy and focusing on high-growth segments as well as segments where we have an opportunity to really supply high value-added solutions. And if you look at just the sum of plant-based food and candles, these are top 4 in terms of absolute numbers even for AAK. So even starting from small numbers, we start to add up and it starts to become something that is important for AAK in terms of the earnings that we generate. So what are some of the trends behind this? What are the consumer trends that drive this, leading through our customers and their needs? To name a few, health and well-being is a given. Sustainability, but also indulgence and premiumization. No one can argue, and we spoke a little bit about chocolate before. How do we say that we have chocolate and we have health and well-being, how does that stand? Well, we are human beings. We like to have a healthy profile, but we also like to treat ourselves. And that's just the name of the game. And when you combine that, there will still be an opportunity around making food more healthy, making chocolate and confectionery healthier and with a better nutritional profile. And Karsten mentioned a bit about the chemistry behind the oils and fats. And clearly, sustainability is something that is really present and the demands on every of us -- each and every one of us are increasing. Anne Mette and Jacob will speak a bit more about AAK and our sustainability journey. But just to highlight a few things. At AAK, we are committed to live our purpose, making better happen from plant to brand. That is about engaging to transform in the way we source. It is, of course, focusing on our own operations, how do we reduce environmental risks, social risks and improve the way we operate. And last, but not least, better solutions. Better solutions to consumers, to our customers. And I think plant-based food is a very good example. If we can help the population of the world to get food on our plates that is better from a sustainability point of view, the total supply chain and still are well tasting with a good nutritional profile, then we are helping to change, all right? So we focus on all these 3: better sourcing, better operations, and better solutions. And I'm so glad to see that in recent weeks around COP26, we have seen many, many countries standing up behind no deforestation, just like AAK. And we saw recently the European Union also putting a proposal on legislation around no deforestation, exactly what we have been talking about at AAK. So that really is about joining forces. And we have always said that only together, suppliers, customers, and governments and consumers, we can make it happen. So these are good steps forward. At AAK, M&A has been and continue to be an opportunity to deliver growth. We see M&A going forward as an ingredient for how to deliver on our targets. When we look at M&A, when we fill our pipeline with opportunities, when we screen the market, we are looking for geographical expansion. Bolt-on acquisitions of oil and fat refineries that helps us move into region or expanding the region is clearly in play also going forward. Ideally, we find targets that has a bit of excess capacity that helps us then grow from there. But also more importantly, in order for us to be able to continuously deliver really high value-added solutions, we need technology and capabilities. M&As can be a source of that. And also adjacent portfolio. So I just mentioned a bit about lecithin. We have made 2 acquisitions to add lecithin to our portfolio. There might be other ingredients, close to oils and fat, and we will remain at our core, but there are ingredients spaces just close to oils and fats where we might enter into. Either through M&A or through partnerships like we mentioned with DHA or Omega 3. That's how we focus on M&A. We have mentioned quite a few times today already our purpose, all right? Well, I just want to take us back a bit 2 years. When we launched our updated strategy, one piece of that, an internal piece of that was we want to make AAK a purpose-driven company. We believe in that force. So one of the first tasks we had at hand was to develop a purpose for AAK. Then came COVID. And I personally felt that how will we be able to kind of get to workshops and really move the needle and get out with a purpose that we can really live and motivate our organization with. But we managed to do that. We engaged more than 1,000 colleagues during COVID. Working with the management teams around the world with the Executive Committee of AAK as well as with many colleagues in these greater teams, and we were able to deliver making better happen. And it's already being rolled out. It's already being rolled out in better behaviors, in leadership program of AAK, how do we want to act? How do we want to behave? And this purpose is really building on who we are, parts of the DNA of AAK, which makes us a bit easier, but it's certainly already living and it helps us really to get forward, to really help our ambitions come to life. And with that, I think it's about time that we wrap up my part of this presentation. When we look forward, we reiterate our target about growing our earnings, our EBIT or operating profit by 10% year-on-year, all right? That is a bold target. That is an exponential growth. Those of you who have been with us for some time, you know that our track record tells us that we have done it, all right? It doesn't tell us what we will do in the future, all right? But we know that we have done it, and we know that we can do it. Our success going forward rests on 4 pillars: market growth. We need a bit of underlying market growth and at least grow with the market or then some by taking market share based on our performance; topping that up with structural growth with M&As, all right? We are looking at M&As continuously. The market is not that fragmented. There will be a bit on and off in terms of the opportunities, but it's key going forward; optimization, I mentioned in the strategy, continue to optimize our cost structure, continue to look at the segments where we are best suited to play; and continue to focus on high value-added solutions, where we, with our solution, really bring value to our customers. And with that, we create a better opportunity to earn money and to increase our earnings. And that is the EBIT per kilo that we have been talking about for long. We have a track record of improving our margins in EBIT per kilo. That is delivered through high value-added solutions through our co-development approach, getting together with customers, helping them improve products for them and for the consumers. And that's how we will continue to deliver on our ambition of 10% year-on-year. Over time, year-on-year, the proportion of each pillar will differ, but we need them all and over time on an average, that's how we will deliver the 10%, all right? With that, thank you so much for having listened to me and maybe 1 or 2 questions for me before we move on. Okay. So please welcome to the stage Tomas.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. And again, a warm welcome to our Capital Markets Day from me as well. Let's dive into the numbers a bit. When we look at our numbers for the year and Q3, and you've seen this before, but just to give some color to it, Q3 showed continuous growth in volumes and also in profitability per kilo and then driving the overall operating profit up by about 7%. So a good quarter for us. Clean for currency effects were up over 12%. Our ROC stays stable at above 15% from a lower level of mid-2020 when the pandemic started, we were down to about 13%, picked up quickly, again, I'll come back to that. When we look at the year-to-date numbers, you see a very similar picture. And the reason why the percentages are actually higher in the year-to-date than the Q3 numbers, the growth. The reason for that is the weak Q2 we had last year when the pandemic hit. We had a bit of a slump and that shows in these numbers as well, of course, right? When we dive into the details a bit, particularly on the Q3, we look at Food Ingredients. And what we see there is, as you've also seen, a bit of a reduction in volume, but a growth in profit. And this is in line with the strategy that has been mentioned before by Johan, where we tried to optimize primarily our bakery and dairy business. But also play for where we want to grow, like plant-based and so forth. So good development in our view. We also see on CCF, profits up by about 6%, driven by volume and the price pressure that's been there before that we mentioned is still there. So it is a bit of a tough market, but we see our volumes grow and our profits grow. In TPF, profit soared in Q3, up 65%. A 1/3 of that was driven by our crushing margin, which at high volume and high raw material prices produced a good margin. 2/3 of that improvement is a bit more interesting in my mind, it's related to natural ingredients and the demand for that. We talk candles, things like that. You see prices going up and demand going up. So that's a real interesting development segment for us. Another way to look at our profit growth is this waterfall here. Same thing, looking at the year-to-date development versus 2020, first 9 months. Volume, again, driven by mainly CCF, where more of the strategy comes into play is the price and mix where if we do it well, we see some good gains, and we have TPF and food ingredients play a big role here, of course. SG&A is up somewhat to about 2%. But then we have to take into account that we have annual salary increases. We also have furloughs last year that have been canceled. Everyone is back again. And we also have a little bit of travel pickup. So I would say the cost reduction program that we initiated in 2020 is playing a big part in this and keeping the cost down. And back to what I said before, up 11% to 20% year-to-date, if you clean it for currency. In this good development, we also have the challenge of increased inflation that we've been dealing with. And I'll come back to that in the next few slides. But just to give you an idea of what it looks like. This is the cost breakdown of the first 9 months as a percentage of where we basically spend our money. Almost 80% goes towards raw materials. And that is, of course, with the price increases that we've seen big challenge. Wages, other production costs that could be secondary input packaging and so forth, but also energy and logistics, we've all seen increased inflation over the past 6 to 12 months. Raw materials has probably grown in price over the last 12 to 24 months, I would say. So we've seen that for a bit longer. But it is a challenging picture, of course. And with these cost increases, we are still able to move those costs on in the value chain successfully. And that's what you see in our profit numbers as well. We continue to grow and produce increased profits despite these challenges. And we don't see -- if we look at logistics, for example, there is a practical point to this as well, the difficulty of getting goods moved around the world. We have seen challenges there, like everyone else, about the same, I would say, as everyone else, on average. It is a challenge. We put more resources and time to find the solutions. We have managed well over the past year, I would say. We don't see the risk increase going forward, but we don't see a drop quickly either. So I think we'll continue to manage it the way we have in a successful way. When we look at our cash flow, it's also very much impacted by raw materials. All components of working capital, the 9 months, everything from inventory to receivables and payable are inflated by the raw material prices. But what we see when we measure inventory days is actually a slight reduction from the beginning of the year until the end of Q3, which is what really matters. The prices we can't do much about. The important thing there is that we actually get paid for the increases. What we can do is the levels, and that's where we work. And that's how we measure the inventory days, of course. But that hampers the cash flow a bit. As you can see operating cash flow before interest and taxes is a slightly less than 1/4 of what the EBITDA is. So the cash conversion is not great. But if prices level out, we'll see cash flow start going up. And if prices drop, cash flow starts going up real quick. But there is a 6- to 9-month lag in this, as we mentioned before. So given the price increases that we've seen of late that continue in Q3, we expect cash flow to be hampered the rest of the year and going into the first half of next year as well. And then we'll see how the prices develop. When it comes to CapEx, and I have a slide on that as well to give you some details, investing activities, acquisitions, but focusing on CapEx. What we see in Q3 is the sort of run rate level that we've seen in the quarters of 2021, about SEK 150 million a quarter. It's less than what we've seen historically, and it's less than we would like to see, I have to admit. But there are some challenges, resources, materials, availability and those type of things. It does not hamper our ability to run our operations or maximize our capacity in the short to medium term. But long term, our focus is, of course, to get the levels up again. We have good projects in the pipeline. So we expect next year to have some overflow, probably around the SEK 1 billion or just north of SEK 1 billion mark for CapEx. Looking a little bit more long term. These are adjusted EBIT and volumes on the right-hand side. And as you can see from the graph for the past 10 years, we've had good growth in both. We ran into a little bit of a problem in the beginning of the pandemic. As you can see, volumes actually dropped about 4%, mainly driven by food ingredients, food services and so forth that came almost to a halt in Q2 2020, has been since picked up again. But profit didn't go down. We kept it fairly flat. And in 2021, and this is in my mind where we make a big difference. You see volumes come back up, profit increase even faster and it hasn't done that really throughout the -- well, a little bit, but not too much, as you can see in the past as it has in 2021. And this then enables our EBIT per kilo to grow quickly, and we're now above SEK 1 up to SEK 1.10. So we see the gearing effects here in 2021, which is really good to see despite continued uncertainty and volatility in the markets. When we look at our ROCE. As I mentioned before, we have a drop in the beginning or mid 2020 due to the start of the pandemic and then a quick rise again, and it's all driven by the improvement of profitability. And we're back to our sort of 15%, 15.5% mark of return. Capital employed has remained fairly stable throughout this. Raw material prices have pushed it up. The currency and exchange rate developments and actually revaluation pushed it down at the same time. So fairly stable levels, profits driving it back up to historically high levels. When we look at our net debt versus EBITDA ratio, we're still a very sort of moderate levels, I would say. And this gives us ample room for growth in the future. We talk both about organic growth, where we invest in CapEx and then growth-related working capital, but also acquisition. And I think that we can probably gear this up to 3 or 4 without any huge problems over a limited time when we make larger investments and so forth. So there's a lot of dry powder here. And when we look at the long-term delivery to our shareholders, EPS, 10%. CAGR over the past 10 years, as Johan mentioned as well. In 2021, we have excluded here our items affecting comparability, and that's the Merksem closure that we announced at the end of Q2, just to give you an idea of comparability there. This, in turn, from the EPS development has also then provided a steady increase of dividend per share over the years within the dividend policy that we have in place. So looking at AAK as an investment, we have our focus maintained, and we're geared to continue to deliver. We see and it's proven through the pandemic, we have a strong underlying demand in the markets, in our products and where we operate, these growth drivers. As I mentioned before, we have a strong balance sheet to continue that growth. And we do so through organic growth and acquisitions. And in order to deliver, as Johan also mentioned in his last slide, the 10% year-over-year EBIT growth. That's it for me. Thank you very much.