ADDvise Group AB (publ) (ADDVA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon and to some of you, good morning, and welcome to ADDvise Group Q1 2023 Earnings Call. I will walk you through key takeaways from today's report. And at the back end of the call, we will have a Q&A session facilitated by my colleague, Simon. The headline of today's call is significant EBITDA growth, improved earnings per share coupled with notable deleveraging. We had a strong momentum in the first quarter, basically following the trajectory from Q4 last year. During the quarter, we have been able to accelerate growth, combined with year-on-year margin expansion and at the same time, deleverage. Our organic growth in the quarter remained high and came in just shy of 20% and was mainly driven by the Healthcare segment where U.S. was one of the leading geographical markets. And our organic order intake grew even faster in the quarter and came in at 86%, giving us visibility on the upcoming quarters. In the quarter, we continued our margin expansion. Group operating margin reached 27% which is well above our long-term financial target. The margin was boosted by a higher share of proprietary products, pricing strategy and product mix. And part of our strategy is to increase -- in general, increase our share of proprietary products since these products carry a high -- normally carry a higher margin. The product revenue streams in Q1 compared to Q4 last year have seen an increase in Lab equipment revenues and revenues from our Pharmaceutical businesses and both these product segments contribute to the group margin improvement. And now we are on a rolling 12 basis, EBITDA margin at 22.6% versus 19.5% for the full year of 2022. Looking back at the first quarter last year, we have done major balance sheet improvements by extracting cash from inventory and the [ APAR delta ]. And the numbers in Q1 last year were skewed because of negative effects from COVID and Omicron though. Our cash conversion in the first quarter came in at a record high 149%, and that brings our net leverage down to 2.1x EBITDA. And it puts us in a good position to refinance our existing bond, and I'll come back to that later on the presentation. The Healthcare segment performed very well in the quarter. Margins were high and organic growth above our expectations. Organic growth was 36% isolated in the quarter, and the operating margin came in at 33%, and when we split that on geography, we can see that U.S. and the Finnish market showed strength. And in terms of products, we saw Pharmaceuticals, as mentioned, and clean room projects going into the pharma industry being key to the strong order intake in the segment. In the Lab segment, we have, as several of you know, struggled for some time with the operating margin. We have continued our efforts to strengthen the margin in the quarter and isolated, we reached 23%, which is all-time high in that segment. And it is also a sequential improvement compared to the fourth quarter, which was basically the starting point of the improvement. And now on a rolling basis -- rolling 12 basis, we are above the COVID margin spike we had 2 years ago. As you know, we had a mixed effect from COVID in the 2 segments and the Lab segment was positively affected giving the margin a spike, but now we are above that. Key drivers to the margin improvement were pricing and even more so us more wisely choosing our product mix in the segment. And that means basically turning down low-margin deals. Organic growth, however, came in on the soft side in the quarter at a negative 4%. But when we take the order intake into consideration, we can see that -- or I anticipate that we will see a gradual improvement of the organic revenues later this year in the Lab segment. Order intake isolated in the quarter came in organically at 92%. The overall growth in the quarter came in at 91% of which 12% was organic, if you exclude currency effect and 72% was acquired growth and another 8% driven by FX tailwinds in the quarter, and that is mainly revenues in USD and EUR versus the SEK. We have had sequential margin expansion in the last 5 years, and we now have a solid foothold above our 20% EBITDA target. And as mentioned before, key drivers have been pricing, focused on high-margin product segments and also related to our M&A agenda being able to acquire more high-margin businesses. And if we do the breakdown of the orders received or the order intake, we can see that 64% -- 96% of the growth was organic, which is a very strong number for us and 64% was acquired and a deeper dive into the organic part of the growth shows that it is within the clean room projects going to the pharma industry as well as the pharmaceutical stuff that were boosting the organic part of the orders received. In both our segments, Lab and Healthcare, we have shown resilient growth over time. One key takeaway is how well the 2 segments mitigate risk, not only that both are noncyclical, they also tend to offset each other. And if you look at the quarters, we can see that all the quarters where we see negative growth in one of the segments, the other segments show growth. And that is something that we believe is significant for ADDvise group and mitigating risk on group level. And one more thing is that both segments were also affected by COVID, Lab in a positive way, supporting healthcare professionals in diagnosing and treating COVID patients and healthcare in a negative way when elective procedures were postponed. Once again, the 2 segments mitigate financial risk for ADDvise Group. Our efforts to first stabilize and then improve the margin in the Lab segment has shown a result. The Lab segment's operating profit on a rolling 12 basis is now at 14% which is, as you can see, higher when compared to the first quarter 2021, where it's kind of spiked based on the high revenues from COVID. And consolidating acquired margin acquisition -- high-margin acquisition, and prioritizing high-margin products and working with pricing are the main reason behind the margin improvement. And that is something that we have mentioned before, pricing is key for us. And one of the main drivers for our long-term improved margin. Over the last 5 years, the average operating profit growth has been 72%, if you look at it from a CAGR perspective, and the trend continues. Looking at rolling 12 and looking at our projection for 2023, we see similar growth rate given that we reach our forecast. And what is interesting here is that and what you should know is that today compared to 5 years ago, we have a platform that is much more scalable and our financing tools better, which gives us many opportunities to continue our growth journey, both organically but also within our M&A agenda and do -- or carry through disciplined acquisitions within our space, Laboratory equipment and Healthcare. Our EBIT margin more than doubled year-on-year. The bridge between Q1 this year, 2023 and last year clearly shows that the gross margin improvement is the main contributor to the more than doubled EBIT margin. And the improved gross margin, once again, as mentioned a couple of times before on this call, comes from higher share of proprietary products, in our revenues, the pricing projects and the larger portion of revenues from our high-margin pharmaceuticals. On the cash flow side, we have -- have finalized a quarter, which, in my view, was quite impressive. And also, if you look at the 5 last quarters, we can see gradual or significant improvement in our cash flow. And as you know, the first half of last year was really challenging. We were basically cornered by our customers and our suppliers. Our suppliers last year, first half, they wanted upfront payment in order to prioritize us as a customer and ship components and our customers were reluctant to pay in time. And at the back end of the third quarter last year, kind of -- the market kind of came back to normal again, and we have seen a gradual improvement in the balance sheet since then. We had a cash conversion in the fourth quarter last year at 86%, and now we are close to 150% in cash conversion. And as you can see on the bridge, most of the extracted cash comes from changes in working capital were a reduced level of inventory and even more so the delta between receivables and payables are the contribution to the strong operating cash flow and the cash -- strong cash conversion. And net leverage is and has been for the last 2, 3 quarters topic of the day for many investors. And we based on our strong operating cash flow, have significantly reduced our net leverage in the last 2 quarters. We are now well below our long-term financial target, which is 3x EBITDA and that gives us ample refinancing opportunities. And we have, therefore, mandated 2 banks, Pareto and SEB to investigate potential refinancing of our existing bonds. And that is something that we will come back to to the market later on. And last but not least, our long term -- or this is the financial goals and outlook for this year. And as you can see, which we communicated in the year-end report for last year, we have a target of reaching SEK 1.6 billion on a pro forma basis before the end of this year and to reach an operating result of SEK 330 million, which gives us -- on a pro forma basis, which gives us a margin of 21%, and at the same time, and based on the strong financial performance we have seen the last 2 years, the Board has decided and communicated this morning in the interim report that we will review our long-term financial targets. And the ambition is to come back to the market during the second quarter with an update on that. And the long-term financial targets shouldn't be mixed up with outlook for 2023, they kind of live separate lives. So -- but as mentioned, we will come back to that later during this -- the second quarter. I think I will stop there and open up the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Fredrik Nilsson from Redeye.

One question about the pro forma target for this year. As you just said, it implies an EBITDA margin of 21% but at the same time, I mean, in this quarter and the last one, you were at 27%. Should we assume that you mean that, that is a bit too high for the long run? Or what should we readout of that you treat that pro forma target despite a very strong quarter?

I mean, we are improving all the time. And based on the last 2 quarters, we have decided to review the long-term financial targets. So -- and what we also said is that the target for -- the margin target for this year still stands. So my answer to that is that you will have to wait until we come back to the market with an update for me to comment on the margin basically.

Okay. The organic sales and order intake growth was also at very solid levels. Could you elaborate a bit about that? Do you see a catch-up from the pandemic levels? Or are there other underlying drivers that you have identified?

I mean, of course, during last year, we saw some pump up demand from COVID, but we can't see that in the order intake at the moment. What you should know is that, and as I mentioned, some of the strong organic order intake came from projects in the clean room space and these tend to be larger in size and they also tend to be spread out over a longer time. Typically, a large clean room project can be spread over 12 to 18 months. So that needs to be taken into consideration.

Okay. And the gross margin improved quite substantially compared to last year. And I mean, you mentioned the product mix, for example, that was strong, but was it out of the ordinary strong? Or is it a new normal considering your acquisitions and the focus on profitable products?

I mean you can go back and backtrack the acquisitions. We have finalized the last years. And you can see that some of them carry operating margins around 50%. So of course, these businesses also carry a high gross margin and there will be an impact from higher margin acquisition and we have also kind of tweaked the search criteria in our M&A strategy to more focus on high-margin businesses. So I guess there is no onetime effect in the gross margin. However, I can't promise that you will be exactly at this level, you will see some fluctuations between quarters for sure.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Christian Lee from Pareto Securities.

Yes. And congratulations to a very strong start to the year. I was wondering if you could help us to understand the EBITDA margin improvement to 24% for the Lab business unit compared with Q4 when you had 17%. The consolidation of CliniChain obviously supported and you have actively turned down less profitable business. But on the other hand, the gross margin decreased to 51% compared to 58% in Q4. So could you please elaborate the dynamics here? And do you believe the EBITDA margin of 24% is sustainable?

I mean you basically answered the question yourself. I mean it is the fact that we consolidated CliniChain for the full quarter. I mean if you look at the fourth quarter, CliniChain was only consolidated in December, 1 month of a full quarter. And of course, CliniChain carries a very kind of high operating margin, and that is one part of the improvement. And one other part is the one you mentioned, we are turning down -- we are turning down businesses that we don't necessarily need to kind of take because of margin reasons. We want to steer away, especially in the Lab segment from low-margin products. So pricing has been a tool for us and the flip side of the pricing tool is that short term, you might end up in a situation where revenues become soft. And that is what has happened in both in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter this year, improved margin, improved profitability, but somewhat soft on the revenue streams.

Okay. And I was wondering if you could give us an outlook on the cash flow in Q2. If you expect the cash conversion to stay at a high level as well.

I will not give you any forecast on our projections on our cash flow. But of course, I mean, 150% cash conversion is not sustainable over time. If you look at our peer groups, I mean, if you take some of the bigger players in the med tech industries, I would say that -- and this is not a forecast, this is much more of me looking out at the industry, I would say if you can maintain 85%, maybe 90% cash conversion over time, that is great.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference to Simon for any questions from the web.

Thank you. And to start off, we have a question from a private investor. One of our long-term target is to pay out dividend, something you have done once. When are you planning on paying dividend? And how do you see the targets playing out for 2023, given the strong cash flow?

I mean, obviously, dividend is part of our long-term targets and maximizing return to our shareholders is key to us. However, paying dividend is not always the best way to maximize return. How to deploy capital in the best way possible is a question, I mean, I and the team and the Board work with every day. And we always have all options on the table, basically using free cash flow to invest in add-on acquisition, invest in existing product portfolio, buy back shares or pay dividend are always on the table. And right now, I believe that we can create more value for our shareholders by using our free cash flow to add on acquisitions, given the attractive multiples we see on the markets.

Thank you, Richard. And following up on that, we have a question from David and he is wondering, do you find it realistic to keep up or even improve the current organic growth levels?

I mean, we have always said that we should grow in line with the market. And the market is growing organically somewhere between 4.5% and 5.5%. Obviously, our growth has been significantly higher, some quarters and of course, we want to kind of grow as much as possible. But in order to grow over time, more than the market, we need to invest more in our existing product portfolio. We have a target to invest somewhere between 1% and 1.5% of our revenues in existing products and use the surplus cash flow above that to invest in add-on acquisitions. And I think that is creating more value for our shareholders. So a long answer to a short question, but I think that you shouldn't expect double-digit growth over time organically. But what I can promise is that we will grow significantly if you include acquisitions on top of that.

And additionally, from [ David Cleman ], how much of your integration capacity this year has the already announced acquisitions taken?

Once again, I didn't understand the question. You mean financing wise or in terms of the team?

Of the team, the integration capacity.

I mean the integration -- we have a very strong team at headquarter. We have been able -- I mean, acquisitions is nothing new for us. We have been in this industry for a long time. We launched the M&A agenda in 2010, that's, I don't know, 13 years ago, and we have refined the model over the last 13 years, building a solid team at headquarters that can onboard acquisitions and at the same time, once they are on-boarded, extract the synergies. However, what you should know is that we are operating in a decentralized fashion. So there are some key components once we have acquired a business that we kind of focus on. And 2 of the most important ones are pricing and optimizing the balance sheet, trying to extract as much cash as possible, which is typically something that you can see in this quarter because there is a time lag before or after a finalized acquisition. There is a time lag before you see the full effect of extracting assets and cash in the balance sheet.

Thank you. And from [ Joris Kaiser ], he is wondering, can you elaborate on an eventual uplifting to a bigger exchange in order to attract bigger institutional investors?

Sure. I mean, first of all, yes, the answer is yes. We will investigate that and we have a long-term target to do that. At the same time, we haven't seen any significant negative effects in the institutional investor market because First North has grown significantly, and you have several businesses listed on First North that are large cap size. So I think the appetite for investors on First North is much higher today compared to 10 years -- 13 years ago. That being said, I think still it is a quality stamp to be on -- to have a main listing. At the same time, if you want to create or maximize shareholders' value, you only have a certain amount of time slots per day and it's always about prioritizing what creates most value at the moment. And I believe that we have workflows today that will create more value for the shareholders short term than putting pressure on ourselves and go into a listing on the main markets. So long term, yes, short term, probably no.

And Jonas, a private investor is saying, ADDvise will now investigate refinancing the bond. In the current market, what's the pros and cons with the bond compared to bank financing?

Yes. That is a question I've received several times. And of course, we -- we have several opportunities. We can do a refinancing term loan with the bank. We can do a blended basket, basically a bank and a bond, and then we can go into the bond market and refinance 100% in the bond market. And the pros in the bond market is that you will get more flexibility in the bond market compared to a bank. On the other hand, you might get a slightly lower interest rates going to the bank. And what we have today is probably, I mean, an opportunity to go blended or 100% in the bond market, and that is basically what we're investigating here. But there are pros and cons with both. What you can say is, I mean, what I should mention is that as you know, it's not as easy to monitor the bond market in the same way as it is with the stock market. And what you should know is for those of you who don't have access to pricing and the bond market is that our bond is now trading well above par. I don't have the latest pricing, but I would say that we issued the bond at 725 basis points. I would say that the implicit rate -- interest rate on the bond now is somewhere around 500 basis points. So we have seen an uptick in the pricing of our bonds since it's trading above -- well above par.

Okay. I'll now hand over the word to Richard for some closing words. Thank you.

Yes. I just want to thank you all for listening in on this call, and we will continue the hard work to create and maximize shareholder's value and even more so to bring products and services to the market that extend and improve people's life because that's our core mission. Thank you.