AO World plc (81A.DU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us this morning. When we were last together in November, I said I think pretty optimistically that we were looking forward to things normalizing after we've frankly been running up and down escalator for the first half of the year. Well, let me say it right at the beginning. This might be a much longer escalator than any of us could have predicted only 9 months ago. I want to talk to you about what we're doing about that right across the business and the strategic realignment that is underway. We've taken some important steps to simplify the business, pivot to profit and cash generation and concentrate the team on what we do best for customers. But first, I'd like to hand over to Mark to go through the numbers.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. It's great to finally be here delivering our full year '22 results. They are obviously later than usual due to the conclusion of the strategic review in Germany and the equity placing just less than a month ago. The focus of today is on the details of the results for FY '22, the headlines of which we gave you back in April. I think it's worth reflecting on some of the macroeconomic and industry-specific issues in the period. We experienced a post-COVID consumer behavior shift with lagging COVID impacts to ways of working. In the first half of the year, we saw driver shortages, with disruption to global supply chains. Increasing raw material prices were driving up manufacturing and delivery costs. Towards the end of the second half, we saw the war in Ukraine and the impending energy cost increases start to dampen consumer confidence. We take comfort that against this consumer environment that over 70% of our MDA revenues are distressed purchases underpinning the resilience of our model. As we've done for the past few reviews, we're providing comparisons on both the 2 year-on-year and a 1-year basis to give a more normalized view of those results. And on a 2-year basis, U.K. revenues grew 52% from the pre-COVID period to this year. Despite the challenging financial year, we remain convinced by the long-term structural shift to online, with online penetration in our largest category of MDA currently being 54%. U.K. gross margin as an overall percentage of revenue improved slightly over the prior year. The effect of increased delivery costs in fuel and driver rates were largely offset by profitability in the mobile business, which last year had been impacted by a one-off charge. This graph nicely highlights the impact of the year-on-year volume drop from FY '21 to where we expected to be in FY '22. The cost base of the business had been invested in to deliver a future international growth strategy. Looking forward, we very much see the shape of SG&A costs as the sort of percentages we saw in FY '21 across all categories of cost, and that had been our firm direction of travel. For adjusted EBITDA, we can see again the impact of the reduction in product volumes, which had a further knock-on effect in our logistics operations. AO Care, which covers warranties, was essentially flat in the year, with the increase reflecting model refinements in the previous year. In Mobile, we have made adjustments to our customer proposition, and with the removal of the redemption cash back, the average life of new contracts has continued to improve. The RPI increases instigated by the networks has also increased revenue and profitability in the year. Recycling performed well against weaker comps when recycling plants were closed for much of the year as well as benefiting from strong output material prices. In total, this resulted in a reduction in U.K. EBITDA from GBP 67.5 million to GBP 22.5 million for the full year. Turning to working capital. We see that the U.K. reverted back to the usual long-term trends outside of COVID with the FY '22 profile starting to fall back to normalized levels. During the year, we gradually decreased inventory from escalated levels seen in the previous financial year. We ended the period with GBP 82 million of stock, and I still think that, that can fall a bit further in FY '23. We saw growth in the PPP contract asset, reflecting the cumulative growth in the retail sales over the last 3 years. The contract asset for Mobile has fallen slightly as we focus on profitability rather than on volume. Other debtors and prepayments have increased predominantly in trade receivables relating to the B2B business, but also with an increase in purchase rebates reflecting revenue growth. Payables have fallen. And in Q1 of FY '23, we were closer to 56 days, in line with previous trends. The movements in working capital that we've described followed through here from the previous slide. Capital expenditure of GBP 10 million incurred this year is expected to halve in FY '23 and future years as we close the ERP project and other costs associated with international expenditure. In April, we renewed our revolving credit facility for GBP 80 million, which now expires in April 2024. Our placing in July for GBP 40 million restored our liquidity to historic levels. Net debt on a pre IFRS 16 basis was GBP 32.7 million at year-end. That excludes operating leases. Back in January, we commenced the strategic review of our German operations, culminating in the decision to close them in June of this year. We are managing an orderly wind down of the business unit, and it ceased trading on the 1st of July '22. We expect physical operations to be materially complete by the end of August. We have previously announced the expected cash closure costs to be between 0 and GBP 15 million. We now estimate this to be between 0 and GBP 5 million. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the team in Germany for everything they've done over the last 8 years and even more so over the last few months in difficult circumstances. John is going to talk in more detail about our strategic focus for this year and the medium term in a moment. But to end the financial review, I want to highlight some of the initiatives that are being actioned this year. We set out at the time of the equity placing actions we are taking to simplify our business and to optimize our cost base for the current market volatility. Most of these actions are already well advanced and are expected to lead to significant cost savings. We've spoken about the German closure costs. Headcount reductions will contribute approximately GBP 10 million in savings. CapEx investment will reduce, and we have terminated the ERP project. Additionally, we are optimizing our logistics network for current levels of revenue, although increased shipping and driver costs remain elevated. We are reviewing our overall office space, which will generate cost savings through the next few years. We continue to evaluate inventory and rationalize slower-moving SKUs. And finally, we have terminated our arrangements with housebuilders and Tesco as they did not fit our operating model. These actions will result in estimated savings of GBP 25 million a year by FY '25. To summarize, we are focused on the actions, which will set us up well for the current uncertain consumer market. Our business is resilient with a significant underpinning of distressed purchase, and we are focused on cash and profit generation in the short term. For the year ended March '23, revenues, as we remove certain pockets of sales, are estimated to be between GBP 1 billion and GBP 1.25 billion, with continuing adjusted EBITDA of around GBP 20 million to GBP 30 million as we go through this pivot year. In the medium term, we are targeting adjusted EBITDA margins of over 5%, improved cash generation and revenue growth of over 10%. Given the strong customer feedback and our resilient U.K. business, we are confident in our future. Now I'll hand over to John to talk more about our strategy. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. I'll give a very brief overview of the challenges sitting behind those numbers and then spend some time talking about what we're doing to weather the storm, focus on profit and cash generation, and in time, return to growth. Our purpose is to make our customers lives easier by helping them brilliantly, and that remains our obsession. We were pioneers in putting customer experience front and center. It was the right thing to do over 20 years ago, and it's still the right thing to do now. This means we are well positioned to weather the storm and stand by our customers, both new and old. It's an understatement to say we're currently in a challenging environment, as everybody knows. This volatility is compounded by the need to plan even further ahead in key areas of our business, like supply chain, than we did during the pre-COVID years. I was very clear back in November about the challenges that we faced, along with many others in retail, and of course, way beyond as well. As I've said, there is short-term volatility, driven by macroeconomic factors that make planning extremely difficult. These challenges were compounded over the second half of the year by the cost of living, inflation, energy and fuel prices, and yet more supply chain disruption. The situation in Ukraine and the political situation in the U.K. has only made matters worse. A demand gap also emerged a combination of inflationary-driven household spending squeeze and some demand pull forward through COVID in some of the categories in which we operate. We are less affected by the latter and more by the former. And although online consumer buying trends are still higher in the U.K. than pre-COVID levels, they are also more uncertain in the short term. What we viewed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage our scale and market position now faces headwinds on various fronts, not least from the impact of record inflation on consumer spending. While we are, of course, seeing some effects from this, there has also been a savings boom through the pandemic period as well. And we've added 4 million new customers over the last 2 years who, based on historic data trends, will repeat at around 55%. We're confident that our model also provides some inherent protection on several more fronts. Our total historical customer base of around 10.5 million people is largely in A, B, C demographic, which is somewhat insulated because of that COVID savings boom. And our normal lag in repeat purchases most likely means that the fuel for most of those 4 million new customers has largely yet to be realized. And as Mark mentioned, over 70% of our MDA sales are distressed purchases rather than discretionary. And they are essential items, which, put simply, in bolt-on ease, I guess, means if your fridge breaks, and you can afford to replace it, well, you will. And just over 10% of our sales mix is also transacted on finance, which we, of course, deploy responsibly to help customers to spread the cost of essential electricals if they need to. So against this backdrop, the Board instigated a strategic realignment in the second half of the year to focus on cash and profit generation. And in line with this, and as Mark said, we also conducted a strategic review of our German operations. And that resulted in the decision to exit the market, and with it, remove our international overheads. We expect this to have a small cash cost in the short term, but improve cash and profit by around GBP 1.5 million per month going forward. I'd like to add my thanks to Mark for our team in Germany and those who supported from here in the U.K. They've all done an exceptional job for us since we made that tough decision to exit. As a result, we now have a strong U.K. focused platform with less cost and less complexity. It's through the same lens that we also chose not to renew the Tesco store trial and why we're closing our housebuilders business by the end of September. While they were attractive opportunities, what we learned was that they did not fit our current business model and they added needless complexity and short-term cost. Inevitably, there will be other cohorts of business that we will remove in line with our ambition to deliver 5%-plus EBITDA run rate margin by the end of this financial year. To be clear, in the short term, the decisions that we'll take may remove pockets of sales, and we will reduce costs accordingly. But the outcome will be improved profitability and cash generation. And once we've achieved that base business, we'll target again with a 10% growth rate. We also continued our program of increased operational efficiencies over the past 6 months, removing about 235,000 square foot of warehousing. We rationalized vehicles, and we reduced our stock holding. Similarly, we continue to reduce our overheads. We've ended investment in our planned ERP transformation, which, frankly, in that form is no longer completely required with a pure U.K. focus. And we'll achieve a significant headcount cost reduction by the end of this financial year. A review of our office footprint is also underway. And combined, we expect benefits of at least GBP 25 million a year by FY '25. Mark has already referenced the placing in July. To strengthen the balance sheet and increase liquidity back to historical levels relative to revenue, we conducted a placing of new ordinary shares, raising GBP 41 million of capital. But most importantly for me, I'd like to thank our investors who supported this placing, demonstrating that those that are closest to the business and therefore, I think those who obviously understand it the best, they believe in our strategy. So with this realignment, we focused on the fundamentals, and I've highlighted over recent years that there's a lot to leverage in the AO model. Our flywheel is fueled by that culture of amazing service and treating every customer like our ground. It's that experience that builds loyalty and I guess, frankly, fans, which drives repeat purchase and strong recommendations. In the medium term, by leveraging the AO platform in new and different ways, we can achieve the pivot to profitable growth. For example, we secured an exclusive B2B agreement with Homebase in the period to supply appliances, installation and recycling services to their customers who are primarily buying kitchens from them. It began in January, and we and Homebase are pleased with the progress so far, and we have other opportunities in active discussion on a similar basis. AO will always be a disruptor, an innovator and a challenger, finding new, better and winning ways to delight customers. It's just the core of our DNA. It's what we're about. But for now, there'll be fewer experimental growth initiatives while we focus on what we do best. In the current market conditions, AO remains one of the U.K. market leaders in MDA, with an 18% total market share and about 1/3 of the online market. Our current U.K. addressable market is some GBP 28 billion, and that's 5x larger than it was at our IPO back in 2014. One of our biggest lessons since then is quite how long it takes to get into and grow the relationships with the global brands in these new categories. But put simply, the categories that we've been in for the longest have the best share and margin. And so we see huge opportunities in the new categories that we've entered as they develop. Long term, my view remains that the migration to online retail is only going in one direction for all the categories in which we operate. We've built an incredible vertically integrated platform at scale with world-class quality across retail, logistics and recycling. For context, we make over 70,000 deliveries a week from 1.4 million square feet of warehousing capacity. As an example, from last week, one customer wrote this on LinkedIn. AO encompasses everything you could possibly want from a [indiscernible] customer services organization: easy to work with; quick to respond; communicates clearly; and frequently sets the correct expectations. Their teams show empathy and are empowered to take actions. I'm really proud we inspired that customer to write that on LinkedIn. But this is one of many examples that we receive week in and week out. It does not happen by accident. We've also built deep expertise in quality 2-person delivery and have invested in industry-leading electrical recycling capabilities. Getting to this scale with this level of service quality really is the AO magic. Not only is it hard to replicate and a significant barrier to entry for competitors, but is also a hugely attractive platform for partners who are subscale in our categories. And as I said, this includes Homebase, as I mentioned before, as well as other kitchen furniture retailers and manufacturers and lots of other small and medium-sized enterprises. Delighting customers, well, it's just the AO way and it's the fuel for our flywheel. Over 1.3 million new customers shopped with AO in the last 12 months, bringing our total historical AO customer base in the U.K. to 10.5 million. Increasingly, we're their destination for electricals because of our choice, price, service and products of information. There's every reason for that to continue. We maintain our market-leading Net Promoter Score of 86 and a 4.6 star rating on Trustpilot, which is based on over 350,000 reviews, which frankly, is way ahead of both Currys and John Lewis. As I said earlier, the scale of our infrastructure combined with this world-leading service quality really is a powerful combination. And actually, as I mentioned John Lewis, I was delighted to see them finally level with their customers. But they are expensive. I mean, come on, never knowingly under sold, you have in a laugh. I've said for 20 years, it's more like never knowingly honest. They've always known they're expensive. And it further underpins the online is both a cheaper and vastly better way for customers to shop electricals. Our core MDA category is proving to be resilient over time, given the natural replacement cycle and the largely nondiscretionary nature. This gives us a solid retail customer base to leverage to drive share of wallet, cross-category purchases and opportunity to offer other benefits that drive both satisfaction and loyalty. We're proud of our ownership of one of Europe's largest state-of-the-art recycling plants. And as I said earlier, it is a critical part of the AO platform. Our early investment in these facilities mean that we've recycled more than 5 million white goods since 2017, including over 2 million refrigeration products. As well as being the right thing to do, our recycling plants mean we're well positioned for future changes to reregulation on extended producer responsibilities for retailers as well. A few of whom are ready for the regulatory changes that are definitely coming. Having this recycling capability in-house further drives the attractiveness of the platform to partners, such as Homebase and other major kitchen furniture manufacturers and retailers, because, as I've said, the legislative direction of travel, well, it's really only likely to lead to, I think, more regulation is my view. Our investment in our plastics plant also means we're now able to turn waste plastics into high-quality, environmentally-friendly polymers. And we're finally starting to see, I think it's after about 5 or 6 years on this journey, to see recycled polymers that we've produced being used in new appliances and other products in our circular economy approach. This period of strategic alignment for AO will continue into FY '23. Our first quarter trading and financial performance are in line with the Board's expectations. We do though, of course, remain mindful of the economic challenges and their impacts, but not just customers, but our supply chain and other partners as well. We take confidence that our core MDA market is underpinned by distressed purchases. And we'll continue to put customers first, or frankly, as we've always done. We'll invest in multiple opportunities in different sectors, categories and channels as future engines of growth in the medium term. And we'll continue to play our part for the planet with our pioneering approach to recycling. It's during the tough times that the value of a great culture and of long-standing and trusted relationships with our trading partners and suppliers becomes particularly clear. And I'm really proud of the way that we've invested in both of those for the last 22 years. I've always said that it's in the tough times that you really realize the value of those investments that you make in those relationships. And it's certainly not a time to start to build them. With that in mind, I'd like to thank all AOs for their hard work and our partners for their continued support when it has really mattered most. So thank you for listening, and we'll take questions in a couple of minutes.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Cynthia Alers. I'm Director of Investor Relations at AO. And I'm here with John Roberts, Founder and Chief Executive; and Mark Higgins, Group CFO. I'll be moderating the Q&A session this morning. [Operator Instructions] We have the first question from Paul Stephanie at Atrium. Can you clarify the view on current trading since June 1, please?

Yes. Paul, we've obviously this morning reconfirmed our guidance for the full year. And so our trading for Q1 or since Q1 remains in line with that. We'll obviously go through the full details at our interims at the end of November.

We have a second question along the same line, so I group that together from Philip Spain at JPMorgan. Does current trading in line with expectations, implying performance towards the lower end of guidance in Q1, was this expected to improve throughout the year?

Phil, obviously, we're not sort of splitting up quarterly sales, and we'll update as at the end of the first half. But we would sort of point to the things that we're talking about, actually about purposefully reducing certain pockets of sales and terminating some projects rather than this being a particular market issue. And so our view is that we will update against that guidance, but are very comfortable with it for the full year.

Yes. And I would add in there, Mark. But we've been very clear that our steer here is focused on profit and cash generation. And so that is very firmly our focus. And if that means we take pockets of sales out here and there that don't achieve that objective, then that's what we will do.

We have a follow-up question to that also from Simon Bowler at Numis. Given that your [ large way ] through H1, can you give any sense of where within your revenue range you currently are?

Yes. I think Simon, the answer is the same, that we will update at the end of the first half.

And we have a question from Tony Shiret at Panmure's. When is working capital peak in relation to peak trading? And how close do you get to your facilities on current projections?

Actually, the way that our cash cycle works, Tony, is that I think you mean sort of when is our worst point in the working capital cycle. And that typically comes somewhere through the period after our peak trading, and so in the first quarter of the calendar year. And we've got plenty of headroom in our facilities. And I wouldn't expect us to have a lower level of liquidity throughout this year than we did at the end of the last financial year.

We received a lot of questions from [ Liberum ]. You guys are obviously working hard this morning. First question from Adam Tomlinson. U.K. gross margin was up 30 basis points despite increased costs in fuel and driver rates due to increased product pricing. What drove the increased pricing?

Yes. So gross margin is a basket of an incredible amount of things. And there's -- obviously, there's lots going on there of increased delivery costs. We have seen inflation through the cost of the products that we sell, which have been passed on to customers. They -- probably the single biggest point in year-on-year actually is the charge in the previous year relating to mobile that doesn't occur in the current year. And that's actually probably the single biggest element of that variance.

We have another question from Adam Tomlinson at Liberum. If sales are going backwards, can you talk about how you'll mitigate working capital outflows?

Yes. So we've seen most of the outflow on working capital actually through the last part of the last financial year and the early part of this financial year. And so we actually then see generally a sort of a neutral working capital cycle. So we don't think there is a sort of future outflow, if you like, Adam, to manage.

We have 2 questions on the ERP projects from both Adam Tomlinson and from Tony Shiret at Liberum and Panmure, respectively. You are terminating your ERP projects. What benefits are -- is that supposed to bring? And what is the longer-term plan [ you have ] here? And also from Tony, to follow on to that, if there's no Germany, which reduces the scale of ERP improvement requirements, what other business extensions are probably still left for an upgrade? Where does that leave the remaining business in terms of ERP?