Azelis Group NV (AZE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Azelis Group NV 9 Months 2021 Trading Update. Presenting this morning is Dr. Joachim Müller, CEO; and Thijs Bakker, CFO. Dr. Müller will start with highlights of the period, followed by Mr. Bakker, who will give you a financial update. Dr. Müller will then wrap up an outlook and open the floor for Q&A. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the call over to Dr. Müller, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our first trading update since becoming a publicly listed company almost on the day 2 months ago. I'm very pleased to present a strong set of results to start our life as a listed company. But before we jump into the short presentation, let me take a moment to thank those of you who engaged with us during the IPO process. Thank you for putting in the work to understand our business. Greatly appreciate it. And to those who did not get a chance to speak to us before, welcome to the Azelis story. We look forward to working with all of you in the coming years. So let me kick start the short presentation. As you might have seen -- on the next slide, please, as you might have seen in our press release this morning, the first 9 months across our business were excellent. Next slide, please. Next slide. Here we are. Okay. EMEA, Americas and APAC all generated double-digit organic growth, and we continue to see strong demand in both the life sciences and industrial chemicals end markets. We also continued pursuing growth through acquisitions, completing 10 acquisitions between January and September. I'll talk more about our growth drivers in the next slide. But our growth focus is not just on the top line. We are equally determined to drive up profits and generate cash, as it is important for our stakeholders and to support our future growth. We also succeeded in further expanding our gross margin. Noteworthy that our pass-through policy and value-based pricing policy allowed this expansion despite the continued cost increase we are seeing from materials we are sourcing from our partners. The increase in our free cash flow confirms the benefits of our asset-light model. We generate cash through the site. Operationally, we also continue to focus on equally important longer-term objectives. We have strengthened our LVC, our lateral value chain, by some excellent mandate wins and continue to position Azelis as the industry reference in innovation capabilities, digital platforms and sustainability. We have launched multiple e-labs, activated customer portals on completed several principal [ periods ]. These developments are crucial components of our flywheel growth strategy. Earlier in the year, we received a platinum EcoVadis rating, which underscores our commitment to sustainability. Lastly, we are here doing this call for the first time following our IPO in September. The proceeds from the IPO were used to pay down our debt, giving us more flexibility and headroom to pursue growth. But we're also excited because we know that being a listed company will also guide us to balance growth as well as cost and value creation, not just for the capital markets, but for the industry we serve and our employees. Let's move on to the next slide, please, Yes, here we go. Now let's put a little bit more color on our revenue performance. At the group level, organic growth was 13.6%. That growth reflects strong demand for Industrial Chemicals and is a sign of a strong rebound seen in the building and construction sectors. In life science, which has stayed resilient throughout the cycle, we see good growth in personal care, food and health and, again, in pharma. We acquired, as I mentioned earlier, 10 companies. Two of those, Vigon in the U.S. and Quimdis in France, give us a strong footprint in the global flavors and fragrance market. We also added to our EMEA network with CAME in Italy. In Asia Pacific, we made 7 acquisitions to reinforce our footprint in the region. This is all in line with our strategy to expand especially in high-growth emerging markets like Southeast Asia, in India and in China. Noteworthy that all these acquisitions not only give us scale, but also strengthen our lateral value chain. The 10 acquisitions together generate over EUR 400 million in annual revenues. Now speaking of revenues, this is a good point to transition to some financials. So I will hand over to Thijs, who will take you through the numbers, starting with the next slide.

Okay. Thank you, Joachim. Good morning, everyone. Good to be here after the IPO process for our maiden trading update. Thank you for joining us today on this call. I'll provide you a brief summary of the financial developments in the first 9 months of the year by giving you a high-level overview of the P&L, our cash flow statement and a high-level regional overview. Our detailed financial statements will become available at the full year 2020 (sic) [ 2021 ] results early next year. Now on this slide, as you can see, as Joachim already mentioned, we've had a good first 9 months. The strong growth in the first half of the year was further confirmed by strong momentum in the third quarter, where revenues grew 31.5%, which is above our year-to-date levels, as you can see on this slide. Total revenue growth for the first 9 months of the year was 20.7%, or 22.9% on a constant currency basis, with total revenue coming in slightly over EUR 2 billion. We experienced strong growth both in our life science and industrial chemicals segments. This growth was largely driven by organic growth of 13.6% and a contribution of 9.3% from the first time inclusion of the various acquisitions that we closed. This is partly offset by headwinds of 2.3% related to FX effects. Okay. So in terms of gross profit, our gross profit increased 25.8% to EUR 467 million. Our gross profit margin ended at 22.9%. This increase of 93 basis points was the outcome of mix effects as well as disciplined price management to pass through price increases that were incurred from our suppliers. While there may be some delays here and there, you'll see the pricing offsets, on balance, the impact is neutral. For the first 9 months, adjusted EBITA increased by 34% to EUR 200.5 million. This translated in a strong margin expansion, 93 basis points versus prior year comparison period. Now the key drivers behind this change for the resilience of our business model translated into strong progress in terms of organic growth, but we also kept investing in our digital platforms and the expansion of our lab network and its capabilities. Now all of this resulted in further improvements in our conversion margins from 40.3% to 42.9% in the first 9 months of this year. On the next slide, a quick overview on the cash flow and the balance sheet of our business. Obviously, our balance sheet reflects the structure post-IPO. Based upon the strong momentum in the first 9 months, our free cash flow increased 44% to EUR 151.6 million. And as a reference, our free cash flow conversion rate for the last 12 months was 96.6%, mainly driven by the higher EBITA. This reconfirms our asset-light business model. You can see here that the increase in the adjustment line reflects mainly one-off costs related to the IPO. If we take that out, the underlying development is stable compared to previous years. The cash flow performance was strong despite higher working capital and capital expenditures. On the working capital side, working capital increased due to the positive top line development and partly due to the impact from recent acquisitions. The increase in capital expenditures reflects our commitment to growth investments in digital labs. Now if we look at net working capital a little bit more in detail, you will notice that the net working capital as a percent of sales ended at 14.8% at the end of September compared to 12.7% in 2020. This is mainly driven by IFRS effects of inclusion of recent M&A within the third quarter. In terms of working capital management, we see a stable picture measured in days versus previous year. Now as flagged during the IPO meeting, and Joachim also alluded to this, we used the proceeds to accelerate our deleveraging, which we succeeded in doing, with leverage ratios going down from 5.3 at the end of December 2020, 5.4 at the end of June '21 and now at 2.7x at the end of September. It's our intention to keep this ratio between 2.5 and 3x. On the next slide, we give you a little bit more color on the regional performance. So let me provide you some key highlights of each of our regional segments. Let's start with EMEA. Revenue increased by 13.8% to EUR 894 million. This was driven by strong organic growth of 11% and the rest by the first-time inclusion of acquisitions and FX. We noticed in the third quarter strengthening of the life science demand, supporting strong organic growth in Q3. Please note that the EMEA results only include 1 month of Quimdis France, an acquisition we executed and closed. Based upon the strong performance, our conversion margin ended at 45%, an increase of 126 basis points during the period. Now moving over to the Americas. We continue to see very strong trends over there. Revenue increased 17.4% to EUR 856 million. This was driven by organic growth of 15.8% on the back of strong industrial activity. The Americas results include 4 months of the Vigon acquisition. The conversion margin improvement was very strong and improved from just under 49% to almost 53% in 2021. This is on the back of efficiency gains but also a positive mix effect from the first time inclusion of Vigon. We move to our last region, APAC. We continue to see strong momentum there, both organically as well as on the execution of our M&A strategy, with total revenue growth of 62%, out of which 15% was organic and the latter from the acquisitions we made in the first 9 months this year. Something to note there that although we completed 7 acquisitions, Ingredients Plus in China was completed just before the close of the period, so their numbers will only be included starting in October. Despite our ongoing investment in this growing region, we managed to deliver 123 basis points step-up in adjusted EBITA margin versus previous period, an excellent performance, and a significant improvement in conversion margin, which ended at 38% as we are gaining scale and momentum in the APAC region. This supports our view that there's no reason why APAC margin levels will not reach the same level as in EMEA and Americas over time. I will close the financial review here and hand it back to Joachim for comments on our outlook. So Joachim, the next slide is yours.

Thank you, Thijs. Hopefully, we gave you some idea on how we performed in the first 9 months of '21 and the trends we are seeing. What does that all mean for the remainder of the year? Let's turn to the next slide. We are guided by our midterm objective of delivering 8% to 10% revenue growth on average for the next 3 years. Roughly half of that is what we always said will be generated organically and the other half will come from acquisitions. We also aim to deliver 10 to 15 bps EBITA margin expanding per year on average. For this year we just went through, a few slides showing positive trends. End market demand continues to be strong. We have a solid pipeline for acquisitions. We are benefiting from the strength of our network and the lateral value chain, and we leverage our growing scale. On the other hand, we also have to manage the supply chain challenges playing out in the industry. All said, our strong performance in the first 9 months gives us confidence that we will be able to deliver on the current consensus expectations at the minimum. With that, let's open the floor for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Chetan Udeshi with JPMorgan.

A few questions from my side. First was, thank you for giving the organic revenue growth numbers. I was just wondering, is there a reason why we don't have the organic numbers for gross profit and EBITA? I think clearly, that would be useful if you could provide that for 9 months or third quarter, whichever. That would be first point. Second was, can you help us understand what is the typical seasonality that you guys usually expect in Q4? Because on one hand, you will have the usual seasonality. Looking at your peers, they tend to have something like 5% to 10% sequential decline in earnings in Q4 versus Q3, but on the other hand, as you mentioned, the -- some of the acquisitions have only closed close to the end of the quarter, so one would assume higher contribution from those acquisitions in Q4 versus Q3. But any color on like what is the typical seasonality that you've had in the past or what we should expect in Q4 would be useful. And last question, can you help us split the organic growth on top line in first 9 months between volumes and price, please?

Well, Thijs, you're taking number 1 and 3, and I'll be taking number 2, if that's okay.

We had hoped right now to focus on disclosing revenue growth organic and inorganically. Our margins are rather stable in that respect. So you can use your own math there as well, and we all can pick this up at a later stage offline, but this is what we have opted to disclose at this point in time.

Well, on your question on the -- what's the seasonality we are seeing in the business. Over the years, it's true, obviously, until year-end, November is a little bit slower and December is -- moves even slower depending on how Chinese New Year plays out. If it's sitting in February, then you won't see an effect in December, but if people are getting ready for Chinese New Year in January, then you obviously will have a stronger demand in December, which is kind of easing the effect of this 5% to 10% drop in the region -- in the business. What we see though this year is a little bit different as to that people are trying to -- obviously filling the empty supply chain, so we don't see so much of a pronounced downturn of the business end of this year as we have seen in some of the earlier years. Thijs?

Yes. On the volume and price question, I think this is very difficult for our business. What we see, of course, we have a very diversified business model, so it's very difficult to give basically volume comparisons. You get completely different outcomes out of that because you compare, for instance, kilograms in food or pharma towards tons of resin or other adhesive products in the CASE segment and the price effects can be -- can get completely different outcomes. So volume variance is not something we look at. That said, the industrial chemicals segment, which is more volume-oriented -- orientated, yes, is having a good run. So there is definitely a positive volume effect in our business, yes. And maybe to add on the seasonality of our business, what we've seen normally, it takes really sharply off in December, which is a very short month. And obviously, we have the full cost incurring as of December, which also has an impact on the EBITA margins.

We'll take our next question from Stijn Demeester with ING.

Two questions, if I may. First one is on the Americas. I calculate around 190 bps margin at least in the third quarter. Would it be possible to bring this percentage down into its components, as I assume that Vigon is a sizable factor here? The second one is also on margin for Q3, but in EMEA. It seems to be trending lower in Q3 versus the first half of this year and also in the third quarter of last year. So what is the driver behind this lower margin? And then the last one is on the acquisition of Umongo. Can you confirm the acquisition price that was mentioned by Omnia? And also comment on what to expect going forward. We saw in the fiscal 2021 a nice margin at this point, 4.8% to 8%. Should we bank on that number going forward? Or are there some exceptionals in there? These are all my questions.

I'm not sure if I understood your first question correctly, Stijn, can you repeat that? On the...

Sure. Yes, it's basically on the margin uplift that we saw in Q3 in EMEA. I calculated that at 190 bps, so is that mostly Vigon? Or is there -- are there other components? You mentioned mix and pricing. So you have sort of this color on what is really driving that up in the Americas and actually the same for India, but then that doesn't explain the sort of lower margin that we see in Q3.

You want me to answer the first question?

Yes, you do, and I do the third...

So for Americas, I think we see it's fair to say that there is a Vigon effect in there because the margin profile of Vigon is higher than the regular business what we're having. That said, we also see in the Americas, in our normal business, we see a margin uplift as well, the organic part. So I think the Vigon numbers have been disclosed externally. So from a math perspective, it is acquired since June, so you can do the math there. The business has performed quite well. But organically, America has a very strong performance. On your second question, yes, it's correct that in EMEA, if I understand your question correctly, we see actually the EBITA performance percentage is a little bit lower than the year-to-date trend. Now let me explain that to you, it's very simple. The Q3 organic growth in EMEA was high in the double digit, higher than the first 9 months. Now due to this, our overperformance, we obviously have to accrue for bonuses. We also saw a gradual uptick in the traveling side of things, and we also strengthened our organization in EMEA. That's explaining that difference.

And moving on to Umongo, well, obviously, Omnia published the price, the proceeds we're expecting, so that's what we confirm. On the margins for the business, it is a very much technical driven business where the need for better oils translating into less friction translating into less energy consumption is driving innovation. And Umongo has, through some recent also partnerships, mandate wins. They got access to even improved portfolio. So we expect that also the profitability profile going forward will be looking very much as to what you're seeing right now.

And is it the goal to sort of roll this out in other parts of the region? Can you comment on the geographic spread to date and the possibility going forward in terms of the latter on the value chain?

We will -- currently, Umongo business is going all the way up to Central Africa. So -- and we will utilize the network we have there in Africa. And remember, we have a really strong setup. We will leverage this, so we have a good platform to continue the growth trajectory Umongo has been on since a couple of years.

And we will take our next question from James Rose with Barclays.

James Rose from Barclays. I've got 3, please. And the first is on -- for the first 9 months, for gross margin improvement, could you say how much has come from M&A, and how much underlying? Similarly, for EBITA margins, can you say how much has come from M&A, how much is from underlying? And then lastly, on guidance, the medium-term guidance, 8% to 10% revenue growth, 10 to 15 bps EBITA margin improvement, do you think that's applicable to 2022 as well?

You go.

Yes. Maybe on your first one, James, is that we typically do not disclose organic EBITA development for M&A and underlying business. But I can say that the underlying business has been performing really strongly. I'm pleased to note that the majority of our M&A is tuck-in and is small in comparison to the overall business. And when you look at the revenue numbers that you have guided in the organic, you can derive to the underlying EBITDA. So it's a bit similar like a question that was earlier asked.

On the guidance, yes, I can take that one. As I said before, we have a solid pipeline of acquisitions. That's what I said in the outlook session. And the business is going strong, which brought us to a conclusion to say, well, that we will be able to deliver on the current consensus expectations at the minimum, which also then includes our outlook of -- states what we expect for 2022. So we're optimistic in what we're seeing.

And we'll take our next question from Suhasini with Goldman Sachs.

Just a few number questions, please. Can you please tell us what's the total spend that you've had on M&A this year, just give a number and including...

Can you repeat?

The total spend on M&A, please.

Total spend on M&A.

So you mean as part of nonrecurrent or how...

Just the cash uplift on M&A this year on the acquisition spend so far.

Yes, I have to come back to you on that exact number. I don't have that here.

No problem. And just one on the holding costs. Post the listing, I think the expectations that the holding cost will increase. So in the Q3 number was around EUR 4 million, EUR 5 million. Can you give us some color on what the Q4 numbers should be, please, so that we have the actual numbers in our model.

Okay. Yes, I think the holding cost, what you will see in there, you will see similar trends like Q3. There are no additional costs coming in or a pickup in holding costs in Q4. It's only a reflection of bonus accruals, as I indicated. And for the rest, yes, we have no exceptional plans in to change anything in the holding there. We have some costs, of course, related to the listing, but no change in trends.

No material step up in Q4, I understand. Okay. And on the last one, please, is it possible to give us the absolute Q1, Q2 numbers, revenues, EBIT, need for any breakdown organic CapEx, but just to make sure we can model out [indiscernible]?

As I've already said that before, we do not intend to disclose that, but we can take that offline.

We'll take our next question from Rajesh Kumar with HSBC.

Your peers are -- very clearly, they have a very different message on chemical crisis. The bulk distributors are saying that they've had a big tailwind. Some of them are saying it will reverse. Others are less worried. So I know you've made your comments about how you're exposed to chemical prices. But the team would -- that would really help us to think about '22 onwards is what sort of volume growth are you expecting next year? And what is that based on? Is it based on what your customers and suppliers are saying? Or is it based more on your own predictions?

Well, on volume growth, again, we're not really looking into volume. We're looking into what is the growth of the end markets we are serving. And there, yes, there's obviously a dialogue we're having with customers, foremost customers. We see what we put as projects into the pipeline. And then we can anticipate what they expect from their end markets they're serving. And then we obviously have also a dialogue with our principal partners telling us these are their expectations they're going into next year. What we are seeing as a trend to set on the life science side, there is a really good uptick, a lot of demand coming from new innovative products. So that's helpful. On the industrial side, it appears that momentum is not -- there can't be that strong demand going on going forward, but there is still a very solid baseline. So we really don't think it will be moving back a lot. And as to your point on the pricing and the bulk, very true. I can see once you're really dealing with bulk chemicals and not really trying to sell a lot of value chain, you will come under a lot of pressure there because these prices are very transparent. Remember, the specialty products we're dealing with, there are a couple of manufacturing stages away from the borehole, and there's also a lot of more value-add service we bring to these products. So hence, we're very confident that we can keep the pricing level as to where it is right now.

Understood. Just to be clear, when you go to your clients, you have been raising prices this year because there is clearly a shortage and everyone is needing to ration what -- who gets what. So one rigor action is to increase the prices. So if we look at a normal year of, say, 5% growth for the sector, 1% or 2% would be pricing, I'm assuming this year, instead of it being 20% of growth, it's more like 40% of growth. Would that be a fair depiction of what's happening this year?

The positioning in a market -- the positioning of a proposed pricing to a customer in a market where everybody talks about price increases is obviously very different as it is where everybody talks about pricing -- prices are coming down. That said, and just to repeat what I said before, we are confident that we can maintain our position with regard to pricing at a very good level because we are not selling just a product, we are selling the service through a lot of value chain.

Maybe to come back to the question from Goldman on the M&A spend. This was around EUR 550 million, of which the majority obviously was related to Vigon in H1.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Laurent Favre with BNP.

I've got 3 questions, please. The first one, could you talk about the end market where you're seeing the biggest acceleration from Q2 to Q3, and I think, in particular, in Europe? The second question is on your comments on the pipeline of acquisitions, including Umongo. I'm assuming that you're going to get very close to 3x leverage. Should we be assuming that you will be over 3x leverage temporarily with the other acquisitions you have in the pipeline? And then the third question which would be that you disclosed in the prospectus a financing EBITDA, I was wondering if you could give us a number at the end of Q3.

I do the 1 and you do 2 and 3. On where do we see the acceleration most and focusing on EMEA, that's certainly on the food side. There's a lot of good uptick we're seeing there. But also we're still riding a very strong wave on the CASE side, the coatings, adhesives, sealants and elastomers side, so also we see quite a bit of growth there. Now to the next question. It was on the leverage, Thijs, please.

We will not go so fast, this according to our projections, at all. So we do not expect to go above the 3x leverage, as I mentioned earlier in the call. And then financing EBITDA, I'll come back to you, is around EUR 300 million.

We'll take our next question from a follow-up with Chetan Udeshi with JPMorgan.

Just a follow up. Previously, you had given the guidance for revenue for this year of EUR 2.65 billion to EUR 2.75 billion. Maybe can you provide us what is your latest thinking on that guidance range? Is it still relevant? Or are we looking at the top end or even above the top end of the guidance range? And associated with that, can you remind us how much M&A revenue contribution should we expect for 2021 for the full year on revenue?

So on the top line, we're a little bit higher on what we have guided you up to now. And on the revenue contribution from M&A, Thijs?

Trends about close to EUR 300 million.

[Operator Instructions] It appears that there are no further questions at this time. I will hand the call back over to Dr. Müller for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for your questions. I appreciate it. And also, thank you for spending your time with us this morning to listen to the developments of our business. As it concerns, we're very positive about what we have been seeing. If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. You should all have Pamela's contact details by now. She will be happy to deal with your questions or requests. We have a couple of events over the next couple of weeks. We look forward to seeing you in one of those events. Thank you all again, and have a good day.