Cabka N.V. (7GW.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Cabka's 2024 Half Year Results Presentation. My name is Nadia Liber, Corporate Strategy Manager at Cabka, and I'll be your moderator this morning. First off, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to our shareholders, analysts and guests joining online. We greatly appreciate your support and continued interest in Cabka. I'm joined here this morning by Alexander Masharov, our new CEO; and Frank Roerink, our CFO. Our webcast this morning will cover the operational highlights and financial performance for the first half of the year, followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And without further ado, I'd like to hand over to Alex, who will share a personal introduction and take you through the highlights for the first half of the year.

Thank you, Nadia. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining. I'm truly excited to join Cabka as I think this company is great, taking care of our future generation through sustainable product manufacturing and value creation of those products to the market. Moving forward, I'll be focusing on leveraging the strength of this company in innovation, exploring new opportunities and looking forward how we can expand this company going further. I want to take you through some summary of our key developments in the first half of the year. Despite the challenges that we still see in the market conditions, the company was able to grow in its major segments and most key segments in order to withstand those drops. We had to stabilize our product pricing. As you know, the energy prices and the material prices have dropped in the '23 and '24. We had to transfer that to the market. So we dropped our prices accordingly to our customers to maintain the good relationships. Those revenue -- those product price drop has realized in some impact on our revenue. With that said, I'm proud to say that in the first half, we were able to maintain operations under control and significantly improve our margins there. This is mainly due to our U.S. factory, which is fully running in the U.S. and also by operational effectiveness around Europe. As well, we remain -- we were able to maintain the costs and have a very stable cost reductions despite the inflation and despite the growth in the wages across Europe. On our top line, we see a drop of around EUR 12 million last year. With that said, now -- in our main segments, which are portfolio in Europe and the U.S., we see a growth of EUR 6 billion. We see customer solutions in Europe growing and our ECO products is in line with the market conditions of construction business. With that said, we have a drop in our customer solutions in the U.S., mainly driven by the market conditions and interest rates in the U.S., which makes our customers a little bit short on their CapEx spend. More so, our contract manufacturing, mainly in Europe is under pressure. If we look forward to the U.S. market, as our strategy says, we are executing the 14% growth in our portfolio. However, our customer solutions, which is our customers that we codevelop with is under pressure, and we [ have ] a drop of around EUR 10 million there. In Europe, we see growth in all our strategic segments. We can see a 13% growth in the portfolio of our products. We can see customer solutions growing by 1 million, which is about 7%, and we see [ Eco products ] growing despite the headwinds in the construction market. With that said, due to the market conditions, our partners are also feeling the pressure and our contract manufacturing in Europe has dropped. Regarding the product pricing adjustments. So as said before, we have adjusted our pricing according to the prices of energy and raw materials. Those adjustments impacted 5% on our top line. We did do very well on our product mix, and we actually increased our quantities, realizing 15% growth. However, we couldn't realize it to the full extent because of the volume and mix drop in the customer solutions and the contract manufacturing. With that said, our total number is 11% drop on the total revenue. We did do some major improvements in our gross margin. Those were mainly realized by our operational effectiveness. We have finished rebuilding our U.S. facility, which is fully running and upstream. We have Implemented a new processing technology for our recycled material, and this has brought our margins up on our products. This company has invested quite a lot of money in the last 2 years. You can see the results today. First, our innovation in our products that came up from the 2 years of development has more value and are bringing more profit to our bottom line. As well, the investments in automation and robotization, we have lowered the dependency on the labor that works in our factories. All those has increased our gross margin by 4%. Looking at H2, we'll be revisiting our business strategy. It's only natural that we do that as a company, especially to adjust to the new market condition, looking at the competitive landscape and also see how regulatory changes in Europe will come up across in our strategy for the next few years. Later on, we will need to support that strategy with a proper organization setup, which we'll do accordingly. We'll focus on 3 main things. Number one is customer relations; number two is product innovation; and number three, our market expansion. We will be ready to expand that market with a newly built factory in the U.S. Summarizing the progress on our medium-term guidance. So unfortunately, we are 11% down on our revenue. We are 11.3% on an EBITDA margin, slightly below the expectations. Our CapEx is under control and around 5%. Our net working capital is 20% as expected, and we are paying the dividend on the 16th of August of EUR 0.15 per share, which will happen this Friday. Frank?

Thank you, Alessandra. Let me dive a little bit further into the financials that you already explained as well. Here are some of the financial highlights. Revenues, as explained, we see a drop of 11%, bringing it down from EUR 104 million last first half year now to the first half year of 2024 with EUR 92 million of revenues. Our gross margin has been a -- has showed a phenomenal recovery. We're now back to 50.5%, which is in line with the historic data. So we feel very comfortable that the gross margin has been restored to where it's supposed to be. However, the shortfall in sales, combined with the solid recovery in gross margin did unfortunately touch on our EBITDA margin, where we dropped from 12.9% now down to 11.3%. This is purely a temporary drop. Later on, we'll comment on the outlook for the remainder of the year, but we do believe that we'll be back towards the 13% again by the end of the year. But at the moment, it's 11.3%. Our net debt has slightly increased from EUR 56 million down to EUR 74 million. That number, by the way, includes the operational leases. Our operating expenses, as Alexander already mentioned, have remained fairly stable. Of course, they were impacted by some of the inflationary pressures in terms of labor cost and in terms of all the services that we in-source. But in return, we also reduced substantially our capital investments. Now from almost EUR 13 million, we brought it back to EUR 9 million in 2024 in the first half. That brings me to this P&L of the first half 2024 compared to 2023. Let me zoom a little bit more to the point from Alexander on the sales. Yes, we did see a 5% price adjusted, therefore, a decline in our prices. This is only fair when we -- our customers were with us when energy prices and raw material prices were going up, we were able to translate that to price increases. Now these prices come down, that it's only fair and appropriate within relation to our customers that we bring our prices down as well. And I think we are very comfortable with the fact that we were able to deliver a 15% growth in our volume. That means that we've been able to grow in many of our markets and therefore, regaining market share where we may have lost, for instance, in the U.S. flooding, we lost some market share, but we're regaining that in quite full speed. Of course, [ the 58% ]drop in our customer solutions in the U.S. and contract manufacturing was not to our expectation. This is, of course, a market, especially in contract manufacturing, where we are dependent on what our customers do. We help them in many ways we can. But in the end, they are in control and we help them to succeed. The gross margin improvement with 400 basis points from 46.5% now to 15.5% is something we're really happy with. It's a true testimony to the strength of the operation that we have and therefore, the recovering in the gross margin is something we plan to continue going forward. Operating expense, we talked about already, delivering a total operational EBITDA of EUR 10.4 million, which is 11.3% as a percentage of sales. Let me dive into 3 components that help you to understand our cash generation. The first one is the capital investments. There we have brought down the capital investments substantially from almost EUR 13 million in 2023 now to EUR 9 million this year. Still a number is -- part of that EUR 9.3 million is linked to the flooding in the U.S. For instance, we had to install a flooding dam around the factory in St. Louis to the tune of EUR 1.2 million. Of course, it's something that doesn't help production, but it does help to protect our asset base in the U.S. going forward. Also, we invested in some of the new malls that we are developing together with the customers such as BMW and Seb and our investments in the eco business remained stable compared to last year. Overall, that was to EUR 9.3 million of investments, a substantial drop. The second element of cash generation is about net working capital. Here, you do see that we're back to 20% of sales. It's still below and in line with the guidance that we provided. But of course, we'd like to bring that back again to the levels that we saw at the year-end. Why has it gone up? The key reason there is a buildup of inventory of raw materials where we are preparing ourselves for a new launch for products in the third quarter of this year. That, by the way, is already happening, and we've been producing. So that inventory level has come down already substantially. The second one is an increase in trade receivables. We're expanding our market, we've also attracted new customers in some regions where the payment terms are slightly longer than what we normally have in our business. We believe it's the right investment to make to attract these new customers to our business, and we also see already in Q3 those payments coming in. So in that sense, trade receivables position is going to come down as well towards the year-end to the normal position that you expect from us. The third level that you see an increase is the trade payables. That included a payment of about EUR 5 million that we had to do for the machinery that we bought in the U.S. due to the flooding. Those payments, they only started now in the first half of this year. So that has been completed. That's why you see a delta there. So Alex, back to you.

Thank you, Frank. As a consequence of what you have just seen and based on the challenging market conditions, also understanding that our Q1 results as they were today were disappointing. We understand that we are not looking to recover from that fall in Q1. We'll have to adjust our expectations to the range of $180 million to $185 million on the revenue base. With that said, we're going to focus a lot on our cost control and our operational effectiveness and thus our margins will come to 13% to 15%, EBITDA ranging about $23 million to $27 million. Looking at the calendar ahead. Yes, the -- as you probably have seen already on our website, the ex-dividend date was on the 8th of August, so that's already passed. However, as Alexander already explained, we will do the actual payments on the 16th of August, which is a Friday. We have on the 21st of October, we have a trading update on Q3. And on the 25th of November, we will organize a Capital Markets Day. That days we'll be focused around giving you the insights on the updated strategy. I'll be more than happy to invite you to one of our factory locations who will provide the details later on. But please mark this date in your calendar for the update on the business on the 25th of November. The last date is the announcement of the preliminary results 2024 that is scheduled for the 18th of March 2025. With that, I'd like to hand it back to you, Nadia.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question goes to Alex. Alex, you've indicated that the company will revisit the company's strategy in the first quarter -- third quarter. So what specific changes prompted this decision to review this current strategy?

Well, first of all, it's only natural that the company revisits its strategy from time to time. And I think it's about time. The strategy so far have taken the company to the market and has built a very ground and good foundation. With that said, we need to adjust that strategy to the market conditions today, the competitiveness of our -- of the market as it is and also how we leverage our innovation going forward. It's too preliminary to say what that strategy is going to look like. But what we aim to do is to deliver that strategy to you in the Market Capital Day in November, explaining a few key things and seeing how our next 3 to 4 years are looking like.

Thank you, Alex. Clear. Frank, the next question goes to you. Could you elaborate on what steps have been taken to address the weakness in the U.S.? And is it only company specific? Or does peers have the same issues?

Well, the U.S., of course, is something that we are extremely carefully monitoring what that means. We've launched quite some new products in the U.S. market. And as you've seen in the portfolio, we've been extremely successful in recouping lost territory, which we'll continue to do. We have boosted sales team. The sales team has been completely renewed and doubled in size because in the end, we believe it's one of the bigger market opportunities that we have as a company. So there are sufficient resources have put in with a cost leadership to our earlier comments, cost leadership where we believe we can bring truly innovative products at really competitive prices that will help our customers succeed in their supply chains. Then, of course, the unfortunate part is the customized solutions where a customer could not live up to the CapEx commitment that they thought they would be able to do. Now we are clearly still working with our customers there to make sure that we can deliver whatever they need. But the gap of the EUR 10 million that Alex showed before is not easily filled up. And we are doing a lot of work with the customers on testing products in the supply chain that takes time because they need to test it whether it fits in their warehouse, whether it fits on their trucks, but we feel very comfortable that we can recoup that territory in the coming period.

The next question is also for you, Frank. We've seen a very strong improvement in gross margins in H1. How much more room do you think there is for the short to medium term?

There always remains room, and we will continue to strive for enhancing our profitability. In the end, having a profitable business is a crucial element for cash generation. So we'll continue to strive forward to improving that. I don't think we'll see such a massive improvement as we were able to achieve versus last year. Clearly, that was quite a happy improvement. We will keep on pushing on operational efficiencies in terms of robotization where we can ensure that the cost base is a very consistent cost base and where we have all the flexibility in terms of operations. In the end, growth is our key margin improvement there that will help us to drive further up the margin. So we're doing a lot there. And the second element is, of course, the continued balancing that we do in terms of portfolio products versus customer solutions products. And that balance and bringing that balance to the operation will help us in the long term to have a robust and profitable business going forward.

Excellent. Thanks, Frank. The next question is for you, Alex. How much visibility weeks, months do you typically have for customer solutions orders where you have already developed a product? And does that vary by market, U.S. and Europe?

Well, after we develop a product, we used to have a very good visibility about 6 to 8 to 12 months before. Today, due to the market conditions, our customers keep very short stock levels. And this is why our order books look much shorter than it used to be before. So we're now about 3 months ahead, 19 days, sometimes 4 months ahead, but not more. This is just the reality of the market changing.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Alex. I think also another question on the gross margin, Frank. It's up substantially year-on-year. Which part was due to lower sales in the U.S. and did lower sales have a positive impact on working capital?

No, the lower sales had an impact on the working capital. However, you're seeing the trade receivables position has gone up. And we've also made quite a deliberate choice to have a slightly different inventory level on some of our key products in the past. We think there's still room to improve the lead time from a customer demand to the actual shipment of the products. So we are shipping slightly that is a temporary hiccup. So looking out towards the end of the year, we will bring back working capital levels to where they were last year. I feel very confident that we can with a much better quality of the working capital in terms of the type of inventory that we have, the type of receivables position that we have, the type of trade payables that we have. So all in all, I see no problem. Again, let me compare the working capital half year 2024 to half year 2023, you see at the same level. So there is some slight seasonality in our working capital. But I think every day, we're learning -- are getting better at controlling the working capital that we have.

Excellent. Thank you, Frank. Next question is for Alex. Could you kind of indicate as to which end markets are holding up well and which are not? For instance, where do we see weakness? Is it in the auto sector? Has it impacted QA?

Well, Obviously, we see weakness in our contract manufacturing. The contract manufacturing is across numerous sectors. So that goes across a few of those sectors like automotive as well, like retail as well. Our main weakness today with our customer solution is in the retail business in the U.S. This is the main one that has restricted the CapEx for the project that we have already had in 2023.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Alex. Next question is for Frank. Frank, do you intend to focus on additional cost-saving initiatives? Will these be concentrated in a particular geography or product lines? And are you able to provide any quantification at this stage -- quantification, I mean? Yes, there's a couple of questions here. I'll break the first one...

Let me take a little bit of a step back. Any organization, therefore, also CAC always needs to look carefully at its cost base. And it's not because we are not cost effective, but there's always room for improvement. In our business, we operate in a tough competitive scenery. So therefore, we always have to be careful and cautious about how we manage our cost base. In that sense, I think we are -- I wouldn't call it frugal, but we are wise spending. We have a culture of being not penny wise pound fully. So we do invest. We do take steps forward. As you've seen in the past, we've been investing substantially to invest for growth. That plan has been brought back to ensure that we contain our cash as much as possible. And in the ongoing operating expenses, of course, we do every day, we are weighing whether we spend the dollar one way or the other. There's no specific area that I would be concerned of. It is just good maintenance and good business practice that you always carefully consider your cost base and you look carefully how to improve. And like Alex made the example, robotization is a good example where we see nowadays that robotization allows us, for instance, to improve stability of the cost structure, lower the cost base, but also improve our productivity because we can run 24/7 with a very fixed number of robots to deliver, for instance, to take a pellet out of a mold, which is a very careful process. It's a very hot product that comes out. You don't want human hands to touch that product. So if you have a robot to do it, it's a much more reliable and a much more safer way to manage your process. So we will continue to do those steps to improve a stable cost base.

I think there was also the second part of the question where we are probably also seeing some cost saving initiatives due to automation. I think there is a certain difference between automation and robotization. Is it correct that we also now are further ahead in the U.S. with automation?

Well, that's difficult to assess. I would call that we're not massively ahead in the U.S. or in Belgium or in Germany. I think they are even some -- there are many steps in our production process and some steps in the U.S., for example, the example that Alex gave on raw material processing in the U.S. that the U.S. is well ahead. That's an innovative step that we're also now implementing in our operations in Europe that will bring more cost reductions in our raw materials in Europe. And likewise, in the U.S., they can benefit from some of the learnings that we have in our European setup. So it's a bit of a mixed bag where we make sure that all the sites benefit from each other's learnings and that we implement the best practices wherever we can.

Excellent. Thanks, Frank. Next question is for Alex. Customer Solutions, we believe that also includes repeat orders for products you have already developed and new product development agreements. Is it correct to assume that the current sales weakness relates to a lack of repeat orders for products and which have been developed? Are you currently working on any significant new product development opportunities in the U.S.?

So it's both. Obviously, the weakness that you see is already to the products that have been developed, but not have been realized to its full potential because of CapEx restrictions on our customer side. With that said, we are continuing to develop customer solution as a strategy, and I think it's the right strategy because then we codevelop with the customer and then we have that customer for a long time period of time adding revenue to the company. So those innovations will be in place and continue going because they are strategic to organization like ours. And that said, we have quite a lot of customer solutions companies that we work with like BMW, for example, that we are launching a product with just as we speak.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Alex. Next question is for Frank. It's about the 2024 revised revenue guidance. It is a 7% decline versus our prior guidance of mid-single-digit sales growth. The announcement notes Q2 sales were in line with your earlier projections, which I guess were informed by orders at hand and of course, the Q1 sales update for mid-April. Should we conclude that despite the Q2 order intake improvements, order intake is running significantly below your anticipated recovery, resulting in a full year guidance reduction?

I understand the question, and I struggle a little bit in answering it in the best possible, but let me give it a try. I want to build on the answer that Alex already gave before. I think that the key problem that we have is that the market is extremely volatile and has a very short time lead. Where in the past, we will get customer orders for the next 6 months or the next 12 months, we now get customer orders for the next month. And that's all related to that customers themselves are managing their inventories. They don't want to be sitting on heaps and heaps of pellets where they don't know whether their consumers are going to buy the product. So you see that trickling down into the pipeline. That doesn't mean that we will not be able to grow, and that doesn't mean that we're not comfortable about the future. But we are conservative in the sense that we don't want to build up a cost base that if the demand is not there, that we are stuck with the cost that we can't deliver on our profitability. In the end, our business needs to remain profitable. In that sense, we are more confident about making sure that we make small steps going forward rather than making a mass step forward and then we may take a step too much. This is a difficult market to get the balance right. I think we have done the right things in order to optimize our process of aligning our supply to the demand from the customers. But it's not very easy right now to forecast where the market will go. And I've seen many companies in the past that took a step -- a bold step forward and then they were caught off guard that the market moved in a different direction. We don't want to be in that spot. In that sense, I think what we're guiding the market is maybe seen as more conservative, but I would call it more realistic.

Thank you, Frank. I think that's clarified. Next question is for you, Alex. So between the economic uncertainty and the elections, it appears that there is a number of reasons for weakness to persist for much of this year. Do you have a sense of what are the key drivers, uncertainties that the customers are focused on economic versus election, anything else? And to what extent is the recovery restart of the U.S. customer solutions activity incorporated in your 2024 guidance?

That's a very good question, a very complicated answer. In addition to the elections and the interest rates, we have a quite complicated geopolitical situation as we know it. And all those reflect on the market conditions, more so to the U.S. maybe than in Europe. But it doesn't mean that we don't need to do our absolutely utmost to make sure that we deliver the results that we promised. So looking at the customer solutions, for example, yes, we are -- we doubled our sales force in the U.S. We are looking extensively to new customers and in new segments of growth in the U.S. And we'll continue doing that in '24. Obviously, the U.S. market, despite the fact that it goes through an election and interest rates going up is too big of a market not to grow in. With that said, we have a beautiful facility, which can support that market. So U.S. market will obviously be our point of focus, and I'm a big believer that it will recover in '24 -- '25, so in full.

Excellent. Thanks so much, Alex. [Operator Instructions] Next question for you, Frank, is on our share price. We've seen a significant drop, which is 65% in our share price since the introduction. What actions are you taking to improve the share price?

As a company, we, of course, monitor the stock price performance in quite some detail. Of course, we do only -- we can only do one thing is explain our strategy, execute on our strategy and explain our execution. And I hope that our investors see that in these difficult and challenging market conditions, we are executing still in line with what we said so far. Now that's not sufficient to adjust the share price for sure. And therefore, we are also looking carefully at how to make sure that we can continue our profitability. We continue to monitor M&A activities. And if we cannot grow organically, we, of course, also try and want to aim for growing inorganically. So M&A remains high on the radar screen. And as Alex said before, that the market in Europe is doing well in some of the regions where we're able to attract customers. But clearly, Germany, automotive are difficult and tough markets to compete in at the moment. The U.S. is a very attractive marketplace where there's sufficient space. And there -- also there, we will continue to do utmost to show that we can deliver on the strategy. But again, I understand the disappointment from our shareholders that share price performance has not been where they would hope it would be. And we are, as a management team, are definitely not happy with that as well. And so we will continue to explain, explain and explain hence, the Capital Markets Day where we will hope to provide more guidance on the steps we're going to take in the next few years. And we invite our shareholders to come and visit and ask the questions one-on-one and that we're able to give them the comfort that we're executing the things that they consider is important and that we consider to be important.

Thank you, Frank. The next question is to you, Alex. Presumably, and that's more on the contract manufacturing. You have a relative -- sorry, [indiscernible] type. Presumably, you have a relatively limited visibility on forward activity or ability to influence, for example, the sales and marketing activities. Since you're manufacturing products for third parties. However, I believe it's a helpful revenue stream permitting you to maintain higher utilization rates of your equipment? And are there any initiatives that you can undertake in the contract manufacturing to improve these things?

Yes. So in terms of contract manufacturing, it's always a good business to have because it keeps you safe whenever the market changes. With that said, when the contract manufacturing is down, it allows us to bring more of our tooling manufacturing in. However, any contract manufacturing is not the growth of our own business. And this is what I think we need to focus more. We need to bring further our business into growth mindset, innovative products more to the market and to fulfill our own assets with our own products as much as possible that will create much more stability. But we need to have the right products, the right demand for it and obviously, the growth in our own portfolio. -- to build a little bit on that. I think Alex is -- I think it's not an either/or situation. It is -- we believe that the business can be combined and live fruitfully next to each other. And I think it's a very effective manufacturing strategy that you have your assets utilized to the maximum. Focus is deed on our own products, where we've got spare capacity, contract manufacturing is always a really good source to generate cash, to help our customers and to basically make sure that we are not losing touch with what's happening in the marketplace. And our production setup is done in such a way that we are flexible. But clearly, it's aimed towards growth. So if there's a priority setting, of course, our own products get the priority, but we clearly believe there's a synergetic effect of these 2 businesses.

Excellent. Well, we don't have any further questions coming in. [Operator Instructions] I will maybe pause for a second. I do have one question from myself. Frank, maybe you can provide us some insight on the development for costs in raw materials.

Yes. These have been -- the raw material energy prices have been extremely volatile. For those of you who have been following the company closely, you have seen raw material prices in both virgin plastics and in recycled plastics going up substantially. In the last half year, they have come down also again to the levels that we were seeing before the Ukraine war. So there, we see stability. The market is still a bit volatile. We do see a difference in the -- price difference between virgin plastics and recycled plastics. We see that the -- especially the influx of quite a volume of virgin plastics from China is distorting price developments in virgin plastics. So far, it doesn't have a major repercussion on the recycled prices. Good to point out there is that our backward integration really helps us to play that market in a much more effective way than many of our competitors. Now we can shift quite easily from one source of raw materials to another. And that flexibility really helps us to deal with that volatility in the raw material prices. Second, energy prices there, we see also a stabilization and less volatility. Price levels have come down to much more stable and lower levels than they were in '22 and '23. They are still substantially above the levels pre-Ukraine war. We are talking about a premium of about 30% to 40% over those prices. But there's a decent stability. And our hedging policy in that sense also helps to avoid that we are hit by any volatility in energy price movements. So that's helping. The third leg that what we're pushing for is, of course, much more focus on sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar. We've been now expanding our wind capacity and solar capacity, and that is also helping to bring much more stability in our energy prices.

Thank you Frank. Really appreciate that. Yes, if there's no more questions, I would like to thank Alex today as well as Frank for presenting. And I would really like to also thank the viewers online that joined us this morning. If you were not in the position to join our webcast today, there will be a recording of this session uploaded on our website this afternoon. And with that, yes, we really look forward to hosting you next time. Good bye.