Cherry SE (C3RY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our H1 2025 earnings call, and thank you for joining us today. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Joining me in the room today are Oliver Kaltner, our Chief Executive Officer; Volker Christ, EVP, Global Finance and IT; and Dr. Philip Groth, Managing Director of Cherry Digital Health. My name is Nicole Schillinger, and I'm responsible for Investor Relations. Before we begin, let me briefly walk you through today's agenda. Oliver will start with our investment highlights, provide a summary of our H1 2025 results and then take you through the key achievements of our restructuring efforts. He will also outline how we have enhanced our capital allocation efficiency. Volker will then present the key financial metrics for both H1 and Q2 2025. Following that, Philip will offer a more detailed view into the opportunities with our Digital Health & Solutions segment. The presentation will conclude with our outlook presented by Oliver. Afterwards, we will open the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Let's begin the presentation, and over to you, Oliver.

Thank you, Nicole. Ladies and gentlemen, dear investors, dear analysts and capital market experts, dear participants, I also would like to welcome you to our company's H1 earnings call. According to the relevant rules and regulations, we would like to give you a detailed insight into our preliminary H1 and Q2 2025 landing figures and the measures we have taken for reshaping our business across all business lines. We will go into detail about the actions we have already taken and those that will follow in order to achieve a sustained change, of course. Please be informed that our COO, Dr. Udo Streller, cannot join today's session as he is with an important partner to further lay out a master distribution plan for Cherry Europe that is also consisting of some aspects of operations, logistics and product development. As we see an ongoing growth momentum in Digital Health & Solutions, we think that this is the right moment to give Philip Groth some room in the earnings call to get, a, introduced to you; and b, speak about the very positive development in that business segment that we see for 2025 in total and beyond. Dear all, let me walk you through our key financial metrics for the first half of 2025. Revenue came in at EUR 46 million, reflecting a 25% decline year-over-year. This decline is part of our cleaning up process in Peripherals, especially in Europe and therefore, a direct result of the consistent execution of our strategic realignment and is preliminary attributable to the deliberate restructuring -- reduction in sell-in volumes in Peripherals Europe. However, this decline was also caused by continuously weak demand in the Components segment and an unsatisfactory performance in CHERRY Americas. Our adjusted EBITDA margin stands at minus 5.0%, driven down year-on-year by restructuring effects and the lower sales contribution. On a more positive note, cash on hand increased to EUR 7.1 million versus last quarter, reflecting the sale of the hygiene peripherals business known as Active Key. Managing liquidity remains a top operational priority. We have consistently reduced our inventory levels for Gaming & Office Peripherals. We have also significantly reduced inventory volumes at our distribution partners. In doing so, we used as little cash as possible. With this measure, along with targeted cash collection, we were able to secure and optimize our liquidity. Our equity ratio is at 45.6%, showing a moderate decline of 2.1 percentage points compared to the previous quarter, which still indicates a robust capital structure. As mentioned, a key element of our financial strategy is to ensure robust liquidity. In this context, we informed you on 22nd of April of this year that we had reached an agreement with UniCredit to extend our financing until 31st of December 2027, a real milestone indeed. The total loan amount was only slightly reduced from EUR 25 million to EUR 23 million. Importantly, the interest rate remains unchanged at EURIBOR plus 3.75%, which we see as a clear vote of confidence from our financing partner in our restructuring path, our executional and overall financial discipline. Second, on 28th of May 2025, we completed the sale of our hygiene peripherals business unit for a total target purchase price of EUR 21 million. An initial payment of EUR 10.4 million was received at closing after customary net working capital adjustments. The remaining amount is structured as an earn-out, tied to the achievement of specific performance targets through December 2027. Let me now turn to our third pillar of our capital control, the progress on inventory reduction, a key lever in improving capital efficiency and strengthening our liquidity position. Since the peak in summer 2023, we have successfully halved our group-wide inventory levels from EUR 28 million down to EUR 43 million as of Q2 2025. We have peaked once at a level of EUR 84 million back there. This is a significant achievement that demonstrates discipline, strategic alignment and an operational execution. A central driver of this improvement was the comprehensive 2-year cleanup process within our Gaming & Office Peripherals segment. We proactively realigned our partner network, prioritized viable distribution channels and significantly reduced SKUs. As a result, we achieved a 72% sell-out rate for Q2 2025, a clear indicator of market absorption and demand alignment. In addition, our Asia Pacific operations deserve special mention for their exemplary inventory discipline and agility throughout the period. In Components, we responded decisively to market shifts and repositioned the business more realistically. This included a targeted and necessary inventory adjustment, alignment with our strategic redefinition of the segment's growth and potential. And finally, in our Digital Health & Solutions segment, we maintained full control over inventory. Thanks to strong coordination between forecasting, go-to-market and sales operations, we avoided any stock-related risk and set a benchmark for operational integration across the group. As part of our strategic realignment, we are discontinuing switch production at our German site in Auerbach, Germany and transferring it to established partners over in China and Slovakia. This step is essential to address structural cost disadvantages in the volume market dominated by Asian competitors. The Ultra Low Profile, ULP switch, which failed to gain sufficient traction, will be phased out accordingly. At the same time, Auerbach is being repositioned as our European logistics development and service hub. Its central location and infrastructure make it ideally suited to support future growth. The site already manages all logistics from our eHealth Terminals. Socially responsible personnel adjustments will be made in close coordination with the works council and the reconciliation of interest and a social plan have been concluded. These measures are necessary to enhance operational efficiency, streamline our cost base and strengthen Cherry's long-term competitiveness. In Shanghai, our high-performing sales and marketing team ensures proximity to both key customers and the influencer ecosystem right in the world's second largest peripherals market. Our Zhuhai site is a critical innovation hub with a skilled local R&D and project management team, backed by deep manufacturing and logistics know-how. Located in [ Zhengzhou ], Zhuhai gives us direct access to the full value chain from component manufacturing to cutting-edge electronics and firmware development. All activities are embedded in a broader transformation, particularly the streamlined product and project management setup under the COO organization. With this, I hand over to Volker.

Thank you, Oliver. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your interest in Cherry's H1 webcast. I'll now continue with our preliminary Q2 and half year 1 results before potential impairments. Following a difficult financial year in 2024, the first half of 2025 was also challenging for Cherry SE as expected. At EUR 46 million, Cherry SE's consolidated revenue for the first half of 2025 was approximately 25% lower than the prior year revenue of EUR 61.6 million. Second quarter revenue came in at EUR 20.7 million, trending around 34% behind the quarter 2 2024 revenue of EUR 31.3 million. This decline is driven by a challenging macroeconomic environment in key European markets, particularly in Germany, combined with our strategic realignment efforts, which also include a deliberate reduction in sell-in volumes to clean up channel inventories and stabilize street prices. In addition, we faced a disappointing performance in the Americas and also in our Components business. As a result of this, profitability also fell short of the prior year level. In the first 6 months of 2025, Cherry SE recorded an adjusted EBITDA margin of minus 5%, which was in the first half of 2024, plus 4%. The adjusted EBITDA margin for Q2 2025 came in at minus 1.3%, which is well below the prior year's figure of plus 5%. However, it represents an improvement compared to the adjusted EBITDA margin of minus 8% for quarter 1 in 2025. Let's now have a look on how the segments performed. The Gaming & Office Peripherals segment was particularly hard hit by the continued local economic downturn given its strong dependence on the German market. Additionally, our previously mentioned efforts to channel inventories and to stabilize street prices led to lower revenue. In addition, CHERRY Americas underperformed in the first half of the year. As such, the segment's revenue in the first half of 2025 came in at around EUR 33.6 million, a drop of 19.5% compared to previous year's figures of EUR 41.7 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin amounted to 0.1% compared to 12.6% in the previous year. The Components segment continued to face significant challenges due to competition and competitive pressure from China. Segment revenue amounted to EUR 4.3 million, which was in the half year -- the first half year of 2024, around EUR 6 million, of which EUR 1.9 million was attributable to intra-group deliveries and revenue. The adjusted EBITDA margin was also below the previous year's levels at minus 69% versus 10.7% in 2024, particularly caused by a provision for restructuring in the amount of EUR 1.8 million. The Digital Health & Solutions segment generated revenue of EUR 10 million in the first half of 2025, a decrease of 38.3% compared to the previous year's figures of EUR 16.2 million. The decrease in revenue was driven by a natural cool-off in demand for eHealth Terminals following the surge from the introduction of the e-prescription that started in Q2 2024 as well as a slowdown in the hygiene business, formerly the Active Key business due to the focus on the due diligence and contract negotiations related to its sale to the Danish company, Contour Design. However, sales levels have been trending up slightly in quarter 2 of 2025 with revenues of EUR 5.2 million compared to EUR 4.8 million in quarter 1 of 2024. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the first 6 months of the year came in at 98.7%, a significant improvement from prior year's margin of 38.9%. The adjusted EBITDA margin includes the book gain realized to date from the sale of the hygiene business. Next, let's have a look at our inventory levels, how those have been developing. As already mentioned by Oliver, our strong efforts to reduce inventories across the group successfully lowered our inventory levels down to EUR 43.1 million in the first half year. This marks a reduction of almost 50% from the all-time high EUR 82 million in summer of 2023. It also represents a clear improvement compared to the EUR 54 million at year-end of 2024 and EUR 50 million at the end of the first quarter of this year. More detailed balance sheet KPIs can be also found on our website. With this, I want to hand over to Philip.

Thank you, Volker. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, a warm welcome to today's conference. Please allow me to present the performance and strategic outlook of our Digital Health & Solutions business for the first half of 2025. In the next few minutes, I will talk about regulatory tailwinds, market momentum and the first signals of a platform breakthrough. Let's begin with our core business, the eHealth Terminals. The market is structurally driven by mandatory telematics infrastructure, TI connectivity for elderly care and other health care professions. The legal deadlines, July 2025 for elderly care and January 2026, for therapeutic professions have been confirmed, and the impact is striking. SMC-B card applications, a prerequisite for TI connectivity, are up by more than 500% year-over-year. This is not just a number, it's the clearest leading indicator for future terminal demand. Our terminals are performing strongly in the market. In H1, terminal sales remained largely stable, providing a solid base. But now we see an inflection point. July orders alone already surpassed 50% of the entire first half year's volume. At the same time, we've reduced return rates, so-called RMAs by 51% year-over-year. This has a direct margin impact amplified by rising sales of add-on services, like extended warranties. And demand for replacements from pre-2017 installations continue to provide steady volume. By midyear, only 30% of elderly care institutions were connected to TI. That leaves 70% of the market still to capture around 23,000 facilities in H2 alone. And this is just the beginning. In 2026, 50,000 additional therapeutic institutions will follow. From 2027 onwards, we expect a robust stream of recurring revenues driven by life cycle replacement and service subscriptions. One key milestone in April, we rolled out WireGuard VPN across our terminals. This enables remote qualified e-signatures via PIN pad, for example, from physicians during video consultations. It's a unique feature in the market, and it matters because doctors see Cherry at work and at home, and they like what they see. Let's now have a look at the software side as we always speak about hardware, software and cloud service offer as a full-size ecosystem provided by Cherry and its partners. In March, we achieved provider certification for CardLink, proving our ability to deliver regulated software products. But shortly thereafter, we made a clear strategic decision, CardLink must be discontinued. Our full focus is now on the TI Messenger. Why? First, technology. CardLink is becoming legacy. Second, market potential. Despite considerable marketing efforts also by competitors, CardLink accounts for just 1% of e-prescriptions in Germany. Revenue per token, EUR 0.20. We've done the math, and it's no longer worth the effort. TI Messenger is a different story. It's built for secure communication across practices, hospitals, care facilities, just like our terminals. The total addressable market around 150 to 160x larger. TI Messenger isn't just better tech. It's a platform move. With TI Messenger, we are shaping digital communication in health care. For Cherry, this is not just a product. It's the gateway to a paradigm shift, a SaaS model with regulatory backing, strong market pull and massive upside. Certification for version 112 of TI Messenger is expected in the next days. Next versions, TI Messenger Pro and TI Messenger Connect are already underway. We are actively bidding in major public tenders in Berlin, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia and in discussions with leading primary system providers. This is our platform play, and we intend to lead this market. Let's step back and look at the big picture. With our eHealth Terminals and PIN pads, we have a market-leading hardware foundation. It delivers revenue today and anchors us in the hardware foundation and [indiscernible] as in the health care infrastructure. But the next wave of growth will come from software. Our terminal management software already contributes growing SaaS revenues, while streamlining operations for our highly satisfied customers. With TI Messenger, we are entering an even bigger arena, secure, regulated cross-sector communication for all participants of the health care systems from patients to doctors and institutions. That's why DH&S moves from product to platform. The key pieces are in place. We're certified, we're integrating, we're bidding in large tenders. We are combining hardware reliability with software scalability, and we do so in one of the most regulated and thereby barge market segments in Germany. That's our position and our advantage, and we will make full use of both. Thank you for your attention. With this being said, I will hand back to Oliver.

Thank you, Philip. It's really great to have you on board, and you really seize the moment as a promising business line and you take the next step month by month and quarter-by-quarter. Dear audience, allow me one correction here in the context of the Active Key earn-out phase. I mentioned that this earn-out phase is going through until December 2027. This is to be corrected. It's until December 2026. So let me conclude the presentation with an outlook for the 2025 financial year and beyond. We continue to consistently pursue our strategic goal of transforming Cherry in an international provider of agnostic digital ecosystems with a strong focus on our Digital Health and Solutions segment, as we just learned. And we see the momentum there, and we see our strong position. So this is why we really put more effort into that segment. E-terminal sales are gaining momentum, driven by upcoming mandatory TI connectivity deadlines. While H1 shipments match those of the prior period, we expect a clear acceleration now in H2 of the year. Customer feedback remains highly positive, especially regarding design, value for money and our service quality. Our return rate has dropped significantly, enabling strong service margin products such as warranty extensions. Demand for hardware replacements, especially pre-2017 installations also remains high. Our SaaS-based terminal management software, called TMS, continues to scale with H1 2025 revenues already surpassing full year 2024. The TI Messenger is more than a product. It's a strategic gateway into a SaaS-driven platform model with recurring revenues and regulatory protection. Certification is expected shortly with further rollouts like the TM Messenger Pro and the Connect already in development. We are building a value-adding ecosystem that goes far beyond hardware and delivering on our mission to become a leading TI platform provider. In Gaming & Office Peripherals, Cherry is executing a focused strategy to strengthen its gaming market position through the XTRFY brand. The targeted marketing and distribution cleanup are helping restore price discipline and brand visibility. Sell-through in office is up to 72% year-on-year, confirming the effectiveness of our actions. And again, we did all of these necessary measures by balancing our cash position. Germany, so remains in recession and our dependency on the DACH region, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, continues to weigh on performance. We've had to reduce sell-in volumes, carefully manage channel inventory and adjust fleet prices upward to stabilize margins. Pushing volume at this stage would only trigger returns and hurt cash. The reorganization of sales and marketing is nearly complete, enabling leaner execution and improved resource allocation. Liquidity is actively managed on a weekly basis. Cash is king has never been more relevant. By end of August, the European Peripherals cleanup will be finalized, setting the stage for profitable growth in a highly competitive market. Let me now turn to the challenges of our environment that we're actively navigating with focus and resilience. Germany remains in its third consecutive year of recession, which continues to weigh on overall consumer sentiment and discretionary spending. The German office Peripherals market is still significantly overstocked with products from all relevant brands, a legacy of post-pandemic forced revenues. In the U.S., we face a combination of softening demand and ongoing tariff-related friction, which adds pressure to exports from the EU, but especially China. And we noticed that this could change overnight. Having said that, CHERRY Americas is undergoing a recalibration, distribution must be even more tightly aligned to market demand going forward, supporting efficiency and working capital discipline. This topic is on my personal agenda to get fixed. And for sure, APAC compared to this is the blueprint version of an efficient organization. In APAC, we see rapid growth and innovation, but also extremely short product life cycles, which require continuous agility in development and supply chain management. Lastly, gaming demand was finally normalized post-COVID with Cherry well positioned, thanks to our brand award recognition and strong retail partnerships. Just a side note, but underpinning the challenging framework conditions for a lot of businesses these days. For several quarters now, we've been closely following now automotive OEMs and their suppliers are struggling under increasing regulatory and economic pressure. The stress has already spilled over into adjacent sectors, pushing a number of companies into severe distress. Cherry has 0 direct exposure to the automotive industry that insulation reduces our risk profile in the current environment. Recent market data clearly confirms both consumer -- both customer satisfaction and disciplined price execution. We increased our market share in value terms in Germany from 21% to 22% year-over-year, while unit share slightly declined, a clear indication of successful pricing discipline, positively impacting our revenues. We see a strong uptick in market share in key retail channels with office equipped resellers up to 10 percentage points and computer stores up to 9 percentage points. Additionally, value share in mass merchants like Amazon rose by 3 percentage points. As noted, customer satisfaction is also reflected externally. Cherry was awarded first place in the 2025-'26 German Customer Satisfaction Award for Gaming Peripherals. Dear all, during the Annual General Meeting, we had to announce that our highly valued colleague and EVP, Global Finance and IT, is having his last day at Cherry today. He urgently needs to focus on serious family matters. It's a bit of loss for us, but the family takes absolute priority. Dear Volker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you on behalf of the Cherry team, our partners, our shareholders, our Supervisory Board and the Executive Board. It's been an honor working with you.

Thank you, Oliver. Likewise.