Clicks Group Limited (CLS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Deutsche Bank Depositary Receipt Virtual Investor Conference, DbVIC. My name is Zafar Aziz of the DR team at Deutsche Bank. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from Clicks Group Limited from South Africa. Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. [Operator Instructions] Once the Q&A session has ended, don't log out. You'll automatically be transferred to the Clicks Group booth, where you can continue your conversation via by the chat booth and access additional investor material. On the final note, all today's presentations can be replayed and can be accessed by the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Vikesh Ramsunder, Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Fleming, Chief Financial Officer of Clicks. Clicks trades on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange under the symbol CLS, and in the U.S. on the OTC market as CLCGY. Over to you, Vikesh and Michael. Thank you.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to a short presentation on our interim results for the 6 months ended February 2021. I'm Vikesh Ramsunder, the Chief Executive of the Clicks Group, and I'm joined here today by Michael Fleming, our Chief Financial Officer. Together, we will take you through today's presentation. This is the outline of the presentation. I will start with a review of the past 6 months. Michael will follow with an overview of our financial performance. I will then take you through the trading performance and close with the outlook for the group. You are welcome to ask questions after the presentation. I'll now begin with a review of the period. The group has once again delivered a strong health and beauty performance over the past 6 months. This is in the context of a disruptive start to the new financial year, a constrained economy, compounded by the destructive nature of COVID-19. Just to remind you that the comparative period was not impacted by the pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 continue to be felt into the first half of the new financial year, with consumer shopping patterns changing and lower footfall in malls. Gifting performance over Christmas was also [ used ] as gatherings were restricted and the country experienced a second wave of infection. Despite these headwinds, the business once again generated good growth, driven by our great everyday prices, a differentiated product offer and our highly accessible store network, including our online store. We continued our focus on growth and opened our 600th pharmacy during the period. It is pleasing that this pharmacy was open in a mall where we had not been able to secure space for almost a decade. So the tough environment is also presenting opportunities. UPD saw strong sales growth and continued to gain market share. This has been driven by strong growth into the hospital channel and by attracting new wholesale customers. Another highlight was the effective cost control as the group adapted to changing consumer buying patterns and a far more digitized way of working. During the period, I also took the decision to strengthen the group's executive management by appointing Vikash Singh as Managing Executive of Clicks; and Trevor McCoy as Head of UPD. At the same time, we have expanded the role of Bertina Engelbrecht, our group HR Director, to include corporate affairs. The macroeconomic and trading environment has become far more complex, requiring adaptability and increased speed of execution. As we advised in our trading update in January, we took a decision to close the Musica business. This is a very sad moment for the group as it marks the end of an iconic South African brand that has brought entertainment to customers for more than 5 decades. We recognize for several years now, the business model was no longer viable, but have managed the divestment of the brand in a responsible and phased manner to reduce the impact on our shareholders, suppliers and people. Almost 100% of Musica employees have been accommodated within the group supported by the growth of the Clicks store network. The strong performance from health and beauty and distribution moderated by the closure of Musica has resulted in diluted headline earnings per share increasing by 9.5%. I will now hand over to Michael to take you through the financial performance of the group.

Thank you, Vikesh. Group turnover increased by 7.6% for the first 6 months, with health and beauty turnover up 7.2% and UPD growing turnover by 9%. The group operating margin lifted 10 basis points to 7.5%, benefiting from stringent and focused cost management. Diluted headline earnings per share rose to ZAR 3.71 per share, up 9.5% and included closure costs of Musica. Excluding the impact of Musica, as the operation will be reflected as a discontinued operation at the end of the year, diluted headline earnings per share would be up 14.1%. Group's return on equity increased by 260 basis points to 37.4%. We closed the half year with cash of ZAR 1.1 billion on the balance sheet, and this was after the 2020 dividend was paid in January as well as after ZAR 600 million was returned to shareholders in the form of share buybacks during the period. We've also declared an interim dividend of ZAR 1.425 per share, which will be paid to shareholders on the 5th of July. We have a very resilient and a defensive business model, but it's not immune to the impact COVID-19 has had, both on the economy and on consumer behavior. Within retail, which grew sales by 5.8%, you can see the driver of growth was in health and beauty, where new stores and pharmacies added 3.2% to the top line and same stores grew 4%. Selling price inflation for health and beauty was also 3.2% for the period. In addition, last year's comparative was leap year. The loss of the 29th of February, which was a month-end shopping day, had a 0.8% negative impact on health and beauty's turnover growth rate this year, effectively reducing its growth rate down to 7.2%. The distribution business experienced low selling price inflation of 2.3% and saw particularly pleasing volume growth in the wholesale business, which ensured turnover to rise 9%, as I mentioned before. Vikesh will elaborate on the detail of each business' performance later in the presentation. You can see both the health and beauty and distribution businesses' operating margins are healthy, as is the group margin despite the faster growth of the distribution business. Health and beauty grew profits by 11%, with the margin improving by 30 basis points to 9.1% as a consequence of tight cost management. UPD, through its sheer scale, grew operating profit by 16.6% and improved operating margin by 20 basis points to 3.2%. Overall, despite the loss incurred in Musica, the group's operating profit increased by 9.7% to almost ZAR 1.4 billion for the 6 months. This slide shows the movement of cash between the cash on the balance sheet at the end of August 2020 and the end of February this year. At the end of last year, we had cash of almost ZAR 2.2 billion, which is reflected in dark blue on the left-hand side, and we ended the half year with ZAR 1.1 billion, also reflected in dark blue on the right-hand side of the slide. For the 6 months, the group has generated cash of almost ZAR 2 billion, highlighted in green, before the repayment of lease liabilities amounting to ZAR 307 million, working capital changes of ZAR 270 million and tax payments of ZAR 429 million. We have invested ZAR 269 million in capital expenditure over the past 6 months, mainly on new stores, including 19 store refurbishments and IT. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we returned over ZAR 1.7 billion to shareholders during the period. This was in the form of dividends of ZAR 1.1 billion and share buybacks of ZAR 602 million. This leaves the group with a strong balance sheet at the end of the period and in good shape to fund the interim dividend, which amounts to ZAR 350 million. We continue to view the investment prospects for organic growth as highly attractive. Capital expenditure and commitments of ZAR 745 million are still planned for this year. And as a reminder, this includes ZAR 67 million carried forward from 2020 due to delays caused by the impact of COVID-19. ZAR 317 million will be invested in our store and pharmacy network, which will include 40 new Clicks stores, 36 new pharmacies and 40 store refurbishments. ZAR 428 million will be focused mainly on IT systems supply chain, including UPD, and infrastructure. Of this amount, IT-related expenditure will comprise ZAR 226 million. I'll now hand back to Vikesh to take you through the rest of the presentation.

Thanks, Michael. I will now take you through the trading performance, starting with health and beauty. This is the breakdown of health and beauty sales by category. Total turnover grew 7.2%, with existing stores growing by 4%. COVID-19 has changed the way customers shop and behave, which has affected the performance of certain categories. Firstly, customers wearing masks and working from home has meant a lower demand for beauty and accessory. Secondly, reduced footfall in stores has a negative impact on higher-volume impulse category such as confectionery and cool drinks. Thirdly, social distancing and mask usage helps prevent the spread of acute infection. On the upside, consumers have become more aware about wellness, which has driven health care sales while spending more time at home meant a greater need for appliances and technology. Modest volume growth of 0.8% was achieved in existing stores, impacted mainly by these factors as well as disruption to our stores in early September. Pharmacy sales grew by 3%. Value in pharmacy continues to be suppressed by genericization, a lower demand for acute medication and people shopping closer to home. The soft growth in curative healthcare was counterbalanced by the preventative with front shop health growing by 24.7% and was once again the star performer buoyed by 3 factors. Firstly, we saw an excellent performance from our baby category, which was up 23%. Secondly, our vitamins and supplements category grew by 34%, reflecting customers' desire for wellness. And finally, our external health care categories of diagnostics and first aid delivered growth in excess of 22%. Beauty and personal care growth was muted, dragged down mainly by beauty with negative growth in color cosmetics and fragrances. Standout performances were seen in the soap category, up 44%; and derma skincare, up 11%. General merchandise was impacted by lower footfall in stores, negatively impacting our basket building categories. People working from home, however, drove the growth of household appliances up 10.4%; and technology and accessories, up 15.8%. The sales performance in health and beauty translated into market share gains across most of our core categories. Pharmacy market share declined for the period, impacted by consumers choosing to fulfill their prescriptions closer to home and opting for home delivery. This has made independent pharmacies more resilient over the short term. The strong performance in health care has resulted in market share growing to 33%. We now have 19.6% share in baby, with almost a 3% market share gain in a year. Although the beauty category was under significant pressure, share gains were achieved in both the hair care and skin care category. People working from home and strong promotional offers meant that we once again gained market share in small electrical appliances, which is at 17.8%. I will now go into detail on the key drivers that supported our growth. Starting with value. The disruptive economic impact of COVID-19 in delivering value to consumers has now become even more important, and we continue to do this in several ways. Firstly, through great everyday prices. As you can see from the table on this slide, we remain price competitive with all major national retailers, which are predominantly grocers. Secondly, through market-leading promotions. Promotional sales grew by 12.1% and now makes up 42% of turnover. Thirdly, by offering patients a generic medicine at our pharmacy. Generics grew by 4.7% and now contributes 58% of sales and 70% of volume. Finally, by rewards offered through our loyalty program and lower prices through our extensive range of private label products. A key driver of growth in differentiation is our range of private label and exclusive brand. Private label grew by 12.8% and now makes up 24.5% of sales, with 30% in front shop and 9.4% in pharmacy. Our long-term target is to achieve 35% contribution in front shop and 15% in pharmacy. Another driver of performance was the Clicks ClubCard. Even with reduced footfall in stores, ClubCard membership was maintained at 8.6 million active members contributing 79% of sales. A pleasing 1.8 million customers have now downloaded the Clicks app. This is testament to our continued investment in digital and create a very important conduit to engage with our customers in a more personalized manner. Another way in which we enhance the brand positioning is the convenience in health care. Firstly, we have a repeat prescription program that supports patient care and convenience through a reminder service and preprepared parcel. Secondly, customers are able to submit their scripts via the app to Clicks' pharmacy of their choice. This helps speed up service and reduce waiting time. Thirdly, the launch of our pharmacy delivery service in November has seen a positive uptake and provides added convenience for our customers. Finally, COVID-19 has accelerated the growth in telemedicine. We now provide a virtual doctor consultation service in 85 of our clinics, providing cost savings and improved access to primary health care for patients. Our plan is to roll this out to all clinics in the future. Building on our convenience strategy was the expansion of our store network and the performance of our online store. Our teams have been very busy over this period and expanded our network to 760 Clicks stores with 601 pharmacies. 74% of these stores are in the convenience format, and these continue to outperform our destination stores. 50% of the population now live under 6 kilometers of a Clicks pharmacy, and this will improve over time as we continue to get closer to consumers. The online store remains our fastest-growing store accelerated by COVID-19. Online sales grew by 167%, but remained a very small part of turnover. As I said earlier, we continue to make significant investments in our line as a defensive strategy and see it playing a valuable role in complementing our brick-and-mortar network. That completes health and beauty. I will now move on to UPD. UPD has once again delivered an excellent performance despite the total private pharmaceutical market growing by only 2%. The wholesale turnover increase was achieved by gaining new hospital business. UPD service credentials were once again reflected in our ability to effectively distribute life-saving medication nationally as the second wave of COVID-19 gripped the country. The ability to secure and have available a wide range of medication as well as providing excellent service level has seen UPD grow its market share to 30.6%. Our long-term objective is to achieve 35% market share in wholesale. Total managed turnover, that's combining wholesale with the turnover managed on behalf of our bulk distribution clients, increased by 19% to ZAR 13.2 billion. The business has once again landed an additional distribution contract to start in the second half of the year. Our largest distribution client has committed to extend their contract for a further 5 years. UPD's challenge is that it has more potential distribution clients than its capacity allows. This has been dealt with by renting additional offsite space and carefully selecting its new clients. The contribution of generic medicines in wholesale continues to increase with sales growing by 14%. Genericization, unfortunately, creates increased pressure on UPD's margin. The margin pressure will be slightly offset by an increase in the single exit price of 3.68%. It's important to note that this is lower than last year, which will result in lower-margin gain on stock. I will now conclude the presentation with our outlook for the balance of the year. Trading conditions are expected to remain tough as we continue to trade in an environment impacted by COVID-19 with the risk of a third wave of infection. More store opportunities have become available, and we will once again exceed our guided range and plan to open 14 new stores for the year. Major IT projects in both Clicks and UPD will start to go live in half 2, with benefits being achieved towards the latter part of the new financial year. Notwithstanding any major restrictions being imposed by government, we are forecasting diluted headline earnings per share to be between 8% to 13% higher for the full year. One of the most important things we can do as an organization is to assist government in the vaccination rollout program. 62 of our pharmacies have already been selected to assist in phase 1, which is the vaccination of health care workers. We have more than 600 pharmacies across the country that could collectively vaccinate between 600,000 to 700,000 individuals per month. With a gradual opening up of the economy and the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program, the trading environment can only get better. In what has been a challenging 6 months, the resilience of our strategy and business model has once again been demonstrated. I, therefore, remain confident in the group's ability to deliver on our medium-term targets. Thank you for listening, and we are now happy to take your questions.

A question about front shop health, which -- has the growth been attributable to COVID and vaccines? And do you see this pace continuing?

Well, I think certainly, front shop health growth, the last double digit, I would say, has been a contributor coming out of the COVID impact, but certainly not vaccines because we haven't started to vaccinate any citizen in our stores as yet.

Got a question on an announcement we actually put out yesterday morning about purchasing the 25 Pick n Pay pharmacies. Can you discuss the rationale for the Pick n Pay acquisition and the synergies you expect?

So the rationale for this is really was an acquisition of licenses. In South Africa, if you're within 500 meters of another pharmacy in an open shopping center, you're prevented from actually getting a license. So the acquisition really of these pharmacies assist us in getting new licenses, which we'll ultimately then move these licenses into the Clicks stores. Our ambition is not to run pharmacies in grocers. It's actually to run them within our own stores.

Question about online. Can you speak to balancing your brick-and-mortar expansion with growth of e-commerce sales?

Well, I think we're forced into it, this -- isn't it? Because customers will choose to shop across various channels. So we're certainly not driving the growth of online. What we want to do is ensure that if a customer wants to either shop online or in our brick-and-mortar stores, the experience is seamless. There's no friction. They can shop us online when they wish. And if they want to come into a fixed store, they're able to do so. So we want to offer the customer a choice. So thank you very much for listening. There appears to be no further question -- sorry, a new question, yes?

A new question just come in. Clicks have quadrupled investment in SME suppliers recently. How important is it to diversify our supply chain in the current environment?

Well, I think it's actually very important because part of our role is also focusing on ESG as a large corporate organization. So uplifting small suppliers, building the social contact within the South African environment is actually very important for us. The bulk of our stores are in South Africa. This is a private South African company. And it's quite important that we, as an organization, help support the growth of our economy as we want. So supporting smaller suppliers is key to that long-term growth.

Another question has come in. What are your key milestones for 2021?

Well, certainly, it would be supporting the vaccination rollout program. That would be the highest priority we have as an organization. And certainly making sure that we land the IT projects in a very effective way and in a cautious way so that they are successful. Those would be the key things that we will be focused on.

We don't -- we just got another new question. Any plans to expand to neighboring country?

We're already in the neighboring countries that I think we're happy to be in. And I don't think we have any plans to expand further north. So we're very happy with the growth prospects we have in our home markets. And we have around 39 stores in the neighboring countries. And there may be a possibility there for a few more stores, but I think that would be in our ambition really around the neighboring countries. There wouldn't be much more.

And these are fairly stable countries adjacent to South Africa, almost extensions of South Africa. So mainly Namibia, Botswana and then the 2 small countries called Swazi -- Eswatini, it's used to be called Swaziland and Lesotho.

No more questions, Sue?

No. No more.

Thank you very much. So thank you, everyone, for listening, and thank you for your questions, and goodbye.

Bye-bye.