CTEK AB (publ) (CTEK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to CTEK Q4 Report Presentation 2024. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Henrik Fagrenius; and CFO, Thom Mathisen. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. And once again, a warm welcome to the Q4 presentation from CTEK. Today's presenters is myself, and I also have CFO, Thom Mathisen here with me. Before we start to jump into the results, I'm just going to give you a brief presentation of CTEK. CTEK was founded in 1997 by Bengt Wahlqvist, the inventor of the first ever battery charger to use electronic pulse technology. We are designing, developing and testing all our products in Sweden. We have competence centers in Vikmanshyttan, Norrköping and Shenzhen and we are producing in mainly Asia and Mexico. CTEK has a big business with client brand, and we are chosen by the best. We have customers, like you can see here in the picture, Lamborghini, we also have Porsche, Bugatti, Rolls-Royce, BMW and 50 other premium brands. I'm very proud to have a CTEK name at the same product as the Lamborghini powered by CTEK. I think that speaks loads of how strong our brand recognition is. We have mainly 2 technologies. We have the EVSE, which is chargers for electrical cars and we have our low voltage, mainly 12-volt chargers for the normal car battery. And we have different segments that we are serving. Many of our customers are using our products in many different applications. And we have products that are applicable for both ELECEV and plug-in hybrid that we can use, of course, our EVSE charger, but also our 12-volt charger and the workshop chargers. For combustion engines, it's the 12-volt chargers, the workshop chargers, and we also have charters that can be used in recreation vehicle and leisure. Motorcycle is a big growing business for us, and we also have chargers for the industrial sector. When we are going to market in -- mainly 2 divisions, the first one, Professional is our B2B channel. There, we are selling our destination chargers to parking operators and we also have our client brand, where we are selling to Porsche, Lamborghini, Corvette and a lot of different other premium brands. In our Consumer division, we are selling in retail through distributors, pure e-tailers and also to importers. So jumping into the Q4 result. We had a sales of SEK 279 million. The gross margin ended up at 49.8%. Adjusted EBITA, SEK 25 million, and we have a strong cash flow of SEK 59 million. The share of EVSE was 23% in the quarter. And altogether, we managed to lower our net debt ratio to 1.8x. If we look at the quarter, it was -- we had a onetime buy from General Motors that affected our figures. And if we adjust for that, our organical growth force of 5%. The gross margin adjusted from this onetime order was increasing to 54.6%. The adjusted EBITDA was ending up at 10.2%, a little bit lower than the comparison quarter, mainly has to do with a credit loss and some of our performance costs that we're paying to the onliners are not evenly distributed quarter-to-quarter. So you can see that Q3, we had a stronger result, but there, we had a little bit less of these performance costs. But if you take it over a year, it's on the same level as last year. I'm very happy to see the continued strong momentum in the Consumer division. It was the sixth quarter in a row where we showed growth, organical growth. This quarter, we have 7% to chemical growth and it was quite a strong comparison quarter as well. So I'm happy to see that we are increasing our market share and doing a good job there. Also -- I can also mention that we see a good demand for our workshop chargers, but we're mainly selling to workshops, and they are used for when they are servicing both EV vehicles and combustion engines. Challenging market conditions for the Professional division. My belief is that we have seen the bottom of the EVSE for CTEK. We are now introducing the CC3 with positive comments from our customers, and we are opening up markets like U.K. and hopefully, in the end of the year, also Germany. So we are well into delivering on our strategy, and we will happily invite you to a Capital Market Day on May 22 in order to explain our next steps. So with that, I leave the word to you, Thom.

So we continue with some overall comments on the financials. And first bullet, it's a bit of repetition from what Henrik already said. We have an organic growth of 5%, excluding the GM last time buy. We have increased the gross margins as well, and we had an adjusted EBITA margin that is around 10.2% lower than last year, as Henrik mentioned. But if you see all the year, it's more or less quarterly how we split the cost of the performance cost, how can we see that cost that is not fully even all the year. The full year result is 3 percentage below last year, 9.8% versus 6.7%. We have a little bit higher share of EVSE products in this quarter with -- if you compare with GM numbers. But without the GM numbers, it's basically on the same level as last quarter 4, 16% versus 15%. As you have seen, we have quite large item affecting comparability of SEK 90 million related to the ended collaboration with General Motors. I would like to mention that this is a conservative approach and potential upside in the final negotiations with GM will be reported as positive items affecting comparability. If you take a look at the respective division, start with the Professional division that stands for 2/3 of other net sales and mainly with the low-voltage products. We can see, as Henrik mentioned, the 7% organic growth from a strong quarter 4 last year to an even stronger quarter this year. The adjusted EBITDA is a bit lower in this slide than on last year, but that is again related to performance cost coming not evenly over the year, and the underlying margins, both gross margin and EBITDA margin are stable. Professional division, a bit more of a challenge than in the Consumer division. It's 1/3 of our turnover. It was an increase organically with SEK 95 million, but impacted then on the last time buy from GM. The adjusted EBITDA number-wise is on the same level as last year and a less bad result than quarter 4 last year. However, we would like to say that this quarter was impacted by this low-margin sale to GM. It was also impacted by that we are selling out slow movers, some of the variance of them, CC2, that is obviously better than scrapping them. And we have also taken the provision for credit loss as Henrik mentioned as well. So we see that we will come back on the blue line to see on the lower graph that should turn upward again and hopefully pass the 0 line during the next year. Then some words around our cash flow and CapEx. Again, on the full year, we can say that we have a net cash that is the most important because it's money we have left after the investments is on the full year level, SEK 54 million versus SEK 53 million last year. It was also a strong improvement during quarter 4 with a positive net cash of SEK 42 million. We have cash in the bank account of SEK 142 million versus SEK 192 million last year. But during the 2024, we have amortized SEK 100 million. So it's, in fact, an improved cash position. And again, our leverage has decreased from 2.7 to 1.8. This is well below the financial target of [ 3 ]. CapEx level, as we have shown over the quarters is now going steadily back to more normal levels, 8%, there's a peak of 12%, and we expect that to continue to be on these levels of 6% to 8% over the years to come. So with that, I hand over back to you, Henrik.

Thank you, Thom. And since this was the last quarter of the year, I just want to talk a little bit about the full year 2024, which we improved in every point. We grow organically with 4% and if we take specifically our 12-volt chargers, we grow with 13% in a quite tough environment. And that means that we're gaining market share. We improved the gross margin with 3% units to 53%, and we also improved our adjusted EBITDA from 6.7% to 9.8% and also happy to see that our net debt ratio is going down well below our financial targets to 1.8. So key takes away for 2024. We are following strategy. We are driving in the right direction. We also can see about the restructuring of our organization that we initiated during 2023 is paying off. We also see the -- we hope we -- my judgment is that we have bottomed out CTEK's EVSE business and that we will see a growth in that during 2025. During the year, we also got a new Chairman, Johan Menckel from Latour. We refinanced our credit facility with Swedbank and we inaugurated office in Stockholm. As previously mentioned, we also ended the collaboration regarding EV chargers for General Motors. And the reason there is about the volumes was not according to the prognosis and our expectations, and we couldn't earn enough money on that business. So all in all, we put up this 3-step phases strategy a little bit more than a year ago. We left Phase 1 stability beginning of last year, and now we are well into the Phase 2, strengthening our profitability. And we are happy to invite you to Capital Market Day, 22nd of May, where we will describe more about our plans for Phase 3, where we have a more accelerated profitable growth. So to summarize, third consecutive quarter with growth for the group, sixth quarter in a row with growth for our 12-volt chargers. Very strong quarter for Consumer Division. We have launched our Chargestorm Connected 3 EVSE charger for -- mainly for destination charging, and we have had very positive reception from our customers. Net debt ratio down to 1.8. And as I mentioned, happy to invite you to our Capital Market Day, the 22nd of May in Stockholm. So with that, operator, I open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Mattias Ehrenborg from Redeye.

I think you have already answered several of my questions. But then I just want to -- if you can provide some additional information on the performance costs here. You mentioned, I think, that there was limited effects on the P&L in Q3, but more significant ones in Q4? And is it possible to quantify the delta between these quarters?

I don't have a delta quarter-on-quarter. But if you compare with last Q4, it was about SEK 3 million higher this quarter.

But for the full year, it was the same level.

Okay. Okay. Excellent. And then also regarding the credit loss that you mentioned in your report, is it possible to quantify the amount of this credit loss and perhaps provide some information about what type of customer is being behind this?

Yes. Yes, it's no secret. This has been out in the media that Eways was a big customer to us. And we -- due to their insolvency, we have, over the years, made provisions of that. And since they were filing for insolvency in Q4, we made the last provision, and that was of SEK 1.5 million.

Okay. Excellent. I was curious to hear, you mentioned in your report that North America is going quite well for you. Now we have a new administration in place, a new trade tariffs. But as you mentioned in your Q3 report, you have moved some parts of your production from China to Malaysia to mitigate this risk. Could you just give more information or insights into the North American markets, what you're doing there right now? Is it all focused on low voltage, I assume? Or what is it looking like there at the moment?

Yes. You're right. We are focusing on a low voltage. And we have quite limited market shares in North America at the moment. So as you mentioned, we had production in China. There was tariffs of 25%, which made us a bit uncompetitive. Now we have rectified that and we have changed our production site for 80% of the volume to Malaysia. In this current situation, it's hard to say if that will be unaffected of tariffs going forward. But as of now, it is. And we have managed to keep our margins but lowered the price to the customer and that has had a positive effect. So we see a good growth potential in North America going forward. And we are aiming both e-tailers and distribution channels.

Okay. And looking at Europe, obviously, Consumer division was very strong in this quarter as well, driven by the low voltage sales. What are the main drivers in Europe? Is it overall high demand? Was it favorable quarter in terms of temperature? So what was the main drivers in this quarter, would you say?

Actually, the comparing quarter was better weather-wise because then it was very cold weather, which is good for our sales. So we didn't have a weather with us this quarter. But we have increased our sales organization. We are working tighter together with our customer. We are growing in the digital channels. And I would say that we are growing, taking market share, growing in markets where we are -- have maybe not been satisfied before. So it's hard work from the Consumer division, and we see a good momentum there. And also, the workshop chargers have grown double digits during the year.

Okay. So in general, it's more of the same that you have mentioned in previous quarters, sounds like or how -- are there anything new in this quarter that you would just to highlight compared to Q3 or Q2?

We have mentioned and we continue to mention that this year, but we are continuously investing in our sales organization. And of course, it takes some time. So sales -- the stronger sales organization that we put into place in the beginning of the year, we now can see, and that was mainly in the DACH region, we can see that, that is paying off now. Now we -- in Q4, we have employed another strengthen even more, and that is mainly in some of the Nordic countries and also in Eastern Europe. And of course, that will take some months before we see the result of that. But our judgment is that during the 2025, we will see also the result of that investment.

Okay. Final question from my side now. I noticed on LinkedIn the other day that you have hired a new Head of e-commerce. I'm curious to hear, is this a new role of CTEK or is it new person coming in to an already existing role? And what are your hopes there?

We have -- the digital channels are a big part of our sales. We have had already a very good and existing organization for taking care of this. But the role as such was divided between marketing and e-commerce. Now we have made a pure e-commerce role and that is part of the investments that we are doing in our sales organization.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for listening today. And as I mentioned, you are warm welcome to our Capital Market Day in 22nd of May in Stockholm. So hope to see you then, and have a nice day.

Thank you.

Thank you.