dormakaba Holding AG (DOKA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to today's webcast. My first as CEO of dormakaba. Our CFO, Bernd Brinker, and I will present you our annual results 2021. We will also give you a business and strategy outlook. But first, I would like to start and to share with you a few takeaways from my first 100 days as CEO of this company. Above all, this first 100 days were about listening, listening to all our stakeholders. I listened to many people. I even had the chance to meet some of you in person or virtually. I listen to our customers in virtual meetings also at ISC West, when I attended America's largest fair in our industry last July. Other wrote to me directly, sometimes to praise, sometimes to complain. But first and foremost, I listen to our employees. To me, their opinion and insight and also their well-being is key. This is why we conducted a pulse check among all our employees early April. I am pleased that 86% of them said that dormakaba took sufficient safety precautions during the pandemic. And 80% say that they have confidence in the future of our company, 80%. Let me take a moment to say how grateful I am for the continued resilience and commitment of our employees, especially in these challenging times. They have kept their focus on serving our customers and on ensuring business continuity. So coming back to my first 100 days. What did I hear from external stakeholders? I heard customers appreciate the dedication and expertise of our people, recognize the strengths of our talent, of our brand, welcome our connected products and value our global presence. But I also heard them request improved ease of doing business and that they count on us for innovation. I heard you recognize our comprehensive, high-quality portfolio, our global footprint and our potential to become an industry leader in sustainability. But I also heard you ask for reliability, transparency and a greater return on investment. I heard you loud and clear, and I know the concern some of you feel. Summarizing all this feedback, there is one sentence from a customer that really resonated with me. And this customer told me, it is a company worth fighting for. He expressed a point many customers actually mentioned. They wish us to be successful in our transformation because they value the relationship with us and know they will benefit from us. My personal belief after these 5 first months, dormakaba has a unique legacy, great opportunities ahead and the right people to tackle them. I am dedicated to unlocking this potential. But please remember, Rome was not built in 1 day. From April 1, I've been giving the company a clear direction, a clear direction centered around: number one, increased focus; and number two, customer centricity. And I've been promoting a culture of performance and accountability. I will get back to this later in the strategy outlook. By the way, this picture is in Mexico, when I was in Mexico. One last thing I wanted to stress, what can you expect from me? First, increased transparency. This starts with an improved financial communication. You might have noticed that you now can raise questions regardless of your participation in the room or remotely. And that we have adopted an industry-wide practice with introducing adjusted EBITDA as an additional KPI. And I hope you will also note changes in the very way we present our results to you today. Small steps, but I believe in the right direction. Second, candor. I will address negative topics upfront, but also share positive news with the same energy. And third, reliability. We do what we say, and we say what we do. Now let's move to our financial results. We posted good business results in a demanding environment. Our sales performance improved over the year. We saw double-digit organic sales growth in the second half year driven by a strong fourth quarter. Overall, organic sales growth for the full year was slightly above our guidance, and our EBITDA margin improved and landed in line with our guidance. The main reason for the good results was a strong performance of our European and Asian businesses. All segments, except AS Americas contributed to the organic sales growth and the increased profitability. Overall, results did not reach pre-COVID level yet. Our financial profile remains strong. We are in a good position to support future strategic measures. Net profit increased by 17.8%. This allows our Board to propose a significantly increased dividend, CHF 12.50 per share. Let me now share a few highlights and also setbacks. I am pleased that we achieved strong growth in the Asia Pacific region. This is despite the slowdown in several markets, such Asian. It is also comforting that with AS EMEA and Key & Wall Solutions, 2 segments have already achieved pre-COVID profitability or above. AS DACH delivered a solid performance, which underlines the success of the segment's transformation program over the past few years. Further, we want to focus on portfolio management, and we had focused in portfolio management in the past few months, either by complementing organic growth with attractive inorganic growth opportunities or by divesting noncore elements. And finally, I am proud that our company is the first in our industry to have its carbon emission reduction target approved by the reputed SBTi organization. I would also like to openly communicate on some setbacks. First, the performance of Mesker continues to be very unsatisfactory. This has significant impact on the profitability of our AS Americas business and must be fixed. In general, we saw a weak U.S. construction market. This impacted our performance as we are mainly operating in the commercial market, but we see now some recovery. Our global business continued to be impacted by the pandemic, especially in the first half year. And in addition, we also faced challenges coming from increasing raw material and freight costs as well as shortages of electronic components. On the topic of active portfolio management, in the past few months, in the current fiscal year, we have announced 3 transactions. Let me start with RELBDA. This transaction allows us to strengthen our position in door automation and services and to diversify and to expand into the Australian residential market. It will help further our ambitious growth target in APAC. We have also acquired India company, Solus, back in July. This company based in Bangalore, will help us expand our electronic access offering as well as our services footprint in an attractive growth market. We see further benefits in leveraging the software expertise for the entire Asia Pacific region. In addition, as announced on Monday, we have decided to divest our Interior Glass Systems business called IGS. IGS is our smallest product cluster, with limited synergies and integration in our offering. This will support us in focusing on our core business. It gives you a clear indication on future approach to portfolio management. We had many operational successes throughout the year. You see only a very small selection on this slide. I am proud that we received several product awards, most recently for -- from the German Design Council. These awards cover the entire product portfolio and all regions. And they reward how our products perfectly integrate into buildings, which is so important for architects. The focus on selected verticals with attractive growth potential is also very important to us, focus attractive growth potential. In the past year, we performed well in verticals such as health care and education, and even in verticals hard hit by the pandemic, such as transportation and hospitality. For instance, we won some major projects for airports in Europe, in the U.S. and in India. And we secured the biggest hotel project win over the past 5 years, the Resorts World in Las Vegas. And I was proud to stay at this resort during my U.S. trip in July. Always good to stay with customers. A good example of the strength of our innovation. Now let's talk a little bit about innovation is EntriWorX. A door today is a quite complex system, with a lot of stand-alone components. EntriWorX turns complex doors into a system that is easy to plan, easy to install, easy to operate and easy to maintain. EntriWorX provides our customers with very tangible benefits to improve the productivity along the complete building life cycle. For example, the solution reduced planning time for architect by 20%. We are the first to have such a solution in the market and based on the good customer feedback so far, we see good potential for cross-selling and for growth. The solution was launched end of April in Germany, and the rollout is happening at the moment to 13 other countries. More to come at the Capital Markets Day, was just a teaser. Turning now to sustainability. Here, we have made good progress. First one, we have achieved 5 key strategic objectives. This related to climate change mitigation, certification of our environmental management system, transparency on the environmental impact of our products and supplier due diligence. Another example, in the past year alone, we have reduced our carbon footprint by 6% through investment in energy saving projects and the purchase of green electricity. Over the past 5 years, we have reduced our carbon footprint by 20%. Turning to our customers. We notice increasing interest in green products, and we expect the green building market to grow annually close to 15%, 1-5. This is why we have increasing transparent communication on the environmental impact of our products. With our new life cycle assessment tool, we have collected data for 70 products or over 70 products in just 1 year, you see on this slide. And finally, employee health and safety, a topic which is very important to me. We have introduced a standardized monitoring to consistently implement corrective actions. So now I move to more details about our performance, and for each of the performance slide which will follow, you will see sales and EBITDA comparison year-over-year, that's the top part as well as the comparison per half year, with a special focus on the second half year, that's the bottom part of this slide. Our organic sales growth was unevenly distributed over the full year. This is linked to a sequential improvement of our business as well as to a weaker base as the second half of '19/'20 was heavily impacted by the pandemic. We achieved a 10% organic growth in the second half year, with a strong fourth quarter, in line with our competitors. Our EBITDA margin improved by 130 basis points against previous year. And you will see later in Bernd's part when we disclosed adjusted EBITDA that we improved our underlying financial performance in the second half year. These good results was driven by higher volume, improvements in operational efficiency and effective cost management, such as in procurement. In addition, we raised sales prices on average with an impact in 2021 of around 0.5%. With all these measures, we could more than compensate the impacts from higher raw material prices and freight costs. Looking ahead, we will definitely continue to use strategic pricing with discretion in all segments. This will be supplemented by measures to secure supplies of scarce electronic components. Now moving to our segments, AS Americas. We are not satisfied with our performance and the progress made in addressing our issues. The performance of AS Americas was impacted by 3 main factors. The first one is a weak U.S. commercial market. The second, the weak hospitality business, which was heavily affected by the pandemic. Sales were still 20% below pre-COVID level. And third, the very unsatisfactory performance of our Mesker unit. As you can see, Mesker has an impact on the segment profitability of 240 basis points. Our focus lies on turnaround, and we are, at the same time, evaluating strategic options. There were also some positive developments in AS Americas, for example, the strong performance of Alvarado, which we acquired 2 years ago. And we see positive trends in the area of Electronic Access & Data, touchless access and Entrance Systems. Now to our segment, APAC. In this segment, we saw a strong sequential recovery over the year. While growth in the first half year was still impacted by COVID, in the second half year, we generated strong growth of 24% driven by an especially good fourth quarter. This is due to the recovery in India and in China. In China, we are convincing our customers with our offering, especially in the area of touchless access solutions. Growth in China was also supported by strong demand for our OEM business for the U.S. market, Wah Yuet. This is reflected in the lower EBITDA margin of the second half year since this business has a lower margin contribution. Now to our segment DACH. Here, we have, again, a good growth development with 8.6% in the second half year. Organic sales growth for the year was 2.6%, but was especially good if we only look at the 3 regional markets, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where the total combined growth was 6.3%. So the 6.3% to compare to the 2.6%. Growth was driven by a strong Electronic Access & Data, Entrance Systems and Service businesses. And I'm pleased that the transformation program of AS DACH is now starting to pay off and leading to sustained improved performance. You can see this in the EBITDA development. While intercompany demand was still down in the first half year, there was a good recovery in the second half year. Moving to EMEA. We posted here good growth in all European regions, with 13%, 1-3, growth in the second half year. Norway improved well and returned to organic growth and profitability after the divestment of its project installation business in summer 2020. Sales growth was driven by a strong double-digit growth for our Electronic Access & Data, especially through intercompany sales into regional markets such as Germany. The EBITDA margin improved significantly and reached a level of 8.5%, which is above pre-COVID level. And finally, Key & Wall Solutions. Strong overall performance with EBITDA at pre-COVID levels and 16% organic growth in the second half year. There was an impressive positive rebound of the key Systems business, with 35.6% growth in the second half year. And let's not forget, a year ago, this unit was hardest hit by the pandemic, all production sites were closed at one time or the other. Organic sales for movable walls were below the previous year. This is due to a base effect from having finalized a major project in the previous year and also from delays in the finalization of existing projects or in the execution of orders. Still, movable walls increased its EBITDA margin and reached an all-time high. With this, I would like to hand over to Bernd to give more financial details on our performance. Bernd, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Sabrina. Warm welcome from me too. I'd like to start with a brief overview of our key figures for financial year 2021. The overall picture looks positive. We were able to achieve good and improved results in a demanding environment. The only negative impact stems from the continued strengthening of the Swiss franc. This led to a negative currency translation effect. Important to note that this does not have any impact on cash flow. Back to the positive messages. We achieved organic sales growth of 1.3%, which is better than the guidance update we gave when we shared our first half results back in March '21. And we achieved an EBITDA margin of 14.1%, which is in line with the March update. This led to a much better operating profit. In combination with a significantly improved net financial result, we were able to achieve a net profit which is 17.8% above the previous year. And now to the details. Let's look at our sales performance first. Organic sales growth for 2021 was 1.3%. While the first half was negative by 6%, the second half was positive by 10%. I would like to come back to the technical impact of currency translation driven by the strengthening of the Swiss franc, which is our reporting currency, against some of our major currencies. Without any change to the underlying business in the relevant countries, the reporting value of our revenues in these currencies was reduced by CHF 76.6 million. This negative impact of currency translation is even greater than the positive impact of organic growth. In line with our COVID-19-related Cash is King principles, we only executed a few smaller M&A transactions throughout 2021. As well as acquiring some new businesses during the year, we also divested our Norwegian project installation business in August 2020. As a result, the net contribution to the sales bridge was rather limited from M&A at only CHF 3.6 million. Let me walk you through the EBITDA bridge in the same way. We were able to grow our EBITDA organically by CHF 34.4 million against the previous year. One key driver was higher volume. Another was that we were able to increase sales prices over the financial year by around 0.5% on an annualized basis. In addition, we achieved savings by focusing on procurement. While the M&A contribution to sales was rather small, the impact on EBITDA was more significant as evidenced by the CHF 4.8 million attributable to acquisitions and divestments, which both contributed positively. You have already heard from Sabrina that we have decided to introduce an additional reporting element, adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA focuses on underlying financial performance by removing exceptional items outside the normal course of business, such as restructuring, impairments, book gains from divestments or changes in the scope of consolidation. Going forward, we will focus on adjusted KPIs by eliminating such items affecting comparability, whether their impact is positive or negative. We believe this will improve transparency and will allow a better understanding of performance as well as guidance. In terms of guidance, we will refer to the adjusted EBITDA margin going forward. How does this look like for 2021? The clean EBITDA margin for the first half, which we reported, was 14.8%, while the adjusted EBITDA margin was only 14.1%. For the second half, the clean EBITDA was 13.5%, while the adjusted EBITDA margin was much stronger at 14.3%. So for the full year of 2021, the difference is much smaller, with the EBITDA margin at 14.1% and the adjusted margin at 14.2%. We will incorporate adjusted EBITDA into our group financial reporting and segment reporting going forward, starting with the first half of '21, '22. Just to finish on profitability development, we were able to improve the clean EBITDA margin by 130 basis points from the previous year's 12.8% to now 14.1%. Let us turn now to the income statement, where I would like to highlight a few elements. In line with our strategy, we continue to invest in R&D. You have seen one of our bigger R&D projects a few minutes ago, EntriWorX. In addition to the CHF 109.5 million spend via our profit and loss statement, we invested another CHF 8.4 million by capitalizing certain R&D projects. This translates into an R&D ratio to sales of 4.7% overall. Beyond the improvement in our operational performance, another very positive contribution to the increase in net profit against the previous year came from the net financial result. On the one hand side, we were able to reduce our net debt throughout 2021 due to the good cash flow. In addition, we were able to benefit from much more favorable interest rates. Our effective income tax rate was stable at 22.6% against the previous year's 22.3%. However, it has to be noted that our weighted applicable tax rate moved up by almost 200 basis points to 25.2% as a result of our country mix of profit. This will most likely lead to a higher effective tax rate going forward. Overall, net profit went up by 17.8%, which is another good improvement on the previous year. Our cash flow profile still very much reflect the Cash is King principles. However, as business activities picked up throughout the second half of 2021, this led to a lower operating cash flow for the full financial year against the previous year due to investments in business and growth. While the operating cash flow margin for the first half was very strong at 15.8%, it fell to 9.3% in the second half and so to 12.5% for the full financial year. With the stronger business environment in the second half of 2021, we eased the internal conditions for CapEx and M&A, which reduced free cash flow. Overall, free cash flow for the reporting year was much stronger than in the previous year. This goes back to our acquisition of Alvarado, which we completed at the beginning of the previous year. Free cash flow before M&A was basically unchanged at a rather high level of CHF 240 million. So how did the cash flow situation translate into net debt? We were able to reduce net debt by almost CHF 160 million to CHF 508.8 million at the end of the reporting period. As mentioned earlier, this was one driver for the much lower interest charges against previous year. dormakaba, thus, continues to have a solid financial profile. This is reflected in the leverage ratio of net debt to EBITDA of 1.4x for the period under review. One important building block of our financing structure is our syndicated credit facility. The old one amounting to CHF 500 million expired in March '21. In order to avoid refinancing risks, especially during the pandemic, we decided to refinance this facility early. In November 2020 already, we successfully completed this refinancing by signing a new syndicated credit facility amounting to CHF 525 million with our core banks. As a result, we continue to have sufficient financial flexibility for future strategic measures. We have more than CHF 600 million of as yet unused committed credit lines granted to us by our banks. As in previous years, we want our shareholders to participate appropriately in our financial results. Our dividend policy is to have a payout ratio of at least 50% of net profit after minority interests. In line with this dividend policy, the Board of Directors is asking the Annual General Meeting of 12th of October 2021 to approve a dividend of CHF 12.5 per share. This is equivalent to a payout ratio of 52.2%. And with that, I would like to hand back to Sabrina.

Thank you, Bernd. So let me talk about our business outlook for the current financial year '21/'22. In the coming months, we may well see a high level of uncertainty and volatility. This includes, for example, continued negative effects associated with COVID-19 such as selective regional restrictions and lockdowns. It is also likely that we continue to see increasing shipping costs, shortages of electronic components and raw material price inflation. Further factors may be geopolitical such as trade conflicts. Based on this, we guide for moderate organic sales growth and a slight year-on-year increase in the adjusted EBITDA margin. dormakaba's current strategy cycle comes to an end at the end of this year. Therefore, in April '21, we started to define the new vision, purpose and strategy, along with the resulting KPIs and initiatives. We have been running the entire project under the name of Shape4Growth. Through Shape4Growth, we will develop our full potential. To achieve this, we will follow 5 priorities. Number one, I mentioned already before, focus, focus to accelerate growth. Among others, focus means identifying our core portfolio and being consistent in terms of resources allocation, innovation and M&A. Focus means also developing a clear ambition for this core portfolio in selected countries. Number two, customer centricity. I want to ingrain customer centricity in our company. This will be the yardstick for the planned new organization and its operating model. Concretely, this means increasing the ease of doing business with dormakaba, improve our services and build an engaging customer experience across all touch points. And it also means reducing internal complexity and activating our sales. To support these 2 priorities, we have defined 3 other priorities that should serve as enablers. First, operational excellence, notably in procurement, in manufacturing and internal digitalization using the strength and the scale of being a global company. Second, effective capital deployment, notably through focus and best-in-class product development to achieve a higher R&D return. Third, culture, as culture eats strategy for breakfast. And our culture must support the priorities set and drive performance. And performance means timely implementation and stringent execution. To set a clear direction, we have decided for this year to align all management incentives on the same set of group-wide target with a special focus on sales growth. In a nutshell, it is all about focus, focus on our customers, focus on our markets, on simplification and optimization of our internal processes and focus on growth. Because, in the end, the yardstick by which we will evaluate all initiatives is accelerated profitable growth. I will stop here, and I hope this is enough of a teaser for our Capital Markets Day on 15th of November, when we will flesh out our vision and the strategy to reach it and hoping to see you there. With this, we conclude the presentation part of this conference and come to the Q&A. Bernd and I are ready to take your questions now. And we will take also questions from remote participants. So I, first, hand over to the operator to give instruction. Operator, please go ahead.

Maybe what would be good is that you just say your name, you and your company because I don't know everyone. That would be very useful for me. So I think you were first, and then...

Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Actually, I have one for the CEO and 2 for the CFO. Starting off with the Mesker issue. It's been going on, if I remember correctly, for 3 years now. And I was just wondering, what are the quick fixes you see from today's perspective? And what will be the remaining challenges after that? That's my first question. And the next 2 for the CFO are regarding the net pricing impact. I realize we've not only been talking about sales price increases and material and component price increases also about shipping costs. So I was wondering whether you could give us an idea what the impact was in the last financial year, and what we should expect for the new year 2021, '22? And then finally, if I remember correctly, I think that we still have some cost savings upcoming from restructuring this year, incremental ones. And I was wondering whether you could give us an update on how much to put into our EBIT or EBITDA bridges.

Thank you. So I will start with Mesker. First of all, the performance of America is on top of my list. And that's why I went to the U.S. It was my first trip outside Europe in July. And I visited Mesker, and I used the opportunity to see a lot of customers at the trade show in Vegas, which was different topics, but this trip was really good because I could visit Mesker and I could see a lot of customers. Mesker, I believe we bought a business, which was new for us. It was a new business. We are, at the moment, looking in details at all root causes why we are here. In the past, we -- and I want to talk about the future now. I don't want to talk too much about the past. We probably did not understand fully this business because it was new to us. Now we detailed all the root cause. We have -- we are in the process of implementing actions. And at the same time, we look at strategic options.

Martin, with regard to net pricing impact and the question of additional shipping costs. I think the biggest impact, which we see in our current portfolio in the last financial year, was coming from raw material price increases. Now the situation has become a little bit more difficult. We are all aware of the temporary closure of [ Ningbo ], such as an example. And this has an impact on supply chain and availability of freight in general. So it's much more the supply chain issue rather than the costs. So therefore, shipping costs are more -- or shipping is more a question of availability of product in our portfolio. In -- overall, the last year's net pricing impact, we mentioned that during our presentation, was positive by 0.5%. And this was sufficient to cover the increases in terms of raw material and freight. In the current financial year, and this might be related to your question, we expect -- based on the current pricing environment, we expect that we need to increase our prices in the magnitude of 3% in order to fully cover raw material and freight impact. And we are, from today's perspective, comfortable to achieve that. So 3% should be sufficient. With regards to restructuring, you are referring to our restructuring program which we introduced last year. And the overall target was, as a reaction to the significantly lower demand in the markets, to lay off up to 1,300 people, employees throughout our portfolio, the biggest part related to the U.S. as well as to Asia. And here, again, to the blue collar workers, again, as I said, to address lower demand. Today, we have achieved almost 1,200 FTE reduction. And this had a positive impact since the start of the program in the magnitude of CHF 42 million. When we introduced the program, we indicated that we expect run rate savings in the magnitude of almost CHF 50 million. And we also indicated that we will be willing to accept a lower layoff of people if business picks up. And today, we see that we don't need to fully execute our program for 1,300 people. So we will have less people affected by this restructuring. So therefore, I expect lower savings. So CHF 42 million, we achieved already. I personally expect an additional CHF 4 million to CHF 5 million in the current financial year. In addition, we still have to expect costs related to such layoff in the magnitude of CHF 4 million. So there will be a minor positive impact from this restructuring in the current financial year. But there will be a long-term saving because we expect the long-term savings to remain as run rate saving.

Okay. I think I may have been a little bit unclear about my first question to you, Mr. Brinker, about the pricing situation. I was actually not talking about selling prices. I was talking about net pricing in terms of the overall impact between selling price increases, but also higher raw material prices and shipping costs. I was just wondering what kind of target do you have for this year on how to deal with that situation.

I would like to go back, Martin, to what I said earlier. Our current analysis shows that we need to increase our prices throughout our portfolio by 3% in order to fully cover raw material price increases and increased freight costs.

Okay. Then the next question.

Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank. Just coming back on Mesker shortly. Could you tell us how bad the situation actually is? I mean financially, is it loss-making? And if so, at which level, net profit EBIT, EBITDA?

I will start and Bernd will continue. As we mentioned, we saw for our American business an impact on EBITDA of 240 basis point negative. That's what you see in the slide of the AS Americas segment. So you can make the calculation for the group, how much it impacts. But for the segment America, it's 240 basis point negative. And this business did not grow as well in the last -- we lost revenue in the last years.

Okay. And when you talk about strategic options, just to be clear, that could also mean a divestment.

We are looking at strategic options. I don't want to make some hypothesis now because we are looking at this, and we will say more during our Capital Market Day on 15th of November.

Okay. Then also again on pricing. You said 3% is needed, and you're confident to be able to achieve it. Now what makes you that confident? Did you introduce those price increases already? And did they stick, therefore?

Yes. We started already in May to work on. By the way, strategic pricing is key and important to me. We started in May to implement some of this pricing -- price increase. And of course, as you mentioned, it takes a while so that it will be in the market. So that's why we started early. And that's why we expect a more negative effect on the first half year than on the second half year because some of these price increases would be implemented in January, for instance.

Okay. But you confirm that overall, you have introduced this 3% by now across the board?

Yes.

Okay. Then my last question, which is a very general one for you. You said culture eats strategy for breakfast, which is absolutely true. So that means the best strategy will not bear fruit if the culture doesn't follow it. Now in your first 100 days, did you get the impression that you should probably also change something in the culture of the company?

This company has a very solid foundation, as I mentioned, and a very constructive culture. I was talking about performance culture. The performance culture of this company is good. If not, the company would be -- would not be where the company is. There is always a possibility to do better, and I want to drive this company more in the direction of performance, so performance-oriented culture with customer centricity. That's the 2 main points that I really want to emphasize in the future.

Okay. But that won't be done in 12 months?

No. That's why I said Rome was not built in 1 day. Maybe we take a third question. I think you were the third one then -- and then we will go offline, and then we will come back to the room. We will make sure that we answer all your questions.

Holger Frisch, Zürcher Kantonalbank. A question on organic growth. You reported 10% organic growth in the second half of the year. Could you give some details about quarterly performance and some indication how the business developed in July and August?

On the quarterly performance, we mentioned a strong fourth quarter in line with our peers. So if you look at what our peers achieved then you can conclude our -- or you can find out which kind of growth we had in the fourth quarter. So what we have to say as well is this fourth quarter last year was the quarter the most hit by the pandemic. So the base is quite low. In terms of July, August, we don't comment on monthly performance. What I can say is that we started the year in line with our expectations in July. August, we still don't have -- August is not finished and is a holiday month anyway. So that's what I can share with you.

Okay. Then in terms of CapEx, you reduced CapEx again, last fiscal year, you indicated that CapEx are going to rise. What level can we expect for this fiscal year and going forward?

I would give to Bernd.

Yes. So as you've seen from the chart, CapEx was much stronger in the second half. There was obviously some catch up also from the first half where we postponed certain investments. But I believe that the second half level is a good indicator for the current financial year.

Okay. And then on the maturing bond, what are your plans there? Are you going to refinance the new bond? Or will you use your credit facility?

As I've presented, we are in the very comfortable situation to have, as of now, roughly CHF 600 million as of yet unused credit -- committed credit lines available. So as of today, we intend to refinance the bond, which is maturing in October this year against our syndicated credit facility.

So now I would propose to go to the operator. Any question remote?

The first question from the phone is from Maidi, Rizk from Jefferies.

So I have a couple here. So I'll take them one at a time. So Sabrina, you talked about focus, promoting a culture of performance and accountability across the organization. We've seen other industrial companies going through the same path of decentralization, pushing responsibility of P&L balance sheet and cash flow to the divisional unit heads. Maybe perhaps can you talk about how your managers are currently incentivized, and how you would want that to change going forward? I think you talked about sales incentive, anything on profitability and cash flow generation?

Thank you, Rizk, and nice to hear you. We will review the compensation systems, and we are reviewing it in the frame of our Shape4Growth project, and we will communicate more details on 15th of November in our Capital Market Day. But you are completely right. We will look at this, and we will focus on this. There will be, for sure, a component of growth, a component on profitability and a component on return. That's what I can say up to now and more to come on 15th of November.

Understood. The second one that I had is going back to Mesker, again, and sorry to belabor the point. Just perhaps if you could just help us with the synergies with the rest of the business. You said it's quite a new business. But -- does it really add anything to the remaining sort of part of dormakaba? And also, you help us with the margin impact, but perhaps can you just assess what's the revenue size of this business is last year?

I will start with the synergy, and I will give to Bernd for the profitability. On the synergies, this business have 2 parts, so the hollow metal doors, and that's the part that we are concentrated on. And there was another part, which was called design architecture hardware, and this part was already merged with best -- with our best business in the U.S. and is part of our door hardware business. So when we talk about Mesker now today, we talk about the hollow metal doors, where we don't see too much -- too many synergies with our core portfolio.

Rizk, with regard to profitability, I'm not sure whether I fully got your question. But -- so we acquired Mesker in 2016, late 2016. At the time, it was a business in the magnitude of roughly CHF 70 million. Part of this CHF 70 million was the design hardware component, which has been elaborated on by Sabrina just now. At the time, the business was profitable. It was even accretive to our group margins. And since then, it has developed in the way we just described. And now, to date, it has a negative impact of 240 basis points on AS Americas and 60 basis points on group, so significant. So you can clearly see that this business is already negative on EBITDA level.

Okay. And then perhaps another one is on just the pricing, Bernd. I have you there. Just a clarification. I think at the last earnings call, you said that price increases were 1% in H1. I'm a bit surprised that you only had 0.5% for the full year. And then building on this, if you are confident that you will achieve 3% price increases in the current year, why such a cautious full year guidance in terms of organic revenue growth of just moderate growth if all of it could just potentially come from price increases?

Maybe I take the guidance, then you take the 0.5%?

Yes.

So regarding the guidance, yes, we are cautious. We still are in a volatile and uncertain environment with a lot of challenges. As we mentioned before, so shortage of electronic component, supply chain, raw material, cost increase, COVID restriction still there or still coming in some of our key countries, like Australia, for instance. So we believe -- we believe -- I want to deliver what I promised. So I think that's a very important statement. This guidance is a short-term guidance. We don't talk about midterm. We will talk about midterm in our Capital Market Day on 15th of November. And due to this uncertainty and volatility, we believe that the guidance is now the right one in this moment of time. To your question on price increase, yes, we believe that we will be able to reach the 3%. And this should be enough to compensate if the spot prices stay at the same level. And we all know the discussion before, if it changed, then there will be a delay between the price increase and the implementation in the markets. Now the 0.5% to 1%?

Rizk, the 0.5% is obviously a number which is related to our full portfolio. And you are familiar with our portfolio, where we have not only product business or distribution, but also project business as well as service business. And in a year of pandemic, I think, the project business is very much -- is very competitive. So therefore, please take that into consideration when you apply the 0.5% on an annualized basis for the full portfolio.

Okay. Just very quickly and lastly, just what are you seeing in China? We've seen liquidity tightening with the government announcing 3 red lines policy, some real estate developers facing liquidity issues or credit control for some of them. Is this something you're seeing? Or have you seen any changes in the payment terms in the country?

We haven't seen too much changes in this direction at the moment. But as I said, I think at the moment, it's very difficult to predict. So that's why we have to follow up these topics very carefully, would be my...

And if I may add here, I think you are also referring to liquidity risk in the market. What we -- during the pandemic, we introduced as part of Cash is King principles, we also introduced a very rigid accounts receivable credit management. And interestingly, here, we don't yet see any negative impact in our portfolio on -- in terms of days sales outstanding. In the China environment, we see the opposite. So we have improved there. But obviously, we need to be very much focused on the topic you just raised. It's not only about the local environment. It's also about trade conflicts between different parts of the world. So this is obviously an area of attention.

So now we take another question remote, and then we come back to the room. Operator, do we have any?

The next question is from Chand, Debashis from Societe Generale.

My first one, I appreciate like some of the comments would be reserved for the Capital Market Day, but it would be helpful if you could give some color on the strategy. So just focusing on your comment on growth. So would that entail a greater emphasis on M&A than we have seen historically from dormakaba? And also, what would be the key target areas where you'll be looking at for the M&A opportunities? And if that would include some of the larger deals as well? That's my first question.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I could understand everything on the strategy.

M&A.

Yes. Okay.

The importance of M&A and key targets.

Okay. The strategy -- first of all, we will present the strategy on 15th of November. So I don't want to give too many details. And of course, if not, you will not come. M&A will be, for sure, part of our strategy, and we will disclose more details on 15th of November. Again, the focus topic -- focus on core -- on our core, strengthening our core, how we can achieve this with services potential will be one of the key element. So yes, I said too much, probably.

If I may add. I think today, you've seen some good examples. Sabrina presented the Australian acquisition, RELBDA, and she also presented Solus in India. So those are perfect examples of what you can expect. Secondly, our industry is still very fragmented and offers significant opportunities. So there’s also something which fits nicely. And third, we have already shown you that we have quite a solid financial profile. So there is something which can be expected in terms of M&A.

Sabrina, you listed few issues impacting the Americas division. But setting aside those issues, given your 100 days at office, do you have -- do you see any structural issue with the division? Or do you -- are you confident that this division has the potential to narrow the margin gap with -- versus your peers?

First of all, this company has a very solid foundation. And I repeat it, very solid foundation with a strong brand, strong portfolio, strong team. I was amazed with the quality and professionalism of our people. So really good foundation to build on. And to build on, there is potential. I see potential. I am dedicated to unlock this potential, as mentioned earlier. And this potential will be unlocked with the 5 priorities that I mentioned. High level. Of course, I know it's now high level, but it's a teaser to the Capital Market Day, again. And you will see when we will present the details of the initiatives, which are behind these 5 priorities that we will unlock the potential of this company, where we will come in which level of EBITDA, we will communicate in our midterm targets at the Capital Market Day.

Sure.

So now, we take a question in the room. I think you were first, I tried to, sorry. You will -- we will take all the questions.

Martin Hüsler, Zürcher Kantonalbank. I have 2 questions. First, about the semantic of your outlook. Can you maybe help us a bit to give more quantitative feeling on what the moderate growth and the moderate increase in margin might be, for example, 5% growth and 100 basis point margin increase is moderate, or would this be already high? And the second question is turning to movable walls that developed very favorably even though sales came back. Can you may be shed some more light into this business? What helped to increase margins to record levels? And was there also a mix effect? And what can we expect for the next couple of years, even higher margins for this division?

Thank you. The first question on the guidance, we were expecting the questions, and we didn't give a figure on purpose because we want to stick with our moderate and slight increase year-on-year. Again, I want to deliver what I promise. We are in a very uncertain and volatile environment. We have delivered this year. We want to deliver next year. It's a short-term target. Rome was not built in 1 day, and we will communicate the midterm targets with more quantitative figures. I'm sorry that I cannot give you more, but that's all. Then on the movable wall business, I'll just start with an introduction then I give to Bernd. The movable wall business is a very good business, global business, very profitable, as you saw. We are very happy with this business, and then I hand over to Bernd for the...

We were able, in the last year, to, let's say, earn the fruits of what we have done in the last 3 to 4 years. You may recall that we have acquired Skyfold, which is a Canadian-based activity, which, in addition to horizontal walls has vertical walls. So with that acquisition, we were able to add a very important element to this portfolio, and Skyfold is performing very well. Second, we started a restructuring program also 3 years ago in Germany, addressing issues in our German environment, including the plant in Ocholt. And also here, we were able to improve significantly. The year we have to compete with, so the financial year '19/'20, there we were able to get very big projects such as one in Las Vegas. And this was a driver for the top line while not so much on the bottom line. Now the last financial year, where we competed against a very high base in the year before, we did not have so many bigger projects. So therefore, we were not surprised to have lower sales. But at the same time, we were able to improve profitability as a result of what I've just said. So therefore, I can only echo what Sabrina just said. We are very happy with the progress we've made for movable walls and is a very -- especially the acquisition of Skyfold is a very good addition to our portfolio. And it has synergies for our entire portfolio.

Okay. And the end of the [ financial year ], you would say it's not yet reached margin-wise?

I think the -- we need to be careful because we have a very successful business, especially in Canada and the U.S. environment. And here, we are facing -- now we are facing really issues in terms of labor -- availability of labor and also other things or also raw material prices have an impact and bigger projects tend to be very competitive. So I would caution the expectations. We are happy with what we have achieved, but I don't want to raise expectations beyond today's level.

Thank you. So now a question on the right -- And then we come back. There is a question here. We go remote.

Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel. Coming back to focus, you mentioned the progress there on movable walls and key solutions, asking critically. Do you definitely regard it as core? Or do you -- don't you want to focus a little bit more on access solutions or saying access solutions is core, core, and these separated business as kind of core only? So could you imagine divesting it and using it for a bigger deal in the access solutions area in the longer run? That would be my first one. And secondly, on working capital, is there a reason why your working capital intensity should be much different from an [ other employee ] in the long run, I think especially on inventory level you are, at the moment, much higher than other. And could you give us here a concrete target for the current year and the long run where you want to land in relation to sales?

I start with the core and Bernd take the working capital. The definition of our core business and what will be core will be disclosed during the Capital Market Day, sorry to repeat this sentence. But this is very important topic here. We want to focus on the core. We want to strengthen on the core. This does not mean as well that if something is not core, that we will not continue to have some focus on this noncore element. We will define exactly what it is and present it to you on 15th of November. And the second part of your question and the divestment, this is a hypothetical question, and I would not like to answer this question. And again, more details to come.

Tobias, with regard to your second question, I tend to agree with your inventory assessment. I tend not to agree with your accounts receivable assessment. And I see some opportunities in the area of payables. So payables is much more related to procurement efforts where we already indicated that we are doing more than in the past. In accounts receivable, we have made significant progress in the course of the last 15 months. This was also driven not only but also by the pandemic, where we really focused on accounts receivable management, credit management because in a crisis environment, this is a much bigger risk. So we have improved our days sales outstanding, which is our major KPI. In terms of inventory, days inventory outstanding, yes, we are not yet there, where we would like to be, but this is also a result of our today's footprint, which we have in the market. So it's closely related to the question focus. And with regard to payables, I would expect that we -- that there is some room for improvement.

Thank you. Then we go there and then we go remote.

Patrick Rafaisz from UBS. I have 2 questions, please. The first one is, coming back to the guidance, sorry for that, on the margins. And I understand you want to be conservative at this point, but...

Cautious.

Or cautious, fine. If I just consider without numbers, right? You're taking immediate action with Mesker. So let's assume you stop the bleeding to certain extent. You have a bit of incremental savings. The deals you've announced should be accretive according to the slides. It feels like you're not building in any operational leverage from your moderate growth. Is that a fair assessment? Or are there other factors to consider like product mix or geographical mix in the current fiscal year?

I would just repeat what I said before. The environment is very volatile and very uncertain for many different reasons. Look what happened in Australia or in Malaysia. They closed the factory a few weeks ago from our Key & Movable Wall business. We see shortages in electronic components. It's becoming more and more difficult. We managed, we managed, but it's quite difficult to predict ahead what will happen in all the topic mentioned before. So that's why I want to deliver what I promise, and I want to deliver the guidance that I promised. And again, it's a short-term target, it's short term. Midterm will come in November. And midterm will be ambitious but achievable.

Okay. And the second question is on the U.S. or Americas excluding Mesker, right? Because it wasn't just Mesker, right? You were losing market share also elsewhere. And you mentioned signs of a pickup in the commercial space in the U.S. So excluding Mesker, do you feel you've caught up again with market dynamics in your specific verticals? Or are you still losing relative market share?

What we see in the U.S., in the U.S. market at the moment is there is a good momentum for aftermarket and renovations. This good momentum does not offset yet the loss of business with the new buildings with the new construction. So that's what we see. But these are positive trends, but still do not offset. And what we see as well in renovations, there are as well some issues. Contractors mentioned to us that they are issues to execute because of shortage of labor, of materials, so all the problem that we know. And this delay as well a little bit this recovery. There is, through this infrastructure bill, good opportunities, and we have already captured some of them. In education, for example, money goes into renovation for education. And we have a special focus on education vertical. We started a few months ago, our American team to focus on education. We won some projects of renovation of airports. And what we see in general is a trend towards electromechanical, access solutions, touchless solutions. I mentioned all of this in the presentation. And here, we see really positive momentum in our EAD business, in our Entrance System with Alvarado. And the market, even if this year is a little bit, I would say, due to what I explained before a little bit uncertain, we see a positive market growth in Americas in all these topics, 5% to 7%, maybe till 2027. And the pandemic accelerated, from my point of view, the digitalization and the electromechanical conversion. So now we go remote.

The next question is from [indiscernible].

I just had a question on hospitality in the U.S. If you could maybe like just give us the size of the business today relative to the North American business? And I think you mentioned revenues are still 20% below pre-COVID levels. What do you think will be the shape of the recovery in this business, whether we go back to 2019 levels already in '22? Or you think that takes a bit longer?

Thank you, [ Delphine ]. So hospitality, first of all, I think that people will continue to travel and will travel again because it's in our genes. We want to travel. We want to go away. Hospitality suffered, yes. We will see more and more need for touchless solutions in hotels. So I strongly hope, and we see already such opportunities of renovation and retrofit where we are very well positioned for this. We won a big project in Las Vegas. I was in this hotel. I think it was 3 -- if I remember well, 3,500 rooms. So there are still some new build in the U.S., where we are well positioned. How long it will take to recover? Honestly, it's difficult to predict, but it's starting. We have to focus not only on Americas on hospitality. I want to focus on other countries like in Asia Pacific as well in Europe and Asia Pacific. And here, I'm sure there will be some opportunities, new or retrofit. And our solutions are really good. Our ambience system and our -- all our hotel solution, a benchmark, I would say. So we should be able to get what the market or the growth of the market, which will come back at some point. It will be -- and by the way, what we -- part of our hospitality business, we are selling multi-housing solutions. You can say it's residential somehow, but we sell multi-housing. And this has been growing in the past year, and this has been a good business. I hope I answered your question, [ Delphine ].

Yes. And just the size of the business of all of [ those ] exposure to airports and hotels?

We don't disclose -- the size of the business you were asking, right?

Yes, I'm just trying to understand if like 5%, 10%, 10%, 15% of...

We don't disclose, but maybe I see where probably you are going. This business, okay, represent a part of our revenue. But we have seen other opportunities, which compensate what we could have lost as well in this business due to the market situation. For example, in education, infrastructure, what I mentioned before, we had very strong as well airport wins in retrofit. So I'm not so worried. There are so many other verticals where we could focus on. But nevertheless, we continue to focus on hospitality and multi-housing. Is there any other question remotely, operator?

We have a follow-up question from Maidi, Rizk from Jefferies.

Just firstly, on your spec writing business in the U.S., I was wondering whether you -- that business is mirroring what we've seen in the ABI and The Dodge Momentum Index over the last -- of the last few months, half year?

I'm not sure I got the end. The U.S. business and then in the last few months, and then I...

Just your specification business in the U.S., which is basically a lead indicator for new construction, whether you've seen any big changes there in light of the nonresidential lead indicators that we look at there, such as the ABI and Dodge Momentum Index basically posting record high readings over the last 4, 5 months?

I -- Rizk, I'm not fully sure what I would answer on this question. I would come back to you, if it's okay with you. What specification? Yes. Specification, just one sentence. We want to focus on the specification business. And we are doing more, and this is part of our strategic project. But I would propose to come back to you on this question, if it's okay with you.

No problem at all. Just perhaps just another general question on multifamily housing because I think that was one of the growth initiatives that sort of Alex Housten came up with or trying to implement in the U.S. Are you worried at all by some of the new startups that we see popping up in the U.S.? One of them being large -- backed by large real estate company. Are you worried at all about competition in that specific vertical?

I will not use the word worry, but we are observing very closely and looking at what they do. We feel we have -- we are quite strong. We have a strong offering. But these kind of competitors at large what you are mentioning came with an interesting business model, and we have -- we really have to watch and to see what we what we can learn or what we can do. Okay. So with this, I would thank you all for your interest in our company and look forward to seeing you on 15th of November for our Capital Market Day. Thank you very much.