Douglas AG (DOU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning all. I'm very happy to welcome you for our quarter 2 results, our half year results, but also the first time that we report to all of you as a listed company, listed back at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since March. And I think we can share with you a continuation of a strong performance, both commercially, operationally and financially. So between Mark and myself, we're going to walk you through a little presentation. And for those of you who have participated in our bond calls, you can still see that we are, let's say, using some of the slides structured as we did them before. So on the first page, you can see, basically, the highlights, the financial highlights of our Q2 success, a double-digit top line development, omnichannel, both driven by stores and E-Com, 11.9% in stores. Many, many stationary retailers would be a bit jealous about that number. But also, 10.7% on the E-Com side is a strong, I would say, performance. You can see that we've been able to translate the top line, and more than that, in an improved profitability with 16.2% adjusted EBITDA, but also an improvement of our EBITDA margin, not only for the quarter, but also for the full -- for the half year and on an LTM basis. And as a result of not only EBITDA growth and cash generation, but also as a result of the IPO, the equity injection from CVC and the Kreke family and basically the primary offering, we have been able to significantly reduce our leverage from 5x for basically a year ago to 2.7x currently. And that was also the objective of the IPO. So strong financial numbers and a continuation of what we did before. What you can see on basically the next page is a colorful slide of the listing on the 21st of March. That's the first day of spring. As you know, our strategy is called Let it Bloom. So we thought the first day of spring is a good day to start with. And I'm very happy and also proud that, as a company and as a team, that we've been able to do that. On the next page, I was already making that point before. The objective of the IPO was to significantly improve the balance sheet to significantly, first and foremost, reduce our net debt, which we did with EUR 1.3 million, combination of new money and equity injection. And secondly, we have replaced the entire old debt structure by new financing structure with better terms. And that basically will mean that, on an annualized perspective, our interest expense line will come down with, let's say, up to EUR 100 million. And that is basically incremental cash generation for the future, but our balance sheet is also providing more flexibility and clearly also showing more the structure of the balance sheet of a listed entity. So I would say, the interim objective has been accomplished. From an operational and commercial perspective, some of the highlights of this quarter. So not only the top line of, let's say, grew in both channels. But we can also see that our CRM database, so these are basically the customers who we know with a name and address and an e-mail and with whom we can build a more intimate, I would say, relation going forward, also sales from the beauty card customers, is significantly growing. We have 5 core beauty categories: fragrance, skin care, hair care, color cosmetics and accessories. And all categories are growing, but especially fragrance, being the biggest; and hair care, being the most promising, are basically driving above-average growth. And also, a separate business unit in our organization is retail media, which is clearly strategically very relevant. A lot of the brand partners are shifting money from, let's say, above-the-line TV, traditional TV communication more and more to the point of purchase, retail media. Now the luxury customer is shopping in the DOUGLAS domain. So we see that our retail media sales is growing significantly. And the EBITDA of the retail media is very, very high because a lot of the sales is translating into EBITDA. So this becomes a sizable business unit, and it's helping both top line, but certainly also the bottom line. So all good developments with more opportunities going forward. This quarter was also marked by the appointment of a new EVP, Executive Vice President of Assortment and Purchasing for a retailer in general, but certainly for the premium beauty retailers, brands, categories, products and a very good relationship with the brand partners. The top 10 suppliers of DOUGLAS, we call them brand partners, account for 78% of our sales. It's really important to have the right strategy, the right, I'd say, relationships. So I'm very happy that Stefanie von Albert has joined us after 20 years at L'Oréal Luxe. So she is really, I would say, an authority in the premium beauty domain, and she has worked in multiple roles, both in France, but also internationally. She is a German national by birth, but has lived and worked in France for the past 20 years. So I would say, a true European premium beauty expert. She reports directly to me, and I'm very happy with the start. And not only I'm happy, also our brand partners and our purchasing people are very happy. So that is just a very great start for Stefanie. And then before I hand over to Mark, if you then look high level to the financial performance of the company on Slide 10. So total sales, I've already made that point before, double-digit top line, 10.7% like-for-like. In E-Com, all the sales is basically like-for-like. On the store side, clearly, there is like-for-like and nonlike-for-like. I will say a little bit more about store expansion going forward. The delta between like-for-like and nonlike-for-like is getting bigger because our network expansion plan is now starting to kick in. So Stores, 10.8% up; E-Com, 10.4% up. And the net sales growth is basically driven by all segments, with DACHNL being the biggest segment, that helps; and Central Eastern Europe being the most promising sector, so that also helps. So strong developments. And on the right-hand side, 16.2% EBITDA growth, 15.2% EBITDA margin, so that is 60 basis point margin expansion just in the quarter, which is driven by gross profit increase. By the way, we know that we are exiting a period of, you could say, hyperinflation or very high inflation. So in many consumer goods categories and also nonconsumer goods categories, there has been double-digit inflation in the economy over the past, let's say, 2, 2.5 years. We now very quickly see both at the macroeconomic level, but also in the premium beauty category, a normalization, let's say, of inflation. And by the way, we always need to make a distinction between inflation, which is the price of products this year compared to the same products 1 year ago, or a change in the average prices. Average prices is a combination of inflation, promotion and category mix. But pricing is starting to normalize. Supplier bonus was in line with net sales growth. And we have a very sustained operational cost discipline, which translates into stable personnel cost ratios, a stable marketing ratio. We also have some one-offs, and Mark will talk about it more in the context of the IPO, which are impacting the costs, but we need to separate the operating cost versus kind of the one-off development as a result of the listing. So with that, I'm handing over to Mark, who will dive into the segments and the channels a bit more. And you will see or hear me back a little bit later with a strategy update. Mark, please go ahead.

Thank you, Sander, and warm welcome also from my side. So after the group overview that Sander has given you, let me now start with a review of our performance by segment, and I'll start with our largest segment, which is comprising Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium on Slide 12. Within the segment, we saw double-digit net sales growth, both on a reported level and like-for-like, and this growth was driven by both channels. Just like in the first quarter, we saw again a strong increase in footfall and customer numbers in our stores. This is again a testimony to the inspiring shopping experience and a very appealing offer at our DOUGLAS stores. Our customer increased both the basket size and the net sales per item. Also, they bought slightly less items. In the E-Com part of the segment, we saw a strong uplift in the number of orders with a moderate increase on the average order values. So the result was around about 18% increase in net sales. Due to that good development, the E-Com share in the segment remains the highest in the group and rose to 42%, which is above the 35% on group level. The strong increase of the adjusted EBITDA is based on a double-digit growth on the gross profit. Additionally, we even managed to further support the adjusted EBITDA growth by thorough cost management, where we see more marketing contribution from our suppliers, but spend more cautiously on marketing ourselves. Staff costs increased on an absolute level but decreased in relation to sales. The logistic costs increased in both absolute terms and in relation to sales. Furthermore, the prior year still contains an intercompany fee as well as an intercompany supplier bonus charged to Parfumdreams. This was a pure recalibration of intercompany charges and did not change the group view. Still, the comparison base was higher. In total, these effects resulted in the strong uplift of adjusted EBITDA and the stable adjusted EBITDA margin for this segment. In France, our second largest segment, our store business developed slightly better than our online channel. Please go to Slide 13. The footfall on our French stores increased significantly, although slightly less visitors actually made a purchase, so that the conversion rate slightly decreased. Slightly higher basket sizes and a higher value per item did not completely make up for that. All in all, these effects resulted in a moderate sales increase. As the E-Com net sales in France grew slightly weaker than the Stores, the sales share remained virtually stable at 20.8%. We had a moderately lower number of orders, but higher average order values. As COGS increased at a slightly slower pace than the net sales and the supplier bonus grew faster than net sales, we achieved a higher gross profit margin. We received more marketing contribution from our suppliers, but we also spent strong in marketing. Furthermore, we hired more temporary staff so that the product cost ratio increased, the logistic cost ratio did so, too. Nevertheless, the increased gross profit allowed for the adjusted EBITDA margin to increase 110 basis points and a double-digit percentage growth in adjusted EBITDA. Moving on to our segment Southern Europe on Slide 14. With regard to the sales channel, we saw a diverging development again. The sales growth in the segment was fully driven by the Stores, while our net E-Com sales decreased. In our Store business, a much higher number of visitors were attracted by our offering and many of them turned into customers. The customers were more hesitant with regard to number of items per basket and versus net items but at a higher price into their basket, which reduced basket sizes. Still, the higher number of our customers completely made up for that and enabled a significant rise in net sales. The picture in E-Com was different. As we focus on profitable sales in the segment, the baskets were significantly higher, but the increase could not offset the lower number of orders. As a side remark, the development was uneven in the segment, with the Adriatic showing a far better development. Therefore, the online share of our E-Com business decreased to 14%. The adjusted EBITDA was affected by several factors. The cost of goods sold increased lower than the net sales, and we received a significantly higher supplier bonus, resulting in an improved gross profit margin. Although we received less marketing income, we also spent less on marketing, thereby significantly improving the marketing ratio, too. The personnel cost, too, only rose moderately, thereby lowering the personnel cost ratio. Thanks to all of these effects, higher logistic cost was offset, and we achieved a double-digit percentage uplift in adjusted EBITDA and an 85 basis points adjusted EBITDA margin increase. Coming to Central and Eastern Europe on Slide 15. Like in the previous quarter, the segment, again, in terms of top line growth and in profitability, was leading the group. In Store business, we recognized a significant higher footfall in the larger number of stores as we opened 3 new stores in this quarter and 10 stores in the first quarter. Many of these visitors did not only explore and seek advice on our product offering, but turned into customers. As the number of items per basket increased significantly, the lower net sales per item were fully offset. Also, our online offering attracted many customers. We saw a moderately increased number of orders at significantly higher average order values. This combination drove the net sales increase in E-Com. As this performance was nearly as strong as the performance of the stores, the E-Com sales contribution remained stable at 22.5%. In CEE, the cost of goods sold increased slightly faster than net sales as inflation in most Eastern European countries is still above the EU average. This resulted in nearly stable gross margin. While the marketing cost ratio remained stable, logistical cost increased. The personnel cost remained stable, but increased in absolute terms. The opening of new stores is a temporary dampening factor for margin as explained in earlier occasions. Due to the overproportional net sales growth, the adjusted EBITDA margin decreased despite the significantly higher adjusted EBITDA. Still, at this level, the segment shows the highest adjusted EBITDA margin in the group again. Coming to our fifth segment, our segment Parfumdreams/Niche Beauty. I'm on Page 16 now. Within our group, the segment had the second best net sales development, with an increase of nearly 20%. The sales growth was driven by the German, Austrian and Swiss market, where we were especially successful in activating and retaining existing customers. These customers bought significantly more and at larger baskets. The segment saw cost of goods increasing faster than net sales. As supplier bonus increased even faster, the gross profit rose slightly. A strict cost discipline supported by an adjusted -- supported our -- the improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin. We spent much less on marketing so the marketing ratio was better. The personnel cost ratio was improved, while the logistic cost ratio was stable. The development of the adjusted EBITDA should put also into context, as I mentioned earlier, as the prior year's Q2 numbers, the segment was still charged with an intercompany fee as an intercompany supplier bonus at the same time from the German segment. As we stop the intercompany charges, the comparison base for last year is lower due to these charges. Excluding the effects, the adjusted EBITDA increase would have been smaller. With the small sales numbers by channels on group level, we conclude the segmental view. Please go to Page 17. Our Stores welcomed a significantly high number of visitors, also helped by net opening of 14 owned stores in the first half, turned a large part of them into customers with an average stable basket size. Our customer brought less items per basket at a higher price, and you can see that the nonlike-for-like component of the growth is around 110 basis points. E-Com grew for the seventh consecutive quarter. The channel benefited from a significantly higher order intake as well as, on average, significantly higher average order values. In total, we had much more visits while the conversion rate was stable. Furthermore, we managed to keep the COGS increase below the net sales increase. E-Com had a net sales contribution of around 35%, slightly lower than last year due to the strong development of the Store channel. Let us now move on to Slide 18 and look at the major developments in our P&L. As said, the development of cost of goods sold was different in the segments. On group level, the effects added up to an increase below the net sales increase. Together with an increase in supplier bonus above the growth in COGS as well as thorough margin management following our Let it Bloom strategy, this enabled an expansion of gross profit and gross profit margin. The main influencing factors in our net operating expense in this quarter was definitely our IPO. We incurred EUR 27.6 million onetime expenses related to this project. Let me still briefly explain the development of other cost position, too. Group-wide, we recognized a stable marketing spend. Also, we received more marketing income. The personnel cost ratio increased due to the opening of stores. And wage increases, also logistic cost ratio increased due to our strong business. D&A as a percentage of sales remained virtually stable. As said before, this also includes amortization of right-of-use assets according to IFRS 16, which make up for roughly 2/3 on D&A. In total, especially the onetime costs related to our IPO led to a lower reported EBIT. The positive impact -- effect on our financial result isn't due to the significant deleveraging, I will come to that in a second, but due to the valuation of the derivatives embedded in our bonds. Due to the uneven distribution of profits through our different jurisdiction, we could only partially make use of tax losses carried forward. Therefore, we recognized tax expenses of EUR 12.6 million compared to only EUR 2.9 million in the second quarter of 2023. Finally, this led to a reported net income of minus EUR 41.3 million, heavily impacted by the before-mentioned onetime costs for the IPO. Moving on to net working capital and CapEx on Slide 19. Our average net working capital was EUR 238.7 million. This mainly resulted from the higher inventories to support a strong business. As a percentage of LTM net sales, the working capital amounted to 5.5% and was at the same level like in Q1 this year. After a continuous increase post the rollout of the AI-based inventory management software RELEX, which we use in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Poland, DIO remained virtually stable. As announced, our CapEx was higher, with a strong focus on store refurbishment and store openings, mainly in Central Eastern Europe. Main investments related especially to the 37 stores that were refurbished as well as the 10 net store openings. Furthermore, we continue to invest into the establishment of a group-wide uniform E-Com platform and further investments into our IT stack as well as our international E-Com as part of our Let it Bloom strategy. Let us now review our cash flow and liquidity situation, starting with the free cash flow bridge on Slide 20. Since we have already discussed most of the position, I will only explain the position Others as we didn't touch upon this yet. The cash inflow from the position Others resulted especially from the value-added taxes and valuation proceedings. Thanks to the positive development in adjusted EBITDA, combined with a higher cash contribution from working capital and others, our free cash flow after EBITDA adjustments amounted to EUR 363 million, an increase of 52.8% versus last year or more than EUR 130 million in absolute terms. On Slide 21, we show our liquidity and leverage. This picture is distorted by the IPO and its proceeds, which we received in March, while the refinancing of the old debt structure only happened on April 15 in the -- basically in the following quarter. Still, the net debt and leverage numbers can be read from that. Our net debt, including IFRS 16 liabilities amounted to EUR 2.1 billion carrying amount and reduced significantly due to the IPO proceeds of EUR 850 million and the equity injection of our major shareholders. Further helped by our strong business development, our leverage ratio decreased to 2.7x. Please note that many IPO costs and the early prepayment fees for our bonds have not affected the net debt as of end of March '24. We will show the full picture as of end of June '24 with our Q3 reporting. We continue to strive to deleverage the company by focusing on strict cost discipline and cash management and by capitalizing on our strengths. By this, we want to achieve a leverage ratio of around 2x. On my last slide for today, it's Page 22, I would like to show you the new financing structure, which is in place as we speak. It consists of 3 elements: EUR 350 million RCF facility, a term loan facility of EUR 800 million and a bridge facility of EUR 450 million. The major part, meaning the RCF and the term loan, mature in nearly 5 years from now. We have a great a margin bridge, which rewards our further delevering path. The bridge facility initially runs until March 2025 and can be extended twice by 6 months each. We will decide in due time how to proceed with that financing instrument. Ladies and gentlemen, with that, I conclude the financial part of today's presentation. And Sander, I will give it back to you.

Yes. Thank you, Mark. So I would like to give a brief update on our Let it Bloom strategy. And as you can see on slide -- the next slide, we have 4 pillars: to be the #1 beauty destination; to offer the most relevant and distinctive range of brands; to deliver the most customer-friendly omnichannel experience; and to build a focused and efficient operating model. These 4 pillars are basically the drivers behind Let it Bloom and also the drivers behind the financial objectives which we have laid out for the future. And within each of those pillars, we have a number of initiatives, which are the light blue boxes. And today, I want to give you an update on network development, supply chain and our technology approach. So you have already seen it in the press release, but let me give you a little voice over on the next page. We are making significant investments in further strengthening our store network across Europe. So we've opened 24 stores in the first 6 months of, let's say, the financial year. We've also closed 14 stores. So net -- the net openings was 10. Be aware that our midterm objective is to open 200-plus stores, and that's a net number. So that is netted with the stores which we intend to close. And the store numbers, which we have closed in the first half of this year is relatively high versus what we intend to do in basically the rest of this year or in the next few years. That's one. We have also been refurbishing 37 stores in the first half year. For the second half year, we will add another 50 new stores going forward. And there is a significant refurbishment program in Europe, with a strong focus on France and Germany. So a lot of activity to update our store network, which will certainly drive our like-for-like in the future. Poland continues to be a highlight. I was actually in Gdynia, Sopot, Gdansk and Warsaw last week, where we've already celebrated the opening of store 150. To be honest, in the meantime, we've already celebrated the opening of store 153, if I am correct, and there is more to come. So we -- and in the next few months, we're going to open new important stores in Berlin, Vienna, Antwerp and Paris. Antwerp, by the way, we currently have one store up and running in the Flemish part of Belgium that we have approved a lot of investment proposals. So as of basically the summer this year, you will see a significant acceleration of our expansion in the Belgium retail landscape. On the next page, Page 26, so an update on supply chain. So we have developed a strategy where we're moving away from basically a country-by-country supply chain. We used to have a very fragmented supply chain, and every country had their own warehouse or cross-dock facility or a combination of that. And we're moving towards a situation where we will have 6 or 7 OWACs, one warehouse, all channels, across Europe. In the beginning of this year, we have opened a new logistical center in Toledo, Spain, which is an outsourcing of a warehouse which we did ourselves. For the short term, this warehouse is focusing on Spain, but for the midterm, we're also going to start supplying Portugal. We already have OWACs in place in Hamm, Spain, Lille and Bologna. And in Lille, we also have a pretty significant undertaking because we currently operate 2 warehouses. One is a company-operated warehouse, and the other one is an outsourced warehouse. And we have decided to outsource our own warehouse into the external facility, which is supposed to take place in the beginning of 2025. By the way, currently, we have some labor unrest because not all the employees are completely happy, let's say, with this plan, but we do believe that we will be able to manage and to mitigate that. So that will mean that we will have a strong OWAC up and running in France. We are currently preparing the implementation of 2 OWACs in Central and Eastern Europe, and that's going to take place, basically, in the next 18 to 36 months. The first one is what we call OWAC North. We're going to open that one in Poland. And the second one is going to open -- we opened in the southern part of Central and Eastern Europe. Then we have also made a significant achievement with Parfumdreams and Niche Beauty. Parfumdreams currently has their own warehouse in Pfedelbach. That's in the more southern part of Germany. That's a warehouse which we operate ourselves with currently 168 employees on the payroll. We are currently in a transition process to close down this warehouse and to integrate, let's say, the activity in our existing facility in Hamm, which is currently supplying the DOUGLAS business in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. That will mean that we will not only be able to consolidate stock, so there will be a significant inventory reduction as a result of that, but we will also be able to leverage the highly automated facility in Hamm. So with a relatively small portion of incremental variable cost, this will also create significant, let's say, P&L benefits, which we will basically benefit from in the future. And in the meantime, we have done this in a very friendly way towards the 160 FTEs. So we have agreed, basically, a separation for all of them, and we're helping those people to move from one job to another. And then last but not least on this slide, as you know, we also have a fourth beauty retail brand, Niche Beauty, which is a relatively small brand, but it's growing very, very rapidly. It will be managed out of Hamburg. And we used to have a small warehouse facility in Hamburg as well. We have recently moved that new warehouse to another outside -- outsourced service provider near Dortmund, and that will allow us to improve the availability, to reduce the lead time and also to improve basically the cost structure. So that is another initiative, which has basically been implemented. So a lot of stuff happening on the supply chain side. But what you can see on the next page are basically the reasons why we believe that an OWAC is a very good, let's say, supply chain element for DOUGLAS. It will allow us to significantly improve the product availability, not only in the warehouse, but more importantly, in our brick-and-mortar stores. It will allow us to significantly reduce the inventories in stores. To give you an example, in a German store, the lead time before we had the central warehouse between the order and the delivery was very often 2 weeks. So the store was carrying a lot of incremental stock to basically cover this pretty long lead time. Once we have implemented Hamm, the lead time has been reduced to only a few days, and that will allow us to reduce inventory in the German stores, and we can see the benefits of that. That benefit is also going to be materialized, for instance, for the CEE. We can shorten delivery times to both Stores and E-Com customers. And we can also leverage volumes and also our deals with our suppliers by basically providing a cross-border setup because we have 22 countries and 6 or 7 OWACs, and most of those OWACs will actually be international OWACs. Other than the French OWAC, all the other OWACs are going to supply multiple countries. And then last but not least, this also gives us an opportunity to have a commercial discussion with our branded partners about consolidation of volumes, more efficiencies, and clearly, we would like to translate that into an improvement of our buying terms and ultimately an improvement of gross profits. The last strategic initiative is about technology. So like the supply chain, we historically also had a quite fragmented IT application and IT system architecture across the DOUGLAS universe. In our historic countries like Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, we already are using a more unified IT landscape. But in CEE and in some other countries, where we had to digest the results of acquisitions, we have too many different systems. And we are working with a program to basically replace all those local legacy systems by the unified application landscape of DOUGLAS with the objective to become more efficient, to become more consistent, to become more speedy. We are working closely with our clusters and countries to basically harmonize and standardize processes. Because if the process is not the same, we cannot use the same application. So process harmonization and standardization and IT deployment is going hand in hand. An important example of this is in the HR domain, where we have a lot of different HR applications. We used to have 80-plus different smaller and bigger, not so big HR applications in the 22 different countries. And we're now implementing SAP SuccessFactors, which will allow us to create a central HR platform, but it will also allow us to significantly reduce all those local legacy systems in the near future. So this OWAC approach and the tech stack approach is an important enabler of creating more simplicity, more efficiency and more speed, basically, in the DOUGLAS business model. So to summarize on the next slide, the DOUGLAS Group is in good shape. We continue with a successful momentum, and we've accelerated growth in the strong second quarter, 11.5% top line driven by Stores and E-Com. We have further improved profitability as a percentage of sales vis-a-vis the prior year, but also in absolute terms. A strong performance for the first half year, as you've heard from myself and Mark, and a very successful deleveraging, driven by operational improvements, but also by the benefits of the IPO and the refinancing of our old debt structure. We have a current leverage ratio of 2.7 and a clear objective to develop towards a leverage of around 2 in, let's say, in the midterm, and that would also be a triggering point for the dividend payments going forward. And then from a strategic perspective, we are well on our way to implement a number of our strategic initiatives, and I'm giving you the example of network development, which is going to contribute significantly to the short and the midterm top line development as well. Last but not least, we are confirming our guidance. So our top line guidance for the short and the midterm is that we want to grow -- we want to deliver a CAGR of around 7%. With the number for the first half of the year, you can see that we are well on track. EBITDA-wise, we want to move towards an EBITDA -- an adjusted EBITDA percentage of around 18.5%, and we are well on track on that as well. And by the way, from an adjustment perspective, we also have given guidance that we are going to significantly reduce the adjustments going forward because exiting an IPO phase and moving into a more operational phase, that number is going to come down as well. So with that, I wanted to conclude on the presentation for us. We wanted to thank you all for your participation, your attendance and your questions, and we hope that we have given you a proper insight of the kind of the drivers behind the numbers, which we proudly present to you today. Our company purpose is Make Life More Beautiful. The weather is not so beautiful here in Dusseldorf, but you can also make life more beautiful by buying our beauty brands online or offline. Have a good day, and see you in 3 months again.