Dustin Group AB (publ) (DUST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Dustin Q4 presentation for 2022-2023. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Johan Karlsson; and COO, Alexandra Furst. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Q4 presentation from Dustin Group. So my name is Johan Karlsson, I'm the CEO. And with me in the room is also Alexandra Furst, who is the COO of Dustin. And she will help us to better understand the segment results and how we work with inventory and working capital. Also in the room is Fredrik Satterstrom, Head of IR. Let's move to Slide 2 and Dustin in summary, just to make a brief update on Dustin. So Dustin is an IT reseller with a base in IT hardware and software products. And as you can see in the graph, up to 82% is IT hardware and 18% is software and services. Software and Services increased its share during last year by 4 percentage points. Our assortment is primarily sold online, and 60% of sales go through the online platform. The share in the Nordics is about 80%. And in the Benelux, the share is lower. And as you know, we have recently launched our online sales model in the Benelux, and the aim is that we move to a similar share in the Benelux as in the Nordics when it comes to online sales. We are represented in 6 markets in Europe with our main markets being the Netherlands and Sweden. And as you can see, our key customer focus is B2B, representing 98% of sales. With that said, let's move to Slide 3. As you probably have seen, we today announced our intention to do a rights issue in Dustin for SEK 1.750 billion. We will talk more about that and the quarterly results in this presentation. But let's kick off with the quarterly results. Sales in the quarter was affected by a challenging market and macroeconomic turbulence and the general cautiousness by the customers in many of our customer groups. Sales in the quarter was SEK 5.088 billion, 11.4% below last year. In SMB, organic growth was negative 11.8%. And in LCP, negative 18.9%. LCP was affected by the trading agreement in Denmark, and by change in accounting treatment affected sales, and total this affected sales by approximately 8%. Gross profit at SEK 745 million was down 9%. However, gross margin improved from 14.2% last year to 14.6% this year, as strong product mix with more service and less mobile phones and computers affected margins positively. It's also comforting to see that our position in the most important markets is strong and that our price leadership gives us the possibility to maintain margins also in challenging times. Adjusted EBITA ended at SEK 142 million in the quarter compared to last year's SEK 202 million with an EBITA margin down from last year's 3.5% to 2.8% this year. Items affecting comparability was SEK 20 million, and these are mainly costs related to the integration of previously acquired candidates. EBIT was SEK 75 million compared to last year's SEK 147 million. And cash flow from operating activities ended at SEK 23 million compared to last year's SEK 104 million. Leverage at the end of the quarter was 5.0x, but more about that later in the presentation. Some other highlights in the quarter was that we, during the quarter, as previously announced, extended the credit facility by 1 year to 2025. It's also good to see that our continued focus on costs start to happen, which we will also see later in this presentation. But now let's move to SMB and the numbers in some more detail with Alexandra.

Thank you, Johan. Starting with SMB on Slide 4. Sales in the SMB segment was SEK 1.459 billion in the quarter and 7.9% below last year. The organic growth was negative 11.8%. The general economic uncertainty continues to affect the demand in all markets and within most customer groups. For consumer sales, we see a positive year-on-year organic growth. The lower demand in the market is primarily related to computers and mobile phones. Services share of sales has improved to 13.3% versus last year of 12.4%, mainly due to a healthy trend for contracted recurring services in the Nordics combined with weak hardware sales. The standardized managed service portfolio continues to deliver growth in the Nordics, and recurring services are showing more stable demand from our customers in this cautious market. We have a fairly stable gross margin in the quarter, mainly due to a good product mix with less computers and mobile phones, combined with strong price discipline in a price-conscious market and the margin contribution from growth in standardized services. Cost base has been lowered to reflect the cautious market, but inflation puts pressure on the cost base. And due to the drop in sales volume, the cost base temporarily burdened the segment margin. That ends up at 4.4% compared to 4.7% last year. Total segment result ends at SEK 64 million compared to last year's SEK 77 million, and I will come back with some more details on costs later on in the presentation. Despite this, a good performance by our SMB segment in the quarter, showing stable gross margins. Moving over to LCP in Slide 5. Sales in LCP was SEK 3.629 billion and a decline from last year's SEK 4.105 billion and hence a negative growth of 11.6%. The organic growth was negative 18.9%. But adjusted for the terminated Danish framework agreement and a major contract where net accounting has now been applied, organic growth was around negative 8%. The public customer group showed a stable demand in general, whilst demand from corporate was somewhat cautious in the market affecting organic growth. Geographically, organic growth was positive in Finland, Norway and Belgium. We see a positive gross margin development due to better customer and product mix with an increased proportion of more advanced hardware and a lower proportion of standard hardware. A robust increase in take back in the Nordics, a healthy sales trend in private label products in mainly Benelux, and the expired framework agreement with Danish SKI has affected the gross margin positively. Cost base has been lowered to reflect the cautious market. However, the lower volumes, together with a generally higher inflation-driven cost level, have had a negative impact on the segment margin and leaving segment results with SEK 104 million for the quarter versus SEK 148 million last year. And the segment margin decreased 0.9% from last year's 3.6%. Closing the year, we summarized the full year for LCP with reported sales growth of 4.6%. Now moving on to some more details on costs in Slide 6. Our focus on cost synergies and cost consciousness has paid off in decreased cost for the quarter. In the quarter, we have, amongst others, outsourced part of our mark-on functions. We have continued to transform our acquired companies into 1 Dustin and our IT platform, and we are scaling on competences when harmonizing ways of working. These activities are partly counteracted by inflation and fluctuations in currency. But looking at SG&A for the quarter, we see a 3% decrease versus last year and adjusted for currency fluctuations, a decrease of 8%. Average full-time equivalents amounted to 2,252 in the quarter and corresponds to a decrease of 9% or 227 FTEs versus last year. We ended the year with 2,214 FTEs. And we also end the year with a more solid cost base to both run our business from as well as execute our strategy from, but cost consciousness and synergy captures continue to be a focus onwards. Moving on to net working capital on Slide 7. Our net working capital is continuously improving towards a normalized level for our business of around negative SEK 100 million, and we are closing the quarter on negative SEK 36 million versus last year's positive SEK 80 million. On total inventory, we decreased by SEK 353 million versus last year to a level of SEK 987 million, and the decrease is to the larger part related to customer-specific inventory. I'll come back to some more details on inventory on the next slide. Accounts receivable decreased by SEK 476 million compared to last year, mainly related to lower business volumes at the end of the quarter. Accounts payable is lower with SEK 718 million versus last year, mainly due to lower purchase volumes as a result of the decrease in inventory and lower business volumes overall. Moving on to Slide 8 and some details on inventory. Inventory decreased further in the quarter compared to the third quarter. And with SEK 987 million, we are well below the targeted level of SEK 1.100 billion by year-end. Our core inventory, which is mainly attributable to our SMB segment, decreased versus the third quarter, and slightly also compared to year-end last year. This is due to, amongst others, focus on optimized stockkeeping and procurement of selected product categories such as PCs and phones. Inventory of private label products decreased slightly compared to the third quarter, but was unchanged year-on-year. The increased sales volumes for private label drives higher inventory, but is mitigated by our move of some production to Europe with shorter lead times. Customer-specific inventory increased slightly compared to the third quarter, but year-on-year we see a decrease of SEK 354 million (sic) [ SEK 353 million ] . The inventory level of SEK 987 million and its stabilization to this level is made possible by active collaboration with our customers and partners, benefiting from our strong position in the market. We also continue to benefit from changes done to our procurement processes foremost in the Benelux region. And with this, we conclude a quarter and year-end where total inventory is below the year-end targeted level. And we aim in the future to stay around SEK 1 billion in inventory for the coming quarters and feel comfortable in this target by having implemented our procurement processes for the group and using our strong position in the market. Handing back to you, Johan.

Thanks a lot, Alexandra. Let's move to Slide 9 and cash flow and investments. And the cash flow for the quarter was negative SEK 116 million compared to last year's SEK 8 million positive. Looking at the details, we will see that cash flow from operating activities before change in net working capital was SEK 164 million compared to last year's SEK 212 million, reduction mainly coming from a lower EBITA and higher paid interest. Cash flow from change in net working capital was negative SEK 141 million compared to last year's SEK 108 million. As you heard before, we saw good progress in the reduction of inventory and also accounts receivables, but this was offset by lower accounts payables, mainly due to the lower business activity and the reduction in inventory. Cash flow from investment activities was SEK 68 million, up from SEK 45 million last year, where the main difference is the development work done on the common IT platform. And cash flow from financing activities was negative SEK 71 million compared to negative SEK 51 million last year, mainly attributed to the repayment of lease liabilities. We then move to investments. The total investments in the quarter was SEK 91 million or SEK 25 million above last year. Out of SEK 91 million, SEK 68 million affected cash. CapEx related to IT development was SEK 54 million, up from SEK 35 million last year, as we are focusing our work on the common IT platform. Investments in tangible and intangible assets was SEK 26 million, up from SEK 20 million last year. And finally, investment in assets related to service provision of SEK 11 million was at the same level as last year, and this is mainly related to the consolidation of data centers in the Benelux region. Let's move to Slide 10 and the rights issue. As announced this morning, it's our intention to propose a fully guaranteed rights issue of SEK 1.750 billion. The rights issue is fully covered by a combination of subscription undertakings and guarantee commitments by [indiscernible]. To the right on this slide, you can see the overall timeline of the rights issue. Just to mention a few, the complete [ terms and conditions ] will be presented on November 7, and there will be an EGM in Dustin Group on November 10. Moving on to Slide 11. The proceeds of the rights issue are intended to be used to secure a flexible and optimized capital structure to reduce debt in order to support the strategy implementation and continued profitable growth of Dustin. The rights issue will ensure the extraction of synergies from previous acquisitions and make further improvements and investments in the customer offering possible. Over time, it will also enable continued expansion in Europe. The rights issue will decrease the leverage from end of Q4 at 5.0x to approximately 3.2x on a pro forma basis. And it will give us the opportunity to, with our strong operative cash flow, work towards our leverage target of 2x to 3x. Moving on to Slide 12 and more about the rights issue there. As a result of the rights issue and the lower debt, we will be able to also focus on business operations and strategy implementation to improve margins and growth. As you see in the slide, the first step on the journey has been to deleverage coming from the change that we made in the working capital management and from the rights issue announced. However, it will also come from improved business results, and this is where we can now put more focus. Looking at the margin area business results. We will continue to maintain the cost focus when it comes to synergy extraction on the OpEx side, but also in private label and procurement efficiency in the Benelux, we see possibilities to expand. Another area for margin expansion is take back, where we now put all our local organizations into one global with the aim of increasing sales and efficiency. Moving to growth, where we remain with our ambition from our financial target. This means we need to strengthen the customer offerings and grow the customer base. We have to continue to develop our offering portfolio to support future growth in both segments. All in all, with the rights issue, the focus will be more balanced between the deleverage work and the implementation of our business strategy. Moving on to Slide 13 and a short summary of the full year '22-'23. As you know, we have just finalized the financial year '22-'23. In summary, you must say that it's been a complex year to manage. It's been very cautious market affecting sales. Organic growth was negative 5%, where SMB was down 10.5% and LCP 2.6%. Gross margin was relatively stable at 14.5%, while EBITA fell from SEK 979 million last year to SEK 724 million in '22-'23 as cost was affected by the high inflation. EBITA margin was down by 1 percentage point to 3.1%, mainly as a result of the lower volumes. EPS at SEK 1.54 was down from previous year SEK 4.22. Highlight, of course, is cash flow from operating activities that was up from SEK 584 million to SEK 619 million. And as we talked about before, leverage at the end of the year was 5.0x, which will then be reduced by the rights issue to 3.2x at the end of the year pro forma. All in all, we end a challenging year, but we have done activities and we have activities in place to secure that we can implement our strategy and remain momentum in the business in the year to come. And with that, we'll conclude the presentation, and we open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier.

I start off with a question on SMB here. Previously, you have said that SMB weakness typically lasts for 2 to 3 quarters. And now you mentioned IDC's forecast on return to growth in H1 '24, which seems highly speculative, in my view, at least. But how do you see the near-term organic growth development for SMB specifically? Should we expect to see improved numbers? Or is there still too much weakness out there in the market for the coming quarters?

My view is we will see continuous weakness throughout the calendar year of '23. I don't see any big change there. Obviously, the comps will get worse as we move along. So in percentage, it will start to look better after New Year. And as you said, we expect, looking at the mortgage institute numbers, that first half year SMB will start to improve.

Okay, I see. And then a question on LCP here. I guess that the Danish contract in the comp last year had a lower margin than the segment as a whole, which means that the margin mix should be favorable this year. Is it true to assume that the underlying margin decline year-over-year in LCP is even larger than what we actually see in the numbers? Is that true?

There is a mix, of course, of margin in new and old contracts. But if you only take the Danish contract, that by lose or not prolonging that one, we have improved the margin in LCP for sure.

Yes, I see. And then my final question is on the leverage here. Now you conduct the rights issue. But I mean, the leverage increased quite a lot here in only 3 months. But I still wonder what was the key trigger for announcing the rights issue? Was it forced by the banks or a decision by the Board because net financials increased to an unsustainable level? Or what was kind of the key trigger here?

It was decision by the Board, and I think triggered by the fact that we have a hard time to predict when the market will turn, and we need to change focus from all the leverage focus to much more business focus. Because when the market turns, we want to be there and capture the shares that we can. And this was the strategy to actually make that happen.

Please state your name and company. Please go ahead.

It's Daniel Djurberg here from Handelsbanken. My question is a little bit on -- starting with -- you have done a good job on inventories falling back below SEK 1 billion, et cetera. But it seems that you are a little bit of squeezed between DSO and DPO. Is this a onetime impact here on the accounts payable? Or is it that we will see this to continue to squeeze continuously here in the year?

Yes. I don't think it's a trend that we are squeezed in the 2. They are obviously a little bit dependent on when we are reducing inventory, and in particular, in Q4, where you have a lot of customer sales in August after summer. So that timing is not ideal for the relationship between receivables and payables. So I think it's a Q4 issue rather than a continuing issue.

Okay. Perfect. And if I may, on the mix outlook, if you can give us any comments on the order backlog and especially LCP in terms of mix and impact on gross margins year-over-year, et cetera.

Well, the backlog is not, let's say, any different to -- it's normalized all backlogs. So we don't see any difference there. In terms of margin projection, I think we are doing a good job on both take-back and private label in LCP. And it will depend a little bit how many new contracts we take in. So depending a little bit on how the sales growth will look like, that will affect the margin. Because as you remember, contracts on LCP usually start with a lower margin, and then growth in margin as the years -- I mean the duration of the contracts. So depending on how fast we grow, it will have an effect on gross margin in LCP.

Okay. And finally, if I may, you mentioned the cost base and obviously inflationary impact there. When should we expect the ease from this pressure, i.e., see an annualized effect of this in your view? Is it next year? Or is it before that?

I think this is a continuous inflation pressure in the last 12 months. And as you saw from the presentation, we have taken a lot of measures to kind of reduce the total cost by reducing FTEs. Inflation pressure, I think, will go down, I mean, gradually goes down in society. We will still have some salary inflation coming from slightly higher salary increases than I think it's over time, average. But I think it will come back to normal levels during next year.

[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 very much, everyone, for attending the Dustin Q4 call, and we wish you a really good day. Thanks a lot.