EBOS Group Limited (EBO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the EBOS Group Limited FY '21 Full Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, the 18th of August 2021. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. John Cullity, CEO of EBOS Group. Please go ahead, John.

Welcome, everyone, to EBOS Group's Full Year 2021 Results Presentation. My name is John Cullity, CEO for the EBOS Group. And I'm joined this morning by Leonard Hansen, our CFO; and Martin Krauskopf, our GM for Investor Relations. I'm very pleased to report that EBOS' strong performance has continued with another record result driven by both our Healthcare and Animal Care segments. Key highlights of this year's results include double-digit earnings growth, record return on capital employed, several strategic investments and acquisitions across our Healthcare and Animal Care segments, further strengthening of our balance sheet and increasing dividends to shareholders. I'm also very pleased to advise that EBOS has today released its inaugural sustainability report in support of our environmental, social and governance program. Before we go through this morning's presentation, I should point out the following: The results are expressed in Australian dollars, unless I otherwise note. The presentation refers to both statutory and underlying results. The underlying results exclude one-off costs related to M&A activity. Both statutory and underlying results include the impact of IFRS 16 for both the reporting period and the prior year comparative period. The commentary this morning is predominantly based on our underlying results, and the appendix to this presentation contains additional disclosure and reconciliations for everyone's interest. The key financial headlines of our full year results are: revenue increased 5% to $9.2 billion. Underlying EBIT increased 11.9% to approximately $295 million. Underlying NPAT increased 15.5% to $188 million, and underlying earnings per share increased 14% to $1.149. In light of the group's performance, the Board has declared a final dividend of NZD 0.46, bringing total dividends for the year to NZD 0.885, representing an increase on the prior year of 14.2%. The key highlights. The group's double-digit earnings growth was driven by strong performances from both the Healthcare and Animal Care segments. This again demonstrates the benefits of our diversified portfolio of market-leading businesses and our strategy of investing for growth. Our Healthcare segment increased underlying EBIT by 11.4%, driven by our Community Pharmacy, TerryWhite Chemmart, Institutional Healthcare and Contract Logistics businesses. Key highlights of this performance were: continued wholesale volume growth in Community Pharmacy. The TWC network added a net 36 new stores for the year. And the network now has over 465 stores, making it one of the largest Community Pharmacy networks in Australia. And our Institutional Healthcare division continues to be a top performer within the group, driven by growth within our hospital and medical consumables businesses as well as growth in our medical devices distribution business. Our Animal Care segment continued its outstanding growth seen in the first half, increasing EBIT by 26% for the year. Our key brands Black Hawk and Vitapet as well as our Australian vet wholesaling business, Lyppard, continued to capitalize on strong pet market conditions and each recorded double-digit sales growth. At the group level, we recorded an excellent cash flow result, a record return on capital employed, and we further strengthened our balance sheet. Leonard, our CFO, will take you through each of these points later in the presentation. Moving to Slide 6, which illustrates that our performance has been broad-based with each segment and division contributing to the group's growth. Consistent with our strategy of investing for growth, FY '21 has been a year of high activity. Today, we have announced a significant investment in our Animal Care business with the construction of our own pet food manufacturing facility. We have also, post 30 June, continued our investment in our growing medical devices business with the acquisition of Pioneer Medical. We are also highly confident of completing another acquisition within our Institutional Healthcare division in the very near term. These investments are in addition to the 2 acquisitions completed earlier in FY '21, being Cryomed and CH2's vet distribution business, which are both performing to expectations. I'll provide further details on these new investments in subsequent pages. Moving to Slide 8. EBOS is investing approximately $80 million in a new state-of-the-art pet food manufacturing facility located in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. Since its acquisition in 2014, EBOS has grown Black Hawk sales by more than 4x, and it is the leading brand in its market segment. At this scale, we have taken the decision to self-manufacture Black Hawk, providing more control over its supply chain and enhancing our speed to market with new product development initiatives. Construction of the facility is well progressed, and it is expected to be fully operational by the second half of FY '22. Approximately $51 million has been spent on the project to date with the remaining $21 million -- $29 million spend to occur over the balance of FY '22. This initiative is expected to drive further organic growth for our Animal Care business with returns over the medium term in line with the group's return on capital employed. Moving to Slide 9. I'm pleased to announce the further expansion of our medical devices distribution business through the acquisition of Pioneer Medical. Pioneer is a New Zealand-based importer and distributor of spine and major joint implants for orthopedic and neurosurgery. This represents our third medical devices distribution acquisition since entering the market in 2019. Following this acquisition, the division will generate aggregate revenues of approximately $70 million. We will continue to pursue further acquisitions in this sector focusing on most therapeutic areas that have solid underlying rates of organic growth. In addition, we have a high degree of confidence of executing a further acquisition for our Institutional Healthcare division within the near term, and we will provide a further update to the market on that investment in due course. In aggregate, we will invest approximately $80 million for these 2 acquisitions, and they will generate approximately $50 million of revenue. Each transaction will be EPS accretive to the group. As foreshadowed previously, we have today launched our ESG program and published our inaugural Sustainability Report. This is a key initiative for the group that will serve as the framework for responsible governance and organizational practices to ensure we continue to meet the expectations of our stakeholders and maintain our social license to operate. The program comprises 5 pillars, being health and animal care partners, consumers and patients, community and environment, our people and responsible business. Within these pillars are 20 material ESG topics that have been identified through a comprehensive benchmarking and stakeholder engagement process. Our ESG program will continue to evolve, including the setting and refining of targets. And I invite all our stakeholders to read the Sustainability Report, which is now available on our website, and we look forward to discussing our ESG program with you in due course. Moving now to an overview of the group's performance. This slide provides further details on the group's financial performance on both a reported and underlying basis. The increase in underlying EBIT of $31 million or 11.9% reflects an increase in revenue of 5% and an expansion of our EBIT margin to 3.2%. Net finance costs decreased as a result of a reduction in net debt, and our effective tax rate remained broadly constant. This resulted in underlying NPAT growth of 15.5% to $188 million. With respect to the impacts of COVID-19, there continue to be a range of positive and negative impacts across our group businesses, as summarized on Page 32 in the appendix of this presentation. On an overall net basis, we estimate that the impact on earnings in FY '21 was slightly positive, contributing less than 1% to our growth rate. You can see here that our FY '21 performance represents a continuation of EBOS' long-term track record of delivering strong and steady performances across a wide range of financial metrics, which has resulted in strong returns to investors. Importantly, these returns have been generated with a disciplined focus on cash flow generation, maintaining a strong balance sheet and improvement in our return on capital employed. We now move to our segment performance and starting with Healthcare. Healthcare generated revenue growth of 4.4% and underlying EBIT growth of 11.4%. Our Australian and New Zealand Healthcare businesses each contributed to this growth. Key drivers of the Healthcare result included increased wholesale revenue, TWC's continued network expansion, growth in our medical consumables wholesaling business as well as our medical devices and Contract Logistics businesses. Moving now to the specific components of Healthcare and starting with Community Pharmacy. In Community Pharmacy, we occupy the leading wholesale market position in both Australia and New Zealand. The Community Pharmacy business, excluding Consumer Products, recorded a 3.9% increase in revenue and a 4.3% increase in gross operating revenue, or GOR. Key drivers of the result were increased wholesale revenue in both Australia and New Zealand on the back of strong performances by TWC and our other major customer groups. Within our Community Pharmacy business, we saw strong sales for the year in the ethical category, up 6.4%, while our OTC sales declined by 7.6%, primarily due to the impact of COVID-19 on certain categories like cough, cold and flu, which were well down on the prior year. The result also reflects increased CSO funding as a result of the commencement of the 7th Community Pharmacy Agreement on the 1st of July 2020, partially offset by the impact of PBS pricing reforms. Our TerryWhite Chemmart business, which is reported within our Community Pharmacy result, has further expanded its network and reinforced its position as one of Australia's leading community pharmacy networks with over 465 stores. This financial year, TWC added a net 36 new stores to its network and is targeting further expansion towards 500 trading stores by the end of FY '22. TWC's network sales increased by 5.3%, and like-for-like sales grew by 3.6%. This performance was driven by new store growth and continued investment in media spend as well as pharmacist education programs and product category initiatives. Over 400 TWC pharmacies across Australia are supporting the COVID-19 vaccinations in their communities with 300 stores already delivering this service. Our Institutional Healthcare business has continued its strong performance with GOR growth of just under 10%. Within this division, we occupy the leading market positions in hospitals' medicine wholesaling as well as strong market positions in medical consumables distribution, hospital pharmacy outsourcing services and a growing presence in the medical devices distribution market. Key drivers of the result were increased sales of specialty medicines into the hospital network, continued strong demand for our medical consumables business and our growing medical devices business, which is a key driver of the increase in GOR margin. As I mentioned earlier, this particular part of our business is earmarked for further M&A investment as we continue to build out our medical devices and consumables distribution businesses. Our Contract Logistics business had another very strong year with GOR growth of just under 20%. This division has grown GOR by approximately 50% over the last 3 years. In this business unit, we are an important part of the medical supply chain for over 160 pharma manufacturers. We occupy the leading market position in New Zealand. And our Australian business is growing ahead of expectations, driven mainly by servicing new pharma principals. We are close to capacity at our existing sites in New South Wales, and the Board yesterday approved the investment of a second facility for us to service the growing Australian market. Turning now to our Animal Care segment. Animal Care has continued its strong performance with revenue growth of 17% and EBIT growth of 26%. This segment has grown EBIT by almost 50% over the last 3 years. The strong pet market conditions that we highlighted at the first half have continued, supported by established global trends such as the humanization of pets and premiumization of products, further accelerated by ongoing COVID-19 conditions, resulting in an increasing pet population and people spending more time with their pets. Our key brands and businesses have capitalized on these strong market conditions as a result of their leading market positions. Moving to Slide 21. Each of our Black Hawk, Vitapet and Lyppard businesses generated double-digit sales growth for the year. Black Hawk remains the leading premium dog food brand in the pet specialty channel in Australia and continues to build its market presence in New Zealand. Vitapet remains the leading dog treats brand in the grocery channel in both Australia and New Zealand. Both of these brands continue to benefit from substantial marketing investments. Our Lyppard business also experienced strong growth from customers in the vet and online channels. The acquisition of CH2's vet distribution business made a contribution for approximately 7 months of the year. That concludes the commentary on our segment performance. So I'll now hand over to Leonard Hansen to cover the financial information.

Thanks, John. Statutory cash flow from operations for the 12 months to June 2021 was $298.3 million. This represents an improvement of $69.1 million on FY '20 due to earnings growth while maintaining our disciplined approach to working capital management. Capital expenditure for the year was $82 million, comprising business-as-usual CapEx of $31.1 million and investment of $50.9 million during the second half of FY '21 on our new pet food manufacturing facility. An additional investment of approximately $30 million is expected to complete this project during FY '22. We also invested approximately $31 million on current year acquisitions and deferred consideration payments for prior period acquisitions with the majority of the spend in relation to the acquisition of the Cryomed devices business and CH2's vet wholesaling business during the year. Moving on to working capital. Working capital remains a key focus for the group with a cash conversion cycle of 14 days as at June 2021. Net working capital days have improved on FY '20 by 1 day, benefiting from a further increase in sales volumes during the year while maintaining -- or sorry, decreasing net working capital by $43.8 million. Debtors have increased by $114 million as a result of the increase in sales compared to June 2020 but partially offset by a further reduction in overdues by $16 million from that of the prior year. Inventory increased by $47 million to support service levels on the back of the increase in sales activity. Trade payables have increased by $205 million, principally due to the higher stock turn in the June '21 month compared to that of the prior year as well as improvements in net working capital management within our Healthcare business. Return on capital employed for the year rose to 18%, which is a record and well above our 15% internal target on the back of our strong earnings growth and cash result. Net debt for the group, excluding leases, was $271 million as at 30 June 2021, down by $56 million on the prior year as a result of the cash -- the strong cash performance by the group for the year. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 0.85x, a further improvement on the 1.11x we reported at June 2020. Our low gearing also provides significant capacity for further acquisitions and growth investments. During the year, we've refinanced $940 million of debt facilities, including our Aa2-rated $400 million securitization facility. EBOS has achieved an improvement in the maturity profile spread of its existing debt facilities with the refinancings undertaken during the year with no debt maturities into the second half of FY '23. The weighted average debt maturity profile for the group at 30 June is 2.73 years. Turning now to earnings per share and dividends. Underlying EPS for the year is $1.149 per share, growth upon FY '20 of 14%. The EBOS Board have declared a final dividend of NZD 0.46 per share. This will be imputed to 25% and fully franked for Australian tax resident shareholders. The total dividends for the year are, therefore, $0.885, up 14.2%, with a payout ratio for the year on an underlying basis of 72%. I wish to also highlight that the directors have revised the group's dividend policy to declare dividends representing between 60% and 80% of net profit after tax. Reflecting on the group's strong cash performance, cash flow and balance sheet, the dividend reinvestment plan will again not be available for the final dividend. Thank you, and I'll now hand you back to John.

Thank you, Leonard. So in conclusion, we are pleased with our strong performance in FY '21, which included double-digit earnings growth, record return on capital employed, several strategic investments and acquisitions across our Healthcare and Animal Care segments, which position us for future growth. We've also further strengthened our balance sheet, and we've increased dividends to shareholders. We expect to be able to generate further growth in FY '22. The group's portfolio of businesses has proven to be very resilient throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. However, lockdowns in New Zealand and Australia are evidence of the material uncertainties that exist and that may impact upon the group's future trading performance. We expect capital expenditure for FY '22 to remain elevated as a result of the completion of our new pet care manufacturing facility. We have a very strong balance sheet, and we're well positioned to pursue future growth opportunities. And another performance update will be provided to shareholders at the annual meeting held on the 19th of October 2021. So with that, I'll conclude the formal part of the presentation and hand back to the operator to facilitate any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Chelsea Leadbetter at Forsyth Barr.

John and team, I guess maybe if I start with the margin side of the business. I'm just interested in your view, John, on the outlook here. Obviously, hearing a lot of businesses talk about cost inflation, particularly in wages. So interested in how you see it in terms of FY '22 and beyond.

Yes. Chelsea, on the margin side, we think we can basically hold our margin. We do see further cost increases coming through the business. So in wages, insurance, we're spending more on IT, HR costs, et cetera. But we also have the benefit coming through of the contribution of our devices business, improved growth in our medical consumables business. So it's a real mix. But in terms of the overall margin, we think it's probably stable to slightly positive.

Okay. No, I appreciate that. And then I guess just trying to get a little bit more clarity on outlook, and I appreciate you haven't provided guidance at this point. But just some understanding of, I guess, run rate that you've seen so far. Is that broadly consistent with the revenue growth that we've seen in the second half, 3.6%? Is that the right way to be thinking about how the year started?

Look, we had an okay start to the year, Chelsea. But it's very hard to predict, right? So July was in line with our expectations. But then we've had the further lockdowns, as you well appreciate, in both Sydney and Melbourne. So we just have to see how sort of the first quarter plays out and then accordingly update everyone at the annual meeting.

Okay. And then I guess just last question for now. Consumer Products, we've talked about it before at the last call. And obviously, it's been an area of challenge for a wee while now. I appreciate there's cold and flu and all sorts of things going through that, but just interested in your plans from here in terms of trying to reinvigorate, drive some growth in that business. Is there something different you plan to do? Or is it a function more of market conditions and sort of COVID-related headwinds just abating?

I think it's the latter, Chelsea. It's been certainly significantly impacted by COVID and the impact on the daigou channel, et cetera. So -- but the strategy is one that we're sticking with, that we still believe in the strategy of having that portfolio within the group. And that is one that will also -- we'll hold that strategy and look for opportunities to invest and bolt on opportunities into that part of the business. The reason we've absorbed it in with pharmacy is that it's relatively immaterial to the overall group. I think it's, say, less than, say, 3% or so to the contribution of the results. So we just want to sort of take away the focus on it for now and then focus on building it back up over the medium term.

Our next question comes from Dan Hurren at MST Marquee.

I'm just going to ask, the Pharmaceutical Benefits pre-rebate growth for financial year '21 was around about 9.5% in value. Just trying to understand how do you compare against that, how we should think about that and perhaps the split between Community Pharmacy and hospital.

Did you mention 9.5%, Dan?

Yes. I think the pre-rebate PBS growth for '21 was 9.5%, the numbers that came out the other day.

Yes. No. Well, we saw that number. So our PBS growth wasn't really near that number. So as you know, Dan, some of those statistics can be a bit hard to interpret, right? But what we saw with our business was we had stronger ethicals growth, particularly in Australia, and a declining OTC category. So our ethicals growth within our business was, say, between 5% to 6%, right? And we had a decline, it was actually within the Australian market, right, and then a decline in the OTC category, right? So you can never resolve or forecast for you through the PBS data. You've never been able to. So as I say...

No. I understand. I understand, that helps us get the ethicals. And if I could be just cheeky and sneak in one other one. Just Institutional Healthcare, just the growth rate fell off sharply in the second half. Is there anything you can talk about the moving parts there?

Well, that's, of course, made up of numerous parts. What we had there, we had, of course, the hospitals business in Australia and New Zealand. In the first half, we had very strong growth in that part of the market. I think it was around about 8%. That's reduced in the second half, but that's a bit hard to read as well because you're cycling a very strange period, that last quarter in FY '20. So yes, I think the overall growth in that hospitals business for the year was around about 4% to 5%, right? So -- and what we are seeing is increased growth within our medical consumables business and certainly, the investment coming through for our medical devices business.

Right. So that -- the pcp of the second half is just COVID weakness, in other words?

Yes. We had this -- you may recall, in March of 2020, we had this pandemic, the panic buying going on. And that also -- that impacted on retail pharmacy as well as in the hospital channel as well, right? And so we're cycling that in the second half of this year. That was always going to impact on the numbers.

Our next question comes from Marcus Curley at UBS.

John, just a couple for me. I just wondered on the Community Pharmacy, could you give us a view on what you think market growth is and how you think the EBOS market share is faring against that?

Marcus, look, we estimate the market growth is approximately just a tad over 2%. And over the course of the year, we held our -- we were basically -- our business performed in line with the market growth, right? So we held our share, right? Now what -- when you look at that, we had a stronger growth in, say, the ethicals part of the business, right? But we probably had a weaker performance in market in the OTC part of the business.

Understood. And there's been obviously announcement that Pfizer is changing its distribution model. Will you see any benefit from that? I know it's not an exclusive distribution. It was unclear whether you'd see any benefit yourself from those changes.

Yes. We should benefit from that market because our business is more -- has -- is more skewed towards the ethicals part of the market. So with them returning to the channel, that should -- that will naturally add -- and our expectation that will naturally add revenues and increase profitability for the business. So it might add -- broad estimations, it might add another $100 million of revenues to the business.

$100 million to your sales.

Around that level, Marcus. Yes.

And then concerning this financial year coming?

Sorry, Marcus. It hasn't started yet. It starts more towards the back end of this year.

Back end of this calendar year?