Elektroimportøren AS (ELIMP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Q4 webcast of Elektroimportøren. Presenting today will be CEO, Andreas Niss; and CFO, Jorgen Wist. [Operator Instructions] Andreas and Jorgen, if you're ready, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Mona Katherine, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for listening in and joining us for our Q4 presentation today. We will talk you through an overview of our strategic initiatives, of course, talk about the results for the fourth quarter and then also give an update and a sum up of yesterday's private placement. So 2023 has no doubt been a challenging year for us. The macroeconomics with inflation, pushing up interest rates, giving people less room to spend money, the housing market, more or less collapsing. And on top of that, we got the EV charger issue with the sales ban on Easee. With no tailwind whatsoever, we are focused on reducing our operational costs, balancing aggressive pricing with the need to maintain margins. We entered into the solar market, which started off very well, but then turned as we reached into the summer. We've also been building a new organization in Sweden, moving warehouse and opening our first new store in Sweden, which has been an even tougher market than the Norwegian one. So in a tough market, we have not really taken the easy way either. However, we do believe that the structural trends in our society and in our business are very attractive in the mid- to long term. There is an increasing digitization of our homes and offices that drives demand for smart home automization and security products, products that we sell. There is an increasing uncertainty around future energy supply and pricing, which drives demand for solutions that help consumers control and reduce their use of energy and by doing so, reducing their electricity bills. Those are also products that we sell. Climate changes and the need for cleaner energy drives electrification and forces through the rollout of new solutions such as solar panels, electrical cars that needs electrical vehicle chargers, products that we sell. The EU have launched new regulations that demands us to make our houses more energy efficient. A lot of this will probably be around new windows and doors, et cetera, new isolation, but there will also be demand for products that control your energy use in the home. So all of these trends drive positive momentum for us, and we believe that we, as a business, is perfectly positioned to gain from this going forward. So trends gives us some opportunity, and so do our business setup. We have SpotOn, which is a great platform for customers that need help from A to Zed. We started selling solar in 2023 and are now well positioned to take our part of the market as it continues to grow. Yes, probably we need to accept the lower margin on bottom stock today. But as we shift our route to market, we will benefit from okay margins again. Sweden has started out troublesome for us, but with the right team in place and acceptance for the concept, Sweden continues to be one of the greatest possibilities that we have for growth. The backbone of our business are the Norwegian stores. Together with our online presence, we still have a great deal of white space available for rollout of more Elektroimportøren stores going forward. And a bit more on SpotOn. As we have mentioned earlier, we are exploring the opportunities to develop SpotOn into other craftsman areas than just electro. We believe that this unique customer offer will be attractive also for plumbing, carpentry and painting. And we seek for partners within these areas. Having said that, we also believe that SpotOn will be a good contributor to future growth also just through electro. Other opportunities that we see, the market for heating pumps have had a great development over the last year, somewhat weaker than 2023, I should say, but it has come up and plateaued on a new level. We do sell heating pumps but only to the consumers. And in the fall, we will reenter this market with a new offer also for the professional customers. The solar market doubled in 2023, and it's expected to continue to do so over the coming years. We have learned a lot over the last 12 months, and now we are able to capitalize on that going forward. With electrical vehicle car chargers, we have become a major player in Norway. And now the journey starts in Sweden. Swedish EV-charger installation is rapidly increasing, and we seek to be a part of that. The start of new housing project is at a 25-year low in Norway. This might continue for a while, absolutely, but when the market turns, we are ready, and we're there to support it. Our Norwegian business is robust and have been so also through these more challenging market conditions. We have 27 stores who all delivered a positive store contribution also in 2023. 80% of our salespeople on the floor are electricians. Those electricians and all sales reps gives a great deal of trust to our consumers and electrician customers entering our stores. We have a superior omnichannel setup where our website works perfectly together with our physical stores. If we look at sales for 2023 and exclude the bad development we had in EV chargers, we actually grew our Norwegian business with 2%. We have a partner network in Norway with 160 electric installation companies that buys products from us and where we also give our partner customers, consumer customers, we connect them together. We believe that in Norway, there is a wide space available for approximately another 20 stores. We've had a really tough start in Sweden, and we need to turn the business around. We will have to do that by increasing sales and margins as well as getting even better operational efficiencies. We need to build the brand awareness to drive sales, and our ambition for 2024 is to grow the business with at least 10%. We will do so also by increasing sales activities to professional customers. And the ambition there is that 25% of the share of business in 2025 will come from professional customers. We need to continue to increase the margin by growing the Namron share of business. In January 2023, we had 2.9% share of business in Sweden. In January '24, we had 8.6%. And the ambition is that within another year, it's 15%. We do have lease contracts for facilities that we do not use anymore. We need to sublease or exit these contracts. As of now, we have 25% of the area subleased, and we're in negotiation of another 50%. And the ambition is, of course, to get rid of these contracts as fast as possible, but we need -- we think we should be able to do that in -- during 2024. We also need to improve our operational efficiencies and keep improving the ways of working. And we need to get profitable in Sweden. We believe 2024 will still be a tough year, but that we should be profitable in Sweden by 2025. So long-term ambition. Organic growth in Norway. We have an average sales per year in our stores in Norway of around NOK 50 million. With another 20 stores, you can do the math, but probably the average sales there will be a bit lower. New stores in Sweden, we will not enter new stores in Sweden until we really find out how to make the store we have in Stockholm today profitable, which we are on the way of doing. New energy categories, very exciting opportunities here, especially around solar and energy efficiency products and heating pumps, which will help us grow. And together with SpotOn that connects all of this together, we see that the possibilities that we have for growth are good going forward. Okay. Moving into the fourth quarter. Some financial highlights. We had a revenue of NOK 495 million, which is down 1.4% from last year at NOK 502. Gross margin percent is low, 32.8%, down from 37.3% last year. We will come back to that. OpEx to sales ratio is quite stable at 23.6%, 0.1% higher than last year. And our EBITDA ended at NOK 46 million, down from NOK 70 million in 2022. In terms of traffic to our stores, our physical stores in Norway, a number of visitors are slightly up. I think we had 1,500 more customers in Q4 than we had last year. Conversion is at 60%, down from 61%, so slightly down on conversion, slightly up on traffic and the average basket is down by NOK 35, which gives us this slight decline for the quarter. If we look at Elbutik, it's a tough quarter. We had revenues -- on sales, it was okay. We had revenues of NOK 43 million, which is -- then we're growing with 14%. The growth comes from Vedista. Like-for-like sales is down 1%, which I would say is quite a good performance actually in Sweden given that the market has been in a great decline. Vedista contributes with NOK 8 million for the quarter. Gross margin is at 16.1%, which is down from 26% last year. The margin is diluted by partly high campaign pressure not only in Black Week, but in Black Week and throughout the year. We have sold out some inventory, which we didn't want to bring from our old warehouse into the new one. And we also had a yearly inventory counting in Sweden when we moved the warehouse. The EBITDA for the period is minus NOK 8 million. We are implementing a turnaround plan for Sweden. And as I mentioned earlier, have some good initiatives that we believe will turn this business around. If we look at Namron, share of business in Q4 was 36.5% in Norway, which is up from 34.8% last year. The margin for Namron -- the gross margin for Namron was 56.1%. In Sweden, as we mentioned, it continues to grow. Share of business is 8.5% in Q4, which is up from 5.3% in Q3. Electrical vehicle chargers. The Q4 revenues of NOK 34 million is down 27% from last year. We believe that's more or less where the market is right now. The stock levels are normalized and the earlier risks that we talked about, especially in Q2 of Easee old stock or bad stock is no longer present. So the stock levels are at a normal level. Sales expected to stay below last year's sales at least throughout Q1. And as you probably know or most of you probably know, in March last year, we had a major decline in sales. So I mean, there should be a possibility for growth in EV charger sales in Q2 2024. Solar. Total orders in the quarter of NOK 10 million. Consumer demand is lower, and we are expected to -- due to the lower electricity prices, it's fascinating to see how the demand on solar panels is driven by the day-to-day electricity pricing, but that's how it is. Fortunately, it's not the same for B2B customers. Inventory levels is at NOK 40 million at year-end. We expect, as I said, to sell down this, at least half of it, in Q1 and Q2, with slightly low margins or with low margins, but then we will shift our route to market and not stock as much ourselves and rather buy it on demand. We are refocusing the sales strategy to target the commercial buildings and owners, and we will, of course, continue to offer solar to consumers through SpotOn. And just finally, a few words on SpotOn, which has a total sale in the quarter of NOK 11 million, which is on par with last year. The decrease in EV charger continues and is the major factor for reason for the slowdown in growth. Gross margin is up 2.5 percentage points in the quarter. And we, as I said, continue to explore the opportunities to include other craftsman areas or get a new business partner for us in SpotOn. So that's what I had on Q4 and I give the word to Jorgen for some more financial updates.

Thank you, Andreas. I will take you through the finance part, and we'll start with the revenue. Total revenue in Q4 was NOK 495 million, down 1.4% from NOK 502 million last year. Like-for-like sales declined by 4.1%. B2B sales increased by 3.5% year-on-year, mainly driven by solar. B2C sales decreased by 5.5%. The fourth quarter started off well with sales growth in both the Norwegian and the Swedish operation. We had a good execution of Black Week campaigns, but growth slowed down towards the end of the quarter with sales below last year in December, both in Norway and Sweden. The decline was mainly driven by the EV charger category and was partly offset by increased contribution from Elbutik and solar. Revenue, excluding EV chargers, was NOK 461 million, up from NOK 455 million last year. The availability of both Easee and Subtik have been good in the period, but the demand is reduced by approximately 25% compared to last year. However, this is an improvement from the last 2 quarters, where the reduction compared to last year have been approximately 50%. Gross margin in the fourth quarter was 32.8%, down from 37.3% last year. In Norway, the gross margin was 34.4%. During the quarter, we had some effects, which have impacted the gross margin negatively. Increased share of B2B sales with lower margin compared to B2C sales is 1%. Exchange rate effects on Namron products is 1.5% and inventory counting and provision is 1%. Adjusted for these effects, gross margin in Norway is 37.9% for Q4. Gross margin in Elbutik is significantly lower than for the Norwegian operation with 16.1%. However, adjusted for the inventory accounting, the gross margin is 20.8%. OpEx to sales ratio was stable at 23.6% in Q4. Operating expenses are reduced compared to last year, even with a general salary increase, inflation adjustments of cost and 1 new store in Sweden. The group maintains a rigid cost control and has implemented new cost reductions in November in Norway with a full year effect of NOK 30 million, which will take effect from January 2024. EBITDA for the quarter was NOK 46 million, down from NOK 70 million last year; a decrease of NOK 24 million is mainly due to a lower gross margin. At the end, I'm happy to inform that we [indiscernible] secured a new 3-year loan agreement with DNB and completed a private placement raising NOK 150 million in new equity. The net proceeds from the private placement will be used to repay NOK 75 million of the debt in connection with the refinancing, continuing the financing of the ongoing growth initiatives and general corporate purposes. Under the terms of the new loan agreement, loan installments of NOK 40 million for December 2024 and the net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA covenants for Q1 to Q3 2024 [indiscernible]. For Q4 2024, the net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA covenant will be 4.0 and the liquidity covenant for 2024 continues to apply. And with that, I will let Andreas give you the summary and outlook. Thank you.

Thank you, Jorgen. Yes, to sum up, we managed to keep quite a stable revenue in a tough market, both in Sweden and Norway. We have reduced our operating expenses and meaning that we have a greater cost control and lower cost base going into 2024. The EBITDA is dramatically down due to lower gross margins. That's a short summary. Going forward, we think that keeping control of cost and margin management is of the most importance. We believe that the market conditions will stay tough for the coming months. We are somewhat dependent on that people get more money to spend. If it is through salary increases or a decrease in interest rates from the banks, but an increase in spending. However, we are committed to being the preferred supplier and work hard that both the consumer and professional customers should reenter our stores in a greater way when conditions improve. Yes. Thank you, everyone. And then I think we open up for questions, Mona Katherine?

Yes, there are some questions that have come in. Can you see them there on your screen?

When do we expect the market to turn? How should we think about the demand from B2B under the current growth conditions? Well, our expectations of the market and when it turns, we don't know. What we -- our guess is probably as good as yours, to be honest. But the macro picture might tell us that there will be some lower interest rates from the banks going forward at least summer after summer this year, both in Sweden and in Norway. That should probably be the first indicator to better market conditions. Yes. When do you expect Sweden to be breakeven? Well, as we said, we have an ambition of making money in Sweden in 2025. Somewhere during that year, we need to have an [indiscernible] which says that we are breakeven. So that's more or less what we can say on that, I guess. On EV chargers, how is the sales development of Easee? Have the customers come back? Or are they hesitant after the Swedish sales ban? What are your thoughts on risk related to the old Easee chargers? In a scenario where the safety authorities mandate that the old Easee charters be retrofitted with an extra fuse, Easee cannot foot the bill and goes bankrupt, how would that affect Elektroimportøren? Would you have to pick up the bill in that case? Let's start from the beginning. Sales on EV charges, as we said in the quarter, was down 27% from last year. We believe that's more or less where the market is right now. Easee chargers do sell. It's our second largest brand at the moment. It used to be our largest brand. But customers do buy Easee and both B2B and B2C customers like the Easee chargers. So we will see where it develops going forward. Well, if the safety authorities comes up with a retrofit, we don't -- it's not really clear how that would --might affect us. What we know is that all the installations that we've done with SpotOn has been done with this extra fuse. So there would not be a claim for us. And otherwise, it's not clear, to be honest. We do not think it's a major issue for us. Yes.

Is there a call option on new debt? No.

I don't see any more questions, Mona Katherine.

Okay. Well, I guess we would just like to thank everyone for attending then. And thank you, Andreas and Jorgen, for the presentation.

Yes. Thank you very much for listening in.

Thank you.

Have a good day.