Fiskars Oyj Abp (FSKRS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to Fiskars Group's Q2 Results Webcast. My name is Essi Lipponen, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations. I'm here with our President and CEO, Jyri Luomakoski; and our CFO, Jussi Siitonen. Let's look at the agenda of this call. Jyri will first go through Q2 in brief, some highlights. After that, Jussi will go through the financials in more detail, after which Jussi will hand over to Jyri, who will cover business areas and our guidance for the year. After that, we will have plenty of time for your questions, and we welcome questions both through the chat and through the phone lines. Jyri, please go ahead.

Thank you, Essi. Good morning, and welcome also on my behalf. Brief summary of the quarter. It was actually the fourth consecutive growth quarter, much driven by our business area Vita. Comparable net sales 3% up and comparable EBIT improving from EUR 3-ish million to shy of EUR 8 million. So there was a clear way in the positive direction. Both sales growth and EBIT improvement really was driven by Vita for Fiskars BA, where the growth number, it's a black zero. So when you go to the decimals, you get to a positive. It's not rounded up to 0, but it's rounding down to 0 and some margin expansion, but pretty much stable in terms of the EBIT. One of our focus points now since the year has been cash flow as a consequence of the balance sheet or the indebtedness that had gone above our limits, and we've been focusing on our cash flow. And there was a continuous improvement, significant actually to EUR 31 million on free cash flow, and that's net working capital driven and strict CapEx management has been key there. We introduced the new financial targets in our Capital Markets Day in May. And you can actually find those in the appendix of this presentation and in our releases. So that's something we will not dive deeper into today as such. On our sustainability journey, pleased to report also that we regained the Platinum EcoVadis status or Medal and that's a result of our hard work. We need to remember that, that implies that we are in the top 1% of the companies assessed, and it's not the average companies that file for that. It's those who have sustainability already in their focus. We have not changed our guidance. It is as it has been since February, comparable EBIT to increase or expected to improve from last year's level. But that's the segue to the numbers, Jussi.

Thank you, Jyri. So as Jyri already mentioned, so after admittedly a quite long period of no growth, we have now succeeded to grow fourth quarter in a row. The growth has been very much driven by Vita, 5.5% now in Q2 and then flat Fiskars BA. The growth has been very broad-based. So when it comes to our top 4 countries, U.S.A., Sweden, Denmark and Finland now in Q2, which are more than 50% of our Q2 sales. All these 4 countries were growing. On top of that, we had a very robust growth in Japan. There are some behavioristic differences between countries. But overall, at the group level, these 4 countries were showing a very robust growth. When it comes to our channels, so our own e-commerce was up 4% in Q2, our own retail, up 2% and then wholesale up 3%. And by the way, this Q2 was the first time in company history when Vita was already bigger than Fiskars. And now we know that the second half is very Vita dominated when it comes to top line. On EBIT, we were up quite significantly from admittedly low level last year, so from EUR 3 million to EUR 7.7 million. And I walk through more in detail, which were the driver behind this one. Also, our earnings per share adjusted was negative EUR 0.06, very close to last year same period, and I will go a bit deep on that one after a couple of slides. So moving to EBIT bridge, and I start here from the middle where we have BA Vita. So BA Vita succeeded to improve EBIT by EUR 5 million versus last year. The main drivers being increased sales volumes, lower marketing spend and then very strict SG&A management there. SG&A management was partially reported already the benefits from this restructuring program we announced earlier this year, where we said a EUR 28 million program, out of which up to 1/3 should come in now in 2026, which is very much second half loaded, but already in Q2, we have some benefits coming from that program. As you can see, gross margin came down in BA Vita. That's very much driven of those actions we have put in place in our supply chain to manage the inventory level to manage the factory variances. On the right, BA Fiskars was flat at reported EBIT, then currency-neutral basis, we were slightly up versus last year. In BA Fiskars, we continued improving gross margin. And as we said in the Capital Markets Day that in BA Fiskars, we are focusing on this flywheel where we are increasing media spend, where we are increasing R&D and get a momentum on our top line. That continued now in Q2. So all those benefits what we had there from gross margin improvement, we invested back in marketing and R&D. R&D was up over 20% now in Q2 versus last year. Then the cash flow. As Jyri already mentioned, we had a very strong Q2 cash flow. Free cash flow, the way we define it now, we changed it in the Capital Markets Day so that our unlevered free cash flow now includes also those lease payments there. With this new definition, we were at EUR 30.4 million now in Q2, EUR 28 million better than last year, which is significant improvement there, mainly coming from change in net working capital. Net working capital came down over EUR 30 million, whilst last year, it was quite flat. Another positive driver what we had on cash flow is our CapEx. So CapEx in Q2 was EUR 7 million, which is less than half what we had last year same period. Even for the first half basis, in the first 6 months, CapEx was EUR 12 million, which is half of last year's 6 months CapEx. So this CapEx management is now one of the key drivers what we have here to manage our cash flow. Then cash earnings per share almost doubled from EUR 0.29 to EUR 0.51, and I'll go through a bit more closely that on the next slide. As said, earnings per share was quite flattish there on adjusted basis, so from minus EUR 0.05 to minus EUR 0.06 there. Adjusted EBIT contributed improvement there by EUR 0.06 and then biological -- fair valuation of biological assets, i.e., our forest assets there and net financials took it slightly down. When it comes to our net financials there, the biggest single negative is fair valuation of our commodity hedges. Then taxes also took it down and taxes also include here those adjustments based on those items affecting comparability. On cash earnings per share, you can see significant improvement there coming from the net working capital change, and that has been the main driver for this improvement. On net debt to EBITDA, net debt to EBITDA was now 3.42 at the end of Q2. Last year, it was 3.16. So it's increased versus Q2 last year, but versus Q1, so in this last quarter, we succeeded to improve it a bit. The main reason for this increasing net debt EBITDA versus last year is coming from EBITDA side. So rolling 12 months EBITDA was lower than it was in comparison period. The net debt itself came down versus last year. When it comes to our net debt overall, what we introduced or what we made now in Q2 was EUR 50 million tap issue to our existing EUR 200 million bond. And then we have also strengthened our liquidity. So total liquidity, what we have at the end of Q2 is EUR 420 million, consisting of EUR 300 million committed credit facilities, roughly EUR 40 million overdraft there and then roughly EUR 80 million cash. So liquidity is very strong now when we start the second half. Then when it comes to our sustainability and on our sustainability targets, I would like to highlight the circularity, which is one of the key KPI what we are here following our environmental commitments. So now it's up to 30% versus last year 28%, and we continue driving it towards 50% by end of 2030. When it comes to emissions, Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3, all are improving from last year. On social side, I would like to highlight this Lost Time Accident Frequency. So significant improvement from last year, 3.6 to 2.9. And whilst we are very happy with this improvement, we can't be happy with the current level until it's 0. With that, handing over back to you, Jyri.

Thank you, Jussi. Looking at our 2 business areas, what's been happening at Vita. So as in the intro mentioned, fourth consecutive growth quarter for Vita, and we can clearly see signs of our turnaround that has been -- is critical, instrumental to the business. As such, growth is relevant, but also those measures that we took in the winter time, in the spring time in terms of restructuring, both reorganizing and as a consequence of that, that was leading also to reduction in our headcount, which you can see also now in the quarterly report when you look at the aggregate personnel, the FTEs average in the quarter, it's already down already quite kind of in a relevant number and materially in line with our plans. So what was driving up the growth? So across D2C and wholesale on a broad base in terms of channels, we've seen growth. Georg Jensen, which is kind of the newest family member in the family of brands at Vita, acquired '23 has continued strong performance on the top line and as such, been a very wanted brand for the consumers. Then many of our regional leader brands, whether it's Rörstrand, which has celebrated its 300-year anniversary this spring and Moomin Arabia have continued growing. So when we look at the comparable EBIT, still this time of the year, the number is dismal and it's also unfortunately negative, but it has improved. And that's the important that the direction is right, and we are not sliding down on that side. So we can see both the effects of the volume growth and the effects, first signs or first kind of things ending up in the income statement, and we have a degree of confidence those ending up in H2, in Q3 and Q4 on our SG&A savings as a consequence of the program that was announced in early February. And in Jussi's EBIT bridges, you saw that the gross margin, there was a negative variance or unfavorable move on the gross margin at Vita, but that's not because of pricing slippage. It is because of us continuing scaling down the production. So for many, many years, when we had a declining top line, we did not have the corresponding decline in the operations and ended up at significantly higher inventories than the business would actually necessarily need. And now we are in the kind of inverse process. We are scaling down production. We are ramping up sales, and that's the recipe to eat up the inventories. But as long as we are scaling down the production, that's eating up, as Jussi mentioned, in terms of the supply chain variances. So it's a lack of absorption of the fixed cost of factory facilities that is hitting the EBIT. But when we take the ruler, we can see that these lines will also meet each other at some point of time. And that's really behind the comparable gross margin decrease. And the good news is that we know what it comes from, and it's not from price erosion in the marketplace. Many things have happened. As I mentioned, Rörstrand turned 300 years, and that's, of course, something that has been boosting. There is a good reason to activate. It's a Royal purveyor in the -- as a Royal Warrant from the Swedish court and attending also the 300-year anniversary, the Swedish National Museum is having an exhibition this summer on Rörstrand curated by the museum. So it's a bit similar like maybe in Iittala perceived as national property in terms of the heritage. Iittala, those who have been active and young in the '90s have been playing with Pokémon characters, et cetera, will recognize the limited edition collaboration with Pokémon, actually sold out in the first week. More to come, but that's how desired brands are working. New jewelry series or collection at Georg Jensen left. And then many of our brands were visible at the 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen early June. 3daysofdesign is behind -- besides Milan, kind of the biggest, I think even globally biggest design event. And in the picture on the slide, you can see a 9-meter tall Aalto Vase so it's a bit bigger than 90 years ago when the vase was launched and brought to the market, and it's not made out of glass, but it was pulling a lot of attention in the marketplace. Good way to celebrate the 90-year celebration and anniversary. At Fiskars, top line flat. On a currency-neutral base, half of the business is in the U.S. in U.S. dollars. So still the exchange is burdening us a bit less and less. The further we go to the year when we look at last year's euro-dollar exchange curve margin slightly expanded. And while we were growing in the U.S., which is very much driven by our distribution gains and our credibility in the marketplace as we handled the import duty or tariff crisis and availability kept the availability have been bringing new products, declines in Central Europe. That appears to be the corner. Traditionally, it was the Finns, so we Finns have been the most cautious consumers if there is a kind of gun powder burning somewhere on this planet, as unfortunately, we currently can observe, Finns were immediately stopping spending. And currently, it seems that it's Germans and some other countries in the Central European markets where this consumer cautiousness is very visible. So stable EBIT and the gross margin, as Jussi's bridge showed was expanding, but we have had some good traction with our new products and want to continue on that track remaining relevant to the consumer and to the trade to grant us the shelf space. And then on picture level here, the modular system, one-click tool system was introduced during the quarter. And then we gained a few Red Dot Awards and our new Power Tools range actually got the highest design award, best of the best distinction at the Red Dot Design Awards and our new Pet Care and DualAction head shears and pruners and so forth got the normal kind of Red Dot Design Award. So it's been recognized also not only by the functionality, excellent functionality, but also the design and optics and aesthetics. So what is expected to happen this year still half of the race is unfinished. We expect that our comparable EBIT is improving from last year's level. I guess that some of the listeners or watchers of this webcast were hoping for some kind of range. That was something that we have been also hoping, but at the same time, we've been hoping that some of the wars would settle, and that hasn't been really the very recent trend, which means that the uncertainties in the global economy continue to persist and the visibility is somewhat limited. We know that our EBIT generation is much weighted to the second half of the year. And really, the improvement is primarily driven by business area Vita. We see that the changes that Vita announced in February, the execution of those programs has progressed basically like the manuscript says. And hence, we have a high degree of confidence getting that benefit to the H2 and onwards also. We also know that we will still have kind of a savings mode and not full speed on some of our factories to eat up and consume the elevated inventories and that will, as a consequence, have a negative impact. But this -- from the historical H1, H2 pattern, obviously, when we acquired Georg Jensen, we also showed that it will actually make it even more extreme. But the good news is that the H2 heavy and Q4 heavy. Jensen has been one of our leading growth drivers in Vita. So that's helping us much in terms of our confidence behind our guidance. That takes us to the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you, Jyri and Jussi. We do have some questions already in the chat, but we will first check if there are any questions through the phone lines.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Joni Sandvall from Nordea.

Starting maybe with Vita supply chain, you mentioned that in short term, this will still burden the margins. So are you expecting the -- let's say, the impact to be still fading away during H2? Or should we expect this only to happen in '27?

Not 100% sure, I can follow the impact what you imply with the impact that part of the question. Did you Jussi?

Yes, Joni, if you talk about delta versus last year, bearing in mind that those actions what we put in place last year, they started to impact second half 2025. So now when we are entering into second half 2026, they are already in our comparative numbers. So of course, then the delta when it comes to gross margin won't be the similar type of thing. It has been the first half this year.

Yes. That's okay.

Okay. I'm just thinking is it still -- is the drag increasing in H2? Or are you seeing easing pressure already from this side?

We have not specifically guided individual income statement lines. But as you can certainly recall last summer, we announced that the focus is on cash flow generation and deleveraging. And as a consequence, we started to curtail production about a year ago. So hence, the comps, as Jussi said, are easier in this aspect going forward in the H2.

Okay. Okay. Then going on to Fiskars BA, you have ramped up the marketing as mentioned, but the sales growth has remained muted. How confident are you actually on the growth side of the Fiskars BA?

The growth we see is much coming from the U.S. market and a couple of European, mainly the North European -- non-Central European market, so to speak. And there, we clearly see that both with the launches, our brand relevance with new product launches has been kind of -- we've maintained that both to the trade and to the consumers. The consumer confidence type of factor that we have seen like in the Central European markets certainly has been negative. And also on top of that, we had a year ago on the continent, some loyalty campaigns with some big retailers, which we have not been repeating. Those type of campaigns can drive up volume, not in the same proportion, the bottom line though. And from that perspective, it's visible in the top line development, but we are not regretting that too much when we live in the end from the profits.

Okay. That's clear. Then coming on the lower CapEx now in H1, should we expect this to be more structural? Or is it just near-term cash saving action what you have taken?

Joni, if we take our rolling 12 months CapEx there, which [ just ] say some kind of proxy for full year, we are a level of EUR 32 million there on a rolling 12-month basis. We do have some project going on in the second half. But therefore, the last year level is probably a bit too high for this year. So strict CapEx management will continue and the results should be quite visible for a full year basis, difficult to say that we continue spending the way we did second half last year. So approximately, we are coming down as we guided in Capital Markets Day also. So I would say that's a good proxy also for 2026.

And maybe filling in a bit, building on that. When I look at the CapEx, it's not that we've pushed on any panic button. There is no single initiative or CapEx program that I would have stopped kind of under the headline that we need to save CapEx. It's more the structural. It's new product related. tooling has been a big item, some IT related, but that's been more limited now as the separation of the -- to BA or on the ERP level is completed. So that was driving some part of the historical CapEx and so forth. So it's not that we wouldn't do the CapEx that's required to run the business. And in terms of the production, as you have seen, we've been curtailing production, which implies that we have at least enough capacity, even not somewhat too much. So hence, from that perspective, we haven't had any and don't foresee in the kind of near-term future structural needs for CapEx to increase to accommodate higher level of production as we have those capabilities in place.

Okay. Perfect. Last one on the visibility. You mentioned, Jyri, that it has -- it's limited, but maybe going back to Q1 from Q1 to Q2, did you say that visibility has improved or worsened when the summer has gone?

Well, when there was a ceasefire, we thought that it has improved. But as we know, that's kind of, again, history from the recent past that there was a ceasefire in around Iran and that war. So I wouldn't -- it's difficult, of course, to measure per se, but I wouldn't be able really to quantify. No material change maybe is a relevant way to spend it.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Maria Wikstrom from SEB.

This is Maria Wikstrom from SEB. I wrote some of the questions on the chat, but decided to join in the telephone line, so you can discard those from the chat. And I was interested in your thoughts on the global consumer demand and maybe you need to split it by geographies. First of all, did you see any differences from different months during Q2? And what is your take that -- would you say that the consumer -- global consumer demand is currently improving? Or what is -- how would you describe the -- currently the consumer appetite given that you are like one of the few consumer companies reporting early the Q2 results?

Geographically, I think what we communicated around Fiskars is maybe something we can apply on a more broader base. The American consumer seems -- appears to be more spending happy than the European one. And while historically, we have been the most cautious one always, now it seems that it's more on the continent where the consumer worries are more visible. When we look at the pattern of the quarter, actually, the kind of towards the end of the quarter, the growth rate was higher than it was in the middle of the quarter. So from that type of a curvature perspective, it's consistent with those observations. The Asian consumers and for us, the big markets there are China and Japan, no material change really visible in those markets. So it's been pretty much going according to the manuscript that was made for this year.

Perfect. Then I had a second question relating to the inventory that if we look on the like first half basis, I think, I mean, your inventory is down some EUR 20 million, which in respect that, I mean, the inventory value at the end of Q2 was EUR 340 million is not that big number given that you have had these measures to take down the inventory level. So what do you say that -- I mean, is -- do you think that you need to take, I mean, further actions to write down the currently very high inventory level? Or do you still think that you are unable to move this inventory that you currently have in your balance sheet?