Friedrich Vorwerk Group SE (VH2) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] to you today. Presenting team will be the CFO of the Friedrich Vorwerk group, Tim Hameister. He will be, of course, be in charge of the financials in the second part of the presentation. And myself, Torben Kleinfeldt, CEO of the company's group, will start with a very short market update and later on give you some brief update about our business and our current projects. So first of all, welcome to the market update. As you know, our main markets, electricity, natural gas and hydrogen are being reflected in the grid development plans that are published by each European country. Since our company's group is mainly focused on the German market, of course, the grid development plans for electricity, natural gas and hydrogen ruled out by the German Bundesnetzagentur are the best indication of our future markets. Bundesnetzagentur just confirmed the grid development plan with a duration between -- from 2023 to 2037 or 2045. And what we can see here and what is, I think, very astonishing about the development of the grid development plan is when we IPO-ed in 2021, there were projects reflected in the grid development plan with a total volume of EUR 120 billion over the next 15 years. The next grid development plan being published in '22, reflect a project of EUR 220 billion. And now the latest addition of the grid development plan reflects projects of [ EUR 320 billion ] in total up to 2045. Of course, please keep in mind the grid development plan for electricity does not only reflect cable projects, but also above ground high-voltage power lines, which we are not active in, so only the part with the underground cable, the inverter stations and the transformer stations would be an applicable market for Friedrich Vorwerk. But not only in the field of electricity, we see a huge market coming up in the next years, but also in a very new sector, we are active in, and that is hydrogen, not only hydrogen production, but also hydrogen transport and the use of hydrogen is with -- on our agenda. And since, EU has just funded EUR 6.9 billion to 7 member states for their hydrogen project. And the German hydrogen projects will receive EUR 4.6 billion of public funding. This is a very important step for the next hydrogen projects to be kicked off here in Germany. And as you can see on the right-hand side of our slide, a lot of that money is collected by our main customers like, Open Grid Europe, Thyssengas, Ontras and Gasunie who will be responsible of setting up the core of hydrogen grid in Germany. German government decided last year to take huge investments in what we call the core grid of hydrogen within Germany. It should have a length of in total 9,700 kilometers. 40% of that new build -- of that grid will be new build pipelines and 60% will be converted pipelines. So pipelines that are already existing today and being used for the transport of natural gas will be converted to hydrogen. Total volume of all activities in this core grid is roughly EUR 120 billion, and years of execution will be 2024. So some of the projects have already started and Friedrich Vorwerk is already active in some of the projects as we see later on. And the hydrogen power grid as sketched here on the left-hand side should be in operation -- full operation by 2030 June. So as you can see, not only on the cable, but also on the pipeline, we'll have a great market opportunity coming up. And besides, of course, the hydrogen activities, we are still looking into the grid development plans of natural gas, which reflect also project of around EUR 30 billion for the next 10 years. That's from my side, for the first part of our presentation, and I would like to hand over to Tim for the financial year 2023.

Thanks a lot, Torben, and also welcome, everybody, from my side to today's earnings call. Overall, 2023 has been a transition year for us. On the one hand, we invested large parts of our planning and engineering capacities and the acquisition of major projects in the field of electricity in the past financial year with great success. But on the other hand, some legacy projects, which we acquired in the years 2020 and 2021 had a negative impact on our profitability. To start off, let's have a look at our revenue development across the year. We are pleased to have closed our financial year with a strong Q4, even though revenues were below the previous year's level as expected. This is due, in particular, to the high pressure to complete a number of critical infrastructure projects in 2022, which could only be ensured with a very high level of subcontractor involvement. Revenue growth was hence achieved in the first half of the year, in particular, thanks to a high proportion of inner city construction projects, such as the 2 district heating projects in the cities of Bremen and Hamburg, and a number of plant construction projects, which are subject to less seasonality compared to a typical pipeline project. Overall, in the 2023 financial year, total revenues of EUR 373 million were achieved with the concurrent reduction in subcontractors, which correspond to a slight increase of 1.4% compared to the previous year figure and a fantastic book-to-bill ratio of 2.8. In terms of the segments, natural gas continued to account for the largest share of our revenue, but with the continuing downward trend in favor of electricity and adjacent opportunities. However, looking at the order backlog, which we will see on one of our next slides, this ratio will continue to shift drastically towards electricity in the short term. In terms of profitability, we've managed to continue our upward trend. In the fourth quarter, we generated EBITDA of EUR 11.6 million, which corresponds to a margin of 11.8%, and therefore, significantly exceeded the previous year's figure. Similarly, we increased the EBIT margin from 2.4% to more than [ 10% ] in the last quarter. With the exception of the third quarter, we achieved a continuous improvement in margins throughout the year by further executing the legacy projects in our order backlog. In terms of margins, the third quarter was negatively impacted by a one-off effect in the form of a project-related provision. This provision had been adjusted, the EBITDA margin in the third quarter would already have amounted to 13%. At the same time, no negative effects from this large plant construction project are expected in the future due to the recognition of this provision. In the full year 2023, we therefore, achieved EBITDA of EUR 32 million with an EBITDA margin of 8.6%. And adjusted EBIT of EUR 14.1 million with a margin of 3.8%. The reasons for the temporarily lower margin in 2023 are mainly due to the ongoing cost pressure in the areas of materials, energy and personnel, which had a particularly negative impact on the projects calculated before the war in Ukraine. However, the majority of these projects were already completed in 2023, meaning that as at the balance sheet date, the remaining order backlog for these projects was only in the low double-digit million euro range. Let's talk about cash. We generated a very strong operating cash flow of EUR 50 million in 2023. Of course, this also includes catch-up effects from the previous year, in which invoicing at the end of the year, only worked to a limited extent due to the cyber attack, but we also achieved significant improvement in working capital management, which led to a reduction in contract assets. In addition, we were able to include advance payments in various project contracts, which also had a positive impact here. There's also a positive trend in the CapEx area. Now that the main investments have been made, particularly in regards to the upcoming major projects in the field of electricity, we've slightly reduced CapEx again for the first time since 2021, further gradual reduction in CapEx is also planned for 2024 and the subsequent years. Cash flow from financing activities also developed positively, a lower level of financial debt and lease liabilities, as well as the lower profit distribution contributed to this. As a result, our net cash position improved significantly at the end of the year, rising by around EUR 15 million to EUR 42 million as of December. Our balance sheet at the end of the year is correspondingly healthy. We've once again increased our equity ratio to now 55%, which puts us in a very comfortable position to further organic and inorganic growth. The balance sheet shows an increase in property, plant and equipment of EUR 13 million to EUR 110 million at the end of the year, while at the same time, working capital and financial debt were reduced. On the basis of this very solid financial position, Management Board and Supervisory Board will again propose a dividend payment of EUR 0.12 per share at our Annual General Meeting in June this year. The order intake and order backlog developed very positively. Both figures increased significantly compared to all previous periods in the history of our company. We recorded order intake of over EUR 1 billion in 2023, around EUR 690 million is attributable to the third quarter alone in which we'll be finally able to complete phase 2 of the award procedure for the A-Nord flagship project. The order intake by segment is, therefore, correspondingly electricity heavy, which means that more than 80% of the order intake is attributable to the electricity segment, followed by another 10% attributable to the Natural Gas segment. This results in an order backlog of fantastic EUR 1 billion as of the end of December, more than tripling the previous year figure. Based on this order backlog, we expect to generate revenues of more than EUR 380 million in 2024. And as price increases have now also been factored into the calculations for our new projects, we expect the EBITDA margin to recover to between 11% and 13%, and the adjusted EBIT margin is also expected to increase at a similar rate. And with that, I hand back to Torben for our business update.

Tim, thank you very much. First of all, I would like to touch on our largest project for last year, which was the third LNG connecting pipeline being constructed by our company, as a technical leader in a joint venture with PPS Pipeline systems. It was a very difficult pipeline to construct over the last year since we had an impact of very bad weather starting in October. So in the end, we were able to commission this pipeline in March of this year. So now it is capable of transporting regasified LNG from the floating regasification terminal in Brunsbuttel towards the [indiscernible] pipeline system, which can distribute natural gas both to Germany and also to Denmark. Initial project volume was around EUR 120 million for the joint venture due to a very complicated soil and difficult weather conditions. The current project volume with extra works being awarded by the customer now has almost doubled, and we do expect further claims to be awarded by the customer in connection with the reinstatement. Reinstatement works have begun actually a bit earlier than expected because of the good weather in March 2024. Second, contracts. We would like to highlight our service and maintenance contracts, which, for example, for ONTRAS Gastransport, we are operating since 2001. This contract has just been extended for another 3 years with extension options to another 3 or possibly also to another 5 years. So this is, in the end, in the field of service and maintenance, almost important contracts since this covers a lot of the East German natural gas -- high-pressure natural gas grid where we are doing all the operational work for our customer, ONTRAS Gastransport. But also service and maintenance contract for some pipelines of gas transport have been renewed in 2023. The pipelines we are in charge of are highlighted in blue color on the right-hand side of the sketch. So we are quite happy to have received these orders again. And as you know, service and maintenance is a very important part of our growth strategy, and it brings us also a very interesting margins for the execution of these service contracts. And of course, we have already started working on the -- our largest project so far in history of the company's group, it's the first electricity highway, bringing roughly 2,000 megawatts of electricity from the north in Germany, very close to the city of Emden towards Osterath, we already started a bit of construction in the fall of last year and works for '24 have already resumed. So that leads us to an estimate revenue distribution over the next years just for the A-Nord project. So we do expect revenues out of the A-Nord project of more than EUR 150 million in '24, significant more in 2025. And a bit of a downside, but still revenues of more than EUR 200 million in 2026. Of course, that strongly depends how the customer, Amprion, is able to receive all necessary public permits. So far, we think that we got a good job, especially in the north of the corridor project. So in Lower Saxony where we are active as one of the joint venture partners. We are having quite -- some stretches to be executed for this year. And please bear in mind that the A-Nord runs under different compensation scheme. So it's not a classical fixed price contract. This is a cost-plus fee contract we are running on with the bonus-malus system at the very end of the project, mainly incentivized is the budget, which we have agreed together with Amprion and the time line with the end of construction at the end of 2026. And not only looking at where we do A-Nord, because already the next large DC underground cable systems are inside. So after the corridor A-Nord, which is sketched in blue on the very top of this graph, you can already see corridor B, which we are negotiating already today with Amprion. This will be a project that will follow up on the corridor A-Nord project immediately in 2027, 2028. So as you can see, not only Amprion is putting large projects on the market, but also the other TSOs like TenneT, they are planning also major projects, which will be executed up to [ 2032 ]. And yes, maybe leaving the electrical market again and jumping into the hydrogen market, Friedrich Vorwerk is already participating in the first hydrogen projects here in Germany. We are running under the framework contract with [indiscernible] to upgrade the pipeline system, leading from Bremen towards Hamburg. Our job is to inspect the valve stations of that pipeline and change all those make all our stations and all peaking stations fit for the later use of hydrogen. So hydrogen can later on be transported from Denmark towards the city of Bremen. And again, we are again active on the Get H2 Nukleus project, where we have already in 2020 and 2021 constructed the first stretch of the Get H2 Nukleus pipeline, connecting the chemical plant of Evonik towards the BP refinery in Gelsenkirchen. Now this pipeline system will be expanded towards Lingen where RWE is setting up a -- the first stage, 100-megawatt electrolyzer, in the second stage 200-megawatt electrolyzer. And this electrolyzer will be connected to the pipeline. And we as, Friedrich Vorwerk, have already awarded -- been awarded a contract by RWE to construct the balancing of the plant for the large-scale electrolyzer being located in Lingen. Third project, I want to highlight is the Hamburg [ wind ] project, which will be an industrial grid for hydrogen in the very future. Roughly 60 kilometers of pipeline grid, mainly focused on the harbor area of Hamburg. And in the middle of it, a large-scale electrolyzer with a capacity of 100 megawatts being located directly at the old coal power station of [ Moberg ] in the region of the harbor. We have already been awarded the contract here to supply the first pipeline systems, forming the future harbor grid for the use of hydrogen. That's it from my side for the business update. And I think we got through quite quickly so that will give us quite some time for Q&A hereafter. Thanks for listening.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Mr. Kleinfeldt and Mr. Hameister. So we will now move on to Q&A session. So for a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask questions in person via audio line [Operator Instructions]. Who are your main competitors for the upcoming major projects in the electricity sector?

Yes. First of all, of course, we still see our competitors that we have been accompanied by for many years in the pipeline construction business. So privately owned companies like [indiscernible] from Belgium are, of course, also entering the cable-laying market but also larger construction companies like [ Strabag ] and [ Max Bögl ] are taking on some of the projects in the cable laying business at the moment.

So further question, what synergies are there between the segments? Are there any structural differences between the segments that cause higher or lower profitability?

No, in general, we do not see any differences between our core markets. It's very project specific, depending on the complexity of the project. And also, of course, depending on the competitive situation for each project. But I would not see any general difference in margin between the markets at the moment.

We will now have a virtual hand by Lukas Spang. So please go ahead and ask your questions.

I would like to start with the topic of entry this year. So you showed us this slide with the upcoming orders or projects in the next year, and there's also the SuedLink, which is for 2024 in the graph. So what is your expectation in terms of order entry this year? And what is your expectation concerning the SuedLink project? Do you see any chance to realize and maybe the complete project or the entry for this year or maybe part of it. Yes, that would be my first question.

Well, in general, [indiscernible] and West Link were at the moment tendered by the TSO, TenneT. It's -- both projects are divided in roughly 28 lots. We are looking at some lots, which are very close to our branch offices. So more or less focusing on the lots, which are located in the north of Germany. But we will definitely not be able to take on the whole SuedLink or the whole [indiscernible] at least not for the civil contractors -- contract. As you know, we have already received a contract for cable laying and cable logistics for SuedLink in the joint venture. So these activities will also start in the second half of this year. But for the similar contracts being tendered out by TenneT, we'll definitely look only at very interesting lots at the moment since -- due to the corridor, our workload for the next 2 years is already pretty good in the electricity sector.

And in general, your expectation for order entry this year?

Well, it strongly depends on how the customers are really putting the contracts out already this year or if they shifted to next year. So we are in very close negotiations with Amprion for the corridor B, for example, so if they would at the contract also already this year, then, of course, we would see another huge order intake this year. If they are not as quick -- I mean, we have some experience with A-Nord, we expected the order to be in 2021, and we finalized it in the end of 2022. So it could be that we see another large order intake only in 2025.

And then related to these low-margin project, can you quantify how much of the revenues were related to these projects in 2023?

Yes. So relating to these legacy projects, you can assume a [ mid-double-digit million euro ] revenue from those projects in 2023. And looking forward around EUR 90 million still attributable to those projects for the first half of 2024.

I know you touched already the topic of CapEx. Can you also quantify that in more -- little bit more specific, what is your expectation for this year? And if you can also comment on the years afterwards.

So our CapEx target for this year would be in the range of EUR 25 million to EUR 27 million. And we do not have specific guidance for the upcoming years.

EUR 25 million to EUR 27 million?

Yes.

So -- and then we will move on with the questions from Lasse.

I just want to follow up on cash flow. You had quite a big working capital unwind in Q4, which is typical for the business. But just looking longer term, structurally speaking, where do you see working capital developing to, I guess, with the bigger projects coming? You're getting some advanced payments for those. So I'm just wondering how you're thinking of working capital as a percentage of sales in the next 2 to 3 years?

Lasse, glad you joined today. As we said, we included -- and a lot of project contracts, we did include advanced payment losses, especially for the in-house project, and we will try to include those projects also for the other upcoming large-scale projects which should result in a relatively lower working capital to sales ratio as we have seen in 2022, for example. And there's no specific guidance out here.

And one other question. Can you give an update on the personnel situation? And how you plan on talking about for the next few years?

Well, the labor market here in Germany is still very tight. We see a bit of relaxation concerning the blue-colored workers. So some of the work stuff in the regular construction business being said free since regular construction, this is going down in Germany. We have set up a crew to attract personnel from outside Germany to our company. So they been starting working -- after Eastern they will be starting to work after Eastern. So we think that we will have no problems in sourcing blue-colored workers for the upcoming years. Problem is more on the project management, construction management height. So far, but maybe that's a seasonal effect. We see that -- some people are coming on the market, but if that's really sustainable, we don't know yet. It's still a big issue, especially with large projects and organic growth is, of course, limited by the numbers of employees we can source.

And just one more on that. What -- you mentioned sort of raw material costs coming down, what should we -- how should we think about where age inflation for 2024?

Very hard to say at the moment. I mean, negotiations for the -- between -- are still ongoing at the moment. We have seen in other industries to have like 8% or 10% of wage increase since our contracts are being negotiated together with the regular construction industry. My hope is that we will end up between 5% and 6%. But in the end, we don't know the outcome yet. We have taken some provisions in our estimations for the upcoming years. So I think at the moment, talking about estimations we -- for future projects, we are on the safe side, looking at the wage inflation in Germany at the moment.

So now we will come back to the questions from our chat box. So some of them are already answered, but some of them not. So -- one is considering the guidance for 2024 seems to be conservative especially on the margin side, what key risks have you built into this guidance? And is it possible to reach an EBIT margin by 10% to 12% until 2025?

Yes. Maybe, first of all, of course, it's still our target to regain the double-digit EBIT margin. Obviously, we will not do that in 2024, but still it would be the target for the mid- to long term again. And regarding the short-term guidance, please keep in mind that 1 large project contributing to the revenue is the A-Nord project, which base margin is slightly below the average margin of recent years, due to the more favorable risk profile we see in this contract structure. And on the other hand side, the guidance also reflects some kind of liability for the uncertain part with regard to the bonus-malus system and [indiscernible] contract, which is only determined at the end of the project meeting in 2026.

Another question, given that the main investments for the large orders on hand have already been made, what would be the average investment needs for 2024 until 2026?

So we typically see in the next years investments in the range of 4% to 4.5% to renew regularly their equipment. And we'll see on top of that, also growth investments but not an amount we've invested the last 3 years.

What is the maximum sales business volume that you could handle with the current organization?

Yes. I would say, of course, always depending on the prices, but we have seen in the past that with own staff, we have on board at the moment, we would be capable of bringing revenue of somewhere around EUR 400 million per year. But even to achieve this, we still need to get some more people on board this year. And I do expect that looking up in the future, we might be able to grow our staff maybe by 3% to 4% given the current condition of the labor market.

So by now, we have one question left. So at this point, this is the final reminder the open topics you would like to discuss. So the question is, can you already give a qualitative indication where the bonus system of the A-Nord projects will be in 2024 and 2025?

No, in general, the bonus will be paid out at the end of the project because the main incentives are project budget and also the time line to get the project finished. So get the corridor -- the cable into operation. So we are only sure about the extent of the bonus in 2026 when the project is completed. That's why Tim already elaborated that we will put some reservations on the project until 2026. So we will not show the whole bonus for 2024 and 2025.

And as we did not receive any further questions in the meantime, we, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining and your showing interest and [indiscernible]. So should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations or us from Montega. And a big thank you, also to you, Mr. Kleinfeldt, to Mr. Hameister for the time you took to get us through the presentation and to answer all these questions. So from my side, I wish you all a lovely remaining day and hand over again to Mr. Kleinfeldt for some final remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much for managing this. And yes, I think we are having some absolute great times in front of us. All of our markets are as big as they've never been before, and I've never witnessed it in my life in this industry. So I think with the energy transition, there will be a lot of work coming in over the next years. And the only limitation we have at the moment is workforce. And we will be working on this issue in numerous directions. So not only in organic growth, but also still looking at M&A target. And hopefully, together with you, we can grow this company under these circumstances a lot more. And so stay with us and hope to hear from you soon. Thanks a lot for listening.