Greenyard NV (GREEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. Welcome to this analyst call -- this investor call. Excuse us for the technical delay. In this meeting room, we are present myself, Nicolas De Clercq, CFO of the company; and Francis Kint, CEO of the company. We will first go through the highlights of the half year results and through more financial details. And at the end, we are open for questions. Francis, may I pass the word to you.

Thank you, Nicolas. First, we'll go through the real highlights, the 4 main KPIs. Starting with the top line, of course. Our top line went up by 6.1%, which we are rejoicing. And so, we go up to a level of EUR 2.6 billion. And interesting is to see that it's driven by about 0.5% volume components and half of price components. It's slightly different in the 2 divisions, as I will explain later and also Nicolas will do a dive-in because, of course, analysis of this top line growth is important for us to really understand. Together, with the top line came also the adjusted EBITDA which increased by 4.6%, landing at EUR 94.4 million. And we would say that we're on track to reach the guidance that we have made some years ago about the accounting year '25-'26, we say that we would land above the EUR 200 million. For us, this is a very important mark in the future. And of course, we judge ourselves on the path if we're still on that path of EUR 200 million. Now the third point must be said is that due to restructuring costs and higher depreciation, the net results of EUR 1.2 million remains below the level of last year. It has to do with nonrecurring items that Nicolas will go through in detail because it's an important element of what has happened and also in the management of the future. Good news is that our net financial debt continues to drop now this time by 11.2% to EUR 280 million. And this, despite the impact of increasing inventories and the acquisition of this company Creme de la Creme, very quickly increasing inventories, has to do with our Long Fresh segment, where the inflation of '22-'23 clearly has increased the value per tonne or per kilogram of that inventory that we need to finance. The acquisition of Creme de la Creme, I will come back to. There's been some press releases about it, but I'll be happy to give some more comments. So of course, taking some attitude because this is the common denominator of our results in the 2 divisions. I would say that the first good news is that fruit and vegetables remained a very solid traffic driver in all retail segments. I would even say and I'll see it on the next slide that probably our preferred partners, retail partners are above the market. So they're gaining market share, which is good news for us. But in general, of course, we see that with all the efforts on healthy living and on healthy nutrition, we see that the fruit and veg is a driver for these retailers. And they are themselves putting more and more emphasis on promoting that part of the categories that we're selling. The next point is a long phase, but to say that it wasn't that easy though to operate in the first half of 2024 had to do with the stuff that all the companies that you're analyzing probably are doing with the difficult geopolitical circumstances. And some uncertainty that it gives to consumers, but also supply chain and weather conditions throughout the group. Weather conditions, I'm thinking more about what happened in Europe, supply chain issues. I'm telling all about also what happened in, I would say, the global situation on container deliveries and Nicolas will say a few words about that later. But so it doesn't be easy to operate. But I think we can say that through strong operational performance, we were able to keep our service levels at the highest levels. And we're in the high-volume business for products that are fresh for most part, that are very important for our customers. The service levels are very important. We can say that we've done that. And when we will say that we've been able sometimes to increase our prices in difficult supply chain circumstances being able to deliver is the best argument to increase your prices. Nicolas will speak a little bit later about the restructuring efforts that we're doing currently this year in order to prepare ourselves for next year and which we have summarized here by further streamlining the group. So we need to be able to work better with less people. The third bullet point has to do with our CapEx. We continue to invest all over the place. We've taken out 2 examples because they're quite speedy of the things that we'd like to do in the future. We've taken 2 examples because there are examples that come with a fairly high cost and important CapEx projects for us. The first one is in prepared. We're implementing a carton and packaging line. Tin and glass is, of course, is a category that starts to be a little bit old-fashioned that we will use. And so we have to modernize that category. Shelf stable, by the way, of course, has a future. It's part of what people have in their houses. But of course, by implementing carton packaging with better communication possibilities, we'll be able to rejuvenate or rejuvenate that category. The second one that I'd like to mention is a big cap we had in the northern part of France, where in 1 of our 9 frozen factories. We've increased the capacity by about 60%, which is fully up and running right now. It's in the northern part of France where we see because it's a big area where we really can see that we have big, let's say, possibilities to also expand the sourcing of raw materials. And that is the plan that we decided to where we should increase our capacity. A quick word about Crème de la Crème, we've communicated about it. It all came with the acquisition of the Gigi, which was a producer of vegan ice. So it's non-dairy ice which we see as a clearly growing segment in the market. It's a small item. It's never going to be the biggest volume drivers. But for sure, it's going to be a profit driver. As you know, we make a nice margin on these products and we see that there's more and more appeal for non-dairy ice. And because of the extremely appealing recipes that we have in Gigi, we'll be launching on the market. But at the same time, we thought the production was outsourced that for the long future, we needed to have our own production capability. And this company, Creme de la Creme happened to be a Belgian company that had themselves been developing vegan ice for 25 years. So we also take on 25 years of let's say, know-how on that. And you see on the right-hand side, our Gigi products, which have found a lot of appeal during the summer. It wasn't, in all honesty, the greatest summer. It was quite a wet summer, but we saw clear attraction for that product. I'll make some comments about the 2 segments before leaving into Nicolas. But if you look at the Fresh segments, there, our sales growth of top line in euros is mainly thanks to volume, 4.5%, but also thanks to price. The good news is there that we see that our ICR customers, ICR is for Integrated Customer Relationships. It's a word we kind of defined a little bit to explain how we work in a more and more integrated manner with our retail customers and are moving from a more trading model to a cooperative model. And I would even go as far as to say, I think in the Fresh segment, certainly, we prefer to have less customers than more in the sense that we like to increase our market share within these customers in order for us to become more and more important for them. And to have this switch of mentality, we're working together on the build-out of the fruit and veg category, which they all, by the way, claim, we're not saying it is enough for screener. They will all claim it's the first phase we have with all our customers, meaning fruit and vegetables, is the most important one. It used to be only for the traditional supermarkets. But now we're also seeing the discounters stating fruit and veg for us is a traffic builder. That's the thing we want to focus on. And we need a strong partner to have the best assortment on the shelves. On the third bullet point, you see the word convenience. Now in all fairness, we use internally the word convenience for all the products by which we make consuming food, healthy fruit and vegetables more convenient. And that is, of course, different products in the Fresh segment than in the Long Fresh segment. Here, we're focusing very much on what we call meal kits. It's something that we started in the country that we're rolling out, which is to bring together, call it a little bit of a HelloFresh concept, but offered [Technical Difficulty] in cart box of all the necessary ingredients for a particular recipe. So that you don't have to go through the entire shop in order to gather all you need for your [Technical Difficulty]. So it gives, let's say, this means to come at home and to be able to cook a healthy meal in a very short period of time. And we see an incredible boom, of course, will be copied. But in the meantime, the volumes that we're producing on that product are so huge that we've been able to centralize the production and automate them. And frankly, we have quite some years of advance on the products, which you will see more and more yourself in supermarkets on the shelves. Last, good progress in Fresh. We definitely had some breaks in the supply chain, especially you've heard about ships having to come from India, having to go around the Cape. It wasn't a very good year for maritime transport, which led to some quality issues. And in one particular, which is our big warehouse, by the way, which is the recipient of overseas products. We definitely had more people there than normal to sort out the lower quality and it has cost us money. That's for sure. When it comes to streamlining cost structures in France, it has to do with the fact that we decided to close the unit that we have closed [indiscernible] closed to Paris. And then we will service these markets from Italy and from Belgium. So we'll be able to cut out complete cost of one plant. So it's definite streamlining of our cost structure. And also in Germany, we have closed the distribution center in Neunkirchen. We had one close by. I think so for us, the biggest steps that we can do in cost structure decrease are to do the same thing within less DCs or less plants. That's a brief summary on Fresh. We're going to move to the Long Fresh segment. I know that, of course, it's something that I'd like to remind you. Obviously, Fresh is 80% of our turnover and Long Fresh 20%. But when you would look at invested capital, it's really a 50-50 thing. So we are as much a Long Fresh company than a Fresh company when it comes to invested capital. Of course, invested capital is a little bit higher in the long fresh brands, in the frozen and prepared brands. There, the story is a little bit different in the sense that we still see sales growth, so euro sales growth is 4.1%. But there, it definitely has to do with price. I'll say something about it in a moment. But we need to put the things as they are, slightly negatively compensated by decreased volume. Let me make some explanations on that. Price is still very positive because we still see the inertia of the last 2 years. I was reminded this morning in my car that the war in Ukraine started exactly 1,000 days ago. That's where we started to see big inflation in principally energy, but of course, all the energy-consuming industries. And it definitely has brought a lot of our components, the inputs for producing frozen prepared, of course, an activity that uses a lot of energy. And we've been able to pass on these costs during '22-'23 better and better. It's really only in '23 that we got the full benefit of this price increase. And you now see the further inertia of these prices because there's always a time lag, let's be honest, but asking price increases and obtaining them. But now we see, of course, the inertia that we still have in the first half of '24. So it's very good news, but negatively compensated by the decrease of volume. It's certainly not a structural thing. Also there, I would put 2 reasons behind it is we had an extremely let's say, a bad autumn last year. So what you cannot source, you can't process and you can't sell later. So definitely, especially in our Prepared division, there are some products on which we are particularly strong like salsifies and small potatoes. We've not been able to source and not been able to deliver later. That's one of the reasons. And in all fairness, I think that the whole industry after 2 years of inflation price increases has to adapt itself a little bit. We need to land the business. We need to do it in a smart way. And so we're going to have to regain these volumes later, but consider it as a bit of a transition year. Also there, maybe as a total, we see some slight volume decrease. But we definitely see our convenience sales in frozen and prepared in frozen, it's more ready meals. In prepared, it's more sauces and dips that we're strong in. But we see these further increasing, which is not only good news because you can put in, of course, a lot of innovation in it, the differentiated products and their products with better margin. I talked about the capacity expansion that we can do. Maybe another thing to say is that in the frozen division, especially, we still buy a lot from other parties in the market. So we definitely have a lot of potential expansion of our own production on the base of the products that we're already selling today. I realize it's a complicated phrase. I hope you understand it. Higher production costs due to lower product yields was definitely there. We went through 3 bizarre years. The year '22 was very late with a very late spring. '23 was very dry and '24 was very wet. So definitely, we enter into these special years. But we cannot highlight the fact that product yields on the fields were lower that we had to cope with that. But this is a little bit what happened in the 2 segments and I will leave it now for Nicolas.

Thank you, Francis. First of all, I would like to take you through the ESG results. On carbon oxide and carbon footprint, we are very good in progress. Currently, we have more than 60% of renewable energy due to switch to renewable energy in Poland, Germany and Belgium. Investments in solar panels on our rooftops are ongoing. We are working on a windmill project in Bree in our prepared factory. We are looking at a windmill project or another windmill project in our distribution center in [indiscernible] we'd like to sell in the market. So we are definitely made sure that we will reach our CO2 targets. On the water, nevertheless, on water, nevertheless, we had last year quite a good saving of more than 100,000 cubic meters versus our referenced year '21. But this year was quite -- we used a lot of water. Vegetables came quite dirty from the fields with a lot of muds. So we had a lot of them have to wash 2 times before into the production plants in frozen and veg and prepared. Coming years, we are confident that we will reach our water project or our water target due to the fact that we will conclude in 2 important factories as well. Big water purification systems that we will have in a more water as a service project. And that will reduce our water usage with more than 500,000 cubic meters within 2 years. So that will also help to reach our long-term targets. Waste, we had a bit more waste this year as well, also due to the climate and the conditions that the vegetables came from the field. So we had a lot more cleaning to do a lot more cleaning, to do a lot more cutting to have the good parts of the vegetables out of the vegetables so that we had not waste as well. That was sent to biogas installations and to animal food. So we are also maximum, reusing the waste that we have and the bio of course, helps us in our CO2 targets. Packaging, we are already at 99.6% recyclable. So that we will -- also there, we are confident to reach the target to reach 100% within 2 years that we will absolutely reach with all the packaging we have. And a responsible sourcing that means having -- making sure that our farmers respect all the SDGs, the sustainable development goals in high-risk and medium countries where you need certificates. As from 2027, we have, of course, also the corporate social due diligence directive that we have to audit ourselves. So also there, we are working very hard to reach those targets in the coming year and years. When we take a bit more deep dive on the results, immediately on the left-hand side above, you see the sales increase, 2.3% in Q1. The sales increased a bit more in Q2 with 3.9%. So the second quarter was a better quarter than the first relatively, but the growth was fast relatively. 2.4% was from price, 2.9% from volume. The volume component was especially in the Fresh segment, we will see it later on. The price component was especially in the Long Fresh segment, but also partly in fresh. The other 0.8% is mainly due to service activities that we do for customers for handling the logistics supply of the customer without having the goods going through the P&L. So service fees are in the other category increased as well with 0.8% due to a new customer in Germany. This led to an increase of the EBITDA of 4.6% from EUR 90.3 million to EUR 94.4 million. Not the revenue increase not fully translated and EBITDA increased mainly due to the already named extra costs we had due to the quality of the produce was one of the main reasons. And EBITDA margin went slightly down from 3.6% to 3.5%. Also there, we see a difference; the quality of the produced and the extra efforts we had to do was mainly in the fresh segment. So you saw there a decrease of 2.6% to 2.5%. In Long Fresh, Frozen and prepared, we saw an increased EBITDA from 8.2% to 8.6%, mainly thanks to the increased production efficiency and combined with also price increases. Net financial debt went strongly down to EUR 280.7 million. Nevertheless, we had an inventory increase, excuse me, an inventory increase of EUR 33.4 million. But even with that our working capital was quite good. And we were below 2x again also on the half year results. And for the people who know us better know that on a half year basis, our inventory is slowly reaching its peak by end of October, mid-November, our inventory levels reach its peak. So also the net financial debt reaches a peak by end of October, mid-November. So the 1.92x at the end of September, which is close to our peak net debt. Net result however did not benefit from the stronger operational result, mainly due to the fact that we are currently streamlining the operation further to absolutely make sure that we reach our guidance and our targets in '25-'26. So we took the provision to close down Fresh France will be closed down by the end of February, March next year. So it will not hurt our P&L anymore in the coming year. And we also closed one distribution center in Munich. There is not the question of leaving the country, Germany, for example, it's streamlining the German operations. We announced last year, we had extra customers with [indiscernible] and the head shops, for example. But there, we can see -- we can reach more efficiency in German operations by streamlining. So the EUR 4.5 million restructuring costs with a bit higher depreciation, mainly due to the investment in increased capacity in Long Fresh and partly in Fresh the citrus line in one of our divisions that would help to keep the product ultra-fresh and lengthen the shelf life because if the product is not good enough, we send it to the juice line and no longer to the shop line, helped by more sorting artificial intelligence on the pictures that are taken from all the citrus to predict the shelf life. So these investments were done in the last calendar year and now the depreciation we see the impact. Taxes slightly higher due to the fact that we last year in September, we could book another some deferred tax assets opportunity currently at the end of September, leading to a bit higher taxes leading to EUR 1 million. Looking to the global P&L, gross profit margin increased mainly thanks to the lower fresh segment from 7.8% to 7.9%, but increased costs led to adjusted EBITDA of EUR 94.4 million, EUR 4.1 million better. But if you compare us to our peers, we cannot forget that we are doing it quite well when you do a peer comparison for the first 6 months. Depending on the period that the first 6 months of the year or the second half year where 6 months. When we do the comparison with our peers, we have splendid results on the sales level, but also the adjusted EBITDA evolution. Net profit is lower than expectation for the analysts, mainly due to the fact that it -- when you look at an adjusted net profit excluding reorganization. And it's purely looking at operational results, it's quite good. But we are making sure that we can continue to deliver good operational results and cash flow by preparing the organization and streamlining the organization. When we now have a look at the segments, you will see here a bit more detail from already told our integrated customer relationships do work quite well. And we will grow further to close to 80% of our revenue in the Fresh segment is ECR, where we see in some customers, even the double-digit growth of the volumes, volume really helps here at the 6.5%. So there you see that the model works. And we can outgrow the normal market share with those customers what we our relevant market share of the vegetables is higher than the normal market share of the customer by our easier relationship. Also, a slightly positive price effect of 1.4% and higher service sales, onetime extra labor cost due to the quality of the produced asset and also, we had a very bad flower season in the beginning of the year. First, Easter was booked last year because it was last weekend of March. So the Easter came into last accounting year. And secondly, tulips are very important for the German market for the base for the German market which we had very bad tulip season in the Netherlands due to the weather conditions and the bumps were even in the ground, leading to a lot less flowers. And flowers have a nice margin and that led also to a bit pressure on the margin percentage in the fresh business, leading to the 2.5%, combined with mostly increased labor costs due to the quality of the produced. In Long Fresh, sales increased with 4.5%. Thanks to the price increase of 6.5%. And that's more like Francis clearly explained, is an annualization impact of previous price increases that had a further impact in the results of in Long Fresh and some transport costs that we could recharged to our customers, partially lower volumes, 4.3%, mainly due to the fact we see that more as a onetime hit. We are the market leader in Europe, for example, for salsifies. Salsifies has a lot of -- we lack salsifies. We let salsifies on the field because we could not harvest them due to the weather conditions in January until March, leading to less produced, leading to less production, leading to less sales. We also had it with small potatoes. The fields were so wet that they worked with machines with bigger seeds leaving or harvesting only the big potatoes and leaving the small potatoes on the field due to the wet circumstances. So also there, we had some impact from the weather conditions. And also we saw that we could keep the price. But we also see in prepared, for example, that the canning business is not a growing business anymore on the long term. And therefore, the investment in third packaging line and that's a much more modern packaging for vegetables and peas and so on that we have. Carton packaging also called -- is the brand name of the carton packaging. And we see that really as a new packaging method and that's more modern, lighter as well, less CO2 impact because it's lighter in transportation. The shelf space is smaller. It's cheaper in production and so on. And it's much more modern for the customer in Scandinavian markets, for example, the Tetra packaging is already replaced 80% of the canning business. Thanks to the price and the efficiency, EBITDA rose by EUR 3.8 million in fresh and that we have further margin improvement initiatives there and what's called improvement plans to further increase the margin in the future despite some higher marketing investments of strategic that we already talked about. Margin increases nicely to 8.6% this year. When we have now a look a bit more deeper dive on the capital allocation and the leverage. You will see here, I'm looking now to the third line of the free cash flow statement, the working capital, a lot higher, a bit higher factoring. Thanks to a new customer, but that's the minor part of the increase of EUR 26 million is mainly due to also working hard on the working capital on the receivables side on the as well. So that led to a much higher free cash flow compared to the year before. And we keep on investing in expansion, as you can see, a bit less maintenance compared to last more in expansion. And expansion is our definition of increasing the product lines and increasing the production capacity. For example, when you install a new engine room, what we are currently doing in England. That has a lot of benefits on CO2 and has a return on its output that we see as a purely maintenance investment expansion is already what we did in France, for example, increasing our capacity frozen plant. We had some share buyback as well, treasury shares for EUR 4.3 million. But that program ended somewhere mid-October. So now so in the second half of the year, you will see minor cash flow shares. On the right-hand side of the page, you also see the impact of increased inventory increase in volume in fresh vegetables you will see figures rounded figures, EUR 4.1 billion revenue in fresh only has a bit around EUR 50 million, EUR 55 million inventory. EUR 1 billion revenue is currently EUR 452 million inventory around, give or take, 40%. So you will see the impact on prepared in the middle green color, prepared EUR 122.5 million, a bit less inventory due to we talked about the quality of the produced and less, potatoes less. In frozen, you will see a nice increase. We are spread over a lot more countries. And we have a lot of peas and green beans. So there you see that inventory increases a bit. But nevertheless, the increase of the inventory of EUR 33.4 million. You see a very nice decrease of the leverage ratio for the first time on half year that on a half year basis, our debt is a bit higher on the half year result for the first time since more than 5 years. We are below 2 leverage ratio. At that point, we reached for the first time in end of March as well on an end of year basis. Our current forecast and prediction is that we are going to sustain that level in the coming periods without external factors, of course, coming periods below the 2x leverage, which helps also our financial debt. And then you see the bridge where does our cash flow goes from. This is a 12-month graph. So you see we don't pay EUR 60 million CapEx for 6 months. So it's comparing really with the same period last year, same period, so 30th of September '23 compared to 30th September '24. First normalized for the lease component, IFRS-16 that you really see the financial debt, the bank definition. Good operational result, of course, decreases and good net working capital, which was negative last year. And then the CapEx paid EUR 60 million. Second is, of course, interest that we have to pay and thirdly, the taxes that we have to pay, which are the main buckets. Just to finalize very quickly, for those who follow us longer, you should have seen this slide before. And that was a result of a strategic exercise we've done at the end of '21. It's good to see that these are still our strategic goals for this year and the next years in what the document that we had called at that time, Strategy 2030.

Basically, that's the way that we drive our management to focus on 6 important things on which we want to excel. These are the 6 battles that we want to win, the 6 things on which we want to be better and create our bottom line. Of course, we start at the left-hand side with health and sustainability. We like to say that we're in the heart of positive change. We're promoting pure-plant foods. We're promoting healthy fruit and vegetables. And of course, we want to offer them in a way that is convenient, as I explained. The second particularity of our strategy is these unique ICR relationships that we want to have. So I even said quite strongly, I prefer to have less customers, but to be more -- have a bigger market share within each of the big retailers. I think I've explained that. A third element that is becoming more and more important. I think Nicolas expressed very much the way that we need to cope with weather conditions, with climate change. It is going to be more and more important in the future to have this growing expertise and network with growers. And we've called it obviously to make the symmetry with integrated customer relationship. We call it integrated grower relationships. It has to do with the fact that we more and more like to work with cooperatives of course. So we can steer our common business in a certain direction. The fourth pillar is impactful innovation. It has to do with these convenience products that we're trying to launch products with more differentiation and innovation and higher margins, of course. And of course, GG is an example of that, how we have identified the vegan ice as a small segment but growing segment within a huge and profitable ice category. The fifth one being operational excellence. I'm going to segment that in 2 parts. First, of course, Nicolas expressed the work that we're doing on making the operational KPIs better and better. We've talked about closing certain distribution centers, operate from others. Of course, if you can do the same thing with a better footprint, we definitely keep more on the bottom line. And the second segment of that operational excellence is what still lays before us. We can still see that, of course, we've got a history as all companies. We have historical, let's say, footprints. But we still have a lot of potential in automating certain steps that are done currently manually. We still have a lot of people displacing products from A to B without adding value. And of course, step by step with CapEx will come also the benefits from automation. The sixth element pillar that is extremely important is our people. You will hear us from other people also. We need to make sure that within our plan and distribution center, we've got talent. And we've got the people to hands to work and we need to work hard to attract them and to retain them. We've summarized it with performance and union culture. We need performance. We're a low-margin business. We definitely need performance to follow up on the performance. But again, we like to think and we are a safe haven for a lot of people, also people with lower skills. And we are a safe haven where they can have a fun job to work so that they would stay with us. And so create a further diverse talent pool is extremely important. So these are the 6 pillars of our strategy. And I will end with the last slide, whereby we are confirming the outlook that we've done some years ago that our ambition for the fiscal year '25-'26 to end with EUR 5.4 billion of sales with an adjusted EBITDA from EUR 200 million to EUR 210 million. With that, I make a pause and wait for questions.

Thank you, Francis. Thank you, Nicolas. You can indeed now ask your question in the Q&A section of this webcast. So we will wait for a few seconds. But there might be a slight delay and to see if there's questions popping up. I will then read them out loud to our senior management. We have a first question that came in. I will read it out loud and then Nicolas or Francis, you can see who answers the question. ICR sales in fresh went up from 78% to 79%. Is that because you do more with the same client? Or did the number of ICRs increase? How many ICRs do you have and how much of that 79% is covered by the top line?