Gurit Holding AG (GURN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Gurit Half Year 2022 Results Conference Webcast. I am Alice, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be immediately followed by Q&A session where questions can be posted by the ongoing conference call. As an analyst or journalist, you can receive the necessary dial in details by registering at investor@gurit.com. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Mitja Schulz, CEO, Gurit Group. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. I welcome you to the presentation of our first half 2022 results. I'm here in Gurit's corporate office in Zurich, together with my colleague, Philippe Wirth, our CFO. Let's have a look at today's agenda. I will start by providing you a business update, highlighting the key events in the first half of the year. Philippe will provide details on the financials before I will wrap up and give you our view on the outlook for the full year. Following the presentation, we have scheduled a Q&A session. Let me begin with the highlights of the first half. Gurit achieved revenue of CHF 234.8 million, which was impacted by a lower demand for rotor blades of our Western wind customers. The operating profit margin of the first half is 8.4%, excluding the gain on the divestment of the aero business and adjusted for restructuring and impairment charges. The adjusted operating profit margin is 2% of net sales. The operating margin is negatively influenced by 3 factors: Inflation of costs for raw materials, energy and freight, ramp-up costs in our new plants in India and Mexico and the lower demand for wind blade molds of our Western customers. As an immediate countermeasure, we have initiated a dedicated cost-out program, which I will introduce to you later in the presentation. While the wind market sees challenges, our lightweighting business continues to exceed our expectations. We saw a strong double-digit growth in both the marine and industrial segments with healthy margins in the first half of the year and anticipate the similar performance in the second half. As separately communicated, Gurit divested its aerospace business earlier this year. And in April we announced acquisition of 60% of Fiberline Composites to complement our wind product portfolio. This was an important enabler on our trajectory to serve our wind blade customers as a full solution provider. We see some headwinds and uncertainties in the wind industry. We are addressing these with additional measures and continue to execute our strategy 2025. I will highlight a few examples on the coming slides. We inaugurated our new wind campus in Chennai and successfully launched production. We booked the first revenues in June and now ramping up the capacity, so far flawless and without major hiccups. A great job by our teams. What makes Chennai special is that we combine all our different wind businesses underneath one roof. Mold making, PET extrusion, engineered core material kits and from October this year onwards also carbon pultruded profiles. In addition we take advantage of the availability of highly talented engineers and strengthen our local R&D and technology teams. Consequently we already made the necessary decisions to increase our manufacturing capacities on-site and extend the wind campus at Chennai. Strengthening the non-wind business is part of our strategy. One of the main levers is to sell PET in multiple applications while using the economies of scale from the wind business. We continue to see an increasing strive towards sustainability that drive boat builders to use recycled PET foam as core material, same trends in other industry segments. Recycled PET being used in many architectures, building and transportation applications. We have the right product. We have the right footprint. We have a solid cost structure. This is one of the reasons why our marine and industrial business is currently growing faster than the market. A quick recap on the acquisition of the majority stake of Fiberline Composites. Fiberline is a manufacturer of glass and carbon fiber pultruded profiles for the wind industry, headquartered in Denmark with manufacturing sites in China and soon in India as I mentioned before. Fiberline strong R&D capabilities fit well to the Gurit DNA. Last year Fiberline achieved a revenue of roughly CHF 108 million, but the market for carbon pultruded profiles is growing strongly since blade manufacturers substitute glass fiber designs with carbon fiber spar caps as rotor blades become longer and their weight more critical for the turbine structures. Our aim is to triple the sales of the structural profiles business in the next years, which requires investments in additional capacities and footprint expansions to India and potentially North America. Consequently the business currently has a startup character, is not yielding targeted profitability yet and is demanding network and capital to support the growth. With the addition of Fiberline, Gurit's extended wind blade product portfolio, is unique in the industry. Gurit is now able to cover up to 50% of the blade value chain. This offers not only cross-selling and growth opportunities, but positions us technically as a leading supplier and development partner towards our customers. This marks an important step in our transition from a pure material and tooling supplier to a solution provider for our customers. Consequently we have continued our product innovation initiatives. The new OptiCore design platform which is now being validated by one of our key wind customers is one example and was acknowledged through research funding we received. We converted our site in Ringkobing, Denmark, into an R&D and technology hub for our wind blade customers and opened our new wind innovation center. You can see on the picture below, a snapshot from one of the mold elements, where we work together with multiple customers or new improved kitting designs. Considering our ESG performance in the first half of the year, we can claim that we are executing our sustainability strategy according to plan. Our health and safety campaign enabled us to achieve the lowest LTA ratio since the start of the program, which underlines that the health and safety of our employees is highest priority for us. Another highlight was the introduction of the One-Share-One-vote principle and the implementation of the single registered share in May, which is further strengthening Gurit's corporate governance. We anticipate that this will be reflected by improved ESG ratings going forward. That concludes the examples of first half business highlights. But before continuing with the financials, let's have a look at how Gurit responds to the market challenges we currently face. As an industrial company in general and with a strong wind industrial chain in particular, we are facing multiple headwinds. The first half was still impacted by COVID, leading to temporary plant closures and disruptions in China. We have no sites or critical business partners in Russia or the Ukraine and are not directly impacted by sanctions. But the indirect implications of the Ukraine war impacting us as many other industry companies resulting in excessive inflations of energy, raw material and freight costs. We see that our Western wind customers continues to struggle with their profitability, while the Chinese market has reached 2020 levels again, but with very aggressive pricing expectations. To tackle those challenges, we have initiated multiple countermeasures. We launched our Fit-for-Future program targeting reductions of indirect and SG&A costs primarily in high cost countries. As announced, we will consolidate our kitting footprint in Europe and relocate manufacturing from Denmark to Spain and Turkey. We further rightsized our manufacturing for balsa in Ecuador to reflect market demands, same as for manufacturing solutions in China and Canada. We already have a strong footprint and team in China that is addressing the market needs with corresponding design to market solutions. We have now implemented a more decentralized organization to empower our team in China, aiming to increase customer proximity and further reduce time to market. Tactically our team's focus on operational execution within all hands on deck mindset. We work to mitigate energy and raw material costs as good as possible, try to close the price cost gaps and set up a net working capital task force. And as explained before, we continue the execution of the main initiatives of our strategy 2025. This concludes the business update and I hand over to Philippe Wirth for an introduction of the healthier financials.

Thanks, Mitja. Let me start with the P&L and here with a quick summary on sales. Sales and materials include CHF 27.4 million of structural profile sets. Excluding these sales, the organic growth of materials is minus 2.5% and the group is declining 17.6%. The organic decline in material of minus 2.5% and the decline in kitting of 20.9% is the result of the reduced blade demand. In materials, the decline coming from the wind business has been offset by strong growth in our marine and industrial. Manufacturing solutions declined 43.7% compared to a record half year last year. We continue to see the low levels of sales in the Western world. On a very positive note, we see an increase of sales in the first half of 2022 versus the second half of 2021. The increase is coming from China, where blade manufacturing is picking up, but at much lower prices. In total, this led to the decline of the 17.6%. When we look at the P&L, obviously profits are impacted by the reduction of sales and increase of material expenses. But there are some special items that I would like to elaborate on. Gross profit margin is 6.4 percentage points below prior year. And as a reminder, last year included a CHF 4 million one-time balsa wood write-off. The decrease compared to prior year is mainly due to lower volume and mix, particularly manufacturing solutions. In manufacturing solutions, we lost CHF 4.9 million due to lower prices in China. Higher material and freight costs accounted for a net reduction of gross profit of CHF 3.5 million in the first half. EBITDA for the first half amounts to CHF 28.1 million. This includes a gain of CHF 18.3 million from our sales of the aero business and the restructuring expense of CHF 2.3 million to rightsize our organization to the current demand in the wind market. Excluding these items, our EBITDA is decreasing. And like on gross profit level, the reduction is due to lower volume and price as well as higher material costs. So now let's look at operating profit excluding these one-timers. Adjusted operating profit excludes the gain on the aero divestment, restructuring and impairment charges and amounts to CHF 4.6 million in the first half of this year compared to CHF 26 million last year in the same period. The next slide summarizes one more time the key drivers for this reduction. So compared to prior year, we lost CHF 14.9 million due to the reduced sales and due to lower manufacturing solutions in the sales mix. Then as mentioned earlier, we have experienced a significant price drop in China in our manufacturing solution business. We lost about CHF 4.9 million on sales and profit due to this. Next we have a CHF 3.5 million negative impact on operating profit due to raw material price increases. With a time lag, we expect to be able to pass most of it towards our customers, either through contractual obligations or renegotiations. And as Mitja elaborated before, our new India production facility started producing a couple of weeks ago. Here we are incurring ramp-up costs this year, while Mexico is improving compared to last year. In 2022 the impact of these ramp-ups is about CHF 5.6 million and last year it was CHF 4.7 million. The net effect of -- is a reduction in profit of CHF 0.9 million. After savings of CHF 2.8 million, which are mainly the result of our cost adjustment we made last year, we end up with an adjusted operating profit of CHF 4.6 million or 2% of sales. Together the acquisition of Fiberline and the sale of the aero business did not have a material impact on our adjusted operating profit. Okay. Now let's move to cash flow. In 2022 we experienced an increase of the average trade net working capital compared to prior year. In the graph, you see an average over the last 12 months. This is caused mainly by an average longer payment terms on receivables in the wind business. This is amplified by the reduction of tooling business in China with favorable prepayment terms. We also continue to experience inefficiencies in our inventory levels. First, we need higher safety stock to overcome supply chain disruptions and long lead times. Second, we experienced a much more volatile demand. Orders tends to be rescheduled or even canceled on short notice more frequently. And third, we have ramped up production in India. To counter these trends, we have put several initiatives and measures in place to bring the net working capital back to approximately 22% of sales. Capital expenditures amounted to CHF 6.7 million in the first half, CHF 4.8 million or more than 70% of it is related to capacity increase, mostly to our footprint expansion in India. For the year '22, we expect CapEx below CHF 15 million for the base business. This is significantly below prior years due to the finalized ramp-up in Mexico and India. In order to ramp-up the newly acquired structural profile business in India, we forecast CapEx of around CHF 5 million to CHF 7 million in the second half. So in total, for 2022, we expect CapEx in the range of up to CHF 20 million. Free cash flow, which equals to net cash flow from operations after capital expenditures amounted to minus CHF 19.2 million -- CHF 19.3 million. Compared to the previous year, we faced a lower EBITDA from operation and an adverse impact from the timing of cash receipts. To conclude on the financial, a couple of comments on the June balance sheet, which is more leveraged, as you know it from Gurit due to the acquisition of Fiberline. So net debt increased CHF 65.9 million, and this is a result of our acquisition and divestment that add net CHF 40.8 million and due to our cash flow performance. The equity ratio is 34%, and it is reduced to higher debt as described before, but also due to our accounting policy that nets goodwill from the new acquisition against our equity. Our return on net asset increased from December due to the gain on sale of the aero business. And with this, I hand back to Mitja.

Thank you, Philippe. And I'm going to continue with the outlook on the wind market driven by most recently enhanced commitments towards the growth of renewable energies and certainly impacted by an increasing mindset change as a result of the dependency on fossil-based energy from Russia, we remain convinced that the long-term growth perspective of wind energy is intact. Evaluating the midterm wind market outlook and referencing to the Q2 market outlook from Wood Mackenzie, there are a few observations I would like to highlight. China will drive the global installation growth. We anticipate already 60 gigawatt levels this year, growing gradually over the next few years. That underlines the relevance of the biggest wind energy market of the world and emphasizes the importance of China for Gurit and other global players. According to Wood Mack, new turbine installations in the Western markets are stagnating over the next 2 to 3 years. We think that the PTC extension, which was recently announced, will lead to a rebound of the North American installations, providing an upside to the numbers shown latest in '24. The growth rate for Europe seems reasonable with an upside potential in '24, depending on country-specific energy mix decisions as a result of the war in Ukraine. So overall, a positive midterm outlook with near-term uncertainties, driven by inflation effects in Europe and Americas. Let me conclude today's presentation. Our focus remains on operational execution to tackle inflation headwinds. I have explained to you the measures we have implemented. The Western wind market environment continues to be volatile near-term, but mid and long-term outlook expected to be strong, driven by most recent commitments towards renewable energy. Marine and industrial continues the strong growth trajectory, and the implementation of Gurit's Strategy 2025 is on track, referencing the examples I've shown to you at the beginning of the presentation. As full year outlook, we guide a net sales of CHF 500 million to CHF 530 million with an adjusted operating profit margin between 2% and 4%. As I've just explained in detail, we are convinced that the longer-term market outlook for wind energy remains intact. With our extended product portfolio, our manufacturing footprint and the execution of our strategy, Gurit is well positioned to benefit from the anticipated market growth. This ends our presentation. Thank you for joining us today. With this, I'm handing over to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you so much.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jorn Iffert with UBS.

And 2 to 3, if I may. The first one would be I believe on your growth outlook also 2023, '24, '25. You said China is very likely a key driver. At the same time, you are facing significant pricing pressure, more PET capacities coming into the market, which could further track on pricing. Do you -- what makes you confident you really can benefit from the rising volumes and pricing could track you down? This one may be the first question, please. And the second question, can you give us some more insights how Fiberline is developing at the moment? What is the growth outlook for this year year-over-year and also for next year? And what was the customer reaction on this acquisition? And the last question, if I may, on cash collection and the balance sheet, you have implemented net working capital task force. Do you see them as structural issues you need to take over the next 6 to 9 months? And also with your balance sheet and EBITDA, do you think some additional financing could be needed for the next 12 to 18 months when market turns a bit more slower?

Let me tackle the first 2 questions, I made some notes here. I mean, first, you asked about our view on the growth outlook. And then in particular, in China, how are we going to benefit? Well, first of all, I still think there is a lot of uncertainty right now in the market, and this is what we've also seen, and you certainly witnessed the presentations from our major customers as well. There is not a lot outlook right now about 23%. And I think the reason is, as I said, that there are a lot of near-term uncertainty still in the market in terms of how fast will, for example, the PTCs kick in, in the U.S., how fast will developers now, again, work on their pipelines and how long does it take until this trickles down in the supply chain? So we are today not really in the position to give a firm 2023 guidance because we are still working through that also with our key customers. But your second part of your question was, how are we going to participate from the anticipated growth in China, which is real as we see it because we see the volume numbers. And let me answer that in the following. As I also elaborated in the presentation, first of all, we think that you need to treat China separately. You need to strengthen your organization in China because China is a different world. It will be more and more difficult since no one can travel to interact with customers. And if you're not having a really strong organization in there, it is very difficult to have access to the customers. We have a very strong organization, and we basically deal with all Chinese OEMs and, let's say, with 90% of the blade makers in China. So I think that is, first of all, strength. Secondly, how are you unable to make money from that -- in that market where we know that price pressure is out there. And this is, I think, 2 elements. And we look right now, we have 20% to 25% market share in China, both for PET as well as for molds. That's a strong position. So that means we create, first of all, scale, economies of scale. And secondly, it is about being in the market and understanding the technical requirements in the market and conclude on design to cost solutions, which face or reflect the market expectations, which are lower than for Western customers in terms of technology expectations. So we develop dedicated products for the Chinese market with, for example, lower material properties to drive down costs and to create an environment which is still enabling us to make, I would say, a decent margin on these volumes. I think so both proximity and the ability to scale as well as designed to cost to reflect local market demand. This is, I would say, the key to successfully participate in China from the growth trajectory. Your second question was related to how is Fiberline -- how is Fiberline doing? As I said, the business is right now in a ramp-up phase. We call it in a start-up environment. That means we are right now investing, as Philippe also said, in the expansion of the footprint in India, that is not only CapEx, that's also OpEx because we need to hire people, we need to onboard an organization. We need to qualify a team there. So right now, the business is not profitable, but we expect that from next year onwards, we will achieve improvements there. Growth-wise, we see that the business is growing stronger than, let's say, the wind market itself. This was also our expectations. And the reason for that is that blade manufacturers are changing their new blade designs and gradually implementing carbon fiber profiles in these blade designs. The reaction from the customers was positive. There was not one negative word about the acquisition. I think customers see 2 major advantages. One is that we were really able to now ramp-up manufacturing in India. And you could argue that Fiberline alone would probably not have managed that in that speed. As I said, we are planning to have a start of production early Q4 this year for the first customer. So that was highly appreciated by customers. And secondly, customers see the, I would say, increased value add by integrating certain functionalities and capabilities Gurit as the whole group now has and the abilities of us now, better understanding technological challenges and translating those into solutions. This is what I'm always referring to as our transition towards an engineering partner and solution supplier and solution provider to our customers. And this is clearly acknowledged. But also here, yes, I mean, we are now a few months into that acquisition. There's obviously still some ways to go until we will really be able to have working and functioning simultaneous engineering processes with our customers in place, which then I think will yield also new products and solutions into Gurit portfolio. And third question, I would hand over to Philippe.

Yes. So you asked about our net working capital and what we are doing to bring this down to, I would say, an acceptable level of around 22% of sales gain. So 2 things we are doing. Obviously, we have to be more strict on cash collection. We have more frequent calls and look at our receivables and who is overdue. And we, unfortunately and that's what I also then mentioned on the inventory side, we unfortunately have to threaten more with delivery stops but with the negative impact on our inventory, right. But at the moment, that is unfortunately a little bit the trend in the wind industry that supply chain disruptions are accepted or have to be imposed to get cash. On the inventory side, we have to do a better job in planning and forecasting. This is a difficult task in the environment that we are in at the moment, but we can do better. And we are working on that on all fronts. One card that we have not played yet at Gurit is factoring of receivables. You see in our balance sheet, about CHF 100 million of receivables is out there, and our payment terms in wind is more than 70 days. That card needs to be analyzed first. So far, it was not beneficial to Gurit because the interest rate that we paid on lending the money at our banks in Switzerland was lower than what we would pay for factoring. But that, for sure, is something that we at the last resort, can do to bring our net working capital down. Our debt, we did finance or refinance the company for this -- the acquisition of Fiberline, you see the -- we added a note to our financials in the half year to reflect this and to explain it. We increased the committed debt that we can take. We have also increased or extended the time line to 2025 for a repayment. So until 2025, we have this debt guaranteed. When we run our models for the next half year and half year next year, first half year and second half year, we have enough headroom against our bank covenants to say at the moment that we do not need any new financing, right. So at the moment, no, we do not expect to have any needs to finance further.

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Koenig with Mirabaud.

I have 2, 3 questions. First, on the Chinese pricing, it was negative in H1. I was wondering what the expectation is for Chinese pricing in general for H2 and beyond. Then I had an understanding question on Fiberline, it's accounted as part of core materials. I thought in a previous meeting, you said that it would be putting as a separate line. Has this changed or is this just a momentarily step? And then the final question on the balance sheet. I don't know a gross start to EBITDA of CHF 3.3 million is rather on the high side. Is there a target range where you think it should go or where you feel more comfortable? And then the final question, you had an adjusted EBIT margin of 2%, but you're expecting a higher EBIT margin for the full year. Is this -- there an expectation of an improvement in there in H2 profit?

Just let me start with the last question. Yes, there is an improvement, as we've also noted in the press release, an expectation to improve. And I would say, the primarily reason is, as I also explained in our -- in the presentation, I mean, we are now achieving the first sales revenues in India. That means the plant is now, I would say, through the valley of costs only. Plant is now creating revenues and basically yielding breakeven performance and revenue is now growing. So clearly, that is a major driver for improvements in the second half of the year. Plus, of course, I mean, as I've outlined, we have initiated multiple measures to improve costs, both tactical as well as a result of our Fit for Future program. So also here, we expect in the second half of the year already first contributions, and this is driving that outlook. And your question related to China, of pricing and I would just basically follow-up from the answer I gave to Jorn before. China, the market will grow. So we do not anticipate that pricing will suddenly increase. But what we are doing to still convert sales into profitability is, as I mentioned, in particular, design to cost-related measures to drive down product costs for these products we sell into the Chinese market to still create acceptable margin levels by that sales. But no, we do not expect that the prices are suddenly going up in China. I think this would be a wrong expectation. And then probably thirdly, to your question before I hand over to Philippe. Yes, we are not treating Fiberline as core material, but as composed materials because it is composite materials, and that's the reason why we also have it integrated in the line composite materials. Philippe, probably you can add.