H+H International A/S (HH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to H+H International First Half of 2026 Results Presentation. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand it over to the speakers, CEO, Jorg Brinkmann; and CFO, Bjarne Pedersen. Please begin.

Good morning, and welcome to our earnings call for the first half of 2026. My name is Bjarne Pedersen, CFO of the company. And joining us today is our CEO, Jorg Brinkmann. Before we dive into the presentation, I would like to lead your attention to Slide #2, where we have a disclaimer on the forward-looking statements. And after that, we will hand over to CEO, Jorg Brinkmann.

Yes. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to dialing in and listening into our Q2 and first half 2026 update. With that, please turn to Page 3, where I want to provide some of the highlights in the quarter. So what you can see from the quarterly results is that after the Q1, which was heavily impacted by winter weather, we saw normalization of activities, which is definitely good. And in that environment, we delivered a 6% organic growth and an EBIT margin of 6%, so back to normal. The result was mainly driven by strong activity in Poland, but also the German business developed in the right direction. With the result in Q2, we are now on breakeven. So we see a 0 EBIT. And from here, we're going to proceed. Second observation in the second quarter is in the U.K. So here, we saw some slowdown of activities, and I come to that a little bit later. It's a particular situation we need to talk about. There's a new government in place. So I want to give a little bit of highlights on how we see the U.K., but certainly, it's a watch-out area for our business in the second quarter and also when we go into the second half of 2026 now. The third driver is the strategic changes we've done to the German organization. We talked a lot about that, especially last year, some big adjustments we've done to the business. And it's good to see that the strategic changes taking ground here and are contributing to improving our business in Germany and the CWE region. Our focus is on managing the cash flow, and that is also, from our point of view, a positive result that we came in with a free cash flow of DKK 117 million, which comes from 2 elements. One is strong operations, but also from some asset sales that we are driving. And that is certainly a good outcome and helps to bring our debt position into a definitely better space. With that trending here, we are also committed to keep our full year outlook for the year. Let's zoom in a little bit into our 3 markets, and please turn to Page 4, where we can see the Polish business results. Let me start with the market. And you know building permits is one of the key indicators we are looking at to see where the markets are going. What you can see is really strong development on building permits. We see a 19% year-on-year, which is, yes, definitely a good number. There are some legislation changes coming up. So there's a little bit of, let's say, forward effects in here. But nevertheless, there is strong underlying activity in the Polish market. And this is true for the general economy, but then also for the building environment. So very friendly and very positive market environment and some good investment climate into new build. We are positive also for the future, and we see a quite strong pipeline of projects and activity in the market. In that environment, you can see it from the numbers here. We've delivered a stronger revenue and volume quarter than the quarter last year. And again, with 25% EBITDA margin, a really strong profitability as well. So both numbers are ahead of last year, which is also quite a positive contribution to our group results. And then we talked about in the last earnings call that we did an upgrade as part of our HOME initiatives in our plant in Pulawy. What I can report is here that the plant is back in operations, and it was really nice to see is actually that it is performing better than it was before the upgrade. I mean, this is how it should be, but it's good to see that also in the financial numbers. The plant is performing better and also contributing to a payback of our investment here. So overall, good market situation in Poland, but then also our team in Poland are really using the conditions in the market to perform really well in that friendly environment. On Page 5, you're going to see the overview of U.K. And when you look at the registrations here, you can see -- we see a different trend line. So the registrations are coming down. Year-on-year, we're seeing a 6% minus in registrations. So yes, going in the wrong direction. Where is that coming from? There's still huge demand for housing and housing is still on the political agenda. However, the demand is really constrained by affordability. Just in the last 4 months, we were seeing interest rates going up by 0.7%. For sure, this is having impact on buying decisions of people and families. So this is certainly a watch-out area. And then you know there's new government in place, always when there's these changes, there's big uncertainty for investment decisions, and this is also what we can observe here. So it's quite a -- we are a little bit cautious here on what's going on in the U.K. market. The good thing is, I think there is new government in place and the new government in their first speech, we were talking about housing. And there's a GBP 40 billion program for affordable and social housing, targeting 200,000 additional social homes over 10 years. You can say, is that a lot? Is that not a lot? But given that the U.K. at the moment is only building 160,000 units, 20,000 year-on-year plus would lead into 10%, 15% growth for the market actually. So if this initiative materializes, I think it would be good for the British society, for British economy, and then at the end, also would be good for the industry and us. So let's see what the new government comes up with and if the funding holds. But I think it was a good sign that the new government talks about housing at the very beginning and makes this a priority. When you look at how we performed in this market environment, you can see in Q2, there was recovery over Q1, which is good for sure, also the weather here changed. But if you compare it against last year Q2, you see that it came in a little bit weaker. So we had less volumes. And then you can see that the dynamics, we are a little bit losing on these market dynamics, and this you can see from the revenue numbers. What I want to highlight here is the EBITDA margin we delivered in this context, and that is a 12%, so I think from a margin quality point of view, I think this is still a good result. How do we get there? Two major drivers, I would say. First of all, we are driving prices because also here, we have inflation from energy. So prices we are driving. That is one contributor. And then the second one is that we've adjusted capacity to the new demand situation. Particularly, we have taken shifts out in 2 of our 3 plants in the U.K. and that gets us into a better position and helps to protect our earning levels in the U.K. From U.K. to CWE on Page 6. Let me start with the market development first. Also here, when you look at the development of building permits, you can see a rising curve. Year-on-year, we see 17% more permits coming in, in Germany, which is, first of all, an encouraging sign because that means there is investors and specific projects that are handed in into the authorities to ask for permission. And that is, first of all, a positive sign. And that also shows that there is underlying demand and that the market is showing more activity again. What is important, though, that these permits are also transforming into building starts, and that is the big question mark at the moment because we don't see the starts picking up. For this year, the German outlook is 185,000 units in the residential sector. To give you a little bit perspective, this is the worst number since 2012. So we have, for a long time, not seen a number below 200,000. And for sure, this is something that needs to be improved. But as I said, with the permits going up, there's a pipeline that is built. And when this is translating into starts, we're also going to see this number climbing up again. So the permits is a good sign. Question is when do these building start to be built. CWE is more than Germany. So we also do business in Denmark and Netherlands, both markets showing some good improvement, some positive market dynamics. We are very happy with that. And then the Switzerland, very stable, I must say, throughout the cycle. So not a lot of cyclicality here, but very stable market development and also earnings contribution. When you look at how our company is performing here, you see the revenue in Q2, DKK 262 million, very -- so it's an improvement over the Q1, but then it's quite a flat development, but this is what we've expected in the current market environment. EBITDA margin came in at 3%. This is mainly driven by also here increase of prices. And then we have announced the effects from our restructuring and the structural changes we've done through the organization. And these effects, we are now seeing materializing and helping to improve our earnings level here. If I talk a little bit about strategic initiatives that we are driving as a group, I want to give you an update about this on Page 7. So basically, two major topics that we are driving. One is our operational performance of the plant. You have heard me talking about HOME, which is our operating model for excellence. And this is numbers I want to share with you here because we are quite happy to see that our 25 plants that we are operating and the whole network is really improving, and we are really driving operational efficiency here. One key indicator we are looking at is the net hours of production per week. And as you can see here, we improved that nicely from a level of 117 in '24. That's where we started to a level of 135 in the first half of this year, and we had a record quarter 2 with 137 hours. So there is significant improvement of the network and the efficiency of plants. And this is part of the whole strategy we were driving over the last 3 years. We've closed a lot of plants, concentrated volumes into fewer plants and now really driving efficiency. This is not the end of the story, but it's going in the right direction and certainly helping to protect our earnings. And also, the Pulawy upgrade, as I said, it's nice to see that net hours are even better than they were before. And that is exactly what you want when you invest into plants and into debottlenecking to see that after this investment, you have a better asset that is performing. And then it's also needed because it's close to our Warsaw market, which is very important to us, and that is volume we need to serve the Warsaw area on big scale. So this is HOME. And then for sure, Germany is the big value creation area here for us. When you compare earnings levels, Poland and the U.K., they are operating really on different levels. We have some work to do in Germany. And what I can tell you is we're seeing really some good traction from our new profit center approach. We've organized Germany in 4 profit centers, very regional businesses. We have leaders for all these 4 regions. And now we are really driving top line and making sure that we are selling the right products to the right customers within these regions. So a new setup, but we believe it's the right strategy. And the key task here is to really align the demand side, so the sales side and then the production side. We call it sweet spot, but that is what is really critical, making sure we have the right products, the right quantities and then match that also with the capacity that we have installed within these regions. And that is what we are driving in all these different -- these 4 profit centers. So from that point of view, it's well on track. Then the savings from the restructuring, we've delivered that. We started that last year in the second half of 2025. So we're going to see -- we see the full effect now materializing with the end of H1 this year. And in total, we've delivered DKK 40 million of annualized savings on fixed costs. And then there was another DKK 30 million coming from lower impairments. Both numbers we see arriving into our P&L, which is what we wanted and it's good that we can tick that off. And on top of that, from all the assets we have sold, I think we're making some good progress in utilizing them. So we've sold a couple of them. And in total, we had net incomes here of DKK 49 million. They all materialized in the second quarter. And I think this is also good that we are utilizing these assets that we've closed down and using the value of these assets to further optimize our cash position here and bring the debt position of the company down. And we're going to do that also forward because there are some -- still some assets that we are holding for sale. With that, let me turn the call over to Bjarne, who will give you an even deeper insight on the financial numbers.

Yes. Thanks for that, Jorg. And we do that on Slide 8, where we start to look at how the top line has developed. We came into a much more normalized state in the second quarter. The revenue is up. That is mainly driven by the volumes. So we have a 4% volume growth quarter-on-quarter. That is driven by Poland that saw a huge increase based on also what Jorg explained, U.K. did see a decrease and where the CWE was more flattish. In general, when you look at the numbers for CWE, there's a lot of small moving parts, mainly going in the right direction, but it's not one big thing that is driving the improvement that you see in CWE. On the revenue side, you also see the big increase from the Polish volume being illustrated. That is the main driver for our organic growth of 6%. That is very positive for the quarter. But bear in mind, for the first half, we are still at negative 5% on the organic growth. On the prices, they are higher than last year, and the volumes are equally up. So that confirms that the underlying initiatives and market is playing in the right direction. One thing to notice is that it is Poland driving it. It has the numerical effect that it takes some of the averages down. So we have an adverse country mix effect because when you go from the local revenue into DKK, Poland is having lower prices and then also a lower nominal DKK effect on that. If we go to Slide #9, we start to look into how the earnings development has been on this top line. And on the left-hand side, you see the gross margin development. We are, so to speak, back in the region, which we think is what we can achieve under the current demand situation. We had this 22% for the period. We have seen past year fluctuate between 22% and 24% in, let's say, the normal seasons. We still have capacity available. So with a little bit more demand, we are also able to increase this further. The margins also confirm that we are able to pass through the energy cost. We've talked a little bit about the impact from rising energy costs and our hedging. But with these margins, I think we prove that, that is being delivered, again, taking into account that there's a little bit of adverse effect from the country mix. And also, as we are passing through the cost, we got a higher top line. So again, mathematically, we have a little bit of headwind, but we can still maintain this headline number of the 22%, which we are pleased to do for the quarter. On the right-hand side, you see the breakdown of the earnings on EBITDA level, all in line with the volume and margin development. U.K., more or less on par on lower volume, again, confirming the margin and the pass-through of the energy costs. Poland up and so is CWE. CWE, again, this basket of the underlying initiatives, the effects from the restructuring cost last year and then that our commercial approach has been changed and are seeming to take us in the right direction. On Slide #10, we have an overview of the cash flow for the quarter. So with the normalized earnings level for the quarter at DKK 85 million, together with some positive effect from net working capital, we're getting to this cash flow from operations of around DKK 100 million. And on top of that, we then also have the cash flow from the asset sales. So the free cash flow is at DKK 117 million. That is also helping our gearing ratio, which has decreased from 4.1x down to 3.4x here at the end of the second quarter. If we then go to Slide #11, we have our outlook for the year. There is no update to the outlook itself. We have adjusted some of the key assumptions to it. On the market side, it is we see a stronger market in Poland than we originally anticipated, and we see more uncertainty around the U.K. market. Then we have also slightly adjusted our expected CapEx spend. It has been low in the first half. It will increase in the second half, but now we expect it to be around DKK 100 million as a gross spending for the year. And then we can also confirm the free cash flow based on the current cash flow and the asset sale, we expect that to be positive for the full year. With that, I'll hand back to Jorg, who will summarize our findings.

Yes. So on Page 12, let me try to really summarize the situation of the company. So first of all, this is back to normal. That is -- we are seeing the underlying performance of the business. The first -- after first half, we had breakeven, and we continue driving the business going forward. So this is a good thing. Second, we talked about the U.K. There's still -- it's a watch-out area for us. We've adjusted and taken the adjustments that were needed. So from that point of view, we have done the right decisions here, and we need to now monitor what this new government will do and how this is impacting housing. We are well prepared for those scenarios. And then on Germany, we are seeing that the strategic changes we have done to the German organization, they are right and they are working. And then with these permits that we are seeing going up, yes, we are slightly positive actually that there could be some momentum coming from the German building activity and also helping support our earnings level in Germany going forward. And then for sure, we're going to stay focused on cash flow. This is one thing that Bjarne and I are driving, really making sure there's positive cash flow and that we are optimizing and improving our debt position. And overall, yes, we maintain the outlook and going to deliver an EBIT of between DKK 50 million and DKK 100 million for this year. With that, let me open up the call for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] As we have no questions in the queue, I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

No questions. Okay. So no questions. It seems that our -- yes, our messages here were so clear. But anyway, thanks for dialing in. Thanks for your interest in the company. I know we're going to see some people in the next couple of days looking forward to that. And with that, have a good day. Bye-bye.