Hamburger Hafen und Logistik Aktiengesellschaft (HHFA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, and thank you for joining our conference call today on the financial results for the first 3 months of 2024. The start of the year 2024 was characterized by far-reaching changes in an environment of ongoing crisis. The war in Ukraine, escalating war in the Middle East and rising geopolitical tensions are adversely impacting global economic growth to a degree not witnessed for many years. At the same time, inflation and interest rates are at comparatively high levels, making economic recovery even more difficult. Economic forecast for Germany in 2024 have been downgraded and are thus further dampening the outlook for the remainder of the year. What's more, renewal supply chain disruption significantly impeded progress in the first quarter. The military conflict in the Red Sea led to major shipping delays and the cancellations as vessels were mostly rerouted around the southern tip of Africa, and therefore, arrived later in European ports. In January, this led to delayed calls at our Hamburg terminal, owing to catch-up effects in February and March, containers report was up moderately on the prior year level is a consequence of temporary higher dwell times of containers at the Hamburg container terminals, storage fees increased in the first quarter. Against this backdrop, the operating result of the container segment made good progress. However, with regard to HHLA's hinterland transportation, economic weakness and supply chain disruptions also impacted the development of transport volumes. Despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions and uncertainty in the sector, we continue to drive our transformation and modernization program at the Hamburg container terminals. The Burchardkai terminal is currently being converted to automated horizontal transport. This represents a significant step towards automotive automation and climate neutrality at Germany's largest container terminal. In the first quarter, our rail subsidiary Metrans successfully acquired the remaining 49% of the shares in the Croatian company, Adria Rail. As a result, it now holds 100% of the Adria Rail and offers further rail connections to Southern Eastern Europe, especially Croatia and Serbia. Another perfect strategic fit was the acquisition of a 51% stake in the [indiscernible] Roland, one of the largest owner-led container operators for hinterland transport in Austria. Both acquisitions are an extraordinary addition to our existing service portfolio in the European intermodal market and decisively strengthen our comprehensive and independent network between our seaport and inland terminals throughput Europe. Moreover, our subsidiary, HHLA Sky, has added an innovative drone control center for Germany's first commercial scheduled air operations of a transport drone. As you can see, a lot of progress in the first quarter in the group. Ladies and gentlemen, with regard to the MSC transaction, there is little news compared to the situation in March. We are still working with MSC and the City of Hamburg to finalize the business combination agreement. At the time of submitting the recent statement, key commitments had already been reached in a preliminary agreement. These include EUR 450 million of additional capital, significant commitments regarding the workforce and the commitment to uphold the neutrality of the business model as well as our strategy and investment planning. For the time being, the closing of the transaction remains subject to closing conditions like merger control, subsidiary control as well as approval by the Hamburg Parliament. Subject to the fulfillment of these conditions precedent, the transaction is currently expected to be closed in the third quarter of 2024. Including the tender shares, the city of Hamburg and MSC currently rolled around about 93% of the group's share capital. On that note, I'll hand over to Annette, who will take you through the key financial figures.

Thank you, Angela, and good afternoon, everyone, also from me. Let's move directly to the reporting of our container segment. As Angela already mentioned, container throughput at HHLA's terminals increased by 3.3% to 1.464 million TEU in the first quarter of '24. Throughput for our terminals in Hamburg rose by 2.9% to 1.4 million TEU. The main driver for the positive development was the increase in volumes from South, Central and North America. There was particularly strong growth in cargo volumes from the United States. By contrast, handling volumes from the Far East shipping region continued to decline. Although the development of feeder traffic volumes remained weak, there was significant year-on-year growth. That said, the feeder ratio of seaborne handling increased by 0.7 percentage points to 18.8%. The international container terminal recorded an increase in throughput volume of 12.7% to 63,000 TEU. It was driven by the strong increase in the multifunctional terminal, HHLA TK Estonia. This more than offset the fall in throughput volume at HALO PLT Italy in [indiscernible] course by ship being rerouted or canceled as a consequence of the military conflict in the Red Sea region. The situation in Odessa remains unchanged. CTU is still operational but closed for seaborne container handling. Segment revenue increased by 5.4% year-on-year to EUR 185.3 million. In addition to higher volumes, this was also due to longer 12x and the resulting increase in storage fees. This positive trend was additionally aided by increased revenue of the intergroup company HHLA-Personal-Service GmbH, which was transferred to the container segment in the '23 financial year. EBIT costs increased by 2.7% compared to the previous year, mainly due to the volume-related rise in personnel expenses and a strong volume-related increase in energy costs. Cost increases in the first quarter were largely offset by declining expenses for external maintenance services as well as for consulting, services and insurance. In the previous year, the reversal of liabilities for ship delays and repayments received from insurance aggregates had positively impacted EBIT. Against this backdrop, EBIT rose by 87.3% to EUR 10.7 million, while the EBIT margin increased by 2.6 percentage points to 5.8 percentage. So let's now have a look at the intermodal segment. Compared to the previous year, container transport fell by 5.5% to 986,000 TEU. Regarding rail transport, all major routes were affected by this decline, especially Polish traffic and the Adriatic port. In total, rail transport decreased by 3.2% to 329,000 TEU. Road transport was impacted even more severely and suffered a decline of 16.8%. With a decrease of 3.5% to EUR 151.8 million, revenue was less severely affected than the volume trend. On the one hand, this was due to an adjusted pricing level as a consequence of increased cost for the purchase of services. On the other hand, the rate share increased slightly with a positive effect on revenue development. EBIT fell by 34.3% to EUR 14.1 million, mainly due to lower transport volumes. In addition to increased union wage rates, the expansion of operations in rail transport also had an adverse effect. The EBIT margin was 9.3%, 4.3 percentage points below the prior year figure. Let's turn briefly to the logistics segment, where we have pooled vehicle logistics and consultancy divisions as well as business activities with which HHLA aims to tap new growth fields. In the reporting period, the consolidated companies reported revenue of EUR 19.2 million, which was 8.8 percentage down on the previous year. Revenue development for vehicle logistics, in particular, was weak compared to the strong prior year period. This was only partly offset by a strong contribution from the intermodal leasing activities. As a result, there was an EBIT loss of EUR 0.9 million at equity earnings amounted to EUR 1.1 million for the reporting period, mainly driven by the strong performance of bulk cargo handling. Coming back from the Port Logistics subgroup as a whole, let's have a closer look at our cash flow development. Cash flow from operating activities decreased by around EUR 47 million to EUR 24.5 million as of March 31 and mainly compromised -- and mainly comprise earnings before interest and taxes, write-downs and write-ups on nonfinancial assets and increase in trade receivables on other and other liabilities. The main items with an opposing effect were the increase in trade payables and other liabilities as well as lower income tax payments. Investing activities resulted in a net cash outflow of EUR 75.3 million, which was only slightly above the prior year figure. This development was mainly due to scheduled capital expenditures focusing on the extension of our own transport capacity for the intermodal business and the transformation program at our Hamburg container terminals. There were no outgoing payments for short-term deficit in the first quarter of 2024. As a result, free cash flow of the Port Logistics [indiscernible] was negative at EUR 50.8 million. Financing activities resulted in a cash outflow of EUR 25.3 million. This resulted mainly from outgoing repayments of financial loans and the payment of lease liabilities. This was offset by proceeds from the raising of financial levels. Overall, our available liquidity at the end of March 2024 remained at a healthy level of EUR 98.5 million.

Ladies and gentlemen, despite some unforeseeable events like temporary disruptions in the transport chain, HHLA's economic development in the first quarter of 2024 was largely in line with our expectations. The signs are that we will continue to operate in a volatile market environment. But for now, we are sticking to our forecast, which we published as part of the 2023 annual report in March. This means we expect the Port Logistics subgroup to achieve significant year-on-year growth in container throughput and a moderate increase in container transport in 2024. All in all, a moderate year-on-year increase in revenue is expected. Significant increase is assumed for the container segment and a strong increase for the intermodal segment. Overall, EBIT in the range of EUR 70 million to EUR 100 million is considered possible for the Port Logistics subgroup for the year 2024 financial year. Within this range, the strong decrease is forecast for the container segment and a strong increase for the intermodal segment. To further increase efficiency and expand capacity in the container intermodal segment, capital expenditure in the Port Logistics subgroup will be in the range of EUR 360 million to EUR 410 million. In the container segment, investments will focus on the efficient use of existing terminal space in the Port of Hamburg and the expansion of foreign terminals and in the intermodal segment on the expansion of the group's own transport and handling capacity. With this outlook, I would like to close my remarks on our financial results for the first 3 months 2024. Annette and myself, we will be happy to take your questions now.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Angela Titzrath for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, for HHLA, it is evident that only a sustainable logistics network can meet the growing demand, a broad-based and independent network of seaport and inland terminals across Europe is therefore key. For this reason, we will continue to steadily expand this competitive advantage of HHLA. Thank you very much for your interest in HHLA. Please stay healthy and take care. Goodbye.