Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Aktiengesellschaft (HDD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Heidelberg's Analyst Conference on the Fiscal Year '22-'23 Results. Welcome here in the room in Frankfurt and also welcome in the telephone conference. We will give you a presentation first, and then we are happy to take your question. When I say we, it's actually Tania von der Goltz, my colleague and CFO of Heidelberg and myself. My name is Ludwin Monz. I'm the CEO of Heidelberg. So, we are pleased to welcome you, as you said, and let me introduce the agenda. First of all, I will give you a brief overview about the highlights of the fiscal year '22-'23. And then as I said, my colleague, Tania, will take you through the financials more in detail. In the next section, we would like to share our thoughts on the way forward, in particular, on our business and financial strategy. And then we will conclude with an outlook for the current fiscal year before we take your questions. So let me start with an overview slide on the figures. Overall, I would like to say that fiscal year '22-'23 was marked by significant macroeconomic challenges. The war in Ukraine led to dramatic price increases for materials, for energy, and all that resulted in higher production costs. In addition, we observed changes in Central Bank policies with an increase in the key interest rate weighing on economic development. Absorbing inflation and passing it on to our customers proved to be our biggest challenge during the year. Moreover, the COVID situation in China resulted in a weak market development in that country and caused our Chinese production to be shut down for several weeks. All in all, it was really a very challenging year. But the most important thing is that we achieved our goals. We achieved our guidance despite these extremely difficult circumstances. Now let's have a look at the numbers. Sales reached EUR 2,435 million. This exceeded our guidance where we said that we would expect approximately EUR 2.3 billion, and we were showing significant year-on-year growth. The reported EBITDA margin was at 8.6%, in line with our guidance of more than 8%. Adjusted for onetime effects, and as you will see in the presentation, that's important, adjusted for onetime effects, the EBITDA margin increased from 5.1% in the prior year to 7.2% this year. The net result after taxes was at EUR 91 million, exceeding the guidance of a slight improvement compared to previous year. As you remember, we published that number a while ago in ad-hoc release. In addition to a solid operating performance, the financial and tax results benefited from non-recurring items, and this is why we are now talking about adjusted EBITDA. So that's the high-level view on the numbers, and I now would like to hand over to Tania to discuss these numbers more in detail. Tania?

Thank you, Ludwin. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Let's start by taking a broader look at the past year on Page 6, which also provides insight into the latest developments of the fourth quarter. Overall, we can say that last year's performance was solid across all key metrics. Also, a more differentiated analysis is required. Let's begin with orders received. On a 12-month basis, orders received accumulated to EUR 2.43 billion, representing a marginal decrease of 0.9% compared to the previous year, which benefited actually from recovery effects. While we observed a slight decline in volume of orders received, it was largely offset by positive price and currency effects. Despite necessary price adjustments in response to higher material, energy and personnel costs, we only saw a limited impact on our customers' investment behavior last year. In the fourth quarter, orders received was at EUR 574 million, basically in line with previous year. Fiscal year 2022-'23 saw a remarkable upswing in sales, reaching EUR 2.43 billion, a solid growth of 12% compared to previous year. The fourth quarter, in particular, stood out with sales rising to approximately EUR 700 million as new machine deliveries peaked during this period. Organically, sales grew by a solid 8% over the entire year, driven by improved pricing in sheetfed and consumables, as well as a slight increase in volumes. Currency effects also played an important role, contributing 4% to the year-over-year growth, mainly driven by the strength of the U.S. dollar. EBITDA was also positively impacted by volume growth and the aforementioned price adjustments in sales. The reported EBITDA margin reached 8.6%, successfully taking the guided hurdle of at least 8% for the fiscal year. Excluding onetime effects, EBITDA margin was at 7.2% last year, which represented an improvement of 210 basis points compared to the prior year. Looking at Q4 only, EBITDA was EUR 65 million, representing a margin of 9.3%. This peak in margin is a typical pattern towards the fiscal year-end. The adjusted EBITDA margin reached 7.1% in Q4, a solid increase from 4.6% in the prior year. Free cash flow for the full fiscal year was down to EUR 72 million compared to EUR 88 million in the prior year. In the fourth quarter, free cash flow was strongly positive due to higher operating income and the normalization of net working capital towards the year-end. Let's move on to our segments on Page 7. In this segment, Packaging Solutions, orders received showed a robust increase of 7% compared to previous year. Thanks to solid growth in our equipment and service business, segment sales actually increased by 25% year-over-year. Now turning to the segment, Print Solutions. By the end of the fiscal year, orders in this segment were down by 5% compared to previous year. This was due to the commercial printing market returning to normal following catch-up effects from post-pandemic recovery in the previous year. Thanks to a solid order backlog, sales showed a robust performance, increasing by around 4% to EUR 1.25 billion. In the segment, Technology Solutions, sales of wallboxes were distorted due to the expiry of subsidy programs in Germany. At minus 57%, both orders received and sales were significantly lower than previous year. Now let's take a deeper look into the regional performance on Page 8. Starting with the EMEA region at the bottom of the chart, actually our biggest region. It experienced remarkable sales growth in absolute terms, primarily driven by high order backlog. Among the contributing countries, France played a significant role in driving the overall increase in sales. Now let's take a closer look at the Asia Pacific region and its performance. The region faced challenges in sales, predominantly influenced by the adverse effects of the COVID situation in the Chinese market. Furthermore, the weakened value of the Japanese yen caused a competitive disadvantage against domestic players. However, the steady growth in the packaging market within the region provided a stabilizing effect. As a result, sales in the Asia Pacific region experienced a modest 4% year-over-year decrease. North America region and its biggest market, the US, witnessed substantial sales growth supported by favorable exchange rates, actually a plus of 32% year-over-year. Now, we are moving on to our EBITDA bridge on Page 9. Reported EBITDA in fiscal year '21-'22 included EUR 48 million of non-recurring income, mainly from the sale of Docufy and a property sale in the UK. Hence, the adjusted comparable EBITDA ranged at EUR 111 million. The underlying operating improvement was primarily driven by a 12% year-over-year increase in sales. Price adjustments to offset material and energy cost increases over the past 2 years had a positive net impact. Personnel costs were under pressure in the last fiscal year, mainly due to the payment of an inflation compensation premium of EUR 17 million to employees in Germany as well as currency-related effects. Overall, we achieved an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 176 million in the fiscal year, which corresponds to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.2% compared to 5.1% in the previous year. To bridge the gap to the reported EBITDA, I would like to explain the onetime effects amounting to EUR 33 million, which include: firstly, the sale of property in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and in Wiesloch at the headquarters as well. And secondly, the contribution of intangible assets to our joint venture with Masterwork China. Accordingly, we reported an EBITDA totaling EUR 209 million, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 8.6%. Now moving to the next page. Based on the EBITDA reported on the previous page, EBIT increased accordingly as depreciation remained constant compared to previous year. The financial result was significantly lower than last year, decreasing to EUR 19 million. Firstly, the reduction in financial debt resulted in a decrease in the respective interest expenses compared to the previous year. The second significant change relates to interest expenses and pension provisions, which increased to EUR 16 million, also due to the higher interest rate environment. Going forward, actually, we anticipate a further increase of approximately EUR 10 million in interest expenses on pension provisions for this financial year. However, it is important to note that this is a non-cash effect. Thirdly, our third impact on the financial result is the rise in market interest rates, caused a decline in the present value of long-term provisions, causing a non-recurring income of EUR 6 million, reported under other income expenses within the financial result. With the improvement in the financial result year-over-year, earnings before tax increased by EUR 61 million to EUR 112 million. Now shifting our focus to the net tax result. Also, really at the same level, its composition has certainly undergone changes. Looking at the right-hand side, the effective tax expenses on income were lower year-over-year, primarily due to the release of a tax for transfer price risks. Conversely, deferred tax expenses amounted to EUR 3 million in the previous financial year. In the prior year, we recorded a deferred tax income related to the carve-out of Amperfied, leading to a net deferred tax income of EUR 14 million. Corresponding to my previous explanations, net income was at EUR 91 million compared to EUR 33 million last year. Divided by the number of shares, earnings per share improved by EUR 0.19 to EUR 0.30. Now, let's turn our attention to walk from earnings to free cash flow. Free cash flow amounted to EUR 72 million compared to EUR 88 million last year. On a high level, the key observation is that the improvement in EBITDA was overlaid by the sales-related increase in net working capital, which rose actually by EUR 79 million. Operating cash flow also included payments of EUR 39 million for pensions, as well as EUR 23 million associated with the 2020 headcount reduction program. Also, operating cash flow was EUR 18 million lower than in previous year. It demonstrated a structural improvement due to the improved earnings. Now a final statement on the cash flow from investments. The figure remained positive at EUR 39 million as it included cash inflows from the sale of non-operating assets. Let's conclude the section with the look at our balance sheet. As we have just seen, the net financial position has improved by EUR 40 million as a result of the positive free cash flow. The Heidelberg's group equity increased to EUR 514 million as a result of, firstly, the increase in the discount rate for pensions; secondly, the positive result after tax; and thirdly, the planned fair value-based revaluation of land according to IAS 16 standard. As a result, the equity ratio rose from 11% to 23% at the year-end. Finally, net working capital increased to EUR 515 million, mainly as a result of increased inventories due to the higher sales volume and delays in the supply chain, causing delays in shipments of finished goods. The net working capital ratio actually slightly increased year-over-year from 20% to 21%. Let me provide you with a brief interim conclusions on our financials. Heidelberg demonstrated a solid top line performance in the last year. Particularly, the packaging business showed a positive development. In addition, we were able to offset the increased production costs through our own price adjustments. Nonetheless, we have to conclude the profitability remains at a low level, which actually brings me to the next item on our agenda. Let's continue with our way forward. Actually, Heidelberg has improved its profitability year-over-year, now the third year in a row. As you can see from this chart, which shows the development of our operating earnings over the last 3 years. Please note that the blue bars are adjusted for non-recurring items and just show the result of the ordinary operating business. This is what we call the adjusted EBITDA going forward. So actually, the EBITDA from our operations without onetime effects. Also, we are quite pleased with the positive profitability trend. Please note that the EBITDA margin is still on a relatively low level. This is, to some extent, typical for companies in the capital goods sector, as well as the profitability being dependent on sales. During the COVID-related sales decline in 2020, the result from operating activities dropped accordingly. To compensate for this shortfall, Heidelberg sold several assets, also to finance the headcount reduction program initiated in 2020. As a result of that effort, operating profitability has increased quite solidly over the last 3 years, mainly as a result of the cost-cutting program combined with the market recovery. Nevertheless, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.2% is not sufficient to meet the challenges going forward, both in the short term and especially in the long term. If you look further back into the past, we can see that all the programs since 2008 have adjusted Heidelberg's capacity to the new market conditions. Also, Heidelberg's structural setup as well its business model was not adjusted accordingly. This brings me to the next chart. First, I would like to give you an overview of our financial strategy, which will pave the way forward for financing our growth and transformation ambitions. We have begun a comprehensive value creation program, analyzing various levers considering short-term as well as long-term implications. First of all, we aim to further strengthen both our profitability as well as our financial foundation. To this end, we are reviewing production costs, processes and our portfolio from a structural point of view. A sustainable impact on profitability can only be achieved through substantial changes aiming to improve our structural cost position. By doing so, we want to increase the cash available to fund our future growth initiatives. To set the stage for this, we will also implement a holistic financial management model that ensures sound decision-making and effective allocation of resources and capital. Additionally, we are seeking to increase the share of recurring revenue to stabilize earnings, bearing in mind that companies with a high share of recurring revenues tend to have higher valuations, given the low exposure to the market volatility. For that, now I would like to hand over to Ludwin.

Yes. Thank you, Tania. Ladies and gentlemen, again, the value creation program that Tania was just talking about lays the foundation to our strategic development of the company. We need the financial backing. We need the financial resources to invest into the new technologies, new businesses, but also in the established business of printing. And this is what I'm going to talk about now. So let's have a closer look at our strategy. I know that most of you are familiar with it. But nevertheless, I would like to highlight a couple of points. We are talking about a, we call it dual-track strategy. The idea here is that the strategy has 2 tracks, 2 parts. The one is here on the left-hand side, that's about the printing industry. We have the ambition to shape the printing market going forward. This is our home market. And also going forward, we will continue to invest in this market. Well, you might say printing, well, that's not a good market. It's a declining market. It's a shrinking market. Well, the truth is that this is not true. Printed products play a crucial role in our daily lives. They fulfill important functions such as safeguarding our food or medicines, and they are vital to our well-being. While the global printing market is growing at a modest rate of about 1% per year, demand for packaging printing is particularly robust, growing at a rate of 2% to 3% per year. And this growth is driven by a global mega trend, including a steadily increasing world population. Key segments within this market trend to a less -- to be less volatile are mainly packaged goods such as food and pharmaceuticals. And this all meets our basic needs. This is one of the opportunities that we will go for in the first pillar of our strategy. We want to capitalize more on the growing packaging market. Other opportunities are increasing the share of recurring revenue and utilizing opportunities in the digital market. I'll come back to these 2 in just a minute. Before I do so, let me talk about the second track of our strategy, which is focused on entering new and adjacent businesses. By broadening our business portfolio, we aim to explore potential growth opportunities beyond our core business. Our electric vehicle charging business is the first example of this strategy, benefiting from technological synergies with our core business. To guide our efforts, we have established 3 strategic filters in identifying new feeds of business. First, we seek to address significant mega trends. Secondly, we target markets of significant size with a significant potential. And finally, we ensure alignment with Heidelberg's capabilities. Now on the next slide, I would like to turn our attention to the printing market again and talk about the 2 growth areas that I was just mentioning, the one which is digital printing and the other is packaging printing. I believe that both are really very promising for Heidelberg. Heidelberg is already active in the field of digital printing. Last fiscal year, we introduced a new and first fully digital label printing press called Gallus One. The production volume of the label market is growing by 2.4% annually. This is an attractive entry point for Heidelberg in digital printing as the market is undergoing a major technological shift towards that technology of digital printing. Digital printing currently accounts to about 30% of label printing and is growing at about 8% per year. With Gallus One, Heidelberg wants to participate in this growth of this segment. I would like to point out that there is an important difference between the business model of traditional offset printing machines and the business model of digital printing machines. While consumables for offset presses are commodities, in digital printing, the ink is inseparable from the printer. Heidelberg in the case of the Gallus One, Heidelberg sells proprietary ink for its digital press and generates an important recurring revenue with its consumable. Here's some more information on Gallus One, which might be interesting for you. This digital printing press addresses 3 major pain points of our customers in digital printing. The first is a lack of skilled labor. The Gallus One is equipped with a range of automation features that reduce the number of operators required. Second pain point is the high cost of energy. The Gallus One uses significantly less energy than traditional label printing presses. And the third pain point, which Gallus One is addressing is sustainability. Digital printing reduces waste by eliminating the need for printing plates. And furthermore, less substrate is consumed when setting up the printing machine. I believe that Heidelberg is well positioned in this growing segment as the market leader for sheetfed offset, the dominant -- being the dominant printing technology. Now you see what happens when I just move on. So, I now would like to move to the next field, which is the packaging market. And here, in particular, I would like to talk about the folding carton market. And this is when I said we are well positioned. This is what I was referring to. In the folding carton market, we are well positioned with sheetfed offset. Conventional systems, which had the advantage in high-volume production, they play a crucial role in packaging printing. However, we are looking beyond this technology to meet the challenges of our customers in this segment. Successful customers are those who can produce high volumes at low cost. So, this is really what packaging printing is all about; high volumes, low cost. And to meet these challenges, we offer solutions with efficient processes and high productivity that minimize manual intervention. We recently introduced a new printing press called the HEIDELBERG Boardmaster. And you can see actually a picture in the background of this slide. Actually, for those of you here in the room -- in the back of the room, there is a nice print out of this machine. It's really an impressive machine. It's huge. It's really large. And it's used for high-volume production of folding cartons. It uses not offset, but flexographic printing technology. It's different from the conventional offset system, but it offers a significantly higher printing speed. And it's unique production concept effectively minimizes, make ready times and significantly reduces machine downtime. Jobs are printed sequentially with seamless execution. It's really impressive, and it's extremely well received by our customers. So, we see quite some potential as it addresses the need for more productivity in packaging. Okay. So much about strategy and in order to address these segments as we were saying, we need to work on the financial base, and this is why we have our value creation program. Now let's look at the outlook. And before we get into the specific guidance, let's take a look at the opportunities and the risks that we see for this year. Overall, our assessment is that the outlook is mixed with both positive and also negative aspects. Predominantly, we see the continued rise in costs as a key challenge also for the coming year. Personnel expenses are expected to increase significantly and the prices of raw materials and energy will continue to rise, putting further pressure on our profit margins. Of course, we intend to pass on further cost increases for raw materials, intermediates and energy, again, to our customers. Unfortunately, we have no choice. However, there is a possibility that these price increases could lead to a decline in sales volume. Not to be overlooked is the significant increase in interest rates by central banks, which has a significant impact on our customers' ability to finance their machinery. We are therefore already seeing a slowdown in global growth. We do not see a decline yet, but a slowdown of growth, particularly in the advanced economies, which will inevitably have a dampening effect on Heidelberg's progress. Fortunately, our high order backlog should provide some cushioning throughout the year, giving us hope for a relatively stable top line. In addition, there are slight signs of recovery in China as customers responded at the China -- Print China trade fair positively. However, geopolitical tensions are creating considerable uncertainty about the global economic outlook, which could affect us in various ways. So, this brings me to the guidance for the new fiscal year. Taking into account the just discussed risks and opportunities, we forecast our sales for the fiscal year '23-'24 to be at the level of the previous year. We would like to inform you that we will report an EBITDA that is adjusted for non-recurring items in the future. That's a change to what we did in the past. This adjustment is intended to increase transparency and provide you with a clearer understanding of the company's operating performance. However, the operating EBITDA margin is also expected to be in line with last year. So last year, the EBITDA -- the corrected EBITDA margin was at 7.2%. So, this is broadly in line with the overall market, which also expects earnings to be flat year-on-year. Going forward, we will no longer provide net income guidance as the operating [ development ] is already reflected in the adjusted EBITDA margin. Additionally, the net income is highly dependent on the discount rate for pension obligations, which is simply beyond our control. Yes. That brings us to the last slide. I would like to reiterate 3 key takeaways before we open the floor for your questions. First, it's important to acknowledge that macroeconomic -- the macroeconomic environment remains to be challenging. However, despite these uncertainties, we are demonstrating stability and resilience as we strive to maintain the positive result, which we achieved last year. Secondly, the primary challenge we faced this fiscal year is to effectively manage and absorb cost increases. And thirdly, we have initiated a comprehensive value creation program in order to improve our profitability level sustainably and to expand our headroom for future investments. Yes. Dear colleagues, thank you very much for your attention. [Technical Difficulty]