Hiab Oyj (HIAB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Hiab's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Aki Vesikallio, I'm from Hiab's Investor Relations. Our excellent performance continued, resulting in a strong first half of the year. Today's results will be presented by our CEO, Scott Phillips; and with our CFO, Mikko Puolakka. We will be making forward-looking statements in the presentation, so please pay attention to the disclaimer. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Scott.

Thank you, Aki. And good morning, everyone, from my side, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. For the quarter, I'd say we had several highlights in the quarter, a couple of which I'd like to point out here on the opening slide. Our orders received increased versus the comparable period. I'll give a bit more color on that later in the presentation. Similarly, our comparable operating profit improved from a margin perspective. I'm really proud of the team for the great execution of our operational excellence pillar, which is the key driver behind the improved profitability despite the decline in sales. However, the good performance internally is a bit offset with the continued elevated market uncertainty due to the ongoing trade tensions and changes in trade policy. We will specify our outlook today for the remainder of the year. And proud to report that with excellent work of colleagues that are current and former colleagues within Cargotec and Hiab, we've announced the closing of the sale of MacGregor, which is expected on 31st of this month. All right. Let's see if I can get the technology to work here. Apologies for that, everybody. So I'd like to start off the group presentation by highlighting a few of the key investments we have made in the quarter as we continue to execute on our strategy. First, moving from left to right, we are making a -- we announced we're making a EUR 19 million investment in our MULTILIFT factory in Raisio, which will help to deliver on our promise to be more scalable and flexible throughout all cycles as well as delivering an excellent customer and employee experience. The investment will also enable our division to be much more efficient as well as more sustainable. Concurrently, we continue to execute nicely on our operational excellence road map. So I'd like to highlight one of the elements to help us in our operations across our footprint as our truck-mounted forklift and our information management team successfully piloted a new manufacturing execution system solution, which will enable improved material management and process efficiency. And then finally, we launched new solutions in our MULTILIFT and GALFAB brands to better serve our on-road load handling customers in both Europe and the U.S. At the same time, our DEL brand tail lifts launched a new heavy-duty solution for the U.K. and Ireland markets geared towards serving customers who have more operationally intensive fleets carrying heavier loads. So a key new penetration for us in that incredibly important market. So now I'd like to turn your attention to group financial results, starting with order intake. The orders received for the quarter were EUR 377 million versus EUR 348 million for the comparison period, representing an 8% positive variance. And for the first half, orders were EUR 755 million, up 3% year-over-year. In terms of demand trends, we remain on a similar level as we have for the prior 10 quarters with demand coming more from larger key account customers, which is the explanation for the positive variance compared to the second quarter last year. And currencies had a negative impact in the quarter compared to a slightly positive impact in the first quarter of approximately 200 basis points. So in constant currencies, we had a 10% variance versus the comparison period. So all in all, we are pleased with the results, but at the same time, we do not see the trends overall changing in either direction. So let's look a bit more in detail the order intake by region. For the quarter, we were positive relative to the comparison period, but I would point out that we were coming from a relatively low base in the Americas, so starting with the Americas. EMEA delivered EUR 188 million of orders, representing 50% of the group results, which is up 2% year-over-year, and EUR 391 million for the first half, up 8% versus last year. The Americas delivered EUR 159 million in the quarter, representing a 15% positive variance and for the first half delivered EUR 303 million, which is actually down 5% year-over-year, representing 42% of orders at the group level. But as I mentioned earlier, we come off a relatively low comparison period or base from last year, and the positive variance was largely driven by a large order that we've recently reported on. In the Asia Pacific region, we continue to deliver stable results, representing 8% of orders for the group in the quarter and up nicely year-over-year by 15%. So we continue to see positive momentum in defense logistics, together with robust replacement demand. But at the same time, we continue to see demand impacted by the uncertainty stemming from the trade policies, which we see is causing our target customers in the U.S. to remain cautious. In terms of sales execution, which is quite strong in the quarter, which resulted in EUR 402 million of revenue and EUR 814 million for the first half, representing a 7% and a 4% negative variance, respectively, year-over-year. In constant currencies, we were down 5% versus the comparison period. And in terms of Services sales, we were up 2% year-over-year. Now looking at the sales mix by region. The mix for the quarter was similar to our order profile as EMEA represented 50% Americas up slightly in sales versus orders of 43% and Asia Pacific at 7% of sales. EMEA declined by 4% to EUR 203 million. The Americas delivered EUR 173 million, representing a 12% decline. And Asia Pacific remained flat at EUR 27 million for the quarter, but down 10% for the first half. So I'm really pleased with the development of the percent of sales of our Eco portfolio as we improved to 38% of sales or EUR 155 million for the quarter compared to EUR 126 million for the comparison period. And for the first half, sales from Eco portfolio represented EUR 279 million of our EUR 814 million of sales or 37%. So nice execution by the team in that regard. And perhaps this will work better if I pick up the remote. Although we had a 7% decline in sales, we were able to deliver a good level of operating profit in the period and for the first half of the year coming from excellent execution, in particular, in our operational excellence pillar of our strategy. In terms -- in absolute terms, profit was EUR 60 million versus EUR 63 million, so a decline of 4%. And for the first half, the result was EUR 126 million versus EUR 124 million. So a nice year-over-year increase by 1% despite the decline in sales. In relative terms, the group delivered 15% for the quarter and 15.5% for the first half. So a strong performance overall, and then Mikko will provide additional insights with regards to the profit bridge just a bit later. So the good level of profitability supported a nice improvement in return on capital employed from 27.1% last year to 30.4% this year. So I'd like to close this section with an update as to how we are tracking towards our strategy targets. If you look back to the prior quarter, we're down slightly in our rolling 10-year average of our compounded annual growth rate. Similarly, we're slightly down sequentially on our last 12 months of operating profit due to the fact that we lost a strong quarter last year in Q2, so slightly down from 13.7% to 13.6%. And our return on capital employed, as I talked about in the prior slide, is up to 30.4%. So we feel that we're nicely on track to achieving our long-range strategy targets that we communicated last year. So with that, I'd like to hand over to Mikko Puolakka to take you through the segment results.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning also from my side. Let's first have a look on the Equipment segment performance during the second quarter. The equipment order intake grew. However, profitability was impacted by lower volumes. Order intake grew 8% to EUR 256 million. This growth came from the lifting equipment, especially in EMEA and in APAC. The delivery equipment order intake declined in EMEA. We had quite a sizable defense order in the comparison period. And it's also good to remember that this kind of orders, defense orders do not necessarily come every quarter. So overall, we still see that defense activities on a good level and hope to also book some orders in the future. The order book decline is attributable to delivery equipment due to the lower market activity, especially in the U.S. during the first quarter and now in the second quarter. Sales declined 11% to EUR 284 million. The lifting equipment sales grew, but this was not enough to fully offset the delivery equipment sales decline, which is very much stemming from the low order intake what you saw in quarter 1. Our comparable operating profit declined due to lower sales as well as due to a EUR 5 million asset write-off, which we took in quarter 2. Without this asset write-off, the equipment comparable operating profit margin is 15.5% in quarter 2 despite the 11% sales decline. So really strong performance, underlying performance. And I will describe this write-off a bit more in detail on the next page. So let's have a look on the Equipment segment profitability bridge. The EUR 33 million sales decline, what you saw on the previous page, was the biggest adverse impact on Equipment segment profitability. The Equipment gross profit margin declined. It was impacted by this previously mentioned EUR 5 million asset write-off that diluted comparable operating profit margin and also gross profit margin by 1.6% units. As a part of ongoing restructuring in our Italian operations, which we announced late last year, we have identified certain assets which we have decided to write off now in quarter 2. Currencies like lower U.S. dollar caused also some headwind in quarter 2. On the positive side, the Equipment segment SG&A costs declined illustrated here on the other bar on the right-hand side. So summa summarum, without this EUR 5 million write-off in quarter 2, Equipment segment delivered a very solid 15.5% comparable operating profit margin in the second quarter. Services performed extremely well in quarter 2. Order intake grew by 9%. This growth came mostly in so-called recurring services like spare parts and maintenance services. We have been successfully growing also the number of connected units as well as the maintenance -- number of maintenance contracts. The profitability development was really strong, supported by the commercial and sourcing actions. Looking at the Services profitability bridge, there were several positive contributions to the profitability. First of all, 3% sales growth was one of the contributing factors. Then already previously mentioned commercial and sourcing actions were supporting also the gross profit margin. We did not have any major impact from the FX during the second quarter. And then we had slightly higher SG&A costs as we continue to develop services capabilities and technologies in line with our strategy to take the Services business to -- revenues to EUR 700 million by 2028. Next, let's have a look still quickly on the total Hiab financials. So as mentioned already earlier, our sales declined 7%. Also, as mentioned earlier, the gross profit margin was impacted by the EUR 5 million Italy-related write-off. Without that, our gross profit margin in quarter 2 was 32%. The same applies to our comparable operating profit. So without EUR 5 million write-off, the comparable operating profit was 16.1% on the same level as in quarter 1 and clearly improving from the comparison period. Thus, I would say that the underlying business performance has been very good despite the 7% sales decline, really highlighting the robustness of Hiab's business model. Looking at the cash flow, like in quarter 1, most of our quarter 2 cash flow was generated by the continuing operations, i.e., Hiab business. The cash conversion was slightly below 100% in quarter 2, mainly due to the incentive payments, which typically take place in the second quarter and VAT payments, which fluctuate from month-to-month and from quarter-to-quarter. Thanks to the solid cash flow in the second quarter, we continue to have a very strong balance sheet. Continuing operations, i.e., Hiab's gearing was minus 7%. This is slightly lower than what we had in the first quarter, minus 12%. We paid EUR 77 million of dividends in the second quarter, and this was mostly offset by the strong operative cash flow, as you saw on the previous page. Also, please note that, like I said also earlier, we aim at closing MacGregor sale at the end of July, and we expect then roughly EUR 225 million sales price coming in in quarter 3. Like Scott mentioned earlier, we have specified the outlook for 2025. This is based on the first 6 months financial performance and our current visibility to the second half of the year. So we estimate for the continuing operations, i.e., for Hiab, the comparable operating profit to exceed 13.5%, so to be slightly higher than in 2024. So with those words, then I would hand back to Scott to summarize the key takeaways.

Thank you, Mikko. All right. So a couple of key takeaways that I want to summarize the quarter around. One is our first half of the year has been extremely strong and due to the excellent execution of the entire team at Hiab. That's led to our profitability being on a strong level, really proud of that despite the challenging market situation. However, the market uncertainty continues to negatively impact our business, especially in the U.S. So therefore, we're still taking a relatively conservative view and providing a bottom scenario as we have been for each of the last several quarters in terms of our outlook. We believe we're in an excellent position, however, to deal with this market volatility. And we like the fact that our strong cash flow and balance sheet position positions us to continue to invest in the business and gear Hiab for growth into the future. So with that, Aki, I'll turn it over to you for Q&A.

Thank you, Scott. And I would like to welcome Mikko Puolakka back to the stage. And with that, operator, we are ready for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Quiet at the moment on the question front.

Yes.

So if we don't have any questions for the call, so we can conclude the session. But I would still remind you that we have our site visit upcoming on 18th of September. So please sign up if you're interested to participate this one. Thank you, Scott, and thank you, Mikko, for the presentation.

Thank you, Aki.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone, and have a safe day.

And have a nice summer.