Humble Group AB (publ) (HUMBLE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Humble Group's quarterly presentation for the third quarter in 2024. My name is Simon Petren, I'm the Group CEO. And with me, I have Johan Lennartsson, our Group CFO.

Good morning, everyone.

So to start the presentation, we just want to highlight a few things about the quarter. I think it's been a solid start after the summer with some tangible growth. We have a very eventful quarter with our new financial targets communicated. We had a Capital Markets Day, and we also did the list change to NASDAQ main market. What's really rewarding to see in this quarter is that we have actually been starting to do some really good cash generation despite having a tie-up in inventory due to the high months coming in October and November. And we have a strong belief that we are going to continue to delever the business towards our targets of below 2.5x EBITDA. We also think that we are well positioned going into the fourth quarter, started strong, and we are well prepared for 2025. So let's dig into the figures here.

Our net sales came in just below SEK 2 billion, and this was comprising on a total growth of 9%. The organic growth for the quarter amounted to 10.3%. So the total growth was a little bit negatively impacted by currency impact and the divestment of a subsidiary in the first quarter. We also noted that we had a strong positive momentum in our Quality Nutrition segment that grew by 18% quarter-on-quarter. And the Future Snacking segment was a little bit -- had a little bit headwind due to some strategical terminations of distribution contracts in our First Class Brands subsidiary.

So I think overall, with the growth, I'm happy to see that we're back to double-digit organic growth. With our new targets, we are saying that we are going to primarily reach them with organic growth. We have a strong outlook for next year with many exciting things coming up ahead. But we can really see that we have tangible growth in all of our business segments. And for those of you that follow us, you will also recognize that we now report gross sales in our quarterly reports, which actually makes a more transparent picture of the growth in each segment. To give an example, if our brands within Future Snacking or Quality Nutrition are selling products through our distribution segments, it will get eliminated in the Future Snacking, Quality Nutrition segments. So this is a way for us to give you all a clearer view of the actual growth in each segment when we are driving synergies by distributing our products within our own subsidiaries. As Johan mentioned, I think Quality Nutrition has some really, really strong momentum. We can start to see the initiatives coming into play by ramping up the production and also the strong success in Australia with Body Science. Overall, Sustainable Care is growing nicely but meeting tough comparables in the quarter. But we have a solid, solid strong growth underlying in the segment. Nordic Distribution, we've also communicated one of the big initiatives that we have highlighted for next year with Hemmakväll, but we can also see that we're reaching more and more retailers, and we bring more of our products out to the market. And then lastly, Future Snacking. Overall in Future Snacking, we have really strong growth in the companies. FCB is the only one dragging it down. But I'm confident that next year, when we have like-for-like comparable peers without these external distribution contracts that takes the net sales down, it's going to be strong growth in FCB as well. And we have some really interesting initiatives in that. To round things up, I also just want to highlight, I mean, we're growing plus 10% organically in volume, like we are driving volume growth here. And you can clearly see that we are growing faster than the competition in the market. So let's dig into the gross profit a bit.

Looking at the first profitability KPI for us, the gross profit and the gross margin, we noticed an improvement quarter-on-quarter, where the gross margin reached 30.7%. This is an improvement of 1.5 percentage units compared to previous quarter. And this reached -- this helps us reach an LTM gross margin of 31.2%. And we continue to see the positive momentum in the underlying profitability, driven by the strategic initiatives that we have taken to increase the underlying profit.

Yes. And also here, I just want to highlight, I mean, it is a volatile market. Some of our raw materials like cacao [indiscernible], for instance, have had a really, really volatile pricing. So that is something that we are facing in the market. Also as you're probably aware, the freight cost from Asia has been significantly increased in Q1 and Q2, but where we actually see that since August, there is a significant drop, which is also something that will give us a boost going forward now when that drop is going to start materialize in a couple of months into our COGS. So I mean I'm quite happy to see that we have been able to continue to improve the gross margin despite facing a lot of challenges and the extra freight costs that we have been having to have throughout the last few months. But we know for a fact that the freight prices have gone down, and that is something that will materialize into our COGS in a couple of months.

And continue looking at the profitability KPI #2, we have the adjusted EBITA LTM. We managed to reach an adjusted EBITA margin of 7.4%, comprising SEK 566 million for the last 12 months. Looking at the quarter, we improved the underlying profitability margin by 0.1% and reached 7.8% for the quarter. And this is an improvement quarter-on-quarter on almost 11%, which we think is, of course, satisfied with.

Yes. And I also want to highlight a few things here. I mean we have divested our properties. So the actual like-for-like, if we would have done it already last year is 14%. So I'm happy to see that we're actually improving the profitability more than we are growing, which is one of the initiatives we have and within our financial targets to strengthen the margin. On top of this, I mean, we are investing heavily this year compared to last year and last year compared to 2022 into marketing. These efforts is something that we will have a return on in the coming years. And we wouldn't do these investments unless we were confident that it's going to bring good value to the group and our shareholders. So despite increasing the investments significantly with additional resources in terms of personnel, marketing and sales initiatives, we're still able to improve the profit margin. So I think that really shows good cost control in the other OpEx and the fixed OpEx that is not related to the increased sales and marketing efforts. So just to highlight a few things from the segments in general and thinking Future Snacking, we have really worked efficiently with the improvements in Grahans and Franssons. Franssons has already started to scale up and Grahans will happen now in Q4, something we are very excited about. Demand for candy and sugar-reduced candy is higher than ever. So it's really something that we need to fix and something we have good belief in that we're going to have going into 2025. The True Dates continue to perform well. We have gained several new listings in markets and a good reception. We are working with the product quality to improve it even more and launched several new SKUs. So I think overall, it's early on. But knowing what we have done here in Sweden with a similar product and what can be done internationally, we're confident this is going to be one of our winners in the coming years. Pändy is the fastest-growing company in the group, doing fantastic numbers. We have capacity constraints that we are working on, but actually seeing really strong momentum with the candy products that we have launched in Sweden and internationally. And then lastly, we have been working hard with FCB to get that company back on track. We terminated these contracts already last year. And we have also done significant improvements in the organization to bring that company back to solid growth and profitability next year. In Sustainable Care, Solent is the biggest company in this group, continuing to perform well with solid growth and stable margins. So that's really rewarding for us to have that sort of backbone in the U.K. We are also investing in Solent with a retail team to utilize that setup to drive value with all of our brands into the U.K. markets. Naty launched a Bambo diaper that has been really well received already on Amazon, so happy to see that. I think it's one of the bigger initiatives in that company in terms of product innovation for many, many years. And we see it as a good complement to the already existing assortment. Humble Co., we have also turned the company around very well this year into solid profitability and starting to grow again, and we have a really interesting pipeline with new product development going into next year. And then lastly, we're continuing to expand our private label offering, combining resources and trying to get leverage with our suppliers. So hopefully, we will see a few more of these really nice products that Solent make in the Nordics in near term. In Quality Nutrition, Body Science, one of our leading brands in the group, going from clarity to clarity. We just launched a collaboration with Chupa Chups that has been really well received. The Soft Bar is actually the leading bar in the market, and we have a hard time keeping up already with Soft Bar with our internal manufacturer that we acquired last year. We have done a split between Ewalco and Amazing Foods. So we actually moved Amazing Foods out of Ewalco, which is dried nuts and snacks, which is something that will enable more capacity with Ewalco that we're now filling up with new customers. And we have also invested into this snacks and dried fruit facility. So we will be able to offer some really great products, especially in private label and to other companies in contract manufacturing here in the Nordics. Bars production is continuing to grow nicely. We are scaling up the production and putting a lot of efforts into scaling the organization there to really be able to do this significant journey that we estimate for 2025. And then we have also now finalized the drink line. We've done the test runs, and we're actually now in production. So I'm really happy about that. We have since the start scaled that initiative more than we initially thought we would do, but it's because that we see such a strong potential in it, and we have a lot of interesting customers coming into us, both external but also internal, bringing production back from Europe into our own facility here in Sweden at a cost-efficient price. And then lastly, Nordic distribution, we are continuing with the consolidation and digitalization of Privab. I think that is going well, and it will give us more efficiency in that company overall in the supply chain but also overhead. In GSD, we have also launched Hell Ice Coffee and now Hell Energy that we have really, really strong reception in the market. It's actually one of the leading energy drink brands here in Europe in several markets. So I think that sort of trust that we show with our distribution capabilities really tells the story with what we can do. Then lastly, we secured a strategic partnership with Hemmakväll, which is also something that we've been talking about in the Capital Markets Day that with Privab and GSD, our distribution platform, we want to be that go-to partner for the retailers in the market.

And looking at the cash flow generation from the operations, we reached a cash flow before change in net working capital of SEK 119 million. And after change in net working capital, we reached SEK 142 million. So we gained SEK 22 million from positive changes in net working capital. And to just give an overview of the cash flow for the quarter compared to the previous quarter, we had a -- previous year, we had a refinancing that -- had a big impact of the comparatives. So it might be difficult to compare them between each other. But just to notice for this quarter, we had a negative impact that we paid a little bit more taxes from our business. Underlying business is growing, meaning that we have to pay a little bit more taxes in advance instead of paying them in arrears. So that had some negative impact on the overall cash flow for the quarter.

Yes. And I think overall, I mean, we are focusing a lot on the cash flow, but we don't want to constrain our companies from going. We're heading into Q4. And I mean, October is our biggest month, and we have started really strong. So I think it's just good to see that we're able to still delever the business and have some solid underlying cash flow. And talking about leverage, I think it's really rewarding here to see that we are continuing on the path to delever the company with our cash flow from 3.9 down to -- 3.1 down to 2.9. We aren't that far off from our leverage target. So that is also something that we're really focusing on going forward to continue to generate good cash flow. Q4 is an important quarter with big months and also potentially net working capital release. So yes, that is something to look forward to. And to round things up, the outlook, I mean, our focus here is to continue to execute well on the strategic initiatives. We are looking to prepare the business as good as we can that we will go into 2025 with the best sort of setup, in our factories, in our brands. We've taken a lot of investments that we are not going to need to scale at the same level next year as we have done this year, but we are going to continue with our efforts to grow the business and setting it up for 2025. Cash flow is important for us. We are going to continue to generate good cash flow and hopefully release some from the net working capital in the last quarter of this year. But we want to get a stronger balance sheet so we're able to deploy that capital into new growth initiatives and potentially over time some acquisitions. And then lastly but not least, we are investing for growth, but we're going to maintain a good cost control and start scaling on the platform and getting leverage both with the other external expenses and with the personnel. And as always, I mean, the gross margin is important. We have some things going for us with the freight prices already gone down, but we are also looking into several initiatives with how can we improve the gross margin and thereon strengthen our profit margin. So that being said, let's open up for some Q&A.

Thank you, Simon. I think one of the first questions here was actually covering exactly what your thoughts about the gross margin development and how we have -- what you think about that. So I think we skipped that one. But just can you share some thoughts on your -- on the growth in Sweden and what you think -- are we happy with the development in Sweden?

I think, I mean, if you just look at the overall numbers, it might not look as high. But we have 2 outliers here. FCB, where we have terminated contracts like we said, okay, we want to focus on our internal brands and our efforts there. We know we're going to have more profitability by doing that long term. But of course, it impacts the numbers, SEK 35 million year-to-date. So that's a big impact. The second one actually is also in Sweden with sustainable care, I mean, we have been growing nicely, but we lost a contract with a big retailer that was unprofitable on candles. So like we haven't lost profitability in that business, but I think the total impact is almost SEK 60 million this year. So I mean taking those 2 outliers into consideration, almost SEK 100 million, I think the growth in Sweden is very solid. But mind you all that, I mean, none of these things is something that really have impacted our profitability much. So that is also something that we have been looking into. Of course, we don't want to lose like that candle business if it was really profitable. But that specific company, we've actually been able to increase the profit despite losing that sort of sales volume. So think with those 2 outliers into consideration, I'm happy with Sweden.

Thank you. And then next question is, if we can elaborate a little bit on the larger-than-usual other items in EBITDA, costs that are not linked to any of our business areas. And here, we, of course, have -- some part of that is when we have a revaluation of contingent considerations. That's one of the major items that's impacting our EBITDA that's not linked directly to any of our specific business areas. I think that's...

Yes. I mean that's one of the things. And also, I mean, if you have followed us for many quarters, you will know that the net from the other income and other expenses is usually quite low. And it's, as you said, depending on the revaluation of earn-outs and also some other sort of FX effects.