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

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Humble Group's presentation for the second quarter of the year. My name is Noel Abdayem, and I'm the acting CEO of Humble Group. With me today, I have our Group CFO, Johan Lennartsson.

Good morning, everyone.

To everyone calling in, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. We will now go ahead and present the results for the second quarter. Following the presentation, we will open up for a Q&A session. Let's walk through the quarter. Revenue came in at just over SEK 2 billion, corresponding to an organic growth of 1%. While this is below the level of organic growth you are used to seeing from Humble, we remain confident in our ability to return to stronger growth as the underlying business continues to develop and the initiatives we have implemented gain further traction. The quarter was impacted by a continued challenging macro environment, together with short-term operational disruptions and delayed deliveries in some of our largest businesses. However, thanks to our diversified portfolio, demand across the group remained stable and helped limit the overall impact. Operationally, we continue to execute on the initiatives launched over the past year. Our cost efficiency program is progressing according to plan and several of our businesses continue to strengthen their underlying profitability, even though the group's overall earnings were held back by challenges in our distribution business, Privab, and parts of our U.K. operations. We also continue to optimize our portfolio during the quarter. We completed the acquisition of Jutexpo, strengthening our position in the U.K. And after the end of the quarter, we announced the divestment of Fancystage as another step in focusing the group on our highest priority businesses. As part of this work, we recognized a goodwill impairment, which better reflects our future portfolio and long-term strategic direction. While this impacts the reported accounting result, it has no impact on cash flow and supports our ambition to build a more focused, profitable and scalable Humble Group. With that, I'll hand over to Johan, who will take you through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Noel, for that. And just as Noel said, the net sales came in on just about [ SEK 2 billion ]. We noted a total growth of 1%, which [indiscernible] comprised organic growth. And as Noel said, that's a little bit lower than we are used to see. There was some things to consider regarding the organic growth. First of all, we had a really strong year last year where we had an Easter impact who was contributing positively last year, which we had an early this year. That's mainly visible in the Nordic Distribution segment. But as Noel said, we've also seen challenging market conditions in the United Kingdom, where -- which is one of our largest geographical markets. And that's especially driven by a little bit weaker consumer sentiment and where we see a shift in the shopper behavior. But despite that, we are holding up quite well. We have also completed and announced a few acquisitions and divestments during the quarter. But all in all, the total impact from this M&A activity is limited in relation to net sales. We can see that the acquisitions and the divestment is contributing positively to the profit. Talking about the profit, the gross profit amounted to SEK 636 million, corresponding to a gross margin of 31.7%. And we can see and we can conclude that the broader portfolio that we have is supporting strength in a challenging time. the gross margin is flat versus last year. And we want to just emphasize that the macro environment has been quite volatile over the beginning of the year, not to mention the Irani-U.S. conflict, which has contributed to an increased prices in our last mile transports from the ports to warehouses, which is heavily dependent on the fuel prices, which has been a volatile income factor in the quarter. But we've also seen -- we also -- we mentioned in the CEO letter that we've seen some supply chain disruptions, which also impacting us negatively, mainly a little bit difficulties with port congestions, which makes it a little bit challenging for our teams to manage the supply chain and the logistics to ensure just-in-time logistics. But with that said, the EBITDA came in on SEK 120 million, and that's in line with last year. And worth mentioning about the EBITDA is that we had a positive gain of SEK 6 million from divestment of subsidiaries in April, but we've also had a negative impact of acquisition-related expenses and revaluation of earn-outs of SEK 8 million -- minus SEK 8 million. So the total impact to EBITDA is negatively, minus SEK 2 million. And also, we want to just remember or bear in mind that we have moved away from reporting the adjusted profitability as a KPI as the core purpose with that is to make it more clear what the underlying profitability is actually generating. So that's why we are highlighting these impacts in this way. But overall, the main challenge for our subsidiaries during the quarter has been fighting the cost price increases due to the volatile macro environment. And with that said, we are not happy with the underlying profitability development, and that's something that we're continuously working with, but we remain at flat versus last year when the macro situation has changed, and that's something that is worth bearing in mind. Noel also mentioned that we've recognized an impairment of goodwill in the Sustainable Care segment later -- earlier this week of SEK 600 million, which has a negative impact to EBIT, but it's a noncash impacting item and also nonrecurring. But with that said, we are continuously following the valuation of the segments, and we want to be clear that we do not foresee any other need or any future need for impairment goodwill in any of the other segments in the near future. Moving on to the cash flow. We can conclude that the cash flow before change in net working capital came in really strong of SEK 142 million. That is an increase from SEK 129 million in previous year. But however, we can also conclude that we have a seasonality impact in the -- mainly in the inventory, where we build up quite a lot of stock before summer when we do a lot of maintenance in our production sites. So that is contributing to inventory buildup just before summer. And we can also see that the early Easter impacted sales a little bit negatively, but that also was a little bit weaker than expected when it comes to the sell-out from the inventory, which has a negative impact in the second quarter. Moving on to the leverage. It's also, of course, highly dependent on the cash generation in the quarter. And here, we can see that leverage came in on just 2.8x adjusted EBITDA. That is an increase from the first quarter and it's a little bit higher than we want it to be. Now with that said, it's mainly explained by the seasonality impact that we've just spoken about in the net working capital. But also, we want to emphasize that we've seen this, and we've been aware of this increase in quite a long time as it is a result from strategic decisions in CapEx investments, mainly in the brand new confectionery site, which is very valuable for us to enable future growth and value addition activities in that segment. But we have also completed acquisitions during the quarter, which also have a negative impact of the leverage in the short term, but that we are confident that we will contribute to the overall long-term value creation for the group. Now with that said, we are looking forward to continue working with the leverage, and we are confident that there is much more to do in the third and the fourth quarter to continue to driving that down to the target of 2.5 or even below where we want it to be.

Thank you, Johan. Let's talk a bit more about our 4 business segments. Our segment Future Snacking continued to develop well during the quarter, delivering 7% organic growth despite temporary supply chain disruptions. Demand remained resilient across the segments and momentum improved towards quarter end. We are also approaching the production start of our new confectionery factory in Skövde, which will significantly expand our manufacturing capacity and support future growth within the segment. Finally, we are very excited about our long-term partnership with the brand Barebells, further validating both our innovation capacities and production platform. Within Sustainable Care, market conditions in the U.K. remained weak and continue to impact both sales and profitability. During the quarter, however, we completed the acquisition of Jutexpo, broadening [ Poland's ] customer offering and strengthening the platform for future growth. Following the quarter, we also divested Fancystage as part of our strategic review and as mentioned earlier, recognized a noncash impairment that better reflects the future composition of the portfolio. We remain confident that the actions taken over the past year position the segment well for improved performance going forward. Moving to Quality & Nutrition. The segment delivered another solid quarter with 5% organic growth, supported by strong customer demand and high capacity utilization across our manufacturing operations. Profitability was, however, impacted by continued volatility in the whey protein prices, together with temporary operational disruptions. Despite these short-term headwinds, the underlying business remains strong, providing a solid foundation for continued profitable growth. Finally, Nordic Distribution delivered a resilient quarter. While the organic growth was slightly negative due to tough comparables, profitability improved through a stronger product mix. Privab continues to be our main focus, where restructuring initiatives and cost reductions remain well underway. We expect these actions to gradually strengthen both profitability and cash generation moving forward. Finally, let me conclude by looking at our key focus areas going forward. Our highest priority remains the same: to improve profitability and strengthen cash generation across the group. The cost efficiency program continues to deliver according to plan, and we remain focused on operational excellence, pricing initiatives and restoring performance in the businesses that have been affected by temporary market conditions and supply chain disruptions. At the same time, we continue to execute our strategic review. Our ambition is clear. We want to build a more focused, profitable and scalable humble Group by allocating capital and management attention to the businesses where we see the greatest long-term potential. We, therefore, continue to evaluate both selective divestments and complementary acquisitions. We also continue to invest in strategic growth initiatives. The new confectionery factory in [ Skövde ] will be an important platform for future growth. And at the same time, improving cash conversion and gradually reducing leverage remains the absolute highest priority. Looking ahead, Humble Group is stronger today than it was a year ago. We have a more focused portfolio, a stronger financial platform and a clear strategic direction. Everything we do is aimed at building a stronger business and creating sustainable shareholder value over time. As previously announced, Anders Fredriksson will join as CEO in September. I am convinced that his extensive FMCG experience will be a great asset as Humble enters its next phase of development. Personally, I look forward to continuing to support the business in an operational role while remaining a long-term shareholder and member of the Board. Over the past year, we have laid the foundation for the next chapter of Humble Group. While there is still work to do, I'm confident that we are moving in the right direction, and I firmly believe that the best is still ahead of us. Thank you all for listening in. We will now open up the floor for questions.

Thank you, Noel, and we will see -- we'll start with the questions as they come and as we go. Let's see what we have. Maybe first here from Hans Mähler at DNB. Noel, can you talk a bit about your expectations of organic growth throughout the rest of the year? Do you consider Q2 a blip in the curve? And what can you say about the potential in Barebells cooperation?

So we continue to see a stable underlying demand across most of our businesses, which, in my opinion, reflects the strength of our diversified portfolio. Several of the factors that affected growth of this quarter are operational rather than structural, and we have clear initiatives in place to address them. Combined with the investments that we're doing, such as our new confectionery factory, we remain confident that we will be able to return to a stronger organic growth over time. When it comes to the partnership with Barebells, we're not commenting on the commercial details, but we see this as a very, very strong validation of the platform that we have built. We believe that Humble has established one of the world's leading platforms for sugar-reduced confectionery, where we combine innovation, product development and what we believe is the highest product quality currently available in the market. And I also believe that, that was one of the key reasons why Barebells chose to partner with us. And looking at it from a strategic perspective, it's also a great collaborational fit for us. Barebells is currently one of the fastest-growing brands in the U.S., and we hope that this partnership will contribute to building volume and selling capacity in our confectionery over time.

Thank you, Noel. Next question from Hans Mähler here is deleveraging is still moving quite slowly. What are your expectations for cash flow and deleveraging going forward, both organically and through further divestments? Yes. First of all, we can just conclude that we were aware that we would have a negative impact to the leverage overall in the second quarter due to the CapEx investments that we have decided on previously, and we are now moving into the final phase of completing that factory buildup. With that said, we expect to have another quarter in Q3 where we have quite heavy CapEx for that project. But with that said, we are -- we're done more or less now with all the payment of earnouts, and we don't have any other larger initiatives that we expect to have a negative impact on the overall leverage. That's what we can say. So -- and we are -- with that said, we are confident that we have a good possibility to continue to reduce the leverage during the third and the fourth quarter, and that is one of our highest priorities to achieve. And then another question here from [ GLG ] regarding M&A. Are there any pending significant processes that you aim to conclude during the year? Or are any divestments going forward likely to go more similar to the recent ones with regards to size? Noel, do you have any comments?

Yes. So we continue to execute on the strategic review. And as part of this process, we continuously evaluate both potential divestments and acquisitions. As a policy, however, we do not comment on ongoing processes or potential transactions until they have been completed and publicly announced.