I-Tech AB (ITECH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to today's presentation with I-Tech. We apologize if we started late, we had some technical issues. Today, we have the CEO, Philip Chaabane; and CFO, Magnus Henell, with us presenting. If you have any questions for Philip and Magnus, please use the form that is located to the right. And with that said, I'll hand the word over to you, guys. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much, Ludwig. And again, apologize for technical issues that were difficult to resolve timely. We are equally happy to be here and to have the opportunity to present this fourth quarter report and also then the full year 2022 outcome. As many of you may have read, it's been a robust growth that ends a very successful year. The last quarter is definitely something special, and it clearly demonstrates our position as an established growth company. And this is a heartwarming statement given the many quarters in the pandemic where we didn't present any evidence of growth at all. But now we consistently have proven that we're back on track. Some interesting figures that will be elaborated on further on much more in detail. But for your initial reflection is that we have 80% -- 5% currency adjusted growth in the fourth quarter, so ending very, very strong. And that adds up to a full year with a strong EBITDA margin development that amounted to 24% on the full year. This is strong business from our side, but it's also driven by a very long-term and robust global or so-called macro trends. We will come back to those. But the Carbon Intensity Index and ship design index and European Emissions Trading Systems are put in force into this industry. And also in some locations and regions, such initiatives are taken to try to reduce biocidal levels in coatings, which is a difficult task. But if these come in place, Selektope definitely is well positioned to take an even bigger part of the coating industry moving forward. For you who are new to I-Tech, it's a listed company on Nasdaq First North. We rely on very strong IPR intangible assets, both in terms of regulatory approvals and also patents, both back end and front end. And that means we can run the company relatively lean, certainly in combination with the relatively few customers who are dominating this industry, around 9 altogether. The purpose of what we do is to make and help shipping to become much more efficient by being an ingredient technology supplier to the global coating industry, and that is the marine coating industry. And the technology we use is called Selektope and is very special because it has a repellent mode of action, we'll come back more to that, enabling it to be used in tremendously small quantities yet with enormous power. The scalability of this case is claimed from our side to be high, and we see the evidence of that now concluding 2022. There are 3 main pillars that we base our business on, so-called fundamental pillars. One is the ability to reduce emissions, emissions to air that is. The shipping industry in total has a big part of global CO2 emissions. And if you boil that down to the coatings, it's commonly known that there is a potential in the industry to save some 100 million tons of CO2 all over the fleet if the best possible antifouling coatings were applied in contrast to the average situation as of today. But it's not only about emissions there, it's also trying to preserve marine environments by not bringing alien species into these, and some of those may be invasive species even. That's formerly a ballast water problem, mainly solved to a large extent. Now it's focused on fouling. And fouling may be a vehicle for transporting these species around the oceans. And there's been some interesting incidents around this when we'll report on in the slides to come. And on top, there is an ambition to always try to optimize the amount of chemicals and actives used in any coating, not saying that anything is not needed, but the optimization potential is still available for the sake of a good or/and better sustainability profile in marine coatings. So this is a very niche product, not only because it's part of a quite small or condensed industry, I should say, the marine coating industry, but it's also so that it's focused entirely on the barnacle larvae who are those who may be considered public #1 enemy in many cases because they attach and build large shells that create a lot of drag, weighing above 40% extra drag if they attach in larger scale. But it's also a component that has a very niche mode of action because it comes from the pharmaceutical thinking of research, so to say, where it actually repels its target organism and becomes very, very precise in its action. And the power is tremendous. Certainly, we combine it with a few remaining active agents and the strong technology platform in binder technology and so on from the customers. Altogether, integrating Selektope gives a really strong power to resist barnacle fouling even in the most difficult challenging orders. On the picture below, you can see the difference when integrating Selektope into a certain coating system. So this is what we do. It's very simple. It's simple in its mode of action, and it's set up as a company. If this company could get Selektope into every single liter of antifouling all over the world, targeting then all these kind of different vessels that are displayed on the pictures, the potential would be $350 million to $500 million altogether in sales value for us. Of course, such a big market share is unrealistic, but it gives you an idea. Another takeaway from this slide is that there are many boats and vessels of larger size being responsible for the seaborne trade, but also the marine industry as such. And they have to come in for dry docking and coating surveys and coating change every 3 to 5 years, depending on age. And that means there's a recurring amount of opportunities to select and change the coating and optimize that aspect every year. Mainly, all this is taking part in Asia, but yes, it is every year a nice opportunity. So is the [ retro boat ] side, which is a bit more niche because it's regulated much more locally than the other 2 segments. We do have a potential to integrate our technology in all these segments, and we are doing so as we speak, with a big overemphasis on the large commercial fleets represented by the oil tanker on this slide here. So the driving forces around this are quite astonishing, has never been so many things coming into play at the same time. This gives you a view of 2 of those. One is the so-called EEXI, which a lot of shipping companies are dealing with at the moment. It's a one-off design rating or approval, depending on the actual physical installations of equipment and design of the ship. It could be engines, can be the propeller, can be the hull design and so on. So it's equipment-based or design-based figure, and that's what they are fighting with right now. In addition to that, it would be Carbon Intensity Index program coming in, which means that from January 1 are required to start to report year-by-year their actual performance. And that is the most interesting from a coating perspective because year-by-year, they will be compared to the previous year, and the outcome will clearly depend on how well the ship has improved year-by-year and operate how well it's managed in terms of efficiency improvements year-by-year. This is driving the coating industry much more than the EEXI, but yes, both are putting a lot of pressure on the industry to transform. In addition to this, the industry also adapted to the European ETS system where carbon will start to cost money at some point down the line, adding to this spiral or this pile of quite tough requirements on this industry. Not only that -- let's see if we can get the slide change here -- oh, here we go. We spoke about the protection of the marine ecosystems around the world. And there was a news flash in January, early January, with a cruise ship being reported to have way too much fouling and then possessing a way too high risk of actually bringing in alien species into protected waters, in this case, Australia. And it's an example of many ships that are troubled with this kind of ban on port entry or denial of port entry. This costs a lot of money because the only way to fix it is to go way out in the coast, way out from the coast, beyond territory waters normally to clean with divers. That is a very lengthy and difficult task itself, but it also disrupts the journey of these passenger ships or the commercial ships, if that's the case, and completely disrupts the customer satisfaction, either it's delayed goods or it's just not expected cruise for simply speaking. And cleaning is also not only expensive, but also damaging to the coating system itself, which means once starting that procedure, every few months, that procedure has to be repeated to keep the condition in okay shape. So a premium antifouling coating with our Selektope is clearly a very good choice when it comes to mitigate this kind of risk. There is reference links here for those who want to read more. We can provide those separately. But it's not only external factors that are helping us taking big steps into 2022. It's also a customer maturity step and process that's ongoing all the time. We have collaborations with all 9 big customers serving this market. Out of those, 6 are really, really big on a global scale and a few are big, but more on the regional space. We're happy to have engaged in very lengthy R&D activities with all of them. 6 of them have new products -- or newbuilding products on markets, the specialized sustained outfitting period or at least the first 1 to 2 years of operation after and during newbuilding. A few of these are also available on the market with so-called dry-docking products, and that's where the volume of coating is sold into. And that's where we hope to be able to expand even further with our technology in the years to come. And part of these are also in the late process of finalizing ideas on potential commercializing new products into the market. So within 12 months, we have a hope that something more will come around from customers in this group. And all of this is obviously good news and will help us continue our growth agenda forward. I think that concludes the more background parts of this presentation. We will now spend some time on financials, and I'll have Magnus to walk you through 3 or 4 slides here.

Okay. Thank you very much, Philip. It's actually great to be here for the first time, I think. And what time is better to do it when actually the best quarter and the best year ever. And as you see in front of yourself, we increased our sales significantly compared to last year, 156% in growth. But more importantly, it's 85% currency adjusted, which means that we have a strong volume uptake. And all of this comes from high sales volumes from 5 different customers. And as Philip spoke about earlier, the customer development is a very important part, and I will come back to that. And we're doing this with a stable gross margin of over 50%. And what had driven this? It's -- a very large part is our main customer, Chugoku, of course, where they're growing significantly or mainly in Japan. But there is also a strong increase in Korea, both on -- mainly on newbuilding, but we also have certain strengthening of the maintenance markets all over the place. And another comment is that we're -- at the end of the year, it was quite low on inventories due to the increased sales, but the production is going full speed and will not be any bottleneck moving forward. So for the full year 2022, we have a growth of 58%. It's almost 30% organic growth, but most important take of this is actually the improvement of EBITDA or actually the net result in the end, where we are coming from several years of losses, and now we show a full year with a net profit. We have 4 consecutive years with a positive EBITDA and continuous growth in the product and customer portfolio, which I will come back to. So that gives us a very good hope for the future. And I think it's also worth mentioning here is that our strong supplier relationships give us a chance to manage all the volatile raw material prices that have been out in the world over the last periods or last year's, actually. And coming back to the EBITDA improvement, from 6% to 24%, which really proves the scalability of the business there, and we will hopefully continue that journey. And customer development, as you know, that is one of the most important things or the most important things for us to grow. And as you can see on the top left side, we have, over '21 and '22, improved the number of products. We actually doubled the number of products from 2020 in the market. There are significantly more customers with products out there. So we have now over 20 commercial paint products. And that, of course, should and have given us a very nice organic growth. So seen over the last 5 years, since we were listed on the First North, we had a cumulative growth of almost 30%, which is very strong today. And finally, we usually don't talk so much about it, but we have a very strong cash flow and a strong balance sheet today. We have, over the years, growth significantly without major increases in working capital. We have a strong operating cash flow, mainly for this year, due to the nice results and the management of working capital, of course. We should also say that we had planned more investments mainly in regulatory approvals, but they are quite slow, the authorities, which means that we have postponed some of these investments into the coming year. And also for Korea, it will come in, in a few years ahead. We have earlier had some loans from mainly Energimyndigheten in Sweden, which we are rapidly repaying. So all in all, that gives us a cash balance of almost SEK 53 million by the end of the year, which is a very strong position moving forward, and I will come back a little bit to that as well. On the balance sheet, the fixed assets is significantly reduced between the years, but mainly due to low investment, high depreciations and started utilizing our tax assets. And that's why I talked about earlier that the inventory is kept on a low level. We have a good cooperation with our suppliers, which are holding inventory for us. But of course, the inventory levels will be somewhat increased also in our own books over the year to come. Equity is still strong. As I said, we don't have any long-term liabilities left in end of 2022. The only loans we have still left, which is roughly SEK 2.3 million, will be repaid during the year. So given that we aim to continue having profit, we are in a very nice position cash-wise, of course. But we also should understand that we will most likely start to increase the working capital over the years to come. Most likely, we will increase the accounts receivables significantly. We will start to build some more inventory, which will have negative effects on the overall cash flow. And as I talked about a little bit earlier, that we are -- we'll start to have some investments in the regulatory approvals as well as we are now moving our facilities and building up a new lab in those facilities, which will take some means of the cash. On the other hand, overall, we have a very strong position and should continue to hold that.

Very good. Thank you for this in-depth review of the financials. We'll expect questions on that as we soon terminate this presentation. Before that, we have the final slide here by putting forward the statement on what our ambitions are moving forward, and that is clearly to achieve a sustainable double-digit profitable growth in our core business. We are seeing and we -- our judgment is that the macro trends combined with the higher underlying customer activity will support this ambition. Although still a very low market share, generally speaking, we have to work hard to achieve such a growth by pushing and developing the technology into the larger maintenance market and certainly then in the Asian regions. All in all, we do see with positive light on the years to come here, and that's why we are putting forward this kind of statement. Of course, things can happen anywhere unless we have all witnessed in the past, but disregarding all that, we are confident that we have good grounds to form an ambition like this. And for now, we say thank you and look forward to questions.

Thank you very much for that presentation, and I will jump into the Q&A section here.

We'll take the first question. Can you please provide more detail on the maintenance business progress? Is it ramping up? And what should one expect here?

It is quite similar to the previous quarters. We have mainly 2 customers who are active in this field. There are 3, but the 2 mainly contributing to any significant figures on the top line. One of those well-known, Chugoku, is somewhat over-skewed to the newbuilding, but fairly balanced between the 2 different markets. For the rest, we still have to work and still have to cooperate to see if we can find good grounds to mature their existing products in the sense that they actually do qualify for a 5-year scheme rather than a 1-, 1.5-year scheme that is applicable for newbuilding.

Okay. Thank you. We'll take the next question here. Should we expect gross margin to increase as scale is reached? Or should we assume current level is the steady level?

I think for the coming periods, we should assume that we are on a quite good level that we will maintain. There are certain aspects that could increase the gross margin. But on the other hand, there are also certain aspects that could decrease it. So -- but our ambition is clearly to be in line with what we see today over the 50%.

Thank you. Could you provide more detail on the outlook? Because you say you raised your bar and expect double-digit profitable growth. And just could you provide more color to that statement?

First of all, we -- it's a forward-looking statement, which is in itself a big thing that we haven't talked about in a long, long time. We reserve, obviously, the rights that things can go up and down in the different years and depending on how this maintenance market develops for the technology, as someone asked before. But on the overall path, we should have a double-digit growth, and it should be profitable. And hopefully, profitability even grows faster than the top line, depending on how our investments and costs come in, maybe more costs on that. But we don't put out a firm figure other than the average increase year-over-year should be on double-digit level.

You grow very strongly. What do you believe is a key underlying driver to your growth in the quarter? Is it the new products, shipping indices, et cetera?

Well, it's clear, as Magnus said, the availability of more products. So a lot of growth has taken place in Japan and Korea. And certainly in Japan, we know a lot of products came out in the 2021 period from mainly Chugoku, but also one other paint manufacturer. That is clearly one of the driving factors. That's a region where a lot of shipping is ongoing and a huge market, maybe one of the largest in the world in terms of regional shipping. So the fact that not only one, but actually 2 products -- sorry, companies have started to use the technology there, it's very satisfying. We know that volume pressure is quite high in that region. The other part is Korea, which is a newbuilding area. A lot of larger gas carriers are being built, and they have longer outfitting periods than simpler type of ships. And that drives obviously the need for longer outfitting -- better outfitting performance products, and that helps Selektope. That's what we've seen in the quarter mainly.

Okay. Thank you. You're now showing a new complete level of growth. Would you say that this level is sustainable?

Our quarter 4 was exceptional in terms of growth. If we can repeat that, we will be soon on the big list among the really big companies, of course. But as mentioned, we do receive very positively on the future with growth as a minimum requirement on double-digit level, of course. But on the 85% organic growth for the quarter that it may happen, but it won't be the average growth rate over the years to come. So -- but clearly positive also from our side.

Thank you. What could investors expect for 2023?

Well, as I mentioned, we believe in growth. We think that, that is going to be possible to be achieved. We think it will be a great year or else, we wouldn't put forward this outlook. This -- given that nothing else is obviously coming into the picture that we can't control. But all these arguments that we've put forward in the presentation is starting to put pressure on coatings that are redeveloped or re-enhanced, optimized in every different sense. And in that equation, Selektope fits well in most paint systems at least. As we also say maybe that the R&D activity is quite interesting at the moment once in all of these line paint makers. So that won't help us 2023 or 2024, but 2025 and onwards, the outlook from that should be helping us as well.

If we're looking at the sales to ships under maintenance and not the newbuild, how much of that sales are to ships previously painted with Selektope?

That is a good question. I wish I knew all of that. I do know that the increase in that area comes from mainly, as you all know, from Chugoku vessels, by far, the largest position with Selektope in the dry-docking space at the moment. And they have launched new coatings where, not this year, but the years before, the M1 PLUS as an example, that is more or less on a standard component now on the flat bottom of a ship. And that is combined with whatever coatings they feel appropriate on the vertical side. So that's 1/3 of the surface, which normally and, to a larger extent, is specified with the Selektope coating. So we hope -- well, that is going to drive the growth in that area. And we hope other paint makers will take, maybe not a similar approach, but use the technology in other smart ways on the dry-docking market because that's where something really big can change this outlook.

And can you mention something about the progress with your other 5 customers?

Well, some have increased maturity of their products that they have on the market. That's one thing. That helps to justify the expansion in their product portfolios. And our second biggest customer is doing very, very good with these products. And hopefully, that turns into more deals on their Selektope range. That's a customer we can't point out and name, but they are doing a really good job in general in the coating business. The Selektope is increasingly important to them. So I think that is the main takeaway. Then for many of the others, there will be some increases this year. Still, there is hope for launch of products on the dry docking, and that's the point where we will be able to be more confident that real big things are going on. We know that things are tightening in, in Korea, as I mentioned, this 1% biocidal level that is being put in place by the local regulators. And to achieve that, every paint formulation has to be reformulated in the next 2 years or so. And the only way to really achieve that appears to be the use of 0.1% Selektope in the metrics. That gives us the power needed to respond to this request. And if that happens, that would be an increase also -- a large increase also in the newbuilding market.

Thank you. If we're looking at the limitations of biocidal loadings to 1% in Korea, how far have they comped on that? And what is the likelihood of that coming through?

It's a very good question. Well, first of all, it is in place. It's also so that a lot of [ loan bringers ] is coming on against it, as always, when it comes to regulations. That's the nature of the industry or any industry, I guess. At some point, it probably will come into play anyway. The current time line is 2 years from now. There may be a grace period that extended from that, I don't know. But the fact that the discussion is ongoing, it's strong enough to start reformulation work. And we know that the test programs locally in Korea are called for to evaluate what can be done during this year. So at the end of this year, I guess, the industry will know what impact this regulation has on the performance of their coatings -- on their new coatings.

Thank you. Could you elaborate some on what the most important ship classes are and types for the Selektope? And what ships benefit the most from -- the most and the least of Selektope?

Yes. Traditionally, the ships with higher speeds and less port waiting time are not going into the Selektope domain, not consider on like Selektope because they don't have the barnacle problem simply. Barnacles are a problem when you are idling at anchor over some time of period, more than a few days maybe, even though you can have problems in that short time frame as well. But that gives you the direction into the more commoditized ship types, which are oil tankers and chemical tankers, dry bulks and so on. They also have a very large wet surface, certainly the larger oil tanks. So that is clearly, I would say, the larger category of vessels. But as I mentioned earlier, when it comes to newbuild, that all changes because gas category has a very similar shape to as a container vessel, but it's just idling a lot. So that type of ship yet still needs the most robust protection you can invent. But I would maybe put a lower emphasis on the container side. But having said that, there are customers using Selektope in a coating type that is tailored for the container vessels. And that is bringing new concepts forward and using Selektope as a safeguard in case they end up in idling, but it's also so that the fact of replacing a lot of things with Selektope in that specific type of coatings enables a better overall performance according to this paint maker. And therefore, they are very well positioned to actually also have a nice and very firm offer to the container industry, relying on the Selektope technology, but mainly then emphasizing the rest of their technology portfolio in that context.

Thank you. Could you break down the dry-docking revenues versus newbuilding revenues?

Not on a total level, but we can -- as I said, Chugoku is probably close to 40:60 ratio there on dry docking/newbuild. But for the rest, the vast majority is definitely newbuild. As mentioned in the slides here, we have 3 customers who are offering both newbuilding and dry dock. So the 2 other ones, which are not Chugoku, we don't have that time or transparency at the moment.

Thank you. Could you give us some color on business performance in Q1?

We're confident that we are in a good momentum in the industry with all these things going on and have a very strong product portfolio from all these paint makers that is, in many cases, increasing quite a lot. Quarter 4 is a good quarter, but it's not a onetime thing. We will see larger growth numbers coming in, and we also see lower growth numbers coming in. But all in all as with growth, we are quite positive for the first quarter.

Thank you. Why do you estimate the market size at USD 500 million?

It's to give some sort of guidance. If every liter of antifouling produced on Earth is containing the recommended amount of Selektope, give and take, coating, thickness and all that stuff, that's the potential that could be reached. We will try to put some more light into that figure in the reporting periods to come over the year here where we maybe bring that down to the more accessible market, so to say, given the current product ranges that we see. But we need to come back to that later on. And I will give you further guidance on what may be a bit more realistic to expect.

Thank you. How close are you -- are your different customers in getting Selektope into their maintenance and dry coatings?

We think 2 new will at least try to -- well, we know that there are interesting plans to go in that direction from 2 customers who are not at all in that segment at the moment. We see a time line of, as I mentioned there, give and take 12 months driven by the maturity level, but that could also be 24 months, but somewhere around there. And that would then put a number of total 5 big paint makers into the maintenance area within that 12 to maybe 18 to 24 months at the latest. And that will be a very good step to confirm a very long-term growth of this technology.

Thank you. How many coating customers offer Selektope as of today for maintenance?

Three, as we have showed in the chart there. It's Chugoku plus 2 more, where the other 2 are not as all as influential on the top line at the moment. But 3 are having offerings that are used both on newbuilding and dry dock, all are Asian-based.

Yes, thank you. Your patent expired last year and another one will expire in 2030. The formula is quite easy to copy. How difficult is it to a competitor to copy your business?

I would say it's very difficult, at least on a global shipping perspective level. First of all, it's not that easy to copy. The molecule is known, yes, and there are producers out there. But to produce it at the cost that we do is not easy and certainly not with the purity levels that we have and the safety measures that are expected from the industry. And that's one thing. The other thing is the regulatory approvals that are much more important in many areas than the patents. The big, serious paint makers are key -- are very clear on sourcing from suppliers that control the dossier and the contents of it in dominating countries, which is in Europe, Japan, Korea, certain extent, China, but where Europe is the dominating factor. So it's like an entry barrier. Even if you have no volume in Europe, you have to possess your regulatory dossier in good shape in Europe to qualify as a supplier. So even if someone else will find a way to produce this at a comparable cost, they will have to file this and go through this, whatever, 10-year process in Europe to qualify. Of course, we may see local outbreaks where regulations are less dominant. But again, that will be local paint makers as well, which have a much more limited capacity to make a difference in this industry.

Thank you. Are you starting to look at expanding production capacity? And for how long do you expect that the [ core ] production capacity will be able to meet the demand?

Yes, that's a good question. And we are continuously looking into the production capacity, of course. Today, we have a very nice production capacity at our main producer. We are able to have a significant growth, I would say. But we also have another -- a second supplier that takes certain parts of our material from, which also have significant production capabilities. All in all, what I'm saying is that on capacity-wise, we don't see any issues for the coming years, I would say. Of course, we need to continuously work with and to be able to have the best cost of goods as possible. And there is where the main focus is. So capacity-wise, we can manage the growth without problem. Cost-wise, we are, of course, continuously working on it.

Okay. Thank you. Why do you say that it's not realistic to get 100% market share? And how much would you say is realistic?

Well, 100% is never realistic because there is always a need for different things. And there are different coating systems out there that work with different, how to say, technology-based lines, which are much more difficult for Selektope to enter into. So that won't have -- I don't think it would be good if it happens. It's very good that there is a mix of biocides and active agents and technologies to not burden neither nor the environment, but neither put all the eggs in one basket because spread is always good. We will come back with a more detailed view on what we think is more realistic out of that in the reporting periods to come.

Okay. Thank you. And what's the best way to contact you, Philip, if you have investor-related questions?

I do hope my -- and I know my e-mail and contact details are available on the web page as I am the one who deal with the Investor Relations questions. So please send an e-mail rather than call, by the way, and use my e-mail rather than anything else at that point.

Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions that we have. Do you have any final remarks for these presentations?

No, we're just very happy to be able to present this. It's been a lot of work and a lot of difficult times, and now it comes through showing the potential in the industry and showing that Selektope as an advanced biocide really has an important place in turning shipping industry into an even more or a much more sustainable industry. After all, we all rely on seaborne trade to keep this globalization moving. And active biocides approved and well-proven are highly needed as we can see, and that's good for us.

Okay. Thank you, Philip and Magnus, for presenting today and answering all our questions. And a big thanks to all of you who follow this presentation with I-Tech live today. I hope you have a great rest of the day. And until next time, thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you.