Investment AB Latour (publ) (LATOB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Investment AB Latour's Interim Report for the Second Quarter 2023. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to CEO, Johan Hjertonsson; and CFO, Anders Mörck.

Okay. Thank you, Katarina. And once again, welcome to this Q2 conference call. I'm here together with our CFO, Anders Mörck. As you can see on the first slide, as we usually do, you can see that our overall group structure is unchanged. We had a strong second quarter with record results in terms of EBIT. However, order intake is slightly weakening, and this is mainly explained by a normalization of how customers plan and place their orders after the pandemic, since the logistic chains are more stable now, and also somewhat weaker demand. We are delivering on a very high order book, resulting in high volumes in the quarter and a strong organic growth in net sales. Going on to next slide to comment on our listed portfolio. There is no change within the quarter in the listed portfolio. The long-term underlying development for the holdings in our listed portfolio is strong. A majority of the companies have reported as of today a positive development during the quarter. Acquisitions activities continues on a broad base. We could mention ASSA ABLOY. ASSA ABLOY financed the acquisition of hardware & home Improvement in North America as one highlight. The stock market has developed positively during the first half year, and our investment portfolio value increased by 20.6%, whereas the SIXRX increased 11.3% during the same time period. Until Friday of last week, August 18, the portfolio value was SEK 67.8 billion, and the total return amounts therefore to 6% so far this year compared to SIXRX of 4.9%. Then going to the next slide. I'd like to comment our wholly owned industrial operations. And as I said, very good second quarter with a strong result over SEK 1 billion actually, with continued good underlying demand on most markets. However, order intake has slowed down somewhat as we said at the beginning of the presentation. This slowdown is partly explained by the normalization, as I said, of how customers place their orders, but also to some extent, it has slowdown in the economy. And the slowdown that we see in order intake is especially in those business areas that has exposure to capital investments and also the consumer segment. It's difficult to assess how much is explained by customer's normalized purchase behavior and how much is action downturn. Referring to the chart, as you can see here, it's easy to see that the order intake was boosted during '21 and '22. And these times were very long and customers wanted to secure the deliveries. What we see now is that we deliver on the high order book that was built during those years, and the invoicing shall exceed order intake until we have delivered on the built-up order book. Looking at the industrial operations as a whole, order intake decreased 3%, organic minus 13%, and net sales increased by 19%, organic 7%. The general cost inflation is affecting all business areas, but good cost control combined with the implemented price increases protects the profit in an effective manner. The quarter result is growing by 26% to SEK 1.020 billion compared to SEK 812 million last year with a margin of 15.4% compared to 14.6% same quarter last year. And then if we go to the next slide to comment on acquisitions during 2023. After a very [ high activity ] in acquisitions during 2022, we have temporarily lowered the tempo during the first half of the year. However, we have a lot of activities still ongoing and many discussions with a good pace as usual. Acquisition of Dalair to Swegon that we announced in the end of last year was finalized in the beginning of this year. In July, Latour Future Solutions invested in Quandify and entered as minority holder. Quandify is a Swedish company that offers intelligent water measurement systems for commercial and private buildings, enabling cost-efficient analysis of water consumptions, leakage detection and remote shutoff capabilities. So having said that and commented on our listed portfolio, our wholly-owned portfolio and acquisitions activities, I would like to hand over to Anders. So over to you, Anders, please.

Thank you so much, Johan. So we start to talk about the first business area, which is Bemsiq. For Q2, it was another strong quarter for Bemsiq with continued underlying demand in a growing market. The total growth was 33%, of which 14% were organic growth, and both business areas within Bemsiq, building automation and metering are growing, and so are the different geographies. The situation with lack of components has stabilized and the delivery capacity has been good within Bemsiq. And as you can see, the profit development is impressive, all companies contributing positive. So very well done, Mikael and team. And we should also note on Bemsiq that there has been an internal transfer of a company from Bemsiq to Swegon Group during the quarter, when the company Bastec was moved from Bemsiq to Swegon. And all figures have been adjusted accordingly. We go to the next page, which means that we go to Caljan, the next business area. And I would like to refer to the 5-year chart on the top. You can see that Caljan today is double the size than it was in 2020, and this has been all organic growth. But when we now conclude that order intake is on a lower level, that should be in hindsight. Customers are a little bit more or very much more conservative. Much should be said when it comes to capital expenditures and therefore, the order intake is on a lower level, as you can see in the report. However, market activities are gradually starting to increase. And of course, we hope for the better. But there is no doubt that net sales for Caljan will decrease short term going on from at least the fourth quarter and going forward. Net sales in the quarter was organically on the same level as the corresponding period last year. So we still live on old orders, so to say. The result is somewhat lower than last year, but still on a very good level with an operating margin of 21.6%. The slight decrease is due to product mix, but to some extent because of increased fixed costs, but also compared with a very, very good quarter last year. And due to the situation, Caljan has initiated cost saving programs to decrease fixed cost and also has decided to close its facilities in Denmark for production and to consolidate the capacity to Latvia and the U.S. when it comes to telescopic conveyors. So thanks to Henrik and his team for taking care of this situation in a very professional manner. We go to the next business area, which is Hultafors Group. And Hultafors continued to develop very positively during the quarter, driven by business area PPE Europe, firstly. The European market is still strong, while the North American market has been slower than last year. The gross margin development is very positive and contributes to a good profitability together with very effective cost management. All in all, operating profit increased by 9% to SEK 258 million. So very well done, Martin and team as well. We go to Latour Industries. Latour Industries, when it comes to order intake, has a mixed picture, but overall, on a quite good level. Net sales grew by 14% in total and 4% organically. Earnings and profitability as a whole is developing well in the right direction and operating profit grew by 8% to SEK 107 million with an operating margin of 9.6%. So this is very much in the right direction. And as you can see in the heading of this picture, we are building these companies within Latour Industries for being platforms for future business areas, and this means that profitability has good prospects to grow even stronger. The acquisition agenda continues both with add-ons and finding new platforms, even though we have nothing to show the first half year this year. So very well done, Björn and team as well. We go to the next business area, which is Nord-Lock. Nord-Lock's order intake increased by 10% and organically by 4%, and it is a high level, giving the good basis for future in a quite difficult business climate, so very impressive. Net sales grew by 13% in total and organically by 7% with the best growth in Americas, followed by Asia Pacific, whereas Europe then, of course, is a little bit more stable. High volume contributes to a strong operating profit of SEK 117 million with an operating profit of 25%. So well done also, Fredrik and team. So we go to the final business area, which is Swegon. And this is another strong quarter for Swegon with stable underlying demand. The only exception is, as Johan mentioned before, the residential segment with a decreasing order intake. Business area air handling units and cooling and heating is driving the very strong net sales. Total organic growth for net sales was 18%. Most regions are growing with double digits and the presence in the North American market is also increasing. Swegon's growth is both supported by acquisition and existing operations all performing very well. So these high volumes and good gross margin development contributes to a record high operating profit of SEK 308 million, which I must say is very, very good. So very good, Andreas and team as well. Okay. So we go to the net asset value. And the net asset value this year have increased by 24.3% to SEK 193 per share. And SIXRX this year to the first half year was 11.3%. The strong growth in net asset value is explained by the recovery in the stock markets, but also in the increased underlying profits in our businesses. Share price end of June at SEK 214, means that we had a premium to our net asset value of 11%. This Friday, on August 18, we had a net asset value of SEK 178 per share, and the share price on the same day closed at SEK 196, giving a premium of 10%. And our consolidated net debt increased during the quarter from SEK 11.9 billion to SEK 12.7 billion. This increase is due to the paid dividend. Besides that, we had a good operational cash flow during the period, giving development in the right direction, so to say. And the net debt now corresponds to about 9% of the market value of our investments. So that was all from me. Johan, I hand back to you.

Thank you very much, Anders, and then we go to the comment on the financial targets. If we do a summary on the last 12 months, our growth has been 23.9%. EBIT margin last 12 months rolling is 14.9%. Our return on operating capital is 16.5%. So we're just short of the target on operating margins. But for those of you -- that most of you probably know, we increased our operating financial target at the beginning of this year from 10% to 15%. So overall, a strong performance and we're very proud as a team. And if we go into the last slide. And as you know, Latour is a long-term sustainable investment company and a responsible owner. We have the strength that enables us to continue investing in sustainability in all aspects, in our people, in our existing holdings, as well as finding new holdings. And this applies even if the economy would further decline. We have an ambition to grow, and we are truly delivering on our growth targets, but a large portion of potential remains. As you can see, if you look on the map that is presented here on, we have a large potential international expansion arena to go into. So having said that, I'd like to thank you all for listening in, and now we open up for the Q&A session. And Anders and I are eager to take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets.

So a couple of questions from my end, perhaps starting off with the fact that we are almost 2 months into Q3. So is there anything that you can say with regards to incremental pockets of either strength or weakness with regards to what you highlighted here, both in terms of the slowdown concerns regarding capital investments or the consumer segments?

Not really, Joachim. I would say the same picture holds as we just described. There is generally a slightly weaker economic outlook, I would say, and we see that in many companies. But we really want to highlight and underline that also a big part, we believe, is the normalization of how customers place and plan their orders. We should not forget it was a quite an unusual period the last couple of years during the pandemic and post-pandemic on the whole global supply situation. So it's also a normalization of that. So same picture holds, I would say, as we're now entering end of war, yes.

Understood. And is there anything with regards to the margin profile of the backlog that has shifted over the past quarter?

No, not at all. We have no reason to think that we would have a weaker margin in the orders we have on hand or in the backlog, to use another word.

Very good. And I mean this is perhaps a slightly -- I mean, let's not be too focused on that. But is it possible just to quantify if there are any -- like material short-term cost headwinds now to expect from measures taken in Caljan for the coming quarter?

No, we have no such plans to take any special one-off costs in that case, so.

Understood. And with regards to working capital now, I mean, it's been a real headwind over the past quarters, and in 2022, to say the least, we saw a slight reversal of this year in Q2. Is this a theme that you expect to continue for the latter part as we see this normalization among customers?

Yes, I would say, I would like to remind you all that we, during the pandemic, deliberately and consciously took a decision to have a very high service level for our customers. And therefore, increasing our stock and what we had on hand and planning and that draw down quite a lot of cash to do that, and that was very deliberate in that sense. And now that we see that the world is normalizing again in terms of supply chain, we are focused now also to normalize our working capital situation. And to your point, Joachim, you can see we've had strong cash flow during the first 6 months, and I and Anders expect a continued strong cash flow throughout the rest of the year. And anything more you'd like to add, Anders, on that?

No, I think you covered it all, Johan.

And taking a [ controlled ] perspective, Latour Future Solutions is not necessarily a real big part of your NAV as of today. But can you comment a bit on whether that strategy is developing or progressing according to plan in relation to the strategies about a couple of years back?

I would say Latour Future Solutions is extremely well on plan, and we're very happy with the investments we're doing there. And as you know, it's kind of a very different philosophy there. We take minority stakes. And it's in general much smaller businesses that we invest in than we do in the rest of Latour. And it's also Latour's way to show that we want to help the whole transition agenda to a greener economy, and we want to help the smaller companies with capital to grow, but also to help them with coaching and providing them a business network and to be part of our family and nurture them to grow even more. So we're very happy with what we have achieved in that area so far.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

Okay. I can't find any written questions, Johan, on the web.

Okay. Well, then...

Katarina?

Katarina?

I think we have a question from David Johansson of Nordea. He's in the queue.

The next question comes from David Johansson from Nordea.

I think there was some problem. I just have one question, really. It looks like you have taken a temporary pause perhaps on the acquisitions here in the first 2 quarters. What's your view on this currently? And what can you tell us about the acquisition landscape entering the second half of the year?

Thank you, David. Yes, we deliberately took a pause for 2 main reasons. We had a very high pace of acquisitions during the last year and also the year before that. And we also wanted to digest and put everything in place operationally and take care of all of the new companies coming in. So that was one reason. The second reason was also that we saw that we kind of expected kind of a little bit slower and weaker market, both in terms of the economy and financially. And we also saw that price expectations were quite high. And I would say that's starting to normalize now. So sellers are more -- becoming more realistic, and we are now going back to our usual pace of acquisition. So hopefully, during the next 6 to 12 months, we will see a higher pace going forward. That's our plan. Okay. Then Anders, I think the question queue is empty and there's no other written questions right, Anders?

That's right.

Okay. So that concludes the presentation of the Q2 results. And once again, thank you all for calling in and listening in, and thanks for your questions. And looking forward to "see you" on the Q3 report later on this year. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Thank you.