Investor AB (publ) (INVEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Investor AB Q3 Report 2021. [Operator Instructions] And afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today, I am pleased to present Viveka Hirdman-Ryrberg, Head of Communications. Please begin your meeting.

Welcome all to Investor's Q3 report and the conference call we are hosting. We will, as usual, start up with our CEO, Johan Forssell; followed by our CFO, Helena Saxon. And after that, we will have a Q&A session. So welcome, all. And Johan, please go ahead.

Thank you, Viveka. And also for me, welcome everybody to this call. If we start on the first page, just to give an overview. I think that overall, we see a strong demand out there. But we can also see that we see challenges from the supply chain, and that is affecting a number of the companies during the quarter. And we also see, of course, continued effects from the pandemic and I will come back to that later on. But overall, the demand is strong during the third quarter -- or was strong during the third quarter. With that as an introduction, let me then jump into the next page. Our net asset value grew by 4% in the quarter. The total shareholder return was down 4%, and that should be compared with the stock market being up 1%. If we start commenting on the listed companies, the total shareholder return was 3% in the quarter compared to the stock market up 1%. And ABB continued to concentrate its portfolio, divesting the mechanical transmission business, and that was a divestiture close to USD 3 billion. Electrolux revised the dividend policy. It's now targeting about 50% of earnings and also made an extra capital distribution of close to SEK 5 billion, and that will give Investor about SEK 900 million in extra distribution. That would come in the fourth quarter. Electrolux Professional, I'm glad to say that -- or glad to see, I should say, that they made a significant acquisition with the acquisition of Unified Brands that strengthened the position in the U.S. market. It's within the food segment, and a significant part of the customer base is within the chain business. And this acquisition will add roughly 15% to the sales of the company. So it's a quite significant acquisition for Electrolux Professional. Finally, then, Sobi, there is a pending bid, and we have said that we support it. And at the bid price, our stake has a value of SEK 25 billion. Moving then over to Patricia. The total return was minus 2% in the quarter. The organic sales growth was minus 1% and the adjusted profit growth was minus 9%. And the reason for the negative figure is mainly due to distortions within Mölnlycke that I will come back to later. If we exclude Mölnlycke on the performance of the remaining or the other 8 subsidiaries, combined, the organic growth was -- sales growth was 15% and the profit growth was 24% in the quarter. A number of our subsidiaries made important strategic add-on acquisitions in a very interesting growth segments, Advanced Instruments, Sarnova and Atlas Antibodies. And to support these acquisitions, that combined, had an enterprise value of about SEK 7 billion, Patricia injected more than SEK 5 billion in equity for this acquisition. And we continue to see a strong pipeline for further add-on acquisitions in our companies. Moving then over to Mölnlycke. Let me spend some time to try to explain the performance and a little bit also what we see going forward. If I start with the quarter, the organic sales growth was minus 16%. That was a combination of a continued good development in Wound Care that grew 8% organically with good profitability but a much tougher development within Surgical that was down 37%, heavily distorted by the PPE business. And as you can see from the figure, the PPE business had a significant sales in the third quarter last year. And this year and going forward now, it will be 0. So that was the main reason. But in addition to the drop, there is also supply chain constraints within Gloves. And as I mentioned, in connection with our second quarter presentation, the factory in Malaysia had delta virus infections and actually had to temporarily close the plant during the quarter. This has affected the third quarter, but the company also had some inventory that could take care of the beginning of the third quarter. So actually, the worst effect, we will see on the Gloves side in the fourth quarter. So if we look forward then, we can say that the fourth quarter will be the toughest comparison with PPE sales because, as you can see from the bar, the fourth quarter last year was the highest sales of these PPE contracts. And we will also have the effect on the closure of the Malaysian factory for Gloves, which is a profitable product for Mölnlycke. This will affect the fourth quarter. The good part, of course, is that the underlying development in the company is strong. There is a strong demand for Gloves. The problem is just shortly -- or temporarily that Mölnlycke cannot supply the Gloves. But there is a very strong demand for Gloves. And the Wound Care continued to develop well. And if we talk about the PPE contracts, that would be a smaller effect in the first quarter next year, but then, it will more or less be gone. So I think short summary, fourth quarter will be challenging but hopefully then, moving to next year, it should be a more normal situation. My final comment is on the top graph where you can see the Wound Care and Surgical, just to give you a feeling for the development, where you can see the sales level in the third quarter '19, third quarter '20 and third quarter this year. And you can see that Wound Care continues to develop steadily while the Surgical business had this temporary peak last year due to PPE, and now it's more or less on the same level as the third quarter '19. So with that, moving down to the other 8 subsidiaries. And here, we do not have Vectura, the real estate part of it, but the other 7. You can see that it was a strong development in the quarter. Atlas Antibodies, our most recent subsidiary, grew organically by 39%, with very high profit margins of about 50%. Piab grew at 26%. And here, we saw strong growth in all geographical regions and for all business areas. And the profitability increased due to increased leverage. Advanced Instruments that we acquired about a year ago continued to develop very strong with an organic growth of 26%. The profit margin was lower than last year, but still, as you can see, on a high level, the reason for the lower margin is, number one, that Solentim that was acquired has a lower margin than the old Advanced Instruments business. The old business was close to 50%, while Solentim has a margin of about 30%. The second reason is that we are investing heavily to continue to grow and develop this business both on the commercial side and within R&D. BraunAbility grew organically by 17%. Here, the profitability was 2 percentage points lower than last year. And this is a company that is heavily affected by the supply chain challenges that we see. It's clearly so that the chassis that they need to convert to their vehicles that they sell has significant problems due to the lack of chips globally. And there are also, in addition to that, increased freight costs for the company. Moving to Sarnova, strong development in the quarter, organic growth of 14%. The underlying profitability develops well. And also, the recent acquisitions that they have made, the Digitech, continued to perform well. So overall, a strong development, the fastest growth in the quarter we saw in the Acute segment. Permobil, organic growth of 11%. Here, the situation is a little bit similar to BraunAbility. First of all, higher freight costs, higher sourcing costs but also challenges related to the supply chain, and that affected the profitability in the quarter. And then finally, Laborie only grew 6% organically in the quarter. But here, I should stress that for Laborie, the order intake was significantly better than the revenues and once again, related to the supply chains. You need chips in the instruments that they sell. So here, the backlog has increased and the profitability remains at a reasonably good level. But of course, that's been affected by the supply chain situation. So overall, this company grew 15% organically with a profit growth of 24%. Moving then over to EQT. Total return was up 16%. And as you can see, almost equal contributions from EQT AB and the funds. The net cash flow was slightly positive in the quarter, and we see a very high activity level within EQT, both when it comes to investment but also divestitures. Then if you would, going forward, we see an increasingly fast, rapidly changing environment around us, and we have crystallized our targets, strategic and operating priorities. And I think this page summarizes this well. We have a purpose to create value for people and society by building strong and sustainable businesses. Our ultimate target is to generate an attractive total shareholder return. We have 3 strategic priorities: grow net asset value, pay a steadily rising dividend and deliver on our ESG targets. And finally, we have 4 operating priorities. That is how we work to actually achieve the above. And that is our role as an engaged owner, make sure we have an attractive portfolio, operate efficiently at Investor and, of course, maintain financial flexibility so we can act on interesting opportunities. And as Helena will come back to, we have a very strong financial position at the moment. Moving to next page. We have sharpened our climate targets and now we target for Investor net zero at 2030; and for the combined portfolio of companies, a 70% reduction of CO2 compared to 2016. The previous target was to cut the CO2 in half over this period. So we have significantly stepped up the ambition level. And then we also have a value chain ambition to reach net zero in 2050. And we, of course, also encourage our companies to report, for example, in accordance with TCFD. Finally then, I think we are well positioned to continue to deliver a good return. We have a proven governance model. We have great companies, companies with good tailwinds and also high profitability and cash flows. And the strong cash flow supports our ability to continue to develop our business, invest for the future and also take a steadily rising dividend. So with that, I so then will hand over to Helena.

Thank you, Johan. Moving over then to Page 14. This graph describes the net asset value development for the last decade, and we see that the quarter ended at SEK 682 billion in adjusted net asset value. Looking closer at listed companies, a total of SEK 465 billion, we see that the TSR was 3% in the quarter compared to SIXRX 1%. And year-to-date, these numbers are 29% compared to 24% for SIXRX. Looking at the graph, we can see that there was some mixed performance in the quarter. Sobi and SEB were the strongest performers, while Electrolux and Wärtsilä had a tougher quarter. On Page 16, yes, Patricia Industries' total return was minus 2% in the quarter. And looking at 17, Page 17, we see the sequential change in estimated market values, i.e., the change since we reported Q2. And on this graph, you can see on the left-hand side, that we significantly -- or the significant contribution from the strategic add-on acquisitions that Johan already mentioned. While on the right-hand side, we can see the impact this had on cash, Patricia's cash, as well as decrease in the estimated market value of Mölnlycke. And on the next page, Page 18, I will go through the major drivers of value in the quarter. And it was, of course, Mölnlycke, but also Laborie and Piab. So Mölnlycke's estimated market value was down SEK 7.4 billion in the quarter. And this was mainly due to lower multiples but also lower earnings, and this was partly mitigated by cash flow in the quarter. Laborie's value was up almost SEK 2 billion due to higher earnings, higher multiples as well as a positive currency effect. And at Piab, also up SEK 0.7 billion in the quarter due to higher earnings. Moving over to Page 19. Johan already mentioned our financial position remains strong as well as the credit ratings and the average maturity of the debt portfolio still being 10 years and our leverage landed in the quarter up 2.5%. Talking about the leverage at the end of the quarter, I want to say something about the leverage and the dividend. I want to mention that during the quarter, we have updated our policies to reflect that we are increasingly focused on adjusted asset value, i.e., based on estimated market values for Patricia Industries' major subsidiaries and partner companies. Regarding the leverage, we now aim for 0% to 10% net debt to adjusted net assets instead of previously 5% to 10% net debt to reported assets. This broadening of the range in absolute terms, both upwards and downwards, increases our financial flexibility. Our goal to pay a steadily rising dividend remains firm. While we have also replaced the dividend policy, this is just to clarify that it's supported by cash flow from all 3 business areas, and it should not be seen as a fundamental change. My last page describes the return, the average total shareholder return, for the Investor share during several periods. Year-to-date, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years. And it shows that we hit the spot market index and our internal return requirements for all these periods. And that was it. So yes, over to you, Viveka.

Thank you, Johan, and thank you, Helena. Now we will start the Q&A session. So I hand over to our facilitator.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Derek Laliberte from ABG.

So I had a question on Mölnlycke. I was wondering if you could give us the growth of the Surgical segment adjusted for this contribution from PPE sales. I know, Johan, you talked around this quite a bit and I have some idea but very helpful to get a figure for Surgical in addition to what we got for Wound Care.

Okay. Thank you, Derek, for the question. If you look on the Surgical ex PPE, the organic growth was negative high single digit in the quarter. And that means that for the group, excluding PPE, there was a growth of, call it, low single digit in the quarter.

Excellent. And then I just had a question on your update of the gearing or leverage policy here, if there's anything to be interpreted in this, why it's coming at this particular time. Is it, in any way, related to your current investment or acquisition agenda? Or is it just an adjustment that you decided to make one day in the quarter, that it was appropriate especially with the overall strategic priorities or clarification rather.

I think it's more connected to the clarifications that we made. Johan also mentioned the strategic and operating priorities. So it should not be interpreted in any such way. Maybe you want to add something, Johan.

No. I think since we are adjusting, we are focusing more and more on the adjusted values rather than the book accounting. And for that reason, of course, we are also increasing the base. So by doing this, we will increase the -- basically, the band, both down and up. And we think that you never know how many investment opportunities arise. But with this band, we should have a good flexibility that boost upwards and we get an increased flexibility basically.

The next question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets.

So just to continue where Derek left off. So you have SEK 8 billion net cash position post the Sobi divestment here and this more flexible gearing target, can you talk a bit about the opportunities you see to deploy this and to build NAV growth for shareholders in terms of administrative or, call it, a more generous dividend policy or allocating these towards unlisted assets given that we have not seen that much investment?

I'm sorry, Joachim, but we hardly hear you. But if I try to guess your question, it is how we plan to use our financial strength. And the answer to that is that we will continue to invest in add-on acquisitions like we did in the third quarter with the SEK 5-plus billion investment in Solentim, Allied 100 and evitria. And within that area, we have a strong pipeline for our subsidiaries. So we will target that. And of course, you never know how many we'll be able to close, but there are very interesting opportunities out there when it comes to add-ons. In addition to that, we are, of course, also flexible for investment in other areas, for example, in listed selected ones, if we find good opportunities in that. In addition to that, we, of course, will stick to our dividend and distribution policy that we have.

That's clear. And a final question for me then, across Patricia Industries, we talked about some of the ones that have faced some headwinds. But are there any holdings here that has weathered tight supply chains with more success than you would have anticipated?

Yes. I think that if we take -- where did we have that? Let me see. I think that the development of Advanced Instruments has been very strong since we acquired it, as I mentioned. And that has clearly been a, call it, a positive surprise. It has actually delivered stronger than we had expected when we bought it. And then, of course, also Piab has delivered strongly now for a couple of quarters. And finally, we saw a very strong revival in Sarnova. And as I mentioned before, that was, to a large extent, also related to the Acute segment. So I mean it's a broad good demand in many areas, but these are 3 that clearly has been a positive in the quarter.

The next question comes from the line of Oskar Lindstrom from Danske Bank.

I'd like to follow up a little bit on the net zero target. Which part of your unlisted assets is this target going to be the greatest challenge for? I mean are there any parts of your unlisted operations, which will need to make a larger adjustments than the others? And then as sort of a follow-up, I mean, obviously, your net zero ambition is going to impact your acquisitions. Could it also lead to divestments as you seek to reach this target?

Okay. Thank you for these questions. If I start with the first one, the net zero is only for Investor AB. So that's a very, very small part of the total CO2 emissions. The portfolio, that includes both our unlisted companies and the companies within Patricia Industries. So for these companies combined, the target is to reduce the CO2 emissions by 70% compared to 2016. Of course, for these 20-plus companies, some have more ambitious target than this. And for some, it will be more challenging. So it differs between the different companies. More importantly, I think is -- and this we should also remember is Scope 1 and Scope 2. We are, from an ownership perspective, really driving through the Board that our companies focus on improving when it comes to Scope 3 because that is actually where the biggest emissions are. And on your question, I would not say that -- you should never say never, but the divestment is not our focus. The focus for us is to make sure that our companies are changing moving forward to adapt to the new future. And that work is ongoing in all our companies at a very high speed at the moment.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions, so I will pass back to the speakers.

Okay. By that, we would like to thank you for joining us today, and we will be back with our annual report early next year. Thank you so much for today.