Kamux Oyj (KAMUX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. Good morning. My name is Juha Kalliokoski. I'm CEO and Founder of Kamux.

Good morning. My name is Marko Lehtonen. I'm Kamux' CFO.

Welcome to Kamux' quarterly results presentation in January to September 2020. I can be very happy to tell about our results from Q3. Table of contents: Q3 in brief, firstly; secondly, financial development; outlook and financial targets; and then we summarize these. As you remember, our amortization level is high, and we want to be #1 used car retailer in Europe. And after these results, for example, from Sweden and Germany, you can see that we are on the right way. If we first think what happened in this year in corona time. At the end of Q1, at the end of March, we made decision that we drive our inventory down and take more cash in our bank account. And after that, Q2, at the end of May and June, we started to buy more and more cars. But still, at the end of Q2, our inventory was very low level, maybe 10% lower than at the end of Q2 2019. And still, we started the business when the inventory was very rollable. And now we can show the results that our inventory -- our revenue increased 13.5% to EUR 207.4 million. And our gross profit increased 26.3%, made quite a near double if we compare -- revenue increased and gross profit increased. And of course, adjusted operating profit increased by 44% up to EUR 12.4 million, and we are very proud about this. Like-for-like showrooms revenue increased also in this quarter, 3.1%. And we are very happy from our Swedish and German's business. It was first time in this quarter when we made positive results from Germany, and we grew 31.6%. And our Swedish business grew 62.3%. And if we take off the company sales to Finland inside of Kamux and compared to external sales, it grew in Sweden 47%. And also, Swedish business results grew nearly 3x bigger if we compare Q3 2019. And in this time, July and August went up, which are the best sales months in used cars. Our inventory didn't grow so much. And in September, we bought more cars to our inventory. And the biggest change in inventory happened in September, as we planned. If we compare new car market and used car market, new car market is still quite low. January to September, new car market in Finland and Sweden is minus 15% to 20% and in Germany, over -- minus 25%. And at the same time, in Finland and Sweden, we had a positive way in used car market. And also in Germany, this Q3, used car market grew. At the same time, when we tell about very, very nice results from Q3, we must say that this market, what happened in a COVID situation in Germany and Sweden, we are not -- we had very much higher level in this infections when we compare just now and 3 to 4 weeks behind and also if we compare what happened last March and April. And this gives -- this give to us a little bit, maybe, to say, stress. What happened in this market? Is there coming some lockdowns? We don't know. But of course, we can say that our business model works, and we can do the best in the market what we can. The digital-focused operating model and cross-selling are key enablers of growth. And our results -- we think that our results tell strongly that our business model works. And especially in this corona time, Q3 and Q2 in Sweden and Germany, gross sales grew very rapidly. And also, our data-driven purchasing model is in use and part of the reason for good results, what we have now. If we compare revenue grew, it was 13.5%, and adjusted operating profit grew 44%. And of course, we are very happy that our results are so good and adjusted operating profit are so much higher than revenue grew -- growth. And always, and every year, what Kamux have, Q3 is the best quarter in the year. And then if we compare the sold cars, we sold 17,285 cars in Q3, and it's 12.2% more than a year ago. And if we compare the revenue grew, it means that our average price was a little bit higher than a year ago. And if we compare Q2, we made decision that -- in Q2 that we purchased cheaper cars. And now in Q3, we came back to normal situation and purchased normal prices car for us. And the average price was a little bit higher than Q2. Integrated services revenue grew in Q2, and the revenue was EUR 9.4 million. And it was 4.6% from revenue. And last year, it was 4.7%. And typically, Q4, it's a higher percentage share of the revenue. And it's more stable business than buy and sell cars. We opened, this year, 7 stores, and 6 of are this mainly in very demanding competition during corona pandemic. But it also tells that we can open stores even this corona time. We concentrated on operative business in this summer time, and we didn't made any decision to next openings. And we are very hand-on-hand business in this corona time. While corona pandemic evolves, we can act very fast, react, and time span from a decision to a real opening is not long. And then Marko, you can tell about our financial development.

Thank you, Juha, with pleasure. These kind of numbers even give a CFO small smile to the face, absolutely. Before we go to the directly numbers, so let's start first with a few outlines from the results. Of course, the business was growing rapidly and also profitably. And that was, of course, driving our return on equity and earnings per share in Q3. Return on equity was 27%, and it was improved from the last year. And I believe that in Helsinki Stock Exchange during this corona pandemic year 2020, it will be very good result. Also, our basic earnings per share were EUR 0.23, and it improved 40.6% compared to the previous year. And it will be also interesting to think that if you take January to September last year, we had a -- sorry, if we take the whole last year, so we had EUR 0.48 per share earnings. And now in January to September, we had EUR 0.45. So almost the whole last year earnings per share we have now earned in 3 quarters. I would also like to point out that our net cash position was positive. So meaning, if I take out bank loans or loans from financial institutions and deducted -- deduct those loans from our cash, so it was a positive. So the company is technically speaking debt-free. All this was, of course, making so that the Kamux financial performance was improving. Juha was already going through the key numbers of the third quarter, but I will take a few picks from there. Firstly, I would like to point out that the gross profit percentage and also operating profit percentage in the third quarter was actually highest ever we have reported during the Kamux' history as a listed company. So we can be very pleased with that result. Also, I would like to point out, if you look at the revenue from the integrated services, it was growing 14.6%. And I think it's a really good result compared that our revenue was growing 8.7%. So that, we can also be pleased with. As Juha was telling, we were systematically improving or, let's say, increasing our stock level in September. And that, of course, can be seen in our inventory turnover per days, which was 50.9 and slightly up from the previous year. Also, of course, the purchasing market was relatively tight, and we were buying quite some cars abroad more compared to the previous year. And that was also slightly increasing the inventory turnover days. Then if we go to our segment results. For the Finland -- Finnish result, we can be very pleased with. Revenue increased 4.8%, but gross margin increased significantly, being 15.2% for the third quarter. And operating profit increased 24.6%. In Finland, the market was very strong. So also, the demand was strong, and we were able to utilize the market situations in the business. And of course, we also managed to execute our operations successfully in the third quarter. The growth from Finland was driven mainly by the new showrooms. Then if we look at our foreign operations. Before diving to the numbers, I would like to point out that this year, for our company, the focus area was profitable growth abroad. And of course, if we look at the first and second quarter numbers, the corona pandemic was affecting strongly the business. And then, of course, the results from these activities were not so clear. But what I'm very happy to see that actually, the hard work, what we have been doing abroad, has been now paying to us. So the revenue grew 62.3%, and the gross margin was also increasing to EUR 4.9 million. And the operating profit, as Juha mentioned, was actually 3x higher compared to the previous year. In Sweden, the result was also mainly coming from the car trading business, and the revenue from the integrated services increased, but relatively speak, it was not improving from the last year. And in the Sweden, growth was driven by the new showrooms and like-for-like showroom sales. Then about the Germany. Very often, investors and analysts ask from us that when the Germany will be profitable. And yes, [Foreign Language], ladies and gentlemen, now it really happened. So at the same time, while we are very happy and pleased with that result, I would also like to remind that we see a tremendous growth opportunity in German market. And we are going to invest in the German market. So -- and also, I would like to remind that the seasonality between the quarters is strong. But let's enjoy these results today. Also in Germany, the car trading business was driving this improvement. So the market was also strong, but I would also like to point out that the conditions were relatively normal -- or let's say, we cannot call them normal. So still, our salespeople are operating with the masks on. And also, there is regulations about amount of people allowed in the stores and so on. Also, integrated services revenue increased and relatively being on the last year level, and the growth was driven by the new showrooms. Then if we look at net working capital. So what we can be pleased with is that the net working capital was basically growing hand-by-hand with the turnover. So the growth, 14%, was almost the same. However, now the change in the inventories, as especially our actions in the September, was growing inventory by 25%. And if we look at then the cash flow. So we can now see that during the corona pandemic, this year, cash cycle is relatively untypical. So if we look the previous years, we can see that usually, the cash flow from the operations is strongest in the Q3 and, of course, a bit weaker on the Q2. But now we can see that, that cycle has been a bit pushed forward due to the market situation we had in the early -- late spring and early summer. And of course, cash -- when the cash flow from the operations was negative, it was mainly driven by the change in the inventories. Then I would like to talk about our investments. And firstly, I would like to point out that even though we have said that we have made significant actions to our costs and basically the cost level of the business, we have not saved anything from our strategic investments. And we have invested in line with our strategy, and we have invested systematically to our growth. And we are seeking to gain a significant competitive advantage by investing and leading with the knowledge as well as digital customer and business processes. The main investments were also, in this quarter, directed to our digital functions, especially developing our CRM-ERP system, analytics and also data management and financial management systems. Then if we go to our outlook and financial targets. So in our midterm targets, the revenue growth is over 10% annually; EBIT margin, at least 4% annually; distribute dividends of at least 30% of the net profits. And I'm pleased to tell that we were paying at the end of the October, as decided in the General Annual Meeting, our second part of the dividend, EUR 0.11. And Kamux does not publish a short-term outlook. I would also like to remind that Kamux was releasing a stock exchange release March 20 this year, informing that it is not likely that Kamux will reach its medium-term targets in 2020 due to the corona pandemic. So I will now then summarize this all. So revenue increased by 13.5%, being EUR 207.4 million. Gross profit increased by 26.3%, being EUR 28.9 million. Adjusted operating profit increased by 44% to EUR 12.4 million, and Kamux' international business developed strongly and profitably. Thank you for your attention, and we are happy to answer your questions.

Can you disclose the long-term margin potential in Sweden? Do you think you can reach the Finnish levels? Because when looking at the share of the integrated services in Sweden, it looks very promising.

If we think about -- especially about the gross margin, so in our midterm targets, we have defined the operating profit target. So we have not defined the gross margin level targets for ourselves. Of course, the companies and the countries where we operate are in different development phase. And you can see that there are differences, for example, on the level of integrated services being also partly related to our scale and how lucrative a partner we are for the third-party providers. So that is one very significant part. But in generally, we do not see any clear or main obstacles why the Swedish business couldn't be also a very profitable business.