Kid ASA (KID) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this Q4 presentation for Kid ASA. [Operator Instructions] Okay. Let's kick off. In a challenging market, we are very satisfied with presenting a revenue growth of 2.1% for Q4 and the like-for-like growth of 1.8%. On a full year base, we managed to grow our revenue 2.6%, and we ended up the year on an all-time high revenue of NOK 3.178 billion. The online sales grew by 18.2% compared to a strong fourth quarter last year, ending up at NOK 121.8 million in Q4, which is equivalent to an online share of 11%. The gross margin decreased by 6.5 percentage points, mainly caused by increased freight costs, which without corresponding price adjustments as informed during the Q3 presentation. And also, we had more availability of campaign products and increased discounting compared with the same quarter last year. The EBITDA decreased by NOK 75.9 million to NOK 296.8 million, increased general expenses, especially electricity, offset by lower bonus provisions. The EPS ended at NOK 3.91 compared to NOK 4.39 last year. And also the inventory was reduced according to plan and contributed to a very strong quarterly cash flow. So what have we done in Q4? Well, first of all, we launched our Kid Extended concept. As a new concept that was launched during Q4 and has had a very promising start. Our European manufactured furnitures like beds and sofas were launched in 1 pilot store in Bergen and our Norwegian e-commerce platform and has shown a promising start as set. The gross margin for these categories was in line with our expectation, ending up at in the range of 35% to 40%, which included logistics and last-mile distribution. We will continue to roll out the Kid Extended pilot store as planned and expect to have launched a total of 5 stores in Norway by the end of Q2 this year. The main growth drivers were new product categories in addition to continued investment in our physical store base and the e-commerce platform. The revenue from new categories launched during and after 2017 increased by 26 -- sorry, 27.6% to NOK 136.1 million, which with the highest growth from the category of Homeware and kitchen assessors, along with new initiatives under the moments concepts. Our strategy of increasing our footprint in Finland and Estonia remains, and we're happy to have opened 1 new store in Estonia during the quarter. And in addition to that, have a larger store expansion in Finland in downtown Helsinki. Based on our CO2 roadmap, we have submitted both our near-term and long-term CO2 reduction targets to the Scientific Based Target Initiative. With ambition and commitment to reduce the absolute CO2 emissions in Scope 1 to 3 with 50% from 2020 to 2030, we are aligned with the 1-point degree goal in the Paris agreement. So let's have a look at the full year -- a short look at the full year financials. With a strong revenue growth ending up at 2.6% in 2022, the like-for-like growth was 3.1% and an online growth of 12.1%, representing a 10.8% share in the year total. As mentioned, we experienced the unexpected drop in gross margin due to the volatility in the freight costs, which we did not incorporate enough in our price calculation model. The OpEx to sales ended up at 44.9% compared to 43.8% last year and Eystein will give you some more flavor on that later. The EBITDA reduced by NOK 165 million, and that was mainly driven by the gross margin drop. And then the full year dividend ends up at NOK 5.5 per share. Looking at the chart on the right, I'm very happy to see that going out of COVID, we maintained growth throughout 2022. So this proves that Kid has an extremely good concept working in all markets. So this, our growth last year is not mainly COVID-driven, it's the strength in our concept. And with the drop in gross margin, as mentioned, we have ambitions to increase our gross margin, which also hopefully will positively influence the EBITDA going forward. And with that said, I'll leave it over to you, Eystein.

Thank you very much. As already mentioned a couple of times, challenging retail market, we managed to grow our revenues by 2.1% measured in constant currency with Kid revenues up by 2.3% and Hemtex revenues up by 1.7% and group like-for-like up by 1.8%. And as also communicated in previous reports, we placed orders earlier and with shipments arriving even earlier than what we expected. This resulted in seasonal products being available in our stores and online much earlier than compared to 2021. This is quite important when analyzing quite a few of our figures. Therefore, we must admit we were a bit surprised to see both segments experiencing a reduction in footfall, both in October and November. However, this changed materially in December. And for the quarter in total, footfall was approximately at the same level in Kid but was up in Hemtex. We're also happy to see a continued growth in online revenues. And I would like to point out that when including click-and-collect, the online share was at 16.6% in Q4. We have chosen to report click-and-collect as part of our store revenues to make sure that store personnel are positively adding to our multichannel strategy. Also, we see a positive development in revenues from new categories being the finance categories introduced since 2017. Larger furnitures, including carpets and beds have now been introduced both online and in 1 pilot store outside of Bergen. Furnitures increased by NOK 5 million to NOK 16 million in 2022, of which half of that growth was experienced in Q4. Gross margin. The gross margin was down by 6.5 percentage points to 56.9%, mainly caused by the increased freight costs. Freight spot rates are currently decreasing towards pre-COVID levels. And as the current inventory containing these higher freight rates will now be sold out. We expect a gradual gross margin improvement in 2023. The reduction in the Q4 gross margin was also caused by higher volumes of discounted products as well as increased discounting. When comparing with late arrivals of products in Q4 2021, the availability of campaigning volumes was higher in Q4 2022, therefore, leading to a reduced gross margin. But also, we have seen higher discounting as such in this quarter and particularly in Hemtex. For the year in total, we expect a gross margin in line with the past 10 years, as stated in our financial objectives. EBITDA. Group EBITDA is down by NOK 75.9 million, mainly caused by the reduction in gross margin, accounting for NOK 67.5 million of those NOK 75.9 million. Employee expenses was down by almost NOK 10 million, NOK 9.7 million, mainly caused by lower bonuses. Other operating expenses increased by 13.2% and has -- the main drivers has been more or less the same all through 2022. The largest portion is due to increased housing costs and from -- and with 3 main factors explaining increased housing costs, namely increased rental space in like-for-like stores, increased shared operating and marketing costs from the landlords, probably mainly caused by increased electricity and then KPI adjustments on the rental agreements. So that accounts for 55% of the increased operating expenses in Q4. Also, electricity adds to the increase. And then we have had, as mentioned quite a few times, higher inventory, leading to higher inventory or third-party logistics costs, especially in Hemtex in Sweden. We are presenting an all-time high cash flow, all time high --and quarterly cash flow. We informed last year of the earlier placement of orders resulting in higher inventory due to the discrepancies in the freight market, global freight market. We also said that we would see an inventory build down, which has now happened and being the main reason for the strong cash flow during the quarter. And we expect to see a further build down in inventory in 2023. As for cash flows from investments, we continue to invest both in our physical stores and in our e-commerce platform, all within the yearly ambition of NOK 100 million, as stated in the financial objectives. In addition, we have invested almost NOK 50 million in the new warehouse in Sweden in 2022 and expect almost the same amount in 2023. Kid has cash and credit facilities of NOK 552 million with a healthy financial and liquidity position. Gearing ratio ended at 1.12x at year-end which, according to financial objectives are to be distributed to our beloved shareholders. We are happy to present the payout ratio at the same level as last year, and we believe it was 91% last year and now 90% of net income. The details on payment and et cetera are presented on this slide. But I believe also with a NOK 5 compared to the current share price, not having checked it today though, should yield return approximately at 7%, 8%, which I believe should be pretty good. Thank you very much.

So let's have a quick look at the store portfolio activity. We have signed 4 new leases which 2 of them will open this year, 1 in Trondheim Torg an important store that we've tried to come into this market for a long time and also a new store in Lippulaiva, Espoo, that's Finland. And then there's 2 more Norwegian stores signed for the years to come. We are targeting and negotiating, and we have an ambition of reaching a total of 320 stores in the Nordic market in the years to come. During January, we also have closed 3 stores, 1 in Norway, Sweden and Finland. We have 7 relocations that will be done within this year. These are mainly targeting better location, but also enlargement of the stores. And that's also, of course, add some with refurbishments. When it comes to the category refurbishment and expansions, there are 8 stores in total, 2 of these are refurbishments. All the others are refurbishment and expansions. And bear in mind that we now are targeting larger stores, our normal store size will be 600 square meters, while historically, it has been around 460 for Kid and 370 million for Hemtex. By having larger stores, we can add more categories that we have developed throughout the Kid concept -- Kid Extended program. So on the outlook side, the construction, as Eystein has mentioned, for our new warehouse in Sweden is progressing as planned, and we expect to be fully operative in May. March and April will be a transition period as we relocate the inventory from the 3PL player, at Schenker and move all this inventory to our new warehouse just outside [ Boras ] in Sweden. We continue the pilot of the Kid Extended stores. We will add another 2 stores during end of March and 2 more stores will open in the beginning of the second quarter. So then we have the 5 pilot stores up and running. And we will add more categories, both in these 5 stores and on the e-commerce platform and also some categories will be added into the rest of the store basin. And bear in mind that since this is a pilot project, we're piloting Kid Extended, this will be done in the Norwegian market only now. As mentioned, the freight costs have materially reduced. And on shipments arriving in the beginning of 2023 and onwards, we expect a gradual margin improvement during 2023. And due to the unusual high inflation in all markets during '22, the store and warehouse rent index regulation for '23 will be in the range of 8% to 10%. We focus on improving our market position in a challenging market environment, and we are positive and looking forward for the times to come. So before the Q&A session, we will have a short with you, showing you how we work with our European manufacturer furnitures. [Presentation]

So just to highlight that, all furniture that we have launched during Q4 are designed by Kid, and these larger furniture are produced in Europe. So with that, we are ready for the Q&A session. So we will start for those who are in the audience, and please wait for the microphone. So feel free.

There's currently no questions on the web. [Operator Instructions] So let's start with a question from the audience.

Could you just expand a little bit more about the difference in gross margin between Hemtex and Kid? You said there was more discounting. But let's see in Hemtex, does that mean that there really was no big effect of the miscalculation of prices since you had to adjust prices down anyway?

You are correct that the freight, extra freight costs were lower in Hemtex than in Kid. But I think the main reason for the change -- the difference in Q4 would be that there were higher discounting going on in Hemtex than in Kid.

We do not expect to see any large variation compared to what we have seen historically, in the margins between Kid and Hemtex.

You see similar gross margins in the future. So this was...

Yes. Not larger variation than what we have seen historically.

And over time, similar gross margins?

There are different campaigning situations in Hemtex and in Kid. So there might -- and there will also be foreign exchange differences between NOK and SEK. So it's hard to say that they will be exactly the same. They will develop somewhat indifferent. But over time, they shouldn't be very much different.

Thank you. Any more questions? Seem to be that we've been very clear this morning. Any questions from the web, Marie?

No more questions from the web, so I think it was pretty clear.

No? Okay. So yes, we might conclude.

Thank you very much. I wish you all have a nice day, happy day, whatever you say [Foreign Language].

All look nice and happy. Yes, it's good.

Bye-bye.