Matas A/S (MATAS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Matas Q2 report. [Operator Instructions] Today, I am pleased to present Gregers Wedellsborg, group CEO; and Anders Skole-Sorensen, CFO. Please begin your meeting.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to the conference call covering the second quarter of the financial year, a busy quarter with a strong summer and the launch of a new strategy. I will start out by commenting on the quarter overall, then hand over to Anders, who will cover the financial details in -- the financials in more detail, and I will return with the guidance, comments on the guidance, and then we will open for Q&A. It was a hand warming quarter in many ways because we sustained the momentum that we got last year. We got a big bump from COVID on the summer of last year, so this quarter was actually way up compared to 2019. And overall headlines is revenue growth of 4.4%, driven by online sales, but also by seeing our range extension, which was part of our strategy, moved forward quite successfully. 1.8% like-for-like growth and 15.8% versus the same quarter of 2019/'20. Web shops increased on top of a very impressive sales numbers of last year by 12.8%, and the physical stores were flat compared to last year. And last year, as you may remember, the physical stores got a big bump as well compared to the previous year. And Web Sundhed, the acquisition contributed about 2% to the total growth. Gross margin was up. This was mainly due to the fact that we were no longer selling face masks and hand sanitizers at low margins, but rather selling makeup at the higher margins. EBITDA decreased in the quarter, and there are 2 reasons for that, 2 main reasons for that. One is that the same quarter of last year, we had an extraordinary reimbursement for trainees that was COVID-related, and we didn't get that again this year and will not get that in the future. But most importantly, this was a quarter where we decided to back our new strategy with increased cost allocations and allocations to really fueling the introduction of the broader range on matas.dk. And then, of course, we had some cost increases just due to the fact that online is growing and driving travel cost and also to the addition of Web Sundhed and starting to build our international organization, the Matas Brands organization. So that led to a decline in the EBITDA margin, reaching 17% versus 19.3% last year, which was extraordinarily high for the quarter. But all in all, Q2 leads us to upgrade the guidance both on growth and EBITDA margin, and I will return to that later in the call. I think the most important takeaway from a business point of view for this quarter is that it's been favorable market conditions overall. But what has also driven the results is early success of our new strategy, which is to build on our now quite strong, very strong, actually, digital position and extend the range online. We saw a progress in our market share, if you will, for online and our position online, cementing our position as the second most visited web shop across all web shops in Denmark, only topped by Zalando. So the first range extensions that we did, Pro Hair Care, we're off to a very, very good start. And what we do when we introduce new ranges, it's not just to put the merchandise on the digital shelves. It is also to really heavily support the introduction of new assortments so that customers know that we now can be a destination for professional hair care as well. Off to a very good start. Same with our new introduction of derma cosmetics brands that have usually been found mainly in the pharmacy sector, are now also available in Matas. And we also saw some of the -- an interesting development in our partnership with NovoZymes of introducing new dietary supplements. This is -- these are some of the indicators that support our strategy and support our ambition to grow the business. We are seeing record numbers on our online customer satisfaction. That is due to the fact that our day-to-day deliveries now 9 out of 10 customers will receive the package next day for online and we continue to invest in the overall user experience for our online business. And also, we are becoming better and better at using our Club Matas data to do precision marketing so that the e-mails and notifications that customers get from us, they are relevant to the individual consumer. Also, we have expanded our web shop fulfillment center facility by 2,000 square meters. That is to support range extension until we complete, the beautiful picture on the other side of the slide, until we complete our new Matas Logistics Center, so that we can support growth in the period now and until the Matas Logistics Center is operational. Also, this is -- we are making strides on our CSR and ESG agenda. We have signed a new financing package. It has integrated ESG targets in the package. We are linking the management bonuses to ESG progress, and we have worked on establishing our CO2 baseline and mapping all those initiatives that will drive us toward the ambition of being CO2-neutral by 2030. And we will get back to that in more detail when we report on the full year. Now as all of you know, there's a lot of choppy waters in terms of labor market and in terms of supply chain and even inflation. We are at a point now where we don't believe it will materially affect our business. We are seeing some stresses somewhere in the business. But overall, it's -- we are not at a point where it will materially affect our business. Why is that? Well, for one, we have limited exposure, given that almost all of our products are produced within Europe. And if we have stuck out on a product, it can be substituted by another product. And we can advise the customer to try something new instead of the brands they are used to trying. Also, and you will notice in our inventories, we actually made a conscious decision to pull forward a buildup of inventory for the Christmas quarter. So I can tell you that the stores are full of merchandise and so is our online store. We are experiencing more staff shortage than usual, especially in the larger cities. But for now, it is not business-critical. We are also seeing some push on prices, but we're negotiating, and we actually expect to end up in a situation where it will not materially impact our gross margins for the financial year. So choppy waters, yes. But for now and for the foreseeable future, we think it's manageable. I also want to point your attention, and particularly the Danish audience, that we have entered into a partnership with Sofie Linde. For those of you who don't know Sofie, she is a very well-known TV host and influencer, really carrying the torch for a lot of the issues that I've spoken about, especially among the younger demographic, so all about self-acceptance, mental well-being, body issues. And she's making a very brave campaign to spotlight how to take good care of yourself, how to take good care of your mental health as well aimed at the younger demographic. And with that, I will hand over to the numbers. That's you, Anders.

Thank you, Gregers, and good morning. On this slide, we are looking at the key financials. As Gregers has already pointed out, the 1.8% like-for-like growth on top of what we could do, I think we can call it tough comps without being over the top. Gross margin up by 1.1 percentage point. And just to flesh it out a bit, what has really happened in that quarter, of course was that we had a marked drop-off in the sales of the low-margin products of personal protection. So that is the hand sanitizer and the face mask and so forth and so on. While we had very good sales development in what we call our private brands section, so that's the stripes but also things like sunscreen, had a better summer than we had last year helped a bit. Finally, makeup made a comeback, and that is also a fairly high gross margin area of our business. So that lifted our gross margin. And we're quite pleased to see that development. On the cost side, a marked increase in overall cost. Gregers has already mentioned it, and I'll come back to it in excruciating detail in just a moment, of course, that does play a role. And that reflected itself in the drop-off that we saw in EBITDA, where the margin went down from the 19.3%. As Gregers mentioned, it was quite very high in the last -- second quarter of last year to 17% this year. And that, of course, is directly related to the cost development. That also turned out to have some effect on the adjusted net profit, while free cash flow was much closer to remaining stable, and I'll come back to that as well. One thing we are seeing, a trend we've seen for quite a while now, is that the number of transactions is trending slightly downwards, not by a whole lot this quarter, especially with regards to the physical stores. We are seeing a tendency for the customers to concentrate their purchases a little more. So they may not shop as many times, for when they do shop, they will shop with a bigger basket. And this is also what we've seen this quarter with an increase of almost 3% in the basket size, which is a very solid development. Looking at the longer-term trends in revenue, gross margin and so forth, we are very pleased to see that, yes, in spite, of course, of growth coming down with the tough comps and the very extraordinary last year, we are still seeing positive growth and a very marked positive long-term growth. And on the gross margin, I just want to come back to the fact that we are now seeing the long-term trend actually going a bit upwards, and I think it supports the story that we've been telling you for quite a long time that we are seeing a stabilizing trend in gross margin. Cost development, and just coming back to that again because, of course, when you look at the numbers, it's quite dramatic, so it needs a bit of explanation here. Overall, cost ratio was up from 23.9% last year to 27.2% this year. And if we then dive in to the cost elements of what has really happened here, well, Gregers pointed out already, DKK 14 million is just a rise in cost levels at the staff cost in the stores, obviously, because we got this very nice dividend, a very nice subsidy from trainees last year, which we didn't repeat this year. So that, of course, added DKK 14 million. On top of that, there is a DKK 12 million overall cost addition on other external costs, and that is, as Gregers pointed out, marketing and logistics. We have been increasing sales so that obviously had logistics costs go up. But we have also taken conscious decisions on discretionary spending, you might call it, taking decisions to spend more money to really make a splash when we go out and add new product ranges, things like Pro Hair Care. It's no good if people don't know we have it, so we really need to splash about it. And also dermatological, that's a tough word, dermatological skin care, we've also splashed on. And on top of that, we've also actually had some quite significant product expansions in areas like the whole makeup range from Ecooking and Kylie. Now, you know that I also know some brands here, that's quite amazing. Finally, just DKK 8 million, of course, of just personnel costs, which are directly related to the online sales growing. And if we just -- just to add a little flavor, it's also in the numbers. Electricity is the main part of our energy, direct energy consumption is electricity. And of course, we all know electricity prices have been going upwards. Just to give you a flavor, say, look, that is important, obviously. We've spent about DKK 1 million more in electricity this quarter than we did last quarter. And I would love not to have spent that DKK 1 million, but of course, seen in the overall picture, it's still fairly limited. All right inventories, we've already talked a little bit about it. Inventories have gone up by DKK 47 million in total. And if we then start to decompose that, what's really been going on, well, COVID-19 related stocks have gone down by DKK 36 million. I think we're all happy to see that. So less hand sanitizers, fewer face masks. We have been adding inventory in the growth areas, that is natural as the business grows. But then there's also an addition of about DKK 58 million, what we call the existing business. And if you then take that and say, okay, what are the elements here? Well, there are really 2 big elements. The first one is the fact that, yes, we haven't really seen much in the way of supply chain hiccups yet. But of course, we need to take heed of what happens in the market. So we've taken precautions and we've added that sort of maybe slightly below half of that DKK 58 million is actually what you could call safety stocks that we've bought. And naturally, we don't just buy across all the range. We focus on the areas where we know that with ourselves the goods sooner or later. On top of that, as I already mentioned, we've actually introduced quite a lot of new products and assortments. There's the Pro Hair care, there's the dermatological skincare, but there's also things like Ecooking, which is in very broad distribution, the Ecooking makeup. And that actually also ties up a bit of money as does things like Kylie and so forth. So overall, when we look at this number, yes, the headline has gone up. But, and I think this is really important, if we look at it relative to sales, and that is really the way one should look at it. Last year, relative to last 12 month sales, we were sitting at an inventory level of 24.3%. This year, we're down to 23.1%. So we're still going that way. Finally, just on the cash flow and working capital. Well, cash flow from operations, slightly up compared to last year in spite of the fact that the underlying cash flow from the operations before changes to working capital was slightly down. That has to do with the EBITDA development that you've seen. We always have this quarter a tying off of capital and working capital. Last year, it was DKK 60 million, this year it's DKK 36 million. You can say, how does that add up with the fact that we actually split and had an increase in inventories? Well, the thing is that the increase in inventories this time around has been in our sort of core areas where we have very good payment terms, while last year, a lot of it had to do with COVID-19-related products where we were, frankly, buying things for people we don't usually trade with. And so we didn't quite have the same kind of positive or good payment terms. So that's why we have a more positive development. Finally, just a short note on the CapEx side of things, CapEx has been going up, and we are basically seeing what I would call an increase both in direct and indirect IT-related CapEx. When I say that it's, of course, because we have directly IT-related CapEx developments such as the ERP upgrade that we're going through right now. So that adds something. But also because all of the digital business is more capital intensive. And then the lifespan of these new IT systems is just shorter in this area. Things are going very fast, and that means that we are spending a little more money to make sure that our user experience and our back office and everything else in the online business is as sharp as possible. With that, I will hand you back to Gregers, and he'll talk you through the guidance.

Thank you, Anders. And on the back of the strong quarter, and also on the back of positive trading in October, you might remember that October of last year was just spectacular because that was when the big holiday pay support package came out. So we're very happy to see that we were able to match that growth this year. But we now expect revenues to go between -- grow between 1% and 2% against our previous expectations...

1% and 4%.

Sorry 1% and 4%, thank you, Anders, against our previous expectations was a growth rate between 0% and 3%. And for our EBITDA margin, we also upgrade to a range of between 18% and 19% up from 17.5% to 18.5%. And this is backed by the rise in gross margin. and it still includes what we gave in the full year financial guidance that we invest, if you will, a 1% margin in driving our new strategy and future growth initiatives. As for investments, there is no change to our long-term investment plan. This is merely a matter of timing. We will see around DKK 100 million less investments, so CapEx coming in this financial year due to the timing of the Matas Logistics Center project. It's not an indication of delay. It's just a matter of we now know what is the plan for rolling out the Matas Logistics Center and we will see those investments coming in, in the next financial year rather than this financial year. So with that, we will conclude the presentation and open to questions.

[Operator Instructions] There appear to be no questions. I will turn the conference back to you, speakers.

Thank you, that's a first. And we will take that as an indication that we've been quite exact in explaining what the movements of the quarter are. So with that, thank you, operator, and thanks for joining the conference call.