Netel Holding AB (publ) (NETEL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Netel Group Q3 presentation for 2023. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Jeanette Reuterskiöld; and CFO, Peter Andersson. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our presentation of quarter 3 for Netel Group. My name is Jeanette Reuterskiöld, and I'm acting President and CEO of Netel. With me today, I have Peter Andersson, CFO of Netel. So summary for the quarter is that we have an increased results and continue to grow strong organically. That is driven by our underlying markets who are still strong in all our segments. We have a robust order backlog as we move into 2024 with a good mix for our business units and our segments. We are carefully monitoring the development of how turbulent world around us with more increased interest rates and inflation might impact us and our customers. And we meet these challenges and continue to implement margin-enhancing improvement measures. These activities are a natural part of our constant work to develop and streamline our products and services. Our indication for the full year 2023 still remains firm that we will have a growth of 10% and adjusted EBITA between 4.5% and 5.5%. And now we go into our group performance. We have a growth of 14.2% this quarter to SEK 800 million. It's mainly driven, as I said, of organic development in Sweden and Norway within Power. We show an organic growth of 9.3% and excluding phasing our fiber rollout in Sweden, it end up in 10.9%. And as you can see in the right corner, our segments in net sales, it shows that Sweden with 47% and Norway, 35% is our biggest market and very important for us. Finland at 8%, Germany, 6% and U.K. 4%. Our strategy now is to grow organically in all these segments further until we reach our leverage ratio below our financial targets. We have a sequential improvement due to a high activity level in the quarter. Our adjusted EBITA increased to SEK 50 million. And our adjusted EBITA margin is 5.6%. The increased adjusted EBITA margin is due to our high activity level and the margin-enhancing measures we've done in the quarter, particularly in Norway. The margin-enhancing measures we do and will do in Norway and Finland should continue to contribute to our profitability in the next quarter and under -- next year. Our EPS landed on SEK 0.27. We expect our growth to -- of 10% remains our indication and also our adjusted EBITA margin of 4.5% to 5.5%. Our financial targets are to grow 10%, and we indicate that we will reach that. And our margin, as I said, between 4.5% and 5.5% still remains. Our capital structure financial target is that we should have a net debt excluding lease liabilities divided with adjusted EBITA should be below 2.5, and we expect it to be reached in the end of the year. And Peter will comment more about that later on. So, Peter?

Our operating cash flow for the quarter was slightly positive with SEK 2 million and in line with seasonality. We have continued strong focus on cash improvement measures, both in short and long term. We expect cash releases in Q4 and possible also in Q1, depending on timing regarding invoicing and payments. And as can be seen in the chart, Q4 is normally a strong quarter for us regarding operating cash flow. We continue to have focus on the capital structure target. And at the moment, we have unutilized credit facilities and cash of SEK 507 million, which is sufficient for our business. However, our leverage ratio calculating according to our financial targets is currently at 2.8, which is higher than the target of 2.5. And we are working to get it down under 2.5, like Jeanette just said. This also means that we have less focus on M&A until we have improved the leverage ratio. Over to you, Jeanette.

Yes. Now it's time for us to go through our segment performance on the quarter. And we start up with Sweden, which shows very strong growth and improved profitability. We have increased our net sales this quarter comparing to last year with 23.1%, and it's driven by our growth in -- both in acquisitions then and in Infraservices and Power. We have an increased margin this quarter of 2% to 8.5%. And we see in Infraservices that we have -- still have a good demand for public and state clients, but we have seen this quarter increased competition in this business unit. Power -- mainly the reason for that, what we can see is the decrease of housing projects in Sweden. Yes. And in Power, we have a high demand, especially for power stations. Telecom for us is this quarter impacted by the ongoing phasing out of the fiber rollout as planned. And we also have had the whole year and this quarter a lower activity within mobile and service. And -- but we can see we got a new framework agreement with FMV, Swedish Defense Materiel Administration, so we are -- that we are very glad about. So we can see improvement for Sweden further on in service. And in Norway, we have a good demand and improved profitability. Since last quarter, our volume is increased in Power and in Telecom. We made a strategic move in the Power to broaden our business geographically, and we have already got extended cooperation with Elvia. Elvia is Norway's largest power operator. So that has so far been successful and a way for us to grow that business in Norway. Telecom has showed good volumes, both in fiber and 5G rollout and our margin-enhancing measures that we've been doing this year has improved our margin to 3.6% from 1.8% last quarter, Q2. So improvement for Norway. And then we go into Finland. We, of course, have had focused on activities to improve our profitability. And as you can see, our sales are impacted by planned lower volume in Power. The negotiation we had with the major power customer were finalized in July, and that has created the prerequisites for Power to become profitable in the next year. Our new fiber projects is increasing in volume. The new large fiber projects we've been talking about earlier has started after a protracted start. And now it has a good potential to contribute to our improved profitability in Finland. We still see that we will have positive results in Finland on the next year, 2024. In Germany, there is a strong underlying demand we see this quarter. So that has been impacted by the finalization of projects in combination with the start-up of new projects with a large new customer. We are right now building up our organization locally to meet the strong demand we see in the market. Our focus is to grow further on in Germany with the new customers and to improve our profitability further on. We see that Germany will pick up in the end of this year. And year-to-date, we have a margin of 6.9%. And then finally, U.K. Merger of our two U.K. companies is finalized and they are now working under the brand Netel. Our projects with new fiber customer and those synergies with the margin will continue to contribute to our profitability. The same as in Germany, we are building up our organization locally in U.K. to be able to grow from -- to meet the strong demand that we see in that market as well. Yes, we have receive new customers, but we also in U.K., focus on reaching new customers to grow further to improve our profitability. So there is a good market there as well. So that was the end of this presentation for now. And the next presentation will be the 16th of February next year, 2024 then it's our quarter 4 and the year-end report. And now we open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Gustav Berneblad from Nordea.

It's Gustav from Nordea. Just a couple of questions from my side here. Maybe start off in Norway. It looks to be recovering quite all right. I mean, are we seeing full effect of the cost savings program you have made in Norway now already in Q4? Or will that be postponed already over to 2024?

We will see most of the margin-enhancing that we have been doing this year under Q4. And the new projects we have started up this fall will make our margin better for next year as well.

Okay. Perfect. And then if we look at Germany, I mean, how should we think about this segment going forward? Because you said you're finalizing projects now while you also ramp up new projects. Are there any reasons for Germany not sort of returning to the historical levels in terms of margins that we have seen or...

No, we expect better margins than we have done -- see so far. And it's all -- it's a balance between our -- when we are finalizing the old projects and ramping up the new ones. But we -- it's a good market, and we see a good -- possibility of good margins in Germany as well. But of course, we see Germany as a -- in a long-term market for us. And now we're also focusing on building up the organization locally to be strong in long term in Germany, of course.

But this new project that you are ramping up, is that -- would that be in full production? Or is it in full production already now? Or...

Now, I would say it is in full production, and we are also in negotiations with the new -- other new customers in Germany that we hopefully could come back to you.

Okay. Perfect. And then maybe if we turn to the cash flow. I mean, you built some working capital burden by receivables in the quarter here and I mean, just to sort of clarify, has there been any changes in the payment terms? Or is it just seasonality or...

Peter, maybe you can...

We are working with improving measures in many ways. I think we have addressed that earlier also and we continue with that. So it's to do quicker invoicing to reduce the work in progress. We're working with payment solutions where we have payment conditions, which is longer than the normal 30 days. So we're working with that also, and it looks positive. We also try to negotiate better payment terms, if possible. And we have achieved that also with some of the customers -- clients also to invoice more often, which means more than a month, and that has also been achieved in some places. So we have had high production. We have had really high invoicing in the Q3, so we are looking forward to Q4. That's what we can say. And we expect the cash release in Q4, and it could spill over into Q1 also. So that is what we can say about that and the same also...

No, that was good. That was good. And then maybe one last question here. I mean looking at the net financials, it was quite a miss to our estimates and I guess, consensus. But what is driving this besides sort of the interest expenses, is there a one-off or...

Can you repeat? [indiscernible]

Yes. If we look at net financials, I mean, you had interest expenses of roughly SEK 18 million, right? But the financials came in at SEK 26 million, is there a one-off there? Or...

No. It's [Technical Difficulty]

Hello?

Hello?

Could you hear my question, Peter?

Yes, I hear you. Yes. It's -- most of it is in interest, but also some other positions that we have. It's -- but most interest.

Okay. So if we look forward to Q4, should we extrapolate these other items? Or should we just sort of calculate on the interest expenses?

Interest expenses, there were SEK 18 million in the quarter of the SEK 26 million, and then we have some other positions also. So you should go for around the SEK 18 million.

The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets.

Yes. I need to come back to the last answer, the SEK 18 million. Seems that your -- the cost for your service in your debt is very, very high. Is there any chance that you could improve that going into maybe then [ '24 ]?

[indiscernible] what would you say? We have on the phone.

[indiscernible] could improve our cost into 2024.

There seems to be -- well, is it mid-teens that you are paying for your debt for the moment or it must be -- it's not very high, at least.

Right. The -- we have you on the phone. Can [ I ] say again, sorry.

Yes. Now looking at the cost for servicing your debt, it seems to be a very, very high interest rate margin that we are paying for the moment. Is there any chance of improving that? Or what is happening?

We have a possibility to decrease it, of course, if we have in our financial agreement, of course. It's some flexible variables there, so we can get it down. But unfortunately, the interest rates has gone up in the market. So it's a little bit to do, but not a lot, what we can say on the interest rates.

And when you look at -- maybe I could picture being a little more on the cash release there. Obviously, now you have built up working capital for quite a substantial time and I know you were talking about trying to find either payment solutions and so on, so you could have a more forceful release of cash. Is that what you're still seeing? And coming back to the earlier question as well, is the payment term changing with the kind -- looking at the backlog you now have compared to the kind of payment solutions or payment patterns you have had historically?

What we're looking at now is payment solution. We have -- last years, we have more contracts where we have a tougher payment conditions, which means we have longer payment terms until we get paid. On those ones, we are working with payment solutions and it's looking positive. We have done something already, and we're working with some more on that. And this could be quite substantial amount for us in our [ world ]. So -- and that's looking positive and we're working with that. We have a plan for it, how to go ahead for the fourth quarter and also going into 2024.

And maybe you could elaborate -- indicate to us how much of the working capital you might think is going to be released over the next 2 or 3 quarters or something like that through these kind of measures.

We are at today, if we look at our working capital, it's SEK 506 million. And it's around 14.5% if you look at -- and what we have in sales for a year for this year. We have indicated before in the other calls, we should be between 9% and 12%. So we have the goal to go below 12%, of course, so to be in the range of 9% and 12%. If we can 9%, it's very difficult to reach, but we should be under 12%.

With the measure you are looking to do, you feel that 12% should be achievable over the next 2 or 3 quarters?

Yes, absolutely. We have a plan on -- like I mentioned before, what we're doing, we -- a lot of things are happening in the Q4. We can see that in the chart also, if you look at what's normally happening in the Q4. So we're building up for that, and we're working very wide in the whole group, [ invoice quicker ]. We are talking with our clients. We're working with the payment solutions. And we are also improving our margins and profits. So we have a plan for it, and what we know today, we will achieve it.

Good to hear. And just to finalize on that, if you manage to get the net debt then clearly below the 2.5x net debt to EBITA in the financial, will that have some meaningful improvement also on the interest rate margins you need to pay for the servicing the debt?

Some effect, but we shouldn't look at any big changes in that -- in the margin -- interest margin. It's not big, but some.

Good. And just a final one for me. Looking at -- it's good to see that you're reiterating the financial targets for the full year and very encouraged to see how you build the order backlog. But Jeanette, maybe you could just elaborate a little how you feel that you have been able to work through this turbulent period in the company. Have you kept your colleagues at a good committed level and how the companies that you've bought paying for your -- with your own shares, [ part ] and these kind of things, how are those relations work?

Yes. It's been, as you know, an active period the last two quarters for the company. But we have a lot of engagement, a lot of energy in the organization and everybody is working really hard to improve our business and margins, of course. And there is a positive energy in the group. And of course, even if we look at the stock shares, that's one thing, but we see a really good market for us in our businesses. And overall, we are -- have good results in the organization. And as you had a question, Karl-Johan, before about -- in the order backlog, if we have better payment solutions or [ in it ], of course, that's one of the things we're working really hard on to get better contracts for us to improve our cash flow further on. And it is different, how should I put it, culture in how long -- how the cash flow is in our contracts between Infraservices and Power and Telecom. So it's -- in some cases, with new customers, we can have discussions easier than in customers we been having before, but it's easier to have those discussions with new customers. But we are working really hard on it, and we feel that we are taking the steps we should take and that's positive in the long term for us.

Excellent. That sounds encouraging. And just on that note, there is no, say, arbitration processes or anything like that, that you should flag, say, tying up capital at this stage?

No, there isn't.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Well, thank you. I don't hear any or see any more questions. So thank you for today, and we see you hopefully back in February then. Thank you, and goodbye.