Nilfisk Holding A/S (NF1.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Nilfisk's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2022. My name is Elisabeth Klintholm, and I'm Head of Investor Relations and Group Communications here at Nilfisk. Before we begin today's presentation, I would like to remind you that this presentation, including remarks from management, may contain forward-looking statements that should not be relied upon as predictions of actual results. For more details, I refer to the content on this slide. To cover Nilfisk's Q1 2022 results today, we have our CEO, Torsten Turling; and our CFO, Reinhard Mayer, presenting. Looking at Slide 4. The agenda for today is as follows: Torsten will start us off with some high-level commentary on our Q1 financials as well as a short business update. Following this, Reinhard will give an overview of our financial performance for Q1, followed by a few comments around our sustainability-linked finance. Finally, Torsten will comment on our unchanged outlook for 2022 as well as the underlying assumptions. We'll keep today's presentation fairly short and look forward to taking your questions during the Q&A session at the end of the webcast. Torsten, the scene is yours.

Thank you, Elizabeth, and good morning to all of you. Thank you very much for joining us in this call. We will be sharing with you this morning, business highlights and our results for the first quarter in 2022. Let me start with the financial highlights of Q1, on the next slide. We started with a strong first quarter into the year '22. We continued the growth momentum of the year 2021 well into 2022. We experienced high demand for our products and services throughout the first quarter, and reached sales of EUR 264.2 million, up by EUR 26.9 million over prior year. Strong market demand in combination with the initiatives of our new business plan led to reported revenue growth of 11.3% in the quarter. Organically, so without a positive FX effect, we grew sales by 9.3% in the quarter. As presented in the Capital Market Day, one of our strategic priorities is to grow in the large-scale U.S. market. In continuation of our strong growth momentum in 2021, our sales in the Americas region recorded an organic sales growth of 24.3% in the first quarter 2022. We also achieved to increase EBITDA before special items. EBITDA before special items landed at $37.6 million in the first quarter, up versus prior year by $1.2 million. Our margins were somewhat challenged by increasing material cost inflation and elevated freight cost. We continued in the first quarter to take both measures to offset the negative effects with pricing actions and cost control. Our EBITDA margin before special items came to 14.2% in the first quarter, 110 basis points below prior year. In summary, a strong set of results in Q1 2022 as the next step on our journey of long-term sustainable growth. Let's move to Slide 6 for some business highlights. The strong demand for Nilfisk products and services that positively impacted, already, 2021 continued in Q2 -- Q1 '22. Order intake remained strong, with Americas being the most significant growth driver. In the Americas region, we successfully continued the implementation of a revised go-to-market strategy, sharing end-user leads with distributors, and systematically developing strategic accounts has become a winning formula. In the first quarter, order intake surpassed invoiced sales. As a result, we register an all-time high order book at the end of the first quarter. Also, in the first quarter of 2022 sales growth has been constrained by global supply chain challenges, and availability of critical parts. We took bold actions to mitigate those supply chain challenges, and continue to hold higher levels of inventory in order to better secure our supply capability. As in 2021, we continued in 2022 to address the margin implications out of the inflationary pressures with pricing actions. We continue to monitor closely, the further evolution of inflation, and will adjust our actions accordingly. Another highlight of the first quarter was the launch of our Business Plan 2026. In this plan, we have clearly laid out the levers for long-term sustainable growth and value creation. Details have been presented at the Capital Markets Day in early April. The material is available on our website. The implementation of the business plan is in full swing throughout the organization. Now we come to the tragic part of the first quarter, the war in the Ukraine. As a consequence of Russia's invasion into the Ukraine, we announced on March 4 to suspend our activities in Russia. After a thorough reviewing the situation, we decided to close our Russian business, and are currently in the process of liquidation of our Russian entity. As a reminder, in 2021, Russia represented around 1% of the group sales. Turning to a very positive note. In April, we successfully completed our sustainability linked refinancing. Reinhard will share more details in his section later. Moving on to Page 7. At the end of the first quarter, we experienced an exceptional incident. In the early morning hours on March 30, our distribution center in the U.S. located in Springdale, Arkansas, had been partly destroyed by a tornado. Luckily, no one was injured. With a tremendous effort by our local team, we were able to resume operations in a nearby building already, early April. We are currently ramping up the new warehouse and are in the process of replenishing inventory during the second quarter. This will lead temporarily to somewhat longer delivery times. We expect the impact on our U.S. sales to be limited to around EUR 20 million, being delayed from the second quarter to the second half of 2022. Overall, we continue to expect the full year 2022 to land in line with our prior guidance. And with this introduction, I hand over to you -- hand you over to Reinhard to run you through the financials of the first quarter. Reinhard?

Thank you, Torsten. Let's dive into the financials. Moving to Slide 9. I will start the financial review with the income statement. For the first quarter of 2022, Nilfisk reported net sales of EUR 264.2 million, an increase of EUR 26.9 million compared to Q1 2021. This corresponds to a total reported growth of 11.3%, with foreign exchange rates having a favorable impact of 2.3%. Net sales grew organically with 9.3% to prior year. The gross margin came in at 40% compared to 41.6% prior year. The decline was caused primarily by a negative impact from increasing material costs and continued high freight rates, partly offset by a positive impact from pricing actions and higher revenue. . Higher business activity in the quarter led to an increase in overhead cost of EUR 5.8 million. However, cost inflation remained significantly below top line growth in the quarter, and the overhead cost ratio was 31.5%, 110 basis points lower than Q1 last year. EBITDA before special items came to EUR 37.6 million, an increase of EUR 1.2 million from Q1 2021. EBITDA before special items benefited from the higher revenue and good cost control, but was negatively impacted by the aforementioned gross margin pressure. Finally, the EBITDA margin before special items came to 14.2%, a decline of 110 basis points. Let's move to Slide 10. The organic revenue growth of 9.3% from Q1 2021 was primarily driven by our strategically important U.S. market. In total, Americas grew 24.3% with revenue at EUR 87.8 million. The strong growth in America was, as Torsten mentioned, partly driven by the market recovering after COVID. We were able to amplify the growth by focused initiatives to gain market share in the U.S. and to grow with strategic accounts as well as with our distribution partners. Finally, it's worth mentioning that all regions in Americas delivered strong growth. Organic growth in Europe came to 3.6%, taking revenue to EUR 154.3 million for the quarter. As part of our optimizing Europe strategy, we implemented a price increase, which has driven revenue growth across all regions and segments. In Europe South, countries such as Turkey, Italy and Spain continue to outperform while markets in Central Europe has been slower. For APAC and Middle East, Africa, revenue grew organically with 2%, and came to EUR 22.1 million. Let's move to Slide 11 for a look at our operating segments. When we look at our operating segments, Branded Professional grew 11.2% to EUR 220.1 million. Growth was driven by Americas with 25.3% from Q1 2021, while Europe grew 5.4% in the same period. APAC declined as the continued 0 COVID policy in China resulted in a negative impact from severe COVID-19 lockdowns. Supply challenges also had a negative impact for the Pacific region in Q1. Thailand and Middle East Africa were the exceptions in the region with very strong growth. The consumer business saw lower growth compared to the same quarter in 2021. The timing of the Easter holiday season impacted sales negatively in the quarter compared to last year. Revenue for consumer business in Q1 amounted to EUR 26.5 million with organic growth of minus 5.8%. The private label business reached revenue of EUR 17.6 million, up 12.1% from Q1 last year. Organic growth reached 12.7% due to continued high demand from key customers. Turning now to the balance sheet and the cash flow on Slide 12. In the first quarter, we actively managed our inventory levels to match and fulfill increased demand. As a result, inventories rose by EUR 70.7 million, and we ended the quarter at EUR 235.3 million. The increase came from the higher business activity and investments into stocking of critical parts and components. As a result, working capital grew by EUR 74 million. Higher revenue, however, reduced our 12-month working capital ratio with 80 basis points compared to last year. CapEx increased EUR 2.3 million for the period, primarily from investments in R&D for sustainable products and investments into IT systems. Free cash flow declined by EUR 31.9 million to a net outflow of EUR 22.7 million for the quarter due to the increase in working capital. Positive effects from lower financial expenses and lower taxes paid could not offset the impact from working capital. Our net interest-bearing debt at the end of the quarter arrived at EUR 372.4 million, which is a reduction of EUR 6 million compared to Q1 2021. This, in combination with a solid development in EBITDA, led to a reduction in gearing to [ 2.6 ] compared to [ 3.4 ] last year. So summing it up, performance in Q1 was strong. Our order book continued to be very strong. proving that demand remains high. We see tangible effects from our price increase, which, to some extent, offset the continuing supply chain challenges. This has given us a solid starting point for 2022. Now let's have a look at our sustainability linked financing at Slide 13. In April, we closed the deal for a new EUR 400 million financial facility with a syndicate of 5 banks. This syndicate gives us access to both a broad set of financial competencies as well as better geographic coverage. The EUR 400 million facility consists of a EUR 200 million term loan facility and EUR 200 million revolving credit facility, both set on 3-year agreements on improved terms. Finally, the loan is linked to Nilfisk's sustainability targets, and to our Ecovadis rating. As a step towards having sustainability deeply rooted in the organization, a certain portion of our financing costs are now directly linked to our sustainability targets for Scope 1, 2 and 3 CO2 emissions as validated by the science-based target initiative to our targets for increased tender diversity as well as to our Ecovadis rating. With this new incentive structure, we are deliberately putting extra pressure on ourselves to perform sustainably and deliver on our CSR targets whilst striving for an overall lower financing costs. Now back to you, Torsten, for a comment on our outlook.

Thank you very much, Reinhard. Let's turn to the following page for an update on our outlook. So in summary, we delivered strong Q1 results, and hold an all-time high order book at the end of the quarter. We are determined to mitigate as much as possible inflationary pressures with pricing activities as well as prudent cost management. We expect the impact of the U.S. distribution center to be limited to the second quarter, leading to a delay of our U.S. revenue of around EUR 20 million from Q2 into the second half. And we are in the midst of implementing the initiatives of our Business Plan 2026. This plan is focused on long-term sustainable growth. Key drivers like growth in the large-scale U.S. market or developing service-as-a-business as well as leading with sustainable products will continue to contribute to this growth. This goes along with optimizing our leadership position in Europe and enhancing the robustness of our supply chain. On this basis, we maintain the full year outlook as we communicated in the annual report for 2021. This means that for 2022, we continue to expect organic growth in the range of 4% to 7%, and we expect EBITDA margin before special items to come in between 13.5% and 15.5%. With this, we conclude our presentation, and are ready to take your questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Kristian Johansen of SEB.

Yes. A couple of questions from me. I'll do them one by one. So first, your comment on the U.S. and these EUR 20 million in revenue, you expect to be moving in Q2 through the second half. How confident are you that this is just a timing effect than the customers are not going to cancel orders?

Yes. Thank you for the question, Kristian. The reason why we are very confident is that we have an all-time high order book in the U.S. So we have such a coverage that our sales are really determined by our supply capability. So once we resume, and ramp up in the second quarter to full speed and then recover from thereafter, we have enough coverage in the order book to fully get back to the levels we expected. We also see from our customers as a reaction to the incident, no cancellation of orders. So we remain very confident that these sales will be just delayed and not lost.

Okay. That's very clear. Then on your guidance, especially the lower end either it is a 4%, it implies a fairly significant slowdown in growth. I think just by math, it will imply that, that organic growth for the remaining 9 months go down to 2%. And at the same time, you keep referring to this extremely strong order book. So can you just help us a bit balance what you're actually seeing right now? And what could take you to the lower end of guidance?

When we originally issued the guidance range, we referred to the continued uncertainties of global supply chain challenges. This remains the question mark throughout the year. This has not disappeared. We continued to face limitations in the first quarter, but it's also true that with the efforts that we did in the first quarter, and as we did throughout last year, we were able to mitigate some of the supply chain challenges. But we remain cautious about those challenges that why we have given the range from 4% to 7%. Beyond that, the activity we see in the market makes us confident that we'll be operating well into the range. But this magnitude of the range was given particularly due to the uncertainty of the supply chain challenges.

Okay. Just to clarify. So you have not seen any signs of a slowdown, yet. It's more sort of cautiousness given the supply chain pressure, you're expressing.

Situation in '21 in the first quarter of '22 and right now continues to be that our sales growth is constrained by the supply ability. So we have a strong order book, a record high as we reported. So the limiting factor in the next foreseeable months is our supply capability. And here, we're doing tremendous efforts. You saw the results in the first quarter, but some of the supply situation is beyond our control. So we don't see signs of it to get worse, but we're also not out of the woods yet when it comes to supply chain bottlenecks.

That's clear. Then on pricing, can you explain what you have done in terms of pricing in the beginning of the year on ordinary pricing? And then what actions you've had to take sort of during the year so far to mitigate inflation.

Yes. Kristian, I'll take this question. Well, first of all, you might recall that we have done a pricing initiative July last year, which is the full in effect now. And we have also done a price increase towards the beginning of the year, at the end of last year. And those price effects show tangible results. On the other side, we don't fully compensate for the inflationary headwinds, we do see on the raw material side. But we are actually tracking extremely well alongside those capturing of price increases.

But are you then planning to do sort of a midyear price increase, again, this year?

We have basically started to communicate a media price increase. That's true.

Perfect. On the Capital Markets Day, you guided for your overhead cost ratio to increase this year compared to last year. In Q1, it's down year-on-year. So can you maybe help us in terms of the phasing, and the timing when we should expect this ratio to trend up?

Well, 2 effects. I mean it's a ramp-up for the total year. So ramping up means we need to get to the additional resource in place. Secondly, we have had, let's say, good base effect. I mean growth -- organic growth of 9.3% was over and above our guidance, and that has helped also to bring down the overhead to cost ratio. So I mean we have said at the Capital Markets Day, we are investing in overhead. We see that specifically now as well in R&D, where we have expanded spendings, and that will continue. So this ratio might grow slightly over the course of the next months. But we will be in a position to react in case we see, let's say, pressure from top line or pressure from the gross profit margin as we are driving for profitable growth.

Understand. And then just my very last question. I was under the impression that you would change your segment structure here from Q1. And obviously, that didn't happen. Can you just update us on when you expect to do that?

I do agree that it was our aim to provide that business segment structure. But on the other side, we were also asked by our auditors to validate some of the, let's say, revalidation aspects further before we come forward to the market. And that was the reason why we have actually delayed this aspect. We are striving for clearly provide revenue and profitability on the business level. And we will see most likely this, let's say, restated a new business perspective, for Q4 reporting for the full year.

So with the annual report for 2022?

Correct.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from the line of Casper Blom at Danske Bank.

Congrats with a good start to the year, guys. On the strategy that you presented at your Capital Markets Day, the way I understood it was, we really wanted to sort of do things right. But there are also some changes to, for example, how you would go about with your service business, and how to sell that. How has the reception internally been from this? Are your sales guys motivated to actually do this? That would be interesting to hear.

Thank you, Casper, for your comments on the results, and thank you for the question. So the organization is excited about the service focus. Because service is a key part of the value proposition to our customer base, and is really a differentiating factor. So what we see from our commercial front end is a focus on selling service contracts like never before. So -- and while the sales frontline is readying to sell service contracts, we are working on investing into the back end of the service infrastructure to make sure we live up to our customer value proposition. So to your question, the organization is eagerly engaged in this initiative, and we expect a lot from this going forward.

That's good to hear. Secondly, the quite impressive organic growth you see here in Q1, especially in the U.S. Can you give any hint on sort of the split between price, mix and volumes here?

We would not basically give a split on the Americas, but we can say that approximately half of our growth in the quarter is stemming from price increase and the rest is stemming from volume increase. And I say approximately because yes, I cannot be too precise on this number.

Okay. So would it be fair to say that if you have 9% organic growth, then 4.5% is due to pricing.

I'll leave that to you.

Okay. I like to keep things simple, so fair enough. Then finally, just on the supply situation, which Kristian also touched upon. I think today, [ Daimler ] was out saying that they are starting to see some light at the end of tunnel in terms of semiconductors, for example. What are sort of your suppliers telling you? What are you hearing from your transportation partners are things starting to get a little bit easier?

Yes. Casper today is -- we see for some components, indeed, the relaxation, and some other components remain tight. Please keep in mind that our volumes are growing. We are still ramping up from '21, where we had more than 20% growth. Now this quarter, we are in the high single-digit organic growth, good volume growth. So we do put a quite high level of demand on our supply base. So our supply base needs to support our growth journey. And the vast majority is coming along well, but we still have some critical elements that are limiting and constraining our growth. But we're working on those with the measures we had spoken about in the past, primarily diversification of our supplier base that we have more sources to support the growth, but also reviewing specification so that we have more products available. So overall, to your question, yes, some components start to get better, but not all of them. We still have some limitations.

Okay. This pent-up demand that you see, which I guess is also illustrated in your record high backlog, let's say that the supply chain was to normalize tomorrow, how long would you sort of benefit from this pent-up demand? And how long would it take to have sort of a normalized order and backlog situation?

Let me -- Casper, let me answer the following way because I'm not sure we're talking about pent-up demand here. If I give you a very simple straightforward data point, the level of order intake in the first quarter -- so fresh order intake in '22 first quarter is higher than sales, we invoiced and reported in the first quarter. So we think we are continuing to see healthy demand for our products and services. And I think to a good degree, we left behind the '21 pent-up demand by now more regular, sustained strong market demand for our products. Of course, the order backlog that we have, which is at an all-time high as we indicated, will take some time to work through. And the speed of this to work through is determined by the availability of parts and components by the supply chain constraints really. So -- and depending on the product and the source, we expect this to normalize in the second half of this year or for some -- for a few of the items, even into '23. But as we normalize this, we continue to have strong inflow of new orders.

Our next question comes from the line of Claus Almer of Nordea.

I also have a few questions, and I will do them one by one. The first goes to the U.S. growth. 25% was quite remarkable. Can you maybe break it up between new accounts and existing accounts? That will be the first question.

Yes. I mean this is -- Claus, thank you for the question. 25% growth in the Professional business in the quarter. Indeed, we feel also strong about. The strategy that's driving this is not new in the first quarter. It's the same strategy that did drive already 24% organic growth, and throughout 2021. And let me remind you that around 70% of our revenue in the U.S. is distributor-based, and 30% is direct accounts. So we're growing on both of the channels. So we are growing the distributor business primarily with the strategy to share, to identify, develop leads and share them with the distributor base, which is meaning, we are developing the end-user contact and sharing it with the distribution for execution. This is working extremely well, and is highly appreciated by our distributor base. And once you come with a lead, the distributor is not selling than other manufacturers equipment. So that has more or less 100% translation than into our equipment. And then we systematically develop new accounts. But once we have new accounts, we make sure we satisfy them well. We talked about in the annual report about the significant win of United Rentals. This is the globally leading largest rental company with huge expansion in the U.S., and we have agreed a multiyear contract with them. So -- and with the -- all the backlog situation, we need to make sure that we supply this customer and the customers we have, we supply them well. And this gives the growth momentum. So there is no significant proportion of the 25% growth from completely new customers. We're just surfing the wave of the things that we have added to the portfolio. And once we have more headroom in terms of supply, we'll add more. But now we focus on satisfying what we have.

Okay. So if you're going to exclude United Rental, would you still be growing double digit in the Americas?

Yes. By far double-digit.

What? Sorry.

Yes. By long distance double-digit. I mean you take United Rentals [indiscernible] as one -- is a contributing factor, obviously, you are still in the high double-digit growth.

Okay. Good. Then moving to Europe, where you had a low single -- or mid-single digit organic growth. But as you also said earlier that the group level is 50-50 between volume and price. So I guess Europe might be down on volume terms. So what is behind that trend?

It's actually -- the trend is driven by supply chain constraints. So we have, also, some constrained product in Europe, and that is the reason why growth is behind the potential.

So you have less components coming in than you did in 2021, I guess?

That is a correct assumption, for certain product line.

Okay. Then coming to the backlog, you mentioned several times. So when you're taking in your backlog, you took in maybe in Q3 or Q4 last year, on the price levels you had at that time. But given that the cost inflation since, does that mean that part of your backlog at least comes with a lower gross margin?

That's also correct, and we digest that [ today ], [ month by month ]. But as Torsten said, our overall order growth in the first quarter was over and above. And that came already with new pricing as we had initiated in January 2022.

Maybe I can add to this. Our pricing is very dynamic, right? So we had several price increase in the last 12 months. So -- and then we have a fast replenishment of our order book. Now given the magnitude of the order intake, we don't deplete the order book really, but we have a pretty fast rotation. So we don't carry an order book for I mean, the same orders for a long period of time. So we will take rather quickly. And the second comment I want -- I would like to add is when we dimension. So we monitor inflation, and then we dimension our pricing action, and we dimension with what is left over as a net impact. So -- and this takes into consideration how long does it take to rotate the order book. Now of course, there is some dilution impact. Sure, certainly, mechanically. But this, we take this into consideration when we dimensioned the magnitude of the pricing actions.

Okay. So maybe if we were going to speculate in a backlog that was on the current price levels, how much better would the gross margin be?

I mean we will not guide on this, Claus, because that is outside what we could today publicly display. But I guess if you just look on the evolution of gross profit margin from Q4 to Q1, you already see that -- as Torsten mentioned, the rotation in the order book is at a fast pace. We see in the quarter 1 already the effect of the price increase from January onwards. Of course, we see all the effects now from the inflationary environment. That's why we have launched the new price towards mid-year. And yes, we drive on-site with this aspect, but towards meeting our financial guidance for the year.

[Operator Instructions] We've had one further question come through. That's at Mads Quistgaard of Canopy.

Yes. Just a couple of questions on the U.S. So I guess, what's the business sort of the margin impact from this tornado event in the U.S.? I guess it has also caused fed rate cost to increase, locally. Is that a fair assumption?

So if I understood Mads, you asked about the margin implication from the U.S. DC event, right?

Yes. Exactly, yes.

Okay. So the main impact that we see is that the sales is moving out. What we are doing from a supply chain perspective, temporarily, we have rerouted flows to get as much as possible direct. So the main implication is the time it takes to replenish the inventory, and this is the speed of ramping up the operation. So we migrate sales from the second quarter into the second half. But we don't see a particular impact on margins. Now of course, we have one-off cost in investing in the new racking, the new wells and so forth. But this is obviously not visible in the margins. From a business margin implication, we don't anticipate a negative impact.

Okay. And I understand you have a strong backlog in the U.S., but do you see any risk on sort of your -- I guess you also have strong bottlenecks in the U.S. So do you see any risk of this EUR 20 million to be postponed into, let's say, quarter 1 next year, and not only in the second half of this year?

So we are confident that we have fully ramped up the U.S. DC by the end of the second quarter. So we track this every day, and we're making good progress every day. It's in the process of ramping up, and we think this will be completed over the course of the month of June. So given the overall lead times in the market, although this is a few weeks longer temporarily than the normal lead times, we have not experienced customers really walking away from this. So we do expect that once we have reestablished the full capacity, we can cover those sales rather quickly, and we don't expect them to move into '23. Again, let me reiterate the current bottleneck. This is true for the Americas as it's true for Europe is the supply capacity. So we could invoice more. We have enough orders and new order intake, but we are constrained by supply capacity. Once this is reestablished with the U.S. distribution center, we are very confident that we'll be able to cover those, around EUR 20 million that we do have already in our order book then with a little bit of a delay.

Thank you. There are currently no further questions in the queue. So I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

Thank you very much, operator, and thank you all for participating in our today's call. Thank you very much for your questions. We look forward to meeting some of you in person in the next couple of weeks to explore our strategies and our results in more detail. We are looking forward to see you again for the announcement of our Q2 results on August 18, and I appreciate your continued interest in Nilfisk. Thank you very much for joining, and have a great day.