Orkla ASA (ORK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Orkla ASA conference call. My name is Jess, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Kari Lindtvedt, to begin today's call. Thank you.

Thank you, Jess, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this conference call following our stock exchange release this morning, where we announced that Nils Selte will take on the role as President and CEO of Orkla. My name is Kari Lindtvedt, I'm Head of Investor Relations at Orkla. We will start the call with our newly appointed President and CEO, who will give you a short introduction of himself and briefly share his view on Orkla, before we move on to Q&A. The call today is meant as an opportunity to meet Nils. And as we are currently in a silent period, we cannot answer questions related to financials. With this, I leave the microphone to you, Nils.

Okay. Thank you, Kari, and thank you all for dialing in today. My name is Nils Selte. I'm Norwegian, 57 years old, married and father of 3. I have been a member of the Board of Orkla since 2014, and I come from the position as CEO of Canica, where I have held various positions over the last 21 years. My background is primarily from finance and strategy. During my years at Canica, I have been engaged in several strategic and structural initiatives, both public and private. Throughout my career and even so in the latter years, my focus has been on consumer-oriented sectors where my area of expertise has been investments, capital allocation and larger structural deals and development of portfolio companies. Having an intimate knowledge of Orkla, both from the vantage point of the CEO of the larger [ organization ] and also as a Board member for 8 years, I firmly believe there's a lot of potential for value creation in the company. I'm humbled stepping into my new position, but at the same time very excited at the prospect of heading up such a great organization. Orkla's strategic direction stays firm and our priorities are ambitious, and ambitions are in line with those laid out at the Capital Market Day in November last year. The platform of the modern Orkla continues to be our strong brands, consumer insight, supply chain optimization and power of innovation. The financial targets for Orkla Branded Consumer Goods are aligned with the strategy and give a framework for what we will work to achieve in the coming years. The strategy for realizing the value creation lays firm and my role will be to ensure that we are able to accelerate the pace in delivering on the strategy. To facilitate this, we will adjust existing organizational model. Our ambition is to empower our business units further and to ensure that we have the necessary flexibility to act on structural opportunities in a fast-changing and, at times, unpredictable world. As a first step, I will organize the 3 core BCG areas and the One management. I couldn't be happier having Atle Vidar on board to head up the Branded Consumer Goods area. He knows the organization, our managers and value chain well from close to 30 years of experience within Orkla. During this period, he has delivered both organic and structural growth. Atle Vidar also has extensive and much needed international experience. The new structure will free up time for me to focus on structural opportunities and capital allocation. And at the same time, being able to keep a strong focus on BCG, with Atle Vidar heading up this area. Going forward, we will apply a more dynamic approach to portfolio management. As we stated during our Capital Markets Day, it is important that we keep an objective view on our assets, we will be more open to various ownership structures, such as JVs, IPOs or other forms of value-creating partnerships. M&A will continue to be an important part of our value creation. We will prioritize, focus on higher growth segments in geographies where we already have a strong presence or in adjacent areas if seen to strengthen our existing positions. My experience from structural changes -- change processes and my track record in developing portfolio companies will help speed up process in these areas. Together with the rest of the team, the Orkla Board and stakeholders, I look forward to the coming years. Although I'm humbled to the task, I believe we have a very good starting point. Thank you for your attention, and this concludes my introduction. We will now move on to Q&A.

Thank you, Nils. And Jess, are there any questions so far?

We currently have no questions on the line. [Operator Instructions] We have just had a question come through. This comes from the line of Markus Heiberg from Kepler Cheuvreux.

So over the last couple of years, you are focused on One Orkla or worked with synergies across your portfolio companies to extract all the value potential in those companies. So my question is more have you seen any changes or were there obstacles in extracting these synergies, and is it that you now realize that you need a more focused portfolio? Can you please elaborate on that?

Thank you for that question. I think going forward, we will apply a more dynamic approach to portfolio management in line with what was communicated at our Capital Markets Day. Together with my team, we will consider the best organization and reporting structure for unlocking value. I believe the business areas should be empowered further. I will spend the next weeks and months to understand our assets and potential opportunities. And as I have already stated, our strategy is unchanged and our target and plans in the BCG area was laid out during our Capital Markets Day in November.

Okay. So one -- just a follow-up on the new structure here because you define now Foods, Snacks and Care and then -- yes, in your BCG segment, but then you leave out Food Ingredients to be more sort of an own unit. And I think there has been some work together with Food Ingredients and Foods on, say, plant-based in those growth areas. Can you elaborate a bit on how you think about food ingredients and why you have chosen this new structure?

I think it's limited or few synergies with the other BCG areas. And I think by the new way of structuring this, we will free up management capacity to work on the future of OFI on a concentrated basis rather than actually looking into synergies between OFI and the other BCG areas. When it comes to the plant-based, I think that will be, of course, looking out -- we'll be looking after that and make sure that we take out any synergies available.

The next question comes from the line of Bruno Monteyne from Bernstein.

Quite often when the CEO change, the market analysts are sort of aware that there's some level of dissatisfaction, and so things don't come as a surprise. In this case, I am surprised. I didn't sort of get the feeling, from listening to the company or to shareholders, that there was a material level of dissatisfaction with the execution of the previous CEO. I think if we look at the share price, they seem to be as surprised as I am. So except -- people in the marketing as well, what's happening, what do we not know. And so which really then -- what else is there that explains the sudden change in CEO? Is it more -- what's underlying this level of dissatisfaction by the Board that they feel there's need for acceleration? I feel that the entire explanation doesn't sort of fill up to a complete story.

I think very much -- I'm not here to comment upon the exit of the former CEO. So let me be clear on that. I think I will talk about what I will do with the company going forward. So I think that's important to say that before I -- but my task will be to definitely accelerate on the strategy communicated on the Capital Markets Day, and I think that will be my main task going forward as well. And to ensure that our business areas are well set to navigate the situation we are currently in, it's also important, of course, because there is difficult times out there, we'll also start working with an ongoing pipeline of structural opportunities and look into how we can create more empowered, autonomous and agile business areas going forward.

Maybe to rephrase the question. The timing is somewhat surprising shortly before quarter 1 results. And your colleague Kari just commented on it's hard to say much [ on the results ]. But why not do this as part of quarter 1 results? So what's the -- do we need to read something in the quarter 1 that you need to do this before these results come out?

Bruno, it's Kari. Yes, well, just a reminder that we can't comment on Q1, but I don't think you should see this change in connection with Q1 or any underlying results. We've been asked about profit warnings. This is a more long-term strategic change that the Board has decided on. And as you know, as a listed company, we are obliged to communicate any changes like these as soon as they have been decided.

We currently have no questions in the queue. [Operator Instructions] We have no further questions in the queue. So I will hand the call back to your host for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Jess, and thank you all for joining today. We will be back with our Q1 results on the 5th of May. We also host our Annual General Meeting on the 20th of April. Until then, stay safe and thank you all for joining. Have a nice day.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.