Orthex Oyj (ORTHEX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Warmly welcome to Orthex's financial statement release for the fourth quarter. My name is Alexander Rosenlew, and with me I have CFO, Saara Makela, and CMSO, Hanna Kukkonen. We will take you through Q4 and the full year results. So looking at just in small details, who we are and what we are doing. We are a leading Nordic houseware producer with our own factories where we produce more than 90% of what we sell throughout Europe and to roughly 40 countries around the world. We are proud of our own strategic brands, SmartStore for Storage, GastroMax for Kitchen products, and Orthex for more or less the rest. So we have a strong focus on sustainability in everything we do, and our ambition is to become the #1 branded storage goods actor in the European market. So how has it evolved like this? The mission is very clear for us. It's to make everyday life easier. If we have functional, good products that simplifies life at home, then we are on a good track. And that we are doing in 3 different categories, Storage with 69% of the sales roughly, Kitchen products at around 21% of the sales, and then what we call Home & Garden products for about 10% of the sales. It's about sustainability, it's about long-lasting products, no single use, products that can be used over and over for tens of years, decades, and then can be recycled at the end of life. And the products are usually made out of either recycled plastic, bio-based or then traditional plastic, especially for products that are in contact with food. We're also quite an innovative company. We want that 10% of the sales are coming from new products. Design can also be a sustainability thing. If you can design beautiful products that the consumer doesn't grow bored with, it means that you don't have to throw it away. It can live for a long time in your home. That, of course, we hope for. So a bit of a, I would say antiforce against throwaway culture. We are producing long lasting, good, high quality products. Looking at January to December 2024 in brief, and I would say during a quite sluggish year the net sales grew. And we managed to grow it 4.4%, just shy of EUR 90 million in sales. And the growth was solid both in the Nordics and in Europe, and especially Europe is an area of focus for us where we want to grow a bit faster. On EBITA profitability, we did EUR 10.2 million. The margin came slightly down but in the comparison to last year, you have a one-off electricity support of around EUR 700,000. So in that sense, we more or less maintained the profitability. Regarding raw materials, the biggest cost we have, the raw material prices were fairly stable during the period. So that helped predictability. When looking at Q4, I think the market was tougher than expected. The recovery on the market was a bit slower. Even though interest rates went down we still saw sluggish behavior both from consumers and customers. And then also towards the end of Q4, we had a few customers having their own troubles and making us cautious in both deliveries and doing business with them. Having said that it was a record quarter. We delivered 2% growth overall, and then about 6.5% outside the Nordics. On the EBITA side, the adjusted EBITA was just above the year before. And cash flows were strong. We did EUR 2.4 million in cash flows. So if we then look and jump to the full year, a 4.4% growth to EUR 89.7 million, as said. And invoiced grew by, invoiced sales grew by 4.9%, up to EUR 92.3 million. And the EBITA for the full year already commented on adjusted at 11.4%. Net debt healthy, down to 1.4 leverage. And as said, stable raw materials. Then if we look by geographies, growth in Q4 to the left, you can see we grew on all the geographies that we report on, even though slightly slower than I would personally had hoped for, but the market was, as said, extremely tough and sluggish. Then in terms of the full year result, we grew on all the markets. And in the rest of Europe, we hit the 10% growth target we have put for ourselves. Rest of the world is small numbers. We keep them there. So you can actually distinguish with -- distinguish between what is happening in Europe and Nordic and see where the growth comes from. So that just gives you a picture that the growth has come from Nordic and rest of Europe in general. Then if we look at the categories, on an overall yearly level all the categories, and of course all the markets grew, so that's good. Storage being the fastest grower throughout the year, at 5.9%. Storage already up at almost EUR 64 million in sales. And then the Kitchen category also grew, I would say, rebranding of food storage products under the SmartStore brand had a positive impact as well as launching quite a number of new interesting products. And then Home & Garden was rather flat. And that's a category which is mostly sold in Finland and the Nordic countries. Then if we look at Q4. Growth in storage, we had a slight decline in Kitchen mainly coming from timing of campaigns at the end of the year. Nothing major there. The fully year growth in kitchen was still healthy. And then Home & Garden in Q4 not that much in season but flat sales. Regarding strategy, just a short recap of what we are looking to do. It's about keeping our position and growing market share in the Nordics. That can be done with interesting products, with driving shopper interest in the stores by launching good news and good customer collaborations. We can drive sales in the Nordics. The number 2 box in the strategies is clearly straightforward, it's accelerating the international growth with a special focus on Europe and with strong customer collaboration, both growing the partnership with existing partners and customers and of course acquiring new customers. And that's one of the places where we have during the past years invested quite heavily in, in structures, in sales force, in activities in the stores, et cetera, et cetera. And that strategy is clearly working even on a sluggish market where consumers probably are a bit more price-skewed than skewed towards quality, which we represent. Then the e-com channel or online retail channel is as important for us. It's one of the building blocks. And we are closely monitoring how to be as good in the virtual store as in the physical stores. And that will continue. We believe it's an avenue of growth. So towards the #1 storage brand position in Europe and strengthening Nordics, we also are closely looking at opportunities to consolidate the market. And that's on my table. Just to comment on that one, we're not looking for just anything. We have a list of interesting candidates and we are working systematically on this aspect. But the price, the strategy and the timing has to be correct. So not a must, but a good opportunity for us. Then if we open up a little bit of one of the key things in order to drive consumer and shopper interest in a what we call sluggish market, it's about being easy to buy in the stores, it's about being tempting, it's about reminding the shopper who is in the store about us, and that I must thank the whole organization has been involved in it, both in creating the ideas, the materials, and of course the ones building the stores throughout Europe. Very, very good efforts from everyone on these teams and everyone backing up. So during the year, just a few highlights, you see the truck to the left, it's a very nice way to put the display on the floor in the stores and boost sellout out of the stores. We did around more than 500 trucks throughout Europe in 2024, building them up to gain consumer and shopper interest. And we did more than 500 in-shelf implementations throughout Europe to make the category easy to navigate, easy to shop, tempting, and helping our partners, the retailers to be successful. So this has kept us quite busy. Now I will hand over to Hanna Kukkonen who will talk about sustainability and new products.

Thank you, Alexander. Sustainability, we still want to be the forerunner in sustainability and are working extremely hard to achieve our goals in sustainability. And during last quarter, last year, we, for example, announced that we have joined the Circular Economy Green deal. That is a voluntary commitment which is shared by companies, organizations and the Finnish state or Finnish government. And they're all big partners then they commit to decrease the use of natural resources. And this is one of the key things in our sustainability strategy, to increase the amount of recycled and renewable plastics. Regarding other sustainability news, we are almost ready with our sustainability report. So more about sustainability during 2024 will be published in a couple of weeks when we will come out with our sustainability report. So look at the report in a couple of weeks. Then moving on to the novelties, which has been a focus area also during 2024. We have invested very much on new products. Saara will talk about the investments in figures in a couple of slides, but many new products came out during last year. So in pictures here are some examples. So from left to right you have the Collect Stack-it containers that can be then used for sorting your garbage or for other purposes like laundry, toys and so on. Then there is SmartStore Essence basket range, SmartStore Collect Biowaste bin and then our very nice new stylish GastroMax ladles and much more in pipeline at the moment. Then I give turn to Saara and the financials.

Thanks, Hanna. Our net sales increased by 2% during the quarter 4 and were in absolute value at EUR 23.9 million, and that was the highest quarter for us ever. Currencies had a small negative effect to the net sales. And in constant currencies, sales growth was a bit higher at 2.2%. The tough market situation affected the sales as several customers, they had financial challenges, and we had to cancel some campaigns and orders and limit the maximum open receivables to mitigate the credit risk for the company. The full year net sales were EUR 89.7 million and growth was 4.4%. And all our categories and geographical areas were growing during the year. Strategically important storage category contributed most to the growth, as well as the international sales were growing with a double-digit figure. The full year net sales currency effect was only very small and constant currency sales was 0.1 percentage points lower at 4.3% growth. Then to profitability. Our adjusted EBITA increased slightly during quarter 4, up to EUR 3 million. And as credit insurances were canceled for some of the customers. We had to increase the provision for credit losses and that affected the EBITA negatively during the quarter. The full year EBITA decreased from EUR 10.9 million to EUR 10.2 million. Last year we got the electricity support, and that affected profitability positively last year. And this year we've been strengthening our commercial organization and been suffering from the salary inflation and increased credit loss provisions and those all affected profitability negatively. Then also the right-of-use asset related depreciations, which are related to our rented premises, were increasing and affected EBITA. We also received finally a decision to our claim regarding the tax audit, which was conducted in '22. It was related to VAT deductibility in IPO and claim was only partially approved. And due to that, we booked EUR 200,000 additional admin cost. But that is considered to be a nonrecurring item and is not affecting adjusted EBITA. Then shortly about the raw materials, which have stabled and the curve has been quite stable for some time already. There is normal fluctuation as always, and inflation has been increasing the price pressure. And currently, it actually seems that the raw material suppliers are balancing their capacity to defend the prices. Then the geopolitical uncertainty might of course have an effect on the prices on coming year, coming months. Then regarding the investments, investments during the quarter 4 were EUR 1.2 million and mainly related to new products and some small capacity increases as well. Full year investments were EUR 4.3 million, which is quite some higher than last year. But actually last year we had a lot of projects at the end of the year and some of them were postponed to the beginning of '24. So that was affecting the investment phasing between the years. And Hanna already mentioned, we had a lot of new product lines in '24, for example, Essence Baskets and [indiscernible] SmartStore Collect Stack-it and many more, and there are still more to come. Net debt and leverage, both on a healthy level. So net debt was EUR 20.3 million and leverage at 1.4. Then we have our long-term financial targets. They are unchanged. And in sales, we were almost in the target in net sales, 4.4%. In invoice sales we were at 4.9%, so very close to the target. And outside Nordics, we were able to grow by 10%, which is in line with the target. Profitability EBITA was -- adjusted EBITA was 11.4%. So we still have some work to do to reach the long-term target of 18%. Leverage, we already covered. But the dividend proposal from the Board is to distribute EUR 0.22 per share dividend, and that is 63.9% of the net result for the year. Then just as a reminder, our reporting days for '25. So the next report, quarter 1 report will come out on 15th of May, quarter 2 on 21st of August and quarter 3 on 13th of November. And our annual and sustainability report will be published during the week 13. The AGM, so Annual General Meeting, will be here at our Espoo office. So it's going to be a physical meeting on 29th of April. And then I'll hand over back to Alexander to summarize the presentation.

Thank you, Saara. And before summarizing, just reminding you that there's a chat where you can post your questions, and we'll be happy to answer them very soon. So if we look at the summary what has happened during the year, it's been a year of stable growth. It's been a year of investing a lot into new products and especially in strengthening our in-store presence and strengthening the sales organization to be able to build a good foundation to ensure growth going forward. And then there's been cost pressure as well at the same time from many different directions that Saara explained. So this is in very short, the highlights. I think now we're actually happy to take any questions you might have.

Yes. There are questions here. Quite many questions about the credit loss provisions, so. "Can we open up the higher credit loss provisions and the fact that you have to limit your deliveries? What kind of amounts are we talking about?"

When we talk about the provision for credit losses in the big picture, it's not a huge amount, but it's quite exceptional for us. So we haven't been having credit losses and provisions have been quite low. Roughly I can say that it's around EUR 300,000 what we increased the provision in '24.

Thanks, Saara. Then about the expenses still. "So on underlying basis, operating expenses declined both in selling and marketing and in administrative expenses. Were there some shifts of these costs? Or should we expect similar trend in '25?"

I can comment that one as well. I think it's -- the phasing differs. So I mean, from quarter to another. This year, employee bonuses were lower as we were not reaching the sales targets we had. So that affected the employee bonuses. And I mean the final bonus level is known at the end of the year. So usually, ups and downs are affecting in the last quarter of the year. But otherwise, I mean, we haven't been limiting marketing or commercial activities at all, quite the opposite actually.

Thanks, Saara. Okay. "Then in the report you mentioned that your factory is prepared for sales growth, which impacted your profitability. How do you see the market going forward?"

That's a very interesting question. And we had hoped for faster recovery in 2024. And it's still a bit sluggish, one could say. And consumers are focusing a lot on low prices, and maybe not that much even consumers, but maybe customers want to offer an assortment with really low prices at the moment. And there being a quality producer, you have to be really good in communicating why it's more sustainable to buy quality, why it's wiser, why it might even be cheaper for the consumer to buy high quality. So it's been a struggle, I would say, in terms of market condition and especially towards the end of 2024. And that of course continued with strikes in Finland first 1 week in the factory and then trade couldn't receive goods. So it's not easy times at the moment. And all the turbulence created with the political turmoil and discussions in different directions. So it's quite hard to navigate at the moment on the market.

Thanks. And there was also a question about the strikes, but you answered that already. Thanks. Then about the trucks, you mentioned. "So you mentioned the 500 trucks you placed in the stores during '24. Does this basically mean that you entered 500 new stores in Europe in '24? And in how many stores are you actually now present outside the Nordics?" I can maybe answer that, that, yes, we have placed 500 campaign, SmartStore campaign trucks all over Europe. So they might be new stores, they might be stores that we already are present. So both of them for the truck campaign. And then how many stores are we in today outside Nordics? We don't calculate that figure exactly, but it's thousands of stores where we are present at the moment. Yes, then maybe a little bit more about the Nordics and outside Nordics. "So what are the main drivers you expect to accelerate the growth outside the Nordics?"

That's a good question. I might take that one. I think the first thing is to actually show that the partnership with Orthex is beneficial for our partners, the customers. We drive the value of the category. We can give advice of assortment. We know what kinds of promotions work and when. And of course we take pride in having really good products that the consumers hopefully love. So I think this is -- these are the sort of the foundations. And then in addition to that, with a good and skilled sales force who can help our partners to succeed, we believe we can create a good traction on the market, not forgetting all kinds of advertising, words of mouth, consumers who are fond of our products and being present both in-store and online. So it's not the past game. The category is not new in any sense. We need gradually to prove and build testimony that actually our products can and will perform good.

Thanks. That was all about the questions this time. So thank you all for participating, and see you again in May.

Thank you so much. Wishing you all a good 2025.