Pierce Group AB (publ) (PIERCE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Pierce Group Q2 2024 presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Goran Dahlin; and CFO, Fredrik Idestrom. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Goran Dahlin, CEO of Pierce, and with me is Fredrik Idestrom, our CFO. Before we go into the results of the quarter, I would like to spend a few minutes on Pierce. Pierce is a leading e-tailer in the European market for gear parts and accessories for motorcycle riding. The total European market, which in 2021 was estimated to some SEK 100 billion, is still a fragmented market and mainly served by physical retailers, while the market is well suited for e-commerce. Pierce is the clear leader in the Offroad segment and one of the larger e-tailers in Onroad segment. And Pierce is the only true pan-European company in the industry with a local presence in 16 markets. We have a unique, attractive assortment where we combine a wide range of top brands with the largest range of owned brands in the market. We have a turnover of SEK 1.5 billion and 330 employees across Europe. To the right, you can see some basic information about Pierce. We have 2/3 of our sales outside the Nordics, almost 2/3 of our sales are Offroad, 1/3 Onroad, and then we have 5% Other, which is primarily Sled. And our own brand share is above 40%. Page 5, please. So going into the quarterly report for Q2. During the second quarter, primarily in the beginning of the quarter, we experienced a more positive consumer sentiment versus last year. We also saw effects of our actions to improve our offering, availability, pricing, lead times, et cetera. This resulted in that our sales grew versus the same period last year with 3%, 2% in local currencies. Our margins continued to improve versus last year with 2 percentage points. The improved margins were mainly the result of a combination of increased prices and lower shipping costs. Our adjusted EBIT improved significantly from SEK 6 million in Q2 2023 to SEK 17 million in Q2 2024. We have a very solid cash situation at SEK 350 million, driven by continued focus on stock efficiency as well as increased focus on slow-moving stock. We do expect somewhat increased stock levels going forward in support of seasonal fluctuations, the need to ensure product availability as well as capturing future growth opportunities. Geopolitical uncertainty, we feel, has lately increased even further, while the market outlook remains uncertain. And we think that this influenced the end of the quarter for us. Next slide, please. Some of our KPIs that we follow closely. If we take to the left, we have the share of private label. We have a very strong own brands offering that we intend to strengthen even further. Our LTM private brand share was 41% compared to 40% in Q4 last year. So we continue to have a strong position with our private label. Then we follow the Trustpilot scores which we use to track customer satisfaction. They continue to be on a very high level across Europe, as you can see, 4.3 out of 5.0. We continue to drive improvements in the customer experience. We have, for example, implemented a more generous approach to claims, and we have made many improvements to take out customer pain points, apart from improving basics such as assortment lead times, pricing, et cetera. And last Wednesday, we also launched -- or this Wednesday, we also launched our first ever customer loyalty program. We believe all of these things should influence our customer satisfaction and retention positively going forward. Next slide, please. As you can see here from the chart on the left, the active customer base is down versus the same period last year despite increasing revenues. The downward trend is, however, flattening out, and we're working hard to get back to growing our customer base, both through increased retention and by attracting new customers. On the right-hand side, you can see that the average order value continues to rise, which is offsetting the lower order volumes. We have grown the average order value, primarily due to price increases, but also because we're selling more high-ticket items such as motorcycle gear. I will now hand over to Fredrik.

Thank you, Goran. Good morning. This is Fredrik Idestrom. I'm the Pierce CFO. As Goran mentioned, we have continued to grow also in the second quarter this year. During the second quarter, our revenues grew with 3% or 2% in local currencies. We see variances between our segments with Offroad having higher growth than Onroad and also between the different countries in Europe, where we, for instance, see strong growth outside the Nordics in Offroad and in the Nordics in Onroad. The growth mix is in line with our strategic pillar to grow Offroad and to achieve the absolute leadership in the Offroad segment, whereas we see profitable growth in the Onroad segment. We have, during the second quarter, continued to improve our margins off the variable costs versus previous year. This is mainly driven by increased prices to customers, lower in-freight costs and a reversal of our obsolescence provision of SEK 3 million in the second quarter. Variable cost share was further improved versus the same period last year. The improvement can be seen in the profit after variable cost that has increased in the second quarter with 2.7 percentage points versus last year. During the quarter, our adjusted EBIT improved from SEK 6 million to SEK 17 million versus previous year, and this was driven by the improved profit after variable cost. Our overhead costs were more or less flat versus previous year, and they were negatively impacted by underlying inflationary trends, FX effects, mainly the weakening of the Swedish krona versus the Polish zloty and costs associated with execution of our strategy to improve our tech stack. Our operational efficiency program, which was launched in 2023, however, delivered in line with expectations and successfully mitigated the majority of these costs. Looking at the gross margin trend to the left, we see that our gross margin remains higher versus last year with 2 percentage points. The positive development has been driven mainly by price increases and lower shipping costs, but has also been positively impacted by release of obsolescence provision in the recent quarters. Gross margin decreased slightly in Q2 2024 versus Q1, and this was mainly due to the larger reversal of the obsolescence provision in Q1 that impacted the gross margin positively. As you may remember, in Q3 2023, we made an extraordinary provision for slow-moving stock, which impacted gross margin negatively with 12.1 percentage points in that quarter, which can also be seen in the graph. Shipping costs in relation to revenue is 1 percentage point lower in Q2 than 1 year ago and on the same level as in the first quarter this year. This is partly due to our focus on selling off overstocked inventory with higher associated in-freight costs. With the current geopolitical situation, the uncertainty connected to shipping rates is high. And during 2024, market shipping rates have been higher than in 2023, especially in the second quarter, but they have also been more volatile. There is a risk for potential increases and more volatility in the coming quarters due to the ongoing situations in the Red Sea region and other geopolitical situations. We are monitoring this closely and our teams are also working actively with a diverse toolbox of possible mitigations. As mentioned a few slides back, OpEx has been impacted negatively in the second quarter versus previous year by underlying inflationary pressure that is salary and cost increases, the FX effects as well as the execution of our strategy to modernize the tech stack. As mentioned, the outcome of the restructuring program is, however, in line with expectations and has mitigated the underlying effects. Net working capital continued to improve in the quarter. It decreased from the previous quarter with SEK 189 million compared to 1 year ago, of which inventory accounts for SEK 152 million. The reduction is mainly a result of focus on stock management initiatives and efficiency as well as improvements resulting from our new operating model and ways of working. The adjusted assumptions for the inventory provision from Q3 2023, of which some have been reversed, have also had an impact. We do, however, expect somewhat increased stock levels going forward in support of seasonal fluctuations and to ensure product availability and capture growth opportunities. Our financial position remains strong, and at the end of the quarter, we had SEK 350 million in net cash and our equity also is on a high level. I will now hand back to Goran again.

Thank you, Fredrik. So by the third quarter of last year, we made a pivotal decision to embark on a comprehensive transformation journey that we call Pierce 2.0, our undertaking in simplifying, streamlining and modernizing several aspects of the company from growth strategy, go-to-market approach, our operating model, our private brand portfolio as well as a complete overhaul of our IT systems as well as our processes and organizational structure. 2024 is, as I've said many times before, a year of transformation. We are working on many different things simultaneously. And as expected, when you change a lot at the same time, the road is a bit bumpy. We say in Pierce that we are on an off-road journey experience rather than a smooth on-road ride at the moment. Having said that, we are making a lot of progress. When we set the new strategy ambition for Pierce, we said that we have 7 strategic pillars that guide our efforts: to achieve absolute leadership in the Offroad segment and profitable growth in Onroad segment; to have the highest customer loyalty in the industry; to create a simple and powerful go-to-market approach; to be the best in the industry in purchasing and in pricing; to have market-leading value for money own brands; to have a modern and scalable tech stack and a lean, fast and agile organization. During the quarter, we took significant steps to enhance our customer offering by expanding and optimizing our product assortment. We also made substantial changes in our customer care approach and laid the groundwork for the launch of our first-ever loyalty program. To provide the best shopping experience is absolutely key to achieve our strategic pillar of having the highest customer loyalty in the industry. Additionally, we have finalized the design and ordering of an important part of our 2025 own brand collection. If you remember, we previously made the decision to consolidate our private brand portfolio to build real value for money own brands. And we have created a new product development road map and a new brand strategy that we're working hard to achieve. When we launch the new private label assortment in the season of 2025, we will have taken a major step in the right direction. We're progressing fast in our work to build a composable cloud-based technology stack, integrating the best-in-class systems to enhance our operational capabilities. This will also enable us in our strategic objective of creating a simpler and more powerful go-to-market approach and will support the leaner, faster and more agile organization that we now have in place since the first quarter. This work will continue all year and some into 2025. I want to say, finally, with increasing geopolitical tensions in several parts of the world and the upcoming election in the U.S. and the general economic uncertainty as well as the volatile shipping markets, the outlook remains uncertain. We are, however, keeping full focus on our operations, what we can control, and we remain fully committed to our vision and strategic objectives. That ends our presentation for today. Now we're happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Erik [indiscernible] from [ Go and Invest ].

Congratulations to successive quarters with growth and positive operating profit. I have 2 questions. Starting with the first one. What is the strategy going forward regarding the net cash position and in general capital allocation?

So we have a -- Goran mentioned it, we expect the stock levels to -- I mean there is a seasonal pattern in our business. And at the end of the second quarter, we typically have a very high cash position. And then we foresee that the stock levels will increase going forward here to support both the seasonal patterns as well as to capture growth opportunities and also make sure we are not out of stock on any products.

Yes. And my last question is about your partnership with SCAYLE. When will the migration take place to their platform? And what improvements are you anticipating?

Yes, that's correct. With SCAYLE, we aim to start the migration in this quarter, possibly beginning of quarter 4, and that we will do the migration step-wise. So we take one country at a time until we feel that the solution is secure and developed enough -- performing well enough to launch it in all markets. And exactly when that would be, we will come back to you. The benefit with changing platform, if we ask our internal team, it's night and day difference between these 2 platforms. What we see is that we will be able to work much better with personalization, with content. We will also have a faster site, which will influence our performance marketing, our SEO, et cetera. So there are numerous benefits of switching platforms.

The next question comes from Tommi Saarinen from Inderes.

The [indiscernible] situation has [indiscernible] a while already. Do you see any permanent changes in the competitive landscape?

No. Not really. You're right. There has been -- after the pandemic, with the geopolitical tensions, et cetera, the market has been very sluggish for a long time. We saw an improvement in Q1 and in the beginning of Q2. We have experienced quite a tough market situation with a lot of competitors as well as ourselves with very high stock levels and very high overstock, which has, of course, pushed the margins down across the industry. We still see that the market is very competitive. But we do not -- there are no larger players in the market that has gone out of the market or changed in some way, in a substantial way.

All right. And how do you see the online penetration rate? And how has that developed during these rough times?

I think in hindsight, it's quite clear that we had a very rapid increase during the pandemic, like in many other sectors, and that there has been a slowdown in the transformation from offline to online. We believe that share of online is higher in the Offroad segment, where we are a clear market leader. While we are a large player, but possibly not the market leader in the Onroad segment that is much larger and also the offline has a larger share there, we think that that segment in the market still has -- both segments have still a large potential to shift to online, while maybe the fastest acceleration will be in -- or transformation will be in the Onroad segment.

All right. And then my last question would be that you reached growth outside the Nordics region. What countries did drive that growth and which countries performed best?

We normally do not comment on individual countries.

The next question comes from Adrian Elmlund from Nordea.

Adrian Elmlund here from Nordea. A few questions from me. You did report declining in-freight costs in the quarter and also you saw some price increases. Maybe can you develop on the freight costs going forward? And also a bit on how much more price increases do you think you'd be able to perform going forward?

Sure. So we don't provide any forecast. But what we can say, well, we have seen, in the market, higher freight costs in -- or freight rates, I should say, market rates. For us, any change in shipping rates impacts the P&L only when the product is sold. So what we see in the numbers for Q1 and Q2, we have a flat or the same level of in-freight costs in both quarters. So we do not, in those numbers, see any change in that sense. Then the final impact depends on, of course, the shipping cost, but also the outcome of any mitigating actions we take, both when it comes to shipping, purchasing, pricing, et cetera.

Right. And do you expect to be able to perform like more price increases going forward in H2, for example?

Well, we don't provide a forecast. But we can comment on -- again, we can repeat what we said about Q2 that we saw a stronger increase in the customer sentiment in the beginning of the quarter, and then with all the things that is happening around the world and the increasing tension, the geopolitical tension in the world paired with the increase in economic uncertainty, the quarter ended on a weaker note than it began.

Right. So another question here. Maybe can you develop a bit on the new customer loyalty program? What exactly does it include?

Yes. We have -- again, we started just day before yesterday. So now what -- if you sign up for this, you will get to participate in membership weekends, which we have every month until the end of this year with a 15% discount. And you also get the chance to win the Stark Bike, which is a company founded by one of the, I would say, early key individuals in Pierce, that created what is considered in the off-road community, by far best, I would say, maybe the Tesla of the off-road motorcycles. So it's an electrical motorcycle. So this is the first perks that you can get. And the way that we have structured this, we think that this will drive an increase in the retention. Then we want to have a very active and lively loyalty program, while we will continue to work with this group of customers in a very active way with exciting and rewarding activities.

Right. Okay. Perfect. Maybe last question, I'll try my luck on this one. Have you seen like any particular growth maybe in Eastern Europe? I know that you don't provide comments on individual nations, but maybe Eastern Europe as a whole?

We have our central warehouse based in Poland, Northern Poland, which means that we have 1, 2 days delivery time and very high delivery security in Poland and neighboring countries. And this is, of course, a big benefit for us. We know that the lead times are very important for our customers, especially when they buy parts. So I would say that the fact that we are well situated in that part of Europe has been part of what has been driving our Offroad -- the increase in the Offroad segment outside the Nordics.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for listening, and we wish you a great continuation of this Friday and a great weekend.