Polytec Holding AG (PYT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody, to the presentation of our half year results 2023. As you already heard, we have recently had some changes in our management board. Heiko Gabbert has been recalled as COO, and I have taken the direct responsibility for the operations function together with my CEO role. Along with this, Markus Muhlbock has been appointed as CFO. He has been with us several years as Vice President, Finance. He held operational responsibility for the group finance already, which was the base for me to combine my role as CEO and CFO in the last approximately 1.5 years. Markus is joining me today, and he will take the second part of this presentation. Our half year results will need some more explanation to understand where we are at the moment. Before going into the big financials, therefore, I want to frame the current situation in POLYTEC. We have been hit by massive external factors to recent years. Ultimately, we are proud of handling these impacts up to 2022. Since the end of last year, beginning this year, we are facing some challenges, which we need more internal focus on, which will be given by the new Board setup. As a summary of the main points of my presentation, I would add a few comments. POLYTEC and the automotive sector was hit by massive impacts long before COVID crisis. 2015 Dieselgate and subsequent diesel bans in German cities impacted diesel car sales, which was linked to approximately 25% of our sales this time. But not only diesel, even WLTP legislation impacted the powertrain of portfolio on the one hand and even the painted exterior cars selling business, which was heavily focused on [indiscernible] accessory parts, but these parts were then significantly changing due to the certification demand. And not only powertrain and painted exterior, also, our [indiscernible] portfolio was affected by a technology change, mainly from fiber reinforced composite parts to more [indiscernible] molding technology. So a significant impact on our total product portfolio. It was in 2018 or '19 when we decided to clearly reposition POLYTEC from a parts and module manufacturer to the solution provider in plastics. We have put the right range of plastic technology and competence in the center as our USP. In a world of changing demands and products, we can provide the best possible solution out of all plastic technologies that we are providing. Since then, we appeared as the POLYTEC solution force. But it's the marketing side of the picture. Internally, this means heavy changes in the total organization of POLYTEC, pushing the one POLYTEC approach from a decentralized business unit structure to a more centralized organization, but centralized in a term where the teams are geographically spread over all our plants form a business unit but centrally controlled. Exactly during this phase, when this decision was taken, COVID came on us. COVID hit the industry and all of us were put down in lockdown. In an geographically spread team that is newly establishing, this was at least a burden in the internal communication. Nevertheless, we intended to make use of the market changes and pushed forward this massive organizational change. We decided to proceed the one POLYTEC approach, headline 2020 annual report was therefore forcing pace. We decided to push these changes onwards. Nevertheless, COVID was on us and all this unpredictable development was in front of us. However, we were absolutely convinced that our market positioning needs this change, and we still are. Alongside with the changes, we also adopted our production footprint to consolidate our capacity because the market demand was dropping, and it was clear that it will be dropping. We shutdown 6 production facilities; transferred hundreds of products, tools and machinery all across Europe to consolidate it in the remaining plants. We established a greenfield in South Africa, and we acquired an additional plant out of insolvency. This was 2019 to 2022 during all crisis from COVID, material shortages, cost explosions, Ukraine war and, and, and. You might imagine that this has put some pressure on our organization. But ultimately, all these efforts led to the success that we could balance both cost forwards on the one side in a record [indiscernible] intake, which makes our portfolio future-proof. We even achieved some awards for development and innovation. And we managed to increase our sustainability rating. This is a clear confirmation of our solution for a strategy. It was and is worth the efforts. Even if we are not commercially satisfied to recent years, we were and are proud of the transformation we have made. Since the beginning of the year, we faced at least, comparable to recent years, a stabilization of our business on base of which we could expect recovering results. Unluckily, we cannot report these today. After an unsatisfying Q1, we see a similar Q2 result, achieving just above 0 EBIT. Due to strong capital management, we reduced net debt and could remain a strong equity ratio. Markus Muhlbock is going into more details later on. [indiscernible] of this result is shown on Slide 21 of our presentation. And it's an outcome of the ups and downs in the recent years. Basically, we face a more solid market with stabilizing volume, however, at the very low level, which we have our capacity adapted to. At least the volumes even low are more predictable in short term, so we are -- we can better plan our production. The underlying product needs has partly significantly changed due to market developments, battery electric car, powertrain cars, whatsoever. So in our portfolio, there are shifts up and down, but the top line and the capacity is more predictable. But more relevant, we face an aggregation of new product launches on 2 plants, and this is impacting our operational performance. Driven by the strong order intake on the one hand and several customer postponed SOPs on the other hand, we see thousands of launches in parallel in a focus of 2 of our plants. Together with the unexpected high lead times of importing machinery, this leads to extra staff expertise, extra expenses for special transport on shortages or whatsoever it takes to keep supply up. This burns significantly our operational efficiency. On the upside, the most urgent machinery is expected to arrive during September-October this year, which will reduce the shortages. But it's not only machinery, it still needs major management attention and team focus on the launches in the 2 impacted plants to improve performance on these products. And as I have said in the introduction, I have also taken personal responsibility to do this. All other underlying business and plants are stable and solid, while we are positive for midterm performance backed by the new order intake and our market position. I would now hand over to you, Markus Muhlbock, for your introduction and the financial details.

Thank you, Markus. So welcome also from me. At first, let me introduce myself. I'm 37 years old and live in Zaisen, Germany. I started at POLYTEC in 2016 as an expect for accounting and taxation. I then took over the accounting and controlling department and later as a Director to all finance activities within the business unit composite. Some of you may remember POLYTEC was organizing different business unit in the past. After merging our business units, I took over the role as Managing Director of Finance for all German activities and our plants in the Netherlands, South Africa and China. Since almost 2 years now, I'm leading group-wide finance agendas under CEO, Markus Huemer. And finally, I have been appointed as a CFO on 17 July this year. Before my career at POLYTEC, I was working for Ernst & Young in the financial accounting advisory department, there of 4 years in the Stuttgart office and 1 year as an expert in the Los Angeles branch. I'm very excited to get in contact with our investors, analysts and banks. I'm also looking forward to meeting you all during future calls, events or one-on-one sessions. If you have interest to meet me, let me know or contact our Investor Relations manager, Paul Rettenbacher. He'll let you know at what conferences you can find us. Let's turn to our results in the first 6 months. I would like to start with a brief look at our turnover. In the first 6 months, 2023, we generated EUR 340 million in revenue compared to EUR 285 million in comparing period 2022, which is a 19% increase. The increase is driven by 2 major effects. First, our Tooling revenue amounting to almost EUR 45 million is more than doubled compared to prior year, which is an outcome of our high order book. Second, the part sales have increased by EUR 30 million to EUR 295 million due to stabilized customer costs. During the first 6 months of this year compared to the same period 2022, our EBITDA decreased slightly from EUR 17.7 million to EUR 17 million. EBITDA margin decreased from 6.2% to 5%. EBIT in the first half year 2023 is EUR 300,000 compared to EUR 1.4 million in prior year. Main drivers are higher personnel costs and other operating expenses because of the meta Markus Huemer just explained, like the application of product launches and delay in machinery delivery, which led to higher manual work. Due to increased interest rates, some of our promissory note loans have variable interest rates as well higher cost for factoring. Our earnings after tax resulting in minus of EUR 3.7 million. Therefore, the earnings per share resulting a minus of EUR 0.18. Let's now briefly look at the development of our equity. POLYTEC has a strong equity, 42%. The decrease of 1% is the result of EUR 2.2 million dividend payout and increased interest expenses. This brings me to the development of net debt. As of June 30, net debt amounted to about EUR 72 million, which is 37% below the level of half year 2022, up EUR 12 million above level as of year-end 2022, mainly due to the decreased cash balance because of increased receivable. Future ongoing capital measures and positive EBIT expectations, we believe, to further reduce our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. [indiscernible] leads to the outlook of sales at the expected lower range of around EUR 650 million for the full year and a positive EBIT for the fiscal full year 2023, still having a critical view on the impact of high inflation on car sales.