Profoto Holding AB (publ) (PRFO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, and welcome to this call regarding the acquisition of StyleShoots. My name is Amanda Astrom, and I am Head of Investor Relations. Today, I have with me our CEO, Anders Hedebark; and CFO, Petter Sylvan. And we'll now present some slides before we open up for questions. Please note that we're in a quiet period and therefore only answer questions related to the acquisition.

So let's go to Slide 2. Slide 3. Welcome. We're happy today to announce the acquisition of StyleShoots. I will come into details around that very soon. But first, let me talk a little bit about Profoto for those of you who are not really acquainted with what we do. Profoto is active in the growing image and content creation market, which is a large and attractive one. But we have the premium position in the segment photography lighting solution, where we made products for professional photographers and a full light shaping system. Our brand and what we do is really the result of that we're used by the leading or, other words, the best photographers. And obviously, we sell all around the world where U.S. is the biggest market or the North America is the bigger market. And we have sales offices in various places around the globe. We focus on organic growth and high margins being the premium brand in the industry. This means that we are investing heavily in innovation, but also this is combined with that we're very nerdy about our operational efficiency. And for instance, we have all production outsourced, and we're really trying to decide what not to do and what to do ourselves. This means that our 95 employees in Profoto so far need to manage in a very good way since we have a lot of people outside Profoto working for us. So we are only hiring the best, and this is a very important factor of what Profoto does and what we do not do. Slide 4, please. So as I said, we are part of the attractive and growing image and content creation market, which is the gray part in the circles to the left. We are the -- Profoto is the leading company in the lighting solution market. That market is around $1 billion. And it is growing. And it's based on what you see to right, the number of images that are captured and posted on the Internet is increasing most probably exponentially. We take the next Slide 5, please. So last year, we were highly profitable. And we had a very good recovery with a 39% growth between 2020 and 2021, resulting in SEK 732 million in sales with EBIT margin of 32%, resulting in an adjusted EBIT of SEK 237 million. And to the right here, you can see what effect that COVID had on the company in 2020. So we're very happy to be back in good growth and good profitability. Next slide, please. So at the time of IPO -- this is Slide #6 we are now. And at the time of the IPO, I was talking about 3 areas where we see -- saw more better, higher growth. We are -- but first, I would like to say the black area, professionals still photography, that is our key and that's what we focus on every day. And that's where we are going to deliver our financial targets, which are 10% growth every year, and also high profitability between 25% and 30%. So we saw 3 areas: number one, smartphone photography where Profoto is the only brand in the world that are able to actually connect smartphone photography. And we sold 1.5 billion smartphone cameras every year. So we are the only company that are able to connect and support photographers that want to create great images with their smartphone camera. That is area number one. Area number two is light for moving images, light for cinema, et cetera. That is the second area of growth outside still photography. The third area is more a workflow-based, high-volume, but still very high-quality photography mostly used for e-com companies. If we take next Slide #7, and this is where we today are able, and very thrilled actually, we're able to maybe go public with the acquisition of StyleShoots, which is a Dutch company based in Haarlem where I speak from now in Holland. So we can go to the next slide, please. First of all, I should say, this market is a growing, fast-growing part of photography market. And the reason is that all brand-building companies want to sell their products on the Internet. And they had realized that great photography is the key, single, most important factor for attracting traffic to the websites. Increasing conversion and also minimizing returns, as you know, is very positive for this kind of companies. Over the years, and this is really had the turbo effect as of beginning 2020 when all shops, physical shops actually had to close all around the world. We know now from talking to the largest e-com companies that the process development for actually creating those images in a cost-efficient but high-quality way is that investment is continuing and growing market. So let me talk about StyleShoots. StyleShoots is a company that are using workflow software connected to hardware for e-com companies. Their last year sales was EUR 9 million. They had an EBIT margin of 18% with 41 employees. And today, this morning, we both signed and closed the acquisition. And the price was EUR 18 million paid cash. And that was corresponding to an EBIT multiple of 12x 2021 figures. And we are maintaining the organization and the CEO and CFO. They have undertaken to acquire Profoto shares in the stock market for EUR 1.3 million within 6 month after today. And they will have a lockup of 12 month after that. The company is based in Haarlem, as I said, outside Amsterdam, here in the Netherlands. We can continue with next slide, which is Slide #9. So what does StyleShoots do? They're using workflow software for growing e-com photography market. And with this, they are producing -- or e-com companies are producing consistent high-quality imagery. And this is making the time to market for the e-com company when getting an apparel, footwear or accessory product in through the doors and before they can actually start to sell, so shorter time to market. And they're also doing this with increasing the productivity of the operation of creating this content. And all in all, this is increasing the conversion and minimizing the return for the company, very important factors for increasing profitability of the e-com operations. We could do the next Slide 10, please. So in addition to the workflow software, StyleShoots is combining the software with easy-to-use products for -- hardware products for actually creating the images. So they have 4 different kinds of hardware products designed for different applications. So they're called Eclipse, which is used for smaller objects. And they are using Live -- they're using Live, which is a large studio for model -- full model shoots and both still and moving images, video. They are using something called -- they're selling something called a Vertical, StyleShoots Vertical, which is used to produce mannequin that is products shot on not on live models, living models but on mannequin models. And then they also have, last but not least, a flatlay. That is when you lay down the shirt or the blouse and shooting that image, called Horizontal. Slide #11, please. Yes, that was all about StyleShoots and Profoto. We think that we have terrific possibilities of growing faster together, both companies, than doing this individually. Let me open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Okay. Currently, there are no questions coming through from the phone lines at this time.

Okay. Thank you. Then I would just like to thank you for joining this call today and just give you a gentle reminder about our first quarter report, which will be published May 5. Thank you for joining us today.