RS Group plc (RS1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. This is Lindsley Ruth, Chief Executive Officer of Electrocomponents plc, and I'm joined today by David Egan, our Chief Financial Officer. Welcome to our trading update covering our performance till March 4 of 2022. We've continued to outperform the market. Our momentum has built from the start of the year to deliver stronger performance over the last 9 weeks than expected. This has been achieved despite the challenging environment and toughening comps. I want to start by thanking our people and teams. Our people are our strongest and most powerful differentiator, and we never underestimate the value they bring to all of our stakeholders. Crucially, everyone has worked very hard, even more so given that the COVID Omicron variant has been more contagious than previous strains, and that's driven more temporary absences throughout the business. We are driving market share gains as our product and service solutions continue to resonate with the market. We believe this is due to our ability to source product where others cannot, ensuring we have strong availability of our broad and deep product range which has offset industry supply chain shortages, while our solutions-led and omnichannel model delivers a differentiated service to our customers and allow them to operate more efficiently. We have seen across the group continued commitment to differentiate our customer journey as we help design, build, maintain, improve and protect their operations. We are focused on improving our customers' digital experience, ensuring availability of products while being responsive to the needs of our suppliers and customers through uncertain times. Across the group, we are generating operating leverage, which is helping offset rising costs. This is being driven by a purpose-driven culture. We are supporting our people and teams as we develop, grow and deliver, and focusing our efforts on where we can drive more value on a worldwide basis. We are mindful of the increasing geopolitical challenges and the potential increase in trading volatility this could bring. We do not have direct operations in the Ukraine nor do we have direct operations in Russia, but our thoughts and support are with everyone affected by these events. I'd like to hand you over to David to talk you through the details of our trading. David?

Thanks, Lindsley, and good morning, everyone. Over the last 9 weeks, our like-for-like revenue increased by 22%, including our industrial product range. Total group revenue grew 23%, with a 1% contribution from acquisitions, 2% from additional trading days, and foreign exchange being a 2% headwind. Our main own brand product range RS PRO grew revenue by 14%, lower than the group rate due to significantly lower revenue participation of less than 1% within the faster-growing Americas region. We continue to see significant opportunities to expand our product offer into other categories and to drive new product development, especially within the Americas going forward. Web revenue grew by 27% like-for-like, with total like-for-like digital share now at 64% of group revenue. We are seeing a reduction in one-time low-value visitors as we have shifted our marketing attention away from paid advertising towards organic marketing. Our more proactive digital strategy is focused on delivering a B2C experience to our B2B customers. Moving now to the regions. EMEA, which is roughly 63% of group revenue, saw like-for-like revenue growth 17% over the 9-week period. Throughout the region, we have seen a growth in the average order value. We are seeing a higher number of items in customer baskets and increased order frequency, which over a sustained period suggests growth in share of wallet. With the ongoing supply issues in the market, our breadth and depth of product continues to give us an advantage, particularly with customers looking to consolidate their purchasing. The U.K., which accounts for roughly 40% of the region's revenue, has delivered an improved performance during the period, reflecting, we believe, disruption from the Omicron variant, reducing since the start of the calendar year. Our performance in Germany has been the strongest in the region, and this has been despite some minor teething challenges within our extended distribution center at Bad Hersfeld, illustrating again the hard work our teams are doing, for which we thank them sincerely. The German growth is being driven by our strong commitment to investing in the German market, as demonstrated by the investments in our distribution center, product range and digital customer experience. IESA is winning more new contracts, including a major global consumer brand, adding European locations for current clients and broadening into less cyclical and softer industry verticals. We have also seen an improvement in trading of our existing clients in more traditional industries. The Americas is roughly 28% of group revenue and delivered 32% like-for-like growth over the 9-week period. We're delivering a good performance within the region, with momentum improving during the period from a slower start. Market growth has been broadly spread across all industry segments. Our growth rate continues to be supported by the investments we've made in our digital proposition, product depth, greater customer understanding and a more targeted sales and marketing focus. We've seen our digital participation increase, customer numbers grow and a higher average order value. Synovos continues to win new contracts, and we are introducing some of the successful operational processes we have at IESA to drive stronger disciplines and efficiencies. We now have one management team across Synovos and IESA, working on a number of global pitches. We are well positioned to become a leading global player in the integrated supply market. Asia Pacific, which is circa 9% of group revenue, grew by 24% like-for-like over the 9 weeks. The market drop -- market backdrop has been challenging as the majority of Asia Pacific has struggled with increased variability relating to the pandemic and further regional lockdowns. We are taking share in the industrial product market, whilst electronic product growth has been a helpful tailwind too. Our country leaders are focusing on driving the revenue growth more profitably. We are restructuring supply chains to help more inventory -- to hold more inventory locally and utilizing more sustainable and efficient transport modes. Moving on to gross margin and costs. Inflation remains a key feature across both products and costs. Price inflation is roughly 5% year-to-date and has been increasing throughout the year. We continue to improve our pricing and discount approach, tightening up our offer to reflect [ market ] conditions, whilst maintaining our competitive position. Cost inflation continues to put pressure on the business. Labor accounts for circa 50% of our operating cost base. We work hard to attract and retain top talent through providing a purpose-led culture, industry-leading benefits and a flexible working model. Supply constraints, which are driving freight inflation have not eased, and now we see oil price pressure too. However, we do not expect material additional costs. We continue to restructure our transportation network to minimize freight miles. As we outlined in November 2021, reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 transport emissions are a key action of our 2030 ESG action plan for a better world. We continue to invest in our operating model to ensure we are well-supported and able to take advantage of the future growth opportunities we see. This includes strengthening our expertise, technological capabilities, product and service capacity to improve our operating basics. Looking at cash. Despite the ongoing investment into our inventory, we still generate strong cash. Our inventory investment has enabled us to maintain industry-leading availability. We expect to end the financial year with circa GBP 100 million year-on-year increase in inventory, which includes the additional product within our North American and European distribution centers. We continue to work on inorganic opportunities that will accelerate our growth strategy. Lindsley and I have met some very exciting companies, most of which are outside an active sales process and impressed with the strategic fit and quality of opportunities we see. Our corporate development team is very busy, but we are retaining and maintaining our strict cultural, strategic and financial criteria. So looking forward, trading was a little softer at the start of January, potentially reflecting a longer holiday period and the Omicron variant. However, since then, trading has been stronger than expected despite the tougher comparatives and external headwinds. We are actively monitoring the potential impact of increasing economic and geopolitical uncertainties on our markets, which may increase trading volatility. However, given our progress year-to-date, we expect our full year revenue and adjusted operating profit margin to be ahead of the top end of the current consensus range. And now I'd like to hand you back to Lindsley to summarize.

Thank you very much, David. Exciting times. Let me just start by saying in today's ever-changing fast-paced world, we must continue to have a long-term strategic view with the daily relentless focus on execution. And as I've said many times before, a quarter is like a year in the old world. A month is like a quarter, a week is like a month, a day is like a week, and every day matters in this business. So despite the evolving external challenges, we believe that our proposition is resonating with our customers. We remain confident in our own abilities to drive further market share gains to continue to outperform, to improve our operating efficiencies, to deliver ongoing adjusted operating profit margin growth and generate long-term value creation for all of our stakeholders. We see many opportunities to move from being a good company to becoming great. And we are a good company, but we're not yet great. We continue to prioritize the initiatives which will widen our differential with our peers and those in terms of competition that have yet to come. Namely, to become more solutions-led, improve the user experience, the customer and supplier experience and develop our product offer further. And let me be clear. As I was preparing for this morning yesterday, I was looking through our annual reports back to when we went public in 1967, our very first annual report shows the history we have of resiliency in this business and that we've demonstrated throughout time. The 3 key points that I'll highlight right now from 1968 -- September 23, 1968. Three points [indiscernible], who was the Chairman at that time, who was a co-founder of the company. He says, number one, the aims of your company remain unchanged, to give all customers a really first-class reliable service matched with the highest quality products. Nothing has changed from 1968 till today with our goal of becoming first choice for our customers, and that depends on our ability to offer reliable service with high-quality products and services, giving our customers a first-class experience. Two. This is quite interesting back in 1968 to look forward 53.5 years, and that's the notion of the fact that we want to continuously do better. We see ourselves as good but not yet great, and [indiscernible] says at the time, again, September 23, 1968. These days, when forecasts are rapidly becoming debased coin, it is not without some trepidation. But I mentioned that so far during the present year, we have not only achieved but exceeded our own targets. With a single reservation against possible outside national or international interference, it should be my privilege to talk to you about greatly improved results in a year's time. So despite the headwinds for many decades within this company, we were able to grow our sales and our profit rapidly and improve our results year-over-year. We want to continuously do better today and in the future. And three, there was always a great appreciation for our people and the realization that our people make the difference. Our company's fortunes are closely connected with the staff, [indiscernible] says, that it's my great pleasure to report to you that your company is very fortunate indeed to have a loyal and hard-working staff. I wish to express also, on your behalf, our sincere gratitude to all of them who have worked so hard to achieve the excellent results on which I have been able to report. So for all of those people that are on this call, for all of our shareholders, investors worldwide, you should be proud to know that we have an incredibly dedicated staff that are working hard every day to drive greater value on behalf of all stakeholders within this company. So to hear more about our past, our future and our journey to greatness, I invite you to join us and many of our leaders and exciting talent from around the group to our Investor Event, which will be on March 30 of this year. This will be held physically in London with the option of virtual attendance, too. We will highlight the transformation of our culture, explain our differentiated offer, which is driving our market share outperformance and outline the growth opportunities we have. Details on how to join the event are on today's RNS statement. So with that, Bailey, if we can please open it up to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS.

Just 2 questions. Firstly on the top line acceleration, and then one longer-term one. So firstly, can you give more details about the customer trends? Previously, you've talked about your B2B customer numbers growing at about 8% CAGR, I think, so has that picked up? Or is this more about wallet share gains? And so if you can talk about [ AOV ] and [ AOS ]. And then secondly, on product price inflation, which is clearly picking up. You're passing it through well, of course, given the gross margins. But interested to know what's causing customers to do any down trading or changing any other behaviors as they are seeing their kind of cost of products going up overall? And maybe those 2 first.

Yes. So first of all, I think what we've been really focused on for the last year is the quality of the business that we're doing, and it's really getting into an understanding of customer lifetime values, looking at cost to serve customers, looking at where we're making money, where we're not making money. So we've been looking at the churn of customers, looking at how we can focus on delivering more profit from the customers that we see as loyal customers that have the highest profit profile, looking at how we can sell more to those customers that deem us to be first choice, if you will. So average order value has gone up. We'll get into those details certainly in May. But if you look at customers numbers, average order value, those are all important to look at in terms of trends, but most important to us is looking at how we can get more from the existing customers that we would say are those that we really want to focus on. So with that we've had really a de-emphasis somewhat on B2C customers that tend to cost more, have lower average order values where we're paying freight in Europe and Asia that aren't necessarily driving the return we want. And that's not to say we do not want B2C customers. We're just looking at the profit profile of our customer base and how we make more money overall at a customer level. But that is something you have to earn the right to do by providing outstanding service, and that's the goal that we have to become first choice for our customers. In terms of behaviors and trends, we're not seeing any significant changes. Obviously, as customers are returning from the pandemic, there's larger teams of people that are coming in. So certainly, there will be some increased buying of products to restock stock rooms, but not in our world because of the need to benefit from price. Because keep in mind, lots of the products might sit on the shelf for 2 years just in case because they're there in an engineering store room to support a breakdown of a processor product on the line. So to go save 2% and hold it for 2 years, economically, doesn't make a lot of sense. So we're not seeing a whole lot of pull forward orders at this point. We are certainly seeing a return of staff, more people coming in, and that's going to increase volume over time. But nothing that we would say is out of the norm of what we've seen historically, Rory.

Very helpful. My last question. I've also been doing some reading of old annual reports, but clearly, my records don't go back as far as yours because I only made it to 1979. It did seem clear that through crisis, customers kind of always move to these kind of strong leading companies, but then there may be a bit of a reversal and maybe a bit more of a fragmentation of the market in the periods after. And clearly we're going from one crisis to the next at the moment. But in all that customer analysis you're talking about, are there any pockets or customers that you've identified that maybe you think, might not prove as sticky? Or that you're worried about losing share over time as we go through the next full cycle effect?

No. So first of all, I would like to extend the invitation for you to come to my office. You can see the 11 years you're missing back to '68 because they're on a table in my office, so you're welcome to come at any point in time. The -- in regards to the history of the company, let's not forget that for many decades, the company was U.K.-focused, and now we definitely are an international company that happens to be headquartered in the U.K. versus a U.K. company with international operations. So the first thing I would say is if you look at the trends in the past, they used to be more geographically specific in terms of what those trends were. If you look at today, I would say it's more about the products we sell than the customers. I don't see there is a change in behaviors of customers from segment to segment, whether it's food and beverage or whether it's chemicals or processing of any other type of plastics, et cetera, or it could be certainly in the food and beverage front when it comes to the U.K. and customers who have an integrated supply, for example. There's not really a change in those behaviors. I think what there is, is more of a change in product. So obviously, with -- as the pandemic has waned somewhat, although certainly, by no means, is it over, we have seen a reduction in the demand in safety products and PPE. So as products tend to ebb and flow with the demand of the market, we can shift our focus to other products. And we're really focused on providing the total solution today to our customers as opposed to a product-led solutions. So in the past, we were selling products. Today, I think we're more in the realm of selling solutions, winning the customer and then pulling through the products that we stock and that we can bring in based upon lead times. Does that answer your question, Rory?

Yes. No, that's very helpful as always.

The next question today comes from Oscar Val Mas from JPMorgan.

Lindsley and David, I have 2 questions. The first one is around just the margin, I guess the operating profit upgrade. Could you just talk about the moving parts in terms of labor inflation and price? What led to that upgrade? And then the second question is around pricing. If we go back in time, how sustainable is pricing in your products, i.e., if you think about raw materials potentially declining in 2024, would your product see price deflation as well or not?

Oscar, David here. So let me take the first one, operating margin to say yes we are certainly guiding for a stronger operating margin that's being driven by, first of all, top line growth, and that continuation of the strong growth and market share gains. The second is that we've seen a slight uptick in terms of the gross margin, which is being driven by the pricing and recovery of the cost increases. And then the third one has been cost control and operational leverage through this strong top line growth. So they are the 3 sort of key elements that are delivering that operational margin improvement versus the previous guidance. On the pricing?

On the pricing, Oscar, I would say this. What we can't lose sight of in this business is the importance of availability. You can't put your prices up on products you don't have. You can, but it doesn't matter. It has no impact. You can't put your prices down either. So we got to remember the most important factor is availability, whether pricing is going up or down. So for us, it's more of having the products available on the shelf. If you have all the products available on the shelf and you give a customer a phenomenal customer experience. If your average order value is roughly, call it, around 200 pounds on average, then customers aren't going to shop your product around, the prices are [ irrelevant ]. You can charge a slight premium for that service. So in our world, you can maintain higher prices as long as you provide outstanding service and availability, and you're not out of simple products that customers expect you to have. So for us, we do expect certainly some degradation of pricing over time, but not a significant amount, so. And you really have opportunities over a decade to put prices up. Arguably, you could always say you could put your prices up even higher than you have, but you certainly have to be in a protection mode when prices could potentially be going down. But for us, price is definitely not in the top 3 factors of why our customers buy from us.

Okay. Great. Maybe just as a quick follow-up. You've talked about 5% pricing year-to-date at a group level. Are there significant differences between Americas and in Europe?

Not material, probably a little bit more in APAC, but otherwise not material at this point.

Yes, Oscar, one of the things you got to look at in terms of pricing, you got to look at the cost of the products. And our suppliers have the ability to shift products around the globe in terms of manufacturing. And will that change over the next decade or two with geopolitical disruption? Maybe. But today, there's the ability to move products around based on what's happening in an environment with not only supply chain shortages, but also with duties and tariffs and also with inflation, so it tends to even out in terms of the buy side. And certainly, where we see more inflationary pressures on the wage side, where you see greater impact in terms of inflation by country. Bailey? Bailey, did we lose [indiscernible]?

The next question today comes from David Brockton from Numis.

Two questions, please, and apologies if these were covered in the introduction. Firstly, just in terms of the performance of Industrial products. I'm just keen to understand, I think it's sort of interesting that that's now performing in line with the group average. It would suggest there's less outperformance being driven by electronics products. And would that point towards an underlying improvement there in Industrial products? That's the first question. And then the second question just relates to your point, Lindsley, a moment ago on the importance of availability. I think at the H1 stage you did signal that there were signs that sort of availability levels were sort of deteriorating in a few product categories. I just wondered if you can just touch on how you've performed in terms of replenishing that through the sort of the third and final quarter?

Yes. So first of all, in regards to Industrial performance, I wouldn't say the outperformance is less in Electronics, I'd say it's more outperformance in Industrial. So we stepped it up on Industrial. Certainly, Electronics had probably more market tailwinds and the performance in the numbers than Industrial. But as we moved along, many of the products, more than half of the products we sell to customers are in both categories. So customers are buying both product categories, and we have the opportunity to accelerate Industrial. And again, I think this gets back to being solutions-led and not product-focused and somewhat product agnostic, if you will, to where we're selling a full portfolio of products that customers want and need. So I -- we expect to continue certainly to outperform the market if we keep doing the right things and don't become complacent, which is why we always want to continue to under promise and over deliver and making sure that we're exceeding the expectations of our customers. In regards to availability, I would say there hasn't been a material change on the supply side. As things start to get better then something happens, uncertainty creeps in, and something -- I don't know how many people thought a month ago, there would be an issue of neon gas that supports semiconductor foundries that would be impacting the long-term outlook of chip supply, which people thought was going to get better. So there's always those things that pop up and uncertainties that exist. We take this as the norm today. So the only certainty is uncertainty, and we want to prepare and navigate those channels to make sure we get products that others can't. We have a major advantage in terms of our people and the relationships we have with suppliers being long-term, long-standing relationships. And the fact is that we have -- the biggest advantage is we're buying smaller quantities, we're servicing small to medium enterprise customers, large customers with integrated supply. But in terms of getting smaller quantities, it's much easier than going after large quantities, and we can negotiate that. And based on relationships, we can get products, maybe others do not. So we've got numerous examples. We're touching more on this at the Investor Event certainly as we move forward on how we're able to source and get product where others may not be. But we continue to have around the same level of availability. We brought in quite a bit more inventory this year as well as we've expanded to make sure that we have the right products on the shelf. And as we've expanded our warehouses in Europe as well as in the Americas.

[Operator Instructions] The next question today comes from Rajesh Kumar from HSBC.

The first question is a slightly more mundane one. Could you give us some sensitivity and -- like freight inflation, labor inflation, et cetera? That would be super helpful for everyone. The second question is on [indiscernible], and you could own and [ adjust ] in the market where you are...

Rajesh, I'm sorry, but we got cut off. Sorry, we couldn't hear the question. The second question.

Question is that if you [indiscernible] and you could [indiscernible] segment [indiscernible].

Unfortunately, Rajesh, your line is not coming through. If you would like to re-register your question, we can try again. While we wait for Rajesh to re-register his question, [Operator Instructions] Okay. We will try again, Rajesh Kumar from HSBC. We have Rajesh back with us now.

The first question is, can you give us the sensitivity to freight and other types of inflation to your business, please? Just for that, what impact would additional 4% of freight or 5% of freight inflation might have on your profits? And second is, which are adjacent market segments that you wish you owned at the moment? I mean, where the growth on market dynamics are quite attractive, but you [ don't ] currently have it in your business currently?

Okay. Thanks, Rajesh. Let me take the first question. With regards to inflation, there's a couple of elements within our business. The first is wage inflation. In the ordinary course, our wage inflation typically runs around 4%-ish, plus, minus. It's probably running a little bit higher. Not materially higher, but it's probably running a little bit higher. It does vary by market quite materially. So a little bit higher, but not material. The other key elements for us are freight. Freight, in largely our working assumption is that, that would be passed on through pricing to our customers. Freight out, in the RS world, in particular, Europe and EMEA and also APAC is we pay for that. We are seeing increases in freight costs and movement of product around the world in unit rates, and we're also seeing -- and also an increase off the back of fuel. It's not material, because the fuel element of the overall freight cost is a small percentage of the service that our carriers provide us. So again, if we were to look at material changes in oil, it's not going to have a material impact. It will have some, but not material impact on the overall costs for the group. And then the final piece is with regards to distribution costs and energy costs. Again, we're not a big consumer of energy. We largely use energy, electricity and gas to light, heat or cool our facilities. So again, it's not a material cost increase even though the unit rates of those products have increased quite materially. And the final point is that we are hedged in our largest consumer of gas and electricity in the U.K. We are hedged for the FY '23 period.

Okay. I think in regards to the second part of your question, Rajesh, I look at it slightly differently. If we look at within the 4 walls of the factory, whether it's a shoe manufacturer or any glass factory, we want to be able to provide the products and the solutions that go into that factory that support the design, the build to maintain as well as through to eventually, and this is why I bring this up, to protect, to repair, potentially to recycle. So if we look at the solutions that we have today, I would say, where we need to focus in the future is on how we expand the solutions, how we build out those solutions, how we look at potential buying in solutions. So I think we've got to enhance the solutions we offer to customers, and we're doing quite a bit on that front. We'll go into more details certainly at the end of this month at our Investor Event. And we also need to expand the products led by our own brands. So in terms of products, the areas such as fluid power pneumatics, mechanical products [indiscernible], et cetera, that fit into what our customers currently buy, that fit in within those 4 walls of the factory that we can pull through a solution. So as we move forward, I would say those are the types of opportunities. It's not any one particular type of customer. Customers that actually have a process, they have aligned and manufacture that build products and they need maintenance of those products. We do sell some products that obviously go within those products, so the direct materials that go in for resell purposes for an end product. But the bulk of what we're selling today is for products that support the manufacturing of products.

There are currently no further questions registered. [Operator Instructions]

All right, Bailey. As always, we're available for any questions, conversations. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the end of this month at our Investor Event whether it be in person or online. I would like to just reemphasize the importance of our employees, and it all starts with the well-being of our employees. And as we've gone through the pandemic, the important stuff shifted from physical protection to giving our employees the mental health and assistance they needed to, and still need, to be able to deal with the pandemic. And in many cases, people working from home alone or having multi-generations of families within the house. And for us, it's quite simple. The success of this company starts with our employees. And if we cannot offer a world-class customer experience for our employees, it's difficult to offer world-class customer experience externally. So it starts in our own house. And the ESG for us is about doing the right thing for our people and for all of our shareholders or stakeholders, the investors, the communities that we serve, the suppliers that we represent and that we partner with, the end customers that we focus on a daily basis, and our own employees. So those are the 5 key stakeholders that we want to become first choice for. So regardless of the headwinds that we faced in the last few years, whether it be the pandemic, wage inflation, cost inflation, inflation, the rising oil prices has an impact on freight, the availability of airlines and being able to ship globally, the increasing in cost of sea freight, Brexit, the supply chain shortages that exist, we've attempted to do our best to turn those headwinds into tailwinds, which is historically the story of this company when it comes to resiliency. So for us, this is a story of us going from good to great, and it's about our journey to greatness, and we look forward to you joining us in the next few weeks to discuss the next stages of our journey. So thank you very much for your time today, and we look forward to seeing you all very, very soon. Bye for now.