RS Group plc (RS1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to today's RS Group plc Trading Update Conference Call. My name is Bailey, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the call over to Lindsley Ruth, CEO. Lindsley, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. I'm Lindsley Ruth, Chief Executive Officer of the RS Group, and I'm joined today by David Egan, our Chief Financial Officer. So welcome to our Q2 Trading Update to the 30th of September 2022. We've delivered another strong performance this quarter due to the hard work and dedication of our teams and I would attribute that to the culture that we've established. We continue to invest in our people and our culture. We are fundamental in driving our performance. And to say thank you for their hard work, and in recognition of the more difficult economic backdrop around the world, we're giving all our permanent employees a GBP 500 award in November. We've had an exciting summer as we started to rebrand our business to RS around the world. We've already rebranded IESA and Synovos, which we acquired to RS Integrated Supply, and this has been very well received both externally, as it brings recognition to our global offer and improves our procurement strength; and internally, as the business adopts the best combined commercial model as we unite our group. Next month, we rebrand Needlers and Liscombe to RS Safety Solutions and Allied becomes RS Americas in early calendar 2023. From a performance perspective, we've continued to grow our market share. We continue to take share. Our active inventory management has supported our product availability. We've improved our pricing and discount model. We're running a more commercial regional operating model, focusing on where we can add more value. As such, we remain confident in the strength of our people, our proposition, and the opportunities we see to drive ongoing stronger revenue and profitable growth. So at this point, I'll hand over to David to take you through our second quarter in more detail.

Thanks, Lindsley, and good morning, everyone. As Lindsley said, our performance for Q2 was strong. Like-for-like revenue increased by 15%. Within the product categories, our industrial components range, which accounts for around 75% of our group revenue, grew by 21%. Electronics and single-board computing, which accounts for the remainder, has seen some slowing in growth, partly due to tough comparatives, but also an ongoing lack of supply, particularly within Raspberry Pi in our OKdo business. Our main own brand range, RS PRO, grew revenue by 21%, driven by strong availability, new product launches, and greater online personalization, leading to increased conversion. Web revenue increased by 15% like-for-like with digital accounting for 63% of overall group revenue. We continue to see growth in our average order value from our loyal customers, which is our key area of focus. Conversely, there's been a small decline in one-off guest purchases, which drives limited value to the group. RS Integrated Supply in EMEA continues to win more new contracts, with existing customer retention remaining strong. In the Americas, we see significant growth in the pipeline of new contracts, and we're working on several global pictures utilizing RS Integrated Supply as a new brand. Moving on to the regions. EMEA accounts for circa 60% of group revenue, and it grew like-for-like revenue by 15% in the quarter. Germany remains strong, driven by our ongoing investment in improvement to the commercial and operating model, which is focusing on people development, improved digital capabilities, and product range expansion, all in line with our overall group strategy. The benefit from bringing more products straight into our German distribution center for our European business is in the early stages of ramp-up. U.K. and Ireland, which accounts for roughly 40% of the region's revenue, delivered solid volume growth, resulting from a greater focus on higher-value B2B customers in digital revenue growth and price optimization supporting revenue growth and gross margin gains. France is focused on improving the customer experience through targeted sales campaigns to drive increased digital and own brand participation. The Americas, which accounts for circa 30% of group revenue, delivered 19% like-for-like growth in the quarter. Our customer base has an industrial bias with our strong growth being delivered across the board in terms of industry vertical and location. Our digital participation has grown driven by core web, reflecting our ongoing investment, focused campaigns and greater sales engagement. Our strong availability, which has supported our outperformance, reflects the increased capacity at our distribution center. The market backdrop remains favorable, although customer behavior has become a little more irregular, suggesting a little more uncertainty within the market, although we remain confident as we look forward. Our acquisition of Risoul remains on track, and we anticipate, subject to review by the Mexican competition authorities, that it will be completed by late November. And then finally, Asia Pacific, which is circa 10% of group revenue, grew 6% like-for-like in the quarter. Our growth was affected by constrained supply of single-board computing, particularly Raspberry Pi, sold within our consumer brand, OKdo. This is a lower gross margin product and we have managed our costs appropriately. Excluding OKdo, our revenue growth in Asia Pacific for the quarter was 14%. Additionally, we saw a slowdown in the electronics market against a strong comparative period. This was primarily within Japan, and this has a higher participation rate within Asia Pacific versus other parts of our group. However, the key fundamentals of operating a more commercial strategy in the region are unchanged. We are improving our industrial product offer, which is delivering strong market share growth, and we're focusing our efforts where we can drive greater value and returns to deliver operating profit margin improvements. Our acquisition of Domnick Hunter in Thailand is performing well, and we're already working on some joint pitches. So across the group, inflation continues to be a key feature. We saw price inflation continue at around low double digits in the quarter. This has been driven and supported by cost increases both at the product and OpEx level, which are not abating given ongoing energy and labor pressures. The remainder of our 15% like-for-like revenue growth has been delivered from product volume. We have successfully passed through product cost inflation while keeping our value proposition competitive. We've delivered gross margin improvements through our margin optimization work, a tighter discounting policy, and more focused buying commitments. Cost inflationary pressures, especially within labor, have continued, but this has been offset by strong cost control and positive operating leverage. Our transactional currency pressures are minimal with most of our products for EMEA and Asia Pacific bought in pounds or euros. Our Americas business is largely sourced locally in dollars. We've continued to invest in our operating model to support the growth opportunities we see, and all of this is part of our Journey to Greatness plan. On the cash side, we've tightened up our inventory management further. Our sales and inventory teams have been more targeted with our marketing campaigns. We're investing in products that are higher turning and where we see customer demand, and we're working closely with our suppliers to ensure flexibility within our purchase orders. Our availability to customers has improved due to deliberate interventions our teams have made. However, there is still little improvement in supplier lead times and overall supplier performance. We remain a very cash-generative business. So looking forward, given our strong trading performance year-to-date, we expect our full-year revenue and adjusted profit before tax to be slightly ahead of current consensus estimates for FY '23. We do expect there to be a greater first half waiting than historically delivered. While we are expecting slower economic growth in the second half, we have contingency planning and cost mitigations in place with all markets ready to respond, if appropriate, to protect our profit. Despite the environment, we remain confident in driving further market share gains to generate stronger revenue and higher quality profitable growth. And with that, I'll hand you back to Lindsley.

Thank you, David. People constantly ask us why do we think we're gaining market share and why are we growing? And I'll tell you that I think it's the strength of our people, it's our culture, and it's our differentiated offer, expanding products and solutions focused. And I think our investment over recent years has changed our group model. We're more focused on providing what our industrial customers want. We have less exposure to more cyclical electronics market. And I think we're less exposed to a potential recession, too, given the strength of what we're doing overall as a company. There's significantly greater revenue from service solutions and digital, and we have more data and insight than most of our peers. And today, we've got greater regional and business accountability and responsibility. When I joined this company, we had no regionals P&Ls, and David put them in place. And now we have it. And you know what, people live to it, and our people come first, but people drive profit, which helps us make a difference for the planet overall, which is our triple bottom line: people, planet, profit. Most importantly, we've got a different mindset and culture today. And I couldn't be more proud of the people we have in this company. So I'm not going anywhere. It means we're more proactive, agile and a commercial group. We've demonstrated over the last few years our resilience, while still investing in our future with capital discipline based on David looking at it on a daily basis. So despite the more challenging economic backdrop, which involves supply chain shortages, wage inflation, all the things that you all know about, we're concentrating on what we can control: our proposition, our service, and being a partner to all our stakeholders. We will, however, continue to invest organically and inorganically as part of our Journey to Greatness, which is to capitalize on the significant market share opportunity, given that we have less than 1% of the market that we see, and turn our challenges into opportunities. So taking those headwinds and turning them into tailwinds. This will drive stronger revenue, high-quality, profitable growth. And with that, I'd like to invite your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS.

It's Rory here. Just 2 for me, please. With price inflation still running in low double digits, as you said, that means real growth has slowed to the low single digits, having been high single digits last quarter and double digits before that. You still talk about share gains. So does that suggest your end markets are now kind of flat to declining? And then can you talk about the makeup of that kind of real underlying 3% to 4% growth in terms of number of customers or growth in wallet share? And then secondly, on the outlook for the price inflation. Obviously, there's a lot going on, you've got a huge range of products, but can you talk about how your supplier product availability is changing and when you might expect that price inflation to, yes, start to stabilize?

Yes. So just on product availability. The industry, in general, still has a number of shortages, and we've got great supplier relationships, so that's helping us get product and availability drive margin in this business. So I don't see that, Rory. I don't see that changing in the next 6 to 9 months. I think we're still in this market with extended lead times, et cetera. David can take the inflation?

Sure. So Rory, in terms of the reported growth, we said reported growth of 15% for the quarter. We did experience some unavailability of OKdo, Raspberry Pi. If you strip out Raspberry Pi, the growth in the quarter was 18%. And again, split by region, that's 17% in EMEA, 20% in the Americas and 14% in Asia Pacific. So our overall growth was, I guess, sort of 3%, 4%, 5% within the marketplaces. Our focus has been very much on driving profitable growth with the right customers as opposed to just driving top line that's not necessarily value attributing. So we have seen customer numbers relatively stable, but the quality of the customer across the group has continued to improve. Average order value has continued to improve and average order frequency has also continued to improve. From an end market perspective, it depends on the country. But overall, we would say that there is still modest growth within the end market, but we continue to outperform that. And that is with the exception of electronics, where there is a little bit of a slowing in electronics that we've seen during the back end of quarter 2. And that's a little bit more focused on semis and passives at this point in time. So overall, we would say we're continuing to outperform, we continue to take market share, but we're very much focused on quality of customers, share of wallet and overall profitable growth.

That's really helpful. Maybe just 1 follow-up. Given Lindsley made the comment that availability drives margin, and right now, your availability is better than peers and others in this constrained market. Obviously, you're putting towards your gross margin still being nicely up in H1. Do you think that represents that increasing mix of quality customers or is that a short-term phenomenon given the relative availability you're offering your clients, if that makes sense?

No. I think it's long term. I think -- look, in our business, we have an average order value that's just over GBP 200. You can keep your prices up. And so we're going through planning for the future right now, and we want to keep our prices high. And you can't look at what's happening online. I terms of competitors, you've got to focus on how you can drive the highest margin and not discount and make sure you're getting the highest price you can give for the value of your service. It all comes down to service. Rory, if you have the best service, people don't care about the price. And I'm not saying that -- we're not gouging customers. We have a reasonable price for the service that we give. So I don't expect that margin to come down.

Yes, just one build. We have seen our availability improve, our on time to promise has improved over the first half of the year, which we're pleased about. And the consequence of that is we've also then seen our Net Promoter Score, which is our key customer entry, that is also starting to begin to trend in the right direction as well. So again, it's all linked back to availability, service and then charging the right price for the value that we're delivering to the customers.

The next question today comes from the line of Sylvia Barker from JPMorgan.

Three quick ones for me, please. Firstly, on the Raspberry Pi replacement Rock, how quickly could that cover the lost revenues from Raspberry Pi? Secondly, could you give us an update on the ramp up of the German distribution center? Where are you in terms of utilization? And how could that increase? And then lastly, just on margins, the reason for the H2 EBIT margin being lower, if you can give us a bit of detail around that?

Yes. First, the distribution center, we're fully operational today. So our focus now is on expanding products, and we've got a ton of capacity there, but it's going well for us, which is really important. As far as Raspberry Pi, we've got other options which we're focused on today. Not to go into too much detail on this call, given it's public, but we do have a ramp-up plan, and we've got alternatives at much higher margin actually, which is good for us.

Yes. Just one quick build on Rock. It is a better product, more features, and it's also, as Lindsley said, a high-margin contributor to our group. It's in the early stages of introduction into our marketplace. From an EBIT margin perspective, our best guidance at the moment is that we would expect the operating margin in the first half to be a little stronger than the second half. We have certainly seen very, very strong operational drop-through during the first half off the back of very strong top line growth. We've also managing our cost base during the first half and not necessarily brought in the exact right number of headcount to actually deliver the volume growth that we've delivered in the first half. So again, really just planning for the future and not necessarily wanting to create a problem for the future. So there's just a slight sort of possibly an overperformance in the first half, slight moderation in the second half, but overall, for the full year, we would expect good progress on the operational margin for the group.

And for a follow-up, sorry, on the German distribution center. So you said you still have a ton of capacity. So how can we think about the utilization of that today versus where it might be by the end of the year or in 2 years' time?

Yes. I think we'll double the number of products we have there and that will be our solution for Continental Europe. And Germany is a huge market, and we are significantly underperform -- well, I wouldn't say underperforming, but our market share in Germany is very, very low. So it's not that we're underperforming, we have great people, but we can do so much better there, and having a German distribution center just for that market is huge, but for Continental Europe, it's enormous. So we could actually double the number of parts that we have in that distribution center over time. And we've got a lot of capacity to move forward. And we've got great people there.

The next question today comes from the line of David Brockton from Numis.

Two questions, please. Firstly, on price optimization, that's clearly worked very well through the first half. I just wondered if you can just give us sort of an update on where you are with your sort of dynamic pricing model and how much more there is to come here sort of beyond just passing through cost inflation? That's the first question. The second question, just in relation to RS Integrated Supply and what the pipeline of new customers looks like? I'm just wondering whether in sort of less certain economic conditions you would expect sort of new customers to either step back or would it encourage them to push more actively on seeking efficiency from a supply chain perspective?

Yes. So on your second question, I think it actually encourages customers to come to us because they want to save money. And so I think it increases the opportunity for us. And the biggest issue with RS Integrated Supply in the industry overall is it's a long sales process. So you've got anywhere from 12 to 18 months in terms of convincing the customer to outsource, because they turn their stores over to us. And so it's not that easy, but economic situations tend to force that to happen much faster.

And we saw that through COVID as well. So I would concur with what Lindsley said. I think there will be further opportunities. And certainly going out with 1 brand in global pitches also puts us in actually a very good position. In terms of pricing, we have dynamic pricing that's embedded within both our EMEA region and Asia Pacific region. We are putting the application and the programs into our Americas business at this point in time. Is there more that we could go after in terms of pricing? Well, you can always say there's more. I think the key for us is going back to that value equation. We need to be able to demonstrate to the customer that we're delivering value and that we can charge the right price for that value, but also then ensuring that we don't give it away through discounting. So it's not just a tool, it's a whole process and a mindset within our organization that is continually improving. So for us, it's continuous improvement as opposed to this is big opportunity. It's sort of -- for us, it will be as steady as she goes, one step at a time, get the Americas on board, taking all the dynamic side of it and we'll take what we can, but we have to demonstrate value.

The next question today comes from the line of Kean Marden from Jefferies.

I've got a few, so apologies. So I'll try and run through this slowly. Just first on the U.S. distribution center. If the U.S. sort of drifts into recession over the next 12 months, how do we think about the pace of inventory expansion in that distribution center? So we can see that you've invested quite strongly in the June and the September quarters. Would you sustain that pace or would you look to throttle it back? Then secondly, on pricing, are we seeing sort of procurement cost inflation of products slowing? And actually, are there any areas now where we're seeing deflation coming through in some product prices? And then thirdly, just some focusing on electronics. Just interested in your views about the risk of dislocation from destocking and therefore, a sharper decline in revenues from electronics over the next 6 months?

Yes. Thanks, Kean. I think in terms of the U.S. distribution center, we want to continue to expand products. Customers are still buying products. Obviously, I spent a lot of time in the U.S., and I'm encouraged by what's happening in terms of infrastructure, the CHIPS Act. And I think we all want to talk ourselves into recession in the U.S., but I'm not so sure that's going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months, but we'll see. But regardless, customers still have to buy products. And for us, I think expanding our product portfolio is key because we have plenty of space, and I think we'll see the benefit of that. So I expect for us to continue to grow there. I think in terms of electronics, there's a general slowing in the industry. And I think you'll see more of that in the coming months from suppliers and from other distributors. But we're still encouraged because we're focused on new designs and design starts, and that's not going to stop. As far as pricing...

In terms of pricing, we haven't really seen any material shift in product pricing at this point in time. Internally, we are sort of slowing down our inventory intake in terms of our standard products, again, just to make sure that we don't necessarily get caught, and at the same time, just making sure we've got good supplier arrangements and agreements should there be any shift in the cost price of products. But at this point in time, really a lot of the input costs of the products that they're producing haven't materially changed. And so as a consequence, we haven't seen any reduction in costs. In fact, we still continue to see some inflationary pressures on the cost price of products.

And let me just add, you asked the question about our U.S. distribution center, but I'm encouraged by Mexico and our recent acquisition of Risoul and the nearshoring opportunities that exist in Mexico and our distribution capabilities there and our logistics capabilities there. So I'm really excited about what's going to happen in that market over the next couple of years.

I think just one build on the U.S. inventory as well is that we're continuing to bring inventory in based on data. So it's all about what is the customer looking to buy and converting the nonstocked into stocked inventory. So it's not just hit and hope. This is very deliberate in terms of the choices that we are making for the inventory that's coming into that new distribution expansion.

And actually, just one more if I can bolt it on very quickly? It's the profile of the inventory build in Germany, would that logically follow what you did in the States, or are there just different drivers or different sort of points in the cycle that might influence that? So is it too simplistic just to look at the U.S. experience and apply that to Germany?

It's the exact same process. So we've got global linkage right now around the world in terms of how we manage our product. And I can say this, having 30 years' experience in distribution, I think we're best-in-class in how we manage inventory. And our turns might be low because we have to have availability for our customers, and our model is based on service, but I think we do a phenomenal job at how we manage the data to drive inventory and sharing around the world.

[Operator Instructions] The next question today comes from the line of James Rose from Barclays.

I've got 2, please. So excluding OKdo, it seems like overall trading has been comparable to the first quarter. So where are you actually seeing signs of a macro slowdown, which you're clearly guiding to in the second half? And sort of which SKUs are you being more cautious of now? And then the second one is on recent U.S. dollar strength. How much sourcing do you have, in U.S. dollars, which you then go and sell, instead of I think in euros? And is that a gross margin headwind we need to consider in the second half?

Yes, let me take both of those. So in terms of U.S. dollars, we largely buy all of our products for the Americas in dollars. We buy very little products in dollars for the rest of the group. So there isn't really a significant risk in terms of the transactional FX risk in the gross margin. And that has changed from where we were a number of years ago as a group. In terms of the outlook, excluding OKdo, the growth in Q1 was 19 and the growth in Q2 was 18 and the growth for the half was 18. As we look forward, I'd say, yes, we are expecting a little bit of slowdown in terms of the electronics side of the group. We do actually bump up against some higher and tougher comparatives across the group. And overall, I guess, we are saying that we would continue to build and take market share. There isn't any particular market where we're saying it's going to go into negative growth, but I think it's just more of a cautiously optimistic view for us at this point in time. Remember, our visibility remains negligible. The greatest visibility that we have is in the Americas, where we do have some form of an order book, but the balance of our group has very little visibility. So we're optimistic and positive, but I think at the same time, I think one has to be a little bit realistic in terms of what's going on around us. And in terms of the exit rate, one final -- in terms of the exit rates, no, I think the exit rates still remain in good positive territory and the only exception to that is where we've called out electronics and that's more associated with semis and passives.

There are no further questions on the phone line. So I'd like to pass back to the management team.

We've got one question that's come in online asking how sustainable do you think the current outperformance versus the market is? And do you expect this to accelerate in calendar 2023, whilst competitors absorb slowdown?

Look, I think that's down to our people. So the question in regards to outperformance is, will we continue? And I wish everybody on this call could come see our locations and come to Milan, come to Warsaw, come to Beauvais, and come to Fort Worth and you would see a remarkable culture that we've developed, and our goal is to outperform the market. And we're going to continue to do all we can. Can't guarantee it, but certainly, our people want to do that. We have the desire, and it gets down to people. In this business, it all comes down to people and culture. So that's really important.

No more questions online.

No more questions online. Any other questions? All right. Thank you all for being on the call. We continue to work hard every day to deliver great performance. And I'd just like to call out our people. I think we have phenomenal people and I love the people in this company. And we've got close to 9,000 employees now, and we've got just a remarkable culture that we're building. So that's a difference maker. So thank you to all. Thanks for being on the call, and we'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.