RugVista Group AB (publ) (RUG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the RugVista Group Q3 Report 2023. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Michael Lindskog and CFO, Joakim Tuvner. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q3 2023 earnings call. Happy to see so many familiar faces on the line. We would like to give you a quick update on how we see this year’s performance for the past quarter. So let me start off, just giving a few of the highlights. I think number one, of course, we are very pleased to be able to again report organic growth. And this is achieved in a continued challenging market. So our net revenue reached about SEK 160 million, which is 25% up versus last year, and the organic growth rate was about 14%. We also managed to maintain a healthy margin level with an EBIT margin of around 12%. We also increased the absolute EBIT by about 12% actually to deliver almost SEK 19 million in EBIT during the quarter. And of course, we continue to maintain a strong financial position with an increasing net cash position as well as balancing our overall inventory position. And then finally, I think it's worth mentioning for sure that we have started to see a positive impact from our strategic initiatives with the new platform now out on essentially most of all of our markets. We see a sharp increase in order counts as well as new customer count, and we maintain very, very high customer satisfaction ratings. A couple of highlights on these things. So almost -- so 68 is our NPS score, and we continue to maintain 4.8 in our Trustpilot score, which, of course, are among the best, if not the best in class. And then like we mentioned, almost or 43% order growth and then a bit over 50% growth in number of customers that we actually acquired during the quarter. The consumer sentiment continues to be cautious overall, especially looking at it in a slightly longer time frame. It is improved versus the low we saw about 6, 7 months ago, but it's still at a very low level across most of the European markets that we operate in. And despite that, I think the -- our results during the quarter should be seen in that light, so to speak. Then looking a bit at the rollout of our new platform. Like we mentioned, it's essentially online now in all of our RugVista markets. What we've also done during the quarter is actually add country-specific domains to a few of the European markets that we've served historically from one of the other domains. So among others, of course, is Ireland, Belgium as 2 examples where we historically did not have country-specific domains, but now we actually do. And then I think the final thing to mention here on the business update is around the consumers, right? We have definitely seen that consumers are focused on getting the best possible deal, which our assessment is -- our assessment is that, that is based on the fact that the overall European households are squeezed when it comes to disposable incomes. We, as a company, of course, are trying to ensure that we have the best possible offer in terms of assortment and the overall customer experience. But looking at the left-hand -- left side of the graph, the fact is that we haven't necessarily done a major stride in terms of offering lower price points. It's just that customers have chosen this year more so than normal to buy the lower price point items. So with that being said, I'd like to hand it over to Joakim to do the financials.

Thank you, Michael. So I'll take you through the financial update, that is starting with this positive headline return to organic growth. Our net revenue is up by 24.7% in the quarter. We still have a strong tailwind from the weakening Swedish krona, about 10% year-on-year. So excluding the currency effects, we have an organic growth of 14.2%. The B2B segment continued with good growth, and we grew across the board in most subsegments, although we highlight small companies and interior designers in the report. MPO continued to slow due to our focus on efficiency. And then our biggest segment, B2C grew by 25.6%. And if we look at where that comes from, starting to the right in the picture here, DACH, where we have our biggest market, Germany, we grew by 30%. And even better in the Nordics, where we grew almost 45%, less so in Sweden and better in the other Nordic markets. And the rest of world, which is mainly Rest of Europe, is growing by 16.6%. And although the organic growth here in the last region is a single-digit one, we still see a healthy double-digit organic growth in several of the strategically important market of this region. If we then move on to gross margins. So we are dropping 0.8 percentage points in margin, and the main reason is a higher product cost ratio. And this is deriving from the fact that our customers, to a much larger extent, like Michael mentioned, seek discontinued prices trade down and also it is that we offer higher discounts. Regarding the shipment costs to our customers, this tends to increase when our average order drops like it did during this quarter, but the efficiencies that we have gained in shipment to customers have been larger than the negative effect from a lower average order. So our shipment cost ratio in total has gone down in the quarter. The same explanation applied to the 3 segments that you see to the right. That's being an increased -- sorry, that being a somewhat larger drop in B2B margin, and this is driven by customer mix, that being an increased sales to trade partner customers. So I move on to the next, which is the cost ratios and the EBIT margin. So goods for resale is up by 0.7 percentage points. The observant reader might ask why it's not up 0.8 percentage points coming from the former page, the margin page. And the difference between these 2 numbers it has the other income, which is marginal, is included in the gross margin. So again, the higher price focus by customers opting for discounts and our discounting is the main factor explaining the increase in goods for sale versus prior year. And as I mentioned, shipment costs to our customers is down as a ratio despite the lower average order. Other external expenses is up. The main explanation here is that marketing spend is up by 3.3 percentage points. So in the prior year, where we had unusually low cost, we were cautious with the spending due to that the new Google Performance Max was launched and due to our focus on efficiency. Personnel expenses show a 1.8 percentage points lower spending due to economies of scale. Other operating expenses are down. Here, we record the impact of exchange rate changes on transactions and the realization of balances that we had in foreign currency. Depreciation and amortization is down by 0.2 percentage points due to the economies of scale. So adding this up, in total, our EBIT margin is down 1.3 percentage points, of which the main explanation is the higher marketing cost this year compared to the very low comparables prior year. But as you saw on Michael's first slide here, EBIT in absolute numbers is up by SEK 2 million. So moving on to inventory. So as we mentioned in the prior earnings call, we implemented a never out of stock program in quarter 2. And despite this, we have managed to decrease the inventory by SEK 25 million versus a year ago or SEK 13 million since the year-end. Quarter 3 is normally a quarter when we build inventory, but we have taken steps towards our target range in this quarter. So our target is to have an inventory equivalent to 17.5% to 22.5% of last 12 months of sales as displayed by the dotted lines to the right here in the picture. We all know that this never out of stock program still means sometimes being out of stock, but we feel we are in a good position entering into the peak season in quarter 4. So I move on to the slide with the strong cash flow development that we had during the quarter. So we have improved our cash flow and our cash position. If we compare to prior year, like in the top left here in the slide, there is a big improvement in working capital development compared to prior year. Inventory decreased during this quarter but increased in prior year. Also, our operating liabilities improved in quarters where we increased sales from one quarter to the other. So as we collect the VAT payments that are not due until the beginning of next quarter. Our net cash position then is SEK 112 million, and that is an improvement of SEK 58 million versus the same time prior year. And if we take out our leasing debt from this, we have a total cash of SEK 136 million at the end of the period, which is SEK 52 million above prior year. And that concludes the financial update. And I'll hand it over to you, Michael, to sum this up before the Q&A.

Thank you, Joakim. So I think overall, we feel very ready, prepared to continue to successfully navigate rest of the year and the peak season that is Q4 and Q1 for us. And like I said, we are happy and proud that we managed to get back to organic profitable growth after a few -- or quite a few quarters where that was not the case. So net revenues being up 25% year-over-year is something we are very happy about. I see a typo here, sorry about that. With the organic growth rate being about 14%. The EBIT increased by about SEK 2 million, but a slight decline to about 12% in the EBIT margin. We continue to maintain a very healthy financial position with over SEK 100 million, over SEK 110 million in net cash. And of course, that is something that enables us to continue to develop ourselves and the long-term strategic initiatives that we've been working on over the past few years without being concerned about the overall economic conditions. So we maintain a very healthy financial position. And it also has allowed us, of course, to continue to invest in those growth opportunities that we've seen during the quarter. Looking forward, the focus right now, of course, is to execute our commercial plan for the peak season. We will also continue to effectively navigate the market condition. We are, of course, cautious when looking into the macroeconomic environment that we're in. We are also facing a slightly more challenging comparables from Q4 last year. But overall, we feel very pleased with where we are at and feel that we are well prepared to continue our journey moving forward. With that being said, I will -- we will open it up for potential questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABG Sundal Collier.

Congratulations on strong growth in the quarter. So I have a couple of questions. First one being, Michael, you talked about tough comparables in Q4, what are you referring to here? I noticed that over the last couple of years, Q4 has become a larger share of annual sales. But in -- or in 2022, both Q3 and Q4 had similar organic growth. So yes, tough comps in Q4. What are you referring to, please?

Slightly tougher compared to Q3 last year. That is the main reference.

All right. I appreciate that you might have sort of underspent marketing last year for a normally low marketing ratio, which, I guess, also supports the strong growth this quarter. Could you give us an update on the marketing climate from here, please? I noticed there have been a few entries into the online rug market, at least in Sweden. Is this something you notice in click prices, for example?

I mean those -- it's definitely an environment that continues to be dynamic with different players pushing at different degrees of aggressiveness throughout the last couple of years. And that is, of course, quite normal. Overall, we see as I would call it, overall, a stable quarter-on-quarter environment in that regard. The one thing I think could be worth mentioning is that many of you have probably seen news articles about TMO going quite hard here into Europe. And that is, of course, since we're pan-European, and that is in certain markets, something that we have noticed. And then, of course, something that we need to take into consideration in terms of how we position ourselves in those auctions.

And also, if at all possible, could you give us an idea of the development in the sort of consumer price focus in the quarter, please? Are consumers more focused on a good deal in September versus July, that is...

No, I'd say it's a relatively stable overall in terms of the focus on price. And then throughout the quarter, we see that in many ways, our offering, of course, has changed a little bit in terms of improving our position in the slightly lower price ranges in addition to making sure that we have great deals available. And we also see that the amount of or the share of search queries, including the terms related to deals have continued to be very high. And all of that has overall resulted in sort of the AOV development that we saw in Q3 this year.

The next question comes from Niklas Ekman from Carnegie.

Yes. And can I follow up on this question about tough comparables when you're talking about Q3? Because I made kind of the same conclusion that your comparisons were no tougher in Q3 or Q4 than any other quarter last year. So are you saying that kind of this growth we saw here in Q3, was that exceptionally strong for any particular reason? Did you have any campaigns that were particularly successful and will be [Technical Difficulty] Q4 be weaker than Q3?

I think number one, of course, we are a bit cautious when looking ahead with the overall macroeconomic climate. And we feel that we had a very good Black Friday period last year. Of course, our ambition is always to improve ourselves and our customer offering. But we are making sure that we are a bit cautious when it comes to the outlook due to the fact that the consumer sentiment is very uncertain at the moment from our point of view.

Okay. Sure. Fair enough. Second question on the rollout of the new e-com platform. Can you tell us a little bit more about the reception here. Have you seen any tangible change in conversion rates? And anything that's possible to quantify or otherwise elaborate, now that you've rolled it out in many markets?

Yes. Overall, the reception and the rollout has been relatively smooth here during the quarter, of course, has required a lot of work from most -- essentially all teams in the organization. And we're happy with how it's performed so far. Of course, if just looking at very high level numbers, we can, of course, see a rather significant improvement in the year-over-year conversion rate. Part of that is the new platform, of course. Part of it is undoubtedly also the -- our continued effort to balance what type of traffic and optimize what type of traffic we do buy and also the mix between the different traffic sources. But the platform we're overall very happy with. It's still a work in progress. Keep in mind, a lot of the features we envision to improve throughout the -- over the next couple of quarters and the next couple of years are still not live and -- but the early results are promising.

And you mentioned here that you have now a couple of new country-specific domains. How many country-specific domains are you up in at the moment?

It's those 20 that we had on the chart and -- or on the page and then plus the [ revamped.com ], actually it was released here a few weeks ago, so it was actually in Q4, but it is live and the only country-specific domain that is outstanding is our Greek domain, where we're still sitting on the old platform.

The next question comes from Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank.

I think most of my questions have already been answered here. But on the gross margin, which declined year-over-year here. I think the reason why it's quite obvious, but I wonder, do you feel like you have any like price component that you can use in this environment when consumers are trading down. Do you feel that you could maybe implement some price increases to your products in order to mitigate the decline in the gross margin at the moment?

Yes. With the business model we have -- where we design and sell the products ourselves. However, I think that should also be considered in light of what the consumers are actually seeking and what the consumers are seeking right now is value for money. And of course, we want to ensure that we get our fair share or more of our fair share of the total market. And if the consumer sentiment at the moment is focused on that, we want to ensure that we have an offering that is durable for that. And I think the -- what we should also keep in mind that despite the decline in the AUV, we continued to see improvements in our cost ratios in terms of fulfillment costs. And that is, of course, due to the efforts we've done so far in the area. We see opportunities for continued improvement in those areas as well. In addition to over time, also making our efficiency even greater.

And lastly, could you maybe highlight some product category within the B2C segment here in the quarter that you want to -- that have been performing better than others, maybe?

I think the in-house design items continue to be where we see growth. And that, of course, is part of what we see as our long-term -- part of our long-term strategy that we are a very product-focused organization, have always been and will continue to be. And it's just a little bit different in terms of which type of products we're trying to sell and how we package and merchandise it towards the users, and that will continue to evolve in and something we believe will be a -- or is a value add for consumers today and in the future.

And is it possible to quantify the percentage of sales in-house design?

Yes, it's well over 2/3 of our sales.

The next question comes from Benjamin Wahlstedt from ABG Sundal Collier.

A quick follow-up. Is it possible to give us a rough idea of how significant November is for Q4 overall, please?

Let's say, we've never shared that. I think if you look at the quarter in total, historically and during normal sort of consumer behavior, we can say that December and sort of the holiday shopping period in general is not our strongest portion of the quarter. Rugs are -- have historically not been part of the gift-giving type of item, so to speak. So with that said, December is less important than the rest of the quarter. And then, of course, during November, the overall retail environment here in Europe to what the North American market has been for many years. Black Friday and November in general have increased in importance for us. And I would argue or what I would expect for most retailers in Europe has increased in terms of importance during the fourth quarter over the past few years.

[Operator Instructions]

So we have 2 questions here, written questions. One from Thomas, where the question is whether we would like to comment on current trading so far in the quarter. That we'll come back to, once we present our Q4 numbers. And then a second question is from Carl where the question is what our view is in terms of market share and whether we are taking market share here in this challenging market. I think the -- based on sort of the data that we have available and that, of course, is far from a complete sort of POS scanning accuracy type of data. But overall, here in Europe and what we see is that we're more than pleased with sort of how we feel that our market share has developed here during the third quarter.

And then we got another question here from Simon. What's the progress with your SEO ranking since you launched the new platform, how's the trend? And when you think your improved SEO rating can complement your paid marketing? So overall, with the launch of the new platform, of course, we addressed some of the historical challenges we had in the old tech stack. Overall, we are still in the early stages of our organic visibility journey or our SEO journey. But overall, that is progressing well. Our web pages or domains are being indexed, and we're seeing some early promise in that area, but still a long way to go. And we have a question from Philip. The first one is a little bit the same. How is the organic search traffic mix developing in your new website? And he adds on, do you see any shift in the traffic mix?

Of course, depending on the market. And then of course, there's an overall mix as well in -- but overall, we're seeing that we have still an opportunity to be more balanced in the future compared to what we are today when it comes to paid versus earned traffic, but it is progressing. And overall, we're happy with that part. And I think the overall message, of course, from my point of view or our point of view is that we need to be present where the consumer is present when it comes to online digital media, both and to a certain degree in more traditional media channels as well. But we, of course, have the ambition to utilize all of the content capabilities that we're building to drive more organic or earned traffic in the future versus what has probably been the case.

And that seems to be the last question we have here in the floor.

So unless there's anything else. No? Thank you very much for your attention and have a continued great day. Thank you.

Thank you.