Sensys Gatso Group AB (publ) (SGG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Welcome to Sensys Gatso's presentation of the third quarter 2020. My name is Ivo Mönnink. I'm the CEO of Sensys Gatso, and I will be presenting to you together with Simon Mulder, our CFO. Next slide, please. In this market presentation, we will provide you with an update on our business for the quarter and for the first 9 months. We then follow up with a financial update by Simon. And finally, I will finish this presentation with a summary and our outlook. Next slide, please. Let's now look at an update on our business. In this business update, I will take you through our order intake, which has now broken through the SEK 900 million order intake level. Some more information about recent orders and why we won those: our positive sales development, which is up by 80%; our school zone TRaaS speed enforcement programs and some recent information on the timing of the Costa Rica project; the development of our EBIT, which is up by nearly SEK 31 million this quarter; and finally, I will talk you through our successful direct share issue. Next slide, please. First, we look at our order intake. With the record high order intake this quarter of SEK 324 million, more than 4x higher than last year, we achieved a strong sales outlook. The order intake for the year-to-date looks equally strong. We arrived in September year-to-date at SEK 640 million, 100% higher than last year. When we look at the 12 months rolling order intake, we arrived at a record high of SEK 909 million, 95% higher than last year. We are operating in a business environment with long-term relations and contracts from our governmental customers. To assess our future sales position, we consider the 12-month rolling order intake one of our key performance indicators. With 3 large sales orders in the past 9 months factored in, it is encouraging to see this performance indicator is making such a significant upswing. Next slide, please. It is not only the large orders that contributed to our high order intake, also, smaller orders announced and not announced are part of it. What is interesting to see from this slide that captures a few examples of these orders in the past 9 months are 4 things. First, orders are coming from all our global regions: APAC, Latin America, Europe, U.S.A. and Middle East. Second, we have sold various solutions, demonstrating the technological capabilities of our development team and the scalability of our solutions. Third, we manage in all these examples to provide our customers in a trust component, ensuring we generate recurring revenue and long-lasting customer relationships. This can be a service level agreement for service, maintenance and calibrations of our systems or a flexible software solutions [ sit in ] to operate back offices. Last and foremost, none of the contracts we won just on price. It was always in the added value stemming from our proven technology, our solution and service performance and our sales efforts that brought us the business. Next slide. Now let's have a look at our top line development. We had yet another strong sales quarter, with sales up 80% compared to Q3 2019. This is proving the resilience of our business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Year-to-date, we are now nearly 30% ahead of last year. TRaaS sales are up by 20% in the quarter and up 24% year-to-date. Although strong growth, it is somewhat below our expectations. This mainly relates to the temporary school closings in the United States caused by the pandemic. To ensure proper education and social participation of children, some schools have reopened again as of September. We are pleased that we can contribute again to save school zones with our school zone speed enforcement solutions, and we expect all our school zone programs to come fully operational again in the course of 2021. Now let me shed some more light on what these school zone speed programs encompass. Next slide, please. Few people will argue against children needing to be safe when traveling back and forth to their schools. It is never quite acceptable for communities in the United States to introduce speed enforcement in school zones. As you can see from the table on this slide, we have initiated 6 school zone speed enforcement programs across 5 different states in the past 2 years. These are all traffic enforcement-as-a-service contracts with an average contract period of 4.7 years and options for extensions included in these contracts. The nature of these programs is that they can only be operated by Sensys Gatso when schools are open, so not before and after school time and not on weekends and during the vacation periods. The programs are successful in reducing speed around schools at those times when it matters most, when kids are on or near the roads. More and more cities take note of this success. As a result, I'm proud to announce that yesterday, we received our second contract in the state of Rhode Island in East Providence for a total contract value of SEK 34 million over a 5-year period. This provides us with yet another important opportunity to make traffic safer around schools. Next slide, please. In February of this year, Sensys Gatso, together with our consortium partners signed a contract with the Costa Rican government for the country's nationwide intelligent transportation system. At the time, the 2020 budget for the execution of the project was approved by the government. Due to COVID-19 circumstances, the parliament could not convene to approve the 2021 part of the total budget for the project. We expect this to occur later in December of this year. At the moment, we expect the deployment of this SEK 192 million contract to be shifted into the beginning of 2021. Next slide, please. With our high sales volume this quarter, the gross margin significantly improved by 3.5 percentage points to 37.4%. In addition, our operating expenses were SEK 6 million lower than last year. This resulted in a strong and profitable quarter. The EBITDA arrived at SEK 23 million or 17% of sales and SEK 26 million higher than last year at minus SEK 3 million. The operating profit EBIT increased by nearly SEK 31 million to SEK 13 million in the quarter. Next slide, please. Sensys Gatso is on a growth journey. We are expanding our TRaaS business in the U.S.A. We have recently entered into new markets in Latin America. And we have seen the size of our contracts increasing, requiring large investments in working capital. In September, we issued new shares to raise equity capital for the amount of SEK 75 million. This direct share issue enabled us to diversify the shareholder base in the company among long-term investors, and at the same time, take advantage of the opportunity to raise capital in a time and cost-efficient manner. The capital was raised at initial prices of SEK 1.40, 9.7% below the market price at that time and generated a dilution of approximately 6%. This was the first time Sensys Gatso made use of its yearly mandate by the AGM to issue maximum 10% of our share volume directly to the market. We are proud to have raised the capital we targeted in a timely and cost-efficient way and to see a high interest from the investment community to join us in our journey to realize our growth ambitions. With that said, I'd like to hand over to Simon for the financial update. Next slide, please.

Okay. Thank you, Ivo. I would like to take you through the following topics today: an analysis of the segment's performance; our consolidated income statements; and finally, our available cash and financial position. Next slide, please. So this slide illustrates the performance of our system sales business. The 12-month rolling order intake of Q3 2020 landed at SEK 783 million, which is a record high for Sensys Gatso. This order intake is 170% higher than the 12-month volume order intake of Q3 last year. The increase is mainly driven by the contract received from Costa Rica of SEK 192 million in the second quarter and the order won from our Saudi customer of SEK 275 million in the third quarter of this year. The sales for the segment system sales in the quarter amounted to SEK 105 million compared to SEK 48 million. For the first 9 months of the year, the sales landed at SEK 232 million compared to SEK 182 million for the same period last year. The sales increase is driven by the first deliveries on the Saudi order. The EBITDA for the quarter arrived at SEK 20 million compared to negative SEK 2 million last year. The improvement in the performance is due to the increased sales levels and higher efficiency on delivery of bigger volumes and repeat orders. The operating profit arrived at approximately SEK 15 million compared to negative SEK 8 million. Year-to-date, the operating profit of the segment amounted to SEK 10 million. Next slide, please. So moving to the segment, Managed Services. The 12-month rolling order intake for this segment arrived at SEK 126 million compared to SEK 176 million in Q3 in 2019. After the quarter, we've received a renewal for a program in Abington with a total contract value of SEK 23 million and a new school zone program in East Providence, Rhode Island for a total contract value of SEK 34 million. Our Managed Services sales has increased by 8% compared to the third quarter last year. Year-to-date, we've seen an increase of 33% of sales due to contribution to sales of programs that were won in 2018 and 2019. Our Managed Services business in the U.S. has seen somewhat lower volumes than expected due to the school closing since March and lower volumes of holiday traffic in general. The schools have partially reopened in the U.S. as of September. For the programs operated by Sensys Gatso, this means that we have partially resumed enforcements in these school zones. The EBITDA in the quarter amounted to SEK 3 million compared to negative SEK 1 million. Year-to-date, the EBITDA has more than tripled from SEK 3 million to SEK 11 million. Next slide, please. We operate in business segments, system sales and managed services with a focus on TRaaS recurring revenues. On this slide, we would like to take you through the various revenue sources within TRaaS. Let's first look at the sales values of TRaaS within the segments. The total TRaaS sales value for the quarter arrived at SEK 51 million or 39% of total sales. Year-to-date, the TRaaS amounted to SEK 158 million, 49% of year-to-date sales. The sales in Managed Services is 100% recurring revenue and considered full TRaaS sales. In the quarter, the TRaaS value in the segment system sales amounted to 24%. Year-to-date, the TRaaS share amounted to 30%. TRaaS revenue sources in the segments are as follows: Managed Services, this revenue relates to the programs that we predominantly operate in the U.S. Repeat repairs, calibrations, maintenance services on existing global installed base. As we sell systems around the world, we add to our active installed base, and therefore, increase our service and maintenance sales. Licenses on functionalities and software, we always aim to sell additional functions in our software suites, Xilium and PULS. Next slide, please. So looking at the consolidated income statement, we can see that the net sales of the quarter amounted to SEK 132 million compared to SEK 73 million for the same quarter last year. This is an increase of 80% in sales driven by the strong performance of the system sales segment and continued stable performance in the segment, Managed Services. The margin for the quarter arrived at approximately 37.4% compared to 33.9% for the same quarter last year. The increase in margin is due to better leveraging our organization whilst delivering higher volumes. The operating expenses totaled SEK 36 million compared to SEK 43 million, including amortization of intangible fixed assets. Operating expenses are lower, mainly due to lower amortization in connection with the acquisition of Gatso Beheer. The amortization has decreased from SEK 6 million in the third quarter of 2019 to SEK 2.5 million in 2020. With this, the operating profit for the quarter landed on positive SEK 13 million compared to negative SEK 18 million last year. This is an improvement of SEK 31 million in 1 quarter. Next slide, please. Finally, I would like to take you through our cash position. In the quarter, the company has issued approximately 54 million new shares through a successful oversubscribed directed share issue, raising SEK 75 million in available cash. More importantly, the company has broadened its shareholder base with long-term investors. The net proceeds from the directed new share issue will primarily be used to support and accelerate the company's growth plan, which includes investments in expanding current and new markets. The available cash at the end of the period totaled SEK 169 million compared to SEK 66 million for the same period last year. The available cash includes the credit facilities not taken up, but excludes the tranches of additional financing of Rabobank not yet taken up. The remainder of that additional financing amounts to SEK 37.5 million. The company has covenants in place with its banks and is in compliance of these covenants in the quarter. The operating cash flow of the third quarter amounted to positive SEK 11 million, an improvement of SEK 35 million compared to Q3 2019. Year-to-date, the operating cash flow amounts to SEK 22 million. Investments for the first 9 months in our platform FLUX and our software platform Xilium and PULS amount to approximately SEK 10 million, of which SEK 3 million in the third quarter. The investments in fixed assets and operations supporting our Managed Services business amounts to SEK 11 million, of which SEK 8 million in the third quarter. With the new capital funds raised, additional financing from Rabobank, we have a strong financial position with a 66% equity asset ratio. And on that note, I would like to hand it over to Ivo. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Simon. In Q1 of this year, the COVID-19 pandemic started to impact all of us. Fortunately, we have seen in the past 6 months that our business has been minimally impacted. Some shifts in timing of deployment and temporary portion of enforcement do not pose structural issues to our often long-term contracts with customer relationships. Our order book was even reinforced in this quarter, with the largest order in our history coming from the Middle East region. With higher sales, improved margin and controlled expenses, our profitability has increased significantly in this quarter. We, therefore, retain our long-term ambition to grow our net sales to more than SEK 1 billion in 2025, 60% or more than SEK 600 million of this revenue is to come from our recurring TRaaS business. We also hold on to our ambition to increase our EBITDA margin to more than 15% by 2025. On that final note, I would like to open up for questions. Next slide, please.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Viktor Westman of Redeye.

Congrats on a strong report. I have a few questions on Costa Rica. Maybe first, will you start preparing the work on Costa Rica? Or is this completely on hold until you get the final signing and everything?

No, we actually have started the preparation work already, having some of the units that needed to be shipped ready for dispatching. And the time schedule is in place as well. So yes, we're ready to start there, but waiting on the government to make a final decision there on the timing.

Yes. And with that in mind, how do you see the risks of further delays or even cancellations?

Yes. I mean we see this project to go ahead and just shift in time. And that's something -- what we also said, I mean, we expect this to start in the beginning of 2021. It's also in the benefit of the people of Costa Rica and of the government, of course, to start the program and they realize that. So I don't see a huge problem there. But having said that, we're talking about politics, so we never know.