Shelly Group SE (SLYG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

On behalf of Montega, a warm welcome to today's earnings call of Shelly Group following the publication of the company's half year figures for 2023. The co-CEO, Dimitar Dimitrov; and Co-CEO, Wolfgang Kirsch will speak in a moment. We're looking forward to the presentation. And with this, I hand over to Mr. Kirsch.

Good morning, everybody. On behalf of Dimitar Dimitrov and myself, a warm welcome to our first half year trading update. And as usual, in the last quarters, we have some quite good news to present. Just as a very small reminder for the newcomers and for the ones that are not yet familiar with our business, we are making smart building solutions, and we help to save energy, and this is one of the drivers of our business in the last quarters. So just the content -- sorry, I have to click one more time. Yes, just the content. As usual, I will start with some highlights as well as the main financial highlights, then Dimitar will give a short overview about the products that we already launched in the first half of the year and what will come in the second half of the year. And then at the end, I will go into more details about financials, and then we are open for questions. So the highlights about Shelly Group. Since we launched the first Shelly product, we sold 9.4 million. Right now, we are close to 10 million because those numbers are reflected to the 30th of June. Every 6.5 seconds in average, a new product is added to our cloud. Very important for us is our social platforms, our communities, the Shelly fans. If we make a post on social platforms, we reach 2 million people without paying for that. We have a very high customer satisfaction with an NPS of above 60. Our support actually has an NPS that is constantly between 70 and 80. We are measuring this every day. And we are adding a lot of people to our cloud. We have 990,000 cloud users, we had 990,000 on the 30th of June and in the first 6-months of this year, we added more than 300,000 so we are growing really fast which is a proof that our app and Dimitar will talk about it that we launched a couple of months ago, is really an improvement to all our customers. The financials. In the first half of the year, we realized EUR 28 million revenue, which is a growth of 53.2% versus last year. The EBIT grew even a bit more to EUR 7 million, which is a growth rate of close to 80%. And our cash improved as well, end of the year, we had EUR 14.4 million cash in our bank accounts. And on the 30th of June, we had EUR 19.8 million on our cash bank account. So that means we are well prepared for the second half of the year and we will need some money as well but I will comeback to this in a minute. Some general remarks about Smart Home Market. Whatever you read right now, a lot of comments are negative. The Smart Home Market is a challenge, it's going down. And this is mainly reflecting to the typical smart home like televisions, like smart speakers, like smartphones. Our part of the market that is a bit complicated to measure looks much more positive. So Lighting and energy management is still doing well. And we are doing specifically well in that market because we offer value for money products and this especially in times when customers look for saving some money and not spending too much for very high-end sophisticated solutions, we are in the center of the market. Having said that, lighting and energy management still is doing well. We as well have to say that some of our competitors obviously are not doing well. We see on the numbers that they are publishing that some are even stagnating. So we are definitely outperforming the market, and we are growing our market share. Once again, value for money is one of the key of our successes and as well new product categories. We are entering new technologies like Z-Wave with Shelly-Qubino Wave line. We have the first Bluetooth product on our market, and we are entering into professional installation market with our Pro devices. So usually, we say challenging times are Shelly times because very good products, very flexible product at a very good price, that's a key for success. I talked about our community already. So 2 million social media post reach, we have more than 100,000 members in our support groups. We have way more than 2,000 user-generated videos on YouTube and other channels. So all this is a proof that our customers like our products, and they like as well the way how we are reacting to their comments. If there is something popping up, we especially Dimitar is reacting immediately making products better, getting comments. And for this, we get a lot of positive feedback from our communities. The fact that we want to enter into the Pro market, we have to address new wholesalers that are working with those guys and other retailers like Hornbach is as well addressing a good proportion of professionals. And we see that we have a very good interest in a couple of regions like in Southern Europe, in the DACH region as well, in the Northern Europe, entering with new partners and one very important partner in this case is Amazon. We started direct business with Amazon last year already. And this year, we rolled out to France, Italy, Spain and Benelux, and we expect to start in some other regions in the second half of the year, which should as well help us to reach our ambitious targets for this year. And one very important thing that is new in this -- in the second quarter is we changed the name of the company from Allterco, which was referring to the old times of a telecom business into Shelly Group, which brings together our successful products, make use of our product community as well for the investors market and all the activities that we are doing on investor side and are reflected in use will as well help to sell more of our products. So Allterco became Shelly Group, and we got a lot of very positive feedback about that. So now Dimitar it's your turn to talk about the products.

Thank you very much. A word on products. In this half, first half of 2023, we launched a lot of new products. Some of them is related with the Qubino company, which we acquired beginning of the year. And now their first product is on the market. And from what we see, this is really interesting for the customers and partners to test them, to work to offer -- to order them. And also even from the customers is like we are on the right way with the choice which we make and with the first Z-Wave product which we released. This is about the Z-Wave 1, but not only, next to Z-Wave 1, we also launched our first Bluetooth products. And the first two Bluetooth products, which is the motion sensor and the door/window sensor at the bottom, is on the market. And the new 1 is coming, but the Shelly Bluetooth one is also appreciated a lot from the -- our customers from what we see. And we continue developing our WiFi series devices, the main series, and we launched 6 new more devices. I will not go to -- in the deep details because it's not the product presentation. But just for the first 6 months of the year, we launched 10 new products, which is a huge number and even the same number is expected for the second half of the year. Together with that, this year, the first half, we released the new application for the Shelly cloud, where we completely changed the customer experience, improved it significantly with a lot of smart features for all customers to control their buildings, homes and offices and to have a very detailed information about energy consumption and energy -- for how they spend their money and give a lot of possibilities, which make our application one of the leading smart home and smart living application in the world. It's not only because there is a huge interest in the community is rising, we launched our Shelly Academy. In Shelly Academy, that is for advanced customers which want to know more about our devices, how they can use it, how they can extend the features of the existing devices and to implement the logic, which is not ready -- which is not built in the devices itself. For the first part of the 400 Shelly customers, which finished the Shelly Academy is there. They finished a month ago. And now we see that they start offering and showing to our -- to other Shelly customers, different options, possibilities to improve their home, to improve their offices. And now something which is very important, which though it might be more than a year for that. We launched our first subscription service in the new Shelly app, which allow customers to receive, to have a much detailed information to use the advanced features, and this is not reflective of the feature which we have now. This is the -- some extensions for the customers. And for users, which can really go, want to go much deeper and want to know more, to have a better statistic and third-party integrations. At the moment from what we've seen, that the result is going quite well and the customers are very, very interested and more and more customers switching from the standard to premium version of the application. About what next. As I say, we launched 2 new products and in the August, on the 31st of August, there will be a live stream where we will present our next batch of the products. It's very important that we are in the final stage of negotiating with Alexa, Amazon, and to make special products, which is related to Alexa voice assistance, which will bring us also additional options to cover -- to reach new customers. The new operation system, Shelly OS, we're finalizing in the first half of the year and now all new products, including generation 3 of the products, we use our own operational system and this is somehow is related with the new chip which is already on stock, and we're preparing our first product to be launched with our new shelly chip, especially made for IoT and more details and technical news about that, you can expect at the beginning of the September during the IFA event in Berlin. And something interesting just about 1 product, which is everybody from our customers asking about it. This is the first display, the Wall display, which allow customers to manage their homes, not only from their phones, but also from the Wall, which is the combined device, could be used to switch on/off the light, could be used as a thermostat, could be used as a central controller for the home. And this is a multipurpose device, which are with built-in relaying features and everything which make it some unique on the market. Especially there's -- there is also features which we want to show and present this device on the 31st of August when the device will be launched officially on the market. This has also opened the new market segments, segment to control the HVAC system, it's connected to somehow off-controllers, which we didn't have now, but on the new way, in the way which customers looks and have interest to have it. And everything which I talked about the new products, all new products, and they will be showed on IFA, which is on 1st to 5th September in Berlin and everybody of you is invited to visit our booth and to learn more about the products and services, which we're planning to have, to end of the year. About our module business, is something which we're working more than -- in the last year. The new chip which we make together with Espressif is especially made to targeting this direction. Direction there is one -- where you're no partner -- not partner, the competitor in the world, this is the Tuya, which offering a similar solution. But this solution allowing a Shelly technology and what we do to be building in every appliance. It's no matter that could be the fridge or oven or that could be the EV charger or anything. This technology will allow us to offer our technology, our advanced technology and features to the appliance manufacturers and they can build in without spend a lot of -- without increasing their cost for development because we make it somehow the no code solution, which everybody just can buy a module or can order a module and build it. The same technology is in progress, we want to keep it at the moment -- all details, not publish it and not officially publish it because we're still working. And in the Q3, we are expecting first modules to be on the market and the first clients which using the Shelly modules and Shelly operating system to be there and to start working with them. And I have Wolf for the financial updates.

Yes, now let's come back to some boring financials. You have seen that chart already. So everything goes in the right direction. We are growing EBIT over-proportionally and even above our own targets. We are with revenue above our own targets for the first half of the year. So everything is fine. And now let's go a little bit more in details. If we look to the revenue quarter-over-quarter, and we see how the first quarter in the last 3 years developed, you see that in the first quarter last year, we grew only by 15%. And we were asked a lot of questions if we will make the year, and we promised that we will accelerate in the second half of the year with new products, new channels, new channel policies, and we kept our promise. So we accelerated the growth last year over the different quarters. That led to an over-proportional growth as well in the first quarter this year, whereas in the second quarter compared to the first quarter, the growth rate was only 46%, which might sound a little bit like a perception, but once again was as well in the second quarter over our personal and internal targets because last year, the second quarter was already growing a little bit faster. So the level of growth made in the last year was a little bit higher, so it was more a challenge. If we accumulate this to the first half, we reached these 53.2%, which shows as well that over the years, the growth rate in the first half of the year is accelerating. The EBIT development is a little bit different -- sorry, is similar. In the first quarter this year, we grew 53% in EBIT. Last year in the second quarter, we had a small negative dip because revenue was not growing that fast, but we were already starting with adding new people, investing in new functionalities of our systems, and that led to a small negative impact on the EBIT, whereas this year, we are back with full speed in the EBIT growth with second quarter growth of 110%. So we are more than doubling the EBIT in the second quarter. In the full year, the EBIT grew by close to 80%, which is in a challenging market environment, fantastic. The EBIT margin with 24.9% is above our promises because our target that we gave out including in our guidance was a growth of -- an EBIT margin of 23% for this year, so we are above that. We will see how this ends up end of the year and what we will achieve in the second half of the year, but we are quite careful and I come to the guidance update in a second. The cash flow, as I already said at the beginning, our cash increased from EUR 14.4 million by the end of the year, 6 months later to EUR 19.8 million. We have a couple of positive impacts, we have less outstanding customer payments, we reduced our stock from EUR 11.8 million to 9.8 million. And the CFI, the investments are mainly affected by the GOAP acquisition in January and the rest is some small effects that are not very important here. So this is quite a high level of cash, but I can tell you that we will need cash because we decided to increase our stock back to old stock reach levels because we have very ambitious targets around Black Friday and by the end of the year, we have to order now. So we will need this cash, and the good news is that we have enough of it, so that we still will not need any bank loans to finance our stocks or as well the customer payments because all the distributors, have some payment terms. And if we make high revenues with them in November and December, they usually pay in January, February. So we will need some money to finance our growth, but we have enough, so there is no need to go to banks, and this is always a very positive situation for every company. The breakdown by brands. I think you have realized that I'm not talking that much in every presentation about Myki anymore. Myki, for us is a solid business, is not a huge focus business nowadays because Shelly is so dominant, and we put all our resources on continuing growing faster and accelerating growth with Shelly. And Myki revenue in the second quarter is down by 30%, but it's a very low level, still a profitable business. And we think and we see that we can grow it in the third and in the fourth quarter with back-to-school activities, some nice promotions. But we prefer to focus on the big brand with all our activities and investments because this is where we see the future of the company. If we go to the regions, last year, the DACH region was developing in a positive way, but not as fast as this year. And I explained a couple of times that we are investing in new structures, in new sales channels. Just as an example, we have stopped business with our second biggest customer because this was not creating the value that we expect and this had some slowdowns in the last year and this year in DACH, we are more than doubling our revenue in the first 6-months, with all the things that we have done, and it's accounting for close to 50% of our business. We see a very good development in Southern Europe. We historically have been good already in Spain and Italy and in Portugal. And now we see that we have some good first results in France, which shows when we make the right efforts in the country, when we put local teams, and when we start with new professional channels, then we see that it takes off. It's just at the very beginning, but it's quite promising for the second half of the year and as well for the next year. In Northern Europe, this was the first region where after DACH, we brought local people on board, we are as well more than doubling and here, especially, we are working very good with all these wholesalers addressing the professional installers. So that's quite a good development with plus 104% in the first 6-months. And it looks like it keeps growing even faster than that in the next month. Rest of the world, we were losing 28%, which is a result of not having focus -- Sorry, rest of Europe, for not having focus everywhere because we are really concentrating on the big countries where we can make the big change in the numbers. But for the next year, we have a clear plan to go in more and more countries and regions with local people so that we will turn this trend, but it's not significant, and it's nothing that makes us worry today because we think that we can easily turn this around. We can get much more out of the countries like U.K., Nordics, France, Italy and Spain than we risk to lose here. Rest of the World with a positive development. And here as well as soon as we made our homework in all the regions that I mentioned, we will attack these regions, and you will see that in the next year, we will have a very positive development here as well. So I will not go to all these details. You can read that later. You can download the presentation. It's more or less the numbers, a little bit more split up that I already mentioned. And you see that the net income is growing 83% proportionally more or less to the EBIT. So all numbers are in a very good stage. And on the cost side, we invested a lot in people. We have round about doubled our head count in the last 12-months. We have invested a lot in R&D. We have more than 90 people working in our R&D department. We have local people in Western Europe that are usually a little bit more expensive, but we overcompensated with a lot of positive effects from supply chain that leads to a margin that is above budget. And all this together gives us enough financial resources not only on the cash side to be very positive about the second half of the year. Let's have a look at the guidance and where are we. As you know, we promised after EUR 47.6 million revenue last year, EUR 72 million as a guidance for 2023. After 6 months, we have reached EUR 28 million. What does this mean for our business? We reached with the EUR 28 million, 38.9% of the full year '23 target, whereas in the last year, we were only at a little bit below, but only at 38.4%, which means we are above track to reach the EUR 72 million right now. On the margin side, I already said we have a more positive margin and the EBIT margin with 24.9% after 22% last year and 23% that we have promised is as well very positive. We might have to sacrifice a little bit the EBIT margin if we want to reach or overreach our financial targets this year because usually in the second half of the year, especially Black Friday period is very aggressive in prices and important for us as well because we have a very strong Do-it-yourself business and usually makes some very good offers for our fans. In the midterm, so '23 is EUR 72 million. For 2026, we promised above EUR 200 million. which is a CAGR of above 43%. So we expect with the growing basis that the revenue growth goes a little bit down, 51% this year, 43% in average of the next years. But still, that means that we are making 4x as much revenue in '26 than we did last year, which is as well possible because we invested that much in people and systems, and we'll continue doing this. The EBIT in 2026 is expected to be above EUR 50 million, so up 25%. So all those numbers are very positive. And we have as well, don't forget that enough financial liquidity to make that happen without asking all the time for new money. So in the summary, we are continuing to grow strong and profitable and increasing the profitability, which is not normal if the company is growing 50% in a market environment that is challenging, where we have a lot of competitors suffering. We have enough cash to finance all that. We have an equity ratio that is end of June on a level of 82.7%, that means it went down a little bit. This is mainly coming from the dividend payment that we did in July, but that we had to book already as a liability in June. So this will change, and we'll go back into the region of 90% in the next 6 months. We have doubled our headcount. We will now slow down a little bit, adding more people because we have worked as well on processes. We are more efficient in what we are doing. So we will not add 50% more people to grow 50% anymore. We have to do this in a much better way. We have new sales teams on board. That's as well something that you see on the cost side because people in Western Europe are expensive. They pay as well higher taxes, but they are expensive, bit expensive but we want to keep as much as possible here in Bulgaria because here is the heart and the soul of our company and we want to have as much people as possible here. And the new teams are generating a sales pipeline so that we are quite confident that the second half of the year will be good as well. The Qubino acquisition is completed, the first products on the market, and we see a very good demand. So the first products are just coming in and out. So that went very fast, and we have some very good context to the Z-Wave channels that will help as well to reach our targets. We have implemented a new channel policy in DACH and some other regions, and that pays back as well. 53% growth in a challenging market is not coming from nothing, it looks like we are doing a lot of things right. By the end of the year, we confirm our target of EUR 72 million. You know that we are usually conservative in giving out overambitious targets, but we feel quite comfortable to reach the EUR 72 million and as well as the planned EBIT of EUR 17 million. And if we have to be a bit more aggressive in the second half of the year, we are willing to do so. Challenging times are Shelly times because value for money is what customers want. For the people that we have hired and for our older people that are longer in the company, we have started an HR development program, investing in their quality in different areas of potential developments. We have a very strong R&D team and not only headcount wise, but as well quality-wise. The new Shelly chip and Operating System is almost ready to launch and will as well open more possibilities for product and new possibilities for revenue. We are widening the product range with Bluetooth devices, Z-Wave devices. The Shelly premium app is launched, we will see when we have the first financial effects of that because now we have a free trial period. We are still in the marketing period of -- Dimitar already said that we have some positive feedback, very positive feedbacks. But first financial results are expected in '24 and then in '25. We are preparing Q4, including Black Friday, that means we will increase the stock, and we are doing this planned and not that it just happens and we make mistakes. We will increase the stock significantly to be able to fulfill all the demands for the end of the year. There is no risk that products are getting older, that our prices are not stable anymore. So all this is on the positive side and will help us to reach our targets, not only for this year, but for the coming years. So '26, I will go just very quick. We confirm the EUR 200 million that we have in our guidance and the EUR 50 million EBIT target for '26. We have very strong, more and more strong connections to the big platform enablers like Google, Samsung and as well, Amazon, of course. We are partnering with the first consumer electronic brands to build-in our solution into their products, that's what Dimitar mentioned in his part of the presentation. And we are still open to make acquisitions, but we will only make acquisitions if they make sense, like Qubino for us made a lot of sense and it proves that it made sense. If there is something that could fit into our portfolio, we will do it, but not just to grow because we think that the growth rate of average 43% in the coming years is good enough. If we can make a big jump, we are open, but we will not be blind and just look to the topline growth. Yes. On the investor side, we are very active. So in the first half of the year, we made a lot of things being on investors conferences, capital market conferences. And this will continue in the second half of the year. We will be next week in Hamburg on the Montega Conference. There's a smaller one, Ruttnauer Research Conference, Baader Conference. We are invited to a MicroCap Conference in Chicago, and we will be on Eigenkapital Forum Frankfurt. So a lot of activities that will come. And in general, for investors, what are we doing? We continue delivering our promises. And I think we have now proven over the last 5 quarters that what we promised we keep, so that means operational excellence is key for as well a good share price development. We have a better visibility, especially in Western Europe, and we have a lot of demand on investor side for as well individual calls. So whenever you want to reach out and want to have some more information, we are open to talk to you. We have a high credibility because we delivered our forecast and our promises. We have a higher trading volume that we had a couple of months ago in the last 4 months, 5 months. Still not on the level that we expect. For this, we are fighting with Frankfurt Stock Exchange and Sofia Stock Exchange to become Xetra listed. We have some positive signals, but we will see when this happens, but I'm sure it will happen one day. And hopefully, in the near future and not in the long future. We will have a new Investor Relations website. Honestly, we plan to launch it today, but we still have to make some final checks. You see a screen shot on the right side of this chart, there will be more modern, visible, connected to some other platforms, so that will be easier for you to have all transparency about our developments and our numbers whenever you need this. And we will, of course, let you know when this happens. So that's the final of the first part -- of the numbers part and the product part, and now we are open for questions.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And we already received the first question via audio line. Please go ahead [indiscernible].

First of all, great results. Congratulations to this. And even though you mentioned a lot and explained a lot during your presentation, I indeed have a couple of questions. And if you don't mind, I would go through them one by one.

Of course.

Perfect. First question, according to the recent launch of the subscription-based premium app version, you said it was a successful beginning. Could you shed some light into the first days after the launch? How was the first reaction within the community and just somehow quantify that what level of conversion do you expect? And maybe more over what kind of -- which exclusive feature would you consider as the main conversion driver?

Yes. So maybe let me answer to the first numbers and the expectations on the financial side, and then Dimitar can give some information about the main features where we think that they are the drivers. So it's way too early to say, this will be a huge success or not. We have a couple of thousand people converting to the app. But don't forget, we are in a 3-month trial period. So they can -- they don't pay anything, they can just move. So it would be too early to say it is a huge success. The feedback, the qualitative feedback we get from our community is very positive. About quantities, please give us 1, 2 more quarters, and then we will start reporting as well the conversion into the paid app and churn rates and all what that is normal for such a business. It's a bit too early. One thing that I always add if we talk about the paid version of the app, it is a potential source of revenue and EBIT, of course. But I want to as well make clear that our company is not depending on this. And there are a lot of other competitors out there that are not making profit with the hardware. And that always promised that one day, they will monetize the customer data that they have, and customers will pay for applications, and then they will be super profitable. But now investors have to wait a little bit because they are not profitable now. So if this works, this is just one of our work streams to increase revenue and EBIT. It's perfect. It's the icing on the cake. If for whatever reason it does not work, which we do not expect, it's no risk for the company. That's something that is very important. Now Dimitar can give a couple of features.

Yes, I can share. The first, which is very important. This is the premium plan for the existing subscribers. Without this premium plan, they can use all devices with all features and a lot of features free of charge. And this is important for -- to tell also to subscriber and to everyone that the premium plan is nothing which is mandatory. We didn't push them because we want to see how they will appreciate and the feature of this, more than 10 different features. Mainly this feature is connected to give them -- to deep energy analysis, monthly reporting, a different resolution for their power consumption. Also, there is a EI, which we're working in the 6 last months, implemented to analyze their data and to tell them when, for example, something is forgotten to be switched off or if some appliances is [ favor ] or will [ favor ] expecting to be [ favored ] based on the other different criteria and what we make. And also -- but this is not everything, this one is not mandatory. And really because there is not so many apps and it's not usual for people to pay in additional, something premium to control their homes. We don't want to go strong here. We want to offer them and to see, and this feature to increase them step by step. And for this one, at the moment, there is nothing else then customers cares to use in their homes without paying anything using the application, lots of features without paying anything. But if they want to be a really on professional level or to go deeper, they can do that. In time, we have ideas how we can attract customers even more to switch to premium. But now for the first launch, we do this in a very careful steps, in very small steps. And for this one, it's to -- it's not any numbers, the more will not be relevant, because at the moment, there is a premium app, there's subscriptions. Interest is huge even that we didn't do active promotions or something. We just tell customers, okay, there is options if you want, we can switch to, see what we offer you. And we're really expecting in the next 3 months to have more information. And based on this information to decide what would be the next steps about the subscription and what other services and promotions.

Okay. I see. And next question, getting back, let me quote you to the boring numbers regarding your cash flow and the strong operational cash flow benefited beside the enormous volume growth from the inventory decrease, you mentioned? And secondly, you already said with looking to the black week, you order an inventory increase, is ahead. And therefore, I was wondering what would you consider as a normalized or desirable level of inventories at the end of this year?

At the end of the year, I want to be close to the number that we have today, even a little bit less, but now we have to prepare for the Christmas season. So we will have huge shipments in November for Black Friday and afterwards. So we will have a peak now. And then with all the sell-out activities, I expect a little bit less than we have now end of the year.

Yes, I can add something. There is 3 periods each after other, which is here upon us and which is reflective of the stock and cash. The first one is Black Friday preparation is starting from now because now we need to start manufacturing it now to have -- to deliver everything. There is a Christmas, which is the -- we need also to prepare to start in the month for the Christmas season. But not only after that, usually, you know that end of January to middle of February, there's a Chinese New Year and the supply chain is affected from the Chinese year. We need to have a stock from February to middle of March without expecting lots of quantity, additional quantity. And if you look then the challenge is starting now because the Black Friday is in November, then the Christmas in December, then the February is a Chinese New Year. And in these 3 months, it's -- then this affecting significantly. And the huge increase of cash, for example, is about end of March because -- or beginning of March, because we're still selling all these products on stock, and the new orders will start increasing from the March when the Chinese new year is over. Then this is something which is, let's say, especially in this period, is quite different than the other part of the year.

Yes. The good news as well is that we have no risk in our inventory. So if you have a television, for example, or smartphones, there are computers, they are old after 3 to 6 months, and you have to write them off and sell them at lower prices. We don't have that risk. So whatever we have on stock, we can sell in a good way. We can -- even if it's end-of-life product because we will start with the Gen 3, we are more than happy to give some good discounts on the old line without touching the new ones. So the mix of margin will be very healthy, gives us a lot of opportunities. So that's why there is -- if we have -- as long as we have enough cash, there is no need to risk not making the revenues that we plan because we are a bit too short in stock.

Sounds good. I understand. And last but not least, due to your global operating business activities, even though there's right now no substantial effect on currency effects. Could you somehow explain your strategy, how you deal with different currencies?

I mean mainly it's U.S. dollar and in the last year, we had some small negative effects from currency exchange rates, but we are doing this in a very conservative way. So we are not gambling with currencies. Our CFO is usually -- if he sees that the dollar is increasing, he buys some dollars and save something. So it's -- we are very conservative. We don't have a specialist working here and checking every day and making a bet will the dollar go up or down and as well the effects that are on a single-digit level, have no influence, not main influence on our margin because our gross margin is good enough. Does this somehow answer your question, [ Neil ]?

It does, yes. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Fingers crossed for the second half of the year and look forward to seeing you next week in Hamburg.

Thank you very much for your questions. And we move further with Viren Krylov. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself. Now Mr. Krylov.

I have 2 questions, one for Dimitrov, one for Wolfgang. Dimitrov, out of those 90 people which are occupied in the R&D, what percent are involved in new projects, which the public doesn't know about.

No, it's -- I cannot say. Really, I can tell how the internal organizations work for. Because for a company, it's very important to keep the -- even if it's going bigger and bigger, to keep the start-up feeling, especially for development. And all these people is lead to different teams. Some of them is in the 2 teams and 1 team. In each team, there's the 5 to 6 people, a very small number of people, which working all the time together and their target is to achieve and to make the best product for the -- fastest possible without -- but not to help say, without to -- I forget the word, but without affecting the quality or everything. And this is a small team operating independently. And this is some kind of the need because today, if you make -- we're working on 10 products, which means this is at least 10 teams. And 10 teams, 5, 6 people each means at least 60 peoples working for the new products. But on the same way, these people are also working on supporting existing products, that's -- there's nobody that, okay, I work only for new products. I don't look what is behind me. I think it's -- every one of our people in R&D team have own history for the product, and they're supporting old one and making new one at the same time. For this one, the question is not so easy. Today, it's 50. Tomorrow, maybe 60. A day after a week, could be 35, it depends on the -- it's a very dynamic process here, yes.

I wanted to know about the things which are not on the table.

The secret of our product that the public does know is that the public doesn't know.

Okay. Second question for Mr. Wolfgang. If any news from American, I didn't hear, you mentioned nothing about America and U.K. anything is happening there?

I mentioned the U.K. We have a person for the U.K. now on board. We are a bit late with that, but we see that we make some good progress there. We will start in the U.K. as well with Amazon to do direct business that was a very good success in other regions as well. Although we are controlling that Amazon will not be a too dominant player because we don't want to be dependent on one company, but we are far away from that. So in U.K., we see some first steps, and that's what I call that the sales pipeline is filling. In the United States, we have a solid development. We are growing, and we are growing like 50% or over 50%, but it's -- on still on a very small level. So we are doing a lot of things, optimizing the Amazon presence. We want to go as well in the U.S. to be a direct business partner of Amazon, not only be on the marketplace, which usually accelerates the business. We have a new listing now in Home Depot in the United States, which can be a huge milestone if we do the right things now. But it's on a very low level still, but going in the right direction, let me say like that.

Is there any chance to get into big supermarkets in Home depot...

Home Depot is the biggest do-it-yourself chain in the United States. We make the first steps, and then we will see if we can manage to be really visible and present, which usually takes quite some time.

Thank you. I was not happy with the price of the share, but today, I'm very happy with the price of the share.

So you're the only one that is not happy with the price of the share because in the last 12 months, we doubled almost.

No, no, I was not at the last meeting, but today, I'm extremely happy.

Somethings not depend on us. We're just doing our business. You make the share price.

And in the meantime, we received an amount of questions in our chat, and I will start with the first one from Dimitar [ Genchev ]. How is the new Shelly microcontroller going to work? Is it going to be built into the product during manufacturing process? Or will it be added later?

No. It's -- we will build during the manufacturing process. It's not added later. It's something which needs to be ordered and prepared before and during the manufacturing process should be build-in into product.

Okay. And his second question. On the side lines, you are disclosing some small deals on with -- one with Corner Solutions for EUR 100,000 and one with Expat capital to lend EUR 250,000 ( sic ) [ EUR 280,000 ] at 1%. Can you share any details on this and how they fit in the big picture?

Yes. Well, the first one I can tell you, this is the one small technology company, which offering energy solutions, but this is the energy platform for our big customers, like bank institution or manufacturing facilities. It's something which we are not working for because our application is mainly prepared for the -- for end customers, controlling office buildings, houses, but not the -- not so much in energy markets, what they do. And this company shows that's very interesting products and results and asking for a possible investment is not together or it's not just us. We are the [ somehow ] technology partner, but together with one of the VC funds here, which also invest in them. And we said we just separate the investment, half of coming from us, half is coming from this VC. And the invest is good in this company. also, which is very important for this company, they're still -- they're using mainly Shelly devices to deliver the service to their customers, which also is interesting for us. And in this reason, this is fit to us, mean we understand the business. We know how they do. We can help them out in the future and also they're using our products. And this is the key factors, based on which we decide that let's invest them and to see how they cover some direction with solutions which we're not ready for. And this is the reason for the first one, yes. For the second one, it's regarding the Expat, excuse me, with our CFO, I need to check. It's just a loan. It's nothing else than a loan. Maybe you can ask about the percentage and everything. But don't forget that this is the long-term partner, which especially they help us to be in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. And this is the company which help us a lot. And the amount is not huge, it will be just a year old. And this is nothing special behind that. This is just something that's okay, partnership with them and some loan which we gave them.

I received 2 questions from Thomas. Could you talk about the acquisition of GOAP. What are the strategic thinking and how much does GOAP contribute to revenue and earnings in 2023?

Yes. So what is the strategic thinking? The strategic thinking was entering the Z-Wave market, which is a new market for us because we are traditionally in the WiFi segment. Z-Wave is the biggest and oldest Smart Home Platform that is especially used by some security companies like Alarm.com and there are a couple of others. We are in contact with some of them so that they could use our new Z-Wave products to integrate this in their offer, which could really be a good push of development. The second strategic thinking behind that was it is not easy to get good developers. And we have -- with Qubino, if you want, we bought a full development team in Slovenia. And this is as well something that is important. So we can, in the future, we can more and more combined forces. We help them to develop their products better. But if we have a shortage of resources, we can use them as well. So now what is the effect on revenue this year, this is a bit complicated to say because we just have launched the first 2 products. I was expecting for this year something like EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million, not more. Because we're just now in the second half, started selling the products. This can be way too low because we see a huge -- or hear a huge demand from Z-Wave specialists, but it needs to be proven. And if you know me, I'm always very conservative and not saying everything will be nice and we will sell EUR 10 million, everything will be easy. The numbers -- the real numbers from Qubino, we will see in the next year. But right now, it looks like we will overachieve our own business plan with Qubino.

Yes. And for [ Racunal ] they have -- they achieved, equipped with Shelly devices, the new Shelly devices with their new cruise chip for thermostat and this cruise ship is the [indiscernible] and they at the moment producing the devices for the next bigger, one of the biggest cruise ships in the world in Italy.

And the second question regarding inventory decrease. Your inventory decreased significantly from BGN 23 million to BGN 17.7 million, in MBGN, in H1. What drove this decrease?

This was our strategic decision to reduce from the originally planned 5 months of stock reach to 3. Because we said that now supply chains are optimized, and we can work with a lower stock to have more cash. On the other hand, we discussed in the last 4 weeks that we need to increase now because we want to be on the safe side to reach our 50% plus revenue growth, and that needs more stock. So that's the reason for this ups and downs. It's nothing that just happened. It was planned. So we plan to reduce in the first half of the year. And now we as well made a very clear decision to increase the stock because we want to make our revenues, and we do not want to stand there and say, "Oh, now why didn't we not -- why did we not order for 2 million or 3 million more and we could have made more revenue. That's a simple reason.

This is something also one going behind, there is a chip shortage few years ago, and then we keep a high stock just to be sure that every thing will be delivered on time. The chip shortage is over -- and now -- and we start decreasing the stock. But now not only that we're planning a lot of new products to be manufactured in the second half of the year. But also, there is another advantage. Now there is not a chip shortage. There is an opposite. There is -- the price of the chip start reducing because there is over stock for the suppliers. We want to use this moment because we know this is coming on the way. Then maybe after that will be another product or something else. But now is a good time to negotiate with them and to buy from them more stock as chips and different components at a good price, which will give us additional profit in the future. And this is, let's say, how it depends, how the market is moving and what happens, we're quite flexible that we don't just sit behind the world just because they are right there 6 months ago but not 3 months ago. And this is another reason.

I received a question from [indiscernible]. In expense, we see a 150% increase in bank charges. At the same time, the company has plenty of available funds, but less interest income. Is there any optimization work going on here?

So first, we have higher bank charges because we have higher bank activities. So that's normal. If you have more bank transfers, if you have more payments from customers from Western Europe or more money that you pay, that's a normal thing. And we have only limited influence on the bank charges. In the future, we might have some optimizations with the new accounting system coming, but this is not a very relevant number. What was the second part of the question about our cash.

The company has plenty of available funds, but lacks interest incoming. Is there any optimization work going on here.

I don't understand the question.

Yes, but our cash at the moment, we're not planning to do some optimization or to deposit or to do something with the cash to optimize and to make some money from the cash. Because as we say, is very dynamic. For us, just the best optimization is if we decide to buy not 1 million, but 5 million chips. The optimization of the price, which will be much better than any kind of the interest rate. And for this at least this for us is less risky operation because we know how this stock -- with what time will be used and will have a price for cost optimization. That's something which we prefer.

So one thing that is, I think, always happening. In a situation where you have cash on the bank account. So first, we get some positive interest on that. It's not that we pay interest as it has been some time ago. We get some interest -- very small interest on that. The second is, we have every day, I think, 10 companies offering help to spend or to invest our money. And I would be very careful with all those helpers because they all have the interest, they want to make money with helping us. So there is no one saying, come on, I have some good ideas. I don't want to have anything for helping you. And on the other hand, we explained now a couple of times during this call that we will need some cash as well to finance future growth. And this is the best investment from us and not putting it in, I don't know, 1 year investment where we don't get the money back as soon as we need it. So yes, we have enough cash. We have as well paid the dividend in this year where we need some of the cash or needed already some of the cash for and we think it's well invested in growth, in support, in stock, in everything that we explained now. So yes. But still, everyone is -- we are happy to receive help. If there is no payment connected to it.

And we received a question from Ricardo Gonzales. One question regarding the rest of Europe region. During Q1, you mentioned this decrease in revenue in this region due to a cleaning up effect as you were taking out some distributors that were selling a bit too aggressive. Could you expand a bit on what too aggressive means. Is that they were cutting prices? Is this why this region has been deprioritized?

Yes. So that's very simple. First of all, we don't have resources to handle all those regions. And second, what has been deprioritized is not the region, it was some specific channels. I'll give you an example. If we deliver products to a customer in Poland, we expect that this customer wholesaler sells the product in Poland. If we find out that he sells the product in Germany or in France and at aggressive prices. Sorry, we don't need a Polish wholesaler to deliver products to other regions. We have enough partners in the specific regions. And that's what happened. There were some players that were selling on marketplaces, not only Amazon, all across Europe, and this is something that we took in our own hands or we have dedicated distributors doing this for us. And this is one of the cleanup effects. Sorry, if we deliver to, as I said, to a wholesaler in Poland, he should develop the market in Poland for us and not pollute or disturb other distributors in other regions.

Okay. Thank you very much. Well, in the meantime, we have received no further questions. We, therefore, come to an end of today's earnings call. A big thank you also to the management for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. Should further question arise at a later time, please feel free to contact the Investor Relations department or us. We are very happy that Shelly will be representing at Hamburger Investorentag next week. Thanks for listening, and I wish you all a lovely week. Goodbye.

Thank you very much.