SSP Group plc (SSPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us on the call today. I'm going to start with a short overview of current trading and then move straight on to Q&A. So we've had a good start to the new financial year despite the impact of the Omicron variant on the travel sector in recent weeks with group sales at 62% of 2019 levels over the first 4 months of the financial year. Now as we said at the prelims in early December, trading had recovered well over the early autumn with sales running at around 66% of 2019 levels in the first 9 weeks of the year, so October and November. This recovery was led by the Rail sector at around 71%, which benefited from a return to office work and commuter travel as well as strengthening leisure traffic. Whilst the Air sector at 62% was boosted by an extended holiday season into the autumn across the U.K., Continental Europe and North America. Now as you'd expect, the spread of Omicron around the world and the subsequent government restrictions have inevitably had an impact on passenger numbers in many of our markets. In the latest 8 weeks, so from the 5th of December to the end of January, effectively the start of the Omicron wave onwards. Group sales have been at around 57% of 2019 levels. So nearly 10 percentage points down compared to the start of the year. And what we've seen is that trading remained resilient during December and throughout the holiday period before softening markedly in early January. However, recent weeks have been more encouraging as we've seen government restrictions being lifted in the U.K. and some of our Continental European markets, with sales now trending positively again driven mainly by strengthening trading in the Rail sector as commuter travel has started to return. Now turning to profitability. Despite some inflationary pressures, as anticipated, underlying EBITDA on a pre-IFRS 16 basis has remained positive in the first quarter of the new financial year. A reflection both of our ongoing management of the cost base as well as our continued ability to access government furlough support in many of our Continental European markets. Net cash flow during the first quarter was broadly neutral, and we've continued to benefit from payment deferrals, and we've now fully repaid the GBP 300 million drawn on the Bank of England CCFF. And that's left pro forma available liquidity at GBP 630 million at the end of the first quarter, so at a similar level to the end of September. And finally, turning to the outlook. Whilst the Omicron variant continues to have an impact on trading, we are confident in our ability to manage the short-term volatility that we're seeing subject. And subject to no material new restrictions on travel, we are very well positioned for the important spring and summer trading periods. Our medium-term expectations remain unchanged, which are for a return to like-for-like revenues and EBITDA margins in 2024 to broadly 2019 levels. So now let me turn the call over to Q&A, and I'll pass back to Stuart the moderator.

[Operator Instructions] Your first telephone question today is from Leo Carrington from Credit Suisse.

You haven't mentioned the flow-through to profit in the release or updated this, I should say. Can you give us some more detail on how the moving parts have evolved since we last spoke in December. And I'm particularly thinking about price versus inflation, operational efficiency in the reopening and the concession fees themselves. And maybe few question on the concession fees. When it comes to your negotiations with the airports, it's been well publicized recently that the airlines and the airports are negotiating hard over the split of the economic benefits of the recovery. Are you seeing -- would you see a risk that the airports choose to allow some of that strain to spill over into your negotiations over future concession fee levels?

So, just trying to unpack the elements of that question. I think, firstly, with regard to inflationary pressures, yes, they are real. I've referred to them earlier on and we first in our RNS. However, as I think you know, we are in a position where, generally, we are fairly able to pass through cost inflationary pressures on to our customers because of the sort of environment in which we trade. We are seeing relatively well controlled supply chain and cost of goods inflation. And some of this is because of the protection we enjoy through the sort of 6- to 12-month term typically in our purchasing contracts. I think the more material element of inflation is really on the labor line, which I think we discussed in December, and we're seeing that particularly in the U.K. and in the North American markets where it's pretty well documented that there are pressures on the hospitality sector. Notwithstanding that, that stuff that we built into our forecast and the guidance we've given you historically. So there's nothing really new as we see it today. In terms of the rest of the P&L, I think we continue to open and close units in line with the fluctuations in demand. I should stress that we assume right now that we are going to see a recovering trend from the impact of Omicron. Therefore, we've not closed as many units as we might have done had we thought that was going to be a prolonged impact. And that will have some impact on the flow-through probably in the second quarter, albeit relatively modest. In terms of the concession fees, we continue to achieve pretty similar levels of success in getting minimum guarantee waivers and concession fee resets as we've seen throughout the pandemic. So the point that you make, and it's a very good one about airports being under pressure and whether we're going to see any change in behavior. It's not something that we have seen yet. I think that it is potentially the case as we get back towards pre-covid levels of sales that we may see airports looking to reinstate minimum guarantees. But of course, as we start to get back to those levels of trade, it becomes less of a material issue for us, quite frankly, given that minimum guarantees are typically set up in the region sort of 65%, 70% of the anticipated concession fees. So it's not something that I would raise as a major concern at the moment. So wrapping that up, going back to the start of your question, Leo, on profit conversion. We would retain the guidance we've given you previously, which is clearly, we don't know what the sales outturn is going to be for the year, anybody's guess. But we believe that within the sort of range of scenarios we anticipate, we think it's still going to be towards the high end of that 25% to 30% profit conversion rate for the full year. And I think if you look at the half year, because we are benefiting to some degree now from furlough and other support from governments, particularly in Continental Europe, as we've indicated, we think it's probably at the lower end of that range in the first half. But again, stress, I wouldn't change the sort of central view for the full year.

Next question is from the line of Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley.

Just first question, could you please give us a bit more flavor on the 4-month figure? I mean, it would be great to get the Q1 because generally, that's how we model and give us some numbers for January and where things have bottomed in terms of the number. I assume it's still over 50% of 2019 in the worst weeks, but perhaps not. Secondly, in terms of cost inflation, it would be great just to get a figure for actual total cost inflation, both labor and input costs, if there was one on that? And then on contract wins, anything new there in terms of new wins or pipeline?

Okay. Thanks, Jamie. So with regard to the sort of -- a little bit more granularity on the short-term trading, one of the reasons we've chosen not to give you a lot of detail here is because, of course, over the Christmas, New Year period with the shift in timing. And by the way, we also have to think about the Chinese New Year coming in at the end of January, early February. It's quite a complex picture with a lot of moving parts. But in broad terms, I mean, you're right, directionally, of course, December has been was generally in the region of 60% to 65%, whereas January has been trading in the sort of 50% to 55%. So I mean, there has been quite a material step down between 1 month and the other sort of in the region of 10 percentage points. So as you can probably conclude, it's sort of been down to near 50% at the start of January, but of course, now starting to climb back, albeit from a somewhat reduced base. In terms of -- so I hope that gives you enough color to do some modeling. In terms of cost inflation, again, I can't give you a rolled-up number. It's not really the way we think about life. But in terms of cost of goods, as I said a moment ago to Leo, we have some protection from some of the price increases that are out in the market, albeit not all of the commodity price increases. Typically, that's running in the sort of around the 3% mark at the moment. If you -- and again, you will have seen this on the high street. We are seeing this around the world on the high street. Pricing in our sector is increasing, and therefore, that really is a basis from which we are also able to increase our prices without becoming uncompetitive. And as I said a moment ago, clearly, we do generally have a greater ability to flow that through than if you're in a competitive sector on the high street. In terms of labor inflation, again, varies widely across the world. As I mentioned a moment ago, the sort of toughest markets of the U.K. and North America. So in the U.K., it's running sort of near 5% is what we're seeing at the moment. And in North America, in our business is running at sort of 7%, 8% with one or 2 spikes in certain regions where there's a real shortage of availability labor. But that -- those are numbers that I think we've discussed before and are built into our guidance. So hopefully, that gives you a little bit of color, Jamie.

And anything on contract wins pipeline?

Sorry? Yes. Apologies, yes, not much new news in terms of contract wins. But we've really not had a long window as we updated you in December, and clearly, we've got the Christmas period intervening. Suffice to say, we're very confident about our opportunity to continue to win new space. We've indeed, I think, secured one or 2 more important new contracts, but not ready to announce those publicly, but you'll get more color in that later in the year.

Next question is from the line of Tim Barrett from Numis.

I had 2 unrelated things, if possible, please. In the statement, and just now you haven't covered leisure traffic, particularly. I wondered if there's everything to add color there around weekend trading or any kind of visibility here? And the second question, which is relevant to margins is spend per head, quite a few operators in the sector are talking about a boost to spend per head behaviorally, and this thing would you confirm that are you seeing an increase?

Okay. Thanks, Tim. Yes. Well, perhaps tackling that one first. I mean, we have seen a good performance in terms of spend per passenger throughout this year, both in the rail channel and in the air channel for slightly different reasons, but fundamentally, driven by the strong performance of the leisure traffic. So as we've said to you before, the recovery has been led by leisure travel. So I think if you look at the rail sector, what we've been seeing is a slight shift in mix away from commute to travel to leisure travel. That's clearly been a function of the sort of guidance to work from home. Clearly, over October, November, we saw a good recovery in commuter travel, which has now dipped off and again, is recovering. But the overall shift in mix has meant we've seen stronger weekends trading, and we've also seen a slightly higher spend per pax because that tends to be the fundamental driver as you would anticipate the sort of the vast numbers of commuters tends not to have quite such a high average spend. I think the other factor that's been important in the rail sector that we've discussed before has been the sort of flattening out of the extreme peaks and troughs in demand over the week and during the day part, which has allowed us, I think, to sort of generate better levels of penetration of the available passengers. So essentially, we're not losing some penetration in the extreme early morning, late afternoon peaks that we have seen historically. But -- so that's the situation in rail. In the air, it is very much about the recovery being leisure passenger led. And again, there, as you perhaps anticipate business travelers typically see more of their spend in lounges and it's actually leisure passengers who tend to typically spend more in the normal food and beverage units. In terms of the trends, very, very difficult to read right now. I mean clearly, we've gone through an unusual period because over December as we see a prolonged holiday period, our commuter traffic drops away anyway. So the sales are always in normal times dominated by leisure. So with the guidance to working from home, we saw in early December, it's been extreme. So really, the business has really been driven by leisure. And of course, that's one of the reasons it's dropped off quite sharply in January because we've not seen a return of the commuter traffic in the rail business, which is normally an important part of the mix over January, February. But very difficult really to read but a lot of what we're seeing at the moment is driven by leisure and hence, the good level of spend per passenger. So hopefully, that gives you a little bit of color to...

Next question is from the line of Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas Exane.

First, I just wanted to confirm that I heard correctly that the low point of trading in January was no worse than 50%. And...

Correct.

And then just one question on commuter volumes. Are you seeing quite confident in stating that what's driving the improvement is commuter travel. So just curious if that's based on third-party traffic data and you're benefiting from that? Or have you made any progress in understanding your customer base, which demand which customer segments and this used to be a pretty anonymous B2C business a couple of years ago.

So just to go back to the sort of mix, what we have seen is that in -- really over the last week or 2, we've seen this reasonably sharp recovery in commuter travel in our rail businesses, most mark in the U.K. because that's where I think the government guidance to work from home have the greatest impact. But we're also seeing that in France and Germany. In fact, the guidance really, I think, formally changes right at the end of the month. in France. It's still a slightly mixed picture in Germany, but we are seeing a slow recovery, but it's really about the U.K. But remember, coming from a very low base because there was a lot of dollar commuters on going through railway stations in the start of January here. In terms of any further granularity in terms of customer base and customer mix, we don't really have any. We're in pretty unusual signs here. But I would stress that we do get weekly data from network rail in the U.K. So we are able to see the recovery in passenger numbers, and that's one of the reasons why we can talk about our sales per passenger and our penetration levels.

And I guess where I'm going is a year ago, you made pretty conservative assumptions on the structural changes to customer behavior. You said we'll just budget for up to 10% volume loss there. Have you updated that? Have you advanced a little bit in understanding the behavior and the intentions for long-term promoter -- is that too early?

So the answer is no. I mean we did -- we carried out an extensive piece of research through a third-party consultancy at the start of last year, as you say, which clearly, we set out with our rights issue prospectus. And as you correctly say far, that pointed to a potentially a sort of 5% to 10% reduction in rail passenger volumes over the medium term. The only thing I would say is that we have been pleasantly surprised by the pace at which passenger numbers and spend has recovered in our rail business as we've seen restrictions eased. So I mean, I think for me, the learning in September, October, November was that as the restrictions did fall away, we got a pretty quick bounce back. So the fact that as you've seen, sales in our rail channels across the U.K. and Europe were back to north of 70% of pre-COVID levels back then over that extended period. I think indicates that getting back to those sorts of levels of volume over a 2-, 3-year time horizon certainly doesn't feel ambitious, and with the luck that might be such cautious. But we haven't -- I stress we haven't done any further analysis and research.

Next question is from the line of Harry Gowers from JPMorgan.

So I've got 2 quick ones, if I can. So first one, I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on how the U.S. and rest of the world has been performing over the quarter relative maybe to the group figures reported? And then second one, just in terms of plans now looking forward in terms of reopening the states. So will you continue to open up the states maybe in line with sales? Or can we expect 100% of the states open before we get back to 2019 levels, maybe if the outlook looks pretty strong post Omicron?

Okay. Thanks, Harry. So taking the parts of the world, we haven't really explored. First of all, North America. It's interesting that actually, sales in North America held up particularly well. Clearly, they were on an improving trend anyway. Actually, Omicron really didn't hit the states materially until well into December or in reality early January. So in fact, sales there were still through December, we're sort of running at north of 80%, but did then soften materially in January. So they came off by sort of 15% to 20% Again, we've seen -- I think the recovery there is going to be a few weeks behind the U.K., what we're now seeing in Europe, but it's certainly bottomed out and is now just started to turn the corner. But -- so I think we'll see the same pattern of behavior, but it was coming off a higher base in December. In terms of the rest of the world, it is the area where trading is still softer. So it's been across this period anywhere between sort of mid-30s and high 40s percent of pre-COVID levels. It's bounced around a bit. There are clearly a lot of moving parts in the rest of the world. So we've seen businesses like Thailand, India, Australia, where we've got large domestic operations, which were on a recovering track softened as they've seen a wave of Omicron. But again, in the similar to what I've just described in North America, we've now seen those bottom out and restrictions are being eased. Interestingly, some parts of the world have remained much more resilient. So in our space, places like Egypt as one of the sort of remaining sort of warm weather tourist destinations over Christmas remained remarkably strong, softened a little bit in January, which is really seasonal. But we're still trading at a ahead of pre-COVID sales levels back in December. So it's quite a mixed bag. But again, it's just the sort of -- I think what will happen there is that the large domestic markets, as I've referred to, places like India, places like Australia, places like Thailand, will, I think, recover pretty swiftly as restrictions ease. I think it will be a slower recovery, as we've said before, we're in the markets which are more dependent on long-haul air travel. So if that hopefully gives you a bit of color on what's happening in those parts of the world. Just to your question on reopening, I think you've really answered it. We will continue to manage the unit numbers in line with demand. We didn't close perhaps as many as we could have done over the last month or 2 with the view that this was a relatively sort of time-bound weakness. And what we've done is focus more on trimming hours rather than closing units because there are some cost consequences of that. But I think that we are now really gearing ourselves up for spring and then summer, and making sure that we've got the labor available to open more units with a view that I think we could be substantially sort of back to pre-COVID levels of openings by the tail end of the year.

Next question is from the line of Ali Naqvi from HSBC.

I was wondering if you could go through what are the sort of biggest areas of the drop through that we should watch out for? I mean what are the moving parts there that will drive the drop-through and your guidance for the balance of the year? And also, could you just highlight sort of the cash movements in details in the quarter versus the EBITDA generation, please?

So in terms of the profit drop-through not really much to add compared to my answer to one of the earlier questions. I think we continue to manage our sort of key operating ratios around gross profit margin and our labor margins, as we've said earlier, addressing some of these inflationary pressures. But I think that the movements there are very much within the sort of parameters we normally operate at. I've really covered the fact that we continue to get rent relief. I think the big unknown is really around government support. And as I said earlier, the -- that has helped us in the first quarter. It's helping us today in the P&L because if there is any good news in what we've seen in recent weeks is the fact that government furlough in most countries in Continental Europe has either been maintained or indeed been reinstated. So in quite a lot of markets. It was rapidly reinstated during December or in some cases late in November, which is clearly in contrast to what we've seen in the U.K. And that's really going to be one of the most material factors that influences the drop through Again, I'd reiterate the guidance that we've given historically sort of -- towards the high end of the range of 25% to 30% for the full year still feels appropriate. It will probably be at the lower end of the profit conversion, so probably near 25% for the half based on what we're seeing now because with the weaker sales, we are getting some additional support, and that's really the thing that influences the P&L. But it's not really much more I can give you. In terms of cash, Ali, as I've said, we're running at broadly sort of just positive EBITDA. Clearly, that means that we are given what we said about cash flow, we are managing to absorb the cost of capital investment and interest within our operating cash flow. From that, you can conclude that we are essentially benefiting if we look at the first quarter from the slight improvement in sales between September and December. So we've got, on a run rate basis, a little bit of an improvement in the negative working capital that's helped us. But we have seen a very slight lines of some of the deferrals. But broadly speaking, that those are the sort of main dynamics in terms of the cash flow. So really, better working capital from slightly stronger sales, helping offset the other cash outflows with profit only very modestly positive at an EBITDA level. And again, I think that's very much the flavor that we're anticipating over the rest of the half.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from the line of James Rowland Clark from Barclays.

I just wondered if I could ask on pricing, whether you could provide a bit of color and perhaps some numbers around the price increases you've put through across the group more recently to manage inflation? And also, is that as far as you can see, in line with the travel industry? And then secondly, on government support, Obviously, it's a key driver in the drop-through that we're likely to see in the second quarter. Based on the visibility you have and all the local management you have, can you give a sense of when you think that government support materially drops off? Is it Q2? Or is it Q3?

So as ever, quite difficult to give you a lot of detail on pricing. I mean, as you know, the backdrop here is that we have a reasonably free hand in many of our locations to pass through cost inflation increases into retail prices, albeit not a completely free hand. So we are, in many cases, subject to some constraints from our brand partners, which will often be an agreed premium to the high street and some reference point or it will be some contractual restriction with our clients, again, often with reference to high street brands or sort of equivalent formats. I mean the good news is that because we have a protected catchment, we are generally able to respond pretty swiftly. And we've got a pretty decent track record of managing cost inflation where we've seen spikes for various reasons over many years. And I think you see that if you look at the GP over a considerable period of time. I think what we're seeing now, which is clearly levels of cost inflation that are highly unusual. We are frankly already seeing the high street prices move, and that, of course, creates the basis from which we can then move our prices. So I mean I don't know about you, James. But certainly, I can see on the high street in the sort of coffee chains, fast food outlets, restaurants, you see prices that are being put through all the time. And this has been the case since sort of really the second half of last year. Clearly, we monitor and study these around the world, but I'm certainly seeing them myself. And that's what we're doing really. So it's why -- it's the reason why I have a degree of confidence that we're not going to see that have a material impact on the overall margin. But difficult to quantify at this stage. In terms of the government support and the impact on the P&L and the profit conversion Q2 to Q3, very difficult to say. It's really all about the sales, I think. So -- and again, this is a familiar theme. You'll have heard me say this before a few times now over the last year or 2, where we have seen restrictions put in place by government, which has impacted travel, generally, we've also seen government support in place, whether that be support in the form of grants or whether it be support in the form of furlough, which has been clearly the predominant factor. And that's exactly what we've seen here with the wave of Omicron. I think as Omicron eases, if we do see that pass-through and within the next month or 2 or 3, we're back to normal, it may well be that some of the government support eases. I mean my -- as a sort of basic planning assumption, I'd be assuming that we continue to get support over certainly this quarter and therefore, are able to be flexible around bringing people in and out of the workforce as necessary. It's -- I think it's tougher to assume that will be the case right through the second half. And again, that's one of the factors that informs the guidance that we're giving you on profit conversion. We're looking at the second half, which, of course, is a be waiting in terms of the overall profit for the year. And that's why if you assume that we've seen a recovery, we haven't really got material government support. It's one of the reasons why we're guiding to a slightly higher profit conversion with reference to 2019. Does that make sense?

That does. That's very helpful.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jonathan Davies for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Well, I think it just remains to me to say thank you very much indeed for joining the call. Hopefully, you've taken from this that whilst the recent developments have been unhelpful. There's nothing here that we haven't seen before and haven't been able to manage. And I stress that we still remain very positive about both the recovery in the spring and the summer as well as the new business opportunity. And rest assured, whilst we haven't given any color on that today, there's plenty of activity, which will bring you up to speed with in May. So with that, I'll close the call, and thank you very much indeed for joining us, and have a good day. Bye-bye.