The Platform Group SE & Co. KGaA (TPG0) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the call of Fashionette AG on the Preliminary Results for 2022. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Dominik Benner, CEO. Please go ahead.

Yes. Dear ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the introduction. I would like to welcome you to Fashionette AG, today's webcast for the preliminary annual results for 2022. In today's webcast, we will explain the preliminary financial figures for the past financial year. We also present our targets for the 2023 financial year. And please consider our disclaimer for this presentation and today's call. Before we start, I just want to shortly introduce myself. My name is Dominik Benner. I'm the CEO of Fashionette Group since this year. I started with the e-commerce sector 10 years ago. At this time, there was almost no platform running in the fashion or shoe industry, and we started with the first platform for shoe retailers online. It was called Schuhe24. And since this 10 years, we developed a lot of platforms within different industries like shoes, like fashion, like car parts or medicine. And actually, we invested into the Fashionette Group in December '22. And from my point of view, this was a very attractive opportunity because Fashionette is in the right attractive position, we can develop Fashionette toward a platform strategy. And I think we have a good background and a very strong position right now where we can focus on and develop this group towards a good future. So let's slide to our financial results. Here, you can see Fashionette at a glance. Here, we give you a brief overview about our current figures. And just to start with the left side. So Fashionette right now is one of the leading European data-driven e-commerce groups. We are focusing pretty strong on luxury and luxury products. And right now, we have 2 main brands. One is Fashionette. Fashionette is very much focused on the German, Austrian and Switzerland market. And on the other side, you find Brandfield. Brandfield is very strong position in the Benelux countries, like Netherlands, Belgium and so on. And therefore, we also sell our products to additionally 13 other European countries. Though basically, we are a European player with a very strong portion in the Austrian and Switzerland market. In 2022, we had a revenue of EUR 165 million, which is more than the year before. And additionally, we have more than 1 million active customers. Also there, we found a strong growth and had also an increase in our orders to 1.5 million orders on the whole financial year. Furthermore, we have more than 350 brands in our web shops and in our distribution channels, and we come later to this. But there, you can find that we are developing more and more toward the luxury player. We combine more and more our luxury brands like Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton and so on and focus very much on this luxury industry. What we do in 2023? So again, I'm the new CEO since March of this year. So now I'm, since 2 months, in charge. And so together with our Management Board and with our people here at Fashionette, we decided what is the focus in 2023. And first, and this is the highest priority, we have to reduce the cost base. We have to make clear cuts where we say, okay, what can we do to reduce fixed costs, what can we do to reduce our variable costs like online marketing and so on that we strongly go towards a profitable company. Additionally, we will also optimize our product portfolio. Maybe you have already seen that we stopped 2 of our business units. So first, we decided to close down and shut down the beauty sector. This was not profitable at all. And it was, I think, a good decision to stop this business unit very quick. We executed it by the beginning of April. Additionally, we also closed the business unit of smart watches. Smart watches is also a very competitive market with a lot of discounts and a lot of price competitiveness. And it was our decision that this is not a market where we would like to focus on and the margins in this market are pretty low. And though therefore, we also decided to shut down this business unit. We executed it also by April 23. There's no strategic decision, and this is quite relevant for our Group. We decided that we make a platform model for Fashionette Group and that we would like to connect a 3-digit number of fashion retailers by this year. Maybe it sounds a little bit strange for you, but right now, Fashionette is not selling fashion. Fashionette has a broad and very good supply for bags and leather goods and also for shoes. Therefore, we have a lot of luxury brands for shoes and also for leather goods and bags, but right now, we do not sell clothes. And to be honest, it is my absolutely clear point of view, Fashionette is the biggest market for luxury goods. Fashionette is quite relevant. If you take a look at the customer, the customer, especially women, spend more than 70% for fashion and only 30% for shoes and leather goods. So I think we will enter a quite attractive market and we will focus much more on our customer, the women with money between 40 and 60 years. What else? We're going to improve our profitability. That is a quite relevant goal and priority. It is strongly related to our first part. Maybe you have realized in our corporate news that we already introduced and started a cost and efficiency program because, again, we strongly reduced our cost basis. Last point is expanding into international markets. Right now, as I said, we are selling products and have customers in the German, Austrian and Switzerland region, and the Benelux region and also in 13 European countries. But to be honest, from our point of view, we have subsequent products with such luxury brands that we can sell everywhere in the world. And there are a lot of markets where you can sell Gucci, Prada, Versace and other brands in a pretty good way with pretty good margins. And just to give you 2 markets where we would like to focus on. One is, for sure, the U.S. market and the other one is Middle East and Asia because in both regions or parts of the world, there are a lot of well-known brands like we already have it in our document, and we are more than convinced that we can sell it in a very successful basis brands to these customers. So that was the priority for 2023. Let's get a little bit deeper in our next slide. Here, again, you can find what we currently offer. Here, you can see things like smartphone cases like watches and so on and jewelry and hats. But in all, we do not offer fashion. But that was in '22. Then we have a look at '23 on the next page. Here, you can see that we already cut down a lot of things. You will not find smart watches anymore. You will not find beauty anymore. And we will directly focus on luxury fashion, as you see in 2023. We also decided when we would like to start with this very relevant strategic project by September, we have our first partners live and onboarded into our platform system. And therefore, we right now make all the technical issues and prepare all the technical software that we successfully run and onboard our partners onto our platforms. I hope this gives you a better understanding what we do right now and what is our plan for -- by the end of this year. Let's take a deeper look to our fiscal year 2022, the year where I was not the CEO. And where, of course, would like to give you a better knowledge and a deeper look into our financial figures. So first, here, you can see our gross merchandise value with the GMV. This is the figure which is quite relevant for the e-commerce sector and for different e-commerce players. As you can see, we have a very constant growth within the last 3 years. So here you can see 2022 until 2022 and '23, of course, the forecast. There, you can see that we have, each year, a good growth in the numbers. And when you compare it with our net sales, you can also realize that our return rate is pretty good. It is 40% and much below right now. And you can also find out that we have, I think, a very good relation between returns, sales and cancellations. The slide on the next page, you see the net revenue growth between 2021 and 2022. On the pro forma side, when you look on the pro forma revenue growth, we had 7.1% and when you look on the total revenue growth, you can find a good jump of more than 23%. I think this is quite successful for a very, very difficult market. And as you might know, a lot of e-commerce players did not realize any growth in the last year. On the right side, you see our adjusted EBITDAR, the adjusted EBITDAR was lower to the year before. And it was exactly according to our last corporate news, which was published before. And at the end of our results, we exactly fit the EUR 0.4 million adjusted EBITDAR. So it was according to our corporate news before. What was the reason? What was the reason for the lower EBITDAR. So first of all, we had a very negative effect when we look at the gross margin. So we had to offer a higher price discounts and make less price in a very competitive market. Additionally, we had a very high cost basis in relation to our net revenue, and this was also quite relevant for the EBITDA especially our marketing costs were pretty high and especially our HR costs were much higher than the year before. To give you more insights here. You can see the gross profit on the left side, we raised the gross profit to EUR 62.4 million. And as you can see in the percentage, it was declining from 38.4% to 37.9% last year. And on the right side, you see the personnel expenses going up to almost EUR 30 million, and the other expenses, especially marketing and especially distribution costs raised to EUR 53.9 million. Including into this, there are the distribution costs and the parcel costs from our carriers like DHL, UPS and so on. So if you make more revenue, you also have much more distribution costs. Let me go on to the next slide, you will find our international distribution of the revenue and the revenue split by region. Here, you can see that we have more than 65% achieved in the German, Austrian and Switzerland region. Its growth to almost EUR 108 million. And with around EUR 58 million. We have a new record also in the Benelux and other countries. So we have a bigger international part of our sales and achieve more revenue in our international countries. On the next slide, Slide 13, you see our development of earnings. For me, as the new CEO, this was not satisfactory at all. We had a strong decline in the EBIT. Here, you can see that at the end, the realized EBIT was minus EUR 6.4 million. And this was very much affected by some things. So first, we had a goodwill impairment test. For our subsidiary in the Netherlands. This is called Brandfield. Therefore, we had an impairment declined by minus EUR 1.8 million so this is an extraordinary effect. And it is affecting, of course, our EBIT and our result at the end. Also, you can see our adjustments. Our adjustments was EUR 2.4 million is more or less the average which we also had within the last years. Our adjustments are typically for non-recurring consultancy expenses and also for share-based compensation and for hidden reserves for our inventories. On the right side, you can see our net profit, which is a result if you take the EBIT and our financial result and taxes and therefore, we realized it by minus EUR 6.3 million at the end of the fiscal year. The free cash flow, which you can see on the current page, you can see that we had a pretty good development regarding our free cash flow. So it was positive by EUR 1.2 million, which is actually a quite good result when you compare it to minus EUR 15.4 million the year before. On the right side, you see our total assets. I think the total assets are on the same ratio, which we had before, it grew to almost EUR 88 million, and we had a very strong equity ratio by 52%. Our cash was EUR 3.8 million and our net debt by EUR 9.9 million. There you can see that we have very low debt levels. And with our credit lines, we can also extend within the next years. To give you a better insight view of our new customer growth and our active customer growth. Here, you can see the numbers for the last 2 years each. We had a strong growth of our active customers. And as you can see, we also reduced some of our marketing expenses, which were originally planned and with active customers, we grow by more than 10% last year. In this market, I would say this is also a very good result, and it shows that Fashionette has a strong position and it show that we have a very strong relationship with our customers developed within the last 2 years. And to also add this and I mentioned this, the big majority of our revenues are coming from active customers. And I think this is also a good example how you can -- a very strong bond with all your customers to a group and even if in the e-commerce sector, where everything is very competitive and transparent, you can also have a very strong bonding to all your customers in your market. On Page 16, you see the growing number of orders, which was also increasing by more than 10%. And the average order value is a little growing up to EUR 176 per order. But you have to always consider that in this number, our Brandfield group is included and Brandfield average value is much lower than Fashionette. Right now, when we look at the current '23 order value at Fashionette only, we have order value by more than EUR 350 right now. And there, you can see that this number is very much affected by lower order value in Euro because of Brandfield Netherlands. So with that, I will end my remarks on the financial year 2022 and present you what we intend to do in the current year 2023. In 2023, we have placed the focus on 2 strategic pillars. Firstly, as already mentioned in several places, we want to quickly implement our cost and efficiency program. So our cost and efficiency program on the left side, you see that the cost base reduction is very much our focus and we see a lot of room to reduce our marketing costs, reduce our distribution costs and also some of our personnel expenses. We want to take in a leaner and more efficient way in our organization. On the right side, you see some pretty much relevant brands and almost all these brands do offer a big range of good fashion products which we do not offer so far because right now, Fashionette is not offering fashion. And therefore, we enter a platform strategy. And within this platform strategy, we will connect some 100 retailers within the next years, and we will have a good start with this, beginning in September 2023. And as you already have seen, we have a very strong cut with not successful business units. We cut it and shut it down beauty and smart watches. In future, we will show these activities and the not -- in the discontinued activities. And therefore, you will always find the results for revenue and for EBITDAR in the discontinued business activities. What is our guidance in 2023? Here, you can find our outlook, first, for the growth. We expect an outlook by a plus of 5% to 8% within this year for the growth of the net revenue and our profitability, we are more than sure that we can have good cost effects with our cost program, which we are already implemented. And therefore, our EBITDA will rise to EUR 2 million or EUR 3 million this year. To add some more figures to you, we expect that our active customer base will also grow by 3% to 6%. And of course, we expect a much higher margin for our product and a much higher average value for our average basket and average order. All right. So far, these were my relevant points for the outlook for this year. Right now, I would like to start our Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Christian Salis with Hauck Aufhäuser.

I've got 3, please. So first of all, on the topline guidance, so what would be the negative impact of the termination of the beauty and smartwatches segment on the top and bottom line performance in 2023, please? And then secondly, on the profitability guidance. So EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million, this is still way below the historic margin levels of the company of up to 9% adjusted EBITDA margin. So could you maybe provide a little bit of a breakdown of the headwinds you are seeing or you are expecting in 2023 from promotions, restructuring expenses and when do you expect the restructuring initiatives to yield positive results in the numbers? And then finally, on the competitive qualities, the one key element of Fashionette's competitive quality was actually always a tight focus on handbags and accessories. Now you're saying that you want to expand into clothing and fashion. So how do you want to differentiate against fashion clothing players like Mytheresa and Farfetch? Excuse me, could you hear me?

Well, thank you much for this question. So first, we would like to start with the first question regarding the beauty and smartwatch segment, our beauty and smartwatch business unit. As I already mentioned, we closed this year. And for both of these business units, we have a 1-digit million amount, both for revenue and for the net result. So right now, we have not a detailed listing for you in this public conference, but at the end, it has an impact of a 1-digit million number for revenue and also for the net earnings for both of these segments. When you asked us for the headwinds, of course, we reduced our cost basis in a very significant way. And when you look at the right headwinds, which we already see right now, you see that the average cost per parcel is a little bit growing because all the relevant carriers like DHL, UPS and DPD, slightly increased our cost by 4% to 7% this year. And additionally, even if we will have a less number of total FTE or employees, we will also see with our existing employees, an increasing cost factor due to inflation and due to usual salary increases by our top performers. The last question was our competitive structure and our competitors. You mentioned, for example, Mytheresa and Farfetch. Both players are pretty successful running international markets. From our point of view, from Fashionette point of view, first, we have some brands which are only offering and working with us together. But more relevant than this, we have some unique features like the payment later structure and the rate payment, which is quite successful running in our systems since many years right now. And I think this will work pretty successful also in foreign countries. And this is my personal point of view, if you have such a big and very strong growing market like the luxury fashion industry, there's almost place and enough place for 3, 4 and 5 players, which have quite significant market shares and which have quite significant revenue developments with an increasing factor. So I'm more than optimistic that this strategic decision is a good decision for the Fashionette Group and that we will grow into this foreign market because right now, we have no sales in the U.S. market. We have no sales in the Asian and Middle East market. So we can only have, I think, a good growth numbers when we enter this market.

Maybe just a quick follow-up on the second question again on the profitability outlook. So my question was also about restructuring expenses, right? So how much of one-off restructuring expenses are included in the full-year '23 outlook? And yes, what kind of positive effects do you expect from these initiatives then on the margin side in 2024 and '25, please?

All right. On Slide 21, you have seen our outlook for the adjusted EBITDA. And of course, we have calculated our restructuring costs. In our current forecast, we have an amount between EUR 1.8 million and EUR 2.8 million for restructuring costs, and this is also included in our forecast.

Does this answer your question?

Yes. And on the positive impact in 2024 from these initiatives?

We have a call with the outlook of 2023. Of course, we cannot give you a forecast for 2024. But of course, as you might imagine, it has an effect to 2024. But in this call, we cannot make any public numbers for this.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions, and I hand back to Dominik Benner.

All right. So thank you very much for this good call. Thank you very much for the questions, which we have received. And yes, I want to thank you, and have a good day. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.