Tokmanni Group Oyj (TOKMAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning and warm welcome to Tokmanni Fourth Quarter and Year 2020 Result Presentation. My name is Mika Rautiainen and together with me today to present the results is Tokmanni's CFO, Mr. Markku Pirskanen. As always, it's my great pleasure to say today that Tokmanni revenue was over EUR 1 billion during year 2020 and EBIT over EUR 100 million. Basically, we exceeded our strategic targets in advance. And in March, in 5 weeks times -- 5 weeks' time, we will then be presenting the new strategic target for Tokmanni. And I'll come back to that a little bit later. Here in the beginning, I will go through the figures for the fourth quarter and year 2020. Then I also will give a short recap on the business drivers, which basically led us to exceed our strategic targets during 2020, actually earlier than expected. After that, Markku will dig deeper in the financials. And in the end, I'll come back to the guidance for year 2021. And then it's time for questions. About the fourth quarter. Well, I can say that it was almost perfect. And that has a lot to do with all the preparations done during the third quarter. Basically, all these preparation gave us the opportunity to fully concentrate on our main season, Christmas season, and the fourth quarter. And well, basically, these are the results. Revenue grew by 14.6%. Like-for-like revenue grew with 13.4%. The comparable gross margin was 36.8% and it was clearly higher than during the previous year. And that also had to do with the fact that we could basically fully concentrate on the season. Basically, all our stores were fully ready for the Christmas season in the beginning -- already in the beginning of October. And then, of course, basically we didn't have to go to strong sales with big price reductions in the end of the year. So basically, we ended up with a record high gross margin during the fourth quarter. And of course, also a record high EBIT, which was EUR 45.3 million, 13.9% of revenue, really great achievement. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to EUR 89.6 million. Clearly a higher cash flow compared to the previous year. And then, of course, the earnings per share also higher, EUR 0.57, compared to previous years' EUR 0.39. And during the -- well, of course, very difficult and special year of 2020, Tokmanni in Finland, we basically became a discount retailer for everybody in Finland. Basically, a very important thing for us was that we got -- out of all the customers who visited Tokmanni during 2020, 20% were new customers, which basically means that the base of customers is nowadays a lot bigger than previously. And Tokmanni has really become a very popular discount retailer in Finland. During the whole year, revenue grew by 13.6% and we exceeded EUR 1 billion. The end result was EUR 1,073.2 million. Like-for-like revenue grew by 12.3%. Still after 9 -- first 9 months, we were a little bit behind from previous year with the gross margin. But due to the very good results during the fourth quarter, we exceeded the previous year's gross margin with 0.2%. And of course, one of the biggest achievements, as said already, was the EBIT for the year 2020, which was EUR 100.2 million, representing 9.3% of revenue, where actually one of our strategic targets were 9%. Cash flow from operating activities was EUR 151 million. Earnings per share EUR 1.21 compared to previous year's EUR 0.80. And basically, yes in the yesterday's Tokmanni Board of Directors meeting, there is a decision that Board of Directors, the proposal of dividend is EUR 0.85 per share. So a very, very good year for Tokmanni. And obviously, all the thanks go to Tokmanni people, Tokmanni employees, both over here in Finland and in China for excellent work done during 2020. Thank you very, very much. And of course, warm thanks to all our customers. We're very grateful for the success and our cooperation during last year and, of course, in the beginning of this year. Thank you very much. I already mentioned the Tokmanni business drivers. We have been driving Tokmanni business according to these drivers already several years, but especially 2020 since it was such a specific year. I would just like to open up a little bit idea how we see Tokmanni business. We start everything from the Tokmanni personnel. We are, today, more than 4,000 people working in Tokmanni. And basically, our aim is to be -- to have the best customer satisfaction in retail. So we have to make Tokmanni the best place to work in retail because if all the 4,000 Tokmanni people are doing their best for customer satisfaction, then we will succeed as we actually did during 2020. And this will, of course, lead to the revenue growth, profitability improvements. And of course, everything which is basically covering this story is the sustainable way Tokmanni is behaving today. But let me give a short recap on each of these areas. The best place to work in retail, which is our target, we basically -- of course, everything starts from the -- in a special year like 2020, it starts from the employee safety. And well, we're 4,000 people and we basically had 17 infections in the company during 2020, which is clearly lower figure than in the whole of Finland. So we are very happy that we -- of course, these 17 cases are very unfortunate, but we're very happy to keep the figures low because, obviously, all stores, not only in Finland, but in also in Europe and globally, are being very careful with all the infections. I think we succeeded very well to keep the figures very low. Basically, during last year, in the end of March last year, when we lost 30% of our customer visits per week, we made a decision that we will behave according to our values and we made the decision on the worst moment for us that we won't go to any -- we won't do any layoffs during the year. And that's also how we basically decided to do during the whole year. We actually hired almost 400 new Tokmanni employees during last year. We paid EUR 3.7 million as bonuses for all Tokmanni employees. And of course, we noticed our employees during the whole year with different small gestures, which were very highly appreciated by Tokmanni people. And of course, well, despite of the pandemic, 3,400 employees participated in Tokmanni trainings, which, of course, gave the Tokmanni people a little bit more hope about the better future, so to speak. And then, of course, this actually led to very high customer satisfaction figures in Tokmanni. Obviously, we had to make sure that the shopping in Tokmanni stores is safe and easy, and that's also something which has basically come true. We really decided to invest in low prices already in last year March. We still didn't know at that time what's going to happen during -- with this pandemic and in Finland. So we decided that we will definitely keep our eyes on the price, which basically means that we will stick to the discount retailers, most important mission which is the very low price level, and of course, the wider assortment where we basically have had excellent experiences with our customers. And during the year, the Tokmanni customer service was highly appreciated by our customers and we're obviously very happy about it. The customer visits grew by 3.2% and the average basket grew by 10.1%. So the Tokmanni fans, basically the people who visit Tokmanni stores very often, they basically came not that often to our stores, but they were buying a lot more at one time. And then we got a lot of new customers. 20% of our customers during 2020 were new customers. And we're very happy to enlarge our customer base. Also, for future, it's very important from our perspective. The Tokmanni online sales grew by 124%: leisure products, garden products. And we also launched the selective cosmetics, actually more than 5,000 SKUs during -- or actually for the Black Friday campaign in the end of last year. This was very successful launch and we will continue developing our online business. But I think that the most important thing is that our customers, they have found our online or they feel the customer experience in our online business very good. And the cooperation or the combination of online and brick-and-mortar works very well. We actually would like to call Tokmanni a real bricks and clicks retailer. And this, of course, ended up with EUR 1,073.2 million. Of course, the continuous work with expanding and improving the assortment boosted the revenue. And of course, the special efforts in the low price has strengthened our customer confidence, which during these times were very, very important. As already mentioned, we had our focus on employee satisfaction and customer service and we got very good feedback from our customers for this. Our marketing efforts turn to Tokmanni, the most trusted discounted brand in Finland. I'm very happy about this and we succeeded very well. All the destination categories grew very strongly during 2020. In apparel, where we basically -- or actually, it was a global problems with apparel business, we basically reached the level of previous year sales, which I think was extremely good achievement. In Finland, the market was almost minus 20% and we reached almost 0% level with apparel. So it was very good. And the target of comparable EBIT, 9%, we succeeded very well. The margin in 2020 was 9.3%, so very good. Of course, a strong sales growth improves efficiency and productivity. The store and supply chain efficiency also improved significantly. But definitely for discount retailer, every day low-cost is the most important driver for all operations and we were able to keep a good hold on this. And we will continue the systematic work with improving company efficiency and productivity also in future. I won't go through all these action points regarding Tokmanni sustainability. But in Finland, for example, these sustainability issues are being all the time more important for our customers. So we are seriously and systematically investing in making Tokmanni a sustainable discount retailer. There are a lot of action points already last year, which we are basically very happy about. But of course, the work continues. And of course, here's the figures for what happened in finished non grocery market. And Tokmanni was able to win market share in non-grocery market, which we, of course, are very happy about. But I also have to say that these figures, they don't include the online business. But anyway, a clearly much better performance than in the whole of the non-grocery market, which we are very happy about. And Markku, would you please tell a little bit more about the financials. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Mika. Yes, let's go up. Okay. Good morning and good day from my side also. So -- but anyhow, let's go a little bit deeper for the figures and I'll start with slide which includes 3 years development from -- of revenue and EBIT. And then basically thinking a bit that we have already couple of years done certain development actions and starting to see, and we have already seen and then starting to see more results out of our actions. So I have many times spoke about seasonality of Tokmanni's business. And certainly, as we all know, Q1 is the lowest quarter for Tokmanni; Q2, Q3 about the equal size. And Q4, clearly the biggest quarter for us. And if we look now here on the left side, you can see Q4 figures, revenue and EBIT. And if we start to calculate a bit with EBIT for Q4, it's roughly 45% -- 40%, 50% out of total year's EBIT and that's certainly very, very big share and very meaningful quarter for us. Looking at the whole year's bars here, we see from revenue side, that starting from year 2018 up to 2020, we have been able to increase the revenue by roughly EUR 200 million, which is a very good step or jump. And I'm glad to see also that we are able to somewhat utilize the increase of revenue, so that it has been flowing to our EBIT also. And so that means that from 2018 up to 2020, we were able to double our EBIT from EUR 50 million to EUR 100 million, which is very good result. A couple of words about the gross profit. We can say that gross profit or gross margin fluctuated quite heavily during 2020. And that space of a different kind of sales mix, which we had in 2020, and also one thing which Mika already mentioned, with apparel situation, and especially during Q3 for us. Apparel sales was somewhat difficult last year for everyone. We managed quite well, but that's clearly affected to our gross margin during Q3. But now when looking for Q4 margin, we are -- we see that we were able to improve our margin from 35.2% to 36.8%. And basically, there are perhaps 2 main reasons for that. And one thing is that we were able to increase our private label share. And other thing is that we started Q4 Christmas sales a bit earlier compared to last year, which led to the situation that our sales was more steady compared to last year. And perhaps one reason that was that the corona pandemic caused the situation that people started to buy products earlier compared to last year and that led to the situation where the sales was more steady. And we were able to estimate quite well how much we are selling, which led to the situation, but we had no big needs to make big clearance sales after the Christmas time, which, of course, means that we were able to, as a whole, sell products with a higher margin. For the whole year, we were able to improve a bit the margin, ending up to 34.6% against 34.4% last 2019, and that's good end result because after 9 months, we were a bit behind the level of 2019. I have picked up here a figure for freight costs, meaning import related freight cost, because during the last 2 months' time, there has been a quite much discussion about the prices of containers. It has been the situation that there has been a shrinkage of container capacity when companies are bringing products from China to Europe or to U.S. and that has been, of course, if you have a shrinkage of capacity, it has been led to the situation where the prices has started to increase. And our import-related freight cost last year was on a level of 0.8% out of revenue. And I have to say, of course, at the same time that that was the total expenses. And of course, the container cost out of that 0.8% is only one part. So you get some kind of picture how much these increases on container prices could effect to us. About the private labels, I already mentioned that during Q4, we were able to increase the share of private labels, ending up to 34.3% against 33.6%. And of course, the good situation that on yearly level, we were a bit higher level compared to 2019, only 0.1% higher, but still on a higher level. And that is one of our targets to increase that share. And of course, when we started the year 2020, we thought that we could increase more. But last year 2020, circumstances were a bit difficult because the sales mix was different. And as everyone knows, on apparel we have a quite high share of private labels and the apparel sales was only at the level of last year or that was a good result, but still we can see that it was only on the level of last year or 2019. Direct import share of sales, that's other target to increase this one. And we really succeeded to increase direct import share, ending up 26.6% against 25.6% when we look at yearly figures. And it is good to notice that this import through Shanghai -- we have a joint venture in Shanghai with Europris and we have managed to increase that share clearly, and that's good end result also. Operating expenses, it's -- it was a difficult year when we look operating expenses point of view. The end result was that these costs were very well on control. But still looking backwards to 2020, we had a different kind of items which affected to us so that the costs were increasing. We made different kind of safety actions for our employees in our department stores and also in our logistic centers. That's clearly affected to our costs. And also, some safety actions so that our customers felt safe in our stores. Other thing which affected to our cost levels, if we look on euro-wise prospect when volumes are increasing very fast, that's clear that it is not so easy for our supply chain and certainly effective to our supply chain costs. And as Mika already mentioned, we hired almost 400 new people into our supply chain organization. But that was good. We had a -- on summer time, we had difficulties in our share availability. But when we went towards the year-end, that was really clearly on a better position. And that was a good thing. Personnel expenses, EUR 122 million compared to EUR 101 million, 11.4% against 12.1%. Clearly, we were able to make this more efficiently and utilize the increase of revenue, and that was a good achievement and which affected to our euro-wise personnel expenses was our bonuses which we paid to our employees during the last year. But as a summary, we can say that we managed to achieve 19.6% ratio operating expenses against revenue compared to 21% 2019, and that was really good achievement, even the year was a bit difficult from that point of view. Comparable EBIT, we have had a target of 9%. And now looking 2020, we achieved 9.3% against 7.5% 2019. So basically, or not even basically, we really achieved our 9% target last year. That was very good. And already mentioned, we had a EUR 100 million EBIT level, which is good. About the balance sheet, financing and cash flow. Cash flow, 100 -- roughly EUR 150 million, which was clearly higher level compared to 2019. And the basic reason, of course, is that we had a better result, but also at the same time we had a good inventory management. If we look at the figures here, inventory level at the end of 2020 was EUR 225 million compared to the figure 2019, which was EUR 222 million. And they were almost at the same level and we were able to increase the revenue clearly. And that was a good level with EUR 225 million. Interest-bearing dipped, EUR 410 million. But when we speak about the so-called real loans, it was level of EUR 100 million. These rest a little bit over EUR 300 million are according -- in the balance sheet, according to IFRS 16, which said that we have to book our rental agreements as liabilities. But as said, this EUR 100 million was so-called real debt. And earlier, it was due to October this year 2021. But yesterday, we have reached an agreement so that it will be due in 2026. So it's 5 years, a long time for this EUR 100 million flow. Ratio of net debt against comparable EBIT, it was level of 2.0, which is very good level compared to our target which is 3.2. Couple of words about net capital expenditure, meaning investments. When we look at the figures here the whole year 2020, what was EUR 12.8 billion compared to EUR 15.4 million 2019. So there were EUR 3 million decrease, but have to say that the idea and plan was to be about the level of 2019, but due to this corona pandemic, we were forced to postpone a bit our investments. And certainly during 2021, it is -- it will be a bit higher level and we are estimating that it will be roughly EUR 16 million to EUR 18 million when we speak about the investments. And we also published that we are searching the possibilities to expand our Mantsala logistic center. But of course, there are no decision so far. But of course, if this kind of decision will happen, it will effect to our investment levels during '21, '22, '23. But let's see how it goes. And next, we jump to year 2021 and I'll give the speech again to Mika. Thank you from my side.

Thank you, Markku. Yes, about year 2021, obviously pandemic will have a strong effect on this year as well. However, Tokmanni will continue to work according to the business drivers, which were basically presented earlier. And we're basically building or continuing building the growth for Tokmanni also during 2021. We basically, we made several scenarios regarding the pandemic and what's going to happen with all the treatments and so on. And based on the scenarios, different scenarios, we -- in these current circumstances, we basically forecast a slight growth in revenue for 2021. And we also forecasted the group profitability is expected to be on the same level as last year. Well, basically also as mentioned already earlier, we achieved and exceeded the most important strategic targets, especially the comparable EBIT margin target. And therefore, we are inviting all of you to join the Tokmanni Virtual Capital Markets Day on the 22nd of March to hear basically more about the elements of Tokmanni future growth and about the new strategic targets. So warm, warm welcome to follow this virtual Capital Markets Day. Thank you. That's it. So operator, now it's time for questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] And our question comes from the line of Nicklas Skogman from Handelsbanken.

I have a couple of questions here. Starting out with your -- with the guidance for 2021, what assumptions in terms of benefit from the pandemic on your sales are behind the slight earnings -- or sorry, slight sales growth guidance? I guess you've seen a pretty strong Q1 so far, but what's your split in 2021 between like-for-like and the space contribution?

Well, first of all, as said already, we made several different scenarios regarding the situation, the pandemic in Finland for 2021. And based on this, what we actually did last year, the sales changes per week were quite dramatic in the end of March, we faced basically -- or let's say in the middle of March, we've faced a very high sales growth figures. And in the end of March, we faced basically a really strong drop in customer visits and so on. So we actually went through week-by-week, the whole year. And basically, we're making a different kind of scenarios for all these weeks. And based on that kind of setup, then we ended up with the guidance of slight growth for 2021. Yes, obviously for the first quarter, it's a little bit different. I also have to say that last year -- well, the sales figures for the whole year are very good. But on the other hand, we had a lot of problems as well during the year when it comes to apparel, when it comes to shelf availability and things like this. So it's a lot of different details regarding basically every week. And I won't start opening that much because it's a very complex picture. But anyway, like I said, several scenarios and this is the one that we believe in right now. Obviously, the difference between the like-for-like and the total sales growth has something to do with also the new store openings. The plan is approximately 5 stores. It's a little bit depending on -- also depending on the pandemic in some areas. So -- but we're talking about approximately 5 new stores during 2021.

Okay. But this main assumption, if we look at Q2, do you still expect sort of support from the pandemic in Q2?

I would say that -- well, first of all, last year we had, I think, it was plus 19%, 1-9, sales growth for the second quarter. So we're not expecting a strong -- strong growth figures from the second quarter. But well, you -- obviously, you can understand that in Finland, it has a lot to do also with the spring season, how the season starts and so on. So it's a mixture.

Okay. And I mean, you mentioned 5 store openings, but I see in 2020 you added just one store net, but still your selling space increased by 7,000 square meters. So what is the expected square meter addition in the plans for 2021?

We have said that it's roughly 12,000 square meters and it's roughly this 5,000 square meters. That's the basic target and perhaps we lower I think. So that's the assumption roughly.

Okay. Good. Two more quick ones. CapEx guidance for 2021?