Verkkokauppa.com Oyj (VERK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to join us and see the results for Verkkokauppa.com Q4. Today, joining with me and also available for questions, CFO, Mikko Forsell, and Head of Investor Relations, Marja Makinen. In the first part of my presentation, we will go through the highlights out of the report of this morning. And then in the second part, we will focus on strategic development throughout the year going forward as well as how we see the market and guidance for this upcoming year. Then at the end, we will have key takeaways and questions, if there are any. So let's kick it off. Starting with the report. Obviously, not revenue development according to our expectation. We saw a soft market and consumer demand that we didn't predict. With the consumer demand, we saw that some of the consumption was allocated partly to traveling, mostly to services and hospitality rather than products. Obviously -- the figures from past year that we are pairing against obviously had some high figures, but still the consumption not on the level as it was the previous year. Especially in consumer electronics, which are the main categories of our business, we saw that the demand was not on the same level, it basically started throughout the Black Friday season, not getting to the same levels as previous year. And then it flavored the whole season sales as well. So due to these reasons, the total revenue slightly declined by 4%. A positive thing that the B2B business, which is not that heavily impacted by these kind of trends, obviously, not by the consumer behavior. We were able to grow in that area where it was possible and it also made sense. Nice strong development, growing by almost 11% the previous year. Also online business, obviously, heavily infected by the consumer behavior and consumer demand, especially the main seasons during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles Day, didn't have the same effect that they had previous year. If you look at the categories, like I said, in the core categories, we were not able to grow in most of them, few exceptions, computers and gaming. The growth came mainly throughout evolving categories and newer categories such as sports, toys, barbecue and cooking, home and lighting, for example. So the company's strategic decision to broaden the assortment outside the core categories outside the consumer electronic categories really makes sense because, therefore, we can also mitigate this kind of market behavior trends, which might not be always in favor of growth. And like I said, the consumer electronic market declining by really something we haven't seen that many times in history, almost by 8%. So basically, not reaching the levels that it had the previous year. Typically, in an environment like this, the whole market declining heavily. It ends up that all of the operators start adding activities, pricing activities, adding campaigns, adding visibility, which basically all has a negative effect on the profitability side. The second positive thing about the report is that we were able to defend the margin level, even slightly increase the margin percent from previous year, mainly to the sales mix that took place. So those lower-margin consumer electronic categories not gaining growth and at the same time, higher margin categories in evolving part of the business growing. This has always a positive effect on the average gross margin, but also making right decisions about combining marketing efforts and campaigning and pricing made sure that we didn't lose or sacrifice margin unnecessarily. In the cost position, nothing too surprising about that. Slight increase we saw in other operating expenses that we have had throughout the year. We have transferred part of our assortment from this own local warehouse to an outsourced warehouse because we are implementing an automated warehouse solution, and also the higher inventory that we are running in these outsourced facilities increase the total costs of that part of the operation. So combining these, not able to be on the same record level that we were previous year, on EBIT still a decent solid EUR 5.3 million that came out. If you then look at the P&L, again, starting from top, like I said, the revenue development, not according to our expectation. But I do believe that in this market situation, this was the best that we could get out, still protecting also margin and getting out a decent profitability. From the cost position, personnel costs actually slightly decreased, somewhat tied to the revenue development. So when the revenue is not growing, we don't need the resources on the same level and also partly connected to the previous year figures, including a one-off corona bonus that was paid out to the whole staff. Other operating, we already talked about slightly marketing spend, mostly external warehouse operations, ending up in operating profit of EUR 5.3 million and operating margin of EUR 3.2 million. So all in all, obviously, we are not happy about the revenue development. We are happy that we were able to gain growth in the areas where the market was in favor of it, protecting the margin and still put out a decent performance from the profitability-wise. So in this market, surroundings, I think it's a solid performance. Another big surprise was that the Board decided to propose to the AGM later in spring time to distribute the total dividend of EUR 0.246, which will be then installed in 4 different time periods throughout the year. So holding on to the promise of paying out the quality come dividend looks highly likely. When we look at the whole year, the revenue development has been positive throughout the year until the last period. We talked about the reasons behind it. The same picture is pended also in the online landscape. On the other hand, a really solid and strong performance on one of our strategic growth areas, B2B and we are well in line with our internal targets, reaching doubling the revenue by the end of 2025. From a cost position, not able to scale the business as the revenue development was not on the level that we expected it to be. So if we sum up the whole year, somewhat bitter sweet, good performance during the first half of the year and the third quarter, then market really not helping us, still combining 4% total revenue growth. I think it's a decent outcome. We can be okay with the online development, growing by almost 14%. So utilizing the opportunity that lies within the online shift, especially happy and proud, we can be by our B2B business, really good job done by our staff, gaining revenue almost 20% and really one of our key growth drivers at the moment. Sadly, and just missing the mark of last year's record EBIT by EUR 100,000 but I still think it's a good performance and nice profit for the whole year. Earnings per share actually somewhat increased due to the reason that we are comparing about -- against net profit and the previous year figures had some one-offs regarding NASDAQ Helsinki listing. A few things about the balance sheet worth mentioning and the cash flow. So inventories are somewhat higher than previous year, above EUR 10 million, partly due to the reason that we didn't have the revenue levels that we expected. But normally, we can quite fast mitigate that, so we are ordering basically every day, every week and every month. The main reason coming out of still the shortages in certain categories, in certain brands, in certain subcategories with chips and supply chain issues. So we really want to mitigate those problems, which will be still present during the first half of the year and make sure that the availability issue is not the biggest blocker for the company to grow. Cash flow delta the previous year, mainly due to the reason of higher inventory. Investments, historically high, almost EUR 5 million. We haven't been investing historically on this level, mainly due to the reason that there was no need for it. But on the other hand, now we have -- with the new strategy, we have identified areas where throughout the investments in capabilities and technology and scaling the business, we can take next leaves in our growth story. So I see it as an extreme positive thing that we were able to pull through these kind of investments, mainly focusing on the internal logistics solutions with the automated warehouse, some additions to that. And we are looking forward to searching and finding also new areas in coming years where we get -- we could through investment speed up, strategy execution and the growth story of the company. Cash position, EUR 20 million less than previous year, and half of it explained by the inventory. The second half explained throughout the extra dividend that was paid out in the beginning of last year. Equity ratio on a good level. And still, we have extra credit facility that we could take in consideration if there would be a need. So let's jump into the strategy execution part. As a reminder, 4 pillars in our value proposition: assortment; experience; speed; and trust. If we start with the assortment part, our assortment saw and development and growth last year that was on a record pace, so amounting to almost 80,000 SKUs at today's standpoint. Injecting few A brands that we're just missing in core categories, I think we are on a good level in all of the core categories, really providing the most exciting assortment. Adding new subcategories, making growth hacking throughout individual products or just utilizing the opportunities like EV vehicles loading stations. I think we might be even the #1 in the market in the Finland at the moment. So really being aware of what's new, what's trending and what's also a good possibility for us to grow. Obviously, main focus areas in a bigger picture, looking at categories, subcategories will be home and interior and an outdoor and garden for the coming years. Second part of strategy execution and taking the company to the next level is around the experience part. For every retailer, this is one of the most important topics or should at least be. In numerous surveys conducted throughout the year, we have always been giving a high note from our consumers from our clients, they say that the experience is on a really good level in a Finnish landscape. And it should be. It needs to be. We want to be one of the best in breed when it comes down the e-commerce, not only in the Finnish landscape or Nordic landscape, but also in European and worldwide. We also measure it internally throughout the MPS in stores, e-commerce, contact center that the numbers are historically high. So the consumer is really satisfied with the experience. We can also see that throughout the loyalty increasing, so our loyal customers utilizing our site and now offering more and more, not only in the customer side -- consumer side, but also in the B2B side. So that's also an indicator that we are doing things right. There has been many, many different developments throughout the year, some of those listed in the slide regarding the search, finding products, comparing products, enriching product data, facets and attributes making the reviews even better to be combined with the purchasing. So really making sure that the customer finds the right product for the problem at hand and therefore, doesn't make any wrong decisions. Besides obviously e-commerce, we also always ramp up and renew our stores. The in-store experience is as important because it's really connected to the roll-in entity. Last year focus was on the flagship store here in Helsinki, the third of the store basically totally renewed and now hopefully, pandemic, at some point, really fading away, we are welcoming all new customers to take a look at the great store and talk to the great staff that we have inside the store. So the third part about the speed and flexibility. It is very much in line with our internal logistic developments that we are running at the moment, so implementing an automated warehouse system into this building. We are full on track with the time table. The grid is standing, the picture that you saw, it's not -- just the picture from auto store somewhere around the world, it's in our facility in the fifth store. So it's up and running. And now next week, we will start to insert the products and the assortment into it and take it into use, could be already during this first quarter. So good in line with our internal guidelines and timetable. So the next interesting new historic part yesterday evening announced by the company. If you look at the strategy, we have said that we want to be a EUR 1 billion revenue company, including different kind of growth scenarios. This EUR 450 million when doing the strategy was divided in organic and inorganic part. Organic being EUR 350 million and EUR 100 million should and must come from inorganic activities. So really just executing the strategy, but also it is historically the first acquisition of the company as we have acquired e-ville.com, a Finnish site company. Why did we end up with this kind of company? So taking it back to the strategy, it is a perfect fit for us. We have the perfect platform for offering our products. But we don't have any own sourcing capabilities on site in Hong Kong or China. We are utilizing distributors. We are flying there to look at some fares but still, it takes quite a lot of time. And we have identified that, that could be a really, really good area of business to execute the growth and also support the profitability story because private label normally has a higher margin than the brands. So purchasing a company that has been on site for over 10 years with local people combined with some experts, really knowing the market, knowing the factories and knowing the process it takes us to the new level, having those kind of capabilities inside the company. But it's not only sourcing because a lot of the innovation and the prototypes, you can see already there at the fairs or in certain exhibitions or even on the street, which you don't have in Europe or the Nordics yet. So the speed to market will be a totally different game with this kind of a purchase because now we don't have to wait the brand to take it over and then package it and make it a product. The distributor take it into their line and then order from the distributor. We can really cut down 2, 3, 4 phases and get it faster, way much faster to our side. In addition, if we take our strong B2B and the customer base that we have, this own sourcing capability gives us a nice additional service that we can provide, so taking orders directly from our B2B clients. So we would need this kind of product in this kind of quality, in this kind of amount. Could you purchase it for us? So these kind of sourcing services that we could provide to our big customers, B2B customers is also a really nice addition to it. And probably underlying and supporting our B2B's growth story as well. And not forgetting that we will get another stream, another site e-ville.com in the Finnish side. Some nice revenue, maybe some new clients, we can utilize that also for certain products or certain categories that we can offer on that side. So we are quite excited. I think you can see it from my presentation as well, but it is really a good, solid display that we are executing strategy according to our plan. So the last part about the trust brand position. Sustainability issues and sustainability will be increasingly important to drive customers' purchasing decisions. It is a good thing that we have always believed in certain values on providing customers with a solution, fixing the problem rather than selling a product or upselling to a different brand because we get more money out of it, really fixing the product and being on the customer side in all those interactions. That, combined with the high sourcing capabilities and the know-how that we have in the purchasing department and the high quality of assortment is displayed in the return percent that we have from goods sold. In the year 2020, it was 1%. And I said this is one of the figures that I'm probably most proud of because we want to do sustainable things. I'm even more proud to say that last year, it was the same, it was 1%. So 1% out of all products sold were only returned. So what's the next step? So we want to make sure that all products that we can get back to the life cycle, which are recycled, return to us, we can display to our customer base. We have improved our outlet stores. We have ramped up an outlet e-commerce side as well or the products on our side. And we see that we can sell more of those returned products throughout the outlet channel because it is growing faster than our revenue, growing almost 30% last year. And the last step is that sometimes products get broken. You can fix them, you can take them back into the life cycle. Then they need to be and should be recycled. We want to educate the consumer to recycle those, bring it to us or somebody else who recycles it. And therefore, making sure that those parts that can be used again will be used again. And also the amount of recycling magnitude increased by 11% last year. So that's also overgrowing how much we gained revenue. So all indicators say that the life cycle is getting healthier, healthier and therefore, the sustainability issue is really going forward as well. All right. So last part, looking at the outlook. So from a business perspective, we strongly believe that the business model, how we have situated ourselves, how we have distributed different kind of growth streams, how the assortment is set up is fully in favor of the company is continuing to grow, utilizing the online shift and gaining market share also in core categories. We want to be the market leader in consumer electronic market, but especially in evolving and untapped categories. We have now proven that the strong balance sheet is not just there for the books. So last year, we invested more than we have ever done to execute strategy and fasten the strategy execution as well as yesterday evening that we are also looking in inorganic opportunities to fasten or accelerate the growth of the company. The pandemic is hard to predict. A lot of people have tried to predict it how it might end up. I think maybe the common understanding is that it will gradually maybe fade away or start fading away. At the point of time that it will happen at some point, we do expect that part of the consumption will be allocated to travel, which has been heavily headwinded the last 2 years. On the same -- at the same time, we see that, that kind of situation would benefit strongly our export business, which has also been heavily headwinded throughout the last 2 years. The second part about the pandemic. And normally, it comes down with a slight delay. The supply chain issues, some shortages in certain brands, certain products and certain subcategories we see -- still see them. We don't expect that dramatically to change throughout the first part of the year. So we need to be quite active and make decisions on how we can provide the best possible availability. So those issues will affect certain categories, more even certain subcategories or certain brands. Last about the survey just conducted some weeks ago, I think, but Finnish [indiscernible] about the consumer behavior in Finland regarding e-commerce. And it's basically 2 or 3 information that we get out of it. More and more customers will tend or focus buying in the future from online channels. That's not a big surprise. So online shift is permanent. The second thing that we get out of it is that they will prefer the Finnish e-commerce site, different e-commerce operators in Finland. So normally, it has been that the market is global and things are getting more and more global. This tells us slightly a different story that it's getting maybe even more local in the coming years. We can see that the demand for China or U.S. side is not growing on the same pace. China maybe with some tax relations or the U.K. maybe due to Brexit reasons. But sites and operators in Finland, Nordics and Europe are at the moment those ones that the Finnish customer is preferring. So to the last part and the brief, obviously, what do we expect not only in words, but in figures. So we are expecting to have and see a nice growth this year. We expect the revenue to be between EUR 590 million and EUR 640 million. And we also expect good development from our EBIT side to be somewhere between EUR 19 million and EUR 25 million for the whole year. We are not changing our long-term targets. And we are also not changing our policy of paying out a quarterly growing dividend, just newly we heard that another big retailer in Finland is also starting to pay out growing dividend. So it's good to be a front runner also on this part. So to wrap it up, the first part may be on the report. Obviously, we expected a different development on the revenue side. But if we then take a closer look on what happened, how the market was, how the consumer behavior was, we believe that we made that possible that it was possible to make B2B, like I said, strongly growing because that was not affected by the circumstances or the environment, the market environment and also making sure that we get out of a decent profit, although really not operating in a favorable market. Long-term looking last evening's announcement about the purchase obviously, historic. But on the other hand, just strategy execution. It was the first one. It will definitely not be the last one. Investments, into the internal logic throughout the automated warehouse system going as planned. We will see the benefits at the latest during the last half of the year. And like I said, we are strongly determined to execute the strategy, getting growth, building new growth streams and making sure that we gain our targets and remain a growth company. Thank you all. And was there one question? Yes.

This is Marja from Investor Relations. So we have got one question regarding our financial guidance for '22. Is it so that it's including the acquisition impact of e-ville.com or not?

Yes. So the guidance that we gave out is obviously including all scenarios that we have for this year, maybe good to remind that the stand-alone business that we purchased. The effect on the revenue development will be somewhere between EUR 5 million to EUR 8 million. So the closing is on the first of April. So the second, third and fourth quarter will be taking in consideration and the revenue impact from the stand-alone business is between EUR 5 million to EUR 8 million. And from that profitability about 3% to 5%. So the impact is not that heavy on -- as a stand-alone case.

Thank you. That's all.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for joining and listening, and have a great Thursday. Bye-bye.