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

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Verkkokauppa.com Q2 results presentation. If you have any questions during the presentation, please feel free to send them to investors@verkkokauppa.com, and all questions will be then answered at the end of the presentation. Today, joining with me and also available for questions, CFO, Jesper Blomster; and Investor Relations Manager, Marja Makinen. As always, I will start my presentation with highlights out of the interim report published this morning. Then I will shed you some light on company strategy execution going forward. And at the end, then our outlook and guidance accordingly towards the end of the year. But if I start with the operating environment, it stayed pretty much the same it has been, throughout the year and previous years as well. The consumer is very hesitant at the moment, consumer confidence is low, although slightly picking up, but there's not a huge change what we have seen before. The consumer tends to see this time extremely unfavorable for discretionary shopping, which is impacting all lines of our business. It's fair to say that the market turn recovery has been postponed. And if and when starting, it is expected to be later than expected and milder than expected. We didn't see actually any boost in consumption in coordination with the first Central Bank interest rates going down. So we believe that there needs to be several of these. And especially the actual purchasing power needs to start increasing before we see any kind of boost in consumption. If we then look at the consumer electronic market, especially here in the Finnish market, we saw some untypical price fighting out of stock or stock clearance kind of actions in the starting of the quarter. And then the actual season sales first didn't pick up because of bad weather, and then when picking up, many operators starting with season sales as early as already in May time, which shortened the time for normal sales and normal margin generation. But in the market, actually, we slightly increased our market share. So we did pretty well if comparing to our competitors. At the bottom right, you see the specialty retail market in Finland, which has been decreasing for over a year now. So it's not only consumer electronics. It's also everything with discretionary shopping, which is quite heavily head-winded at the moment. So if you consider the surroundings, the consumer behavior and our competitors' action, actually it's a decent outcome that the revenue decline was only 6% if you look at the market. It, like I said, impacted all our channels or our segments. Positive thing is that our strategic cornerstones online channel, for example, did better than the average and especially proud of our own brands, which despite the headwind, increased nicely by 12%. And actually, now during the second quarter, we reported record high internal share of sales, 8% of all revenue coming from own label sales at the moment. As a reminder, we have set target by end of '28 to be at 10% of internal sales share. So we are actually pretty far ahead of our internal schedule. So that's a good outcome. There are always some categories which are doing better than the average of other ones. In home appliances, especially in major domestic appliances, we have been doing quite well. That category is actually increasing at the moment. We are gaining also heavily market share. But that market is also somewhat different. If something gets broken, the consumer is actually forced to refurbish or purchase a new one instead of the old one. So that is not that heavily volatile as TV market, for example, phones or computers. The actual hit we got then on a margin side, we were not able to maintain the same level that we had during the first quarter. We were not even able to get to the levels that we had previous year. Like I said, heavy campaigning at the beginning of the quarter in consumer electronic market impacting negatively. Season sale slow pickup and also heavily price-driven afterwards, impacting negatively our margins. And also in logistics, and especially in container costs, we see significant increase to previous year. So that's also eating up of part of our margins. On a positive side, we have been taking many mitigation actions, dynamic pricing tools, which makes us quite flexible on protecting margin in certain selected categories, own brands really performing -- overperforming in the market with higher margins, for example. So a lot of mitigation actions to make sure that we protect the margin in the best way that we can. If you look at the sales mix in general, we see that the sales is now more tilted towards consumer electronics in core categories. So almost 90% of all revenue is coming from those categories, which are typically of lower margin. So it's immense important that we keep on pushing our own brands, own labels in those categories to have a decent margin development going into the future. So if we then look at the P&L, the big hit we got from volume loss and gross profit loss due to the volume and gross margin percent drop. On a cost position, slightly two-folded. We see that personnel costs have actually increased. And there are some collective agreements, which are impacting the salary levels here in Finland. Also good to mention that in the previous year figures, we have a mitigation plan. We have one-offs, we have layoffs, restructuring, which are impacting that positively. So that's also part of the delta that we see at the moment. On the other hand, if you look at other operating expenses, we see a small decline. So not only mitigating inflation but also being able to be slightly below that of previous year levels. But it turns out that all in all, it's a negative result of EUR 1.7 million negative in comparison to previous year where we had EUR 1 million positive result. But it's still good to bear in mind that the second quarter is one of the smallest, if you look at the whole year, if you look at EBIT generation, for example, but also revenue generation. The third and the fourth quarter are by far the most important ones. Then some financial KPIs, inventory levels, extremely important in retail in our line of business, especially. I think it's a fair outcome that we are on the same level. I would like to have seen maybe a slightly lower level than this. But if we take in consideration the demand side and the tough season sales side, I think it's a fair outcome. We need to be cautious on looking at the inventory levels. The season is still ongoing, but we will take needed actions to make sure that there are no negative surprises coming out of this one. The first part of the year on the investment side, slightly below that of previous year. No big reasons for that, not need of any bigger investments at the moment. During the second quarter, we were enhancing our online experience, online usability, supply chain logistic flows, et cetera. Cash flow from operating activity is positive as it should be at this point of year, slightly below of previous year cash position and equity ratio almost on the same level. So no big surprises from this side as always. So let's jump into the next topic, strategy execution. As a reminder, the main goal for the company is accelerate online shift throughout fast deliveries. This is the key that we are driving at the moment. And I'm especially happy and proud to see that this topic is evolving as expected, actually, slightly ahead of schedule. I'm proud to announce that we have now connected all stores into our fast delivery network. So today, we are able to reach 1.7 million Finnish customers, consumers within 1 hour with our fast-moving assortment. Here in Helsinki area, it's actually 30,000 SKUs, 24/7 within an hour. So that's world class, and that's something that our competitors cannot reach at the moment. We also see that the fast deliveries are especially appreciated by our customers. The sales throughout these services are increasing heavily, 26% in the last quarter. It's not only making online shopping the preferred channel. This is actually a really effective loyalty tool for the company. So customers who are picking or choosing this way of delivery are really likely to continue purchasing with us. So that's a good -- not only a growth tool, but also a loyalty tool for the company. In addition, we are utilizing AI quite broadly in our operations, in our e-commerce operations. We are optimizing product information. We are optimizing how we show and offer products that are available right away and can be fast delivered, for example. So that's another way of pushing these fast deliveries. We are utilizing dynamic pricing quite broadly already in our assortment. We can optimize sellout, turn, margin, price leadership. So we have different strategies in place, and we can make decisions, actions during the day as we see it in the current circumstances. Secondly, I'm proud of that we have actually expanded our operations. We are now up and running just as we speak, in Estonia. So we are utilizing a partnership like I said, in our strategy, we are utilizing a delivery platform, where we offer over 10,000 SKUs at the moment for almost -- I think it's over 400,000 native Palin living customer base. So it's interesting to see how this additional growth and profitability stream picks up. And we have also been expanding our future-proof ways of operation. Trading service will get bigger and bigger and so we have been investing in that, expanding it. Nowadays also in the smartwatches, typically most utilized or most trading are products or phones, tablets, PCs, for example. But we believe that this is something that will get bigger by time. So if we then look at the latter half of the year, like I said, the expectancy of the market recovery was slightly different from how we believe that we would have seen a stronger demand already during the second quarter, which we didn't see. We didn't see any boost in the first interest rate increase that happened in the Finnish market. So what we can see that the actual purchasing power needs to start picking up before we see any major changes in consumption, which then will also impact our line of business, the discretionary shopping heavily. So the market turn seems to be postponed. And when and if it's going to happen, it's going to be later than expected and the recovery will be longer than expected. We do believe that we have done the right things last year with our cost efficiency measures, this year with our cost efficiency measures, making sure that the inventory turn is healthy, making sure that margins are protected, but still making sure that we continue driving our business, driving our strategic objectives and making sure that we stay above the game. We have actually won slightly market share, although the market has been tough. So we are determined to continue our strategy as planned. But if you look at the short term, we saw that the market turn and the expectancy for -- internally was higher, so it didn't happen. So it's fair that we update also our guidance accordingly. Now we don't expect revenue or comparable operating profit to be on the level of previous year, but to be below of that unless there is a positive turn in the market. And like I said, we have no indication in the consumption at the moment that there will be a turn, rather a slow recovery at certain point. All right, so if I wrap up the presentation, first of all, a tough quarter. But if you look, let's say, the environment and operational things inside the company, we can be fairly pleased with the top-line development better than the market, gaining slightly market share. Our inventories are on the right level. We were not able to protect the margin in the way that we planned ourselves. The consumer electronic market was more price-driven than expected. But we were able to push our strategic spearheads, own brands and e-commerce nicely above the average and own brands, like I said, record high internal share of sales. We are determined on expanding or continuing developing our business according to our strategy. We have been expanding our fast deliveries now to 1.7 million customers in the Finnish landscape, and this will be a good tool for gaining growth latter half of the year and gaining market share as well. So we are determined that we are doing the right things at the moment. We will be looking short term on actions how to secure decent profitability, but we are determined on executing our strategy as planned. It seems that there are no questions. So I thank you all for joining in, and have a great summer.