Earnings Call: Q1 2021

May 14, 2021

Good afternoon or good morning to everyone, welcome to EL.En.'s first Q financial results of 2021 conference call. Today's call will be recorded, so will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the conference call. With me on the call, Andrea Cangioli, EL.En.'s Managing Director, and Enrico Romagnoli, EL.En.'s Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations. Before we begin, please note that there is remarks management makes on the conference call about future expectations, plans, and prospects, forward-looking statements. Certain statements in this call, including those addressing the company's beliefs, plans, objectives, estimates, or expectations of possible future results or events, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve both known or unknown risks, including general economic and business conditions and the condition in the industries we operate, may be affected should our assumptions turn out to be inaccurate. Consequently, no forward-looking statements can be guaranteed, and actual future results, performance, or achievements may vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation about the content, nor to update the forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date hereof. At this time, I want to turn the call to Andrea Cangioli. Please, go ahead sir, Andrea. Thank you, Bianca. Thank you everybody for joining this call we're holding after the release of the first quarter financial report in 2021. As usual, I'll provide you with an update on the most relevant things of the quarter, then Enrico will guide you through the details of our financial performance. Before beginning with my comments, I'd like to mention two very significant events that took place in the very last days. A very joyful one, EL.En. just overcame its 40 years of life milestone. It's quite an age for a high-tech company. We are a technology-based, fast-growing company with a deep heritage. Our age, 40, means that our knowledge, technology, and organization are based on very, very solid ground. Sad side of this celebration, and also reason why there was no celebration, is that one of the founders of EL.En., Professor Leonardo Masotti, passed away just a few days before the anniversary. I know that many of you met Leonardo in person and were, as all of us, fascinated by his vast knowledge and his ability to transfer it to his students, as well as within our organization. We'll miss him a lot, and we'll miss his insight, and we'll have of him a thankful memory. In correspondence with these two events, a celebration of the past and the loss of one of the strongest contributors to this past, I'd like to further comment that while our organization has deep roots in values, technologies, know-how that make it what it is today, at the same time, it is very flexible, very proactive, adapting itself, and renovating its structures and functions to the needs of the current and future time. I believe this is also a good key to reading the current performance of the group, in which, needless to say, we are extremely satisfied. The pandemic hits our markets and our facilities with an unprecedented blow early in 2020 in China, later on in Italy and in the rest of the world. Our operation displayed an outstanding reaction to the adverse conditions, an excellent response in terms of commitment of all our functions and all our employees in putting the company back on the growth and profitability path where it was smoothly running before the pandemic flow. The group was on such an outstanding path due to a mid and long-term planning that from 2017 on redesigned the approach to several activities, setting up all the needed inputs, the requirements in terms of expansion of the R&D capabilities, operational and logistics structures, which are allowing our current brilliant results. As you know, we are still far from having a normal day-to-day and business life. COVID limitations are still quite strict in Italy and elsewhere, though the pressure is being gradually lifted, and hopefully, we're on the right track to get out of this. Thanks to vaccines that were not in the picture at the beginning of last summer when we had the same hopes, if not expectations, that we have today, we now really hope to be closer to the end. Let me again express my satisfaction and appreciation for the way our organization reacted to all the inconveniences left by the pandemic. EUR 116 million in revenue for the first quarter is a record figure, and it is so close to EUR 13 million, more than 11% on revenue is a record achievement for a first quarter as well. I'd like to remind that for all our markets, the first quarter is seasonally weak since it follows the end of the year when capital equipment investors typically anticipate purchases due to tax reasons, and also due to the holidays at the beginning of January in Italy and the New Year break in China. Comparison with the first quarter of 2020 is highlighting phenomenal revenue increases. We are comparing with a quarter when our production sites and activities were down in China for more than two months. Industrial manufacturing was slowed down in Italy by traveling limitations and eventually halted in March. The same happened to medical and aesthetic centers activities. This is also the reason why gross margin on revenues appears to decrease so sharply in 2021. It is predominantly a mixed effect since in Q1 2020, sales in China in metal cutting, typically high volume and low margins, were extremely low, therefore allowing the higher margins of the other segments to dominate in the total margin. In terms of sequential comparison to Q4 2020 performance, revenue is lower in Q1 2021 due to the reason I just mentioned of seasonality. Moreover, in China, Q4 was somehow exceptional since it was also gathering pent-up demands coming from the first months of the year, marking the fast recovery of the Chinese economy. Profitability increased due first of all to increased margins, both in the medical and in the industrial sectors, and also due to the one-time expenses related to the employee stock, which totaled up more than EUR 2 million in Q4 2021. The most relevant of which was the stock-based compensation allowed to certain employees in China. The very high sales volumes was joined in Q1 2021 by a very high level of orders booking. As we mentioned in the press release, our backlog is at its highest level ever, substantially over the board in terms of geography and market segment. The very good news here is that all this booking wealth is coming in without extensive support of international travel, congresses, and fairs, which especially in the medical business, are very significant lines within sales and marketing expenses. Japan and China were the only countries where we could attend trade fairs in person in the last months, of course, on a local basis and without any international travel. We, therefore, have a very strong momentum going into the second quarter, and we also expect leverage effect to play a significant role in the next quarter. A few words on the main trends that we experienced in this quarter. Demand in laser metal cutting systems remains strong in China and in Italy, and in their export markets. The underlying drivers of such demand growth are the decrease in the cost of the laser sources and the concurrent increase in maximum available laser power. This is increasing the technical abilities of the systems on one side, allowing them to perform applications that laser simply could not perform well enough before. At the same time, on the other side, it decreases the price of the laser systems, allowing more and more customers to afford a high-power laser system for their own processes. The market is therefore growing, as you can see from our results, and growing very fast. Our results are paired by other competitors benefiting from this trend, making the segment extremely fast-growing, but also quite competitive. Andrea, sorry. That someone is just typing on the keyboard. Yeah, the keyboard. If there is anybody typing on the keyboard, please turn off the- Yes, because it's not. I see. Sorry. Okay. Let's see if it goes away. I would say, I talked about industrial laser cutting, and now about aesthetic. Demand for aesthetic applications was also very strong, led by our innovation and product releases in hair removal and body contouring applications. The aesthetic segment quickly gained traction in the post-pandemic transition, gathering demand also as a reaction to the limitations, as willingness to invest on physical wellness and appearance. Demand for surgical application is expected to recover throughout the year, as it is still suffering from the focusing of hospital and national hospital system structures on the COVID pandemic. The segment was also affected in the quarter by an issue in the optical fiber production process that affected sales in Q1, as reflected in the decrease in the period of medical service sales, which include consumables like optical fibers. This issue will be overcome in the second quarter, when regular flow of optical fiber sales for urology is expected. Finally, the first quarter was an excellent quarter for physiotherapy, back to revenue and profitability levels typical of ASA, our company charged for this segment before the pandemic. We need to highlight increasing difficulties with our supply chain. Shortage of metals, auto electronics and electronic components, down to wood and plastic, is making it very difficult to timely feed our production lines with the appropriate components. This is causing some efficiency problem in the production processes, increase of purchasing costs on several components, and the need to increase our inventory of parts in order to prevent a further lengthening of lead time. Our level of attention on accurate programming of the purchasing process is very high, but in the period, we cannot count as much as we could in the past on a reactive and flexible supply chain. To wrap up all these comments, we can summarize saying that the pace we are able to keep today is in line with what we had expected prior to the COVID impact. What we had expected for today, prior to the COVID impact. Having reached that sales volumes level, contingently, without the need of certain expensive sales and marketing expense, profitability is even higher than we were expecting, let's say, two years ago. I turn to Enrico for the comment on the financials. Thank you, Andrea. In the first quarter of 2021, in continuity with the end of 2020, the growth progression of the group continued after the parenthesis due to the effect of COVID, with a level of turnover and profitability back in line with the forecast outlined before the pandemic. In Q1, there was an increase of 59.5%, and we reached a turnover of EUR 116 million. The gross margin stood at EUR 43.6 million, an increase of 38.5% compared to the first quarter of last year, thanks to the significant increase in turnover. The comparison with the first quarter of last year shows a marked decline in sales margin, 43.2% last year, 37.5% this quarter, should not be true full, because the sales mix in 2020, as already said by Andrea, was markedly different, with almost zero sales in China in the industrial sector, characterized with the high volumes with margin lower than the group average. The 37.5% gross margin impact on sales is an excellent result if it was compared to the Q4 2020, when the profitability was at 33.8%, and it is due to the improvement in margin in both sectors, and it contributes significantly to the operating profitability in the quarter. The operating cost amounted to EUR 8.8 million and are substantially unchanged compared to March 2020. The impact on turnover, on the other hand, decreased from 4% on March 2020 to 7.6% on March 2021. Decisive in this cost aggregate are the savings in commercial expenses, almost -3% compared to the Q1 of last year, such as international travel and trade fair and congress, in particular in the medical sector. The only trade fairs we were able to attend in this period were held in China for the metal laser cutting sector and in Japan for the beauty treatment equipment sector. Staff cost equal to EUR 19.2 million, are up compared to the EUR 15.6 million of March 2020, but with a lower impact on turnover, decreasing from 21.5% to 16.6% of March 2021. EBITDA was EUR 15.6 million, more than double compared to the EUR 7 million of last year, and with an impact on sales of 13% compared to the 9.7%. Amortization and other accruals show a slight increase, but their incidence on turnover drops from 3.5% to 2.3%. In Q1 2021, the total amount of fixed costs as operating costs, staff cost, and depreciation showed an increase of almost 14%, and the impact on sales reduced from 37% to 26%. Thanks to the increase in gross margin and the reduction of impact of fixed costs, the operating result marks a positive balance near to EUR 13 million, with a strong increase compared to EUR 4.5 million for the quarter of 2020, and with an incidence on turnover increasing to 11.1% from 6.2% in the same period of last year. This is a record result for a first quarter, usually characterized by sales volume below the annual average, and therefore not able to fully benefit from the operating leverage. Pretax result was EUR 14 million, with a positive effect of Forex, mainly due to the US dollar, which appreciated against the euro in the period. Net financial position had an increase of approximately EUR 7 million in the period, from EUR 69.2 million on December 2020 to EUR 75.8 million on March 2021. Operating cash flow covered the physiological increase in working capital associated with a growing phase and with those deriving from fixed investments. The capital increase collected by the company due to the exercise of stock option assigned to employees amounting to EUR 3.2 million in the three months, and contributed to the improvement of the financial position. Part of the liquidity will be used for the payment of the dividend of EUR 0.4 per share the next May 26th. Looking to the turnover breakdown by business, the overall growth, close to the 60%, is much stronger in the industrial sector that was almost stopped in the first quarter of 2020. In the medical sector, which in 2021 accounted approximately 57% of the group turnover, the lockdown restriction have had more deleterious effect on the surgical segment than on the others, due to the difficulty to access in the hospitals and the focus of hospital activities on COVID treatment. We hope to be able to recover in the coming quarters. The decrease in turnover medical service derives from a temporary difficulty recorded in the production of stereoscopic unit, as already said by Andrea. The jump in the sales of aesthetic segment has a very significant value, which is only partially diluted in comparison with Q1 2020 hit by the pandemic. It is based on the solid growth, in particular in hair removal and body contouring application, thanks to an offer of innovative system that are able to meet the needs of the demand that, after a pause for the first wave of the pandemic, has gradually returned to growth. In the industrial sector, the comparison with Q1 2021 is not a significant benchmark, in particular for the cutting segment, where about two-thirds of the activities are carried out in China. However, this should not detract from the exceptional performance highlighted by the cutting sector, which is working at very high rates. These are the production and sales volume for which the production capacity has been increased with important investment now used in an increasing manner, also allowing the beneficial effect of the operating leverage to be constant. The trend was also very positive for the other main segments, such as marking and laser sourcing, in rapid recovery from the last year. Looking at the distribution of revenue by geographical areas, we can see the return of the weight of sales in Italy, around 20% of the global sales. In medical sector, we have a strong increase in all the areas of activities, with a jump of Italy from 70% that was partially hit by COVID lockdown in Q1 2020, when the sales on international markets did not decline significantly in the first quarter of 2020. In industrial sector, the most marked increase in turnover were recorded in China, which practically didn't work in the first quarter of 2020 in China. In the Q1, we achieved EUR 28 million of turnover. When last year only EUR 7 million was realized. Also, we had a good performance in Italy, thanks to Cutlite Penta that was hit in the second half of March of Q1 of 2020. Andrea, please go ahead. To close our presentation with the guidance. As you know, we have always been very cautious in guiding you to the expected financial results. As I mentioned before, in this year, we are contingently experiencing an extraordinary pre-level of orders booking, a good level of good gross margin on sales, and a material saving in sales and marketing expense. We are living in a very unstable environment. We adapted very well to this phase of the pandemic, and it's hard to tell now how the post-pandemic politics and policies will impact on us and on our markets. For the time being, assuming we can roughly maintain the pace we recently reached, which is possible, the EUR 500 million of consolidated revenues is an actually achievable target. At the same time, and under the same assumptions, maintaining an EBIT margin around 10% is something we could definitely achieve in 2021. We are done with the introductory presentation. I believe we are now ready for your questions. Hello, do you hear me? Yeah. I'm Andrea Amio. Okay. Sorry because I'm with the phone because I wasn't able to connect with Zoom. I'm sorry. Congratulations for the results, first of all, really strong. I have a few questions, if I may. The first one is if you can provide a sort of comment on current trading for the second quarter. You mentioned some factors, but if you can summarize. The second question is about if you can, again, repeat the underlying assumptions in your guidance for the second half and especially in terms of pricing volumes, if you can provide us an idea of what you are assuming. Then if you can provide a comment on the recently announced transaction takeover in the U.S. on Soliton that seems to be in an area of business similar to yours. If you can comment on this transaction. Finally, last question, if you can update us on possible M&A activity this year, also reading across with this transaction. Thank you. Okay. I hope I remember everything. Q2 expectations. As I was saying, Q1 is typically one of the weakest quarter of the year. We are getting into Q2 with a good volume of orders. We expect Q2 revenues to beat Q1 revenues. This, of course, assuming that one of the items I mentioned during the call will not affect us. I need the production problems due to supply chain issues. The assumptions that I made when outlining a EUR 500 million revenue guidance and around more of 10% EBIT margin guidance are that the environment doesn't quickly change in its determinants that are currently allowing us to do very well in terms of sales on our market, and at the same time, inhibit us from traveling and therefore allow us to save a lot in sales and marketing expense. Those assumptions are, let's say, critical in terms of marginality, because as Enrico Romagnoli mentioned during his documents when he exposed position, we are saving a few percentage points on revenue currently in sales and marketing expenses that we are not bearing as compared to what was our sales and marketing life prior to the pandemic. Of course, another assumption of this guidance is that increased volumes in certain products should improve also our leverage effect. Last question was M&A. There's no update on M&A in this moment. We are looking around, as I always said, and I think that the results are every time confirming it, our most important M&A is investing in ourselves. We are growing at a pace which is double digits, but more on the 20s than on the 10s due to the investment that we are making on ourselves on the articulated structure that we have. This is today our main goal, continue to run the tractor, which is itself quite complex, and to bring it to the best efficiency in terms of sales growth and also profit growth. For what concern the Soliton deal, it has been extremely surprising. Actually, Soliton has always been extremely surprising for us, even prior to getting bought by Allergan, because Allergan paid 25% more than the market price. $550 million compared to the roughly 400 and change that was the market price the day before the agreement was announced. We are talking of a non-revenue company. Sincerely, we are very curious to see and to know how well this Shockwave technology will be able to reshape the body shaping the market. Excuse me for the repetition. They claim they have a breakthrough technology for body shaping. They claim this technology will reshape the market. We know the technology. We have been selling Shockwave system for cellulite and body contouring over the time. It seems like they found a very significant technological combination, or maybe simply Allergan will be able to find a very effective market combination in order to sell these technologies. I don't have any other comments. We will have to see. We will let you know if this technology will actually become a threat. On our market, a threat for our market positions that we expect to grow in the body contouring business. Thanks. Andrea, we have a question from Marco Riva. Go on, Mr. Riva, please. Okay, thanks. Written on the chat, but it's okay. It was regarding raw material, which is the impact you can expect, and in terms of supplies, in terms of time. Second one, how this element could influence on your expectation you show a few minutes ago. Thanks. The issue is the following. Each laser is made of hundreds of components. There are optical components, metal components, machine parts, electrical components, LCD displays, and there are several of these components which currently is experiencing, let's say, a sort of shortage. For instance, LCD displays. We use LCD display, you need one for every machine we manufacture. Now, in order to get them, I believe we are getting into deliveries over 18 or 20 weeks. We were used to have eight weeks. Plastic parts, we are having problems in having the raw material that allows our plastic parts printers to purchase appropriate volumes of plastics for manufacturing our parts, and we are not that huge manufacturer. We are at the very end a small manufacturer. Metal parts, the cost is increasing. There is not one single component which is giving us troubles. We are having troubles in several segments. Maybe the most significant trouble we have today is in laser diodes. You know, lens, we use at least one lens for every solid-state laser system. Laser lens is another item which is very difficult to source in this moment. The guide answer is factoring in that we will continue not to be perfect in our production systems. I mean that we will not be 100% efficient as we would, so we will not be 100% productive as we would, but it's not factoring in any disaster scenarios. Like you have seen on certain car manufacturers that had to stop production for one week or two weeks due to the missing of certain critical components. As of today, as I mentioned, we work closely trying to fill the gaps, but it has been a very difficult period. Finally, there have been two events which are negatively affecting supplies. One is the Suez Canal block, which slowed down several deliveries coming from Far East, and, I mean, delayed several deliveries. The other one is the Brexit, which indirectly has put more stress on the Italian custom officers, which are very slow in adapting to this new volume of work, which is now falling on them. We had several problems. Nothing, again, huge. A few weeks of delay of goods that were stuck in the customs rather than coming directly from the U.K. as they were coming before. Thanks. You're welcome. Can we ask you to introduce yourself before asking your question? Any other questions? Yes, please. Could you please give us some comments on the next step on the methodology product for the dermatologic treatment, sorry, in USA and in Europe, and some update on the commercialization of Tattoo? That's the first question. The other question, just a curiosity, if there is an impact on the temporary closing of the aesthetic center in Italy and Africa. Thank you very much. Let's start going over. Acne, we finally sold the first units. There will be total revenue in the second quarter. Again, here, we know that the sales activity currently is not expected to be booming and to be really starting until the United States doesn't get the FDA clearance. Because we will be able to sell a few units in Europe, we know, but it will be a few units and the big splash for these units is expected only after the FDA clearance and the full marketing. The state efforts will be displayed in the U.S. We do not have a date yet. We hope that enrolling of patients and also execution of the treatments which are part of the clinical study, which is needed in order to get the FDA clearance, will be able to move quickly, but we are not thinking of anything there falling in year 2021. For what concerns the MonaLisa Touch, sales of MonaLisa Touch were decent, but as you know, everything is tied to a very expensive multi-year clinical study to be performed in the U.S. We are reaching an agreement. We do not have the official amount yet, we hope to reach finally the agreement with Cynosure, which is our exclusive distributor for the U.S. and for a few other countries worldwide, to share the cost of this multi-year and multimillion program in order to be able to sell MonaLisa Touch back again in three years from now. In the meantime, for all the markets but the U.S., we are launching a new release of the CO2 laser, which is used for the MonaLisa Touch application. The name is MonaLisa Glide. It's actually a laser with similar performance in a new, more attractive box with a more attractive guided user interface, and with an option to use a second wavelength, which could be used effectively in order to improve the effectiveness of the treatment. This is for MonaLisa Touch. Then the third question was? Maria, can you repeat? It was about the temperature in the. yes. if there is any impact. We are having a very good year in aesthetics in Italy. You know Esthelogue, the company that is based here in Florence, close to us, I mean, together in the same building, had a very good beginning of the year. Even though in some areas and during the red and orange areas, the shops were closed, demand was very high due to our offer, which is really the top of all the offer in the medical aesthetics segment, both for medical, for hair removal application, where we have top-level hair removal lasers, the MeDioStar from Asclepion. We have also an entry-level hair removal laser system called Youlaser Prime, which is extremely interesting. We have at least three technologies effective on body shaping. We have the icoone, which is a mechanical massage. We have the DeepStar, which is a body shaping system deriving from superluminescent light matrices, and we have the high intensity magnetic fields having good traction in the first few months. The aesthetics market, both in the professional aesthetic and also in the medical aesthetics, has been extremely buoyant in this first month of the year, both in terms of sales and in terms of order booking development for us. Thanks. Another question? We have a hand come through with a person. Okay, no. Still I'm afraid not. Okay. Some other question, please. Andrea. Andrea Bonfà. Hello, good afternoon to everybody. Hope you can hear me. Yes. Okay. Thank you for taking my question. Andrea, I got one question, especially for the performance of the medical aesthetic. I mean, they said that the previous quarter, the Q4 2020 quarter, was affected by lockdowns across Europe and the world, but more or less, the situation was about the same in the first quarter. How can we explain this kind of performance from the medical and aesthetic sector? Is that an anticipation from, let's say, operator, from your client of the, let's say, openings to be, let's say, achieved in the following quarter, or how can you explain this kind of performance? Is this kind of pent-up demand which was not expressed before? I mean, just an idea, because if these are the kind of trends you're showing in a quarter which was heavily affected by lockdowns, especially in Europe, I would say, I would dare to say that the following quarter should be by far stronger, even for next year. This should bode well for next year performance. Thank you very much. Thanks, Andrea. It's hard to make projections, especially long-term projections. I can tell you that what we have seen in this quarter is high demand internationally. We did very well in the U.S. We did very well in the Middle East. We did decently in Italy and Europe. It was especially from international markets that we received very strong demand. We believe in this phase, we are getting to the level of demand, can be a little bit less, can be a little bit more, that we were programming, because in several countries, like the United States, notwithstanding the pandemic situation and limitations, people have learned to live with it and are acting almost like if the pandemic wasn't there, at least in terms of purchases. Moreover, I believe in the aesthetic, there has been a rebound in terms of demand, which, this is what we feel. When people, the very end users, not our customers, the users, the clients, the one that buy the services from the doctors that buy laser systems from us, are willing to spend more in this specific phase for their body wellness and their aesthetic because it's a reaction to the threat of the pandemic. It also is a way of spending their excess money because, there are several social layers which maintain their revenue, but decrease their expense due to the impossibility to party, the impossibility to travel, and the impossibility to dress up. They have more money saved to spend on their body. We have something which could be contingent. I used the word contingent several times during my presentation. At the same time, this contingency is putting us where we were more or less expected to be, when we were thinking about 2021 in 2019. If this contingency will continue in something stable, we hope, and I think it will be at least for the very next month. As usual, what's going to happen six months from now is beyond the visibility of our order bookings and it's only based on assumptions, which are what they are. We believe that we can achieve the results I mentioned, but of course, none of our results is based on solid order backlog. Okay. Thank you very much. If I may ask you a follow-up question on the, let's say, acne new machine and for the U.S. clearance. What's the timing for it as of today? The expected timing as of today is something in between the last month of 2021, but more likely at this point, to be the first month of 2022. Okay. Thank you very much, Eugenio. You're welcome. Another question? Okay. No question? If there are no more question, we finish this conference. Please do not hesitate to contact Enrico Romagnoli. He will be happy, or Andrea Cangioli, he will be happy to answer your question if you have some more questions to investigate. Thank you for attending this conference, and we hope to have you all at the next occasion. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you and good afternoon. [Foreign language] Grazie. Grazie mille. [Foreign language]