Earnings Call: Q1 2021

Apr 22, 2021

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Asetek Quarter 1, 2021 Presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer Please be advised that Today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Peter Madsen. Please go ahead. Thanks, Nicole, and thank you to the audience for joining this Acetec Q1 2021 presentation. I have with me in the room, but on another line, Andre Slot Ericsson, our CEO. Hi, Andre. Hello. Hello. We've had quite a busy day. Our Board met last night and discussed and approved this report. And then this morning, we've had our Annual General Meeting, And we're now ready to present the quite strong Q1 of 2021. The way we'll do it is that Arnaud and I, we will be running through the Presentation will show it on the web app that you are probably in front of. And then we, as Nicole said, we'll have a Q and A session at the end of this thing. And you can either call in via the phones or feel free to type in your questions on the web application. With that, Andre, over to you. Thank you. We'll start on Page 4. Just a highlight of the quarter that's just So biggest, highest revenue ever in Q1, Reflecting a growth of 174% for Q1 2020. That was a rather weak quarter, So pretty easy to beat, but way above my own expectation with 174%, that's quite a bit above. Gross margins of 43% compared to 49%. We will obviously go or come back to that in detail. For those of you who have followed us for a while, you should know that anything above 40% is great. 40% in the space we're in is high. So whenever we have the sun and the wind and everything in our direction, it's sometimes soft work. But 43,000,000 is still more than a respectable number. Obviously, we also have a record EBITDA of 4.7% compared to 0% last year. We announced the SimSports Investments we have done and our plans for that, and we are still on track to launch new products later this year. We made an SEI stock exchange release early in April that Things look pretty good. We expect now a growth of at least between 20% to 30% Compared to last year, overall revenue of $73,000,000 So it looks good. We do expect On an overall level that gross margins will decline as already alluded to, but still way within our normal So if we go to the next slide. If we look at the current situation, And when I say current situation, there are, let's call it, 3 items that We and everybody else is struggling with at the moment. There's of course the COVID-nineteen, it has had a limited impact on us And if anything, probably a positive impact. But we have our full production capacity running business as usual. We have, of course, expanded our supply chain capacity to meet the increased demand. And so far, we have also avoided Significant impact to the IT shortage on a global scale. Although we have started to see it and noted, We have not been impacted thus far, but it is a risk. And the third thing that we are obviously still impacted about is Upfront is the tariffs. COVID-nineteen has taken all the headlines, Of course, and the global shortage of IP, but as Peter will probably allude to later when we talk about the gross margins, etcetera, Don't be fooled to think that the tariffs don't impact us. It has a huge impact on our market. The good news is that we are still getting along pretty well, but it is a thorn in the eye for sure. We focus on our employees' health and safety. We follow all the guidelines that we have to follow, of course, But our headquarters, sales, manufacturing, engineering, everything is fully operational. We have, I would even call it a very high sourcing activity. I think here in April, We are manufacturing the highest number of units ever in 1 month. I think we are approaching 200,000 units in 1 month. So we are running fast at the moment. And on top of that, we are expanding our workforce, of course, to meet this growth and also to develop our SimSports business. On the customer side, what we see is What you would call it continued positive signals. Things are looking good. We see good Response from the G and E business. From the data center side, there's not really a lot of news. As always, we have low visibility. We report Significant orders when we get them and yes, that's the nature of that business. As I said to begin with, we expect our revenue To increase on top of a very strong year last year. So that's really nice. And Of course, that means that our range of guidance is now between €87,000,000 €95,000,000 I don't think it's necessary to say, but I will of course say it anyway that I will we will I will Of course, go the extra mile to see if we can hit the magic €100,000,000 number. We hope, of course, but As the situation is, right now things look good, but we also know things can change. But just so you know, The hitting the EUR 100,000,000 number would be great. The range We came from more than 20. So still, we had expected a good growth this year also. As I said, our gross margins are expected to decrease. We are facing ForEx, we are facing, of course, the IT shortage. So although we don't have shortage, we, obviously, We have to pay for what we get and if not become cheaper lately, we are facing a tariff situation. And I don't want to go into any details because of our customers, but what I can say is that the impact It's measured in 1,000,000 of dollars within the quarter. So it does have an impact. And Finally, on the bottom line, we are of course also investing in the simsports business. Of course, that will have an On our income. But that's all a part of the plan. Go to the next, Tina, this slide is more or less the same. Yes, Probably been like this for a number of years, but there are subtle changes. And I like to go through it every time, and I hope to do it this time because It tells you a little bit about how we are growing our organization and how we are growing it. So if you look to the far left in our Silicon Valley office, It used to be more or less only than a few support functions, But we actually over the years have added product management. We have added a new wording called total solutions. That's for those of you who've been around for a long time may remember that word. It's actually FAE, Field Application Engineering, So that we have engineers close to our customers. Up until now, we have primarily had engineering and engineering Out of Denmark, but needless to say with the COVID travel restrictions and for other reasons as well being close to the customer makes sense. So we've actually added that. We have branding, outbound marketing, finance function and we also have a Part of management over there now. And so our Silicon Valley office is growing again. And the reason I say again is that When I lived there for 7 years, it was also a sizable office and then we scaled it down and now it's been scaled up a little bit again. Then in Texas, close to HB and L. We have management, John, our COO. We have sales In London, in Aalborg, Denmark, where I reside, we have product management, we have R and D prototyping, A lot of in house prototyping, sourcing, in house manufacturing, quality, order management, branding, marketing, finance And then of course Peter, myself and a couple of the other VPs are residing there. In Xiamen in China, We also have product management now. We have some level of R and D sourcing. Obviously, We have our outsourced manufacturing quality, order fulfillment and finance. And then In our Taipei office in Taiwan, we also scaled up a little bit as we now have total solutions, so field application engineering there as well. We have some R and D, product management and of course sales. So that's the global organization as it looks today. We are Roughly 140 employees. It's difficult to count because there are more or less new people Starting all the time right now because of our growth. Yes, I think that's what I want to highlight. On Page 8, if you look at the business segments that are, Let's say generating revenue today, we have the gaming and enthusiasts business where We have split that in 2. We have the enthusiast and do it yourself customers who are building their own PCs. And then we have the, Let's say more hardcore gamer type who is not necessarily building their own PCs, but buying Gaming PCs from our OEMs, Alienware and MSI. And then on the data center side, we have For GEET to HPE and Super Micro, that's a select of them. So we've pretty much been through it. It was on Slide 9 already. But Just looking at the bars, very strong Q1 following a very strong Q3 and Q4. And if we look at the margin just once again, We are obviously spending money. We have roughly 20 employees in the same sports department. So That's why you see the white line pointing downwards. And it, of course, will be pointing downwards for a while. If we jump to Slide 11, if you look at that segment alone, the D and E, It looks very strong again, both on the market side and on the revenue side. I just want to stress once again that on the gross margin level, in my book, It has said minimum 40%, and that's been my guidance towards myself for the last 20 years. And that's also how we do how we'll continue. And anything above that is gravy. And of course, we're doing everything we can to keep it as high above 40 as possible, but nevertheless 40 is It's the guidance, Dick. If we look at Page 12, along with the number of shipments, We, of course, also enable new customers and new programs. And in Q1 alone, we introduced 4 new products to our do it yourself OEMs. And just here in Q2, we expect to start shipping 6 new products. And we are investing in even more in product development branding and this whole idea of our branding behind the brand It works pretty well. And our partners are featuring us. They are talking about us. They are highlighting us So that end users, they know they get the real deal and not from cheap knock off from someone. That's right. It really seems to work well. If we look at our customer base A little bit. We are currently shipping to more than 20 OEMs. We actually have more in the pipeline. Top 5 represented roughly 90% of the G and E in Q1 versus 81 For the full year of 2020, the largest OEMs are the ones who have handled the crisis and benefited the best. I don't think that's a surprise. Of course, our ambition is to increase customer diversification over time. I don't know if it's locked or what it is, but it seems as we have been good at picking the winners Among our customers, meaning that our really good customers are also really successful. So therefore, it's really difficult for us to manage the diversification, but I'm not too worried about it. And If you look at the graph on the right, the 5 bars, you may say, oh, The customer concentration looks the same now for the last 5 years. Yes, that's correct. But keep in mind, the Name of the different colors is by no means the same. So what that means is that if one big Caller disappears, then the new one will come in. And that's why I'm saying I'm not too worried about it. On the IT side, I don't want to say much other than we are, of course, following the situation and there's no dramatic development since our last If we go to Page 14, yesterday we introduced New series of coolers with ASUS for their ROG stands for Republic of Gamers. And Asus have been an OEM since 2018, and they have been in the I mean, they have been a forerunner of this whole branding That we made since 2019. It's one of our top 3 G and E OEMs right now. They are doing really well. We have started with early on a simple co branding program, but it has actually Developed over time from or to that we are now on the retail box, we are on the Republic of Gamers webpage Talking about the Cool by Asotec, we have feature videos, Unboxing videos, we have promotion, giveaways, etcetera. So it's a really good partnership more than just, Let's say an OEM customer vendor relationship. So that's really nice. If we look at the strategic picture in the G and E business, I don't want to dig into too many details. But the goal, of course, is to dominate the market simply as that. And the way we're going to do that is, of course, we are going to Keep developing new products, new technologies. We're going to grow our customer base, our OEM base and of course we will support it with branding and marketing. Nothing rocket science here really, just getting it done. And if we look forward, I think the reason why people are buying Acetec is because of the performance, the quality and the reliability. You know what you get. And that's, of course, what we're going to push Going forward, we have co branding agreements in place. We're going to do more. We are connecting directly with the gamers Enthusiast via social media and online communities at Discord, etcetera. So all in all, I think we are very well positioned to monetize Our brand. If we jump to Slide 17, The G and E up until now have of course always been about liquid cooling. But the same It's of course also within the gaming and enthusiast market. So if we just spend a little time On that and recapping and perhaps introducing new people to it as well. The idea is that We see sim racing and sim sports in general doesn't necessarily have to be racing. We start out with racing because we think it's The most low hanging fruit at the moment, but in the longer perspective, it could be gaming simulation of anything from racing to flight Games to golf simulator, skiing simulator, they could be anything simulator related. And we This rating opportunity through our Esports Academy and our rating engagements, it's in fact Highly complementary to what we do already at Acetec. There's a big overlap of customers. There is a direct overlap in our abilities within mechatronics, the software, hardware and mechanics, that's what we're good at, at Asotec. And just like everything else within gaming, the racing sim market has really grown and is growing really fast. For us, the way we wanted to enter was we wanted to do it fast. We didn't want to Hire 100 people and then say we come to market in 5 years. So what we did instead was we Acquired a company and we acquired some IP from a company that's enabling us to go faster to market. I have to say that, well, at the end of the day, we need to see how much money we can extract. And that's, of course, we all realize that that's the judgment day that is when the The day that is when the revenue starts to dig in. But if we forget revenue for a second, I would say that these two acquisitions We have made it. It's working really well. We have a strong team both on software and hardware, and they are working well together with, Let's say, old Acetec people and new people we acquired. And I'm actually very confident We are going to release our first product already this year. And if you think about it for a second, within 12 months, Assuming that I'm correct, within 12 months, we've been able to buy 2 companies, start product development from scratch And then the end of market. And if you wonder how can you go to market within 12 months and say that it's From scratch at the same time, as you say, you would have bought something. What I'm getting at here is the first we are going to release is a pedal set. And for sure, the software was somewhat developed already. But the mechanics office, Everything we have patented, technologies in there, we have a lot of new stuff in there. Everything is grown from blank sheet of paper within 12 months. So in my view, that's spot on what I had hoped for, that everything we've learned and everything we know From doing liquid cooling, we could apply directly into this and that is in fact what we're doing. And if If you go to Slide 18, what you can see also is that it fits directly to this gaming If you look to the left of this same sports bracket, in every simulator, there is a PC And in every simulator, at least at the level we are targeting, there is a high end PC and a lot of them are The PC and Touche is already building their own PCs. And guess what, many of them, there is an electric liquid cooler. So So we continue to be excited about this investment, and I'm sure that it will bring us a lot of revenue going forward. Yes, I think that was enough about Sims 4. So if you go to Page 20, talk about data centers a little bit. On Slide 21, Q4 2020 was a strong quarter And the same for Q1 2021, also a strong quarter. No. When we get significant orders, we release them. So I think it's not a surprise to anyone to learn that there's not been a lot of New orders coming in here in the last month or 2. And there wasn't an order coming in today actually, but In my view, it was not significant enough to release it. But it is the lumpiness of the business as we have seen all along, and that's also what we see now. We don't really have a lot of intelligence to add other than our customers are happy with what they see and what they get. And yes, we keep executing on what we get. In the quarter, we had 3 new orders and That's why I said that I felt it was strong. And the demand was, of course, also no surprise driven by HB and Fujitsu. And just to illustrate that there is not a direct correlation between our activities And the order inflow, we have developed roughly 20 new server loops the last few quarters To support new customer wishes for servers and CPUs. So there's actually a quite high activity level. Also by fulfilling the orders that we got the quarter before, so the whole data center organization is actually quite busy. I still believe that the green the whole green angle about data center and regulation will be the main long term trigger. And if we look a little bit from a strategic perspective on the data center side, It is still to create a highly profitable and thereby highly sustainable business. That's obviously the goal. And the way we are trying to do that is to influence the influencers, whatever they might be, from journalists To politicians to OEMs, we push on all the buttons that we can. The way we try to increase end user adoption, it is pretty much the only way we can do it, is through our OEMs, both the existing ones but also new ones, of course. And the hope of course is also that for example with an HPE That now that we have success in the HPC space, the high performance compute space, that we can ride on that and leverage that into Other segments or even more HPC design wins, that's of course the goal. And As I mentioned quite a few times the last few years, this whole global agenda About green sustainability, carbon emissions, etcetera, everything plays into our basket from a strategic The CAF 22, of course, is to turn it into a good business also. And that's, of course, what we are working on. And In my perspective and from my perspective, as I've said before, we do need some of the politicians To put the money where the mouth is. It's not enough to claim that we have to be green and we have to do this and we have to do that. But then when we have really, really big problems like emissions from data centers, Then they have to also step up and do something about it. And that's what we are trying to influence, of course, as well. So with that, Pete, I'll leave the floor to you. Yes. Thank you. And let me start off by saying that if you hear birds The background is not because I've gone to the beach to celebrate a wonderful quarter and a strong future. It's just that a bunch of seagulls Seem to have fallen in love with sitting on my windowsill here. But let me go through the financials. Q1 revenue $25,000,000 And yes, we it's correct, we compare with a relatively weak quarter of Q1 2020, Well, Andre noted that it was 174% increase. But even if we don't compare with anything, just take the $25,000,000 It's a significant number. We are proud to be there. It's only the second time in the history of our company that we've surpassed $25,000,000 €3,000,000 of that comes from data center 2022 comes from our D and E business. Our ASPs have gone down slightly. We have sold 188% more products Versus 174 percent more revenue. So the ASPs have gone down a little bit. And that is due to our change Our business model that we have described in details for many quarters by now. So let me not go further into that one. Gross profits, gross margins, I'll come back to them in the following slide. So if we're talking about operating expenses At $7,200,000 versus $5,400,000 last year, a significant change, 33% up, Yes. But we have also increased our staff significantly, as Andre also said, to around 140 people to support all the business, Support all the new products and projects and of course also to support the SimSports business. Let me allow me just Here to compare to state that the comparison to Q1 of 2020, the $5,400,000 last year It's a quarter where we had scaled down as much as we could because we were looking into what we thought would be a weak year Marked by the trade war and the tariffs that turned out to be completely different. Of course, we know by now. But at that point, we have turned down the operation as much as we could. This brings us To a quarter where we deliver an operating income of $3,500,000 versus a loss of $900,000 same quarter before. Foreign exchange financial income is actually for once in our favor. We have been as we also talk about some time, we're facing ForEx headwind for the last many quarters, but actually here in Q1, we saw it coming our way. Income before tax is $4,000,000 versus a loss last year of $700,000 And all this boils down to an earnings per share of $0.12 versus a loss last year of $0.03 So all in all, quite at least as I see it, Quite a solid quarter. I promised to talk about gross margins. And we also talked about it already before. We are at 43% for this quarter versus a very high Q1 of last year at 49%. And the changes here comes again foreign exchange going against us. I think the Chinese, remember, increased by was it just from the top of my head, was it 6% or something like that last year, of which half of it ends on our bottom line as a reduction. And then also we've seen prices in general go up, as Andre spoke about. And there could also be issues around Product mix, for example, makes that impact our gross margins. I can reveal without going too much in detail that Norm, typically our gross margins from data center is pulling the average up, but in this quarter, it's actually pulling the average down. I think we I know we have We've been talking about the 45% level as for the year as such as a good marker. I stand by that for now. Dollars 43 in my book is also close to $45 just for those who are discussing the details. So that's what we're looking at this point. Going to the balance sheet. Same story as for many, many moons, strong balance sheet, quite significant cash holdings that we have For a purpose, we want to have a strong balance sheet and we want to maintain our flexibility. We had $24,000,000 in the bank at the end of Q1. That's $3,000,000 down compared to December 31. And the way that worked out was that we made $7,000,000 from operation. We then spent $7,400,000 in investments. Keep in mind, we purchased this asset up in Finland, etcetera. And then we spent $2,200,000 I believe it was on financing. And financing here is primarily A share repurchase program that we completed In Q1, we are now since yesterday, it was decided to initiate a new share repurchase program To offset an employee's option program that was also decided yesterday. So all in all, Strong balance sheet as we as you have been used to see for a long time. Financial strategy and goals, No changes here. Andre alluded to it also that on the gaming enthusiast side, it's about Dominating the market and of course, profiting from it. And we are going into the sim sports with the same kind of approach. And then of course, one of the things some of the things that I'm working on from my chair here is cost base optimization and cash flow improvement. I ought to say that our KPIs, our cash cycle For Q1, it's the same level, 13 days, I believe it is, as it was the same quarter last year. So I'm reporting as we normally do, good progress. All in all, strong progress, good outlook. And Andre, with that, back to you for a summary and outlook. And let me also hear already now just I apologize, there's a Typo on the first bullet there for you, Andre, just so that you are aware of it. Yes. The typo is really just it says 2020 in 2020 in 2021. Fortunately, the conclusion is the same that we do expect a record year once again. So that's, of course, nice. And it's driven by a strong demand for our G and E products. I hope it's also driven by the data center business by the end of the year. But Just in full transparency, I can say or see no more than what I have explained. We I'm going to release our first product in the Sim Sports arena. Obviously, it will not have a revenue impact this year. But we will launch the first product this year and then we will continue releasing products for my guess 12, 24 months continuously until we have a full program. So that's very exciting also. And most of it is, I think, that on our Capital Markets Day, I gave ambition that in 2025, we should at least hit $150,000,000 in revenue. Needless to say, if I meet my own threshold of, let's say, around €100,000,000 so you don't take it as New revenue guidance around $100,000,000 Then needless to say that we are on a good path to on a very good path To reach our 5 year goal for sure. And yes, I think that's pretty much it. And then I guess we will open the floor to questions. Yes, let's do that. Operator, Nicole, I think the name was, Will you handle any questions via the phone? Sure. Thank you. We do have a question. The question comes from the line of Li Huizhou from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, Andrew and Peter. Thank you for taking my question. I have three questions for now. Firstly, you mentioned that you have 20 new server loop designs To support new customers in data center. And for how many of them you have generated sales? Could you give us an indication? Yes. Just to be specific, it's not for 20 new customers. For 20 new CPUs and motherboards and server designs, etcetera, it's for our current customers. I cannot give you a specific number and say that out of the 20, 8 has generated revenue. What I can say is that If we had not made them, there would have been 0 in revenue. So they were, of course, needed to do to make the revenue we have made, But they are also made to accommodate new processors, new graphics processors, new Intel and new AMD and NVIDIA standard. So it's about generating revenue, but of course also to support new standards that are coming to keep in the market and to support what's coming. Okay. Thanks. And my second question is regarding the extensive shortage in The semiconductor market, and how have you seen the impact on your business on the P and E side? I would say that there are 2 ways for Acehtec to look at it. If we look at our guided revenue, meaning our own forecast internally, We have not been impacted there because we have been diligent enough to, let's say, order enough early enough Plus on margins, of course, to not run into issues. But with the growth we are seeing right now, For sure, we also on certain components have to use, let's call it, the alternative sourcing methods as spot markets and things like that. So I would say that for our, let's say, core business, our bread and butter business, as we thought it would look, We look good. But if things continue to grow as fast as they have done in Q1, Then we definitely have to put more effort into finding our components, that's for sure. It is a global issue. But yes, we have not seen any big impact yet. We've been able to manage. Great. Thanks. And can I just follow-up on this one? How have you seen the impact on your customers? And are you I mean, Are you seeing them still sort of trying to fulfill the unmet demand or you see them sort of start to get more supply From their suppliers. What is it they are currently in the market? Again, there are a couple of ways to look at it because Our success is, of course, measured by how many liquid coolers we send out of the door. But what's also important to note is a lot of customers now because of The business model change we made a few years back or sorry, a few quarters back. They buy the core product from us, But then on top of that, they have LED, they have screens, etcetera. In other words, they have their own ICs. So if our customers cannot get the integrated circuit, then it doesn't matter that we are able to ship them liquid cooling and they want liquid Because then at the end of the day, they cannot sell it. So I would say for now with the forecast we have from our customers, it better it looks good. Well, for sure, there is a risk with our customers. So the risk could be and I would like to emphasize and stress That's not how it is. Right now, this is pure speculation to give you an example. There could be an instance where a customer will call us and say, we have Frank the forecast now because we cannot get the components we need to get the liquid coolers out of our door. And that's, of course, a situation we hope not to see. And it's not what we are seeing right now, but of course, that's the risk and that's what we fear. But as it looks right now, it looks okay. Great. Thanks. And then my last question here is regarding The new product launches, you mentioned you have shipped 4 new type of products to the customers in the G and E products. Could you give us an indication how much of your Q1 sales was relating to them? If I knew it, I could. I simply don't know on top of my head. Do you have any insight into that, Peter? No, I don't know if no, that's the quick answer. Fair enough. Thank you. I will jump back to the queue. Thank you. There are no further questions on the lines at this time. Okay, perfect. And I am looking at the web application and I'm turning the or pressing the Refresh button so fast, so my finger is turning blue, and I actually ran a little test in the background. There seems to be no questions at this point in time. I'll just give it one last chance here. Nothing came up. I think with that, we'll end the conference here and say thank you for your interest in Acetec. Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.