Good afternoon, and welcome to this presentation and Q&A with Scandinavian Medical Solutions. With us today, we have the management team of Scandinavian Medical Solutions, and first, there will be a presentation, afterwards, a Q&A, where the management team will answer questions submitted via Stock-IO. There have already been pre-submitted questions on Stokk.io, and the Q&A is still open so that you can submit questions live as well. I will now hand over the mic to Scandinavian Medical Solutions to start the presentation. Your line is now open.
Hello, and welcome to Aalborg in Denmark. We are very happy that you would spend a little bit of time with us, and we'll walk through a presentation the next around 20 minutes, usually, and then we will, we'll go to the Q&A session, that which we are looking forward to as usual. So thank you for joining us. Our agenda is the highlights for the year that has passed, then the financial highlights, and then our guidance and expectations for 2023, 2024. First of all, my name is Jens Krohn. I am CEO of Scandinavian Medical Solutions. I'm immensely proud of where we are, our year in closing, and where we went to this year.
It's a tremendous team effort, and we are looking forward to an upcoming year where we have a venture in the U.S. as well.
If we start with some of the highlights for the year, then we start to look back. When we started the year, we expected a revenue of DKK 125 million-DKK 140 million, and an EBITDA between DKK 15 million-DKK 17 million. Since then, a lot has happened. We have been through 4 upward revisions through the year. In the latest publication of the guidance, we had an expectation of DKK 180 million-DKK 195 million. We have now ended the year with a revenue of DKK 191 million, which is an increase of 73% compared to last year's result.
We have also managed to keep EBITDA on DKK 21 million, which is an increase of 37% compared to last year. Besides the financial, then, we have also had quite a journey internally in the company. So the company has grown quite a lot. We have managed to hire people in for both administration, back office, warehouse, and then added people to the sales team. This means that now we are ready for the growth forward, and the team is as we like it very strong. Furthermore, we have received the award by the, the, Danish, what?
Federation.
Federation of listed
List of growth companies
G rowth, companies. In Danish, it's called the Foreningen af Børsnoterede Vækstvirksomheder.
Yes, it's a tough word in English.
FBV. But basically, it's a prize for being the best Danish growth company, and we are, of course, very, very proud about that. Afterwards, we've also been nominated for the more or less the same category, but in a European perspective, and we were delighted that we also won this prize in Spain. So it means a lot to us that people believe in us and that we also prove that we actually have a really good business here. Also internally in the team, it's a recognition of our hard work, everyday work. So, thanks a lot for the people who voted us on us.
Yes. In November 2023, so not that long ago, we finally revealed that we are establishing a subsidiary in the United States. This is a natural step for us, a big step, but a natural step for us, in the growth journey, and we are really looking forward to get foot on ground and get started in the U.S. I'm personally very happy that the team said, okay, that I could go. I have a lot of experience with the start-ups, as you know, and also in the overseas from earlier. North America has been dear to our growth throughout, and it's super important for us to have foot on ground there.
The North American refurbishing market, it was measured in 2021 to have a value of $4.3 billion. So it's, it's a big market over there. Establishing this subsidiary is a milestone for Scandinavian Medical Solutions, and it will, of course, also contribute to our ongoing growth potential. So I'm very happy with that.
I have gotten the honor to give you a bit more insight in our financial highlights. For the presentation here, I won't go too deep into each and every numbers of our profit loss statement and so our balance sheets, as I would expect that there's also some questions afterwards when we get to the QA around this.
Some of the points we believe worth mentioning from the annual revenue we just announced from last year is, as Martin also briefly mentioned, the four award provisions enabling us to end at a total revenue for last fiscal year in the sum of DKK 191 million, which is, we believe, quite remarkable, as the year before we had quite a significant growth, and with the four award provisions, we managed to maintain this trends against all expectations. Our gross profit around almost DKK 35 million also keeping well in track.
As you can see, of course, as Martin also said, we managed to hire in some more people, which also means that we have a somewhat increase in our staff costs, for instance. Worth mentioning, when we listed Scandinavian Medical Solutions on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, we were two and a half fixed employees, so it was a natural step for us that we had to grow the number of employees in the company as well, then our staff costs. The depreciations, I'll dig in a bit deeper into in one of the next slides, the analogy behind that, and so on. Meaning that we get an EBITDA close to the DKK 21 million mark, which we are immensely proud of, being able to grow and still maintain the bottom line.
Digging a bit into the balance sheet, as you can see, we had quite a growth in our rental assets over the fiscal year, which has also been a strong plan from the start. That, of course, has an impact on the balance sheet as well on the depreciations, as you've seen from that going below the EBITDA level. This is fully in line with what we have been forecasted, and of course, growing a rental fleet that is very profitable from the gross profit. Also, on the other side, meaning that we are to grow our balance sheets. That goes hand in hand.
Another point worth mentioning here is the stock of our trading goods has increased from DKK 51 million to DKK 83 million, which is also very well in what we're expecting and the level we want to be at, and this is mainly a natural step of our parts department growing, and swapping more from doing transit deals into actually start carrying the stock with the data they collected to have the right systems on the shelf. This is where we see our parts department having a bigger gross profit, and also being able to deliver faster to our customers because we already have the goods and the parts on the shelf as they require. Usually, trend for parts is when you request, you needed them yesterday. So for that, we are very pleased with as well.
Last point on the balance sheet, on the other side, is that you can see our lease liabilities grew from a flat zero to now DKK 17.7 million. This is natural impact of having a strong relationship with our bank and our finance partners. So as me mainly heading the rental department, the commercial side of it, if we buy these very expensive units, we would in a very instant actually empty the cash reserves and not to handicap both our trading and our parts department, being able still to trade equipment and grow these two business areas of Scandinavian Medical. Short overview on our equity. I won't go too deep into this, and we'll skip for the next one.
Yes, so, a little look into the future. Scandinavian Medical Solutions expects to continue the growth of the top and the bottom line next year. We are targeting and forecasting a revenue in the range between DKK 210 million-DKK 230 million, and the EBITDA in the range of DKK 20 million-DKK 23 million.
Yes. I'm sorry.
Yes, we consider this a realistic guidance. We had a little bit of pushback on being conservative, but again, we are very rest assured that we will guide what we believe is correct, and we trust in the guidance that we have published. It's important for us to be very realistic in our budgeting, and we are in line with our team and our management and our board, that this is the right guidance for the next year.
In this guidance, we are looking at a CT market last year, one of the diagnostic imaging equipment categories that has been less profitable, even though it's been mitigated in other areas of the diagnostic imaging being higher profitable than the year before, MRI, for example, and that has leveled out, so we have the same, more or less the same gross profit as we over the line because we are spreading out the different our different liabilities. We expect that market to pick up next year again, which is, of course, a positive upside. At the same time, we are looking at the rental fleet, where our utilization rate has not been fully utilized last year.
The budget for next year is based on the same utilization rate. We will need to base on the current numbers that we have from last year due to the history, and we are young in that category. It is within the line of our budget from last year, so we're happy with the utilization rate. But we also forecast to stay within the same number of assets as it sits now within our budget, where last year we budgeted to invest a lot more, what you also see in the balance sheets.
It's important to understand that when we invest in rental assets, it's throughout the year, so we won't see the either the forecasted budget for the new inquiries that might have come in the day before the year end before the end of the year next year. United States, we're looking forward to start up over there. It takes time to start up. We are starting forecast to start after Q1 between first Q1 and Q2 to start up. We expect there to be a wrap-up period over there. Our equipment, it has a long sales cycle, so even though we sell the first pieces or three pieces of equipment, the first day we have foot on ground in U.S., we might not see it before nine months after.
It's project sale, it takes a long time for it to be, to hit the balance sheet. So we just want to forecast and make very, very much sure that that the first three quarters where we will be or two quarters we will be present in, in the U.S., we expect to be more or less cost neutral. And it takes time to do the ramp up there, and it will not contribute to the, to the, to the next year's, financial, financials, top-down.
Yes. And if we look a bit deeper into the guidance and expectation for next year, then we, of course, as Jens said, have the more-- we'll have more focus on our rental fleet. We need to go more and deep in the market. We knew when we started the rental that it will be a challenging task, but we have gone a long way. There's still some way to go, but we have the focus now, and we have the fleet that we wanted, so that will be in focus for the year. In the parts and after-sale service, we have ramped up the stock with the parts we need that the market will demand in the year.
So, we are in a strong position now where we can supply the parts which is needed. So we are looking forward to see the growth in parts. On the equipment trading side, then we of course will have some advantages coming with the entry of the U.S. market. As well, we have some strategic possibilities we are looking into by making more transit deals and taking less risk to the company. So that's some of the focus points.
If we look at the purchase department, then we have to go even deeper with our purchasing, meaning that we have to go straight to some hospitals, we have to make better relations with our vendors, and we have to make sure that the quality is still as high as we want it to. That's the focus points.
Yes, and thank you very much to both of you to participate in it, in this presentation. We are now at the end of the official presentation, and we are looking very much forward to the Q&A session, as usual.
Perfect. Thank you for that, Jens, Jens and, Martin. Let's move directly into the questions, starting with a live question that I think you have addressed a little bit, but let's take it so that it gets answered. Looking at the guidance for next year, it seems quite conservative when comparing to also your investments in growth and increase in inventory. Are you more conservative than usual, or are you experiencing some difficulties in growth at the moment?
We are not experiencing any specific challenges as of now. Of course, we made some add-ons to the team last year, which has also affected the numbers. It's not possible to duplicate that, but we're also looking into a highly competitive market, which we also did last year. But yeah, the people we are in the team now and were last year, it's not possible to just duplicate. And you know that when you are trying to scale a business like this, the first step might seem bigger, but that's percentage-wise, and then when you have a fairly-...
Fairly big company as we see it now, then the next step is not, it's a bit harder to take the next steps, and that's what we forecast at least. Let's see what the future brings. We think we are conservative, but not too conservative. So we have presented the numbers which we believe in.
Yeah, and I think it is super important to look at the numbers and say there's a growth, there's a significant growth. And we were a little bit surprised that that would be taken as a conservative tack. Actually, this is in line with our growth potential or our growth strategy from day one, from our perspective side. So we are actually on the line or above than what we went to the stock exchange with back in the day. So we are happy with the forecast. Again, we are building the foundation. For us, it's super important to build the right foundation to continue growth throughout the next...
We are not looking at a three-year plan, we are looking at a 30-year plan. So for us, it's important to have the milestones and the cornerstones of the company set, and that is what we are hiring in overhead of course, but compliance-wise, we have a full-time attorney. We have everything set in stone to ensure the growth for the next many years. So that's important to us, and that's how we built the company from day one.
I think it goes very well in relation with what you presented about the whole U.S. case. It's not, we are not in for taking the quick and the easy wins. We're into building the next foundations, the big milestones, and this, specifically our U.S. cases, is one of those. Believe in it, it's a long haul, and it's not something that we can just expect to have a straight up, but it is the right choice to do and do the investment now, which also will, of course, look into the numbers, but taking it from the right angle and the right long-term growth of the company.
Yeah. And then, the next question here: Would you consider to guide on EBIT instead of EBITDA? I believe it will create more value to investors as depreciation of rental equipment is becoming a significant value.
Yes. We are looking into different other guidance models, obviously, and that is the decision that we are making together with the board going forward, but we are looking into that as well. Yes, it's at some point in the future, we would like to do that or I would like to do that, but we have to align it with our financial department and our board as well.
Yep, sure. And, the next question here: Not that long ago, you were only a few full-time employees in the company, and now Jens Krohn will be moving to the U.S. It sounds interesting, but how will you make sure that the European department does not lose its momentum when the CEO goes to the U.S. while still being a quite new and still small organization?
Yeah. We are a quite new and small organization relatively, but the people we have in the team right now have experience from many years. So, it's not a team which is new in the business. We are well-known in the business as individuals as well. And luckily, we are today also driving each department, even without Jens' involvement. Jens is taking care of a lot of strategic things, but with that said, then already today, each department is self-driven. So I hope that's-
Yeah, and I think it's a testimonial to also the team that we have set in place here. My colleagues, they are doing the job that they are set for, and it's the A-team that we managed to collect here in Aalborg, which is super impressive. So it's a testimonial to the team, not Jens Krohn, but the SMS is a team that can be without me and can grow separately and have its own life. So it's a very, very positive thing.
Yeah. And then, what kind of EBITDA margins do you usually have on your rental products compared to normal sales?
Yeah, so we, we have this question a lot, and, also, if we could do the split guidance or guide on, EBIT, EBITDA for the different, departments and so on, we have to, we have to, communicate, communicate that, to everybody at one go. We are not allowed to discuss it in one go, but in different departments. You can, again, look a little bit into our prospectus from back in the day, where we have some estimates that's not far off. So, so again, it is a, it's a profitable, profitable, business sideline. Yes.
Okay, perfect.
That politician too much or is it okay?
Yeah, I think that's quite fair.
Sorry, it's... We are a little bit tied on our hands on how we communicate that.
Yeah, sure. You have made a lot of new hires in this current financial year. Do you expect to continue to need to hire new people in or above this level in the new year, or are you, are your organization fitted for your expected growth?
Well, hopefully. We budget not to hire the. We have, again, a little bit back to what we talked about before, the foundation is now made, and we have budgeted a little bit of new hiring, but more supporting roles within the organization. So, but not the same as this year. Should we hire more people, it would be because that we need more hands for the sales and procurement department that has an impact on the revenue.
Okay, and then, the same person also has a follow-up question for that. How about in the U.S.? How many people do you expect to need to hire here?
Again, we learn a lot from having feet on the ground, and we have built the company with really understanding the market. So we want to be present there before we do a strategy. If, again, from my own perspective, my own personal opinion, if you look a little bit about how we built the company in Europe, that would be a scenario obviously, where we actually were the two and a half person the first two and a half years. So it's not a numbers game, especially not in the States. It's more to read the market and take the strategically right decisions. There's a lot with logistics and feet on the ground that makes an upside for U.S.
It just takes a little bit, so just the presence there will have a benefit for us.
Okay. Next question: Inventory has increased significantly during the year. How are you managing these inventory levels, and how do you make sure to have the right inventory in stock and keep inventory days low?
These two guys.
No, yeah, she's done with this one, but-
Yeah.
Of course, speaking very shortly about the analogy of buying in our, in our world, being a trading company, and buying, mainly on the, public, what's it called? public offering. So when a hospital is to replace their equipment, they, above, roughly EUR 50,000 equivalent, then they have to do a public tender. And these tenders tend to go on for anything between 3-12, maybe even longer months before we start offering on it the first time until it gets in. So we are looking at some very long pipelines on the purchase process, and that's of carrying your own stock instead of just doing day trading, is the upside of achieving better margins and also being able to support our customers when they need equipment.
So, we are not in any way nervous about our inventory rising. Actually, had it been decreasing, would have been actually negative. And it sounds a bit strange, but it is. As our revenue grows and majority of our customers, especially with the interest rates that we're seeing right now, the credit facilities, our customers are more reluctant to buy for stock, but buying as they need, which requires SMS to carry a more vast stock of different equipment in the different imaging modalities. But also enabling us to supply while the demand is there, and by that achieving bigger gross profits. Of course, we are always looking into our stock for counting stock days. Again, we do see equipment.
It's not like day trading on stock exchange, but close to sometimes you can have equipment that's actually strategically clever to hold back because there is a, let's say, an overflow, bigger supply than demand of a piece of equipment, which actually enables us, with the financial strength we have to strategically hold back some of the equipment and await selling it out when the demand is higher than the supply and actually achieving better margins. So it's a bit of a strategy game all the time.
Also, we have to remember that it's not an average picture we see in the annual report. It's a one-day picture, and we can actually tell without crossing any lines that we had a decrease of almost 10% the month after. So it's, it goes ups and downs, and if we have some expensive systems in stock when we close the books, of course, the books will seem higher, but we are managing it at a high level.
A small hint is to look into the prepayments that we have in the account. Obviously, that we only finalize the sales in our books when the systems has left the building or it has been handed over. So we see again the fluctuation on the last 25% of the stock can be high and low, and as we don't try to cater to a year-end result, it could be different from day to day. But Jens is a little bit modest. We have one of the most sophisticated purchasing departments in Europe, and they're doing a very good strategic job. Also meaning that they will buy when they can, if they can see the market is soft.
We did a little bit of depreciation of equipment this year. That's new. First time we have done that, and that was again, a post-COVID situation on these CT scanners that's been used a lot after, and during the last end of COVID. There is an overflow of that, and we see that already, turning around. But, but we, we have depreciated a little bit on that, that market, but only to the market sales price, not, not, not lower than that.
Okay, perfect. The next question here: I believe you previously has mentioned that the market is quite fragmented with a lot of smaller operators. Have you considered an acquisition strategy to accelerate growth and gain a bigger market share? If you have, then what would you look for? New markets, special segments, technology, or anything else?
It's also a question we had before. If we look back at the IPO material, we actually wrote there that we are open to acquisitions, but when we have something solid in the pipeline, then we will go to the market with that information.
It is also as we wrote in the prospectus back in the day, we are looking at the different possibilities all the time. So we have an open strategy going forward, and we have been true to that from day one, so we always consider what is the next step. So there's a lot of things going on in our discussions. How is the market in five years? What's going up and down that you don't see in these presentations? But it's again, it's opinion sharing and it's knowledge, but we are very, very aware of what could the future bring and what would be the next steps in the different scenarios for the company.
And then there, there's a question here. I don't, I don't know if you can answer it, but I will ask you, and then you can say if you can answer anything. How much revenue do you get from the U.S. today, and how has the growth in this market been in the past years?
I think, what we can say is that about 40% of our sales goes to the United States, these days. I think that's what we are allowed to say.
Yeah, I think with that is what we presented before. Of course, it's fluxes, so that's a median. Depends a lot of the of seasons. It is again where you cut the half year or the year or the quarters, so on average, around 40%. So it is a big market for us, and it is one of the biggest markets in the world.
And then-
And then-
Of course, growing the team, that also meaning us that our sales team members have their specialties, not only in, in the different types of equipment, also the different markets. So market specialists, meaning that, that we are not just relying on going in one direction. Of course, U.S. is very important, but other geographical areas are really heavily increasing for us as getting the, the right sales team members on board, really knowing how the, the local markets work. Yeah.
And then the last question for now: looking at the establishing of the U.S. office, will you be opening both a service and a sales office at the same time?
We don't do service in Europe either. So we are looking at a sales office. Our core business is trading, so it's a trading office. So that is our main goal to start out with. We don't have intention of doing service in U.S. or in Europe. That is not a part of our prospectus either.
Perfect. And that was all the pre-submitted and all the live questions, so that finalizes the Q&A. And before we end the session, I will just hand over the mic for you to end with any final remarks, if you have anything to end with here.
Yeah, no, thank you for spending the time with us. We are very grateful that people use the time on Scandinavian Medical Solutions, and it is a team effort from here. So again, I cannot be more proud of the guys I'm sitting with here, the full team behind Scandinavian Medical Solutions, the achievements we did this year, the awards we received, and the year-end results. So thank you very much.
Yes, and in case more questions will come in the future, then we have our investor mails, which people are welcome to write to, and then we'll answer the best way possible.
Perfect. Thank you everyone for listening in here. That ends this presentation and Q&A with Scandinavian Medical Solutions. Have a nice day, and see you next time.
See you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.