Hey, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Azelis Group's Q1 2022 trading update. With us this morning are Dr. Joachim Müller, CEO, and Thijs Bakker, CFO. Joachim will start with the operational highlights of the period, followed by Thijs, who will give a financial update. Jochen. will then wrap up with an outlook for the remainder of the year, and we'll open the floor for Q&A. We remind everyone that this presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainty. All participants will be on listen-only mode until we start the Q&A. We will make the recording of this presentation available on our website later today. With that, I'll hand you over to Joachim .
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this update call. Let me kick off, kick start the short presentation now. As you might have seen in our press release this morning, we had an excellent start to the year. The Group delivered record organic growth of almost 33% with strong performances from all the regions. Demand in both the Life Sciences and Industrial Chemicals end markets remained very strong, as we indicated already in March when we presented our full year 2021 results. In Q1, we also completed three acquisitions that further strengthen our lateral value chain. Umongo in South Africa, Catalite in Thailand, and WhitChem in the UK. These three companies have combined annual revenues of over EUR 160 million. The strong top-line growth, as well as the benefits from our growing scale, efficient margin management, drove a 95% increase.
A 95% increase in our adjusted EBITA and an EBITA margin expansion of 215 basis points compared to the prior year. Noteworthy that our pass-through and value-based pricing policy allowed this expansion despite the continued cost increase we are seeing for the materials we are sourcing from our partners. We continue to generate cash, although our working capital was impacted both by the strong demand as well as the ongoing supply chain pressures. Once again, we reduced our leverage ratio to 2.6 at the end of March this year, compared to five at the end of March 2020. Operationally, we'll continue full steam with our initiatives that will drive and support our future growth. We're still focused on rolling out our digital platforms and building a strong network of laboratories that will keep us at the forefront of innovation.
Innovation, a key driver for all we do. We continue to deliver award-winning innovative formulations and solutions for both our principals and customers. Let's move on to the next slide. Let's have a look at our Q1 performance in more detail. At group level, organic growth was a record at 32.6%. The strong growth reflects continued strong demand in both the Life Sciences and Industrial Chemicals end markets, as well as some positive impact from higher prices. It should be noted that the impact from volume growth was still greater than the price impact during Q1. In Industrial Chemicals, we continue to see strong demand in CASE across all regions, supported by positive trends in the building and construction sectors. In Life Sciences, growth in Food and Health accelerated following the lifting of COVID restriction in most countries.
Additionally, the recovery in pharma and the continued positive trends in personal care have further reinforced demand in life sciences. In the first 3 months, we closed three exits, two in EMEA and one in Asia Pacific. Umongo, which was announced already last year, but only closed in January, significantly strengthened our industrial chemicals footprint in Africa, especially in the lubricants and metalworking fluids. Catalite, which we closed in February, reinforces our portfolio in the personal care and home care markets in Thailand. In March, we completed the acquisition of WhitChem, which complements our lateral value chain very nicely in the industrial chemicals markets in the UK. These three acquisitions represent, as mentioned earlier, revenue of more than EUR 160 million. Now, I'll hand the floor over to Thijs, who will talk about our financial performance during the quarter, starting with the next slide.
Thank you, Jochen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending this call. I will provide you a brief summary of the group's financial performance in the first 3 months. As we noted in November last year during our first trading update as a listed company, quarterly updates will provide a high level financial review. I also refer to our press release where there are some more details in this. We of course will publish more detailed financial figures for the half year and full year results. Now, let me start with the P&L overview, as you can see here on this slide.
As we already indicated in March, and as from Jochen's introduction, we're very happy to report a strong growth trajectory from the fourth quarter in 2021 carried on to the start of 2022, resulting in revenue for the quarter to EUR 975.3 million. That represents a year-on-year growth of 59%. In constant currency, growth was 57%, a significant acceleration quarter-on-quarter. The strong performance was on the back of a record organic growth, 32.6%, which was achieved across all of our regions. Revenue growth contribution from acquisitions was 24.1%. We also had 2.7 tailwind effect in the first quarter from an FX translation.
Organic growth in the more resilient life sciences segment was strong on the back of customer gains and new mandate gains, which started to materialize and where we expect full ramp up in the coming quarters. As the outcome of this strong revenue performance and the positive development of our order book, also our working capital levels increased. I'll come back to this later on in the presentation. Our gross profit increased 71% to EUR 235.9 million, which implies a gross margin of 24.2%. The 167 basis points expansion in our gross margin was the outcome of positive mix effect as well as disciplined margin management, pass-through price increases that we passed from our partners to our customers. Lastly, also pulling strength from our innovation through formulation work that's happening in our labs.
Please note that this is already our 7th consecutive quarter where we booked double-digit gross profit growth. In the first quarter, adjusted EBITA increased by 95% or at a constant FX of 92.3% to EUR 160 million. This translated to a strong margin expansion of 250 basis points versus prior year. Strong top line growth, as well as the benefit of our growing scale, allowed us to deliver a strong margin uplift despite continued growth investments in digital as well as commercial initiatives. This result also reflects full bonus accruals to cater for the over-performance versus our budget. Now, all of this resulted in a significant improvement in our conversion margin from 43.3% to 49.2%.
Let's move on the next slide to a quick overview of the growth breakdown of our revenue and our gross profit. Here on page nine, we have broken down the 59% revenue growth and the 71% reported gross profit growth between organic growth and growth coming from the first time inclusion of acquisitions. The strong performance for the first quarter was supported by M&A. We completed 12 transactions over the course of 2021, and three acquisitions were for the first time included in the first quarter of 2022 with a combined revenue effect of around EUR 160 million, as Joachim already mentioned. Please note that a significant portion of these acquisitions is still not part of our organic growth calculation. 24% of the revenue growth in Q1 coming from the first time inclusion of these acquisitions.
Even more important, as you can see on this slide, the majority of our growth came from the key pillars of our growth strategy. That is organic growth. All of our regions delivering high double-digit organic growth on the back of strong demand in the majority of the end markets in each region. At group level, organic growth came in at 32.6%. In addition, these slides also demonstrate our focused ability to execute pass-through price inflation and the hard work in executing our margin management programs across all three of our regions. This is reflected in the 43% organic growth in our gross profit line. Let's have a look at the regional financial performance in the next slide and provide some color on the underlying results. What you see on this slide, you see our three regions that we have.
We also have a holding, but let's focus on the three operating regions here. Starting with EMEA on the left, revenue increased by 51.6% to EUR 451 million. This growth was driven by strong organic growth of 33.9%, and out of this growth, 19.5% came from the first time inclusion of acquisitions, where in 2022 we closed Umongo in South Africa and WhitChem in late March. In addition, there was a 1.8% of FX headwinds. This performance was very impressive. Dynamics in the resilient life sciences markets were positive, particularly in food and health, where the recovery, which started in the second half of last year, has continued strongly as well, and also demand in pharma was very strong.
The rest of the Life Sciences markets as well as the Industrial Chemicals activities in EMEA, as well as our order book, remained very strong. Based on the strong performance, our conversion margin ended at almost 54%, a year-on-year increase of 600 basis points. Now let's move over to the Americas. We continue to see a very strong growth trends there. Revenue increased more than 50% to EUR 367 million, driven by strong organic growth of 28%. The strong demand in both the Life Sciences and Industrial Chemicals reflects the strong economic activities across these sectors and also growth of new customers and new mandates. The conversion margin improvement was very strong in Americas, going from 49% to almost 54% in Q1 2022.
This is on the back of efficiency gains, but also a positive mix effect from the inclusion of Vigon in our numbers. In Asia Pacific, we continue to see strong growth momentum, both organically as well as on the execution of our M&A strategy. The total revenue growth of 123%, of which 44% was organic and the rest from acquisitions. An excellent performance considering also the impact of the new lockdowns in China. Despite our ongoing investment in this growing region, we managed to deliver a 145 basis points step up in adjusted EBITA margin versus Q1 2021. Our Asia Pacific operations also recorded 900 basis points improvement in conversion margin, 43.2%, as we gain scale and momentum in this fast-growing region. I promised to move on to give some more details on our working capital performance.
Let's move to our cash flow drivers on the next slide. Net working capital to revenue normalized for acquisitions ended at 14.6% at the end of March 2022 compared to 15.3% at the end of December 2021, and 10.8% at the end of March 2021. In absolute terms, this increase was driven mathematically by our debtors, which are roughly at 45 days, and then there is also the inventory ramp up to support the strong growth during the quarter, as well as our strong order book for the second quarter. To give you a bit more color on this inventory increase. In absolute terms, around EUR 196 million of the working capital for the period came from our recent acquisitions. These acquisitions are not yet at the Azelis standards.
They are not yet on our platforms, all of them, as we are still in the process of integrating them and bringing them in line with group policies. We have a good track record here. Out of this EUR 196 million, EUR 128 million relates to inventory. Then there are supply chain disruptions. We experience a higher amount of goods in transit from our suppliers. This accounts for about 12% of our inventory value and has almost doubled compared to prior year. To be clear, we do not expect this to be structural. We expect working capital ratios to gradually return to normalized levels over time, but we have to support our growth obviously.
Our leverage ratio reduced to 2.6x at the end of March 2022, despite these elevated working capital levels, compared to the 5x in the previous year and 2.7 at the end of December 2021. Now overall, we are very pleased with the group's financial performance in the first quarter of 2022, and we have a positive outlook based upon our order book development and the execution of our strategy around innovation through formulation. On that note, I will hand back the presentation to Joachim for a statement on the outlook for the rest of the year.
Thank you, Thijs. Well said. We're really well positioned. Hopefully, we have provided you with some insights on how the year has started for us at the moment. At the moment, end market demands remain strong and we have a solid pipeline for acquisitions, but also, we are in progress negotiations about mandate expansions. That all looks good and promising. We continue to benefit from the strength of our network and the lateral value chain and the leverage of our cost base. All on green for now. On the other hand, we also have to manage supply chain pressures playing out in the industry. Given the strong performance in the first 3 months of the year, we expect to exceed the current consensus estimate of EUR 325 million in adjusted EBITA for the full year by at least 10%.
With that, let's open the floor for Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, you can also submit written questions via the Ask a Question button on the webcast. We will begin with questions from the conference line. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your device. We will now pause for a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question is coming from Luuk van Beek from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Yes, good morning. First of all, I have a question about the year's gross margin improvement, which was largely driven by or partly by mix improvements. Can you indicate if that is structural because of the efforts you're putting into reaching higher value-added products? Or is there a large extent an influence from, say, quarterly fluctuations, or could be lower next quarter? My second question is on your midterm targets, because if I look at Q1, you are well ahead of it. Even if the rest of the year is flat, this year will be well much above the midterm trajectory that you've indicated.
Is your guidance on the conservative side or should we take into account the possibility that in the future, maybe in a more difficult macro environment, there'll also be a down year and take that into account in your midterm guidance? Can you give a bit more color on that?
Well, let me start on the second one with regard to the outlook, because you're referring to that. Yes, we have increased our outlook of the guidance for the year by 10%. Also, yes, it is a conservative outlook. Our trading remains strong. We have shown in the past whenever a crisis did come to us, be it COVID, but also what happened in 2008, 2009, 2010. This business is very resilient to crisis situations. We all are in the same boat, knowing what's out there in the world, with all the uncertainties. Despite all that, we are confident in not only delivering the 10% which I spoke about, which are conservative, but also above as well. The outlook is good and stable despite all the, well, the turbulence we're seeing.
On your gross margin question on the gross margin improvement, I hand it over to Thijs.
That is a good question. We actually do not see that this is from quarter to quarter a fluctuation. Obviously, it's driven by mix, which is why we also report the Industrial Chemicals segment and the Life Sciences segment. The Industrial Chemicals segment is a little bit more fluctuating, but the Life Sciences segment is very resilient. Then also please note in this gross margin, there is also the inclusion of our M&A, which is a little bit at a lower gross margin level. We get that up as we do that part of our integration, where we sell more products into similar customer base from multiple principals.
I do not see that this quarter fluctuations other than mix seasonal trends. Normally the second quarter, we go more into the summer, and that also has an effect on our mix, but I do not see any fluctuations there.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is coming from Stijn Demeester from ING. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for hosting this call and congratulations on the very good start of the year. I have two questions. The first one is also on the guidance. I assume you have some good visibility on the second quarter, and given the very strong results in Q1, you mentioned it yourself, there is quite some conservative conservatism for the second half, I assume. Is that driven by purely limited visibility, or have you recently seen a change in order behavior from your clients? Yeah, what is sort of driving the conservatism for the second half?
The second question, can you help me bridge the strong quarter-over-quarter margin improvement on EBITDA from 8.5% in the fourth quarter to 11.9% in the first quarter of this year? I believe there was an impact from employee compensation in the last quarter of last year, but was that the main driver, or is there also an impact of these bonus accruals in Q1? Yeah. Some color here on the strong margin improvement would be helpful. These are my two questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Stijn. Yep, on your Q2 question, where we're currently seeing order pattern hasn't changed, right? We're still seeing strong tailwinds, so which kind of supports our increased guidance to the market. There is also this level of being conservative in this equation because we all know this, there's a lot of unknowns out there, right? The impact, potentially the spread of the crisis we're seeing in Ukraine, these are things, and then supply chain disruptions, these are things which we don't take lightly. Currently, the order behavior and the pattern hasn't changed, which gives us confidence that also second half year sailing will be good one. We all have read about consumer confidence coming down in Europe. We've all seen that housing starts in the U.S. have slowed down.
These are early indicators for an industrial side of the business, going into some sort of deceleration. Still expansion, but maybe not this humongous growth we have been seeing over the last couple of months. All taking into account, though, we will sail through whatever lies ahead in a good way. Thijs, please.
Yeah, Stijn. Your question is actually, let me answer that very simply for you. First of all, as you know, we're always careful in our outlook, and that's what we preach. We have quite good insight in our supply chain, so we call that the open order book. About 3-4 months out, it's very positive. There are also some seasonal trends. That's why also we have the working capital that is associated to this open order book, because a lot of these orders are already confirmed. Taking that into account, the coming 3-4 months is basically looking positive. It's not based on what we're seeing, but because of the unknowns that Jochen just alluded to. On Q4, normally Q4 is always a little bit lower.
You can look at the working capital chart. That's normally a little bit a good indicator for the trends. Q2 and Q3 is actually a little bit stronger. If we look at your question regarding bonus accruals for Q4, because their performance was higher than we anticipated, we had to catch up. We fully accrue based upon our targets, and the Q1 result also incorporates a full accrual basis for these bonuses. There are no lower accruals if you are referring to that. It's basically the main driver is the business, and it's doing really well. Obviously you benefit from the scale effects of that. There are no basically cost effects in there that's driving that EBITDA, that EBITDA margin increase. Yeah. Does that help?
Yes. Thank you. Very helpful.
Our next question is coming from Laurent Favre from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Thank you. Good morning, all. My first question is on China. With all the changes on acquisitions, I was wondering if you could tell us roughly on the APAC number, how much of that is in China? And also, as we've been hearing a lot about chemical companies who had to shut down, in particular in April, with a very gradual improvement in May, I was wondering, I guess, what you're seeing in China now, and, what should we expect for Q2? That's the first question.
On your question on China represents 5% of group sales, 9% of GP. You see the effect of the lockdowns. Yeah, it's similar like in COVID. We do not really see the effects there because our customers are being served. They can all work from home, fully mobile. We went, of course, through the COVID exercise, so that's not a real change for us. Obviously, supply chain disruptions are elevated due to this lockdown effect. We're talking here about, let's say in the second quarter, about an effect of about EUR 5 million in revenue per month. It's rather limited. Yeah. Maybe on the second question, Joachim , I was not quite clear what you meant there. Maybe you can repeat that question.
No, sir, I haven't asked it yet. The follow-up question is around M&A and the M&A pipeline. I just noticed that you increased the credit facilities by over EUR 300 million. I was wondering, should we expect this to be a signal of the amount of M&A that you're looking at, or is it just standard practice?
Well, as we have said all along, M&A is an integral part of our growth story. We promised to the markets, and we always obviously shoot to over-deliver. We promised a 5% organic growth and associated with an inorganic growth through M&A of 5%, year after year. Last year, we have delivered 12 acquisitions, and this year we are on a very good run rate to get close or repeat or exceed, we have to see, what we did last year. The M&A pipeline is very vibrant, solid. We don't see in the exclusive negotiations we're doing that multiples are creeping up.
From this point, yeah, there's more to come and CASE and the team was successful in securing the funds needed for things we expect to happen within the next couple of weeks and months. Does that answer your question?
Yes, absolutely. Thank you.
The next question is coming from Thibault Leneeuw from KBC Securities. Please proceed.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question with regards to the EBITDA margin. Do you expect that the margin that you reported this quarter is sustainable for the whole year, taking into account that last year, the EBITDA margin decreased slightly over the year?
I think we follow the same. We follow the same pattern as last year. This is more mix and seasonality driven, where you normally see margins taper off in Q4. That has to do also with working days. In that respect, we do not see any change. Obviously we're working at elevated levels and obviously our mix has also changed towards Life Sciences, F&F, where we made a strategic play into as well that you need to incorporate into that figure as well. We do not expect
Okay, thank you.
The next question is coming from Rajesh Kumar from Edelweiss Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first question is on gross margin again. I know you've had at least a lot of questions on this morning. Just to be sure, from what I understand that you've had some additional formulation work and more, you know, technical content which has helped the mix and therefore the gross margin. When we think of first quarter next year, should we assume that some of that cannot repeat and therefore will revert to a more normal level, or should we expect that is an ongoing tailwind? That's the first question. The second question is, fully appreciate your desire to be conservative for the second half guidance, and that's reasonably prudent.
Despite that, you know, just based on what we know as of now on trading, you have increased the guidance which is, you know, significantly ahead of what the market was expecting. Are there any implications for 2022 numbers as well because of this? Because the questions we're getting is, do the comps become tough and therefore should we model a bit of tapering if the chemical prices come down, et cetera? I've heard your answers on this topic before, but just updated thought would be very helpful. Last question on the construction leading indicators. Yes, some of the front of the curve indicators have started softening. Can you give us some color on what type of exposure you have to that industry?
It doesn't need to be precise, 10%- 12% or something like that. Just an order of magnitude would help. Thank you.
On the GM one, well yes, it's driven up by formulation work, and yes, it's driven up by innovative solutions we are bringing to the market. It's also driven up by enhancing our intellectual variety and offering to existing customers or new customers through combining portfolios, man, by winning new mandates and by doing M&A. All of this is work we are doing to get more from a given customer, which kind of obviously increases his buy-in service level he's getting from us as more formulation is higher. We're very confident that the margins we're generating this year will not go back. The ambition is, and I think we promised this all to the market, that we could continue to expand our value offerings to be an innovation service provider to the markets.
Hence, we are confident that this will also in 2023, that this will be sustainable. On your question on exposure with regard to industrial markets and what we are seeing as a harbinger on the horizon of a slowdown of demand and inflation going up and so on, and supposing purchasing power of individuals coming down. Well, as said, we have 61% of our business is on, is a business which is on the Life Sciences. So from Life Sciences, also when you go back to whenever we were in previous, disruptive situations, Life Sciences turned out to be super. We shouldn't expect any different going forward, unlike from the 61% before. The 39% of the portfolio, it's really more of a mixed bag.
Again, we have seen that you then have to go to sub-sub-sub-submarket segments. Some of the markets we're involved with, like, decorative coatings in the housing industry, right? They are coming at basically at the end of a project. Even if the economy slows down, nobody will stop building a house if he's middle building a house. We have another segment which is a not so significant segment, let's say EUR 30-40 million segment, which is going into kind of more the, construction chemicals, stabilizing mortar and all of these things, right? There, they're kind of early in the cycle. There you would see an early impact.
I guess what I'm trying to say is also on the industrial side, we have so many different segments that we will see individual streams of market growth or slower growth. All in all, again, as to what we have seen, it's just go back to what we have delivered in 2021. Even at the height of the crisis of COVID, we were able to come on a like-for-like basis out of 2020 with a stable top line and with an increase of added value through our increased service offering. Does that answer your questions or is there anything, Thijs, you add on them?
No, I think it was a construction.
Please go.
There are many subsegments CASE, around 20% of our total revenue base.
Different segments.
Yeah, different segments. That's where it is.
That clear or?
Thank you. Thank you very much. It's very helpful. Thank you.
We do not have any further questions for now. Everyone, as a kind reminder, you can submit written questions via the Ask a Question button on the webcast. If you wish to ask a question on the audio line, please press star then one on your device. Thank you. We have one more question from Luuk van Beek. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Just have one follow-up question on the way you're passing on cost increases. Do you pass on basically the absolute amount which would be like the margin dilutive, or are you able to maintain your margin, maybe even increase it on top of the cost increase that you pass on to the customer?
I didn't hear you.
No
Whether we were able to expand over and above what we are getting from our partners as cost increase. Obviously, when you look into our margin expansion, yes, we do. This has something to do. We're on the specialty side of things, and we are offering services over and above. Yeah. For us, just when you look into fundamentals and when you cannot increase prices, this type of an environment where everybody knows there is inflation going on, obviously, it's also easier for us to upprice our offerings. This is really clearly considered when looking at the, you know. Right. Thijs, sorry.
No, no, I think, Luuk, like, where we create value is through innovation and formulation by our lab. We offer multiple products to multiple customers.
Obviously, we help them with technical solutions, and we apply value-based pricing. First of all, on the price mechanisms, we pass through any price increases that we get from principals, that's normal. Then second of all, we work on the technical solutions for the customer, and that drives basically our margin. Yeah.
Okay. It's clear.
Luc, you said.
We have one more question from Stijn Demeester. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Yes. Thank you. A follow-up on the acquisition so far. You mentioned the EUR 160 million of sales acquired. I assume there's little contribution in the first quarter, and the revenue guide is helpful, but what sort of margins do these acquisitions should we think of? Is that below the group? Can you sort of give some color here on what to expect and what to model?
Well, currently, it's a mixed bag, but they are not all at group level, but we have strong conviction that we will be able to manage them at group level. Again, through combining lateral value chains or service offerings we already have in the countries they're in. So we will manage this up over time. The same is true, obviously, and Case alluded to that on the working capital side, where we, when we acquire, there's a lot of best practices in the firms when it comes to how to manage working capital, but obviously we have our processes in-house, which we will implement over time to manage this up.
Stijn, WhitChem, which is in CASE, we acquired in, we closed that in the last week of March. That is, the balance sheet is fully in, but the P&L effect you cannot see yet. Yeah.
We do not have any further questions. Once again, you can submit written questions via the Ask a Question button on the webcast. If you wish to ask a question on the audio line, please press star then one on your device. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's question and answer session. I will now hand over to the management team for closing remarks.
Well, thank you all again for your interest in Azelis. You have seen we've started a journey quite a few years back on being the leading innovation service provider of our industry, with the core target of being also delivering sustainable solutions to the end markets. All the acquisitions we did supported this target. We're on a good track to this what my first boss about 30 years ago told me, "Always under promise and over deliver." We will continue to stick to this, and I'm confident that with the great team we're having at Azelis, that we will have more results, with more good results to report about in the months to come. With this, I thank you again, and we'll be talking to you, next time. Thank you.