Our analyst and investor call for the first quarter of 2022 fiscal year. As always, we will have our CEO, Rolf Unterberger, and our CFO, Bernd Wagner, lead you through the call today. As in previous sessions, both board members will be available for any questions you may have in the Q&A session following this presentation. For the first time, our new management board member, Udo Streller, who was appointed by the supervisory board as Chief Operations Officer as of April 1, 2022, will also be available for answers during the Q&A session. Now, the presentation supporting this call was also uploaded to the investor relations section of our website. However, if you are not online now, you should still be able to follow the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's presentation contains forward-looking statements regarding future developments, which are based on the information currently available to the company. As a result of risks and uncertainties, actual outcomes may differ from the forward-looking statements made in this presentation. Cherry does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. Also, financial figures in this presentation may not add up due to rounding. Finally, please take notice that this call will be recorded and a replay will be made available in the investor relations section of our website shortly. Now I hand over to our CEO, Rolf Unterberger, who will give you an update of the current business and market situation. Afterwards, our CFO, Bernd Wagner, will give you some more details on the financial results for the first quarter 2022 before Rolf concludes the presentation part of this call with a wrap-up. Rolf, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Kai, and welcome everyone to our Q1 2022 earnings call. As expected, the first quarter of the current fiscal year was significantly impacted by the high level of uncertainty in the overall macroeconomic environment, the short term re-reduced market demand, and the war in Ukraine. Our business operation, in particular in the gaming business, were specifically held down by supply chain disruptions, especially in Asia and China, temporary fluctuations in our customer orders, and heavy lockdowns imposed in line with Chinese government's zero-COVID policy. We cannot influence those challenges, but we can adapt and adjust. We have responded to these underlying conditions with a variety of special, individual measures like operational improvements, automated production, as well as multi-machine handling of assembly machines and diversified shipping strategy. Group revenues of EUR 33 million were down by 12.6% year-on-year.
However, compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, we still show a revenue growth of 18.6%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was at 13.4%. The number of employees stayed relatively stable even though we professionalized the organization with additional managers and eCommerce experts. The operating cash flow of -EUR 2.7 million reflects the development in working capital. With EUR 39.5 million in net cash, we are in a very comfortable financial position to fuel our growth strategy, both organically but also inorganically. Our M&A activities are ongoing, and we are evaluating potential targets on a continuous basis. Let me recap the highlights of Q1 2022. In the gaming business area, we continued developing the new tactile version of our global unique ultra-low profile switch.
The market launch of this switch is scheduled for the end of second quarter. The distinguishing feature of this innovation is that it does not produce any acoustic click feedback. This version of the switch is also suitable for use in office but also creator applications. In addition, we pushed ahead with the development of a new switch featuring a customizable functionality. This switch will be available to the market as of the third quarter this year. With its innovative switching technology, this new switch will give competitive gamers, in particular, a new gaming experience. Moreover, we are equipping various gaming keyboards with our new advanced wireless technology, which ensures an optimized response time for gamers with this technology.
As a further highlight, we are developing new smaller keyboards with a reduced number of keys, for example, 60%, and this specific 60% keyboard will be launched in the second half of the year. In the professional business area, we made good progress with our new products created last year, supported by the expansion of our eCommerce business. We started implementing our eCommerce strategy by increasing our share with Amazon as one of the main channels. Furthermore, we are adding additional channels and hired a couple of specialists into our eCommerce team. As mentioned in the last call, in addition to Europe, we are also focusing on the United States as a further online sales market for our popular peripherals.
The business case will be finalized by end of Q2, but we are already gaining traction and increasing revenue via online channels in the U.S. Besides the e-commerce business and regional expansion, we of course focus on new products. One of the key new developments will be the new KW X ULP Wireless Mechanical Keyboard. This high-quality keyboard, with the ultra-low profile switch, will stand out due to its distinctive design and extra flat profile. A very high-end keyboard, which we will launch in the second half of the year. Looking at our eHealth business, our state-of-the-art eHealth card terminals put us in an excellent position to benefit from both current and the future requirements of gematik GmbH in terms of digital infrastructure for the healthcare sector. The implementation of the current rollout is basically going according to plan.
However, we see a shift from Q2 to Q3 due to shortage of parts to build and deliver the connectors by the various connector suppliers. Connectors are important for connecting our eHealth terminals with the telematics infrastructure. The telematics infrastructure 2.0 is currently being designed and the schedule is drawn up. This is the basis to further develop our products with the aim of tapping into the new software and service-based revenue streams with the next generation of telematics infrastructure. We expect to start with that around 2025. With that overview, I'd like to hand over to Bernd to talk about the detailed financials. Bernd, please go ahead.
Thank you, Rolf. I would also like to welcome everyone on the call, and I want to point out the main financial results of the first quarter, considering our business performance in this difficult economic environment. The quarter was impacted in principle by this difficult macroeconomic environment, and in consequence, we see lower revenue of EUR 33 million, which is 12.6% lower compared to Q1 2021. However, compared to Q1 2020, we still see a revenue growth of 18.6%. As far as the cost side is concerned, cost of sales went up by 4.1% to EUR 23.1 million, mainly due to higher purchasing prices for materials, a strong US dollar, and higher transportation costs. However, as mentioned last year, we have significantly cut down already on air freight costs compared to Q1 2021.
These factors result in a gross profit of EUR 9.8 million, which corresponds to a gross profit margin of 29.9% compared to 41.1% in Q1 last year. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 4.4 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.4% compared to 29% in Q1 last year. Considering EUR 3.9 million of depreciation and amortization, this results in a slightly positive EBIT compared to EUR 6.7 million positive EBIT in Q1 2021. A full reconciliation of our alternative performance measures is included in the interim report, which also is available from our website. At EUR 21.1 million, revenue in the professional business area increased by 11.6% compared with the same quarter of last year.
The pace of growth in this business area was mainly driven by the steadily improving level of digital health business. Further, the e-commerce business, which we started over the course of last year, contributed to this development. By contrast, gaming revenue decreased by 36.9% to EUR 11.9 million compared with the same quarter one year earlier. A lower figure was primarily attributable to lower demand for switches, as well as higher demand for smaller keyboards with a reduced number of keys and various lockdowns in China and Hong Kong. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the professional business area was 16.7% compared to 24% in Q1 last year, primarily due to higher purchasing prices for raw materials, the expansion of marketing activities, and the corresponding increase in personnel required to implement our organic growth strategy.
The adjusted EBITDA margin in the gaming business came in at 7.4% compared to 34.1% in Q1 last year, due in particular to reduced fixed cost absorption in view of lower revenue on the switch side. One of our countermeasures was the introduction of short-time work at Auerbach production site in Q2. Total assets decreased slightly by 0.8% to EUR 407.7 million. Trade receivables remained almost unchanged at EUR 19.4 million, while inventories was further increased by 6.8% to EUR 47.2 million, owing to preparation for the expansion of eCommerce in the peripherals business unit over the course of the year.
Cash and cash equivalents decreased by 5% to EUR 104.2 million at the end of the first quarter, mainly due to the extended payment terms for one customer into Q2. Also, current liabilities decreased by 6.6% to EUR 31 million, primarily due to the 17.5% reduction in trade payables to EUR 14.8 million. Equity remained practically unchanged at EUR 293.9 million, which corresponds to a equity ratio of 72%. Comparing quarter by quarter, the operating cash flow amounting to -EUR 2.7 million mainly reflects a lower level of earnings, a significantly lower increase in inventory, trade receivables and other assets, and an increase in trade payables.
The cash outflow from investing activities of EUR 2 million comprises payments for investments in property, plant and equipment amounting to EUR 1.3 million, and payments for investments in intangible assets of EUR 0.7 million, predominantly in capitalized R&D. These figures result in a free cash flow of EUR 4.7 million for the first quarter, compared to -EUR 3.5 million in Q1 2021. Ladies and gentlemen, despite the challenging Q1 environment, Cherry achieved a double-digit EBITDA margin and the other financial results which we had expected. Therefore, we stick to our guidance for the full year. With that, I now hand over back to Rolf. Rolf, please go ahead. Thanks, Bernd.
Ladies and gentlemen, due to the ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges impacting markets as well as lower market demand in Q1 2022, shown by many market studies, we experienced a decline in revenue in the first three months of 2022 compared with the extraordinary first quarter in 2021. However, our underlying growth momentum remains high. With revenue up by around 19% compared to the same period of fiscal year 2020, as I have already pointed out. We have already taken current developments into account in our outlook for the full year. We confirm our expectations for the group revenue in the region of EUR 170 million-EUR 190 million for the fiscal year 2022, with an adjusted EBITDA margin between 23%-26%.
Looking further ahead, we see the underlying secular growth trends in the overall gaming and esports, the creators and hybrid workplace, including our e-commerce business, as well as the digitalization of the healthcare business further in place to reach our mid and long-term goals. We remain focused in expanding our presence in the market, and we are well-positioned to continue gaining market shares in different areas. Thanks for your time and your continued support. I will now turn over to the operator who will moderate the questions. Please go ahead.
We will take our first question from Philipp Frey from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, gentlemen. A couple of questions from my side, please. Well, during the IPO, you showed us also the sales numbers of your different business areas. Could you provide these as well, please? In this context, particularly explain in the professional segment, you also had a strong margin decline, and you particularly mentioned that the eHealth business is performing strongly, which would be your highest margin segment. A bit more light on that one. Then certainly, if I'm looking at the gross margin decline, or should I say meltdown, well, what measures have you really taken? Is there a price increase coming? Well, 11 percentage points decline is certainly extraordinary. Which particular components did experience this strong inflation?
Is there any general color? If you look at the industry trends we are seeing, well, some of your customers and also competitors have certainly also reported a very weak Q1. If you're looking at, for example, Corsair with their 30% decline in sales. How do you see yourself regarding the lead lags of the business development of your customers? Do you think this say 30% sales decline of one of our larger customers is already reflected in your numbers? Just some general comments on that one, please.
Yeah. Let's start perhaps because it was a sequence of several questions. Let's start with the-
Please do.
Allocation of sales. I think if you look at the subsegments and the digital health arena, we have made roughly EUR 7.5 million sales. In peripherals, it was nearly EUR 14 million. In gaming peripherals, roughly EUR 5.5 million. Components, roughly EUR 6.5 million.
Okay.
The second question was?
Yeah. The gross margin decline, what happened here, basically?
Yeah. I think it's a combination of several points which I've mentioned in the speech. The first one is of course the increase of raw material prices, energy, transportation costs, but also a shift in the product mix in combination with a strong US dollar. We have in principle, we are purchasing a lot of products in US dollar, so there is an impact to us. The combination of that one, raw material prices, energy costs, transportation costs, strong US dollar, and also product mix, because if you compare the figures of the components, then you have the strong profitable subsegments are a bit weaker on the component side, and that makes the reduction on the gross profit margin.
Okay. There has been no impact of countermeasures or what have you done now in terms of price increases?
There are price increases which are, Rolf can elaborate a bit, when I'm finished here. What we are doing now is, of course, we have short-time work, but that started in Q2 with the target to reduce inventory, which we have built up very strongly. We see for the moment, based on these macroeconomic headwinds, which we see, we want to reduce the inventory to free up cash flow. Nevertheless, we are building up inventory still for ICs, because some of the ICs still have lead times of roughly 70 weeks. At the same time, we have multi-machine operation installed, and we now also run into a cost reduction program, not on the strategic side.
eCommerce, we are pushing that side and also marketing, but we are reviewing all the cost side to compensate with countermeasures in Q2 and Q3 if that proceeds. We will not endanger our growth, organic growth plan with defined marketing measures and also with strong investments into our eCommerce, our new distribution channels. On the pricing, I think Rolf can perhaps say some additional words here.
No, no, we didn't. We did price increases, of course, yeah, with first of April. Of course, what we cannot do is that we every day come back to the customers and say, "Hey, we need to increase prices there and there." We have done that now with first of April, and then we have to see how it develops over Q2 and how the costs will develop, and then we will decide whether we have to do another price increase. Yeah. That's definitely something we are doing. Coming back maybe to your final question or the last final question. Looking at the market, yeah. If you look at mechanical keyboards market today, it's pretty flat.
In the US and you have seen maybe the NPD data, it's 20%-30% declining in regards to the Q1 last year. This means a lot of, let's say, customers of us on the switch side having a lot of inventories, and they try to sell it off into the market in a declining market at this point of time. With that, you see also price reduction taking place at the moment. That's one reason why we are selling at the moment less switches than we have done one year ago.
The second thing is, the current trends that you see, more and more smaller keyboards, because it's at the moment really trendy and fancy to have 60%, 70%, 80% keyboards, which immediately, of course, impacts the number of switches you're selling to the keyboard brands. This means there's an impact between 20%-40%, depending on the keyboards. If you look at the market share of those keyboards in China, it's already 31% that you see smaller keyboards than the 100% keyboards. That's the second impact we see at the moment. Therefore, we see in the gaming numbers, mainly the impact on the switch side in that respect.
Okay. May I add on this side a follow-up briefly? If you look at the current momentum, well, I guess, lockdowns in China certainly can't help your gaming peripherals business there, so it should actually worsen, I guess. The trends with the high inventory level of your customers, all this indicates that we basically should brace for an even worse Q2 than, in terms of decline rate, than we saw now in the first quarter, or what's my mistake here?
And that-
Yeah, no, that's of course difficult to say and to predict, yeah, because it's really a daily changing situation, especially in China. You're absolutely right, yeah. If you look back to February, yeah, when Chinese New Year started, you saw a lot of lockdowns in Shenzhen, Dongguan. It's all in Guangdong province, where basically our suppliers are sitting, and they could not deliver material to our factory. As the next step, we saw that Zhuhai, where we have our factory, was shut down. First it was the warehouse what we had, yeah. We could not bring in inventory to the warehouse or send it to the clients.
What we did is really on a daily basis took countermeasures and tried to produce in different shifts more that we can send the material directly or the products directly to the clients. Our factory was closed down. People even slept overnight in the factory because otherwise if they would have left the factory they couldn't get in anymore. We produced all the material we had or with the material we had in order to ship it. Now you see by yourself that the last 5-6 weeks Shanghai is closed yeah. In Shanghai there's our second biggest distributor in China so therefore we cannot ship anything to them and they cannot ship out to their clients. Countermeasure is that they are trying to set up now within the next week.
A warehouse in Guangdong Province, which is open again now in order that we can send directly from our factory to their Guangdong or Guangzhou, which is the city, warehouse that they can send it to their clients. Therefore, it's very difficult at the moment to really predict what will happen because China still has the zero-COVID policy. If there is not an opening taking place, it's very difficult. Even for the ultra-low profile contract manufacturer, they're sitting in Suzhou, which is Jiangsu Province, they also don't receive parts from their suppliers in order to produce the keyboards or let's say the ultra-low profile laptops for Dell. From this point of view, it's very difficult to predict.
We have to react and act on a daily basis in order to manage the numbers. The impact on gaming peripherals so far was not that big as in the switch side, and we're very confident that we can pick up on that one, depending, of course, on China and the lockdowns in China.
Okay. Best of luck for the market environment improving again.
Again, sorry?
I just wanted to thank you and wish you best of luck now for the remainder of the year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Julian Dobrovolschi from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for this presentation. I have a couple of questions on my side as well, and probably we can try to go one by one. The first one is on the new ULP switch, but also the customizable switch. I think you've presented that in the sort of, let's say, the new upcoming products from the gaming business unit. Now, of course, we see that the components business is actually on the decline, and I just commented kind of the reason, and I think it's understandable. How much do you actually expect from the new upcoming, let's say, switches? The ULP, but also the customizable one, how much do you expect these two products to actually offset losses in the other components? Just kind of directional thinking about the problem.
Yeah, of course. One thing is very clear, that, let's say the stronger growth will come from ultra-low profile switch, yeah. Looking at the clients we have contracted, unfortunately, they have not launched the product yet, except Alienware, the two platforms, and Corsair, the French company. The others will come now, let's say June, July, August, until September, you will see a couple of new products with the ultra-low profile switch, with the textile, but also with the clicky switch. With that, we definitely believe that we will further grow on this part. If you look at the clients, we will definitely will use the entire capacity until end of the year of the first machine.
As you know, the second machine will come in in January in order to really onboard additional customers, which we're going to acquire hopefully in the second half of the year. If you look at the components business, of course, the MX and the MX RGB switches at the moment are flat and the growth, or let's say Q1 was declining, of course, yeah. We see still a huge challenge on the standard switches in Q2. But of course, we will pick up a certain portion in Q2 and further quarters, of course this year with the ultra-low profile switch.
Got it. Now,
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah. No, no, go ahead. Sorry.
Now with the customizable switch, as you know, as we mentioned, we will launch it, the technology, in Q3. We are in different discussions with clients, what is the first keyboard in order to build this customizable switch into a first keyboard.
The customizable switch, this is basically the same product as I think you know in that course you mentioned it to be the kind of, let's say, analog with like many actuating points, right?
Exactly.
Okay. Got it. Just kind of still staying on this topic, I think in the past, I think actually during the IPO phase, it was mentioned that the margins on the ULP switch, and I believe also on the new customizable switch are higher than MX and other ones. Let's say now we kinda know that the margins are, you know, declining because of whatever, like the high fixed cost and so on and so forth. Because of, let's say now ramping up production, actually, sorry, ramping up sales in the ULP switch, but also in the customizable switch part, do you believe that, you know, margins have the potential to go up slightly as well on the back of, let's say, more sales from the ULP and customizable switch?
In general, yes. Of course, we're still in the ramp-up phase, onboarding more and more customers. This means this takes also a certain effort, of course, on the ultra-low profile machine. In general, yes, especially when we have then second and third machine in place, we see definitely a ramp-up there. In regard to the customized switch, we will see, yeah, because we will see how the adoption will be, how fast it will be, and therefore, we will see then also whether this will be a ramp-up depending on the volume, of course, we're selling. In general, yes, the margin is higher there but depending very much on the volume, of course. Yeah.
Margins is gonna be a matter of volumes on both sides.
Perfect.
two more questions on the outlook. This is reiterated for 2022. You also just explained as well. Just kind of, you know, trying to kind of gauge your confidence in the outlook, especially in the gaming segment, since the growth in the gaming segment actually has been slowing down since Q1 2021 in fact. I mean, if you can expect gaming unit to grow in the mid-single digit this year, that actually would mean that you'd have to kind of generate on average EUR 25 million in sales every single quarter in Q2, Q3, and Q4 this year.
While last year, if you kind of look into the numbers, in a bull market with good demand, but also decent macro environments, your highest gaming revenue per quarter was actually EUR 23 million. So just wondering if you could just please kind of run us through the, you know, how they actually see the phasing of growth in the gaming this year.
Yes. In the gaming part, of course, we have two different perspectives. One is the components, of course, where we see a challenging market environment and lower demand, of course. Here we, as already discussed, I think important thing is that we can ramp up ultra-low profile and then hopefully also the customizable switch going forward. The second thing is the gaming peripherals, where we are slightly behind our expectations due to the shutdowns, let's say, or lockdowns in China.
Depending, of course, on the Chinese decision, the government's decision, whether they're going to open soon, we are confident that we can catch up on this side because here we brought a couple of new products to the market last year, but also bringing new wireless products to the market as mentioned before. Therefore, we are confident that we can catch up. In general, we have to say, if you look at the four different units, I think the biggest market challenge at the moment is definitely in the switch business.
Looking at the second half, on the digitization of the healthcare business, but also how the eCommerce took off in Q1 already for the peripheral side, we are confident to catch up in second half of the year. As I mentioned also last time, the plan for 2022, because of the eCommerce, was pretty much backloaded in the second half of the year. Therefore, depending, of course, the influences we have from the macroeconomic environment, of course, because we cannot influence a war or cannot influence lockdowns in China, we are still very confident to arrive at our guidance, what we gave us already last time. Of course, depending on certain environmental impact.
I get it. Now, a follow-up of kind of more or less the same flavor on the 2022 outlook, but this time on the margin side. Based on the midpoint of sales, but also just EBITDA margin guidance, back of the envelope calculation kind of suggests to me that on average, you'd have to realize circa 27% in adjusted EBITDA margin again in every single quarter. Could you again, sort of speak about a bit, on the, you know, from where they actually expect margin improvements to come from and phasing goals in 2022, as, I mean, we've kind of seen this to be quite depressing in Q1.
Pretty much, you know, kind of looking in, let's say Q2 and Q3, you know, again, sort of like in, let's say, back of the envelope calculation, that actually would imply that in every single quarter after Q1, margins would have to double. I was just wondering, you know, from where this massive upside should we expect.
In principle, we expect, and that was also in our budget, that the second half of the year will be, as usual, stronger, much stronger than the first half year. We are also working on several measures to improve margins and the selling prices. I mentioned already some of them. These are the short-time work. Secondly, of course, multi-machine operation. Our new COO will focus very strongly to even further streamline operations and purchase prices with economies of scale.
When we look at the e-commerce business, we see very clearly that there is a huge chunk because we compared Q1 this year compared to Q1 last year, and we see that on our e-commerce selling in Amazon, we have been growing by 45%. Of course, we are boosting that one for the moment with additional marketing spends to come up in the ranking on Amazon, because that is typically what you have to spend the marketing expenditures for. That is together with all the other measures on the operating side, we are quite confident that this brings the rebound on the profitability.
On top of that one, the product mix, because we see a very strong growing demand on the digital health, which means eHealth terminals and PIN-Pads. That is the second driver beside eCommerce and the peripherals, which is strongly growing also.
Yep. Got it. Just a quick final one. Is it possible?
Changing product mix.
Yeah. Is it possible?
Sorry.
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I think there's a bit of delay in there. Go ahead.
Yeah. There is that, well, to summarize it is a change in product mix what we expect, and the operational measures which is driven by the COO now, which has taken over this role from my side so that I really can concentrate on the finance and, last but not least, on the operational measures with the production side, yeah, multi-machine operation, fourth generation, and so on and so on, and economies of scale. Just to summarize it.
Yeah. Got it. Well, thanks for all the flavor. Thanks, Bernd Wagner. Good luck.
Thank you.
We will now move on to our next question from Marie-Thérèse Grübner from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Couple of questions from my side. I would ask them one after the next, if you don't mind. How many terminals are you planning to sell in eHealth this year?
Yeah. First of all, hi, Marie-Thérèse. Rolf here.
Hi. Hi.
You know, this year we're going to launch in Q4 the PIN-Pad, which is a second device for new applications in this environment of gematik infrastructure. We plan to have a similar number on the eHealth terminals. Maybe there's a chance to overshoot depending how the rollout of the connectors will go on in the next couple of weeks. On top.
Yeah.
We will have the PIN-Pad. Yeah.
Okay. Basically, if I number of PIN pads plus number of eHealth terminals, I mean, what is it overall? I mean, how many in total number?
That's difficult to say today because also here we have a lot of influence, especially in the connector side, yeah.
Yeah.
As you most probably know. Because the first connectors who were basically placed in the gematik TI infrastructure coming end of life. After five years you have to exchange them, and now the connector suppliers like CompuGroup, like T-Systems, secunet have-
Mm-hmm.
The challenge that they have on one hand to replace existing end of life connectors and have to deliver for the new applications or for the new stakeholders additional connectors. Therefore we depend on them because we have to connect to the connector of course, yeah. But
Okay.
In total.
Yeah.
It could be around, let's say, total number, maybe around 70,000, something like that.
For the terminals?
For all together, yeah.
All.
The terminals last year was about 63,000, yeah. What we delivered.
Mm-hmm.
Could be around the same number, could be also higher, plus the PIN-Pads, which we start to deliver from Q4 this year.
Q4 delivery. 7,000
Yeah.
more or less PIN pads. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that one. The next question regards the smaller keyboards. I mean, it's interesting to hear that they are gaining market share so quickly in China. You know, I just wanted to have your view on whether you think this is a trend which is here to stay and which will spill over into some of your other customers also in the US. Whether or not we should see sustainably less typical mechanical switches for these types of keyboards being produced. Because you know, as you mentioned, they are smaller, they need less switches per keyboard.
I mean, is this something?
Mm-hmm.
Is this a trend we are seeing now above and beyond this terrible year, 2022? Which we should reflect.
I mean, that's very difficult to predict, of course. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
What we see with regard to gaming trends, yeah, or mechanical keyboard trends, they last for, yeah, I don't know, 12-18 months. Yeah. And then you will see-
Mm-hmm.
a different trend again. Yeah. Therefore
Mm-hmm.
Definitely it's a current trend, but we don't believe that this will be something where you're maybe in 12 months or 18 months we'll see 50% or 100%, 60% or 70%, 80% keyboards. So it's one of the trends. Yeah. And we see, of course, a lot of gamers, but also creators who need the full size keyboard. Yeah. So therefore, it will be, I would say, a mix out of that. Will it go to 40% or 50%? Difficult to say, but most probably.
Mm-hmm.
The main application for the smaller keyboards is not really, let's say 100% gaming. It's more, let's say casual gaming, but also living room environment where we wanna have a smaller keyboard with your smart TV, for example, but you want to have a mechanical keyboard. Therefore, I think it's a current trend.
Mm.
I would see also going forward 2023 that more and more full-size keyboards will come to the market as well.
Basically so that we understand, what does the gamer who has a small keyboard forfeit in terms of game performance or gaming abilities or capabilities? I mean, what does he forfeit in exchange for small and easy to carry around, you know?
Yeah, it's easy to carry or easier to carry around, but I mean, this 10 centimeters really don't make the difference, yeah, to carry a keyboard around.
Okay.
Anyway, I think a gamer, a typical gamer has several keyboards. Yeah. One of them might-
Mm-hmm.
be for specific game, a 60%-
Mm-hmm.
or a smaller keyboard, let's say. For other games.
Yep.
They will use a full size keyboard. Yeah. Depending on the game as well. Therefore.
Mm.
We see this as part of the assets a gamer have when he's really a professional gamer, then he definitely has several keyboards.
Okay. Next question has to do with H2. I mean, you gave us plenty of reasons why H2 should be stronger than H1. Corsair was mentioning in one of the investor brochure presentations that they're expecting a replacement cycle to kick in for all these people who equipped at the beginning of Corona. Is this something you can kind of corroborate or confirm? That you are expecting a wave of upgrades to come in the second half? Because this is what they were talking about.
Yeah.
I was curious maybe to have your feeling on that one.
Yeah. It's difficult to predict. Usually, you have in a gaming cycle and this would underline the statement of course, yeah, of 18. You have a 18 months replacement cycle on average, yeah. Not because
Mm-hmm.
The keyboard is not good anymore, but because you have to bring something new to the market, you have to give the gamer something new to buy. In that respect
Mm-hmm.
I would agree to that. Yeah. I think, since what we see is a lot of keyboard brands have their still a lot of inventory, yeah. The question will be.
Mm-hmm.
When this inventory is sold out, and then they can really sell new products to the market, which then in the entire value chain also will, let's say, impact on us in a positive way, let's say, yeah. So it's
Mm-hmm.
Difficult to predict at the moment, yeah. In general-
Mm-hmm.
From time perspective, I would underline that one, yeah.
Okay, great. Next question, it has to do with the gross margin development, maybe one for Bernd. You mentioned the U.S. dollar. Is it possible to isolate the U.S. dollar effect in the decline in the gross margin in terms of basis points or points?
Yes.
Is it simply.
You-
Yep.
You can extract that one, of course. The US, we have had a very conservative budget rate.
Mm-hmm.
Lower than the banks expected, by the way. Unfortunately, Ukraine war came, and the US dollar went to 1.05 against the euro, which is below our budget rate.
Mm-hmm.
The situation is that we are roughly $2 million short in US dollars per month.
Mm-hmm.
We expect to implement now also a hedging strategy, which
Mm-hmm.
or execute a hedging strategy in the future. I think you can calculate when you're short on that amount that the impact up or down hits you positive or negative on your purchasing prices.
Okay. All right. I will do the calculation. And then one more question, the multi-machine operation you mentioned that as a countermeasure, you know, but can you just explain what you mean exactly? I thought that the fourth generation machines are coming, you know, next year kind of thing, and maybe not immediately. What do we have to understand on the multi-machine operation as an efficiency measure?
We expect the fourth generation to come in the range of November to December.
Mm-hmm.
That's not a brand new technology like the ultra-low profile, because the new ultra-low profile machine has a new, let's say, architecture.
Mm-hmm.
which gives us a much better performance than the first one. We are still-
Mm-hmm.
Of course, in the ramp-up phase, yeah. The fourth generation is established MX and RGB switches, yeah. As you might remember, the actual pre-production machines generate roughly 80 pieces per minute, and then the new generation, the fourth generation is roughly 300, in the range 330-350 switches per minute.
Mm-hmm.
We expect this machine to arrive somewhere in November, hopefully.
Mm-hmm.
Even the testing period, because the output is so large, even the.
Yeah.
The testing periods will produce a lot of switches already for a lower price. On the multi-machine operations, you need typically in these kind of machines what we are using, you need so-called bunkers, yeah. Those-
Mm-hmm.
Bunkers typically have to be fed manually today, roughly every 30-60 minutes, yeah. They have to put roughly we have five-six bunkers per machine, yeah. We have more than 25 production machines, and each of the bunkers have to be filled. The next generation of bunkers, which we have already implemented, they are much bigger. They need only a feeding, for example, of five-six hours, one bunker. Yeah. They are larger.
Mm-hmm.
Simply larger than the existing ones. That's the first one.
Mm-hmm.
What we are doing is we are putting machines into a kind of bulk of machines, so high performance machines, which do not need so much attendance of the operator together with.
Mm-hmm.
with lower ones, yeah. That we have less direct workers working on, for example, 4 machines instead of only working on one or two machines, yeah.
Okay.
Because some of the machines need less care than other machines from the old generation.
Okay. Yeah, great. That makes it a bit clearer. Maybe a classic question on the guidance. It doesn't include any M&A, right? Your guidance, just to be clear.
Yeah.
Let's put it this way. Okay. No M&A. Okay. I saw that in the invitation for the AGM, you are requesting more authorized capital. I mean, can you give us maybe an idea of what kind of capacity are you looking for at this point?
Not yet, because we have to decide on some of the decisions together with our supervisory board.
Mm-hmm.
I think that is a bit too early.
Maybe last but not least, just to come back to, you know, obviously, there's a lot of pushback on the maintenance of the guidance in light of the performance in Q1. Maybe you can give us some, like, concrete color as to how Q2 is proceeding. We're just presuming it's gonna be just as bad or even worse than Q1 in light of the lockdowns not easing. Do you have any kind of tangible data or any updates you can give us now into maybe one and a half months of Q2?
No, I think it's very difficult to give a prediction on Q2 since we are not even in 50% gone, or through the Q1, Q2.
Mm-hmm.
It depends pretty much what will happen in the next couple of weeks in China. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It's at the moment not possible to give a prediction, but what we can say it's definitely further on very challenging Q2, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
We looking positive to the next quarters, yeah. We will see how it develop, but at the moment it's too early to talk about that.
Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. I'll see you in the next couple of days, I guess, at our conference. Thank you very much.
Yeah, I guess so. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Miguel Lago, from Montega AG.
Yes. Thank you very much for taking my questions. A couple of technical ones, actually. You are mentioning EBITDA adjustments in the amount of EUR 1.5 million. Can you maybe shed some light on those adjustments in detail and the specific components? Maybe that's for the first question, maybe we can go through the questions one by one. Let's start with this one.
Adjustment. What number did you say?
0.5.
Yeah. The adjustment we typically have only five categories of where we're talking about adjustments. One is personnel. Typically extraordinary one-off or non-cash expenditures which are involved with the supervisory board or the board members. In this respect, because Udo came on board, we have had a one-off costs, slightly one-off costs here. Secondly, we have had one-off costs for extraordinary strategic investigation or analysis on the e-commerce, which is really a one-off. Last but not least, we typically have expenditures on M&A and IPO. IPO is gone, so there is no late invoicing for the moment. M&A, we have transactions costs for due diligence and so on.
We have that one included in our categories of personnel, M&A transactions, IPO, and pandemic costs, and then typically some other costs which could occur. Could be sometimes accounting. Last year it was accounting IFRS 2, but this year it's predominantly bringing a new board member on board, the strategic analysis for e-commerce and that's it more or less. Yeah. You can expect that looking forward, there will not be very much in the next few quarters.
Okay, great. This would be my next one then. Your expectation for full year should be relatively. There's not much left, let's say, for what you just said or?
Correct.
Next one would be on the working capital increase. Is this an effect we will see in further quarters, or is it something you expect to come back to former levels?
No, we are concentrating now. I think that one of the reasons is the short-time work. We're concentrating now to reduce inventory on one part, for example, on switches, but we use this one to ramp up the higher necessary inventory for eCommerce, because as you remember, I mentioned we have been growing to roughly EUR 1.4 million by 45% compared to the same quarter last year in eCommerce. eCommerce, definitely you need the products on board. You need it on stock, otherwise, because you have to deliver within 24 hours with Amazon. That makes a very good picture. For the moment, we are predominantly working on the eCommerce in Europe.
Very soon, that is also a booster for the second half. What we expect is e-commerce in the US. We use the, let's say, reduced inventory for two purposes. One is for ICs, which are short and have long delivery times, which we need for the terminals and the digital health. The other one for the e-commerce. You will probably not see an increase on the inventory, but we reduce the inventory. Use it for different purposes. For the moment.
Okay.
Yeah. Once the supply chains are back to normal, then we reduce inventory totally.
No, totally makes sense. Give me a second. I think that's it for the moment. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. That concludes the Q&A session today. I will now hand back to your speakers for any concluding remarks.
Yeah. First of all, thanks very much for your participation and of course, the questions. I think we will be in touch anyway over the next couple of weeks, in order to see where, how the situation develops. We still hope it will improve, going forward, towards end of the year or second half of the year. With that, thanks a lot for your support and hope to talk to you very soon. Thank you very much.