Ladies and gentlemen, welcome also from my side, and thank you for joining our today's conference call. Our prepared slides are also available under the Investor Relations section of our website, www.r-stahl.com. A replay of the entire conference will be at the same place shortly after we'll have finished. Please be aware of our safe harbor statement, which you find at the beginning of the slide deck. Now, I'll pass on to Dr. Mathias Hallmann, our Group CEO, who will walk you through our presentation.
Thank you, Judith Schäuble. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our Q2 2022 analyst and investors conference call. The quarter showed a very strong, ongoing, very strong order intake from all sectors and almost all regions, ending with an increase of roughly 18% year-on-year to a level of EUR 77 million. Sales are up 5%, to a level of EUR 68 million, but still heavily subdued by ongoing supply chain issues. Therefore, EBITDA pre decreases slightly to a level of EUR 3.9 million, resulting in a EBITDA pre-margin of 5.8%. This EBITDA decrease is very much related to ongoing supply chain issues, and therefore, significant efforts we have to do to keep customer service on an acceptable level.
Net profit increases slightly by EUR 0.3 million to a level of EUR -0.9 million due to improved financial result and lower tax burden. Cash flow from operating activities is up by EUR 4.8 million to EUR 8.4 million. At the end of this presentation, we will also discuss updated outlook, which will show sales between EUR 270 million and EUR 275 million, and an EBITDA pre between EUR 18 million and EUR 21 million. If we look into our sales, we see a significant growth in Americas starting from a pretty low level. We discussed in our last call whether this is a trend because we saw similar numbers in the first quarter, or it's one-off, especially projects which would not come again.
No, it's a strong trend, and it's also ongoing in the third quarter, and it shows the strong investment level, especially in the gas and oil industry in North America. The opposite we see in Asia Pacific, where the recovery from the COVID crisis is much slower, but we will see improvements in the second half of the year. What we see in Germany is an ongoing trend of gaining market share, and that has definitely to do with our ongoing strong customer service level, which we keep on a very high level. That's probably a difference to many of our competitors. The result is definitely an increasing market share in the German region.
Looking at the net profit, or at the income statement, we see the net profit improvement, strongly driven by the financial result and the income taxes. On the operating side, we see higher cost of materials due to supply chain issues and strong inflation. We performed a couple of price increases, but the impact of these price increases has a certain delay, so that we see these slightly higher cost of material. We also see increased personnel costs, which as I already mentioned, were heavily influenced by material shortages and delivery issues, which we put lots of people into the processes in order to keep customer services on a reasonable level.
We see the impact of that in our order intake. The financial result improved strongly by the performance of our participation in our Russian company, Zavod Goreltex, which despite the Russian-Ukraine crisis is showing ongoing very strong performance. On the cash flow statement, we see a strong slight improvement of the net profit. A very strong improvement on the working capital side, where we could manage at least temporary reduction of working capital in the second quarter. That's resulting in a stronger free cash flow of EUR 5.3 million against EUR 0.1 million in the second quarter of 2022. Cash flow from financing activity in the last year.
This year it's improving due to the repayment of interest bearing debt, while last year we had to take money from the bank. This is the difference in this position and all of that, including the operating performance, is resulting in a higher net debt of EUR 23.2 million against EUR 13.2 million in 2021. Coming to our outlook, I already mentioned we had ongoing strong order intake in the second quarter. It's coming from all sectors, meaning chemical industry, pharmaceutical industry, but also gas and oil. Some first small orders from the hydrogen, from the growing hydrogen activities. We had particularly strong orders for automation equipment, which is again 12% up against the already strong first quarter.
The problem at this point of time, and we also discussed that, is turning orders into sales, because this is very much dependent on ongoing shortages for electronic supplies. The trend is at least continuing, if not further accelerating in Q3. We had a very strong July with respect to orders. August also started strong, but our current order backlog is already above EUR 100 million. We would expect ongoing strong orders towards the end of the year. We would also expect an increase in sales in the subsequent quarters of the year. That results in our updated guidance. We expect sales coming in by the end of the year between EUR 270 million and EUR 275 million.
EBITDA coming in a range between EUR 18 million and EUR 21 million. A negative cash flow, which will most likely result in a high single digit negative number at the year-end. A significant increase of our equity ratio as the interest rates are going up and help us in the valuation of our pension provisions. Risks we have in the business, as we all know, the Russia-Ukraine crisis. We can expect or we cannot expect it. It's a possibility of all kinds of developments. In the worst case, we will see further impairment of our Goreltex investments.
In the best case, and that's very much supported by the ongoing results, we would see the opposite, that the impairment we did in the first quarter can be turned back and that would then show a strong impact on our financial results. We do have the risk of increasing supply chain problems due to the crisis. Nevertheless, in many parts of the business, despite electronics, we do have our supply chain very well under control.
Our customer service levels are improving, and we are working hard on solving all the issues with electronics so that the bottom line, we think we can well manage the risks in the business, and we are positive that the second half will show a significant improvement against the first half of the year. Yeah, it's definitely supported by very strong orders with strong margins. Yeah, the moment we can really turn these orders into sales, we will see a very strong development of the bottom line in the business. This is it from my side, and I'm open to take your question.
We will take our first questions from our participant, Mr. Christian Sandler from Hauck & Aufhäuser. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I would have a first question on sales. You had a rough 5% sales increase. Can you quantify how much of that was driven by higher sales volume, and how much by higher sales prices?
Thank you, Mr. Sandler, for your question. I tried to quantify it on both sides, on the orders and on the sales side. I would guess we don't have it 100%, that one third is prices and two thirds is volume.
Is that for sales and orders, or?
Sales and orders. On the order side, there's a little bit of stronger tendency on prices, because the price increases need to flow through the chain and turn into sales. The orders are earlier, so maybe they're at 40/60, but on the sales side, it's probably 30/70.
Okay. Looking at the fact that your gross margins are still down compared to last year, is there more room to increase prices? Because I would assume you will, I mean, eventually have to anyway.
There will be another price increase by the beginning of next week. On the fifteenth of August, we apply another price increase for our standard products.
Mm-hmm.
We have to see. What we see right now is that the raw material prices are coming down. The inflationary tendencies we have more on the electronic side. We don't see it with plastics and steel and energy. The next price increases will not be over the whole range, but very much targeted to the areas where we suffer from still increasing prices on the raw material side. Overall, we are positive that we come back to the margin level we had at the end of last year.
Right. Okay. Is it possible to give an indication of how much more sales you could have done if you would've been able to procure all necessary components?
10%.
How much did 10% growth or 10% more on the number you reported?
At this point of time, 10% more on the number we reported.
Okay.
Eventually, it's a higher number over time, yeah.
Yeah.
As our orders are very strong at the moment. I would guess that these supply chain issues easily take 10% of our capacity in operations and in sales.
Yeah.
Because it takes a lot of discussions with customers, rescheduling, broken processes in operations, replanning also in R&D, to exchange components. If these supply chain issues are solved, I would easily see at least 10% higher performance in the business in terms of sales with the same amount of people.
Okay. Could you tell us, please, your other operating expenses. They have gone up roughly 20% or so, a little bit more than 20%, where this was coming from?
Let me have a quick look. I think what we definitely have is on the expense side we have much stronger business travel than in the last years, the last two years. I mean, activities are going up. Only looking at myself, I couldn't travel intercontinental in the last two years. This year, I try to be in our subsidiaries at least every four to six weeks, somewhere around the world, outside Europe. We see this from many on the management level. We see stronger customer interactions. We see more on the marketing side, really physical sales. We have some FX losses, which we also show in the other operating expenses.
Okay.
Which were very well balanced on the other operating income, by the way.
Yeah.
Overall, our FX balance is positive.
Okay, fine. Maybe another question on the whole order intake, you know, and what you're seeing going forward. Besides automation, you see any other industries particularly thriving? I mean, with the whole topic, the independence from Russian gas, I would think that the whole topic around LNG is gaining traction. You know, projects being started particularly in Germany but mainly across Europe. Do you already see any of this in order behavior?
Maybe we should quickly talk about the definition. The sectors we talk about, industry sectors. It's chemical, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, hydrogen, as an example. They are all strong. We have the three segments or the three product ranges, automation, lighting and low voltage. In automation we see a very strong trend through the fact that customers are ordering well ahead because they have ongoing projects and they need to be sure that they get products.
Mm.
We also have very strong trends in the lighting and automation sectors overall. It's pharmaceutical, it's chemical, it's the gas industry and especially LNG tankers. It's also oil service companies, for example, which are starting to open the door for stronger investments, which they didn't do over the last years. We see first trends from the hydrogen side. We have very strong trends on the lighting side because the whole European industry is forced into modern LED lighting. We never produced that much luminaire in our Weimar plant than those days, and we see even stronger trends coming by the end of the year.
We also see a good growth on the low voltage side. Now coming to these big LNG projects, we are pretty late in the value chain. We know that many of our customers are in discussions, for example, for the loading arms. We are indirectly definitely in discussions and we also see orders from LNG tankers, but because the problem is not the terminal, the problem is the transportation capacity as all tankers are booked for the next years. We also see orders or we have discussions with machine builders building the infrastructure around these terminals. These terminals will definitely not be built without R. STAHL technology.
Maybe just one final one. Zavod Goreltex, how much value do you still have on the books just in case there would be a, I don't know, black swan event where you have to write down the remaining part?
In IFRS, we have EUR 9.2 million, EUR 9.3 million. Don't ask me the last percentage. We've written off EUR 3.2 million in the first quarter. The potential is EUR 3.2 million, the maximum risk is EUR 9.2 million. Yeah. My personal guesstimate would be that we rather get the EUR 3.2 million back. But that's my personal crystal ball. Yeah.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. That would be it for me.
Thank you.
Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for question. We will take our next questions from Klaus Schlote from Solventis. Your line now has been opened. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning.
Good morning.
The guidance updated on page 11 of the handout, what are the changes compared to the last guidance?
In the first guidance which we gave, Mr. Schlote was that we said low single digit, low double digit growth on sales and EBITDA, which is still in this range, but we opened it up a little bit. There is no significant change in the guidance. We would still expect high single digit or a low double digit growth in both dimensions.
Mm-hmm.
Which will be very dependent on solving the problems in our supply chain. We already see a nice trend in June and July. As I said, we are getting issues under control more and more. It's also a kind of a surprise box in many ways, as you never exactly know whether you get product and when you get product.
The EBITDA of between EUR 18-21 million would result in what level of net profit, approximately?
That should end in close to zero.
Close to zero. As we
Without the depreciation of the Goreltex.
Okay. That would come on top then.
Depreciation, yeah. That we have to eliminate.
As you said, I think you hope it will be, it will come back.
We discussed with our auditors, and the auditors clearly said, if we look at the numbers, we get it back.
Okay, okay.
If you just applied rules.
Yeah.
We would get it back.
Okay. You would have a zero then.
If we reach the 21, we would come closer to a 0, yeah.
Okay. From your crystal ball next year, 2023 then would be the year with the positive profit.
Definitely if we get the electronics. I mean, we never, ever had such an order backlog. The order backlog is extremely healthy. We don't have big projects in the books where we only churn money. We see that the inflationary tendencies are coming back. We don't expect that we have to fulfill orders in three or six months on even higher cost of material levels.
Mm-hmm.
As I already said, I would expect that these broken supply chains easily take 10% of productivity.
Okay.
I mean, this is a guess, but it's not an unrealistic guess because when I, for example, discussed with our internal sales, we have so many escalation meetings with customers, where we have to reschedule, problem solve, and we do that successfully. Otherwise, we wouldn't get these order levels. This is taking enormous capacities on all levels of the organization.
You said your backlog, your order backlog is showing strong margins.
Yeah.
What does that mean in terms of numbers? Can you give us a hint, please?
I would say for overall 50%.
Fifty? Of raw mater- Uh-
550 against the cost of product. Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, yeah. That's the margin level we are targeting.
Mm-hmm.
Because we do have lots of customer specifics, specific projects, applications, so that we carry significant costs in our SG&A, and this is the margin level we need, but this is also the margin level we have those days.
Okay. The electronics, I mean, that appears to be one of the major risks going forward. Looking back, but also going forward. Could you put a bit of color on that? I mean, every call for the last quarters there was always the topic of electronics and the
Yeah.
The supply chain of electronics and yeah. Is that?
Yeah.
basically a price issue or.
No, it's not a price issue. It's I mean, the product is simply not there. If you look at a company like ours, I mean, you compare us with companies like the big consumer electronics players, then you have the big automotive players, and they all suffer from electronics shortages. We are really at the end of the food chain. That gives us certain advantages. We can still buy small volumes on the market which are not really relevant for the big players. There we have sometimes overpaid dramatically, and we have to think whether it makes sense to overpay 5x. This is the level the market is asking for. Sometimes they ask 5x, 10x the original price of a product.
In many cases, you just don't get it. Then we help ourselves with the redesign of the product, with qualification of new components. This comes to an end when it really goes into the core electronics like highly intelligent, high-performing chips, which are just not on the market.
In terms of the prices you mentioned, 5-10 times normal price, can you basically, or in your contracts, can you pass that on to your customer? Or is it?
Yeah. You see from our balance sheets that we have a material ratio of roughly 1/3 of our external turnover. What we do those days is we apply on top of the normal price increases, we apply material surcharges.
Mm-hmm.
These typically cover these expenses. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. It appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to Dr. Hallmann for any additional remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just one remark. I just got to know that some of you had problems dialing in. We don't know what the problem was, but if you couldn't listen to the full call, it has been recorded, and you can listen to the recorded call on the back page. So that's from my side, and thank you for participating, and hope to talk to you in three months in our Q3 call. Thank you.