Earnings Call: H1 2021

Apr 22, 2021

Good afternoon and welcome to the webcast of our interim results for the 6 months ended February 2021. I'm Vikesh Ramsanda, the Chief Executive of The Clicks Group, I'm joined here today by Michael Fleming, our Chief Financial Officer. Together, we will take you through today's presentation. This is the outline of the presentation. I will start with a review of the past 6 months. Michael will follow with an overview of our financial performance. I will then take you through the trading performance and close with the outlook for the group. You can submit questions via the webcast during and after the presentation. Sugham from Investor Relations will read them out for Michael and I to answer. I'll now begin with a review of the period. The group has once again delivered a strong health and beauty performance over the past 6 months. This in the context of a disruptive start to the new financial year, a constrained economy compounded by the destructive nature of COVID-nineteen. Just to remind you that the comparative period was not impacted by the pandemic. The impact of COVID-nineteen continued to be felt into the first half of the new financial year with consumer shopping patterns changing and lower footfall in malls. Gifting performance over Christmas was also muted as gatherings were restricted and the country experienced a second wave of infections. Despite these headwinds, the business once again generated good growth driven by the great everyday prices, a differentiated product offer and our highly accessible store network including our online store. I will provide you with more detail on the performance of our merchandise categories later in the presentation. We continued our focus on growth and opened our 600th pharmacy during the period. It is pleasing that this pharmacy was opened in a mall where we had not been able to secure space for almost a decade. So the tough environment is also presenting opportunities. UPD saw strong sales growth and continue to gain market share. This has been driven by strong growth into the hospital channel and by attracting new wholesale customers. Another highlight was the effective cost control as the group adapted to changing consumer buying patterns and a far more digitized way of working. Michael will provide you with more detail on this shortly. During the period, I also took the decision to strengthen the group's executive management by appointing Prakash Singh as Managing Executive of Clicks and Trevor McCoy as Head of UPD. At the same time, we have expanded the role of Bettina Engelbrecht, our Group HR Director to include corporate affairs. The macroeconomic and trading environment has become far more complex, requiring adaptability and increased speed of execution. As we advised in our trading update in January, we took a decision to close the Musica business. This is a very sad moment for the group as it marks the end of an iconic South African brand that has brought entertainment to customers for more than 5 decades. We recognized for several years now that the business model was no longer viable, but have managed the divestment of the brand in a responsible and phased manner to reduce the impact on our shareholders, suppliers and people. Almost 100% of Musica employees have been accommodated within the group, supported by the growth of the Click Store network. The strong performance from health and beauty and distribution moderated by the closure of Musica has resulted in diluted headline earnings per share increasing by 9.5%. I will now hand over to Michael to take you to the financial performance of the group. Thank you, Vitesh. Group turnover increased by 7.6% for the 1st 6 months with health and beauty turnover up 7.2% and UPD growing turnover by 9%. The group operating margin lifted 10 basis points to 7.5 percent benefiting from stringent and focused cost management. Diluted headline earnings per share rose to $0.3.71 per share, up 9.5% and included closure costs of Musica. Excluding the impact of Musica, as the operation will be reflected as a discontinued operation at the end of the year, diluted headline earnings per share would be up 14.1%. Group's return on equity increased by 260 basis points to 37.4%. We closed the half year with cash of ZAR1.1 billion on the balance sheet. This was after the 2020 dividend was paid in January as well as after ZAR600,000,000 was returned to shareholders in the form of share buybacks during the period. We have also declared an interim dividend of $142.5 per share, which will be paid to shareholders on the 5th July. We have a very resilient and a defensive business model, but it is not immune to the impact COVID-nineteen has had both on the economy and on consumer behavior. Within retail, which grew sales by 5.8%, you can see the driver of growth was in health and beauty, when new stores and pharmacies added 3.2% to the top line and same stores grew 4%. Selling price inflation for health and beauty was also 3.2% for the period. In addition, last year's comparative was a leap year. The loss of the 29th February, which was a month end shopping day had a 0.8% negative impact on Health and Beauty's turnover growth rate this year, effectively reducing its growth rate down to 7.2%. The distribution business experienced low selling price inflation of 2.3% and saw particularly pleasing volume growth in the wholesale business, which ensured turnover rose 9% as I mentioned before. Vakesh will elaborate on the detail of each business' performance later in the presentation. This slide reflects our total income earned, which increased by 5.7 percent to nearly ZAR4.9 billion for the 6 months. You can see the Health and Beauty total income margin was 40 basis points lower than last year. This was mainly due to sales mix changes within various categories, in particular beauty being negatively impacted by COVID. On the other hand, UPD's total income was up 14.7% with the margin lifting by 40 basis points to 8.5%. UPD has continued to benefit from the addition of wholesale and distribution contracts gained during the previous year. A point worth noting is there was no SEP benefit in the first half as the SEP increase was effective about a month later this year. We continue to focus on cost efficiency in the retail business. Health and beauty has reduced operating expenditure as a percentage of turnover by 70 basis points to 23.9%. Over the past 12 months, we have opened 39 click stores, 29 pharmacies, of which 17 stores and 16 pharmacies were opened in the last 6 months. We have also extended space in 7 stores during the first half. Operating costs in health and beauty were up only 4%, largely due to the addition of new space and employees to support the new stores and pharmacies. On a comparable basis, health and beauty cost growth was flat on last year. As Vakesh mentioned earlier, we have announced Musica will cease trading at the end of May. During the first half, we closed 53 stores and we have closed a further 14 stores since the half year. Currently, we have 11 stores still trading. We also only have 53 Musica staff members left to be transferred into the expanding clicks chain. In terms of the impact of Musica's closure on the group, stock risk to the business has been reduced through running attractive promotions and clearance sales. We've also had the benefit of selling consignment stock and are left with only ZAR4 1,000,000 of our own stock, which will all be sold. The provision of ZAR11 1,000,000 has been made at the half year for store made good costs for us to return stores back to landlords in good order in terms of our lease obligations. We've impaired residual fixed assets along with remaining right of use leased assets in cases where a few leases continue after the end of May. We've also signed relet mandates with landlords to market these stores. The total impact of the Musica loss on diluted headline earnings per share in half 1 this year was $0.18 per share. We expect a further trading loss in half 2 with the remaining stores trading up to the end of May. UPD's costs increased by 13.5% for the half year, which was well below the 18.9% growth in total managed turnover. I did mention at our results presentation last year that the business continues to have an element of inefficiency in the cost base in Johannesburg. This takes the form of extra operational costs incurred in the rented warehouse, which is used to service the additional distribution in complex 1. You can see both the health and beauty and the distribution business operating margins are healthy as is the group margin despite the faster growth of the distribution business. Health and beauty grew profits by 11% with the margin improving by 30 basis points to 9.1% as a consequence of tight cost management. UPD through its sheer scale grew operating profit by 16.6% and improved operating margin by 20 basis points to 3.2%. Overall, despite the loss incurred in musica, the group's operating profit increased by 9.7% to almost ZAR1.4 billion for the 6 months. Looking at inventory, we have buffered FunShop Healthstock in retail with additional days stock cover to cater for increased demand as well as ongoing local and global supply chain disruption. Distribution stock cover remains appropriate at this time of the year with the business well positioned for when the anticipated COVID 3rd wave arrives. Overall, inventory levels for the group have increased by 8.2% and have improved by one day to 83 days overall. This slide shows the movement of cash between the cash on the balance sheet at the end of August 2020 the end of February this year. At the end of last year, we had cash of almost ZAR2.2 billion which is reflected in dark blue on the left hand side and we ended the half year with $1,100,000,000 also reflected in dark blue on the right hand side of the slide. For the 6 months, the group has generated cash of almost ZAR2 1,000,000,000 highlighted in green before the repayment of lease liabilities amounting to ZAR307 1,000,000 working capital changes of ZAR270 1,000,000 and tax payments of ZAR429 1,000,000. We have invested ZAR269 1,000,000 in CapEx over the past 6 months, mainly on new stores, including 19 store refurbishments and IT. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we returned over ZAR1.7 billion to shareholders during the period. This was in the form of dividends of ZAR1.1 billion and share buybacks of ZAR602 1,000,000. This leaves the group with a strong balance sheet at the end of the period and in good shape to fund the interim dividend, which amounts to ZAR350 1,000,000. We continue to view the investment prospects for organic growth as highly attractive. CapEx expenditure and commitments of $745,000,000 are still planned for this year. As a reminder, this includes $67,000,000 carried forward from 2020 due to delays caused by the impact of COVID-nineteen. Dollars 317,000,000 will be invested in our store and pharmacy network. This will include 40 new click stores, 36 new pharmacies and 40 store refurbishments. $428,000,000 will be focused mainly on IT systems, supply chain, including UPD and infrastructure. Of this amount, IT related expenditure will comprise $226,000,000 dollars I'll now hand back to Vitesh to take you through the rest of the presentation. Thanks, Michael. I will now take you through the trading performance starting with Health and Beauty. Let me start by reflecting on this joyous picture from the milestone opening of our 600th pharmacy at the Nickel Way Shopping Center in Johannesburg, a truly proud moment for all of us. This is the breakdown of Health and Beauty sales by category. Total turnover grew 7.2% with existing stores growing by 4%. Moderate inflation of 3.2% was achieved whilst we remained price competitive. COVID-nineteen has changed the way customers shop and behave which has affected the performance of certain categories. Firstly, customers wearing masks and working from home has meant a lower demand for beauty and accessories. Secondly, reduced portfolio in stores has a negative impact on higher volume in pods categories such as confectionery and cool drinks. Thirdly, social distancing and mask usage helps prevent the spread of acute infections. On the upside, consumers have become more aware about wellness, which has driven healthcare sales, while spending more time at home, met a greater need for appliances and technology. Modest volume growth of 0.8% was achieved in existing stores impacted mainly by these factors as well as disruption to our stores in early September. It's also important to note that these sales are being compared to a non COVID-nineteen impacted period. Pharmacy sales grew by 3%. Value in pharmacy continues to be suppressed by genericization, a lower demand for acute medication and people shopping closer to home. The soft growth in curative healthcare was counterbalanced by the preventative with Front Shop Health growing by 24.7% and was once again the star performer buoyed by 3 factors. Firstly, we saw an excellent performance from our baby category which was up 23%. Secondly, our vitamins and supplements category grew by 34% reflecting customers' desire for wellness. And finally, our external healthcare categories of diagnostics and first aid delivered growth in excess of 22%. Beauty and personal care growth was muted, dragged down mainly by beauty with negative growth in color cosmetics and fragrances. Standout performances were seen in the soap category up 44% and dermis skincare up 11%. General Merchandise was impacted by lower footfall in stores negatively impacting our basket building categories. People working from home however drove the growth of household appliances up 10.4% and technology and accessories up 15.8%. The sales performance in health and beauty translated into market share gains across most of our core categories. Pharmacy market share declined for the period impacted by consumers choosing to fulfill their prescriptions closer to home and opting for home delivery. This has made independent pharmacies more resilient over the short term. The strong sales performance in healthcare has resulted in market share growing 33%. We now have 19.6% share in baby with almost a 3% market share gain in a year. Although the beauty category was under significant pressure, share gains were achieved in both the hair care and skincare categories. People working from home and strong promotional offers meant that we once again gain market share in small electrical appliances, which is at 17.8%. I will now go into detail on the key drivers that supported our growth. Starting with value. The destructive economic impact of COVID-nineteen means delivering value to consumers has now become even more important and we continue to do this in several ways. Firstly, through great everyday prices. As you can see from the table on the slide, we remain price competitive with all major national retailers, which are predominantly grocers. This excludes our famous 3 for 2 promotions, which further enhances our value offering. Secondly, through market leading promotions, promotional sales grew by 12.1% and now makes up 42% of turnover. This is a further reflection of consumers searching for value. Thirdly, by offering patients a generic medicine at our pharmacies. Generics grew by 4.7% and now contributes 58% of sales and 70% of volume. Finally, our rewards offered through our loyalty program and lower prices through our extensive range of private label products. A key driver of growth and differentiation is our range of private label and exclusive brands. Private label grew by 12.8% and now makes up 24.5% of sales with 30% in Front Shop and 9.4% in Pharmacy. Our long term target is to achieve 35% contribution in Front Shop and 15% in Pharmacy. A key strategic focus area is the tiering of private label. We recently launched the Clicks Expert range as our top tier and we'll be rolling this out to more categories. Expert provides us with 3 levels of pricing for private label as customers continue to trade down. It further differentiates our offering and increases consumer choice. Another driver of performance was the Clix Clubcard. Even with reduced footfall in stores, Clubcard membership was maintained at 8,600,000 active members contributing 79% of sales. A pleasing 1,800,000 customers have now downloaded the Clix app. This is testament to our continuous investment in digital and creates a very important conduit to engage with our customers in a more personalized manner. We have seen improved participation on personalized promotions by the app and our latest investment in digital creates a personalized landing page based on customer segmentation data. We have a team focused on customer behavioral analytics and we will improve our quality of engagement as our expertise grows in this area. Another way in which we enhance the brand positioning is through convenience in healthcare. Firstly, we have a repeat prescription program that supports patient care and convenience through a reminder service and pre prepared parcels. We regard these as our managed patients and they display on average a 17% higher chronic medication compliance. Secondly, customers are able to submit their scripts via the app to a clinic pharmacy of their choice. This helps speed up service and reduce waiting times. Thirdly, the launch of our pharmacy delivery service in November has seen a positive uptake and provides added convenience for customers. Finally, COVID-nineteen has accelerated the growth in telemedicine. We now provide a virtual doctor consultation service in 85 of our clinics providing cost savings and include access to primary healthcare for patients. Our plan is to roll this out to all our clinics in the future. Building on our convenience strategy with the expansion of our store network and the performance of our online store. Our teams have been very busy over this period and expanded our network to 760 click stores and 601 pharmacies. 74% of these stores are in the convenience format and these continue to outperform our destination stores. 50% of the population now live under 6 kilometers of a Click's pharmacy and this will improve over time as we continue to get closer to consumers. We also completed 19 revamps to ensure that our state remains modern and appealing to our customers. The online store remains our fastest growing store accelerated by COVID-nineteen. Online sales grew by 167%, but remains a very small part of turnover. Direct delivery has increased significantly to 85 percent of sales reflecting the work from home trend. As I said earlier, we continue to make significant investments in online as a defensive strategy and see it playing a valuable role in complementing our brick and mortar network. Recognizing the inevitable growth in online shopping, we have committed to being one of the early movers to be hosted on the Vodacom Super App, which will be launched later in the year. That completes health and beauty. I will now move on to UPD. UPD has once again delivered an excellent performance despite the total private pharmaceutical market growing by only 2%. The result was achieved by gaining new hospital business. UPD service credentials were once again reflected in our ability to effectively distribute lifesaving medication nationally as the 2nd wave of COVID-nineteen gripped the country. This slide reflects the breakdown of UPD's wholesale turnover excluding bulk distribution and preferred supply contracts. Wholesale turnover grew by 13.8% with hospitals being the fastest growing channel up 37%. Independence and other channels grew by 4.4%. Fixed purchases grew 2.5% in line with its pharmacy performance and now makes up 46% of sales. The ability to secure and have available a wide range of medication as well as providing excellent service levels as seeing UPD grows market share to 30.6%. Our long term objective is to achieve 35% market share in wholesale. Total managed turnover that's combining wholesale with the turnover managed on behalf of our bulk distribution clients increased by 19% to ZAR13.2 billion. The business has once again landed an additional distribution contract to start in the second half of the year. Our largest distribution client has committed to extend their contract for a further 5 years. UPD's challenge is that it has more potential distribution clients than it has capacity. This has been dealt with by renting additional off-site space and carefully selecting its new clients. The contribution of generic medicines in wholesale continues to increase with sales growing by 14%. Generization unfortunately creates increased pressure on UPD's margin. The margin pressure will be slightly offset by an increase in the single exit price of 3.68%. It's important to note this is lower than last year which will result in a lower margin gain on stock. The business also saw very good growth in front shop sales up 30%, driven mainly by the demand for health supplements and sanitizers. That completes the review of the business. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our people for their resilience, passion and dedication to our business in these very difficult times. I will now conclude the presentation with our outlook for the balance of the year. Trading conditions are expected to remain tough as we continue to trade in an environment impacted by COVID-nineteen with the risk of a 3rd wave of infections. More store opportunities have become available and we will once again exceed our guided range and plan to open 14 new stores for the year. Major IT projects in both clicks and UPD will start to go live in half 2 with benefits being achieved towards the latter part of the new financial year. Notwithstanding any major restrictions being imposed by government, we are forecasting diluted headline earnings per share to be between 8% to 13% higher for the full year. One of the most important things we can do as an organization is to assist government in the vaccination rollout program. 62 of our pharmacies have already been selected to assist in Phase 1, which is the vaccination of healthcare workers. We have more than 600 pharmacies across the country that could collectively vaccinate between 600,000 to 700,000 individuals per month. UPD, the country's largest national pharmaceutical wholesaler has the capability and infrastructure to assist in the distribution of all temperature sensitive vaccines. We are working closely with government and organizations involved in the rollout to provide our support. With the gradual opening up of the economy and the rollout of the COVID-nineteen vaccination program, the trading environment can only get better. In what has been a challenging 6 months, the resilience of our strategy and business model has once again been demonstrated. I therefore remain confident in the group's ability to deliver on our medium term targets. Thank you for listening and we are now happy to take your questions. I have a question from Brian Thomas at Laurium Capital. He did ask this before your final after class, so you've answered part of it. Are you able to provide some guidance around what you anticipate with the COVID rollout? Are you allowed to make a margin on the vaccine? Our intention was not to make a margin on the vaccine, but I think government will determine the price that service providers can charge. We will always want you to do this at a cost neutral basis. And once that fee has been finalized, that is potentially a margin if we can be cost efficient, but it has not been our intention. Another question on COVID, which I think we've answered from Bhupinder Sashdev at Manulife. So please give me a shout if you're not happy with the outlook information that the cash gave. Another question from Brian Thomas with Lauriam. When deciding to utilize cash for buybacks or dividends, what are the metrics you use to favor buybacks over dividends? I mean, that's a recognition of the fact that cash the business is very cash generative and we've got a strong balance sheet, I think. Primarily, we focused on organic growth as opposed to acquisitive growth, although we continue to evaluate opportunities around growth. Dividends is always first, given we have communicated to shareholders in terms of our medium term guidance that we would have a dividend payout ratio of 60% to 65%. So last year in the interim results, it was the first time we ever passed on an interim dividend That was we established at year end results with a full payout ratio of 60%. Kelly, we've committed to the interim dividend now of $350,000,000 And on top of that, we will always look to supplement that tactically from time to time with share buybacks should be set with surplus cash. As you know, interest rates are the lowest they've ever been in South Africa. And the dividend yield on the share is roughly 1.9% or 2%, just depending on the share price. So that's an attractive dividend. And then in terms of valuation, we certainly run DCF, probably very similar to how our fund managers would consider it. We look at enhancing long term shareholder returns and then we'll deploy service cash to share buybacks as and when we deem that. Question from Achamily Moshalaba at 91. Hello, congrats on the great results. My question relates to the non payment of government grants for March. Has the group seen any impact on sales in the 1st few weeks of April in the stores in the less affluent areas of the country or is it surrounding error for the group? No, we certainly haven't seen any impact on that. A number of questions from Jatin Batory at Avior. Well done on a good stage of results in a challenging trading environment. I see enough in the results to point to an acceleration of growth in H2 apart from the lower base. Are you seeing a reversion of customer pharmacy purchases in a more open economy and with your delivery service? Yes, we most certainly are. And what's key as well is the fact that kids are back to school. So once children are back to school, you get a different demand within our pharmacies. In a chronic, certainly compliance is improving. And every single week, our delivery service continues to grow in terms of demand. So I certainly believe the opening up of the economy will help support the growth in pharmacy. Do you anticipate a negative margin impact from the low SEP increase relative to your cost inflation? Well, as Vakesh said, it's going to be lower than last year. So it will have a margin impact compared to last year, probably 10 to 15 basis points. But relative to cost inflation, I think it's okay. Yes, we're right. It would have liked to hire 1, but it's okay. Do you foresee the cosmetics and fragrance categories secular growth being structurally impaired? Certainly not. I think not structurally. As a woman return back to work and we are all vaccinated, I believe there will be a boom in fragrances and color cosmetics. When do you anticipate the new wholesale and distribution contracts to fully annualize, I. E. Should we expect double digit growth to persist in the distribution segment in the second half of this year and the first half of next year? Yes. Certainly, this contract that Vakesh spoke about, that we it will benefit the second half. It should certainly support UPD growing in double digits, both in the first half next year and in the second half this year. I think that's a fair assumption. When do you expect to reduce working capital days and by how much? Is the IT investment partly aging this initiative? Yes. Look, it's going to roll out over the next 6 months, in particular in retail and the opt in distribution. So, Vitesh mentioned that we would expect benefits to begin towards the end of next financial year. And I think that's exactly what should be expected. It will be incremental because we do run an efficient business today in terms of stock management. And obviously, assuming that COVID is sorted out and supply disruptions that one does see from time to time, depending on which countries are affected and our own country, how it's affected. But if you strip that aside on a long term basis, we'll definitely see improved inventory position, I would imagine, over the next year and a half to 2 years. Difference, that's what Michael is saying, because it's an IT implementation, we'll be rolling out in a very cautious way. So we'll do it category by category. So you wouldn't expect a massive benefit in the short term. What benefit do you expect in part of the Vodacom Super App that is different to your own app? Well, it's an aggregator app. And I think in the future, people would rather have a singular app to shop rather than multiple apps. And really the Vodacom super app becomes one of the well, the ambition is to be one of the largest digital malls in the country. And if you look at some of the emerging markets, particularly what happens in China, etcetera, I think this is the future. This is how people will shop through a single aggregator app. We do it today for accommodation as an example. So I think that's the advantage. Do you expect the additional costs of Telemedicine to add or to be 1 efficient? 2, could the script uplift be material versus existing script sourcing channel? And 3, are you anticipating indirect front shop uplift from Telemedicine? Yes. The answer, of course, if someone comes into our store to visit the nursing practitioner and consult with the virtual doctor, that's our business model. Of course, we would love customers within our brick and mortar stores. But really the advantage of telemedicine is that it's at a lower cost. So you're providing access to more patients to consult a GP at a lower cost. And then you have the nurse that can take the vitals of the patient and provide that information to the doctor. The other advantage of the patient is once they receive the script, right, the pharmacy is right there for them to pick up their medication. So it will be very slow. It's actually very slow in South Africa today. But I have no doubt that COVID, as I've said in my presentation, has accelerated this trend because typically people would have stayed at home, but they were ill and they needed consultation. They've learned to engage with their doctors digitally. And that will be a trend I think that will continue. A question from Nick Quifa at Signal Asset Management. What does it typically cost to open a new store and how long does it take for a store to mature? Around just under 5 years for a store to mature in terms of its scrip base in particular. And we don't really disclose what it costs for each store because you could probably work it out just based on our CapEx bill that we put forward for new stores and refurbishments. We actually pre refurbishments very much like a new store CapEx. We look at how we can identify it, how we can add more space, cut into the stockroom perhaps, while we're doing it. Obviously, refurbishing will be slightly more expensive than a new store, because you're not given a clean shell. So I mean, just take our CapEx that I've given you guidance on and divide it by the number of stores that we have and it will give you an idea. Question from Chris Rady at All Weather. Can you provide further detail on the leasing of existing and new stores, I. E. Tenants, escalations, rental versions and potential to further reduce rental? Basically, at the moment, we continue to as leases come up for renewal, we seek to maintain we've always had a very good rental in the first place as clicks given we are a desired tenant in a mall. But we've definitely taken the opportunity to reduce rental escalations. We think given lower interest rates and lower CPI for longer, we are seeing reductions in lease escalations. We're also requesting landlords to give us some breathing space in terms of recovering from COVID. So again, there it's how can we keep rentals flat or decrease them in the shorter term before we expect some form of normalization post the vaccine rollout. I've got 2 different questions here on the vaccine rollout that I'm going to combine. Chris Reddy asked, are there any timelines regarding the awarding of the vaccine rollout contracts? And Tertius Pelsat, Custom Capital asked, can the private sector not do more for the vaccine rollout or is the procurement of vaccine solely in the hands of the government? So I'll answer your second question first. Yes, the procurement of vaccines is through the government. And certainly as a private sector, we're supporting government in every way that we potentially can. And with the arrival of further vaccines in the country, I would expect government to make an announcement within the next month or 6 weeks because those vaccines would have to be administered. So I would expect that announcements will be made shortly. That's all the questions we have from the webcast. So there appears to be no further questions. So thank you to everyone for joining our webcast.