Earnings Call: H2 2021

May 25, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Electro Components 2021 Full Year Results. My name is Brika, and I will be the moderator for today's call. And I will now hand over to our host, Lucy Sharma, to begin. So, Lucy, please go ahead when you are ready. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the virtual 2021 preliminary results presentation for Electro Components for the year ended 31st March 2021. I'm Lucy Sharma, responsible for Investor Relations at Electro Components. If you are dialing in through the phone line, you can find our presentation slides on our website under the Investor Relations link. I'd like to introduce you to Lindsay Ruth, our CEO and David Egan, our CFO. Over to you, Lindsay. Thank you very much, Lucy. And After such an extraordinary year, I'd like to begin by talking about what underpins our success at Electro Components, And that is our people. Our amazing team has driven our strong performance this year, working tirelessly and collaboratively To support our customers, suppliers, communities and each other. Special mention goes to the essential workers and our distribution centers Who came into work every day despite the lockdowns to ensure ongoing service and continue to do so. We have been supporting our communities too. For example, setting up 3 d printing forms for personal protective equipment, PPE, designing personal ventilators and providing tools for homeschooling. I'm incredibly proud of how strong our team is. I thank everyone For their hard work, positive attitude and humor, which continues to make Electro Components the amazing business I'm proud to lead. So turning to Slide 5, our Destination 2025 strategy outlined years ago sets out our 5 strategic priorities To deliver value to all our stakeholders by becoming 1st choice, our vision. This strategic roadmap has been driving our market outperformance And is guiding our actions going forward. It is a plan based on 5 key principles. 1, delivering the best Customer and supplier experience 2, investing in our talent to maintain a high performance team 3, continuously improving how we do things to build operational excellence. 4, driving innovation, See this within product and service solutions, we're harnessing our digital expertise. And 5, Reinvesting to accelerate growth both organic and inorganic. There is no change to the overall plan, We have refocused our efforts to deliver these ambitions faster. Destination 2025 It's about driving profitable market share growth towards our goal of a mid teen adjusted operating profit margin. I will now hand it over to David to take you through our financial performance. Thank you, Lindsley. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our preliminary results presentation. Let me start by giving you the key messages from the results on Slide 7. We delivered a strong performance during FY 2021 with momentum building through the year after the onset of the global lockdowns from COVID-nineteen in March 2020. Key for me is how we have proven the strength and resilience of the business in extreme circumstances and had the ability to improve our competitive position. We believe these factors, plus our differentiated offer and financial strength drove the significant market share gains that we have seen. During the year, we took a step forward in our inorganic strategy, making 3 high quality strategic acquisitions that are all performing well. Acquisitions will help us to accelerate our strategy and we have an active pipeline of further targets, but we will remain disciplined and selective in our approach. And finally, we delivered strong free cash flow And with ongoing rigorous capital discipline generated strong investment returns. Slide 8 illustrates our financial highlights. Full year like for like revenue growth was up 1.4%. It fell 7.3% in the first half as COVID-nineteen hit, improving to a positive 10.2% in the second As lockdown restrictions eased and the strength of our model and our customer proposition shone through. Our main owned brand, RS Pro, continues to outperform the group with like for like revenue growth of 9.7%. Digital like for like revenue growth of 0.9% was lower than the overall group due to less e procurement revenue from some large customers. Pure web sales, which is a truer measure of our digital proposition and customer traffic, grew at 2.4%. Our adjusted operating profit margin fell by 1.9 percentage points, predominantly due to inventory provisions and additional costs relating to COVID and Brexit. Despite this, our return on capital employed remains strong at over 19%. During the year, we focused on conserving cash, delivering adjusted free cash flow of £145,000,000 even after an additional $12,500,000 payment into our U. K. Pension scheme and no real slowing of our capital investment program. Accordingly, we reinstated our progressive dividend policy and increased our full year dividend by 3.2% to 15.9p. We have 7 non financial KPIs, which relate to our ESG ambitions, Which Lindsley will address later. So turning to Slide 9, I will detail 4 of them. Our CO2 emission intensity improved by 36.5 percent to 3.3 tonnes per £1,000,000 revenue. In fact, that is a 62% reduction in tonnes of CO2 since FY 'fifteen. Customer experience remains a core focus for the business and a key performance metric for our teams. Our group rolling 12 month Net Promoter Score was Despite all of our team's hard work, we could not fully mitigate the impact of product shortages and longer lead times from COVID and Brexit. Improving NPS is a key focus for us all going forward. Our employee engagement score grew to 74 as our teams worked hard in keeping our people safe, connected and healthy. And our accident rate fell by 36%, resulting from safer working within our distribution centers. Slide 10 details the income statement. Like for like revenue growth was 1.4%. Total revenue grew by 2.5 percent with acquisitions accounting for 1.5 percentage points of the overall growth. The gross margin decreased by 1 percentage point to 42.7%, which includes A 0.6 percentage point impact from inventory provisions on certain PPE products as prices fell, with the remainder being higher inbound freight costs and a geographic and product mix effect. Outside of gross margin, Costs relating to COVID were circa $17,000,000 with Brexit another circa $2,000,000 reflecting increased freight costs, brokerage fees And a higher cost to serve. Many of these costs have continued into the current year, although we should see reduced brokerage fees When our distribution center expansion in Germany comes on stream in early autumn. Our RISE initiative to streamline and simplify the group delivered €7,000,000 of benefit and is on track to deliver the full €25,000,000 of benefit over a 2 year period. There was an $11,000,000 substantial reorganization cost, Less than the charge booked in the first half, as some plans were stopped due to Brexit, more people with less service years left, And we redeployed people from redundant roles into vacant positions. The 3 acquisitions contributed €29,000,000 of revenue and CHF 2,000,000 of adjusted operating profit since joining the group. Our adjusted effective tax rate Was 21.8 percent in line with last year, helped by circa 1 percentage point from 1 off tax credits, which are unlikely to repeat. Looking forward, we expect the FY 2022 tax rate to rise to circa 24% With further increases in the outer years as the effect of corporate income tax rate increases in both the UK and the U. S. Come into effect. On Slide 11, we see that all regions had positive like for like revenue growth. Industrial production data shows our core markets gain share, as can be seen on a chart in the appendix. We've provided revenue data at our trading update on the 13th April, so I will concentrate on the profit metrics within this presentation. Starting first with EMEA, which accounts for circa 64% of group revenue. Like for like revenue was 1% up during the year with nearly an 18 percentage point swing in performance between the two halves. The gross margin decline was largely due to the inventory provision on certain PPE products. Operating profit fell by circa 15%, a result of the lower gross margin and $13,000,000 of extra costs associated with COVID and Brexit. The operating profit margin was 13.5%. Needless and Liscum, our 2 PPE acquisitions in the UK, contributed €1,600,000 to the profitability within the EMEA region. The Americas, which is circa 26% of group revenue, saw like for like revenue grow by 1.4% with a circa 19% swing in performance between the two halves. There's been a lot of change within our Americas business Over the last 2 years, we've transformed our senior management and sales force teams, we've doubled the capacity of the distribution center, Refocused our marketing initiatives and acquired Cenovos. We're starting to see the benefits coming through from this repositioning. The gross margin rose due to less discounting and better price optimization, offsetting the inbound freight inflation. Operating profit declined by 8% with higher operating costs relating to supply chain, labor and depreciation from the DC investment. The operating profit margin was 10%. Cenovos contributed €500,000 of operating profit since its acquisition in mid January. And finally, Asia Pacific, which accounts for circa 10% of group revenue, So like for like revenue grow by 4.6% with a 13% swing from the first half into the second. We have broadened our product offer, restructured our country operations and refocused our sales force. The gross margin declined largely due to a mix effect from stronger revenue from lower gross margin product. The operating profit fell to €1,400,000 with the higher cost on a small profit base more than offsetting the revenue growth. On Slide 12, we detail our adjusted free cash flow of $145,000,000 which benefits from tight working capital control. Our working capital to revenue ratio was 21.8% for the year, a great performance. Inventory turn was 2.7 times with delays in receiving product due to Brexit and the Suez Canal blockage. Net capital expenditure was €55,000,000 as we focused investments on key value levers such as our distribution center expansion and technology platforms. Our expanded DC in Fort Worth, U. S. Was completed in the first half, And we continue to invest in expanding our distribution center in Bad Herzog, Germany. We anticipate capital expenditure in FY 2022 to be circa £65,000,000 We delivered 100% adjusted operating cash flow conversion during the year, providing strong financial support for our investment program. During the year, we acquired 3 Strategic businesses detailed on Slide 13. Cenovos is a leading player in integrated supply solutions based in the U. S. And very similar to our Aesa business. We see significant cross selling synergies between Cenovus, Aesa, Allied and RS Pro. Needles and Liscum expand our product and services solutions offer in safety, hygiene and PPE, allowing us to capture a greater share of spend with new and existing customers. All three acquisitions are performing in line with expectations with integration and cross selling opportunities on track. Our pipeline of acquisition opportunities remains strong. On Slide 14, We note how we are optimizing our capital allocation. During the year, we delivered strong cash generation, refinanced and increased our debt facilities and raised equity to fund our acquisitions. Given our strong performance, the board resumed our progressive dividend policy, paying a deferred final dividend from last year in December 2020. We returned to our normal dividend timetable this year, paying an interim dividend in January. And the board proposals a 9.8p per share final dividend, giving a full year dividend of 15.9p and dividend cover of 2 times. The group's financial metrics remain strong with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 0.5 times, providing us with the financial base to support both organic and inorganic growth investment. Moving to Slide 15 and current trading. The 1st 7 weeks of FY 2022 has seen very strong growth on either a 1 or 2 year view provide good tailwind. On a 1 year basis, this is due to weaker comps from the first COVID-nineteen lockdown. And on a 2 year view, we saw a very slow start to the year, particularly within the Americas. Looking at our current performance on a 2 year view, revenue growth remains robust, a broadly low double digit CAGR. Our performance in the Americas continues to benefit from a wider product range, improved digital performance and much easier comps. We're particularly pleased with the robust performance in EMEA given ongoing lockdown and the logistical challenges presented by Brexit. And Asia Pacific remains strong, helped somewhat by the buoyant electronic market. We're mindful of ongoing uncertainty regarding COVID-nineteen and its variant, continuing cost pressures relating to freight inflation Brexit, currency headwind, thus the potential for some supply chain constraint later in the year. However, we're well positioned to make good progress this year and our expectations for strong growth in FY20 to remain unchanged. With that, I'll hand you back to Lindsay to go through our strategic opportunity. Over to you, Lindsley. Thank you, David. So turning to Slide 17 and the significant growth opportunities we have, like to talk about 3 things today. The 4 needle movers that will drive top line and market share growth, We can do better at the basics to drive operational leverage and how we are accelerating our growth opportunities through acquisitions that strategically and culturally fit and financially add value. Combining all three will drive profitable market share growth And improve operating efficiencies to achieve our goal of a mid teen adjusted operating profit margin. Slide 18 lists 4 needle movers underpinning our market share growth. 1, Our product and service solutions proposition where we work in partnership with our customers to deliver Sustainable cost efficiencies 2, a strong customer experience through our omni channel offer to deliver a frictionless service 3, our unrivaled breadth of product choice, an industry leading availability providing security and supply. And 4, Our specialist home brand, RS Pro product, which widens our offer and improves our margin. These are all delivering Our outperformance versus peers, a testament to the hard work of our people who are driving this. So what are we doing within each area to leverage Our advantage further, we move to Slide 19. We're competing smarter through our product and service solutions. Our customers want solutions to their procurement problems from a trusted partner that understands their business. Our expanding service solutions offer moves us beyond pure product distribution, differentiating us against transactional peers And improving customer loyalty and ultimately customer lifetime value. And when we provide a solution, It brings increased product sales and a higher average order value with the customer benefiting from the cost and time efficiencies. The graphic on the right hand side of the slide illustrates the range of procurement solutions we offer From the more transactional to the fully integrated depending on our customer requirements. Additionally, our technology driven model Means that we are at the forefront of the changing world. So for example, we have connected the industrial assets of a major Operator, to cloud based reporting and condition monitoring system. This generates data, which helps them predict their maintenance needs And improve their productivity through using digitally enabled operational tools. Meanwhile, Aesa and Synovos Have a strong pipeline of new business wins and opportunities. Aesa has won a number of contracts with the majority in Europe And is working with Cenovos on joint pitches to some high profile global corporate. Cenovos is also working With our business in Asia Pacific on another joint pitch with the global corporate. We're in an industry leading Position and offering a truly global integrated supply solution. So Slide 20. Slide 20 shows how we are unlocking opportunities to improve our customer experience. We are A leading omni channel operator within our MRO competitive set, which allows us to provide superior customer service, but we don't want to be The top and just our competitive set. We want to provide the best experience against whoever we compete. On this slide, we show on the left hand side of the table where we are now. We have over 14,000,000 visits per month to our website And specialist knowledge providing a wide service to all. On the right hand side, We see the opportunity to drive our data harder and we have hired digital and brand experts to get us there. Our journey is to improve our customer experience further, be it data or insight led, adapt our service according to the customer And focus more on the higher returning options through knowing our cost to serve better. We're already seeing benefits from the improved marketing efforts, Meaning we have been able to reduce paid advertising spend, drive more organic traffic and thus enhance returns. Overall, we are aligning our digital capabilities and service to maximize customer lifetime value. Slide 21. Slide 21 illustrates the breadth of our product offer versus our peers and the opportunity More importantly, to expand further, the breadth and depth of our product offering continues to set us apart from our competition And we have over 650,000 stocked industrial and electronic products and over 3,000,000 un stocked products. Our customers increasingly want a one stop shop and security supply and we have Industry leading availability and service. The investment into our distribution centers is widening our product offering. By March, we had 37,000 more product stocks in our Allied Distribution Center in the United States. And our acquisitions are broadening the depth of expertise within each category even further. We're already seeing Kneadler is winning contracts to supply PPE products for AEC's customers as an example. Our offer is led by innovation and our electronics range, which alongside our design and technical expertise Means we can help advise and supply our customers on the journey to remain relevant in this digital industrial revolution. So the last of our needle movers on Slide 22 is developing our strong own brand offer RS Pro. And it is our main owned brand, RS Pro. It continues to outperform the group, offering a quality value product for the customer And delivering revenue at a higher margin for us. RS Pro utilizes our extensive Digital and customer data to design products and ranges our customers want, such as Our very successful test and measurement kit as businesses return to work. The team is working closer with our digital marketing function To grow brand recognition, website traffic and add on sales through more targeted marketing campaigns And a more personalized customer journey. We see significant opportunity to develop our own brand further, especially in the Americas, Where penetration is less than 1% and we can offer RS Pro to Cinnovos' clients as we do with IASIS. Further growth will be driven by new product launches and targeted marketing campaigns. And we're already working on the opportunities to develop our newly acquired PPE brands in the same way through our extensive distribution network. We are also developing a sustainable product range, Providing quality products across various categories. So the second part on Slide 23, delivering destination 2025 is detailed on this slide and we've done much work On building the foundations, becoming a leaner organization since I joined 6 years ago, but the successful delivery of 2025 Needs us to improve our operational basics even further to be best in class in each discipline, including Negotiating better buy in prices, understanding our cost to serve, leveraging our existing capacity, Utilizing our extensive database to be insight led, sharing best practice and expertise on marketing, Digital, innovation and product and supplier management and even reengineering supply chain to be more sustainable and closer to the customer. Overall, we want to be globally connected, but locally delivered and we want to do it better. Slide 24 Pulls together the work we're doing on improving sustainability through the supply chain. Our supply chain strategy is customer centric With multiple distribution centers regionally located, this allows us to provide a fast delivery service to our customers and be agile, Which was crucial this year so that our service continued largely uninterrupted. We've invested Heavily in our operations over recent years to reduce our environmental impact by progressively installing solar panels, Implementing energy saving initiatives and using renewable energy. But we're not stopping there. We want to transform our Supply chain operations further. We're working with our supplier base today to reduce unnecessary transportation routes through restructuring our network, Both inbound and outbound. This will result in more deliveries direct from the manufacturing location VSP rather than airfreight, growing the level of inventory we hold locally and increasing regional sourcing options. This will significantly lower carbon emissions from our supplier base and third party delivery network and improve product availability, Delivery times, consistency and customer service levels. This is a large project as we restructure Decades of historic working, but one we are passionate about delivering. The last part of the big stall to accelerate Growth is through inorganic opportunities on Slide 25. Our prime strategic priority Of course, remains driving organic growth and the key areas outlined already. Where we already have the supplier relationships And in house expertise, we are building out specialist ranges and services our customers require. However, we can see that we can accelerate this growth through inorganic expansion. We're focusing on 3 key areas, Which in order of priority are product and service solutions, product extensions and adjacencies and geographic development. And we definitely have a strong pipeline of suitable opportunities and the financial strength to add further acquisitions, Which fits strategically and culturally and where we can generate meaningful value. So turning to Slide 26, Part of Destination 2025 is making amazing happen for a better world. We're committed to accelerating the positive impact we have in Society and on the environment by inspiring a more sustainable world through education and innovative solutions that improve lives. This year, we have strengthened our ESG approach, which is focused on 4 key pillars: the environment, customers and suppliers, People and Health and Safety and the community. Each pillar has a clear commitment and 2025 targets, which are outlined on Slide 34 with a more in-depth ESG presentation available on our website under the Investors Financial Results link. But doing the right thing in terms of working towards a more sustainable and inclusive future It's not new to us. We've been integrating this as part of our business as usual for years, which brings us to 527. This business as usual is across our entire group as illustrated here and ranges from Providing a free online design community to over 1,000,000 members in Design Spark, restructuring our customer delivery routes, Be more environmentally efficient, right, and Synovus and providing more energy efficient solutions through Auris, Monition to name just a few. All our work has been driven from within to deliver sustainable growth. I am Fully responsible and committed to our ESG approach and our President of our Global Supply Chain leads the planning Our new VP of Social Responsibility and Sustainability is bringing together all work To develop further targets beyond destination 2025. I am incredibly proud that our ESG work has gained recognition by external agencies, Including MSCI ESG A rating, the CDP Climate Change Leadership Score of A- being 10 out of 13,494 Companies with Sustainalytics And a gold medal rating by EcoVardis. We know our ESG is Working positively across our business and we've just won a large contract with a major global customer And the Americas who mentioned our ESG commitment and technology innovation as being 2 differentiating factors, We look to improve our ESG further going forward. So in summary on Slide 29, We're excited about the opportunities we see. There will be pressures ahead and we're of course mindful of the ongoing external headwinds, But we have less than 1% share in a £400,000,000,000 global market where differentiated model That's us apart from our competition. We're driving market share growth through ongoing development of our product and service solutions, customer experience And our product offer, including our own RS Pro Specialist brand. We have a well invested operating model, Which we are leveraging and simplifying to drive sustainability, scale and a lower cost to serve. And we're cash generative with a strong return focus. Our ESG ambitions are part of our Destination 2025 strategic plan And I'm proud of the ESG journey so far, but see more to do going forward. We're excited about future And the opportunities we have to accelerate our growth through organic and inorganic expansion. Thank you for listening. Now I'll pass you back to the operator to open it up for Q and A. We have the first question from the phone line today from Kean Marden of Jefferies. So Kean, please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, all. Thanks for the additional language on the 2 year stack. So It looks like in the 1st 7 weeks, you're running basically about 20% up on the equivalent level In 2019. I think as you pointed out, you sort of started that year slowly, but you also The year quite slowly as well. So the comps sort of gets a bit more difficult, but then it gets easier as the year progresses. Is there any reason why your business Shouldn't continue to be 20% bigger broadly than 2019 over the remainder of this fiscal year is the first question. Then you're obviously trying to flag some additional costs in the business so we can sort of break down sort of the COVID And the Brexit costs being something in the region of a 13,000,000 headwind in the year just gone. Just wondering if you can help us understand how some of those linger In the current fiscal year, and then you call out things like FX translation and supply chain potentially as additional costs that we might want to overlay on to that as well. I know I've got some more, but I'll stop there and just keep it at 2 for the moment. Thanks. Hi, good morning, Tim. David here. Let me address your first question with regards to our performance in the 1st 7 weeks. I think sort of the first thing is, it is only 7 weeks Of activity, as we said in the statement, we have started the year in a strong mode. If you look on a 1 year comp basis, obviously, we've outperformed significantly, but that's really off the back of That's the Jude numbers as a consequence of COVID. If you look on a 2 year basis, we had a very slow start to the year In FY 2020, and in particular within the Americas. So we are running at sort of double digit CAGR On a 2 year basis at this point in time, as we look forward for the full year, our visibility remains Negligible or very minimal. Consensus is currently at around 9% growth for the full year. Our comps Do get harder, so we did deliver 10% growth in the second half of FY twenty twenty one. So the comps will get harder Throughout the balance of the year. At this point in time, given we're only 7 weeks in, we're sort of we're comfortable with where consensus is, but we'll provide a much Broader and more robust update when we go through Q1 at the beginning of July. With regards to the costs, we called out £19,000,000 of cost in the statement for FY 2021, £17,000,000 was COVID, 2 was Brexit. As we look forward, the €2,000,000 of Brexit will moderate, but probably later in f Until we get the Banghorst, or German distribution center, up and running fully. So that's really during the back end of FY 2022 that they will moderate. On the $17,000,000 of COVID costs, dollars 12,000,000 of that is freight related. We haven't seen any moderation of freight. We had hoped to migrate from air to sea, which we did, but equally we saw freight rates of sea increase. So the 12,000,000 It's not something that we're expecting to go away anytime soon. And the balance of the $5,000,000 which is largely inefficiencies off the back of COVID, We are still running inefficiently because of social distancing within our distribution centers, but we would expect that to moderate As lockdowns ease throughout the world. Thanks very much. Thank you. We now have the next question from Rory McKenzie of UBS. So Rory, please go ahead when you're ready. Your line is open. Thanks. Good morning, all. It's Rory here. Firstly, I wanted to ask about your customer numbers and the customer trends. How did the customer numbers finish the year? And maybe exclude kind of B2C and just focus on the kind of core B2B customers. Has that accelerated through the pandemic? I know that customers typically start with a very small wallet share, but again, just trying to ask how much your business footprint Has structurally expanded? And then secondly, maybe following up from the Keane's question, Where should we be worried about revenues falling back in any areas? Do you expect some of that B2C revenue growth disappear as behavior normalizes? How much revenue from PPE might disappear over the next year? Maybe just those 2 first, and I've got one on margins, please. Yes. Hi, Roy. This is Lindsey. On customer trends, our customer count For overall, it was up 18% year over year. For B2B, it was up 8%. So We have seen a strong growth in terms of obviously customers via the website. I said we're up to $14,000,000 is what our average was last year, but we actually hit over $15,000,000 customer visits in 1 month in the last couple of months. So we're doing a good job at acquiring new customers as we broaden our product portfolio And as we have the