Morning everyone, and welcome to this Q4 webcast with the management of Elektroimportøren, CEO Andreas Niss and CFO Petter Bjørnstad. Should any of the listeners have any questions, please use the written Q&A function, and the questions will be answered at the end of the session. When you are ready, Andreas and Petter, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Kirsty, and welcome everyone, good morning. We will go through an update of our Q4 presentation and with a bit of a deeper introduction about our recent acquisition of Elbutik in Sweden. Just to sum up the quarter, we had a slight increase in sales versus last year, up 1.6%, ended at almost NOK 460 million. Versus 2019, our revenues are up 47%, and for the full year, our growth is at 13%. Online share of sales is at 12.5%, slightly down from last year in terms of share of business. Our B2B sales continue to be very good. Increase in the quarter was almost 20%. B2C continues to have a slight decrease.
We are down with 7.2%, which makes the B2B share of our business grow up to 47% compared to 41% in 2020. Like-for-like sales are down with 1.8%. Physical stores are down with 1%, and online 6.8% down versus last year. For the full year, we had a like-for-like growth in the physical stores with almost 8% and 13% online. As for the previous quarters, it's the electric vehicle chargers that is really driving growth in terms of B2B sales. It was doubled in Q4 versus last year. A product category that is thriving at the moment. Gross margins are up from 39.6% last year to 40.5%. Our costs of OPEX to sales ratio is increased by 2% mainly driven by having 2 more stores this year.
EBITDA for the quarter ends at NOK 62.6, which is up roughly NOK 2 million from last year and more than doubled from 2019. EBITDA margin at 13.6%, slightly up 0.2% from last year, and the adjusted EBITDA is at NOK 64, which is down NOK 3.7. We will of course come back to these numbers. Net cash ended at NOK 76.5. We also have an overdraft facility of NOK 120 million, which is not utilized. Could mention that in the quarter we paid a dividend of NOK 25 million, and we paid down a long-term debt of NOK 20 million. It's NOK 45 million in those two. The Board of Directors is proposing an ordinary dividend of NOK 60 million in the coming general meeting. Key takeaways in terms of sales is that B2B continue to grow.
We are gaining market share in the electricians markets. We have managed to increase our gross margin mainly due to some price increases that we made in the Namron products in the beginning of the quarter. Increasing the average baskets continue to be there. It's up roughly 110 crowns for the quarter which is 11%. Some decline in footfall versus last year, and we had a decline in 3.8% versus the fourth quarter last year. Spot-on. We have made more than 700 installations in Q4, so the curve we see and the trend we see in SpotOn is very pleasing. Total sales is NOK 6.7 million. Still small numbers, but a great growth.
Totally for 2021, we've made more than 1,300 installations and just about NOK 50 million in sales. We continue to develop the Spot On offer, and we drive customers through the joint marketing activities with Elektroimportøren. As of now, we are adding Spot On onto every marketing activity that we do with Elektroimportøren. Petter, you go through the revenue.
Yeah. It's as Andreas said, we are continuing to grow sales in the B2B. Of course, the main driver in the B2B sector is sales to the electricians. We get new customers, but the main driver, I would say this quarter, is increasing the loyalty from the existing customer base on the electrician side. Going forward, we will also have some more focus also to grow the other B2B sector even more going forward. We think that is a good potential. In Q4 2020, we had exceptional sales growth, so we are satisfied that we delivered these numbers on the B2C side, and we are also very satisfied with the Black Week campaign. Yeah, and also the new stores are contributing a little bit. Small increase from last year.
The comparables that we're talking about here is that in B2C we had 38.6% growth last year. Online 54% growth in Q4. We didn't really manage to match that, but generally we're quite satisfied with the development anyways.
If you look at the margin, we are able to increase the margin in Q4, going at 40.5% against 39.6%, last year. Some key drivers there. I think we were a little bit too tough on marketing campaigns during Q3 and Q2. We said in the Q3 presentation that we were going to work on the margin and look at the prices. We've done so, and we see the impact this quarter with a positive development. We also see an increase in the number on the margin. In addition to that, we also have been a little bit conservative with the customer bonus, supplier bonus, and so on. There's a little bit of effect in the Q4 on these elements as well. That's but overall, it's a very positive development in gross margin.
OPEX, we have a total around NOK 11 million higher costs compared to last year. We see that we have some higher electricity costs in the store base. Also we have, as I said, we have around 20% growth on the B2B customers. We see some increase in the local distribution costs to these customers, to this growth. Also we have a cost in the new stores that we did not have last year with around NOK 4 million. That's. We also doubled the size of the center warehouse in Vestby from first of October. In Q4, we have double rent in this location, but we are now very ready for future growth in a very good place to be.
We had 67.7 million last year and 64 million this year in adjusted EBITDA. Like-for-like on the physical stores, a little bit down, online a little bit down, and new stores are contributing the positive result. A little bit increase in the operating costs, mainly in the distribution costs, logistical rent costs in Vestby. Yeah.
Going into the fourth quarter, you sort of see the projections and the budgets from last year and it's quite a heavy upward hill. We knew that we had a fantastic delivery last year, our result. We are quite happy with the number. We are happy, and also it sums up the year. We had growth throughout the year, and we managed to make more money than last year. If you look at EBITDA for the year and then the net profits, we're happy with the full year result. If you look at what has happened since New Year's, we're opening our store number 26 on Monday the next week in Kristiansund.
We have been certified according to a Norwegian environmental certification called Miljøfyrtårn, which we're happy to have finished the work with. We've been working with the certification throughout 2021. We finalized the SPA, signed it with Elbutik and are now starting the work with our new Pollex. Of course, first doing the work until closing, which we assume will be at the end of February. We expect that Q1 will have a similar development as we've seen in Q3 and Q4, probably with a bit of an upside in the last part of the quarter. Last year, we started to close down stores for consumer customers in March, and it went on until May.
Not all of our stores, roughly 30% of the turnover was affected by that. That's that we hope but we don't know will not happen this year, and that should have some positive effect on the B2C sales. There's still some uncertainty regarding supply of products, but we don't foresee any major challenges. We think we managed throughout 2021 good with our supply chain management. We have also increased our stocks somehow in December and January to make up for that. We have enough stock, especially of Namron products throughout the Chinese New Year, which we're right in now. There could be some difficulties well when they start up the factories again after this period.
Moving into Sweden, just to sum up what I guess all of you already know maybe, but we have acquired 100% of a Swedish company called Elbtik Scandinavia and three of its subsidiaries. We're opening up actually a 20 billion SEK market. But we think that what is available for us with our concept is around 15 billion SEK. This gives us a great base to start the rollout of physical stores. Elbtik does not have any physical stores. They're a pure player online today, but our ambition is of course to make it an omni-channel company. We believe there is some great potential in terms of margin potential and efficiency improvements in their existing operation.
As you've seen, the purchase price is based on a 14.2 multiple on the EBITDA for 2021, which we believe also will be ready now in the coming week. It gives us an approximate purchase price of NOK 235 million, which we will pay with NOK 182.5 million in cash and the excess in Elektroimportøren shares. There is a 24-month lockup on these shares. There is also an earn-out liability to the seller, which goes for four years. It's based on a multiple of 10 on the EBITDA which is in excess of NOK 18 million. We have secured financing for the transaction by loan.
We will issue new shares in the private placement, well, right after we hopefully get approval in the general meeting. Why do we do this? We have told you before, and we have three major strategic growth areas. It's first of all, to continue to grow in Norway online, B2B, and building new stores and also widening the offer of Namron. SpotOn is another growth area. Through this service that we provide, we should continue to grow. We have been talking about Sweden for a long time. We've said there are three potential ways to do this. It's through an acquisition, through a joint venture with someone, or just to go alone on greenfield. I'll come back to why we've chosen the acquisition path.
Quick view on the Swedish market. It's divided into, as in Norway as well, new commercial buildings, new residential buildings, residential renovation, and commercial renovation. Our main part of the market is residential renovation, commercial renovation, and new residential. We're not that much into new commercial, or our customers, we should say, are not that much into those kind of projects. We believe that there is like roughly a NOK 15 billion market opportunity, which we are now digging into. If you look at the competitor landscape in Sweden in terms of on the X-axis, you have the product assortment going from narrow to broad. On the Y-axis, you have the customer group from consumer to professionals.
We believe that as in Norway, there is space in the middle for someone who could be both. We should continue to service the consumer customers that Elbutik have today, and we should increase the customer portfolio with the B2B customer approach or offer. Quick glance of Elbutik Scandinavia was established in 2006 by Sven Svensson. It's a family-owned company. Sven and his three children and his wife is working in the company today. It's located just outside of Malmö in the south of Sweden. They are the leading online store for electronic installation material to consumers in Sweden today. With strong historical growth and strong history of growth and sales profits. As we have gotten to know Elbutik, we started the conversation with them in March last year.
We have found that we have a very similar company culture. Fortunately, we also use the same ERP system, which is helpful. They have a great product and supplier knowledge and well, 15 years of experience, which we think we will gain from. This is for the from 2016 to 2021, their development. They've had a compound annual growth rate of 18% in sales and 33% in EBITDA, which we think is quite impressive. They, as we, had a dramatic step up in 2020 but are managing to beat those numbers in 2021. Short glance to compare the two companies. Well, Elektroimportøren is about 10 times the size as Elbutik. They have a...
will have a revenue of 2022 of just above NOK 150 million and an EBITDA around NOK 16.5 million. There are 25 employees working there right now at the same place in Staffanstorp. They have the administration and the distribution center. They're an online pure player, as we are an omni-channel player. They have no physical stores. We are now opening up our 26th. The customer offer is based on a great and wide range of products, fast deliveries, and low prices. They only focus on B2C customers. They have some private label, but it's a very limited range. Whereas our customer offer differs a bit in terms...
We also have a wide range, we do fast deliveries, but we mostly focus on being the best locally, and having the best offer in terms of customer service through our stores and our websites. We, as you know, focus on both B2B and B2C. We have more than 30% of our turnover as our private label Namron. Why an acquisition? As we said, we've considered going alone, greenfield, finding someone to team up with in a joint venture, or doing this ourselves. We believe that this is absolutely the best way that we can do this. Elbutik, they offer us a deep insight into a market that we know something about it, but not even close to their insights and knowledge about the market.
This especially comes down to product assortment. Because there are some different requirements in Norway and Sweden, and there are different products that the consumers prefer, which is not the same in Norway, and this is knowledge that they have. They have a well-established brand. They have a profitable business, and they have shown that they can grow, and we are very sure that we will continue to do that together with them. We think that this is a great, or actually a perfect strategic fit, in terms of both the culture and the knowledge and our knowledge from the past eight years, and it will give us a fast entry into a great market with what we see as limited risk-taking.
Elbutik has many similarities to what we saw at the, in Elektroimportøren in 2012-2014, and we believe that using the experience that we have gained through since then will help us to accelerate the growth of the company, and there are absolutely some great opportunities for synergies.
In both operations actually.
In both operations, yes. We believe or think it's a perfect strategic match to do this, and what we're gonna do is that we're gonna build a Swedish omnichannel champion. We're gonna use our experience from the last years to first of all increase the commercial activities and conceptualize and professionalize the business of Elbutik. We'll use the knowledge that we have within retail, use our own concept, tweak it for the Swedish market and start to build up an omnichannel player. We will leverage the product and market knowhow from both us and particularly then in the B2B side and in consumer side for Elbutik to optimize the product range for both companies and then improve our customer offer.
We will introduce Namron in the Swedish market, drive synergies in eCom and systems development, obviously. We will widen the offer of Elbutik into the B2B market. We will, once we have a physical store established Spot On in Sweden, more or less replicate what we can from the Norwegian business and change what we must for Sweden to make this growth journey going forward. Some key priorities for 2022. We're establishing now a matrix organization. The country manager and the managing director in Sweden will stay. David Svensson, who is the son of the founder, he will continue as the managing director as of now. The management team of Elektroimportøren will start to get involved with the different functions that they are responsible for here.
They will also be responsible for in Sweden. Key priority to continue to grow in Norway and in Sweden. Nothing is wrong here in any of the companies. We just need to make sure that we keep on going in both countries as we do this add-ons or adjustments in Sweden. We will introduce Namron quite rapidly. Our ambition is to open up to two stores in Sweden this year. We are picky, however, in terms of where these stores will be. We need an A location. We know the importance of opening up in the right spot. We're not in a rush, but the ambition is to open up to two stores in 2022. Then we will get some experience on how this works.
We will have to most probably do some adjustments from the Norwegian concept to adapt to the Swedish market, but that's what we will do. Of course, we need to prepare for the future growth with efficient logistics. Elbutik has already grown out of their warehouse. And there is some great plans for how we rapidly can change the logistics, and we're happy to say that we have some great experience having moved our own warehouse twice, and established a store in Vestby where we are now, but this we will start working on right away. This is an estimate. We're looking at, of course, the larger regions in Sweden.
We believe that in Stockholm, in terms of the coming two-three years, there is room for approximately 5 stores in Gothenburg too. There should obviously be stores in Malmö, Uppsala, Västerås, Örebro, Linköping, Helsingborg. In which order these stores will come, we don't know yet. It's all about getting the right location in one of these cities. Location trumps city in terms of our establishment. We've done the same in Norway. We know that that's what works. We'll have the same strategy there in terms of store rollout in Sweden. That's what we had. We are happy to take any questions, and they are coming in. I'll read them out for you.
Longer term, where do you expect the distribution between B2B and B2C sales to end up as % of revenue? Well, we think that in terms of 2022, if we just look at the Norwegian business, because now we're adding on NOK 150 million plus with consumer business. If we just look at the Norwegian business, I'm guessing 2022 will be the first year where B2B is larger in terms of share of business than B2C. Looking even further, I'm guessing for the coming years, maybe it will shift so that in five years' time, maybe it's 60% of our business.
I also think we had various exceptionally strong growth in the electrician side of the B2B sector. We also think there's good potential to grow even more in the other B2B, like farmers, craftsmen, janitors, and so on. Yeah, I believe that it will not take very long time before the B2Bs exceeds the B2C.
There's a question, Oninen is apparently growing 32.8% in the quarter, and we are growing 20%. Who is losing? I don't know. I can only see the figures that are official, which they are not for the other competitors. We know that the market growth in Q4 was 10% in B2B. Well, wholesale sales in Norway was up 10%, and we grew 20%. I don't know. There are us, Oninen, and 5 other large wholesalers, so one of them or more. Can you please help us understand what is our main value proposition to electricians versus competitors? Is it price, service, and/or convenience? Our main value proposition is. Well, price just needs to be there.
It's a hygiene factor, so we need to be competitive on price. What we do best is that there's no one in this market that compete with us, that can compete with us on local availability. When I talk about local availability, I talk about the range and the amount of stock that we keep close to the electrician and the opening hours that we have in the stores. We're open from 7:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. and on Saturdays. Competitors close at 3:30 P.M., 4:00 P.M. That's one. Well, that's probably the key. Then we also have more people on the ground. We have larger stores locally, more electricians available for them to consult with. I would say local presence and availability is our key value proposition.
Do you believe competition in the Swedish market is tougher than in Norway? Does this have any implications to factors like sales per store potential relative to Norway? I believe competition is tough in Norway. I believe it will be tough in Sweden as well. There are fewer but stronger wholesalers in Sweden. There are more retailers that offers the type of products that we do. You have large chains like Hornbach and Bauhaus who are well-established in the Swedish market. We believe that sales per store in Sweden will be a bit higher than in Norway once we're up and running. That's what we believe. Basically because the cities in Sweden are so much more densely populated than they are in Norway.
Can you say something about revenue per store expectation in Sweden? Well, yeah, that's more or less the same question. Two questions on other OpEx. Outside the sales channel, is there some special Q4 seasonality?
The main thing is that we have doubled the capacity in Västerås, so that's the main issue this quarter compared to the last quarter that we have.
Mm.
Yeah.
Seems to be much higher in Q4 than the rest of the year.
Yeah, that.
Yeah, that's.
That's because the distribution center opened the first of October, so it's a full Q4.
Up 3% year-on-year, but it was up 72% year-on-year last year. How should you think about this going forward?
I think last year we had the bonus provision. That was the biggest element in Q4 last year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
That'll be at the same level probably as we've seen.
Any estimate on how many attractive destinations there are in Norway for Elektrikerpartner? Yeah, absolutely. We have 26 stores now. We think there is room for another 20-25. A lot of them will be not in the same destination, but for Oslo, for example, we have one store in Oslo. We should probably have four.
Mm.
there are lots of other cities where we're not yet. 20-25 more stores in Norway we think there is room for. there is a lot of historical examples of successful retail concepts in their home country totally failing when expanding into new countries. Do you have any defined strategy for preventing Elektrikerpartner doing the same mistake in Sweden? Are you going to have any different approach from the one you have when opening new stores in Norway? Well, we have the largest respect for that, this is a different market. The consumer behavior is a bit different. The B2B behavior is also different. What we will do is, as we said, we will open one or two, I would call them test stores. We did the same in Norway in 2015.
We will see how the customers receive that, those stores, what we need to change in terms of assortment, the store layout, deliveries, opening hours, et cetera. Once we are confident that we have found the concept that the Swedish market enjoys, then we will start to roll out. Of course, there is a risk, but we still have a profitable business running online. Well, as of now there is a profitable business running online. We believe that with our experience, at least it will be much more cost-effective over the first-
Mm.
Years than what it was in Elektrikerpartner when we did a lot of mistakes in terms of the new stores costing us a lot of money. Yeah, we have the greatest respect for the competition, for that is a new market, and we know some have failed, but we also know some have succeeded. Some great Norwegian concepts that actually are thriving in Sweden. We're
We also believe that it's a strong risk reduction element that we actually go into the Swedish market, buying Elbutik to build on their competence, their knowledge of the Swedish B2C customer assortment, and we believe that's.
I mean, yeah, that's a key factor for us in thinking that that mitigates the risk, we think, in terms of what other retailers before us might have done when they have just taken their own Norwegian organization, jumping over the border and then doing exactly the same thing. We've been part of some of that, me and Petter and some others in the company, I think we've learned some. We have. We also have a great board of directors with a lot of history of this, so we're confident that we will make it. How should we think about the gross margins for 2022 versus 2021? Well, as B2B increases their share of business, that is a natural thing in sort of driving the margins down.
Better category management, better campaign planning, et cetera, is pushing it up.
Mm.
I think we should see slightly increased margins.
At least for the first three quarters.
At least for the three first quarters.
Mm.
That's what we believe, and probably on this year for Q4.
Mm.
You say Elbtik reminds you of Elektroimportøren in 2014. What factors might lead to differences in, for example, growth in numbers of stores over the coming years? I believe that we can establish more stores faster. Once we have, as I said, made these two stores and are confident that the concept works in the Swedish market, we will increase the rollout of new stores and have a greater pace than what we had in Norway. I think that's the
Mm
... the biggest difference. On the comparison slide, you show turnover and EBITDA of ELBTIC and Elektroimportøren for 2022. Do you mean 2021? Yes. Sorry. Sorry for that. I mean 2021. What was the private label growth in Q4 and Namron's share of sales? To be honest, I don't have that off the top of my head.
Not me either.
Well, I think the share of business was 32.5%, but what the growth was, I do not recognize.
We had high growth.
Yeah. How many new stores do you see opening in Norway? I guess you're saying this year. If you mean this year, we have one on Monday. We have another one coming up in July, and hopefully one or two more. So two, three, four stores in Norway for this year, and if you're looking for, well, as I was saying earlier, 2025, for-
Total
... for a total. Will you roll out this new Swedish stores under the Elektroimportøren brand or the ELBTIC brand? We will use the ELBTIC brand. How many additional stores are there room for in Norway? That we've been through. Can you give us a sense of the mix of business between big one-off renovation projects versus smaller repair and maintenance projects? Our mix is very much on the smaller repair and maintenance projects. We have not had. Our customers do not have very a lot of these one-off renovation projects. Of course, they have one-off when they build a new house, that's a one-off, but.
It's a huge.
Not a huge impact on us, and then we believe there are prognoses saying that they will still be building new houses in Norway for 2022. We don't see that we, in 2021, have had any major boost of those kind of projects. Elbtik headquarters close to Denmark. Do you consider future expansion to Denmark impossible? Possible? Yeah, definitely. How would you service the trade customers in Sweden versus what you are already doing in Norway?
The B2B.
If you mean B2B. Yeah. If it's the B2B customers, we will service them. We will use a similar setup as we have in Norway. We will wait. Since our value proposition is based on being the best locally, we need to have a store first before we can approach the professional market.
They also need to learn more about the B2B customer in Sweden.
Yeah.
That's our assumption.
Yes. I think that was the end of the questions, Kirsty.
Yes, it seems no further questions at the moment.
Okay. I guess we just say, thank you very much for listening in.
Thank you. Thank you.
See you.
Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.