Welcome to the CTEK Conference Call Q1 2023. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to the Interim CEO, Ola Carlsson, and CFO, Thom Mathisen. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this call. We'll start this call by presenting a little bit what we do at CTEK and how we are organized. I will do that very briefly. I know many of you have seen this before. We look at our business in two technologies, EVSE, which is aiming towards electrical cars, charging of electrical cars, and what we call low voltage. Within low voltage we sell through retail and our OE partners to consumers. We sell to workshops, professional products. We have portable products, and we also sell products that are installed in commercial vehicles. In EVSE, we are present in two segments, Home Charging and Destination Charging, and you see a couple of examples of products. Up to the left you see the General Motors chargers.
In the middle you see our Chargestorm Connected . To the right you see our portable EV charger, NJORD GO. We are organized in three business divisions, Energy & Facilities, Aftermarket and Original Equipment. If we start with Energy & Facilities, that's the channel where we only sell EVSE products. You see typical customers there. It's a B2B business. We also sell not only hardware, we sell software. In the Aftermarket today it's mainly related or has sales in low voltage. We sell through physical and online retail. We sell mainly then our low voltage chargers, but we can also sell our portable chargers and other EVSE products. Our last business division is OE, Original Equipment. This is where we sell to car manufacturers or other manufacturers of vehicles.
Here we sell both low voltage products and EVSE products. We showed this chart last time. I just want to highlight what has changed in the quarter. We have a substantially larger share of EVSE products in the quarter than in the previous quarter. You can also see that our Original Equipment business unit has a bigger share of the total group. In the quarter, actually, Americas was the biggest region for us. I'm sorry. With that said, I hand over to our CFO, Thom Mathisen to take you through the Q1 interim report.
Hello, everyone. The overall financials, you can see that the net sales for the company is more or less flat versus quarter one last year. As Ola Carlsson also mentioned before here, we have another product mix with a higher share of EVSE products through our OE division, taking down the overall gross margin with around 4%. Overhead costs rather stable versus last year, but clearly lower than quarter four last year, around SEK 15 million lower than quarter four last year. We come back to that a little bit later.
Some one- off cost in this period related to the cost- out activities we have done and the change of CEO, on a lower level than we guided in the quarter four report, around SEK 9 million versus the SEK 50 million we said in quarter four. Coming to our different divisions. I go to the Aftermarket first. As you know, not only for CTEK, but generally in the market it's a slowdown in the consumer spending, and that hits our Aftermarket business works to a very large extent towards the consumer market. We have around 20% lower revenues in the quarter one versus last year. In the same time we have managed to bring up the underlying margins in the business.
We are more not fully compensated, but to a large extent compensated. We have improved gross margins in that business. That is a positive thing for the first quarter. That is coming both from less of air freight and spot buy that we had in the beginning of last year, but also from the remaining price increases we did compared to quarter one last year. OE division, there we see, as we said before, a large increase versus quarter one last year coming from the EVSE sales. You can now see that 2/3 of the sales in quarter one is coming from EVSE, 1/3 from low voltage.
This had an impact, as we have communicated before, on the overall margins in that division because we have less margins in the EVSE part, which we are working on. We will come back to that later on to come to better levels going forward. We, as communicated before, now we see the higher volumes coming through EVSE. E&F, last division, not the least. Also here, we are with our focus on working with destination chargers, we can clearly see that we are hit by the lower activities in the construction sector. We have a net sales drop of 50% compared to last quarter. However, we are working with, as we have communicated before, looking for more profitable growth than just focusing on top line.
That shows also in the graph you see below that we now have turned the negative trend of margin towards a positive trend with better EBITDA margins than we had before. Finally, some words around cash flow and the CapEx, where we actually see clearly improvements versus the last quarters, I would say. If you compare to the quarter one last year, we are around SEK 40 million improvement, both after operating activities and after investment activities. That comes primarily from all activities done to reduce inventories and reduce trade receivables, which we have done according to the plans we have had.
We also see that our net debt, that was finalized right at the end of quarter one now, bring us back to our financial target of three times as a result of that rights issue. With that, back to Ola.
Thank you, Thom. I'll talk you through a little bit about the current trading and the outlook for the rest of the year. If we start with the current trading, all the activities that we communicated in the last quarterly report are either done or in progress. As you know, we have completed the SEK 300 million, SEK 350 million rights issue with strong support from our big and small owners. We're very grateful for that. All the previously initiated activities are progressing according to plan. As Thom were alluding to, we turned a quite negative cash flow in Q4 into a positive cash flow in the first quarter. We lowered our operational expenses with SEK 50 million in between Q4 and Q1, the cost-saving program is progressing well.
We have done the majority of the organizational changes, and anticipate to have full effect of those in the end of this year. What has happened in the quarter as well is that we have seen a lower market activity. We, as many other companies, are affected by lower consumer spend, and that has an impact mainly on our Aftermarket division. We also see a lower activity in the construction sector, which impacts our Energy & Facilities. Compared to what we saw before, we see lower market activity. Another thing that has happened in the quarter is that our big customer, General Motors, has heavily or substantially reduced their forecast for 2023.
For those who are interested in their forecast on how they will develop with the electrical car, I recommend to go into General Motors' first quarterly report. They have quite a lot of details there about how they see the development of electrical cars in General Motors. We are continuing to take actions to improve or lower our costs and improve our cash flows. That will continue throughout the year. We don't exclude that we have to take additional actions as a consequence of the softer market. We look at the updated guidance for 2023. We now foresee a bigger decline in the Aftermarket driven by the lower consumer spend. As a consequence of the revised General Motors forecast, we don't see as strong growth as we communicated earlier.
I want to highlight that the rest of the OE business is actually progressing quite well. We don't see the same slowdown there. It's good sales. For Energy & Facilities, we were looking at a growth, now we see a flat development versus 2022. That also will bring down the EVSE part of the total turnover for 2023. Our margins in the base business, excluding General Motors are strong. We will also have a lower share of General Motors in the mix, in the product mix, which means that we will have a better gross margin on the group compared to what we previously communicated. It will be slightly lower than last year and better than previously communicated.
When we look at the adjusted EBITDA, we unfortunately see lower volumes in Q2 compared to Q1. We would have a further decrease in Q2, and then we foresee a gradual improvement from Q3 onwards, driven by the more of the actions that we have taken comes into place in the result. CapEx we keep at the same level in nominal terms, but as the net sales becomes lower in percentage, it's gonna be a bit higher than normal. We remain with our forecast to have a positive cash flow on the full year of 2023, driven by the activities that we have initiated. When we talk about the net debt, we see that we will be above our financial target due to lower earnings.
Before we end this presentation, I also wanna inform you where we are on the actions that we initiated in the first quarter. We have reduced our workforce. We were above 300 at the end of last year, and we're currently at 270 including consultants, and we aim to get down to 230 by the end of the year. We have lowered the OpEx in one quarter with, as Thom Mathisen said, SEK 15 million, and we want to lower that additional SEK 8 million towards the end of this year. On the development cost, we currently have a run rate around SEK 100 million compared to SEK 150 million last year, and we'll bring that down to SEK 80 million at the end of the year. On the cash flow, we already talked to that.
We have made good progress in the first quarter, we aim for a positive cash flow for the full year. In the graphs, the first one I will not comment since Thom Mathisen talked to that, you see also graphically there that we are bringing down our CapEx. We have also reduced our inventories. As we said, we turned a very negative cash flow into Q4 into a positive cash flow in the first quarter. In addition to this, we work very hard now to reduce the cost of the GM chargers, that's a project that is ongoing. If there is any benefits of a lower GM volume is that we now have a little bit more time for those activities.
They all require approval from GM, but we have good cooperations with GM, and we are confident that we can lower the cost of these products. As volumes pick up in 2024, we will see better profitability on those products. That was the things I wanted to present today, and I think we then open up for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good morning. This is Johan at Kepler Cheuvreux. Thank you for taking my questions. I will start off a little bit with the EVSE part. Here in Sweden, we have obviously seen a competitor dropping out, now admittedly in the sort of low-end consumer chargers rather than the destination chargers you are in. I think I've noticed that the CTEK brand is mentioned more often in reviews after this. Have you seen any positive impact from Easee's demise in the Swedish market?
I would say as they are mainly a home charger, competitor, and we are not present in that segment, it has a limited effect on us.
Okay, good. On the GM charges, you talk about lowering the cost, but I understand, you know, there's also a base version and a more advanced version coming. Which activity cost cutting or more sales of the premium version of the GM charger is most important for your earnings development on that contract?
It's hard to reveal those details, but I can say the cost cutting activities will affect both models. There is no secret to have a little bit better margins on our premium versions. We are right now produced the first batch of the premium version, and we are just waiting for GM's approval to ship them. That's also important to understand when we talk about development cost. We have very little left of the GM project now in terms of development. That's of course good and that gives us the opportunity to bring down our development cost.
Unless you have any other major contract in the pipeline, how is that looking?
No, I cannot comment that, but as we have a very strong reputation in the industry, and we have long-term cooperations with the world's major car manufacturers, whenever they want a product like that, we will be invited to those tenders. I cannot comment any specific tenders. We are getting invited to those tenders.
Okay. Then a little bit on the low voltage business in the Aftermarket channel. You talked about you obviously releasing inventories. Have you any ideas on how your retail partners inventories look like? Are they down to a level they want to be, or are there further inventory reductions expected, or where are we now in that cycle?
Yeah, that's a very good question. It's a little bit difficult to answer since we are present in 70 countries. When we talk with our big customers, it's a little bit a mixed picture. Some of them have actually stated they don't have any over-inventory, while some of them actually have too much inventory. It's a bit of a mixed picture. I would say on average, they have a bit too much inventory because of they are also seeing the slowdown in the market. That's why we also anticipate lower sales.
Okay. Finally, energy facility, you had some geographic, markets expansions, and now you're cutting costs a little bit. Which are the markets you are now focusing on, apart from Sweden, obviously?
You can see it like this. We focus on our home market, which is Sweden. We are in U.K., and we've taken a little bit longer time, but we are starting to get some traction now in U.K. as well, with some of our bigger customer. We are also taking part in tenders. What is changing a bit that is the tenders becomes bigger, and they cover more countries. A big priority to us now is to get our charge point connected- compliant in as many countries as possible because there is not that many players that can compete in these tenders. They are big tenders, big parking operators, with European footprint. Our strategy is also to try to gain those businesses and then grow with those customers into new markets.
We also already have some sales in other countries in Europe, outside U.K. and Sweden as a consequence of focusing more on big customers rather than small.
If you get a tender, win a tender for, you know, U.K. and maybe France, Benelux, can you sell with profits in sort of those countries? Or will you have to give away to the integrator if you're not present yourself in those markets?
It is our belief that it's better to gain those kind of businesses. The gross margin might be lower because they have a strong purchasing power. Once you get the business, it's much more cost efficient to maintain the business than if you go after smaller business. Of course, you need a certain size. I mean, we are still making a loss in this business division, and we would need a bigger net sales to be turned profitable. We think this is a faster path to it rather than going country by country and building up a sales organization and starting in that end.
Excellent. Finally, just gross margins. Are you back on your low voltage products where you were before the cost inflation started? Where are you on the gross margins on the EVSE part?
I would say, if we take our base business, if you call it like that, LV business, I would say we are back on track and even better than, you have to go back some.
Quite many quarters to come back to those gross margins. There we have seen a clear improvement. In the EVSE side, I would say that we, as I said about the E&F division, we are more cost efficient even if we not have the volumes, as Ola said, as we would like to have. We have lower overhead costs for that division. As we also mentioned for the big GM contract, there are several actions ongoing to take out the cost of the product. It's heading in the right direction, but of course from lower levels on that side.
Strong gross margins excluding GM in all the businesses.
Yes.
Okay, good. Just to get a feeling for your sort of midterm 20% margin target, what sort of gross margin assumptions would you bake in there?
Yeah. I think that will come from various things. It has been mentioned the cost out activities, but it's also the, I would say advantages of scale. Scaling up businesses, of course, mainly in EVSE products, both through OE division and the E&F division. You also can see that we still have, compared to the levels we have today, we will definitely grow in Aftermarket as well. Also the OE LV business, the low voltage business in OE is room for growing continuously. By that and not in... I think we can be quite cost efficient on the OpEx side and overhead side. We will have a scale advantage over time.
If we hit the turnover target we have to come to SEK 2 billion, we see that the 20% EBITDA margin is fully reachable.
Yeah.
Okay.
You can see, the impact that GM had just in 1 quarter.
Yeah.
I mean, if you have a few of these customers, then of course you need to get the profitability right from the beginning. You know the GM story, it was done in the turbulence of component shortage and raw material and so on. We know much more about how these products should be designed and how you do it cost efficient today than we did during the development of these products. We are more confident that we can earn money in these segments going forward. As Thom is alluding to, it's important to get the scale here. When you scale both in OE EVSE, you don't need a huge sales force to maintain these customers.
You need some support, but it's quite cost efficient once you have the business. It's the same with bigger E&F customers. You need a certain support, but it's quite efficient once you have the contracts.
Excellent. Many thanks.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kenneth Toll Johansson from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
On the Aftermarket side, if you compare sales in Q1 to Q1 2021, so two years back, at that time, two years back, it was in the middle of the pandemic, so you probably benefited from the pandemic effect in your sales to Aftermarket at that time. Over two years, sales revenues for Aftermarket is down 32%. There should be some price increases in that. I mean, maybe sales volumes are down like 40%, 50% over two years. There are probably some destocking at retailers and so on. Still, the former CEO estimated that the pandemic gave a boost of some 10%. Volumes down 40%, 50%, it's quite a lot.
Are you facing more competition or are you losing market shares in your market as well?
I think we don't have any market statistics. Where we get information from our customers, we don't lose market share. That's our opinion. It's more that the market is down.
We can say in general, we have as you, or also, saying, we have had the pandemic effect, a positive pandemic effect. If you go back to 2019, 2020, we are back on those levels. Now a little bit this year, more so down in the general consumer market that hits us right as we speak. We see more that it's a, the consumer spending impacting now, than anything else.
We haven't lost any distribution. We are in the same distribution and the same customer.
Okay. Great. I wonder, you also guide now that your net debt to EBITDA will be above your financial targets this year. Do you see a risk that you will start getting close to covenants or were you able to change covenants when you did the new share issue?
Cannot go into that details. You saw now that we are on the, exactly on the spot of 3 after quarter one. The problem for us now since you see that we have a good, rather good cash flow expectations, it's not on the net debt side, it's more that the profitability slow down. Of course, that impact the net debt ratio and so forth. Obviously, we have some audience about our financial target in the bank covenants. Of course it's a focus area for us to keep us within the limits.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's all for me. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
I just want to say thank you for participating and look forward to talk to you soon again. Thank you very much.