Hello and welcome to the Dometic Q2 2021 analyst call. For the first part of this call, participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a short question and answer session. Please also try to limit the questions to two. Today, I'm pleased to present Juan Vargues, President and CEO, Stefan Fristedt, CFO. Speakers, please begin.
Good morning, everybody, welcome to sunny Stockholm and the presentation of the interim report for the second quarter. If we look at the highlights for the quarter, we see that the market demand remains very strong in all segments and in all continents. We have a record high backlog for this period of the year. As many other industries and many other companies, or most companies I would say, we still see critical shortage on components and freight capacity. That creates, obviously, challenges. We also perceive the retail inventories to be very low, which means that we expect the restocking period to be extended. We were discussing some months ago about 2021, perhaps, first quarter 2022. We see now in accordance to our customers and the rest of the industry that it will take longer time to refill inventories.
From a performance perspective, we show all-time high sales and profitability. Organic sales growth up 66% compared with a weak Q2 2022 where we went down 38%. We have also experienced a very high M&A activity and announced six acquisitions during this year, 2021, and completed three acquisitions during the quarter. EBIT margin at all-time high as well, 17.2% compared to 10.9% last year. Keep working on our innovation and innovation index reach for the first time 24% versus an 18% one year ago. We keep working according to our strategy to reduce our break-even point on continuous level. If we move over to the financials for Q2, as I mentioned it earlier, 66% up organically. We have a negative impact of 7% coming from FX and an addition coming from M&A of 8%.
Looking at EBIT, before items affecting comparability, we increased our EBIT by 165%, ending up at SEK 955 million in comparison to SEK 361 million last year, reaching an EBIT margin, as I said, all-time high of 17.2%. We're looking at operating cash flow. Strong improvement as well, ending up at + 181%. As you all know, we had a share issue earlier in June, bringing our leverage down to 1.4x compared to the 3.1x that we were showing one year ago. Also a strong EPS development in comparison to last year, ending up at SEK 1.85 compared to SEK 0.42 one year ago. If we move over to the year-to-date numbers, 41% up organically to be compared with -26% organically one year ago. The FX impact is the same, M&A will add 4% of growth.
Even here, we see that the numbers have developed very positively for us on the year-to-date numbers, ending up 115% up versus the same period last year of almost SEK 1.7 billion or 16.2% margin in comparison to the 10.4% that we were showing one year ago. Cash flow, 75% up versus last year, ending up at SEK 857 million. EPS ending up after two quarters at SEK 3.50, which is more than 3x the level that we had one year ago. We are obviously very happy both inside. We have seen now four quarters in a row with organic growth, and we expect the organic growth to continue in the quarters to come. Looking at the different segments, pretty much even with Americas being up 66%, EMEA 63%, APAC 65%, and Global 70%.
Looking at different application areas, we are also happy to report that we see growth all over. When looking at current currencies, we are up 72% on Food & Beverage. We are at the same level, 73% on Climate. Power & C ontrol, an area where we are investing quite a bit, 124% versus last year. Other Applications as well, 65%. Looking at our sales channels, we see OEM at current currencies growing 89%, while Service & Aftermarket is growing 74% and Distribution 62%. Again, all are still very pleasing to see that both all channels, all segments are growing nicely. If we look and compare to our strategy, we communicated two years ago that we wanted to grow Distribution, Service & Aftermarket faster than we were growing OEM. We see that this is really kicking in.
When looking at the same period, 12-month rolling number, same period Q2 2021 versus 2018, we have moved the needle from 39% to 47% coming from Service & Aftermarket and Distribution. Of course, this will bring more stability to the business, and this will also bring higher margins over time. On top of that, obviously, most of the acquisitions that we are doing today will strengthen additionally both the Service & Aftermarket and the Distribution business. Looking at EBIT, all-time high. We are running just now at a 12-month rolling trend of 14.9%, influenced obviously by growth giving us leverage, but also our price management compensating for raw material prices, compensating for freight cost, compensating for the negative FX evolution that we have seen.
On top of the pricing, we also have less negative impact from tariffs, even if tariffs still play a negative role in Americas, obviously. All the efficiency activities that we are running across the company. Looking at different segments, Americas up 66%, growing in all the application areas, growing both on the OEM side as well as Distribution and Service & Aftermarket. We are very happy after the completion of both Valterra, and Valterra is bringing two different businesses. One, which is Service & Aftermarket, and then another part, which is Mobile Power Solutions that we will mention later. Zamp Solar, which is 100% Mobile Power Solutions. EBIT, a strong improvement up to 7.3% coming from losses one year ago. On the factors influencing is very much similar with all the other segments. We have, obviously, leverage on the sales growth.
We have a channel mix. We have lower impact from the U.S. trade tariffs. We have also been working hard with our price management, and we have the underlying efficiency improvements. On the contrary, we are suffering from supply chain constraints from the raw material prices and the freight cost, which is just now impacting all over the place, then negative FX. Looking at EMEA, very similar, 63% up organically, growth in all the application areas, growth in the OEM side of the business, but also equally on the Distribution and Service & Aftermarket. In this case, we have not completed any acquisition, but we announced the Front Runner acquisition back in June, then Büttner that was announced and completed in July, beginning of July. EBIT, SEK 343 million. Looking at the EBIT margin, 16.7% versus 12.9% one year. I will not repeat myself.
It's exactly the same factors as we saw for Americas with exception of the tariffs. We have leverage, we have price management, and we have underlying efficiency improvements. Playing against us, we have obviously still there the supply chain constraints. We have raw material prices and freight cost, and on top of that, FX and M&A transactional cost. Looking at APAC, in a similar manner, 65% organically up. Growth in all the application areas. Growth in all the sales channels. All-time high backlog. We completed another exciting acquisition in Enerdrive, which is also 100% Mobile Power Solutions. EBIT margin at all-time high, 29.5%. Two factors. On one side, we have the net profit by the sale of a warehouse in Hong Kong. At the same time as we have negative transaction cost of SEK 13 million against those SEK 21 million of net profits.
If you exclude for those two, EBIT margin would have ended up at 25.5%, which is still a very, very high level. On the factors, exactly the same factors as for EMEA and the rest of the segments. The global segments, 70% up, growth in our application areas. We have an all-time high in Marine, but we also have an all-time high in Residential. Hospitality is turning back to growth. We see also Mobile Deliveries where we are finishing off our field test, and we are opening for orders, and we are optimistic about that vertical market moving forward. In terms of profitability, ending up at SEK 370 million or an EBIT margin of 22.9% versus 18.2% one year ago. The same factors influencing.
We have leverage, we have efficiency improvements, price management, and then against us, the headwinds, we have the supply chain constraints, raw material prices, freight cost, and then our mix. If we move on, we continue to deliver on our strategy. As I mentioned earlier, we see a very nice movement with Distribution and Service & Aftermarket growing faster over time than the OEM business and standing today for 47% versus 39% a couple of years ago. We have announced six acquisitions year to date, and we keep working on that area. We also see a rapid growth on our B2C channel. Still small numbers, but we are twice as much as we were one year ago. If we look at our product leadership, innovation index on 24%, all-time high. What is even very pleasing to see is that we are continuing to launch new products.
Just as a reminder, on one side, we are revamping all the existing product areas that we have historically, at the same time as we are launching new products for new vertical markets. We have a strong pipeline, and we expect the product launches to continue. Cost reduction, keep working very hard. The number of SKUs is down now 57% versus the level that we were showing in 2018. It's not only that, we are working on supply reduction. We are 25% fewer suppliers. We are working on space, 13% down, and so forth. We have also announced the closure of one more site, and we are totally committed to our cost reduction target that were introduced in connection to the Capital Markets Day. Looking a little bit on the growth side. We pay a lot of attention to our website. We have implemented a new website.
We see in the quarter an organic growth of 18%. This is important for us, obviously, since we are trying to communicate more and more with the consumers. This is also one of the fundamentals to enter into the B2C channel. If we look at social media, we also show a similar progress, 19% versus the situation one year ago, with nice evolution on all the different medias. The same, this is going to be crucial to develop new ambassadors, to have more traffic on social media for our B2C channel. Looking at outdoor, we launched our new cooling boxes and drinkware in both EMEA and Americas during the quarter, after the introduction that we had in Australia one year ago. This is a very important area for our future. Moving the perception from high-ticket discretionary spend into low-ticket discretionary spend.
We also launched a new generation of minibars. In this case, it's not just for lodging business, but also for the healthcare business and the elderly care. What I think is impressive is that we manage to improve performance at the same time as we are reducing energy consumption by 40%. We are finishing off the field test on our DeliBox, on the food delivery market. We are receiving very positive feedback from potential customers. We expect to start getting orders very, very soon now. We are investing in introducing ourselves into more outdoor channels. What you see on the slide is really our presence on the Liverpool Outdoor Show that took place between June 29 and July 1st, where we are showing our activity-based vehicle outdoor approach.
As you can see, we have rooftop tents, we have the HUBs, we have the coolers, and we are going to be launching a totally new generation of products during the first quarter next year. Looking at acquisitions, we have been very active. We continue to be very active. What I would like to mention is obviously that we didn't start working with acquisitions the first of January. This is really the consequence of 1.5 years where we built up the organization, where we have people in the different continents, and we are starting to harvest the hard work that we have been spending. Looking at what we are looking for acquisitions is very much on the Distribution side and on the Service & Aftermarket. On the left-hand side, you have the Residential business, which is a Distribution business.
We have Front Runner, which is a 100% outdoor company. Valterra, on one side, is a Service & Aftermarket business, but they also own Go Power!, which is 100% Mobile Power Solutions. We have the three additional acquisitions in the same area, Mobile Power Solutions. Why is Mobile Power Solutions interesting to us? It is clear that we see sustainability, electrification trends that are leading to increased end-user demand for off-grid products. We have observed a number of these companies growing very fast, showing very nice margins. This is very appealing because we believe that the underlying trend of people deciding to spend more time in nature is going to continue to grow. At the same time, nobody today wants to give up the convenience that we have at home. That's where we play a role.
Of course, in a future with electric cars, it's going to be even more important to have access to electricity, and you will not be able to take that electricity or that power out from the car. That's why when we are talking about solar panels, when we are talking about battery packs, when we are talking about generator, power generation is extremely important for our future. On top of that, we see obviously that the more electronics you have, the shorter product cycles you are going to experience and the higher margins we are going to have. Very interesting to us. Sustainability, we are totally committed to lead the sustainability in our industries. As you know, we have four KPIs that we are following on continuous basis that we are communicating. In terms of injuries, we are down 23% towards the same period of last year.
We are spending a lot of time to increase the number of female managers in our organization. We cannot show that in the numbers yet, but we will see it. We are implementing a three-years plan to elevate those numbers. In terms of audits in low-cost countries, we have moved to 84% versus 77% one year ago, despite, as you are aware of, the travel restrictions that we still have around the world. We are also investing in renewable electricity, and we have a reduction on our consumption of CO2 tonnage of 12%. We have as a target 5%, but we have invested faster to accelerate the progress in that area. In regards to restructuring program, we announced the closure of one more site during the quarter, which means that we are down to 22 sites affected so far.
Another 26 employees will be leaving us for a total of a little bit more than 800 employees so far. On the cost side, SEK 24 million accrued in the quarter or SEK 266 million since the beginning of the program. Again, we hope now when the travel restrictions start to ease up, that we will be able to accelerate our program. With that said, I would like to hand it over to Stefan, please.
Thank you, Juan. Starting off with the bridge for the second quarter. As you can see from this, currency continues to be a negative impact for us, SEK 34 million in the quarter on EBIT. We have the M&A transactions that we have been completing. I'm coming back a little bit to more details here in a second. Totally in the quarter, we have SEK 270 million of net sales included related to M&A and an EBIT of SEK 39 million. We have the last column, which is of course a combination of a number of different things. Obviously, sales growth is an important part in this. Juan has already talked about price management, which we have successfully been implementing to mitigate some of the negatives, which is related to raw material prices and freight costs.
We have continuously less negative impact from U.S. trade tariffs, not in absolute terms, but in relation to the business volume. Obviously, operational leverage and cost savings are important factors driving our profitability. Except for raw material and freight cost increases, we also are obviously facing, as the rest of the world, supply constraints and increasing lead times. Move to the next. Here we have some more details on our acquisitions. As I said, SEK 270 million of net sales related to 8% growth from M&A. If we look on this before amortization of intangible assets, which comes with all acquisitions, we are showing an EBITDA margin of 18.9% for the acquired companies and 18.6% for Dometic as an average.
We have also taken a decision to handle M&A transaction costs of bigger materiality, and book them as items affecting comparability, and that is a total of SEK 29 million. In the box below, you have the acquisitions we have done just to help you understand when we are announcing them and when they actually are included in our accounts. Twin Eagles was announced in February and included from February as well, related to the Global segment. Valterra announced April 22nd and has been included since May. Should, however, highlight it's since the last week of May, so it's not a full month of May we're talking about. Valterra is belonging to the segment Americas. Enerdrive announced on May 18th and included from the 1st of June, related to the APAC segment.
Front Runner was announced May 20th and has not yet closed and is expected to close in Q3, and this acquisition is related to the segment EMEA. We have Zamp Solar announced on May 26th and is also included from the last week of May and belongs to the segment Americas. We have the latest announcement of Büttner Elektronik July 2nd, and will also be included in our accounts from July and belongs to the segment EMEA. Let's move on. Going over to the operating cash flow. Satisfying development in the quarter, SEK 875 million in operating cash flow, 80% cash conversion rate. The cash flow is making a bit of a comeback, we could say. That's nice to see and expected as well. Moving over to the next page to talk a little bit about the different components in working capital, starting with accounts payable.
As you can see, number of days are moving up. We have been driving in China, especially, a program using bank promissory notes. Also the rest of the group is now moving up terms in the agreement. That's a nice development. DSO starts to come down to levels we have seen historically. I think on the DSO situation, we see things stabilizing here. DIO are obviously higher, especially if we look on the graph, that is the short-term view of DIO. That's driven by that we need to build inventory to secure deliveries. We also have new product introductions that we need to build up inventory for. We also have significantly increasing lead times, especially from Asia to the rest of the world.
If we look on a total level, we are actually working capital in relation to net sales on a historic low level. Moving on to the next, talking about CapEx and research and development. As you can see, and what we also basically have been communicated, we are hovering around the level between around 1.5%, equating to SEK 77 million in the quarter. Even though we are doing more things, we feel that we are doing different things and that we are getting higher efficiency out of the investment that we are doing. Looking specifically on the research and development spend, 1.8% in relation to net sales, SEK 102 million. As you can see from the development of the innovation index, the investment that we're doing are certainly driving and renewing our product portfolio. Take the next step. Cash flow for the period. Some highlights are already mentioned.
The operating cash flow improved to SEK 875 million. We have done acquisitions of around SEK 1.6 billion in the second quarter. There has happened a couple of things within financing. As you know, we did the directed new shares issue here in the beginning of June, which brought almost SEK 3.4 billion. We have also paid out our dividend of SEK 680 million. Looking on our debt portfolio, there has been one change in the quarter, and that's the SEK 2 billion facility provided by EKN, which has been extended with two years to 2025. We also have our undrawn revolving credit facility of EUR 200 million. Looking on our net debt, as was mentioned before, it has been coming down to SEK 1.4 billion, obviously, driven by the directed new shares issue.
As you also have noticed, we have changed our target to be around 2.5x over a business cycle. Basically taking that to the level where we have seen it on an average for the last couple of years. This obviously means that we certainly have capacity to continue to execute on our M&A strategy going forward. With that, I'm handing back to you, Juan.
Thank you, Stefan. Let's summarize the quarter. On the business side, all-time high sales and EBIT. We feel confident about the future. We have an order backlog which is record high. We continue to see strong underlying market demand. Again, we see that with that backlog, with the underlying demand, we see that we have a positive outlook for the coming quarters, and we also believe that it's going to take longer time than initially expected to refill the inventories on the market side, at the dealer side. Looking a little bit more internally, we continue to work on our innovation index, and we are improving quarter- by- quarter. We have a very high focus on our cost and efficiency improvements.
We are very happy to see how the company is reducing our exposure to one single segment by increasing on Distribution, increasing on the Service & Aftermarket side. We are standing close to 50%. As I mentioned previously, with the new acquisitions, once we are reporting all of them, we are pretty convinced that we will be close to 50%. Six acquisitions announced year- to- date, and we keep working on more acquisitions, more opportunities out there. We are happy, obviously, about the share issue giving us the muscles to continue that journey. With that said, I would like to open the Q&A session. By the way, I forgot to mention, obviously, that we have a Capital Market Day. We are going to have a Capital Market Day on the 30th of November in Stockholm. Please save the date. Now we open for the Q&A session.
Thank you. If you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Please also try to limit the number of questions to two. Our first question comes from Daniel Schmidt, Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, Juan and Stefan. Just two questions from me, starting with the operating leverage in Americas. All regions are basically back to the margin levels that you had in Q2 2019 or even above, apart from Americas. I, of course, appreciate what you said in terms of the impact and maybe the impact from the U.S. dollar and the mix is probably bigger in Americas than in EMEA and other parts of the world. Is it also fair to say that the supply chain issues continue or has been a bigger problem in Americas than in the other regions?
I would say so, you have a couple of components more. Keep in mind that we are talking about Q2 2019. The 10% tariffs that was implemented during the second half of 2018, we were building up inventories at 10% tariffs that we were consuming in the first quarters of 2019. During the second half of 2019, the 25% tariffs started to kick in. In reality, we are also still today penalized by that.
Yeah.
You have a clear mix. As I think we have mentioned a couple of times, RV OEM is the lowest margin area that we have, and we are growing faster on RV OEM in Americas at lower margins than we are driving on the rest of the world. That has an impact.
Yeah.
If you look also at the weighting, the weighting of RV OEM in Americas is higher than for the other regions. You put everything together, it is very much mix-driven. We have, as you just said, some more impact on delays. We know that a number of manufacturers started to run longer weekends during the last six, seven weeks. We expect to see a little bit more leverage in the quarters to come if everything goes as we expect.
Yeah. You also said that you're totally committed to the cost reduction target, and you hope to be able to accelerate the cost-cutting program once now travel restrictions are easing.
Yeah.
Is this more related to Americas than the rest of the group, or is it equally distributed?
Well, I think-
In terms of your focus?
Yeah. It's obviously high-cost country driven. We are sitting with a number of factories in Americas, and we have, still today, a few factories in Europe as well. Of course, if we are talking about priorities, Americas for us is a priority because we see that in the numbers, clearly.
Yeah. Okay.
We want to get to the same average numbers that we have in EMEA. There is no reason for not believing that we should not be delivering that. We also need to work on the mix, as I said.
Yeah.
We have more exposure to the RV OEM business in Americas than in the rest of the segments.
Good. The second topic, you talk about prolonged period of restocking, and of course, we've heard this for some time, but it does sound that you are highlighting this yourselves a little bit more. What are you seeing in terms of retail demand? It's one thing that, of course, inventories are low entering 2021, and there's been some supply chain issues, but what are you seeing in terms of the end market demand as we enter Q3 and during Q2?
Still very positive. That's what is driving our assumptions. Obviously, the demand is still there. It is clear that dealers, the OEM dealers, are not refilling the inventories at the pace that it was expected before. Because of that, when you have a combination, higher demand, which continues, at the same time as you have inventory levels that are not growing at the pace that was expected, that means that the period that it will take to refill is going to be longer.
Yeah. Do you feel that it's in an equal impact in terms of supply chain issues and higher demand than expected that are keeping inventories low, or do you have any sort of shed some light on that?
No, I think. It is clear that people are still not taking a flight to the Caribbean or to Thailand. I think that this is obviously supporting the industry without any kind of doubts. If you look at camping in Sweden or camping across Europe or in the U.S., it's difficult to get today space. They are fully booked. I don't feel that's just going to go away either. Of course that we will seasonal later, that we cannot be at these levels forever. I see it as an acceleration of the underlying trends for outdoor life and lifestyle that we have seen over the last 10 years.
Yes. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Juan.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lucie Carrier, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could help us understand how much price increase you were able to pass in the second quarter, and how much you estimate the impact from raw materials and I guess also supply chain constraints, to remain a tailwind in the second half, please, because I think it would help us to understand whether you see maybe an acceleration of that headwind or maybe a deceleration.
Hi, Lucie. It's Stefan here. What we can say about that is, if we see the net of these effects, obviously the price increases that we managed to pass through, less the raw material price increases and the inbound freight increases. I would say that it's more or less even. We were a little bit below in the first quarter, and now we are a little bit above in the second quarter. So far so good. This is things that is evolving almost day- by- day, week- by- week here. We know that there are going to come more price increases here a little bit further into the year here, and to mitigate the continuous cost pressure that we have from different sides. I would say so far we are satisfied with what we have been managing to do here.
Just to be clear, our intention is to be ahead. That's our clear intention. It's of course, what you can see is our pricing are increasing and the cost is increasing, and then we need to increase prices again, and then cost continues to increase. As for any other industry.
Understood. Basically what you're saying is, actually in the second quarter, you were able to kind of mitigate the headwinds.
Yeah
The margin overall was not disproportionately impacted by the headwind basically.
Correct.
Thank you very much. My second question was around M&A and the M&A envelope. I appreciate that M&A depends on timing of closing of acquisition, discussion with targets and so on. Are you expecting something equivalent to be achieved in the second half versus what you've done in the first half in terms of spend or something higher, something lower? What can you give us on that at the moment?
What we can give you is that we keep working exactly the same pace as we have been working in the last, I would say 18 months. We got the pandemic in between, so we restarted our activities again in Q3 last year. During the first half, we harvested some of that, and we keep working exactly the same pace. It is clear that this is crucial for us to accelerate our journey, our transformation journey to become a less exposed company to one single segment. That's the target. We want to see less exposure, and we want to see high margins.
Understood. Just on the point on the margin, the new reclassification you are making from M&A cost into items affecting comparability, is that a new classification that you look at acquisition by acquisition, or is that when you see that the total M&A cost is exceeding a special threshold, you're making the reclassification? Because obviously that makes it a little bit more difficult to compare EBIT margin versus history.
No, correct. If we take the acquisitions we have done now, the acquisition that qualifies to be taken as items affecting comparability is Valterra. If that size of acquisition, but it of course has to be evaluated case by case. The rest of the M&A cost, they are included in EBIT because we also believe that this is going to be a part of our normal business. It's of course going to be a little bit up and a little bit down, but it's a part of our strategy. You obviously have to add, everyone knows that you don't have 100% achievement on all your M&A efforts. Of course, sometimes there will be something that is sunk. Depending on the materiality, then it will be included in items affecting comparability if it's more material.
That's the way we have decided to do it.
Okay. Thank you. I'll get back in the queue.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Rizk Maidi, Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, Juan and Stefan. The first one is really on the supply chain bottlenecks and the component shortages. If I look at your organic revenues excluding effects and M&A, looks like it was sequentially stable from Q2 to Q1. It does feel that those headwinds are actually getting worse. I'm just wondering if you could comment on this, on whether you can assess what could have been your organic growth if you were able to deliver or ship your products.
I feel you could have added a couple of percentage points more, without any kind of doubts. I have to say that it is not just one segment. We see that in all the segments. We don't see that in one product. We see it more or less in all products. Again, we are not vaccinated against what is going on around the world like many other industries. It is tough to deliver 66% up organic when you are chasing every single day. Again, we are talking about componentry, but we are talking about containers. The price for a container today, first of all, you need to get hold of the container, then you are paying 10 times more than you were paying one year ago, just for you to get a feeling. It is a struggle.
At the same time, I also believe that we, like the rest of the companies, are becoming better and better, I guess, that we are getting used to live with this pandemic and the consequences of the pandemic. This is kind of the fourth quarter now in this situation.
Okay.
As you know, you can read the media, obviously, that the electronic suppliers are building up new factories. They are building up factories in Asia. We also have Europe, which is starting to invest in that area. We have Americas, but it will take a while. I'm not expecting the situation to ease dramatically in the coming weeks. I hope that it becomes easier at the end of this year.
Understood. The second one is really a follow-up on Lucie's question on raw material and freight costs. You were helpful last quarter to actually assess those. I think you talked about SEK 80 million sort of headwind with pricing roughly under 1.5%. I was just wondering if you could sort of give us those same numbers this quarter, and whether your comment, Juan, on you're willing to be ahead as well as a target also applies to Q3, where I think we should get the peak headwind in terms of raw mats.
I think that's kind of our job. Of course, that we are looking at those curves every single week. We are following what is going on on steel prices, aluminum prices, plastics, all that kind of stuff. We are reacting as soon as we see that we are moving to the next level. We have been increasing prices already starting in Q3 last year. We have been increasing prices in Q4. We have been increasing prices in Q1, in Q2. Now we see the raw material prices stabilized during the last couple of weeks. We don't know what's going to happen in three weeks from now. If we see prices coming up on the raw material side, we will have to increase prices again.
It's not the only raw material prices. There's also freight.
The freight cost is also going up to quite extreme levels. Even here, I do believe that the pandemic has created an extreme situation, and when you have these kind of situations, you also need to behave accordingly, which means that we need to be on our toes, and we need to be very fast on adapting our pricing to our cost. So far, we have done a decent job in doing so.
Okay. Lastly, the Mobile Power Solutions sales of SEK 1 billion. What sort of normalized growth rate are you seeing in this vertical?
We are seeing two digits, and we are seeing two digits for years.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Agnieszka Vilela, Nordea.
Thank you. Starting with kind of two questions that I have. Number one is about what do you feel about your sales in Q3 on kind of absolute level? Traditionally, when we look at Q3, it's usually slower than Q2, given holidays, et cetera. However, now I notice that you did build half a billion of inventories in Q2 versus Q1. The question really is, do you plan to kind of ship these inventories now in Q3, or do you feel you need to have this elevated inventories for quite some time? Also, when I do my calculations, I do expect that acquisitions will probably add something like SEK 200 million more in Q3 compared to Q2. Do you feel that you have kind of potential to actually exceed sales in Q3 versus Q2? That's my first question.
I have not been calculating in such a way. I'm just considering how I'm going to answer you here. We are looking positive into Q3, Agnieszka. Also versus what we achieved last year. Obviously, M&A is also going to help up here. What did you say?
On inventories, maybe if you can just elaborate. You raised your inventory level by SEK 500 m illion this quarter. Is this inventory to be shipped out in Q3, or do you feel like you need to keep kind of high inventory level?
It's both. It's Q3 and Q4. Keep in mind that we have quite a bit of inventory on the sea.
It takes about 60-80 days to reach increasing.
It's both Q3 and Q4. I would say it will be the second half of Q3 and Q4.
Yeah. That's the reality.
I said that in Q1, that we have never had so much inventory on the sea, and I can say exactly the same in Q2. The lead times is really a challenge.
Yeah. All right. Perfect.
That's why, Agnieszka, we are optimistic because we see the backlog, we see our inventories, and it will come out. The question is only when. Which week or which month?
Yeah. Okay. My second-
Concerning the acquisitions, Agnieszka.
Yeah.
Keep in mind that Valterra and Zamp Solar, they were coming in the last week in May. They were not in the full month of May. Enerdrive is one month included. Then, of course, Twin Eagles is there fully in the quarter. Büttner is going to be almost the full quarter, Q3. Then Front Runner is a little bit depending on we are waiting for some decisions to be made by authorities out of our control here. We expect it to close in Q3, but we are not 100% certain exactly when in Q3.
Yeah, that's my point, that you should see a stronger contribution from M&As in Q3 versus-
Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, then my second question, can you just help us to understand what are the kind of building blocks for you for improving margin in Americas? What can you do?
We have to do a lot. One side is obviously the mix. It is crystal clear. It is clear that we have activities to reduce our cost as well. I think one of the main contribution factors that we have in Americas is the mix. It is too much RV OEM. As you know, RV OEM, it is no secret, we have communicated several times, but that is where we have absolutely the lowest margins in comparison to anything else.
That's obviously both Valterra and Zamp is obviously addressing that and helping up. Even with them, compared to the other segments, still more weight towards OEM.
Now we are investing in building up our Service & Aftermarket business. We're investing in developing our outdoor business, where we have very nice margins. It's very much about exposure. Americas has historically been for Dometic very much about one segment, one vertical market segment. If you compare both with APAC and EMEA, where we are much more fragmented, which means that we are obviously reducing exposure.
Perfect. If I may-
As I said, we are working a lot on reducing the tariff effects. That's coming step by step. We are obviously reducing on top of that in reducing our cost base, our infrastructures.
Great. If I may, very short kind of housekeeping questions? Did you have any cost for the direct share issue in your financial cost this quarter?
No. That is netted down, so it's according to existing accounting principles.
All right. Also on the CapEx guidance for the full year, what can we expect?
You see the levels that we have been hovering around for quite some time, maybe with some lower levels last year. I think you should expect us to stay around these levels. We don't have any plans to take that up in any dramatic direction.
The last one on the amortization of PPA, if you could guide us there, what kind of run rate should we expect, say, per quarter in the coming quarters and years?
That is obviously going to be a little bit depending on the various acquisitions. They look slightly different. You can see yourself that it was SEK 12 million in the second quarter related to acquisitions. Obviously, that is not the full quarter for Valterra and for Zamp Solar. I think the acquisitions to come, are they going to be significantly different? No, they're going to hover in the same ballpark in terms of the amortization. I think you can use this information that we have provided with you, combined with when you know that-
Yeah
They have been coming into our accounts here to make your view.
Yes. Just looking at the purchase price allocation that you have in note 10 in the report, I can see that you have trademarks of SEK 67 million and then other intangibles of SEK 621 million for the four acquisitions. Maybe to ask a question a bit different, what's your accounting principle when it comes to amortizing this kind of PPAs? How many years do you usually amortize that?
It's between two to 15 years. Trademarks, it's depending on two to four years, typically. Customer relationships, 10-15 years, typically. Technology, that could really vary. Let's say five to 10 years, depending on what we are talking about here. Okay, Agnieszka..
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Johan Eliason, Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning. This is Johan. Thank you for taking my question. I was just wondering, with all these acquisitions you have now done, you've added dealers, could you sort of mention how big your dealer network is today versus where you were at the beginning of the year?
I cannot tell you just exact numbers, simply because we are just now in the process of integrating the companies. It's difficult to know exactly how many dealers each of these companies do have. If we started on somewhere around 36,000 dealers around the world, I would assume that we are today adding another 1,500 or so. We're looking at the companies and looking at information that we have received during the DDs. That would be my assumption, 1,500 more.
Good.
What is important there is that the vast majority of the dealers we had in the past, obviously, were more on the RV aftermarket side. Now we are adding stores. We are adding Distribution. We are opening a channel. If you look at Front Runner, that's an outdoor company, a pure outdoor company with a pure outdoor channel that we are very interested in. At the same time, obviously, as we are organically working with the REIs of the world, with Naturkompaniet, with Globetrotter, with all these outdoor companies around the world.
Also keeping in mind that some of the acquired companies actually have a rather high share of business to consumer.
Absolutely. Just to give you something that you might be interested in, if you look at this company, Front Runner, they are 50% B2C.
Good. One thing, obviously the acquisitions you highlighted came with quite good margins already in the quarter. A number of those have centered basically around, to my understanding at least, the same technology in the solar space.
Yeah.
Will you be able to take out synergies basically from common technologies going forward on all these smaller acquisitions you are making in the solar space?
That's our belief. Obviously it takes a while. These companies are not companies having big factories and big infrastructures. Our expectation is obviously that we don't need to have four different set of suppliers when we are supplying to the market similar kind of products. It will happen over time. We don't feel that we are done by any means. That's the good news. Being a new market and being a fast-growing market, what happens, obviously, that you are getting new startups. We see this area as a very interesting area moving forward for the years to come.
Excellent. What's the strategy with all the brands you're acquiring? Are you keeping them?
They will be dominating.
Dual branding?
You got it right. We are implementing double branding within the coming six months. I have already seen the logos, the new logos.
I haven't seen that, but I will look for them. Excellent. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our last question comes from Harric Winkler, Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thank you. The first question is a follow-up of the previous question. It's broadly, it's about your post-acquisition strategy for companies that you acquire. Do you have a certain process that is pretty much the same for all companies? Then there's, of course, always company-specific variations.
Yeah.
The reason that I'm asking is that at what point do you start to have sort of constraints, bottlenecks, either in terms of managerial resources or your systems, either financial reporting or IT systems.
If we take the first one, it is clear that we have a number of people. Stefan is coming from an acquisition company, I'm coming from an acquisition company. We have a number of people coming from that kind of environment. We have the experience and the means to do that. Secondly, we have a clear plan. It is difficult to be a one-brand company when you have a strong position. I don't see Dometic having one single brand, but I don't see Dometic having 20 brands either. I see Dometic having one main brand, which is Dometic. If we look at Front Runner, Front Runner will become Front Runner Dometic. If we look at Go Power!, it's going to be Go Power! Dometic. If we talk about Zamp Solar, it's going to be Zamp Solar Dometic.
What happens over time, in five years, 10 years, still to be seen. They are going to be Dometic-identified because, again, we are buying nice companies, very nice companies in new markets to build up a Dometic brand on the outdoor. The question is more, okay, what happens if you buy a different company being sizable and where in areas where you already have a very strong position? 1 + 1 will never be two. That's when I see, obviously, that we might need, over time, another brand to attack the better segment. We are not there at this point. If we are talking about systems, this is not about Dometic. Remember where I'm coming from, we don't have one single ERP.
Of course, whenever you are acquiring a company, you need to have a plan on how are you going to integrate these companies from a financial perspective, from an IT perspective, from a legal perspective. We need to reduce number of locations. We need to reduce number of legal entities. We need to reduce number of ERPs. Again, I think that I have a pretty good education in that area. I think that Stefan has a pretty good education as well, and we have a few more people that are used to do it. Keep in mind that we are not buying global companies. If we are buying a company in Germany, that acquisition will impact the German organization and the mere management. That has nothing to do with the U.S.
If we are acquiring a company in South Africa, that has very little to do with American business. That's the other one. It's not just me running the company or Stefan running the company. We have some people out there that need to be in charge of integrating these companies. That's very much about building up competence. That's why we need to be decentralized. That's why we have decentralized the company since I joined it, because I don't believe in being acquisitive and being centralized. It is impossible. You become the bottleneck, as you just said.
All right. Fair enough. A question related to decentralization, and maybe you gave an example of some component suppliers have started to reshore or build up production closer to end market. Your plan for manufacturing footprint, is that still 100% intact compared to what it was before the pandemic, or have you made some sort of pandemic-driven adjustments in where you want to be in two years' time when you are done with that?
I think that is quite similar, which is basically what you are talking about. Already pre-pandemic, the entire process started with the U.S. tariffs. With the U.S. tariffs and the way that China is developing during recent years, it is clear that political decisions are having an impact in the way we are doing business nowadays. We believe that we need to have assembly plants in Americas, and we need to have assembly plants in Europe, and we need to have assembly plants in Asia. The question is, how do you get also critical mass when you are purchasing? I think that you have the componentry side, and then you have the heavy manufacturing side. As you may remember, one part of our manufacturing strategy is that we want to add less value in our factories.
We want to become much lighter, which means that we are outsourcing more. As we are outsourcing more, we are going to outsource more close to the main markets. I see our factories in China having less impact in the future than they had historically. That process already started two years ago, or two and a half years ago, and will continue.
All right. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
This concludes our Q&A session. I will hand back to the speakers.
Well, thank you very much for your attention, all of you. We are not obviously unhappy with our results. We will never be totally pleased. We know that there's more out there. We know that obviously the shortages did have an impact in our numbers, and we will continue to work very hard to deliver on our targets and to deliver on our strategy. It is coming. That's what we see, and that's something that we are happy about, that we are really walking the talk and making our strategy a reality. Thank you very much for your attention. Those of you going on vacation, enjoy your vacation, and we'll see you soon. Thank you.
Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.
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