Earnings Call: Q1 2020

Apr 21, 2020

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of Beta Electronics Group AB Q1 twenty twenty Report. Today, I'm pleased to present Per Sandjalsson, the President and CEO and Jochen Larian, the Executive Vice President and CFO. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen only mode. And afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Per and Joergen, please begin. Okay. Thank you very much. First of all, hello, everybody. And I guess that now everybody is used to sitting in digital meetings like this. So and welcome to the presentation of the quarter one report 2020. And as normal, we will go through this. I will take first section, de working the second one, and then I will have some conclusions and concluding notes. And then we have the Q and A sessions after that. If you have had the time to just quickly go through the report, you can see that and what we do there is that we are focusing, of course, and start up to do all discuss the coronavirus situation. We're saying that it's, of course, overshadowing most of things. And all of you listening to this knows that and we don't have to begin to that in detail what happens around the world. But of course, for us as an organization, it affects us and I will come back to a specific slide on that thing. But I already now want to tell you that the employees and the people we have in the organization has really been very professional and they are really doing a good job in these difficult situations, which means that in this first quarter, even though we have had some hiccups because of the coronavirus situation, I must say that there has been a high activity level and then also the operations supply chain and so on have been able to work in a good way. We are stating that we have overall not seen significantly downturns because of this situation. But we're stating that if we try to do an estimation, we can see that between 7% to 9% downturn because of the COVID-nineteen situation. And that is mainly in Corenics and in the Bay Electronics entities. It's, of course, always difficult to do those estimations, but we try to be as how should I put it straightforward on that as possible, so we don't overestimate that factor. The big shining star to this quarter is, of course, VEZTOMO. If you have been and that you will listen to GeoAcume later on, they had done a very, very, very strong quarter and they have maintained a good growth. They have a good profitability. And also nice to see that the two acquisitions we made last year, Virtual Access as well as Neratec, both has contributed in a good way during the quarter. And also on top of that, in these difficult times, Viestamo had a they closed a deal with a train manufacturer, a train company in the Northern America. And we estimate the value of that contract to be around SEK 80,000,000. And that is, of course, also well done in these times. Bayer Electronics, they are one of the two entities that has been affected by this coronavirus situation. And I could tell talked about it in the following way. I mean, we that are doing business in the Asia Pacific regions, normally, there is what we call a Chinese New Year coming up. And this year, it came up around between January and February. And normally, you have one to two weeks around those celebrations they have in that region where it slows down or even closes down. This year it was because of this situation, the coronavirus situation, it was longer. And also we had especially, I would say, February January, but especially February, there were some issues on the supply chain, meaning that some difficulties to get some of the components into it. But it never ended up in a situation where we need to close down any line and things like that. So that is a little bit what has happened. And then of course, on the customer side, especially in the Asia Pacific side, but also when you have projects that you want to close, if I'll put it that way or start up, then there are some hesitations. So it's a combination of supply chain and a little bit that some projects slows down. So that's why there is a little bit lower sales in the quarter in both Bayoelectronics as well as the Koelectronics side. But coming back to Bayer Electronics, know Joachim will comment on that, but the good thing in the quarter one is actually that the order intake was in a good situation and increased up 187,000,000 no, 89,000,000, I think it was, And that is a good sign for the new products X2 series that we will we are coming into now. Coremics had the quite is the unit that had the toughest quarter in relation to the size and everything. And they lost, I would say, 20%, 25% of the business or something like that. We took a decision very early to take a cost program and we prepared for that more or less directly. And both Bioelectronics and Coremics have done that quickly and efficient. And during we took the cost now in quarter one, and we can see we will see cost effects from April going forward. And we can see we say that the cost we have taken is SEK 50,000,000 and the estimated yearly savings will be SEK 40,000,000 to 45,000,000 starting up now in April and going forward. The comments we are saying and our comments is that the overall underlying performance of group, we will say, is decent level driven by best to move. And also, we want to state and take up that the cash flow we had those of you that are following us knows that during 2017, 2018, we had beginning of 2019 as well, we had some sort of, I mean, issues on the cash flow side. But Q4 last year and Q1 this year, we are the cash flow is okay. We're ending up this section by saying that we are preparing ourselves for tougher times ahead. And all of you listening to this, I probably in some cases better than me to predict what will happen going forward. But we how should I put it, this statement, plan for the worst and hope for the best, that I think goes for us. And we have a lot of plans and scenarios going forward for what we should do if things get worse. And so we could really push the bottom if we want to do things here. And that is what we and I will comment a little bit more how we look at the future in a fifteen minute time here. Then if we go into specifically a little bit this corona situation, And I don't need to state, but of course, people's health and safety first. And we really have done all the things we can in order to avoid, yes, how should I put it, physical contact and physical meetings and things like that, but also of the separate workplaces and all these things. And of course, as a lot of other companies, wherever possible, we work from home, remotely from home. And I could say that we as all other companies are getting quite good in digital meetings, even myself, if I put it that way, I'm not the youngest one in these cases. But we can also see that it's important that we also meet at the offices. So we are not completely shutting down the major offices. So we try to have a sort of where people are in 30% to 50% of the people are in the offices and then we roll it around. So as my own situation, I'm in the office two to three days a week and then I'm working from home the other days. And then most of the people are doing the same. Then of course, we have a special group headed by Joakim, where we are looking and exploring all the different, we say, country specific support packages. And they are I mean, there are some packages in Norway, some other things in UK, third one in U. S. And so on and so on. And of course, here in Sweden, we have our packages. And we are monitoring all these packages so we know what we can do and we can't do and once again to prepare ourselves for if it gets worse. We have done some things in the different countries, but we haven't been taking the final measurement or final thing taking down and I'm trying to say the English words for quartz permutating, but we haven't done that yet. But we have prepared ourselves for it. We have also in difficult times, it's always important to protect the cash and also to make sure that we have a good situation on that side. And one then the Board, they would suggest on the annual meeting to take away the dividend in order to save that money in the company. And we can also say that we have a transparent and extremely good dialogue with our major bank. And know that if we need, we will be able to extend credit lines and things like that. But that's not the situation today because as you can see in our report, are coming out of the quarter in a good situation here. We are saying also that we will have to be a group less debt to its cost level. And what we mean here is that when market condition changes, and I'm saying when because I think there will be some changes going forward. And when things are happening, then we are we'll be very quick adjust further on if we need to. All of us, of course, hope that that's not happening, that we don't need to do that, but we prepare ourselves very carefully on this situation. And some of you know also that we have in the management team here several of the people that have been around in other crisis. So we make sure you can be sure that we will do the actions we need to do when we need to do it and if we need to do it. Last point here, once the crisis is over, because it's not if the crisis will go with, once the crisis is over, then we are really doing everything we can to make sure that the organization, workforce, employees that this will be intact. So we could that we will remain attractive to both the customers and the employees. Because also if you have been around before, know that when it moves when it goes the other way, we need to be prepared there as well. By that, I also have a couple of comments on the orders. And you can see here on this slide that and I know that Dheeraj can comment a little bit more on to it. But you can see that there are no dramatic changes in the order intake or in the sales, if you see in the quarter one, both on the order intake as well on the sales side. But a little bit is with the organic growth that was more or less not there if you look at the group and that the growth on the sales side is mainly and a little bit of order take is mainly driven by the acquisitions. But you can I wanted to note that also Vestumur is growing also excluding the new entities by a good healthy 8%? And that I think is very well done. By that, I hand over to Joakim. All right. Hello, everyone. I will take us through more of the financial aspects of the report or the first quarter. We start with the group. And as Per has described, we stayed a stable underlying process, but COVID-nineteen having an impact in the quarter. Order intake SEK $4.00 6,000,000 sales SEK $3.95 We have an EBIT excluding the restructuring program at €23,000,000 or 6% after the restructuring program, 8,000,000 or 2.1%. You can see in the graph below the P and L, the EBIT development. And here, we show in Q1, excluding the restructuring cost because that is the underlying business generation of the quarter as such. It's not in line with Q1 twenty nineteen, but actually somewhat higher than we had if we take a sequential look compared to Q4 twenty nineteen. When it comes to currency, we have a positive impact. The fact that we have a weak Swedish krona and do a lot of business in euros and in dollars. We have a positive effect of about EUR 2,000,000 in the quarter, transactional variances mainly. Looking at the bottom line, the net income, of course, impacted by the EUR 15,000,000 in restructuring costs. We end up at plus SEK 5,000,000 compared to the SEK 20,000,000 last year or an EPS of 0.19. As Pat pointed out before, we want to state that we have a positive cash flow, not huge numbers, but still positive SEK3.5 million, mainly driven by good progress in Beyer Electronics, which we are happy to note. Now we take us through the three different entities and we start with Vesdemir. And the heading here, good performance with record profitability. It's really good to see that VestaMo is doing really, really good in this first quarter of twenty twenty. We had an order intake of $2.00 $2,000,000 sales of $214,000,000 and an EBIT of 33,000,000 And looking at the graph of the sales, it's pointing upwards, of course, including then the acquisition, the acquired entities. And with those, we have a 25% growth. In terms of sorry, that was orders. But in terms of sales, there is a 35% growth. But organically as Pat pointed out before, it is 8% growth, which is strong to see in a quarter like this. Karl has already mentioned the agreement signed with the North American train operator. That is a good one to note. When it comes to Neotec and Virtual Access, the two companies that we acquired last year, they are contributing. They are adding basically in line with the rest of Estimil, which is in line what we stated before. And the last point, we have been talking about the new segments Power Distribution and Rail trackside that's ongoing right now and there will be new products coming up in the coming quarters. So let's move to the Electronics. Here we state a mixed picture. Let's look at the numbers. Order intake, 188,000,000 sales, 164,000,000 and EBIT excluding the restructuring of $4,800,000 but including the restructuring cost, we come to a loss in their electronics. And clearly so you see in the graph that we have a drop of the sales in the quarter. And we have an impact of the corona situation. But also what we have been seeing during 2019 with the phasing out of the four product families and those challenges that we saw during 2019 that has been somewhat overall in the first quarter. The good thing is that the orders increased and we see a good growth in the X2 series. And that's basically what we plan for and that's also what we can note in the first quarter, which was something to make a note of I think. The restructuring is then impacting Bayer Electronics as stated before. A good thing that we want to note also is that I think most of you remember that we took or we signed an agreement with the company Otis in The U. S. And we have started to do deliveries, pilot deliveries in the quarter where the regular shipments are scheduled then by the end of Q2. And then we go to Carenix. Yes, it was a tough quarter for Carenix being placed in Taiwan with quite a big extensive part of the business in China. Of course, they had a tough quarter, no doubt about that. Orders at €20,000,000 sales at €21,000,000 with quite an extensive loss where the restructuring program also made it even worse. And looking at the sales graph below, you see that this is a hard one for the entity Kerenics. The restructuring program meant that we had to make adjustments in the organization here in Kerenics. Also that we coordinate some activities with Bayer Electronics mainly on the supply chain side And that's also part of this restructuring program. And the low sales is basically the reason why we have the loss in the quarter. The last point here though, we want to raise that I think many of us have seen in the news that things are coming back in China and that is something that we see also. There's quite a lot of customer activity both in China and Taiwan and region And we saw that in the Kerenics organization at the end of the quarter. This concludes the financial side. And back to you, Pal. Thank you very much. Of all, I just want to restate that this quarter, when we come to the performance, we are very, very happy with VESPOM and all the people in VESTOMAO should be proud of what they have done during this quarter. I also want to, of course, that the other Yunis people should be proud, but they have a little bit of challenge before they could prove and show these type of figures. But Vesterme we also have a situation in Vesterme where I think that the segments we are segments that we are supplying to are not directly affected in situation where we have this coronavirus situation. So we'll see. But of course, if this environment will continue then of course the customer will be affected as well. But at the moment they are doing well. The good thing in Bay Electronics is, as we have stated now a couple of times, is the order intake. For us, the proof for the X2 series has been to see now that during first half of twenty twenty that we can see orders coming in on X2. And we see that, that is doing that is challenging. Core and X-ray has said as well, but I must say that they are a smaller entity, but believe us when we say they're doing a good job. And step by step, they will come up from this situation. And we can see now that there are more and more activity in Asia Pacific side. Now I'm also sure that the cooperation between Bayer Electronics and Koinik sales side in Europe will have a positive effect, especially the second half of twenty twenty. We have already discussed the cash flow. It's important for us to follow, and we will continue to follow that every week, every month because in a quiet situation, that's the most important thing in the end. And we will still have a huge uncertainty going forward. And as we have also stated in the outcome for 2020 that we have to change the last couple of months is, of course, we don't really know what will happen going forward with economies in the world. And once again, we prepare for a tough situation, but we hope for that it will be better. But once again, I mean, at the moment, we are getting orders, we are selling, we are supplying and the customers are paying. So we haven't seen dramatic downturn yet. But of course, it's a little bit slower and you can see in Bayer and Corenics that as we said, 7% to 9% downturn in the quarter, and that's really what we see at the moment. For us, we can say that at the next couple of months, I would say that what happens in Europe is the most important thing for us. We have close to 70%, 75% of our sales in Europe in the group. And we'll see now if the big countries like Germany, UK, Spain, Italy and these ones, if they are France, by the way, if they're to open up and if they are some positive trends going forward, then perhaps we can come out of this in not very bad situation. But if they start to not open up and if they have the rebounds going down again, then we will have problems going forwards. But I'm at the moment, I'm a little bit optimistic because we can see that most of the our customers and the segments we are supplying, they have not been closing down more or less yes, with a couple of exceptions, they are still running and we can see that they will continue to run. So I'm a little bit optimistic at the moment for that. But as I've said before, we do everything we can and make sure that we are when we come out of this, we will be in a good shape. And that means that we should have supply chains in order, we should have the right people in place. And so we really could be there when the market is starting to go up again. And by that, I think we end discussion the presentation. And as I've already said, this is the outlook and yes, it doesn't seem that much say that much. It's just that we don't really know what will happen because of the corona situation. But you can see in quarter one that so far it has not been that bad. We are, I mean, still doing we are working every day. And as I said, we haven't seen a quite big downturn yet. By that, I open up for questions. And our first question comes from the line of Haddon Hanna of Redeye. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, guys. Thank you for the presentation and hope you are all doing well during these times. Just quickly around the pandemic. And if you could say anything about the activity level during April compared to the first quarter and maybe first and foremost compared to the March? Hi, Havana. Thank you for listening. I'm sorry to say I can't comment. I don't want to comment anything more than I have already done. That is I mean, I have said that I mean, are still getting orders, we are still selling, we are still supplying and so on. And more than that, I can't comment on that point. Okay. Got it. And have you noticed any customers placing larger orders than usual, maybe to secure products if the situation should worsen even more in the coming months? That's a good question as well, of course. But we haven't seen that much. There were some tendencies in February that there were some of the some that wanted to safeguard a little bit, but not in a big extent. You can on the other way around, we haven't seen, you can call it, a bigger contract that we normally get, for instance, investment. So it evens out a little bit. So I would say that overall, a quite a normal situation when it comes to that side. I just want to state, Alan, that we have also written in the report. We have not seen any cancellations of existing orders. Yes. Thank you. Maybe a question around R and D and your view and strategy around that. Are you making any changes there? Or do you continue as planned before this whole situation appears, so to speak? First of all, no, we haven't done any big changes on the R and D. But when we have the different plans, if we need to cut down anything going forward, then of course that will be one of the area we will perhaps delay some of the projects a quarter or two. So we have prepared to do that. But so far we haven't been taking down those activities a lot. There is of course one thing we mention is that one thing you do in these situations is you cut down on consultants, for instance. On the development side, we had some consultants that we have been canceled that have been canceled during the because of to prepare ourselves for tougher times. But I would say generally speaking, we haven't taken down the R and D more or less at all, if I put it that way. There are also some changes where you try to focus on the short term customer oriented things. But I will not say generally speaking, no big changes. But once again, if there will be a downturn on the order intake and so on, we have prepared ourselves to I mean, to work from I mean, work two days and be home for three days, then of course, that will affect how much we can do if that will happen. But we are not there yet, if I put it that way. Okay. Thank you. Just a quick update on a zero plus. How is that performing? And this is we said in an internal sort of podcast where I mean, now when we have these times when nobody could travel and I mean, the digitalization, how should I put it, increases in a lot of ways. And we are all selling, let's say, O plus through different digital digital ways. But I believe there are no significant in the figures in Q1. My personal view on that one, I will try to really go through that second half of twenty twenty. That's when I start to evaluate if that is a good product or not. Okay. And maybe a last one just around the best new order with the North American Rail Company. Can you talk a little bit more about the order? Is it a new customer? What potential are you seeing going forward? And just overall, view of the North American rail market as a growth driver and your plans and ambitions there? Short version there is that, first of all, it's there is no misunderstanding. It's not an order, it's a contract. And we have the supply to this customer before. And the good thing with this is that with this contract is that they are, I mean, pointed at us for the next couple of years. And that will start up, I mean, of this year going forward for a couple of years. So that is, of course, very good. We see that are happening things in the North America. So there are also other customers up there. So we see more in the pipeline, more opportunities going forward. But for us of course, those of you that have been following us for a lot of years, those that we had earlier is Toshiba order for the Washington side that kept the American organization going. But now we have got another big one and that's good also to get other orders in The U. S. That's I guess it's as much as I can say. But I'm really looking forward to see Vestomar's development in The U. S. In the next couple of years because they have a good organization over there. Okay. Thank you very much guys and stay safe and take care. Same to you. You too. Bye bye. And there are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead speakers. Okay. Thank you very much. Then I just want to thank all of you for listening. And then Havana said, I also take care at this time and we will continue and take care but also do our best to come out with a good result also going forward. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. This now concludes our call. Thank you for attending. Participants, you may disconnect your lines.