Morning, everybody, and thank you for everybody who's managed to make it through the security this morning. I'm sure some more will be joining us. Delighted to introduce Magnus Groth, the President and CEO of Essity, who will make a short presentation, and then we'll move on to some questions after that. Magnus, thank you very much.
Thanks for the introduction, and good morning. I think we're all very safe in here, it seems, the ones who made it inside. I'll give a quite brief introduction, and then we have some interesting questions I know, then some things to discuss, and I look forward to answering your questions as well, of course. So the Essity Group, for everybody and every body, our new tagline, we touch over 1 billion people every day with our products in hygiene and health, and we are active in 150 countries around the world. Some quick numbers for those who are maybe not that close to Essity. Essity was created seven years ago through a spin-off from the hygiene and forest company, SCA.
So we're a quite new company from that perspective, even if, of course, our brands and our business has been around for much longer. So close to SEK 150 billion of sales, 36,000 employees. Since our products in hygiene and health are typically bulky, we have 72 factories. We typically have quite local or regional, production and supply of our products. We're in hygiene and health, but we're also a leader everywhere, we choose to play more or less, by having a number one or number two position. It's key, and this is based on actively developing very, very strong brands in our different categories.
We're not present everywhere, but where we're present, we definitely need to be number one or number two, and this goes whether in business to business or in business to consumer. We are present in three very attractive business areas: Health and Medical, 20% of sales. This is where we are the global number one in incontinence care in the healthcare sector, so the reimbursed part of which is typically in mature markets of the global incontinence care market. Overall, in incontinence, we have... We're the global number one with approximately 20% market share. So, and of course, this is a rapidly growing category with aging populations, where people want to remain active, live an active life, suffering from chronic condition and the consequences of aging.
In this category or in this business area, we're also present with three therapeutic areas in Medtech. This is Advanced Wound Care, it's the Compression Products, and it is orthopedic soft goods. Also here, we are typically in number one and number two positions where we choose to play, and typically, it's the same persons who are suffering from different chronic conditions. Could be cancer survival, it could be obesity, could be diabetes, aging, that use both, for instance, chronic wound products and incontinence care products, and compression garments, for that matter. The biggest business area, 55% of sales, and the business area that's often maybe connected to Essity, Consumer Goods. Many might believe that we're a Consumer Goods company entirely, but it's actually just over half of our sales, 55%.
This is where we are in leading positions in consumer tissue, in baby care, so baby care products, incontinence care products in the retail space, and feminine care products. Again, where we choose to play, we are typically number one or number two, mostly number one. Our third business area, which is having a fantastic development, Professional Hygiene with the Tork brand, where, again, we are the global number one when it comes to high Professional Hygiene solutions, away from home. Like here, for instance, I noticed in the washrooms, there were Tork products, even though it wasn't our dispensers in this case. This is 25% of sales. We are the clear global number one, 20% market share, and growing very nicely here.
And also, this is the last part of our business that's recovering after COVID, but now doing really, really well with increased traveling around the world, increased activity in hotels, restaurants, and catering, and so on. And in all these three areas, we are set to grow, and this is for various reasons, to some extent. Number one, we have great margins now, so growth is very value-creating for shareholders. Secondly, in Health and Medical, since we have a high fixed cost in this business area, in a big sales force, feet on the street, actually meeting with hospitals, elderly care homes, participating in tender processes, and so on, we have huge scale benefits from growing. In consumer goods, we can grow because we now have the margins that again justify growing.
Of course, some of these categories, especially incontinence care, healthcare, has a fantastic underlying growth, 5%–7%, so we can really grow with that. Feminine care, baby care growing rather flat, 0%-1%, and consumer tissue, depending if it's a mature or emerging market, a few percentage points. And then Professional Hygiene, growing 2%-3% every year, but we are the clear number one and also gaining market share here, so exceeding market growth. I want to take a step back because Essity is at kind of inflection point, actually. I already mentioned that we are a young company, only 7 years old, and we were created through numerous dozens of acquisitions over the last 30, 40 years... as the forest company, SCA acquired companies all over the world in hygiene and health.
And then at the time of the split, the hygiene part was 87% of sales. And what we've done since the split is really to create one common way of working, one go-to-market, one supply chain, achieving the synergies, putting in place Global Business Services, global distribution, transportation hub in Barcelona, for instance, sorting out the supply chain. When you grow through acquisitions, you end up with having maybe 5 factories in one country where you need 2, and maybe no factory in another country where you need 1 or 2. So we closed about a dozen of factories over these years, a lot of restructuring. And we also achieved big, big efficiencies through all of these activities.
And meanwhile, underneath, we have been working, continued to, to work with innovation and brands, and also through the pandemic, the following raw material crunch, the energy crunch, the bottlenecks that we saw in the supply chains, we continued to invest, invest, invest behind our brands to make sure that we retain these leading positions. So it's... From that perspective, it's been a, a journey where we've been very focused on creating the big machine that we feel that we now have in place after a decade of hard work. Financially, this is the, the development. So in magenta there to the left, you see the sales growth, annual SEK 7 billion sales growth, and, uh, how the operating result has developed. And as you can see here, it's a very consistent, trajectory with a dent during the pandemic.
In sales, the dent was in 2020 and 2021, and in operating profit, the dent then came one year later because that's when we had the raw materials, the energy, and the bottlenecks. But as we proved last year, we're back on track, and I know that this is something we'll discuss also, but I'm completely convinced that this is the trajectory if you follow that path, excluding the dent that we are on, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be. And actually, compared to looking back 3 or 4 years, we are really in good shape. So this is my favorite slide. That's why I'm lingering a bit on this one. Some, you know, might ask, so is this now peak profits or peak sales?
My response is, hey, why, why would it be? I mean, look at the trend there. This has been going on now for 10 years, and we recovered very quickly after all the issues that we are aware of. Also in Q1 last year, high profits and strong cash flow. This picture actually is our Knix washable, absorbent underwear company that we acquired a couple of years ago, which is the market leader in the U.S. and Canada in this very new, exciting sub-segment of feminine care and incontinence care products, where with a very sustainable alternative of using than washable, absorbent underwear instead of disposable, single-use plastic pads.
In Q1, we had 14% EBITDA margin, fantastic development in Health and Medical, close to 19% adjusted EBITDA margin, strong development in Consumer Goods, 13%, and over 15% in Professional Hygiene. So we were doing well, more or less across the entire business. And why was this? We improved margin significantly in Professional Hygiene through some restructuring that we did last year, which we're now comparing to, which shows a reported negative growth. However, underlying, we had good positive volume growth in all our categories. Excellent pricing discipline, which is based on our strong brands, our strong market positions, our pricing power, excellent cash flow, and during the quarter, very important.
Also, why we're at an inflection point, we divested Vinda, our listed Hong Kong company, with a strong presence in China, 17% of our sales. And we divested Vinda as the outcome of a strategic review, where we concluded that we have to reduce our share of sales in consumer tissue, which is our lowest margin, highest, most capital-intensive business, and especially in China, where this was being commoditized, and where there's a big need for continuous investments in new plants and machinery and so on. So we finalized that divestment, reduced our share of sales in consumer tissue significantly. And it was also a fantastic deal. So you can see here, sales proceeds of SEK 19 billion and the net capital gain, SEK 9 billion. Of course, this puts our balance sheets in a completely different position now.
We have a very, very strong balance sheet, and together with strong cash flows, a lot of optionality for the future. The annual return on investment from these 10 years with Vinda has been 14%, per year. So to summarize, Essity is in better shape than ever. This is what I want to leave you with for the Q&A. We worked extensively with our supply chain. We're more efficient than we've ever been. We now have the plants we want to have that are modern, that are well-equipped, that are efficient. We see efficiencies going up everywhere. We have lower volatility in our earnings, which were actually already low, and we made some analysis of our earnings volatility just before coming here.
If you look at the volatility quarter over quarter over the last five years, from a standard deviation point of view, we actually have lower earnings volatility than our two, three biggest international peers. And the same goes if you look back at the last ten years. So this is partly a myth, I think, because we have this kind of pulp exposure, and then we had the big dent in the curve during the pandemic. But when you run the numbers, our earnings volatility actually doesn't look bad, but we're still working very actively to improve this, and maybe the best way of doing this is to be more agile in pricing.
And what we believe, and we're convinced, because we did it during the pandemic, is that we can adjust the underlying raw material costs within 1 or 2 quarters through pricing towards our customers. Before the pandemic, this was typically took 3-5 quarters. So we're much faster here, for many different reasons. The whole industry has changed in that direction, especially than in the retail sector. So also, the retailers are willing to kind of discuss and adjust prices quarterly instead of annually. So lower volatility, pricing power, I touched on, something we have proven over the last couple of years. We have a more profitable, we have a more attractive portfolio without Vinda, and a very, very strong financial precision. After the first quarter, net debt to EBITDA was 1.36. We had excellent cash flow.
We expect to continue to have excellent cash flow, so this will continue to come down. We will provide new financial targets, including then, how we look at our capital structure going forward, financial policies, during the second quarter, so kind of within the next month or so. We promise to come back on that because now we have a lot of flexibility, based on our balance sheet strength and our cash flow to look at, yeah, both, acquisitions, investments in the business, of course, but also other ways of using cash in an efficient way. So a very good place to be for Essity, and this is my pitch to you, why you should invest in Essity. Attractive and growing markets.
I should say that, of course, our big bet over 10 years has been on aging, and it's becoming more and more clear. I mean, we have been pulling out. We were very, very bigger in baby than in incontinence care 10, 15 years ago. We've been pulling away from baby, investing in incontinence, to have a clear number one position in healthcare and in retail, globally. And of course, 10 years ago, it was a joke. People said in Japan, "Ha, ha, there are more adult diapers than baby diapers." Now, this is everywhere. It's not only in Japan. It's the new normal, and of course, that's only going to change. Also, our stepping into the medical business also very much supported a very good growth from aging.
Of course, attractive also from the perspective—these are products that people use every day. So whether times are good or bad, people use our products. Leading brands in innovation, 90% of our market positions, market category combinations, which we're either number one or number two. I haven't touched on that, but we have a very, very strong sustainability agenda, and we walk the talk, so we really invest in this. We are typically recognized and awarded by all the major NGOs and others for our sustainability work. Yes, we believe that this is an important competitive factor also going forward, and a very strong financial position, as I already touched on. So thanks for listening. Let's have some time for questions.
Great. Thank you very much indeed, Magnus, and I'm going to ask some questions, but if anybody does have some questions they'd like to ask as well, then please do please do raise your hand, and I'll ask it. Maybe go straight to the heart of the issue, and you alluded to it in the presentation, that you you've done a lot of work and reduced the volatility of the earnings, as you stated, but the valuation multiples for Essity are relatively low versus their post-listing historic range. And one of the points that people make to us quite often is we feel Essity is over-earning, particularly in areas where there's a high commodity, you know, a high costs component.
So to what degree can you give that confidence to people that you're not over-earning in those areas, and that it is sustainable?
I think it sounds like a good thing to be over-earning, but, anyway, no, I, the confidence is based on that 10-year trajectory. So we heard this many times: You're over-earning, this is it. From now on, you know, things will only get worse, and that hasn't happened. We've proven again and again, we can raise prices. We have super strong brands. We have super strong market positions. Something, we haven't touched upon the, before I forget it, we have really, really good savings. We had savings in cost of goods sold net in the first quarter of over SEK 400 million, and our guidance this year has been to have savings of between SEK 0.5 billion-SEK 1 billion, and now we're guiding to be at the top of that range.
Also coming from the very good development we have in our entire supply chain, not only in the production, but also end-to-end, also in logistics and everywhere, actually. So very, very strong savings, which makes us more competitive, basically. Pricing power, I mentioned, we expect to be able to adjust pricing specifically in the consumer goods sector, because we're now talking about the retailers in 1–2 quarters rather than 3–5 quarters. And also, again, remember, 20% of our business is in Health and Medical, where we had close to 19% margins, and we don't have a big raw material or energy exposure. Twenty-five percent of our business is in professional hygiene, which is a tissue business, but it's mostly based on recycled fibers, and that's not as volatile as the pulp.
Actually, we have much stronger pricing power in professional hygiene because we typically work with distributors or big end users, like airports or universities, and so on. And for them, it's not a big deal when we adjust prices. We provide high quality services, high quality products. It's easy to work with us because we're a big provider of professional hygiene, so that gives us pricing power. You passed security? Okay, welcome. And then we come to consumer goods, 55% of sales, where, of course, the personal care categories, baby care, feminine care, incontinence care, retail, they're not impacted by raw materials or energy either at this point in time. That's oil-based materials. And then approximately one third of our business is consumer tissue.
But what we have left now of consumer tissue is the best part, where we have strong brands, we have good market positions, we have pricing power. And of course, currently, pulp prices are going up. These cycles we see all the time, and we'll manage that over the next couple of quarters. So we're not overearning.
So you, you obviously run through the potential mix benefits for you. You've run through the cost savings at the COGS level, as well as-
Mm-hmm
... and further down through the organization. To what extent, therefore, is there still the opportunity for further gross margin-
Yes
... organic gross margin improvement? And where would you sort of benchmark yourself versus history, if you like?
Yeah, we are at better gross margins levels than we ever been. And of course, that also gives us more flexibility in terms, you know, how we want to work with A&P and so on. So our gross margin was 33% in the first quarter, which is kind of an all-time high due to the mix changes and so on, we just discussed. And what was your question again?
Yeah, well, just to the extent to which you can organically-
Organically
push the gross margins.
Yeah, and I mentioned a few times that we're at an inflection point, and that means that over the last years, there have been a lot of restructuring, and this has now and then kind of come as a surprise, both internally and externally, as we've been running different programs like Tissue Roadmap, the Cure or Kill exercise we did a few years ago. And now last year, when we said, Let's, is there anything left that we need to clean up now in Essity? And we said, Yes, actually, in Professional Hygiene, one of our best performing businesses, we take out almost 10% of capacity, which is not really contributing to the business in the long term. It was just unbranded, low-value napkin business on old assets, so we closed it.
This is now done, and that means that our new focus is in combination with the margins that we have to grow volumes. And with growing volumes, we can clearly see that there's an opportunities to see great operating leverage. So that's the new way of continuing to improve margins over time. With 14% EBITDA margin, we are putting more emphasis on growth than for two reasons. One is that it's more value creating when you have good margins than when we had 10% margins, of course. But secondly, because we can see that as we utilize our remaining now very efficient supply chain, but also our go-to-market, all the other strategies we put in place, we can get operating leverage.
That's what we're going for, and we never worked with operating leverage as a way to improve margins before. We can clearly see it also in the first quarter this year.
So when you look out over the next 3 years, 3-5 years, where are the biggest volume opportunities and value drivers for you? Would those businesses already be at Group-level Return on Capital Employed for you, or?
Yes. Our group level return on capital employed was now 17% for the second consecutive quarter, which has been our long-term target or target until next year, actually. But that target was helped by 1% by the divestment of Vinda, because Vinda was a drag on our ROCE target. So from that step perspective, we have a step up, you know, another 1%, which will mostly come from operating margin improvement, rather, because, I mean, that's quicker than capital efficiency, even though we're working with that continuously, as well. But we believe, as we've rerun all our numbers after the divestment of Vinda, that our category market combinations are growing between 2% and 3%, 2.5%, maybe something like that.
And of course, we believe that we can grow slightly faster than the markets and take some market share. That's our ambition. Which means that growing above 3% organically is something we see as achievable, which is quite attractive. And how does that break down? Typically, when we look back, we have been growing around 3%, even though it was very lumpy during, again, the pandemic. Two percent has come from volume, 1% from mix. We had a very, very consistent mix component over many, many years, actually. The last years, we lost volume. We were so focused on pricing, but now we see that underlying 2% volume growth should be achievable.
Okay. You mentioned some of your financial targets, which are in place at the moment, and you've stated that you're going to be updating those relatively-
Yeah
... soon. Feel free to update away now.
Watch this space.
When you update them, is the financial framework as it stands and those data, is it like to be an update on those existing measures, or do other measures become a little bit more relevant now that you've evolved and developed the business to the portfolio that it is now?
I already spoke a bit about the organic growth, which I think any company has an organic growth target, so that shouldn't be a surprise if we came with an organic growth target. And then if we're gonna work with a ROCE target or something similar, we've done some benchmarking. We're checking what other companies are doing, of course, in our industry and other industries, and we'll get back to that. But either way, I mean, we will continue to present, like we're doing today, EBITDA margins, ROCE target, ROCE development, and so on. So for investors, it will be... And I mean, the only difference between the two is the capital turnover, of course, which we also show.
So, this will be, I think, very transparent going forward, all, also whichever we kind of work with going forward.
Okay.
And then, of course, we also have the financial policies regarding our dividends and regarding our capital structure that we have today to remain solid investment grade at all times, which is more of a restriction really than a target.
Okay. And you mentioned there and in the presentation, the strength of the balance sheet.
Yep.
What can you say, perhaps at the moment, in terms of the M&A valuations, perhaps of targets you've looked at? You've mentioned that before, vis-à-vis your own valuation-
Yeah
... and whether perhaps buybacks...
Yeah, good.
See.
I didn't, I forgot to mention that, of course, part of our strategy is to do acquisitions, and we have been quite acquisitive over the last number of years. It's provided 1% or 2% of growth, even though the last two years we haven't done any acquisitions. We did a big review of them, actually, with the board, some time ago, and it turned out that all of them are actually on business plan and value creating, so very happy. Sometimes I get questions, you know, "Are you doing bad acquisitions?" But we did that review, and they are, they're really, really good.
What we learned, of course, it's no surprise that bolt-on acquisitions, small, medium to existing categories and existing business, that's where you can have quick synergies and, you know, accelerate growth, do some costs, have some cost efficiencies, like Hydrofera, the Advanced Wound Care company in the U.S., or Abigo, the Advanced Wound Care company in the Nordic markets, and so on, that we acquired. That's what we're looking at. So we're looking at acquiring in Health and Medical, maybe something in Professional Hygiene, not in tissue, in adjacent categories, of course, in Feminine Care or Incontinence Care, if we find something that's very attractive for us, but not that many targets out there. And of course, typically, these targets have high multiples, and we currently have a, or as you mentioned, are trading on a low multiple.
So, that's something we have to take into account. I really, I mean, we realize this, so when we look at how to allocate capital, this is something we need to think about.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe if it's possible now, could we perhaps run through parts of the business, and if you can give an update on perhaps some of the recent trading trends that you're seeing-
Mm-hmm
... either through the category lens or perhaps through the geographic lens,
Sure, sure
... would be very helpful.
If we start with Health and Medical, where our customers are then healthcare professionals, could be NHS in the UK, could be an elderly care home, could be a hospital, anything in between. We do thousands of tenders every year, and typically, these contracts have a three-year duration, so it's a more sticky business than the other parts. This is the 20% within Health and Medical, the Inco healthcare and the Medtech. What's been very positive for us is how quickly we were able to raise prices. We were afraid, and this is also what we said, it's gonna take three years, when raw materials come up because of the contract structures. But it turned out it was possible to achieve a bigger flexibility.
Even with the NHS, we negotiated, even though there was two years left in the contract, we said, "We're just not gonna deliver on these terms. You have to improve the reimbursement one way or the other, because otherwise, you know, we can't make this work." And we were able to do that. So that's kind of moving along quite nicely. And of course, this business area had a setback when a large portion of the users actually, you know, died away during the pandemic, and that's filling up again, and people didn't take care of their swollen legs and so on because of, you know, staying at home instead, and not using compression garments and so on. So that's developing well from a market perspective.
Professional hygiene is not back to where it was before the pandemic, and that's because people are working from home. So in hotels, restaurants, it's actually quite buoyant. In industrial sector, it's quite buoyant, but in commercial and public buildings, I don't think it will come back, but the new base where we're at is quite—there's quite good growth, but from a lower level than before the pandemic. And then consumer goods, of course, where we work with the big retailers as our counterpart. Consumers are this kind of a subdued view of the world. So we are seeing down trading, we are seeing a move to private label, but that hasn't changed now for 12, 18 months. It's been the same trend.
In Latin America, clearly in parts of Europe, in the UK primarily, but to some extent in Germany also, people are switching to private label, and especially this is limited to consumer tissue, because in more emotional categories like feminine care, incontinence care, baby care, consumers still prefer the trust that a brand brings, you know, that they can feel safe and secure and relaxed. So the downtrading is really in consumer tissue, and we are mitigating that as much as we can by stretching our Good, Better, Best tiering to keep the consumers in the brand. But of course, we also have a private label offering in Europe, so it's that combination we're playing now.
Our experience from previous years is that typically, when things improve the general economy, then consumers come back to the brands, so that this is temporary. So yeah, that's the situation, but there's nothing new right now, and there's nothing—no drama with any retailers. I get that question sometimes, where you could say there's always the same drama. It's, there's no change. I mean, we but we negotiate much more frequently now, which is, I think, a good thing both for them and for us. And we can also change prices more frequently. This has been quite cumbersome, just the process, and it's something we improved over the last years, significantly.
Yeah. Fantastic.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. You mentioned the sustainability focus-
Mm.
that you have and how outside organizations view the sustainability and progress that you've made. To what extent is sustainability an important differentiator for consumers now?
Yeah.
Is it top of mind for consumers when they-
It was hugely important until one or two years ago, when we saw this kind of subdued view on innovation in general, kind of ongoing and the down trading and so on. So I would say from a consumer perspective, focus on sustainability is a bit lower. We know that claims that, you know, this is. We have a paper packaging or recycled plastic in the packaging, we have wheat straw in the products or brand processing in Germany. So we know that this is very much appreciated by the consumers, but we can't say that it's a strong differentiator. Where it is a strong differentiator is primarily in Professional Hygiene, which is kind of interesting.
The Tork brand, again, the dispenser systems, the soaps, not only the paper hand towels, but also the napkins and so on. Because this is something our distributors, like Bunzl, for instance, love to bring forward to a facility management company or training university or a hospital. And they love to use our sustainability claims in their sustainability work. So they say they work with Tork because Tork recycles hand towels, which we do in 10 countries now in Europe. There's low 40% over-usage when you use Tork products because they have sensors in the dispensers, so they just dispense one at a time. We have 40% over cleaning costs because of the dispensers. So the cleaning staff, they can actually be much more efficient in refilling the dispensers.
So we have real value-creating claims related to sustainability, that they really like. And then in Health and Medical, it's still not such a big issue. It's not, but we're working very much, especially in Incontinence Care, healthcare, where there's a lot of waste, of course, from these bulky Incontinence Care products from an elderly care home. To convince more or less, you know, putting in the bidding criteria to focus less on lowest cost per piece and more of cost in use, and also, of course, sustainability. If you have thinner, more efficient products, then there will be less waste, for instance. So actually, the consumers are probably the least interested right now.
That's very interesting-
Yeah
... on the split between professional and the-
Yeah
and the consumers. So you, you mentioned that your operating margin and your gross margins now give you some flexibility on A&P.
Yes
... and give you some ability to flex your budget differently going forward. So, when we think about the A&P budget going forward, how has that breakdown between marketing and-
Mm
promotion changed for you? Have you optimized that, and is there a greater skew now behind the products that you see as real winners compared to history, where there may have been some legacy marketing spend or also?
So this year, we are investing more in A&P than we've done for many, many years. 5.5%, I think, of sales in the first quarter. And we're doing that because we feel that we have a lot to shout about. We have fantastic innovation, fantastic brands, and of course, we want to grow volumes, so it comes together. And we expect to keep A&P on an elevated level. We have become much better in managing A&P over the last couple of years. It's part of this Essity being in better shape than ever, that we now have a global brand innovation and sustainability function. We're working with the, you know, the biggest agencies.
We're doing more and more ourselves, because, of course, now with AI, we can do a lot of the, especially online marketing optimization and so on ourselves, so being more efficient. We also learned over the years that it's better to have fewer, bigger innovations that we drive for longer. So we can prove and see that what we launched three years later have a much higher sales per launch than it had five years ago or 10 years ago, and we continue to push those innovations. We think we get tired with these innovations after three, five years, but the customers don't. They, theirs keep on being interested. For instance, the coreless toilet tissue or the 4-ply we have in France, called Just1, for instance.
Of course, all of this makes us more efficient also in our A&P. The trend towards investing more and more online continues, but that varies a lot between, still, countries and markets. In Latin America, there's a lot of TV commercials, for instance. In Sweden, I don't think we did a TV commercial for 10 years.
Mm.
It's all online, so it's big, big differences here.
Okay, well, Magnus, thank you very much indeed for running us through the business and answering those questions. And, yeah, thank you very much indeed for your time and come to the end of the session. Thank you very much for everybody for joining us today. It's great. Thank you.
Thank you very much.