Welcome to the Fractal Gaming Group's Q4 2022 conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Hannes Wallin, and CFO, Karin Ingemarson. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's presentation of our Q4 report. Shall we see? Start with some highlights from our. In the second half of 2022, we have signed our gaming hardware markets. This is largely driven by a return to normal graphics card price and a combination of pent-up demand and from Fractal. We launched several new products in the quarter. One of them, the North, and have sold out in record time in all markets. Our sales increased by 17% measured in SEK. Decreased by 3% measured in $. This is due to strong comparison Q4 2021 and higher discounts in 2022. More importantly, we're very happy to report an impressive sales out increase of 31%, which proves the return in market demand.
Our product margin improves from 32.7% last year to a healthy 37% in this quarter. EBITDA increased from SEK 3 million to SEK 13 million. Towards the end of the quarter, we got the very positive information that our tariff exemption for cases to the American markets valid until September 202 . The leading gaming platform Steam set a new record recently with 32 million concurrent players, which is a testament to the still strong gaming interest and activity. The viewership numbers with Twitch have dropped slightly lately but are still more than double compared to the pre-pandemic levels. The gaming regulations for China is beginning to loosen up in the last couple of months, which is a positive sign for that market. AMD and NVIDIA introduced graphics cards in the Q4 .
All in all, there have been many new interesting releases in 2022. Gaming has been resilient in the past, and we believe it's likely that gaming will continue to be strong in coming years despite macroeconomic headwinds. We have launched three new case products during the quarter. The most notable is the Fractal North, which you can see here in the center. It's likely one of the most successful product launches in our history. Both media and customer reviews have been very good. We've seen it selling out in record time in all markets. As you can see, we have introduced wood as a material to this case, which have been very well received. With that, I'll leave over to you, Karin.
Yes. Thank you. We wrap up the year with a relatively strong quarter. The graph at the top shows the development in net sales, and net sales in the quarter increased by 17% to 142 million SEK compared to Q4 2021. We also measure our sales in US dollar as we sell exclusively in dollars regardless of the end markets, and the organic net sales decreased by 3% in Q4. During Q4, sales discounts were higher than last year but also higher on a full-year basis. Sales discounts were back at more normal levels in 2022, being relatively low during 2021. For the full year 2022, net sales increased by 2% in SEK and decreased by 14% organically. The second half of 2022 was stronger with 56% of total net sales.
In Q4, the main drivers of net sales were increased demand and healthy stock levels at the sales channels, successful case series such as Torrent, Pop, and the newly launched North, as Hannes just talked about, better availability and prices of graphics cards, strong sales out to end customers, which increased by 31% organically, which means that the underlying consumer demand was strong. In the graph at the bottom, you can see our quarterly development in sales out to end customers measured in dollars. Sales out in Q4 with sales of $16 million was the strongest quarter since Q4 2020. Moving on to the next slide and segment development. The strongest region in the quarter was Americas with net sales of SEK 73 million, corresponding to 52% of total net sales.
The increase was mainly driven by successful sales campaigns, general market growth, low comparison figures, and lower inventory levels at the retailers. In EU, net sales amounted to SEK 49 million, which is 34% of total net sales. The decrease in EU versus last year can be explained by a stronger US dollar and high freight prices, which have led to more expensive products to the end customers. APAC and other had a net sales of SEK 20 million, 14% of total net sales. Sales of cases was 91% of total net sales, which is an increase of approximately 6 percentage points versus Q4 last year, and was related to successful launches of cases during 2022. Moving on to the next slide and product margin development. In Q4, the product margin was 37%, which is 4 percentage points higher than last year.
The increased product margin was mainly driven by favorable currency effect and tariff exemption. Let's have a look at the details on how we get to the 4 percentage points improved product margin versus Q4 last year. Positive currency effect increased the product margin by approximately 3 percentage points. As said before, we sell exclusively in dollars, and our product purchases are also in dollars. The currency effect comes mainly from selling out from stock with higher FX rate than we bought the stock for. U.S. tariffs exemption improved the product margin by approximately 2 percentage points compared to last year. Fractal received a renewed tariff exemption for computer cases, and the exemption applied retroactively from 12th of October 2021 through December 31st, 2022.
We have also received a new exemption from January until September 2023, which will continue to have a positive effect on the product margin also going forward. Lower freight costs affected the product margin slightly positive by around 0.3 percentage points through lower shipping rates, which was partially offset by a higher share of sales to the U.S. Shipping prices dropped significantly during the quarter, which will have a positive margin impact coming quarters. Lower product costs positively affected the product margin by approximately 1 percentage point. This is due to higher product cost in Q4 2021 that, to some extent, was related to previous quarters. Sales discounts affected product margin negatively by approximately 3 percentage points, which was due to campaigns related to Black Friday and the holidays. Sales discount is back at normal level, more in line with how it was before COVID.
Let's have a look at the next slide and earnings. Q4 EBITDA was SEK 13 million, and the margin was 9% compared to SEK 2 million and 2% in Q4 last year. Year to date, EBITDA was SEK 34 million, and the margin was 7%, which is SEK 22 million and 9 percentage points higher compared to the same period last year. The increase in EBITDA was mainly due to higher sales volumes, higher product result, and lower warehouse costs due to decreased stock level. Moving on to the next slide, operating cash flow was positively impacted by higher EBITDA. During the second half of 2022, we have taken actions to normalize the inventory level, and it was reduced by SEK 34 million. We will continue to focus on the inventory level going forward to ensure additional improvement.
Accounts receivables increased by SEK 13 million due to increased sales in the quarter. Investing activities was SEK 6 million and was related to development of new products. The overdraft facility amounted to SEK 110 million and was mainly related to purchases of products in stock. Total credit facility amounted to SEK 180 million. Moving on to the next slide and the income statement. As previously presented, we had a net sales increase by 17%, mainly due to increased demand, availability, and lower prices on graphics cards, successful product launches, as well as healthy stock levels at the sales channels. During the year, we have continued to execute on our strategic growth agenda to create profitable growth in the coming years. We have increased our marketing activities, kept a high focus and pace in product development, and increased the number of launches.
I said before, we believe that the gaming industry has proven to be relatively recession-resilient in the past, and we believe it's likely that gaming will continue to be strong in coming years despite macroeconomic headwinds. We only sell in US dollars regardless the end market, and the same goes for purchases of products. Fractal is, in many ways, a dollar company with 100% in dollars down to product margin. Fractal's reporting currency is SEK, and the numbers are affected by fluctuating exchange rates in currencies other than SEK. Q4 had an average US dollar SEK rate of 10.7 compared to 8.8 last year, which is positive on our results. I said earlier in the presentation, positive currency effects as well as tariff exemption improved the product margin in Q4.
However, sales discount decreased the margin. Other external costs are lower than last year, mainly due to lower warehouse and rework costs. Personnel costs mainly increased due to salary adjustments and higher variable salaries. The financial net is affected by interest expenses related to the overdraft facility and FX translation effects. With that, I hand over to Hannes again.
Thank you. A brief summary of our quarter report and outlook. As mentioned, our sales have increased by 31% in the quarter, which we believe is fantastic growth level, and it's driven by improved market demand and also our recent successful launches of new products. Our EBITDA margin improved significantly in the quarter and full year. We will continue to drive our growth-promoting initiatives focused on delivering high-quality products, a high level of service, and increased marketing efforts. Despite high macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, we see good opportunities for growth in this year, which is based on our attractive product portfolio and increased general market demand. With that, we can go over to any questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Simon Granath from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Hi, Hannes and Karin, congrats on the strong Q4 results. It's great to see further recovery here, particularly positive response in Fractal North is probably partly behind it. Could you talk a little bit about the financial unit economics for when you launch a new product? Initially, it gives some revenue in the Q1 , when do you normally see culminating revenue, et cetera? I'm trying to catch whether there was an unusual boost effect in Q4 due to this. Thank you.
The North case has been a big success for us. We launched it on December seventh. We had good hopes, but we didn't sell that much into the channel. The very positive reception of the case proved to be much, much more than we could have hoped for. We quickly sold out in most markets. I would say in Q4, the contribution from North has a relatively modest effect, and we will see more effects of that in coming quarters. In terms of the general dynamic of how launches relate to our revenue, there is a certain revenue bump about one to two months before the launch when we ship the products from China and sell it into the channel.
There will be repeat orders, of course, depending on the success of the products.
Thank you so much. Do you expect to launch more products in 2023 versus 2022? I know you mentioned that there were 3 cases launches during H2 here.
Yeah, I would say that 2022 was a particularly big year for us in launches. We will have launches in this year as well, but not as many as we had in last year. We're excited to see now the full year effects of the products that we launched in the second half, which have proved to be particularly successful, including the North. Also the Pop Series has become an important revenue contributor for us.
Great. Thank you. On the pent-up demand, do you have any tangible data about the pent-up demand situation that you can perhaps talk about? Or is it more about a general feeling regardless, or given recent softness in the market?
Yes, we have seen a clear return to market demand growth in the second half of the year, which is also in line with what we earlier predicted. I think it's dependent on several different reasons, but one of the main drivers is likely that both NVIDIA and AMD were launching their graphics cards in September, October, November, which removed this kind of wait and see effect that we had earlier when customers, especially during the spring, when they knew that the new graphics card series were around the corner, they wanted to wait and see what that was all about and what it showed. In this cheaper costs, or they can buy the newer one for higher performance, but higher costs.
Since we have seen the market demand being depressed for a number of quarters for the second half of this year, we believe that this return to growth will continue in this year.
Thank you so much. That makes a lot of sense. I know that there have lately been some talks about AMD restricting supply to push up GPU prices. Is that anything that you've noticed in the market that may impact the potential of materializing further pent-up demand?
I mean, both NVIDIA and AMD has actually said that in their earnings call that they have on purpose kept down the supply of the new graphics cards. particularly driven by that they had and their partners had a lot of inventory over the previous months. they want to run through those inventories before releasing further inventory of the newer ones. We're not particularly worried about that. We think that the prices of the new graphics cards will come down as supply increases, which it will do when the old graphics cards are being sold out. for us as a case supplier, it doesn't really matter if the customer is buying previous generation graphics card or one of the newer one. if they need a case, they will buy the case anyway regardless of the generation.
Excellent. Then just two more questions from me, if I may. On the sales out figure, certainly a very strong figure. How would you say that current inventory levels are at your resellers, and are they talking about anything on how they want to position themselves going into 2023 regarding this?
Yeah. Inventory levels, they were previously early in 2022 rather on the high side. And our sales channel had to normalize a little bit during the first half. Towards the end of 2022, when the market demand was picking up significantly, their inventory levels have gone down a lot and are actually below normal levels. We're now seeing them restocking in order to normalize.
Thank you. Finally, could you mention anything about demand in different geographies? I know that North America has been a strong market for you or a resilient market for you in 2022. Do you expect that to continue in 2023, or should we see any other trend shifts here?
Yeah. We see the North American market has been very strong lately and continues to be strong. There's difference between various markets. Europe has been on the weaker side through 2022. North America has been on the stronger side. Asia has been okay. Especially in Q4, we have seen a rebound on all European markets, not all. In Germany, for example, has ended the year well. The weakest markets are actually the Nordics and U.K., which may be because of the very poor currency levels in those countries and other macroeconomic uncertainties. Most regions are doing very well and seeing a healthy growth in market demand.
Thank you so much for having my questions. Congrats once again to the strong results.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Amar Galijasevic from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I have a question on the product mix. Strong development for cases, but is there a reason for a bit softer sales in the other category in Q4?
I'm sorry, could you repeat that again?
Yeah, sorry. You had strong development for the cases segment, but a bit softer for the other category. Is there a particular reason for that now in Q4?
I would say that our product lineup of cases is stronger than our other categories. We're focused more on cases in our product development, especially with a much stronger margin profile that cases provides. I would say it's because of our company focus on cases that have driven that and less company focus on power supplies and cooling.
Okay. Thank you. A question on seasonal patterns. Do you expect, you know, the historical pattern of Q1 being a bit weaker than Q4 and perhaps Q2 being the weakest quarter of the year, or has anything changed that dynamic that, you know, we should be aware of?
Yeah, that's a good question. In the last couple of years, the seasonal variations have been very hard to predict as the market has been quite volatile. It hasn't followed the usual patterns. The usual patterns, as you mentioned, is that the Q3 and Q4 are the strongest, and Q1 is slightly weaker, and Q2 the weakest. Because of the research and market demand in Q4, we believe that Q1 will be pretty strong quarter still. Q2 is harder to decipher this early. Likely, the seasonal variation will come into play there with a bit lower demand because of the regular season variation.
Thank you very much. That's helpful. Just a final question from me. On personnel expenses in Q4, quite a step up. Is this a Q4 kind of seasonal phenomenon, or how should we think about personnel expenses going forward?
Yeah, we had some annual salary adjustments in Q4 that normally comes a bit early in the year. They came a bit later this year. We are hiring staff, so our personnel expenses will increase as we want to expand our business and enter new product categories, for example. We're also actually quite proud of that, in this quite volatile year, so 2020, 2021, and 2022, we have not been forced to lay off people, as many of our competitors have been forced to. We did in 2020 and early 2021. Our personnel expenses will rise in 2023 as we are building the company for the future.
Thank you very much. Just a follow-up. Salary inflation, how do you see that affecting you in 2023?
Well, it's hard to say yet. We believe that salary increases in 2023 will be higher than me, because of the inflationary pressure and expectations from staff in general. We don't believe it will be a dramatic effect on the business. Yeah, slightly higher than the medium.
Okay. That's very helpful. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions from the teleconference lines at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for questions from the chat.
Okay. Thank you very much for the questions, Simon and Amar. I don't see any written questions in the chat. With that then, we want to thank you all for your time, and hereby conclude the conference. I wish you all a nice day. Thank you.