Welcome to the HANZA Q2 2023 presentation. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Erik Stenfors and CFO Lars Åkerblom. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Welcome to you all, and thank you for joining this quarterly earnings call in the middle of the summer. My name is Erik Stenfors. I'm the CEO of the company, and I will run this presentation as usual with our CFO, Lars Åkerblom. So for some time now, our industry has been navigated in a recession, and therefore, we look forward today to report to you on the many activities we have done in order to stay on course for a good development. If you look at the agenda, to give you a clear picture, we will first summarize the market trends and also HANZA's position in all this. Next, we'll walk you through the quarter, both by words and by numbers.
And then we will give you our projections for both the short and long term, and conclude the presentation, as usual, with a Q&A session. So the market. The quarter and the first half of 2024 has been characterized by a very normal, traditional recession. It means, lower demands from different industries. We've seen that from the mining industries, from textile equipment, recycling machines, but we also have other sectors such as energy security and defense, that continue to have a good volume in the Q2. But in all, Q2 came in on the same sales level as Q1, which was also according to our estimate this spring. So we are experiencing a cyclical headwind. And if we look at the trends and the trends affecting our industry, the most important is regionalization.
We see that globalization in general and global supply chains, in particular, are under evaluation, and one reason is constant disruptions. It was COVID-19 who highlighted this weakness. It's been under scrutiny ever since. We see some examples on the screen, the low water in the Panama, the Baltimore bridge collapse that blocked one of the top ten harbors in the US, the Red Sea pirates that makes attacks and force ships to go around Africa. So that's a reason right there to rethink your supply chain.
And another reason is, of course, the environment. If you reduce transport, you lower the emission of CO₂, and also cost reason. And the manufacturing cost is determined by the supply chain, and we see that in the recession, there's a growing demand for optimizing your supply chain. So this and also geopolitical.
The geopolitical concerns now could be new trade barriers of the possible change of, of president in the U.S. This also fuel demands for optimization of supply chains, and this is actually a good trend for HANZA. As you might know, HANZA is not just about selling, manufacturing. We also offer to restructure supply chain. We have a special service we name MIG, stands for Manufacturing Solutions for Increased Growth and Earnings, where we try to find a better solution for the supply chain for our customers.
We here see an example. It was Mitsubishi. They have a division called the LogisNext, designing, selling forklifts. Had a traditional supply chain. We see it illustrated to the left, over 40 suppliers in Europe, their own assembly in Finland. We agreed on a mixed solution and started that a year ago. Now we are in full swing.
See the picture to the right. Forklifts produced, volume production now in Estonia. And look at the wide square. This is just the module, the module for the forklift. That module itself would require 2-3 traditional contract manufacturers. Now, we do the module, we do the heavy forks, previously done in, Southern Europe. We do the chassis and everything on one side of the street, and we do the assembly on the other side of the street. A fantastic solution for, Mitsubishi, a great order for us, and also good for the environment. So with this, general introduction, let's then dig into the Q2. We have been focusing on three key areas. All of them are quite important for the future. First of all, we have intensified sales, and quite successfully so.
We have got new customers from different areas and different geographies. We got the largest order to date, SEK 134 million, from a global leader in the defense industry. We will start deliveries in January next year. We also got Munters as a new customer, which I think it's a, it's a fantastic, company. It's a Swedish company specializing in air treatment and climate solutions, and other, customers as well. And we are in discussions of new MIG projects. So what we discussed earlier with Mitsubishi, similar cases, we do expect to launch them somewhere during this autumn. Another key area for us has been to adjust the cost base. We did a large acquisition by the beginning of this year, Orbit One, and of course, we had an integration, plan.
Came recession, we expanded that integration plan to be an integration and efficiency program. Started that in March, expected it to last half a year, end somewhere in Q3. Happy to report it has been completed in Q2 ahead of schedule, meaning that we will see some positive impact on earnings, and, Lars will come back to this in a couple of minutes. So a lot of work with the sales and with the cost side, but you cannot get mesmerized of the ups and downs of the economy. This is normal situation for all business activities. You need to keep your eyes on the horizon, not to stumble. The horizon for us is what we call HANZA 2025, and we did a lot of activities for that strategy. And the strategy is basically to expand and develop some of our manufacturing clusters.
So one thing we did was to open a new factory in Estonia. We see the picture up to the right. A fantastic creation, if I may say so. We have now a new sheet metal factory, which is attached to our assembly hall with an automatic transport system. And we also got some good PR around this. We had the economy minister to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony. We also got the Prime Minister of Estonia to visit us, so she's not prime minister anymore. She stepped down now to become the European Union's foreign policy chief. So that's a very good thing for our future because of the tailor-made factories, they increase our operations efficiency, so it's very important. We have another similar activity going on in Sweden.
Decided in the beginning of this year to also build a new factory in Töcksfors, Värmland, Sweden. It will be ready by the end of this year. A lot of work with that, of course, during the quarter. You are free to contact us, and we will be happy to bring you to the opening ceremony by the end of this year. Moreover, in HANZA 2025, is to consolidate customer and technologies in a way that increase efficiency. And therefore, also, during the Q2, we proposed to merge a couple of our smaller units into our larger manufacturing clusters. We did the union negotiations, which we could conclude in Sweden during the quarter.
We have still negotiations in Finland going on. So if you sum up the quarter, it's been a very active quarter, both to handle the present situation, but also to build for the future. By that, I will leave the floor to Lars, who will talk about something else which is really important, sustainability.
Thank you, Erik. And the sustainability activities in Q2, besides the normal work we always do with sustainability, has been to work with the CSRD to do materiality analysis and mapping the Scope 3 in order to come back later on this year with new goals for sustainability. We also have introduced a new intranet, what we call the HANZA Hub, which gives the possibility for all employees to communicate with us in the management. And we, as Erik mentioned, we are opened up a new factory hall in Estonia, and it is built with sustainability aspects, with solar panels on the roof, and this automated transport system that also reduce the emissions.
You can see it in the KPIs that we believe are the main KPIs connected with the environment and the safety in the company that we are developing in a positive way, or more or less in line with former quarters. But no major negative aspects on those KPIs. Coming into the Q2 financials, we have an increase of sales with 14%, of course, connected with the acquisition of Orbit One. So if we deduct Orbit One and also the currency, we actually have a decrease of 8%. And the reasons are what Erik mentioned, the macroeconomic factors, and also the fact that we are now comparing to quite strong figures. A year ago, that was record high.
We had over 10% organic growth back in Q2 2023. We are now on 4.5 billion SEK in rolling twelve sales, compared to 4.1 billion SEK in 2023 for the full year. And as Eric mentioned, also, we have finalized efficiency and integration program, and we see a positive effect. Those activities, we said already when we launched them that they will reach full effect at the end of 2024. But what we can see is that we already are starting to increase profitability, even though the sales are flat compared to Q1 this year. We also see that Orbit One is starting to increase their profitability, their margin.
They are not at the level we want them to be, but they have a clear and positive trend towards a stronger margin, and we see that trend also within Q2. For comparable units, we reached 6.7% in margin for Q2, and that is a little bit higher than in Q1, we reached 6.4%. We took a one-time cost for consolidating the volumes. We want to close down 2 factories and consolidate the volumes into other factories within HANZA. And including those costs, we have an operating margin of 4.1% compared to 8.6%. We have a negative effect on the finance net of with currency of SEK -6. We had SEK +6 in Q1.
That led to a higher financial net that also affected, together with the one-time cost, affected the EPS, so with 0.5 crown 50 öre. So the EPS was 0.16 SEK, compared to 1.51 SEK a year ago. If we look into the segments, we see that main markets is up 20%. Organically, or adjusted for acquisition and currency, it's down 9%. We have still a quite strong margin, 7.2%, and adjusted for or comparable units, it's 8.2 compared to 2.8. So what we have said before is that, within the HANZA, the old HANZA, if you say so, it's quite persistent when the sales are decreasing, and we still see that.
And we see that we increased the margin from Q1 to 7.2% from 7%. In other markets, we also see an increase to sales. We see more or less the same, down internal sales, adjusted for acquisitions and currency. We also see the trend that the profitability is increasing compared to Q1. We see that the margin is up from 3.3% in Q1 to 4.0% this quarter. Looking into the balance sheet, we have a really strong cash flow. In Q1, we had a little bit weaker cash flow, and we said already at that time, it will come back.
So we are glad to be able to present that we have a really strong cash flow, SEK 135 million, and the main reason is that we have decreased the working capital by SEK 77 million in Q2. CapEx mounted to a little bit over 100 million, SEK 108 million. 18 million of that is connected with the building, both in the Baltics and in Sweden. We have a net interest-bearing debt that is more or less increasing with the dividends that we paid out in May. And we have now a net debt, compared to EBITDA of 2.2, if you add the first half year of Orbit One, or the second half year in 2023.
So we add—if you add Orbit One's rolling twelve, if you exclude that, we are on 2.4. The equity to asset ratio is still strong, it's at 37%. So we still have a strong balance sheet that allow us and give us the possibility to do acquisitions and bring in big projects. And by that, I leave back to you, Erik.
Thank you, Lars. Let's now look ahead and start with the short-term future. So we do expect to have a positive sales development. First of all, because our assumption is that the economy, and hence our demand, will strengthen towards the end of this year. It was also our previous assessment. We had others stating it could happen already during the autumn, but we have stayed with the forecast that it will happen only by the end of this year. And this is also together with a strong new sales, because today's sales is tomorrow's revenue. So we do expect for these reasons that the sales development will be positive.
If we look at the earnings, also expect a good development, firstly because if sales increase, the earnings, are positively affected, but also because of the large program that we ended in Q2, this integration and efficiency program, and the strategy HANZA 2025. And all in all, we still believe that we will have a solid 8% margin for next year. And then we are quite satisfied with the acquisition of Orbit One. It has added a good customer value to us, which is the aim of the game. And the integration was earlier than expected. It was probably because of the due diligence we did over the corporate culture. With a good corporate culture due diligence, the integration will become easier. It also means that the door is open for new acquisitions. However, we are really careful.
It must fit us, it must increase customer value, it must be non-overlapping customer base, it must be bringing competence to HANZA and so forth. But it could happen that we see more acquisitions, so moving forward. If we then turn to the long-term outlook, I think there are two features if you try to understand HANZA. One is our business model, where we offer more than contract manufacturing, and secondly, it's our expansion model, where we have built HANZA in steps. Already from the beginning, 15 years ago, where we put milestones a couple of years ahead into the future with operational and financial goals. So far, we have passed 3 of these milestones. We are now heading for milestone number 4, HANZA 2025, and of course, there will come a new milestone after that.
And we already revealed that we are looking at the geographical expansion. Today, we have six of our industrial park, what we call manufacturing clusters. We have demand from our customers, so we expect to open cluster number seven, and we will come back to this next year. But it means that we see a positive development, both in short and long term, and we hope that you continue to follow us. The future is just beginning. And with that, we move over to the Q&A session.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Fredrik Nilsson from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Erik and Lars. I want to start with the strong new sales you saw in the quarter. Could you remind us about what share of sales you have from new customers during an average year and approximate the number?
I don't think we have revealed that. What you can do, Fredrik, is look at the past, and we have said that our growth has been around 50% organic, 50% by acquisition, and we have had an average growth of about 19%, and then maybe that will give you some guidance.
Okay, thanks. And also, regarding volumes, you expect a rebound in late this year. I mean, in the last quarter, you mentioned that some customers were indicating an increase already in the autumn, although you did not plan for that. So are you planning for an increase in volumes in the later part of this year, or what do you plan for?
Yes, and we said at the last call that sometimes we know even more than our customers, and they can be a bit optimistic. So we think that the internal forecasts we do is even stronger than sometimes what we get from our customers, being around for a long time in this industry. We do now expect, we know that we have orders coming in because of the increased market shares, so we are planning for a growth. And then in addition, we expect the market to bounce back. We haven't lost any customers, so they are still there. Yes, we expect a growth, and also we expect higher efficiency due to these new buildings I mentioned.
The new orders will come into the new buildings, and also it will be easier for us to adapt to the different volumes. The flexibility will also increase due to the new setup of the clusters.
Okay, I see. Great. And what, what about the large new order from the defense sector? Was that from a new or a current customer?
I wish I could tell you more about this. It's very, very secret, but, we're allowed to announce the size and when we will start delivery, but that's it.
Okay, I see. And last question from me. Your financial targets stipulate SEK 6.5 billion in sales and 8% EBITA margin in next year. And I mean, I believe that the sales target will likely require an acquisition, which, however, typically comes with some negative impact on margins short term. Should we expect the underlying margin to be strong enough to handle an acquisition, so to speak? Or how should we think about that target with regard to acquisitions?
I think I will start, and Lars can maybe finalize the answer. First of all, there's nothing saying that the margin must go down when you do an acquisition. When we bought Orbit One, they had a lower margin, so we need to act on that. Can also be acquisition with company with a higher margin. Secondly, it doesn't only go to acquisitions. Sometimes we also have mid cases, which are quite sizable. That's another way to grow. And we also have traditional contract manufacturing, so there are many ways to grow. But exactly how that will happen is not revealed. But I also invite Lars to say more about that answer.
Hello, Fredrik. And of course, if you talk about the cost for the acquisition, the transaction cost, they will be excluded when we look into the financial figures. But otherwise, as Erik said, it depends on what acquisition you do. Orbit One should have been, or if the recession had not hit Orbit One, they were expected to contribute to the margins. They had a lower margin compared to HANZA, but we can also do acquisitions that has an equal or even higher margin than HANZA, and by that, contributing to the margin in HANZA. So we don't see that doing acquisition will, at the same time, always lead to a reduction in profitability for a while.
Okay, I see. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you, Fredrik.
The next question comes from Anders Roslund from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have a couple of questions regarding new orders here, and specifically for the second half. If I recall it rightly, is the Mitsubishi deal that will be up and running now with full effect from the Q3? But it is, it's a major step up from the Q2, or is it just a gradual sort of effect coming into the second half? And then are there any new business coming on board during the second half so that we could see a sequential uptick of sales, even if the underlying market remains relatively weak, at least for the Q3?
So for the first question, and good morning, Anders. Good to have you here.
Yeah, good morning.
Now we are in volume production for Mitsubishi, so it's right now from summer. It took 1 year. We announced that 1 year ago, it will take 1 year, and it was exactly according to plan. So that revenue will hit from Q3 and onwards. When it comes to other new customers, there is a delay between the sales time and the revenue time, so typically it could be 1-2 quarters. So what you say is that on average, the order we take now will come somewhere by the end of the year. We saw the defense order starting in January.
Mm.
So, something, and expect up to half a year for new orders.
Okay. Just a question about the new orders for next year. The SEK 134 million, is that on an annual basis or, or?
It's an order, and we have not revealed the time for it, and I think it will also be a matter of how quickly we can get this produced. The demand is quite high in that sector, and it's sometimes a matter of how fast we can cope with that. So we haven't said it, but typically we talk about yearly orders, but this could be a bit longer or a bit shorter, depending on delivery time.
Yeah. Okay. So we could regard it as an annual order, but it's, it's not maybe in full speed from January directly.
Exactly. That's a good-
Yeah
... summary.
Okay. And then coming to Munters, if I recall it right, it was something like SEK 25 million. Is that the sort of a starting point, and you expect more to come, or is it just one order, and that's it, or how do you see upon that?
We try to be really careful when we select acquisition and when we select customers. We don't want to have too many customers. We want to have selected customers. We think Munters is a prime customer because it's not just a matter of what they are doing and how they are doing, it's also a matter of how they fit with our offer, so that-
Mm
... we can do case, complete cabinet. It will add value for them. But I expect this to be a starting point of a long and fruitful cooperation for both party and expand it over time. I have no projections how big it can be, but I really think that customer really fits our offer.
Mm-hmm. The MIG projects you mentioned that are supposed to be announced during the second half of this year, are they going to be then starting up a little bit like the Mitsubishi in a year ahead, or could it be quicker, or how should we see upon those large products?
Typically, a MIG embraces some kind of manufacturing transfer. So the positive thing, it's ongoing products. It's not a new product that needs to get up in sales. It's an ongoing production. That's a positive thing. The negative thing is if you have to be really careful when you move manufacturing.
Mm.
There's a lot of knowledge in the head of the people currently running this. So when we announce new MIG, it doesn't have to take a year, but it could take half a year at least to transfer something.
Mm.
It would be typically the reason that they either would like to lower costs, or there could be also political reasons, or it could be some disturbance in the supply chain. There is a pain in the supply chain, and we would like to correct that by manufacturing transfer.
Mm-hmm. And then about the sort of cyclical recovery when it comes, I mean, you talk about organic growth down 6% in the Q1 and 8% here. How fast could you sort of swing up when demand recovers again? Could you go up to the same level, or could you even turn it up 10% above that? I mean, could volumes recover 20%, or how does it look like when it comes to your production capacity being?
Yeah. I understand the question. I would also like Lars to elaborate on that, but I can start from the operations point of view, and that's really connected to the new facilities that we are building. It's really important for us to be able to cope with ups and downs in the demand without having too much challenges. And that's also why we create this manufacturing cluster, so we can share the resources, and we can have a limited reason to the lower number of people when it goes down, and we can handle an upturn. And we will get helped by all the things we are doing now with the clusters when it comes to flexibility. But I'll leave to Lars to talk more about maybe the percentages.
Mm.
Yeah, hello, Anders. We have, since last year, we have opened the new factory hall in Estonia, and we are about to open up a hall in Sweden. So I would say that the capacity is higher than it was a year ago. We are closing, most likely, we are closing down two sites, but they are quite small compared to the sites that or the halls that we are opening up.
Mm.
So without giving any percentages, I will not give any percentage. I will say that we have a higher capacity in 2024 compared to 2023. And we also have the balance sheet in order to be able to increase sales volume and finance the growth. So-
Mm.
I think that that's a fair answer to your question.
Yeah. Great. I have a question regarding the seventh cluster. Is that a new geographical cluster, or is it, could it be anywhere in the existing markets, or?
We have said that it's going to be a new geographic expansion, so you should expect it to be somewhere else in the world, and it will be completely driven by customer demand. So we are in close cooperation with our customers to see where they would like us to build our next cluster in order to make sure it gets fully loaded.
Yeah, maybe I missed that. When in time have you sort of planned to take such a move?
We have said that, first, we need to fulfill the financial and operational goals for 2025, which we hope to do that next year. And, as when we can present that to you, we will also present the next cluster.
Okay, excellent. Yeah, that was all the questions for me. Thank you.
The next question comes from Oliver Uusitalo from Aktiespararna. Please go ahead.
Erik and Lars Åkerblom, thank you for taking my questions. I was thinking if you could elaborate a bit on the working capital release that we saw in this quarter, or more specifically, where does it stem from? Does it stem from the order with Mitsubishi, or is it rather working capital that has been tied up in Orbit One?
Okay, Lars, would you like to-
Hello, Oliver. Going back to Q1, we were not satisfied with the development of the cash flow and especially the working capital development. You mentioned a few of the things that, of course, has a big impact on the working capital. We had to increase the working capital in order to set up the Mitsubishi deliveries and the working capital needed for that production and that was the main part in Q1. It's less in Q2, but I wouldn't say that it has led to any release of the working capital. It is a continuous work, reduction of inventory, work with working capital within Orbit One.
But it is also when the volumes are decreasing, it has a time lag before you can release working capital and especially stock in when sales are going down. So that's an effect. But bear in mind also that the quarter is quite short term to measure the working capital. It can increase a little bit due to projects, and it can decrease when you are finalizing some projects. But we expect the cash flow and the working capital to continue to be strong and to decrease the working capital and be able to release working capital from Orbit One.
Yeah. I see. Thanks for the elaborate answer. And also, with that said, I suppose it's safe to assume that there are more to come in the matter of working capital, just as you said, Lars. But moving along to my second question: do you have any sort of timeframe? You mentioned that you're not completely satisfied with the margin of Orbit One. Do you have any sort of timeframe of when the margin will increase a notch? Is it safe to assume that the margin will increase as volumes kicks back up?
Should I start, Lars, and-
Yeah, you can start, and I can fill in if you want.
So a summary of that is that, first of all, they were coming in with a couple of units, percent units lower than HANZA at start, and then we had recession hitting both of us, and that's why we had this huge program. And, as we stated, now it's already executed, and we see a good upturn in the margin of Orbit One, old Orbit One, and also in HANZA, even though that Orbit One is still lagging behind. But, if we're going to reach our goal for next year, the simple answer is that by next year, we must have somehow made Orbit One into a similar level as old HANZA. So that would be the target. But, Lars, maybe you can continue.
No, I think you mentioned there are two things that we will do in order to increase the profitability regardless of the volumes, that is, of course, depending on the market situation. But it is the consolidation of production units and also the cost reduction that we have finalized in Q2, and we will see the full effect in Q3, Q4. So, of course, when the market comes back, the profitability will increase, but even if the market does not come back, we will still see increased profitability due to the activities that we have already decided on and started.
Yeah. Thank you. That's a great answer. Thank you so much. That's all for me. I get back into the queue now.
Oh, thank you, Oliver.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you. And we have also a submitted question, comes from Jacob Sörblom of Carnegie. Actually, a number of questions. First, as the defense business grow in the coming years, as part of the company's revenue mix, is it correct to think that this will lead to a positive effect on the margin? And how much of the company's customer exposure can be thought to be defense today, as well as in twelve months? Of course, it's a healthy margin in the defense industry. We have not revealed the part of that. We say that, customer in HANZA should be somewhere between 1 and maximum 10%. If you look at the releases we have done from the defense industry and add that with the new order, you would find yourself somewhere between, somewhere above 5%.
I don't think we, we can elaborate how that will affect our margin on a group level, Lars?
No, we are not.
Okay. So, next question: How do you see demand in the mining business? Do you see any sequential change during the quarter? Q2 was the same as the Q1. We keep our assumption that by the end of the year, we will have an upturn also from the mining sector. Next question: Do you feel that you're continuing to gain market share in the quarter? Yes. Next question: Do you see any of your competitors trying to create similar products offering to HANZA's MIG? What is the main barrier to enter this? Well, the first thing you need to do is the all-in-one solution, so the manufacturing clusters, combining different technologies. We haven't seen anyone else doing it in that way, and it's for sure a ride for a number of years.
Secondly, you have to then have the knowledge of transferring manufacturing, which MIG is all about. So you have to have the tools, which is the manufacturing cluster. You have to have the ability, which is transferring. So I think it's a quite high barrier, and we actually haven't seen anyone else trying to do this. So that's the answer to that one. Next question: How have the other markets developed in the recent months? Do you think we are past the bottom in terms of organic growth changes?... in Q2. I can say that we have a large ongoing work in Poland, post acquisition of Orbit One, when we are restructuring, also restructuring what we mentioned before, to have customers and technologies in the right places. Lars, would you say something more about the margin in other markets?
The only what I'd like to add is that Q3 is always a quarter where we see the effect of the vacation and some lower sales due to vacation, both in HANZA, but also mainly in our customers' production sites. So if you look quarter from quarter, you need to take that aspect into consideration. But otherwise, the trend we expect to be that over time it will increase the profitability in other markets.
Yeah. And we, we increased it from 3.3 to 4, Q1 to Q2, and excluding the seasonality, which we're talking about, Lars, it should be a good trend, of course. Last question: How can we think about working capital development in the coming quarters? Continued releases, but that Q2 stands out on the high side? For you, Lars, I think.
Yeah, I think we went quite deep into that on Oliver's question. So the short answer is that we will see fluctuations in the quarter, but the trend is that we expect to continue to have strong cash flow as we have had before, and also be able to free up working capital in the acquisition of Orbit One.
Mm-hmm. Okay, we have no more questions, so I'd like to thank you all for participating in today's call. As stated, we stay confident in our strategy and committed to our goals, and we look forward to talk to you again later on and share some positive news. Thank you very much.