Good morning, everyone listening into this, third quarter presentation by Humble Group. My name is Simon Petrén. I'm the CEO of the group, and together with me, I have Johan Lennartsson, our CFO.
Good morning.
To summarize things, I think we've had a quite strong third quarter for the year. It's the highest sales for the quarter year to date. And also we have a record level of the adjusted EBITDA. Overall, it's been a strong quarter for every month, and we've had continuous growth in all of the segments. What's really rewarding to see is that we have also been able to improve the adjusted EBITDA margin looking back at the first half year of 2023, which is also one of our most focus targets for the coming period. We can also see that the adjusted EBITDA trend of continuous improvement is successful, and we have remained at a good level of the leverage.
We have also been able to sustain a strong cash flow, throughout the period, and continue to work with the net working capital . But to start things, I would like to emphasize a bit on the market climate. What we really can see is that there is still a strong demand, among consumers. I think our exposure, towards low price, and private label is, looking very, very strong. We are continuing to looking into how we can expand that offer even further in the Nordic markets, but also the Central European markets. What we have also seen is that there is a high demand for the retailers to continue to invest in healthy and sustainable products, which is also seeing additional listings in several new markets.
One interesting factor that is quite relevant for the year that we have seen increasingly, because of the geopolitical climate with all the crisis that's happening in Israel and also Ukraine, is the focus on the defense industries. We're getting a lot of requests there for mainly the protein bars and powders that we have the capacity to provide, which we think is a really interesting possibility going forward, to be able to supply high-quality products produced in Sweden. I think the macroclimate in general is playing well into our trends. We have a good momentum in most of the businesses.
I think we've also been working hard with some of the businesses that have been strong in 2022 and also the first part of 2023, and I feel confident that we are on right track to get those businesses back, on where they should be. So let's dig into some of the numbers.
Yes. As Simon mentioned, the net sales continued on a strong path. The net sales for the quarter came in on just above 1.8 billion SEK, comprising a year-on-year growth of 34% for the quarter. With that said, we had a 12% organic growth, and 3% was comprising currency. The year-to-date growth organically was 13% and came in, the net sales came in just above 5.1 billion SEK. The net sales last twelve months now reached 6.7 billion SEK.
Yes, so what we can really see here is that this is a quarter where it's all the businesses that we have acquired are same as Q2. They are fully consolidated in the figures. The third quarter is generally the second strongest quarter for the year, and the fourth quarter is supposed to be the strongest quarter. So we have a very intense period going into the coming months until the year end, and we're quite positive about that. I think October has started very strong. So we, we're gonna continue to deliver products. What we do see is some constraints in terms of the capacity for our manufacturers, which is something that we work on.
We have already invested quite heavily into new machinery and improving the automation, but this is something that we need to continue to do in order to keep up with the demand. If we would have this in place, I think the sales would have been even stronger. So there's further potential here if we just get the manufacturing capacity where it needs to be. In addition to this, I think we've grown a lot of quite nice listings into new countries. We have continued to develop a lot of new products, innovations. We haven't really seen that super strong product innovation hit that we have been looking for yet, but I'm hoping we will get there in the future.
As Johan said, I think the organic growth has been quite strong and in line with the year, year overall, and same for the pro forma. It's keeping up where it should be. So yeah, one really interesting thing I think we highlighted here also in the notes is that the biggest company, Solent Group, has had a really, really strong quarter, contributing a lot, both on profitability and EBITDA. So here is something we see a lot of potential to expand their business model, like they have already done into South Africa and Australia, and to do that in the Nordics and Central Europe, where the demand from the retailers is there, but there is not a lot of good players like Solent to act on that demand.
Talking about the gross profit, we noticed that the gross profit came in on SEK 529 million for the quarter, comprising a growth of 27% year-on-year. We now have a gross profit for the last twelve months on just below 2 billion SEK. We're talking about the gross margins for the third quarter. We had 29% in line with the second quarter. We are working on improving the gross margin.
Yeah, so I mean, I wrote that in my CEO letter that we're a bit disappointed that we didn't have an improvement from the second quarter. That being said, we had several companies that we have moved the entire warehouse. And what we are doing now in order to improve the profitability and cash flow going forward is that we are doing this ABC calculation on all the products in every businesses. We can see that this is something that a lot of the entrepreneurs haven't done before, and when we do that, we can also see quite clear synergies and ways to improve the profitability. But this means we will do some sell-out of the C product that aren't as profitable or have too slow stock rotation.
So I think we're doing the right things here, and those moves of warehouses and logistics is also something that we know will improve the efficiency. But as I said, a little bit disappointed it wasn't improved as I was hoping. But we are going to continue to push for that. We have some clear targets for next year to do it, and I think the solution here is to work with the pricing as we're doing, and also the procurement for sure. In the procurement, we can see a trend where it's actually now being able to start to reduce the prices a bit, but it's taking quite slow. I mean, we're doing the same. We don't want to reduce our prices with the retailers, and I think it's the same for our suppliers.
There's a lot to do here. We have a target to get back to the levels of 2020, and I'm confident that our entrepreneurs, you know, they've been doing this for many, many years, and they are not worried, so I'm not that worried either.
Talking about the profitability, we see an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 188 million. That's an total growth of 73% compared with the same quarter last year. We also had an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 158 million, similar growth as adjusted EBITDA. And on last twelve months, we see an adjusted LTM EBITDA of SEK 684 million, and we start to reach higher levels.
Yeah, we're still in line with the pro forma since we have consolidated all the businesses. I think it's quite clear that we have been able to keep a good cost control. We are working with some consolidation. We have actually integrated a few businesses into bigger entities, which, you know, is a way for us to reduce overlapping personnel and unnecessary functions. So that is something we have just started working with, but I think now, when we have owned the businesses for a few years, we have really identified this is what we need to do in some of them, and everybody's on board with it. So I think that's a great thing that we're working on. What we can also see is that we're getting scale on the platform.
So if we can continue to increase the sales, and the gross profit, we will have a strong profitability growth on that increase, because we have quite stable cost. Historically, many of the businesses have really invested, and I think going into 2024, we are going to have a stronger cost control on the businesses, and to start scaling. I mean, some of the businesses we have invested significantly, doubling or tripling the sales force, for instance, and now we're going to start to reap the fruit from that. So I'm quite happy with the profitability here. I think it's in line with what we expected, and it's our strongest quarter so far. But of course, we're now going into the fourth quarter.
That's the most important one. So, yeah, we're going to continue to push here. I'm happy to see that the margin improvement that we have seen, it's a clear trend of improvement from Q1 to Q2 and Q2 to Q3. So as long as we can continue to do that, I'm quite satisfied.
Talking about the cash flow, we continue to see a strong operating cash flow. Came in on SEK 175 million for the quarter. What can be said more about the cash flow?
I mean, we haven't had such a big net working capital raise as the previous quarters this year. I think we're starting to reach a level of some in some of the areas of that that are quite sustainable in terms of keeping up also with the strong growth that we're having. That being said, I mean, I'm most happy about the inventory release that we saw. Despite, you know, pro forma, we grew, like, SEK 300 million. And generally, our businesses tie up sometimes between 10%-15% of the turnover in inventory. So I think that that's very strong, and it showcases good inventory management. But there is still a lot to do left with the inventory. Yeah, we're going to continue to push for this to deliver strong cash flow going forward. That's our target.
We also successfully finalized a refinancing of the capital structure in the third quarter. This was a work carried out during more or less the full year, impacting the net debt. Would you like to give some details?
Yeah, so I mean, the net debt compared to Q2 is actually pretty flat. But I think this is because of the one-off costs we've had with the refinancing of the bonds and also taking up the new loans. And we've done some nice investment into assets from bankruptcies that has been really cheap for us to get. But our target here is to continue to deliver good cash flow, and without any one-offs like we've had during the third quarter, I'm confident we will continue to be able to reduce the net debt. You can see here also the actual debt was increased a bit because of the earn-out payments we had during the third quarter. Now we're done with most of it for 2023, so that's nice.
The most important part here, I would say, going also into the cash generation for the total business is what we did in August when we finalized the redemption of the bonds. Now our interest cost is down significantly, and this is also something that will enable us to reduce the debt. And over time, when we feel that, okay, now we're at good levels in line with our target, we can start doing some acquisitions again like I wrote to in the CEO comment. So let's dig a little bit deeper into the different segments and what happened in the various areas. When we look at Future Snacking , we can see that the gross margin is still lagging a bit.
There is a high volatility in the raw material prices, and the businesses are doing their best to cope with that. That being said, we also have an impact here from some of our brands that are doing a lot of international expansion, like True Gum, Pändy, Tweek , and Wellibites , for instance. Because generally when you get the new listing, you discount the products or do a rapid start, which is, you know, hitting the gross margin. So I think we're gonna continue to expand here, but the expansion is putting a little bit pressure on that. Not long term, but short term. What we also can see here is, as I said, there is a really, really strong demand from the market in all of our manufacturing sites.
Candy generally is strong in these times, and we're seeing some very nice orders and also requests from customers that want to produce with us. We have also started to note that, you know, our technology here, focusing on sugar reduction, is really starting to get known in other parts of the world. So we are getting a lot of interesting requests from manufacturers and brands that want the same sort of products that we can produce. And this has sort of been the goal from the start for this segment, for me, that we should be seen as the premium supplier of sugar-reduced candy, both with our own brands, but also in manufacturing B2B. So, I'm quite happy with where the segment is overall.
I think the profitability could be a bit stronger, but as long as we continue to grow like this, I think it's gonna have a bit of an impact, you know, launching into new markets. That's. It's quite expensive, but over time, as you have seen in the Swedish market, our brands are very, very profitable. We know it's gonna bring good earnings to the group. Sustainable Care segment is one of the real highlights for this quarter. Solent Group has done a fantastic quarter. They're really driving a lot of growth and profitability. We have also seen, The Humble Co. and Naty, two companies that historically have struggled a bit, they're actually back on profitability.
The Humble Co. back on growth in Q3, and Naty is actually looking to be back on growth for the first time in one and a half year now in October. So, I'm quite happy with the development in all of the businesses here, and we're continuing to deliver good products. For sure, this is a segment that has been hit hard by the price elasticity from the consumers, but I'm feeling now we're, hopefully, we've hit the bottom, and we can get back to some nice growth there. And if we do that, and since it's a very profitable segment, I think it's gonna be strong for the group as well.
In terms of Quality Nutritio n, I actually last week just came back from Australia visiting Body Science, the biggest company here in terms of profitability. Very interesting market, I have to say. We are gonna invest to grow there, and we have plans to bring several of our brands into this market. They also just launched an energy drink, which we have high hopes it will do well in that market. And we have a plan of expansion here, bringing them to Europe, which is due for the coming months here. So that's really interesting. I think also a little bit the same theme here as in Future Snacking . Both our powders and bars, you know, we have fantastic demand, but we need to see how we can keep up with that.
I think we're already quite set in the order book for 2024, and, of course, we would like to sell even more. So it's a lot of potential here, and we have a high focus to realize that potential. We've also, as I've said, historically, invested in the drink line. We hope that it's gonna be up and running in the beginning of next year. It's been some delays waiting for a few parts that we needed to order. We did also buy a really nice bar line down in Australia, which we think is a very, very good synergy because, you know, we sell more than 20 million bars this year with Body Science, and there, it's quite a good saving to bring some of that in-house, actually.
And this also is a nice way for us to share synergies. We've taken some recipes from Australia to our bottom manufacturing site here in Sweden, and we're doing the opposite. We're bringing some of our recipes here down there, which I think will be quite unique and standing strong in that market. We do see potential like this in the market generally, where there are a lot of nice companies going bankrupt because they have too high debt or something, and where we can buy the assets like we did. This is a state-of-the-art bar line, and we got it for, like, 30 cents on a dollar. So I think that's a really nice investment for us, and we're going to utilize it nicely.
And for the Nordic Distribution , I mean, this is a lower margin business. I think the gross margin is in line with the last year. So we can see quite a high representation of the sales, but lower of the profitability. Here we are doing some very interesting strategic projects to continue to take a wider grip of the Swedish market. We have also successfully integrated now Ystad in Privab Ystad into Privab Nyköping. We did Privab Stockholm last year, so we're gonna start seeing some synergies and benefits of that full integration. But also this segment has, as during the first part of the year, had some margin pressure because of the currency, and here is something that we hope that we can recover in the personal care companies within this segment.
So, so yeah, quite positive about this segment. We're continuing to grow, but, but the nature of it, of course, is not as high in, in profitability. Well, to start summarizing, the 2023 this far and, and the outlook, as I've said during the presentation, we have identified a lot of possibilities for consolidation and integration of, of some of the businesses. So this is some initiative that we are driving now, and we know that we will be able to reduce the cost, quite significantly in those smaller businesses that can be part of, of the bigger, companies that already have a good operation excellence. We also are working intensively to secure the, the capacity to produce, with the demand that is.
We have several projects that already has been ongoing from last year, so we will have additional capacity next year. But given that the growth in the market, I think we need to do even more. And as I said, we are being quite opportunistic. We bought the bar line, the drink line. We also bought a small bar brand in Denmark for True Gum, so hopefully we can launch a True Bar. We will see about that one. So there are a lot of possibilities coming up, and we are keeping our eyes out to see what we can do with that and if it fits the group. The work with working capital, it's still ongoing.
As I've said, not as good in this quarter, but I think there is further potential for the group generally, and it is gonna remain a high focus for us. I want to get our ratio for the net working capital at much better levels than it is today. So there is a lot of work to do there. And in addition to this, we have also done investments in central initiatives across the group. I think the BI platform that we've invested in during the last two years, we're starting to roll out nicely in the businesses, and we can already see that it's bringing good support to each local management.
We have also invested to be ready for the next steps in terms of the CSR, the compliance reporting next year, which is also, of course, important for all the companies. And then lastly, we are going to see how can we help the businesses even more, as I said, with pricing and procurement. We are working on those projects, but we really need to see how we can bring even larger scale, leveraging the full size of the group in those negotiations. So yeah, to round up things, I think Q3 has been a quite solid quarter. We deliver strong growth, we deliver good profitability. The gross margin improvement I was hoping for was not really there, but we have a lot of work doing to get back there.
I think going forward, we have a strong momentum in going into Q4. Let's continue to push this and deliver a good year. That's our target. Okay, let's open up for some Q&A. Do we have any questions coming in?
Yes, we do. For sure. We have a lot of questions here coming in, so I'm just try to read them through and then pick out the cherries. There are some questions about the capital structure and the refinancing of one-off costs. What can be said in terms of the new capital structure? Did we utilize everything? We said that we had SEK 1.6 million in new loans. Did we utilize all the loans?
No. I mean, if you look in our balance sheet, we have the SEK 1.35 million, which is the long-term loan, and that is utilized, and then we have an RCF for the rest, so, and that is not fully drawn. So, to answer your question, no, we haven't utilized everything.
Everything is not utilized. Okay, that's good. What about the, in terms of the, the one-time cost of refinancing?
I mean, we knew that when we were gonna do the redemption, that there would be cost, but you know, given the saving on the interest, you know, we recouped that in less than six months. So I think it's a really, really good activity for the group, and yeah, we've taken that cost. Our balance sheet now is fully consolidated with that. So going forward now, if we can deliver strong cash flow, we will actually continuously reduce the net debt of the group.
And, you mentioned it, but there is also some questions here looking into what can we expect in terms of interest expense going forward? We have SEK 55 million in the quarter. Is that what to expect forward or?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, the new interest cost is starting at 300 margin + STIBOR. So of course, that's, it's a big saving compared to last year and this year so far. But I would expect around just north of SEK 100 million. So it's around SEK 160 million annualized in savings.
Yeah. Between SEK 25 million and SEK 30 million per quarter going forward. Yeah. Also some questions about the gross margin and gross margin impact. You mentioned it, in terms of the ABC, analysis, especially about Future Snacking . Is there anything we can say more about the inventory optimization we've done?
I mean, we haven't really quantified the impact from those moves and sellouts. But given that we still keep the levels that we did in Q2, and I know that we have moved at least four warehouses and stock during the period, it would have been a strong gross margin if we wouldn't have done that. But I'm sorry I don't have the exact number in front of me, how much it impacted us negatively. But you know, if we have that opportunity, we are investing long-term.
So if we have an opportunity to do that move, and we sell out some bad stock, and we will have higher focus on more profitable and higher rotation product, we will do that because we are looking to really hit the gross margin long term, and that's the way to get there.
I think you just replied, well, next question. Someone asking about what we can expect going forward, and of course, gross margin improvement is one key focus for us to continue to work with.
Yeah I mean, as I said, in the coming years, we are gonna get back to 35%. That has been the clear target for us, but I don't want to guide on the periods, if it's gonna take three or five years to get there. But I know it's possible. I know that's where the businesses has been historically, and we shouldn't forget many of our companies, they've been doing this for more than 20 years. So when I talk to the entrepreneurs, I trust that they know what they're doing. And, you know, the last two years has been extraordinary, but I mean, it is our highest focus. If we can get back that gross margin and continue to grow like we do, it's gonna be very positive for the earnings.
Just scrolling around the all of the questions. There is one question also, or several people asking about if we can say something about the work with the listing process on Nasdaq.
I mean, we are ready for it, and all I can say is it's a, it's a decision for the board. I mean, but now our focus is fully to continue to improve the operations and the cash flow in the group. That's my main target.
That's great. Just trying to see if there's anything else. Yeah, someone asking about the real estate, the property sale that we've, yeah, talked about in the letter of intent.
Yeah. All I can say is the same as we communicated last time.
Yeah. I think we've covered the most of the big briefs. There were actually very, very many questions this time. It's good to see.
Well, thank you all for listening in, and if you have any further questions, feel free to send an email. Have a fantastic day. Thank you.
Thank you.