Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Q3 2022 report of Loomis AB. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session, and if you would like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star and one on your telephone keypad. Please press star followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Aritz Larrea, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the third quarter presentation for Loomis. My name is Aritz Larrea, and I'm the President and CEO of Loomis. With me here today, I have Kristian Ackeby, our CFO, and Jenny Boström, our Head of Investor Relations. I will give a short overview of the third quarter and then open up for questions. Let's start the presentation by turning to slide three, market trends. Our strong performance continued during the third quarter despite the current economic uncertainties. We have seen volumes coming back after the pandemic lockdowns, and our revenues are increasing in every country we operate in. Retail sales keep growing, and we still see a resilient consumer who continues to spend.
We have commented in the past quarters and in our last Capital Markets Day on how important outsourcing is for our future growth, both from a retail and a financial institution perspective. The outsourcing trend has continued this quarter, where our Automated Solutions business shows continued strong organic growth. With the easing and lifting of travel restrictions, international tourism continued to show strong signs of recovery, positively impacting our FX business. Although the tourism sector is not back to pre-pandemic levels, our FX business has fully recovered, and we expect there to be new revenue growth opportunities as the sector recovers. As we have proven, Loomis has a strong history of navigating macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties. The basic need for cash and payment solutions is vital in our society, and here Loomis has a central role in the payment ecosystem.
Let's move on to the next page, where we have the highlights for the quarter. This has been the best quarter ever for Loomis. When it comes to revenue, we had all-time high figures with SEK 6.7 billion. This is mainly supported by continued strong organic growth and, in addition, also favorable currency movements, primarily driven by a strong US dollar versus a Swedish krona. Organic growth keeps showing strong with 15.5% in the quarter. As I mentioned, open societies and increased travel have supported our growth. It has been our fourth consecutive quarter with higher organic revenue than pre-pandemic. From a revenue perspective, it is clear that we now have the pandemic behind us. When it comes to the operating margin, this reached 12.5%. We see that the increased volumes and the efficiency measures initiated during the pandemic are paying off.
In the third quarter, we also have a positive seasonality impact from the European segment. Our cash conversion is at 108% for the quarter, 87% year to date. Despite the increase in accounts receivable due to our strong growth this year, we have been able to offset it with other measures. As announced earlier this year, Björn Züger was appointed President and CEO for Loomis U.S. and took office during the third quarter. We continued repurchasing our shares during the quarter, and now the board announced a new mandate to continue acquiring shares during the fourth quarter. Let's turn to the next page. Here we can see how revenue and margin have developed over time. Regarding revenue, we can see in the chart how we are well above pre-pandemic levels.
Compared to the prior year, we have had more than 31% growth, and half of that is organic growth. Margin-wise, we have improved our margin with 110 basis points compared to the prior year, which brings it up to 13.1%, excluding Loomis Pay, which is overall in line with pre-pandemic levels. This despite the headwind we currently face with high employee turnover and supply chain issues. Turning to the next page and starting with the segments, we start with Europe and LatAm. The positive trend in Europe and Latin America continues. We have had a strong quarter, both revenue and margin-wise. Regarding revenue, we were SEK 3.25 billion, with organic growth of 16.4%, with strong development in all countries. This segment is now back at pre-pandemic levels.
The operating margin is at 13.4%, supported mainly by the increase in volumes and tourism, but also due to the measures taken during the pandemic to optimize the infrastructure. Turning to the next page and focusing on the trend of both revenue and margin, we see that the reported growth was at 20.7% when looking at the top line trend, and the vast majority is organic growth. We have seen the recovery expanding monthly when societies have been opened. Regarding the operating margin, despite the impact of inflation and supply chain issues, we have increased by 2.3 percentage points year-over-year, bringing it up to 13.4%. This improvement has been possible thanks to the strong revenue growth and the efficiency plans we have in place. Let's turn to the next page over to the U.S.
The strong momentum continues in the US business. Revenue was at SEK 3.5 billion, with ATM and SafePoint representing close to 43% of our revenue. Organic growth was at 15.2% in the quarter, with our Automated Solutions business growing above 20% compared to all-time high numbers in the prior year. As we mentioned in our previous quarterly presentations, the US market labor shortages and supply chain issues impacted our margins during the first semester of the year. We were confident that once the US labor market improved, we were going to be able to increase our operating margins. This quarter, our operating margin was at 13.8%, showing an improvement versus the second quarter of 2022.
Although we see improvements in the labor market, we're still facing a high turnover in the U.S., which requires an extraordinary effort to continue recruiting and training new employees to continue providing high-quality service. Turning to the next page and focusing on the trend of both revenue and margin, we see the exceptional US business revenue trend during the last two years. We had a high FX impact again, but we are at all-time high revenue even in local currency. Loomis U.S. only showed negative organic growth in the second and third quarter of 2020. All other quarters have recorded positive organic growth. We keep working on efficiency, and although the supply chain issues we suffered have impacted our efficiency plans, we expect margins to continue improving in the last quarter of the year. Let's turn to the next page and talk about Loomis Pay.
Transaction volumes keep increasing in Loomis Pay in our existing markets. We continue to move ahead in building the sales organization in the countries we have launched to support further growth. We continue investing money, time, and effort into the Loomis Pay platform to adapt it to the local markets we launch. As we mentioned in our previous quarter results presentation, we have started to pilot the solution in Spain, a country with a great potential in the SME market. We can already say that the biggest customer we have signed so far in Loomis Pay is a Spanish customer. This shows the potential that the Spanish market can have for us. We expect the official launch in Spain in Q4. Turning to the next slide, we see our continued initiatives for a sustainable business.
We continue lowering Loomis' carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels by introducing more sustainable vehicles and optimizing our routes. We added new electric vehicles on the road in the third quarter despite the supply chain issues, and more vehicles will be added during Q4. We do see that the supply chain issues that impacted our business in the past are easing, and this will allow us not only to reduce the carbon footprint, but also complement the efficiency programs we have in place. To support the safety of our employees, we're also investing in vehicles with additional safety features, thus keeping them safer from traffic and helping them avoid collisions and impacting others. During this quarter, we have also updated and rolled out our code of conduct and anti-bribery training, which is part of our annual update.
Let's turn to the income statement slide, highlighting the net financial items and monetary losses due to hyperinflation adjustments in both Turkey and Argentina. I would also mention here that earnings per share of 6.9 SEK are the highest in a single quarter. Moving on to our last slide, I want to summarize the quarter's highlights. To summarize, all-time high revenue and operating profit in this quarter. Great organic growth, both in Europe and the U.S. Significant increase in our operating margins brings us close to the all-time high margin we had in 2019 third quarter, despite the challenging market environment. I'm through with my presentation, so we can turn to Q&A. Operator, we are now open to questions, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier with DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Aritz Larrea and Kristian Ackeby. Just starting off with the employee turnover and supply chain challenges that you mentioned. It would be great to have an understanding which markets you feel the biggest say pressure on these kind of things for the moment, and how you see it might be easing going into Q4 and then to 2023.
Yeah. When it comes to supply chain issues, mainly it's the U.S., and it's mainly related to vehicles. We haven't been able to acquire as many vehicles as we needed, and this has slowed obviously the process of optimizing labor costs and routes, and that impacts our margins. When it comes to staffing, although the pattern changed in the U.S., what we see now is we have people in the pipeline, but the problem is turnover is still high. We're talking about Austria, Switzerland, and a little bit in France as well.
I remember after the Q2, you mentioned that you were forced basically in the U.S. to say no to a lot of new business because you had this staffing problem also then, and saw the pipeline opportunity, I guess. Surprised to see how strong organic growth you still managed to create in the U.S. Do you see it easing from that perspective that you're able to take on more new business? Or it's still the question of, say, old customers doing more with you rather than taking on new?
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is easing, and we can see that, as you say, when we look at the organic growth in the U.S. We're not where we would like to be yet when it comes to the staffing. If it gets better, that organic growth could even be higher. I mean, we've got a lot of customers waiting for us to be able to provide services to them. As things get better, I'm sure that we will keep growing the US market.
When you look at Loomis Pay in Spain, it sounds very promising. How quickly can you develop it in Spain, do you think? I guess you have a good market position in Spain in your traditional business. Is that something that could maybe allow you to drive it quicker in a slightly less developed market than we have seen in the Nordics?
The pilot in Spain is progressing according to plan. As we said, we are prepared to launch before the end of the year. However, we do not expect any significant revenue in the near term. The product is ready, the adaption to the Spanish market is also there. We still see a huge potential there. We need time to build the sales team in order to get future growth there.
Finally, on SafePoint US, keeping growth at 20%+ organic, it still sounds like you have a good new placing, so to say, of equipment out there. Is there any change in the clients that you managed to attract to the system these days, compared to previously? Or is it still a broad-based kind of setup?
We don't see any change there. Then the only thing in the U.S. is we keep on developing new products and new solutions for merchants to make their life easier. It's not just talking about the SafePoint. We've got other products that we're launching also in the U.S., and that will continue. The trend will continue the same.
Just one more as well. We've seen one of your larger competitors going more into ATM management and acquiring a couple of ATM companies of late. Would any of those have been of interest for you, or would that be going into too much of a hardware kind of setup?
No. I mean, we have also been looking at those targets. We're always interested in that, but we based everything on the return on investment that we do. We are still interested in those type of businesses. We're interested in the ATM business in both the U.S. and in Europe. We'll keep pushing to try and get those type of acquisitions done as well.
Looking at those targets they acquired, none of those were, say, business partners of yours, so to say, so you might risk losing volumes?
No. On the contrary, no, none of them were our customers. The good news there is, I mean, we see that our competitors also are looking into growing in countries where we are present, like the U.K., and I mean, that always, it's always good, I mean, to have them investing in countries where they were heavily impacted by the pandemic. We're not back to pre-pandemic levels there yet, but we see that there's confidence, not just from us, but from our competitors as well.
Thank you very much. I'll walk back in the queue.
Thank you.
If there are any further questions, please press star followed by one. At this time, the next question is from the line of [Kate Carpenter] with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to circle back on some of the labor challenges. Has there been any shift in your recruiting and retention strategy in the U.S. just to address some of these headwinds? Such as, like, are you providing any additional incentives or employee benefits? With the shift to electric vehicles in the fleet, how should we think about your cost profile going forward? Would there be similar pass-through mechanisms like the fuel surcharge that you have on your US contracts? Thanks.
When it comes to the retention and recruiting in the U.S., we spoke about this in the past quarters as well. The first measure is to increase wages, and we have increased wages both, I think, for the last three years in the U.S. On top of that, we did come up with new benefits for the employees, and we were also looking at shifting from a five-day workweek to a four-day workweek to make work life more compatible with the personal one. When it comes to the electric vehicles, we're still talking about a small percentage of all the fleet that we have in the U.S.
Coming back to the fuel, we are very comfortable with the fuel fee matrix that we have in our contracts, and again, that has no impact. It just washes the increasing cost that we're having. Of course, I mean, moving on to more electric vehicles within our fleet, that's our purpose, and that's what we're going to pursue, not just in the U.S., but also in the European countries as well.
Got it. Just in terms of the
Breakdown within organic growth, quite strong numbers there. I was just wondering if you could provide some more color around maybe the split between volume pricing. You've broken out fuel for the U.S., but also then in Europe, you know, any impact from hyperinflation?
Yeah. Let's talk first about the U.S. In the U.S. when you talk about volume, price and fuel, all three areas contribute to the growth. Regarding price, short-term increases are mainly to offset the salary inflation, since fuel is charged separately and wages are approximately 50% of the cost structure. Fuel costs, I talked to you before, have increased from 3%-4% of the revenue, and that gives you an indication about that number. Then taking these two into consideration, volume is still an important factor in our growth. When it comes to Europe, it's a different situation. When we started the year, inflation was very low. It was not as high as it is today, and that's when we primarily do the mainly price increases of the year.
We've had a big cost increase during 2022, and now we'll have to wait for beginning of 2023 to be able to transfer part of those costs to our customers.
Perfect. Thank you.
As a reminder, that's star followed by one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Viktor Lindeberg with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you. A couple of questions from my side. Starting on Sweden. It seems Sweden is actually developing quite okay, even though it's a small market. I think it's interesting to see given the digitalized society in Sweden not using that much cash. It seems revenue is actually picking up and hovering not far from pre-pandemic levels. Maybe can you tell us a bit about any initiatives you're taking there, or is it the market changing in light of geopolitical uncertainty or whatnot? Any color on that would be interesting to hear. Maybe on Loomis Pay, the losses are also narrowing now.
Is this because you've had the big bump in the development cost, or is it slower marketing costs in the Nordics now, while maybe waiting for a bigger launch in Spain that may add to the losses also going forward? Any color on how we should think about Loomis Pay bottom line trends would be also appreciated. Those are my first two. Thanks.
Okay. When we're focusing on the Nordics, I think you're spot on. The only main change is that it's good to see that we see ongoing discussions about around the availability and acceptance of cash in the Nordic countries, and that's really good for us. It's been our third consecutive quarter with organic growth in Sweden, and we're very happy about that. Coming down to the Loomis Pay, every time we launch in a country, we're gonna see a cost increasing. It's both based on the getting the sales team in place, but also continue developing ad hoc solutions that those countries need.
We will see costs increasing again, but then hopefully next year we'll start seeing revenue coming in from the Spanish launch as well.
All right. Following up on SafePoint in Europe, can you tell us a bit on the commercial development there? Is the pipeline developing as planned? It seems revenue is largely flattish compared to, in relative terms, to the overall segment. Just curious to see given this is a high priority area for you.
It is. SafePoint business in Europe is growing. However, when comparing numbers, I mean, we will not see the same fast development in Europe as we see in the U.S., and we've commented around that before. Because in Europe, most of our SafePoint potential customers are already our customers. In Europe, the outsourcing of cash started earlier and most merchants are already Loomis customers. The thing here is, I think now with the launch of the Loomis Pay, that would also accelerate the automated solutions in those countries. Labor shortage is also there. Interest rates are increasing, and I think all that is beneficial for us commercializing the automated solutions for the retailers as well.
All right. Thanks. I'll get back in line.
We have a follow-up question from Karl-Johan Bonnevier with DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, Aritz, I heard you mention in your earlier speech, so to say, about the opportunity in taking the FX distribution to the next level now that you feel that you are back to the level where you should be. What kind of opportunities do you see there?
I think it's mainly our FX business today is B2B, and our idea there is to step into the B2C part of the FX business. There's a huge opportunity there, and it's growing really strong as well. With all travel and tourism coming back, and it's not back fully yet, but with all of it coming back, I think it's gonna be really a nice growth opportunity in the future.
Which markets would be most interesting to start in?
We don't disclose those things.
Oh, okay. No, sorry. I don't want to get into competitive sensitive things. I also noticed that your the international business seems to be doing very well for the moment. What is driving that? Have you entered new agreements somewhere, or what's happening?
No, I mean, when it comes to international, I think it has to do with the economic uncertainty that we have today. There's nothing special or anything new that we have developed. Probably if we want to highlight something, I think the storage business has increased in the U.S. compared to prior years, but nothing special there to comment.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
There are no further questions registered at this time. I would like to hand back to Aritz Larrea for closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening in. All great questions. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.