Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nobia Q3 Report 2021. Through the call, all participants will be in listen only mode, and afterwards there will be a Q&A session. Today, I am pleased to present Tobias Norrby, Head of IR. Please go ahead with your meeting.
Thank you and good morning, everyone, and thank you all for calling in to this Nobia Q3 2021 results presentation. We will follow the usual format over here, which means our President, Mr. Jon Sintorn, will begin with an overview of the quarter before our CFO, Mr. Ljungfelt, digs into some of the financial details. With that, I hand the word over to you, Jon.
Thank you, Tobias. Again, good morning and welcome everybody to the Q3 report session. Let's start on page two, slide number two, highlights for the third quarter. Let me start on a very positive note with the strong and good performance that we've had in the Nordics and Central Europe. However, the performance in the U.K. was more mixed, where we had continued growth in the trade segment, while retail and project sales were below the pre-pandemic levels. We experienced, as many industries, a challenging supply chain in the kitchen industry as well, where direct material cost inflation and availability have been challenging in the quarter. As a consequence, we have increased prices to customers to compensate for the direct material price inflation. We have a solid balance sheet for investment in future growth and efficiency improvements.
Those were the main topic highlights for the third quarter. If we turn the page and going into the next slide number three, an overview of the kitchen market development, we can see that in the Nordics, the stay-at-home trend, solid housing markets and consumer confidence continues to support retail sales. We also have a stable business-to-business demand driven by the housing construction activity, and especially Denmark has been very strong, Norway, slightly softer. If we look into the U.K., the traction that we had from the second quarter did not continue, so it's a slower than anticipated recovery in the retail/consumer segment, and the London project market and social housing market remain weak. If we look into the Central Europe region, there was a strong consumer demand supported by the stay-at-home trend.
Housing shortage in the Netherlands supports new construction and B2B sales, which is obviously good for our business operations. You can see there are, let's call it evidence or suggest that we are taking market share in Austria. If we continue to the next slide number four, we'll spend a few moments on the direct material pricing impact. Our industry as well have seen significant upward pressure on direct material cost and components. We've had a lot of work and everyday struggle in the supply chain, making sure that we have availability for certain components. But as a consequence, we've also seen longer lead times. It has been a tough job.
All our factories been able to operate and deliver in the course of the quarter, and we foresee that we will be able to do that going forward as well. It comes with a lot of hard work, and as I said, a lot of everyday struggle. We have adjusted prices to our customers, and we are expecting effect from this quarter, Q4. This quarter, Q4 of this year, where we will have a compensation for the lion's share of the price inflation, but not fully covered. With that said, going into the Q1, we estimate or we forecast that we will be fully covered on this price inflation, given the situation remains at a similar situation as we have today. That was on direct material, slide number four. Going forward to slide number five.
With these events and highlights and activities, we can see that in the P&L, where we have organic net sales increase of 3%, rendering net sales of SEK 3.215 billion. That was driven by high single digit growth in the Nordics and Central Europe, an overall decline in region U.K., and then obviously the price increases that I just mentioned. As a consequence of that, we can see the EBIT improve to SEK 228 million compared to SEK 195 million of last year's third quarter, and the EBIT margin increased to 7.1% compared to the 6.3% we saw third quarter of 2020. Moving on to slide number 6.
In addition to running our business every day, making sure that we deliver to our customers and sell nice, beautiful kitchens every day to consumers, trade and projects. We continue to work and deliver on our Tomorrow Together strategy. A few highlights from this quarter is that we continue to do well and have traction in the trade segment. We're catapulting trade growth in the trade segment in the U.K. We worked on revitalize consumer retail, where I'd like to mention that our campaign with colors for Marbodal has continued to do really well. There is a big demand for that product range. We're also doing really well, for example, in Denmark, in the retail segment.
Our sustainability and design leadership ambition, I'm pleased to see that the Nordic Nature concept now has reached a big number of stores. Also in the digital and data space, we have renewed our web, for example, in the U.K. and enhanced our digital experience capabilities as well. Moving on to structural efficiency initiatives. I'll in a second get back to the manufacturing footprint transformation, talk about our new factory. Before that, I'm pleased to say that our product platform alignment K2020 project is running according to plan, which will optimize in a better way our platforms and deepen our range, making it even more attractive to buy products from us.
Also, the business process harmonization is going according to plan, which is obviously really important and vital on the back of being preparing for the new factory. Good job in terms of getting the Nordic region working closely together for optimizing the processes. In terms of people engagement, a year ago we launched a new organization, and I'm also pleased to see that we reached next level or deeper in the U.K. organization, specifically around the retail team, which is now being renewed, so we can take on that challenge and opportunity in an even better way. We also added some new competencies that we need in order to continue to do really well on our Tomorrow Together strategy.
Those were a few words on the overall situation with our strategy, which is obviously very exciting to work with and on. Moving on then to slide number 7. There is a slide from the Capital Markets Day depicting the new factory that we are building in Jönköping. Obviously a big undertaking for the company and a big investment for us. Obviously really important. With that said, also pleased to say that we are progressing according to plan. To recap a little bit, we have a machine park investment budget of SEK 2 billion, which we are meeting. We will not go beyond that. We have a project cost budget of SEK 200 million, which we also are on par with or in line with, I should say.
We have the building of SEK 1.5 billion, where our main strategy for that is to sell and lease back, which we also are working on. There is write-down in non-cash of SEK 100 million. All of that, we now have started the construction, and we have, you know, tiling and starting to pour cement to build the platform. We will ramp up production second half of 2023, and we'll be up in full operations, not full capacity. Obviously, we'll not fill the capacity day one, but we will be able to to run full-scale manufacturing in the course of the first half of 2024. All of that as of now running according to plan, where building work obviously being really important, but also machinery sourcing, purchasing for those machines with the longest lead time.
This factory will render SEK 300 million run rate saving on the back of the productivity and higher efficiency that this modern factory of highly automated with a nice sustainability footprint will render. At least half a billion, SEK 500 million, we calculate the value of the capacity increase, meaning if we would fill the factory, if we would have sales to fully fit the factory, that would at least render SEK 500 million, say, value. Those were a few words with regards to our new factory in Jönköping, to be built in Jönköping. With that, I hand over to you, Kristoffer.
Thank you, Jon. We move over to slide number eight, where I will shed some more light on the development in the different markets. We're starting with Denmark, with 23% of our sales. We continue to see very good momentum in Q3, with growth of 10%, driven both by retail, up double digits, and product sales up high single digits. The market in Denmark has been strong for a long time, and we also see strong performance from our new product launches and believe that we continue to take share on the back of that and the strong team in Denmark. Sweden, 13% of sales, also had a strong momentum in the quarter, especially in product sales, which grew double digits. Consumer retail was flat in the quarter, but mainly due to capacity constraints that we have now to deliver on painted products.
Coming back to the consumer campaign for Marbodal, the Jordnära färger, or Earth Colors, I guess, would be the translation. That campaign continued to trade well, but again, constraints on our ability to paint has been increasingly difficult in the quarter. We are now working intensively to get access to more capacity for painted parts. I believe it will take until the end of the year before we find appropriate solutions for that. In Norway, 10% of sales, it has been relatively soft after the easing of COVID restrictions. Decline both in product market and consumer market in the quarter. However, judging by the housing starts, we believe the product market will recover in Norway by first quarter of next year. We are, as we have stated before, not that concerned about the Norwegian market and believe that the decline is temporary.
In Finland, 6% of our sales, we have seen some recovery of the product market in the quarter, which is promising after a couple of years with declining market in the product segment. Retail also in Finland continues to perform very well in the quarter with double-digit growth. We look then at Central Europe and Netherlands and Austria. We had another good sales period in the quarter, with the Netherlands growing high single-digit. Austria was growing low single-digit, but we also have to keep in mind that the factory was fully open the entire Q3 last year, whereas, Well, they took out vacation earlier in the year due to the pandemic. Moving over to U.K., which constitutes 37% of our sales.
To the right here, you see that we are breaking it down a little bit different to highlight our Magnet brand performance and the push we're doing in the Magnet brand. We start with Magnet Trade, 29% of sales. We performed well in the quarter, double-digit growth compared to same period both last year and 2019. However, as Jon was alluding to, the growth was slowing somewhat from the trajectory we had in Q2, and we also start to meet tougher comparables in this area. Magnet Retail is also 29% of sales in the U.K. We expect to have much better momentum than we had in the quarter. We believe the market was soft compared to last year and compared to 2019 as well.
Having said that, we are still not satisfied really with the performance in retail, which declined single-digit compared to last year. I will shed a little bit more light on that as well later on here. Product sales have been very difficult for us and has not recovered after the pandemic. We've seen sales decline in this segment close to 40%, which is the result of very low activity in the high-end property market in London and low activity in the social housing segment across the U.K. We believe it will take another six months before this market starts to trend better. Of course, our factories to these segments are running much below capacity and negatively impact our margin. We are working hard to adjust the cost base for this. Some extra information about our Benchmarx business.
After the Wickes demerger from Travis Perkins, and following our strategic initiative to exit unprofitable business, we have decided to exit the Travis Perkins kitchen branch Benchmarx. That resulted in a net sales decline of SEK 80 million in the quarter, but contributed positively to the UK profit margin. Rolling 12 months, Nobia sales to Benchmarx is roughly 4%, as you can see, of the sales in the U.K., that is, which equals to roughly SEK 220 million, evenly distributed over the quarters.
We will now turn our focus to Wickes business, where we see a strong growth potential, and as a result, we have recently signed a five-year supply agreement with them. To shed some more light on the Nordic region, again, net sales increased 8%, Denmark and Sweden driving growth, strong demand for painted kitchens, and a trend shift in the product market in Finland. We also sell at higher order values and have a favorable mix due to strong retail development, which is driving gross margin to some extent. Cost for direct material increased during the quarter, which we will price out to the market, however, with a time lag, and we believe most of it will be covered in Q4, but definitely all of it by Q1 next year.
Important to note is that our SG&A cost position was lower in the second half of last year due to our furlough contributions and cost-cutting activities following the lockdowns. As a result, we have slightly higher cost base during the second half of 2021. These two effects combined impact our drop-through. As you can see from EBIT margin that came in slightly below last year despite the volume growth. However, we are quite content with the EBIT of SEK 196, given the circumstances on the direct material. Next slide, please. Slide number 10, that is, on the U.K. Organic net sales down 4%, growth in Magnet Trade, retail sales below last year in 2019, and then, a big drop in construction in London and social housing. Benchmarx, if we adjust for Benchmarx, the organic sales would have been 1% positive.
As Jon stated earlier, we have a new team in place in Magnet Retail, and to drive the proposition and make these investment that Jon was alluding to before in digital and in the product, we did spend a little bit money in investment in those areas. We will also continue to invest in Magnet in front of the winter sales period, which starts after Christmas, which will then drive slightly higher cost than previous years. Gross margin improvement of almost eight percentage points was a result of better mix as we grew Magnet. We've also been successful in raising prices sufficiently to cover for the direct material increases for Q4. However, the jury is still out how the market will respond to the higher pricing, which might require adjustments throughout the quarter.
I'd just like to add here also that structurally, our order book in the U.K. is somewhat shorter than in the Nordics and Central Europe, and thus it's been easier to get the pricing effect earlier than in the Nordics and Central Europe. Organic net sales growth of 7%. Again, strong demand in Austria and good demand in social housing and new housing investments in Netherlands. And some gross margin decline due to the higher raw material impact, whereas the price increases have not taken place yet in those areas. However, a good EBIT of SEK 34 million with over 10% EBIT margin. Let's flick over to the financial position. We had an operating cash flow of SEK 123 million in the quarter.
We have done some major investment then in the factory in Jönköping that is starting to come through in the quarter. Last year was also impacted by governmental support, and you can see in our change of working capital that it's negative due to these effects. Having said that, we have a very strong balance sheet with a financial net debt of SEK 153 million, and feel that we have a very good position to make these bigger investments now for the strategic plan and not the least, the factory in Jönköping. Jon, I hand over to you again for the summary.
Thank you. Well, reiterating where we started, we've had a strong and a good performance in the Nordics, in Central Europe, and in trade in the U.K., whereas the retail and project performance in the U.K. was softer. We've had a challenging supply chain situation with prolonged lead times, but we've managed to get material in even though it's been more difficult, and not least the direct material cost inflation has had an impact. We have implemented price increases to our customers to compensate for that direct material price increase, where the lion's share of that will be covered during the Q4 and fully at Q1. We have a solid balance sheet for investments in future growth and efficiency improvements, and we mentioned
A few of those exciting initiatives that we are currently running in addition to running our everyday sell, sell, deliver, deliver to our customers. With that, thank you very much, and it's time for Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. We already have one question from Victor Hansen from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Jon and Kristoffer. Victor here from Nordea. My first question, on your organic sales growth, if you could please specify how much is volume and how much is price hikes?
We don't like to go into the detail of how the organic growth is distributed between those.
Okay. On the next question. On structural efficiencies, Jon, you mentioned that they are going according to plan. Could you please try to quantify how much it added to EBIT now versus last year? Or if you have any other color to add on this.
Oh, no. I was referring to structural efficiency initiative for our strategies predominantly related to the new factory that we built.
Okay, no EBIT impact?
For this quarter in general, not anything significant that's worth mentioning in this quarter.
Okay. A follow-up, because you mentioned on the CMD, you said SEK 200 million in sourcing due to efficiencies across the group. Have you seen any of this yet since the CMD, or when do you expect this to come? Are they front or back-end loaded?
We continue obviously to run the program on getting the direct material cost down. We can see savings from the value engineering that we do, that we get cost out, and the K2020 platform is significantly contributed to those savings that we expect. That's trading according to plans. However, given current circumstances in terms of direct material input cost, of course it's very difficult, but the underlying cost has gone up so much that, of course, these savings are not coming through, or they compensated for the direct material input cost, so to say. There's still a lot to be had in that.
Yeah. On the very strong gross margin in the U.K., you did provide some flavor in this. You mentioned mix effects and price hikes. Could you please elaborate on how sustainable you expect this to be? You mentioned, for instance-
So, um-
Weak efficiency in social housing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Could it be-
No, yeah, I can shed some more light on that. Our product sales in the UK has a quite low gross margin with also low cost to serve, while the Magnet business has a considerably higher gross margin, but also a much higher cost to serve, and especially so in retail. The more we can grow with Magnet Retail, the better the gross margin will be, but also the SG&A will go up slightly. Thereafter is trade, and then product sales has by far the lowest gross margin. Having said that, we still believe that when we get volume through our Magnet business, we will be able to retain good and solid gross margins.
Of course, we're also pushing for the product sales to come back as we've been hurt by the very weak market there.
I understand it's a complex question, but could you provide any flavor on how large the hit actually was from the external costs and the direct material pressure from within your supply chain now in Q3?
It's hard to put an exact number on that, and it's different from region to region as well. But there is a significant price increase that is captured in the P&L for that. Again, we saw some of the mitigating price increases or compensating price increases come through towards the end of Q3, very little, but we see them come through quite a bit now in Q4. Back to your previous question on top line, part of the top-line growth would absolutely be based on price, and it was not that much based on on volume.
Okay. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have another question from [Småbord] from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, Jon and Kristoffer. First off, a question on the U.K. Clearly softer performance than you guys were planning for. Perhaps if you can tell us something about what you're seeing with regards to ordering trends. Are consumers canceling orders or as sort of order intake is often as installation capacity has been a bottleneck for you?
No, we don't see any canceling of orders. Our order book has been a bit, let's call it delayed or pushed into the future on the back of installation scarcity and you've all read in the newspapers, drivers and petrol and those sorts of things. The market as such was a bit softer than we anticipated on the back of the traction we had from the second quarter, so that's another reason. On top of that, we also now enhancing and putting more combination of investments and skills into the specifically the retail segment where we have an opportunity to do even better.
All right. When it comes to the split between trade and retail particularly, I mean, my guess would've been that trade as well would've been impacted by lack of installation capacity, transportation and so on. Maybe you can shed some more light on how you're able to grow substantially in trade while the retail business declines?
Well, then if I start first, there is we've done quite a few things the recent years in order to strengthen our proposition in trade, and that is paying off, where we have, you know, the underlying momentum in that area is better for us. That's one. There is probably a slight flow from consumer or retail to the trade because of the availability or scarcity of the tradesman, where we have this professional network of or connection with carpenters. This probably is maybe not huge, but at least some stream of consumers ending up in the trade segment, so to speak, because of this situation. The tradesman is more, you know, it's his or her living to.
In his job, whereas the consumer, it's the appetite for going out shopping and doing retailing is lesser from the consumer perspective. It's more easy for them to wait, so to speak, rather than for the tradesman. Those are a couple of explanations.
Sure. That makes a lot of sense. On the K2020 platform, you mentioned it's progressing according to plan. Perhaps if you can provide us with an update on where we are in that transformation.
Yeah. Of course, much of it, the full platform will be suited for the new factory. We are also setting up a platform that will be optimized to go with our new factory, so then it would be 100% completed. Right now we are implementing parts of the K2020 platform across all our Nordic brands. We are, let's say, not halfway there, but close to halfway there. Again, we can see some benefits coming through in this, that we get the reduction in SKU counts, but at the same time, get actually a bigger assortment for our brands.
Outside the Nordics, especially in the U.K. where you've had some, I guess, issues with when it comes to capacity of filling factories, if you could update us on the progress you're making with the platform in the U.K. as well.
The K2020 platform is foremost the Nordic platform. In the U.K. we're still on the K2020 platform, but we are taking elements from the K2020 platform and move them into U.K. What-
Rixonway is now on K2020, it did not used to be.
Yeah.
Which is one step forward.
We've been a little bit ahead in the Nordics to move over to the K 20 platform, which is the predecessor of the K 2020 platform, and therefore it's been easier to move over in the Nordics first. There will be additional benefits when we can do this journey also in the U.K. Regarding the capacity in the factories in the U.K., I mean, that we're working, as I said, very hard to get the cost base down. We're coping with the situation, but of course we at the same time expect the market to come back within six months or so. We need to keep the skeleton crews there as we have it now.
Thanks a lot for that color. Maybe when it comes to the capacity in the U.K. and the cost savings you're looking to do that, perhaps if you can give us some sense of what types of initiatives it is that you're looking for.
For capacity in the U.K.?
Yeah, for reducing the cost base in the U.K.
It's foremost the reduction of manning, obviously on the back of lower volume. It's also moving production from different sites depending on their key skills and the type of products that are being manufactured. We have moved some of the manufacturing from our Rixonway factory over to Darlington as an example.
Uh.
I think it's fair to add to this. It's fair to add that we are still confident that we will get the project business back at some point in time here. It's not something that we at all are considering to make huge adjustment to before we get the project business back. As you know, also, we have Magnet selling into the project segment where we're also making investments for when demand starts to pick up, we should be able to deliver to the higher project demand also with the Magnet brand. It is still an important business for us.
Okay, thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. One last reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question to our speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Well, it seems that we have no further question.
Okay. Dan, thank you very much. That's it for this time, and welcome back on first of February for the Q4 numbers. Thank you.
Thank you.