Good morning. Welcome to Polygiene's presentation of the fourth quarter. My name is Ulrika Björk. I'm the CEO. Here by my side is Niklas, the CFO. We will continue for 45 minutes. As usual, we will have some financial updates. I will present some highlights from the quarter. Then we will end with a Q&A. Niklas, will you start with the numbers?
Yes. If we then start with the financial overview of the fourth quarter, what we can see is that the sale was in line with 2021 if we include a 10% FX impact. It's also been in line with Q3 sales this year, and historically, Q4 has been lower than Q3 sales. The adjusted gross margin was 67.3% versus 67.9% last year.
We have taken out a non-recurring cost for inventory adjustment that belongs to previous periods. We have continued to invest in people, in marketing. With that said, we have also been running a restructuring program during Q4, and four people left during December. In January, another two people left, so if we would compare Q4 to Q1, we are 12% less employees in Q1 versus Q4.
Total non-recurring cost is SEK 3.7 million, where SEK 1 million is the inventory adjustment, SEK 1.8 million is related to the redundancy, SEK 900,000 is supporting cost for the process of doing the redundancy, supporting the acquisition of BioMaster and also the cost for ending a customer contract. The adjusted EBITDA margin is 4.8% versus 10.9% in 2021.
During the period, we had a negative cash flow, a significant part of that was investments in BioMaster, product development, marketing, and also in IT. If we would look on the sales, and look on the share of the sales for Q4, we can see that Polygiene Freshness was 47% of the total, while Protection was 53%. Last year, the split was 50/50.
We then go a little bit more in detail on sales, we can still see that the overall purchase power has impacted sales, especially in the consumer goods. We can see that in our Freshness sales, mainly in Americas, where we see a drop in sales versus last year in the category sport and outdoor. EMEA and APAC as a total for the company are showing a small growth.
There is also a small recovery in the distribution sales in Q4 versus last year. It's not compensating for the low Q3 we had versus last year. More details then on the P&L. As you can see, we had a gross margin of 64.9%. The adjusted was 67.3% versus 67.9% last year. Operating costs increased with 21%, up to 27.8 million SEK.
We have included the minus 2.7 million of non-recurring cost. We also see an increase in marketing cost, travels, and more employees. Bear in mind that we have then reduced this with 12% when we go into Q1. EBITDA was -1.8 SEK. Adjusted EBITDA was +1.9 SEK. EBIT was -6.4 SEK.
Adjusted EBIT was -2.7 million SEK. That's include an FX impact of almost 3.4 million SEK. Last year we had a positive FX impact of 300,000 SEK. We had a negative cash flow of -6.6 SEK, driven mainly by the investments that we talked about earlier. Cash at the end of the period was 48.2 million SEK.
Thank you, Niklas, for that update. We got a lot of questions during the period moving forward for Polygiene, so I will not focus so much on the Q4, and I would rather speak more about the future, the strategies ahead, and also more about the long-term goal because that's been demanded. First some highlights from the last quarter of 2022.
We had the acquisition of BioMaster US in November. We acquired the long-term distributor that Addmaster been working with for many years. The reason for the acquisition is not for only financial reasons, quite small business today, but we believe, and we've seen that there is a great potential for hard surfaces in U.S. that we haven't been approached before.
Acquiring BioMaster US, we can take control of the U.S. market, and we can also help to push with our marketing resources from the Group to accelerate these sales. We paid $120,000. It's not a lot of money. It's paid cash, no assets included, and we actually paid for the margin we get from one year, almost one year.
There were a lot of ongoing projects that is could potentially be business this year, so instead of paying for that if it's not gonna happen, we decided to make a commission-based model. If these contracts will happen in 2023, there will be a commission paid to the owner and the seller of BioMaster US. We have also strengthened the sales team in U.S.
Also bear in mind that we had the redundancy program, but these decisions of Charlie and Bart, who joined us in the autumn, that was taking long before. Charlie Matthews came with acquisition of BioMaster, and we started these discussions 1 year ago, and we wanted to investigate very thoroughly if this could be something that added a value to the group.
Then we've been negotiating, put down the strategies, and decided to terminate this acquisition in November. Then we have the recruitment of Bart Kennedy, and he joined 1st of October, and he have a very solid experience, both from Freshness and Protection, and he's a very good add to the U.S. team now when we're gonna focus more on the hard surfaces in U.S.
He is a previous employee from Microban, which brings a lot of solid experience to the group, and he will be located in New Jersey, U.S. I also want to just comment on the drivers for the restructuring process. It was quite a long process during November and December, we had of course financial reasons. We have seen a slowdown in the second half of the year, we need to protect our key figures, that was one reason.
Even more, it's also to get more synergies between the acquisition of Addmaster and Polygiene. There's still some more back office synergies that we could win, and also on the sales side. It's also a reason to relocate people to the areas we believe will grow in the future, like U.S., that is identified as a growth region.
Of course, focus is on sales. It's very highly prioritized. Main part of the function that we're redundant is back office and non-sales persons. It's a strategic change in the organization. Just very short update on freshness. We have seen that the sport and outdoor mainly have a negative impact on the Q4. In Q4, we had only 50% of the freshness business in sport and outdoor.
Normally, in 2021, it's been 60%. They have very big challenges in the sport and outdoor. There are stock levels high through all the value chain. We hear from our customers that they are not producing as much because of the overstocks. After that, the reduced demand for the consumer products is due to the less buying power that all are facing, especially in Europe.
We've been speaking to our partners, we are very close to them. For instance, Adidas, which is our big customer, they are struggling with these overstocks. You can see in the first lockdown, there were a lot of demand for outdoor products. Many countries, they were not allowed to go out unless they were exercising.
There was a big drive for biking, for hiking, for sports clothes and goods. It was almost like the brands couldn't deliver. In 2021, they want to be on the safe side, so they started to produce, they overstock, they ship a lot of products to China because they believe it's gonna open up in 2021. Now, as we know, it's been closed almost all 2022 as well.
There are lot of stocks, mainly in China, but also in other places. That of course hits us as an ingredient brand. We don't have our own products, and we can't sell without our partners. I mean, this is overall, and I think also to those companies who focused on China have suffering more than those who, like Nike for instance, they have been more focused on U.S. during this time, and they are actually up while Adidas is down.
Of course, even if the sales are down now, we need to plan for the future sales. We have a very intense period of trade shows and events during this last quarter. I just wanted to highlight ISPO. That was a great success. It was a comeback after three years of no shows. We decided to go very, with a heavy investment in the booth and the activations.
It was a great success. We reconnected with so many of our existing partners, but also we got more than 50, 60 qualified leads for new project, which is really a record from coming from these trade shows. I'm very positive for what's coming in the next years. A short update on the protection side. We had the price increase to our customers that we carried out in October, and that made us keep the margins for the Q4. We saw increases in raw materials during the year, and this is a way for us to compensate that. We also...
That is something that is positive, that it's the freight prices that are back to pre-COVID levels, and we also see that the supply chain is recovering, meaning that to get a boat and ship containers to China, it's not that long anymore, that we could wait six, eight weeks during the last year or before. We're also seeing a small progress in transport.
It's a long sales cycle, but we've seen that NIO is continuing to investigate more areas or materials in the car. We also had a small addition with Fiat on a special edition that they've launched this autumn. It's small steps, but it's a long sales cycle when it comes to these kind of products. Then we had a strong start in 2023 on the protection side, and it's also because we have a very short December.
It means that we close around the 19th, and then we don't reopen until the 3rd. January is quite a good start. Yes. Now we got a lot of questions regarding the long-term goal. Are we still holding on to that goal or are we going to update it? The background is we presented this December 2021.
It's more than one year ago, and the numbers and the calculations we made was made during August, September. It was a completely different world climate than it is now. There was no war, and we thought that China will reopen and that the pandemic effects will be over. As you know now, 2022 has been quite a lost year for us, so we lost one year of the long-term plan.
Although we decide together with the board and with the management very closely to do no changes in the long-term plan for now. We decided to review it after maybe Q3 and check where we are at. One year is very short to change a long-term plan. It's only one of these years. We are holding onto our goals for that question, and we will make a review in maybe September, October later on.
I also get many questions about how we're gonna get there, how is it gonna work? I've shown this many times. We have four growth areas. We have the existing business, which there are a lot of potential to continue to grow. We also have new markets. It could be regional markets or it could be new categories, or it could be new product segments.
Of course, we have the new technology. Innovation is very important for us. We have the M&A that also is part, a quite substantial part of our growth journey. I will go into what we've been doing the last six months in the management team just to show you that we are working very serious on these areas to accelerate the growth.
First, for the existing business, we have opened a new sales channel from the freshness side, and that is that we open up for distributors to sell. Previously, they only hold stock for us, and we did all the selling together with our agents, and they were not allowed to sell. Now we change this since we see this slowing down of the sales this year.
We open up STT as a selling distributor in China. We signed that contract in August, and it's been quite a good success. They have ordered and reordered, and we see that this is could might be a good strategy in China. STT just one of many of these distributors.
They have a sales team around 10, 20 people, and they are educated and trained to be able to sell Polygiene, and we have our staff in China locally to support them instead of going to brands one by one by themselves. This is a much faster way to market. Of course, we need to still have control of who they are selling to, so we have control of who is using our brand. We have the key recruitments, not only the last two here.
We also have recruited since one and a half year back, people to my new management team. We are completely new management team if you look more than one and a half year back. We have been working very closely together so we can be totally aligned of what's going to happen in the future.
We change to categories that will be also much, much easier and to pinpoint marketing resources to the right targets in the category setup. That's going to also help us growing the business. We also continue to build strong partnerships. For instance, we have this picture from O'Neill that we press released today.
This is a success story I want to share because we started with O'Neill in Europe, and they started with a small collection to prove that we wanted to prove to them that we add a value and they can sell more products. They are very happy, so now they decided to go full in in one of their collections, and we are investigating other segments as well.
They are doing wetsuits, and they are doing sailing clothes or a lot of different categories. Now I think they're happy, so we got a mail from their US O'Neill office there that they ask us to be introduced to Polygiene as well. This is a really good example how we should work more with our partners.
We should continue to do this fact-based LCA to have fact-driven data for our partners that adds a lot of value to them. Maybe not so many customers, but stronger partnerships with those that we really see big potential in. In the new markets, we press released, and we have been discussed to open up hard surfaces in more regions than Europe and U.K.
If you look at Addmaster historically, the sales were 85% in Europe and U.K. We see that this business that is adding a great value and it's successful, we need to open up in other markets. We signed a contract with Resil in India earlier this year, and we've been down there with them for months. It's about relationship. It's about trust. It's about being there.
We finally got to an agreement, so they will promote Polygiene BioMaster technology in India, and that's a huge market. We actually were down there, two of the team members from Polygiene, to meet them and also to visit Plastindia , which is one of the three biggest plast shows in the world. They have a big team ready.
They are educated, and they have been updated in all the technologies, and they are ready to go to market now. With the technical support from Addmaster and the marketing team from Polygiene Group. They have a lot of support behind them, but they are the commercial persons in India. Also the acquisition of Biomaster is also a way to expand U.S.
There's been quite small activities before. Now we actually will push this market now that we have our staff over there. Also expand Freshness. This is more long-term. We are investigating Africa as we believe will be a future textile production land. We also have South America where we also working in Colombia. Of course open the volume markets.
We've been very, in history, Polygiene has been very, how will you say? You know, you want to target a brand and you go to this brand one by one and it's a longer process but you build more closer relationships. On the other hand we also need to target the volume market to accelerate sales. This is the new markets.
One of the maybe most important one for us is the new product development and we have intensified that development the last I would say six, eight months as you saw on Niklas' numbers there are a lot of investment in product, new products. All technologies we launch will be under the umbrella of Mindful Living. That is very important.
We have a quite big pipeline of new innovations and I hope we can present something already in 2023. It's super important for us when we develop new technologies that they need to add some value, need to be fit under Mindful Living and of course be compliant to perform well and also the regulations and the environmental impact of these technologies.
There are a lot of parameters that's why it could take some time, but we don't want to put anything on the market that we can't stand behind. That's why it can take some while. Then we started to do open innovations with strategic brands. Instead of innovating on our own we would like to find partners and we started a couple of them this year.
We go with a product that is not finished, but we would like them to help us with input and also testing for this and also to see if there is a demand in the market. This has been a good way to get products tested and verified. Then also to build strong partnerships with new suppliers because we are not producing any liquids or chemicals by ourselves we need to lean on strategic partnerships.
We also have Addmaster technologies that we acquired that we haven't been investigated or activated yet. Some really, really interesting technologies that we now started to make a strategic plan for how we can roll them out. The last is the M&A and we are continuously evaluating objects.
We are approached very often with smaller companies or even bigger companies to have merger acquisition, but we also have our own list of target objects that we would like to have collaborations with. Of course, again, they need to add something for us. We're not acquiring whatever for the sake of acquisitions. We need to see that they can fit in and add a value for us and the timing is not optimal now because if we need to finance with new emission it's not a good time at the moment.
On the other hand, it's quite cheap now, companies. As I said, M&A are a significant part of our journey ahead so we need to be ready to hit the long-term goal we need to be more active in this area which we are as well.
Then I just want to end with the investment case because we got questions, "Why Polygiene? What do you have?" I would just like to put some of the reasons why Polygiene is a good investment case. First we have our vision that is more relevant than ever. We operate in a huge market, both for Freshness and Protection.
Protection is driven by the hygiene that has been awareness and the demand increased significantly and the Freshness business is mainly driven by the sustainability demands for the industry. The vision and the field we are operating in is right on spot now. We have a history that make us a trustable and reliable partner. We are not like a COVID company starting two years ago.
We've been here for 17 years in Polygiene and Addmaster have more than 23 years of experience. Innovation will build comprehensive product portfolio. In the past, Polygiene invested all money in branding which has been a good strategy because now we actually have a good recognition out there. Now we need to also invest more in new products and technologies.
Yeah, the brand awareness is that actually differentiate us from the competition. We add a value. We know that because if you look at our brand partner list you can see the kind of partner we attract and work with so they're definitely an added value for Polygiene. The sustainability is also something we focus in everything we do from our business, I mean the business case in itself is about sustainability.
The company operates as sustainable as possible. We are measuring our carbon footprint. Of course it's the individuals and the team, the personal decisions we make, is also part of that culture and value. Of course the team is absolutely, like the best asset we have I would say. We have global network.
We have so many years of experience and we try to compete with excellent support and services for our partners and customers. If we look more on the financial side of it. If you look what we have that is positives, we have a scalable business model. We know that we will not increase the fixed cost proportional with increased sales. We know that we can add a lot of more sales with the organization we have now.
There are no plans for further hirings during 2023. We are a full team now that can operate and grow the business. We are asset light, so we have no production in-house, and that make us very flexible when it comes to what technologies we want to work with. We don't need to invest in machinery. We don't have any factories that stand still because of demand.
It's very positive to be asset light and very flexible. Our high margins enables a profitable business. We operate at a higher margin than competition does, but we also invest a lot in marketing and support. With positive cash flow on a yearly basis, it limits also the financial risk you have as an investor. We don't need to fund money to operate our daily business.
We are debt-free. That also gives us a strong financial position. It's good to be a debt-free company these days, and also net cash. We have our own resources to invest without external funding. We can invest in marketing, we can invest in the brand, in technologies, and whatever we like. We don't need to go out for external money. As I said, we are not like a startup.
Like, sometimes we say we are a startup, we are not, we've been around for quite a long time. We have recurring business. We been here together with Addmaster, with almost 40 years of experience in the industry. I think that was my last slide. I think we will head over to the Q&A, and we had some that previously was sent, and then we have maybe some new ones coming in.
We got one here regarding the prediction for the full year.
This is also something we've been stating before. We give a long-term plan. We are not doing annual guidance because it could, it's very hard to predict when and where the sales will come, so we be careful about doing that. Historically, we don't do that.
Mm-hmm. Then we got something about how we can get trust back from the outside world. It's related to the Svenskt Vatten situation.
Yes. There was a hard hit on us, like, one year ago. We haven't seen any reactions from the industry as from our customers. There were been maybe one or two in Sweden that asked for support on what they can say to their customers, but it hasn't affect our business. It's a very much local debate in Sweden. We haven't heard anything since that. It happens once in a while. During 10, 15 years we had these hits.
I would say maybe a question that's partly related to that, and that's, is there any news regarding the EU classification of silver?
It's still a couple of years, three, four years down the road to they will have a decision, and what the decision is, we don't know. Some people think there will be a ban, some people think there will not. We don't know. Of course, we will be ready that day when we have, if it will be a ban, of course, we are ready with other technologies at that point.
We have something about activities to attract investors.
Yes. We actually now setting up a strategy for the IR. We know that we need to get back the liquidity in the share. It's been slowed down a lot the last year. We have a plan, we will communicate when we know more about that.
We have some question that's pops up here during the presentation. We have one here which about the reduction in people with 5%, at the same time we are hiring in U.S. What does it mean from a cost point of view?
Yes. This was what I said before. We're actually transforming competence from back office more to sales. We need to focus on sales. The new hires are mainly in sales. When it come to the cost, of course there are different kind of cost, but I think we could say that there is a cost of around maybe 8-10% from Q4 staff cost.
Yeah. It's a little bit about the fairs that we attended. We say that it's a success. Can we maybe elaborate a little bit about?
We measure success in the number of leads coming in and new products, projects coming in. Of course it's to, it's a way to reconnect with existing partners. We haven't seen them for many, many years, so that of course strengthen the relationship and to do more business.
Of course it's also to attract new players, new big customers, and also to be visible with the brand. When we mean success, it mean that we have a lot of new contacts. We have been talking to the existing partners, and we know their plans for the future, and hopefully that is that they're increasing their volumes.
Mm-hmm. Then we have another question about, you mentioned the extra commission to Biomaster. If, what does that mean?
It actually mean if one of the seven named customers on this list that they've been working with for more than two years, and it came to a point that we don't want to pay for something that might not happen, and of course, if it happen, they want to get paid. That's a very good setup. It's a win-win. If something will happen on these seven customers, they will have a kickback or a commission on the sales for a period of time, limited.
Yeah, we get some questions about the Chinese distributor. We said that it's been successful. Can we sort of describe it little bit more maybe?
Yeah. As I mentioned before, they are connected, and they have a foothold in the textile industry. They have many customers, which are mill, they're fabric producers. What we did is actually to say, "You're allowed to sell this." They are our customers, and they can sell this to their customers. Like I said, we lose a little bit control of who they sell to, but we have a very close partnership.
When they, for instance, selling to Fila, which is a very great brand, we can contact Fila and say, "Hey, we know you're using Polygiene. Would you like to do co-branding with us?" For now, it's been a very good relationship as we have a person in China talking to them weekly, and then also we can see initial orders and also recurring orders, meaning that they are selling it through. It's not only, like, stocks.
Some seems to have some things wrong, can you-
I don't see.
Mm-hmm. No. If there are some more.
Another question about the board fee. That is not our decision. It's the AGM who decides for the level of the fees to the board.
Mm.
Is there any else?
We have some discussions about the Q3 where we said that October started fairly strong, and that's why we have like to like sales in Q4.
Yes, it's because the first, the December is a very short month for Addmaster. They close almost half because they only been doing European and UK business before, and they have the same Christmas holidays. For Polygiene before, we always had open because we're doing business with China who don't have the same Christmas celebration at the same period, at least.
That is why December went slower, and then they rolled over to the new year, I would say. We also saw in the freshness business the Chinese New Year came very early this year, 2 weeks earlier than 2021, and it also hold some orders back and say we wait to after the Chinese New Year. That's the reason why Q4 all ended up being SEK 40 million than and not more.
Yeah.
I think there was a question about if we have a silver-free technology. I think I saw that somewhere. Of course, the pipeline will reflect what is demanded out there. Of course, we are looking at non-silver-based technologies, and you will know when we have something to present to the markets.
We don't want to reveal too much here, but that is of course something we are looking at, to have a complementary product. Remember that this potential ban is only affecting Europe. It's the BPR, it's Europe, and not the rest of the world.
We also have a question about the competitors and their developments and numbers.
We got some insights. Some of them are public, some are not, but we have some insights from the industry and the competition we can see that they have. One of them said that they never had as bad quarter than their Q4, for instance. It's never been so low ever. Another competitor went out to make like a profit warning.
Mm.
That they actually projected that their report will be lower than expected. There are some struggling out there. We are facing the same customers. Some of them are in sports and outdoor. We know that there is big trouble with the customers there.
Yeah. I think we actually covered most of the questions then versus what has been, said thing before and what we can see right now.
Yeah. We went through all the questions? Yeah. Okay. We're almost in 45 minutes. We would like to thank you for listening, and we will have this link. If you want to watch it again, we can send you the link if you contact us on the email. We don't want to put it out public because of some of the things we talked about.
It's just like a balance between what we want to reveal to you as the investors and also to competition and others out there. Please, and reach out if you have further questions. You can just email to me or to Niklas. Thank you very much, and see you in April. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.