Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Jul 20, 2021

Thank you. So welcome everyone to this presentation on the results for the Q2 and the first half of the year. Next slide please. So first, we have a brief overview of prices, including the financial development for the past 5 years. And worse than nothing is that the level of net sales that we report for the first half of twenty twenty one is in line with our full year net sales only a few years ago. And before we dig further into the financial details, I would like to talk a little bit about the macro trends in retail and how they provide us confidence in the growth potential of the ESL market for the coming years. So next page please, number 3. So first of all, then perhaps contradictory to what many of you may think, e commerce is a great market driver for the ESL industry, simply because the convenience, the flexibility and availability of online shopping raises the bar for a good shopping variance also in the physical store. As consumers get used to finding products easily, having access to extensive product information and so on. They bring these expectations and many more with them to the stores. To the study of consumer trends by interviewing 6,000 persons in the U. K, France and Germany. And the study concluded that more than 70% of the respondents get annoyed if there is a price difference between online and offline. And 60% even said they would shop less at the retailer with price differences between digital and physical channels. And another trend worth noting refer to sustainability and a more conscious life choice. So consumers today expect retailers to take more responsibility for the climate by for example reducing food waste. And in order to attract consumers back to the stores, retailers must respond to these mega trends and many more. And so investing in digitalization becomes critical to drive consumer loyalty and in the end also profitability. Next slide please. So this is where Priser Solutions comes in. So we offer our customers the possibility to do more with less. By automating a labor intense process such as price updating, the retailer is no longer restricted by the cost and availability of labor to define how many price changes that can be made or the frequency of the updating, which is of course fundamental for aligning pricing offline and online. And in addition, dynamic pricing on expiring goods can be applied by grocery retailers to reduce food waste. But of course, our system can provide great value in many more in store processes than the price updating, increasing the accuracy and reducing the picking time of online orders is another example. And we have testimonies from customers saying that They save as much as 30% of the picking time when being guided by prices system. In essence, we can support retailers in running their stores more efficiently, but we can also provide invaluable support to improve the shopping experience in stores to gain the customers' trust, confidence and loyalty. Next slide please. It's worth repeating that thanks to the unique infrared communication protocol between the access point and the label, Pfizer has the best performing ESL system available in the market. The speed, responsiveness, robustness and scalability of our system is unmatched. Our radio competitors have advantages in terms of installation time and effort. But when it comes to running the system and maintaining it, we are at a clear advantage. And that's why we can call it install and project. Considering the fact that we are fundamentally different from all our competitors, we would not survive unless we had a better solution. We win on performance. But that doesn't mean we can sit back and relax. In fact, quite the opposite. Our difference mean that we have to work harder than everyone else to get our message across through the noise. So when we do and the retailer gets used to the performance of our system, then changing to competing solution becomes very difficult. Next slide, page 6. So now moving into the financials. I'm pleased that being halfway through the year, we report significant improvements in all key metrics compared to the same period of last year. The growth is generated by a large number of customers across several geographical markets. And it gives strength to the company that we have managed to reduce the dependency on a few customers. We now have a very broad customer base to stand on. Next slide please. So looking at the more detailed distribution of the revenues for the first half of the year, we can see that Europe is our largest market and also where we know the highest growth in the period. And although North America is a growth market for Prisar, we have challenging comps relating to the large U. S. Customer project from last year. Asia and Pacific, our smallest region is also reporting significant growth in the period. Next slide please, Page 8. The second quarter also showed good improvement on all four key metrics compared to last year. Although it's worth reminding that the pandemic had a big impact on the Q2 of last year with delayed deliveries in primarily Southern Europe due to COVID-nineteen related lockdown. This year, we struggled with availability components and longer transportation time since then, which is why I'm particularly pleased that we managed to deliver twice the volume of labels during the Q2 this year compared to last year. And we also note a significant headwind from currency movements in euro and U. S. Dollars. We have almost no sales in Swedish krona. So from a top line perspective, our dependency on euro and U. S. Dollar is very high. Next slide please. So net sales in the quarter increased by 35%, reaching DKK389 1,000,000. But measured in constant currency, the growth is nearly 50% compared to the same period of last year. Canada, France and Norway contribute most to the net sales in the quarter and we see good contribution from the framework agreements that have been communicated over the past year. As we move into the 3rd and 4th quarters, comps will be more challenging due to the high delivery volumes last year for the large customer projects in the U. S. And the Netherlands. Next slide please, Page 10. So the order intake reached more than DKK400 1,000,000 for the 4th consecutive quarter. The order intake is distributed over a large number of customers in several geographies, again with good contribution from the framework The flow of small and medium sized orders is growing steadily and is now on a significantly higher level than before the pandemic. And this is a consequence of the growth in the market, but it's also a result of our strategy to increase our market presence. The order backlog at the end of the quarter was DKK563 1,000,000, which is marginally higher than at the end of the first quarter. Next slide please. The gross margin is primarily a function of the product and customer mix delivered during the quarter. And the favorable mix in the second quarter was balanced by the higher cost for components and transportation, resulting in a stable gross margin development, that's in line with the previous quarters. Next slide please. And the scalability of the business is good, which means that there is a high correlation between net sales and profitability. And while we continue to build for further growth by expanding our market presence and broadening our portfolio of products and services. We increased the profit margin by several percentage points in the Q2 compared with the same period of last year. Next slide please. The cash flow should be analyzed over time as it is a result of timing effects for incoming and outgoing payments. So we noticed an increase in the capital tie up during the quarter and that's relating to the high production and delivery pace combined with a temporary increase of the production transportation lead times. And at the end of June, our net cash position was DKK 86,000,000. Next slide please. So to summarize the Q2, the trend for in store digitalization remained strong and we experienced high activity in several of our important markets. Canada, Norway, Italy and France performed very well and contribute most of our growth in the quarter. And thanks to the framework agreements that have been signed over the past Years, in combination with a strong underlying demand globally, the order intake has stabilized on a historically high level. Our working capital tie up increases because of the high delivery activity and combined with the size of the order backlog and particularly as transportation times are longer than usual. And to prepare for continued growth in the market, we have begun investing in more scalable production solutions, remaining a lean and cost efficient supply chain will continue to play an important role for our competitiveness also going forward. So next slide please. So with this, I would like to open up for Any questions from the audience? Thank It seems like we have no questions from the audio. I will hand it back to our speakers. Okay. Thank you very much for listening in, and I wish you a nice rest of the summer. Thank you. Goodbye.