Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Scandi Standard Interim Report for the second quarter 2023 conference call. I am Sandra, the calls cooperator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star on one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jonas Tunestål, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Scandi Standard's result for Q2 2023. I'm Jonas Tunestål, CEO and Managing Director of Scandi Standard, with me I have Julia Lagerqvist, our CFO, and I'm pleased to have her by my side today. I'm glad to report continued earnings improvements and a strong cash flow in the second quarter. Next slide, please. This is another important step on our journey to full recovery. This gradually allows me to turn focus from a turnaround to long-term value creation. As you can see, 12% growth. We have encouraged demand in several markets. We're also starting to increase volume in some markets even though we set earnings before growth. We have delivered an EBIT of 121 million SEK and a strong cash flow.
A strong EBIT improvement is supported by strong quarter in ready-to-cook but there's still material gap to be closed. We see some pressure on the European market which has an impact on export and ingredients prices. Although there is still high uncertainty commodity prices seem to be on track towards normalization. Worth to mention is also that we have sold our 51% stake in Rokkedahl Food. With that we get a more focused business with less complexity. It ties up less capital while we still can deliver organic chicken into the Danish market. Overall a positive outlook with good prognosis in Scandi Standard despite some international and market headwind. Next slide, please. This slide presents a strong positive trajectory. As you can see in the graphs we have a history of strong growth and stable margins.
The sudden inflation broke a trend over some quarters and we are now gradually recovering our margins. I'm optimistic that we will take further steps towards full recovery over the coming periods. Focus will be to close the remaining gaps. The successful turnaround allows me to turn my focus towards long-term value creation and I look forward to presenting our thoughts on this late November in our Capital Markets Day. Next slide, please. If we look into how inflation impacts we see that consumer demand is sensitive at current price levels. We see that inputs costs are leveling off but with really high uncertainty. Our labor negotiations ended in line with markets. We see some pressure on commodities which impact ingredients and some of our export prices. We expect commodity prices to normalize.
We will get back to this later in the presentation. In the current inflationary environment chicken is well positioned to pierce and it recently also was supported by increased pork prices. Next slide, please. Here you can see our strong basis for future profitable growth. We have strong macro drivers that's supporting our business and I'm enthusiastic about the long-term opportunities in our industry. You can see in the graphs that we have very strong history of growth in consumption. The trends that we see they're expected to continue driven by versatility, health trends, sustainability metrics, and not least in this environment affordability. If we go move into next slide. This slide presents Scandi Standard's strong market positions in all our five home markets and each country is highly consolidated.
These markets have large entry barriers and they can individually be regarded as semi-closed markets due to the strong consumer preference for domestic produce. Due to our strong market position our own supply decisions have a meaningful impact on the market balance which has helped us in the recovery process from inflation. If we go into next slide. Here we can see the thing that I mentioned before in the presentation. We see a drop of export prices in the quarter and it's driven by global supply mainly import pressure from Brazil and Ukraine. It has put some pressure on the European meat commodity prices. We also focus on building more solid export business with European and Southeast Asian retail and food service customers to be less exposed to the commodity market which has and will have a positive impact on our export business.
We're also as a part of our export focus on broadening our export permits to the most attractive export markets in order to get more value out of the bird. We see stable export prices into Q3. If we go to next slide, please. This slide just shows the tables the reconciliation of our segments. We see a positive contribution from all areas compared to Q2 2022. The category other includes our ingredients business and our corporate costs. Next slide, please. Here we look into our segments. In our Ready-to-cook segment we're on a journey towards full recovery. We present an EBIT of SEK 48 million compared to SEK -60 million last year. It's a strong improvement driven by turnaround measures and recovering demand in several markets.
We also see a strong improvement in our LTI performance but we're still challenged in our antibiotic use in Ireland. We're improving quarter for quarter and we have a strong focus on that. If we take a stick deeper in our ready-to-cook business and as you can see here in the slide we've been able to increase our sales prices significantly. In spite of massive price increases implemented our EBIT per kilo is still SEK 0.46 below 2019 level. At the same time you can see that our ingredients business which is reported under other is more profitable than earlier and it's closing some of the gap. We can move into the next slide. On this slide we just want to show you some ongoing initiatives that support our improvements in the business. We have an increased investment in automatization in Ireland.
We're invested in packaging machines in our plant in Shirkop. We're also investing in our hatching business in Sweden. Up in Vårgårda we are investing at the moment. We're also an acceleration of breed changeover in Denmark. We have talked about that the latest quarters about change from slow growing into conventional birds. Together with our partners put up an hatchery in Denmark. Most important we're investing in increased bird value and reduce our export reliance with putting in leg deboners in our plant in Shirkop in Ireland and also in our plant in Denmark. We can move into next slide. We look into Ready-to-cook Denmark. Stepwise improvement is expected. We are in the process of reversing an unsuccessful implementation of slow growing bird strategy. We have seen that there's a peak in slow grow in quarter one and quarter four.
We will see an improvement during the quarter and we are expecting to have the optimal breed mix from year-end 2023. We also should mention that compared to other countries Denmark is more exposed to the export market. To mitigate this we are in the process of increasing the integration with our ready-to-eat plant which also will be made possible by the changeover to high proportion of conventional bird. Next slide, please. We are at slide 13. On this slide you can see the channel development in more detail. Through these details you can notice the strong increase in retail channel in the quarter which is driven both by price and volume. We have been seeing a strong demand growth in some of our markets in the quarter particularly Ireland and Finland. We move into next slide slide 14.
Now we go into our other segment Ready-to-eat. We see a good quarter. We have an increase of 3% in net sales and an EBIT of SEK 59 compared to SEK 51 last year and an EBIT margin of 7.7%. I must mention that it's positively impacted by SEK 11 million in insurance compensation for the fire in Farre last year. We also see a little bit softer QSR demand after a period of exceptional growth. In medium and long-term growth it's expected to be high. We also to mention that we have a loss of a breaded contract to Continental Europe. We will see a sequential drop in volume from Q3 and Q4 2023. We are confident in gradual put more profitable customer replacement into the Farre factory. We will use this window of utilization to prepare for future expansion.
At last I also want to mention that we have improved our work-related injury score the LTI score in our RTE business. If we move to the next slide slide 15. Take a dig deeper into our ready-to-eat business. We see a strong and even demand trend and it is expected to continue. We have over the latest 7 years have 6 times organic growth. It's typically 2 main type of business. It's breaded processes in Denmark and sales to northern Europe. Then we have the integrated local businesses in Sweden and Norway. We also see that our other countries in Ireland and Finland are picking up on these sales as well. We also want to mention that we think that these products are aligned with consumer preferences. It's easy to prepare and it is a convenient product.
It is a better return on investment versus Ready-to-cook. We will continue to invest in this area. One thing in that is that we're expanding in Norway. We will see new capacity now and it's expected to become effective in the mid-2024. We move into next slide slide 16. Here you can see it in the figures. It's of course very encouraging to see that Ready-to-eat is growing in retail. However the development in food service channel is slightly declining due to reasons mentioned in the former slide. Growth in this segment will be priority for me the coming years. In short term we will see a volume drop due to lower sales market outside our home markets. We're confident that we'll replace it with other more profitable orders in the coming year.
Ready-to-eat will be an important tool on developing EBIT per kilo i.e. increasing the value of our protein. With that said I want to hand over to Julia for a more deep dive in the financials.
Thank you Jonas. We go on to page 18 and we come back to the overall P&L. As you've seen the quarterly performance showed an improvement versus the previous year with an EBITDA at SEK 230 million and an EBITDA margin at 6.7%. There were no non-comparable items booked in this quarter nor in Q1 or the entire 2022. EBIT landed at SEK 121 million in Q2. Finance costs are increasing with the higher base rates as seen in the previous quarter. This is partly compensated by lower credit margin due to lower leverage.
All in all net income for the period landed at SEK 74 million far above last year indicating an earnings per share of SEK 1.11 for the quarter. Looking at feed conversion ratio or feed efficiency this is measured as the kilo feed needed to produce 1 kilo live weight where chicken has one of the lowest levels for animal proteins. In Q2 this was at 1.5 kilo and it has been at this stable low level in the last year. Looking at our return measures on page 19 we see that the return on capital employed is now at 9.3% for the last 12 months. An increase versus the previous low year. It's also an improvement versus the previous quarter and we are on a continued positive trend now close to in line with historic levels.
If we look at the annualized return based on the Q2 results the return on capital employed would actually have been 10.6%. At the same time our equity ratio has improved to 33% from 30% last year. This is the same levels as we saw in quarter one and mainly related to retained earnings and exchange rate differences related to inflations on our foreign operations. Moving to the next page we have our cash flow overview. EBITDA as I said improving versus previous year. We've had also a substantial improvement in working capital mainly driven by lower inventory. I will come back to this on the next pages. We've kept the investments low in the quarter leading to a strong improvement in operating cash flow. Paid financing items are increasing driven by the previously mentioned increased base rates.
We also saw some negative effects coming from currency fluctuations. In addition, there's been changes to our net leasing asset values. None of these has a cash impact. All in all, our net interest-bearing debt at the end of the quarter was slightly below year-end 2022. This including payments of dividend of SEK 75 million. On the next page, page 21, we have our working capital overview. Inventory has increased versus the same period last year. As mentioned, we are improving versus previous quarter and end of last year. This is a continued important focus area for us and I will share some more details on the next slide. Tables and receivables both increased versus last year. This is mainly driven by cost and price increases. We do however have some positive net timings effect in the quarter improving our working capital.
This all leads us to working capital close to 0 in the quarter and hence working capital to sales ratio of 0%. Our target level for working capital to sales excluding financing items remains to be around 6% and we are currently at this level. Looking at our inventory levels per quarter on page 22 it has as said decreased in Q2. This both in value and volume through targeted actions. We are now below the year-end 2022 levels. We do have some positive seasonality effects here driven by higher sales in the barbecue season. At the same time there's also some negative force effects driven by the weak SEK. Inventory of course remains a clear focus area going forward. We always try to use flexibility in bird intake to balance the supply and demand.
We work on optimizing the Sales and Operations Planning to make sure we produce the right products. We use the export channel for surplus sales to not interfere unnecessarily with domestic pricing. If we come to page 23 we have then our cash flow guidance. The CapEx for 2023 is still estimated to be around SEK 400 million versus SEK 311 in 2022. Priorities for us are the RTE expansion in Norway and then upgrades in Denmark. In addition investing in RTC efficiency in Finland and in Ireland. We also have our ERP implementation on top of going maintenance. The paid financing cost is still estimated to be around 6%-7%. The blended tax rate is expected to be around 21%.
In the quarter we paid dividend of 1.15 SEK per share which is close to in line with the policy of 60% of net earnings over time. We look at our sustainability KPIs on page 24. It's a fairly busy slide. In the table to the left you see our year-to-date performance compared to 1st half of last year and the targets. In the graphs you can see the performance per quarter. LTI or Lost Time Injury continue to improve on a year-by-year basis. Year-to-date we're up 17%. Improving health and safety practices in at the sites continue to be a clear priority for the total organization. Use of antibiotics is mainly driven by the Irish performance as antibiotics used in the Nordic countries continues to be very close to 0.
We are improving versus last year even if we have some way to go to reach our targets. We note also that the resulting Q2 was slightly higher than Q1. This is partly driven by increasing Irish productions making Ireland a larger share of total productions hence driving up the average. CO2 emissions are improving versus Q1. Here we also have continued work to do to deliver on our targets. We are glad to report that our animal the key animal welfare indicator the footpad score is improving. Also here there is focused works ongoing in our Irish operation. Important to remember here is that there is a seasonality to this KPI and that Q1 usually is the worst performing quarter due to weather.
We have also had zero critical complaints year-to-date which is a very good step towards the ambitious target of zero complaints for the full year of 2023. The feed efficiency or feed conversion is as already talked at a very stable level. Target is to improve slightly in 2023. With that I would like to hand back the word to Jonas.
Thank you. If we move into next slide, slide 25. Here you can see this percent of 4 strategic pillars which is important for building the fundament of Scandi Standard and taking us to the next level. We have talked about this in the former presentations. It's about building a winning culture. It's about ramping up our efficiency end to end. It is about increased the value of our protein.
At last and an important thing for us is a future-proof company. One example of that how we work with a future-proof company is our work with Science-Based Targets. If we move into next slide slide 26. Here sustainable food production is a crucial factor in the fight against the climate crisis. As a market leader we want to increase transparency and take a clear leadership in the industry. Ongoing transition. We were happy to announce that in Q2 Scandi Standard's climate targets were approved by Science Based Targets initiative after a lengthy process. The official target includes both emissions in our own operations and in our own value chain and shows that we take this seriously and that climate strategy is an integrated part of our corporate strategy.
We are one of the few Swedish food producers who have obtained validation of the targets. The targets are ambitious aiming at having halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 which is in line with both 1.5 degree target in the Paris Agreement. We are now working on a detailed plan that will be developed during H2 2023. I also happy to announce that in August 2023 Morningstar Sustainalytics published an updated ESG rating and ranked Scandi Standard as top 10 out of 360 companies in the packaged food industry. We are working hard with this and I'm really glad to present these two things. If we move into next slide slide 27. This shows our 6 areas where we see large potential. The first one matches domestic supply and demand.
It is really important for us to actually take out the most value of the bird in every each home market. Now when we've talked about in the former slides with some pressure on the European meat commodity prices it's even more important to have this S&OP and OP process. So we are really able to increase the value of the bird. Then we have the ready-to-eat potential. We also talked about that. Even though we see some changes quarter for quarter we see a long-term trend and we will invest in ready-to-eat business that has a growth over time. I think that the thing that we've done in Norway is a good example of developing that area.
Then of course quality and production process is really important for our efficiency and actually deliver the product to our customers that they expect in the right quality. The last one the export business. It's also important for us to have the right export customer to get deep good relations with our retailer and food service client throughout Europe. We're not selling a lot of products in the European commodity market. That is also an important thing to increase the value of the bird. If we move into the last slide, slide 28 to summarize it and make an outlook going forward we see another quarter of improvement. We see strong demand growth and increase in profitability in several of our markets. Our primary focus is still on regaining EBIT per kilo in ready-to-cook. There's still a gap to be closed.
We see reduced inputs cost and increased efficiency. We're expecting further sequential improvements in Ready-to-cook Denmark even though they're more exposed to the export market. We see some macro headwinds ahead temporary reduced activity level in Ready-to-eat and reduced pricing in export and ingredients markets. The underlying improvements is expected to compensate for the headwind. I'm really glad to say that I'm gradually shifting from a turnaround focus to a more long-term value creation focus in Scandi Standard. Our ambition is to significantly increase EBIT per kilo over the coming years. With that said we want to open up for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on the touchdown telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue.
If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes good morning Jonas and Julia. A couple of questions from me then. Starting off with maybe some of the negatives. There was of course a lot of positives as well. You mentioned softening demand in QSR business. It sounded like that softened a bit during the quarter. I just wanted to ask if that was sort of the development of the trend going into the second half of this year.
Is that a function of sort of worsening economic conditions when you look at the consumer in sort of the Horeca business or how do you explain it?
I I would say if we we see a softening demand but but if you look at the the long-term growth it's increasing and then it comes from it reached some top and then it's softening a little bit and then the the growth come back again. I think that it's more about in in some segments that are not growing and in other segments I actually think that we will see an an good growth coming ahead. The thing that's happening in our our Ready-to-cook business is the one that we explained about the customer contract that that ended and that will have an effect on the volume in Q3 and Q4.
Then we are changing the mix into more profitable customers. That will take a couple of quarters in June 2024 to make that change. There has been exceptional growth and we see some declining as we saw a couple of years ago. We see the long-term trend is growing. Then we have the change in customer mix.
The loss of that contract is a separate thing right? Just so we don't sort of mix pears and apples here. What you're saying in terms of QSR is more of a general reflection on demand we're coming from sort of high levels and you're seeing some softening and then on top of that you have this loss of the contract. Is that correct?
Exactly.
If you look back to the slide that we presented in slide number 15, you can see the growth, and then it takes a little bit dip, and then the growth comes back again. That is the same pattern that we will see here.
Okay. All right. This lost contract, is that sort of meaningful in terms of top line and EBIT in Q3 and Q4, and how you mentioned that you have sort of good hope to be replacing that with other new contracts? I assume that sounded like that could take a couple of quarters. Could you give any sort of shed some light on what impact it will have for the second half of this year?
Yeah, yeah.
In this Ready-to-cook business in separate it will have an impact on top line and EBIT. We are really sure that in Scandi Standard total we have good tractions in RTC that will offset that change as we saw before. If we look into the RT segment in long term we are changing out from this customer to other customers that we expect them to be more profitable in the long term. It will take some quarters and in 2024 to make the volume replacement.
Okay. It sounds like you have basically other new contracts lined up. It will take some time to get them going. Is that sort of how we should read it?
Yeah, we will gradually replace it.
Some of them are already in place and other ones is contracts that we are looking after. We see this underlying long-term strong demand. We are pretty confident that we are changing. We have a pretty pure clear strategy of how to replace it.
Yep. Okay. Moving on maybe to RTC in Denmark which we've talked a lot about. Clearly a good improvement sequentially and a slight improvement year-over-year in terms of losses. You sound quite confident that we should continue to progress in the right direction and reach some sort of balance when it comes to the assortment towards the end of this year. Is that equal to reaching also balance when it comes to break even?
We are not guiding on results.
What we have said is that that we will have the right balance in both in the year end 2023. Of course there's a lot of things that that we're working with continuously to to chase customer contracts and and and change how we we have in quality in in day 06 and how we use our production process. The thing that I talked about the investment of of deboning more and more and integrate together with our RTE business in Finland. There are a lot of things actions that we are are taking. We cannot guide them and we will not guide them on on the results when we're breaking even. We will have the right bird mix at the end of 2023. We are we'll see stepwise improvement. That is expected.
Even though I must say that as you know historically there are a big high exposure to export market in Denmark compared to the other countries. That is why we are focusing on integrating our our business more and more with our Farre business our ready-to-eat business.
Yep. All right. I assume that sort of selling your stake in Rokkedahl is is making you a bit more sort of independent in in getting your sort of your mix where it to where it needs to be on the ready-to-cook side in Denmark. Is that a sort of correct observation?
Yeah we sell off of mainly three reasons. We we want to reduce the complexity and and be be more focused on on where we are. We we of course free up capital. We'll not be owning this Rokkedahl stake.
We're still able to sell organic chicken in the Danish market. I think that is a really good mix for us because then we can have the whole value ladder in the Danish retail and to the export but without tying up capital and without taking carcass responsibility. So I think it's a one important step of our journey to be more streamlined. It's not direct linked to the Danish main core business.
No. I know that this deal was struck in middle of the summer. You will have sort of a neutral effect on P&L but positive at SEK 170 on net debt. When is that money cash flow coming in?
How does that sort of SEK 170 stack up against the sort of what this is booked at in terms of the stake?
Yeah, we we will get back to that exact numbers in in our Q3 report. That that we only talk about the thing that we're presenting in in our press release. And there we have have stated this SEK 170 and and a neutral P&L effect. We will get back to the the exact numbers and the exact exact effect in Q3 because it happened in Q3.
Okay. Okay. Then maybe just moving on to ingredients where you're also saying that market prices dropped towards the end of the quarter if I read it correctly? Has that continued into Q3? What is the pace of change here?
Yeah we're said that we expect it to normalize to the level that has been in 2021 in the ingredients part. We've seen some and as I mentioned in the commodity market some pressure due to import and due to low energy prices. Ingredients have a more direct link to energy. There have been some changes. We have seen pushes. We are expecting it to get back to normalized levels like it was in 2021. It's also a broad segment. It differs from products to products what the effect and the links are.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you.
As a reminder if you wish to register for a question please press star followed by 1.
So far there are no more questions on the phone. Yes. Sorry to interrupt sir. We have a follow-up question from Daniel Schmidt if it's okay for you.
Yeah okay.
Okay please go ahead sir.
Well since there's no other questions I might have one or two more than Jonas.
Yep.
Of course you're at the same time seeing stabilizing input prices and even declining input prices. As you mentioned maybe that has a negative effect on ingredients when it comes to energy as you alluded to. Sort of the overall impact must be quite positive. Am I missing anything?
No the overall it do mean specific in terms of energy or in terms of Scandi Standard in total?
In general.
If you look at feed prices if you look at energy prices packaging they're all sort of packaging maybe sideways but the others are moving the right direction. You've been suffering quite a lot from very elevated energy prices in the second half of last year and so on. Now now it's the opposite. Of course that will be something positive. Is there any hedges that are sort of prolonging the negatives?
Yeah we are hedging in different variants of the compared to what type of impact it has on us. Of course there's there's hedges. That's so you can't look at the spot prices and do one to one there. We will always do that.
As you mentioned and as I said in the beginning in the presentation we see some upsides both in in demand that is picking up and we see some commodities decreasing. We are we know that those type of improvement will mitigate the little bit slower demand we see in export prices in ingredients and so on.
Yep. Okay. Good. That's that's it. Thank you.
Thank you.
They didn't answer them.
Thank you very much.
That was the last question. I would now turn the conference back over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Thank you everyone that called in. Have a nice day. Thank you. Bye.