Good morning, everyone. Anders Ulff and Roland Kasper here to present our Q4 report. As usual, you will find our presentation under our Investor Relations part on the web. Please go ahead, Roland, with the presentation.
Good morning. Welcome to the quarter four report 2021-2022. I hope you have the presentation in front of you, and I'll start right away. Going for slide number two. As you know, Systemair AB is established in 1974 in Skinnskatteberg in Sweden. We have an annual turnover of around EUR 940 million, and we're listed on Nasdaq stock exchange since October 2007.
Currently, we are running our own sales companies in 52 countries in the world, and we have our own production facilities in 20 countries. The actual number of employees in the group is 6,700, and we are currently exporting to 135 countries all over the world. By switching over to slide number three, we're going right down in the report.
Our net sales in quarter four amounted to SEK 2.662 billion. That compared to SEK 2.2 billion in the same quarter the year before. That corresponds to a growth of 20.5% and an organic 16.4%. On the right side of that slide, if you have it in front of you can see the graph of the development on the organic growth on a rolling twelve.
Switching to slide number four, the growth analysis. If you break it down and look into the details. Organically, all regions show good organic growth. Then we only had a small impact from the acquisitions of 1.5% and currencies, the strengthening currencies of Euro versus U.S. dollars and Canadian dollars, contributed with 2.6% maybe.
Altogether that amounts to 20.5% growth in the quarter. Going to next slide five, the operating profit in the quarter. The gross margin as reported decreased to 34.1% compared to 35.7% the same quarter the year before, due to higher material prices, reduced productivity due to component inefficiencies. We had a higher rate of sick leaves and of course, also some price increases for customers that did not make full impact in the quarter. The sales and admin expenses for the quarter increased by 14.5% for comparable units, and the operating profit for the fourth quarter thereby increased to SEK 191.4 million, compared to SEK 173.1 million the year before.
During this quarter, though, we had goodwill related to Menerga in Germany and Lautner in Germany that had been written down, which totally amounted to SEK 38.6 million. By that, the adjusted operating margin in the quarter was 8.6%, and the adjusted operating profit amounted to SEK 230 million in the quarter.
Switching to next slide, the profit after tax, slide number six. The profit after tax in the quarter four. The net financial items for the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 5.4 million. The currency effects on long-term receivables, loans, and bank balances amounted to a net of SEK 13.8 million, and interest expenses for the quarter amounted to SEK 8.9 million.
All in all, the profit after tax amounts to SEK 139 million in Q4 2021/2022. The next slide number seven, the cash flow analysis. The cash flow from the operating activities in the quarter amounts to SEK 247.9 million. The change in working capital was a negative SEK 279.5 million, which mainly is due to the increased inventories, contribution of SEK 222 million, and trade receivables, SEK 182 million. The change in working capital amounts to negative SEK 279.5 million, compared to SEK 43 million the year before. The net investment in the quarter, excluding acquisitions, is SEK 84 million.
Here, primarily the final installments of machinery for the new plant in Czech Republic, also some machine investments in both Canada and France. The free cash flow amounted to negative SEK 115.6 million, and the net debt increased from SEK 1.5 billion to SEK 2.1 billion in the quarter. Next slide, moving over to the markets.
We start with on slide number eight with an overview, which is a pie chart and looking at the different regions. What you can see, starting on the right side, is the Nordic region stable, 20% market share on the total turnover. Then Western Europe with a minimal decrease of 42% coming from 43%. The other markets column is 12%, come back to that. North and South America, 11%.
Eastern Europe and CIS countries, 15% of the total turnover. Going into the details and starting with the Nordic markets on slide number nine. The sales in the Nordic region increased by 5.4% during the fourth quarter compared to the previous year. Here, adjusted for the effect of foreign exchange and acquisitions, sales increased by 1.4%. It is to be marked that the market in Denmark, Finland, and Norway showed a very good growth in the quarter, while the Swedish markets held back due to the component deficiencies that affected our factories in Sweden.
Next slide 10 and Western Europe. Sales in Western European market increased during the quarter by 27.3% compared with the corresponding period last year. Here, adjusted for foreign exchange effects and acquisitions, sales increased by 21.1%.
It's actually all markets in the region that showed good growth during the quarter. Mainly here we have U.K., France, Netherlands and Germany. Slide 11 and Eastern Europe and CIS. Sales in Eastern Europe and CIS increased by 17.8% during the quarter. Adjusted for the foreign exchange effects and acquisitions, sales increased by 11.6%.
Needless to mention that sales in Russia increased during the quarter in Swedish kronor, although of course clearly declining during the latter part of the quarter due to that we stopped all deliveries and business by the fourth of March.
The Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian markets accounted for 4.6% of the group sales. Other major markets that showed really good growth in the region and also here, of course, are filling in the gap, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.
Next slide number 12, North America. Sales in North America increased by 25.7% during the quarter compared to the same period last year. Adjusted for the foreign exchange effects and acquisitions, sales increased by 12.6%. Here it's both the Canadian and U.S. market showed really strong good growth during the quarter.
Next slide number 13. Middle East, Asia, Australia and Africa. The sales in this region increased by 23% compared with the same period last year. Here, adjusted for currency effect and acquisitions, the sales actually increased by 35.2%. India, Morocco and Australia showed good growth during the period, while sales in Turkey decreased in Swedish kronor. As you can now see it's of course the inflation and weather effect here.
Next slide number 14, giving you as we present quarter four a view on the sales for a full year base. The sales for Systemair year 2021-2022 on a full year base amounts to SEK 9.634 billion compared to the year before SEK 8.5 billion.
This means that it's an organic growth of 12.7% or the total growth of 13.1%. For that, switching to next slide number 15, and looking at the growth breakdown. Organically all regions showed good growth, 12.7%. The acquisitions during the year as they came in the latter part of the year, they only contributed really, on a lower side, only 1%.
The strengthening currencies for Euro, U.S. dollar, and Canadian dollar contributed with a - 0.6%, which brings us to 13.1% in total growth on the yearly base. The operating profit on the total year is shown on next slide number 16. The operating profit totals SEK 769.8 million compared to SEK 676 million the year before, and the operating margin was 8%. The adjusted operating margin here amounted to 8.5% in the same year before, and this is SEK 821 million.
Here I need to point out that during the financial year, we had an impairment loss of SEK 22.5 million Swedish kronors arising from the divestment of Systemair Traydus in Brazil, as well as positive revaluations of SEK 9.8 million related to acquisitions of minority shareholding in Burda, Germany. Goodwill related to acquisition of Menerga and Lautner, both in Germany, has also been written down by SEK 38.6 million.
The selling, admin expenses for the like-for-like units rose by 8.9% and amounts as shown on the right side to SEK 770 million or 8% for the full year 2021-2022. Looking at the quarter four again, I also want to mention two highlights in the quarter.
One is this project here where Systemair delivered ventilation products for the 2022 Commonwealth Games Aquatics Centre in U.K., as shown here on slide number 17. It's the Sandwell Aquatic Centre and a new venue for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. It will house a swimming and diving competition pool, and this venue will host real lot of medal events that will come up here in later July and August in 2022.
Systemair U.K. provided different ventilation equipment, Geniox, Topvex, air handling units, also with Menerga units for the swimming pool humidification. This deliveries to this project amounted to EUR 700 thousand. Next slide number 18. The Italian authorities have approved Systemair's acquisition of SagiCofim S.p.A.
Systemair announced in April 7, 2022, the agreement to acquire all shares in the Italian company SagiCofim S.p.A. The purchase has now been approved by the Italian authorities and closing is thereby estimated in June 13. SagiCofim S.p.A. is an international supplier with extensive experience in air filtration and air distribution.
The company produces highly efficient air filters of HEPA and ULPA class. In Somma Vesuviana, the company also manufactures products for air distribution. The company's consolidated sales in 2021 amounted to approximately EUR 36 million with an EBITDA result of EUR 4 million. The company has around about 200 employees. Thereby I switch to the last slide. I say thank you and would like to open up the lines for questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing star two to cancel. There'll be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question today comes from Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea. Carl, your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. It's Carl here from Nordea. A few questions from my side. Firstly, you mentioned that the component issues burden on the Nordic market and particularly Sweden. Would you say that you have seen any improvements in the component issues so far in June, or is it same as during Q4?
Hello, Carl. I would say it is more switching over in different cycles than some changes in components going from electric to being more on motor than fan side. Switching over from in November, December, it was more on small motor cycles or more focused on heating products, and now it's more on medium sizes that is also affecting other products on bigger cycles. It's more a switchover on different areas. I would say that the constraints on the components they continue, but it's switching over from the areas.
You mentioned that you had elevated sick levels as many companies had during the quarter, and also impacts from raw material headwinds. Is it possible to quantify the impact, maybe on a gross margin or EBIT margin level?
Yeah, Carl. We of course have been looking into that, but it's very hard to determine the difference in between. It would be only a guesstimate, so I'd like to refrain from that part, as it is very different from geographical area and the different product areas that we have.
Would you say that it's the main reason behind the gross margin contraction?
I would say that the main reason behind it is that we cannot operate our manufacturing as optimized as we normally can when we have the full supply of components that we need for to deliver the orders. Of course, also the unexpected absence of workers that are away for one to two weeks for COVID that were in some weeks in March and beginning of April, it was rather high in some areas of the world. That made, of course, the inefficiencies in the operations led of course to stable overheads but not the output that we expect for the calculation. These are the main drivers for us.
Perfect. Also a question on the demand side. You guided that order intake is still quite strong. The backlog is on a high level. But of course, there is a lot of discussions on what impact inflation will have on the construction market.
Have you lately seen any changes in the demand situation or postponed projects, et cetera? The second part of that is, of course, you grew quite nicely in North America. I guess it's partly driven by residential ventilation. Also if you have seen a sign of a weakening consumer in North America.
Very good question, Carl. Looking at overall, yes, you're right. We have a historical very high backlog in order intake. The outlook, of course, is that, how to say. You're right that we see an ever-increasing cost issue. We also see that, of course, that amounts to a huge increase on the building costs. We have first signs of projects being little more put on hold, being pushed a little way, but still on a lower level.
Of course, how this will further develop going three, four months down the road, very hard to say. It's still not seen. I would say that from the indications that we have got, I would at least say that for the rest of the year, it should be on a stable level.
Beyond that, it's very hard to foresee. As to the second part of the question for the North American market, what we can see today is on the commercial side, there is only forecasted a smaller growth going ahead with around about 2%. But still on the residential side, on an annual base, there is forecasted a growth in around 20%.
This is driven by changes in the building codes, especially in U.S., where they are changing state by state the building codes from normal ventilation to balanced ventilation, which is of course very beneficial for residential ventilation units, where we have a very strong stand in North America. I would not be a bit concerned about North America. There are continuous also investment programs from state to private persons.
that I think will be fueled by that mainly.
Perfect. The final one from my side, if I may. With the price increase you implemented during the quarter, when fully materialized, did you expect to be, I mean, fully compensated by the, I mean, raw materials in Q1? Or is it
Maybe in Q2, given some lag, and also given rapidly falling steel spot prices, how did your customers react when you implemented the price increase? Is it getting tougher and tougher?
Overall, I would say that in the beginning of all the price increases, if I can name it like that, in the beginning of last year, the customers were more concerned. Today, due to that, all of our competitors and market followers, we all have the same issues that we need to adjust the prices constantly. The acceptance is not the problem.
The problem is just that the increases are coming very unstructured, very unplanned from sub-suppliers and their suppliers. It can be not even monthly, it can be on a weekly basis. There is a constant need to compensate it. By that also answering the part of your question, if we have by one price increase compensated truly for the next quarter, of course, that's always the plan when you do the increase.
I would say in the current situations on the market, that is a good plan, but as I said, the increases can occur on a weekly basis, so it's very hard to say that it will actually compensate for everything.
Okay, perfect. Super helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Carl.
Our next question is from Henrik Alveskog from Redeye. Henrik, please go ahead.
Okay. Hello, this is Henrik. You hear me?
Good morning, Henrik. Hear you loud and clear.
Great. Good morning. Well, yes, then a few questions from my side too. Could we start just talk a little bit about your most recent acquisition, SagiCofim?
Mm.
I think it's pronounced something like that. What was the major reason for this acquisition? I mean, they are deep into the air filter market, and was that like the main reason for this? If you could, in that case, maybe talk a little bit about your, well, maybe ambitions within air filter, that area in general, if this is like a new growth area maybe that you have identified.
Very good question. Thank you for that, Henrik. SagiCofim, they're actually standing on three different legs, I would say. The main part, as you also mentioned, is filtration, 60% of the business. Here they have their absolutely sweet spot is that they are the main supplier for operating theaters and hospital applications.
Mm.
This is an area where we have specialized HEPA units, and it's a growing application for us, where we have had partially both SagiCofim and other sub-suppliers that we have partnered with in the past. This opportunity gives us much stronger stance towards these kind of applications that are, for the time being, growing extensively in all the world after the pandemic.
Mm.
The other part of the business for SagiCofim is air distribution applications for both offshore and marine. Here, especially, I would say that 90% of that part to the marine is air distribution. The other part is air distribution products. Here, their specialty is actually the customized air distribution products that they do up in this special factory in Sandvik.
This is where it's a very good competition to our offering in Italy that is a growing application for air distribution, with DESistem as standard products in air distribution, and their part is the customized products. It's for us also on the Italian and neighboring markets, a very good completion to the offering to all installations.
One part hospitals and these special applications are very much growing and a very good complement to our local offering in Italy and the neighboring countries when it comes to the products for air distribution.
Maybe it's too early, but is this an area where you are seeing further investments already to grow?
Yes, we will invest in that. We see that the possibility to especially increase the volume and output on the filter side for the applications just for hospital and for clean rooms is very much growing these times. We see that we can absolutely increase the output here.
Okay. All right. Over to something else. Well, you have previously talked about that you have a few underperformers within the group. Well, obviously, it's a matter of definition, but are there any subsidiaries or maybe countries where you are now taking specific action to, well, to improve profitability?
I guess we are always taking actions on underperformance. It's part of the normal business for us. I mean, we have regular meetings and put a lot of focus on the underperformance, really. But at this time, what we show here with the impairment also of the goodwill in Menerga is that we are starting to come to the end of the road, really, with Menerga. We
Had big problems really to protect the value of that goodwill really. Yeah, we are now looking at what kind of options we have there really to move forward. There's a lot of focus on underperformance regularly.
Okay. Would you like to expand a little bit about what you said about Menerga or what the options are?
I mean, it's totally right. We of course by taking this goodwill write-down of course also making quite clear where we will focus on some dedicated projects of course. As you know from earlier reports, we have already started with this transferring part of production from Menerga, for example, to Slovenia.
That has now finally started to pick up pace due to that we had component issues also in these plants especially for the tank combinations for these units that is now more stable. Then of course also as you know, we have, for example, also divested Brazil, which was also underperforming company.
Right.
We are looking especially into these different entities and taking these different measures of course.
Mm-hmm.
Special focus just now is Menerga, which you also see in these write-downs.
Mm-hmm. Okay, thanks. Then maybe could you give us, like, an update on Russia? What kind of activities are you able to continue with? Well, just give us a brief update on the current status.
Yeah. Since the fourth of March, when we stopped the deliveries from all our entities to Russia, it's of course a very different situation. To be really honest, we have closed almost all sales offices. They are not existing anymore. We also moved out of our headquarters in Moscow. The employees left with the companies are sitting in the main factory in Moscow.
We have of course a situation where no suppliers coming in, only selling off the things that are still on stock. It's a very limited operation only possible today. That's where we are. We have heavily reduced costs and staff just sitting in the factory in Moscow, but we could never open any operations. That's where we are today.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Great. Thank you very much. That's all for me.
Thank you.
As a reminder, for any further questions, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads now. Our next question comes from Douglas Lindahl from DNB Markets. Douglas, please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking my questions. I have a few. Following up on one of the previous questions there, Roland, you mentioned that you are seeing some projects being delayed, talking about the construction industry now in general.
Mm-hmm.
Is it possible to give some sort of indication on which geographies we're talking about, what sort of projects, and any more details on that to start there?
Yeah. The clear signal that we get, for example, is that governmental projects for residents, for example, in Denmark, are stopped. You have some similar activities in Austria. You have similar in France. It's a little bit going through Europe, I would say. It's not overall.
Most of them are not industry related. They are more, I would say, governmental funded, where they let construction companies to a fixed price make the projects. Where the construction companies with all the increasing costs now putting the brakes and request more money, whether the government isn't giving them, they stop it.
Okay. It's more a question of them probably negotiating the prices then?
Postponing, yes.
Yeah. On pricing weighing on margins here, and you talked a little bit about raising prices as well. Just to be clear, when do you expect to catch up there, meaning normalizing margins from pricing? Should that be effective from the next quarter already or any comment on this?
I think this question is quite different, due to the different product really. Some
Mm-hmm.
The products are directly from the shelf. Of course, we can increase the prices directly from day one, but others are long-term projects, you know, that has been planned for a year or two and, where the delivery time could be six months or something like that. Then it takes time. I guess maximum it could take up to 2-3 quarters until we are up to, you know, we caught up to the material increase.
Mm-hmm. Okay. On organic growth, which was strong obviously in the quarter, and you lagging a bit on pricing. I'm assuming volume was the main component here or how should we think about the organic growth in terms of pricing versus volume?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's really hard to say exactly here, but our estimation is that the price increases is around 10%-12% of the growth. The rest of them is organic, pure organic, you could say.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. I obviously realize we've had a few questions now on the Menerga, but it's a company you bought in 2013 and we're still talking about it. What sort of additional related costs do you foresee for this business going forward? Is this something we should expect that you already know about? Now, I guess, obviously not, but what are the risks there going forward in terms of additional costs, would you say?
From what we can see and say today, I would not expect any extraordinary costs coming up. It's more for us to clear the path to do all the different measures that we now finally can do when the company is coming or the country is coming out of the pandemic. As you know, especially for Germany, there was special protections against workers act and these kind of things throughout the pandemic. They had very strict measures how to handle workers, shifters, and so on and so on. We're now finally out of that and can start all the transitions that we wanna do.
Okay. I guess based on your questions for Russia, you still don't have a sort of a long-term plan there. The plan is to basically sell the stock you have and keep the factory as is or and hoping that Russia will come back to the world, I guess. Or what are your, what's the more long-term plan? Because we're not seeing any indications that Russia is changing its direction, really.
I would agree with you there.
Okay.
We agree with you. We would not see any short-term changes in that, no. We're actually on a monthly basis, we are evaluating the next steps on how to do. As also interviewed on the question from the department before here, it is of course, it's not a good plan to just sit still and wait what will happen, just take the cost for it. We are evaluating the situation on a monthly basis, and we are ready to take the steps when we see the possibility to do so.
Is asset sale, I guess, on the table as well?
Sorry, once again, I didn't get the.
Asset sale. Yeah. We have looked at all.
Selling your facilities in Russia, I guess, is on the table. I mean, it's not an excluded option, I would assume.
Correct.
Okay. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Douglas.
Those are all the questions we have for today. Anders and Roland, I'll hand back to you for any concluding remarks.
All right. Thank you very much for calling in. Hope to see you otherwise on the annual general share meeting, shareholders meeting in Skinnskatteberg on August 25th, I believe.
Yes.
Yeah. Thank you very much for today.
Also from my side, thanks a lot. I hope, meanwhile, until we hopefully see each other in August, I wish all of you a very pleasant summer. Thanks a lot. You take care. Bye-bye.
Bye.
This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.