Good morning, and welcome to the Thule Group 2023 Quarter Two Report Conference Call. My name is Carla, and I will be the operator for today's call. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star followed by One on your telephone keypad. When asking a question, please ensure your telephone is unmuted locally. To revoke your question, please press Star followed by Two. I would now like to hand the conference over to our host, Magnus Welander, CEO. Please go ahead when you are ready.
Thank you, Carla. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this 2023 Q2 report for the Thule Group, which is also my final as a CEO. The 35th quarterly call since stock was listed, actually my 50th quarterly report, I realized. Time flies when you're having fun. Let's go to the first slide. When we look at the summary of the Q2 , I think we can happily say that what we expect to happen has been happening throughout the quarter in terms of sales. As you all remember, when we summarized the Q1 in late April, we also informed the market that we would have a slow start to the quarter, partly due to the high inventory levels in bike retail and partly due to a late bike season start due to weather.
That was true, we did have a weak first month in the quarter. April was clearly very weak. May got clearly better, and June was strong. In total, we end the quarter with a 15% decline, currency adjusted. We're helped a little bit by currency, so it's only 9% down when it comes to reported currency, but 15% down, currency adjusted. That is still 23% growth versus the pre-pandemic Q2 in 2019, currency adjusted. As I said, the monthly trend is strongly positive. When we look at what makes me most happy in the quarter, it is our very strong gross margin at 43.6%. Not only was that a clear improvement versus last year, but it was also the strongest we've ever had.
We have never historically had any quarter such a high gross margin, that was, as you are aware and naturally can consider, done when we had very low production overhead absorption, because not only did we sell less, we continued to reduce our own inventory levels according to our plans. The positive factors that made us deliver the best ever gross margin was, most importantly, as we already communicated in conjunction with the Q1 report, the mid-year 2022 price increases are still, of course, impacting us positively. We still see very significantly reduced freight costs, what was very positive to see is the continued positive channel mix that we see in the quarter. I'm gonna come back to a little bit what we see in the growth of our direct-to-consumer, there was a general positive channel mix.
We still do have the negative economies of scale, and there is still, with reduced bike carrier sales versus historical past in the quarter, some negative product mix effect. However, some of the new products, like the Thule Epos bike carrier on the image, are coming in with good volumes, very strong sales of that product and at very good margins as being a new best-in-class product. What was also good, we kept our SG&A costs steady despite a very aggressive product development push, as we continue to do. In fact, on a rolling twelve-month basis, we are now up to 7.1% spend of sales on product development. We're pushing very hard for the future growth and then to be able to still hold on to that same level.
In fact, a small decrease even when you look at it in constant currency, is strong, also considering some of those senior management changes impacting costs in the quarter. EBIT margin therefore landed at a very strong 23.5%, which was a little bit down versus the extremely strong 2022 Q2 , but a very strong result overall, and an EBIT of SEK 711 million. As I mentioned, our inventory reductions are following to our plans, and even slightly ahead, considering that some of that inventory value is also a currency effect. We are currently reducing inventories in line with the plans that we presented already last year. A reduction of inventory of SEK 308 million in the quarter.
A very good plan followed there and a very strong cash flow as we have already communicated we would have throughout 2023. If we go to the next slide, we can then see a little bit of the performance on a quarter-by-quarter basis and what goes on in our business. When we look at the performance on a continuous basis, it is easy to do the classical mistake to only compare with the previous year period.
That's why we're showing a few years, because we've had, as you are all aware, some very weird swinging quarterly performances throughout the pandemic and also now then due to the bike inventory situation in the beginning of 2023. When we look at the start of the year, we saw a big gap versus 2022. We have to remind ourselves then that in 2022, bike retailers were very, very optimistic in the beginning and ahead of the season, ordering significant quantities after having had very good sales in 2021. Many players then slightly or significantly overestimating how much they would need in the season. That impacted our start of the year. Now in the Q2 , as I mentioned, we were 15% down, currency adjusted versus 2022 Q2, but still 23% up. The Q2 was the second most difficult comp quarter.
The Q2 was exceptionally challenging because we had a fantastic preseason sell-in. We saw some of that, especially at the beginning of the quarter in 2022, Q2 as well, so a difficult comp. Now we're coming with a very positive monthly trend, with April being very weak, May being better and June being strong. We're now facing, as you are aware, a very weak comp period in the Q3 , where we saw the handbrake being pulled by the bike retailers in July and August last year, and therefore our profit warning, that we did in September as a consequence, knowing that that would impact us for a number of quarters going forward. Now we're starting to see easy comps. I therefore urge you all not to get too excited that we will be beating our 2022 results.
I think it's more important to look at the continuous performance of 2023 versus a more normal season pattern, which you can see in the yellow columns on the 2019 is a more normalized pattern of how our sales should pan out. A very positive view on a strong second half of the year, because bike retail is now back to a more normalized level, and we will be seeing a much more normal performance on a seasonal basis. We then go to slide 4 and look from a more regional perspective, you can see that the performance actually was relatively similar between the two big regions, but as always, there are some differences. We take Europe and the rest of the world, then first, what was similar in the two regions was it started weak, with bike retailers having stock still.
That is applicable in both regions, so that has been exactly the same performance. What we see also is generally, as we already mentioned in conjunction with the Q1 report, is that generally in sporting cargo carriers, the retailers are cautious. They're not placing big orders, they're taking smaller orders with more frequency, rather than aggressive, bigger orders. That is also similar across the two regions. What starts to differ is, of course, a little bit the exposure we have due to historical reasons between the product categories. As you are aware, in the biggest region, Europe and the Rest of the World, the RV product is a significant part of our business because we are the market leader in the niche categories we play in.
Here we had a one further solid quarter, thanks to that the motor home manufacturers are still catching up with some of the order book backlogs they've had now for several years. Everybody in the motor home industry is very much anticipating the big question mark that will be more clear in conjunction with the CARAVAN SALON in Düsseldorf in September, is how many new orders will be filling into the system? What is clear, consumer interest is high in going with motor homes and doing that flexible vacationing. It is clear at the same time that the cost of these vehicles have gone up significantly, and there is, of course, a concern with some of the inflationary pressures and higher interest rate logic of how many new orders that will be signed.
I discussed in the last two, three quarters, the risk that people would be stepping out of line so that they had committed to buy a motor home some years ago, but when the cost went up and the backlog finally was starting to be filled up, that they would step out. That is not a pattern what we're seeing, which has been good for the industry and for Thule, but it will now be more of a question mark for the 2024 season, how much new orders that are signed, so to speak, by the European motor home manufacturers in conjunction with the CARAVAN SALON.
In juvenile and pet, which is also bigger in this region than it is in Region of the Americas. Thanks to our strong bike commuting trend with children in Europe, specifically then the German market, Germany, Switzerland, so to speak, and the Benelux and the Nordics, where people commute to kindergarten with their kids. That is a significant chunk. Here we're very happy to say that we saw an earlier normalization than in any other category in terms of the bike trailers, where we are the European market leader. Already in the Q2, we saw growth in our bike trailers in the region because there was an earlier normalization than there were of some of the other bike-related categories.
Which is also a sign that the trend that young parents want to bike commute with more and more commuting opportunities done in municipalities around the world with all the investments, is definitely a trend that will continue. In the packs, bags, and the luggage category, it was the luggage and duffel that were the best performing subcategories. From a regional market perspective, we saw France being our weakest of the bigger markets, and the main reason here is we have a few very large retail chains that are positioned slightly lower, some more mid-priced products, and they are still comparably the most conservative and also sitting on slightly more inventory in the quarter than in other markets. The best performing markets were the UK and Poland.
As I mentioned, direct- to- consumer, nice to see from a very small base in this region, but a very strong growth. Now in the quarter, it was 6% of sales. You have to remember that we do not ever consider to do the RV product sales direct- to- consumer, because the consumer won't be buying those products that way. As a share of the possible business, it's still growing very nicely. If you go to slide 5. Look at region Americas, as I mentioned, many of the patterns are the same. The picking up month-over-month is absolutely the same. The high inventory levels in bike retail at the beginning of the quarter, exactly the same.
And also what is similar is this general cautiousness of placing large orders for sport and cargo carrier products, but with this lot of continuous smaller orders. What differs a lot is this exposure to RV products, where it's a significant category in Europe, while it's a tiny niche category for us in region Americas. In this case, that was lucky, because if we talk about the European motor home markets being stable by catching up with backlog, as I'm sure you've been reading a lot about, the North American motor home market was weak, so we had a similar performance with our niche category in RV products.
Within packs, bags, and luggage, we took a decision some time ago, as you know, from years ago, but also specifically now some quarters ago, that we had still in our legacy categories that we play in, some OE business where we do direct business to business of other, the more simpler bag solutions. We decided to step out of this business and phase it out. That is impacting us quite significantly in this quarter and will impact also the next quarter. What is good about that, is that that was very low margin business, so from a mix point of view, it didn't.
It helps us from a mix margin point of view. It isn't the business we want to be in long- term. From a sales perspective, it did hurt the packs, bags, and luggage category in Q2, and will do so partly in Q3 as well. What is going well is very similar to Europe. It's the luggage and duffel bags, especially, that continues to grow nicely. From a geographic perspective in this region, the two big North American markets of the U.S. and Canada had a similar performance, while we strongly grew. It was nice to see some growth in Latin America. Here, clearly, Latin America, the better performing of the geographic spread. Here, direct- to- consumer continued to grow at very strong pace. In the quarter in the region, it was now 16% of our sales.
As you also understand from that, from a gross margin percentage point of view, the strong growth of direct- to- consumer, of course, continues to help us. If we go to slide 6 and look a little bit more on what's going on in our business. In general, as I said, many patterns are similar across the regions, and also patterns in terms of what's going on in our trending on things. If you look at the financials on an operating working capital point of view, is the key message, the inventory reduction? Despite a currency effect of making the inventory being SEK 186 million higher, purely due to currency, we are now seeing that planned reduction of inventory as we announced already late last year. In fact, we would be slightly ahead of plan if it wasn't for those currency effects.
From an accounts receivable and an accounts payable, if you look at from a trending point of view, obviously, as we mentioned, with a slow sales start in the beginning and then stronger and stronger, we see an accounts receivable going in the right direction. What you can see is also key that on an accounts payable basis, we are still not buying a lot of product and components in, thanks to the fact that we still are planning to reduce our inventory also clearly throughout the Q3 of the year. Overall, I am happy with what we've been doing in terms of reducing the inventory, and that is what the key contributor to what we knew would be a very strong operational cash flow in the period.
As you see, a lower CapEx in the period than the previous year, but that is not just the previous year. We are, in fact, doing things over time to get back, as we said, after a heavy investment phase, to a more normalized investment phase. If we go to slide 7 and look at how we, how the business unfolds, as I said, some strong positive trends and some good things happening. When you look at what this company, first and foremost, does great is new products. Of course, it's important for you to realize how many new products we are coming with in the 18-month period that started more or less from April this year.
We've already, this spring, helping us, especially in the Q2, but will be helping us also throughout Q3 and 2024, is a number of key launches that have already taken place. You've seen the fantastic Thule Approach rooftop tent. You've heard about our brilliant Thule Arcos rear or car box solution with very good energy efficiency. You've seen the very cool Thule Caprock premium lifestyle roof platform, and you will definitely be hearing a lot more over the coming years about world's best rear of car bike carrier. We launched the European version of tow bar mounted in the Q2 , and now in the Q3 , we're going to start to see volumes also in North America for the hitch-mounted version.
The Thule Epos has already won multiple awards and won also a gold award at the recent Eurobike event, and is clearly already taking a clear place as the best in the market. We have also, since we announced the Q1 report, had a number of other trade introductions, and we are seeing some of those that will be hitting sales already positively in the autumn. The Thule Allax, the world's safest dog crate for the car trunk, is coming into market at the end of the Q3 , and it's in the upper right corner of the image. I'm sure that will be a significant contribution. At Eurobike, where we in June showed all our new bike-related products, we also launched a second dog transport product, the Thule Bexar dog bike trailers, which is shown in the top left image.
With those two, we'll start to have two big products in dog. The Thule Bexar comes at the beginning of next year, while the Thule Allax dog crate comes in the end of the Q3 . We have also in the autumn, will launches of a number of very nice bag collections that I feel very strongly about. We are hitting it spot on in terms of design and recyclability and sustainability of those bags, and styling is, as I've joked a few times, it's always good when my daughters and their boyfriends steal the bags that I have home for testing, and so it looks very, very positive. What is also important to know is that we sometimes do more money than anything else with an upgraded generation of a key volume product. At Eurobike, we launched Thule Chariot Generation Three.
Thule Chariot is the world's most sold premium bike trailer for children, and at Eurobike, we launched an even better version with the same iconic design and look, but with a multitude of big improvements that got raving reviews from all our importers. As I mentioned, we already saw bike trailer sales starting to grow in Q2, with the trend that is in the market and this fantastic new product, I see very positively of this high- volume product having a significant impact in 2024 as it hits the market at the beginning of 2024.
What is also nice to say is that when Mattias Ankarberg, who takes over as CEO, will be doing the quarter three update, he's going to have a lot of cool news to tell you about in that quarter three update as well, because there are some still upcoming fairs and events. As we've always said, we don't tell you investors before we tell the retailers and consumers that will buy it. At those upcoming later in this quarter, then events, we will be announcing some other key volume-driving product launches for next year. Not just niche little product launches, but some serious volume launches with brilliant new products. We feel extremely strongly about our product launch assortment coming for the coming 18 months. If we go to slide 8, look at what this, of course, means.
It's not always completely free of charge to drive for future growth, and when you do that, you will need to invest and spend, but it keeps the focus going in the long run. Our focus for the second half is a strong growth focus strategy that remains unchanged. We are pushing new products and new solutions to the market for a good reason. We are convinced we will be able to drive growth. From a pricing point of view, we are keeping the prices stable after those multiple increases we did in 2021 and 2022. It will be by new units, new volumes, that we will generate top- line growth coming into the near future. We are also doing that by continuing to strengthen the very strong global lifestyle brand, Thule.
We are going to see now, despite doing a second or continuous phase of inventory reduction also in Q3, but we will now start to see as we produce more, the possibility to utilize a very well-invested back end to drive cost efficient growth in the coming quarters. We are continuing to boost our direct-to-consumer sales, and that will, of course, drive a margin improvement as well. It's not only our own direct consumer sales, our big improvements that are noticed by retailers as well, is on, for example, our Thule.com solution and our other merchandise solution, is to generally drive growth across all channels.
The product portfolio push I've already talked about, the fact is that we will continue with extremely lower levels of production staffing throughout 2023 Q3, because we are reducing inventory levels, and it will only be when we start to be into 2024, we will see a more normalized levels. We have been continuing our investments, as you're aware, of high heavy investments in automation and efficiency gains for our plants. When the volume comes, I feel very confident that we will be able to meet those capacity demands, and we will be able to do so in a very efficient manner. The strong cash generation will continue throughout the year, which is always good because that enables us the freedom to spend where we should. All of that is the focus going forward.
A reminder is, of course, also that we will now face some very easy comps, especially Q3 is very easy, and Q4 is also relatively easy. Shouldn't get too carried away internally or with investors, because we should be beating and will be beating those quarters, but it's nice to see that we have that momentum. We have to remind ourselves, the world is the most uncertain in many ways. There's many things going wrong. Our ability that we've proven once and again, to be flexible, will be key, and, we have proven that throughout recent years. If we go to slide 9, one of the questions we've been getting quite a lot from investors over the last few months or since beginning of the year, has been around, How much are you really spending on product development, and when will it normalize?
How much have you been spending on CapEx, and well, how will that normalize? Looking a bit on those two things, you are completely correct that we have had an extremely aggressive product development push. That was already planned. When we then saw bike retail slowing in sales and us seeing them reduce sales, we were faced with a choice of pulling back on some very good product development initiatives that we were sure would drive future growth, or take, so to speak, the rolling 12-month hit of increasing our R&D spend. We correctly, I'm convinced, chose to be pushing very aggressively for future growth and future performance with fantastic new products to hit the market.
That means with the reduced sales we've been seeing as retailers were selling down inventory, that in fact, on a rolling twelve-month basis, we are now up to 7.1% of sales in product development. I won't be running this company in the future, and you all know that I'm slightly a glorified product developer and product manager, but even I would not consider 7.1% at the right level for Tula in the future. I think, as I've said a few other times, that the level should be normalizing somewhere in the range of slightly above five over time. That, of course, will happen for two reasons.
One, this has been an extreme push with loads of new products. Two, we will see, no doubt, a pickup on rolling 12-month sales as we're now facing several quarters in a row with very weak comps, Q3, Q4 in 2022 and Q1, especially, but partly also Q2 in 2023, have been weak. The rolling 12-month sales will be stronger, but also the absolute spend will be more normalizing, so we will be going down from these extremely high levels. When we do that, we will also do that partly because once you start actually selling in new categories, and as I said, we start selling dog products at the end of Q3, beginning of Q4, you start to see volumes hitting. When you roll into 2024, you will therefore see a natural offset to our dog spending, so to speak.
The same will happen for the car seats in the second half of 2024 and beyond. You will get an offsetting of actually the revenues in categories where we have been hitting the P&L with heavy development spend. From a CapEx perspective, we told you several times throughout the autumn of 2020 and 2021 and 2022, that you would be facing, or we were facing a number of years, three, we in fact said, of significantly higher than average CapEx. 2021 and 2022, partly also because we did very large investments in a completely new development facility that some of you saw and visited at our Capital Markets Day in 2022, but also a fantastic state-of-the-art new test center.
Those two above and beyond investments that we don't do very often, came at the same time as we needed to do significant capacity investment, having gone from 7 billion SEK sales to 10 billion SEK in a very rapid rise. On top, we did- investment to be able to automize more in some of our high- volume products. Finally, investment to prepare for production insight in our own sites of these new categories. As you can see on the rolling 12, we are now starting to normalize, so we are already on a clear downward trend, and I'm sure from 2024 and on to a normalized, slightly above 2% type of CapEx spend in the group.
If we then go to the final slide 10, and look at something, I take this opportunity, 35th time I do this. I've always been, and will continue to be, a forward-looking person, but sometimes when you're told to lead, you can also look a bit backwards. I've taken the liberty to do a bit of backwards looking, and I can tell you then, I'm a very proud person in what we have achieved, my colleagues and myself, over the 17 years I've been at the company. Having been a CEO since 2010, I can strongly say that Thule Group is today a stronger company in every single aspect than it was when I took over. We have successfully divested a number of underperforming car industry subsupply divisions.
Most of them were actually divested even before we got stock listed, and a few after. We've changed from a complete wholesaler model to retail-oriented sales, and as you've seen in our last few quarters, an exciting quick growth of our D2C journey. We have no doubt a true world-class product development, with more design and test awards than any other player in our sector. We have a modern and very well-invested supply chain with capacity expansion opportunities. What is, in these days, so important, we have a true sustainability mindset with very high ambitions, both science-based targets and net zero, and also a very strong track record on actually delivering those plans, not just talking about them. What I'm extremely proud of is also that Tula is today a very well-established global lifestyle brand.
I notice that wherever I travel in the world, and the difference is phenomenal versus when I go back to 2010, traveling the world. Happy to say we've done this while delivering very strong financial build results, and also with very big dividends paid to you, investors. If we include the October dividend payment, in fact, we will have paid in dividends as much as our total market cap was when we got listed in 2014, SEK 7 billion. We've also, what I think is very important now, as we have a new CEO taking over, we've had very strong internal people growth, and we have a lot of internal promotions of people that have done a phenomenal job. We have some people that have, for various reasons, left and have had fantastic, and are having fantastic careers at other companies.
We are today a very attractive employer in all our markets. You have seen and heard about all the new great products coming the next 2 years, and what is good is they're coming in sectors with long-term positive market trends, because it's always easier to sail with the wind in your back. With all of that, I feel very proud. We know in the end, especially you, analysts and investor, will judge a CEO, mostly in the end, almost solely on how the investment has grown under my or their management. I have to say, I'm also proud there. We have created a fantastic return on investment, both as an unlisted entity and since 2014, with an impressive share price development as a public company.
A little bit as I joke with my friends, being an ex-soccer player, it feels like in the 80th minute, we get a penalty and you're looking up because there is a substitution. You are surprised that it's your number coming up on that board. You look around and you go like, "Okay." You go around, realize, yeah, they decided they replace you. You go on, pat the back of all your teammates, pump them up. You go out, you take off your captain's bindi, and you give it to the new guy. You pep him up, and you say, "You go in and put that penalty in.
Let's make a fantastic future for this company. In closing, I want to give a huge thank you, because I do know that there is a lot of colleagues that are investors as well in the company and are listening in to this call. I want to give a huge thank you to all my fantastic colleagues. There is a great team at Thule Group, and it's been a pure pleasure with working with you for the 17 years I've been here. I am also convinced that with your help, Mattias will, in the same way, contribute to the successful future of the Thule Group journey. I wish you all the best, and although I normally don't single out persons, I want to do one singling out now because it is an investor and analyst call.
I want to thank specifically Fredrik Erlandsson, our head of IR, who is a brilliant IR person. I know you know that as investors and analysts, but who has made my life extremely easy to work with all of you, investors and analysts. I send him a special thanks, also for being a very fun person to work with. With that, we open up for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star, followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. To revoke your question, please press Star followed by 2. When preparing for your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question is from Daniel Smith, from Daiwa Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, Magnus. A couple of questions from me, and starting maybe with the sort of the tagging on the commentary that you had when it comes to bike retailers' inventories, which has been a big, big, big focus over the past 12 months, and also during the spring. You're saying that you're more or less seeing a normalization of those bike retailers' inventories as we go into the second half of this year. Could you shed some more light on what you've seen? I think you mentioned that trailers are ahead of carriers and so on, but also on a geographical, from a geographical perspective, and also maybe on a bit more on a product perspective, what you're seeing?
Morning, Dan. Generally, the trend is the same. What we're seeing is, I would say, as we exited June, most retailers are back to normal levels, so it's not geography-based at all. It is specific retailer-based. There might be specific retailers in a specific market that have still a little bit too much. They are few. Most of them are back to normal levels. However, if those few are relatively big, which is what I mentioned about France, where we have a few very big retailers, and that are selling at slightly lower price points, more mid-priced, there is a higher likelihood that they still had a little bit too much throughout the quarter. Generally, with the good sales we saw in the last few weeks of June, we saw a clear normalization across the board.
The logic for why certain product categories have then performed better from an inventory normalization is more due to how many different models was there available in the market when they built up inventory. If you look at, for example, premium bike trailers, where we saw a normalization a little bit earlier, there it is because there isn't that many players and models up at the very premium end. Even if there were too many, there were too many of relatively fewer models. There are more models at a mid-priced bike carrier, for example, there are more brands, more models. When you go upwards in the price points, fewer models, so less build up of inventory. You can say that's the trend, not geographic as much as retailer and price point specifically.
Okay, well, that's good. Just coming back to sort of the product, and especially some of the ones that have been very successful, I think you've mentioned Thule Epos a number of times, and that launched in mid- April in Europe and mid-June, I think, in Americas. I assume that given the sort of difference in launch dates, that that will probably have a good contribution also to Q3 and the second half of this year in terms of sales in that category. Is that a fair assumption?
Absolutely. Thule Epos is a true volume product at very high price points and good margins. We're selling lots of units. We were not selling any of that because we didn't have it last year. Of course, it's partly taking some share of our previous most sold ones. As we were selling very few of those as well in Q3 last year, due to the holdback, that will be a significant contributor to the growth in Q3.
Yep. Speaking of that, and also all these components, that impact the gross margin, and you've lined them up fairly, sort of visually, with freight impacting positively, also channel mix and new product share of total sales, given that they are sometimes produced more efficiently than the old ones, and I think that goes for Thule Epos, and then you have the price increases that you did last year as well, of course, kicking in. Looking ahead, what should we expect on all these sort of different components? You have the raw material working against you in Q2. I assume that's gonna be working with you towards the end of the year, then maybe the channel mix will go the other way, who knows. Could you shed some light on those different components and the gross margin impact going forward, all else equal?
I think you should always be careful to look at too much gross margin quarter on quarter, because it depends on the production overall absorption, which type of products are sold more each quarter. You should be looking more on the rolling 12 performance as we go ahead now. I'm very confident that we have a very solid base of a high gross margin going forward with all the things we've done and with the under absorption we've been having, which has been significant. Not only have we sold less, we've also produced a lot less than we sold due to sitting on too much inventory.
When we come slowly but surely back to more normalized production levels, both thanks to sales and not needing to sell down inventory anymore, that will, of course, be a nice positive contributor, being able to offset some other things that is going on always in the market. I feel very confident about our gross margin development going forward.
I assume that sort of you stated that sort of there will be underproduction also in Q3, and it will take until 2024 until we see normal production. Is there any sort of step change at all from lower levels compared to Q2 running into Q3 on the production rate, if you adjust for seasonality?
From a production rate logic, no, but as sales will be higher, you still get the more pure production overhead absorption, thanks to sales levels being higher.
Yep
... versus the previous year, right?
Yep.
Our production levels will still be low because we're going to sell out in inventory, but we will sell more.
Yep. That's understood. On product development spending, I think you had a good slide on that, should we expect that normalized normalization to happen at the start of 2024? Is that already happening towards the end of 2023 in terms of PD spending?
If you look at it, we will be spending a lot, but as we are now replacing low revenue quarters with higher revenue quarters from a rolling 12 point of view, thanks again, you get as a share of sales, you're going to see the number going down only thanks to better sales.
Yeah. All right.
The spend is heavy still because we're pushing for these new products, but sales will be better, so as a % of sales, it will go down.
Yeah. Nitty-gritty, I think you actually mentioned the senior management changes had an impact on SG&A costs for the quarter, or did I hear you right?
That's correct. Replacing a CEO is not free of charge.
Any numbers that you want to give that sort of, regard as well?
No. I think it's pretty, the annual report shows what my contract is, there's, of course, some headhunting costs and some other things around, replacing people. It's pretty.
Yeah
easy to do. It's still significant for the administration part of our cost.
Right. Good. That's all for me. I just want to say, good luck, Magnus, and hats off for the performance that you've been able to deliver together with the team, of course, over the past, nine years, at least, as a listed company.
Thank you very much.
We have our next question from Gustav Hagéus from SEB. Please go ahead when you're ready.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. To follow up on the, the margin discussions, 23.5% EBIT margin this quarter versus, I think it was 24.7% last year, right? In the same territory, despite organic growth being down 15% and volumes then being down more, could you give us some color on if the volumes would have been in line with last year, would margins then be significantly up? Or how much is the under absorption effect, and how much is the volume effect here in total, you think, to the margin?
Of course, as always, it's always hypothetical because you actually need to run the plants as well as efficiently as you want to do. As I reminded everybody, when we did the fantastic volumes in 2021, we were doing that by running the plant inefficiently at shift nights, weekends, at a higher cost, with a lot of temps that cost more per hour, et cetera. That was the right choice because we had the sales volume, and we still made a lot of money doing it, but it wasn't very efficient plants. Now, in the second half of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, we had efficient, well-invested production plants, but they're running very little, so therefore, they are costing from a more traditional production overhead absorption logic.
What would be the ideal, which is what we're hoping should be then taking place in 2024, with more normalized sales volumes picking up because bike retailers are not reducing inventory and we are not reducing inventory, we will produce more. Not only sell more, but produce more. You then get two effects: you get the pure, let's say, top- line effect of selling a lot, you get the effect of producing more efficiently, and if you at the same time, do that also by having more optimized and better margin products, you're getting three positives, the kind direct situation in an ideal world. The ideal world has never happened to me.
There's always something not going as well as you hope, but totally, that means there should be, on a continuous basis, seeing a nice gross margin development rolling forward, subject to weird things like pandemics, Russian invasions or whatever, not hurting the flow of material and the flow of your supply chain.
Okay. Could you shed some light on the car seat rollout? You know, I'm not sure if you said Q2 before, just H1 next year. It's been postponed, right? I haven't heard a lot of comments on why.
No, well.
There have been technical issues or safety.
No, because we already in the Q1 report, a bit clearer, actually, that it was gonna happen in Q2, so it was that postponement was announced. The decision, as was communicated in the Q1 report, is that we have seen much longer lead times as everybody else on some, still, on some electronic components, and some assembly equipment. We do not, on a product that is safety-oriented, one, and most importantly, for small children, wanna take any type of shortcuts when we're stepping up and ramping up mass production, but also not from a pure brand perspective of coming in as a new player and then starving the market just after you've launched. That was, and is the logic for why we took that delay as we communicated at the Q1 report.
All right, that's clear. Finally, for me, looking into H2, maybe next year in terms of working capital lease, cash flow, you had a nice return here in Q2. Where do you think is that? You previously said that, do you think that lead times and the tariffs and whatnot will keep your inventories perhaps higher than they were in the pre-pandemic era? Can you shed some light on the cash flow profile as you see it?
The cash flow will be fantastic in the second half of the year as well, because we are still reducing inventory significantly and we're seeing pickup in sales, so cash flow will be very strong. Then from the direction, then what goes on in 2024 and onwards, if you look at Rickard Andersson, our head of supply chain, a brilliant guy, he's not gonna be stupid in trying to be goody-goody two-shoes. I've talked a lot with Mattias, I'm sure he won't be either in trying to show, "Look how good we are on operating working capital," and taking the risk of saying no to fantastic high-margin sales. The world isn't still fantastically smooth in everything. I think in 2024 and beyond, it will be more slowly but surely a reduction.
We needed to do significant reductions of inventory because we simply had far too much of bike-related products in 22, exiting 22. That is being reduced now in 23, and will be done by the end of Q3. It will be more a continuously getting normalized supply chain pickup in sales and a more a continued slow but sure reduction of inventory to a more normalized level. I think, but that's then up to Rickard and Mattias and others to talk about. I think realistically, it would be too optimistic to believe that that can be even at the levels was before, because you have to remember, we also do more direct to consumer. When you do that, you take on that responsibility to hold that stock also for the consumers, which otherwise the consumer stock is held by others, right?
You shouldn't be fooling yourself that some of these channel mixes also impact other things. I think it will be, even if we see a gradual decline of the %, it won't be going back to the same levels as pre-pandemic.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
At least not fast. Yeah.
No. All right, thank you. Those were all my questions, and agree with Daniel there. It's been a nice time with you here, too. Good luck with your future endeavors, whatever they may be.
Thank you, Gustav.
We have our next question from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go ahead when you're ready.
Good morning. Let me just start off by congratulating you, Magnus, on a fantastic career. I think everyone listening in on this call will agree that you will be greatly missed. On to my questions, I'm sorry if this is too repetitive, but I think the biggest topic of discussion today is the margin. Obviously, you proved your resilience and flexibility in this quarter and also in Q1. Should we be worried that the efficiency measures that you've taken or are taking today won't be able to maintain them once the volume situation normalizes? Is this, you know, 23.5% EBIT margin is at a level or a new base that you will continue to build upon?
It would be good if we could just have more of a clarification on what the... I do understand that you don't give out guidance, but what a normal base could look like in a normal scenario.
I think you need to separate EBIT margin % from gross margin %. If we take a gross margin % logic, that will be driven by how efficient you sell and produce your things, but also, of course, what pricing you have on them and what mix there is, both from a channel and product. If we look at the whole logic of how we see it, we believe that the mix going forward will be clearly positive. As you remember, we sold very little of some relatively higher margin products in Q3, Q4 and Q1. We will sell more of those as now bike retailers have reduced their inventories. From a product mix, we will see a positive effect in the coming four quarters versus historical, the recent past.
From a point of efficiency, we will clearly see a better production overhead, not in Q3, as I mentioned, because we're still reducing our inventory. As we go into 2024, we will be producing more normally. One, because we're convinced we'll sell more, two, because we don't need to reduce inventory. Fact is, we're gonna get much more efficient utilization of the investments we've done, that's why we also shared the CapEx graph, right? We did do a lot of investments that are costing us, you know, we have a lot of, you know, fixed staff in our white-collar bases of quality and supply chain, et cetera. When the volumes pick up, you get a better coverage for them. That will be positive impact. I therefore feel from a gross margin perspective, we have a very good situation going forward.
For how much that materializes in an EBIT pull-through is even more driven by economies of scale, because we will be pushing clearly ahead. I'm sure Mattias and the team, Kalle, who's a fantastic Senior VP of Product Development, will be pushing Mattias to do more and more cool new things also in the future. As I said, it will go down as a % of sales because sales will pick up. Even if you do a lot of product development as a % of sales, it will be going down. You, there, you have different factors. You will also have a greater economies of scale on any type of head office SG&A costs as sales numbers go up, therefore, the EBIT will be helped by that as well.
I would focus, if you look at economies of scale, first and foremost, on gross margin. I feel very comfortable that we have a very good trajectory. If the sales come, which I'm convinced it will, that will also have a positive economies of scale effect on our SG&A costs. Both will contribute to why I'm so confident with our 20%, above 20% EBIT level as a continuous basis going forward.
Okay. Thank you very much for that clarification. Then also, a quick question on what the current trading looks like. I do understand that the inventory levels on a retail level are now looking more rebalanced than what they did at the beginning of the quarter. The logic behind retailers placing smaller orders, is that a behavior that is also improving on a week- by- week or daily basis, as they're now less cautious than what they were just two weeks ago? Are we still seeing that kind of behavior as we go into the second half of the year, and what could the implications be in that case, if that behavior is sustained for more than just one quarter?
This is a normal behavior in the end of a summer season. If you look at a company like us providing next day delivery, what normally is done by retailers is, at the beginning of the season, they pump up and fill up their stores because they will have a lot of people coming in the spring, buying their bike stuff and buying their products, right, going on vacations. After the peak period, they normally, even in pre-pandemic times, didn't place big orders in Q3 because they placed replenishment orders of smaller quantities of specific models, specific colors. The pattern is more for every week that goes more similar to historical patterns, which should be smaller quantities with frequent orders. We see a very continuous strong trend.
If you saw the first 3... If you go back to what I said, very weak April, okay May, strong June, that isn't changing overnight, right? If you look at the trend, we feel very good about the orders that are coming in on a daily basis. Now, in this part of the year, it is more normal that they place smaller orders. In the spring, historically, they would place bigger orders, but because of the situation, they didn't, right? It's more the spring that was weird. It's not so weird now that it's a continuous smaller replenishment order cycle.
Got it. Taken all together, your outlook on the second half of the year?
I have a very positive outlook. Yeah, correct. Hello?
Hi, I think we've lost her line. Moving on to the next question, it comes from Carl Deijenberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, Magnus. Two questions from my side. Maybe first, a general one, following up here on the comments with regards to inventories in the channels and bike retail in general. If you could provide us or if you have any sense sort of how the overall bike market is doing this year, given that we're quite far into the peak season now, it would be interesting to hear sort of your sense of the sell-out development, if you take, you know, both bikes in Europe and in the U.S. versus, take versus the pre-pandemic period and versus last year. Is the sell-out, in your view, still above pre-pandemic levels? I can see that the participation rate seems to be high, but, yeah, anything on that would be interesting to hear from your side.
Yeah. Having been at Eurobike, I, of course, spent a lot of other CEOs in the business, and we talk with them all the time, and we talk with the retailers. I think in general, people will say that it's clearly higher levels than 2019, but it's, you know, depending on who you talk to, there is a speculation that it's mid-single to 5%-10% below the peak during the pandemic, so to speak. What is helping the bike retail sector and the bike brands is that average price points are higher. If you look at it from that perspective, they're compensating partly because the growth of e-bikes, and e-bikes being so much more expensive than a bike with no E in it, and the general price increases that have impacted has helped. Yeah, clearly above 2019 levels, but below the peak levels.
Okay, thank you. I had a question on this new product that we're looking ahead of now, the course set launch here in the beginning of next year, the new carrier that you launched here at Eurobike. I just wanted to ask sort of the new products that you're planning to launch here, are all of these being produced through your new sort of more running or more efficient production line that you've been investing here in the last few years? Is that going to be for all of the new products, or are some of them requiring a different process?
If you look at it, for example, the bags, we are launching a number of new bags. They will still be done by Southeast Asian suppliers, so it's not every single product. You can generally say.
Yeah
... when it's a high- volume product, like the Prolayar course, like some of the other products that will be announced soon, they are high- volume ones. That's where an automation setup makes sense of the heavy, true, full-on automation. Otherwise, it will continue for a lower volume products there which we will also launch a few, of course, because we need to fully complement the portfolio. There is more traditional, semi-automized setups that we will have. On a number of the key bike carrier volumes, some other cool products coming, truly more optimized assembly being used with the investments we've done over the last years.
Okay, very well. I think that was all from my side. A big thank you again, and also from my side, a big good luck on your new adventures here after leaving Thule. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We have our next question from Karri Rinta from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, operator, for taking my question. First, a clarification on inventories. When you say that inventories have normalized, I just wanted to make sure that you are specifically talking about retailer inventories of Thule products and not their overall inventory levels.
That is correct. Inventories have normalized on Thule products. You're correct there, Karri. There is at lower price points, for example, still on cheap bikes. Many retailers will clearly say that they still have a little bit too much, but it's the categories we play in our inventory. There are some of our competitors that these retailers still have too much, but not the ones that we compete directly with, the ones that compete at lower price points that we don't play at.
All right, thanks. The D2C sales that have been growing nicely, and as you said, in the U.S., or in North America, it's already 16% of sales. Have you changed your view of on what would be the sort of the ambition level for a company like Thule? At what level do you think that you will stable or that you should strive to reach if we exclude RV products?
Yeah, if you look at that one, Karri, I think it's one of these where you have to say, we're gonna be to with very few exceptions, Sweden being the one with three own shops now, one in Gothenburg as well as the one in Stockholm, Malmö, because there aren't many brilliant retailers in Sweden, but otherwise, our focus will be online. Therefore, we need to be realistic more in terms of when we internally challenge and target and follow up, we look at online sales reality, what share of online sales in any given market should we have? When you look at it, I think you have to be realistic that this is a physical product that people want to see and touch and, you know, do as well. You want a lot of stores to be successful, physical stores as well.
What you will see is that there will be fewer players online selling Thule products, and some of that Thule online sales will then go to us. I think that's the trend. U.S. will always be the highest share because there you have the opportunity with the minimum sales retail policy to price the same way as your online customers. You are not gonna have that price negative comparison effect, which you always will have in Europe, where people will be selling your product at a lower price. I think, you know, there is, we are now getting a CEO who has lived in do-it-yourself, price-driven business retail. I'm sure he knows a lot more about direct- to- consumer than I do. I will let him have fun with that speculation on what he thinks is the right way going forward.
Sure, fair enough. Just one final question on this topic. If we look at absolute numbers, then the direct-to-consumer sales are roughly similar in Europe and in North America. How much more margin accretive are the sales in North America, given that it's one country, one language, and so forth? Would you say that the European direct consumer sales are still subscale to be margin accretive?
No, absolutely not. They are at very similar levels because we historically built our setup in terms of how we both do our Thule.com setup with language and translations, historically, with all of those normally extra costs, but also from a physical, how we handle the supply chain. We have very efficient handling of our supply chain, also in Europe, because we were already doing retail sales, which were pick and pack, and we then just slotted in that rather than picking and packing for a small retailer, they're picking and packing for a consumer in those same places. Both regions are equally margin accretive.
All right, great. Yeah, I think those were all my questions. I would also like to thank you for your service, and thank you for making both these Conference Calls and reporting days to suck less. Thank you very much.
I'll take that as a huge compliment, Karri. Thank you.
Our last question comes from Mats Liss from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thank you for taking my couple of questions here. First, starting with the. Well, you mentioned all the product launches, Magnus, and very impressive, I guess. If you just could indicate how much of the, this offering, of your current offering are sort of upgraded? Yeah, that's the first one.
I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll try to interpret an answer.
No, I mean, for the whole offering you have in all the four business segments, how much is sort of upgraded?
Yeah, so if you look at it, I think first of all, it's important to remember that Thule has always done a lot of product development, and it's not just this year. We do roughly 50% of our sales is product launched in the last 3 years. What is happening now with some high- volume products getting a new generation, you're going to get a big boost to that, but then it normalizes over time, so to speak. I think from a high level point of view, you should be thinking that 50% should be coming from sales, should be coming from product launch the last 3 years. In a short while here in 2024, there will be more of it because the rolling 12 will pick up, and it will mostly pick up the new products of high- volume products.
Okay, great. Great. Thank you. All these sort of discussions regarding direct- to- consumer there, in which areas do you see most opportunities to grow sales there? Do you also expect you need to make investments in that area to sort of handle returns and so on? Are you sort of could you use external suppliers to handle those?
Yeah, I think the first key is here, since we do a relatively technical product with a conscious buy rather than a passionate, I want to buy 3 T-shirts and 4 shoes, but I know exactly the fit, so I bring them all in and send half of them back, is not happening. We already have been doing this for a while. We have extremely low return rates. Of course, we are always working on how should we be able to handle, should they increase? The type of products, and not only Thule, if you talk to other companies that do these type of more hard goods, more advanced products, they have extremely low return rates. That's not an issue where we are concerned at all that we would need to invest.
We are not clothing or fashion or something like that, where there are huge return rates, right? Not a big issue at all. We're not concerned at all. In terms of opportunity, it will actually be more than anything. It is already driven by how good retailers do we have in each type of product, and how strong have we been in winning space at those retailers. As I mentioned, unfortunately, Sweden doesn't have a lot of very good, I would say, hard goods, physical store for sport and outdoor. Therefore, we needed to have some stores. In some countries, there are brilliant stores offering fantastic assortment of both Thule products and other brands, and if there is, our likelihood of taking a bigger share will be small.
Sometimes it's because of the type of retailers that exist, sometimes it's because we haven't done a good job of winning share in those retailers, so we're needing to sell it more in our own direct consumer.
Great answer. I mean, coming back to this inventory, you have the SEK 2.7 billion post well in the Q2 , you expect it to decline during the second half. How much money is that do you expect to be able to reduce it with?
At the end of last year, we said we wanted to reduce SEK 600 million versus the SEK 3.0 billion we had. That was before currency valuation started growing it with quite a lot. As I said, we've actually reduced more, excluding that currency effect, and that ambition of the SEK 600 million less than when we exited 2022 is still the right ambition to have.
Thank you. Just finally, there, I mean, there are some tough market conditions out there, and maybe it will get worse, but you also have a history of making sort of bolt-on acquisitions to speed up growth in new areas like, well, whatever. Now you launched the car seat there. Do you see opportunities, well, coming up there due to market conditions?
I am convinced that Mattias will get the same type of pressure as I have been getting from the board to do more acquisitions, and then he, I'm sure, will have to do the same valuation as I've done in saying it's not always that easy to do those acquisitions, but I'm sure Mattias will do a smart and structured valuation together with the team on which smart additions we could do, because the ones we have done have been extremely successful. We haven't done so many, but they've been brilliant, actually.
Great. Thank you very much, Magnus. Thank you for all the help, during the years.
Thank you very much.
For me as well.
Thank you.
We have no further questions registered. I will now hand back to your host, Magnus, for final remarks.
Thank you very much, Carla. I want to then jump on the bandwagon of what Karri said. I want to thank all of you analysts, because honestly, without you asking questions, this would be a very boring monologue. On Karri's theme, I want to thank you all for you making these type of events not suck, but actually be intelligent, analytical, and fun, challenging to try to answer your questions without giving away too much, which a CEO should never do, but enough for you to truly make up a clear and good understanding. It's been a true pleasure having these calls with you, and I know that Mattias and the team will enjoy them in the future as well. Thank you very much, and have a great summer!