Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Presentation Q3 Report 2021 Conference Call. To ask question during the session you need to press star one in telephone. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Thomas Widstrand. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone. The theme for today is, as usual, to stay safe, obviously, since we have had a lot of improvements now with the pandemic, and obviously things Troax is a safety-oriented company. We try to stay safe and sound on solid ground. As normal, I'll do a small introduction before we briefly go through the figures. As normal, for those of you who've been around before, which I think most of you have been, you will find the documentation of what I'm presenting on our webpage under the headlines of investor. You will see their presentations, and if everything has worked out all right, you will then find the presentation for the third quarter, which I briefly will follow. Then, of course, in the end, you can put the questions on this or anything else that you would like to.
First, a brief introduction. As you know, Troax is a growing company. We are working then with safety solutions, and the biggest segment for us is machine guarding, which we have on page three on this presentation that we have prepared. This is approximately 65% of our turnover. I'll quickly go to the next one, which is what we call warehouse partitioning, which is some 20%-22% of our turnover. I'll come back later with a brief description of then some customer or customer segments, which are a combination, both a warehouse and our machine guarding, which we call warehouse automation. The third segment that we're working with is what we call property protection, mainly is for the northern part of Europe. It's approximately 14% of our turnover.
As you can see from the picture, those of you who have put it up on the screen, you see that it's mostly done safety more from a static point of view. We protect then the largest bicycles and whatever you have in these kind of cages. Whereas the other two previous ones where we deliver the strategies and the business idea is to prevent accidents either with the rolling objects like conveyors or robots or other moving objects, or like we had in the warehouse. You could also say we try to protect then people from getting injured in an area where there could be fallouts from goods or trucks could lose something or whatever. Next page will show you then what we call automated warehouse. It's a combination, as I said, of products coming from different segments.
This is then a segment which then is growing substantially. It used to be only a couple of percentages of our turnover a few years ago, but due to the ongoing demand of e-commerce, this is of course, growing substantially. I would say it's grown substantially for us now during two, maybe three years. This is a long-term trend, which I expect them to be ongoing for a number of years. For us, it's of course, quite interesting that even this is today driven by major international customers who are doing this kind of huge optimization in warehouses. It will also spread to at least medium-sized customer is our firm belief. It's a trend which will go on, obviously not forever, but for a number of years is our conviction.
Going to the next page, I think the figures that you have on the left side are pertaining to 2020. They are a bit old, so I skip them for the time being. Just to briefly talk about the sales per region, which you have on the mid part here of the paper, you see that the Mainland Europe is, of course, the big part of our turnover still with a little bit more than 50% of our turnover. If you combine that with the Nordics and U.K., which are also then roughly 10%-15% each in addition, then of course, you quickly come to the conclusion and that still we have some 80% of our turnover is related to European business.
Even if we are growing very nicely, I would say in North America, over the last, let's say, year or so, I think we've had a quite good development there. Also new markets, which are mainly countries in the Far East like China, Japan, and a few others, are also growing, of course, nicely, but of course, from a low level. Next page shows then also a little bit figures over a number of years. It's a more the long-term trend. I normally saying then that, without going into too much details, that we have had an organic sales growth of some 8%, 9%, 10% per year.
Even if we don't have any official targets that we communicate over the future, I'm normally saying then that what we've done historically could possibly be some sort of indication what could be expected then going forward, because we should continue to take market share, and we are in a market that is growing regardless of what we are doing. We get some help from the market, and that's, from our point of view, calculated to something around 4%-6% per year over a business cycle of growth. We have some 2.5x bigger market share than our number two player, and there are two number two players, which I'm coming to a little bit later. With this then, I think you've at least got some sort of indication of what we've been doing historically.
On the next page, you have the financial targets. I will comment then briefly what happened in the last quarter. Obviously, when it comes to sales growth, just as I just said, we don't have communicated specific target, but we should grow more than what the market is growing. As I said, historically, we've been growing with some 8%-10% per year. Of course, right now, we are growing substantially. Organically, we've been growing with, let's say, around 40%, and with some additional then of the acquisition we did towards the end of the year last year in Poland. We've had quite a good growth this year, and I would say that this kind of figure is not really, let's call it normal, and you have to see it as some sort of extraordinary growth.
I think over a business cycle, we are more talking about what we have historically done to be more realistic, excluding acquisitions, of course. Regarding profitability, our target is to be on top of 20%, and right now, I think year -to -date, we are close to 22%. It has been a rather turbulent year, as you know, but basically, we've had a good development from a volume point of view, and that, of course, helps to offset them. All these things we have been, again, turbulent with substantial price increases, both on steel, freight, and lately also on energy. Unfortunately, we believe that this will continue. I'll come back to this a little bit later.
Again, on the capital structure, our net debt in relation to EBITDA should not be more than 2.5 x. Right now, we are at 0.9. We have a very strong balance sheet, I would say. We are quite prepared to go into serious discussion for any acquisition, which we deem to be interesting. I think the last thing is probably the most difficult to find interesting alternatives, because we have the financial means, but there are not so many out there in the market which are really of interest to us. Of course, they also have to be interested to talk to us. I think that that's what limits us today, not so much the balance sheet or the financial structure.
Dividend is not really relevant right now, as you know, we should pay approximately 50% of our net profit, and that's the target that I think we're going to maintain. Going to the next page, I want to address a little bit some sort of summary then of the quarter three. In general, it continued then with good order trends, which already started, I would say, towards the end of quarter one, when actually the pandemic then started to go away, perhaps not entirely, but at least business-wise, it started to improve then. The main explanation for the good ordering take in Q3 are again then the strong development from industrial customers, mainly within automated warehouse, but also in machine guarding, not so much in automotive, but in machine guarding in general, I would say. It has been quite positive during the quarter.
From figure point of view, it's actually the automated warehouse which is driving the most of the growth. This, of course, gives us a good inventory result and a margin also in the quarter three. As I said before, the good utilization of our manufacturing units are, of course, a key to this relative success. There are good sales levels in all markets. I would say that the market is very strong out there, and it reflects then good activity in Q3. We note, and I've said this also in previous times, that some sort of delay in orders coming down from 2020, we regard that as clearly diminishing.
We think that the market towards the end of Q3 and clearly the market going forward into Q4 and probably into next year will be what we call then a normal market, whatever that means, and will not be influenced by old possible orders or old orders that should have come earlier if we hadn't had the COVID in 2020. Obviously then, this means that the net result is increasing. The earnings per share increased, I would say, in a nice way from EUR 0.12 last year to EUR 0.19, which I think, again, as I said, is a good development. Working capital is on the expected level, even if inventory is still high due to higher security levels.
That's something which I think we are going to continue to defend, because with the turbulence that is still with deliveries of different sorts, we think we need to keep higher security levels in our inventory until things are starting to stabilize, and that we don't see until probably the earlier 2nd part of next year, not earlier than that. Steel price has continued to increase also in the third quarter. We have expected this to start to stabilize, and we've seen some sign of that now going into the fourth quarter. Whatever would happen in the fourth quarter is too early to say, but we've seen some sign of it. Of course, with the turbulence in steel and in other things, there might be a continued need for increasing prices also going into next year, even if that's something, of course, that we try to avoid.
Talking about the prices, they have, with some delay, been adjusted to reflect the higher steel price primarily. Talking briefly about automotive as a sub-segment, it has not been as strong as expected during the third quarter. This is probably, as we write here, attributable to the delay in supply of the semiconductors to the industry in general. We have noted then, of course, that the delay in production in the automotive industry have delayed also investment. We don't see, however, that the sheer size of investments will be diminished just because of this delay, but we think that the projects will be delayed, and that will, of course, also have a hampering effect of deliveries from Troax and our competitors to these segments until, of course, things are starting to stabilize for this important segment.
On the other hand, which I referred to before, the automated warehouse segment continued to give us substantial orders, and it's very encouraging to see that our solutions then seem to fall in very good grounds with these kind of customers. We have very good development there. However, we would like you to understand that, of course, our dependence of these international customers have increased in the last two years. Normally, we have a very broad customer base, and we still have. Of course, especially in this automated warehouse field, the development is driven, as you know, by some very big international customers. Of course, this changes a little bit the structure of the customer base of Troax. Nothing negative. We're very positive over there, but it changes, nevertheless, a little bit the structure.
Jumping a little bit to Poland with our acquisition of Natom, which we did then 1st of November last year. We've continued to have a very good development in the third quarter. They really have had a good development during the time in Troax, both in orders and in result. They are, of course, mainly focused on the warehouse segments, driven at least to a major extent by the demand coming from the e-commerce and this automated warehouse trend, also in other more traditional warehouse segments. We have continued in this quarter continuously investing in this new facility outside of Poznań in Poland, where we bought this new facility beginning of the year. By the end of this year, the first manufacturing machines will be installed there. The administration have actually just recently moved there, we are now starting with the implementation there.
The intention is that the move of the two existing units will be done. The main part will be done in 2022, but part of it will be done probably also in 2023 because of some lead time and in acquiring enough electrical power in the new facility. Also, just some information, we have also, during the fourth quarter, started deliveries of the newly acquired QuickGuard, which was the old ABB product range for aluminum product range. It doesn't change, as I call it, the top line of Troax, but it could be a good addition in some markets then for customers who are used to work with aluminum, where we see that we can combine aluminum and our more traditional steel fence in a good way for the customer. Going to the next page, which are the financial highlights for the group.
I think we went through this briefly, at least today. Just to summarize, we have a very good order intake. Perhaps we shouldn't exaggerate that in comparison with 2020, which, of course, was influenced negatively by the COVID, but nevertheless, it's quite a good figure. The same goes for the sales invoice, which, of course, follows the order intake with some delay. Just to give you the information on that, the order book that we have today is, of course, intended the major part of that will be delivered in Q4 this year. Some part of it will be delivered in Q1 next year, but the main part is, of course, then connected with orders for delivery already this quarter.
Gross profit is on a good level, albeit that I would say that the gross margin could have been even higher than if we had been even quicker with some of the price increases. There are, as I said, some delay in them. We expect then the margin, if this good volume development increases, not to deteriorate further, but on the other hand, improve somewhat in the coming quarters. Regarding the result, it's of course, quite encouraging to see that we are on this 22% margin, but due to the good volume level, this is something which is not really unexpected, but follows then more or less our plans. As a result, as I've said, it's following then the operating results, obviously, it's a quite good improvement compared with last year.
After nine months, we show the middle section of the columns here, you see then that we are already now substantially above last year in turnover, both in orders and in sales. Also in the result, of course, we are improving. If you look to the right, you see then the 12 months rolling figures, and you see there that we have substantially improved them in orders and sales and also on the results. Far this year, it look very stable and on a quite acceptable level. Going to the next page, which I think could be perhaps more interesting if you look at then the three quarter regional development on order intake and maybe on sales. To the left, on the left columns, you see then the July to September development, and you see there the continued strong development in all regions.
This quarter was very strong in United Kingdom. As I normally say, not all of this volume is going finally into U.K., but we have an organization there who's handling also some sort of export activities. Some part of this is going to other parts of the world, but as the way we report it's for us then our U.K. organization is handling it. Generally speaking, it's been very strong also in North America, quite encouraging with good order trends, both in Troax part and also in the Folding Guard part, which was, as you know, acquired a number of years ago. Totally, we are then in the quarter of 47% up, and then we add, of course, the acquisition. We reached then a quite good 80% increase in this quarter.
Even as I said, maybe the figures, when we compare with last year, it looks a little bit too good. If we look at sales, it's a similar development, but there, of course, you then see that North America, where we had very good order intake in the previous quarter, also has now good sales level, which means, of course, also that they have contributed well then to the result development. The same goes for, in principle, all the other markets. Also the more mature region in the Nordic region and partly in the continental Europe have quite stable development, which is, I would say, quite encouraging when we see then how customers appreciate our solutions. After nine months, if you look at the same figures, the total excluding acquisition, we talked about around 40% in orders and a similar figure for sales in organic growth.
If you add then the acquisition, we talk about some 60%-70% increase cumulative. Jumping to some sort of summary, which briefly we'll touch upon what I said before. You could also say in other words, that Q3 has been more or less expected. There's not been any tremendous deviation from expectations. Even if, of course, you've had this continued turbulence in pricing, which I think we've handled in an acceptable way. The good orders coming, as I said, from automated warehouses and also machine guarding has, of course, been driving then the good development and creates then a good EBIT result and margin, mainly in all regions. The automotive, as I said, has not been as strong then as expected, so maybe that could be the negative deviation compared with our internal plans.
As I said before, this will come back, but it probably will be some delay in the timing then from the automotive companies when they start to invest in a way which also gives some volumes to Troax. The acquisition we did in Natom is continuing in a very good way, and we're quite happy then to see them integrate in a good way in the Troax Group. That's a good addition to our portfolio. The same goes, hopefully, for the new QuickGuard Aluminum. It's a little bit early days to say that they have done something in a good way, but I think that this will be created in a way that makes it positive. Our North American operation, as a conclusion then, they continue to develop well and they show continued improved result. All factories are continuing to develop well, have good utilization.
We have still our capacity in the normal Troax factories, we can cope with high demand, which is according to plan. The exception for this is basically the Natom factory then, which is moving to this new factory. Until we got that in operation, they are working more or less at full capacity. In total, a good development in the quarter with a substantially better result in the corresponding quarter 2020, even if, as I said before, this was then, of course, negatively influenced by COVID. To end up, and you can start with your questions within Zoom, just would like to end, and for the sake of clarity, that the growth factors for us, and probably for our competitors, are very similar to before.
It's a lot about the industrial automation and the growth in e-commerce, and I think the figures presented now for the third quarter exactly shows this. To a certain extent, we also believe the on-shoring of manufacturing will help this. We will probably not change the total picture, but on the top, it will have a certain positive impact. As usual, safety awareness and stricter regulation will, of course, also over time improve the market, but the real influence from the market development is coming from this general trend of industrial optimization and the growth in e-commerce. In this market, and as I said before, we are the market leader. We are approximately two and a half times bigger than the closest competitor.
We still are in a good position because a number of our very small local competitors, we call them blacksmiths, they don't have the same possibility as the professional suppliers to compete with good prices, good technical knowledge, safety knowledge, lead times, and what have you. So far, I think we have still a good advantage in competing with this, more or less in all places in the world, maybe with the exception of the northern countries in Europe, where these kind of blacksmiths has disappeared since quite a long time, I would say. Obviously, we need to do some new estimate now after COVID over the global market. On these old figures coming from 2018 and 2019, we think that the global market was some EUR 1.1 billion.
Then, of course, the European market was approximately half, and the American market or North American market, a bit less than half. The rest is basically the APAC region, which is growing substantially as we speak, but of course, coming from a lower level. Next page, you have our assessment of the competitive situation and turnover based on 2019, 2020. I won't go into this. In our production units then, which is the next page, you see where we are producing, which I think is right now actually then benefiting us in a good way because we are, from an environmental point of view then, not having to ship everything from one place.
We have different regional manufacturing, which of course is good both from an environmental point of view and now also good from a lead time point of view because the freight right now with containers all over the world is of course not the easiest thing to organize and plan. Of course, the costs are also increasing. The addition to the right we have in Poland, the capacity there will be increased by the end of the year. When we meet again in February, talking about the full year, I will then inform you then about what the new capacity will be. In our group, we're working, as you know, with different brands. They are very important, even if Troax as a brand is of course the biggest one, but the others are good complementary brands.
We're working then with the Safer Tomorrow, as you know, since 1955. We're working with a lot of things, obviously, like many companies today, for a Safer Tomorrow. We try to especially decrease the energy consumption. We try when we do investments to have then, of course, an environmental angle to it, which in some cases could even then do that we accept longer payback times just because we see that that has a healthy influence on the environment. We work then with compensating programs for the transportation, et cetera. I think that as a conclusion, our main advantage from environmental point of view is that our products are more or less 100% recyclable.
That means, of course, that we help our customers with environment because the products they buy from us, they don't really hamper so much, I would say, than what they are doing from an environmental point of view because our products can be reutilized time after time, assuming, of course, that we see steel to be a recyclable product or recyclable source, which we think they are now. Okay. Going into then the questions, just briefly touching upon that we, of course, test our products. We have our R&D centers. We're getting certified by external parties so that the customers know that we are not only writing something or saying something by ourselves, but someone is testing us. By the end, of course, our aim is to protect people, property, and processes.
With this then, we aim to continue to work and grow and continue to be the original since we have been since 1955. Dear operator, I think I end my presentation there, and you could ask the participant then to come with the questions pertaining to this.
Thank you, sir. Once again, if you would like to ask questions, just press star one. If you want to cancel it, just press the hash key. Once again, please press star one for questions. Sir, your first question comes from the line of Herman Eriksson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Hi, Thomas. Two questions from me. First of all, just regarding the order intake in the automated warehouse segment, are you receiving orders from new customers or is it mainly from already existing customers that you are ramping up on?
I think if you just look at the order value, the main part is coming from existing customers who are ramping up the volumes and are increasing the demand. We are expanding also the customer base quarter -by -quarter or month -by -month. It's still important for us to continue to do that. Again, from the sheer size of the orders, the majority is coming from the existing customers.
Perfect. Thank you. Secondly, just the CEO letter was a bit less forward-looking than usual. Should this be interpreted as business as usual, or how should we view this?
Yes, that's right. I think you should read it, and that's our intention, and to give you the conclusion that we think then that it's very much business as usual now. Of course, we cannot foresee everything with steel pricing or freight prices or energy. Since everything is moving, perhaps not in the right direction, but in the direction that we think we can, if not control, we can at least adapt to, then we think then that it's very much right now business as usual.
Perfect. Thank you. That's all from me. Thank you.
Sure.
Once again, if you would like to ask questions, just press star one. Your next question comes from the line of Kenneth Toll from Carnegie. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yeah, thank you. I was a little bit curious. You write in the report that this automated warehouses is now quite a large part of your order intakes. I know historically, several quarters back, you said that it was the same size as the automotive part used to be at around 20%, and now it has grown a lot since then. Is it now up to 30%-40% of orders incoming?
It's a good question, Kenneth. I think we can talk better about this when we analyze the whole year. If you just isolate the third quarter, it's definitely on top of 20% and it's approaching 30%. You are not too far out. What I said before was probably that it was the same size as that of automotive, and that was more in the 10%-15% range of the turnover.
The automated warehouse is our biggest, let's call it segment today, even we are not reporting this directly as a segment. It's certainly substantially higher than 20%.
Great. You talk about high capacity utilization and that you had to bring in some temporary employees in some plants in order to cope with the high demand. At the same time, on the short, you show capacity utilization by plant. There it looks like you have more spare capacity.
Yeah.
Is it the spare capacity is more compared to the technical maximum capacity?
Yeah.
Or.
Yeah. Well, that's correct. Maybe we should do it in a little bit other way to give better communication to you who are following us. The figures were written there are more the technical capacity. We write that we increase the number of people working with the machine is more short-term than to increase than the working hours to increase the output. The technical ability or technical volume is still the same as it was before.
Yeah. We do not need to see a massive CapEx program going forward since you did that a couple of years ago.
No, not massive, but of course, this is rather clear, if we have not communicated it, but I think that you are quite good in analyzing us, and others realize then that if this good development continues, of course, then the overcapacity we have in machines will more quickly go away. We have to start the next investment program earlier than what was the original plan. Short -term, we are not starting a lot. We have still overcapacity. With the exception of Natom, we are not doing any, let's say, dramatic increases in CapEx.
Great. Also, you have had Natom now soon for year.
Yeah.
You write in the report in very positive terms. I guess you haven't found any, how to say, any negative surprises lying around here or there in the company.
No, we haven't seen that. Especially not from financial point of view, it's quite stable and quite, let's call it, well seen through. What we do see that we need to do, and that this is something which we see in all acquisitions that we do, we need to strengthen the management over time, and that's clear we need to do that over here.
Yeah. Of course, when you grow a lot, everyone gets more to do, I guess.
Yeah.
Finally, also the balance sheet is very strong.
Yeah.
You talked about keeping the dividend policy intact and so on. If you don't do an acquisition soon, you will almost be debt-free sometimes into next year.
Yeah.
How do you think around that? Would you consider to do an extraordinary dividend or buy back shares, or are you trying even harder to look for acquisition targets?
We will probably do all of that, Kenneth. I don't want to joke about serious things, of course, to have a healthy balance sheet is very good. I'm not at all negative of this, and we don't feel pressed to do acquisitions which we don't see fit in. If we don't see that we will find new interesting investments which will benefit our shareholders, obviously, we will evaluate other ways of giving back some money to the shareholders. I think with this growing market, there will still be opportunities coming in. I don't think we should be too closely focused on the short-term issues of this with the dividend, et cetera. Again, we'll see how it develops. In the end, of course, it's not my opinion that matters, it's of course the shareholders. We have to see to this.
You have a point. Sooner or later, if we don't find alternative interesting investments, we have to look at ways, of course, of perhaps increasing the dividend.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot. That's all for me.
Thank you, Kenneth.
Once again, if you would like to ask questions, just press star one, and if you want to cancel it, just press the hash key. Sir, no more question at this moment. Please continue.
Okay, then. Thank you very much for your time and for your attention to your interest.
Sir, sorry for the interruption. I think Kenneth have a follow-up question. Is that okay to open the line?
Okay, thank you, sir. Go ahead, Kenneth Toll. Please ask your question.
Yeah, thank you. Sorry for coming in late again, but I was just curious about this ABB aluminum product that you took over now and starting to produce.
Do you think that there is a business case of expanding that business globally to maybe start production of such products in the U.S. or Asia or something to grow the business?
Yes, absolutely. We're talking a bit longer term, Kenneth, but the simple answer is yes, absolutely.
Okay. Sounds great. Thank you.
All right. If I understand correct, then there were no further questions. Otherwise, you have to interrupt me. I would like to thank you then for your interest and your time, and I look forward to talk to you again or together with you or try to answer questions then in February of 2022, when we deliver the whole year result of 2021. As I said when I started, stay safe, take care, and looking forward to see you next time. Thank you for your attention. Bye-bye.
This concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Speaker, please stand by.