Good afternoon, and welcome to this live video interview with Zinzino following the Q2 report released this morning. My name is Niklas Elmhammer from Carlsquare, and we are very pleased to be joined today by the CEO of Zinzino, Dag Bergheim Pettersen, but before we begin, I would like to invite for questions, and you can submit the questions via the chat function, so please don't hesitate to send in as many questions as you like, so I would like to turn now to you, Dag. Welcome. Great to have you here again with us.
Thank you for having me.
So Zinzino released its report today. On the face of it, it looks quite similar to the Q1 report regarding growth and profit, but I guess that's only part of the story. So I would like to ask you to provide your comments on today's report.
So we're pleased, as you mentioned, in the growth. We're pleased with the profits. We're very pleased with the activity that we are showing in the full year or the first half of the year in quarter two. We have acquired and done a lot of investments. We have opened a couple of new markets. So that is, there are great things happening on the growth sector, and we are investing in both tech. We are investing in some new products, and as I mentioned, some mergers and acquisitions have turned out. So we are, according to the plan, I would say in most of the cases, a little bit above the plan when it comes to the growth.
But the negative sides, I would say, with the growth sometimes could be that you are putting a lot of effort and initiatives and resources and some money as well, I would say, into the growth will be allocated in the quarter two, but also in the quarter one. But happy and pleased with most of the things that are happening at Zinzino at the moment.
57% growth despite currency headwinds, and if I estimate correctly, about 47% organic growth or something like that.
I think that might be correct. It's a little bit depending on how you calculate, but the latest three, three acquisitions are adding some growth figures. So you are probably correct. Some of the acquisitions are turning into organic growth with selling a lot of our own products. So we do a different way of calculations when we look through this over years. But I'm happy and pleased with the organic growth on top of the merger and acquisitions growth. Yes.
So I know we ask this question every time now, but what is the explanation for the really strong growth?
I think you need to go back a year, maybe two years and three years, and maybe even a decade. So we were struggling 10, 11 years ago with our tech side, and we decided that we needed to put a lot of effort into upgrading and updating our tech side. So we've done over the last 10 years lots of different upgrades on the tech side. That has given us what I called a system platform. So one of the reasons why we can do all of these mergers and acquisitions is just because we have the platform and the system to take them on board in our system without too much of a problem, I would say. We have invested like in payment gateways. I think we have like four or five different payment gateways.
When you are working in a global market, you need to make sure that the payments are going well. Then on top of that, with some of the mergers and acquisitions, but also internally, have we done a lot of investments on product development? We started 13 years ago by acquiring a company. We acquired a factory which had like 5,000 recipes for products. We have a very disruptive test, and we have expanded that offer. So we have been growing like silently over the last 10 years, and we've done accumulated that. Then in our space, in our space of indirect sales, we have done a lot of good changes. So the partners in the field that are working together with us have the ability to also own shares in Zinzino, which brings a lot of loyalty, and it brings a long-term culture.
That kind of culture is getting wings when we are delivering the products at times. We have a lot of good development, and we have a tech side that is working. So we are honestly, I would say, scaling on behalf of the investments and the things that we did five years ago and 10 years ago. We take some advantages of that today. So of course, we can do a lot of things inside a year, but a lot of people underestimate what you can do on long term or maybe on short term, I mean, and you overestimate what you can do on a long term.
So I am truly happy with what we have achieved, and I think that having a growth in the end of the year of 50% is more than what I can dream of and also happy, super happy to have that kind of growth. And it costs some money to have that kind of growth doing all the initiatives that we are doing.
Yeah, you mentioned products and brands. You've been quite active in acquiring brands. So how important are the acquired brands for your sales?
It depends. Like in the U.S., one of the brands coming from Zurvita, which will be soon in a Zinzino suite, are the main product coming from that segment of sales, so that's going to be super important. We acquired a company, a French company last year called Xelliss. They had two products that are now probably number six and seven in the range of sold products at Zinzino with good cost of goods, and then we are also dismissing a lot of products that are not fitting our, I would say, base of products and our philosophy, so we do a little bit of both, but the flagship, and I mean, the top four products at Zinzino are still Zinzino products. We have a health concept, and it's so strong, so it's hard to climb to be number two, three, or one.
So it is important, but to a certain extent. But the main reason for us to keep some of the products is to make sure that the distributor base and the customer base on those products are happy that we are continuing with those products. But you should not continue with all products. So it's a very hard and defined balance that we are working, I would say, weekly on maneuvering.
So could you provide us any estimate of how important the top products are in terms of your sales?
Yeah, I see the Balance Concept is probably about 50% of the total sales. We have two other products. I would say that they are probably containing around or segments. So the top four products stand for about 75%-80% of the total sales. They come in a little bit of different variations and flavor, but that is the main top sellers. So we have an 80/20 rule, as many other companies have. So it's about four different products or four different segments of products. But the world might change a little bit inside Zinzino. I mentioned the last year's acquisition of Xelliss in France, and we also announced a part-time ownership in an algae factory down in Spain, which are now producing spirulina and soon will be producing algae omega-3 oils. That would change some of our initiatives.
That would change, I would say, also the omega-3 industry if we can scale up the business that they are doing, and we will do that in partnership with that company. So that came out in July, the announcement of that acquisition. And it's a brilliant product, a brilliant concept, and an extremely unique concept with lots of different patents, which we are super proud of to join. And then we didn't invent that ourselves. We were luckily acquiring a company and got in touch with them and act on that opportunity.
Okay, great. That's very clear. And related maybe to that, how confident are you with the strong growth in securing sufficient capacity and supply?
It's a good question. So we probably hold at the moment goods for about seven to eight months, depending on which warehouse we are talking about across the world. We have secured the main products, the main ingredients. We are owning a factory, so we have direct access to suppliers. So at the moment, things are very good and very calm. The fisheries in certain markets is now good, so they show good numbers on that. And also the olive oil, which we had some issues with like three years ago, are now producing pretty good, and it shows that it's going to be a good harvest. As you probably remember, we acquired half of an olive oil factory down at Cyprus, and they show a really good faith in the harvesting this year.
So we have ingredients probably for a year, and we have end product in the storage of over half a year, about seven to eight months in storage. And that is going to give us plenty of time to produce and act on that. And then we can diversify with focus on different products in addition. So we are very much in our own hands when it comes to production and sales.
Okay, good. We have a question here from the viewers. Michael Scher says, "Will you launch a new product for the gut in connection with your launch of the gut test in Q4?
Sounds like an internal candidate who asked that question. First, we haven't launched a gut test. Number two, we have a product that is doing an amazing thing for the gut, and that is probably the second or the third largest product that we have in our portfolio called the ZinoBiotic+ . So this guy needs to wait until we have our major big bang event in the second week of October. So he needs to be patient or she.
Okay, and going back a little bit on the sales and growth, is there any regional development that you would like to highlight here?
Yeah, almost everyone is performing pretty good. We've had a high growth to start with the region of Eastern Europe where we have a minus accumulated 1%. I am pleased because we have grown there for like three to four years, and it has been we are tremendously well in that market region. But all the other regions are having a plus factor. Even in the Nordics, we have a double-digit growth, and we are probably one of the top three, at least in our industry in the Nordics. So our home base, are we doing good? And in the Baltics, we're probably number one, and we are growing steady in the Americas, steady in Asia, really good in Asia, I would say. And with Zurvita, we are doing really good in the USA and Mexico and North America.
In South of Europe, we are doing fantastic. Of course, our proudest market or region are Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. That is the big train in our family of growth. When it comes to numbers and figures and numbers of new customers, it's just through the roof, amazing. I'm happy with all markets, honestly, although they are a little bit of a different cycle, to put it like that.
Yeah, Asia, as you said, it's growing at breakneck pace. And regarding that, can you comment on the China rollout and the model for that market? What are your expectations?
Yeah, we have very humble expectations of China. China is a hard market to dig into, and there are a lot of things you can do, I would say, with failure. So we've been into the China market for five years through Hong Kong, and that didn't work like totally perfect. So we changed the model to more like an e-commerce model, which is a little bit different from the model we're using in the rest of the world, where we are extremely customer-based. So it's a little bit too early to say either that or this, but it's a good start. We are going to focus more when everything is tested enough, sold enough, and it's going to be a soft start for us. But if you look at Taiwan for Asia, we are exploding. I think in quarter two, they are about fifth or the sixth largest market.
And if you go back a year, it was like a number 20. So it's really rapidly growing. We are doing a lot of leaps in a difficult market like India. So that has been growing pretty fast. But we are happy with a soft kind of touch for us in Malaysia and in Australia and New Zealand. So we have patience to work through these markets. And we added the Philippines to the last market in that region of APAC before we entered New Zealand in the beginning of the year. But I believe that Asia is going to be strong. That's my point. And you cannot just be strong in one market. You need to be kind of good in many markets to really have growth also in China because they are connected with Hong Kong and Taiwan and even Malaysia and Australia.
The Chinese market is very connected with where the population of the Chinese is living.
Okay, thank you. And we have some questions regarding costs. OpEx increased quarterly and year over year, up roughly 50%. Is it possible to pinpoint if there are sort of one-off costs included here? You mentioned already in the report, currency translation, but sort of acquisition costs that are one-off here?
Some of them are one-off, and some of them are kind of time-limited. So they could be one or two years and three years. So then they are going from X to probably zero. On the OpEx side, we have some investments on new products and product development. We have some costs in opening up new markets and the setup and consultants. We have costs related to operationals. And then you have operating costs that are connected to the growth. Like when you have more transactions for payment, there is a part of percentage of that that goes to that or delivery and shipping that goes along and drags along together with the growth on the top line. Where we can really differentiate will be to scale and not use so much money on internal costs and some of the OpEx costs.
So without promising too much, but if we just stopped our development and just focused on profitability, we could probably increase that with quite a significant number, to put it like that. But we are not that kind of company. We would like to grow. We have an ambition of having 100 million customers in 2050, 20 million customers in 2035. So we have ambitions that are much higher than that. But we want to have a profitable growth, which means that we can also next year pay out dividends. That's important for us. But we also need to have money to the investments on IT, as I talked about, on products, also on IT and tech and new markets and mergers and acquisitions.
So is it fair to assume that it was a bit of a spike in Q2 for OpEx, or is it the same pace going for the rest of the year?
I think the costs are reflecting all the initiatives that we are doing. But I could, on a personal note, I always love to earn a little bit more money, but it's a balance between all the initiatives, all the things that we do. We could probably save some costs in some markets that we have been aggressive on getting new customers. And we are actually doing some changes towards that. So there are some markets that we have been a little bit having struggles with, to put it like that. And we are closing some of that costs. So hopefully you will see both in quarter three and quarter four that we will have strong growth and strong profits. That's what we aim for and forecast for.
Okay, so how confident are you in reaching your margin target of 10% for the year?
Oh, I'm pretty confident on that.
Yeah, good. So we should mention cash flow as well. I mean, it was strong and I believe an important strength in your business model.
It is. But it's based on the same structure that we have had over the years. So we are trying to be cautious on spending money and building money. But one of the benefits that we have is that most of the customers or every customer that buys products for us pays prepaid before we deliver. So we have very low problems on that. The only problem we can have is when we are selling something from the factory where we could have more delays on payments. But like 96% of the business is prepaid before we're delivering. So that gives a lot of cash flow, positive.
Yeah, that's quite impressive. Maybe on another subject. Earlier this month, your shares took a hit on media reports that have been scrutinized by Swedish authorities for marketing its products in a misleading manner and also facing potential fines, according to media. Could you comment on these reports?
Yeah. So first, you could say I'm impressed with the share price increase from maybe April and May towards today. So I think that Zinzino shares is probably the hardest thing to talk about for me because we are going to be a little bit volatile, in my opinion, because we could be shorted suddenly. So there has been a lot of short positions at Zinzino. So that has an impact in the share price. We have a lot of happy buyers also, so not only people that are selling. We have gotten over the last two years a lot of new investors that have taken some profits on selling their shares. So what I would like to say is that the article in itself, we went back, we have not gotten any fine. So we were getting that updated, that's for sure.
Second thing is that all the things that go for the regulatory. It's normal for us every year to go through with the regulators. They always have changed. They are sometimes changing some of the rules, and we are working together with them on compliance and on all the different works. And we do that. That's a regular kind of work for us to do. So when an article talks about that, it sounds like it is more serious than maybe what it is because we have answered up all of that different questions. And we do that, and we will always follow the laws and the regulations and the rules that we are set to follow. So when the share price is dropping, I see a couple of things.
I see a lot of shareholders who are selling because they're thinking that they need to take, they want to take the profits. I also believe that there's a lot of new short positions coming in at the same day, and the only kind of question I have is that it's a little bit strange that it happens at the same time, but I don't want to speculate too much in that. My job is to put all my effort into building a great company, a great company for now and for the future, a company that could be sending a dividend to our shareholders, so what I normally do when my daughter is complaining that her shares in Zinzino have been falling and she has lost money, I tell her, "Don't look at the share price. Don't watch the share price.
Think of when you're going to receive the dividend next year and the year after that." So that is the only thing I can work on, and it's to make a great company that is profitable and can pay out dividends. And the share price lives its own life outside my control in the daily work.
Okay, great. I guess we have covered a lot of topics, and it's probably time to wrap things up. So thank you, Dag, for taking the time and effort for taking our questions. And as always, very exciting to learn about the progress. And thanks again.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks also to all the viewers for listening in, and hope we'll see you soon again.