Earnings Call: H1 2021

Jul 15, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to DKSH's 2021 Half Year Results Conference Call and Webcast. I am Alice, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. Conference. The conference must now be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Harjie Leissner, Head of Investor and Media Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Alice, and good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to welcome you on behalf of DKSH. Before we start, the usual statement about the disclaimer on the Atdksh.com. With that very short introduction, I'd like to hand over to Stefan, who will walk you through the results. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our half year results 2021. Thank you very much for taking part in this virtual presentation. Joining me today from Singapore is Bernhard Schmid, who joins us for our financial reporting the last time. Already now, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Bernhard for his good financial leadership, strong contributions and excellent collaboration over the last years. Bernard will stay with us until the end of the year to ensure a smooth handover. I'm very pleased to be joined also today by Ido Wallach, who delivered already significant contributions as our Head of Controlling over the last one and a half years and who is our new CFO as of July 1. Guido will present our financials and join today's Q and A round at the end of this session. To begin, I would like to acknowledge that in line with this internal succession, we will hold our conferences Moving on to today's agenda, I will begin with an overview To conclude, I will comment on the outlook before opening the Q and A session. Let's start by taking a closer look at our market environment. The chart on the left proves the common assumption wrong that Asia was the first in And also first out with regards to COVID. There are in fact still varying degrees of governmental restrictions, measures in place across Asia Pacific. And even so, vaccination initiatives have started. The share of people with at least one dose of a COVID vaccine in Asia is still at a low level. With Vietnam and Thailand, for example, still in the single digit range and Malaysia in the lower double digit range. When compared with Europe or the United States, where at least half of the population has already been vaccinated once, the discrepancy becomes even more evident. Despite this backdrop, our results today reflect a strong performance with all key figures at constant exchange rates This includes increased net sales by 5.3 percent, a substantial EBIT growth by 20.7% Compared with the pre pandemic levels in the first half of twenty nineteen, we have an increase of 19% here. In sum, we delivered good profitable growth in the first half of twenty twenty one. This solid achievement is not only the achievements made during this challenging operating environment to build a better company for the long term. Let us now look at the highlights of the first half of twenty twenty one. We continued to make operational and strategic progress over the last six strategy. We considerably increased the EBIT and achieved the cash flow above pre COVID levels of 2019. The EBIT contribution of the business unit Performance Materials has increased to 40%. We accelerated segments and services and increasing our geographical reach. As part of our cultural transformation, we As a company in today's world, a simpler and more relevant DKSH with a clear purpose at heart, enriching people's lives and a clear commitment to deliver growth reflected in our tech lab. As you can see throughout our presentation, we took this opportunity for our brands to shift into a more contemporary, bold and bright design and make our transformation more visible. We are further setting DKSH up for the future and increased e commerce sales double digit in the first half. Also as of February this year, we have a new very experienced Chief Information Officer, who will drive the expansion of our digital capabilities even further. We also made significant progress in sustainability. Having established a sustainability framework with Clearly defined targets, such as our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint by 35% until 2021, We will continue to challenge ourselves further in this integral part of our business to make a positive impact for the future. All these key developments, including a highly engaged and connected team, underline our progress of building a better company Let me now please move to the business unit update. Starting with healthcare, where we still face with ongoing COVID-nineteen impacts on the pharma industry, we see that The demand for medical services has not quite returned, and the volatile situation in Myanmar also left its mark. Despite all of that, we delivered solid results at last year's level. At the same time, we are proud of being the trusted partner for communities and governments to supply COVID vaccines and test kits in Thailand, Taiwan and Cambodia, thereby fulfilling our purpose In our business development, we partnered with new clients. Just to name a few we are allowed to disclose, I can mention Pfizer in Thailand or Creative Biosciences, where we made cancer detection solutions more accessible to Thai patients. Moving on to the business unit consumer goods. Despite COVID, we slightly increased sales and substantially improved EBIT. In our fast moving consumer goods segment, we continuously enlarged our business development pipeline, which helped us to increase sales Despite some rationalization in our client and product portfolio, we further capitalized our regional leadership position by expanding agreements with key clients such as Ovo Maltin in Vietnam and Indonesia, Nando's in Malaysia or Kingfisher across Indonesia. Overall, the transformation of the business is well on track, and we have delivered very strong EBIT improvements. In the Luxury and Lifestyle segment, sales are recovering and profitability is better, but travel is and will be limited. In Thailand, for instance, the forecast for 2021 foreign tourist arrivals has been again revised downwards from previously 3,000,000 to 700,000, which might still be optimistic. This is compared to around 40,000,000 We don't expect tourism to come back immediately nor completely anytime soon. The watch brand, Maurice Lacroix, continued to perform well. Let us continue with the business unit performance material. In this division, we once again recorded outstanding results This broad based growth applies across all four business lines and across most markets. We substantially expanded our key client portfolio and onboarded a lot of new customers, which we continue to provide with our service excellence, Notwithstanding external factors such as supply chain disruption. We complemented the performance with M and A contributions from Axios, which is running above expectations and are also very committed to integrating and expanding the SAKOA business. Looking ahead, we see more growth and M and A opportunities for our Specialty Chemicals business. Favorable factors such Our scalable business model, strong business development and focus on digital and value added capabilities make me very confident that those opportunities will become realities over time. Last but not least, let us have a look at In this business unit, sales have recovered, thanks to a combination of organic as well as M and A driven growth through the acquisition of the life science distributor, Bosong in Korea. However, we are still not back to pre COVID levels here. The service business continued to grow, and we are well on track implementing our strategy of focus and digitization. The EBIT also increased slightly and was 9.5% above last year. Based on our robust business pipeline and our transformation, we confident to deliver a stronger half in 2021. With that, I hand over to our Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome also from my side here out of Singapore, together with Bernard, my partner in our CFO position. Thank you very much for joining us today. I'm very pleased to speak to you today for the first time as CFO. Let me provide you with further details of our results in the first half year twenty twenty one. I'm delighted to say that in challenging market conditions, All key figures are stronger than they were last year. At constant exchange rates, net sales grew 5.3 percent This growth rate is consistent with our objective that we call GDP plus It illustrates our mission to grow faster in economic growth in the geographies where we operate. Organically, that is before M and A and FX, Our net sales increased 4.6 percent with all four business units growing. Healthcare and consumer goods were up 4.1% and 2.4%. Technology was up 7.5%. Performance Materials had a particularly strong semester, growing 14%. We continue to be very active in M and A front also in 2021, joining already as many as 4 new companies to our DKSH platform. Awesome, MedWorks and Sequoia have already contributed to the first half results in 2021. They added 0.7% to our growth. Han Healthcare, which effectively joined us 2 weeks ago on July 1, will start to contribute in the second half. Health Care is the latest in total of 4 acquisitions that we made in Australia and New Zealand in the last 24 months. Our strategy to grow disproportionately in ANZ is already bearing fruit. Our DKSH platform extends more profoundly into the wider Pacific region. We can therefore progressively achieve our mission of delivering growth in Finally, our net sales growth was adversely impacted by the strengthening of the Swiss franc. The net impact against the currencies in the markets where we operate was a negative 2.5%. We also achieved a strong EBIT result, growing overall by 20.7% at constant exchange rates. Organic growth contributed 18.7%. Finally, and quite similar to net sales, FX had a negative impact of 2.5% on our EBITDA. Let us please move on to review cash generation in the period. In conjunction with our accelerated M and A strategy, we continued our focus Cash conversion, measured as free cash flow over profit after tax, was 123.6%. This disproportionate cash generation follows 127.5 percent of cash generation achieved in 2020 overall. Consistently faster collection and just in time inventory levels are providing us with more liquidity. This flexibility to deploy capital is also supported by the low CapEx intensity of our business model. We constantly expand our digital offering and upgrade our distribution capabilities. However, CapEx in the first half of twenty twenty one remained as low as 0.4% of net sales, A level that is very consistent with our long term operating. Our balance sheet continues to show its strength as well. The net cash position at the end of the first half was CHF268.5 million. It is up CHF72,700,000 half of the year. This is after paying CHF126,800,000 of dividends and investing CHF 45,500,000 in acquisitions. Working capital measured as trade receivable plus inventory and less trade payables is at CHF1 1,000,000,000. We are now running our business, which is 28% larger with working capital that is 2.7% strong. Our equity ratio is 33.2%. It is a ratio that provides an ample headroom for leverage, to elaborate on our future prospects, let me provide you with our outlook for several financial indicators. In terms of M and A, We estimate that our recent acquisition will contribute 0.8% to the net sales of 2021. Our strategic ambition for additional M and A clearly remain. On FX side, assuming that current rates prevail for the remainder of the year, we expect a full year FX impact of negative -one percent to negative minus 2 percent. Tax rates, we estimated, would remain within the mid term range of 27% to 29%. Capital expenditure will be in the range of CHF45 1,000,000 to CHF50 1,000,000 for the full year. Final word regarding cash generation. Long term range required for our business. We therefore expect it to grow at a rate which is slightly lower than net sales growth going forward. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention and hand over back to Stefanie Zurich. Thank you very much for this financial review, Ito. Before wrapping up, I want to comment on the outlook. We expect that COVID and global economic uncertainties will continue in 2021. However, based on our strong results in the first half, which reflect the resilience of our diversified business, We expect a solid performance in the second half and EBIT growth in 2021. This outlook is based on the following assumptions: A slight GDP growth in Asia Pacific in 2021, stable exchange rates for the remainder of the year and obviously excluding any unforeseen special to benefit from favorable market industry and consolidation trends. We will continue to navigate strongly through a challenging market environment and The long term growth drivers for our business remain more than intact. Thank you very much for listening, Hap. The first question comes from the line of Gianmarco Perro from ZKB. Please go ahead. Good day, everybody. Ido, welcome, and Bernard, congratulations to the great job during the last years. My first question is in relation to the whole Performance Material segment. How do you see the current momentum in relation to the Your Capital Markets Day, the potential should be great, but I'm more interested also in the whole momentum. Then second question is in relation To the whole transformation of your consumer segment, which really seems to pay out at the moment. You also mentioned in the Capital Markets Day that you are now currently in the second phase of the whole transformation. And in the second phase, You really want to further advance your strategy in target markets and also increase your capabilities. Can you maybe elaborate more on increasing also these capabilities? Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much, And Jean Marcus, so let's start with Performance Materials. So overall, the trend towards Outsourcing is absolutely unbroken, and we rather see some further acceleration in this Because more and more of our clients, they want to work with less contributors, which is a clear opportunity for us. And let's please not forget, it's still a very, very fragmented market with a lot of M and A consolidation potential on top of that. I mean, the market overall you were referring to clearly currently has some tailwinds rather Then headwinds and there are a few supply chain disruption and shortage of products in the market, which have an impact on the pricing Of the products as well. But if we peel the onion, we clearly see that 75% of our success is Clearly volume driven and only 25% is price driven. Regarding the supply chain disruption and there we are with also The pricing issue, we don't foresee that this is going to change in the second half of this year. I think it will move on most We should probably get back to more normal levels. But normal levels in Performance Materials or in Specialty Chemicals Ingredients business means it's still a very high growing markets. So we really see some very good outlook here for the years to come. And that in Asia Pacific, but also in Europe, where we also do 30% of our revenues. The second question regarding consumer goods segment and the Phase 2. Yes, the transformation in consumer goods is going very well. I think our leadership team there, including the guys on the ground, are doing Tremendous job despite the current tailwinds they clearly have, thanks to COVID, And improving those results significantly. Next to the homework we have done already in Phase 1, I mean, now it's really about executing local strategies, every market and our competitive position in those markets is slightly different. And the team is very close there to client and customer needs. In terms of the additional services, they are currently improving. A lot has to do with field marketing, in store execution, but also our digital services are picking up And then helping the clients to make sure that all marketing and A and P activities Did that answer your questions? Was there any follow-up? No, that's very helpful. And thank you and congratulations to the strong results. Thank you very much. Thanks, Gianmarco. And let's please move on to the next question. The next question comes from the line of Cameron Brabzon with Northgate Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you and good morning. On the results. And I can say that being based in one of your core geographies during the same time period, it's Certainly good growth given the reality on the ground here with persistent COVID cases, significant movement restrictions And the associated uncertainty. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, you mentioned you see solid from the second half as far as you can. And secondly, on consumer goods, Your slide pack mentioned that you're still undergoing client and product rationalization. The transformation seems to be Still ongoing. Are these factors still weighing on your divisional margins to some extent? And can we expect that these if there is a drag that this will lessen in the coming semesters? And finally, I'd just like to wish Bernard all the very best. We'd appreciate the job he's done over the years And its communication with shareholders and also welcome to Ito to the role. Thank you. I will share that with the wider team. So and you pointed out already nicely that the headwinds From COVID, especially over the last couple of weeks, are rather increasing than decreasing. So the 4th wave is hitting Asia Southeast Asia right now quite hard. And in many Countries we have severe lockdowns and actually the amount of cases currently is 4 to 5 times The amount we have seen last year in April, and that obviously creates an uncertainty for all of I think we have shown in H1 that despite those headwinds, our activities from building a better company and Doing our homework and diligent strategy execution is having a positive benefit, and that's also why we believe we will have A solid second half in 2021, as we did in 2020, Which is a good benchmark, and we have to take it from there. I believe in the long run, We will build a better company, and we will see the results then even stronger. In terms of consumer goods, there is an impact close to 2% of sales, thanks to client consolidation. But this is now coming in the second half of 21 to an end, so that next year, there should be no financial impact Please let's move to the next one. The next question comes from the line of Jon Cox with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, guys, and congratulations on the figures, and I welcome my side to Edo. And a happy retirement To Bernard. A couple of questions for you. Just on the free cash flow and obviously it's a fantastic figure. Maybe for the full year. Will it go backwards in the second half of the year? And what should we think about that conversion rate going particularly given your comments that working capital will grow at a slower pace than sales growth going forward. So it's sort of like A free cash flow question there. Added into that slightly, it looks like your CapEx guidance is up a little bit. Just wondering what your thoughts are on that. Is it because you've sort of done the turnaround in consumer and now it's time to start looking at growth internal growth 2nd question, more on the nuts and bolts on the financials. Your financial expenses were well down H1 on H1. Just wondering if you have a best guess for the year as a whole or just kind of explain why the financial expenses were a lot lower than they were And then, therefore, maybe on track to be lower than we expect. And then the last question really on I don't I don't expect too much granularity if I start asking about margins and the rest of it. But just on consumer, you had that original target of 2.5% margin in the second half of the year. Is that really a really long shot at the moment given the impact of Okay. Thanks for your questions, John. And Ido, will you please take 1 and 2? And I take then the CG question at the end. With regard to cash flow, our guidance look in the past 18 months, we have delivered a conversion which is above 100%, that is 123.6% in this half year. And over the course of last year, it was 127.5%. We cannot continue forever to deliver more cash than our profit. And therefore, we expect that over the midterm and perhaps also in the short term, this will be closer to 100%, but probably from the other side of 100%. Whether it's going to be like that in half 2, I I think we usually don't give immediate guidance for the next few months. We may want to capture a very unique opportunity, which is We will be targeting something close to 100,000,000 from the double digit side, Ed. I think there was a question also on the level of CapEx. It is slightly up about $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 up versus the two ranges that were given before. We are doing some upgrades to our DCs. There is one which is already visible in Taiwan, a fully automated one which we're working on. But it's also where we're doing the digital investment. So some of the digital intangible assets that were being there are also registered as capital expenditure, of course. The final question was on financial expenses. The main difference versus last year is the warranty payment that we paid last year of half. 5,000,000 reported in the first half of last year, which relates to the divestiture of the Healthcare business in China And then there is a difference the rest of the difference come from the impact on the hedging contracts, which were slightly stronger because of the PM deals that we are sourcing from Europe into Asia. Whether this is going to continue into the second half, it's difficult to say because it really depends on the exact amount when we do the deal and the hedging versus Okay. Thank you, Ido. And John, regarding the FMC or CG question, yes, pre COVID, we said that we are optimistic that we can achieve 2.5% margin in H2 2 of 2021. But unfortunately, I mean, COVID is there more than ever. And you are right, I mean, It's not only impacting the core business to some degree, but also in particular our luxury retail and also to some degree the food business if all the restaurants Close across many countries in Asia. So once COVID disappeared, I mean, we are very optimistic, especially based on the good transformational results we had We can stick with this commitment, but the question is when will COVID be gone. And yes, we do need some tourists Could I just have a follow-up on the free cash flow? So for The free cash flow conversion in H2 will be slightly lower than 100%. You're not talking about slightly lower than 100% for the whole of the year. So there's a massive decline in H2. You're just saying profit after tax, free cash flow conversion will be slightly below 100% in H2. I think I was hinting towards this direction. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for all of the questions, John. Operator, please let's move on. The next question comes from the line Andy Grubler with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, everybody. And I'll add to Thank you to Berndot and welcome to Rideau. Just three questions, if I may. Firstly, on Performance Materials, you talked earlier about the benefits of pricing and kind of 3% to 4% pricing boost through the period. How does that differ between Asia And Europe or does it not differ, just out of interest? And presumably that pricing is pretty much flowing straight through to EBIT. Would that be correct? And just as a follow on from the last question, you mentioned some of the hedging impact from Could you just quantify what that is and therefore what the underlying margin was in H1 for Performance Materials? Secondly, on Healthcare, margins were down slightly. To what extent is that due to Myanmar Or are there other reasons that are negatively impacting the margin? And would you expect that to continue through the second half of the year? I'll leave it at that. Thanks. Okay. Thank you very much, Andy. Regarding the pricing, Europe and Asia Pacific, no, we don't see any material difference there. And yes, it almost goes through straight through EBIT. On the hedging, I would ask Bernhard or Ido to jump in. Yes. So thank you. Just to provide further context to The way we do the hedging, so many of our a big part of our PM business is, as I mentioned before, is sourcing from Europe to Asia. I think the underlying profit profitability of PM, if you include those impacts, would be above 10 Okay. Thank you, Ito. Regarding the margins in Healthcare, Yes, Myanmar has an impact. So Myanmar for the group is not material. But for healthcare, it's a very profitable market, and the results are obviously down there looking The circumstances out of our control. The other driver is over the counter products, which we sell to tourists, Especially in Thailand, we had that already last year in for 4 months, but this year, we obviously had 6 months of COVID In the business. And the last point is actually also a mix issue because some of the highly valuable pharma product. They go into hospitals for surgeries, etcetera, PPE. And obviously, the hospital occupation is down. And these are probably the 3 major impacting factors here. Excellent. And can I just one quick follow-up? Going back to Performance Materials and Margin. Given your expectation that pricing and market conditions are going to remain good Through the second half, is there any reason why H2 margins should be notably different from the first half? At current market environment and current demand that we see, there is no reason to decrease. Your next question comes from the line of Pascal Bolt with Stifel. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question and congrats to the I have two questions. First, regarding the Healthcare business. In my understanding, This division suffers also from the lack of medical tourism that also lacked already in 2020. However, What revenue did you lose back then in Swiss franc terms and what amounts do you expect coming back Next year when things normalize. And the second question is regarding input costs. We see raw material costs Across the globe rising, we do see a positive impact or saw a positive impact on Performance Materials, but Do you also expect a positive effect on other divisions in H2 or also in 2022? Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Pascal. In terms of the health Tourism and that's obviously down to 0. That's the reason why I said before. I mean, we do have Significantly and headwinds there in Healthcare. And also, if you look at the numbers which are published by the Southeast Asian Pharma Association, you would see that the pharma market overall Business development team and performance, and that is the reason why we can deliver those solid results here. In terms of the raw material costs, yes, I mean, at the end of the day, inflation is our friend, Right, because if you have higher raw material costs, it's just a matter of time in normal market conditions That also the pricing of the normal products in consumer goods, for example, are going to increase. And since we take a margin on the pricing, yes, inflation is our friend. Okay. So you expect a positive effect on EBIT in H2 then? I didn't say that Because I don't know when this is going to be reflected then in the prices in the market. But I mean, everyone is talking about inflation. At some point, it will also come to our part of the region a little bit more. There are no more questions at this time. Good. If there are no more questions, as it seems, we can close the call. Thank you very much. Yes. I quickly have one sentence, sorry. Of course, there were many thank you coming in. I want to thank everybody in the call for the good cooperation over the years. I have to say, I have typically enjoyed the interactions. What I really liked most were the challenging questions, which triggered new thought processes for improvements in DKSH, which were the most helpful ones. Again, thank you, everybody. And I'm sure Ynon will make sure to keep you up to date half. And thanks everybody for joining today. And if there are any more questions, we are available. Thank you very much, and have a lovely day. Thank you very much, and see you soon on the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.