Earnings Call: Q1 2024

May 6, 2024

Slides

Good afternoon, dear investors and everybody else who is watching us today. Let's begin with the webinar introducing Infortar Group financial results of first quarter 2024. I am Kadri Laanvee, the investor relations manager at Infortar. Joining me today to provide an overview of Infortar activities and results is Mr. Martti Talgre, CEO of Infortar. We will start with an overview of our activities and key events in first quarter 2024. Then after the presentation, we'll answer the questions sent to us. If anyone is watching now and wants to ask a question, please use the Q&A button at Microsoft Teams. We will not disclose the names of the questioners. No need to worry about that. Today's presentation will be recorded and made available later on the Infortar investor website. Let's start with an overview, and first I will hand over to our CEO, Martti Talgre. Hello and good afternoon, and thank you, Kadri. Before going to Q1 results, I will have a very short summary what Infortar is about. We are one of the largest investment companies in the Baltic region, active in 3 main business segments. It's about energy, shipping, and real estate. All those sectors are a bit different from each other. They still are very similar, they are all stable. They are very capital intensive. They have high barriers of entry, and they generate very strong cash flow. Infortar is a very international company. Today, more than 80% of our revenues are coming from other countries than Estonia. Our largest market as of now is Finland. During Q1, we actually added another whole market to complement our 5 previous whole markets, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Poland. Now we are also operating in Germany, where our energy company has started to transact in the wholesale market. Our main investment in energy segment is Eesti Gaas, Elenger with international brand name, which is the largest privately owned energy company in the region. In shipping, our interests are in Tallink, where we have a minority stake, slightly more than 42%. As we have a minority in Tallink, we don't consolidate Tallink numbers. We have this as an equity stake approach in our numbers. Real estate, which is our smallest segment, is still very important for us. We have actually increased our portfolio there also in Q1, we added another building. From the IPO time, which was about 5 months ago, we have actually increased the portfolio by 13% already. We have other interests in engineering, agriculture, et cetera, et cetera. Now going to Q1. Q1 was a very strong quarter for us, actually the best Q1 ever for our group. We posted a revenue of EUR 373 million, which is a growth over the previous year. Our EBITA was EUR 74 million, also significant growth versus the last year. Our net profit of EUR 62 million was actually more than 40% of growth versus the Q1 in 2023. We always want to grow our business, investments are a significant part of our activities all the time. Q1, from that respect, was slightly slower, the number was only EUR 7 million, we are actively working to invest more in coming quarters. Digging deeper into the segments, energy posted a record result, the highest energy sales volumes ever in a quarter, very strong result. We have also significantly grown our market share over the previous year. Due to the decrease in energy prices and then also the increase in consumption, we posted very strong result in our infrastructure segment. Now the Baltic Connector, which was offline for almost a half year, the gas transmission pipeline between Estonia and Finland is now back in operation. Finnish gas supply is now even more efficient than it was during the half year when it was not in operations. Regarding Tallink, our shipping business, we are very proud of their Q1 results. Seasonally, first quarter is a low season for Tallink, but they managed to post profit in Q1, which is very encouraging. In general, Tallink's financial position is very strong, and they have managed to reduce the leverage also significantly. The company is standing on very strong and solid ground. Regarding real estate, we are continuing there according to our plan. We completed the expansion of the logistics center, added approximately 4,000 square meters into our portfolio. Our Rimi logistics center construction is in line with the plan schedule, as well the construction of the Pärnu Bridge. All in all, on a group level, it was the best Q1 ever. We are continuing our expansion in foreign markets, we sold slightly more than 10% of our energy volumes in Q1 in Poland, which is significant. We started our business operations in Germany. When we look at the performance of Infortar stock, we have been the best performer in Nasdaq Baltic main list in Q1. As of today, the stock price has gone up almost by half versus the IPO price. Thank you. I will now provide an overview of the results for the first quarter of 2024. For better overview, we added the results of first quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2022 as well. Infortar Group's consolidated revenue of EUR 373 million increased by 7% compared to the same period last year, and by 72% compared to the first quarter of 2022. Next, EBITDA, which is also an important profitability indicator to us. Compared to the first quarter of previous year, EBITDA increased by 40%, and compared to the first quarter of 2022, by 80%. These numbers clearly demonstrate how Infortar has grown and maintained profitability even now that the energy prices are not volatile anymore. Going forward, net profit, EUR 62 million, is 32% higher than in the same period last year. I'd like to address seasonality here. Historically, the first quarter has always been strong for Infortar because it includes the cold winter months, whereas the gas group performs very well. Compared with last year, we are well in line with all our plans. Regarding asset volume, comparing year-end and first quarter-end numbers, we see a decrease. When you look at our balance sheet from asset side, you will see that the inventories have decreased, meaning the gas has been sold from the storage and the money received is used for repaying short-term loan obligations approximately in the same amount. Financially, we are in a good shape, and this is how Infortar's balance sheet at the end of the first quarter should look like. Liabilities and net debt have also decreased, and the debt burden is low. Internally, we monitor the ratio of investment loans to EBITDA, which has slightly increased from 1.3 to 1.5 compared to the first quarter of 2023. This is also due to significant investments in the second half of 2023. In the next slide, we have also highlighted the financial dynamics from 2020 to 2024 to demonstrate Infortar's ambition to grow. Growth is evident in all years and in all indicators, assets, equity, revenue and EBITDA. The growth mainly comes from the foreign markets. I'll now hand over to our CEO, Martti. Thank you, Kadri. I would now move forward to the energy segment. Energy segment is our largest segment, so it has been really growing the past years. It has mainly come from the increased market share. When back in 2019, our regional market share in the Baltic and Finnish market was approximately 7%. In Q1, it was 26% already, so significant growth over the Q1 last year when we, our market share was approximately 17%. Although the energy prices have stabilized, so they are back on the normal levels, basically the same levels what we saw 3 years ago in 2021, our sales volumes have still increased, and that has mainly happened because we are selling more. When we compare the sales volumes of last year in the respective quarter, then the sales amount sales volumes are up by approximately 74%, which is, I think, very strong result. That is mainly coming from, as I already pointed out, the increased market share, but also the fact that with the affordable energy prices, the consumption of natural gas has increased significantly, more than 40% on a year-on-year basis. That has supported the increase of our sales volumes. Last year in Q1, we didn't own Gaso yet, so the Latvian gas distribution monopoly, what we bought in July last year. The fact is that our infrastructure has been doing really strongly because of the increased volumes. In that business, it's a regulated business where the tariffs are regulated and the result very much depends on the volumes distributed. In general, from our point of view, the low energy prices, which drive higher demand is very good for our business. Operationally Q1 was very challenging, so the fact that Finland was supplied only through Inkoo terminal was operationally very strong challenge for Eesti Gaas's team. I think they delivered very well and we managed to supply Finland, so no issues with security of supply. Of course, I think when we look in general at our results and at strong profitability, this is very much dependent on our very prudent risk management. From our point of view, whether the gas prices go up or down, this doesn't impact our profitability because we hedge our positions. To manage the risk of supplies, we use several LNG terminals, both the Lithuanian and Finnish terminal, and as the Balticconnector shutdown incident demonstrated, that has been a very wise decision to use different terminals. And of course, we also use the storage facilities. Historically, the Latvian facility, but now more and more of our gas is stored in other countries like Poland and Germany. As I mentioned in Q1, we actually started our activities in Germany as well. We see a great potential in the German market, which is like 4 times bigger than all the other markets we are operating currently, or like 16 times bigger than the Baltic-Finnish market. I think it's a great potential for our future growth. Moving forward to shipping. Tallink is our first investment. 27 years ago, when Infortar was established, Tallink was our very first investment. We have seen the growth of the company. Tallink is right now the leading European shipping company. Tallink has seen different times in their history, was quite harshly suffering because of the COVID crisis, but now has had a very strong recovery. What we are really proud of is firstly the strong financial performance, but also the fact that the Tallink leverage is now on a very solid and actually low level. Tallink debt, EBITDA ratio is approximately 2.6 times, effectively meaning that the company could repay the whole loan exposure or leverage in 3 years. And looking at the balance sheet, Tallink has a very capital-intensive balance sheet. Tallink is owning their own assets, their own vessels. From that point of view, you know, bearing in mind that the balance sheet is consisting of long-term fixed assets, the leverage of 2.6, I think, is very solid and low. In general, Kadri already pointed this out that Infortar Group's business is seasonal. When our energy business has very strong results during the colder quarters, Q1 and Q4, Tallink is different. Tallink has very strong Q2 and Q3. Historically and seasonally, Q1 is the most challenging quarter. I think that the fact that Tallink managed to post profit in Q1, that really demonstrates the very good financial standing and shape of the company. Normally during the winter months, we see that the major part of our profit and cash flow is generated by the energy segment, but during the summer months, the most profit is generated in our shipping investment. Moving forward to real estate. Our real estate segment is the smallest of the three main business segments we have, but still it makes us one of the largest real estate owners in Tallinn region. As of today, we own 113,000 sq m in our portfolio, which is operating and generating cash flow. We are also investing. As I mentioned before, since December, we have added 13,000 sq m into our portfolio. The Rimi Logistic Center construction in Saue is going to add another close to 30,000 sq m, and there are a few other projects in pipeline, slightly too early to talk about. All in all, we are continuously increasing our portfolio, adding properties, adding sq m there. This is an important and stable part of our cash flow and business composition. In general, financially, it's also very strong and stable. The main metric what we are following is the Net Operating Income, which is approximately a few % up versus the previous year. To wrap the whole presentation up, Infortar is a leading investment company in the region. We have a very strong portfolio, so it's diversified. All our business areas generate us strong cash flow. They are capital intensive and have high barriers of entry. I think the key value of Infortar is our eagerness to look for growth and expansion. Our growth has mainly been coming from the international expansion, going into the new markets, finding new potentials, but also the fact that we are always making very large capital investments. Although we are one of the largest companies in the region, we are privately owned, meaning that we can be very agile. We can make very fast decisions. We can use the opportunities, and we are capable and willing to adapt with the new opportunities. We are continuously doing large scale business decisions, so kind of M&A and then capital investment type of transactions are like a business as usual type of activities for us. All in all, the core of our business is to generate strong cash flow, because without strong cash flow, you can't guarantee a stable and strong dividend flow for your shareholders, as well you can't continue with the growth of your portfolio. That's about it. Thank you. Thank you, Martti. We have also received some questions, I promise to answer them, let's start then. What is the current status of Balticconnector? Is the pipeline now operational and in use? Yeah. Balticconnector is now operational for two weeks, that was very positive to see that the transmission system operators managed to do all the reparation works in time. The market participants could really, you know, rely on the dates given out. However, I think when we look at the winter when Balticconnector was not operational, the Inkoo Terminal, of course, with operation challenges, managed to guarantee the security of supply of gas for the Finnish market. Kind of from the gas user's point of view, no real headaches from that. I think it's definitely positive that now the market is also, again, nicely connected. It's more efficient, and I think it benefits all the players. Next question. Energy segment expansion into Germany, what products are being sold there? When we look a few years back then, we were operating purely in the Baltic and Finnish market. When we just look at the market size, it is approximately 50, 60 terawatt hours a year. We currently have approximately one quarter of the market share here, but our ambition is to grow. We have to go into the new markets to really deliver that growth. The first step was Poland, which is about 200 terawatt hours a year. That is, like, 3, 4 times bigger than the Baltic-Finnish market. This is where we already have the office, the B2B sales, everything in place. We clearly see that Germany is very logical next step. Germany is 5 times bigger market than Poland. I think that, you know, that gives us even more opportunities for the future. I think this allows us to continue with the growth. What we have started from is that we have booked the storage capacities, the transmission capacities to start operating in the wholesale market, which is kind of the business logics we have. We start from the wholesale market, but then in parallel build up a portfolio as well. Thank you. Next question. Financial forecast for the end of. Oh, sorry, wrong question. Infortar's first full quarter as a public company, are you satisfied with the decision? Yeah, definitely. I think that there has been no kind of way of looking back. This has really supported us. I think it's important when we expand in international markets, kind of the transparency, name recognition. I think that also the new investors, we believe should be pretty happy. I think that when we look at the market price, the original investment has increased in value by half, so I think it's very positive. I think that in our future development and growth, being public company, being a transparent company is definitely a great value. We're really happy and proud. Thank you. Now the final question, financial forecast for the end of 2024, what results can be expected? I will answer this one by myself. As a public company, we have decided not to publish any forecast or information about the future, this is the reason we can't say much. However, our quarterly results will be published according to financial calendar. This is all for today. Thank you very much everyone who watched us, and also to those who will watch us later. If you have any questions about Infortar as an investment, you can always contact me via email or by phone. Thank you, and have a nice day. Thank you.