HORNBACH Baumarkt AG

Good morning and welcome to our Q1 2024-25 update call presentation of Von der Holding. My name is Antje Kelbert, Head of Investor Relations. Today at 7 a.m., we have already published our figures for the first quarter 2024-25, comprising the period of March 1st until May 31st, 2024. Welcome and good morning also to our CFO, Karin Dohm, who will be our host and presenter today, and will later also take your questions. Please note the entire conference call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded and made available with a transcript on the company's website afterwards. Please also take note of the disclaimer, which is valid for the entire presentation and for the Q&A session. To ask a question, please dial in for the telephone conference. Numbers have been provided in your confirmation emails. Asking questions in the webcast is not possible. The operator will give further advice at the beginning of the Q&A session. Now I'm delighted to hand over to you, Karin, to give us an overview of the latest set of numbers. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Antje. Good morning and a warm welcome from my side. Thank you all for joining this morning. We delivered a very good performance in the first quarter of our financial year. As expected, adjusted EBIT significantly improved compared to the same period last year due to a better spring season and our successful cost management. We are especially pleased that we managed to increase our gross margin by 1.8 percentage points in Q1 compared to last year's quarter. This development predominantly reflects lower commodity prices and the more profitable product mix. Our sales were in line with our expectations driven by more favorable weather conditions in March and April, but also continued softness in large projects and discretionary spending. Last but not least, we confirmed our full year guidance as announced in May. We continue to expect sales slightly above the previous year and adjusted EBIT at or slightly above 2023-2024. In light of a bit slow start into Q2 due to rainy weather, as well as the international sporting events this summer, We currently stay unchanged with regard to our guidance. Our net sales in Q1 were slightly up by 1.8%, driven by Hornbach Baumarkt's strong performance. Compared to last year's quarter, we saw increased demand for gardening products following the good weather in March and April. The positive development of customer frequency continued with 4.1% in Q1, while average tickets were slightly down by 1.1 year over year. The geographic split did not change significantly, with slightly more than half of Hornbach Baumarkt sales coming from the eight European countries outside of Germany. Net sales of subgroup Hornbach Baustoffunion, which mainly caters for professional customers in the construction industry, decreased by 9.2%. This reflects the ongoing negative trend within the building industry, especially new construction business in Germany. Now let's turn to our like-for-like sales growth. Generally, demand in most European countries benefited from better weather conditions in March and April, especially in Romania and Sweden, where we saw like-for-like growth of nearly 4%. For the group, like-for-like growth was 2.5% in total, despite having on average 0.6 business days less than last quarter. I would also like to point out that sales growth in Q1 has not been influenced by inflation, but is pure volume growth as sales prices were decreasing slightly. Looking at our market share, we continue to focus on growth, expanding our strong market position in Europe. Especially in the Netherlands, we further expanded market share significantly. Our new store in Nijmegen has started out very successfully, and also the stores we have opened in the past couple of years are showing strong growth. Czechia also continues to take market share without having added new space. In the first month of the year, the outperformance was based specifically on strong sales of supplies for gardening projects. In Germany, our market share remains on a high level of 15%. Let's have a look at our e-commerce development. The share of e-commerce sales of Hornbach Baumarkt came in at 12.4% in Q1, still well above pre-pandemic levels. Customer engagement across our interconnected platforms globally remains high. This shows that these platforms are well-established sales channels in DIY and do it for me. However, in line with general market trends in the e-commerce sector, online sales declined slightly year-on-year by 4%. And with that, I would like to take a closer look at the cost and expense development in our P&L. Our gross margin increased by 1.8 percentage points, continuing on the higher level we achieved over the course of the winter. This is due to the normalization of select core commodity prices and a stronger product mix compared to the previous year's quarter. For selling and store expenses, While we experienced increased wages, we realized lower store operating costs and used natural fluctuation to partially offset the given wage increases. As a consequence, selling and store expenses decreased in percentage of sales. The cost ratio of general administration expense remains stable. We continued to invest in IT headcount and also experienced here slightly wage increases. However, this was offset by lower project-based expenses. Overall, we improved our adjusted EBIT by 34% compared to Q1 last year, based on a much better spring season in March and April, combined with a strengthened gross margin and good cost discipline. With this, overall adjusted EBIT margin came in at a comfortable 8.1%. There were no non-operating items or adjustments in Q1 this year. Turning to cash flow, our cash inflow from operating activities increased almost double compared to the previous year, primarily due to the strong earnings development. The change in working capital was on previous year's level and reflects our normal seasonal swings as well as the planned repayment of short-term liabilities. CapEx summed up at $23.4 million in Q1 2024-25, compared to 51.1 million the same period last year. This is mainly due to store openings happening only at the end of this financial year and in the following year. Regarding the capex split, 29% was spent on land and real estate, mainly for new stores, while the rest was spent on store conversions and equipment as well as software. In Q1, we also received investment subsidies for our stores in Leipzig and our logistics centers in Esseng, opened last year, which reduced our cash flow from investing activities. Let's have a quick look at our balance sheet. As of May 31st, Hornbach once again delivered a very strong balance sheet. Compared to February 28th this year, the consolidated balance sheet total remained almost stable at 4.5 billion. The equity ratio was slightly up, coming in at 45.3%, continuing to represent a strong level. All in all, our balance sheet underpins our robust financial position as well as the resilience of our business model. Before we open the floor for questions, I would like to remind you of the long-term opportunities we are pursuing despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges. Those are catering for the trend of multifunctional living spaces that accommodate both work and life. fostering energy efficiency through the renovation and modernization of Europe's aging residential homes that are 20 years plus on average in age, adapting bathrooms and other rooms for an aging society in light of demographic changes in Europe, supporting customers in DIY and DFFM activities by offering quality goods and services for professional and retail customers, as well as linking up these two groups through our craftsman services offerings. In sum, we are well positioned to capture medium and long-term growth opportunities in the home improvement sector, and we are confident about Hornbach's successful development in the future. We will continue to focus our strategic and operational priorities. With our everyday low-price strategy and strong private labels, we remain a reliable partner to our customers for all their big and small renovation needs. We also will continue to emphasize cost and inventory management while making targeted investments to improve operational efficiency and maintain our strong market position. ESG is a very important topic to us, and we will continue to work to advance our sustainability efforts. For us, being successful and profitable needs to go hand in hand with advancing our ESG priorities and objectives. In the past year, we have set a goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in our own operations in line with the Paris Agreement by 42% until 2030. We've also published our footprint for some scope three categories for the first time this year, and we'll be able to disclose the full scope three emissions next year. With regard to our assortment, which is the biggest lever for making the company more sustainable, We will systematically screen all our product ranges for sustainability benefits. Thus, we will be able to steer our product portfolio accordingly and create transparency for our customer to help them choose sustainable products. And with that, I conclude my presentation and head back to Antje for the Q&A session. Thank you, Karin, for your remarks.

And I hand over to you, Laura, our app operator, to explain the technicalities of our Q&A session. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ange. Thank you, Ange. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. That is star 1 on your telephone keypad to ask a question. Thank you. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. We will now take our first question from Thomas Moll of DZ Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two. The first one, can you please shed some more light on your online business? I understand that sales are declining. That's okay. My question is, are your sales actually declining faster or slower than before? online sales of your peers. So what about market share in the online business? And my second question, can you please elaborate a bit more on sequential development of footfall and shopping cart size in June compared to Q1 of the current fiscal year?

Thank you. Thomas, thanks for your questions. I'm happy to talk a bit more about the e-commerce. Unfortunately, for any acoustic reason, I didn't get your second question. Could you just repeat it, please?

Of course. So my second question would be on footfall and shopping cart size in June. Can you elaborate a bit on the sequential development of both ratios compared to the Q1 range? of the current fiscal year.

Okay, thank you. So let me start with the e-commerce. And you asked with regard to peer figures. So when we compare our e-commerce shares with peers, we feel very comfortable that we're having there not only good figures for ourselves, so to say, but also a good outcome with regard to what's our market share in the e-commerce and how is that developing over time. I think one of the main reasons is that we have started, obviously, with our webshops really years ago. And despite the fact that this is a topic which continuously evolves and customer expectations, of course, continually evolve what is a good shopping experience and how does a good webshop look like, what application do I want to see there and things like that, we think that due to our good head start and the continuous investment that we take, The continual additions that we add into our app and to our web shops in each of our countries, we think that we're really well positioned there to offer good experiences and with that make further market share hours. So, yes, fine in comparison to our peers. Okay, thank you. To your second question, the footfall, and I understood it a bit in the sense of what is also current trading looking like. I mean, obviously, as I alluded to earlier, we had in a lot of our countries, we had relatively often rainy weather towards the end of May and now in the first weeks of June. Many people on the call maybe experienced that literally themselves. So that is, of course, something when we always see a little bit reduced activities. That means not so much footfall, a little bit less footfall there than in March and April, and a little bit smaller baskets here and there. Nothing dramatic, but just as that usual weather impact that you have. So As we currently have more sun across Europe in many areas, we also have, of course, the development into the other direction. The other thing that we mentioned where we always need to see how things play out is, of course, we have a number of exciting sports events this summer in Europe. We have, obviously, the football European Championship just going on. We have the Olympics coming up in July. So, That might also be something where people do a little bit less, do a little bit more in the garden, depends obviously then in combination once again with the weather. So there are a little bit of smaller question marks out there, and that's the reason why we said we had a very good start into the year. We need to see how Q2 comes along. Nothing to worry, but I think it's just that's why we said we would like to keep the guidance currently where it is.

Okay, very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Thilo of Warbook Research. The line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. Good morning. I have two questions, if I may. The first one is on the gross margin development, the level of 35% or 35.4% in Q1. Is this also a level we could expect for the coming quarters, or is there kind of special positive effect from seasonal product mix in Q1. Because, I mean, in Q2 and also in Q3, the basis for the gross margin is also pretty low. And my second question is regarding the development of the number of employees. it was up by more than 2% since the start of the fiscal year. So the increase was even stronger than the top line increase. So maybe you can comment on this if there's any specific reason behind this development. Thank you.

Thanks for your question. So number one on the gross margin, two thoughts there. A, So as I talked about in some of the previous calls, we were really keen to make sure we get some of those parts that we lost in the gross margin in earlier quarters. Specifically, I would claim towards the end of 22-23 and the first half of 23-24, so if you want to say 12 months ago and a little bit more, due to high energy prices before some force majeure events with some suppliers, things like that, commodity prices. So we worked hard on making sure we get that back, which we successfully managed to do. And that was something which came through already in winter, starting towards the end of our Q3 and definitely in Q4. Now, if you look back into those figures, you can see that already there. So it is a continuation. that is something which is really, I think, a good sign of stabilization. Nevertheless, of course, as you know, we also have not only our supply prices, our logistic expenses and other components where we can work hard on, but we also have, of course, sales prices. And we want to make sure that we are a reliable partner for our customers. So that means we are also there. Our everyday low price strategy, as I mentioned, is still one of our core principles, so we need to make sure we're really there, a reliable partner. As I said, that means there might be the one or the other sales price decrease, which then could make the gross margin ultimately a bit lower. We're not expecting any fundamental changes there currently, but I'm just trying to shed a light there. It might be that it goes a little bit more down, but actually, as I said, currently we look for stabilization on that side. Employees, yes, typical Q1 phenomenon, I would say. That is the time of hiring in our industry, independent whether you talk on the store side, whether you talk about some of our back offices. So underneath here in those figures, there are, for example, a couple of IT talents which we managed to get on board in Q1. So we were lucky, and some of that will, so to say, be offset over the course of the other quarters. And therefore, nothing that is a fundamental change of direction of travel. It's just I would claim coincidence that that fell into Q1.

Okay. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Benjamin Filman of Barenberg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, good morning, everyone. This is Ben from Barenberg. Two questions from my side, if I may. First one on free cash flow run rate for Q2 out to Q4. Is there anything you could roughly guide us on? I remember in the four-year call, you mentioned free cash flow roughly in line with last year level. Is that still up to date? This is question number one. Question number two is then on basically market shares. I see you guys keep winning market shares, particularly in Czech Republic, Netherlands. It's looking quite fine. Do you consider these market share gains as I mean, they keep growing since three years. And the question is like, okay, how much of that is spillover from post-COVID? And do you think that those customers will remain a customer over the next couple of years? Like, do you track maybe, okay, how many times do maybe the same professional customers or customer purchasing patterns in the, for example, in Netherlands, have they changed significantly in terms of frequency of customers visiting the stores? Because so far, market share gains look actually quite nicely. And the question is like, okay, how much of these market share gains will be sustainable over the next two to three years? That's it from my side. Thank you.

Yeah, once again, thanks for the questions. On the cash flow side, Yes, absolutely. Obviously, it's good to come in with a good development on the cash flow. And we see that literally as a kind of mirror of our activities in the operational side. In our business, the relation between sales and cash is relatively one-to-one. We have, of course, also services on offer where we have the one or the other later payment for our customers. If they want to, we support them with credit facilities or other services. Nevertheless, the vast majority is still, as we have the sale, there's also the cash coming at the same time. So good business figures mean good income in cash, and we're really keen to make sure we use our our networking capital in the way it's meant to, and we have our eyes fixed on that. So that was not only a one-off exercise in the past. This is an ongoing monitoring, which is high on management agenda to make sure we use, so to say, the inherent cash in our organization to support our cash flow. Therefore, I definitely think that we will have here a good stability, not only now in this quarter, but over the course of the year and over the course of the following years. Also, we have put an emphasis on making sure we use cash in times of high interest rate environments, even though those are coming down currently, as we know, slightly. But we will have elevated levels of correspondence. in this decade. So we're really keen to make sure that we have classical debt only utilized in those instances where we want to use it for investment or other things, but that the ongoing activities capture our capex and other spending nicely and generously to then use cash beyond that for extra activities, for shareholder return in form of dividend and other things. So That is absolutely meant to go on like this, if I want to say so. And then to your other question with the market shares, it is really – it's not a spillover or something of pandemic times in Czechia or in the Netherlands. It is the fact that we're really there extremely strong. We had there – a different competitive footprint. We are ultimately market leaders, and we very successfully expanded that position in those countries. I mean, we're having a number of countries where we can grow only by taking away market share from others. That's known to everybody. For example, Germany, we have a very dense competition. Of course, we also aim and work on to make sure we gain their additional percentage points. Nevertheless, We are really confident and feel very happy in a number of the other countries where we are well established. No sign whatsoever that might diminish. So absolutely very happy with where we stand. And as I said, no clouds on the horizon.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much, Carly.

Thank you. And we'll now take our next question from Mira Zizek of JMS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have a couple of questions. Is it okay if I take them one by one? Can you hear me? The first one is in Bausch of Union there was minus 9.2%. Is this related to let's say the weakness in the construction industry in general and do you expect this to remain muted until the end of the year in this basically in this kind, the minus 10% roundish?

So obviously Baustoff Union is absolutely linked to building industry. So I think that's the big contrast that everybody needs to take into account. Baumarkt is always focusing on existing buildings. So that is renovation, modernization, activities like that, that customers there are pursuing. whilst Baustoff Union is really focusing on new buildings, building industry, and that, of course, as we all know, is currently nowhere in Europe where it should be. Their area of their geographic footprint, so to say, is southwest of Germany and a very small footprint in France. That means they will, of course, get the turnaround done once the building industry picks up again. Given the macroeconomic environment, when we look into Shrinking inflation, slight interest rate reductions coming in. I totally expect that we will see there definitely a turnaround in the calendar year 25. Will we see something in 24? I am not so sure, frankly speaking, because we all know these cycles need their time to restart. On the other hand, will that be going down now, 9% every quarter? No, I don't think so. But I also don't think we will see fundamental increases in this calendar year. Nevertheless, surely next year, I have no doubt about it.

Okay, thank you. Very clear. Then next question regarding the adjustments. There were none in Q1. What is, from your current perspective, the amount we should expect in terms of adjustments for the entire year? And do you have any visibility on the quarters where you book them?

Yeah, that's a good question. If I knew future figures, I would probably have a different job in the sense of that is obviously as tricky as for everybody else. But to give you full transparency on how this runs, obviously we had last year a very special situation and I know I myself keep forgetting sometimes. ECB raised the interest rate last year six times just to remind everybody. So it was really outstanding. And that drove the big four here, our audit companies and everybody else's audit companies, into reassessing this as a triggering event. So we all looked into impairments both at year end as well as at half term. That is, of course, now a different environment. So normally you look either once a year or you look when you have a triggering event. That means I've currently no indication given the interest rate environment and the development of the risk-free interest rate to see any triggers of any impairment in our area. So we will most likely look into that with a specific eye only later in the year. Currently, as said, I have no material expectations. Yeah, period.

I think that's my current assessment. Okay, cool. Thank you. Then on the OPEC side, it seems that you have quite good cost control over your costs. I mean, there is some wage inflation and so on. We talked about that. So you were almost on par with the last year's Q1, which is, I think, remarkable. Will there be any special effects this year coming from, I don't know, future agreed wage increases whatsoever? Or do you expect the normal seasonal pattern regarding Europex?

Yeah, I think there are from the wage side, as you said, and as we also brought across a bit earlier, there were, of course, wage increases in the past substantially linked to the inflation. And as you know, we're keen to be an employer who pays proper wages where people can live from their salary and don't need to take a second or a third job, independent in which country they work for us. And obviously, we also have legal requirements, which we follow there absolutely in line with our asset aspiration as being a fair employer. So that brought a number of increases in the last year and in the year before already. So that is totally different this year. We have asset inflation has come down. Therefore, this inflation wage spiral has come to an end also in the majority of our countries where we operate. We don't expect any major increases anymore. We had in Germany, as you might recall, the last agreements a couple of weeks ago in spring. So that means those things are now done and dusted, so to say. And yes, you always have the one or the other percentage in the normal course of doing business, but No fundamental increase is currently expected.

Okay. So if I put this all together, you know, your gross margin is 2% higher compared to last year, roughly. You have very good OPEX cost control. You have shown a very good Q1. Your D&A is flat on the line. You guide for a slight increase in sales. Slight means, I think, 2% to 5%. you basically guide for a flat or slight higher adjusted EBIT. If I just take the 2% higher gross profit level, which you have and which you, I think, elaborated well upon, why don't you expect some kind of fall through of the 2% higher gross margin, which you have at this point in time? Do you understand my question? Compared to last year, you basically got no increase in margin.

I guess the question, sorry for rephrasing, is the question why we're not adjusting our guidance? Is that the underlying?

Absolutely.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely, I've understood. And coming back to my earlier statements, we have currently, obviously, only June. And I know for many, many out there, that is already the end of their first half. For us, as you know, we only started on March 1st. So for us, this is now the fourth month coming to an end. And the first two quarters are most likely the most important for us. And As I said earlier, we had a very good Q1. We have done our homework on the underlying KPI, so we will feel very comfortable that we're well set up. You summarized that absolutely quite nicely. Thanks for that. Nevertheless, we have now Q2, which started with a little bit of a dampening due to a lot of rain coming in, which didn't really make a lot of people move into gardening activities or other refurbishments or renovations around their houses, their flats. And secondly, we have a number of usual question marks topped by a set super exciting sports events this summer. So we need to see where people actually put their money. You know that well from customer sentiment analysis. Yes, inflation has come down. Yes, real wages have increased for many, but also many people out there still are a little bit On the cautious side with regard to their spending, they might not spend on their home. They might spend more on travel. They might spend more on looking into other activities or holding back money. So we need to see how customer sentiment plays out. And what we definitely have seen in Q1 and keep seeing is that there is a bit of softness on larger projects still. It's getting better, but it's not where we used to see customers' behaviors. And that's one of the pieces that we would like to see coming back before we release, so to say, our ideas on different guidances.

Okay, very clear. And the one last one, sorry, the financial result, the minus 15, was there any special – element in there, or is this like a stable run rate we should expect for the remaining quarters of the year?

Excuse me, the financial result of minus 15?

Minus 15.2 is like the consolidated financial result.

Ah, yes, you mean the investing activities, sorry. Is that the one you're referring to?

In the P&L. The non-tech even is in the P&L. It's minus 15.2, so you have like Stinson, minus 13.8. Plus 2 million, sorry. Author financial result, minus 3.4. And last year, you had also basically minus 15.8, but in the remaining quarters, it was less. It was like around minus 10 per quarter. Now you started again with minus 15. I was expecting again minus 10. The question is whether it's going to remain at minus 15 or because this is the current run rate of your interest results or whether there is also an improvement like in the last year where you have basically minus 10 million per quarter around for the remainder of the year.

Yeah, I totally expect our expenses to be so the debt-related financial expenses. No, you always need to make sure you look into differentiate a little bit between so to say gross debt and leasing related activities or payments so obviously as far as debt is concerned I totally expect to be lower than last year because we repaid a couple of loans and therefore that should be a bit lower but as said it's really not Any key figure for us as we're really, I mean, you know that one of our key figures which we manage very proactively is net debt to EBITDA, and we always said we want to be 2.5 or better, and we're really there in extra good shape. So I think that's all going into the right direction.

Thank you very much. Going back into the queue.

Okay, so I think we have no further questions for this time, and it looks as if we have satisfied all your questions. So if you have some questions afterwards or would like to discuss any topics, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the investor relations team. We also would like to invite you to meet up at the upcoming capital market events throughout the coming weeks and months, especially in September after the summer break. You will find an overview of conferences and IR activities on our website. Thank you all for your interest this morning and have a pleasant summertime. Enjoy your own outdoor and gardening projects and we hope to meet you soon in person. Thank you and goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.