Fiskars Oyj Abp

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the webcast of Fiskars second quarter 2021 results. My name is Kristian Tammela. I'm the director of investor relations here at Fiskars. As usual, we start off with a presentation by our CEO, Natalie Ahlström, followed by the one by our CFO, Sari Pohjonen. After that, we'll be able to take some questions via the chat, so you can start typing those in early in advance if you have any. And without further ado, I think we'll get started. Natalie.

Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everybody. It's really a pleasure and a privilege to be here today and talking about our strong Q2. And also, as we can say, it's an exceptionally strong first half for Fiskars Group. This is actually the strongest first half we've ever had in the company. And also, looking at the second quarter, we now have five consecutive quarters where we've hit the all-time high in that quarter. So, fantastic start to the year, fantastic first half. And when we look at where does this continued success come, it really is, Viitta has made a step change. Viitta is delivering not only on the top line, but also the bottom line. And Sari will later talk about the programmes that are now really delivering. Also, we can be happy saying that Terra and Crea, compared to last year, are really holding up. They are really holding up and performing well. And finally, as you know, in June we upgraded our guidance to reflect this strong development. When we look at the net sales, as said, Viita really has a step up. And we have Terra and Crea Holding up well, also when we look at Terra and Crea, we need to look at the first half in totality, and the growth figures that they are showing are significant when you look at the whole first half, because especially in Terra, we have a strong load-in in Q1. So let's look at the first half in totality, and Sari will also mention that more in detail. In addition, on the net sales development, we see that the US dollar headwinds had an impact on our business. But to summarize the growth, 14% comparable net sales growth in Q2. That's amazing. And really, when we look at what's behind it, we have a strong portfolio. We have a strong portfolio that's delivering. The brands are delivering. Our top brands are really delivering, all of them, all categories. and also all countries. Earlier in these sessions, I've spoken about the weakness in UK and Ireland due to the lockdowns. Now we see that UK and Ireland start to be flat. So really strong portfolio with the brands, the categories and the countries delivering. So overall strong performance. Then looking at our profitability, as said, it's the good top line growth, but also showing the power of the brands, the power of the brands to increase the gross margins over the period, and also the programs delivering. And you can also see here on the right side, that the rolling 12 months profit is really going in the right direction. And also with this, I want to say that we are going to have a capital markets day later in the year where we also then will comment on the targets going forward. Then to the outlook. We upgraded the outlook in late June to a bandwidth of 140 to 160 million euros of EBITDA. That still serves us well in this situation because the visibility continues to be low. I know I say that a lot, but that's the situation we are in. We have more than 10% of our own stores closed in Asia at the moment, especially in Australia. Also, the seasonality and the consumer behaviors are not what we are used to see. And we can't just assume it's going to be like in the past. Availability and the global supply chains that are a global phenomenon. Of course, we are not immune to that. And the availability situation is something that we are working on every day. It doesn't impact our business per se at the moment, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do that good growth figures, but it's a thing that we are really working on with every day. And finally, the inflation. The global increase in raw materials and logistics is of course impacting us. But thanks to our strong brands, As you see in the first half, the gross margins have developed well. Also, as we go forward, we want to sustain, we want to future-proof the company, and therefore we are now even further investing in growth. where upfront investments in digital, especially in data and analytics, in direct consumer capabilities online, the whole omnichannel experience, the consumer experiences that we have in the digital world. So we want to now sustain the growth, invest in the growth for the future, and therefore we are doing these step-ups in investment in digital for the second half. And as a final note, Jose Sitoinen, our newly appointed CFO, he will start in mid-August. Then, looking at the consumer every day, and what are the latest we have been doing for the love of the brands, for the love of what the consumers are feeling. Again, we were awarded the Red Dot Award for the best design for the garden pruners that you see here on the picture. We also had a good pilot here in Finland where we made the everlasting frying pans. This was based on an innovation challenge we had internally, and this is a pilot where the consumers get their frying pans recoated to sustain the life of the product. We have the Waterford range that has a new range there. And then the strong, strong growth in Asia, in China continued, and we opened the first Royal Copenhagen flagship store in China, in Shanghai. And Sari will later show also the significant growth figures that we are showing in the Asia region. Sustainability is also a growth lever for us, a very important growth lever for us. And in the against throwaway culture, we did some leaps forward. We've now launched the vintage service in all stores in Sweden. We already have it previously in Finland and also working on a pilot in Denmark to introduce the vintage service. And then as an example, we had the frying pan pilot in Finland. A core of our sustainability strategy is for carbon neutral future. And here also we've done good leaps forward. Already 40% reduction compared to the base of the scope one and two targets. So 40% when we set the target at 60. So there we are moving forward. And then I'm really happy to tell you that when looking at our operations, we've added two more countries that are now fully renewable. And these countries are Denmark and UK. And this means that all our operations in Europe today are using renewable energy, electricity, all of them. And this is how we do on sustainability. We go step by step and execute and deliver. Thank you. And with this, I hand over to Sari.

Thank you, Natalie. And let's indeed go a little bit in more detail through our second quarter for the year. I will start with an update on the two ongoing transformation programs. First of them is VITA transformation, which we launched in October 2018. And there we have now been able to complete certain initiatives during the second quarter, and thus we are also updating a little bit our view on the final outcome of the program. It will be completed by end of this year. The benefits that we have been talking about earlier, they will materialize, and the majority of them will be visible already in 2021. At the same time, we have also now updated our view on the total cost for the program. They are expected to be approximately 5 million less than in the initial announcement in 2018. In terms of the restructuring program, there we have also updated a little bit now the time span. We now expect the program to be completed by the end of first quarter 2022 instead of by end of this year. Other than that, no changes in terms of the restructuring program. Then if we take a look at Viitta for the second quarter 2021, obviously an excellent improvement in the net sales and excellent improvement in the result as well. In terms of comparison data, good to remember that Q2 2020 was really a one could even say a lousy quarter for Vita due to the major lockdowns we had both in our own retail and also for our customers in their retail stores. But even if we are comparing with 2019, which was a more normal year, you can see that Vita has been growing a lot. And at the same time, we have also been able to improve the result significantly. What I'm Particularly pleased about is that we've been able to grow in most of the markets, channels, brands and categories. There are some pain points still. For instance, we can talk about hospitality channel. Obviously, as our customers, there are hotels, restaurants, cruise lines and airlines. Those industries are not yet. recovering fully from the pandemic, and that's been visible in our business as well. But other than that, growing in China, Natalie already mentioned a couple of initiatives there that we have been doing during this quarter, and that's in the numbers as well. In terms of the result development, obviously the volume impact is there, but at the same time, we have also been able to continue Implementing or deploying the ongoing programs, they have an impact there, and we have been very strictly looking into our product portfolio during the past couple of years, and that impact is visible, for instance, in the pricing, which then bears a good meaning for the result as well. In terms of the first six months, good to note that the VITA growth has been on a comparable basis 30%, so it's not only a question about the Q2, but the first half of the year. Then looking into Terra, and here on a comparable basis, we saw a small growth of 1.6%, but it's good to bear in mind that year-to-date basis, the comparable growth for Terra has been 14%. As Natalie already mentioned, there were big load-ins already during Q1. Sometimes those load-ins take place in Q1, sometimes they do take place in Q2. This year it was predominantly Q1. On the category level, we were able to grow with outdoor and fixing during the quarter. Garden was flattish and watering was decreasing, but as said, there were already plenty of load-ins during Q1. In terms of profitability, on a year-to-date basis, Terra has been able to improve from the previous year. You all remember that we did benefit from a strong demand in Q2 2020 for the Terra products last year. Despite that, we have been able to grow, and despite that, we have been able to improve on a year-to-date basis the EBITDA as well. In terms of the quarterly EBITDA, there's been some pressure on the raw material prices and logistics cost. This is something which is happening globally not only for fiskars, that has to some extent burdened our result, yet at the same time also good to mention that on purpose we have also been investing more in product marketing during the quarter. Then looking at CREA, a somewhat similar story as for Terra in the sense that for this quarter there was a slight decline or one could say flattish development in the net sales. However, if we take a look at the year-to-date development, we've been able to grow by 7%, and compared to 2019, you can also see that this quarter was stronger in terms of net sales. Also, in terms of the result, year-to-date, we have been able to improve the EBITDA. For this quarter, the EBITDA remained slightly lower than in the previous year, a bit similar. implications than for Terra, so the higher costs have an impact here. But at the same time, the product mix has been more favourable, which has been partly offsetting the impact of the higher costs. In terms of categories, cooking was growing during the quarter, whereas scissors and creating tools were not. However, good to remind here that especially Q2 2020 was a very high quarter for CREA. We do see that in the Americas, especially the mask-making related activities are not at the same level as they were last year, so demand has been normalizing there, and that is reflected in our Q2 numbers. In terms of the geographies, there was excellent growth both in Europe as well as in the Asia-Pacific region, partly of course due to the fact that the soft numbers for 2020 due to the lockdowns, but also other than that, we have been able to grow. In the Americas, this quarter was negative due to the development of Terra and Crea, but we were able to grow with Vita there too. If looking at the profit and loss statement or the income statement here, I would like to draw your attention to one line, which is the gross profit, and we have been, or rather the gross profit margin, Thinking about the current businesses that we have in the group since 2015 after the latest big acquisition, this is actually the best cross-profit margin for Q2 that we have been able to generate. So back on growth track on that one as well. Internally, it's a very important KPI for us and really showing the power of the brands and also the product portfolio work that we've been doing in all the business areas and be it the offering, be it the pricing, or be it cost efficiencies there. Then if we take a look at the earnings per share, you see the quarterly number here, just reminding that during Q1, we got a tax ruling related to an old tax case dating back to 2003 that was weighing the EPS during that quarter, just reminding also that there is no cash impact on that that ruling as we already paid the taxes and related items in 2016. Following the very good result development, we also have been seeing again a strong cash flow development in the first half of the year. Our cash flow is always seasonal due to the seasonality of the business, but as you can see from the graph illustrating the development on a rolling basis, it has been improving starting from the latter part of last year, and we have at the same time been able to push down our working capital. It is also a seasonal item for us, depending on the seasonality of the business, but as you can notice from the graph on the right-hand side, we have been very rigorous on the working capital management in the last quarters. About the balance sheet, maybe just drawing attention to inventories here. They are now on a more normal level compared to 2020, when we had really low inventories at this time of the year. Other than that, no major items here. And then finally, looking at our net debt development, thinking about the seasonality of the business, the net debt, especially if we exclude the leasing liabilities, is at a very, very low level, and thus also our equity ratio and net gearing have been improving. And more as a reminder here, our long-term financial targets and how we have been recently performing against those targets.

Great. Then we have some questions around... If I start with one regarding our guidance, maybe that will go down too. Natalie, so if we compare the guidance of 140 to 160 million in comparable EBITDA to the 2019 clean EBITDA of 91, so how much roughly of this is due to the pandemic and how much is sustainable profit lift?

When we look at the sustainability, I mean, we're all here to ensure that we have a sustainable underlying profitability and also sustainable development of the top line. And when looking at the second half and related to the question about our guidance, it's still, we live in a volatile world with quite poor visibility also due to the global supply chain situation. And then as said, we are really now investing in growth, investing in the digital side, investing in talent. So we want to take this opportunity as we go forward to a strong second half.

Right, then the second question about China. So in terms of revenues, how much is of the group and which brands exactly do you sell there?

Asia-Pacific, as you know, is already more than 14% of our businesses. And as the figure study was showing, Asia-Pacific for us grew 30% in the Q2. So strong performance there. Then coming to China, of course, we are starting from a smaller base, but it's already starting to be substantial business. The key brands we have in China are Wedgwood and now also Royal Copenhagen. And what we're really happy and proud about is that the Wedgewood appeals to the young audience in China. Our loved consumers there, they are the young, around 20-25 year old Wedgewood fans, who really are buying the products a lot there.

Thank you. Then to Sari. How do you see the cost base in the other segment progressing throughout the year? Does this mean that you could see double the cost in Q3? Will the normalization of the cost base in the other segment look?

As we were mentioning in the report, this is a timing topic and I can say that typically the other segment on a full year basis has been fairly stable. So it's a question about timing topic this year.

Is it possible to comment on the split between short-term savings and the savings from savings programs in the VITA segment now in Q2?

Maybe I continue on that one as well. Not only for Viitta, but generally for Fiskars, it's good to know that we did have a lot of temporary savings last year, starting from Q2 onwards as we were quickly reacting at that time to the pandemic and its impact to the business. So yes, there were temporary savings in 2020. However, during 2021, there are hardly any temporary savings. So it's related to to the overall good development of the business, including the impact of the programmes.

Thank you, and if you could, Sari, even take this third one. Is it possible to comment on your like-for-like growth in own stores versus 2019?

Versus 2019, I wouldn't draw any one conclusion on the own store development. Thinking about own retail as a whole, including then e-commerce and the omnichannel as a general, of course, the e-commerce channel continues to be extremely important for us right now. It's been in the past, it is of that right now, and it will continue to be hugely important for us in the future as well. Like for like comparison, there is no one single answer to that. The situation varies quite a bit between the markets. And also just reminding that we have also had lockdowns during this year, not as much as in 2020, but they do continue in some of the markets where we operate.

Thank you. And then a question regarding the gross margin level. Have you indicated any normalized gross margin level or mid-term target level? Due to the various business and COVID-linked volatility, it's difficult for us to understand what is normal or even semi-normal. Any help on this topic would be much appreciated.

We haven't unfortunately disclosed any targets for the gross profit margin as such, but I would repeat what I said earlier, that internally for us it's a hugely important KPI and as said, indicating many of the elements, strength of the brands and the categories that we operate with.

Thank you. We don't have any further questions. I'll just give it a moment to see if there are any other ones coming in. It seems that there are no other questions. If there are any, you can please contact me after this. But otherwise, I would like to thank you for this. Thank you.

Thank you.