Bang & Olufsen a/s

Welcome to B&O Interim Report for the second quarter of 2024-25 presentation. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, please press 5-star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded, and I will now hand the call over to CEO Christian Therr and CFO Nikolaj Venelbo. Please begin.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining the first Centennial Year Call. With me today is our CFO, Nikolaj Wendelbo. I will start by talking you through our key highlights and business review. Nikolaj will take us through the financials in more detail, and I will conclude before we open up for questions. So please move to slide number four. Let us begin by looking at our Q2 performance. We delivered the second quarter in line with our plans and expectations. While the EMEA region and the Americas generated positive revenue growth year on year, we had a marginal decline in group revenue of 1% due to negative growth in China. In line with our strategic focus, we are pleased to report that our wind cities generated 24% sell-out growth and our branded channels generated sell-out growth of 5%. The gross margin increased to 53.7% and improved by 0.6 percentage points year on year. You may remember that we in Q1 reported a gross margin of 55.2%, which was record high. We did not expect a gross margin of that level for Q2, and we are pleased with a report at 53.7%. The level shows the progress we are making in building a robust financial foundation for the company. In September, we launched our new flagship headphone, H100. These are the best headphones we have ever created. During Q2, we also launched a new generation of our successful earphones, EX, the E11. Simultaneously, we have worked on preparing the acceleration of our strategy execution and making value-creating investments to realize our mid-term growth plan, which we announced in July. All in all, we are progressing as planned and we are also maintaining the outlook for the full year. This is another quarter where we see that the strategy is working. We see positive EBIT margin and we see positive cash flow and we grew where we wanted to grow. Please move to the next page. On 27 November 2024, we successfully completed a capital increase as a directed issue and private placement without pre-emptive rights for existing shareholders. The offering raised gross proceeds of 228 million through the issuance of 24,554,416 new shares at an offer price of 9.27 Danish kroner. We are encouraged by the interest from existing shareholders as well as new shareholders who participated in the offering. As we have communicated the proceeds are intended to fund our acceleration of the strategic execution and drive long-term profitable growth. Please move to the next slide. as we have communicated we will focus the investments on building brand awareness optimizing the retail network and we will continue to invest in our product portfolio for the retail network we have been in the preparation phase for a while with a strong global city focus and we can now accelerate our expansion plans For example, in California, where we are rebuilding a strong presence as we have found a new resourceful and experienced partner with whom we will open several flagship stores. We have more initiatives in the pipeline and we will share with you as we progress. As part of accelerating revenue growth, driving strategy implementation and enhancing the overall customer experience, we will be making some organizational changes. By mid-January 2025, the three regional sales functions will be consolidated into a single global sales function. In addition, we are establishing dedicated sales functions for new partnerships and hospitality. We're also adding more local sales and marketing resources into the key cities. These changes will enhance our focus on key cities and enable us to better serve our customers. Please move to the next slide. We have in Q2 continued to approve our store network before we speed up and make the planned investments. In EMEA, we have since Q2 of last year reduced our monobrand network in the region by 28 stores year on year to 270 stores at the quarter end. During the quarter, we expanded our presence in the Middle East with the opening of a monobrand store in Abu Dhabi. In Asia Pacific, the number of monobrand stores was reduced by three. We collaborate with numerous luxury monobrand partners across all regions to utilize the strength of combining our company-owned stores with the presence of strong partner-driven monobrand stores. Out of our now 13 defined global win cities, we are executing in four cities, New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. More will come and we expect cities like Los Angeles and Tokyo most likely be the next cities in execution as part of our wind city concept. In terms of performance for the ones in execution, the wind cities collectively reported sellout growth of 24%, which comprises sellout across channels in the cities. All cities reported growth. New York, London reported double-digit growth. Both company-owned stores in New York had good performance. Also, New York was positively impacted by low comparables as one of the stores were closed for relocation in October last year. London was positively impacted by the opening of the New Bond Street store in December 2023. Paris and Hong Kong reported single-digit growth year on year. We are pleased with the performance of 24% growth of our wind cities for the quarter. Please move to the next slide. Before I hand over to Nick Lai, let me elaborate on our recent product launches. As I mentioned, we launched our new flagship headphone H100 in September. It is the first headphone built on our proprietary software platform, the Amadeus platform. The higher price point compared to previous headphones not only reflects that H100 is the best headphone we have created to date, it also confirms our strategic direction of further strengthening our position in the luxury audio market. The sales performance of H100 got off to a really good start with demand exceeding all our expectations. In November 2024, we launched the E11, which is the next generation of the successful EX earphones. The E11 features improved acoustic performance thanks to enhanced active noise cancellation, more transparency and voice clarity. We continue to elevate the product experience for our existing products and create new best-in-class products. In terms of product collaborations, we also announced the second special edition Ferrari collection, revealing three new product collaborations, all from our staged category. With the made-to-order collection, Beng Olofsson has reimagined its Biolab 50 speaker, BioSound Theatre soundbar, and BioVision Theatre TV solution. The design integrates Ferrari's charcoal Grigio Corsa colorway combined with a striking shade of red to create an unmistakable connection to the motorsport icon and the first Ferrari collection launched in 2023. The first special edition comprised four products from our flexible living and on-the-go category. This was the Biosound 2 home speaker, the H95 headphone, the EX earphones and the portable speaker Biosound Explorer. The edition was in good demand and the products were sold out. As I mentioned, we will invest further in our product portfolio. We have a strong product portfolio today and we will keep on strengthening it across all categories. With this, I will hand over to Nikolaj. Thank you, Christian.

Now, please move to page 10. Let me start by going through sellout for Q2. Our like-for-like sellout was positive for the quarter and grew 1% compared to last year. If we exclude end-of-life deals made last year, sellout was higher and moved to the mid single digits. We are pleased to report that like-for-like sellout in our branded channels grew 5%. In terms of regions, like-for-like sell-out in EMEA was on par with last year. The branded channels grew, while multi-brand declined as expected. As Christian mentioned, we have reduced the number of multi-brand stores primarily in Germany, and for ETail we saw positive traction at the end of the quarter, which generated positive sell-out growth for the quarter. Sell-out in the Americas grew by 8%. Banded channels combined reported a double-digit increase, supported by double-digit growth in all channels. Company-owned stores delivered very satisfactory performance and were in addition positively impacted by low comparables as one store was closed for relocation in October last year. For the APAC region, like-for-like sellout declined by 1%. The branded channels reported growth driven by growth across the channels. Like-for-like sellout in the e-tail channel declined as expected as we have changed the setup. For the multi-brand channel, where we have also changed our focus towards travel retail, we saw only a modest decline in sellout due to positive traction from the travel retail network. Looking at China, like-for-like sellout declined 7%. The monobrand channel was on par with last year, excluding sellout from one partner. South Korea and Taiwan reported sellout growth, and Japan reported sellout growth in the branded channels. Across regions, our stage category grew by 9%, while the flexible living and on-the-go categories declined by 10% and 13% respectively. This reflects the change in channel mix towards our branded channels as wind of end of life deals made last year in the flexible living and on the go categories. Please go to the next page. Reported revenue for the quarter was 698 million. This was a decline of 1% in local currencies compared to Q2 of last year and in line with our expectations. Overall, product sales had a marginal decline. Breaking revenue down into categories, the stage category grew by 7%, flexible living declined 26%, mainly driven by end-of-life deal made last year in APAC and the launch of the Ferrari collection in Q2 of last year. The undergo category increased by 5% and was positively impacted by the successful launch of H100. Our brand partnering and other activities increased by 4% and was on par with last year in local currencies. The development was mainly driven by growth in license income from automotive, while license income from HP declined in line with our expectations and due to the expiry of the agreement as of June 2024. The new partnership with TCL, which we entered into in July, is ramping up as expected. Revenue from co-branded products declined year on year due to ramp up in Q2 last year. Please turn to the next page. Let me go more into details on product revenue per region. Revenue from the EMEA region grew 3% in local currencies and growth was reported across all branded channels in the region. The UK market and the German market are still challenged markets. We continued the transformation of the multi-brand distribution channels, thereby improving the underlying quality of revenue. Gross margin was up 0.8 percentage points to 49.3%. In the Americas, we saw a strong performance across channels and revenue increased 17% in local currencies to 86 million. The monobrand channel also grew despite having terminated all monobrand stores in California. As Christian mentioned, we continue with our US expansion and are rebuilding a strong presence in California. Revenue from the multi-brand channel was very limited in absolute value. This is in line with the strategic transformation to reduce our multi-brand presence. At the end of the quarter, we were present in 20 multi-brand stores across the Americas. The change in channel mix also contributed to increased gross margins for the Americas from 42.9% to 48%. Revenue in APAC was 182 million, which was a decrease of 13% in local currencies. Revenue from China declined 12.3% or 14% in local currencies and accounted for approximately 55% of total revenue in APAC. Revenue from our monobrand channel in China declined year on year. Excluding one partner, revenue from the channel was largely unchanged. As part of our strategic transformation in China, we implemented a structural change in the multi-brand setup and e-tail network and we saw increased revenue from both channels year on year. Revenue from Japan and Taiwan grew year-on-year, while South Korea was temporarily impacted by a planned simplification in the partner setup. Overall for the APAC region, the gross margin declined to 47.4% from 51.6%. This was mainly due to changes in product mix, but also impacted by the lower revenue level to absorb fixed production costs. Now please move to the next page. On group level, the gross margin rose to 53.7% and was up 0.6% compared to last year. Overall, the gross margin for product revenue was largely on par with last year. We have in recent quarters been positively impacted by both channel mix and product mix. We have been on an increasing trajectory for the past several quarters, and in Q1 we reached a record high gross margin of 55.2%. As we said when we announced the Q1 results, we didn't expect that level to continue for the coming quarters, and there will be fluctuations throughout the year. We are pleased with a level of just shy of 54% for Q2, and in general we expect the gross margin to increase over our mid-term period. This quarter, the gross margin for brand partnering rose to 94.4% from 87.9% in Q2 of last year. The margin increased due to the change in mix between license and product sales compared to Q2 of last year. Again, this level will also fluctuate across quarters depending on the underlying mix. EBIT margin before special items was 1.7% compared to 3% in Q2 last year. The improved gross margin was more than offset by increased development cost. Now please turn to the next page. Moving on to capacity cost and net working capital. Capacity cost increased by 12 million year-on-year. Looking at the composition of the capacity cost, development cost increased by 20 million, partly due to an increased level of incurred cost and partly due to less capitalizations. Distribution and marketing cost decreased by 12 million, and our marketing ratio was 9.3% compared to 10.6% last year. Administrative cost increased by 3 million, driven by one-offs. Net working capital decreased by 32 million during the quarter to 250 million. This was mainly driven by a reduction in inventories of 25 million during the quarter to 426 million. Overall, Finnish goods were improved in terms of composition and aging. Sales with extended credit were 2% and continued to be at a low level. Payables increased by 61 million and other short-term liabilities increased by 63 million to 189 million during the quarter, which was primarily driven by employee-related liabilities and VAT. Please turn to the next page. Free cash flow for Q2 was up 6 million to 30 million. The development since last year was driven by the improvement in networking capital. CapEx was at 54 million for Q2 and mainly related to new products and platforms. The level is expected to increase in the second half of the financial year and with more retail-related CapEx in the mix. Capital resources amounted to 390 million at the end of Q2, of which available liquidity was 159 million. This is excluding the capital raise of gross 228 million as we received the funds after closing of the quarter. Please turn to the next page. To conclude, we maintain the outlook for the full year 2024-2025, with revenue growth in local currencies from minus 3 to plus 3%, with an EBIT margin before special items from minus 2 to plus 1%, and free cash flow is expected from minus 100 to 0 million Danish kroner. As we have stated, 2024-25 is a transition year. With the proceeds from the capital raise, we can now initiate the investment programs of our strategic execution according to our mid-term plan. This means that capital is expected to increase compared to 2023-24, and capacity costs are expected to increase as well, as we will hire the right competencies to help us execute the plan. With those words, I will hand it back to Christian.

Thank you, Nikolai. So to sum up the quarter, it was in line with our plans and expectations. While revenue had a margin decline impacted by the challenged economic climate in China, we generated positive growth in EMEA and Americas, and we had a positive EBIT and a positive cash flow. We are pleased to report a growth of 24% in our win cities and 5% sellout growth in our branded channels. And finally, we are excited about having completed the capital raise and being able to accelerate our strategic execution. Once again, we would like to thank both existing and new investors for the strong support. And with this, we will now open up for Q&A's.

Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again, you may do so by pressing five star again. We'll have a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question is from the line of Paul Jessen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted. Yes.

Thank you. I have a few questions. Let's start by the changes you do to your sales, global sales on the retailer side. I guess it's a consequence of getting a new head of sales on board. Could you explain more what the actual impacts will be from centralizing and not having a regional base structure? Yeah.

Hi, good morning, Paul. Thanks for your question. So when we look at the Q1, Q2 executions, we see that we are doing well in the cities where we focus on and the strategic cities. We want to get closer to those cities. We want to put more resource into the cities and have more resources on the ground. We have also seen that the operating model that we have in EMEA with more than 200 monobrand stores, we're working really, really well with them. So we're taking the same operating model and applying that in Asia Pacific and in the Americas, and we have appointed Jorge Aguiar who is now running the EMEA region as head of global sales to implement the same operating model across the globe, but also then help us to focus further on the cities where we have had, as you heard, good results already. In addition to that, we are creating a new partner and distribution sales organization that is also global that will help us to find new partners for the white spots that we have on the map and finding new monobrand partners in particular for the North American market. region, but also in other regions, Asia and Latin America. And for that purpose, we have appointed our current North American head Rick Costanzo to run that new sales of partners and distributors. And the third focus area is we have had good success with hospitality and we will continue to invest in hospitality. And that has currently resided under Christopher Paulson, who is also running brand licensing and partnering. But we will put more emphasis on hospitality and put more resource into hospitality as well. So those three changes in the sales organization will help us to further accelerate growth and execute on the midterm plans that we have announced.

And then putting that forward to Nikolaj, then how should we look at the cost on distribution marketing into second half? And is it also already being ramped up there or is it mainly an issue for the next financial year? It's a question of how fast the costs are moving up.

So there will be an increase in cost also in the second half of the year as we are hiring in people to help us with our strategy execution. Of course, the impact will be bigger when we go into next financial year because it takes time to get people on board. But we are expecting extra cost also in Q3 and more specifically in Q2 for these extra resources coming in.

And then coming back to your question, I guess you are commenting on the US and California. You have a quite strong performance in the US and That's despite of having those doors open or branded stores open in California right now. Is it installers and hospitality that's driving it or is it the New York stores? What's the key drivers here? And secondly, you say you have a new franchisee on board for California. When should we expect revenue out of California from branded stores again?

So we have a strong performance across the different channels in the US. We're actually growing in all channels. We're doing really well in New York, in our Wind City, like I said, but it's across the board. On California in particular, we have found a new partner, a very resourceful partner that will help us to execute the retail strategy by putting several flagship stores in place in the key cities and also satellite stores in place in the key cities. And we expect the first stores to be up and running during this calendar year. already. So we're very excited about that. And we have a partner who is very, very capable and very resourceful. So you will see that by end of this calendar year.

So it's next financial year?

Financial year, correct.

Okay. Does that also mean that you have plans to in the cities where you're not present right now? I'm thinking about the Bay Area.

We will have a better coverage throughout California. We have already several leases in place in cities, and we're going to continue with that expansion with the same partner to sign up more leases. So it will be across California, yes.

Okay. And then a question on the back of the S25 and the TCL presentations, but when we look at the TVs in general, So there's not much question about quality of panels. It's more of the software inside AI and others being included into the panels. Just want to make certain that changes or the development of TV panels now and going forward, you are more or less fully independent of that because you provide the audio part of it independent of what's happening inside the panels.

So we have a good collaboration and a strong collaboration with LG and we expect that to continue and us actually also to be strengthened. And we expect the business to continue under the same operating model for screens as we currently have.

And when you mentioned TCL partnership on revenue, on royalties, Is that material by now, or is it still something ramping up as it gets into more price? Just how much, or is there two numbers already? More or less nothing.

It's not material at this point in time. It's a few millions, so to speak, but it's according to plan. And it will become more material when we move into next financial year when we are ramping up and we're also getting into new TCL models. Right now we are only in one TV, and we're expanding that with the latest announcement also of the X-Series at CES.

Okay, I'll step back to see if there are others. Otherwise, I have more questions, Len.

The next question is from Nils Lidt from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. First question is about the ongoing restructuring of your multibrand network. So should we expect the reduction in the number of multibrand doors to continue at the same pace here in the next two, three quarters? Secondly, on your OPEX ramp-up or expected ramp-up, so you recorded 3% growth in quarter two, should we expect OPEX growth to move into the double-digit growth here in the second half? And then just coming back on the question on California, perhaps you could elaborate on the number of stores that you expect to open in California. Thank you.

Good morning, Nilsson. Thank you for your questions. On multi-brand, we believe we have the right multi-brand network more or less in place currently. We may tune it down further as we see how we are growing in the other channels that we have. long-term, we will continue to be in some selected multi-brands. It's not going to disappear completely, but with the selected assortment and with selected partners, but we don't see a bigger kind of change and shift in that channel for the time being. I'll take the California question as well, and then Nicolai will take the other question. I will not give you a specific number, but we will have several stores and there will most likely be more stores than what we have terminated currently.

In terms of OPEX growth, we will expect the growth on OPEX to pick up in Q3 and Q4, as I said before. I don't expect it will go into double digit growth, but it will probably be high single digits, if I should give some kind of flavor to that.

Okay, great. And then if I can just follow up on store openings and store acquisitions. As part of your growth plan, you have mentioned that you want to double the number of stores that you own. Could you provide a little bit of timing to this ambition to Should we expect the number of stores that you own to double already within two years? Or is that basically spread across all the years in your strategy period spanning to fiscal 28? That was my question. Thank you.

So the expectation is that the doubling in number of cocoa stores is in the mid-term period. So that will be towards the end of 27, 28. And the exact timing of that will, of course, be announced as we are opening the doors. But that's the expectation. So it's not something that happens within the first one or two years. It is over the next three and a half years.

Okay, great. And then just finally, on your gross margin progression throughout this year, now you have generated year-on-year progressions in the past few quarters. So I presume that's also what we should expect for quarter three and quarter four. And perhaps you could also give us a few comments on your gross margin progression in the on-the-go category. It seems like the most recent products that you have launched in this category would be higher priced than what we normally see in this category. Would that have any meaningful effect on the gross margin in the on-the-go category?

So overall, we expect gross margin progression year on year to continue, but we also expect that the rate of the progression compared to what we've seen in the past year will be lower. So I think when we come into Q3 and Q4, the progression will diminish a little bit for those quarters, short term, long term. We are planning with progressing our gross margin over the next three and a half years every year. So we are ending at a level that will probably be five, six percentage point higher than where we are today at the end of the mid-term period. But that will also be something that we then do over the next 12, 14 quarters. So quarter by quarter, it will be small steps, but all in the right direction. And what was the second question? I forgot that. Sorry, Niels.

That was how we should think of the gross margin progression in your on-the-go category, where you have launched a few rather expensive products here recently.

Yeah, so we definitely expect the progression in the on-the-go category from a gross margin perspective as well. There are many factors in that. Of course, when we launch new products as we have done with H100, it has a significantly higher gross margin than the average in the category. And as we continue to launch more products in that category over the time of our strategy plan, that will all contribute to increased gross margins as well. In addition to that, as we are cleaning up the multi-brand channel and the e-tail channel, and there's still some work to do on the e-tail channel, especially in China, that would also help us improve our gross margin in the category as well.

And could you just remind us how much of revenue would come from e-tailing today?

In total, it's probably around 10-15%. Between 10 and 15.

So that would be for pure e-tailers like Amazon and those kind of retailers.

Amazon, Tmall, JD.com. So we are restructuring how we work with those channels in terms of product assortment and pricing strategy. And that has an impact on the category from a revenue perspective, but it's also helping us to improve the margins in the category.

Great, thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Paul Jessen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Yes, thank you. I have a few questions here and there. First, the H100, I think it's been selling more than we have been able to deliver. Can you tell when you expect H100 the supply to be sufficient to cover demand so that it's available everywhere.

That's a really good question because we can of course not foresee demand out in all future. But right now we are basically sold out for Q3 from a sell-in perspective. So if you are a retail partner placing an order of H100 right now, you will not get it in this quarter because we are sold out. So we are ramping up production. It takes time because we have components that have a long lead time. And we expect that demand and supply will be more in sync, of course, next year when we have time to readjust our supplier plans, basically.

Okay. And then point of sales Europe, the drop of 500 multi-point of sales. Is that a partner or two taken out or is it more optimizing existing partnerships on locations where you want to be present? And if you have closed down specific farms, can you give examples of who and where it's been shut down?

So we're talking about multi-brand, I assume, in Europe. So we closed down a number of stores, especially in Germany, where we had a number of multi-brand chains that were not adding value to the brand or specific adding value from a revenue perspective either. So they have been closed during the quarter.

But who? remember the name Paul is nothing nobody of significance okay then just have to scroll down here guidance for you say that it's based on the current currency range you also said that when you gave the initial guidance but the US dollar has moved in the meantime the British pound as well so this is based on a rates as of today or is it the same definitions as when you gave it initially in july it's based on rates as of of today so the headwind that you must have because you typically have headwind from a stronger us dollar is that compensated within the earnings range that you have or have you

other areas which is compensating. When we look at the impact from the US dollar and the dollar increase, that is more impacting, of course, the bottom line, right? Because we are buying our products in dollar. And that's a big chunk of our cost, whereas most of our OPEX cost is Euro based, right? So there's a headwind to that. But the current headwind, you can say we can keep it within the flexibility of our minus two to plus 1%. So that's why we're not changing our outlook based on that.

Okay. And then the proceeds from the capital increase to 28. That's a gross number. Can you, for modeling, give us the net number on how much you're actually receiving?

We will disclose the net number when we finalized all the costs for the issue with the Q3 report, right? But of course, there is a cost that is in there and is taking the net number down with around 10 million lower, plus minus. Okay. Yeah.

I have one more. Yeah, the net finance is minus 12 million. Is there anything special included? I can see that your net or the bank debt is coming down. Are there some additional costs or is it underlying just business as usual?

There's no additional cost. It's net financial cost related to the normal running of our business. The net debt is coming down because we are using our repo setup to a lower extent. That will also, of course, over time have a positive impact on net financials. especially in the coming quarters when we have the proceeds from the directed issue as well.

So you will use that to reduce the repo also?

Yes.

Okay. And receivables has gone up quite a lot, Q over Q. Is that because Q1 was exceptionally low and then you're more or less normalized now?

Exactly. So Q1 is always low and Q2 is always high. So there is always a big swing in receivables between Q1 and Q2 due to the seasonality of sales in the business.

Thank you. That was all from me.

And just as a reminder, if you have a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up from Nils Litt from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Thank you. Just one follow-up question on the U.S. tariff situation. Could you talk about what proportion of your U.S. sales are manufactured outside of China and some considerations around what you are planning to do if tariffs will be imposed on imports from China.

The biggest portion of the sales by far into the US is not manufactured in China, because most of our staged category is coming from Europe, which has the highest value. So it's mainly on the GO products and a few other products. So it's a limited number of products that will be impacted. I would say it's probably two handfuls of products, if I should put it like that. And we have not made specific plans of how to handle it yet, because we actually don't know what will happen exactly. And it depends on the level of tariffs that are being imposed towards Chinese products. But we have different handles that we are looking at, which is everything from from shipping products into the US before tariffs are coming to handling through price adjustments in the US specifically. But those are basically the handles that we are looking at. And it's basically a cost-benefit analysis between tying up more working capital in the US and shipping more into the US versus having more flexibility If the level of tariffs is what has been initially talked about, which is an extra 10%, then we will probably carry on business as usual and mitigate this through pricing, because that seems to be the most efficient. But as I said, until we have more concrete measures implemented or announced, we are being a little bit cautious in doing anything right now.

Okay, thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue, I will hand it back to the speakers.

So thank you all very much for joining today and all for all your questions. If you have, as always, any additional questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our fantastic IR department. Thank you very much.