Luceco plc

Okay, good morning everybody and welcome to the Lusico H1 2024 results presentation. Highlights in what was a difficult period as far as market demand, we think we've executed well. Our revenue up just over 8% of which 3.6% on a light for light organic basis in a market which has declined by approximately 3%. This resulted in an operating profit up almost 17% and an operating margin almost 1% higher. Our free cash flow was also strong, leaving our net debt ratio just over one times. EPS was up over 12%, and our dividend also up slightly. Some highlights I will pick up. Some other highlights I can pick up here. Operating profit, as I say, up 16% to 12.6 million. And historically, we've always been a business which has made a higher operating margin in the second half of the year. We are therefore on track. to perform for the full year in line with market expectations. Our residential EV charging business is also growing strongly and we're extremely excited about the launch of our first EV chargers for commercial applications, some images of which are on the right-hand side here, and also our home integrated management system, which integrates batteries with EV chargers and solar systems and heating controls, and I will speak more about this later. The acquisition of D-Line which occurred earlier this year has gone extremely well and the integration of the business is well on track. And with that, I shall hand over to Will to go through the financial review.

Thank you, John. And good morning, everybody. Let me start by pulling out some of the key themes within our numbers. Overall revenue at 109.6 million pounds grew 8.4% or on a light for light basis, an increase of 3.6%. A good achievement against the backdrop of the challenging market, especially the pleasing growth of 10% we achieved in the residential RMI sector, given that market is expected to record another year of decline in 2024, though a more modest decline than we saw in 2023. As expected, D-Line contributed just under £6 million to the revenue in the four months that it has now been in the Group. Our infrastructure businesses of Kingfisher Lighting and DW Windsor are having a more difficult time in 2024. These are both projects operations and so can be vulnerable to the flow of construction projects which slowed coming into 2024. Our success in the residential space is more than making up for this much smaller element of the group. Our gross margin for the half was 41%. Our raw material bill, with the exception of copper, reduced and factory efficiency improved. Production volumes were better at our manufacturing facility and, as a consequence, overhead recovery levels improved. In addition, the new leadership there has taken some cost reduction activities that are further helping with the facility's competitiveness. This has compensated so far for the increases in shipping costs caused by vessels travelling around the south of Africa rather than through the Red Sea. I expect gross margins to ease a little from this high level as we head through the second half We have some freight headwinds and although our sales pattern is usually second half weighted, product mix is a little less favorable. Operating costs grew again in 2024, though by a slower rate than the prior year. Pleasing to again report an improvement in operating margin now up to 11.5%, which is a creditable performance at a low point in the cycle. We make over 80% of our profits in the UK, so the increase in the UK corporation tax rate to 25% has affected us. I've mentioned previously that as a consequence we expected our effective tax rate to rise. It now sits at approximately 21.5%. Even with this, we're pleased to report a 14% improvement in first half earnings per share. Our board has consequently increased the interim dividend to 1.7p, an increase of 6.3%. This slide provides a bit more detail on drivers of our revenue performance. The most significant organic improvements to our revenue for this half compared to the first half of 2023 occurred in our retail space. The team has delivered some positive product range extensions, which are helping to mitigate the impact of the overall sluggish demand in the DIY space. And our portable power offering is enjoying some better volumes this half year. Internal LED has continued to make progress, though not quite enough to offset the reduction in our external LED businesses I mentioned earlier. EV charger sales are accelerating, especially more recently where growth over this summer has been strong. I've said before that it's difficult for us to be precise about our exposure to new house building because we don't have perfect sight of our distributors and customers. We do, though, estimate that our overall exposure to new house building is under £15 million of sales in a full year. We look forward to when this sector returns to growth. Acquisitions and closures shows the near six million revenue generated by our new D-Line business in the four months since it was acquired. The acquisition is integrating well and we are encouraged by the opportunities to utilise our JX facility and its local supply partners as part of this programme. The adverse currency noted here is a consequence of the FOB sales we make in US dollars. This slide shows the key drivers to our adjusted operating profit performance. Pleasing progress in organic adjusted operating profit this half. We're seeing efficiencies coming through the factory in Jiaxing, and there has been good progress on costs for some sourced products, as well as assistance from some currency tailwinds. Copper and sea freight costs have been challenging this half. Copper began to rise quite rapidly at the end of the first quarter, peaking in the second half of May before settling around 10% up since the start of the year. We have some forward cover in place, which offers a level of short-term protection from volatility in copper market. The sea freight capacity issues have been well reported. Our experience has been nothing like what we saw during and shortly after the pandemic, but we are keeping a close eye on the situation. D-Line's life within the Luceco Group has seen a good start and we look forward to the further improving contribution it will make as we jointly deliver on the synergies. Looking more deeply into our P&L comparison back to 2023 shows the continuing progress in gross margin. It's pleasing to see our gross margins now into the 40s%. delivered through raw material cost reduction efficiencies at the Jiaxing manufacturing facility, now able to operate at sensible volume levels and so make good use of the automation equipment that has been installed there over recent times. This improvement was in part countered by the increasing cost of living, especially in the UK. We mentioned last year that coming into 2023, The median pay rise for the UK was 7.5%, with the lower earners gaining over 10%. We increased salaries by less than this coming into 2024, and UK inflation has since eased materially. We have decided to make select investments in certain overhead areas which we believe will improve the business going forward. These include marketing and a more focused EV charger team to pursue opportunities there. These have and will add cost in 2024 but should provide revenue benefit in the future. Luceco has historically enjoyed higher sales in H2 than in H1. We expect this year to follow the normal pattern, but this year because of freight and copper headwinds, it may not deliver a stronger bottom line margin though. Looking into our segment shows the progress in our wiring accessories segment, which now includes D-line and in portable power. Much of our wiring accessories products are made in our in-house facility in China, and so better utilisation there can be very helpful. Portable Power enjoyed a strong improvement compared with the first half of 2023. As you know, this segment includes our EV charger range. We have an enviable product offering in this space now and are enjoying some good growth. I mentioned earlier that we've also invested in the team to support this. LED splits into two camps. Our Luceco branded internal LED sales are continuing to enjoy good momentum. As I mentioned earlier, our external realm LED operations, which are more susceptible to project timing, have had a more difficult first half of 2024. We have taken some self-help cost reduction actions here, and we remain optimistic that project order pipelines will improve. Finishing up on the numbers, this slide summarises our working capital cash flow and debt performance. Lusico's working capital profile reflects the seasonal nature of some of the business. The bank net debt and the adjusted free cash flow charts here show the extent of this where working capital sits around £10 million higher in the middle of the year than it is at the year end. This year the position also reflects the greater level of inventory in transit as sea journeys avoid the Red Sea. At the end of June we had in the region of £6 million additional stock in transit. At this stage our accounts payable picks up some of this excess, though our payment terms mean I expect us to be carrying more working capital at the end of the year if the Red Sea situation continues. Luceco is a manufacturing and distribution business, and so product availability is highly important for our continuing success. With the exception of 2021, which was affected by the pandemic, Luceco has typically experienced working capital cash outflows during the first half of each year and an inflow in H2. 2024 began as a typical year in this respect, however, the sea freight position means I expect our usual second half working capital cash inflow to start later this year, as I expect to see the higher inventory levels continuing into Q4. The bank debt position here at June of just under 40 million pounds sits comfortably within our 80 million borrowing facilities. With that, I'll hand you back to John to talk through our business review and outlook. Thank you, Will.

Yeah, so as I said earlier, a difficult market in terms of underlying demand. As you can see in the graph at the top left, the Barclay car consumer spend on DIY products has been very weak. It has improved a little bit over the summer, but you can see well down from where it was from the beginning of last year. We would, however, point to the improving trend of UK residential property transactions the graph on the right hand side, you can see that really from the beginning of this year, the trend has started to improve. And we would think of that as a leading indicator for the RMI market in which we are heavily exposed. But overall, as you can see from the graph in the bottom left, the table rather, we think our market's declined by approximately 3%. Our organic growth, therefore, of 3.6%, points to excellent execution in very difficult markets. harnessing power sustainably in everyday life. That is what at Luceco we are doing. And innovation, as you know, has always been at the heart of how we have successfully grown this business over many years. There is no doubt that in the pandemic, our NPD activity was impacted because our engineers were not able to freely travel. And since the easing of those restrictions, we can definitely see an improvement in the overall activity of NPD in our business. I'm more excited now by the current level of activity, especially in the energy transition space than I have been for many years. As mentioned, we are imminently launching our first commercially focused EV chargers. So far, we've only been concentrating on the residential segment. Expansion of the EV charger range for international markets and also the home energy management system, which I will talk a bit more about in a minute. as well as ongoing activities to improve our core offering. So we are a big believer in local energy generation and management in the residential environment. So we are launching a home energy management system that will integrate with our EV chargers also with our batteries, which some images of them here, and hot water controllers in the residential space. The graph on the left-hand side, you can see the forecast and the enormous growth in this market, both in terms of EV installs, but also from the solar PV space. So currently the payback on residential solar is about five to ten years, depending on various different aspects. However, if you add batteries, you can basically halve that. And even where you don't have a solar PV array, having a battery enables you to buy power overnight when it is cheap and use it throughout the day when it is much more expensive. So the payback on a battery on its own, even without solar PV, is about five years now. So we forecast this to be an enormous market in the future. batteries is just one example of where we believe we can benefit from the ongoing upgrade to the residential electrical systems which is required with the transition away from hydrocarbons in the transport and heating arenas. For example, a heat pump installation will require significant electrical works, such as a new consumer unit, et cetera, as does an EV charger or an EV install. And we will be able to offer all of the products that you use, other than the solar panels themselves. On top of that, there is an ongoing requirement to invest in the UK housing stock with approximately 4 million homes below the decent home standard. And the energy transition, as we know, is going to require a huge capital expenditure, some of which will be happening in the homes itself. All of this leads us to believe that our through the cycle growth of our markets should be significantly ahead of the overall rate of GDP growth. And at the bottom here, you can see some of the markets in which our products are currently sold. some other information on other ongoing investment activities in the business. In January we invested 2.5 million in the purchase of a new warehouse facility for our Kingfisher lighting business to enable it to achieve its next leg of significant growth. The acquisition of D-Line has proved highly successful and the synergies are ahead of what we were originally targeting. These activities together with ongoing investment in our people will continue to sustain our competitive advantage. And this is an illustration of how our products fit together on the pathway to net zero. Our capital allocation policy is unchanged. And with our relatively unlevered balance sheet, we are actively pursuing further M&A activity on top of the D-line acquisition that we closed earlier this year. And finally, to the outlook slide, as I said at the beginning, the business continues to perform in line with expectations. We believe that we've executed well in an extremely difficult market, and we believe that as the market improves, so will our performance. And we think we are at the bottom of the cycle, or if not at the bottom, we are very close to the bottom. Our share of the residential EV charger business has grown since the acquisition of Sync EV just over two years ago. The revenue of that business has doubled in that period, and we are well placed to take advantage of this highly growing segment. And as I say, we are extremely excited about the imminent launch of our integrated residential batteries, as well as EV chargers for commercial applications. And we're also excited about how further M&A could enhance the group's earnings. And with that, I will take any questions. Yes.

Thank you, guys. Two questions if I could do.

Thank you. So Kevin Fogarty from Deutsche Numis. Two questions, if I could. One, I guess, on the areas about performance in the period. So thinking about kind of RMI and on the EV charges and the performance there, obviously much stronger than the backdrop would suggest. I just wondered if you could kind of pick through why you've been successful in those areas, how much is down to sort of product categories, channels, and anything else we should be thinking about there, just in terms of that performance relative to the backdrop. And the second one in terms of D-line, you touched on it a little bit in the presentation about, you know, outperforming your expectations or at least kind of synergy potential. I just wondered, you know, you're kind of six months or so into post ownership of the business and the update on, you know, your impression of that now post acquisition, any color you can, you can put on that'd be great.

So RMI outperformance. New products, new ranges into some of our key customers have performed very well. I think some of our key customers have outperformed the market. We have a particularly strong position in certain segments of the market who have traditionally performed very well, and they are continuing to outperform the market. And our high market share within that segment means I think we can grow our market share overall. There's a lot talked about the weakness of the EV market in terms of the number of cars being sold. I think while that is true against the forecast, the number of cars being sold is still, at least in the UK, increasing. But also, that doesn't necessarily take into account things like new house buildings. So the regulations have recently changed such that all new homes need to have EV chargers built into them at the point of construction. And the same might happen with solar. And the same might happen with batteries. uh... so even if the car market is a bit quieter There has been a big uptake in the infrastructure investment because of the new housing thing. We've invested in the category. We've launched some good new products in the residential space. We're highly competitive. We make them at our own factory in China. And I think we've done a good job. unrivaled distribution in the electrical market, particularly into the residential space. We are market leaders in UK residential electrical products. So we always thought that we would be able to sell lots of EV chargers into that space using our customer relationships, our contractor relationships, our house building relationships. And that is what's happening. In terms of D-line, yeah, I mean, the business has performed very well. It's a run rate business, which has continued to grow. By accessing the group's sourcing activities, particularly on certain of their sort of niche products, we've been able to improve their margins. And I think we can do a lot more work in that. And by integrating that business more into the group structure, I think the synergies will be very strong. It will take a bit of time to realize them all. But I think we'll end up having bought the business on a three or less times multiple.

So the sort of confidence you had at the time of acquisition of getting the margin up to the group level is still there, presumably?

On D-line, the contribution margin will be well above group level. it will be a tailwind to improve the group margin once all the synergies have come through. But that's probably more a 2026. Sure. And cross-selling, is that yet to sort of happen? It's still too early days. Yep. So we're using that. We spoke at the time that they had a US operation. which we didn't have, although we have US customers. So we are now utilizing their US operation for our US business, which is helpful. And we are able to sell their products into our customers and vice versa. One of the reasons the synergies are so strong, though, is because we have quite a similar set of customers. The sales synergy I don't think will be huge, but there will be some. But the cost synergy will be very significant. Great. In time.

Yep. Thank you. So, yes, I think we remain confident, as we've said, of achieving the group margin in the first full year of ownership with potential for improvement beyond that.

Perfect. Thank you. Excellent.

Morning, Adrian Giersey, Pamela Libram. Do you mind if I ask just a few questions in terms of the home energy management and the EV charger product range in terms of initially how broad the product range is and where could that go in the future? And then also to ask a bit more detail, to get a bit more detail in terms of your route to market and do you anticipate there to be much sort of a greater proportion of sales going into resi new build? relative to the existing group?

EV product range. Yeah, so we've got a product that goes into the residential space for EV chargers. I think we're on our third version now in two years. We've got an innovation that we're launching next year, which I think maybe could make quite a big difference. These are smart products. These are designed to be easy for install, made in our own factory, highly competitive. But so far, we've only been operating in the residential segment. We are going to launch later on this month the commercial chargers, which are I mean, they are still AC chargers. So you have high-powered DC chargers, which is the type of charger you have on the side of the motorway up to 150, 250, I think even now 350 kilowatts. These are AC chargers. So these are a maximum of 22 kilowatts. But they have Apple Pay terminals on them, for example. And you would put these typically in places like hotels, pubs, restaurants, car parks, supermarket, car park spaces, anywhere where you will leave a car for a significant period of time. Because these are relatively low-powered, slow chargers. But they are a... fraction of the cost of a DC charger. So if you've got a hotel, you will generally put these things in. We are not a charge point operator. So we will be selling to the CPOs who will be operating networks. As I say, they are used with Apple Pay terminals, etc. And this is not a market we've been in at all before, so this is a completely new activity for us. In terms of route to market, as Will mentioned, we've invested in a dedicated sales team for this product. Up until now, we've been using our existing sales relationships. So electrical contractors, electrical wholesalers, specifiers where we currently, as I say, we are market leaders into UK residential electrical. Our market share, though, of residential EV is only 5%. It was about 3% when we bought the business, when we bought the Sync EV business in 2022. This year, it'll be approximately 5%. So it is growing. And we forecast the market will triple over the next five years. So if you extrapolate that forward, it should be a decent business for us. And then home energy management system, again, it's the same electrical contractor. And the point about the system is it's an integrated system. So you have your EV charger, you have your solar PV array, and you have your battery. And they all have to work together. And you can choose how the energy flows between the car, the panel, the battery, under what circumstances you charge the car, under what circumstances you charge the battery, under what circumstances you use the power from the battery. And actually managing the flow of that energy is how you get the payback. If you sell energy to the grid, you don't get much for it. Therefore, you want to store it and use it yourself. Cost of batteries is obviously coming down. It has come down a lot. It continues to come down. And there will be a point at which most houses, I believe, will have batteries. And I think the new homes regulation could easily mandate solar. And if they mandate solar, it's likely that even if they don't mandate batteries, a lot of those homes will end up with batteries. And having the whole system, the EV, the battery, and the other parts is the way consumers will go because you don't want different elements. So it's a software activity as much as it is a hardware activity. So we've spent a lot of money developing the software that controls these energy flows and the app and all of that. And we've been working on it for about the last year and a half. And we are due to launch it in January. Any other questions?

Thank you. Morning. Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I've got a few as well. On the organic growth, can you give a bit more color on the volume versus price versus mix? Obviously, a growing EV charges a higher ticket item than a socket. So any color on that for your 3.6% organic growth would be helpful. And then on gross margin, I think you talked about the second half being weaker than the first half. Should we think about 40 kind of being the through cycle sort of ceiling for the business? And so it will fluctuate from period to period, but that's kind of where the gross margin will cap out. And then the last question is on the sort of infrastructure exposed businesses, you talked about kind of weaker demand there. Do you have any colour on how much of that is kind of deferred spending in the run up to the election?

Yeah, thanks, Sam. Yeah, I mean, we, as I said earlier, new products into strong customers has resulted in us outperforming. EVs continue to grow. I mean, there was a bit of destocking in the first half of 2023 that we spoke about at the time, which we didn't have this year. In terms of price volume, nearly all volume, actually. If anything, price came down a bit because there are some pricing mechanisms with some larger customers. The RMB has been weak. The RMB has driven higher margins. Weak RMB has driven higher margins. But some of that we give away contractually to our larger customers. We have contracts. So I think Really not much price. We're going to have to go for some price now. We haven't done a price increase yet on the back of higher freight costs. We obviously have inventory and it takes a while for the higher cost to work through that inventory. But we are at the point now where As Will spoke to, second half margins are going to be a bit weaker. So we will need some price increases to maintain current margins in the face of higher shipping costs. Shipping costs have actually come down a bit. They spiked at about 8, 9, even 10 at the sort of June peak. They're now down to about 7. This is $7,000 per container from Shanghai to UK. And maybe they might continue to fall. But notwithstanding that, yeah, there is a headwind on margin. Whether 40% is a ceiling, I mean, over time, we've improved the mix of our business. Higher quality products, higher quality categories, higher quality customers has, over time, improved the mix and the margin. But yeah, I mean, 40% is a decent margin for us. In terms of operating margins, we would say that 11.5, which we achieved in the first half, is weak relative, because we are at a weak point in the cycle. We would say that our revenue is probably 10% lower than it would be at a neutral point in the cycle. And if you add 10% at a decent margin with a similar overhead, that would drive the operating margin quite a lot higher. So I think gross margins around 40%, but certainly as volumes improve, as the market improves, as the cycle moves on, certainly operating margins should improve. Hopefully that'll be next year, but. We've been hoping for a little while now. infrastructure, you asked about whether council postponed, I think postponed. And I think Yeah, I think the election did have quite a big part in that. I think councils and businesses like DW Windsor are nearly that, like sort of 70% local authority. They will, you know, they have been holding on to numbers and they're all a bit nervous. We're hopeful that you know, next year will be you know, will be better. Kingfisher and DW Windsor have both had a disappointing year, but their order books are certainly stronger since the election.

And I think it's probably fair to say in terms of freight costs and other raw material costs that have come through, I mean, Luceco has demonstrated that it's been able to recover those in the market when it's needed to in the past. So I guess we sit here reasonably confident that if things continue like that, then we will be able to maintain reasonable margins.

Good morning. Adam from Longspur. Actually, one for Will, really. Inventory day's up, but debtor day's very slightly down, actually. Is there anything odd going on there, or are you actually where you think you should be now?

I guess the Red Sea situation has had an impact and a good spot. So there was a little bit of freight disruption at the end of June. John has mentioned that was when the cost of sea freight peaked. And as a consequence, we've ended it with perhaps a bit more inventory than we might expect there and slightly less sales just at the end of June that will have then fallen into the second half. As John mentioned, the sea freight costs have come off somewhat, but they're still actually elevated than where they were as we came into the year. I guess your guess is as good to mine as to when the situation may end. So yeah, I mentioned about six million extra inventory that we're carrying at the half year as a result of sea freight. Of course, the other thing in inventory, we bought about 5.6 million of inventory when we bought D-Line, which, of course, wasn't in last year.

In terms of data days, I think that's probably just customer mix, to be honest.

Is there any D-line impact on data or are we normalized?

Yeah, interesting. That probably brings them down a tiny bit on average because of their customer mix. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Any further questions? No. Okay, well, Will, do you want to make some closing comments?

Certainly, John. Thank you very much for your time this morning. I guess in spite of the fact that the market remains a little bit depressed, I guess we're quite pleased with our first half performance organic growth. in spite of the fact that our main residential RMI market is continuing to decline somewhat. And I guess we all look forward to when the UK consumer is feeling more enthusiastic and will return to perhaps spending on slightly bigger ticket items. So I think, as we've said in the presentation, we have made some investments in the business this half. So we look forward with quite some optimism. Thank you. And thank you for your questions.