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spk05: Thank you, and welcome to BetterWear's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings conference call. With me on the call today are BetterWear's Executive Chairman, Luis Campos, Chief Executive Officer, Andres Campos, and Chief Financial Officer, Diana Jones. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties, that can cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Any such statement should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements and the safe harbor statement in the earnings release and risk factors discussed in reports filed with the SEC. FedAware assumes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. A reconciliation and other information regarding non-GAAP financial measures discussed on the call can be found in the earnings release issued earlier today, as well as the investors section of our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the company's Executive Chairman, Mr. Luis Campos. Luis Campos Thank you, Operator.
spk09: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I will begin my remarks by providing a summary of our performance for the fourth quarter and 2020. In address, we discuss the progress we have made against our strategic pillars to increase efficiency and elevate our operating platforms. in support for the continued growth we see for the company. Diana will then review our financial results and our fiscal 2021 outlook. Before turning to our results, I want to start by thanking the entire Better Work team for their hard work and contributions all year. I am so proud of all that they accomplished in 2020 amidst the challenges presented by the global pandemic. Their hard work and determination in a difficult operating environment allowed us to maintain continuity of our operations and meet our customers' changing needs. The COVID pandemic demonstrated even more clearly the strength of our people, business model, and operating platform. Indeed, we delivered record results and made significant progress on our strategic growth pillars. And while the pandemic caused families to change the budget preferences which benefited us, Our strength in the fourth quarter was achieved with families resuming more normal lifestyles in the markets we serve. And we remain confident in our ability to continue double digit rates of growth in 2021. Turning to a review of the full year. For the full year, we achieved record sales and EBITDA growth, exceeding the increased guidance that we provided last November. The year marked significant milestones for better work, including growing revenues over 135% to 7.3 billion pesos, and EBITDA over 154% to 2.16 billion pesos, achieving record annual EBITDA margin of 29.8%. This growth was driven by 180% increase in distributors and 195% increase in associates during 2020. as we leverage our technology that allows our distributors and associates to conduct business remotely. As of year end, we have more than 59.7 thousand distributors and 1.23 million associates, another record achievement. We are confident in our ability in continuing to grow our distributor and associate network and expect our larger and stronger team will drive our business forward in the near and long term. Equally exciting for our company is that we entered the public markets trading on the NASDAQ exchange in March 2020. and we launched our new web marketing platform in December 2020. In addition, we made significant strides to strengthen our financial health and positioning during the year. We reduced our leverage ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA to minus 0.01, from 0.5 at the end of 2019 and increased our liquidity to 650 million pesos at year end. Turning to our four-quarter results, we had an outstanding finish to a strong year of growth for our company. record sales growth of 229% and an EBITDA increase of 254% year-over-year. While our results continue to benefit in part from COVID as consumers spend more time at home, the continued momentum from the first three quarters into the final quarter of the year especially into December, is a testament to the strength of our business and the significant progress we have made against our four strategic pillars. Finally, returning value to shareholders is a top capital allocation priority for us. And we, again, have proposed an annual dividend of one point to be paid in four installments. This implies a dividend of 9.57 pesos per share for this quarter. This dividend was approved in the ordinary general shareholders meeting held on February 18, 2021. So in summary, we are very pleased with a strong end to the year and the underlying momentum of the business. Despite the challenges the pandemic presented, our distributors and associates successfully conducted business from home and capitalized on the increased demand of our products. At the same time, we remain focused on our strategic pillars, invested in key areas of the business to improve our efficiency and made a stride to strengthen our financial position. As we begin 2021, we believe we are poised for continued growth, including double-digit sales and profit growth, which Diana will discuss in more detail. I will now turn the call to Andrés, our Chief Executive Officer, who will highlight our progress on our four growth initiatives and plans for 2021.
spk08: Thank you, Luis, and good morning to everyone. Before I review our strategic initiatives, I would like to also personally thank our team for their grit and determination this year as we navigated a challenging environment. Their continued dedication to our customers and our brand drove results for the year that exceeded our expectations from a sales and profitability perspective. In addition to the record growth for both the fourth quarter and full fiscal year. I will now discuss the progress made in 2020 on the four strategic pillars, as well as our plans to advance these priorities in 2021. As a reminder, these pillars are centered on market penetration, category expansion, business intelligence and technology investments, and geographic expansion. These initiatives, along with our web marketing and the new campus, which I will discuss momentarily, are expected to support our future growth and increase efficiency. Starting with market penetration. In 2020, we significantly increased our household penetration to 20%, driven by our deliberate actions to drive growth with high-impact innovation combined with the increased demand for household and cleaning products as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth is a testament to our strong competitive positioning as the category leader in Mexico and the deep expertise that drives customer loyalty. As we look ahead, we believe we can continue to increase our market share and doubled our household penetration from 20% to 40% in the next five years as we focus on innovative products that continue to resonate with our customer base. Our second strategic pillar is category expansion. In the fourth quarter, we launched three catalogs and introduced 98 new products. customers continue to be receptive to our new products, and we are excited about our product launches for 2021. Before the end of the second quarter of 2021, we will introduce our new category of home renovation solutions that will let our customers improve their homes at low costs, including products such as curtains and tapestries. This new category will allow us to increase our share of wallets of our customers, which we currently estimate to be at 20%. In the coming quarters, we will announce more new categories that we plan to enter to achieve our growth goals. Next, business intelligence and technology investments. Within business intelligence, we started using Power BI, one of the most advanced platforms of data visualization available in the market. This tool allows us to optimize day-to-day monitoring of the business and transform millions of data points into business strategies. We also made great strides using NIME, our artificial intelligence and data science platform. Additionally, we started working together with Bain & Company to improve our forecasting methodologies. This project will help us optimize our service and inventory levels, allowing us to allocate capital in a more efficient way. Within technology, we launched our new web marketing platform in December 2020. Although it's still early, new customer sales have been increasing weekly since the launch. We also consolidated our new WMS platform, Blue Younger, and launched our new AI-enabled bot. This year, we plan to launch our 3.0 version of our proprietary Salesforce app, BetterNet, and develop strong natural language processing capabilities with our bots. We also plan to launch a 2.0 version of Pipeline, our proprietary product innovation platform. Finally, we will consolidate all technologies within our new campus, which should yield productivity gains in our day-to-day operations. Our last pillar is geographic expansion. In 2020, we ran a successful pilot test in Guatemala, where we saw consistent sales, editor, distributor, and associate growth. While Guatemala is a relatively small market, with its total market representing only 5% of Mexico's market size, our pilot test proved that we can successfully replicate our business model in other geographies. we see continued opportunity to expand into other countries, mainly Colombia and Peru. In the coming years, both organic and inorganic growth as we assess M&A opportunities in these countries. Going deeper into our web marketing, we launched our new and improved transactional website, betterwork.com, in the fourth quarter. We are very pleased with the early results of our new site, which acts as a tool for distributors and associates to grow their sales and earnings by continuing to reach additional customers. They are able to do this by, number one, connecting new customers based on location to a distributor if they don't already have an existing relationship with one, and two, The new platform allows the distributors and associates to share a personal link that will ultimately assign them any purchase completed through the link. It is relevant to highlight that penetration of e-commerce in Mexico remains low, representing less than 6% of total retail transactions, but is rapidly increasing. With this new platform, we are ready to offer customers the most convenient way for them to buy our products, while giving our distributors and associates the opportunity to increase their earnings. Touching briefly on our new campus. The new campus opened in the fourth quarter in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Currently, almost all of our operations staff which is approximately 70% of our collaborators, is working from there, and the rest of our people will move by the beginning of March 2021. This will give us operational efficiency, including consolidation of all warehousing and distribution processes, optimization of space usage and inventory management efficiency backed by new technology, and allow increased collaboration and therefore quicker decision making across our organization. After the triple digit growth in volume during 2020, the new campus will reach full capacity sooner than expected. We decided to keep a 24,000 square meter rented warehouse to complement our capacity. And we are currently analyzing together with Bain & Company, the most efficient way to expand our capacity to support our growth. This could mean an expansion of our campus or a new distribution center located near Mexico City. We will keep you posted on any new developments in this regard. Lastly, on January 15, we launched our biggest marketing campaign to date. This campaign includes paid and open TV video advertisements, radio commercials, out-of-home media and social content, which all highlight BetterWars' vast array of easy-to-use and accessible products for organization and practicality. We are excited to share our values and product solutions for the home with more families and individuals across Mexico through these advertisements. Overall, we expect the new marketing campaign to expand our customer base as we showcase how customers can benefit from our line of products. So, overall, I am very pleased with the significant progress made in 2020 against our key strategies. As we begin 2021, we enter the new year from a position of strength and remain confident in our ability to drive strong double-digit sales and profit growth. Our priorities remain the same. We are focused on executing against our four growth pillars while also continuing to invest in key areas of the business and returning value to shareholders to our quarterly dividend program. Similar to 2020, we will continue to take a strategic approach to expand our household penetration and our share of wallets as we focus on further strengthening our marketing position in 2021 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to Diana to review our fourth quarter and 2020 financial results.
spk02: Thank you, Andrés. Good morning, everyone. I would like to take this time to review our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 results. I will then share perspectives regarding our outlook for fiscal 2021. Please keep in mind that the currency I will refer to reviewing our results and guidance is a Mexican paper, which is our functional and reporting committee. I will provide highlights of our results, which are detailed fully in our six case . The fiscal 2020 included a 52-week and compares to a 52-week year in fiscal 2019. The 50-tier week was included in the company's 2020 fourth quarter and added $160 million in net revenue and $63 million in EBITDA. For the fourth quarter, total net revenues increased 229% to $2,601 million from $791 million in the first year. It is important to highlight that 4Q20 had 14 weeks compared to 16 weeks of 4Q19. The additional week represented $160 million of net revenues. Comparable net revenues for 4Q20 were $2,441 million, an increase of 209% compared to 4Q19. EBITDA for the fourth quarter 2020 increased 254% year-over-year to $870 million. Compared to $228 million in the third year, an EBITDA margin expanded 220 basis points to 31% due to the increase in operational leverage. The additional week in 4Q20 represented incremental EBITDA of 63 million. Compatible EBITDA for the quarter was 744 million, an increase of 227% compared to 4Q19. We reported 18.64 in adjusted non-IFRS earnings per share. For the full year, total net revenues increased 135% to $7,260 million from $2,085 million in 2019. Comparable net revenues for 2020 were $7,100 million, an increase of 130% compared to 2019. EBITDA for 2020 increased 154% year-over-year to $2,164 million compared to $851 million in the prior year, and EBITDA margin expanded 220 basis points to 29.8% due to the increase in operational leverage. Compatible EBITDA for the year was $2,101 million, an increase of 147% compared to 2019. And finally, we reported 43.36 in adjusted non-IFRS earnings per share. Now, turning to the balance sheet as of December 31, 2020, we have $650 million in cash and cash equivalents, a 204 increase versus the prior year period. Inventory increased 269% year-over-year with increasing support of our sales expectations. At year-end, our leverage ratio of net debt to EBITDA was minus 0.01 down from 0.5 at the end of 2019. In the fourth quarter, we had $235 million of capital expenditures And for the year end, we had capital expenditures of $736 million, compared to $182 million invested in 2019. For the year, $613 million were invested in our new campus. We expect CapEx in 2021 to be $460 million, which includes additional equipment for our new campus, technology, and other investments. In terms of our outlook for 2021, as discussed in our first release, we expect revenue for 2021 to be in the range of 10,100 million to 11,100 million, and expect EBITDA to be in the range of 3,000 million to 3,300 million, compared to the $2,164 million in 2020, an evident margin to be approximately 29.7% versus 29.8% in 2020. Over the long term, we expect our stated growth strategy, supported by a strong infrastructure and a standing team, We enable our company to deliver consistent growth in sales and medicine in future periods. I will now turn the call over to the operator, and we will take any questions you may have.
spk05: Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Eric Vedder with SEC, I apologize, SCC Research. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Good morning. Good morning, Eric. Good morning. For the new website, what customers are you seeing, are the customers different either demographically or geography-wise, from your core areas? And where do you see that going as kind of a percent? And that's one question. The second is there was a slight, I guess, decline in the cost of item per unit in terms of how much was spent. Is that a shift to more basic products, or what is kind of the focus there?
spk08: Hi, Eric. This is Andres. So in terms of the web marketing site, we think it's too early to give, to tell specifically about this. But it's very important to note that after six weeks of operating the platform, the sixth week we have five times the number of customers that we had in the first week. So, it's growing rapidly, but obviously, it's still, you know, a very, it's a small transaction, and we still have to see it develop in the coming weeks and months.
spk04: Okay. Guatemala. Where, when is that going to, I know it's small, where does that start to come onto the financial statements? And what should we be looking for as guideposts going forward? Again, I know it's small, but I'm just curious where, what should we be as investors thinking about it, seeing more signs that it's working and can work in other areas?
spk09: Yeah. Yeah, I remember that during the pilot test, Eric, they, we're operating as distributors in Guatemala. Beginning in March 1st, we are going to begin operating as BetterWear Guatemala. And then we will include, even when these are very small figures, we are going to include it in separately in our reports And we will begin reporting and giving guidance also about Guatemala, even when this is very small. What I can tell you now is that they continue doing very well and growing very well down there in Guatemala. And we expect to replicate, totally replicate the business in the first half of this year. I mean, we have not still replicated 100% of our business model, but by the end of the first half, I think we are going to accomplish that.
spk04: Great. Thank you. Congrats on the quarter. Good luck to the year.
spk05: Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jorge Lagunas with Appalachia. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Okay, thank you. Good morning, Luis, Andres, and Diana. Congratulations for the results. I've got two questions. The first one is, does the expected growth in revenue only contemplate the operations in Mexico, or are you already considering starting some operations in Guatemala? And the second question is, If you could share with us your expectations of growth in distributors and associates for this year. Thank you very much.
spk08: Jorge Díaz- Hi, Jorge Díaz-Andrés. First of all, our projections only include Mexico for 2021. And second, the expected rate of growth for distributors and associates You have to keep in mind that growth rate in sales is very closely related to the growth in distributors and associates. So we expect that correlation to continue in the future.
spk06: Okay. That's all for now. Thank you very much and congrats.
spk05: Your next question comes from the line of Joe Feldman with Telsey Advisory. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Great. Thanks, guys, and congratulations on the quarter. I wanted to ask one thing. With regard to the CapEx forecast of 460 million pesos this year, it's a bit higher than what we were thinking. Is that residual from the new corporate campus, or can you talk a little bit more what's what's going into that $460 million of CAPEX?
spk08: Yeah. Hi. So CAPEX is mainly divided in three parts, I would say, for 2021. The first part is the remainder of investments we have to do in the campus. That is about one quarter of the CAPEX. The second is technology investments, which is about one-third of the CAPEX. And the third main is we have estimated a CAPEX to open a new distribution center in Mexico City due to the recommendations that we went to with Bain & Company. So the opening of this distribution center is already accounted for in the CAPEX. We are still in final evaluations of doing so, but it is within the Catholics' expectations.
spk03: Okay, got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And then another question I wanted to ask was about freight costs. Did you guys see any incremental pressure? You know, we hear a lot about freight coming from China and other parts of Asia. having been very expensive in the past quarter or so, and we've seen freight prices increase significantly for product coming to the U.S. I'm assuming it's the same for you guys coming over, you know, across the Pacific. Has increased freight costs been a pressure point? And how should we think about it for 2021? So for freight,
spk08: It is a reality that there has been a temporary, according to experts, it's a temporary effect on trade costs due to spike in demand and shortage of containers. But that said, within our 2021 projections, it's already taken into account, and we don't expect any significant impact on the 2021 projections.
spk09: Got it.
spk03: Okay.
spk09: However, yes, this is risk. However, if these price increases would continue for freight from China, we would let you know what Alessandro said. We are including that impact in our guidance.
spk03: Okay. That's in the guidance already. Thank you. And then maybe the last one for me, can you share a little bit more about the new app, version 3.0, like what will be different and when you plan to launch it?
spk08: Yeah. So the main thing that will be different are two things. One is user experience in general is going to be a lot more friendly and especially for new users, all the incoming distributors and associates, so that they understand rapidly how to use it. And the second part is a lot of new futures for associates, which we believe will help to retain associates and diminish churn. So those are the main two things. I would say, and we expect to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021.
spk03: Great. Thank you, and good luck with the current quarter. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
spk05: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for more questions. Your next question comes from a line of Phil Kim, private investor. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Morning, guys, and a very impressive quarter in 2020. I have a few questions for you. So, One of them revolves around your days payables. How has BetterWear been able to maintain days payables over 120 days when 90% of your goods come from China? Almost all supply relationships in China are within two-month terms, with majority requiring upfront deposits and LCs. You know, how has your relationship developed in China that allows you to buy that much time?
spk08: So I think it's a matter of two things mainly. The first one is we have developed the relationship with Chinese vendors for over 20 years. So this is not a matter of Southern movements. It's something we have built for many years. And the second thing is that we have taken into account a credit line with banks where the banks are the ones who pay the money up front to the vendor, and then we have to pay the bank in 120 days. The interest of that debt is paid by the vendor, but this way the vendor can obtain their money immediately after they ship. The bank is... who is providing the loan for the 120 days.
spk01: Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. And then I guess, you know, industry in general, the consumer product companies around the world, you know, we're used to seeing, you know, 40% returns on invested capital, 12% operating margins. You know, how has BetterWear been able to achieve what looks like 200% returns on invested capital in the last quarter and 30% operating margins?
spk08: Well, you know, I think that we have two things in terms of returns. I think that on the one side, we have a very unique business model that is not only based on one single thing. It's based on multiple things. It's based on a very unique product line. very unique and proprietary technology that we have developed, very unique way of managing the opportunity for all the distributors and associates. So it's a combination of things to achieve this. And the second thing in terms of return, I think that we have a very clear strategy that when we really stick to the strategy and go deep into executing it correctly. In terms of margin, I think that something that helps a lot is that we have a very low fixed cost expenses. Our model is based on variable costs, we outsource many things such as distribution among other things. So, this helps a lot as well. So, I think the combination of these two things is what is driving return and what allows us to have a better margin than other consumer goods companies.
spk09: And Phil, this is Luis. Something I will add to that is we are very disciplined in the finance area of the business. We have very tight control on the manufacturing cost with the factories we work with in China. And we are very, very close. to the expense control system we have here. And we are very, very disciplined in that area. Most of our expenses are variable expenses. And only like one fourth of our expenses are fixed, okay?
spk01: Got it. Okay, that's helpful. I want to get to that as far as the China relationship, but You mentioned your associates and distributors. You know, that's very impressive growth. You're talking about 1.2 million associates. And on the topic of market penetration, you know, we're looking at 84 million roughly people in Mexico between the ages of 15 and 64. Call it the working age population if we're being generous here. You know, your numbers suggest one in 67 people, working-age people in Mexico, is an associate of BetterWear. And it's roughly six times your largest employer in Mexico, which is Walmart in Mexico. How have you been able to really achieve that type of market penetration, and why do you feel like you can double that to 40%, which would result in, call it, one in every 30 working adults or one in every 15 households? I mean, at some point, don't you think there'd be some sort of ceiling there?
spk09: Remember that our market penetration strategy is based on very solid data that comes from our PI area in the company. we have a very clear roadmap of market penetration. And we just stick to this strategy based on very solid data from our BI. Then we know the way we are going to penetrate the market this and next year and the next four or five years. And this is a very disciplined and very well-organized strategy based on this roadmap. Remember that we have segmentated the country in approximately 56,000 that we call, and then we know exactly the direction we are going to take in the years to come in order to increase in a very organized way deep market penetration and avoiding cannibalization among our world distributors.
spk01: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Gotcha. When you look at your, you know, relationships in China, Avram's World Trade data shows that BetterWear has imported 182 million in total value of shipments from 2013 to today. Your COGS numbers just in the last three, four years is 300 million, and that doesn't even include the inventory on your balance sheet, which is another 500. I guess, how do you explain this gap in about 500, $600 million difference there, and the total value that was imported from China and other countries, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, versus your COGS and inventory?
spk09: What is exactly the question? You mean the source from?
spk01: So when you look at bill of lading data, which, you know, every company that imports or exports into a country has to, you know, provide that data to the state. You know, it shows 182 million of total U.S. dollar value that's been imported into, for a better word, New Mexico. in the last eight years. But if you look at the last three years of your COGS and the inventory on your balance sheet, we're closing in on call it 900 million U.S. dollars. So there's a $700 million gap there of, you know, where is that excess inventory and COGS coming from versus what's been shipped to you from your suppliers.
spk08: You know, we don't know the source you're talking about, but, I mean, we will gladly check into it and look at that source. Just to mention, between 80 and 90 percent of our COGS is imported from China, so it should reflect this, but we would like gladly go into that source and check the differences. So our investor relations team will get back to you and give clear clarity on that, okay? What is the name of the source you spoke about?
spk01: Yeah, it's called Abrams World Trade Data, and they log all the bill of ladings, import-export information for countries and companies.
spk08: Okay. We'll probably look into it and get back to you.
spk01: Thank you very much. Appreciate your answers today. Thank you.
spk05: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your next question comes from the line of Andres Alvarez with Betterware. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Yeah, hello. Thank you, guys, and congratulations on the results. Sorry for the background noise. So my question is related to a previous question that was asked regarding the increase in freight costs from China. I was wondering what was the amount of extraordinary expenses coming from this this increase in freight expenses from China, and how did you account them in the P&L, and if you accounted for it above or below EBITDA? I'm just wondering if the EBITDA should be maybe adjusted on those expenses, or could you just give some color on that side? Thank you.
spk09: As we said before, we have... been posting the impact of these very variable freight costs from China over the last weeks. And our results for 2020 have been negatively impacted by that. However, we have included in our guidance numbers for 2021 the potential impact we expect in this year. What we know is that prices will begin going down again probably by beginning of the second quarter. However, we are being conservative regarding our guidance and the potential impact we can have this year. then we have been conservative, and if things go better, well, our results could improve a little bit.
spk07: Okay. And what about just specifically about air freight, extraordinary expenses? Can you just... We do not...
spk09: Yes, we do not expect major negative impact this year. I think this could be a more normal year in that aspect, more predictable year in this aspect. Then we do not expect high expense in air freight this year.
spk07: Okay, understood. Thanks a lot, and congratulations again.
spk08: Thank you.
spk05: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Luis Campos for closing remarks.
spk09: Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you when we report first quarter results. I'm meeting with many of you at upcoming investor conferences we will be attending. Thank you very much.
spk05: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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