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spk01: Hello everyone and a warm welcome to the first quarter 2022 ACCO Brands earning call. My name is Bethany and I will be your operator today. If you would like to ask a question during the question and answer session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the call over to Christine Hanneman to begin. Christine, over to you.
spk07: Good morning. This is Christine Hanneman, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Welcome to ACCO Brands first quarter 2022 conference call. Speaking on the call today are Boris Ellisman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Echo Brands, and Deb O'Connor, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides that accompany this call have been posted to the Investor Relations section of EchoBrands.com. When speaking about our results, we may refer to adjusted results. Adjusted results exclude transaction, integration, amortization, and restructuring costs, and other non-recurring items, including the change in fair value of the contingent consideration related to the Power A earn-out and reflect an adjusted tax rate. Schedules of adjusted results and other non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are in the earnings release and slides that accompany this call. Due to the inherent difficulty in forecasting and quantifying certain amounts, we do not reconcile our forward-looking non-GAAP measures. Forward-looking statements made during the call, including statements concerning the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company, are based on the beliefs and assumptions of management based on information available to us at the time the statements are made. Our forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and their actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for an explanation of certain of these risk factors and assumptions. Our forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update them going forward. Following our prepared remarks, we will hold a Q&A session. Now I will turn the call over to Boris Ellisman.
spk02: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before I begin my comments for the quarter, I would like to formally welcome Deb O'Connor, our new CFO. Deb joined Aquabrands on April 4th, and we're very pleased to have her on board. Deb will follow me with a financial review of the quarter, and then we will both take your questions. Moving now to our first quarter. Following a record sales year in 2021, we have started 2022 with an excellent first quarter, posting strong sales and higher EPS. This performance is a result of the strategic transformation of our company towards sustainable, comparable sales growth. I am particularly pleased with this quarter's performance as we continue to execute well in an environment of high inflation and supply chain constraints. The 11% comparable sales growth for our total business was higher than our expectations and included both price and volume growth. All segments posted meaningful comparable sales increases led by our international segment. Earnings per share were 11 cents. which was also above our expectations. Our international segment posted 23% comparable sales growth. The growth was driven by Brazil and Mexico, as schools have now reopened after being mostly closed for the past two years. Our back-to-school sales have shown recovery in Brazil, particularly for our Talibra-branded notebooks, and in Mexico, but do not yet reflect a pre-COVID level of demand. We anticipate seeing even stronger levels of back-to-school demands during the upcoming season in those markets. The international segment doubled its adjusted operating income due to strong sales and the release of prior year reserves. Overall, this segment had an excellent quarter. Moving to North America, this segment had a 10% increase in comparable sales. We saw strong increases in most product categories in particular for student note-taking driven by our leading brand, Five Star, as well as Kensington computer accessories and most business products. We had some back-to-school sales pull forward into the first quarter as our customers are seeking surety of having inventory on hand for this important season. Overall, we expect a strong back-to-school season in North America as more children are attending schools in person The channel inventory overhang is gone. We expect to see continued good growth in five-star school products, and we are well-positioned to manage supply chain to serve our customers. We have domestic production of key back-to-school products, which is a clear advantage for replenishment given supply chain issues related to products imported from Asia. In addition, in the US and Canada, we're seeing the benefit of price increases we have taken over the past year to help offset the inflationary cost increases that continue. However, we have not yet recovered the cumulative impact of all the cost increases, and we will raise prices as needed throughout 2022 to protect our margins. Our EMEA business, which has been growing strongly for several quarters, posted a 7% increase in comparable sales. I am very pleased with growth in EMEA, especially since some countries had business lockdowns for much of the first quarter due to a spike in COVID. EMEA operating margin declined as our pricing has not yet caught up with inflationary cost increases. We took a sizable price increase on April 1st and have announced another increase that will be effective on July 1st. So we expect to see recovery in margins as the year progresses. Creating innovative new products that address a net consumer needs is one of our key pillars in achieving comparable sales growth goals. In the first quarter, we won two German design awards for our Leitz Ergo Cozy range of storage and organizational products, and for our Leitz precision paper trimmers and cutters. We also won the prestigious Red Dot Award for our Light's Cozy range, our Light's IQ Autofit Shredder range, and three of our Kensington Computer Accessory products. And PowerA received 10 mark on platinum and gold awards for the Fusion Pro 2 Wired Controller and the Spectra Infinity Enhanced Wired Controller for Xbox Series X and S. 11% fellow company comparable sales growth is especially impressive as we delivered it despite a decline in PowerAid sales. PowerAid positioned for long-term growth, even in the face of a very difficult first quarter comparison because of posting over 100% sales growth last year. That PowerAid first quarter sales didn't match last year, the business continued to perform well and showed over 60% growth versus the first quarter of 2020, despite ongoing girth of gaming consoles in the market. The chip shortage continues to impact the availability of gaming consoles, which is hurting overall industry sales. We're hopeful that the shortages will begin to ease in the second half, but they are likely to still impact gaming console and accessories availability. As a result, we expect Poway to track toward 5% to 10% sales growth this year, with a softer first half and a stronger second half. In summary, we have started the year with good momentum. We're executing very well as we manage the ongoing supply chain issues and inflation. We expect to have strong back-to-school seasons in North America and Latin America and expect to post another year of record sales, strong profits, and free cash flow growth. I will now hand it over to Deb, and we'll come back to answer your questions. Deb?
spk08: Thank you, Boris, and good morning, everyone. Our first quarter 2022 reported net sales increased 8% to $442 million, largely due to the return to in-person education in Latin America and strength in North America. We saw broad-based growth as most of our product lines posted increases, led by note-taking products, computer accessories, and business products. Our comparable sales rose 11% as we benefited from 6% higher pricing and improved volume of 5%. Adverse foreign exchange of almost 4% was a worse headwind than we had expected. Adjusted operating income was $23 million compared with $25 million last year. Adjusted net income was $10 million and adjusted EPS was 11 cents versus 10 cents in 2021. The benefit of our sales price increases has not fully offset inflation because we are chasing continually rising costs. This was particularly true in EMEA. We have taken price increases in all of our markets and will continue to react to the marketplace with necessary adjustments throughout the year. First quarter adjusted SG&A expenses were $97 million, compared with $93 million in 2021, primarily as a result of increased marketing expenses to support growth and from inflation. SG&A expenses at percent of sales was 22%, below last year's 23%, due to higher sales. This quarter we booked a $3 million expense for the Power A earn-out. We also booked a $2 million charge to operating expenses related to our Russian business. We stopped shipping to Russia in late February and expect our $6 million in annual sales there to decline significantly. Now let's turn to some details of our segment results for the year. Comparable net sales in North America increased 10% to $209 million. The increase was due to higher pricing and higher volume, as increases in business and school products, as well as computer accessories, more than offset the decline in gaming accessories that Boris mentioned. Our sales reflect increased demand, even with higher pricing, and we are seeing share growth in several of our brands. Growth margin in North America increased as a result of improved sales prices and volume. North America also benefited from lower logistics costs compared with especially high costs last year. North America adjusted operating income and adjusted operating margin increased because of higher sales and growth margin. Now let's turn to EMEA. Net sales were essentially flat at $156 million due to unfavorable foreign exchange of 8%. Comparable sales rose 7%. to $169 million due to price increases and higher volumes from computer accessories and business products. EMEA posted lower operating income and margin as our previous price increases were not large enough to offset inflation. We've announced additional price increases effective in April and July, which should improve margins throughout 2022. Moving to the international segment, net sales increased 19%, and comparable sales rose 23%, primarily due to improved volume, especially in note-taking products for Brazil's back-to-school season, as schools are now open for in-person education. The segment has also raised prices to offset inflation and unfavorable foreign exchange. The international segment posted higher adjusted operating income and adjusted operating margin as a result of higher sales, lower bad debt reserves due to improved collections, and the benefit of long-term cost reductions. The improvements were driven by a rebound in Mexico and Brazil. Let's now move to our balance sheet and cash flow. In the first quarter, we had $104 million of cash outflow from operations and a use of free cash flow of $108 million. This was due to increasing our inventory earlier than we did in the prior period to mitigate supply chain issues and the timing of vendor payments. We also had higher incentive compensation payments this year. Due to seasonality, we generally use cash in the first half of the year. As expected, this resulted in our quarter end bank net leverage ratio increasing to 3.7 times. Nevertheless, because we generate a significant amount of cash flow in the second half, we expect that ratio to be less than three times by year end. We also paid dividends of $7 million. At quarter end, we have used $208 million of our $600 million revolving credit facility. We have a high level of inventory due to a combination of our normal seasonal buildup for back to school and to mitigate supply chain disruptions and inflation. Turning to our outlook, as we noted on our last earnings call, we expect demand to continue to improve in 2022 as more offices and schools are in physical use, at least in a hybrid mode. We are continuing to increase prices to catch up and offset cumulative inflationary cost increases. We remain committed to returning our longer-term growth margin to the 33% level, but this is an ongoing challenge due to higher costs and the magnitude of inflation. We now expect a growth margin improvement for 2022 of approximately 50 basis points versus 2021, which is at the lower end of our previous outlook. Given the strength of the first quarter and expectations for the remainder of the year, our guidance reflects an increase in our full year comparable sales outlook of 1.5% and comparable adjusted EPS of 2 cents. We now expect foreign exchange to be more of a headwind than we anticipated earlier this year with a 2.5% negative impact on sales and a 4% negative impact on adjusted EPS. Given these two factors, for the full year, our outlook for reported sales growth remains in a range of 1% to 6%. Full-year adjusted EPS is expected to be in a range of $1.48 to $1.58. The adjusted effective tax rate is expected to be approximately 29%. Intangible amortization for the full year is estimated to be $43 million, which equates to approximately $0.31 of adjusted EPS. We continue to expect our free cash flow to be approximately $165 million, cash from operations of approximately $190 million, less the capex of $25 million. We expect to return to a historically more balanced capital allocation that includes dividends, debt reductions, opportunistic repurchases of our shares, and potential acquisitions. We have $125 million remaining on our stock repurchase authorization. Now, let's move on to Q&A, where Boris and I will be happy to take your questions. Operator?
spk01: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, you can press star 2 And when preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from Joe Gomes at Noble Capital. Joe, please go ahead.
spk05: Good morning. Congratulations on the quarter.
spk02: Good morning, Joe. Thank you.
spk05: So I just wanted to, you know, impressed with the mention, the increase in the business product sales. Some of that obviously is coming from the office reopenings. How much more of that do you see is in play here in terms of the office reopenings? Where do you think the business product sales go from here for the rest of the year? Do you still think that will be a positive for the company?
spk02: Yes, Joe. The short answer is yes, we do. Offices are continuing to to reopen. If you remember, actually, earlier in the quarter, we had a high prevalence of Omicron pretty much across the world. So many businesses were still delaying their return to office, but things started to open up later in Q1 and are continuing. And we think this will be a positive tailwind for us pretty much across the world. So we saw good growth in business products in Q1, and it was broad. It wasn't one particular category, but pretty much across the board. And we expect this to remain a positive for the remainder of the year.
spk05: Okay, great. And maybe on PowerA, you could dive a little bit more into that. I know in the In the fourth quarter call, you'd mentioned that you expected sales in there to go back to the historic 10% to 13% range, and now here you're talking in 5% to 10%, which is on the low end a pretty big cut. Maybe just a little bit more detail and color of what you're seeing on the PowerA side and in terms of especially the console availability.
spk02: Yeah, the main difference in our view for PowerA has to do with chip availability. We now have more information that there will continue to be issues, especially with wireless chips, pretty much for the remainder of the year. So we expect that to impact the overall availability of accessories broader PC and gaming accessories, and that would include PowerA accessories. So as a result of that, we've taken down our forecast from, as you mentioned, 1013 to 5% to 10%. We expect a lower first half of PowerA, just due to difficult comps and continued console availability issues, and an improvement in the second half of this year over what was a pretty difficult second half of 2021. But overall, yes, we took the forecast down.
spk05: Okay. And if I could sneak in one more, you talked about Russia and you stopped shipping and you thought that it's going to be difficult to make up, I think you said 6 million of revenues in that market. But the other markets surrounding where the Ukraine and where all the We're having the issues at this point. Are you seeing a reduction in those also? Are you still seeing somewhat new business as usual in the surrounding countries?
spk02: We're seeing business as usual. We have not seen the impact of the war in Ukraine spill across the borders in its impact on our business. Obviously, there are other social and humanitarian issues, but as far as the impact on our business, we haven't seen it.
spk05: Okay, great. Thank you, Boris. I'll get back in queue.
spk02: Thank you, Joe.
spk01: The next question comes from Chris McGinnis from Sudoti & Company. Chris, please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and nice quarter. Maybe if we could just start off with just the price versus volume. I think, Deb, maybe you mentioned it was 5% volume growth on a consolidated basis. Can you confirm that? And then I guess the second part of that would be just given the expectation of additional price increases going forward, do you have any concerns around price sensitivity either on those products or from customers? Thanks.
spk08: Yeah, so yes, you're right. Price was about 5% to 6%. The volume was strong, too, at about 5%, so you get to that 11% in total. So we had nice price and volume in our adjusted growth rate of 11%. And, Boris, I'll let you answer the second part of that.
spk02: Yeah, Chris, we have not seen significant growth degradation and price elasticity of demand as a result of price increases. I think our consumers and our customers too have been broadly accepting of the increases because they see it everywhere around them and they know that this is something that is necessary for businesses to take. And the fact that volume has grown with a 6% price increase is a reflection of that. We are taking... you know, appropriate increases. The objective is to recover our margin. We're not trying to make extra money on our price increases. And again, businesses and consumers seem to understand it. So we're optimistic that that will continue for the future as well. I appreciate that.
spk04: And then, Boris, you know, in your prepared comments, you talked about some market share gains, but you also talked about sourcing. Can you just talk about the competitive landscape? Does that put you in a better position for back to school, especially in North America with the supply chain challenges that are out there? Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, we think we're in a great position for back to school and more broadly to supply throughout the year because of our mix of what we manufacture in our local facilities and what we get through outsourced providers primarily in Asia. As a company, we're about 40% manufacturer our own, 60% source from Asia. And that serves us well. We're well positioned for back-to-school. We don't anticipate, despite supply chain issues coming out of China that everybody reads in the papers, we're well positioned for our back-to-school supply. And then we're also well positioned to support our retailers closer to the season because of our domestic manufacturing. So we do think that is a competitive advantage, and we're hearing that from our customers as they're giving us more business. So again, that's partly why we feel confident in our outlook for the remainder of the year.
spk04: I appreciate it. I'm going to jump back in queue. Good luck in queue, too.
spk02: Thank you, Chris.
spk01: The next question comes from Kevin Stank at Barrington Research. Kevin, please go ahead.
spk06: Good morning. So, you know, you increased your outlook for comparable sales growth to 3.5% to 8.5% from 2% to 7% despite lowering the growth outlook for PowerA a little bit. What are the areas driving the improvement in overall comparable sales growth, and is that more price or volume related?
spk02: The improvement falls into three buckets, Kevin. One is just our performance in Q1. We did better than we anticipated, so that's baked into the number. The second, we believe we're going to have a stronger back-to-school season, both in North America and in Latin America. So that's part of our optimism. And then the third big part that we talked about with Joe is we think that return to hybrid mode or return to working in the office is a positive trend for us. So having seen that in Q1, We think that will continue as well. So those three factors together give us reason to raise our comparable sales growth that you see now look from two to seven to three and a half to eight and a half. And we think we're going to have both price and volume. I can't give you exactly what that mix is going to be, but clearly price is going to be a part of it because we are raising prices, but we think volume is going to be up as well.
spk06: Okay, that's helpful, good to hear. And you mentioned that some back-to-school sales in North America were pulled forward into the first quarter. How should we think about that as we look to model out sales for the second quarter? You know, just wondering how significant of a pull forward that was.
spk02: It was a few million dollars. The way I suggest you think about the seasonality of our business on a quarterly basis is similar to what it was last year in terms of percent. I think we have a fairly seasonal but regularly paced business. Every year there are different puts and takes, but overall it falls to a very similar pattern. I think this year's pattern will be very similar to last year's pattern in terms of certain percentage of the year falling into Q1, certain percentage of the year falling into Q2, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think with all of those intakes, it just feels similar both for sales and for EPS, adjusted EPS.
spk06: All right, great. Thanks for taking the questions.
spk02: Thanks, Kevin.
spk01: The next question comes from Hale Holden at Barclays. Hale, please go ahead.
spk09: Good morning. I had two questions. On the inventory increase that you had at the end of the quarter, I was wondering if that was just driven by forward buys so that you could make sure you had things in stock for back to school or what the composition of it was and how confident you kind of felt on clearing that out as the year went through.
spk08: Yeah, so there's a couple things in there that I'm sure you can appreciate. First of all, inflation is in there, right? So that's kind of a big ticket number that's driving inventory up. But I would say, yes, we brought in earlier, but we also have things still on the water. So our in-transits are up as well as those lead times have really expanded and continue to stay expanded. So it's a couple different parts, but we don't feel any concern about selling through that or getting it down by year-end.
spk02: Yeah, and some of the reasons, one of the main reasons why we brought the inventory forward early is our customers want the back-to-school inventory a little bit earlier, too. So we're trying to serve their needs.
spk09: Great. And I was wondering as you sort of think forward in terms of your inflationary pressures that you're seeing, if you wanted to highlight one or two that you were particularly watching, whether it was transport or finished goods or how we should be thinking about, you know, where your pressures on the COGS lines are.
spk02: You know, inflation has been pretty broad. It's affecting most commodities. It's affecting transportation. So there isn't one or two. It's pretty much everything. I mean, everything that's oil related, obviously, is elevated, but also paper inflation is up. So it's not limited to a single commodity. It is. higher than we anticipated. And that's why we have to do additional price increases to offset inflation. Great. Thank you, Boris. Thanks, Hale.
spk01: Another reminder to press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad to ask a question. The next question comes from Hamid Khorsand at BWS Financial. Hamid, please go ahead.
spk03: Good morning. The first question was just given this pull forward that you were talking about in the back-to-school season, are you seeing retailers or your customers just really preparing for price increases from your end? They're just buying ahead of time?
spk02: No, I don't think so because we agree on pricing for back-to-school well in advance, and we don't change that pricing. So they don't risk anything at all. by waiting. The reason that they're bringing the inventory forward is because of the supply chain issues that they're experiencing. They want the surety of supply for the season. You know, the season sets on a certain day, they can't miss it, and they want to make sure they have the product in the inventory.
spk03: And then given the lockdowns in China and the supply chain issues, Is that putting you at an advantageous spot as far as being able to get, you know, the high volume, low margin business you've been on and off about over the years? Any interest of it for this year?
spk02: Yeah, as I mentioned before, Hamid, we're not seeing the China supply chain issues affect our back to school. I mean, obviously, we're watching it carefully. But most of our products for back-to-school are shipped from Vietnam or southern China or manufactured domestically in the U.S. and Canada. So the area that's most affected right now, which is the Shanghai region, we're not really affected for back-to-school. Now, your question was, does it allow us to be more competitive on opening price points? All of those are independent decisions. And as I mentioned, they're made pretty much in advance for back-to-school, given just the length of supply chain. So at this point, the early back-to-school is not going to be affected by anything, but we are still hoping to win additional business for late back-to-school and also for Q4 because of our ability to produce domestically and to meet some of the demands of our customers.
spk03: Thank you.
spk02: Thanks, Ahmed.
spk01: We have no further questions, so I'll hand back to Boris Ellisman for any final remarks.
spk02: Thank you, Bethany, and thank you, everyone, for your interest in Echo Brands. We had an excellent first quarter and have strong momentum for the second quarter. Our business is pivoted to faster growth, and we expect financial performance improvements to continue in 2022. We remain confident about our longer-term future as we continue to position the company to be more consumer product-oriented for higher growth and stronger returns for our shareholders. We'll look forward to talking with you in a couple of months as we report our second quarter. Thank you.
spk01: This concludes the first quarter 2022 ACCO Brands Earnings Call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
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