Nomad Foods Limited

Good day and welcome to Nomads Foods' fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Tipoche Barry, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us to review our fourth quarter 2020 earnings results. With me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer Stefan Descheemaeker and Chief Financial Officer Sami Zaykowt. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the disclaimer on slide two of our presentation. This conference call may make forward-looking statements that are based on our view of the company's prospects, expectations, and intentions at this time, including consideration related to the impacts of COVID-19. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our press release, our filings with the SEC, and this slide in our investor presentation which includes cautionary language. We will also discuss non-IFRS financial measures during the call today. These non-IFRS financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with IFRS results. Users can find the IFRS to non-IFRS reconciliations within our earnings release and in the appendices at the end of the slide presentation available on our website. Please note that certain financial information within this presentation represents adjusted figures for 2019 and 2020. All adjusted figures have been adjusted for exceptional items, acquisition-related share-based payment and related expenses, as well as non-cash foreign exchange gains or losses. In all comments from here on, we'll refer to those adjusted numbers. But with that, I will hand the call over to Stefan.

Thank you, Tafosh, and thank you all for your participation on the call today. I hope you and your loved ones continue to stay safe during these unprecedented times. It has been nearly a full year since our lives changed following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Nomad, our entire organization has risen to the challenge of supplying Europe with our iconic brands while ensuring the health and safety of our employees. As you may have seen, we reported our fourth quarter and full year 2020 results this morning. Consistent with our announcement at Cagney last week, we ended the year on a very strong note, with Q4 results ahead of our prior expectations across all key metrics. Here are the headlines for the fourth quarter. Organic revenue growth of 9.5%, driven by an 8.6% increase in volume and mix, and a 0.9% increase in price. We achieved 160 basis points of gross margin expansion to 31.5%, marking our strongest quality gross margin rate in over two years. Adjusted EBITDA of €119 million and adjusted EPS growth of 19% to €0.38 per share. Here you see the financial highlights for the full year 2020. For illustrative purposes, we're showing these figures in both The currency in which our stock trades. Overall, an incredible year of performance as we completed our fourth consecutive year of organic revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS growth. Turning now to the highlights of the quarter and the year. As I mentioned, organic revenues grew 9.5% year before, ahead of our recently updated guidance of high single-digit growth. We were pleased to end the year on a strong note as demand for frozen food began to accelerate in late October. That momentum built throughout the quarter and has carried over into 2021. We continue to see broad-based strength across our portfolio with fish fingers, coated fish, poultry and plant protein among the strongest performing subcategories. We've managed the business by focusing on both long and short-term priorities throughout 2020. A great example is our strategic decision to allocate 10 million euros of investments behind green cuisine or core and new consumer retention. Most of these investments was deployed during the fourth quarter, resulting in a 30% increase in NA&P spent year on year. Near term, we dedicated a lot of our energy in chasing demand and fulfilling orders to the best of our ability and converting strong profits into free cash. And as you see in our results, I'm pleased to say that we generated €345 million of adjusted free cash flow in 2020, an all-time record and nearly €120 million higher versus the prior year. Our strong patient performance in 2020 was complemented by a series of capital allocation actions. We initiated a $300 million share buyback program in March 2020 at the onset of COVID-19 and were quick to repurchase a significant amount of our stock under $17 per share. We followed that up by tendering nearly 500 million of our stock in September. In aggregate, we repurchased over 600 million euros of our stock, resulting in a significant reduction in our share count as we enter 2021. We have also been active on the M&A front. At the time of our tender of our announcement in August, we clearly articulated our focus and priority on the European frozen food acquisitions, where we believe we have a strategic advantage. Since then, we successfully completed the acquisition of Kinder Switzerland, which further expands our European geographic footprint. And just last month, we entered into exclusive discussions with the Fortinova Group to acquire their frozen food portfolio. This is a business with strong brand positioning and a significant operational footprint across the Balkan region. We're making good progress in the Fortinova process and look forward to updating you in the coming weeks. So that was the past, an unprecedented 2020 that many of us will never forget. And for us at Nomad, and many more. As Sami will outline in his remarks, we have a strong set of plans that will underpin our ability to achieve what will be another exciting year for Nomad Foods. Before I conclude, I'd like to remind you why we are as excited as ever in the growth perspective of our company in both the near and long term. Here you see our three pillars of growth. First, our core portfolio, which is anchored in frozen fish and vegetables. COVID or not, these are growth categories that are aligned with a more nutritious diet and a more sustainable food system. Demand for these categories has been growing for years. COVID, which introduced millions of new consumers into our portfolio last year, has only accelerated that movement. We have brands that are local jewels across Europe, and thanks to the support of our R&D and marketing teams, remain as relevant as ever with today's consumers. Second is a commitment to breakthrough innovation with green cuisine. This is a business that we have taken from 0 to 30 million euros in less than two years. and we won't stop there. We have planned to grow revenues to over 100 million by the end of next year. As we presented at Cagney last week, green cuisine is now in all of our markets and was Europe's fastest growing frozen meat free brand in 2020. We're developing fantastic new products across a variety of meat states and seeing strong response from retailers and consumers. and third, our efforts around M&A as we complemented our core with strategic acquisitions into new geographies, categories and channels. Putting it all together, we have the wide space opportunities to continue to generate top-tier performance in the packaged food space in 2021 and beyond. And with that, I will hand it over to Sami to discuss the results in more detail and outline our guidance for the coming year. Sami?

Thank you, Stefan, and thank you all for your participation on the call today. Turning to slide 8, I will provide more detail on our key fourth quarter operating metrics, beginning with revenues, which increased 4.7% to €658 million, driven by 9.5% organic revenue growth. As expected, this was offset by 3.2% relating to a calendar shift and 1.6% of foreign exchange translation, Organic revenue growth exceeded our prior expectation and was once again driven by our branded retail portfolio, which grew 12% during the fourth quarter. Growth continues to be most pronounced within our core products, namely fish fingers and cutted fish, where demand is particularly robust. Strong growth in our branded retail business was offset by our non-branded channels, which represent approximately 10% of sales. Specifically, we experienced mid-single-digit growth in private label sales and nearly 30% declines in food service due to the impact of restricted movement across Europe. Our gross margins expanded 160 basis points to 31.5% during the fourth quarter, reflecting favorable mix, pricing, and promotions. Moving down to the rest of the P&L, adjusted operating expenses increased 15% year-over-year, This includes a significant increase in ANP, which grew 30% or 10 million euros versus the prior year. You may recall our decision to allocate part of our incremental profits in 2020 towards strategic investments. Most of this investment was indeed deployed during the fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to €119 million, and adjusted EPS increased 19% to €0.38 for the quarter, reflecting the significant share repurchase activity we have conducted since Q4 last year. Turning to cash flow on slide 9, we generated €345 million of adjusted free cash flow in 2020, equating to 131% cash conversions. As Stefan mentioned, we had an exceptional year of cash performance in 2020, which sets a new record for our company. This was driven by higher EBITDA and disciplined working capital management, which more than offset year-on-year increases in capex and taxes. While COVID certainly played a factor last year, specifically regarding inventory, which will need to be rebuilt over the coming months, This performance was also largely driven by cash breakthrough interventions that we have been making since 2019 around structurally improving our working capital efficiency. As we look out to 2021, we expect to deliver another year of strong cash performance in line with our longer-term target of 100% conversion. Based on our share price today, this would equate to a free cash flow yield of approximately 7%. With that, let's turn to slide 10 to review our 2021 guidance, which is based on foreign exchange rates as of February 23rd, 2021. We expect to achieve another year of double-digit adjusted EPS growth in 2021 as we look to build on our strong momentum exiting 2020. This guidance is based on the following factors. Total revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately 3% to 5%, and organic revenue growth of approximately 1 to 2%. For modeling purposes, we are assuming a weighted average share count of approximately 179 million for the year. In aggregate, we expect 2021 adjusted EPS to be in a range of approximately 1.50 to 1.55 euro, which equates to a US dollar equivalent of approximately 1.83 to 1.89 earnings per share. As a reminder, this guidance does not reflect any potential accretion that may result from our exclusive discussion to acquire the frozen food portfolio of the 14 of our groups. These discussions are ongoing and we expect to have an update for you in the coming weeks. On slide 11, we outline 2021 guidance relative to history. What you can see here is our commitment to delivering sustainable financial performance every year. 2021 will mark our fifth consecutive year of growing organic revenues, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. And importantly, this performance builds on the strong year that we have achieved in 2020, representing robust growth on both a one- and two-year basis. As we outlined at Cagney last week, you see here the building blocks supporting our robust plans for 2021. We expect to achieve these goals through a combination of the macro tailwind, operational levers, and capital allocations action outlined here on slide 12. That concludes our remarks. I will now turn the session over to Q&A. Thank you. Operator, back to you.

Thank you. We will now 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 that 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.

Thank you.

Our first question comes from Andrew Olson with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, hi. Good morning, guys. I just want to... Morning, Andrew. Hey, good morning. I just wanted to dig more a little bit into the drivers of the top line, the organic sales guidance that you gave at Cagney and then are reiterating again today. Where do you have the most confidence in that guide and how much does it depend on maintaining some of the COVID gains that you had in 2020? Just trying to think through kind of the underlying growth of the base business first, maintaining some of the lapping effects. Thanks.

Okay, let me take that one, Andrew. Let me stand back a bit first. I think where we're quite different is when you see a bit of our journey. Before COVID, we had three consecutive years of growth, and it doesn't come by chance. I think we worked a lot on our brands, we worked a lot on our business model, and it paid off. And then obviously came COVID, one year, and obviously we grew nicely. But like many other people, but very importantly as well, we've also reinvested, as you know, another 10 million at the end of the year, which obviously serves as well for the beginning of this year and later. So that's a bit, you know, what we have accomplished over the last years. I think where we are quite different is we have just... Fantastic categories. When you think about fish, which is 40% of our business, nice margin. Vegetable, which is 20%, plant protein up and coming. And this, you know, in frozen food, which is doing very well now and obviously beyond, it's obviously a natural tailwind. They're all growing, which is very nice. Then you have COVID, obviously, which gave opportunity to all these people New consumers, millions of consumers to try. That's why, by the way, we invested behind retention, which was very important. You remember, that's kind of a program we put together last year. We announced this, you explained why we're doing this, and we see the results. And that's very nice. Then on top of that, obviously, you have green cuisine, which has also moved from zero to 30 million in less than two years. and as you know we have the plan to increase but up to 100 million or beyond the 100 million in the next two years. So with all these things you know on top obviously of the plan that we put together business model yes we believe that you know 2020 when we're going to grow by one to two percent it's obviously ambitious because you know it's on top of 8.5 percent but that's the culture of the organization we're delivering and I think we have the best plans we ever had so that's why we think you'll be going to make it work and then beyond 2021 I would put it that way we think again that with all the things we have the growth is only starting so we know what we have ahead of us in 2021 and beyond and we're very excited with this and then obviously, you know, we also have things that are coming like Switzerland that we just completed, you know, end of last year. You know, obviously, Fortunova is an option, obviously, that we, as we announced, you know, it's an interesting plan also in the Balkans. So, a lot of good things between, let's say, the natural growth of our must-win battles, as we say, green cuisine, and also, obviously, a very focused M&A plan behind frozen food. So that's all the reasons.

Okay, great. Thanks. And then just as a follow-up, just specifically on the marketing spend, it was good to see that 30% increase come through in 4Q, which brings a high single digit for the year in terms of that advertising line. How do you think through your kind of overall marketing levels, do you think that you'll have to increase

even further to support Benja Switzerland. Sami?

Sorry, excuse me, I was on mute, sorry. SG&A will be about flat year-on-year in 2021, so we are up the game in 2020 for the reason that we had mentioned, investing behind the green cuisine. Muscle Battles, which we know are paying off. And the other piece which was important for us is to effectively invest behind retention, as we had mentioned. But we clearly, the intent is to continue to invest behind our brands. We have strong plans behind the core business and behind Switzerland. And we will always try to balance if you have the need for supporting the brands and driving the appropriate ROI, I mean, on the investment making in advertising for sure.

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Tanwantang with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good morning. It's Pete Lucas for John. Just how have industry and trade negotiations progressed so far this year in terms of pricing, shelf space, and promotions? Any meaningful difference and also any meaningful difference you're seeing Thank you for joining us.

We always said it's great for us. That's the best result. And quite frankly, I can tell you by when the deal was announced on December 24th, it was a very nice gift. Is it perfectly smooth at this stage? No. You can imagine you have obviously some logistics issues here and there, which makes things a bit complicated. But we've been extremely well prepared. We know that it's going to be fine. So that's a big thing for us. You know, it's Brexit. And we're so pleased that, by the way, we can always also think about more productive things, more interesting things than just playing defense with Brexit, which is absolutely great. Then back to your question about the negotiations. Well, let's say negotiation with the trade is negotiation with the trade. It's not going to change. you know sometimes you have a bit more inflation sometimes you have a bit less inflation this year we have a bit more less inflation which I would say ultimately makes things a bit a bit easier so I don't think there is anything specific compared to previous years that are worth are worth mentioning the obviously you know we we need to deliver we also said Last year, it was a year of high demand. It's still a year of high demand, which makes to some extent that piece of the conversation with the trade a bit easier. And yeah, that's where we stand. I think our conversation with the trade is all about brand building, about their trade margin, which is overall is in good shape as well. So nothing specific to mention and no real difference between UK and Europe.

Helpful, thanks. And just one more from me. Can you talk about synergy and accretion potential from Finn to Switzerland? Do you think you've realized most of that this year or do you think it'll be a longer term process as you exit 21?

We always, you know, we're just going to be completing the year one transition, I mean, as we get into that. So the business is part of the family right now. We have the year one investment always with, let's say, that is playing for us in terms of planting the seed. So if you think about the playbook that we have been applying in the past for, obviously, Goodfellas, which has been working really well when you look, frankly, at how the business is doing today. If we apply just simply our playbook around, frankly, where we are clearly having a strong competitive advantage, I mean, the focus on the must-win battles, clearly the extra speed that we can give to our top clients through NRM, the focus on our cost, and we will effectively drive the synergy that we have planned for in the years to come. So clearly the plan is on track, and clearly the economics have been, let's say, put together in that context.

It's very much in line with what we've been doing, to your point, Sami, with Goodfellas and on Bessie's first investment behind, you know, sometimes assets that are a bit of orphan assets under investors. And, you know, we're starting with that, which is, I think, long term is the right thing to do.

Great, thanks. I'll jump back in the queue.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bill Chappell with SunTrust. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning.

Morning, Ben.

I just want to Talk about the surging demand for frozen at the end of the year and also what it's done for other categories. I remember three or four years ago, one of the thoughts from Nomad was to move into breakfast items and that didn't really work so well because Europeans didn't particularly like frozen breakfast items. They liked fresh. But I'm kind of wondering if that's changed as people have been locked down and accelerated and whether maybe it opens up other categories within frozen for you to expand as we've kind of had behavioral change over the past 12 months.

Yeah, well, it's a very good question, Bill, but it comes back to the very essence of our strategy, which is about resource allocation and where we want to play in frozen foods. and hence, you know, our definition of must-win battles. Must-win battles or core categories are categories where we have leadership, we have good margin and we have growth potential. And back to this breakfast question, you know, I think it would have taken ages and take so much resources to get there that it doesn't make any sense and it wouldn't serve the other categories well. And that's why we've gone through these co-categories that we're calling mushroom battles and you know I can tell you they're doing extremely well year in year out and it's mostly in fish in in in in vegetable and then in some local categories obviously like for example pizza with good fillers or other other categories in local categories and we're not going to deviate from there so we need market share we need growth potential and we need gross margin. So that's that. But besides that, we remain also extremely focused behind Frozen. As we know, last year we've just confirmed that Frozen is where we are, where we are winning and where we want to play. And we are the leaders. And by the way, it's an extremely good category for a variety of reasons between Let's say obviously good for your health, good for the planet, combined with categories like fish, vegetables, or plant protein. So on top of also e-commerce that is doing well. So we definitely believe that it would be just a mistake today to move away from this combination of focus behind frozen and within frozen behind the mushroom battles, including obviously green cuisines. It serves us well. We have a lot of tailwinds. We have developed our business model for the existing business and also for the business we want to acquire within the same frozen food category.

Got it. No, thanks. I appreciate the color. On green cuisine, help me understand kind of the The thought process on the marketing and advertising, it's certainly done well, but it seems like there are a lot of competition jumping in and will be more. Are you looking at this of we just need to build out the brand equity and grow and build brand awareness, or are we getting into a land grab where you really need to make a splash in terms of getting the brand out there before there's so much noise in the category where it'll be tougher for consumers to understand it.

Well, the good news, Bill, is the category in chilled and frozen, by the way, is growing very fast. And we as a category leader in frozen, we need to make sure that we're going to help the category to grow even faster. So that's the starting point. So this company in the past years and years ago did the same with other categories. We need to do the same. First is obviously is to make sure that we're going to grow the category. And it's starting with obviously differentiation with the others. We believe, and that's what our consumers and the retailers are telling us, that we have a product superiority. The products are great. You know that, for example, last year, let's say in December, we got the award of the best frozen food product in the UK with our nuggets. They're great. There is a product superiority. But that's one element. The other element is obviously we have also a superiority in terms of distribution network. We have a vast network of retailers across Europe. So that's another element. The third one is, to your point, is we decide, as you know, to focus a lot and to put quite a considerable amount of money behind the category and behind green cuisine in terms of brand, brand building, which is also what it is. So all these elements are part of the flywheel that we have developed. The only difference is probably even more aggressive because it's a new category and it's a category which has a lot to offer with also, by the way, very nice margin. and we're making very good progress. So that's that. But it's a big focus for us, as you know.

But you don't see it as a land grab right now. It's not a try to get anywhere and everywhere as fast as possible.

Well, you know, you need to make sure that people understand, you know, all the consumers understand what it is. So it's a wide space to some extent. So that's what it is. But it's how to develop a new category. and we've been good at that in the past and we're going to do it again.

Great, thanks so much. Thank you very much.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Stefan Descheemaeker for any closing comments.

Thank you very much operator and thank you for your participation today. We're pleased to have completed our fourth consecutive year of strong financial performance, underpinned by consistent organic revenue growth and complementary M&A and share repurchases. We have a well-defined playbook and a strong set of plans to continue our momentum into 2021. As you've heard me say, while we're proud of the performance that we have delivered since 2017, we strongly believe that Nomad Foods is still in the early stages of value creation.

So thank you for your time and have a great day. This concludes today's program.

You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful day.