BHG Group AB (publ)

Hi, my name is Gustav Öhrn, and I am the CEO of BHG. I'm here together with Jesper Flemme, our CFO, to present the BHG fourth quarter report. We will also be available after the presentation to do our best to answer your questions. Slide two, please. The financial highlights of the report. It was another challenging quarter from a market perspective, and sales was down approximately 10% per four months. However, given the data points we have, we are confident that we have continued to take market share. Earnings came in at 55 million SEC, still not where we want to be, but with a decreasing top line, we have improved our profitability versus last year's Q4 results. The improvements in earnings are a result of our focus on gross margin improvements and cost reductions. And we can happily conclude that our hard work is starting to pay off. This was the first quarterly improvement year over year on earnings since mid-2021. Continued very strong cash flow with plus 350 million and significantly stronger than last year. We reiterate the message from Q3 that we for 2024 will prioritize profit over cash flow. Slide three, please. Summarizing the year from a financial perspective, the team has reason to be proud of what we have achieved on inventory reduction, cash flow, balance sheet and cost reductions. We set out for 2023 with a communicated ambition to reduce our inventory with 600 million. Summarizing the year, we have reduced our inventory with more than 900 million. We have, as a consequence of primarily the inventory reduction, had a cash flow improvement of more than 1.5 billion SEC during the year. In the beginning of the year, we set and communicated a target to reduce our SG&A with between 100 and 150 million net, and we have delivered on that target with a cost reduction of 125 million net during 2023. On balance sheet, we have as a consequence of our strong cash flow and in combination with the structural work we have done during the year, reduced our interest bearing liabilities with 1.6 billion during the year. In summary, we are from a financial standpoint entering 2024 with a significantly stronger financial position than last year. Slide four, please. A few words about the market in the last quarter and market outlook. This slide is based on the Swedish market, but we see a similar development with smaller variances in most of the markets where we are active. The market was challenging also in the last quarter, as it has been for the last two years with a detracting market and negative sales development following the pandemic. The drivers we all know too well, inflation, interest rate levels, low transaction volume on the housing market, and still some rebalancing effect on category levels following the pandemic. The strongest effect of demand we unchanged seeing capital intense categories as doors, windows, and floors, and other categories associated with renovation. As we all know, the number of renovations is closely connected to the number of transactions in the housing market. Trying to look forward, I think most of us believe that we now most likely have passed peak rent and that the interest levels will come down during the coming year. Our view is, however, that the effect on disposable income for most of the consumers will be fairly limited for the majority of the year, and we are planning for a challenging market for most of 2024. Also on the positive side, we believe that we will see increased activity in the housing market from pent-up demand and improvements in consumer confidence as a result of interest rate levels coming down. And the above-mentioned corona rebalancing effects starting to level off. The fundamental drivers of our business, the migration from physical retail to the online channel, will continue, and the penetration in our categories is still low, both from a categories perspective, but maybe more importantly, also from a geographic perspective. Slide five, please. Leaving the financials and saying a few words about where we are in our main strategic ambition on business unit level. As you know, we are a highly decentralized group of online businesses within do-it-yourself and home improvement. The business is based on what we call entrepreneurial accountability, and we have a very limited group function defining core strategies, working financials, and supporting our businesses through a few center of excellences and utilizing best practice and benchmarking from within the group to support the entrepreneurs. The business is divided into three business units based on category, target group, and business model. The reasoning behind the business unit is that it is primarily on this level that we can realize synergies. Starting with home improvement, a do-it-yourself business primarily in the Nordics and primarily based on a dropship business model. The main strategic ambition of home improvement in the short to medium term is focused on continued consolidation to achieve economies of scale and realize synergies in creating what we call the Nordic do-it-yourself powerhouse. Value home, our home interior business in the value segment, a primarily European business based on a private label-based business model. As a consequence of the supply chain disruptions and the long lead times towards the end of the pandemic, this is where we had the biggest challenges related to inventory buildup and profitability following the pandemic. It was in this business unit we did a major restructuring program in Q3, including two divestments of loss-making businesses. However, we still have our work cut out for us to improve on operational execution and restore profitability in some of the entities in this business unit. However, and with that said, this is where we saw the biggest profitability improvements in the fourth quarter. And finally, premium living, our home interior business in the premium segment and based primarily on a wholesale-based business model. This is a very international business with the majority of the sales from outside of the Nordics. A strong European business with a significant contribution also from Asia. Here, the prime focus is to continue the international expansion and strengthening the Nordic Nest Group. Two weeks ago, we also announced a smaller acquisition to Nordic Nest with the asset acquisition of Kitchen Time. Kitchentime is a segment specialist within dining and cooking, and just as we acquired Svenssons as a segment specialist in furniture in 2021 and integrated into Nordic Nest Group, we will now integrate Kitchentime into Nordic Nest Group. In conjunction with the acquisition of Kitchentime, we also announced that we, during spring 24, will consolidate our lightning business of Lampgallerian into the same group. Basically, reinforcing the Nordic Nest platform, now consisting of Nordic Nest, with a supporting category specialist of Svensson's in furniture, kitchen time in cooking and dining, and Lamp Gallerina in the lightning category. Slide six, please. In our tactical plan for the coming year, we have identified the following key focus areas. After 18 months of focus on cash flow and balance sheet, we will reinforce our focus on profitability, and I will expand how we are to do this in a minute. Continued consolidations. We have done a significant number of consolidations in the last 18 months, and we will continue this focus and work, going from a large number of smaller businesses to fewer and larger platforms. Efficiency. Already a focus for last year with our focus on cost reductions, but planning for a challenging market also in 24, we will need to continue this focus to improve efficiency and reduce cost. Growth initiatives, also with profitability as a main focus and also in a challenging market, we must as retailers continue to take steps to grow our business. This we do through growth initiatives as internationalization, expanding into marketplaces and category expansions. And finally, customer centricity. Focusing on presenting relevant offer for the consumer, delivering a strong user experience and a positive experience in deliveries, both from speed and a quality perspective, is key for customer retention. Buying the same customer over and over again is just too expensive. We need to ensure a positive experience through the complete customer journey to secure repeat customers. Slide seven, please. Coming back to profitability, our key focus for the coming year. This is where we'll put our focus to deliver profitability also in a challenging market. Gross margin improvements will be crucial, and it's a huge focus for us, working on optimizing both supply chain and pricing. Direct selling costs as fulfillment, postage, and online marketing is significant cost drivers within our business models. We need to continue leveraging our reduced inventory to reduce warehousing costs and leverage our size to reduce last mile cost, as well as optimizing our traffic acquisition to reduce online marketing spend. SG&A efficiency. As mentioned, we did a good job last year in reducing costs. We also created some AI powered efficiency, primarily in product and content creation. With a challenging market, we need to continue to build efficiencies, both through consolidations and all other available tools, including AI, where we see a number of opportunities. Slide eight, please. As mentioned, we have taken huge steps in the last 18 months to simplify our structure, creating economies of scale and realizing synergies in the process. We have in these 18 months reduced our number of operational entities from 25 to 15 business units. This has been done through two closings, two divestments, but primarily through a larger number of consolidations. Too many to go through today. We aim to continue this consolidation journey, aiming at a target state of approximately seven to eight platforms. And with that, I will leave it to Jesper.

Thank you, Gustav. And slide nine, please. Net sales decreased 14.5%, reaching 2.8 billion SEK, and organic growth was minus 10.6%. The net sales trend in the fourth quarter was impacted by a continued challenging market. At the same time, our initiatives to achieve geographic expansion outside our home markets progressed well. Segment-wise, the premium living segment had a strong quarter with total growth of 7.8%, driven by very strong growth in the markets outside the Nordic region of 24%. Turn now to page 10 and profitability. Adjusted EBIT amounted to 54.8 milliseconds, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 1.9%, one percentage point higher than the corresponding period last year. From a segment perspective, Premium Living performed best with an EBIT of 45.3 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 5.8%. However, The biggest improvement was seen in the value home segment, improving EBIT with 60 million SEC compared to last year. Moving on to slide 11 and the EBIT bridge. The EBIT margin improvement compared to last year was mainly driven by a significant improvement in product margin. In turn, thanks to, firstly, an active effort to normalize the margin structure, and secondly, somewhat more balanced inventory levels in the market. Another positive driver in the quarter was inventory handling costs, as we start to see the effect both from cost initiatives and investments in automation. On the contrary, last mile and other direct selling cost was negative, mainly driven by inflation-related cost increases for last mile delivery. All in all, our EBIT margin amounts to 1.9% in the quarter. Slide 12 and cash flow, please. Our successful inventory reduction continued also in the last quarter of the year and generated a strong cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to 349 million SEK. For the full year, cash flow from operating activities amounts to a fantastic 1.6 billion SEK. The right-hand graph showing the development in liquidity walks us through the starting period position of 478 million SEK, adding the cash flow from operations and the impact of investing activities, a majority of which is M&A related. And finally, deducting the financing activities, which are primarily related to amortizations of our revolving credit facility and leasing liabilities, but also include interest payments. bring us to the period end, 370 million SEK of liquidity at hand. Slide 13, please. The group's net debt amounted to 1.1 billion SEK at the end of the year, and net debt in relation to LTM adjusted EBITDA ended at 4.01 times. On top of our liquidity at hand, we had unutilized credit facilities at the end of the year of 1.8 billion SEK. Acquisition-related liabilities have been reduced with close to 900 million SEK since the beginning of the year and amounts to 374 million SEK at the end of the year. Cash flow-wise, Roughly 50 million SEK will be paid out in 2024, and another 250 million in 2025. With that, I will hand back over to you, Gustav, to summarize and conclude.

Thank you very much, Jesper. I will do my best to summarize this. Slide 14, please. Market has been challenging since mid-21, and if we now see positive signs, we plan for a challenging market for the majority of 2024. We are very pleased with the result of the work we have done the last year in strengthening our financial positioning, reducing inventory, super strong cash flow, reducing costs, and strengthening our balance sheet. We have delivered on our plan to simplify our business and realize synergies, taking it from 25 entities to 15 operating units, and with continued consolidation, aiming for a target structure of approximately seven to eight platforms. With the work we did last year, we are entering this year with a significantly stronger financial position than where we were last year. And the last quarter of the year, we improved our profitability year on year for the first time since 2021. We have done and are doing the work to be in good shape and well positioned when the market bounces back. And our focus for 2024 is continued focus on profitability. Thank you very much for listening and happy to do our very best to answer all your questions. Please fire away.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Benjamin Wallstett from ABGSC. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. So first of all, Gustav, you talk about a better consumer outlook compared to Q3, and I was wondering if we could get some more flavor on that. Obviously, you mentioned interest rates. Do you see anything in consumer behavior to add to this point or anything else, please?

Hi Benjamin, this is Gustav. No, I can't really say that I do. It is based on I think the same outlook as we all read. Interest rates potentially coming down a bit faster than we thought a few months ago. And the effect that we believe that that can have also on consumer confidence when it comes to transactions on the housing market. But as we stated, we think that 24 is going to be tough, even if disposable income comes up a little bit. We think that the effects on most of our consumers is going to be fairly limited.

Perfect. Thank you very much. And then I also have a question on your inventory outlook or your market inventory outlook. You mentioned a normalized situation for several categories and I was wondering if you could elaborate on this point. I was wondering first if you could specify any or give us an indication of categories that are looking better and if you could also help us how to think about your exposure to outdoor furniture following the divestment of AH trading please.

I'll do my best. I would say that inventory on the market in most categories are normalizing. And where we were super heavy going into last year for spring and summer categories, that's where it has normalized the most and would make the biggest difference. What we've also said is that in some categories, there's still some inventory, some overstock of inventory. And we specifically mentioned one of those being outdoor garden furniture So there is some overstock in that category. I would say that our exposure to that category is less with the divestment of AIS trading, but I would still say that it is significant. We have a number of businesses with a fairly large business in that segment.

Perfect. Thank you. And then perhaps final question that's inventory related. In the end of 2022, you made a big inventory write-down. Now, having seen the whole 2023 result then, could you give us an indication on the net effect of this right down on profitability after the products have been sold, so to speak?

If I start, Benjamin, and hi. Hi. I will just repeat that I think our assessment at the end of last year was the right one. If we look at gross margin full year, it's almost flat. So I think the combination of write-down and price reductions needed to get the goods moving have been the right ones. Do you want to add anything Gustav?

No, I think in terms of gross margin, which I must admit is one of the most difficult to forecast also for us. We have a number of positive effects. One is the fact that we have less inventory, which means that we can be less aggressive in pricing. Another positive effect, of course, is that there's less inventory in the market, which will put less price pressure in the market. And the third one, of course, which is what Jesper touched upon, is that a lot of the products that we saw last year was bought during the supply chain disruptions, very high freight costs, very high landed costs. And that is what we tried to balance out with the inventory write-down. And as Jesper said, we believe we did a fairly good job in doing so. Perfect.

Those were all my questions for now. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The next question comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, I hope you can hear me. A couple of questions from me. Maybe starting with the sort of housing and housing transactions, which of course has been a big drag for you for the past couple of quarters. Do you have any sort of idea what the average spend on your categories is when people buy a new home?

No, we don't have that number. We can see that the number of transactions is closely related to renovations, and renovations is closely related to a large part of our business. But I don't have any number I can give you on that specific question.

Right, of course, it's probably quite meaningful. And then maybe on price... And, of course, I do hear you when it comes to inventories being down in the market, which is creating less need for promotional activity. But at the same time, it seems like some of your, I guess, IKEA have done it all the time, basically trying to... push any sort of cost benefits to the consumer in terms of lower prices, and they were out two weeks ago saying that they're lowering prices again now on 2,000 articles. They did so in September with 500, so that's 25% of their assortment. Is that impacting your daily operations, what they have done recently at the start of this year, or are you seeing any others doing the same thing, i.e. should we see sort of lower ordinary prices in 24 versus 23 you think?

I think we should say that you know there's a significant price pressure and that will be a significant price pressure also for this year to come and I mean that is what our categories I think you know retail in general is about so that will just continue. I don't see and I don't believe that IKEA will have any particular specific effect on our pricing. IKEA is almost like a category in itself in most of our sectors, to be quite honest. But that said, less inventory will put less price pressure, but competition is still very tough and price pressure will remain high.

Yeah, and then maybe a final question on your M&A strategy, which you have been conducting in the past year, which has crashed, you have to say. Wouldn't it be more prudent to sort of be a bit cautious on M&A and stay away from it a bit longer, given you're sort of still fairly high in debtness? I'm referring to the kitchen time here. acquisition that you announced two weeks ago?

No, I think you're absolutely right. And we have been very cautious. As you know, we haven't done any acquisitions for the last 18 months. It's still part of our business model. We're still evaluating opportunities when they turn up. But it has not been our prime focus. It will not be our prime focus for the sort of year to come. But there will be opportunities. And when they are, we will look at them. And I actually think kitchen time was a very good example of the type of acquisitions that we might be considering doing. it was an it was an asset acquisition where we was a small acquisition it was an asset acquisition and it was as a bolt-on to one of our existing platforms where we acquired a brand name and a very very limited inventory basically there no liabilities and no cost that we brought on in that acquisition i think those type of acquisitions when the opportunities arise we will consider all right

It's a fairly light asset, but it looks like it has been loss-making, at least if you look at the Swedish records.

It has been loss-making, yes, but it's important to keep in mind that none of the costs associated with this we acquire. We only acquired a brand name and an inventory, non-organizational cost, non-fulfillment cost. Everything of this is brought into Nordic Nest. Okay.

This is more to be seen as if you're doing anything, it's going to be very light assets, but the core focus is to continue to drive profitability organically and cash flow. Is that what you're saying when you look into 2024?

Yes, that's correct. Okay, good. Thanks. Thank you.

The next question comes from Nicholas Ekman from Carnegie.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, yes. Can I just ask you to elaborate a little bit more on your comments about the 2024 outlook? When you talk about a very challenging environment, I mean, that's on the one hand, that's a given. On the other hand, you're facing very, very easy comparisons here, particularly in Q1, and there should be quite a lot of pent-up demand for home improvement. I'm just wondering, should we read this that you worry that recovery will take time or do you still see a tangible risk that sales will continue to decline going into 2024?

Oh it's such a difficult question but I'll do my best to elaborate on it and as we said in the report we believe that the majority is going to the market's going to be challenging for majority of the year and that is basically based on the number of things one is of course disposable income and even as you say even if inflation coming down interest levels coming down the effect on most of our consumers is going to be fairly limited for this year and that's why we believe it's going to be challenging and why we what we see are some of the positives apart from of course interest levels coming down etc is that we believe that the number of house transactions on the housing market will go up as you say there we see pent-up demand because there's been almost two years of significantly less transactions and And that has an effect on renovations and that has an effect on our business. But we should also be mindful that there's quite a time delay before that happens. And of course, one of the last points to also comment on is the pandemic rebalancing, which we mentioned in the report. In a lot of categories, that was significantly down during the pandemic. I'm talking about travel, hotels, et cetera, et cetera. It's doing surprisingly well right now, considering disposable income. And we believe that that still affects from the pandemic rebalancing. We believe that that will level off over time, but it's very, very hard to forecast how long that is going to take So summarizing all these impressions, we believe, as we write, that the majority of 24 is going to be challenging in our business. I think that's unfortunately the best answer we can give you.

Yeah, fair enough. And I assume you're not at this point willing to say anything about the beginning of 2024 if you see any change in trend versus Q4.

No, we don't comment on current trading. No, fair enough.

Can I also ask you about your comment about prioritizing profit over cash flow in 2024? Can you say a little bit more about what you mean here? I mean, you've now reduced your inventory significantly. Is this something you see reversing now? Are you going to be rebuilding inventory or do you rather mean that you're kind of done with the cash flow improvements and now you're prioritizing profit? Can you just Elaborate on the mix here and particularly what you see on cash flow. Is there any room for further improvement in cash flow or is that journey essentially behind?

I can start and I'll let Jesper follow up. But in short, I mean, it was a dramatic inventory reduction that we did last year. 900 million is more than we were aiming for, to be quite honest. And we're very pleased that we could achieve that. We still believe there's room for further inventory reduction, but on completely different levels. We must be now much, much more surgical in trying to reduce inventory. And we have to be very, very careful to protect availability so we have the best sellers in stock. But there is room for some more improvements, but it's going to be on a completely different level. I think that's what we're saying in terms of inventory. And prioritizing profit over cash flow basically means that in some instances last year, we did an active choice to be very, very aggressive to get down on our inventory. And of course, that costed on gross margin. And that would be less frequent, we believe, during this year to come, because there's less need to free up cash and inventory reduction. Jasper, you want to fill in on that?

No, maybe numbers-wise. We still think that we will be able to reduce the inventory with maybe 100 to 200 million, but that will take time, maybe 12 to 18 months. So that's the numbers.

Very clear. Thank you. And some nitty-gritty details here as well. Net financials, 65 million in Q4. Of that, 55 million was financial expenses. Was that exceptional, or is that a reasonable assumption for the coming quarters here in 2024?

I think that's high. As you saw in the report, we amortized on the revolving credit facilities, so the base will be lower next year. I still think that between 150 and 200 million is a reasonable number for net financials.

Very clear. And also, the impact from divestments, it seems to be quite limited here in Q4, if you look at the sales impact based on the divestments you've done. I assume that's related to the seasonality and you'll have a similar small impact on Q1, but bigger in Q2 and Q3. Is that the right assumption, the right way to think about it?

Yes, it's the right assumption for 24. And if we look at the adjustment in Q4, 23, the 40 million on net sales is only related to the physical stores in value home.

Okay, very clear. Thank you. All my other questions have been answered. So thank you so much. Thank you.

The next question comes from Johan from Fred.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. My line got disconnected, so I do apologize if any of my questions already been answered. But could you elaborate a bit numbers wise into the profitability savings that you expect in 2024? Are there any levers to pull internally to improve the cost savings measure going forward? Thank you.

So I can start with the numbers. We reported that we reached a cost saving of 125 million. If we look at the full year effect, we estimate that that will be some 30 million higher so that's one effect going into 24. the other effect comes from from impairing leasing assets with with my best guess is that we will have a a reduction of dna in 24 of maybe 75 million so that's the numbers and gusto can answer on on actions um

Basically, there's two main levers to pull. One is gross margin, of course, and there we're actively working supply chain and trying to get in prices and landed costs down, which is a huge focus for us. And the other end of gross margin, of course, is pricing, which we're also putting a lot of effort into improving our pricing. And the second lever is what we call direct selling cost, which is a significant part of our cost structure, given our business models. And then we're trying to leverage our reduced inventory to reduce our fulfillment cost that will continue during the year and also continue to leverage our size when it comes to last mile cost. And of course, on top of that, we have SG&A where we're doing everything we can to be more efficient. It was a super focus for last year. It will be so also for this year. I can also mention that we did our first sort of adventures into AI, especially into automating content generation with both product content and other content. And we now see a number of other opportunities trying to build efficiencies through AI, which we will explore during the year.

Thank you very much. And on that topic, you touched upon that you're seeing the pricing pressure in the market sort easing. Could you elaborate on what you think is the driver behind the decrease? Is it due to a stronger demand, or is it just inventory going out, less inventory in the market, or what do you see? Thank you.

I think first maybe I should correct that. It's not that price pressure is easing off too much, to be quite honest. Price pressure is significant also for all of the fourth quarter, and with a demanding market, we see it going to be challenging also in that respect for the coming year. I think the main driver that we see that we believe will ease off competition is the fact that there's less inventory on a general level in the market.

Got it. Thank you. And I want to talk about premium living that continues to develop fairly strongly, especially in relation to your other segments. What's sort of driving the relative outperformance here? Is it the customer segment, the product portfolio, or just better quality and the underlying asset? If you could help us better understand the dynamics, that would be great. Thank you.

First, I should say that it's a great business. It's a good business model, and it's very well executed by the team at Nordic Nest. And the main driver is continued internationalization. Not for premium living, but for Nordic Nest. The majority of the sales today comes from outside of the Nordics. And that's where we see the biggest growth. I think they're doing a tremendous job in doing what they do, which is basically taking Scandinavian design and exporting it internationally. Strong in Europe and also a not significant business in Asia. But the driver is primarily internationalization. Then, of course, they're pulling all the other levers as we all do. And I should also mention that they do a really, really good job on customer centricity and taking care of the customer.

Okay, got a final question from me on value home. You mentioned that you still have your work cut out for you in terms of profitability improvements. Long term, what's your market target for the segment?

I think we should just be clear that we see the profitability potential of value home as the highest of the three segments, but it's also a segment that come with the highest risk as we saw towards the end of the pandemic. It's a business model with longer lead times and therefore bigger risk, but it's also a business model with the highest gross margins. That's why in good times it is very, very profitable and we would see profitability levels, potential profitability above our long term financial targets of 7%, but also the toughest one when the market is decreasing.

Got it. That was all of my questions. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions.

We have one written question coming in. And that is, what's the current standing with regards to the loan covenants?

So we have an amendment with our two banks up to and including Q1-24, where the covenants are minimum liquidity and profitability. From Q2-24 and onwards, we will then start testing leverage and interest coverage ratio again. And maybe I also should say that also from a Covenant perspective, profitability is the key to improve.

Thank you. That was all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for listening. I hope that we were able to make some clarity on most of your questions. And if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

You are now in a sub-conference.