Midsona AB (publ)

Thank you so much for attending this call. This is Peter Osberg speaking, CEO of the MidZona Company. As a top line summary, I would conclude that we took steps forwards also in the third quarter. We deliver organic sales growth for the second quarter in a row. We do significantly strengthen our margins and also our operating results. That said, we are on a journey and the steps taken so far are really only the first steps in our long-term quest to reach our financial targets. Before we go into the numbers, I would just like to make you aware that there might be certain forward-looking statements in this presentation and that such statements are subject to risk and uncertainty. So let's dive into quarter three. I would say that overall we are reasonably happy with our progress in the quarter. Sales was slightly down due to currency effect, but we're still posting an organic sales growth of just below 3%. Looking at ambient, before one of items, we improved to 32 million, which should be compared to 18 million last year. Absolute A-bit increase from nine million last year to 32 million Swedish krona this year. So quite a good improvement. And if you look at the key components or ingredients of that, of course we're helped by the organic sales. We have good management of our product mix and also quite cost controlled. One of the key items is of course the gross margin. And we saw a good increase from .2% last year to 28% this year. And this is before items affecting comparability. And this was despite continued high raw material prices. And also despite the fact that we have continued our complexity reduction project. What we're doing is that we are relentlessly stopping low margin products. We are key on focus on stopping both low product, profit content in private label and food service. And thereby we are considerably improving our margin profile. It's also worth noting that our leverage has come down significantly. Net debt in relation to EBITDA was at two times in quarter three. And that should be compared to four times last year. So we have effectively half our leverage in one year. And this to me and hopefully also to you clearly signals that we are a financially much more solid company. So as a key conclusion, we'd say that we are taking steps forward also in quarter three. But still there is a lot to improve. Let's dive into our different categories or segment. We did see slight organic growth in the organic category. It grew by 2%. I would say that market conditions are still somewhat challenging. Generally speaking, we see some stabilization in certain markets, but also some markets and channels are still quite depressed. So in that slide, I think that we should be quite satisfied with an organic growth of 2%. Our expectation is that the market will gradually improve as we see lower inflation and interest rates coming down. And we think that this will restore consumer confidence and spending also in the organic category. I would also say that our market intelligence clearly shows that consumers want to spend on healthy and sustainable products, but they have been somewhat restrained in the economic down to the last couple of years. But as economic conditions improve, we think that market conditions for organic also will improve. One of the branches that grew nicely was Davert in Germany. It was held by completely new customers, as well as new listings at older customers. Hedges continued to grow nicely in Norway, while we saw slight declines for Earth to come into market, as the market condition for organic foods was still somewhat restrained in both Sweden and Denmark. Private label continues to be a major driver in the organic segment, had very high demand, but also some production constraints, especially in our German factories. And had it not been for those, sales could have been even higher. If you look at our conventional health food brands, we saw a decline, and this was completely due to us stepping out of some less profitable private label contracts and brand campaigns. And on the positive side, Phryg continued to grow. In the consumer health category, we saw very strong growth, 20% organic growth. And this was driven by a new distribution contract in Finlab, but also very good performance for some of our key brands. Let's go into the divisions. All three divisions improved operating profit compared to last year. But it should be said that it's really the Nordic division, which is the shining star. It's so flat sales actually, as we continue to terminate some unprofitable contracts, but also as mentioned before, we did have weak market conditions for organic foods. Phryg continued to do very well. Helios developed very nicely in Norway, and we did see good development for many of our consumer health brands in the Nordic region as well. So while we saw some up and downs in sales, A-Bit saw very strong development. We are selling a more profitable mix, as we have put more focus on our brands, and at the same level, we have gotten out of low profitability private label contracts. And A-Bit improved a very nice 35% to 66 million in the quarter. The Nordic division, sales increased by 3%, and this was despite some supply challenges that we are putting a lot of effort into fixing now. We have installed extra shifts, and we are also working on production efficiency to better meet expected high demand for the fore and forward in Germany. I would say that in division north, the fur quarter is a little bit of a low season. We posted a loss of 3 million SEC A-Bit. It's better than the minus 7 million last year, but of course, it's not at a satisfactory level. So we will continue to work on strongly improving performance in division north. Also in division south, we have a little bit of a low season in the fur quarter, but I would say that it's still an issue. An A-Bit of minus 8 is of course very low and at an unacceptable low level. And we have started a number of projects to improve operations, but also to boost sales in the region. Gross margin and gross margin management is the key driver behind our improved profit. And here it's of course good to see that we are doing well in all the three divisions. And it's pretty much the same factors in all the divisions that contribute to the better gross margin. It's efficient price management. We are -by-step improving production efficiency, but still a long way to go to be as effective as we want. We are substituting low-margin private label contracts with better-margin ones. We do discontinue low-margin food service contracts and also some licensing agreements. A focus on our brands with higher margins. And it should also say that in this mix, we have rather stable raw material prices. We continue to drive innovation. This is very important for us in order to drive net sales and achieve organic growth. I will just show two quick examples. One is the new innovative spreads that we have launched on the brand name Dabert in Germany. And as we said, generally speaking, we do see very high demand for our spreads. And we have recently expanded our market and expanded our production in this segment. Another example, if we go to the next page, is Gainemax, the sports nutrition brand. And we have recently added three new tasty bars. We have a more healthy profile with a soft context and no added sugar. For those of you following us, you have seen this before, our study that was presented in the spring. It's really focused on increasing our profitability and strengthen our market position for the future. And we have three main pillars to do this. One is what we call one organic powerhouse. It's about strengthening our organic portfolio. Then we have the strategy to grow and expand our health brands, brands like FIX and Gainemax that I've talked about earlier in the presentation. And last but not leastly, to really step change our internal efficiency and harmonization by driving efficiency across the total value chain from sourcing to production. At the same time as we updated our strategy, we also updated our financial targets. So this was done in spring. It's our aim to reach an organic sales curve of three to 5% per year. As said earlier, we are posting the second quarter in a row of organic sales growth. It was 2.6%. We're still not up at the level where we want to be, but step by step, we should get there. Even the 8% and this we should achieve by 2027. Still of course, quite some way to go. And this is really one of our main focus areas to step by step drive towards that target. We do take a decent step forward from 2% in quarter three, 2023 to .5% in quarter three this year. Last but not least, our gearing of net debt versus EBITDAF maximum 2.5 times. We are already under this. And as I said, these signals that we are now much more financially stable and by that could be more offensive in the future. Before I hand over to CFO Max Bocchandra, I would just like to make a short summary. In my mind, our third quarter organic sales that we are on the right track. We can see that the continuous streamlining and coordination of the product range has a clear impact on earnings. And we're continuing to work to great conditions for organic growth. And indeed we did achieve organic growth for the second quarter in a row, now in quarter three. The focus for the rest of 2024 and the upcoming year 2025 is of course to continue with the implementation of the strategy. We're happy about the progress so far, but far from satisfied. It is our mission now to step by step move towards our financial targets.

Max, please. Thank you, Peter. I will start with a short financial summary for the quarter and the net sales declined with 0.4%, but clean from currency and structural effects, the sales grew with 2.6%. The gross margin continued to improve with .3% response and the EBIT increased with 77% compared to last year. The net result improved with 27 million, i.e. 30 million more than the EBIT improvement, this driven by lower financing costs and the fact that last year included 9 million of restructuring costs. The cash flow from the operating activities landed on 42 million, which was 45 million weaker than last year, fully explained by the change in working capital. The net debt EBITDA ratio also continued to improve and landed on 2.0. Looking at net sales development for the quarter, the organic growth, as mentioned, landed on .6% and even clean from one more invoicing day, the quarter showed organic growth. Looking at the sales by brand type, for our own brands, some continue to struggle on markets where we still have a higher demand for products in the lower price range, which also you can see that our private label business focusing more lower price segments grew with .6% during the quarter. And here, South and North Europe continue to show very strong growth, while we in Nordic still had a small negative growth because of the exiting of low margin. Contracts. The licensed brands also grew strongly, but it's a smaller part of our business. It grew with .2% driven by the increased scope for an existing distribution agreement on the Finnish market. Now explaining the EBITDA development compared to last year, the organic sales growth, or in this case labeled as volume, resulted in 5 million higher contribution. The improved gross margin, that was a result of better price management and improved margins on private label contracts, generated 20 million higher contribution. The sales and admin expenses, however, increased somewhat 5 million, mainly driven by higher investments in selling activities. As a summary, the EBITDA landed on 32 million for the quarter, which was an increase of 77% compared to last year. Moving over to the cash flow. As already mentioned, it landed on 42 million, and the cash flow was negatively impacted by a periodic increase in working capital of 23 million, driven by the seasonal build of inventory for quarter four. Finally, from the slide, our cash and debt situation, we ended the quarter with 575 million in available cash, which represents 50% of our last 12 months net sales. And as already mentioned, the net debt in relation to EBITDA continued to improve and landed at 2.0, which is 0.5 times better than our financial targets. With this final slide, I would like to hand back to the operator and open up for questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nicola Kalinowski from ABG Sundial Collier. Please go ahead.

Hi, Peter Maxson, thanks for the presentation. Just one quick question to begin with. Could you perhaps give us a brief update on how you're progressing with the reduction of the SKUs, and perhaps, I guess more importantly, how much work you have left to do in this area?

I mean, as we have discussed in previous calls, this is an ongoing process. And I would say that we're more than halfway by now, but it is for sure an ongoing process. And what it has shown is while it has given some lower net sales and selling categories, it has really improved our margin profile. So this is something that we want to continue. As we have mentioned also in previous calls, we are in the process of setting up a more central purchasing organization. And we're about to hire a clear purchasing director in the near future. And by that, we think that this process will continue well into 2025. So we are doing this step by step now, and really key focus to improve our margin profile. While, of course, at the same time, delivering on our organic growth target.

Yes, that sounds very healthy indeed. I fully understand. And then second question. You wrote in the report a couple of comments on the implementation of the new organization through which you're introducing new central marketing and innovation, purchasing and HR functions. Is there any chance that you could clarify this? Does this mean that your OPEC space is higher now going forward because of new hires? Or is it just an organizational adjustment, if you know what I mean?

I would say that it's more of an organizational adjustment. So we're basically flattening out the organization to have a little bit stronger headquarters, but then also a little bit less resources out in the divisions. So it's not something that should drive major OPEC costs. We will bear a few exceptions. We do hire a sourcing director that we did not have in the company before. But overall, tight OPEC control will continue to be very important to us.

Very clear, thanks. And finally, you appear to tie up a little less working capital than both some peers and a little less than I had anticipated. And that's subjective to a degree. But would you say that this relatively lower capital tie-up is related to a discontinuation of SKUs that have been a negative drag on working capital, or have you become more efficient in some way as well?

Yes, you're right. It's an effect of the complexity reduction as well. We are more efficient. I mean, we do not only look into the profitability of the product. It's basically a return on capital employed analysis done as well. So unfortunately, many of the low margin contracts that we have discontinued did also tie capital, if I look to history. But this then means that we should not need to build the same level of inventory in the same level of growth go forward. So yes, it's true. I do, I mean, if you look then at the absolute value working capital, we are now coming to the level where we were almost last year at the same time. And I do of course not expect us to have the same cashflow effect in quarter four due to that. And maybe actually with the remark we did last year when we presented quarter four, where we came in lower than anticipated and planned, we may have a less release in quarter four due to that.

Yep, super clear answer. Thank you very much, Max. I think that's all for me and well done. 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 closing comments.

Well, Peter here, then I would just like to thank you for your attendance. We are on a journey, we are taking steps forward. We will continue to drive forward towards our financial targets. And happy to talk to you again after next quarter. Thank you so much.