Svitzer Group A/S

Welcome, everyone, to our webcast presentation for annual report 2024. Today, I will say a few words, and then I will hand it over to Knut Winkler, the CFO in Twitter, and then in the end, we'll host a Q&A session, so an opportunity to ask questions. So I think we should just dive into it. So in general, 2024 was a good year for Switzer. We achieved the revenue growth of 9% in constant exchange rate and increased our EBITDA margin to 29.9%, so really positive. We also had a positive revenue in free cash flow and are proposing a dividend payment of 8 kroner per share. Overall, it was a very busy year for Switzer. As you know, we had a demerger from Maersk and a separate listing. And on top of that, we also implemented a number of new contracts. So we started up operations in new operations in Greece, in Brazil, and in Australia. So big contracts coming on stream. We took delivery of our first transverse tuck. It's a new tuck design that we put into operations in the Netherlands. And I'll have more on that in the next slides, but so far it looks very good on its performance. We also ordered the world's first battery methanol truck, also designed on the transverse truck design. And as I said, we started up operations in numerous places and also took delivery of four nuclear vessels to the new operations in Port Hedland in Australia. On the growth side, for new growth, we were awarded a five-year contract with two trucks in the Panama Canal that will start up in mid this year. And then after the year, so in January, we were awarded a big contract for the Oman LNG operation with four trucks that will start up in 2026. So two significant growth projects secured. We also increased our presence in Brazil, taking delivery of new trucks and entering the port of Itaqui. And we secured all the contract renewals we could secure in terminal towage. So overall, a successful year that we are very happy with. One of the things we're also proud about, as I said, is taking delivery of our first transfer truck. The transfer truck design is a new design that has several benefits. First of all, it's more efficient, so you can produce more force on the line, more force to push or pull the ships you assist with, with less power, so lower fuel consumption, meaning lower CO2 consumption, but also, of course, lower running costs. And then the way it's designed also means it has improved the safety and maneuverability capabilities, and it can also bring ships in and out faster in ports. so so we are very happy with this development we took delivery of the first one we have two more coming that will go into operations in newcastle in australia in the next few months and then we have another on top of that five on order so so very good sign and so far we've received very good feedback from customers in portsmouth I mentioned we won two significant contracts, and we also won some smaller contracts we're not highlighting here. One is for the Panama Canal Authority as the first private operator or provider of tugboats in the Panama Canal, five-year contracts with technical management. And then the other one, Oman LNG, nine-year contract for four tugs for the Oman LNG export terminals. So good big contracts that we are happy with that we're now building trucks for and we'll start up as mentioned this year for Panama and the startup for 26 for Oman. If we dive a little bit down into our regions, then if we start with Australia, we saw a significant revenue increase and also a good EBITDA increase. partly because of the terminal torch operations I mentioned, for example, in Port Hedland started up, and partly because of our tariff increases in harbor torch. We didn't see an increase in growth, but that was more than offset by price increases and the growth. Sorry, we didn't see an increase in the number of top jobs in our harbor torch operations, but we saw the price increase and we had the growth in the terminal torch business. If we turn to Europe, Then we've also seen an 11% revenue increase and a 16% EBITDA increase. The year started off a little bit weak in Europe, but we caught up somewhat in the end of last year. So overall, a positive development for Europe. There is still more to do, especially in the UK, on making that, reaching the profitability we like to see in operations. And we have a We have plans for that that we're implementing, and we started seeing the benefits of that in quarter four. If we turn to Americas, we grew revenue 9% and EBITDA 8%, which actually have to be considered that 23 was also a really good year for Americas. So overall, we're seeing good growth. We had some special jobs, so jobs that are outside the normal harbor torch and terminal torch scope. We won a few new contracts for supporting import terminals for LNG, and overall saw good growth. Also, actually, an improvement in Argentina, where we're seeing inflation coming down. In EMEA, which is the region that is primarily almost exclusively terminal storage, we also saw revenue growth and EBITDA growth. So overall, and that was very much due to both the harbour torch volume in the one harbour torch port we have, it's in Morocco, went up. And of course, also the tariff escalation, so the price increase in terminal torch helped drive the growth.

Good.

I will then hand it over to Knud for more details on our financial performance.

Thank you, Kasper. I'll dive a little bit more into the numbers on the following slides. So if we start off with the revenue development, we've seen revenue grow by 9%, as Kasper mentioned, in constant exchange rates. So from the 5.8 billion Danish kroner to 6.3. It is basically two different elements playing into this. So around 5.5% of the growth is on our existing business. It comes out of tariff increases, as Kasper mentioned, in Harbour Toad, so no underlying activity increase, but increases on the tariffs. We had a number of special jobs where we make a little bit more money than on the standard truck jobs. We have had contractual escalations in our terminal torch business. So this is very much the elements that go into the growth in our underlying business. Then we have entered into new contracts, both in 23 and in 24. We have full year effect from the contracts that started up in fully in the UK from July 23. So that now has sort of a full year effect in 24 versus a half year in 23. We started up the Woodside contract in Australia in October 23. So now that's again, full year effect versus a three month effect in 23. Then we had the Alexandropolis in Greece, which started up from the beginning of the year. So that's sort of a full year from the beginning and that will continue for a lot of years. And then finally, the BHP contract where we now have five vessels on contract, that those vessels have been put into operation sort of consecutively during 2024, starting with the first vessel in April. So whereas we haven't seen a lot of activity increase in the harbor towage, we have seen quite a few additional vessels being deployed in terminal towage and that sort of underpins sort of the activity growth in towage in the global towage market overall. If we then look at the EBITDA growth, EBITDA has grown 193 million from almost 1.7 to almost 1.9. basically 50-50 split between growth in our existing business. And it's very much the same factors that come into play. It's the tariff increases, it's the more attractive special jobs that we've done, and it's the escalations in that generate the 94 million that we see in the existing business. And then the other half is the new contracts, the full year effect and the new contracts that we started up during the year. Foley, Alexandroplis, BHP and the Woodside contracts that contribute the other half of the EBITDA increase. And what we're seeing is that we have managed to increase the margin from 29.3 to 29.9%. So a very healthy increase in the margin along with a very healthy increase in revenue. The EBITDA is adjusted here for the one-off cost related to the demerger from Maersk and the listing on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. It amounts to a total of 130 million kroner. that hits the P&L. We have another 31 million that have been put onto the balance sheet relative to the funding package that was entered into in connection with the listing. So this is the only adjustment that has been made to the EBITDA and we do not foresee that there will be any adjustments in 2025. Then looking at the cash flow generation, I think the performance in 2024 just goes to show that this is a business that has a very strong cash flow generation ability. We have grown the cash flow from 61, the free cash flow from 61 to 584 million in 2024. And if we break it down to the parts, we see that the cash flow from operation has increased by 58 and this is even after deducting the 130 million that we spent on the separation listing. So basically it's 188 million kroner up on the operating cash flow from an EBITDA growth of 193, so close to 100% reflection in the cash flow generation. So we think that's really something that we're proud of that we can generate that cash from the operations. Then another point that has improved the cash flow and that's the biggest part that is that we have reduced the capex in 23 and 22 for that matter we had significant investments in growth capex which resulted in the particularly the terminal torch operations going live in 2024 as I mentioned before. And we have not won significant contracts during 2024 that we are investing in. So the growth capex has reduced by 484 million kroner from 23. That means that our capex overall in 2024 is below a billion. We end up at 981 million. which is below the average that we see. So we've previously communicated an average of around 17% to 18% of revenue, and this is under 15%. So we are below the average, which of course also, and we'll talk about that in a minute, impacts the growth as we see it for 2025. But for 2024, we see a very strong cash flow generation. And talking of cash flow generation, The strong cash flow will allow us to pay out dividend for the year of eight kroner per share is what we proposed to the ATM to be approved in April. And we can do that without exceeding our leverage target of 2.0. We are currently at 1.9. So the strong cash flow has allowed us to decrease the leverage ratio. And even when we have paid out the total of 252 million kroner in dividends, we will retain a significant flexibility to act on growth opportunities that may arise, whether those are organic or inorganic. So we see this as a very strong payout on the results. And we retain a very flexible balance sheet to pursue future investments. The way we've arrived at the eight kroner per share, we have a dividend policy that says 40 to 60% of the net result. And we have chosen to add back the one-off cost to the separation listing, which means that our starting point for the calculation is just about the 500 million kroner. And therefore we take 50% of that and pay that out as dividends. Then turning to the outlook, When we look at the revenue generation, as I mentioned before, the investments in growth has been lower in 24 than an average year. And therefore, we see the revenue growth being around 1 to 5% measured in constant exchange rates. So the underlying assumptions here are that we do not foresee significant changes to the volumes in Harbour Toad, so that activity remains flat as we see it. However, we do see tariff increases similar to what we have seen in the past at or slightly above the CPI in the respective countries. In terms of total, we will see the full year effect of the BHP vessels that we have deployed during 2024. And we will see a quarter of impact from the Panama Canal, the two vessels that Kasper mentioned earlier in the call. So that leads us to the 1 to 5% growth in revenue in constant exchange rates. When we look at the EBITDA, We see that the tariff increases will allow us to protect our margins, so we do expect the margin to remain around the 30%, but we guide the EBITDA to grow 0 to 7% measured in constant exchange rates. So there is, you can say, if you measure on the midpoints, there is a slight increase in the margin from 29.9 to around 30%, or maybe a little bit above that. So it comes obviously from growth in the tariff and also the growth in the terminal tolls activity, but it also comes from some of our cost initiatives and and and the profitability initiatives that we are doing for example in the uk where we are right sizing the feet amongst others so so that we we expect to to retain the the margin around the 30 percent when we look at the capex um we are guiding 1.1 to 1.3 billion kroner in in gross capex this is along the lines of the average that I mentioned before, and which we also communicated at our Capital Markets Day in March last year. This is 18% of the revenue that we expect to generate, and this will be sort of the average capex required to maintain the fleet and to grow in line with the market. In 2025, we do have a higher number than normal on the docking, even if we have a significant feed of the more than 400 vessels, there are differences year on year, whether we have a lot of dockings or not. And 2025 is one of the years where we have more dockings than average. So the maintenance capex will be slightly higher than what we saw in 2024. And we do expect to spend more money on growth capex than what we saw in 2024. Of course, assume that we will win some of the contracts that are out there to be won. So when we look at the overall assumptions, we do not expect any changes to the competitive landscape, so no changes to port entries from our competitors, and we do not see any of those on the cars either. We have an assumption that we call a relatively stable geopolitical situation, and I think It's difficult to say these days what is a stable geopolitical situation. There's a lot of things up in the air. From the initiatives that we've seen so far, we believe that that would have a relatively small impact on our numbers. The countries that have been hit very directly by the USA in terms of tariffs, Mexico, Canada and China, we are not present in those countries with any significance. So we do not see those having an immediate impact. However, it is very difficult to predict what the right impacts will be on the trade flows. This could be upside as well as downsides for Switzerland, depending on how the trade flows develop. But it's very clear, if this converts into a global recession, then of course we would have a negative implication similar to other companies, but although we believe that we will be hit relatively less. Assumption as well is that we expect to maintain all of the terminal contracts that we have. We did not lose any of our terminal contracts in 2024, so we continue the streak of renewing all of our contracts and we expect that to continue. And as well, we do see, and this is something that can potentially impact the reported numbers, especially on the top line, volatility in the exchange rates uh what we've seen as of late is that they are quite volatile up and down depending on uh on uh on what comes out of the white house in washington um and what we have facing our guidance on is that the rates for 2025 would be similar to the average that we've seen for 2024. uh but this is of course something that we're keeping a very close eye on Those were the words on the guidance. And just to recap, 2024 was a very good year for Switzerland. We outgrew our own expectations on the top line by growing 9%. And at the same time, we increased the margin. So the EBITDA grew 11%. And in addition to that, we generate a very strong cash flow that allows us to pay out the 8 kroner per share in dividends. On the operational side, our innovation came to fruition in terms of the transverse top that is now in operation, and we believe there's a big potential in that going forward. And last but not least, we managed to secure two contracts, although the last one was signed only in January, but two significant growth contracts in the terminal toll segment to generate revenue and profits in the years to come. That was it from me, and we are now ready for the Q&A. Operator, will you take over, please?

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Loris Hinder with Nordia. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you, morning, and congratulations with the numbers. A few questions on mainly on the terminal part of the business. You mentioned that you haven't lost any contracts in 24. I mean, you won the one in Oman, but have you added anything operational during the course of, you have the PHP, of course, but besides that, any more contracts in 24?

So we added Alexandropolis from the beginning of the year that started in January. We've added the five vessels in BHP during the course of the year with the first one going on contract from April. And then, as I mentioned, we won the Panama Canal, which will start up in Q4, 25. And then the last one, Oman, LNG, that will start up in 26. So those are the additions to the terminal storage portfolio. But I think it's important to mention that the securing all of the extensions of the contracts that expire during the year, I think that's an important testament to the fact that we do deliver significant value to our customers and that they acknowledge that.

And how many vessels are there in the terminal storage part of the business?

I don't have that number right in front of me.

I believe it's around 120.

Yeah, it talks, but then you have the other smaller events, right? Okay, I can ask Michael about it.

Yeah. It's in a year old, but it's not substantially changed.

And then regarding the, if you look a little bit about the outlook for 2025, I mean, volumes are not really, at least not in the harbor church, increasing in terms of the number of tuck jobs. So assume that the, you mentioned that the growth that we're going to see here is mainly price related. I mean, do you already know now what kind of price increases you will see, for example, in Australia, which is normal in April? Or can you say anything about the CPI regulations that you will see here or maybe already have seen in the start of this year?

Yes, I can say that. So in Europe, it's of course individual how much we increase the prices in the different ports. It's actually on the website. We have published exactly what those prices are. We're going to look at the tariffs, right? But in general, it's around the 4% level in Europe, as far as I recall. On average, in Australia, it's going to be a little higher, but around that level as well. But that's the tariff increase in Harbour Torch. Then there are some Harbour Torch customers that are on different contractual arrangements, and there you have to go out and negotiate a price increase directly. But we're also doing that, and those will be at the same levels.

So around 4% also for Terminal Torch.

No, sorry, that was Harbour Torch. 45% in general in Harbour Torch, Terminal storage, it's much more individual with the contracts because they relate sometimes to local CPIs. And depending on the contract structure, the price increase you see may only be applicable to the cost element of the day rate. But that depends very much. So you can say in terminal storage, typically you see escalations between 2% to maybe 6% or 7% depending on which country you're in.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Again, in order to ask a question, press Start, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.

Your next question comes from the line of Deepak Morya with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Tim, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Thanks for the presentation and the remarks about the guidance. I do understand that you're not present in markets such as the U.S. and China, which are majorly impacted by the trade tensions, but you definitely are present in the rest of the world, and anything happening between these two major economies will have some impact on the overall trade environment. So do you think that would probably reduce volumes for you in the harbor storage business? And the second question was about what is the outlook for costs? I understand that there is some tariff increase, which you are confident of realizing in terms of pricing. But can you speak a little more about the cost headwinds? That would be my two questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much for those questions. So the first one on trade. So as you mentioned, we're not present in those countries that are for now directly impacted. What will be interesting for us or will determine the impact on us is how trade flows change. So if you see an overall recession, less economic activity, that's not good for most companies and it's also not good for Switzerland. So if volumes, if ships stop calling ports in general or call ports less, That's not good for us. But what we typically see is that trade patterns change and how they change is very, very difficult to predict. So we are present in 37 countries in 180 operations, you can say globally. And what we sometimes see is that volume go down in one place. So the trade may go less to a certain port, but then it goes into another port. And we may have presence in both ports. So, for example, if you see less volume going into the U.S. from China, for example, that volume may go to Argentina, Brazil, the Caribbean, where we are present. So what we saw during Corona was this portfolio effect where we saw volumes, for example, decline in the short term in Europe, but then they had a record harvest in Brazil and we saw strong volumes from Brazil. So we're pretty, unless we see a global recession, then we are quite, I mean, we are well balanced to whether the impact of these changing trade flows because of the diversified presence we have. And then of course, 40% of our earnings come from the terminal storage segment that are fixed contracts, and those will not be impacted by changing trade patterns. So we have a solid platform also in, you can say that adverse environment.

Yeah, on your second question, on the cost side, right? So what we're guiding is a slightly increasing EBITDA margin, right? So our expectation is that the tariff increases and the escalations that we will see on the harbour tours and on the contracts and terminal tours, that that will more than cover the cost increases, also relatively speaking. So we do see that the tariff increases are sufficient to protect the margin and even expand it a bit.

And we have several, just to supplement, we have several initiatives ongoing on increased efficiency, you can see, that we're implementing to ensure that we see those margins come up at least a little bit.

Okay, thank you. That's very clear. That'll be from me.

And good luck. Thank you. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Lars Hendroff with Nordia. Please go ahead. Lars, your line is open.

Yeah, sorry. Thank you. Just to follow up on the trade pattern and the impact on your business, the recent suggestion in the U.S. about charging Chinese-operated or Chinese-built vessels for any port calls Have you made any thoughts about how that will maybe affect the trade patterns? I don't know, Mexico and Canada, you probably won't see that much of an increase since there will be a tariff there, but maybe in Latin.

Yeah, so first of all, and thanks for that question, as we mentioned, we're not present in the U.S., so that rule, if it is implemented, will not hit us directly since we do not operate in any U.S. ports. Now, we haven't made an assessment last because it's, I think, you know, it's a little bit difficult for us to predict, but what we, you know, but you're right, if it means more volume into Brazil, then that's a good thing for us. But it's not something we are baking into our forecast that we'll see either an upside or downside by these trade wars or these increased tariffs. And we haven't been sitting and modeling to a larger extent. And why don't we do that? The ports we're in, I mean, we're in. So if you see, if you're in Santos where we have five turfs now, if you see an increase in underlying volume, that's great for all players in Santos. If that increase comes in another port, then we have a plan for which ports to go into in Brazil in general on the next line. And that's something that we build up over, you can say, time, looking at the customer arrangements and so on. So it does not make... I mean, we don't have to spend a lot of time modeling those things that are not certain because it will not necessarily impact our short-term decision-making at least.

Okay, so also no... No request or anything from customers about, you know, potential ramp up or any signs of that?

Not yet. No, not yet.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Again, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad.

We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.

Your next question comes from the line of Louis Fu with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for the presentation.

Just three questions, please. So the first one is on volume. And I appreciate that you have commented on the overall trade environment in 2025. And because we're already two months in 2025, can you share some color that you're seeing that what regions are seeing more growth in volume and what regions that you see are more challenging And second question, terminal college. So one question is that if you can share approximate value of the Panama Canal and the OMEN LNG contract, like what kind of revenue and episode contribution should we expect when they are in operation? And also like the focus on winning more contracts in 2025, Do you think there will be more opportunities present in the market in 2025 than 2024? And the third question is on the cost management that you have mentioned. And do you think this cost management will be simply for the UK or that they're involved in the broader areas?

Thank you.

Thank you for those questions.

We'll try to answer them and let us know if we didn't answer all of your follow-up questions. I think the first question was on how we have seen develop the first few months of 2025. And I think our overall assumption that we're working with, that Knud also mentioned, that we don't expect for the year revenue growth, sorry, volume growth in our harbor storage business That's probably what we're seeing now. We will caution a little bit. We do see fluctuations month on month, which evens out over the year. Of course, you can have some indication from the first two months, but for us, we need to see a little bit on the longer term. I would just say that the assumption we have now on no volume growth in harbors is probably what we're seeing so far. And then there was a question.

Yeah, there was a question around the contribution from the two new contracts in Panama and in Oman. And so we can't really share the details of those of those contracts, the revenue contribution and contribution. But I think if you look at the at the average. Revenue and if it up her talk in in the terminal total segments, these would be relatively close to that, I think you will not be far off if you go with a with an average number. So, so I think that's that's probably the closest I can get in terms of details and then to your last question Chloe on the on the cost management is it only the UK or is it a broader initiative. So in the UK, we're running a number of different initiatives addressing the specific issues in the UK, one of which is the size of the fleet relative to the activity in the ports across the UK. But it's very clear there are efficiency benefits that we are pursuing across the organization. And this goes both for the head office, it goes also for regional offices and our operations in the individual ports.

and so so it is that the cost initiatives are broadly founded across the entire organization and you had a last question on whether we believe there will be more optimism on contract awards in in in 24 and 25 you know i don't think we have seen a lack of optimism in 24 in general what we're seeing is we want a lot of contracts in 23 and then we want a less in 24 It was not because we lost more contracts, it was because there were less contracts that we go for that were awarded. So that timing element of when you have contract awards is quite, you can say, important when we look at calendar years. So we expect that now we can say we had the first award already of R&D and And we work with a few of these awards every year. That's our assumption, knowing that it can slip either side of the 31st of December. So we don't see any change necessarily in the business environment around these longer-term contracts that we're pursuing. And of course, we work with a pipeline. So we monitor these projects well in advance, most of them before they materialize. And the pipeline we have today is healthy. And we have several projects that are you know, moving along that pipeline. So we remain, you know, fairly optimistic that we'll get our good share of those contracts.

Chloe, your line is still open. Thank you for the opportunity.

I will now turn the call back to Kasper in Laos for closing remarks.

Thank you very much.

As we said a few times, we've had a good year in 24. We are very happy with the results, not least, of course, the financial results were good, but we're also happy with the way they were delivered and the significant amount of work that went into the demerge and the listing. So we are quite optimistic on the future. We see a year where we got less growth than last year, but as we've tried to explain a few times, the growth is not on a linear scale. It will come a little bit in a lumpy form, and we've had growth in 24 and now we expect a little bit less than 25 and then it will i'm sure pick up again so we are confident that uh that we'll have um yeah decent year again this year thanks a lot for for listening