Luotea Oyj (LUOTEA) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. My name is Eero Hautaniemi, and welcome to this Lassila & Tikanoja 2024 Earnings Release. First, a few highlights from 2024. Profitability improved in the circular economy businesses and Facility Services Finland despite of the challenging market environment. We also announced in December 2024 that we start planning for separation of circular economy and Facility Services and a potential demerger process into 2 listed companies. Our sustainability metrics developed very well, especially our work safety and carbon footprint. If we move on to net sales. Our net sales in circular economy businesses increased slightly. And in Facility Services, it declined. In Facility Services Finland, this was more intentional as we discontinued our unprofitable contracts. In Sweden, this was mainly a result of discontinuation of large customer contract at the end of 2023. Adjusted operating profit improved 14% in 2024. And especially in Industrial Services and Facility Services Finland, we had a significant improvement. In Facility Services Finland, the adjusted operating profit more than doubled over the comparison period. As I said, in December, we announced that we started planning for a demerger process. And here is a glimpse what the company might look like after demerger. As you can see in circular economy businesses, we have managed to grow since 2020. The average growth has been a little more than 5% per annum. We have also been able to increase our adjusted EBITDA from EUR 69 million to EUR 86 million and adjusted operating profit from EUR 35 million to EUR 43 million. You can also see that the capital employed in circular economy businesses is much higher than what it is in Facility Services businesses. So most of our capital is tied into the circular economy businesses. In Facility Services businesses, the development has been twofold. In early '20s, we had challenges in our technical services in Finland in the last couple of years in Facility Services -- sorry, in Technical Services in Sweden. But now as we will see when we continue the presentation, the turnaround has happened in Finland, and we expect to see a similar development in Sweden in the coming years. Facility Services in general, tie much less capital and the return on capital is on a healthy level already in Facility Services Finland and hopefully, in Sweden also in the future. As I said, we have started the planning for a demerger. And this would mean that approximately after 12 months, if the extraordinary shareholders' meeting so decides, we would have 2 listed companies, one of which would be circular economy businesses and the other one, facility services businesses. And in this circular economy businesses company, there would be our previous Environmental Services and Industrial Services. And in Facility Services business, Facility Services Finland and Facility Services Sweden. Why are we planning this? The main reason is that we believe that through this demerger, we can release more value for our shareholders. In circular economy businesses, we have a leading market position in Finland and a growing position in Sweden. We operate in large growing market and the megatrends are especially well supporting these circular economy businesses. The business model we have is very resilient. As you saw from the previous slide, when we look at the development from 2020 to 2024, the earnings have grown every year despite the COVID pandemic and despite the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the inflation that resulted after that war began. We have multiple growth avenues in circular economy businesses. And as I said, these are very well supported by the megatrends. On the other hand, in Facility Services, we are an established player. We have worked very hard on our operating model, and it is much improved now, and we can capitalize the current industry trends. We have a very high share of long-term contracts. And as you saw from the slide, the capital employed in this business is at very low level. We have had successful profitability enhancement measures in Facility Services Finland, and we are working very hard on those in Sweden. And this would be indeed a fresh start for the whole entity and -- which is very well positioned to deliver sustainable margin and very good cash flows. At the same time, when we announced the plan for this demerger, we also announced that we started a profitability improvement program for the years 2025 and '26. And the background for this efficiency program or profitability improvement program is that we have certain headwinds that we need to offset. But obviously, we see that there is much more potential in these businesses and especially when we build on the strength of each business. This efficiency program focuses especially on simplifying the processes, improving the efficiency in direct and indirect procurement, increasing the efficiency in the use of fleet and equipment and a number of other improvement measures. And this target of ours, net improvement of EUR 8 million compared to 2023 levels. This already includes the headwinds that we have identified and those headwinds are, for example, municipalization, general cost inflation and increased depreciation based on the ERP renewal program we have been doing in the past years. I will touch those a little more in detail in just a moment. Let's start with the municipalization. And this actually began really after the Waste Law renewal in 2021. And the market that we are discussing here, the total market is about EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million, which is the residential waste collection market. Our market share has been around 30%. It is impossible to get exact figures, but that is the estimation that we have made. And these changes that were introduced in this 2021 legislation increased the municipal control over the residential waste, enhancing the role of municipal competitive tendering. And our estimate is that after this whole renewal has happened by the end of 2028, the free market, if you will, will be about 20% to 25% of this original EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million residential waste market. Our strategy is to be very disciplined in this tendering. And on the right-hand side of this picture, you can see that in 2023 and '24, we won let's say, a good amount of these municipal contracts, whereas we have won less contracts that will become effective in 2026. And the reason here is that we always, when we tender, want to make sure that the return on capital employed and the profitability of these tendered contracts is at acceptable level. But in general, as you can see from this picture, which is based on tenders already done, our share will remain about this 30% mark or around this 30% mark. Another thing which is, on one hand, increases our depreciation, but obviously, that was not the aim for our ERP renewal. The aim was that we had end-of-life systems that needed to be replaced, which we have successfully done. But the main reason is that by changing into this Microsoft Dynamics or D365 cloud-based systems, we have clearly taken our capabilities to next level. And the biggest of these programs has been the renewal of our environmental services systems, and this has taken several years. And the investment has been big, but the reason is that we have not only renewed the sort of the main ERP, but all the related systems around the main ERP. The build of this project was completed by the end of 2024. We were piloting around the year-end. And the first wave of implementation is ongoing and everything has been so far very successful and as planned. And I'm very pleased with the work our people have done. The testing and migration has been very diligent, and that is now paying off. We also renewed our HR Master. We have obviously thousands of employees, and it's really important that we have an efficient system to manage all the HR-related matters. And we are also in the middle of renewal of the system for our industrial services, which also will be based on D365. And at the end of the second half of this year, we will start the renewal of our finance system, which also will be in the 365 family. So what this means is that by mid-2026, we will have systems that are state-of-the-art and will obviously allow much better customer service, but also significantly better efficiency. Then I'd like to move on to business segment by business segment review. And this will be the last time that we will look into Environmental Services and Industrial Services separately. From now on, first quarter 2025, this will form our circular economy businesses. In Environmental Services, 2024 was a success, I would say. Our profitability improved despite the challenging business environment, especially in construction. But in general, the industrial activity was at very low level in Finland, and this obviously affected in general, the market. Our costs were successfully adapted to the current market situation, and this was done through successful efficiency improvement measures. Number of personnel decreased by 65, and this was mainly white collar workers. So this shows that we were able to improve our -- efficiency of our processes. And obviously, we will continue the work '25 onwards. Our market share remained strong and stable in producer responsibility organizations and B2B market. In October, we announced acquisition of Stena Recycling’s pallet business, which is currently with the competition authority. And hopefully, we get the decision in the coming weeks or months at the latest. When we look at the numbers, our net sales was pretty much on the same level as it was a year ago. And our adjusted operating profit improved by 2.6%, which is a little over EUR 1 million and relative profitability increased to 9.5%, which is a pretty good level also in European context. In Industrial Services, we had a very successful year, record year ever. In general, profitable growth continued. The sales grew by 2.9%, which is a very good result in this market environment. In hazardous waste, the demand was stable, and this is because we have a very large customer portfolio scattered all over Finland, and we collect the hazardous waste from very small streams. So it is a very resilient business model, and this was proven also in 2024. In process cleaning, the annual planned maintenance breaks were carried out very successfully, and our resourcing especially was successful. In environmental construction, the development is a little bit twofold. We had projects that were carried out very well. But at the same time, the land masses to our landfills went down quite significantly because of the activity in general in construction sector was at so low level. In Sweden, we have invested into growth, and that was a little bit burdening the profitability in 2024, but we expect these investments to yield results in the coming years. But as I said, in general, a very successful year in Industrial Services and a clear improvement in adjusted operating profit and also in relative terms, we reached 11.2%, which is extremely good result. Facility Services Finland. The turnaround program that we have had ongoing for a couple of years already is now bringing results, and they are quite visible in our 2024 results. Especially, I'm happy that the demand for our new developed services, data-driven cleaning and AI-assisted energy efficiency services continued very strong, and we are getting a new family of products, which really separate us now from the competition. But in general, the profitability has improved quite significantly from previous periods. And we had adjusted operating profit of EUR 9.6 million, which is 4% of the sales. It is starting to be on almost acceptable level. Our target has been and still is to reach an adjusted operating margin percent, which is more than 5%. So we have still ways to go in Finland as well. In Sweden, on the other hand, the turnaround program was progressing slower than we wanted and expected. But there were also positive signs towards the end of 2024. We won in the second half, 2 good-sized contracts. And also in Sweden, the efficiency measures are finally starting to take effect, and we have a, I'd say, optimistic start for 2025 based on these new contracts, but also the proof that we have seen that the efficiency measures are starting to finally work in Sweden as well. Clearly, a very disappointing result. Adjusted operating profit was minus EUR 7.5 million. And despite the fact we reduced quite a bit of number of personnel, our sales declined even more, 16%, and this was more or less the result of this -- losing this one large customer at the end of 2023. Sustainability is very important for us in Lassila & Tikanoja, and I'm very proud to share with you the results of 2024. Our own carbon footprint declined to 27,200 tonnes of CO2, and this is a very good result. As you can see, it is -- we are already now at the targeted level of 2026, and we are making very good progress towards our target of 2030, which is 24.4%. This development didn't come by itself. Obviously, there are a number of measures behind it. We have replaced big part of our fleet. And we have increased our HVO use, which is currently close to 30% of all the diesel that we are using. And that means 4.5 million liters of diesel we're using is HVO, which is quite a lot. Also, our recycling rate has increased. There is a certain statistical change done by the authorities in Finland that sort of helped us to reach this higher level. But nevertheless, we have very actively worked on the actions to increase our recycling rate, and I'm happy to see the results also here in our report. Also, our sick leaves have now come down to the levels pre-COVID, which is also a very positive thing and has helped us to achieve better results, especially in Facility Services Finland. Now I'd like to hand over to Joni, who will go deeper into the financials.

All right. Thank you, Eero, and good morning, everyone, also on my behalf. As Eero said, I will next go through the financial highlights of the fourth quarter as well as financial year 2024. And I would like to start by highlighting our strong cash flow generation between the second and fourth quarter, especially. Our net operating cash flow after investments totaled almost EUR 29 million in the last quarter of '24 compared to EUR 23 million in the comparison period. Also, we had quite substantial items affecting comparability in the fourth quarter amounting to almost EUR 29 million on EBIT level. And of course, this had an impact on our financial position. However, we can see that our financial position remained solid at the end of the year regardless of these sizable nonrecurring items. Also, obviously, our key performance indicators such as earnings per share and return on capital employed were affected by these nonrecurring items. However, if we adjust these measures for these items affecting comparability, we can see improving -- slightly improving trend in both of these KPIs. Okay. Let's start by looking at our net working capital development. At the end of the last year, our net working capital amounted to minus EUR 46.5 million compared to minus EUR 47.6 million in the comparison period. As a company, we are fairly satisfied with this result if we take into account that our net sales decreased by almost 4% year-on-year. And also, we have quite substantially reduced use of factoring in financial year '24. Also, we can see from the graph that there was a strong release of net working capital in the fourth quarter, just as it was in the comparison period. The released working capital amounted to EUR 17 million in the fourth quarter. All right. Moving on to capital expenditure. Our capital expenditure decreased by almost 38% in -- compared to '23, and it amounted to EUR 37.5 million, while in 2023, CapEx totaled a bit over EUR 60 million. And the decrease came predominantly from Environmental Services and especially the heavy-duty truck investments during '24. And just like Eero already highlighted the differences between our circular economy and facility services businesses in terms of capital intensity, we can see that 95% of this CapEx in '24 was or took place in -- or within circular economy businesses and only 5% in facility services businesses. Also, if we look at the income statement and depreciation and amortization, we can see a slight decrease year-on-year in 2024, EUR 56 million compared to EUR 58.5 million a year earlier. All right. Moving on to cash flow generation. As I already said, cash flow generation was strong, especially after the weak first quarter. And if we look at the graph, we can see that practically all of our cash flow after investments were generated during the second half of the year. But on total year level, we generated EUR 81.4 million of operating cash flow compared to EUR 93.6 million in 2023. And as I said, this was practically due to the weak Q1 or the difference between '24 and '23 was practically due to weak Q1 cash generation. January-December '24 operating cash flow after investments was EUR 40.8 million compared to EUR 50.9 million in '23. So there's a decrease of EUR 10 million. This is practically due to significant tax refunds we received in Q1 '23. And also, there was an increase in net finance costs in 2024 compared to 2023. And as I said, the company's financial position remains strong regardless of the sizable one-offs affecting group equity, especially in the last quarter of the year. Our gearing ratio amounted to 73.2% compared to 69.5% at the end of '23. There was a slight decrease in equity ratio, obviously affected by these items affecting comparability. Equity ratio was 35.4% compared to 36.7% at the end of '23. And if we look at the net interest-bearing debt, it was approximately EUR 153 million at the end of '24 which is a decrease of EUR 7.8 million year-on-year. This is practically due to decrease in leasing liabilities year-on-year. Our cash flow -- sorry, our cash at the end of the year amounted to EUR 34 million, which is practically at the same level as a year earlier. We have no change in our maturity structure of long-term loans. Basically, we have this EUR 40 million bank loan maturing in August '26. And then we have this bond of EUR 75 million maturing in 2028. So obviously, we will be refinancing this bank loan of EUR 40 million during the first half of this year. And if we look at our effective interest rate, we can see that we are slightly below the last year's or the end of last year's level, basically coming through the decrease in market interest rates. It's good to note that almost 2/3 of our interest rates are based on fixed interest rates and 1/3 based on variable interest rates. All right. Return on capital employed was obviously also affected by one-off items in the fourth quarter as well as weakened financial performance in Facility Services Sweden. Our reported return on capital employed amounted to 3.3%, which was a result of weakened operating profitability, but on the other hand, increased capital efficiency, basically due to this goodwill impairment in our Facility Services Sweden business. If we adjust both the income statement and balance sheet for these items affecting comparability, we can see that our adjusted return on capital employed would have been 11.1%, which is an increase of 1 percentage point compared to 2023. Looking at the business area specific returns, I would especially highlight the excellent return on capital employed achieved in Facility Services Finland, which was more than 51% compared to 19.4% in 2023. Also in our circular economy businesses, the development was favorable. Net profit or our L&T share of net profit from our joint venture, Laania was EUR 3.2 million, a bit less than in 2023 when it was EUR 3.6 million. And finally, looking -- looking at our earnings per share development, also heavily impacted by one-off items and increase in net finance costs year-on-year. Our reported earnings per share was minus EUR 0.05 compared to EUR 0.77 in 2023. Also here, if we adjust the net result impact of our items affecting comparability, we can see a slight increase in earnings per share amounting to EUR 0.78. All right. Perhaps I can finally mention that the Board proposes a dividend of EUR 0.50 per share for financial year '24 compared to EUR 0.49 in '23. Then I will hand over again back to Eero for guidance.

Thank you, Joni. Our guidance for 2025 is that we estimate our net sales to be at the same level as in the previous year and adjusted operating profit to be at the same level or better compared to the previous year. And this concludes our presentation, and now we are ready for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions online -- on the phone lines, but we do have a couple of them online. So let's start with the first one. Is selling Facility Services businesses still an option?

We are now planning for the demerger. We had this strategic review of our Facility Services in 2024, where one of the options was divestment also. But the conclusion was that it is in the best interest of the shareholders and the company now to continue on this path where we're planning the demerger.

Then there's a question about wage inflation. So what kind of wage inflation are you expecting for 2025? And is there any major increases coming in some of your businesses, which could impact your profitability?

I wish I knew. The negotiations are ongoing as we speak. And let's say, the expectations from the employees' association are on very high level. And at the same time the -- let's say, the level that the employers are willing to pay are on the low levels. So I don't know. We have a certain percentage built in our plans, but obviously, I cannot disclose that.

So when do you expect to break even in Facility Services Sweden?

I don't want to give out a specific date. But as I said in the presentation, the improvement or the efficiency measures and also the new contracts sort of makes us much more confident that the worst is behind us, and we are now on the way to improve profitability. When exactly are we going to break even, that obviously depends on things that are not in our hands. For example, the general market development in Sweden has a big impact as well as the mentioned salary increases, et cetera. But I'm much more optimistic when it comes to 2024. And hopefully, the time or the moment in time when we can report positive numbers also from Sweden is not too far in the future.

Facility Services Finland continued very strong improvement. Was there something exceptionally strong in Q4?

No. This result was the outcome of hard and systematic and diligent work that the whole team in Facility Services Finland has done. And now we are trying to replicate the same thing in Sweden.