Home / Transcripts / Videndum Plc (VID.L) · February 25, 2021

Videndum Plc (VID.L) Earnings Call Transcript

February 25, 2021

London Stock Exchange GB Consumer Discretionary Household Durables earnings 53 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Stephen Bird executive
#1

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vitec's full year results presentation for 2020. I'm Stephen Bird, Group Chief Executive; and with me here is Martin Green, Group Finance Director. Today, I want to start with our performance, explain how the pandemic has opened up new opportunities for us and tell you about the recovery that we're now seeing. Martin will then take you through the financial results, and there will be the opportunity to ask questions at the end. 2020 was a very tough year, and I'm really proud of how our employees responded, and we're coming out of the pandemic in very good shape. We managed the impact of COVID effectively, have protected our people and continue to invest in the long-term capabilities of the business. This is thanks to the outstanding hard work of employees across the group. So turning to our results. Our full year results came in as expected, and Martin will give you the financial details shortly. We finished the year well with our largest order book ever. Despite the industry shutdown and the decline in revenue, many market segments saw growth last year as more and more video content is being consumed, captured and shared. In particular, this included significant revenue growth in JOBY products and our streaming solutions. We delivered exceptionally strong operating cash flow, and we significantly reduced our net debt. We implemented mitigating actions in Q1 to cut costs and the year-on-year benefit of these actions was GBP 22.6 million. However, we protected R&D spend to be able to benefit from growth opportunities as markets recover. 2021 has started really well with a record order book, even though our markets are only about 70% open. As a result of our confidence in the future, we're proposing to pay a final dividend of 4.5p per share. Looking forward, we still expect 2021 to be a year of recovery and investment. But we believe that our markets will grow faster long term than we previously expected, and that we will deliver strong margin recovery. Although it's still a challenging and changing environment, our end market drivers remain intact and we have seen many positive trends accelerate. We're also starting to see the benefit from the structural market changes that have occurred over the last 12 months. There are some exciting opportunities, particularly in creative solutions with streaming. This is where we continue to focus a lot of investment and resource. I'm really pleased with the position we are in and the opportunities ahead of us. While there remains some uncertainty about the duration and continued impact of the pandemic, our confidence that underlying trading conditions will continue to improve, has increased. Now I'll provide a market and strategy update. Our markets are recovering well, and we believe that our end market drivers are even more relevant than before as people are consuming, capturing and sharing even more content. So as markets recover fully, the growth prospects for the group are very good. We're seeing fundamental and lasting structural changes in TV and Cine production as a result of the pandemic, and we're investing to capitalize on these substantial opportunities. I'll go into detail about these in the divisional sections, but briefly, key changes include the fact that video communication has grown exponentially, driving demand for our streaming products and more content has been consumed on subscription channels like Netflix and Amazon Prime. And when production sets fully reopen, we expect original content creation to grow dramatically, driving demand for our video transmission and monitoring systems. Broadcasters are having to do things differently to ensure a safer working environment, and this means further automation in studios, which will benefit our robotic camera systems and our voice-activated prompting solutions. And finally, vlogging, social media usage and homeworking have increased significantly. This means that more people are using our JOBY products to create content and communicate via video on smartphones and cameras. Although the pandemic initially hit our markets very hard, I'm delighted that they are recovering so well and that there are a number of significant opportunities. Now let's look at our total addressable markets. We believe that our own market drivers are intact and will recover to pre-pandemic levels shortly. In the medium term, we believe that our total addressable market has expanded and will grow faster than we previously expected mainly due to our ability to serve the streaming market. Streaming has grown strongly during the pandemic. The high-end enterprise segment has doubled in the last 12 months. And although difficult to quantify, we estimated it's currently worth about $300 million, and we'll continue to grow quickly. This represents a significant opportunity for us. As a result, the expected CAGR for Creative Solutions is now much higher than previously at 17%. Now moving to discuss each of our 3 divisions, starting with Imaging Solutions. We expect Imaging Solutions to recover well when studios reopen and travel is resumed. Approximately 65% of the division's revenue comes from our core professional, high-end photographic and business-to-business customers. This market is resilient and the new higher-value compact system cameras now represent over 50% of the ILC market. These new cameras will stimulate demand for our higher-end products. Approximately 20% of Imaging's revenue comes from the hobbyist segment of low-end photo supports and bags. We do expect this to continue to decline as smartphones continue to replace lower-value cameras. However, growth of our JOBY, audio and motion control products is expected to offset the weakness in the hobbyist segment. We expect the transition to the higher-margin e-commerce channel to continue. And we have already restructured the division to benefit from this continued change. And Imaging's direct e-commerce revenue grew about 50% year-on-year. Revenue from our key e-commerce partners also continue to grow and in 2020, about half of total divisional revenue came from online platforms. Now I'd like to look at JOBY in a bit more detail. JOBY is very important to us strategically, and it's now one of our major assets. I'm delighted that JOBY has grown so well despite the pandemic, and it's now an important strategic growth engine for the group. JOBY has benefited for the increase in vlogging, social media usage and video communication over the last 12 months. The launch of the new JOBY products in March was a huge success despite the pandemic and despite only initially selling on joby.com and Amazon. We've also entered the fast-growing LED lighting and on-camera microphone segments with JOBY-branded products. JOBY is outperforming the competition and is now the #2 brand for support in the U.S. behind Manfrotto, which is #1. It's seen as a high-end premium priced product and is used globally by professional influencers like vloggers, YouTubers and podcasters using compact system cameras. It's also used by consumers with their smartphones. JOBY's average retail price is $150, and JOBY is seen as a core unique brand with unique technology. And we have robust defendable IP with numerous enforceable patents that we use to defend our market share. During 2021, production of some of the flagship JOBY GorillaPod products will be in-sourced from China to our automated facility in Italy. And the Made in Italy stamp differentiates us from our competitors, gives us greater control of the design and manufacturing process, improves customer service, has a lower environmental impact, is cost competitive and improves margins. JOBY is here to stay. It's a really innovative brand with a large and growing social media following, and the team has an exciting range of new products to launch this year. Now let's look at Production Solutions. We expect a strong recovery from Production Solutions with continued growth in on-location productions, including news and sport and in our LED lighting and mobile power products. TV and film production and live events have adapted to safe working guidelines with a restricted number of crew allowed in studios and productions. These new guidelines benefit remote control products like our robotic cameras and voice-activated prompters, although short-term equipment budgets could be constrained. We expect to benefit from rescheduled major sporting events, even if there are no live audiences. And finally, we will, of course, continue to drive further margin improvements in the division through continued lean manufacturing initiatives. Now on to Creative Solutions. Creative Solutions is our greatest market opportunity. It's our fastest area of growth and has our highest-margin potential. I'd like to go into some detail today to explain the expanded growth opportunities for the division as a result of structural changes to the market and where our Amimon technology fits in. First, the Sydney market. Here, our Teradek Bolt wireless transmission systems and SmallHD monitors incorporate Amimon's technology. Although there is still some uncertainty about when production sets will open up fully in the U.S., filming has started across Europe and Asia, and the group has received our first orders in a couple of years for cinema equipment from China. We expect a strong bounce back in the volume of new productions as there is enormous pent-up demand for new film and scripted TV content. The chart on this slide shows a CAGR of 20% for spend on original content between 2019 and 2024. Once markets open fully, spending on equipment should recover quickly. We will also benefit from the adoption of 4K/HDR to replace the existing base of HD equipment. We've launched our full ecosystem of products, which have been incredibly well received by our customers although the pandemic has impacted short-term sales. We're uniquely placed to benefit from this replacement cycle and see another wave of multiyear growth. COVID-19 has driven structural changes to the Cine market to ensure safe production and safe distancing on set. This includes more live streaming, remote monitoring and remote production. And back-to-work legislation mandates more monitors on set. With production shut, customers have turned to Vitec as a trusted supplier to help them live stream news and information and to enable offset personnel to collaborate and work on post production. This is excellent news for our ecosystem of monitors and transmitters as well as for our streaming solutions. Now let's look at the enterprise market. Teradek offers market-leading, high-end live streaming solutions for corporates, governments and schools. These solutions don't currently use Amimon technology, but we see a big opportunity to leverage Amimon in this area. We also supply high-quality, 0-latency wireless video solutions for the medical market, and these products do use Amimon technology. 2020 saw an exponential growth in the streaming of video across all industries to maintain communication, and we expect many forms of remote working to remain post pandemic. This has been a crucial structural change for Vitec, and sales of our streaming solutions grew 50% year-on-year with recurring revenue doubling. We expect streaming to grow significantly in 2021, and we've introduced new and improved products at both the high-end professional and low-end ICC price points. We're investing to use Amimon's technology to upgrade our Teradek streaming product solutions further, especially targeting the professional remote workflows that cannot use or do not want to use consumer-grade applications like Zoom. We will sell to both existing and new enterprise customers as well as to our Cine customers. Acquiring Amimon has cemented Vitec's leading position in the Cine market. It will also give us significant differentiation in the growing streaming market where we estimate that the high-end niche we can now target is worth $300 million. The team was recognized on the world stage this month when Creative Solutions received 2 Oscars for the development of the Teradek Bolt and the Amimon chipset that is incorporated within the bolt. I'm really delighted for the team. And this has been a big deal in Israel as the last Israeli Oscar was won in 1972. Before I hand over to Martin, I'd like to update you on our ESG priorities. Although we're a small company, we are looking continually to improve our ESG performance. While Vitec has a comparatively low impact on the environment, we've engaged a specialist independent company to advise us on how to improve in this area. And for 2021, we're focusing on 2 key environmental initiatives, specifically reducing business travel and packaging usage. We remain committed to our aim for Vitec to positively impact one disadvantaged young person for every Vitec employee in the communities in which we operate. Now I'll hand over to Martin for the financial review.

Martin Green executive
#2

Thank you, Stephen. I will now go through our financial results for the year with an update on our liquidity position and performances within the divisions. As set out in our half year results, we were hit hard by the pandemic, particularly in Q2. The second half of the year saw significant improvement with revenue declining by only 10% versus 2019 compared with the 37% decline we saw in the first half of the year. As a result, full year revenue was GBP 290.5 million. Gross margin was significantly reduced from lower sales despite actions taken to reduce fixed costs within cost of sales. Please note that 2019 margin includes a 2 percentage points benefit from SmallHD insurance payments. As previously disclosed, we took significant actions to reduce our cost base and manage cash. We implemented a program of salary reductions and froze recruitment. Many staff went on short-time working. We reduced production levels to match demand, and we reduced all nonessential operating spend. We delivered GBP 22.6 million of savings versus 2019. Half of this related to wages and included GBP 2.8 million of government support globally. The majority of these costs will return, but in a phased and controlled manner as trading conditions continue to improve. In addition to the GBP 22.6 million, there was an incremental GBP 3.5 million of savings in Imaging Solutions from the previously announced restructuring. We made a full year operating profit of GBP 9.9 million and profit before tax of GBP 5.5 million. The group's effective tax rate on adjusted profit was 25%, which is broadly in line with 2019. Given the strong management of cash and improving outlook of market conditions, the Board has decided to resume the payment of dividends and is recommending a final dividend of 4.5p per share for the year. This is covered 2x by adjusted earnings. We now move to cash generation. Whilst the pandemic impacted profits heavily, we've managed our cash and debt position well. By reducing inventory, we were able to decrease working capital by GBP 8 million. This was done in a sustainable manner, and we do not expect a reversal of this in 2021, although trade debtors and trade creditors will rise as demand returns to normal levels. Capital expenditure was GBP 2.9 million lower than that in 2019 as a result of actions to minimize nonessential spend. This was despite GBP 1.4 million of purchases in relation to the postponed Olympics and Euros. R&D was largely protected with gross spend only reducing by about 10% as a result of reductions in Imaging Solutions and Production Solutions. Interest paid was GBP 1.6 million higher largely due to fees paid on the RCF refinance in January and on the RCF covenant waiver in April. Turning now to net debt. Net debt was GBP 5.2 million lower than December '19 and GBP 16.6 million lower than June 2020. The reduction was driven by the GBP 9.5 million of free cash flow, shown on the previous slide, partly offset by net lease additions of GBP 3.5 million. Our total available liquidity at December 2020 was GBP 143.2 million, largely from our RCF where we are currently only using 26%. We will repay GBP 50 million access via the Bank of England's CCFF in March, earlier than planned, given our strong financial position. Now let's look at how each of our divisions performed during the year. In Imaging Solutions, revenue was down 9% at constant currency in H2 compared to a 34% decline in H1. The retailer destocking trend that we experienced in 2019 and in the first half of 2020 did not occur in the second half of 2020, and we do not expect any in 2021. Despite the pandemic, we've seen some areas of significant growth. Sales of our JOBY smartphonography products grew by 70%. B2B sales grew by 12% driven by the sale of products to support thermal cameras, and sales of our Lastolite backgrounds grew by 90%. The expanded restructuring project has been completed, although there are some final residual payments to be made in 2021. In 2020, we incurred GBP 1.6 million of expense and GBP 3 million of cash costs with GBP 4.9 million of savings delivered. This is GBP 3.5 million incremental to 2019. Production Solutions revenue was down 16% at constant currency in H2 compared with a decline of 39% in H1 as the broadcast market started to reopen, although the recovery was slower in ICC/Cine. Production Solutions continues to drive operational efficiencies and completed the transition to the same third-party logistics provider in the U.S. as used by Imaging Solutions. This delivered GBP 0.6 million of savings in 2020. Creative Solutions recovered strongly in H2 with revenue in line with 2019 at constant currency compared with a 38% decline seen in H1. In Cine, production sets have started to recover, although the market is still only about 50% open. Our SmallHD production monitors began shipping in H2 to complete our 4K/HDR ecosystem. Our streaming products and solutions grew by 50% compared to 2019, including a doubling of recurring revenue. Further R&D investment is now underway to expand our range of solutions and products in this market. We continue to expand in the medical market where Amimon's CONNEX solutions enable wireless procedures in operating theaters. Medical sales grew by 80% compared to 2019 to GBP 2.9 million. Now for some financial considerations in relation to FY '21. Whilst we're not giving formal guidance, I would like to outline some key items that will impact the financial performance of the group in 2021. We are expecting revenue, profit and cash to be weighted towards H2. We intend to repay U.K. furlough proceeds of circa GBP 1 million during the year. Given the increase in R&D spend across 2019 and 2020, we will continue to see our amortization increase in 2021. At current spot rates, we are facing a GBP 4 million headwind on PBT versus 2020 driven by the weakening dollar. With regards to capital expenditure, we are investing to bring JOBY production in-house and increasing R&D spend, in part, to capitalize on the opportunities in the streaming market. Cash tax paid is expected to be GBP 9 million. As with many other companies, we have received a demand for payment from HMRC in relation to alleged EU State Aid. This demand was for GBP 3.2 million, will be paid in H1 and is included in the GBP 9 million. We have a number of large lease renewals in 2021, which will increase our reported net debt level under IFRS 16. These include our factories in Costa Rica and Feltre and our Teradek facility in Irvine. I will now hand back to Stephen to summarize.

Stephen Bird executive
#3

Thank you, Martin. So to summarize, 2020 was a very tough year, but we managed the downturn effectively and have protected the long-term capabilities of the business. We finished the year strongly. Our results came in as expected and we exited the year with our largest order book ever. Our market drivers remain intact, and we're seeing many areas of growth. There are some exciting opportunities, particularly in Creative Solutions with streaming. And this is where we continue to focus a lot of investment and resource. We've had a strong start to 2021, and we're now even more confident that underlying trading conditions will continue to improve. 2021 will be a year of recovery and investment, but we believe our markets will grow faster longer term than we previously expected, and that we will deliver strong margin recovery. Vitec is a strong, vibrant company with great people and premium brands in long-term growth markets, and I'm really proud of how the company and our people have come through the pandemic. We now have an even stronger competitive position and are very well placed to benefit from the emerging trends and return to growth when our markets fully reopen. Well, that concludes the formal presentation. And we're now going to move on to our question-and-answer session. So I'd like to hand over to our operator. Thank you.

Operator operator
#4

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Scott Cagehin of Investec.

Scott Cagehin analyst
#5

Stephen, Martin, just a couple of questions, please. Of the remaining closed markets, around 30%, as they return, how do you sort of see the margin composition of those sort of products? And then the second question is JOBY and competition and pricing. I wondered if you could just talk about that. Clearly, JOBY is doing very well, but I just want any sort of comments around competition. And then last question is in terms of the record order book, can you give us any flavor of the composition of that and sort of visibility and delivery clients, and that would be great.

Stephen Bird executive
#6

Great. Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everybody. First of all, in terms of the markets reopening, the key area that we've shown at the moment is on production set, mainly in the U.S., mainly in California, actually, mainly in L.A. where we think the production sets are still about 50% shut. When they open up, which we can start to see happening now and if you hear all of the noise around that, we're starting to see that open up, then we should have quite a positive impact on margin because that should drive the demand for our 4K product. And the 4K product is the -- if you like, the big replacement cycle that we're driving at the moment. 4K incorporates the Amimon technology. So the true margin on those products is the highest in the group. And so as we see 4K products start to sell, the margin should increase significantly. So the -- as we see the markets open up, we should see a margin improvement mainly driven by 4K. Second question, I think it was around JOBY, which is a great question, and we've tried to spend a little bit more time talking about that this time. We've got really strong intellectual property around JOBY. So we're able to protect it quite effectively. So there's strong patents around not just the technology, but also actually around the design. And so as the GorillaPod, in particular, has started to become more popular, we have seen copycats in products started copy us. We've managed to successfully take down a very large number of those particularly on Amazon. So Amazon are very helpful in taking down products that are infringing intellectual property. So the actual number of products we've managed to take down has been quite significant. So from a competitive position, as I think I've mentioned, our competitive position on JOBY has gotten stronger and stronger. We're now #2 in the U.S. in terms of tripod brands behind Manfrotto. And also, our website -- if you go to joby.com, our website is pretty impressive, and it's very hard for anybody else to replicate. So typically, we're looking at small Chinese customers trying to copy the product. Actually, their websites struggle to be as strong as ours, and we're able to take them down at the -- on Amazon. So that's gone very well. And then in terms of pricing, we're managing to get what I would call premium pricing for our products. So as I think I mentioned, the average price of a JOBY product is not $20 or $30, it's actually $150. And it's being sold mainly to quite serious vloggers and videographers who are using it to tell stories and put those stories online. And then final question I think was about what the order book -- how the order book is comprised. I mean it's pretty much across the board. So I mean it's kind of good news, really. We've had strong demand at the end of last year, not all of which we could satisfy. We haven't got major customer issues in terms of on-time delivery, but we have got a bunch of orders that we are now fulfilling. It's across the line. So for example, we're now running a 24/7 shift in Bury to make the flowtech product and the new active quick-release cam, which has been a huge success. We're running flat out to produce monitors in SmallHD. We're running flat out to produce streaming products from Teradek. So it's kind of across the board, but it doesn't go out too far. We've not got major customer issues, and we will bring that backlog down over the next month or so. Did that answer most of the questions, Scott?

Scott Cagehin analyst
#7

That was very helpful.

Operator operator
#8

Our next question comes from Henry Carver of Peel Hunt.

Henry Carver analyst
#9

Just a couple of questions from me. Following on from the JOBY sort of story, did you say now that it has -- it's fully offsetting -- the growth in JOBY is fully offsetting the decline in the 20% of imaging that is sort of at the lower end? Or is that likely to happen over the course of FY '21? Just a little bit more color around that, if possible. And then the second question was just on the streaming, which is obviously going very well, and you mentioned recurring revenues improving. Could you just give us a feel for what -- who those revenues are with, what sort of customer base that's with and if there's sort of scope for -- where this go for a lot more growth in that particular area would be useful.

Stephen Bird executive
#10

Great. Henry, thanks very much for your questions. So in terms of JOBY, the simple answer is that JOBY is already offsetting the softness in the hobbyist segment. So JOBY has been a big success for us. We launched a lot of new products back in March, which, I mean, as it turned out, obviously, it was probably about the worst time you could have launched a new range of products. But it's been really successful. Just to start with being sold on joby.com, which is our website, as I mentioned, and also on Amazon, we're now increasing the distribution of JOBY quite significantly and seeing it really starting to take off. So it is more -- now more than offsetting the softness in the hobbyist market, which is around the decline in camera sales, which we've seen, but also the fact at the moment that people aren't really traveling. So the travel side of that business is softer. So that's the one area where we're still suffering from. In terms of streaming, yes, I mean the streaming is, as you can probably tell, the kind of big exciting opportunity. And what we're seeing is obviously a huge growth in all of the streaming. But at the high end, we're seeing not just enterprises who we've already dealt -- worked with before. So people like churches, government agencies, corporate. So some of the recurring revenue we're getting is from people like Johnson & Johnson or from SpaceX. So that's where we help them to stream what they're doing. So live from the launch sites and so on, but also helping them communicate within their engineering departments to communicate with each other live and in a secure way. So the recurring revenue we get there is from basically providing in the cloud a secure way of ensuring that they know who they're streaming to. So you can basically use an app that controls in the cloud exactly who is seeing the stream, so you know that people aren't seeing it who you don't want to see it. Now that, in the long term is -- in the medium term, it's quite an exciting opportunity for us. So what we're doing with Amimon is working on exactly that, on how we can develop a better streaming product and potentially charge a recurring revenue for the use of it. So we're going really still -- it's quite small at the moment, it's a couple of million, but hopefully, we'll see a lot of growth there.

Operator operator
#11

Our next question comes from Andrew Douglas of Jefferies.

Andrew Douglas analyst
#12

A few questions, please. When we think about imaging, you said that there'll be no further destocking in 2021. Should we expect restocking? Just thinking as the world opens up, whether your chains need a lot more products. On the 4K rollout and I guess Creative Solutions as a whole, can you just give us an update on competitive position? I'm working on the assumption that it strengthened throughout the downturn. I just want to make sure that I've not missed anything from that perspective. Raw material inflation, just making sure that that's all under control and I'm not throwing up too many concerns. And then last one is a bit more strategic, I guess. Clearly, JOBY has been a massive success and smartphonography, one for a better word, is on a rage. Does this throw up additional M&A opportunities rather than kind of trying to just expand the JOBY brand as much as possible? And is that something that could potentially be I guess the next leg of that story?

Stephen Bird executive
#13

Andy, so four questions. If it's okay, I'll do the first two, and I think we're going to make Martin just suffer, so he's going to do the second two.

Martin Green executive
#14

Absolutely.

Stephen Bird executive
#15

So he can start thinking about them. So I hope I can remember your first one. So imaging in terms of restocking. So the answer to that is yes, absolutely. So we in the first half of last year clearly saw a huge amount of destocking. So basically, retailers obviously getting extremely worried about what was going on with the pandemic and not buying anything. And so Amazon was quite a good example. Actually, Amazon drove their stocks down, but they continue to sell our stuff out. So we saw a lot of destocking. So the destock in the first half was significant, and we've seen the second half of last year, we saw some restocking. We're continuing to see that. So for example, without giving too much away, we're getting some big orders in at the moment from customers who want to secure delivery for events coming up in a few months' time and are giving these orders now -- some big customers giving us orders now because they don't have enough stock and they're worried about availability. And that I think across the board, that is the case. So yes, we'll -- I think I mean I'll be really disappointed if we see destocking this year. We should see some restock in the first half. We'll see what happens with the market, but we feel reasonably positive about that. 4K rollout, absolutely. I mean the key thing about the 4K rollout is that we don't have much competition. So we -- obviously, we're using the Amimon chip, the 4 -- the old HD chip. Before we bought Amimon, Amimon were giving their chips to lots of people, small Chinese companies, encouraging competitors for us. They've stopped doing that because we've now bought Amimon. So they're not giving chips to anybody else and moved down to develop the 4K chip. And nobody else is going to get the 4K chip. So we have no competition in zero-delay 4K product. So that's a strong position to be in. And clearly, it's all about the rollout and how quickly that replacement cycle happens. That's probably the main area of caution. So you can tell I'm pretty upbeat about what's happening. We are back to sort of 2019 order levels already, even though 30% of the markets are shutdown, the caution is around production sets in the U.S. and how quickly they're going to come back. And when they do come back, it may not be the first thing they do, that they go out and buy a lot of new product. They've got to get back to work and work out the new ways of working. But it will happen. We're very, very confident about it. We're very confident that it's going to be a big replacement cycle. The caution is how quickly it will happen. If you read media magazines in industry, you'll find there's a lot of optimism about it opening up very, very soon. And certainly, in Europe, I've seen -- we've seen a big improvement in sets opening up. So hopefully, that will happen in the U.S. quickly. Martin, do you want to talk about raw materials?

Martin Green executive
#16

Yes. Sure. So you asked two questions I think, Andy. One was on raw material inflation. So far, we've not really seen anything or nothing significant at all. So not particularly concerned about that at this point. As regards M&A, and you mentioned JOBY, in particular, I think there probably have some better opportunities probably in the Cine market with weaker competition maybe in the LED area, then we will be looking at other smartphonography accessory areas. But obviously, JOBY is a very strong brand with patented technology. So I don't see us buying another support business in the smartphonography area. It might be a different accessory group. I think the main opportunity -- the other main opportunity we're looking at, at the moment is around streaming. So that's obviously a very attractive market, although our efforts are really focused on doing that organically.

Stephen Bird executive
#17

Yes. So JOBY is about developing -- I mean we've spent a lot of money and time developing the brand, developing the website. You go in joby.com, it's a pretty cool website. And we've invested quite a lot for us in digital marketing. We've launched -- we've got the GorillaPod, which is the core of the product offering that we've added lighting, we've added audio to that. We've developed that ourselves. And that is being really well received. So we can develop JOBY organically, we think, quite successfully. What we might want to do from an M&A point of view is look at two main areas, one is [indiscernible] streaming. So accelerating streaming, which is a big opportunity, as we keep saying, is -- potentially, there might be M&A opportunities there. And also LED lighting is another area where we would like -- as a growth area, we'd like to get stronger in LED lighting. And one of the fallouts of the pandemic has been that there are some companies who are very, very dependent on the U.S. production market, the U.S. Cine market. So LED companies supporting that market have really, really suffered doing the pandemic. And as a result, they're looking -- maybe looking for a new home to help finance them and help them grow. So that's potentially and opportunistically, we could be looking at something in that area.

Andrew Douglas analyst
#18

Okay. Cool.

Stephen Bird executive
#19

[ Did we answer your questions? ]

Andrew Douglas analyst
#20

Yes. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Just one quick follow-up. Can you remind us how big are your streaming sales or how big were they in 2020?

Stephen Bird executive
#21

Yes. I think I can. So they broadly almost doubled from a bit over $10 million to -- I mean whether you're looking at orders of revenue, but $10 million in 2019 to close to -- in orders, $20 million in 2020, okay? so -- and that's in the high-end segment, which we think is now about $300 million. So we've got a decent share of it. But that product is all about 10 years old. So it's using chips that were about 10 years old and designed a long time ago. And it's a good product, but it hasn't had a lot of attention until now. So what we're trying to do, what we are doing is we've relaunched those products with improved components and so on. And then the holy grail for us is to try and incorporate the Amimon technology, which is, as you know, we are the world leader in wireless transmission of video with zero-delay. If we can take that technology, which has IP around it and put -- and incorporate that into a conventional streaming across a network, then that's the holy grail for us. And we -- obviously, clearly, if you can produce, which allows you to stream with higher-quality video and lower latency, then the world is going to be interested in that, and that's what we're trying to develop at the moment. And we've been doing this for a while. It's not just happened recently. And that's really the very exciting area that hopefully at some time we'll be able to tell you more about.

Andrew Douglas analyst
#22

Super.

Stephen Bird executive
#23

That's actually five questions, Andy, okay? That's a lot.

Operator operator
#24

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tom Fraine of Shore Capital.

Tom Fraine analyst
#25

Stephen, Martin, firstly, on the cost savings, so it's GBP 23 million of cost savings in 2020. How much of that do you expect to follow through into 2021? I know there was some restructuring there. But given the recovery you're expecting to saw -- very high and replace some of those employees?

Stephen Bird executive
#26

Right. Well, Martin can help me with this in a moment. But I mean just broadly, so we've made -- the cost savings, as you mentioned, those are primarily not being redundancies. So we have had to make a small number of redundancies, but they're primarily not redundancies. So it's been really in 2 areas. We've been paying obviously less in salaries because we -- a lot of people took salary cuts as the Board did, as we did, pay less in bonuses. But we've also been able to reduce other costs, so marketing costs and so on. So yes, very obviously, we've reduced travel costs. We've also reduced things like trade shows and so on. So the answer to your question is that we are very aggressively trying to make sure that some of those costs stick and that they will come back. And so the broad answer is about GBP 5 million, hopefully, in this year. Martin?

Martin Green executive
#27

Yes. I think there's a couple of things to say. One is the restructuring savings in the Q that we referred to are on top of the GBP 23 million. So those are ongoing and shouldn't reemerge. And secondly, in relation to what costs probably won't come back, there's obviously, as Stephen said, travel and marketing. So I don't imagine that our trade shows expense will be as high in the future as it has been in the -- so...

Stephen Bird executive
#28

Yes. A few primary thing we tried to do and successfully did last year was to try and keep the business intact. So we made a very, very small number of redundancies. We basically wanted to keep everybody in the business because we believe that the markets were going to be intact when we came out of the pandemic, and we broadly did that. And I think our people were fantastic. A lot of people took salary sacrifices and had some hardship, but we've come through that. And hopefully, we'll be able to reward everyone for that this year, but we kept the business intact. And I think as one of the core strengths of Vitec is we are a vibrant company with a fantastic group of people who are very, very, very committed to what we're doing, and we've kept everyone together and hopefully, we're going to be very successful together.

Tom Fraine analyst
#29

Okay. Brilliant. Now in terms of M&A, I know you've touched on it earlier, but if you could give us a bit of an idea on time line, whether we can expect any acquisitions in the next year or 2 or whether you're focused on reducing net debt? And if so, what would be your target range for net debt?

Stephen Bird executive
#30

Sure. Okay. Well, we'll -- so yes, we absolutely are focused on reducing net debt. And I think we've done a pretty decent job so far, and we will hopefully do a great job this year as well. So you should expect the net debt -- the underlying net debt come down. There are some complexities about some leases. But that's not going to stop us doing some small M&A. So I would expect us to do some small M&A, particularly, as I said, I think there are some businesses that need help and maybe need a new home and new financing and so on that are very, very good businesses but suffered particularly in the pandemic. In the -- particularly, the Cine market completely and utterly shut. So we were very lucky. We've got a good spread of businesses. So although once the Cine market shut, we were able to find other businesses like streaming to offset that. Some other companies weren't able to do that. So we might be looking at a couple of M&A opportunities in that area. Martin, do you want to just give more detail?

Martin Green executive
#31

Yes. The only thing I wanted to add was to say in terms of target range of net debt to EBITDA, we've previously said it should be ideally between 1 and 1.5. And we would expect -- we wouldn't really want it to go above 2, and I would expect it to be below 2 by the end of the year, hopefully. So that is what we are trying to target.

Tom Fraine analyst
#32

Okay. Brilliant. And finally, I'm not sure how much detail anyone really has on this. But in terms of the margins, I know 2019, 2018 benefited from the insurance payments book. Do you think there's a possibility that margins can get back to that level within the next 3 years?

Stephen Bird executive
#33

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely 100%, yes. So this business is fundamentally a high-margin business. It should be a mid-teen margin business. I mean I'm absolutely committed to and passionate about that. We've had a few bumps along the way, which have affected us. And clearly in 2020, the margin deterioration is almost all volume-driven. There's a little bit of mix because we obviously sold a bit more JOBY, which is slightly lower margin, but -- and less the Amimon products because of the Cine market being shut. But as we're coming out of this, the pandemic, the margin story should be really, really attractive. And I think the first question from Scott was about as we open up, what's the margin story. The margin story should be that as we start to sell 4K products, the margin impact of that should be really significant because they are our highest-margin products in the group. So yes, absolutely. We hope to get back certainly in the next few years, it just depends how quickly the volumes come back.

Operator operator
#34

Our next question comes from Kevin Fogarty of Numis Securities.

Kevin Fogarty analyst
#35

Just one or two questions really, I guess. One was on the confidence in the sort of faster medium-term growth outlook. I just wondered, I mean is that sort of primarily driven by the acceleration of the trends we've seen due to COVID-19, i.e., kind of streaming, remote solutions, et cetera? Is that sort of the primary driver of your sort of more kind of optimistic medium-term outlook? And I guess possibly related to that, I just wondered if you'd -- and you did touch a little bit on it, but a bit more color on perhaps areas where the competition may have suffered during 2020. Is that principally around Cine? Or are there other areas that could be beneficial from a competitive positioning point of view for you guys?

Stephen Bird executive
#36

Sorry, Kevin. So in terms of growth outlook, yes. So what's going to drive that? I mean fundamentally, most of our markets are recovering well. There are a few areas like, as we said, sort of the hobbyist segment of photography is pretty subdued at the moment because that's driven by people going on holiday, traveling, going on safaris and stuff like that or even getting married. So that sort of activity is subdued. And as you know, the Cine market is subdued at the market -- at the moment. So scripted TV shows, Netflix and so on are only just coming back. But in terms of looking forward, we absolutely believe that our markets are going to go faster than we thought a year ago. So with the exception of the hobbyist market, which is going to continue to be fairly subdued, the other markets we think are all either going to grow as fast as we thought or faster. So smartphonography in JOBY is going to go faster than we thought. So JOBY is a big growth engine of our business now, and that's going to grow quickly. And then as Cine comes back and production sets open up, we're going to see a wave of 4K replacement cycle. And our expectation is it's going to be a really massive bounce back because the production sets have been shut now for, whatever it is, 6, 9 months. So people like Netflix have not been able to film any original content. And at the same time, we've all been watching endless Netflix stuff and consuming all that original content. So the desire to get out there and make original content is enormous. So real pent-up demand for original content. So that will -- the 4K cycle and just the pent-up demand in Cine will really be a big growth driver. And then as we keep saying, streaming, yes, the world's changed. And so many of our customers, including our Cine customers, now want to use our products to stream content in a secure and reliable way. They don't want to trust Zoom because it's not secure and it's not high on quality. They want a high-quality streaming with very little delay, very high-quality videos. So we are able to offer that. We've always been able to do that. For the last 10 years, we've been selling products that do that. Now people want those products even more. And we are very well positioned because we've got the brand and we've got the technology to do that. So that will be -- that will probably be the biggest growth driver for the business. In terms of competition, yes, again, we've had a very torrid, torrid time, but a lot of our competitors have had a more torrid time. And particularly, if you are -- most of our competition, they're smaller -- smaller companies tend to be smaller Chinese companies. And if you're a smaller Chinese company, you've had a pretty tough. It started with tariffs. So if you remember the tariff war that was going on when Mr. Trump was around, and it's still somewhat there. So you're hit by tariffs, i.e., selling stuff into America was very, very difficult. You had a horrible tariff on there, which we didn't suffer from. Then you obviously had the pandemic hit you first. And then you've also seen the switch to more stuff being sold online where we are very strong. So we have better platforms than our competitors. And if you go on Amazon, our products will be top of the search engines because we spend so much time doing that. Our competitive position with -- against those sort of companies is enhanced. Martin, do you want to add anything?

Martin Green executive
#37

No. I think the key point there is around the online situation where I think we are in a better position than the competition, as you said, Stephen. So I don't have anymore to add.

Stephen Bird executive
#38

Kevin, did we answer your questions?

Kevin Fogarty analyst
#39

Yes. Perfect. Great.

Stephen Bird executive
#40

Great. I think we're almost going to run out of time. So unless there's any other questions, thank you very much for your questions. That was great. Hopefully, that was helpful. It's good to give you a bit of color, and we look forward to meeting up with some of you in the future. Thanks a lot.

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