Welcome to Probi Q1 report. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to the speakers CEO, Anita Johansen, and CFO, Henrik Lundkvist. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this quarterly one with conference call for 2023. With me, I have Henrik Lundkvist, our CFO in Probi, and myself, Anita Johansen, CEO. Next slide, please. Yes. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this safe harbor statement. Here you see the agenda of our call today. First, I'll give an executive overview. Our Q-Q1 report came out earlier this morning. As you can see, we had a net sales in the first quarter of this year that increased by 11% and ended at SEK 172 million. This is compared to SEK 155 million in the first quarter last year. We had good help of the currency effects in this quarter. Also we had a positive effect of the delayed order from the last quarter in 2022 that was delayed due to the huge snowstorms in North America. Our EBITDA margin ended at 28% in quarter one. When we look at the results and the underlying or the different regions, we have different dynamics in the different regions. In the Americas, we have an underlying market that shows signs of slowing down, and we see that from our customers' order patterns. In EMEA, we expected and we saw a decline in our sales in the first quarter. This is mainly due to the sell-out of the stock that our former distributor in Sweden had. This is a consequence of Probi taking over the distribution of our own brand in Sweden. In APAC, we had an all-time high net sales in first quarter of this year. This was with good help from the timing of orders. Also we saw nice growth in China, which is a driving force in this region. Also this is a country and a region that we see high growth potential. In the 1st quarter of this year, we also succeeded with delivering news to the market. Firstly, we were able to deliver the 1st order of our Probi manufactured BLIS strains into China. Also we were successful in producing the 1st batch of the new spore-forming probiotic that we can now offer to our customers. In the executive leadership team of Probi, we had a few changes. Firstly, my interim CEO role was changed and I became permanent CEO, which was announced on the 30th of March. I appointed a new VP of Operations. We had Vaughn Carlson joining our organization in the U.S., and he joined us on the 27th of March. In the first quarter of this year, we were also very busy in preparing to take home our Probi brand in Sweden. Probi is a brand and is Sweden's leading brand for probiotic products. We have more than 40% market share in Sweden, and today the brand is sold in over 400 or in 1,400 pharmacies and up to 100 health food stores and also online. Starting April 1st, we are now our own distributor of this brand in Sweden. We have built a new marketing and sales organization that is now in place, and they have a clear mission to grow this business in Sweden. We have ambition to grow in more channels, de-developing our marketing tools and also to launch new products in this brand. We've invested in building the sales and marketing organization, but we do have high ambitions for the brand going forward. In 2023, we are expecting neutral effects on the earnings. Now, I will hand over to Henrik to go through the financial review. Thank you, Anita Johansen, and good morning to all the listeners out there. I will now walk you through the financial section of the report. As Anita Johansen mentioned, we report a net sale of SEK 172 million, which was a growth of 11%. Adjusted for currencies, this was a growth of 2%. We should also mention that we had some help from the postponed orders in Americas that contributed to SEK 18 million in the first quarter here. We reported a very strong EBITDA margin, 28%, compared to previous year, 25%. This was driven by volumes of course, but also a very healthy product mix with a lot of clean label sales in the quarter. If we look at the different regions, to start with Americas, we reported a growth of 18%, or 6% currency adjusted. What we see in this region is general, a cautious market where customers are ensuring that they don't keep too high stock levels. We also see the a bit lower order frequency from some of our customers. In EMEA, we reported a decline of 33%, mainly related to the old distributor in Sweden who sold out their stock, which meant that we had limited deliveries during the first quarter, which was according to our plan. This is however, a business where we expect to pick up late in Q2 when the pharmacies will start to replenish their stocks, and we expect to see good development during the second half of the year. In region, APAC, we reported a very strong quarter with 55% growth, and the quarter was all-time high for us. The growth mainly came from China, which contributes, or continues to be a fast-growing market. We should mention that some orders came in early this year, which means that we will not see the same sales levels in the second quarter. In Q2, we expect to see more historical sales levels, and first half of the year is expected to be in level with previous year. We are, however, convinced that we will have a strong... As we have a strong customer pipeline in this region, we are optimistic about the second half of the year. Short comment on the gross margins. There is a strong correlation between volumes and gross margin. In this quarter, you can see that the growth in Americas contributes to a higher margin, the decline in EMEA, to a lower gross margin, and the growth in APAC to a higher gross margin. A brief overview of our net income. Net income ended at SEK 19 million or SEK 5 million up versus previous year. There's a few explanation and the volume is of course the largest one to that one. SEK 7 million up due to volume, SEK 2 million down due to operating, higher operating expenses or reported operating expenses. They are actually more FX-driven, so the nominal operating expenses are similar to previous year. If we look at the cash flow we generated, or our gross operating cash flow amounted to SEK 47 million in the quarter. We had negative impact from higher working capital by SEK 30 million in the quarter due to higher accounts receivables and inventories. We have realized that we need to improve our processes and ways of working. While we're doing this, we have temporarily increased our stock levels to ensure we are able to meet our customers' expectations. Accounts receivables were higher as large shipments were made late in the quarter. Paid taxes amounted to SEK 4 million, CapEx SEK 14 million, and the largest part was related to investment in our manufacturing sites in the U.S. Finance studies related to payments and interest for lease obligation amounted to SEK 4 million. There were no FX effect on the cash this time. Overall, we have cash on hand of SEK 380 million at the end of Q1, which was SEK 6 million lower compared to the start of this year. The temporary higher inventory levels made the cash to slightly be lower compared to the start of this year. The short or brief overview of the balance sheet. It continues to be very strong, and we do not have any external loans. Our equity amounts to SEK 1.4 billion and equity ratio is 90%. It's of course good to have a strong balance sheet, especially under current macroeconomics uncertainties. This also enable us to further invest in new products and capabilities to continue to build our growth platform. To summarize the financial review, the reported numbers for Q1 were strong with good profitability. Our assessment is, however, that net sales for the first half of the year will be on par or slightly below last year. This means that we are expecting a softer second quarter. The profitability is expected to be negatively affected by the lower volumes in Q2, and we also see a less favorable product mix in the second quarter. We will continue to invest in marketing, especially around the new distribution model in Sweden, where we expect the sales marketing expenses to increase. This all in all means that our EBITDA margin for the first six months of this year is expected to be lower than previous year. With that, I will hand over to Anita again. Thank you, Henrik. Please next slide. I'll speak a little bit about the outlook and my agenda for 2023. For me, I strongly believe that the route to success is to have a strong leadership team in Probi. This is my key priority in the short term. You already know that I just hired a new VP of Operations. With my own change in role now being the permanent CEO, I also have an open role as the VP of R&D, which was my previous role here. The other key priorities for the rest of the year is obviously to execute on our strategy. We want to come back to growth and thereby increase our profitability. Currently, I'm reviewing how we can become more efficient internally and how better can meet the needs of our consumers, our customers, and our external stakeholders. In Sweden, obviously, the takeover of this own business to consumer brand, the Probi brand, will help us. It's a key must-win, and it should provide us some benefits in our growth. It's also very important for us to timely succeed with the launching of the new innovations that can also contribute to growth. We are already now offering the BLIS strains that was mentioned earlier and now offered to our customers worldwide. Also this year, we've started offering the spore-forming probiotic strain that we can now produce. Launching spores will enable us to offer a product to our customers that can now be applied in new formats that our normal probiotics cannot be applied in. For example, gummies or other experiential formats that are very popular, specifically in the U.S., and increasingly demanded by our customers. Another new innovation that we are working on is our gut-brain health area. We finalized a pilot clinical study at the end of last year, now we are preparing the results for publication later this year. Parallel with the publication being prepared, we have dialogues with our customers, we see significant interest from our customers in the gut-brain health area. As also mentioned earlier, we have continued our investment in our production capabilities, especially in our fermentation site in Redmond, in Washington State. We will obviously continue to upgrade and maintain our equipment and our facilities and improve our production processes. Now it's also really important to ensure we have the right resources in place and the right processes in place, so we continue to benefit from our investment in our manufacturing and gain the efficiencies that are required. This is my agenda for this year. Together with the executive leadership team, this is what we will focus on. Next slide, please. It's time to hand over to the operator for our question part. Thank you. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Gonzalo Artiach from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead. Hi, Anita and Henrik. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on the US market. I mean, how do you see this market for the upcoming quarter? I mean, you only say that you see a lower order frequency from customers. Why is that? Is it only seen in the LiveBac segment or as you mentioned in previous quarters or also in the clean label? As you previously announced in previous quarters, also potential new customers on the clean label segment for 2023. I was wondering if you could give us some comment on that and how this is looking. Thank you. Okay. Hi, Gonzalo, and thanks for asking questions here. Let's start with the U.S. market, what we see there. The market reports that we have available, the data, indicates flat to actually down, slightly down. I think that is also what we see or our sales team experience, that it is a cautious market at the moment. We have not lost any customers. However, the existing customers, they tend to place order less frequent compared to previous years and sometimes also smaller orders. I think it's a market thing there, really what we can see, especially around the second quarter. As you know, our visibility is, let's say it is around three months, depending on what we sell, because in some cases it's like spot orders that we, that we can get in an order 1 week and deliver next week. For many of our products, we have long lead time, and it takes us some time to actually produce them and to deliver them. We do see a softer Q2 here, that is around the visibility we have. Your question related to the customers that's been discussed in previous reports. That is ongoing launches. There is really no news to them. They have all potential to become key accounts. Key accounts meaning more than $1 million in sales for us on an annual basis. They always start on very low levels. I mean, the orders are small, and that is... they are still small. There's good potential in the customers, but also with the cautious market, they are not growing as rapidly as we would have liked, of course. That is something that we are working on to fix with the launching new initiatives and new products, sports and BLIS, et cetera. Great. Great. That was very clear. Thank you very much. I have a second question, in Europe. I was wondering if you could give us some color on the sales and prospects for Q2 and also for H2 in the European regions that are not Sweden. I mean, how is the market moving there? What we see in the European market is that it is really Probi's legacy market. We have long-term customers that's been with us for many, many years, and it's stable. What we can see right now is this switch from the Swedish distributor to moving back that in-house. That has hurt us in a couple of quarters in Sweden when the old distributors sold out their stock levels. In Q2, the pharmacies, they have stocked up with our products also for April, potentially also May. We expect the orders to come in May, June, so to say. We will not get the full quarter with sales. That we expect to start seeing in the third quarter. That is really when we expect the Swedish business to pick up again. Otherwise, I would say it's stable development in Europe and on our legacy customers. Okay. Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. If there are no more questions, then let's go to the final slide, Henrik. Thank you. Please have a brief look at our financial calendar. The next event that we will participant in is the annual general meeting that is taking place next week on May 4th, and the next interim report, Q2, will be in July 18th. With that, thank you very much for your attendance and the questions. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye.
Loading workspace