Weyco Group Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
June 3, 2024

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Nano Dimension's Q1 2024 Conference Call. My name is Betsy, and I'm your operator for today's event. On the call with us today are Joao Stearns, CEO and Member of the Board of Directors Tomer Pinchas, CFO and COO and Julian Litterbahn, VP of Corporate Development. Before we begin, may I remind our listeners that certain information provided on this call may contain forward looking statements and the Safe Harbor statement outlined in today's earnings press release also pertains to statements made on this call.

Operator

If you have not received a copy of the press release, please view it at the Investor Relations section of the company's website. A replay of today's call will also be available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Yaurav will begin the call with a business update followed by a question and answer session, at which time the management team will answer questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Neo Dimension's CEO and Member of the Board of Directors, Joao Pfirn. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much, Betsy, and good day to everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, good middle of the day. We are going to speak today about the Q1 of 2024 and some reflection from before and after. And I would not read you the news release. You hopefully read it or you will be able to read it later.

Speaker 1

I'm going to speak into the presentation and give as much as possible time for your questions so we can lead it toward what's more interesting for you. To start with, we had a great quarter with total fitting which was totally fitting the reshaping nano initiative, which we started last quarter. And it was a very important initiative because it's basically embarked us on a direction of emphasizing profits and adjusting and the business model toward profitability, eventually EBITDA positive, etcetera, rather than just either to internal growth or organic growth or acquisitions, just focusing on the top line. Of course, the top line is first. By the way, the top line

Operator

Pardon me. It appears we've lost connection with our speakers. We've reconnected with our speaker line.

Speaker 1

Okay. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, something technology is not perfect in spite of everything. I guess, we dropped off or you dropped off. I don't know where, but I'll continue for where I was. And if there'll be questions, I'll get back.

Speaker 1

We had an amazing quarter of improving profitability according to our reshaping nano initiative. We went up to is another important I'm just trying to adjust the presentation. New customers partnering with us is another important factor in this quarter. RF, for everybody that doesn't know it, is radio frequency. This is one of the major application for our AME, additive manufacturing electronics.

Speaker 1

We have proof of concept that new customers are wanting to use it. A lot of it is in defense. We repeat sales to Western Defense Agency. We have new customers in Advanced Electronics. Some of the names appear here, obviously, defense the name do not appear.

Speaker 1

We have 2 leaders in the new space industry. You can guess what kind of industry is that. And we have repeat defense sales repeat sales to a defense contractor. This is just small part of the achievements of this quarter. Innovation and securing the competitive advantage relate to how we develop our products and what achievements we have reached while developing and investing in R and D.

Speaker 1

AI Services is a starting business where DeepCube is actually starting to make money by itself. Not that we intended ever for AI technology for an industry to be a profit or a revenue center because we bought it and we're using it mostly to advance our machines in their AI for industrial accuracy and maintenance. But we have enough customers that requested us to potentially do business with them just with the AI capability and to install them in their machine. And as long as they're not competing with us, we're doing it. On the robotics side, we increased the speed of our robotics Additive Electronics by a factor of 3, 300%.

Speaker 1

And mostly, it's also used beside component mounting, it's used for solder paste spreading, and this is a very, very important competitive edge comparing to competition. And not less important is our digital solution in software. We partner or we just announced it with ESCO and Firi and become a one stop shop for digital printing solutions, highly important achievement. The reshaping nano that I mentioned before is all about numbers, obviously. If you look back with the reflection on the starting from the left side of the slide, since 2021, we had 150% compounded annual growth.

Speaker 1

Since 2022, we have 36% expansion of our gross margins. That's 36 actual percentages from 10% to 46%. Our gross margin grew by 4.6 times. Our operating expenses in 2023 and ahead were reduced by about a third comparing to Q1 of 2023. And the most important point that we are so proud of is our cash burn was reduced from $27,000,000 a quarter to $7,000,000 a quarter.

Speaker 1

And we are still moving ahead in the reduction of this to the point that the year end on a quarterly basis will be close to breakeven, assuming the company is as is without acquisitions. Last but not least, and actually one before last, the industry situation. The industry situation is very well reflected by this graph. It shows you the following. The left side blue is the combined revenue of the 4 industry leaders in 2012 and the combined profits EBITDA or EBIT to be accurate.

Speaker 1

On the right is the situation in 2022, a year and a half ago, 2 years ago actually, it's a year and a half. The combined revenue grew from $650,000,000 to over $1,500,000,000 and the combined profit grew from positive to deeply negative. I wouldn't say grew, but shrunk, probably a better name. This is indication and manifestation of a market that is growing, but poor business strategies and business models that destroyed otherwise good businesses. Meanwhile, the demand for additive manufacturing is existing in the market because all those service providers, which are using multiple additive machines from different suppliers, which they're buying cheaply, are making money by supplying parts, which means the demand is there.

Speaker 1

It's just somebody in our industry, which I would say, including all of us, is not running our strategy right. And we intend to try our best to change it because of 2 reasons. A, we have the theory and the analysis of what to do B, we have the practical ability to do it and C, we have the capital to effectuate the consolidation of this industry. Now it's last but not least, the buyback program that some of you recommended to for us to do a year and a half ago and we listened As proven to be successful, we bought shares much below the cash value of the share between $2 to $3 a share. We reduced our share count by 15%, and we have more inventory for this activity.

Speaker 1

If you're buying a share today of Nano at $2.7 a share beyond the excellent performance that we just spoke about and beyond what we are discussing and promising regarding acquisitions, buying a share at $2.7 which is a discount even over the cash of 4.1 and not considering the value of the business above it. So as I think I've mentioned in the past, certain people see an opportunity problem in every opportunity, problem being the share still at the lower price than it should be by far and certain other people see opportunity in the problem. When the share is below cash, that's the opportunity. I don't think you have a lot of companies with performance like that and yet the share is below cash. So this is my bottom line.

Speaker 1

At this point, Betsy, I would like to open up the session

Operator

The first question today comes from Troy Jensen with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Good morning. Good afternoon. Quick for you, Yolav.

Speaker 2

I just I'd be curious if you look at your Q1 or 2023 revenues, how much of it if you could break it down a little bit between like additive and robotics or the other sectors you're in? I just want to kind of get a bigger picture of your total additive exposure.

Speaker 1

It was about half from additive, a bit less than half than additive manufacturing, sorry, Additive Electronics and Half from Additive Manufacturing of all kinds, including electronics, including micro mechanical polymers, special polymers.

Speaker 2

All right, perfect. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. And then also, Yolav, I think it's 12.28 you guys had the announcement for Stratasys and the offer for 16.50 if I remember correctly. But you guys have been extremely quiet ever since.

Speaker 2

So I wonder if is there any update you can kind of give us on status on when you think the consolidation cycle could start? And then I got one more question for Tillman.

Speaker 1

I remember you, of course, remind me that when my kids used to be quiet in the room, I got very nervous. Yes, we were quiet. The reason we're quiet is not we're doing bad things. The reason we're quiet is because contrary to last year when we did not manage to convince Stoltzys to speak with us, this year we have a very friendly discussion. It's intensive, and we're continuing our discussions about what we believe is a good solution for the industry.

Speaker 1

And we are strategic partners because we are the largest shareholders of services in 15%. And obviously, we are not competing with each other, and you know that very well. They know it as well. So we are in a discussion of how to proceed. And the reason we kept the offer out is we don't want to rock the boat.

Speaker 1

Eventually, obviously, you know that the prices have changed since then, but we are not giving up the potential to cooperate. It's done right now on a very friendly basis. And you have the 2 jobs are talking a lot.

Speaker 2

Okay. Yes, that's great to know. Alex, lastly, I don't see the floor, but Tomer, if you could give me just kind of a sense of what revenue level do you think you need to hit breakeven with all the restriction that you guys have planned here?

Speaker 3

So basically, our plan is to reach breakeven towards the end of twenty twenty five, second half of twenty twenty five. And assuming we are going to grow our business as planned, similar to this year, but 25% to 30%, the second half of twenty twenty five will be breakeven.

Speaker 2

Okay, awesome. Well, thanks, guys. Congrats and good luck.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Troy. Thank

Operator

you. The next question comes from Kathryn Thompson with Edison. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning everyone. Just wanted to ask 3 questions. I'll quickly get the questions out. First, could you characterize customer demand at the moment and kind of how that might have changed over the last quarter or so? Secondly, just so I can understand the cost base that we're seeing for Q1 'twenty four after the reshaping nano program, is that now the kind of steady state level of cost?

Speaker 5

Or is there more cost to be cut? And thirdly, should we expect to see you doing more share buybacks at a similar pace to what you've done over the last 6 months or so? I guess that's partly dependent on share price.

Speaker 1

Okay. Excellent questions and thank you for that. Let me start by the first one. Customer demand compared to Q4, we sell to about 6 to 7 we're selling to 6 to 7 verticals. So the customer demand is obviously typical to vertical.

Speaker 1

I can tell you that, for instance, on the defense side, the market is very, very active, obviously, because of the conflicts in Israel and the conflicts in Europe, mostly by the way in Europe. In Israel, we don't feel it by demand. But in Europe, we do. In the United States, we do. Customer demand in other areas, in the general electronic field, a bit weakness in the German market, maybe because of the war itself.

Speaker 1

So we feel a little bit slowdown, but it's marginal in the periphery. It's not affecting our main business. And in the other verticals, including medical, including academics, research institutions, we don't feel a change in the demand. And as much as the second question, what is the cost basis in Q1? Is it going to stay or is it going to be cut more?

Speaker 1

The answer is, we are going to improve our cost basis and it's going to be reduced from the Q1 definitely And you're going to see it in the next 2, 3 quarters to come, definitely. Okay. Last question, more shares to buy to purchase. Share purchase and acquisitions and investment in R and D is all about asset allocation. It's a very different three profiles of how you allocate your capital and what is the return.

Speaker 1

We believe that the return in general by investing in R and D and investing in acquisitions on a longer term basis is much higher than the return on buying shares. The buying shares is a quick return because you buy shares right now at less than cash and the result is immediate on the quality on the sorry, on the value of the company's balance sheet and obviously on the number of shares. So it's always a decision we're going to take on a quarterly basis. Depends what's the alternative ahead of us. As I mentioned before, right now, the acquisition trail is pretty bubbly.

Speaker 1

And the asset allocation according to what we see in the immediate future, and we're using it accordingly.

Operator

The next question comes from

Speaker 4

And great to see that the quarter is starting off strong and may continue that way, especially with everything going on in Israel. Our praise are with you. The gentleman, I apologize I didn't get his name, but the gentleman from Cantor Fitzgerald touched on my question. You got off easy with the answer, but I guess I'd like to touch on it just to drop more is, investors, traders have this question quite often. When you look at, let's call it your investment thesis, which is you look at performing trade, underperforming trade, when do you recalculate that thesis to see when you reverse or cut that underperforming trade within your portfolio?

Speaker 4

For example, very specifically on the Stratasys offer back in, I believe, at the end of 2023, Based on where they are now, based on their recent results, it looks like they're underperforming. It's in your portfolio. I don't believe that your previous offer is relevant anymore. Are we looking at continuing in the offer? Are we looking at potentially cutting our losses on this and pulling back from that position?

Speaker 1

We're not going to we're not looking to cut our losses. And to be a little bit cynical, we didn't lose anything as long as we didn't sell. The investment is a strategic investment. It's not an investment for trade in the market. I've said it a year ago when more than a year ago, actually.

Speaker 1

When we purchased it, the investment to have 20 sorry, 15% of a market leader without getting into its business and without competing with him with it is definitely a strategic investor a strategic investment, point number 1. Point number 2, of course, that leads to the discussion we have today. It's true that our offer from a few months ago is probably a bit too high now. But as I mentioned before, we don't intend to divest on this investment at this point. We believe Stratasys have a good future.

Speaker 1

And now that we're getting close to their management, we believe they have management that is sharing a lot of our vision, and we're continuing the discussion with them on potential cooperation.

Speaker 4

And thank you. Just a quick question. Has that do you feel that it has a negative overhang for Nano, having maintaining that position?

Speaker 1

Sorry, I didn't understand you.

Speaker 4

Does maintaining that position or maintaining not having that serious reassessment have any negative overhang for Nano Dimension?

Speaker 1

No. The only thing that maintaining this position is affecting you or me is in a funny way because of the accounting rules. If in the last day of the quarter, give you an example. Let's say, the shares of Sadasys went up by 30%, I will have in that quarter a huge profit. If in the last day of another quarter, the share went down by 30%, I will have a huge loss.

Speaker 1

Both the profit and the loss, obviously, are not indicative of anything other than one day trading, but that's how the accounting rules work. It doesn't affect our cash flow. It doesn't affect our business. It doesn't affect how we proceed. It doesn't affect the acquisition.

Speaker 1

It doesn't affect how we do R and D.

Speaker 4

Great. I'd love to see how this plays out. Thank you for sharing that. There is the consideration on that reassessment, that one that you're doing in very much in par and together with the Stratasys team. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joao Pfirn for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for your questions. I'll summarize by saying that something I said during the meeting today. Our industry is in a very peculiar situation and a very peculiar place.

Speaker 1

Look at everybody around us and think on your mind how the situation today relates to the strategy and the intention of Nano Dimension as I described to you over the last 2 years. And you'll come to the conclusion by yourself without me having to say anything at this point. So I thank you very much for thinking about us and being our partners. Goodbye.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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