Earnings call transcript: Verkkokauppa.com Q1 2025 sees stock surge on strong results

Verkkokauppa.com Oyj (market cap: €124.18M) reported robust financial results for Q1 2025, highlighting a positive revenue growth despite a challenging market environment. The company’s efforts to enhance cost efficiency and expand its own brand offerings have paid off, leading to significant improvements in profitability and market share. Following the announcement, Verkkokauppa.com’s stock surged by 16.9%, contributing to an impressive 54.71% year-to-date return. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company appears to be trading near its Fair Value, with multiple growth indicators suggesting potential upside.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue growth achieved despite a 2% decline in the consumer electronics market.
• Own brand sales grew by nearly 40%, targeting 10% of total revenue by 2028.
• Stock price increased by 16.9% post-earnings announcement.
• Gross margin reached a historically high 18.8%.
• Strong international operations growth, with a 40% increase.

Company Performance

Verkkokauppa.com demonstrated resilience in Q1 2025, achieving revenue growth in a declining market. The company’s strategic focus on cost efficiency and innovation in its own brand offerings contributed to its success. Notably, the company gained market share and reported a 40% growth in international operations, underscoring its competitive edge.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Positive growth despite market challenges.
• Comparable operating result: €3.2 million.
• Profitability: 2.9%.
• Gross margin: 18.8%, a historical high.
• Inventory levels: Reduced by 5% year-over-year.
• Cash position: Nearly €20 million.
• Equity ratio: Improving.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Verkkokauppa.com anticipates continued revenue growth and higher comparable EBIT, with analysts projecting profitability this year and EBITDA of €2.81M. The company expects a stronger performance in the second half of the year, driven by factors such as lower interest rates and stable inflation, which could enhance consumer purchasing power. The upcoming partnership with Amazon in Sweden is also expected to bolster international sales. InvestingPro subscribers can access detailed analyst forecasts and comprehensive financial health scores to better evaluate the company’s growth potential.

Executive Commentary

"Despite these market turbulences or the market environment, we were able to record growth figures in revenue," stated a company presenter, highlighting the resilience of Verkkokauppa.com. The management expressed confidence in the company’s strategic direction, with one executive noting, "We are certain that we have the right path going forward."

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain disruptions could impact inventory management.
• Continued low consumer confidence may affect sales.
• Fluctuating interest rates and inflation could alter purchasing power.
• Increased competition in the consumer electronics market.
• Potential challenges in scaling international operations.

Verkkokauppa.com’s Q1 2025 results underscore its ability to navigate a challenging market environment and deliver growth. The significant stock price increase post-announcement reflects strong investor sentiment and confidence in the company’s strategic initiatives. With a moderate debt level and improving financial metrics, the company shows promise for continued growth. Access the complete financial analysis and Fair Value calculations in the detailed Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro.

Full transcript - Verkkokauppa.com Oyj (VERK) Q1 2025:

Company Presenter, Verkocauper.com: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to werkocauper.com Q1 presentation. If you have any questions during the presentation, please feel free to send them to investors@vercocalpa.com, and questions will be then answered at the end of the presentation. As always, today joining with me and available for questions, CFO Jesper Bomstad. I will start my presentation first of all with few words about the operating environment, then company’s performance during the first quarter from financials and also strategy execution perspective, then some words about the market outlook, and then key takeaways and questions if there are any. But let me start with the operating environment.

It actually stayed pretty much the same it has been throughout last year. If we start with the consumer landscape, the consumer has been really hesitant on making any discretionary shopping. The consumer confidence has has remained low for for a longer period of time. Consumers’ confidence in own economics and employment is on a low level. We also see that estimation towards the Finnish macroeconomic landscape has been quite mild for this upcoming year.

We see also some positive drivers, especially impacting the consumer business. Interest rates have been continuously going down, and we expect that this development will have a positive impact on purchasing power as we go further this year. During the first quarter, we did see some, increasing in in small midsize businesses bankruptcies, and this might have an impact on on this year as well. Talking about geopolitical uncertainties, we didn’t see any impact during the first, quarter in our line of business. If we then look specific, specifically in consumer electronic market, according to JFK, again, the market declined by 2%.

Despite these market turbulences or the market environment, we were able to record growth figures in revenue. Growth came from our strategic segments, strategic focus areas. It is nice to see that online visitors are growing again, which is which is stating that consumer is interested in our line of offering again. Our online segment is growing nicely by almost 4%. Consumer business was flat.

On the other hand, b to b business grew strongly by 7%, mainly driven by our international b to b clients. If you look at certain segments, really strong performance in entertainment categories such such as TVs, for example, IT, computing doing also really really well, highlight from categories where our own brands growing by almost 40%. Second positive driver for a strong quarter was our margin development. Gross margin stood at 18.8%, which is a really high level for us. It actually states already, back to actions taken early on.

The fundament for healthy margin comes from inventory, inventory turn, making sure that the obsolete stock stay as minimum as possible. And due to these reasons, we were also able to source and make good deals with good commercial terms, which yielded positively in our margin development. We were also really successful in campaigning and pricing activities, finding the right price points for profitable growth. It’s also worthwhile mentioning that the own brand positive development is yielding a positive impact on the general margin development as well. Revenue development, really strong margin development accompanied with good cost efficiency leading into significant profit and profitability improvement.

Operating expenses and personnel expenses were down from previous year, and these all combined into a comparable result and operating result of €3,200,000 and a really solid profitability for the first quarter, ’2 point ’9 percent. Like I said, the backbone for solid margin distribution comes from good inventory, healthy inventory and good inventory turn. We were able to make sure that we are in a position to to invest in in, for example, in upcoming season categories. We took certain season categories earlier into our stock than we did previous year, and this had an impact of increasing the inventory levels from the fourth quarter. But if we compare to the previous year first quarter, they were still down by 5%.

From balance sheet financials, first of all, flow is typically negative at this point of year, slightly decreasing the previous year due to the reason that we were taking in more of the upcoming season categories. Equity ratio going into the right direction, really strong cash position at the end of the period, almost €20,000,000 Level of invest low as typically not that we are not able or wanting to do those kind of investment, more underlying and highlighting the investment light business model that we are running. So all in all from the financials, we can say that the company’s situation is strong and solid. It’s also important to drive the business in long term, not only short term execution and profitability wise. Therefore, I’m really happy to see that the way we are transforming the market, the way we are accelerating online shift throughout our fast deliveries is yield really yielding market share gains and positive momentum during the first quarter.

Again, really strong performance growing by by over 20% and and stating that we have really find out a way how we can man maneuver and and operate in in low demand environment and still be able to gain growth through new services and new ways of conducting business. Not only growing faster than the market, also, the customers are stating that our fast deliveries is is the best possible way of operating and interacting with us, NPS as high as 84 in this line of business. During the first quarter, the internal share of all online orders distributed to fast delivery services were above 20%. So it has become a significant part of our business. Secondly, like stated already earlier, really good performance from our own brand development team, finding and creating new products, interesting high quality products, really competitive in price points, gaining growth, growing by almost 40%.

So we are nicely on track hitting our targets end of twenty twenty eight to have 10% out of total revenue from own brands. During the first quarter, the internal share was almost 7%. And lastly, we have said that we are interested, and we will be focusing also not only the the home territory here in the Finnish market, but also gaining growth outside of our international current partnerships and also new partnerships. International operations growing by almost 40% during the first quarter, really strong performance also from that side. It’s good to mention that in these figures, we don’t have any impact from the announced cooperation and partnerships starting in Sweden with Amazon.

Those impacts will be shown in figures from the second quarter then onwards. So how do we see the market? The outlook has not changed from the full year report few months ago. We do believe that the first part of the year will be a tougher one, which was stated during the first quarter. Consumer confidence still still low, and there are uncertainties around geopolitical uncertainties, like I said, not impacting our line of business during the first quarter, but it’s it’s too early early days to see what will be the impact going further this year along.

We do believe that the second half should be a better one. We do believe that the big underlying drivers for for purchasing power increases should really yield a positive impact also on consumption, mainly interest rates, for example, or or or inflation staying as low as it has. What we can say for certainty is that regardless of the operating environment or the market environment, we will be focusing on our strategic growth areas and we’ll be focusing on our own actions, own performance and we are certain that we have the right path going forward. Therefore, no need updating our guidance. We are expecting a growth year.

We are expecting revenue to grow from previous year. We are expecting comparable EBIT to be above of previous year. So if I summarize the presentation, during unchanged tough times, solid strong performance from the company with own actions, own focus area, executing our strategy, we were able to gain growth, increase margins, being cost efficient and increasing our profitability. Secondly, it’s important to have long term actions, long term profitability pools, revenue streams to support the growth story also long term. That’s it from my side.

I believe there are no questions at this point. So thank you all for for joining in, and have a great day. Thank you.

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