2024-03-05 19:13:04 ET
D'Ieteren Group SA (SIETY)
Q4 2023 Results Conference Call
March 05, 2024 12:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Édouard Janssen - Chief Financial Officer
Francis Deprez - Chief Executive Officer
Nicolas Saillez - Chief Investment Officer
Conference Call Participants
Michiel Declercq - KBC Securities
David Vagman - ING Belgium
Jeremy Kincaid - Lanschot Kempen
Alexander Craeymeersch - Kepler Cheuvreux
Pallav Mittal - Barclays
Kris Kippers - Degroof Petercam
Presentation
Unidentified Company Representative
[Call Started Abruptly] …so we're a good €10 million above that, and that's an increase of 28.1% versus last year. We've also generated over €600 million, €605.4 million to be precise, of free cash flow group share and that's about 12 times more than in ‘22. And that comes amongst others also from D'Ieteren Automotive, which you may recall last year did not have a positive free cash flow that is now definitely is the case. And then third key message is that our guidance for 2024 is to continue to grow our PBT group share and we anticipate a mid to high single digit growth in that KPI. So these are the three key messages I would say of today.
And let me give you a little bit of flavor more on how we got to those results. It's really been driven by a strong operational performance of several of our businesses, and also the full year scope effect of PHE which we, as you recall, only had five months of in ‘22 and now had 12 months in 2023. At Belron, the adjusted PBT group share improved with over 17.5%. Actually we ended up with a margin improvement of 226 basis points. You’ll recall we guided for 200 basis points at least and so we're a bit above that. And so we passed the 20% margin mark landing at 20.5% to be precise in 2023. At D’Ieteren Auto, we had of course a lot more car deliveries coming in, which allowed us to invoice them and to gain market shares. And so we posted the record adjusted PBT group share that grew 36.6% compared to the year before. We also reached a return on sales of 4.2%, which is actually slightly better than the year before. We had guided for a slightly lower one but we delivered a slightly better one than 2022. In PHE, we have a contribution of about €138 million in our PBT group share. So a sizable number for this first four year, I would say, and that was a solid level of activity at PHE with both price evolution and also good cost control. TVH recorded an adjusted PBT group share of around €75 million, it's 24% less than the year before and it's of course the result of the cyber attack on the one hand, because that had a temporary interruption for a number of weeks but we also had some adverse foreign exchange effect, and we had some softer sales in the months afterwards and we fully took out Russia by the way as well now in 2023.
And then last but not least, Moleskine, the story similar to what we had been telling already at the half year destocking policies at the retailers and e-commerce platforms and restricted corporate gifting budgets have continued to weigh on Moleskine,but they improved their margins. And so we landed with a PBT group share of €2.2 million but at a higher operating margin of about 18%. Maybe also important to note is the gross dividend that we will recommend to the general assembly at the end of May is going to be €3.75. So that's about 25% more than the €3 of last year. And when I was guiding mid to high single digit growth for the PBT group share for 2024, it's also important to note that we will be calculating that starting from a number where we have aligned to different foreign exchange rates to the rate of the 31st of December 2023. And so the starting number will not be the €970.8 but it will be €962.4 to be precise. I think Stephanie asked me to clarify that number from the start, so they don't forget to mention that....
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D'Ieteren Group SA (SIETY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript