Shriro Holdings (ASX:SHM) Presentation, FNN Online Investor Event, October 2020

Company Presentations

Shriro Holdings Limited (ASX:SHM) CEO Tim Hargreaves talks about company expansion, innovation and latest financial results.

Tim Hargreaves: Thanks very much Clive and thanks Martin, for that insight. Look, a balanced portfolio is important. I hope that investors are interested in our business. Shriro is not a household name, but my guess is that the brands that we have will be, well, our household names we've been around for 40 years, 38 years, nearly 40 years, and listed as five years. So you can see some of the brands there. We've got, Clive, could you just go to the next slide?

There you go. There's so we're a mixture of company owned brands and distribution. So the company owned brands, Everdure cooking appliances, Omega cooking appliances and Robinhood and Omega Altise. So the different categories that we operate in, obviously barbecue. So we've entered a joint venture in with Heston Blumenthal, and we've got a range of award-winning barbecues, both gas and charcoal, with some innovation, that I'm hoping to go through in some detail moving forward. In the appliance area, we've got to Everdure as a brand, Omega and Robinhood. They're all, as I said, company owned and Omega Altise is really in that fan or cooling area and heaters.

The brands that we distribute, look there's Casio, Blanco and Pioneer. Pioneer is in New Zealand only, Casio is a relationship that we've had for 38 years. Our company was founded on the relationship we have with Casio. They have a range of watches, you'd know the brand, G-Shock, which is a leading brand around the world; digital pianos and keyboards and school calculators. So we've got quite a large share of the calculator business in Australia and New Zealand, and we've got a terrific relationship with the Japanese company, Casio. Blanco is a German manufacturer of sinks and we produce some cooking appliances under license with them, which is a wonderful brand we've been distributing their products for quite some time and have a great relationship with those guys. Pioneer is more around car audio and DJ equipment. And it's interesting that the categories of home-related goods are doing very well during that... This COVID, sort of, household isolation period.

So revenue is split by territory. You can see that obviously Australia and New Zealand make up the bulk of our business. You can see that the different brands that we either own or distribute in the different regions. That's clear. I suppose the interesting point in our business is really where we're going from an international perspective. So our business has grown about 64% PCP in the first half of this year on the back of distributing our products predominantly Everdure by Heston in around 28 countries, and they're listed there. There's some big countries that are operating in that barbecue sort of space. The barbecue business is worth about $5 billion per annum and we think that there's an opportunity for us to grow meaningfully in that business.

The financials, the first half was a record profit, which is fantastic. Our revenues were slightly increased on last year, which is a credit to our staff. I mean, really, our New Zealand operation shut down for five weeks, we had retail store closures that I'm sure you're all aware of. And really to be only down on that, was pretty creditable, I thought. Our business post the first half has ticked up quite nicely. We updated the market yesterday that our July to September revenues are about 14% up PCP and looking quite strong. From an EBITDA perspective is quite strong growth, that's driven predominantly around some cost savings. Our business really looked at, sort of, cost rationalisation two years ago. So we really addressed some unnecessary costs and we really looked at how we could actually better manage our business from a cost perspective. I'm grateful that our finance team and our management team looked at that two years ago. So we're ready to reinvest now, some of those cost savings at the growth end of the cycle, particularly in our growth area of our barbecue business internationally.

The other area that we've saved some money on, is really looking at where we advertise and promote our products. So rather than traditionally with trade shows and the like, around the world and traditional media, the digitisation of our business is really the key and it's much more cost effective for us to grow that and manage that, and to tweak that business, to understand our customers from a digital perspective. So we've taken some learnings from our G-Shock watch business and looked at the growth of our online channels and growing that and understanding who the customer is, and now replicating some of that with our Everdure by Heston business.

So now we can understand who the customer is, and where they located and we can tweak our marketing in accordance with that. So our marketing costs are well down, but we just think that it's more effective rather than a one-off sort of, cost savings. So listed are the key points there. So since listing we've produced about 44 cents in fully franked dividends, and we're listed at a dollar. Strong cash conversion. I think that the key thing at this time, Martin touched on it before is, is having strong balance sheets. We've got a very strong balance sheet. We've got no intangibles on our balance sheet, and an end cash position that the first half of just short of $20 million.

The key pillars to our business, for those of you who don't... Who aren't investors, is really those recognised brands, you can see them all listed there. They're wonderful brands. And what we're finding in relationship with our customers in our business is we're seeing that customers are looking for brands. They're looking for trusted brands. No name brands are really price orientated, they don't have the support structure from a warranty perspective, from an aftercare perspective. Brands do and they are more focused on what happens after the sale, more so now than ever, and I'll touch on that and a little bit about our strategy moving forward. The real product innovation is critical to our success. So not only in our partnership brands, which really, the innovation coming from partnerships like G-Shock watches and their smart fitness watches is quite amazing, but really in our own brands with our award-winning barbecues, we have a range of gas and charcoal barbecues.

The charcoal barbecues have an Electric Ignition Charcoal, which is a market first. And we took that to the US market a few years ago, which is the HPBA show, which is a barbecue show for barbecue stockers. And look, I'm really delighted, as a company that we won the best charcoal grill in USA, which is fantastic. And from a gas perspective, what changes can you make in a gas barbecue? So we've looked at how we can change that, and we've looked at how we can make it more stylish. We've made it out of aluminum, so it's rust resistant and I'm sure investors would have seen a bunch of barbecues that those cats will clean up sitting out the front. And really what consumers are telling us that they're looking for quality products outside that are going to withstand the sort of rigors of the environment that we live in, in fact, the environment that many people in Europe and the USA are as well.

The other component with the gas barbecues, as well is they're SPF rated. So the plastics are SPF rated, so they won't fade as fast. So then we think that they'll hang around for a while and they look good. They perform extremely well. And really, the results are in... We're getting there with consumer recognition of our brands overseas. The other key pillar in our business is the exposure to the diversified market. So in terms of the channels, we've got bricks and mortar and e-commerce, so we've supplied to a lot of the e-commerce people, the Catch of the Days, the Kogans of the world, we work very closely with those sort of guys, and our bricks and mortar. We've got a wide variety of bricks and mortar retailers that stock all of our products from jewellery channels, home improvements, department stores.

So we're well diversified in terms of channels. The sectors that we operate in are not just household goods, I think that's important for investors to realise. While it is important part of our business, we're in discretionary, we're in education we're in other areas as well, so we're not wedded to one particular sector. And really for us moving forward, we're looking at the growth areas of, not only in Australia and New Zealand, with our company owned and distribution brands, but how we can grow our business overseas with those 28 countries that we've worked very hard over the last four years in developing a pretty solid footprint and where we can now look at how we can feed more product through those distribution channels.

So when we speak about the scalable growth opportunities, everyone's looking for growth, obviously, we picked on the barbecue market, predominantly because we thought it was a somewhat fragmented market. There's no huge global competitors. There, obviously Weber are in there, who are owned by private equity. They're a big player, but then there's brands like Traeger and Broil King, which most people wouldn't have heard of. And we're a new player, relatively new player into this business. It's $5 billion per annum. And our brand is now selling, even after four years, we've worked very hard in growing that distribution footprint in 28 countries, that are listed there. And now, as I mentioned before, we're now using that as a network to feed our new product through with our fan, we just want to design award in Australia for our fan, with some innovation with that. And when now intending on using the footprint of 28 countries to now look at how we can scale that business through that distribution network.

The key strategy for our business is that innovation, really we've got to be different. We've got to make price at the end of the consumer equation rather than the start. And really when we look at our barbecue business, when we look at our watch business, when we look at our... Even our appliance business, we're looking for innovation, we're working on some great innovation with our Robinhood brand in New Zealand. And we intend on keeping innovating in our business. We can't be a me-too brand. We don't think we are, but we're going to still continue that innovation and that drive with the innovation and reinvestment into those key innovation areas. Reputation is critically important. I mentioned those home brands really, consumers are now looking for great backup support. And if they don't get it, they're very quick to get onto social media and really slam companies for not supporting them.

So we're reinvesting in that aftercare facility and the digitisation of the aftercare facility to make sure we're meeting those consumer standards and really investing in how we can really make them advocates of our brands rather than having problems. The next point is our global expansion. I went through that, the 28 countries, we're hell-bent on making sure that we build strong foundations. You've got a key management group here that are long-term players. I've been with the company for about 25 odd years. Our CFO's been with the company for 10 years, so we're not interested in short-term wins. And what we intend on doing is building strong foundations. So when we talk about our global expansion, we're not interested in just signing up people for the sake of it, we've got to have a strong plan for our brand going forward. And reinvestment, reinvestment in our people, our products and consumer-centric, digital systems. So I spoke about how we engage with consumers from a digital perspective at the front end, how we get demand there for our product and how we support them from a backend perspective as well.

So we provided our trading update yesterday, so our revenues were up 14%, which is really nice. That's on the back of some household goods, barbecues, appliances, musical instruments, et cetera, et cetera. We anticipate that that should continue, but, there's obviously the caveat there of another outbreak of COVID and consumer confidence sticking in there, which is looking okay at this stage. And really, it's on the back of some operational efficiencies that were driven 24 months ago. So we're now... They're cost saving and our cost rationalisation is now complete. And we expect that the companies will place to grow our business now to invest in our business both locally and internationally on a product and a digital scale.

So the key takeaways for future investors, really experienced management on board, really, as I said, we're interested in laying strong foundations, making good long-term decisions for the business. We've got a wonderful board, very supportive, with some great expertise in different areas. Strong financials, we've got no debt. I think that's helps me sleep a little bit better at night, $9 million in cash, which is wonderful. We're historically profitable and we're growing sustainably, we have very strong cash conversion. I think increasingly the yield is becoming more important to investors, obviously, we're paid about 44 cents, which is about I think, eight or 9% per annum based on the share price of 80 cents. So the... Fully franked, it's quite an attractive yield. And the growth opportunities for us are both organic, which with our further development of our export markets in those 28 countries and further countries, with our current products and new products that we intend on distributing through that network. And through acquisition, we have quite a strong, successful track history of acquisitions and a strong balance sheet. So we're in the right position to be able to make some good investments in acquisitions.

So we've got a stable and profitable, strong foundation on diversity brands and suppliers, customers, regions. So what Martin was just mentioning before, having that balanced portfolio, we think we've got a business that has diversity. And I think that that helps us in times of uncertainty as we're speaking of at the moment.

If you're interested, myself or Shane our CFO, his details are there. So if there's any further questions, we're happy to address that on a one-on-one basis. Until then, thanks very much for watching and appreciate the support of our investors.

 
Ends

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