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Materialise N.V. (MTLS)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 24, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Materialise Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call maybe recorded. I'd now like to introduce your host for today's conference Harriet Fried of LHA. Please go ahead.

Harriet Fried

Analyst

Thank you everyone for joining us today for Materialise's fourth quarter conference call. With us on the call are Fried Vancraen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Materialise; Peter Leys, Executive Chairman and Johan Albrecht, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being accompanied by a slide presentation that reviews Materialise's strategic financial and operational performance for the fourth quarter of 2016. To access the slides if you have not already done so, please go to the Investor Relations section of the Company's Web site at www.materialise.com. The earnings press release that was issued earlier this morning can also be found on that page. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements regarding the Company's plans, expectations and growth prospects among other things. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including competitive dynamics and industry change. Any forward-looking statements including those related to the Company's future results and activities represent management's estimates as of today and should not be relied upon as representing their estimates as of any subsequent day. Management disclaims any duty to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or changes in expectations. A more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties and other factors that may impact the Company's future business or financial results can be found in the 20-F for fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 filed with the SEC on April 28, 2016. Finally, management will discuss certain non-IFRS measures on today's conference call. A reconciliation table is contained in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Peter Leys. Peter?

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Thank you Harriet, and thank you everyone for joining us today. The agenda for our call is on Slide 3. I’ll begin with a brief recap of our results for the quarter and the full-year after which Fried will give you an overview of our most important strategic accomplishments for the year. After that, Johan will go through our Q4 numbers in more detail and then I’ll come back on to take you through our operational performance for 2016 and our strategic imperatives and guidance for 2017. When we've completed our prepared remarks, we will be happy to respond to any questions that you may have. Turning to Slide 4, you will see the highlights of our fourth quarter results. While the markets we operate in has been in the state of transition, we continue to make good progress with our financial results, our strategic initiatives, and our operational effectiveness. For the quarter, we had revenue growth of 12%. The figure that does take into account deferred revenue from annual software sales and maintenance contracts, which rose by €3.7 million from the end of last year. Adjusted EBITDA was up 50% compared to the fourth quarter of 2015 and we turned in earnings of €0.01 per diluted share. Importantly we had revenue increases and positive EBITDA in all three of our business segments. Slide 5, sits forth some of the highlights of our full-year performance. For 2017, revenue increased 12%. Again, not including the increase of almost €3.7 million in deferred revenues from annual software sales and maintenance contracts, which add roughly an additional 3% to our annual sales growth. For the year, consolidated adjusted EBITDA was up 157%. Thanks to the combination of on the one hand a solid growth of both our revenues, 12% and our gross profit margin 130 basis points. And on the other hand, a much more moderate increase of our operating expenses of roughly 5%. And with this, I’d like to turn the call over to Fried.

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Good morning or Good afternoon to everyone. 2016 was quite a busy year here at Materialise, during which we reinforced our strategic positioning with good results. In the beginning of the year, we launched our new branding architecture to make customers better aware of the cohesion between our different product offerings. Together they constitute the backbone for 3D printing applications. During the first half of the year, we introduced the Magics Suite and we added the Materialise Mimics Care Suite to the Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite. These suites fit in a horizontal market approach. They enable professional and certified 3D printing in a broad set of industrial sectors, such as automotive, aerospace, and consumer electronics, as well as they allow us to serve multiple medical markets such as for instance orthopedics, cardiovascular surgery, CMF surgery, phenomenology and neurology. In 2016, we not only introduced but we also expanded these horizontal backbones. We added the inspected tool to our Materialise Magic Suite and broadened the Materialise Mimics Care Suite with Mimics Imprint and Anatomy Print. On the medical side, we also started data testing, new scripting tools in Mimics. These allow automations in the data handling for the development of custom and standard medical devices. Another element that fits into this strategy is a partnership with Siemens. The integration of functionalities of our Materialise Magic Suite technology into the Siemens cut [ph] and product lifecycle management tools will give a broader customer base access to our technology at an earlier phase in the product development cycle. In 2016, more and more customers and partners reached out to us to learn where additive manufacturing can add value for them. This resulted in a substantial update in our manufacturing activities. We are proud to announce that during 2016 we printed more than 1…

Johan Albrecht

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Thank you, Fried. I’ll start with a brief review of our consolidated revenue on Slide 7. First. I’d like to remind everyone that when we refer to sales in our presentation, we mean revenues plus deferred revenues. Also please note that unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call are against our results for the same period in 2015. Finally, in each of the six slides I cover, I will focus on our results for the quarter. Although certain data for the year also are shown for reference. As Peter mentioned in his opening remarks, in this year's fourth quarter we generated a 12% increase in revenue, with increases in all of the segments. Materialise software accounted for 26% of our total revenue. Materialise medical for 32% and Materialise manufacturing for 42%. As you know, two of our Company's goals are to grow to the contribution -- to grow the contribution that software revenue and end parts revenue make to our total mix. In the fourth quarter of 2016, total revenue from software products rose by 2 percentage points to 39%, while end parts decreased by 1 percentage point to 37%. Prototyping accounted for 24% of total revenue as compared to 25%. Moving to Slide 8, you can see our consolidated adjusted EBITDA numbers for the fourth quarter. As Peter mentioned in his opening remarks, consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased by 50% growing from €2,979,000 to €4,455,000. Our adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 10.6% to 14.2%. This improvements primarily reflect two factors. First, our continued double-digit revenue growth. And second, a modest increase of only 3.6% in operational expenses. Slide 9, summarizes the results of our Materialise software segment. The revenue grew 11%, recurring sales grew 38% driven by 80% growth in sales generated from new annual licenses. The strong performance…

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Thank you, Johan. Please turn to Slide 14, for a summary of our operational achievements for the year and also our priorities for 2017. The additive manufacturing market is transitioning from Rapid Prototyping due to production of end parts. Many players in very different industries are seriously exploring the potential of additive manufacturing for their end markets, and are actively using equipment either for testing purposes or already for the production of limited series of parts. Simultaneously industry players have been waiting for new technologies that are expected to reach the market in the near future. During this transition periods, the growth has been slower than expected, Materialise set four objectives for itself. First, maintain our double-digit revenue growth rates. Second, increase efficiencies and expand our adjusted EBITDA margin accordingly. Third, broaden our technological offering targeted at the markets for end parts. And finally, expand our market reach, both horizontally and vertically by engaging were appropriate in selected partnerships. We believe, in 2016, we made good progress on each of these four fronts. Our revenues grew year-over-year by 12.2%. And if you were to add our deferred revenues on software sales and maintenance to our recognized revenues, our sales growth would even be 15.8%. Second, year-over-year our adjusted EBITDA grew by 167% to €9.5 million for 2016. Third, we expanded our backbone with promising new functionality, such as Inspector, Mimics Imprint and Anatomy print. And finally, we engaged in a number of promising partnerships with HP, Depuy Synthes, J&J, HOYA and Siemens to only name a few. We expect 2017 to be a similar transition year and intend to work towards the same four goals. Continue to grow our revenues double digits, increase our profitability, invest in innovative additions to our backbone technology and advance our plans to engage in…

Operator

Operator

Certainly. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Jason West

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Hi. Good morning. This is actually Jason on for Julian.

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Hi, Jason.

Jason West

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Hey, just a really quick question on how you -- how to achieve the higher end of your guidance. You mentioned that there is some growth prospects that you could be looking forward to achieve that, will this come more in the software segment or maybe from the manufacturing expansions that you sort of highlighted in your last call?

Johan Albrecht

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Well, as always it’s a combination of both elements we see growth perspectives on the manufacturing side and we see growth perspectives on the software side. And, yes, definitely we’ve continued to grow the software a little bit faster than manufacturing in the previous years. Again, it's hard to predict before the year starts that this will be the same this year, but it's our ambition to grow both of them and, yes, we believe that are our opportunities for both.

Jason West

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Got it. And then as a quick follow-up, could you give any visibility into how printer on the manufacturing segment as to how printer adoption could look in 2017, given it's been kind of slow these past couple of years? Any color that you could …

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Insight, you mean internally in Materialise?

Jason West

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Yes.

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Yes, we -- well, for sure the biggest demand in for and the largest volume manufacturing applications are related to plastics polyamide technologies, which can be aided as a [indiscernible] systems or multi jet systems from HP.

Jason West

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open.

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Hello, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my call or questions here. Maybe a couple of here for you Fried or Peter. To start off with, how about Siemens relationship? I would just like to know your thoughts on the significance of that and when would it ramp into kind of more of a material kind of revenue opportunity for you guys?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Yes, thank you, Troy. Clearly as we already mentioned in the prepared remarks, this is for us an important landmark collaboration. It is a true endorsements by a very important player, in particular in the end part manufacturing world of the strength and the advancement of our technology. So basically the additive manufacturing functionality that they want to add to their product lifecycle management tools will be the Materialise technology. So we are very excited about that and do expect that over the years this will have an important impact on our sales numbers. Of course, this will take -- this will follow the market, it's not because Siemens moves and moves very quickly as one of the leaders in this market by adding additive manufacturing functionality to its portfolio, that all the customers will certainly in that same year buy this functionality. The successive functionality will go together with the adoption of the technology for end part manufacturing by the customer base of both Siemens and ourselves. And we see that ramping up gradually in 2017, 2018, but obviously with much more significant impact on the numbers in the years thereafter.

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

All right. So it looks like if we think about Autodesk has Netfabb [ph], Siemens is partnering with you. I’m assuming this would be a nonexclusive contract and there been other kind of CAD companies that are reaching out to you do something [ph] in similar?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

I mean, we have -- Troy, you know our strategy and we try to be very true to that strategy. We want to be a neutral player that reaches out to as many users of the technology and the ecosystem as possible. So our relationship with Siemens is just like our strategic relationships with many other players in the field that is indeed nonexclusive.

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Right, perfect. And how about switching gears at HP, I guess, I would be curious know you guys have a machine on site starts in the technology, do you see yourself transitioning more of your nylon production to Fusion Jet technology? I mean, does it have the speed and capabilities that the company's claims?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Well, we certainly see a potential for certain product types and we will increase our capacity of those machines.

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

The Fusion Jet, specifically is [indiscernible]?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

[Indiscernible].

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Okay, perfect. And then how about -- just one last one for me and I will cede the floor, just love to get an update on the X-Ray product?

Peter Leys

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Well, yes, this project is still in progress. It is harder than we thought to fulfill all the requirements of the FDA. We have not resubmitted new 510(k) yet, but we are still planning to do this further down this year. That’s the current status.

Troy Jensen

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Okay. Perfect, guys. Good luck this year.

Peter Leys

Analyst · Troy Jensen from Piper. Your line is now open

Thank you, Troy.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open.

Weston Twigg

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Hi. Excuse me, thanks for taking my question. First, just I was wondering if you could maybe talk to us about your relationship with GE now that they’ve bought a couple of metal printing companies, and if you think that will expand to be a strong revenue driver anytime as they really ramp up that metals focus?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Hi, West. Thank you for the question. Obviously, GE already was a customer of ours, a good user of both our Magics and our Streamics functionality. The machine vendors [ph] that are in the process of being acquired by GE, both contemplated in Arcam were our vendors, which we have good relationships and many users of their machines were also used our technology. So we -- these -- parts of the puzzle as far as we concerned full nicely together, its existing partners of ours that now join an existing customer of ours. What exactly that the future will bring, of course remains to be seen. We will, I mean, we’re in discussion with GE and we will ramp up those discussions. I guess, once these acquisitions had been fully finalized and GE is more in a position to actually discuss and further work with these assets.

Weston Twigg

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Okay. I mean that make sense, but it sounds like you do you view this as a potential nice growth driver for your business, as there -- as GE expand its nova [ph] focus. Okay, perfect. And then the other question I had was -- sorry, go ahead.

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

I was going to say, I mean, if you look at the announcement, West, that they’ve made at the time of the acquisition, they’re very ambitious in the number of printers they’re going to get out there. And of course the Materialise any printer that is being used somewhere is a good potential for our business.

Peter Leys

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

And immediately at Formnext thereafter we have gotten their support on our Group, and they’ve made multiple statements endorsing our technology. So I think the signs are very good, but contractually they are not yet in a position to sign everything.

Weston Twigg

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Perfect. Very helpful. And the other question, I wanted to ask about was just related to the unique partnership with HOYA. I’m just kind of curious how that’s going along, that’s a really interesting project you're starting in a retail location, producing the end-parts in terms of eyeglasses. Can you give us an update in terms of what the feedback has been, what kind of volumes you’re doing, how it's been progressing, maybe if you run into any roadblocks?

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Well, actually the feedback is simply fantastic at old ratios [ph] where the system has been introduced, it has received a lot of attention and more than attention also orders. Now actually the real rollout in the first commercial CRE is expected only in the second quarter. So, at this moment we’re still in a full ramp up phase. And just with that, our customers and the real launch is, yes, early second quarter.

Weston Twigg

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

All right. Thank you.

Fried Vancraen

Analyst · Weston Twigg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is now open

Thank you, West.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And at this time, I’m not showing any further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Peter Leys for any closing remarks.

Peter Leys

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open

Okay. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining the call. I hope we’ve been able to give you a good overview of the way in which we plan to continue to increase Materialise's revenues and profitability, expand our backbone technology and engage in new verticals in collaboration with strong partners where appropriate. So thanks again to all of you and enjoy the rest of your day. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program, and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.