Autins Group Regulatory News (AUTG)

13 June 2018

Autins Group plc

(the "Company" or the "Group")

Interim Results

Autins Group plc (AIM: AUTG), a leading designer, manufacturer and supplier of acoustic and thermal insulation solutions for the automotive sector, announces its results for the six months ended 31 March 2018.

Financial Highlights

· Revenue increased by 29.4% to £15.86m (H1 2017: £12.25m)

· Gross profit ahead by 1.5% at £4.27m (H1 2017: £4.20m)

· Gross margins down to 26.9% (H1 2017: 34.3%)

· Adjusted EBITDA1 £0.60m (H1 2017: £0.55m)

· Adjusted Profit Before Tax1,2 £0.41m (H1 2017: £0.35m)

· Profit After Tax £0.05m (H1 2017: Loss of £0.16m)

· Earnings per Share 0.22p (H1 2017: Loss of 0.72p)

· Net debt £3.58m (YE 2017: Net debt £2.04m)

1: Adjusted EBITDA excludes non recurring start up Neptune costs of £0.24m (H1: 2017 £0.23m), £nil (H1 2017: £0.14m) related to the former Chief Executive and £nil (H1 2017: £0.09m) of IPO and refinancing costs

2: Adjusted PBT further excludes £0.12m (H1 2017: £0.12m) amortisation of intangible costs

Operational Highlights

First Half

· Neptune product successfully gained technical approval across all strategic targeted OEMs in Germany, UK and Sweden 

· Neptune product gaining traction directly through OEMs and through Tier 1s with awarded business across 11 OEM brands, 26 vehicle models, and well over 100 different parts

· Continued growth in both Germany and Sweden

· Winning business and building partnerships with more than a dozen Tier 1s

· Indica Automotive joint venture continues to perform well

· Continued progress in focused areas: research, test and product development; advanced manufacturing; and continued strengthening of our organisation and capabilities

Post Period End

· Reduced schedules from key OEMs and customers in UK

· Pricing pressure / tighter margins on existing contracts and when bidding for new business

· Secured technical approval for Neptune with all target European automotive OEMs

Adam Attwood, Chairman, said:

"Our first half of year shows solid results in that we have continued to deliver top line growth although at the same time seeing pressure on gross margins. This reflects the challenging conditions in the UK automotive market."

"We had previously provided guidance that we expected a significant weighting to the second half of 2018. However, visibility to current volumes now indicates lower levels of supply required from some of our major customers in the UK and, therefore, our second half performance is likely to remain similar to the first."

"The investment in the Neptune facilities since the IPO will enable the Group to broaden its customer base and the technical approvals secured recently with Europe's leading automotive OEMs represents a significant step towards achieving that goal. The Board will provide further updates on new customer and platform wins as and when they occur."

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About Autins

Autins specialises in the design, manufacture and supply of acoustic and thermal insulation solutions primarily in the automotive sector but with an increasing focus on other sectors, including flooring, building and wider industrial applications.

The Group is one of the leading suppliers of noise and heat management products in the automotive market, producing and supplying over two million parts per month to customers including some of the world's leading vehicle manufacturers. 

Operational and Financial Review

Revenue

Revenue progressed with growth of 29.4% to £15.86m (H1 2017: £12.25m). Component revenue saw growth of 35.4% to £15.57m (H1 2017: £11.50m). Tooling revenue was lower at £0.29m (H1 2017: £0.76m) but is expected to be higher in the second half year.

A major driver of the growth in component revenue was the UK market, which saw revenue increase by 33.2% to £13.56m (H1 2017: £10.17m). Swedish component manufacturing revenues increased by 4.7% to £0.49m (H1 2017: £0.47m), whilst German component revenues increased by 77.2% to £1.50m (H1 2017: £0.85m).

Direct component sales to the Group's largest customer accounted for 61% of Group revenue (2017: 64%). The reduction in concentration of revenue with this customer is expected to continue with new volume production commencing on new customer programmes in the next year.

Gross margin

The Group's component gross margin decreased to 26.9% (H1 17: 34.4%) as a result of changes in customer schedules affecting product mix and production efficiencies as well as significant competitive pressures with regards existing work and new platform launches. The Group's specialist technicians are continuing to successfully operate and improve the Neptune line, which is still working towards economic batch volumes.

EBITDA and operating profit

The reported operating loss of £0.07m (H1 2017: Loss of £0.28m) and EBITDA of £0.37m (H1 2017: £0.09m) are stated after charging exceptional and adjusting items of £0.12m (H1 2017: £0.34m) and non-recurring costs of £0.24m (H1 2017: £0.23m) as detailed below.

Adjusting items

The Company acquired 100 per cent of the issued share capital of Acoustic Insulations Limited on 29 April 2014 as part of an overall refinancing package to fund strategic investments and additional working capital to support the growth of the Group. This acquisition recognised £1.90m of intangible assets which creates an annual amortisation charge of £0.24m.

Non-recurring costs

The Group's Solar Nonwovens facility has, whilst continuing to work towards full operational status, incurred non-recurring start-up costs of £0.24m (H1 2017: £0.23m).

Joint venture

The Group's share of joint venture activities relates solely to Indica Automotive, a UK based foam conversion business.

Turnover at Indica Automotive increased 52.7% year on year to £1.94m (H1 2017: £1.27m) with a profit after tax of £0.31m (H1 2017: £0.22m). Whilst the Group remains the largest customer of the joint venture, diversification activities have resulted in a fourfold increase in sales to non-group customers.

Net finance expense

Net finance expense for the period of £0.04m (H1 2017: £0.05m) is primarily the interest element of hire purchase agreements (£0.03m) and interest paid on bank borrowings (£0.01m). No new term finance has been utilised in the period.

Taxation

Tax provisioning for the period has been calculated at a blended rate taking account of the relative UK, German and Swedish headline rates and the effect of additional reliefs and non-taxable items. We would expect the effective rate for full year profits to be lower than the headline rates due to enhanced R&D claims and the utilisation of brought forward losses within the Group.

The Group continues to have taxable losses available within its overseas subsidiaries which will offset trading profits in higher corporation tax territories of Sweden and Germany in the short term.

Dividends

The Board is proposing an interim dividend of 0.4p per share for the current year. The dividend will be paid on 3 August 2018 to shareholders on the register on 13 July 2018.

Net cash/(debt) and financing

The Group ended the period with net debt (being the net of cash and cash equivalents and the Group's loans and borrowings) of £3.58m (H1 2017: Net cash £0.44m; H2 2017: Net Debt £2.04m) and cash and cash equivalents of £1.35m (H1 2017: £1.93m; H2 2017: £1.45m). During the period net debt has increased as a result of funding working capital requirements and further capital investment in the Group's technical and operational facilities.

The Group's HSBC facilities provide up to £6m of invoice discount and £4.5m of asset finance availability for the Group's ongoing investment in growth. At the end of the period, £3.9m of the invoice discounting facility was utilised (H1 2017: Nil; H2 2017: £2.2m).

Capital expenditure

The Group invested £0.4m (H1 2017: £0.5m) in its facilities during the period, of which £0.1m related to its Neptune facility and £0.2m related to works required to accommodate water jet cutting equipment.

Operations

Our UK operations have continued to invest to ensure our capacity and capability aligns with our strategic growth prospects, however, we have experienced volume, mix and performance challenges, which have led to short-term margin erosion.

Our German and Swedish operations have both continued to grow and progress including market share gains with existing OEMs.

Neptune

Our Neptune product has successfully gained technical approval across all our strategic targeted OEMs in Germany, UK and Sweden. This has led to initial specific awards for future year models, however, the broader success of Neptune's adoption is clearly illustrated most clearly with it now being awarded across 11 OEM brands, 26 vehicle models and well over 100 different parts. Completing technical approvals with our target strategic OEMs represents an important milestone in delivering on our growth strategy, which is significantly underpinned by our class-leading Neptune offering.

Outlook

We had previously provided guidance that we expected a significant weighting to the second half of 2018. However, visibility to current volumes now indicates lower levels of supply required from some of our major customers in the UK and, therefore, our second half performance is likely to remain similar to the first.

The investments we have made in the past year to improve our capability in people and processes have enabled us to make good progress to ensure we can deliver sustainable growth. We have built a strong pipeline of quoted opportunities whilst winning good business for future year models across major targeted OEMs. This diversification across UK and Europe underpins our strategy and this progress positions us for a bright future. However, before this new business can come into live production, we have near-term challenges with lower demand in the UK constraining our current financial performance.

The investment in the Neptune facilities since the IPO will enable the Group to broaden its customer base and the technical approvals secured recently with Europe's leading automotive OEMs represents a significant step towards achieving that goal. The Board will provide further updates on new customer and platform wins as and when they occur.

Interim Consolidated Income Statement

Interim Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income

Interim Consolidated Statement of Financial Position

Interim Consolidated Statement of Changes in Equity

Interim Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows

Notes to the Interim Consolidated Financial Information

1. Accounting policies

Description of business

Autins Group is a public limited company domiciled in the United Kingdom and listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange ('AIM'). The principal activity of the Group is the supply of Noise Vibration and Harshness ('NVH') insulating materials primarily to the automotive industry. The address of the registered office is Central Point One, Central Park Drive, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV23 0WE.

Basis of preparation

This unaudited consolidated interim financial information has been prepared in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the European Union. The principal accounting policies used in preparing the interim results are those the Group expects to apply in its financial statements for the year ended 30 September 2018.

Depreciation is provided in respect of certain items and property, plant and equipment relating to the Group's Neptune line at a fixed rate per unit of manufactured product. The fixed rate has been calculated so as to write off the cost less estimated residual value of the assets over the estimated total output of the line.

With the above exception, all of the principal accounting policies used in preparing the interim results are unchanged from those disclosed in the Annual Report for the year ended 30 September 2017.

The financial information does not contain all of the information that is required to be disclosed in a full set of IFRS financial statements. The financial information for the six months ended 31 March 2018 and 31 March 2017 is unreviewed and unaudited and does not constitute the Group's statutory financial statements for those periods.

The comparative financial information for the full year ended 30 September 2017 has, however, been derived from the audited statutory financial statements for that period. A copy of those statutory financial statements has been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The auditor's report on those accounts was unqualified, did not include references to any matters to which the auditor drew attention by way of emphasis without qualifying its report and did not contain a statement under section 498(2)-(3) of the Companies Act 2006.

The financial information in the Interim Report is presented in Sterling, the Group's presentational currency. 

Basis of consolidation

The consolidated financial statements present the results of the company and its subsidiaries (the "Group") as if they formed a single entity. Intercompany transactions and balances between group companies are therefore eliminated in full.

Subsidiaries are all entities over which the Group has control. The Group controls an entity when it is exposed to, or has rights to, variable returns from its involvement with the entity and has the ability to affect those returns through its power over the entity. Subsidiaries are fully consolidated from the date on which control is transferred to the Group and cease to be consolidated from the date on which control is transferred out of the Group.

The consolidated financial statements incorporate the results of business combinations using the acquisition method. In the statement of financial position, the acquiree's identifiable assets, liabilities and contingent liabilities are initially recognised at their fair values at the acquisition date.

Operating segments

Operating segments are reported in a manner consistent with the internal reporting provided to the chief operating decision maker. The chief operating decision maker has been identified as the management team including the Chief Executive, Chief Financial Officer and Chairman.

The Board considers that the Group's activity constitutes one primary operating and one separable reporting segment as defined under IFRS 8. Management consider the reportable segment to be Automotive NVH. Revenue and profit before tax primarily arises from the principal activity based in the UK. All material assets are based in the UK. Management reviews the performance of the Group by reference to total results against budget.

The total profit measure is operating (loss)/profit as disclosed on the face of the consolidated income statement. No differences exist between the basis of preparation of the performance measures used by management and the figures in the Group financial information.

2 Revenue

Segmental information

The Group currently has one main reportable segment in each year/period, namely Automotive NVH which involves provision of insulation materials to reduce noise, vibration and harshness to automotive manufacturing. Turnover and Operating Profit are disclosed for other segments in aggregate as they individually do not have a significant impact on the Group result.

Measurement of operating segment profit or loss, assets and liabilities

The accounting policies of the operating segments are the same as those applied for the Group in the 2017 annual report and accounts.

The Group evaluates performance on the basis of operating profit/(loss).

Segmental information (continued)

Segmental information (continued)

Reporting of external revenue by location of customers is as follows:

3 Earnings per share

Earnings/(loss) per share are calculated based on the share capital of Autins Group plc and the earnings of the Group for all periods. There are options in place over 941,048 (H1 2017: 305,944) shares that were anti-dilutive at the period end but which may dilute future earnings per share.

4 Non-recurring and exceptional items

The Company acquired 100 per cent of the issued share capital of Acoustic Insulations Limited on 29 April 2014 as part of an overall refinancing package to fund strategic investments and additional working capital to support the growth of the Group. This acquisition recognised £1,909K of intangible assets which creates an annual amortisation charge of £237K.

The on-going start up process and commissioning of the major plant for the Neptune line resulted in an operating loss of £240,000 (full year 2017: £590,000) from the incremental costs of the operation and the specific premises taken on for the plant.

5 Taxation

Taxation on the profit/(loss) before taxation and share of results of joint ventures has been provided at a rate of 19% for the six month period ended 31 March 2018, which is the estimated rate of tax for the period (six months ended 31 March 2017: 20%; year ended 30 September 2017: 19.5%).

6 Dividend

On 11 December 2017, the Company announced a final dividend in respect of the year ended 30 September 2017 of 0.8 pence per share payable on 16 February 2018 to those Ordinary Shareholders on the register of members at close of business on 19 January 2018.