Suominen - A volume setback

Suominen’s earnings will now correct to a lower level from their recent peak. We believe, despite the setback and increased uncertainty, that Suominen’s value chain positioning is still good, and decent margins will remain.

US delivery volumes will take a big hit in H2’21

Q2 revenue fell 7% y/y to EUR 114m and missed the estimates, which were at EUR 120m. In our view the softness was due to Americas; the US supply chain has lately been saturated with wipes as the local retailers sourced as much product as possible, including unbranded wipes which then didn’t move forward from the shelves and thus blocked volumes for many brand wipes. Suominen’s US brand name customers were pushing for max delivery volumes as late as May and June, and by the end of Q2 stocks began to pile up. Suominen says the logjam hasn’t for the most part spread beyond the US; LatAm has continued to develop as before while there has been some jamming in Europe. In our view the 14.7% GM was an encouraging sign, considering the metric also benefits from high volumes, as revenue was soft compared to estimates. Suominen thus reached EUR 15.3m in Q2 EBITDA, compared to the EUR 14.8m/13.5m Evli/cons. estimates.

We believe GM will remain near 13% going forward

Suominen’s nonwovens pricing is now to a large extent locked into mechanisms and so we believe gross margin will remain at a decent level going forward, at around 13% or so. We estimate Q3 revenue to decline by 17% y/y as we see Americas down by 24%. We expect gross margin to decline to 12%, which translates to EUR 9.5m in EBITDA. We expect some stabilization already in Q4, but we revise our FY ’22 revenue estimate down to EUR 431m (prev. EUR 473m) and that for EBITDA to EUR 48.5m (prev. EUR 56.0m). It is now clear earnings have peaked and Suominen may not reach EUR 15m quarterly EBITDA for a while. We however believe Suominen can achieve above EUR 10m quarterly EBITDA again soon enough.

The sell-off already neutralized earnings multiples

Suominen’s earnings multiples were low already before the profit warning, at about 6x EV/EBITDA and 9x EV/EBIT. We find the net effect of the sell-off and our earnings downgrade has been a marginal increase in multiples. We consider these levels very reasonable. Our TP is now EUR 6 (6.8). We retain our BUY rating.

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