Verkkokauppa.com - Critical Q4 ahead

Black Friday and Christmas sales boosting Q4 growth

During ‘19, Verkkokauppa.com has faced ups and downs in the highly competitive and price driven consumer electronics market. After a relatively weak H1’19, the company was able to show a positive turn in earnings development in Q3, despite of weaker sales growth. For Verkkokauppa.com, Q4 is critical, as most of its sales and profit are generated during this quarter, driven by Christmas sales and Black Friday. We expect only limited impacts resulting from the postal strike but the changed timing of tax refunds might have a negative impact on December sales compared to last year. We expect 8.4% y/y increase in Q4 sales (EUR 168.9) and EBIT to be on par with the previous year at EUR 6.0m (Q4’18: 5.9m).

No ease of competition ahead

We don’t expect the consumer electronics market in ‘20E to grow much from last year thus the management of sales mix plays an important role of supporting further sales and profit development. We expect the growth investments (e.g. increased marketing) to bear fruit in 2020E, resulting in new customers. We also hope to get more color on the new plans regarding B2B sales with the Q4 result. Due to the price driven competition and growth investments, we don’t expect profitability (EBIT%) to improve from last year, although the company’s cost base is scalable. We expect sales in ‘20E to increase by 7% y/y (EUR 549.1m) and EBIT increase of ~10% y/y resulting in EBIT margin of 2.6%..

“HOLD” with TP of EUR 3.3 intact

We have kept our estimates intact ahead of Q4. Verkkokauppa.com guides ‘19E sales of EUR 500-525m and EBIT of EUR 11-15m. Our estimates are in the mid-point of the guidance with ‘19E sales of EUR 513m (7.4% y/y) and EBIT of EUR 12.8m (FY18:13.3m). We continue to expect a growing dividend of EUR 0.21 (cons. EUR 0.21) vs. EUR 0.20 for ’18. We keep our rating “HOLD” with TP of EUR 3.3 intact ahead of Q4.