Oatly Group AB (NASDAQ:OTLY) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Toni Petersson : Well, the why is that we have our runway is absolutely massive. And remember one thing, the hurdles that we had experienced are very much related to the macro combined with supporting the high growth that we have. So there’s so much more to do, and we have so much confidence in these very decisive strategic actions that we’re taking now to prepare this organization company for growth. And again, we have this underlying demand. Again, no demand issues we see the opposite. We see velocity strength. We see market share gains. We see us expanding across regions. So the confidence level is high. This has been very much an executional exercise that we need to improve, and we are taking decisive action. So that is the reason.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John Baumgartner from Mizuho.

John Baumgartner: Good morning, thanks for the question. Wanted to come back to the reorganization and your reductions for operating expenses. Relative to sales, your OpEx is a multiple of your peers with similar levels of revenue. And I guess a big part of that gap can be explained by the infrastructure to support your geographic breadth, and that gets leveraged over time with sales. So as you’ve given the business a second look here, what costs have become more discretionary in your view relative to what was maybe previously viewed as more structural in nature? And how do we think about the risk that you’re reducing costs excessively or at least prematurely. Thank you.

Jean Christophe : So first of all, John, Jean-Christophe speaking. I think technically, within our SG&A costs, we have our customer distribution costs. So I think that’s an important factor when you benchmark or compare which I know is at the heart of your job rightly. So then to your next question, which was, as we reset our cost base. Are we taking any risk there? I think we have had a very, very bottom-up approach. We have done the entire analysis ourselves, leveraging the guide people that exist in the various teams and we have really done the exercise in reset with the three intents that Toni has listed initially. So the question we asked was, what do we need capability-wise in order to propel us into the next step towards growth.

So we were really looking for a scalable model. The second thing that has given us is simplicity and clarity. As any fast growth company, we have grown very fast and so has some parts of our organization. And therefore, we really need to bring simplicity and clarity. And finally, the expected outcome of that is by diminishing our fixed cost structure is to accelerate the path to profitability, which both Toni and Christian have referred to. The specific intersection, we have looked at first back to your regional resources was the intersection of the corporate and the global player with the European player. And Daniel and I coming in June, we had the opportunity to see some opportunities there, and this is what we have done. So I want to leave you with the thing that really the main priority, the main focus for us has been to position ourselves to invest in those because that is and will remain our number one priority.

John Baumgartner: Thanks for that. And just a follow-up on the European environment. It looks like from the slide deck that velocity in the U.K. and Germany was down about high single digits sequentially versus Q2, which was better than the category. I’m just curious, how much of that was due to the seasonality relative to just the overall macro environment? And what’s your confidence level for seeing velocities and demand sort of bottoming given the macro uncertainty in Europe? Thank you.