Betterware de México, S.A.P.I. de C.V. (NASDAQ:BWMX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Cristina Fernandez: Hi, everyone. Good morning. I wanted to ask about the change in the guidance. If you can share more color into what you’re seeing today that is different versus a few months ago to lower the guidance. You mentioned it’s a Betterware, but is it more the consumer environment that’s been softer or some of the initiatives are not as far ahead or gaining as much traction as you expected? Any more details there would be better understanding the change in view. Thanks.

Luis Campos: Hi, Cristina. Good morning. This is Luis. Cristina, I would say basically two reasons. The first one is that as you certainly know, there’s a seasonality challenge every year in the third quarter, basically because of the school vacations and the back-to-school time. The first one, impact normally our business because ladies are more busy with the children at home. And the second one, because the fact that they have to spend in the back to school diminish a little bit the spending in our kind of products, especially discretionary products like in Betterware. Then in both cases, Jafra and Betterware, we got a higher than expected impact, negative impact during the school vacations and the back-to-school. And the second reason is, because it has — it’s taking or it took — I would say it took longer in Betterware to realign the strategy, the commercial strategy in order to — in terms of sales brochure and the product portfolio.

But we have already completed that in — by the end of the third quarter in Betterware. And this is the reason why you expect better revenues from the fourth quarter and beyond. And probably, Andres can explain that better. These are the main two reasons. Okay. But we are going to recover from that in the quarters to come. But this time, it impacted more than expected. And this is normal in the third quarter. Normally the third quarter is lower than the second quarter because of these two reasons. Sorry, because of the first reason. Then that’s mainly it.

Cristina Fernandez: That’s helpful. And then, so following up on that seasonality for Betterware itself, the home business, the EBITDA margin was 23% this quarter. First half you had gotten back to 30%. So, is it just the seasonality this quarter and we should expect a return to that you know, 30% going forward or were there other factors this quarter that led to that sequential decline?

Luis Campos: Look, Cristina, if you look at our normal margins, in the case of gross margin, we are here today slightly above our normal margin. In the case of EBITDA, I’m talking about Betterware specifically, okay. This is because of this seasonality in the EBITDA margin. However, remember that our normal, historically our normal margins, okay are not at the level of 30%, okay. I think for the year, we are going to do as we say in our report, we are going to be slightly above our normal level of EBITDA margins. Okay. As you can see, as you will see by the year end, okay, slightly, slightly above our normal margins. In the case of the EBITDA margin, there is no variance basically as compared to the guidance.

Cristina Fernandez: Got it. But on the Betterware business, what do you consider your normal EBITDA margin? Just because if I look back at 2019, the business was doing you know, 27%, 28% EBITDA margin. So, is that a normal margin or is the normal margin more like 25%? Maybe just some more color there to be able to…

Luis Campos: Yes. Anything between 25% and 26.5%, I would say is our normal EBITDA margin.

Cristina Fernandez: Okay, that’s helpful. And then the last question on Jafra, what is this — can you provide more details on the brand refresh and on the marketing side I guess how much is it already underway? What are the plans over the next couple of quarters to revitalize the brand, attract a younger consumer, et cetera?