Enento Group Oyj
OMXH:ENENTO
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Good afternoon, and welcome to Enento's Q3 2022 Results Webcast. My name is Arto Paukku, and I'm starting as Enento's Investor Relations Officer on December 1, 2022. Today, I'm still for a month, I'm heading the Premium Solutions business line at Business Insight.
With me here today, I have Jeanette Jager, CEO of Enento Group; as well as our CFO, Elina Strahlman. We will start with a brief update from Jeanette and Elina, and then we will go over to your questions, which you can present either from teleconference line or via the webcast tool. But now I'll hand it over to Jeanette.
Thank you, Arto. Thank you. So a warm welcome to Enento Group's third quarter interim report. Enento had a strong third quarter. Our net sales grew by more than 7% at comparable exchange rates. The positive sales development continued in Consumer Insight and Business Insight while Digital Processes were declining. Profitability started to improve according to our plans as we have successfully implemented several profitability measures and saving activities during this third quarter that have a positive impact on our profitability short term.
As we are witnessing high energy prices, rising interest rates and high inflation in Europe and in the Nordic countries, the economic outlook for the coming months and next year remains uncertain. Indirect impacts through economic activity levels may be significant to us. So far, our consumer credit business has continued to perform strongly, while low growth environment has kept demand for business information on a more moderate level.
On real estate side, we have already seen significant decrease during the year, in housing transaction levels. Future performance is dependent a lot on what happens to the activity levels and how it impacts consumer and business behavior. But we are preparing ourselves for various scenarios and are executing to secure our profitability. It is good to note that our business model and our services have resulted in economic resiliency over challenging macro periods in the past as we have pro and anti-cyclical elements in our offering.
Let's continue with an update on our strategy work and future direction. To navigate in a rapidly-changing world and increased uncertainties, it is more important than ever to be smarter, faster and more agile. It is important that we have a profitable, robust and financially-sound foundation for our Nordic operations. If we are profitable, we free up capacity to invest in modernizing our business, which, in turn, will let us grow together with our customers.
In recent years, we have made significant investments to support future growth, but this has come with increased costs. In addition, the GDPs are expected to decline in our operating markets in 2023, and we are potentially facing a recession in the Nordic countries. Despite the resilient nature of our business model, we are expecting a challenging growth outlook in the near-term future. We are preparing for the uncertainty and adjusting our priorities to secure the profitability of our business.
Rather than prioritizing short-term growth, we balance and strengthen our operations to secure our profitability in a possible economic downturn. By doing this, we'll free up capacity for the future growth. To align our business towards this objective and increase our execution power, we have defined strategic focus areas, which will direct our planning and prioritization of efforts and resources going forward.
Our current strategy was published and communicated in 2020, and we continue to aim to strengthen our leading position within credit information business, become the leader within business information and be the #1 choice in data-driven business process services. These targets continue to be valid. And in more favorable macroeconomic circumstances, we believe we can deliver 5% to 10% profitable growth.
Due to constant changes in our environment, we review our strategy on a yearly basis. We have finalized the strategy review now, and we can conclude that our current strategy remains, but needs to be adapted to what is happening outside and inside the company, meaning adapting to the macroeconomic outlook and to the fact that our profitability has been under pressure during the last year, while actions supporting operational excellence are needed.
During this strategy update, no changes were made to our mission, vision, values and other basic elements of our strategy. The changes that we have defined 4 strategic focus areas and replaced our previous 2 enablers with them. Our strategic focus areas aligns our strategy execution activities, meaning that the focus areas guide us when we plan and prioritize our efforts. So the focus areas are customer first, one Enento, empowered people and operational excellence.
And the customer first is all about developing superior customer experience, solution selling and packaging and that is our services so that our services are easy to buy and easy to use. One, Enento is focusing on Nordic culture and common ways of working and that Enento is perceived as one company by customers and suppliers. In addition, we want Enento to be a learning organization with built-in growth mindset that drives innovation and improvements within empowering leadership.
Then let us focus on the operational excellence area a bit more. Our company's current operating environment is complex and demanding. Operational excellence for us means that run cost-efficient, scalable and well-managed operations to secure our profitability. It's also about simplifying and driving Nordic solutions where possible and to have focused on improving our profitability by better planning and prioritization. It also means that we are willing to invest in modernization of our business, which in turn will generate benefits going forward.
Our IT platform transformation program has so far mainly focused on investing in building new capabilities that will enable the future growth of our business. But with the weakening economic outlook, we will now refocus our short-term activities to secure a profitable development, which will include activities as vendor consolidation, product decommission and service model refinement.
We are finalizing the reshaped plan of the program, and as an outcome, we will have a sequence program that will reduce complexity and decrease level of risk. As previously mentioned, we have carried out extensive work to prioritize initiatives and redistribute resources. And we're selling the frame agreement with the new IT partner, TCS. But let me also say that operational excellence is not only about IT. It is about how we drive our operations and our company in general. For this, we will also focus more on operational excellence within sales and marketing and on securing that we make data-driven efforts and conclusions.
So let's then move to opportunities for growth and for future growth. If we then look at our business development and our growth drivers, the Q3 growth was very much driven by the volume growth in consumer credit business. Also, Business Insight had a positive quarter with all business lines growing and with higher growth rates compared to the first 2 quarters of the year. This is mainly thanks to strong growth in premium and freemium services, but also supported with moderate positive development in Enterprise Services.
Net sales of Digital Processes business area declined due to record high comparables and softening housing markets in both Finland and Sweden, while compliance services compensated and continued this strong growth. Now new services also continued to support growth in all our business areas, although the share was declining compared to previous quarter and year.
When it comes to pricing, our usual approach has been increasing the share of wallet through introduction of new services. However, in this market situation, we are also investigating possibilities for price increases in selected customer segments and product areas. We will come back with more details after we have finalized our implementation and communication plans.
Next, I would like to share with you an important announcement. And that is that, as you all know, ESG or sustainability data is one of our Nordic growth opportunities and strategic initiatives in Enento Group. We have just reached an important milestone on our journey to become one of the leading provider of ESG data solutions in the Nordic.
We have started the collaboration with LähiTapiolan to collect ESG data from LähiTapiolan's corporate customers. The data will be collected with our new ESG service and utilized by LähiTapiolan in all their financing decisions in the future. This case shows a great example of how we help our strategic customers and partners to implement ESG into their core processes, and we look forward to seeing more successful ESG cases such as this, of course.
Let us then address another area that we see important going forward. The public positive credit register that is going to be launched in Finland in 2024. During times like this, when we know there are changes that will impact the consumer lending processes, exceptionally close relationships with our customer makes it possible to openly communicate and jointly create opportunities to develop services that genuinely support our customers' processes. Our customers will use the positive credit register data as one additional data element together with negative data provided by Enento. That means that one needs to combine the negative and positive data with intelligent analytics.
According to our current understanding, it will be financially beneficial for the lenders to start the lending process from the negative information provided by Enento in comparison to the public positive register. Enento will not be the only one source delivering data for our customers, but a close strategic partner that together with the customer solves issues and challenges and at the same time, create value-adding services with new sources of information.
We are the leading provider of creating value-added services on top of positive and negative data with our analytics. This is what matters today and in the future. In addition, we maintain differentiated set of data and add new data sources, which we then combine with existing data. One example, we believe, will create a lot of value and even be more important than the positive data is the PSD2 data, an investment area for us since 2018. So our data and analytics are integrated and embedded into our customers' lending processes. And we believe that even with the positive data register, our role is still going to be a strategic partner who provides best-in-class data and analytics services.
Our unique offering and know-how will add value for different risk management processes used by our customers, and thereby, we see opportunities in the future with limited impact to our current services. We are investing in this area and preparing for the future together with our customers.
And let's then have a review of our new services development during the third quarter, which, of course, is the vacation period, where we typically do not release too many new products and services. As mentioned previously, we are focusing on the strategic initiatives and thereby, the number of new services will be lower in the future as we invest in the services where the commercial potential is higher and where we can see sustainable future revenue expectations and long-term growth.
The share of new services was 4% in Q3 and declined somewhat from previous quarter and last year's levels. We launched 2 new services during the quarter. The decline in the share of new services is largely explained by the fact that we had some larger services from 2020 that dropped from the baseline in the beginning of this year. And as mentioned, our focus during the coming months and in 2023 is very much on operational excellence. While the economic outlook is weakening, we prioritize our largest strategic investments such as daily credit register and the ESG offering in Sweden.
The sales cycles and customer integrations for these kind of services tend to take longer time. And this may impact the KPI negatively throughout the year. However, the long-term potential for these kind of services is high. We have previously mentioned the forest and farmland valuation product that was launched during Q2 in Finland. That is an excellent example of our ability to develop smart and scalable solutions to meet the specific needs of different kinds of customers.
The reports were first developed in very close collaboration with one banking customer to enhance and optimize the collateral valuation process. Quite soon, several other banks integrated these reports as part of their similar processes. Also, real estate brokers, law firms and different kind of companies operating in the forest business have expressed great interest for this unique service. Finally, we will soon launch Forest valuation report in our online store for forest owners and other customers.
Now then to concentrate a bit more in detail. In one of the strategic initiatives we have in Business Insight, let me introduce the improved company credit rating and scoring model we have launched as part of the Forvalt service in Norway in September. We are continuing to expand our Nordic offering into risk management services in Norway, and we are mainly targeting small and medium-sized customers. The sales start has been very positive, and we are able to offer a more frequent up-to-date company credit rating model for our customers.
Now this is very important today when our customers want to monitor and follow up both the current customers and suppliers in real time, but also use the information when prospecting new customers or planning to do business with a new partner. We have implemented new data sets, which will bring more value and intelligence to the rating model we use. This is just the first phase, and our colleagues in Norway are developing our services continuously to improve customer experience and make the service even better.
So now for the best part. Now it is about the Q3 results review. And I am, of course, very happy to share these kind of results, since in Q3, we had the highest growth -- quarterly growth in 2022 and also after some declining quarters, improving profitability. Revenue grew by 7.1% and totaled EUR 40.1 million, mainly thanks to continuing strong performance in consumer credit business on top of that, also demand for business information growth and supported growth. Adjusted EBITDA also developed positively according to plans and grew by 14.4% to EUR 16.2 million. Margin improved nicely and expanded by 2.6% with comparable FX rates reaching 40.1% margin level.
Of course, compared to previous quarters, this year, it's good to remember that margin-wise, Q3 is always the highest margin months due to the Nordic holiday season. But also when comparing year-on-year, the profitability improved and the good profitability was a result of the positive impact from the growth and good sales mix, successful savings, efforts, timing of activities and increased focus on development. Those then successfully offset the continuing high IT cost burden and the negative impact from the discontinuance of Tambur service development.
Let's then continue and move on and shortly go through some of the key figures. First of all, adjusted EBITDA development was in line with the adjusted EBITDA development, which we will now move over to Elina to continue to take this forward. And please come on, Elina, so you can continue to share.
Yes. Good. Very warm welcome on my behalf as well to this Enento's quarterly release. And as Jeanette also said, I'm very happy to share this kind of result since after lower growth periods and also declining profitability, we are now both showing good growth and improved profitability as planned. But as said, let's continue with a few key figures here and starting from the adjusted EBIT. So as Jeanette already mentioned, that developed in line with the adjusted EBITDA development. So no surprises there.
And then as Jeanette also described the new services share of new services, unfortunately, declined to 4%. We have good launches and good pipeline, but we are delayed when it comes to getting revenues in place. Good example of that is daily credit register in Sweden, where we have several customer migrations ongoing, but those have simply taken longer time than expected and the revenues for those are thus delayed.
Let's then continue with revenue development in more detail. So we continue to see strong development in Consumer Insight with 11.7% increase year-on-year with very high growth in consumer credit business in both markets, Sweden and Finland, but especially in the Finnish side. Largest parts of the business volumes relate to unsecured lending, where proportionate transaction levels are much higher compared to, for example, housing loan transaction levels. And the growth in that area has been boosted the demand for our services as well.
The Finnish consumer credit business continued to be positively impacted, obviously, by the removal of the temporary 10% interest rate gap last year. The development in the smaller business lines and Consumer Insight in direct-to-consumer and consumer marketing was more negative and continue to be more and more impacted by the macroeconomic situation. The demand for especially consumer marketing services has declined significantly, and we don't see that recovering in the short term.
What was also very positive was that the Business Insight development clearly improved from the previous quarters and resulted in 5.5% growth. Development in the Finnish enterprise business was growing slightly. And despite moderate development, the good thing is that trend has been continuously improving. The growth was stronger in premium segment and especially strong in freemium business, where the demand for visibility services continue to increase.
Then in Digital Processes business, on the other hand, that turned to decline by 8.7% following the soft housing markets and declining housing transaction levels in the Nordics. The strong continued growth in compliance services was unfortunately not able to fully offset this decline.
Then let's move on to adjusted EBITDA development in more detail. So adjusted EBITDA development was positive after [indiscernible] declining quarters and improved to EUR 16.2 million, with 14.4% growth. The key reasons behind the positive development were, as already mentioned, good scalable growth combined with successful savings measures and optimization of resources. But if we then go through the cost development line by line.
So firstly, starting from the materials and services, i.e., our data acquisition costs, those increased by EUR 300,000, following the growth in Finnish consumer credit business that comes with variable data acquisition costs. At the same time, the decline in Finnish real estate and consumer marketing areas and the related variable data costs offset this growth partly.
Personnel expenses increased by EUR 300,000, following higher amount of FTEs, but as we have also increased focus and recruited resources for the service and platform development, the production for own use grew with the same pace than personnel costs. Then finally, other operating expenses, those increased by EUR 300,000. And the main reason behind the increase are higher costs in IT and expensed Tambur service development. Some EUR 300,000 of costs altogether in various line items relate to higher Tambur expenses year-on-year due to the fact that it takes time to adjust and ramp down the capacity in a situation where we need and want to continue to deliver services on good level and secure successful transition.
Also sales commissions under other operating expenses increased following the growth in premium and freemium services likewise. And we also had somewhat higher costs in relation to our own activity when it comes to traveling, events and similar. But on the other hand, we gained very good savings in marketing costs due to optimizing and adjusting our efforts to the current growth outlook as well as then savings in consultancy costs and maintenance costs by optimizing our IT and maintenance operations and obviously, due to timing of activities as well. We had a high level of various activities ongoing in last quarter 3.
Then if we move on to the free cash flow. So free cash flow was EUR 10 million and remained flat compared to prior year. Positive profitability development and lower level of investments supported the free cash flow, but those positive impacts were then offset by negative impacts from changes in working capital and timing of payments as well as timing of receivables likewise. We also had some final tax payment concerning prior year that negatively impacted the free cash flow. Cash conversion was on a good level of 61.9%.
Then a few words on the financial position. So our financial position remains strong. And by refinancing our EUR 180 million credit facilities, we have secured our financing for the next 3 years, added with 2 option years. We now have EUR 150 million term loan and fully unused revolving credit facility of EUR 30 million in addition to cash pool limits. We also have around EUR 10 million of cash at our hands.
Net debt-to-EBITDA that remained well behind the defined maximum level of 3x at 2.4x level. Gross investments, those were somewhat lower than prior year, and that mainly related to more focused investment activity and relatively high activity in the comparison period in relation to Tambur service development.
Then finally, a few words on the outlook and guidance. So for the full year, we continue to target around 5% growth and somewhat improving adjusted EBITDA margin. However, even the visibility in the very short-term future continues to be dim and any sudden changes in the volumes and demand could impact our capabilities to reach the guided levels for the full year. So far, the demand for consumer credit services has remained strong. And as of now, we haven't seen any material weakenings in the volumes. Consumers want to find cheapest loan providers and run tendering processes and the high inflation may also increase the need for short-term unsecured financing.
Our current expectation is that the high demand will continue during the last quarter. However, we have to remember that the comparisons in Q4 are much tougher, and we are already facing normalized finished interest rate cap regulation in the comparison figures for Q4. Therefore, the Consumer Insight growth rates for Q4 are expected to be on a somewhat lower level than seen now in Q3. And this naturally pushes down the growth for the whole group in the last quarter as well.
In Business Insight, despite modest positive signs in business information risk management services for our enterprise customers, we do not expect to see any significant hikes in the demand during the last quarter. What is also good to remember is that enterprise also has B2B sales and marketing type of services. And the demand for those services has started showing weakening size already. And this development, we expect naturally to start accelerating towards the end of the year while market outlook gets weaker. Also, freemium services are expected to start being impacted by the market situation more and more. So overall, expectation for Business Insight for the remaining quarter is somewhat modest.
In Digital Processes, there, we expect, obviously, the negative trend in real estate services to continue and even accelerate towards the end of the year. We don't see that continuing good demand for new valuation services and compliance services would offset this negative volume impact fully.
In this area, we are also facing tough comparisons in Q4. But then thinking about next year as well, so of course, reminding you that the Tambur business, which then represents roughly 1/3 of the Digital Processes revenue is planned to be fully discontinued from the beginning of Q2 '23 onwards.
So -- but coming back to Q4, so overall, we will have a challenging quarter ahead of us, and the growth levels are expected to be on lower level than what we saw now in Q3. But on a full year scale, we expect to be able to deliver on the guided levels of revenue and profitability asset, unless any sudden declines in demand would take place.
So Arto please.
Yes. And we will start with the questions from the teleconference line. So operator, please go ahead.
[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Felix Henriksson of Nordea.
It's Felix from Nordea. I have a few, I can go one by one. Starting on pricing. Shared in your presentation, it sounds like pricing still had a limited impact on growth in the third quarter, what you're planning to do more on that front in the coming quarters. So I just want to hear your thoughts about your success with price increases in the past and how you view your pricing power across your different verticals, especially against large financial institutions, SME or consumer?
Yes. Well, I can comment somewhat on the future and then please add regarding also how we see it in the past. We have -- we are -- to start with, as I mentioned earlier, what we're doing right now is that we are in the planning process to see what possibilities for price increases we're having during next year. And in addition to that, also that we want to evaluate what are the right things to do regarding the price increases.
Now as we have mentioned earlier and as you probably know, when it comes to larger customers, those customers are connected to contract with limited possibilities to do price increases at. Then we have, of course, the SME, where there is a larger possibility of freedom. And then when it comes to consumer, I think we actually also need to look into what does that consumer world look like when we are looking into that segment for the price increases. Then please add, Elina.
Yes. So I mean in history, we have had limited impacts from the price increases. The primary strategy has been to increase the customer share of wallet through implementing new services to customers' portfolio. But as said, as Jeanette explained, we are now also looking at how we could also gain some benefits from the price increases. But so far, the impacts are basically -- you could say basically 0 when we look at the Q3 figures.
Okay. And given the verticals that you're planning to introduce these price increases to, how should we sort of think about the lead times if you're starting to sort of implement those in the fourth quarter or the first quarter, given the contract structures that you have, how long would you say that it takes to become visible in your financials?
Yes. Well, most of the contract renewals tend to take place in the beginning of the year. So that is the -- that is the natural timing of implementing these changes. So no expectations for the Q4.
No expectations for Q4. And also, as Elina already mentioned, we have low expectations of what it would mean on a profitability level for next year.
Okay. Got it. That's clear. And then moving on to sort of the resiliency of your business. I guess you did mention in business information, you mentioned something about some brisk demand in risk management services. So should we interpret that as sort of you're seeing that the promise of the risk management services, demand accelerating in an economic downturn is actually starting to show when you discuss with your customers and when you look at your growth in the third quarter?
We would like to wait and see somewhat. We can see sign. We can see some signs of increasing volumes, but at the same time, we should also remember that it is still very early signs. We will need to see how the downturn in economy is actually moving towards actual consequences in the market before we can see that the risk data is being asked for to the extent that we can see that in the revenue. So we are a little bit in between, I would say, probably right now.
Got it. That's helpful. Then regarding this year's performance in Q4, could you just give us a better sense of your visibility for the fourth quarter because if we think of your guidance, you're sort of tracking on year-to-date figures to achieve your top line guide, but you still have some catching up to do to achieve sort of flattish margins or improving -- slightly improving margins for the full year. So what sort of gives you confidence to stick to that guidance? Is it the sort of the current visibility that you already have for the fourth quarter? Or is there simply so much sort of self-help that you can do to improve your profitability for the fourth quarter?
Well, to start with, of course, what we want to do is to stick to what we have promised. Nevertheless, what we now see in front of us in Q4, which has impact on the Q4 numbers and whether we can keep to levels that we have in our plan, which we today say that we can is, of course, dependent also on how we will see the volumes develop during the last quarter. We have prepared -- we have prepared for that we will do and have done both measures to improve operational efficiency, but also for cost reductions. So that is maybe a complex answer, but it's the simplest answer I can actually give you at this point. And again, Elina, please.
Yes. So when comparing to previous year Q4, we also had rather high cost levels then. And as we have done already for the Q3 cost side, we have taken actions on the cost side to secure the profitability levels and basically even somewhat lower cost levels in the last quarter in some areas. But as said, what continues to be, let's say, the unclear part in this equation is that how the demand will continue to develop in various revenue lines. So the expectation is very much dependent on that we will continue to see high growth in the consumer credit business going forward as well as we have seen so far now so. Hopefully, that helps a bit.
Yes, that's helpful. Then a final question for me. In the earnings release, you're mentioning about reshaping the plan for the Nordic IT platform renewal program and that you are sort of throwing out a new program that will reduce the complexity in these risk in terms of customer migration. So could you perhaps walk through what this means in practice and sort of give us a better sense of what has changed from the original plan in terms of the IT platform renewal to this date?
Well, what we see is that we have added to the program, we have added that we need to look over, which I have also mentioned to you earlier, the possibility to actually drive operational excellence and profitability by doing vendor consolidation when it comes to product and services decreases of non-profitable services and products, of course, and that we are also looking into our model of how we develop and maintain. So as we could see that these kind of activities and to approach those kind of activities rather than going for that we see operational excellence and profitability in -- when it comes to platform consolidation or any kind of actually component in our IT frame would give us more in less time.
Therefore, of course, as we have seen, both at the macroeconomic environment is changing, meaning that we can expect that there is a pressure towards the volumes on our top line in some areas. Hopefully, we'll also see that there will be some gains, of course. But then additionally, into that, we have also seen that our costs are increasing as we have experienced this last year, then that pushed us forward to overview of the plan to see whether we can get benefits sooner than the plan was saying. So that was one reason why we did this change.
We will, of course, also come back to give you more information on what does this actually mean and what is happening when. But that is also due to other communication, which needs to come in the right order. Why I would like to, of course, address this when the time is right.
Now then secondly, what we have also done is to review, okay. So what does it mean when it comes to our platforms and our IT environment and the potential of doing the decommissioning. It doesn't matter if the decommissioning is connected to a software or to hardware or any kind of component, big or small, then we will continue to work with decommissioning.
When we have been working with the Nordic business program, what we have been done is that we are building one Enento, where it's possible to build one Enento. And that has come again with higher cost. At the same time, at some time, you can, of course, also decommission from that. But when it comes to larger initiatives in that, in that plan like platforms, et cetera, then we need to be very cautious about what is the right time to do what in order to move forward in the right level of risks in connection to that. So that was a long answer to your question.
I hope though that it gave you some more clarity on that we have actually added activities, which we are putting much more in front in order to be more focusing on operational excellence and costs to free up capacity to continue to move on with the program as a whole so that we also can continue to invest in the future growth. So that is the thinking of the whole program. So the program continues, but we have added elements in order to get cost out to invest for future.
Okay. Yes, that helps a bit, but it's sort of fair to assume that the original plan in terms of the IP migration did not sort of progress as you initially thought out in the very beginning.
That depends on what item migration we're referring to. If we are looking at migration of data, for example, that is continuing. We're calling it modernizing data. That has been done, and then we are continuing of doing that. When it comes to large initiatives like platforms, then we are closely looking into what and when is that possible to do. As mentioned, there are also additional risks connected to, for example, the timing with customers of those. So that needs to be carefully considered.
We'll now move on to our next question from Matti Riikonen of Carnegie.
It's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. I have a couple of questions, and maybe I will continue with the IT platform plan change that you already discussed. Did you have a timetable when you are kind of giving out more information related to the timetable and costs versus the old plan? Was that already somewhere in your report?
No, it is not clear yet, the timetable of when we give more information. Of course, we are pushing that as much as possible. So let me keep being neutral for the time because, again, it is also good to remember that this is connected to communication. So feel assured that we are not only planning, we're also actually executing. But we need to -- again, we need to also connect this to the right time so that we don't decrease risks when we are doing this kind of planning. So let me come back when the time is right.
All right. Fair enough. And then related to the kind of fundamental reason why you chose not to go forward with the previous plan. So I was just wondering that which was more important in your thinking -- was it that the large customers were basically opposing the conversion so that you felt that it's not possible to do in the time frame that you thought? And then -- or was it more like -- I mean, the costs of doing that in relation to the external environment have just become too high. So -- or is it a combination of both?
Yes. Well, I would say that's a tough question to answer because you would like me to say that it's either or. And I would say it is a combination, definitely. So again, we need to consider when is the right time to do the migration from the customers in order to actually reach the values that we are all looking for. Then secondly, again, we see that the costs have been rising this last year. We need to act upon those, which is actually possible to get more, if I may say so, operational excellence and more cost reductions into.
What do I mean when I say operational excellence and what is the difference between cost? Well, operational excellence for me, that is actually that you maximize that you are getting the most out of the money that you are investing into it. So for example, into this, when I'm saying this, I also need to see that we need to have a higher speed in what we are actually providing within the Nordic business platform, and that I can see that we can also do with this kind of combination of overlook of the program. So it is several upsides with it.
Okay. Then going to cost savings, you mentioned that you have already executed some in Q3 and expect to do more in Q4 and maybe next year. Could you give us some examples what you have actually made -- when I look at your kind of people numbers, they have not essentially changed. So you're obviously getting some benefits elsewhere, could you just or -- what is there that you have already done and maybe consider a bit what kind of savings could you make in next year's inflationary environment, particularly as you said that it might be difficult to raise prices that is for the large customers.
Yes. Would you like to start? Because I've done a lot of talking now -- please go ahead.
Yes, I can start. So obviously, on top of personnel costs, we do have a sizable external costs. When it comes to various IT-related activities. We have various vendors, providing our services and a lot of consultants in that area. And there, we have done various actions to optimize that cost base and also taken away some of the capacity that has been there.
Secondly, we also have sizable marketing costs. And now at the situation with this kind of economic -- macroeconomic environment, we don't necessarily see that it is financially most beneficial to spend that kind of amounts of money to various marketing activities and because the customer acquisition cost tends to go up in this kind of market environment. So there, we have also taken active measures to adjust our cost base on that area, to name a few.
Okay. That's good. And is it the same sources that your savings in 2023 will come from?
Well, '23, I would say that it's a bit too early, early to start discussing about 23%. But definitely, we are looking at our IT environment, growth in connection with the platform vendor consolidation and various activities on that side. And we do have also various other types of activities, smaller consolidations and things like that, that we are working on. So clearly, those are the areas, [ both IB ] and marketing that we continue to optimize also next year. But too early to say any more detailed impact at this stage.
Okay. Fair enough. To me, it sounds like 2023 is in 2 months. So hardly a long time there, but probably we will hear more from you in 3 months' time. Then the next question is about the Business Insight. Could you Elina repeat what you said about in your verbal guidance, how you see the environment going forward? I think you mentioned that you will have a more modest outlook basically for Q4 and that we can probably extrapolate into 2023 as well. But could you just repeat that part, please? It was, I think, a good summary of what you plan to see or plan to do.
Yes. So obviously, we have seen more or less positive signs when it comes to enterprise risk management related demand and services, and that trend has been continuously modestly positive for a couple of quarters now, but we haven't seen any major hikes in that demand. At the same time, enterprise business also contains sales and marketing type of services and in Business Insight, we also have sizable freemium business, which includes sizable advertising revenues.
So we do see that although there are counter-cyclical elements and we may expect that part to be resilient or even continue with some positive development. But then we also have areas that will be very likely hit by this macroeconomic situation. So that's why we are currently, let's say, framing a modest future, especially now for Q4. Obviously, as we know, the visibility for the longer future is currently very dim, but this is what we now see for the coming quarter.
All right. That's good. And then finally, regarding your price increase plans and the likelihood of getting those through. Did you really say that you have low expectations for profit margin improvement for '23 because of the fact that, let's say, large customers, if they are contract based, the price hikes might be difficult or impossible to execute. So basically, the business outside those large customers is basically not enough to offset all the inflationary pressure that the whole group will have. So was it really that you already at this stage, think that it will be difficult to get those profit margins up from other than cost savings, if price increases are not enough to make that happen?
Well, now I'm not sure whether I understood the question. So please add to that one. Well, I would say that we are -- to start with, we are still investigating what are the potential cost layer price increases that we can do in euro, even though we have a fairly good idea of segments and business areas.
Then secondly, as mentioned earlier, we have also -- with the larger customers, those are connected to contract. So there are limited price changes we can do there than on the other segments, than we can do price increases like for SME, for example. So that was in short, but it maybe it's something in addition that you can put on the table to clarify.
Yes, so...
Yes. I think I catch a phrase that you talked about low expectations for profit margin increase going forward with the help of price increases. So did I understand that point right?
Well, yes. The price increases are also then offset, of course, by cost increases, which is also connected to inflation. Now this year, we have not -- we have -- as we have said earlier, we have had limited effects, maybe mainly connected to that we are on the market where our competence is highly recognized, meaning that they are also very attractive in the market, which also means that we have -- in connection to that, there is some pressure on our salaries. But as we look into next year, we are also preparing for that there will be cost increases. And so what I am actually telling is about the net effect of those.
Yes, exactly. That's what I'm asking about.
Yes. Yes. So to put it shortly, so we don't see that we are fully able to offset the cost increases with the respective price increases at the moment. So we are also continuing with other actions on that area. Of course, it's also good to remember that in next year, we will also, as we are preparing various plans when it comes to, for example, vendor consolidations type of activities, it will also cost to run these kind of activities. So that is also good to remember when considering the profitability levels for '23. But we will come back to the guidance for '23 then in connection with the Q4 report obviously.
We'll now take our last question from [indiscernible].
It's [indiscernible]. Actually, basically, all my questions have been already asked, but I could add on the inventory pressure. And what kind of salary inflation you are seeing towards '23. So what will be the kind of the like-for-like salary increases you are expecting there?
Well, like-for-like if salary increases, may I ask you to develop that further. We, of course, are -- we are, of course, looking at the salary levels that are, let's say, the prognoses for the different countries in the Nordics, and we have also different processes in the Nordics for when you will know more about what the level will be, if you connect it to, for example, the unit negotiations. But we are doing forecasting on the different countries, which -- and they are different. And we are also preparing for cost increases in the salaries.
Okay. And then do you have material cost items that are kind of a dollar based? And would you see inflation coming from there?
No.
No, we don't.
Thank you. It appears there are no further question at this time, I'm handing the session back over to you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. And we have a few questions from the webcast also. Let's continue with those. First one being about the enterprise services or perhaps you already answered it partially, but is there any further commentary or reasons behind the positive development in the enterprise services for large companies?
No, not really. We have seen that the demand in general has shown modest positive signs of increases, but it's coming from, let's say, from various customer sources. So from small increases here and there. So we see somewhat higher activity when buying our risk management services, but it's not coming from one specific source as such. So...
Good. And then looking at the capital expenditure, the investment to intangible assets, i.e., the IT project seems to lag the previous year. Are you on purpose holding off the investments at the moment? Or is it just seasonal variation or some other reason?
Well, one thing that impacts that level is the discontinuous of development of the Tambur and real estate services currently in Sweden. So that is the biggest reason behind the deviation. So we are obviously in that sector, investigating and looking various future opportunities, but we haven't started investing in new development in large scale yet.
Very good. And then the last question, any estimate for the monetary impact of the announced LähiTapiolan deal? How significant is this type of a deal set to be?
I would like to underline that this is not necessarily money-wise the biggest win for us. The biggest win for us is that a recognized bank like LähiTapiolan is actually choosing to use our services and choosing then to actually handle these kind of services. So what we are, of course, hoping for is that this is an early sign of also that this will now develop with more customers. So I think that, that is kind of more important to underline what is the potential when a bank like LähiTapiolan is taking this decision?
Exactly. Very good. So that was our last question for the session. And this, I guess, concludes our call. So thank you all for the questions. Thank you for participating, and we wish everyone a really nice weekend.
We do. Thank you very much.
Thank you.