Sitowise Group Oyj

OMXH:SITOWS

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Hello, and welcome to Sitowise's Q1 presentation. My name is Mari Reponen, and I'm Head of Investor Relations here in Sitowise. I have here with me our CEO, Heikki Haasmaa; and our CFO, Hanna Masala, who will soon start the presentation.

Here is our agenda for today. And as you can see, Heikki and Hanna will first discuss our Q1 performance. And after that, Heikki will go through the outlook and the progress we have made in implementing our strategy. [Operator Instructions] And now we will proceed to the presentation, and I will hand over to Heikki and Hanna.

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

Thank you. Thank you, Mari, and welcome all on my behalf as well. So let's start with the first quarter summary.

Infra business continued to outperform the market again, and Infra and Digi defended their profitability successfully. In the Buildings business, the market environment continued to be very weak and that burdened the performance. In Sweden, the results of our sales activities are yet to be materialized.

Our net sales were down by 8.1% year-on-year. Organic growth was negative by 8% year-on-year, including the downside from the Buildings. If we exclude the Buildings, the decline was 2%. Our profitability declined from the strong comparison period, and the adjusted EBITA margin was 6.6%. We'll go through this development in more detail a bit later. But as a summary, the year-on-year decline came mostly from the wage and cost inflation, negative calendar effect and also from a bit lower utilization rate and tougher pricing environment. The adjusted EBITA decline was reflected in our operating profit, which decreased and our leverage, which increased from the previous quarter end.

Cash flow, on the other hand, remained at a very good level. Our order book was stable in first quarter, totaling at EUR 163 million at the end of March. I'm very happy about the order intake, which was slightly up from the previous quarter.

Looking at the current market, we face challenges, but also see growth areas. The weak macroeconomic situation continued to impact our clients' investment volumes, especially in the Buildings business where the market continues to be very weak. And also in the Digital Solutions business where the private sector demand for project business has been very low. Low tendering volumes have, in turn, led to excess capacity and also increased price competition in both traditional technical consulting and also in the IT consulting, especially in the public sector. However, we see stable demand from the public sector overall and some encouraging signs of potential market improvement in Buildings.

We continue to see growth in services related to renewable energy, sustainability and security. Our focus is on these growth sectors, especially in energy and industrial. I am pleased to share that this quarter, we already won new clients in these areas. In energy sector, Sitowise was selected as consultant for the environmental impact assessment, general joining and permitting for a new energy storage project by Suomen Voima. Here, you can see an illustration of the finalized innovative pumped storage hydropower plant that is currently under construction.

In industry sector, Louhi, our own product service supports Metsä Group’s mills’ asset management, information sharing, environmental issues and also real-time situational awareness through geospatial data. I'm also pleased to share that our recent acquisitions of Infrasuunnittelu positive impact and Ahlman Group's expert operations have brought valuable expertise to Sitowise. The acquisition of KM Project business operations announced about a month ago is set to enhance our capabilities in addressing the transport sectors, energy transition and its opportunities.

During the quarter, we also focused on building long-term future competitiveness through smart solutions, artificial intelligence and new partnerships. Starting with New Smart Services. We have in a year, developed a robust pipeline of new smart and sustainable digital services. This quarter, we are launching Plannect, an urban planning tool for assessing climate impacts and also CO2 Roadmap, a climate leadership Software-as-a-Service solution. Further, our Smartlas service, which leverages AI and also satellite data for sectors like forestry and energy is already selling well.

One also highlight in the first quarter was that our digital solutions made its first deal in Baltics when Latvian State Forest selected Sitowise as their partner for monitoring insect pests in Latvian state forests. Regarding AI, this quarter, we established Sitowise AI Center of Excellence with a core team of 15 AI experts to foster an innovative culture, accelerate ideas into market where the offerings and to enhance AI capabilities. During the quarter, our AI team also coordinated over the 5 generative AI experiments to streamline business processes and foster new solutions.

Our Sitowise Smart City Lab team won the best hack from a past event open source award at the Global Architects Engineers & Construction Hackathon in Copenhagen for the AI solution that enhances collaboration in the built environment sector. I'm very proud of the team and confident in our internal AI expertise.

In the quarter, we also announced a new partnership with forest machine manufacturer, Ponsse. Through Business Finland Vettery funding for Ponsse, Sitowise is collaborating with Ponsse to explore the potential of artificial intelligence for smarter planning and optimization of loggings. I firmly believe that this kind of ecosystem-wide collaboration drives innovation and growth for all participating companies.

The key for our future success is, of course, our ability to meet and exceed our clients' expectations. This quarter, we renewed several frame agreements, signed new ones and expanded cooperation with existing clients like YIT in Finland and AstraZeneca in Sweden, demonstrating our commitment to client satisfaction and also service excellence. Our customer loyalty stayed on a good level, and our Net Promoter Score was 31%.

Then let's look at each business area more closely, starting with the Infra business. The Infra business area reported an 8% year-on-year growth, again, exceeding the infra market average. The growth was mainly organic, driven by growing demand for energy and environmental projects and with the 1/5 of the growth attributable to the recent acquisitions. During the quarter, Infra secured several new projects and clients. For example, the battery chemical manufacturer Terrafame’s dam inspection project.

The market showed continued demand for projects related to green transition and security, while demand for municipal infrastructure design and new building continues to be weak. So this relates to the overall construction market situation. Despite challenges, like the negative calendar effect and a decrease in utilization rates due to increasingly focusing on sales and then also the recent ERP CRM system implementations. Infra's order book saw an increase in the first quarter.

Looking ahead, we expect the market environment for Infra to remain stable during this year. The first tendering rounds for the larger Infra projects, including in the government -- Finnish government program have been delayed again. But we hope to see the first one in tendering in summer. All in all, outlook is good for the Infra. We are in a strong position to continue the profitable growth in Infra this year.

Buildings. Net sales in the Buildings business area declined by 19% year-on-year. It was due to the difficult market situation, decreasing the number of personnel as a result of the last year change negotiations and also the negative calendar effect. We adjusted the operations also during the first quarter with temporary layoffs and focused on growth segments such as industry, energy, health care and education. These actions have progressed as planned, but the current market environment has delayed the materialization of the positive impacts of our efforts.

During the first quarter, the buildings business area saw a slight increase in tendering volumes and also order intake. And this signals a start of a gradual market recovery. Order book increased slightly from the previous quarters, but was still substantially lower than the previous year. Among the new projects, one was a design for hospital furniture for Meilahti Tower Hospitall in Helsinki over the next 10 years.

The market outlook, as I said, in the Finnish construction industry continues to be weak, but we expect that turn to growth will start towards the end of this year. Overall, we see that we are now better positioned to see growth and performance, especially when the market turns, and we are increasingly focusing on services with higher margins and aim to broaden our client base and service offering to improve further the resilience of our Buildings business.

Digital Solutions. In first quarter, the market for Digital Solutions was tougher than in '23. Private sector demand, as said, and also the budgets fell. However, in renewable energy and municipal digital investments, the market was good. Public sector budgets for mobility and building environment, digital Solutions stayed stable, but for the forest industry sector investments declined. There's also increasingly price competition, especially in the large and public tenders, which is driven by the market overcapacity.

Net sales in Digital Solutions dropped by 12% due to overall market conditions. Then also a change in our subcontracted work reinvoicing, which was already done basically last year, but it has still a carryover impact for this year. And then the negative calendar effect. Despite the net sales decline, Digital Solutions defended its margins successfully and also outperformed the general IT consultancy market in Finland. So I'm really happy about this performance overall.

Our SaaS products represented 1/4 of the business areas, net sales and the demand for these products continues to be on a high level. Digital Solutions order book was at a good level as well. And overall, as I said, Digital Solutions outlook is overall -- is good and our product business continues to grow well. And there we also can create the market. However, in the coming quarters, we expect Digi's organic growth to be at low single digits due to the overall market situation.

And then finally, see, let's dig deeper what's happening in Sweden. Net sales in Sweden declined by 8% year-on-year, and that was due to the negative calendar effect, which was actually 1.5 working days in Sweden and also there has been a tighter price competition. The market environment has been quite varied in first quarter. So there is very good demand for commercial, industrial, institutional building projects and also the Infra market continued to grow. However, the market for the building installations remained weak, largely impacted by the downturn in the residential housing market.

In Sweden, we focused on more proactive sales, pricing excellence and also diligent project management and I'm happy about the order intake, which was slightly up for the second quarter in a row, and that's, of course, a really positive sign of our efforts. We won several projects related to prefabrication, building design, extended range of deliveries to AstraZeneca and signed an agreement with the municipality of Norrköping for infra control online, which is our own SaaS solution. The market environment in Sweden is expected to remain quite mixed during this year.

But now I'd like to hand over to Hanna. So if you share about the group performance in more detail.

[Hanna Masala, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Heikki. I will do that.

Actually, one positive note for Sweden, the interest rates we've got just today. So let's hope that, that gives a nice boost to the construction industry there. But overall, as a recap, Sitowise's net sales during the quarter were down by 8.1% from the comparison period. And the number of FTEs was down by 5.2%. And this, of course, reflects the adjustment of our capacity in line with the market conditions and the sizable personnel reductions we needed to do in Q4 last year in the Buildings business. These explain a significant part of the decline, together with the negative calendar effect having less working days during the quarter than last year.

When we look at the adjusted organic growth figures, which takes into account the impact of acquisitions, number of the working days and the exchange rate difference, we can see that the quarter was quite challenging for most businesses for the reasons that Heikki just went through. The organic growth rate has varied a lot between the business areas, especially when we look at the last 12 months' performance. The decline in recent quarters has mainly been driven by the Buildings business, which is facing a very challenging market. The positive sides mainly come from the demand for green transition and security-related services, which are among the key positive drivers for us. The topline growth in Q1 was also impacted by the tight price environment that was mentioned.

When we look at our adjusted EBITA margin, we ended up at 6.6% in Q1. There were several factors driving this decline from the previous year. Firstly, in Q1 in Finland, we experienced significant wage increases resulting from the last year's collective bargaining agreement, and this is impacting the profitability comparisons in Q1 '23 for the better and this year Q1 for the worse. This is due to the timing of the wage increases. Last year, the increases were effective only from April so after the Q1 was already gone. But this year, the increases became already in February. And this results in a roughly 6% wage increase compared to '23 in February and March as we had like a double impact there.

The high cost inflation also contributed to the EBITA margin decline. And additionally, the fact that we had lower amount of experts in our payroll meant lower topline, while the fixed cost didn't decline exactly in the similar manner. Secondly, we had 1 working day less in Finland and 1.5 working days less in Sweden during the quarter, and this had a bit more than 1% impact on the margin.

To mitigate these effects, we've obviously focused on raising prices, maintaining strict cost control as previously. However, we can see that passing the full inflation into our prices has become more challenging. Furthermore, the lower utilization rate, which was due to the increased sales efforts in the current market and the residual effects from ERP and CRM implementations in Finland as well as the Bitcomp merger in Digital Solutions also pressured our margin. But obviously, the last point, Bitcomp merger, was a good one, and we are very happy with the successful business integration during the quarter.

As you might have noticed from our Q1 report, we have now started to comment our order intake this quarter. Our order intake reflects our sales performance, and we believe it's a good forward-looking indicator of our future revenues and I hope that this provides more transparency on our business when we share this information. It's good to note that when looking at the order intake and order book, we include SaaS and other product sales only for the 12 -- next 12 months in these KPIs, even if the contracts may have a longer validity. The project business is included for the full agreed amount. The group's order intake was up by 2% quarter-on-quarter and stable year-on-year. In January -- March, the order intake increased in infra buildings and Sweden for the second consecutive quarter. In Digital Solutions, the order intake was down quarter-on-quarter, reflecting the weak market in private sector IT investments and also a very strong order intake in Q4 last year.

The group's order book was stable compared to the end of the year. When we compare to the March last year, there was an 8% decline, but the order book totaled EUR 163 million now at the end of this quarter. The order books were at a good level in Infra and Digi and satisfactory in Sweden. In Buildings, the order book is not yet on an adequate level, and therefore, we've needed to use the temporary layoffs to balance this.

On this slide, we've earlier presented FTE, sickness absences and the utilization rate as they are key components in analyzing the technical consulting business. In general, sickness absences naturally play a key role as these impact the available capacity. But this quarter, they were at the level of the comparison period. So we've removed that graph from the presentation, at least for this time. The first graph shows our headcount and FTE development, which tells about our capacity to perform our daily work. You can see a clear decline in the number of FTEs related to the reductions in Buildings. But at the same time, FTEs have grown in Infra and were fairly stable in Digi and Sweden.

The second graph shows the utilization rate, which tells our ability to bill the available hours. The Q1 utilization rate declined from the comparison and the reasons we already mentioned, but brief repetition, low demand in the market, time spent in sales and tendering, some tail effects from the Finnish systems implementations and the Bitcomp integration. We're obviously not happy with the level of the utilization rate and put a lot of focus on improving this.

Our liquidity remained good in the first quarter. And also the cash flow from operating activities before financial items and taxes was at EUR 5 million, so very close to last year's Q1. The small decline year-on-year was attributable to the clearly lower result for the period, but the good development of our net working capital compensated this. The net cash from operating activities increased from the comparison period as tax refunds in the first quarter provided support for the cash flow.

Net debt was slightly higher due to somewhat lower cash position. Net debt to EBITDA, so our leverage increased, and it was mainly influenced by the clear decrease in the rolling 12-month EBITDA. Here, the weak performance in Q4 last year and also this quarter's decline compared to the very strong quarter a year ago, have a big impact. The acquisition of Ahlman Group's expert operations during the period obviously also consumed cash. And it's -- but it's expected to have a positive impact on Sitowise's profitability this year. However, due to the seasonality of that business, this did not yet contribute to profitability in Q1.

As mentioned earlier, our financing contract is still valid for 2 years and as it was extended roughly a year ago. We're actively keeping an eye on our balance sheet and solvency and also maintain a close dialogue with our financiers. We've already commented most of the figures on this slide, but one more comment on the balance sheet. You can see here that the equity ratio was exactly the same as a year ago. So even if the leverage is up, the equity ratio is still very strong.

Now handing back to Heikki.

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

Thank you. Thank you, Hanna.

So our main priority is to improve profitability. There are a couple of external factors impacting. So firstly, we continue to face a headwind from the construction market downturn and the slowing demand in some other parts of the business, driven by the general macroeconomic environment. However, the demand for services related to green transition, security and digitalization of the building environment is at the high level, providing growth opportunities in all business areas.

Secondly, a key factor impacting our market environment will be the timing of the anticipated Central Bank's decisions to lower interest rates and whether those will be sufficient to drive increasing demand for new construction and investment projects and thereby technical consulting services. As we have seen, these decisions seem to be delayed, thereby delaying also the recovery of some of our key client segments.

Thirdly, we've seen positive development in the Swedish order intake, as I said earlier. However, it will still take some time to get the order book in Sweden to a very good level. But how do we then address the profitability? So as you saw from the EBITA margin bridges earlier, we've been quite successful in mitigating the margin pressure caused by the external factors, and we are determined to continue on this path. The focus is on sales and pricing, cost containment, billable project work, projectors that are the renewable energy industry clients and sustainability services and then also the smartest ways to work with a special focus on AI to also improve internal efficiencies but also to develop new services. And overall, we also expect to have a positive contribution from these recent acquisitions.

Here are some details on the differences between second quarter and the rest of the quarters of the year regarding number of working days and wage inflation. So as you can see, we'll have one working day more in the second quarter than last year in Finland and Sweden. In the following quarters, there will be one working day both in third quarter in both countries and then in the fourth quarter, an equal number of working days in Finland and 0.5 in Sweden. Anyhow, on an annual level, it's like a plus 1 working day more than in '23.

The wage increases, as mentioned, so in Finland, they came already to effect in February. In Sweden, the negotiated salary increases are 3.1% for this year, and they started from April onwards. So this means that from the second quarter onwards, the full impact of the wage increases will be visible.

We've already covered almost all topics under the market environment. So I just highlighted this year, we also expect to see higher interest costs than last year. Our guidance for '24 remains the same. So Sitowise Group net sales is expected to slightly decline in '24, driven by the Buildings business decline. Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be at '23 level above this year.

We announced a change in leadership in Sweden, and I'm happy to share that Daniel Doeser started as EVP for Sweden and a member of Sitowise Group management team at the beginning of this month. Daniel has a broad experience in growing business both organically and via acquisitions from our industry, and he joined Sitowise from Ramboll. So welcoming Daniel to Sitowise.

And then finally, let's move on to our strategy and see how we are progressing. So I'm sure that you start to be familiar with our strategy picture, but just very briefly, so the left-hand side about our values, our purpose, then right-hand side our vision, strategic pillars and then our focus areas in the bottom. Next, I'll go through how we are progressing with our strategic pillars.

Under the most innovative strategic pillar, our direction for this year is to continue to develop innovative culture that enables to generate ideas that are selectively accelerated and developed into new solutions with significant commercial potential. We've already discussed our progress with New Smart Services and AI in the beginning. So I just summarize that we are advancing well with our goals, and we are really excited about the progress made and the future opportunities that lie ahead of us.

Under the most sustainable pillar, we continue to develop our sustainability services offering. We've been recognizing 4 areas, so renewable energy, climate change, biodiversity and circular economy, and they are our priorities in sustainability services. And during the last quarter, the focus was especially in developing the biodiversity offering for our clients.

Two business acquisitions were completed during the quarter to support the profitable growth, as already mentioned, so Ahlman Group and KM Project business operations. The KM project came a bit later but anyhow. And then further, we advanced in aligning our internal sustainability reporting with the new European standards and are committed to setting targets for near-term CO2 emission reductions through the science-based targets initiative.

And finally, the most efficient. So there has been and will be heavy focus on sales and pricing excellence and overall client activity. And this is overly visible in first quarter results as well. We also want to ensure the competitive advantage through right processes, tools, data and all of this creating less waste and more meaningfulness. Use of AI played a key role here during the first quarter and will do so also in the future. We also continue to develop further our IT and service platforms, but on a more normalized level after the busy fourth quarter last year.

That's all for today, and now we are ready for questions.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Yes. We have a couple of questions related to the financial position and leverage. So could you tell me about your covenant levels?

[Hanna Masala, executive]

Yes. We've disclosed that we have a covenant -- financial covenant related to the net debt to rolling EBITDA so as our leverage, which we are reporting, but we haven't disclosed the levels, and I'm not intending to do it now either. But we can, of course, confirm as we said also in the interim release that we are aligned with -- or we are in line with the financing agreement covenants.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. And then are you planning an equity issue this year?

[Hanna Masala, executive]

We don't have such plans. Obviously, we -- as I said, we keep a tight eye on the balance sheet, but no plans to be discussed about.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. After Q1, you are behind your profitability guidance. What are the key risks that you would not be able to meet the guidance?

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

Yes. Maybe firstly, of course, the first quarter as has been shared here. So it was also like anticipated that net sales is there below the last year levels and thus impacting the overall performance. And of course, when it comes to the forthcoming quarters, so we still believe that we are in line with the guidance. So that's -- we have all the profitability drivers that I went through and they are supporting us.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. If you think about your industry technical consulting, is artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat?

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

I would say that it's definitely more an opportunity. So clearly, we see a lot of great possibilities with the New Smart Services, which are already like a base. We already have them in the market as well, and they are based on the AI usage. So that's providing us future opportunities definitely. And then, of course, we see that there's already now in the short term, great possibility for us to improve also internally like efficiency with the AI comes to the sales and tendering work and there are several opportunities we already have. As I also said, 5 different use cases what we have been already implementing now during the first quarter, and we are really looking forward to the benefits of that.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. How is the M&A market looking at the moment? And is the tough market situation impacting your M&A strategy?

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

Yes. So overall, of course, there are some M&As in the market as they have been. Of course, we see that the industry consolidation continues. We, all the time, keep our eyes open. Of course, today, we are quite careful with the opportunities also due to the financial position.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. What does it require for you to turn the Swedish operations to growth?

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

In Sweden, as I said already, I'm really happy about the order intake. There has been a heavy focus on the sales pricing, also the diligent project management. But especially the sales results start to be already visible more in the early part of the pipeline. And now we are expecting, of course, that to be then materializing in the order book and net sales in the coming quarter. So of course, that's like a key item there.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. Then going back to M&A. Are you evaluating any way the M&A opportunities this year? And are you having any ongoing discussions?

[Hanna Masala, executive]

Yes. Well, as Heikki said, we keep our eyes open but are conservative. I think there are smaller cases that we'll be looking at for a longer time, and we keep on looking at those and of course, have our eyes open, but I guess somehow, I think overall, the M&A market has been more -- somewhat more quiet because of this downturn, I think, generically and also in our industry. But yes, it's not a very high priority for us now. It's operative performance, sales and so on. But of course, we want to have a finger on the pulse.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. And then we have one final question separately for both of you. So Heikki, what are your priorities as a CEO going forward? And same question to Hanna, what are your priorities as a CFO?

[Heikki Haasmaa, executive]

Yes, of course, as I said, naturally, like the main, main priority for us is to improve the profitability. And of course, it has several elements under that one. So it's about the client sales activity, cost containment or being aware of the cost side. But then naturally, we see that there are a lot of opportunities in the market and also in some of the segments where we haven't been traditionally. And then, of course, we want to focus on those ones and capture those opportunities. And then still highlighting also this like basically under the smartest ways of working, but we have -- we see that there's a huge potential with the AI, both for the new like Smart Services, but then also for the internal efficiencies. So those are where I put my focus.

[Hanna Masala, executive]

Yes, I think for me and the whole finance team, one of the priorities is obviously to be like support and sparring partner for the business when it's about pricing or developing new products or thinking about client profitability and that sort of things. And then, of course, cash flow, that's a priority. So making sure that we have a kind of efficiency in the net working capital. We keep all the cash flow in control and in mind. So those in short.

[Mari Reponen, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Heikki and Hanna. And this concludes our webcast today, and we hope to see you again on 13th August in connection of our half year results.