Terveystalo Oyj
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Terveystalo's half year results webcast and call. As usual, our CEO, Ville Iho; and our CFO, Ilkka Laurila, will present the results of today, and we'll follow that with a Q&A. We also have a third speaker today, Mr. Simo Taimela, from one of our subsidiaries, Evalua, who will talk a little bit more about the capabilities that we have in predictive analytics and so forth. But as usual, we'll take questions from the phone lines and through the webcast after the presentations, and you can send them out from the link as well. And without further ado, I will give the speech over to Ville.
Thank you, Kati. Good morning from my behalf. Let's dive directly into main headlines of Q2. And it's no surprise, of course, for anybody that Q2 basically was characterized by fighting with this COVID crisis. And the impact on our business. Our business was heavily impacted during Q2 as well predicted. And the name of the game from operational point of view and running-the-business point of view has been matching basically the demand and supply, heavily shifting demand and supply and coming up with the new services needed for mitigating this crisis throughout this quarter. As I said to our personnel, just a couple of minutes ago when we had a brief, this COVID crisis is like having a boxing fight, where you don't know how many rounds do you need to fight. Now we have fought our first round. We don't know how many there will be. But as per today, I can say that this period quarter 2 has been a defensive win for Terveystalo from many points of view. Now we see that demand is recovering. It's, of course, fall is very hazy. It's very difficult to predict where the demand for different services will go. But today, of course, we are picking up in demand. We have been successful in mitigating the crisis, I would say, from operational point of view, from medical point of view, from a financial point of view and also from a customer service point of view. One thing that every Terveystalo employee can be proud of is the fact that we have been beating our employee satisfaction records every month, basically, going into the crisis. And now we are over 80 with NPS for the appointments, which is a record high level. Trust from our customers has been strengthening throughout the crisis. And I think that is a very, very clear sign of the capabilities of Terveystalo organization. Coming to the fall, I said already that demand has been picking up. In July, we gave some detailed numbers on that one, but we need to be flexible. Flexibility has been the key for our managing the crisis, and it continues to be the key for managing [ for as well ]. There will be swings up and down, and we need to be very, very agile in matching demand and supply and also providing right type of services through right channels for all of our customer groups. Some details from Q2 and now also some sneak peaks from H2 and beginning of H2. So revenue was obviously heavily impacted by COVID crisis, almost 20% down for corporate customers during Q2; 24% down for private customers for Q2; and also some impact in our public customers, mainly through lower demand for staffing services and then also some difficulties in supply for staffing services due to some restrictions for a [ movement ] of factors from Estonia, especially. Now the H2, beginning and the numbers describing the recovery are, of course, very interesting. So what we came out already with are the detailed numbers for corporate customers, demand development and then also private customers' demand development. Revenue from corporate customers in July, almost flat year-on-year, and private customers are picking up quite nicely, 9% up compared to last year's period. You need to bear in mind, of course, that July is the slowest season for our services. So you shouldn't make too a direct conclusions from this one. We have all the time said that decisive period for our services and how far the recovery will continue is going to be mid-August. So these are the critical weeks, and we'll see how the fall will develop. And as said, we are prepared for any scenario. We remain flexible. And I think the quarter 2 result and our performance by the company is a clear sign that there's a capability inside the organization to tackle any scenario, any situation. All in all, revenues are down to EUR 109 million. Results, I already explained and the drivers for that one. Obviously, I will give some more detail and dive deeper into these numbers. Then going forward, as I already said, H2 extremely hazy, obviously. We are, right now, picking up nicely on demand. But COVID-19 has been full of surprises, very difficult to predict. And the mobility of people in our different customer groups will be the key. If the mobility will be there, people are highly aware of their health. They are sensitive in taking tests, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, that's going to be a positive scenario for us. But then, of course, any harsh restrictions or lockdowns, again, will then impact negatively on how it results going forward. As said, we are prepared for any scenario. We started the fall planning with the 4 different scenarios. We picked 1 as a base scenario, and our targets are based on that one. But we remain flexible. From a result point of view, on EBITDA level, we reached almost EUR 9 million, which, I think, is a good achievement by the organization. As I said, this can be called a defensive victory. We were successful in matching supply and demand quite nicely. We were able to come up with the new services for corporate and private customers. In testing arena, for example, we were able to direct demand to new channels, digital channels, and we were heavy on cost mitigation and through those actions and very active crisis management, the result is, in these circumstances, at least satisfactory. The other positive thing, of course, has been our cash situation and cash flow through named actions and also some detailed cash flow. Mitigation actions have been strong throughout the period. As I said, the name of the game has been flexibility, flexibility in demand supply management but also in matching our services with the customer need, evolving customer needs from corporate customers, from public customers, from private customers. We have been very active in establishing new type of services for testing, tracking and risk assessment. We are helping our customers to mitigate for this crisis also during fall. We are also preparing for new services for the fall. I would name as one of the most important, the quick test, which is going to be a very effective tool for managing COVID-19 situation in different type of customer groups. As we promised, even though we were in the middle of the crisis, we updated our vision, mission and strategy and also our strategic targets. If you want to sort of describe in a nutshell what we are aiming at in this industry, the starting point for health care industry is fairly immature. We are well underway in industrializing and commercializing this industry. And now our key targets, key themes throughout the strategy period will be to build the smartest model, smarter service model for the industry and be very close to the customer -- end customer, be customers' health partner. This requires a lot of internal intel system intelligence, and we thought that it would be very refreshing for the audience to hear a sneak peek on one of the capabilities that we have been developing. It's only one, but it's one of many and a very interesting one. So Mr. Simo Taimela from Evalua, a company -- analytics company which we acquired last fall, will give a brief how with analytics data and science, you can predict and support our strategy and our customers going forward. With that, over to Simo.
Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Ville. Yes. My name is Simo Taimela, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Evalua Company. And as Ville introduced a brief introduction to Evalua, what we do, where we come from. And Evalua is part of, as Ville said, out of the Terveystalo Group since November 2 last year. We have specialized in health risk crisis and related services mostly to corporate clients. And the company was established already in 2003, and we started first with offering as our services to internationally operating large corporations like Nokia, Kone, ABB, [ Parcel ] and the like, later on to insurance companies. And over the past, I would say, 10 years to health service providers, including Terveystalo already fall from 2012 onwards, I think. We have a presence in Finland and the Netherlands. There is a subsidiary, Evalua Nederland, in the Netherlands and the company is based on a very solid scientific background, a scientific foundation and research network. Content wise, we have been developing our services, primarily by 4 people mentioned here, myself, I have an academic background. I'm an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of Helsinki. I'm still working part-time for the university, medical doctor originally. Willem van Mechelen, Allard van der Beek and Han Anema are professors at the University of Amsterdam. And they have a very, very broad experience and sized background in the field of what we do. The problem, what we are trying to solve, what is that? Many, many companies have realized that taking good care of employees is a means to secure optimal [ level in ] the productivity, which largely determines profitability in services and expect services, especially. And certain operative means [ include ]before that include identification of individuals with care needs, especially of those individuals, who work disability risk factors and intervening the problems accordingly. Another one includes identification of the individuals who may have mostly lifestyle-related issues that hamper their vitality, their well-being at work and then therefore, influences their productivity. And a third mean could include identification of the communities where issues with lifestyle or work related problems and work disability risk factors are more common than elsewhere and are intervening accordingly. So our solution, what we offer includes the sound acute health risk appraisal. We have been developing the contents already for 17, 18 years. And I think we have found a reasonable package, but not only limited to the questionnaire, but we also have incorporated a personal feedback so that each and every respondents receive an immediate feedback after responding about what are the findings? What are the meaning of each or each individual finding or a topic? And what can I do about it? What are the means that I can do? And when how should I seek help for the issues that have been pointed out? In other words, we can build an action plan guiding towards personalized interventions. All this is operated through a versatile IT platform, what we call My Health and Workability platform, and that enables operation of questionnaires in large volumes. It's highly scalable. Also, over the course of the years, there has been an accumulation of the vast database. So we have been doing quite a bit of research and analytics about the findings, and we do have a benchmarking database based on which we can provide a group level qualitative information and feedback to the companies on what level they are as compared to what level they should be, and what are the issues that they should focus on, on the company level or a business level or department level or so on. What is the predictability of the questionnaire? We have been studying that quite extensively. And the most recent sized scientific papers have been published in less than 1 year in international journals. In the nutshell, we put together the data of 22,000 people's responses to the questionnaire, the sickness substance records and the permanent disability benefit records. This was done in collaboration with the University of Tampere in Finland. And the results quite clearly indicate that the subgroups that we can identify as the work disability risk factor group where, in which belongs about 1/4 of the respondents on the average as compared to the reference group with no findings or lifestyle issues only. Sickness absence days are fourfold within this work disability risk factor as subgroup. And if the individuals have 2 or more simultaneous work disability risk factors, they have over tenfold risk of ending up on a permanent disability benefit over the course of 6 years. So the predictive capability of the questionnaire is rather good. And then we have done, for example, a randomized controlled trial on the early intervention model versus the traditional or care, as usual, having occupational health services. And in this randomly allocated 2 groups, the targeted intervention, which was based on the findings of the Sante Q, the group had 35% less sickness absence days over the course of following 12 months. The benefit per individual per year was about 11 days per year. And surprisingly, also the savings in health care costs were noted. The early intervention reduced the future health care utilization more than it temporarily increased it. So there is a double benefit, both on the health care cost and sickness absence days. We have also published the paper, actually just Verbeek has published the paper, I was involved. Where we compared the cost benefit, either using the Finnish costing parameters or the Dutch costing parameters, and the cost benefit ratio was very high. The investment point estimate was in around EUR 30 per saving per 1 sickness absence day. So with the Finnish costing parameters, the return on investment would be more than tenfold. So the current solution for the problem that I described it earlier includes the idea that for those with work disability risk factors, we performed the Sante Q targeted health checkup, coordination of the interventions by the occupational physicians, and we expect reduction of sickness absence and future health care utilization. And for those with lifestyle issues or well-being issues, we can also follow the idea of targeted health checkups and perhaps a lifestyle coaching. And on an aggregate level or group level, we provided group reports and support the management decisions about what to do with developing the HR management in the company. Future opportunities may include horizontal expansion, new clients, new client segments and the like. And vertically, we may think of, and we are actually working with additional surveys for, for example, occupational hazards. Digging deeper on occupation, we'll be also designing more effective or new effective interventions and the like. As a summary, we aim at improving vitality, well-being, health and workability of employees in order to improve the labor productivity and improve the competitive advantage of our client companies by the means of, first of all, pleasant, versatile questionnaire; guiding individuals' correct interventions; and making it possible to build a seamless coordination of the services within occupational health services, health advisers. Also, it's possible to build an entire e-health ecosystem around the services in the future. There is a strong scientific proof of the predictive value effectiveness and cost effectiveness on this model of operation. Thank you.
Thank you, Simo, and good morning on my behalf as well. That was one of the -- from the financial perspective, that was one of the examples that we do in our preventive services and which are having a strong sort of scientific and clinical background. And like we have communicated earlier, I think, we are quite forerunner in that arena and as a Terveystalo and also as a country, and we believe that is a fact also in the international context. But then a few words regarding the financial performance in the second quarter at Terveystalo, starting from the sales and profitability development. As Ville already told, of course, the profitability in absolute and in relative terms declined as the revenue declined during the second quarter. If we compare the year-before numbers, the biggest reasoning, of course, was the decline in the revenue, but also as a result of changes in the sales mix. Meaning that, as we have said that as the infections declined and that -- and the sort of the services for the lifestyle diseases declined as well as the preventive services declined, those services typically include at least some proportion of diagnostic services and therefore, relatively speaking, diagnostic services declined in the second quarter a bit more than the appointment services, which had a negative impact on the profitability as well. The third thing, obviously, is on top of the protective gearings that we -- which cost increased as well is the fact that we have continued digitalization of our corporate operations, which will have an increasing impact for the cost structure as well. From the cost structure wise, the numbers can be seen here. So basically, what happened is that even though that the top line declined at 19%, the purchase of the materials increased to 20%, and the reason for that is the obvious. It's the protective gearings that we acquired. Secondly, the employee benefit expenses declined as a result of those temporary layoffs that we had during the second quarter. Thirdly, as I said, the IT expenses continue to increase even though that we have, of course, mitigating actions. But as we've transferred our operations rapidly to work more in a remote mode that had a sort of -- let's put it that way, sort of a nonrecurring type of increase in the IT expenses. But of course, as we continue to digitalize our operations that will have a continuous impact for the IT expenses, trend-wise as well. Then the cost mitigating actions in addition to employee benefit expenses can be seen in other operating expenses, which includes different kind of administrative, marketing, et cetera, et cetera, expenses, and that declined with approximately about 35% and has declined during this year about 15% in total. So that shows the capabilities that we have to sort of cut the cost in the short term, if needed. From the balance sheet-wise, we increased or made an additional financing agreement of EUR 40 million during the second quarter. The result of that is that we have now cash, cash and cash equivalent assets is that EUR 90 million. And on top of that, we have some EUR [ 40 ] million of undrawn loan facilities. So in that sense, we can argue that from the financial perspective or through liquidity perspective, we are in a very strong position at the moment. And our net debt also has declined. And the net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA, the leverage ratio is still below the target and well below the last year's number, which was that 4.1.From the operational efficiency and the cash flow-wise, we have been able to sort of control the working capital as well quite effectively. You can see that the trade and other receivables have declined. That the one reason, of course, is that the top line decline part, but we have also sort of improved our debt collection and invoicing sort of functions and operations, and we have had positive impact to the cash flow from that as well. Then on the other hand, you can see the trade and other payables have increased. And there's several reasons for that as well [ where we had ] a lot of activities behind that. One reason is that the pension expenses, like in other Finnish companies, we are able to sort of postpone the payments to the third and fourth quarter. The second element is that we have negotiated longer payment terms with some of the suppliers as well as some of the tenants as well. And the net result of these activities has been that the net working capital has improved as shown here. Sort of third thing related to cash flow is that, like we said, we have sort of freezed and reconsidered some of the investing activities during the second quarter. The result, you can see here. So that investments related to digitalization and IT continued on a high level, EUR 18 million as an LTM number, but for investments for the machinery and equipment declined quite considerably. One reason for that is that during the comparison period, we had 2 MRI machine acquisitions at the time. But the second reason is that we have postponed some of the non-necessary investing activities just to secure the cash flow and the liquidity position. And our sort of capabilities from the cash flow-wise, you can see it from the numbers as well so that if the EBITDA in the second quarter declined at EUR 17 million, roughly speaking, the cash flow after the investing activities only declined at roughly EUR 7 million. So that shows that in these kind of situation, we are able to manage the cash flow quite nicely as well. Then finally, I think as communicated already earlier, we will have a Capital Markets Day on 2nd September this year, and that then you will hear more with recurrence to our operated strategy and looking forward to sort of see some of you, hopefully, during that meeting and at least hear you during that Capital Markets Day. Then I think we have time for Q&A.
Thanks, Ilkka. I think that we have a couple of questions already on the line from the phone lines.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Gibson, Morgan Stanley.
My first one is on the sales development that you've seen in July. And can you talk about the seasonality of the quarter? And how that's impacted the July level? And what do you expect for the rest of Q3, with the balance of pent-up demand, the holidays that you expect to come through and the availability of physicians? That's my first question.
Well, in Finland, the July is the sort of the quietest month of the year. School starts this year, I think, 12th of August, and a lot of parents and people are coming back to offices in the middle of the August. So therefore, the July is the slowest month, and that's why Ville already said that the predictability of the July numbers is a bit hazy and weak still, but that's the only fact that we have at the moment. And of course, the sort of the swings will be quite high obviously during the third quarter and the sort of the development remains to be seen. But the July is the slowest month clearly, starts then quite a lot of increase towards September and October and November, which are the sort of the highest sales months during the second half of the year.
Yes. But I guess, on that point, and you talked about your developments in July so far. Is the expectation that you won't see as strong a recovery in August and September from here on out just because July is usually seasonally weak? So you're getting more people coming in because of the pent-up demand argument. Just trying to think like, is July, should we be expecting a slowdown on a relative growth basis in August and September?
Yes. It's -- it would be a sort of -- in a normal year, it would be much easier to sort of give more sort of flavor on that. But this year, I would say that the only fact that we know is the July number. And it's really difficult to predict at the time. It really depends on how the consumers behave and how corporates are behaving and what will happen with the unemployment, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of sort of uncertainties in the short term especially, and that's why it's really difficult to say anything sort of firm with regard into August and September.
Just to add on that one, you need to be as [indiscernible] very cautious to draw conclusions from July. We have said during Q2 that the decisive period for the recovery for us will be mid-August and onwards. So these are very interesting weeks for us. Obviously, as to your question around pent-up demand, we can clearly see that there is pent-up demand. We can see that one in the some of the services and bookings. But still, even with that one, you need to be cautious because we are still in COVID-19 period and very difficult to predict the impacts on that one.
Okay. Great. And my second question is just on the sustainability of the layoffs and the cost savings that you've seen. Clearly, through the crisis, it might have been easier, more understandable to cut out costs. But as things do return to normal, how do you expect your costs to evolve over the next quarter? And how do you balance kind of the return in demand with your more fixed cost employee base?
Well, if I may comment on that one. The Finnish unpaid leave or fair log system is highly flexible. And that's one of the benefits in the Finnish system. So from that point of view, it's -- we are agile. We are very flexible in matching demand and supply, as I said earlier. Right now, when the demand is picking up, of course, the layoffs are at the minimum level, but we have a preparedness for increasing the layoffs if the demand would be lower than expected. So I don't see any difference between Q2 and Q3, for example, from this point of view. We will act according to demand, and we are highly flexible in doing so.
Okay. Great. And my last question is just on M&A opportunities. And just interested to hear if you've seen an increase in any stressed assets out there that have potentially been approaching you to be acquired or the partnership in any way? And if that is the case, do you think you have enough allowance in your leverage levels to push any of that M&A opportunity through?
To answer the latter part of second question, yes, we think that we have flexibility to move if needed. And with regards to M&A market, we can see -- in the small companies, we can see some activities that some small companies are running out of cash and have difficulties when it comes to the liquidity, and therefore, that might end up in some kind of M&A situations. But in a more mid- to a larger size, we don't see that kind of distressed activity raising at the moment.
Our next question comes from Panu Laitinmäki from Danske Bank.
I have 2 questions. Firstly, can you talk about this topic of a QSR backlog being created in the public sector and the impact to your business? Have you seen -- have you kind of done any contracts to help the public sector with this? And what is your view, how this will develop? And then have you seen any kind of spillover demand from public to private if people kind of get tired of waiting for a cataract surgery, for example, and then decide to pay you to do it?
Okay. Well, first of all, from the sort of a medical disease category that we have been looking at, we could see during Q2 that certain disease types were slowing down more than the rest. And for those ones, we've said that 1 of the groups were sort of lifestyle-related diseases, which typically are long-term issues, we could clearly see that there's a pent-up demand building up. As always is the case for, for example, dental services and from public discussion, you can, of course, see and read and hear that on the public side, you have been building even more of that pent-up demand. From our bookings, we can see that the -- on private side, people are coming back with the longer-term diseases. And when it comes to public, yes, we have -- there have been, throughout Q2 already, some activities with the public sector. But in a larger scale, it's not yet materialized. At certain point, it needs to materialize. There's no other way to solve the situation and solve the queuing situation and problem on the public side. But in larger scale, the sort of wave of public sector demand has not yet arrived.
Just to comment on that. I agree. So basically, we see some signs. But the materiality of those activities is still quite low.
But if it materializes, do you think it will be like a second half issue or second half thing for this year? Or would it kind of happen next year?
Well, spillover impact, obviously, this year and this half. Then public side solutions depends -- those depend on political decisions partly. But of the -- this is, of course, our local, for municipalities and those could materialize in Q4, I would say, at this stage.
All right. My second question, it was on costs. So basically, have you seen -- do you see potential for more structural changes after these changes in your business? And I mean that the remote services have grown quite a bit. Do you, for example, see potential to close some units and do some -- that kind of changes to your kind of network of offices?
Well, the balance between different channels will change due to this crisis. And we, of course, can see clear signs on that one. One is to -- from Terveystalo point of view, one is to state that we believe going forward in omnichannel environment. So we need to have a brick-and-mortar network, a very strong one. But at the same time, we need to be able to couple services through different channels for individual customers. During the crisis, we have already closed some units temporarily. So we have been reacting to lower demand on -- based on that one. At the same time, we have been increasing services through digital channels. So we are already in a way in that shift, but there's no sort of -- at this stage, any sort of a large-scale plan to reset our network based on the new situation. It's too early to make that call. But in the long run, as to your question, of course, the balance between the channels will shift then, and we will then adjust accordingly.
To remember that we do our sort of result with integrated the care agents. And those remote visits and digital services typically relate to appointments. So basically, there is only 1 sort of the -- if you want to call it that, that's the first contact with the customer, and then it sort of refer the link to other services within our organization and operations. And that's why it will not have that significant impact in the short term. Quite the sort of opposite because it's lowers, the sort of, the barrier to entry to our services because it's easier to contact medical services through digital services. But the impact where the care chain is always good to remember when considering these kind of issues.
Our next question comes from Iiris Theman, Carnegie.
This is Iiris Theman from Carnegie. I have 3 questions. So firstly, still on the cost side and on investment side. As the demand has started to pick up, so have you started to increase your other costs or investments? And then secondly, how do you expect your sales mix to develop in the second half of this year? And third, my third question is related to the government SOTE Reform proposal. It indicates that there could be cancellations of some municipality outsourcing contracts. I guess -- or I remember that you had some [ 10 full ] outsourcing contracts in place. So is there a risk that some of these contracts could be canceled?
Maybe I can answer the first question regarding the costs activities. So far, we just sort of returned -- everybody has just returned from the holiday. So we haven't yet made any sort of decisive movements regarding the cost activity. So we continue with the same pace as earlier. And as Ville said, we watch closely the activity level and how it develops and adjust our cost structure also to those -- to that activity level and try to keep as -- our organization and cost structure as agile as possible in this kind of situation.
Yes. That does definitely relates to investments linked to implementing our new strategy. And of course, have in operational -- on operational side, we are running very tight ship, and we are keeping costs in very tight control, but then at the same time, of course, we are building a road map for our strategy implementation. And that will include investments in digital and system intelligence, as I pointed out earlier. But as Ilkka said, we have not mapped out that investment program for the fall or even next year. The next question was around the sales mix. Well, if [ Ilkka] want to comment on that one. But the indication from July recoveries is that sales mix will normalize. But again, swings are -- they are possible that they are even likely.
Yes. Precisely, so in July, the sales mix has sort of normalized, so to speak. So we have seen -- like I said, we have seen increase in demand for the specialty care doctors services, especially and that typically include diagnostic services as well. And therefore, the sort of the sales mix has more or less normalized during the July. And the infections have also increased during the July, luckily [indiscernible] rhinovirus related sort of normal flu, not the coronavirus.
Yes. And testing activity, of course, has increased quite a bit in the first weeks of the fall. Then the last question was around the SOTE Reform. Yes, we do have a couple of outsourcing deals out there. According to our assessment, they are not at risk. And on the other hand, their significance to our business, especially on result level is very, very, very low. Terveystalo has never sort of been a SOTE company as we have never ever sort of resolved the story based on any SOTE scenario. We have the capabilities to serve all of our customers and help Finland in large scale to decrease the health care cost and improve the quality if this is a make or so wish. But our strategy is not based on any individual scenario.
[Operator Instructions] Okay. There appears to be no further questions, so I'll hand back to the speakers for any other remarks.
Thank you. We have some follow-up questions from the webcast. First of all, from [indiscernible], OP Markets. Could you describe the potential outsourcing pipeline and market in Finland? For example, municipality of Puolanka said yesterday that they are considering outsourcing?
Well, all in all, outsourcing market, regardless of the SOTE talk and discussion, is quite active in Finland. It's -- it hasn't been this active during my time as it is right now. So there are activities and there are initiatives out there. And of course, we are interested in those.
No major changes in the market after the government's SOTE?
No, no. It's -- these initiatives and outsourcing packages that we are seeing in the market right now, of course, they are -- they have been pushed by the local municipalities, and they are doing their independent decisions. And I think they are doing wise decisions right now and looking for solutions for the high cost and lower availability where we can help.
Thanks. Then we have a question from Jutta Rahikainen in SEB. Two questions on the corporate customers. How is corporate customer sales in May, June and trending up during the Q2? Or was it a big jump to what's normal in July, specifically? And then secondly, do you think corporates will continue to invest in well-being and predictive care also in H2, should most of the office people continue to work remotely from their homes? Or will the distance working automatically mean lower corporate customers' revenues for us?
You can take that one.
So starting from May, June. So like, I think it -- the sort of the pattern was quite similar with both private and corporate customers. So we saw sort of the gradual increase since April when the society opened as well. July, specifically, it's a -- with regards to corporate sales, obviously, that then most of the Finland is on holiday. It's a bit weird month for the corporate segment customers specifically. But in there, we already, like in May, June, we saw that the 1 that is actually sort of the below-the-normal level is -- are those legally required and preventive services, meaning health checkups, et cetera, et cetera, which is also part of the diagnostic services typically. That has been relatively speaking, on a lower level, that's the sort of the normal, let's say, sickness care for the occupational health care customers. Because that's typically if you are sick, you take care of that issue. But for those preventive activities, you are able to postpone it within the year, from the spring to the autumn, and that's most likely what we have seen. So in that sense, because it has to be taken care within certain sort of calendar year, most likely, we can see increased activity in the second half of the year when it comes to the legal, required, preventive, occupational health care services. It was a long question. Are there sort of parts that I didn't answer?
So another question about whether if people continue to work remotely from their home, should that have an impact on the corporate sales going forward?
That's the tricky piece, I would say, because, of course, if -- like in the second -- or the second quarter, if we can see lower numbers of the infections, if people are not contacting each other, overall, all kind of infections, be it any kind of respiratory or other eye infections or anything like that, of course, it will have impact for the acute care-related sales for the corporate and for the private customers. On the other hand, even though that you really staying at the home, if you are having sort of health checkups or et cetera, if you are having any kind of activity planning with the corporates or workplace assessments or anything like that, that activity should continue even though that you are working remotely. The third element is then the sort of the non-acute care. And there, I think, the sort of the behavior with the private individual and the corporate end-user customer is quite similar. So you can sort of postpone certain non-acute care activities for the certain times, but there's always sort of limit at how long you are willing to sort of postpone your cataract surgeries or with your knee problems. And that's why it's so difficult to predict the demand for the second half of the year that like we have said, most likely, there's a pent-up demand for those non-acute services, but the quantity and the amount of that, that's the big question mark. And this related to sort of restrictions regarding the movement on society, of course, because if people are remaining at home, they can live with that knee problem or with that cataract still a few months. But net-net, eventually, it has to be taken care of in the third quarter, fourth quarter, first quarter of '21 or later. It will not pass away.
Yes. Maybe to add on that one. As I said earlier, also, as Ilkka said, mobility of different customers, be it corporate or private customer. That's 1 of the key for the demand for the fall as well as it was for Q2. We saw demand picking up as restrictions were lifted and people started to move and live more normal life. If there is no movement, if people are staying home, as we've COVID, of course, the demand will be lower. What we can see right now, which is one -- maybe one sort of example is that, obviously, well, when companies are normalizing the business and a way of doing office work, for example, the testing activity is increasing fast. Because people are very, very -- companies and individual people are very sensitive on their health. And of course, with any even small symptoms, you will not go to the work and that sort of feeds in, into testing activity.
And that's part of, as we said, that one of the sort of the biggest impact that we had during the second quarter was that infections, where we saw sort of very significant decline because all kind of infections declined, of course, because people are not contacting each other. And now when people have started to move, they have some kind of infections, be it then flu, be it the eye infection, be it the other ear, nose, throat-related to infection or stomach infection. So any that kind of -- and of course, they are now sort of very eager to come to check whether that is a sort of normal infection or more severe sort of infection, meaning corona.
Thanks. We're almost running out of time, but I have a couple of more questions from the webcast. One from James Vane-Tempest from Jefferies. We mentioned that the next weeks are critical as people return from holidays and there's pent-up demand. But what's our perception of the consumer at the moment? Do we have a sense that people are wanting to have treatment? Or are they delaying nonessential treatments until they have more visibility around the COVID situation?
Now we are talking about psychology and the consumer behavior based on that one. Right now, as you can see in Helsinki or in Turku or basically, anywhere in Finland, people are much more relaxed and people are not afraid of coming out. People are not afraid of moving about. And as I said just a minute ago, that feeds in, into testing activity and later to the rest of the services. So right now, the mood is very different from spring. But this is COVID-19 and things can change and if the epidemic situation drastically worsens versus in Finland.
Thanks. I think we are now on time, and thank you, everybody, for taking part and listening on the lines, and then we wish you a good rest of the day.
Thank you.
Thank you.