Atea ASA

OSE:ATEA

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Hi, and welcome to the Q4 and 2021 full year presentation of the Atea numbers. It's been another really challenging but good year and quarter for Atea. We've been battling rising sick leaves and product shortage, but we have managed pretty well even so. Revenue came in at record high NOK 11.9 billion, more than 6% growth in constant currency. EBIT at NOK 403 million, a record result for Atea. The cash position, as you can see on this slide, is very strong and so was the cash flow in the quarter. But as always, I'll leave it to Robert to take you through all the good news.

[Robert Giori, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Steinar. I'd like to start by reviewing our income statement. Atea reported revenue of NOK 11.9 billion in the fourth quarter, up 1.6% from last year. The underlying sales growth was higher than reported. Currency fluctuations had a negative impact of 4.5% on reported growth rates as revenue in foreign currencies was translated into a stronger Norwegian krone. Adjusting for the currency impact, revenue growth in constant currency was 6.4% with strong growth in software and services offsetting slower sales of hardware. Hardware revenue fell by 2%, which in constant currency implies a 2% growth rate. Shipment volumes were negatively impacted by global supply shortages in the electronics industry. The impact was hardest felt in sales of networking, data center and audio/video solutions. Sales of PCs and accessories were less affected by the supply shortages, and these categories had strong growth from last year. Software revenue increased by 6% or over 10% in constant currency driven by higher demand from the public sector. Services revenue also increased by 6% from last year or over 10% in constant currency based on high growth in the consulting business. Total operating expenses were in line with last year as an increase in operating costs was offset by the effect of foreign currency translation. With strong growth in sales of software and services, Atea's EBIT grew by 4% to NOK 403 million, and net profit grew by 8% to NOK 307 million. These results should be seen in the context of the current hardware shortages and a very strong Q4 last year. If we look at earnings growth over 2 years, Atea's EBIT is up 32%, and net profit is up 41% since Q4 2019. We'll now take a closer look at revenue and profit development across the countries in which we operate. Across all markets, strong sales of services offset the impact of supply constraints on hardware shipments. All countries except Finland reported higher revenue and profit than last year. In Norway, EBIT grew by 22% to a record high NOK 143 million. Revenue growth was driven by higher sales of software with large project orders from the public sector. In Sweden, EBIT grew by 11.4% to a record high SEK 167 million driven by strong demand from the private sector for PCs and services. In Denmark, EBIT was DKK 32 million, up slightly from last year. Strong growth in sales of services was partly offset by lower sales of hardware due to delivery constraints within data center and networking equipment. Of all countries, Denmark has the highest proportion of networking sales in its revenue mix and was particularly impacted by supply shortages in this product category. In Finland, EBIT was EUR 2.6 million, down from a very strong comparable period last year. Revenue fell from last year due to supply shortages in hardware and the loss of a large public frame agreement in software. On the positive side, the services business in Finland continued to grow and had a very strong quarter with over 15% growth year-over-year. In the Baltics, EBIT grew by 16.4% to a record high EUR 2.5 million. Revenue in the Baltics increased by 11% from last year with strong growth across all business lines. Atea Group Functions, which includes shared services and group costs, had a net operating expense of NOK 1 million compared with an operating profit of NOK 8 million last year. The difference was primarily driven by less profit from Atea's logistics operations in Vaxjo compared with a very strong period last year. In sum, Atea's EBIT improved to a record high NOK 403 million with higher revenue and profit in nearly all geographies. Now a word for -- on our cash flow and balance sheet. Atea's cash flow from operations was an inflow of NOK 1.7 billion in the fourth quarter compared with an inflow of NOK 1.6 billion last year. The strong cash flow was driven by solid earnings, a reduction in working capital balances by NOK 1 billion and an increase in receivables sold under the securitization program by NOK 202 million. Atea's working capital balance was higher at the end of Q4 than in recent years due to the need to hold buffer inventory to secure hardware deliveries in a period of supply constraints. This impact is expected to be temporary and to normalize in 2022. Moving on to our debt balance. Atea had a positive net financial position of NOK 822 million at the end of Q4 as defined by Atea's loan covenants. This corresponds to a net debt-EBITDA ratio of negative 0.5. Atea's loan covenants require the company to maintain a net debt-EBITDA ratio of less than 2.5, which would mean that the maximum net debt balance allowed by Atea's loan covenants was NOK 4.2 billion at the end of Q4. Atea's net debt balance was therefore NOK 5 billion less than the maximum allowed by its loan covenants at the end of Q4. The company has significant additional debt capacity before its loan covenants would be reached. That concludes the presentation of the fourth quarter financial results. I'll now hand the podium back over to Steinar to discuss the full year results and the business outlook.

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Robert. If we take a look at the full year 2021, first of all, I have to say I really hope that 2022 will be more normal than 2021 turned out to be for all of us. But the revenue and the results of 2021 for the Atea team was excellent. We are really proud of a growth in revenue of almost 8% organically, I must say, and an EBIT growth of 23%. We have said over and over again that our target is to grow organically between 5% and 10% on revenue and 2 to 3x that in EBIT. It is the plan we have. It's the improvement projects that we have. And in 2021, we were on the upper side of that guiding. So a very good year. And as Robert said, even better, the longer down in the P&L you get, 30% growth on net profit and a very solid cash flow. As I said, we are really proud of this year. But when that is said, it's actually not a one-off. If you look at the last 7 years of the Atea performance, on average, we have had 7% growth in revenue and 13% growth in EBIT, on average, even with the difficulties we had in Denmark included in these numbers. So a little bit on the low side on the EBIT on our guiding but spot on when it comes to the revenue. We see no reason why this suddenly should change now. Infrastructure is more important -- IT infrastructure, I should said, but whole infrastructure is more important to society than ever, more important than ever. And we have just started a journey that will keep us consuming more infrastructure in decades to come. So we see no reason why we shouldn't be growing also in the future. But let me take you through a couple of things that might not be seen as the mainstream of the reason why this will continue but as important even so. Social -- corporate social responsibility is one these areas. I think we all see how important it is not only that we act but how we act, and that we act responsible. And we have in Atea invested in how we act and that we act in many years now. And so it's with a considerable proudness that we say that we are one of the most sustainable companies in our business in the world and actually one of the most sustainable companies any business in Europe. It's because we have high ambitions in this area. It's because we work hard at it, and we have a really good team both centrally and in the countries. We take a holistic approach to it, and we have very high transparency on what we do and what we succeed and what we do not succeed on as we report on this yearly. More and more companies, customers of us, are asking for this. How are you acting and how can you help us, meaning, the customer, to become more sustainable? This is now a part of most frame agreements in the Nordics, and it's growing also in the private industry. But also investors, especially outside Norway, are asking for these credentials when they put their funds money into investments. So we feel very well positioned in this area. We actually feel pretty well positioned in many areas. We feel that the platform that we have built, that we have invested in, that the Board and the shareholders have let us invest in over years have given us a strength in many areas. On the competitive situation or arena, we feel that with and the breadth and the depth of the capabilities that we have is second to none in our geography. We actually feel the platform we have in this area are so good that is competitive in any geography. The investments in these capabilities have taken us years, and the spread between us and competition have never been bigger. When we put the best team in front of the customer, we simply win. So our job and what we talk about internally is what we call the best team, to use the best team at each task and each project. And it's not the same team, but it's the best team. Financially, we've never been stronger. We've never been stronger. We've never had more firepower to invest, and I'll get back to how we'll treat that going forward. But maybe the strongest part of our platform is the culture of the company and the organic structure of the company. With 85 offices in this geography, we are closer to the customer wherever the customer is than any competitor and any vendor. And at the center of this structure is the culture of the company. And it's the culture that has brought us the stamina to show the results quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year. It's not like we haven't faced trouble, but it's that the structure carry us through it. So the platform is strong, and we keep on investing in it. When we look at the market, I've hinted to it, but there is no reason, and we hear this, will software grow faster and hardware -- will hardware grow faster, are you investing in services. Well, this is the secret sauce. It's not either/or. It's both. In one quarter, it could be more one thing. In another quarter, we could be better achieving our targets on another area. But Atea is the best friend of the customer because we have all. We believe and have seen and have said over the years that hardware will grow, software will grow a little faster, and it's up to us to invest enough so services grow faster than both of them. The market takes care of some of this. The rest has to be the investments that we do. And in 2022, we have come to the stage in our efficiency plan where we're going to start not move, not stop doing it locally but start to produce services from our central data centers as we are centralizing the offerings in managed services. It's a new step in our program of making Atea more efficient. M&A. There is definitely opportunities of M&A. We have been more careful especially through the pandemic as we have acquired more than 50 companies and know how important it is to see the people in their eyes when you buy companies. It's easy to financial and legally buy a company. The difficult part of it is to get the heart and the brain of the people in it. And as we are, cross fingers, leaving the pandemic, we will be more active both outside our geography but, first and foremost, in our geography. And you will see this going forward. So as I close, looking at the platform that Atea has, let me just take you through very briefly how we look at capital allocation. First of all, of course, we have to earn it. But as we are and as we have, we are very comfortable in raising the dividend from NOK 5 to NOK 5.50. It's all about balancing how you use your capital, and share backs will be a part also by the Board -- or the Board will ask for the opportunity to do share buybacks of shares also in the future. M&A will increase. As we are making more money and balancing the use of cash, we have plenty of firepower, as I said earlier, to do M&As. The CapEx, the capital investments that we do, as we've said before, the guiding stance, we will be a little below or on 1% of revenue. And this year, we were way below 1%. So there you have it. 2021, a really, really excellent year. I hope you see that we're meeting the expectations we set to ourself not only for this year, but for many years before it. I hope you have confidence in the fact that Infrastructure market is growing. And again, the software that runs on software has still not been developed. And before we take questions, please listen to some words from our Chairman.

[Ib Kunoe, Chairman of the Board]

Dear colleagues, dear fellow shareholders and all who are watching this online, as you know, it is a tradition that I, at the presentation of the Q4 and full year, show up and give you some comments on the situation in Atea and on major events in the year. Just as last year, this speech is made in Atea's studio in Copenhagen as the corona situation is still a challenge for us in some countries. Hopefully, things will normalize soon. As you all know, Denmark canceled all restrictions from 1st of February, and so did Sweden and, to some extent, also Norway. What the new normality will be is now another question as we are likely to be working a little different from how we did before corona. I believe it will be a better way for our customers, for our employees and our company, more flexibility and more efficiency and thereby a happier working environment for all involved. All in all, we have come out of the pandemic with a very good result, as you have already heard from management. This year is the 15th time I give you this end of the year speech, and that make me look back and think of what kind of company Atea is. The IT business is a dynamic business where companies, new companies, new products, new software and innovations come and go all the time. Some companies suddenly grow fast, very fast and make hopes that profit will follow, and that gives them a fantastic valuation on the stock exchange. We see a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and some companies are moving from one area to the other in our industry. So what about Atea? 15 years ago, we had a revenue of NOK 12 billion a year. Now we have NOK 12 billion in Q4 and NOK 41 billion for the year of 2021 and a profit of over NOK 1 billion, but also a backlog of NOK 4 billion, which is more than double from last year. That would have been very nice if we could have invoiced the extra NOK 2 billion in Q4. Our share price ended in 164, up 35 from 121 at the end of 2020. So that's the overall picture. But looking back, as Atea, we grew very fast through acquisitions the first 7 years, and then we used time to consolidate and integrate all the new companies that we had bought. After that, we basically grew organic, and now we are by far the biggest player in the Nordic, with a market share around 20%. Can we double our market share in our present market? I think not. It will not be realistic and not healthy, I think, with a market share of 40%. But the market will grow and we'll be growing with it, keeping our market-leading position. People then ask me, can you double the company? If we want to double our revenue fast, then we must go outside our geographies. The last 7 years, we have primarily used our profits to pay dividends. And this year, the Board will suggest to the general assembly that we pay NOK 5.50 per share in the usual 2 installments. So what type of a company are we today? I'll allow myself to call us a value share because we have shown growth, stability, profitability and willingness to pay aggressive dividends. Nevertheless, we have a very strong financial situation. So if we want, we can make the acquisitions that we want to make. We've had some problems in Denmark, but they are history. Denmark has made a turnaround and is up DKK 100 million from the last year in EBIT. I hope you saw that Denmark just got a very big software deal with 87 Danish municipalities with a value of NOK 2.8 billion and that Finland, at the same time, got a deal worth NOK 6 billion over the next 4 years. So we are on track. We have initiated a new strategy that we think is the right one for the future to ensure we remain our leading position in the Nordic. Besides that, we are in the middle of a big 3-year program that will improve our profitability. We want to be one of the leading companies in sustainability and take our part of the worldwide responsibility. But without a profitable business model, it's not possible. We must be able to do both, and we have over the last years invested heavily in sustainability. And because of that, Atea was recognized as one of the most sustainable corporation in the world by Corporate Knights as part of their annual ranking called Global 100. Atea ranked 51st overall and 1st in our industry in the world in IT services. Atea received the highest ranking by The Governance Group in the new report, ESG 100, how the largest 100 companies on the Oslo Stock Exchange report on ESG. Atea was awarded the highest ranking environmental and social performance by EcoVadis, an achievement that ranks Atea in the top 1% of 75,000 organization evaluated globally. And Atea was among a selected group of European companies that have made the greatest progress curbing their greenhouse gas emissions. That ranking was made by the Financial Times and Statista. And the last, Atea was recognized as a Transparency Partner by NASDAQ, an initiative focusing on improving the ESG information flow between listed companies and investor communities. So a big hand of applause to a great achievement by all employees in Atea. It will be tough to keep the gold medal with so many contenders, but we will strive to remain leaders in this field as well. All in all, Atea is continuously growing and a well-managed company, where it is an honor to be Chairman. I love the company. And over the years, I bought a lot of shares and never sold any. We are now ready to attack 2022, and our ability to tackle the COVID situation has shown that we are the place to be for customers, employees, management and shareholders. Finally, I want to thank all our 7,800 managers and employees for a fantastic job done under very difficult circumstances. You deserve our gratitude. So keep up the good spirit and your dedicated work, and stay safe, healthy and profitable. All shareholders can be very satisfied with your achievements. You can be proud of yourself and your colleagues. Thank you.

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

So there you have it. 2021 in the bag, and we'll go to questions. It's possible to take questions. We actually have people in the room, and we're very happy to say that but also from online.So [ Chris ], do you have any first questions?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes. Thank you, Steinar and Robert. Yes, we do have some questions for sure today. First of all, your inventory [indiscernible], can you comment on that, please?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes, it is up not a lot, but it's up a little bit from end of Q3 to end of Q4. And it's actually because customers have learned that they need to order early. So most of our inventory, about 80% of our inventory leaving the year is actually for customers' deliveries in Q1, so we're very calm about the small buildup.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. Pandemic, how will -- going back to the office affect Atea in the future?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Well, first of all, I'm so much looking forward to it. I don't know about all of you, and I don't know if I ever thought I would say this, but I'm so much looking forward to flying again but -- to meet people. But I think there are 2 answers to that question. So first of all, we already seen -- we've already seen that customers have started to preparing to move people back to the office. So we're already seeing their investments in video, so professional video, not the PC video. And we've seen people servicing older printers. We've seen them upgrading their WiFi and network in general. So we've started seeing in the last 2 or 3 months that the customers have started to prepare for it. But we believe as our employees with the customers will come back, that this will increase during 2022 and 2023. So a lot of our backlog right now is actually office upgrades, not home office upgrades. Secondly, it's about us. It's about the efficiency of Atea, and it's about how we get people back. Actually, I think it will be proven in a couple of years that it was more difficult to open than it was to close. And we have to find this new balance where we utilize the flexibility we learned and cherish with the need to get people back to do innovation and to do the more difficult things, which is difficult to do on Zoom or Webex or Teams. So I think mainly positive, but there will also be some challenges both for us and the customers. But from a revenue point of view, we're really looking back to -- looking forward to getting back to a normal discussion with our customers.

[Unknown Executive]

You have some plans to centralize more on the hosting side. What should we understand that this may imply for further top line and EBIT growth?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

So first of all, just a couple of words on what we are doing. So we're not moving just to move stuff, but everything that we invent and create going forward will be created in one place with the intention of being sold in many places. So the process is at least a 3-year process of getting to a centralized run AMS, which will be under Carl-Johan the COO's responsibility. From a revenue point of view, we believe we will be more competitive, so we believe that we will win more in the market for managed services. And I should say that the managed services is not only producing our data center, it's also coupled with the hybrid capabilities of the public cloud. On the profitability, we absolutely do this first and foremost for profitability. So we hope this will be an active initiative to keep our guiding on EBIT growing 2 to 3x the revenue alive.

[Unknown Executive]

Very good. On the topic of EBIT, we have a question here. What year-over-year development do you expect for EBIT in Denmark for 2022?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Do you want to take that?

[Robert Giori, Chief Financial Officer]

We expect -- as we've been saying, we expect to see strong growth in EBIT over the course of the next year. I think what we'll see in Denmark is we'll see more of the EBIT growth in the second half of the year versus in the first half of the year on a total krone basis. And something which is impacting us as we go into the first half of the year is what we described also in Q4 is the delivery shortages on networking equipment. That we expect to see ease over the course of 2022, but we'll probably see more of that ramping up in the second half of the year. So this is what we'd expect, strong growth year-over-year in 2022; on a krone basis, a little bit more backloaded in the second half of the year.

[Unknown Executive]

Right. And on a group basis is a question here. Going forward, what the top line impact do you from the supply constraints in data center and networking equipment?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Well, let me say this. When we gave the Q3 presentation, we -- I think we would hope in our voice said something that we thought we got more control over the deliveries situation. And in many ways, we did. The vendors have balanced it better. The total supply is more in balance with demand on the user equipment. And very surprisingly to us, in the middle of the quarter, there was a setback especially on the networking side, and the people who listen to Cisco's webcast will hear them say more of the root cause of that. It's a mixed signal. So on parts of our product sector, things are looking better and better. On another part, we are very uncertain about Q1 especially in the networking and the server side. And this has nothing to do with slower demand. It has everything to do with a higher demand. And so -- but still we believe that we will be growing 5% plus in the quarters to come on revenue in the total mix of hardware, software and services. But there is a constraint here, and we are certainly not the only one feeling that.

[Unknown Executive]

A few more questions here. Just tell me when we're out of time here. There's a significant growth in the FTEs and the personnel expenses. But how are you thinking about the new hirings in the future and moving ahead?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

I want to start and then Robert can take the more cost side of that. There is a saying where the CFO asks the CEO, what if we invest in building up knowledge in our people and they leave? And the CEO says, what if we don't and they stay? So we really have to invest in the knowledge because the infrastructure becomes so critical and so complex that it's difficult to keep up especially for the smaller players. So consolidation will accelerate again as it did some years ago because of this. So we are happy that we're able to add people. And maybe we, in Q4, added a couple too many. But everybody else are screaming about the fact that they can't get people. So we will definitely invest in new people and the skills of the people we have and the skill set of the total workforce. But I don't know, Robert, if you want to...

[Robert Giori, Chief Financial Officer]

No, I think there's 2 major areas where we've seen headcount growth. One of them is in services across our businesses. We've been investing in developing our service offering. We have been expanding the number of services employees. And we do this because this is central to our strategy and we -- because we believe that this is going to be an important growth area for Atea going forward. The second part of it is we've been investing more in resources in Riga, and that's to reduce the overall cost of operations. In the short term, this leads to a buildup of people based in Riga, but over the longer term, this is going to be something that we can be scaling our business on. Those are the 2 areas. And it just shows confidence in how we look at 2022 that we're making these investments now, that we feel we can make these investments now to build up our services team.

[Unknown Executive]

Final question. The demand for competent people is quite high. How is this influencing Atea today?

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. As I just said, there is a shortage of people right now. And again, it comes from higher demand. And customers are hiring people as much as the other side of the table, so to speak, the vendors. So IT has become more important than ever, and it would only grow going forward. And it puts a pressure on the cost side. And so our customers has to expect that prices will rise. That is just the part of the demand side of the equation. But as I said earlier, we are the place to be for a lot of these people, and they get to work on really interesting projects. And they get to work in a very cultural-driven company, which people tend to like instead of KPI-driven companies.

[Robert Giori, Chief Financial Officer]

I'll just repeat, too, services was the highest growth area of our business in Q4 with over 10% growth in constant currency, in fact, close to 11% growth in constant currency. So we're seeing a payoff already in the buildup of our services revenue.

[Steinar Sonsteby, Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. So that closes the 2021 and the Q4 presentation of the Atea figures. Thank you for the people who came. Thank you for all the people out there who listened. And we'll see you again in about 3 months. Thank you.