Itera ASA

OSE:ITERA

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Arne Mjøs, Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the interim report for the fourth quarter for Itera. Next slide, please. We will present -- yes, the walk-through is the same as they have been in the previous 3 quarters. I will start with the highlights of the quarter, the business review, and then Chief Financial Officer, Bent Hammer, will walk through the financial review and the outlook. There will also be a chat that you can also pose some questions during the presentation. So we'll look into the chat at the end of the presentation in the Q&A session. Both Bent Hammer and myself, we are sitting at home office due to the COVID-19. So this will be a fully digital presentation.Let's go to Slide 3, and start with the highlights of the fourth quarter. We show quite high growth and profitability in our core digital business. This is -- represents about 81% of the total business of Itera. So that's everything, except from the data center operation that we are transforming into the cloud. So if I look at the gross profit or the net revenue, growth was actually 14% in the core digital new business. And we also show a good EBIT margin of 10% in the fourth quarter.If I look at the total business, we had a revenue of NOK 168 million, that represents a growth of 15% year-over-year. The gross profit was about NOK 149.5 million, that represents a growth of 18% year-over-year. And the adjusted EBIT of NOK 16.8 million in this quarter, that represents a margin of 10%. We also had [ NOK 3.89 million ] in restructuring costs, and we'll come back to talk about that. But that is related to the downscaling of the data center operation that we also informed about in the second quarter and also in the third quarter.If I look at what I will say is highlights from the business perspective, we are really going into the business-to-business market segments, which we see quite high growth. We had a very strong book-to-bill of 1.8 (sic) [ 1.6 ] in the core digital business in this quarter. And about 2/3 of the data center volume was actually migrated to the cloud during 2020. So I'm very happy for this transformation that we said that we should accelerate and we've really succeeded to do that in 2020.If we look at -- we have also a lot of awards, I come back to that. It's one of the important awards in the fourth quarter, it was actually that was named as a Top 10 European Digital Banking Solution Provider. And also, if we look at the number of employees, that was actually increased by 57, the last 12 months. That means we've managed to grow our business also during the COVID-19 period. We had also a strong 12-month rolling cash flow from operation of NOK 102 million. And the Board of Directors have also proposed ordinary dividend of NOK 0.25 per share. So that's the highlights for the fourth quarter.And if you go to the next slide, 4, we will also look at the revenue, the sequential development of the revenue and also the EBIT, adjusted EBIT. We come back to the restructuring cost later. But if I look at the profitability and the revenue, I'm very happy what we managed to do in the fourth quarter, keep up the speed, but also do a lot of things in the transformation of Itera, not at least the data center operation into the cloud.So then, I go to Slide 5 and start with a business review with more details about that. So let's go to Slide 6 and also look at the highlights for 2020. What I will say is actually that Itera is really -- have become really more stronger after the COVID-19 -- before COVID-19. So that we have achieved 11% growth in our core digital business. And also, if I look at the hybrid business, that includes the nearshore operation, we showed 24% growth last year. We also had a lot of new awards. We continue to be amongst the top 25 most innovative companies in Norway. We also managed to be top 1 European -- the best player in project management in Europe, but also the top 4 global. We also see a new -- 10% new customer and also in new industry during this year. Sustainability has also become a core part of our business model. That has also been a big, big change of Itera during COVID-19 and 2020. We have also strengthened our core digital business capabilities by including recruiting a lot of new people into the company, into very key people coming from other international companies that believes that Itera has a very interesting position to join going forward. We have also strong talent attraction with a lot of certification by the employees, but not at least also, we continue to engage our students into project by -- during the summer, but also onboarded a lot of graduates, more or less as usual, despite the COVID-19 period, and also took some kind of social responsibility for all the students that also were quite frustrated about what their career path will be during the COVID-19 where everything was actually more or less stopped for a lot of the industries out there. And we also managed to develop a partnership with Cognite, DNV GL and also Microsoft just to mention some of them. So in general, I'm very happy with what we achieved in 2020. And also, if we go to Slide 7, you will also see that the crisis has also a big impact on the digital business transformation. So this is analysis by Gartner in November that was showing that 65% of the businesses will accelerate the digital business transformation going forward. And also, if I can look to an analysis by McKinsey saying that the adoption of technology has actually increased in average, whereby 7 years around the world and maybe it's 10 years, if we go to the Eastern part of the world, but also if we go to the Nordic region, it might be 2, 3 years, whatever. In any way, you know that 1 year is quite a strong development in terms of digitization itself. So by using from the home, by online buying, et cetera, channels -- using all that channels for buying products and services has been, more or less, forced for everyone around the world. So this is why it's so important that we have seen this kind of acceleration in digital business. If you go to Slide 8 and I also talk about the segment. We said that in the previous presentation for the third quarter that there's a huge potential for digitalization in the business-to-business segments. So according to McKinsey, they're saying that the value of digitalization in the business-to-business segment is -- the next 5 years represents the value that we have seen in the business-to-consumer for many years. So the growth rate is really much stronger in the business-to-business. The business-to-consumer, will, of course, continue to grow, but we will see more, I would say, radical growth in the business-to-business segment. That has also been a change in the focus at Itera. We have a strong history in terms of banking, insurance, public, et cetera, and we continue with -- to grow in that segment. But we see more -- even more faster growth potential in the energy sector, in manufacturing, maritime and fishery, where we have really taken a good position the last 2 years. So if you go to Slide 9, you see that this is how everything is linked together. It's actually the physical world and the digital world has really been linked. And the business consumer and the business-to-business are also needed to be linked in order to be -- become a more sustainable society. So digitalization is actually more or less the same in terms of value for the sustainability. So these 2 topics are quite reinforces -- yes, reinforcing each other. So really, they are really connected together. And that is also where we go to Slide 10 about the position for Itera. So when we started 2020, we upgraded our position to say that we should become the specialist in creating sustainable digital business, where we're combining the consumer or the customer and the user, the business logic and more in terms of data-driven business, but also all kind of technology that are needed. So when we have that into one team, we really managed to build or create a sustainable digital business for our customer. And going to Slide 11. During the last 2, 3 years, we have really been working, not only as a Nordic-based company or a Norwegian-based company we are really taking a strong international position. So this -- in Norway, of course, we have been one of the most -- top 25 innovative company in the last 4 years, last 5 years. That's important, but not at least also in 2018, we managed to be top 1 in the world in cross-border delivery nominated by Global Sourcing Association. So this model, by having team from different location, onshore and Asia, whatever -- wherever, we manage to do this in a very Asian manner with a full fledge competencies from the designer, consultants, technology, people, testers, whatever, security into one team. So the scalability of Itera has been very strong. And also, in 2020, we also managed to not at least also be one of the best in the world, top 4 in the world in terms of project management, which is also extremely important when you address quite complex projects in -- not at least in the business-to-business segment. And the last but not least, also in 2020, we managed to be amongst the top 10 European digital banking solution provider, which is also banking solution is one of the key segments at Itera. So these are really quite bold ambition asset, and we managed to build these -- or achieve these awards during the last 2, 3 years. And the reason for that will -- if you go to Slide 12. So Itera is, of course, addressing or working with clients in the Nordics, that a lot of these clients also are present in Europe. But some are also very global, especially in the business-to-business like a customer like DNV, which are located, I think, in 22 or whatever locations around the world or 150 -- more or less -- sorry, 150 locations around the world. So they're really using Itera to -- based on the knowledge in terms of digitalization and sustainability we have in our region, our European or Nordic region, to bring this knowledge to U.S. or to other part of the world. So having Itera as an international company that really managed to deliver across the border is very a big strength of Itera that I think is important to note. Because a lot of international companies are really looking to our regions, to the Nordics or European to learn how the new business models for sustainability or the transformation that we have seen in digitalization for a long time in Europe that a lot of other parts of the world are really keen on to learn. And by having or evolving engagement in Itera to bring this knowledge and experience into other parts of the region of the world is really attractive.So if we go to Slide 13, I think that is also very important to note that we are also revitalizing our brand because of the new position that -- and that will be launched in the first quarter, where our brand will be more -- have a more professional outlook. It will show a more stronger international position, but also, we will also be a quite high-value partner because we managed to create this digital sustainable business for clients around the world. On Slide 14, I just show you one of the sectors that we are working a lot. This is the energy sector, and this really belong -- the full energy sector from the oil and gas that are transforming into more renewables in terms of floating wind power, but also everything in the power and utilities that also involve the consumer. So if we look at this value chain, it really needs to be digitized fully. They need a lot of new technology to manage to provide new solutions where you really have everything from the demand side and supply side into one model that manage to optimize the value chain, and instead of just increase the grid capacity, whatever, if it's not needed, if you manage to balance the use of the energy or electricity itself. So this is a really complex value chain that need a new -- a lot of new technology that Itera have bring in and enable these players to really go into more sustainable position. So it's a very exciting industry to work with. We also have a lot of international attraction. And on Slide 15, I just show you one example in the oil and gas part of this energy system, which is Pandion, which is an oil and gas company in Norway. The digitalization of the Continental Shelf has been -- Norwegian Continental Shelf, has been -- they've done a lot of digitalization for many years. And one of the examples here shown, is actually that there's a release well initiative by the government or the oil and gas association where they collect all the drilling cutting samples from about 1,600 wells. Until now, I think it's maybe 20, 30 years since, and they take all these data, digitize, it's about 600,000 cutting samples that are available. So Pandion, as our customer, teamed with Itera to build a new solution that utilize this data and use -- make it much easier to look into this data, to analyze this data and also more or less using -- empower the solution with AI by using cloud technology. This solution is actually based on Google. And one of the main driver is actually that they will use this for more data-driven decision and also more sustainable decision, such as seek exploration in areas where there are possible access to renewable electricity is the best. So they really try to look at how do they optimize, how do they reduce their carbon footprint and how do they more -- this operation, this well exploration in a more sustainable way. So I think every part of the industry in the value chain is really going and focusing on how to become more sustainable by using data-driven or business model or data much more than in the past.If we go to 16. So energy has been a strong focus for Itera the last 2, 3 years. And it's really escalating in terms of interest from the market, and we have also built a strong position in terms of our partnership with Thema Consulting in Norway. We have some kind of reports that are regularly distributed to clients. We also have a lot of market activities in terms of engaging key players for discussions, seminars, podcast, whatever. And we also are present with key notes and different kind of -- for Cognite and for different kind of associations in these industries to really take a position to learn and share and also bring new ideas into this direction. So also, if you look at 17, I also have some comments about our industry itself because we have talked about the cloud transformation, which is the part of the industry connected to the infrastructure and the infrastructure is now cloud-based, but also how we develop the solution, how we're building solutions, how we're really also changing a lot because development and operation is more or less connected into one process. And we, as a provider of services, it shouldn't only be the consultant by themselves. It should also be some kind of service or a product. So the customer when they're approaching the business side of the customer, they do not want to look at the people, the consulting by themselves in the same way as in the past. So they really would like to have a service, consume -- that they consume and put into their products to enable their business instead of having all the people. So we are also, as a company, really need to also industrialize our way to deliver our services. And this is what we have also done a lot during 2020. If you go to Slide 18. This is just to show you that we are also building a delivery factory with a full range of services that we can provide to one customer and another customer. We can reuse some part of it or we can also make a product what is today named as some kind of as a service, which are also have a recurring revenue model in itself. So building products from a consulting company, taking the position as a service is not far away from what we are doing today, but we need to reorganize or rethink how we deliver our service in terms of kind of factory and also what we have in the cloud center of excellence, which is the full stack of our power in terms of infrastructure, which is in the cloud. But it's not only the hardware and services. It's a lot of functionalities that are also built into the cloud system that we are reusing into our solution that we deliver to the customer. So these really accelerate digitalization for the customer, we can deliver autonomous service, a full end-to-end experience for the customer and we, from Itera, can also look and discuss with the customer some kind of more subscription-based or all the kind of KPIs than only hourly rate of capacity, whatever. So that is also the way we, as a consultancy industry, are also transforming into more products. And if you go also to Slide 19, I just also show you our own data center transition. As you can see with the graph here, the black color is actually showing the share, which belongs to the data center. And during the 2020, 2/3 of the volume in terms of data center, are moved into the cloud. So the share of what we have left, 7% will actually be moved into the cloud by 2021. So that is the transition that is, as I said, accelerated during 2020. On Slide 20, I also show you some of the new and existing customer. We had strong order intake in the fourth quarter. If we look in total, we have a very strong book-to-bill ratio of 1.6 in the fourth quarter for our core digital business. And as you see, they are both business-to-consumer and business-to-business customers. So that's very important for Itera going forward.On Slide 21, we also show the customer development in terms of new business. We had almost -- 7.2% of the customer last 12 months was actually new ones, and some of them were also new industries. So that has been a little lower than in the past. But that is also -- we see that some of this business-to-business customer are really becoming quite large businesses. So when -- so I'm very happy also with looking at the portfolio of customer and also looking back to the top 30 customer with Itera, which represent 80% of total volume at Itera. Let me conclude this section with Slide 22, which is showing the number of employees. We are 569 employees at the end of the quarter. That's up 13 FTEs from the last quarter and 57 from the same period last year. So this is 7 quarters of sequential growth. And what we are also seeing in this quarter that we managed also to build more capacity in the Nordic organization compared to the nearshore. So that's also good that we are also strengthening our core footprint closer to the customer. But going forward, we will still also continue our growth rate with maybe one person, [ one to third ], something like that in terms of onshore and nearshore.So that was the last slide in the business review section. So let's go to the financial review section, Slide 23, and I hand over to you, Bent Hammer.

[Bent Hammer, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Arne, and welcome to you all. As Arne mentioned, we had a very strong top line growth of 15% in the quarter and a growth profit -- profit growth of 18%. This includes NOK 2.8 million in the purchase of residual liabilities in connection with the termination of our customer relationship at the data center, where we also had a corresponding extraordinary depreciation expense.Personnel expenses, however, grew more than this in the fourth quarter. This is this due to a combination of several things beyond headcount growth, of course. We had restructuring costs of NOK 3.8 million in connection with the downscaling of the data center. Moreover, we accrue for bonuses on a running basis based on where we think the various goals will end up at the end of the year. So where we were able to slow down accruals considerably in the fourth quarter of 2019, we have to accelerate this in 2020. So there was a net -- or a double impact, you might say, from that. Also, a 7% to 8% lower Norwegian kroner versus the euro and Danish kroner meant that we had some higher cost on parts of the workforce.Other operating expenses were up 20% compared to the previous year. Here, again, currency effects and increased staffing are the biggest factors. So this resulted in an EBITDA of NOK 29.2 million, which is up from NOK 28 million in 2019. Depreciation expenses includes over NOK 12.4 million. Includes, as mentioned, immediate write-downs of leasing contracts and this gives an EBIT, including the restructuring cost of NOK 13 million and NOK 16.8 million without these. So in terms of margin, this is somewhat lower than in 2019.Cash flow from operations was again good at NOK 37.6 million in the quarter and a full NOK 101.7 million for the year as a whole. So at the end of the year, we have a strong cash balance of NOK 54.4 million. The equity ratio is somewhat weaker at 15.2% after payments of NOK 0.60 per share in dividends. And also these repurchase of own shares that we did last summer.So we had a good head count growth as well in this quarter with an increase of 11% compared to the previous year. So that -- yes, that leaves us with 569 FTEs at the end of the year. For the year as a whole, we had a top line growth of 10%, and personnel expenses grew by 13% year-over-year, which is 5% higher than the headcount growth would indicate. And again, this is primarily due to the restructuring costs and a weaker Norwegian kroner. EBITDA grew by 18% to NOK 108.9 million, while depreciation was 19% higher. And this gave a reported EBIT of NOK 62.6 million and an adjusted EBIT of NOK 66.4 million, which represents a margin improvement of 0.1% and 0.7%, respectively. If we go to Page 25, we can take a closer look at the split between the digital core business and the data center business. The digital business had a growth of 14.7% in the fourth quarter and 10.8% for the year. There was also a very strong growth in the data center in the fourth quarter at 17.5% as there was a lot of activity associated with helping customers on their cloud journey, in addition to this purchase of residual leasing values. The digital business had an EBIT margin of 10.0% in the quarter and 11.8% for the year as a whole. And the data center business had a negative margin of 2.0% due to the restructuring cost and 2.9% for the year as a whole, even included these restructuring costs.On the next page, we see the sequential development over the last 3 years. Quarter-by-quarter, there will be some variations due to the number of working days and the main holiday period as we are -- a significant portion of our business is related to consulting hours and therefore, obviously impacted by those factors. But as you can see, we had a nice growth curve through the last 3 years and also with an improved profitability over time. Moving on to Page 27. We can take a closer look at the various income streams. Of the total revenue growth of 15%, we had a corresponding growth in the service revenues from our own consultants, growing to NOK 114 million. Subscription revenues grew by 7% to NOK 40 million. And third-party services, i.e., subcontractors that we use in our projects, they grew by 33% to NOK 8 million. And other revenue, including this NOK 2.8 million of residual values, increased by 62% to NOK 7 million. So moving to the statement of cash flows on Page 28. Again, we have very strong growth from the operating activities, as I already went through. On investment activities, we had a cash outflow of NOK 4.8 million versus NOK 4.9 million in 2019. And for the year, as a whole, NOK 17 million versus NOK 18.8 million in 2019. We had more cash outflow from financing activities this quarter as we distributed an extra dividend of NOK 32.4 million. So all in all, NOK 36.1 million from finance activities versus NOK 1.4 million in 2019. Comparing 2020 as a whole with 2019, we have about NOK 17 million more cash outflow from financing activities, and that's primarily due to the repurchasing of own shares, in addition to some more dividends paid during the year. So again, leaving us with a cash balance of NOK 54.4 million, which is just slightly up from 2019.On Page 29, we can see the distribution to shareholders. As Arne mentioned, our Board has proposed in a meeting last night to suggest an ordinary dividend of NOK 0.25 per share to the general assembly being held in May. Our share price was at NOK 15 at the end of Q4, which is a 30% increase from the year before. And add to that NOK 0.60 in dividend payments through the year that makes for a quite decent return on the shares. We currently hold close to 1.3 million own shares, which at year-end was valued at NOK 19 million. So yes, showing the development through the years, we show a consistent high earning -- high distribution of our earnings. And that's the shareholder strategy that we have continued to show and will continue to show over time.So moving to the balance sheet on Page 30. We see that we have slimmed the total balance by NOK 17 million to NOK 224 million. Our equity has been reduced as a result of the dividend payments as well as the share repurchasing. And also the right-of-use assets, which are predominantly our facility lease obligations, they have gone down by NOK 8 million. We did enter into new lease agreement in Denmark, relocated to a new office there in Q4. And we will relocate to bigger facilities in Slovakia on September 1, which will also add to this right-of-use assets as well as we will enter into a facility lease in Bergen in Norway. Most probably we will sign the contract in Q1 and then move in, in Q2 later this year.So that concludes what I was going to say about the financial results for 2020. If we skip to Page 32, I will give some comment about the future outlook. We still feel that we are in an attractive market, and that's just being reinforced by the even stronger focus on sustainability that we see in the marketplace. And we also see that digitalization is further triggered by the COVID-19 situation with the lockdown situation in many countries. So both those 2 factors are driving more and more digitalization and especially in creating digital business. We are very well positioned to serve our customers on that journey. We have a full range of services in this, and we also have this hybrid onshore-nearshore delivery model, which both gives better scalability and also a very favorable cost to the customers.As Arne mentioned, we have entered into strong industrial partnerships with Cognite, DNV and Microsoft over the past 1 to 2 years. And these will also be instrumental in our growth journey going forward. In terms of the data center, we expect to complete the transformation of this to cloud during 2021. And this will give a short-term revenue drop. Especially in the first half of 2021, we will see both the revenue drop as well as the investments in the cloud center of excellence. And then from the later part of H1 -- or H2, sorry, we will start seeing momentum on this cloud center.Yes. So that's as strong as we will guide the market on our future prospects. There aren't any questions being posted to the chat. So I think we'll wrap it up there. Should you want to speak to Arne or myself then please feel free to contact ourselves -- to contact us at any point in time. We are always available to chat with investors.So yes, thanks for watching, and we hope to see you back on April 28, when we present the Q1 results. And until then, hope you will all be well and safe from COVID. Thanks.