Karnov Group AB (publ)

STO:KAR

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Welcome to the Karnov Group Q1 Report 2021. [Operator Instructions]Today, I'm pleased to present CEO, Flemming Breinholt; and CFO, Dora Brink Clausen. Please go ahead with your meeting.

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone, to this earnings conference to Karnov Group, where we are going to present the outcome of first quarter of 2021. Next slide, please. I'm Flemming Breinholt, President and CEO of the company. With me, as it was said, I have our CFO, Dora Brink Clausen; and our IR specialist, Erik Berggren. Dora and I will present the outcome of the first quarter using a few slides, and then we'll open up for questions. With that said, let's get started with the presentation of Q1. So let's turn the page and go to next slide. We are pleased with the outcome of the first quarter as we performed well, having a solid organic growth based on good online as well as off-line sales. Early in the year, we closed the acquisition of DIBkunnskap, and we are pleased to see that the company is delivering according to plan.The first quarter of the year is typically our strongest quarter, with a larger portion of off-line sales. This year, we are content with our off-line sales, which were above market trend. Net sales grew by 10%; organic growth was 5%; margin on a high level of 40.7%; and leverage below our target of not more than 3x, also after the acquisition of DIB.Next slide, please. In Denmark, we are back on track with our organic growth of 3% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 42.6% in Q1. We have continued being active in the market, and our updated platform was launched in the end of February. We have now onboarded more than 17,000 users, and we are pleased with the user feedback we have had, showing that the new platform is an appreciated initiative. We will continue adding more features to the platform and have the -- our old platform living for a period of time as a service. Along with the other products we launched in 2020, we believe we have formed a good basis for growth the coming years. We also plan to launch additional new products in Denmark in 2021, including an offering for municipalities, similar to our offering in Sweden. Turning the page. Following the acquisition of DIBkunnskap, we have formed a new segment in Sweden/Norway. This business segment has had a good start of the year. The organic growth of 7% was driven by good online sales and upselling to existing customers as well as sales of new products to existing and new customers. We see good development in our offering for municipalities and the public sector.The strong market trend in the EHS vertical is still valid, and we are happy that we are active within this area. In the first quarter, we typically have a high number of off-line sales as universities are starting new courses and companies are sending employees in legal training courses. We are content to see that our offer and sales were better than the market trend in the first quarter.The first quarter is when we published the new addition of the clerical law book, Sveriges Rikes Lag. This year, the book was again well received as lawyers continued to use it as an important web tool. Turning the page, ESG and our mindset, long-term value in a responsible manner. ESG has for many years been a part of Karnov's DNA. We are following UN Codes 5, 8 and 16 with being a diverse company, supporting knowledge and society and contributing to raise legal standards in the society. With, among other things, 29 nationalities employed and equally divided in genders both among employees and management, we are a diverse company. We were highly ranked in the Allbright list in 2020 and work to secure a high ranking also in 2021.As a software as a service company, we have a limited environmental impact, but we are stimulating local initiatives in all local management teams and also on group level.I will now hand over to Dora, who will tell us more about our financial performance in the first quarter. Next slide, please.

[Dora Brink Clausen, Group CFO]

Thank you, Flemming. I will now present and discuss the financial outcome. So let's start with an overview, which is Slide #8. The first quarter is typically our strongest quarter of the year, both on top line and on margins. The top line growth was 10% compared to the same quarter last year. Net sales were SEK 234 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 8% to SEK 95 million, with a high and stable adjusted EBITDA margin of 40.7%. Next slide, please. Looking more closely at our sales growth. Organic growth was 5%, while currency effects had a negative impact of approximately 3%. Acquired growth from DIBkunnskap and LEXNordics contributed with 8%. The online business continued its steady growth, while off-line sales were on a high level, declining less than the general market trend. Both segments contributed to the increased sales. Next slide, please. In the first quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased to close to 8% and adjusted EBITDA margin was at a high level of 40.7%, which is a decline of close to 1 percentage point. The decline is due to the acquisition of DIBkunnskap, which has diluted the group margin with approximately 1 percentage point, as announced earlier. And adjusted EBITDA of SEK 95 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40.6% is a strong result. We are content with the high margin, which is a result of higher net sales and efficiency gains.Next slide, please. On Slide 11, you see the net sales development with 2 different views, and you see that the long-term trend in our sales continued also in the first quarter of 2021.First to the left, you see that the online business increases its share of our group sales by 3 percentage point to 75%. The higher share of subscription in our sales that you can see from the graph to the right. Here, the increase was also 3 percentage point from 80% in Q1 2020 to 83% in Q1 2021. Next slide, please. Here, we have 1 of our 2 segments. We are pleased to see that we are growing organically again in Denmark. In Q1, organic growth was 3%. However, net sales decreased by 2% due to currency effect. Organic growth was driven by strong online sales, where our new products have been appreciated by our customers, with us being able to increase upselling to existing customers as well as attract new customers.The COVID-19 pandemic still has an impact on the SME market demand, which is reducing the growth in Denmark. In Denmark, adjusted EBITDA declined by 2%, and adjusted EBITDA margin was flat at a very high level of 42.6%. The decline was due to FX effects having a negative impact of 5% on net sales, thereby also impacting our adjusted EBITDA. On to the next slide, which is the Swedish and Norwegian segment. Following the acquisition of DIBkunnskap, we have created the segment Sweden/Norway. The performance on these markets was solid. Net sales increased by 24%; organic growth was 7%; acquired growth amounted -- accounted for 17%; while currency effect had a negative impact of 1%. The organic growth comes from good online sales based on upselling to existing customers and sales to new customers. We could also see great progress in our other verticals, TMA workflow tools, legal practice management and EHS.Adjusted EBITDA in the segment increased by 18% compared to last year, while the adjusted EBITDA margin declined by 1.6 percentage points to 39%. This was due to the dilution on the Swedish, Norwegian segment from the acquisition of DIBkunnskap. Turning the page. Here, we have our cash flow slide. As expected for the first quarter, adjusted operating cash flow was strong. The invoicing season is normally Q4 and Q1. We have strengthened our processes, and we, therefore, have a seasonality effect as the great majority of subscription were renewed and paid in December. Combining Q1, Q1 cash -- sorry, combining Q4 and Q1 cash flows, we have a higher cash conversion rate this season, and we are proud to have improved it from the previous invoicing season. Our leverage was 2.8x at the end of the period, which is below our target of not more than 3x.As for our balance sheet, we have now paid NOK 219 million for the acquisition of DIBkunnskap in Q1 and still have a solid cash and bank.And now for the last time, handing over to Flemming again, who will present our last slides.

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

Thank you, Dora. Please switch to the next slide. I just want to conclude this presentation by presenting a summary of the highlights during the first quarter. We have had a good start to the year with solid growth and high margin. We have launched our updated platform in Denmark and are planning to launch new products in 2021. We are happy about the development in Sweden/Norway segment with strong sales, both from our core legal services and our closely related verticals. Next slide, please. Karnov Group has a strong basis to grow from the coming years. As you all know, I will be happy to hand over the baton to Pontus Bodelsson, who will assign as the new President and CEO on the 8th of May and take the company into its next phase.And by this, I'll end our presentation, and we are now ready to take questions.So I will hand over to the conference -- again, to our host.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Ovin from Nordea.

[Daniel Ovin, Senior Analyst]

Congratulations on a really good quarter here. First question I would like to ask is on Sweden, where you had a really strong development, growing organically by 7% year-over-year. Perhaps you can elaborate a little bit more in details of the drivers of this very strong growth in Sweden. That's my first question.

[Dora Brink Clausen, Group CFO]

So we can see that the reason for this good growth is a combination of our strong online engine, which we also have seen in the last years, but also that this time, the off-line hasn't declined as much as in earlier quarters. And that is, of course, due to the fact that the COVID-19 now is more comparable quarter-over-quarter, but also we see a little effect coming from people now actually taking decision on off-line. So that is why we believe that that we have had a better off-line season in this quarter compared to a normal market trend and our expectations overall. So I think that is the overall combination of why we have had such a good growth in the first quarter.

[Daniel Ovin, Senior Analyst]

Okay. Then going over then to the off-line sales, because I read in the report here also that you mentioned that overall, it was now flattish year-over-year. But if I remember correctly, you previously talked about having a negative impact for this year also by around 1 to 2 percentage points on sales. So I'm just wondering how should we think about this now going forward. Could this perhaps even be rather positive impact now due to easy comps going forward? Or how do you see the negative impact there from for the rest of the year from COVID?

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

Well, I think we are sticking to our market assumption, market views, as we also did earlier, which means that we believe there is a decline in off-line of 2.4% in the whole in Denmark/Sweden market. And it's correct that there has been a good coming up in Q1, and we actually believe that it's too early to take any, you could say, conclusion out of that. And therefore, we still stick to what we actually earlier have announced of our financial target based on the market trends of a online growth of 4% and an off-line decline of 2.4%.

[Daniel Ovin, Senior Analyst]

Okay. Then just a final question here on the Norwegian business. And I wonder if you could give any indication of what the growth rate to us in the northern business and then also -- the Norwegian business? And then also, I calculate here backwards a bit and I come to an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 25%. So maybe you can give any indication if this is in the range? And also, perhaps you can mention how the margin was developing in DIBkunnskap versus last year?

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

I think you could say that we actually have seen that the company is working accordingly to expectation also outlined when we acquired the company and also when we closed the deal. And we are in a segment with a growth where it's above, you could say, traditional panel growth. But we are not opening up, you could say, the books for what is the split between Denmark and Norway in the segment and sticking to reporting on the 2 segments, Denmark and Sweden/Norway as a whole and thereby, all in all, living up to our financial targets and also with the dilution effect this year coming from the acquisition of DIBkunnskap on our EBITDA margins growth.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Predrag Savinovic from Carnegie.

[Predrag Savinovic, Research Analyst]

I'll follow up a bit on what Daniel asked about. So I'm curious about the growth. And I think you mentioned in the report, you have gained some new customers. These have driven higher online sales. Could you share more comments on type of customers, how much they contribute with? And I'm also wondering if these accounts will support growth also in the coming quarters.And the second question on the same topic. You also mentioned growth from upselling and cross-selling. So what kind of cross-selling are we talking about here?

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

First of all, you can say that the goal perspective on when we grow in online this is based on a subscription where it is actually a 12-month period. And you could say this actually form the outline of what we gain, and therefore, also what you could use to see how the future will look like. When we have looked into where we actually get a good momentum in the growth from, that is in environmental health and safety vertical. We have seen good momentum in municipalities, and we have also seen that we have been able to grow good in public sector in general for that kind. And then we have also, with some of the launches we made in Denmark last year, online library and others, have seen that it has been taken in as very appreciated and thereby, also leading to good order intake.When it comes to new customers, I think you will see them more core growth in, you could say, core legal services. It can be in corporate. You will see it, as I said, in municipalities, where we are gaining good momentum. And we also see a good growth in new customer acquisition coming from environmental health and safety.

[Predrag Savinovic, Research Analyst]

All right. That's very clear. And just, I guess, another follow up to my second question there on the cross-selling. What kind of potential you see for this continuing going forward? You mentioned quite a number of examples there, Flemming. So it sounds you're quite optimistic on this trend also for the coming quarters here.

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

We, as a company, have, of course, sales cycles and where we are trying to promote the both acquired companies, products into existing companies and vice versa, and this is actually an ongoing job. But also where we are not using that to actually either give a different outlook on our performance, and therefore, as you normally get, we actually still stick to and very content around our financial target.But you can say that, in general, when it comes to legal practice management, for instance, is, of course, one element where customers see a relevance of getting that from Karnov, and there are other elements where you actually see both own developed solutions, you see some of the companies we acquired into, which was also a part of the plan of getting them onboarded. And thereby, it's a combination of those elements of where you also will get the cross-selling effect coming from.

[Predrag Savinovic, Research Analyst]

All right. And I guess in the overall market, it seems you're outgrowing it. But could you mention if you're seeing any changes in overall terms there? So say that your main customer base is growing, I don't know, say, they are employing more, so the employer base is growing, for example. Has that triggered anything? Or is it simply due to better execution from your team?

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

I think it's a combination of both good execution, but also that some of the product we launched years back are actually trying to be seen as gaining good momentum into the market. And this is also a philosophy, if you look into the growth perspective of Karnov, where we're saying that we will ongoing develop our existing business, supporting it by more features and content. We will be looking into adjacent verticals in order to actually grab other areas of the market and also seeing into how we can use geographical expansion as also an engine for future. And that is actually, you could say, the same patterns, but it's good that we also see that we are taking some payoff now from some of the loans we did actually a couple of years back, for instance, in municipalities in Sweden.

[Predrag Savinovic, Research Analyst]

And good luck also, Flemming, with your future endeavors here.

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And as we have no more questions registered over the phone, I hand back to our speakers.

[Flemming Breinholt, Former CEO & President]

Thank you very much for listening and also for your questions. Karnov Group will report our Q2 report on August 26, and we hope to hear from you then, if not earlier. Thank you very much, and have a good day.

[Operator]

This now concludes our conference. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.