Karnov Group AB (publ)

STO:KAR

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Welcome to the Karnov Group Q4 Report 2020. [Operator Instructions] Today, I'm pleased to present CEO, Flemming Breinholt; and CFO, Dora Brink Clausen. Please go ahead with your meeting.

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

Thank you. Welcome, everyone, to this earnings conference for Karnov Group. I hope you all are well and are staying safe. Today, we are going to present the outcome of the fourth quarter of 2020, our full year results. Next slide, please.I'm Flemming Breinholt, President and CEO of the company. With me, I have our CFO, Dora Brink Clausen; and our IR specialist, Erik Berggren. Dora and I will present the outcome of the fourth quarter, using a few slides, and then we'll open up for questions.Those of you who have called in can ask questions verbally. While those of you who are participating via webcast can send questions in written form via the webcast. With that said, let's get started with the presentation of Q4. So let's turn the page and go to the next slide.We have ended the year on a positive note, with strong financial results. I'm very satisfied that we have been able to continue delivering according to plan despite the pandemic. Our organic growth was 2% during the full year and 1% in the fourth quarter. We improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 60 basis points, to 37.4% in the full year and 31.7% in the fourth quarter. We also ended the year with a leverage of 1.9x adjusted EBITDA last 12 months, well below our financial targets.Despite us being happy with our results, the COVID-19 pandemic still has an impact on our business. Apart from the off-line change, mainly public publications and legal training, we can see a delay in new business due to longer or postponed decision processes, and we can also see a decrease in demand from the small- and medium-sized entities market because of the pandemic. We believe this will continue also in the first half of 2021. On the positive side, we see that our renewals rate on our core customers are at the same high level as normally, and only SME and new business are suffering from the pandemic in the online. So next slide, please.When we were listed in 2019, we had announced our ambition to continue to leverage our position in our home markets while investing in geographic expansion. We want to grow in 2 dimensions: first, highly specific jurisdictional products based on our strong network of orders; and secondly, general jurisdictional products also for international purposes. In December 2020, we announced our acquisition of DIBkunnskap, which is in line with this strategy and fits well into the Karnov Group family. The company combined knowledge and content with workflow and efficiency. This fits our strategy of having a collaboration between highly jurisdictional product with processes and services such as workflow tools.DIB has a strong focus on creating efficiencies in the workflow of professionals. They have a strong track record and identified opportunities to grow this market. The company's product portfolio is based on an intuitive online platform for its users. The company's suit of workflow tools enhance the task within accounting, auditing and law, and the company provides data sources to relevant publications, books and legal texts to make the experts' daily work more efficiently.The acquisition of DIB strengthened our presence in Norway, and their products open up a new vertical on the Norwegian market for Karnov in tax and accounting. This is beneficial as the total addressable Norwegian market through the acquisition grows to approximately NOK 650 million. With the acquisition, we get a strong presence, market presence in Norway with a good customer base and another strong brand in our portfolio. DIB is the market leader among accounting and audit firms as well as large enterprises in Norway. In Norway, we also look forward to the market launch of Karnov Group Norway's product latest in the second half of 2021. Turning the page.Our Danish market initiatives have progressed well in the fourth quarter. With our new platform being soft launched, currently more than 20 -- sorry, 10,000 users are onboarded, and we will continue onboarding our users during the coming months. As we normally do, the old platform will be living and users will be able to easily change between the 2 for a period of time. Together with our new product launched during 2020, we have a good basis to keep developing our offering on the Danish market, which will support our future growth in Denmark. The organic growth for the fourth quarter and the full year was 1% respectively. Our initiatives to keep the organization fit and ready for continued business development has progressed well, and we are content to have reached an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40% for the full year 2020.Our new initiative for law students in Denmark, the platform Kaius, has made steady progress in the fourth quarter. The platform helps to motivate and guide law students in becoming successful and insightful lawyers during the studies. Turning the page.We have had a good year in Sweden following our plan of adding more content and value to our users and continuously making updates to the JUNO platform. The organic growth for the fourth quarter was 2%, and the full year growth was 4%. The growth drivers were good online sales, upselling to existing customers and sales to new customers. We have seen an increasing market demand for our EHS solution, environmental health and safety and compliance, which has performed well also in the fourth quarter. Further, we have also seen good progress in our municipality offering and in our offering for the public sector in general. We have continued running our legal training course in Sweden virtually in the fourth quarter. And the fourth quarter is typically the quarter with high number of courses. Next slide, please.We are glad to see progress in vaccinations around the world, and we look forward to meeting you all in person again. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the global societies and therefore also our business. We continue to take several precautionary measures for our employees, and we are, of course, still strictly adhering to the regulations and recommendations from the authorities. Our special sections on our platform in Denmark and Sweden, where we have collected all legal and regulatory information about COVID-19 pandemic still has high activity and easy access to relevant content. This service has been very well-received, and there have been many searches on our platform relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.Our nonsubscription part of the offline business, mainly public trades and sales of legal training courses have been impacted also in the fourth quarter. As previously announced, we have a different product mix in the fourth quarter with a higher number of legal training. The estimated negative impact on full year growth 2020 is seen to be approximately 1 to 2 percentage point.I will now hand over to Dora, who will tell us more about our financial performance in the fourth quarter. Next slide.

[Dora Brink Clausen, Group CFO]

Thank you, Flemming. Next slide, please.I will now present and discuss the financial outcome. So let's start with an overview. The fourth quarter was in line with expectations and on similar level as previous year. Our full year net sales increased by 2%, with our online business being the growth driver. Net sales were SEK 189 million in the quarter. And the full year net sales were SEK 771 million. We estimate that the COVID-19 effects on Karnov Group's top line growth for the full year was approximately 1 to 2 percentage points. Next slide, please.In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased by 1%, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was 31.7%, which is an improvement from last year. The improved margin is due to higher net sales and due to our continuous work with process optimizations. We are proud to continue performing in line with our medium-term financial targets. For the full year, we have improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 60 basis points, and the full year adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.4%. Following the acquisition of DIBkunnskap, we have assessed that the adjusted EBITDA margin for the group in 2021 will be negatively impacted by approximately 1 percentage point due to the acquisition. Based on our growth strategy of DIB and the rest of the group, we expect to increase the adjusted EBITDA margin again from 2022. Next slide, please.Here we see our net sales quarter-by-quarter. In the fourth quarter we had the same high level of net sales as the fourth quarter previous year. However, the FX impacted negatively with close to 2% as the Swedish currency grew stronger compared to the Danish currency during the fourth quarter. Growth levels were further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to product mix in our nonsubscription-based offerings in this quarter. Next slide, please.We have improved our margins in the fourth quarter. The adjusted EBITDA improved by 1% to SEK 60 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was 31.7%. The improved margins are due to higher net sales and our continuous drive for operational excellence with process optimization and preparing our organization for growth initiatives and new projects. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have adjusted our cost base to offset the effect on the top line. We have, for instance, lower traveling and marketing costs due to the pandemic and therefore also lower overall costs. Next slide, please.You see our net sales development in 2 different views. As you can see, the long-term trends in our sales continue also the fourth quarter of 2020. First to the left, you see the online business increased its share of the group sales by 3 percentage point to 82%. This follows the expected market trend. The higher share subscription in our sales that you can see from the graph to the right, here, the increase was 2 percentage points from 86% in Q4 '19 to 88% in Q4 2020. Next slide, please.Here, we have the presentation of the fourth quarter in the Danish segment. In Denmark, adjusted EBITDA was on a high level, and the adjusted EBITDA margin was on the same level as last year with 33%, even with slightly lower net sales. Organic growth was 1% in the fourth quarter. However, due to the currency effect having a negative impact of minus 3%, the net sales decline by 2%. Our new products on the Danish market and our soft launch of new platform will form a good basis to provide our users more content and increase efficiency. However, due to our 12-month renewal cycle, we will first see the effect 12 months later.The COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced the long-term declining trend in the offline market. The COVID-19 impact sales of printed materials in Denmark and also the demand in the small- and medium-enterprise market where companies delayed their decision process as their business are more uncertain.Next slide, please, which is the Swedish segment, where we have had good performance throughout the year. Net sales in Sweden increased by 4% in the full year, which was in line with expectations. Most of the, let's say, increases our organic growth since our reported currency is in SEK, but we also have a little acquired growth due to our majority stake in LEXNordics. Adjusted EBITDA increased to SEK 89 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 0.6 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. This is due to the increase in net sales where the growth has come from upselling to existing customers and sales to new customers. During the fourth quarter we have seen good progress in our municipality offerings as well as in the public sector. Our EHS solution has performed well also during the fourth quarter.Turning the page, where we have our cash flow slide. As expected, our adjusted operating cash flow and our cash conversion reached high levels in the fourth quarter. This is due to our invoicing seasonality where the fourth and the first quarters generated a strong cash flow. In the fourth quarter our cash flow was extra strong as timing meant that a higher number of invoices were paid before the end of the year. This will, of course, also have an impact on the first quarter of 2021. The leverage of 1.9x is well in line with our target of not more than 3x. As for our balance sheet, we have a strong bank and credit lines, which made it possible for us to acquire DIBkunnskap. Further, it has also allowed the Board to propose an increased dividend of SEK 1 per share to be resolved on the Annual General Meeting in May. Next slide, please.The dividend proposal is in line with our dividend policy, which is to distribute 30% to 50% of the purchase price adjusted net profit. This year's dividend proposal corresponds to 38% of the PPA adjusted net profit.I will now hand over the word to Flemming again, who will make a summary of the fourth quarter and the full year.

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

Thank you, Dora. Next slide, please.I just want to conclude the presentation with the highlights of the year. 2020 has been a special year for all of us. I'm very proud of how Karnov Group and all its employees, authors and experts have handled the COVID-19 pandemic, providing our satisfied customers valuable content that has been used to serve our society. We have worked as one team, one company, executing our strategy despite working on distance for most of the year. We have had a good year with a solid margin. Excluding the effects from COVID-19 pandemic, the organic growth has been according to expectations and in line with our medium-term financial targets. And we have improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 60 basis points. Our strong financial results have also allowed the Board to propose an increased dividend for the shareholders to result on for our AGM in May.With 4 new investments conducted in 2020, we have continued to broaden our offering as Scandinavia's leading provider of legal information. We have had several launches in Denmark to make the daily life of lawyers more efficient and soft launched our new platform in the fourth quarter. With our new investment and most recent acquisition of DIBkunnskap, we have a solid base to execute our growth strategy with Norway as a third home market. Next slide, please.Karnov Group has a strong basis to grow from the coming years. I will be happy to hand over the baton to Pontus Bodelsson who will assign as the new President and CEO on 10th of May and take the company into its next phase. Until then, it is business as usual, and I will help Pontus in the best possible way to get warmed up and ready to continue with the good journey we have started.By this, I'll end our presentation, and we are now ready to take questions. So I'll hand over the conference again to our host and open for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea.

[Stefan Stjernholm]

This is Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea, stepping in for Daniel Ovin who couldn't attend today. First a question on Denmark. You reported margin was down some 40 bps year-over-year. But if you exclude the SEK 5 million in write-down, it seems that the Danish margin is up quite a bit. Can you explain what's the reason behind that?

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

The reason behind the good result in Denmark, as you are referring to, is a matter of continuously successful securing our recurring business, a good ordinary sales also in offline products and the cost control where we also have been working with reducing as a general path as related to less activities from the COVID, but also working on optimization of our processes in the Danish organization.

[Stefan Stjernholm]

I see. And regarding pricing, can you say anything about pricing in 2020? And what you see in this year?

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

For us it's not a matter of pricing itself. It's a matter of actually adding more continuously value to our offering and thereby also enlighten and having our users to renew, to be updated and operate to bigger packages. And on top of that, of course also we see that pricing mechanism in order to compensate for the add-on values we add to the product itself. And we have, as in the past years, having a very modest increase of prices. So it's on a very low number.

[Stefan Stjernholm]

I see. And regarding the pandemic impact, you said that you -- in your estimate it's having a negative impact of 1% to 2% on sales during 2020. Is it possible to give an assessment on the impact on the EBITDA margin?

[Dora Brink Clausen, Group CFO]

No. It's not directly possible to say, but we at least assess that we have covered some of it with lower activity both in traveling and in marketing, et cetera. And that's also why we are very satisfied with the increase in the adjusted EBITDA margin by the 60 basis points.

[Stefan Stjernholm]

I see. And regarding the -- once we are behind the pandemic, so to speak, do you think that with pent-up demand, then we can expect the organic growth to actually be better than normal? Or is it more back to a more normal level in terms of growth?

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

We are not, as you know, giving any forwarding looking statements, but you can say that we are still confident in sticking to our financial targets, which means in the medium term that we will have a growth between 3% and 5% from the organic business.

[Stefan Stjernholm]

I see. And a final question for me. Regarding the acquisition of DIBkunnskap. You are guiding for a negative impact of 1 percentage point 2021. Can you say anything about the level of sales going into last year or what we can assume for 2020 for the acquisition?

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

We are not giving specific guidance on the sales of individual entities of product for being a part of Karnov Group. But you can say that the sales in 2019 was in the range of -- DIB…

[Dora Brink Clausen, Group CFO]

For DIB, in 2019 it was in the range of beginning of the 50s, yes.

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

Yes. So we see, as we also said, when we announced the acquisition, that DIB is in a segment with an expected growth rate beyond, you could say, what is actually the ordinary Karnov growth. And therefore, of course, we see that it's also supposed to grow in Karnov range.

[Operator]

We have no more questions from the line. I will hand it back to our speakers.

[Flemming Breinholt, CEO & President]

Thank you, everyone, for listening and also for your questions. We will report our Q1 reports on the 5th of May, and I hope to hear from you then, if not earlier. Thank you very much, and have a good day.