Knowit AB (publ)

STO:KNOW

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Interim Report Q1 2024 Conference Call. I'm Alice, the conference call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Per Wallentin, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

[Per Wallentin, executive]

Thank you very much, and I would like to start to introduce myself and Marie here. We are going to take you through some operational highlights during the first quarter for Knowit.

As you saw, we start with a stable trend for the year. And the end of last year, we were able to stabilize our utilization. And I think that this trend have been continued into Q1, although it is on -- to a low level, and our focus on sales and cost remains. It's yet too soon to say that we see a broad market recovery.

We do, however, note some improvements in certain parts of Sweden. We reported decrease in net sales compared to Q1 last year, and this is mainly explained by negative calendar effect and, of course, fewer employees. And I have to say that the calendar effect is quite big this quarter. Marie will go into that later.

We also see some geographical differences. And of course, the biggest challenges is in Sweden, while Norway remains somewhat stable.

We can take the next slide, please, and take a look at our biggest -- big business area solution. We have EBITDA margin around 8.4%. It's a decrease compared to last year, but both margin and sales are somewhat stable compared to Q4 2023. Our efforts to optimize our organization pays off with utilization stabilizing.

There are, in Solutions as well, big geographical differences, while Sweden have the largest challenges. And as we talked about in Q4, we see a better market in Norway. We also have several strong partnership with clients there, for example, the police authorities that we signed in Q4. And in both Norway and Finland, we see positive margin development for the quarter.

We can take the next slide. And going into Experience, our digital agency and Experience is facing the largest challenges in the market for the time being, and that is impacting both sales and margin, unfortunately. The margin was 8.4%, and that's substantially lower than last year.

We were intensely to reduce costs and capacity to adjust the organization. And of course, in parallel with that, we have high focus on sales activities to improve utilization. Also in Experience, Sweden remains the most challenging market, while we see higher margins in Finland, Norway and Denmark.

We can take the next slide going into Connectivity. Connectivity report sales of around SEK 219 million for the quarter. The margin was in line with last year, a little bit higher in Sweden, a little bit lower in Poland. We have a strong delivery in the quarter, but difficult to assess the current market, particularly in the industry segment.

We are pleased to have prolonged and extended our frame agreement with Saab. It's a very important customer for time being, and I think it's going to be a very important customer for the future development.

Within Connectivity, we have several different product initiatives that are developing really well during the quarter as well.

We can move to our management consultancy, the next slide. Insight, in Insight, we are reporting sales around SEK 235 million for the first quarter, and that is actually a slight growth compared to Q1 2023. The margin was lower, 8.4%. We see a stabilization from Q2, and we see -- also, we are pleased to see a small pickup in the month for general management consulting in Sweden, actually.

There is a continuously stable development in defense and cybersecurity and legal services, and that is a trend that has been going on for several years now. We also see, and this is new since last year, a rapid development within AI, and that creates new need for competencies within legal organization and processes, opening up new opportunities for us in this business area.

And with those highlights for our four business areas, we are now going into our Q1 figures a little bit more in detail, and I hand over to you, Marie.

[Marie Bjorklund, executive]

Thank you, Per.

Next slide, please. And we can go to -- yes, exactly. Perfect. Thank you. I want to start with a comment on the figures for the business areas that Per talked about before I go through the overall numbers.

We've made a change in the classification of net sales per business area, and we're now including deduction for internal direct costs, which impact margins positively for each business area. And we're doing the adjustment to encourage cooperation, and comparable figures are updated in the report. So you'll find them there. And there is no effect on the Knowit Group as the whole.

So back to the total figures for the quarter. We delivered sales of approximately SEK 1.8 billion, a decrease of 10.4%. Adjusted for FX effects, revenues declined by 9.9%. And there are three things that I would say are affecting the decline.

First, we have the calendar effect, and we have 14 hours less than last year, which is a rather big effect on the figures. And second, we have a decrease in the number of employees. The net recruitment of the quarter was minus 156 versus minus 33 last year. And all four business areas have a negative net recruitment.

And this is influenced by our deliberate measures to slow down recruitment and adjust capacity. And we dismissed 73 employees during the quarter due to low utilization, which also ended in SEK 13 million in restructuring costs.

And the third reason is that we do have a stable utilization, as Per mentioned, but it is still on a too low level.

EBITA amounted to SEK 136 million for the quarter, a decrease compared to the same quarter last year, and this leads to an EBITA margin of 7.7% in the quarter. Last year, it was 10%. As we already mentioned, this margin decrease is due to the slowdown in demand that has been, and it's causing lower utilization effect in several markets, Sweden, in particular.

We still see that our hourly rates increased compared to a year ago, even though we are experiencing price pressure, and reducing capacity has been one measure to protect margins. Although I want to highlight that we're still recruiting in areas where we see good demand, and we will continue to do so.

And another measure that we've taken is cost cutting. And during the first quarter, we saved SEK 19 million compared to last year, which is according to our plan. And the cost cuts are referring to conferences, travels, marketing events and paused projects and more.

Next slide, please. This slide shows the development over time and also on a rolling 12-month basis. Our adjusted EBITA for the latest 12 months is at SEK 436 million and revenue at SEK 6.9 billion, which is an adjusted EBITA margin of 6.3%. The past year has been a year of challenges in demand and utilization. And in connection to that, of course, action to improve our margins.

We mentioned cost savings and reductions of capacity, a [ work ] that we will benefit from for a long time to come. We have also increased our sales capacity and made a successful switch from recruiting to sales that has created a solid base for taking on the rest of 2024.

Next slide, please. This is an overview of our net debt development, and we have SEK 500 million in used credit facility. Knowit has a total credit facility granted of SEK 1,000,000,050. Future considerations amounts to SEK 41 million.

Other liabilities, mainly leasing debt, amounts to SEK 537 million, and the amount has decreased since last quarter because of amortization. This totals a net debt of SEK 884 million and divided by our EBITDA on a rolling 12-month basis, we are at a leverage of 1.4. We still have a stable balance sheet and a good financial position. And also, this means that we are well within our financial target, which is set not to exceed 2.

And I think it was last time, I got a question concerning the covenants to the bank, and I can assure you that we are well within these as well.

Next slide, please. We have a solid platform and a strong position as a digitalization partner in the Nordic region. Having a broad footprint is a strength in tougher times. And the share from the public sector has decreased compared to last year, following a softer demand in some areas compared to a year ago.

We noticed a growth in the industry sector driven by good demand. But as Per said, the market visibility isn't that good at the moment. We also see a decrease in our telecom industry following lower demand from large telecom companies.

All in all, clients remain focused on business-critical projects also in an economic downturn. And of course, the megatrends are driving the need for digitalization in all our industries.

And with that, I'll leave it to you, Per, to say some final words.

[Per Wallentin, executive]

Thank you, Marie.

Well, to summarize, we can take the next slide, yes. We see a stable trend continues from Q4 last year with utilization. That's important. Although the market is still hesitant, we continue to keep our focus on cost control and sales activities. And I have to say that there is really high activities connected to sales right now, and I think that's very important.

We see quite big geographical differences in the Nordics with the tougher situation, as I talked about in Sweden. I think that we are really well positioned when the market turns, and this is thanks to our intense work to optimize our organization, but also that we continuously invest. Although that we have tough times, we invest in new offerings, and we develop new offerings, not the least offerings around AI.

And with that, I would like to open up for new -- or for some questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jesper Stugemo, Handelsbanken.

[Jesper Stugemo, analyst]

On the 70 employees that was asked to leave here in Q1, you were taking a restructuring charge of SEK 13 million. Should we expect some additional costs here in Q2? And those 70 people, are those related to the Solutions or Experience mainly or maybe to the Finnish market also as it's a bit easier to lay off people there?

[Marie Bjorklund, executive]

Yes. Hello. The reduction on employees, it's actually in all four business areas, but of course, it's mainly in Solutions and Experience. And it is true that it is also concerning Finland.

And can you repeat what the -- yes, you asked also what effect it would have in the second quarter. And I would say that we haven't seen yet most of the effects for these 70 employees in the first quarter. So the effect we expect to come middle or late part of the second quarter.

And the costs are -- it's not -- we don't take restructuring costs for all the 70 people. Some of them are still working and taking salaries. So by end of second quarter, we expect to see the effect. And with that said, we might have restructuring costs in the second quarter because we are, of course, always looking at adjusting our capacity and reducing the capacity where we don't see that we have a long-term demand. Did that answer your questions?

[Jesper Stugemo, analyst]

Yes. That's perfect. And on the net recruitment here, average employees is down around 6% year-over-year entering Q2. When do you think you would dare to push the gas on the recruiting once again? What's your belief here? Is it first in the later part of 2024? Or is it somewhere in 2025?

[Per Wallentin, executive]

I think it's early to say. When we know, we know. I have to stress that we are pushing the gas on the throttle in both defense, cybersecurity, in some areas in Norway. But as you see in the figures, the total is down.

So for us, it's very important to be selective in different market segments and geographical segments. I think that we will see a somewhat stronger market in the end of this year or in the autumn, but it still remains to be seen.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Raymond Ke from Nordea.

[Raymond Ke, analyst]

A few questions for me. First one, it is admittedly a challenging market out there, and customers are more cost aware than a year ago. Do you expect to keep a positive price wage balance ahead? Any color on that?

[Per Wallentin, executive]

I think that it's going to be tougher than ever to increase the yield, the difference between prices and salaries. But fortunately, we have a very solid and quite low growth of wages between '23 and '24.

We also see some increases in prices compared to last year with index regulations that I think that we will be okay, but we will not increase that yield during 2024.

[Raymond Ke, analyst]

Got it. And you have emphasized before, Per, that there is really high sales activity, but you were also sort of hesitant to connect this to staff growth or net recruitment. Could you provide some more color into what you mean with the high sales activity and how we should think about that in terms of growth?

[Per Wallentin, executive]

Well, as the market is structured right now, there is -- especially in some areas, for example, in the Stockholm area where there is a lot of customers connected to public sector. There is -- and this is the first time for a long time we have this situation, but there is a possibility to both hire and recruit highly skilled consultants.

So it's important for us to find those new assignments. So one sales person that I talked to the other day here in Stockholm said that we have to sell 10x more to sell the same amount of revenue compared to last year. So that's the situation in the market. And of course, there are new deals to be done, but there is a lot more competition connected to those deals.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Per Wallentin, executive]

All right. Do we have some questions from the web? Shall we take those?

[Marie Bjorklund, executive]

All right. We have a question from Victor Higgons a Indépendance Asset Management. Question is regarding EBIT margins. Do you expect year-on-year improvement from Q2 '24 given the lower basis or comparison numbers?

[Per Wallentin, executive]

We don't have any outlook for that. But of course, when we look into our efficiency work that we have done, we are a bit less people, and we see a stable trend compared to Q4 connected to margin. I think that we are on the right path anyway.

So do we have some more questions?

[Marie Bjorklund, executive]

No.

[Per Wallentin, executive]

All right. Then I think it's time to end this call, and thank you for listening in.

[Marie Bjorklund, executive]

Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.