Storytel AB (publ)

STO:STORY B

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

So welcome to this investor call for Storytel for Q4 2020. Can we go to the next slide, please, with the snowballs. So basically, our global market opportunity for audiobooks is big and rising. We anticipate the overall market to grow from SEK 40 billion in 2020 to SEK 200 billion in 2030. And Storytel is aspiring to take a good share of that market. We're currently at about 5% market share and have to grow that to about 15% global market share by 2030. Next slide, please. The reason we are bullish and believe that the audiobook market will grow throughout the world is, from the example of the Swedish audiobook market, which has grown from a couple of percent 5, 6, 7 years ago and up to a size where the audiobook market is actually the majority of the fiction sales book market overall. This is a trend we're seeing in many of our markets. And we expect this strong audio trend across the world to impact the audiobook market and make it the dominant segment in the fiction book market globally. Next slide, please. Storytel has been on an expansion from -- over the past 7 years, and we're now on 20-plus markets. We've demonstrated that we can grow many of these markets, passed the 50,000 subscriber milestone in a couple of years. So we see from one of our recent launches in Turkey a couple of years ago, we actually grew that market to pass the 50,000 subscriber line in only 15 months. What's interesting to note on this slide is that Sweden, which is our by far biggest market, actually took the longest to grow from 0 to 50,000 subscribers, took about 4 years. So that says something about the potential in -- and the success of our expansion strategy. If we go to the next slide, please. What is as important is that we want to demonstrate that we can grow markets to profitability within 5 years. That's the target we've set for all our markets. And so far, we've been successful with all markets except maybe for Netherlands, which took us 6 years. But we now have 5 markets that are profitable. And we expect to turn 3 more markets profitable within the next year, and that's Poland, Finland and Russia. Next slide, please. And just briefly on the Q4 growth. So we grew subscribers year-on-year by 33% and revenues by 19%. But you have to bear in mind that the Swedish krona has been incredibly strong in the past year. So working off a fixed currency, then we would actually have grown by 26% between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020. And with that, I hand over to our CFO, Sofie.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

All right. Thank you, Jonas. So let's jump into the report, and you can change the slide. Highlights from the report. As Jonas said, Streaming sales up 19%; but using constant FX rate, is up 26%. And we try to describe that a little bit more in this report, also for the Q1 forecast for 2021. Net turnover increased to SEK 633 million in Q4, up from SEK 565,000 (sic) [ SEK 565 million ] in Q4 2019. On the EBITDA line, we came in at minus SEK 22.8 million, EBITDA margin of minus 3%, which is in the targeted range that we have for the full year. And for 2020, we came in at minus 3.2%. I think what's something great in this report is the Print segment. As the figures came out from Sweden during this week, we saw that the Swedish book market actually grew by 9% in 2020. And of course, Streaming is a big part of that, but also the physical book actually increased. And on the EBITDA side, we increased from SEK 9 million in 2019 to SEK 42 million in 2020. So that's great news. Next slide, please. So digging into streaming top line and profitability a little bit more. You can see that we came in at about SEK 500 million in Q4 2020 on the revenue side. Contribution margin went down slightly in Q4 compared to Q3, and that's -- the reason for that is the investments in the non-Nordic segment, where we see good momentum and an increased marketing spend if you compare to Q3. On the revenue -- on the subscriber side, we came in at 1,442,000 subscribers and an ARPU of SEK 116. In the Nordic segment, we are almost at SEK 400 million on a quarterly basis on the revenue side and a really, really strong contribution margin this quarter, 33.6%. So we are increasing top line, and we are also increasing the profitability in the Nordic segment. And although we saw a slightly decrease in the ARPU this quarter, and that is, yes, explained partly by the strength in Swedish krona but also that we see that more and more customers go over to the family subscription, which we are very happy about since that increases the lifetime of the customers. Looking at the non-Nordic segment, we are above the SEK 100 million mark on a quarterly basis on the revenue side. And as I've said, contribution margin went down slightly, but we see that as a positive sign that we can, yes, get a good return on investments on our marketing spend. Average subscriber increased to 516,000 and a slightly ARPU decline also here, same explanation as I talked about on the Nordics segment. Just touching briefly on the Q1 forecast. As you can see, we think we will come in at SEK 514 million on the revenue part. Subscriber base will grow with 100,000 subscribers, while ARPU decline slightly also this quarter. And Q1 is always the worst quarter for us when it comes to ARPU since it has fewer days in the quarter and we charge our customers on a 30-days basis. So if you adjust for that, the revenue would increase by 2%. Yes, and the Nordic segment is, yes, basically flat but, as I've said, growing 2% if you adjust for the number of days in the quarter. And the streaming revenues for the non-Nordic in Q1 amounts to SEK 115 million; 588,000 subscribers; ARPU of SEK 65. And as you can see on the graph to the right, it's going in the right direction on the Nordic side. As I said, on the non-Nordics, we are investing heavily in marketing, and we see that we'll get a good return on investment on those. You can go to the next slide. So I will hand over to Ingrid, talking a little bit more about our expansion activities.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Thank you, Sofie. And yes, so last year, in our Capital Markets Day in January, we said we were not going to focus so much on expansion over 2020 and that we couldn't resist to at least launch 2 countries at the end of the year. So we successfully launched Belgium in late October. And that's really great to strengthen our bases in Europe and in the Benelux region. It's also great to say that this has been done entirely by our Storytel Netherlands team. So it has been a strong challenge for them as well as broadening the scope of the business in the Netherlands. And then we also launched Thailand at the end of the year, which has been a region where we've been in for a long time, actually producing a lot of audiobooks. So that has been a little bit of a different expansion story, where we start by acquiring content and, of course, produce. And then when we feel ready, we launch for our consumers on the consumer side. And yes, next slide, please. Also great to say that last year has been a very positive year for our creative side of our business, working very closely with creators across the world to produce the Storytel Originals for audiobook audience. And very happy to see that 1/3 of our countries actually had one of the Storytel Originals as a top 10 list during -- or #1 title actually during December. And great to see also that we have attested some of the stories that we have developed. For example, Virus is a 7-season book that we have developed in Sweden. And then that has actually also now been translated into several languages and is in our service in other countries as well. Next slide. I'm very super happy to announce our really first global Storytel Original and that we have been doing together with collaboration with a very renowned, best-selling author, Camilla Läckberg; and as well renowned actor, Alexander Karim, who has also been an author lately. And it's really great to see that we will release this in June 15. We will translate it into 40 languages and go live at least in 6 markets on that day. So this is a big investment for us. We believe that this is a new way for us to build stories across the world and find new collaborations to continue to invest in great stories. Next slide. Yes. So Sofie?

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

All right. So I'm back. We already touched upon the forecast for Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020, but let's just reiterate that. Subscriber base growth is 34% in our forecast; and revenue growth, 20%. But just to emphasize again, the revenue growth would have been 27% if we use constant FX rates. So we are suffering a little bit from the strength in krona. Next slide, please. So our financial targets. 2020, just to -- yes, just to show that we have a history of reaching our targets. We said that we would reach SEK 1.9 billion in Streaming revenues in 2020, which we achieved. We also achieved the 1.5 million paying subscriber mark in just a few weeks after year-end. So I think we'd get past on that as well. We also said that we wanted to turn at least one country profitable, and we saw that Netherlands became profitable in 2020. Our EBITDA range was minus 1% to minus 5%, and we came in at minus 3.2%, so in the middle of that range. And as Ingrid said, we also launched in Belgium and Thailand. So looking at the full year 2021 targets. We see continued growth. And we want to grow our streaming revenues to SEK 2.4 billion to SEK 2.5 billion, so at least a 28% revenue growth. And in order to achieve that, we want to reach 2.1 million to 2.2 million paying subscribers. But of course, that will depend on what geographical mix we have and also subscriber mix since we have launched a few new subscription types during 2020. More important as well is, of course, to become profitable in more countries. We think we will reach that in Finland, Poland and Russia for 2021, as Jonas also mentioned in the beginning. And we want to achieve this by improving our EBITDA margin basically, so coming in at 0% to minus 5% negative EBITDA margin. Also, we are preparing to launch many more markets. So we want to be present in at least 25-plus markets. And going into 2023 targets, we want to be present on 40-plus markets. We reiterate the targets that we announced on our Capital Markets Day. So we're still convinced that we can reach 35% CAGR on the Streaming revenues, which, of course, indicates that we will increase our growth rates in the coming years and have around 40% CAGR on the paying subscribers. We also want to reach Streaming profitability on a local level within 5 years from launch. And as Jonas said, we have been successful in that in the past. All right. So that was the end of the slide show, so we will move into the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Derek Laliberte of ABG.

[Derek Laliberte, Research Analyst]

Yes. I was wondering a bit about your path to reach the revenue target in 2023, implied by the 35% Streaming revenue CAGR target here. I mean it's quite obvious -- clear that since growth was below the average target rate in 2020 and now you're guiding for that in this year as well, it'd just be good to get some sort of specifics about what is expected to happen in 2022 and 2023 versus this year in your -- from your point of view.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

All right. So yes, I can start. That's a fair question. And I mean for 2020, we saw really strong growth in the Nordic region, as I talked about Swedish market. It's really growing the overall book sales. And we want to continue to invest a lot in the Nordic region since we still see big potential and we want to continue to keep our strong market position that we have in these markets. Looking at the other countries, I mean, as Jonas mentioned, the countries where we reached 50,000 subscriber mark and also the 100,000 subscriber mark, we see good momentum in, and we want to continue to invest in those countries that are currently in the West region and also Turkey in the East region. And then looking -- I mean, I think the Nordic and the West region will contribute most to the growth in 2021 at least and also in 2022. And then the APAC and the East and the Lat Am region will contribute more from 2023 going forward. Jonas, do you want to add?

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes. I mean basically, when it comes down to how people will start signing up at a higher extent and to stay with the service at a higher extent, we see that we have really good momentum on the subscription side now. We've launched a couple of new subscriptions in the past year and testing those out. And we'll roll them out more broadly during 2021, and we think that will have a good effect going forward. We also see that working with achieving product leadership is going -- moving forward. And in particular, looking at how we curate the content to our subscribers, ensuring a personalized experience and also ensuring that people starts to get recommendations from each other, that's something that we have anticipate will also help to boost loyalty in the service, which will, in turn, also help us grow more.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

And perhaps just to sum up or to finalize that discussion, we have also been very successful in the past of increasing prices. And I mean that is something that we work with continuously. I think we increased prices in at least 8 of our 20-plus markets in the last couple of years. So that's also one way to grow revenues, of course.

[Derek Laliberte, Research Analyst]

Okay. That's very helpful information. Then just going over -- or sort of back to this year, I think -- I mean looking at your Q1 estimates here for the non-Nordics segment specifically, that growth rate in subscribers is still expected -- you're still expecting that to be below 60%, so not really a pickup from H2 of last year. So from my point of view there, it looks like you really need to accelerate growth here between Q2 and Q4. And I was wondering if it -- what will drive this pickup. Is it investments or heavy investments? Or how does that look?

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes, I mean it's been part of those elements I talked about before but also, as you say, more heavily invest in marketing and ensuring that we're driving more intake to the service.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell of DNB Markets.

[Joachim Gunell, Junior Analyst]

So to continue where Derek left off, but I mean as you alluded to, Jonas, you've run a couple of interesting experiments during the past quarters with some lowered-priced peers in some markets. So can you perhaps talk a bit more about the learnings from these, call it, experiments, I mean if they're successful enough to expand to other regions?

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. I think we are constantly -- I would say that 2020 was a year of a lot of testing and also a lot of improvements generally on our service in terms of everything from user experience, also from the offers that we have in the market. And we have a lot of learnings that we can draw from what we did during the Q3 and Q4. And then we can see actually really great momentum, for example, in India, where we have launched a service that is much more targeted and localized in terms of the language it offers. So we are positive that this is a trend that we will continue to do in that specific region and also in others. And then in addition, then we are looking into what we have tried at different limited service. So we cannot exactly say how we will do this, but I'm sure that this is really a way to go because we know that people want to test our service. We have seen that during last year. We had a fantastic intake, lots of people testing our service. But it's also a behavioral change that needs to happen. And then we want to support our customers to actually do that behavioral shift in the best way. So product market fit is, of course, key to how we do this in all our markets.

[Joachim Gunell, Junior Analyst]

Understood. And to continue on Derek's question, with accelerating growth from, say, Q2 throughout 2021, it seems that, okay, you are now more comfortable with the CLV/SAC levels to invest more heavily, they call it. Can you just elaborate a bit more on what makes you more comfortable with the CLV/SAC levels?

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Well, it's constantly improving our attribution model and learning from data, learning from how our customers behave and of course, also improving on our brand and our communication and campaigns. So I think it's a range of different aspects. If you have been following our -- as closely over the year, you've probably seen a significant shift in how we communicate, the tone of voice and also the expression. And that is now flooded over, of course, in all our type of communication. We also have in-app communication in our apps today in a much better way. So I think all of this actually makes our CLV/SAC, yes, improve in a sense and/or at least it gives us much more confidence that we know that we are on the right track.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

And if you turn it down to the customer experience, I mean we can see good traction on improvements on the average app store rating, for instance. We can see improvements on also the down -- the usage, how much people use the service when they get in. And that translates into a better customer lifetime and higher revenues. So I think we're very positive about those developments. And I think that's really what's going to make the difference in increasing the growth rate going forward.

[Joachim Gunell, Junior Analyst]

Understood. And so -- but in terms of the -- call it, the churn or customer retention development throughout 2020, I mean you talked about non-Nordic markets being a bit more -- or new subscribers there being a bit more uncertain in terms of how we can forecast it. But you feel more comfortable about the engagement in these markets now, if I understand it correct.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

I mean we have many more tools in our toolbox now. So we have -- I think we talked about all these different subscription models that some we can talk about and some we can't talk about. But we're rolling those out more broadly now. And that means that a customer who comes in doesn't only have an unlimited and often quite expensive service to sign up to, but they can also test it and sign up to a lower-priced model and therefore stay longer.

[Joachim Gunell, Junior Analyst]

Roger that. And just a final from me. If you just look at the competitive landscape, I mean can you just talk a bit about what you perceive as the real competition for you, guys, and I mean if it's the other audiobook services or, say, perhaps new larger market entrants with bundling options, et cetera?

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes. I mean when we started many years ago, we always looked at how we would fare in the audiobook market. We compared ourselves to CD audiobooks and tried to kind of win the audiobook market. And now we can see that we are in the segment that's really totally taken over the audiobook market. And we no longer look at the audiobook market as our market but the overall book market. And that's what we see from the statistics in Sweden, for instance, where now audiobooks are more than 50% of the overall book market for fiction books. And it doesn't really stop there because we need to ensure that the book stays relevant. We need to ensure that other entertainment formats do not succeed more than we succeed with books. We believe that books has a very good role in society today, that it provides much more colorful mindset and not just the black-and-white mindset that we oftentimes see now. You have more time to think. You have more time to use your imagination when you listen to books. And that's really the agenda that we're pushing forward in terms of customer experience. And I think that's our real competition, to ensure that, that stays. Then we've been very good, I think, at working collaboratively. We can see that the Sweden book market now thrives because we have worked collaboratively with our competition. We're still market leaders, and we still succeed, but we can also see other services succeeding well in this market. And that's -- there's no problem with that because the big challenge is really to ensure that the book stays relevant and that the book markets are healthy.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Oscar Erixon of Carnegie.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Very nice to have you back, Sofie, as well. So a couple of questions from me, although some have already been asked. But your internal focus here in 2020, what -- are there any -- is there 1 or 2 key things that you would point out that you have done? And also, do you feel like anything important is missing ahead of this geographical expansion? And finally there, have you felt that your offering -- product offering has been trailing local competitors in any sense?

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes, that's a great question. And looking at the internal perspective, we feel that the organization, Storytel, now the decision-making processes and our focus on the right KPIs and the things that really drive the business is something that we've really set us in for in 2020 and starting to see great results for now, where we have an organization and people working in the company that are much more results and focused-driven than we have been any time before. I think that's a key parameter. And then looking at what the customer sees externally, I mean we have a wonderful content production machinery that runs out in 28 different languages now. And we learned a lot from that. We can see, as Ingrid talked about, that we are now capable of launching Storytel Originals globally. And we haven't had that capability before. And we have a very good communications team that are helpful in making that happen and making the media kick up the launches. So I think there's a lot that's happened on that end. And then on the customer side, as said before, there's more subscription options to choose from. There's more payment alternatives to choose from. And there is a better welcoming. When you enter the app and start using it, you have a better chance now than you've ever been before in finding the right content for yourself and come back day after day after day.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Perfect. And sequentially here, in Q4, we see quite significantly increased marketing in the non-Nordics, I expect judging from the contribution margin. Are we seeing clearly improved LCV/SAC (sic) [ CLV/SAC ] compared to Q3, an improved momentum? Or are you sort of expecting a lower return than you did in Q3? And I guess an add-on question to that then is if you have a sort of updated view on COVID-19 impact, positive or negative.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. Thank you. Very interesting question in regards to our non-Nordics here. I think we have to talk about the fact that the non-Nordics now comprises of 16, 18 markets. And so it's a wide variety, obviously. And they are in very different stages. Some are very early. I mean in Thailand, we just explained, we just started. And there are others that started a year or 2 ago. And then we, of course, have some markets where we've been in for quite some time. So I think it's a mix, and it's difficult to tell exactly on a mix. What we have been doing and what we are better and better at, I think we are adjusting to where we see different momentum. And this is something that we are continuously working with. And some markets may have suffered a little bit more due to the COVID situation last year that none of us could have expected or anticipated. And then there are some other markets that are actually thriving in the sense that people are really wanting and desiring more things to do on their lockdown period. So then we have better momentum in these markets. And obviously, we also then divert our marketing investments as well as content investment in a smarter way. So that is something we will see continuously going forward.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

And the exact answer to your question about CLV/SAC is basically we see...

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, positive outlook. Yes.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Positive development as a whole outside of the Nordics.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, absolutely.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Great. Very clear. And then on the targets, yes, historically, you have largely delivered very well on targets. Given the momentum here in H2 last year and Q1 here at the start, are you confident on your 2021 and your long-term targets? And an add-on question, could you guide me on the constant currency level alternative going forward?

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean thank you for that, Oscar. And yes, we are very keen on reaching our goals. And as you said, historically, we have been very good in reaching what we have said that we would reach. And there's no exception this year. I mean we feel strongly about our targets for 2021. Then of course, it's becoming more and more tricky, of course, to do the forecast when we are in 20-plus markets with high-ARPU countries, mid-ARPU countries and low-ARPU countries. We also have new subscription models that we roll out. And then as you mentioned, we had seen an exceptionally strong Swedish krona this year. So of course, that makes it a little bit more difficult to forecast. But when we forecast, we look at the FX rates that we currently have in our budget. And we are not forecasting how the Swedish krona, if it will become stronger or weaker. But yes, just to answer your question, yes, we feel confident, but then there are some uncertainties right now.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Perfect. And final question from me. Could you give an update on how your price increases during 2020 has been -- have been received in terms of churn? I know you talked previously about that not impacting churn that much.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. So price increases is obviously another instrument for our growth. And we have actually seen quite positive results from our price increases in general. Already this year, we have done 2 price increases, 1 in Norway and 1 on Iceland. And we believe in not doing radical price increases but rather following the different markets we are in. And as we are improving our service, we are also improving the size of our catalog. And the way we invest in content, we think it's fair to increase prices and follow that in a smart way. And when it comes to churn, I think when you do a price increase, there might be an immediate effect that you wake up somebody who maybe did forget -- forgot about their subscription. But that is such a small part of our portfolio, so that doesn't really give us any long-term implication.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

And all our price increases so far have been clearly net positive for us.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes, if you look at, yes, the bottom line.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes. And we have the -- I mean we have the family subscription now, which we didn't have a couple of years ago, that we can really see that those customers get enormously high value for money. And there are great opportunities also to get good value for money there even with slightly higher editions when you add more customers. That's something we've seen in, as we said, Iceland and Norway. And probably we'll see more markets.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Stefan Wård of Pareto Securities.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

I'd like to start with a follow-up on the forecast -- 2023 forecast. It implies that you will reach Streaming sales of about SEK 4.5 billion. And then we can add the screens to that, so you will have a top line in excess of SEK 5 billion by 2023. Could you please describe a little bit also 17 of the markets in the footprint where you would have been present more than 5 years by the end of 2023? So this sort of indicates that we could see a quite nice development of EBITDA over these years. If you could help with any comments on this and how the scalability on the sort of costs side, the contribution margin, what we can expect there.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean one very important target for us is to turn markets into profitability after 5 years. And as we already mentioned, we expect 3 more markets to reach that stage during 2021. And then more countries, as you say, will follow during the next couple of years. But then as we also communicated on our Capital Markets Day and that we still believe firmly in is that we will prioritize growth before profitability if we see improved CLV-to-SAC ratio. So of course, the EBITDA or the EBIT might be even more important to look at now when we capitalize our intangible assets. I mean that will depend on the mix of countries that we go into. And if we see good momentum in these new markets, we want to, of course, continue to invest in both content production and marketing. So it's difficult to say exactly when we will reach profitability on an EBITDA group level. More importantly for us is to see that we we can really turn more markets into profitability and also improve EBITDA levels in these markets to the levels that we see now in the profitable markets in the Nordic region.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

Okay. Can you still give some guidance then on CapEx levels for the coming, say, couple of years, meaning capitalized content costs per annum?

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean as you saw in the report, you can see it on a separate line in the P&L., we invested SEK 240 million in both content production and R&D. And that's weighted more heavily towards the content investments. So I mean I think it's fair to say that we will continue to invest in the same pace that we are currently investing in. And then we will add more markets to that, so the total amount will increase. But as a percentage of revenue, I think you could, yes, estimate sort of the same levels that we are at today.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

As percentage of revenues?

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

Okay. Then turning into the new subscription offerings in India, I'm a little bit interested there. Is it only your own content, it's 100% Storytel content in the, for instance, Maharashtri offering? And how is the margin structure for that type of offering?

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. So you were asking just -- sorry, the line is a little bit tough here. So the last sentence you were saying, you asked about what is our share of the content. And then I didn't hear the last sentence.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

How the profitability looks for that type of offering. I mean it's such a low price level compared with unlimited offerings. I'm just trying to figure out if it's -- what the margin could be for that offering.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. So when we explore different types of price models, we obviously also calculate a profitability level that we think are decent in terms of how we would like to offer it to the market. So it's a combination -- every price decision is a combination of, of course, the cost and margin perspective but, of course, also on a market -- product market fit level. And when it comes to India, one has to understand the dynamics of an Indian market, where we have a plus 20 local different languages. And different people in different regions speak those different languages. So we obviously want to take it to those individuals that have a native language preference. So I think that's what we are diluting to with this limited languages selection. And yes, the capital that we have invested in is a lot of our owned content.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

Okay. Can you also give a little bit of color on what we can expect for the Middle East offering, how up and running is that Kitab Sawti acquisition, I'm thinking of? But also interested in the high-cost acquisition in Israel, what we can expect for 2021 and onwards.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Yes. I mean it's -- we see good traction in the Middle East. That's, I think, what we can say. And our challenge now is to ensure that we can localize the offerings for the different countries. We also expect to launch Israel shortly, and I think that, that will be a very, very exciting market. I mean it's the, I think, sweet spot -- I have said that before, I think it's a sweet spot of the type of markets we want to launch, which is quite-high ARPU, reasonably sized country. We can expect good word-of-mouth traction. And we also have a very, very strong catalog -- proprietary catalog where we can expect to have good margins as well. So it's super exciting. But I think we'll get back to that as the market starts to become bigger, and we can talk more about how successful we are.

[Stefan Wård, Research Analyst]

Great. So the last question is also just any color on development in South or Latin America would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, for instance.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

No, I mean I don't think we can comment any specifics more than I think you're right there. South Africa -- South America is suffering quite a lot during the COVID or corona situation so, obviously, also some macroeconomics effects as well. However, we see a really strong focus on nice entertainment and, of course, continue to invest in our own catalog to ensure a good local fit in that region. So we believe long term in the region and continue to invest.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Hjalmar Ahlberg of Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, Equity Research Analyst]

Maybe just a few more question. On the targets there both for '21 and also '23, discuss a bit how the mix in the non-Nordics will be. But could you say anything about, I mean, the share of different countries or different markets? I don't know if you provide specifics, but if like the top 3 of the Nordics, is that 50% of the total? Or wondering if you can give any input on the mix in the non-Nordic?

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

I mean what we can say, if you look at the Q4 report, the Nordic region still stands for almost 80% of the total revenue, and we still see good growth. And since we are early in many of our markets, we will continue to see Nordic as a really strong segment going forward.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, Equity Research Analyst]

Got it. But can you say anything on the non-Nordic, I mean if the top 3 markets, is that a large part of the total in the non-Nordics? Or is it a bigger split between the different markets in the non-Nordics?

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

I mean we can say that you saw on the slide I showed before on the market that reached 50,000 subscribers and most quickly, that gives you some flavor that markets we are seeing great growth in are markets like Russia, Turkey, Poland, Netherlands. Those are our top non-Nordic markets, and we're quite bullish about all those markets in coming years.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, Equity Research Analyst]

Got it. And then you may discussed it a bit, but maybe on -- you said that later in this 2021 to '23 period, you have -- you expect more growth in the emerging markets, so to say. What is the biggest challenge to reach this growth in this market? Is it content? Or is it that you have to find the right marketing methods? Or anything you can maybe give input on there.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

I mean the challenge is and remains for most markets to develop awareness about the audiobook as a product, as a subscription product. And I think that's really where our marketing comes in. The word of mouth generated from delivering a really good service, that includes strong content that's relevant to people and that people can read about also outside Storytel. I think it's a mix of all those different things and also ensuring that we have a good price point that people can relate to in comparison with other types of entertainment services. As you know, the book reading remains strong. It's -- it has to be said all over again. I think looking at the physical book still exists. It still grows actually on some markets and ensures that we have an author community and a publishing community that keeps investing and keeps generating great stories. And we're there to ensure that people choose that above other entertainment forms. And I think we're doing that successfully. But Storytel is a very long-term growth story. And we have a target that 10 years from now to grow to SEK 30 billion, and that's a big ask, but we can see that we have a very good market position on a fast-growing market. And I think that's what really, really matters for us to set and to target on the long term. But of course, we need to deliver in the short term. We've done that historically. We've hit all our targets so far. We don't plan to miss the targets for 2021, but I have to admit that it is a challenging target. It will be reached only to ensure that we can improve the user experience and keep pushing out really the strong titles that brings in more people to the service.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, Equity Research Analyst]

And maybe a question on this new historical global original content. Will this be important to think in a more mature market? Or it is something that is important to have in new markets as well? And do you see competition doing this as well? Or is it something that is unique for you, you think?

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

I think the fact that we will translate it into 14 different languages is something we believe that this is equally strong in all our markets. As Jonas just pointed out, I think the really telling the story about how a digitally streamed book can be as an experience for you, that's our story that we want to tell. And the best way to tell that story is through awesome and great content that has been done by great creators. So I think that's the way to reach everyone in every country of the world, in every type of language. So yes, we believe that this would be strong in many markets or in all of our markets but in different ways.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Thank you. Are we approaching the end of the session or do you have more questions?

[Operator]

We currently have no further questions.

[Jonas Tellander, Founder, CEO & Director]

Great. So thank you so much for amazing questions. Thank you for tuning in. Really happy to have these calls and to have this communication with you. And as always, Sofie, our CFO, is available for analysts to discuss what we report and what we target. But thanks for tuning in. And thank you for believing in the book market and in audiobooks and Storytel.

[Ingrid Welinder Bojner, Chief Commercial Officer]

Thank you.

[Sofie Zettergren, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you.