Bouvet ASA

Let's get started. I'd like to welcome you to the presentation of the results of the second quarter at BOV. My name is Per Gunnar, and I have with me Steffen Garder, our financial director. We're doing this in a completely unusual way. I'm going to talk about the business, and Steffen will talk about the numbers, and I'm going to share some reflections on what time looks like in the future. Welcome to those of you who have come here in Sørkedalsveien. And welcome to those of you who are on stream, who are sitting around. Welcome. Hi. What we have behind us now is the second quarter of 2025. a good and strong quarter for BOV. What characterizes this quarter is good results development and a number of new contracts. Contracts with companies like Equinor, Ake BP, Skatteetaten, Banenor, Statnet and Fifty. These are companies that have big digitalization ambitions, and it will be exciting to work with further. The operating revenues came in at 969 million kroner. That is down 3% from the same period last year. The operating result landed at 123 million kroner. which gives an EBIT margin of 12.7, compared to 13.5 from the same period last year. The number of employees increased by 0.3% to 2,337. Another important thing to say about this quarter is that when we compare this quarter with the same period last year, we compare a little apples and pears. Here it is Easter that comes in. So a more relevant comparison, we mean, in terms of seeing the development this year, is to see the first half of the year, this year versus the first half of the year last year. And Steffen will explain a little more about that. I would like to say that this is a good quarter. It is a solid effort that lies behind. And I would like to say to everyone in BOV who is listening, thank you very much for the effort. It is a great pleasure to be able to stand here and tell you about what we are creating together. We have ended this quarter by welcoming summer students to Bove. And this is a good time, because we welcome many young people who are at the end of their education and who come to Bove to work as developers, designers and project leaders. and they get to work under good guidance from a lot of committed residents. And most importantly, all of them are allowed to work on real solutions. So then we have a large number companies and customers of ours who are setting up and have real needs that they should work with. And then we have companies like Bane Nord, Lyse, Stavanger University Hospital, Haugaland Kraft, Venn Properties, Stavanger Concerthus, Eulers, Norsk Lærer Akademi, Verform in Meråker, Husbanken, AKBP and BoV. It is clear that summer students are important for those who get the opportunity to come to us and work with these solutions. It is also important for BOV. For us, this is first of all motivating and engaging, and it is also a good recruitment arena for us. But maybe more important than that, it is important for our society that we take the new graduates in and give them opportunities to get into the working life. So I would like to say a little extra thank you to the companies that stand up and give the opportunity. And they are not, as I said, real solutions. And if we just take one example of what they work with, then these summer students, and these are good people, they have worked at Haugeland Kraft, for example, they have worked with simulations of where it is most likely that there will be a power outage on the internet. And these are solutions that Haugaland Kraft has used in its operations. So this is exciting and good. Now I will tell you a little about the operations. We can start with something that is very important to us, people and recruitment. This is a quarter that has also been flat in terms of growth in the number of employees. We ended the quarter with 2,337 employees. And the average number of employees is up 0.6% from the same period last year. And in spite of that, this is a decline of 10 employees from last quarter. This is a natural backdrop for this. First of all, and this is very important for us to say, is that we have a low and stable turnover. It is one of the most important key figures we follow, so that is important. And then there is a trait we, I mean, we train a lot on, and we are quite proud that we master, and that is to adapt that speed in relation to what we see as market opportunities. We communicated last quarter that there was lower activity, and that has a direct impact on the recruitment activity we have. So what we see here is a direct consequence of what we have seen as market opportunities in terms of recruitment. Then it should be said, and we say a little about that in the report, we have won a lot of contracts, so there is reason to believe that there are opportunities in recruitment work in the future. So, optimists in relation to that. In relation to our sectors, there are not many changes from previous quarters. The four largest sectors are oil, gas and renewable energy, power supply, public and defence, and services. Oil, gas and renewable energy is held at a relative advantage of 39% of our turnover. In that sector, our biggest customer is Equinor. It is the customer we see the biggest activity with in the future, and we were out with a press release last week that you might have received. We have received a new contract with AKBP. We see great activity there. In energy supply, the activity we have on StatNet and FIFTE, where we see the biggest change in a positive way, increased activity, has been Skagrak energy and energy. And the numbers we see here, here you have the quarter effect that I talked about earlier. Public and defense. There we have high activity. And it is especially within the defense and within a customer that I brought up, which we won an agreement on earlier, earlier quarter, which is NAV, where we have the largest activity. Also very happy, positive development in Sweden's municipalities and regions, in our Swedish business. And the services, a small sector, 6%. Those who carry this are companies such as Innovation Norway, Viking and the Norwegian Church. Then a little about our customer pool. Our ten largest customers, and here we are also, in this way, this is a quarter that is comparable to previous quarters, because again, the ten largest are 67%, a small positive change, while the twenty largest are 75%. This has talked about many quarter progressions, This is about the development where we see large companies connecting long-term partnerships. We are very positive about this. It gives us an opportunity to understand the customer, to understand the domain, we get deeper in with the customer, we get more trust and we take more responsibility. Very positive, we think it's very positive for our customers, who we work so closely with, and it's also very positive for us, because it gives a lot of opportunities in terms of also being able to bring in new graduates into the deliveries. The division between public and private is perhaps where we see the biggest change, and we also saw that change at the start of last quarter. And then we see a constant shift from private to public. And there are two main trends that drive this development. And one is what I have talked about in a number of quarterly developments. That is the development within power supply and electrification of our market. So that means a lot of activity within power companies, i.e. net suppliers and those who deliver services to all of us. In addition, there is a focus in our society around defense and security. And there is the activity we have in the defense that stands for much of this development. So a shift from some movement from private to public, and then it is driven by the two underlying trends. And the last one, a lot to do with existing customers. Approximately 97% of revenue comes from revenue that we had on customers also in the second quarter of 2024. So that's a lot, and that's what the new customers have come to, which we may see more of. That's Startens Kartverk and Enova, which we work with a bit. But as you can see, all of our main activities are linked to some large sectors, to the 10 and 20 largest customers we have. We appreciate that. Then I would like to introduce four customers that we have done exciting things with this quarter, and where we have also received some new contracts. Equinor is a fantastic industrial locomotive in the Norwegian society. Equinor is also the largest supplier of energy to Europe. And the whole portfolio is oil and gas, and also the renewable. Bovee, we have been allowed to be a supplier to Equinor for more than 20 years. So we have been on a long journey. We have experienced Equinor as a very advanced company that sees the possibilities in digital technology. And there we have been able to build a lot of exciting solutions. And now with this agreement, which is a new agreement for the next ten years, including options, we also hope that we can take part in the journey that Equinor is now leading, which is in an exciting energy transformation. So we are both proud and humble for what we will take part in there. Yara is also an industry giant in Norway and internationally. Yara is the leading global fishing company. They have 18,000 employees and they have representation in more than 60 countries. Yara on Herøya. That facility is Europe's largest facility for the production of nitrogen-based waste products. We have done exciting things there. Today, in cooperation with Yara, Telenor, Volvo and Hive Autonomy, we have worked to improve the efficiency and work-life in the production plant. What we have done specifically is, if you have seen the plant, it is quite fantastic, nitrogen-based manure is produced into heavy containers. When it is packed, large loaders work with it and move the manure into the packing systems. It is a very demanding work environment. Both with sound and with air and much more. So what we do there, we automate that. So there we build in technology and work patterns that remote control the wheel loaders. So from that we had operators who sat in the wheel loaders in a demanding work environment, and burdening the working environment, operators and truck drivers are moved into the meeting room. and sits in the control panel there with food and coffee available in a much better working environment, and which makes it possible to drive much more effectively. An exciting project. It sounds like there is a lot of technology. There is so much learning and organizational development in relying on technology and understanding the framework for how that technology should work. So that is exciting, and not entirely different from what is done in many other sectors and industries. When we look at offshore, where you move the manned tasks into the country. Exciting. Then we have the tax state. And this is an important cogwheel in our welfare society. And what they work with is to ensure that taxes and expenses are paid in the right way. And here we are chosen as suppliers, one of some selected, on the new framework agreement for the tax state. And here we have won most of all areas. So there is a wide range in this agreement, and it ranges from advice, system development, IT architecture, design, and what we call user experience, i.e. how you experience, including those that deal with organization and change management. For us, this is an important agreement, not only because we have the opportunity to deliver on a full scale, but also because we have the opportunity and the tax state to deliver from many of the regional offices that we have around in the country of Norway. So I am very happy and proud that we have achieved so well. Then we have KS Digital. KS Digital is a wholesale shareholder under the municipal sector organization, or KS. And KS Digital, their mission is to contribute to digitalization in Norwegian municipalities and municipalities. The municipal sector has been characterized by the fact that there have been many fragmented solutions, and different municipalities, and then we speak from the very small to the large, have a very different ability to implement good infrastructure services. And KS Digital will solve that challenge. So then KS Digital will provide a set of services to the municipalities, and a set of services to us, the residents of the municipality, that we can use. And then that will be implemented and rolled out. in the country's municipalities. And what we are allowed to do there is to deliver a whole team that handles and builds the solutions that we all are going to use. So that's what we call a multidisciplinary team, which includes all those who know how this is going to be designed, how it is going to be used, how the technological platform is going to be shaped. and how this should be rolled out in the business. So full breadth, and then we work with solutions such as Min Kommune, concern message, work with infectious disease and digital leadership needs. So completely specific services that we will use as builders in the municipality. Again, it gives us a good opportunity to work very broadly for Norwegian municipalities and deliver on the entire breadth in Bove. So that was four customers that I wanted to share a little from. And then there is this with artificial intelligence. Before we started here, before the stream started, there was a bit of talk about artificial intelligence. And we can continue that now, because it is not possible to have a quarter's progress without addressing this. And this is a development that is going at a rapid pace. And we experience that our customers are very concerned about it, we are very concerned about it, and more than that AI becomes a thing on the side, we see how this permeates a lot of what we do. It will permeate what kind of tools we use, how we work internally, but it will also permeate how we deliver solutions to our customers and how we use that technology in many different types of solutions. So we work with the development and implementation of this with our customers. We work with finding the right applications for it, where they actually create business value, so it's not just about using technology. We work with competence learning, and we work with to set a framework for how it is used, and it happens in an ethical, safe and safe way. What I want to do is to briefly mention some areas of use that we do for different customers. If I call it chatbots and dialogue solutions, an example of a solution is what we have done at Colorline, where KI assistants are introduced in the customer center at Colorline. This gives Colorline a more efficient customer center management. faster information flow, faster language support, and a shorter time to find the right product and the right offer for the customers. In the same category, I had one up last quarter, we talked about career guidance for young people. And that is artificial intelligence used in the Directorate for Higher Education and Competence, which is about matching based on interests, look at the needs for competence in society and relate it to current education. So that is one application that is out there and that is in use. Then we work with what we can call more predictive models and operating support. An example is what we do at Statnet. We use artificial intelligence to predict imbalance in the power grid. That gives better decision support for the operators, and it's a step forward to fully automate it. Another example is the patient flow to the nurse in Stavanger. With artificial intelligence, we make forecasts for the number of patients. This gives a much better planning, reduced waiting time, better resource utilization of key people in the nurse, and it simply gives a better patient experience. We also work with tools for employees in LKM, which makes it easier to find the right documentation and handle and process the documentation. In the public sector and in court proceedings, I have previously talked about how we use artificial intelligence in court administrations, and that is in better court proceedings. Here, the main focus is of course safe and secure use of artificial intelligence. In the same way, we use artificial intelligence in Innovation Norway. And again, we use it in case treatment. Better case treatment, better, faster handling, and faster processing of documentation. And then there is a large area that we see growing up in very, very many sectors. And that is very easy to understand. There is a lot of experience summarization, end reports, It is extremely difficult to create learning from all these end reports. They happen in different parts of the organization, on different projects, at different times. It could have been two years ago, four years ago, it could have been yesterday. over all that information, find the patterns in experiences and be able to extract those experiences and use them in learning and improving the development of the business, that is demanding. Artificial intelligence is used in an increasing degree in such applications. And in the same way, in HMS work. Small and large events in many different, in great scope, in different phases, in different parts of the business, the ability to combine, find the patterns, and be able to, based on that, identify and implement measures. So this is a selection of applications that creates real customer value. That's what I was going to say before I leave it to Steffen. Can we take questions afterwards?

I've read both the report and the presentation, and you've written more about AI than before. You've written about contracts. Could you give us something that ordinary people understand a bit more concretely? Like the examples you've mentioned. Take that into account in later reports.

We can think about that.