Dynavox Group Ab

Okay, good morning everyone and welcome to this earnings call. We will cover the second quarter of 2023, summarizing our business in April, May and June of 2023. My name is Fredrik Ruben. I am the CEO of Tobii Ainovox and with me on this call I also have Linda Tybring, the CFO. Can we hear you, Linda? Yes, you can hear me, I hope. She will, of course, cover the financials in more detail. And in this earnings call for the second quarter of 2023, we will first, in our usual manner, take you through some of the brief fundamentals about the company. We will summarize the main takeaways from the quarter. We will dive deeper into the financials, and thereafter we will open up for a Q&A session. And you can submit questions during this live session in the chat function in Teams. We, of course, always welcome offline questions sent to the email above, which is Linda's email, linda.tyring at tobydynabox.com. Okay, but again, before we dive deeper into the second quarter of 2023, I'd like to make a short summary about what Tobii Dynamovox is about. This may be repetition for some of you, but still fundamental to really understand the company. And first and foremost, it's important to reiterate our mission and vision, which I know is very dear not only to the roughly 600 colleagues around the world, into Dynavox, but also to our ecosystem as a partner and investors. And our vision is a world where everyone can communicate, and we will contribute to this via focusing on our mission, which leads to empower people with disabilities to do what they once did or never thought possible. And this also summarizes two of our main user stories. The do what you once did that may be the person who led a normal life until a diagnosis such as ALS, which rendered her unable to control the body or communicate like before. And the other story, the never thought possible, that can refer to a child diagnosed at a very early age with a condition such as autism or cerebral palsy, where, thanks to our solutions, she can do much more than the world around her ever thought possible. And on the picture here to the right, you see Delaina Parrish from Florida, USA. She was born with cerebral palsy, and she's a great example of just that. The market that we serve is hugely underserved. Some 50 million people have a condition so grave they simply cannot communicate unless they have a solution like ours. And every year about 2 million people are being diagnosed, yet only about 2% of those are actually being helped and the rest remain silent. And the main reason for this spells lack of awareness, also among the professionals and the prescribers tasked to assist these users and combined with a poor healthcare reimbursement system. Tobii Dynavox, we operate with a global footprint. Today, some three quarters of our business stems out of the US, and that's largely because of a reasonably well functioning funding system established some 20-30 years ago. Our products are sold in some 65 markets around the world. Our staff is distributed similar way as our revenue, meaning that some 70% of our staff are based in North America with our US headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our second largest office is our headquarter in Stockholm, but we also have branch offices in several European countries, as well as in Suzhou, China. And as of today, we are about just over 600 employees in the company. With the recent acquisitions, we now also have established increased presence, specifically in Belgium, France, Ireland and Denmark, in addition to a smaller number of remote employees, primarily in Central Europe. We provide a comprehensive portfolio of solutions and they range from, if you start from the top on this slide, the content such as the world leading library of communication symbols called PCS, the synthetic voices as well. Specifically, the voices is a component of an acquisition that we made in 2022 of Acapella Group, who are the world's leading provider of naturally sounding and diverse synthetic voices. If you then go down, we have highly sophisticated communication software tailored to the type of user which can vary greatly based on the need. Further down, we develop and design devices with cutting edge technology and medically certified durability, including communication aids controlled using eye tracking. Further down, we have a services portfolio to help our users through the complexity of obtaining a device, and getting funding for our solutions. And then last but not least, we are there to help our users, the therapists, the caregivers through a global team of support resources. And we operate this model globally. So it's important to note that each piece here is critically important and also significant differentiator for us, making us absolutely unique. Our go-to-market model is predominantly as a prescribed aid. Some 90% of our revenue comes out of public or private insurance providers. This also means that we have solid paying customers. And we have always been resilient towards changes in the overall economic climate. And in addition to that, our market is extremely under-penetrated. With that said, we now go back to focusing on the main topic of the day, namely our earnings report for the second quarter of 2023. Looking at the highlights, we had another solid quarter when it comes to revenue growth. The growth compared to the same quarter last year sums up to 32%. And if we adjust for currency effects, the growth was 24%. And this continues the trend as we have seen since basically the second quarter of 2022. During the second quarter, we continue to report good growth across the board, across our different geographies, our different products and the different user groups. We benefit from a market leading and very up to date product portfolio, continuously improved with new products and features. At the same time, we continue to invest in our sales and marketing organization, including further strengthening our US funding organization. And this is key to navigate customers through the complexities of obtaining funding for the new communication aid through public or private insurance systems. Our work to improve awareness and competence continues specifically among prescribed professionals, The value of being able to meet our customers is, of course, of major significance, both internally and within our teams, as well as with our customers. And the North American markets continue to show strong growth. It is the largest and most influential market, both for us and for our industry, but we have similar growth rates now also in Europe and other countries. The strong momentum among the younger user base continues, such as children with autism, and they rely heavily on our symbol communication solutions and in particular our software TD Snap. We furthermore see a clear trend that the market where we sell directly, including the recently added Irish and Danish markets, are the ones that shows the strongest growth. The reason is primarily that we have much greater opportunity in those markets to effectively both train but also support prescribers while at the same time obviously gain deeper understanding of the local requirements, the local processes, reimbursement systems, etc. Our OPEX levels are higher than a year ago, and this must be seen in the light of the significant investment in our staff, mainly within sales and marketing. And we are also investing in systems and tools to manage a very fast-growing business. And then last but not least, as I've highlighted, at the end of the quarter, around the very last day of the quarter, in fact, we entered an agreement to acquire ReHadapt Engineering in Germany. and i will shed i will shed some more light on this acquisition here so the acquisition of our long-term german partner readapt which we agreed on at the end of june complements in a very natural way our products portfolio while also strengthening our presence in the german market The company is unique with their offering of high quality, medically certified mounting systems or mounts as they're typically referred to. And mount is a product that either we or our local dealer or the prescribing entity in that market combine with a communication aid when these are fixed and attached to, for example, a wheelchair or a bed. This acquisition means that we can create solutions that makes it easier for our users to access and use their communication aids. But it also improves our ability to better, in the future, design and innovate further around the physical setup of each individual user. Readapt will be part of the group as an independent subsidiary to Tobu Dynavox under its own brand and its own organization and continuing to serve the entire industry and all of the customer segments. We expect to close the deal during the third quarter and thus welcome some 50 new colleagues to the Tobit Anabox team. And some financials in 2022, Readapt had worldwide sales of roughly 10 million euros at an EBIT margin of about 20%. And Tobidanovox, we will pay 15 million euros upfront in cash with a potential earn out of up to 3.5 million euros after 12 months based on the financial development of the company. And this deal is financed from our own cash and with an extended credit facility with our bank. All right. Now I will hand over to Linda to have us dive a little bit deeper into our financials.

Thank you, Fredrik. So the Q2 financials revenue for the quarter came in at 381 million SEK, a 32% year-on-year growth. And adjusted for currency effects, the growth was 24%. M&A contributed with 4%, hence the organic growth was solid 20%. And as Fredrik said, this has been a continuing trend for the past five quarters. North America continues with solid, strong growth, as well as Europe and some of the rest of the world. The gross margin ended up at 68%. The main factors behind the improvement of the four percentage points were normalized component and shipping costs, as well as the sales price increases. Almost half of the price adjustments announced earlier in 2023 are now visible in our income statement. EBIT for the quarter was 29 million SEK or 7.6% versus 5.4% last year. Excluding non-recurring cost of 6 million SEK, EBIT was 35 million SEK corresponding to a margin of 9.2%. This was more than double versus last year's EBIT of 16 million SEK. increased with 16% organically, excluding the non-recurring items on 6 million sec, mainly related to the condition of readapt. The Opus increase mainly relates to significant staff increases in the sales and marketing organization, but also a new agreement regarding salaries and benefits that came into force April 1st. Investments in the system and tools to manage our growing business also contributed to the cost increase. Net effect of R&D spend increased with minus 5 million SEC and mainly driven by depreciation related to main or major product launches during the last 12 to 18 months. Cash flow after continuous investment was positive 30 million SEC. Cash at hand was 116 million SEC. Net debt was 476 million SEC. and net debt over the last 12 months EBITDA was two times in absolute terms, which is the lower range of financial targets, which we have said between two and three times. The financing of the acquisition of ReaDAP Engineering, we expanded our credit facility with an additional loan from Swedbank of 100 million SEK during the quarter, the total of 800 million SEK. This will come into effect when we have closed the acquisition of Readapt. We have amortized our credit facility with 30 million SEK in the quarter, and the total used credit facility and loan at the end of the quarter was 542 million SEK. That was a lot of numbers, Fredrik, so let's get back to you to conclude the earnings call.

Thank you, Linda. Yes, a lot of numbers, but in our world, good numbers, I would say. So before we open up for some questions, I'd like to reiterate the main takeaways from the second quarter of 2023. So we continue to show solid growth, a trend that we started over a year ago. In absolute terms, we grew our revenue in the quarter by 32%. If we adjust for currencies, the growth was 24%. And if we then further adjust for acquisitions made in last year, the organic underlying growth was 20%. We see revenue growth in this quarter across all geographies and across all product segments. There is a clear trend that markets where we sell directly to our customers are the ones that show the strongest growth. Our profitability continues to move upwards, mainly from higher prices and normalized costs after the pandemic. The Medicare's announced increase in the reimbursement levels for our products by roughly 9% gradually affects our revenues in 2023. And in the quarter now, we see that almost half of these price adjustments are now visible in our income statement. But we expect to see the full effect of this during the second half of the year. The acquired companies contribute well and are developing favorably. We look forward to prospects both for growth and profitability, and we think that they are bright. We are investing in systems and tools to further solidify and increase the scalability of this company. We reiterate our long-term financial goals, which, for the sake of repetition, reads that over time, we aim to maintain an annual growth adjusted for currencies in excess of 10%. And this is obviously a target that we currently overshoot. At the same time, we want to reach and maintain an EBIT margin of 15% or more. And here we still have some more ground to cover, but we take a clear step in that direction with continued growth, strong growth margin, and OPEX levels that is normalized. We remain confident that we will reach this. We want to maintain a net debt ratio over the last 12 months EBITDA of between two to three times. And the outcome in absolute terms in the quarter was 2.0. And once we have landed in our split from Tobii and we have consolidated our balance sheet somewhat, we will distribute the dividend provided that other more compelling alternatives such as acquisitions do not take preference. And these targets are expressed with a rough time horizon of two years. All right. With that said, I'm actually handing over the microphone to Christian Hall, who, in the usual manner, will take questions from the audience.

Hey, Christian. Hello there. So let's start with some questions. First of all, a couple of questions from Oscar Rehnquist at ABG. So admin costs came up sharply quarter and quarter, partly driven by non-recurring expenses, correct? But it's still up significantly quarter on quarter. What is the run rate we should expect when this item is stabilized?

Linda. Yes, thank you. I mean, as you are stating, Oskar, in the administration cost, you have the one-time cost that you should adjust for. But we also state that we are now starting to invest in our IT infrastructures and processes. So you should expect that this will continue going forward as well.

Okay, another question from Oscar. The acquisition is margin accretive and you have not changed your targets. Do you still expect to reach plus or over 15% EBIT margin, excluding readapt? Any update on timing?

Oskar, the short answer is yes, we still expect to reach the plus 15% EBIT margin, even if you take readapt out. Readapt obviously has a slightly higher run rate historically, but they're also significantly smaller than Tobin and AVOX. Any update on timing? No, we expect to close this. There are some formalities that we need to sort out, but during the third quarter is still our best guess to close the deal.

OK, and then another question from Oscar. Could we expect the further price increases in the second half of the year to support additional gross margin improvements? Or are there any COGS effects we should keep in mind, like current component and freight prices?

I can start since I'm on the video already, Linda. Yes, we do believe that the price increases will support additional gross margin improvements. And no, we don't see any negative outlook when it comes to component prices or freight prices. So I would say that your underlying estimates here are largely correct, Oscar. I don't know if you want to add something to that, Linda.

I think you're totally correct. What we see is that, I mean, as we said, close to half of the price increase that Medicare has announced can we see in the income statement now and gradually we will get up to the nine percent at the end of the year. There's no large cost or cost of goods sold related to that.

Okay, and then we have a question from Daniel Jurberg at Handelsbanken. Congrats to a very strong report. You had some progress in several markets outside the US in the quarter. Can you comment on the visibility for the second half, i.e. temporary improvements or more of a structural uptake? Also, can you also comment on the OPEX increase? I guess the 16% is a fair number also for coming three quarters or... The hike in pricing seen in the US, how much of this was visible in the quarter and how much ballpark is left to benefit from?

Do you want to start, Linda, and then I can follow up?

Yeah, I mean, repeating when it comes to the price increase, we have seen close to half of it and we will continue to see that gradually over the second half of 2023. When it comes to OPEX, we had an organic growth revenue-wise of 20%, and we have had OPEX growth adjusted for one-timers with 16%. We, as we have said before, we need to continue to invest in sales and marketing to be able to grow. So you should expect that our OPEX will continue to grow. But of course, to improve our EBIT, it will not grow as fast as our revenue. Do you want to comment something else, Fredrik?

Yeah, I think we still have to, and hopefully this is the last time I say it, but last year's Q2, we're still to some degree affected by COVID in the sense that we had unusually low OPEX levels. And this means obviously that the percentage-wise increase should be lower. In the second quarter of last year, we still couldn't really travel to all countries and meet as we can today. That's a good point.

OK, and then we have a question from June Berggren as it looks now is the final question. Should we expect any additional non-recurring costs in Q3 related to the ReHAdapt acquisition?

Hopefully no, and if they are, they are non-material. The costs that were non-recurring were largely related to the fairly large team of advisors, etc., that you need to conclude a deal, and hopefully those costs will be significantly lower once we're over that hurdle.

Okay, so that finalizes the questions.

great so uh with that said uh thank you everyone for uh dialing into this earnings call as always and for those who know those who you who know us don't hesitate to reach out we'd be happy to answer and clarify any questions otherwise until next time have a great day thank you