Bokusgruppen AB

Hi and welcome to today's webcast with Bokusgruppen, where VD Maria Edsman and CFO Ola Malsnes will present their report for Q4 2024. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A, so if you have any questions for Maria and Ola, you can send them with the form to the right. And with that said, I'll hand over the floor to you.

Thank you very much and a warm welcome to our presentation of Q4 and the whole year 2024. I will start with a short summary of the fourth quarter. You who know us know that Christmas trade is very important for quarter four, but also for how the whole year goes. Therefore, it is very happy to tell that this year's Christmas trade surpassed the previous year, which was also strong. Q4 became therefore strong on all levels, revenue, gross profit and EBITDA increased compared to previous years. And it was primarily the academic book market that stood for the increase with an impressive 11.8% growth. The book increased by 0.9% and thus exceeded a very strong Q4 2023. In addition, we carried out a third acquisition this year in December. We then acquired BTJ Sverige AB, which strengthens our position within the business segment. And I was going to present BTJ a little closer on the next page. BTJ Sverige AB has an approximately 80-year-long history as a supplier to Sweden's library. Later, customer focus has been extended to schools, other municipal and state businesses and companies. BTI sells books and other media products, as well as various services that make it easier for customers. De här tjänsterna grupperas i bibliografiska tjänster, redaktionella tjänster och inköpsvägledning samt olika digitala utbildningar. Över tid så har tjänstedelen av omsättningen ökat och det kan ni se hur den såg ut 2024 i grafen nere till vänster. De senaste åren har fokuset även breddats till framför allt skolor och skolbibliotek, vilket är helt rätt i tiden med ökade statliga anslag till skolbibliotek. Bokus also sells books to the public sector and companies that overlap BTI's media sales. This part has historically been a fairly small part of Bokus' business, but with the acquisition of BTI, it gives it the opportunity to take a more forward-looking position in these art segments. We also feel that this is in line with our vision of reading joy for everyone every day, when we now get the opportunity to not only work in these issues against consumers, but also take a stronger position via libraries and schools. In this report, BTI is consolidated in the balance calculation, but will not be included in the result calculation for the first quarter of 2025. BTI will then be included in the business segment Bokus. If we look at the fourth quarter in figures, it shows a revenue growth of 8.4%, while the organic growth was 3.9% and the rest comes from the acquisitions of stores that we have made and that have strengthened the academy bookend during the year. Tillväxten har skett med en förstärkt bruttomarginal, vilket resulterade i en bruttobinstillväxt på 9,1%. Även Ibita stärktes mot föregående år och ökade med 4,2%. And with this strong ending in quarter four, the whole year also turned out well and landed in a historically good result, where we were close to climbing over 2 billion in revenue. And we also deliver this in a tough macro environment. Det har varit ett händelserikt år där vi har uppgraderat logistikpartner för den viktiga e-handelslogistiken. Vi har haft stort fokus på att utveckla nya e-handelssystem samt vi har genomfört tre förvärv som adderar till vår omsättning och resultat. And with all this that we have done during the year, I feel that it is extra impressive that we also deliver very well in the organic business and all employees have really also had focus on delivery here and now and have done it in a very, very good way. Vårt hårda arbete har delvis redan fått effekt i form av fler och nöjdare kunder. Om vi kikar på helåret i siffror så visar det på en omsättningstillväxt på hela 6,3% vilket med god marginal överstiger vårt finansiella mål rörande topline. The organic growth was 3.7%. The biggest growth is for academic bookkeeping, with an increase of 8.8%. We have seen strong growth both in the store and online. The gross marginals have been strengthened further, even on a year-long basis, which has generated a gross profit increase of 7.5%. And even though we have had increased costs, which are partly normal index adjustments we have on rents and loans with Mera, there are also cost increases related to e-commerce investments. And despite this, we managed to strengthen EBITDA with an increase of 4.7% compared to previous years. Den här bilden visar en flerårsöversikt av de senaste fem årens omsättning och ebita under det fjärde kvartalet till vänster och på helårsbasis till höger. Omsättningen har tagit ett ytterligare kliv upp under kvartalet och ligger nu på den högsta nivån under de senaste fem årens fjärde kvartal. Även Ibita har förstärkts för andra året i rad. Samma mönster ses för helåret till höger där omsättningen ökar för andra året i rad och landar på den högsta nivån under den här femårsperioden. Även Ibita har ökat för andra året i rad och rensat för engångsposter 2021 så ser vi en årlig ökning under femårsperioden. Efter den här inledningen så lämnar jag över till vår CFO Ola som kommer gå igenom den finansiella delen av rapporten.

Tack Maria! This picture shows the season variation for our business. We can see how revenues and results vary during the different quarters of the year. Q4, which is framed in the picture, is our strongest result, and is characterized by Black Friday, but not least Christmas trade as important sales events. The fourth quarter of the year stands for about 36% of the year's turnover and 96% of the year's EBITDA. If we look further at the outfall for the quarter, we see that we have a net turnover of SEK 721.4 million, which means an increase of 8.4% compared to 2023. The increase is divided by 4.5% from acquisitions and 3.9% as organic. We have a gross margin of 45.3%, which is an increase of 0.3%. It is explained by several factors, where optimized pricing and increased sales in stores are the most important. Our EBITDA for the quarter fell to 115.5 million kronor, which was 4.7 million kronor higher than the previous year. The increase is driven by profitable growth, both organically and through acquisitions. The result of the quarter goes up to 76.8 million kronor, which is 1.6 million kronor higher than the previous year. Moving on to the whole year, from January to December, we have a net turnover of 1.988.9 billion kronor, which means an increase of 6.3% compared to 2023. We have a gross margin of 42.9%, which is an increase of 0.4%. The increase is mainly explained by the same factors as for Q4, A result of continued work with optimizing pricing and increased retail sales as the most important factors. Our revenue for the period ended at 120.3 million kronor, which is an increase of 5.4 million kronor compared to previous years. And the period's result goes up to 41.9 million kronor, which is 1.4 million kronor higher than previous years. This year, we have been burdened with contract costs of 1.5 million SEK. Adjusted to this, the net result is in line with the turnover, which is good considering the IT transformation that we are working through, logistics shifts and contract activities that we have had during the period. Until then, 2024 has been plagued by a challenging market environment, as we mentioned earlier, with a consumer who has a weakened purchasing power. Finally, if we look at the EBITDA margin for the entire year 2024, it is 6.0%. Moving on, we see that the bookkeeping group has a strong balance ratio and shows a stable and positive cash flow for the quarter. The cash flow for the fourth quarter was positive, which is normal for the quarter. We see in the graph to the left that we have a clear seasonal variation also for the cash flow. where the fourth quarter is the strongest, driven not least by the Christmas trade. The adjusted operating cash flow for the fourth quarter of 2024 was positive and rose to 213.3 million kronor, which is then compared to 222.4 million kronor in the corresponding quarter of 2023. This includes a decrease of 9.1 million kronor, which we can see in the middle of the picture. Minskningen är primärt kopplad till ökade investeringar och högre skattebetalningar. Sammantaget så tyder det att det underliggande kassaflödet har utvecklats stabilt i kvartalet. För helåret så uppgår det justerade operativa kassaflödet till 78,8 miljoner kronor, en minskning med 9,0 miljoner kronor jämfört med 2023, vilket vi också kan se i mitten på bilden. The decrease is mainly explained by investments that have increased by 24.1 million kronor compared to previous years. We can also note that the circulation acquisition has affected the operating cash flow by 57.8 million kronor in Q4 and 83.0 million kronor throughout the year. Det justerade operativa kassaflödet innebär att vi lägger tillbaka de utbetalningar som avser amortering av leasing-skulder enligt IFRS 16 och rörelseförvärv. Leasing-skulderna handlar primärt om våra butikshyror. För kvartalet så uppgick detta till 33,3 miljoner kronor och för helåret till 139,7 miljoner kronor. Tittar vi längst till höger i bilden så ser vi att nettoskuld genom justerade EBIT for Q4-24 to minus 0.3 compared to minus 0.8 for the corresponding period 2023. This means that we have SEK 51.2 million on our bank account for December 31, 2024 compared to SEK 108.7 million in 2023. I december så tecknade vi ett nytt långsiktigt finansieringsavtal med Nordea på en revolverande kreditfacilitet, en så kallad RCF, som uppgår till 250 miljoner kronor och kan utökas med ytterligare 50 miljoner kronor. Den ersätter den tidigare checkkrediten som uppgick till 200 miljoner kronor. Soliditeten är fortsatt hög även jämfört med branschkollegier och uppgår till 38 procent att jämföra med 44 procent 2023. If we move on and look at our financial goals, we see that in the beginning of 2024 we set up new financial goals. When we have now passed the first year, we can see that we have developed better than our first goal, which is revenue growth. The goal is to reach 4% on average over the years, and the first year's outfall is a good bit over that goal, at 6.3%. Tillväxten har påverkats positivt av två butiksförvärv, men även den organiska tillväxten uppgår då till 3,7 %. Det andra målet var att på sikt öka EBITDA-marginalen till 8 %. När vi summerar året så ligger vi kvar på den tidigare nivån om 6 %. Men vi ser att den genomförda IT-transformationen kommer att ge oss förutsättningar för att vi ska kunna röra oss upp mot vårt uppsatta mål. Det tredje målet är avslutningsvis att nån är rose på 35 %. Utfallet för året är 27,3 %. Det sysselsatta kapitalet har ökat på grund av förlängda och tillkommande hyresavtal för butiker samt konsolidering av BTI, där BTI resultatmässigt inte ingår i perioden. Den välslämnar jag över till dig igen, Maria.