BTS Group AB (publ)

Good morning, everyone. My name is Richard Engberg, and I'm an equity research analyst at Eric Penzer Bank. With me here, I have Henrik Ekeland, CEO of BTS Group, and Jessica Parisi, head of US BTS Group, to present another record quarter for BTS Group. Thank you very much, Richard.

And thank you everyone for calling in. And I'm happy to report to all the listeners and the shareholders another record-breaking quarter. And if we compare with 2019, which is... What we think is mostly relevant, you know, 2020 numbers are so easy to beat. So we don't want to compare with 2020. We're compared with 2019, the year before the pandemic. That was a really strong year. And we increased revenues 12 percent if we adjust for changes in the currencies. You know, the corona grew stronger and the earnings went up 40 percent compared to the strong 2019. So after the difficult investment and crisis year of 2020, We are delivering a new record quarter, and we're very happy for that. I also want to mention that the market has developed in an interesting way. The pandemic has really created a lot of challenges for our customers, the big companies of the world. And they are coming with new strategies, with new organizations, with new initiatives. And that drives more demand for our services. And interestingly, one year ago, basically, or a little bit more, every training was physical. Now, 100% is virtual. And that is now fully accepted. And that's the way how you conduct these programs. Very interesting market change. And BTS has become... through the crisis and through the investments we made, and even more attractive partners, because we made a fast move into virtual ahead of our competitors, and we're stronger in virtual today, and we're winning because of that. We also retained all our people last year, which is very good for us now when demand is coming back strongly. And we also continue to invest long-term in product development and marketing. And the final point I want to highlight is innovation. Virtual delivery, which is over Zoom with a teacher facilitator in the room, has taken over. But now we see digital. When you learn yourself in front of the computer, that is growing. And we are investing quite a lot more in that during 2021. We're taking more costs. Already took that in Q1. And we see that as a very interesting opportunity going forward. So that's a quick summary of this record first quarter. And I just want to talk a little bit more about our thinking in 2020. You know, in a crisis like the pandemic, it was a crisis for us because we were facing a potential 70 percent revenue loss. It's easy that you take the short-term view and you cut and you become a bit desperate. We have really taken the long-term view. Last year, we did not maximize profit. We thought about building for the future, building for a new era of growth. And We're getting there by growing the customer base. We added a lot of new customers last year and is continuing to do that. Secondly, building a broader offering. Thirdly, we've strengthened our organization. We've increased our marketing to be out there to win more business. And the bottom line is that this, you know, creates potential. potential for a new, long growth era for BTS going forward. And we're happy and proud how we handled the pandemic, thinking long term. And we think this is the interest of everyone, our employees, our customers, and certainly our shareholders. Q1, strong rebound, as I said, 12% up on revenue, 40% on earnings. And you can see, you know, the comparison numbers with 2020 are ridiculously high. Easy to beat those numbers. That's why we try to compare primarily with 2019, which was a normal, strong BTS year. Margin up. three percent units compared to 2019, which was a strong year. We're very happy about that. And if you look at this slide here, you can see on the Q1 that the earnings in Q1 is way above what we've ever delivered before. So that's, and you can see 2020, the bars are very low. So to come back like this is something that makes us very proud and gives us a lot of confidence for the future. Looking here at Q1, you see 70% growth compared to last year, and the profit growth is, again, ridiculously high on all the lines. And if we look at the units, we can see that growth. Jessica here beside me at North America, amazing revenue growth and margin growth. Most of the world also that. Europe actually a little bit not the same development. They had quite a strong economy. Q1 in 2020, they were not hit by the pandemic in last year's Q1. But overall, you know, a very, very positive development. If we take the long-term view, if you look at BTS from 2001 up until 2019, you can see that we've grown revenues 14% per year, year after year on average, and earnings 18%. So that's a very long, very stable and strong track record. And then you can see the 2020 bar, the crisis year when everything dives down. And we think that in 2020, which has been a transformation year for us, an investment year, we've made the right moves to create the same positive development going forward in 2021 and forward. to continue that growth in revenues, growth in earnings, year after year after year. This again looks at if you put some money into the stock market when we went public in 2001, or you put it into BTS. The shareholders on the call who put money into us in 2001 can see that, yes, you made quite a good, nice bet with your move then. Now, The underlying factors which have created all these years of revenue growth and profit growth still remain as we now move into 2021 and into the future. And first of all, you know, BTS, we have a very strong position. we are very, very competitive with our offering. We still only have 1% in this market, so there's a lot of room to grow. So that's really that position of being very competitive in a market that is fragmented, that is growing, that creates a huge opportunity for us to grow in the future. The second point is our track record. We grow year after year. And why do we grow? We grow because we have a great offering, because we have a fantastic talent base, because we invest in growth, in marketing and in product development, and because we make acquisitions. And we will continue to do that, and that's why we will grow year after year from 2021 and moving forward. So the outlook for this year, is physical deliveries will come back gradually during this year, but virtual, we think, will remain the majority. We see that the digital solutions, there is more demand. That's an interesting opportunity for us to address. And the outlook. is the same as after the Q4. We always keep the outlook. We never increase it after Q1. So we're saying that we will reach an earnings level that is in line with 2019 and then way, way better than 2021. And with that summary, I'm happy to let my colleague since 22 years, Jessica Parisi, present a little bit about BTS North America.

Thank you, Henrik. Okay, so a quick summary of BTS North America. First, our locations and the team, and then I'll build on Henrik's point of coming out stronger and share what we're doing to drive continued growth. You can see our major locations here. The core consulting offices are San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Austin. Our digital offices are Toronto and Philadelphia, and then we have a big operational location in Phoenix. You can see our major practices on the right. So we help our clients with their big change and transformation initiatives. We also do leadership development from top to bottom of the house, and we help our clients with their go-to-market sales and marketing functions as well. So now to build on Henrik's point of what are we doing to drive continued growth, both top line and EBITDA improvement. First point is a larger customer base, both bringing in and attracting new clients, as well as growing our existing market share with our existing clients. So first one is we had an even stronger, more successful new client acquisition team and success in 2020, leading to growth in Q1. We're also focusing on expanding the number of client budgets that we're going after, and in our accounts where we've done that, we're seeing significant account size growth. And then we've had an industry focus specifically targeting software and pharma bio industries, and it's paying off. You can see that together they accounted for 24% of our revenue in 2019 versus 45% in 2021 to date. Second area, a broader offering. Just as Henrik mentioned, I mean, the acceleration of 2020 and our ability to give our customers total consumption choice has been really phenomenal. So now we can do all of our services, both in-person and virtual, and a combination that they want thereof. I agree with Henrik. We're seeing some demand for in-person coming in already in Q3. So we believe we'll have a mix for the coming quarters. And further integrating all of our seven practices is resulting in increased spend per initiative with our clients. And as we continue to make investments in both our platform and broader digital solutions, it's allowing us to be our partners for our clients at greater scale. So all leaders in the company, all employees in the company, helping to accelerate their big initiatives. And finally, a strong organization. We're doing a lot to drive productivity and scalability of the org, as well as to attract and retain our people. So on the scalability side, working on being the consulting firm that brings a lot of creativity to our clients and also holding a platform mindset, and we're working with them with our digital solutions. We're doing a lot of work in terms of providing pricing guidance and scoping guidance to our project teams so that each project is profitable. We're investing a lot in further automation of our internal systems and a one-team approach, putting down some of our silos in service of speed and simplicity. Retention of talent. As Henrik mentioned, it was absolutely the right decision to keep our people last year because without them, we would be struggling to deliver on the growth in Q1. And attracting talent. So given the DEI shifts and momentum in North America, we have also shifted both our sources for getting interns as well as the colleges and universities that we're recruiting from. We have an internal inclusion-made personal initiative, which is really key in terms of improving and strengthening both our culture and ability to retain diverse talent. And you can see our acceptance rate. So in 2020, we had a 90% acceptance rate of all of the offers we gave out, and currently in 2021, 85%. Turn it back over to Anna.