Cint Group AB (publ)

four of our clear focus areas for the quarter in that regard. We have rebuilt Engage, which is our new panel platform. And that panel platform is now fully integrated with the Synth Exchange. What that means for our in the new Synth Exchange to exclusive high quality panel at a larger scale and size than ever before. It's also critically important for our legacy Lucid customers who have not had direct access to this panel before. Very soon, later in July, we will launch our ScentVerified audiences as a native app in the Snowflake marketplace. This is an opportunity, of course, for our data solutions business and allows customers to purchase our verified data through the Snowflake platform. As we've been speaking, the study creator DIY product within our measurement business is growing rapidly. It's a very nice fit, especially within the European region. And we've seen substantial growth in that part of our business over the last quarter. And finally, we speak about our new measurement integration. integration into the Trade Desk. We've upgraded our API, as well as the reporting and data capabilities that our customers can achieve through the Trade Desk integration, including visualizations, AI generated reports, and also multi-touch reporting as well. So these are clear areas of innovation that we lifting of migration in the second quarter. So proud of what the R&D and product teams have been able to accomplish with a lot of things on their desk. And now I move to Niels to go through the financial elements.

Thank you, Patrick. Good morning. Starting with the first one, just a reminder of our financial targets that we announced at the end of January this year. In particular, the sales growth of 10% combined with margins of 25%. And then the leverage ratio to keep that below 2.5x. Dividend policy, no dividends. And we are following the net zero targets from Sweden as well. Going into this quarter, you can see on the left graph that we had decline of revenues of 6.6%, 2.9% in constant currency. I have to highlight that this quarter, the USD versus Euro exchange rate had a lot of movements, USD becoming weaker, and therefore the constant currency numbers are better for us because we have a lot of sales in USD. About two-thirds comes from the Americas. Underneath of this sales number, we have the same picture as we have seen before. So we have decline in Synth Exchange and then increases in media measurements. And moving to the middle graph, the gross profit improved, even though we declined in sales, which is of course great. So we now have 88.8% gross margin, which is 1.8 percentage points above last year. on a smaller basis, so that's great. It's driven by lower hosting costs and personnel costs. Then moving to the right, the full profitability to EBITDA. Also there you see a strong increase. So we arrived at 8.2 million, being a margin of 20.8%, which is 3.9 percentage points above last year. And again, also here on lower sales basis, right? So this is also a great improvement. This is driven by the cost savings that we did both in June and in December. Moving on to the net sales development. So as mentioned, Sint exchange declined. It's 9.1% in constant currency. Media measurements, 14%, one four. So that's a similar picture as we have seen before. And it's mainly driven also by the America's region. And then if you go to the right, you see the regional splits. So we have a decline in Americas and APAC and an increase for the first time in a while in the EMEA region. So that's also great to see. And then moving on to the full P&L. So we already discussed sales and gross profit. You see here the full numbers and EBITDA as well, of course. So we don't have to focus on that. Again, you can see that the cost basis is lower across the board. So this is actually the first quarter where we have a clean and new cost base for going forward after we had the cost savings last year and also the rights issue that we completed at the end of Q1. Right now, that's fully behind us. Yours fed lower interest expense. Therefore, you cannot see that here, but we will get there later. So overall, this clean and nice P&L to look at. Also, no NRIs, items affecting comparability. So there's actually a small positive effect reversal that you see there from last year. It's 0.5 million compared to last year when we still had 4.9 million that was partly for the integration between Lucid and Synth, and also that we announced cost savings in June. So that was also in there last year. So we don't have any of that this year, which is great, of course. Moving on to cash, see also similar picture. So we have good, strong cash flow from operations. The working capital cashflow was actually down this quarter. That's driven by the accounts payable side. We go into that later. Other than that, cashflow from investing, that's related to capitalized software development, where we capitalize the investments into the new platform and the new features, et cetera. So that's in line with expectations. And the bigger change that you see there is the financing part. So here I need to highlight that we had, of course, the rights issue proceeds that we received at the end of Q1. And at the beginning of Q2 in April, we paid down the loan with 35 million USD. So that's in there. And then also we had a 5 million USD down payment at the end of the quarter in June. So that is what goes in there. That's all according to plan and what we announced with the rights issue. So overall that leaves us with a net debt of 13.7 million compared to almost 80 million last year. So that's of course, or less, yeah, less year exactly. So that's a huge improvement. And the final point, the leverage ratio, we just looked at the targets, it's 2.5X, we're actually at 0.3X. So that's much better than our target actually, which is great of course, and a really strong position to act from. So we can be proud of all of this. Moving to my final slide around working capital. So you can see that the total working capital went up a little compared to the previous quarter. This is driven by accounts payable decline, as you can see there in the middle of the table. We had a strong reduction again in accounts receivable. So this is still our main focus, of course, To reduce further, but it's great to see this decline from 120 million to 97 to now 84. It's still coming from the same structural improvements that we talked about last quarter as well. So legal entity rationalization, ERP consolidation, one CRM system, and we also have more capabilities there. A lot of automation and improvements in the background. So this is really great to see as well that it's paying off now. So overall, as a percent of Total customer spent also the receivables is now lower than we have seen in a very long time. Yeah, I think that's actually it from the financial side. We can get Patrick back on the virtual stage and then we open it up for questions.

Thank you, Niels. I am back.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniel Gerberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Hello, Daniel?

Daniel Gerberg, your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Why don't we come back to Daniel? And if you're having a challenge with audio, you can also contact him. Can you hear me now? Oh, yes. Hi. How are you? Hey, Daniel. Good morning. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

We hear you just fine. Can you hear me? Sounds like we're having an audio problem.

There seem to be some technical issues with that.

The next question comes from Daniel Thorson from ABG Sundahl Collier. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much. Let's try with the next, Daniel.

That's right. Can you hear me better?

I heard it was quite noisy, the first one. Okay, so a few questions here. First one on costs. You continue to surprise on the lower end here again. How do you view recruitment and total costs for the rest of the year? What's your plans? and also into 2026. Do you need to invest a little bit more on the cost side to start to see a growth recovery?

Well, I'll start with, and maybe Niels can color in as well, that I wouldn't really frame it as that we're in some way holding back or slowing down cost or investment in order to just be more efficient. Obviously, we've been very effective in our cost management over the past couple of quarters, and we look to continue that level of efficiency as we've consolidated on the unified platform. So the savings we unlocked last year, especially around multiple legacy systems, which we unlock now, is going to be obviously redeployed for growth initiatives. Niels, you want to comment on it as well?

Yeah, no, I would say so as well, but also, of course, constantly exploring ways to accelerate things, right? But at the same time, we want to be cautious and, yeah, we come from far, of course, with the cost, so we also don't want to go overboard right away. if you see good opportunities, we will definitely invest in those.

That's right. Okay, that's clear, thanks. And then on the organic decline here in Q2, it's quite small still, but is it mainly driven by a lower number of customers all in all due to some customer share in recent quarters, or is it entirely explained by lower volumes per customer?

I think it really gets down to the heart of the migration, which is impacting sales in the Sint exchange during these quarters where customers are moving and going through their own process of whether reintegration or retraining there's an obvious change in the volumes between legacy systems and the new SYN exchange. So we would expect as we get through this, that a lot of the challenges in terms of top line growth on the SYN exchange would start to rebound. And so we point at most of this at the moment to be correlated to the migration process.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. And then the final one, you're soon in a net cash position here. What are your alternatives for deploying cash in 26 and beyond? Are there any potential acquisitions you're thinking about or anything else?

Well, obviously, we're not going to announce talking about new acquisitions at this stage. But as Nils just pointed out, we do find ourselves for the first time in a while in a positive cash position. And now that we have started to prove our ability to have a more successful accounts receivable position, also from a free cash flow standpoint, our net debt is in a much better place. And we've proven our major focus for 2020. Now we move to innovation and growth about the opportunity to grow in new ways. And that could be reinvestment back into the company at different levels or something outside. But the key thing for us is that we've accomplished this major milestone of consolidation. which is critical to the long-term success of the business, which gives us now the opportunity to, dare I say, dream a little differently now that we started to prove ourselves effective in execution on several important levels.

Yeah, thank you very much. That's clear.

Well, I appreciate your questions today. Thank you, Daniel.

The next question comes from Thomas Nielsen from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on the visibility you have into organic growth for the second half of 2025 and whether you're seeing any green shoots in client activity or demand pipelines?

Absolutely. Well, in terms of visibility and Thomas, it's good to hear your voice. Welcome back. The obviously we're going through this still this migration story, which is impacting our top line. And so we're spending a lot of time with our customers navigating the final stages of their transition here and really looking to understand the very. Great question that you ask, which is what is our visibility and how do we view their move of volumes of revenue onto the new Sint exchange? Obviously, there's been some friction with that final cut over. But we believe the bulk of that revenue impact is now behind us. In terms of green shoots, what we've seen, we highlight that with Study Creator. This is the DIY tool for our measurement business, which allows our advertising customers to run brand lift measurement projects themselves. And this is a very good fit for middle-sized or smaller customers or customers that are wanting to move quickly. and especially in the European market. And we've seen a substantial growth curve in the number of customers, but more importantly, the volume that each of those customers is contributing to that study creator business in the last quarter. So that's a tremendous green shoot for us as well. Secondarily, we've seen some AMEA growth this quarter, which is something that we've been wanting to see for a while. And especially in our SMB and smaller businesses, the cutover to the nuisance exchange, we've seen a lot of growth there as well above the plan. So I think that's some green shoots there critically. And I expect to see a lot more in the coming quarters as we move again from this migration story, which is very kind of internal operational focused, to more customer and innovation and forward-looking focus with our customers on a go-forward basis.

Okay. And a second question, if I may. Looking forward, when it comes to innovation and new products, could you talk a bit about what kind of new products and services you're planning for the coming years and which customer groups would be well served by these?

Absolutely. Well, we announced our strategic plan in January and that has not changed. And so our innovation stories very much focused on those key areas for our exchange business. One of the key areas that we talk about is premium supply. So these are audiences that are more valuable, but also harder to reach. The key area we often talk about is B2B. So in this past year, we've ran a what I call a B2B cycle with our commercial teams as we learn which suppliers and which buyers are more focused on this. As we start building out the capability to launch what we call the premium marketplace, which is an additional layer to the existing marketplace, which focuses on the needs of premium buyers, premium suppliers, but also the respondents themselves to make sure we're taking care of them effectively. On the measurement side, part of it has been growth outside of the U.S. We speak a little bit about the European opportunity, but also we want to keep adding new channels, new platforms and new types of measures. So, for example, we launching the ability with our verified audiences, the Snowflake Marketplace, the new upgraded integration with Trade Desk. We keep adding new integrations. I think last quarter we announced four or different platforms and partners we go out to. And that's a big value to our customers. And then on which measures we actually provide. So I think a big focus of ours recently has been especially on social media. And there are several different measures and types of channels that we'll be adding for our customers over the coming quarters.

OK, thank you very much.

Absolutely, thank you.

Next question comes from Daniel Gerberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Hello, operator. Can you hear me now?

Yes, welcome back.

Thank you so much. Sorry, my headset was actually broken.

No worries. We had an extra Daniel, so that was fine.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. It's always there. A question starting off with the completed surveys. I think they were down like 15-16% and this is from back of your shift for higher value surveys and you have an election year impact and the platform transition. But can you give some more granularities here on which of these factors that impacted most and how we should think about these going forward, i.e. can we see any annualized effects? supports this going forward.

Good call out there. It's an important part to look at our overall transactional volumes in the exchange business as the number of completed surveys or completed interviews being down. I think it's important to note that while interviews are down a certain amount, obviously our revenue is not at that same level. So it's not a direct correlation between the two. And I think there are three key areas. I think you mentioned two of them outright that we talk about. One is 2024 is an election year. And in an election year, you see customers do a lot of high volume, low value studies that are not replicated for three more years. So the 2024 election in the U.S., huge amounts of values come through the platform that are not replicated in 25. You see a smaller bump in 26, but nothing like 24. And so we won't see really those volume and type of surveys really return to the platform until 2028. Additionally, last third and fourth quarter, we did a review and audit of a certain type of buyer, which we would call low value, which means they were putting types of surveys and types of work into the overall ecosystem that was hurting the respondents and hurting the suppliers. And so there was revenue there. Don't get me wrong, but it was low. the juice was not worth the squeeze. So we remove those from the platform in order to increase the value of the ecosystem and the health of the platform altogether. And then, of course, the other segment is as we've had some softness in the SIN exchange business, particularly through migration, we've seen some lower volume there as well. I think the biggest and most important one in terms of just net volume is the election year tied to that. And then probably split between changing and upgrading our quality of demand, but also just the overall transition of migration, having lower volumes until the lifting is behind us.

Perfect. Thank you. I can also ask you, you know of the verified audience on the Snowflake platform. Can you say anything about the potential you see there in terms of add-on to the growth potential?

Well, I don't want to give a signal on the exact volume or size of the potential there. But what it really is, is an indication of the types of new products and services that Scent can launch that are data oriented or audience oriented through channel partners like Snowflake. So on the measurement side of the business, we've seen the ability for channel sales or channel partners to really scale the business. A great example of that is the Trade Desk. Now we look at the data solutions and data management side of our business, also looking at which channel partners can scale that business. And the first one that we're launching is, of course, the Snowflake Marketplace. We'll be looking for more opportunities to create channel partner relationships so our customers can engage with set data through a third party and through APIs versus calling us directly through a more services-oriented transaction.

Interesting to follow. May I also have a last question on the legacy Lucid customers that you aim for a full upgrade starting in Q4 to come to the new platform features. Is this a forced upgrade, i.e. will we see less cost for legacy platforms already in 2026, or will that be later on? What kind of key risk and opportunities do you see in this work that you start in Q4?

Well, it's important to note that the product architecture or tech architecture that the new Synth Exchange is built on is the legacy Lucid Marketplace. So there's not the same level of consolidation requirement or deprecation, any of those heavy lifting elements that were a focus for the legacy Synth platform. where we had a forced migration, not only of our customers, but also all of our systems. So in that way, by the end of the year, we will have consolidated into a single platform that every customer and all of our internal systems can be on. The upgrade cycle is really for those Lucid customers who want to take advantage of all the new features that we've released in the Synth Exchange. So the legacy SIP platform had a lot of new capabilities, for example, engage the panel platform that those customers want to upgrade and start taking advantage of. So it's not a forced or managed process in the same way. I think probably what you're getting at the heart of it, do we run the same kind of revenue or operational risk? And the reality is we do not have the same level of operational or revenue risk associated with an upgrade cycle as compared to a forced migration cycle.

I'm going to double-click on something Patrick just said. In very clear terms, the underlying data store for Synth Exchange is the legacy Lucid data store. And upgrades to Synth Exchange for legacy Lucid clients is literally the adoption of a superior user experience, a superior UI.

And finally, if I may ask you about, you also write that you will do target final platform depreciation early 26, but no material impact on profitability. Can you just give some more light on this? How should we interpret this not materially?

I think that when you think about what the cost structure of the legacy cent platform is, it's a combination of hosting, but also the teams necessary in R&D to support and maintain that platform. And so part of the reason why we don't expect to see a large cost structure shift is that the R&D element will be shifting from, of course, this maintenance to innovation and growth. And so we don't expect to see a reduction in cost from that perspective. Thank you very much. There will be some improvement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.

Well, thanks, everybody. We do have some questions in the web feed. And by the way, as a reminder, if you have specific questions, feel free to put it into the prompt in the platform. I'm going to start with a question from Victor Hoberg at Donské. It's actually a series of questions, and I'm just going to break them down one by one. First, does the Kantar extension come at new terms that might be a bit more beneficial to Kantar than Sint?

That's a fun question. Obviously, I'm not going to comment on the specific commercial terms of any specific agreement, but maybe I can provide some strategic context for the deal, which, of course, we're extremely proud of. I think the biggest understanding that everyone should have is that we're partnering with Kantar through their own technology transformation. And so we have not only are they integrating with the Synth Exchange, we're partnering with their own transformation cycle that's going on right now. And so Kantar being one of the most sophisticated and largest players in the industry, it's a validation of our overall technology process, but also a validation of the capabilities and features of the new Synth Exchange. So, of course, with every commercial deal, there's a give and take. But what I can tell you is that we're incredibly proud of this mutually beneficial partnership with Kantar.

Moving on to part two, medium measurement Q2 organic growth matched what you specified as underlying growth in Q1. What are your plans for the segment in the next year? Is it possible to accelerate growth further?

Obviously, we believe that we can grow faster with media measurement. We're pleased with the momentum in our media measurement business. And there are key segments that I mentioned before that are really paying off. For example, the study creator business and our overall potential within Europe, as well as payoff down the road for our recent reintegration with the new TradeDesk platform. These types of integrations and moves lay the foundation for growth in the future, for example, with the Snowflake integration for verified audiences. So as we can improve our integrations with existing platforms, these allow for the foundation to not only have sustainable growth, but at growth levels that are higher than the 14.2 we saw on a constant currency last quarter.

And as Patrick alluded to earlier, now that migration is substantially in our rearview mirror, our efforts are pivoting towards innovation. And we also believe that some of the innovations baked into coming quarters will also help to continue to fuel growth. Our next question, our next part here, for how long? Yeah, actually, this was already asked and answered. I'll move on to number four, which is exchange and new platform. What do you expect of volume revenue churn, not customer churn, now in H2 that the last clients roll into the new platform?

Yeah, the question really goes down to what do we expect in terms of revenue as we are turning the page on migration? It's a critical point I think we've mentioned to before, but I'll go back to what I think is critical here. The heavy lifting of the work is mostly behind us with 95 percent of legacy customers already migrated. For that remaining cohort at the beginning of this quarter, we're taking a very hands-on approach. So we've extended some of those deadlines to those customers so they have a service continuity with long-running studies and trackers. This is all meant to reduce friction for this final cutover as best we may. So we are doing everything we know in order to support our customers successfully in this final bit of transition. The focus in our second half of the year is to shift from this active migration to help our customers leverage all the full capabilities and superior features of the platform to grow their business with us. So we're confident that having these customers on a single unified platform is the necessary foundation of returning the exchange business to a growth position.

Good deal. I'm going to move on. There's a few questions from anonymous listeners. The report mentions continued improvement in accounts receivable. Can you briefly touch on the operational enhancements that are driving this and your expectations for working capital going forward?

Thanks. I'll take this one. Yes, as mentioned, we had a lot of improvements there. Of course, you see the number coming down. I think overall, we are normalizing the situation more and more. On the accounts payable side, we should be at the level that's kind of to be expected from here going forward. But then on the accounts receivable, we want to bring it down further, of course, going forward. So the structural improvements was also the question. Briefly spoke about it already, to do a lot with consolidation in the background of legal entities, systems, processes, et cetera. And the final thing that will help is of course also the migration of the platforms, right? So that simplifies also the operations on the financial side going forward. So this is also something we're looking forward to during the next couple of months and quarters to come.

Good deal. We've got a question here. It's primarily around Engage. Again, it comes from an anonymous listener. The presentation highlights the new rebuilt Engage platform for panel management. How does creating a better, more integrated experience with suppliers ultimately enhance value to our customers?

I'll take this one, if I may, Brett. The Engage platform is the newly built panel management platform that existed in the legacy Sint and now in the new Sint Exchange. And this is critical for value to our customers because we have hundreds of unique and exclusive panels that across the globe that our customers rely on to deliver their work. And so it unlocks the ability for especially the Lucid customers to start using this type of panel for their own projects. It also means that our existing panel customers have access to all of our new features and that our sales teams can go out and recruit even more panelists, but also panel customers to engage with Engage. So it's a big unlock of value for us, and we're pleased about its readiness on the Newsom Exchange. Good deal.

And I have one more question out there. Again, I'm going to reword this just a little bit. Now that our net debt is at 0.3 times EBITDA, well below our target, how does this stronger balance sheet influence capital allocation priorities and primarily ability to invest in future growth?

I smile because it touches on a little bit of the questions we've had in the past, which is, I'll frame this question differently. It's exciting from my perspective to be talking about how we should invest in future growth versus how we're solving for challenges through the merger and migration. So the story over the past years have been working capital, has been about migration, has about cost management. What we've proven over three or four quarters is that we have gotten our house in order. Niels and his team have done a great job, not done obviously on a working capital and AR perspective, but we've seen dramatic improvement in our ability to collect and manage our cash flows. Our cost structure is well in hand. We went through a very successful rights issue in partnership with our investors from a balance sheet perspective. And we're at the tail end of this very successful migration story. So now, of course, we're being asked, where do we grow from here? And the fact that we're being asked this question is a key indicator of the success we've had over the past number of quarters of getting our house in order. And I look forward to talking about what our priorities are and our ability to invest in the future. Rest assured. The opportunities are strong. We're going to be able to make the right choices here. But the change of tone from fixing the house to what we're building with our customers in the future is the most critical tone shift I've seen in this organization for quite some time. Wonderful. Thank you, Patrick.

That's it on questions from the audience. Patrick, I pass the mic back to you to wrap.

With that, I think I said the most important bit at the end already, but I continue to want to thank our customers for their partnership with us through this transition from the legacy Sint platforms to the new Sint Exchange. It's been a critical process, important for their business as much as anything important to Sint. So I just want to say thank you to our customers and the ongoing support for our investors is not lost on me. The roughly in USD 60 million that we raised last quarter to improve our balance sheet and pay down some of our debt. These have been important factors. And without your support, we would not be successful in the future. So appreciate your time and attention. Look forward to doing this again in 90 days.