Knowit AB (publ)

Thank you very much and I would like to start to introduce myself and Marie here. We are going to take you through some operational highlights during the first quarter for Möwe. As you saw, we start with a stable trend for the year. At the end of last year, we were able to stabilize our utilization and I think that this trend has been continued into Q1. Although it is on a low level and our focus on sales and cost remains, it's yet too soon to say that we see a broad market recovery. We do, however, note some improvements in certain parts of Sweden. We reported decreasing net sales compared to Q1 last year, and this is mainly explained by negative calendar effect and of course fewer employees. I have to say that the calendar effect is quite big this quarter. Marie will go into that later. We also see some geographical differences and of course the biggest challenge is in Sweden, while Norway remains somewhat stable. We can take the next slide please. Take a look at our biggest business area solution. We have an EBITDA margin of around 8.4%. It's a decrease compared to last year. But both margin and sales are somewhat stable compared to Q4 2023. Our efforts to optimize our organization pays off with utilization stabilizing. There are in solutions as well big geographical differences, while Sweden has the largest challenges. As we talked about in Q4, we see a better market in Norway. We also have several strong partnerships with clients there, for example the police authorities that we signed in Q4. In both Norway and Finland, we see positive margin development for the quarter. We can take the next slide. Going into experience, our digital agency and experience is facing the largest challenges in the market for time being. That is impacting both sales and margin unfortunately. The margin was .4% and that's substantially lower than last year. We were intensely to reduce costs and capacity to adjust the organization. Of course in parallel with that, we have high focus on sales activities to improve utilization. Also in experience, Sweden remains the most challenging market while we see higher margins in Finland, Norway and Denmark. We can take the next slide going into connectivity. Connectivity reports sales of around 290 million SEK for the quarter. The margin was in line with last year, a little bit higher in Sweden, a little bit lower in Poland. We have a strong delivery in the quarter, but difficult to assess the current market, particularly in the industry segment. We are pleased to have prolonged and extended our frame agreement with Saab. It's a very important customer for time being and I think it's going to be a very important customer for the future development. Within connectivity, we have several different product initiatives that are developing really well during the quarter as well. We can move to our management consultancy. The next slide is insight. In insight, we are reporting sales around 235 million SEK for the first quarter. That is actually a slight growth compared to Q1 2023. The margin was lower, 8.4%. We see a stabilization from Q2. We are pleased to see a small pickup in demand for general management consulting in Sweden. There is a continuously stable development in defense and cybersecurity and legal services. That is a trend that has been going on for several years now. We also see, and this is new since last year, a rapid development within AI. That creates new need for competences within legal organization and processes, opening up new opportunities for us in this business area. With those highlights for business areas, we are now going into our Q1 figures a little bit more in detail. I hand over to you, Marie.

Thank you, Per. Next slide, please. We can go to... Yes, exactly. Perfect. Thank you. I want to start with comment on the figures for the business areas that Per talked about before I go through the overall numbers. We made a change in the classification of net sales per business area. We are now including deduction for internal direct quotes, which impact margins positively for each business area. We're doing the adjustment to encourage cooperation and comparable figures are updated in the report. You'll find them there. There is no effect on the know-it group as a whole. Back to the total figures for the quarter. We delivered sales of approximately 1.8 billion SEC, a decrease of 10.4%. Adjusted for FX effect, revenues declined by 9.9%. There are three things that I would say are affecting the decline. First, we have the calendar effect. We have 14 hours less than last year, which is a rather big effect on the figures. Second, we have a decrease in number of employees. The net recruitment of the quarter was minus 156 versus minus 33 last year. All four business areas have a negative net recruitment. This is influenced by our deliberate measures to slow down recruitment and adjust capacity. We dismissed 73 employees during the quarter due to low utilization, which also ended in 13 million SEC in restructuring costs. The third reason is that we do have a stable utilization, as Per mentioned, but it is still on a too low level. EBITDA amounted to 136 million SEC for the quarter, a decrease compared to the same quarter last year. This leads to an EBITDA margin of .7% in the quarter. Last year, it was 10%. As we already mentioned, this margin decrease is due to the slowdown in demand that has been. And it's causing lower utilization, affecting several markets, Sweden in particular. We still see that our hourly rates increased compared to a year ago, even though we are experiencing price pressure. And reducing capacity has been one measure to protect margins, although I want to highlight that we're still recruiting in areas where we see good demand, and we will continue to do so. And another measure that we've taken is cost cutting. And during the first quarter, we saved 19 million compared to last year, which is according to our plan. And the cost cuts are referring to conferences, travels, marketing events, and post projects and more. Next slide, please. This slide shows the development over time and also on a rolling 12-month basis. Our adjusted EBITDA for the latest 12 months is at 436 million and revenue at 6.9 billion SEK, which is an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.3%. The past year has been a year of challenges in demand and utilization. And in connection to that, of course, action to improve our margins. We mentioned cost savings and reductions of capacity, a work that we will benefit from for a long time to come. We have also increased our sales capacity and made a successful switch from recruiting to sales that has created a solid base for taking on the rest of 2024. Next slide, please. This is an overview of our net debt development. We have 500 million SEK in youth credit facility. Now it has a total credit facility granted of 1 billion 50 SEC. Future considerations amounts to 41. Other liabilities, mainly leasing debts, amounts to 537 million SEC. And the amount has decreased since last quarter because of amortization. This totals a net debt of 884 million SEC and divided by our EBITDA on a rolling 12 month basis, we are at a leverage of 1.4. We still have a stable balance sheet and a good financial position. And also this means that we are well within our financial target, which is set not to exceed two. And I think it was last time I got a question concerning the covenants to the bank, and I can assure you that we are well within these as well. Next slide, please. We have a solid platform and a strong position as a digitalization partner in the Nordic region. Having a broad footprint is a strength in tougher times. The share from the public sector has decreased compared to last year, following a softer demand in some areas compared to a year ago. We noticed a growth in the industry sector driven by a good demand. But as Par said, the market visibility isn't that good at the moment. We also see a decrease in our telecom industry following lower demand from large telecom companies. All in all, clients remain focused on business critical projects, also in an economic downturn. And of course, the mega trends are driving the need for digitalization in all our industries. And with that, I leave it to you, Par, to say some final words.

Thank you, Rory. Well, to summarize, we

can

take the next slide. We see a stable trend continues from Q4 last year with utilization. That's important. Although the market is still hesitant, we continue to keep our focus on cost control and sales activities. And I have to say that there is really high activities connected to sales right now. I think that's very important. We see quite big geographical differences in the Nordics with the toughest situation, as I talked about in Sweden. I think that we are really well positioned when the market turns. And this is thanks to our intense work to optimize our organization. But also that we continuously invest, although we have tough times, we invest in new offerings and we develop new offerings, not least the offerings around AI. And with that, I would like to open up for some questions. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have answered the question. If you wish to remove yourself from the question, press star and two. Participants who have requested choose only answers for asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of guest, Stugemål, Anders Banken. Please go ahead.

Hello Per and hello Marie. Thank you for taking my question. On the 70 employees that were asked to leave here in Q1, you were taking a restructuring charge of 30 million. Should we expect some additional cost here in Q2? And those 70 people are both related to the solutions or experience mainly, or maybe to the Finnish market also as it's a bit easier to lay off people there?

Yes, hello. The reduction of employees, it's actually in all four business areas, but of course it's mainly in solutions and experience. And it is true that it is also concerning Finland. And can you repeat what the, yeah, you asked also what effect it has in the second quarter? And I would say that we haven't seen yet most of the effects for these 70 employees in the first quarter. So the effects that we expect to come middle or late part of the second quarter. And the costs are, it's not, we don't take restructuring costs for all 70 people. Some of them are still like working and taking salaries. So by end of second quarter, we expect to see the effects. And with that said, we might have restructuring costs in the second quarter because we are of course always looking at adjusting our capacity and reducing the capacity where we don't see that we have a long-term demand.

Okay, thank you. Yes, that's perfect. Thank you. And on the net recruitment here, average employees is down around 6% -over-year entering Q2. When do you think you would dare to push the gas on the recruiting once again? What's your belief here? Is it first in the later part of 2024 or is it somewhere in 2025?

I think it's safe when we know we know. I have to stress that we are pushing the gas on the throttle in both defense, cybersecurity in some areas in Norway. But as you see in the figures, the total is down. So for us, it's very important to be selective in different market segments and geographical segments. I think that we will see a somewhat stronger market in the end of this year or in the autumn, but it still remains to be seen.

Yeah, all right. Thank you. That's all me and jump back in line. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Raymond K. from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Padamaru. A few questions from me. First one, it is admittedly a challenging market out there and customers are more cost aware than a year ago. Do you expect to keep a positive price-wage balance ahead? Any color on that?

I think that it's going to be tougher than ever to increase the yield, the difference between prices and salaries. But fortunately, we have a very solid and quite low growth of wages between 2023 and 2024. We also see some increases in prices compared to last year with index regulations. I think that we will be okay, but we will not increase that yield during 2024.

Got it. And you emphasized before, Per, that there is really high sales activity, but you were also hesitant to connect this to staff growth or net recruitment. Could you provide some more color into what you mean with high sales activity and how we should think about that in terms of growth?

Well, as the market is structured right now, there is especially in some areas, for example, in the Stockholm area, where there is a lot of customers connected to public sector, there is... And this is the first time for a long time we have this situation, but there is a possibility to both hire and recruit highly skilled consultants. So it's important for us to find those new assignments. One salesperson that I talked to the other day here in Stockholm said that we have to sell 10 times more to sell the same amount of revenue compared to last year. So that's the situation in the market. And of course, there are new deals to be done, but there is a lot more competition connected to those deals.

Got it. Well, that's all for me. Thank you very much. I'll get back in line.

Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Start by one.

All right. Do we have some questions from the web?

We have a question from Victor Higgons as Independence as Management. Question is regarding EVS margins. Do you expect your new improvements from Q2-24 given the lower basis or comparison?

We don't have any outlook for that. But of course, when we look into our efficiency work that we have done, we are a bit less people and we see a stable trend compared to Q4 connected to margin. I think we are on the right path anyway. Do we have some more questions? All right. Then I think it's time to end this call. And thank you for listening in.

Thank you

so much.