Knowit AB (publ)

My name is Per, and with me is our CFO as well, Marie Björklund. First of all, I would like to take you through some operational highlights during our first quarter. We continue the trend from Q4 with gradual improved utilization rates. Our largest business area solutions continues to show solid performance and lead the way for the rest of the group. We are happy that we've been able to stabilize the development in experience during the quarter. We have a continued focus on sales and client relationships, leading to investing in new interesting and new assignments during the quarter that we have assigned. And we maintain, of course, our focus on cost awareness and efficiency. And that is very important to secure success. a continued positive development in these markets. We can take the next slide, please. Take a closer look into our business areas, starting with solutions. Our largest business area accounting for more than 50% of our total revenue reported net sales of 880 million SEK for the quarter. The margin increased to 9.1%. And we are happy that the utilization rates continue to improve. This is an effect from the organizational work done over the past year. But the geographical differences remain. Norway is a more stable market, but we now see some slow but steady market improvements in Sweden as well. Next slide, please. Our digital agency experience reported net sales of 286 million SEK in the quarter with an EBITDA margin of 6.2%. We still meet challenges, but we are very encouraged over the stabilization of utilization rates that we have seen in the quarter. This is a step in the right direction. We see an increased client interest in Sweden, but from low levels. And the trend continues from the end of last year, which is promising. The plan for how to continue to improve experience lay firm. We can take the next slide, please. Business area connectivity. We reported net sales of around around 208 million SEK for the quarter, margin 8.3%. We have had challenges in the quarter, mainly due to decreased demand in the telco sector. This has impacted the business a lot. We have made critical investments in our sales capacity, important to move back to organic growth. And we note strong interest from clients in this industry segment. And the pipeline looks promising for the rest of the year. I can take the next slide, please. Our management consultancy Insight reported around 230 million SEK for the quarter. The EBITDA margin was close to 6%. In Insight, we continue to work to balance good demand in some areas with need of cost control and optimize the organizations in others. And as you have heard before, cybersecurity, defense, and ERP systems remain areas where we show a really good growth. But we see that the demand for traditional management consulting services remains weak. And with that, I would like to... Next slide, please. And with that, I would like to hand over to you, Marie. We can take the next slide, please, again.

Thank you, Carl. So back to the group as a whole, we delivered sales of approximately 1.6 billion SEK a decrease of around 10%. There's a negative calendar effect of the quarter. However, it is small. It's just one hour. Also notice that we are at the end of the quarter, 337 employees less than previous year. So the organic decrease in sales was expected. The adjusted EBIT day amounted to 104.5 million SEC for the quarter. a decrease compared to the same quarter last year. This leads to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.6% in the quarter. Last year it was 7.7%, so here we also have a decrease. We see that the market is still challenging. It's fragmented and competition is tough, but we do see some signs of improvements. Solutions is improving utilization since the second quarter of 2024. experienced utilization has stabilized. All in all, the utilization is slowly getting better for the whole group. We're working on our hourly rates, and we managed to raise prices towards clients also in the first quarter, but not to the full extent to compensate for salary increases. Despite this, I want to stress that our main challenge and also opportunity for growth and improve margins is our utilization. We have the good potential to continue to increase utilization. We have the right competencies and have done hard focused work on our cost structure. However, fixed costs are harder to work on. 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 363 million and revenues at 6.2 billion at an EBITDA margin of 5.8. Next slide, please. This is an overview of our net debt development. We have 500 million SEC in used credit facility and NOAA has a total credit facility granted of 1 billion 50 SEC. Future considerations amount to 18 million. Other liabilities, mainly leasing debts, amount to 470 million SEC. This totals a net debt of 625 million SEC, and divided with our EBITDA of 508 on a rolling 12-month basis, we are at a leverage of 1.2. We have a stable balance sheet and a good financial position. Also, this means that we are well within our financial target, which is set not to exceed two. Next slide, please. We have a solid platform and a strong position as a digitalization partner in the Nordic region. The share from the public sector is stable compared to last year, a positive sign as the share in this sector has decreased during last year. Competition, however, remains tough. We see that the retail sector continues to improve, potentially a consequence of general improvements in the economy. We have a strong and solid position in the industry sector, partly thanks to good development in the defense sector. The negative development in the telecom sector primarily relates to one significant client. And all in all, clients remain focused on business critical projects, also in an economic downturn. And with that, I hand back to you, Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Marie. Well, to summarize, we see a continued positive trend and stable delivery in our largest business area solutions, where both utilization and margin have improved during the quarter. We have also been successful in converting the pipeline and signed several new agreements in the quarter. We see improvements in experience with the stable utilization. We maintain our focus on sales and cost control. And of course, we are proud of our very strong position in the Nordic market as a partner connected to digital transition. particularly in the fast-growing segments like defense and cybersecurity. Well, with that, we are now open for some questions. Thank you.