Knowit AB (publ)

Hi and thank you and with me is our CFO as well Marie Björklund. First I would like to take you through some operational highlights during the quarter. We are happy to see continued improvement in both utilization and margin in all four business areas for the first time since Q1 2022. I see this as a clear result of our hard work over the past two years. The improvement Improved profitability is driven by higher utilization, greater efficiency and proactive sales. And this focus has shaped both the quarter and the full year. And as you've seen, after the period we ended, we made a strategic decision to establish a fifth business area products. risk this reflects a clear shift in the market with the growing demand for the combination of consulting and our own ip platforms now it already has several successful offerings in this area with this change i think that we will be able to create the clearer accountability strengthen strengthen our commercial focus um and also provide better conditions for growth in a quite fast evolving market. This business area will consist of approximately 200 employees and the revenue of the operations amount to around 300 million SEK 2025. Thanks to its continued strong financial position and confidence in the group's long-term development, the board proposed a dividend of 2.5 SEC per share, an increase of 9% compared to last year. Next slide, please. We will now take a look at our business areas more in detail. Solutions, our largest business area, accounted for more than 50% of the total revenue reported net sales of 771 million SEK for the quarter. The EBITDA margin was 10%, improving compared to last year. We are happy to see a solid improvement in the business area driven by a positive trend in Sweden, where we have seen signs of pickup in demand during the fall. Our long-term efforts to improve both efficiency and utilization are now really delivering results. Over the course of 2025, utilization trended positively, and I think that this will provide a strong platform for continued growth in the future. Next slide, please. Our digital agency experience reported net sales of 274 million SEK in the quarter with an EBITDA margin of 6.2%. A strong improvement compared to last year. Utilization rates are improving month by month, driven mainly by the development in Sweden. We have invested and worked hard to enhance sales and leadership, which is paying off with a strong pipeline going into 2026. We continue to work towards more advanced and value-creating offers where AI is used. And this is actually creating so much new opportunities for us and for our customers. Next slide, please. Business area connectivity reported sales of around 225 million SEK for the quarter. EBITDA margin was 11.3% improving compared to last year. We are happy to be back in organic growth. This is a combination This in combination with improved utilization creates a really positive momentum, especially projects related to the defense sector develop strongly. But the industry sector is still challenging. And we have also broadened our business with a lot of new sectors and customers. And this position that we have built over the past year positions as well for continued growth. Next slide, please. Business area insights reported sales of around 234 million SEK for the quarter. EBITDA margin significantly increased to 9.1%. We are pleased to see margin improving year by year for the first time since 2023. We have a healthy trend in utilization, mainly explaining the margin improvement. Although the market uncertainty remains and we are experiencing high competition. The increased focus on security and resilience in the society increases the demand for our offerings within cybersecurity and defense. Next slide, please. And I would like to turn to Marie who will walk you through some financials more in detail. And next slide, please. Over to you, Marie.

Thank you, Per. So back to the group as a whole. We delivered sales of approximately 1.5 billion SEK, a decrease of 9.1 compared to last year. But adjusted for perform of acquisitions, divestments and FX, it was minus 4.3%. The number of hours in this quarter had almost no effect. However, fewer employees than the previous year did. The average headcount during the quarter was down by 5%. The adjusted EBITDA amounted to 116 million SEC, up from 106.6 last year. The EBITDA increased mainly thanks to two things, improved utilization and efficiency gains. It is the second quarter in a row with increased EBITDA and EBITDA margin. And this quarter, all four business areas are contributing to the development. The margin was 7.8 versus 6.5 last year. High competition remains, and that means price pressure. It is one of our top priorities to increase prices to compensate for salary revisions. And as mentioned, we continue to see a market that remains challenging, but there is a significant potential to further improve margins and to regain organic growth. Next slide, please. As this closing also marks the year end, I will also comment on the full year performance for 2025. in addition to the quarterly development. We do operate in an uncertain market environment and against that backdrop, we decreased our sales with 9.6%. For the full year 2025, net sales amounted to 5.8 billion. The decline is primarily explained by a lower number of consultants and continued price pressure. The adjusted EBITDA for the year amounted to 337 million compared to 395 million last year. The decrease was mainly driven by lower revenue levels and pricing pressure, partly offset by clear improvements in utilization and continued cost control. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year was 5.8% compared to 6.2% last year. And while the overall picture for 2025, it's not particularly uplifting, it's important to highlight that the underlying trend is improving during the past six months. And we are seeing the effects of utilization and operational excellence in the fourth quarter. Next slide, please. NOIT has recognized a goodwill impairment of 399 million SEC in the fourth quarter. It has no effect on the cash flow and it is a non-recurring item. It relates to the acquisition of Cybercom in 2021. The acquisition of Cybercom has been very significant for NOIT's development. and has contributed to strengthening the customer offering as well as delivering both strong results and a solid cash flow. We view this reassessment as a natural consequence of the current valuation environment rather than an indication of a weakening of our overall business. Know it has a stable balance sheet and a solid financial position going forward. As Per already mentioned, the board has proposed a dividend of 2.50 Swedish crowns per share, which is an increase with 9% since last year. Reported earnings per share for this year is negative due to the non-cash, non-recurring goodwill impairment that I just described. Adjusted for this item, EPS amounts to approximately 4.18 Swedish crowns per share, And the proposed dividend of 2.50 per share amounts to 60%, which is in the upper end of the dividend range, reflecting the view of the expected market development. Next slide, please. So the development in net sales and adjusted EBITDA, both on a quarterly basis and on a rolling 12-month basis. The revenue development should be seen in context of our deliberate focus on profitability over volume during the years. We have reduced capacity where demand has not supported full utilization, which has a short-term impact on revenue, but strengthens the underlying margin quality of the business. Net sales on a rolling 12-month basis have declined compared with last year, primarily driven by a lower average headcount and continued price pressure in the market. At the same time, it is important to know that adjusted EBITDA has stabilized and improved the past two quarters. For the last 12 months, adjusted EBITDA amounts to 338 million SECs, corresponding to a margin of 5.8%, which represents an improvement compared with what we reported in Q3. Importantly, the improvement in EBITDA is not driven by one-off effects, but by structural improvements, higher utilization, and a lower cost base. This provides a stronger starting point as market conditions gradually improve. Next slide, please. This slide shows the development of our net debt and confirms that NOID continues to have a healthy balance sheet and a solid financial position. At the end of the quarter, net debt amounted to 433 million, corresponding to a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.8, which is well within our financial target of a maximum of two times EBITDA. During the fall, we entered into new banking agreements with improved terms, further strengthening our financial flexibility. Interest-bearing liabilities are stable and other liabilities mainly reflect IFRS lease liabilities that do not indicate increased financial risk. With low leverage and significant headroom versus targets, we are well positioned to future possibility and to maintain financial discipline. Next slide, please. We continue to demonstrate a strong and diverse customer portfolio, which is particularly important in an uncertain market environment. Our broad exposure across sectors reduces dependency on individual customer or market. Development in the public sector is strong, up 4% since last year, supported by a solid market position especially in Norway, and also continued good delivery to key clients. This contributes positively to overall stability and growth. The retail and service segment shows stable development, reflecting resilient demand despite a more cautious macro environment. At the same time, industry-related revenues have declined, as several clients remain cautious following a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. The defense segment continues to develop positively, driven by increased demand and a strengthened position among our key customers. Telecom shows stable development overall, where growth in certain areas is offset by structural changes in others. Overall, we consider the mix across the sectors to be healthy and well-balanced, positioning as well to navigate an uncertain market while maintaining long-term stability. And with that, I hand over to you, Per, to sum up.

Thank you, Marie.

Next slide, please.

Yes, next slide. To summarize, we've been able to establish a continued positive trend in utilization across the group with improvements in all four business areas leading to improved margins. We have taken a strategy decision to establish a fifth business area products from the 1st of January 26 with a business model that combines consulting and our own IP platforms. Financially, we will report the figures starting Q1. And we entered the new year with an even stronger position in data and AI, supporting our clients' increased focus on digital transition. The board of directors are proposing an increased dividend to, as we said before, to 2.5 SEC per share. And with that, we are now open for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered in the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioner on the phone requests to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Daniel Gamberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Yeah, someone's called me Durberry as well. Nevertheless, good morning, Marie, and congrats, solid numbers. A couple of questions from my side. Obviously, super interesting, this new business area, products, focus on package solutions and IP and so on. So you gave us a number of 100 million, I think, and 200 employees, run rate 25. Can you share with us a little bit on the software assets you have, how large part of this revenue is, for example, recurring? Is it, and also on the business model, you know, is it customer finance projects? Will you take on the own risk and so on? And how will you differ towards, you know, the number of companies in the past that have tried to do this as well? I know that you have done it for a while, but, you know, all the names from Pecania, Teleca, et cetera, that we have seen that has been less successful. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you. Well, this is something that we've been working with for many, many years. For example, our subsidiary data unit's been part of NOID since more than 20 years and evolving quite slowly, but with really strong results for many, many years in the defense sector. We, as you know, we acquired it in SICON earlier this year. with an ip con connected to to bank and finance we have our own platforms deploy connected to bank and finance since before we have a couple of other smaller platforms that we have started ourselves etc etc and i think that the The key focus here is the business model. This is not software as a service products, to be clear. And if they are evolving into that, we should probably sell them. And this is not only IP developed in customer projects either, because we have quite a lot of that connected to our customers. complete consultancy business so this is an hybrid so the IP that we have is supposed to enhance our relationship with the customer and our consultancy so it's important to stress that we are really good in scaling people not in scaling IP and software so we have been working with this for quite a while and see that this is really a sweet spot where we think that there will be a shift in the market completely connected to AI as well, because the value of IP might go down, but the value of using IP platforms to have a strong relationship with a customer connected to consultancy is going up. and this makes it really good for us to elaborate a little bit more in that area. We will go through a lot more details in Q1, of course, connected to that this is the first time we will present the results.

But if we would have reported in 2025 for this new business area, it's around 300 million SEC and with an EBITDA margin of a little less than 14%. And it's 230 employees. And it's mainly from connectivity that we are creating this new business area, but also a bit from solution.

I get it. And will you also give... indication of the growth profile at that time. Can you say something now if you compare, for example, 25 versus... I know that you have done acquisitions there as well, but... Yes, I think that we will see quite strong growth. That would be interesting to see. And the biggest positive and also if you see some risk to bring all these assets together in one business area compared to before, I'm thinking about incentives across the company culture and that kind of stuff that can be a little bit different in this business.

That's one reason why we are doing it and we have actually been working quite a lot like this for more than one year now so for us internally it's not such a big difference actually. But one thing is the timeframe. I think it's really important that you have a really short timeframe when you work with consultants, especially nowadays when the development is so fast and there are new possibilities connected to what our customers are buying. And AI, we are really good in in change, and we are really good in the whole of now with working with assets in different ways and with platforms, third-party platforms, etc. But in this area, we need to be a little bit more long-term connected to the development, to thinking one, two, three years ahead. So it is a little bit of a different... business model and that's why we have for the last one and a half or maybe two years trying to drive this a little bit differently and we see that that is really successful. So I think by that it's important for us to inform you connected to the market what we are doing.

May I have one more question? I'll follow up on the insight that did really well. I think it was on 4% margin or something. Was it any unusual large number of product delivers or something that drove this? I know obviously that Q4 can be stronger of seasonality, but I have to think if we go into 26 from a year-over-year perspective.

No, nothing like that. Maybe you would like to...

No, there's nothing like one-off in the fourth quarter for Insight. But the Insight business is quite volatile, so it's difficult to draw any conclusions for the future. But there's nothing affecting the fourth quarter.

Perfect. It is a better situation both in Norway and Sweden.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll get back in the queue. Thanks. Thank you.

Yeah, we have actually a question from the webcast from Joni Granqvist at Inderes. In Europe, the discussion about shunning US technology companies escalated into a significant diplomatic and economic dispute at the beginning of 2026. Has this affected you in any way, for example, in public sector tenders? Would you see this as an opportunity or a threat?

Well... I think it is fair to say that we have more of those discussions with some of our customers. As you know, the digitalization industry is completely integrated with a lot of US-based platforms, so it's quite impossible to... make it only Swedish or only European. But of course, there are some discussions about how to be less dependent. And sometimes we help, for example, public sector to do that. And that's... a consultancy work for us to do. I don't think it's a threat, but I also think it's good to be a little bit cautious as a customer what you are doing so that you do the right thing because there are a lot of really good platforms from the US that I think is really good to use. I think the big discussion right now is how to enhance the development of AI connected to our customers. There is a lot of interesting work going on. We increased the efficiency for the customers. There are quite interesting and big projects connected to this. So that's for sure an opportunity. All right. And with that, I don't think that we have any more questions. So then we would like to say thank you from us and please come back if you have anything more by phone or by mail thank you thank you so much