Sinch AB (publ)

Welcome to the Cinch Q2 2022 results. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, so there's no need to mute your own individual lines. And afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. I'll now hand the floor to Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please begin your meeting.

Thank you very much, Operator, and good day, everyone. Welcome to the Q2 2022 conference call with Cinch AB. My name is Thomas Heath. I'm chief strategy officer and head of investor relations. And with me today to present recent developments are Erik Flöerberg, our chairman, Johan Hedberg, our interim CEO, and Roshan Saldana, our CFO. With those opening remarks, may I ask the operator to switch to slide two and hand the word over to our chairman, Erik.

Thank you, Thomas, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Erik Proberg, board member in Cinch since 2011 and chairman of the board since 2015. I also represent Next, the largest shareholder in Cinch. The reason that I'm here is that the board yesterday announced that we will initiate a search for a new CEO. In the past few years, Cinch has grown rapidly, both organically and through acquisitions, and Cinch has established itself as a global leader in cloud communication and customer engagement. We've followed a well-defined strategy. We've acquired eight companies in the last two years, in 2020 and 2021. Through these acquisitions, we've strategically repositioned the company, and we're very confident with the strategic and market position the company has today. Despite our strong strategic and market position, Synch is today facing some challenges, both external and internal. External challenges are related to changes in the macroeconomic environment, high inflation, increased interest rates, higher cost of capital, the current geopolitical situation. This all leads to changes in investor behavior where investors focus more on profitability, cash flow, and to avoid risk. This is something we believe we can cope well with since we've been profitable since day one, since the establishment of Cinch. As regards to internal challenges, they're mainly related to slowdown in growth profit growth in the messaging segment in the last three quarters, combined with continued increase in operating costs. This has resulted in lower profitability. The Board of Directors' assessment is that after a period of large acquisitions, we are entering a new phase where we need an increased and stricter focus on profitability and cash flow. We will also focus on consolidating the acquisitions integrating platforms and extracting synergies. In discussions with Oscar Werner, we have come to a conclusion that we need a new CEO for this new phase and have therefore announced that we will immediately start the search of a new CEO. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Oscar Werner, who's led the company through four years characterized by strong growth and many acquisitions. Johan Hedberg will take over immediately as interim CEO. Johan is one of six founders of Cinch. Johan was also the CEO of the company between 2010 and 2018. Johan knows the company extremely well. Several board members knows him since his period as a CEO, and the board is confident that Johan will be able to take the right steps to improve financial performance, profitability, and cash flow. and also to implement the cost-cutting program that we've announced today. Johan will be interim CEO until we have found a new permanent CEO and a new permanent CEO is in place. With these initial words, I will turn over to Johan Hedberg, our new CEO.