Storytel AB (publ)

Hi and good morning everyone and welcome to Storytel Group's earnings call for the third quarter of 2024. I am Bodil Eriksson Torp and I've been here as the CEO of Storytel Group since October 1st. Joining me today is Titi Messner, our CFO. I'm really glad to be here today. I've been working at Storytel now for four weeks and it has been really exciting. I've spent my time on meeting our brilliant team and getting to know our business. And I would say that I'm really eager to get an even deeper understanding, especially when it comes to our customers and users in the different markets, as well as our products. I've spent over 25 years in the media industry, working with media groups like Bonnier and Aller, And mainly, during all those years, I've been focused on driving growth for strong consumer brands with an emphasis on subscription-based models, combining content with excellent tech. And this is actually where I have my big passion. So someone called me a subscriber hunter, and that's actually spot on. So one of my big goals here is to capture everyone entering our amazing Storytel world. and never ever let them go. Sales and marketing are also in my DNA, so I'm really excited to continue our success to deliver even greater value to our customers and all our stakeholders. Thanks to the hard work done by our team here, the group has delivered the best quarterly financial performance ever with record high revenues of 954 million SEK, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.7%. We are so proud to present these results. And with that, I will hand over to Peter to talk about the details of our quarter performance. So let's move on, Peter.

Thank you very much, Bodil, and welcome to this third quarter earnings call also from my end. Let's start with some operational highlights. Foremost, the profitability improvements we continuously see and report are the result of the disciplined strategy execution balancing growth and profitability. During this third quarter, our paying subscriber base grew by 10% to above 2.3 million paying subscribers, and 40% of that growth was driven by our core Nordic markets. The size and therefore the growth of our subscriber base is, however, not the only focus. It's also the health of the subscriber base, and that is evidenced by the paid churn development, which continues to be on an all-time low. From a content cost perspective, the increased consumption of our own high-quality content from internal publishers again contributed to the improvements on gross margin level. Following the introduction of new pricing plans and differentiated promotions in the Nordics in the second quarter, I'd like to particularly highlight our Finnish market, where we saw an outstanding success with our Premium for Life campaign, which also heavily contributed to the low churn. In total, we saw our subscriber base in Finland growing by 30% year-on-year during this quarter. Our publishing houses continued to release bestseller lists and consumption-topping titles during the quarter, including another Storytel original from the Red Revenge series of Danish author Nis Jacob, and Emilie Schepp's thriller 100 Days in July, published by Neustadt in Sweden, to name just two of the highlights during this quarter. In September, Swedish crime author Sami Cheridi signed a multi-book deal with Neustadt and Storytel, showcasing again the dynamic synergies between our streaming platform and the publishing houses within the group. Let's turn to the financial highlights then. As Budil mentioned earlier, Storytel Group again delivered the strongest ever financial results during this quarter. Group net sales increased by 7% or 8% at constant exchange rates to 954 million SEK. The adjusted gross profit margin improved by 4.6 percentage points year-on-year to 45.7%. Our EBITDA performance was particularly strong, with adjusted EBITDA reaching 178 million SIG, which is up 76% year-on-year. The record high margin of 18.7% during the third quarter also reflects positive seasonality effects in the personnel cost base due to reversals of vacation accruals, as it is the main vacation period during the year. Else, however, the significant year-over-year improvement is driven by the increase in revenues and gross profit and also by the cost efficiency measures that the group has been taking since last year. All these operational and financial improvements are reflected in our operational cash flow, which was 146 million SEK, and in our adjusted operating profit, which improved to 105 million SEK, which is a margin of 11%. Let us turn to our segment performance then. Looking first at the operational performance in streaming, which is our largest segment, we are again pleased with the very strong results. The total subscriber base grew by 10% year-on-year, or 222,000 subscribers, up to an average number of subscribers of 2.36 million during the third quarter. More than 40% of that subscriber growth came from the Nordic markets, which contributed with an 8% growth. while the non-Nodix core region grew 16% year-on-year and contributed 129,000 new subscribers year-on-year. The ARPU, the average revenue per user, remained at a high level and organically decreased by 2% year-on-year or 4.4% when including the adverse currency exchange effects as a result of the expected stronger subscriber intake in our lower-priced tiers. As mentioned earlier, we focus not only on the size, but also on the health and therefore the profitability of the subscriber base, which means all-time balancing of subscriber growth and our pool. We manage this through the ratio of customer lifetime value to our subscriber acquisition costs, and our success is evidenced by the development of paid churn, which continuously is at an all-time low. When taking a closer look at the streaming segment's financials then, we see that total net sales were up to 852 million SEK, which is a 5% increase year-on-year, or 8% at constant exchange rates. Revenue in the Nordics region increased by 3%, based on a subscriber increase of 8%, and an upward decrease of 5%, which is also impacted by adverse currency effects. Revenue in the non-Nordics core region increased by 16%, based on a subscriber increase of 16%, and a slight upward decrease a little bit below 1%. Adjusted gross profit for the streaming segment increased by 11% to 354 million SIG, with a margin of 41.6%, which is two percentage points higher than in the third quarter last year. The total operational expenses significantly decreased, such as the general and administrative expenses, which decreased by 59%, again, including a positive seasonality effect on personnel expenses due to the reversal of vacation accruals during the summer. As a result, the adjusted EBITDA contribution from the streaming segment increased by 56% to 121 million SIG and reflects a margin of 14.2%. And the adjusted operating profit contribution from the streaming segment increased by 142% to 90 million SEK. Let's then turn to the publishing segment. The publishing segment reflects the financials of all the publishing houses within the Storytel group. This is Neustadt's publishing group, Linden Company, Gumoros, and Peoples, as well as our global digital audio publisher, StorySight. The total net sales in the publishing segment increased by 13% to 285 million SEK, out of which the external sales, which account for 54% of total sales, increased by 11% to 154 million SEK, and the group internal sales increased by 15% to 131 million SEK. As you can see in the bottom left chart on this slide, the internal sales show a more stable and increasing development while the increase in the external sales over time is subject to certain seasonality patterns also defined by the print sales. Adjusted gross profit increased by 52% to 98 million SIG, with a margin of 34.5%, which is 8.8 percentage points higher than in the third quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA contribution from the publishing segment was up 48% to 87 million SIG and reflects a margin of 30.5%. And the adjusted operating profit contribution from the publishing segment was 47 million SIG and increased by 141% year-on-year. Both the gross profit and the EBITDA margins follow certain seasonality patterns due to different gross profit margins in print sales versus digital sales and also effects from inventory write-downs. Overall, the increase in margins is not only the result of higher revenues, but in particular also due to the many operational improvements that have been implemented since last year. Let's take a look then at the group's cash flow statement, which shows really the results of the discipline strategy execution and the past cost efficiency measures now. The cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital increased by 88% to 148 million SIG, where the change in working capital was 45 million SIG and explained by the seasonality on accrued expenses, including royalty payments. The cash flow from investing activities reflects our investments into content, product, and technology and was minus 44 million SIG. And the cash flow from financing activities was minus 9 million SIG. All in all, Total group cash flow for the period was a positive 140 million SIG. With that record high cash flow generation, let's have a brief look at the group's balance sheet. There are overall no major movements on very much all of the asset lines in the balance sheet, with total assets at roughly 3 billion SIG and reflecting an equity to asset ratio of 43.9%. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period was at $448 million. The only remaining financial debt is a revolving credit facility. Only after the end of the period, we have extended the maturity of this revolving credit facility until April 2026, for which the related liabilities were still classified as current in the balance sheet as at the end of September. The new revolving credit facility is 700 million SIG, of which 650 million SIG are currently utilized. How does this then translate into the group's leverage? Well, firstly, our operational cash flow, defined as EBITDA, excluding any items affecting comparability, less any operational capital expenditures. was on a record high level with 146 million SIG or 15.3% of revenues. The net interest-bearing debt was 202 million SIG at the end of the period and represents a leverage ratio to the last 12 months of adjusted EBITDA of 0.4. As you can see, the Storytel Group has significantly deleveraged during the past 12 months, down from a leverage ratio of 1.3 at the end of September last year. Finally, so where do we stand regarding our financial guidance for this year based on this strong performance? As a recap, our previous strategic shift towards an increased focus on efficiencies and profitable growth, which was initiated in 2022 and reinforced this year, has led to significantly higher profitability while still maintaining solid growth. With the continued strong competition, particularly in our core Nordic markets, we have applied a fairly disciplined approach to marketing spend, and therefore we have chosen to revise our 2024 full-year revenue growth guidance to around 8%. At the same time, we now expect to be close or reach the previously outlined 2026 mid-term targets of both adjusted EBITDA margin above 15% and operational cash flow above 10% of revenues already this year, which is more than two years ahead of plan.

Thanks, Peter. This performance is a clear statement of the group's strong financial position, and I would say it also opens up for many strategic opportunities. I will work closely with our team to review our business plans and evaluate the different possibilities that we foresee. And with that we conclude this presentation and open up for your questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Derek Laliberte from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Okay, good morning and thank you. Also great to have you on the call, Bodil. I wondered if you could start out by maybe sharing some of your, I know it's early, but some of your key observations perhaps after being on the inside, so to speak, for about a month now. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. As I said, I'm really happy to be here and I've been here for four weeks now. So, of course, I'm deeply impressed about the work that has been done by the team here. All the strategy executions by combining a discipline strategy for marketing investments and also the cost efficiency but also securing the market positions within the different markets that we are in a leading position, as well as we are a challenger. That's really impressive work that has been done. And so far, I would say, even though it's really early time, I'm really impressed by the highly skilled team that we have here within the company, regardless of the different disciplines. that goes into tech, product, marketing, publishing and also finance, to mention some of the skills. So the company is in a really good position now. And of course, my responsibility is to take it to the next level. But even though it's quite early stage.

Got it. Sounds great. If we could move to the Nordic streaming here. Very solid intake of subscribers here. During the summer, you mentioned this really strong 30% growth in Finland. I wonder if you could break it down a little bit and explain how the individual Nordic markets performed there.

Yeah, thank you, Derek, and welcome to our call and good morning. I mean, as you know, we're not breaking out the single countries, but it was worth to really highlight and mention the success in Finland, because you need to put that a little bit into the perspective of our expectations for this year and the overall intake and the balancing really between the profitability of the customer base, the health, and at the same time, the growth outlook in the Nordics as well. What we have been doing in starting in Q2 really, as I mentioned on the operational highlights with the new pricing plans and in particularly the for life campaigns, they are really a very important item in building up a subscriber base that has continuously a very low churn. You can understand that a for life proposition for a consumer is very powerful, right? It comes at a certain short-term cost for us as an operator because we obviously give for life at 50% discount But it comes with a commitment of a consumer to really stay hopefully for the long term and we have seen It's still early on but we have seen these positive developments in the continuously low churn In fact, it's the lowest churn that we continuously have in our business so the combination of exactly these pricing innovations and with a very strong consumer proposition. And the very low churn is exactly that balancing act between how much do you want to push subscriber growth in the short term at higher up or how sustainable and long term thinking with maybe a short term impact on that growth you have. But Finland has shown and we are the number two in Finland, as you know, Finnair has shown that we gained market share with a 30% increase on subscriber growth. That was a clear sentiment that these pricing innovations and the campaigns that we have been running, a student for life campaign and also a time limited premium for life campaign have really been successful. So we look very forward to and that overall supported not only, but to a large extent, the very strong intake of subscribers in Nordics during this quarter.

Okay, thanks for the favor. And on that note, with the different pricing and subscription packages here, how has this Flex time-limited subscription performed? Are you seeing, for example, younger audiences coming in here because of the lower price point and the overall characteristics of that?

I mean, that has been one of the reasons, obviously, to introduce the pricing and the way how we package that product. If you think back a few years and where we really come from in a time up until 2022, where we essentially had in the Nordics and overall an unlimited plan only, we went or the group went really into very differentiated pricing tiers. And one reason for that is not only the competitive part, but it's, of course, also the segmentation of our consumers and really to respond to the various different consumers.

Hello, can you hear me now?

Hi, Derek. Yes, something technically must have happened here with the provider. So I'm not sure how long you could really follow, but just let me know what kind of answer part you still got. And otherwise, I will simply repeat.

Oh yeah, I think we're good on the subscription packages. Thanks for that. I was wondering if we could jump into, I know you're not commenting too deeply on the individual markets, so to speak, but looking at the non-Nordic core streaming segment here, I mean, I would have expected a somewhat higher subscriber intake than what we've had here in Q2 and Q3. So I'm wondering, it's still good growth, but what's really going on there? Is something holding this back or is it the price increases you rolled out, for example?

Yeah, exactly. So let me start with the final item that you mentioned. If you take a look at the ARPU development in the non-Nordics core, you see a sequential improvement on the ARPU, which is the result of the price increases, particularly in the Netherlands and in Poland. So that had an impact. And when you do price increases without adding other services or features, then, of course, this is always a balancing game where testing a little bit the grounds, how much of a price increase can you do, without impacting the short-term churn profile and therefore the intake, right? So there is an effect, obviously, on the subscriber base. What we, however, also did during the third quarter, and we just launched this something like two weeks ago in the Netherlands, is we introduced new pricing tiers. The Netherlands and some of our outside of the Nordic markets markets are not yet changed to our pricing tiers that we have here in the Nordics, which is a basic or a flex, a premium, an unlimited and family plans. So we have introduced this in the Netherlands as well and planned for that introduction. And therefore it made sense to balance the various efforts and the promotions and the campaigns accordingly. So the intake was stronger towards the end of the quarter. But the quarter averages, if you compare them to the second quarter averages, are impacted, so to say, by that. But it's a combination of the price increases that nevertheless increase the ARPU. The ARPU overall in non Nordics core declined by a little bit, but that is also impacted by the currency exchange effects. Overall, the year over year increase in ARPU was a positive almost two and a half percent. So there's a very positive ARPU development. Subscriber intake, exactly as you say, a little bit slower, but intentionally, because we have been balancing exactly these two items. But I would expect that to change now, given what I just said, what we introduced in the Netherlands and what we continuously focus on in some of the other markets.

Thank you. That's great clarity. And can you say something in general on the pricing here? It seems overall, I mean, temporarily higher. churn or slow intake, but price increases have been received pretty well, I would say, over the last couple of years. So what's the plan here? Will you raise prices further?

I need to be very careful with an answer which you hopefully understand based on the sensitivity also towards our competitors. But as you said, the price increases that we did in the Nordics in the beginning of 2023 have been very well received. What happens, as you can understand, is that the composition of the consumer base in the various pricing tiers changes over time when you have new intakes that may preferably join lower priced tiers than you had before, which is, of course, also reflected in the ARPA development in the Nordics over time. With price increases being now passed, if we enter the next year two years ago, there may be an opportunity, but I think it would be too early for us to really commit to anything. But pricing and overall packaging is always something strategically that you need to take a look at into your marketing mix, right? So it is something that every provider in that space has to take a look at.

Okay, okay, perfect. And finally... From your note, the strong cash flows here and the balance sheet as well as you mentioned when it comes to M&A, is this something you're actively pursuing now? And if so, what type of targets are you primarily considering?

I mean, exactly as you said, if we wouldn't do now any investments with the likely net cash position that we would achieve at one point in 2025, As Putin mentioned earlier, this opens up for many different strategic opportunities, and M&A is one of those opportunities in the toolbox that we would look at. We always have open ears and open eyes to see other interesting targets. Is there something that really fits in there? At the same time, this is the time of the year not only for budgeting, but also for strategy revision. Since May, we have new board members, a new chair. Budil just entered four weeks ago. So we take a look, a very close look at our strategic plans and our business plans, and we will update the market if there is anything to update about. But the general answer is, of course, we will always take a look at, especially because we are now in such a strong financial position to be able to really take a look at that.

Okay, great. Thank you.

The next question comes from Fiona Orford-Williams from Edison Group. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. I'm quite new to this story, so if the other analysts will forgive me if I go something a little bit more basic. You're talking about a range of tiers. Can you just tell me a little bit more about how they vary? Is it by content? Is it by access? And then the objective of having those tiers, are you trying to tempt people in at the lowest prices and then manage them up through the tiers to become more profitable for you? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Fiona. I tried to condense the answer and not to go into too many details about that, exactly as you said. But a little bit of history. So as I mentioned before, when Derek was on the call, Storytel had in the core Nordic regions, and generally speaking, with the exclusion of our business with audiobooks.com in North America, really, which is a credit model similar to Audible, a subscription business with an unlimited tier. And unlimited means you pay a fixed amount per month as a consumer, and you can use as many hours as you want listening to the content that you prefer. And content being books, but even reading books. We have e-books, of course, on our platform as So when we started to differentiate, the different pricing tiers now differ in the price that you pay per month. And what you get for the different pricing ranges is different hours for your subscription. So the basic plan in the Nordics is general a 20 hour plan with the flex element where the unused hours can be taken over and rolled over into the next month up to 100 hours. So you can save these hours if you want to listen to them later on. The middle package, so to say, is the premium package where you get 100 hours and the unlimited is still the unlimited hour pricing plan. Then there are family packages that particularly target. And the basic proposition here is obviously, well, why do you want to pay for unlimited at a higher pricing tag if you are not interested to listen, let's say, more than two books per month? And the 20 hours is roughly on average a two book proposition. So it addresses the needs of very different customer segments. and they are interested in reading books. The upselling or the cross-selling that you referred to, that is not in our industry as sophisticated as you may think that it is coming from different other industries. It is more really a customer segmentation opportunity for selecting the right one. But of course, there are these opportunities there as well, depending on certain campaigns that we would run during the year. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you.

And you were talking about this Premium for Life model that you have in Finland. Is that suitable for other markets and are you intending to roll it out?

Yeah, so the Premium for Life was a time-limited campaign. What we rolled out in general in the Nordics during the second quarter and continued into the third quarter was foremost a Student for Life campaign. And the idea behind that was students, reflecting younger audiences in general are a little bit more price sensitive, might be a little bit more casual in their usage of audiobooks with all the other content and all the other entertainment that they are consuming. So we wanted to really create an offer that is very compelling for students. And students for life means a 50% discount on the premium offer for life if you show that you are a student and have to correct the critiation. And if you then stay with our service in an uninterrupted way for life. In addition to the students for life in Finland, we also launched a premium for life campaign for everyone. So not only students, but for really everyone. It was a time limited campaign. And in the same way, a 50% discount on the premium tier if you continuously stay with the service in an uninterrupted way. So that was the offering. It can be suitable in other markets. It depends a little bit on the competitive situation and where we stand. So we obviously take a very close look at what is happening competitively. What is the overall growth and the penetration in the respective market? And does it make sense from a timing perspective to really offer that? But it is based on the success that we had. And again, we had a 30% subscriber growth year on year in Finland. We're very pleased with these results, so we might consider that in other markets as well.

Okay, thanks very much.

The next question comes from Joachim Gunnell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome Bodil. Now you're stuck with us analysts. Thank you, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, if you take a step back, I mean, you highlighted this also that the case in Storytel up until 2022 was about offensive growth. 2022 has been about the turnaround. In the past two years, we've seen a refocus and step change in profitability and cash flow. So call it high level thoughts from you with how you envision the story to unfold for Storytel over the coming three years. Is it more of the same or are there certain other aspects that attracted you to this role?

Maybe I will disappoint you a little bit now, but I think it's way too early to actually point out the direction in this call for the upcoming three years. But I'm confident in the strategy that is running for the moment and all the teams that are working within the company with really high skills and putting out different questions, opportunities and the plan forward. So as we said before, both Peter and I, that we are in the moment where we revise our business plans, looking into the strategies and also thinking about how we can accelerate our business in the long term, of course. to a business that we really can see that we are growing, but also remain the profitability level and are, I think, I mean, the company is really doing well and the teams are, the efforts are good in different perspectives. But as always, in all companies, there are room for improvement, of course. I mean, I have my background also when it comes to marketing and sales. So, of course, it's interesting to look into how we can accelerate our sales within the different countries. But regarding the upcoming three years, I will wait a little bit more before I state the plan for that. But I will come back soon to you. and answer a little bit more specific in those questions.

Thank you. And Peter, so from the Capital Markets Day material in 2023, you provided a bridge on how you would deliver 12% EVTA margins by 2026. From the optics of it, it would look like roughly three percentage points then would stem from gross margin improvements, basically. And now, not even one and a half years after this, you have already improved the gross margin by some four percentage points and are by 2024 at your, I mean, at a higher target here. So on a BTA level. So just help us a bit with how we should think here. How much more is there room to improve the gross margin from these levels? And the current progress, is that the best indicator for your long-term profitability potential?

Yeah, thanks Joakim for that. I mean, there is, I think we indicated this previously as well. We are working a lot on the various elements and it has been a balancing act. You can be a growth company and then you disregard a little bit the profitability. You can do the other way around and not focus a lot on the growth and push a lot of your profitability. And the middle path is the more difficult one that we chose to do because we like to be very ambitious. Right. So it is it is a profitable growth strategy here. And the profitability comes really through all the various measures. We have focused a lot on our own content. And that is really the synergetic reason why we have both the streaming and the publishing segment. And in the publishing segment, the various publishing houses in our business. Because we are creating content and then we are distributing content. So the focus on content creation, the focus on high quality content that really attracts and engages our audience, that is one of the key drivers here, which we might have underestimated, to be honest, how great that content actually is that can drive our internal consumption and by that improve our margins. How much more is possible there? I would leave that question a little bit open because it's also a it must be an intentional decision of how much do you actually want to do there? Because there is always a trade off between how far you want to go and what that means as an effect on royalty payments in the end, potentially as well. On marketing efficiency, we put a lot of focus on that with the team in the last two years, and we have gained a lot of ground. and overall on the cost base as well. So you can always expect, as every other company, what Budil just mentioned, there's always room for improvement because there will be new technologies, there will be process improvements based on how we can further optimize certain steps. We can simplify certain procedures. So there's always a possibility to improve the profitability margin. And then there will be a trade-off as a balancing act. And as part of the strategy that we are revising of, How much more do we want to invest in growth? And do we want that to cost us a little bit on the profitability or not? And that we will update the market on. But I think it's fair to say from where we are right now, you shouldn't expect major deviations. We have already achieved two out of three midterm targets. We are still on a path to deliver all the midterm targets if we want that. And that we will update the market when the time is right.

Okay. And finally, so we're two years now in from the consolidation of audiobooks.com almost. I mean, it appears to be performing actually quite well on a standalone basis, but just comment a bit on, I mean, if there are any synergies at all when it comes to the offering, the technical platform, the payment solution, etc., Or is it perhaps time to review the industrial logic of running this business as a part of Storytel? Have you come any closer to some sort of integration is the real question here?

Yeah, also here, I think it's the same answer. We will take a look at all kinds of things as part of our strategy process, including what kind of positioning do we see and do we want to continue on with audiobooks.com? It's now three years into consolidation. So the business was acquired at the end of 2021. The closing was early 2022. So it's the third full year. And I think it's fair to say that in the beginning of that period, the company followed the company, meaning the group followed the strategy of keeping exactly that very high profitability contributing business in the shape that it is. We have seen a great development during this year. We have upgraded our own budget in the US with Audiobooks.com twice during the year. We had the highest, as we mentioned, I think in the second quarter call, we had the highest subscriber numbers during the second quarter with an intake. The contribution that Audiobooks.com has to the group is above average from a cash flow or from an EBITDA perspective. So it is a very valuable asset that we have here. And we will take a closer look as we will take a closer look at everything in our group as part of our general business plan revision and strategy process.

Great. Can I just question a quick follow up here? So you commented a bit on the several strategic opportunities, as you say, entering that territory into next year. So I know it's a board question, but from a CFO standpoint, Peter, can you comment a bit on what's What's your preference when it comes to the best possible use of capital here, if it is to pay down debt and the RCF or instant dividend buybacks or actually pursue M&A?

It's not about what I as a person or in my role really prefer here Joachim. It's really taking a closer look at exactly what you mentioned. I mean, you can continue deleveraging, but we are already at a leverage of 0.4, which is fairly low and reflects the health from a balance sheet perspective. That opens up the opportunity to do more. M&A could be one thing, and M&A could be very different things as well. You can think of IP, you can think of content acquisitions, you can think of consolidation in the market, you can think of publishers, you can think of all kinds of things, right? So that the toolbox that we can apply and potential targets could be quite manifold. And it is that process that we have with our board of directors to decide the balancing particularly from a from a long term and therefore from a sustainable strategic development perspective what is the best thing to do but it's independent of what i personally would want or would not want to do it's always worth the shot thank you that's appreciated thank you Joachim

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Stefan Ward from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.

Hello. I'm happy to read the report today. Really strong performance, so congratulations and well done on that. I'd like to ask you a few follow-up questions on the OPEX side. There's a very substantial decrease in the DNA cost, especially on an annual basis, not so much on a sequential basis. But can you describe if there's more room to do on the DNA? It seems like that's where most of the OPEX leverage or operating leverage has come from. And also, if you could describe a little bit about how the efficiency improvement in sales and marketing has materialized. What you've done that and what to expect for sales and marketing going forward would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, Stefan. Well, as I mentioned on the DNA costs in particular, so if you think back of how we updated the market with various cost efficiency measures, We've started to make organizational changes in particularly in our content and publishing side here in Sweden towards the end of last year. Q3 executing starting, implemented Q4 last year. And then major operational restructurings at the beginning of this year with an overall 13% headcount reduction. A lot of that is is now fully built into the cost base um that that was implemented during the first quarter then you still had certain effects during the second quarter and you have the run rate effects now fully implemented in the third quarter so that explains a fair deal what you also have in the third quarter and i mentioned it on the on the slide set in the presentation earlier The way how we are handling our personal expenses from a vacation accrual perspective is that we are accruing the vacation pay and then when vacation is taken, and from a Swedish and Scandinavian perspective, the huge vacation time is during the summer, then you have a reversal of these accruals which have a positive impact on your margin or on the cost base first and then on the margin. So that is not necessarily now reflecting in the third quarter from a run rate perspective, because you should reflect that correction going up a little bit from a cost perspective into the fourth quarter. But overall, year on year, nevertheless, you have a significant reduction in our operating cost. On the marketing and on the marketing efficiency side, exactly as you said, and as we updated, I believe, the market since I came in from the second quarter earnings call last year, There have been a lot of low-hanging fruits that obviously have been taken. There have been a lot of continuous improvements in the overall marketing way. And the marketing efficiency, you need to think of subscriber acquisition costs and the way how we define at what point in time, in what market and what channel are we acquiring customers, how much does that cost and how much in particular does it relate So the customer lifetime value that we can expect from such subscribers. And that's a balancing act that I referred to earlier as well, especially when we do certain campaigns like the for life campaigns. Then it has a certain short term impact, but it has a very positive long term impact as well in terms of the lower churn and the health of the subscriber base. So there is always room for improvement and continuous fine tuning in all these measures. Also taking a look at how the world is continuously developing. And what I mean by that is how different media channels are involving, what the competitive environment is, how we focus or refocus maybe on certain consumer segments within our overall segmentation strategy. So there's always something that we will be able to do. But I would not expect necessarily from CFO perspective the huge jumps that we've seen in the last two years because these were really the more disruptive changes as part of the transformation and now it's really going to be more fine-tuning.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Peter, for that clarification. I would also like sort of an update educational-wise on how the publishing segment is functioning now with story side, having been moved to this segment for a few quarters, because it changed the gross margin profile quite a lot. And overall profitability, I'm surprised, at least me, on the positive side. So can you just sort of describe how this business looks like now? Any level of detail is appreciated, please.

It's always great that we can surprise you, Stefan. I know that's not so easy, actually. So I take that really as a compliment. So when we introduced the new segment financials and the segmentation in the way how we show the operating segments in the second quarter, what we said back then was that we followed the way how we already have been operating. So there was a little bit of a lag how we updated our segment financials financials and the overall operating segments in the external report as compared to how under the previous CEO we already started to work with the segments anyway. And as I briefly mentioned as a reminder in the presentation, the publishing segment reflects all the financials and therefore the operations of all the various publishing houses. So it is our more traditional print publishing houses like Newstead's publishing group, It is Linden Company, it is Gumeros, and it is Peoples. And then it is also StorySide, which is a purely digital audio publisher. And the way how we run them is, of course, in both a collaborative way, but also in an independent way, because they still have their very own value propositions, either out there to the market based on their imprints, The way how they work with the authors, but also how they focus on, and that could be different genres and different formats. So there's a very distinct leadership per publisher, but nevertheless, a collaboration in terms of what do we want to achieve from a group level. And then on top of that publishing segment and that setup, you obviously have that collaboration with the streaming segment because roughly half of the publishing segment's revenues come from internal sales within the Storytel group. So that is exactly that synergetic value. If you take a look at the gross margin profile in streaming and the gross margin profile in publishing, and then at the gross margin profile of the entire group, that gross profit margin in the group is higher than the single one. So one plus one is three in that respect because of the synergetic nature that we have of our internal publishers and the way how we can use that high quality content in distribution.

That's a great description. Thank you very much for that. I have a question also regarding the Netherlands. Spotify has launched there. Have you signed a content deal with them or can you give any insights to how they have secured content for that market? And what has been the sort of initial impression from that? I know it's early days, but if you have anything to say, it would be helpful.

Yeah. It is indeed early days, so I cannot comment too much on that. We actually started, I mentioned it, I think, on the question from Derek in relation to our subscriber development in the Nordics core markets, where the Netherlands is one of the key markets, right? Roughly a week, a week and a half before Spotify launched, we actually launched our own new pricing tiers. So we previously only had an unlimited product offering in the Netherlands. And we differentiated that in alignment or similar to what we have here in the Nordics, which is a basic flex introduction, a little bit different from the number of hours that you can consume, a premium and unlimited and also the family packages. So as we started very close to when then Spotify started with their launch, it's very difficult actually to extract now certain developments because they are interfering with each other. We're not licensing any content to Spotify in the Netherlands, that is fair to say. Other than that, it's too early. We have totally expected that Spotify would launch in the Netherlands. They not only launched there, they also launched in the other Benelux countries and in France. But from our core market overlap, so to say, only the Netherlands is really relevant for ourselves to look into. If I compare to what happened in the fourth quarter of last year when Spotify launched in the US and we have now almost a year of data for our Audiobooks.com development, then I'm actually very positive looking forward to the overall category of audiobooks being lifted by yet another very big player entering the market and doing a lot of promotion for audiobooks as well. We mentioned that several times. We have seen a lot of tailwinds in the U.S. because of Spotify's entry. They have essentially made the cake much, much bigger by converting their own music listeners to also listen to audiobooks. And that is a very positive impact on that entire industry. So something similar, I'm very much looking forward to in the Netherlands as well. But again, it's a little bit early days to share any more conclusions out of that.

Okay, thank you very much. Great numbers. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Stefan.

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

Yes. Thank you so much for relevant and good questions. And thank you, Peter, for really interesting and detailed answers in many of the questions. Of course, I'm looking forward to the next chapter here, and hopefully I could also join with a bit more of answers to the questions on the next call. During the time I will work on and together with our dedicated team here at Storytel and also our board of directors. I'm quite confident that we have all the driving forces to continue our success. So I'm really looking forward to this. Thank you for joining us today and we're looking forward to meeting you soon again.