Storytel AB (publ)

Welcome to Storytel Q2 Report 2026. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the CFO, Stephan Ward. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning and welcome to our earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. Regarding today's call, I will be hosting it on my own as Bodil had an accident at her home this morning and dislocated her shoulder. She's unable to attend and needs to have the shoulder looked at. Aside from that, she's doing fine and she'll be back soon as she's sorted out the problem with the shoulder. We're pleased to report a solid performance for the second quarter with strong revenue growth and continued margin expansion. On the back of this solid organic performance and the acquisition of over Amstel, we are raising our 2026 full-year guidance for adjusted EBITDA to be at least 900 million from earlier 870 million. During the quarter, we also completed our transfer to the Nasdaq stock of main market. Now, let me take you through the highlights. On top line in the quarter, we grew our net sales in constant currencies by 12.7%, of which 10.7% are organic growth. The adjusted EBTA margin came in at 19.2%, up from 16.8% a year ago, and equal to a total growth year-on-year in EBTA of 27%. Our net profit more than doubled to 100 million kronas from 47 million and our earnings per share came in at 1.18 up from 0.54 a year ago. We ended the quarter with a slight net debt of 14 million and a very modest gearing. In terms of subscribers, we grew our base by 7.2% year on year to a total of 2.75 million customers end of period. A highlight here is that this is the first quarter when our subscriber base outside the Nordics is actually bigger than the subscriber base in the Nordics. During the quarter we added 11,000 from Q1 and year-to-date we added 83,000. Growth year-to-date is led by our European segment. Looking at our streaming or publishing business, we grew sales by 32% in constant currencies and we expanded our EBTA margin for publishing to 31.3% up from 27.4% a year ago. We acquired over Amstel during the second quarter and it is consolidated as of June. As mentioned, we raised our full year guidance and we completed our move to the NASDAQ main market. In terms of product innovation, we had significant progress in the quarter with the launch of Storytel Genie and our author platform, Storytel Pulse. Moving on to the next slide, we can see the bar charts for net sales showing solid progress with the growth rate already mentioned, 12.7%. We have a strong development on the gross margin. It's up one percentage point year-on-year to 46.3%, while our adjusted EBITDA came in at 205 million for a margin of 19.2%. Cash flow from operations. Cash conversion is solid, and the cash flow from operations are 170 million before changes in working capital. to move to the next slide. Looking at our annualized development, it highlights our significant margin expansion over the past 10 quarters, moving from 9% EBTA margin in the first quarter of 2024 to 19.8% at the end of Q2 2026. During this period, we have also exceeded the market expectations on the EBTA levels. of the past nine quarters. On a rolling 12-month basis, our EBITDA are currently at 1,823 million for a growth year-on-year of 22%, and the margin is at 19.8%. This means that we are very well on track to realize our 2028 targets, which stipulates an annual sales growth of at least 10%, with the EVTA margin at the end of 2020 of at least or plus 20%, and we are already at 19.8. Moving over to our publishing segment. It's a very strong quarter with strong growth in both net sales and gross profit and EBITDA. External sales increased by 32% in constant currencies driven by higher digital external sales and improved commercial terms and newly acquired publishers such as Overarmstead. Our gross margin is at 35.8% up from 31.2% a year ago. Our EDTA came in for publishing came in at 108 million up from 82 million equal to a growth of 32% year-on-year and a margin of 31.3%. Stronger growth also in operating profit. Oberhamstel was acquired in May and consolidated as of the beginning of June. Next slide. In streaming, our subscriber base grew 7.2% year-on-year to 2.75 million. It's up 185,000 on an annual basis. As we mentioned, 11,000 subs were added in the quarter and a total of 83,000 for the first half. Our performance in our European segment is strong, with 13% growth in subscribers, 18% growth in sales in constant currencies, a stable ARPU and a total of 1.07 million subs. We also deliver solid performance in our Nordic segment, with a 4% growth in subscribers and a 6% growth in reported sales. in constant currencies driven by a slightly higher ARPU level. The run rate for the first half is slightly below where we were a year ago. This is primarily due to campaign planning. As you know, we had a really strong first quarter, and that has some dampening effects on how subscriber growth were in the second quarter. However, for the full year, we target to add at least the same amount of net tax for the year as we did in 2025, suggesting an acceleration in net intake during the second half, and the outlook for the third quarter is promising. On the churn level, we remain at a very modest level. We've seen a continued decline in churn rates for a long time. Regarding the Nordic segment, you can see a tiny pickup in churning in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter. It's relatively undramatic and explained by the development in Finland, where we changed our campaign mix, which had a negative impact on churning in Finland. In the Swedish business, we had a stronger net intake in Q2 this year than we had in Q2 last year. Retention in our core base remains strong. In terms of ARPU, it's essentially flat on the group level. It's offset. We've done price increases in a few markets. Those are a little bit offset by regional mix changes. So the important takeaway here is that in local markets and in local currencies, prices across the board are either stable or improving, while the mix with our non-Nordic part of the business growing at a more rapid pace than our Nordic part, that has a dampening effect on the overall group ARPU, as it should, because of the differences between ARPU levels in the Nordics and outside the Nordics. Nordics ARPU increased by 2% to circa 154 on higher price points. As you know, we did a price increase in Unlimited in Sweden at the end of 2025, and that has, it didn't have that much impact on Q1, but it was a little bit more impact in Q2. Worth highlighting also is our weaker ARPU development in Americas. which is down to 129 kronas in the quarter, down from 138 a year ago. That is primarily due to FX, but also slightly due to mixed changes as we grow partnership customers, and we have also quite good growth in our left-hand business, which are at lower price points than in the U.S., Moving on to the next slide please. Unreported numbers, streaming are growing at a little bit more than 8%. You can see Europe is growing very nicely with 18.2% in sales. America is slattish. Gross margin is expanding to 41.2 up from 40.9. Good growth in EBTA year-on-year and the solid marketing improvement in the EBTA level. So overall, we're satisfied with the performance of our streaming business. Moving on to the cash flow statement. We can see that cash flow from operations came in at 170 million, so we continue to have a really good cash conversion of our operating earnings. We had a slight headwind in working capital, it's nothing dramatic, it's a little bit seasonal impact, headwind of 21 million for a total cash flow from operation of 150. We used the cash flow in our investing activities. It was negative by 237 million, of which the bulk of that is the over-amstel acquisition. And the rest is ordinary investments in content. Cash flow from financing activities was a total of minus 100 million, including our dividend of 140 million. The cash flow for the period was negative 187 million, which brings us to slide, move to the next slide, this balance sheet. You can see there that the net interest rate at the end of the quarter was 14 million. Other than that, we grew our asset base to 3.7 billion, of which 2 billion is equity, so the equity to assets ratio, ratio includes the 54% from earlier, 46. so our financials remain solid and strong. Next slide, please. With that, I can summarize that we had a really solid performance in terms of sales growth, plus 12.7%. EVTA margin expansion continues to improve, up 2.3 percentage points year-on-year to 19.2%. We raised our full-year guidance. We had really strong releases on our user experience in terms of Storytel Genie but we also released our author platform Storytel Pulse these are important product developments where we put a lot of emphasis internally in our business to continue to stand out when it comes to the user experience of our service and we also tailor to the authors that they can really see the benefits of being part of our group and we have got really positive responses both from our end customers but also from our authors regarding these releases. We have strong financials. They support an active M&A agenda. We are very pleased with the Over Amstel acquisition that we finalized in May. Over Amstel is a really impressive company. It has created a platform for us in the Netherlands from which we can actually drive growth in the Benelux region. So we're quite optimistic on that. It's a great team that have joined our group led by Martijn and a really strong portfolio of publishers that have been with the company for most of them have been with Martijn for in the range of 10 to 20 years. So that's a really high quality team that is joining us And this is an important proof for us to broaden our taking our successful Nordic strategy outside of the Nordics and try to drive a similar success in continental Europe. So we're excited about that and we are continuing to look for additional assets to bring to the group. So expect more from us on the M&A front. We're well on track to deliver on our mid-term targets, our 2028 targets, as you can see from the current performance, and we complete the transfer to the main market. And that was a speedy and efficient process, carried out during the spring, which is a good proof that we have all our internal policies and procedures well in place. With that, I think we can head over to the Q&A section.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Joachim Gunnel from DND Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Just from, I mean, it's a very strong result, but on the NetAds, can you just explain what initiatives are in place to re-accelerate NetAds for age 2, and what is your line of visibility when it comes to that? Thank you.

Yeah, so we have a campaign agenda or calendar planning, which is, in this year, it was tilted a little bit towards Q1. And we, as you remember, we have a really strong start of the year. Strongest start since the pandemic. And that had a little bit of a dampening effect on our Q2 numbers. However, we're well prepared for increasing our net intake in Q3 and onwards. So on the run rate level, it's around 20,000 lower in the first half of this year. And that will be... We expect that to be recouped, at least recouped, and possibly even a little bit higher during the second half, starting with the Q3. Disability into Q3, we have had a good start of the quarter, but as you know, we're only one month into the quarter, but it looks good so far.

Lovely. On your European segment as the key growth driver, The gross margin trajectory on the group is, of course, positive year over year, but you see slight headwinds here. What makes you sure that this incident that took you to, whereas what can be done to reverse the gross margin crash in the European segment?

Well, the gross margin in the European segment is impacted if we grow. Certain markets where we have strong growth have a slightly lower gross margin. If you take Poland, for instance, it's slightly lower than in the Netherlands, as an example. It's not a big issue, it's just a mixed change. We see fundaments for us to, over time, have a really supportive gross margin also in the European segment. So it's nothing that we on the group level. We will continue to prioritize growth in the European segment as we are in a very strong position in many markets where we are market leaders and those markets are in early stages, so it's more important to focus on growth there than optimize on margin.

Finally, on the guidance rate here, you have re-established credentials of meeting or beating your guidances. So just on a 12-month training basis, you are tracking at or just below your 28 margin target. So just help us with how you think with regards to to if you should, at this level, target to re-accelerate growth rather than optimize for profitability, or if the current run rate on an EDTA drop-through is actually achievable over the coming two years as well?

I think that you should uh... really i mean we have operating leverage and we've are becoming more efficient internally in in uh... both our product and tech department but also in in in sales and marketing i think that there is room for further marketing expansion but i think the priority for us is to be more focused on growth not see that margins are softening but we don't really need to be as focused on improving margins as we have perhaps been in over the past couple of years when we went from 9% EBTA margin to close to 20% most of that journey is obviously done and the priority will be to try to improve growth rates further But with that said, I mean, we have a target of plus 20% by 2028. We're close to that, so you should also expect that there will be margin improvements as well.

Great. Thank you for that, Stefan. Have a great summer, and I hope you get a speedy recovery, Bodil.

Thank you, Joachim. I will tell Bodil that.

The next question comes from Ina Jepsen from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, so hi, Stefan, and thanks for taking my question as well. I wanted to ask about the kind of competitive landscape, and have you seen any impact from Spotify ramping a little bit its audiobook presence, and how effective would you say that marketing is, and are you happy with the kind of current ROI levels? Okay.

Yes, thank you for your question. We don't really comment on specific competitors in that sense. What I can say is that the overall trend that we appreciate and would like to see more of is that the larger part of the population in most of our markets are becoming audiobook users. And we think that Spotify is helping with this. and that is also the picture that we have from the Nordic experience. We've been competing with Spotify in other markets for a longer time and that is what we've seen in those markets, that they actually help broaden the usage of audiobooks. That's a positive thing. Then we need to do our homework and see that we have a very... If you are an avid audiobook reader, then... Our hope is that you see that Storytel has the best service for that. And we think that we can see that in the figures so far. So we're happy with how we are performing. That's basically what I can say in terms of that. What was the second? Can you please repeat the second question?

Marketing stand, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay. and is there kind of anywhere you would like to add Accelerate Spend?

Yeah, I think we look to Accelerate Spend in several markets, but we're very sort of, we have high demands from the returns, and that has been the right way to prioritize over the past few years, so we have really improved our on marketing spend. That remains crucial. That said, we have been growing quite conservatively in several of our markets where we're present in, and in those markets where we see opportunity, we will increase our spending.

I hope that is some sort of answer to your question, Nina.

Yes, that was all from me. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Martin Wallstrom from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Stefan. Thank you for taking my question. Just had one to begin with related to the number of employees. The increase we see here quarter on quarter, is that only related to the overall acquisition or is there some form of net hiring underlying that? If you could just give some call on those effects.

Thank you, Martin. So the increase in FTEs is purely explained by the acquisition of a RAM cell. We don't really have a sort of explicit target on FTEs. We drive a competence shift internally or in some areas. We don't really feel like... It's a key priority to address headcount as we have a very satisfactory profitability development. What we are concerned about is that we have as strong a team as possible on board to see that the company is developing favorably, basically. To summarize, the increase in FTEs is due to the M&A, and we are constantly monitoring our internal efficiency and strive to have as strong team as possible on board, which we believe that we have.

Great. And then a final question from me related to kind of the capital allocation going forward. The releasing is not complete, so I guess buyback is technically on the table, but if you could give any comment on how you weigh

Yeah, I think we are looking at all three alternatives and they are all on the table, so to speak, and we believe that there is room to do. We have a progressive growing dividend strategy in place that we have commented on what our ambitions are. Then, of course, that is board and owner decisions related to that, but expect similar sort of development that we have presented over the past couple of years. When it comes to M&A, it's a top priority for us to see how we can strengthen our group, primarily in our European footprint. That remains the case. And when it comes to buybacks, now that is an option. And as an option, it's an alternative for allocation of our resources and will be subject to conditions that we put on that. If we feel like the best returns are by a buyback, then that is a likely scenario. If we feel like we get better returns elsewhere, then it's less of a scenario. That's all I can say at the moment.

Yeah, great. That's all I have. Thank you.

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

So we have some questions from written questions. Question number one. You state that Sweden saw higher net increase in clubs compared to Q2 last year. Does that mean that you still are confident and comfortable with the competitive landscape? Yes, exactly. That's the conclusion that we continue to defend our market share position in Sweden and in the Nordics broadly. Yeah. That's a good interpretation of that answer.

Question number two.

How are you doing in Baltics with streaming? Estonia was launched in October 2025 and is now included in the Nordic segment. Could you give us some color on its early performance? Is subscriber growth and revenue development ahead of, in line with, or below our internal expectations? We're very pleased with the launch of our Estonian business and see a good uptake in the subscriber base. It's still tiny, sort of small, but the progress is really good. I would characterize that as ahead of expectations, and it's something that we are focused on growing our presence there. I think that's all, and we have no more questions. So with that, thank you all for your attention and look forward to see you at the next quarterly results in October. Have a great summer until then.