Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the NNIT Financial Report 2022. My name is Glenn. I'll be the moderator of today's call. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Pär Fors, CEO and President of NNIT, to begin. Pär, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, welcome to earnings call about NNIT's full year results of 2022. My name is Pär Fors, I'm pleased to be able to introduce Carsten Ringius, who joined us as CFO in December and is by my side today. We look forward to sharing some highlights of 2022 and providing a bit of background for the guidance for 2023 before answering your questions. Let us turn to slide two, with a brief overview of the agenda for today's call. The first point of the agenda is a few highlights of 2022, which was immensely busy year for us in NNIT. We will follow up with comments on the strategic direction we are taking after the contemplated divestment of our infrastructure operation.
I will provide an update on the performance of our 2 business units, which comprise the continuing activities of NNIT. Carsten will briefly describe how we have allocated revenue and cost between the segments before zooming out and taking us through the group figures. I will close the presentation with our outlook for 23 before taking your questions. Please turn to slide 3 for the highlights. 22 was truly a transformational year for NNIT. We set out to accelerate the strategic journey, improve our results, and enable profitable growth in the years to come. These efforts culminated with the announcement of the divestment of the infrastructure operation in June.
We are divesting roughly half of our business and have dedicated significant resources and a lot of time to ensure a good progress and complete the necessary corporate activities, and also obtain customers and authority approvals, among other things. As announced this morning, we now expect closing to be completed in the first half of the second quarter as the Danish Business Authority decided to extend the deadline for its FDI approval until the 17th of April. The carve-out is progressing. We have obtained authority approval, and we have an ongoing and constructive dialogue with our lenders about the postponement. We look forward to taking the next step and the sharpening of NNIT's profile. Early in the year, we took steps to streamline our outsourcing organization in the Philippines.
We were pleased to successfully complete the initiative during the fourth quarter and expect to see the full effect from Q1 this year. This move entailed higher staff costs during 2022, it will strengthen our global delivery capabilities, streamline operation, and contribute to ensuring lower salary expenses and improved profitability going forward. We see good growth opportunities in the production space and boosted our capabilities by the acquisition of prime4services, which is a leading European Manufacturing Execution System provider. The team has performed well since acquisition, we expect further growth and progress in this year in the coming years. Finally, we were pleased to report a number of great wins during 2022 as this provides a solid foundation for our growth in the years to come.
This includes substantial contracts with ATP, Danmarks Nationalbank, the Danish Health Data Authority, the Agency for Higher Education and Science, and Lantmännen Unibake, among others. We also ensured engagement and renewal with strong traction within regulatory affairs, clinical and production IT. We will be focusing less on our order backlog after the divestment of the infrastructure operation, though, as our continuing activities are mainly centered around consultancy services. On that note, please be aware we are presenting financial figures for our continuing operation in this presentation and the annual report, and that these figures are impacted by the carve-out process and allocation to discontinued operation. The underlying business performance was marked by a slow start of the year and improving performance in the second half. On that backdrop, we posted a revenue of DKK 1.5 billion and a 10% growth driven by acquisition and currency effect.
The gross profit and operating profit before special item improved versus 21, with special item increasing as well. Let us take a look at the strategy on slide 4. The course is set for us to create a specialized IT services provider and center our focus and investment and competencies and sales forces around the two core business areas, Life Sciences Solutions and Cloud & Digital Solutions with strong growth prospects. We are now eagerly awaiting the delayed FDI approval from the authorities and look forward to closing of the deal in the 1st half of the 2nd quarter. Life Sciences Solution will continue to pursue strong international growth within the full Life Sciences value chain. The business units will maintain its focus on developing and delivering the best digital solution to address the fast-growing global market.
This focus area include assignments within regulatory affairs, clinical development, quality management, drug safety, medtech, production, and laboratory. Our team is supported by a dedicated partnership with leading solution providers such as Veeva Systems. CDS will focus on the Danish market, specifically within the public and enterprise sectors. The business units draws on our comprehensive experience from highly regulated industries to deliver tailored solution for public sector clients. We will focus specifically on central and regional government opportunities with key service, including custom application development, cloud services, dedicated business consulting, and security services. In addition, we will cater to larger enterprises with complex IT demands. This will mainly be in segments such as manufacturing, utilities, transport, and finance. We will continue to focus also on Microsoft-related services and leverage scales unique position within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
The two focuses on these two core business unit will make NNIT an increasingly international people-centric consultancy business and enable us to run asset-like business models going forward. We're certain that our vast experience from highly regulated industry will give us a competitive edge we need to succeed with our clients and deliver improved results in the years to come. Let us turn to page, slide five, please. About Life Sciences solutions. As mentioned on previous course, the Life Sciences business unit had a slow start of the year. We took steps to lift the activity level and improve utilization, and we saw a pickup in the second half of 2022. Supported by acquisition and currency impact, we generated 20% growth in Life Science, reported revenue of DKK 873 million.
The improved capacity utilization was a result of higher activity and capacity adjustment completed in Q2, which had a positive impact on the gross profits for the full year. The business unit operating profit took a hit in 2022, and we are focused on delivering improvement in the coming period based on the positive impact of capacity adjustment and increasing activity. Life Science won several orders during the year and strengthened the business unit position, the attractive areas of production and regulatory affairs in the Life Sciences space. Please flip to slide 6 and the CDS business. The continuing business in CDS generated stable revenue in 2022 and delivered solid performance in the last quarters of the year. The business unit increased sales to Life Sciences customers and remains on good trajectory.
We took steps to improve capacity utilization in CDS in Q2 as well. We improved gross profits and operating profit as a result of these efforts. The gross margin improved throughout the year and reached 16%, with the operating profit margin coming to 7.5%. We will continue to improve profitability going forward and maintain our focus on costs while ensuring CDS is able to accommodate demand and drive growth. The CDS team won several orders in the custom application development field and did well in China and Denmark in particular. Carsten will now provide an overview of the segment information after the split into continuing and discontinuing operation. Please turn to slide 7.
Thank you, Pär. I'm pleased to take part in this presentation today after spending the first busy four months here at NNIT and meeting our employees, customers, analysts, and not least investors. I look forward to building relations with all stakeholders in the coming years. As Pär mentioned, the infrastructure business has been classified as discontinued operations in our annual accounts. We are therefore presenting and focusing on continuing operations in our annual report and today's presentation as this is aligned with our internal reporting. The continuing operations are comprised of services delivered through the two LSS and CDS business units, which Pär just provided comments on before. In addition to these activities, we have specified activities that are allocated to the discontinued operations, including parts of the CDS business unit also included in the transaction.
Finally, this item includes unallocated costs related to the carve-out process and reflects a reclassification between production costs and SG&A. The table on this slide and in the annual report outlines the steps from continuing business units to consolidated group figures and highlights the significant stranded costs impacting our business in a transition period. With this, let's move on to slide 8 and group financials. 2022 consolidated revenue grew by 9.6% to DKK 1.5 billion, mainly driven forward by the full year effect of the acquisition of SL Controls in 2021 and the acquisition of prime4services in early 2022. Currency effects had a positive impact on revenue as well, and organic growth was negative by 1% after the slow start to the year mentioned by Pär earlier.
Gross profit improved to DKK 151 million from a low base in 2021, with both years being impacted by the stranded costs related to the carve-out of the infrastructure business, as mentioned before. The gross profit margin improved by 1 percentage point to 10.0%. The stranded cost also impacted the operating loss of DKK 7 million before special items. We booked special items of DKK 278 million in 2022, mainly related to the relocation of global service delivery center from China to the Philippines, costs related to the carve-out and impairment of headquarter building. Following a recent ruling by the Danish Business Authority, we were furthermore required to reclassify and include employee benefit costs as part of contingent consideration agreement previously recognized as goodwill.
All in all, we reported a net loss of DKK 258 million for the continuing operations in 2022. We obviously look forward to improving these figures quite significantly as the impacts from the carve-out and stranded costs fade out. On that note, Pär will now share a few comments on the near-term guidance. Please turn to slide 9 for the 2023 outlook.
Thank you, Carsten. We are presenting our outlook for 2023 today after introducing the continuing operation under the assumption that we close the transaction in the first half of the second quarter as expected. We look forward to being able to leverage the sharpened focus of the two core business units with ambition to significantly strengthen revenue and profitability of the continuing activities. As the carve-out has dragged out and postponed class closing, we expect 2023 to be somewhat more impacted by the process and transition costs than expected back in June. We expect to be up to speed during the second half of 2023 and improve performance in the full year of 2024. For 2023, we expect to continue the solid trajectory we are seeing in Life Science and CDS to generate revenues, revenue growth of around 10%, assuming stable key currencies.
This positive traction in sales and our continued improvement of utilization should entail higher profitability, resulting in an operating profit margin before special items around 5%. As mentioned, profitability will be negatively impacted by stranded costs related to the carve-out. Special item are expected to amount to up to DKK 180 million, relating mainly to carve-out and separation activity as well as restructuring costs to right-side organization after closing. All in all, we see potential for improvement in 2023 despite the postponed closing, and we see prospect for profitable growth in the coming year when the separation is completed and the transitional support and back office assignment have been completed. Thank you very much for listening in. We now look forward to taking your question. Next slide, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. We have our first question comes from Poul Jessen from Danske Bank. Poul, your line is now open.
Thank you. Thank you for taking the question. I have a few. I'll just take them randomly from one end. Starting by guidance. Special items, you say DKK 180. The split of those, is that about DKK 120 on carve-out costs? Then you say earn-out, and then how much is continued restructuring, just roughly?
Restructuring, you're correct on the carve-out. That's estimated to around DKK 120. The restructuring part we assess in the vicinity of DKK 30 million.
DKK 30 for carve-out. Sorry, for earn-out.
Yes. That's our current estimate.
On the guidance, where you say 10% growth, can you give indication on what you see for Life Science and CDS respectively? Is that the same level, 10 each?
Well, if we are looking at the combined business, we are talking about 10%. What we will do before the next quarterly release is that we will send out seasonalized or numbers on the 2022 numbers. As of now, we only have this discontinued and continued split produced on full year numbers. Before the next quarterly release, we will send out a continued business with a seasonality, allowing you to see the development on quarter by quarter basis. As of now, we are guiding as a total on the continued business, and here we say around 10%.
Maybe, Poul, I can elaborate just generally on what has happened in 22. I mean, we have been very successful in winning in a number of deal in the public sector, which has created a good foundation for growth, in our CDS business here in Denmark. While we also continue to win and that also long-term, business, so to speak, running over multiple year, as we announced in the press releases. In parallel, we also have been continued to win many smaller deals in many different areas, not the least regulatory affair in production IT within Life Science. It's, it's a solid sales performance in 22, which we will reap some of the benefits of from in 23.
The reason I ask is that if I try to do the math on the win share reported last year, and you referred to earlier, I would assume that that would be up to some 15% addition to the CBS. That's actually on a base that was larger than what you actually come out, and therefore it should be higher. If you guide 10% for the group, and I would see CBS based on the wins being higher than Life Science, it should grow less than the 10%.
Yeah. As of now, we are guiding as a total for the coming year. We, as Pär mentioned, are in a transition year going forward also into 2023. Once that we have the seasonality provided on the continuing business, we will provide you that information, so you have a better data foundation for actually assessing the growth between the two continuing business units.
Can you give any indication on when you will be at, a normal business rate? Meaning that there are no more cost reduction. When is the cost base in place so that we can see this is, the normal, NNIT business-
Now with this-
going forward.
Now with this delay because of the delayed FDI approval, we see this transition going into Q3 this year, actually, before we are at a expected cost rate, reflecting how we wanna operate going forward.
Because as you know, I mentioned in a previous call from the last quarter announcement that we said that we will kind of up speed versus mid-year 2023. That I think it was I who said it. Now due to the postponement of the deal, that will be delayed with approximately a quarter.
Okay. I have several more. I'll take one, and then I'll jump back to the manufacturing. That was under the old structure in the range of DKK 180 million-DKK 119 million. I see when you do the separation here, that you have DKK 81 left, and that's increasing from DKK 7 the previous year. That means I was right on my assumption earlier that the majority of DKK 180 would be in the now divested business. Meaning that in the continuing business you have done a lot of factoring during 2022. Would that be normal? I think for factoring was more on the infrastructure business.
We have the possibility of also doing it on larger, you can say customers on the project business. Going forward on the continued business, this factoring will constitute a smaller proportion than you can say the total MMIG as of now, as the discontinuing business has been utilizing the factoring to the highest extent.
When you get the proceeds from the divestment, would you then reduce using factoring?
Yes. We expect to be able to repay our credit facility with the proceeds from the closing of the transaction.
That's the DKK 857 million, which were drawn by the end of the year?
Yes. We expect to be able to fully, pay out our drawn credit facilities by the closing of the transaction.
Yeah. Does that then add the DKK 81 on top of that? It's actually about DKK 950 that you have to pay.
We have, you can say, a revolving credit facility. Our actual draw is fluctuating over the month, as part of our, you can say, movement in our working capital requirement. I can say that, by closing of the transaction, we expect to be able to pay the fully drawn credit facility once that we close the deal.
Okay. I'll jump back and I'll come back again. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Poul. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask any further question, please press star followed by one on telephone keypad now. We have Poul from Danske Bank for follow-up question.
Okay. I'll continue. capitalization, of course, part of the carve-out and divestment of the units. Will there be any capitalization of the cost, as in this process, which then will be maybe put in reducing a potential gain on the sale?
As part of the transaction, the capitalized cost is part of the, you can say, the hive down and part of the, you can say discontinued, business. In the continuing business, this will be to a much less extent, a way of dealing with cost as we are working on a time and material project going forward in the continuing consultancy business.
Potential or actual, capitalization as part of the separation is already in the numbers now and not the additional when you close the deal?
That is part of the, you can say that the final transactions, once that we do the hive down, as it's called. It's quite, it's a rather complex transaction, means containing several steps, but in the end, it will be a asset deal. The balance sheet that we are handing over will be including this, you can say transition cost that is capitalized from the last projects that is part of the discontinued business.
The balance sheet that you have now reported today is the balance sheet that is the one we can use going forward.
That is expected, yes. There will be some, as part of the deal, some networking capital adjustments by time of the closing. The balance sheet as of now for 2022 should reflect the split. According to IFRS, we have not updated the balance sheet on 21 numbers, only the profit number.
On note 21 where you have the separation, I'm just trying to understand what's actually the margin here of 2 businesses. The allocation of discontinued operations, is that only being taken out of CDS? There is no LSS part of that.
There is a really minor adjustment to Life Science, but for practicalities, you can say that it's CDS and then unallocated cost, which is part of the allocated to discontinued operation, segment.
True. I'm trying to understand. When I look into 2023, the 16% margin of CDS, is that the ongoing business or how much shall I subtract, which then will be stranded cost also going forward?
Once that we are able to give you the, you can say the updated number on 2022 reflecting the continued business, you will be able to see that and, you can say, make that part of your projections. We will distribute these numbers before we actually release the Q1, so you have that information available.
The truth is, somewhere in between the 10% reported and the, yeah, the guessing level of where it actually is.
That depends on, you can say the speed of which... Sorry, I didn't get the last one. Poul-
No. On the gross margin where you report 10%.
Yes.
Where you have 18 for LSS and 16 for CDS, and then you move discontinued cost out, which I assume both is CDS, but must also be some HCS cost which is stranded in your business. CDS would come out with a negative gross margin.
Okay. Now I understand your question. Yes, you are correct. Correct. Somewhere in between.
So-
Uh.
The CDS gross margin going forward, until you got rid of all the cost is somewhere, I mean, between 5% and 10% or something.
You will be able to see.
Take 80% on the LSS, and you got 10% on the group, then the CDS must be close to 0 or negative. It's just to get an impression of where is the real CDS when you have completed all the separation.
Yes. I understand that. I would really like to give you that information now, but we have to, we have to do this further split where you can actually see the development on a quarter-by-quarter basis on the two continuing business units. We, you can say, can provide you with that information before we do the Q release. You have, you can say, the right historical numbers for you to have a better assessment of what gross profit margins you can expect going forward in the two continuing business units.
The 5% guidance you give for operating margin going forward, does that include further these, costs which you report as discontinued here?
Uh-
To discontinued operation. Are there any cost in this column?
This is the total business.
being part of the guide for 5%?
The 5% is the total, the total business operating margin.
Yeah. If I look at this for 2023 and you guide 5% margin, does that guidance include any cost in this column?
Yes. It includes everything, the entire business.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on ten on keypad now. We have no further questions on the line. I will now pass back to Pär Fors for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you for everyone who participated in today's call. If you have any follow-up question, please feel free to reach out to us. I wish you all a great day and a great afternoon. Thank you very much.