Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this interim report session of Alma Media's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021. My name is Elina Kukkonen. I'm responsible for the communications and brand of Alma. As usual, we can begin the presentations with our CEO, Mr. Kai Telanne, to give the outlook for the full year results and then followed by Mr. Juha Nuutinen, our CFO, about the financial position of Alma Media today and our updated long-term targets also announced this morning. Then Mr. Telanne will return about the operating environment and the strategy and outlook going forward. We have reserved plenty of time for questions and answers, and today it's only online questions, so please use the online chat function for questions and our manager of Investor Relations.
Mr. Teemu Salmi will pick up the questions then. I think we are ready to start, and I will hand it over to Mr. Telanne. Once again, welcome on my behalf.
Thank you, Elina. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this interim report presentation on my behalf as well. As Elina said, as usual we start so that I start with the highlights. Then I hand over to Juha for the financials. He will go deeper into the details, into the numbers and then we continue with our outlook as said. It's great to stand here today. While we had a fantastic year 2021 after a difficult but a good year 2020. We had an amazingly good year 2021. All the businesses performed well above our own expectations while we started the year.
We had a very nice organic growth of 15% in the fourth quarter and 12.6% for the full year, boosted by very nice acquisition of Nettix. Due to these achievements, our EBIT margin was almost 20% for the last quarter last year and more than 22% for the full year. All-time high profitability. Nice revenue growth of 20% from EUR 230 million to EUR 275 million and a nice growth of operating profit from EUR 45 million to EUR 61.1 million. All businesses performed much better than planned and expected.
Due to a good profitability and a nice cash flow, we were able to strengthen our balance sheet. We were able to deleverage it from the second quarter and from the third quarter. The equity ratio by the end of the year went up from 29.4% to 34.7%. If this or when this continues, we have a good position for further investments during coming years. One of the key elements of course, for the good performance was the digital business growth in all sectors. The best and the fastest growth came from Alma Career which picked up faster and earlier than anticipated from the COVID-19 dive.
EUR 8.8 million revenue growth from fourth quarter and Adjusted operating profit growth of EUR 4.5 million. Very high profitability level, nice growth and especially high invoicing rate at the moment. As we can see, all the businesses grew nicely. Operating profit developed better than anticipated. The search services EUR 1.4 million as we have here, it came almost all from long-term incentive costs. Due to a good development of Alma Share during recent years, we have of course more of these long-term incentives and they were here this time and this cost increase came from that almost entirely.
As said, a very strong digital growth both from advertising, subscriptions and digital services. This has been the strategy for us for quite a long time. We have been able to continue a good growth. As you can see, a nice jump from 2019 especially. We were on a high level and a high profitability and growth level. By the end of the year, 77% of our revenue is coming from digital sources. We are on a good side, on a winning side of the transformation from print to digital. There are still businesses like inside Alma Talent to go on but like for Consumer and Career, we are almost fully digital at the moment.
Very nice growth. I will take a deeper dive into the business segment performance for the last quarter. Here we have just the drivers for the growth. I won't go deep into this but to summarize, we are transforming the traditional Career business from the listed business to other businesses as well as transforming the core business with new services. Talent segment is of course concentrating on transforming the traditional business-to-business media to digital media and to add on that, different kind of digital information services for professionals and companies of course. The Consumer segment we are concentrating more and more on marketplaces with the Nettix investment and different kind of digital services around this.
Of course, Iltalehti high reach is one of the key elements and the digital advertising on that side. These are the elements that we count on and will continue to develop also in the future. Alma Career, we had a very nice demand on the market surprisingly good. We were a little bit surprised as well as many other how fast the recruiting business picked up after a difficult start in 2019 and the beginning of 2020 also. Revenue growth of 57% during the fourth quarter and the 31% for the full year.
We have a very strong increase in our customer invoicing which guarantees also a nice start for this year inside the Alma Career segment. We have a very good speed at the moment in this segment also. Adjusted operating profit more than doubled during the last part of the year and 46% increase in EBIT for the full year 2021. Well above our own plans and expectations. Of course, the main growth came from the core job board listing business. To add on that, we have a nice growth of added services, added value services like Seduo and other services around the core business.
This is of course, part of the strategy that we are running at the moment. As I said, very important part of this good growth is of course the own work but then the basic economic recovery in all markets has been one of the key elements. As you can see from the right side of the slide, all the countries have been growing nicely. The biggest one is of course, Czech Republic almost 50% revenue growth b ut as you can see, like from Croatia, 91% growth. Croatia, which is really heavily dependent on traveling and tourism for example, is doing pretty well. On a high profitability level, nice growth which is going to continue. Really happy with this development.
We are of course investing in the new services. We have this kind of Alma Career level, Career United program. It's like a team play initiative in order to increase the speed of product development. We are going to share more technology together and increase the profitability and the growth of this segment. It's doing and running positively nicely at the moment. Very good end result and a nice start for the year as well.
When I'm talking about the nice start of the year, it comes from the good invoicing level of the Carrier as you can see from the grey line here which is above revenue line, which means that this is due to the revenue recognition of our Carrier business, this will end up to a good revenue development during the first half of the year. It's a really good situation. I go forward to Alma Consumer, where we have done the biggest investments in our history. Nettix investment last year, it's integrated into the segment. It's been a smooth transition and integration. Good setup for this year as well.
Nice revenue growth during the last part of the year and for the full year as well, 35% growth of revenues. Of course, most part of the revenue growth came from the Nettix acquisition but a very nice organic growth based on good advertising sales especially, on the digital arena. As you can see from here, 18% advertising growth during the last quarter and 26% during the whole year. This means that Alma Media has also gained market share inside the consumer segment and inside Finland among the Finnish peers.
I'm really happy that we have been able to gain paying subscribers for Iltalehti digital media which is called Iltalehti Plus. Very nice growth in this new initiative. Due to this good development of Iltalehti Plus, we've been able to mitigate the decline, the natural decline of single copy sales of Iltalehti. The market is still declining on the print side. We had also very nice growth on other services like mobility services, housing services and comparison services. The housing market has been stable and nicely growing during the year. We have been able to defend our market-leading position on a high profitability level, really nicely done.
On mobility side as well. Used car market has been really good. There have been difficulties in the new car sales as we all know. As you can see, very nice growth on there on a high profitability level as well. Very good operating margin and the revenues nicely up from last year. Lastly, Alma Talent, the business-to-business media and services side. Very solid quarter. We had a very demanding comparables, 2020. Last quarter was really good also for Talent. Still, well above our own expectations, the full year development especially, nice revenue growth, very nice profitability growth for the full year.
Digital advertising has been growing more than expected even a very positive development on service side. 15% growth. As you might remember, the DIAS acquisition that we made has been running smoothly and well. It's good. It will be really good for us for the coming years as well. Recurring revenue is one of the key targets that we are aiming at this segment. The share of recurring revenue was 64% during the last quarter and more than 70% during the full year. Very nice growth of those. Digital subscriptions, digital services, those are the main elements for this target. Very nice.
Happy with all the segments that we have. Now I will hand over to Juha Nuutinen, our CFO. He will go more deeply into the financials and the numbers and the balance sheet as well. Juha.
Good morning. Thanks, Kai. Financial position. A couple of words about our solvency and balance sheet issues today but also a few words of our updated long-term financial targets. We released a new press release today concerning those and let's go into detail about the change what we made. The first is the balance sheet and the net debt level. We have managed to decrease our net debt level around EUR 20 million per each quarter because of our good cash flow. Our equity ratio is at the moment around 35%, and it will approximately go to at the end of this year around 40%-41%.
In spring, because of dividends in the first quarter, it goes around 30% and then it increase to 40% towards the year-end. The net debt, where it comes from, it's mostly coming from the term loan, 33-year term loan, EUR 200 million and we will make the first payment of this term loan back in March, EUR 15 million. We will gradually decrease the actual loan amount as well. Our balance sheet will go stronger and stronger in each quarter and it's good and we will have very healthy situation during this year. Then the cash flow we had really strong cash flow and during the last quarter but also during the second half last year.
This EUR 24 million in the last quarter was one of the strongest cash flows that we have had. This comes of course. One reason is our good result and an increased result. Also, like Kai said earlier, we had especially in recruitment a pretty good invoicing quarter and it means that we have quite a lot advanced payments from the customers as well and that explains also the strong cash flow. It means that this year 2022, the increase in cash flow might be slightly lower than the increase in the profit wise. It's because of these advanced payments this year. The CapEx we have EUR 3 million. There was no acquisitions in this last quarter.
This EUR 3 million comes one half from the investments in our platforms and the other half, EUR 1.5 million comes from several renewals of our rental agreements in our smaller facilities. Totally that CapEx level is EUR 6 million and we have said that there will be around EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million investments or CapEx on a yearly basis and that comes from, especially from the marketplace platform investments. That's the cash flow and then the earnings per share. This EUR 0.53 is one of our highest earnings per share figures ever concerning the continuing operations. Last year of course, there was a capital gain of Regional Media and it, the effect was EUR 0.80 of that.
EUR 0.53 is from continuing operations. It's the highest level ever. Also you can see the cash flow. It's operating cash flow, it's 92 cents and that's also the highest level that we have had. The dividend now suggested to annual general meeting is EUR 0.35 and it's EUR 0.05 higher than last year. It might be higher as well because we have stronger earnings per share but because of our balance sheet, it's now only EUR 0.05 in increase this time. If this continues to following years, we have room to increase this dividend from that level as well. Our return on equity was 24%, which is a good ratio.
The return on investment was 14%. That's also pretty good number if you are taking into account the huge investments that we have made, nearly EUR 300 million. Then the long-term financial targets, we changed the adjusted operating margin target today. We increased it from 20% to 25%. The other targets remain as they are. Our target for revenue growth is 5% and naturally last year because of this heavy recovery in recruitment sector but also because of Nettix acquisition, the revenue growth was much higher than this 5%.
In the first quarter of this year, the revenue growth will be much stronger than the 5% because of this acquisition, Nettix is affecting there in the first quarter still. After that in the long run, this 5% is good target level. The operating margin. This 20% when we are looking back that was quite modest target we admitted. This recruitment recovery last year was something that we didn't expect that happened so fast. We expected that the recovery will happen sometime at a two, three years period of time but it happened within six to nine months. That was huge, faster than we expected.
That was the reason why our operating margin increased also much more faster than we expected. The other reason is that we have in our portfolio there is more and more marketplace type of business which have higher operating margin than previously and that makes also the case different now and those are the two main reasons why we increased our target to 25%. We see those long-term financial targets a period of three years so our goal is to have this 25% within the next three years. We keep the solvency targeting as it is. Net debt to EBITDA ratio should be lower than two point five.
Actually, we are lower at a level than the target is. In that sense there is no, that 2.3% is our current level at the moment. That's the long-term financial targets and this 24%-25% is a pretty tough target, I think. We have good possibilities to achieve that in a couple of years now. Yeah. Thank you. Then we have some comments on the operating environment and strategy. Please, Kai, continue.
Thank you. Come on this way now. CFO is always a bit careful and modest with the targets. At least, I'm pretty confident with the profitability target. We have a very good plan and I'm pretty confident that it doesn't take three years to achieve the target. We will be there sooner, hopefully. That's based on a very good start of the year of course, and a very good plan that we have. Of course, all our achievements are also, you know, dependent on the underlying economies and the operating environment. If we have a look at the latest forecast of European Commission, it looks like this.
If it looks like this with the economies growing between 3%-9% in our markets, this is a pretty good environment for our purposes. With this kind of environment, we can do quite a nice marketplaces business, really good digital service business and media and advertising business as well in Finland. Hopefully it stays like this. Okay, now we have inflation going on a little bit faster than expected. Interest rates are rising and so many things are moving. At the moment, big picture is this.
Having this kind of view in our eyes, we don't see any kind of needs to change our plans and strategy at the moment. We can continue with the good speed as is. That's very good. Finnish advertising market has picked up also in Finland during last year. Of course, we know that the print advertising is still at the low level, that's usual and we're used to that. Our dependency on the print business is lower and lower all the time. On the consumer segment as we know, it must be over 90% of our digital advertising share at the moment. We have a very low share around that.
On Talent sector, it's a little bit bigger. We have gained market share. It's based on a good performance of our Alma Media Solutions which is the corporate level advertising sales organization and the good development also in the marketplaces where we have a good development of the display advertising and programmatic advertising on all lines. As you can see, 35% is our market share last year among the Finnish peers. That's good. It's been the target of course, for us to increase the share. Okay. How do we continue from this? As said, after a very good year and good performance, we are confident with the current strategy.
No need to change the strategy. We are continuing transforming the core. With the core, we mean the media business, the print business to digital and services and also the marketplaces business from the current one to more transformational one. As we have a strong initiatives in Finland, we will go to this kind of classified listing businesses to transformational businesses where we get the bigger share of the transactions, transactional-based businesses. We take a bigger share of the revenues of the transactions with our own services in the future. We have investments there, as we did by the end of the year and are doing at the moment.
This transformation is really interesting on our side. We will grow in digital services especially in the talent segment. We have a very good track there, a good journey with the DS and other services as well and we will diversify our marketplaces also to new digital services. Of course, we will continue with the international expansion to new areas and new services in the current areas. That's one of the key element of our internationalization and we have a lot of possibilities there. As said, we had a nice year for the Nettix acquisition and integration. It's gone smoothly, performing as expected and growing. We bought also the Netello.
That integration has been good as well. We will see the results later. We have achieved important milestones in the digital business at Alma Talent. 55% of the revenue from digital and that will continue. Hand-in-hand with the transformation from print to digital, the profitability level is going up also on the Alma Talent as well. This Carry United initiative that we have. We will be a more effective, more profitable in the future, sharing more services, technology, product development and so on. We aim higher also on profitability side on our Alma Career sector. That's it. Very nice track so far and that will continue.
We have had a good start for the year. Our outlook for this year is that we will go further. We expect our revenues to grow and profitability to grow from last year, last year's all-time high level. Of course, we have to have this disclaimer of the COVID-19 b ut to be honest, we are not waiting for the situation to get worse. We are coming back more like to the new normal in the company. We have been safe and healthy so far. We haven't had any casualties. We've been doing pretty well all the time. At the moment we are getting back to the offices. We will continue of course, with the multi-local working mode and we have a good possibility for that.
Most of the employees want to come back to the office and continue with the cooperation with colleagues. That's our aim also for the beginning of this year. Thank you very much. This was our part of the interim report. If you have any kind of questions, we are more than happy to answer those. Please, any questions?
Yes, we have both comments and questions from online.
All right.
Let's go with Sami Sarkamies from Nordea Markets first. I'd say we covered that pretty well. Thanks, there's a-
Sorry
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This mic doesn't work. Okay, take the other one.
Thank you. As I was saying, we do have both comments and questions from online. The first question from Sami Sarkamies, Nordea Markets, is concerning the long-term targets. I'd say we covered that fairly well. If we wanna clarify or add something, let me just paraphrase that question to you. ''You did upgrade EBIT margin target to about 25% from 20%, even though the previous target was announced not too long time ago in September. What has changed thinking of your outlook?''
Yeah. That is simple. Much faster recovery especially, on the recruitment market and advertising than we expected. That is the key element. The recovery from the COVID-19 situation's been much faster than we expected. As you have said, we expected that bounce back during coming two, three years but it didn't take more than six to nine months. We were well above our own expectations with the revenues and with the profitability. Secondly, our portfolio has changed during or with this marketplace's development with high profitability, our portfolio balance and the share of high profitability business has increased compared to the lower profitability like print media business.
This balance change in the portfolio will end up to higher profitability and a better possibilities to reach higher profitability also in the future. We will have this financial engineering initiatives also which will lead us to a change in the portfolio also in the future and that will make this new revised target setting clear and necessary. We are really confident. We have a very good plan also to reach the targets for the future. That's it.
Yeah. ''When do you think you might realistically reach the targets?''
As you have said, this target is set for three years. I'm more positive on that. That's of course the role of a CEO. We have a very good plan, so I expect that to happen even earlier.
Great. Sami's second question was about advertising media. ''How do you expect advertising media market to develop in Finland during early 2022? Are you seeing any signs of slowdown in trading conditions?''
Well, there's a lot of fluctuation in the advertising sector due to the overall mood and the situation globally. I mean, like this hassle that we have in Ukraine and the interest rates and this and that will have its effects. We have high targets so, we aim and expect our advertising to grow more than the market. I think expectations are close to double-digit growth and then closer to zero growth.
Third question from Sami was, ''Adjusted EBIT margin rose to 22.2% from 19.7% in 2021. Do you expect margin progression also in 2022 towards your long-term target?''
Yes. Yes, we do.
His final question. ''When we think about operating leverage in 2022, is Q4 or full year 2021 a more relevant benchmark?
I don't have the exact figures in my head but Juha might answer that. If I remember right, our net debt will decrease around EUR 20 million per quarter, right? Around. With this cash flow and profitability that we have. Is that close enough, Juha?
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Thank you.
Was the question about the operating figure or what?
The operating leverages.
Okay
In the full year or Q4 or full year 2021 a more relevant benchmark.
If I understand right, it's a question also about the profit side and the EBIT side. The first quarter of this year, last year the first quarter was we were living in a COVID situation then and we will have strong increase in revenue in the first quarter compared to last year. Then it will be much more even when it goes to the second quarter.
Okay.
The first quarter will be-
Yeah
Strong increase in revenue and profit.
Yeah, exactly. Now I understand also the question. As we know, we have Nettix in our figures since April last year. It lacks from the figures during the first quarter of this year. Of course with that increase, the revenues and the profitability will be different from last year. The second thing is that our Career revenues and invoicing has been really high by the end of last year and that will continue during the first half of course, and hopefully for the last part of this year as well. The first quarter will be different of course, from last year's comparables.
Great. Moving on to a question from Turo Kiiski. This is a shorter one. ''Update on Iltalehti Plus subscription numbers and how the business is going?''
It's moving nicely. I think, have we disclosed the numbers, the exact numbers? No, we haven't. Well above our expectations. I could say that we have been able to mitigate the decline of the print subscriptions by the increase of the digital subscriptions, Iltalehti Plus. That's what we want to say and that's been our goal of course. From now on, we will go further and we have a very good plan and development there as well.
Petri Gostowski from Inderes and this is a direct quote.
Yep.
''We saw broad cost increases on Q4. You mentioned personnel expenses to be a main driver in Career. Have you added personnel here and what is the impact and level of wage inflation?''
So far the biggest impact, I'll start from the last part, the wage inflation is running on the tech side. The resources of the tech development especially on the software developing, there's this salary inflation going on. Nowhere else I would say. Okay, this kind of normal inflation which has been also planned. No worries with that. The cost on our side comes to the investments of the new initiatives like we have new services and those on. Of course, on the Career side, we have revenue dependent and based cost, moving costs. As when the revenues are growing, the costs are growing. They're somewhat more or less same costs, moving same costs.
Of course, if there's the growing market and demand, we want to increase a little bit more of the push and the sales and the costs in order to get the sales that we want, the market share that we run of course. With this kind of profitability margin of close to 50%, it's of course the clever thing to do. That's it. The Career costs are coming from the sales cost, software development and some new initiatives on the product development side. Otherwise, the cost increase is coming from investments into the software.
We are transforming our marketplace business from traditional listing business to transactional businesses and that's where we are putting effort and money at the moment. On group level, I know that applies also to Alma Talent, where we have a digital service initiatives like the DIAS and other services. We are investing into those in order to get the results later with these businesses. They are running as expected and smoothly. All the business increases are planned. No unexpected or extraordinary costs. Except the group cost increase of EUR 1.4 million which came from long-term incentives.
Of course, with the good profitability development and a good share price increase from 2015 and so on, the long-term incentives will be paid and they are there. They were not in our plans before but only after the good results. That will be the difference.
Petri continues, ''Nettix revenue and EBITDA seem to have decreased slightly in 2021 compared to 2020. Can you talk about the drivers behind the development?''
Yeah. Those are the cost increases are those planned investments. We are developing the software, the platform, as you have said. We are increasing the. At the moment, the development costs to renew the platform of Nettix, the whole. We are in how do we say it, [Foreign language] business. [How do you- System] What? System. It is difficult to say it in English what is the business. We are doing this kind of software for the agents, for the dealers, for the housing agents and so on. We're in the software system business and we are investing there.
We are investing and renewing the platform of Nettix from traditional to this kind of transaction business. Those investments will go on from now on. That will bring the new revenues in the near future also so that will be a good investment of course. The basic profitability level of the business is not decreasing. We will stay on a high margin level and even higher with the transactional model.
This is still from Petri concerning the Nettix. ''Do you expect to fully reach the target at EUR 1.5 million synergies this year?''
Yeah. That will happen. Yes.
''Associated companies supported your results slightly again in Q4. Is all of this stemming from Bolt.Works again and how has the profitability of Bolt developed?'' This continues and this is also from Petri. ''Should we expect Bolt's contribution to your earnings to be on an increasing track this year?
Oh, Juha can answer that.
Yeah, that's true that it's mostly coming from Bolt. Bolt associated companies. Yes, Bolt is making the increase in that sense. Yes. Yeah, Bolt has pretty good and strong second half last year and that's why it's also seen in our results as well. I think Bolt is in a good speed and it's expected that it will continue with the growth path it has had last year. I think the company is in a good phase at the moment.
Yeah. The revenues of Bolt has increased more than expected, and then the latter, the profitability comes with that. That's the expectation, yeah.
Moving on. A follow-up question from Turo Kiiski, and this is about Seduo.'' Could you open a little bit more about your long-term plans and current situation with Seduo?''
It's an important part of the add-on service development of Alma Career. The big picture is that we aim at leveraging the business in new geographical areas. We are strong in Czech Republic. We have been doing quite well in Slovakia. We have had a slow start in Finland but we have possibilities to go abroad. That is the plan. We are, you know, investigating the new areas at the moment and we have a good setup for that and the organization is in place.
Turo's follow-up on the same topic was, ''Is Seduo numbers reported under marketplace numbers or service numbers in the Alma Career segment reporting?''
Seduo numbers, are they Juha, they are Seduo numbers, right? Seduo.
Yeah.
They are service numbers. Yeah b ut inside Alma Career. They are inside Alma Career but they are like you have marketplaces and services so they are service business there.
Okay. Next question from Maria Wikström. ''Finnish advertising revenue is still below 2019 levels. What is your view on the ongoing recovery, if we should be again above 2019 levels in this year? How do you see ad revenues developing across segments, especially in print?''
No, print advertising will be in difficulties. There's this kind of transformation going on. The advertisers are moving more to the digital. That's the expectation. We will wait for the Finnish market to recover during this year. Hopefully it happens. It depends very much on the overall situation. There are of course differences between different segments. For us, for example, we have had a good development in many sectors. Of course in the digital side. As we know, the new car market has been difficult during last year so we wait for that to increase. Hopefully it happens.
Of course, some other segments which are suffered from the pandemic, they will be, also for the first half of the year they will be in difficulties. Mostly, our most important segments will be doing quite well and there are a lot of expectations for them to grow. Our expectation is that we will have quite a good market this year.
Shifting gears now to Pia Rosqvist-Heinsalmi from Carnegie asking about M&A. The specific question is. ''Can you describe your M&A pipeline? Were there any substantial changes in the market in 2021 that have impacted your plans?''
No, not really. We have of course a pipeline but with this balance sheet, we can't do any big moves yet. We have to digest the investments that we have done. As Juha said, we have spent almost EUR 300 million during last year or two and before we have a healthier balance sheet, we can't move or do this kind of big moves. We have this kind of resources, EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million for smaller moves and we have many possibilities and a good pipeline of course, there. We will have a closer look at the possibilities.
Of course, there are other kind of possibilities to move if needed. I would say that we will likely wait for a year or two before we can do bigger moves with these resources. Of course, if we have a very good target in sight, we can go to the market, to the stock market and should have resources for those but I'm talking about the current balance sheet.
We don't have any more questions but we do have one more comment.
Okay.
This comment is from Raimo Mäkilä. It says, "Good job. Congratulations.
Thank you, Raimo. Raimo was the former director of the marketplaces and he knows very well the business, so thanks a lot. Encouraging comment. Thank you very much. Do you have any comment or not? If we don't have any questions or comments, we will end the presentation here. Which we will see next time during this first quarter result presentation or until that we are of course at your service. You can call us and contact any day. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of the week and as always, stay safe and healthy. Thank you very much.