Welcome, everybody, to Enento Group's Q3 pre-silent analyst call. My name is Henrik Soras. I'm Head of Investor Relations at Enento Group. Today, with me, I have our CEO, Elina Stråhlman, who will walk through our Q3 pre-silent highlights. I will now hand over to Elina to do that.
Thank you, Henrik. As usual, let's start with the macroeconomic outlook. As we probably all have seen while following the news, we have not experienced any major changes in the macroeconomic or market environment recently. The overall situation continues to be rather muted both in Finland and Sweden. Nordic economies face a delayed recovery with modest growth expectations in 2025, led by exports and by that demand, before a rebound expected in 2026. Hence, the expectations of the macroeconomic recovery have been again pushed forward, which is a trend that we have seen repeated for some time now. Large and ordinary banks have also remained cautious in terms of the macroeconomic situation in the Nordics. When it comes to consumer confidence, it has also remained low in both of our main markets. In Finland, it is clearly below the long-term average.
Finnish households have remained cautious regarding their spending and lending, although intentions to increase borrowings have slightly increased. Consumer confidence in Sweden has started again improving over the past few months, but the indicator still has remained well below the long-term average. We have not seen any major boost in lending activities. This means that the underlying macroeconomic environment is not giving us tailwind at this stage. If we can move forward to our performance and outlook as a summary, as there has been no major change in the macroeconomic environment, the same applies to our performance and outlook as well, which continue to be in line with the past quarters. We also want to highlight that we continue to reiterate our guidance for the full year. Going through the situation in a bit more detail, on a group level, we are seeing a stable quarter in Q3.
This is driven by solid demand in business insights, whereas demand in consumer insights continues to be more muted. Overall, if we look at the volume levels in any of our businesses, we are seeing month-to-month stable development. No major decreases, but no increases either. Business insight shows more solid performance in Finland with continued good growth, especially in real estate information services, where we have also very good new services in place supporting the demand. The Finnish premium business targeting SME customers continues, on the other hand, to be impacted by the weaker external environment like it has been in the previous quarter. Norway and Denmark continue to show good performance and outlook for the rest of the year. This is driven by good sales performance combined with very good offering for SMEs.
Business insight shows then more muted performance in Sweden, like we have seen in previous quarters as well. That is especially impacted by the SME transformation that is ongoing. The transformation is progressing according to the plan. In September, we will initiate the digital renewal process for selected products and a small number of customers, with a broader rollout starting in early 2026, as previously we have communicated. The transformation poses risks for the remaining year due to changes in sales partner setup, but the mid-term profitability potential is obviously good. On a positive note, as we have also mentioned before, we have launched exciting compliance services in Sweden in the past months. There, we have many small Swedish customers testing our new solutions. We have also signed a pilot agreement with a mid-sized financial sector client in this field. Go-to-market activity is progressing well.
Consumer insights continue to face more muted demand. Obviously, this applies to consumer credit information services. We have not seen any significant recovery of volumes. We continue to expect the volumes for the remaining year to remain stable and on the level that we have seen in Q2. Month-to-month situation is stable, but not growing. The situation continues to be more challenging in Sweden as in previous quarters as well. There, the main reason behind is the broker channel. Also there, we are seeing month-to-month stable demand and volumes, but still declining development when you compare to the previous year. On the strategic activities side, we have successfully completed the wide infrastructure migration. We have also successfully completed the largest post-migration stabilization activities. Of course, we continue to follow the situation. The work continues. Overall, we are in a stable, good situation with our new setup and new partner.
Going forward, this means that we expect to see the gradual improvement in our capacity deployment when it comes to new products and services as well. Our profitability overall continues to be impacted by muted revenue development as well as the weaker sales mix and cost inflation, combined then with investments to new services and go-to-market activities. This means that we expect our profitability trend to be similar with the past quarters, where our margin follows the seasonal pattern for Q3, but is then negatively impacted by the previously mentioned factors, muted sales and sales mix fusion. This was the summary for this call. As I said, we reiterated our guidance for the full year and feel confident about that as well. Let's now open up for.
Thank you, Elina. Let's start to go through the questions. I think Sanna, you have your hand up first. Please, please go forward.
Right. Thank you. I have two kind of simple questions to start with. You mentioned that you expect a stable Q3. Did you mean in terms of revenue or volumes?
I would say in this case, both.
All right.
Volumes have remained stable when we look at the development month by month. When we look at the revenue development, we can expect also rather stable development. And.
In business insight, we see more stable development, whereas, of course, consumer credit and consumer insight continue to be impacted by this overall low volume situation when we have the year-on-year comparison.
Could you perhaps elaborate on if this estimate includes FX or not? Is it organic growth or organic revenue?
We talk about good control at the moment.
Thank you. Perhaps how does this impact your margin development? Do you expect your earnings as well to be on a stable level? Assuming your guidance, I would assume that margins would have to improve. You have mentioned the infrastructure project, which is now finalized, and some cost savings and efficiency and also commercial activities, which should boost your margins in HQ. Could you talk about those a little bit more? How do you expect these to impact your earnings?
Yeah. I mean, overall, the profitability also continues to be impacted by the muted revenue development and weaker sales mix, as we have seen in previous quarters as well. Of course, if we think about seasonality, our Q3 is always the strong quarter due to Nordic holiday season and how it impacts the personnel costs. Overall, we expect in a large scale the similar trend that we have seen in the past quarters to continue.
All right. Thank you. I had no further questions at this stage.
Thank you, Sanna. I believe it's Daniel, you are next.
Yes. Hi, all. Maybe a question on this weaker sales mix I guess you are once again referring to. If I recall correctly, this means that your customers, they are using less sophisticated services and opting to maybe get some maybe bare-bone data services from you, not these larger credit decision services, which are obviously better. My question is here that, do you think this is temporary or permanent? I guess the risk from my point of view is that have your customers developed their own services and maybe only leveraged data from you from year on onwards? Or have you seen any sort of what's the feedback from the customers? Why are they opting to use these weaker services right now when the bankruptcies are quite high?
If I firstly start from the sales mix impact, the biggest reason behind the negative sales mix impact is that we continue to see declining development in the Swedish consumer credit business overall. It's not about our customers in Sweden using less sophisticated services, but it's in general the volume decline. Since the Swedish consumer credit business is purely fixed cost business, the decline directly comes to our margin. We are growing, for example, in Finnish real estate information services. We are growing in consumer marketing services, and there we have variable data acquisition costs connected, so clearly lower gross margin. We are growing in areas where the gross margin is lower. That is the main reason behind the sales mix impact that we are seeing.
When it comes to this that you mentioned, that our customers are using less sophisticated data, that applies especially to what we have seen more on the Finnish side, where the whole credit process is a bit different compared to Sweden. In Finland, when you do the credit check, you start by checking if the customers have credit remarks. If that turns out to be true, that the customer has credit remarks, then you can stop the process and don't go any further to more sophisticated data or services or to cover the credit register to that matter. That is the reason why we are seeing more basic data being used in Finland, because the quality of credit applicants is weaker than it used to be previously. We are not seeing us losing any major customers in using our value-added services as such. That is not the case.
Megan, you can mention that in Sweden, a very high share of the customers use value-added services such as decision as part of the credit process.
In Sweden, the process actually starts from the positive data. It means how many loans and what kind of loans the customer has. That relates to the credit regulation and what kind of data the finance asset can use to make the credit decision. There is a big difference in that, which is why the process is also very different. Yes, in Sweden, basically, it's more than, I think, it's more than 90% of our Swedish customers who also use value-added services, including, for example, decisioning. The data that is used for that decisioning is different than in Finland.
That's good clarification. Maybe if I turn the question around and focus on Finland, because for me, it's quite interesting that obviously, I mean, the quality of applicants is low right now. If I turn it around, what kind of macroeconomic conditions would improve this mix? Do we need to see improvement in the GDP growth? It has to be this way for the mix to improve.
I think that the key in Finland is the consumer confidence. The consumers are not currently, especially you know the middle class, they are not spending currently, which we can read pretty much almost every day from the news as well. They are holding back on whether they will renovate or buy a new car or whatever. That is the decrease for the volumes. That is the decrease and also why the quality of credit applicants is impacted negatively as we see now. Only, you know, those who are not only, but the large part of those who are applying for a design must be in a must situation and have such financial position. That is the main reason. Consumer confidence is critical here to keep the middle class moving, so to speak.
Great. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thanks, Daniel. I believe it's Ronnie. You are next.
Yeah, I could ask about the Swedish SME business transformation. You have mentioned about these revenue risks. Could you maybe talk a little bit about that, whether these have been materialized or how does the outlook look at this?
As background information, we are also digitalizing the customer subscription renewal flow. At the same time, this means large changes to our sales partner, who is undergoing partner restructuring right now. That is the short-term risk in our revenue, that our sales partner is falling in this situation that they were in. Just to clarify.
Did they have any?
We have seen they started activities right before the summer holidays. We saw some shock reaction there. We have also seen fast back. We continuously pretty much daily follow the situation. Now it seems that at least again, the situation has normalized and gone towards clearly better. They are reducing quite a significant amount of the staff. That may then also impact our revenue development. Although we have learned from the beginning of this place as well.
Maybe you have also mentioned that you're trying to grow your recurring revenue items there. Maybe about that as well. How has it been going?
Yes, we have started or we are starting that testing now with small batches in September. We do not have yet live experiences to share, but we will have something to share in connection with the Q3 release on what kind of customer behavioral impacts we then start seeing.
That requires also a little bit of modernization of the offering.
Maybe one more about the broker channel in Sweden now that the new banking license regulation has partly come into effect. Have you seen any changes in the market? Do you know if the largest brokers have applied for the license, or have you seen any consolidation, for example, in the smaller brokers?
No changes in what we have been communicating before. To our understanding, larger brokers are to apply or have already applied for a license. No changes in that. We haven't seen any consolidation when it comes to the smaller players yet, so the situation in that sense continues to be.
All right. No other questions from me.
Thank you, Ronnie. You are next.
Yes. Good morning. I could follow up on this Swedish SME transformation. Have you seen rivals becoming more aggressive during your process? Is there a risk of losing the customers because of this?
We are also following that. We haven't seen any sort of aggressive moves. Of course, we consider that that's one risk as well because, of course, the markets are in that way small that there are a few players. We continuously follow each other. No, we haven't seen any aggressive moves from our competitors' side yet, at least.
Okay. Good. Thanks. Could you remind us or give some indication what should we expect in terms of your own development cost capitalizations for the second half, perhaps more of a looking towards the last quarter and perhaps a bit toward what to expect in 2026? Will there be a significant step up in the own work capitalization?
For now, for the remaining year, we expect to see some gradual improvement in that, of course depending on the overall environment. As I said, we have now been in a stable, good situation there. We continue to have some activities remaining that will impact the capitalization rates. We expect to see some small gradual improvement there already for HQ. The overall capital allocation for 2026 is something that we will discuss later in more detail. In general, we have successfully executed at least the major IT-related activities that we currently have had in the pipe.
Okay. Thanks. Perhaps finally, on new services, could you remind us or give a kind of a brief update which services you are seeing the most promising in terms of their outlook and your position in the marketplace? Do you hold, for example, a unique position in terms of competition with some products?
Clearly, our most exciting growth is the compliance offering in Sweden, where we have just launched unique services. We have unique ownership data available in that service that our competitors don't have. That is clearly where we see the biggest potential going forward as well. Again, what we also see is that the sales cycles, especially with the finance sector customers, are long. Nevertheless, we have very good discussions ongoing there. As we have unique data and we know that it's something that our customers need, that is clearly the most prominent area. What I also want to mention is that on the real estate side, especially in Finland, we have a very, very good pipeline there as well. We have already launched new services, but we have all the time good development ongoing and new data, new services coming there.
That is an area where we have a very, very good pipeline. We don't always talk too much about that, but that's something that has been growing very well. We expect that to continue.
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thanks, Jaakko. I don't see any more hands up. Are there any further questions? If not, thank you, everyone, for the pre-silent call. We will then see at the webcast as part of the Q3 result. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, bye.
Thank you.