Yes, everyone is here, so let's start. Welcome to Enento's Q3 pre-silent call, and good afternoon for everyone. I'm Virva Vesanen from Enento's Investor Relations, and here with me are CEO Teppo Paavola and CFO Elina Stråhlman . Teppo will start by walking through the recent company development, and Elina will continue with the macro environment and performance for the quarter. After this, we'll open for questions. Teppo, go ahead.
All right. Thanks, Virva. Let's start with the recent company development. During Q3, we have continued strategy execution, particularly driving organic growth systematically, increasing operational efficiency and product development capabilities with AI, and having clear responsibilities in the new organization. in August, we appointed Petter Alvsten as the Interim Country Manager for Sweden. Petter will continue in this role until Alexandra Åquist , who was earlier appointed to this role, joins the company in the beginning of next year. This change was done in order to have more focus on all of our markets, as the former Interim Head of Sweden, Carl Brynielsson , can now focus solely on his primary role, the Norway and Denmark business, while Petter focuses on Sweden. The SME transformation in Sweden has continued as planned, and churn has continued at an expected level.
Regarding broker regulation in Sweden, we continue to see the impact on Enento as limited, as we have not seen any significant changes in broker volumes. In Q3, the consumer credit information business in Finland has also started to pick up, which was not yet visible in Q2. In addition, we have continued the integration of Eivora into our compliance offering in Q3. All in all, we continue to develop our go-to-market strategies and product development capabilities to reach growth targets for new sales. We have also successfully recruited first hunters to our sales teams, and they are solely focused on new logos. We are planning to accelerate our investments in growth and focus on new sales with new recruitments in the plans. Of course, in addition to short-term activities, we are working on our long-term strategy at the same time.
With that, let's turn to the macro environment and how we currently see demand conditions in our markets. Elina, please.
Thanks, Teppo. The macro and geopolitical situation remain challenging with war in Ukraine pushing gas prices. However, the latest monthly indicators in our markets point to a gradual improvement. In Finland, consumer confidence clearly improved during the summer and was in August close to the long-term average. In Sweden, household confidence has also improved during Q3, returning close to a normal level. Inflation has remained moderate in both markets. The Finnish real estate market, on the other hand, remains challenging, while the Swedish real estate market continues to show a more supportive picture. However, the European Central Bank has raised interest rates twice now in 2026, with latest increase in September. Sveriges Riksbank , on the other hand, has not raised interest during this year.
Why this matters is that in our markets, consumer mortgages are largely tied to variable interest rates, meaning that increases may have a negative effect both on real estate transactions and consumer confidence and consumption. That said, we have so far seen more positive development also in Finland, and as Teppo mentioned, the improved situation has started to be visible in the Finnish consumer credit information, and specifically unsecured lending volumes. Otherwise, Finnish business is stable and developing as expected. In Sweden, consumer credit information volumes have continued on the level seen in the past months, thus supporting year-over-year growth. At the same time, business information sales remains affected by the SME transformation. As Teppo mentioned, churn has remained at an expected level, and profitability continues to be supported by lower commissions, while short-term SME new sales continues to be under pressure.
Development in Norway and Denmark, on the other hand, has been flatter during Q3, as we have had challenges with our advertisement sales partners. Actions have been taken to support situation going forward, with some new partners already in place. Profitability and cash flow development continue to be supported by top line growth, changes in sales mix, SME transformation, and organizational changes, as well as continued disciplined cost control. Overall, similar picture than what we've seen in the past quarters continue. Looking at the profitability development by country, in Finland, the good development in consumer credit is visible as increasing data costs, while various cost efficiencies support the profitability development. In Sweden, we continue to see positive year-over-year development on margins, thanks to both good development in consumer credit and various savings actions taken. In addition, a few words about our financial position.
We have secured financing for the coming three years, added with two one-year options. During Q3, we have renewed our long-term financing package, which includes a EUR 150 million term loan and a EUR 30 million revolving credit facility. Finally, our full-year guidance was slightly adjusted in the Q2 report, and we continue to expect sales growth to be within 0%-5% range for the full year and Adjusted EBITDA to grow faster than net sales. This concludes our summary of the situation, and we are happy to open the line for questions.
Okay, let's start with Sanna.
Right. Thank you for the brief introduction. I'll just continue on the guidance. Does your guidance include the Finnish recovery that you are now seeing in consumer credit as well?
Yes. It is included in the guidance.
Okay, thanks. I did have a question about the Swedish consumer credit volumes, that they improved in Q2 moderately. Do you continue to see moderate growth, or do you think the pace is improving there? I know we've heard many encouraging signals from the Swedish economy lately.
Well, if you look at the quarter-over-quarter development, we have seen similar volume development in consumer credit than what we have seen in the first quarter. We haven't seen any major shift in trend upwards. But of course, when we look at the year-over-year development, the development continues positive, so to say.
Right. Looking at the overall big picture, where do you see the most growth at the moment? I feel like in many areas, there's signs of growth. Where are you the most happy about growth?
Well, I think if we look at the year-over-year development, consumer credit businesses in both countries are performing well, and volumes are definitely on much better level than what we've seen in the past years. So of course, that's part of our core and thus very positive as well.
Okay. Thank you. Perhaps related to that, any new services that you think would be worth mentioning that you think might be driving growth?
Well, overall, we have continued to see good development both in real estate and compliance, especially in Finland. Of course, in real estate, at the same time, the transaction volumes are very low. We are actually, revenue-wise, developing quite well thanks to the new services. As said, at the same time, when transactions are, in Finland, declining year-over-year, then revenue-wise, we are quite balanced. But definitely some good development there. Then when looking forward, as we have mentioned also in the previous I believe we talked about it in Q2 as well. For example, the upcoming CCD II regulation is something that opens up more opportunities with new services and expanding our position in the credit markets with new services on the way. That is something that is nice to highlight for the coming, especially then 2027 and forward.
Okay. Thank you. I did not quite hear you mentioning the SME transition and churn versus new sales. Where does your partner stand currently with the churn versus new sales? Do the new sales already cover the churn that they are seeing?
Well, unfortunately, the churn has been on expected level. That part of the transformation has been good while our partner has been still struggling with the new sales. It is not yet, unfortunately, fully offsetting the churn. As said, profitability-wise, this continues to have positive impact for us. But of course, we are continuously taking actions to also improve on the new sales and also recruiting someone on this area to support our own sales force.
Right. Is the partner still recruiting? I remember in Q2 you mentioned that they have started to restaff.
Yes, they have started to restaff, but we haven't seen, so to say. Well, we wait for the results on new sales still.
All right. Makes sense. Thank you. I have no further questions at this stage, at least.
Okay, then we have Jaakko next.
Yes. Good afternoon. Sorry. On the Finnish business side, sorry if I missed, but have you started to see any impacts on that business unit following the improved macro signals that we are getting in Finland? Or was your comment mainly on the consumer side?
Yes, it's mainly on the consumer side. The business information volumes have remained stable and on similar level than what we've seen in previous quarters. We have mainly seen the positive impacts in the consumer side.
Okay, good. Just to get it clear on the Swedish SME transformation, did I get you correctly that you are now seeing year-over-year improved profitability already now, or is that still to come?
Yes, we are already seeing it now, and that was also visible in Q2 already. You can see the other operating expenses going down, and that's mainly driven by the lower sales commissions. We are seeing positive impacts and have been already in Q2.
Okay. Then you get the full benefits when you get the new sales models fully up and running and going as you planned.
Yes, of course. Profitability-wise, of course, we are getting good benefits already. But in the long term, we also need to get the sales up, and new sales as minimum, covering the churn. Of course, we aim for higher. Yes.
Good, thanks. Then my last one , a bit of a broader reminder, or has there been any changes in the landscape? Teppo, could you remind us about the key entry barriers against a possible new competition that may arise on back of the AI technology development?
Yeah. I dont 't think there's anything big or new to say about that. AI is still dependent on data, and that's what we sell. I think you see in other industries, probably more in non-regulated industries or non-regulated use cases, you see maybe more of the change in the usage patterns. But the data is still needed, so that doesn't really change that part, bu t it may change the user interface that customers use to consume our data. And that is certainly in our plans as well.
Okay. Very good. All from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. Then we have Roni next up.
I could ask one question about the broker and banking license situation in Sweden. As only few players get the license, do they have, in a way, more bargaining power in terms of price when the market is more consolidated to fewer players? Does this have any effects on gross margins of the business?
Maybe I can comment on that. It may be in terms of number of players, but when you look at the ones that are left, they did already cover 90%+ of the market in the past. We haven't seen that it would meaningfully reduce the competition. Of course, when the market gets more interesting, you may also see new competitors coming in. There is one part of the broker license which we just don't know if it is going to have an impact, which is that they now actually can also act as lenders, not just brokers. Will that happen remains to be seen. That, of course, would grow the competition potentially.
Could you maybe go through quickly the scenarios, how would that affect it?
There is a multiplier that comes from the amount of competition, whether it is how many brokers a consumer approaches o r how many banks then actually bid. For every loan that goes out to a consumer, we get several requests, and we get paid for al l of those reports that we provide. That's really what drives the volumes up or down when it comes to competition.
All right. Then maybe one question about the new financing package. Does that affect the financing costs in any way?
Want to comment, Elina?
No, not really. We have similar terms and good pricing connected as we had previously as well. Of course, any interest rate changes impact the cost, but otherwise, no major changes.
All right. No further questions from me.
Okay. If we don't have any more questions, then we will thank you and end the call here.
Can I actually-
Oh, yes.
-if I have time
Yes.
-just briefly touch Norwegian and Danish markets. Any updates on those? We haven't talked about those for quite a while now, so how are they doing?
As mentioned, and what we had as a situation in Q2 as well, we continue to have good development and growth in areas where we want to see growth, meaning the premium and business and data-related sales, as well s the market packages that we sell. However, where we have been struggling is the advertisement sales and display sales. And there, it's not that traffic would have been declining. So traffic has continued to be on good level, but we have had issues with our partners in this area. And we have taken actions, and now we have some new partners in place. Of course, it takes some time for them to catch up, so to say, but it's been operational issues impacting the advertisement and display sales, which has then been visible in the revenue development.
But in the most important areas and subscription services that we have, there we have continued to grow with nice rates. And that situation continues.
Right. Very similar to Q2, then?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. If that was the last question, then we will end the call here, and have a nice afternoon, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Bye.
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Bye.
Thank you.