Dear ladies and gentlemen, we have today announced our first quarter result, a solid one. Highlights of the report will be introduced by Kimmo Alkio, our President and CEO, and Tomi Hyryläinen, our CFO. My name is Tanja Lounevirta. I'm Head of Financial Communications. To join the Q&A later during the event, please dial into the conference call. I'm delighted to welcome you all, and now hand over to Kimmo, please.
Thank you very much. Thank you. A very warm welcome on also my behalf to our Q1 results announcement. Very practically, we have had a good start for the year 2022. The main highlights of our Q1 report are the following. Strong growth of 5% supported especially by our Tietoevry Create business, revenues up by 15%, Tietoevry Banking revenues up by 8%. Furthermore, we have been able to deliver healthy profitability level, adjusted operating margin of 11.6%. Furthermore, given the war in Ukraine, naturally we've had enormous degree of attention on our employees in the country, supporting them in all aspects of their lives. Finally, we have been able to get our six specialized businesses up and running as intended as of the first of January.
We'll touch on all of these topics in more detail throughout the session. I would furthermore like to touch a bit in the beginning on the aggregate environment. Market continues to be positively active with tangible growth potential, and naturally, we do live in extraordinary times, and I would like to offer our and my reflections of these factors. First of all, we would like to confirm our market growth estimate of 3%, and the background continues to be consistent from our standpoint. Market growth driven by the cloud-native and data-centric, software-centric services, fully according to our strategy that the market growth being around 10%, in some areas potentially even higher.
We'd like to confirm that the traditional managed services side, traditional application and infrastructure management continues to decline between 5% and 10%. Given our business mix, with this in mind, we do want to reiterate the aspects where the market is most attractive from a growth standpoint, fully in accordance, as mentioned, with our strategy, and given our footprint, also good to highlight the traditional managed services market development. Next point I would like to deepen a bit further around our activities to secure our colleagues in Ukraine. We have, as many on the line are aware, nearly 2,200 people in Ukraine. We have had a few weeks before the war started an extra program supporting the safety and lives of our colleagues and their families.
We have reached over 90% level of having people in safe locations, primarily in or extensively in Western Ukraine and in adjacent countries. We continue to be highly impressed by the morale of our Ukrainian colleagues in coping with this extraordinary circumstance, and in parallel being very committed to work, very committed to serving our clients on a daily and hourly basis. Naturally, we will continue to do our utmost support the safety of our colleagues and their families. I would also like to confirm that, during the early part of the year, we did communicate our plan to be exiting Russia, and we did share in April that the exit is completed. Very important for Tietoevry to follow our values of openness, trust, and diversity and carrying out the decisions accordingly.
Furthermore, I'd like to confirm again our perspective, which I'm sure we are hearing for all industry peers. The talent market continues to be dynamic, attrition levels are high, and salary inflation for the companies continue to elevate. We believe all this is for us in a well manageable kind of business environment, also given our good recruitment pace of getting 1,400 new joiners to become our colleagues in the company during the first quarter. Now, this is naturally an area that we continue to work, like any company in this environment needs to put a lot of energy into. I'd also like to mention that the overall employee engagement levels actually ever since the merger throughout the integration, and we continue to see really nice progress in terms of employee engagement and motivation within the company.
Next, I'd like to go into naturally into our financials and first time we report the performance according to our new structure. Here we have a bit of an outline, also describing the core scope of each of the businesses and respectively the managing directors of the end-to-end businesses. As a group, as commented earlier, 5% growth during the first quarter. Profitability adjusted EBITDA EUR 84.6 million, 11.6% level. Earlier already talked about the primary growth drivers through Create and Banking. Profitability healthy, in line with the prior year. Operating cash flow healthy at EUR 62 million level, and good also to highlight that strong order backlog, which is up by 8%. On a group level, everything proceeding in a sound manner.
Very interesting, let's look at the six businesses. Our Tietoevry Create, this is the digital consulting, analytics, and software engineering services with significant footprint and growth opportunities internationally. Revenues EUR 218 million, organic growth of 15%. Fair to highlight that in the first quarter, somewhat favorable contribution from the extra working days and naturally the business expansion through our R&D site in Nanjing. Overall, good performance, including profitability level of slightly over 14%, and I'd like to confirm from our standpoint that the market activity continues to be healthy. Good opportunities in these new domains, cloud-native data and software engineering services. During the first quarter, we did experience strong growth, actually strong continued growth in the international markets and Q1 Norway within the Nordics.
I'd like to also confirm, related to the Tietoevry Create business that as this is where our Ukrainian footprint is hosted within the company to very, very large extent, that we have had limited financial impact from the war during the first quarter, and I talked about the focus factors already earlier. For Tietoevry Create, also would like to confirm that the adjusted operating margin for the second quarter anticipated to be above Q2 prior year level. Next, we'll go into Tietoevry Banking. This is naturally the software-centric assets and businesses for financial institutions. Organic growth of 8%, profitability at 9.9% level. We've seen healthy growth, specifically in the cards, financial crime prevention, and credit side.
Furthermore, we continue to see healthy demand for the banking-as-a-service, while we wish to highlight that the earlier announced decision by a customer to be exiting the Finnish market has had a negative impact of 3% on the business, fully as predicted in the business plans. Measures to drive competitiveness and efficiency have been initiated in Q1, focuses on SG&A rationalization after further analysis conducted as the transition to the end-to-end business has taken place. We do anticipate second quarter adjusted operating margin to be below the second quarter 2021 level. Next, I'd like to go into Tietoevry Care. This again, the software-centric business for health and care services. Organic growth of 5%, profitability at 29.3% level.
We have three businesses within Care, two of them, Healthcare and Welfare, up by about 10%. This is more or less where the bar for the business tends to be. These are naturally the third business, some extraordinary items there that resulted in the, one could say, only 5% growth in the quarter for the business. Healthy profitability. We would like to highlight we continue to invest in this business, focusing overall on the software competitiveness, continuously adopting new technologies, further scale, further automation, further data embedded into software deliveries, and we also reinforce our go-to-market as we do see the market opportunity out there. Second quarter this year, we anticipate the operating margin to be below Q2 2021 level, which as everyone recognizes, was over 31%.
Tietoevry Industry, this is the remaining or other industry-specific software and data platforms. Organic growth of 3%, profitability 15.7% level. Q1 growth driven by the data platform services and the paper and pulp software sector. Overall, profitability solid in the first quarter, and we anticipate the second quarter profitability to be at the second quarter 2021 level. Next, we go into Tietoevry Transform, enterprise IT services for select customers. Also further deepen the kind of a business description, this naturally is the full stack optimization, focusing on customers' business process availability through extensive modernization of both application and infrastructure environments, driving for lower total cost of ownership for our clients. We had revenues at the Q1 2021 level, profitability at 8.5% level.
Within this business, we had the industry and forest segment. This is organized by industry segments overall. While in the retail and financial services, as well as telecom and consumer, these were impacted by predictable annual price discounts kicking into effect as always in early part of the first quarter. Naturally, profitability has been impacted by the combination of flat growth and the higher inflationary era, specifically salary inflation. In this business, very importantly, a strong book-to-bill in the first quarter and order backlog up by 7%. This is very important as the top-line development is very important to ensure proper performance in the business as a whole. For the second quarter, we anticipate the adjusted operating margin to be below Q2 2021 level.
Now the Tietoevry Connect infrastructure capacity and services, naturally including our private cloud capacity and related multi-cloud services. Organic growth of -1%, profitability at 4.1% level. There tends to be a natural skew within the annual cycle as annual price discounts specifically impact the most the Tietoevry Connect business. Within the business, very importantly, cloud platforms and security services revenues up by 16%, while traditional infrastructure services declining by 8%. That decline has been predictable from our standpoint. Naturally, the profitability impacted by the lower volumes and annual price discounts, which I mentioned. Very importantly, in this business, the cost-saving program that has been announced is on schedule, and we firmly believe will be contributing to significant performance improvement according to our plans for the second half of this year.
Second, for the second quarter, we anticipate the adjusted operating margin to be below Q2 2021 level. This would conclude the summary and overview of all the six businesses. Now over to Tomi.
Thank you, Kimmo, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased with our performance in Q1 overall. We delivered strong 5% growth and healthy 11.6% margin, as commented. The market has been positively active, however, characterized by continued high salary inflation and attrition impacting both growth and profitability. Our reported operating profit was EUR 46.1 million or 6.3% impacted by higher levels of one-time cost, mainly from Tietoevry Connect performance acceleration program. Furthermore, our order backlog was up by 8%, providing us a good foundation for future growth. The financial impact from the war in Ukraine for Q1 has been limited, with small EUR 1 million-EUR 1.5 million impact to revenue and approximately EUR 1 million of other one-time costs. These relate to mobility, housing, and other support that we have given to our local employees.
I remain impressed with the work and morale, as Kimmo mentioned, on the Ukrainian colleagues during these difficult times. Other events for Q1 include completing the sale of our Indian operations relating to oil and gas software divestment and completing the exit from Russia, as mentioned earlier. Our operating cash flow was EUR 62 million, impacted by normal seasonality in profit generation, with Q1 profits being lower than Q4. When compared to prior year, our cash flow was weaker as a result of increase in one-time cost and higher payment of tax and financial items. Our ability to generate healthy cash flow is unchanged. Our interest-bearing net debt decreased to EUR 586 million, and our net debt EBITDA was 1.1, similar to Q4 level. As mentioned, we finalized the sale of our Indian operations related to oil and gas.
The P&L impact was very small, amounting to EUR 200,000 roughly, and we transferred 200 employees to the buyer, impacting Tietoevry Industry headcount. As a result of our exit from Russia, we will be booking in Q2, as it was closed in April, approximately EUR 7 million of one-time cost, of which half relate to currency translation differences or CTAs as those are referred. We estimate our one-time cost for the year to be approximately 2%, so slightly higher than our previous estimate due to cost from the war in Ukraine, exit from Russia as mentioned, and efficiency measures in Tietoevry Banking. Attrition levels continue to be high, although stabilizing for Q1, roughly at the levels we have been experiencing in Q3 and Q4 already.
Rolling twelve-month attrition has increased to 60.5% compared to 40.6% in Q4. To mitigate the high attrition level, we have continued with high recruitment base with 1,400 new joiners, delivering a small net headcount increase when adjusted for divestments, quite practically the Indian oil and gas divestment. Our offshoring ratio has consistently increased and is now at 51%. The active talent market has driven salary inflation, and as a result, we increase our salary inflation estimate for the year to 4% from our prior estimate of three. We will be offsetting the higher cost level with many activities, including price increases, further offshoring, management of competence pyramid, and overall cost efficiencies across our businesses. CapEx for the quarter was stable compared to prior year, representing around 3% of revenues. Next, I'll summarize the Q2 performance drivers.
We expect good momentum to continue in Tietoevry Create and Tietoevry Banking. Tietoevry Care growth will be negatively impacted by 10 percentage points due to high comparable relating to extraordinary license sales in Q2 2021. This one, where if you recall in Q2 last year, we referred to 5% additional extraordinary license sales. This is where the impact will be now shown this year in the care business. Tietoevry Industry growth will be negatively impacted by 3 percentage points due to one large ending customer contract in data platform services. On profit drivers, salary inflation and attrition are expected to continue at high levels, impacting the speed of performance improvement. The more normalized operating environment post-COVID will drive higher cost levels primarily in travel costs.
The profit improvement program in Tietoevry Connect will primarily contribute to H2 with small limited impact for Q2 already. FX tailwind is expected to be small at 1%, EUR 1 million and working capital impact to growth positive 0.4%. Good still to remind that we are going through a large transition into new operating model, and it might impact our performance still for Q2. Now back to you, Kimmo.
Thank you, Tomi. Let us take a look at our sustainability and, way forward. Regarding sustainability, during the first quarter, I'd like to confirm our science-based targets have been verified. We have aligned our own actions to the highest ambition level to limit the global warming below the 1.5 degrees. Very important, commitments and actions we are committing to. We have practically committed to naturally, as part of the science-based targets verification, to the Scope 1, 2, and 3, activities, and these activities can be grouped into our activities driving our own emission reductions and then the, reduction within our supply chain. Very important, commitments we are making as a company and, also very intriguing, constructive discussions with our customers as well, how to drive sustainability jointly forward.
When we think about our agenda moving ahead, first of all, we are building our full 2022 view on a good start for the year as we have reviewed today. Very importantly, that our end-to-end businesses are up and running. In the strategic domains, the growth agenda is materializing. In four of the six businesses, the underlying foundation for growth in the market and our underlying execution, specifically around Tietoevry Create, Tietoevry Care, Tietoevry Banking, Tietoevry Industry, we believe is fully according to the opportunities out there in the market. Second, I'd like to highlight our significant continued attention on employee engagement, building on the cultural and value foundation we have. I believe many companies have recognized that companies' values have never been as important for employees as it is in this era of the crisis and the war in Ukraine.
We continue to focus naturally on the safety of our Ukrainian colleagues, while maximum attention continues on the customer service continuity as we have been able to manage also up to now. I'd also like to confirm the importance of the Tietoevry Connect performance acceleration that will be contributing significantly to our full- year profitability objectives as a company. Like Tomi mentioned, cost efficiency activities are taking place across the businesses and functions, which is normal in the post-transition era from the prior matrix structure to standalone businesses. Overall, good start for the year, a good market activity, we believe clear agenda for the company, and we naturally stay fully committed to the guidance that we have for the full- year. With this in mind, I think over to the Q&A.
Yes. Thank you, Kimmo and Tomi. Yes, we are ready to proceed to questions from the call. Moderator, please go ahead.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name's announced, you can ask your question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. We have a few questions lined up. The first comes from the line of Michael Briest over UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks. If I could put a few to you. Just in terms of the pricing discussions, Kimmo, how are they progressing and how quickly will that sort of manifest itself? I'm curious if that makes you more confident of coming in at the top end of the revenue range for the year because I guess costs are going up and you're offsetting that. If prices are going up, shouldn't that mean for the same hours worked, if you like, you get a better realization? Then Tommi, two for you. Just there was a mention of increased efficiency measures in banking as part of the increased scope on exceptionals. What is that?
Also on the cash flow, you called out higher one-time items, but actually it looks like restructuring fell from EUR 13 million last year to EUR 4 million, and factoring went up from EUR 19 million to EUR 24 million. I'd have thought there was a positive effect there for cash flow, not negative. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Michael. If I may, I'll take the first two, and Tomi will add into any topics as usual. First of all, good point. Thank you. In all of those. Pricing, kind of very tangible way forward in our consulting-oriented, meaning Tietoevry Create, as we have updated the price books, and that is kind of quite clear how the pricing mechanism works. Maybe the other point I just mentioned that we've had significantly more attention on pricing, price increases naturally in this era for all businesses. Second factor for the software businesses, we have naturally reviewed the pricing and price increase mechanisms for the software businesses. Several of them need...
have to do with the next release of software in case the customer readiness for a SaaSified business model is not yet there. The overall opportunity to ensure that the software businesses apply the price increase possibilities, including many in many contracts we have actually clauses for index-based increases. We've done verifications how and what is the type of cycle time that we're able to execute. Maybe the third point, as I'm sure the audience well recognizes in the outsourcing type of contracts that impact our Connect business and our Transform, those tend to be longer cycles with embedded price reductions as the automation increase the way of for deliveries. There naturally, in our case and industry-wide, the price increases are quite a lot more complicated. Other efficiency measures continue to be there, super important.
If I may comment briefly, the efficiency side, I would like to confirm that naturally as management, whenever you make a structural change in the company as a management team, you maintain continuous attention on the competitiveness of your total cost structure. All businesses by nature review the how optimized cost structure for businesses. All businesses are doing this, and we have also reflected that we have seen further potential on cost optimization in the banking side. That's why it has been mentioned. Important to recognize this should be happening at the stage of transition across the company.
Yes. Michael, on the cash flow, the seasonality comment of course refers to the Q4 to Q1. Now the other comment there is comparing to Q1 last year and Q1 this year, and that's where it's sort of relevant to understand, of course, how one looks at cash flow. First you look at the sort of reporting in the P&L, and when one takes a look at the EBITDA, we are - EUR 13.5 million below compared to prior year. That is the driver from the higher one-time cost, which are EUR 13 million higher. Then the timing of the payments of taxes and financial items, that delivers around EUR 12 million, and then there's a small working capital change.
Of course, you can sort of slice and dice this in a different way, but if you start from the reported number, this is how you compare to prior year.
Okay. There, there's a EUR 13 million drop in EBITDA, is that what you said?
Yes. That's the driver, the one-time items, which are now EUR 26.6 million, and last year, EUR 13 million.
Sorry, it's the cash exceptionals we should look at and they're down rather than the
Yes, that is accounted in the net working capital change, of course. Because first you start from the P&L. I can walk you through the logic.
Okay.
Of course, separately as you want. If you want.
All right. Then just a final one on attrition. I mean, a lot of companies observe resignations in real time, and attrition's got a lag of a month or three or so. Are you expecting attrition to have peaked? Are we now seeing it come down or are you still expecting it to be steady or even increasing?
I think fair would be to say it's stabilizing. Now, we did experience like half a percent of decline when we look at the quarterly attrition, but it's probably too early to say how it will go. I would say stabilizing and good proxy would be to look at for the full- year of these stable rates, what we experience now.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nicolas David of ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. First, I have is regarding the Create business. Maybe in order to understand better the underlying trend, could you please precise what was the organic growth of this business in Q4 and last year and what was the impact of the Nanjing R&D ramp-up in Q1 as well as working days impact you mentioned. Regarding Create, I noticed that your net hiring in Q1 were quite limited. I think 50 or 60 people joined in net division with. You ended the quarter with a lower number of headcount than the average of the quarter. Could you help us understand?
We understand that attrition is high, but were you negatively surprised by the net hiring here, and do you have an action plan here? What could be for this division goal of net hiring per quarter, if we can have one? More broadly, do you think that the organization change you put in place in Q1 had some impact in your commercial activity and your ability to hire? If so, do you think that we should expect improvements in the coming quarters as now the organization is set up? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the questions. If I take the first two parts. First of all, Create is a new business. We have not restated 2020, so there is no comparable growth rate for Q4 as you were asking. There is a number in euros which we have published last week when we published the restated numbers. Now, for the Nanjing and working day impact in Create, working day impact is 0.8%. Nanjing is around 3.5%-ish . Roughly 4.5% is the impact from those two components, as you were asking. The net hiring rate, this is primarily a consulting business, so the business logic is such that if you don't have the headcount, you can't grow.
Of course, there's a part where you improve your billability percentage, but one should be looking at this as the net headcount increase would roughly follow the intended growth rates of this business.
Maybe I'll comment briefly. Of course, I'll take the org change, and I'll comment on Tietoevry Create as well, just to reflect on the business dynamics a bit as well. Just for the sake of clarity, in case everyone do not remember very clearly which businesses went into Tietoevry Create as part of this change. Three businesses that do operate in the market segments of the market, which worldwide will very likely experience healthy growth in the market as a whole. This comprises of our prior international business, which grew over 20% last year. It is actually based on the modern cloud-native data-oriented services, continuously gaining higher share of wallet from the customers that have been won and penetrated. Second is the prior product development services.
We have one of the best capabilities in the world around advanced software engineering, especially in the domain of connectivity. Naturally super important, especially for the telecom and automotive sectors. The third part that went into Create is the advanced part of consulting in the Nordics. Again, cloud-native, data engineering, data management, data platforms. The market factors are healthy. We believe this business will continue to have healthy opportunities, as Tomi also referred to in his commentary. Organizational change so far, first of all, when you make significant changes, there usually are, you do experience some impact on productivity. We have been actually fairly fine in the first quarter.
The agenda of the businesses has been clear, and it looks like the ability for all employees, 24,000, that we intended to find a new home within the first or second week of January. The recruitment pace as such should not have been hindered by the transition. Of course, the part that is hindering anybody's elevation of your kind of employee base, impacted by the attrition levels. Overall, we remain, we have high attention still on transition. We've said that for the first half is important. The market activity level, we have been on a fairly fine level. Of course, we aim to increase the market penetration even more. A bit reflective, my commentary. Often the risks are higher in transition than we would have experienced up to now.
Yes. Thank you for the color. Maybe Tomi, I understand that you can't give us a quantitative number regarding Create Q4 trend, but maybe more qualitatively, do you have the feeling that this Q1 performance is perfectly in line with the trend you were seeing last year, or is it an acceleration you are seeing? If so, maybe it's more volume or it's also volume acceleration or near price acceleration. A follow-up from my side, maybe if I can on Connect margin, should we expect H2 margin to be at the level or above the margin of last year? Thank you very much. Thank you to your serving plan. Thank you.
Yeah. I would characterize it, if we think about last year, and Kimmo mentioned the three businesses which went into Create. The growth in international business, it continues. We are experiencing over 20% growth in our international business. Our product development business growth is continuing as well. What I would say it's a nice continuation what we saw towards the end of last year and last year as a whole from international businesses.
In terms of the Connect margin, we will be improving the margin during the year, so H2 will be better. To comment exactly, is it better or worse than last year? I won't go there. It will be better and it will be impacted by our productivity improvement program that we have.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Panu Lehtinen of Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. I have three questions. First one is on the Transform and the EBIT margins that were declining. What kind of actions are you taking to improve the trend and when would you expect impacts from those?
Okay. Do you want to take one by one, Panu, or you want to mention all three?
Well, I can go through all the three. That was the first question. Second question is on the impact from the Ukraine war, so very limited in Q1, but should we expect something more in the coming quarters? The third one is basically this was basically asked, but still I'm wondering about the margins in Connect. You said that they will improve in the second half due to the cost savings, but I'm wondering why did they decline year-on-year because it's been like something that's been worked on for a while, reducing capacity after the customer losses and so on. Did the price decrease kind of surprise you, or what was driving basically the decline in Q1?
Yeah. Thank you, Panu. Maybe I'll take the first and the third one, and then Tomi will add into any which ones then. Transform is one of the businesses where further cost efficiency kind of improvement opportunities have been identified. That's one factor that we believe will very tangibly contribute also in the Transform side. Naturally, the whole growth agenda, a bit of mid to long-term becomes very important for that business. To answer your question, profitability, yes, we do have a view what are the activities that will see improvement. On the Connect side, the price discounts have been fully predictable on the Connect side, so no surprises there.
With that in mind, of course, impacted by also that business by the salary inflation and our program for cost structure optimization and profit improvement was started already quite some time ago. I would like to confirm that is currently fully on schedule. That will be contributing very significantly to both the Connect profit improvement and to the group improvement for second half. On Ukraine, I think. Yeah. So Ukraine, I think it's sort of from the data point of view, if I sort of break it from there. So we have five weeks of impact of war now in the numbers, and I was reflecting EUR 1 million-EUR 1.5 million top-line impact.
Now, of course, these first five weeks were the time where we mostly transferred the people and a lot of this, let's say, from the productivity point of view, disturbing activities happened. Now we're in a more stabilized situation. I shouldn't guess, of course, as a CFO, but if we sort of say it stabilizes the situation, I would estimate a declining impact from what we have now seen in terms of top line from Ukraine. Then we will be continuing to incur some additional costs from the housing. Our people, of course, are not living in their homes, and we're supporting them as best as we can. That will continue throughout the year, with this sort of roughly same levels as we now see in Q1 as well.
May I add just a reflective-
Sure.
In addition that naturally like Tomi's and everybody recognizes that no one can predict what will happen. I was visiting last week our operations in Poland. We've had about 300 colleagues with their families then moving to Poland. Why I mention that is from a standpoint that whatever happens with the crisis in the surrounding countries, we have quite a good support structure, very committed people from Tietoevry supporting our colleagues from Ukraine. Why I mention that because also for our Ukrainian colleagues being able to contribute to the business itself is very important and independent of the risk level. Our kind of support network is actually quite strong.
Okay. Can I still ask one clarification to previous questions? On Create, like, should we, like, read your comments that the double-digit growth rate would be sustainable going forward from resource point of view, personnel was up 10% year-over-year, and then from demand point of view, as you said, you expect the trends to continue?
We don't guide, of course, the per business growth, but I would think that's a good proxy. We don't give an official guidance, of course.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jaakko Tyrväinen of SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. It's Jaakko from SEB. Two quick questions from my side. First one, regarding the guidance
Since you are indicating that in most segments you will see margins below last year in Q2. Given this and your guidance range for the full- year, this implies that you are seeing improving margins towards the year end. Could you once more elaborate a bit more thinking behind this assumption?
I would highlight two main factors. One which I touched upon a bit in my closing commentary of the presentation, that the underlying growth factors of four of the six businesses are healthy. That is one important factor. Fully according to our strategy, fully according to what we see as the market signals, and so far our execution overall ability. In some of the businesses, the Q2 comparables are, in that sense, a bit rough. Second important factor, that the cost structure optimization, efficiency improvement, very important and, to be fair, in prior cycles when that has been executed in prior years, it should be predictable that that will be actually supporting our profit improvement from Q3 onwards. That's a very important factor.
Your question fully understood.
Excellent. That's very clear. Thanks. My second one goes to the strong growth in order book. Could you elaborate a bit on which segment, which segments books are driving the growth here?
The one which we did highlight is the Transform. 7% order book growth. It's quite good overall in our businesses, I would say.
All right. That's all from my side. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Felix Henriksson of Nordea. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, Kimmo. Hi, Tomi. It's Felix from Nordea. I have a couple questions. I can go one by one. First I'm wondering about your thoughts on your ability to offset salary inflation. Previously you were guiding for 3% salary inflation and saying that you would be able to partly offset this, but now you're guiding for 4% and saying that you should be able to offset this fully, if I understood correctly. If you could just provide a bit more color on the moving parts here. Is there any, you know, change in your pricing dynamics or is this more related to the banking efficiency program that you highlighted already? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean there's no tricks in the books. Of course, Felix, time will tell how well we will be able to mitigate all of this. We know what to do. We will be extremely focused on price increases. That will be even, let's say, increased the focus as we live in this extraordinary inflationary era in the market. Of course, sort of the competence pyramids, the offshoring, I mean, this is what we do all the time. It's just a more extreme focus on getting all of this done. It's execution, and we do believe that we will be able to do this, and we feel extremely comfortable with our guidance out there.
Got it. Thanks. A follow-up on the market environment. You're talking about an active market and you reiterated your guidance for the 3% market growth. Should we sort of interpret this in a way that there's no meaningful variation in the customer purchasing behavior since the crisis in Ukraine started? Perhaps talking about the markets not directly impacted by the current situation.
Indeed, that's kind of a good summary in a way. Overall, that's why we did want to mention that the market dynamics are healthy. We wanted to bring that out because there is increasing level of dialogue on the potential kind of macroeconomic impact. We have seen some early signals of potential caution, but they are so early and light. Because that, right, that's in the media. We all experience that in the dialogues with different larger enterprises. I want to loop back to the good market dynamics.
The investments into a more agile data-oriented enterprise or private sector, the necessity to optimize, modernize your application infrastructure landscapes, and for banks, for hospitals to invest into modern software, they are foundations of a better tomorrow. Even if there are macroeconomic uncertainties, if currently the market signals are fine. Let me add one more reflective comment. We have been relatively predictable in prior economic cycles on how would this industry usually behave. That would take some more minutes if anybody wanted to talk about it. With this background in mind, we are comfortable stating that the market dynamics remain as we had predicted for the year. Could they change? That is of course something that no one knows.
Got it. That's very helpful. Thanks. That's all from my side.
Thank you. Our next question is, follow-up from Michael Briest through UBS. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes. Just looking at the 2023 ambition, when you introduced it, you gave some margin targets by division and growth targets of course. I remember cloud and infrastructure had to get from
7.2% last year to 11%. Financial services from 13.8% to 20%. These were the big step-ups. Could you tell us what those under the new divisional structures, where the big step-ups in margins have to be, in 2023? Then, you know, what's gonna drive that?
Thank you, Michael, for that. Couple of comments. Naturally we will add to that perspective more towards the next capital markets day on as the future business plans are actually completed for the new businesses. But as always, of course, happy to comment your fair question. Naturally, based on when we look at the Q1 performance, naturally we see significant uplift in the connect side and the activities to be driving in that, in the infrastructure side. That's relatively clear. Volume development, private cloud success being an important factor in there. Second factor, naturally the uplift around banking side. Banking, we believe underlying growth is good. Growth will be a contributor.
The whole software centricity, platform centricity in banking as a service, and then the improvements also in the cost efficiency, which is the case in a multitude of businesses. These are the likely more significant ones, and of course, one can put Transform into that equation as well.
Okay. Then on care for Q2, obviously you flagged the tough license comparatives. I mean, would that suggest that the growth would probably be negative if it grew 5% in Q1 and there's a 10-point headwind or are there other things at play?
We wanted to point out that comparison and comment that -10% headwind. We don't comment on where it will end up.
If that was purely licensed business last year, it would have a very high margin as well. I know you're flagging margins down, but would margins be lower than in Q1 as well?
Michael, of course. I mean, you're right. That will impact the margin as well when one sort of doesn't have that top line there, what was there in the comparison year. Kimmo also talked about sort of the main drivers. You recall we discussed when we talked about the guidance of IS aiming for 2% lower margin for 2022. This is the care business where we will put more emphasis into the software and the development of that and the go-to-market as was highlighted before. Those will drive a bit lower margins than compared to prior year. This we have been extremely open. This is how we plan the business for the year.
Just to confirm the underlying kind of a healthiness of the business, the growth outlook, the competitiveness of our software and the reasoning to be investing into this is simply to create even higher value. We are comfortable with the plan around the care business.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Currently, we have one further person in the queue. Just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one now. The last question so far is from the line of Matti Riikonen of Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, it's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. Two questions related to the Finnish government and Valtori service contract. You are now transferring that service to CGI, and I'm just wondering, does that have an impact on 2022 yet, or do you expect that most of the impact would be in 2023? The second thing is that it's related to the facilities where you have delivered the service. What will happen to the kind of extra secure or special premises related to the service? Can you use the facilities for other customers, or do you have an option to basically sell those? Because obviously if the contract is for 8 years, it might be fairly costly to keep that in anticipation that you would at the later stage be in need of those, or what will happen.
Is that any kind of cost issue to you this year or next year?
Thank you, Matti. I'm glad to comment. For Valtori, no impact on your question for this year. Then I offer a consideration that exactly how much will the impact be in the next years will be dependent on how many ministries or government departments wish to utilize that frame agreement. We maintain very high service levels, high security and the like. We are active within the government domain on many fronts. I wanted to answer your question that no impact 2022. Then around the facilities related, this may be the part I need to be a bit high level with my commentary that we do have high security services to multiple clients. It should be manageable from our standpoint.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions at this time, I'll hand back the floor to our speakers for the closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining us today. Maybe good to remind at this point that you will find more material related to restatements and our new businesses on our investor site. Kimmo, any closing remarks?
Thank you again for joining us. Thank you for the questions and the dialogue. In the case of Tietoevry, a good start for the year. Exciting agenda, of course, demanding due to the crisis on hand in Ukraine. Good luck to everybody and stay safe. Thank you.