Good morning, welcome to Tietoevry's first quarter 2023 earnings webcast. My name is Tommi Järvenpää, the head of Tietoevry's investor relations. We had a good start for the year, with strong growth and solid profitability. Our President and CEO, Kimmo Alkio, together with our CFO, Tomi Hyryläinen, will go through the highlights and results of the quarter. Kimmo, please go ahead.
Than you very much. A warm welcome also on my behalf to our first quarter results announcement. Very pleased to be sharing today our good start for the year and our continued consistent execution of our specialization-based strategy. Q1 is characterized as a strong growth and solid profitability, as well as strong overall financial performance across all key indicators. We were able to deliver a revenue growth of 8%, driven especially by two of our software businesses, banking and care, and the digital engineering business Create. Adjusted EBITA margin of 12.3%, importantly, profitability improving in all of our businesses. Furthermore, today, we are confirming that our two strategic reviews, Tietoevry Banking and Tietoevry Tech Services, are progressing exactly towards our original plan.
In light of the dynamism of economy and geopolitics, I'd like to confirm our view of the market and current customer expectations. very fair to confirm of the perspective of continued healthy demand into technologies, cloud data and security, which actually drive our customers' competitiveness and support the important objectives for our clients on business resilience, efficiency, and the importance of business continuity. These factors on market characteristics, customer requirements, we see being consistent with our last couple prior quarters and important to confirm the investment appetite into these areas on cloud data and security. We also naturally want to confirm the era of high inflation. Inflation remains at high levels and will further deserve attention to our pricing practices and drive for efficiency at a similar level of urgency and importance as in prior quarters.
We are naturally confirming, given that we have approximately 2,200 colleagues in Ukraine, our full commitment, full continued commitment to support the safety and well-being of our Ukrainian colleagues and their families. Very important for the company. I'd also like to offer the perspective of our strategic fit to the main dynamics in the global marketplace of technology services and software. We continue to very actively drive our shareholder value acceleration by our specialization-based strategy and related businesses. We continue to take advantage of the cloud data and software-related market momentum and the customer appetite for investing into these technologies. Furthermore, our strategic reviews of Tietoevry Banking and Tietoevry Tech Services continue to be integral parts of our planned value acceleration.
Now, after five quarters of executing our new specialization-based strategy, we are well on our way of repositioning the company as a leading software and digital engineering company towards scalable market segments. I would like to furthermore provide our status in relation to the commitments to Science Based Targets as exactly one year ago, we received the validation for our commitments, which are aligned with the highest ambitions to limit global warming below 1.5 degrees. Some of the main developments to share today, we have committed to reduce 90% of our emissions by 2026, and our achievement to date is 70% already. Currently, we use 95% of renewable electricity compared to our 100% target level by 2026.
We have furthermore achieved 83% reduction of travel-related greenhouse gas emissions per person as compared to pre-COVID levels that also reflect the new virtual ways of working and very practically refined and updated travel policies. 34% of our biggest suppliers by emissions have their commitments towards Science Based Targets. Overall, the importance of sustainability remains at a very high level, and we continue to drive our part of the ambitious corporate climate actions that we can contribute to jointly with our customers. I'd like to naturally again share some of the customer successes in the beginning of 2023. I'd like to share four samples that reflect the good competitiveness as Tietoevry we have.
In the example of Goodyear partnering with our Create business for driving new type of innovation, both in terms of efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness by providing the state-of-the-art fleet and tire management solutions, naturally utilizing all the latest and highly advanced technologies. Furthermore, in the healthcare sector, we have been able to drive market expansion with 12 of 21 counties in the country of Finland by utilizing our health data platform, enabling a 360-degree patient history for higher patient care quality and very importantly, care personnel experience, better access to data and better productivity. Again, utilizing the latest data-centric technologies and the type of integration of across a multitude of back-end systems. Furthermore, a long-term customer, If Insurance, extending the partnership with our Tech Services for modernization, driving modernization, and us being the advisor on the future cloud journey.
Furthermore, in the case of the software business in banking, extending the agreement in Norway with SpareBank 1, for the core banking cards, as well as the very important part of financial crime prevention. Some of the samples that reflect our good momentum in the marketplace, as mentioned in the early part of this year. Then we move into our financial performance and the business highlights. To confirm our the success in Q1 across all core financial indicators, the revenue of EUR 744 million, the earlier mentioned 8%, adjusted EBITDA EUR 92 million, 12.3%. Furthermore, and importantly, healthy cash flow of EUR 104 million and order backlog at EUR 3.39 billion, organically up by 5%, also in terms of the realizable backlog for this year.
Good to see that all important indicators on performance have given us a really solid start for the year. Let us move into the business-specific overviews. In the case of Tietoevry Create, revenues of EUR 223 million, a healthy growth of 9%, and adjusted EBITDA of 15.2% level. I want to confirm we continue to see the high market activity within the digital and software engineering services category. While we do see some early signals in very specific regions of potential delays or intermittent pauses in customers' decision making. Very soft and early signals, I believe not unusual in the case of some of the economic volatility, and we naturally continue to highly believe in the market opportunity and the global expansion potential that we have.
We did experience strong growth in our international businesses, over 15%, actually in Norway, 10%, and we see favorable development, to be fair, also across our Nordic countries. Profitability naturally supported by growth and paying attention on productivity improvement. Tietoevry Banking experiencing continued strong revenue growth, revenues of EUR 131 million, 15% growth, a 10.7% adjusted EBITDA. From a top-line standpoint, strong growth driven healthily across the portfolio of our banking solutions in Q1 covering cards, wealth, credit, and financial crime prevention. Importantly, furthermore, to highlight here that we did in Q1 have a few percentage points of positive impact from earlier pro-project close-closures than originally planned, thus potentially impacting the second quarter.
To confirm the profitability supported by, naturally by growth and the 2022 efficiency measures that we did run throughout the last fiscal year. In Tietoevry Banking, the combination of personnel cost inflation and technology-related partnership cost levels do impact the speed of profitability improvement and plenty of actions to be conducted to offset the impact of these higher inflation components. Tietoevry Care continuing on its strong path, both in terms of growth and profitability, revenue growth of 15%, profitability slightly over 30%. In from a top-line standpoint, as in this business, we have four domains. We have the healthcare, social care, laboratory, and data-centric services. The healthcare side up by over 20%.
In this highly software-centric business through our Lifecare platform, we did see further positive revenue development due to the social and health reform in the country of Finland, and this high level of activity, which took place also in the fourth quarter of last year and Q1 of this year, may impact the demand in the second half of the year. We are confirming very straightforward that the favorable profitability development continues given the foundation of scalable software-centric business. Next, we go into Tietoevry Industry. Here we have a consistent perspective in relation to prior quarters, consistent performance in terms of revenue, modest 4% profitability, healthy at slightly over 17%. Within the business, Q1 strong progress in our case management, Public360 software, over 20% growth, and in pulp and paper over 10%.
We are running slightly over 60% of the paper and pulp manufacturing sites in the industry at large. To confirm, and this is like the last time we do mention, as many remember from the past year, the last large customer contract ending approximately one year ago in the data platform services did have a negative impact still of two percentage points on the top line, and we continue to drive the profitability consistently. We go into more towards the managed services type of business, both Tietoevry Transform followed by Tietoevry Connect. Tietoevry Transform continuing its healthy and good turnaround since approximately four or five quarters ago, again delivering similarly to the fourth quarter healthy growth and improved profitability, revenue growth of 6% and profitability slightly over 9%.
Strong growth driven of over 10% in the sub-industry sectors of industries at large, the forest and public, while decline in retail and financial services. That's to give a bit of a reflection on the dynamics within the Transform business. Profitability improvement continues to be driven by the focus on efficiency and naturally being contributed by the actions taken during fiscal year 2022. This is the other business where we have seen slight signals of potential delays in customers' decision-making. Now, as we have mentioned, this has been visible in two of our businesses, slightly in the, in the Create business and here in Transform.
Into our Tietoevry Connect business, the first quarter organic growth of flat being 0%, profitability slightly over 5%, continued healthy development in the more scalable side of the Tietoevry Connect business in cloud platforms and security, growth of 16%, while traditional infrastructure services continue to decline by approximately 6% level. Profitability drive continues to be high on the agenda, supported by efficiency programs from the past year. To be fair, and as expected, partly offset by the annual price discounts that do kick in early Q1 each year, and naturally the inflation on the cost side, both in personnel and from the technology cost standpoint. This would conclude the business overviews of our six businesses, and naturally next time we'll be reporting five as Tietoevry Transform and Tietoevry Connect are combined as of April 1st into Tietoevry Tech Services.
Next, I would like to confirm our progress and plan in relation to two of our strategic reviews, both for Banking and Tech Services. We want to confirm these are both progressing on schedule. Both follow the original 12-18-month timeframe as originally announced. In the case of Tietoevry Banking, this was announced on the 22nd of July last year. We have done naturally a lot of the preparatory steps at this stage. The standalone legal structure design's completed. Implementation underway. Current activities extensively in confirming and defining the standalone strategy, the long-term business plan and financials. Naturally, preparations are full speed moving ahead towards a standalone listed company. We anticipate the strategic review decisions to be taken according to the original schedule during the 3rd and 4th quarter of this year.
Next, into the Tietoevry Tech Services, this was announced on 13th of November last year, to confirm the 12-18-month timeframe remains valid. Integration has gone well. It's big integration, a lot of work taking place in the first quarter of this year, going live on the first of April, we shall be doing the Q2 reporting in the new structure. Furthermore, as we drive the integration, it includes reworking the operating structure, driving operational simplification, as announced earlier today, efficiency measures have been initiated, leading to a potential reduction of up to 500 roles.
The preparations for standalone strategy, long-term business plan and financials are ongoing, aiming, as originally announced, at the potential sale or listing as a spin-off. I'd like to furthermore add a little bit of color to the earlier announcement of this morning in relation to the Tech Services announcement which was sent out in the press release. As the combined Tech Services, we have very rich set of capabilities for driving enterprise-wide transformation, leading at technologies capabilities at covering the full stack of IT services and modernization from the data layer, application layer to the infrastructure layer, and we believe that this combination is very competitive in the marketplace. To confirm, currently the focus is on integration to improve competitiveness through a highly customer-centric operating model.
A lot of responsibility being given to the customer teams, highly, as mentioned, customer-centric structure, including the financial structures behind to be driving the operational simplification and, very importantly, driving efficiency given the price sensitivity of this business in the market and our aim to further improve financial performance for Tech Services as we move forward. Further to confirm on the announcement today, efficiency measures leading up to this potentially up to 500 roles. This will follow the implementation, naturally, the local regulatory practices as they relate to each country. The realization of efficiency and the related measures we anticipate to take place during the third quarter and onwards. With this in mind, next we go into the CFO view.
Thank you, Kimmo, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased with our Q1 performance. We delivered a strong quarter with all key financial metrics as commented, including revenue growth, profit, and cash flow. Our organic growth was strong at 8% with reported growth at 2% due to heavy FX headwind of EUR 46 million arising from the depreciation of Norwegian and Swedish currencies. We delivered solid profitability of 12.3%, improving in all six businesses as commented during this high inflation era. Our profit improvement was supported by strong growth, continuous attention to efficiency, and tailwind from our 2022 efficiency programs. Our one-time cost estimate for the year is 1%. As we have communicated, the strategic reviews will generate additional one-time costs. Our best estimate as of today is that this cost will be approximately 1.5% of revenues.
These costs include all strategic review-related costs, including all transaction-related costs, legal separation costs, refinancing-related costs, and costs for the today announced Tech Services operational simplification. Good to note that the strategic review-related one-time costs are not timestamped for 2023 but will occur when we make progress with the strategic reviews. Effective tax rate for Q1 was 22%, which is the same as the effective tax rate for the full year. For 2023, we will be booking the quarterly taxes using the estimated effective tax rate for the full year, which reduces the volatility between the quarters. On cash flow, as mentioned, we delivered strong operative cash flow of EUR 104 million compared to EUR 62 million of Q1 2022. Our strong cash flow was driven by improved profitability and decrease in net working capital.
Net working capital decrease was due to normal seasonality with increase in customer prepayments and vacation pay accruals. Our free cash flow was also strong at EUR 69 million, taking our net debt down to EUR 632 million at the end of Q1. The company is in a very strong financial position with net debt/EBITDA at 1.3 at the end of Q1. On attrition, it continues to decrease, with 12-month rolling attrition being 13.5% at the end of Q1 compared to 14.4% at year-end. Our net headcount was slightly down from Q4 due to slower recruitment pace in response to lower attrition and continued planned headcount decline in Connect and Transform.
We keep our salary inflation estimate for the year at 4%-5%. We remind that significant portion of this will impact already Q2 results, which is consistent with prior years. Next, I'll summarize the performance drivers for Q2. On growth drivers, we expect continued good momentum in Tietoevry Create, Banking, and Care. The decline in traditional infrastructure is anticipated to continue, driven by acceleration of cloud transformation. On profit drivers, the inflation is expected to continue at high levels consistent of the few prior quarters, creating it a demanding agenda for all market participants to maintain and expand margins. High technology cost, as commented, will continue impacting primarily Banking and Connect businesses. Banking legal demerger will result in additional cost having negative 1.5 percentage point impact to Banking profitability.
This cost increase is due to Norwegian financial activity tax, which is a specific tax for the financial services legal entities. On the positive side, effective efficiency measures as commented executed during 2022 will give a tailwind still into Q2. FX headwind we expect to continue at very high levels, -EUR 46 million if the currency rates continue at these levels. Working day impact will be significant, having -1.4 percentage point impact to Q2 organic growth. A brief look into our Q2 profit outlook per business. Two of the businesses, Tietoevry Banking and Tietoevry Transform, we expect to be above the prior year Q2 profit level. Two businesses, Tietoevry Create and Tietoevry Connect, we expect to be at or above prior year levels. Tietoevry Care we expect to be at or below prior year with Tietoevry Industry expected to be below Q2 of prior year.
Good to remind, as mentioned, that Connect and Transform will be reported as combined business of Tech Services in Q2 reporting. Now back to you, Kimmo.
Thank you, Tomi. On towards the end of our presentation today, a bit of a synthesis of our start for the year. We have seen a positive start for 2023. This is consistent with our plans and expectations. We do expect continued good execution of our specialization-based strategy. Our drivers for the next quarters remain consistently around driving continued profitable growth in the categories that in the marketplace have investment and growth appetite, specifically in software and digital engineering businesses. Our strategic reviews continue to be high on the agenda, and we also naturally continue a lot of attention on offsetting the inflationary implications to the business and furthermore employee engagement at the healthy level. The value base is very strong, attracting great talent, and we anticipate to build a great place for our 24,000 colleagues and also attracting further talent.
This would be concluding, Tomi's and my overview of the report. Thank you.
Thank you, Kimmo, and thank you, Tomi. We are now ready for the questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, gentlemen. Yeah, a couple of questions from my side if I may. Congratulations to very strong numbers, I think. First and foremost, if you can comment a bit more on your order backlog and order intake and possibly give a little bit more flavor on the geographical touch and perhaps on the business segment. Where do you see the pros and cons from your perspective in the order backlog?
Thank you for the question, Daniel. Order backlog development, as Kimmo reflected in the presentation, was favorable. We increased our order backlog from Q4 into Q1 approximately organically over 5%. In addition, when we compare the order backlog into Q1 of prior year, we are organically, I call it organically, there's an FX difference there compared to reporting, we're 5% better, including the realizable for the year. That's also 5% higher level. On the sort of book-to-bill, we didn't report it, and we don't tend to report, but naturally that was over one for Q1.
Perfect. Is it possible to give any flavor from what you see on the geographical or business segment perspective? Or is it very strong somewhere and wide and light in other segments or countries?
If we look at businesses, it was actually strong across all the businesses. On geographics, I ordered sort of, but I don't actually now have those numbers, but I would tend to say it was across the geographics as well.
Okay, thanks. If I may, you comment about that we have to have obviously inflation in the OpEx and salary uptake, et cetera, that you highlight, and you will balance this with pricing, automation and perhaps I guess the age pyramid. At the same time, we've seen a couple of your or at least one of your competitors here in Sweden talking about that it's quite tough to get the younger or junior consulting into high utilization. My question is really, if you see a similar thing in Create than if that could impact to this yeah, age pyramid play to get to look to balance the salary inflation.
Yes, that's of course an interesting question. We don't see that in our business, to be honest. Our productivity improvement in Create as well, which we reflected, doesn't sort of talk towards that type of scenario.
To confirm the attrition levels, are low or similar to the fourth quarter.
Yeah.
We are seeing that clearly. We tend to have our young graduate programs for specific time of the year. We think it's very important to continue to bring young talent in for a multitude of reasons, including the efficiency side.
Yeah.
Perfect. If I may, I have one final question here. obviously, good cash flow and net activity were low now at 1.3. I also know obviously about your strategy here on the Banking and Tech Services strategic reviews. Are those processes, you know, hampering or excluding that you also can do, you know, niched or focused M&A or acquisition in some areas to strengthen other parts of the business? Can you comment a little bit on your acquisition strategy at these times when you do this strategic reviews at the same time?
I think here we are, we are glad to confirm our consideration on the inorganic. To be fair, this was also shared when we launched the new strategy in October 2021.
Yeah.
We were very open that we are building M&A capacity, most likely into the kind of categories with higher growth and scale. There we commented and I confirm that it's more likely in the areas of Banking, Care, and Create. With that in mind, we confirm it is a vehicle in our toolbox.
Perfect. I guess it's a little bit too early to ask about the cash flow effect from the new program. you comment that it will not be fully impacting the 2023 numbers on the cost side. I guess it's would be on the cash flow similar 2024 play mainly, or is it possible to say anything about the 500 employees there in the Tietoevry Tech Services?
This announcement today, we are planning to have that completed before the end of this year. Yes, we can confirm that.
Okay, thanks. Good luck to you too.
The next question comes from Matti Riikonen from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. It's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. I have five small questions. First related to banking. You talked about technology cost inflation. Could you go a bit deeper what that means? Is it more like OpEx related cost, or is it related to potentially third party licenses, which where the prices increase? Where does it actually come from?
Matti, this is exactly OpEx. This is software and hardware costs in general. Yes, including licenses.
All right. In Care, you flagged that there would be or could be lower demand in the second half of the year. I was wondering that when you reported very good growth numbers in Q4 and Q1, did that include any kind of additional element of license revenue, or was this purely kind of consulting which peaked in Q4 and Q1?
To confirm, here our perspective would be very consistent with the view we had as part of Q4 report, that in this case this is about the Lifecare Solution suite, which has become well competitive, well scalable, and when we do the release of new software versions, it is intended to create additional revenues. This has impacted fourth quarter and first quarter, and we have been mindful that as the SOTE reform in the country of Finland goes into effect, there is potential or likely delays in decision-making because it's political. These are the factors behind why we anticipate there can be slower decision-making in the second half.
All right. Good. Related to the strategic review and the 1.55% additional cost of sales that you introduced now in this report, that included Tech Services and the restructuring of 500 or potentially 500 employees, which you announced this morning. I was wondering what's the share of Tech Services out of that 1.55%? Can you talk something about that?
Yes. good point, Matti. Of course, now, as you rightly pointed out, we gave a number for this one-time cost, which we weren't prepared to give at the, at the time of Q4. Now our estimate is this 1.5%, and it will be roughly 50/50 divided between banking and transform strategic reviews.
All right. But you're not kind of willing to say how much the Tech Services or why is it so that the Tech Services part is the part that we saw in today's announcement that you will consider personnel reductions there? Will Tech Services have of kind of costs that are included in the 1.5%?
Let me try to be more specific. 1.5% includes strategic reviews, review cost for both Tietoevry Banking strategic review and Tietoevry Tech Services strategic review, and half of that is Tietoevry Banking, 0.75%, and half of that's the Tietoevry Tech Services. These cost elements are all transaction related cost, so this reads as banker's cost, and naturally those will occur if any transactions occur, and specifically at that point in time. That's why we don't timestamp this 1.5% when it's gonna occur. It will occur when we make progress with each of these reviews. Hopefully that clarified.
To some extent, but I'm thinking about the restructuring cost related to the announcement this morning. Will that be included in the 1.5% on the Tech Services side?
Yes.
is it going to be?
Absolutely
additional?
No, absolutely it is included. Yes. Good,
All right. Okay.
good to clarify.
Excellent.
Yes.
Good. Regarding industry, you talked about case management growing by over 20% and pulp and paper over 10%, yet the reported organic growth was 4%. There was this two percentage point impact on data platform services. I'm kind of figuring out what were the areas that declined in order to get to only 4% if these that you talked about were clearly higher than that. Which areas were softer?
In the other sectors, just to confirm, the other sectors that in the business are there is the data platform, is the energy and utilities, and industrial and education. As known, this business has a multitude of so-called niche software businesses. Matti, that would be the answer. Naturally these remaining parts were not performing at better levels.
All right. Good. Finally, what do you consider as a normal attrition rate for Tietoevry? We see that of course the attrition rates have been coming down in the whole industry, and, it is constantly coming down in your numbers, but what's the kind of end level that you think you can land, and then that's basically the normal?
Yes.
Are we talking about 10% or something else?
We actually have been talking about this internally as well. We think a normal healthy attrition is somewhere around 10%. Pre-COVID we were there, 10%, 11%. Now this 13.5% is a rolling number. We start to come close to these pre-COVID, whether we call them now normalized levels, that's a matter of choosing the term.
Right. All right. Excellent. That, that was all from me. Thank you.
The next question comes from Sami Sarkamies from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, going back to the cost savings topic we just discussed. Can you give the savings amount in EUR regarding the plan that was announced today for Tietoevry Tech Services? Is that included in the earlier 1% one-time item estimate or in the new 1.5% one-time item estimate related to separations?
Yes. Thank you for the questions. We don't give out a savings target for this externally. Yes, it is included in this 1.5%.
Okay. can you provide guidance on when this program will start to have an impact on your financials?
Yes, we expect the impact to begin, starting Q3.
Okay. Other question on banking. You did flag 1.5 percentage point margin headwind in Q2 related to separation. Did you already have these costs in Q1? Will this be the level also going forward?
Yes. Good question. We did not. This relates to the legal separation of the banking business and it will be a new cost element for Q2, and naturally it reflects the existing setup that we have.
Okay. Then finally, on the demand outlook, you did flag some cautiousness at Create and Transform. Could you disclose which geographic regions you were referring to and sort of which customer industries have become more hesitant?
I think our comment here would be the following that in the case of Transform, so sure has recognized the Transform business is extensively Nordic-centric, that naturally relates with that in mind to Norway, Sweden, Finland. There's nothing, I would say profound, nothing systemic, first of all, but it's just a reflection. Good to see that there can be some delays in decision-making. In the case of Create, as well recognized, over half the business is outside the Nordics, so the international growth potential is tremendous, and we do not comment which country, but the main signals have been very country-specific, and actually outside Nordic.
Okay, thanks. I don't have any further questions.
The next question comes from Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. A couple of questions from my side. I'll take them one by one and start with Create, where your headcounts continued to decrease quarter-over-quarter basis. Are you preparing for slower demand growth here or would you like to see higher headcounts in this segment in order to respond to demand growth?
Yes, a very good question, Jaakko, and good to notice that when you look at the reported number, the exit from Russia is in the Create numbers. There's an additional 100 FTE reduction which is inorganic. It's not all, sort of operational decline. Okay. Sort of overall, we are trying to be mindful of the attrition decline. In my view, we are now at the end of Q1 a bit low, which is visible in the productivity of the business and the over 15% margin currently. We expect to be picking up on the recruitment pace towards the end of Q2 and in Q3, specifically.
Okay. Good. Thanks. On banking and the growth, quite nice growth in the segment. Could you shed some light, how large share of the growth is coming from so-called existing customers and how much growth is coming from totally new clients? Also a follow-up, how is the growth looking outside the Nordics? It is, can you say is it above or below the segment overall?
Okay. I think, reflection on the business mix of banking. Good to recognize that there are six businesses within banking. The banking as a service which relates to core banking. There's the cards, there are payments, there's wealth, credit, and financial crime prevention. There's a strong installed base in each of the businesses. The business growing as driving the predominant international growth in a positive way relates to payments. With that in mind, the potential and likelihood of winning new footprint and new clients internationally is more likely in the payments category. Further other details, to be fair, we don't open up externally. With that in mind, with the strong installed base, so that gives elements of course of visibility into the short and midterm revenues.
Okay. Good. A bit more general one regarding Finland, and we know that the likely coalition of the new government is indicating hefty spending cuts. What is your kind of internal assessment on this, these cuts, and do you expect the public spending on IT to decline going towards 2024? Which segment in your case would be the most impacted?
Our expectation would be the following. We expect this whole consideration for capacity services and the type of efficiency drive just to continue. It's been there many years, and it's very fair to assume that will continue, meaning the kind of cost efficiency and price erosion in the managed services side. That's not the political question of which government in place, but that's business logic and industry phenomenon that will just continue. Second factor, investments into cloud and data technologies across the different parts of the government. I would anticipate that, I mean, that modernizing the way government serve the citizens also in the country of Finland, that will continue. Will there be some volatility? Your guess is as good as ours, but we don't expect anything very significant.
In the SOTE reform, we have a very deep and broad footprint in supporting actually the healthcare and social care systems in the country, and we have one of the most advanced openEHR, open architecture, and as today referred to a winning number of the regions already within this Patient 360, where we integrate even up to 80 systems for the benefit of doctors and nurses. Independent of the way the investment levels, it will be a very dynamic, competitive market, and we are playing hard to win more.
Good. Thanks. Very interesting. That's all from my side.
The next question comes from Felix Henriksson from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have a few. I can go one by one. Firstly, starting on Create, you did flag some hesitancy in customer decision-making in certain pockets and could you perhaps comment a bit on the trend in the utilization rates in the months of Q1? Was there sort of a trend going on one way or the other in terms of that metric?
Maybe I'll make a short comment. Tomi will add if he wants to. First of all, I want to confirm that we have very strong belief that the market that Tietoevry Create is addressing in the cloud native data management, data platforms, analytics towards machine learning, AI, that market will very likely continue to be very active and attractive short-term, midterm, and long term. The investments in the worldProbability of being geared to these segments where Tietoevry Create place, we think it's a really good opportunity. Our comment today was very specifically on delays in decision-making, as earlier mentioned, relates to very one specific part of the world. Given the macro volatility, we thought it's fair to share that perspective as we did see that in some of the customer negotiations.
Regarding the type of a utilization level, slight improvement in utilization. There has been, as Tommy commented, lower attrition levels. We expect to manage well the type of utilization, billability, and headcount increase towards the end of the year to continue to build and scale this business to win market share.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Regarding Care, obviously strong 15% organic growth for Q1 driven by the social health reform in Finland. Could you perhaps give any color on the growth rates in Care that you witnessed outside of Finland?
In the Care business, we have slightly different business mix in the different countries, so that one can read it also positively that there's plenty of upside. We have shared it openly that we tend to have a large footprint in the social care, specifically in Sweden. These are some of the factors that are providing the good footprint across the Nordic countries and giving us also opportunities to extend the portfolio over time into even richer set of software-centric services, first across the Nordic region, over time, potentially towards Europe.
Okay. Then, on banking, you know, obviously strong growth there, but there's been quite a bit of turbulence around the financial sector during the quarter. Has this been in any way visible in your discussions with your clients?
Given that the customer base is extensively Nordic-centric, no, we have not seen impact. As commented earlier, payments is more global. We think that the in the payment side, we are strong, as an example, in virtual account management, kind of on the corporate side. I think we are seeing interesting opportunities in different markets. Of course, we are always mindful considering might there be some market slowdown. Nothing tangible in the banking side. Very fair question.
The final one from me, you highlighted the margin headwind for Q2 for banking from the Norwegian financial activity tax. Just to make sure, was this sort of a headwind that's isolated for the second quarter or will this also be a headwind for the quarters going forward as well?
Yes, good question. This is for the Q2, this EUR 1.5 which we said. Of course, depending on the structure of banking, it might vary then going forward. This is nothing that will go out and be only Q2 specific, this tax element. It will stay with the banking.
Okay. Thank you. That's helpful.
The next question comes from Aditya Buddhavarapu from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just very quickly following up on your comments on some of the delays you talked about in decision-making. You said that's very specific to a few regions. Can you just maybe talk about the general tone of conversation with customers? On where you're seeing the delays, I mean, what gives you any sort of signs that that could pick up for the rest of the year?
To be fair, that's a bit difficult to forecast. We have only given a heads-up. At this point in time, we are comfortable with our forward-looking projections. With that in mind, we do not expect anything systemic, like a broader slowdown. Not at this point in time. Might it impact a month or a quarter in a business? These were some of the kind of signals we had offered today. We stand very firm with our annual plan in each of the businesses.
Understood. Thank you. On the cost savings, so you announced the additional measures today. Is that already included in your margin guidance for the year, as you start to get some of the benefits of that in Q3 and Q4?
We will be touching the guidance if there's a need to. That's short and sweet. Of course, this was announced today and we will be executing towards the end of this year, the full plan.
Okay, it's already reflected in the, in the guidance for the year in terms of the margins?
Absolutely. If there is a need to change the guidance, we will change.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Just final question. I mean, there's been obviously a lot of news flow around AI and then some of the impacts of that. Could you talk about how you look at AI in terms of your own business, maybe across different segments, in terms of the opportunities and the risks?
Indeed. I'm a bit quite hopeful that the type of new technology innovations we should be used to considering the timeliness and appropriate investment levels. Why, why did I mention it this way? Also to be mindful that we educate ourselves into profound new technologies, whether we originally thought about advanced analytics towards machine learning then towards AI. It's very important as a tech company. It's a fundamental part of the learning journey of all employees in the company, and this is one of the important curriculums in our learning platform that all of us are spending time on actively. Naturally, how machine learning towards AI is being utilized in different businesses and different functions by nature varies significantly. We are already using artificial intelligence in 2 of the areas.
One example would be around financial crime prevention. We have early signs of that in our healthcare data platform in certain research activities with some of the very advanced university hospitals. Are these yet scalable? Not necessarily because there's so much innovation to be done. We use automation by nature in our data center, meaning infrastructure services for fault prevention and fault prediction, naturally around application services and automation of application management. Why did I mention it this way? It's a natural part of running the businesses better every day and we are not betting on any crown jewel on AI while it's part of our continuous learning journey. That would be the current view.
Understood. Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from George Webb from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, Kimmo and Tommi. Just one final one from my side. On the integration of transformer connecting to Tech Services, is anything there changed operationally in the business? I guess why did you not do this at the time of the split out into the individual business units previously? Thank you.
Just to confirm, our recognition that there is a further opportunity and a need for greater scale in this business, we came to that conclusion as I think everybody recognized for the CMD end of November. We believe that in terms how fast the market is developing, this is exactly the right thing to do. Yes, part of this operational simplification, we do believe that it will become even more productive driving efficiency and the competitive... It is a competitive business in the marketplace that enables us to pursue the strategic review in an attractive manner by building a more and more competitive business on an ongoing basis. To confirm, the integration work has been very active.
It's been high quality and under the leadership of Satu Kiiskinen, we are on a. Of course, it's a demanding program to run. We have made good progress up to now and expect the next months and quarters to follow.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Just to follow up from my side, again on the customer decision-making delays that you see a little bit in Create, as I understand it, in the international business outside of the Nordic, making up 40% of the business revenue, I guess, in this segment. Is this causing some of your, you know, competence centers the need for example, in China or in India that you will need to do some downsizing of these on back of this? Or is it much too early to speculate about that? Thank you.
Very good. I, of course, understand that the number of questions on this topic. I think it's good to confirm that the signals are marginal. Marginal, from a standpoint that it's good that we are mindful on how we plan the headcount development to make sure that the utilizations and billing rates and all this happen in a fine-performing manner. Then on the interesting part that in some of these delivery locations, I do not kind of open them publicly, but in some of these delivery centers that we have very well functioning, we have been, if there has been an ending contract, actually shifting staff to new clients quite successfully. With that in mind, we firmly believe, I firmly believe there is good demand in the market.
Our addressable market is still relatively small in relation to the market potential. I think we'll find interesting avenues for expansion as we move forward.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you for the questions, and I will now hand over back to Kimmo for final remarks.
Very good. Thank you very much for joining today and for very active and good dialogue, and exciting start for 2023. We have a very exciting strategy, very exciting value acceleration agenda, and I'm sure we'll have many exciting dialogues to have, next one naturally at the end of second quarter. Thank you very much for joining.