Good morning everybody. My name is Rob Woodward. As you all know, I was appointed Chair of the Board at the AGM last year. All I can say is we've been busy. We've been making a lot of change in the organization. You'll have seen through today's presentation and through the announcements that we're starting to make real progress and real change. I'll let our executive team talk you through the detail of that. I'm excited where we are and I'm excited by what we are doing with this organization. I think that the future is a really interesting one. This looks to me like a story that hasn't necessarily since COVID has kind of. It's got a long, it's got a long way to go and a great, great trajectory ahead of us.
More of that to come. It looks like we've brought a bit of the classroom environment to this room. It's very, very formal but we look forward to it. Today the presentation, I think we're going to present in Norwegian. You'll be pleased to know I'm not going to present in Norwegian but the team will, representing Norwegian. When we move to the Q& A, what I suggest is to make sure that everybody can participate. Maybe we could hold the Q& A in English. I think if we let the executive team kind of talk through the presentation pretty much uninterrupted, then we'll open it up to questions. We've got a number of members of our board here this afternoon together with representatives from larger Shell, there Hannover, and of course representatives from across the shareholder base.
A big welcome. We have the two key presenters, Martin and Nina, who I think you both know, and joined by Morten who will answer any specific questions on the ONH story. Without further ado, it's a great pleasure to introduce Martin.
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Yeah.
Yeah.
A few questions from me. First one, could you just explain more about the acquisition of Ekko? Exactly what does the company do and what synergies did you actually see? You know, did they have any students that you also acquired? That is question number one. You can take that first and then.
I can open the other ones.
I think I can say a little bit that maybe, Morten, you can join in on this one. Ekko is not yet a college. It's applying to be a college and applying to be a vocational school. They have psychology as one of their main domains in terms of the vocational school. Now in the college area and then on the vocational school, it's more in health. We believe they are a great fit to us. They have adjacent programs which fits our current needs. We believe they will be accredited as a high school or as a college and a vocational school this year, so that we can actually increase our position in the market. Maybe Morten, you have something else to.
I hope it's a. Can I just ask for mayor? Do you want me to Congress?
Maybe you should come up here.
Yeah.
Because there's a microphone there.
Okay.
I would add one thing, though. Hi, nice to meet you. There is also a plan B part of this acquisition in the scenario where an institutional accreditation is delayed, which we do not suspect or have any indication of. If it happens, the application from Ekko will be handled before the next period or the next intake. If we come to the spring of 2026 and institutional accreditation is delayed, we will have more bachelor's degrees coming in from the Ekko portfolio that will ensure continued growth for nature.
Is Ekko purely online?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That was my first question and just second question on ONF. You said, you know, you launch now this year. How has the response been in general and how many students have applied? Just in general, I see, you know, you have the NOK 30 million. How does that translate to in number?
Of student growth compared to what you.
Guys have now at ONF? Also, do they sit at ONH or where do they actually sit, these students?
ONF is also completely online.
Okay.
Yeah, so of course the staff sits with the ONH in the same on campus. Okay, so there was a few questions here in terms of how many students or how many programs. I mean, it's. I think it's.
Yeah, it's a bit complicated because we have, we, as of today we have only one accreditation, one program over two years. We haven't launched a program because to launch only one program as a school, you should have a portfolio to be a school. We took the single subject and we packaged them into smaller packages of half year, quarter, 15 points and we have now 100 single subject students. It's roughly 40 students that combined take 100 subjects. Main point is to be in the market to test it. We are currently developing all the subjects that will be included in this grid as we are waiting for ONH to get more programs to a portfolio. From August this year we will have a portfolio which is broader and we can launch all things combined.
The program development has been done already this school year. Now we have 40 students taking 100 subjects. Next year we, I would say we would aim for 100 students or so to get to NOK 30 million.
I think we can come back with the things of the platform. I think the important thing for us now is to launch the pilot. Basically we see that it's a good fit of the programs and the demand, the market, it's an attractive market. I think we are looking into, and as you say, Morten, we are ahead of the plan in terms of developing the programs and I think we can return with more specific kind of details on the initiative though. I think so far, Morten, it's been positive response. It's good to see that the subjects are, or the courses are popular even though the student numbers are maybe a bit small still. It's a big potential.
Think
And we see the market is growing overall. I mean it's, we need to take part of that.
Yeah. Just now, since ONF is part of ONH, if ONH gets the institutional accreditation, will that also apply for ONF or is that a separate application?
That's a great question. No, no, unfortunately not. It's a separate entity. However, one part of the Ekko acquisition is 13 location applications within Health. We want to build a full scale offering within Tech and Health. I would think that's going to be the most attractive segments in the years to come. We still have to apply and then apply for an institutional accreditation for the vocational school in I'd say three years maybe or so.
That's a longer time period, I think.
Okay, I just have a last question here on Sonans. I see you're targeting 5% growth and then EBIT margin adjusted EBITDA margin of 15. Just in general, if we take more like a broader view, what's the long term goal for Sonans compared to what you guys expect from ONH? Of course you expect higher growth with ONH, but for Sonans the 5% growth, will you just sit back and expect that 5% growth to come or how will you actually reach that 5% growth in general?
We believe, I mean we believe the market will grow by 5-6% every year. Of course, depending on recovery, it might be a bit more, it might be a bit less. Today we have around half, half of the market. We're not going to sit and just sit down and just, you know, expect for this to get in. We are working with our online offering. We're working on our total digital offering. We're working on being or having campuses all over. Of course we're working in all aspects of our business to get those 5% or even more. I mean it's not, we don't think it's going to come easy, but we believe that we are strongly positioned to at least get 5% growth.
Thank you. The place to put Fisher as well. We have all the opportunity now to improve your ranking to higher education is basically the privatist scheme. Basically, I think anyway it will be eventually better than it has been in the last years. Again, it's difficult to say is it 10, 15, 20? I think we believe at least it's a positive momentum now and positive direction. At least there is at least a supporting environment for it with the political decisions. Thank you.
Yeah.
How many programs does Ekko have in application now that you expect to be approved by spring?
36.
By spring 2025, it's they have five bachelor's, one master's and 13 vocational. We only need, yeah, so all of those will be handled by spring 2026. There was some overlap though. It's only four bachelor's that will be new compared to current portfolio or ONH.
It is a follow up on all this question.
On Sonans the 5% growth, you have some, you know, fairly aggressive online competitors that have a price point which is, you know, close to half of your price. How are you working on that and how do you see that development in the next coming years?
I mean during COVID the number of online students really grew and now it's sort of starting to flatten a bit out. We see that in the market that the growth is not that big on online going forward. We still believe that's the trend and it's important for us to take part in that market. I think we believe we need to keep positioning ourselves as the leading quality privatist school, which we are today. We have highly satisfied students and we need to continue on the quality. I mean, delivering quality is main for us and I'm not comfortable with discussing price of course, in this, in this room, but of course we will. I guess we will make sure that we will be a good competitor also to our online competitors going forward. Yeah.
The number of campuses now around nine, is that, you know, the level you see also is sustainable in the next years, given an expected growth of 5%?
Yeah, I think within, when you look at the population of privatists, the majority of this is south of Trondheim basically, or Trondheim and south, I think we are located at the large cities in Norway, Trondheim, Bergen, Oslo, and we will keep some of the smaller one as well. I think it's well positioned on the campus area, the number that we see today, I think, but it's also for us to see, you know, in this situation we've become a bit defensive. We've started to close down some of the campuses and that makes sense of course, because it's difficult to run them for profits anyway. It could be also, if we see the market change differently as well, it could be a situation where we would decide different.
I think for now at least, I think we are at a sort of a level that makes sense.
We are working on, you know, being flexible in our. I think that's important. I think a lot of students need to come to campus because they did not make it in high school. Why should they be able to make it online? A lot of them need campus, but a lot of students, they can go online and they can, they can study online, but we need to have the campuses to make the flexible and great product offering to our students.
Just to follow up on that, just for me to understand a little bit more. What's the general utilization on your campuses? Like, how many students do you have in and how many students can actually fit? On that, if you were to grow, let's say 10%, or sorry, let's say 5%, would that growth mainly come from, or would the growth be more accelerated through online or through campus? If you were to fill up those campuses if they're not full.
Or where.
Do you see that mainly coming from Sonans?
Of course it's difficult to say exactly where the growth will come from, but today it's mainly we have 50% digital and 50% campus students. If that trend continues going forward, we have a lot. We still have space in our campuses. We're not going to sort of be sold out in campus. We have more focus on flexibility and premium offering to our customers or our students. I think probably in the future it will campus.
If you fill the campuses you have now, let's say with the same mix of students you have, will that reach 5% or will you have to.
Add on top of that
Interesting campuses in Oslo and Bergen and Trondheim, we can feel more than 5% a year if that. We also have the possibility to expand if we want.
Just a question on the growth targets that it's very difficult for us as shareholders to kind of track the ambitions in ONH because you don't have kind of the number of students that you have in the school because you have programs that last for three years. So you have some embedded growth that will naturally virtually and you have a lot of new applications, new programs coming on stream. You're doing M& A. It's a kind of, to have a better picture of how things actually are moving on the underlying speed. It will be kind of useful for us to get the breakdown of the student mass that you have and how they are in the various programs to have a better picture of the pace. If that's possible. That's actually not a question, that's more a request.
On Sonans you're targeting 5% growth and you're showing simultaneously a picture of the volumes pre-Covid. My kind of fast computation here, if you recover to a level where your volumes are back on track, that will equate to 8% volume growth. I'm planning to be more aggressive on the pricing or kind of trying to maximize profits, as I assume you will, then you will end up at the growth higher than 8% over the next five years. Five might be a low point.
Okay, so what you're asking if, if we go back to pre pandemic levels, it's 8%, not 5%. That's, that's. Yeah, but I mean we are being careful here because it's, it's. It's been a few years where there's been a lot of uncertainty and we might see 8% growth, we might also see 4%. I mean that might happen. It's a bit difficult for us to say, but we believe I'm looking at the market, the upsides and the downsides in the market like there's some tailwinds and there's some headwinds. All in all we believe this is. We believe in this. This is something we believe in. We also believe there might be an upside that we might get closer to pre pandemic levels.
Not sure if that answers your question, but it's I'm not sure if we're going back to 2019 or if it's more just a bit lower than that.
On the cost side, what should we think about the next six to 12 months taking out all the costs and when will that feed through the P & L and the cat loss?
Okay. I mean there's always room for continuous improvements and with the use of AI and being more efficient we will be able to take down cost and we're going to work on that all the time. Are you referring to Sonans' real nature?
I understand that there is a step up in the cost base of 1H due to higher activity, but on do you have left to take out?
Yeah, I mean there's still things to do and I think, I mean without saying anything definitive, I think within this year we will do some measures to get our cost base even leaner. Yeah, it's always, it's continuous improvements I think all the way soon.
I think we at least should see some effects already this spring based on the release context and small things we're still doing. Then, as you say, we are also working a bit more comprehensive approach to it to look how we can, you know, scale some among some current volumes and improve the business as well as such. I think we will come back with more, you know, tangible information on what that will result in. I think we're signaling 15% in EBIT. I think that should show that we're aiming for a sliver cost base still and also looking at some growth for months. I think some improvement during the spring, hopefully even a bit more on the autumn and next school year.
The final question from my side, if you manage to, it's a multiple of three to four on every cost you take out in dividend capacity or share buybacks, how will you as a management, and we have the Chairman of the Board here, prioritize by capital vs. MNE. I see that you have that on your agenda. Of course, we want to grow the business. When you are in that position where you're making good cash flows, how will you as the CEO prioritize that when you issue a request to the board and the shareholders?
I mean it depends on what we have on the table in front of us. If we believe it to be fulcom, then I think we should. There's, I mean there's no like obvious candidates that we're looking at right now, but there might be. I think we should prioritize especially adjacent business and technology I think is also worth looking at.
So.
Yeah.
How high is dividend on your agenda?
Well.
It's, I, of course we think about it but it's, it's top priority now is to get someone else back on track to continue the growth alone niche and when we do that, dividends will come.
I think historically we gave some guidance on this and the IPO, etc. I think given the circumstances that we've been through, I think the dividend has not been an option for us. I think for now when the business is starting to turn around, I think we together with the board as well communicate a more kind of clearer communication regarding dividends and priorities of using use of capital basically. I think for now it's, I think we're really happy on seeing the numbers coming up and eventually I think that will bring shareholder value as well. As time will come we will continue to deliver good results that will also make it possible for us to do some good investments.
Yeah. Okay. Any other questions?
We should say thanks for joining us today. It's been good to be back on the scene as well. We have been sending the reports of course, but I think at least for us it makes sense to report to this on a half year basis. That shows more to full part of the semester this and gives sense in the way we are presenting the numbers I think. All in all, good numbers for the second half as well.
Yeah.
Thank you all.
Meeting you all in person. I met some of you before but it's good to meet you here and look forward to next time. Also, as Martin said, we have some slots today open. I've sent questions. We can do it afterwards or can just contact us during the week.
Thank you.