Hello, everybody. My name is Henrik Bartnes, and it's a pleasure to be here. I work as an equity research analyst at AVG, and I'm from the Oslo office. With me today, I have Martin and Nina, which are going to present Lumi Gruppen. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Henrik, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the session with Lumi Gruppen. Before we start, we would like to show you a short video to introduce you to Lumi.
[audio distortion]
It's very strange.
Maybe we can do it like this. I'm sorry.
It's always great when the technology works, but not that much fun when it doesn't work.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, we'll show it in small... Okay, sorry, sorry that was... Okay. We plan to use the video to save some time, but we spent four minutes, so that was not that successful to start with. I'm sorry for that, at least. Let's start. Today, I'm pleased to be presenting alongside Nina Vesterby, who became CEO of Lumi in August 2024. My name is Martin Prytz. I joined Lumi in September 2021 and am the CFO of the company. Nina, I think we're soon ready to start, but just short on the agenda for today. We will present Lumi as an investment case. We will give you some insights on our business outlook and strategic priorities. Lastly, outline our financial ambitions going forward. The floor is yours, Nina.
Thank you. Okay, so nice to see you all. We're going to use this presentation to show how Lumi Gruppen offers a compelling combination of strong educational outcomes, financial resilience, and, of course, long-term market potential. These four areas are the key to our investment case, and we will go through them now more in detail. The high-growth segments that we focus on include adult learners, flexible and online education, and vocational training. They are all expanding faster than the general education market. The total growth in applications for higher education in Norway between 2018 and 2024—sorry, too many clicks—the total growth was 2%. Looking at the segment online and flexible education, we've seen an 11% CAGR in applicants, so this is a high-growth area. Both ONH and Sonans has embraced this shift with respectively 80% and 50% of the students studying online.
Flexibility is core to our value proposition, and Sonans is innovating in this space. They are offering hybrid live classes, and both institutions are focusing to facilitate for the different student needs in terms of when, where, and how they study. Of course, we've also integrated AI tools to enhance the learning experience and, of course, to improve our support. Now, looking at the lifelong learning trend, public universities have around 2% annual growth in students above 25 years of age. ONH has outpaced this and significantly outpaced it and has 18% growth in this segment over the last five years. Today, around 60% of all of ONH students and 30% of Sonans students are above the age of 25. We are reaching adult learners and lifelong learners effectively.
In short, when we're looking at the high-growth trends, we are not only well-positioned in them, but we are actually leading them as of now. We are also supported by what we call strong long-term demand drivers. That includes a persistent undersupply of public study places, a favorable political backdrop, and increasing interest in workforce-oriented education. Now, the Norwegian market for higher education is different from, for example, Sweden, because in Norway, there are more people applying for public study places than the number of spots available. There is a solid 2.2 times demand gap in that market, meaning there are 2.2 times more applicants into higher education and public study places than there are actually study spaces available. This, of course, is one of the key drivers for growth for ONH going forward and, of course, looking back.
If you look at these numbers, and you look at 2011, the demand gap was 2.1. After that, the number of applicants has grown by 38%, while the number of public study places has only grown by 29%. The demand gap is actually getting wider. As you can see, now it is 2.2. There are several reasons for the demand gap to be growing. It is a growing population. More young people choose higher education. As we have already talked about, there is the flexible trend of lifelong learning and online education. I want to dig a bit deeper into our strategic positioning and talk more about the demand gap. The average demand gap is 2... Let us see. Yeah, the average demand gap is 2.2. If you look at selected niches, it is higher.
For example, two of the niches that ONH is positioned in, psychology, where we are market leaders, and the big area of business, the demand gap is respectively 4.2 and 2.6. We use data to find trends and to identify those demand gaps. In addition, ONH is a dominating player in the fast-growing online market with 80% of the students studying online. Just to add on another detail, because we need to understand the growth potential for ONH going forward, we only have 1.2% of the total market. The addressable market is huge. We can look at both growing in our existing segments, but also growing into new segments. That leads me to the milestone that we are looking for in 2026, which is institutional accreditation. Continued investments in accreditation is a strategic enabler.
As you see, we've delivered growth and new programs every year since we got the Bachelor in Applied Psychology accredited in 2015. It is very important for us to have that institutional accreditation, because to be institutionally accredited enables us to faster introduce new programs and new segments, allows us to follow the market trends, and also making changes to existing programs. All in all, it will make us more competitive. Today, when we apply for new changes or new programs, we need to wait almost two years. Being institutionally accredited will fast forward us to even more growth. We believe we will be institutionally accredited by spring 2026. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the macro drivers for Sonans, because the numbers show, and if you looked at the numbers, that we've left a few very tough years behind.
It was sort of the perfect storm. It's a combination of very high employment rates, great inflation when exams were canceled, a short span increase in public study places, and a lot less of students than normal not getting their diploma due to factors like absence or failing subjects. What happened was the number of private exams plummeted by 41% from 2021 to 2022. When Sonans also was mainly focusing on the campus area, we almost lost half of the business in just a very short period of time. Now we see the beginning of a recovery with lower employment rates, great inflation going down, and it leaves us to believe the market will continue to recover going forward. Of course, also the regulatory backdrop is favorable for us going forward.
It is stable long-term political support for lifelong learning, flexibility, and the funding of students through Lånekassen. The government, they spent 6.5% GDP on education in Norway, and that is the highest in OECD countries. We believe going forward, the regulatory backdrop will help us also. A proud moment for us here when the Minister of Higher Education formally opened our brand new campus in ONH in March. Both students and employees are very happy about that, and that leads us to the field of customer satisfaction. Martin, if you want to...
Okay, so let's move on. Leading student satisfaction, I think as with any businesses, customer satisfaction is key. For us, we use the term, of course, student satisfaction. We believe we have a market-leading student experience supported by a leading online offering. Our student numbers reflect this as well, with 80% of the students at ONH being online and 50% at Sonans. We are also working to preserve and further strengthen the student satisfaction by remaining dedicated to innovation and also developing flexible student programs as well for the time being. Just a few facts in this context as well. For ONH, we have ONH has held the highest rating among universities and colleges for the four last years.
In Norway, we have a survey called Studiebarometeret , which is a survey for all students giving feedback on their university or college, and has been ranked the number one for the last four years. We also see from internal surveys as well from ONH that they are doing quite well on items, which is very important for us, which is digital resources and digital lecturing as well. We'll look a bit closer at Sonans. We see that there are clear evidence of grade improvements, improving grades from high school and joining Sonans and retaking exams to achieve better results. There are excellent student outcomes. More people get qualified for higher education. Of course, we see also high levels of satisfaction with our teachers and courses. Results for both ONH and Sonans, we are very happy to see.
Okay, let's move on to the financials for Lumi as well. We believe Lumi offers a highly attractive financial profile. It's built on three key pillars: its strong revenue visibility, strong profitability, and robust cash generation. Over the next few slides, we'll provide some illustrations to demonstrate this. Just to start with, just have a look at the performance over the past few years. Lumi has delivered strong revenue growth, profitability, and cash flow over many years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a market setback for Sonans, and naturally, the group financial performance was impacted. That said, COVID-19 also demonstrated a resilience of our business, and we maintained acceptable margins even in a very challenging environment. As we like to say it, in 2024, we turned a corner and returned to growth in both revenue and margin for the business.
Lastly, we have streamlined the cost basis of Sonans and the business has adapted to the current market conditions. In the broader time frame, both ONH and Sonans have shown strong financial performance. ONH has delivered uninterrupted growth since 2008 with a CAGR of 21% and expanding margins. We have grown to 4,000 students. We have been growing our recurring revenue in the business as well, now close to 40% of the total revenue. The growth is also driven by scale-up of new and existing programs, which is allowed by the online model of ONH. For Sonans, Sonans has also followed a similar trajectory as ONH until it faced a more challenging market in recent years due to COVID. What we see now is that revenue has stabilized for Sonans.
We have right-sized the cost base, with online playing a key role in driving efficiencies in the business. What we see now with the key drivers moving in a more favorable direction, we see room for growth in the years ahead for Sonans as well. That said, given the events driven by COVID, the market will still need some time to fully recover. Okay, back to one of our key pillars, revenue visibility. On this slide, we have illustrated how our business model works. For us, 90% of the revenue is locked in by September for the coming academic year, and the remaining 10% is typically secured by January each year.
For your information, though, we are still reporting in the financial year, financially, but we are monitoring and developing the business according to the academic year, basically, and that's how we follow the business as such. It means basically at September, at each year, we know the revenues for the next academic year ahead of us. It's only 10% that is secured in what we call the spring intake, which is from October to January. This model also with the students, they commit to payment also ahead of the attendance before each semester. We have also a good result of this, which is the strong cash flow this drives as well by the students paying upfront.
When we look at revenue visibility, we see also that Lumi average variance between what we forecast and actual revenue is what we would like to say industry-leading at approximately 2%. A bit more on that on the next slide, because when we looked at businesses with listed companies with a revenue below NOK 5 billion, we see that the variance between guidance and actual outcome on revenues is 51% on average with a median of 17%. For Lumi, as I said, on the other hand, the variance is just 2% compared to what we are guiding on in our autumn intake updates versus what the final outcome of the academic year is. That means also for Lumi that we can say that the T+1 is kind of already locked in.
Also keep in mind that the cost bit of the business is also a large majority of fixed costs. With the visibility on the revenue, the structure of the cost base, you can quite easily predict the results and the revenue and the results, the profits of the business one year ahead of you. Therefore, we would argue that the T+2 is the most relevant period to look at for Lumi. Also the cash flow effects of this operating model as well. Strong cash conversion, we had an impact, of course, during COVID, but we have a prepaid tuition model combined also with effective credit screening, resulting in lower bad debt expenses as well. Okay, on ONH, as we see it, ONH is outpacing the market. When it comes to growth, the growth of 21% versus the market that has grown by 2.1%.
Second, ONH maintains strong dependable margins by targeting, as Nina showed, attractive segments through an online-first model. Third, ONH has demonstrated the ability to reinvest capital at high returns. For Sonans, we believe we have turned a challenge into an opportunity. First, we implemented significant cost measures without compromising our ability to grow or negatively impacting the student satisfaction. Second, we've improved revenue quality and consequently cash flows through improved credit screening for Sonans. Third, the business is now more scalable with the launch of hybrid flexible courses complementing an already strong online position. To sum it all up, Lumi has emerged from a challenging period with a stronger, more resilient business model. We offer solid revenue visibility, strong profitability, and robust cash generation. We have proven ability to adapt and grow. ONH is outperforming the market, and Sonans is well positioned for recovery and scale.
We believe Lumi is set for continued growth and long-term value creation. I'll leave it back to you, Nina, on the business outlook and priorities.
Yeah, so we need to look forward and not only back. Starting with ONH, it's our biggest and most important asset. We aim to continue our double-digit growth in the years to come, mainly through the milestone of institutional accreditation, our ability to work in the large demand gap areas, and of course, the ability to address flexibility and lifelong learning. ONF , we have not talked about our vocational school. I'm not going to spend so much time on it, but it's important for us also going forward because the vocational market is growing even faster than higher education with a doubling of students the last six years. We have synergies with ONH in terms of administration, technology, and program development. Also an important area for us. For Sonans, the key is to return to normalized profitability.
We need to do this while maintaining our strong position in the market. Over the past year, we've streamlined the business, adjusted the cost base, improved operational efficiency, and we're confident that we will deliver profitable and steady performance in the future with or without a big market recovery. Happy students, key to our future growth, of course, meaning we need to invest in the students' experience. Our aim is to combine academic quality with a modern digital-first experience that supports learners of all ages. Finally, in addition, of course, to organic growth in our core operations, we're exploring opportunities in adjacent areas and non-degree education formats. We see strategic opportunities for bolt-on acquisitions, especially in the EdTech and content development area that could enhance our capabilities and student value proposition.
This all leads to our financial ambitions for the coming years. If you look at ONH, we believe we will continue to grow around 15% every year on revenue and a bit margins around 25%-30%. In Sonans, we believe excluding potential market recovery that might come, we will grow around 5% and 15% margins, short-term 10%-20%, long-term + 20%. For ONF, it is a very new area, but we believe we can reach around NOK 50 million within the next four years with the same margins as ONH. Yeah, that was it. Maybe we should do some questions if we have time.
Thank you, Nina. Are there any questions from the audience? Okay, maybe one short from me before lunch. I think what is really interesting about this case is the digital students and the potential you have here. Maybe you could provide some color on how you envision your revenue mix developed going forward with on-campus students versus digital students, and how is the financial profile between these two student groups?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we are obviously aiming to grow the online part of the business and online students as such. I think with the brand new campus we have in Oslo, we're also happy to receive more campus students as well. It's obviously the online students we are targeting primarily, but there still is quite a significant campus market we would like to tap into as well. It's obviously also when it comes to margins that we see it's much easier to scale up with the online model we have rather than the campus space where you have restrictions on the number of students you can have in each classroom, etc. The online model will allow us to achieve higher margin as we also demonstrate for ONH as well with the online model.
I think we see the market is continuing trending towards more online, and that would be positive for the business margin-wise.
Yeah, and ONH, as we said, that 80% online today, and that's a respectable number. For Sonans, we've been growing every year since 2018, 2019, and now we're at more than 50%, and the same applies for Sonans. It's also better margins in online educations.
Perfect. Looking at the time, I think we have to conclude the presentation. Thank you to everybody listening, both physical and online today. Thank you to Martin and Nina.
Thank you.