Good morning, and welcome to this webcast presentation, where we have Albert Group presenting its Q3 report for 2023. With us presenting, we have the Co-CEO and Head of Business to Consumer, Jonas Mårtensson, and CFO, Katarina Strivall. If you have any questions, please use the form that is located to the right, and we'll take that up during the Q&A after the presentation. With that said, please go ahead with your presentation.
Thank you, Martin, so much for that introduction, and a warm welcome to all of you who joined today for this conference call to talk about our quarter three report. Today you will meet me, Jonas Mårtensson, and Katarina Strivall, who is our CFO. Now, I will start the presentation by summarizing the quarter, and then I'll talk through the agenda, and then we get going. For those of you who are new to Albert, we are a leading EdTech company with an ecosystem of learning products for children two to 16 years old. We are today present in more than 10 markets, and help more than 10 million students with their education, both in schools and at home.
We are a dedicated team of approximately 140 people who really wants to help children bringing out their full potential by making learning fun and personalized. If we shift to the numbers and summarize them for the third quarter, our annual recurring revenue was SEK 204 million, and at the end of the quarter, we had SEK 94 million in cash. Looking at the year-over-year changes, ARR has grown with 34%, where all the growth comes from the acquisitions, and also the net sales has grown by 46%, and also them are driven by the acquisitions that we announced earlier this year. But for this quarter, our focus has been on profitability, and therefore, we're very happy to announce that our year-over-year EBITDA has improved by 68%, or SEK 14 million, and is now down to - SEK 7 million.
But more about all those numbers soon, but now first, let's talk about the agenda. Today, this is the first time you meet the new management with me and Katarina, as we will start by talking a little bit about us and the new management. Then we'll have a section where we'll tell a little bit more about Albert, who we are, why we exist, and where we're aiming going forward. Then we'll spend most of the time zooming in on the third quarter. First, talking a little bit about what happens around us, then talking about some of the highlights from the business and operations before we, of course, dig more into the numbers.
We really look forward to hearing your questions, and therefore, as Martin said, please send in questions to him so we can take them in the Q&A session in the end. Starting with us in the group management team. As I said, I'm Jonas Mårtensson, co-CEO and head of the consumer business. I have a varied background, both working with startups, scale-ups, and big companies. I joined the Albert Group one and a half years ago, and has been the operating leader, both for B2C and the group until now. Before this, I'm a long-term experienced leader. The recent years before coming to Albert, I was at Volvo Cars, where I was part of two management teams.
Two examples are Care by Volvo, which was Volvo Cars' business unit, really worked with selling cars as a subscription service, digitalizing the car experience journey, and so on. I was also part of the management team for the Volvo Car Service business, which is a SEK 30 billion global business unit, where we take care of the cars and the customers all across the globe. I have a lot of experience from leading organizations of both in scale-up and mature modes. But I've also have my interest for working with startups. I've been an entrepreneur myself, founding a couple of different companies. I'm been investing in a few different companies, and I'm also sitting on the boards of a few startups.
With us today—who's not with us today is Anne-Louise Wirén, who's also co-CEO and heading up the business-to-business unit. Similar to me, she's also an experienced business leader coming from the telco industry, where she's been with the Hi3G group, also known as Tre in Swedish for most of us here, where she in the last position was head of Hallon, which was sort of the low price internal venture within Tre. After that, she went over to Strawbees and was the CEO for them for a few years before Albert Group acquired Strawbees last year. And then we saw her talent, then brought her in as head of the business-to-business leg. Then we have Katarina Strivall, but you can present yourself.
Hello, my name is Katarina, as Jonas said, and I started at Albert in the end of August this year. I previous come from Sweden EQUIT, where I worked as a senior financial advisor in M&A. And also before that, I also worked as a CFO at Norconsult in Sweden. Norconsult is a construction group, a Norwegian construction group, with approximately 1,200 employees in Sweden. And I worked there for, like, 10 years, and before that, I was in the IT business for 10 years, also in a Norwegian group called EVRY.
Thank you, Katarina. With that, let's move over to about Albert. I would like to start a little bit about the big challenge that we're seeing out there, and that is about the education system as such. I think you can all probably recognize the picture here on the very left-hand side, either from your own childhood or your own kids or kids around you, that a lot of kids are struggling in school, and especially with mathematics. I think it's the most common thing you hear in the media about self-confidence in math, and especially for girls. Another thing which sort of makes this worse is that there is a lack of equal access to qualified teachers out there. In general, there are too few students who wanna educate themselves to teachers, meaning there are too few qualified teachers out there.
The teachers who are out there, they tend to end up in sort of in good schools, in advantage areas, whereas schools in more socioeconomic poor areas, they have a harder time to attract skilled and qualified teachers. This means that not all kids out there get an equal access to qualified teachers. Unfortunately, this even gets worse when the kids get home. So if you typically live in a socioeconomic strong area, your parents might be able to help you with, I mean, homework by themselves, or they have the financial strengths to pay for getting in a private tutor to help their children. Whereas children living in more socioeconomic weak areas, they can typically not get the same type of help from their family, from their families.
Therefore, I mean, a consequence of this is really that schools' results are getting worse, and especially the socioeconomic inequalities are increasing. Education is so important for entire society, so this is something we really want to do something about. Therefore, we have the vision of really helping every child to reach their full potential through fun and personalized learning. And what do we mean by that then? That is really that we would like to create a learning ecosystem, both for school and home, because we think it's so important that learning takes part in all parts of a child's or an adolescent's life. We need to work in the schools with the children, together with the teacher, and at home, together with the parents and the children, and create learning products that can really bridge this gap.
Talking about learning products, for those of you who have followed Albert for a few years, I mean, we started as a math app, but now we have grown into a broad portfolio of different type of learning products. Still, our core is really the digital apps, where you can learn mathematics, programming, physics, biology, geography, second languages, cracking the reading code in your mother tongue, and so on. Those digital apps are available for mobile phones, tablets, laptops, or the web. We also took during this fall, and actually took the first step to go into the physical books. In a collaboration with one of the leading publishers, we released our first mathematics books, Matteäventyret. And we also have a few different activity books where kids can practice hands-on as well.
Talking about hands-on, it was something we saw a lot by interacting with schools and teachers, that there are so many times you just learn things theoretically in books or in apps and so on, but really use all your senses. It can be good to also experiment and do things hands-on. So we decided to go into the physical segment with construction or different type of science products, where you can convert theoretical practice into practical things. And last but not least, we have educational films. It's something we have learned so long time from our customers, that they really love to learn through seeing films. Therefore, we now have this streaming platform called Film & Skola, where we have thousands of educational films for school usage.
All these different products are sold under seven strong product brands: Albert Junior, Albert Teen, Jaramba, Sumdog, Holy Owly, Strawbees, and Film & Skola. What we do in all these brands are a little bit different. They can have one or multiple products, be in one or multiple markets, and so on. But all together, they give us the opportunity to have the right product with the right tonality for the right target group. We're today having really strong presence on three markets: Sweden, which has always been our headquarters, but also we have local teams in France and in the United Kingdom. So in these three markets are really our focus, but then we are present in both in the U.S., other markets in Europe, and in Asia as well.
But kind of connecting back to what I started to say about our mission, about really helping children to learn and democratizing education, and therefore, we are, of course, very keen to understand, do we have any impact with our products? So we typically do studies every once in a while. And for instance, in a study we did with the Sumdog product in the U.K., we could conclude that this knowledge gap between the socioeconomic strong and weak students were really decreased by using Sumdog. So in a class who used it compared to other classes, you can see that this knowledge gap was closed by 20%. And also in a study this summer, where we asked, parents to children using the Albert Junior app in Sweden, what did their kids react to it, and so on.
We could really tell that 96% of those parents perceive that their children's knowledge really developed by using the app. And of course, this is something that makes us really happy, that we have true learning impact with our products. But that was it about Albert, and now we will talk more about the third quarter. But before going into the details, I will start on a little bit more what's happening in the world around us. And if I start talking about education in general, I think the debate that is ongoing and the big questions for politicians, educators, and so on, are similar to what I said in the beginning of this call. It is about having equal access to qualified teachers. It is about sort of the difference between advantaged and disadvantaged students, so that is a big topic.
Also, the whole topic of the COVID pandemic, we now have the few years behind us, but in many countries, the schools actually closed down, so the kids were sitting from, doing school from home through remote learning. That was not the case in Sweden, but in many other countries that we are in, that was the case. And now you're very... and well, everyone is very curious to see what is the effects of that?... And obviously, the whole digitalization, question is up on the agenda as well. And I don't know if you're familiar, but there's a global study of school results being done, every third year, and the most recent called PISA, and the most recent one was done last year in 2022.
And now in the beginning of December this year, the results will be released, and we anticipate that sort of the debate will be about these type of topics that I just mentioned. And therefore, we are, I mean, preparing. We feel very well positioned to show the educators and politicians and parents and students that we can really help in being a solution in addressing these problems that we think will be showcased in this study. Moving over to the second topic here, which is technology and AI in education. I think the big overall macro trend right now is that digitalization of schools continue. This is really a global trend with more technology in education, both software and hardware.
It can be products that the children use to improve their learning, but as much it can be other type of digital products for to make the teachers more efficient, work with progress tracking, and other things like that. And to take a few words about Sweden, since we are anyway, most of us here are probably Swedish today. Sweden has, for a long time, really been a front runner in digitalization of schools. We have a great sort of device density in the schools, where typically most school have, like, one mobile or tablet per student in the class. Whereas in many other markets where we are, it's maybe one device per 10 people or one device for an entire class. So Sweden had already built the perfect infrastructure for working with digitalization.
Unfortunately, now we feel that the sort of political debate has become a little bit polarized, where you start talking about that digitalization is bad, and instead, you should just have analog or traditional learning. We think this is not correct, and I think we... there are a lot of researchers being with us on this as well. That, I mean, digital tools really have the opportunity to make learning better both for children, teachers, and their parents. Through digitalization, you can easily make a diagnostics of a full class to see what they know, what they don't know. Then you can put in focus the challenges on where to challenge different children.
So the motivated children can be challenged on their level, the masses can be challenged on their level, and people who struggle can be challenged on their level. And also, so I mean, digital tools really have the opportunity to be a complement to traditional learning. It's not like either or. And the final topic, which is obviously in education as well, is AI. And I think in education, I mean, it's very much regarding UC, we see a lot of opportunities, how this can be used, but there are, of course, some threats or risks as well. And especially, I think opportunities are like creating individualized learning experiences. You can have an AI tool which can help you with tips and tricks, how to solve different school exercises and so on, and all those things are fantastic.
But there are some issues as well, which you probably hear about the sort of, students use AI tools at home to sort of cheat in homework or home exams and so on. And there's also a little bit, not reliant right now about the accuracy and responses and so on. So rightly used, with the right quality and ethics and so on, AI can really help in education. And obviously, we at Albert, I mean, we look a lot into this area as well. We're already using a lot of AI as a production tool to develop our products more efficiently in designs and text and coding and so on, and in marketing and other parts of our business. We are looking into how we can get it into the product as well.
But as said, here, we wanna be 100% sure about the accuracy, privacy, and ethics aspects of AI before really launching anything commercially. Moving into the third topic, which is macroeconomic. I think in education and for us, I mean, we see the same trends as everywhere right now, that both, like, schools and households are getting tighter budgets due to the macroeconomic situation. But for us, and I'm gonna take a few minutes to talk about that, is looking at the B2B segment or where we sell to schools, we haven't seen an impact here. I mean, schools continue to be a very stable revenue source for us, and we've actually rather grown this segment. We're winning many new deals and taking market shares despite the situation.
Looking at the consumer business, or B2C, as it says here, we can really see, looking at our different customer segments, that the loyal customers who've been with us for a long time, they haven't changed behavior at all. They continue to staying and paying and being as loyal as they were. But the difference we can see is about sort of attracting and converting new customers from a free trial to a paying subscription. That has been a little bit now for probably some two or three quarters, a little bit more difficult to do that. But of course, to mitigate that, we've also worked a lot with optimizing our marketing and lowering their customer acquisition costs to any way ensure what we have profitable marketing campaigns when we get the customers in. So for us, there hasn't been any big impact.
I guess that can be the summary. But we do see, looking outside of us, that many small EdTech companies are struggling in this market climate, both with sales, with financing, and so on, which becomes an issue for them. But for us and other bigger companies, this could actually be an advantage then, because they're pulling out from the market, making it possible for us to take market share, or it can also be acquisition opportunities when they struggle. So with this as a background, I'm happy now to go in and talk about some of the highlights from the third quarter. I would like to start with this one, and it's about that we have launched the Strawbees product in the U.K.. What is that then?
Yeah, the Strawbees product is this hands-on construction kit that has, for a long time, been successful for us in the U.S. market, but we haven't had it in Europe. So now we decided to launch it in the U.K. after having done some pre-studies during the spring, and this market launch was very much supported by our local U.K. team. And why did we choose to do this? Yeah, because the U.K. market is one of the largest EdTech markets in Europe. Having a product adapted for the American market, it's also quite easy to take it to the U.K. market in terms of both being in English. You need some language adaptations, some curriculum adaptations, and so on. But also that we have local presence and knowledge in the U.K. market, which gave us a lot of distribution synergies.
So with this launch, we of course anticipate to really grow sales going forward. Another interesting launch is of Holy Owly in Sweden, and Holy Owly is a language product that we have been in on the French market for a long time. You can learn French, Spanish, and English as a second language, but now it was launched in Sweden by our Swedish team. And we did this because, I mean, Sweden has always been our big home market for consumer sales, where we have really cracked the code for working with marketing and sales towards consumers. And then adding another product to that marketing and sales machinery is super efficient, and we can get a lot of efficiencies. And also, we see potentially in the Swedish market for a good learning product that complement our existing more science and math products in the market.
Since in Sweden, it's very important to learn a second language like English, French, or Spanish. Now we do have an opportunity to bundle Holy Owly with Albert and Jaramba already being present here. All in all, we also here anticipate that this will grow sales going forward. The third example is that we have taken one of our successful Swedish products, Albert Junior, and launched in France under the Holy Owly brand. This market launch was driven by our French team. Albert Junior, for those who have followed us for a long time, is our flagship B2C product, accounting for the majority of sales. It's been around for a long time and proven to be really successful. But we haven't been in the French market.
But we do see a lot of potential in the French market because both market size, it's much bigger than Sweden and the Nordics. The whole French market is also much more, have a high willingness to pay for education in general because it's so much more important with grades in school and many parents, they pay private tutors to help their children, so the willingness to pay for EdTech products is better there. The whole math scene in math market, is also interesting in France. There are no strong players there today, and there is a great push from the government to really improve math in France, and especially for girls. So now we have a great product in the French market, which we anticipate in the longer term, to also grow sales here.
Concluding with three other more cost-oriented synergies are these ones that we're very proud of. The first one is regarding optimizing business to consumer marketing. Business to consumer marketing, it is quite tricky and fast-moving. I mean, cost for marketing varies a lot. It depends on, like, how much does it cost to advertise, how attractive is our offer, what are local events happening in the market. Like right now, we're in the middle of Black Week, and it's very expensive to buy marketing online and so on. And if you just have one market and one brand, it's very tricky because then you have to market in that one. But now we have five consumer brands, and we're present in more than 10 markets, so we can really think about and optimize marketing to where we get the best return on investment.
So for instance, if Jaramba in Sweden is struggling at the moment, maybe it's a much better opportunity to invest in a Holy Owly in France, for instance, and then we deploy marketing money there. And that's an optimization we do many times per week, which has really proven then that we can optimize marketing investments. And one proof point is that we have sustained almost all of the B2C sales, but with just one third of the marketing investments that we had a year ago. The second topic is here in the middle. It's regarding the business to business sales synergies in U.K. Previously, all our B2B products have been sold by a separate marketing and sales force in each market, which of course take a lot of time to build up, is costly, and also building all the relationships with schools.
Now, proven by taking Strawbees to the U.K., we saw that it worked very fine to use Sumdog's local expertise in the U.K. market regarding marketing, relationships with schools, to also get Strawbees into that market, and that had, of course, increased efficiency in sales. The third example we're really proud about is insourcing of tech development. Swedish Film, having the streaming platform Film & Skola, has been 100% dependent on external software consultants to develop their products. Joining the Albert Group, we have a lot of software engineering skills in-house, so now we can reduce the dependence on external consultants and instead do a lot of the tech development in-house. Besides reducing R&D cost for the consultants, we also get full control over the product and the technology in-house.
And all in all, like the things we see on this slide in front of us now, I think we can start seeing in the numbers already now, which Katarina will go into in a minute, whereas the new markets that we have opened up and the new launches will probably be seen in the upcoming quarters and years, since it takes some more time to really build market position. But now, Katarina, please tell us a little bit more about the numbers for the third quarter.
Thank you. Okay. Earlier we have had a clear focus on growth, and during the later period, during 2023, we have changed direction to profitability, also concerning the macroeconomic situation. As we can see here, profitability has increased for every quarter during this year. EBITDA in Q3 has improved by 68% compared to the same period last year, from -SEK 21 million to -SEK 7 million in sales. Growth, as we see, is at 46% compared to the previous year. The growth is primarily driven by our acquisitions, which have also contributed to B2B's share of turnover in the quarter, which has increased from 27% the previous year to 57% in Q3, and year-over-year, that is 52%, compared to 25%, in business to business.
We continue moving forward with focus on profitability, and we also continuously review costs to ensure we have the proper cost focus and work cost efficiently, of course. The increased growth in revenue, as we see here, consists of 57% from acquired companies, while organic, organic revenue is down with 11%, -11% during the third quarter. On an annualized basis, organic revenue has increased by 3% compared to organic, which increased by 62%. As we also have annual subscriptions, a large part of the turnover for the year has been secured within B2B, where we have mainly yearly contracts, and the proportion of annual subscription is also increasing within B2C.
EBITDA has also improved significantly compared to the same quarter last year, and this is due to our increased focus on profitability, which means, among other things, that we, through our acquisitions, have focused on improving the share of sales within B2B. We continuously also review our costs, for example, by using our resources more efficiently within the group. We have also worked on optimizing marketing across our various brands and markets and working even more with synergies within the group, as Jonas just mentioned. Cash flow from operating activities improves over time, while compared to the same quarter last year, it was slightly lower, as we can see here.
There are also seasonal variations from our acquired businesses, with some invoices, a larger part of the turnover at the beginning of the year, which is paid at the beginning of the year, while the income is amortized over the whole year. For example, we can see that in Q1, in the slide. The lower cash flow in Q3 is also due to increased operating receivables from our newly acquired companies and their operations. With the acquisition of Strawbees, we have, among other things, received stock of physical products, which we did not have before, and the stock has also increased further during the third quarter. And accounts receivables and other short-term receivables have increased some compared to Q3 2022, mainly related to Swedish Film and Strawbees operations.
If we continue, if we summarize this, we have improved profitability during the third quarter, mainly due to less spend in marketing while we are optimizing our marketing costs and work. We can also see here the decreased working capital as of September is mainly due to increased accrued costs and prepaid income. For example, accrued royalties and prepaid income have increased due to Swedish Film. Increased accrued debts also connect some to more employees, which has grown in numbers. And we have business in the acquired companies that invoice a large part of their turnover at the beginning of the year, which is also paid, as I mentioned before, in the beginning of the year.
we can also see that EBITDA becomes an important measure of profitability for the Albert Group, as we have acquired companies where we have planned appreciations of goodwill as we follow the K3 regulation, is the Swedish accounting standard, which is different to IFRS, and where you don't have planned appreciations of goodwill in the same way.
Right. Thank you, Katarina, for taking us through the numbers as well. And with that, I would like to sum up this quarter three report. And the main things are really that our focus on EBITDA and cash flow, they do remain. And going forward, our journey towards profitability will be in focus and something we will have a lot of focus on.... We've also, as we talked about before, wanted to grow the B2B segment to really achieve this nice balance between B2B and B2C. We think it's sound to have it roughly 50/50, which we are now, and that will give us a very nice financial profile of the group, both in terms of having multiple revenue sources and different target groups, but also nice risk profile.
And thirdly, that we have launched multiple synergy projects, which really prove to both reduce costs, as we can see in the numbers so far in the short term, but also have opened up new market segments, which we hope will help us going forward. So all in all, we are very happy with the quarter Three report and on our journey towards profitability. And thank you all for listening so far, and now we're very eager to hear all your questions. And, over to you, Martin, see what you have for us.
Thank you very much, Jonas and Katarina, for that presentation. Like you said, we'll jump into the Q&A section now. We'll start with the first question. All growth comes from the acquisitions, while your organic sales have declined. Why is that?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's something that you can easily note reading the report. Yeah, very much I would say it's in line with the strategy and the focus on profitability, that we went from growth to profitability. And with that, I mean, we had to do a lot about optimizing B2 C sales and reducing the marketing investments to really ensure that, I mean, all the customers that we acquire, they should be profitable. And since most of our sales, the organic sales, is B2C, obviously organic sales is therefore also decreasing when we decrease B2C sales. What I would like to stress, though, is that, I mean, we are still preserving most of the B2C sales, but we have reduced the marketing cost with 2/3. So it really shows that we can improve efficiency in B2C sales a lot. Thank you.
There is a significant difference between the EBITDA and the cash flow for the period. Can you please explain more about this and what we can expect going forward?
The difference is mainly because we have a large part of the business in Swedish Film that is invoiced and paid at the beginning of the year, while the income is periodized over the whole year. But it also due to the fact that acquisition or the acquisition of Strawbees, and that we now have a stock, which we haven't had before, and the stock has also increased in the last periods.
Thank you.
Yeah.
How are the integrations of the acquired companies going?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, to summarize, I would say they're going very well. I think many of the projects that I talked about today are proof points of that, both on, like, the revenue side, where we really see now that we can put cross-pollinate in the group and take one successful product from one market into another market where we have a strong local team. We've now been able to do that both in B2C and B2B during the quarter. But also some of these things on the more cost sides that we talked about, being able to optimize marketing, thanks to having a much bigger portfolio of brands, really now having more shared resources in the group in tech development, HR, finance, and so on. So more and more processes, people, the collaborations and synergies are all going very well.
So, we're very happy how the integrations are going.
Mm-hmm. And, what does a GTM model look like within the business-to-business segment? Is it direct sales to teachers or schools through RFPs? And could you give some color to what the agreements look like?
Mm-hmm. I think we can. So the question was regarding the go-to-market model there. And in essence, it's like we sell in a few different ways, and it depends a little bit by country and country as well. Sometimes it's directly to the teachers, sometimes it's maybe at the principal, at the school, or an acquiring unit at the school, or sometimes there are also bigger, like municipalities or school districts. But take, for example, I mean, one of the strategic shifts we're doing in the U.K. right now is that we used to focus more on selling to the individual teachers, which were typically the smaller deal sizes. Whereas in England right now, a lot of schools start to collaborate in what they call Multi-Academy Trust.
That is when a number of schools go together, and present and procure services like ours, together. And here we have really now focused on that at least for one year, to think about how can we really nail sales to MAT, so Multi-Academy Trust. And during the fall, we have been able to land a number of significant deals there. So it feels like we have cracked the code to get into the MAT segment. And of course, those deal sizes are much bigger, so they help us.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Mm.
Are you willing to elaborate on your timing expectations regarding positive EBITDA and the positive net cash flow, and what actions you will take to reach these positive numbers?
Mm-hmm. We will not comment on the actual timeline for it. But I can say, I mean, the focus on the journey towards profitability is very much in front of us. And we are working both on the revenue side with some of the examples that we talked about today, how we can go into new markets, open up new market segments with very small investments through synergies, but also on the cost side, how we can really—like when we go into new market, instead of hiring a new sales force, we can utilize people already existing. And what we did in B2C marketing, where we start marketing a new brand with the people we already have, and where we use tech resources across the group, and so on.
I mean, those things we have just, I think, started to scratch on the tip of the iceberg for. In the upcoming quarters and years, we, of course, continue to both optimize on the cost resource organization side, but also on the revenue side.
Mm-hmm. What are the primary market trends or shifts in the e-education sector that you are capitalizing on, and how do these trends align with your strategies?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Obviously, I mean, the big trend that we are capitalizing on is digitalization and technologies in school, because that's really what EdTech is about, and so on. So I mean, we are tracking what is happening in there, and that's pretty much what all our product is about as well. Could you please repeat the second part of that question?
Yes. So I'll take the question from the beginning.
Yeah.
What are the primary market trends or shifts in the education sector that you are capitalizing on, and how do these trends align with your strategies?
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so then, I mean, I continue saying digitalization is definitely the key trend, and our strategy is, I mean, to be a front runner in digitalization. But then as I mentioned as well, the whole debate of should it just be digitalized, or should you work with, like, physical EdTech products as well, is important. Hence, I mean, our strategy to also, as I talked about in the product portfolio, to, for instance, through the Strawbees product, enter that segment. And then the whole AI trend is ongoing as well. So to ensure that we are on that train, monitoring what's happening, ensuring we are well-positioned, so when the products are good enough and secure, safe, and correct, we should be on that train as well. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mm.
How does the macroeconomic situation impact Albert Group?
Mm-hmm. I think I talked a little bit about this in the presentation, but I can come back to that. So I mean, I mean, of course, in general, we, we do see and hear signs both from schools and households that their budgets are getting tighter. But looking on how we actually experience it, so I mean, in the school sector, we continue to both, I mean, renew customers we already have on board. Just talking about churn, and that is on stable levels. We continue to win new deals at a higher speed than we did before, so we see that we can also do this, both like the go-to-market question, more individual schools and in bigger school districts, so that the school or business-to-business sales doesn't really seem to affect us.
Looking on the consumer side of it, that's also, as I mentioned, we don't see any changed behavior in the loyal customers. They seem to stay and pay in the same extent as they've done before. When we do surveys and so on, I mean, it seems to be like a little bit like when you have your personal gym card, even though you have a strained budget, and you would like to invest in your own health. And if you use your gym card, it's easy to continue to go to the gym, and many households seem to reason in the same way when it comes to education products. That if the children use the product, they're more than happy to have it as a prioritized cost.
But the thing we have seen, which is more difficult, though, is to, I mean, convert customers who are on a free trial campaign and get them into paying customers. But that, the trend and those numbers have been quite similar for the last two-three quarters and hasn't gotten worse since, then. So I think we, we should already see it in the numbers.
Okay, thank you.
Mm.
We'll take one final question here. Looking forward, what future strategies or initiatives is Albert Group considering to sustain its profitability and expand its market presence in the ever-evolving EdTech landscape?
Mm-hmm. I think I've already been touching on, on, this one, but if I start with the expansion question, obviously, I mean, the way we are looking at the EdTech market as such is sort of you can, you can segment it in different, target groups, like consumers or, schools. You can segment it in different type of subjects you learn, languages, math, science, and so on. Can be in different age categories, from, two to 16 years old or even older, and different countries. You can say that we are almost always, like, looking at this landscape and seeing where are there opportunities, where are the competitors, and in which of these segments do we wanna play?
And then, of course, the next question for us is, should we go there organically by sort of developing our own products or taking them to new markets? A little bit like the examples I talked about earlier in this presentation. Or should we acquire companies who already have a good position in those segments? So that continues to be very much on sort of the growth and expansion side of things. Looking at the cost side of the journey towards profitability, it is very much in line with what we already talked about. Trying to optimize all the different cost categories we have. Sales and marketing expenses have been some of them. B2C marketing, really optimizing those ones to the market and the product where we get the best return on investment.
B2B sales and marketing, like we said in the U.K. examples, can one sales force and one marketing team work with multiple products internally, instead of having to work with having dual sales forces? It's also going then into all other type of cost we have, like external costs we have for consultants. Can we insource them to existing teams? And looking at other expenditures. I think, yeah, working on both the revenue and the cost side, I can probably summarize that question.
Okay. Thank you very much, Jonas and Katarina, for presenting today and answering all of our questions. And also a big thanks to everyone who followed along Albert's, Albert Group's Q3 report today and presentation. Thank you very much, and until next time.
Mm-hmm.
Bye.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you
... so much from our side as well.