Hello, and welcome to the Dustin Group audio cast with teleconference for Q1 2022. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listening only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present CEO Thomas Ekman and CFO Johan Karlsson. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, and most welcome everyone and happy New Year, both to our existing and new and potential new shareholders, to our first quarter presentation and conference call. We hope you're well and staying safe and have had a good morning so far. Here now to start on the call is myself, Thomas Ekman, and Johan Karlsson, CFO, and also our IR team with Carl Ferranda and Fredrik Sätterström in the room. Today we present our first quarter results for our fiscal year 2021, 2022, and we kick off our financial year with really strong performance, solid growth accompanied by solid margin development. I am, as always, very proud of everyone at Dustin for doing their utmost every day to deliver the great customer experience.
I might even be slightly more proud this quarter given the circumstances with the overall turmoil in the world, with markets opening and closing back and forth, which gives the challenges in supply chains and also of course in the sourcing of products. Despite all these challenges, we managed to have a double-digit organic growth and capture the demand from our customers. The first quarter once again also shows that availability and delivery capacity generate high growth. We have, as you know, worked hard during the last years to automate our purchasing, our pricing, and our logistics. This work obviously never stops. We can always improve, but it's encouraging to see that it for sure pays off both in growth and efficiency in margin.
Let's go through to slide number two on just to give you a brief on Dustin at a glance. Most of you have seen this one before, but, as you know, we are a hardware, software, and service company, 250,000 hardware and software products in our assortment, primarily sold online. Split is now 60/40 given the changes we have seen also when we acquired Centralpoint. We are across the Nordics and the Benelux. Now it's, Netherlands is our biggest market with 35% of the sales, followed by Sweden at 26%, and then Norway, Denmark, and Finland at between 10% and 15%, and Belgium at 3%. We are primarily a B2B company. 97% of our sales is to B2B and, 3% is on B2C. It's a small area.
50/50 roughly on SMB and LCP. That's us in a short nutshell. Let's move to slide three and go through the financial highlights. A really strong organic growth, as said, at 11%. We have strengthened our position in the market and our productivity and strong position in the value chain has also benefited our performance. This in combination with an intensive cost focus, overall high economic activity in society gave us an adjusted EBITDA increasing to SEK 301 million, and the EBITDA margin strengthening to 4.8%. In addition, our online core business performed strongly in pace with a higher share of online retail and a greater need for mobility, cloud services, security driven from the underlying strong trends.
These market trends that we build our strategy on, I mean, the online shift, the growth mobility and the cloud services demand for predictable IT costs, focus on security and integrity, and finally of course, sustainability have continued during the quarter and increase in importance as well. That makes our long-term position even stronger. Total net sales were SEK 6.2 billion, SEK 6,247 million, up with 69% versus last year on reported level. The organic growth, as said, was up 11%, for which SMB showed a very positive 11.7% and LCP at a very good 12.9%. B2C at a negative -17.4% as an effect of much less campaigning on Black Friday due to the overall component shortages.
Overall strong organic growth, which shows not only good underlying demand, but also our capability to make use of it and deliver. Gross profit was SEK 894 million compared to last year's SEK 577 million, giving us a gross margin at 14.3%, somewhat down from last year's 15.6% because of us adding more LCP volume from Centralpoint. On comparable numbers, it's on the same level as last year. Our adjusted EBITDA increased a lot, passing now SEK 300 million, and came in at SEK 301 million versus last year's SEK 171 million. As said, that gave us an adjusted EBITDA margin at 4.8% for the quarter versus last year's 4.6%. Very strong performance and strong earnings.
The margin is improved by good performance and the structure changes we are doing, combined of course with good cost control within all segments. Both SMB and LCP show really good progress in the margin uptake in the quarter. Items affecting comparability was -SEK 7 million, consequently then giving us an EBIT at SEK 251 million compared to last year's SEK 132 million. EPS earnings per share grew to SEK 1.47 per share versus last year's 0.99. Our leverage at the end of the quarter was 3.1 versus 2.2 last year, increased because of the acquisition of Centralpoint, but deleveraging very good sequentially from Q4.
Cash flow also strong, and from operating activity was SEK 369 million compared to last year's SEK 265 million. Apart from an intense quarter in general from an operation perspective, we have continued the integration work with Centralpoint. Furthermore, in the Benelux, Vincere is now operating under the Dustin brand, and as a consequence of that, we have done a reclassification of segment costs and also transferred customers between our segments. We have also completed our refinancing and signed the sustainability-linked credit facility. Worth mentioning, given the power and electricity mess that's going on, we have also installed solar cells on the roof of our central warehouse, which not only reduces our cost, but it of course also reduce our climate emissions. That has been a good project within this.
Now, Johan, you can take us through the financial for the different segments.
Yes. Thanks so much. Let's move to slide four and the SMB segment in some more detail. Sales for the quarter ended at SEK 1,925 million, an increase of 18.7% over last year, representing an organic growth of 11.7%. Sales growth continues to be strong despite the challenges in the global supply chain, mainly as a result of very strong economic performance both in the Nordics and in the Benelux. As in previous quarters, we continue to see good sales development in hardware categories from all customer groups in the segment. However, in Q4, we had a particularly strong sales toward the larger SMB customers. In terms of services, we have good development of the integrated recurring services with above average growth rates. At the same time, project-related services are now stabilizing on a high level.
Geographically, Norway had the strongest sales growth, followed by Sweden and the Netherlands. In the quarter, the sales towards SMB was affected by customer moves between the segments. The effect was SEK 140 million less sales in SMB and the same addition in LCP. The shift of customers from SMB to LCP was done to harmonize the segment definition in the group. This explains the major part of the difference between reported sales and organic sales development in the quarter in SMB. Segment margin for the quarter was 12% compared to last year's 10%. Reclassification of segment costs to central costs and customer moves affected this year's margin positively by 1.1%. The reclassification was done as the Vincere Groep is now run as an integrated part of Dustin and hence forms part of Dustin's central platform.
Further to that, scalability as a result of higher volumes in SMB affected the margins positively. Also in Private Label, we performed well in the quarter, adding to the margin improvement. Software and services sales was in line with last year, but share of total sales declined from 21.2% of last year to 19.5% this year, mainly as a result of the strong hardware sales development. We then move to slide 5 and LCP. LCP sales in the quarter was SEK 4,183 million, an increase of 119.4%, of which 12.9% was organic. During the quarter, we saw very strong sales increase in both public sector and large corporates.
As discussed before, the public sector sales have remained strong throughout the pandemic, while corporate sales dipped at the beginning of the pandemic, but is now back in full swing. Turbulence in the supply chain is still there, but we have secured good supplies during the quarter. Geographically, we saw strong sales in Norway, followed by Finland and Sweden. Segment margins ended at 7% compared to last year's 6.7%. From a business perspective, the increase over last year is mainly explained by generally improved margins in some of the larger contracts, cost benefits coming from larger volumes and effects from last year's cost efficiency activities, and also coming from customer moves from SMB, SEK 140 million, and the move of segment costs to central costs affected the margin positively by 0.3%.
Segment results improved from last year's SEK 127 million to SEK 293 million or by 130%. All in all, a very strong performance in LCP, both in the Nordic region and in the Benelux region. We move to slide six and the B2C. B2C had a tougher quarter in regards to volume and declined by 16.8%, of which 17.4% was organic. B2C represented in the quarter 2% of the total sales of Dustin. The main reason for the sales decrease was the Black Friday, mainly due to lower campaign sales as the market shortage of products continues. Our focus was therefore again on margins and securing the segment result. We performed well on keeping margins up and ended with a segment margin of 11.1% compared to last year's 6.3%.
In total, this ended with a segment result of SEK 16 million, up from SEK 11 million last year. If we then move to net working capital on slide seven. Net working capital was negative SEK 334 million compared to last year's negative SEK 531 million. Last year was highly affected by the actions taken as a consequence of the pandemic, where focus was on securing working capital to mitigate potential risks in accounts receivables. Further to that, the inclusion of Centralpoint has affected the individual items in the working capital significantly. Moving on to look at the details of working capital, we can see that inventory in the quarter was SEK 1,138 million compared to SEK 507 million last year.
The main reason for the increase was the inclusion of Centralpoint adding SEK 421 million and the higher purchase volumes to reduce the risk with the shortage of components. Accounts receivables was at SEK 1.4 billion, mainly as a result of Centralpoint adding approximately SEK 1.2 billion, and the rest explained by higher business volumes. In accounts payable, which was SEK 3.713 billion, which was an increase of SEK 1.7 billion, Centralpoint added the majority of the difference compared to last year. In total, we continue to see strong performance in the area of working capital, where we continue to stay in or below our target range of SEK -100 million to SEK 200 million. Leverage.
That means net debt in relation to 12-month rolling EBITDA at the end of Q1 was 3.1, including rolling 12-month EBITDA of Centralpoint. As you remember, our target is to stay in the range of two to three. Strong operating cash flow reduced the leverage from 3.4 at the end of last year to 3.1 at the end of Q1. Moving on to slide eight in cash flow. Cash flow for the quarter was SEK 294 million, that's compared to SEK 176 million last year. If we look at the parts, cash flow from operating activities before changes in net working capital was SEK 283 million compared to SEK 169 million last year. Change in net working capital was SEK 86 million positive compared to SEK 96 million positive last year.
There, the difference is mainly the increase of inventory levels due to the market turbulence. Cash flow from investing activities was SEK -40 million compared to SEK -52 million last year, where majority comes from CapEx. Cash flow from financing activities was SEK -35 million compared to SEK -37 million last year, where the main. It mainly consists of reduction of lease liabilities in line with IFRS 16. Looking at the investments in some more detail, total investment amounted to SEK 81 million compared to last year's 53. CapEx related to IT development was SEK 19 million compared to 10 last year. The main difference came from the investment we are doing in Centralpoint IT platform. Investment in tangible and intangible assets was SEK 46 million compared to 33 last year, where new circularity center in Växjö was finalized during the quarter.
Investment in assets related to services was SEK 17 million compared to last year's SEK 12 million. All in all, SEK 40 million out of the SEK 81 million in CapEx was affecting cash flow. The others were change in lease or rent contracts. With that, we move back to Thomas.
Great. Thank you, Johan. Let's continue to slide number nine. As mentioned before, we are entering a new chapter for Dafi and we expand our Nordic or our strong Nordic position to a European strong position. I know some of you tuned into our Capital Market Day we had just before Christmas at the end of November, but let me repeat some of our messages from that. We stick to our financial targets and aim to continue delivering 8% organic growth and also continue to search for bolt-on acquisitions that can further increase our addressable market and our relevance for our customers. As you can see on this slide, we have different buckets and levers that will contribute to our target to be a SEK 40 billion sales company by 2025, 2026.
First, we find growth obviously within our core business within SMB and LCP segments, as well as we continue to grow within services, where we see good development in recurring business and especially now in the now integrated bolt-ons that we have previously done. We work on the integration of Centralpoint, and from that, we estimate synergies both on sales and cost. As the last bucket, you can see that we've given our stronghold now also in mainland Europe. We'll continue to look and search for further geographical expansion. With our business model and approach towards both SMB and LCP, where we use a combination of push and pull sales, we see good potential in taking market shares and finding our customer segments also in new markets and territories.
With all these levers, we aim to reach SEK 40 billion in sales by 2025-2026. Over to next slide 10, on our margin development. We aim to reach a 5%-6% EBITDA margin, even though we now take on more LCP volumes. We continue our automation journey, making us more efficient in delivery, operations, and procurement. We also see opportunities with our scale to serve a broader base of larger customers, as well as increase our private label penetration, both in the Nordics, where it has been very successful, and now we're also launching it in our private label sales in the Benelux.
We are also, as previously announced, building up our own, as Johan also mentioned, our takeback centre in south of Sweden, covering for the Nordics, and that will also contribute positively to the margin development. When we enter a new region or market, it will have a short-term effect on the margin, but our many levers and our daily efficiency hunting will make us deliver on this target. Over to slide 11. Adding to our pure financial targets, we of course also drive our sustainability commitment for 2030. We aim to reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, and we aim to have a fully circular offering by 2030 and also do 100 actions and initiatives to improve social equality in our value chain. For us, this is not something we do at the side.
This is fully incorporated in our strategy, and we look at sustainability as a driver for increased profitability. We have and are doing a lot of actions here, and some of the actions worth mentioning this quarter is the launch of our take back production facility that will increase the circularity of course, but give us growth, and it also give us growth from the increased demand for secondhand products as well as margin expansion. We have also linked our long-term financing to our sustainability KPIs, which gives us a clear incentive to drive this. I mean, in short, if we perform as we want, we decrease our financing costs, and if not, we don't. We will and we know how to do this.
Combining with changing to renewable energy at all our sites and offices, we have also built solar cells on the roof of our warehouse, and that's good timing given the challenges and terms and the like that we have on the power market and electricity market in Europe right now. That will of course reduce costs, but more importantly, it will also reduce our emissions. High activity in this area as well. Before going into Q&A, let me just sum up on slide 12 our first quarter results.
Net sales grew with 69% on reported level to SEK 6.2 billion, where organic growth for the group was 11% with SMB at a strong 11.7%, LCP at an equally strong 12.9%, and B2C as negative -17.4%. Gross profit at SEK 894 million versus SEK 577 million last year, and gross margin at 14.3% versus 15.6%. A change in sales mix with a higher share of LCP sales and strong demand in hardware sales also drives a change in gross margin, but on comparable numbers, it's on the same level as last year.
Adjusted EBITDA passing now SEK 300 million at a good SEK 301 million, giving us an EBITDA margin for the quarter at 4.8%, an increase from last year's 4.6%. The initiatives and actions we have taken on the cost side, both strategic and short-term, has given effect as well as our strong performance obviously during the quarter. EBIT at SEK 251 million compared to SEK 132 million, and earnings per share, EPS, at 1.47 SEK per share versus last year's 4.99 SEK per share. On balance sheet, strong operating cash flow as you know at SEK 369 million and leverage ended at for the quarter at 3.1. A good deleveraging from Q4 at 3.1 to 2.8.
Solid growth and strong earnings in the quarter, with the pandemic still raging over the world. That has taught us a lot or teaching us a lot, not the least a new way of working. The market trends have accelerated with the distinct changes in customer behavior. The IT service demand is there, and there is an increased demand for instant availability online as well as, the underlying trend for security, for mobility, and for remote, management. We have extensive experience and knowledge and can serve our customers in all our markets. For us, these last years, I must say, has meant that our position is clearly strengthened and shows that our business model is very robust. In short, we are well-positioned for what's going on in the world.
I think with that, Johan, we can conclude our presentations, and we are happy to take any questions you might have. Operator, will you support us in that?
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from Daniel Thorsson with ABG. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you very much. First question on the reclassified costs from Vincere to central costs in SMB. Should we see these costs as scalable going forward, or should they grow in line with the rest of the business as if they were part of SMB?
You can look at them as the other central costs that we have. They are scalable going forward in the same level of scalability as we have in the rest of the business. Yes, they are moving into a more scalable platform than we had before.
That's the reason why you reclassify them, I guess, and move them to.
Yeah, you could say that. It's actually the step we're taking towards a more integrated way of working with the Dutch entities.
Okay. Thanks. Second question, related to the market. You say that Norway is strongest both in SMB and LCP. Is it any reason for that, or what's the main driver product or services-wise?
It's hard to say what is the reason. Norway seems to be doing quite well under the pandemic, from an economic perspective. We are really driven by hardware sales in Norway. We are doing very good there. We have a very good team in Norway that performs extremely well at the moment. I think it comes from both external factors, but also our own performance in Norway. Yeah. It's a combination, as usual, of the economic activity, but also our own performance. It helps the new market.
Yeah. Okay. Is it driven by any large tenders, larger deals, or is it broad-based?
Broad-based, yes, which is we find very good.
Okay, thanks. The last question for me is obviously that the net effect from the supply chain issues are negatively by the fact that you cannot source everything. You're also positively affected by the fact that you probably are better off than smaller competitors, and you can drive prices higher. Do you think that the current situation has a net positive effect for you? In what case, you know, can you kind of quantify that? Or what's kind of the magnitude?
I think currently it has a slightly positive net effect. In margin wise, we see the possibility to, let's say, work with margins as we have the supply and others don't. Obviously being one of the biggest resellers in the Nordics and Benelux, we have the possibility to purchase. On the other hand, it adds to working capital, and it adds to the volatility of volumes coming in. Let's say that's the negative side. Overall, I would say we are slightly positive of from this situation from our, let's say, strong business model at this moment.
Okay, fair enough. I follow up with the last one. On the CapEx guide, can you give us some hints on what to expect in the different quarters in this fiscal year from CapEx? I saw it was up more than twice in this quarter on the IT development cost, for example.
Yeah. I think we have said previously that you can expect cash CapEx to be in the range of SEK 120-SEK 140 on a yearly basis. There isn't a big difference between the quarters, actually. Yeah.
Excellent. Thanks.
Thank you, Daniel Thorsson.
Our next question comes from Mikael Laséen with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Okay. Hi, and good morning. We start just from my side. How would you describe the current supply situation for different hardware categories, and how they have changed last quarter and what you see ahead?
In general, it has been. I mean, previously, as you know, during the pandemic and also before the pandemic, there was a lot of semiconductor shortages, but that was already present before the pandemic as well. That has somewhat eased up a bit, but there are still shortages when it comes to other components in the computers. It is a general shortage, but it's also not only a shortage from a production perspective. It's also the overall turmoil with the harbors in quarantine and troubles in shipping and so forth. That is also putting extra pressure on this, of course. There's no specific products.
It is, in general, as we said before, if you have a large order of customer specific products, then it might be harder to get everything in place in one go. But there are products available and for us, as you saw also in this quarter, I mean, availability for us is what drives the growth. There are products available, but you need to be really on your toes. I think our combination of automation and human interaction is what has given us a lot of benefits during this quarter.
Okay. Is it sort of dependent or still volatile on the shipping side that it sort of comes in batches, or is it sort of a steady flow, quite easy to foresee? Can you elaborate a bit on that?
I think it's you can maybe divide it in two different product categories. One is the one that are highly dependent or affected by the work from home, like headsets and equipment you bought in order to, you know, upgrade your home office. They have been on a shortage for a long time as a product group. They are getting better now because of course the effect is less now than a year ago. If you then look at PCs and mobile phones, there is a different kind of challenge we have because there we are a broad liner, so we sell all the brands for PCs, for example. One quarter there might be an issue with supplies of HP, and the next quarter there might be on a Lenovo side.
There we can equal out a little bit between the different vendors. It continues to be a challenge if you would look at the total market. As we are selling all the brands, we can kind of benefit a little bit from that portfolio risk.
Mm-hmm. Okay. How are you performing, do you think, compared with your competitors and other players in the market in the Nordics and in the Benelux?
Without knowing the details, it seems like we are performing maybe slightly better than the market.
We believe we gain market shares in this quarter. We do. We can see that the benefits of having a, as also mentioned before, as having the combination of a push and pull model, it has been really good. We, as you know, we have a long experience in buying to our own stock and buying to our own warehouse and make use of that model. That has really paid off during this pandemic, I must say.
Okay. Can you also talk about the sort of competitive situation right now, and the market climate and the pricing climate?
I think, I mean, pricing has been up somewhat from some of the vendors, as we mentioned before. Overall it is obviously a competitive market given that IT as such is moving more into the heart of every business and is more crucial than before for everyone. In that sense, of course, there is the underlying economic activity and underlying demand is strong. To add in all markets where there's high demand, there's also a lot of competitors coming to the market. I think that our business model and our strength and our scale, of course, gives us benefits and to be able to deliver. Again, I think it's the possibility to have everything available for the customers.
The instant availability is what has been an important driver during this quarter. I must say, even though being humble, I think we have taken a good position there during the quarter.
Okay, got it. I just have one follow-up here on the sort of why you shifted cost from the SMB and LCP segment to central functions. If you can elaborate a bit more on that and explain that more in detail. Thanks.
Yeah. Let's, when we acquire a company, before it's integrated, we keep all their, let's say, OpEx cost as segment cost because they don't form part of our, let's say, group functions as not integrated. That has been the case with Vincere in the Netherlands up until this quarter. What we have done now is that we are classifying their cost because they participate in the, let's say, Dustin platform cost, as of the first of September. Therefore, the costs that were previously in segment cost is now classified as central cost. That has this effect on moving cost, let's say, down in the P&L from segment cost to central cost. That has the effect of 1.1% approximately on the SMB margins and 0.3% on LCP.
Okay.
It's an integration move that we are making with the total Vincere Groep that we haven't done financially before.
Okay. This makes it a bit difficult to evaluate the performance of the margin development for SMB and LCP, and compared to the central functions and how we should look at that historically and also going forward. I assume that this will be the same also in the coming quarters, that we should add 1.1 percentage point to the SMB margin-
Yes.
-if, uh-
Yeah.
-and, uh, and so on.
Yeah.
What happens when you do this with Centralpoint, or have you already done that?
Yes, we have already done that. That's a progress from previous ways of doing it. Yeah.
Okay.
This is basically the last larger chunk that you will see moving in this direction.
Okay.
As you say, indication-wise, it will be the same and move every quarter.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
I'll remind you that if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Erik Elander with Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
I think you're on mute, Erik.
Erik, if you are on mute, please unmute your microphone so you can ask your question.
Yes, I was on mute. I'm always on mute. Anyways. Yeah, I was just wondering about what is actually driving the demand that you have, that you see in the market right now? The reason I'm asking for that is that we saw in 2020 due to the pandemic that people worked from home, and then you got a boost from the home office in terms of hardware sales. Because in 2019, before the pandemic, the hardware market was really weak. Is it still the home office sales that's driving the demand in the market? Or what is actually the difference between 2019, where the hardware market was weak, 2020 when it was strong due to the home office purchases, and right now, and what do you see in the future?
I think overall you can say that there is a strong economic activity obviously in society as a whole. That is. It has also, what has really happened since 2019 is that the importance of IT and the usage of all the applications that everyone is now using. I mean, in 2019, the usage of Teams was nothing compared to what it is right now, which demands more power in the computers. It demands more processor power. It demands other types of graphics cards. It demands other types of specifications in the computer. That is going on in all companies. Everyone is leveling up on this.
You need to have a better capacity in your networks in the company. You need to be more secure. There are a lot of investments which we could have seen coming, or we have talked about it for several years also before the pandemic, that this is where we're going, given that the world is going more digital. The pandemic has of course boosted this a lot. We have taken the leaps that we were talking of about before. We see also that the upgrading the home office is also continuous. That you are. I mean, the first 2020 move was to get everything up and working, and everyone was sent home and started to work from home. Now you're upgrading what's your home office.
You need a better screen. You want a better workspace at home, or wherever you work. Many companies are moving from towards laptop usage. There's a lot of peripherals also selling, of course, like docking stations and keyboards and larger screens, et cetera, and better cameras. There are a general upgrade, which we, I mean, you can see continue. Because of the fact that we have learned a new way of working. I think there's an overall uplift in the IT environment in both at within the companies, but also in the other workspaces, like for home, for example.
It's basically a structural change, which is positive.
Yeah.
For you. How long do you expect these kinds of investments and upgrades to prolong for? Is it like five, 10 years, or do you see any end to it? Because as I've seen historically, when I look at your organic growth numbers, it tends to be a little bit lumpy. One year is very good due to, I guess, high investments among customers, and the other year is a little bit weaker because the prior year was a bump, and then you get a little bit of a valley the year after. Do you see it's going to be structurally at a higher level due to this kind of upgrade trend going forward?
I think the average spend per, let's say, employee is higher. That's gonna stay. We don't see any reason why that should not be, you know, continuing. However, obviously, to reach that higher level, we have had a bit of a boost now to upgrade everyone because no one was on the higher level before. If going back to your comment on things being a bit lumpy, I mean, we should remember that our income in the historic numbers at least, we have been affected by the SMBs quite a lot, and they are a little bit lumpy in their behavior because they react to the economic outcome. Yeah, they get cautious, and they then stop buying a little bit, and then they come back and continue to buy again.
That, that's the waves we see, you know, coming from the economic activity of each of our markets. That will continue, but obviously now, right now, that has a lesser impact on the total sales because now LCP is slightly higher in share for the moment.
Okay, great. So I mean, at the moment, you're performing really, really well, and you've done that for some quarters right now, and it really feels like, yeah, it's really flying for you fundamentally. If things do not go according to plan for 2022, what would happen? Meaning, what keeps you up at night? What could go wrong for Dustin right now this year?
There's a lot of things. We sleep well at night, but of course we work a lot in the day. I think overall, it's for us to continue to be on our toes for sourcing, for overall procurement, be very close to our vendors, be very close to our partners. In general, it's more if there are other economic trends in the society that can affect us. As you almost hinted before, we are a broadliner, and we sell a lot of brands, so we're not specifically sort of linked to a specific brand.
From what we can see now is that the IT market as such will continue to develop, and then it will continue to move even closer to importance in companies. It's just that we have our crystal ball probably looks like yours to see how the future will develop. It's just to continue to dig where we are and be awake every morning for what can come our way and be relevant for our customers. I think that is the most important part.
Okay. I'm very glad to hear that you sleep well at least. I do too, actually. I have a last question, and that is related to the fact that you want to expand geographically. I mean, given where you are right now in Europe, I think in the Nordics, you are in a really strong position already. In Europe, you are mainly in the Benelux region. If you go to the right on the map, you have Germany, which has a very big German player. If you go to the left on the map, you have U.K., and you have some other big players also listed companies as well.
Where could you actually go given that this is really a volume business and have a competitive edge, do you think?
I think overall also the reason for us moving into Benelux is of course that we see, as was hinted also here before, that our business model is very good to export. We have a slightly different model than the other competitors you're talking about there in Germany, for example, where we have a more nearly consumer-driven model towards SMBs, which is not the typical thing that is possible to get in other countries. We see of course the opportunity of building that up with all the experience and all the knowledge we have. It's not something that you just can do just like that.
It's just not start up and then sort it because it's a complete change of how you do your business if you go that way. I think we are also perceived from our competitors in Europe as that we have another model, a slightly different model, even though we work in the same market. We see potential of course in that. What we look for is to see where we can find the same customer behavior, where we can find markets that have internet usage and internet networks that are up to speed, and markets up for change. All markets right now in Europe are changing a lot, and there are new demands coming from especially the small and medium-sized companies.
With that said also, for us entering a new market, we have seen that our way of entering market is to find preferably an LCP player where we can build volume from and from that scale out to SMB, as we do now in Benelux. That has been the same playbook we have used also in Finland and in Norway and in Denmark in the same way and then build out a strong SMB position from an LCP volume perspective. That we will continue to look for, and we see the possibility for that. That's what we do.
You basically feel that if you were, for instance, entering Germany, there will be room for you and the B2B?
Yes. I mean, if you talk about fragmented market, then you can say that Germany is one of the most fragmented markets.
Yeah.
There are like 90,000 companies stating that they're IT companies. There are a lot of room, but competition also builds the market and we see an opportunity of course in taking on that.
All right. Great. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions. I hand back over to our speakers.
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