Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Feb 25, 2021

Thank you. Welcome, everyone, to this earnings conference for Kano Group. I hope you all are well and are staying safe. Today, we are going to present the outcome of the Q4 of 2020, our full year results. Next slide, please. I'm Fleming Brinehalt, President and CEO of the company. With me, I have our CFO, Dora Bling Glausten and our IR specialist, Erik Bergren. Dora and I will present the outcome of the 4th quarter using a few slides, and then we'll open up for questions. Those of you who have called in can ask questions verbally, while those of you who are participating via webcast can send questions in written form via the webcast. With that said, let's get started with the presentation of Q4. So let's turn the page and go to the next slide. We have ended the year on a positive note with strong financial results. I'm very satisfied that we have been able continue delivering according to plan despite the pandemic. Our organic growth was 2% during the full year and 1% in the 4th quarter. We improved our adjusted EBITA margin by 60 basis points to 37.4% in the full year and 31.7% in the 4th quarter. We also ended the year with a leverage of 1.9 times adjusted EBITDA last 12 months, well below our financial targets. Despite us being happy with our results, the COVID-nineteen pandemic still has an impact on our business. Apart from the offline sales, mainly published publications and legal training, we can see a delay in new business due to longer We'll postpone decision processes, and we can also see a decrease in demand from the small and medium sized entities market because of the pandemic. We believe this will continue also in the first half of twenty twenty one. On the positive side, We see that our renewals rate on our core customers are at the same high level as normally and only SME and new business are suffering from the pandemic in the online. So next slide, please. When we were listed in 2019, We announced our ambition to continue to leverage our position in our home markets while investing in geographic expansion. We want to grow in 2 dimensions: 1st, highly specific jurisdiction of products based on our strong network of authors And secondly, general jurisdictional products also for international purposes. In December 2020, we announced our acquisition of Diep Kunstkeit, which is in line with this strategy and fits well into the Kano Group family. The company combines knowledge and content with workflow and efficiency. This fits our strategy of having a collaboration between highly jurisdictional product with processes and services such as workflow tools. DIP has a strong focus on creating efficiencies in the workflow of professionals. They have a strong track record and identified opportunities to grow this market. The company's product portfolio is based on an intuitive online platform for users. The company's suite of workflow tools enhance the task within accounting, auditing and law, And the company provides data sources to relevant publications, books and legal texts to make the experts' daily work more efficient. The acquisition of Dyck strengthened our presence in Norway and their products open up a new vertical on the Norwegian market for Kano in tax and accounting. With the acquisition, we get a strong market presence in Norway with a good customer base and another strong brand in our portfolio. Deep is the market leader among accounting and auditorship firms as well as large enterprises in Norway. In Norway, we also look forward to the market launch of KANO Group Norway's products latest in the second half of twenty twenty one. Turning the page. Our Danish market initiative have progressed well in the 4th quarter With our new platform being soft launched, currently more than 20 sorry, 10,000 users are onboarded, and we will continue auto supporting our users during the coming months. As we normally do, the old platform will be living and users will be able to easily change between the two for a period of time. Together with our new product Launched during 2020, we have a good basis to keep developing our offering on the Danish market, which will support our future growth in Denmark. The organic growth for the Q4 and the full year was 1%, respectively. Our initiatives keep the organization fit and ready for continued business development has progressed well, and we are content to have reached an adjusted EBITA margin of 40% for the full year 2020. Our new initiative for law students in Denmark, the platform Kajos, Has made steady progress in the Q4. The platform helps to motivate and guide law students in becoming successful and insightful lawyers during their studies. Turning the page. We have had a good year in Sweden following our plan of adding more content and value to our users and continuously making updates to the Unum platform. The organic growth for the Q4 was 2% and the full year growth was 4%. The growth drivers were good online sales, upselling to existing customers and sales to new customers. We have seen an increasing market demand for our EHS solution, Environmental Health and Safety and Compliance, which has performed well also in the Q4. Further, we have also seen good progress in our municipality offering and in our offering for the public sector in general. We have continued running our legal Next slide, please. We are glad to see progress in vaccinations around the world, and we look forward to meeting you all in person again. Unfortunately, the COVID-nineteen pandemic continues to impact the global societies and therefore also our business. We continue to take several precautionary measures for our employees, and we are, of course, still strictly hearing to the regulations and recommendations from the authorities. Our special sections on our platform in Denmark and Sweden, While we have collected all legal and regulatory information about the COVID-nineteen pandemic, still has high activity and easy access to relevant content. This service has been very well received and there have been many searches on our platform relating to the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Our non subscription part of the offline business, mainly public trades and sales of legal training courses have been impacted also in the Q4. As previously announced, we have a different product mix in the Q4 with a higher number of legal training. The estimated negative impact on full year growth 2020 is seen to be approximately 1 percentage points to 2 percentage points. I will now hand the horn to Dora, who will tell us more about our financial performance in the Q4. Next slide. Thank you, Klimin. Next slide, please. I will now present and discuss the financial outcome. So let's start with an overview. The Q4 was in line with expectations and on similar level as previous year. Our full year net sales increased by 2% With our online business being the growth driver, net sales were SEK 189,000,000 in the quarter And the full year net sales were SEK 771,000,000. We estimate that the COVID-nineteen effect on Kano Group's shop line growth For the full year, it was approximately 1 to 2 percentage points. Next slide, please. In the 4th quarter, adjusted EBITA increased by 1%, The adjusted EBITA margin was 31.7%, which is an improvement from last year. The improved margin is due to higher net sales And due to our continuous work with process optimizations, we are proud to continue performing in line with our medium term financial targets. For the full year, we have improved our adjusted EBITA margin by 60 basis points, and the full year adjusted EBITA margin was 37.4%. Following the acquisition of Tietconsten, we have assessed that the adjusted EBITA margin for the group in 2021 We'll be negatively impacted by approximately 1 percentage point due to the acquisition. Based on our growth strategy of DIP There we see our net sales quarter by quarter. In the Q4, we had the same high level of net sales as the Q4 previous year. However, the FX impacted negatively was close to 2% as the Swedish currency grew stronger compared to the Danish currency during the Q4. Growth levels were further impacted by the COVID-nineteen pandemic due to product mix in our non subscription based offerings in this quarter. Next slide, please. We have improved our margins in the 4th quarter. The adjusted EBITA improved by 1% to SEK 60,000,000 and the adjusted EBITA margin was 31.7%. The improved margins are due to higher net sales and our continuous drive Corporational excellence with process optimization and preparing our organization for growth initiatives and new projects. As a consequence of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we have adjusted our cost base to offset the effect on the top line. We have, for instance, lowered traveling and marketing costs Due to the pandemic and therefore also lower overall costs. Next slide, please. Where you see our net sales development in 2 different views. As you can see, the long term trends in our sales continue also in the Q4 2020. First to the left, You see the online business increased its shares of the group sales by 3 percentage points to 82%. This follows The expected market trend. The higher share of subscription in our sales that you can see from the graph to the right, here the increase was 2 percentage points From 86% in Q4 2019 to 88% in Q4 2020. Next slide, please. Here we have the presentation of the 4th quarter in the Danish segment. In Denmark, adjusted EBITA was on a high level, and the adjusted EBITA margin It was on the same level as last year with 33% even with slightly lower net sales. Organic growth was 1% in the 4th Quarter, however, due to the currency effect having a negative impact of minus 3%, the net sales declined by 2%. Our new products on the Danish market and our soft launch of new platforms will form a good basis to provide our users more content and Increased efficiency. However, due to our 12 month renewal service, we will first see the effect 12 months later. The COVID-nineteen pandemic has enhanced the long term declining trend in the offline market. The COVID-nineteen impact sales of printed materials in Denmark And also the demand in the small and medium enterprise market where companies delay the decision process as their business are more uncertain. Next slide, please, which is the Swedish segment, where we have had good performance throughout the year. Net sales in Sweden increased by 4% in the full year, which was in line with expectations. Most of the net sales increases are organic growth Our reported currency is in SEK, but we also have a little acquired group due to our majority stake in Lex Nordics. Adjusted EBITA increased to SEK 89,000,000 and the adjusted EBITA margin improved by 0.6 percentage points compared to the Q4 2019. This is due to the increase in net sales where the growth has come from upselling to existing customers and sales to new customers. During the Q4, we have seen good progress in our municipality offerings as well as in the public sector. Our EHA solution has performed well also during the Q4. Turning the page There we have our cash flow slide. As expected, our adjusted operating cash flow and our cash conversion reached high levels in the 4th quarter. This is due to our invoicing seasonality where the 4th and the 1st quarters generate a strong cash flow. In the 4th quarter, our cash flow was extra strong As timing meant, that a higher number of invoices were paid before the end of the year. This will, of course, also have an impact On the Q1 of 2021, the leverage of 1.9 times is well in line with our target of not more than 3 times. As for our balance sheet, we have a strong bank and credit lines, which made it possible for us to acquire Bitcoin Steel. Further, it has also allowed the Board to propose an increased dividend of SEK 1 per share to be resolved on the Annual General Meeting in May. Next slide, please. The dividend proposal is in line with our dividend policy, which is to distribute 30% to 50% Okay. Purchase price adjusted net profit. This year's dividend proposal corresponds to 38% of the PBA adjusted net profit. I will now hand over the word to Fleming again, who will make a summary of the Q4 and the full year. Thank you, Doron. Next slide, please. I just want to conclude the presentations with the highlights of the year. 2020 has been a special year for all of us. I'm very proud of how Kano Group and all its employees, authors and experts have handled the COVID-nineteen pandemic, providing our satisfied customers valuable content that has been used to serve our society. We have worked as one team, one company executing our strategy despite working on distance for most of the year. We have had a good year with a solid margin. Excluding the effects from COVID-nineteen pandemic, the organic growth has been according to expectations and in line with our medium term financial targets, and we have improved our adjusted EBITA margin by 60 basis points. Our strong financial results have also allowed the Board to propose an increased dividend for the shareholders to resolve on for our AGM in May. With 4 new investments conducted in 2020, we have continued to broaden our offering as Scandinavia's leading provider of legal information. We have had several launches in Denmark to make the daily life of lawyers more efficient and soft launched our new platform in the Q4. With our new investment and most recent acquisition of Diepkonska, we have a solid base to execute our growth strategy with Norway as a 3rd home market. Next slide, please. Kano Group has a strong basis to grow from the coming years. I will be happy to hand over the baton to Pontus Bortelsen, who will assign as the new President and CEO on 10th May and take the company into its next phase. Until then, it is business as usual, and I will help Pontus in the best possible way to get warmed up and ready to continue the good journey we have started. By this, I'll end our presentation, and we are now ready to take questions. So I'll hand over the conference again to our host and open for questions. Thank Our first question comes from the line of Stephen Fang from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, this is Stefan Kano from Andreas. The beginning for Daniel Levin, who couldn't attend today. Firstly, a question on Denmark. The reported margin was down from 40 bps year over year. But if you exclude the €5,000,000 in write down, Seems that the Danish margin is up quite a bit. Can you explain what's the reason behind? The reason behind the good result in Denmark, as you are referring to, is a matter of continuously successful securing our recurring business, a good ordinary sales also in offline products And the cost control where we also have been working with reducing as a general path as related to Less activities from the COVID, but also working on optimization of our processes in the Danish organization. I see. And regarding pricing, can you say anything about pricing in 2020 and what you see in this year? For us, it's not a matter of pricing itself. It's a matter of actually adding More continuously value to our offering and thereby also inclining and having our users to renew, to be updated and operate to bigger packages. And on top of that, of course, also we see that pricing mechanism in order to compensate for the add on values we add to the product itself. And we have in the as in the past years, having a very modest increase of prices. So it's on a very low number. I see. And regarding With the pandemic impact, you stated that you estimated to have a negative impact of 1% to 2% on sales during 2020. Is it possible to give an assessment on the impact on the EBITA margins? No, it's not directly possible to say, but we at least assessed that we have Cover some of it with lower activity both in traveling and in marketing, etcetera. And that's also why we are Very satisfied with the increase in the adjusted EBITA margin by the 60 basis points. I see. And regarding the once we are behind the pandemic, so to speak, Do you think there is pent up demand that we can expect the organic growth to actually be better than normal? Or is it more Back to a more normal level in terms of growth. We are not, as you know, giving any forward looking statements, but You can say that we are still confident and sticking to our financial targets, which means in the medium terms that we will have a growth between 3% 5 from the organic business. I see. And a final question for me. Regarding the acquisition of Dibs Kunstkap, You're guiding for a negative impact of 1 percentage point 2021. Can you say anything about the level of sales going into Last year or what you're going to see before 2020 for the acquisition? We are not giving specific guidance on the sales of individual entities or product for being a part of Kano Group. But you can say that the sales in 2019 was in the range of? For In 2019, it was in the way to the beginning of the 50th year. Yes. So we see, as we also said When we announced the acquisition, that deepens in the segment with an expected growth rate beyond, you could say, what is actually the ordinary Kano growth. And therefore, of course, we see that it's also supposed to grow in Kano range. Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Thank you. We have no more questions from the line. I will hand it back to our Thank you, everyone, for listening and also for your questions. We will report our Q1 reports on the 5th May, and I hope to hear from you then, if not earlier. Thank you very much, and have a good day.