Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you all to the Knowit Interim Report, January to September 2022. My name is Brica, and I will be your Event Specialist operating today's event. After the speaker's remarks, you have the opportunity to ask a question. To do so, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind at any time, please press star two. For operator assistance, please press star zero. Otherwise, you can type web questions on the webcast today. I would now like to hand the call over to our host to begin. Per Wallentin, the CEO of Knowit, to begin. Per, please go ahead when you're ready.
Thank you, and welcome to this presentation of Knowit's Q3 report, 2022. You can take the next slide, please. Today, I will present together with Marie Björklund, our CFO. We can take the next slide, please. First, I would like to take you through some operational highlights during the third quarter. We continue to see good demand for digitalization services, and I'm pleased to see that we have had a strong organic growth in the quarter. Our business areas Experience and Connectivity continue to perform well, increased revenue and margins. Overall, we have a negative margin development, mainly explained by weaker performance within Insight in Finland. We see that Finnish customers in this segment are a bit more reluctant to take on longer assignments, and to get people into new projects.
This is mainly manifested through our performance in the newly acquired company Marketing Clinic this quarter. We see good potential in our management consulting business both in Finland and in other markets. We are pleased to note that the net recruitment trend has been really positive this quarter with almost 200 new employees. Following that, we start several new trainee programs, which means that a lot of these people are young talents and joining Knowit in the quarter within different areas. For example, secure solutions etc. We can take the next slide, please.
Our sustainability goals, they are important an important tool to steer our everyday work to ensure that we always strive to participate in the transition to a sustainable and digital society. These goals is a combination with the financial goals and will ensure that Knowit steers towards long-term profitable and sustainable growth. I will highlight one example for this quarter and it's the development of a new process and method to analyze data from a Finnish company, Lindström Group. Lindström offer rental of textiles in the form of working clothes to more than 200,000 customers worldwide. Each garment have an RFID tag meaning that data about its life cycle can be collected and analyzed.
By 2025, Lindström will recycle 100% of its textile waste to efficiently analyze the data thanks to that efficiency. Through this project, we contribute to both the goal connected to sustainable consumption and production as well as climate action. We can take the next slide please. Now we will go into more details connected to our business areas. Our largest area, Solutions, reports net sales of SEK 895 million for the third quarter. That corresponds to around 70% growth including acquired entities. The margin was 8.1%, and that was impacted by pent-up needs for physical meetings and travels.
We have had a high net recruitment in the quarter and we also took quite a few new frame agreements, which made a need for subcontractors in some bigger projects mainly in Norway. We see a particularly strong growth and performance in Norway and in Finland. Next slide, please. Experience reported sales of SEK 339 million in the quarter. That's an increase of around 18%, including acquired entities. The margin was 6.3%, and we have now reached the milestone of 1,000 employees in the Experience area, and that's a really good foundation for further growth. We can take the next slide, please. Our business area Connectivity reporting SEK 248 million in the quarter growing with almost 27% in existing business.
Margin improvement to 11.7%, really strong result. We see high demands for our competence in both Poland and in Sweden. Connectivity, as you know, strengthen our offers to R&D intense industries such as tech, telco, and automotive. For example, in Q3, we received a certificate connected to ASPICE for development in the software automotive industry, which has been really important for us. We will continue to grow in that area as well. Next slide, please. Our business area Insight reported sales of around SEK 136 million . That was somewhat up from the year before. We see a negative result in the area primarily a consequence of weaker worse-than-expected performance in Finland, particularly in Marketing Clinic that was acquired earlier this year.
This year, we have also heavily invested or are heavily investing to gain position as one of the market leaders in management consulting connected to digitalization in the Nordics. We do that also by the acquisition of Ascend and Ionic that strengthens our offers even further. We see a high demand for cybersecurity as well as profitability analysis and cash flow optimization projects. There is a lot of interesting possibilities to come in Insight as well. With that, I will hand over to you Marie. We can take the next slide please, and hand over to you Marie, and you will elaborate a little bit more in detail connected to the financials.
Thank you, Per. Taking a look at Knowit, the group as a whole, we can see that we delivered sales of approximately SEK 1.5 billion compared to around SEK 1.2 billion. Next slide, please. Oka y, I'm gonna go again here. When we're looking at Knowit as a whole, we can see that we delivered sales of around SEK 1.5 billion compared to around SEK 1.2 billion reported for the same quarter in 2021. This contributes to a growth of 28%, which was impacted by the acquisitions. The growth was close to 15% when comparing Knowit now and including the acquired units a year ago. Adjusted for currency, that growth was 11%.
EBITA, adjusted for acquisition and integration costs, amounted to SEK 94.5 million for the quarter, which is a decrease of 10.3%. Our adjusted EBITA margin amounted to 6.2% in the quarter and the margin decrease is mainly due to reluctance among some customers. Especially in Finland, and especially in the business area of Insight. The recent acquisition of Marketing Clinic has faced challenges, and the margin decrease is also due to cost for net recruitment of the 188 employees that Per mentioned, and that's an investment we made for the years to come. During the quarter, same as last quarter, we see an increase of cost for travel and physical meetings. We only had that to a lower extent last year.
We are experiencing a fragmented picture where Insight faces some reluctance in Finland, while Solutions. For example, shows a strong growth in the Finnish market. Next slide please. Looking at the revenue and growth development, we are happy to present another quarter with a good growth. Including the third quarter, our adjusted EBITA for the latest twelve months is at SEK 610 million, and we have revenues of SEK 6.4 billion with an EBITA margin of 9.5%. Next slide please. We continue to enjoy solid financial position and a strong balance sheet, and our net debt at the end of the quarter amounted to SEK 828 million an increase compared to previous quarter following acquisition activities in the past year.
This corresponds to a net debt to EBITDA ratio of around 1.1, which is well within our financial targets. In the second quarter, we extended our credit facility with Nordea, and we now have access to a little more than SEK 1 billion in total, which is good for us and good for our future investment activities. Next slide, please. Knowit is well-positioned to manage a possible downturn well, we believe. Our largest segment is the public sector, and the public sector tends to be stable even in worse financial times. As you can see, nearly 4% of our revenues come from this segment. We also see that projects that are business critical to the digital transition remain, and the fact that the development resources are scarce speaks in favor of consultancies like Knowit.
Another trend is projects that support the transition to a sustainable society, and this is an important and prioritized area for Knowit. With that, I hand over to you, Per. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Marie. Well, to summarize, we are delighted to present a stable quarter with high activity in all areas. We see high demand for our services across the Nordic region with some variations depending on geography and segment. Insight in Finland, as we talked about, has performed weak, and weaker than expected. Other areas are performing really well. We had a successful quarter in terms of net recruitment, but experienced that it takes somewhat a little longer time to get this consultant into new projects. This is mainly due to higher share of young talents. We see that actually every third quarter, but especially now when we have such a big amount of people coming into the company.
We have invested heavily in growth, the past couple of years, and that have created a solid platform to continue to grow from. Particularly important that we have a stronghold, as Marie mentioned, in the public sector that is stable and a stable sector in the economy further. With this, I think that we are really well-positioned and look forward to new opportunities ahead. With that, I would like to open up for questions.
We take the next slide.
We can take the next slide, please. Yes. Q&A, if we have any questions.
We have them.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. Otherwise, you can use the chat function on the webcast today.
We start with if there is any live questions.
We have the first question on the line from Daniel Gullberg of Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is open now, Daniel.
Thank you so much, operator. Yes, Daniel Gullberg, Handelsbanken. Starting off with Solutions, the EBITA margin was down some 200 basis points year-over-year. You explained this by cost of travel, meetings and high net recruiting, and use of sub consultancy in Norway as key reasons. Can you give us a ballpark on how much this impacted? If it was, you know, similar part, one-third each, or if it was something like this that was impacting more than the other, for example, the sub consultancy in Norway. If we should see this, you know, most of these things being of a structural implication that i.e., that we should expect the margin to be structurally lower here in, on the back of these. Thanks.
Well, yes. Thank you, Daniel. I will answer the second question first and then maybe you Marie, can think a little bit about the percentage not in detail but around. And of course, these extra costs is a little bit different. If you look to travel and meetings. We think that will continue in Q4 as well, but then it will be a lot less of those activities, conferences, et cetera, 2023. We also have to bear in mind that we face post-pandemic situation connected to needs for meetings. We talked about that already in Q1 and Q2, that would come in Q3, Q4. That's how it is.
I think that's good because that's important to take care of our people. That will continue through Q4, but I think that what will happen is that we will have not that many of those activities at all in 2023, and then it will go back to maybe normal in 2024, probably. If you look at the recruitment, I hope that will be a trend that we will have for the future in Q3 as well. We are heavily investing in growth that almost always if you are doing that well costing some money in Q3, but you're able to get those highly skilled consultants out in assignments.
Of course, in Q4 and Q1, that amount of people will be sustainably less, of course. That's how it is. If you look at the margin for Solutions mainly connected to big frame agreements and subcontractors, well, that might continue. This is actually really positive because we have been able for a couple of years now, we are such a big player in Norway. So we've been able to take a lot of interesting big contracts connected to public sector. We are not able to fill those projects ourselves with employees. That will probably continuing in at least next year and 2024 as well. That's really long-term assignments.
Fair enough. Yeah, Marie, if you had any additional comments on that.
Yeah. We couldn't give any details about the conferences and travels, but I would say that might be a little more than 30% the explanation. As we mentioned, the challenges in the Insight business area in Finland, and especially our new acquisition on Marketing Clinic. We have around SEK 8 million for that involved. I would say that-
Sorry, I was thinking only.
It's okay. You mean
Only Solutions.
Oh, sorry. Oh, you meant only in Finland?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess the main explanation there is conferences and travels. Around, I can't really give you any details on how.
Let's say the vast majority of it is conferences and travels, and then we have some additional costs connected to recruitment as well.
Yeah. May I ask you on the recruitment side have you seen any, you know, decrease in churn that makes it perhaps less costly going forward due to, for replacement recruiting, the need that might come down a little bit given the uncertainty in the market or how to think?
Yeah. The employee turnover is slightly lower. It was quite high in the whole business after the pandemic. So, it's slightly lower, and I expect that to continue to be lower the quarters to come. That will ease the cost a little bit, yes.
That's good. If I may also ask on Insight, and obviously the weakness was mainly in Marketing Clinic. My question is if you have been able to address this throughout the quarter and, you know, replace the lost contracts or weaker utilization somehow going ahead. Also, I know that you have this program that you know educate IT consultants to become experts in IT security. How has this program hampered the margin? Because I guess they can't both be at the, you know, the learning IT security while invoicing clients, or yeah, if it had any impact.
Yeah, yeah. Yes, of course. As you see, we net recruit quite a lot of people into the Insight area in the quarter as well. It's around 50 people, so it's a lot. That's mainly due to the need in the cybersecurity area. Of course, that is affecting the margin in the quarter. I think that will be good for us within a couple of months. That's really important work to do. They have a really important work to do for the future.
With that said, it's another story connected to Marketing Clinic and Finland, because what we saw there, they work with top-line growth strategies around how to work with different market channels, strategies in how to work with getting things out on the market. Many of those strategic projects that they were conducting in Q2 were actually stopped in Q3 in Finland. You have to bear in mind that this is a very small part of Insight, but that actually did happen. I think that we will suffer from that in Q4 as well. Hopefully in the beginning of next year, we will get back on track.
Yeah. If you look at Q4 as a whole for Insight. I guess, though that it's a better quarter than Q3 although you only have, like August, half of August and September to work. Should we expect at least that it's the last quarter with loss with Insight? Are you that obvious? Turning back to.
I wouldn't like to give any prognosis connected to that, but we will have less people recruited in Q4 with lower cost. We will have a situation with some of the people that we recruited in Q3 out in assignments already in Q4, which is positive. Of course, as you understand, we will work thoroughly with the situation in Finland as well.
Yeah. On that note, you get Ascend coming in from first of October. Is it possible for you to give us any, you know, clues on how they have developed so far in nine months 2022, so we can get, you know, any. Because we need to do our
Yeah. They are performing really well. No estimates for Q4 at all. They are performing really well the first nine months and they don't have the same situation in Q3 as Marketing Clinic had. It's different assignments completely different assignments.
Yes. Can you give us ballpark the margin they've had in the first nine months?
We do show that for six months. Isn't that right, Marie?
Yeah, we have a rolling twelve months of sales of SEK 122 and SEK 23.5 in EBITDA.
The margin.
Yeah, up until June.
Up until June. The margin was around, look.
The margin was high. It was coming up. Sorry?
Yeah, the margin was around 23%.
The margin was a little less than 20%, it was 19%. Rolling twelve-
Yeah.
End of June.
Yeah.
That is what we disclosed. We don't see any signs of them having challenges so far.
A nice contribution into the Insight here from First North. I leave the floor for others, and then we'll go back to the queue.
Thank you. Good questions.
Thanks.
Do we have any more questions coming up?
As a reminder, please press star followed by one to ask any more questions. We now have the next question on the line from Daniel Thorson with ABG. Your line is now open, Daniel.
Yes, thank you very much. I have a question on the margin target, regarding that the 12% margin target you initiated a year ago when you delivered many projects from remote. You had very low external costs related to execution and also keeping employees. Is there a risk that that was a little bit too optimistic target given a more normal functioning market as we see today and the rolling 12-month margin is more like 9.5% today? Is there a risk that the 12% mid- to longer-term is a bit too optimistic in a more normal market?
I don't think that's a risk in a normal market. Of course, in a downturn and a recession that affects the IT industry or the digitization industry, it might be too optimistic. Overall in a cycle, I think that is a good goal for us. We don't see any signs because you have to bear in mind that the effects on the margin in Q3 here. For example, is quite a lot connected to one-offs and investments. The underlying possibilities to create the margin of 12% within a couple of years is still there. I don't see any changes in that at all, actually.
Okay. That's fair. Can you say something about salary inflation affecting Q3 and also price increases in the market as a whole? What do you see currently out there?
We are able to increase prices in Q1, Q2 and still in Q3. That possibility will be a little bit lower in Q4 and Q1, probably. We will see. It wouldn't surprise me in a way, but we will see that. I think that to have this, we have had a strong salary inflation in 2022. I think that it will be only in 2023 connected to times in the economy overall. I think that will be a decent figure in the big agreements. With that will of course have the same, or an increase of 1% connected to that in business in our digitization business. That will be manageable for 2023 as I see it.
The price increases that we have been able to conduct in 2022 is very important for us in 2023.
Okay. It seems like you are able to offset the salary inflation.
Yeah.
Pretty okay so far this year, at least.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's not a problem.
Yeah, I see. Okay, good. A question on the net recruitment. 188 people in Q3 is a strong number, and that must say something about the relatively near-term future demand you see and expect. In what areas do you see all of these people being close to fully utilized in the relatively near term? To be so, to recruit that many people basically.
We see that in Norway, as we talked about, there is a lot of framework agreements that we have connected to public sector. There, it's possible for us to recruit a little bit younger talents to get them out into assignments. We see that, for example, in Stockholm and Gothenburg, we do t his is quite interesting. We have a lot of new assignments connected to automotive industry in Gothenburg still. They are coming this week as well. We see that in the cybersecurity area. We see that in our quite small defense area, there is a lot of different parts of the group that have a strong need for recruitment.
Of course it takes different long time to get those people out in assignments depending on the need for them to get new competence. For example, as we talked about connected to the cybersecurity area, some of them need to be trained first to get out into assignments, but then they will for sure be out in assignments. Some of them are actually already out in assignments today.
Okay. Okay, sounds promising. Then last question on link to the net recruitment here. Can you say something about the gross recruitment? Is that way above the 188 net recruitment figure. Which then basically say something about the employee turnover in the quarter just for us to understand the materially higher-
Yeah.
costs related to recruitments than we expected.
Of course, it's way above that. It's a lot of people that have been recruited in the quarter. Unfortunately, that would be the case even if we would have had a net recruitment of zero. We have seen month after month now since maybe mid spring that the employee turnover have decreased. I expect that to continue during the fall and winter.
Okay. Interesting. Yeah, that was it for me. Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, it's star followed by one to ask any questions on the phone lines. As we have no questions registered, I'd like to hand it back to Annika for the webcast questions.
Perfect. Thank you, Annika.
Thank you. First question comes from Evan Nyman at Master Industries asking if the net recruitment of 188 is adjusted for acquisitions.
Yes. That is adjusted for acquisitions.
Great. Then we have a few questions from William Balfour at Highclere International Investors. Marketing Clinic was recently acquired and appears to be underperforming. What due diligence did you perform, and what should we infer about all your other acquisitions?
Yeah, that's right. We closed the deal just before summer. As always, we did a really thorough due diligence both internally. We have a lot of highly skilled people internally doing that. We are well aware of the business. So, we are able to dig deep into the figures, but we always have external competence doing the due diligence together with us, both financially and legally. We invest a lot of money in our due diligence processes. If we look at the assignments in detail connected to Marketing Clinic, they were up and running for Q3 when we closed the deal, and then they were stopped after summer. We can't do that much about it. That's just how it is.
It was impossible for us or for Marketing Clinic or probably for the customers as well to know that before summer. Unfortunately, I don't think it says anything about our other acquisitions.
No, I agree. I totally agree. We did a very thorough due diligence, and we believe that this is nothing that we could foresee.
Good. A follow-up question from William Balfour is to elaborate a little bit on the high price for Ascend and Ionic acquisition.
We didn't pay more per revenue than our assignments. The high price is probably if you compare to old figures, but if you compare to rolling twelve months that we present in the report from Q2, it's a fair price and well in line with other acquisitions and lower than our valuation.
How are you positioning for a potential recession and protecting margins given high investments for growth and rapid M&A?
I think that we are in our structure really well-positioned. We are really decentralized, so we will be able to conduct the eventual cost cuts and working with the cost side decentralized in those areas very fast, if that would be necessary. That is necessary, for example, as we talked about connected to Marketing Clinic right now. We are positioned in our marketing mix with around 40% public sector. That will not be affected in a potential recession. We have actually the whole Norway part of Knowit, which will I think that with the oil economy and the seafood industry and the bank industry in Norway, it will be good.
We have the banking industry and the industry connected to public sector in Sweden. We have the defense industry. The vast majority of our sales is actually not affected that much from a potential downturn in the economy. Of course, we have some parts of it that is.
Okay. We have two questions from Karl Norén at SEB. First one being, can you comment on the demand in general? Have you seen any larger weakness outside of Insight business, so far?
No, we haven't seen that. We see in some areas that some of the bigger customers are hesitating taking one or two weeks extra long time to decide whether they will start an assignment or not. There is something cooking connected to that. They are a little bit more insecure as customers. I think that is already affecting us with the longer time to start the assignment. If that will be going back to a normal market or because it was really hot the last two or three years, or if it will be worse, we will have to wait and see. We see something there.
During the financial crisis, you managed to grow through that crisis. Now you're a much larger organization and a somewhat different company compared to back then in 2008. Would you expect to grow your business through a recession again? How much of your business would you say is non-cyclical?
The second question I just answered. It's the vast majority of our business actually that is non-cyclical. I think that in our situation right now, we have done quite a lot of acquisitions in 2021 and so far 2022. I think it's wise for us, and we would have done that anyway, to take it a little bit slower, for some time now to integrate the acquisitions that we have done. We always try to have the right pace in that. Depending on the market development, and the possibilities in a potential downturn in the economy, I think that there will be a lot of possibilities within one or two years now for us to come.
We are entrepreneurial and we see possibilities, and we will probably grow in a potential recession as well, yes.
Great. We have no more questions from the webcast right now.
No more from the email either.
All right. One more question, sorry.
We have a follow-up on the.
You have one question there, yes.
We have a follow-up on the phone line from Daniel Gormoff from Handelsbanken. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you, operator. Yeah, a follow-up, if I may here. I was coming back to the strong performance in Connectivity of 250 basis points supported by Poland, et cetera. Were there any specific, you know, items of non-recurring nature that impacted positively here? Because it could be now good to know if you had any large project and so something that gave a really good momentum.
No, there is a high demand. There is an increase in the Polish entity which makes it possible for us to have good margins, and we have been able all 2022 to raise prices in that area as well. It's just ongoing business.
That's nice to hear. And also, just if I may follow up on, you talked about preparation for a recession that might be around the corner. And you have the use of subcontractors that obviously can be used as a accordion buffer, you know. Do you have what percentage of revenue that, especially to non-public and non-banks, that comes from subcontractors? And also if you can comment, if you see a potential. Are these mainly experts that you can't replace with your own employees if needed or are they more of. If we will see tougher times, could you do some replacing subcontractors to your own employees?
I would like to say that most of the subcontractors are highly skilled people that are non-replaceable individuals. But you have-
Yeah.
A possibility in many of the new big frame agreements that we have potentially to replace people, yes.
Okay, thank you so much. Just something I would like to comment is looking at the consensus today and the fact that, for example, it was only one estimate. It was one outlier that was the EBITDA compared to at least my own numbers, and I know another guy that. It could be wise to inform consensus aggregators of your own, you know, what you get when you do a consensus gathering, so it's not so terribly wrong as we saw this morning here impacting the share price.
That's a good point, Daniel. I will do that. Thank you.
All right. Thank you for that. Any more questions?
Currently have no questions on the phone now.
Thank you all for attending and listening in and for the questions. Have a good day. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining today's call. Today's call has now concluded. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your line.