Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sinch press conference call. I am Alice, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator, and good day, everyone. Thank you for participating in this conference call with Sinch AB following the press release that we issued yesterday. My name is Thomas Heath. I'm Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Investor Relations, and with me today are our CEO, Oscar Werner, and CFO, Roshan Saldanha. Some of you will have tried to listen in to our original conference call this morning. We experienced some technical difficulties and decided to reschedule the call so that everyone who is interested is able to participate. With those opening remarks, I'll hand the word over to our CEO, Oscar Werner.
Thank you, Thomas, and everyone, welcome to this call. There are two things we wanna comment on this call. The first one is the statement we made yesterday regarding the reassessment of historical COGS reserves. The second one is the third-party analysis provided by Ningi Research. We wanna be clear on that we will not comment on the Q2 report in its entirety. We'll report that as planned on the 21st of July. We'll not close the books and cannot answer any questions on the quarter at this stage. Coming to the COGS, we have today announced a reassessment of traffic accruals or cost of goods sold reserves for historical periods, which has a negative impact of SEK 162 million on our COGS, gross profit, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA in Q2 2022.
There will always be small deviations in accrual processes. This deviation is of course much bigger than what should be expected. It is clearly an operating failure in certain parts of the organization. We take responsibility and working very hard to ensure it shall never happen again. We have decided to announce this before we finalize the rest of the Q2. A key reason is the strong share price reaction on the 11th of July, followed by the Ningi Research. Coming to the Ningi Research, although the report from Ningi Research did not focus on cost of goods sold, we wanna be as transparent as possible and use this opportunity to address the claims about Sinch revenue recognition that Ningi has brought up in their analysis.
The Ningi report hypothesis is that Sinch has overstated our revenue recognition in 2021. This is something we strongly oppose and believe is completely unfounded, and Roshan will give more comments. With that, I leave it to Roshan to make a more detailed explanation.
Thank you, Oscar. Good afternoon, everybody. The first topic, as Oscar said, is the COGS reassessment, and I will start with going through the process of how we handle cost of goods sold in the messaging business. Sinch's revenue are recognized at the time a message is sent. Cost of goods sold is generated by each individual message as mobile operators or partners charge Sinch a per message fee to terminate SMS traffic to their subscribers. Sinch receives invoices from mobile operators and partners, and in some cases, many months after the traffic was generated. Therefore, Sinch accrues for mobile messages as part of its normal day-to-day operations. On a regular basis, we also match these accruals with invoices. We close traffic periods normally after six months, but even at that time, there might be outstanding invoices from mobile operators or partners.
During this regular process, we have observed that the reserves were insufficient, and hence, we have been matching underlying data from multiple platforms, including acquired platforms, which are not integrated and reconciling them. This was done with the purpose of quantifying the gap. We have then reassessed our reserves, also based on expected future invoicing. This work is concluded now, and that is why we communicate it now. We believe that the reserves are sufficient to materially cover known COGS costs after this reassessment. The reassessment of traffic accruals we have now performed and informed about relates to termination costs for messaging during historical periods. A larger part of this relates to invoicing from a small number of specific operators during a period when we conducted technical integration of multiple acquired platforms.
Reassessments can include corrections due to changing accounting estimates or corrections due to errors. The SEK 162 million reassessment includes a SEK 40 million correction of errors. This latter amount is considered immaterial in relation to the entire previous year COGS. Hence, we will be treating this as a reassessment and taking the total impact in Q2 2022. There will always be some deviations, as Oscar said, during such matching processes, but they have not been this big before. A complex technical setup, augmented by recent large acquisitions. Interlinkages between multiple legal entities and high reliance on manual processes has resulted in the reassessment we have now informed about. We have since then increased resources, clarified roles and responsibilities and/or improving processes and systems to secure that we do not have such large deviations again in the future.
This reassessment will of course negatively impact COGS, gross profit, adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA in Q2 2022, as I said before, with SEK 162 million. There is no additional impact on net cash from this reassessment, since supplier invoices are received and paid in accordance with normal business practices. With that, I'll move on to prepared remarks on the second topic, which is the hypothesis in the Ningi report, that our revenues for 2021 are overstated. They are not, and I will start with explaining how we handle revenues and accounts receivable. We have not heard about Ningi Research before we received their analysis yesterday. They did not have any contact persons and had not engaged with us.
The analysis they have published includes a range of different claims, many of which are relatively less material, and therefore we will focus today on their claims that their revenues are overstated. As I said earlier, revenues are recognized when a message is sent or when a voice call is made. In the messaging and in the voice business, we normally invoice our customers on a monthly basis. Two things happened in 2021. Number one, we acquired Inteliquent. They also recognize revenues in a similar way, and hence we want a harmonized way of reporting. Secondly, we tightened the closing process, which is, you know, the period that we use to close the books at the end of a month or quarter.
The impact of this was that when we passed the last day of the quarter without having invoiced our customers, there is a certain amount that is not yet billed to the customers, and according to this, we treat this amount as unbilled receivables. Given the above, we choose to break out unbilled receivables in the annual report for 2021. This has existed before, but was included in accounts receivables. In summary, unbilled receivable is the income that has been recognized but not yet invoiced. It is treated as receivables because all contractual conditions required to receive that payment have been fulfilled, and hence we have an unconditional right to payment.
Also going back to the Q1 presentation, if you remember, when we want to compare 2020 and 2021, we need to add up receivables, both unbilled and normal trade receivables. We have more or less doubled the company during this period, and therefore we also need to compare with pro forma revenues. Hence, in the Q1 presentation, we had prepared a slide showing days sales outstanding and days payable outstanding, which has been developing in a range-bound manner. Finally, you know, I want to add that we don't have any material realized bad debts during 2022 related to the balances as at the end of the year 2021, which further supports you know the quality of the receivables that we are reporting.
The final proof of the quality of receivables is of course in cash collection. We generate cash. While cash collection can be lumpy on a quarterly basis and was weak in Q1 due to previously stated reasons regarding working capital, it cannot continue to be the case, and now when we do not have any major acquisitions, we believe that this will be proven in the upcoming reports. Thirdly, there are many other claims in this research report, including some regarding India and Australia. Looking specifically at India, ACL Mobile revenues are circa 6% of Sinch Group revenues. The research report states that we had a qualified opinion, which is factually incorrect. We had an unqualified opinion on the financial statements.
However, in an appendix to the audit opinion on the financial statements, there is information regarding the internal control of financial reporting where there was a qualified opinion. This relates to the fact that as of March 2021, that is a couple of quarters after we closed the acquisition, the provision for doubtful debts process was not deemed to be sufficient. This is something that we did address and corrected, and hence the auditor gave an unqualified opinion on the financial statements, which is not reflected in the research report. When looking at Australia, I think, you know, the legal entity that is the primary operating entity for Sinch in Australia, Sinch Australia Pty Ltd. In addition, we have two smaller holding companies.
All of these companies are active and can easily be found on the Australian Companies Office records. The reported revenues for 2021 in Sinch Australia is around AUD 5 million or SEK 35 million, which is about 0.2% of group revenues. The research report then, based on these inaccuracies in the corporate identification number, calls into question the UK revenues, which are several factors larger than the Australian revenues. In total, of course, we push back on all of those comments and are confident as to our revenue reporting and on our receivables balances. This is something that we evaluate on a continuous basis. With those comments, I would like to hand over to the operator for any questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets when asking a question. In the interest of time, we kindly ask you to limit yourself to two questions each. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Predrag Savinovic with Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you very much Team Sinch for hosting this call. This was very helpful. Starting with the COGS side and based on your commentary, it sounds as these are quite large operators and thus important for the overall business. You have stated that there have been inadequate control systems behind this COGS deviation. Oscar, you mentioned in the beginning you're working hard to ensure it's never going to happen again. I'm wondering if you can give some flavor on what visibility you have here going forward and how you strengthen the process to make sure that this doesn't occur again. A follow-up to that also in terms of timing, which period did this occur into? Because depending on the timing, you can draw different conclusions.
For example, if it's all concentrated to Q4 when you closed several large acquisitions, then SEK 160 million is large. If it's spread over the year, it's relatively smaller. Thank you.
All right. The areas we're doing improvements is. I give the overview, and then Roshan can give some more details. There are four areas we've been focusing on. It's system improvements in order to automate more and make the underlying data quality better. It is process improvements, so strengthen the reconciliation process and then looking at where have we had deficiencies and how do we improve that. It is roles and responsibilities, both making that clear. That also comes with our new operating model, which truly gives a true ownership for all things relating to COGS in a few sets of hands. We're happy about having done that and therefore giving stronger ownership.
Resources, increasing resources in several areas to control these areas. To control and make sure we don't end up here again. That's the four main areas. Roshan, you can give more detailed comments if you wish on those areas or take the next question.
Yeah, no, I think that was clear, Oscar. I think just maybe to add, right? I mean, you know, obviously we're going through a phase where we have multiple acquisitions coming in and you know, cross-platform transactions, you know, in the messaging business, covering multiple legal entities and jurisdictions. There is a certain amount of complexity, you know, as we go through this kind of integration phase, which has you know, contributed certainly to this reassessment. You know, I think just some humility for you know, kind of even if we're making improvements, you know, I think we're trying to cover all things that we find and we're really working to improve processes.
I think that's the reality of the situation. On the second question, Predrag, I think you know we you know these costs are of course primarily not only but primarily related to 2021. You know and they are kind of more or less evenly spread throughout the year with maybe a little bit higher weightage to the first part of the year. They're not in any way connected to the large acquisitions that we have closed in Q4 2021, if that was an answer to your question.
Yeah, no, that is very clear. Thank you very much. And may I ask one final one?
Go ahead.
Thank you. I think you have been quite clear generally that you oppose the third-party research that was published yesterday. Is there any new view you can give on the visibility you have on these accounts receivable as a whole? Any update in terms of are the provisions up to date? Should we expect that this will turn into cash flows?
I think, you know, Predrag, just a quick response. I mean, you know, as I said during my comments, all of the unbilled receivables, you know, are being invoiced to customers, you know, just a couple of days after closing the month or the quarter. This is more a process change in the sense that we're closing earlier rather than, you know, a process change in terms of our invoicing. From that perspective, there is really no kind of change in our invoicing process. We have, you know, continuously evaluated and assessed our receivable balances.
We do that, you know, firstly for material items, for large items on individual account by account basis, and then, you know, for smaller balances, you know, more in terms of classes, and those classes could be by legal entity or by type of customer or age or materiality of amounts or different ways of kind of categorizing those classes. We look at, you know, historical performance and bad debt in various classes and try to kind of make provisions on that basis. That process has existed and has not changed as well. If you remember in Q4 of 2021, we did come out with an impact of SEK 37 million of bad debts related to a specific customer in the voice and video segment, in the erstwhile kind of Sinch voice and video segment.
You know, which is again, kind of you know, for me, a proof of that we are, you know, we're kind of doing this on a continuous basis rather than just you know, a one-off. To answer your comment, in 2022, you know, bad debt levels continue to be what they have been historically, and we have not, you know, seen any material bad debts come through yet related to the balances as at December 2021.
You know, we hope that, which I, you know, I understand the proof of the pudding is in kind of at the end of the day, that showing up in our cash flow reports. We hope that we're able to kind of, you know, bring that to the market in the upcoming reports.
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Roshan.
Operator, can we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of Andreas Joelsson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. Just on the COGS process, have you also had the chance to review Q1 2022, if there have been any errors or similar issues with the COGS in Q1? That would be my question. Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, I think firstly, as I started with saying, I mean, you know, what we've done is we have reassessed our reserves. We have not, you know, kind of we should not treat this as though that we've corrected, you know, kind of a previous year or a specific period. We have reassessed our results in its entirety, which means that, you know, kind of we've looked at what the situation is as of today and, you know, what kind of result do we need to have for COGS costs or traffic accruals that have not yet been invoiced to us, right? By definition, that means then that, you know, we've covered all known facts or periods to date.
Of course, I mean, the later you get or the closer you come to today, the lower percentage of supplier invoices that we actually have received. Our ability to kind of confirm that with actual supplier invoices is lower, you know, the closer we come to the current date, so to say. Yes, I hope that was an answer to your question. I don't know if you want Thomas to add something.
Yeah. Just to clarify that, I mean, that is the normal ways of working, you know, providing CPaaS services, which will not differ between Sinch and other companies in our space. It's a part of our business that we receive invoices sometimes quite many months after the original transactions have been made, and handling accruals is a part of our day-to-day operations.
Thanks. Just maybe a follow-up on just you can confirm that you have not changed the way you recognize revenues over the years.
You know, no, we have not changed the way we recognize revenues, when it comes to the messaging business, you know, which I think is the topic that is in question.
Perfect. Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Stefan Gauffin with DNB. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Touching on the unbilled revenues. Is that primarily related to messaging or was that also related to Inteliquent? Which geographies are that related to? Is that across all geographies or just get some more clarity on this issue.
Yeah, I mean, again, you know, as at December 2021, the balance of unbilled receivables that we reported is primarily related to A, the messaging business, the Sinch messaging business, and B, Inteliquent or the voice, what we now have, you know, is a larger part of the voice business unit. Essentially, I mean, I would say from a voice or Inteliquent perspective, this is not a change. This is how they have always reported. They came into being a part of Sinch, of course, in December 2021.
For the Sinch messaging business, due to the fact that we kind of tightened, you know, month-end close procedures, this was a change during the year 2021 gradually, as we had larger unbilled accounts receivable at month-end close. However, again, just to repeat, you know, those unbilled accounts receivable are invoiced as per normal practice in the days following the close.
I think one.
Yeah.
One thing to add here. This is described in note 17 in the annual report for 2021. What might be a little perplexing is that we break out unbilled accounts receivable for 2021, whereas for 2020 this was parts of accounts receivable. The total amount increases from around SEK 2 billion to around SEK 4 billion, so total accounts receivable. That increase is due to the larger size of our group following acquisition and organic growth during 2021. The increase is on a like-for-like basis and has to do with the larger size of Sinch group following acquisitions and organic growth.
The presentation of a new line item called unbilled accounts receivable is a clarification of you know where we add fidelity to improve clarity, and we're able to do that for 2021. That was not the way we did it originally in 2020, right? The total accounts receivable reflects you know the larger group. It's important not to mix these two factors up.
I think just to comment on your other part of your question there, Stefan, you know, this doesn't relate to any specific geography or you know, any specific group of customers or operators. It's more, you know, related to process changes, process improvements.
I think to add also to a little bit more color. When you look at total accounts receivable, if you want to calculate days of sales outstanding, of course you need to have the same, you need to use the correct base when you look at accounts receivable and when you look at revenues. If you make that analysis, you need to look at pro forma revenues for 2021 and pro forma revenues for 2020 as of 31st of December 2020. Otherwise, you know, it will not be a like-for-like comparison to calculate DSO. Some of you will recall that we elaborated on this already in our Q1 presentation, where we show DSO.
This of course is a bit more complicated by a large amount of M&A over a short period of time. The underlying DSO and DPO is relatively stable.
On the COGS side. SEK 162 million, if that is primarily related to 2021, that is in total around one percentage point lower gross margin. If that's a fair assessment, sort of.
Go ahead, sorry.
Yeah. Just to understand sort of the future implications for this.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll start off and then I don't know, you know, if somebody wants to add something. I think firstly, as we said, I mean, this is a reassessment of reserves, you know, assessment of where we stand today. Therefore, we've kind of looked at the total reserves and, you know, that we've had and what we should have had in the books and also looked at, you know, kind of from a forward-facing, you know, what is the kind of reserves we need to have for expected invoices, right? That's kind of the work that's been done.
At the same time, we could say, of course, that the vast majority of this amount relates to 2021, as we've said before, and you know, spread more or less evenly toward the year, maybe with a little bit more weightage towards the first half of 2021. Now, I think in the press release, we're commenting that, you know, that amount, you know, if applied to 2021 would be equivalent to about 1.3% of COGS.
I think the other thing to mention is that, you know, also that this is not only related to kind of the Sinch business, but it's related to both Sinch as well as the acquisitions that came into the messaging business unit, you know, in the latter half of 2020, and as well as 2021, which is, you know, the SAP Digital Interconnect as well as Wavy businesses. It's a combination, you know, and we need to compare it to the total messaging business unit.
Okay. Thank you.
Operator, may we have the next question, please?
I remind participants, if they want to register for a question, they may press star and one on their telephone. The next question comes from the line of Pontus Wachtmeister with SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanna kind of lift the perspective a bit. You know, the margins in this business so far is not huge, even on an adjusted basis for EBITDA. It's around 10% or below last year, I guess. What is being made or done operationally to make sure that the business decisions that are made on a framework agreement basis with a client or on a kind of application or are made with the correct amount of margin to make sure that after all costs and interest payments are done, there is a profit in every business transaction? If you see what I mean.
Because when you see these things coming up and you accrue for costs for a long time, and then, you know, stuff kind of comes back later. Then it's very important to understand that you have room for this in your overall business decision making to make sure you make a profit over time. That was my first question.
All right. This is, I mean, it's a very good question, right? It's a very important topic for this type of business. We have the salespeople on the right-hand side, if you will, you know, selling. Then you have a large amount of mobile operators on the back end, and we're doing smart routing decisions on an hour by hour or day by day basis. That's the structure you have here.
What we're doing is obviously that we're having the routing team that knows the underlying costs, that understands, you know, what the costs are. They're setting some floor prices to salespeople, and then salespeople working with that type of floor pricing in order to make sure that you have a good enough margin. That is the process, and typically that has worked very well. In some cases you may see deficiencies, but typically we have. Typically that is holding the margin well. Now we are working now on various things, especially in this inflationary environment that we see.
In an inflationary environment, we obviously see costs going up from the salary side. Then we're seeing, all right, what do we do then? You know, how are we implementing and institutionalizing a way to increase our prices to our customers in order to have a good enough margin also in an inflationary environment? That is a process that I think we're improving right now, that during the last years we have not needed to do so much of.
Okay, thanks. That's kind of my second question, because you have been very vocal in tying your OpEx to the gross profit growth. If you as a division somewhere grows gross profit, then you can grow your OpEx and so on. Given what we're discussing today, I struggle to see how you can control and check on that. Because you don't really have control over the gross profit until months and months later, but you still drive OpEx by that measure. Isn't that dangerous and, you know, a bit opens up for huge margin drops at times? Should there be another layer of safety there perhaps before one can drive OpEx? What do you kind of think about that?
I can start off maybe a little bit and Oscar might want to add. You know, Pontus, of course, I mean, you know, I think firstly, I mean, this is concerning, right? We're taking steps to make sure that, you know, that we improve, you know, kind of the reporting and transparency around it. At the same time, you know, this is about, as we said, about 1.3% of last year's COGS. For the messaging business unit, it's about, you know, 1% margin drop, right? I think the important message here is to say that, you know, of course, gross profit, you know, OpEx, we still believe in the relation between OpEx and gross profit.
We want to control, you know, OpEx, you know, in relation to gross profit. We've already said, you know, at the beginning of the year, that, you know, given the slower growth within the messaging business unit, that we are putting in place controls around OpEx growth and, you know, also given kind of the overall macroeconomic environment, that we believe that is the right thing to do. That's where we are at today. To reiterate that message that, you know, we need to get in control, you know, of OpEx growth. At the same time, we need to make sure that we get the gross profit growth back on track.
I think reiterating that message that we had in conjunction with the Q1 report.
Okay. Thank you very much. These are kind of high level, kind of just how you drive the process. Since you guide kind of on those measures, it's just great to hear you describe them in a bit more detail. Thank you.
Thank you. Operator, can we have the next question, please?
The next question comes from the line of Mohammed Moawalla with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have a few, if I may. Firstly, in terms of the COGS change, you know, can you just give us some background? What triggered it? You know, what was kinda done incorrectly previously? You talked about sort of adding more resources to sort of improve things going forward, but still mentioned that there could still be some more deviation. Can you kinda help us understand that? To the extent that you can give more color on this COGS restatement, which geographies was it in? I know you sort of called out some big operators, but you're not giving us more details. Just curious to get more on this. A more philosophical question, why didn't you just restate the historical numbers in 2021, given that's when it occurred?
The second question was basically around free cash flow. Roshan, you mentioned that there should be an improvement in the free cash generation and reduction in some of those working capital drags. Can you be a bit more specific on the timing of this? You know, could we see this as early as Q2, or is this gonna be more sort of back-end loaded in terms of the horizon? Related to that, obviously the implications are significant here because of the deleveraging. I think you're kinda running at 3.5 x sort of leverage. I believe that there's also, you know, a bond where there's a covenant there.
You know, as we think of the implications of this restatement, you know, what is the kinda cash flow implication, and how much of that can you compensate for? Just a clarification question. I think, Roshan, you mentioned, I just wanna make sure I heard it correctly, you said there's no cash impact, but the impact is just on EBITDA and gross profit from the restatement. That'd be great. Thank you.
Yeah, you know, Mohammed, sorry. Mo-Mo, you might wanna come back if I have forgotten any of your questions here, but because there was quite a few.
Sure.
I'll try to cover some of them with help from others here in the room. I think you know, firstly, you know, of course, you know, what we've done, as I said, is working with COGS accruals is part of our day-to-day business. I mean, invoicing from operators happens at a point in time, you know, after we send the messages. I mean, we rarely receive you know, kind of all of the invoices, even when we close a quarter. You know, it can be even today, I mean, there are invoices outstanding from periods before December 2021, right?
That's just the nature of this business and, you know, I think that's what we deal with. You know, it's a complex process, you know, with data from multiple systems, traffic flowing from multiple systems. We of course, operationally, what we want to do is we want to consolidate our traffic flows to operators on the most beneficial contract, which means that, you know, kinda we will have cross-platform transactions and that kind of complicates this process, right? Now what we've done is, you know, over a period of several months, we've gone through historical data from various systems and countries, matching them to each other on a detail level.
You know, kind of the amount that we've identified is the total amount of various, you know, identified differences. This includes, you know, kind of normal true ups and true downs, you know, but it also includes specific transactions that, you know, due to system weaknesses, were not captured, you know, in the relevant reports, you know, or not captured in kind of, you know, our estimates. So I think, you know, that's kind of a slightly more detailed description of what has happened.
When it comes to, I think your questions on kind of the cash impact and the leverage, if I try to take them then, what I did say is that there is no net cash impact, you know, of this reserve. Obviously, you can say that, you know, it's quite, you know, we will take the impact in the Q2 2022 books. To that extent, it will impact, you know, Q2 2022 report in EBITDA. You know, obviously, we're increasing reserves, so that will have an impact on working capital as well. You know, those two should net themselves out in operating free cash flow.
You know, then of course, but if you look from a net cash impact, you know, these supplier invoices are paid as and when they are received, and that practice has not changed. You know, that continues to be stable from a comparison period perspective. That was my comment on the cash side. When it comes to leverage, I will not speculate on Q2. I think both when it comes to leverage and in terms of cash flow, I mean, we are reporting Q2 in a quarter, in a week, sorry.
As Oscar said, you know, that's kind of questions on Q2 in this call, because we're not ready with the report yet, and we have to take it when we are reporting Q2. You know, when I said that of course, you know, the nature of our business, you know, and the underlying kind of the underlying business trend is in that we generate cash. Q1 was more of an aberration in the sense that we had you know, a situation with some large customers that did not pay in time on the right side of the quarter. That is not normal practice, and that's something that we will correct.
My comment was more kind of, you know, broader long-term, not specifically on a specific quarter. When it comes to your question on the leverage, as we've said before, the board has a leverage target for the company, which is to stay at 3.5 x adjusted EBITDA over time. You're right in that we have an obligation, Swedish bonds that has a covenant, a light covenant, at a lower figure, I think 3.25.
That is an incurrence test, which means that it is triggered only if you know, if we take up new debt. So it's not triggered otherwise. Yeah. I think and I hope I have addressed all of your questions, but okay, sorry. Oscar is reminding me about restated 2021. I can take that briefly as well.
Again, as I said, I mean, you know, this reassessment consists of both changed accounting estimates and, you know, or corrections due to changed accounting estimates and corrections due to errors. When we look at kind of the reassessment as a whole, we can see that the correction due to errors is SEK 40 million of the total SEK 162 million, which we deem to be not material. Therefore we believe that, you know, we from an accounting perspective can take the cost in Q2 2022.
We also, you know, and this is a little bit softer maybe, but softer reason, not really an accounting reason, but I think from our perspective it's also about owning up to what has happened and, you know, and actually making sure that we reflect that in the report for Q2 2022, the negative impact of this reassessment. I hope I.
Okay.
I hope I've exposed the questions with that.
Yes. Thank you. I just want to clarify then on the working capital sort of progression and reversal. I guess you're not putting a kind of a precise timeframe around that right now, if I heard you correctly. That's gonna kind of come back progressively. Is that the way to think of it?
I think, you know, I mean, the only thing I said is I don't want to comment on the Q2 reports today because that's what we said we will not comment on. I think, you know, then we can come back maybe with that question in a week's time. I think that's maybe a better time to address it.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mo. Operator, can we have the next question, please?
Sure. The next question comes from the line of Andreas Markou with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions. Two of them. The first one is basically on the very negative sentiment that has been created after this short report. Obviously, the call and the explanation the call we're having now and the explanation you've given helps. But do you think, you know, something like a, potentially something, an independent audit review, something like that would help kind of restore confidence? That's the first one. Then the second one is something that is mentioned in the report about your whistleblower hotline. Why did you actually shut that down? Thank you.
Thank you, Andreas. A few questions there. First, we have a whistleblowing functionality in place and have had for a long time, that has not stopped. We think this is a misunderstanding. Generally speaking, in terms of how we work with accounting, of course, as a stock-listed company, we follow the rules, applicable rules and regulations and work continuously with our auditors to ensure the integrity of our financial statements, which is a continuous work, which is reflected also in the reassessments we're doing today, where we're addressing and some issues and making improvements. In terms of longer term.
Ultimately longer term credibility, of course. When we find ourselves in a situation where there's a little bit of mix of everything in terms of skepticism and criticism, we deem the best way forward is to deliver good results, you know, grow profits, translate profit into cash flow. You know, might take some time, but we think that's sort of the most concrete way, rather than stack claims on top of each other. Patience perhaps. We'll do our best to simply deliver good results.
I think, I mean, just to add on Thomas's comment there on the whistleblower hotline, I mean, we have a legal compliance section on the website. There is the code of conduct is available there, and there is an email address, you know, that any whistleblower reporting can be done to. I think it's called Integrity Reporting Line. You know, yeah, to our knowledge, I don't think anything has changed.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Operator, can we have the next question, please?
Sure. For any further questions, I remind participants star and one on their telephone. The next question comes from the line of Lloyd Jones with Redburn. Please go ahead.
Hi there, team. Thanks for taking the question. It's regarding the unbilled receivables and accrued income again, if I may. I think one of the key issues raised in the report yesterday was that the note 17 on accounts receivable and the note 19 on accrued income are inconsistent to the grouping that you then show on note 28. Where you split the accrued income and the accounts receivable in a very different way. Are you able to comment on that, please? I guess the key question here is whether the accrued income that we see in note 19 is a subset of the unbilled accounts receivable that we see in note 17. I think any question, any clarity here will be very helpful. Many thanks.
Sorry, can we just ask you to clarify, sorry, which part was part of what on the Note 19?
Yeah. I think one of the notes raised was the unbilled accounts receivable that we see in note 17 and the accrued revenue that we then see in note 19, the split that's given there. Then in note 28, you group the accrued income and the accounts receivable in a very different way. I guess the key question here is the accrued income that we see in note 19 a subset of the unbilled accounts receivable that we see in note 17? Because it looks like it is from the way that you present it in note 28. But it's not very clear. I think that was one of the sort of main issues that was raised in the report yesterday. If you could clarify that, I think that would be very helpful.
Thanks. We'll be happy to try to reconcile this to the best of our ability. You might have to reach out to us offline and we'll do our best to
Okay.
To explain.
Yeah. Yeah.
If you wanna add anything.
I think just very, you know, quickly firstly, I think on the unbilled accounts receivable, I mean, as I said before, you know, that's a we consider that to be a part of trade receivables because, you know, all contract conditions are fulfilled and there is an unconditional right to payment. The only difference to trade receivables, you know, is that the invoicing takes place a couple of days after we have closed the books, you know?
Yeah. I think that bit's clear, but I think it's whether the accrued income is a subset of the unbilled accounts receivable is the main question.
I understand. By definition, I mean, the accrued income would be a contract, you know, would be a contract asset. You know, but let's come back and let's make sure we get.
If you could clarify that, I think that'll be helpful. Yep.
Thank you.
Thank you. Let's see. I think we're looking towards the end of our queue of questions. I note some media questions. Media are happy to reach out, and we'll do our best to accommodate you and any other investor question. Don't hesitate to reach out. I think we have one more question here I see, and we can make that the final one. Operator, we have the last question here from Bank of America.
Sure. The next question comes from Mr. Farah Rahman, Bank of America. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Thanks everyone on the Sinch team for providing this, very detailed overview. It's very helpful. Just a quick question. Can we expect any further reassessments of historical financials? Can we expect any updated opinion from the auditors or any reassessments on their part?
We're not aware of any needs to reassess any other part of the financials at this point of time. There is nothing else that we're working on and that we're aware of at this point in time. No, you know, is my answer to the best of my knowledge. On the second point, you know, I think I will not speak on the auditor's behalf. You know, they have to speak for themselves. They have of course, you know, done a full review of 2021. This is considered to be a reassessment, which is, you know, based on materially on new information that has come to knowledge.
You know, we of course have a very active and good dialogue and share information, and they are fully aware about, you know, kind of the information that we are providing today, and they have had the opportunity to review and look at that information, but they have not audited it, of course. You know, the Q2 is not an audited report, so to say.
Okay. With regards to their sort of opinion for the full year 2021, any changes to that? Any updates that they may make in the future?
I think.
No, no, not to my knowledge. Again. Yeah. Go ahead.
Not to our knowledge. I mean, to the extent that auditors would, you know, have a view on anything that they would have to communicate that. We have a continuous dialogue and are happy with that relationship. Not to our knowledge at this stage.
Thank you very much for that last question. Operator, thank you for hosting this call in a more successful way than what we attempted this morning. Thank you everyone for the interest and for reaching out. We will try to accommodate follow up any other questions you have to investor relations. Reach out by email. Thank you very much. With that, we will end the call. The next time we speak will be after our Q2 results, where we will, you know, answer further upcoming questions specifically about results. Hopefully, we've cleared all questions with this conference call, and we thank you for your interest.