Alma Media Oyj (ALMA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this Interim Report Session of the Third Quarter of Alma Media 2023. My name is Elina Kukkonen, I am responsible of the Communications and Brand of Alma. As usual, we start with the presentations with our CEO, Mr. Kai Telanne, presenting the overall result of Alma Media and the performance by business segments. After Kai's presentation, we have our CFO, Mr. Juha Nuutinen, presenting the financial position of Alma. And then Mr. Telanne will return to -- about the strategy going forward, the outlook and the operating environment. And we welcome all the questions. So, please use the chat function on the stream to present questions and also, we take the questions from here, from Alma premises. Our Manager of IR and Communications, Mr. Teemu Salmi, will pick up the questions and we answer them here. I think with this quick introduction, we are ready to start and welcome once again. And Mr. Telanne, please, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Elina. Good morning on my behalf as well. Welcome to the third quarter report presentation. As disclosed, we had quite a solid performance during the third quarter despite the headwind that we have had in the market. We were more or less on par with the revenues and slightly increasing profitability, 6.2% increase in the profitability. The share of the digital revenues went up from 82.3% to 83.9%, telling us the development of the transformation from print to digital going on in every, especially, publishing businesses. We have a healthy situation with the financials, meaning the balance sheet growing stronger with the gearing down to 72.7% and the equity ratio up to 46.1% with the good cash flow that we have had during the year. The revenue development was pretty similar in all business segments, I would say that quite flattish compared to the last year. And the profitability improvement came mainly from Alma Career, mainly from Central, East and Southern Europe, backed up by Alma Talent good development in Finland and Sweden. The digital business being flattish at the moment, as we have had in Finland a declining advertising market, more than 3% to 5% and speeding up during the second part of the year. The share of this digital revenue growth has been increasing, as said before. If we take a deeper dive into the business segment before I leave the floor to Juha, I start from Alma Career. Very nice profitability improvement due to a nice cost control or even savings in some parts of the costs. The labor demand has stayed on a high level, especially in Slovakia and Croatia, on a decently good level in Czech Republic as well. We have had difficulties in the market in the Baltics and in Finland. We have reduced some costs that we have had on a high level during the comparable period, meaning last year, especially on marketing. And due to these and some other cost savings, the profitability went nicely up. The profit operating margin during the third quarter, 43.8%, of which we are extremely happy that we have been able to do this. And having the targets on a high level, this is a good start of reaching the long-term high-level targets. Even the core recruitment services demand has been slowing down in some markets. We have been able to mitigate the slowdown by increased sales of value-added services in the main markets. Yes. This is the big picture of the recruitment business. We expect the European labor market to stay tight, meaning that our forecast for the rest of the year is on a positive side still, even there is increasing turbulence in the global environment. This is the slide of the invoicing revenue development, showing that the invoicing, meaning sales in our case, has been reaching the revenue curve, meaning that there is -- the order book is increasing at the moment, which is, of course, a good sign for the rest of the year and for the beginning of the next year as well. So there is light in the market showing up. The visitor base is okay, and the users with the job alerts is -- has been increasing, meaning that there are some redundancies seen in the markets and some easing up of some markets in the European arena. Alma Consumer next. This is the Finnish part of the business. A combination of high-quality digital media, mobility classifieds, and other mobility services, as well as houses and premises and comparison and sharing services. The big picture here is that, the ad market decline reflects to our sales heavily, especially on Iltalehti, but also on mobility and housing services, declining the revenues. As we can see on the center of the slide, media service revenue went down more than 5%, but on the contrary, mobility and housing services mitigating that nicely. But now we have seen that while the construction business is more than -- more or less closed down in Finland, the housing sales, the housing service sales in Alma also going down during the third quarter with 6.5%. So we are suffering from a very weak market and, at the same time, having a quite heavy investments on houses, premises and cars, like this kind of software development investments. We were not able to keep the profitability level of last year, but went slightly down. Content sales, due to the increase in digital subscriptions in Iltalehti, went up by 7%, and there's also a nice good demand for comparison services, which is supporting the profitability, of course, of the segment. High demand for journalism has continued. As we know, there are a lot of news, especially global news in place, and due to this the Iltalehti Plus subscriptions went over 47,000 subscribers. And lastly, Alma Talent, B2B segment, suffering from a weak ad market in Finland, we haven't had any IPO advertising during the year. The car market is on the low-side and so on. But the services are supporting the profitability with a good development at this segment and also a very good cost control. So the profitability went up, that's a very good performance of the group from EUR 22.9 million to EUR 22.5 million in a very difficult market. Recurring revenue, one of the main KPIs of the segment went up nicely, almost 24%, and that comes mainly from a good sales of company information and legal services that we have of high profitability as well. So this is the big picture. Flattish development in revenues in all sectors and good cost control leading to a nicely increased profitability. Now, I will leave the floor for Juha Nuutinen, our CFO, who will have the -- his last interim report presentation in Alma. Floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you, Kai. Yes, thanks, Kai. Let's look at first the financials. About the balance sheet issue, we have been quite stable balance sheet development during the last quarters. We reduced our net debt level with EUR 8 million, and the gearing is, like I said, 73% at the moment. There was no big issues in this quarter, actually. We reduced and paid back part of our loans from the financial institutions, and by that way we get slightly lower net debt level than in mid-June. Equity ratio we have 46%, and we will have slightly higher equity at the end -- towards year-end and slightly better financial position than the last year December. So no big transactions in this quarter, actually. Then about the investments and cash flow, we -- this year and last, we have had pretty strong investments, actually. Our CapEx, capital expenditure, have been at higher level than on the average level, and during the last 9 months, the CapEx level has been EUR 7 million, and it will continue also in the fourth quarter as well. We are making bigger investments in our marketplace units in cars and housing sector, so those investments continue also in the fourth quarter. We have made acquisitions, EUR 5 million during this year. So far, in August, we made a pretty small acquisition, actually, in North Macedonia, Vrabotuvanje Online. We bought 70% of that recruitment portal. We already owned 30% of that business, so now the North Macedonian business is entirely our own hands. This pretty small businesses revenue level at the year level is EUR 500,000, so -- but still we make our stronger position in the Balkan area overall with these kind of acquisitions. Operating cash flow, we have EUR 13 million in the third quarter. It was EUR 4 million less than the last year. We have discussed this also in the previous quarters that last year was exceptionally high year from the cash flow point of view. We have strong cash flow because of customer prepayments, we -- customer advance payments, and now they are more using their advanced payments than last year, and that's why the working capital level is weaker than last year, and the effect of working capital change was EUR 4 million -- EUR 3 million, actually, from that change in this last quarter. So that's the biggest effect there. In the long run, I would say that the average cash flow level from operating cash flow is somewhere between last year and this year's level, so that would be the average level overall. And then, naturally, we have paid also higher taxes and higher interest costs, and their effect is around EUR 1 million each in this last quarter. So those are pretty much explanations from decreased cash flow. Earnings per share was EUR 0.19. There was no any major big one-off items in this quarter, so only EUR 300,000 concerning this North Macedonian business acquisition, and that's why this EUR 0.19 pretty much shows quite a clear earnings per share figure in overall. We have pretty high return on equity and return on investments, revenues or profits, like you can see, 34% return on equity and 19% return on investments. And we are in a good position in that sense. Below in this presentation, you can see the major one-off items what we have had this year and last year, so if you exclude those from the earnings per share figures, you can get more average figure overall what -- concerning our performance in overall. So that was pretty clear quarter, I would say. Long-term financial targets we have kept as they are. This year is a pretty tough year from the revenue target point of view. We are not reaching this 5% target this year, but hopefully next year and the years after that. At the moment, our revenue growth has been minus EUR 1.4 million, so quite tough overall environment in advertising and also in housing sector and cars, so quite tough environment overall. But concerning this operating margin, adjusted operating margin, we reached our target level 25% in this quarter, and now we have 9-month figure is at the level of what we have had set our target, and really pleased that our operational gearing has been stronger. And we may -- we'll leave the target around 2 years ago to be 25%, and now we have reached it. Net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, our target is that we should have that ratio under 2.5, and now we are 1.7. So our financial position is quite stable and strong. And so, we are pretty happy in that situation. We don't need to change that net debt-to-EBITDA or our financial position largely. So we are in a good situation from that KPI point of view. So that's for the financials this time. And, yes, like Kai said, and you know that this is my last interim report, and I would thank you all. You analysts here and all our shareholders and all the media, Kai, especially for the journey, what I have done during these 11 years. This has been really good years for me, but also I think good years also for the company, not bad, I would say. And we have done a great job, and a lot of M&A transactions, a lot of changes in our processes, organizations, and everything what we can think. So this has been a great journey to me, and thank you for all. And I'm really pleased also that we have found a new CFO also in-house. So Taru Lehtinen will be the new CFO, starting next quarter, and I hope you all luck and success also in this new position. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Juha. Quite a journey, more than 50 interim reports, more than 50 acquisitions, divestments, and what else? 11 years together, thank you very much for that. So you can be really proud of all that you have done here. I continue briefly with the operating environment, just to give you a glimpse of what we believe in what is happening here in the businesses. As we have said already before, we have our eye on, especially on these 4 main issues or challenges one might chase in the operating environment. Of course, the geopolitical turbulence is one of the main issues at the moment that has -- is reflecting to many things, like for the economies. Unfortunately, that seem to be continuing. There's no clear answer how to stop the aggression that is happening in different places, like in Ukraine and also nowadays in Israel and in many other places, reflecting to our businesses and confidence as well. And, of course, the slowing economy or economies in Eurozone, especially, the economies have been decelerating, all operating countries of ours. It seems that the high inflation rate and interest rates have had a deeper, harder, bigger effect on consumer confidence and purchasing power than anticipated, I would say, or forecasted. So this has been a little bit surprise for many, how hard this has hit to the consumers and the markets also where we are in. And, of course, in Finland, we have this kind of long-term, or at least in all of the Europe, this kind of long-term issue with the aging population and the issues that that will bring with it. The changing consumer behavior is actually in favor of us, or works in favor of us while we have chosen the digital transformation. So we are heading to the right direction, hand-in-hand with the consumers and with the companies as well. And the big question is that, are we able to develop new, easy, time-saving and safe digital services that the consumers and the companies are needing. Of course, the corporate responsibility comes with that as well. And lastly, the increasing regulation that we have had already with the digital services and with the amount of data that is used and needed. Data privacy and consumer protection issues are more and more important and we have to take care of all those aspects. So these are the 4 main issues or challenges we are taking care of. It seems that the common understanding is that, we have bottomed with the GDP or the GDP decreases in the Eurozone. The European Commission newest forecast is saying that the Eurozone economies are growing 0.8% this year, if I remember right, and 2.9% or 1.8% next year or something like that. And the inflation is decreasing from 5.6% this year on Eurozone to 2.9%, meaning that there will be more purchasing power for the consumers and the consumer confidence with the decreasing inflation and stabilizing interest rates should be developing favorably next year. The unemployment rates seem to be stable, meaning the -- that the European labor markets will be tight also in the future with the aging population and the high demand of skilled workforce. So that's more or less a good sign for our businesses in the region of Europe and the business areas of ours. The Finnish ad market is, of course, a question mark for us. During the summer, the market seemed to be better and developing favorably. But by the end of the third quarter, the market went again down. And we are on a very low level at the moment. Even the digital advertising started to decrease again during the third quarter, meaning that the main markets of ours are declining in Finland at the moment. And as said before, we are suffering from this. While we have a high market share in Finland, we are suffering from the market development, not only in our publications like Iltalehti, Kauppalehti, or other magazines, but also on the classified services like Etuovi, Autotalli, Nettiauto, and those where we have a remarkably share of digital advertising. So that's been a question of ours. But we trust that this will change if the GDP development changes and the purchasing power of consumers changes. A short update of 2 different and important markets of ours, meaning Finnish housing market and then Finnish mobility market. You have some information and details also from the recruitment businesses in our interim report. I don't have these here. But the big picture in Finnish housing business is really sad. As we know, the construction business is more or less closed down at the moment. On the right -- on the left side of the slide, you can see, up left, trade volumes of houses and premises in Finland, used apartments, new apartments. Last year, used apartments 17.5% down and still going down, while third quarter this year, 27.7% down. And even worse with the new apartments, almost 50% down last year and from that 60% down this year, meaning that there's no new apartment construction or sales at the moment in Finland. We've been performing pretty well in these circumstances still, while the volumes in our housing marketplaces or rental housing marketplaces have been quite good compared to the market. There are active listings, positive third quarter. Demand and searches are down because of the low volume of the sales in the market. But on the Vuokraovi, which is the rental housing marketplace, the high demand, high activity there and good profitability as well. There's highlighted on the center of the slide the Real Estate Confederation saying that the Finnish housing trade this year looks weaker than the -- during the financial crisis 2008 and 2009. That's something we have to have in mind which is quite sad. So there's still like this kind of buyer's market. The median marketing time for the houses extended from 63 to 96 days. So that's it. So in order to change the situation or see the increase of the market, we would -- we need the inflation stabilizing or coming down and the interest rates stabilizing. Otherwise, that won't happen. And then the mobility update. New car sales picking up. Most of this comes from last year's sales, I would say, so this is because of the high delivery times of the new cars. So the registrations seem to be picking up, but the sales are on a very low level, 14% below the long-term average. The volumes in our services are on a decent level, I would say, even on a good level. Sold cars totally 5% -- more than 5% up during the third quarter and the market value also, meaning that there are more expensive cars sold in the marketplace. Sales up in all price categories, I would say. So that's it. How do we then go further? We have had the target to be the #1 player in all the businesses that we are in. As said before, the winner takes it all, as Abba says it. We are continuing with the strategy that we have in place, so we are going to transform the current digital core -- even the digital core businesses to advanced platforms towards new revenue sources, maximizing synergies that we have in the company. The core and the focus is, of course, on growing in digital more or less, developing and expanding in value chains to new business areas with synergy benefits. So to clarify or to simplify this, it means like moving from current advertising business to transactional businesses with new revenue sources. And, of course, we try to continue with internationalizing the business with new geographies or to grow with current geographies with new services. So from now on, we are talking about 3 business areas or 3 development areas, I would say, in our case; advanced marketplace platforms, intelligent information platforms, and inspiring media platforms. This is how we describe these developed areas inside the company. And creating synergies with the audiences that we can deliver between the services, the common data and the huge amount of data with the newest technology like AI. And, of course, common sales that we use here to serve all the businesses and segments. And during the coming interim reports and presentations you will hear more about this step by step so that you get light on the strategy to develop, how we are moving on and developing these services and what are the results of the development of this. We are well on track. We have a lot of initiatives already in place and some of them we have already disclosed like Baana, which is the auction service for cars to dealers and many others. But the core idea is to move from advertising to transactions. We are not leaving the advertising business because this is the core of our business and the company, but to new revenue sources like financing the transactions or other services as well. And we try to develop or we are developing this kind of end-to-end solutions for the consumers and the businesses to serve the customers in a digital advanced platforms for the benefits of all stakeholders. There's just a reminder of the Otava's tender offer that we got during the summer. And as a conclusion, on July -- 5th of July, the Board did their job, evaluated the tender offer and then disclosed their view saying that they deemed that the offer price that Otava gave with the tender offer must be considered low from the perspective of the shareholders of Alma Media and that seemed to be the case from the shareholders point of view as well. With this tender offer Otava's ownership rose from 29.18% to 31.18%, meaning 2% -- around 2% extra shares. So that's just a reminder of what has happened. So this is our outlook. We repeat the outlook that we have disclosed earlier. So we expect our full year revenue and adjusted operating profit of this year to remain at last year's level or decrease from last year's level. And there's the description of the last year's figures as well. So this is the current view. We are pretty well on track, fulfilling the outlook as well. So being as a CEO be quite confident that we will do the job. Okay. Thank you very much. That was the presentation. And if you have any questions, we are -- me and the management team members here, we are ready to answer your questions. So, please.

It's Pia from Carnegie. Impressive results in this difficult market. So congratulations for that. I come back to the -- your outlook and guidance for this year. So what's the rationale behind the guidance since you left kind of the lower end unchanged despite the very strong performance in the third quarter?

No. Yes. The turbulence in the market, it's really, really difficult to forecast anything. As we have seen that, like with the advertising sales, the billing of every month has been really good. And the last part of the month has been really bad. So it's really difficult to estimate that how this month or quarter is going to end up. And the visibility is very short and blurry. So that is the main reason. So we are pretty confident with the -- with our own initiatives, but the market is really difficult. I don't know, it's hard to just -- it's just hard to forecast. But as said, we are well on track at the moment and quite confident that we are there and will be there. But, of course, if we have to change the outlook, we will do that immediately. Hopefully, the market will support us. But at the moment, we see only headwind ahead of us, no tailwind, seeing -- or slight -- yes, there's slight positive signals, but not the big ones to change the outlook.

Then to Alma Career, the cost level, you have been very prudent in managing your costs for sales and marketing. Would you describe the current cost level as sustainable or representative, or is this representative in this market? And if the market changes the cost level, the increase will follow?

So we -- like maneuvering the engine carefully, having the eye on the market and the customers all the time. So if the market changes and there will be like this kind of tailwind, more demand to take care of, of course, that is the situation that you can increase your marketing efforts, sales efforts, and maybe in that kind of situation the cost will increase hand-in-hand with the development -- the market development. But without that, without the change in the market, I would say that we aim to keep the cost level as far as possible. Of course, there are cost inflation in the Europe, all over the places. So we are not -- we can't avoid the cost inflation. So we have to have this kind of cost initiatives in the group. Vesa-Pekka Kirsi, who is heading the segment, has been really, really tough with the costs. And as mentioned before, we have this Career United program and process, with the process development and with the consolidation of different part of the businesses, meaning that we should be more cost-effective in the future with the business, while we are sharing the common parts of the engine, so to say. And we have high expectations. So the expectation for the Career segment is to be more profitable than we are today, than less profitable, meaning that we have a lot to do, but well on track. Vesa-Pekka's team has been doing extremely good job and we will see the results during the coming years.

And if I can continue on the Career, what is going on in the Baltics? Are you losing market share or has the market just become more difficult?

No, not really. The markets are becoming more difficult like in Finland. I would say that in Finland we have lost market share. In Baltic countries, there are 3 different markets in the Baltics: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. And we have had difficulties in Lithuania. That we have a strong competition in Lithuania and there we have -- I think we have lost market share there. But in these 2 other countries we haven't. So that is the case more or less. And the economies are suffering like in Baltic countries and especially in Finland. This is the picture of the countries, more or less the labor market and the recruitment business has been reflected by the poor development of these northern countries.

Petri Gostowski from Inderes. Continuing with Career. Can you give some more color on the value-added services that grew in Career? Which services was this?

Yes, we can -- we have -- maybe Vesa-Pekka, if you want to continue with the value-added services, we have many of those there. Yes.

Just quickly and briefly, the value-added services, we have those in the areas of recruitment consultancy, in the area of education, and then employment branding. And then several other supporting services for the main career business. And the growth at the moment, event business, which is -- which we are actively doing Slovakia, Czech and Croatia events, so meaning HR events, people are coming to an event that we organize. That's been a growing thing since COVID-19. Especially successful this year. In addition to that, we are flying still with the education services and employment branding services where companies, in addition to buying advertising, are buying additional services to support them as a desirable employer. So the employment branding service we see as one of the growth sectors, in addition to normal ads sales.

Sure. Then continuing with Career on the invoicing, you showed how it has developed lately. How should we read this into the beginning of next year? Is flattish expectations correct for H1 '24?

Yes. Very good question. So like the visibility is quite low at the moment, but the big picture would be like this roughly. Vesa-Pekka, you can back up. But we have had or we have lagged behind during the second quarter with the sales and invoicing compared to the last year, meaning that we are waiting for difficulties in the beginning of the year with the revenues. But now we are picking up with the sales and the invoicing during the third quarter and hopefully, during the fourth quarter as well. So the dip might be quite short or not too deep, I would say, in the beginning of the year. Otherwise, if the whole year invoicing has been lagging behind last year, we would have difficulties in reaching the revenues or at least the volumes in the beginning of next year. So we have decently good expectations also for the coming years. But, of course, you never know what happens outside of Alma with the turbulence and the situation. But now it seems that we can do the plans with these expectations at the moment pretty well.

And then on the housing market, we had recently a taxation change in Finland. Do you expect this to have any impact on the short-term volumes?

Not in big terms. I would say that minor changes wouldn't affect that much on the markets. I'm expecting more changes or things happening with the increase in purchasing power, like the inflation going down and the interest rates stabilizing. That would be a good sign.