BTS Group AB (publ) (BTSB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the BTS Group AB Q4 Report 2020. [Operator Instructions] Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present Henrik Ekelund. Please go ahead with your meeting.

Thank you very much, and thank you for listening in. I have the pleasure of presenting the Q4 results and the 2020 results for BTS. And if we change to Slide 2, Q4 market -- and I will say also, there will be a chance to ask questions at the end of my presentation, which would be 15 to 20 minutes, and then there's time to ask questions. So Slide 2, Q4 market, the market continues to recover. Customers are resuming operations. And while they, at the beginning, were reluctant to change from physical to virtual delivery, they are now quite comfortable on doing so and growing more comfortable. What we can say is that in the second quarter, when clients were quite reluctant to try virtual delivery. Now they are very comfortable. And what we are hearing from our clients is that even after the pandemic, when you can do any travel you want or any physical delivery you want, they will still stay with a lot of virtual and digital solutions. So that's a very exciting development for us. Now to next slide 3. A little bit on -- more on Q4. So we've seen a gradual improvement quarter-over-quarter. And interestingly, we have a unit -- a region called Other markets, which basically covers everything except outside Europe and the United States. They were first into the pandemic and severely hit in the first half. They are first out of the pandemic, and we are actually achieving particular result in the fourth quarter in Other markets and actually higher-margin than before. So that is a very positive indication on what we can expect once our business moves out of the pandemic. So if we change to Slide 4, here, you can see, of course, the dramatic drop in 2020, with all quarters being significantly worse than the year before and 2019. And of course, the core reason is the pandemic and the stop of all physical deliveries from March and onwards and the time lag to get into virtual. On top of that, a number of clients who actually stopped buying education training during the year because of their issues. Now you also see that quarter-by-quarter improvement from Q2 to Q3 from Q3 to Q4, and we are seeing a continued positive development when we look into 2021. Changing to the next slide, Slide #5, the January-December 2020 revenue results. You can see that there are some very ugly numbers here. We are used to always delivering revenue growth and profit growth. Here you can see that total revenue declined, it's 19% currency adjusted. And the profit, 60% to 80% dependent on which line you look at. And if we look at the next slide, Slide 6, per business unit, you see that we do have, across all regions, a similar decline in revenue and a big decline in profit and in margin. And looking again then at next slide, Slide 7. On the Q4, you can see that there's still a significant negative development, but it's better than the average full year and much, much better than what we had back in Q2 when the crisis hit us the worst. The next slide, Slide 8, looking per unit in Q4. You can see, again, very interesting that Other markets who were first into the pandemic and had a terrible first half, they are turning out of the pandemic and is delivering very good profit development and a much more positive revenue development than the other units. And while these 4 slides describe numbers that we're not proud of, a lot of minus signs and declining revenues and declining profit, but what is important is to understand the story behind these numbers. We have deliberately chosen a long-term strategy for 2020. And very early when the crisis hit, end of February, we decided to do a couple of things: number one, to focus all our resources to as quickly as possible go virtual with our services. And number two, not to engage in tapping down our organization and dismissing people because, A, that's a fantastic organization. We don't want to tear down half the hotel because it was empty. And also, we knew that if we diverted resources into too many things, our transformation to virtual would be much slower. So behind these numbers, there is an enormous amount of time and money invested in going virtual. So these negative signs really show an investment into the future because we are convinced that the future, yes, physical delivery will come back but virtual and digital will be big. And by focusing on that and transforming as quickly as possible and also keeping our organization, while also putting more money into technology and product development, that's the long-term focus we have. So we have deliberately, in 2020, not tried to maximize profit. We have acted during 2020 in a very consistent way to build a business that can grow -- continue to grow revenue and profit after 2020. In a way, it has, during the first 18 years we were in the stock market. So it's very important to understand the story behind these numbers and the long-term plan that we have in place. So if we switch to Slide #9. A part of the strategy that we started in end of February, early March of last year, was also to build a cash position, a cash position to handle any difficulty in the business in the market, but also to be ready to make acquisitions. So we built a much stronger cash position for the future. Just looking at Slide #10 on revenue and operating profit per year. You can see the quite remarkable development we've had since we entered the stock market in 2001. So skipping the extreme year 2020, we have delivered 14% revenue growth per year during these 18 years. And the vast, vast majority, 12% or more is organic. And at the same time, 18% growth per year in EBITDA. So that is something, which, of course, has shown in a big increase in dividend and a big increase in the share price. And then you see the dramatic development in 2020. And again, 2020, we've been thinking about one thing, and that is how do we keep those bars growing? How do we keep that EBITDA growing on a longer-term perspective. If we change slides then to Slide 11, you can see that this growth in revenue and profit has paid off for the people who have been shareholders in the company. The next slide, Slide 12. So how do we come out stronger? What do we mean by coming out stronger? What have we focused on in 2020? Well, really 4 main things. First one is the customer base. So what we've done here is we have really in a way restructured our customer base. Compared to the clients that were dominating for us a year ago, we are currently much more in the industries that are doing well. So tech, pharma, consumer products, financial services and a couple of others. Whereas the industries that are still in crisis, we do a lot less. And that shift has contributed to the quarter-by-quarter improvement. We've also made sure that we maintain relationships with all our old customers, and we won a lot of new customers. So that's number one. Number two, the broader offering. Physical delivery will come back, for sure, but virtual will take a big share go going forward. The business community has learned that they can do a lot of work and a lot of their training and education virtually and with many advantages. So that will continue a lot. So the exciting part here is that we now have virtual and digital and physical. So we can offer 3 different modalities for our clients, and that is a broader and interesting offering. Also, we have spent a lot of money on innovation and product development during this year. The companies of the world, our clients, the big, big corporations are facing big changes from COVID, and they are changing right now. And we've put a lot of effort innovating to meet those changes and be able to offer the most modern content addressing what is really, really important for them. And thirdly, the stronger organization, we've seen quite a bit of competitors who have been cutting down on their organization. We've kept our organization. We have also switched. It's been a good market for hiring. We've hired some people. Some people have moved on. So today, we have a stronger organization. And we also made a bet on marketing. We've increased our marketing budget and our marketing resources to take our exciting message out into the marketplace. So changing to Slide #13 on the dividend. So the Board have proposed to the shareholder meeting a dividend of SEK 1.20 for 2020, and that's basically executing on the policy. That dividend represents 66% of the profit after tax in 2020. So it's the dividend at the upper end of this policy. And this dividend should be distributed twice a year, if the shareholder meeting will follow the proposal from the Board. Now looking at Slide 14. And this is really what is important. We know that the shareholders of BTS are long-term shareholders that are looking to profit from year-after-year growth that we've proven and the year-after-year profit improvement we have been able to achieve. And that's why people are shareholders in BTS, and that's what shareholders hope for going forward and what we aim for. And the reason why this is -- some of the reason that we can -- we will be able to achieve this, we are in a large market. We are in a global market. We are in every major market in the world, and we have a small market share in this fragmented market. We have an offering that is stronger than competition. This is why we're growing faster year after year. And I would say we strengthened that position due to our long-term orientation in 2020 and we invest in growth. We invest in our people, in our products and in marketing. And we also invest in acquisitions to drive the growth. So we are very well positioned to continue our growth path from 2021 and going forward. And speaking of acquisitions, I'd like to mention a little bit about Bates. Bates is a business located in the Northeast part of the U.S., in Boston, with 23 employees, $7 million in revenue. It is a very good business with -- working with top of the house clients, both in terms of the level and the clients. And through this acquisition, we're getting access to a foothold in the Northeast, which is a big and attractive market for us, where we have not been that big. We're getting access to some really, really talented people. There's a lot of senior people in Bates with great expertise and with great client contact. We're getting access to a very interesting customer base and also Bates have some very interesting content that we don't have, that we then can bring to the BTS customer base. So we're very excited on this acquisition, and we have already won several deals together and are working closely together. So this is a very exciting move for us, this acquisition in Boston. Now looking at 2021, we have said that earnings will be significantly higher in 2020. Now that is not going to be difficult, given what a tough year 2020 was. But we've clarified and said we believe it will be in line with the earnings in 2019. 2019 was the year before the pandemic and also a very strong year for 20 -- for BTS. So we -- our outlook is to deliver earnings in line with 2019. So Slide 17 shows our shareholders where there are not really any major changes since the last quarter. So I'll stop there and invite any questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Rikard Engberg from Erik Penser Bank.

I have a couple of questions, if I may.

Yes, please.

So my first question is regarding the guidance for 2020. We returned to profit levels of 2019, was that driven by a higher margin or acceleration of growth?