Dynavox Group AB (publ) (DYVOX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call where we will mainly cover the fourth quarter 2024, summarizing our business in October, November and December. And we will, of course, comment regarding the full year of 2024. And click for the next slide. My name is Fredrik Ruben. I am the CEO of Dynavox Group.

And I'm Linda Tybring, I'm the CFO of Dynavox Group, and I will cover the financials at the end.

Great. So for those of you who have participated in these calls before, you will be familiar with that we will start by doing a quick recap about what Dynavox Group is about. And then we will summarize the main takeaways from the quarter and the year. We will dive deeper into the financials. And thereafter, we will have a Q&A session. as participants here, you can submit your questions during this live sessions here in the chat function in Teams. And we, of course, always welcome offline questions if you send them by e-mail to Linda's email address which is [email protected]. So -- but again, starting with a brief overview of Dynavox Group. First and foremost, it's important to reiterate our mission and our vision, which I know is very dear, not only to the roughly 800-plus colleagues around the world, but also to our ecosystem of partners and investors. And our vision is a world where everyone can communicate, we contribute to this via focusing on our mission, which reads to empower people with disability to do what they once did or never thought possible. And this also summarizes 2 of our main user stories. If we start with do what you once did, that may refer to the person who led a normal life until a diagnosis such as ALS which rendered her unable to control the body or communicate like before. The other story they never thought possible can refer to the child diagnosed at an early age with the conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy and more, where thanks to our solutions, he can do much more than the world around him ever thought possible. And we have a picture here to the right on Christopher or Chris, he's from California in the U.S. and his 1 of our amazing young users diagnosed with non-verbal autism, and he's a super good example of this. The market that we service is hugely underserved, estimating some 50 million people have a condition so grave. They cannot communicate unless they have a solution like ours. And every year, about 2 million people are being diagnosed and yet we estimate only some 2% of those are actually being helped and the rest remain silent. The main reason for this spells lack of awareness. So among the professionals and the prescribers that are tasked to assist with these users and combine them with the poor health care reimbursement system around the world. We operate with a global footprint. So today, some 3/4 of our business stems out of the U.S. and largely because of a reasonably well functioning funding system established some 20, 30 years ago. But our products are actually sold in about 65 markets around the world, of which the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and now most recently adding Australia and New Zealand are markets where we sell directly, while the other markets are served by a network of 100-plus reseller partners. Our own staff is distributed in a similar way as the revenue. So that means that some 70-plus percent of our staff are also based in North America with our U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. And then our second largest office is our headquarters here in Stockholm, but we have branch offices in several European countries as well as in Suzhou in China. And as of today, we are over 800 employees in total. With prior acquisitions, we established or increased our presence specifically in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Denmark and most recently then in Australia and New Zealand. Yes, but I'll come back to that. We provide what we call comprehensive solutions, and it's a portfolio that ranges from if you go on the left on this picture, the content and the language systems, such as the world-leading library of communication symbols they're called PCS and the leading solutions off-the-shelf or custom-made synthetic voices of the highest quality and with a large diversity in terms of languages, ages and ethnicities. Moving on, we have highly sophisticated communication software, which is tailored to the type of user and that can of course vary greatly based on the needs of that user. Moving on, we developed and design devices with cutting-edge technology and medically certified durability that includes communication aids that you can control via eye tracking or accessories such as the Rehadapt mounts. We have also a services portfolio to help our users through the complexity of obtaining and getting funding for the solutions. And then last but not least, we're there to help users, therapists, caregivers through our global teams of support resources. We operate this model globally, and it's important to note that each piece here is critically important and also significant differentiator for us, making us absolutely unique. Our go-to-market model is predominantly as prescribed aids, which then means that some 90% of our revenue comes from either public or private insurance providers. And this also means that we have a solid paying customer base, but also we've always been resilient towards changes in the overall economic climate. All right. But now we will go back on focusing on the main topic of today, namely our earnings report for the fourth quarter 2024. So looking at the highlights, we had another solid quarter when it comes to revenue growth. The growth compared to the same quarter previous year sums up to 22% if we adjust for 2 percentage point positive currency effect. And this basically continues the trend that we have now seen for the past 10 consecutive quarters. The products that we launched in September continued to generate highly favorable response in the market. And with the bulk of orders that originally were slated for recognition as revenue in the third quarter, they were also delivered now in -- before the end of the year in the fourth quarter. We continue to improve our portfolio of products and services and the latest set of launches solidifies our already strong offering. Our work to improve the awareness and competence continues, specifically among prescribers and professionals in our space. We see that the North American market continues to show strong growth, and it's by far our largest and most influential market, both for us and for our industry. But we also see strong momentum among the younger user base to continue. Often that is children with autism that rely on our symbol communication solutions and in particular, a software called the TD Snap and the non-eye-tracking touch control communication devices portfolio that supports these user groups. Our OpEx levels increased, but this is a consequence of investment to secure future growth and building the foundation for a much bigger company in the future. So we continue to invest in our staff, mainly within sales and marketing, but also in back-end systems and tools. We also continue to improve our profitability at an even faster pace compared to revenue, and our operating profits increased by 47% in the quarter. On October 1, we closed the acquisition of Link Assistive, which is our long-standing reseller partner in Australia and New Zealand. And in November, we announced that we will consolidate our product development organization, which includes product management, hardware, software development, et cetera. And we focus these efforts to our Stockholm headquarters. We enhance our innovation capacity while also improving the ability to provide hardware and software that is much more seamlessly integrated and better aligned with the entire customer journey. If we then instead look at the full year 2024, we can conclude that it was solid regarding our top line growth. In local currencies, the growth was 23%. Our profitability improved significantly in the full year. EBIT grew by 48% and earnings per share grew by 40%. So this really, to me, proves the case that our business is now really starting to scale quite well. The fundamental factor behind this is, again, the hugely underserved potential in the market that we address. Our attractive customer offering, which we continue to strengthen through significant product launches was also a key growth driver as well as successful acquisitions such as the one in Australia and New Zealand, Link Assistive. One more factor behind our growth, but also as an important factor to ensure that growth is sustainable are our continued and significant investments within our sales and marketing organizations, but also in systems, tools and processes to secure future scaling. Now I hand over to you, Linda, to take us deeper into the financials.

Thank you, Fredrik. So let's talk some numbers. So revenue for the quarter came in at SEK 585 million, a 22% year-on-year growth after adjusting for currency effect. M&A contributed with 1%, hence, the organic growth was a solid 21%. Continuing a strong trend from previous 10 quarters, Fredrik said, also, the majority of our pushed orders in Q3 was delivered in the fourth quarter. North America continues its strong growth, but it also remains the case for Europe and Rest of the World. As we've talked about in prior quarters, we continue to see growth not just across regions, product and user groups, we continue to see that the fastest growth globally is within the autism customer group. The gross margin ended up at 70%, an increase of 1.2 percentage points. The margin benefited primarily from improved purchase price, but also some negative impact on increased freight costs. EBIT for the quarter increased by 47% to SEK 83 million or 14.2% versus 11.9% last year. Our OpEx increased by organically 22%. The OpEx increase mainly relates to what we already talked about, we added some 154 FTEs, including acquisitions. Majority of this was added in the sales and marketing organization in addition to the salary adjustment that came into force April 1. We continue to invest in systems and tools to manage the growing business and setting up as to being able to handle a business much larger than it is today. These investments contributed approximately to SEK 9 million in the quarter. Operating expenses was affected by nonrecurring costs of approximately SEK 2 million, mainly related to restructuring costs. The cost for long-term incentive program in the quarter actually decreased with SEK 1 million. Net R&D costs increased by SEK 12 million and if we look at the earnings per share, it's increased by 19% from SEK 0.43 per share to SEK 0.51 per share. So the full year 2024 financials. Revenue for the year came in at SEK 1.97 billion, a 22% year-on-year growth. Excluding currency effect, it was 23%. Acquisition contributed 4%, and the organic growth was a solid 18%. North America contributed its strong growth. Europe and the rest of the world also grew strongly. As already mentioned in the quarter, we see growth across the board, not just regions but also products and user group. We also see a trend where markets where we go direct grow stronger. Gross margin ended up at 69%, an improvement of close to 1 percentage point. The margin benefited with improved purchase price at the same time, increased fleet costs had some negative impact. EBIT for 2024 was SEK 229 million corresponding to a margin of 11.6% versus 9.6% last year. Our OpEx increased organically with 18% versus last year. The OpEx increase mainly relates to staff increases in sales and marketing organization and salary adjustments that came in to force April 1. Investment in tools and systems to build scalability contributed to the cost increase of SEK 16 million. Cost for our long-term incentive program increased by SEK 11 million and operating expenses that was affected by nonrecurring cost of approximately SEK 8 million related to restructuring costs and acquisitions activities. The net impact of R&D spend increased by SEK 20 million. This is mainly related to both the most normalized development cost, but also increased depreciation. I think we are very happy with our revenue growth and even stronger improvement of our profitability with an EBIT increase of almost 50% and growing earnings per share by 40%, a real proof that our business scales and revenue growth. At the same time, we managed to continue to invest for future growth. For the quarter, cash flow after continuous investment was positive with SEK 39 million, negatively impacted by increased inventory levels and higher accounts receivable. Specifically, revenue came in late in the quarter, which then increased our accounts receivables. Cash at hand ended up at end of the quarter was SEK 133 million. Net debt, SEK 657 million. The total used credit facility and term loan at the end of the quarter was SEK 694 million. The net debt over the last 12 months EBITDA was 1.5x. So Fredrik, should we?

Yes Linda, thank you. So before we open up for questions, I'd like to reiterate the main takeaways from the fourth quarter as well as the full year of 2024. We continue to show solid growth, and that is a trend that started early in the spring of 2022. We grew revenue by 22% adjusted for currency and the equivalent full year growth was 23%. North America continues to show strong growth, but it's also the case for Europe and rest of the world. The strong momentum are among the younger user base continues and that's mainly among children and younger users with autism. Our profitability continues to move upwards with an organization that scales better day by day. EBIT increased by almost 50% during the quarter as well as for the full year. The previously acquired companies continue to contribute well and we are -- they are developing favorably. And as from October 1, we added Australia and New Zealand as countries that we call home. And given the continued and sustainable growth, we continue our investment in systems, tools, preparing us for being able to successfully manage a future business that is much bigger than it is today. Our financial targets are expressed with a time horizon of about 3 to 4 years. And the first target says that on average, we want to grow our revenue by 20% per year, adjusted for currency effects, including contributions from acquisitions. And in local currencies, the full year growth sums up to 23%, which means that we have found a revenue growth momentum to build on. The market, again, we service remains hugely underserved and with the example of growth levers such as sales teams expansion, adding direct markets and operational excellence, we continue to build on our growth journey. The second target is to deliver an EBIT margin that reaches and exceeds 15%. And we have proven to build strong growth with incremental improvements in profitability. We need to continue to invest in future growth with improvements in scale. An example of this is to continue to grow through better educated prescribers that become more self-sufficient and, of course, satisfied customers lead to a higher degree of replacement sales. The recipe for this is rather simple. I mean, continue our revenue growth, high and stable gross margin and then, of course, an operating expenses that increased at a lower pace than revenue growth. And as a consequence of this, we see good opportunity for future leveraging, how revenue growth translates to reaching and exceeding an EBIT margin of 15%. Lastly, we expressed -- and this is about a year ago, a dividend policy where if you look at the company, Dynavox Group, we have an attractive cash flow profile. And given growth opportunities we need to maintain in a capital structure that enables strategic flexibility to pursue growth investments, including acquisitions. But it's still expected that over time, we will generate excess cash and our policy is, therefore, to distribute at least 40% of available net profits to shareholders via either dividends, share repurchase or similar programs when so allows and the right prioritization. And as you can see, we are well under way to reach a position to pay dividends, however, for the Annual General Meeting in May of this year 2025, the Board of Directors proposes that no dividends is paid related to the fiscal year of 2024. All right. Now I will step to the left, and I will invite Christian Hal over to the microphone to help us with questions from the audience.

Hello. Okay. So we have a number of questions, and we will start with 1 from Mats Hyttinge at Redeye. What is your view on the risks related to the new U.S. administration and its unpredictability as regards to health care in general? So if you could elaborate a bit on the risks there.

I think the situation in the U.S. regarding policies and the new administration is fluid. We are, of course, closely monitoring this day by day exactly on new statements, et cetera. At this point, I think we can split it up in the risk or the concept of tariffs. And there, we do believe that we have a pretty good handle. Remember, we sell products with a very high gross margin. So tariffs on the components et cetera, doesn't really affect us all that much. The other topic is, of course, the changes to administration, et cetera. Here, I think we're closely monitoring what people say, but then actions, et cetera, is probably going to be more based on what actually happens and that remains to be seen.

Okay. So let's move on to Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. So regarding AI development, of course, it's super fast. How do you view and how can you secure to be in the lead? Or do you plan to collaborate with other partners?

Yes, AI is the topic on everyone's lips these days. AI is nothing new to us. We are a fairly technologically savvy company as such. That means that AI has had a profound and important element in our product development, ranging from synthetic voices to how we develop software and hardware. So I believe there, we're already using it, and it's an integral element of how we run this company. The second perspective on AI is operational excellence. And we talked a lot about how do we scale this company. And here, we see fantastic opportunities to use AI and in making sure that we run the company faster, smoother, that we, as someone said, work smarter, not harder in a sense. But we believe that the current initiatives we're doing on artificial intelligence, machine learning and large language models has actually a fairly big impact already today. The last 1 is, of course, how does AI impact our customers and our products out in the market. And this is a longer topic. We're seeing some of the first initiatives both from us and other players, how this could potentially play in. This is a market that is quite slow in adopting new technologies. So I think it remains to be seen whether it will have a significant impact in the future. But trust me, we are on it.

Okay. And then we have a question from Oscar at ABG. Please cover the OpEx items, R&D OpEx in the profit and loss seems elevated compared to R&D expenses on lower capitalization. Please elaborate on the high selling expenses on the underlying development. And finally, when are the ERP costs expected to fade?

I hand this with a warm hand to you, Linda.

Thank you, Fredrik. So let's start with the R&D expenses. So what we have seen historically, which we also have talked about is that we have had artificially low R&D. We have actually hard time to find people. But now we're starting to actually onboarding more people into the organization. We are also investing a lot in our product now. So that's what we see in the Q4 that was a little bit -- and also the impact. Some costs related to the transition of the organization from U.S. to Sweden. Selling expenses, yes, I mean, as we have been historically as well, we continue, we see the underlying demand out there, and we continue to invest in our sales and marketing organization, and that I would say, is just according to plan.

A large portion of the 150 employees we've added in the year are exactly in the sales and marketing organization. And we want to continue on that trajectory.

And then the digitalization and the ERP transformation, that is project that will go on for at least this year. So we are in the middle of it, and we hope to be able to gradually roll it out during the coming 12 to 18 months.

Okay. And then we have some more questions regarding the R&D from Mikael Laséen, Carnegie. How should we think about R&D costs in 2025? Will they remain at the same level as in Q4? Or should we expect an increase? How are you planning to execute the structural changes to the R&D organization through 2025?

So what will happen is, of course, that we will start to transition and employ people in Stockholm and gradually hand over from the U.S., which will build -- at some part of the year, we will have actually double organization. And of course, we will have costs related to one-timers that is severance pay and retention. So we will have a bump during 2025, but then going into 2026, this should be balanced and we are back on the same level as we've been historically.

Yes. So if we look at the announcement we made in November, over time, we actually don't believe that this transition is going to have any impact on our P&L.

Okay. And then we have a question from an anonymous asker, no dividend proposed. Should we read this as that you anticipate you will do more M&A in 2025?

I think it's a combination, but we have -- if you look historically, made a handful of acquisitions in the past. This is also part of our strategy, even though majority of our future growth will actually be anticipated to be organic. So that's the kind of the politically correct answer I have on that question.

Okay. And then another question from Oscar at ABG. Any comments to the current demand in general. Please talk about the confidence of delivering 20% growth in '25.

We see no changes in demand. We feel that the demand in the market, the appreciation of both existing and new product is solid. So we see no changes, neither drastically accelerated or decreased. We feel confident in our long-term perspectives -- projections. But with that said, we also express our targets over a 3- to 4-year period. So no changes in confidence from our end.

Okay. And then a couple of questions regarding revenues in the fourth quarter. And how much of revenues came from pushed Q3 revenues roughly?

I can start. We did express in the third quarter that our then newly launched product, there were some spillover effect where customers who were already in the process of getting 1 of the existing products have the choice to basically pick the new product instead. And that, of course, adds a number of weeks or so to the process which meant that we said that we had a portion of our sales that would happen in Q4. This did happen in Q4. So it materialized. We haven't exactly defined the size of that. Linda, do you want to go into...

We said in the Q3, we said it's a couple of percentage points and a majority of that is converted into revenue in Q4.

And a further question on that. Can you share how much the underlying organic growth was in Q4 and in Q3?

Perhaps now I need to kind of do a quick mathematics in my head. If you combine the growth in Q3 and Q4, I think there you are at an organic growth in the range of just under 20%. So I think let them even out, and that is probably the idle speed of how these companies running right now.

A couple of maybe more detailed questions from Daniel Djurberg. You had a change in your effective tax level. Do you expect -- what do you -- changes to your effective tax level going forward due to the higher taxation in the U.S. Can you share your best view on the effective tax rate level we should use going -- coming quarters?

I think the base is -- I think the problem that we have in Q4 is that we wrote that in the report as well that we needed to do a benchmark and having the transfer pricing actually at a higher level in the U.S., which mean that we need to do a catch-up in Q4. This will then be normalized this year and estimated to be around 20% that we have had historically as well.

So there's actually not an actual change in tax level it's more of our transfer pricing.

How much we are able to, yes.

Yes. With that said, we're, of course, monitoring closely all kinds of policy changes, including...

And this is 1 as well that is on the radar.

And regarding the loan situation, can you help us out a bit on your loan situation with regards to duration or how to think about quarterly mortgages and interest rates going forward?

At the moment, I mean -- the interest rate is following and based on STIBOR, so you can follow that. When it comes to our amortization, we are not amortizing at the moment, it's actually no need for that.

And a question from Oscar at ABG. Elaborate on the working capital buildup release expected in Q1 and/or in '25?

What we expected some release going forward. We had unusually high both inventory levels and accounts receivable. And this relates both to the demand when it comes to our product. And when it comes to accounts receivable, we saw the higher revenue came at the end of the quarter, which means we will get the payment later on in 2025.

Okay. And regarding seasonality, should we expect normal seasonality going into Q1 and Q2?

Yes. I mean we can only look at the historics. I think a really good predictor of the future is to look at the seasonality of the past. This is a fairly predictable company when it comes to seasonality and the underlying reasons are actually quite simple. We have a business that relies to 90% on payments from certain kinds of either private or public insurance providers. In many countries and in particular in the U.S., there is a little bit of a race to the finish where, predominantly the user and the 1 who's receiving the device. They have a huge incentive of getting their device, not only funded but also delivered before the end of the year. Because on January 1, the so-called co-pays, where they have to pay some part of the products out of pocket resets. So we have seen that historically. We have no assumptions that our go-to-market or anything else is going to change in the future.

But we can also then say that if Q4 is our strongest quarter, Q1 is not as strong from a profitability perspective. But we go in the year with the OpEx as we had in Q4, but then our revenue are not as high.

It's very much a staircase pattern. Q1 is weaker. Q2 is a little bit better, Q3 a little bit better and then Q4 is the best.

Yes. And from Mikael Laséen some questions regarding your sales activity. Can you provide more insights into your sales activity, specifically how many prescribers typically prescribe more than 1 or more than 4 devices per year. Has this number been increasing? And what does that indicate about the adoption trends?

I don't have a hard number to provide Mikael, but I can say, yes, the number of high-value evaluators, as we call them internally, meaning prescribers that prescribe 4 or more units per year is increasing. But it's still a number that we want to significantly increase. And again, 1 of the reasons why we believe in the future, and we believe it also in the scaling effect because obviously, the selling expenses associated with the prescriber that prescribes her first or second unit versus the 1 who prescribes their 20th or 30th is, of course, significantly lower.

And another question for Mikael. What are you seeing in terms of reimbursement activity and your pipeline for orders based on current trends, what does this suggest about growth potential in the first half of '25?

I think I write about that in the CEO text of the report. We see continuous and in the same way, good inflow of new prescriptions, et cetera. So there's no change in that trend.

And another question from Daniel Djurberg. The new product launch is made in Q4, I think it was in Q3, is it correct that they were launched first in the U.S. and a quarter later in Europe and the rest of the world?

No, they were launched on the very same day in the entire world in Q3.

And the question from Jakob [indiscernible] on other countries, a bit of a weaker quarter factoring in the acquisition in Australia. What can you say there? And how has the first time with the acquisition been?

I'm not sure I agree that it's weaker. I mean we have some kind of -- there's a little bit of a risk in our company between the various regions. And I would say that the -- over time running equally fast. When it comes to welcoming our new friends in Link Assistive. All in all, good. It's a company which is not super big in that sense, and it's also a company that we've been working super tight together with for well over a decade. So that means that integration is perhaps less dramatic. We know each other quite well from before. With that said, it's an integration in terms of finance reporting, IT system, et cetera, but I feel quite confident in how that works out. And that's -- it's a very typical example of an acquisition that we do, which also means that we have some prior knowledge and routines in doing this.

Okay. And a further question from Daniel Djurberg regarding the percentage, the -- how large percentage of the R&D engineers do you plan to hire in Stockholm is already signed up?

That's a good question, It's actually a number we don't have, I should say. But this is a process that was accelerated during the fourth quarter. And I think now we're in execution mode. The only thing I can say is that it looks quite promising. And it's evident so that from an employer brand, et cetera, we have really made some good progress over the past couple of years. So I have a high confidence in it, but I have no numbers to share.

And a question from an anonymous regarding the outlook for '25. You managed to deliver more or less at your increased growth target for '24. What would you say are the main uncertainties to achieve at this level for '25?

So I wouldn't say that, that is particularly an uncertainty for 2025. And the market we're looking at is very underserved. We are also the trailblazer here. We are the ones that set the standards, et cetera, as the biggest player in the industry. With that, you might also be both bumps and tailwind on that road. The big pain that I still feel on a personal level, I know it's charging the organization is that the vast majority of people out here rich or poor, close or far away that has a need for communication and they're not even informed about it. And their prescribers or their therapist that they work with have never been properly educated on this. That's the pain. I think it's evident to see that we've found the recipe, and our recipe, which we'd say is training is selling. We don't go out there and push products. Our go-to-market model is very much about educating the prescribers in this space about how to work with their patient efficiently. That seems to work. And hence, our plan is to, in a controlled way continue to add those resources out on the ground to continue to build awareness. That's...

It's clear and...

It's clear and that's what keeps us awake, but that's also partly what we see the success in the past.

Okay. And that was the final question.

Fantastic. That was fun with so much questions. Again, don't hesitate to reach out to us if you need more details. We're hence closing this session. Look forward to seeing you back again on April 25, where we will summarize our business in the first quarter of 2025. Thank you. Bye-bye.