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

Good morning, everyone and welcome to this earnings call where we will cover the second quarter 2025, summarizing our business in the first half of 2025. I am Fredrik Ruben. I'm the CEO of Dynavox Group.

Hello and I'm Linda Tybring. I'm the CFO of Dynavox and I will cover the financials later.

Great. So for those of you who have participated in these calls before, you will be familiar with that we will start by a quick recap about what Dynavox Group does. And then we will summarize the main takeaways from the quarter. We will then dive deeper into the financials. And thereafter, there will be a Q&A session. You can all submit your questions in the live session here in the chat function in Teams. But we, of course, always welcome off-line questions sent by e-mail to the above e-mail address, [email protected]. So I will start 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 our almost 1,000 colleagues around the world but also to our ecosystems of partners and investors. Our vision is a world where everyone can communicate and we contribute to this via focusing on our mission, which reads to empower people with disabilities to do what they once did or never thought possible. And that actually also summarizes 2 of our main user stories. So the first one, the do what you once did, 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 one, the never thought possible can refer to the child diagnosed at an early age with a condition such as autism, cerebral palsy and like, where thanks to our solutions, he or she can do much more than the world around ever thought possible. And on the picture here to the right, you see [ Lyn ] from Lawrenceburg in Kentucky. She's one of our amazing users diagnosed with cerebral palsy and she is a great example of that. The market that we service is hugely underserved. Some 50 million people have a condition so grave, they simply cannot communicate unless they have a solution like ours. Every year, we estimate about 2 million people being diagnosed and yet we estimate only some 2% of those are actually being helped. The rest remain silent. And the main reason for this lack of awareness also among the professionals and the prescribers tasked to assist these users and poor health care reimbursement systems. We operate with a global footprint. Today, some 3/4 of our business stems out of the U.S., largely because of a reasonably well-functioning funding system established some 20, 30 years ago. Our products are sold in about 65 markets around the world, of which U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and now most recently, France are markets where we sell directly, while the others are served by a network of some 100-plus reseller partners. Our staff is distributed in a similar way as the revenue, meaning some 60% of our staff are based in North America, with our U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. And our second largest office is in Stockholm but we have branch offices in several European countries as well as in Suzhou in China, Adelaide in Australia. And as of today, we're about 1,000 employees in total. We provide what we call a comprehensive portfolio of solutions and that ranges on the picture here, the content and the language systems such as the world's leading library of communication symbols, they're called PCS and the leading software solutions of off-the-shelf custom-made synthetic voices of the highest quality and with a large diversity of languages, ages, ethnicities, et cetera. Our highly sophisticated communications software tailored to the type of user, which can vary greatly based on the needs. We then develop and design devices with cutting-edge technology and medically certified durability, including communication aids that can be controlled via eye tracking and accessories such as the Rehadapt mounts. We have a services portfolio to help our users through the complexity of obtaining and getting funding for solutions. And last but not least, we are there to help our users, the therapists, the caregivers through our global teams of support resources. And this model above, we operate this model globally and it's important to know that each piece is critically important and also significant differentiator for us, making us absolutely unique. Our go-to-market model is predominantly as prescribed there. Some 90% of our revenue comes from public or private insurance providers. And this also means that we have a solid paying customer base but also have been resilient towards changes in the overall economic climate. With that said, now we move back to focusing on the main topic of today, namely our earnings report for the second quarter of 2025. And I will start by looking at the highlights. We had an exceptionally strong quarter when it comes to revenue growth. The growth compared to the same quarter previous year sums up to 38% after adjusting for currency effects. And this marks a further acceleration actually of the already strong trajectory over the past 3 years. The demand for our solutions remains high, proving the solidity of our underlying business. Sales continue to grow at an equal pace across all our markets. The strong momentum among the younger user base continues, often those are children with autism diagnosis that rely on our symbol communication solutions and in particular, a software called TD Snap. Our investments in systems and in infrastructure and the organization to support our long-term growth ambitions continue according to plan. And on July 1, we actually reached an important milestone with the successful launch of our long-awaited new ERP system in our largest market, the U.S. And during 2025, we expect to invest approximately SEK 100 million in total of nonrecurring nature on our back-end ERP system and also the previously communicated consolidation of our product and development organization. Year-to-date, we have invested some SEK 50 million of those and both projects are progressing well and according to plan. Our EBIT came in at SEK 44 million but that includes nonrecurring costs of SEK 51 million in the quarter and that implies a very, very strong underlying profitability. The current uncertainties in the macroeconomic climate and policy changes has not had any direct effect on our business but we experienced some indirect effects through the elevated freight costs in the aftermath of various tariffs announcements, et cetera. And then on June 2, we completed the previously announced acquisition of our long-standing French reselling partner, Cenomy. And on the topic of acquisitions. They are an important part of our growth strategy in a way for us to scale and gain direct presence in a market and get closer to our customers. During the second quarter, we both signed and completed the acquisition of our long-standing French reselling partner, Cenomy, with a team of some 20 dedicated and highly competent colleagues servicing all of France. Cenomy's revenue in 2024 was around EUR 5 million and Dynavox Group paid the current owner EUR 5 million in cash at closing with a potential additional consideration after a period of 2 years. But on July 11, we announced another acquisition and this time in Germany, we reagreed to acquire our reselling partner, RehaMedia. And RehaMedia reported revenues of over EUR 7 million in 2024 and the Dynavox Group, we will pay the current owner EUR 5.8 million in cash at closing with a potential additional consideration after 1 year. The closing is expected to happen during the next half year and we look forward to welcoming them, some 40 amazing colleagues to our team. Both these acquisitions demonstrate how we quickly gain direct market presence to key markets while adding a great -- while adding great team members who we typically know quite well. Now I hand over the microphone to Linda to take us deeper into the financials.

Thank you, Fredrik. Looking forward to talk a little bit about the numbers. So revenue for the second quarter came in at SEK 603 million, a 38% year-on-year growth after adjusting for currency effects. Recent acquisitions contributed with 1 percentage point and hence, the organic growth was a solid 37%. This is further accelerating an already strong trajectory for the past 3 years. Currency fluctuation had a 12% negative impact on revenue. Sales continued to grow at equal pace across all our markets, both North America, Europe and rest of the world continue to show strong momentum. As we've talked about in prior quarters, we continue to see growing adoption among younger users with autism. At the same time, we see solid growth across all our solutions and user conditions. The gross margin ended up at 67%, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points. The margin was negatively impacted by strengthened SEK versus U.S. dollars. This is a temporary effect of us buying components at a certain exchange rate and sell the same 3 to 6 months later at another rate. In the quarter, this was a significant impact of around SEK 13 million due to the rapid swing in exchange rates. We also saw an increased cost on freight, mainly because of the need to ship more via air versus boat driven by the rapid sales growth. EBIT for the quarter was SEK 44 million and EBIT margin was 7.4%. It was negatively affected by nonrecurring costs totaling some SEK 51 million in the quarter, thus lowering the profit margin temporarily by 8 percentage points. Our OpEx increased by 35% organically -- the OpEx increase relates mainly to staff increase. We added some 160 FTEs, where 110 or so were within sales and marketing, as well as annual salary revision that came into force April 1, 2025. During the quarter, we continued to invest in new systems and tools, strengthening scalability. The total nonrecurring spend related to this in the quarter was [ SEK 17 million ]. As of July 1, we are live with the new system in our largest market, North America. Operating expenses was also affected by nonrecurring cost related to restructuring cost in the R&D department. The total nonrecurring spend in the quarter was SEK 11 million. Both of these 2 investments are according to our strategic plan. The recent strong development of the Dynavox share price has rendered an increased cost for employee long-term incentive programs of around SEK 10 million compared to the second quarter last year. As mentioned earlier, the gross margin was negatively affected by currency fluctuations of SEK 13 million. All in all, nonrecurring cost in the quarter sums up to SEK 51 million and the total -- and that total corresponds to 8 percentage points on EBIT. The net R&D cost increased by SEK 20 million and this include an already the mentioned SEK 11 million nonrecurring restructuring costs versus last year. If we look at the earnings per share, from SEK 0.34 per share last year to SEK 0.27 per share. For the quarter, cash flow after continuous investments was negative with SEK 100 million. This is mainly driven by the rebate volume deal with Tobii AB on eye-tracking components. Cash at hand ended up in the quarter was SEK 157 million Net debt was SEK 851 million. The total used credit facility and term loan at the end of the quarter was SEK 849 million. Net debt over last 12 months to EBITDA was 1.9x. So Fredrik, back to you to conclude today's earnings call.

Okay. Great. Thank you, Linda. So before we open up for questions, I'd like to reiterate the main takeaways from the second quarter. We continued to show exceptionally strong growth and that is a trend that started in the early spring of 2022, actually and that keeps accelerating. We grew revenue by 38% adjusted for currency in the quarter. We see sales continue to grow at an equal pace across all our markets. We continue to see growing adoption among younger users with autism diagnosis. And at the same time, there is solid growth across all device types and user conditions. Our profitability was impacted negatively this quarter by significant nonrecurring costs related to our planned investments in a new ERP system and improved organization and then a strong share price development and timing effects from rapid swings in exchange rates. The EBIT came in at SEK 44 million but that includes nonrecurring costs of SEK 51 million in the quarter, implying a very strong underlying profitability above our long-term profit targets. The current uncertainties in the macroeconomic climate or policy changes has not had any direct effect on our business but we did experience some indirect effects through elevated freight costs in the aftermath of various tariffs announcements. The previously acquired companies contributed well. We continue to complement our largely organic growth journey with additional acquisitions and now most recently in France and we look forward to closing the recently announced acquisition of our reselling partner, RehaMedia, in Germany. And given the continued and sustainable growth, we continue to grow the team while investing in systems and tools to enable future business that is much, much bigger than today. Our financial targets are expressed and they were communicated in February 2024 with a time horizon of 3 to 4 years. The first target is to, on average, grow revenue by 20% per year adjusted for currency effects, including the contributions from acquisitions. And in local currencies, the second quarter growth for 2025 was 38%, which means that we have found a revenue growth momentum to build on. Again, the markets we serve remains hugely underserved. And with the example of growth levers such as sales team expansion, adding direct markets and operational excellence, we continue to build on our growth journey. The second target is to deliver an annual 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. And the recipe for us is rather simple, continued revenue growth, high and stable gross margin, a total operating expenses increase that is lower in pace than our revenue growth. And as a consequence, we see good opportunity to further leverage how revenue growth translates to reaching and exceeding an EBIT margin of 15%. And then last but not least, we have a dividend policy where we have an attractive cash flow profile. And given the growth opportunities, we need to maintain a capital structure that enables strategic flexibility to pursue growth investments, including then acquisitions. But it's still expected to, over time, generate excess cash and our policy is, therefore, to distribute at least 40% of our available net profits to shareholders via dividends, share repurchases or similar programs when so allows and in the right prioritization. With that said, we are inviting our Corporate Communications Director, Elisabeth Manzi, who will help us to moderate and enable us to take questions from the audience. Elisabeth?

Hello and good morning, everyone. Yes, we do have some questions here from the audience and we will start with questions around our growth. So both Jessica and let's see, Ramil and Jakob have asked around the growth. So organic growth remains very strong at 37%. Could you elaborate on the key drivers sustaining this pace and particularly in the autism segment, how sustainable is the growth in 2026? And also, could you elaborate a little bit on the U.S. and the growth there?

Sure. Thank you for that question. The answer is probably the same as it's been for a couple of quarters, meaning that it's not just one specific thing that drives the growth. It is the slowly improving adoption of assisted communication products in the market, where we, since, now, I don't know how many years, have had a strong focus on educating the prescribers. In most countries, they are speech language pathologists. And our model is to really recruit and hire a large team of speech language pathologists that operate on the ground and they in turn, educate their industry peers on how to help their patients. And we see that, that is now starting to pay off where more and more users and customers are becoming successful, more and more prescribers are becoming successful. And hence, we see some sort of not snowball effect, is maybe too strong of a word but it's a self-moving train. We, of course, continue to improve and we continue to increase our efforts in educating to make sure that we maintain this model. Then there is the last effect that we're starting to see now is that in most markets, a communication aid can be renewed every 5 years. And of course, we're starting to see that some of our sales, even though it's still a reasonably small portion are also replacement sales. And that's a good testament that our products really work and the solutions work. When it comes to geographic differences, as mentioned, we actually do see from a percentage perspective, almost the same growth pace, both in our largest market, the U.S. as well as in our more established markets in Europe or Australia, for example. And then last but not least, autism. So the users with autism diagnosis that requires communication aids have a fairly severe version of autism. So this is unrelated to the fact that you might read in media that the autism diagnoses are going up. The users of our products have been clearly in need of some sort of communication aid forever, I would say. And here as well as in the other segments, we believe that the vast, vast majority of people living with or diagnosed with autism in any country are not being served today, which means that, that is a market that is equally underserved as any other market. So we don't see that there is any signs of saturation or such. It's an unpenetrated market.

Thank you. Oscar from ABG and is also asking about the cost. So can you please elaborate on the cost development ahead, timing of a slowdown in ERP, R&D and underlying cost growth into next year? And also on the cost and ERP, how much have we spent so far on these projects, especially on ERP.

Linda, do you want to take that?

Yes, I can take it. So let's start with ERP. As we communicated in the report, year-to-date, we have spent SEK 39 million on the ERP this year. We have spent SEK 19 million when it comes to restructuring costs, when it comes to our product and development organization. We see that the main of these 2 projects will have spent around SEK 100 million at the end of this year. When it comes to the P&D organization, we have said going into 2026, we should be back at the run rate that we had historically in 2024 -- Q4 2024, of course, with adjustments of salary, et cetera but making sure that we then are -- have transitioned all the employees that we have planned for from the U.S. to Sweden.

And I can just maybe add to that, specifically on the ERP system. ERP systems is, it's a big project for a company of our size. And hence, it is really reassuring that we launched a new ERP system in our largest market, which is the U.S. what is that, a little bit over 2 weeks ago successfully and on plan. So we also feel that the kind of maybe the risk level of that one has decreased quite significantly. So that's reassuring for sure.

But this project will continue for 12 to 18 months, is what we have said historically. We still need to continue to develop all the other areas in the organization as well, not just North America. So that's in the plan going forward.

Good. Thank you. Daniel Djurberg is also asking, how should we look at and forecast LTIP, long-term incentive programs provisions going forward totaled SEK 10 million in Q2.

Yes. The SEK 10 million is versus last year. I mean this is hard for us to predict and I wouldn't like to comment on that. It's related to how the share price development is going and the social cost that we need to estimate on our LTIP program.

So also from Daniel, can you give us the key reasons why you choose to invest SEK 100 million in the Tobii agreement, boosting inventories and hence, weighing on working capital heavily in Q2 and especially given only 13% discount, wasn't it possible to redesign instead?

Sure. Daniel, this is to us an opportunity to buy inventory at a discount. We are, how should I put it, hagglers. If your judgment is that the 13% discount isn't good enough, I hear you. We felt that this was a good deal. This was a proposal that was presented to us. It's a solution that we feel works really well. We are very, very happy with both quality and the relationship with Tobii. Hence, for us to secure inventory to make sure that we have all the needed components within arm's length distance is actually quite important. Maybe if I remind everybody what happened in 2021 when the COVID -- the pandemic struck us, we had real issues obtaining -- in that case, it wasn't eye-tracking components but it was other critical components. And for us, making sure that we have ample access to products that we can sell and ship is more important than building up -- optimizing on smaller or efficient inventory. So we believe that this was simply a very good deal.

Thank you for that. Jessica at Redeye is also asking about the elevated air freight costs and how they are impacting gross margin. Have you implemented any measures to mitigate this? And when do you expect freight costs to normalize?

Good question, Jessica. And I think the freight cost is impacted by 2 components. The ones that Fredrik mentioned as well, it's been a little bit of a whirlwind when it comes to logistics due to the geopolitical situation. But mainly in the latter part of the quarter, we needed to fly a lot of our inventory to U.S., specifically to be able to meet the demand that we have on the inventory. Inventory management is something we always work on and we'll continue to work on. And over time, this will improve.

And one measure to that I could add is a new ERP system because that enables us to have all the best tools and predictors at our fingertips to optimize on that. But it's clearly so that the Liberation Day effects had a fairly big impact on worldwide logistics and kind of the freight cost. But that was more or less isolated to the month of April.

So another question from Jakob Lemke. When do you expect to reach a stage where you do not have to grow your -- when you do not have to grow your funding support team at a similar rate as sales?

Do you want to take that, Linda or should I?

You can take that, to start.

I think we are at that pace now, Jakob and I think we've actually been there for some time. So the funding operations, we did a fairly big investment historically. And now we are -- we don't see that we, at this point in time, need to invest at the same pace. So now we are more focusing on operational efficiency, et cetera. With that said, we still have a big belief in investment in the team on the field. So recruiting what we call solutions consultants, that's the people who are out there in the field, educating prescribers of how to be successful with their patients. That is an investment that we feel really pays off quickly. And as of right now, we would like to continue at that pace for as long as we see continued gains from it.

And I would say it's also a gradual improvement. That's what we're going to see over time in all part of our organization, reaching the scalability and the profitability, we need to do that.

So a little bit on the future. Jessica was asking if we have any product launches coming up in the fall or -- and Jakob was also asking if we have any other larger projects to the organization planned for the coming years. So product launches and other projects.

So product launches, we typically keep that quite tight. But I think it's also important to understand that we are not a product launch-driven company when it -- short term. We focus a lot on incremental improvements, how do we incrementally make our products better since we're working towards a market which actually doesn't really love novelties, et cetera, it's -- predictability and quality is much more important. But of course, with that said, we do continuously make product launches but they typically don't have a huge impact, at least not short term on our P&L. And then when it comes to larger projects such as the ERP project and the consolidation of our product and development team to Stockholm, there are no such project that has been announced. And if there would be any, we would, of course, announce it. But right now, it's -- those are the 2 projects that we focus on entirely.

Thank you for that answer. We have a question from -- actually a couple of questions but I think we have answered some of them, from Ramil. But there is one here on the competition. So he's noticing that Smartbox has been quite forward leaning with acquisitions as of late. And can you please elaborate a bit on how you see the competitive environment today and how you think it will pan out ahead? And will this gradually become a more pronounced 2-, 3-player market?

Yes. You're absolutely right. Before kind of talking about specific competitors, et cetera, we have to go back to the fact that we believe that this 2% market penetration among people diagnosed with conditions, that is market-wide. So that means between us, Smartbox, PRC or any other type of company, that's the penetration we share. So I typically tell our staff that the day when competition is a headache, that's a good day because that means that more users out there actually have access to assisted communication solutions. We are only a very small handful of focused players in this space, Smartbox being one of them. I would say that we, to a large degree, operate with similar strategies. It's about educating the market. It's about having high-quality products. It's about having the full solution span ranging from content to support. So there is -- nothing has really changed as of lately. And as you know, there are acquisitions made both in terms of market presence similar to what we do but also select product investments or acquisitions made in the market. But I would say we have a huge respect for each other in the market but we also have some sort of collaborations. We license our PCS symbols to a lot of the established players. We license the Acapela synthetic voices that we own. And many of our so-called competitors are also resellers of our mounting solutions. So there is a -- there is -- it's not just a straight kind of head-to-head competition. There's also -- they're clients of ours and vice versa.

Thank you for that answer. So then we have a question here from Kevin who's saying, first, I would like to congratulate you to what's another strong quarter. So in regards to the future dividend policy, I wonder how you reason regarding buybacks versus cash dividend. Is a mix likely? Or is one weighing more than the other?

Yes, you want to answer that, Linda?

Yes. I think this is still something that we will investigate and we will communicate back to you later. But most likely, we will investigate both of the tracks.

Yes. And another question from Kevin. I can see that this market is just a hole to fill considering the 50 million and 2 million and the 10% metrics you have communicated. Is these your own estimates? Or is -- are these numbers from a study of some time?

No. This is a market that is very nascent and there are no such things as big industry-wide research to tap from. So these are largely our estimates but I'm quite confident that they're shared among the various players.

Another question from Daniel Djurberg here. A new perhaps not that beautiful bill was recently decided upon in the U.S. impacting various financing bodies. What is your current assessment on possible impact on your U.S. business?

The short answer, Daniel, is that we have no indication that there will be any impact on us. These are very kind of complex material. And I think it's also important that in the most recent bill, which definitely pinpointed Medicaid as one of the payers, that could be -- there could be an impact. But since we have some 500-plus contracts and payers in the U.S., it's rarely so that it's just one payer that pays for a device. It's quite often a combination. So just because, for example, one payer would go away, which is by no means the case here, that doesn't mean that, that revenue goes away. It typically just gets transferred to another payer. So short answer is that we, at this point, have no indications of diminishing opportunities for us to get paid or charged. But as everybody would understand in this volatile market, we keep a very, very close eye on this. And if there would be changes, we will, of course, transparently communicate that to the market.

Thank you. Okay. So we move on to Mikael Laséen. He has also questions about North America and our volume growth and that we reported stronger-than-expected volume growth in North America. So are you seeing any indications from prescribers or end users that this could partly reflect prebuying activity, i.e., users looking to secure funding earlier than usual, driven by a generally more uncertain funding environment. Yes.

Yes. And the very short answer, Mikael, is no. And psychologically, if you think about it, you're a prescriber, you work with a case load of 40 kids in a week. There is no such thing as you are putting into consideration macroeconomic opportunities or changes to the environment. You prescribe a product that you believe is fit for that patient and then hand over to us or the funding body to make sure that it's paid for. There are no such things as prebuys. And this was the same question and thought you could have had in the first quarter but that's a no.

And follow-up also from Mikael on this. How has the U.S. reimbursement process and pipeline developed through the first half of 2025? Would you describe the momentum in submitted and approved cases as stable month-on-month increasing or showing signs of slowing?

I think we used the explanation in Q1 that the first week of Q1 was as good as the last week of Q1. And I would like to reiterate that same sentence for Q2. So we see no changes in behavior. We cannot foresee any changes going forward either.

And last one here, also from Daniel Djurberg. You have a minor revenue stream from royalties, SEK 1 million in the quarter. Is this from licensing your PCS to competitors? Any chance to see this revenue to expand in any pivotal way?

This relates both to PCS and other things that we are licensing.

And it's to -- if you take, for example, PCS symbols, yes, they're used by other industry players but they're also licensed to the likes of Microsoft or other players where the PCS symbols is a communication -- symbol communication library that can be used from everything from word processing programs to playgrounds.

Speaking about our products, Kevin is saying here that he's following some users of TD Snap and have noticed some people mentioned the price change did you -- that you did from onetime payment to subscription. My question regarding this is, how hard or easy is it to get compensation from the insurance companies or from public funding?

This is a longer topic. But our products, 90% of our revenue are from insurance bodies and public or private insurance systems. And they are not -- they don't have a recurring model. So when we sell a all-inclusive comprehensive solution, that includes content, hardware, software, services and support and that business model hasn't changed. So this is what is being referred to is a very, very small part of our revenue where private individuals buy the software but that's probably not going to make a very big dent in our P&L.

Thank you for that one. We are getting to the actual end but there are 2 very specific questions here. I think one from Jakob on ERP. Do you expect the nonrecurring costs relating to ERP to come down now that it has been implemented in the U.S. And also in which OpEx line is the ERP cost incurred?

Yes. We are still in the middle of continuing launching ERP in other part of the world. So we will continue to invest in that for the coming periods. When it comes to where the costs come in OpEx, mainly comes within admin costs but also across our -- across the OpEx categories.

Good. I think we are getting to the end then of the questions. Let me just double check that we have answered all of them. I hope that you feel that you have gotten answers even if I haven't called out your name, I did bundle some of the questions together. But if there is anything that you still want to ask, please don't hesitate to get back to us.

Yes, I can only reiterate that we are here for you. So don't hesitate to reach out. But with that, thank you for so many insightful questions. We conclude today's earnings call and we look forward to seeing you back again on October 23 to summarize the business in the third quarter of 2025. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.