Elmera Group ASA (ELMRA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
April 6, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveWelcome, everyone, to Fjordkraft's Capital Markets Day 2022. My name is Morten Opdal, Investor Relations at Fjordkraft, and I will be guiding you through today's presentation. Today, we will give you an update on our strategic key focus areas, our financial outlook, Q1 trading update, a section on Power Trading and an update from our business segments. The presentation will last for about 1 hour and 50 minutes followed by a Q&A session at the end. Please welcome the first speaker, Rolf Barmen.
Rolf Barmen
executiveThank you very much, Morten. Very nice to see you all here in our physical environment. We haven't been used to that many people during the COVID, of course. So we are very thankful for your presence here today. I have 3 messages to you today. First, I will briefly take you through some milestones of our company to describe our ability to respond to changes in the industry. Then I will look into the future to assure you that we see a great potential also going forward. And then third, I will discuss our key investment highlights before I give the word to our CFO, Birte Strander, who will take us through our financial outlook and also give us a trading update. Fjordkraft was established 21 years ago as a merge of the retail companies, Skagerak Energi and BKK. Statkraft fully owned by the Ministry of Trade and Industry is the largest owner about this company. So for 17 years, we were under control of Statkraft before our former owners decided to apply for listing of our company 4 years ago. And during these 4 years, we have experienced a lot, both when it comes to the market situation as well as when it comes to valuation of the company. But overall, as you can see from the chart to the left here, we have continuously delivered improving results. However, the extreme market situation hit our Nordic segment, severely in December last year, hindering us obviously from delivering another record-breaking year in terms of financial results. I joined the company back in February 2013. And as always, when a new CEO takes up his or her position, we revised our strategy. And even though we revised our plans every year, we have always a 3-year perspective on our planning period. Thus, the first planning period was from '14 to '16; the second '17 to '19; and the third from '20 and ending this year. So no, we stand in front of a new planning period lasting from '23 to '25. As I presented a couple of times before and as you see from the chart to the right here, our most important strategic changes in this first strategic period, we're focusing on our product portfolio, building the brand, focusing on operational excellence and building up a competitive sales and distribution system. We also put in place a new leadership philosophy and we built a new strategic toolbox, inclusive our scenario planning procedure. And during this first planning period, we also experienced margin pressure in the consumer segment, particularly. So our response at that time to attack this development was to launch what we call value-creating line model or defense lines model, which we have presented in our annual reports. And the first outcome of this model was, of course, value-added services launched in the consumer market. But from the group's perspective, it was even more important that we also take a strategic position in the business segment. From 2015 to 2021, the growth of the business segment, both in terms of net revenue and profitability has been impressive. In the second planning period, illustrated on the middle of this slide, we launched Mobile services in the consumer segment. And we launched also our Extended Alliance concept in the B2B market, where we offer billing and rating services to small- and middle-sized retail energy companies throughout the country. But the most strategic position we take in the second planning period was to establish ourselves as the market consolidator in the Norwegian market. We believe that size matters. This is a numbers game and to capitalize on investment necessary to give the customers the best value proposition possible, we need larger customer portfolio. The ambition of being the consolidator was, of course, also decisive for our decision to be listed. Another important strategic position we took during this second planning period was to launch our Klimanjaro initiative and become the front runner when it comes to establishing climate-neutral supplier chains. By requiring pledge on climate neutrality from our suppliers, we reduced our CO2 footprint 100x greater than our own emissions. And for this initiative, we were awarded the 2018 United Nation's Momentum for Change Climate Action award as the first company in Norway. We set an example on what is achievable for a customer to require from suppliers, and it is highly satisfying to see that a number of companies have followed in our footsteps. During the third planning period, we have through our subsidiaries, AllRate and Metzum, launched billing and rating services also to grid companies and software solutions to both grid companies and retail companies. We have also expanded our business to Sweden and Finland, and we have launched the marketplace where we sell heating pumps, solar panels, home chargers, cellular phones, smart home products and a lot more. One of the game changers in this industry was fully implemented in this period. The smart meters were installed in every household. And with the Elhub fully operative, this paved the way for the industry to be digitalized. And we have taken advantage of this, both commercially as well as operationally. We have launched our digital ecosystem, which Christian will come back to later, and we are recognized by peering point as the digital leader of our sector. Under the program of Enova, we were amongst the first retailers piloting real-time monitoring of electricity consumption. The outcome of this program is that we commercially have launched real-time monitoring based on LTE communication instead of WiFi protocols, improving the coverage significantly. We have also looked deep into the segregation of consumption and learn how we can and how we cannot use this information to help consumers to reduce their electricity usage. Operationally, it is a fact that the information process impact the exchange of information between the grid companies and the retail companies requires investments in new IT infrastructure. And we are a forerunner when it comes to both processing and utilizing data sets, giving a scalability across all of our brands. Worth mentioning from this third planning period is also that we developed our Klimanjaro initiative to establish Klimahub.no, where all companies in Norway can give their climate accounting and they are measures to reduce their CO2 footprint. So being awarded the industry winner in the Sustainable Brand Index in 2021, meaning that the Fjordkraft brand actually is perceived as the most sustainable B2C brand within the electricity and heating category in Norway was a great achievement for our company. What about the future? On this slide, we have defined 8 important focus areas going forward. The first way of meeting the challenges in front of us is through continuing our sales activities, of course. As the demand in the consumer segment for more advanced products in terms of fixed price with set volumes spot with risk mitigation instruments. And so forth, we surely believe that there will be a need for even more one-to-one sales than before. So we are looking thoroughly into whether we are going to make any changes in our sales channel mix going forward. But our most important task this year and another 2 year in the consumer market is to further develop our product portfolio particularly now when demand for more predictable offerings in the consumer segment increases. From our success in the business segment, we have learned a lot when it comes to covering demand for risk mitigating services. We will now utilize this experience also in the consumer markets. But we also know that consumers have differentiated demands. Someone's predictability, while other are more risk lovers in terms of preferring to be totally exposed to volatility intraday as well as intramonth. The first group of customers will prefer services with some kind of risk mitigation, while the latter group prefers pure spot products. And in between, there are semi-risk takers, and we serve all groups. Being a player serving all groups of customers in a proper way requires extremely good knowledge of the power market, particularly as the volatility increases. It requires financial resources to take part in the financial hedging market, and it requires state-of-the-art competence when it comes to branding, product management, sales distribution and, of course, customer service. And I'm proud to say that our companies scores high in all these factors, and I want to underpin that serving our customers with the best service possible will always be a key element for us. Being available, being transparent, being polite and trustworthy will always be critical for a company like ours. And our call centers did an amazing job serving close to 100 customers every month. With good advices, with information about everything from subsidizing protocols to invoicing from good complexity to information, windmill parks and how the producers balance their water resources. The list of topics we discuss with our customers every day is long, very long. From our perspective, the certification process, Trygg Strømhandel conducted by DNV has been a game changer in the market when it comes to focus on securing customer rights. The certification has led to improved transparency and communication as well as the certification requires a well-defined procedure to fix things that goes wrong to ensure that we, as retailers, focus on continuous improvement. When it comes to the Business segment, we will expand our footprint by implementing our successful model on all our brands, also in Sweden and Finland. We have already made some piloting and the results are really promising, and Roger will come back to that later in his presentation. To improve our cost efficiency, number 5 on the chart here, we will continue our efforts to digitalize our business. We have done a lot on digitalization since 2013 but accelerating steps have been taken in the last couple of years, but this is a continuing process. We invest and we reinvest. We invest and we reinvest. So it is a continuing process actually. From processing, a couple of million data transactions back in 2015, we now process billions of the transactions. We still believe that further consolidation if you have as many customers as possible on our systems will put us in a position to win the cost leadership battle. The margin has hampered our expansion somewhat, but no doubt that we still look for further expansion, both in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Our ambitions when it comes to growth is to strengthen our #1 position in Norway, of course, and also reach top 4 position in both Sweden and Finland. When it comes to new business opportunities, we already have shown that we managed to launch profitable services, and we will continue to do so. Our Mobile services will, this year, be migrated to an MVNO platform, #7 on this chart, which will strengthen our profitability and also improve our ability to strengthen our value proposition to the customers. Finally, the last one on this chart. The marketplace we have established is attractive to well-known retail brands. Through our platform model, we are an enabler for our partners to expand their sales actually. And we have partnered up with top players within home charging, battery stations, solar panels, heat pumps, recycled mobile phones and not to forget, of course, smart home devices. And I think Christian will show you a chart on that in his presentation. During this strategic period, we have expanded a lot. Therefore, it is no time for revising our organizational model. As the group CEO, I have no longer Fjordkraft and in particular Fjordkraft consumer to look after. There are several other business units to follow up and to develop. Fjordkraft Holding ASA now consists of Fjordkraft AS, Fjordkraft Mobile, TrondelagKraft, Gudbrandsdal Energi, Fjordkraft Nordic with its subsidiary, Nordic Green Energy. We've got the Kraftalliansen, AllRate, Betalservice, of course, also our 40% ownership in Metzum, the software company. Some numbers, to give you a way of understanding the transformation. In total, around 400,000 customers, representing about 40% of our customer base belong to other brands of Fjordkraft brand. And since 2017, this number has increased 5x --500%. And about 1/3 of all the group's employees are working with activities outside of Fjordkraft brand, while in 2017, almost every head count, worked with Fjordkraft brand-related activities. So to adapt to this new situation, we have decided to revise our organization. First, as you probably already have learned we have employed a new Managing Director of Fjordkraft AS. His name is Magnar Øyhovden well known as the successful CEO of Sbanken from 2010 to 2019. And I'm convinced that Magnar, he will report to me, obviously, that he has both the experience and the skill to develop FosenKraft AS and the Fjordkraft brand to new highs, both when it comes to profitable customer growth as well as improved customer service, and customer satisfaction and, of course, also brand affection. Magnar will take up this position in August, just after vacation. So secondly, Roger Finnanger, now handing up business in Fjordkraft. He will take up the position as responsible for business activities across all brands and countries in the group. In addition, he will be responsible for building a department with solar and charging that will support all of our brands with these emerging services. Roger has done an excellent job taking business segment from next to noncontributing segment to become an extremely important segment for us, and I'm convinced that he will grow the business segment further, so is he. Third, the Board and the management decided to enter a process to discuss changing name of Fjordkraft Holding ASA, that is the parent company, obviously, of the group. As the group has expanded, we have concluded that we will suggest the name of the listed company that every part of our organization can relate to and a name that communicates the group's broader footprint also externally. Thus, the Board will suggest for the general meeting on the 26th of April, that the new name of the Fjordkraft Holding ASA shall be Elmera Group ASA reflecting our core business, electricity. Following this decision, we will also change name of our subholding companies that is Fjordkraft industrial ownership as the holding company of several subsidiaries. This company will change name to Elmera Industrial Ownership AS and Fjordkraft Nordic, the holding company of the Nordic Green Energy will change name to Elmera Nordic AS. Before I give the word to Birte Strander for a trading update and our new financial outlook, I will introduce you to our revised key investment highlights. First of all, although our energy -- although energy saving is important for the customers in today's high price sentiment [Foreign Language] -- although energy saving is important for the customers in today's high price sentiment, we believe that overall consumption of electricity will be quite stable actually. We see growth opportunities, both when it comes to further electrification, particularly of the transportation sector. And we also see growth opportunities when it comes to increased demand for energy saving products, services as well as energy advisory, both in the business segment and the consumer segment. We have proven to be able to establish new verticals, new revenue streams through capitalizing on our core business, both in the B2C and B2B segment. So we surely believe that our diversified operations in the New Growth Initiatives segment also including solar and charging solutions that cover existing demand will increase their impact on the group's total revenue in the coming years. Also under this first sector section, a few words on regulations. The regulator in Norway has, over the past years, leveled the playing fields. No doubt about that. First and foremost by requiring unbundling of retail and grid activities. The next step now will be to adopt the regulations to the increased volatility, which we believe will be the new normal. We expect the regulator and the politicians to design suitable regulations when it comes to fixed price offering, stimulating liquidity in the financial elspot market. We also look forward to having the [ implemented in the Norwegian markets. The European Consumer Organization, the BEUC requires, from electricity retailers in Europe, services that not only enables consumers to mitigate risk but the organization also requires retailers to offer services where consumers can level out their monthly payments throughout the year. We support both these requirements, and we have prepared and taken measures to cope with these challenges from the European Consumer Advisory Board. Secondly, we are, overall, the largest retail player in Norway, even though we experienced tough competition and have reduced our customer stock during the last year, the group in total still represents the most attractive group of brands across all segments in terms of which supplier the customer chooses. This gives us size and scale -- to scale, and it enables us to further replicate our operations, not only in Norway but also across the Nordic. Third, we have the broadest product offering in the industry. We serve customers in all segments and in all subsegments. This gives a competitive advantage when it comes to developing and launching sort after value-added services when it comes to risk mitigating product. We also are recognized as the #1 electricity retailer on digital maturity in Norway, which ensures that we are on the right path. Fourth, we have been a consolidator in the Norwegian market, and we are capable through our digitalized platform and our commercial insight to be an attractive consolidator also in Sweden and Finland. Our road map to growth is very clear with further growth ambitions in Norway and to become a top 4 player in both in Finland and in Sweden. And last, but not least, we are still having attractive financial profile with a high cash conversion and limited capital expenditure requirements, resulting in a solid acquisition and dividend capacity. Okay. That's all for me for now. Please, Birte, the floor is yours.
Birte Strander
executiveThank you, Rolf. I'll start my presentation today by giving you the highlights from our trading update announced earlier this morning. And as you can see from the slide, both Business and the Nordic segment had a solid net add in number of deliveries this quarter. The Consumer segment lost 29,000 deliveries, our commercial decision to end the price match service has affected the customer growth negatively also this quarter, but the trend throughout the quarter has been significantly improving with just a few thousand negatives in March. We are still preparing our consolidated accounts for this first quarter, but an early calculation estimates our group EBIT adjusted in the area of NOK 160 million to NOK 170 million. The Business segment is expected to deliver an all-time high financial performance this quarter. and the Nordic segment is expected significantly better than we indicated in the Q4 presentation with no under hedging effect in the quarter. The Consumer segment is negatively affected by very mild weather, which affects the average consumption volumes and thus, the financial performance negatively this quarter. We also see the negative -- the same negative effect on the volumes in the New Growth Initiatives segment for the Alliance business, resulting in a slightly negative nominal EBIT adjusted level in that segment this quarter. More details for Q1 will be presented on the 5th of May when we have our Q1 presentation. I will now proceed with my CMD part of the presentation, and Rolf has already shared some thoughts about our strategic focus areas for the coming years. And Christian, Roger and Per will follow up with more details from their business areas later on. The rest of my presentation will be about translating our operational and strategic focus areas into a financial outlook. And I will start with presenting our guidance on financial results for 2022 and 2023 and wrap it up with our capital allocation guidance and principles. First, on an organic group level, we target our net revenue in the area of NOK 1.6 billion to NOK 1.65 billion for the 2 years to come. EBIT adjusted is targeted in the range of NOK 500 million to NOK 550 million in the same period. And that's equal to an EBIT adjusted margin of approximately 30% to 34%. 2022 is expected in the lower end of the range. We target maintenance CapEx in the area of NOK 65 million to NOK 70 million annually and sales commission spend in the range of NOK 180 million to NOK 200 million annually. Thus, CapEx and sales commission spending will be at the same level as depreciation and amortization the next years. We will not make explicit targets for the reporting segments going forward, but I will try to summarize the main drivers to give you some indications on how we see the development in the different segments. The competition in the Consumer segment is expected to continue at a high level. We are launching a broad range of product offerings to serve all customer needs and are expecting the consumer demand to turn towards risk mitigation products. We believe risk mitigation products to be an important measure to differentiate from competition and provide customers with strong value propositions that enable them to reduce their electricity costs while also representing a better revenue potential for us versus low market spot contracts. Further, we are expecting the average consumption to decline somewhat. The high price level but also higher customer awareness through apps and smart home control devices are expected to be the main drivers to this development. On the other hand, EV home charging is mitigating this development, but we expect the net effect to be somewhat negative. Based on these assumptions, EBIT adjusted is expected in the mid-20s -- the EBIT adjusted margin is expected in the mid-20s for the next years. Moving to the business segment -- sorry, the positive underlying development is expected to continue, and there is good momentum for further growth in customers. with more customers taking advantage of our risk mitigation products and a new organizational approach with Roger heading up our business activities in the group, is expected to give synergies across brands and countries and are strengthening our belief in the business segment going forward. The 2021 results in the Business segment were particularly strong, significantly better than we targeted. However, we are optimistic on behalf of the Business segment's financial performance going forward and are aiming for a nominal EBIT adjusted level in line with a strong 2021 performance the next coming years. With a continued high price level and price volatility, the Nordic segment will be negatively affected by higher than normal profile costs in 2022. Per will elaborate more on this and on our risk mitigation actions in the Nordic segment later on. The introduction of new nuclear power capacity is expected to be fully operative for the second half of 2022, and we already observed a decrease in the forward price levels in Finland due to this. And this, in combination with our efforts to develop our fixed price portfolio against more spot-based products supports a guidance towards a slightly positive EBIT adjusted level in the Nordic segment this year in the area of NOK 30 million in 2023. The New Growth Initiatives segment has had a positive development the last years, and we do expect a positive EBIT adjusted in 2022 with additional growth in 2023. We have intensified our growth ambitions in solar energy solutions and EV charging, fueled by the high price levels in combination with national subsidizing protocols and the EU electrification ambitions and the demand for these services has increased rapidly the last year, and we expect positive financial results from these new revenue streams already this year. These 2 initiatives are now booked in the New Growth Initiatives segment, and Roger will go more thoroughly into this in his section afterwards. Some final words on our capital allocation targets regarding dividend and leverage. Starting with some comments on our dividend ambitions. Our cash conversion is high, and we are maintaining our dividend policy to provide our shareholders with a dividend payout ratio of at least 80% of net income. Historically, the payout ratio has been high, and we have the financial capacity to maintain an attractive dividend also going forward. We target an EBITDA level in the area of 2 to 2.5x, and our dividend policy in combination with our M&A ambitions are expected to bring us to that level. M&A and ordinary dividends are our main capital allocation priorities. However, share buybacks a and extraordinary dividends will continuously be considered if the consolidation is moving slower than anticipated. That was all from me today. Solfrid Fluge Andersen our CEO -- COO, will now address the power market.
Solfrid Andersen
executiveHello, and a very good morning to you all. My name is Solfrid Fluge Andersen, I work as COO in Fjordkraft. In today's presentation, I would like to give you an insight to the somewhat complex, but also very exciting energy market we operate in. We will take a look at both the demand and supply in order to understand how this affects volatility and risk for our business. But first, I would like to walk you through the key responsibilities of the power trading function in Fjordkraft. We are responsible for purchasing the power. We sell to all our customers in the market. We buy and sell for all our brands and partners for the next 24 hours in a closed auction for the players in the energy market. We also purchase the mandatory electricity certificates, which most of our customers are required to buy along with power as well as guarantees of origin and climate quotas. The power trading function has personnel with board experience from the power market and holds a deep market insight. This insight enables us to increase value creation for the customers, in addition to delivering power purchase in the spot market. We perform individual risk management for both larger business customers and alliance partners. Many of our customers are too small to perform individual risk management. And for these customers, we have products where one can be a part of risk management portfolio. Serving these portfolios is also the responsibility of power trading. Moving on to the energy market. We first take a brief look at the Nordic market. Let's start off with Norway and Sweden. As you can see on the chart, Norway and Sweden represents both the largest consumers and the producers in the Nordics. In 2021, Norway had a net export of 19 terawatt hours, while Sweden exported net 38 terawatt hours. But when it comes to the production mix, there are some differences. Sweden has both nuclear and hydro as main production source, while Norway has the biggest share of production from renewable resources, not only in the Nordics but also in Europe. And moving on to Finland. We also find a fairly high share of nuclear, which in 2022 will increase by taking Olkiluoto-3 online. Approximately 12 years behind schedule. This reactor alone will provide approximately 13 terawatt hours per year and covers alone 14% to 15% of Finland's demand. Especially the import from Russia is expected to be reduced as Finland now is moving towards self-sufficiency and beyond, actually, with another reactor planned for 2029. This reactor called Hanhikivi1 is estimated to produce 10 terawatt hours per year. And you will hear more about how this change in Finland effects the Nordic market and risk from Per Heiberg-Andersen later on. And a very short comment on Denmark. Wind is increasingly important, both onshore and offshore and is expected to replace coal and gas. The Nordic market was deregulated in 1990s, creating a common Nordic market closely linked by interconnectors and financial integrations. The Nordic market is further integrated with increased transmission capacity and interconnections from the Nordics to central part of Europe. Looking at Great Britain and Netherlands, we find a large portion of generation from gas and the level in total, which is lower than demand. Germany is approximately aligned between generation and demand, but it is fragile as a rather large portion comes from wind. In comparison, German had an import need of 40 terawatt hours in 2020. The production mix is, as you can see, mostly driven by thermal production, such as gas and coal and the intention of shifting towards renewable production sources such as solar and wind will affect the energy market. Moving on to demand in the Nordics, starting with households. The demand in the Nordics is high compared to other countries, and especially Norway has a high demand per citizen. The Nordic temperature are, of course, relevant, but one can also assume that relatively lower prices historically trigger high demand from households. In Finland and Sweden, we find a lower demand in households due to more use of district heating. We expect a slight reduction in yearly demand from -- for 2022 from household in Norway as a response to higher price level. Looking at demand in the industry, we find Norway in Sweden with the most power intensive industry, while Denmark has a low demand in total and a low share of industry demand. On the right, we see industry illustrated in blue, representing a base load in demand. Private consumption in orange is more temperature driven with the demand profile shape with typically ELU ] due to higher demand during the winter. When trying to investigate the future, we have both looked at Statkraft's low emission scenario and [ THEMA ] consulting's long-term prognosis, and they both point out a doubling of demand during the next 30 years globally. The doubling is driven by electrification of transport, petroleum sector and general increase of demand. In addition, there is a large portion of fairly new demand, such as data center, battery production, and production of hydrogen. The increase in production is expected to come from wind, both onshore and offshore, in addition to solar. Thermal production is expected to be reduced taking us up to 83% emission-free production mix. By introducing more momentary energy and less regulated production, the prices are likely to vary even more. Price volatility in the Nordics is expected to increase due to shift in the production mix as well as interconnection to Europe. But we also believe that volatility will, to some extent, be absorbed by demand response in industry and heating, battery and storage technology. And of course, hydro will still have a calming effect in Norway compared to, for example, Germany. Here is an illustration of how system price is set. The price is set one day ahead and is the collection of bids to buy and to sell. This again, turns into an aggregate supply and demand curve without taking into consideration where the volume will be produced or consumed. The price is set with an unconstrained market clearing and is a theoretical reference price for the Nordic region. The price mechanism aims to be a socioeconomic optimization, determining the price of -- cost of producing the last unit of power. System price function as reference price for most of our financial products. On this slide, you find the last 8 months development of the system price shown in dark blue. Alongside the area price of Oslo and where Oslo is illustrated by the white graph. As you can see, an increase in gap from system price has developed as the South has connection to Central Europe and on the transmission capacity between areas, strains the production flow from the north. Per Heiberg-Andersen will comment on how this affects the rest of the Nordics. We believe that the area prices will continue to exist and will be -- only be reduced when transmission capacity between North and South is improved in the long run. A large part of our business has become increasingly important to hedge the full area price through financial instruments and not only by hedging system price. Now let's take a look at the drivers for our market risk and how we cope with them. And first, some eliminating of the market risk. When delivering spot products to our customers, Fjordkraft has no market risk. And business in Norway has very low market risk due to the fact that the customer normally owns the positions and the products in general are built in a way to minimize market risk. The market risk is, however, most prominent in the product group's variable and fixed price contracts. Starting off with price risk. In some products, the selling price and purchase price can be unlike, for instance, due to time lag. This is defined as price risk. In variable products, constituting about 30% of the consumer segment, we are exposed to price risk by committing to a price 14 days ahead of delivery. The most efficient way to reduce this risk is through partial or full hedge of the price we have committed to in sale. Moving on to profile risk. Profile risk arises typically in fixed products where the hedge is done in a baseload consumption but reconsumption differs due to how the volume is distributed. We have this exposure on fixed price and variable contracts. We can, to some extent, mitigate the risk through peak load or by peak baseload swaps. This is financial products, which have historically been more relevant for other markets such as Germany. But as volatility increases, the products are also relevant for the Nordic market. The last risk is volume risk. This risk occurs when consumption differs from hedged volume For instance, due to weather extremities. The price of the risk increases with increasing differences between the hedge price and the spot price. We are exposed to this risk on fixed price contracts with no volume restrictions and in the variable products. There are possible financial instruments to reduce this risk. For example, temperature triggered options, which gives us an extra hedged volume if temperature drops. Another way of reducing the risk is, of course, to limit the sale of contracts with no volume restrictions. You might ask yourself how we can claim that risk can be reduced or even mitigated after reporting the Nordic results in Q4 '21. But when reducing risk, through, for example, temperature triggered options. We need to buy this insurance before the likelihood of the market scenario is clear. The prices in November and especially December was extreme and with high uncertainty of how high the peak could go. When trying to perform hedging close to delivery, the price of the hedge was considered too high. We are more prepared for this coming winter already by assessing possible risk mitigation options in an earlier stage. And I might add that the market risk in variable products are managed in a good way in Q4 as the reported numbers of consumer reflected. As covered earlier in the presentation, we expect the market to continue to be volatile. It is important for us to develop products that give value for our customers and represents good alternatives to traditional spot products. We strongly believe that practicing good risk management combined with robust and fair price of the risk we do take on is a good value proposition for both us and the customers. To sum up the market risk, Fjordkraft aims to minimize the group's risk exposure associated with the offering of fixed price and related hedging products to its customers. Now I would like to thank you for your time and to introduce the next speaker, Christian Kalvenes.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveYes. Good morning, everybody. My name is Christian Kalvenes, I'm Head of Consumer. I will now give you a closer look at Fjordkraft Consumer. In this presentation, I will address what we consider to be the must-win battle for consumer brand in the time ahead. And then how we will approach this must win challenge for future growth and extended profitability. But first, some basic info. The Consumer segment comprises of energy sales to private households across Norway. Fjordkraft has a nationwide presence and a leading market position. At Innlandet we operate the brand, Gudbrandsdal Energi; and in Trondheim, the brand, TrondelagKraft. While TrondelagKraft operates regionally. Gudbrandsdal Energi has a nationwide approach in trying to attract customers. To the upper right, we see that Fjordkraft has a leading market position as a recognized brand, which is proven by various consumer service in the last couple of years. In the Consumer segment, Fjordkraft is the largest and most well-known electricity retail brand. Winner of Kantar's -- winner of Norway's best customer service at Kantar's customer service days, winner of BearingPoint's Digital Leader Award. We have a broad product range with value-adding services and an industry-leading loyalty program. For our Norwegian region customer -- consumer brands, Trygg Strømhandel translated safe electricity retail certified by DNV. The key numbers at the bottom of the page shows that the consumer segment importance to Fjordkraft. Fjordkraft's Consumer segment is contributing with about 660,000 electricity deliveries, 9 terawatt hours delivered volume. Fjordkraft's total market share in the consumer market is around 25% in Norway. Due to the high price sentiment, the value proposition across brands, among electricity service providers is now spearheaded by price. Consumers are looking to cut costs and value-adding services far away from the core product become less interesting. Our analytics shows that every time the prices are rising, the whole industry experienced a steep drop in customer satisfaction. As you can see right on the screen, this has again been proven as the industry has had a steep drop in reputation. This also reflects Fjordkraft development. In this market with sky high prices, the producers are winners with a massive increase in revenue. The consumers, on the other hand, have been the losers as the monthly electricity bills has become a tough burden to bear for many. This has triggered a wave of negative media coverage targeting the whole industry causing even more distrust among the consumers. We recognize that we're gaining a high level of customer satisfaction and trust is the most important must-win battle for the Fjordkraft consumer brand for future growth and extended profitability in the time ahead. In the next slides, I will explain how we will approach some of the key areas and this must-win challenge. We recognize that an important aspect in regaining customer trust is increasing transparency. Transparency and simplicity in the sense of a strong value proposition based upon increased customer insight, overview and awareness on how usage prices and costs developed through the month based on a customer-specific price plan. The Fjordkraft app and My Page offer this insight. Customers get overview and can take control of the electricity usage. Customers can monitor how the cost of the electricity usage develop a day over the month. They can also see the spot price straight from Nord Pool for today and tomorrow. This insight raises customer awareness and the app becomes a smart tool to reduce electricity consumption and hence monthly cost. [ THEMA ] and Itera's Q1 report shows that Fjordkraft is the electricity service provider with the broadest choice of relevant value-adding services. One of these services are smart charging, where we have an integration with 18 car brands more than any other competitor. For customers who choose to use this service, the app would charge the electrical vehicle when the prices are most favorable. This is an easy way for our customers to save money. We offer smart charging for our spot price customers, and we are the only company in the business that offers smart charging for the short term and the long-term fixed price customers as well. Another more traditional value-adding service that has helped our customers to cut cost is Mobile. Mobile has been an important and successful value-adding service for Fjordkraft in the last 5 years. Our mobile offering has had a great impact on customer churn and we've had a fine customer growth. For the moment, we are working together with eRate to test and move our mobile customers from service provider platform to an MVNO platform, but securing great customer experience on the new platform will have the highest priority and can't be compromised. When migration is done, cost to serve of our mobile customers will be reduced dramatically. The most common products in the business are the spot price product and the fixed price products. But in between these product groups, there are loads of opportunities to offer consumers some degree of predictability and protection from high prices in a volatile market. This is where we would focus our product innovation. The aim will be to strengthen the core value proposition. We will offer customers the chance to buy add-ons that reduce price volatility to be more in control of the monthly electricity cost. Within the end of this year, we will have a fine menu of refined value-adding services for our customers to pick and mix as they like. These services will help customers to make qualified decisions with regards to securing usage and cost predictability as well as cutting costs. Today, the revenue streams stems from the core product and a set of value-adding services. We believe that this will change. The revenue streams in the time ahead will be a combination of core product, value-adding services, add-ons that offer predictability and build control and services that offer usage saving and cost savings. As we speak, we are building the engine to serve our customers with these services and we expect the full launch after the summer. Our digital ecosystem, customer service, marketing and distribution channels will play an important part in bringing these services to market and increase adoption in our customer base. We see an untapped revenue potential from these services going forward. Over the last couple of years, investing in a customer-based digital ecosystem has been an important strategic key activity for us. What the customer interfaces are just the tip of the iceberg. We have several innovative partners. These partners continuously innovate their offering and offer the newest and most attractive products and services to our customers through our marketplace, the app and the loyalty program. These partners accelerate innovation and cut down time to market when bringing the newest and most innovative products and services to our customers. For the partners, Fjordkraft offer a distribution channel and a large customer base. We now have all the building blocks to capitalize more than 200,000 customers are using the app every month. Customers using the app has a lower contact frequency to customer service than customers not using the app. As we push forward with new services, our focus will be on innovating close to core and creating new revenue streams within the service universe of the ecosystem. As we're exploring value-adding services close to core, competence in power trading become a necessity and a competitive advantage. Our power trading team are already on their toes, trying to minimize risk for the short term and the long-term fixed time -- fixed price products. But competence in power trading is not only important for the fixed price products alone. It is also the case for spot-based products like Spot with Management. For this product, our power trading desk are purchasing some of the volume in the forward market where the prices are more stable than they are in the month of delivery. The main aim of this product is not to beat the spot price every month, but to decrease the price volatility and protect the customers from the highest prices. Though looking back how this product have managed. It has, in fact, beaten the spot price, 64 of the last 75 months. In the table on this slide, you can see that it has beaten the spot 11 over the last 12 months, and hence, saved our customers thousands of kroners this winter. Spot with management is, in fact, the product that I have myself and that I recommend to my friends and family, a product with a proven record of cutting the price tops and beating the spots. New customer demands offer new opportunities to increase distribution within our digital ecosystem and in low-cost pull channels. But to be successful in the battle for our customers, we believe that a strong multichannel distribution muscle is of great importance. Our internal and external distribution includes telemarketing, field marketing, real estate agents, retailers, partners, organizations. Our customer service teams and Fjordkraft . But a strong distribution muscle is not all about quantity, it's also about quality. All our Norwegian consumer brands Trygg Strømhandel certified by DNV, one of the world's leading certification bodies. The objective with this certification scheme is to secure high quality in every aspect of the power sale. We believe that this certification scheme should be made mandatory for every electricity service provider in the business. But we believe that we can regain customer growth quarter-by-quarter, we certainly do. Firstly, never before has there been higher demand and interest in the products and services that we have to offer. From the basic electricity price plans to app insight and overview, to smart services that reduce usage and costs and add-ons that offer price stability and predictability. We have all these services and keep on investing in new customer-centric services, together with our innovative partners. Secondly, we have a strong marketing and multichannel push/pull distribution muscle. This will play an important part of bringing our value proposition to market to attract new and regain old customers. Now that we have put the pandemic behind us, our distribution channels will soon be firing at full speed again. And last but not least, we address all the critics that has been turned against the business and ourselves to increase customer transparency, simplicity and increase complexity to regain customer trust. Improving customer satisfaction is a must-win battle for future growth and extended profitability. Through increased insight and transparency and further product innovation, we enable energy savings and cost reductions. We see untapped potential within product and services related to cost predictability and control. Demand for our products and services has never been higher, and our strong marketing and multichannel push/pull distribution muscle will soon be firing at full speed. Thank you. And now, it's Roger's turn.
Roger Finnanger
executiveGood morning, everybody. My name is Roger. I'm Head of Business, and I have been responsible for developing the business segment in Fjordkraft for several years. As presented by Rolf, I will with my new responsibility also take lead in further developing the B2B segment in TrøndelagKraft, Gudbrandsdal Energi and Nordic Green Energy. Nordic Green Energy is a part of the Nordic reporting segment and organized under EVP, Per Heiberg-Andersen. I'm also responsible for technical sales, which includes solar power solutions, EV charging and heat pump energy solutions. The results from these operations are now reflected in our [ NGE ] segments. On the following slides, a box in the top right corner will indicate which reporting segments the content belongs to. We have had a successful journey in developing the Business segment over the last years. We have achieved customer growth, both organically and through acquisitions. With a strong focus on core products and value-adding services, we have grown both our profitability and customer base. This has been made possible by investing in the industry's largest distribution power and a strong sales culture. Further, we have had a strong focus on our core product, risk-mitigating services, and the launch of attractive value-adding services. In my presentation, I will be focusing on our market position in the business segment and our product range. I will also give insight to our digital offerings. Our energy solutions and why I strongly believe in further growth in the segment. Fjordkraft has a strong position with more than 115,000 deliveries and more than 45,000 business customers in the Norwegian B2B segment. We have a leading brand position with 97% awareness, and we are measured to offer the most attractive product range in the Business segment. The business customers have a higher consumption and more complex products including risk segment services, and more than 70% of our customers purchase several services from us. Therefore, we have a higher net revenue per delivery compared to consumer segments. Our market share in Norway exceeds 20% in the business segment according to the regulator. Down to the left, you can see that our portfolio is highly diversified. We are targeting specific segments of the market with a wide range of products designed to meet their needs. In our portfolio, we handle more than 2,500 co-ownerships. In this segment, we can deliver cost-efficient heating solutions, and we offer electrical vehicle charging and administration. During 2022, the regulator will decide the regulation related to production of solar energy for co-ownerships. We believe this will give us an even stronger value proposition to this customer group. We have a close cooperation with our national procurement corporations, and this increases our efficiency and our hit rate in our sales channels. It also strengthens loyalty. Fjordkraft is the largest supplier to municipalities. And we have dedicated resources working towards the construction industry. We are also targeting the segments agriculture and aquaculture. An increasing share of business customers are tenants. We have launched several sustainable solutions that make it easy for owners of corporate properties to reduce emissions by implementing new energy sources and distribution of all energy costs directly to their tenants. This will give us the opportunity to offer services to tenants and to increase our share of wallet. We have the largest distribution in our industry. Fjordkraft, along with one other competitor, are the only ones operating the entire business segment nationally. This includes SOHO, SMEs, large customers and public entities. Our product range, combined with our large distribution, are our biggest competitive advantage. We have sales of business all over the country, and we combine telemarketing with meetings at the customer site. This is a strength for us. It contributes to our awareness and our position as a professional player. There are more than 90 sales resources, which sells for Fjordkraft in the Norwegian B2B market every day. High prices and increasing volatility increased the frequency of supplier changes. With large distribution power and an attractive product range, we believe there are good market conditions to win new customers and to continue our growth. Electrification opens new business opportunities for Fjordkraft. The customers need related to mobility, solar and energy control is both Consumer segment and Business segment, several opportunities to attract new customers and to increase the number of deliveries. The market conditions increase the customers' need for services that allow the customers to take control of their electricity costs and to take control of their own consumption. The electrification related to the green shift increases the customers need to use new energy solutions, and we will take lead in bringing new solutions to both consumer and business customers. I will give you a closer look at our services in the next slides. The most important tool for business customers to take control of their electricity costs is to take advantage of our risk-mitigating services. Spot with risk management is offered to all our customers. As you can see to the left, we have the opportunity to combine several tools to meet every customer's need to handle the risk associated with purchasing electricity. Many other business customers have a great need for predictable power costs. And around 70% of our volume are delivered with risk management. This moderates price fluctuations and helps customers manage their cost budgets. Customers have electricity plans that includes risk management show higher satisfaction and loyalty. Focusing on such products is important to increase both customer satisfaction and our profitability. To small- and medium-sized customers, we offer several standardized products designed to meet the customers' different needs. Large customers and public entities are offered tailored solutions designed to meet their unique needs. Our most successful strategy and recommendation is products that combine index hedging 1 to 2 years ahead, combined with an area price hedging illustrated in the upper right. This minimizes the risk of bad trades. The customer gets their electricity prices equalized from month-to-month and they're able to manage their cost budgets. Our experience is that index hedging, combined with other risk-mitigating services, gives the best results for the customers and it gives lower electricity costs in the long run. In the Business segment, Fjordkraft has a very low market risk associated with risk management products because the customers fully own their positions. In the Fjordkraft brand, we have, for several years, offered our online customer portal, Min Bedrift. With Min Bedrift, the customer gets reports on consumption, comparison of consumption with temperature, cost reports, price forecasts and risk management reports. We also offer our customers a climate reporting tool that uses the greenhouse gas protocol standard. During 2022, we will strengthen our digital services. The large customers will get our new portal, get live data monitoring, advanced financial reporting, solar monitoring and integrated EV charging system. This completes overview on all energy sources allows the large customers to take control of their consumption and they can plan their activities on multiple sites and optimize their energy usage. We also will make it easy for our SOHO and SME customers to take control on their consumption. They will get a user-friendly mobile interface that includes live data monitoring and the opportunity to activate relevant alarms and notifications. The customer will get access to 24/7 self-services. First, we will launch our new digital services to Fjordkraft and TrøndelagKraft. Going forward, our plan is to make the services available in Gudbrandsdal Energi and the Nordics. In 2020, we launched Soleklart, our solar energy concept. We want to make it easy for our customers to choose new sustainable solutions and our advisers helps the customers to optimize the solar installation. We offer our customers online calculation and consult them before they make the purchase. We offer small customers green loans through a financial partner. For large customers, we can offer solar panels in the form of energy-as-a-service. With our partners, we offer the customer of power purchase agreements. Our partners take the investment, install and produce energy at the customer site. Fjordkraft offers the customer a long-term agreement, which gives Fjordkraft, our partners and the customer low risk and a high degree of predictability. The customer will get a better certification of the building, reduced emissions and predictable power costs. After installation, the consumers get live monitoring on consumption and production. In Consumer, we offer a unique solar account that gives the customer the opportunity to save their overproduction on a digital account. Large customers are offered solar, combined with risk management products. Within EV charging, we are offering home charging and charging to co-owners and business customers. In our app, the customer can activate smart charging where they can save typically 20%. For Business customers and co-ownerships, we offer administration services and billing services that gives fair cost allocation of charging. The acquisition of Innlandskraft gave us access to a dedicated team with expertise within solar panels and charging. We experienced an extreme increase in customer attraction and are now ramping up our capacity. To increase our market share, we have established an expert team to handle sales of solar and charging for all our end user companies. The end-user companies will stimulate their customers and serve our expert team with leads. After our expert team has closed the deal, the energy suppliers will follow up to customers and offer suitable power agreements, access to live monitoring in our apps and solar accounts. This is solutions that really increase the customer satisfaction. The latest market report from Itera and [ THEMA ] shows that our offering within solar and charging is competitively priced compared to our competitors. We experienced success in sales so far in 2022, and we believe our actions will increase sales significantly in the next months when we enter the peak sales season for Solar Energy Solutions. To summarize my presentation, in the Business segment, the Fjordkraft brand has shown 12 years of growth. The first quarter of 2022 is our best quarter ever. The market conditions fuels our products and services. We have never had a stronger performance in sales when it comes to amount of new customers signed. The number of customers taking advantage of our risk-mitigating services is highly increasing. Our Solar energy team has so far in 2022 sold more solar panels than we sold in all of 2021. We believe our experiences through the latest years will enable further growth with multiple brands and Nordic potential. Going forward, we will strengthen our digital services and make them available for all brands. My product management team will serve all our brands with our fine menu of risk-mitigating services. We also strengthen sales and distribution in the B2B, and we are starting up with Gudbrandsdal Energi this fall. I strongly believe in further growth in the Business segments. Then I give the word to Per.
Per Heiberg-Andersen
executiveThank you. I'm Per Heiberg-Andersen, and I'm responsible for the group's Nordic expansion. I'm the last one out. I will share with you 5 slides today. I will first give you a quick overview of the Nordic segment. Secondly, I will spend a little time on the fixed price products, the risks connected to these products and what caused the losses made in the fourth quarter in Finland and Sweden in the fixed-price product portfolio. Then I will share with you some views on how we see the Swedish and Finnish market developing and the potential for the group before a quick M&A status and a summary at the end. So first, an overview of the Nordic segment. The segment currently consists of the Swedish-Finnish electricity retailer Switch Nordic Green AB, which is using the market brand, Nordic Green Energy. The company has offices in Stockholm, Sweden and Vaasa Finland. Nordic Green is a challenger and a fighting brand and is positioned as a retailer of renewable energy only. The company has now 177,000 customers in Sweden and Finland combined. A part of the Swedish customers belong to the Kundkaft portfolio, that is an aggregated volume through a broker, which we do not see as part of the strategy in the longer term. In 2021, the company delivered an annual volume of 3.2 terawatt hours, which is about the same as year before. And the small matrix shows the split in the country and segment dimensions. Finland generates just short of 60% of this volume and Sweden just above 40%. Late February this year, the Finnish Datahub got up and running and Nordic Green Energy concluded a successful implementation project. This was an important and positive milestone, and we are now ready to initiate further IT projects related to implementation of the group IT platform and the new digital services. Then over to the next slide and the fourth quarter. In Sweden and especially Finland, the fixed price products and the steady priced ongoing products are dominating in the market. These products were, however, not compatible with the extreme energy market scenario we experienced in Q4, resulting in extraordinary profile costs and effects from the cold period in Finland last 2 weeks of December. Electricity retailers made huge losses in Q4, especially in Finland, where informal estimates indicate that retailers had losses totaling around EUR 200 million and then mainly in the last part of December. As you know, Nordic Green Energy was also hit hard and this caused the profit warning mid-January. In the fourth quarter, we had a combination of a dip in nuclear power capacity, combined with very low magazine levels for hydropower production as well as the historic high gas prices. And this winter also made visible debottlenecks in the Nordic power grid systems. This affected the spot prices across the interconnected Nordics and caused spot prices at an average about 4x higher than the normal December. And it peaked even much higher, as you can see in the graph to the left showing the spot price in Finland. And I'm showing the spot price in Finland, which is where the temperature dropped 5 degrees below normal last 2 weeks of December, where consumption rose quickly, and we were suddenly underhedged. We had the most extreme effect as nonhedged overconsumption was to be bought in the spot market at historic high prices. As you can see in the graph, showing prices in the last 10 years, historically, such a drop in temperature would have a limited impact with the extraordinary prices late Q4, the effect was significant. As you can see in the graph to the right, we also experienced an extreme price volatility throughout the fourth quarter, causing a huge peak of peak spread between the top and low spot price during the day and within the month. And again, this was on average more than 4x the normal levels. So the fixed price portfolio then also suffered from extreme profile costs throughout Q4. Again, the cost created by covering for the spread between hedged net price and the spot price when energy is consumed real time. And historically, profile costs have been reasonable and relatively easy to budget, but Q4 '21 became a significant exception. We dealt with this in January and ordered a sales stop for these high-risk products, and we are now following a new KPI to reduce exposure. Currently, 30% of the Nordic Green volume is now spot based, meaning low risk. Next winter, we expect the level to be around 60% and after that, we expect the volume to be at an acceptable level. We are going for a complete turnaround of the portfolio, and we'll invest the necessary time in the product management dimension to do so. We have been very clear on the need for this turnaround. And the signals we get is that other retailers already follow. We do take an active position in transforming the market. Now let's go to the next slide. A big question now is, of course, whether this was a one-off or if the Q4 '21 can repeat itself. Just to conclude, either way, the risk in the product portfolio shall be reduced. And as I said, we're not long. Independently, in both Sweden and Finland, there is now an increased focus on both improving the energy balance as well as on internal grid bottlenecks. Politicians in both countries concern themselves with the higher electricity prices and negative effects on the community and on the economy. Across the industry and policymakers, there is a clear sentiment to avoid another Q4 '21. And we do also see a normalization in the energy market with a reduction in spot prices. A better energy balance, among other is caused by the introduction of new nuclear power capacity from the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland is creating better preconditions for the next winter. In March, we have seen effects of the war in Ukraine, but spot prices have still been much lower than in late Q4 '21. The graph here on the left shows the forward pricing indicating more normal spot price going forward. The graph to the right showing -- perhaps indicating substantially less variation from system price that we also experienced in the fourth quarter. Still, as already mentioned, due to the increase in wind power, combined with continued high gas and fossil fuel prices for some time still, of course, due to the war in Ukraine also. We do expect a somewhat higher price volatility than pre-2021 levels and have taken that into account in our budgeting, as Birte showed you earlier. Now when I have described the negative effects of the Q4 and explained why we should be allowed to expect some normalization, I would also like to point out some positive developments, both caused by the Q4 experience and other recent trends. Firstly, there is a rise of dynamic priced products and higher risk margins in the fixed price products, which is good for the competitive climate, and for our competitiveness. Furthermore, we've seen an explosive growth in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in Sweden and Finland over the last year only. And already in 2021, it amounted to about 1/3 of new car sales and in 2022 anticipated to be substantially higher. In addition to that, especially in Sweden, there is focus on dynamic tariffs for grid fee as well as on flexibility pilots. And in Finland, the Datahub is, as already mentioned, successfully up and running. This means that over the last year, the Nordic markets have become much more homogenous with more similar product set. This also means that the group IT platform and digital services have now become even more relevant in both Sweden and Finland. And as the Datahub is up and running Finland, we can now proceed with the implementation of the Group IT platform and services for Nordic Green Energy. So to the M&A status. We had some 20-plus meetings with possible targets. Most contacts has been with companies in Finland, where there has been some consolidation dynamics prior to the launch of the Datahub, which is expected to have some impact on the competition dynamics. In Sweden, we have the election in September this year and expected less dynamics prior. Still, we've had some interesting dialogues in Sweden as well. And recently, we see a growing interest here. In the meetings, in both Finland and Sweden, we get very unison and positive feedback on the Fjordkraft approach and on the group IT platform and digital services as shown here in the illustration. Most -- all discussion partners acknowledge their efforts and investment needed to build the app services and digital ecosystem which is required to compete in a quickly changing marketplace. And we are clearly seen as a player with a position to be a consolidator. In addition, most of the players that we've been in contact with see the consolidation of retail coming. And most also agree that the market is going pan-Nordic with synergies to be realized across borders. There's been mutual interest and continued dialogue in some of their relations built. However, last fall, we had a growing awareness of the risk in the fixed price portfolios. And we took some extra time to analyze and the processes were eventually put on hold. And now putting the first quarter behind us, we will be -- it will be interesting to see whether the consolidation sentiment has changed, whether price expectations have changed and so forth, and perhaps dynamic will pick up in the second half of '22. Anyway, going forward, we will be very considerate about the portfolio risks. We will prefer portfolios with spot-based products, dynamic price products, or at least for the volume risk and as far as possible, the profile of risk is at an acceptable level. We will be moving forward with caution. So let's sum up on the last slide. We are confident that the Nordic expansion will create value to the group and that it is a prerequisite for an integral part of the long-term strategy. As the Datahub is up and running in Finland, we now have the opportunity, time and resources to initiate the implementation of the group IT platform and connected digital services. This will also mean close cooperation in product management across the Nordics. And as you heard, the B2B has already started. As the energy market is working its way back to the more normal state, we will continue M&A dialogues and initiate new processes, though having a clear focus on portfolio structure and risk in the M&A targets. And moving forward cautiously, our ambition is to become a top 4 player in both Sweden and Finland, now by the end of 2025. In the short term, it is most important to establish critical mass hubs in both countries, and then focus will be on implementing the modern technology and on the project management, before moving forward with aggressive growth. Thank you for your attention.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveOkay. We are moving over to the Q&A session, and we can get all the presenters up on the stage or on the floor here, and they are available for questions. For our online viewers, there is an option to submit questions through the webcast player, but there is some delay on the players. So if there are any questions from the physical audience, we can start off with that.
Unknown Analyst
analystWell, I think we'll come back to that on the Q1 presentation and then also on the consumer I mean if you look at history, you have a 40% EBIT margin in 2020. Around 30% in 2021. Now you're saying it 20s [ ?
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveLet me just repeat the question for the online first. The question was regarding the Consumer segment EBIT margin and the fact that it has been declining from historical levels and down to what we now are expecting around the mid-20s margin and how we should think about that going forward? Is that how certain are we about that guidance basically. So I don't know if you want to comment, Birte or Christian.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveYes, I can start. We have looked very thoroughly into this. And obviously, when we were listed back in the -- 4 years ago, we actually guided on 25% to 30% at that point of time. And then the market was with us. We had a number of quarterly presentations where we reported on [indiscernible], particularly in the consumer market. So no, I think we have turned to our original estimates, actually. We look -- we have really looked into this and our best take is that this is the floor when we are now estimating 25%. And I mean we should all know that the gas market and the energy situation in Europe actually will set the price for some years ahead of us at a much higher level than we have been seeing before. This is also supported by the regulator. They surely believe that we have to expect prices at a much higher level than we have seen in the past years. So I'm quite sure of this 25% EBIT in the consumer market. It's well founded in our estimates, actually.
Unknown Analyst
analystLast question for me. That was on the M&A side. You're -- looking at the share price you could always said the multiples are high low, but really the service is very low. I would assume that, that makes M&A even more challenging, given that we're quite so low. And to that delay the M&A over the next coming years.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveLet me just start by repeating the question again. The question was regarding M&A and whether the valuation of our company is affecting timing and opportunities regarding M&A? We saw that when our multiple, when our valuation went higher and higher, that actually led to expectations by our targets to also increase our price to be paid for our targets. So I know as our multiple and our valuation is down we expect also our targets to be valuated at a completely different price that we just had 6 months or 12 months ago. So we don't think that this will hinder our M&A transactions. The share price within our M&A expansion. But what is -- what has been hindering particularly in Finland, is the volatility and the losses in the Finnish market because it has been very difficult to evaluate companies that lose money, actually. But I don't think that our share price development will be -- will stop our M&A strategy.
Birte Strander
executiveWhat we actually see is that also companies are struggling in this more complex market. And I think that might also fuel the M&A path for us going forward.
Unknown Analyst
analystAs a follow-up to that last Capital Markets Day you told you have 35% market in Norway, and now you're targeting 30% and you have increased the timing of your guys to reach that level. How does that then compare to your comments now. Okay, we can understand the Nordics, but the lower your ambitions in Norway, and your answers doesn't seem that it should actually be a lowering -- should not suggest a lower target.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveNo, I see that. I see your point.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveThe reason -- let me just repeat again, sorry. The question was regarding our M&A ambition and the fact that the Norwegian ambition has been lowered from 35% to 30%.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveI can see your question, and I fully understand that. This is about the possibilities, what we see. It is about the prospect. It is about our financing. It is about the risk -- the value at risk when you are buying these kind of companies. It is about the regulation of the marketplace. As you see, we also have our service companies where we obviously grow our business. So it is good reflections when we are now stating 30%. Now 30% is quite a high market share as well. But if we can have more, we will take the opportunity, of course. And we have -- earlier we said that we believe that the competitive authorities will look into our books and we increased to 35%, that being a threshold. So yes, we take what we can have, and we have the financing. So this is more an ambition -- yes, we have lowered our ambitions, but we still see a great potential in M&A also in Norway.
Unknown Analyst
analystMy next question. You see the pure online competitors, at least here in Norway. It's growing a lot, attracting new customers. So it's interesting to hear that you are focusing on that the large distribution of market in terms of your -- where to get new customers. It would be helpful with a bit more insights on the importance on being in several channels and why do you believe so much in being on all sales channels where you can see in the market that the online players are growing quite long?
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveYes. The question was regarding distribution channel and distribution channel strategy and whether we could elaborate a little bit on that.
Rolf Barmen
executiveYes, definitely. And I said it in my part, we believe that we need to serve all customers. We, for sure, believe that the demand for more complex products will increase and these more complex products, which our online competitors do not offer. Will take more time to sell actually. And therefore, we have to look thoroughly through our sales and distribution system because we think that we might intensify our one-to-one sales resources. But of course, we sell a lot on the web, we as well, and we are the digital leader. I just have to repeat that. We are that number one. When it comes to the online competitors, they have been good in their market approach, of course, but it has been -- a lot competition has been on the price, and they are in a position, at least some of them, they can use their shareholders' money instead of bringing dividend to the shareholder. So it is a question also for how long these can put -- they can continue their business models. We are very eager to understand the sustainability in these kind of business models actually.
Unknown Analyst
analystOne of the reasons the share price in particular are down whatever your business model is. My question goes to why on earth will people choose you instead of [indiscernible] when the price is the NOK 1,000 less than you. Why do they do that, can you explain?
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveThe question was...
Unknown Analyst
analystMy belief is that your margin will be substantially lower than what you would perceive if you don't take a lot of risk on trade? [indiscernible] So because of your risk margin -- because of the difference between the NOK 600 for Tibor and 1600 NOK [ is going to -- you are going to experience a lot of more margin pressure going forward because of the high price than volumes. So I think that -- I think they would like to elaborate that a bit.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveYes, the first part of the question was why the customers should choose Fjordkraft versus other low-priced competition? And the second part was also -- yes. Yes, so go ahead, Rolf.
Rolf Barmen
executiveYes, no doubt that competitors have pressed the consumer price down, and we reflect this also in our guidance now. We believe that these kind of players do not cover all demand in the consumer market. We believe that we cover much a larger portion of the total demand also in the consumer market. So for the consumer segment, we are quite sure that we will deliver what we said to better 25% margin in the consumer market. And we will do this by launching new products. We already have launched new products with substantial higher margins than the spot margin example you throw from Tibor. So I think that is our answer. We also have a very good digital ecosystem that brings a lot to the table, value-added services, not only value-added services when it comes to risk mitigating products, but also other value-added services that are profitable for us. So all in all, this will secure that our margins from the consumer segment will be at this level.
Unknown Analyst
analystYes. Maybe you would explain a bit about the acquisition costs. And I see from the -- from your report annually, you actually have higher acquisition cost than you're actually depreciating. Is there a potential volume in your balance sheet? And secondly, when you would experience using 29,000 customers in 1 quarter as we did. How many new customers did you have to -- grossly, get on board. So my question is, is the cost of churn actually increasing, not just on the margin front but is it increasing...?
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveThe question was regarding cost of acquisitions and whether we are on a steady state or not in terms of depreciation and amortization of that item. Go ahead, Birte.
Birte Strander
executiveYes, I can answer that one. I also made a comment on that one on my presentation in the outlook. We are in a steady state now with our spending and also of our amortization and depreciation, both on the CapEx but also on the sales spend. We did -- we have done some justifications. Christian talked about pull channels, marketing and us -- they -- we believe that they are going to have a more significant effect for us in the coming years. And also in the Nordic segment, we have done some adjustments reducing the spending and also using more pull channels in Finland and Sweden. So that's the main reasons why -- you can see from 2021, that there has been more spend than amortization. But for now, going forward, this is -- will be in a steady state.
Unknown Analyst
analystSo you actually are risking using much more .
Birte Strander
executiveNo. That is with our ambitions to grow quarter-by-quarter that Christian also mentioned in his presentation.
Unknown Analyst
analystBut how long can you go on actually under depreciation if you are actually inefficient. Because, I mean, as long as you're losing more customers and then you're not depreciating as much, but some of this must [indiscernible]?
Birte Strander
executiveBut we have had -- historically, we have had a very aggressive approach to the depreciation. So we don't like to do this, to have this table of costs in our balance sheet. So we have used a model being quite as aggressive as we are allowed to the IFRS standard. So we are quite confident that this is way -- that this is under control, and we are going to be in a steady state in this perspective for the coming years.
Rolf Barmen
executiveI can also add to that comment that we stopped our price guarantee product, as we have communicated and the loss of 29,000 customers, the absolutely large portion was an effect of this. So -- and we saw this in January and the first part of February. And since that, we -- the loss has been significantly lower. So you shouldn't believe that we will lose 29,000 customers each quarter now. And we have been very transparent on why we did stop this price guarantee.
Christian Kalvenes
executiveApproximately...
Birte Strander
executive34 in the consumer segment. Yes. It is price centers, not been giving very much effect.
Rolf Barmen
executiveIt's the same as Per mentioned about the Kundkraft customers in the Nordic segment. It is nonstrategic customers.
Birte Strander
executiveYes. Yes.
Rolf Barmen
executiveWell, naturally, quite naturally. Of course, call. Of course, it is in a high price sentiment, of course. It is very, very, very high activity in the marketplace. And you can see from the regulators overview of how many customers that change supplier quarter-by-quarter. So this is very transparent to see. So of course.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveOkay. I think we'll move on to a question from our online viewers. And it's in connection with the name change. Will the group look for investments in other sectors. It seems like there's a lot of financial business related to solar investments. So basically, will we continue on our capital-light path? Or will this strategy and communication suggests more investments?
Rolf Barmen
executiveThere is no intention in terms of the change of the name in that kind of direction. This is to extend both externally and internally, express that we are much more than the Fjordkraft activities in the group or no. But within the other business units as the service companies in AllRate, in Betalservice, and in of course, the other electricity business units, we will expand our business. So we have no intention of being more or less capital -- more capital-intensive going forward.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveOkay. I think that concludes the Q&A session. And okay, one more from...
Unknown Analyst
analystYour goodwill and in that front how certain are you that really reflects in the balance sheet.
Birte Strander
executiveI'm very certain. Sorry...
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveLet me just repeat the question. The question was regarding goodwill and how certain we are on that item in the balance sheet?
Birte Strander
executiveYes, we are very certain on that. That is tested every quarter. It was tested now by the year-end. Also, our accountant was looking into that. So we are very sure about the goodwill in our balance sheet.
Unknown Analyst
analyst[indiscernible] great success. But how much risk do you take on the [indiscernible] consumers and the business segment? And how do you manage that risk? What's the risk management procedure with respect to how much exposure you can have in your balance sheet of taking this kind of position on behalf of the customer?
Rolf Barmen
executiveYes. The question was regarding the spot with management product that Christian presented and how the risk profile for the customer and for Fjordkraft is on that product. And I can start off, and you can fill me out, guys. It's a product where the customer is owning the financial result. Obviously, it's a capped to how much the negative result can be. I think it's at NOK 0.125 per kilowatt hour. And as Christian presented the financial outcome has been very positive for the customers over the last couple of years. So yes, there is a cap to the risk or to the negative results if there should be a negative outcome of the trades. But historically, it's been a very good value proposition and saving a lot of customers for a lot of money.
Unknown Analyst
analystI understand so it's 12.5%. The maximum from 12.5% and going further also [indiscernible]?
Rolf Barmen
executiveNo, then the trades would stop. So Fjordkraft wouldn't carry any loss.
Unknown Analyst
analystSo there's no [indiscernible] both for the business, customer.
Morten A. W. Opdal
executiveCorrect. Okay. I think that concludes the Q&A session. And thank you all for participating, and we want to wish you all the best.
Rolf Barmen
executiveThank you very much. Goodbye.
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