Enento Group Oyj (ENENTO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Enento's Quarter 3 Earnings Webcast. My name is Henrik Soras, and I'm the Head of the Investor Relations and Strategy for Enento Group. Today, I'm joined by our CEO, Jeanette Jager; and our CFO, Elina Strahlman. Jeanette will start by providing an overview of our third quarter results, key highlights and updates from our business areas. Elina will then share more detailed insights from financial perspective. Following the presentation, we will then open the floor for questions and feel free to submit your questions at any time using the webcast tool. But without further ado, I will now hand over to Jeanette to lead us through our Q3 results and highlights.

Thank you, Henrik. Yes. Let's have an overview of our third quarter results, key highlights and of course, also updates from our business areas. And we will actually go right into now the numbers, the Q3 highlights. So, I think we can actually now continue on the next slide, please. Thank you very much. In the second quarter, our net sales were EUR 36.8 million, representing a decrease of 2.4% and that is minus compared to the previous year. During the third quarter of 2024, Business Insights continued its solid performance. Our operations in Norway and Denmark continued to show growth. Consumer credit market in Sweden remained tough through the third quarter due to the weak market environment and consumer loan demand. Consumer credit volumes were also muted in Finland and consumer confidence remains low. The challenges in our Swedish and Finnish consumer credit information service resulted in lower net sales at the group level. Our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 13.8 million, decreasing 6% at comparable exchange rates and resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.5%. Efficiency program progressed well, and we continue cost control measures to maintain profitability. The share of net sales from new services improved and reached a level of 16.6% in Q3 2024 compared to 12.9% in Q3 2023. Our free cash flow and cash conversion were strong, enabling us to continue investing in our prioritized growth areas and return capital to our shareholders. During the third quarter, there were no major changes in customer behavior. Consumer credit market in Sweden remained damp through the third quarter due to the weak market environment. We have seen stabilization in credit volumes on a quarter-to-quarter basis, but it is not yet turning into volume or sales growth in Sweden. Consumer credit volumes were also muted in Finland, and consumer confidence remains low despite of decreasing interest rates. At the end of August, the Swedish government introduced new legislative measures aimed at enhancing consumer protection and preventing over-indebtedness. We will cover this topic in more detail later in the presentation. We have kept a high level of customer satisfaction with an NPS level of 38 for our strategic and large customers. Very happy to see that, that is continuing on this high level. The mentioned challenges in the Swedish and Finnish consumer credit information services resulted in lower net sales at the group level compared to the previous year. And then continuing to cost efficiency, cost efficiency continued to be in focus in Q3 and our efficiency program progressed well. We surpassed 100% of the targeted EUR 10 million run-rate savings by the third quarter's end. Our remaining key focus is streamlining IT infrastructure by consolidating vendors. However, due to declining consumer credit information sales and weaker sales mix, our adjusted EBITDA and margin declined. The volumes in Sweden are showing signs of stabilization, but weaker sales mix, high-price increase impacting data cost, as well as product renewals and commercialization activities will continue to pressure our margin in the short term. Elina will cover the key profitability drivers in more detail in her section. When it comes to service development, we continue to focus on core credit services and prioritized growth areas. Share of net sales from new services is 16.6%. Improvement was driven by new services related to Swedish daily credit register, modernized premium SME offering in Finland and real estate information. Then -- now it works. Thank you. So as said, our EUR 10 million efficiency program proceeded well, and we surpassed 100% of the targeted run-rate savings by the end of the third quarter. In the third quarter, we have realized efficiencies related to IT facilities and sales efficiencies. The latest efficiencies benefit cash flow immediately, while the profitability impact will be visible gradually in the longer term. Application maintenance and development transition in Sweden and Finland has proceeded according to plans and we have moved to smaller office space in Finland. We have also taken next step in realizing sales efficiency by insourcing products to our own sales organization from our sales partner. We have gained first run-rate savings via lower sales commission payments and continue to see more potential to improve our sales efficiency. However, the profitability impact on this action will be visible in the longer term only. Our remaining key focus is streamlining our IT infrastructure by consolidating vendors. IT infrastructure vendor consolidation is still ongoing, and consolidation is expected to be finalized by end of H1 2025. The infrastructure consolidation needs to be managed carefully from business continuity and risk perspective. This means that there will still be some benefits and one-off costs relating to the infrastructure consolidation during Q4 '24 but also in H1 2025. Now again, I want to underline that the timeline we are sharing with you do base on that we focus and prioritize resilience and are being risk averse. So the timeline might change depending on how the project develops. Despite of the extended timeline in the infrastructure part, we have already achieved more than 100% of the targeted run-rate savings due to the good progress and efficiency gains in the remaining areas of the efficiency program. As the program has achieved its targeted run-rate efficiency benefit, we will not anymore report the progress of the program. We continue to execute the remaining efficiency actions, mainly infrastructure consolidation and there will still be one-off costs in Q4 2024 and also in 2025 accordingly. These one-off costs will be in some million of euros in total. Then at the end of August, the Swedish government introduced new legislative measures aimed at consumer protection and preventing over-indebtedness in the Swedish society. The proposal needs to still go through the ordinary legislative process, including Swedish Parliament voting. Based on the publicly available information, our estimate is that the Parliament decision will happen end of November. Several measures are proposed, but in the government proposal, it is also stated that they will not proceed with the register of debt and credit information, so-called Skri register. The government proposal includes 5 key measures, which are shown on the screen, like -- which includes lower interest rate cap and interest rate deduction limitation for unsecured loans. The government has stated that it sees these as comprehensive set of measures to reduce over-indebtedness. Moreover, the government has also emphasized the importance of proper credit checks. Reliable information and solutions are available from credit information providers as such Enento's subsidiary, i.e., UC, but not all market actors have used this information properly during the credit assessment process. It is still difficult to quantify the exact impact of these regulative measures. Our view is that there will be a negative impact on the total Swedish lending market volumes 2025 and onwards, especially in terms of unsecured lending with higher interest rates. However, interest rate deduction limitation will impact unsecured loans and lenders more widely, including existing portfolio of loans. Therefore, the proposed regulative measures will dampen the Swedish consumer credit market recovery and the level of new normal is still uncertain. There will be a negative volume impact also to Enento. Exact number is still difficult to quantify at this stage, as there are many moving and independent variables impacting consumer behavior and loan demand. But on the positive side, interest rates have continued to decrease. Consumer confidence has improved, and our exposure to the high-interest lending segment is smaller than its penetration from the total lending market in Sweden. We continue to assess the net impact of all variables on the Swedish market, and the final impacts are dependent on the behavior of both consumers and lenders. Now, it is actually moving in the wrong direction, I'm afraid. I think I will need some tech help here to get into the right because it's moving backwards. There we were. Here we are. I was pushing the green, so I should be on the right side. But yes, we keep in contact, okay? Overall, we believe that the Swedish regulatory proposal is a good outcome for the Swedish society and for Enento over time. We continue to be an essential part of the credit ecosystem in Sweden. The regulative uncertainties has limited our possibility to invest in our core consumer credit services. The current proposal enables us to think and plan long term when it comes to tech as well as new data. This enables us to provide more valuable services to our customers that support credit decisions and Swedish government's objectives to reduce over-indebtedness. Now let's see if we can get into that. No, it doesn't. I think you guys have to take over from that side because this one doesn't -- will not work with me anymore. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on to the business areas. So let's then review the third quarter highlights from our business areas, and we start with Business Insight. And Business Insight continued to show stable growth in Q3 2024 compared to the previous year. Net sales were EUR 21.5 million and grew 2.2% at comparable foreign exchange rates. Sales growth was strong in Norway, while Finland demonstrated steady development. Enterprise and premium business lines were stable, whereas real estate and freemium demonstrated very good growth. Compliance services grew slightly. Sales growth in Norway was supported by new service launches and successful sales efforts. Solid growth in Finland was supported by stable development in Enterprise and premium and very strong growth in real estate information services. Premium continued to be supported by the introduced, improved service package that have enhanced the customer experience and facilitated the transition to enterprise accounts in Finland. Decline in Sweden continued to be driven by premium and freemium, whereas real estate information services grew strongly. In connection with driving our Nordic growth story, we are renewing and harmonizing our SME online sites to drive scalability, faster-to-market (sic) [ faster time-to-market ] and improved profitability. As part of this project, we have just launched a new version of Allabolag for Swedish SME customers. On top of the platform benefits, new Allabolag.se is enriched with new features, improving customer experience and optimizing sales opportunities. In Norway, we are moving towards growing in mid-sized corporate customers. We have a good business information offering to serve wider range of customers, and we are investing in sales and distribution accordingly. For example, we have extended our compliance offering and have PEP and sanctions API now available. Lastly, we are proud to say that Proff Denmark has again won the Gazelle Award for its growth and financial success. So let's continue then with our Consumer Insight area. Consumer Insight experienced another quarter with declining consumer credit information volumes and net sales significantly below the previous year level. Net sales was EUR 15.4 million and declined 8.3% at comparable foreign exchange rates. Quarter-to-quarter net sales development was, though, more stable when comparing against Q1 and Q2 in 2024. In Sweden, consumer lending market recovery continues to be slow as loan broker channel activity and transaction volumes have remained low. However, we have seen stabilization -- stabilizing signs in Sweden, such as increased activity in the Swedish loan broker segment and real estate transactions, but it is not yet turning into growth. In Finland, lower volumes and weaker sales mix with more basic services impacted sales negatively. Finnish consumer confidence remains low despite of the recent decline in interest rates and some lenders continue to have their operations on hold. On the other hand, our services connected to the Finnish positive credit register continued to receive positive customer feedback. Impact to our sales have been neutral at this stage. We have also seen positive development in Consumer Insight. Services related to e-commerce vertical penetration and consumer marketing information have continued to grow. We're also happy to see that we are progressing well with our efforts to enter new verticals in Sweden. As we have reported earlier, we have signed several e-commerce agreements. And now during the third quarter, we have also signed one customer within the telco industry. This is a sign that our core services and data within credit are competitive also outside the bank and financial sector. When it comes to our new offering, we have signed one of the major car financing companies in Sweden for our new PSD2 solution. So, this is the first PSD2 customer we have now on our new offering. And last but not least, we know that there is an increasing need of services to prevent fraud and have closed a new deal on fraud services for B2B with another car financing company. And on the note of fraud, I would like to conclude on that there is an increasing challenge of dealing with corrupted data in the financial sector and in society at large, especially in Sweden, but it will most probably spread. There is a need for innovation and modernization to maintain trust and security. Organized crime is exploding the society, making it insufficient to rely on data from traditional sources, thus threatening societal trust. We are upgrading our IT infrastructure, utilizing real-time account information, double checking and increasing amount of data to be cross-checked and improving risk models to detect corrupt data and fraud. Predicting and preventing fraud is difficult, and fraud is continuously becoming more sophisticated in the digital world. It is a moving target. Financial institutions and our society have challenges with fraud, and they need more targeted data and insights to detect and prevent fraud. We are well positioned to help our customers, not only the financial institutions, but society at large. We are a trusted data partner and have a holistic overview of relevant data that can be utilized to identify and prevent fraud before transactions happen. We look at and build solutions based on deviations from normal patterns. We can provide scoring and monitoring to prevent fraud, analytics to create customer unique insights and suggest preventive measures and built in the decision software to optimize fraud prevention. On the service level, 2 weeks ago, we launched a new anti-fraud score in the Swedish market, which we package together with existing credit offering, and it can be integrated with existing credit processes for automated decision. As said, we believe this will be an increasing headache for our society and our customers, and we aim to lead the financial sector in creating a secure, transparent credit information system and calls for collective action to combat data corruption. And that was my final note. So, I'm welcoming our CFO, Elina, and please bring it on.

Thank you, Jeanette. Let's now go through our Q3 financials in more detail. Our net sales reached EUR 36.8 million and unfortunately, due to continuing heavy pressure in consumer credit volumes in Sweden, but also in Finland, continued to decline by 2.4%. The decline was, however, slightly less than in the second quarter, thanks to stable and somewhat improving development in the Business Insight. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 6% and resulted at EUR 13.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin declined by 1.4 percentage points to 37.5%. And this was solely due to declining sales and weaker sales mix, just like we have seen in previous quarters. But also, we are pressured by increased data prices. Our operating costs, however, continued to decline, thanks to savings and efficiency measures, but obviously, that was not enough to offset the sales decline and weaker sales mix. Adjusted EBIT development, that was largely in line with adjusted EBITDA development and financial position remained on a good level. Then moving on to the revenue development in a bit more detailed manner. So revenue, as said, was declining, and that was due to continuing challenges in Consumer Insight and in our consumer credit information services. These challenges caused the business area revenue to decline by 8.3% in the third quarter, approximately on the same rate as seen in the previous quarter. Although we started facing easier comparisons in Sweden towards the end of the quarter, Finnish volumes declined more heavily now when we did not have compensating implementation or other one-off fees to offset the low volumes. The situation remains challenging in both markets, and we have not seen volumes picking up. On the other hand, development in smaller business line, consumer marketing, that was very positive and growing with high rates, but obviously not enough to offset the decline in consumer credit. In Business Insight, the development remained resilient and on the growth side in Q3 and resulted in slightly higher growth than in previous quarter at 2.2%. Highest growth was seen in Norway, where successful sales efforts and new services boosted the sales. Finnish business continued on a stable track and was supported by strong demand for real estate services, as well as stable demand for enterprise and premium services. New services supported the Finnish business development, both in real estate and premium. And in Sweden, business area was likewise supported by the good demand for real estate services, but development in other business lines continue to suffer from macro headwinds and was more modest or declining. Then looking at the quarter-to-quarter development, one can see that in business information, the development has continued resilient and stable despite the macro headwinds, while then in Consumer Insight, the development has overall been roughly on minus 20% level compared to '22. That was still so-called normal year. But now the development in past 2 quarters also in Consumer Insight has remained stable, and that is what we expect to then continue also in Q4, stabilizing development. And that is especially what we expect for Sweden when we are facing already lower comparisons. But then in Finland, the volume decline will impact the overall business area development more negatively when we do not have compensating one-off revenues to offset the volume decline. Roughly, 2/3 of the business area revenues come from Sweden and 1/3 from Finland. In Sweden, the low lending transaction volumes, decreased usage of broker segment, as well as market consolidation and exits continue to impact the volumes. In Finland, the underlying volumes have been on low level since the beginning of the year. And in Finland, consumer confidence is low and some lenders have their operations paused. And on top of that, the sales mix within the business area and business line consumer credit in Finland is weakening. And this is due to the fact that quality of credit applicants tends to be weaker than before, meaning that our customers need to use less value-added services to take qualified credit decisions and basic data is already enough for the decision taking. Then moving on to adjusted EBITDA and profitability development. So as I said, adjusted EBITDA was EUR 13.8 million in the third quarter and despite the fact that we kept costs under very good control and even decreasing. The decline in consumer credit volumes and weaker sales mix turned the adjusted EBITDA development into decline. And as mentioned many times before, we have limited amount of variable costs connected to the Swedish consumer credit business, which means that the decrease of volumes and revenue directly hit the profitability. Looking at the EBITDA development in more detail. The negative sales mix impact can be seen in the materials and services, meaning our data acquisition costs that increased despite the hefty revenue decline. This is due to the good demand and development in real estate and consumer marketing businesses in Finland that come with variable data acquisition costs, as well as heavy price increases in governmental data in Finland. Also, the weaker sales mix within consumer credit Finland impacted the margin and sales mix decreasingly. Then moving on. Another thing to mention is that in the comparison period last year, we enjoyed on some one-off other operating income related to fixed asset sales, and we do not have similar sales supporting our adjusted EBITDA this year. Then on the positive side, personnel costs decreased by EUR 300,000, mainly following the saving and efficiency actions taken earlier this year. However, good to note that we continue to have some positions also temporarily unfilled at the moment. Then the other operating expenses. That's where the successful savings actions and cost optimization measures are also visible, and that declined by EUR 200,000. And behind this decline, we have a mix of permanent and temporary cost decreases, timing impacts, but also negative impacts from cost inflation and OpEx projects, as well as increased costs from growth investments. The launched new services already burdened, but will start burdening our costs more even in the last quarter. And planned growth actions and marketing activities are expected also to impact other operating expenses in the short term. And then finally, production for own use on prior year level and currency impacts finally stabilizing as well. Free cash flow, as Jeanette mentioned, was very strong, EUR 10.7 million in the third quarter and improved significantly compared to prior year. This was mainly due to impact from change in working capital and timing of payments, but also efficiency actions are impacting cash flow positively. Both cash conversion and adjusted cash conversion improved from prior year levels. And then financial position remains strong, and we have some EUR 17 million of cash at our hands on top of unused credit lines. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 2.5, clearly below our maximum set level of 3 and gross investments slightly above previous year's level at EUR 2.2 million. Then finally, our financial position, as said, is strong, and we continue to have strong cash flow generating capabilities. We obviously want to have an attractive dividend in line with our earnings and capital allocation and dividend policy likewise. And as planned earlier already, the Board of Directors has today decided to pay a second installment of dividend of EUR 0.50 per share. And the first installment of dividend, EUR 0.50 was already paid in April, and the second payment will now bring our total annual dividend to EUR 1 per share for the financial year '23. But thank you. Thank you on my behalf. And now Jeanette -- Jeanette will continue by confirming our outlook and guidance for '24.

Yes. And no surprises as we are keeping to our outlook and guidance for 2024. So, Enento's Swedish consumer information sector continues to face a challenging operating environment, but we expect the environment to somewhat stabilize. We will continue to prioritize cost control to maintain profitability. We also repeat the revenue guidance. Our year-on-year revenue development is expected to improve in the second half of the financial year compared to the development in the first half of the year, meaning that the revenue decline in H2 is expected to be less than experienced in H1. And for the full-year 2024, we expect revenue to decline compared to 2023. And that is actually everything from us now, and we will move over to the Q&A. And please join us again, Henrik, so we can hear what you would like us to answer.

All right. There are plenty of questions related to top line growth, costs, investments and et cetera. So maybe we start from the growth-related questions. So, Matti from Carnegie is asking that what's your definition of strong growth like in Norway premium? How much is it in numbers?

Well, I would say that -- I mean, to start with, strong for us, I mean, we have double-digit growth. So in that way, it is strong. But I don't know if you want to add something more specifically than that.

No.

No.

Double digit is when we refer to strong.

Good. Then Daniel from Danske Bank is asking about the volumes. So, how are the Finnish consumer side transaction volumes developing compared to Sweden in absolute level? Have the Finnish volumes also declined along with the Swedish ones looking at the past year? Is further volume decline possible in Finland looking forward?

Well, I can comment on that, that the Finnish decline hasn't been as extensive as what we have seen in Sweden. We have been talking about the Swedish volume decline of roughly 20% level compared to year '22 that we can still consider the previous so-called normal year, if that is normal anymore. That's another question. But nevertheless, compared to '22, roughly minus 20%. While in Finland, we have been closer to minus 10% level on the volume side. So in Finland, we are less impacted by broker segment, clearly. And that is the main reason behind Finnish volumes declining less. Also, we have tighter regulation in place already in Finland, which also levels off this kind of development.

Good. Then there is a next question from Daniel. So, how are the new customers won in Sweden on the Consumer Insight side impacting your sales mix as verticals and products sounded differ from the previous?

Well, if we now take a couple of examples from today, we have new customer wins, which are connected to our traditional offering. If we, for example -- if we take the examples of new verticals, e-commerce that we are moving into telco, and that was also a Consumer Insight service that we sold. So that is, I would say, then still connected to our traditional, where we have also high fixed cost, but we also have good margins in that area. Then if we are looking into new areas like those, which are more connected to the BI or even actually PSD2, which we connect very much to the CI, those areas are new areas. We don't have the volumes there yet. They are new areas. So yes, those are not, of course, in the same level of margin as the traditional ones.

Good. Then maybe we move to the cost side. There are a few questions on the costs. First, on the data acquisition cost, how much did the data acquisition costs increase in Finland? Did they start in April? How large share of the Finland business they affect? Can you raise your prices to cover the price hike in full?

Yes. So now when we talk about Finland -- well, starting from the overall data acquisition costs that are somewhat less than 20% of our revenue, a bit below EUR 30 million a year. So, more than 2/3 of that costs come from Finland. And obviously, in Finland, we also have variable data acquisition costs connected to our business, which we don't have in similar manner in Sweden. And then in Finland, the costs, obviously, largely also relate to the consumer credit business. As said, from Consumer Insights' revenue, roughly 1/3 comes from Finland, 2/3 from Sweden. And then if we look at the consumer credit business, Finland, close to 40% of the revenues or data acquisition cost is close to 40% of the revenue in that business. So, you get some kind of frame. And what happened then during this year is that first, I believe it was in March, government increased the data -- variable data prices by 10%, and they made another increase now in September of 15%. So, you can calculate from that, that the impact is rather significant and our costs have been increasing even though volumes have been declining overall. We have been able to push the price increases to customers with exactly the same euro level, not the percentage level at maximum 1 month later than the price increases have impacted us. But obviously, margin-wise, it still has a negative impact. And then when you combine the weakening sales mix in consumer credit Finland, where we -- where our customers buy more basic data, it means that actually the share of the data acquisition cost is even higher than the average, roughly 40%. So, that's where we see the struggling sales mix impact, especially.

Very clear. Then there's a question again from Daniel from Danske Bank. You discussed sales mix and cost inflation related to the headwinds suppressing your profitability development in the short term. What period does short term mean in this context? Next quarter, next 6 months, 12 months?

So, we'll make a combination of this, you and I.

Yes. You can start.

I would say short term depends on when we see a shift in the market. When we can see that there is a shift in the market and to be more specific also, I would like again to underline the Consumer Insight and the consumer credit in Sweden, then that will affect both our top line, but also how our sales mix is developing and how our margin development. So in that sense, it is very difficult to say anything about what short term means because it depends on when the market can start shifting towards growth. That was my short answer and the most important part, I think, of that one.

Yes. And I don't think I have too much to update on that. I mean, like, we have said that we haven't seen volume picking up so far. And of course, as long as the situation remains, it obviously then impacts negatively our sales mix as well.

It does.

Clear. Then there are a few questions related to the efficiency program, starting from Matti from Carnegie. How much absolute costs have you saved this year? How much will your cost will decline in absolute terms in 2025?

Well, we had -- we had realized roughly 60% or somewhat more when we came to this year of the EUR 10 million efficiencies, meaning that now when we have reached the EUR 10 million target, the absolute run rate for this year efficiencies that we have realized is around EUR 4 million. Of course, then we need to remember that it impacts also cash flows. And especially, if we think about the latest savings that we have realized, they were mainly impacting immediately our cash flows and will be visible in our EBITDA only gradually during next years, both through CapEx and then through decreased depreciations, but also the sales commissions are something that are accrued over time and same applies, of course, to rents and facilities. And then how those then impact '25? So that is then, of course, calculation that how much from each quarter you have realized and how it then runs to next year still. But in rough terms, we can -- we continue to enjoy some roughly EUR 2-plus million benefits next year cash-wise. And then that, of course, partially benefits us in the adjusted EBITDA as well. And then what we also continue to work on is the infrastructure consolidation, and those benefits will only start impacting when the project is finalized.

Clear. Then there is still, I think, one kind of cost efficiency-related question. So, do you plan additional cost saving programs for 2025?

We are not planning any additional cost programs in the way that we have been doing now, where we set the target and we communicated to the market, at least not for now. And as mentioned, we are closing this program. We are not continuing to reporting on it. At the same time, of course, we are keeping a very close eye on hub development due to the sales mix. So, we will have to keep being cost conscious and then let's see how this is developing.