Enento Group Oyj (ENENTO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

February 14, 2025

Nasdaq Helsinki FI Industrials Professional Services earnings 54 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Henrik Soras

executive
#1

Good afternoon from the snowy Helsinki, and welcome to Enento's Q4 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 CFO, Elina Strahlman; and CEO, Jeanette Jager. Jeanette will start by providing an overview of the fourth quarter results, key highlights and updates from our business areas. Elina will then share more details and insights from financial perspective. After that, Jeanette will continue with the 2024 dividend proposal and outlook and guidance for 2025. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions. Feel free to submit your questions any time using the webcast tool. Without further ado, I will now hand over to Jeanette, please.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#2

Thank you, Henrik. Thank you. And good afternoon, everyone. It's great to have you joining our webcast. Let's dive into our year 2024 and Q4 results and key highlights. After that, I will be presenting the usual business area updates and sharing some recent highlights on the regulatory development in Sweden. Before jumping into Q4, I want to start by summarizing our key achievements in execution in 2024. First and foremost, our commitment to putting customer first has paid off. Despite challenging times and decline in volumes and revenues in consumer credit, we have maintained high customer satisfaction among our strategic and large customers. We have not lost any strategic or large customers during the year to competitors. We have also seen good growth in Business Insight in Finland, Norway and Denmark with growth in all these markets exceeding 5% in the last quarter. Throughout the year, we have launched several innovative services, including fraud prevention, open banking data, compliance and ESG real estate-related services. Many of these services are Nordic, but are particularly targeting growth in the Swedish market. We have retained our #1 position in the consumer credit information markets in both countries. To highlight our role as a trusted partner, we have supported several customers in implementing the Finnish consumer credit register and completed customer implementation related to the daily credit register in Sweden. While maintaining a high pace of innovation, we have also completed our efficiency program, achieving the EUR 10 million cost saving target. Additionally, we have improved our Nordic capabilities such as AI in customer service and data processing, which create further opportunities for efficiencies and customer value going forward. Now let's look at the key figures for Q4 2024. Our net sales declined by 2.6% due to the continued muted demand for consumer credit information services in Sweden and Finland. Consumer confidence in Finland remains low, while in Sweden, we have seen volumes in unsecured lending and mortgage outside the broker segment increasing. However, broker volumes have declined, which has continued to pressure our Swedish revenue development. On a positive note, Business Insight net sales continued to grow, supported by healthy growth in Finland, Norway and Denmark, as mentioned, with all markets exceeding the 5% growth level. Our adjusted EBITDA margin landed at 30.9%, which was negatively impacted by the decline in consumer credit information net sales and unfavorable sales mix and higher data acquisition costs. Despite these challenges, our free cash flow remains strong, demonstrating our ability to generate cash even in a challenging environment. We have seen signs of gradually improving macroeconomic situation, but the Swedish consumer credit market faces uncertainties due to the new regulations. In November 2024, the Swedish government approved new measures to prevent over-indebtedness, which will be implemented in 2025. Additionally, stricter banking license requirement for consumer credit and loan broker companies were announced as a recommendation by the government in January of 2025. These regulatory changes will continue to impact our financial performance in 2025. However, there are many growth drivers as well. We are seeing strong traction with many of our new services and the overall share of new service remain high, supporting positive development. But let's then review the fourth quarter highlights from our business areas and we kick it off with Business Insight, which continued to show stable growth in Q4 '24 compared to the previous year. Net sales were EUR 22.8 million, growing by 1.3% at comparable foreign exchange rates. As already mentioned, sales growth was strong in Finland, Norway, Denmark. We saw good growth in our SME offering in these markets, thanks to both new services and successful sales efforts. In Finland, we also continue to see strong growth in real estate and compliance. In Sweden, the revenue unfortunately declined following the declining demand for business credit information services as well as ongoing transformation within our SME segment, negatively impacting the sales, but improving profitability in the mid- to long-term. As part of our efforts to drive our Nordic growth story, we are renewing and harmonizing our SME online sites to enhance scalability, speed up time to market and improve profitability. We have just launched a new version of Allabolag for Swedish SME customers. The new Allabolag platform is enriched with new features, improving customer experience and optimizing sales opportunities within, for example, our market package services. In Norway, we are focusing on growing our midsized corporate customer base. We have a strong business information offering to serve a wider range of customers and are investing in sales and distribution accordingly. For example, we have extended our compliance offering and have now PEP and sanctions API available. We have good progress in '25 in our new service offerings like the Business Insight API launched in '24 and are looking forward to enrich both our new users interface user insight and APIs with more unique compliance data. There's a lot of interest into these services. We recently won a deal with a large Swedish customer for our new antifraud scoring solution and launched an improved open banking solution for loan brokers. We have good traction now within the open banking area and have signed several new contracts in 2025. Let's continue here with Consumer Insight. And I think we also got a little bit ahead of ourselves, mentioning open banking already in Business Insight, which is supposed to come in here, but let's come back to that. Let's continue with the Consumer Insight now and the performance for Q4 2024. Our net sales were EUR 15 million, reflecting a decline of 8.1% at comparable foreign exchange rates. This decline was due to the sluggish demand for consumer credit information in both Sweden and Finland. In Sweden, the overall market recovery has been slow. But we have observed growth in volumes outside the loan broker segment, particularly in mortgage and e-commerce-related consumer credit information services. This is a positive sign, indicating that certain areas of the market are beginning to recover. However, broker-related volumes continue to decline, pushing the overall volume development in Sweden to negative. In Finland, the muted market environment and low consumer confidence continue to impact our sales negatively. However, we are pleased to report continued double-digit sales growth for our consumer marketing information services. We have achieved notable progress in improving our service offering. We recently won a deal with a large Swedish customer for our new antifraud scoring solution and launched also an improved open banking solution for loan brokers. We have good traction now within the open banking area and we have signed several new contracts in '25. Overall, while the consumer credit information market remains challenging, we are encouraged by the positive development in specific areas and our ongoing efforts to innovate and expand our services offering to increase value for our customers. Now we will also share some data with you to make it transparent and clear in regards when it comes to consumer credit business. The decline in consumer credit business has been significant, especially in Sweden in the past 2 years and it has pressured our profitability. It is important to highlight that even though we have a #1 position in both markets in consumer credit information services, the market dynamics and business model are somewhat different and therefore, the impact on our results and profitability differ. Overall, the impact of the consumer credit information development on our overall Swedish business and group development is significant. During the past 2 years, we have lost almost EUR 13 million of revenue in Sweden. And due to the higher margin and fixed cost base business model, this has significantly impacted the group's profitability. Consumer credit information is still around EUR 33 million business in Sweden or roughly 50% of the revenue in Sweden. Although the rate of decline in Sweden has decreased each quarter since Q4 2023, the continued decline within the loan broker segment has resulted in ongoing negative development and continue to pressure our profitability. Currently, the loan broker segment represents around 37% of our net sales and it used to be more than 50%, including more active participation of loan bidders with multiplier effect to our credit information demand. In Finland, the revenue decline of almost EUR 2 million has mainly impacted last quarters of the 2024, following the continued low consumer confidence. Simultaneously, the weakening quality of credit applicants has changed the sales mix towards more basic products being sold instead of higher-margin value-added services. This, along with the governmental price increases for basic data has also resulted in margin pressures despite a high share of variable data acquisition costs connected to the business model in general. It is important to highlight that despite these pressures, we have not lost any significant customers and we have maintained our #1 position in both markets. So in the short term, we face regulatory headwinds in the Swedish consumer credit market. The Swedish government has proposed and approved several legal measures to enhance consumer protection and prevent over-indebtedness, which will pressure lenders and credit demand. In addition, the government came out with a new proposal now in January of 2025, of stricter banking license requirement for brokers and consumer credit lenders. This may mean that the challenges with broker demand in the short term continue and may result in market consolidation and smaller brokers exiting the Swedish market. All these regulatory changes are expected to impact our financial performance in 2025, but exact impacts are impossible to know at this stage. Despite these changes or challenges, our long-term competitive position remains strong in both markets. As stated earlier, we are the #1 service provider in the market and we have not lost any significant customers in these past 2 years. We continue to be the go-to vendor for new credit information needs. Our trusted and well-known brands UC in Sweden and Asiakastieto in Finland, along with our mission-critical products integrated into customers' core credit processes, position us well for future growth. Looking ahead, we see many growth opportunities in the consumer credit information as market conditions improve. Improving macroeconomic drivers such as lower interest rates are expected to support the consumer credit market outlook. Additionally, we are well positioned to capitalize on new service growth opportunities in areas such as fraud prevention and open banking. Overall, while we face regulatory headwinds in the short term in Sweden and macroeconomic headwinds in Finland, our competitive strength and position remain robust and we are confident in our ability to navigate these challenges and pursue profitable growth opportunities with new, innovative and attractive services now being launched into both markets. And then now let's continue with the financials. So Elina, please join me and take it on.

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#3

Thank you, Jeanette. Yes. So let's continue with the financials. I will start by briefly repeating the summary how our Q4 financial performance was. So starting from the net sales. Our net sales reached EUR 37.8 million. And as already mentioned by Jeanette, unfortunately, due to continuing heavy pressure in consumer credit volumes in Sweden and Finland, declined by 2.6% at comparable FX rates. But what I also want to highlight is that we actually saw over 5% growth in Business Insight in Finland, Norway and Denmark, which we can definitely consider as very good performance in these circumstances. Adjusted EBITDA, that declined by 12.5% and resulted at EUR 11.7 million. Adjusted margin -- adjusted EBITDA margin declined by 3.5 percentage points to 30.9%. And this was as we expected and as we already mentioned in Q3 interim report due to declining sales, weaker sales mix as well as due to increased data prices and investments into products and commercialization. Adjusted EBIT development was largely in line with adjusted EBITDA development and financial position remained on good level. Moreover, although not visible on this slide, it is good to note that our net income was also impacted by one-off impairment related to associated company Goava shares of EUR 1.6 million. Then moving on to the revenue development in more detail. And as mentioned, revenue declined due to continuing challenges in consumer insights, consumer credit information services. And these challenges caused the business area revenue to decline by 8.1% in the fourth quarter, approximately on the same rate as seen in the third quarter. Consumer credit information business in Sweden was specifically impacted by the loan broker segment decline, but we saw and we are seeing stabilizing signs as the decline in Sweden has decreased quarter-to-quarter and the demand outside loan broker segment grew at healthy pace. In Finland, the consumer credit information business was impacted by low consumer confidence and weaker sales mix. And obviously, the volumes continued on very low level and the weaker sales mix was visible as more basic services being sold compared to value-added services. On the positive note, our consumer marketing information services continued to grow with double-digit rates in Finland. In Business Insight, the development of the business area remained resilient and on the growth side in Q4, resulting at 1.3% growth. And repeating, we saw over 5% growth in Finland, Norway and Denmark, reaching our long-term target range there. In all these countries, the business was supported by good demand for SME services, driven by both new services and successful sales and marketing efforts. Also, real estate information and compliance business continued to grow with high rates in Finland. However, we continue to face headwinds in Sweden, also in Business Insight, where volumes for enterprise business credit information services declined and SME sales was impacted by lower one-off sales and ongoing sales and business model transformation in our premium services. We are developing the Swedish business information offering and premium sales model and also repeating that we have important launches coming in '25 to support the development in the future. Then still briefly looking at the quarter-to-quarter development, one can see from this picture that in Business Insight, the development has continued resilient and stable despite muted macroeconomic environment. And in Consumer Insight, the development has stabilized during the '24. And as mentioned earlier, in Sweden, rate of decline has decreased each quarter sequentially since Q4 '23. And when we talk about consumer credit stabilization, it is important to note that in Sweden, we actually saw around 10% growth in volumes and revenue in consumer credit information outside of loan brokers in '24. This has been driven by stabilizing mortgage and lending markets as well as continued good demand in new verticals such as e-commerce. However, due to the multiplier effect related to loan broker volumes, the significant revenue decline in this segment has pushed the overall Swedish consumer credit revenue into decline. It is important to remember that the average number of credit information inquiries per broker transaction is currently at around 5 and it used to be above 8 still a few years ago. And this obviously has a significant effect in our volumes and revenues. And what we cannot emphasize enough is that these volumes and revenues have direct impact on our profitability due to high incremental margin and fixed cost business model. Then moving on to the profitability in more detail. So adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was EUR 11.7 million. And as expected, the declining consumer credit business and weaker sales mix combined with price pressures in data and investment into commercialization continue to keep the profitability declining. As mentioned throughout the year, we have limited amount of variable costs connected to Swedish consumer credit business, which means that decrease of volumes and revenue directly hit the profitability. Looking at the adjusted EBITDA development in more detail. The negative sales mix impact can be seen in materials and services, our data acquisition costs that increased despite the revenue decline. And as said, this is due to very good demand and development in real estate information and consumer marketing services in Finland that come with variable data acquisition costs as well as then heavy price increases in governmental data in Finland. Also, the weaker sales mix within consumer credit Finland impacted the margin and sales mix decreasingly following the fact that due to weaker quality of credit applicants, our customers are using more basic and cheaper services and less value-added services. Personnel expenses were supported by savings actions and lower incentives, whereas other expenses increased slightly. This was despite the savings in several areas and were impacted by investments into commercializations and new product launches. Under marketing, we have increased our commercialization activities to support future growth, especially in Sweden. And we have started building awareness, for example, for our fraud offering as well as then the unique compliance offering, where we have important launches coming in the short term. IT maintenance costs were impacted by new products and capability launches as well as high cost inflation. Infrastructure consolidation, an important efficiency item in the long term continues and it also impacted our ability to develop and the speed of development in the last quarter. The infrastructure consolidation, as said, is aiming for efficiencies in the long term and continues during the first half of '25. Then still looking at the profitability for a bit longer time horizon. And from this picture, you can see that during the past 2 years, we have delivered successfully significant efficiencies. The savings are very much visible as declining personnel and other operating expenses. This means that we have not only successfully offset the significant cost inflation in recent years, but actually decreased the costs permanently in addition. However, what we have not been able to offset is the heavy decline in consumer credit business that has been a result of structural change in the Swedish credit markets and operating environment. As mentioned, our Swedish consumer credit business has declined by EUR 13 million over the past 2 years. And as stated many times, this is a fixed cost business where revenue decline directly impact the profitability. And repeating, this revenue decline is not due to lost customers to competition, but due to structural changes with credit players exiting or pausing their activities as well as loan broker volumes significantly decreasing. Then on the positive note, despite of the decline in revenue, we have kept our free cash flow stable and on good healthy level. Full year cash conversion improved and was above 65% and free cash flow generated remained above EUR 30 million. Our Q4 free cash flow continued to be on a good level at EUR 7.1 million, but was impacted by change in working capital and timing of payments. Overall, our ability to generate good, consistent free cash flow remains. And finally, what comes to our financial position. Our net debt has remained stable, was net debt to adjusted EBITDA resulted at 2.7x, well below the set target maximum of 3 or covenant thresholds to that matter. Gross investments were EUR 2.1 million for the quarter. And looking at the full year investments, those were around EUR 10 million in '24, meaning slightly less than in '23. Our plan is to further focus on the most attractive investment opportunities and continue optimizing our capitalized expenditure. But now I let Jeanette to continue more with what's ahead of us in '25. Jeanette, please.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#4

Thank you very much. So let's continue with the dividend proposal and also guidance. So let's start with this now. At Enento, a track to capital allocation through strong cash flows and dividends is an important priority. According to Enento's official dividend policy, our aim is to pay at least 70% of earnings per share as dividends and we want to retain a stable dividend track. We see that despite of short-term headwinds, our financial position and ability to generate cash flow continues to be strong. We have a strong cash flow and Enento is a dividend paying company. For the 2024 fiscal year, the Board of Directors proposes to the Annual General Meeting a dividend of EUR 0.5 per share, followed by a second installment of up to EUR 0.5 per share in November. Subject to the Board of Directors' decision, hence, dividend is kept on the same level as in the previous years. Looking ahead to 2025, our operating environment remains mixed. Despite signs of gradual macroeconomic improvement and the stabilization in the demand for mortgage and unsecured loans, demand for business information services remains good. However, we are executing a transformation of our Swedish premium business, which impacts the performance during the transition period. The Swedish consumer credit market is also undergoing significant structural changes and faces considerable uncertainty. Key regulatory changes aimed at preventing over-indebtedness and increasing consumer protection are expected to slow the recovery of the consumer credit market in the short to midterm. And proposed new regulations introducing stricter banking license requirements for consumer credit and loan broker companies would, if decided, likely further impact activity and behavior of Swedish loan brokers, lenders, customers and our volumes. Despite uncertainties, our current strategy remains valid and there are many positive drivers supporting the profitable growth of our business. We expect our net sales to be in the range of EUR 150 million to EUR 156 million in 2025. Furthermore, we remain focused on maintaining profitability and strengthening free cash flow through disciplined cost control, while simultaneously investing in future competitiveness and growth opportunities. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of EUR 50 million to EUR 55 million in 2025. In the year of '25, we will balance between growth, efficiency and long-term competitiveness. We have identified several key areas to drive our strategy forward. Firstly, we will continue our efficiency actions and improve business resilience. This includes streamlining our operations, optimizing our cost structure and enhancing our IT infrastructure to support scalability and agility. Secondly, we aim to retain our #1 position in core credit and business information services. Our trusted brands, UC in Sweden and Asiakastieto in Finland, along with our mission-critical products will continue to be the foundation of our success. Thirdly, we will grow strategically important new services such as fraud prevention. This is a very relevant area in the Swedish economy. Open banking data, which you also refer to sometimes as PSD2 data, compliance and real estate ESG. These services addressing the evolving needs of our customers and open new revenue streams, especially, I would say, also, again, for the Swedish markets. Additionally, we will focus on growing market penetration in new verticals and midsized customers. This involves expanding our customer base and leveraging our new business information offering to serve a wider range of clients. We will continue to transform our Sweden small and medium business. The actions include developing our distribution channels and offering, in-sourcing new sales partners, renewing the sales model to recurring and also when possible to improve profitability in the midterm. We want to execute various contractions to mitigate headwinds related to the structural changes in the Swedish consumer market. Overall, our 2025 focus areas are designed to ensure that we drive growth, maintain efficiency and strengthen our long-term competitiveness in the market. Finally, I would like to thank you all our customers, all our hardworking employees of Enento who has done a fantastic work during a challenging year. Of course, also our partners who is a part of our ecosystem, building this also for the future and of course, our shareholders for the support throughout 2024. I am confident that our strong team and focused strategy execution will support our leading position in the Nordics and ambition to deliver profitable growth as market conditions improve. But now it is time for some questions. So please, Henrik and Elina, join me.

Henrik Soras

executive
#5

All right. There are plenty of questions here. Let's start with a question from Sanna. How do you see market share development over the past year or [ shore ]? Have you lost share?

Jeanette Jager

executive
#6

Have we lost share in market? I would say that we have not lost share in market. What we have lost is volumes connected to market change in consumer credit, mainly connected to macro headwinds, but also in Sweden, we see a structural change of the consumer credit market. Due to that you want to prevent over-indebtedness forward. So that is how we put it.

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#7

Yes, we have -- as we told in the presentation, we have not lost any customers to competition. And then, for example, in SME services in Finland, Norway, Denmark, we have been growing with very good rates and actually gaining new customers and market share there. So as you said, it's about the volumes and structural change in the consumer credit markets that impacts us now.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#8

We keep to be competitive. We are certain about that. And I would also like then to underline, I think that we will become even more competitive forward with the efficiencies we have done, which actually will follow through when we also see better conditions. And in addition to that, we have done several new service development during the last year. It will take a little time before these are actually giving traction in real revenue as they often start out with new contract value. But we feel very confident about the choices we have made to invest in the services that we are now putting in place and we see good traction and we also see that our customers find our services to be very competitive, both in the mature areas and in the new areas.

Henrik Soras

executive
#9

And there is a bit follow-up question related to the topic, but deep-diving to Sweden. So why haven't we performed better in Sweden? And some of our competitors have been growing faster, but UC keeps declining. Even your customer base is different. Why haven't you won more new customers like competitors? Maybe you can build further on this question still.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#10

Well, now of course, it's a wide question when we say Sweden as such. I would say when it comes to the consumer credit side, I would say that we -- as I mentioned, it has been about volume changes. It has not been that we have lost and we don't see a change in that sense that it is anyone who has actually gained it either. When it comes to the SME market, we are doing actions to increase our margin midterm. That is very clear. It will mean that in the short term, looking from the side, the revenue on the top line will decrease, but the margin will increase. And then, of course, we have new services being sold, like, for example, we have new services in Sweden, new products, which haven't even been there before. We have the BI API, which are getting very good traction. But that kind of revenue, new revenue, new customers is not easily seen in the total numbers as of now. So if there's anything you want to add?

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#11

Yes, I think you put it very well. So as we showed in the presentation as well, the key reason behind of the decline relates to the broker volumes decline. But at the same time, we have actually seen, for example, in consumer credit Sweden, underlying net sales growth. We have gained new customers within e-commerce sector, telco. So we have actually been also winning new customers from new verticals outside banking. But due to the broker segment structural change and decline, that is not obviously then coming through in our figures. So due to the -- our very strong #1 position and these kind of big structural impacts, we are the ones who are also being impacted by those changes in totally different manner than our competitors.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#12

We are the #1 -- having the #1 position and we are in the midst of the consumer credit ecosystem of Sweden. So when the ecosystem is changing, that has the largest effect on us. I would also like to underline that when we say that broker volumes are going down, it doesn't mean that the broker volumes are going somewhere else. It means that the broker volumes market is going down. We are still keeping our customers also within the broker segment. So again, we haven't lost any customers. We haven't lost any volumes to a competition in that sense. The market has decreased in volume.

Henrik Soras

executive
#13

Clear. Then there is the next question about 2025 from Sanna. How do you aim to grow in 2025? Do you expect the Swedish market to continue its decline? And maybe we can bundle actually with the other question, how do we see the new normal in the Swedish consumer credit market?

Jeanette Jager

executive
#14

Yes. Well, if we start then with the consumer credit market, then we focus on Sweden. I would say that, of course, the new regulations, we expect them to dilute the expected recovery from the macro giving us the upsides now forward of, for example, one of many is the decreased interest rates. So in that sense, what is the new normal, that remains to be seen. The amount of regulations put into place to prevent over-indebtedness in the Swedish society are many. And I wouldn't say that you can find anyone who can say exactly how this will turn out in the year of 2025. Then on the other hand also, so where are the opportunities then? What do we see ahead of us? How do we see that we grow? I would say that we have put emphasizes on developing new services in '24 already for Sweden and we are continuing to doing that. So that what I simplify sometimes by saying that Sweden is very much one-legged in one way. We need to widen the offering so that we are a relevant 2-legged player. And that is, of course, quite obvious as we have seen what has happened now the last 2 years. And that means that we are investing in a number of different areas which we see and we know that the customers see as the future offering they want to buy from forward. And we have mentioned them many times, open banking, that is an area which now has been launched and we see that we are also having top quality in that service now. I think we will get any uniqueness on that service in Sweden now forward, which will actually also impact our attractiveness. Several new customers on that one actually now already good traction in 2025. I would say another area which is really important for us in the compliance area. So PEP sanction and also beneficial owners. And we are building a unique database in Sweden for compliance when it comes to beneficial owner. And this will be also possible to share with the customers, both via API and actually brand new QE, which we believe is very important for our growth forward. And then we continue with, of course, also that we are doing well already in the new real estate services. And they are both connected to the data needed for ESG reporting in the financial sector, but also innovation like the climate risk report. And I think we all have seen and understood how the climate actually affects real estate and how real estate is getting vulnerable when you look at the total value of the real estate, if you would say, in a stock or in a country. And of course, also what are the risks for that, which will be a very relevant data point for both banks and insurance forward. So with that said, I wanted to put some examples into the services, which many times sounds like shorter variations, but actually, there's a lot of research and customer dialogues behind it.

Henrik Soras

executive
#15

Clear. Then there is one question related to costs from Jaakko, rising data acquisition cost. Are you still expecting inflation in data acquisition? Or are the largest hikes now behind and visible in Q4?

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#16

Well, we certainly hope that those are now there and visible. Finnish government raised the prices 2 times '24. It was not openly shared or expected well in advance. However, based on the current dialogues, we are not currently expecting new big hikes so to say. But as said, it's not sort of like on our control.

Henrik Soras

executive
#17

Clear. Then there are a few questions about Goava. Could we explain what's happening with Goava? Are we interested to do any further acquisitions? And how do we see the business going forward? Will it start generating profits?

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#18

Well, Goava operates in B2B sales and marketing services. It has built innovative services in this area. However, of course, in the macroeconomic situation that we have been in couple of years, those kind of services, overall, the demand has not been, let's say, growing, but quite vice versa. At the same time, the competition in this area is very tough. We continue to follow the situation with Goava. We see that they have good technical capabilities there, for instance. But at the moment, we are not planning further investments.

Henrik Soras

executive
#19

Good. Then there is a question from Jaakko related to the new offering. So regarding the highlighted new product launches, how long you think the sales cycles are for these products and how easy it is for customers to implement the services to their processes? Hence, how fast do you expect these products can turn into material revenue streams?

Jeanette Jager

executive
#20

Yes. Good questions. And I would say that I think we'll need a little bit more time before we can be more precise on how fast they can take off. Several of these services are actually new, either new, new as such that they are totally new and innovative, like, for example, the climate risk report. It doesn't exist. We are the first one doing that one. In other areas, if we see the compliance area, PEP sanction has already had good traction in the development, which we have also reported on the growth in Finland. And I -- we can expect a growth on those numbers in Sweden as well forward despite that this is now not an area where we are known for earlier, but we are doing that repositioning in the market of Sweden that our brand actually can also carry many other areas outside of the credit part. So I think that we have good hopes for where we are going with compliance. I would also say that we have -- when it comes to fraud, that's an area which is getting more and more in the center of everyone's attention as we are seeing fraud developing in billions and billions in Sweden quite rapidly. And many of the services we are providing, open banking, compliance beneficial owners, we also had the new score that we just actually recently now also launched in Sweden, have the first new customers on already. So you could see that had a traction quite fast is area -- an area for us to expand in. But how much when, then I would more lean back to compliance where we have some experience from Finland. There are the areas we still need to come back on when we see how fast we're getting traction. Contract value will, of course, come before revenues.

Henrik Soras

executive
#21

Good. Then there is one question related to our new exciting ESG rating service in Finland. So any first feedback? Are the customers interested?

Jeanette Jager

executive
#22

Well, yes, the customers are interested. We don't have much to say yet, which is -- I mean, it's very new. We just launched it. And of course, we are very proud of that launch, but still too early to say something which is connected to financial aspects.

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#23

But from customer aspects, we do have good conversations ongoing in this area with a couple of important customers. Of course, ESG is an area where we have seen a lot of interest also before, but it has not yet turned into then sort of like buying the services in the scale that we have hoped for. So let's see. But it's definitely a cool new service and first in kind in Finnish markets.

Henrik Soras

executive
#24

Great. Then there are still a few questions left. From Sanna, will you be able to stick to the share of new services at above 10% also in '25?

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#25

Well, of course, the new services '25 will be impacted by the fact that from the baseline, we are -- certain very big services that have been in the baseline have now been there for the 3 years period and will thus decrease. That said, we do have very good new offering in place. And obviously, then it depends on that how well we are succeeding in go-to-market activities, sales cycles, so forth.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#26

And maybe it is also worthwhile mentioning that, that KPI now and the outcome of that KPI is very much based on, for example, new daily credit register in Sweden and of course, also well-packaged premium services in Finland and also good sales results in that one. When it comes to the first one, yes, also connected now to Consumer Credit Sweden, which has been a big topic today. The daily credit register was something we implemented fully last year, went from the old credit register to the daily credit register, which also had a higher price. So in that sense, what we have done during 2024 is that we mitigated also some of the volume decrease with some price increases and new services. And as you have seen, it's a fairly good amount of volume and revenue we are connecting to the Consumer Credit Sweden. So of course, a new service on that base of millions does have an impact in a KPI of that level.

Henrik Soras

executive
#27

Good. And then there seems to be only one question left related to Denmark and Norway. Why haven't we made any bigger moves in Denmark and Norway? Market is good in both countries, but you have declined staff in Denmark to only 4 people. And in Norway, no any bigger actions to product portfolio in brand Proff.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#28

Well, I would say that I disagree actually on that conclusion. To start with, we have invested a good amount in the services, which is the underlying services for freemium and premium Norway and Denmark in the last few years. It has been everything from tech stack to new data points. We are going out with compliance services, for example, in Norway. We are reaching for midsized customers. Having the services is needed there before you go there. So in that sense, I would say we have invested in freemium, premium and also the new segment, midsize, both compliance and actually also credit API. So to start with, have we invested? Yes, we have. Have Norway and Denmark developed well? Absolutely. Have we decreased in Denmark? Yes, staff on site in Denmark, but we have increased staff on site in Norway who are selling to Denmark and are Danish-speaking. So we have just transferred the business to be handled more centrally in a bigger site.

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#29

Yes. And complementing that, so we have also acquired new external sales partner for Denmark. So who is operating for us, which is visible in our other operating expenses and not as FTEs.

Henrik Soras

executive
#30

Good. Then I think we are done with the Q&A and thank you from my side.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#31

Thank you very much.

Elina Stråhlman

executive
#32

Thank you.

Jeanette Jager

executive
#33

Thank you very much.

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