Humana AB (publ) ($HUM)

Good morning, and welcome to Humana's Q1 presentation. With me today, I have our CEO, Nathalie Boulas Nilsson; and our CFO, Christoffer Herou. They will walk you through Humana's development in the first quarter. And after that, we open up for questions. [Operator Instructions] And with that, I leave the word to Nathalie. Please go ahead.

Thank you. We will give you a short introduction, followed by financials and operational performance. We will then wrap it up with concluding remarks and open up for questions. Humana is a Nordic care provider with a high degree of specialized care. We have a well-diversified portfolio of services in the Nordic countries with Sweden being the largest market, followed by Norway and then Finland. As regards to our Q1 highlights, we are expecting -- executing on our plan to reach our financial targets, and we have in Q1 seen that the efficiency program that, to a large extent, targets the Swedish market as well as the new sales and marketing organizations are beginning to show on the margin, both through lower costs and through an increase in occupancy during the quarter. The adult and the elderly care segments in Sweden have an improved occupancy and even the Child and Youth segments experienced an increase in the later part of the quarter. We completed the acquisition of Familiehjelpgruppen in Norway with a yearly turnover of NOK 120 million on 1st of February. We continued with bolt-on acquisitions in our targeted areas with the acquisition of Homsan in Sweden with LSS units in the Stockholm area and a yearly revenue of SEK 63 million. We have, during the quarter, as mentioned already in our previous call, signed an elderly care home in Sollentuna with 100 placements, and we have also, during the quarter, signed lease contracts for 4 new LSS group homes. The new contracts will add approximately SEK 140 million in yearly revenues. We're also very proud to have been recognized for the fourth time as the most sustainable brand within the care and healthcare sector in Sweden. And we have, during the period, continued with buybacks of our own shares amounting to SEK 37 million. On the topic of executing on our strategic agenda and activities to reach our financial targets, we have during the quarter, opened a few new units within primarily disability. This is one example of a highly specialized LSS group home with 4 places for customers with complex behavioral problems and comorbidity. It is designed with several exits, special features and smaller common areas in order to keep the staff safe and reduce friction between clients. The unit has a high staffing ratio and the staff has a high competence level. We opened the new unit less than 2 months ago. And with our new sales effort, it is already full.

The development in revenues show a year-over-year net decrease of SEK 450 million. The primary reason for the decrease is that we have divested the Finnish Elderly Care segment, headwind regarding currency exchange rates and also decreased number of customers within personal assistance. Also during this quarter, we have been active in continuing to build our pipeline to secure organic growth going forward. Going over to the EBIT development. The adjusted EBIT in the quarter is at the same level as last year with SEK 108 million. The segments all show improved underlying profitability, but temporary costs had an impact on the quarter amounting to SEK 7 million. The bridge comparing the current LTM EBIT to last year consists of calendar effects, the divested Finnish Elderly Care as well as currency exchange effects. Except from that, the underlying LTM EBIT remains flat. We have been active in our capital allocation during the last 12 months, and this has continued in the current quarter as well. We have used our free cash flow to an acquisition, dividend as well as the share buybacks. The share buybacks amounted to SEK 37 million in the quarter and SEK 135 million in the last 12 months. At quarter end, we have shares in treasury corresponding to 8.3% of the total number of shares.

As mentioned previously, we have a year-over-year improvement in the margin from 4.3% to 4.6% in the quarter. This is a result of both increased occupancy and the efficiency program starting to show effect. We acquired Homsan AB with 13 LSS daily activity units in the Stockholm area. With this acquisition, we doubled our daily activity units and establish a good platform to continue to grow from. We welcomed our new customers and employees from Homsan to Humana on 1st of April. We have signed 5 new units in our strategic growth areas, Elderly Care and LSS Group Homes, which will add yearly revenues of SEK 140 million and more will come. Within Personal Assistance, the profitability is in line with last year, which is an accomplishment considering the low price increase we had this year. We are continuing to reduce the outflow of customers, and we expect to reach net zero targets later this year. Worth mentioning is also that the trial regarding the claim process versus the state is taking place currently. Norway has a stable operating margin year-over-year of 5.2% in Q1. Taking currency effects into account, we have a small increase. As mentioned previously, the acquisition of Familiehjelpgruppen has been completed with an annual revenue of NOK 120 million. We welcomed our new Norwegian clients and colleagues from Familiehjelpgruppen to Humana on 1st of February. As previously communicated, we have been party to a legal proceeding concerning overtime compensation for a period of time in 2023. The court has now ruled that we cannot disregard the claim of back pay, and we have initiated investigations and negotiations with the union representatives. In Finland, we can see that the new sales organization is beginning to give effect during the quarter. We have an increased occupancy and profitability within Child and Youth, which is our largest segment. At the same time, we have growth costs of approximately SEK 3 million for ramp-up units and costs related to harmonization of depreciation periods of almost the same amount due to the implementation of a new ERP system in the period. These effects are, however, temporary. The open care services saw a new small decline in the quarter after having stabilized in the second half of 2025.

Going over to our financial targets. We are not yet where we want to be. Regarding the organic growth for the quarter, we are at minus 0.5% and plus 0.7%, excluding personal assistance. For the last 12-month period, we are at a negative figure. But with our signed pipeline, we have a positive outlook on our organic growth going forward. I just talked about the EBIT development on our previous slide, and Nathalie will get back to our profitability target on the next slide. The leverage ratio is below our target of 3.0.

We are on track with our initiatives to reach our EBIT target. Due to our investments in digitalization and AI, we have previously not been able to see the effect on the bottom line. A large part of the efficiencies targeted our Swedish operation, and this was the first quarter since the program started that we can see improvement on the bottom line. We continue to see an increased usage of our AI tools, and we also have several more pilots in the pipeline. Our new sales and marketing organizations that we introduced in the beginning of the year are also beginning to show effect, especially towards the last part of the quarter. We have started a few new units during the period, and we have continued to sign new contracts in our targeted higher-margin areas. So also here, we are satisfied with the development. In addition, we have completed 2 bolt-on acquisitions in our targeted areas that will help us reach our targets. Our focus going forward is to fill unused capacity, continue to build our pipeline for organic growth, complete our efficiency program and continue with our AI and digitalization efforts. All in all, we are in a good position for margin improvement going forward. And with that, we conclude and open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Björn Olsson from SEB.

On the overtime compensation dispute in Norway, could you give us any indication on sort of how we should calculate this on a back of an envelope basis?

We're not quite ready to calculate it yet. We just received the verdict. We're now going back and retrieving the data that then will be negotiated with the unions. But we do currently assume that it will not be material. And if the data would show otherwise, and we will know that shortly, we will communicate that.

Okay. And on the other legal side of things, on the IVO case, could you give us any sort of time line on how you expect things to proceed given that you plan to take it to a higher instance as well?

This part of the trial will end on Wednesday and then traditionally, it takes somewhere between 4 to 6 weeks to get a verdict. After that, if we win, we are fairly certain that the state will appeal. So then it will take another year, I'm sure, at least. If we lose, then of course, we will have to look at the verdict and see if we want to appeal or if we will hold at that point.

Okay. So quite some time ahead until something materializes. And just finally, on the occupancy trend in I&F, do you expect the efficiency programs to add further margin improvements? Or can we expect the improvements to be sort of taken home by now?

No, we do expect further margin improvements already this year.

The next question comes from Julia Angeli Strand from Handelsbanken.

So my first question is on Personal Assistance. So I was wondering if you could give us an update on how you expect volumes to develop and when we could expect a zero net outflow of patients?

Yes. On the zero net outflow, we are expecting it to come already this year towards the end of the year is what we have calculated with. We did see a positive trend again Q1 this year compared to Q1 last year. We've been talking previously about that we've halved -- every time we've had a reporting, we've halved the outflow, and we continue with that trend. Q1, we've had a really good inflow of customers. We had a little bit higher mortality of customers that left than we normally have during Q1. If we had had the same amount of mortalities in Q1 this year as last year, we would have been practically on net zero already this quarter. So we are seeing good improvements.

Okay. That's clear. And then on what you said on unused capacity, is there any specific areas? Is this towards elderly care? Or where do you see the most unused capacity that is either sort of waiting or can give more potential?

Yes. The unused capacity is primarily not within elderly care. We have very full units within elderly care, and that's also why we're so excited about our new potential units coming up because we see that we fill them in a very good pace, and we keep them full. We have more potential in the Child and Youth segment in general in all of the countries, although in Finland now, we have a very high occupancy getting there. We can increase a couple of percentage more, and then we're pretty full at that capacity. And then we have a little bit capacity left on the disability side as well.

Okay. And then just a last one for me, a broader question on the financial targets. I can see that you have ticked some of the boxes on the bridge to reach 7% margin. But I was wondering when do you think you will reach those targets? I know those are midterm. So should we expect this to be reached within 5 years, 3 years? Or how do you think about that?

Definitely not 5 years, faster than that. So 2, 3 years, something like that.

Okay. And then just the last one, if I may, on that topic. One of the boxes is related to strengthening sales and marketing capacity. Could you say something about what efforts you will do in that area?

Yes. We introduced -- in Finland, we introduced a new sales organization at the very beginning of the year. We centralized sales, which means that we are following up on a different level. It also means that we're intensifying. We're having a lot more efforts together with the SOTE regions with continuous meetings, also inviting them to our units and so on, whereas previously, it's been up to the different unit managers to fill the unit themselves. So we are offloading the unit managers and centralizing that. And we see a positive impact of that. In Sweden, we have started up a marketing effort as well where we haven't had before. So now we have continuous sales meeting. We are looking at what are the requests we're getting in, where do we have empty spots, very much looking at improving the process. And also, we have a new sales organization that we have negotiated and that is coming into effect.

The next question comes from Philip Ekengren from ABG SC.

Starting, just going back to the efficiency program now showing some results in Sweden. Is it possible to quantify the run rate savings achieved so far and perhaps also versus the total program target? I'm trying here to ask how much is left to come throughout the rest of '26?

Yes. So as previously mentioned, we have -- we are on good track with the efficiency program. So far, not all measures have come into the LTM figures yet, and we expect it to do so at the end of this year, beginning of next year. And also, we have had these counteracting investments in digitalization systems and so on that is burdening these efficiencies so far. But at the end of this year and beginning of next year, we expect to see the full effect in the run rate.

Okay. Got it. But you don't want to quantify it more than that?

No, not at this point.

Okay. Got it. In occupancy in Child and Youth, obviously still down a bit year-on-year, but you talked about a recovery at the end of the quarter. Do you think that is sustainable? And if so, what gives you the confidence in that?

It's always very hard to predict the market movements on the Child and Youth and the HVB segment in Sweden, if we look at that because there are so many different factors playing in. But we do have -- we do see an increase, which gives us a bit of comfort. We have received -- we've talked previously about changing some of the profiles of our units to fit with the new type of demand. We now have 7 units, to give you an example, taking care of young boys with criminal backgrounds. We didn't have that before. The process of adjusting our portfolio to the need, the changing need takes some time with the IVO permits taking around, currently, about 14 months to change a permit. So we are seeing some effects of our own efforts that we've made, and we're also being following up much more closely on the requests that we get and making sure we match that in an efficient way. So we are hopeful.

I appreciate that. And then just a bit on the M&A, if I may. Familiehjelpgruppen contributed SEK 22 million this quarter. Could you say anything about the margins here and also perhaps also a bit on the margins in Homsan just for us to forecast the future to help us a bit on the way.

Yes. We usually don't go out with the margins when we make acquisitions. We look at the revenue and disclose that. That bolt on -- all the bolt-on acquisitions that we are targeting and that we have now completed are in higher-margin areas. So they will contribute to improving our margin.

And then perhaps a last from me. Finnish margins came down this quarter. You talked about an impact between start-up costs and the depreciation harmonization. First of all, I don't know if I missed this, but could you quantify the split? And also perhaps also just is this the last quarter with start-up costs in Finland?

We hope that we will continue to have start-up costs because we are expecting to start many more units in Finland. But I think it will start paying off from next quarter that we will get them starting to fill them up. Absolutely. It's about half and half if you look at the depreciation harmonization due to the ERP system and the growth costs. It's about half of that. So growth cost of around SEK 3 million and more or less the rest on the harmonization.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Kristofer Liljeberg from DNB Carnegie.

Just 2 questions coming back to Finland. So you're saying your margins should start to improve from next quarter. What type of more normal or sustainable margin do you foresee for Finland in the more near to medium term?

Yes, we're expecting it to increase quite a bit from where we are currently in this quarter.

Already this year or?

Yes.

Okay. That's good. And then just on the cost that you do classify as nonrecurring, is all of that the legal cost for the case against IVO?

No. So that's split. So half of it is in that process and half of it is transaction costs related to these M&As.

Okay. And the legal costs, do you expect them to continue to be at a similar level or it will go down when the court hearings are done?

We would have some more costs a little bit further up in the time, but then they will decline, of course.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

Thank you. We do not have any written questions at this time. So we would like to thank all for listening and wish you a good day.