Itera ASA ($ITERA)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Itera's Interim Report for the first quarter 2026. We have the same agenda, as you already know from the previous quarters. I start with the highlights of the quarter and also going into the business review section. Then Bent Hammer, Financial Director, our Chief Financial Officer is going through the financial review and some comments about the outlook. And the last section is about Q&A. So it's possible for everyone here to post questions into the chat, and we will look into the questions that you might have. And if you also would ask for meetings after both Bent and myself will be available. So let me start with the highlights for the first quarter. First of all, there is -- if we're looking at the market, it's still a cautious market, and that's why Itera has been quite focused on what we call disciplined execution. So what we have seen in the last 12 months, I will say, we have implemented a new regional structure and increased the operational focus built on the foundation to create a more profitable growth platform as market continues to normalize. So that has been instead of growing from new location, whatever, we are working on to establish the foundation for the future market uplift, I will call it. The second topic is actually, as you will see, we have using AI is already now embedded across all the value offerings we have in Itera. So that's embedded at the core of the growth that we also see. So everything in -- when we're looking at the customer, there's now a very high interest in using AI through the full value chain at that Itera deliver. And then last but not least, we have talked about the operational improvement program that was started in 2025. Now we see more and more effects on that. So we are saying that we'll look at 1.6 to 1.5 (sic) [ 1.8 ] percentage annual margin uplift from the second quarter 2026 as long as other -- all else are equal, right? So we are also looking at this kind of improvement program has been -- will also have impact on the margin going forward. Okay. Let me look into the business review section and look at the figures. We are in this -- the brief for the first quarter, we are focused on the growth and the EBIT margin. Let's just discuss the growth and in Itera, we're always talking about organic growth. So in the first quarter, this 2026, we delivered NOK 223 million compared to NOK 232 million. Of course, in Itera, we have seen some currency impact in this quarter because compared to the first quarter '25 and U.S. and NOK is actually a change of 14%. So that has impact of Itera's revenue growth. So if I adjust for the currency effect, we have 1% decrease in this quarter, while we are reporting minus 4% in NOK. So that's one thing. If we look at on the revenue level. If I go deeper into that one and look at what we call the gross profit, then I take out the cost of sales, the COGS, we have a revenue growth of -- or gross profit growth of 1%. So that's the top line is more or less flat, I will say, from the same quarter last year to this quarter. If we look at the EBIT margin, we delivered 7.5% EBIT margin compared to 9.1% in the first quarter 2025. There we have NOK 3 million in bad debt provision. So if I adjust for this NOK 3 million, the underlying EBIT margin is about 8.8%. So it's almost more or less at the same level in the first quarter 2025. Then we show the rolling 12-month operation cash flow. It was NOK 41 million compared to the same NOK 76 million last year. There is some -- we have quite high advanced payments from customer in the fourth quarter. So that explains some of them -- the weaker cash flow but also we have some short-term working capital impacts on our share incentive program. So that these kind of details, Bent will go through later in the presentation. And the last but not least, also the capacity, we have 686 people at the end of this quarter compared to 707 people, that's 4% down. So if I'm looking at the revenue growth, if I look at the currency effect, it was -- take out the currency effect is minus 1%. If I look at the gross profit, it's plus 1%, and that's also based on the capacity down with 4%. So all in all, the efficiency of the Itera in this quarter is higher than we had in the first quarter in 2025. Okay. Some comments about the market. I said, this market is still cautious, but it's also more selective, I say. And that is also not least driven by the AI. So if you're looking at some of the segments of the market, especially everything connected to AI and cloud and data, there is a quite strong interest for that one. So in general, the market is uncertain, but it's very selective going forward. One of the area that is having a very high interest from the customer is resilience in digital spending, we call it. So everything about AI, cloud, data and cybersecurity, as I mentioned, is quite interesting, high growth rates. And not least also all kind of, we call it AI-driven transformation because AI is now moving into reality. It's not only experimentation. We also see a lot of cases that is driven by AI. So AI is also reshaping the investment decision. So there's much more interest for using AI, and that also triggered a faster decision to also investment in IT. And also the shifts in delivery model, we talked about the last quarter, there has been some soft market, especially in the sourcing model from nearshore or offshore. But now we see there is some kind of improving also in that segments, not at least if you also manage to improve your competencies also into AI because this is quite an interesting model that when you're also using these kind of tools, the decision model is also extremely interesting for clients in the market. Okay. So this is what we are today, 14 locations. We call them regions in 8 countries. And as you know, we have been 18 years in Europe -- in Ukraine. If I look at the different location in Itera, I will say that in Sweden, we have quite strong growth now and also profitability. We have invested and start from scratch in Sweden. So now we have a strong customer, and we are growing steadily with profitability. The same, I will also say in Denmark, we have a decline in revenue last year. Now the profitability is really improving. And we're also looking at quite interesting new cases coming in Denmark. We go to Norway, we have done this kind of regional structure. So that is also improving quite fast. If I look at the Central and Eastern Europe, where we have the sourcing perspective in terms of applying resources, we are also looking at opportunities close by nearby the locations. We're also looking at, of course, opportunities in Ukraine, but also into Poland, whatever. So that is also increasing the resilience of Itera going forward. Okay. As you know, we are talking about 2 type of offerings in Itera. The first part is our core digital services in different sectors. And the other part is what we call responsible business and not at least connected to Itera into Ukraine with Itera program. So I will also, in this presentation, make some comments for each of these tracks. First of all, if I look at digitalization, you look at the sector development. Now you see FSI, financial services industry is actually increasing as share of the total. So that has been because we have new customers coming into that segment. If I look at energy industry, it's more or less flat, the same with public and organization and also some changes in other kind of -- but what you see is actually that FSI is really taking a good position -- it depends on some new customer coming in this area. If we look at what I talked about, AI is really coming across all the sectors. We are saying that it's becoming the new operating system of the business because now AI is embedded, not as an option. So when you start a project, you're always looking at how could you apply AI, and that is also increasing the business transformation and digital transformation by the customer. And the same happened with Itera. So we start engagement or also expand existing engagements, we are always looking at how can AI increase the productivity, increase innovation or the speed on behalf of the customers. So what we see is actually we are moving from pilots to scale. So now it's early scaling. It's not, let's say, play around with AI any longer. Now it's a really core part of the software development processes in the design processes, in the advisory services that we provide, but not that also in the operation model that we have in cloud and application services. So that's what I think is much more mature in terms of using AI across everything at Itera. And what I think also is quite interesting because that's also changing the pattern because in the past, a lot of the customers saying that, okay, I don't want to make a tailor-made solution. I try to reduce it by replacing it by software as a service or some software available from third party. What we also see that this kind of trend is also challenged by using SaaS as a service -- Software as a Service because the intelligence is more important than the application itself. And I will showcase one example that we see in the market. So for Itera, we are bringing -- we're integrating intelligence using AI into the system that run the organization and also look at how they might change the processes because we also need to change the processes to get the real business value of AI. It's not only to do it faster, it's also that we also need to change the processes. And also some other businesses and some of the customers also looking at how they will change the business models as such. So to showcase one example and talking about quite complex SaaS application for, let's say, SMB-related customer -- some of the customers have used SAP because they're providing a suite of applications. It's very interesting to look at all kind of functionality. But for some of the customers, this kind of SAP is too large. It's too complex. It doesn't support the business that it should, et cetera. So some of these players are looking at could they use another ERP platform, which is easier and then use all the kind of services that are needed to support the business processes more tailor-made. So we see some of the applications of some of the engagement where we are using AI agents for the developer and through the whole project that we are using AI to replace functionality that was actually taken care of by SAP into a tailor-made solution that really fits the purpose of the customer. Instead of having, let's say, an oversized application, you can really tailor-made the functionality you need to support your specific processes that makes your agile platform as a smaller company. So instead of using this oversized application, now it's really an opportunity to really tailor-made the functionality and increase the speed of the organization itself. So that's one of the case we are seeing, saying that consultancy company are also going into the space of SaaS application because now we can do more tailor-made, faster and more effective than in the past without the digital agent. So for the developers in Itera, a lot of the developers also have these agents that increase the productivity when we build the solutions. Going back to -- we talked about cloud and application services. Also in this quarter, we have a quite good growth in that area, and this is just to showcase a customer in insurance company, WaterCircles that would like to take the full application responsibility and also on the cloud platform. So in this case, we are looking at how can we improve the application portfolio running on the cloud platform and utilizing AI as such in order to make sure that WaterCircles is even more effective in the business model actually. So this is what we see in this case is SMB-oriented, smaller niche insurance company, but we also believe that, that might also happen for the larger businesses because more of the power of the decision-making for IT is also driven from the business side. So when we have the platform, everything in the tooling and we align with the business needs, we can also be a provider that provide end-to-end solution also for the business side for larger organization. Okay. Let me also have some comments about the responsible business, the second track I mentioned in the beginning. In this quarter, we're also looking at how can we bridge competencies in the Nordics and the needs in Ukraine. So in this case, we mobilized the financial services in Norway. We went to Ukraine, and we had a meeting with National Bank of Ukraine, the largest banks and some other players to see what are the possibilities for collaboration. And this is not charity. This is real business-driven initiatives. And Ukrainians are really looking for how could we utilize the FSI position that we have in the Nordics that they can piggyback. What we learned is actually there's a lot of things we can learn from Ukraine. So this is actually a picture showing the meeting with the National Bank of Ukraine where the Vice Governor of National Banking in Ukraine was present with his team in order to discuss specifically how the payment system in Norway can really piggyback or utilized in Ukraine because we have -- in the society in the Nordics, we have a quite effective payment systems. So some of the topics as you see here, where we discussed, you see the banks we met on the top, and we have brought in some of the key players in the Nordics by Bits, especially Eivind Gjemdal, he joined me to visit Ukraine and you see the topics that we discussed how to mobilize and how to actually co-development cybersecurity operational resilience and protection of critical financial infrastructure. There's a lot of learnings there because Ukraine has been with the financial services in the war zone and what we need to also protect similar the financial system also in Norway. So there's a lot of learning topics there. What is also important is actually how could the European financial infrastructure be more independent of U.S.-based system because that's also part of the topic with the new administration in U.S. And the last but not least, also how to support Ukraine by utilizing capacity that are based in Ukraine. So all these 3 -- 4 topics were on the agenda, and we are looking forward for new opportunities to discuss very concrete use cases where either the Nordic sector have the needs or the Ukrainians have had the need. So that is what we are facilitating and looking forward for quite interesting opportunities going forward. Another perspective and an example is GovTech Lab in Ukraine, which is the country's first open innovation program for the public sector. Our team in Ukraine was applying AI and was recognized as 1 of 3 companies that was selected. It was some kind of grant for NOK 1 million, where we are developing a solution that automate and verify construction documentation to increase the transparency and also efficiency to make sure that all kind of construction is according to the standard that they set. So in this case, we are utilizing AI as a technology to improve these kind of processes. So a lot of things is also happening in Ukraine. This is an example where we have a customer in Ukraine, and we are looking for other opportunities from other Central and Eastern Europe. So it's not only as a sourcing supply part for Itera in the Nordics, it's also a position that we also provide local customer in Central and Eastern Europe. Okay. Let me finish with some topics about the order intake. In this quarter, we have 8% of new customer in this quarter. That's the customer that -- share of the revenue that is actually coming in the last 12 months. So that's, of course, important for Itera that we have a good share there. If I look at the visibility, now we have 75% of the revenue from the top 30 customers. So there has been some kind of concentration that is also based on the 8% of new customer. But we also see on the right side, about 50% of the revenue is coming from 10 customers of Itera. So we still have a very high visibility because we have some very strong large customer as the base of the platform, but we're now also increasing the number of new ones coming in to increase the platform for further -- for future growth. And also, the last thing is actually about the employees. As you see, we have 686 compared to 709 in the same quarter last year. That's a drop of 4%. Most of it is connected to region of Rogaland, where we had some acquisition we made last year, small acquisitions. So that has also adapted into a more scalable setup. And also, we also reduced the overhead. So as I told you, we have increased the productivity for -- during this transition, the last 12 months. So the nearshore ratio or what we call the nearshore ratio is actually the ratio of people in Central and Eastern Europe is about 50%. So half of the capacity in the Nordics and half of the capacity is in Central and Eastern Europe. So that was everything I will talk about in the business review section, and then I hand over to you, Bent, to go deeper into the financial sector.

Thank you, Arne, and good morning to everybody. Let me start off with some of the highlights from the first quarter, where we delivered revenues of NOK 223 million, which is down 4% in reported terms, but only 1% in constant currency terms. So essentially a flat development. Our gross profit increased by 1% in constant currency terms. So yes, again, more or less flat. We had a good contribution, though, from our cloud and application services, which grew gross profit by 11% in the quarter. Other than that, there were some improvement in our billable utilization, but we had -- we still have some mix in that sense, where some areas are going better than others. So there's still room for improvement there. We ended with an EBIT of NOK 16.7 million and an EBIT margin of 7.5%. And as Arne said, this includes a bad debt provision of NOK 3 million, which without that, we would have had 8.8% as an EBIT margin, which again is largely in line with the first quarter of last year. However, our operational improvement program is progressing as planned, and we expect that to have a full effect now in Q2 and onwards. So everything else being equal, this will contribute roughly 1.6 to 1.8 percentage points to our margin. Looking at the development over time, we have been able to keep a stable top line, so a 2% average growth over the past 3 years in a market that has been quite demanding. Our EBIT margin has dropped now down to like around 6% over the average of these 3 years, which is certainly well below our ambitions. But what's important is that we have now several levers to improve both on the growth and profitability. So on the growth side, we see both increased recurring revenue from our cloud migration and modernization and driven by AI and security initiatives. We also have, as I mentioned, some upside potential in our billable utilization, which will improve not only on top line, but certainly even more so on our bottom line. And then we have -- we are targeting some quite significant outsourcing opportunities that we hope to land in the next couple of quarters. And not the least, we have several units that are still in a sort of novel phase, I would say, and have a great potential of growing to become more robust in their target markets like Sweden and the office we established in Rogaland area in Norway fairly recently. And there's, of course, opportunities to develop our incumbent markets as well. And not the least, we have a very promising portfolio of this Enter Ukraine with Itera business advisory services, which could develop into very profitable initiatives. If you break down the revenue type, we see that the revenue from our own consultants is down 2% in reported figures, but it's actually up by 1% in constant currency. As you know, the Norwegian kroner was quite weak in the first quarter of last year and has strengthened considerably, especially against the U.S. dollar. We do see some detraction in our other revenue streams like from subscription services, we're down 3% and that's due to less consumption from one single customer. So nothing in terms of structural demand or anything. It's just a one-off case. So this is just a matter of a mixed -- or change in mix of our revenue more so than the volume as such. So the revenue per employee is unchanged even in reported figures. So that shows that we have a good discipline in our operational operations. Looking at cash flow, disappointing Q1 in that regard. There are some effects that Arne also mentioned that came into play. So we received a lot of prepayments in Q4, which then naturally reverses in Q1. So that's one explanation. We also had like a NOK 6 million sitting in a client account from our investment banker in relation to the share-based incentive program. And there were other working capital impacts as well that hit negatively in this quarter. We do expect those to reverse in the coming quarters. So we expect cash flow to come back to, I would say, more normalized levels. Q1 is traditionally not a very good quarter for cash flow. So there are some seasonal effects related to that as well. In terms of -- sorry, financing activities, we spent NOK 4.5 million more than last year, and that's related to the net acquisition of our own shares. We did a share repurchase program in March and also an employee share purchase program as well. But net, we had NOK 4.5 million in outflow from that. Yes. So like I said, this is a temporary dip in our cash conversion. So we've been more or less at a 90% conversion rate from EBITDA over the past several quarters, down to 64% in this last 12 months. But again, we expect this to be a temporary impact and this to return to more normalized levels again in the quarters to come. Our business is very much a cash-generative business. The quality of earnings is good. So yes, so cash conversion should be high as it usually is. And we use this cash to pay back money to our investors. So we have a pretty aggressive dividend payout policy, I would say, at least we practice it in that way. So for this year, the Board has proposed an ordinary dividend payment of NOK 0.20 per share, but it will also ask the general meeting to authorize it to pay an additional dividend later in the year as we have been accustomed to do. Share price was down to NOK 6.9 at the end of March, down from NOK 9.24 the year before. This is more a sectoral development rather than company specific. The whole sector has been hurt by both the soft demand and uncertainty in the marketplace as a whole. So ending with the outlook. Like we've discussed, the market conditions in the Nordics are still a bit soft, but we see some gradual improvements coming now. Our operational improvement program, we, as mentioned, expect to improve our margins by around 1.6 to 1.8 percentage points just from those initiatives that have been actually implemented over the past couple of quarters and which will now come into full effect as of this quarter. This is, of course, other things being equal. But those savings are already taken out of the business. We expect demand to increase with the continued interest in AI-related projects. There are a lot of more projects that now get a positive ROI because of better ways of doing it, not only the efficiency in developing the solutions, but also the opportunities that AI provide in a business sense. And we have this Enter Ukraine with Itera portfolio of several companies that we now do advisory services to and which have the potential of high revenue and high-margin streams for several sectors in this space. So that's -- yes, so all in all, we look forward to a positive development. And as an end note, I would say this is actually my 42nd quarterly presentation, and it will unfortunately be my last as I move on to become the CFO of Arribatec Group. So there's a changing of the guard taking place in the next few months.

Yes, it is. And so as you already know, we have appointed Bjarte Petersen as new CFO. So we are looking forward to onboard him as soon as possible. And I know that there will be a good transition between you and Bjarte. So happy to see Bjarte coming in as the new CFO. He has a strong experience in Kongsberg, Kongsberg Digital and not at least as the CFO and EVP in finance there. And also, he also have a strong consultancy experience from EY. So looking forward for seeing Bjarte as a part of the team. And also thank you, Bent, for the 2 quarters together and wish you good luck in your next journey. Okay.

It's been a real pleasure.

So thank you. That's all for today. And the next quarter with Bjarte and myself will be on the 28th, isn't it, August. We will report the second quarter. So if you have any kind of questions, please reach out to Bent or myself. And then we are looking forward to welcome Bjarte in the second quarter.

Yes. I'll be here for another couple of months.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all for today.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.