Karnov Group AB (publ) (KAR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear shareholders, I'm Flemming Breinholt, President and CEO of Karnov Group. First of all, I'd like to welcome you to this CEO presentation for Karnov Group's first Annual General Meeting as a listed company. I hope you all are healthy despite the current COVID-19 pandemic. In these times, it's especially important that we take care of each other. That is why we, like many other companies, have taken precautionary measures in connection with our AGM to enable you to follow the meeting by this webcast and by voting in advance. We hope to meet you all face to face at next year's AGM instead. The AGM will be recorded, so it will be possible to view it afterwards on our website. In this presentation, I will make a summary of our first year on Nasdaq Stockholm, including the significant events during the year, discuss the financial highlights of past year, say a few words about the report for the first quarter 2020 that we published earlier today. This will include a few comments on the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences on Karnov and what we are doing to mitigate those consequences. Then I will round up by talking about our latest acquisitions and our growth strategy. Starting with the significant events during 2019, we had our focus on 3 different tasks. First, and in the beginning of the year, our focus was on taking our company public. Becoming a listed company is an exciting but complex process that involves many parties. I would like, therefore, to thank all our financial advisers, lawyers and of course, all our own employees who made a great effort in taking Karnov to Nasdaq Stockholm. I also want to welcome all of you, our shareholders. Our second task was developing and implementing our new JUNO platform. The platform was presented in the summer. And at the end of the year, all former users of the 2 old platforms were onboarding on this joint platform. As a result of this successful onboarding, we were able to close the old platforms of Norstedts Juridik and Karnov Group Sweden. During the rollout of the new platform, we received a lot of valuable feedback from our users. We are, therefore, continuing to develop and deploy enhancements to the platform. This is part of our continuous improvement strategy where we use lessons learned from a project or process to further raise the customer value in our offering. The next step in this improvement strategy will be upgrading of our Danish offering using the technology experience from the work with the JUNO platform. The third task in 2019 was the integration of Norstedts Juridik, which we finalized at the end of the year. We have now merged the 2 legal entities into one, we have moved the 2 offices into one and we have merged the 2 organizations into one organization. Consequently, we can now benefit fully from all the potential the acquisition is expected to bring us. 2019 was a busy year with a heavy workload, and we are proud to have been able to continue updating our services and keep all customer relationships despite big efforts made on the IPO, integration of Norstedts Juridik and the launch of JUNO. Despite all these heavy extra tasks and really big projects, we did not relax on taking care of and driving on our core business. As an example, I can mention that we managed to keep the very high renewal rate on subscription. The rate came in at 97% last year. The 3% that did not renew their contracts were people that retired. This shows our important role in the legal system, and that it's hard to get a higher renewal rate than we have. Another highlight was the publication of industry report, the Future Lawyer Survey, which raises awareness and bring inspiration to legal professionals and law firms in both Denmark and Sweden. Over 3,500 lawyers and legal professional answered the survey, making it the largest survey of its kind in Scandinavia. The Future Lawyer Survey show that a clear majority of the respondents find it necessary for a law firm to adapt to a new reality. This new reality is based on technical advance and innovations, globalization and increased demands on transparency. Further, lawyers expect a shift in attitude between work and work-life balance in the younger generations. In connection with our IPO, we announced the following medium-term financial goals. And medium term in Karnov Group is within 3 to 5 years. Our growth target is to have an annual organic growth rate of 3% to 5%. Our margin target is to increase our adjusted EBITA margin. And our leverage target is to have a net debt ratio to adjusted EBITA of no more than 3x. During our first year as a listed company, we have performed in line with these financial targets. Net sales increased by 6% to SEK 757 million. Of this increase, organic growth was 4 percentage points, i.e., just in the middle of the range of our targets. Adjusted EBITA margin improved by 0.2 percentage points, and leverage ratio came in at 2.7x, well in line with our targets of no more than 3. The good leverage ratio was a result of equity injections in connection with the IPO. It was also the result of a strong cash generation since our operation generated adjusted cash flow of more than SEK 0.25 billion. These financial results have made it possible for the Board to propose a dividend of SEK 0.45 per share that you as a company shareholder now have the opportunity today to approve. Karnov's addressable market is expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 2.4% according to a market study we conducted in connection with our IPO. Our financial performance in 2019 indicates good penetration of our markets. In Denmark, our organic growth was 2.7% in 2019. Organic growth was according to expectation and mainly driven by online sales to existing customers. Our adjusted EBITA in Denmark improved by 5% to SEK 165 million, and adjusted EBITA margin were 39.3%. The adjusted EBITA improvement was due to higher sales, better product mix and good cost control. During 2019, we have upgraded our offering to tax experts and released a new tax magazine in collaboration with Danish auditors association to strengthen Karnov's position within the growing tax area. We have also entered into a collaboration with the law firm Horten to promote e-courses on the Danish market. In Sweden, net sales increased by 5.6% to SEK 336 million, driven by strong performance in the online business, partly offset by an expected decline in the offline business. Adjusted EBITA margin increased by 9% to SEK 113 million and adjusted EBITA margin to 33.7%, driven by higher net sales and good cost control, while higher depreciation and amortization had a negative impact. During 2019, we have delivered good results in the municipalities area where we've increased our presence. This is a growing area where we see opportunities to grow even more during coming years. We have also launched improvement to our tool Avtalsguiden, which helps our users with agreements and contracts using templates. Also this year is off to a good start, especially considering that the corona pandemic began to reach our markets in Denmark and Sweden in the quarter. Our organic growth was 2.3%, which is a little less than in the preceding quarters, but we estimate that the corona pandemic effects have reduced our growth by approximately 1 percentage point. And then we are not far from last year's organic growth of 4%. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an insignificant impact on our online business, which accounted for approximately 70% of our sales in the first quarter. However, our offline sales has been affected to some extent. Thus -- there, the decline has been mainly in books and training courses. However, we expect to partially recover this decline in offline later this year. We also managed to keep adjusted EBITA margin at the same high level as in the first quarter last year despite personnel expenses increased in this quarter as the split between internal hours spent on maintenance and capitalized development is back to a normal split again. In 2019, cash flow was strong in the first quarter, and cash flow increased by 4% in the first quarter of this year. So in summary, you could say so far so good. We keep growing despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Let me therefore say a few words about the pandemic and what we have done to support our employees and the society. The COVID-19 pandemic affects us all. Many of us have a friend, a relative or a colleague that has been infected. In Karnov, we have taken precautionary measures, for instance, by having our employees work from home during March and April. Additionally, we are, of course, strictly adhering to the regulations and recommendations from the authorities where we operate. Our ambition has been and will continue to be that our employees can stay healthy despite the pandemic. Their health and well-being are our overriding concern currently. I should also mention that we have set up a special section on our platforms in Denmark and Sweden, where we have compiled all legal and regulatory information about the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, these sections comprise more than 20 new laws and regulations, close to 40 law changes and numerous guidelines and advice related to the pandemic in Denmark and Sweden. This service has been very well received and there have been many searches on our platform related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We strongly believe that it is extremely important that all relevant persons have access to the information they need during these critical times. We have therefore decided to provide this information both to our existing customers and to all organization that needs the information, and we are doing the latter free of charge for a period. That's one way we assume our responsibility to help society in this serious situation. Our growth strategy comprise of the following 5 components: adding more content and values through data-driven features and tools, expand the product offering through innovations, expand into adjacent and more verticals, geographical expansion and accelerated growth through acquisitions. The acquisitions we are aiming for should either be market entry acquisitions, vertical expansion acquisitions or technology bolt-on acquisitions or even better, a combination of these 3. We are constantly adding more and better value to our platform, and this is our part of strategy to grow organically. This increased, of course, the benefit customers have from our platform and help us in renewing of contracts. During 2019, we also, among other things, introduced search algorithm based on artificial intelligence on Notisum's platform in Sweden. This is an example of how we help users become more efficient. Our product Avtalsguiden helps lawyers with agreements and contracts using templates. This is another example of how we help our users in taking better decisions faster. Over the next coming years, we intend to grow organically, adding more content to the platform and developing new data-driven features and tools. During 2019 and the beginning of this year, we have invested in 4 companies. The first acquisition which we made in 2019 was to take a minority position in Procurementlink. This is an example of a vertical expansion since the Danish legal tech start-up company specialize in procurement law, a market segment that we currently don't address in an adequate way. Procurementlink both has stand-alone potential and can bring more value to our digital platform. The next acquisition was in the beginning of this year when we invested in the Danish legal start -- legal tech start-up company Ante and took a 19% position. Ante is developing new technologies expected to be implemented in our digital platform over time to provide additional relevance and efficiency for our customers. Therefore, this investment is an example of a technology bolt-on acquisition. The third acquisition was in March this year when we formed a 60%-40% joint venture with LEX247 called LEXNordics. This is another vertical expansion acquisition since LEX247 is a cloud-based legal enterprise practice management solution that represent a new way for us of delivering even more value to the customers. Further, this joint venture will operate in the whole Nordic region. Our fourth and latest acquisition is an example of a geographical expansion because it will be our way of entering the Norwegian markets. Towards the end of March, we concluded an agreement to invest in Strawberry Law. This company has now been renamed Karnov Group Norway. We and the Strawberry team in Norway are well aligned with each other, and we share the same view on how to create strong businesses results by combining the strengths of both companies. In this combination of business, the legal research platform will be based on a platform collaboration between Karnov Group Norway and Lovdata. This collaboration with Lovdata is an important milestone for us as Lovdata is the most widely used legal information solution in the Norwegian market. The new company Karnov Group Norway is expected to launch its offering in the second half of 2021 with a focus on annotations, commentaries and EU material. Looking forward, we intend to continue to leverage our position in our home markets while investing in geographic expansion. We want to grow in 2 dimensions: first, highly specific jurisdictional products based on strong network of authors; and secondly, general jurisdictional products for international purposes. The latter could, for instance, involve the growing environmental health and safety market. With strong cash generation from the core business, a strong cash position and good credit line, we are financially prepared for additional investments and acquisitions. I want to conclude this presentation by thanking all employees for their dedication during 2019. Our employees, authors and customers are key elements in our success and together, we are a strong team. I'm looking forward to, together with all employees, continuously further developing our company and realizing our plans. I also want to thank shareholders for your trust in Karnov Group, and I hope to see you all again soon. Thank you.