Lumi Education Group AS (LUMI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Lumi Gruppen's Capital Markets Day presentation. So hopefully, you've got up to about 1.5 hours in your diaries. And we're going to -- as well as the presentation, you'll have ample opportunity to ask questions of the executive team and indeed myself at the end of the presentation. To do that, I think you've got access to a chat box, which is hopefully obvious. So please do place your questions throughout our presentation. So it's my privilege to be the Chair of Lumi Gruppen's Board. I was appointed at the AGM last year. As you'll hear today, the company has been on a really exciting journey, and we're going to set out what is a unique and compelling investment case based around a particular set of circumstances in the Norwegian education market. And we believe that Lumi Gruppen is perfectly placed to take advantage of that opportunity. The company is led by 3 experienced and extremely committed executives, and you'll hear from all 3 of them this afternoon. So to my far right, we have Nina Vesterby. So Nina joined us in August of last year. She comes from a huge amount of experience in the media sector and particularly around digital and data, and you'll hear from Nina in a second. Martin Prytz has been with the group, our CFO, in the middle. He's been our CFO -- he is our CFO, been with the company since 2021, comes from a professional services background. And to my immediate right, Morten Danielsen, has been with the company for the last 5 years and is particularly responsible for ONH. And on top of that, you have a very committed Board, an experienced Board that is there kind of helping both uphold a very high standard of governance, but also working with the executive trying to shape the future performance of the business. So I should say this session is being recorded, just so that everybody is comfortable with that. And as I said, please post questions as we go through the presentation. And without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Martin. Thank you.

Thank you, Rob, and thank you for your introduction of Lumi and the team. Before we start, we would just like to share the agenda for the Capital Markets Day with Lumi. So first of all, we will start with a brief introduction to Lumi Gruppen. Then we'll present Lumi as an investment case, focusing on market drivers, market position, the student experience, regulatory and financial profile. Then we'll move into the business outlook, where we will expand on our priorities and the growth opportunities we see going forward. We will wrap up with a Q&A, and we expect the presentation as such to last around 30 to 40 minutes. Okay. Nina?

Thank you, Martin. And I just want to start by saying that as of the moment, I'm also heading Sonans, but we are currently looking for a new MD for Sonans. So hopefully, that will happen next few months. Okay. So the education business in Norway is unlike most countries. It's got a large demand for public studies, and we also have a big appetite for lifelong learning, combined with the need for flexibility with a scattered population. So Lumi is here to take the advantage of that unique commercial opportunity. So let's have a look at our segments. Okay, 2 seconds. So we are operating across 3 different segments with 3 different brands, and we have no public funding. So Oslo Nye Høyskole, ONH, is a private university college and our biggest area. ONH offers bachelor's and master's degrees in high-demand areas such as psychology, business, science and health, and they're a small but fast-growing challenger with a large online part of the business, a lot of study online, but we also just moved into a new campus in Adamstuen centrally in Oslo. ONH are close to achieving full institutional accreditation, and that reduces the lead time to a broader offering and also enables us to grow even faster. Then we have Sonans. And Sonans, they help students improve their high school grades and also get their diploma to access higher education, their choice of higher education. And we do that through exam-focused courses. So Sonans is the market leader today, but it's still a flexible school. And also, we have 50% of online students in Sonans, but also 9 campuses across the country. And then we have our newest initiative, which is Oslo Nye Fagskole. They're a fully online vocational college. They're targeting practical skill-based education fields such as health and technology, and that's 2 areas growing in demand as well. So I would say together, these 3 segments, they give us a diversified offering with proven results, but also possibility for strong growth going forward. So just a little bit on our history. So we have a long history, and it goes back more than 3 decades. Sonans was founded in 1989 and has, during this period, grown to become the best known brand and the largest provider of private exam preparation in Norway. Bjørknes Høyskole was established in 2007 and rebranded to ONH, Oslo Nye Høyskole, in 2021. And then in '23, we launched Oslo Nye Fagskole, reflecting the rising demand for vocational and practical education. Along the way, as you can see here, we made several strategic choices and shifts. For ONH, we expanded our program development, received accreditation for bachelor's and master's programs and scaled a very strong delivery platform. For Sonans, we grew through a solid reputation and the opening of many new campuses, but also that led to us needing to do a post-COVID restructure to transform towards a more flexible and digital offering and to adapt to our cost base. The steps we have taken along the way created a solid and modern education group ready for further growth. Okay. So let's look at some numbers. In total, we served more than 8,000 students in '24, and more than 60% of our students study online. That underscores the flexibility and the accessibility of our offering. We receive no public funding, and we operate a fully commercial and asset-light model. So looking at our growth, it's been stable and resilient over time. We had revenues reaching NOK 451 million in 2024, but both our core businesses had double-digit growth before COVID. But Sonans was highly impacted from COVID, and we expect to see a recovery in the years to come. ONH on the other side had a CAGR of 21% on revenue growth the last 10 years. So we also delivered a healthy profitability, over 13% last year in adjusted EBIT margin. And we have excellent cash conversion and high visibility. And we'll show you a lot about that a bit later in the presentation. But all of this positions us to invest in our platform, our technology and to invest in further program development. Okay. So the investment case. Why should you invest in Lumi Gruppen? Well, we do offer a compelling combination of strong educational outcomes, financial resilience, a long-term market potential. And we've built an online-first flexible delivery model that actually aligns with the modern student. So there are 4 areas that are key to the investment case. So we focus on high-demand programs and high-growth segments. That includes adult learners, online education and vocational training. And all of them are expanding faster than the general education market. We're also supported by strong long-term demand drivers. That includes the persistent undersupply of public study places, which Morten will go through later on in the presentation. It's a favorable political backdrop and increasing interest in flexible workforce-oriented education. Then our students, they are highly satisfied through a leading student experience, and that reflects both in national satisfaction rankings, but also our internal alumni service. And then we have an attractive financial model with strong revenue visibility, high cash conversion and the ability to grow without making large capital investments. So we'll dig a bit deeper into these areas now. And I'm going to start to look at 2 major trends that shapes the future of education, and I would also say that we are very well positioned in. So first, the shift to online education and flexible learning. So if you look at the numbers, we've seen 11% CAGR in applicants to online and flexible programs in Norway between 2018 and 2024. That's a lot higher than the 2% growth in applicants for higher education. So both ONH and Sonans has embraced this shift with respectively, 80% and 50% of their students studying online. And ONH is also a market leader in this segment. And then flexibility is core to our value proposition in ONH with the possibility to move between online and physical studies and a big subject portfolio to choose from. And Sonans is also innovating in this space, because they're offering what we call live hybrid classes. And in addition, both institutions are integrating AI tools to enhance the online learning experience. And then if you look at the other side, there's the lifelong learning trend. And if you look at public universities, they have achieved around 2% annual growth of students over 25. But ONH, they have actually outpaced this significantly with 18% annual growth in the segment over the last 5 years. And today, approximately 60% of ONH's students and 30% of Sonans' students are above the age of 25. So this shows that we are reaching adult learners effectively. So in short, Lumi is not only well positioned for these long-term trends, we are already in the lead. So Morten, over to you.

Wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to walk you through the dynamics of the market now or the higher education segment to say, and show how ONH and Sonans are using the structure of the market to grow. But before we do that, there's 2 things I just want to bring back from Nina's introduction, 2 things that are particularly important to remember from the Norwegian education sector, because I know there's a lot of you in the audience who doesn't know that much about the Norwegian education sector. Number one, in Norway, there is roughly 50% shortfall of public study places. That means that more people apply than the public places provide. And in Norway, public education is free. So what happens to the rest of those applicants? Well, they go to private institutions, or they go working, or life. What's important about that is you don't necessarily see that in other countries. Other countries like Sweden, it's more one-to-one with demand and supply side, meaning that you might not get into your dream university or college, but you will get into a university college. The other thing that's important to remember is that we have something called a private candidate system. And that's when you go from high school to college. And to get into higher education is all about grades. So meaning if you haven't completed or your high school or your grades aren't good enough, you need to retake your exam from high school. For the older segment, there are different ways of doing it, but for the younger segment, that's the only way. And when you have to do that, you have 2 choices. You can either do it on your own or you can join a private candidate course provider like Sonans. So these 2 things, the demand gap and the private candidate system is quite unique for Norway. And what you see here, this is the demand gap in practice. On the left side, you see that last year, there was 142,000 people applied for higher education in Norway and the available public study places is 64,000, meaning there's a 50% shortfall. I'm going to explain to you now how ONH and Sonans uses this demand gap to drive growth. And to go into that, look at this in a 15-year perspective, the last 15 years. Numbers of applicants for higher education have grown by 38%, so 38% growth in applicants for higher education. In the same period, available public study places have grown by 29%. This proves 2 things. Number one, it's a consistent demand gap over time. And number two, the demand gap, in fact, is growing. And when the demand gap is growing, it needs to be met. And Sonans and ONH, we are doing this in 2 different ways. For ONH, it actually is as easy as you might think. ONH develops programs within the areas with high demand gaps. Sonans, on the other hand, is quite different, because as the demand gap increases, it's increasingly hard to get into your dream program or get into higher education at all, meaning that you need to retake or complete or by any means, finish your high school diploma, creating a demand for private candidate course providers. I want to show you in detail how ONH does this, because this is really, really important. And there's quite a few ways that we do this. Number one, so we find a subject area, psychology or business administration with a high demand gap. Psychology has a high demand gap of 4.2x the amount of available public study places. This is the biggest area of ONH. We are one of the largest provider of psychology in Norway with more than 2,000 psychology students. But also look at business administration. You might think that 2.6x demand gap is low, but in itself it's a high number and business administration is also the largest segment of higher education in Norway. So we look at the different segments and we create programs to fit with those segments. So that's one way of doing it. The other way is that we look at where is it a digital undersupply or underdeveloped digital offering, because 80% of ONH students are online. ONH is an online-first university college and our online program is really, really good and have great word-of-mouth effects. So we try to figure out areas where there might be a lot of offerings on campus, but if we can provide it digital first, then it will be a very attractive segment for us to enter. The last area, perhaps the most compelling one is that we've been doing this for quite a few years now. And still, we only have 1.2% market share of the total market, meaning that looking at the years ahead, there is a lot of room for us to grow and a lot of segment for us to enter. And that brings me over to perhaps the most important initiative on ONH's behalf in the coming years, and that's to get something we call an institutional accreditation. Today, ONH has accredited study programs. And as you see on the left side, the development, particularly since 2015, when we got the first accreditation of a psychology program, that's when the growth really started to take off. So from 2015 until today, we have applied for 8 more bachelor's program and 1 master's program. And the application for each program takes something between 1 and 2 years, quite tedious, quite comprehensive. With institutional accreditation, we get to write the right self-accredited study programs. It's exactly the same laws and regulation, everything is the same, but in effect, we will be able to do it faster, enter more segments, more agile, and we will be more competitive. So institutional accreditation is priority #1 for ONH. Let's take a little bit side step and consider Sonans for a while and how Sonans uses the market to grow, because pre-COVID, Sonans was a 2-digit growth company. And the growth was driven by a normal unemployment rate, increasingly hard to get into higher education and average wages. But then COVID hit and particularly 2 things happened or maybe 3, you'd say, unemployment rate plummeted or number of available jobs increased; huge wage increases, making it more attractive to work; and grade inflation was very high. Now what is grade inflation? Well, grade inflation is, during COVID years, exams were canceled and grades were estimated. And when you estimate grades, it tends to be more positive. As you see, both grade inflation and job market levels or the number of job vacancies are now normalizing. So when we're looking ahead, we're looking at a much more normalized market, making room for a market recovery for the private candidate segment. So we talked about the market. And then we talked about how ONH and Sonans uses the market to grow. What we haven't talked so much about is the political and the regulatory backdrop. And to do that, I think it's important to remember who are the students we are talking about? Because you might say that, I know what a student is. Yes, you've probably been one yourself, but that's just 1 out of 3 categories. You have the normal or the regular students, the young people trying to get their first degree, attending campus. They have 2 ambitions, to have fun in the weekends and get a diploma. But you also have a new segment, an online segment, meaning that people want to have an education, but they didn't do it when they were in the 20s. And now perhaps they can't move towards the campus; or some way or another life has gotten in the way, so they can't attend campus studies. So they need an online product. The third area are all of those already part of the professional life. But they might need a second education or to shift their competence. It could be because of AI, environmental, technology, digitalization; all kinds of things that happen globally and locally affects their working life. So they need to shift. And this shift is very important for the Norwegian government. Not only is the Norwegian government one of the most education-hungry governments in the OECD by spending 6.6% of GDP on education, but they have also understood that we need to tailor-made lifelong learning opportunities for Norway. Twice already this year, ONH has been invited to the parliament to discuss how can we facilitate for lifelong learning in Norway, meaning that from a political point of view, private educators are part of the solution, particularly when we look at digital and lifelong learning. A third area, which I haven't mentioned but it's very important is public loan arrangements or Lånekassen, as we say in Norway. All students that get into higher education, be it public or private or private candidate course provider, are eligible for a student loan. And the rules and regulation concerning the student loan arrangement is both stable. And if anything, they are moving towards a more flexible situation and world. And last but not least, recently, there was a government committee considering how should we have people going from high school and into higher education, how is the private candidate system. And the recommendation was very clear the existing private candidate system should be uphold in the future. So when we look ahead, we see a stable regulatory and political landscape. I will take you through student satisfaction now. Perhaps I'm not going to say the most important, I think the most important thing is the employability and the student outcome. But on that way, student satisfaction is hugely important. We exist because we have students. And 3 things are important for us when we consider how can we best create the student experience, and that's to make an online offering that's better than anyone else. I think personally that we have the best digital product in Norway, both Sonans and ONH. And we have that because we keep continuing and investing and testing digital solutions. We have our own tech in both ONH and Sonans because we need to tailor-made it to our offering. And third, we are flexible. And the future is flexible. We need to be more flexible. And to be honest, well, the education sector as a whole hasn't been very flexible in the past, what, 400 years. This turns into a high student satisfaction score. ONH has been the highest rated multidisciplinary university for 4 consecutive years. And we have a strong lecturing culture. As you see in the middle there, on a national survey, ONH students score ONH much higher than the national average on lecturing, both physical and digital. This is super important for us. We also see that in our internal evaluations, where we see that we get high scores on both the digital resources, meaning that the students like our platform and the way we develop digital learning resources, but they also like how the lectures are using the digital resources. When we shift to Sonans, we see kind of the same story. There is a clear evidence of grade improvements, as you see on the bar in the middle. People attending Sonans get better grades. And over 90% of students attending Sonans course get into higher education. And the numbers for satisfaction with teaching courses are really high. So we feel we both have evidence and the experience when we meet our students, that student satisfaction on the product that we deliver is a good student experience. That was the market, that was the demand gap, Sonans and ONH, how we use it, and a little bit about student satisfaction. Now let's head to Martin and the financial profile.

Thank you, Morten. I'll now take you through the financial part of this presentation. First of all, we believe Lumi offers a highly attractive financial profile built on 3 key pillars: strong revenue visibility, strong profitability and robust cash generation. Over the next few slides, we'll provide some illustrations to demonstrate this. But before that, let's take a look at the financial development over the past few years. Lumi has delivered strong revenue growth, profitability and cash flow over many years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a market setback for Sonans, driven by factors such as grade inflation, cancellation of exams, and the strong job market, as Morten elaborated on. And naturally, the group's financial performance was impacted. That said, COVID also demonstrated resilience of our business. We maintained exceptional margins in a very challenging market environment. In 2024, we turned the corner, returning to growth and higher margins again. In a broader time frame, both ONH and Sonans have shown strong financial performance. ONH has delivered uninterrupted growth since 2008 with a CAGR of 21% and expanding margins. Sonans followed a similar trajectory until it faced a more challenging market due to COVID and its aftermath as well. Now revenues have stabilized for Sonans. We have rightsized the cost base. And now with the key drivers moving in a more favorable direction, we see room for growth in the years ahead. That said, given the type of events we saw during COVID and after COVID, the market will need some time to fully recover. Back to one of our key pillars, revenue visibility. This slide illustrates how our business model works, and let me try to explain. 90% of the revenue is locked in by September for the coming academic year, and the remaining 10% is typically secured by January each year. And we divide the academic year into 2 sales cycles, one that starts in mid of February and ends in September, where we close around 90% of the sales. And then the next sales cycle starts in October and ends in January, which then the 10% of the sales. And also, we are here referring to the academic year. Just for your information, we are reporting financially according to the calendar year. But for us, it makes more sense with this type of business to follow it on an academic year. And technically, it's from July to June, the period that covers the academic year. And also, this model not only provides for revenue visibility, but it also drives the strong cash flows in the business. When students sign up in August, September, they also pay the full tuition fee, and then they pay the tuition fee for the second semester in January, leading to a cash peak in the cash position in the early start of semester 1 and in the early start of semester 2. On this slide, we have illustrated the revenue buildup for the academic year '24-'25. And as you also saw on the previous page, we also have something we call recurring revenues. This is mostly related to ONH. And currently, it constitutes around 40% of the annual revenue for ONH, and it's related to the multiyear programs at ONH. And as we expect those programs to grow like bachelor and master, we expect this proportion of recurring revenues to grow as well. We also believe the number speaks for themselves when it comes to visibility and predictability. When looking at listed businesses with a revenue of NOK 5 billion or less over the 5 past years, we see that there's a variance of 51% and a median of 70% when we compare the guidance and the actual revenue outcome. When we look at Lumi for the last 3 years, looking at our trading updates on sales at the start of the academic year compared to the actual outcome, we see there is a variance of 2%. And this means also then that when looking at Lumi, T+1 is majorly locked in. And also when you have the revenue visibility and given the cost structure of Lumi, you also have strong visibility on the profit of the business for the first year. So T+1 is locked in while T+2 is the most relevant period to look at for Lumi. And last, given this operating model we have with tuition payments, et cetera, and the light CapEx business, we see that we consistently also deliver strong free cash flow, except for the COVID years. Now a bit deeper on ONH. As we see it, ONH is outpacing the market. First, ONH, as mentioned, has consistently delivered stronger growth than the market with a CAGR of 21%. And when we look at the market, the growth in applicants to higher education has been 2.1% in the same period. Second, ONH maintains strong and dependable margins by targeting attractive segments through an online-first model. And third, ONH has demonstrated the ability to reinvest capital at high returns. And as you can see on the slide, over the last 4 years, ONH has invested around NOK 20 million in CapEx for new programs that has resulted in NOK 150 million in revenue growth. For Sonans, we believe we turned a challenge into an opportunity. First, we implemented significant cost measures without compromising the ability to grow or negatively impacting student satisfaction. Second, we improved revenue quality and consequently, cash flows through improved credit screening. And third, the business is now more scalable with the launch of hybrid flexible courses, complementing an already strong online position. And then to sum it all up, Lumi has emerged from a challenging period with a stronger, more resilient business model. We offer strong revenue visibility, strong profitability and robust cash generation with a proven ability to adapt and grow. With ONH outperforming the market and Sonans well positioned for recovery and scale, we believe Lumi is set for continued growth and long-term value creation. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Martin. So we've been looking at the key investment drivers and looking a bit back at the numbers. So I'm going to take you through our outlook for the business going forward. So I want to start with ONH, our biggest area. And the most important for ONH going forward is to continue our double-digit growth. And we expect this to happen through our continued program development in high-demand fields, as we have already talked about. And of course, our institutional accreditation will build upon both speed and broadening our offer. When it comes to ONF, we've not talked a lot about ONF during this presentation. And that's naturally because it's a new business for us, and we've just started to offer programs. But this is a thriving business area and that actually outgrows the market and student numbers have been doubling over the last 6 years. So vocational studies, as we already talked about, have strong political support, and it gets students faster into the workforce. So we'll take advantage of that trend and continue to introduce new courses. And ONF is like sort of a mini ONH, drawing synergies from ONH on many areas, but especially in the exchange of competence, administration and technology. When it comes to Sonans, we are returning to normalized profitability for Sonans. And we've already done a lot -- taken a lot of steps, as you can see in the H2 presentation, and that Martin also addressed in his presentation. So we've streamlined the business. We've adjusted the cost base. We've improved operational efficiency. And also, if you look at the market drivers, it indicates some sort of recovery. Job vacancies are going down, the great inflation effect that impacted us post-COVID sort of has leveled out. And we will continue to improve Sonans and the operating model, and we're confident that we'll deliver steady and profitable growth going forward. But, I mean, if the market recovers, we probably will see even more growth. So we've talked about student experience, which is, of course, important for us, because happy students are key to our future growth, meaning we need to continue to invest in the student experience. So our aim is to combine academic quality with a modern digital-first experience that supports learners of all ages. So this means we need to continue to develop tools and platforms and teaching solutions. And then, of course, organic growth is our core business, but we are also exploring opportunities in adjacent areas. So in addition to organic growth, we're looking at possibilities within nondegree education formats. That means like short courses, it might be corporate training or boot camps. But we also see strategic opportunities for bolt-on acquisitions, especially in the EdTech environment, but also content development and anything that could enhance our capabilities and student experience. So we'll, of course, approach these growth avenues with financial discipline, but with a clear ambition to expand and strengthen our position in the education market. So all of this accumulates to our financial ambitions for the coming years. And if you look ahead towards '26-'27 academic year, we've set some clear financial goals across the group. For ONH, we're targeting a revenue growth of 15% per year, and this will be supported by the continued program development, as we've been talking a lot about. So we're going to increase student intake and, of course, this expected accreditation milestone. When it comes to Sonans, we expect 5% revenue growth and 15% profit margins in absence of recovery. So our focus is on stable operations, disciplined cost control and effective market campaigns. But if a bigger recovery should happen, we expect both more revenue growth and higher profit margins. And we will, of course, aim in any case to reach levels above 20%. Then we have our newest initiative, Oslo Nye Fagskole. We see potential for 25% to 30% annual growth over the next 4 years, although it's from a smaller base. So the vocational education segment is growing rapidly, and we believe our online-first approach positions us very well in this market. So that concludes the presentation. And, I mean, in the current environment, I'm feeling good about running a domestic countercyclical service business. So thank you all for listening in. I think we're going to move over to the Q&A now.

That's great. Thank you so much for a very good presentation. So I figured we could dive into some of the highlights of this presentation right away. And I suggest that we start with the accreditation. Could you just remind us again like how will this specifically benefit ONH, and what will you do with then the potential accreditation that we see ahead?

So what I said is that it in practice allows us to develop programs faster, because we can take control of the application process. We still have to follow all the same rules and regulations, but we will be able to increase our growth rate and enter new segments faster.

All right. Thank you. So in short, then a shorter time to market then for developing new courses within -- could you give us like more specific numbers maybe on the time line looking ahead and what we could expect?

Yes. So there's 2 things to say about time line. Number one, we have sent the application for the institutional accreditation and the public authorities say that well, they expect to be finished by February '26. No guarantees, but that's what they say. For us, the time line then shifts from 1 to 2 years for one program in 2 months. But every program is unique. You can have many months or a few months, but we go from years to months.

All right. And then moving on then to the potential within trade school, because you spoke some of this. And I was thinking, could you maybe elaborate a bit on particular subjects that could become a focus area for you if we look at the trade school segment?

Yes. You're thinking about vocational, what we call the vocational ONF?

Yes.

Yes. So of course, as I said, health and technology, that's where we are. That's the areas we're in already. But we are, of course, exploring other opportunities as well.

Yes, you could add, within tech, what we mean is that is technology, programming and development, but also product management, design, project management. And within health, health is the biggest sector. So we want to create programs within the new work or job needs that will arise from growing population and shift in health technology, the jobs we don't have today.

All right. Yes. And if we look at vocational school compared then to higher education as a whole, because there's an online migration trend, of course, in higher migration or in higher studies. Do we see the same thing in vocational schools? And can you benefit from this trend there as well?

Yes. And I mean, ONF is a fully online school and deliberately so, because we do see the shift also in vocational school. And I think, as I also said, we are a scattered country. So it's people living all over, and the ability for the lifelong learning trend to actually take courses from home is, of course, a growing trend. So yes.

And considering this online migration trend that we see, is this also something we should consider when we look at your competitors? Are you mainly competing now with online-only education? Or how does that shift the way that we should look at your competitors?

Well, for our sake, we are digital first. So we first create a program, be it vocational or college. We do it online first, and then we offer it on campus if it's successful. Our competitors usually do it the other way around. And digital is not so important, because all our competitors are much bigger. So their share of campus students is just much more important for them than digital.

Okay. And what are sort of like the key aspects in providing a competitive online offering? Is it having the digital platform to be able to compete, or which are like the key items that you can use to compete online, so to speak? Is it to have the technical proficiency? Or is it -- like how does that compare then to quality of education and other items that students, of course, evaluate?

Well, you saw the internal surveys. Our students are very happy with our platform and the digital space. But, of course, it needs to be scalable and it needs to be like technology future-proofed as well. But maybe you should add something to that.

I personally think that we are in a very early stage of digital higher education. So right now, the most competitive thing that we can do is to be creative in the program design, to make programs that doesn't even exist digital. Going forward, then you will have more normal competition on branding and technology. But right now, it's more about the product itself.

And what then is the very long-term prospects then for the underlying online market? Could we see 30% of the market share? Or what could be the long-term online share that we see in Norway?

I think that's a good question. You are the wizard, so...

Yes. So I am the wizard and I have my ball here. No, I'm not going to speculate on that. But if you look to the U.K. or Germany, you have a much higher share of students doing it flexible or online or in some other way of the classic campus study program. I think we will see exactly the same thing in Norway and Scandinavia in the years to come.

I think there was a shift during COVID. More people started to study online, and that sort of continues going ahead, but the growth is maybe not going to be as big as it was in COVID in the future years. But definitely, you can see, it's the trend.

Yes. Okay. And remaining at ONH, could you just remind us again of the margin dynamics here? How do you perceive the way from where we are currently towards your targets? And what's sort of the contribution then of the vocational school as well? And what is the time line do you feel margin-wise for the vocational school?

Well, yes. First of all, on the vocational part, I think that it's not a copy, but it's similar operating model as ONH, meaning that we benefit from the same reasons why ONH has such strong margins. And as we say, it's an online-only school basically, which means that you don't have the same structural costs like ONH has with its campus, et cetera. So I think the fundamentals for ONH to delivering those kind of margin is in place. It's often more a volume game. I think potentially it could be above that level, but I think it's reasonable to present this number based on the experience we have already from ONH then. And for ONH as such, and the guidance we have of 25% to 30%, we see that we have kind of a business model that allows that level. We are organized in that way. We are able to scale with most of our students online, but it is a business where you have to invest more in resources to deliver the programs as well. So it's over time, but I think we've kind of built a solid foundation that allows us to maintain that level. And we are also, of course, working with operational measures to improve the operating leverage of the business as well, as we go forward. And I think demonstrating the student numbers at ONH with that growth and maintaining those margins, I think, demonstrates that we're actually able to keep track with the revenues on the profit side as well.

All right. That's great. And looking on the cash flow side, mainly then, I guess, for ONH, if we assume then institutional accreditation, how will this impact the investment levels? Will you increase the amount of CapEx you spend on developing new courses? Or what can we expect in terms of investments if we look ahead?

I think that in terms of CapEx as such, ONH should stay on more or less the same level independently of the accreditation as such, because it's more taking away the administration burden as such. And I think it's a very positive thing as well because it takes away uncertainty. And as Morten mentioned, it could take years to get a program accredited and then you have to take the risk by hiring people, et cetera. So I think it at least takes down the risk and has a positive OpEx effect for the business, that you can better plan your staffing and resourcing of the business. And I think the CapEx level we have seen so far is representative for the business. But it's obvious when we see the returns that we show that if we can invest more and get more in return, it should obviously also increase the CapEx spend as well. But I think that's the decision based on the opportunities we see maybe. Maybe you would like to add something, Morten?

Yes, I agree.

Yes.

All right. Great. Moving on then to Sonans. As you mentioned, you have reversed the revenue decline, and we see sort of a stabilization in the underlying market. Could you just remind us again then on the key considerations for the growth target ahead? Like how much is dependent on the market return? How much is efficient marketing spend on your end, so to speak? Which are the components that combine then towards your growth target?

No. As we presented in -- or as we showed in the financial ambitions, we expect a 5% growth excluding market recovery, meaning that it might be 10%, might be 15%. I mean, the market fell by, I think, more than 40% from 2021 to '24. So we do expect a market recovery. But we are carefully watching this and we're not overspending in marketing to get more shares. I think we have the biggest brand. We are the ones that actually put -- you said 90% of our students gets into higher education. So we have the best reputation as well. And we should live on that. But of course, I mean, yes, I think the market might recover even more. And if they do, we will also improve our profit margins going forward.

All right. Super. And on the competition side then for Sonans, how do you perceive the current competitive landscape? And what would you describe maybe as your competitive edge towards the peers that you're facing in this market?

Well, I think I have to emphasize on the quality that we deliver. It's important for us, and we're going to continue to deliver quality education. And also, I think we have a lot -- it's a big market. We have some pure online competitors. We have some that also are on campus. So I think it's a competitive market, but our product is premium towards other providers, and we're going to continue to offer that to our students.

All right. Super. And then I was wondering, maybe this relates to ONH in a bit as well, but could you just elaborate a bit additionally on how the underlying market sort of connects then to the job market, because you mentioned like that's been like a headwind which might be turning into a tailwind. Are we seeing that already? Or how are they like sort of connecting?

Yes. Well, we see that the work market is not -- well, there's fewer jobs available now than it was. And we believe that will take us into recovery. And also for ONH, it's good for ONH as well. And what we've looked upon is that a lot of students chose to go to work instead of go to school and probably they will come back when the job vacancies go down. And then we will see those students come to us to -- they have to improve their grades to get into their choice of higher education or to just get their diplomas. So yes, that will be part of the recovery. Interest rates will be part of it. As you said, so grade inflation is also leveling out at the moment. So there's a lot of drivers pointing in the right direction, but we're still careful looking at that market.

Yes. And then you mentioned M&A. I was wondering maybe we could speak some additionally on this. Are there any potential synergies that you could identify? And what would those be then? Or would this mainly be maybe about, like you mentioned, acquiring like new techniques or new technical platforms that you could use to facilitate current operations? Could you elaborate a bit on this?

Well, of course, as I said, EdTech is somewhere we're looking, because it's important for the future. And even though we're already using a lot of AI in our teaching facilities, we still see that there's possibilities within EdTech out there. So that's, I think, one of the most important. But there might be other companies that have synergies with us as well. As I said, it's a competitive landscape. So I mean there might be some consolidation in the market. And yes, we are campus-driven, and there's always possibilities for synergies in that area. I don't know, Martin, if you want to add up something?

Yes, I agree. I think as we have put on the presentation as well, it's looking at potential opportunities in EdTech. And also, there's obviously finding similar businesses that have the same cost structure basically as us where we can find synergies basically. And even though schools have different type of programs, there's a lot of things that is quite the same, how we operate in school, the campus, the learning management system, the sales solution, et cetera. So there's a lot of synergies, even though it's just a EdTech-related matter. So I think, yes, cost-wise and profit-wise, it's good potential. Yes.

All right. That's great. Thank you so much, and I'll leave it to you for any additional remarks.

Yes. So yes, I don't have any special additional remarks, but I just want to thank all of you for watching. Next time, maybe we'll see you physical, but I mean, the hybrid solution is something that we're good at. So I think that's a good ending of the presentation from us.

Yes. And please don't hesitate to take contact with us directly just also on our Investor Relations web page as well, lumiinvestor.com. You can find a lot of information there, our reports, our commission research reports, our financial reports, et cetera. So please feel free to reach out to us, and we are happy to also arrange meetings one-to-one as well.