NNIT A/S (NNIT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to this NNIT Investor Presentation for Q4 2025. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I now turn the call over to your speakers. You may now begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining this webcast. My name is Par Fors, and I'm the CEO of NNIT. Here at our headquarter in Copenhagen, I'm joined by our CFO, Carsten Ringius. And together, we will present our fourth quarter and full year '25 results that we released yesterday evening. Before we continue with the presentation, I would like to share a few words related to the announcement we sent out on January 15. There I communicated that have decided to leave NNIT at the end of July or earlier if a new successor is appointed to whom I can hand over the baton. And the reason for this move is actually I decided to move back to Sweden to be with my family. So there's really no drama around this. And during this time, until the very last day, I will stay fully committed and energized in continuing to build a stronger NNIT together with all the great people here. Well, that's enough about me. So let's turn to Slide #2. I will walk through the business highlights, including a regional update. After this, Carsten will go through the group results, update to our financial disclosure and our financial outlook for '26. Before heading to the next slide, please pay attention to the disclaimer in the bottom of this slide. Let's turn to Slide #3. The financial performance toward the end of the year was below our initial internal expectation, while we adjusted our outlook on December 22. The quarter was impacted by continued market unrest, especially impacting our business in Europe. Additionally, we saw an unexpected temporary slowdown in contract signing in U.S., including project postponement and rephasing of revenue. I will go more into details into this later in the presentation. As a result of the shortfall in Europe and in U.S., the organic growth was minus 7% for the quarter with a corresponding margin of 4.2%. If adjusting for the U.S. revenue rephasing, organic growth was minus 3% and margin would have been 8%. The full year result ended in line with the latest outlook on both organic growth and profitability of minus 2.8%, plus 5.3%, respectively. Please turn to Slide 4. As in the prior quarters, especially our European business has been impacted by the slowdown in the Life Science IT consultancy industry. Our Tier 1 customers are still hesitant where we see project scope being more narrow and contract size being less value compared with what we had seen in the past. Despite we do see a solid business opportunities entering the lower tier segment is a good example. On a positive note, we have recorded our highest customer satisfaction score of 4.6 for '25, which underpins that our customers value the work we deliver. Furthermore, we do also see that a customer of NNIT is a long-term customer due to the strong collaboration in quality and that we have to maintain and create healthy relationship over time. During the quarter, we have signed strategic important contracts across our regions. In Europe, we have continued to broaden our customer portfolio with a lower-tier segment, ending the year with 20 new contract customers in those segments, whilst also expanding engagement with our existing customers. Additionally, we have entered a new agreement in the public segment in Region Denmark, with the Danish Health Data Authority, Sundheds datastyrelsen and with the Danish Agency for IT and Learning Styrelsen for IT and Laering. At the webcast for the Q2 announcement, we shared that we have continued to execute on our strategy by strengthening our go-to-market approach, refining our operational efficiency and continuing the focus to structurally reduce our cost base. In the fourth quarter, we have continued to progress on the strategic initiatives, laying the foundation for '26. On top of that, we have addressed our organizational footprint to accelerate our strategic focus in the Life Science segment and in the public segment. I will come back to this later in the presentation. Please turn to Slide 5 for the region's performance review. As we have mentioned before, 3 out of our 4 regions operate in the same Life Science domain. Still, their performance can vary quite a bit quarter-by-quarter. This difference between regions is primarily due to varying market position and market characteristics as well as different macroeconomic effects across different geographies. As alluded to before, Region Europe has continued to be significantly impacted by the market unrest affecting our customers. We have observed a different customer behavior, especially with our Tier 1 customers where new larger engagement have been absent to the same level as we have historically seen. This has been the primary reason for the material organic decline in Q4. However, we do see some very good traction with the lower-tier segments, where we continue to bring in new customers during the quarter. Regional operating profit margin increased compared with last year. We are pleased that we have been able to expand the margin despite a material decline in revenue. This was driven by stronger project execution and capacity adjustment done in previous quarters as well as saving on regional overhead costs. The underlying organic growth performance in Region U.S. was an underwhelming at 2% due to unexpected temporary slowdown in contract signing and postponement of several projects. Furthermore, a rephasing of revenue has been made in the fourth quarter due to revenue recognition adjustment made related to previous quarter. This resulted in a reported organic growth decline of 27%. The margin was close to 8% as the timing of the adjustment happened toward the end of the quarter with limited opportunity to further reduce the cost base. However, adjusting for the revenue rephasing, the margin was 31%, supported by structural cost takeout carried out earlier in the year. For Region U.S., we do expect the region's revenue and profitability will normalize as postponed projects resume and new customer contracts are finalized, thereby supporting a return to previous performance level in the coming period. The reported organic growth for Region Asia was down 13%. However, we had a one-off last year boosting last year's revenue by DKK 9 million. The underlying organic growth was 10%, driven by hard efforts bringing in new local customers whilst continuing to grow larger customers. We are pleased with the underlying development as uncertainties persist around the trade war and how it will affect the region going forward. The increase in regional operating profit margin compared with last year is mainly due to increasing utilization and a solid focus on execution. Region Denmark delivered a strong growth of 8%, driven by the Public segment and SCALES who continued to solidify its position as a leader in Denmark within Dynamics 365 Microsoft solutions. As mentioned on the last slide, Region Denmark won important contract within the Public segment during the quarter. We are happy to see that our strategic industry focus toward public segment is paying off and that we have built a solid business, which will be further supported with the new agreement in '26. Profit and margin improved compared with last year, even though regional overhead cost was negatively impacted by around DKK 5 million in Q4 as in the previous quarter. Adjusting for that, the margin would have been 10% last year, which entails a margin increase of more than 5 percentage points in Q4 versus last year. As the other regions, Region Denmark have sharpened their project execution and leveraging cost reduction initiative carried out earlier in the year. Please turn to the next slide. As I mentioned, we have reassessed our organizational footprint to accelerate our strategic industry focus. In Q3, we restated the figures for Europe and Denmark to reflect all Life Science-related business in Europe. It has resulted in Europe, U.S. and Asia to be fully Life Science focused. In Denmark, we have introduced 2 distinct areas: Public covering all related activities and pass-through, led by Jens Maagoe. Jens bring valuable experience from our customer application development area and has been with NNIT for a number of years. It also meant a farewell to Casper [indiscernible], who has pursued another career opportunity outside NNIT. I would very much like to thank Casper for his strong dedication over the past many years and welcoming Jens to the management team and congratulate him to his new position. The second area in the new organization setup is consolidation of all Microsoft Dynamics 365 activities. We have transferred our Microsoft-related activity to SCALES to ensure an even stronger product offering within the Microsoft space. Lastly, I would like to mention AI, of course. It is a high priority for us on our agenda as well as it is for many other companies. We are ramping up the AI effort as AI is an integral part of our solution portfolio and a key element of our strategic direction for '26 and beyond. Therefore, we have delivered -- we have established a global AI center of excellence led by Sam Lehman to ensure a structured approach on how we think, implement and work with AI towards our customers and in our solution and in our internal work. Please turn to the next slide. I will briefly go through the figures later in the presentation. Carsten will go through the details and assumptions behind it, including an update to the financial disclosure. Before we head into the outlook, some terminology changes will be done in connection with the Q1 trading statement in May. Organic growth will now be referred to as constant currency revenue growth. Group operating profit margin, excluding special items as group EBIT, excluding special items. For '26, we target constant currency growth in the range of 0% to 5%. Group EBIT margin, excluding special items, 6% to 9%. Special items will be significantly below the level of 2025, which was SEK 83 million. We expect the market unrest to continue to have a dampening effect on our business, including a continuation of our current Tier 2 one customer behavior. For your reference, the market outlook for our Life Science IT consultancy services was downgraded from around 4% to 2.8% by Everest Group in January. Our financial aspiration toward '27 continues to be suspended. Please turn to the next slide. Now it's time to hand over to Carsten for the group financial performance, an update of the financial disclosure and details around the financial outlook. Carsten, please.

Thank you, Par, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to the next slide. During the year, we have significantly improved the free cash flow. In the first half of '25, it was negative by DKK 134 million, whilst it was positive DKK 87 million in the second. Wrong slide, my apologies. The financial performance for the fourth quarter was below our initial expectations, but in line with the latest communicated outlook we released in December. Par has already been through the regional performance. Therefore, I will just highlight the key figures. The organic growth ended at minus 7% in Q4. However, adjusting for the U.S. revenue rephasing, the organic growth would have been minus 3%. As Par alluded to, we won new contracts across regions, which lays the foundation for '26. The group operating profit margin, excluding special items, was directly affected by the lower revenue recognition ending at 4.2%. However, if we adjust for the revenue rephasing, the margin was 8%, which is in line with the margin for Q3. And if you move on to Slide 10. 2025 has been heavily impacted by the market uncertainty. It has dampened the revenue development in Europe, and we have seen disruptions to the U.S. business. On the other hand, there has been more than 5% organic growth in both Denmark and Asia despite the uncertainty. Full year revenue amounted to DKK 1.79 billion, equal to an organic growth of minus 2.8%. During '25, we have adjusted capacity to fit the current market demand and taken out regional and corporate overhead costs to structurally lower the cost base. We have also improved our efficiency in our internal processes and become more operationally efficient when it comes to project execution. Despite of all these activities, the negative revenue development has resulted in a contracting profit margin. The group operating profit margin, excluding special items, was 5.3% compared with 6.3% last year. Please turn to the next slide for a brief update on special items. As communicated on December 22, special items were expected to be around DKK 83 million. And as you can see on the slide, full year special items ended at DKK 83 million, where the development in Q4 was mainly related to DKK 11 million in restructuring costs and DKK 16 million in Board-initiated projects with adviser support. Please turn to the next slide. During the year, we have significantly improved the free cash flow in the first half of '25. It was negative with DKK 134 million, whilst it was positive DKK 87 million in the second half of '25. The improvement from the first to the second half year is mainly due to stronger management of trade receivables and better payment schedules for our larger customers and also partly generated by nonrecurring items. I'm happy to see the improvement in free cash flow, and it is something we have close attention to and where we expect to see an overall improved development in '26 compared with '25. Please turn to Slide 13. In terms of our financial disclosure, we have updated our terminology, and we will go live with our new financial reporting structure in connection with our Q1 trading statement in May. Firstly, the terminology. To avoid any confusion and to be more concise in our definition, organic growth will now be changed to constant currency revenue growth. Constant currency revenue growth is defined as the reporting revenue adjusted for foreign exchange movements. If any M&A activity will take place, organic growth will be used again. Furthermore, we are making minor changes to the profitability terminology, where regional operating profit and group operating profit, excluding special items, now will change to regional EBIT and group EBIT, excluding special items for further alignment compared with peers. In regards to Region Denmark, we will now separately report on Public and SCALES. This will now mean that we will have 5 regions in Europe, U.S., Asia representing Life Science segment and Public and SCALES, which activity is in Denmark. All the 5 regions will have their own P&L and will follow the same methodology as of today. Ahead of our Q1 trading statement release in May, we will share the historical P&L figures for Public and SCALES. Please turn to the next slide. In '26, we'll continue to execute our strategic initiatives, accelerating the commercial focus towards the public and Life Science segments while improving the operational efficiency and structurally reducing the cost base. We see opportunities to profitably grow the company within its strategic commercial focus areas, although the geopolitical market unrest is expected to continue. The growth drivers are continued expansion in the lower-tier segments, growing existing engagements across tiers and start on the project delivery on the public contracts signed in '25. However, we do also expect that some of the Tier 1 customer characteristics observed during '25 will continue into '26, which will partly offset some of the growth potential. The constant currency revenue growth is expected to be 0% to 5%. We also expect to grow our profitability compared with 2025. For 2026, the group EBIT margin, excluding special items, is expected to 6% to 9%. The drivers for the margin increase are driven by operational efficiency gains, full year impact from cost reducing initiatives done in '25 and continued focus on streamlining processes. Special items are expected to be materially lower than '25 and will mainly related to restructuring costs as the earn-out payment programs are completed. We expect the first quarter to be below the guided range for both constant currency growth and group EBIT margin, excluding special items as financial performance is expected to gradually improve throughout the year. In the outlook for '26, we assume there will be no further deterioration of the current macroeconomic environment and no M&A activity is assumed. Please turn to the next slide. Before we head into the Q&A, Par will provide some closing remarks. Please turn to the next slide. And Par, please.

Thanks very much, Carsten. There is no doubt that we've had a challenging end to the year. The fourth quarter was a quarter with continued market unrest and unexpected disruption to our U.S. business. But we had also positives, especially with strong performance in Denmark and in Asia. Also, we managed to keep the momentum in terms of signing new contracts across our regions, laying the foundation heading now into '26. Internally, we are executing on our strategic initiatives according to plan. We are becoming more operationally efficient. We have expanded our go-to-market approach, and we are structurally lowering our cost base. Despite all the things mentioned around financial performance and focus on strategic initiatives, we have recorded our highest customer satisfaction score, emphasizing our strong relationship and collaboration with our customers. Lastly, we announced a full year outlook for '26 that reflects growth and improving profitability. This concludes the presentation for today. Thank you very much for joining the call. Now we'll open the line and take your questions. Operator, please turn to the next slide and open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] No one has lined up for questions. Then I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. And even though no questions, I hope that our presentation today was explanatory and gave you some good input to our performance. And most importantly, I want to thank everybody for joining this call and wish you all have a great day. And of course, don't hesitate to reach out to either me or Carsten if you would have any further questions. Have a great day.