Sanoma Oyj (SANOMA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I warmly welcome you, shareholders, to Sanoma's Annual General Meeting. In order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, this year, the Annual General Meeting will be held without shareholders and their representatives' presence at the venue of the meeting. This is necessary, albeit unfortunate, in order to ensure the health and safety of the company's shareholders, personnel and other stakeholders. I would like to thank all shareholders for your understanding and your commitment to vote in advance and follow the meeting via this webcast. To improve interaction, questions may be submitted through a chat function during the meeting to the President and CEO relating to her presentation. Shareholders have also had the chance to ask questions in advance. Please let me begin this meeting formally by introducing Sanoma's Board of Directors in 2020. The members of the Board were, in 2020, Antti Herlin as Vice Chairman; Rolf Grisebach; Julian Drinkall; Mika Ihamuotila; Nils Ittonen; Denise Koopmans; Sebastian Langenskiöld; Rafaela Seppälä; and Kai Öistämö. My name is Pekka Ala-Pietilä, and I served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. According to the company's articles, the Board of Directors is always elected for 1 year at a time. Changes are proposed to be made to the composition of Sanoma's Board of Directors as announced in the notice of the Annual General Meeting. Vice Chairman, Antti Herlin; and Kai Öistämö, the Chairman of the Human Resources Committee, have announced that they will no longer be available as members of the Board for the upcoming term. Both Antti Herlin and Kai Öistämö have served on the company's Board of Directors for 10 years, a respectable time in which they have contributed to the transformation of Sanoma. Dear Antti and Kai, during your period as members of the Board of Directors, Sanoma has gone through a fundamental transition from a media company to a growing European learning company with a strong cross-media business in Finland. I would like to warmly thank you both for your commitment in the long-term development of the company and for your very important contribution to the changes in essential times of decision-making. It has been a real pleasure to work with you in the Board of Directors. Sanoma's shareholders, who represent more than 10% of all shares and votes in the company, have proposed to the Annual General Meeting that Ms. Anna Herlin would be elected as a new member of the Board of Directors. The term of office of all Board members will expire at the close of the Annual General Meeting 2022. The Annual General Meeting will decide on this later today. Shareholders, year 2020 was a successful and transformative year for Sanoma, despite the significant impact of the coronavirus pandemic, all our markets, our customers and also on our ways of working. The agility and flexibility of our staff gave us good capabilities to adapt to the rapidly changed conditions caused by the pandemic. And our first priority was and remains to be to keep our staff, customers and business partners safe. And we have been working remotely for almost a year now. And we have complied with the authorities' instructions and regulations and have widely introduced measures to ensure that we all are safe. And there have been 3 essential targets for us: the safety of our staff, the flexible support to our customers and the long-term development of the strategic capabilities of our company. And we set ourselves a target to be a more -- a stronger company after this pandemic. And during this year, the role of our services and products gained some significant meanings. In schools, teachers and students could flexibly utilize the digital solutions and could actually carry on with their studies and work remotely. For journalism, last year was significant and important. The fast-changing world means that conveying entities to readers will need even higher-quality journalism than before. At the same time, the meaning of entertainment grew as part of people's lives during the pandemic. I would like to thank Susan Duinhoven very warmly, who has -- and also other staff for their remarkable performance in this challenging year 2020. And we still want to continue the progress on our own strategic change path despite the circumstances. And this led to the implementation of various significant projects. We divested our media business in the Netherlands in April and the Oikotie online classified business in Finland in July. We acquired the regional news business from Alma in Finland. And at the year-end, we became owners of Santillana learning business in Spain. Today, Sanoma consists of 2 focused and leading businesses, each in their own field, in the learning business in Europe for K-12 and the media business in Finland. We will continue to explore growth opportunities and look for new opportunities, particularly in learning. And our solid financial position and balance sheet will give us a good opportunity for this, and they actually give us a headroom of EUR 300 million to EUR 400 million for further acquisitions. Our ambition is to continue to create increasing value for both our customers and our shareholders. The financial results in 2020 was again solid. And the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic were effectively countered with cost reductions. The Board is, therefore, able to propose a modest growth in dividends per share, even after such an exceptional year. Transparency is important in Sanoma, also on the remuneration of our team. And already in the last years, we have shared our remuneration policy with you and stressed the importance of alignment between management and shareholders' interest through a long-term incentive plan that is also share-based. And this policy has not changed from previous years. The Chairman of the Human Resources Committee, Kai Öistämö, will, in his presentation, elaborate and summarize the remuneration report later in this meeting. Responsible and ethical business practices lead our way of working here. And learning and media have an intrinsically positive impact on society. Our core businesses, inclusive learning and responsible media, are all about contributing to society, and this is what is attracting and driving our team. In 2020, we have further crystallized and updated our sustainability strategy and set our goals for the coming years. Handling data with care, reducing our already relatively low climate impact and respecting people and diversity in all its forms are among the critical challenges facing all players in our industries and societies. We have set ourselves targets on 6 themes. And they are learning responsible media, responsible use of data, looking after the environment, developing workplace and responsible business practices. Susan Duinhoven will get deeper into these topics later in her presentation. Shareholders, I want to thank you for your support and trust in the past year. And I would like to wish you all an interesting general meeting in its exceptional format. Next, it is our task to left a chair for the meeting. And I propose attorney-at-law, Riikka Rannikko, for this job. Go ahead.