Sanoma Oyj (SANOMA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'm very happy to introduce Sanoma as an investment to you today. At Sanoma, we positively impact the lives of millions of people every day. And we do this through our 2 strong businesses, and they are very focused. On the one hand, we have our leading K12 learning content business in Europe, where we serve around 25 million students and their teachers across Europe. And we also are Finland's leading digital cross-media company, where we reach about 96% of all Finns every week. And over the last few years, we have really built a strong platform. If you look at the last 3 years, we have delivered on all the key financial targets we set ourselves, improving the profitability in both Learning and Media, delivering strong improvement in free cash flow and also as a result of that, really deleveraging our balance sheet. If you now look ahead, we're really at the start of an exciting growth period for Sanoma, the period '26 to 2030. And that has, in the end of it, a multiyear high-quality earning growth as a result. And that path is powered by learning. And that's to do with the unique position we have in learning. So K-12 education, what we focus on is, of course, really the core foundational years of education, primary, secondary vocational. So that really is a need to have. And with our blended learning solutions, we really are the preferred approach for the teachers. And that also has earned us the trust of the teachers, the students and parents across Europe. And it really positions us well to help all students achieve better learning outcomes and really fulfill their potential with our inclusive increasingly personalized learning solutions. Second part is that we also have a clear growth pathway to follow, and that will really be around shaping the future of K-12 education. And we have multiple levers for that. And let me briefly touch on them. So in the coming years, we have a real positive effect of the curriculum renewal cycles in our core markets, and that will really be driving growth. And with our strong position, leading position in those markets, we are in a prime position to benefit from that. Secondly, there is a lot of potential around personalized learning, embracing AI, embracing it with real focus on the human oversight, but that really is shaping the K-12 market with new products and solutions that we will bring to market. And thirdly, we have the chance to increase shareholder value with leveraging our scale further, both by doing that with our existing scale, but also very much with future M&A, if you think about the market being really ready for further consolidation. It is still very fragmented. And then thirdly, and this comes back to the point that we really have delivered on building a strong foundation. The foundation is really now such that we have the opportunity to grow further also with M&A. And Media Finland plays an integral part in that. There, the successful digital transformation will continue, which is really good to see. But also, on top of that, we, of course, have the exciting opening of the gambling market in Finland, which will drive significant revenue and particularly also earnings growth. And we have this robust balance sheet and strong free cash flow growth to invest in learning as well as continuing with our dividend policy and M&A ambitions. So to summarize, our ambition really is to follow the path of that exciting growth. We are committed to an even more disciplined approach when you think about our leverage with net debt over adjusted EBITDA target being 2.5 and below. And we retain, as I mentioned, that increasing dividend policy with 40% to 60% of our annual free cash flow delivered to our shareholders. So that's a whistle-stop tour of Sanoma's equity story, growth powered by learning. Thank you very much.